Happy Spring Y'all! Although ... no hyacinths over here, here it looks more like this:

                                  

Same beautiful! These enormous flowers are from the Argentine Giant Cactus (I think ..), and they emerged from these ginormous buds:

                                            

The Beaver-tails are starting. That pink is so beautifully bright!

The bees have found them too!

And how about these gorgeous Prickly Pears ..

                           

Also, the Agave I've been keeping my eye on here in the neighborhood has reached it's final height and is starting to flower too!

    

For some different excitement, we had a pleasant surprise today when the Shotcrete-people showed up unexpectedly, one week ahead of schedule!
(Well, in fact they're two months late, but who's counting).

At first it looked like they had a different size of pool in mind ...

Just kiddin ..!!

                    

They came with a crew of four, and four hours later we had a (rough) pool! Wow!

It's a beautiful thing!

On one of my walks this week I 'cut through' some side yards, and ended up on a different side of the pond at the 17th hole than normal:

You can just see our house there on the left, that white triangle is the backside of it, and the green of the 17th hole on the right.
Its where I happened to come upon a little group of fairly rare ducks (for here) enjoying the calm waters :



They are Cinnamon Teals, small 'dabbling' ducks, who overwinter here in the south-west.
Look at that gorgeous color!
They had company from this little Pie-billed Grebe, a diving bird who spends almost more time under water than above:

They are one of the smallest species of ducks, making them fast flyers

They are one of the smallest species of ducks, making them fast flyers

For our 'fun' this week we golfed at Palm creek Golf and RV resort in Casa Grande.



We'd golfed here before a couple of weeks ago and I really liked the place. It's a 'full 18-holes' par 3 course (some are more a par 4) and very doable for me, being a somewhat 'shorter' hitter.

It is beautifully landscaped, lots of palms and lots of water of course (Palm Creek), which makes for very lush surroundings here in the middle of the desert!

Huh, what, that's just a coffee break ... oh, yeah, of course we had pie!! I used the last of the blackberries I picked last summer in Idaho and added some blueberries and raspberries for a mixed-berry pie!
Fresh out of the oven, it looked like this:

By the way, I almost forgot, but as usual we had Corned beef for St. Patty's day ..

                                             

                  You can't ever say Hess-es don't eat well!

              

Well, that was all. Five more days to go and we'll be on the road again!
This coming Monday we'll pick up the RV from the storage place, and will park it in the driveway for 2 days for a thorough cleaning after which we'll be moving all our 'stuff' back in. Since most of the work is done by now, James has the truck already mostly loaded.

On Wednesday we'll head out, and our first destination will be Lake Havasu, about 240 miles from us.

I'm beyond excited!