Starhaven Chronicles

Storm threatens Starhaven

One of the surprisingly delightful Tucson experiences is the monsoon. Monsoons are summer storms, often arriving in the afternoon, accompanied by displays of lightning and thunder. As a result of these storms, we experience a second spring. Plants are renewed and cacti blossom. I remember the thunderstorms I experienced as a child back East. Those thunderstorms drove us into the basement. Our Tucson monsoons are best enjoyed from under a portola. During our first Tucson monsoon, the patio was invaded by Colorado River Toads. While fun to watch, these toads present a danger for dogs.

After the storm: rainbow over Starhaven

For more on Arizona monsoons, see:

http://ag.arizona.edu/maricopa/garden/html/weather/monsoon.htm

For information on the Colorado River Toad, see:

http://www.reptilesofaz.org/Turtle-Amphibs-Subpages/h-i-alvarius.html

or

http://www.dog-first-aid-101.com/colorado-river-toad.html

Pictograph of a mountain goat–or is it a deer?

Petroglyph or pictograph? Goat or deer?

Just an hour’s hike from Starhaven, at the base of the Santa Catalina mountains, we found a trove of petroglyphs and pictographs left behind by Native Americans.  It was a hot, slow hike–but worth the effort. The images were startlingly beautiful renditions of goats, lizards, snakes, and other desert creatures. One image, of a group of dancers hand in hand, was particularly intriguing. What would life have been like in these mountains so many years ago? The gaiety of the scene suggests that life was more than just a struggle to survive.

Dancers

Dancers

See this website for the difference between petroglyphs and pictographs: http://geology.com/articles/petroglyphs/more-petroglyphs.shtml

Lizards

Man catching lizard?

Snakes?

Coyote and flower?

Mysterious images

A mature saguaro (suh-wah-roe) grows in the desert at the foot of the Santa Catalina Mountains.

The Santa Catalina Mountains

To find out more about the Santa Catalina Mountains see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Catalina_Mountains

During the refurbishing of Starhaven, my husband and I traveled back and forth between Tucson and Sacramento. This involved either a two-day-each-way caravan with four dogs in the Toyota Tundra or, for shorter trips, a flight from Sac International to Tucson and back. The holes in the wall took months to repair (a story for another day). As a result, when we arrived at Starhaven, we would often find unwelcome visitors in the corners of our ceilings or hiding at baseboard level. I am a wanna-be entomologist*, so most of the time these encounters were an opportunity for me to drag out the field guides and have some fun. On a couple of occasions, our visitors were of the Centriroides exilicauda or bark scorpion clan. The bark scorpion is the species most commonly encountered in the home.

On one of our trips, a scorpion slithered out of a magazine I’d intended to read on the plane. As a result, I instituted a scorpion hunt at the beginning of each visit to our Tucson home. Scorpions glow in the dark. Upon arriving at Starhaven, I would take a black-light (UV) flashlight (which can be purchased from just about any hardware store in Tucson) and tour the house, examining crevices and other places scorpions might hide. I would sometimes discover a scorpion and take it outside.

I had warned my husband not to leave his bags on the floor, but (as is often the case) he needed to learn by up-close-and-personal experience. A week after one of our trips, my husband grabbed a t-shirt from the closet in our Sacramento home and put it on only to feel, as he describes it “bam, bam, bam—three jolts from an uzi”. Apparently a hitchhiker had accompanied us home in my husband’s suitcase.  My husband ripped the shirt off, threw it on the floor, and raced to the hospital where the doctors searched Wikipedia for a treatment plan (there are no bark scorpions in Sacramento). A little numbness was the only symptom and a simple dose of benadryl was all that was necessary to deal with this non-life-threatening encounter.

When I got home I heard all of the details, including the fact that the nasty fellow was loose in our bedroom. In the middle of an uncomfortable night on a twin bed in the guest room, my husband, for whatever reason, solo-missioned it upstairs where he found the interloper in the bathroom. Trapped and dispatched quickly, the fellow was destined to become a paperweight.

*Scorpions are not insects, therefore I use the term “entomologist” loosely.

For more on scorpions see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_bark_scorpion

Yet another scorpion story: http://news.yahoo.com/us-man-stung-scorpion-commercial-flight-180744819.html

Check out the trailer for a 1950’s horror movie called, “The Black Scorpion”. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1441596441/

Note: scorpion stings can be lethal to small children, people in ill health, or individuals allergic to the venom. Contact a physician immediately if you are stung.

The first thing we did after closing, was to buy some patio furniture so we could begin to enjoy those summer evenings in the desert.

It took months to get the holes fixed, but in the meantime, we decided that this time we would get some help with color. Somehow paint never looks the same on the wall as it does on a paint chip or in the can. So, we got some help from a lovely young artist/colorist who had a better understanding of the colorwheel then we did. I take credit for the yellow wall, however.

Just before Starhaven closed, we discovered that she was riddled with polybutylene pipe. This meant that at any time, we might experience a flood of epic proportions in our dining room, bedroom, or office. (See http://ag.arizona.edu/azwater/awr/nov94/leaks.html or see http://www.repipenews.com/). We could either cancel the deal, or plunge forward. Being in the throes of Sonoran Desert lust, we gritted our teeth and replaced the pipes. This involved having the plumbers cut holes through the stucco on the outside and the drywall on the inside, providing a direct conduit into our hideaway for arachnids and other arthropod friends. This was to have consequences which we did not foresee at the time.

Our first adventure was finding a place that hit that sweet spot with both my husband and I. We had lived in Sacramento, California for about fifteen years. Our Curtis Park home, a lovely early 20^th century cottage in an older neighborhood, had provided us with a great home base for many years. However, I was ready to forsake country cottage pastels and old glass doorknobs for something a little more audacious. We also wanted room for a couple of trail horses. A search of the internet led us to our wonderful realtor, Linda, and we arranged to view some homes. She saved the best for last…

It’s been a few months since I set up this blog and I have not yet posted anything substantive. Welcome to the world of bloggery, I guess!

“So,” you might ask, “why Tucson?” Well, in the early fifties, my father (a civilian who worked on military projects) was briefly stationed in Tucson. I must have been four years old, but somehow memories of the desert’s beauties left their imprint on my infant brain. Heightened by my father’s yearly Southwest slideshow–with its images of Old Tucson, the pink hats at the Tucson rodeo, and me in my cowgirl outfit–those memories took hold and flourished until I convinced my trusting husband to buy Starhaven, a little piece of paradise in the Sonoran desert where we could hunker down and explore the Southwest. This blog is a chronicle of our adventures and misadventures.