Many thanks to all of you who replied about my posting of the cactus blossoms and yes, couch coyote, the lifespan of these beautiful blossoms is extremely limited and they give very little warning when they are about to bloom.

It still amazes me how such ugly plants can produce such beautiful blooms! Yes, DM is changing all the time. I arrived in Tucson in 1967 as a part time pilot for the Tucson Air Guard flying F-102s and have watched DM mature in a lot of ways and go downhill in others ( they have closed the golf course for one). The base housing looks a lot nicer now and they have a huge solar plant for electricity.

Thanks for the photo of the cactus from your location - my wife, who is the cactus expert in this house, really enjoyed it.

It is now a month or more into our "monsoon" season when we get the majority of our annual rainfall and it has only stormed once at our house. It is also the hottest summer on record here in Tucson with daily temps of 112 being fairly normal. Given all that, you would not expect any of the cactus to blossoming but last week I went out to get the paper at around 6AM and found a large number in full bloom. By 10AM the blossoms were gone. The one with the pink flowers (4) is one of my favorites because of its size - only two inches across so you can see how tiny the flowers are.

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We have a tall tree across the street from our house that every year hosts a pair of hawks who nest, raise the hatchlings and fledge them. They showed up a little late this year but we now have two recently fledged Coopers hawks in the neighborhood and as usual, they congregate in my front courtyard that has a running fountain. The pictures were taken through the living room window and one of the young hawks was sitting on the fountain after drinking and then one of the parents showed up with with fresh prey. At the time the pictures were taken, I assumed there was only one fledgling but a day later I was sitting on the back patio and two of them landed less than 10 feet from me.(no camera unfortunately). Considering that the pictures are through a window and handheld, they turned out reasonably well.

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No, the shots were taken through the front windscreen of the helicopter which was really clean. I hadn't thought about it before but I guess it stays pretty clean by itself because the downwash from the rotor blades would push any bugs away before they had a chance to hit the windshield.

As far as the comment about the wings moving faster..... I totally agree. I also flew for the airlines for 35 years and had a co-pilot on the 727 that used to be a chopper pilot and he told me that the helicopter was the only airplane that you could do everything 100% right and it would still kill you! I thought of that before I took the tour and justified going by reasoning that he said that over 30 years ago and that they must be much safer now. I obviously was correct because I am writing this now! All kidding aside, this was a delightful experience and I might even do it again when we go to Sedona.

Many thanks to all of you that liked my aerial photos of Sedona. I forgot to mention in my comments that I used a shutter speed of 1/500 but in reviewing all my photos, I have determined that was not fast enough. I was worried about the speed over the ground but what made some of my photos a little soft was the vibration of the helicopter itself. This was made obvious in some of the photos that included portions of the instrument panel where the gauges were almost unreadable. This vibration was noticeable in all of the photos but for the long range photos I ran them through Topaz Sharpen AI and it really helped.

Because of my fighter pilot background I used to sneer at helicopters as "a collection of moving parts all going in different directions" but after taking a helicopter tour last year I have recognized the error of my ways. I was totally blown away with helicopter's ability to fly up narrow, dead-end canyons, stop, turn around in place and fly back out as well as it's ability to hover in place while I took photos. ( as a quick aside, I have flown through the red rock country of Sedona before but it is hard to enjoy the scenery when you are dodging rock formations at 500 mph).
The helicopter we flew in was a 4 place and was air conditioned and quite comfortable and thanks to the courtesy of my wife, I got to sit up front next to the pilot (who looked like he should still be in high school) and the takeoff amazed me: we went from to dead stop to a gentle climb in about 10 feet at an airspeed that you would normally associate with an automobile. (a fighter such as the F-100 with a full load of armament could take 6 to 7 thousand feet and a liftoff speed of 165 knots and a climb speed of 300 knots)
Needless to say, if you spend any time in Sedona, a helicopter tour should be on your dance card. I would suggest one later in the afternoon as the "golden hour" sun really brings out the colors of the red rocks.

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What a great project and you keeping a photographic history of it makes it even more impressive. I belong to the Super Sabre Society which consists of pilots and flight surgeons who have flown in the North American F-100 Super Sabre. We found an old F-100 here in the boneyard (at Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ) and arranged to purchase it from the government and were going to restore it for a museum we were building. I was going to be the recording photographer and was really looking forward to it but the deal fell apart at the last minute. I loved the Corsair and made several models of it as a kid growing up and during the 20 years I flew with the Arizona Air National Guard here in Tucson, 8 of those years were spent as an instructor pilot in the Vought A-7D and A-7K. I mention this because the A-7 was officially the Corsair II. Keep up the good work and keep showing the progress.

Many thanks for all the nice comments. This project was launched because of an article on the internet about some of the Tucson murals that gave their locations. During our searching them out, we ran across murals that had not been mentioned and we also know other locations just from driving around town in the 53 years we have lived here so you can expect another installment soon. I also want to thank reconvic for the explanation on the whales over the desert - that had not occurred to me. And to SoHillGuy on the artist signing the mural, you can rest easy as all of them had the artists name but since my photos included close ups of just parts of the murals or panoramas taken at a distance, they are not visable. I also found out that the mural of the whales was only supposed to be about 25% of the finished size as that was all the grant could pay for it but the artist used the whole side of the building and did it for the original cost. Thanks again to all of you for your interest and support. Stay safe.

After staying in the house for a month due to the virus, we had a bad case of cabin fever and got in the car and went in search of some of the numerous murals decorating buildings in Tucson, AZ. Most of them did not require us to even get out of the car but the times we did there was no one around. We live well outside of downtown Tucson and seldom go there because of the difficulty of finding parking space but today we had no problem. This is just a small sampling of what Tucson has to offer and we will be going on another mural search soon. A confession though - because the murals are subject to the intense Tucson sun and have some fading, I have added a little saturation to show them as they were originally. I also have to admit that I can't figure out the meaning of the whales flying over the desert but it is the largest of the murals at about 150 feet long.

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Again, I want to thank all of you that wrote to tell me that you enjoyed my photos of Sedona and the red rocks with snow. We own a time share there and have been going every year for 15 years and I was finally treated to something I could only imagine.

I agree that there is a lot of the base that was cropped out but I did it because it was showing the main commercial section of Sedona and I wanted to just concentrate on the red rocks and snow.

Just got back from Phoenix and was very heartened by the response from many of you for my photo of the red rocks of Sedona with snow on them - my thanks to all of you who took the time to comment on it. If I had realized it would be so well accepted, I would have included a few more so here they are.

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We spent the week of Thanksgiving in Sedona and woke up the next morning heavy snow falling and the road up Oak Creek Canyon being closed. The snow continued off and on for another day and by that time highway 89A northbound was open so we headed up the canyon looking for some good photo sites. This was my favorite but all were great with the contrast between the white snow and the red rocks.

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Perfect!