Chollas are botanically in the subfamily of Opuntioideae, the same family which includes cactus’s with broad, flat leaves. The leaves of the Cholla are round-ish and really spiny. They quickly become stuck to any object that comes close to it. Their spines hurt and aren’t easy to remove once impaled in either fabric, fur or flesh. When backlit by the setting sun, their branches look like bright torches of white gold.
This is an end-of-day scene looking east. We’d been fishing down in the Salt River, fish weren’t biting, the sun’s sinking and it’s getting cold on the desert. Nothing left to do but walk back to the car and start the hour’s drive home.
Salt River Wash, Arizona, $50USD, Oil, 9×12″, 2020, copyrighted with all rights reserved by Jean Krueger
This part of the Salt River runs through Tonto National Forest in central Arizona. When the monsoons come, the rocky bed in the foreground is raging with water which will flow west where the Verde River will join it.
Wild horses, mustangs, roam freely through this park in large herds.
Chiricahua National Monument in southern Arizona is other-worldly. Have you been there? I think it rivals, even surpasses, Utah’s Arches National Park. Chiricahua feels intimate yet has a scale of grandeur. I had never heard of this place before we visited it over the New Year holiday. We hiked isolated trails, took lots of pictures and quit at sunset. See America first, we have so many wonders to behold.
It’s difficult to travel more than a few block in Sun City, Maricopa County, Arizona, before encountering a golf course. I don’t play and they’re closed to all but paying customers. They’ve remained a huge mystery to me for the more than 60 years that I’ve been a visitor to this specialized City. The golf paths wind through lush, shaded and watered landscapes that disappear in the far distance, forbidden to non-golfing mortals such as I so I’m very curious as to what lies beyond. Nonetheless, the courses are lovely and I don’t begrudge those who are to allowed to amble the greens from dawn to dusk. After dark the greens belong to coyotes, the rabbits they hunt and the birds who roost til morning. This is the order such and the way it shall be.
Ocotillo, gouache, 9×12″, 2020, copyrighted with all rights reserved Jean Krueger, $45 USD includes shipping.
Ocotillos, indigenous to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and Mexico, are a plant with long, spiny leafed stems bearing flags of densely packed orange to red flowers at their tips. Their branches grow to 15-20 ft. high in tight clusters. Have you ever seen one?
Jean Krueger Fine Art 
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