If you are among the Tucsonans who have taken advantage of the TEP $5 trees and planted one or more in your yard, the time has come to let the city know about it. There is a website specifically for notifying The City of Tucson that you have added trees and have contributed to the goal of One Million Trees. Go here to post your tree information on the city website.
Cancelling the $5 tree
If you missed the previous post, I have to confess to cancelling my $5 tree order at Harlow’s. I should have looked at a real desert willow–not just pretty pictures on the internet–before I ordered. The folks at Harlow’s were gracious about it. Later I looked up the TEP page about trees thinking I’d remembered something about a refund. TEP has since contacted me by email to confirm that I was not taking the $5 tree and offered to let me re-order or get a refund. Because it is too late for planting, I decided to opt for the refund. This experience taught me a lesson about checking things out in real life (in this case, a tree in the Mission Garden) before ordering on the internet.
Walking a shady pathway by the river
I go to Trader Joe’s on Campbell at least once a week. For some time now I’ve noticed that the bike trail behind TJ’s looked like a meandering path lined with trees. And it looked as if it might be a good place to go for a walk on a hot sunny day. Today I explored it and for about a half a mile the trail is the tree-lined path we all like–for walking, not just for biking.
I hadn’t gone far when I spied a Roadrunner in the brush beside the trail. A few steps later I looked out at the bone-dry Rillito riverbed and spotted a bobcat intently walking West. Sorry, it happened so fast I did not get a photo of the bobcat. Continuing westward on this tree-lined path…
On my right was a roughly paved path leading down into the river bottom — I guess it’s just an access route. Walking along a little ways further, there is, on the left, a dry wash filled with stones and young trees. Then comes a tall wall that surrounds a community called River at North Campbell. Nice looking homes! But I wondered if there was any access from the community onto the walk.
Yes there is. There was a door, left, from River at North Campbell to the walkway and the short path to it looked as if it is used a lot. Not much further along came the end of the tall wall and shady trees. The pathway/bike trail continued but the trees did not. There, on the right, were a cluster of mobile homes and other residences, so at this point I turned around, heading back to Trader Joe’s.
On the shady tree-lined path/trail looking eastward toward TJ’s I saw a tree that’s almost completely dead. Someone — the city??–needs to send out arborists to cut it down. Despite this dead tree, this shady walk/bike path is what we all dream of having in our neighborhoods. Planting trees will make all the difference.
I do Steps and I think it was about 2,000 Steps round trip from TJ’s to the end of the shady part of this walk. Unfortunately, I forgot to check how many steps I’d already walked before I started this little exploration.
Visit my author’s site to see the books I’ve published.
