The end of Desert Denizen

Alright, I am somewhat overdue for a post! Desert Denizen is now complete and I have begun working again on Arizona Desert. It is posing difficulties because of its size.

Here is the final shot of Desert Denizen…

You can see that I have added the black organza ‘shadows’ and done the fine stitching on each arm. Well, there it is.

I will digress once more to tell you of an interesting trip my husband and I made last week. We drove south from Palm Desert to the Salton Sea. This is a very unique place. The sea, itself, was only formed around 1907. It is about 35miles long and 15miles wide. It is 227′ below sea level. Enough of the facts! We drove all around this inland sea and saw its beauty from a distance at first…

It looks really pretty, doesn’t it?

How about this great shot…

I love the egrets.

Well, the closer you get to the water’s edge, the stranger things look…

Yeah, those are dead fish! The sea is totally surrounded with them. In some places, especially on the southern shore, you can’t walk right up to the water because the shore is soggy and your feet sink a bit. The ‘beach’ is actually made up of dried barnacles and fish skeletons…

The sea used to be higher and much more pleasant. Movie stars bought homes here and were planning another Palm Springs. One developer had put in paved streets with street signs and power poles covering acres of desert…

Now, that’s all it is…acres of desert covered with power poles, street signs, and cracked pavement. There is a collection of homes near the water’s edge but the smell must drive them crazy! Some places look like this…

Abandoned…

And here is the real meaning of  ‘dry dock’…

Sad.

So sad.

On our way home, we passed lots of date plantations. It is cool to see acres of palm trees.

Here’s just one of them.

As you get closer, you can see ladders hanging from the tops of some of them…ready for harvesting, I guess.

The big Date Festival in Indio (one of the cities next door to us) starts today and runs for a week. We plan on going so I’ll show  you some pictures of that – should be fun!

So, all in all, it was a great day. We arrived back in Palm Desert as the sun was setting so I’ll leave you with this shot…