Desert Botanical Gardens

We have lived here on and off for 14 years (yikes) and never gone to the Desert Botanical Gardens. So for all of you that have never been to Phoenix and think it is just boring and brown...you have to go to the Desert Botanical gardens here. It is fabulous. So beautiful. There are zillions of types of cactus...and yes, lots of them bloom beautiful flowers. But check out the glass artwork they have there as well...wow. Breathtaking.

There was also a butterfly exhibit. Too cool. They loved my dads yellow shirt. He was covered in them. I know it may sound creepy butterflies all over the place but it was too beautiful to be creepy. Trust me. Even my kids didn't freak out. They loved it.

That one picture of the crazy looking saguaro is so cool. When you see a saguaro do that, it is called a crested saguaro. And it is very rare. It is like a deformity but it makes it rare and super expensive. Plus that one is cresting all over the place. Saguaros are expensive to start with. About $100 a foot. Yikes. Then if it is crested it triples in price. They grow slow. And I think it takes about 50 years or so to start growing one arm. We got lucky and have a big one in our front hard...but you don't see huge ones in peoples yards too often just because they are expensive and you need to be careful how you plant them so they don't fall over on your house.