Phoenix, Arizona.

April is a wonderful time to visit the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. When the Sonoran Desert has received plenty of moisture in the winter months, wildflowers grow abundantly. The Sonoran Desert covers southern Arizona and northern Mexico (with the westernmost section in eastern California.)

What’s nice about the botanical gardens in Phoenix is that even when the winter is dry and flowers are not at all plentiful in the wild, the well cared for plants in the botanical garden receive the water they need to provide plenty of those beautiful spring blossoms.

In April 2021, we visited the gardens with visiting family to share the beauty of the desert spring. As usual, I took my “real” camera, either my Sony or Nikon, but I also am on the lookout for interesting images for my cell phone.

About the photo: This beautiful collection of pastel yellow flowers was just “begging” to be included in a Cellpic Sunday feature. Those delicate blossoms hide the prickly nature of those pancake-shaped branches. After exposure and downloading to my desktop, I processed the image in Adobe Lightroom and Luminar Neo. Click on the image to pixel peep in 2K HD on my Flickr site and see the image metadata.

For more images of those spring wildflowers, check out my first visit to the gardens here or here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

Phoenix, Arizona

This week, my wife Lynn and I are travelling. Last week I featured some of my favorite images of birds. This week, I focused my photo gallery on one of my favorite places in Arizona, the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. I submit for your approval, a gallery collection of my favorite images of flowers in bloom in the desert springtime.

Click on any image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner

The Desert Botanical Gardens glass agave exhibit at the garden entrance is especially beautiful at night

Phoenix, AZ

This week’s blog post features a Christmas treat. A tradition in the Phoenix area for 75 years, Los Noches De Las Luminarias at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens is featuring an anniversary special attraction this year.

The garden opened just before sunset the evening we visited

Coincidental to the annual Christmas celebration, the gardens are featuring glass sculptures by the renowned glass artist, Dale Chihuly. Throughout the gardens, his lighted sculptures provide a visual treat. Chihuly’s exhibit will be open through May 11, 2014. See the exhibit at night for best effect. See the gardens during the day to best view the microenvironment of native desert plant life. Los Noches concludes on December 31. Tickets sell out nightly, so be sure to order in advance to insure you can attend.

Hundreds of candle luminarias line the paths and sidewalks throughout the garden

Regular readers of this blog may remember a photo challenge a few weeks ago where I featured a couple of images from my collection taken at the gardens on November 30. I promised in that post to provide a more complete glimpse of that evening’s images. This collection is but a sample of the many sculptures in the garden. Take the time to explore the gardens yourself to see all of the featured sculptures. I submit for your holiday enjoyment a gallery of images from the magical evening we spent at Los Noches De Las Luminarias.

In one exhibit, a collection of beautiful crystal glass sparkled in the nearby glow of lavender shafts of illuminating glass spires

On a nearby hillside, a collection of lighted sculptures beckoned us

Lighted spires provide an eerie backlight for the collection of nearby saguaro

A Chihuly glass fireball illuminates the nearby organ pipe cactus

One of the Papago peaks and Camelback Mountain (right) provide the perfect background for a stroll through the gardens

For those who celebrate the Christmas holiday, Merry Christmas. Whatever your persuasion; I wish you Happy Holidays and a joyous and prosperous New Year.

John Steiner

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