Sweetwater

I think Dreamstime is a web site which I once took a picture from, perhaps registering with them for the purpose. So this morning they have sent me a link to a water garden in Tucson (reference 1). A water garden which reminds me both of the water gardens of Bushey Park and the wetland centre of Barnes. This last being carved out of what was a water treatment facility, which seems to be what has happened at Tucson.

What caught my eye was the pictures of water life taken by one William Wise, in an oasis in what I have always thought of as a rather dry part of the US. The Sweetwater Wetlands, not to be confused with the rather large wetlands of roughly the same name, across the continent in Sweetwater, a suburb of Miami in Florida, properly the East Coast Buffer Water Preserve. Concerning which Google turned up the interesting document to be found at reference 5. Complete with references to the native peoples' whose land it once was.

I have now consulted Google and my grand Times atlas, dedicated by gracious permission to her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, and know that Tucson is in the south of Arizona, about 60 miles north of what is now the Mexican border. A flat basin, surrounded by serious hills, some rising to near 10,000 feet. Part of a southern arm of the Colorado system, that is to say not the one which does the Grand Canyon. Perhaps once the happy hunting grounds of the drifters, flotsam and worse portrayed by the likes of Clint Eastwood and Cormac McCarthy.

PS: the version of the illustration above that you get at reference 1 does not have the Dreamstime trimmings. But click on it and you get this preview - with an invitation to flash the plastic if you want something better. The green stuff looks very like the duckweed which has invaded the small ponds in our back garden. The duckweed which I believe is grown in lagoons in sunny parts of the US as some kind of a feed crop.

Reference 1: https://www.dreamstime.com/blog/desert-oasis-sweetwater-wetlands-tucson-arizona-54119. The start of the story.

Reference 2: https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/bushy-park/things-to-see-and-do/waterhouse-woodland-garden. Bushey Park water gardens.

Reference 3: https://www.wwt.org.uk/wetland-centres/london/. Barnes water gardens.

Reference 4: https://www.tucsonaz.gov/water/about-sweetwater-wetlands-and-access. The Tucson government story.

Reference 5: https://www.sfwmd.gov/sites/default/files/documents/lass_portfolio_everglades_ecbuffer.pdf. Florida. Might take a while to load at 40Mb or so.

Reference 6: https://www.sfwmd.gov/. The south Florida water management district.