The First WalMart - or so they called it:

Looking southwest from the front door

The Key's Ranch in Joshua Tree is a success story of an early pioneer of that area.  In front of the house, they had what the ranger called the First Walmart of the area.  William Keys was a rancher and miner and all around entrepreneur.  In his front yard, he had a little bit of everything a miner or rancher might need to get it rich quick.  

 Keys was the closest thing to a store in the area.  People would buy from him and go off to their holding. And Keys kept an eye on them.  For once they gave up and left, he would go to their place and pick up all the things they abandoned and replenish his inventory - thus selling the stuff over and over (not that Walmart does that -LOL). 

His wife got into the act by setting up a gift shop - but her sales were final - she sold soap, knic-knacks, snacks - not something you could recover.  Here's her store:

Stash Report/Design Wall Monday 1/16-17

I was gone this weekend, so I'm combining posts this time.  I finished my secret block and changed out the 4 " squares on my 4 inchers on my yellow monochromatic challenge and used about 1/10 yd, so

So: Used/Donated this week: .10 yards

Used/Donated Yr to date: 4.1yards
Added this wk: - 0.0 yards
Total Yr to date added: -1.25 yards
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Total Used Yr to date 2.85yards

Hope to do better this week.

And now for design wall - it's still the same with the blocks although they are now the right size.  I removed the 4" blocks and put 4 1/4" blocks and resewed them and now they are 8" like the rest.  Hopefully I will have time to work on them, but I'm not optimistic as I have a treasurer's report and taxes to work on.

What's on you Design Wall?

My Holiday Blog Post 1/15-17

Back from our desert sojourn.  Our friends have a house in Rancho Mirage and they invited 5 of us to come out for the 3 day weekend and enjoy the desert.  Every time we go they plan something different for us to do.  This time we went to the homes/legacy of two prominent pioneers of this area - William Keys and Cabot Yerxa .  They were colorful characters and it was very interesting learning about them.   Here is a saguaro cactus we took a picture of during our trip.  As we had a late start on Saturday, we drove through Morongo Valley and Yucca Valley to get to the Joshua Tree National Park Visitor's Center and on the way we passed this wonderful saguaro speciment!  It's right there in the middle of town. These take years and years to get this size, so we were thrilled to see them.  At Cabot's museum we found some more.  These are even taller.  Some day I'd like to go to the Saguaro National Park in Southern Arizona where there are many, many of these.  They have these beautiful white blossoms.