Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey
Series produced by KXCI
Petey Mesquitey is KXCI’s resident storyteller.
Every week since the spring of 1992 Petey has delighted KXCI listeners with slide shows and poems, stories and songs about flora, fauna, family and the glory of living in southern Arizona.
211 Pieces
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Oldest First
The genus is now Hesperocyparis, but back in the olden days, I learned the rough bark Arizona cypress of southeastern Arizona as Cupressus arizonic...
- Added: May 04, 2022
- Length: 05:00
We are living in stressful times and getting out of the house, if only to your back yard, is always a good idea. Native flora and fauna can cure th...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 04:59
Encelia farinosa (brittle bush, incienso) loves rocky hillsides and gravelly desert. And though this native shrub has a large range showing up in t...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 04:35
When I was a boy vultures were called buzzards. It’s an interesting common name that came across the ocean with early British colonists who had no ...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 04:03
Anyone who lives in groundhog country will have a woodchuck tale or two to tell. Growing up in Kentucky I sure did. At the University of Arizona in...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 03:47
I forgot to say that the genus Crotalus comes from the Greek krotalon or krotos for rattle or rattling. (A couple favorite native plants are called...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 04:18
I’ve known barn owls since I was a kid in Kentucky and I always saw them in barns roosting or nesting up high in the rafters. I remember finding a ...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 04:43
One of the most magical moments of my childhood was when I first dug up potatoes in a garden and we later had some for dinner. I was awe struck! Th...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 04:59
One of the positive sides of isolating and staying very close to home during the pandemic is that we discovered new places and rediscovered old hau...
- Added: Mar 15, 2022
- Length: 05:07
Cactus wrens were one of the first Sonoran Desert birds I learned when I arrived in Tucson to go to the University of Arizona. They are such rascal...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 04:44
This is Growing Native with Petey Mesquitey. Cloudy Cold days these days. Petey talks about lifesaving snow in the desert, the beauty of Sandhill C...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 04:52
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 05:09
I have a bunch of photos from Christmas tree hunts and most of them are 35 mm slides. These few here were taken over the last several years. I alwa...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 05:07
I was reading a Christmas card from some very dear friends and in the hand written portion of the card it mentioned this season as being the “holie...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 04:53
The vast landscapes of the southwest are to die for and every once in a while I capture one with my camera. More and more I remind myself to just t...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 04:56
I always want to add an extra T when I write Yucca baccata, but no, two Cs and one T is correct. The specific epithet baccata is from Latin and mea...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 04:59
There are around 30 species of Porophyllum, the majority of which are found in Mexico and southward. Around me in the borderlands of Arizona Sonora...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 04:52
The loose rock fandango can get pretty elaborate with elements of modern dance, hokey pokey, ballet and of course some jazz hands thrown into the m...
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 05:00
Xanthisma gracilis is an annual and found all over the southwest and into Mexico as well. Duh. A common name is slender goldenweed or spiny zinnia....
- Added: Jan 13, 2022
- Length: 05:03
Heuchera is found in the saxifrage family, Saxifracaceae, with 80 other genera that includes the genus Saxifraga and its 400 species. Yikes!
- Added: Nov 01, 2021
- Length: 05:06
