The Tropical Paradise at Night

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Now that the weather is starting to warm up, here in Phoenix people spend more time out after sunset. If your tropical paradise becomes a "black hole" at night, or worse, turns into an over-lit, glaring area that looks like a sports arena, you are wasting a lot of the beauty of your yard. Here at The Tropical Paradise I have low-voltage Malibu Lights, the ordinary ones that you get at Home Depot. Mostly they are spotlights but I have a few footpath lights in important areas. As you can see, it sets a nice mood. There is just something so cool about up-lighting on palm trees - makes me think of vacation resorts!

It's good to stack some rocks around your path lights. It helps integrate the light with the garden, covers up the base and some wires, and gives a nice visual as the light plays on the shapes of the rocks. Just to the right of the footpath light is a piece of petrified wood from The Petrified Forest in Arizona, given to me by a friend who collected it many, many, years ago, back when you could do so legally.

In the center of this photo is my Dioon Spinulosum cycad, which lost all of its leaves in the frost this winter. But cycads are tough! It will come back with a new set of leaves (called a flush) in either April or May.

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