Christmas Cactus: 2355 East Parkway Terrace

The 2012 holiday season is almost over. I thought I'd wrap it up here with one last photo. This mailbox has accomplices: a gang of Santas:

Happy 2013!

3362 East 23rd Street

Between the two posts are (I don't know cattle breeds; if you do, please post a comment below), horseshoes, a rodeo rider, and a couple of saguaro cactus.

I took the photo on May 6th.

3312 East 23rd Street

Lots of Tucson homeowners get the idea of mounting their mailboxes on a saguaro. I posted photos of several on December 23rd. I'll try to resist posting all of the saguaro-mailhox scenes I find in the next year. Here's one I couldn't resist posting. It has a yellow cast that wasn't easy to remove, but you'll get the idea anyway:

I took the photo on May 6th.

150 South Westmoreland Avenue

Some mailboxes have flowers, but this mailbox has one REALLY BIG flower — larger than the (plain black) mailbox itself.

According to Google Maps, this is A Neighborhood Early Learning Center. I rolled by on April 22.

2303 East Adams Street

A very fun mailbox with assorted reptiles, lightning bolts, and an extra-large flag:

I slithered by on April 6th.

2041 East Adams Street

Here's a white mailbox with hand-painted flowers.

(There are lots of similar mailboxes around town. Maybe some — including this one? — are mass-produced. You're watching me learn what's out there as I take more photos and post them here. I'll try to be sure not to post duplicates.)

I snapped this on April 6th.

Merry Christmas from 2525 South Edmondson Avenue

This mailbox, nestled in a post made of bricks painted white, is wrapped with Christmas lights and garland. (Too bad I wasn't here at night!) I rode by on December 23.

Happy Holidays from 2435 South Sawtelle Avenue

This white mailbox with sky-blue flowers is decorated by some holiday ribbon and a bell.

I took the photo yesterday.

Saguaro You Today?

That (the title of this post) is a well-known bumper sticker phrase (here's a story of its creation)... so it fits these four mailboxes with saguaro-shaped posts:

	4339 E. Monte Vista October 11, 2012
	2603 E. Drachman October 16, 2012
	2606 E. Drachman October 16
	2601 E. Drachman October 16

(The last three are next to each other, so there's only one map link. Also... that last mailbox could be a young saguaro, a barrel cactus, or whatever...)

Artistic mailboxes seem to come in groups. On (at least) one street (northeast of Speedway & Craycroft — I'll show it in a future post), the same artisan made a whole series of mailboxes in similar styles. There are lots of saguaro mailboxes around Tucson... I'll try to keep some variety here!

If you don't live in southern Arizona, FYI: We pronounce saguaro as, roughly, "so are oh."

3338 East Adams Street

A mailbox sprouting from a steel prickly pear cactus (with a bent pole... was this an accident?):

I was there on April 6th.

2845 East Mabel Street

Petroglyph art in white on a black mailbox:

I took the photo on April 6, 2012.

6511 North Swan Road

Flying mailbox with wings, a head and tail, and a tree limb as the post:

I flew by on February 10, 2012.

6515 N. Catalina Avenue

Here's a square-fronted brass(?) mailbox, in a stuccoed "post," with a saguaro flag. (I said I wouldn't post many mailboxes with cute flags like this, but this is one of the exceptions. :)

I took the photo on February 10, 2012. (By the way, if the Location link below doesn't work, try this one.)

3241 East 26th Street

A calf, a pig(let?), and a puppy with a letter:

I took this pair of photos on the rainy November 13, 2011.

3322 East 24th Street

This mailbox has a roadrunner flag on it and what looks to me like a stylized frog underneath:

I took the photo on November 13, 2011. (That was around the time I got the idea for this blog. I've been collecting photos since then.)

By the way, Tucson has lots of plain-looking mailboxes with a flag in the shape of an animal, a saguaro, etc. I won't show all of them.

2040 East Hampton Street

You can see a sunny mailbox on Hampton by clicking there. That'll take you to the March 31 post from the Tucson Murals Project blog.

(I take photos of murals for that blog and photos of mailboxes for this one. It works out!)

2237 East 20th Street

Here's a unique mailbox. It's the circle in the middle — above the house number. The black curved and pointed metal around the mailbox made it interesting:

I took this on December 10th.

Three in the 2400 block of East Beverly Drive

These neighbors have the same taste in mailboxes: between the two supporting posts are animals, plants, a crescent moon, a cloud with a lightning bolt, and more:

2431	2437	2432

I snapped these photos on December 10th.

The other side of 2308 East Beverly Drive

A horse-drawn US Mail wagon:

Yesterday's post showed the west side of this mailbox. This is the east side.

I found this on December 10th.

What's a mailbox?

Welcome to the new Tucson Mailbox Art blog! As I was setting this up, I wrote an email to a friend in France and started to mention the blog. I realized that not all countries are the same as the US — and even some people who live in the US don't have the type of mailbox I'm describing — so she (and you) might not know what a “mailbox” looks like or how it works.

Here’s what I wrote to her:

“I don't remember whether homes I've seen in France have mailboxes at the curb (the British write kerb) on the street in front? They’ve been a fixture of US homes for decades. (Many city homes used to have a mailbox attached to the front wall, or a slot that let mail drop through the wall. For efficiency, the U.S. Postal Service changed that when I was a child. Also, apartment buildings often have central mailboxes that are different than these.) Now — in Tucson, at least — the letter carrier drives a small truck along the street, stopping at each mailbox to leave that day’s mail (or, as Brits say, the post). The mailbox also has a flag, on a hinge, that the home’s owner (or occupant) can raise as a signal that there’s mail waiting for the letter carrier to pick up.”

The mailbox above is at 2308 E. Beverly Drive. (Click the "Location" box below to see a map.) I'll show the other side of the mailbox in tomorrow's post. I took the photos on December 10th.