You wouldn’t know it from all the parking lots and shopping centers in our immediate vicinity, but out on the fringe of suburbia, acres of peaches are growing fat and juicy in the warm spring sunshine.

Even with a healthy appreciation for the arts and a career that puts me in close proximity to them — not to mention a cousin who’s an accomplished professional ballerina — I can’t say I clamor for a night at the ballet.

Among the not-so-favorite memories from high school, standing in front of the class to deliver a presentation ranks right up there. Remember, the clammy palms, racing heart, dry throat and jumbled nerves?

A smattering of butterflies have flitted through my yard this spring, loitering briefly around the lantana and aloe stalks before moving on to lusher landscapes. Those fleeting backyard glimpses are nothing compared to the up-close and personal look you get at hundreds of butterflies inside The Marshall Butterfly Pavilion at Desert Botanical Garden.

There are restaurants that slash prices on margaritas or invite a mariachi band for Cinco de Mayo - and then there are restaurants that go a little nuts.

On May 5, 1862, a rag-tag force of vastly outnumbered Mexican soldiers held off well-provisioned French troops backed by heavy artillery in a battle to defend Mexican sovereignty.

They may be so commonplace they’re unappreciated, so simple they fail to activate the saliva glands at first sight, but in our book it’s hard to go wrong with chips and salsa.

The road to Florence isn’t long when country music stars are in town. People flock from the East Valley to the Country Thunder music festival, spurring the question: What else is there to see in Florence? It didn’t take long to find an answer — alpacas.

Practically a childhood right of passage, “A Wrinkle in Time” is a book a lot of adults can credit with sparking a love for science fiction and fantasy — or at least introducing words like “mitochondria” and “tesseract” to their vocabulary. Whether you want to acquaint your own kids with the beloved story or just take a trip down memory lane, you can see the stage adaptation of Madeline L’Engle’s 1963 Newbery Medal-winning book in Tempe.

Just about everyone has them — family stories. Yours may be a sweet account of how Grandpa proposed to Gram, or only a whisper of something bad that happened that no one ever seems to want to talk about.

Weekends are made for moving a little slower, taking time to enjoy oneself and reconnect with whatever’s been put on the back burner during a hectic work week.

Food trucks have been popular for some time now in the Valley, but on April 13 a new class of diner will get to partake of the trend.

It may be a “tale as old as time,” but "Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” will never feel old hat to generations of new children or eternal fans of romance and fairytales.

Armando Adrian-López doesn’t farm anymore, but he still looks to the natural world for inspiration and materials, using corn husks, dried flowers and found objects to create fantastical winged and horned creatures.

Children will listen to other children in a way they don’t to adults, says Bobb Cooper — and he’s hoping an awful lot of them get to do just that over the next two weeks.

Downtown Chandler’s nice most anytime, but it’ll be a particularly good spot to while away a few hours April 5-6.

It may not be as mainstream a form of expression these days as, say, Instagram, but poetry, that old-fashioned art of arranging language to create an emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm, is alive and well.

As a tween in the 1990s, Krissy Lenz loved the movie “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” We’re talking loooved it.

Hardboiled and dyed, plastic and filled with coins, or chocolate and oozing white and yellow fondant, eggs are a hot commodity this time of year.

Feeling like you should do something for St. Patrick’s Day but missed Saturday’s downtown parade or don’t fancy a drive all the way to Fountain Hills for a spray of green water?

The worn boxing gloves and yellowed punching bags tell only part of the story.

Anticipating a houseful of kids home from school on Spring Break?

You’ve got to love living in the place everyone else wants to be.

I made sushi at home the other day for the first time ever. And it didn’t go that badly, surprisingly. I wouldn’t have thought so just 24 hours earlier.

Over the years, I’ve been invited to some over-the-top Oscar parties, where guests arrive in evening gowns and top hats, and popcorn buckets full of movie candy and DVDs are given away as door prizes.

This time of year, we’ll take nearly any excuse to get out and enjoy the weather. Fortunately, Chandler’s got a good one in its Feb. 23 Classic Car and Hot Rod Show.

The first time I saw the work of Mesa artist William Barnhart, I was smitten. When I learned he is also the man behind one of the most interesting buildings in the city — the eye-catching cinder-block and steel Quonset hut on Center Street just north of University Drive — I was over the moon.

If you’re looking for a meatball sandwich or fettuccine alfredo, you won’t find it here.

It’s ba-aaack: The Arizona Renaissance Festival opens this weekend in Gold Canyon, and it’s celebrating 25 years of transporting modern Valley dwellers to a 16th-century English village.

Everyone has a story to tell, and you can record yours for posterity beginning on Valentine’s Day in Phoenix.

Sometimes, something’s so bad you can’t help but watch. Take any number of reality or competition TV shows, or highlight reels of grotesque sports injuries that should make your stomach turn but instead have you rewinding to watch again in slow motion.

If the excess of the holidays left you with a strong desire to purge, simplify or de-clutter in the new year, you can find a little motivation for your cause in “Green Revolution.”

If art can be a window to the world, a new art show in Mesa gives a peek at six teeny, tiny and very specific realms.

Invite a lot of people over for dinner, and it doesn’t take long for the table to fill up with platters, flatware, plates and elbows.

The olives from the 2012 harvest have been pressed, and the slick, aromatic liquid they yielded is something to celebrate. At least, it is around these parts.

As a kid, the only thing that could make whizzing through space on my bicycle more fun would have been to ride it someplace unusual — like an empty shopping mall.