This white echinopsis flower greeted me when I went out onto the patio this morning. I also saw eleven cereus cactus flowers. This was the unique one today, though. Click on the image to enlarge.
According to the label on the planter:
The genus echinopsis, native to South America are globular cacti that are quite cold tolerant. They produce white, yellow, pink or lavender flowers in the Summertime.
From Power Line:
Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, when a gay federal judge in San Francisco, relying on the opinions of mostly-gay “expert” witnesses, ruled that an amendment to the California constitution, which was adopted in perfectly proper fashion by a substantial majority of voters, is “unconstitutional.” In this context, unconstitutional means “unpopular with me and my friends.”
In late spring, I bought some Asian lilies to put in the front porch planters for some spring color. Eventually, the lilies played out and I bought some Gerbera Daisies for the summer decorative flowers in the planters. I didn’t get around to putting them in the planters since a tomato plant had started to sprout in the soil where I cut back the lilies. It looked healthy, so I left it to grow into a mature tomato plant.
I guess it’s quite common for plants from a nursery to carry seeds from tomatoes and other things. This isn’t the first time for this to happen to us.
This is the plant today – sporting a healthy crop of six little tomatoes. I got a trellis from the back yard to support the weight of the tomatoes while they get ripe. Now, I’m looking forward to having garden-fresh tomatoes grown on the front porch. Click on the image to enlarge.
This is another of the photos I took in 2005 on our Alaskan adventure tour. We took the airline from LAX via Portland, OR to Anchorage. We boarded a dome car on the Alaskan Railroad and rode to Denali and then to Fairbanks the next day. This is along the Nenana River just out of Denali on the way to Fairbanks. Click on the image to enlarge.
One of the highlights of our trip to Alaska in 2005 was to see a dog sled team doing their thing. A ranger would pull out a sled on a fairly smooth track (no snow in July in Denali) and the dogs – about 20-30 of them – would commence barking noisily – TAKE ME TAKE ME! The rangers assembled a team of five dogs and one of them got on the sled and drove the eager team around about a quarter mile course at full speed. These dogs were wonderful to watch as the enthusiastically did what they apparently love to do. Click on the image to enlarge.
This is one of four cereus cactus flowers in bloom this morning. This time of year. one or more of these opens every day. Within hours the flowers wilt, eventually fall off leaving a portion of the stem that will grow into the fruit of this cactus. Click on the image to enlarge (notice the pollinator inside).
