Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

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More Summer Cactus Flowers

Summer Cactus Flowers

Several of the local cacti were in bloom today. Upper left: Argentine Giant Flower, lower Left: Cherry Red Flower with Pollinator and right: Queen of the Night Flowers at just after midnight this morning. The QOTN flowers are on a rescued cactus stalk in a pot in the courtyard.

We have been having intermittent rain and thundershowers and it was iffy as to whether we were going to be able to get any photos last night or this morning before the flowers all faded away as cactus flowers usually do. However, the weather cooperated and we got these photos this morning. Click on the collage to enlarge.

31 Jul 2019 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden Photography

Summer Cherry Red Cactus Flowers

Three New Flowers

One of our transplanted Cherry Red (Trichocereus Grandiflorus) cacti has three new flowers today. These are the second to bloom on our cherry reds, the first having opened in late April.

These three flowers opened today on the “mother” cactus from which we separated several “pups” last October. A couple of the pups are also showing signs of flowers coming soon. Click on the image to enlarge.

Elsewhere in the xeriscape are flowers almost ready to open: two queen of the night flowers and a couple of Argentine giant buds will likely be open soon. Pictures to come for those as well.

27 Jul 2019 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden Photography

QOTN Rescue Now Has Flower Buds

QOTN Flower BudsThe Queen of the Night cactus (peniocereus greggii) cutting we rescued from up on the hill several years ago is showing a couple of flower buds. This cactus was brought down after a palo verde branch collapsed in a wind and rain storm back then. Damsel put it in a pot and has nurtured it in the courtyard with weekly waterings since that time.

A couple of years ago, the cutting sprouted a new branch which is where the new flower buds are located. That branch and the main stalk have both shown little buds over the past couple of years that never amounted to much. Now, it seems, we have a good thing going. Click on the image to enlarge.

This will be, if all goes well, the first year that these beautiful flowers will bloom in the courtyard. Having them that close is to our great advantage since when they bloom at night we won’t have to go out into the dark (it is very dark here at night) to see, smell and photograph the flowers.

We have summertime plans to get in the RV and head to Colorado and whatever sightseeing we can do along the way, but that might have to be postponed until we see our little courtyard flowers blooming. It’s a good thing we don’t have too many constraints on our ability to flex our plans as we see fit these days.

25 Jun 2019 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden

Pride of Barbados Flowers Now Opening

Pride of Barbados

It’s one of my favorite days of the year when the Pride of Barbados (a.k.a. Red Bird of Paradise) flowers start to open in our courtyard. The flowers are a little late in opening this year, probably due to climate change a cooler than normal spring. The daytime temperatures are now regularly in the high 90’s to low 100’s and the flower buds on all three of my red bird shrubs in the courtyard are ready to go.

More about these flowering shrubs from Wikipedia:

Caesalpinia pulcherrima is a species of flowering plant in the pea family.

It is a shrub growing to 3 m tall. In climates with few to no frosts, this plant will grow larger and is semievergreen. Grown in climates with light to moderate freezing, plant will die back to the ground depending on cold, but will rebound in mid- to late spring. This species is more sensitive to cold than others. The leaves are bipinnate, 20–40 cm long, bearing three to 10 pairs of pinnae, each with six to 10 pairs of leaflets 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm broad. The flowers are borne in racemes up to 20 cm long, each flower with five yellow, orange, or red petals. The fruit is a pod 6–12 cm long.

Caesalpina pulcherrima is the national flower of the Caribbean island of Barbados, and is depicted on the upper left and right corners of the Queen Elizabeth II’s personal Barbadian flag. Claire Waight Keller included pride of Barbados to represent the country in Meghan Markle’s wedding veil, which included the distinctive flora of each Commonwealth country.

Click on the image to enlarge.

08 Jun 2019 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden Photography Retirement

Cherry Red Cactus Flowers

cherry-collage.jpg

Last October, Damsel and I separated the individual stalks from our Cherry Red (Trichocereus Grandiflorus) cactus and planted them in various pots with the hope that they would survive and produce more of the wonderful hot pink flowers that the original produced. Well, we are pleased and amazed that nearly every one of the pups and the mother all have flowers or flower pods this weekend.

Judging from the number of immature flower buds, we should be enjoying Cherry Red flowers for days to come, if not weeks. This cactus (even though we may have overpaid a bit for it) has been a joy in that it reliably produces the attractive flowers each spring. Click on the image to enlarge.

28 Apr 2019 by Arizona Home & Garden Photography

New Shredder/Chipper

chippa.pngOver the several years we have lived here in Arizona, we have found that the natural vegetation on and around the property requires some maintenance by us. Most notably, the mesquite trees and the creosote bushes. Either of those will overtake its environment given unchecked growth. There are several other vegetation varieties which might require some maintenance, but those are mostly out away from the house and garden.

Image: Assembled Unit

We acquired a light-duty unit since most of what we will shredding is on the order of ½ to ¾ inch branches and such. The unit is capable of chipping branches up to 1½ inches, but we will be saving the larger ones for the neighbor’s fireplace.

I assembled the unit today and did a test run with some of the scraps that are still up in the wash behind the retention wall, where I threw them after maintaining one of the mesquite trees up there a while back. There is a lot to clean up there and the test sample was a tiny bit of it. The rest will come later.

I took the manufacturer’s advise and used gloves, long sleeve shirt, eye and ear protection (courtesy of the shooting range bag) and commenced to feed some of the branches through the hopper. The material I was feeding conformed to our intended use being of small to medium sizes and the chips and sawdust-sized shreddings went into the unit’s built-in catch bin. No problems were encountered. The remains of the material fed through looked suitable to use as garden mulch, although we don’t exactly have that sort of garden here in the desert.

The unit requires 15 amps of 120VAC current. It is actually quieter than would require ear protection with the stuff I shredded today, but I will be using the earmuffs anyhow just in case something comes flying out of the unit backwards which can happen. Having more cover is better under those circumstances.

We’re pleased with it so far and intend to start some more serious cleanup of the wash area and some stuff still laying across the road where we trimmed up some of those mesquites over there.

UPDATE – FRIDAY 04/26/2019: Damsel and I took the shredder, the truck with the Honda generator and a bunch of tools across the road today to clean up an old mess of cut branches and to trim some of the spring growth off of the big mesquite over there. Happy to report the mess is cleaned up and many of the low-hanging branches on the tree are now redistributed at the base of the tree in the form of mulch. The chipper worked great. There is still more to do, but since it was hot (95°) today, we knocked off after we met our initial objectives.

Shredder at work

23 Apr 2019 by Arizona Home & Garden

First 2019 Argentine Giant Flowers

Argentine Giant Flowers

After being in the ground out front for over seven years, this cactus is finally showing signs of being as prolific as some of the other Argentine Giants in town. These three flowers opened late this afternoon. There are numerous more flower buds on the cactus that should also be opening soon.

There are also buds near the bottom of the cactus that will be new cactus limbs, not flowers. There is plenty of room for the cactus to expand where it sits, so we’re glad to see it starting to take off. This cactus, native to Argentina, has an unusual growth habit for a cactus. It does not get any taller than about two to three feet at maturity and has sprawling limbs that grow just as wide as the main plant.

More about Echinopsis Candicans:

Echinopsis candicans is a species of cactus from northern and western Argentina (Monte Desert). It has large fragrant white flowers that open at night.

The cactus has a shrubby growth habit, with individual stems up to 60 cm (24 in) tall. The plant as a whole can be as much as 3 m (10 ft) across. The stems are light green, with a diameter of up to 14 cm (5.5 in) and have 9–11 low ribs. The large white areoles are spaced at 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in) and produce brownish yellow spines, the central spines being up to 10 cm (3.9 in) long, the radial spines only up to 4 cm (1.6 in).

Click on the image to enlarge.

UPDATE April 17, 2019: As mentioned in the post above, the cactus is showing a great amount of activity and growth. There are over a dozen new flower buds that look as if they will be coming out soon and all at once.

Coming soon

UPDATE April 23, 2019: Almost all of the rest of the flower buds on the cactus opened this afternoon. It’s like a bridal bouquet with a dozen open flowers.

Bouquet

15 Apr 2019 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden Photography

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