I just came back in from the courtyard where I had been taking some pictures of ‘stuff,’ when I got in the house I was greeted by ‘Beethoven,’ our five year old min pin. He seemed very interested in the camera, so I let him sniff at it.
I guess I pressed on the shutter release just as his nose was up to the lens guard. I thought this was an interesting and humorous view of the curiosity of a small, but very loveable dog. Click on the image to enlarge.
These nice showy flowers are open on our Lawyer’s Tongue Cactus (opuntia engelmannii var. linguiformis). This cactus, which is now over three feet tall started from a single paddle that we rescued from a local park in 2011. We planted the paddle in a pot and it thrived in the courtyard until last winter when we transplanted it to the west side of the lot.
This is the first year that it is producing flowers and (hopefully) fruit. We would like to try and use the fruit in some recipes for syrup, juice or jellies. Maybe we will even make some Lawyer’s Tongue Margaritas this summer.
The first saguaro flower buds were sighted today and they are on our own big guy out front! We passed by the big saguaro today and I noticed what might be some flower buds on the crown of the cactus. Sure enough, when we got the pictures blown up big enough, we could see two or three buds.
In a few weeks, there will likely be many saguaro flowers open. I will be sure to post pictures of ours and any others that we might see around town. Yay for the Arizona State Flower! Click on the image to enlarge.
My little thimble cactus has lots of open flowers at this time. I had this one out back, but it is now in the courtyard because of the construction. It didn’t seem to mind the transition though, since the tiny flowers continue to open. Click on the image to enlarge.
The official botanical name of this cactus is Mammillaria fragilis. Here’s some information I found on the web at PlantOfTheWeek.org:
Mammillaria fragilis, or Thimble Cactus, is a clump-forming cactus native to Central Mexico. The clumps can exceed 12 inches (30 cm) in width in containers. Stems are up to 1 inch thick and are easily disarticulated. Tubercles are in 5-8 spirals with 12-16 white, radial spines, which are needle shaped and up to 5 mm long. The central spine are brown at the tips, pointed outward and very stout. This cactus is an easy one to grow and very showy in containers.
Blooming: In the greenhouse, our specimen blooms from late summer into fall, with very small pale yellow flowers about 1/2 inch (1.2 cm) long.
I can say that outdoors in the Arizona high desert that our specimen starts blooming in April.
This interesting photo is of a cluster of cholla flowers in bloom just behind the wall next to the little wash. I liked the appearance of the crimson-tipped yellow flowers framed by the spiky stems of cactus.
Our friend, Crotalus tells us that this is a buckhorn cholla and that there are dozens of varieties of the cylindropuntia family of cacti. Click on the image to enlarge.
This nice little barrel cactus (species unknown) has almost a complete ring of flowers around its crown. Each station where a flower bud appears can be traced back to the crown of the cactus by following the smooth curves that connect the fuzzy peaks along the top. Click on the image to enlarge.
Bob posted some information about mathematical formations in nature along with a photo of this very cactus without flowers a couple of years ago. Just like in the image above, the post showed examples of Fibonacci spirals, both natural and man made.
Well, not in the shark sense, but today I was in the courtyard with the camera and telephoto lens looking for photo targets of opportunity. All of a sudden several goldfinches were competing for perches on Damsel’s feeder out front. I got this lucky shot while the competition was still on. Shortly after I took the photo, the birds had all settled on the six available perches and were calmly picking seeds out of the feeder.
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel SL1 – Focal length 300mm – F5.6 – ISO 200 – SS 1/400 sec. The range was about 10 yards. Click on the image to enlarge.