We took the dogs to the vet today for their annual exams and immunizations. Three year old Tucker and fifteen(!) year old Cabela were pronounced healthy by the doctor.
The flags out front of the Vet and many other businesses in town are there to commemorate Armed forces day. Our local American Legionnaires plant hundreds of flags around town on patriotic and other holidays and collect them when the day is over.
A couple of years ago, a Cholla Cactus sprout appeared in the xeriscape on the west side of the house toward the front. At the time, we decided to let it grow where it sat. I took the first photo below about a year ago and posted a 3D picture of the little cactus then.
Cholla Cactus One Year Ago
Today, as I walked around the property, I took the next photo below of the growing cactus. It seems to be growing quite rapidly, and a closer inspection of the cactus shows more “branches” beginning to sprout.
The Cholla As It Looks Today
From the other blog:
Opuntia acanthocarpa – buckhorn cholla
The main trunk of this tree-like cactus is short and erect; branching open and low to ground. Branches are cylindrical; the joints light green.
Habit: native perennial shrub; succulent stems, in segments 4-20 in (10-50 cm) tall by 0.75-1.25 in (2-3 cm) diameter; new growth is gray-green to purple-green; old growth has rough, scaly, brownish black bark.
Flower: delicate, lemon yellow to copper to red to pink, 2-3 in (5-7.5 cm) wide.
Verna sent me up into the wash behind our house on the west side to fetch a plastic water bottle that had blown in or washed in from the construction up on the hill behind our house. I did as she said and retrieved the bottle but while I was up there, I saw this nice cactus flower. I used my Samsung Galaxy S23 phone camera to catch this photo of the flower.
The flower is blooming on a Buckhorn Cholla Cactus, which is growing in the wild in our back yard. There are a lot of these open today on the several Buckhorn Cacti, but this one seemed to be the prettiest.
Click on the image to enlarge in the image viewer.
Since we were late to the grand flower opening at home this spring, we may have missed some of the cactus and other blooms in our xeriscape garden, but, not to worry – there are plenty more flowers coming soon. Verna snapped this photo today of a prickly pear cactus flower on the west side of our yard near the fence line. There were several flowers open today and there will be many more over the next few weeks.
Keep an eye out for more flowers when they show up here.
Happy 104th Birthday in Heaven to Kate (1920-2013). This photo taken in July of 2013 a few months before she passed into her Heavenly repose. We miss her still.
We arrived at our campground today without incident. We drove straight through the planned route and stopped only once in Alamogordo to take on fuel.
We were pleasantly surprised that our campground RV park is elevated above the southwest end of the city of Las Cruces – actually a pretty big town in this region of New Mexico. In the image above, you can see our rig parked with the mountain ranges in the distance and the urban sprawl below.
Later this evening, Verna and I took a walk down to the front of the park where there is an overlook of the area. I used my S23 Galaxy phone to photograph the city lights:
In the above image, you can dimly see the mountain range beyond the city we crossed coming here today. We also crossed the Rio Grande River, which flows through the area on its way to the Big Bend and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, where we were just a few days ago.
Click on either image to open the image viewer.
