The Red Bird of Paradise (a.k.a. Pride of Barbados) have been blooming all over town for over a month now. My red birds are less mature and seem to take a little longer to develop these beautiful flowers. But, they are starting to open and should be producing flowers well into second spring. Click on the image to enlarge.
For the second year in Arizona, the little cactus we brought from California has grown a new paddle and a new flower on the end of the paddle. I took this photo this morning after the flower opened for the first time. Click on the image to enlarge.
One of our favorite desert wildflowers blooms on the ocotillos. This one is just down the road from our house in a neighbor’s yard. I love the bright red flowers against the green leaves on the ocotillo canes. Click on the image to enlarge.
This is the third saguaro flower to open on our big cactus out front. The pollinators are anxiously swarming about to collect the nectar and to spread the pollen. I took this with the telephoto lens since the flowers are so high above the ground. Did you know that the Saguaro Flower is the State Flower of Arizona? Click on the image to enlarge.
We were in the Northwest Phoenix Metro Valley yesterday. A lot of the Red Bird of Paradise shrubs were in bloom. We stopped at a little landscape plot where there were several of these growing, so I took this photo o my favorite desert shrub flower. Click on the image to enlarge.
The valley gets their flowers about a month before we do in Wickenburg due to the elevation and temperature difference, I guess. My three shrubs in the courtyard have already started their spring comeback with sprouts from six inches to a foot. They grow really fast, so it won’t be long before we have a lot of these beautiful flowers in our courtyard.
As we were stopping for gas the other day, I took my camera to take some pictures of the flowers growing in the landscape. This ocotillo flower was low enough on the cactus to let me get this close up. Click on the image to enlarge.
