Easter Blessings to all . . .
Verna and Bob
Photography
Hedgehogs in Bloom
We have already had several of our beavertail cactus blooming with their pink flowers, but now, the hedgehog that we transplanted from the back of the property to down front where we can see ti, is currently showing several of its own pink flowers.
The other hedgehogs here down below have buds but no flowers yet. We are looking forward to seeing those real soon.
Elsewhere in the rock and cactus garden, there are several varieties of prickly pear cacti with numerous buds that will soon be showing their yellow flowers. Click on the image to enlarge.
Easter Egg Self-Portrait
A while back, I bought a bunch of silver egg-shaped decorations which I hung out on the palo verde tree in front of the house for the Easter holiday season. I was going down to the road to take pictures of a couple of hedgehog flowers that opened today and I paused long enough to take this photo of one of the eggs which turned out to be a self-portrait of me and my camera. Click on the image to enlarge.
Ocotillo Fower Buds
Our neighbor, Tim, that lives across from us did a job last fall clearing some property for a construction project. Two of the victims of that clearing of natural desert vegetation were ocotillos that Tim brought for us to add to our xeriscape rock and cactus garden. We planted them at that time and today, we noticed that new flower pods are growing on the tips of the ‘canes’ of the ocotillos. This is very good news since the two of them went into shock and lost their green leaves a while after we planted them.
Now, we will see these flower pods grow and produce the little red and yellow flowers characteristic of the ocotillo. After that, the monsoons to come will likely restore the green leaves that these two lost over the winter months. Click on the image to enlarge.
Casandro Wash
We have this sign at the end of our road just before the pavement begins. Somebody (not us) adorns the sign with a rope and an old hat. The old hat that was originally on the sign blew away, I guess, and there is a little funky sun hat as a replacement these days. Click on the image to enlarge.
Holy Saguaro
The cirrus clouds in front of the sun contained enough ice crystals to create this rainbow halo around the sun today here in Wickenburg. It was 82 degrees and an absolutely beautiful day.
I was photographing some work that we did in the rock and cactus garden this afternoon, when I noticed the solar halo. I walked over to the shadow of the big saguaro out front by the garage to get this shot. I adjusted the gamma shading and chromatic saturation of the image a bit to get this nice effect of a “divine saguaro.”
