It’s late spring and the Red Bird of Paradise colors are coming back to the courtyard. A.k.a Pride of Barbados, our Caesalpinia pulcherrima shrubs are beginning to show their summer colors of red, orange and yellow.
Flowers are currently open on the western most shrub but with others rapidly forming on the other two shrubs in the courtyard. Click on either image to enlarge.
Just before we departed for an errand this afternoon, we noticed some solar rainbows positioned to the left and right side of the sun. I took my camera behind the big saguaro out front and used it as a shield to capture the image above.
Click on the image to enlarge.
We have been fortunate to have had spring-like weather since mid-January. The cactus flowers are blooming and the desert critters are out and about acting as though it were spring.
In the composite photo above, a curve billed thrasher looks around while sitting atop one of the bird feeders, a courtyard cactus is having many flowers and a house finch is trying out the new bird feeder in the mesquite tree in the back yard.
Moving to Arizona was one of the best things we’ve ever done. Click on the image to enlarge.
We put our astrophytum ornatum (star cactus) in what will be our xeriscape plot next to the south side of the garage. The cactus was in a clay pot and needed to be transplanted soon, so we did it today.
The plan is to plant several small barrel cacti, like the star, to form a border along the walkway with taller cacti and other succulent plants behind the barrel border. We have identified a number of cacti we already have that we want to plant there and will add others as we acquire them from time to time.
It’s just another slow retirement project we will enjoy doing. Click on the image to enlarge.
About a month ago, this Astrophytum was in bloom. Yesterday and today, it has open flowers again. This cactus seems to have flowers several times a year like our Bishop’s Cap Cactus.
The latter, unfortunately, has not had flowers this year. We have had that cactus for almost twenty years and maybe it’s through with flowers.
This week we bought a bunch of cut pink daisies for the vase along with some purple flowers whose name we don’t know. The colors went well with each other, so I didn’t really care about what they were called.
The flower concession used to label their flowers but lately they have only been stamping them as “cut flowers, monochromatic.” Regardless, we love to have flowers no matter if we know what they are or not.
