This brightly colored flower grows on three shrubs in our courtyard. The shrub, red bird of paradise, a.k.a. pride of Barbados, will produce these pretty flowers all summer long. Come November, we will prune these back to just a foot or so while they go dormant until next spring when they will bounce back with twice as many flowers.
Anyone who has read our blog for a while will know that these flowers are my favorites. Click on the image to enlarge.
A single flower opened on this little cactus last week. Today, it has five beautiful pink flowers. Click on the image to enlarge.
I found this reference to the little cacti that dot the hill behind our house at BirdandHike.com:
Common Fishhook Cactus (Mammillaria tetrancistra) is a small, mound-shaped cactus with short, thin white spines that nearly cover the plant plus longer, darker, fish-hook shaped spines that stand out from the body of the plant. In early summer, red to lavender flowers emerge from the side of the stem that are nearly as large as the entire plant.
In a few days, our little fishhook cactus will produce five more little pink flowers for our viewing and photo-op enjoyment. Click on the image to enlarge.
I believe this is the last of the summer saguaro flowers on our giant cactus. We were very fortunate to have had so many flowers after the cactus crew transplanted our beautiful saguaro in May. Click on the image to enlarge.
We got nothing tonight – just a shot of the waterfall in the new spa . . . 🙂
Click on the image to enlarge.
If you look closely beneath the hooks and spines on this little fishhook cactus, you can see the buds where several new flowers will appear. This cactus had a flower earlier this week. Click on the image to enlarge.
