We purchased this (new to us) cactus at a local nursery late last month. Today, it is showing five flower buds that should open with bright red flowers any day now. When they open, I will post pictures.
There are also several not-as-mature fuzzy flower buds on the crown of the cactus that promise to keep this guy interesting for some time to come. Likewise, more pictures when available. Click on the image to enlarge.
Here we are with another “too many to count” flower eruption on my Bishop’s Cap Cactus. Bob and I bought this cactus when it was in a three-inch pot at a cactus nursery in Chandler, AZ, just before we got married. That would be about eighteen years ago, by my reckoning.
This cactus has always done well since we first put it in the patio in our California home. It is now here in the Arizona Courtyard and must (it seems) produce a hundred flowers each year, way more than it ever did on California.
I did not bother to count the number of this opening, but I can assure you that it is one of the larger flower counts in recent history of the Bishop’s blooms. Click on the image to enlarge.
Last week, we went shopping for some shrubbery to replace the Cleveland Sage Brush shrubs in our courtyard which were not doing too well after the first year or two. We selected these little (for now) bottle brush shrubs which will (hopefully) display more of these little red flowers as they mature.
On Monday, Verna and I removed the old sage shrubs (mostly dead) and replaced them with these three, which were in five gallon containers from the nursery where we bought them. I managed to locate the irrigation feeders and placed them where they would drizzle the little shrubs when the irrigation timer setting turns the water on.
These shrubs supposedly will grow to three feet in diameter and two to three feet in height. I will post pictures of them again next year when they mature. Click on the image to enlarge.
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.
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.
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.
