Arizona

Only a day after I posted a photo of cholla buds, the first flower has opened on a cactus beside the driveway. Bob, who took this photo, had to venture through some of the desert brush and terrain to get close enough to take the picture. Click on the image to enlarge.

Buckhorn cholla seem inhospitable for humans and most reptiles, but the birds do not seem to have a problem with them. We have a curve billed thrasher nest in our cholla out in front of the house, and, down the road, we found a nest that we think belongs to a pair of mourning doves. We think that we saw motion inside that nest. We may be lucky enough to get photos of the hatchlings one of these times.

Stay tuned! Spring has just barely sprung!

Buckhorn Cholla cacti are growing in many places on the portion of our lot that is still natural desert. We were up on the hill today and I took this close-up of a cluster of flower buds on one of the plants.

In less than a month and continuing into summer, the various cholla will have yellow to orange flowers in bloom. We don’t exactly know why, but some of the cholla have flowers later in the spring season than others.

When the flowers do open, just look and don’t get your nose in close to smell them. You just might get one of those spikes in your face. Click on the image to enlarge.

I photographed several of the beavertail cacti along the RV drive today. This large one, in particular, has been very prolific in the production of new paddles and flower pods this year.

Many of the cacti that we have transplanted are doing so well that, after this season, we will have to trim them back from the RV drive and either transplant the cut paddles or discard them. It seems a shame to do so, because of the beautiful flowers, but this variety is very aggressive and relatively immune to being eaten by the wildlife.

We also have some hedgehog cacti that need to be divided and relocated. We will do that after the flowers are gone for the year. The hedgehogs don’t spread as aggressively as the beavertails, but a couple of them are getting pretty big.

The spring season not only brings out the wild flowers and cactus flowers, but some of the landscape shrubs also start to bloom. These are flowers on our Cimarron Sage bushes that line the west side of our driveway. Click on the image to enlarge.

These shrubs have not been doing too well for some known and some unknown reasons. We may replace them with a variety of flowering bushes that have a trunk like a small tree, so when the boy dogs come to call they won’t be able to do their marking on the foliage and flowers.