Friday Flower: Barrel Cactus

This is the candy-striped one across the street, which has a double ring of buds inside the ring of last year's fruit. Each flower seems to last two or three days, and they open one or two at a time. Maybe it's the size and water storage capacity of these cacti that allows them to flower at the hottest, driest time of the year, but this one seems to be particularly lavish in its flowering.

Barrel Cactus UA Campus, June 2005

Friday

It's been a long week, and I've been going through it mostly in a fog. It's the heat, mostly, and I'm not the only one; one of my colleagues pointed out that a German newspaper had declared 'sleep week', and it seemed appropriate. Faced with the choice between sleeping without covers in 85-90 degrees and being woken every half-hour or so by the air-conditioning, I usually choose the former, but it isn't very refreshing. It's been one of those weeks when it's hardly worth taking the top sheet out of the linen closet, as it's just going to stay folded at the foot of the bed.

The barrel cactus flowers have been a pleasant diversion, anyway. Today I noticed flowers on the baobab tree -- big, yellow flowers, but a long way off the ground. I also encountered a sparrow with a beakful of still live and buzzing cicada, and this afternoon, when the cicadas were particularly loud, we spotted several of them clinging to trees.

Oh, yes. I noticed today that it looks as though the night-flowering cactus on the corner is going to have another round of flowers in a week or two.