A watched cactus never blooms

[ellarien]

At least, it's seemed that way all week. There are buds everywhere, but actual flowers come one or two at a time and mostly out of reach. Cacti have a lot of strategies for keeping their flowers away from the camera, from surrounding them with thorns to positioning them on top of twenty-foot towers. There's enough pollen and nectar to go around, even so: it attracts bees and bugs and hummingbirds, and the bugs attract other birds: sparrows; finches; mockingbirds and flickers and thrashers, everybody frantically making the most of the last few weeks before the heat reaches the unbearable stage. It's been reaching the nineties most of this week, enough to make my lunchtime perambulations noticeably less pleasant.

I think some of the yellow and peach-coloured prickly pears just south of the grocery store are starting to come out. I have a plan that involves an early-morning walk and grocery shopping on the way back; we'll see how well that works.