Relief

[ellarien]

We've had temperatures hovering around the 100 mark for the last couple of weeks -- the hottest May on record, apparently. Today, though, was cloudy, and the temperature stayed below 90, which in relative terms seemed amazingly cool and pleasant.

I saw a barrel-cactus flower at lunchtime, which surprised me; I don't usually expect those until well into July. The night-bloomers are starting to put out a few buds, too.

Comments

[peoppenheimer]

The barrel cactus in front of our house has a crown of flowers; I noticed it today driving my brother and his wife here from the airport. I haven't had a chance to photograph it yet.

When I got my iPhone a few months ago, I began taking pictures of flowers around my morning walks. It wasn't really my plan, but I'm starting to have enough of them that I'm wondering what to do with them.

[ellarien]

It's strange, but I hardly noticed the cactus flowers until I started carrying a camera around a few years ago, and then they were everywhere. I must have a few thousand cactus-flower photos by now. I put a few on Flickr, blog some of them for the interest of people in more temperate climates, and keep them to enjoy at drabber times of the year.

[peoppenheimer]

I just uploaded to flickr as many as I was able to upload with a free flickr account. The time to do that was one of my birthday presents to myself. So also were some time this morning to do some editorial work, and the time to go to physical therapy. Probably not everyone's idea of what they need on their birthday, but it works for me. This morning, I slept from 11:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. I spent the small hours of the morning thinking, and writing a little, about what I want to make of my 57th year of life.

[ellarien]

I looked at your Flickr photos. I've never seen a yellow barrel cactus with so many flowers at once! And I see you caught some night-blooming ones -- one of the few things for which I'll voluntarily get up at 5am.