A good lunchbreak

[ellarien]

Today was a much better day for photography. Many pictures (smallish, linking to bigger ones), below the cuts.

There's a pretty little pond at the western end of the campus, surrounded by palms and cycads,

delicate yellow iris,

and a tangle of what my mother and I call umbrella plants, when we grow them as houseplants. Someone gave me a tiny sprig of one when I was a student; I rooted it in a jam-jar, and twenty years later its four-foot-high offspring dominates the corner of my mother's dining room.

I've seen a turtle around there before, but not lately. Today I wandered down there, and there it was, sunning on the rocks.

Once I started watching, I spotted several, some youngsters only about three inches across, swimming singly

or in groups, sometimes near the surface and sometimes diving into the shadowy depths.

On the way back, I passed by the cactus garden and saw a hedgehog cactus in bloom.

Then, farther along the way, I came across an even better clump of hedgehog cactus,
and a prickly pear.

Comments

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Lovely photos. I think your 'umbrella plant' is some sort of cyperus, though not necessarily the one I've linked to. Papyrus is part of the same family, I believe. I used to have one of these, or similar, but managed to kill it, much to my chagrin. I'd love to get another some time. A friend had several growing in his college rooms; they'd reached the ceiling ...

[ellarien]

Thanks! That looks like a website I ought to a) bookmark and b) not explore too deeply at this time of night.

Aha!

[ellarien]

This looks more like it, and is indeed a Cyperus.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that's what I had! I thought you said you weren't going to play with the site at this time of night? (I'm guessing it's about midnight where you are.)

[ellarien]

It was, and I went to bed right after that.