Compare and contrast ...
Jul. 29th, 2008 09:23 pm( Landscape )
( Cactus Flower )
Claret cup cactus UA Campus, April 2008 |
I caught the first bus this morning, and wandered around the campus in the early morning light and relative coolness, dodging joggers and looking for night-flowering cactus blooms. Mostly it was a case of flower yesterday or flower tomorrow, but this one I caught in the act.
This thing has been sitting in the campus cactus garden for as long as I can remember, at the base of the stump of the defunct Boojum tree, but I've never seen it in flower before. I was wandering back from lunch today and there it was, all these delicate pink flowers. I couldn't get really close, so this is more documentation than artistic shot.
It's the time of year when the yellow (and red) prickly pear flowers are out, and it has become my habit to wander down the road of a weekend morning, taking photos and noting the scurry of lizards in the undergrowth, catching the occasional grey-furred flash of rabbit and glimpse of quail.
This was the day for that. More photos over on Flickr.
I've had a lot of trouble with this particular bush over the last couple of years; the flowers are small and glossy, so that the autofocus tends to lock onto the spiny stems instead. This time, I think I nailed it.
This lunchtime the weather was so beautiful that I bought a new memory card for my camera rather than miss it because I left the others at home.