Tag Archives: flowers

What’s Blooming in My Yard on May 7

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A few snapshots.

Yellow Prickly Pear Flowers

Here’s the yellow version…

This is the time of year when all those prickly cacti call out for attention that isn’t painful. They’re starting to flower.

My husband and I planted every single plant within the wall that surrounds our immediate yard. The rest of our 2-1/2 acres is mostly as nature intended.

We planted desert plants because we live in the desert and see no reason to pour precious water into the ground if we don’t have to. That doesn’t mean that we don’t irrigate at all. We do — a little. But not much. You see, most of the plants are cacti.

Salmon Prickly Pear Cactus Flowers

…and here’s the salmon version.

Right now, the prickly pear cacti are flowering in my back yard. Interestingly, they’re blooming in two slightly different colors: a yellow and a pale salmon. The plants came from the same source on the same day and were planted at the same time. Why they are two different colors is beyond me.

The flowers are amazing. They look almost like wax. Here’s a glimpse of them; you can click a larger photo to see it in my Photo Gallery.

What’s also interesting about these cacti is that last year they produced mostly new cactus pads. Think of the pads as branches or leaves. Each pad will produce either flowers or more pads. Last year we had lots of pads — so many that I cut some young ones off and grilled them up to have with dinner a few times. But this year it’s flowers. Don’t know how the plant decides.

Cholla Flowers

Cholla Flowers

The cholla (pronounced choy-ya) flowers — or at least one type of cholla — there are many — are also blooming. Cholla is a particularly nasty type of cactus. I can blame the poor quality of this photo on the simple fact that I refused to get close enough to this cactus for it to bite me. This type of cholla grows well in my yard; green and hardy. The flowers were a surprise; I guess I missed them last year.

More cactus flowers are on the way. I’ll try to snap photos of them as they bloom. I noticed that the new arms on our big saguaro have flower buds but the top doesn’t have any yet. I’m wondering about that.

The hedgehog cacti are just about finished blooming now. I got a great photo of one in Page, AZ last week; you can see it in this blog post. I haven’t had time to add the other photos of this cactus to my gallery; I hope to do it soon.

Not enough hours in a day.

The Seeds I’ve Been Tweeting About

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And the plant they come from.

The other day, the red Mexican Bird of Paradise plant outside my office window began shooting its seeds. Since then, I’ve been collecting them.

I like the seeds. They’re like pretty little rocks. The plant throws them all over the area at the end of its growing season, but they seldom sprout. They’re just too hard.

Butterfly in Mexican Bird of ParadiseThe red Mexican Bird of Paradise is a low-water plant that’s popular in Arizona. We have two of them on a drip irrigation system in our front yard. They grow slowly until the nighttime temperatures warm up, then grow like weeds. At the height of the season, they fill with red and yellow flowers. As shown here, the flowers attract butterflies in addition to the hummingbirds that are always attracted to red.

Time passes. The flowers fade and seed pods appear. You can see an example of one on the far left in the photo below. The seeds in the pods fatten up. Then the seeds and pods dry out. The pods split on their seams, twisting as they break apart, shooting the seeds all over. You can see a recently split pod in the middle in the photo below; there are still two seeds stuck in it. I collect the seeds because I like the way they look. There’s a bunch of them in the photo on the far right. They’re about the size of a very large pea.

Seed Pods

Red Mexican Bird of Paradise SeedsA close-up of the seeds reveals tiny imperfections and cracks. But don’t let the cracks fool you. These seeds are as hard as tiny rocks. That makes them difficult to germinate. So despite the fact that hundreds of them drop in our front yard each autumn, we’ve only had two plants sprout from seeds.

When the seeds are all dispersed and the nights get cold, the plant loses its leaves. In the dead of winter, it looks like a bunch of ugly sticks. In the spring, before things start to grow, we cut them back to a few inches above the ground. Then, as it warms, the entire cycle of life begins again.

Sunflowers!

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The fruits (or flowers) of my labor.

Before I left Wickenburg for the summer, I planted a small garden in some beds at the back of our house. The garden had a few vegetable plants — tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant — as well as some sunflowers.

I like the giant sunflowers, but I also planted some shorter varieties. One of the giants was in bloom when I left. The others have apparently bloomed as well. But not before some of them have reached heights of 8 feet or more!

Sunflowers!Here’s the photo Mike sent today. I’m impressed.

What I like best about sunflowers is what happens after they go to seed: the birds land on them and feed right off the flower head. Mike will have plenty of that activity to enjoy while I’m gone.

I had some leftover seeds and I brought them with me to Washington State. I tried twice to plant them around the water spigot for my camper. There’s dirt there and its almost always wet. I think birds or rabbits got the first seedlings and the lawnmower got the second. I’ve given up. Instead, I have a planter that contains two tomato plants, some basil, and some flowers. That’s as green as my thumb can get here in the RV park, I guess.

Saguaro Flowers

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Some more photos from my yard.

Yesterday, one of the buds on the saguaro cactus in my front yard bloomed. Today, there were many more blooms. I took this photo from the covered walkway near my front door using a 200mm lens. The blue color of the sky is not enhanced in Photoshop; it’s a direct result of the polarizing filter on the lens.

 

Saguaro flowers bloom at night and are pollinated by bats. Bees and birds do a bit of pollination during daylight hours. After a day or two in the sun, the flowers wilt. Fruits begin forming shortly thereafter. The fruits are small and hard and, as they ripen, they split open to reveal red pulp. Seeds are tiny — think smaller than poppy seeds on a bagel — and are eaten and passed through by the birds who feast on the fruit.

Keep in mind that this cactus is 15-20 feet tall. The flowers are on top. This is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to get good photos of saguaro flowers — it’s not like you can stand right next to them.

I just ordered a 70-300mm Nikon lens with image stabilization. I think it’ll help me get better shots of things like this. I’m also looking forward to using it on my flight to Washington state this coming weekend.

What’s Blooming Now

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A walk in the garden with a camera.

As summer approaches and the little moisture we got during this winter’s rainshowers completely dries up, the native desert plants go about their late spring business. A walk around my yard with my camera yielded these photographs of what’s blooming now.

First up, some prickly pear cactus flowers. This is an Engelmann’s Prickly Pear in our backyard, which displays yellow flowers each spring. These are the same cacti we harvest for young prickly pear pads this time of year. They’re great on the grill.

We also have a purple prickly pear cacti in the side yard. Its flowers are similar, but generally brighter in color — almost neon, in fact.

I’m not sure of the identity of this one. It’s a wildflower that’s growing alongside our driveway and in various other parts of the unlandscaped portion of our property. I believe that it’s a paperflower, but I could be wrong. (If anyone knows for sure, use the Comments link or form for this article to let us know.)

This desert willow took root in our side yard some years ago and grew like a weed. As you can see, it gets very dramatic pink flowers — the entire tree is covered with them right now. It flowers twice a year and makes long seed pods filled with hundreds of seeds. The tree loses all of its leaves in the coldest winter months and is pretty messy, so a lot of people avoid them. Me, I wish my yard was full of them.

Palo verde is also blooming throughout Wickenburg right now. (It bloomed at lower elevations 2 to 4 weeks ago.)

For another look at the palo verde in bloom, check out this photo I took of the high school last week. All the yellow you see in the trees are palo verde flowers. Nice, huh?