I took some photos of my night blooming cereus cactus this week. I love the flowers of the cereus. The cereus is a cactus from south america and it blooms at night. As the sun rises the blooms close and each bloom only opens once. It has hard to catch them before they close up.
Lave calls me the cactus whisperer, well if I am these are my favorite cactus to photograph. Their colors are so soft and the morning light gives them a glow.
I really hate yucca plants. They grow everywhere like weeds on our property in Benson. They are so hard to kill and hard to remove as their roots are deep and strong. This week one was blooming and I took these photos. The flowers are very pretty and large.
After taking these photos, I don't hate yuccas quite so much! lol
]]>Here are some photos of the grape cholla cactus flower I got yesterday. It finally wasn't windy and the sun was in a haze or fog and the light was perfect. Too a few OK a lot of attempts to get these photos but the 3 weeks wait was worth it.
This was taken today, May 24, 2008, just before noon from my back yard... notice how clear it is now...
Doesn't look like the previous voggy pics, huh..
if you look closely, you can see far off on the Horizon, Campbell Industrial Park Refineries..
Mount Kaala tracking station.... right below the tip of the Tee leaf plant on the right pic..
the infamous Makakilo ( on the left of pic) ... now3 days, we don't get much of this tyhpe of weather due to the voggy conditions that prevail, however, if the vog is light, you can take some mean sunset shots (i've posted some shots
of the sunsets....
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DON'T INSTALL THE STUPID VERSION CUE UPDATE PROVIDED BY ADOBE! They suck. And if you do, like I did, here's the link to fix your problems. What happens when you install this piece of shit update? You can't open ANYTHING in photoshop. It crashes. Problems with Dreamweaver, Illustrator...any Adobe produce that relies on that incredibly controlling CUE. BEWARE. WATCH OUT.
]]>The following photos was taken during May 14th sunset . The Vog was killers. for those of you who do not know what Vog is all about, it is hawaii's answer to the smog... it's volcano smoke and becomes like a smog so therefore "VOG".. It's bad stuff (and it happens in Hawaii of all places... I f the volcano was not erupting there wouldn't be vog..
Check out the Thickness
Notice how thick the Vog is ..... the area viewing from my back yard is normally crystal clear all the way to the mountains...
On May 18th... evening..... the vog was slowly clearing up.. notice you
can see the skyline now, where as before , you couldn't really see at all.
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Ha, yes you can have fun with cactus. I had a wonderful ride with Winn this morning..we went to the 100 acres woods. I thought the saguaro cactus might be still blooming. And yes they were.
After I got all my horsey chores done. I drove back over to the 100 acres and got some great photos of the Saguaro blooms. I tok these while standing out the back door of my rave leaning on the top of the car. I sued my 400 mm lens. I can't change the F stop or use auto focus with this lens as it wasn't designed for a digital camera. I took a lot of out of focus photos but I did get a few that turned out OK.
The Saguaro cactus usually don't bloom until they have arms and they get their first arms when they are around 75 years old. By that time they are usually 15 feet tall. So taking photos of Saguaro blooms isn't easy. Plus Saguaro's grow in the rocks and that is were the snakes live. I was very careful and didn't climb around the rocks. All photos taken with a hand held camera, no filters were uses. That blue is the color of our sky today.
This Threasher was on top of a Saguaro eating the blooms!
Hmm what bloom looks the best?
Yum, yum, yum I just loves these flowers!
Here are a few photo close ups of the blooms. Each bloom is about 4" across.
Hope you enjoyed my cactus photos, I had fun taking them and no encounters with rattlesnakes!
]]>I took today off so we could go to Benson and finish painting the barn...well yesterday hubby had a slight accident with his bike yesterday that has left him sore with some bruised ribs. Seems the bike fell off the ramp he used to ride the bike into the shed. Now when I say bike I mean a Honda Shadow 1100. he has been riding the bike more now that gas is so expensive but I think his days of riding it into the shed are over. I'm going to clean off the back porch and he can put it there.
Now mind you he was to sell this bike when I bought him the corvette 16 years ago...hmm we don't even have the corvette any more. I guess the bike is here to stay. DARN! At 73 years out I would have hoped he would be down ridding this speed machine...but not yet.
Any way since my plans were changed I got out this moring and tried to bond with the bloom cactus and I think I did OK. So LaidOutInLavender I think I got my cactus whisper mojo back..let me know what you think.
I was luck to get these photos before the wind started up again!
Now these are my favs.
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