Friday, April 20, 2018

A Night-Blooming Weekly Link Round-Up




Here's a fly-by before I flit to my next task...

Back in a December round-up, I showed you a photo of our big senita cactus adorned with Santa hats. We've had this cactus for more than twelve years, and it's been a learning experience. One year, it got so big that it started to lean, and we called someone to straighten it out. Since we called one of the companies that does work for the Desert Botanical Garden, we figured our cactus was in good hands. It was fascinating watching the men dig, move that huge thing into position, then tamp the soil down. Come to find out, most landscapers don't plant these cacti correctly, and sooner or later many of them begin to lean (if not fall over entirely).

Night-blooming Senita cactus
Shortly after it was straightened, we noticed buds come out on it for the first time ever-- apparently in thanks for improving its posture-- but we never saw it bloom. Then during a night of a particularly bright full moon when Denis and I were coming home from The Poisoned Pen, Denis noticed something and walked over to take a closer look.

What he saw made me turn to Google for more information. Senita cacti are night-blooming cacti, so no wonder we never saw the blooms that first year. Our senita is blooming again, and one night Denis made so many trips outside to take photos that he wound up with his own version of time-lapse. The photo above shows the flower fully open at 11 PM. From certain angles, the petals have a soft, gold, metallic gleam.

And if you ever want to amuse your neighbors, just keep running out in the dead of night taking flash photography of your cactus. You will get some strange looks!

On that note, it's off to the corral I go. Head 'em up! Moooooooooove 'em out!



►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄


►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄
  • Found: An ancient depiction of Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut.
  • Stunning photos capture Egypt's ancient underworld.
  • Archaeologists found an astonishing site in the Brazilian jungle that may have housed over a million people, and it could change everything we know about the mysteries of the Amazon.
  • 13,000-year-old footprints have been found off the Canadian coast.
  • Florida beachgoers discover the "holy grail of shipwrecks" after the remains of an eighteenth-century ship wash ashore.
  • An ancient book blasted with high-powered X-Rays reveals text that was erased centuries ago.


►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄
  • Dogs may soon be on the front lines in the fight against artifact smuggling.
  • What aardvark milk reveals about the evolution of lactation.
  • Dinosaur horns were for making love, not war.
  • Baby sea turtles were spotted on a beach in Mumbai for the first time in twenty years.


►The Happy Wanderer◄
  • A nearly nine-hour rainbow in Taiwan sets a new Guinness record.
  • How California's giant Sequoias tell the story of Americans' conflicted relationship with nature.
  • The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now twice the size of Texas. How'd you like to have that in your backyard?
  • The plight of Phoenix: how long can the world's "least sustainable" city survive?
  • Fifteen of the best views in Scotland.


►I ♥ Lists◄



That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!



4 comments:

  1. Oh, that night-blooming cactus is beautiful, Cathy. And I have this great mental picture of you rushing out at night to get a 'photo, and of the person next door giving you One Of Those Looks... As for me, I have a shipwreck to explore...

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    1. Actually...it was a group of people down the street who were standing around a car parked at the curb!

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  2. Beautiful flower. Love it. We've got stuff blooming all over our front yard. We do drought tolerant plants and so as the desert would bloom, so does out yard. Though we did lose a plant or two this last winter. We always do. And that 'Garbage Patch' twice the size of Texas - that's some big garbage patch. Ick!

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    1. I do the same thing with drought tolerant plants. Phoenix has had too many people from the Midwest try to make their property look like they're still living in Ohio (or Iowa or Illinois or...). Sheer lunacy when you're living in a desert!!!

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