Wednesday, August 1, 2007

TONIGHT`S CACTUS BLOOM

 Cerus at 9:00 PMDSCN7564
This is one of two blooms taken within the past hour on a prize cactus grouping.

14 comments:

AndiF said...

Morning Head. I'm out of town (blecch) but the upside is I've got wifi so I finally got to see the slide show. Fantastic (as is today's shot).

Family Man said...

Morning Head. Beautiful picture as usual. I'm beginning to believe you're incapable of taking a bad picture. :)

olivia said...

Morning Head, Andi, FM.

What Andi and FM said. These flowers are so beautiful.

Knucklehead said...

Thank`s Andif,
They really are amazing flowers.

Knucklehead said...

FM,
Hah, nobody can take good pictures without having taken many many bad ones.
The trick is to keep taking them & not being afraid to try new or different ways to take them. I might be waist high in bad ones in the cutting room, but that`s for me to know.
Thanks very much FM.

Knucklehead said...

Olivia, I`m going to try & seal some of these blooms` aroma in a bottle some how, or on a card. I guess it wouldn`t be a good idea to mail an unknown substance in a bottle these days with the scare mongering that`s really ruing things for those who aren`t afraid.
How studip is it?

dada said...

those are really unusual and quite spectacular head.
they are exquisite!

how big are they? it's impossible to tell...

peace

Knucklehead said...

The norm, which the cover one is, would be as big as a teacup saucer., There were three of them last night.
In the post cover pic, the base of the stem is at the very bottom of the pic. I went & measured the wilted bloom, & I would estimate that from the bottom of the pic to the top of the highest part of the bloom at 10".
I used to try & propagate them myself, by planting the fallen wilted bloom in the ground. I wasn`t successful the first few years till I noticed that they self-propagated. Upon a closer look, I realized I was planting them upside down. The fallen bloom is actually a mini version of the large parent on it`s own. It then roots itself throught the flower end & not the stem end. I had been planting them with the bloom up as it seemed most natural.
Fooled again, by a better.
The tallest ones I have are about 12' tall.
I saw in a mag a security wall of these all at least 10' tall in a perfect row along a property line. It sure beats an ugly fence & has the quality of "seeing beyond". More will be blooming tomorrow & I`ll put something in an image to scale it properly. Besides the look, the scent is really unbelieveable. It has to carry a long way to attract a certain moth & it has only one night to do it.
I used to be alerted that it was blooming, first by the scent, then I would go find the source & discovered my blooms.

dada said...

redux...the slide show reminded me of a passage by Edward Abbey, from Desert Solitaire:

..."Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom"...

the man had an incredible way of writing, nae, speaking to and of the wilderness.

peace

Knucklehead said...

That, dada, is one insightful way to describe the desert. It`s a strange thing to call a place that is so full of intense lightplay, reflecting shadows of all colors, unique animals that have adapted to it`s extremes & populated with flora that defies imagination at times.
I`ve spent many solo times out in nowhere.
One of the amazing places is Joshua Tree National Monument. I remember going through there on my Knuckle, going from the high desert & coming out in the low desert by Palm Spings, & not seeing another soul for over two hours. The haunting Joshuas would almost leap out at you. Stranger in a strange land. I love the desert for it`s strength.
A beautiful keeper of a poem. Thanks for including it.

Knucklehead said...

dada, Here`s a link to Joshua Tree.
Many photos. http://photo.net/ca/joshua-tree.html

Knucklehead said...

A photo taken in a ruin in Joshua Tree in 1980 on one of my trips into the desert. A few years later a friend of mine said he had a present for me from his girlfriend. When I met her, she said I would not in a million years guess what it was. I told her it was a picture of me in the desert. Her boyfriend caught hell for having told me, so she said, but it was just a guess on my part.
I still don`t know why I said that. I didn`t know she had taken a picture a few years earlier, nor did I know either of them at that time.
Strange desert ways, I guess.
At the Pueblo

Unknown said...

The cactus bloom slide show traversed via browsing one by one was certainly worth the effort tonight.

Right now I'm hankering for one of them thar cerus to be growin' indoors here at the farm.

I liked that Edward Abbey passage also.

Also, very kewl photo at the pueblo!

Knucklehead said...

Hey NDD,
I glad you took the time to look at them individually. I even call people to come over immediately to climb a ladder to smell the flowers.
Sometimes they bloom at the very top, other times at eye level.
I did a real time film of the bloom opening which lasted one hour.
I then compressed it to three mins. & it now looks like a time lapse . Once when I wasn`t ready to take shots because of a dead camera battery, I faked sunlight for an hour with a spotlight. When my battery was charged up, I shut off the light & it thought it was then time to open. Yes the poem dada included is excellent .
The photo is like "Midnight at the Oasis".