Night Bloomer

The southern Arizona desert has some interesting plants and flowers.  Recently I was combing through some of my images and found these.  The top one is an image of a night-blooming Peruvian Cereus, which was in our back yard at the “Cactus Ranch.”  Unfortunately, the hard freeze that we had a few years ago destroyed the plant.  I found that to be particularly sad, but everything has a life cycle, including us.

The good news is that we can leave behind something of beauty if we choose.  We all have that opportunity.  I’m grateful to our Cereus plant for sharing her beauty with us, and that I was able to capture these images for posterity.  I did some digital enhancements on the top one because I’ll be using it for cards.  The bottom image is what the plant looks like with several blooms.  Namaste’

Regina (Gina) Arnold is the author of Uncomplicated Ways to Find Your Financial Freedom, a “flunked retirement” entrepreneur, co-author of The Art & Science of Recruiting, an award-winning photographic artist,  and photo blogger.

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By the Morning Light

Today’s photo is of a Peruvian Cereus in our back yard that blooms only at night.  I’ve been watching the pods form over the past week in hopes that at least one would produce a flower.  Before the serious freeze we had a couple of years ago, this particular plant bloomed 37 times in one year.  It was so beautiful!  But now I’m feeling grateful to see this one bloom.  There’s a few other pods but they don’t look like they’re going to get large enough to actually produce flowers.

Since they bloom at night, one has to get up really early to catch them before their petals close up.  So I did.  This one was rather low to the ground so it’s as good a shot as I could get without lying on the rocks.  Ouch!  Namaste’