Photo of the day

While working on my slideshow galleries of wildflowers this week I learned a new word, Pollinator.  With this word though, came a second new one, embedded in the definition that I found on Wikipedia. A pollinator is the biotic agent (vector) that moves pollen from the male anthers of a flower to the female stigma of a flower to accomplish fertilization orsyngamy of the female gamete in the ovule of the flower […]

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The mountain is almost devoid of bright color, especially since we have had little snow and no rain this spring. The cactus are still the bright spots on the lower mountain. Tucked away under a larger Cholla Cactus, the hedgehog lives, in and out of the sun.

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On my climb today I found the first wildflowers of the season. Now, perhaps the Scarlet Hedgehog Cactus is not considered a wildflower, but in my book, it counts, and this is my book. This particular cactus was just next to another that was about to burst into twenty to thirty blooms, which I hope […]

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I’ve tried to memorialize this tree several times this week but the light just was not right.  This evening, bright sun with a background of gray clouds helped, but it’s still not as good as the real thing.

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Just as I was shooting this one of my coworkers came by and said, Beautiful, yes, but the pollen is just killing me. Looking at the photo I am reminded of the contrasts from the top of the mountain when it snows and I shoot the white on blue.  Never fear, we’ve had big snows […]

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We had a really warm fall this year and I saw a frost forecast last week so I set about cleaning out the flowers and at the last minute grabbed the pots off of the front porch and brought them inside of the house.  Now granted, we have a lot of light in our atrium, […]

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Hiked the trails again this weekend and at the upper reaches of the LaLuz trail there were one or two clumps of flowers clinging to life on the side of the mountain.

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Teddybear Sunflower – I’d never seen or heard of these before Napa    

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Back on April the 18th I posted a couple of photos of these orchids.  Here we are almost 4 months later and only two of the 6 blooms have dropped off, but the bottom one of these three is in danger.  I decided that I’d grab a last photo before they are gone for the […]

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Popped over to AZ for the weekend and got in a small hike. About the only way you can actually get eye level with a Saguaro cactus is to be hiking on a trail that climbs up the side of a hill and then you can shoot across to the top of the very tall […]

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