Frozen in Time

Taken April 23, 2008.

This is the same variety of cactus that I showed you yesterday, but a different plant. I couldn’t resist this because it looked like a bouquet to me. You can also see what happened to the flowers that were open yesterday.

Taken April 22, 2008.

Sorry this didn’t get posted last night - I was just too tired. But better late than never, right?

Links to some of my favorite pictures from other blogs for Week 16:

living well is the best revenge

Classroom (Tuesday, 9:21 a.m.)

Boogieman is man enough…

sunny

Flying

This is my favorite cactus. Can you see why? Look at those blossoms. They’re beautiful aren’t they? It’s a night bloomer. So it opens at night and lasts for about 24 hours or so. And that’s it. It starts closing up and all the glorious beauty is gone until the next blooms open up.

See how big they are?

Taken April 21, 2008.

This is a very special rose. My mom used to have a Sterling Silver rose bush at the house I grew up in. I’ve been wanting one of my own in honor of her and so we got a bare root rose bush several weeks ago. And yesterday the first rose opened. It’s actually lavender, by the way, even though it looks kind of pink in this picture.

Taken April 20, 2008.

Festivals, carnivals, state and county fairs. Somehow there is a sameness, an oldness, a nostalgia to them that never seems to change. The rides might get flashier and the prizes certainly change with the whims of pop culture, but there are still hot dogs and sno cones and cotton candy. There are smells and sounds and lights and colors. And those things never seem to change. It’s like a peek into our past…and our future as well I like to think. Because even though the technology of it all might change, we can still imagine our parents and our grandparents and our children and our grandchildren experiencing the same things we do. It’s a piece of Americana that just doesn’t seem to go away or to change all that much. And that’s a good thing.

A few more pictures of our church festival can be found here.

Taken April 19, 2008.

The other day I had a picture of the Arizona state bird. Today we have the state tree which is the Palo Verde. Our trees aren’t big and full enough yet to be brilliantly yellow, but I think they’re still pretty! Hopefully, I’ll be able to show you the state flower in the next month or two!

Taken April 18, 2008.

Taken April 17, 2008.

It was a very windy day today so I didn’t really get out to take any photos. However, this morning I picked some flowers that I thought might look good dried and they are underneath the books you see stacked on the counter. Not very exciting, but maybe the books might be interesting to you, although they were chosen for their weight and not their content: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; a time travel romance by Diana Gabaldon (an Arizona-based author, by the way); and The Domesday Book (brought to me by my friend from England).

Taken April 16, 2008.

This is one of the baby cactus wrens that is nesting in one of our cacti.

Taken April 15, 2008.