Another selection of colorful cactus blooms (and Fibonacci spirals!) from my gardens today.
Ignore the weeds.
Clearing out weeds now that some of the days are warmer and unrainy is how I discovered some of these beauties. So out came the camera!
I thought I would share some pictures from my gardens this past week to cheer us up in these dystopian times we seem to be living in.
Of course, cactus are my specialty, and this is cactus-blooming season. I have included the name of the plant if I know it. The ones that are unnamed probably are species of Mammillaria, Rebutia, Sulcorebutia, and Notocactus since I know I have some of those in my gardens.
One
Ferocactus wislizeni
Two
Three
Notocactus uebelmannianus
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
White flowers never have been my favorite colored flowers, so it’s obvious that I did not know the color of the flowers on this plant when I bought it. However, the flowers are gigantic and beautiful nonetheless.
Trichocereus grandiflorus (Thai hybrid)
There is a microclimate on my property in the corner where the garage attaches to the house. Temperatures are about 10-20°F lower than elsewhere. It’s so cool and shaded from our hot East San Diego County boondocks sun that I can grow geraniums, begonias, fuchsias, and ferns in that corner. Here are a couple of my geraniums that are starting to bloom.
I love mass plantings of flowering plants but at this stage of my life, I have decided to live without the room required for mass plantings. However, I do have fifteen Aloe striata planted in a row in front of a fence. They are awesome when they bloom with a billion orange flowers on top of tall stalks (inflorescences).
My Aloe striatas started throwing up inflorescences in early March. It takes a couple of weeks for them to reach height and start blooming. Then it takes three or four weeks for all the flowers to bloom and green dohickeys (fruit) to show up, providing that the bees and hummingbirds have been doing their jobs.
Thank you, bees and hummingbirds.
I went camping for three days last weekend in Anza-Borrego Desert in Southern California, perhaps the best ever camping trip I have been on.
Out of several hundred Ferocactus cylindraceus plants I saw in the desert, I found these two that clearly show spiraling flowers, rather unusual in cacti.
Go, Fibonacci, go!
When I moved out here in the East San Diego County boondocks at 682′ elevation in July 2017, I started landscaping with my favorite plants. Keep in mind that, at that time, I had 62 years of experience growing my favorite plants.
Well, two of my favorite plants, Agave attenuata and aeoniums, don’t like it out here. Agave attenuata simply doesn’t like it when it gets below 40°F, of which we have had several weeks, and aeoniums don’t like it when it gets too hot, of which we have had several weeks of 100°F+.
After trying to will them to live and look nice, I gave up in October 2019, and I’ve been replacing all of them with cacti, mostly Ferocactus.
One of my purposes in going desert camping was to get a good look at Ferocactus cylindraceus since it’s native to Southern California just 80 miles from me. I am officially in love (but don’t tell my husband).
I found the tallest ferocactus I had ever seen, standing six feet and six inches tall, four inches taller than me.
I’m the one in red.
Additionally, I found the clumpiest clump (with seven heads!) and the tallest clump.
And, to top things off, I found the desert rains and a desert rainbow!
When I was in Bakersfield, California, on February 11-12, 2020, high on my list of places to visit was the California Living Museum, or CALM for short. It specializes in California native fauna and flora.
Although the California Living Museum is only 14 acres with 250 animals representing 80 species, I can highly recommend it.
Keep in mind that I have been a member of zoos, arboretums, aquariums, and animal sanctuaries since I was 13 when my wise old grandmother got me a membership to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas. After that it was the San Antonio Zoo and the Houston Zoo. Also keep in mind that I have been a member of the San Diego Zoo since May 1993.
When I was searching for things to do in Bakersfield and found the California Living Museum, I immediately compared it to the San Diego Zoo at 99 acres, 3,700 animals, and 650 species, and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park at 1,800 acres, 3,500+ animals, and 400+ species.
I had convinced myself that I would be disappointed, but I just cannot bear to miss a zoo, arboretum, or sanctuary, so off I went, thinking that since it specialized in California native flora and fauna, maybe I would see something that I had never seen before. At $10, the price was right, too!
I spent four hours at CALM, which breaks down to $2.50 per hour. That’s entertainment that doesn’t break the bank!
Following are some of my best pictures of CALM.
Seeing a saguaro (Carnegia gigantea) in the parking lot gave me great hope
and it only got better.
Barrel cactus
Northern Mojave Rattlesnake
Northern Pacific Rattlesnake
Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake
Sidewinder
Sonoran Gopher Snake
Chuckwalla
Desert Iguana
Desert Tortoise
Desert Bighorn Sheep
Coyote
Mountain Lion
Nelson’s Antelope Squirrel
Roadrunner
Turkey
Western Scrub Jay
Barn Owl
Acorn Woodpecker
Bald Eagle
Did you notice that I got a picture of both a coyote and a roadrunner?
Fibonacci Numbers
1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8 – 13 – 21 – 34 – 55 – 89 – 144 ….
One of the cool things about spirals based on Fibonacci numbers (i.e., the golden spiral) is that in many plants, one can see both clockwise spirals and counterclockwise spirals.
The number of spirals in each direction in a mature plant almost always are consecutive Fibonacci numbers.
In the following picture of a mammillaria seen at the Los Angeles County Arboretum on February 13, 2020, there are 34 clockwise spirals and 21 counterclockwise spirals.
In 1966 when my wise old grandmother was helping her 11-year-old grandson (me!) set up his first company, she told me not to solicit comments, saying that if someone wanted to comment, they would. Unsolicited comments are the best.
So here are unsolicited comments about my book and presentation:
From Etsy
From my Facebook page
From Instagram
From the Facebook page for San Gabriel Valley Cactus & Succulent Society
Here is my updated “Nature’s Geometry in Succulents” speaking schedule. Come see me if I’m in your area!
Whenever I go to speak to a club, I always take plants, books, and shells to create a display about Nature’s Geometry. The plants and shells exhibit the golden spiral.
Here’s my display from the 2/13/20 meeting of the San Gabriel Valley Cactus & Succulent Society:
Having published my book, “Nature’s Geometry: Succulents” in October 2019, I’m now on the speaking circuit for cactus & succulent clubs throughout the nation.
Here is my current “Nature’s Geometry in Succulents” speaking schedule.
Come see me if I’m in your area!
I will be driving to all locations, including Georgia.
Consequently, I’m contacting the cactus & succulent clubs between
San Diego and Georgia to see if I can get some more engagements
on the schedule for June.
….a flower.
….a hummingbird sitting among the flowers.
….flowers cheering you on.
….an arctic fox.
….a sunset in the east.
….a spider.
Sorry about that last one there…………..
People say that we don’t have seasons here in San Diego. Ha! We have more seasons than anywhere else in the United States. In my 26½ years here,
I have experienced many seasons:
Margarita season—January 1 to December 31Because the Fall season is short, and we don’t have a lot of deciduous trees, and we don’t have a lot of cold weather which is necessary for deciduous trees to be their most colorful, it’s difficult to get good pictures of colorful trees here in San Diego. That doesn’t mean they are not here. It just means one has to search for them. Recently I found one, a Gingko biloba looking absolutely beautiful in the midst of eucalyptus and oak trees:
Notice the bench to the left of the tree? It was calling to me, and when I got over there, I found additional information about this little site. I’ll have more about it in my next post. Still researching everything about it.
I had so much fun three months this past summer while I was writing my book, Nature’s Geometry: Succulents, that I decided recently to write another book, tentatively titled SSS: Southwest Succulent Staycation. However, in order to write that book, I have to visit quite a few places in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah to take pictures.
If I’m going to leave home and drive for a long distance, I would prefer to do a lot of things on the same trip. For example, to get to Utah, I have to go through Nevada. I’d rather not make one trip to Utah and then another trip to Nevada.
That started me thinking, which always is dangerous with me.
I decided I would simply catalog all the pictures I do have to make it easier to decide what areas I actually need to go to take pictures. While I’m doing that, I also can send my Nature’s Geometry: Succulents flyer to all the horticulture clubs, plant clubs, gardening clubs, and cactus & succulent clubs in those four states in an effort to get invited to make a presentation to their clubs.
If the Ogden Garden Club invites me, I could turn that into a photographic journey and visit a lot of places in Utah on the way to Ogden.
A presentation to the Tucson Cactus & Succulent Society would allow me to visit Organ Pipe National Monument, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and so many other treat places in Arizona that are on my list.
All of that is well and good, but that would mean I wouldn’t be writing a book until 2021 or 2022. I could be pretty bored between now and then. As I was cataloging some pictures, I got the idea for a shorter book that could be written immediately. Then the mail arrived, bringing three books that I had ordered; two of them pretty much are useless for my purposes. The third, however, confirmed my idea. It’s titled Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature.
The book is only 32 pages and the text is in a half-inch font. Very little text, mostly pictures. In other words, it’s a children’s book.
A-ha! (not the group).
A children’s book! It would be much easier to write and I could begin immediately after a few more dreams…. Yes, dreams.
Whenever I need to think deeply about something, I go to bed when I’m not tired. Thus, I won’t fall asleep. I’ll simply dream about what I want to do, and additional ideas pop into my mind.
I guess it’s a form of daydreaming since I’m what the medical community calls a polyphasic sleeper. In other words, I never sleep more than three or four hours, and that’s very rare. Usually I take a 30-60 minute nap and then work for 3-4 hours. Repeat throughout the day, every day, 24/7, 365 days (except in leap years, 366 days).
I have had several dreams about this idea so far and I’m almost settled on what I want to do: A children’s book titled (tentatively) Numbers, Letters, Colors & Shapes: Nature helps your child learn.
I’m thinking for ages up to 8. I’ll entertain comments about the age.
Numbers could be the numbers of petals in a flower, number of plants in a landscape, number of tree branches….
Letters could be apple, bear, cat, dog, elephant, fox, goat, horse, igloo….
I could get flora and fauna representing every color on a color wheel….
There are so many shapes in flora and fauna: circles, stars, triangles….
Since it is a children’s book, it should be rather short. Letters would need to be at least 26 pages, so maybe this idea could morph into four children’s books:
I might be able to make this into 8 books:
I think I might have stumbled upon a way to use the billions of pictures I have!
Russel Ray Photos 