Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #200 — Every Little Thing

Amy, I love you for choosing this theme, one that’s near and dear to my heart and camera. While I, like Tina, often do close-ups and macros from six feet or so away with my telephoto, the phone is also great for that type of shot. I deliberately didn’t include a flower with a bee, although I love those. Let’s see what I did chose and whether or not you like them.

My Christmas cactus in full bloom lured me into a great number of photos with its sensuous curves and beautiful color.

This unidentified but brave insect ventured much closer to these cactus spines than I ever would!

Our daughter had some beautiful gladiolus flowers, so I just had to get (a lot) closer.

One of these is not like the others.

Although I know many think me crazy for it, I long for some winter, real winter with cold and snow and ice, something we don’t get in the Phoenix area. But go south an hour and a half or so, then head up Mt. Lemmon and if conditions are right, you might spot frost in places where the sun hasn’t hit yet. Seeing some made my day. Really!

No little thing challenge can sneak by without another view, unpublished until today, of the alien-looking interior of one of our torch cactus flowers. I’m endlessly fascinated by them.

A sidelong look

Here’s another look at a trumpet cactus flower, this time from the side. Happy midweek! I’m excited because yesterday I bought two tickets for the Los Angeles 7’s rugby tournament at the end of August. It’s going to be an amazing experience.

Also for Cee’s FOTD aka Flower of the Day 🙂

We interrupt this broadcast

We’ve been walking at the Desert Botanical Gardens, but let’s take a moment to look in our own garden. A year ago, the flowers of the torch cactus welcomed us to Arizona with three different rounds of flowers. Now it’s blooming again. My parents have an enormous one with huge flowers. Ours is small, but also beautiful. Torch cactus come in a variety of colors, which you can see if you click here.

The one on the right will likely be full-blown tomorrow morning. It makes every day an adventure. Until they bloom, the flowers have a rather sci-fi look.

Bees love flowers and this bee was having a good time. But when I tried to get close for a better shot, it would go just inside, then zoom away. This was the best I could do. You can see him at the bottom right, looking a little fuzzy, but then bees are. Just FYI, his antennae aren’t curly, those are dark lines in the flower. It would look pretty cool, though, if they were.

also for Cee’s Flower of the Day