5 for friday

Today, just because it is Friday, here are five pink blossoming cacti photos.

This flower mimics the spikes. Sometimes, at the store, you will see cactus that have little straw flowers glued to the top of the cactus. A fake bloom. I understand the idea behind it and it almost looks real, in fact...some people do think they are real blossoms, until you see a blue one!

If the snake was the king of the snake world then this is surely the queen of the cactus world, with her pink crown of flowers! Or a hippie cactus wearing a flower crown!

Twin bloomers. You can barely see the remnants of the one behind to the right. It had just finished blooming and its flowers were at the base of the cactus . It is so interesting how they all bloom differently. And I have noticed, that they tend to bloom in phases of color...orange seems to be first, then yellow, then pink.

The Argentinian cactus has these blossoms that start out pink. They are huge, beautiful white flowers after they open, which is at night. They are night bloomers wth the most beautiful scent. As soon as the sun hits them the next morning, the flowers start to wilt. They are quick bloomers.

These are the photos I was taking the other day when I had the king snake sighting. I haven't seen him since that day and of course, I do often think about what is going on below. You know, the underground snake system that could be out there. I guess if it's underground, that is... ok?

But, I wondered about how much "underground" might be out there. And then my sister sent me this:

Although, she said, "don't worry, they aren't your kind of snakes!"  Thanks Helen, that made me feel so much better and I haven't thought about this image since then either. In fact, I haven't really thought about how that photo of the snakes all standing up together looks a bit like some of the tall clusters of cactus around here. Nope, I don't think about things like that at all.


Let's just think about those pretty pink cactus blossoms instead, shall we?

Happy Friday.
Happy weekend!