Saguaro flowers

It was unusually cool today. When I got home, the neighborhood smelled like creosote bushes after rain. I love that smell. I decided to go out to the end of Meridian road so I could smell it better. Turns out it didn't rain as much out there. I got a few pictures of saguaro flowers, though.

I got pictures of other stuff, too. Here's a picture of a couple of cholla cacti. There's a bird nest in the one on the right. It all looks like one cholla at first, but if you look closer you will see that the one on the left is a hanging fruit cholla and the one on the right is a teddy bear cholla. The hanging fruit is a dead giveaway, but you will also notice that the two varieties branch differently.

Now that you know how to tell them apart, which is this? There are a couple of staghorn cholla in the picture, too.

I came across something that at first I thought was fungus. Then I started to wonder if it was one of those alien pod thingies. See if you can tell what it is.

Something has been digging a lot of holes out there lately. Here's one. This is an easily accessible area, so notice the bottle shards and .22 shells all over the place.

And, finally, here are all the pictures.

Meridian_2008_05_13