Cactus flower
Spotted these beauties on Benton Drive in Redding. Lovely prickly pears in bloom. Click any to enlarge.
Cactus doesn’t grow much further north than Redding in California, much like palm trees. Prickly pear is very drought tolerant plant, well suitable to southern exposure in Really Redding. Nopalitos, my friends!
Floral fireworks
Petunias perfect for Redding
These Petunias love Redding weather evidently. All you see here is from only 3 plants!
This blog was mentioned in a recent Marc Beauchamp column in the Record Searchlight writing about drought landscaping. These need water, but really not much under mulch. And they reward you with this riot of color.
Shooting Stars in a meadow
Captured these images from a meadow off Mt Eddy, about an hour’s drive north of Redding. Very pretty.
From Wikipedia, “Dodecatheon is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants in the family Primulaceae. The species have basal clumps of leaves and nodding flowers that are produced at the top of tall stems rising from where the leaves join the crown. The genus is largely confined to North America and part of northeastern Siberia. Common names include shooting star, American cowslip, mosquito bills, mad violets, and sailor caps.”
Mad Violets. They’re Really Redding.