The Whole Prickly Enchilada

*I recommend you look at this one full screen*

I always thought this was called a Grizzly prickly pear.  I've had at least three landscapers refer to it as such.  I even had one draw a map of my yard and label it so.  But tonight as I was doing some research on varieties of prickly pears, I couldn't find a single one that even remotely resembled mine.

There's a Grizzlybear prickly pear.  It's hairy and ugly.  The one in my backyard can't grow into it because it produces the wrong color flower.  The ugly one produces yellow flowers.  It also lives at a higher elevation. (Whew!  Wouldn't want mine to look like that beast!)

I looked at six different varieties to which I found links.  I read that there were twelve but for the life of me, I couldn't find any other reference to them anywhere.  So what you are looking at, my friends, must be an uncommon variety. 

You are seeing it in different stages of bloom...preparing to open this morning...opened yesterday and beginning to shrivel...and way past shrivel to deader than a door nail.  If you look closely you may see a lot of buds yet to bloom and a couple of spots where the flower has already completely fallen off of the plant.

This cactus is my pride and joy.  Eight years ago this month I stuck one single pad into the ground and watered it.  I waited and watched as another pad grew out of it.  Then slowly, another grew.  Eventually, I saw my first beautiful, red flower.  I was overcome with emotion.  I had grown something myself out of the desert earth. 

I used to photograph every flower.  Some of you were witness to that.  Now, as you can see, I simply watch them bloom, take in the wonder and watch as they close and wither with the sunset.  Then the sunrise brings a new day and a new set of flowers.  It hasn't been the only cactus blooming in my yard  but the largest and the one in which I take the most pride.

So I will continue to call it my Grizzly - because  it will gnaw you up  with its clusters of fine, tiny, barbed spines (glochids) if you get too close.  But know that what you are looking at is special, not only because of what it is,  but how it came to be...