Cactus – Cynthia M Voss

Here’s my entry for Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge: Things That Are Rough. Some textured bark on a pine tree.

What was once an inviting, fluffy mountain of snow is now a dirty pile of chopped ice. It melts a little each day but freezes again at night. Try to play on this and you’ll slip, the rough chunks of ice scratching your hand as you brace your fall.

I featured this photo of the catci in a recent post about a trip to a rose garden last summer. Thanks to my friend Maria F., I now know their name: Opuntia humifusa. Thanks, Maria!

Here’s a very happy bee on a pointy thistle.

This is rough on an emotional level. When I read the note that was scratched into the painted-over glass windows on a padlocked door to an abandoned house, I couldn’t help but wonder about the circumstances. More photos and speculation in this post from several months ago.

I thought I had written this post last summer, but discovered today that I had not.

So it’s been a few months, and I have forgotten all of the names of the roses and flowers. There are a few flowers whose signs I took a photo of, but unfortunately this peach rose isn’t one of them.

It was a hot Saturday in June, if that helps describe things.

In this shot, the big wavy green leaves immediately above of the small red flowers, and to the left of the pointy flat leaves, are from a horseradish plant (Armoracia rusticana). The spicy, zippy condiment is made from the root of the plant, but I never knew what the greens look like.