Prickly pear cactus blooms always remind me of my mother. They seem to flower here in the Texas hill country around Mother’s Day every year, and they’ve been coloring the landscape with their sunny faces this week: After I became an adult, when I would visit my mother–before she started the long Alzheimer’s decline toward […]
I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. –John Burroughs Since returning home to the Texas hill country a little more than a week ago, I have felt particularly welcomed by spring blooms and by the healing rain that first started on Easter Sunday and returned […]
The photo above certainly does not depict me–I won’t even try this rocky section which my friend Rosemary attacks with ease. Having grown up as I did with very little bicycling experience, I pretty much started from scratch a bit over a decade ago. As a kid I spent much more time riding a horse than […]
Beauty, pleasure, and the good things of life are intensified, and perhaps only exist, by reason of contrast. –Walter J. Phillips The Baja California Sur landscape is one of interesting contrasts. Here’s an example: Can you find the island in the above photo? Although you can’t see the water beyond the cactus forest, the mountains […]
For days now the word “burgeoning” has been on my mind, like the refrain of a song I keep playing over and over in my head. I looked it up to see if it was the correct word for what I have been sensing around me here in Baja California Sur. The meaning of burgeon, […]
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. –Albert Camus I don’t always find Camus’ summer within me, but here in Baja California Sur, it’s easy to imagine that mid-February is not the depth of winter. The following photos (taken in the past few days) are meant to be a […]
Desert plants here in Baja California Sur often intertwine and lean on one another like the cardon cactus and elephant tree (torote) pictured above. A local plant expert described this to some friends, my husband, and me as being simbiotico; that is, a symbiotic relationship in which different organisms cooperate. Sometimes, he explained, well-meaning folks […]
The bees on this Sour Pitaya bloom evidently find the nectar sweet. I found the flower to be one of the day’s “secret glories” (the poet E. E. Cummings’ term) as we biked on the Quail Trail. The Sour Pitaya or Pitaya Agria cactus is a cousin to the organ pipe, which also grows in […]
I think these cactus blooms look like fancy bows for holiday gifts. Photo taken Dec. 26th in Baja California Sur, Mexico.
Studies in Color and Composition
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Joann Pensabene
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