I'm supplementing the cactuses already in my yard with others that are native to this area. A man at last Saturday's farmers' market had three each of this nice little opuntia and another that he called "Black Hills cactus."
I had heard about this opuntia from another friend who is much more serious about collecting cactuses than I am. It's supposed to be rather limited to my area, but the two chollas that were already in my yard were the standard large-limbed purple-flowered kind. This kind is supposed to have orange flowers and grow into a rather dense, rounded bush.
He sold me three of these, too. These "Black Hills" are not in South Dakota, but east of the city. He says they grow in mounds of these little round stems, ridged like barrel cactus, but yes, that's my Swiss army knife in the upper part of the photo.
I can't find either of these in my cactus books.
As I was wandering around the yard planting the new cactus and looking for things to photograph, I found another golf-ball mammilaria. Nice--now I have three of them!
The wren has been checking me out when I work in the yard during the early mornings. She seems to live in a rock pile I've been thinking of using for erosion control elsewhere in the yard, so I'm conflicted about that. She doesn't hang around for long enough for me to identify or photograph her, but she does fly. I was worried that she was injured, but it appears that she just prefers to run a lot of the time. It actually makes sense in that area of the yard, and wrens do that.
I've loved these flowers since I first saw them. They're another of those plants that aren't showy enough to be in the flower guides and not obnoxious enough to be in Weeds of the West. The flower is about a centimeter across, the plant about a meter high and half a meter wide, with flowers on long stems all over it. The smell and the shape of the seeds suggests it's a marigold, although the smell is fainter than for the commercial marigolds.
Baby bunny or a relative hangs out and eats the cheatgrass, which I am slowly eliminating. It's nice and soft at this time of year. He pretty much stays away from the flowers, although one day he took a nip out of a daylily leaf, right in front of me.