On January 26, Lynn and I hiked Quartz Mountain Trail in Skyline Park, about two miles north of our house in Buckeye. It’s been a wet winter and generally the terrain is much greener than normal. We are expecting a spring flower show in March. As we rounded a curve in the trail, we saw several people talking and snapping photos of something on the edge of the trail. As we passed by, they clued us in. Out of a small crack in a rock was growing a tiny cactus. At most it was 3 inches (7.6 cm) in diameter, and at its crown, a ring of red blossoms was sprouting. This was the only bloom we saw in the park that day.

About the photo: The image was captured on my Samsung S6, uploaded to Flickr, and then imported into Lightroom. After cropping and tweaking, I exported it to Luminar Flex for further processing. As always, you can select the image for a better view (if your browser supports it.)

John Steiner