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Cholla Cactus - Anza-Borrego Desert

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Cactus at Anza-Borrego Desert State ParkThis very sculptural-looking cactus is alluringly beautiful and drops the ends of its branches onto the ground like little balls. But woe to anyone or anything that merely brushes even gently against it as its thorns are incredibly sharp and barbed. A gentle touch with the tip of the rubber toe on my shoe and the spines were a half-inch into the rubber and impossible to pull back out! Beware of these beauties if you visit Anza-Borrego desert.

This cactus plant is actually a Cholla Cactus. There are several varieties, but this one is Cylindropuntia bigelovii or the "Teddy Bear Cholla", so named because of it's fuzzy appearance. That cute fuzziness, however, is the mass of spines covering the plant. One of my friends knows this cactus as "the widowmaker"! You can read about this and other Cholla cacti at Wikipedia: Teddy-Bear Cholla. Or additionally at this Living Desert posting which describes clearly the perils of encountering this deceptively-looking teddy-bear.

Full-sized photos of this cactus can be seen in the Plants Photo Gallery (Dial-up Plants Photo Gallery)
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Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

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Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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