I’m really liking this high-quality time-lapse movie creation. It’s fun. Best of all, I can set it up to do a job while I’m home and check the results later.

Today’s experiment came out better than expected. The main goal was to create a time-lapse movie of today’s saguaro flowers closing. (The flowers of the saguaro cactus bloom at night and are wilted and closed by late afternoon.) But I set up the camera to include the sky beyond, which was just filling with clouds. The building clouds stole the show.

If you think this looks good, you should see it in full quality at 1936 x 1296 pixels. That’s the lowest resolution my Nikon D80 can deliver, so that’s how I bring it into QuickTime.

I shut it down when I did for a few reasons:

• The camera’s battery was almost depleted. It had snapped 621 images 20 seconds apart.
• The wind was kicking up. I worried that a gust could knock over the camera and tripod and damage my camera on the concrete surface of my back patio.
• The sun had moved above and behind the cactus. That wasn’t the best lighting for the flowers.
• The flowers were just about fully closed.

I’m recharging the battery now. If the clouds dissipate a bit, I may relocate the camera to my upstairs patio and attempt a sunset time-lapse.

If you’re new to this blog or have stumbled onto this page and wonder what the heck this is all about, read “Time-Lapse Mania” to learn more.

Here’s the yellow version…

This is the time of year when all those prickly cacti call out for attention that isn’t painful. They’re starting to flower.

My husband and I planted every single plant within the wall that surrounds our immediate yard. The rest of our 2-1/2 acres is mostly as nature intended.

We planted desert plants because we live in the desert and see no reason to pour precious water into the ground if we don’t have to. That doesn’t mean that we don’t irrigate at all. We do — a little. But not much. You see, most of the plants are cacti.

…and here’s the salmon version.

Right now, the prickly pear cacti are flowering in my back yard. Interestingly, they’re blooming in two slightly different colors: a yellow and a pale salmon. The plants came from the same source on the same day and were planted at the same time. Why they are two different colors is beyond me.

The flowers are amazing. They look almost like wax. Here’s a glimpse of them; you can click a larger photo to see it in my Photo Gallery.

What’s also interesting about these cacti is that last year they produced mostly new cactus pads. Think of the pads as branches or leaves. Each pad will produce either flowers or more pads. Last year we had lots of pads — so many that I cut some young ones off and grilled them up to have with dinner a few times. But this year it’s flowers. Don’t know how the plant decides.

Cholla Flowers

The cholla (pronounced choy-ya) flowers — or at least one type of cholla — there are many — are also blooming. Cholla is a particularly nasty type of cactus. I can blame the poor quality of this photo on the simple fact that I refused to get close enough to this cactus for it to bite me. This type of cholla grows well in my yard; green and hardy. The flowers were a surprise; I guess I missed them last year.

More cactus flowers are on the way. I’ll try to snap photos of them as they bloom. I noticed that the new arms on our big saguaro have flower buds but the top doesn’t have any yet. I’m wondering about that.

The hedgehog cacti are just about finished blooming now. I got a great photo of one in Page, AZ last week; you can see it in this blog post. I haven’t had time to add the other photos of this cactus to my gallery; I hope to do it soon.

Not enough hours in a day.

The other day, the red Mexican Bird of Paradise plant outside my office window began shooting its seeds. Since then, I’ve been collecting them.

I like the seeds. They’re like pretty little rocks. The plant throws them all over the area at the end of its growing season, but they seldom sprout. They’re just too hard.

The red Mexican Bird of Paradise is a low-water plant that’s popular in Arizona. We have two of them on a drip irrigation system in our front yard. They grow slowly until the nighttime temperatures warm up, then grow like weeds. At the height of the season, they fill with red and yellow flowers. As shown here, the flowers attract butterflies in addition to the hummingbirds that are always attracted to red.

Time passes. The flowers fade and seed pods appear. You can see an example of one on the far left in the photo below. The seeds in the pods fatten up. Then the seeds and pods dry out. The pods split on their seams, twisting as they break apart, shooting the seeds all over. You can see a recently split pod in the middle in the photo below; there are still two seeds stuck in it. I collect the seeds because I like the way they look. There’s a bunch of them in the photo on the far right. They’re about the size of a very large pea.

A close-up of the seeds reveals tiny imperfections and cracks. But don’t let the cracks fool you. These seeds are as hard as tiny rocks. That makes them difficult to germinate. So despite the fact that hundreds of them drop in our front yard each autumn, we’ve only had two plants sprout from seeds.

When the seeds are all dispersed and the nights get cold, the plant loses its leaves. In the dead of winter, it looks like a bunch of ugly sticks. In the spring, before things start to grow, we cut them back to a few inches above the ground. Then, as it warms, the entire cycle of life begins again.

The Mexican Bird of Paradise in my front yard is featured in my Webcam, shown here. If the Webcam is up and running — which it should be during daylight hours — you may be able to see the plant’s leaves or flowers in the foreground of the image. Remember, from January through March (at least), it’s just a bunch of ugly sticks.

Before I left Wickenburg for the summer, I planted a small garden in some beds at the back of our house. The garden had a few vegetable plants — tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant — as well as some sunflowers.

I like the giant sunflowers, but I also planted some shorter varieties. One of the giants was in bloom when I left. The others have apparently bloomed as well. But not before some of them have reached heights of 8 feet or more!

Here’s the photo Mike sent today. I’m impressed.

What I like best about sunflowers is what happens after they go to seed: the birds land on them and feed right off the flower head. Mike will have plenty of that activity to enjoy while I’m gone.

I had some leftover seeds and I brought them with me to Washington State. I tried twice to plant them around the water spigot for my camper. There’s dirt there and its almost always wet. I think birds or rabbits got the first seedlings and the lawnmower got the second. I’ve given up. Instead, I have a planter that contains two tomato plants, some basil, and some flowers. That’s as green as my thumb can get here in the RV park, I guess.

Yesterday, one of the buds on the saguaro cactus in my front yard bloomed. Today, there were many more blooms. I took this photo from the covered walkway near my front door using a 200mm lens. The blue color of the sky is not enhanced in Photoshop; it’s a direct result of the polarizing filter on the lens.

Saguaro flowers bloom at night and are pollinated by bats. Bees and birds do a bit of pollination during daylight hours. After a day or two in the sun, the flowers wilt. Fruits begin forming shortly thereafter. The fruits are small and hard and, as they ripen, they split open to reveal red pulp. Seeds are tiny — think smaller than poppy seeds on a bagel — and are eaten and passed through by the birds who feast on the fruit.

Keep in mind that this cactus is 15-20 feet tall. The flowers are on top. This is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to get good photos of saguaro flowers — it’s not like you can stand right next to them.

I just ordered a 70-300mm Nikon lens with image stabilization. I think it’ll help me get better shots of things like this. I’m also looking forward to using it on my flight to Washington state this coming weekend.

Related Posts:

• My Cactus is Growing an Arm
• Snake in Cactus (with Photos)

As summer approaches and the little moisture we got during this winter’s rainshowers completely dries up, the native desert plants go about their late spring business. A walk around my yard with my camera yielded these photographs of what’s blooming now.

First up, some prickly pear cactus flowers. This is an Engelmann’s Prickly Pear in our backyard, which displays yellow flowers each spring. These are the same cacti we harvest for young prickly pear pads this time of year. They’re great on the grill.

We also have a purple prickly pear cacti in the side yard. Its flowers are similar, but generally brighter in color — almost neon, in fact.

I’m not sure of the identity of this one. It’s a wildflower that’s growing alongside our driveway and in various other parts of the unlandscaped portion of our property. I believe that it’s a paperflower, but I could be wrong. (If anyone knows for sure, use the Comments link or form for this article to let us know.)

This desert willow took root in our side yard some years ago and grew like a weed. As you can see, it gets very dramatic pink flowers — the entire tree is covered with them right now. It flowers twice a year and makes long seed pods filled with hundreds of seeds. The tree loses all of its leaves in the coldest winter months and is pretty messy, so a lot of people avoid them. Me, I wish my yard was full of them.

Palo verde is also blooming throughout Wickenburg right now. (It bloomed at lower elevations 2 to 4 weeks ago.)

For another look at the palo verde in bloom, check out this photo I took of the high school last week. All the yellow you see in the trees are palo verde flowers. Nice, huh?

As I type this, I’m sitting at Gate A6 at Burbank Airport. I just finished up a five-day business trip in Ventura, CA, where I worked with a new client. It was a very satisfactory week, primarily because the client picked up all of my expenses and they put me up in a very nice room on Ventura Harbor.

Yes, it was a Holiday Inn Express. But it was also one of the nicest hotel rooms I’ve stayed in for a long time. My first floor room may have lacked a patio, but it had vaulted ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the harbor. This, in fact, was my view:

That shot’s only slightly zoomed in. The boats were so close that, if my window opened a bit wider, I could have lobbed bars of soap at them.

Let me just say a few more things about this most excellent room. It was quiet — no sound from next door, no sound from the hall, no sound from outside — even with the window open! It included a nice sized fridge, two burner stove, microwave, sink, and various pots, pans, plates, and utensils. In other words, I could have prepared my own meals. The bathroom was huge and included a glass-enclosed shower stall, deep jacuzzi tub, and vanity with stool. The main room had a comfortable king-sized bed, sofa, desk, and round table with two chairs right in the prow window. Not only was it bigger than my first apartment, but it was a heck of a lot better equipped. Although I didn’t spend much time there, it was nice to come “home” to such a nice place after a long day at work.

On Tuesday, after work, I walked to the ocean from my room. I figure it was about a mile each way, walking along the south side of the harbor. I took some photos.

Here’s a flower right outside my hotel. I don’t know what it is, but it was beautiful. And my CoolPix’s macro mode did a nice job of capturing it, even in questionable light.

Near the end of the harbor was an arcade with a tiny carousel inside. I took a few shots of the ride in motion, but I like this shot, which I took after the kids had climbed off, the best:

After dinner at Andria’s, I walked back the same way I’d come. I caught sight of what I think is a Great Blue Heron just moments after it plucked a fish out of the water. I got this slightly blurred shot of the bird with the fish in its mouth:

Last night, I could see a great sunset from my window. I went out in my slippers for a better angle and got this shot:

I had a surprisingly good time in Ventura. It’s a nice little town with lots of great dining opportunities. I ate as I always do when I’m away from Wickenburg: as if I haven’t eaten a good meal in years. Next week, it’s back to my diet.

I like to keep a camera in my purse. You never know when a photo opportunity might crop up. While some people would be perfectly satisfied using the camera on their phone, I’m a bit picky. So when my 7.1 megapixel Canon PowerShot became unreliable earlier this month, I replaced it with a 10 megapixel Nikon CoolPix.

[A side note here: I cannot believe how advanced and inexpensive digital cameras have become. This was the least expensive of all the digital cameras I've purchased, yet it has more capabilities than all of them except my Nikon D80 digital SLR. And the pictures speak for themselves.]

I took the camera along on my afternoon chores at the horse corral and snapped a few photos of what’s currently in bloom around my yard. It’s been warm out during the day — in the 80s — and although there was some rain to the north of Wickenburg today, it remains dry here. Still, there are more wildflowers this year than I’ve seen in a few years.

A close-up shot of some desert marigolds, including a flower bud. Unfortunately, the guy who takes care of our yard pulls these out as weeds.

Globe mallow. (Remember, I’m still playing with my camera, so I’m experimenting a bit more than usual.)

Brittlebush. These took seed in our yard, grew into bushes, and flower every year.

Today was a photography day. Not only did I finally get my POV.1 camera to produce some good and interesting aerial video, but I went out in the desert and photographed wildflowers and other desert things.

Here are three photos of poppies that I took today. I believe they’re California Poppies, although I’ve heard people refer to them as Mexican Gold Poppies. Whatever. They are so plentiful this year that I can actually see them from the air as I fly over the desert: yellow carpet on the south-facing hills around Wickenburg and Phoenix.

All of these shots were taken in the desert just east of Vulture Peak, south of Wickenburg.

I think this is my favorite photo from today’s shoot.
 

The blue flowers mixed in here are lupines. Absolutely gorgeous but there are far fewer of them than poppies.
 

This one just says it all: Welcome to an Arizona spring.

For the past few days, I’ve been watching butterflies come and go in the Mexican Bird of Paradise bushes outside my office window. Today, I decided I needed to capture them with my camera.

Digital cameras are incredible things. You can take 3 dozen photos of the same basic scene and at least one of them just has to be good.

This shot was taken with a Nikon DSLR with a 70-210 zoom lens. The tricky part was focusing — the darn butterflies wouldn’t stay still and there’s just enough breeze outside to move the flowers around. But with a quick shutter speed, several of the shots came out pretty good. I think this might be the best.

Photo Info:
Camera: Nikon D80
Shutter Speed: 1/800th
Aperture: f5.6
Focal Length: 210mm
ISO: 200

Prepare yourself for the usual author rant — but with a difference. This one is coming from an author who just completed her 69th book. An author who has worked with about eight different publishers and dozens of copy editors over the course of 15 years.

So no, this isn’t a newbie writer griping about a heavy-handed editor on her first or second book. It’s coming from someone who has been doing this for a long time and feels as if she’s “seen it all.”

I’ve taken this topic and split it into three parts. In this part, I’ll start off with an introduction to the topic of copy editing and tell you what I believe it should be.

What is Copy Editing?

The purpose of copy editing should be to ensure that the original text is:

• Free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Note the use of the word “error” here; that’ll be important later in this discussion.
• Consistent with a publisher style guide. A style guide, in the world of publishing, is a document that sets forth usage in those gray areas. I’m talking about capitalization issues such as web vs. Web, hyphenation issues such as email vs. e-mail, and design issues such as boldfacing figure references.
• Clear and easy to understand. This usually involves breaking up long or complex sentences or possibly rearranging sentence components.
• Unlikely to be misinterpreted. For example, when you say the “Color in pop-up menu,” do you mean a pop-up menu named “Color in” or are you talking about color in a pop-up menu?
• Consistent with the writing style of the established book or series. This only comes into play when you’re writing for a series that has a predefined format and style. For example, Visual QuickStart Guides (VQSes) tend to be short and to the point, so I don’t have room for personal stories, as I do in other books. VQSes also have level 2 headings that begin with the word “To” and are followed by numbered steps, each of which presents a single task. (I could list about a dozen style issues specific to a VQS, but you get the idea.)

Of course, what you’re writing should determine how much of the above is required. If you’re writing a novel much of this may not apply at all. Consider the book, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The book’s first person narrator is a retarded man. The book is in journal format and the first few chapters are so full of spelling and punctuation errors (or omissions) that the book is difficult to read. But that’s because of the author’s choices and the method he uses to communicate. Would you expect a retarded man to have perfect spelling, grammar, and punctuation? Of course not. The author is using the character’s shortcomings as a writer to make his character more real — as well a to drive home the changes in the character as the story progresses. This technique was used again more recently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which featured an autistic first-person narrator. If a copy editor had done a thorough job on the grammar or punctuation in either of these two books, he would have altered the characters. The same can be said for dialog in most novels, since few people speak using perfect grammar.

So copy editing of fiction is a different subject — one I’m not addressing here. I’m discussing copy editing of non-fiction, primarily technical or how-to books, since that’s where my experience is.

More to Come…

This is the first part of my discussion of copy editing. There are at least two more parts to go. In the next part, I’ll rant a bit about my experiences with one particular book over the ten-year course of its life (so far). You’d think that after 10 years, the process would be trouble-free…

Why not take a moment to tell us what you think copy editing should be. How do you expect it to change or improve your writing? Use the comments link or form to share your thoughts.

In February 2005 Mike and I made our second overnight mule trip into the Grand Canyon. We went with our friends John and Lorna from Maine (Hi, Lorna!) and spent two nights at Phantom Ranch.

Although it’s not a difficult trip, it is a long one. Although Mike and I have horses and ride once in a while (not as often as we used to, I’m afraid), this is 4 to 5 hours in the saddle — enough to make anyone sore. But it’s worth it. Only a tiny percentage of the millions of people who visit the Grand Canyon each year actually descend into the canyon. This is one of the “easy” ways to do it. And you get a whole different view of the canyon once you get below the rim.

Phantom Ranch is nice, too. Stone cottages, Bright Angel Creek, lots of healthy hikers and campers from all over the world going through.

This photo was taken during our full day down in the Canyon. We went for a hike on a trail that climbed up from the river and made its way upriver. After the initial climb, the trail was pretty level — which is good for me because I don’t climb hills well. We saw lots of wildflowers and rock formations along the way. And a helicopter pulling equipment out from Roaring Springs on a long line.

It’s another trip I highly recommend. But book it far in advance — there’s about a 6-month waiting list. Unless you do it the way we did: go in the winter when no one wants to go.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, photo

I’m sitting on a plastic chair on the front patio of a ground-floor apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, watching four men wash the apartment building across the street. It looks to be a 24-story building and, like most of the buildings in this area, it’s got a steel and glass facade. The four men are sitting on separate wooden seats — kind of like the seats you’d find on a swing set — hanging from ropes on top of the building, about four stories down. Two of them have long hoses and the other two have brushes on long poles and plastic pails. They’re all wearing shorts and sneakers and are doing a lot of bouncing off the walls as they move back and forth and down.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wash a building before, but it doesn’t surprise me. This is Vancouver, after all. It’s one of the cleanest, well-kept cities I’ve ever seen. Perfectly manicured grassy islands between sidewalks and curbs, trees and flowers, pedestrians and cars. Everything is clean and well-kept. The only graffiti I’ve seen was painted on the back of a rental truck. And although everyone seems to have dog, I haven’t seen a dog turd anywhere.

I’m here recording the audio and video for the first video in a new MacProVideo training video series. Microsoft Word 101 will be a DVD training video for beginning to intermediate Word users. If it sells well, it’ll be followed up with more advanced titles and coverage of Excel and PowerPoint. The work is a bit frustrating and rather tedious, more so because after each 3 to 6 minute segment, I have to wait 6 to 12 minutes for the newly recorded video to render. So I do about 1/3 work and 2/3 waiting. Because I’m recording each segment at least twice, it’s slow going. But, by week-end, I should be finished.

I’d better be. I leave town mid-afternoon on Friday.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying my non-working hours in a clean, safe, and rather beautiful Canadian city. The weather is beautiful, in the mid 70s and mostly sunny, although a marine layer of clouds seems to be drifting in as I type this. My hotel and the office/apartment I’m working at are right on the water near Stanley Park. The view from my hotel room at the Westin is full of boats and seaplanes and healthy people strolling the waterfront.

One of the strangest things I’ve noticed: most of the buildings — including my hotel — have huge floor-to-ceiling windows that open. At my hotel every evening, everyone slides open their big sliding glass doors. Although most patios are too narrow to accommodate chairs, people step out onto that narrow space and gaze down at the hotel’s pool or the marina or even the city skyline. I’ve never seen so many open windows. But why not? The weather is glorious and there don’t seem to be any bugs. Fresh air beats processed air. And air conditioning, although available in my hotel, is not a common thing in this area.

More another time. Got to get to work.

We had a storm last night in Wickenburg. It came upon us suddenly, from the west (I think), just as we were going to sleep. Soon the rain was pounding against our newly refinished roof and the bright flashes of lightning were illuminating our bedroom.

It’s monsoon season here in Arizona and storms in the late afternoon and early evening are to be expected. But we haven’t had quite as much rain here in Wickenburg as I’d like to see. The wash that runs past our house has been dry for over a year. And the unpaved roads in town have been just as dusty as they are the rest of the year.

Last night changed all that. It rained like hell. And when I woke up this morning and took a look down into the wash, it was clear that it had become a river during the night. The loose sandy surface was packed hard and wet and the debris that had been left there from the last flow was gone, replaced with fresh debris.

There wasn’t any damage this time around. Just some sand deposited on our driveway. Our neighbor, Danny, was out there with a Bobcat bright and early, working on the steep dirt road we use to get to our homes. He bought it used from a local landscaping contractor and I think he was tickled pink to have a chance to fire it up and use it.

Meanwhile, everything looked really fresh and clean. One of the odd things about living in the desert is that it’s so dry most of the time that dust really gets all over everything — including the trees and rocks. The natural colors of the desert seem washed out when, in fact, they’re just dust-covered. A good hard rain takes all that dust out of the air and off of everything. The desert looks green and alive.

And it feels cool. This morning, the temperature outside was probably in the mid 70s. That’s downright arctic in central Arizona in the summertime. The air was fresh and smelled of the rain and flowers and life.

It was the perfect morning for a helicopter ride.

Mike and I drove over to my friend Jim’s house. Jim lives about three miles due north of Wickenburg Airport. He flies a Hughes 500c helicopter. Years ago, he won a bid to build hangars at the Airport, which was in dire need of more hangars. Jim wanted a hangar so he could park his Hughes 500 in it. He figured he could lease the rest of them and make some money. He spent six months with the Airport Manager and other town powers-that-be to come up with a plan that was satisfactory to all parties. He presented the finalized plan at a Town Council Meeting. The Council members said, “Hey, wait a minute. There was only one bidder on that contract. You couldn’t win it. It has to go back out to bid.”

Jim is like me. He doesn’t take a lot of bullshit. He told them what they could do with their hangars and applied for a permit with Maricopa County to build a hangar and helipad at his house. In less than a year, he had a huge hangar on his 48-acre spread with a nicely marked and perfectly legal helipad out front.

The airport didn’t get new hangars for another three years.

Anyway, the airport is getting ready to close for a month due to construction. Although I’m perfectly confident that I can safely fly in and out of there while construction is going on, they’re closing down the place to helicopters, too. They seem to think that there won’t ever be a safe landing zone anywhere on all that land at any time of the day or night for a whole month. It’s bullshit, but not worth arguing about it. Jim said I could camp out at his place. So it’s not like I’m being inconvenienced.

So after topping off my fuel tanks in Glendale the other day (0.7 hours round trip from Wickenburg), I brought Zero-Mike-Lima over to Jim’s place and touched down right on the helipad.

Jim’s out of town. He and his wife are in the process of moving to San Diego. His house and the 40+ acres still left (he sold off a piece) are for sale. Two houses, a pool, horse setup, shop, garages. And, of course, the hangar and helipad. I’d buy it if I had that kind of money and wanted to invest it in Wickenburg. I don’t and I don’t. If I had that kind of money, I’d be in San Diego. I guess that’s why Jim’s there and other people are living in his house.

We took off to the south, toward the airport. I’d brought along my video camera and Mike was using it to shoot images of the things we flew over. I’ve been wanting to get some good video footage from the helicopter for Flying M Air’s Web site and the wickenburg-az.com Web site I run. But I don’t seem able to get it together. I can’t take video while I fly. Heck, I can barely snap a few photos while I fly.

So today, Mike was in charge of the cameras. Although the video footage was too shaky for use — even online use — he got some great photos of the airport construction and downtown Wickenburg, as well as Jim’s house.

We used to do aerial photography together with a Pentax 67 medium format camera. It was a pain in the butt. The camera could only hold 20 shots (I think), it weighed a ton, and although it did have an exposure meter, it didn’t have automatic exposure. That means the photographer had to adjust the shutter speed or aperture for every shot based on the meter reading. Mike didn’t like to do that. He’d set the exposure once or twice during the whole shoot. So half the pictures would be under or over exposed. Of course, the film couldn’t be processed in WIckenburg — we had to send it out. And we had to send out for enlargements, too. It was idiotic.

So now we use a 7 megapixel Canon PowerShot that I carry around with me in my purse. We can take up to 70 images on the card I have in it and even if 80% of them are bad, the remaining 20% are still enough to choose from. So just point and shoot, shoot, shoot.

We were only out for about a half hour. It was still cool when we got back to Jim’s house and put the helicopter away.

Now, later in the afternoon, I see the clouds building to the north. Maybe we’ll have a replay of all that wonderful rain again tonight.

I’ve got my fingers crossed.

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