Saturday, December 23, 2006

October flowers and Griffith Observatory

The cereus had twenty blooms in the span of a couple days. But, none of them appear to have opened fully before starting to wilt, and many (if not most) of them opened during daylight. Perhaps the plant was overburdened; it never had to deal with this many flowers in such a short time before. But, maybe it was the time of year. In the past, October behavior has been very erratic, even when only one or two flowers were produced at a time. Eight of the spent flowers are seen in the picture below.




Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory has reopened after a four-year renovation. The picture below shows the front door of the Observatory presents a rather muddled message:




Once inside, the first thing you see is the Foucault pendulum, shown here:




The Observatory is perched on a mountain overlooking the LA basin: