Where'd they go?

The prickly pear have started to bloom; as promised here's a picture of one in bloom: This was taken early in the morning, after the sun has hit but before the blooms fully opened. They are a pale cream inside, shown here is the peachy reverse of the petals.





I've been taking twice-daily walks around the entire property with the visiting Tigress, and have noticed a couple of things. One, the cholla are of two minds: growing new parts and fixin' to bloom:

new growth; very dark and soft.

pending blooms; note the new growth is curving away from the buds.

The other is that there is no sign of rabbits of any kind at all anywhere. "Sign" in OFC parlance means fresh poop (also known as borzoi M&M's), urine stains, or nibbled cactus. All the cactus I have inspected are free of teeth marks. And the only rabbit I've seen was the remnants the Py and Gin shared several weeks ago (and jack or cottontail I could not tell) - all the bunnies seemed to have moved on to less hostile pastures. I do hope they have simply moved on, and are not actually diminished in population numbers. Last season was a tough one, hare were hard to find.

It has been my hope that our relatively mild winter and decent snowfall, combined with the early spring rains, would provide ample fodder for the rabbits to have productive bunny-making spring. As Elmer Fudd said, be wery wery quiet...