Late season flowers: Mammillaria hernandezii

Not exactly flamboyant, being that it's on a tiny little cactus: Mammillaria hernandezii. However, the Fall rains and cooler weather are creeping in upon us and any little flower is a blessing.

Earlier today, we took a ride out to Sauvie Island (the island at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers) to check on the stables, plus a brief stop at Cistus Nursery...always a fun place to visit. However, it's October and pretty soon the island will have weekend traffic jams of families with little children heading out to one of the many corn mazes and to pick their own pumpkin for Halloween. We made the mistake of being caught in one of those traffic jams a couple of years ago. Never again!
By the way, I grew up in this area and I'll never get used to calling it Sauvie Island. It was Sauvie's Island then and will always be for me.

Mammillaria hernandezii

One of the nice things about these little jewels is that they flower later than just about anything else. Here it is almost Christmas and "wow", it's putting on its show. No archive photo this. Took it this morning, along with the Aloe below.