Flowering cactus

So amidst all of this house hunting stuff, I couldn't pass the opportunity to shoot a photograph of this beautiful flowering prickly pear cactus. 90% of the year, this cactus is just that, a cactus. But during spring, it blooms into these beautiful yellow flowers and during fall, the chunky stem (directly below the bloom) turns bright red and people can it into jelly. It's called prickly pear jelly. I now understand how it got it's name. I had to tromp through knee high jagged weeds (possibly littered with fire ants and rattle snakes to get this shot.) And wouldn't you know that the prettiest bloom was in the hardest location to shoot. After 5 minutes of shooting, I returned with this great shot and about 100 tiny thorns penetrating my skin from my elbows up. It was worth it. After all, my blog is titled ELCphotography, not ELCrealestate.