Here is the very first sprig of leaves on our front yard ocotillo this year. Andy pointed it out to me at dusk last night when he was watering the yard. I took one look and ran inside to get my camera, macro lens, and tripod. This is the first time we’ve had a sprig of leaves grow off the tip of one of the stalks, so I think this means we will have a flowering ocotillo this spring! I can’t wait to post photos of our first red-orange blooms.
This is a follow-up to the last of the ocotillo leaves, which I posted in November. Now in March, I have the joy of posting “the first of the ocotillo leaves”! It’s more than that, though: it’s the first time we’ve had leaves come out of the very top of a stalk. I believe this means we will have our first orange blooms this year.
Tech notes: I took this at dusk, while rapidly losing daylight. I could never have done this without a tripod, for two reasons: 1) the plane of focus on a macro lens with a wide-open aperture is very small, so the slightest movement would have thrown the subject completely out of focus; 2) I could never have held still long enough to get the amount of light I needed (shutter) for a decent exposure. I cropped this only slightly for a balanced composition; I was already photographing at about a 1:1 magnification ratio. About the aperture: I know I could have gotten greater depth of field with a smaller aperture, but I was afraid I might lose the shot if I used too long an exposure and the wind blew the stalk, causing the subject to blur.
Daniel Greene 
Comments welcome