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Candelabra Aloe Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

3 August 2021

Yesterday the sun was shinning so we left the house to take a walk with the Nikon D200 and 43-86mm Nikkor (with a circular polarizer) hung over our shoulder. We had no plan and left the camera in its holster until we came across this candelabra aloe.

Candelabra Aloe. Nikon D200 with 43-86mm Nikkor and circular polarizer at f8, 1/125 second and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw (twice).

It's also called an Octopus plant but we're going for the more glamorous appellation. We do. In fact, the last time we presented one of these, we also called it a Candelabra Aloe. Which gives us points for consistency.

You wouldn't know it from our shots of the spiky leaves, but these things do flower. You can see a dried one along the left edge. It would have been a dramatic yellow bottle brush that peaked in orange. Oh, do the smartphones come out for those.

But we find ourselves resonating more with the spiky leaves.

And on our walk, this one spoke to us not so much about the thorny side of life as much as its meandering aspect. The twirls, the curls, the spirals.

As a map of the interior life, it isn't bad.

And it wasn't bad as a prognosticator of our walk, which involved a hike of eight miles and over 19,000 steps (most of them forward) as we shot our way through the sunny southwestern corner of the city.

But more about that later. For now, it's enough to get lost in the labyrinth of the leaves of a candelabra aloe.


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