Which Meetup do I want to go to? Yes, if you belong to enough Meetup groups, you’ll have a choice. I joined my first Meetup group when I ordered my Nikon D3100–before I had taken my first digital SLR shot! That was 26 months ago, and I think I was excited about my new hobby.

Most photography Meetups try to do at least one outing a month. Some groups do more. They each have their own personality and leadership. Many of us belong to a few, so we run into each other as we travel. Through the Meetup world, I have met new people, made new photo buddy friendships, learned new information, have gone places I didn’t know about and have had fun.

On a recent Meetup, we went to the Ruth Bancroft Garden while they hosted their Sculpture in the Garden show. The garden features various cactus from Mediterranean climates and other dry regions around the world. Its founder, Ruth Bancroft, lives next door and is 105 years. The garden became the first preservation project of the Garden Conservancy, a nonprofit organization and has been open to the public since 1992.

Well maintained, this garden was easy to walk through. It was small, but still took us a few hours to take our images. The next outing I went on was to a garden that was not well maintained. But, first take a glance at the Ruth Bancroft Garden. I’ll show you the cactus in this post and the sculptures in the next. I was able to identify some of the plants from the garden’s brochure. Too bad, I did somehow catalog them by their numbers!

I wonder what Meetup I’ll be going to next!