Some kind of Cacti or Succulent

Well, only in a very broad sense. Not normally grown by the C & S enthusiasts.

Sedum spectablis ???

If so you have a great camera

Heather

out with a magnifying glass

Hi! I agree, looks like a Sedum to me. (Neon, or brilliant....maybe)

who cares about the flower!

what an excellent photo tonyfromoz - what sort of camera are you using?

Not sure about the flower, though it does look a bit cactus like, and now I know that is wrong.

But your bee is beautiful, looks like he is getting ready for winter with all that fur on him.
Marion

Yes, Heather has it, Sedum spectabile. I wouldn't mind betting she has it blooming now in her own garden! Here's my plant

{{gwi:2112595}}

My pics are nowhere near as sharp or well composed as, say Barbara's or Sheila's (from Perth), but for those interested they were taken with my Canon 300D with the standard, very cheap 18-55 mm lens, which in my opinion can give great results. I always use 400 ISO because I can detect no reduction in quality from 200 or 100. For flower closeups I often use the built-in flash, with Manual setting at 1/200 and f36, at longest focal length, giving maximum depth of field (actually shortest focal length of 18 mm may give more, but perspective is distorted and focussing less precise).

I used the flash technique for this photo. I discovered afterwards I had left the resolution setting on only 3Mb and higher JPEG compression instead of my usual 6 Mb and least compression. In Photoshop Elements I cropped this original picture ...

{{gwi:2112596}}

and tweaked contrast and saturation slightly (I always take originals with the standardised Adobe Colour Space which gives a very muted picture). I then resaved with a further JPEG compression of Medium (5 on scale of 1-12). The cropped size was about 700 pixels wide, ideal for posting here, so I did not need to resize it, though I did resize the uncropped version shown here to 700 wide.

Yes Tony I do have the plant growing, I had to get the eye glass out and pull the flower apart to checkit out.
Heather