Cactus Update

Happy summer, everybody!

I came today to post a silly story I'd written, but my comment moderator was FULL of cactus questions! FULL, I say! 

I find this excellent for two reasons:

1. People are still reading my old posts
2. I just bought new cacti!

See my coral cactus? It's the large one in the pot on the right.

The others are some little friends I bought for it to hang out with.

My paternal grandmother always had a window full of cactus, and I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out which ones I could safely poke. :) I loved how she had so many different kinds, and Lowe's had little bitty cacti on sale for pretty cheap, sooo.... 

Cactus Day!  Huzzah!

Let me introduce you:

1. You all remember the coral cactus, right?

Well, it's grown quite a bit, and I moved it out of the polka dot pot and in with some little bitty flowering cacti.

2. Pink Crown cacti are the whiter appearing two around the coral's base.

 They're actually a dark green, but there are so many bristles that you can barely see it. They put out very pretty little pink flowers all over the top of the cactus bulb. If you look very closely, you can see that there are two types of bristles: the straight white ones and slightly curved reddish ones. The curved ones are just like velcro. They stick to everything, even skin, at the slightest touch. (Guess how I know.)

3. The next little guy is a Rebutia Miniscula. It buds out from the base as seen below.

 BUT -- It also flowers, and also in a dark pink. So pretty!

4. This next one might be my new favorite. It's nicknamed the Devil's Tongue barrel cactus.

Lookit those spines!  You don't want to mess with this guy. It was quite challenging to get this one out of his store pot and into the coral's old pot.

 Take a close look at the spines: they're ridged, curved, and very hard. You can actually drag your finger down one and hear the spines - that's how tough they are.

 That brings us to the last pot.

On a side note: I was very fortunate to find these shallow pots for the cacti. I didn't want them in deep pots or plastic pots, and I was just about to give up on getting more cacti when I found these shallow ones.

 There are four different cacti in the pot. I'll keep them here for as long as they're healthy, butI'm not sure how long they can stay together. And that's because....

5. The Pilosocereus Gounellii shown below grows to a mature size of TEN FEET. 

I couldn't say no to it, though. It was too awesome.

 6. This is the appropriately named Christmas Tree cactus. I luv Christmas!

7. This fluffy guy is a golden ball cactus.

It's the other one in the running for new favorite. The description reads "harmless bristles" (It lies - I'm still picking them out of my hands). The golden ball cactus is definitely golden, but it's not a barrel cactus, exactly. If you look at the base, you'll see that it looks a bit squished. The golden ball cacti are more like squished pillars than balls. As this one grows, the ripples at the bottom will become more pronounced.

 8. Finally, the last cactus!  This is a Clothed Opuntia.

It really IS harmless to the touch, unless you grab on to it very firmly. The white fuzz is very soft, almost felt-like. It is blooming right now - the shiny green "spikes" are the blossoms. There's two pictures of it here, so you can see its interesting growth patterns.

I'll always be grateful that Grandma got me interested in cacti when I was a kid. I just wish it hadn't taken me so long to get some of my own. I hope you like the cactus as much as I do, and for those of you who are still reading - Thanks for hanging out and being so patient with me!

I hope to write more often for you now that summer's here again.

Of Stupid Dogs and Headaches

Today, I had a Headache. It was not quite a migraine, as it responded to the Alieve that I took, but still worthy of a capital H.

You know those Headaches: they're the ones that color the rest of the events of your day. It's never a pleasant color either, nothing sweet like "Prince Purple" or "Periwinkle" or "Puce". No, it's more like "Parsnip" or "Puke". Yup.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, my dog puked on the floor today. Twice. Because she's dumb. Not sick, just stupid. Apparently she chewed on a bone until it splintered, then ate the splinters, then ate a pine tree branch, then ate a few rocks (maybe she thought she was a chicken?). How do I know this? Because my canine mulch making machine left me a pile of it. Twice.

I love my stupid, stick eating dog Bill. She's the best.

So where was I?

Oh, yes. So when your dogs are dumb and irritating, AND you've a Headache, AND the garbage men refuse to change their schedules to match your Headache's whims, life is blech-y. Tomorrow is garbage day, and the tree must go. I have a Headache. Jim (ever-loving husband, for you new readers - welcome!) has a Headache and a half. The tree must go.

So.... we pile the ornaments in a sheet to contain the glitter, bundle it up, and put them in a chair. We detatch the tree stand and take the tree outside to remove the lights. We unwind maybe a third of one strand, look at each other, and I say, "You know, we could always buy new lights next year...." (I couldn't believe I said it. Me! The queen of don't throw that away! I can use it for ... uh ... something!)

"No! We just bought these."

"Ok. Well, here, unwind some more."

We try. The cord gets stuck. He pulls. I pull. We figure out it's wrapped on a branch somewhere, but we're both wearing gloves because the tree is so darn dry and pokey, and we can't figure it out. Our eyes meet over the tree again. "You know..." he starts.

"Yeah," I said.

We took the tree to the curb. I sheepishly tried to tuck some of the lights back in so maybe the garbage guys won't notice tomorrow that the lights are still there.

--sigh-- I need another Alieve.

The Traditional Lack of Tradition

In my family, we don't like to do things just because. We like to try new things. So, from one holiday to the next, there's no guarantee what we'll be doing or where or with whom. This makes for some fun times and some funny times.

For example:
Last Christmas, we decided to try out the Disney Christmas experience. As Christmas Day rolled around, we were with the mouse himself! It was a long, fun day. This picture was taken shortly after midnight.
On the other hand, last year for St. Patrick's day, the kids decided the world was not green enough, and they got into the food coloring while making dinner. We ended up with green mashed potatoes and green milk. Trust me on this one: you do NOT want to see the picture.

[no picture - you're welcome]

So, in keeping with our non-traditional tradition, this year we decided to hunt down a tree farm and go cut our own Christmas tree. It was so much fun wandering around the tidy little forest. For the most part, the tree types were intermingled, and so it was easy to compare the different variations.
There were clumps of all one kind of tree here and there, and we ended up in one of these because we were looking for a different type of tree: one we couldn't find on a tree lot at home.

These are blue ice trees. They're super fragrant and pretty nifty looking, too. In this picture, we're just starting to try to decide which one we want. See the tall tree behind Jim? That's the one!

We took turns with the saw, but Jimmy got to finish off the final cuts.

And here are my proud little tree hunters.

The tree is home and up in the family room. Right now it only has white lights on it, and because of the way the branches grow, as you move around, it makes the lights look like they're twinkling. Check it out:

We're going to decorate it in silver so that it looks like an ice tree. I'll put up more photos later.

Merry Christmas!

(PS. If you go to my Facebook page, you can see all the pictures from yesterday's experience.)