From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
The Christmas Cactus flower continues to unfurl its petals from the cylindrical bud.
A long day at work.It was cold this morning,and even colder on the way back. The new garden will be frozen by the weather.
In the south of England they have reported Berwick swans have settled into the waters, in numbers double of last year. Scientists take it that the Winter will be bitterly cold this year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489098&in_page_id=1770
They have flown 3000 miles from the Artic Tundra on the cold Easterly winds that have been making us shiver.
If there is two things the British love, One is gardening, and the other is talking about the Weather. I think the Island shape of the country, and old reliance on agriculture and the sea have made us weather obsessed!
To the point of predicting the weather because of the arrival of Swans!
When we think of plants, we typically think of their functional relationship to us: plants as providers of shade, food and beauty. But there are those occasional plants that have a much more personal relationship with people. In my experience, some exhibit traits I’d even describe as jealous, vindictive and, perhaps, suicidal.
Don’t believe me? Well, take the case of my cactus. When I moved it from our greenhouse to my living room, I was single and it was single…well, single in the sense that it had a single stem. It thrived in my house, soaking up the sun in the corner of my living room. Whenever its soil seemed a bit parched, I’d give it a good drench of water and, periodically, a good shot of fertilizer. The relationship between us was solid. It forgave me when I let it dry out too much, and it provided me with luxuriant growth when I poured on the water.
By the time I got married, this rather inconspicuous little cactus had sprouted nine, large arm-like appendages and stretched to a height of two and a half metres. Now, I must say that I was pleased to see that when my wife moved into our home, both she and the cactus hit it off rather nicely. She liked the cactus, and the cactus continued to grow and thrive as it always had. That is until, suddenly and unexpectedly, the relationship turned sideways—literally.
The exact details are a bit of a blur, but indelibly etched in my brain is the sound of my wife’s ear-piercing scream and the horrified look on her face as she lay trapped in the spiny arms of my overbearing cactus that was now laying nearly horizontally across the chesterfield. Had it not been for the chesterfield’s tall armrest, I suspect that my wife would have quickly been transformed into a human pincushion…perhaps causing enough disfigurement that I would find her less attractive, re-establishing the lost relationship that the cactus and I had for those many years…
Fortunately, the jealousy was rather short-lived, so we chalked up the incident to cacti having shallow root systems. Just to be on the safe side, I calculated my old friend’s toppling trajectory and strategically relocated the furniture.
Part deux
A few years later, my wife and I decided that a house two blocks down the street was more suitable for our growing family. Of course, along with all of the furniture, the large cactus had to be moved—a task that’s never easy. So one mild November night, after considerable thought, I decided the only safe way for the cactus to make the journey to our new home was for me to delicately uproot it, wrap it in towels, rest it on my shoulder and walk it the two blocks to our new house. I must admit that I received a few strange looks from drivers as I crossed the street with the cactus’ arms bouncing rhythmically to my step.
When I finally managed to squeeze the cactus through the front door, I carefully leaned it against the hallway wall and thought about how strange a cactus looked propped up with its roots splayed across a towel I’d placed on the floor. After a brief rest, I headed back to the old house and returned with the cactus’ pot. And then it happened. No sooner had I taken the pot through the door, that I noticed something was horribly wrong. The prickly giant had once again toppled over and was laying in a pool a white latex-like sap that bled from the spots where the arms had broken off the main stem. Looking at the cactus laying seemingly beaten, I realized that it was beyond repair and that there was nothing to do but to lay it to rest in the compost bin.
So am I anthropomorphizing a cactus? Yeah…probably, but who says some plants don’t play out their lives like a Greek tragedies?
Think it unlikely if you wish, but I wholeheartedly suspect that my cactus wrote its own script.
