My christmas cactus

[pegkerr]

Here's my meme: drop me a comment telling me about a little thing in your life, so little and perhaps innocuous that you've never mentioned it before in any post you've ever done, but it's been there for years, or at least as long as you've been keeping a Livejournal.

I've been a more or less enthusiastic (if somewhat ignorant) gardener for years. But I have less luck with house plants. I've managed to kill everyone I've ever had, except for one.

My Christmas cactus is twenty-four years old. I got it as a Secret Santa gift from a coworker back in 1982. Which, when you think about it, is pretty amazing, isn't it?

The problem with house plants, of course, is that eventually I always forget to water them for long stretches of time. I've had ivies that I've kept alive for a good long time, for up to a couple years at a time, but if you forget too long, they will croak. The only one I really felt bad about was the ivy that I had sprouted off the ivy in my wedding bouquet. I felt really guilty when I lost that one.

But I can't kill the Christmas cactus. I think there have been times I have forgotten it for as long as a month, and the soil is like concrete. Sometimes the leaves can get a little shriveled. Occasionally, I will re-pot it (about once every year and a half, but my usual practice is to neglect it shamefully.

It always forgives me, though, and it lives.

It has gradually gotten bigger over the years, very slowly. It still is not too big for the oval table inherited from my great-grandfather, where it has been sitting for the last fifteen years or so.

It blooms (if all goes well) around Christmas and again around Easter. You need to lower the temperature at night to encourage the plant to bloom. I never am organized enough to move it to a cooler room, but it is against a window, and since it gets cold in Minnesota, it will suddenly start developing buds in December. On one side only, the side against the window where the ever-so-slight draft cools the air. When it is blooming, I turn it around so that the dark pink flowers face the room.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have a Red Rose Tea figurine of a circus poodle on my desk. My friend greykev was going to give it to me to remind me of my dog back at my parents' house when I had moved away and gotten married, but when he showed up to do so, he found out that the dog had died the previous night. It used to make me sad, but now it reminds me of how thoughtful and utterly shattered on my behalf Kev was, and what a dear he is. I kept it because I knew someday it would change over that way, and it has.

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

we used to hide a zebra in my apartment from the Red Rose tea, we called the game the Purloined Zebra and it had to be hidden in plain sight (hence the reference). but those figurines, they're useful.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

That's funny; I was about to post that I have a huge collection (thirty or forty pieces) of Red Rose Tea figurines, and then a fair amount of other ones that I've picked up from various places, like bears from the Smoky Mountains, and a turtle from the National Aquarium . . . et cetera. I'm pretty sure I have that circus poodle. My grandmother used to give them to me.