I have a thing for cactuses… grammatically I ought to say “cacti” but that always sounds high brow.
What did I know of them as a kid growing up in Baltimore? Nada. Maybe as cartoon scenery in Road Runner cartoons, and cliché background props of western movies.
Here at our acreage in Saskatchewan, in the front yard is a rock garden, with bits of rusted old tools and implements, and amongst them a thriving garden of prickly pear and ball cacti, all of which grow quite well here. For spring time planting, Cori surprised me with two new Opuntia and with a good bit of unusual frequent rain, have already busted into showy, short lived, one day flower blooms.
My unalgorithmic memory went back to a photo I recalled taking when I lived in Phoenix, and had shoved some found pads of prickly pear into the rocky soil. Yes, flickr has that photo, which was posted 20 years ago (cough, love flickr, why do more people not appreciate its longevity and value? just try to find your own old photos in Instasham, happy long scrolling).
I am fairly sure this was a photo taken with this stuff called “film” and digitized with a flatbed scanner. I recall marveling at its detail, even to seeing bits of pollen flecks.
I moved to Arizona in 1987 to attend graduate school and selected it primarily for being an environment most atypical of what I had known growing up in Maryland.
The Sonoran desert grabbed my interest from the very first drive into the blob of Phoenix, coming down that descent from the high country near Flagstaff. I felt almost at ease seeing the first saguaro silently greeting me on the drop on I-17 south of Cordes Junction, a dramatic drop in elevation to Black Canyon City.
The desert was not at all desolate, it was wonderous, and I learned to crave the Spring time show when a little bit of rain created a show of wild flowers and big bursty ones on pricky pear, hedgehog, and of course the big grand saguaro.
That a species could adapt the harsh elements of desert heat, drought, and here in Saskatchewan, winter sleeps of -40º (either scale will do here). And then they put on a show of beauty.
I continually tease my Kamloops friends for their assertions that because there are cactus growing there (high desert prickly pear, their range will boggle your mind), that somehow they are part of some remote northern reach of the Sonoran desert. All of this is based on the claims of a brochure from a golf course. This is really just a joke I like to “poke” with and also in love for our dear friend now passed, Irwin Devries, because he was most adamant about promoting this falsehood. For Irwin, I will let him hang on to his Sonoran dreams eternally.
I’ve seen cacti in New Zealand, Australia (thanks Michael for your photo), even the very southern tip of Canada in Point Pelee.
I found cacti to be easily transportable/transplantable. Literally, you can cut (carefully) a pad of prickly pear, shove it in the ground, and with a little bit of water (in case the sky does not provide), it not only survives, but grows. I took cacti from Phoenix and planted them in the 6000ft elevation of Strawberry, watched them live through snow, flower, even bear fruit I made into jelly.
We go out to key places here in Saskatchewan (not revealing), to “borrow” found cacti, and bring them home.
They are beautiful and tough and the same time, and don’t ask much of anyone.
Be more cactus.
Featured Image: Composite of two of my own flickr photos, posted more than 20 years apart- Pretty Prickly flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) (2004) and Still Pretty and Prickly flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) (2024)
