Of Cacti - dead and alive

Twenty years ago, we planted a small cactus on the little plot of land where my brother's ashes had  just been buried, in Harare, Zimbabwe. The last time I saw it was about 18 years ago, on my 21st birthday and it looked beautiful and vibrant.

I must have told Russ this at some stage, and a couple of years ago my usually-ever-so-forgetful husband surprised me with a lovely little cactus, on Bozo's birthday. It had pretty, dark pink flowers when he bought it, but that was the one and only time it flowered. Looking back through our photos, I can't seem to find any pictures of the cactus - there is one of it in the background in this picture but that's about it. (Cool picture of me though, eh?!!)

There's the little cactus next to my right hand

Anyway, other than not flowering, it seemed happy enough, shooting up pretty steadily, if in a slightly bent, spindly way. Then Russell tried to fix it, because, you know, that's what he does. And to be fair, he is generally very good at fixing things. He stuck two skewers on either side of it and tied them to the cactus with a rubber bank in an effort to "straighten" it. (I should have taken a photo.) Two weeks later, the lower, plump half of the cactus had shrivelled up and the skinny top half had actually detached from the bottom. (I really should have taken a photo then!) The poor little cactus was dead. To paraphrase Monty Python: "It ceased to be. It was bereft of life. It shuffled off this mortal coil. It is now an ex-cactus." ;-)

He tried to blame it on the pot - the same pot it had been thriving in for 2 years - but I was having none of that. My husband is a cactus killer. (Okay, so it's not like I have a particularly green thumb, and he is the one who primarily tends to our motley collection of plants, but still...)

So last week I reminded him that he had killed the cactus and that the 5th of June was approaching and we needed to go get a new one. Understandably confused, since by now the Bozo-cactus connection had slipped his mind, he asked if the two were linked. Assuring him they were indeed linked, and having made him feel sufficiently guilty about the whole thing (no, not really), and having reminded him several times over the course of last week, gently and not so gently (yes, really), that this would be the 20th anniversary of Bozo's death, I was promised he would return home early to take me to buy a new cactus. Knowing how busy he is at work, and just how hopelessly absent-minded he can be at times, I told him to let me know if he couldn't make it back in time, and was half-expecting to go cactus shopping by myself this evening, which would have been fine, incidentally; it's just that I was hoping for his company and his help in selecting the right plant.

But at 4.15pm - 45 minutes after he was supposed to leave work and yet 45 minutes before I was planning on leaving for the shops, so really, perfect timing - he messaged to say he was on his way. So we go to the nearest Garden Centre only to find a rather sad selection of cacti. There were really only three, none of which appealed to us, so I gave up and was ready to leave, but Mr. Wonderfully Persistent found a whole shelf of delightful little cacti in a different section of the store.

30 minutes later, we had two cacti, because we couldn't settle on one, two beautiful pots for them to go in, and voila! Now I just need to make sure my darling husband does not try to 'fix' them.

Mammillaria Marksiana and an Autumn Cactus

AKA Bozo Cactus and Mini Cactus