Beauty does not require perfection

When I saw that my Thanksgiving cactus was getting ready to bloom, I wanted to call my mom. We had an ongoing rivalry regarding our plants. For me to have a pot of flora  bloom before hers did was a victory. The only problem is, I think the one in bloom was one of hers. 

 Every year when the first flower unfolded she would call and ask if my plant was in bloom. Then she would tell me that hers had a blossom or two and was so many inches long. I never mentioned to her that mine had 20 or 30 blossoms. I didn’t measure my plants so she could have been ahead on that statistic.

 No matter how many blooms either of us had on our plants, we failed to match the number of flowers on the plant that my grandmother had. Every year it was covered with pinkish red blooms. As far as I know, it never had any special treatment. The only thing we did was to carry it outside every spring and put it under the pussy willow tree, then carry it back in every fall. It was an honor when I was finally big enough to carry out this ritual. At the time I was little enough that my arms didn’t wrap all the way around the flowerpot.

 The pussy willow I have is a little too open, and a little too far from the house to shelter the small jungle I cultivate. Instead, all the houseplants, including the cacti, go either under the maple tree, or on or near the side porch. They get very little supplemental water. I try to put up barriers in a futile attempt to keep the critters away. The squirrels don’t seem to eat them, but they dig them up and make a mess. The squirrels aren’t the only ones that endanger the plants. I murder a couple of them myself by not dumping excess water from the pots quickly enough after a good rain.

 In case you are wondering, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter cacti are a part of the Cactaceae family. In their native habitat of Brazil, they are epiphytes. An epiphyte is a plant that grows on another plant but is not a parasite. Familiar epiphytes are orchids, bromeliads, ferns and some varieties of moss. 

 In their native environment they are pollinated by hummingbirds. I should have realized this as the blossoms are the same tubular shape and size as other flowers favored by hummingbirds. For the record, I have yet to see a hummingbird anywhere near the plants. They prefer the neighbor’s hummingbird feeders to my few motley cacti. The genus name of Schlumbergera honors Frederick Schlumberger, a Belgian horticulturist. 

 I usually leave the cacti out until after the first light frost. I say it helps them to set buds. According to what I read, this is not necessary and probably causes them to drop unopened buds. Temperature swings do negatively affect bud drops so I am probably causing more harm than good by leaving them out so long.

 As in poinsettias, Schlumbergera need a specific number of hours without light in order to bloom. They tend to overwinter in rooms we don’t use much at night, so they get their nightly dose of darkness naturally. The only other thing I have found that they like are clay pots instead of plastic ones. The rare dose of fertilizer doesn’t seem to help or harm them.

 If I had told this to my mom she would have told me I was wrong. She believed that any problem with any plant was the soil it was grown in. 

 I find it interesting that I do so many things wrong in taking care of my plants and yet, they grow, bloom and multiply anyway,  Life is tenacious like that. It doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be beautiful.