A “Serious” Love Affair
It’s
an unlikely love affair. First because it took so long to unfold and
second because it’s happened with, well…a cactus. Not only that, a
cactus I bought for all the wrong reasons.
In
moviespeak I guess it could be considered a meet-cute: an unlikely and
unexpected or bumbling encounter. In this case the future object of my
infatuation sat on a rickety table with assorted cast-off detritus at a
small roadside flea market in a tiny Arizona desert town where we stopped on the
way home from an Airstream trailer rally. What actually attracted me was
the rustic enamel wash basin the softball-size cactus was planted in. It was
painted with flamboyant yellow and red flowers and I pegged its age circa
1940s. It had just the right amount of rust in its dents to give it character
and that genuine antiquey look. But the real selling point was the hand-printed
sign that labeled it: Night-blooming Serious. Between the wash basin which I
figured I could sell on e-bay for much more than the $10 cost, and the charming
and outrageous misspelling/pun of “serious” for cereus, I decided it was a
worthwhile impulse purchase.
The
overall-clad good ol’ boy selling the cactus asked me where I lived and when I
told him the high desert mountains of New Mexico he asked, “Get winter there?
Cold?”
“Yes, “I replied it can get down to near zero sometimes.”
“Then you’ll have to bring it inside,” he said, under the impression I was actually interested in the cactus and not the basin. “Oh, and if you want it to really grow for you, you need to water it a lot and feed it,” he added.
“Feed it? Do they even make cactus food?”
Good ol’ boy assured me “they” did and it wasn’t necessary, but “it just makes it grow better.”
Truly, I wasn’t interested in the cactus, it was the basin I was after and I figured the cactus would just have to fend for itself when winter came. Even though I am a true plant lover, I never considered a cactus to be a house plant. They’re interesting wild plants, not something that winters in the house. I stuck the cactus under the tonneau cover of my boyfriend’s pick-up where it slid around with the trailer leveling blocks, sun canopy, lawn chairs and other camping paraphernalia including the requisite plastic flamingos required to accompany all Airstreams. Besides being jostled around the cactus likely broiled in temperatures that probably soared way over 100.
The first thing I did with the slightly banged-up cactus was to unceremoniously dump it out of the wash basin. To my dismay, the seller, who clearly had no clue about the value of this nice little piece of rural Americana, had drilled a large drainage hole in the washbasin to keep the cactus comfortable during its apparently prodigious waterings by the look of the rust in under the dirt. Why hadn’t I looked at the bottom of it before I bought it? So much for plans to sell it on ebay. Still, getting the cactus out of the wash basin would at least not hasten the rusting and deterioration and the basin might make some interesting yard art. So, using thick gloves and kitchen tongs I put the cactus in another pot. Feeling a little sorry for it after its harrowing ride in the back of the pick-up and being up-ended and repotted, I put a drip irrigation line in its pot, set it in my courtyard and, what the heck, even bought some liquid cactus food which I occasionally even remembered to give it. I debated on bringing it in for the winter. My sun room would be packed with other much more decorative plants that wintered there creating a colorful, mini-tropical paradise effect: showy tropical plants, a giant jade plant, and lots of geraniums. As it got colder I relented and brought the cactus in, imaging it dying a miserable death, it’s heat-loving cells bursting from the cold, and the whole thing shriveling to a black pathetic mess. I am, after all a plant lover.
Over the next two years the cactus transformed from its ball shape to a prickly pillar and a ring of charming children emerged from its base nearly encircling it. Well, that was kind of interesting. The cactus “kids” were being crowded by the rim of the bowl-shaped pot so again, with tongs and gloves, I repotted it, cursing its unwieldiness and how its spines found their way into my hands even through thick gloves and a towel. ‘Hey, I’m just trying to help here!’ I told in reproachfully.
An off-handed comment by a business colleague resulted in the cactus having yet another near-death experience its third winter with me. “You know, having cactus in the house is very bad feng-shui,” she mentioned in an off-handed reference to I don’t even remember what. The Serious was now about 14 inches tall, had a diameter of about 6 inches—not counting the kids which now ranged from ping-pong ball to nearly hard ball size—and, in its bigger pot, was quite heavy. Having read about feng-shui and wondering if some sort of imbalance might be influencing the string of recent misfortunes in my life, I decided to take no chances on exacerbating the situations by having a bad feng-shui cactus in my house. It would winter on my south-facing front porch, up close to the wall. If it got too cold, I would throw a blanket over it. Except…it got too cold—3 degrees—and I forgot to put a blanket over it. I figured it was done for. Its color changed to a sickly yellow green. I expected it to keel over like a candle left in the July sun. I didn’t bother to protect it other nights it got into the single digits or teens because I figured that the result of my neglect and its bad feng shui had already killed it.
But the cactus did not keel over and when spring came it returned to its former green color, although not quite as deep as it had once been. The kids, however were a very healthy green and growing vigorously. To make amends for my irresponsible plant stewardship, I again repotted it; another awkward painful affair for both the cactus and me.
About a week after I repotted it and dosed it with cactus food I noticed a curious flat brown growth on its top that looked like either tarantula fur or a hipster’s misplaced soul patch. Examining it closely I decided maybe it was a bud of some kind. But it was completely different from the tight green buds on the wild cactus in the desert around my house that produce crepe paper-like flowers every spring. And what happened next with the Serious was completely different than anything I ever saw happen with any plant. The furry growth transformed at an astonishing rate over the next couple of weeks to a fat scaly and fuzzy red stalk that was full seven inches long according to the tape measure I gingerly laid next to it. At the end of the stalk a white globular bulb-like bud formed that was about the size of a golf ball. As the bud grew it took on a decidedly other-worldly appearance, almost like a science fiction creature with a cyclopean head.
Now this was getting interesting. I went out many times during the day to check on it because its growth was just so fascinating. Since it was supposed to be a “night blooming” cereus, I wondered if maybe I was missing something. Maybe the bud opened up at night and closed tight during the day. So, before I went to bed at night, I’d go check it. Each night it was still just a bud, even when I crept out at midnight.
My anticipation of what the flower would look like increased as strange red petal-like things pronged the enlarging bud like a setting holding a gem. I Googled night-blooming cereus images and saw a wide range of plants, none of which even remotely resembled my cactus. What the heck was this thing?
One evening a rogue cloud pelted a few hailstones as a down drift wind roared. I muscled the cactus and its large pot onto the porch to protect it. As soon as it was safe I wondered if I messed up a flowering process that might depend on it being in a precise location to track light. After all a cactus in its normal habitat is not mobile.
Several days later it happened.
Just before sunset the bud transformed, as I watched from my porch swing, to the most amazing flower I have ever seen—truly the most amazing. It was gigantic, fully seven inches across, perched regally on the scaly red stalk which was now the size of a garden hose. There was an outer ring of sharply pointed petals of deep crimson encircling the ovoid elegant pearlescent white petals. It had a deep mysterious funnel-shaped throat filled with densely packed chartreuse thread-like things. An odd yellow structure with 13 horizontal spokes protruded from the throat of the flower. It was at once exquisitely delicate but also unmistakably, no, aggressively sexual in nature. But what made the flower even more extraordinary was the juxtaposition of its ethereal beauty and delicacy with the tough, fleshy, heavily armed with blood-drawing lancelet spines plant that produced it.
I marveled at the amount of energy it took for the cactus to first grow the huge stalk, then the bud and now the flower all in about three weeks from the time I first noticed the furry patch. What mysterious and inexorable inner chemistry of molecular light clocks had triggered this astonishing burst of cell division? And then I realized how almost sad and poignant it was, making this sensuous, highly erotic mating display in abject isolation. I sat on a nearby rock and peered into the mystical vortex of its throat, watching miniature bees tumbling among the delicate green threads in drunken abandon. Between its magical beauty and its intoxicating honey amber scent I realized that the cactus had seduced me. I had fallen in love. I sat and stared, mesmerized, into it and at it, until darkness fell.
The next morning with that early slanting light that provides the perfect illumination for photographs, I set my camera on a tripod and started snapping macro shots of the flower from every angle like a fashion photographer grabbing every nuance and move of a strutting runway model. I’d pause to stick my nose in the flower and take a long, luxurious hit of its supernatural fragrance which had amplified since the night before. After shooting dozens of pictures, I again simply sat with the cactus and tried to absorb its essence, that indefinable energy that can never be captured in a photograph. Again, the futility of its heroic effort to produce this single magnificent flower when there was no other cereus filled me a strange poignancy. I planned to set up some dramatic lighting and take some night shots that evening.
I had to leave for a meeting and did not return until late in the afternoon. The day had been scorching with record-breaking temperatures but I figured the Serious would be fine. It was, after all a cactus and its native habitat was much hotter than the high desert mountains. I rushed out to visit with the cactus as soon as I got home and gasped when I saw its completely wilted and deflated flower. The white petals hung limp, blackened around the edges. The stalk had drooped like a head hanging in shame. I held out hope that it might revive in the cooler evening air .
Evening came. It was gone.
I plopped down on the near-by rock and stared at the sad corpse of the once magnificent flower, the thrumming call of night hawks underscoring my melancholy. Tears filled my eyes as I thought about the entire history of this cactus in my life. This unwieldy, dangerous-to-touch plant that I had at best tolerated and at worst neglected had all along enclosed a secret power to enchant me with the most amazing flower I had ever seen. Plus, it had begun its flowering process right when I hit a particularly nasty patch of turbulence in my life and watching its growth and speculating on what would unfold was a pleasant anticipation and diversion. I was stunned. I had fallen deeply in love—with a cactus. A cactus! I wondered what other things in my life that might have the same secret enchanting power yet to be revealed. What else had I underestimated? As I considered all this I realized that most of all I was grateful I had spent as much time as I had engaging with the cactus on an intimate level during the mystery of its growth and flowering process. Because, ultimately the cactus and the ephemeral grace of its flower was a reminder of something I knew all too well: life it short, savor the moment.