One of the more inane things I’ve done from a horticultural perspective here in Arizona was to plan a variety of cactus in pots best reserved for flowering plants. The patio never gets enough sun, the soil dries out very quickly and in the hot summer, you have to water the soil so the cactuses don’t burn, but then watering the soil makes them grow faster, then you have to worry about replanting them at some point. It was kinda stupid on my part – something I realized about 15 minutes after I finsihed potting them.

Never mind the fact that planting cactus is not the most relaxing or pain-free thing you’ll ever do in your life, but I digress.

At any rate, I had this little MacDougal Nipple Cactus that I planted in one of the pots. And it obviously needed more sun than it was getting, but I was a little late to the game in noticing it so that, by the time I dug it out of the pot and planted it out front, its leaves (yes, it’s a variety of cactus that has both leaves and spikes) had all but disappeared. Nevertheless, I planted it, gave it a good soaking, and hoped for the best.

That was in mid-April.

A week later, all of its leaves had fallen off and it sat there all kinda naked and sad, its white stem and white needles looking parched amidst the brown rocks and soil around it. I watered it a couple more times, but nothing seemed to be happening and I gave it up as yet another lesson to be learned about landscaping and cactus planting.

Early last week, during a stretch of 105+ degree days, Tracey gave it a good soaking, and then we got an unusual soaking rain last Friday. Just this past Saturday, I took a look and the cactus had still shown no change, so I made a mental note that one of these days I’d dig it up and toss it out.

Imagine my surprise, then, to look at the cactus today and find it covered from head to toe with beautiful little green leaves! Not just one or two or a branch full of leaves, but the cactus was covered with them – fresh green buds happily illumined by the late afternoon sun. Sometime between Saturday and today, the plant had obviously decided it was time to giddyup and giddyup it did. Now I can’t wait to see how this plant grows and thrives in a location it obiously loves.

Just a lovely little miracle of God’s marvelous creation to celebrate, I guess!