I love cacti. I always have. In photo school I had these beautiful huge, almost floor to ceiling, windows with wide ledges where I started my first cactus collection. After graduation, a photo friend came to stay with me on the Cape and brought me an enormous cactus that hung out with me for many years before finally succumbing after one too many moves.
I have passed my love on to my daughter, and we always visit the cactus section at any nursery or garden store and admire all the fabulous varieties. One of my favorites are rock plants, but I tend to kill them off rather quickly, so until I read up on them I will admire them from afar! She’s always been a fan of the grafted varieties.
So we bought Adriana a grafted cactus on one of our outings, it had a beautiful coral top which was quite striking. One day a few months back, it decided it had met the end of it’s journey and shriveled up to a brown, dried, ugly little thing that sat atop an otherwise very healthy cactus plant. When we asked about it at a garden store, they told us that was common for the grafted top to die, and to just throw the bottom bit away. Guess she didn’t know who she was talking to, I am an artist. I never throw anything away. Least of all a living plant. So there it sat with it’s ugly little top until today. Today was the day I decided I could needle felt a quick, cute new little top for it. Turns out it’s a teensy bit like a beret, but perhaps that’s what it had been wanting all along.
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