Cactus (or cacti or cactuses) are messy plants, and sometimes dangerous, but this photograph shows that they also bloom. To be honest, that never occurred to me. I thought, like nasturtiums, they just expanded indefinitely. Of course, very slowly. I suppose I also thought, and it might be true, that you could just plant pieces of them and they would grow. A neighbor showed me a plant on my walk today that was brought over as a shoot wrapped in a damp napkin from Belgium in the early days (or maybe not so early days) of air travel. Her grandmother did that, and various people in the family got shoots from the resulting plant and they are all healthy and happy and ready to offer shoots to others. Do cactus really start with seed?

Cactus seems like a reluctant visitor. Usually it’s an accent to a garden, rather than the garden itself. I don’t think I’ve ever assumed that people plant them. I usually assume they just ended up where they are from somewhere else, somewhere where they grew at their own speed, in their own time, mostly alone. So, if you’re looking for answers, you’ve come to the wrong place. I still think cactus belongs in remote places that one remembers driving through. But piece by piece by troublesome awareness, I’m figuring it out.