I noticed late last month that my 24-year-old Thanksgiving cactus was looking a little sad and wilty. Upon closer inspection, the main trunk was hollow and crispy, and all the branches just broke off in my fingers. At the time, I found a votive holder to fill with water and shove them in, just so they would last until I got around to taking proper care of them.
That finally happened today.
Now, I have more than a dozen tiny cactus cuttings poked gently into floral tubes, poked gently in turn into a slab of floral foam to keep them upright. These are in addition to the four that I started a few months ago that now have delicate root systems floating in their tubes, and one that I’ve planted in a tiny one-inch pot. That one’s not exactly thriving, but it does have one leaf of new growth. Baby steps.
I hope that at least one will thrive and carry on the legacy of its parent, which I got from Aaron’s grandmother as a well-rooted cutting. I remember bringing it home wrapped in wet paper towels on our two-hour drive back from Lakewood, and sticking it back into a container of water… where it lived until its rootball nearly got stuck in the container, and I got it into a proper pot with soil.
Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever repotted it again. Twenty years in the same soil might have something to do with its stem rot. Whoops.