Gardening
It’s been a good spring for the cactus garden on my balcony in Marseille; the new little plants that I was given for Christmas have grown amazingly in size whilst the previous generations have made good progress too. The oldest plants are pot-bound, cacti that I’ve been looking after for ten years or more. So time to get the gloves on and take on the spikes. There’s a handling technique and it’s not as daunting as it maybe looks, though best not to rush, so it took several sessions.
Following the Mary Poppins motto - In every job that must be done there is an element of fun - my bit of fun jet-washing the moss and mulch off Terry’s decking and paving in Preston Park, Brighton. The high pressure water strips off some of the rotten wood as well so there’s muck everywhere. Yippee!
Cacti don’t make it easy to keep the weeds down, you need good 3-D vision and co-ordination to avoid the spikes. I find it’s best to pull out what I can and snip the rest. Anyhow the cacti have much more extensive roots than the parasitic weeds so the summer heat in Marseille sees off the weeds more effectively than I can.
Many of these cacti need potting-up and separating but it’s not a task for the faint-hearted; though none of this collection have poisonous or irritant spines - one has nasty hooks and another some vicious micro-barbs - but all the gloves I have tried have been penetrated, then it’s actually a worse “sting” than on the naked skin.
It’s been a good year for snowdrops in Cumbria; these are in my back garden in Keswick, the area around the folly. The cold snap in January was early enough not to harm the buds, and this February hasn’t been so wet as to rot the bulbs.
Young cacti, a welcome Christmas present and eventual addition to my cactus collection. The package was marked “Handle with care” with good reason. They’re growing alarmingly fast out on my patio in London and are going to need potting-up pretty soon - these are just 3 cm pots, see coin for scale.
