Back about a month and a half ago, I wrote “Cactus As Teacher,” a brief photo-post about the lessons in perseverence and resilience learned from a decrepit prickly pear cactus pad that was still managing to nourish five flourishing offspring sprouts even as it lay dying across the top of the fence separating our property from our neighbor’s.
What I neglected to update the post with was the discovery a day or so later that the terminally ill pad was all on its own. While I had thought it was connected on the other side of the fence to the sprawling succulent next door, I found that it had broken off and was wasting away using whatever it had left to keep its baby pads growing.
As I’m the kind of sentimental sucker that gets moved by stuff like that, and seeing that without intervention those kids weren’t long for this worls, I went into immediate if somewhat risky action in breaking the five nubs of varying littlenessesses from their perishing parent and plunking them into a pot of soil that I placed where it would get a fair amount of sun.
I started to throw away the pad that had gotten them this far, but because I’m such a sap I couldn’t even bring myself to do that and instead left that piece in the pot for posterity’s sake.
Well, I’m happy to report all five kids are continuing to acclimate to their new home — even the tiniest one juuuuuust visible at the bottom or the frame (click to enlarge):
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