What Time Is It?

Why, it's cactus time. This is the time of the year that all the cactus bloom at Draco. Not all are in the gardens, but they are on our place. Unfortunately they are a lot like iris in the fact that they don't look all that impressive for fifty weeks out of the year and are real stunners for a couple of weeks. Out of the two I would take the cactus. They just fit me better.

This is one I dug up on a ranch I hunted down around Ensinal. It's a stunner.

My Cholla was given to me by an old rancher out west of Lampasas. He had one on either side of the walkway to his house. They were like trees, twenty foot tall trees.

The Claret Cup Cactus came from the same Lampasas county Rancher. They are also called Strawberry Cactus and the fruit is shaped and colored like a strawberry and, while not tasteing like strawberries, is very good eating. The yellow inside is so bright it almost loks like there is a light shining in it.
Here on our place, there are Horse Cripplers, Lace Cactus, Nipple Cactus, and Prickly Pear Cactus. The Horse Cripplers almost never bloom here, and I saw none this year. The little Nipple Cactus and Lace Cactus made up for it though.

These are pictures of Nipple Cactus. The blooms look raggidy to me, but beautiful none the less.

The Prickly Pear never have a bad year and it's a good thing as so many animals feed on it. It is great fun just going around and looking into the blooms and on the pads to see what kind of little critters are there. The pollen output of cactus is ginormous. The bugs in the blooms are just covered in it, making them look yellower than they really are. At this point, my buddy Philip at ESP blog , would insert a picture from the Dune movies with the "spice" every where.

I saved my favorite for last. The Lace Cactus grows all over Draco. There must be thousands of these friendly little cactus around here. I say friendly because you can handle them with out getting stuck by them. I've asked a bunch of people to tell me what they are reminded of when they see them standing so proud and every one of them has said the exact same thing. I won't go into it here but if there is a pepper called a peter pepper because of it's looks then we should rename this cactus. Just saying.

The blooms are absolutely stunning and they produce more blooms for their size than most of the other cactus. This cactus also lends itself to use in gardens very well. Even when not in bloom it is a very attractive little plant and as I said, user friendly, so you don't have to worry about kids around them.