Many years and many offices ago, a co-worker gave me a Christmas cactus. It was a small thing in a three-inch pot, wrapped in gaudy ribbon and sprinkled with glitter. Once I got it home, I promptly threw out the wrapping and washed off the glitter, then left it in our front window, which gets the most sun. There it sat for many years, and I’d always more or less forget about it (the best sort of treatment for a Christmas cactus actually) until it caught my eye with this grand electrifying color. Left in a relatively unused room, as our living room tends to be at night, it was able to follow the natural cycle of day sunlight, and every year around this time it would burst into bloom.
Some years it was more floriferous than others, but there were always a few blooms guaranteed, even if the thing was bizarrely changeable. The original plant grew as I repotted it, and it remains in my care to this day. Several months ago, a couple of larger pieces broke off, and I let them dry and callous off, then managed to root them in some light soil. (These are not technically true cacti, but epiphytes, so their soil should be as light as possible – they also seem to like more humidity than a typical cactus.)
Sooner than expected, it produced these blooms – a happy gift that came a little early for Christmas, so maybe this is a Thanksgiving non-cactus after all. I’m not into debating these days, so whatever you want to consider it is fine. Something this pretty defies labels anyway – even proper ones.
