orphaned

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I just heard from Lynne Davis.

Get this: Her husband Bob found an abandoned orphan and just had to bring it home. We have all been in similar situations.

What was it? A potted prickly pear cactus, sitting by the side of the road, as lonesome and forlorn as Oliver Twist...Dickens writes, "even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature’s face, and, carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being."  


Makes you wonder: Who would cast out a cactus? Deliver it to the hand of death? And take the time to drive somewhere else to do it like it's an unwanted bluetick. Granted a cacti doesn't have an agreeable temperament, they can be sort of prickly. 


Although there are several species of prickly pear, only one occurs naturally in my part of the world, the only native cactus in the Southeast: Eastern prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa. The red fruits, commonly called cactus figs, are edible although they have to be peeled carefully to remove the small spines on the outer skin before consumption.

Lynne also writes, "Yeah, we're big adopters of orphans. I have an asparagus fern I rescued from the church dumpster. The asparagus fern has survived several years now, and spent the summer on the back porch, where it bloomed and even set fruit, little pea-sized red berries."

Thanks, Lynne. 

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