As you can see, it’s the pretty fluffy ones you have to beware of, like this little guy, whose sneaky spines have hooks that break off in unsuspecting fingers. Too small to get with tweezers, they usually go septic.

A visiting student of creative writing from South America, who probably sees cacti all the time in a native environment, asked, why cacti? Well, who knows? With me, it was accidental, three tiny cacti being given to me as a fun present when I was young. Even I didn’t expect to find them fascinating enough to become a hobby, at that point. The amazing thing about those plants is, they didn’t die from teenage neglect, hence surviving long enough to interest me!

Cacti flowers are rarely scented. This one is called Queen of the Night, and, as the name suggests, opens at night to emit a heady fragrance that night-time insects can scent from miles. The flower is enormous, probably ten to twelve inches across.

These three guys below are over thirty years old, having survived various house moves, and a total drenching when Ophelia took out the greenhouse. The old man in the left-hand image, now over seven feet tall, was no bigger than my little finger when given to me all those years ago. I am in a bit of a quandary about what to do with him, as he’s pressing against the top of the greenhouse. The guy in the middle took twenty years to grow to four feet tall, and another ten to grow the one limb. He’s just decided to grow an equaliser on the other side. The guy on the right has taken many years to reach the size of a rugby ball, and has only just started to grow ‘babies’ which might be an indication that it’s at the end of its life.

The Christmas Cactus, which comes in a variety of colours (I love this bright orange one), and in my experience, rarely flowers at Christmas, is not a true cactus, but a succulent. Hence the lack of spines.

The greenhouse has also been with me for many years, surviving through various dismantles and reconstructs. But never had it been so abused as by storm Ophelia in 2016. In the middle of the storm, once one pane went, all the rest began to follow. We wrestled to get a sheet on the windward side, and managed to contain the situation, but it was a scary moment, seeing 18 inch panes of glass flying down the garden, embedding themselves in the lawn as shards, like something from a horror movie. We were picking glass out of the lawn for days afterwards, and eventually replaced the thin, overlapping sheets with larger sheets of heavier window glass, leaving fewer gaps for the wind to get under.

Succulents come in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes. They rarely have the exotic flowers cacti are known for, but are survivors. If a single piece drops off, often it will grow into another plant.

I hate throwing these ‘accidental’ plants away, so began to grow them on with a view to selling them on the local market, only COVID intervened, putting that plan on hold. As my study was usable and I began to write more fiction, the idea of standing around on a market lost its appeal, so all the small plants ended up in a charity shop (and still do).

Cactus flowers rarely last for more than a few days, and come in all exotic shapes and sizes. Sometimes the most ugly plant can produce the most beautiful flowers, and tiny cacti can produce flowers several times their own size.

Now, just scroll through this random selection, and maybe my infatuation with these thorny plants will become more understandable.