Return to Sender

Some weeks ago I ordered A selection of Conophytum plants from Conos Paradise in Germany. For the next three weeks I visited the post-office in Guardamar three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. No sign of a package. Then Uwe of Conos Paradise emailed me to say that the package had been returned, with no explanation as to why this had been done. Anyway, I arranged with Uwe to send the plants to me again, this time using the address of a Spanish friend in Guardamar. Today, just six five days later, the package was delivered. The little plants were not in the best of shape: their roots looks extremely dry and some individual plants were as good as dessicated. Nevertheless, most of the plants showed at least some sign of life, so I made up a mixture of coarse sand, a little vermiculita and a little potting soil, and potted up the 22 plantlets in 6 pots, giving them a good misting to boot.

Wish them luck.

Conophytums, like Lithops, belong to the family of Mesembryanthemums, a group of unusual plants generally originating from South Africa.

Blooming cacti

Still no success with the lithops seeds, but at least the cacti are starting to put on a good show. A few have already bloomed, many are in full bud and some are currently in flower. The pink flowers above belong to the Echinopsis eyriesii. Normally they come out at night and last no longer than until about noon; this year, however, we have been able to enjoy them for almost two whole days. The large yellow flowers at the back also belong to an Echinopsis, a hybrid variety, but I do not know which. Behind these, you can just see a low Mammillaria elongata, with tiny yellow flowers The short-stemmed flowers in the middle right of the photo belong to what I believe is a Notocactus, perhaps a Notocactus macambarensis. The cactus in the foreground, again with yellow flowers, might also be a Notocactus.

And then there were none

The 1000 lithops seeds that I put into forty pots some ten days ago (see And some fell on stony ground) are showing remarkably little signs of growing. Well, let's be honest, nothing at all is happening! I don't think there's much hope now of them germinating, but I shall keep looking after them for a while yet, before finally giving up hope.

I don't seem to have too much luck with Mesembryanthemums (the group of plants to which Lithops belong), as an order I made recently for some young Conophytums has also failed to materialise. After a few weeks, the seller informed me that he had received the unopened package back in Germany, with no explanation for its return.

Baby bloomer

I have a collection of about 150 cacti. At this time of the year, they start to display their wonderful flowers. Here's a baby cactus, no more than a few years old, I should think, and it has made a sterling effort to produce a flower that is bigger than itself. The cactus is just 5 cm in diameter. As is often the case with cacti, it is difficult to know exactly what sort of cactus it is.
I have numerous books and spend hours searching through them, trying to identify my cacti, but with very little success. The closest I have got with this one is that it is perhaps a Parodia, but that's very iffy.
I have two larger plants of the same cactus, both about 12.5 cm in diameter and both of which have already flowered magnificently, as can be seen in the photo of one of them below, taken a couple of weeks ago.

World famous… in Guardamar

Walking in Guardamar this morning (Elise was having her usual Wednesday-morning visit to the hairdresser), I came across this poster. It advertises a local dental clinic. Elise had a new crown fitted there and they have used her name as one of their customers. (This follows a recent smear campaign against the clinic, in which fly-posters were put up around Guardamar.) If you can't see the name in the photo above, here's a close-up:

Lithops seeds (and some fell on stony ground…)

I have quite a number of cacti, but am also fascinated by Lithops. These are small succulents, which originate from South Africa and look so much like pebbles, that they are often referred to as "living stones." I have already bought some of these as mature plants, but some weeks ago I came across Lithops.es, an amazing blog, where Khenai explains everything you ever wanted to know about cultivating Lithops. I therefore decided to have a go at growing my own Lithops.

Living in this part of Spain, it isn't always easy to find things, but after a few weeks I was able to collect everything I needed: square pots (ordered from Lithops.es), 1000 seeds (ordered from Cono's Paradise), and the quartz sand and vermiculita, as suggested by Khenai. Of these, the quartz sand was the most difficult to locate, but I ended up with a couple of bags of 2-3 mm. aquarium sand, produced by Edna, and a bag of larger-grade sand produced by Friskies:

Based on Khenai's instructions, I prepared a total of forty pots, but used three different mixes of sand and vermiculita, topping all the pots off with a white granite mixture of about 5 mm. I mixed the seed with some fine sand in an old herb shaker:

(ignore the contents of the shaker!) This allowed me to more easily spread the seeds across the forty pots -- time will show how well they were distributed!

Each pot was given a marker, indicating the mixture used and the date of sowing. Then, again following Khenai's instructions, I lightly sprayed the pots with water and covered each one with some cling-film. The final result:

So now it's wait and see!

Elise

I first saw Elise on the beach of Heist-aan-Zee on the Belgian coast. I knew immediately that I would marry her, even though we were unable to speak to each other: she knew only Dutch and I spoke only English and a smattering of French. Still, the sand made an excellent writing and drawing surface and we communicated through that sand, together with signs and wonders. Elise was in Heist as a monitor for a group of children on one of the only occasions that her parents had allowed her to go somewhere by herself.

That was 1966.

Elise was born in Aalst in 1949 and grew up in the small village of Denderleeuw. Although small, it was quite important as a railway junction and attracted quite a lot of attention during WWII. Elise was an only child and was somewhat dominated by her parents, particularly her mother, who seemed to regard her as an investment for her old age. When I came on the scene, things were not pretty: apart from being a distraction of the opposite sex, I was a foreigner and, even worse, the son of a coal miner!
Still, Elise was made of sterner stuff and maintained contact with her "foreigner" for several years; we communicated by letter and the occasional phone call. Elise's parents would not allow her to travel, so we only saw each other once or twice a year, when I was able to get enough money to pay for the fare to Belgium and the hotel costs (I was rarely allowed to stay at the house).

By 1970 we had decided that I would move to Belgium: Elise would then be old enough to be able to legally defy her parents and we would be able to get married, whether they liked it or not. Finding a job and making all of the other arrangements in order to get a work permit took longer than expected and I was only able to move to Belgium in August 1971. We married at the end of October. The day after our wedding (a simple civil service), Elise travelled abroad for the first time, when we took the ferry from Oostende to Dover.

When Elise left school in 1967, she worked for the Ministry of Education in Brussels. A year or so after we married, a position of receptionist became available in Samsonite, where I was already working, and Elise filled it perfectly. She remained there until 1982.

Elise enjoys all sorts of sewing work and can turn her hand to anything in that line: patchwork, crocheting, knitting, dressmaking, teddy-bear making… whatever, and she's good at it, too. She also loves cooking (rather unfortunate, as I am not enamoured of food) and eating even more: she is willing to try anything and likes almost everything.

Elise's health has not always been wonderful. The biggest problem occurred in the mid-1990s, when she was found to have a large brain tumour. An operation was quickly performed to remove the tumour and a second operation was carried out a few of months later to place a skull prosthesis about the size of the palm of a hand. Fortunately, there has been no recurrence of the tumour. Some years ago, test revealed that Elise was suffering from diabetes. Now she must be careful what she eats and is able to maintain the diabetes under control through diet and oral medication.

As I write, Elise and I have been married for just over 37 years. We have seldom been apart during that time. We have done and still do everything together and that is how we like it. I wouldn't want to be with anyone else.