Christmas cacti, Honey Locusts, and Mice.

You’re probably all sick of hearing about Christmas? Truth be known, I don’t kick up much of a fuss over all the commercialism. At best I do some baking and get a few presents for my sister, my wife, and my wife’s friends – no tree, no lights, nothing to clean up after. During the much celebrated day we made a brief round on some back roads in an attempt at midwinter bird watching, and my wife’s vigilant eyes spotted a flock of at least two hundred snow buntings feeding in a feedlot amongst the cows. On previous winters I have seen groups of up to a dozen in that area … maybe it’s a colder or snowier than average year?
My mother has several color variations on the Christmas(?) cactus (blooms in November), and she keeps them in my sister’s office. This year I put a tight weather seal on the bottom of the door to shut out the unbearably cold draft, and the slight change in temperature allowed the cacti to set fruit. On previous years I have made repeated attempts at cross pollinating them and each time the flowers would abscise without any fruit development whatsoever. I am looking forward to doing some fruit dissection in search of seeds (I know you all think, “This is one sick puppy!”). I will try to remember to tell you what I discover. Should there be anything worth experimenting with, it will be packaged, labeled and saved until the light conditions are better (probably sometime around April). Then I figure an orchid potting mix might be the way to go? Well I have a few months of leeway to do some research on epiphytic cacti.
I took ten of the thornless honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos inermis) seeds that I scarified over Christmas and wrapped them in damp tissue paper in a jar in order to see how quickly they would germinate. They are looking mighty fine, having swollen to at least double their original size (If they would have been this big while I was scarifying them, then I wouldn’t have had such sore finger tips!). At this moment they all have germinated and have roots longer than 2cm, so I put them all into the same flower pot by the livingroom lamp so I can keep an eye on them. I also took about five pawpaw (Asimina triloba) seeds and placed them in the fridge. This test has no real statistical accuracy, but at least I’ll be able to see if any crop failure is on my part, or on the part of the numerous mice that bless the garden. Those little varmints have quite the gluttonous appetite and have repeatedly wiped out my beets in the past! Curse their mangy little tails and floppy ears! I’ve seen nature programs on television where the fox pounces head first into the snow bank, sometimes coming up with fresh mouse for kibbles … why can’t our cats do that? Perhaps my best bet is to purchase one of those revolving mouse traps that keep piling up the live mice inside, the only thing being that they are hard to come by here. I’ll have to look around. Mousies be ware! This wasn’t intended to be a rant against mice as I feel all pests deserve controls from time to time.
Until next week, MM.