Surprise, part 2
It was a long weekend of gardening for me. I spending many hours on Saturday getting things ready for Sunday's tour, then it was a long, humid day showing the garden yesterday. We had 75-100 people visit, and it was fun!
I'm just a little bit tired of the garden right now (and tired in general) so a long post is not what you get today. Instead you get to see the cactus blooms that I almost missed!
I hadn't been paying attention to the cactus bed lately, thinking that all of the excitement was done for the year -- the Opuntias had finished blooming, all of the new pads had grown. Luckily I needed to survey every corner of the garden for this tour, as I saw these:
Does this help anybody ID this cactus? Remember that this is one of them that I grew from seed, so don't have any idea what it is.
It's the largest of the "round" cactus that I'm growing, a bit smaller than a baseball.
Apparently I missed the first of the three blooms, and these two did not open again the next day. Do they last only a single day, or did I just barely catch the end of a multiple-day blooming session?
This is really very exciting for me!
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I'm not from your area but a big thank you for opening your garden up for others. My neighborhood does this on a much smaller scale and it is so encouraging for me to see other spaces. I know it's a lot of work for the host gardeners so please know the guests are inspired by your efforts!
Alan, are you going to do a post on the backyard tour? Would love to hear your thoughts on what it's like to host so many people.
Your cactus is an Escobaria, probably Escobaria vivipara. Yes, cactus flowers often only last one day :-(.
Anon: I'm glad to hear it! I hope to have another opportunity to have visitors again this summer.
Gerhard: Thanks so much for the ID! One down, four to go! I wasn't planning on doing a post about the tour as I didn't take any photos, but I'll talk a bit about it when I give you a photo tour. (My garden is so clean right now, I have to take advantage of it.)
Congratulations on your garden tour. Did they get to see the cactus in bloom or was that the next day? I never thought of growing cactus when I lived in Chesterfiled. I think I need to be on the look out for this one as I see you have it in the ground and it is clearly hardy and such a lovely bloom. Did you buy the seed as a hardy group. Well done on growing it.
I was going to ask much the same thing as Gerhard. I've only opened my garden twice before with approx. 25 people for a glass and then a bloggers event with about half that. Next month is going to be quite the change!
Jenny: they did not get to see the cactus in bloom -- missed it by 2 days. Maybe next year's timing will be better.
Loree: I think the most in the garden at one time was about 10 people, and usually it was only 5 or so at once. Forty at once would be a different experience entirely -- I feel like I'd want to stagger their start times, and have them start in different areas. Your experience will be much different than mine! :)