Beauty and the Beast

Colins mom brought me some cacti plants recently. She has had them lying in the pots they are currently in for years and saw my terrarium's (I have two now) and decided maybe I would be a better mom for them. Colin says he can never remember them being anywhere else besides in a messy uncared for pile in their pots, and that they have probably been in that one spot for decades.

They need a lot of TLC, they are dirty and look like they haven't been watered for years so I kind of just shoved them in a corner to deal with a bit later, cuz if they've been like that since 1987 then I'm sure they will survive another week or two.

So this weekend I go around the corner to get something where I had left these poor plants and BAM...

Flowers. Beautiful, delicate, vibrant flowers. And lots of them. And they are big, like the size of your hand big.

These amazing flowers emerged out of these old, unloved, dried up, thorny stems and burst into the world to shock us all. I love this plant, I loved it when I got it but this is like finding a R100 note you stashed away somewhere and completely forgot about. I love the contrast between the harsh everyday appearance and the amazing soft, fragile beauty that it hides.

I will clean it all up once the flowers have died away and give it some love and a pretty vase to live in. Hopefully it will love me back and keep showering me with these amazing bursts of colour.