The Christmas Cactus

And now for something a bit more fun and colorful than my last post.....

I will share my Christmas Cactus with you!

This cactus is hanging out over the kitchen sink in an east-facing window. As you can see it has a tendency to take over said kitchen sink. That will be taken care of in another post (which will have a link when the other post actually exists).

I'm not really sure how old this cactus is. My husband got a cutting from a friend, which turned into this beast. It must be fairly old because it has several woody stems, and is heavy on one side causing the pot to be lop-sided in the macrame pot holder thingy. And a branch has decided to explore behind the decorative plate on the cabinet. You just never know where these things are going to go!

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But the thing Christmas cactuses.....no, wait... cacti are best known for are their flowers.

Our Christmas cactus blooms somewhat reliably around Christmas, although some years it's a Thanksgiving cactus (did you know there really is a Thanksgiving Cactus?!), and other years it's a New Year's cactus. But this year it's a true Christmas cactus.

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If you look back at the photo from the beginning of this post

you may notice that our cactus only blooms on one side of the plant - the side that's pressed up against the window. Christmas cacti (Schlumbergera x buckleyi) require short days and cool temps in order to bloom. The glass of the window is plenty cold and the days are definitely short in our Minnesota winters, but what about the other side of the plant? What's going on there?

If you remember, this guy is in the kitchen directly above the sink where hot water is used frequently. What you can't see in the picture is that immediately to the right of the cactus is the stove. Lots of heat coming off of that thing. On top of that, the kitchen has a very efficient vintage hot water radiator that is probably too big for the kitchen and puts out way too much heat for a room that already gets heated up regularly by the stove. Therefore, anywhere more than a foot away from the window is too hot for Christmas cactus flowers.

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Having all the flowers are on the far side of the plant is something of a bummer because we can't really see the flowers without sticking your head under the plant. We've tried turning the plant, but the branching is too irregular and woody so it doesn't fit against the window and around the cabinet the right way. We nearly broke it on one attempt. So I guess we have to get used to sitting in the sink to admire the flowers.

Taking pictures of our Christmas cactus is also rather tricky, and not only because of the uncomfortable positions you have to contort yourself into to even get to the flowers. There is also a very short window of time to take pictures without the rising sun blowing out every picture. I decided to play around with the manual settings on my point-and-shoot camera and got some good shots and some not-so-good shots. But one setting and a half-hearted attempt at aiming gave me an unexpected yet awesome result:

The Christmas Cactus light bulb!