The Cactus Garden 2006-2008

We bought our house in Wichita Falls, Texas in 2006. One of the things I have always wanted is a small cactus garden. So, a lady that Janice works with gave us a piece of a prickly pear cactus. She said to plant it & it would grow and get a little bigger each year. So Janice cleared a spot out in the Northwest corner of the backyard & we planted our little prickly pear cactus. We then went to Wally World (Wal-Mart) and bought several 0f those little cactus in those little clay pots and planted them in the new cactus garden..The pics that follow will show just how " little bigger" prickly pears become in just two years..Also threw in a couple pics of the house from front & back and a cool landscaping thing Janice did in the front yard. So without further ado, onto the post. REMEMBER: if you want to see it bigger, click on the picture..


Here is the front of the house..I took this at approx 4 p.m. today, 6-20-08. Russ, Linda & I left for a bike ride this morning at 9 a.m. and had just returned when I took the picture. If you had sound, you could probably still hear the engine of the m/c making the popping sounds as it cools down there in the garage..

Here is the little landscaping thing Janice did out front..I thought it was pretty cool. That tree is a non- fruit bearing pear tree that the previous owners had planted..Why a pear tree, I don't know. I would've went with a red oak or maple tree for the shade..But the house faces south and the porch pretty much stays shaded in front as well as in back.

Here is a view of the back of the house..You can see with the sun in the west, the porch is shaded..Janice has a fountain on the porch and a table with fake plants on it that hides her CD player. She plugs in the fountain, puts on an ENYA CD and sits out there..It's actually quite relaxing..We are getting an outside ceiling fan put on the porch to keep it cool & breezy...Well, breezy anyway..It is never cool here this time of year..

In 2006, I planted this prickly pear cactus...Ok, Ok, Janice planted the cactus as well as all the little ones..She fed them cactus food and watered them..Looked pretty neat...She did a good job..

Here is another view of the cactus. We even had a barrel cactus..

Then we added this lawn flag..That lawn flag flew in our front yard when we moved to Missouri for a year..So, it was only natural that it be in Texas, in our backyard, with our Texas cactus.

Winter 2006 it snowed..I was concerned that the weather would kill the cactus..Janice's friend said that the prickly pear would be ok... So, I sat back , watched and waited...

The spring of 2007 showed that the prickly pear that we originally planted did die off as well as all the little Wally World cactus's or properly, cacti is plural...But the prickly pear had this new growth and had doubled the number of little "pancake cactus" as I call them. This is what the new growth looked like..

We had a mild winter in 2007 with no snow and this is our "little growth" in 2008. That thing is enormous!! You can tell it's size by the lawn flag..The little Wally World cactus, suffered a horrible death & never did return.

A final shot of the cactus garden.. That thing will be ridiculous next year. That's it for this post. I will be adding another family stuff post next week as well as another m/c post Sunday night on the kewlstuff blog..Till then, ya'll be careful out there....JOHN