This is the beginning of getting ready for winter, and I'll begin moving cactus plants back indoors today. The night time temps. will start getting down into the 40s and some species of cacti won't like these conditions. Most of the cacti I have will tolerate cool temps. down to freezing and I have many varieties that are kept outdoors all year long. The outdoor plants will survive below Zero F. temps. for weeks at a time, but they are protected from ice formations and kept dry. The plants that can not survive outdoors in Wisconsin could stay outdoors a few more weeks, but it looks like winter will come soon this year anyway.

Walking home from work I see the patches of Opuntia (Prickly Pear) cactus are already laying their pads flat on the ground. This is a good indication that the growing season is coming to an end fast.

Ten years ago one of my co-workers gave me a cactus as a gift. I was surprised and moved by the gift and didn't know what to say at the time except, thank you. She told me that the cactus had been sitting in a southern Wisconsin greenhouse for years and she finally decided to buy it for me. I think she said that I was like the plant, and I suppose I do have a spiney personality that some people like and leaves others repelled.

It was fine for a few years, but I still sometimes watered my cacti plants in the winter. I watered the one she gave me and it died shortly before spring. I placed the dead plant out in the flower garden, and left it there to decompose. The plant had about 24 pups on it, but at the time I didn't know these could be rooted and assumed they were going to rot with the mother plant. Almost a month later I noticed that the pups were still alive and some of the were growing roots into the dead mother plant. I though this was great and planted all of them in little pots - wondering what I would do if all of them lived. Most of them did live and I began to give them away as much as I could, and most of these are probably already dead. I gave them to too many people who aren't really interested in caring for plants.

I was never sure on the identity of these cacti until a few years ago when I leaned that they are Echinopsis multiplex or oxygona. This year they have started to bloom for the first time and they have a pinkish tone unlike other Echinopsis plants I have that make very white flowers. I'm very happy that a gift from a decade ago has produced several plants, and it's good to see them finally make flowers too. The women who gave me the mother cactus has passed away because of cancer, and I nick name these cactus plants with her name.

I hope to propagate these plants with the pups they are making and offer some of them for sale a year from now.