How It All Began

I have always had a love for nature. When I was little my Great Grandmother had a huge opuntia in her front yard and Naked Lady Amaryllis next to it. Every year she would have one of her sons cut the opuntia half way down, the pads would sit in the yard until somebody decided to throw them over the back fence. Since her property backed up to the creek bed the opuntia cuttings helped prevent animals from getting her chickens. I remember her swinging those chickens by the head to break their neck so that she could boil them into stew. When she died the opuntia was cut down and never seen again. My grandparents got some of the naked lady bulbs, which I now have a few of my own from her bulbs. Since I lived with my mom in one of my grandmother's houses, I couldn't have any of the opuntia.
My grandmother has a mint plant she curses ever planting, and has never let me grow any where I'm at, so I grow my mint in pots. It's not happy, but at least I have some. I would love to release it from it's confinement unit (pot) and let it run free! However I live in one of my grandparents' rentals and must abide by their rules. I have a love for all the plants she hates. I am down to four different mints, but at one time had over 35. I have been collecting opuntias also, and have about 15 different kinds, all in pots, waiting to be release out of their confinement. I may plant their seeds just to see if they will come up.
Another bane to my grandmother is 4 o'clocks. I love these easy to grow plants, they make huge tuberous roots. I have a few dug up that I planted 15 years ago, they have fairly large roots, but I'm thinking I must have got the edge of the group, because, they could be bigger. I want to try making a caudex out of them. It will be fun to see how it works out.
None of those compare to my real love in the plant world, jungle cactus. Epiphyllums are hybrids between epiphytic cactus and land cactus, most don't even have 1/10th epiphyllum in them, but they are called epiphyllums nonetheless. Schlumbergera the Christmas or Thanksgiving cactus started appealing to me, I have 15 of them now. Rhipsalis is a smaller cousin to epies. I fell in love with this plant when I bought about 5 pots of one from the plant shop at Cal Poly SLO a few years ago. I was thinking it looked like a plant I had called Epiphyllum oxypetallum, aka Queen of the Night. Which has enormous white flowers during the night, mine traveled with me from Tennessee to California when we were coming home. It didn't survive the winter.
A local nursery had a plant that looked like my oxy. When I asked about it, it turned out to be "Padre." I bought a cutting. Then I went back and got more and more, until I had a small plant of it.

I found another nursery which had a lot of epies, I bought a few cuttings. I was on my way! One day I was researching epiphyllums to see if I could find another, low and behold I came across a forum just for epiphyllums, so I joined. I was able to expand my collection, I have an epi called "Clarabella", my great grandmother was named Clara Belle. She and her twin sister both got a letter and picture of Ronald Reagan for their 98th birthday. Anyway, I gave a cutting of it to my mom, her plant looks way better than mine and she neglects things until they die, I hope she doesn't kill this plant.
I've lost a bunch of plants this last winter, mostly epies and rhipsalis. So I started again. This spring I remembered the old "Padre" so I went to the nursery with intent on buying it for whatever she'd take. It was frost damaged really bad, She gave me the whole plant for $5! I was able to salvage one cutting off of it. Sad but it was a beautiful plant, but I got some of it anyway. I hope one day Padre will look as beautiful as it did last summer.
Two years ago I found an old picture of an epi my other great grandmother had on her porch. This started another search, I was told this plant could be "Guatemala" an older hybrid. I have searched for this plant for two years. I finally found and bought a cutting on eBay for $25. It came with other cuttings, but this was the crown jewel! I can't wait to get it planted. Last month I got a plant of "Zola" I had been looking for this one for a year, this is just as exciting. I feel that my collection is and could now be complete. I hope so, since I have over 100 different epies, and by the size of the above plant, I am going to need a huge greenhouse to confine them all. Well, that's how it began, I was drawn to cactus by my inability to have some of Grandma's opuntia, other plants because grandma hates them and because I had an amazing bloom about 7 years ago one summer evening.