For the Brown Thumb on Your List...

The simplest things are the hardest for me. Consider Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera). Now when I worked at a garden center back in the days when such places still grew and tended things (rather than getting it all in by the truckload from someplace in the South) we had a greenhouse full of past-season Christmas cacti every spring and summer. They grew leathery and reddish, shrivelling in the heat and drought in their weedy resting place under the wire benches where marketable stock awaited purchase; any water these almost-dead specimens got was what trickled down from above. Every fall, we pulled them out, gave them a soak, and watched them green up and burst forth in magnificent magenta and red blooms. They were bought and taken away, or else they survived to spend another year in exile and neglect while they put on more growth...and an even better show the following year. "Neglect," I say. Yet my attempts to imitate this on a household level always end in sudden botanical death. After a summer spent outside in the droughty shade between some arborvitae and the house, I bring in my schlumbergia to watch it wake from schlumber, bud, and die. I've killed two, and am raising a third that I'm pretty certain is doomed. Sure, Christmas cacti are a dime a dozen at the nearest grocery store floral department this time of year. But for someone who makes their reputation growing figs and peaches, jewelled corn and iris from seed, this inability to keep alive the most undemanding, bomb-proof of plants has always been a bit of an embarrassment. The un-fussy Christmas cactus is not the only thing: gift amaryllis never rebloom in my care; sometimes they don't even unfurl those fat buds they arrive with. Paperwhites and hyacinths grown in those lovely glass forcing vases are doomed in my hands.
     But wait: maybe I'm not alone. A fellow gardener confesses she is lethal to aloes. Another routinely executes rabbit's foot ferns unless they are rescued by covetous friends (ahem). Everything—EVERYTHING—has its limits, after all: too much love, not enough; more fertilizer than necessary, or not enough; sudden death by cats or slow death by gas leak. Unfortunately, a lot of these maladies are hard to diagnose until it's too late. I'm not sure, for exampe, whether my shallow-rooted cacti died from too much water or too little; obvously, the protocols for doctoring it through one diagnosis or the other conflict.
    Anyways, my cactus never did bloom on time. The first year when I brought it home from the store it was a Christmas cactus. Then it was a Haunukkah cactus. Then, a Thanksgiving cactus. This year, it set bud on Halloween, opened two flowers on All Souls Day, then went to meet its maker. But I love Cristmas Cactus! The contrast between those thick, dull green leaves that are almost, I daresay, ugly out of season and the jewelled blossoms that appear from nowhere at just the right moment (okay—or not quite the right moment, but nonetheless a happy surprise)... The Christmas cactus is a botanical enigma: easy to grow yet difficult to grow well; common as dirt, yet somehow declasse in a way that allows me to appreciate them for their pure, classic, pedestrian splendor. They're a grandma kind of plant, like gladioli, african violets, zinnias and hoyas: plant breeders and style-makers have largely let them be in such a way that these old-fashioned plants have kept the naive charm they posessed back when plants weren't shipped cross-country in semis but were grown by the white-haired nurseryman at the local glasshouse or passed along via "slips" from a generous neighbor.
     My associates will point out that I turn everything into a pean to simpler times. Nevver mind. Really, all I wanted here was to explain that I've come up with a triumphant solution to my embarrassing case of schlumbergia rot. In fact, the first limp limb to droop, redden and drop to the floor beneath the hanging planter provided a template for this, the truly heirloom Christmas cactus:

 Materials: Paper, wire, wool, cotton, china
Available in two colors and varying pots, signed by the artist. $35.
  It isn't often I make something totally original, and even less frequenly do I make something so utterly like I wanted it to be that I am loathe to part with it.
Okay—so a real, live CC is available right now at Price Chopper for $6.
Is it organic?
Can you keep it alive?
Is it environmentally sound?
Is it signed by the artist?
Can it be passed along as an heirloom?

 Tomorrow, I embark on a two-day holiday marketplace at the nearby botanical garden, where I have been assigned space in the food tent and am supposed to hawk only my edible items.
But these, and the two others I made, simply have to make an appearance.

 Just for fun, here are a few more pictures, including one of my first Hellebores (the Christmas rose, a hardy perennial that doesn't bloom until February here in New England, and resents life in a vase.) Already, I have vague notions of tissuey crocus and tiny nodding snowdrops to herald February. Looks like I need a studio as much as I did a greenhouse... 

(Meantime, I'm happy to schedule a trunk show by appointment: georgiadouillet@gmail.com.
Bloom where you are pasted.