FLOWERING CACTI

Each year, in April, two of my cactus plants bloom. This is the only time they have flowers and I love them because they are so vibrant and showy. I keep my cacti in a greenhouse window in my bathroom. A greenhouse window is not flat like a regular window. It is like a box that juts out. My window faces south so it gets great sunlight all day long.

Cacti do not need to be watered as often as regular plants. They can often go without water for two weeks! Did you now there are more than 2,000 varieties of cacti? And cactus spines are actually the cactus's leaves!
It is really difficult to get cacti to bloom indoors, mostly because they need intense, long periods of sunlight. Another reason is that some cacti grow slowly and won't mature for decades.

This is true of the very hairy old man cactus, which is native to Mexico. I have one of these too, but will probably never see its whitish-yellowish flower. It takes 20 years before they flower and they usually flower only when they are outdoors. But that's okay, it's messy, carefree hairstyle is flower enough for me!

I'm not sure of my cacti varieties, but I'm researching it and think that perhaps the one above is a pincushion cactus, while the one on the right is still a mystery to me. It's funny that they both have shocking pink blooms.

I really like the green fingers that protrude from the center of this flower.

HAPPY EARTH DAY FROM RANDALL'S ISLAND

A good time was had by all on Randall's Island today, where four students from the Urban Nature Club planted blueberry bushes in the island's freshwater wetlands. Students were chosen by lottery and I'm so sorry that I couldn't take the whole club. I wish I had a bus rather than a car that seats five. (We do have a trip coming up to a farm at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and I hope everyone will come....details to follow.)

Digging in the deep!

One hundred blueberry plants, the "Elizabeth" variety, were planted by various groups, including ours, which planted six blueberry plants in all.

Kaseng and Julian with one of their plants

Maddy and Sarah with their first planting

 Randall's Island is in the East River, between Manhattan and Queens. Together with Ward's Island, to which it is attached, it encompasses about 500 acres. During the nineteenth century, the island was an institutional island, with an insane asylum, infectious disease hospitals, and a potter's field (or cemetery for the poor or unclaimed bodies. Today, it is a hodgepodge with a fire training academy, sports fields and facilities, nature, parkland, a homeless shelter and water treatment plant.

We found lots of worms, pill bugs and snails

Julian and Kaseng watch the snail crawl
on some invasive phragmites

Sarah holds the fattest worm found

Click here to see the book on Amazon

If you want to learn more about Randall's Island, or any of the other islands in New York City, check out the aptly named "The Other Islands of New York City," by Ms. Seitz and her husband, Stuart Miller.