A Story of Survival

In a previous post, when I was looking at activity in our garden and slope early in spring, or perhaps late in winter, I mentioned the sad state of our prickly pear cactus.  This cactus was originally brought back from a trip to Phoenix in 2011.  It suffered some damage from the long car trip and then was actually relocated at least twice in our yard due to some landscaping issues and a quest to find a spot that was both sheltered and received full sunlight most of the day.  We were pretty sure we had found an ideal spot for it, because last summer it filled the area with lots of exuberant growth.

When we were at the Outer Banks last fall, we brought back a couple "paddles" from a similar prickly pear that was flourishing in the front yard of the house we rented and added it to area.

Then this winter, on the one day that we had significant snow cover, some neighborhood kids cut through our yard and ducked under our deck to go down our slope.  The cactus was right in their path, but camouflaged by the snow.  No doubt it was pretty brittle from the severe cold, as well.  So, needless to say, when we inspected the cactus this spring, we needed to remove probably 75% of it, because the "paddles" had been disconnected and were dead.  So we feel like we are pretty much starting from scratch this year.

Last year this whole area was covered with cactus, now we are down to just a few scattered plants.
However, for the first time ever, we have cactus flowers!  I'm thinking this must be the OBX cactus.

These two new green "paddles" are growing from what was likely the original cactus we brought back from Arizona.  In the first picture you can see a slight reddish tint to the plants in front of the flowering cactus.  We had selected this particular variety of prickly pear because they tend to get some reddish fall coloring.  I don't know if that is true of all prickly pears.  But in the few years we had this cactus, I never remember it flowering.

I love the vibrant yellow color of the flowers.  This was a cluster of three and the middle flower opened a couple of days ago and is now shriveling.  So I figured I had better take a picture before the remaining flowers left us.  They are really quite beautiful.

This close up shows the almost translucent petals and the rather elaborate center of the open flower, below you see the remains of the first flower in the center of the two open blossoms.

We were told you can grow varieties of prickly pear quite far north into Canada, but they still seem pretty exotic and out of place to me in non-desert gardens.