My cactus is having TWINS! This mother cactus is about one-half of a much taller cactus that was left at my mom’s house in 2016 after it was destroyed by fire. She, my brother, and my nephew moved in with Shando and me, but unfortunately, my mom died a few months later of ovarian cancer unrelated to the fire, so this is definitely a sentimental plant. Without any attention to it, months after she died and even longer after the fire, when the house was nearly renovated, I found this lone cactus in her backyard and adopted it. A few years later it toppled in the wind and half of it broke off and both halves are planted in different pots in my backyard without missing a beat. One small piece also fell off and has the current fuzz on top of it that you can see, which these gross flies are loving. Recently I got a little smarter and put the large cactus piece in a much wider pot, hoping to foster growth, especially with some better quality topsoil, and voila. She’s pregnant!

We’re now ready for an electronic vehicle and we will be 100% renewable energy because we will produce more than enough energy for our needs currently.

I was very specific about where I wanted the solar panels. I was worried they would be too visible from the street, but they were able to accommodate my request to not have two of them dangling off the front of the grade.

So under a large jade plant that came with the house, there has been a confident stem growing that looks like it wants to be a tree when it grows up. The proximity to the house made me nervous and I wanted to pull it out and put it somewhere else before the root grew out of control and killed the large jade that was mature and thriving since before we moved in. You can somewhat make out this tree before we removed it by the leaf type protruding from the narrow stem and growing higher than the window frame in these pictures:

I put the plant into my identifier application, but it doesn’t seem confident in what it found. At this stage of its growth, I’m not even sure if the identifier app can do its job. Here are the identifier results: Garden Privet

I put as much of the root as we could get into a large pot and tried to support it and put it near the side of the house where there is very little vulnerability to the high winds. Initially, it looked viable. Compare the before and after here which are about two hours apart, because almost immediately it seemed like it started to droop. Maybe I’m just being impatient?

I don’t even know if I want to keep it as it could just be a weed, but it’s a really pretty one.

Other updates to the garden as of today: