At the Velez Gallery in Colorado Springs.

Point to some brightly colored baskets. “Those are made by the Huichol Indians,” he said, referring to the Western Mexican culture. “The beads are held on with beeswax. There are probably 800 beads, maybe more,” he said, pointing to a basket – perhaps 2 inches across – adorned with an image of a peyote cactus. 

I’d buy that. But then I recently bought a purple gorilla suit filled with gold coins.

They can! They really can!

your own little piece of paradise might include formal topiary or an exultation of cacti and succulents; elaborate hardscaping or simple statuary.

Now you know. I think the link is broken, so you never know where it will lead.

…have knocked down trees and power lines, but the cacti are OK.

If you have ocotillos or succulents, like barrel cactus, Harper says they can many times be straightened back up and saved.

I don’t know how you straighten up a barrel cactus, but then I’m not going to see any movies this week either, so my random thought of the day for you is this: Use compact fluorescents wherever you can.

I don’t know where Yucaipa is, but they’ve busted a peyote provider.

Law enforcement also found peyote (a cactus plant that produces hallucinogenic effects) growing in the backyard and a lab used to make and encapsulate mescaline, a psychedelic agent that has been illegal since 1970 and is derived from the peyote cactus.

Stupid illegal cactus, and their hallucinogenic effects.

Locally, you’ll find a respectable assortment of sedums at local garden centers, although I wish they would carry more varieties.

Well, I guess not too much love.

Scientists in Italy have proven that cactus pear reduced oxidative stress in healthy persons.

I love that attribution! “Scientists in Italy”! I’ll bet you they’re trying to sell something…

Cactus products rule the earth. Here’s a new one. I refuse to endorse it, but you can take my blogging about it to be an endorsement.

Cactus Juice Eco-Safe Spray 6 oz.
Manufacturer: Cactus Juice
Product Description: Containing no harmful chemicals and formulated with your health in mind, this natural, lightly fragranced blend of Prickly Pear Cactus, emollients and moisturizers creates a shield that protects the skin from most insects, including sandflies, no-see-ums, black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. Safe to spray on clothing.

I don’t know what the hell this is about. I see plenty of gnats and mosquitos hanging around the prickly pears.

Succulent plants are hard to love. They tend to be parsimonious about offering shade and seem rather pointedly inhospitable so that pleasure-seekers are disinclined to settle among the yuccas for a leisurely afternoon glass of wine.

By Georgia Tasker, McClatchy Newspapers

I disagree.

So they plant succulents to beat the heat.

When Dallas has terrible triple-digit heat waves coupled with dry skies, my thoughts always turn to succulents.

Converting to a garden of succulents occurs to me when I’m standing with the garden hose in hand, sweat rolling down my face.

Now you know that people with hoses in Dallas sweat a lot. At least, that’s what I take from the article in question. Maybe if you click through and read the rest you’ll get more out of it than just that. Like this bit:

I’ve been hungrily reading a new book, Hardy Succulents: Tough Plants for Every Climate by Gwen Moore Kelaidis (Storey Publishing, $19.95 ). There are fetching glossy photos by Saxon Holt on almost every page that deepen my yearning for not just containers of succulents but whole garden beds thick with them.

We agree.
 

I just read that there is a law on the books in Richmond, Virginia saying you can’t plant cactus as a fence between you and your neighbor! I know many towns have very specific fence laws, especially dealing with heights allowed, which is why we sell a lot of bamboo, but no cactus!?!

I like writing headlines.

Anyway, there’s some new art on exhibit at LAX that features some natural themes, if you happen to get the chance to stop between flights and look around.

“A Place in the Sun: Desert Landscapes” (is) in Terminal 2. This exhibit features oil paintings of natural desert elements, such as cactus, rocks, and wildflowers by local artists Judith Amdur and James Griffith. These paintings remind the viewer that while Los Angeles is known for its miles of coastline, parts of the region have desert conditions and features. The exhibit is on display through September 11, 2008.

The 25th annual succulent plants symposium, “A New Century of Succulent Plants,” will be held 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aug. 30 at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road.

The forum will look at the first 100 years of the venue’s Desert Garden and its diverse plant collection. There will also be a discussion of new developments in the world of succulents.

I love that! New developments! Maybe there are new biogenic technologies to help succulents hold onto their water a little longer. That’s what I hope they’re talking about.

Friday is the day we plan our weekends, and so we most certainly need some entertainment news right now. And what better way to entertain us than with featuring entertainment news with the word “cactus” in the title. For instance,

Theatre Knoxville’s performance of the late Abe Burrows’ comedy “Cactus Flower” will leave theater fans hungering for its next production.

And then there’s this short news piece on a band that opens for another band called Cactus:

The Lizards new live DVD (includes) “The gig at B.B. King’s was us opening for Cactus, the band I play harp in,” explains band leader and bassist Randy Pratt.

With a name like Lizards you know it has to be fab. I wonder if the band called Cactus has a CD coming out too? Finally, we have some lovely and disquieting chamber music on tap.

THE FOUNDING OF CACTUS PEAR
12 seasons ago, Cactus Pear Music Festival was founded in 1996… as she sipped a signature Zuni Grill cactus pear margarita. ¡Caramba!, she exclaimed.

That has been today’s edition of Entertainment News. Stay tuned next week when we bring you entertainment news with the word “toothpaste” in the title. The Toothpaste Industry News is aquiver.

At the Chicago Tribune they’ll try anything to cure their dandruff.

“I spent five years going into the mountains talking to old people about the remedies and native plants,” she said… The old ways were kept alive by the descendants of Curacao’s African slaves…. They brought their knowledge of herbal remedies with them but had to adapt to new plants they hadn’t seen before….

The seeds of the tromustok tree are used as a laxative… The calabash tree… is used for asthma and coughs… A concoction made from a cactus is good for backaches, she said, as well as for dandruff shampoo.

Dandruff remedies are all the rage these days, and now it turns out I’ve been growing my own dandruff remedies right here at home all this time and I never knew it. I could be a millionaire!

Did I mention alcohol today? Well, here’s some more cactus-related alcohol in the news.

`I wanted to create something that represented those flavors I grew up with,” Merino said of Macondo’s cocktail menu. The restaurant, which draws its name from the fictional town in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” showcases nine of Merino’s concoctions.

It’s a literary bartender!

`My Most Original Drink’

He also uses Cointreau, agave nectar, honey, lime juice and a green liqueur called Agwa, made from Bolivian coca leaves, which has “a weird flavor by itself but blends perfectly in this drink.” Merino is always shooting for complexity and balance.

He puts all the elements into a blender with a little ice. Before pouring, he coats the rim of the glass with nopal salt, which consists of dehydrated cactus, lemongrass and other spices.

And he uses cactus and agave in one fizzy mix.

Well, this is what you get after I’ve just spent the whole day trying to set up a new POS system for the store.

Jane Armstrong, a restoration artist with Evergreen Painting Studios, restores the mural that was under layers of paint at the Alameda Theater in Alameda, CA on Thursday afternoon, August 7th, 2008. (Laura A. Oda/The Oakland Tribune)

“(I)t has such a free-flowing, symmetric design to it. I love the style,” Armstrong said. “It has a bit of a cubist element to it, with shades of a stylized desert-cactus landscape. And the use of the (silver and gold) leaf and the way space is created within it are sophisticated, quite sophisticated….”

With the mural project wrapping up, the theater will develop the surrounding space as a wine and cappuccino bar for adults.

I think wine is the underlying theme for the blog today.

Someone at UCLA wants to know how drugs affect the brain and what they can do to help patients with terminal illnesses. And so we get a scholarly reference to Peyote.

The way hallucinogens such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), psilocybin and mescaline (the active ingredient in the peyote cactus) act on the brain is reasonably well understood by scientists. The drugs stick to chemical receptors on nerve cells that normally bind the neurotransmitter serotonin, which affects a broad range of brain activities. But how this leads to the profoundly altered states of consciousness, perception and mood that typically accompany a “trip” is not known….

Since the 1970s, scientific research into the effects hallucinogenic drugs have on the brain and their potential benefits has become a pariah field for any scientist who wanted to keep their reputation…

“As a culture we just decided clinical research shouldn’t be done with this class of compounds”…

“These drugs, these experiences are not for the mystic who wants to sit on the mountain top and meditate. They are not for the counter-culture rebel. They are for everybody,” he said.

Such a long quote when the part about the cactus was really quite minor. I wonder what that says about me? Now you’ll all think I’m some kind of drug addict, when really my drug of choice is vodka. And gin. A little rum on occasion. Lot’s of California red wines. Sometimes a french red. My mom thinks I’m an alcoholic since she once saw me have a 2nd glass of wine with dinner. She doesn’t know about the 16 shots of Jameson I did in my fraternity days, Go Delts.

…with the sound of succulents sipping water through the seasonal dry spells.

In Florida they can grow the classic Madagascar plants outside. Lucky Floridians

JOHN VANBEEKUM / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
A twisty, spiny Alluaudia montagnacii thrives in the South Miami yard of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden….

Succulents… are endlessly visually interesting, with forms that make green-leafed shrubs seem deprived of imagination. And they are survivors, with a will to live that is in-your-face apparent, meaning they may be more at home here than you think.

”The tropical look here is an illusion,” says Harvey Bernstein, who has landscaped his front yard with succulent plants.

I like illusions. I harbor many myself. Like the illusion that this blog has dozens of regular readers. That’s a fun illusion.

Well, that’s the end of that.

Nearly all of more than 2 million acres of public lands in six counties surrounding Richfield would be open to oil and gas drilling and off-highway recreation, under a U.S. Bureau of Land Management proposal released Friday.

The plan, which would open about 80 percent of public lands to energy drilling and about 90 percent to off-roaders, also would allow OHVs into areas of Factory Butte previously closed for endangered-species protection and wilderness-quality lands….

A bit more than a year ago, the BLM closed nearly all of it to cross-country OHV travel…. The emergency action was taken to protect endangered Wright fishhook cactus and the threatened Winkler cactus.

Well, I’m sure the administration has looked into it closely and has determined that they’re not worth it. No good reason to save a couple small cacti. They are doing their best to serve us all, and if they decide we shouldn’t be saving an endangered cactus, well then who are we to argue. It’s for our own good, those actions they take for us, they are.

From Florida where they eat cactus:

Opuntia cochenillifera’s thornless pads are a fine addition to salads, omelets, soups and stir-fries….

One species long favored in Mexico for both food and medicine is Opuntia streptacantha, whose polysaccharides have been confirmed by modern research to stabilize blood sugar. For that reason it is used by many people with diabetes, either as a vegetable or in capsule form at health food stores.

And from Texas, where they also eat cactus:

Ranchers in Texas long ago resorted to burning the spines off prickly pear cactus with a flame thrower to make cow feed out of it.

Well, someone’s eating cactus there.

Just for you, the Casa Grande News let’s you know when the next class will be to learn how to make fresh cactus fruit punch.

Apache Junction resident Jean Groen, author of “Foods of the Superstitions,” will teach visitors how to harvest opuntia cactus fruits and extract the juice from the prickly pear without turning their hands into a “porcupine of cactus spines.”

The class, which is free with regular admission, will be repeated Aug. 23 and Sept. 1.

I guess you need to be midway between Tucson and Phoenix to take advantage of this news. Sorry about that.

I never thought I’d have cause to use that headline, stored in the back of my head for years. But now, the Pensacola News Journal has convinced me to break it out and print it bold and loud.

With summer in all its glory, there is nothing better than strolling through (the Milton Garden, located on the Pensacola Junior College/University of Florida Campus in Milton) filled with brightly colored flowers and plants.

“We have one of largest collections of day lilies in the area.”

Reason enough? I was still feeling a little skeptical… But no, that’s not all.

“We decided to see how the cactus would do growing here,” Thetford said. “Since traditionally cactus enjoys dry soil and extreme heat, we weren’t sure how they would grow in this climate since we have quite a bit of rain. So far, they are doing very well.”

Well, now I’m convinced. The gardens in Pensacola really are beautiful.

Really they are. According to the latest news from the midwest’s farm industry news source, Farm Gate, that is.

Global warming or not, you may have cactus growing on your Cornbelt farm, and it may become a sticky issue to deal with, literally and figuratively. The pricklypear cactus has become an invasive specie of sorts, making its way from the desert southwest to pastures and fencerows of the Midwest. And you may prefer to wrestle a grizzly bear than a pricklypear.

It’s probably true. They’ve become a real problem for cattle in Australia, and if they escape from the fencerows into the fields, and there’s a big drought, then the cows will feel the hurt.

Slithering out after it was a blacktail rattlesnake, which settled into the limbs of a mesquite tree that shades a newly formed section of the Arizona Trail….

Although the rattler appeared to have moved on, ocotillos, prickly pear cactus, wildflowers and other plant life had perked up after the latest round of monsoon showers.

In New Mexico they’re thinking about drilling on a mesa that may harm the groundwater and kill off the local cactus.

The mesa is a scenic 1.2 million-acre expanse of yuccas, cholla cactus and knee-high gramma grass. Drilling opponents warn that groundwater could be contaminated by oil and gas production.

And then in Boston they’re giving away succulent cuttings.

I cut off the top 4 to 6 inches of young stems… Then you need to practice patience….

If the leaves are thick – as they are with succulents – I may… force the plant to expand its root structure to ensure survival.

Sure you do.

Next on our trip around the country it’s off to the Tucson desert where the farmers are hoping for some rain.

The monsoon season, which officially started June 15, has been wetter than normal from Douglas to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

I’m sure the cactus are happy. Where else should we go? Any place else on our map? No? OK, then.

Well, I forgot about Florida. Shall we see what’s going on in Florida? They’re feeling the drought there.

What exactly does the term ‘xeric’ mean? That’s a very good question…

(A) planting scheme grouping plants by water needs; uses modern water application techniques; minimizes open areas in the garden; improves the soil; and sharply limits high-water plants like turf.

Remarkably, many of our favorite plants do nicely with less water (like) Jatropha.

Well, that was a fun voyage around the country looking at drilling and watering and planting and cutting. Tomorrow I think we should all go to Western Ontario and visit the The Sherwood Fox Arboretum together. Shall we say 2pm? See you there.

A newspaper in North Carolina tries out new products so you don’t have to and asks a good question.

The marketing: Both products ask me if I “want skin she can’t wait to get her hands on!” The shower scrub claims it contains cactus milk that exfoliates your skin, leaving it smooth and energized so she’ll keep coming back. (What is cactus milk?)

What is cactus milk? I should be able to handle that one for them. But no, I can’t maybe we could check wikipedia. Nope, nothing there. Google? Well, with this blog entry, I’m going to be the number one result on google for “cactus milk” by the end of the day. Just try it out. Anyway, Euphorbia abyssinica is sometimes called the Milk Tree, or even Milk Cactus, though it is not a cactus at all. 

This Old House has rediscovered drought tolerant gardening now that the heat of summer is here.

Succulents: Ideal Plants for SummerSempervivum tectorum (which along with the unrelated Echeveria x imbricata is commonly referred to as hens and chicks) is right at home in tight spots, such as a rock garden. Sempervivum ‘Carmen’ (shown) can also be nestled with smooth stones in a shallow, quick-draining garden.

Utah County man would like his peyote back.

That was fun.