This should keep the politicians busy for awhile, because cactus tacos are delicious, and wandering-eye politicians in Washington really just want something delicious.
El Centro’s Lackluster Cactus Taco
…The muted Army green-colored slices of prickly pear taste much like you might expect: very similar to bland green beans with a slightly waxy chew. The cactus is even cut into a similar shape.
I really, really wanted to like this interesting vegetarian alternative to El Centro’s beef tongue or pork shoulder tacos. But no such luck. Though steamed and grilled, the nopales simply can’t muster any umph.
Here’s a photo of rain on cactus for a very unseasonably rainy day today. I refuse to go outside myself today to snap a photo for you. Me and the dogs are staying inside.
It’s finally here. Cactus Vodka! Perfect for a vodka drink featuring cactus! The article is from the NY Times so hopefully the link will work for you, what with their new paywall and all. You’d think with this being written essentially as an advertisement for Skyy Vodka that they’d make sure the link to the article would work for everyone, paywall or not.
“For a marketer, it’s a dream come true, because how many dragon puns can you come up with?” said Andrea Conzonato, the chief marketing officer for Skyy vodka. “An orange is an orange. A raspberry is a raspberry. But then you find a dragon fruit, and you’re like, Where did this come from? Why did I not know about this before?”
That is one sexy dragon fruit photo. And then it gets sexier yet. The NYTimes prints celebrities posing with dragon fruit for some odd reason. Oh yeah, baby, now I really want some dragon fruit.
Michael Buckner/WireImage
CELEBRITY STATUS Escorted by Omar Epps, Brandy and Keisha Spivy.
I don’t understand.
Finally, they published a photo of Skyy’s new bottle, because a “Paper of Record” can’t advertorialize a brand of vodka properly if they don’t show a bottle.
I wonder how much they got paid for this? I got nothin’. But it is interesting in a socialogic journolistical kind of way. Plus, you know, Cactus!
I guess that’s a good sign. Or maybe you’re skin is naturally dry and it’s a temporary moisturing.
This is made up of… prickly pear, blue agave, lady’s slipper orchid… aloe. Of all of these, prickly pear, or cactus pear (opuntia tuna) is the most convincing…. Cactus pear has plenty of antioxidants, such as ascorbic acid, carotenoids, reduced glutathione, cysteine, taurine, and flavonoids such as quercetin, kaempferol and isorhamnetin.
Sounds important!
Unfortunately… Blue agave, from which tequila is made, doesn’t have much research to back it up and I could find no supporting evidence as to its role in skincare. Lady’s slipper (cypripedium pubescens) has primarily been used as a sedative.
So you can drink it if you prefer. A little prickly pear juice for the anti-oxidants, some tequila for the buzz and a little Lady’s Slipper for the sedative…
Dame Helen Mirren is presented with a nepenthes cultivar (a new variety of the carnivorous pitcher plant), Nepenthes ‘Helen’ named in her honour. Doesn’t she look pleased?
What are the best plants to grow in a container on a sun-soaked balcony, terrace, patio or deck that faces west or south?
Super heat-tolerant plants include succulents such as echeveria and aeonium.
Many sedums, especially top cultivars, such as ‘Angelina’ and ‘Autumn Joy’, have no problem flourishing in hot sun. Opuntia (a form of cactus) is another attractive sun worshipper.
While that all may be true, I wonder why the Vancouver Sun is publishing this information? It’s not like they get a particularly hot sunny summer in BC.
• Fat Plant Man: 11 a.m. to noon May 28, featuring succulent specialist Clifford Meng discussing rare and endangered succulent plants and how to grow them. Cost is $15. Succulents and cactus plants will be available for sale.
Don’t click this at work, but today apparently is World Naked Gardening Day. Just thought you should know. via Thomas, who I assume is out naked gardening today.
From the Staunton News Leader comes a recommendation that Virginia gardeneners plant more succulents.
You’ll find them peeking from the cracks in stone walls, decorating the corners of old barns, tumbling out of crumbling containers. Succulents grow just about anywhere and last just about forever, says Chris Lockhart, co-owner of the Staunton Plant Co.
The huge selection and easy maintenance of these sturdy plants makes them a good choice for Virginia gardeners, Lockhart said, since we have weather that’s often unreliable: cold, then hot; rainy then dry. He said one particular succulent is so hardy that it’s used for “green roofs.” The living roof absorbs water and also deflects the harsh son, while it flourishes and spreads in the blazing sun or bitter cold.
That is so true. I think he’s talking about all the different Sedums and Sempervivums that can survive on a roof in Virginia. But Staunton does get cold, regularly getting in the single digits and occasionally below 0F and about 40 inches of rain. So there are a lot of succulents that won’t survive there. Plus I would guess they’re pretty humid in the summer. In fact, I wonder which succulents besides the sedums and sempervivums that Chris is recommending? I should read further…. Clicking through to the 2nd page of the article leads me to his list. And in fact his list includes Sedums and Sempervivums and Portulacas, all fine choices.
The cactus moth larva often burrows into the cactus pad to feed on the flesh. Dripping ooze on the pad’s surface indicates a hungry caterpillar inside.
This came up in the course of a question from a reader:
Q: I found caterpillars in prickly pear in the cactus garden in the back yard. I looked them up and found pictures — they are definitely the larva of these cactus moths, Cactoblastis cactorum. What should I do to control them? Can I control them? What else will they destroy?
A:Unfortunately, this invasive insect is fairly common along Florida’s coasts. My advice to homeowners with only a limited number of cactuses under attack is to control the pest by removing the eggsticks by hand….
Is this not the most exciting post of the day? No? Then you have no sense of the drama of the cactus moth’s mysterious eggstick.
Entomologists could wax lyrical for hours on the fascinating development of the Cactus Moth’s eggstick. Here, in fact, give a listen to an entomologist. Alright, so that wasn’t an actual recording of an entomologist at work, but rather the USDA’s scientific study of the Cactus Moth’s eggsticks.
The UC Master Gardeners of Napa County present “Down the Garden Path,” an educational tour of members’ gardens in and around upper Napa Valley on May 15. The tour is designed to show how Master Gardeners develop and care for their own gardens using University of California research based horticultural practices.
This self-guided tour of seven gardens includes both large and small gardens that feature educational examples of water-wise and succulent gardens… There will be docents and educational information at each location.
Sunday, May 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m…. call 707-253-4147.
North Dakota’s Peace Garden is getting the rest of their cactus after all. The Republicans fought it to the end, but they lost because everyone loves a cactus garden!
Baseball is producing a series of baseball-related cactus statues, or toys if you will. Really. I don’t know what to say about this. I love baseball. I love cactus. And yet….
Are these for real? The photo is from NBC News, so I guess so.
Some kind of racing thingy in the desert going on here.
After missing three rounds of the AMA Racing/Kenda National Hare & Hound Championship Series with a knee injury, few people expected defending series champion Kendall Norman to be 100 percent when he returned to the series… outside of Lucerne Valley, California….
But Norman regrouped… and was able to capitalize when Caselli went down and ended up in a cactus. “He had balls of cactus all over him!” Norman described. “Dude, it sucks for him; I know the feeling!”
Norman went on for the win.
“It sucks for him” being the operative phrase.
So what kind of racing is this AMA, this National Hare and Hound Championship in the desert?
Here’s the race logo, from something called Dust Magazine.
Finally! From the Atacama Desert comes some good news in these days of high gas prices.
The driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, wouldn’t seem an auspicious place for biofuel production.
Biotechnology experts, however, may have found a way to turn one of the desert’s only available plants, the cactus, into energy.
A US$500,000 pilot project in the Río Jorquera Valley in the Copiapó province aims to reduce Nopal cactus stems to high-energy dry briquettes that can be burned in coal-fired thermoelectric plants.
Everyone likes a good cactus briquette.
Here’s a delicious looking recipe for grilled cactus that you can now make on your cactus-briquette-fired grille.
By the way the temperatures in Santiago are very similar to here even though they’re in the Southern hemisphere and all. High 70s for everyone!
Exciting news in the world of national park cacti!
A crew surveying plants at Saguaro National Park west of Tucson has made a “shocking” discovery: a mature organ-pipe cactus growing among the saguaros….
The find is significant because the big cacti – with arms somewhat resembling organ pipes – are almost completely limited in this country to warm, low-elevation deserts at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument south of Ajo….
Hubbard said a crew from the monitoring network, which is a part of the National Park Service, found the Saguaro Park specimen in February in a “sort of protected micro-site.”
The plant is big, but clearly not in its ideal environment. You can see the really pronounced yearly variations in width and the most recent growth is not looking healthy, probably a very cold couple of winters.
They have succulents there, but alongside a Pork Festival.
(W)hen I heard about North Hollywood hosting a flea market in walking distance, I was elated. But I was hesitant when I heard it would be combined with a food truck fest…. I was worried that the popular mobile feeders would deter customers away from the local vendors.
…I smelled grilled pork in the air…
And… the booths were empty. Artists and vendor owners smiled at each passing customer, waiting for a sale… I stopped to take a few shots of miniature succulents….
I heard a dance number starting as I walked toward the succulent booth again. Only a few were missing. I picked four, each small enough to fit in the center of my palm. They would be low maintenance. They just needed to be placed in a spot with consistent sunlight, I was told. When I left, it started to rain.
Not many new plants will grow in our climate, but I will tell you about a few that stand out in my mind….
Willing to try something different? How about Aeoniums, one of the most ornamental of all the succulents. Even those who don’t appreciate succulents seem to like these plants. Perhaps it’s because they look like large, colourful, rubber flowers. And luckily many are easy plants to grow as well. They’re great for containers on the patio or poolside.
Poolside? In London? I’ll bet you didn’t catch that this London is in Canada. Now that makes more sense.
The Cactus and Succulent Society of America’s 2011 biennial convention comes to the San Diego Marriott the last week of April. In addition to interesting and informative sessions, there is a public plant sale from April 26 through 28. Visit www.sdcss.net/2011convention.html for more information.
“I can’t say for sure, but given that it seems to be associated with the meteor, it probably came from outside our solar system,” (David) Salman says in a recent video interview released this morning on High Country Gardens’ YouTube channel.
Salman says he was on a routine seed-collecting mission west of Roswell – the undisputed locus of extraterrestrial preoccupation since the late 1970s, when the alleged UFO crash of July 8, 1947 was brought to the world’s attention – when he was drawn to the unmapped meteor crater by a “faint glow.” Closer inspection revealed the light coming from a colony of small cacti yet unfamiliar to Salman…
“(I)t’s very possible that this meteor that hit near Roswell, perhaps it broke up in the atmosphere and other pieces maybe crashed in South America or Africa or Eurasia,” he says.
OK, so I looked at the date of the article and it’s 3/31 – i.e. NOT April 1st. Plus, if it’s alien, it’s not a cactus. Just saying. But if it is alien, then that’s pretty big news. Too big for just the Las Cruces Times Picayune. Alert the New York Times! The Washington Post could use a scoop!
A prickly pear grows directly out of a mesquite tree trunk along the Canyon Loop Trail at Catalina State Park. One expert said it was one of the largest he has seen that didn’t grow in soil. DOUG KREUTZ / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
The Ruth Bancroft Garden is getting a long awaited and much needed makeover.
They’ve had to take out some trees and agaves that had outgrown their beds or had reached the end of their life span, Harrington says, “which has given us bigger areas to work with.”
The beds are being rejuvenated with fresh soil, building them back up to their original size, and new plants are being added. Rocks of various sizes are being included both as a mulch and to give the beds a natural look.
Erosion and compaction had brought some of the beds down below the levels of the pathways, Kemble says. And it wasn’t just a matter of aesthetics. Some of the plants were suffering from a lack of oxygen in the compacted soil.
Click the link for some great photos of the garden through the years. Big succulents.
While this may be the mother of all garden tours by the vastness of properties on display, it’s not your grandmother’s garden tour with tea and crumpets.
My grandmother never served tea and crumpets during a garden tour. Had she had a garden that was on a tour of Brookline gardens, she would probably have served her famous chopped liver.
The garden of Anne O’Brien of Torrance will showcase shade natives, including plants for habitat, fragrance and cut bouquets, during the Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour.
