Happy Birthday, Ma Jones!

I have written about this plant before but it never ceases to delight me and leaves me wondering each year if it will produce it's magic at just the right moment.  You see, this is my Grandmother's Christmas Cactus, for her it bloomed at Christmas, because much like most growing things it dared not defy her tutelage. 

 

When she died almost a decade ago, I some how ended up with her prized Christmas Cactus.  To this day I do not know how it ended up coming home with me.  The first year I had it, I was quite abusive and left it in my garage for many months with no water and little light.  Of course, when I finally brought it inside it didn't even show the tiniest sign of a single bud at Christmas.  I didn't think much about it.

 

Then her birthday rolled around in mid February, (the 17th, to be exact), and that amazing plant threw a very unexpected party.  It burst into full bloom, making me realize there was more than one variety of cactus planted...there is a red with a beautiful fuchsia stamen and then there is a white with tinges of red. To say I was filled with joy and sadness was an understatement.  

 

This year it popped out a bloom or two in December for the first time since I have had it and I wondered if the birthday streak was gone and if the plant had adjusted back to it's normal schedule.  That was until this week, when it began to bud and bloom and produce the birthday party for my Ma Jones... right on time. I have said this many times but the older I get the more I miss her.  It would be so nice to be able to escape to the bubble of her little world, it was somewhere you didn't have to explain, you could just be.