What is it?

Posted on July 25, 2002 in Whimsies

It’s a cactus. A trilobed form I bought a few weeks ago in the garden section of Home Depot. I went to unpot it so that I could put it in a bigger cup of Italian clay. It fell out of the potting soil. I took the soil out of the pot anyway and surrounded it with more soil, a special “cactus mix”, that I had bought. Then I placed the cactus on top, pushing it down slightly so that it would nest firmly. It had a single, twisted, woody root the color of a parsnip and no thicker than one of Lynn’s little fingers. I watered it with Miracle-Gro that day and every month since, on the first of the month. First it blossomed irregularly. The flowers were tiny white cups smeared with a little pink. They fell off. A few weeks passed. The red fruits that you see crowning the three pates appeared. Each is shaped like a tear-drop or a long pignola. When you crush them, they smell of strawberries. Because of the Miracle-Gro and because of my learning about the liver transplants that people who think they know their edible mushrooms when they don’t require, I’ve not eaten any.