Crown of Thorns...

So, I'm sitting at home doing absolutely nothing again... a ball joint went out on my drivers side front tire, and I certainly can't drive with the tire at an angle, so there we are...



One of the side effects of having the only cactus garden in the neighborhood, with spiny plants prominently displayed in the front yard, is that I occasionally get annonymous "donations." I haven't quite figured out if this is an advantage or a disadvantage... but I went out the front door this morning and practically tripped over a prickly item on my front step... turned out to be a Crown of Thorns, Euphorbia milli var. splendens...

It origionally looked half dead... but after a little attention ie: pulling off a dead branch, several dead leaves and flowers, then repotting, it's not half bad. It even has some new blooms developing...

I think that this is a plant somebody aquired at Christmas, as it had traces of glitter on some of the leaves and it was in one of those plastic nursery pots and sleaves... somebody probably decided to leave it on my porch, thinking that the local cactus freak would love it. Either that or they were hoping I'd end up crippled with thorns in my ankles...

Now, Crown of Thorns aren't high on my list of favorite plants... They're one of the plants that I remember every old lady in the neighborhood had growing on the front porch when I was a kid. Sometimes planted in an old enamel cooking pot. I don't dislike them, but it certainly never occured to me to aquire one. They're nice enough when they bloom, and if properly taken care of, there's usually a bloom or two around. I'm informed in my reading that in very hot climates, they may go dormant in the summer, but I think I'll probably be able to keep it going. The larger leaves point out that this probably isn't one of the dwarf varieties, so it might actually get to a fairly large size... which means I now possess yet another large spiney thing to carry into the house every winter.