Firesticks Cactus - Spring 2018

Over the weekend, I did something that I don't normally do:  I went to the Home Depot.  As you guys know...I'm a Menards guy.  But, with Spring right around the corner, I wanted to see what the Home Depot was up to.  In particular, the store on Butterfield in Downers Grove has a really good garden center and both the plant quality and the care given to them far surpasses the stuff and care at Menards. 

The garden center was just getting booted up.  They had some trees (I'll post about one of them soon), but most of the perennials and annuals were still not in stock.  Too cold. 

After poking around, we wandered into the indoor greenhouse section and found some of their succulents - and one jumped out at me.  It is this Pencil Cactus, which happens to be a "Firesticks" variety.  That means, the new growth/tips are orange/red.  Look at this example to see what I'm talking about in terms of color.  Natalie was in Arizona earlier this year and she shared a photo that included a large Pencil Cactus.  It reminded me that I had one of these earlier in my life - when I was a bachelor.  I always liked it and I guess the idea of Spring being here got the best of me and decided it was going to come home with us.

I found a small one and also found an orange glazed pot that it fit neatly inside of and picked up a bag of succulent-specific soil mix.  Below you can see the genus/species details on the small plastic pot that the plant came in from Home Depot.  And up top, you can see it once I brought it home and planted it.

I put it in our dining room for now.  That room gets the most southern exposure and has three big windows.  We don't have a plant stand in there, but there's a little mirrored cabinet that I'm sure Nat loves having me put plants on, but so far, she hasn't thrown them out.  If you look at the photo above, you'll also see on the right side a large clay pot.  More on that in a bit.  But, I'm hoping that we're not that far off from being able to move all of these pots outside to the patio.  Maybe just a little bit at first to harden them off, but by May they'll be out there full time.