THE SEX LIFE OF CACTI

We have a lot of cacti in Tenerife of all shapes and sizes and varying degrees of ferocity. I see this thirty-foot-tall one on my morning walk - this week it was in exuberant flower.

There is even a Cactus Park where you can learn how some cacti protect themselves with vicious spikes while others use toxins to deter predators – very wise in a climate where they are often the only succulent vegetable food around.
 

This one is called Silla de Suegra – Mother-in-law’s Chair, which proves that those so-called jokes are universal.

We can buy cactus fruit too, though

I don’t like the bland taste or the multiple seeds, and there’s cactus jam and even cactus liquor.

The fruits pictured above mainly come from the huge palmate cacti that were once cultivated for, believe it or not, the insects that still infest them – cochineal.
At one time this was a thriving industry here, and I understand that many of what appear to be wild cacti may still belong to a particular family. Now most of our red food colouring is artificially produced – not many people like the idea of putting crushed insects into their food – but the fruit is still harvested with leather gloves, shaved with a disposable razor and eaten or sold.

But I have rarely seen any sign of fruit or even seed pods on other cacti. They produce beautiful flowers, but why? Presumably to attract insects, but how do they reproduce?

Perhaps the answer is the same as to the question, “How do hedgehogs make love?”

                                           Carefully.

WRITING AND A BUS

A few days off writing, organizing my desk and filling the recycling bin with paper, has resulted in a refreshed mind. I have completed a 1700 word story for a competition and will send it off once I have run it past my daughter's eagle eyes, and I have the germ of an idea for another competition entry.
The OH goes away on Thursday, after which I plan to tackle the much tougher task of re-writing a novel to re-submit to an agent who showed an interest. Unfortunately the temperature has gone up and my fingers are too sticky to be comfortable for long on the keyboard. Out comes the fan!
ON THE BUSES!
Driving into Guaza the other day I was held up by a green Titsa bus. No problem - I wasn't in a hurry - I assumed there was a van parked in the bis stop, as often happens. When the bus began moving I thought, "Here we go", but it wasn't going far.
Recently the Cabildo have been re-doing the road through Guaza. It has taken them more than a year, and goodness knows how many businesses closed due to the fact that customers literally had to jump ditches to reach them, but finally it was finished.
Except that they had forgotten one pipe, so this day the road was dug up again, and the Guardia had only just arrived to direct traffic. A bendy-bus, me and half-a-dozen other cars, a very narrow road and a junction with a mini-roundabout.
   Give the bus driver his due - when the police had moved a few cars from the road on our right, he backed his articulated bus down there and managed to execute a brilliant 40-point turn. He didn't even run over the roundabout.

CACTUS
Those of you who followed the growth of my cactus flower will be pleased to learn that, far from being slung in the bin by the gardeners, the cactus has been relocated and given its own water supply. Alfredo even took some cuttings from my huge lemon geranium to surround it. So we may even yet see the other flowers emerge from their hard black buds.

FINISHED! (well, kinda)

After a long month of re-writing my first ever book, I have reached the final page!
It has quite a history, this book. I first wrote it at least six years ago – a 180,000 word fantasy. Far too long, of course, but I was carried away with writing. I sent off some submissions and one agent actually asked to see the whole book. With great rejoicing I told family and friends - my kids even baked a cake - and I parcelled it up and had it hand-delivered. After a few weeks it was refused, and it was hugely embarrassing having to tell everyone after the initial euphoria. Back to the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook.

   Then I fell for a scam. I paid £350 “expenses” to another agent who said my book was fantastic and he wished he’d found something similar to read when he was young. I waited six months for him to find the promised publisher, and I had written a 190,000 word sequel before I realized he was a crook. He is still around playing the same tricks, so don’t fall for it!

   But he’d done me a favour in a way because, when I started re-reading my books after a six-month break, I could see a whole raft of things I had done wrong. I did a complete re-write and split the two books into a series of five. Each one is self-contained but there is a theme running through the series, and I sent the first book out to every agent who would consider fantasy. All I got was rejections. Again.

   Now, some years later, having read lots of advice to writers, I have written three other novels and am giving my fantasy series another major overhaul! I have already cut 10,000 words from the first book, re-named it and the whole series. It’s very different now, but last time round I approached most of the possible agents. I am afraid that even now some of them might remember my original submission and reject me without a second glance.

   The moral of my tale? Don’t submit too soon.

 I was so sure the cactus would flower today! I went out armed with my camera and brimming with confidence, but look at it! Still hiding its light under a ficus bush(~el).

The pollinators are sitting on the nearby aloe vera plant with their arms crossed, tapping their feet with impatience. 

Three days ago the bud was as long as my thumb - now it's bigger than my hand.

Imagine what the flower is going to be like!

EYESIGHT and a POEM

A couple of years after this photo was taken I was wearing glasses and have worn them ever since. I spent my teenage years bemoaning the fact that I had to spoil any outfit with my National Health glasses - my parents couldn't afford private ones. Each time I had new glasses I had to choose frames without being able to see them, and each new pair reduced me to tears when I realized once again that they hadn't transformed me into a beauty! After an unsuccessful flirtation with lenses it is only now, in my later years, that I have learned to accept them.

Eyesight is something most of us take for granted, but if, like me, you had to take early retirement due to eyestrain, you tend to be a tad paranoid. Every new floater might be Retinal Detachment and each blurred moment Macular Degeneration. Other people enthuse about laser surgery – me, I’m terrified I’d be one of the failures. How could I write or read if I couldn’t see? I couldn't admire the photo of my grandsons playing with the neighbours' dogs in an English meadow, or see the growth of a cactus flower.

This is this morning's photo - it won't be long before the flower is fully open.

The flame trees in our complex are just bursting into leaf, though they still have last year's seed pods. In a few weeks they will be aflame with orange blossom - what a shame not to be able to see that.

The reason for all this introspection is the book I am reading - Nicholas Evans' The Smoke Jumper - in which a young man is blinded by an accident, and I wondered how I would cope.

Some years ago I worked for the RNIB and wrote a poem about being blind. I shall put it on My Writing page if you want to read it.

Oh yes - and Happy Diamond Jubilee to you all, Congratulations to Her Majesty, and I wish I was in England to join in the festivities, rain and all!

EL HIERRO PIRATAS

You may remember I have blogged several times about El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands that recently had an undersea volcano erupting two kilometres off its coast.
They have been struggling to survive ever since. The fish stocks have dwindled or fled the contaminated sea, decimating the income of the fishermen. Diving schools, that are another main source of income on the island, were also badly hit, though they are recovering since the ban on approaching the now quiet volcano has been lifted, but their economy is still fragile.
It wasn't helped when the ferry company Armas announced it would no longer be going there because the route was losing money.
So last week the Mayor (whose name is Armas, oddly enough) and fifteen other El Hierro politicians took matters into their own hands and prevented the ferry from loading. Eventually the boat sailed. The Captain radioed ahead to say he had "several stowaways on board." and asking for the Policia to meet the boat. The politicians were referred to in the press as "Piratas". They seem to have talked their way out of being arrested - politicians are good at that.
Someone arranged with Fred Olsen to take the abandoned goods to El Hierro in one of his ferries, and he began talks with the Canarian Government about taking over the route.

Surprise, surprise! Armas Ferries have now decided they might be able to see their way clear to operating a service after all.

The yellow tree I commented on three days ago was buzzing this morning. There must have been a bee on every twig and the ground underneath was bright yellow with fallen blossom. I wonder what the honey tastes like?

And this is the latest photo of the cactus, with my hand to demonstrate the scale of the bud that is growing fast.

POETIC PHILANTHROPIST?

I was reading in a magazine the other day about a girl who had a favourite poem tattooed on her stomach in case the forgot it.
In the photograph the poem was the right way up and the right way round. So what does she do if she forgets it?
If she tucks her chin in and heaves her bosom out of the way I suppose she might just be able to read it upside-down. Or perhaps she's an expert at mirror-reading. What happens if she puts on weight or develops wrinkles?
Maybe she's had it done solely for the benefit of others - a poetic philanthropist. If you see her walking around, presumably in her bikini, can you stop her and read it, or does she zoom past like those annoying people who wear tee-shirts with complicated messages?
One of the requisites of being a writer of fiction is the ability to think "What if?" but at times that ability can be a curse!

And for those of you who are following the growth of a cactus flower, here is today's photo. The bud is a centimetre longer than yesterday - about the length of my thumb now.
We haven't much longer to wait.

JUST A QUICKIE

No, not that kind of quickie!

This was how our cactus looked on May 13th when we first noticed it was in bud.
I planned to take a photo every day to watch its progress, but it's  been slower than usual this year so these photos are several days apart.

I don't know what happened to the bud on the left. Maybe the community handyman knocked it off. Possibly a cat is to blame, in which case I hope it spent the rest of the day getting the spikes out of its paw! The bud itself may have given up the ghost. We shall never know.





But then, lo and behold, another bud appeared on another head.
This was on a cloudy day, believe it or not - we have had more of those than usual this year, and at the end of May we expect wall to wall sunshine.


                                                                                                                    This morning we finally have some movement! I was hoping they would all come out at once, which would be spectacular, but it seems we shall get them one at a time.
Not everyone will be enthralled by the growth of a cactus flower, so if I'm boring you, may I direct you to some of my other posts that are not entirely on one subject? Thank you for bearing with me.

QUE CALOR!

We have another calima - fine dust that blows in from Africa. It reduces visiiblity, sometimes to such an extent that Mt Teide disappears, it clogs up the sinuses, makes the eyes smart, and sends the temperature soaring. On our terrace at ten this morning it was already 36F.
It's not only people that droop in that kind of heat, especially when it descends so suddenly. My morning walk took me past this beautiful jacaranda tree, the blossom from which is already dropping in the heat, creating a mauve carpet.

There was one lone man in the pool at nine o'clock, but by eleven it was full of shrieking children making the most of their fathers' one day off work. This afternoon will probably be the turn of the learners. The locals teach their children to swim before they can walk and ignore their screams. At first I was horrified, but after years of witnessing this method I have seen that it works. Before the season is over they will be diving in without armbands, but the first few weeks are heart-rending to listen to.

And in our garden a cactus is beginning to flower. Last year it managed three flowers at once, but this morning there were six buds. At the moment they are only marble-sized, but I shall take a photo every day to show how they grow. As they say - watch this space!.

XENOPHOBIA & XEROPHYTE

What we have here is the Tenerife flag behind the Spanish one, to illustrate my point that if you dislike foreigners, Tenerife is not the place for you. For one thing, XENOPHOBES would find it hard to accept that they – in fact anyone other than the native Canarians – are the foreigners here, including the mainland Spanish.

Being an island a long way from Europe we attract more than our share of people evading the law, and that tends to colour our attitudes. A lot of drugs come from Columbia, so we are wary of Columbians. Many muggings are perpetrated by Rumanians, so they all get tarred with the same brush. The area around the Home for young unaccompanied illegal immigrants is plagued with robberies, so any black face up there is suspect.  The Russian crime lords and Italian mafia have toe-holds here, so we mistrust those people, and cheered when we heard that a gang of 30 was flown to the mainland for trial recently..

And yet, at the last count, we had friends and neighbours from – in alphabetical order - Africa, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, England, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Venezuela and Wales. We have been to an Italian christening, a Spanish First Communion, a Scottish wedding, an Irish St Patrick’s Day bash, and our Venezuelan friends have invited us to several barbecues, more than one Christmas dinner, and a wedding.

There was a restaurant in our town that has had many tenants, none of whom lasted long. The owner was a crook who doubled the rent as soon as each hopeful began to show a profit. He also pocketed the tenants’ money for electricity while running an illegal wire from the community supply. He was notorious, and he was also from La Gomera. When his wife divorced him and took over the building, no-one was sorry – El Gomeron had got his comeuppance. He’d be just as crooked if he was local, but he gives all Gomerons a bad name, and they're regarded as backward anyway, just because their island is smaller than Tenerife.

We can all be racist in small ways without realizing. The one African watch seller who is too pushy puts you off them all. The table-cloth hawker whose nimble fingers steal cash out of your purse makes all of them robbers. The  Spanish boys who ripped my friend’s handbag off her shoulder in broad daylight have made her wary of all such groups. A Canarian who hates all tourists and makes it obvious can spoil your impression of the entire population.

I was reading in a local paper that El Fraile, a village a few kilometres from us, has seventy different nationalities. Xenophobes there would expire of apoplexy.

And years ago we visited a Ugandan friend who had just had her second baby. “He’s lovely,” we said. “He’s the wrong colour,” she replied. “What do you expect – white babies?” I asked. “No – he’s too black, like his grandfather.”

 It’s not only white people who are prejudiced.

XEROPHYTE refers to any plant that can reduce its water loss during dry periods and/or has a system of water storage – such as cacti and succulents, of which we have thousands in Tenerife.

The prickly pears that you see growing wild used to be cultivated for the cochineal beetle they support and many of them still belong to someone. The fruit is edible but be warned - you need thick gloves to pick it unless you want to be removing tiny spines for days. I find the taste insipid, but they’re full of vitamins and thirst-quenching in an emergency.

Another xerophyte that’s good for you is aloe vera, which the Cabildo often use to decorate the roadsides. The juice is good for the digestion and soothes sunburn instantly. It can be squeezed straight from a leaf – I’ve seen locals picking them from the town gardens. Of course you can save yourself the bother and buy refined aloe vera products – my daughter sells them in several hotels on the island.

The cacti that look like a set of organ pipes are protected in Tenerife – like trees might be in an English town. When our road was due to be up-graded the Cabildo sent a team of specialists to build a protective wall round one. It was a lovely wall – a real work of art. Pity the new road is several metres above it.

Cacti don’t flower very often but when they do they go all out. A twenty foot cactus dotted with huge flowers is quite a sight, and the last time there was a flower on our cactus the community cleaner called her friends to take photos. ¡Que bonita!