Wednesday is Auction Day!

My small village comes alive on Wednesdays.  First of all, we have the Gentner Auction on Wednesdays.  This is a unique mix of farmer's market, flea market, and auction house all rolled into one.  On a nice day, people come from miles away simply to experience an old fashioned country market day. Secondly, since so many people come into town on Wednesday, locals have found that this is the best day for yard sales.  Every Wednesday, all through the summer, there are a dozen or more yard sales where bargain shoppers can find almost anything for very little money. I rarely pay full price for my craft supplies or books; I just buy from my neighbors:)

Today, I was more interested in Gentner's auction.  The heat and the dry weather have finally gotten to my hanging pots of pansies.  Even though I watered them every day, I wasn't surprised that they couldn't get through the whole summer.  It's just too hot. They lasted longer than I expected, and actually the pansies at the front door and in the flower beds still look good. But I needed something new for the hanging pots.  I found 2 nice pots of wave petunias at the auction for $4.00 each.  Can't beat that.  I brought them home and quickly replaced pansies with petunias.

You never know what you'll discover in this village on Wednesday, and today was no exception.  One of the landscape venders had a prickly pear cactus for sale.  Just for fun, I asked him about it. My parents live in Southern Texas, and their yard is full of prickly pear cactus.  I assumed that it could never survive our western NY winter outside, but the seller claimed otherwise.  He said he had removed it from a pool area not far from here, and that it was so hardy it did not need to be brought inside for winter.  I'm not sure I believe it, but for only $10 I'm willing to take a chance. So into the trunk it went.

I decided to plant it on the west side of the house.  It's hard to get plants to grow here.  The soil is dry and well-drained.  It gets the afternoon sun.  Unfortunately, it also gets the wind of the winter storms. I'll be sure to mulch it well come fall.  Now comes my stupid moment. (Well, my husband shared the same stupid moment.) I got the leather gloves out, dug the hole, and then asked my husband for help getting it out of the pot.  He sent me for shears to cut the plastic pot.  Meanwhile, he decided that he could just dump it gently out.  By the time I got back, he had it in the hole.  I turned it slightly, patted it in, and brushed off the extra dirt.  Did either of us put on the leather gloves?  NO!  It didn't seem prickly.  The new growth was soft and supple. About 2 minutes later we both noticed the iching.  We washed; we used tape and tweezers, but the almost microscopic spines will be torturing us for the rest of the day!

Here's some prickly pear facts.  I'm still not convinced it will survive in western NY.  Time will tell.

"Prickly pear cacti typically grow with flat, rounded platyclades that are armed with two kinds of spines; large, smooth, fixed spines and small, hairlike spines called glochids, that easily penetrate skin and detach from the plant. Many types of prickly pears grow into dense, tangled structures.

Like all true cactus species, prickly pears are native only to the Western hemisphere; however, they have been introduced to other parts of the globe. Prickly pear species are found in abundance in Mexico, especially in the central and western regions. They are also found in the Western United States, from arid regions in the Northwest, throughout the mid and lower elevations of the Rocky Mountains, and especially in the Southwest. Prickly pears are also the only types of cactus natively found to grow far east of the Great Plains states, as far northeast as Long Island, where it can be found in Northport.

Opuntia are the most cold-tolerant of the lowland cacti, extending into western and southern Canada; one subspecies, Opuntia fragilis var. fragilis, has been found growing along the Beatton River in central British Columbia, southwest of Cecil Lake at 56° 17’ N latitude and 120° 39’ W longitude.^[2] Prickly pears also produce a fruit that is commonly eaten in Mexico, known as "tuna"; it also is used to make aguas frescas. The fruit can be red, wine-red, green or yellow-orange." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia)