The Cactus Trip Diaries

As last Sunday, Eunice was occupied with church during the morning, so I had a nice relaxing time googling for information on pottery matters after acquiring pots at San Gabriel’s CSS meeting and at the San Diego Sales yesterday. If they were not so heavy and potentially fragile, I’d buy some more at the two presentations yet to do, or….. find potters with similar products in the UK or …….. discover how to make them myself.

The only flower pots for sale in the UK and found in the top 20 Google pages were for mass produced pots in garden centres and general stores. So, I need to make some visits to craft markets once I’m back in the UK. Then I remembered that Angie used to go to pottery classes before we met, some 15 years ago. Are there pottery classes in Amesbury?

After a slice of Apple Pie and cinnamon ice cream, we went to the coast where Eunice wanted two show me some more Dudleya, D. stolonifera. It turned out to be a bit of a disaster. As we approached the coast, our average speed reduced to around 15 mph as others also wanted to see the sea and the sun.

The first spot was an old Reid Moran spot that is now a ‘wilderness site’ with so many negative signs: no dogs, no smoking, no trespassing off the track, no enjoying yourselves etc etc that I suggested moving on to an alternative site. The only sign that was missing was ‘no photography’. But I bet that if we had seen any of the plants, say, growing five feet away from the track, it would have been impossible to have taken the pictures we wanted without breaking the law. Reid Moran, you were very lucky to have seen them when you did!

Rather than persevere in this unwelcoming environment (no doubt necessary in this densely populated part of the world) we decided to get back to the car park (US$2 car park charge) and move on the spot #2. This was at a golf course and Eunice had last been here some seven years ago. A lot had changed. There were building works going on at the small car park where we should have parked, had it not been for the ‘no parking’ signs due to the building work in progress (although not during President’s Weekend). They were rebuilding the bridge we would have had to cross and the hillside where the plants were expected to grow was in deep shade, not the best for photography. As we got back on the coast road, the camanchaca was coming in – just like in Chile. Dudleya are definitely ‘fog zone’ plants.

On the way home we stopped off at a REI, a large leisure wear shop with everything from hiking to cycling to mountaineering to water sports gear. I’m looking for a suitable bag to bring the pots and books home – not really a sport, and although some bags would have done the job, at the prices on the ticket, I prefer to take a look at Costco’s another day.

We had a Chinese at Ming in Bellflower before I was fighting my eye lids around 9.