Cacti Cocktail Hour

During the holiday season, I attended a fun little Christmas get-together and a fellow attendee brought one of the most clever gifts for the hostess... it was a flower pot full of cacti and succulents the woman had gathered from her garden! 

While talking to her about her cacti, I learned how easy they are to propagate and keep alive. After successfully killing almost half of my patio garden, I kinda wanted to get some cacti.  Low maintenance, little water, few bugs.... sounded like a match made in Heaven! 

Lucky for me, she had the idea for a girls' afternoon, Cacti and Cocktails.  So, a few weekends ago, a few gals piled into a car, headed to her house with our empty pots.... and some wine.... and we got ourselves some cacti!

Before.... my empty pots that at one time had some tomatoes, flowers, and herbs.  I'll blame the freezes for their deaths.....

We had to break some old pots up to put in the bottom of the pots for drainage.

Getting closer....

Starting to clip some cacti arms; after cutting an arm off, the cacti would bleed a white milky substance.  These guys are super spiky and really tough; they were much heavier than I thought!

Ta-daa!!! Here's my first completed pot - it has 4 different plants in it, two pretty spiky guys, a pencil plant that can grow to 8-feet tall and a little gray/purple succulent!

Pot number 2.... 

Close up of the cool succulent. 

All finished.  With wine, and cheese, and dirt, and a few bugs, some spikes, and awesome succulents, we had a really fun time being a little creative and attempting to have a bit of a green thumb. :)

Quick update - when I put these on my porch... the giant stink bugs were there to watch! And they are multiplying... there were 6 in of my plants instead of 4.