My cactuses, if you please!

My cactuses, if you please!

The less attention you pay to the cactus, the greater is your reward. This is an ideal plant for my kind of a grower and breeder. I am a proud owner of a Cactus Ranch measuring approximately 10 by 22 meters, being advantageously located approximately at the geometrical center of Ostrava. It is a splendid parcel of land, bordered by the Hornbach building supply store; a four-lane highway; and the Svinov train station. Here we find a greenhouse, which happens to be quite windy and, from to time, also quite cold. In the greenhouse, my cactuses. Hundreds of them. Cactuses from Chile, Peru, Mexican miniatures, cactuses from Brazil… The plant Lophophora („drunken head“) grows in northern Mexico. It contains the narcotics mescaline. The plant is worshiped as the God Peyote. Haven't tried it yet myself. At our latitude it grows very slowly and the only effect it has is that you got to go Number Two more often. Winding around the greenhouse we find the grape vine. I guess I am the founder of the hiking and wine tasting trail, the „Hornbach Way“. So far, nobody else joined. In the Fall, the starling go on the attack. But I outsmarted them. For the opening of my photography exhibit „Lords' First Supper – Old MacDonald Had a Farm“, I prepared a stack of CD's with my portfolio – but then I forgot to hand them out. So I hung them on the branches, all over the grape vine. The birds didn't appreciate this, and so that year the grape harvest was huge! The wine itself – supreme delicacy. It has everything that an Ostrava vintage should have, that is, all those things that they don't have any anywhere else and what we, in Ostrava, can be „proud of“. Those are the things that other vintners, even the French ones, can just envy us:

nitrogen – 78,09% oxygen – 20,95% argon – 0,93% carbon dioxide – 0,033% neon – 0,0018% helium – 0,000524% methane – 0,0002%, krypton – 0,000114% hydrogen – 0,00005% xenon – 0,0000087% ostraon – x%

Oh, and yes, also huge amounts of ash, dust, smog, exhaust gasses and, needless to say, no sun. For god's sake, for Peyote's sake, please keep the sun out!!! Just come on down and taste it for your self.

Jaroslav Malík photographer, teacher, cyclist, cactus grower, and the like