X is for Xerophytes

    The dictionary says that a xerophytes is a plant which is adapted to survive in the desert like a cactus.    When I was about 12 or 13 my family took a trip to Colorado and just across the border into Nevada.  On that trip my mom found some lovely cactus along side the highway growing wild.  She decided she had to have it and dug up some starts and brought them back to Indiana with her.  She planted them outside the back door where they thrived until my Dad decided to mow them down one year after she died.

      My mom often complained that my Dad didn't know a weed from a flower because once he climbed onto his lawn tractor he mowed down everything  in his path.  I have vivid memories of her chasing his lawn mower yelling all matters of obscenities and waving her hands in exasperation.  She called him every name in the book when he was mowing down her precious flowers.  After he let her chase him a bit he would stop the tractor and scream "What?"  My Dad had selective hearing.  If he chose to he couldn't hear a mouse fart.

     It seems I went off on a tangent again reminiscing when all I really planned to share was a picture of a xerophytes specimen that I photographed.