From a 9/16 visit to Stanford’s Arizona Garden — the “cactus garden” in local talk — engineered by my caregiver León Hernández Alvarez (who will be L from here on out), to investigate new things (for him) in the area — so many wonderful places open to the public for free — and to provide me with enjoyment (and useful exercise with my walker).
When we came around a corner of the path from the parking lot, and suddenly faced an alien-planet vista of huge astonishing plants of all sorts, as far as the eye could see in every direction, L gasped in surprise and delight. And close to the ground there were all manner of other plants, every one of them a novelty. Nothing labeled, no information supplied, but I could provide some facts from memory. Though mostly L was being carried away in delight by the visual excess: everywhere you looked, another bit of (mostly dangerous) living magic.
Then, around a corner there was a large garden island populated by cactuses I certainly recognized. “These are called barrel cactuses, for obvious reasons”, I said, but for a few moments he didn’t care what they were called, they were amazing, and in fact adorable. Some of them were arranged in what you could think of as family groups. They were golden-green, with huge spines all over them. Spines so big you could feel them individually, discover they were soft and flexible, but with spear-sharp tips.
Eventually, L looked them up on his phone and discovered that they were, specifically, golden barrel cactuses. From Mexico originally, but in the desert far from the Mexico City region he grew up in.
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