I Am Going To Spend The Day,

playing with cactus,

 firstly I had the one that had grown too large in one of the mini cactus gardens we have,

 and also I wanted to move this one as it too had grown to large,

 as a bonus it had also grown a few smaller ones so I will pot those later,

 in its place one we bought last week at the weekend plant market opposite the Bangkok Pattaya hospital,

 this one also,

 as you can see her was getting a bit to large, so out it went,

 to be replaced by this one we bought at the Petchtamsee cactus nursery yesterday,

and there it is, job done,

Diana bought a mini-mini cactus garden as well,

it has everything, 9 or 10 cactus, plus a few nice pieces of rock work,

whilst playing with them,

I decided to divide up some of the 'buds' that had appeared on some of the plants,

and here is one of the hopefully new cactus,

I used these long tweezers I bought to help with the aquariums,

and a spoon to separate the babies,

and here they are all 5 of them, some with roots already,

I also thought I would try to grow one of these buds,

but both this one,

and this one had to be cut off as they were not growing from the base, also both of these are grafted cactus, so I do not think the buds will take, but I had to give it a try,

back to the large cactus that had out grown their neighbour's, here are the three of them in their new home,

I now thought I would pot the plants that I had removed from their parents, 

so some coconut chips to stop the soil from failing out,

a mixture of soil and aquarium gravel,

and topped off with some of the rounded gravel we have in the other aquarium,

great fun!

I used one of three different toppings,

two we already had from out two aquariums, plus the one we bought yesterday from Petchtamsee,

hot work, so Diana brought us both in two ice coffees,

the new cactus we had bought were going into this pot, the problem was the holes at the bottom of it were huge, so I trimmed the bottom off of two plastic pots to cover them but still let water escape,

all planted in their new home,

a topping of gravel,

and there are our 4 mini cactus gardens and a tray of cuttings,

will the new ones and the cuttings take?

it is a case of wait and see,

the cuttings and buds from the ones that we already have,

on to our new cactus,

the nursery specialises in cactus that are coloured,

so we bought a few of them, this one by the way has really cruel spines,

hopefully they will all grow, sorry the closeups are a bit vague, we are still waiting for Panasonic to call us let us know that our other camera has been repaired,

no sooner had I finished than we were off to the weekend night market on Thepprasit Road,

clear skies looking towards Jomtien,

pretty in pink,

one of the mobile food sellers,

the beauty store open this week,

the good news about going early is that you miss the crowds,

clear skies looking inland,

I decided to take my life in my hands and cross the Thepprasit Road, to go to the aquatic store,

and have a look to see if there might be some aquarium gravel I could use on the cactus pots as dressing, but no luck, or at least nothing that I liked, so back across the road,

behind the bar a secondhand clothes stall and one selling shoes,

a few people by now in the first of the food aisles,

strawberries now in season for fruit drink,

the second food aisle with a few customers,

but not many in the pet section,

sunset over the market,

so far no customers at the bar,

but the ice cream seller had a few,

then he was on his way,

this evening we were joined by Brian and his father Mike here with Cindy, after saying our goodbyes we made a move for home,

after watching, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, we or I should say I had a surprise,

Diana had made a chocolate cake and custard filled profiteroles,

delicious! we watched a couple from Rumpole and then for us we were off to bed.