Next Time, A Fern

Spring7 has an incredible imagination and comes up with many plans and ideas. Most of these ideas and don't go anywhere. For example, he thought he might like a hawk for a pet so he could walk around with it on his arm. Keep in mind that he's terrified of large birds that swoop around. I think he just liked the idea of how badass he'd look walking around with a hawk on his little arm. Then a neighbor emailed us a picture of a hawk sitting on her playset eating a fresh bird. Out of concern for his little brothers, the idea of falconry as a hobby went out the window.

One of his most recent grand thoughts was that he wanted a cactus. If you say, "A what?!" you won't be the first. After all, this is the child who sprayed himself in the eye with air freshener because he was curious about how it came out of the can. (Yes, he's fine. It hurt ALOT and he smelled like pumpkin spice for a couple days but he's fine.) We decided just to ignore the cactus idea to see if it went away.

It didn't. We made a deal that if Spring7 helped clean out his room...going through old toys, clothes, papers etc. and cleared a safe spot for a cactus, we would get him one. He worked and worked and got everything done. Spring7 assured Mike that Home Depot sold cactus plants and off they went.

They proudly returned with a $3 cactus named Spikey. He had two long arms made of a bunch of round spike covered pieces. The pot was wobbly because the arms were so long but I really wasn't ready to tackle the repotting of a cactus. Within the first 24 hours, Spring7 had been poked in the fingers a couple times and once in the mouth (haven't figured that one out yet!).

Then the first crisis, as Spring7 watched me, I picked up Spikey to think more about the pot situation. While I'm looking at the pot, one of Spikey's arms fell off and broke into 5 or 6 spike covered balls and rolled all over the floor. Spring7 yelled, "You killed Spikey!!" We cleaned up Spikey's parts but now he was really wobbly. A few days later, Spring7 found Spikey on the ground, dirt and spike covered pieces everywhere. He's still with us and is much more manageable now as he's just a small pot with three ground level spike covered balls.

I suspect Spring7 wants something to care for but next time we'll go for something a little more leafy. Hey, maybe that could be the new plant's name...Leafy!