That's me. I've never tried to grow cactus, but I have a jade plant. It's a succulent, so does that count? When I bought it, it was about two inches high. Within the first year, it grew to about a foot and half and about that wide, too. This plant is known in feng shui as the "money plant" and it's supposed to be tied into your finances. When it does bad, your finances do bad and vice versa. I must admit, when I bought it and it took off growing, my finances were doing well. Then I decided one summer that it would enjoy the outdoors...it didn't. It lost leaves and I got laid off. Since then, it's done fairly well, but hasn't ever really come back from its bad experience outside. And neither have I. I've seriously started to wonder about this feng shui stuff...I'm gonna have to start babying that plant.

Last year I discovered that for some reason I can grow jalapeno plants. Right now, I have a huge bag of jalapeno peppers from the one plant on my patio that refuses to hibernate over the winter. Ordinarily speaking, they lose their leaves and you have to cut them back practically to the ground. Then in spring, they jump right back into action. But this one plant...we call him Miguel...hasn't dropped leaves at all in the three years we've had him. He's grown to be nearly as tall as I am and produces peppers all year long. It's very weird. It's 34 degrees outside and Miguel decides to put out flowers....go figure.

I also grow Bougainvillea. I really like that plant, especially the purple ones. Took me forever and a lot of poor murdered plants to figure out how to grow them, but now I've got it down pretty good. Fortunately, I figured out laurel trees on the first try. And I have this one lemon tree that won't grow, but won't die. Still, it smells good about this time of year.

Indoors...bamboo. Lots of bamboo, philodendrons, closet plants, one Hawaiian Schefflera, and for color kalanchoe. I really like fuschia, but they can't survive Texas heat outdoors and I haven't learned how to grow them indoors yet. I'm still experimenting, but that means the Plant Killer is at it again!! Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!