Yesterday I had to go somewhere and on my way to the destination, I spotted this cacti greenhouse. It was like finding a piece of uncut diamond in the dirt as you don't see something like this every day. I did something similar in Paris years ago, when I spotted a gorgeous garden and could not resist taking a few photos.
This one was in a courtyard of a museum, the gate was open, so you can imagine what I did 😁 My first thought was to go in, take a bunch of photos and get out as quickly as possible. Nowadays there are cameras everywhere, you don't know who's watching you 👀. So that is what I did. Got in the courtyard, took a bunch of photos, tried to open the greenhouse door, which was locked (obviously), then I got out. No one shouted at me, no one ran after me, so so far it's ok.
The Greenhouse
The greenhouse is not big, it's smaller than a house, but it is full of goodies.
Having a look inside made me realize what a treasure this place is. The cacti you find here are very interesting and of different species. Each pot has a label with the name of the cactus, which I could not see, nor take photos of it as that would have been possible only from inside.
Look at these hairy ones, aren't they interesting? I've never seen anything similar to these so far.
The table in the middle was full of these long cacti and some small ones too.
There seem to be an aloe vera in there, which is not common here but not rare either. We have these in pots, inside during winter as they can't resist low temperature.
I guess I would have taken a thousand photos if the door would have been open, to have for myself and earn each species. I bet some of these can be found at thee nursery, but there are others that must be rare. In this photo there on that is starting to open some nice ed flowers.
The Garden
There wasn't just the cacti greenhouse here. There was a very interesting garden as well.
What surprised me here was to see so many green plants this time of the year. Apart from some grass and weeds, there's not much green outside. My knowledge of plants is limited, but even so, I was able to identify these and got the confirmation when I smelled the leaves.
This was lavender. The flowers are long gone, but the leaves also smell like lavender, so it's hard to miss or confuse it with something else.
This was a species of eucalyptus. I suppose there are hundreds of species, variants, so this definition may be a bit vague but the leaves had a menthol fragrance, a nice one actually.
The whole place was like a puzzle to me. There was no description of anything, so I tried to figure it out what I was looking at. I loved these beams on the ground and slices of wood. Also there was a lot of tree bark in one of the "boxes".
Corn cobs and pine cone, although I'm not sure the one on the left of the photo is called that. I was wondering why were these brought here, and the only explanation I could come up with was that this is like recycling, or a natural cycle and that's what they wanted to create here. After the corn is harvested, the cob is thrown away, if not burnt, but in the old days, these cobs were used to heat the house or the oven in which bread was made. The pine cones are falling down when the time comes.
I'd love to see more gardens like this but lack of space and funds make it impossible. I guess I'm going to go back and visit this one again sometime during summer next year. Would love to see what they will be growing.
