07-2006 Irja´s Cactus
Birthday Cake Cactus
Cut in 1994
2nd
Anita Nilsson, Lund, Sweden
In 1975 Anita (then 25 years old) visited her aunt Irja in Hyvinkää north of Helsinki, Finland. Irja lived alone in a small flat and was about to throw the cactus away because it apparently never blossomed and was taking too much space. Anita likes cactuses and when she was told Irja got the cactus as a gift from an admirer in the 1930s she wanted to save it and brought it back to southern Sweden. You see, Irja never got married and was very secretive about any love life. Getting a small glimpse of this part of her life through the cactus made it very special. When the cactus moved to Gårdstånga, to a small house in the countryside with Anita and her boyfriend Mats, it blossomed already the first spring because of its new, sunny window spot. In 1982 it moved with the Nilssons to the small village of Södra Sandby where it stayed in the same window and grew really tall and crooked. In 1994 it had actually grown too big for its own good and was thrown out. Luckily it had produced a number of offsprings taken care of by Anita. One was given to her sister Rigmor in Laholm, Sweden, and four was kept by Anita herself. One went to the summerhouse in Skummeslöv and three now lives in the same pot in a flat in Lund where they moved in 1995. One of these is now for sale in the Vintage Plant market.
When Irja pasted away in 1996 Anita for the first time got to look inside of Irja's golden charm that she always wore around her neck. Inside there was a picture of a young man. Could this be the love of her youth, the admirer who gave her the cactus?
The mother plant in Anita´s living room, S.Sandby, 1990s.
Irja in her living-room in Hyvinkää, 1980s.
Irja in the 1930s, by the time she was given the original plant.