At our English conversation schools 英会話 we’ve done a great job keeping our places comfortable and one of the ways I’ve done that at my Smith’s School of English Franchise in Kotoen スミス英会話 甲東園 is to grow lots of plants and take really good care of them.
Recently I’ve had remarkable success with a tiny cactus plant that both clones itself and makes flowers, so it reproduces both sexually and asexually. The trouble is that it very rarely does either unless the conditions are just right, meaning tons of sunshine, low humidity, no water and just the right amount of handling.
What makes this little plant particularly touching is its incredible physical delicacy, and at the same time the enormous resilience it possesses to survive and even thrive in very harsh surroundings. Just lightly touching it in the most benign way can cause it drop flowers, discard spines and even discard its much needed fruit that appears so very rarely. At the same time touching also seems to help it pollinate its flowers. It’s favorite place is right in the hottest sun, a place that gets no breeze, no moisture – even the insects stay away.
Once it flowers, and evidence of it can be clearly seen in this picture, it produces one or more little red fruits, and quite voraciously, too. It’s really surprising since it is so incredibly rare unless the conditions are exactly optimal. The plants at my Kotoen English Conversation school 甲東園 英会話 甲東園校 have become rather famous and are often talked about. That of course goes for the ones inside that I have adopted, but also for the range of greenery outside that the building owner takes some pride in. There are tons of seasonal flowers around including azaleas and lilies, and a dogwood that attracts giant colorful spiders every year too!
Martin Werner Zander
マーティン・ワーナー・ザンダー
Smith’s School in Kotoen 月謝制 A Real Monthly Tuition School
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