What is something you wish you had known sooner?

 If only I knew this sooner, I would have saved myself from embarrassment in front of a lady. You see, lately, I have taken an interest in gardening. My mom basically started this and gradually, I am taking interest as well and helping her maintain it. We currently have a little more than 50 plants in our home including both indoor and outdoor plants.

We have two cactus plants at home. From my childhood, I have picturised cactus as a thorny plant that has a long and thick stem, some branches may be and there are thorns all over its body. I was surprised to see leaves growing out of the two cactus plants!

In my school, I had learnt that cactus grows in deserts where there is water scarcity. So in order to prevent water loss by transpiration, cactus don’t have leaves but thorns. This helps them to retain water. The fact that it can have leaves was a shock to me, rather than a surprise!

I have a friend online who shares a similar interest in gardening. I am in a Facebook group actually which is related to gardening and that is how I know her. So we kinda exchange gardening tips and new plants that we planted. So I clicked these two pictures of my two cactus plants and wanted to share them with her.

I tried to increase the suspense as I thought it would be a surprise for her as well. I mentioned that there had been an astonishing discovery in my garden and that she will be shocked to see it. But when I shared the pictures with her, she was like “Bleh!” Apparently, this is a very common thing to have leaves for cactus plants. She further added that they can also have little yellow leaves too and that is pretty common with certain species of cactuses. She laughed at my excitement of seeing cactus leaves and pulled my leg and I was left embarrassed.

I showed them to my mom too and apparently, she was aware of it as well. If only I knew this sooner or at least had shown the plants to mom first before boasting in front of my online friend, I wouldn’t have been left embarrassed. She must now be thinking that I know nothing about plants or gardening, which in a way, is kinda true though.