Today started off with one my favorite weekend meals – the giant pancake from 5 Points Market & Restaurant. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach, and I can never finish it (although it’s super tasty). I’m not sure what they do it, but its insanely delicious – like, tastier than any other pancake. I’m guessing it might have something to do with the fact that its drizzled with clarified butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and served with real maple syrup. YUM!

The funny thing about this photo is a actually the small plate of eggs and bacon in the back. Most people would probably assume those were my side dishes to go with the pancake. Nope, that was Kirk’s entire breakfast. You can tell which of us is really into breakfast based on this photo. Although let’s be real, Kirk ended up eating a good third of this pancake… so I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad for being a carb-a-holic.

In other news, after breakfast Kirk and I went back to EcoGro (second weekend in a row!) to check out their selection of pots. I’ve added some great new plants to my collection the last few weekends, and I’ve been meaning to do some general repotting as well (some plants have started to outgrow their current homes). So my mom and I went on a mission for some pots and had some great success. Although this was the first weekend when we’ve had triple-digit temperatures (105F or so), I decided to plow ahead this afternoon and repot a few of the plants.

Enter in my gymnocalycium pflanzii v. albipulpa:

One of the plants that needed a new, larger home was my gymnocalycium pflanzii v. albipulpa, which I bought from EcoGro about a little over a year ago. It is a fabulous cactus (and I miraculously haven’t killed it yet) and it flowers consistently – last year and this year I’ve gotten 4-7 flowers – sometimes 2-3 will bloom at once, but more often than not one bud will blossom, and then a few days later another one will open.

This is a photo of the bud that has been opening and closing the last few days (and you can actually see a new bud starting to form – it’s the purplish/pinkish bump forming on the cactus lower and to the left of the mature flower blossom):

Here’s what the flower looks like when it’s open:

It’s a beautiful cactus with generally green flesh that will start to turn more of an orangish color with tints of purple around the rib lines as the weather heats up (which you can sort of see starting to happen in these photos – especially now that the weather is warming up into the triple-digits).

Happy desert gardening!