This Week With Jane: My Grandma’s 75-Year-Old Christmas Cactus

Hello, Dear Readers. We made it to March! If you’ve been reading the Gazette for a while, you know I generally love the winter months and find solace in “stopping by woods on a snowy evening.” But this winter has been a tough one in many ways, and I barely got into the woods at all. After being in crisis mode pretty much since November, I’m ready to call it good and see what Spring brings.

We’ve had some warmer days and sunshine, and my weather app says it’ll be in the 30s and 40s this coming week. That’s encouraging. I’ve even bought some seeds and flats (while looking for something else at Menard’s, of course), and I’m thinking about all the flowers and veggies and herbs I’ll be planting in the coming months.

Being a farmer’s daughter, I’ve always had my hands in the dirt since I was a kid, whether it was helping out on the farm or growing herbs and plants on the window sills of my room. After I got married, had kids, and spent much of the last 20 years shuttling back and forth to U of M Hospital in Ann Arbor, I didn’t really have a lot of time to grow things.

After Tim passed four years ago, I started filling up the house with plants, partly for therapy and partly just because I love plants. Now there are plants in every corner of the house. Those 1970s-era macrame hangers are making a comeback around here.

One of those plants is my Grandma Johnson’s 75-year-old Christmas cactus, acquired from my sister-in-law Laura. It seems to bloom at random times throughout the year, so I don’t know if it’s a Christmas cactus or an Easter cactus or just a regular flowering cactus. Anyway, it was a little gnarly when it arrived here, so I split the thing into a half-dozen pots and they all seem to be doing pretty well.

As a kid, I remember seeing it in Grandma’s house across from the Peninsula Fruit Exchange on the corner of Kroupa Road and Peninsula Drive. It was massive at the time, hanging over the edges of a large round table in her living room along with several other plants. I have no idea how it came to be at her house — wish I did!

Grandma’s maiden name was Stella Isabella Smith. She was born in 1887 on the Old Mission Peninsula, and grew up in the hollow off Center Road where Cosgrove’s lived about a mile north of Mapleton. She married the farmer next door, Frank Edgecomb, in 1905, and they had two kids, Fred and Gladys. They ran the farm that’s still in our family, which I now think of as the “home farm.”

After Frank died in WWI, she married Lester Johnson, who was working as their hired hand. They had two kids, my dad Walter and my Uncle Guy. Lester grew up in Kingsley and walked out on the Old Mission Peninsula one day looking for work. If he hadn’t done that, I would not be sitting here telling you about my family history.

Anyway, the memory of Grandma’s flowering cactus looms large in my childhood, and I’m happy to be shepherding it along some 75 years later. By all accounts, she had a lot of challenges in her life, too. Farming on the Old Mission Peninsula in 2026 can be tough to navigate, but try doing it with draft horses and no running water or electricity.

Who knows, maybe taking care of that flowering cactus helped to ease the stress of Grandma’s life, just like it does for me now.

Also this week, I finally got up the courage to look inside the purple bag holding Charley’s ashes that I picked up at Bay Area Pet Hospital a few days after she passed. I was so touched to find a plaster of paris imprint of Charley’s paw with her name on it, along with a keepsake pack of her fur and a certificate of cremation. I also received a beautiful card from Oakwood Veterinary Hospital, where I’d taken her for checkups, signed by all of the staff there.

Everyone has been so kind and caring about her passing, including all of you who’ve kept me in your prayers, sent cards and gifts and mementos, and encouraged me. Thank you, All.

Also, more people have reached out to me about my eye issue and/or who’ve had the vitrectomy eye surgery. Though it’s scary thinking about vision issues, I’m feeling better about everything. I’m doing the anti-inflammatory drops (Prednisolone Acetate and Ketorolac Tromethamine), but can’t say I’ve noticed a difference in my left eye vision.

But I can still see well enough for most things (including writing this), and my surgery is scheduled for April 14. I’m hoping it will help me see better so I can continue rambling on to you guys about my life growing up here on the OMP. I sure appreciate all the info and encouragement.

Also Read…