Last sum­mer, I searched high and low for a cac­tus with a pink flower that was­n’t fake. And by high and low I mean the local gar­den cen­tres, Ikea and Tesco. 

I found only one. And this one had the tee­ni­est, tini­est bud with a dash of pink. But that bud was real. So I took a chance.

With­in two weeks, this tee­ny, tiny bud of promise dis­ap­peared. Gone. Vanished.

I’m not the most green-fin­gered copy­writer out there and I put it down to arc­tic tem­per­a­tures, cloudy days and every­thing else non-Mex­can-desert in my office. But, nonethe­less, that cac­tus took cen­tre place on my office window.

Fast for­ward six months and this lit­tle beau­ty has blos­somed. We have not just one pink flower, but one pink flower with nine pink buds ready to blos­som. I’m ecstatic.

What’s the moral of the story?

I could spiel out some rub­bish about how you don’t always have to fake it until you make it, and that some­times if the tal­ent is there, a lit­tle per­sis­tence and nur­tur­ing can make that tal­ent blos­som beyond what fak­ing it can.

But the real moral of the sto­ry is: pink flow­ers for the win.