The 18th biennial Mid States Conference was held in Santa Fe this year, a destination I am somewhat familiar with, and it’s reasonably close to home. So off I went Friday, July 26, to enjoy the city, eat a little prime Southwest-style Mexican  food, learn some new things, and try not to buy an unreasonable number of unusual and seldom seen cactus and succulents. Here’s how it went.

I made the trip with no problem, checked into the hotel, and drove down to the plaza, only to find it covered up with people and cars there for the Spanish Market that takes place every summer. Parking was nonexistent, but I could have paid $30 for the day at a parking lot I knew about. Well, considering the day was about over by then, I decided to take my chances elsewhere. I moseyed down Marcy Street at about five miles an hour and lucked out as a man was getting into his vehicle to leave right in front of me. So of course, I stopped in the street and waited for him to leave and slipped into his spot! Then I had to ask a local for help making the blasted parking meter work with a credit card. But we got it done, and I ambled down the street and over to East Palace Avenue to eat at The Shed, a restaurant I had been told was a good place to eat. Didn’t have to wait but thirty minutes for a table, not very long considering the crowd of people waiting in front of me. I ordered a dinner plate with an enchilada, a baked taco-new to me-beans and posole’, not in soup, just on the plate, also new to me. Everything was made with blue corn tortillas, which was no problem, but a piece of garlic toast came with the meal, another new concept in Mexican food for me! The food was tasty and spicy, but I wasn’t crazy about that baked taco.

I took Old Santa Fe Trail from downtown, which turns into Old Pecos Trail, which took me right to the Santa Fe Women’s Club on Old Pecos Trail, the location of the event. This was an area of town I was not familiar with, but I know now. Sort of.

I was early, so I got to look at the sale tables of plants and pots all by myself.

Before the shopping started,  Woody Minnich, who helped organize the event, gathered up the speakers and vendors for a photo shoot. From the left are vendors Cate McClain, LIsbeth Cort, Jimmy Black, Judy Nelson Moore, Kathy Minnich, Woody Minnich, Donnie Barnett (the man in the back is in charge of drinks!), and Kim Barofsky Thorpe.

Speakers for the event included Mike Hellmann, Steve Plath, Steve Lovecky, Panayoti Kelaidis, Woody MInnich, and Doug Dawson.

Cactus people like to be first in line to pick their favorite new plants, so a raffle is always held as a means of letting some people get a head start buying the really cool plants. People buy tickets and then tickets are drawn one by one and about ten  ticket holders gets to go in first and shop to their heart’s content before everyone else is allowed in the shopping area. My ticket has yet to be drawn, but I still manage to get the plants I want. So far, anyway.

The next day, Saturday, serious shopping was going on, and I managed to find a couple of plants I couldn’t live without before  finding my seat near the front in the auditorium.

The first talk by Panayoti Kelaidis, “Succulents Outdoors in Cold Climates,” displayed many rock gardens in a variety of cold climates in the U,S.and other countries.

Mike Hellmann was next to talk about how to grow things in your environment and climate when they don’t match the native climate of the plant you want to grow. He showed some graphs of the high and low temperatures through all seasons in countries where many cacti and succulents occur naturally, Mexico, South Africa, Madagascar, and South America, all of which showed little change from highs and lows, as compared to places in the U.S. where the temperature ranges change drastically over a year’s time. Those graphs were, well, graphically effective! I wish now I had taken pictures of them.

After lunch at Dos Amigos, it was back for the talk by Doug Dawson on succulents of South Africa. According to Doug, South Africa is home to more than forty percent of the world’s succulents. I thought the number was higher, but at any rate, they have more than their fair share of succulents.

Woody Minnich was next with pictures from his trips to Brazil.

After supper at the La Fonda, it was back to the Women’s Club for Steve Lovecky’s talk on Big Bend.

The auction of show plants and pots and other things cactus-related came next. I bid on a few plants but won no bids. Probably just as well since I bought more from the sale tables that I had intended to in the beginning.

Sunday morning Steve Plath told us about bats and their dependence on agaves for nectar and their subsequent impact on pollination of a variety of other plants as well. Many agaves that feed the Mexican long-nosed bats are disappearing and the Bat Conservation International is working to restore those on the bats’ migration route.

The conference wrapped up after Steve’s bat talk, so I headed out for El Dorado to see the Cactus Rescue Project.  A young man named John “Obie” Obenhausen had a vision to protect the endangered Santa Fe cholla, Cylindropuntia viridiflora, affectionately now referred to as Obie cholla, and to rescue cactus that would be lost at construction sites and other places where loss of habitat is an issue. When I drove up, the garden I saw turned out to be the young garden of the project; so it was unfinished but showed signs of great design.

The original garden, however, was chocked full of plants that were of size and stature! This one is what Obie had started before he died of cancer in 2022. Now a group of volunteers who started with Obie are continuing the mission and taking care of both gardens.

I enjoyed spending over an hour there, and they sent me home with a cutting of the Obie cholla for my garden, along with a couple of loose pads of two different Opuntia fragilis for my garden.

So it was time to head home. I stopped at Clines Corners for a rest stop and Subway sandwich, took a picture of New Mexico landscape at a rest stop on I-40, and made it home with my treasures from the conference. The new astrophytum had bloomed on my way home.

The weekend being over, now I have the fun job of planting my cuttings and potting my purchases.

What a deal!