Cactus surprise

 I was never so surprised as when someone offered me some prickly pear cactus fruit.  I guess I just figured prickly pear where just in the USA.  But to my surprise there are lots of prickly pear and other cactus in South Africa.

 Elder Edington and I go walking for exercise.  Sometimes we go to this big open field that has lots and lots of trails that we can follow.  We were not so surprised to see the prickly pear cactus because we had been told, but we were surprised to see so many.  Some of the fruit is dark reddish purple when it is ripe and some is green when it is ripe.  I have seen prickly pear fruit in more than one store.

When we were walking we were amazed to find prickly pears with such large pads.  Look how big it is compared to Elder Edington's hand.

 You can image our surprise when we went to Kimberly yesterday and on the way we saw a prickly pear farm.  Who would have known.

It totally makes since to have prickly pear farms, but we had just never seen one before.  What wonderful things we are learning.  They also have big plants that look like agave and century plants.  There are  lots of aloe vera plant as well.   I am surprised how many of the plants and flowers are the same here as at home.