Cactus delivery

John messaged me recently and asked if we wanted some big columnar Euphorbia ammak (or trigona...?) cacti. I said yes before really thinking it through as usual because John always has the good stuff.

Off we went to John's neighbor's place in Glen Park and lo - two GIGANTIC Euphorbia cacti planted int he ground and needing a new home. And I mean, gigantic. So, of course, we decided to dig them up whole instead of trying to cut them apart and re-root smaller sections because, well... like I said, not thinking things through.

With John's help, Matt and I attached each specimen to a tall ladder for support with bungies and rope, padded with drop cloths, then dug it up, lowered it to the ground, and carried it down a flight of steps (!) to the truck where we had to hoist them onto the roof and tie it down with even more rope. 

Fun times - did you know cacti are mainly water and as such... HEAVY?

Then we drove slowly along back roads (vs the freeway) home to Pacifica to keep speeds down and avoid the beasts falling off the roof. Once home, we enlisted a friend to help unload them onto our driveway - said friend was a bit daunted when he arrived because Matt didn't sufficiently describe the task when asking for help...

The next week we planted the smaller one at our house, and last weekend we managed to hoist the bigger one BACK onto the truck with just the two of us, drive back to the city, and with the help of Josh and Jim we planted it at PG. It is a realistic 15' tall and it was HARD WORK, but it's done and it looks magnificent!

We will keep the guy line on it for quite a while as it didn't have much in the way of roots and needs the support. If it falls over I will cry.