#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - Bonus
I planted a cactus in 2008. Being it’s Florida, I don’t know why. It was small.
It grew. About 10 arms, straight up, probably 10 feet high.
Don’t have a picture of that.
Back in 2017 or so, we managed to prune off seven of the arms, cut them up and get them in the trash without so much as a single stabbing.
In this picture on the top left above the red car’s windshield, you can still see some of the longer remaining arms.
We decided it was in the wrong place.
Rather than cut and kill it, we thought we’d (ok, I’d) give moving it a try.
If it died, no loss, but why condemn it without a fighting chance…
The spines are not the biggest obstacle - we just cut more of the arms down.
Cactus roots tend to be long and shallow as they seek water. And these were likely entwined with the close by tree roots.
Digging took 4-5 weekends of Saturdays while we worked the pond on Sundays.
It finally gave up its tenacious hold on the earth on Saturday.
Thank goodness there wasn’t a central 10 foot tap root
Before we tried to move it, i dug a hole. (well, I tried)
Coral rock is not your ordinary rock.
It knows what you want to do and where you want to dig.
then it moves underground to be there.
No, not when you start digging, but after you’re a good way down and wide and you’re committed to that hole.
You try to rationalize it. I can move, left, right etc. But what if there’s another rock… There’s just no way to know.
How about poking the ground first? Nope. Guaranteed it’ll be just deeper than you probe, or inches to the left or right.
I did all that. tried left, right, poking and prodding, and with no success, out comes the pinch bar and the sledge hammer.
After about 2 hours of pounding, chipping, beating, etc, I broke off enough of the rock that the hole would work.
There are no pictures of this. Proof enough is my shoulders are still jelly.
With the help our neighbor, Angel, we pull and lever it out of the ground and onto the grass.
We were going to try and get it on the lawn cart but Angel looked at that funny and suggested dragging it. and that worked great.
We rolled it in and stood it up without too much difficulty.
Overall it suffered very little damage.
Now it can stretch out and roam free.
We recovered all the river rock (see the first photo above) and that will go in the channel in the pond.
This will get some sod.
Fin