Flashback Friday

Sunday morning, with border collie and barrels.

A kind and extraordinarily generous neighbor gave me this humongous golden barrel (Echinocactus grusonii) last week. To say I was flabbergasted doesn't even come close. "Are you sure? Are you sure?" He was. His dear wife — she passed away a year ago — had brought this cactus home when it was smaller than a grapefruit, had looked after it for decades, and my neighbor wanted it to go to a good home. I was moved and honored. You can see what wonderful care this barrel has received: it lived in (increasingly large) pots, sheltered from rain and snow, with filtered sun in the morning and shade in the afternoon, until it grew so big that its size and spines became a hazard. 

So how do you move a 200+ lb barrel cactus? Believe it or not, we didn't even need gloves. Three men and yours truly used a dolly to get this beautiful barrel into my yard and settled in its new pot, and we were able to do it because I'd had the opportunity to watch a master cactus-mover at work.

Rob Roy MacGregor is a Riverside plantsman and cactus maven, and back in April I watched Rob (with cactus fanatics Aaron and Paul) move big barrels like this one into the bed of Aaron's truck, using not much more than a long piece of old shade cloth. Rob puts the shade cloth around the barrel, and uses the loose ends to maneuver the barrel without risking life and limb, and without harming the cactus. It works! Two strong men with shovels had tried and failed to budge this beauty toward a wheelbarrow (never mind into the wheelbarrow) after it fell out of its old pot, but with shade cloth in hand, we moved it to my place with the dolly, potted it in its new, 24-inch container (with an essential plant caddy), and then potted up another barrel at my neighbor's. Note to self: always keep old shade cloth handy.

Before it came to my yard, this cactus lived for years in a big container at my neighbor's house, in dirt. Not potting mix or cactus soil with pumice added — just native clay soil. Wish I'd thrown a few handfuls into the current container.

So now the girl who swore she'd never have a golden barrel has four of them, three little ones and a very, very big golden barrel, all in my very, very small backyard. "Don't be afraid to use big objects in small spaces," right? One more photo, with Jasper yawning and stretching: 

I'm not in the habit of giving names to plants. Anyhow: golden barrels Huey, Louie, and Dewey are in the background. I'd kind of like to call the new guy Jonathan Gold, because he is blond and on the round side and sharp as a tack and thoroughly awesome. 

(Both these photos were first posted on my Instagram account. Here's a link.)