killer cacti

So one of the things that we disliked very much about out front yard is the giant cactus in the center. It is an odd sight. We decided early on to dig up that old cacti and replace it with redwood trees. Because really who doesn't like redwood trees? Even Mr. House who insists ever tree bear fruit or nuts wanted the redwood.

The other benefit to planting redwoods is that we have a seemingly endless (and free) supply from my family who lives in the Santa Cruz mountains. This past weekend we decided would be a good time to obtain our first redwood tree. I don't have any pictures of the process because we were running late for a wedding, but needless to say we had our pick of the trees.

We shopped around their property for the right height tree, with the right number of branches and the right thickness of trunk. We found it a little ways out in the back or front of their house (depending on who you ask). We dug it out and put it with some more dirt and water in a garbage bag then loaded it in the back of the empty van. It fit perfectly! Then we got ready and drove to the wedding where our new tree waited patiently for us to return.

After some delicious cake and a little dancing we returned to the car and drove home. We arrived home just before 8:00 and began digging our hole right away. The ground seemed really hard and we soon realized that there was a layer of gravel on the top. Once we got under that layer we thought we were home free, only to find another layer of gravel, this time about a foot deep. Poor Mr. House kept on digging and eventually he dug through all the gravel and quite a few random roots. We plopped our new tree and some new dirt in the ground next to the cactus for now because we didn't have the time to transplant the cactus it into a pot, nor a pot to transplant it in to. Soon we hope to dig up the cactus and get two more redwood friends.