(no subject)
Some guys mowed our lawn last week (Wednesday? I can't remember) without asking us, and we didn't pay them, and we're not sure who they were. Best guess is they were hired by the landlord or they were just mowing lawns in the area for the city. We have't heard anything from anyone, so who knows? (g) Anyway, it was while I was at work, so I wasn't able to move any of the plants to the porch and so my newer saguaro and the golden barrel got plastered with grass bits.
Sunday I finally had some spare time to go out and gently brush most of the grass away, and noticed something weird apparently caught in the golden barrel's spines. After prodding it very carefully with a small twig, I discovered it was hard -and- buried inside the poor thing. Upon much closer inspection it turned out to be a piece of metal I took to be a -nail- driven into the cactus, likely thrown by the mower, so I went inside to get some pliers and (again, carefully!) pulled it out.
Turned out to be a length of fencing wire about three and a half inches long if it were straightened out. The cactus itself is only about four inches in diameter! This thing had torn an inch-and-a-half gash, then went through the flesh, and poked out very slightly from the other side of the plant. It doesn't seem to have pierced the core, though, and there isn't any leaking fluid. It looks pretty dry and it had already started to callous over.
I'm hoping I didn't make anything worse by pulling the wire out. The cactus -is- leaning, but it's been doing that off and on all summer because the base is a little weak, and otherwise it's green and firm. I've actually watered the plant since the mowing, too, without noticing the injury (it was dark!). Plus, like I said, the wound is dry...
O.o
So far it doesn't look any worse, so here we go.
From this side, doesn't seem bad at all. No cause for alarm. Right?
But here you can see where the penetrating-end of the wire poked out after going through the plant.
And on the other side...This is what it looks like after I pulled out the wire. O.o
Closeups of major damage. It looks more red in there in the camera's flash than it did with my flashlight, but I dunno if it's rust from the wire, normal cactus flesh color or the beginning of rot. Erk. Thing is, as you can see in a couple of these it seems pretty nice and dry in there, or at least not weeping much, and the shallow end of the gash is calloused.
And here is the wire, just less than four inches long if it was straightened out, sitting atop a 20" box fan which measures about 4 inches front-to-back. I forgot to set my ruler down next to the metal for scale so the fan's dimensions will have to do. (g)
The circle indicates how much of the wire was protruding when I discovered it. Poor cactus!
Sunday I finally had some spare time to go out and gently brush most of the grass away, and noticed something weird apparently caught in the golden barrel's spines. After prodding it very carefully with a small twig, I discovered it was hard -and- buried inside the poor thing. Upon much closer inspection it turned out to be a piece of metal I took to be a -nail- driven into the cactus, likely thrown by the mower, so I went inside to get some pliers and (again, carefully!) pulled it out.
Turned out to be a length of fencing wire about three and a half inches long if it were straightened out. The cactus itself is only about four inches in diameter! This thing had torn an inch-and-a-half gash, then went through the flesh, and poked out very slightly from the other side of the plant. It doesn't seem to have pierced the core, though, and there isn't any leaking fluid. It looks pretty dry and it had already started to callous over.
I'm hoping I didn't make anything worse by pulling the wire out. The cactus -is- leaning, but it's been doing that off and on all summer because the base is a little weak, and otherwise it's green and firm. I've actually watered the plant since the mowing, too, without noticing the injury (it was dark!). Plus, like I said, the wound is dry...
O.o
So far it doesn't look any worse, so here we go.
From this side, doesn't seem bad at all. No cause for alarm. Right?
But here you can see where the penetrating-end of the wire poked out after going through the plant.
And on the other side...This is what it looks like after I pulled out the wire. O.o
Closeups of major damage. It looks more red in there in the camera's flash than it did with my flashlight, but I dunno if it's rust from the wire, normal cactus flesh color or the beginning of rot. Erk. Thing is, as you can see in a couple of these it seems pretty nice and dry in there, or at least not weeping much, and the shallow end of the gash is calloused.
And here is the wire, just less than four inches long if it was straightened out, sitting atop a 20" box fan which measures about 4 inches front-to-back. I forgot to set my ruler down next to the metal for scale so the fan's dimensions will have to do. (g)
The circle indicates how much of the wire was protruding when I discovered it. Poor cactus!