This saguaro cactus was about twelve feet tall when we purchased our home in 1982. Over the years, it had doubled in size until it ended up being well over twenty feet tall. It was always the dominant feature of our front yard.

One day, working one morning in my office, I heard and felt a large thump outside my window that shook the entire house. We had had an especially wet week and obviously the cactus had absorbed too much water. This was the result. We were extremely lucky that it had not fallen on the house and caused heavy damage.

It cost me more than $300 back to have someone cut it up into pieces and remove it from our yard. Each of those one foot pieces weighed at least eighty pounds.

After that our yard was never the same and many years later we re-landscaped out entire front yard. The soil underneath must be heavy in nutrients because what we planted has taken over.