My indoor plant lab including the desert garden, coffee tree plantation and Ficus bonsai tree forest is now located on the east coast.
To get here they had to endure more than nine days inside a U-Haul truck while crossing the country. They lived in total darkness without water other than the moisture in the soil they had leaving San Diego. Thanks to their sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) there was no need for water stops or other maintenance along the way.
For older folks reading this post these words of John Swayze might come to mind…”It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.” Newscaster Swayze was the TV spokesperson for Timex watches a long time ago.
Just as in the commercial the plants in my plant lab took a licking inside the darkness of the truck but they're still ticking. It was a wild ride particularly through the spectacular mountains of Utah and Colorado. I soon learned how to be a low-gear trucker. The beginning sections of I-70 were an otherworldly experience at times when I was often the only truck or car within eyesight.
Out of my view the plants bounced around during the wild ride over one mountain after another. It was only after unloading that I saw the chaos from the journey. Fortunately, little permanent damage was done.
In some respects this arduous trip reminded me of old WW2 movies about the legendary Burma Road and Flying Tigers that I watched as a kid.
This was definitely not a ride for the faint of heart. I am lucky to be alive and sure that someone up there was watching over me. Maybe that someone was in the passenger seat next to me. Who knows?
This is just a hint of what I discovered after slitting the shrink wrap. I didn't have the heart to photograph the cactus chaos. I had other things on my mind.
Although all of the plants were shrink-wrapped within the light garden shelves some of them became airborne. Many of the small cactus and succulents flew around inside their shrink-wrap cocoons. Some even flew out of their SIPs but fortunately couldn’t fly out of their shrink-wrapped space.
Many succulent leaves were lost but the plants are now in rehab after several days of plant triage.
These photos were taken at a U-Haul storage location on the East Coast. It is the temporary location of the lab until I find a new home for it. It was a most tedious job repotting, watering and locating all of the plants in sufficient light but it's now done. Thank god for that!