a big job

I spent the last 3 hours pulling up a huge cactus. It's a Spineless Prickly Pear Cactus and it engulfed the mailbox and the surrounding 6 feet on either side and behind. I filled up 5 large trashcans with the sections and the bottoms of the cactus (actually more like tree trunks) are now in a pile about 5 feet long and 3 feet high. Wow those things sure weigh A LOT! I'm actually glad that it hasn't rained in several months otherwise they would have weighed a whole lot more. I've got some more to pull out but I ran out of trashcan space and it just turned noon and was getting hot for that kind of work. The kids did a great job in helping out - for the first hour they picked up all the pieces that I cut off and put them in the bins. For the second hour they helped to cut down the Evergreen Sumac and set it out for pickup. I'm really hoping that the yard waste pickup takes all the full bins, otherwise I'm going to be filling the trash can weekly to get it all out until large-sized brushy pickup comes through in another 2 weeks.
I forgot to take 'before' pictures so an 'after' one wouldn't do much good. Oh, I could draw them back in to make my own 'before' picture!