Slightly-larger-than-baby-steps

I'm sore today, but we've more to do. We've started moving our plants and shrubs that are in harm's way from the upcoming house demolition. Thank God for the John Deere 770 tractor and front loader!

<----Here's a "before" picture of the front bed. There are a number of small to fairly substantial-sized rhododendrons in there, but they're not very obvious yet. But the next photo clearly shows where they WERE:













The closeup photo shows the tools we used to help us pull the big shrubs out. It took shovels, a chain, metal rods and a mallet, along with a lot of grunting and sweat. Oh yeah, and the JD770. Definitely can't forget that.

Rhododendrons aren't too bad for moving because their roots are pretty shallow. Even so, a big rhody has a big root ball and therefore pretty heavy. We began by digging around the plant, starting at about the "drip line", which is about the same as the plant's maximum width. After finding the fine mat of rootlets, we dig down until we're below the root mat. For big rhodies, this means digging down about 2 feet all around the plant. Then the metal bars are pounded in at an angle, on opposite sides of the plant, and a chain is run around the bars, at the bottom of the trench we've dug out. The purpose of the metal bars is to force the chain to go down, rather than pulling up too high and potentially breaking off the stem of the plant. The hook at the plant end of the chain is attached to the chain to form a loop around the plant. Then the other end of the chain is attached to the front loader (not shown). Slowly backing the tractor up then applies enough force to pull the shrub free of the ground and out of the hole.

Repeat as needed for each plant.

I need aspirin .