We spent a good part of the past weekend digging up the front yard. It brought me back to when I was a kid playing in the dirt by the old forsythia bush with my Fisher Price construction equipment. I'd spend hours sifting through the dirt and moving it around. This time, though, I got to rip out huge tracts of grass and dug a 1½ foot deep hole.
Word to the wise — do not fool yourself into thinking that you can move a tree. It's just not possible. They don't have legs for a reason. I'm really suprised, in hind sight, that the lady at Abbott's Landscape Nursery didn't laugh when I said I though we might be able to put the tree in our car. Though they may look small and light in the nursery, trees are extremely heavy. Sara, Amy, and I could hardly even nudge the witch hazel that the nursery dropped off for us in our yard. They had delivered it about 2 feet from where we decided to dig the hole, but it took us half an hour to shimmy it over. Then, when we were slidding it down a plank into the hole, it ended up falling over and landing on Amy's head, smashing her ear. Luckily she wasn't seriously injured and we were able to finish planting Hazel. (Amy is naming all the plants. I think she really wants a baby ;)
There are some progress pictures in the album. I'm planning on putting more up when we finish the job.