holy cow hydrangea...

I was expecting a little twig - the size of the forsythia I would dig to sell to people who will read the adv. on Craig's List. I put the notice up about a week ago, and renewed last night. Have only gotten one response, from a man asking how big they plants are. (I wrote back and told him they would be about the size of the switch his mama made him go out in the yard and pick when he had been bad and in need of discipline.)

Size is obviously something I failed to inquire about when I said I would come up this morning and pick up the hydrangea the guy was giving away. He was going to put in in a big garbage bag, to keep it moist, and keep from loosing dirt in my car. I should have realized how important the word 'big' was in the conversation.  I could not pick it up, and it would not fit in the back of my car. He suggested putting the back seat down, to tip it over, and finally got the hatchback to close.

So that hole I need to go dig will have to be much bigger than planned. As well as closer to the driveway so I can get the huge plant out of my car and into the hole. I cannot lift it up, but expect that gravity will help me lift it down. So I need to reconsider location, to find a place that is diggable, meaning relatively root-free, to make a hole big enough to put it in. Fortunately, it was growing in some hard Georgia clay, so he said that the root system was not extensive, and the plant is pretty shallow-rooted, so will be fairly easy to get back in the ground. So he said....

With the brief history of planting hydrangeas that the deer discovered, thought was a newly installed salad bar, I am concerned about investing my digging effort in a poorly chosen location. I can't decide whether to go ahead and put it out in the front, where the deer could enjoy, at their leisure. Or inside the fence where the earth is going to be really hard, completely clay-ey and nearly impossible to get a hole deep enough for the monster to go into. The weather predicts likely rain today, so I need to get underway with this unplanned project: asap.