Why you ask?  Because I got this bug up my ass to dig up a tree in my backyard and move it to another location.  Eh, that shouldn't be too bad right?  Did I mention that it was a redwood... a 15 foot tall redwood?

Last year, my wife and I were at Portland Nursery, she looking at flowers and herbs I at trees, found a beautiful 8 foot tall redwood.  After some convincing, I suggested we get it and put it right outside our bedroom window.  Yeah it's a redwoood but it'll take YEARS for it to grow big, right?  NO!  Fucking thing grew a good 7 feet in one year... SEVEN FEET... S-E-V-E-N F-E-E-T!  So, before it got out of control my wife and I talked and thought it best to cut down an old, ugly looking tree right outside our fence and move the redwood there.

So last weekend, with only a tree saw, I chopped down the old tree in the corner.  Yeah, you read that right... all I used was a hand saw (insert dumbass quip here).  This weekend I dug up the redwood and transplanted it.  Now you have to realize that a 15 foot tall redwood is heavy to begin with but the damn root ball with encased dirt around it added to that weight two-fold.  The first day, Saturday, I dug up the tree but couldn't break a few of the last roots.  Then Sunday, I finally broke it free and found out just how heavy the fucker was.

After cleverly devising a lever system I got the thing out of the hole I dug (thought I could roll it out... HA) then, over the course of an hour, rolled, dragged and shimmied the poor guy to his new home.  My wife took pictures... I'm sure she'll post them on her blog sooner or later. 

So what have I learned today?  Moving a fucking redwood tree is a pain in the ass.  If you do it alone, be prepared to hurt the next day... and I mean hurt!

CORRECTION: My wife pointed out that we purchased the redwood 2 years ago so it grew 3 some-odd feet per year, not 7... still a lot though.