Well, it happened! We did it! Yesterday the rocks "magically" moved to my house. Last week I went to my friends house and Farmer Ed used his loader to pull the rocks from the woodsline. I was worried because I thought he had a farm tractor, but it was a heavy duty loader and it treated the boulders like they were bowling balls. Once he got them all out of the hedgerow, there were a few more than I thought - 26! Probably 5 or 6 BIG (bathtub sized) 12 Medium (32 inch TV) and the rest Small (microwave sized). Seeing how easily he handled these rocks was very reassuring, so I made arrangements for the loader, truck driver, and unloader for the following week. The weather was terrible here all week. We had a tremendous windstorm with gusts up to 65 mph that uprooted a few of my newly planted trees. Then we had a very heavy rainstorm. Then a spell of our first "winter weather" - 40 degrees, crisp, biting wind. But Saturday dawned warm and sunny and still, a great day for moving rocks. Farmer Ed and his son both arrived with loaders. For some of the big rocks, one loader would push the boulders into the other loader. You could see that the smaller one would not have been able to lift the heaviest of the rocks. They were quite skilled at what they did, I took my four year old son to watch and he loved it. Mike the truck driver was great. Acted as if he did this every week. He said he had hauled some very unusual things in his time, and raw boulders was another on the list. He took longer to tie everything down than it took to load. He was very thorough and professional. Made a phone call as we were leaving so Dick the backhoe driver would be there when we arrived. Dick and Brian were waiting when we arrived. Just immediately drove up in the backhoe and started tugging them off and they rolled away. It was slow and steady work, but happily was done without incident. Just like that! Wow! Now we still have the work of moving them from behind the barn to be placed in the backyard, but that seems a lot more doable than having them magically move 30 miles south. With the fall rain we've had the ground is rather soft for heavy equipment. We'll move them next summer. So watch for another post then asking how to move them into position. But for now I am quite happy! I'm sure enquiring minds want to know, how much did it all cost? Things improved from my initial conservative estimates. The $150/hour was for a quarry loader, which we didn't need because the farmer's loader was one of those BIGGGG ones. Farmer Ed did me a huge favor and did all the loading for $150 plus various baked goods and bottles of wine. Really he was being nice to my friend who owns// owned the rocks. Truck driver Mike was very professional and very reasonable, I thought, for $250 since it took his entire afternoon. Dick would only take $100 for his work since "it didn't take him very long" and he lives just around the corner. So total transport cost was $500 for 25 very nice sized granite rocks. $500 isn't a small sum of money, we've just blown the landscape budget for 2006, but at $20 rock it seems fantastic to me when I think how much work was done. I'm still working on getting a very nice something for my friend too, who was so fabulously generous with her stones. What a long winded post, as you can tell, I'm excited. Here's some photos, I've never done photos before so we'll see how they work.

Had lots and lots of fun yesterday. Collected another 1 cubic yard of really good compost (27 cubic feet). Last time I did that was about a year ago. Thought I'd post in the same thread from last year. Used my Camry again to haul the stuff, but this year, I made 2 trips to haul the cubic yard--much friendlier on the car's suspension. Can't believe I was able to fit a full cubic yard of compost into my car last year. Won't do that again though. Yesterday I loaded from 60 to 66 percent of the cubic yard into the car for the first trip and I loaded the remaining compost in the second trip. Much, much better to do it that way. In fact, a 50/50 split may have been even better. It's hard to gauge the 50/50 mark though on a cubic yard. Went to STL Compost in Fenton again, just outside St. Louis county. Got their Field and Turf compost again, instead of their Black Gold, even though I'll mostly be using it in the vegetable garden, not so much on the lawn. IIRC, last year their Black Gold smelled a bit, meaning it wasn't really ready yet to be used as compost, but I didn't detect much, if any, bad smell this year from their Black Gold. Their Bessie's Best is part manure and their premium is a mix of Black Gold and Bessie's Best, IIRC. I think the Field and Turf is like the Black Gold but finer for lawn use. Still their Field and Turf worked great in my vegetable garden last year. Lots and lots of tomatoes, eggplants, squash, string(?) beans, basal, parsley, finnochio (fennel?), and it was all top quality. Good compost seems to help so much. I stored the compost in my garage overnight, because I was too tired yesterday to move it behind the bushes. Later today I'll take it all outside. Nice thing is this compost does NOT smell bad at all. It's been in my closed garage all night, and not a hint of foul smell. This is really good compost! This year I fit the cubic yard into about 28 or 30 big plastic bags. Last year it was just about 20 or 22 plastic bags. It's much, much better to use 30 bags than 20 bags, because each bag is much lighter and easier to carry by hand. My back thanked me. I pushed the compost into the bags with an oversized rubber glove. Much easier than shoveling. Important thing to do, as I may have mentioned last year in this thread, is to control the opening of the plastic bag with a 5-gallon bucket whose bottom has been cut out. Lay the bucket sideways on the ground with the plastic bag attached behind, and just shove compost into the bucket-bag combo. You can work fast that way--much better than a shovel, I think, like that YouTube person recommended. I think I may have provided a link to the YouTube video last year in this thread, or in a different thread. It took about 15 to 17 rubber-gloved shoves of compost to fill each bag to the right weight for me. Twenty or more shoves caused the bags to be too heavy and not easy to carry. Last year, I used 2-millimeter thick bags that were much tougher to tear. This year I used 1-millimeter thick plastic bags, and must have torn 5. Don't use 1-millimeter thick bags (go for 2 mm) because you can even tear the thinner bags while your handling them with just your hands inside your car, not just on the abrasive ground. My hands tore a hole in a bag just while lifting the bag when it was already inside my car's trunk, to reposition the bag. Two millimeters will save you time and energy. Once a bag is torn, you have to place it inside a second bag. I can't emphasize enough how much happier you will be using 2-millimeter thick bags over 1-millimeter. It took me about 2 hours to shove 60 to 66 percent of the cubic yard of compost into the plastic bags, and about another 1 hour to shove the remaining third of the cubic yard on my second car trip. So the glove-shoving alone took about 3 hours, then there's drive-time to add onto that, and unloading the bags from the car, and the preparation, etc. I also ate and rested a bit between the two trips. All-in-all it was about a 5-hour project for a cubic yard. Last year, I did it when it was nice and warm. This year it was windy and cold, probably between 45* F and 55* F. Much better to do it when warm, and not windy.

I've seen blue spruce lose needles like your two "bad" trees for several reasons. Shading could be one, but these trees look pretty open to be shading from the branches. If it was, I would just remove the branches as they die because the upper branches will continue to grow outwards, and over time their weight will bend them downwards so the removed branches won't be missed. I've also seen this as a result of longer term drouth. The solution here is to give them more water and in a wider area. From the picture, it is hard to tell what the ground is like where they are planted, but if it is gravelly or very well drained, give it more water. Spider mites can cause problems like this, also. Typically I've seen it on trees smaller than yours up to those of your size. They don't seem to bother larger trees as much, and mite infestations often show up in trees under drouth stress first. If you have recurring infestations you can spray for that when they occur. Finally, I've seen that type of damage--somewhat thin, open branches with needle die-off on trees that were deficient in iron due to high soil pH. However, iron deficient trees also tend to turn a lighter green to yellowish green and the needles will shorten. The color and needle length on your trees looks fine. I would probably just concentrate on removing dead branches and watering well, extending the water out at least 10 feet from the drip line for a tree of this size. Don't keep the trees wet, but water well so that it soaks into the soil a lot further than needed for a lawn, then let the ground dry for a week or so before watering again.

I sure seems like there should be an easier way but there usually isn't. When I have had to move rocks IÂve employed different methods. When I was gathering large flagstone from a river bed I would lean them up against a tree or other rocks then back myself up to it and hoist it up onto my back and "granny" walk it (hunched over) up the hill to my truck. With smaller rocks I tried buckets but that really strains your shoulders so I got out my old Danish army backpack. I would put a piece of plywood on my wheel barrow to make a mobile table. Then set the backpack on the "table" fill it with rocks then put on the pack. the "table" puts the weight at a nice height so that you don't have to strain yourself lifting it. I also have an old red wagon that I often use for moving just about everything. My Dad uses an old car hood turned upside down with a chain attached as a "rock sled" which he attaches to the truck hitch or in tighter spaces the garden tractor. If it is still too much work you can usually find cheap labor in neighborhood kids. I hope this helps you. Good luck and try not to hurt yourself.