Showed up at the nice lady's house and we see little flags denoting buried gas and electric lines right around the base of the tree..ha! More than we bargained for. And tree turned out to be pretty substantial. 6"+ diameter trunk. Started by doing a quick hack job on the canopy with my electric pole saw. It's now an ugly goblet. After nearly 4 hours of clearing the major lateral roots and start to dig under the tree, my buddy (with longer legs than me) was able to wedge himself between the building and the tree and use his legs and I climbed up on the opposite side of the tree and we were able to get the tree rocking and finally it came out. So heavy we could barely get it into the pickup, any bigger it wouldn't have fit. Guess he'll get it in the ground tomorrow. It's got a pretty good root ball, and it will be well looked-after this summer. Thanks for the tips and moral support.

Clare!!! Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Thank you for such a geat Christmas tour at your home!!! Your efforts have made a wonderful Holiday experience for us all. You are the 'Christmas' bomb girl!!!!!!!!!!!! I especially love all kinds of trash to treasure endeavors! Your wheelbarrow is so charming!!!!! We had an old metal wheelbarrow that needed a front wheel. I got a discarded child's small bike wheel (a tricycle wheel would have been even better, but what'a ya gonna do? Free is Free. I couldn't just knock on the door and ask if they had it in a different size.). Then I tore the rubber tire off of the spoked rim. You'll need one of those darned men with his 'Man tools' to help remove the center of the wheel if you do it this way. I spray painted it white, then ran a rod through the middle and attached it to the wheelbarrow cart. I'll post a pic soon because it really made a huge difference to my old metal cart. It would make your wooden cart even nicer. I bet you did work for months on the Venician plaster it looks so rich!!! Great idea to toughen up the heavy traffic areas. Loved the glow when the lights were turned down low. The fresh greenery is wonderful on the door. The ice skates brought back memories of my childhood immediately. It was all so lovely. Susie

Post a few ads at feed stores. Might be a suburban type with a manure pile nearby that doesn't know what to do with it. Town area that does a leaf pickup?? I see the town I work at lug off truckloads of leaves. They do a compost and mix it with the sewage plant solids and sell and give it away. Years ago this old farm was in danger of flooding by a new state watershed dam. My husband's aunt didn't think the people would win the fight and proceded to make a deal with somebody to sell off the loam. The old aunt was housebound with osteoporosis and didn't see what was going on further in back. They had a whole gravel mining operation going with tons of holes and test pits and just a great big mess. My mother in law was still alive and checked when the aunt wasn't getting any money for the soil. She threw them out on the spot. I'm still slowly filling holes and building back the top soil. Best guess is in most spots near the front field we lost a good 2 feet of loam. In the back it's full of holes and pile. The biggest hole took up an acre and flooded in the spring to breed mosquitos but nothing else. We contacted construction sites and town highway depts and they have been slowly dumping their fill. Helps them, helps us. Since I have horses and a few other critters I can then spread a skim coat of manure and compost and keep building little by little. I really have no idea how much soil was lost but guessing a farm that had been in use and fields that were cultivated for over 250 years should have had a good 2 feet of soil on them, probably more. Lot of places I'm down to white sand. Not even enough soil to grow some grass. Got a business with a cardboard dumpster? Plain old newspaper works too. We have a mill here where the sawdust is free for the taking. If it rots take it. If you are on a road with a little traffic put a sign out front that says you want leaves and other compostables. Don't look at the whole big mess at once. Will seem like you aren't making progress. Choose a little spot and work on it. Get it done and move to the next.

Isn't that just the most frustrating thing? We Freecycle and offer free on Craig's list quite a bit, with the same struggle, Patti ... NO_SHOWS! We live out of town, so I don't feel it's fair to people to just set something out on the driveway and say "first come gets it," but I'm about at that point. Tough cookies if they have to drive extra miles, I'm tired of penning up the dogs, sitting and waiting ... and waiting ... for someone who doesn't have the decency to show up when they say they will, or call and tell me they're running late or can't make it. Oh! and the ones who want me to DELIVER a free item to them, because they don't have gas money????? It's one thing to want something large and you don't have a truck ... but a bag of clothes? Will you bring it to me because I can't afford gas? GET REAL.