Giving a shrub a second life

Ever since I found out about Freecycle, it's been my new favorite thing. I subscribe to the emails in search of garden related items. I finally scored on Wednesday when I saw that someone was giving away their Lilac, Viburnum and Climbing Rose Bush. They didn't want the plants anymore because it was too big for their small Brooklyn backyard. Here's the catch... we had to bring a shovel and dig it out of this guy's backyard. When I told my husband about the free plants, let's just say he was less than thrilled about the idea, but he said he would do it. I called the guy and asked him how big the bushes were.  He said they were 5 feet tall.  Then I told him we would come to get the plants.   Here is where things started to go downhill.  The minute we pulled up to the house, it starts pouring rain!  Since it took us an hour to get to Fort Greene Brooklyn, (we hit crazy amount of rush hour traffic on the BQE) we decided to rough it in the rain and start digging.  When we entered the guys backyard, the first thing I thought was, man, I wish I had my camera.  The backyard literally looked like one of those yards you see on the History Channel show "American Pickers".  There was furniture, bikes, a sink, pots, wood, boxes,  chairs, all toppled on top of each other.  We had to climb over the mess to get to the plants.  Then when we saw the lilac bush I thought to myself, this is way bigger than 5 feet tall!  Don't get me started on the viburnum, it was like 10 feet tall and 3 feet wide.  I decided to only take the lilac and rose bush.  The lilac roots were well established, my poor husband was struggling to dig it out.  It took us an hour to dig out the bush in the pouring rain.  My husband looks at me and says, "You soooo owe me for this!" .... Gulp! Well, 3 hours later and completely drenched, we got both the lilac and the rose bush into our car.  When we got home it was dark so we waited until morning to plant the bush.  Here is the hubs digging a hole in our side yard for the lilac.

He dug a big wide hole for the plant.

We added lots of homemade compost to the hole then got the plant in and covered it with soil.

Here is the lilac in it's final spot.  Note the 2nd tall fence behind it?  that fence is 6 feet tall.  So this lilac is easily 7 feet tall!

Here is the rose climbing bush waiting to get planted.

And here it is in it's final spot.  This one was much much easier to dig up and transplant.

When all was said and done, I realized that this was a lot of work. My back hurts right now from digging, lifting and planting. I also am so grateful that I have such an amazing husband that puts up with my crazy ideas! He is so awesome beyond words. I also feel great that we were able to rescue two shrubs and to give them a second life. Now I have to cross my fingers that they survive!