Back at our old house, Doc and I had these two hydrangea plants that produced the biggest, prettiest flowers ever! Seriously, the blooms were the size of my head.
While we lived there, I had told Doc over and over again that if we ever moved, we'd have to take the hydrangeas with us. They were just too pretty to leave behind. So about two years ago, we started working on splitting them (so we could eventually take half with us and still leave a plant there too). By the time moving day arrived, we had turned our two hydrangeas into four.
Of course, on the actual moving day the last thing on our minds was digging up plants, so they got left behind to be dug up on another day. But with the excitement of the new house and projects that were going on there, the hydrangea transfer kept getting pushed aside.
Until August 31st, that is. I remember the day like it was yesterday. It was a Friday and our first tenants were set to move in the very next day. It was the last day our house would be unoccupied and therefore the last day we could be there digging up plants. Doc was busy that afternoon so I had no choice but to stop by after work and dig them up myself. It was over 100 degrees with the humidity out the roof and I was in a dress and sandals, but by golly I was not going to leave behind these plants I'd worked so hard on! Oh, did I mention I was also three weeks away from having a baby??
I pulled up to the house and grab the shovel out of the back of my car and approached hydrangea #1. It looked pretty pitiful since it hadn't been watered in about three weeks.
The lack of water made the ground ridiculously hard, and I was barely able to get any of the root dug up. I was sweating buckets and this was all I could get.
I was still determined so I made my way over to hydrangea #2 that looked equally as pitiful.
Thankfully, I found a soft spot in the dirt and was able to get a better chunk of root on this one.
I brought my roots home to the new house and Doc found a spot in the flower bed to plant them. Of course, shortly after came the baby so we were very inconsistent with our watering. I peeked out the window at it all winter where it looked like a pile of sticks. I was sure that it was dead...
...until just a few weeks ago when green leaves sprouted! A successful plant transfer!! I am so thrilled that it is still alive and can't wait to see if it actual blooms this year. I'm gonna be watering this sucker like crazy.
Since I was already a hot, sweaty mess that day back in August, I decided to go ahead and grab these hastas too. These were a wedding gift from some friends of ours; they had dug up some roots from their yard so we could plant them in ours.
I guess the ground was a little softer back there because I took them all!
And I am happy to report that these are doing just great!
We split them into two and they flank our front porch steps.
Three replant successes. Now, if we could just get rid of the millions of weeds the previous owners left behind...