I love starting off my "weekend" with a productive spurt of stuff done, and indeed, I did do that, starting off this afternoon around 4 pm when I got home.

I wanted to transplant a "small" viburnum (about 5 feet high now, one I already transplanted once, but to the wrong spot) to the large area fronting the road where the town took down 3 humongous white pines last November. I need large shrubs that will block the view of the neighbor's house and of passing cars.

I dug the hole in front first, but had a heck of a time digging up the viburnum in the backyard. It had a pretty thick and strong root growing directly down from exact center.

I finally got it out and moved it to its new spot, then watered it well. I do hope it has enough roots to survive. I'm not 100% sure. It is still dormant, so a good time to move it.

I'll water it daily for the next 4 days and see how it does.

After I got done with that, I went to work on the storm damaged, fallen tree limbs, continuing where I left off last time, and managed to work on that for 1.5 hours before running out of steam.

But when I last left the crabapple tree, one large trunk was still upright; now that limb is also down (crashed into white pine) and so it's a total loss, which is sad, because it had such a brilliant mass of fuchsia-colored blossoms in May.

I'm going to have to hire someone with a chainsaw, but I'm doing as much as possible myself first to reduce the bill.

I rolled up 2 tarps and returned to the garage all the pots I put over the daffodils to protect them from frost. We're to have frost-free days and nights for the next few weeks and, I guess, for the rest of spring.

Unfortunately, I was so involved in the tree work that I forgot 2 meetings I was going to choose from tonight: the garden club in town and an MS dinner about a half hour from here. I didn't make either...too pooped.

Tomorrow I'll be getting my hair cut ($7 before tip with coupon from Great Clips), vacuuming, and hopefully transplanting another smallish shrub to the front roadside before rain in the afternoon.

I also want to return a Transfer on Death form for my checking account to the bank. This was one of the few very useful pieces of info I got from that class I took: you can designate beneficiaries on any kind of bank account (TOD, or Transfer on Death) and when you pass, the monies go directly to your beneficiary and bypass probate. Which saves your heirs time and money. I knew you could do this for any kind of brokerage account/mutual funds, but didn't know you could do it with banks, too. So after I do my checking account, I'll do my numerous online money market and CD accounts.

I told my dad about this too because I don't think he knows that much about estate planning stuff but I haven't known how to approach him about it to discuss these things. So I told him about the TOD thing as something I was doing myself, and then he asked me to let him know if I was able to do it, and I could see he was interested. And since my bank is also one of his bank's) and they emailed me the form, I have printed out an extra copy for him.

Now I don't mean to pry into his estate planning although I am pretty sure the 4 of us kids will be beneficiaries. He often has me write things for him, fill out forms, etc because his vision loss is so profound he has trouble writing even his signature.

So I will carefully offer to fill out the basic info part of the form for him and leave him to do the rest if that's what he wants.

Having been my mother's executor, I really do wish my father would be open about his plans with me/us because it would just make things easier when the time comes. At this point, I don't think any of us knows who will be executor, or anything else, for that matter. I am guessing the executor will be the older of my 2 younger half-brothers (and praying it's not my sister).