I removed some tree stumps last fall using nothing other than hand tools like shovels, a pickaxe, a sledgehammer, a crowbar, and a tree branch saw. I did that by digging around the stump, whacking it with the sledgehammer, lifting with the pickaxe, and prying with the crowbar until the location of the roots became discernible and then I crouched down in a weird position to get below it with the tree branch saw and cut away at the roots. It was difficult, slow, and as it turned out dangerous because by straining my muscles in unusual ways, it ended up with me getting an inguinal hernia. A couple of months later I participated in an entertaining operation. All of which I survived in a relatively good mood after being sewn back together.
Unfortunately, after all of that effort, I had only gotten about half of the dead stumps removed. Those stumps were there when I bought this house eight years ago and the trees and bushes had been cut off at about two inches above the ground level. They weren’t visible and didn’t bother me much because they were covered with grass and flowers. But, after Paradise, California, burned last year, it was apparent to me, if not to my neighbors, that it was imperative that my house be made more fire-resistant. My neighborhood looks very much like Paradise before the fire wiped that beautiful small city out. On the 4th of July here again this year there was an abundance of fireworks close by. Check my blog on July 4th for some spectacular evidence of that assertion.
Before that spectacular event, I spent a lot of energy clearing everything potentially burnable as far away from my house as possible. It turned out to be a much larger operation than expected. Three years ago there were three full-grown Ponderosa trees near my house, and four more not on my property but close enough to fall on my house, one of which did during a windstorm, when one of mine blew over too but fell between my neighbor’s houses. The last of my Ponderosas had roots going beneath where I sit at this moment writing this post, and when the wind blew the whole house creaked, and a portion of the foundation developed two cracks, about six feet apart, next to the tree, which had lifted an inch. That tree had to go, and so I had it removed. Sad.
The point of all of this blather is that there were still some remnants of tree stumps that were not a fire hazard next to my house but were ugly. That was my motivation for trying to remove them last fall. A weak reason but that was my motivation. After I got the hernia operation, it didn’t seem reasonable to go back to doing that underground sawing. Then a friend of mine, Steve, said he had an old electric 14-inch chain saw which he would give me. I didn’t think that was fair, so I paid him what I thought wasn’t enough, but he claimed it was too much.
The ground was finally dry enough and I was physically able enough to attack those stumps, and I finished after an hour’s work, doing all the things above, except the sawing of roots with a hand saw, because that hand saw I replaced with the electric chain saw. Okay, sawing under dirt isn’t all that great for the cutting teeth on the chain saw, but it worked and I got two more stumps out. That’s my big event for today.
After working on the grand Universal questions which I posted yesterday, isn’t it reasonable to do something “useful”?
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