Daddy is not Stumped! But the city is...

Our yard continues to take our thoughts and attention.  It's just such a huge, huge mess, and now that winter is over, the mess is once again extremely obvious.  We had a couple of landscapers come out, and they gave us some good information and some expensive but relatively equitable quotes.  I'd like to be able to use one of them, but it just costs too much, so we must continue to trudge forward as we can on our own for the time being.  The back sidewalk is more important than the grass or flowers, ultimately, and no landscaper I talked to does sidewalk...they want to do pavers, those little inter-connected flat stones or bricks, and those cost about double what concrete costs...It ain't happenin' on this budget!

But Daddy has certainly been doing HIS part, and already taken care of part of what the landscapers were offering to charge for.  Our front yard near the house had 3 stumps, most likely from evergreen bushes or something of that kind, some house-front decoration that got chopped down who knows how many decades ago, but that never got fully removed (go figure, EVERYTHING in this house that was worked on seems to have been left in some stage of incomplete-ness).  So, after Daddy finished removing one of the two backyard stumps that had been fresh and green and growing like wild when we moved in, he headed to the front to tackled those old dead stumps.  We were pleasantly surprised at the relative ease with which those guys came out.  I'm sure part of the ease came simply from Daddy learning just *how* to dig a stump out when he tackled that backyard one--That one was a big process of trial and error and dealing with gravel and fresh roots.  But he dug down and around, and slowly chipped away at the base to clear the clumps of dirt out so he could see where the roots were, either snipping or sawing them off one by one until the stump had nothing left to stand on.  With the old stumps, the same process was employed, but he was able to break a lot of the roots with his bare hands, as they were already partially rotted out.  He had fun with that.  :)

The first, started in October, completed in April when the weather (and ground) finally warmed up enough again.

The second, at the beginning of May, was out in about an hour and a half.  He literally rocked it back and forth on its last root until it snapped.

The third, about a week later, which was the easiest by far.  He was done with this one in 40 minutes!  When it came time to rock it off the last root, it snapped so fast it might as well have not even been attached.

The fourth, tackled this past Sunday.  This one was a beast, and so was the ground around it...almost entirely clay.  It took Daddy about 3 hours from start to finish, and he was TIRED by the end of it!  We suspect that this one may have been a small tree, not a bush...

Only one remains, but it's in the backyard crowded by the day lilies I want to transplant to the front.  I'm planning, weather permitting, to get started on that very soon!  And I just learned of some free dirt a friend is getting rid of...timing, timing... :)

But meanwhile, we do have one more stump that Daddy will NOT be tackling...That's the one belonging to that parkway tree that died at some point in the last 3 or 4 years.  Since it's a parkway tree, it's on the city to pay for the removal (YAY!), but of course that means it's also on the city's time-line...

We called them about this tree mid-August.  They FINALLY showed up in early April.  Which, I guess, is actually pretty fast for them... ;)  As it happened, it was a Monday, but the Munch was suffering badly from her first ear infection, so I wasn't working that day.  Which meant we got to see all the excitement!

Sizing up the tree...notice how close those neighbors left their cars, despite the signs saying 'Don't park here!'

Most of the smaller stuff is gone now.

Just the trunk left...This guy was a PRO.  Not a single branch even brushed those cars.  I was and still am VERY impressed with how he managed that!

The laaaast cut.

A couple hours later, the clean-up crew arrived.

I'd seen this happen with a tree across the street a month or 2 earlier, but hadn't seen what they used that red brush for--it's for scraping the ground free of twigs, I learned!  It also likes to eat recently-placed sod...We lost a little of the sod that the gas company gave us.

All that remains is this stump.  I asked one of the clean-up guys how long I could expect it to be there, and he said the city contracts that out, but that it usually takes a couple weeks...at least.  Well, so far it's been a month and a half.  I'm not in a hurry, as it's the least important part of my yard to me...but apparently neither are the contractors!  Incidentally, the tree across the street still has its stump in the ground too.  Our neighbor  who lives there was joking that Daddy could come over and do his stump next!  :)