Really, it was because the lovely shade tree had lovely roots that were making their lovely way under our lovely foundation. But that's just details.
It only took us a couple of months to chop down the tree. But then we were left with a mammoth stump in the middle of our yard just sitting there waiting for the termites to find it. So what did we do then? Dig a giant hole around the stump, of course! Who wants an attractive yard when you can have a deathtrap instead?
Long story short, after nine months of digging and hacking at the roots as they were exposed - it actually became a party game at our Memorial Day bbq!- the stump was finally cut free of it's moorings. So now we had a giant stump in a hole, with no way to get it out.
Fortunately, all that science and engineering education finally came in handy! Alan attached a giant lever, with which we could rock the stump back and forth despite our puny muscles. We then proceeded to rock and roll it, meanwhile backfilling the hole. The screws we used to attach the lever kept breaking, but otherwise things were going along smoothly.
This morning we started with the stump 2/3 of the way out, like so:
Eventually the stump was so close to the top of the hole that it seemed like we could just lever it out the rest of the way - if only the lever was in the right place. But our last screws were broken, so we were screwed. 2x4s and cement blocks allowed a different kind of levering that worked much less well, but another sweaty hour later, the stump was out. Man, that felt good - almost as good as the shower that came just minutes later.
Did we mention this whole endeavor transpired during a heat wave?
