While the mind was racing for a snappy comeback, the mouth opened and said, “stump in the back yard.”

doh! Oh well, the truth is out, guess I’ll stick with it.

When I bought the house, there was a stump in the back yard near the driveway. (There’s a fence between the two, so you’ll not see my driveway in any of the pictures.) After mowing around it for many months, I finally decided to be rid of it. The “stump doctor”-family of services you see in the phone book want an insane amount of money to come out to your house and a minor investment for every stump they need to remove. That’s not practical for just one stump and I’d probably have to tear down a chunk of my fence anyway.

As much as my Tim Taylor roots wanted a power tool, I just couldn’t justify the $100 or more to buy a chainsaw for this specific project. On the other hand, $40 buys me a nice axe at Lowe’s and I can lumberjack my way through it, old-school. So I bought the axe and had at it.

The plan was simple — put time into it every weekend that I did yard work. I’d have to police up the wood chips and toss them into a bucket, no need to have the mower sling them into my (or neighbor’s) windows. When the bucket was full, that was a day’s worth of work.

The first week went slow, as expected. I took a small bit off of the Eastern edge and got down a couple of inches below the grass line.

The second week was a little more productive, I “got in there and got some!” as it were.

The third week was the magic moment, the stump was whittled down enough that I could break it loose.

Of course, I didn’t just let the wood chips go to the city. After each chopping session, I’d load up the chiminea and light it, and then light a cigar to savor the taste of victory.

No more stump!