i don't see nothing wrong with a little stump and grind...

in the spring of 2004, we (read: my friend paul, while i assisted) cut down the bad punky tree that was dropping dead branches and gunk onto our house, gutters, and lawn.

the tree was more than twelve inches in diameter and left a pretty formidable stump in the ground, which incidentally was our garden space.


once the tree was gone, the garden grew pretty nicely, but the stump was an eyesore that also became a nice rat house during this past winter. we made the rat go away. but we still wanted the stump to go away too.


after a minimum of three unsuccessful attempts to rent a stump grinder from home despot™, we said 'fuhgeddaboudit' and persued alternate venues. we found a rental place out in catonsville that had the midrange-size stump grinder we wanted...

needless to say, the thing looked like a monster. compared to the home despot™ model, this was a sherman tank. 25 horse power, hydraulic, self-propelled... hooh haaaah! we had to to tow it behind the truck.


once i got over my fears of the thing's size, it operated pretty smoothly. the real challange was getting the thing down a substantial slope to our yard, and at a 48" wide wheel base, it just made it, even though the ground was a bit swampy. needless to say, this thing chewed up hiney like nobody's business. you had to basically hone down about 1/2" at a time to keep the engine from stalling out. but it had lots of torque to spare, and as you can see, carved out curvilinear swaths no problem.




the task took maybe three hours? for the main stump... happily the previous owner had buried some romex about 3" below our turf, so we found that hidden treasure... hmm, is this lawn 110 or 220 volts?




all in all, i was extremely satisfied with the performance of this stump grinding juggernaut. nothing like turning a tree stump into evenly-dispersed confetti [/caveman grunt].