October 1, 2007: Another Stump Bites the Dust

I seem to have a thing about stumps...

In the brick planter in front of the house, there was a stump. Not the kind to suffer such a blight upon our curb appeal, I bought a hatchet and a shovel and started the project of getting it out.

Neither tool proved to be up to the task. The hatchet dulled after only twenty or thirty severed roots, and the shovel handle cracked after an hour of scooping and prying. My hands were scraped and bloody, and the stump was still happily hunkered in the planter.

Yesterday morning, though, Aimee and I bought a pick axe and a pair of branch loppers, both of which were far more fun to wield. The many rooted guy wires of the stump popped with satisfying cracks beneath the added leverage, and I made much better progress in far shorter time.

I'd just pried the pick axe under the stump, though, when it gave way. I tumbled off the elevated planter wall to the driveway on my tail bone. There I laid, stunned, wiggling my feet to prove they still worked.

Then, sore and annoyed, I finished off the fucking stump while Aimee held a shovel underneath for leverage.

Every so often, I need a big physical project with an obvious result to prove that I'm still capable of doing big, flamboyant, and largely useless things. Sort of like mini space programs.

Humans are defined by the more-than-necessary, and I wouldn't be me if I didn't do the excessive and the dangerous from time to time.

Posted by Will Ludwigsen on October 1, 2007 1:11 PM | Permalink