The Grind

While I was busy composing the last article about abundant family bonding over food and hot wax, we had a noisy visitor.

The Boy came running into my sanctuary. "There's two big trucks out front and a little thing that's remote controlled!"

I blinked.

"I think they're here for the stump!"

Ah! Now that is worth going to see. Indeed it was two big trucks and one little thing that was remote controlled. Now the rest of this post is all the details of our stump being removed. Leave now if: A) You think that stump removal machines are boring or B) You already witnessed a stump being removed once in your life.

Here's the little remote control thing. It's got this spinning blade that you would not want to to mess around with. Some horror film will undoubtably use one of these for a character's grim end.

Here's the dude with the remote control. Neither of these guys seem very impressed with me taking pictures of them. I'm certain that controling this machine by remote is more fun and decidedly safer than say riding on top of it. That blade spins super fast and the arm swings back and forth slicing out more of the stump with every pass.

It's almost through the whole thing now. After they got through shredding the stump itself, they went after some of the more giant and prominent roots, like that big bastard that made mowing the curb lawn such a pain! But look at that mess! What are they going to do about that? I hope not just rake it into the hole and call it a day.

Nope, there was a plan. The remote control guy put the little thing away and pulled out a leaf blower and put all the mess into a big pile. Meanwhile, the guy who up to this point did nothing, brought up the really big truck. And that truck had an arm with a scoop.

It took four scoopfuls to get all of it up.

It all got dumped in the truck, but not from this height, I'm sorry to say. That would have been cool. No, he opened the scoop way down in the truck where we couldn't see.

So here's what left. Nothing. All ready for a new tree to start the process from the top!