Mr. Stumpy's New Look

It's been a month since we took a serious whack at Mr. Stumpy the giant tree stump. This time all three of us went outside with various tools: my husband with the axe he uses to split wood, me with the hatchet, and our son with my hand plow.

This is Mr. Stumpy's picture at the beginning of December, which I think is the last time we had any snow. The daytime temperatures have been in the 40's and even 50's since then. We had a green Christmas and a green New Year's.

The guys didn't stay out there very long, but the big axe brought down several of the big branch stubs. I usually like to pick up the big chunks as I go, but with these guys out there, it was dangerous! They don't always watch their backswing!

Here is Mr. Stumpy's new thinner look for 2007!

As we shred out his punky interior, it gets easier to split off the spars of still-hard exterior wood. Now that my husband knows how soft Mr. Stumpy is inside, I have a feeling it isn't going to take as long as I thought to bring him down.

Although I am not a fanatic about clearing out dead wood (woodpeckers and nuthatches love it) in this case, it was time. The wood is pretty much consumed by fungi and insects. As we worked, we saw almost no insects. Even the birds weren't interested any more. It will be nice, but strange, to have an open space there.