No Longer Stumped!

YEAH! I'm no longer stumped! Here's the area where the stump used to be (over to the right):

And here (below; click the pictures to enlarge, if you care) are the pictures of the final extraction. We'd gotten it to the point where, when we whacked it with the sledge-side of a maul, it would move 4-5 inches. So I went to Lowe's and picked up a chain and a couple of connection links - the best $18.12 I have spent today (well, the $10 we spent on shrimp - which I grilled in aluminum foil in a butter/garlic/spices mixture - was really worth it, too!). Anyway, we'd hacked and hacked, for (literally) weeks and months, and I declared (this morning) that today we would have victory - today would be our independence day from the stump! And we did.

A couple of hours of manual whacking and digging this morning, then (once we got it to the point where it was actually movable - not significantly movable, but enough that we could push on it to make a difference) we went after the chain. Now, I know that a Lexus is not a truck (although the engine is related to the engine in the Tundra, and I even had one of those for a couple of years), but you can still hook a chain to the tow hook on the rear and pull out a stump with it. The stump was heavy, so I dragged it with the car/chain over to our "big stuff pile" on the side of the road and rolled it up onto the branches we had piled there. Then I unhooked and picked up the chain and promptly burned my right pinky finger on the portion of the chain which had been dragged across the cement with a stump on it and was exceptionally hot.

But the stump is out! Today I declare victory over and independence from the stump! (Ok, I still have to put the dirt back in the stump-hole...) Hope you've had a great 4th of July!