Success! Well, sort of...

After a change of strategy we joined in battle with the stump once more. The new plan was to cut it off as close to the ground as feasible then burn the rest. So Andrea's husband Josh has been attacking it a little bit at a time. I went back last Wednesday. Thursday I spent 3 hours in the hot, hot Arizona sun hacking at the big ol' stump. When I was teetering on the edge of heat exhaustion I decided to call it a day and to start early the next morning when it was under 100 degrees. When I went in, Grandpa asked me how close it was to being done. So I went back out to measure it and discovered it was only held up by a strip of wood about 3" wide x 10" long. I broke out the chainsaw again. I figured I was already about as hot and sweat as I could get so why not finish the job? After another half hour, the top of the stump finally slid off the bottom portion. My arms, shoulders, and back were not happy.

I don't want to be a lumberjack when I grow up.

Then I spent about a half hour Thursday morning cutting the smaller stump in front of the house. Thanks to Uncle Seth for the loan of his truck, Paul for helping load the wood in the back of said pickup, and Anna for the round trip. The wood has been delivered to my friend Jerry and we have high hopes of seeing something beautiful come out of all this!

Stumped

GG and Grandpa had the mulberry trees in their yard taken down, leaving stumps. I have a friend that makes things out of wood that wants the stump from the back. So Jerry and I drove over to Thatcher to pull the stump out of the ground. It was hot! And Jerry burned up his electric chainsaw. We went to Home Depot and he bought another. We dug. We sawed. We backed a truck up to the stump and pushed on it. All to no avail. Round 1 goes to the stump, but we will be back! And better prepared!

At least we got fed. Yummy tomatoes!

Out & About

So if you go by Phoenix Civic Plaza on the light rail, you see these 3 statues around Washington & 5th St. They're pretty good size. Just some whimsical public art!

This is a grasshopper. I think it would be hard to hop in high heels. And I'm not sure what the coins under her hands are.

A big ol' centipede.


A nice scorpion. You can kind of see some smaller critters that he's holding in his claws and looking at. There are some more on the other side of the statue.