a hundred degrees

Volunteer Removal

Two trees of the same variety were growing in our flowerbeds behind the house. One was a little over six feet tall, and the other one a little over four feet. I don't know what variety of tree they were, but I didn't feel good about them growing so near the house. With Lexie and the kids off to visit her mother, I decided to tackle the project of removing them.

Here's the first tree fully removed:

You can see that it is in three main pieces. After digging for a while I decided that the tree was in the way, so I cut it with a hacksaw at ground level. When the top of the shovel needed to be shoved below the level of the remaining trunk, and was causing interference for my foot, I cut it again.

Here's the hole:

That thing sticking out of it is a yardstick. See it from a closer point of view:

Yep, I dug over two feet down to get the tree out. At that point I was able to pull the remainder of the roots out. The whole root section was a little over a yard long which equated to right at half the exposed part of the tree's height.

This lulled me into confidence about removing the other tree. It was growing in the flowerbed on the opposite side of our patio. At only about fifty inches, I figured that the whole root would be about two feet and I could pull it after only digging a single foot into the ground. As I cleared the area around the tree, I began to suspect that things would not be so easy. Apparently I had taken the lazy approach with this plant before. It was new growth on an older (read bigger) stump.

The root seemed to get fatter, rather than thinner as I dug. The digging itself was harder, though, because the ground in this bed was much rockier. Rocks are a real pain. After digging for a while I noticed something else:

What's that yellow thing? Closer inspection showed it to be a severed cable. Great. I went in the house and there appeared to be power. I turned on the TV and heard Timmy Turner's voice, so I knew the cable was still working. On retrospection, I didn't remember seeing any cable in the earth that I turned over. I decided that I had just stumbled on someone else's buried hacking and went on digging.

Unlike the other tree, I did not cut this one off as I worked. I just moved the tree to the opposite side of the whole from where I was working. This ended up causing me to fail to remove the entire root. Because of all the rocks I moved the tree a lot. This bending back and forth caused it to weaken and separate. When I tried to pull, it just broke off.

I was already about twenty-one inches down and every inch was costing an enormous effort. I knew that I'd have to expose at least six more just to get a hand hold. I made the executive decision to quit. If it is willing to grow through nearly two feet for light, I'll let it. At least that will give me something to pull on the next time.

In each of the holes I found a big white grub. I don't know what they were or if they were harmful or beneficial. I split the difference by leaving one be and stranding the other on our patio.

Posted to Family and Home at June 7, 2005 10:14 PM