Well I’m stumped...
Phew, what you see to your left is the result of a long day of hard work.
It’s the stump of the old rotten pear tree that was in the back yard, it’s about half a foot wide at the trunk, about a foot and a half at the widest part and three feet tall (rough figures since I have very little sense of how big a foot is). It took me nearly all day (minus time about noon when it was too hot to work) of digging, sawing, prying, and hacking with more axes than a RO merchant can carry, to take it out. At first I figured that it would be easy enough to just dig down a few inches to the roots and then pry it out, but as I kept digging I found more and more roots to cut through and the thing would not move an inch till they were all cut. Finally I got all the way down to where the roots were very small and was able to tilt it forwards enough to hack out the bottom, then I replaced the dirt and grass and set the sprinklers on to hopefully stop the grass from dying (that’s why the stump looks wet in the picture). Surprisingly, with all the axe swinging and wood flying, the only injuries I sustained were wearing away some of the skin on the side of my thumb from holding the axe and a bunch of mosquito bites.
Tomorrow it’s one of the apple tree stumps...