The aspen trees in our front yard appeared to be dying.
With the help of my neighbor Ken, the remaining two trees were brought down.
My other neighbor Tony noticed that I was hacking away with a handsaw and offered the use of his electric chainsaw to clean up the stumps. I cut the trunks down close to the ground, but still wanted to remove the remaining trunk. Spreading the task over random hours during weekday evenings and more concentrated effort on Saturday mornings over a two week period, the aspen stump finally worked loose. Tony helped me lift the stump out of the hole and place it in the wheelbarrow.
Here I am in the excavation site. Having made a big hole and not having given a significant amount of contemplation about what would be planted in the archeological dig zone, Deanna suggested that as long as a hole had already been made, rather than fill it in only to dig it up later should the need arise, that a new tree would be a good thing to place therein, so long as it would not be an aspen or cottonwood or crab apple.
During a trip to a nearby nursery, we selected a Crimson Sunset Maple, which we brought home and planted in the hole. Deanna wielded a shovel and helped complete the task. then hosed off the bricks and sidewalk where we had piled the dirt that had been displaced when the hole was created..
I still have to deal with the last remaining Cottonwood stump in the backyard. We had the utility lines marked before further digging and it looks like it could be more of a challenge than I thought. The stump will not prevail....
