Sparky says that he is protesting some damn thing, but I wasn’t listening. Early on, he made it clear that he likes pooping on stumps. That was covered in the Poop wars post.
Next walk, he crapped on a stump.
Every four or five years, First Energy sends a tree company to trim trees under the high voltage transmission lines. This summer, Aspundh came by. The foreman was the same guy from five years ago. It went the way it usually does.
The foreman and I are chummy, but he’s got his orders. This year, First Energy’s policy stipulated that anything above about 9 feet tall, had to be trimmed lower than that, or cut down. I have a couple of dozen semi-dwarf fruit trees that were chosen to never get tall enough to threaten the power lines. I told him that my policy is they can go pound salt. He helpfully suggested that I deny permission to trim trees. That kicks it up to First Energy management.
I don’t know how First Energy works. A couple of weeks later, Aspundh came back and asked if they could trim trees that were an actual threat. The foreman said it was worked out, and they wouldn’t touch the fruit trees. Other property owners must act like jerks. Since I will talk to anyone and aspire to always be polite, the foreman enjoys our chats. I asked him if they’d cut down these two maple trees.
The closest branch is 20 feet from the edge of the easement, but he said they’d take them down. This photo is from 4 years ago. Now, the bigger tree has a diameter of 26 inches, and the smaller is 20 inches. They are big enough that roots would soon be a problem with the deck, wood shed or basement. They cut them down, diced up the logs and cleared the brush. That has to be a $1500 job.
I just rented this stump grinder from Copley Tool Rental. It’s pretty great. It is self-propelled, and is all hydraulic. Set the depth to take off about a quarter inch, then sweep it across the stump. The trick is to keep lowering the cutter wheel until it goes 6 inches or so below grade and to grind an area with a diameter of about 3 time bigger than the tree trunk. Since the base of a tree flares out with roots, if you don’t go that big, there will be a hump in the lawn for about 10 years. Roots and stumps take longer than you’d think to rot away. The rental is about $200 per day.
Its amazing that such powerful and technical equipment can be rented by anyone. A cherry picker or man-lift is my favorite machine to use. Excavators are fun too, but anything bigger than a mini-excavator is too heavy for me to trailer home. Stump grinders and trenchers aren’t exactly fun, but it’s cool to get so much work done so quickly.