digging and chopping and pretties.

a few weekends ago i told you about chopping down the giant overgrown tree near the mailbox. for whatever reason, i didn't get a before picture of the old mailbox being swallowed by the tree. but i did find this for you.

and yes. that is our house from space. at least that's how i assume googlemaps gets those pictures. anyway. so i've pointed out the giant tree smothering the mailbox and if you can see it from space, it's gotta be big, right?

so we chopped the tree down and built a new mailbox. and then we realized the tree stump was covered in poison ivy so we left it alone for a while.

well austin and i were determined to get the stupid stump out. so we got to chopping.

and although it may look like i'm just posing with the mattock i swear i was actually working to get the stump out and i have the blisters to prove it.

austin and i worked and worked. chopped some. dug some. pulled with the truck some. but the stupid thing wouldn't move. our neighbor provided some cheerleading on the side {and he loaned us the mattock, too!}. eventually, we called in reinforcements and ben came over to help. we finally made progress by having austin pull with the truck while ben chopped at the roots that were still hanging out. then out it came!

so now we have this pretty shot.

woop woop! success. then we filled in the gigantic hole the stump left and now we're trying to decide what kind of plants or flowers we're going to dress it up with. one thing i can promise, though, is that it will not be something that will grow a root ball that big. because i am not doing that again.

and since these pictures weren't very pretty, let me  share some little pretties with you.