I recently wrote that I hit a tree stump with my lawnmower and experienced an unanticipated expense in repairing it. Well, what I haven’t written about is that I was relaying that story to a young friend of mine and he, without reservation or prompting, offered to “help” me grind the stumps down if I rented the equipment (I was sure all along that he’d be doing most of the heavy physical labor and I hope he did also). I must admit we have several tree stumps I’ve had to mow around, and I have often wondered if I could rent the grinder and do it myself. In other words, I was motivated to take him up on the offer from many different angles.
This past weekend, I made arrangements to rent the stump grinder. They had three different ones to choose from, ranging from a small, wimpy-looking one to one that came with its own trailer for transport. I chose the medium-sized one, hoping it would be more than enough. I picked it up early and was surprised at how heavy it was for the store clerk and me to lift it into my truck.
When my friend came over, we wrestled it off the truck by backing it up to a hill first, then took it to where the stumps were located. Two of the stumps had seriously damaged my mower and five others were just short enough not to impact it. My friend started on the first one.
This grinder was one (thick) blade designed to start from the left side and wave across the stump. We didn’t know this when we started. This is when the lessons began.
First lesson: wood is a lot harder than I think it is in my head. When I think of a piece of wood, I think of something sturdy but breakable, like a bat. I thought for sure the grinder would go through the stump like butter. It did not.
“And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.’” - Genesis 6:13-17 ESV
Second lesson: the way you approach the situation matters. My friend attacked the first stump by lowering the blade into the stump and grinding it down several inches. Even though the blade was wide, the stump was wider. So, he cut a groove into the stump. He then went to a new patch and cut another groove. The ground was uneven, so he fought the machine and the terrain, trying to cut grooves across the stump to cut it out. Eventually, he and I found a more efficient strategy: grinding off successive layers from the top that were about a quarter of an inch deep by waving the grinder from left to right. The second stump took less than half the time that the first stump with the grooves took.
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.” - Psalm 32:8-9
Third lesson: some trees have harder wood to grind than others. Unfortunately, the first few stumps were all cedar wood. Honestly, the grinding smelled great, but man, was that a hard wood. I don’t think of cedar as being an extremely hard wood, at least not like oak, cherry, walnut or hedge wood. That is what I remember from helping my dad cut and stack wood for his fireplace when I was a teenager. Hedge wood always lasted the longest in the fireplace, so I just assumed it was the hardest wood. Once we got away from the cedar patch, the other stumps were faster to grind.
“He lined the walls of the house on the inside with boards of cedar. From the floor of the house to the walls of the ceiling, he covered them on the inside with wood, and he covered the floor of the house with boards of cypress. He built twenty cubits of the rear of the house with boards of cedar from the floor to the walls, and he built this within as an inner sanctuary, as the Most Holy Place. The house, that is, the nave in front of the inner sanctuary, was forty cubits long. The cedar within the house was carved in the form of gourds and open flowers. All was cedar; no stone was seen. The inner sanctuary he prepared in the innermost part of the house, to set there the ark of the covenant of the Lord. The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and twenty cubits high, and he overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid an altar of cedar. And Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold, and he drew chains of gold across, in front of the inner sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold. And he overlaid the whole house with gold, until all the house was finished. Also the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold. In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olivewood, each ten cubits high. Five cubits was the length of one wing of the cherub, and five cubits the length of the other wing of the cherub; it was ten cubits from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other.” - 1 Kings 6:15-24
Fourth lesson: it is better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed that someone won’t make an exception. My rental was for 24 hours. I originally planned to pick it up at 8:00 a.m. and bring it back by 7:00 p.m. The guy told me that, if I needed to, I could bring it back any time before 8:00 a.m. the next day without an additional charge. So, I asked the opposite question: If we finish within four hours of renting it, could I bring it back even earlier to save myself a little on the rental fee? He said yes.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” - Romans 8:26-30
It ended up that we left my house with it loaded in the back of my truck exactly four hours after that 8:00 a.m. pickup time. I remember wishing we had finished 15 minutes earlier, but knew that by the time I got to the store, I would clearly be beyond that 4-hour rental period. As the cashier checked me out, she told me I would get money back from my rental because she adjusted it to be a 4-hour rental. Even though I didn’t ask and I was clearly 15-20 minutes late, she had made the adjustment. I was pleasantly surprised.
All these interesting observations aside, I want to sincerely thank the friend who came to grind my stumps. I could have paid three times the price to have a professional tree service do it several months from now (depending on their schedule), but I wouldn’t have been able to mow this section of land and the saplings would have grown up again. It is easy to think things don’t change much but, usually, that perception of consistency requires regular maintenance.
