Bwana, Polly and a cat named Molly: Cleaning up the backyard

It has over a year and a half ago that we had four large trees cut down in the back yard. In addition, we cut down a whole bunch of palmettos and smaller trees - All this was to open the roof up to sunlight for the pool solar panels and to make room (someday) for a pickle ball court. It was so long ago that everything started to regrow and we had to go through and cut all the new growth down again.

I had originally asked the guy who dug our pool to come back and clean out the stumps - he quoted a price of $1600 to do it - It sounded a little high but he had good recommendations so I told him to go ahead - but he was busy and said it was illegal to pull palmetto stumps out without a permit and he'd have to wait till all the inspections were done on the new pool so that the county inspectors wouldn't see him removing the palmettos. Well that gave me some additional time and I stopped in a local grain store and asked if they know of any local diggers to clear the stumps. They gave me the name and phone numbers of a local guy who came out and gave me a price. What would you guess his price was? It was $350 to clear and bury all the stumps - What a difference - $1250 cheaper. It took a few weeks of calling him to get him in to do it but he did come in and did a great job. He started on the pickle ball court area first.

Pulling out all the stumps and digging a large hole in the back of the area to bury all the stumps.

One of the trickiest jobs he had to do was remove a big stump that was right next to the new pool.

Besides being next to the pool and lanai, there were two buried electrical lines that ran out from the house to a well and were between the tree and the pool.