\u201cI’m pretty good with a shovel,\u201d I told Gilbert. “I\u2019ll dig the hole.”<\/p>\n
We are replacing our main circuit breaker panel, and we have to put in a new grounding system in order to be code compliant. Gilbert\u2019s attempts to drive two 8-foot grounding rods had (unsurprisingly) failed, since there\u2019s solid limestone four or five feet down. I was offering to do the digging for the city\u2019s alternative grounding scheme: a 3 foot x 3 foot steel plate buried three feet down.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Gilbert said we could do two smaller plates rather than one big one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll dig the holes,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n
I started today at 2:00. The sun had just passed behind the eves of the roof, so I was in the shade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There was gravel below the loamy garden topsoil, which was not a surprise. And then I hit black clay that made me set my shovel aside. I started using a post-hole digger (a hard way to dig two 1 foot x 2 foot holes).\u00a0<\/p>\n
3:00 came and went. Then 4:00 came. And 5:00.<\/p>\n
After 18 inches of black clay, there was another 18 inches of reddish clay. It was grueling work. The clay didn\u2019t fall off of the post-hole digger, but the fair and industrious Trudy came to the rescue, scraping the gunk off the blades so that I wouldn\u2019t have to bend over after each load.<\/p>\n
6:00 came and went.<\/p>\n
I hit solid rock and bent the blade of my grandfather\u2019s post-hole digger. This is bulky-trash weekend in our neighborhood, and the salvaging\/scavanging\/recycling trucks have been driving up and down the streets for two days. I was mighty tempted to set the bent post-hole digger out by the curb, but Trudy would have nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t get rid of your grandfather\u2019s post-hole digger,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ok, but I couldn’t use it, either. So I went begging: first to Ron who has a long rock-bar which sadly is in a shed 30 miles away, and then to Bill who loaned me a rock bar and his heavy-duty post-hole digger.<\/p>\n
By the time 8:30 rolled around, the deed was finally done. I could barely speak.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s just say that I might be good with a shovel, but with a post-hole digger in gunk \u2014 not so much.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI’m pretty good with a shovel,\u201d I told Gilbert. “I\u2019ll dig the hole.” We are replacing our main circuit breaker panel, and we have to put in a new grounding system in order to be code compliant. Gilbert\u2019s attempts to drive two 8-foot grounding rods had (unsurprisingly) failed, since there\u2019s solid limestone four or five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3861"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3869,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions\/3869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}