Showing a trace of Irish stubbornness, I planned out my Big Dig project for what turned out to be one of Seattle’s hottest days ever. But, I had the day off from work. I set out to dig a trench 20 feet long and 12 inches deep so that we could lay power conduit to get electricity out to our garage. I got up at 5:45 am (on my day off) to get started.
The ground was hard, as it had not rained significantly for several weeks. The hardest part was getting through the turf, the tangle of dried out grass and roots. I thought once I got to the soil, everything would go more easily. This was mostly true, except for the huge root that I ran into that ended up being longer than the shovel! The whole digging process took about two and a half hours.
Here’s the trench. The boards are the bridges that Hannah insisted we find to help her cross the chasm:
Hannah and Simeon were soon out to help.
I was racing against the sun, since I didn’t want to dig in 100+ degree weather. You can see that the sun just hits Simeon when I finished. (This feels like a fairy story, somehow, but neither he nor I turned to stone.)
It’s 12 inches deep, all right.
Yanni Gennaios, Hannah’s godfather and prince among men, came at noon to help me lay the conduit:
The next morning, up again at 5:45 to fill it back in. Hannah was not impressed – her bridge was no longer needed. She put it over the old trench anyway, just in case. The best part is, the grass is so dead from the heat that my trench didn’t even damage the lawn much.
Monica does prefer the yard without a trench, though.
Next step: pull wire through it and start hooking up some outlets. To be continued …
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