There I was, digging this hole. A hole in the ground, so big and sort of round it was.

There was I, digging it deep. It was flat at the bottom and the sides were steep.

Raspberry foray

Dan, Meyrick and I had another successful outing on our monthly visit to Alice Park.

First up we had to dig over a little rectangle of land round the back of the greenhouse. An old patch of raspberries was sacrificed here on this particularly rocky part of the garden in order to make way for a new trellis which is going to act as a windbreak for the greenhouse, which itself had nearly bought the farm in the most recent gales.

We turned over the patch in relatively short time. The first 10 inches or so has been done before. I guess in preparation for those raspberries (RIP). But it was clearly very rocky indeed below that.

Going the hole nine yards

Next up, we had a set of 9 posts which are to become the support for said trellis, and for which some deep holes need to dug.

We started digging the first hole…

The first few inches were not a problem. Then came the stony strata. Dan and I stood and watched Meyrick for a while, who by now had a trowel. Scoop, cave-in, scoop, another cave-in…

Progress was slow. Every so often a larger rock required some pickaxe action, which resulted in the biggest kind of cave-in and a whole lot more scooping.

I took over for a bit, which resulted in similar imperceptible progress. If we’d been pushing a piano up some steps, it felt, they’d make a Laurel and Hard film out of it.

We decided to split up and cut our losses. Dan and Meyrick went to work forking over another area, while I battled on.

The hole was getting marginally deeper in time, and I don’t like being beaten…

Pipped at the post?

By the time we stopped for a coffee break, the hole was about half way there! I swear, it was deeper now than it has ever been. We got back to it, and after more tediously slow progress came a breakthrough. Our host found a big old heavy metal spike. Specifically the kind of big heavy metal spike that’s purpose built for this very task, and possibly has a specific name to convey that (but I don’t know what that is).

It was still relatively slow going, but with the spike thing (er, let’s call it a SpikeTastic!) it was much easier to break up the next layer of hole, even though the manual scooping that followed was just as slow.

Eventually with 15 minutes left of the mission the hole was at optimum post-setting depth. We found a spirit-level in the tool shed (if a job’s worth doing, and all that), set the post straight, and started back-filling…

Here’s where the SpikeTastic! helped a second time. The non-pointy end is custom built for tamping down the rubble as we back filled it, and long before the hole was properly refilled the post felt strong and sturdy.

We finished up the post with 5 minutes to spare, and scored some free heritage tomatoes for our help.

Note for next month’s GoodGym volunteers … that’s one post down, eight to go. Don’t have nightmares…