Can one dig surreptitiously?

Before I begin, can we have a few lines of the Hallelujah chorus please?

The cause of celebration? Tom managed to start up the digger this morning, so wonder of wonders, we didn't destroy it with our various issues yesterday. And all the people re-joy-oy-oy-oiced!

Of course being Sunday, we technically couldn't truly enjoy its capabilities. So let's just say Tom probably didn't give it a few test runs.

Remember yesterday how Daniel started painting black tar onto our steel posts? Well he stopped after 6 because I figured we should save that task for a Sunday since it's nice and quiet. So he and I lugged the remaining 16 out to the farthest extremity of the backyard (the only place where there's much clear ground) and lined them all up for the tar treatment.

Here he is hard at work:

We made a very unfortunate discovery. Because of course we were overdue for some bad luck, weren't we?

All (and I do mean all) our steel beams are too long! Somehow or other the measurements got taken wrongly back when we were ordering them, and they're all about a metre too long. One solution is to dig the holes an extra metre deep, but that's certainly not a simple task. So we're facing the wonderful prospect of having to pay someone who charges $70 an hour to cut and re-weld all of the posts to the right sizes. Yay. Cancel that Hallelujah Chorus.

Here's Tom scrutinising the plans

And our much misused diagram of the hole/pole layout.

For some reason, it took us ages to realise that not all posts were lost, we could use the shorter ones in some of the holes where the house was higher up (because the ground slopes, they're not all the same length).

So I started calculating which ones we could use:

We managed to get one hung, which was very much a jump-for-joy moment, but couldn't hang others because either the holes weren't dug, or we needed to drill holes in the right place in the steel above to connect the steel to. We're surrounded by holes that need to be dug, aren't we?!

 

I spent much of the day scooping all of the loose soil out of the already-dug holes. Wasn't that a fun job!

Allie entertained herself (and kept us occupied) by playing ball. It was obviously part of the game to unfailingly drop the ball into one of the holes for us to retrieve it. Perhaps a reverse version of fetch?

I got a bit of a nasty surprise when I jumped into this hole for her.

 

Look at her. Never took her eyes off the ball!

Brisbane has pretty heavy rainfall scheduled for the next few days, so we decided to take some precautions by covering up all of our holes as best we could.

Like our wheelbarrow lineup?

And our repurposed kitchen add-on roof (complete with stove chimney thing)?

Another weekend down, not a great deal accomplished, I'm afraid. Hopefully this can be a big week despite the rain, and we can get the rest of the holes dug and the steel posts re-sized and hung.

Wish us luck! Good this time please!


Love Bec.