Garden Project (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

I have had an enjoyable couple of days digging up the old garden and moving the stones off to one side. The weather has been a little hot but I am mostly working in the shade of the house so its not too bad. Here is a pic from the completion of work yesterday.

*sigh* I managed to slice half-way through my cable with the shovel yesterday. As much as I would like to blame someone else it was totally my own stupid fault - the line was marked accurately and whatnot.

I reckoned I was being really careful around the critical area, but not careful enough, it seems. Frankly, I thought that cable/Internet cables were buried more than 3 or 4 inches into the ground. They aren't.

On the positive side its not like I hit a power or gas line so this is just a "minor inconvenience" and "learning experience" rather than a "horrible tragedy".

Also, when I say "half-way" I mean it. I was thinking I sliced the old, unused cable since I remember them laying out new orange cable when they last came out (this stuff was black). Alas, when I checked the modem the lack of front panel lights confirmed my fears. I went out to take a closer look at the damage and it looks like I sliced partway through the center conductor.

Those of you that know how a cable is built already know that the odds of doing that are really, really low. For those of you that don't and have managed to read this far in this post, the odds of doing that are really, really low. I was able to clean the dirt out of the shiny copper cut and regain my Internet access just in time for my kid to get his daily streaming Netflix Monster's Inc. fix. If you are reading this, it was probably fixed properly today.

On a completely unrelated note, did you know a "dunce cap" is a piece of headgear with a history that spans hundreds of years and is not just an invention of 1930's cartoons and the like? I didn't until just now...

Anyway, because of the location of the cable, I will move the garden further from the house by another six feet or so (rather than moving the cable closer to the house). That should give me enough room, but it is not as simple as that. I don't want to be too close to the ditch out back because it routinely floods during heavy rains, and I don't want to place the walls anywhere near where the still-decaying root balls from former trees are buried...

I quit today after bagging my quota of Southern Ringneck Snakes. Here is where I ended up at end of work.

(To be continued...)