The blog went a little screwey earlier today, so if you checked before -- and I am sure you did, as no one can get enough hole news -- you might have seen roughly six thousand copies of yesterday's final post. This has now been corrected.

So the latest update on the excavation (even I get tired of typing "hole" a thousand times... damn it, I typed it again!): I made an initial attempt at taking out the root cutting into hole from the bottom side of these photos. The root is actually coming in from the East if you want to orient yourself that way. The umbrella is to the east, my yard to the west, the street to the north and a round mother-to-be lies roughly North by Northwest. Insert George Kaplan reference here.

Anyway that root turned out to be a great deal of trouble. It kept going and going, leading me to suspect it is less a root and more the remains of the bottom of the tree. Even after excavating a large space to the east side of the hole, allowing swings to reach the pernicious root, I was able to do little more than knock a toothpick sized scrap off the bastard with every full pick swing. This lead rapidly to a tired and extra surley Colbert.

So I switched to a new tactic, widening the hole by about 1-2 inches to the west. This required chapping through another 12 inches of solid root, but because most of it was at the top of the hole, it was actually a much easier task. Easier, not necessarily easy. This does push the future fence out by 1-2 inches, but:

a) It is quite likely that I won't be able to notice 1-2 inches over that extent,
b) I can cut the fence down a little on the backside to make it fit better,
and
c) It is equally likely I didn't have it properly lined up in the first place. This could be a problem if it is now 4 inches out of line, but I eyeballed it and that doesn't look like that is the case.

If you are having trouble reading the measuring stick, the hole depth is almost 20 inches. 30 inches is the approximate target goal, although I will need to do some follow-up measurements of the surround fence posts for a final estimate. I feel good about Saturday.

Real good.

Don't forget to check out the latest progression of deepening hole pictures in the following blog entry, updated for today.

Now finally, for your viewing pleasure, a cat with a baseball helmet on its head: