Maintaining

Digging postholes. I’ve done it all my life to varying degrees of success. As a new homeowner in the 70s one of the first things I did was put up a fence, for privacy in my yard. The gulf coast soil where I lived was gumbo. Unfriendly, wet or dry. Mostly I used a two-handled post hole digger. Drop it. Lever out the dirt. Do it again. An arm-wearying exercise. My acquisition of an auger type digger improved my life. I just leaned and twisted.

Hill Country post hole digging is interesting. I have a sandy topsoil that’s hard as a rock when dry. But it softens up in the rain. After we got an inch of water the other day, I decided it was time to dig the hole for the last post on my new pumphouse. It was soft going for about foot, then I hit caliche. Ping. I had to hammer it out with a drop bar after softening it with water. Phew! A power tool would be cool, but they’re expensive and a little hard for one old guy to handle.

Anyway, the post hole is in, the post is set, and the tools of destruction are back to hanging on the walls. So, that’s three posts in three days. Slow and easy, I guess. And next week, I’ll go to banging on them. When I’m done a fence will be repaired and my new shed will have a final, sun-blocking wall. That feels pretty productive and a nice way to wrap up the year. Building, fixing, maintaining, keeping things going in my small life, in my small town, in my own small way.