Downright Trudgery

Tragic drudgery...trudgery, that is what happens behind the new project building.

This long stretch of ruble sprawls itself behind the House of Hope, but it did not look very hopeful.  In your minds eye imagine this as a road of rocks, covered in concrete, wearing a mask of dust, dirt, and debris.Can you imagine that? Well all I have to do is go there and its stares me in the face.  Some person, and I will not say names had the wonderful idea of cleaning this out by hand.  How in the world did I ever agree? 

So we grabbed our shovels, buckets, pick, iron rod, and homemade rake and threw ourselves into the daunting task of uncovering the earth from her cumbersome concrete coat.  To avoid the suffocating afternoon heat we toil here mostly in the evening under the glow of tube lights jimmy rigged expressly for the  purpose.

As if to lull me into complacency, progress was rapid for the first couple of days, seeing that the concrete was only an inch thick or so.  Breaking the cement with rod and pick, we could fairly easily scoop out the chunks and then sift them so as not to lose any of the dirt.  While the finer workable dirt is restored to the garden area, a huge mountain of heavy stone, jagged cement, and brittle brick is growing just around the corner from were we work.  I am still not sure just what we are going to do with it all, but I have a hunch we will be doing a lot hauling in the near future.  Unfortunately, and I should have seen it coming my way, just as we were guessing and anticipating the day when we would finish we struck the mother load.  Rocks buried to a depth of about two feet. What would have taken us one day to do has occupied three days of labor.  Next time we will count the chicks after they hatch.

The story is not all sadness and sorrow.  On the contrary we enjoy ourselves. One night I think the dust and  fatigue went to our heads and we tangled ourselves into a dust biting wrestling match.  Making sure to stay on the softer dirt, the game went on for a while.  It is not like we were not tired from working and needed to get our energy out, we had just temporarily slipped outside the realm of sanity.  Of course it happened on the day I wore my white shirt.  And that is the moral of the story, do not wear a white shirt to a dirty job.

Well, you can always find something enjoyable about any job you do. Can any body tell me something enjoyable about washing a white shirt by hand?

David the Post Host has done it again. Although I cannot tell you when we will be done, I can let you know ex post facto because you never know when I will post again.