We’re approaching fall and probably snow—but in the meanwhile, after nearly freezing all our flowers, and putting the poor koi on a wheat germ diet (you can’t feed them protein in cold water)—we are now baking; and all the lava rock we had scraped up to put down new weed cloth now has to be shoveled back again. It’s really hard to drive a shovel into a pile of red pumice. We worked as long as we could and gave it up. That’s still a big pile and we’re about 1/3 done. I don’t mind carrying rock, but I hate shoveling it.
Rocks are so thick in the soil that we’ve given up driving the long-awaited weedcloth pins into it: I’m bending 4 out of 5 pins so badly they won’t go in, and the 5th one is apt to be hammered flat like a badly driven nail, capable of holding, but just obnoxious-looking. Thank goodness for a hefty rubber mallet.
And I’m still working on the Bren book, and still spending my spare time prepping Chernevog for e-book release. Rusalka is ready. That leaves Yvgenie yet to go.
“Thank goodness for a hefty rubber mallet.’
You know, that has so many applications in life…;)
Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn’t it be easier to rake the pumice onto the shovel, then carry it around, rather than trying to stick the shovel in the pile? Or rake the pumice onto/into some carrying thingie, and tote it around when full? The mere idea of using a shovel alone to deal with pumice… ew. Just ew.
I have two thoughts anent pumice. In the first place, whose bright idea was it to crossbreed mice with pumas? Second, I recall wandering around in a home store with a friend and finding a four foot tall pumice monolith. It weighed only about twenty pounds, so I picked it up and called to my friend, “How about one of these?” He had never seen pumice before, so he was…gobsmacked.
😆
Having spent many summers in the family mine whilst swinging an idiot stick (defined as a stick with a shovel blade on one end and an idiot on the other), a suggestion:
Since the pumice-moving is planned, throw down a sheet of plywood (or other rigid substance, we used to use a piece of sheetmetal) next to your work area, and pile the pumice onto it. Then, when it’s time reapply the stuff, using a squarepoint shovel, you can kick the shovel into the pile on your slicksheet (the technical term), sliding the blade along the plywood surface, and fill it as full as you like. An old miner once told me “fill up the back end of the shovel, and let the front take care of itself.” That is true as well.
A day’s work at the time (I did this when I was 16 to 18) was to muck 8 to 10 tons of fluorspar (CaF2) in the morning, drill a round and load it in the afternoon, then spit it (light all 15 to 30 fuses) before riding the skip up to the surface at quittin’ time. The smoke and fumes clear out overnight, rinse and repeat tomorrow. I was young and stupid then, I’m much older now! 😉
I was the envy of my high school chums–I got to handle dynamite! 😀
Oh, I bet nobody fire-cracker tee-pee’d YOUR house! 😉
My technique is to go low at the edge of the pile or near the top, where the pieces aren’t as locked together. 😉
Shoveling 101: place your ‘power’ hand about 18″ from the back of the blade, and your other hand a comfortable distance back up the handle (all this assumes you are using a shovel–long handle–and not a spade). This is a generic starting point, you can adjust for comfort. Pumice is light, you can get away with more handle between low hand and blade. Approach The Pile. Put the tip of the blade at or near the bottom of the pile, stooping slightly; handle angle should be about 45 degrees, with the low or power hand foot about half a foot length in advance of the back foot. Handle should be tucked against your side. Squat slightly while rolling hips forward, pushing the blade into the pile–it’s okay if the blade rises as it enters, in fact that’s a lot easier with chunky materials like gravel or pumice–then stand up with loaded shovel. It should feel pretty comfortable. With heavier materials you can use the handle against your hip as a fulcrum. Standing upright and kicking the shovel into the pile forces you to shift your hand position to lift, and you tend to bend over instead of squatting (poorer body mechanics); kicking tends to give you a sore foot to boot (sorry 😉 ). Kicking the blade should be saved for compacted materials.
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Never thought shoveling could be complex, huh? 😀
Lol!
Re: weedcloth pins. Make friends with your local dry cleaner, and offer to take all his bent-up wire hangars off his hands. Use wire cutters to snip them into u-shaped chunks. Voila! Weedcloth pins, should you run out. You can also make them shorter as needed.