With any luck I'll have the cable trench finished tomorrow. It's possible to finish today, but the work is pretty grueling. This is to supply the spa I plan to put in someday. Once I start the new retaining wall, doing it later will mean ripping out retaining walls again plus lawn and everything else. I'll do it now thank you. The electrical code says buried power lines have to be a minimum of 18 inches from the surface. The last 3-4 inches are the hard part. This is solid clay. Oh I know - I should just quit my griping and go out and rent a trencher. I'm not really griping and yeah I could do that. I'm explaining what I'm doing and what I've learned about it. This is why people go out and rent trenchers and do in an hour what's taken me a few weekends. But I'm so close now that I'm still doing it the hard way out of pure determination. I'm gonna' finish digging this sucker with no power tools. 20 feet long, 6 inches wide and 18 inches deep.

Then as soon as the cable is planted, I can glue the drain pipes, bury them; and start building the new retaining wall.

Update - cable trenching finished and it's just after lunch; and the highest point is twenty inches. Whew. Now that was a workout. That's also the worst of the digging for this phase. Since this project began I finally get to do some fun stuff.