West gate site work

This is the completed excavation. I have this nice, little garden spade that works wonders. It made short work of getting down to business. It is leaning against the grill in the photo. The photo can be viewed by left clicking it. The spade is a Rigid tool. The business end of it is a little thicker than a shovel and the edge is flat and serrated.

Scraping an inch or two of the gravel screenings up was not difficult, either. The material came up in the same condition it was spread- perfect. It has rained for ten days. I now know that this material is best handled damp.
And here I am filling it in. It has to be filled in and raked out, tamped down, dump in some more, rake out, tamp down, more material, rake, tamp...until it is worthy. The only hard thing about this was going back for more. I told myself, "One more load ought to get it." about ten times until I was satisfied I had not cheated.

As I review these photos, I realize that this process would have worked better had I dumped the material in the middle of the excavation and spread it all the way out to the corners, building the whole level up gradually. Instead I dumped the material in piles and then raked off the top to level. Then dumping another pile next to that. While doing the final loads, I kept finding soft spots. Tamping a layer a half inch thick will have more uniform results than tamping material two or three inches thick.