View allAll Photos Tagged Digging
I bought a big bag of Squirrel & Critter Mix the other day thinking the squirrels would just love this new mixture of corn, peanuts, sunflower and red wheat. Well, they don't. They dig through it hunting the peanuts and then hours later when they get hungry they come back and pick through the rest.
I don't know how to break it to them - but it was a BIG bag.
A new science toy that she loves. One digs dinosaur figurines out of three layers of clay, each one representing a Mesozoic period: Cretaceous on top, Jurassic in the middle, Triassic on the bottom.
An Italian built Benati excavator (fitted with what I'm told is a Caterpillar long reach arm) fills the body of a Renault Kerax tipper whilst digging a 40foot water storage well.
The eight-wheeler driver was signalling to the machine operator when digging as it was impossible to see where the bucket was from his cab!
Actually, he's really pissed off at the roots, because they're sticks to him but he cannot pick them up and run about with them. He's not used to be denied what he wants. Here's a funny video of what he does about it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdFHZqHr5Vg
Why is "six feet under" the standard depth for burial?
THE STRAIGHT DOPE-Fighting Ignorance Since 1972 (it's taking longer than we thought!)
There's no minimum safe depth at which a body must be planted – burial depth can vary from 1.5 to 12 feet, sometimes even deeper.
Individual jurisdictions specify their own minimum depths, but most are nowhere near six feet. In California, for example, the coffin must be covered by a minimum of 18 inches of dirt and turf; Quebec's Burial Act orders that “the coffin shall be deposited in a grave and covered with at least 1 m of earth, but the Minister of Health and Social Services may, in special cases, dispense with the application of this section.” (It's common today, too, for couples to be buried in the same grave, with one casket below the other.)
In low-lying wetland areas like New Orleans, a grave dug six feet deep would likely fill with water. Graves in such locales are typically less than two feet deep, reducing (but not eliminating) the coffin's chances of gradually floating toward the surface. Early New Orleanians tried to keep the dead safely out of the way by weighing caskets down with rocks, but even so the airtight coffins would sometimes come popping up out of the soil. Today, in areas well above the water table and generally considered safe from flooding, heavy rains will still dislodge the occasional coffin. As the price of scarce cemetery land skyrockets, above-ground interment in existing vaults and mausoleums is becoming increasingly popular; cremation, which typically costs something like $1,800, is also making gains on traditional burial, which might well run $10,000.
Where did the famed figure of six feet come from? Historians believe it dates to London's Great Plague of 1665. In Daniel Defoe's fictionalized account, A Journal of the Plague Year, the diarist-narrator reports on an edict issued by the city's lord mayor in June 1665 requiring that all graves be made at least six feet deep to limit the spread of the outbreak. Even if Defoe's research wasn't perfect (his firsthand knowledge may have been less than reliable, as he was only five at the time of the epidemic), other sources largely back up his version of events; in any case, his book likely popularized the notion that proper burial entailed putting the body six feet under.
As a reward to myself for having resisted making lots more burial-related puns, I'll just mention that lawyers are buried 24 feet underground rather than 6. Why? Because deep down, they're real nice people.
The Ones Who Prepare the Ground for the Last Farewell
Most graves are dug by a single man operating the levers of a backhoe. Graves are hand-dug if they are on a slope or wedged between headstones or trees, or if the coffin is for a small child.
Families often buy a plot with a plan to add a second or third coffin months, years or decades later. Most of those graves are dug nine feet deep to accommodate three stacked coffins.
"See, this grave is full now," Frank Bernardini said Friday morning, standing over a grave he was about to fill in. "You could put cremated remains on top, or a baby's casket, but the health laws say you have to have something like three or four feet of dirt on top."
They arrive at new plots, staked out by a superintendent, and lay down plywood sheets to put the dirt on. The backhoe pulls out big buckets of dirt and the gravedigger crew trims stray roots and otherwise makes the site neater. A support frame is set over the hole, to hold the coffin during the ceremony.
Ken: Day 1 - 02-08-2010
No plows came so the neighborhood guys shovelled a lane out of the cul-de-sac.
This robin flew right in front of me while I was taking pictures of my flowers. He landed close by and started digging for worms, completely ignoring me. :)
Here's the guy digging on the mound...
Pottery shards from the big mound near Jalalabad. Dave and I have been unable to get more information about it.
It's clearly man-made. Look at it in the satellite imagery (link below). Seriously. There used to be a building on the top. You can tell it's man made by the way the rocks and dirt are piled.
None of the locals I've interviewed have any idea who put it there. It's been there for as long as any of them have a verbal history.
What we do know is there's lots of pottery shards... thousands of them.
Last time we were here some of the locals told us after it rains kids search the mound and sometimes find old coins. Further questioning got nowhere.
Dave and I like to hike here, it's got a great view of the valley. This time we found a guy at the top digging for artifacts, and he found one while we were there. It was a large clay bead with designs in it. He offered to sell it to us... and while I wanted to I didn't because we 1) don't want to reward that behavior and 2) it's bad form and if it isn't it should be illegal.
(34.44809567863388, 70.395348072052)
It seemed a shame not to upload some photos of a perfect autumn day at the beach, but they were not great on their own so it was time to try picmonkey again.
The Forest of Dean is a fascinating part of the country with some quite unique customs and traditions. Aside from the longstanding right of many residents to graze sheep freely in the forest (which they still take full advantage of!) there are many freeminers who have earned the right to mine coal or iron in the Forest. This is one of the few working collieries in the area today - and we were led on the tour by a man in his 70s who still keeps digging and mining!
This squirrel was digging in the yard for something he thought was down there. But he came up empty , except some dirt
Potatoes to market
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman,
Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 31 May 2013.
www.okraparadisefarms.com/blog/2013/06/potatoes-to-market...
Gradients as steep as 1 in 40 tackled by small engines produced spectacular sights on the Nidd Valley Light Railway. A freight train, bound for the Scar House Reservoir construction site and probably carrying bagged cement, is pictured in 1934 by H.G.W. Household. It is double headed and double banked. The location appears to be on the section beyond Lofthouse station, possibly the approach to Scar House Tunnel. The gradient has just eased, indicated by the angle of the rearmost engine. Note the bicycle leaning on the fence. Most likely, the photographer used it to reach this isolated location near the head of Nidderdale. The railway, opened in 1907 and owned and operated by Bradford Corporation Waterworks Department, closed to all traffic in 1937. Passenger services ceased on New Year's Eve, 1929.
DDC-Play
We went outside this morning before it got too hot and played ball, then while I was off taking photos she decided to amuse herself and dig a hole. I had to take a photo of her, she had that devilish look on her face.