Postcard from Zihuatanejo

"In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I used to think it would take six hundred years to tunnel under the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved Geology, I guess it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really: pressure, and time."

Yep: there was Andy Dufresne, the man who crawled through a river of s**t and out clean on the other side...

...and then there was Gekko, the man who mattocked his way through damn near a metre of solid rock in just under one hour. Not in the name of freedom, but so that a humble agricultural pipe could follow a straight, gently sloping line down the side of his backyard.

Today I completed phase one of the new drainage solution: the "french drain" running down beside the fence and finishing up at the retaining wall. Never one to do things by half, I've gone the whole hog on this one: 65mm ag pipe (with geotextile sock) in a bed of 20mm blue metal aggregate all wrapped in landscaping fabric.

1. Here is the trench, ready for the drain to be laid. (Note the aforementioned channel through the rock outcrop -- when I discovered this obstacle, I decided I'd come too far to be turned away...):

2. The following two pics show the drain in place. The effect is kind of like a boa constrictor in a body bag:

3. Finally, it's all covered over:

I can't help but wonder when and by whom the sophisticated piece of landscape engineering that lies buried will be unearthed. And whether they'll pause to appreciate the rock carving...