I’m past the dead zone! It feels like I made more progress today, measured in volume of soil dug through, than in the past three weekends all together. No more scraping soil one fingers-breadth at a time. Now I’m cutting off entire chunks.

The soil here is like somewhat crumbly cheese: sticky and stable. Cut it, and it sticks to your tool, and what you cut off falls into a few pieces, but it can be handled in chunks.

The horrible soil was close to a place where there used to be a concrete sewer access. I’m guessing maybe the soil got compacted by heavy machinery when it was installed?