TheBanyanTree: Wherein peter falls down a hole

[peter macinnis]

I have been gardening this past week, subduing a wild jungle of trees 
and weeds, and today's task was to trim the dead fronds on a  Canary 
Island palm in the garden. I grew up in a street lined with these, and I 
know that they have vicious spines, but I also know how to deal with 
them. I cut the fronds with loppers, and then chopped off the end 60 cm 
or 2 feet so all the spines are now in a bin. Later, I will cut off the 
leaves from the stalks and compost them

For some time, there has been a deep depression in the garden near the 
palm, about a metre, three feet deep, and I have recently been filling 
it with all the fallen leaves, converting it into a compost pit.  Today, 
as I was trimming the dead fronds on that palm, I stepped onto/into the 
depression a couple of times, and the third time I did, the bottom of 
the hole gave way, and my leg plunged in.  Clearly, the leaves had been 
plugging the hole in an unsupported way.

It was a bit like stepping into really deep snow as I did once in 
Norway, so I knew what to do: bend the knee and drop back to land on the 
thigh, so I only go knee-deep, and then scramble out. When I got out and 
started poking palm fronds in there, some of them went down to a depth 
of 3 metres, ten feet.

It could have been nasty, but it wasn't. Just curious, because the 
geology here doesn't support sink holes.

Enquiries have been set in train, but I have ruled out white rabbits.

peter