Tools for digging the trench: Gloves, shovel, axe, pick-axe, buckets (to hold the soil), clipper (to trim the many plant roots), and dowel (to measure the depth of 18 inches):

Here are two pictures of the completed trench:

Here is the beautiful pond right next to the trench:

Where to put all the soil that was removed from the trench? One idea was to use the soil from the trench to fill in the pond. Ponds require a lot of maintenance and we were not sure we were willing to do the work that was needed. Filling up the pond with the soil from the trench would solve the problem of where to put the soil!

It turned out that this was not a good idea. Instead, I put all the soil into buckets.

Click here to see the accumulated buckets of soil.