July 9, 2013 - Moved some dirt today

I spent a couple of sweaty hours with the trimmer this morning to remove any remaining grass from the hillside behind our house. It was an extremely hot, humid day today all over the region. We also had .16" of rain right before noon.

Several loads of clay soil were delivered this afternoon and then spread along the west side of the house. Brant used his skills with the skid loader to smooth out the hillside between the house and the lake. It's steep but we're hoping to make it a little more navigable should I need to mow it in the future. Things are starting to shape up. With a little more rock placed along the west side of the house, perhaps we can start planting something. Grass, shrubs, etc. will be a welcome site in the coming days.

They finished up the wall on the back side of the garage yesterday.

Later on, we'll construct a wood deck outside these sliders. If you remember, these sliders were rejected last August (opened the wrong direction) but we later decided to install them here on the back wall of the garage.

Below is the cleared out hillside. I ran over it with my 4x4 mower as much as I could last evening and finished with the trimmer this morning before the skid loader took over.

No more grassy weeds after the skid loader did it's work. We are leaving Trapper where he lies.....always in the way just like when he was alive. You can see his grave on the left.

In the process of clearing the hillside, Brant uncovered what we think are snake eggs. There were 12 of them. After I Googled this find, I thing they belong to a Black Rat Snake which is pretty common in Iowa. I laid my watch next to them so you can judge their size. I hate snakes. Don't want 'em around but they do have their benefits.....they keep the small animal (i.e. mouse) population under control. Still don't like 'em. I killed a water snake trying to injest a live crappie this past week. Anyway, there will be 12 fewer little snakes patrolling the area this summer.