The results of one of my Christmas gifts.

I got a wildlife digital camera for Christmas so we could get some pics of the deer and other critters that happened to come around. These are a result of my first attempt. I had put a wide board on the ground with some corn to attract the deer before I put the camera up and it worked, we saw several one night when we came home from church. The camera senses the heat from the animal and will take a picture at intervals that you set and will use the flash at night. Here is one of me as I was adjusting it on the tree, I guess I was hot enough to set it off.

Here is one of some snow. I didn't know snow was hot enough to set it off.
These next 2 I guess the sun set it off.


Finally some wildlife.

Apparently in the pics that Carol or I weren't in the camera was set too high for the crows and our cat that set it off in the other pics. It would have gotten the deer but the crows got the corn before the deer showed up. I'll have to tilt the camera down a little more but I think a .22 will take care of the crows or at least scare them away for awhile. Tom can I borrow you and Levi as scarecrows for awhile? I'll be putting the camera back up in a couple of days can you be here by then?

The drainage ditch, rock wall in front yard, ice & snow

This group of pics is about 8 wks worth. The 1st 8 pics some of the work in the back yard and the drainage ditch by the house to route rain runoff to the side so it doesn't wash out the drive way and to help keep it out of the basement. Haven't had a heavy enough rain yet to know if it worked. Sure hope it did.






This is one of the big rocks that came out of the basement hole.



This one slipped by the editing process. But if anyone is interested to see what my trailer and one of the wood piles look like then here it is, otherwise just ignore it it's too much trouble to delete.


The below ones are of some of the landscaping we had done. The section between the loop driveway and the road had some fairly deep dips that we had filled up the the abundance of rocks we have and fill dirt. Also a small rock wall around the front yard with some fill dirt to make it more level instead of the slope we had there. There is still a little bit of a slope but not near as much.





This will look a lot better when everything is cleaned up and covered with grass, I hope.
This is part of the area between the driveway and the road and the straw below is one of the 2 areas that was filled in with rocks and dirt to help level is out. The dip here was almost 2 feet deep and the other area is on the other side of the cedar trees and it was a little more than 2 feet deep there and I think it still needs some more dirt.
The next 6 pics are of an ice build up but not as bad as the one last year which was I think a year ago yesterday.





The 1st snow this winter came 16 days later than our 1st one last winter which was Dec 1st.

Here are a few more pictures. This one shows some of the shrinkage that the logs have done. The trim that Carol is holding against the cabinet has a notch in it where it is against the cabinet,
that notch should be under the cabinet and it's a little over an inch to high right now. The cabinet is mounted on a piece of oak plywood that is mounted on the wall at the ceiling so that it will come down with the wall instead of tearing off the wall when it shrinks. This piece of trim was sitting on the cabinet below Carol's hand so it didn't have any place to go and it caused the
cabinet to move away from the stove which is just to the left of it and I had a heck of a time trying to get the trim out without messing something up. I got it out ok and cut the notch so it would fit again. This was a good example to show everybody some of the shrinkage and it has done more.


A little more landscape and this time we had a stone retaining wall put around the front yard and filled it in with more dirt so that the yard would be more level and look a lot better. We had 2 humongus dump truck loads brought in and 3 pickup loads but that still wasn't enough, we could use 1 more dump truck load. The wall isn't as high as I wanted it to be but it's a lot better than before.




We also had some work done here in the back. We needed it leveled out some also and needed a ditch put in between the house and the hillside to the left in this picture. We needed it to redirect the runoff from any heavy rain to that side of the house so it wouldn't pool in the low spots and get into the basement also to keep it from trying to wash out the driveway at the garage which is to the right in this picture. We haven't had any real heavy rains yet to find out how good it will work. It we can keep water out of the basement then we can finish the basement, we are hoping to anyway. There will be some pictures of the ditch in a later post.


This is a picture of where I spend some time out of the sun right in the middle of 3 cedar trees. A perfect spot to take an afternoon nap.



This is between the driveway and the road so it's the front front yard. I had it cleared out some and there were 2 big low spots, 1 in this picture and 1 in the next picture, that I had filled in with some of our infinite supply of rock and then covered over with dirt. We are planning on planting some fruit trees in this area.

These next 3 pictures are of a hiking and nature trail I made that turned out to be pretty good. It goes into the woods a little ways then to the right and up the hill and loops around into a small valley and up another hill then down and back onto this trail all still on our property. I took our 5 year old niece on it and she said it was boring, I guess because there was nothing but bugs and we didn't see any animals then but her 8 year old brother seemed to think it was ok. There are a lot of animals around tho, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, bobcats, deer, turkeys, chipmunks, armadillos, mice, bald eagles, bats, assorted small snakes and can't forget the occasional skunk or 2. We have seen all of these animals on or above our property except for the armadillo and turkey but have seen them in the local area. I guess we were making too much noise while we were walking around the trail. There have been sightings of black bear and cougar in this part of the country too but so far we haven't seen any but don't worry as long as you aren't the slowest in your group they won't hurt you.


This is the path that starts up the hill but with the shadows and leaves it's a little hard to see it.