August 12 Visit

We took a trip to the farm today to do some work, I wanted to spray the area again for the iris's, more mowing needs to be done. First thing I needed to do was go into town and get diesel fuel for the tractor. Everything is working well and got the grass sprayed, Lois wanted me to mow a lane down to the porch swing. I then headed to the area where we have the main camera, it was needing mowing bad the trees, small ones 2-3' tall we going to take thing over. As I was mowing there was a tree that had limb sticking out into the area where I was mowing, so instead of getting off the tractor and cutting these limbs down with a saw I decided to try and knock them off with the blade on the front of the tractor. We won't be doing that again. The limb came back and hit me in the forehead, it left a knot on my forehead and scratched it. Luckily it didn't knock me out. There is a picture of some trees 50-60 of them that I have been wanting to get rid of in this area. They take up about an area of 100' x 30', they are mostly sweet gum trees 1" to 4" diameter with alot of briar's growing up in them. Well here is the before picture and the after picture.

Before

After

I will come back and clean this area up even more and spray it with brush killer later this fall to help kill any trees and brush that may be left. While we were here working on this area I decided to move the game camera, I had picked out this tree and started clearing vines off of it. Lois made the comment that about 8' off the ground there was a nest in the vines where they all came together. I looked at it and said it looked like a squirrels nest, at about that time I grabbed some vines under the nest. The next thing I knew something stung me on the elbow. You got it, hornets nest, luckily only one hornet stung me and the rest didn't bother us. Needless to say we did not use this tree and moved the camera to another tree.

I spent the rest of the day mowing, I made sure to stay away from limbs sticking out that could do me harm.

I took down the camera from the south pond and brought it home, I want to mount it on a better support and will put it back up on the next trip. but it did have some good pictures on it.

To the farm today

We went to the farm today, on a Thursday, which is unusual for us. It was suppose to rain on Tuesday so we waited to go. It was a nice day, a little to hot but still got a lot of work done. There won't be any pictures today we did take the camera with us but we didn't take any pictures just to busy. We got there and the first thing was we saw two baby blue tailed skinks when I opened the door to the barn. I tried to take pictures of them but they were camera shy and won't stay still. Next we unloaded Camo Kirby, yes we were able to get her fixed without to much trouble. While I was unloading the hostas out of the trailblazer and looked down between my legs and there was a snake. He had apparently came out from under the boards were have there to make a ramp going up onto the concrete floor. Needless to say I don't like surprises. A little squeal and a jump was in order. After I calmed down I realized it was just a small snake, don't know what kind but I did help him along his way. I think I am going to get some of the stuff to put out around the barn to keep them away from it.

I then got the roundup out and sprayed the back of the barn to kill all the grass and weeds so we can plant iris's back there. Next we loaded up camo with the hostas I bought for $1 apiece, got 15 of them, got the tractor and we headed up to the lob lolly pines. I mowed some of the area under them, pushed some of the dead limbs out and we then planted the hostas.

Next I started mowing and spent the next two hours mowing, Lois went to Greenfield and bought us lunch and we had a little picnic at lunch time. We downloaded the pictures from the game cameras, I am going to have to move the camera that has been out there the longest, for some reason the deer have stopped coming by it like they use to. I have noticed that the spot on up the hill where I had put the mineral block out they are wearing this spot out so on the next trip I am going to move and see what we get.

That is all for now, we had a busy day.

Here a couple of pictures from the cameras