July 2021

We got the live traps and started catching raccoons. The first one we caught was a momma with little ones and they just kept on coming to the patch. We removed 15 raccoons before we started noticing skunk odors in the area and decided it was time to put away the live trap.

Abby called us from camp and said her phone was having some serious issues. She deleted some APPs to help the memory issue but it didn't help much. The battery was having charging issues too. Her computer screen also stopped working. She came home on her day off and we bought her a new computer and phone. We also decided to replace Troy's phone and out older hotspot. These new devices are 5G and we can actually get some 5G signal at our house, sometimes...

Ted, Sara, Alan & Hannah came down for a visit. We went to the Lake of the Ozarks with them. Abby's day off work at camp coincided with their visit so she came over and visted for the day.

We saw some unusual insects this month. There was this shiny green beetle, a cluster of worms on one of the pecan trees, a beautiful butterfly, and several of these Luna moth larva one of which spun this cocoon.

The neighbor over the hill with the expensive log home and stables bought the property next to us. He informed us he was going to be replacing the fence between us. We painted the boundary markers, powerpole anchor, and put flagging on some paw paw trees. Troy showed his lead man where the boundary markers were and several trees we had that were close to the fence that we did not want to be destroyed. There is a lot of poison ivy that grows onto our property from that overgrown field. Troy got poison ivy while removing the security camera wire from the fence.

Elizabeth had an experiment for school about molarity. Koolaid chemistry experiment is what it turned out to be and Troy taste tested the mixtures with various amounts of sugar in them.

Troy accompanies 2 of his workers in Indiana coal mines for part of his supervisory activities. He could stand up straight most of the time. They didn't see any fossils in the coal seam or roof but they could hear the water hissing as it came out of the coal.