Then, after lunch, I went and bought the Mercedes Benz of weed-eaters—a very high-end Husqvarna. It is totally cool, and even has blades which interchange with the string cutter.

My assistant was able to easily whack as much area in one and a half hours as it took him a whole day to do with the old one.

While he was working, I took these pictures. Here is a picture of the “Big Butt,” a notable landmark on our property. You are looking at it through the rose garden fence.

I got up on a big rock by the fence to take this picture. Here, you can see the road down the dam and off in the distance our lower well head (a tiny black speck in he grass) and over the top of the middle metal post is our leach field in the distance.

The fact that this was the only area on the property to perc was a huge factor in all the terra-forming we did. We had to get effluent pipes down from the house to this area—a distance of about 2,000 feet—and in order to do so, we had to stabilize all the land in between. This was a huge expense, plus all the ditching for water, electric and effluent pipes—and each must have their own ditch and be encased in sand. You would never realize how much sand cost and how heavy it is until you put in pipes in ditches!

Looking up toward the house, you can see our neighbors’ roof but not our barn, although it is just behind the rise of the hill. Along the top of the hill there is a row of rocks, I call “The Teeth.” There are actually two rows, but one of them is not apparent from this view.

We learned from the geologist that from the bay tree and up, the land is part of the Santa Rosa formation, and stable with solid bed-rock. Below the bay tree, in the foreground of this picture, starts the Petaluma formation. This area is unstable, and there is a small fault, which we named after my father: Ray’s Fault, which curves around the pond. We actually cut through the fault when we cut the key-way to the dam.

Here is a picture of my shadow on the dock, reflected on the water of the pond.The water is full of plants, but remarkably clear, considering the heat.

Last year, we had a soup of algae by this time, but there seems to be enough ecology to keep the water relatively clear this year. Where my head is, is about 10 feet deep, but standing there, I could see the leaves of the weeds on the bottom.

Here is a close-up view of the water from the shoreline. Where did all this wildlife come from? Two years ago, this was bare, dry dirt. All we added were the mosquito fish, everything else came on its own. I guess the weeds come on the bodies and in the feces of the birds. There seem to be several kinds of frogs, snails, bugs of all sorts, maybe even some turtles. Amazing how nature always finds its way.