Slow Progress Punctuated With a Snake

We are doing some major construction now. We plan to mount pillars into boulders to support our canal, because when it floods the water is 3-4 feet deeper than it is now, and we don't want it to wash away. To mount the pillars, we are drilling 1/2 inch diameter holes, 4 inches deep, into granite boulders. As you might imagine, this is hard.

We have a generator to power our hammer drill, and we pour river water in the hole as we drill to cool the bit and flush the debris. We can drill about 1/4 inch in 3 minutes, and then we need to let the drill and the driller rest for few. Even so, I think we burned up our hammer drill yesterday. We bought another one last night, the biggest we could find.

Our 12 inch pipes were delivered. They are big and cool (and white) like me.

This is the beginnings of the powerhouse. It is a little cinder block house near the river that will house our batteries, inverters, and so on.

This is a snake that showed up at our work site. The Boy Scout mantra to identify coral snakes ran through my head: red and yellow, kill a fellow, red and black, friend of Jack. This one looked to me like the red and yellow stripes were adjacent, and my name isn't Jack anyway, so I killed it with a machete. Can you see it in the middle of these roots?

Never a dull moment.