Digging up around house for drainage

Remember my post from May 6th, talking about the end of the house that gets all the hill runoff, it soggies up the yard and ends up in our basement May 6 post 
and this post showing the mess

Well it's time we did something about that, not my favorite thing in the world, tearing up a beautiful yard after it's taken so long to get everything looking pretty out there, but sometimes we have to do it

 hubby on the measuring stick (for depth of ditch) and brother in law on the backhoe of the neighbors we borrowed to do this ditch project

it's getting there!, what a mess, all that dirt all over the yard now :(

 had to get the box turtles out of their enclosure because it is now all dug up, they will have to all live in crates for a day or two until I determine where I want to make their new homes

see the snail along for the ride, someone must have found the toad and put in there with them, goofy things, hitchin a ride

pretty babies, don't know what to do stuck in a crate

 checking depth

 ran some water to see if the runoff has the right slope so it doesn't back up but flows out into the ditch

 that's a deep and long trench!

 and that used to be my beautiful front yard boo waahh

 at least they moved my shrub

adjusting the slope a bit