August 10-16, 2026

Weather | 8/10, p. cloudy, 73°, 89° | 8/11, p. cloudy, 74°, 91° | 8/12, 0.16" rain, 73°, 83° | 8/13, cloudy to sunny, 72°, 87° | 8/14, cloudy, 72°, 83° | 8/15, 0.70" rain, 72°, 87° | 8/16, 0.61" rain, 73°, xx° |

• Monday, 8/10: Chicken Feathers & Baked Bread
  • Today was another day of hot and swimmingly humid conditions outside, so we stayed inside for most of the day. At least we aren't getting as hot as some weather websites announce as our high temperatures. I saw the Weather Channel listing us at 91°, when we were in the upper 80s. I think they get Lewistown's temperatures from some low-lying town filled with asphalt and concrete, such as Quincy or Hannibal. Our greenery keeps us a little cooler in the summer.
  • Mary baked four loaves of bread, putting an amazing aroma throughout the house.
  • I stored away several chicken feathers. The hens are molting, so every evening while putting chickens to bed, we collect nice-looking feathers. They get dumped into my roll-top desk. I store them in labeled ziplock bags according to how I'll use them for tying flies. For instance, some will resemble bug wings. Large wing feathers become bug bodies or tails. I also sort them according to color and size. 
  • Mary and I watered gardens. Abundant grass mulch is keeping the ground around garden plants moist during this high heat cycle, so all plants look great.
  • Mary found 22 hornworm eggs and one hornworm.
  • Cooper loves chasing bunnies every evening when he's with me as I dump water used to clean chicken waterers around south orchard trees.
  • I reviewed mouse issues related to our vintage of pickup by viewing videos online. Mice get into the cabs of these GMC and Chevy trucks by entering drainage spots on each side of air inlet grill panel under the wiper blades. A solution is to cover these areas with quarter-inch hardware cloth held by self-tapping screws with washers. Cleaning mouse nests out of air ducts in the dash is quite a disassembling ordeal.

   

• Tuesday, 8/11: Cooper, The Bird Dog
  • We've got horrible humidity and heat, so it was another day inside.
  • I assembled a two month to-do list.
  • I put away more chicken feathers. 
  • We watered gardens in the evening. Mary found nine hornworm eggs. She noticed that she needs to pick cucumbers.
  • Cooper is a bird dog. On our daily evening visit to the south orchard for me to dump dirty water after washing chicken waterers and for Cooper to look for bunnies, he spotted a dove on the electrical power line and gave it the hairy eyeball. Past dogs in our lives ignore birds perched high on power lines, but not Cooper. He takes in everything.
  • On our nightly outing for Cooper's final walk, we spotted two Perseid meteors in the matter of a couple minutes. Tomorrow is the height of that meteor shower.

   

• Wednesday, 8/12: Replaced Pickup Parts
  • Right after morning chores and fixing breakfast, a thunderstorm came through, giving us a nice bit of rain that meant we didn't need to water garden plants today.
  • UPS delivered an order from Rockauto, if you call dumping a cardboard box onto wet poison ivy plants under our mailbox delivering a package. Our UPS driver is lazy!
  • I replaced the wiper blades and the blower fan on our pickup. Once I removed the old blower, I discovered about a dozen pecan nuts inside the squirrel cage fan...no wonder the fan made such a racket! The fan's motor had an obvious looseness. It was made by Continental, which is more of an economy part. The new GM Genuine fan is built bulkier and feels tight when you spin it. Once installed, it is whisper quiet through all of the five settings. Unfortunately, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't spin. So, I still need to order a blower motor control module/resistor. Based on the records I keep on a card in the glove box, the wiper blades are six years old and the blower motor is five years old.
  • Mary picked a plastic shopping bag of cucumbers about six hot peppers from the garden.
  • She also found four worms in the garden. One was a hornworm. She removed 14 hornworm eggs.
  • Mary's Merlin app on her phone identified the call of a Bewick's (pronounced buick) wren in our yard. It's not supposed to be here, but we've occasionally noticed it here in the spring. She produced the Merlin app to identify an unfamiliar bird call, which turned out to be that of a Carolina wren. It turns out Carolina wrens possess all kinds vocabulary. She also noticed the sound of a yellow-breasted chat, according to the Merlin app.

   

• Thursday, 8/13: Onions Harvested & Work on the Pickup
  • Mary harvested the rest of the onions and shallots. There were a bunch of bigger ones.
  • She picked nine hornworm eggs and three worms off the tomato, tomatillo and pepper plants. Two of the worms were hornworms eating on the hot pepper plants.
  • A couple days ago while looking at the crack in the pickup's windshield, I noticed a bumpy surface. It's sap coming out of a black walnut tree above the truck. Today I noticed that black mold is growing on that sap, so I washed the entire pickup and moved it to a nearby parking spot. The old white wash rag I used turned pitch black, as did the water. The pickup is shiny, now.
  • I cleaned out the air vents in the cab with a small winemaking brush I have that's usually used for cleaning out the inside of tubing. Afterwards, I cleaned the brush with bleach so I could use it again.
  • I tried adding air conditioning refrigerant to the pickup for several minutes in full sun with a running engine blowing heat on my face. Nothing seemed to transfer. Online searches revealed that newer refrigerant cans use a self-sealing technology, which requires a different type of refrigerant transfer connection and hose. I need to buy a new setup.
  • I fixed the crack in the windshield. After carefully reading of the directions, I realized that the package's wording that it handles a "1 1/4" hole or crack" meant it can cover one nick that's a quarter inch in size, not 1.25 inches in size. So, I didn't follow their directions to cover my crack that's a half circle and covers about 1.25 inches. Instead, I put a small amount of resin on the crack, covered it with clear plastic, and used the UV flashlight to harden the resin, instead of the directions suggesting sitting it in the sun. It worked. Mary says the crack is much less visible. I'll see of it passes a vehicle inspection. If not, we'll need to get a new windshield. At least I tried.
  • A quick check of the horn, which I never use, failed to make a sound. I checked the horn's fuse. The 15 amp fuse seemed to have corrosion. Above it in the fuse box was another 15 amp fuse for fog lights. Our pickup is without fog lights, so I swapped fuses and now have a horn.

   

• Friday, 8/14: Cooler But Muggy!
  • We have slightly lower temperatures, but extremely high humidity, so the end result is it still feels horrible while doing anything outside. With this humidity, it felt like storm-producing weather all day.
  • Mary picked 11 hornworm eggs and seven worms from garden plants.
  • On the trip to the mailbox, I noticed brown leaves on saplings due to the electric company spraying under the power lines that are in the right-of-way along the gravel road. Unlike past years, there is no evidence of spraying on our property, which is just fine with us.
  • We watched the second installment of the 2002 British TV series, Foyle's War and the 1989 film, Field of Dreams.
  • On Cooper's last outing, we stayed in the yard, due to lightning and thunder close by.

   

• Saturday, 8/15: New Large Window AC
  • When I opened a new container of blood glucose test strips this morning, I realized that they were the wrong variety and didn't fit my glucometer.
  • Our largest air conditioner's compressor quit operating correctly. I turned it off twice, and got it running, but the compressor turns off eventually. I shopped online for the best price, which is Menards, where we purchased our current 8000 btu unit in May, 2019.
  • While I drove to Quincy, Mary cleaned our fans.
  • She also picked about two-thirds of a plastic grocery bag of cucumbers. It's time to make pickles. We had a cucumber salad as part of our evening meal...YUM!
  • Mary found nine hornworm eggs, a tiny hornworm, and an army worm.
  • I bought a new 8000 btu air conditioner in Quincy that was on sale, some auto AC refrigerant (on sale, too), a modern automotive AC recharge hose with a gauge, the correct test strips to match my glucometer, plus dog, cat, hen, and chick foods. It was hot and sunny in Quincy. Look to the west and I could see it was cloudy back at home, therefore cooler.
  • When I returned home, The living room AC was just blowing warm air, even though Mary said the compressor was on the entire time I was gone. We just used our big fan in the living room this evening with the two small ACs on upstairs.
  • Mary and I shared a bottle of 2023 pumpkin wine. I left this wine on the lees too long when I made it, so it's a tough wine to drink. It goes down after you swallow it with a clunk! Plus, it has an alcohol content close to 13 percent, so it's a bit harsh. We're trying to use it up, because it is stored with poor corks. We'll just soldier through!

August 3-9, 2026

Weather | 8/3, sunny, 60°, 84° | 8/4, sunny, 63°, 87° | 8/5, 0.56" rain, 69°, 74° | 8/6, 0.08" rain to sunny, 67°, 75° | 8/7, sunny, 66°, 85° | 8/8, hazy, 68°, 85° | 8/9, hazy, 70°, 87° |

• Monday, 8/3: Long Line at the License Bureau
  • Bill left for his St. Charles apartment around 1 p.m.
  • Before leaving our county, Bill drove to our county seat of Monticello to get his driver's license. All licensing offices have Monday through Friday hours similar to when he works, plus long wait times in St. Louis, so he thought it best to try his luck here. When he arrived in the Monticello office, there were 11 people waiting in front of him. I've never witnessed that many people in that tiny office! He was done and leaving for home at 3:30 p.m., which was an extremely long wait period. But, he got his renewed driver's license. 
  • Mary turned the hay she cut yesterday in the front lawn. It's looking good.
  • I finished draining the solar generator to 60 percent by trying it out on the refrigerator. The manual suggests to fully charge it, then drain the charge to 60 percent for long-term storage. I linked it to our wifi modem and downloaded the latest firmware update. With that update came an improved link from my cell phone to the unit. I also changed some settings on the unit.
  • I investigated linking the two solar panels in parallel, compared to in a series and learned that one needs a fuse on the positive side after each panel. Otherwise, a panel can turn to toast. Additional cables are needed for the parallel connection. I decided against using that type of a connection.
  • Mary put extra hay into the chicken coop.
  • While adding new bags of feed to the chicken coop, we discovered a young white cockerel escape artist outside of the chicken fence. We got him into the coop, then searched the fences for a possible hole. We noticed an area at the bottom of the east side of the north chicken yard where the chicken wire fencing was lifted up. We figured that some cement blocks or bricks could block that hole until I do a major fence reconstruction.

   

• Tuesday, 8/4: Missouri Primary Election Day
  • While Mary fed and watered chickens this morning, I moved eight bricks and put them in spots in the east fence of the north chicken yard where the bottom of chicken wire curled upward. When I went to leave, I watched a white cockerel on a low cedar branch that reaches out into the yard. It was hopping up the branch and was only a few inches away from leaping down over the edge of the fence to the other side. I chased him off the branch, then got my Stihl pruning saw and cut off four cedar branches that chickens might climb on. I threw them beyond the north end of the chicken yard...enough of that nonsense!
  • We did some voting research online, then drove to Lewistown and voted in the Missouri primary. The governor put two measures on the primary ballet with the intention that a lower voter turnout might allow them to pass. One was to halt the state income tax and allow legislators to boost sales taxes as they see fit, which might result in up to 16 percent in sales taxes. Another was a way to restrict voters' ability to admen the state constitution. Mary and I wanted to make sure and vote no on both of these measures, which we did.
  • I finished weedwhacking under the electric fence of the near garden. It was super humid outside, especially in the late afternoon.
  • Mary picked up the new hay that she cut and was drying for two days. She stored it in the second grain bin.
  • She also harvested a handful of white wing onions that had flopped over.
  • I heard, but didn't see, two birds that were flying overhead. They were making a loud, raspy sound. They turned out to be two great egrets. Verification came from Mary's Merlin app on her phone.
  • Thunderstorms developed to our northwest and went by just five miles north of us this evening.
  • Election results told us this evening that those two measures that we voted against failed miserably. The income tax to sales tax measure vote was 84 percent against versus 16 percent for it. The other measure failed, also. We learned that Greg Sharpe won the Republican side of our state senate race. That's good. The other two losing candidates filled our mailbox with cards telling us how rotten Sharpe and each other were. Sharpe never stooped to their level of throwing rotten eggs and he won...good for him!

   

• Wednesday, 8/5: Rainy Day
  • The ass who flies a crop dusting airplane from the dairy's airport a mile west of us buzzed over our house early in the morning. He was spraying a nearby field with huge black thunderstorm clouds rolling in from the west. Minutes later, we received a big rain, which wiped out any spray he put down. Following herbicide directions is not part of his agenda.
  • We experienced rain throughout the day.
  • Mary saw a juvenile red-headed woodpecker on the power pole just outside the north window.
  • She cross stitched on the Red Fox Profile pattern.
  • I practiced fly tying skills demonstrated on intheriffle YouTube videos. One video detailed tying on goose and turkey biots. A biot is the fiber on the leading or shorter edge of a wing feather. We have both turkey and goose wing feathers, so I have free biots collected from wild birds. Biots are usually used to resemble insect tails.
  • I finished reading the 25th Alexander Kent novel, Relentless Pursuit.
  • Prior to bedtime, we kept hearing thunder to the southwest. Looking online, the nearest thunderstorm was at Shelbyville, which is 27 miles away. That's quite a distance away to be hearing thunder. On our last outdoor walk, the humidity level was extremely high.

   

• Thursday, 8/6: Dusting Books & Weed Whacking
  • Mary dusted all of the books and bookshelves in the living room.
  • I weed whacked under the far garden electric fence. It involved two sessions and always takes a few hours, due to the large size of that garden. The electric fencer unit is still not going to the top. I suspect it's because of mud plastered from the trimmer onto fence insulators that are grounding out wires. I'll work on fixing that issue, tomorrow.
  • I took in a Missouri Department of Conservation black bear webinar. Surprisingly, on a  map showing recent black bear sightings, our Lewis County is included. Black bears are mainly in the southern third of Missouri, moving up from Arkansas, where they once were transplanted from Minnesota.
  • Mary stitched on her red fox pattern for about an hour.

   

• Friday, 8/7: Electric Fence Short
  • I spent most of the day investigating electric fence issues. By isolating sections of the fencing, I discovered that the short wasn't at the fencer unit or around the near garden. Large amounts of dried dirt and dead grass accumulated in the lower insulators on all posts of the far garden from yesterday's weed whacking, so I took a whisk broom to them. I switched two inch diameter PVC pipe used to insulate tops of rebar posts with pieces of garden hose. The PVC pipe often blew off in the wind. I think pieces of half inch hose will stay on the rebar. I still had a low reading at the fencer unit. Mary joined me as we went around all fences. She dusted more dirt from lower fence insulators. Still no change. I turned on the fencer while Mary was between gardens and she heard a snapping noise. A bit of bare wire of the piece feeding the far garden from the near garden was shorting out on the wire connecting an insulator to the metal post at the southeast corner of the near garden. I rerouted that connecting wire, giving me full strength at the fencer unit.
  • Humidity levels are high. A few minutes outside and you're dripping.
  • Retrieving a ball is more important than food, according to Cooper. After a late afternoon walk, I grabbed the ball and even though cats were eating and food was waiting in his bowl, he was eager to go right back outside to chase and retrieve the ball. He's now getting to where he watches for it in the sky and catches it either while the ball is coming down, or on the first bounce.
  • We watched two movies. The first was the initial show of a British period drama called Foyle's War (2002), depicting a police detective in 1940 wartime England. It's very good. The second movie was Ticket to Paradise (2022). We liked it...critics didn't...patooyee on the critics!

   

• Saturday, 8/8: Onion & Apple Harvest
  • Mary harvested 80 percent of the onions. Their tops were bent over and ready, even though several of the bulbs were small. High heat of earlier days curtailed onion bulb growth, plus we'll soon experience more hot days. After cutting off tops, she laid the onions out on plastic in the upstairs south-facing bedroom we call the "room of requirement," temporarily named the "room of onions." The smell coming from that room reminds us of eating homemade hamburgers.
  • Mary emptied a 40-pound bag of sunflowers into three cat liter buckets, which are stored in the chicken coop. Hens get a few handfuls every morning and evening, a trick that makes it a cinch in putting them to bed in the evening.
  • Mary also cleaned up giant ragweeds that were growing just outside of the living room air conditioner.
  • She watered both gardens and found the start of hornworm eggs on various garden plants. Mary killed four army worms and a cabbage worm.
  • There are three-inch cucumbers growing in the cucumber patch.
  • I harvested all of the Empire apples. It didn't take long. We're lucky to get anything after a morning of 3° back in March when buds were developing. That temperature completely wiped out this year's pear crop. I picked 19 apples that weren't drilled with holes from woodpeckers. Since the apple crop was so low, I didn't spray apple trees for bugs this year. Several apples got wormy, which attracted woodpeckers. They did in about two-thirds of the Empire apples. I picked all woodpeckered apples and tossed them into the woods.
  • I chopped up the good apples, put them through the food processor and made 16 sandwich baggies of what Mary calls apple slush. Each baggie holds about five tablespoons of apple slush that we freeze. When winter storms prevent us from buying Granny Smith apples that we like putting on breakfast oatmeal, we grab an apple slush baggie per bowl of oatmeal to use instead of the real thing. It tastes great and makes for an easy way to preserve apples.
  • Cooper watched each section of apple core drop from the paring knife into a bucket on the floor in front of the kitchen countertop. He snarfed an occasional "oops" moment when an apple piece slipped off the counter and onto the floor...sometimes on purpose. He intensely studied the apple processing.
  • I started reading three books. One was Alexander Kent's 26th novel, Man of War. I read that his last books are not as good as earlier writings...predictable with similar themes as in earlier books. Hence, the reason to read something else at the same time. The other two books are The Finest Hours, by Michael J. Tougias, about a Coast Guard sea rescue in New England, and Where the Pools Are Bright and Deep, by Dana S. Lamb, featuring fly fishing essays.

   

• Sunday, 8/9: Ordered Trees & Pickup Parts
  • We are under a heat advisory until Wednesday, so we're staying inside as much as possible.
  • I balanced the checkbook after two months of neglect. It balanced to the penny.
  • We received word that Fedco now has Porter's Perfection apple trees, so I ordered two trees. We really like this variety, but unfortunately, our Porter's tree died this spring after winds snapped off the tap root. When we get the new trees next spring, we'll plant them in the south orchard, which is better protected from strong westerly winds. 
  • Mary watered gardens and picked worms and worm eggs. She found two small hornworms and three worm eggs.
  • I ordered a new blower motor and wiper blades for our pickup. We cannot turn the fan speed beyond setting two without it sounding like a howling banshee. I purchased a GM Genuine fan motor, even though it was twice the price of other motors. It's a part replaced in 2021 and has run poorly for over a year. The old fan motor was new when we bought the pickup in 2020. Obviously, cheap fan motors aren't lasting very long, hence the reason for the more expensive model.
  • Late at night, we tuned into Max Velocity on YouTube with live coverage of tornadoes touching down in Illinois, near where Mary once lived near Grand Ridge, north of Streator. One tornado moved in a 360-degree circle and then disappeared, which is an oddity.

July 27-August 2, 2026

Weather | 7/27, p. cloudy, 77°, 95° | 7/28, p. cloudy, 75°, 91° | 7/29, hazy, 68°, 85° | 7/30, p. cloudy, 63°, 83° | 7/31, 0.82" rain, cloudy, 67°, 81° | 8/1, 0.23" rain, 62°, 70° | 8/2, sunny, 62°, 81° |

• Monday, 7/27: Doctor's Visit
  • During today's semi-annual doctor's visit, my doctor told me that the six-month glucose reading numbers were excellent. Lab results from the blood sample they took were available by mid-afternoon. My A1C is 7.2, up from 6.5 a year ago, but down from 7.4 in January. All of the other items they check for are within the normal ranges.
  • I ordered three bags of coffee beans and 100 tea bags of Stash green tea. I like green tea. It ought to last for quite some time.
  • Mary made bread. After we paid $5 a loaf for two dinky loaves of bread in Walmart, Mary said, "Never again," and decided to go back to baking our own bread. She let the four loaves cool and then sliced them up. Then she packaged two slices at a time in sandwich bags, put those bags in two layers of two-gallon freezer bags, and froze them. Done this way, we only use what we need on any giving day. There was waste in the past with freezing whole loaves of bread when some would grow mold, due to us not eating them up soon enough. We ate sandwiches made from her bread as an evening meal. The bread was incredibly delicious.
  • Today was another episode of high heat. Twice we watched thunderclouds approach from the north, but fade to nothing as soon as they reached us. When the sun was low on the western horizon and the temperature was slightly lower, we watered the gardens. Plants are doing fine, but our daily strawberry numbers are drastically reduced.

   

• Tuesday, 7/28: Mesh Tube Minnow
  • The high heat continues. We stayed inside until late in the day.
  • I built a Mesh Tube Minnow similar to what Ginger Miller demonstrated in the last Virtual Vise online session I took in (see photos, below). It's rather goofy and I don't know how it will fish. The materials I used in this big fly are lead wire for weight, fluorescent green mesh tubing and thread, light green chenille, and a #2 streamer hook. I goofed up on the first attempt with too big of a wad of chenille for the belly, making it impossible to fit the mesh tube over the chenille. The second attempt was better. I might add some google eyes, but I need to test out glues on mesh tubing to see what works and if various glues melt the plastic of mesh tubing.
  • We watered gardens. We're seeing several developing peppers. The plants are surviving the heat. I gave the Carpathian walnut a half bucket of water. Tall foxtail grass surrounds the sapling and probably protects it from intense solar heat. We have the same phenomenon occurring with onions.
  • While putting chickens away for the night, we heard a wood thrush. 
  • We can't believe it, but we're still seeing a few fireflies at night.
  • I watched several how-to fly tying videos by InTheRiffle on YouTube. 

A Mesh Tube Minnow.

Most materials used in making this large fly.

 
• Wednesday, 7/29: Mowing, Solar Generator & Laundry Detergent Stink
  • Mary mowed the lawn between the machine shed and the woodshed, putting most of the grass mulch around tomato plants in the far garden. We haven't mowed through high-heat spells, so our lawns look like hay fields.
  • I washed the three fuzzy items I bought last week from thrift stores. All garments coming from thrift stores are washed with a heavy dose of stinky laundry detergent. I don't want to make lures from items that reek of manmade stinkum. Some time on the clothesline will help dissipate the odor. 
  • I set up the solar generator with the two solar panels on the trailer, pushing the stored energy from 60 to 99 percent. I read in the manual that it's best to take the generator to full capacity, then drop it to 60 percent for storage. So, I used the generator to provide power for my laptop in the evening, dropping it to 96 percent.
  • I mowed the lane. I had to go slower than usual, in order to knock back the chicory stalks. 
  • Black walnut trees have leaves that are turning yellow early. The tall grass is yellowing. There is just too much heat this summer!
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 pear wine. It has great flavor, but a healthy kick. Pear wine requires at least a year of aging. Three years is even better.

   

• Thursday, 7/30: A Mowing Blitz
  • I sharpened the blades of both push mowers.
  • Mary and I both mowed the lawn just north of the house and to the west, which were knee-high in grass, tall chicory stalks, and cherry/persimmon saplings. We added grass mulch to all existing plants in the far garden. It was cooler today, so we took fewer and shorter breaks in order to get this area cleaned up. It looks much better. Bill is interested in enjoying an outdoor fire when he visits this weekend, which was an incentive to mowing down these hay field lawns.
  • Bill's current job allows him to take his birthday off. So, his weekend visit will include Monday, August 3rd, which is his 33rd birthday. 
  • Mary keeps picking up the call of a mockingbird on her Merlin app. The app indicates that it is an unlikely resident. Mockingbirds usually reside further south in the summer. Mary thinks it has taken up summer residence on our property.
  • My three items I bought for fly tying aired in today's sun and wind. Only the infant garment still has a fake laundry soap odor. The two blankets smell normal. I hung them over interior room doors for further airing, just in case residual odors exist.

   

• Friday, 7/31: Trimming Electric Fence
  • I used the Stihl trimmer and whacked down grass and weeds under the electric fence of the near garden, a task I'm accomplishing for the first time this year. I only got the north side cleaned up. Needless to say, it is very thick with vegetation and takes additional time to accomplish.
  • Initially, while using the trimmer, I was breaking off nylon string about every three to four feet. After two or three years, that string is brittle. Once I soaked it with WD-40, the string stopped breaking. Apparently, I should buy trimmer string on an annual basis.
  • Rain squalls forced me to quit my trimming work. Mary started chores earlier than normal. I had to wait for rain to subside prior to starting my evening chores.
  • When Mary put the chickens to bed, she was missing a hen. She started walking Cooper and suggested that the hen might be on that nest under the cedar tree next to the woodshed. I spotted five eggs there yesterday while I was mowing. I looked. Sure enough, our Houdini who escapes the chicken yard daily was sitting on that nest. A few minutes later, Mary grabbed Houdini, who put up a big squawking fuss, while Mary carried her to inside the coop.
  • Mary noticed a brown thrasher for the first time since spring. It was out enjoying the freshly cut lawn.
  • I'm chasing woodpeckers out of the Empire and Granny Smith apple trees. That probably means some of the apples are getting close to ripening.

   

• Saturday, 8/1: Bill Arrives
  • It rained intermittently all day to give us just under a quarter inch.
  • Bill arrived around noon.
  • I added dragon eyes to the mesh tube minnow I made on Tuesday (see photo, below). They are attached and covered with UV gel. While shining the UV flashlight to harden the UV gel, the tinsel of the mesh tubing was purple.
  • Mary finished three Halloween ornaments (see photo, below). They are named Mod Cat, Autumn Silhouette, and Ghoulish Glow.
  • We gave birthday gifts to Bill two days early so cats wouldn't eat them. One of the presents was a bar of dark chocolate.
  • Bill took a photo of milk weed tussock moth larvae (see photo, below). I've noticed several of them on milk weed plants next to the lane. Touching them gives a person a nasty rash.
  • The upper part of a dead ash tree fell into the north chicken yard and scared chicks so that when Mary put them to bed for the night, all chicks were huddled inside a corner of the chicken coop.
  • Bill took a photo of Gandalf crawling out from a kitchen cabinet (see below). 
  • We watched two movies. The first film was a DVD we gave Bill for this birthday entitled A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), about Fred Rogers. The second film we watched was Dave (1993).

Dragon eyes on the mesh tube minnow.

Mary's cross stitch Halloween ornaments.

   

Two milk weed tussock moth larvae.

Gandalf emerging from a kitchen cabinet.

 
• Sunday, 8/2: Wiener Roast
  • I cut up the ash tree that fell across the north chicken yard with the small battery-powered Stihl pruning saw. Our chicks sure live strongly by the name chicken. They stayed inside the coop the whole time I was cutting up the tree. Then I took the big chainsaw and cut up the trunk on the east side of the chicken yard fence. It was actually three pieces of trees...the ash tree, an old oak tree, and an ash limb. I noticed later in the day that the top of a live tree was gone. It maybe blew down in the wind and tilted old dead trees over.
  • Mary used her scythe to cut down part of the lawn between the house and the lane for hay to use through the winter on the floor of the chicken coop. It was deep, tough, and wet, which made for grass that flopped over and hard to cut.
  • Bill helped me move firewood from the chicken yard by opening and closing gates. He helped Mary move hay in a wheelbarrow and spread it out on shorter grass to dry.
  • We lit an outdoor fire and roasted wieners. We also played washers. Bill won most of the games. We watched the sky as darkness revealing stars. There are several more satellites moving across the nighttime sky compared to past years. We saw several shooting stars.
  • Before it was dark, we saw a couple common nighthawks. Mary saw a bat fly only five feet above our heads. Mosquitoes were really chewing on Bill. Mary and I noticed them, but they weren't biting us...probably because we're old coots with no blood. 

July 20-26, 2026

Weather | 7/20, sunny, 69°, 93° | 7/21, 0.12" rain to sunny, 71°, 83° | 7/22, sunny, 60°, 79° | 7/23, p. cloudy, 60°, 79° | 7/24, 0.02" rain, 60°, 72° | 7/25, 0.11" rain, p. cloudy, 65°, 89° | 7/26, p. cloudy, 74°, 95° |

• Monday, 7/20: Creating a Mesh Tube Darter
  • Any time we went outside, the temperatures were just too hot and the air was orange with wildfire smoke. We stayed inside. At 93°, we hit our hottest temperature of this year.
  • Mary worked on her cross stitch project called "Mod Cat," a Halloween ornament.
  • I spent all afternoon online trying to find a fly tying pattern to help me understand the poor notes I took during a web session with Missouri Department of Conservation Educator Matt Murray describing how to make a Mesh Tube Darter. He used a rabbit fur piece called a "zonker strip" by fly tyers. Using that term, I found similar fly tying recipes. 
  • Mary watered the far garden twice and the near garden once. It was a very hot job. Three tomato plants look like they're dying. Some are growing nicely.
  • Bill sent some images and texts about a Mediterranean House Gecko in the support room at his place of work. He released it outside.
  • At roughly 8 p.m., Mary shut chicken coop windows with thunderstorms approaching from Iowa. It was entertaining with all but two chicks piled into three open windows. She moved 29 chicks. We only have 24 chicks. Once set onto the roost, several chicks flew back to the window sills. When she finally got all of them on the roost, she completely closed the lower parts of windows and opened the upper halves to a 3" crack.
  • I built a mesh tube darter (see photos, below). I got the mesh tubing at Dollar Tree for next to nothing. The rabbit fur died in a rust color pushes down the tubing to make it resemble a fish belly. I used two feathers from our Silver Wyandotte hen we call "Silver" (very original) for pectoral fins. Unfortunately, one is longer than the other. I used a plastic fish mask with holographic fish eyes covered with UV gel preservative, which hardened nicely after three minutes exposed to a UV flashlight. I need to buy more colors of rabbit fur to make future versions of this unique lure.
  • On Cooper's last walk, the setting moon backlit clouds in the southwestern sky while lightning flashed to the northwest. We fell asleep to thunder.

Side view of a Mesh Tube Darter.

The same lure viewed from underneath.

 
• Tuesday, 7/21: Two More Quarts For Blackberry Wine
  • We received just a little over a tenth of an inch of rain overnight while we slept.
  • When I walked Cooper around noon, a big turkey, which was probably a female, and two turkeys half her size, most likely her offspring, flew off to the west from near the lane.
  • I picked blackberries before and after our midday meal. I got just four berries from the east patch, but I hit the mother lode in the southeast patch located just south of the far garden through the cedar trees. In two berry picking sessions I gathered two quarts of blackberries, giving me a grand total of six quarts for winemaking. I weighed all six bags and I have 7.59 pounds, which is very close to the eight pounds needed to make two gallons of wine.
  • Mary thinks she has more tomato plants that are dying. Yesterday's 93° didn't help.
  • Temperatures were better today. A north wind meant we only got to 83°. 
  • Mary created a shopping list for our trip to town, tomorrow.
  • While washing chicken waterers, I still see fireflies at dusk. This is the latest in the summer that we've ever noticed fireflies.

   

• Wednesday, 7/22: Shopping
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL. At Goodwill, Mary bought a solid oak frame with some sappy words about family inside it that she'll throw away, but use the frame to replace an old frame around a cross stitch piece she once made of a mallard duck pair. I bought a Savannah Banana baseball team T-shirt. At Dollar Tree, I bought three skeins of chenille yarn and some Crazy glue for fly tying. For $1.50 a skein, a got the equivalent of about 100 cards of chenille purchased from a fly tying site. These cards are worth about $4, each.
  • Cooper was a good puppy while we were gone from home for five hours. I gave him extra time outside while I hauled garbage down the lane, got mail, and did evening chores.
  • Mary watered the gardens. Temperatures were lower, so the plants looked better.

  

  Chenille from Dollar General (left) and from fly tying shop (right).

  
  
  

• Thursday, 7/23: Outside of the Box Fly Tying Session
  • A general "blah" feeling by both Mary and I meant we mostly stayed inside today.
  • When I walked Cooper on his noonish outing, we encountered the remains of a rabbit in the grass along the east side of the lane near the gravel road. Probably a hawk had a bunny dinner.
  • I called in our water meter reading. About two hours later, a couple guys from the water district showed up to read the meter. Initially, they couldn't find it. Usually, it's near the gravel road. Ours is near our house, a quarter mile up our lane from the gravel road. They called, left a voicemail, and I called back to tell them to drive north on our lane. We were amazed that water district employees didn't know where their meter was located. When the older of the two guys read off what the meter number was, the younger guy reading it said, "That's not the correct number." I don't think they have very accurate records. I said to the older guy that I keep reading about the water district online and added, "Someone doesn't like you." He said it's all false information and one-sided, adding that one guy doesn't like the water district, along with the editor of the Edina Sentinel newspaper. Before he left, he said, "Say good things about us."
  • I took in a monthly "Virtual Vise" fly tying session. This time it was "thinking outside of the box." Ginger Miller, the presenter, bought her fly tying materials from a couple dollar stores. She had the exact chenille yarn that I purchased yesterday! She said Family Dollar has mesh tubing on sale for 50 cents a package. Ginger tied three large flies. One involved ribbon material stripped of lengthwise fibers to resemble hackle feathers. She used floral wire as a lead wire substitute and adhesive diamond wrap as fish eyes, with the help of a marking pen. All kinds of cheap fly making ideas came from this online session.

   

• Friday, 7/24: Done Picking Blackberries!
  • We experienced light bits of misty rain during parts of the day.
  • While walking back from the chicken coop this morning, we heard an unusual bird song. Mary grabbed her phone, turned on the Merlin app, and it identified the song of a blue grosbeak, a new bird for the year.
  • I picked almost another quart of blackberries from the south and southeast berry patches. It gives me almost 8.5 pounds of berries, enough for a two-gallon batch. We are all done with picking blackberries for the year. We've been at blackberry picking for over a month. There are still a lot of red blackberries yet to ripen. It gives birds some food and as berries fall to the ground, the seeds replenish berry plant growth for another year.
  • I made waffles that we topped with strawberries fresh out of the garden. We keep getting a healthy amount of strawberries every single day...the best strawberry yield we've ever witnessed.
  • The dingbat crop duster who has buzzed over our house each and every day for well over a month was delivering herbicide over fields while a light misty rain was coming down. All herbicide labels I've ever read warn against spraying 12 to 24 hours before a rain. This guy is wasting farmer's money while spraying during a rain. What a complete idiot!
  • I'm watching one-minute long videos on fly tying tips from the tightlinevideo YouTube site, where Tim Flagler offers fantastic tips for better tying techniques. His stuff is excellent!

   

• Saturday, 7/25: Fly Tying Materials & Katie's Fishing Trip
  • I drove to Quincy only to discover that I forgot my wallet. I drove back home and got it. I went to the Salvation Army and Goodwill thrift stores and picked up yarn and three garments that I can tear down to make into fishing flies. One is an infant's sweater in light pink with hot pink hearts on it. Cut into small strips, it might substitute for rabbit fur. The other two items are really fuzzy lap blankets in deep red and dark purple that I can cut up in strips. The blankets are big enough to give me materials for thousands of flies.
  • I also picked up two prescriptions and two bags of chick feed. Forgetting my wallet meant I put in two round trips for about 120 miles.
  • Mary mopped the floors and finished cross stitching the Halloween project called "Mod Cat."
  • Katie sent several photos (see below) of a red salmon fishing trip on the Kenai River. She won a charter boat excursion and reached her limit in two hours. She's excited to taste the new meat in her freezer.
  • The humidity was amazing when we walked Cooper before bed. It felt like you could swim through the foggy air. Humidity level was at 91 percent!

Several red salmon on a stringer.

Katie with her fish on the Kenai River.

Nice-sized red salmon filets.

Katie thinks it's time to buy a bigger freezer.

 
• Sunday, 7/26: Very Quiet Day
  • It was too hot to do much outside, so we stayed indoors.
  • I fiddled with fly tying stuff I bought yesterday and put it away.
  • Mary covered tomatoes stems that were lying on the ground with grass mulch, where possible. When tomato stalks are horizontal on the ground, this intense heat cooks them and they die. Once tomato plants grow vertically and gain stems with leaves, they survive. Mary finds that by covering these horizontal stems, they soldier through the heat and survive.
  • I worked up a chart of daily glucose readings from Jan. 1st through today for my semi-annual doctor's visit, tomorrow.
  • I talked with Mom. Outside temperatures are well over 100° in Circle, MT. 

July 13-19, 2026

Weather | 7/13, sunny, 63°, 87° | 7/14, sunny, 68°, 88° | 7/15, sunny, 68°, 89° | 7/16, sunny, 69°, 90° | 7/17, sunny, 69°, 89° | 7/18, sunny to 0.17" rain, 73°, 91° | 7/19, cloudy, 71°, 87° |

• Monday, 7/13: Cooper With Us For Six Months
  • Mary picked two more quarts of blackberries. We have a grand total 21.5 quarts in the freezer, including last year's berries, so Mary has gathered 16.5 quarts of this year's blackberries. She's hoping to be done picking blackberries by the end of tomorrow.
  • Mary saw a red-tailed hawk fly overhead. They are rare to see on our property these days since our land is not as open as it was when cattle grazed on it. 
  • Mary saw a wheel bug that was 1.5" long...YIPES!!! 
  • I did fence work involving pulling up deer-trampled chicken wire fencing and staking down the bottom of that fencing. I made it down 2.5 sides of the far garden. I have 1.5 sides yet to go. There are several tick and chigger bites on my right hand in which I removed a glove to feel for chicken wire fencing that wasn't touching the ground.
  • We have upper atmosphere smoke in our air as of today. It's probably from wildfires in other states, such as Minnesota due to our north breeze.
  • We have had Cooper for six months. Below is a video of our silly puppy. He's a happy soul (see video, below).
  We've had our Cooper around for six months.
   
  
  

• Tuesday, 7/14: Blackberry Picking is Over for Mary
  • Mary performed her last blackberry picking of the year. She got 2.75 quarts with today's collections. It makes for a grand total of 23.75 quarts in the freezer, including last year's berries. She looked it up in her records and she picked blackberries since June 22nd, missing only six days in the beginning when they were slowly ripening. It's been a long haul. I now pick for a winemaking supply.
  • Purple prairie clover is now blooming in the north field.
  • Mary was almost hit by two great crested flycatchers that were chasing each other through the northeast berry patch.
  • She also saw a cat bird stealing berries out of that patch.
  • I finished tapping in stakes and pulling up the chicken wire of the far garden's bunny fence. One section trounced by deer and then hopped over by rabbits had a rip in the chicken wire that I mended. The stakes all came from persimmon saplings in the area between the south and north sections of that garden. I noticed as I cut them down that animals are bedding down under the protection of these saplings.
  • A new hatch of fireflies hover over tall grass at twilight. I recently walked Cooper down the lane and was amazed at all of the blinking lightning bug flashes over the surrounding fields.
  • We took out the chick's red heat lamp light. It's too hot for that nonsense and they're big enough to tough out nighttime darkness.
  • We celebrated Mary's last blackberry-picking chore by enjoying a 2025 spiced apple wine. I drew two clouds on the label of this bottle to indicate that it was very cloudy. We've discovered that cloudiness in apple wine equals enhanced flavor, so I don't mess with filtering out the particulates. It was tasty, as usual.

   

• Wednesday, 7/15: Tomatoes Are Transplanted
  • Mary cleaned tall grass out of the top of the compost bin that we're pulling compost from this year. Earlier rains gave grass seeds on the top of that bin incentive to grow big and tall.
  • Mary transplanted 27 tomato plants into the far garden. Actually, there are more, because she puts two seeds in every Styrofoam cup, often resulting in two plants per cup. She also transplanted four tomatillo plants. All transplants received a big hunk of compost, some wood ash, and bone meal. Mary watered both gardens. 
  • I strung baling twine around the top of all fence posts surrounding the far garden. We think the orange string resembles electrified cord some farmers use and keep some deer who have experienced an electric shock from that product from venturing over our fence. It doesn't work all of the time.
  • I hooked up the electric fence from the near garden to the far garden and tested it's potency after I untangled two spots where rabbits jumped through and wrapped wires around one another. It's now up and running.
  • I picked a third of a quart of blackberries. I'm a rookie at picking berries this summer. Patches are so different compared to previous years that I don't know where to go. After returning and listening to Mary describe all of the locations where she picked berries, I realized I missed several spots. Another factor is that vegetation grew so much that winter paths are invisible, making it harder to determine where to go. Plus, I was wearing glasses so I could see fruit quality close up. I felt like a blind man marching across the north field.
  • When I entered the top of Bramble Hill, three turkeys flew off. One was smaller than the other two. I heard them while picking berries between the ponds. 
  • Mary found a dead chick this evening. They're not eating their food. These white chickens are the dumbest lot we've ever raised. We don't determine breed types when we order the Frypan Special from Cackle Hatchery. This year all but two are white stupid chickens!

   

• Thursday, 7/16: Thorough Watering & Berry Picking
  • Mary gave me a morning tour through the north berry patches. I definitely missed a couple of them. She has a nice system down to get through all of the berry bushes.
  • As we were taking a shortcut through the woods just north of the machine shed, a covey of quail burst out just in front of Mary. They never fly off as a group, but burst out one at a time. It's best to stop moving until all of them are finished flying off.
  • Mary thoroughly watered all garden plants. The tomato plants that were transplanted yesterday were suffering with shock from today's heat, with some new growth shriveling in the intense sun.
  • I picked a quart of blackberries in the north field. It took me two hours meandering through all of the thorny plants at 90° temperatures, which is about double the time it takes Mary to do the same job. She grew concerned about how long it was taking me, so as I ended, there she was, looking at me. In her words, "I decided to go out and collect your carcass. I figured I'd have to scoop up a puddle on the ground." I'm labeling the blackberries I pick as "wine berries" on the freezer bags.
  • While I picked berries, a doe deer ran by just south of me. I also saw a low-flying red-shouldered hawk.
  • I spotted two young turkeys on the lane while taking Cooper on his late afternoon walk. They were the size of crows, smaller than adult turkeys. At first I couldn't identify them. When turkeys fly, their wing tips touch with a smacking noise. I heard that sound and then realized they were turkeys.

   

• Friday, 7/17: Chicks Let Outside
  • Mary pulled a bunch of tall grass and weeds from the third row of the far garden. She planted two hills of zucchinis and six hills of acorn squash.
  • Mary watered the near garden once and the far garden twice. We're now in a dry cycle.
  • I mowed the chicken yard.
  • Two of the old wooden posts at the north end of the far garden rotted at their bases and fell over. I installed two metal posts in their place and wired the four-foot high chicken wire fence to them.
  • I opened the door from the coop to the north chicken yard for the chicks. These guys are always in a major fright. As I was unscrewing the inside board off that door, they were all in the corner behind the metal garbage can that holds chicken feed, jumping on each other in a major panic. Even so, by the time Mary put the chickens to bed in the late afternoon, about six chicks were outside. Some years, no chicks venture outside on the first day.
  • I picked one quart of blackberries from the northeast and west berry patches. It sure is a hot job. After returning from each trip, my clothes are soaking wet from perspiration. 
  • The solar generator arrived today via FedEx three weeks after we ordered it.
  • Mary picked a big bunch of strawberries. She's been doing this for most of this week. There's nothing better than homegrown strawberries.

   

• Saturday, 7/18: Hiding Inside From Heat
  • It was too blasted hot outside at 91°, so we stayed in air conditioning for a good part of today.
  • Mary happily worked on a cross stitch project.
  • I worked at understanding the ins and outs of our new solar generator by getting manuals online, reading them, and charging it via a house plug in. I tested it by plugging a big fan into it and then powered the refrigerator with it. The generator works nicely. I'll test charging it with solar panels on a day when it's not so hot outside.
  • When I checked chicks around noon, I discovered a white chick had escaped into the hen side of the chicken yard. It was an Olympic sprinter, so I got Mary to help round it up. Mary crawled into a tight triangular area on the hen side where two fences come together. Cedar and mulberry branches made it a tight cubby hole, making it tough for any human to get in or out of there, even though Mary did it. We eventually urged the chick up the ramp into the hen side of the chicken coop, then through the human door that separates that side from the chick side. I used the small Stihl pruning saw to cut several branches and threw them over the north chicken yard fence. It's now easier for venture into that spot. 
  • Mary watered gardens in the same sequence...two times in the far garden and once in the near garden. Tomato plants are looking better, some with a darker green color.
  • I picked just a shy less than another quart of blackberries from two of the north field patches. There are three quarts in the freezer. I did this in the late afternoon. When I left for home, the sun was about to set behind oncoming clouds. It was cooler than a midday picking.
  • Around 9:15 pm, we noticed thunderstorms on the radar moving into us, so we lowered chicken house windows to a four-inch gap. To our surprise, 22 chicks were stacked on one another in three windows. Some were piled three deep! One by one, we moved the chicks to the roost so we could lower the windows. This is sure a dingy collection of chicks!
  • A slow moving cold front gave us 0.17 inches of rain in a thunderstorm, which was nice for garden plants and the wild blackberry crop. 
  • I watched the online recap of the England/France World Cup soccer game for third place. England won, 6-4. It was an amazing game.

   

• Sunday, 7/19: Charging with Solar Panels
  • Mary watered the garden just once, due to yesterday's rain.
  • I figured out how to hook up the two solar panels in a series and charged the new generator while we ate our midday meal. I surveyed the activity with an app on my phone. The highest input from the solar panels was 400 watts. It dropped to under 100 watts when a cloud covered the sun. Both panels and the generator fit nicely on the bed of the tilt trailer next to the pickup. In about two hours, the battery of the generator went from 40 to 60 percent. It's a cool way to store electricity.
  • A noonish check of chick waterers revealed that a barred rock chick was in the hen side of the chicken yard. I easily scooted it through the gate. When Mary did a mid-afternoon check, two white chicks were in the hen side next to the west end of the chicken coop. I tried moving them with a long stick when they snuck around a fence post to the correct side. A bottom bit of chicken wire fencing was bowed out at the base of the pole, allowing for easy passage of the smaller chicks from their part of the chicken yard to the hen side. That solved the mystery of how they were always moving over to the hens area. I folded the chicken wire and tacked it against the post with a fence staple. When Mary put the chicks to bed, two of them tried to jump through what once was the route through to the hen side of the yard, but this time they just bounced off the chicken wire fencing...the little bastards! 
  • Mary spotted some purple martins that joined cliff swallows and our resident chimney swifts in their zinging across the sky above our house. Her Merlin app verified what Mary thought were martins. It's a first of the year.
  • I picked another quart of blackberries. I did it in the evening, again, when the temperature is lower. I now have 4.25 quarts in the freezer. According to my records, four pounds of blackberries make each gallon of wine. The average weight of the quart bags is 19.6 ounces, so I'm at 5.2 pounds of berries, or 1.3 gallons of wine. I'd like to pick enough berries to make at least two or three gallons of wine.
  • Mary collected about a half a pound of strawberries today.
  • While walking home from picking berries, two fawns jumped up in front of me as I approached the woods north of the machine shed. One still had spots. As I walked through the woods, I looked to my left and saw one fawn looking at me. 
  • After finishing evening chores, which were late for me due to berry picking until dusk, I noticed the electric fencer was shorting out. In a check for crossed wires, I spotted a Carolina wren fledgling sleeping on an upper fence wire of the far garden. The little bird didn't wake as I walked by just a foot in front of it with my flashlight blaring in its face.

July 6-12, 2026

Weather | 7/6, sunny, 65°, 85° | 7/7, sunny, 65°, 85° | 7/8, sunny, 63°, 87° | 7/9, cloudy, 68°, 87° | 7/10, cloudy, 66°, 88° | 7/11, 0.81" rain, cloudy to sunny, 65°, 83° | 7/12, sunny, 62°, 87° |

• Monday, 7/6: Berry Picking & Mowing
  • Mary picked 2.5 quarts of blackberries. We now have a total of 7.5 quarts of this year's blackberries in the freezer. The north field berry patches are developing into a big berry producing area.
  • Mary noticed today as the first day of dog day cicadas, or annual cicadas, that come out at the start of the dog days of summer.
  • Mary heard chimney swift babies peeping as she walked by the chimney on the second floor landing.
  • Mary's Merlin app on her cell phone picked up a great-tailed grackle call. She said it's rare for this bird to be here.
  • Blue vervain is blooming in the north field.
  • I mowed up a bucket of clover and poured it out over about half of the floor in the chick side of the coop. By late afternoon, the chicks polished off all but a couple leaves of that green clover. 
  • I mowed between the far garden and the compost bins, outside of the far garden, and between the far garden fences. My next chore is trimming grass under the electric fence wires so I can turn on the far garden electric fence. Mary has tomato and tomatillo plants that are turning into vines and need to be planted. Grass mulch went around the planted raspberries and under the Empire apple tree.
  • A small fawn, which could barely look out over the grass, jumped up just east of the far garden when I first starting mowing. It looked at me for a few minutes, then bounced off to the east.  
  • Every evening Cooper is outside with me when I wash up chicken waterers. We walk to the south orchard where I dump the waste water around apple trees. Cooper loves tagging along and usually finds a bunny to chase.

   

• Tuesday, 7/7: Berries & Frustrated Trimming
  • Mary picked more blackberries, which is a hot job. She froze an additional 1.5 quarts, giving us a total of 8.75 quarts in the freezer.
  • Mary counted 15 Shrubby St. John's Wart plants in the north field. It's going to be quite an area of bushes.
  • Our sky was bright blue today.  
  • Mary heard a wood thrush in the north woods. It's the first of this year.
  • I used the string trimmer to take down weeds and grass under the far garden electric fence. When the nylon string sits all winter in the trimmer, it dries and becomes brittle. I restrung the trimmer several dozen times, only getting about three-fourths around the outside of the fence. At one point I only moved six inches between string breaks. In frustration, I quit after several cuss words. I read online that the nylon trimmer string is hygroscopic and should be stored in a sealed bag with a wet sponge. I threw the coil of trimmer string in a bucket of water to soak.
  • The stars were brilliant when we walked Cooper on his last outing. The Milky Way looked like steam in the night sky.

   

• Wednesday, 7/8: Shopping, Picking & Whacking
  • Mary picked about 1.5 quarts of blackberries from four of the five locations on our property. We now have 10 quarts of new blackberries in the freezer.
  • She saw a doe deer in the south field. Mary said wild petunias and partridge peas are now blooming.
  • I drove to Quincy, mainly to pick up two of my prescriptions. I bought a few other supplies that were running low.
  • I worked on the Stihl trimmer. I had to rev it all of the time to keep it running yesterday. I checked the spark plug. It looked fine, but I cleaned it with a wire brush, nonetheless. I removed the spark arrestor screen in the muffler. It was clogged with carbon. I cleaned it with a torch and a wire brush. After I greased the head, I added new nylon string that soaked overnight in a bucket of water. The trimmer started and idled like normal. It ran much better. The string only snapped of four times, which was much better than the 24 times it broke off yesterday.
  • I whacked more of the weeds and grass from far garden's electric fence, finishing all of the outside and trimming the inside of the south end and halfway down the east side.
  • Bare ground is cracking everywhere. We're drying out. It means daily watering is required to sustain garden plants.
  • A new hatch of fireflies flashed just overhead of grass as twilight fell.
  • Cooper can count. He loves any orange product. Mary and I each ate two mandarins this evening for dessert. Cooper usually gets one slice per mandarin. After Mary tossed the second slice to the puppy, he came right over to me. I only gave him one slice, because I was a pig and ate all of the first mandarin. Cooper stared at me for the longest time. I finally laid down in his stuffed chair with a big sigh.

   

• Thursday, 7/9: Berries & Whacking
  • Mary was back on the berry trail and picked an additional quart of blackberries. There are now 11 quarts of 2026 berries in the freezer.
  • While picking berries near the ponds in the northeast berry patch, Mary heard the sound of great blue herons, then she saw two of them flying low over her head. "I've never seen one land in a tree," Mary said. It did quite a balancing act before the tree top settled down under its weight. The other one flew real low over Mary's head.
  • Contrary to what we see in all of the news reports, we are not seeing as many ticks as during other summer seasons. On Mary's first berry-picking venture today, she came back with no ticks, even though she heard nearby deer.
  • I whacked the rest of the tall weeds and grass under the electric fence wires in the far garden. The trimmer's nylon string broke about 10 times, usually when taking out thick stalks on plants such as thistles. I also mowed the inside of the near far garden and dumped those grass clippings under the Empire apple tree. Empire is a very wide tree, so a large amount of mulch is required to cover the ground under it.
  • Rabbits are taking over our yard. Everywhere you look, you see two or three bunnies at once.
  • I watched a video of a meeting in Hurdland (35 miles west of us) of concerned users of the water district we get our water from. Hurdland residents are mad. The water district acquired the Hurdland sewer system with the promise of upgrading it to proper standards. They received grant funds, moved that grant money over to help pay for water district needs, and have never performed Hurdland sewer upgrades in the past 10 years. When the residents asked for financial records, they were denied. A newly-elected board member was also denied financial records access. The Hurdland group is gathering signatures to petition the state auditor for a complete audit of the water district. They're also complaining about bills that are guesses on water usage, a practice that we've suspected for a couple years.

   

• Friday, 7/10: Blackberries, Bobwhite & Cleaning Fence
  • It was another blackberry day for Mary. We now have 12.5 quarts of new berries in the freezer.
  • About 12 to 15 northern Bobwhite quail youngsters flew out of the tall grass near the Macintosh apple tree in the north yard when Mary walked back home from picking her first round of berries. She said they burst from the grass like popcorn, flying in all directions. Mama was calling them back immediately.
  • The Merlin app on Mary's phone picked up the song of a cliff swallow and blue-gray gnatcatcher. These are the first of these two birds for the year.
  • Ironweed is starting to bloom. 
  • I sharpened a pair of old pruning shears that I use for cutting grass, weeds, and persimmon saplings. The shears must be completely disassembled in order to use a file on the blade, then put together in the correct order. I goofed up on assembling it initially and had to take it apart a second time before I got it right. 
  • I cleaned weeds and grass from the inside and outside of the rabbit fence made of chicken wire on the south end of the near far garden. By cleaning this all up, I can prop up sections of this fencing that were stomped down by deer and add stakes to keep the bottom of the fence tight to the ground. Without this fence secured, rabbits invade and eat garden plants.
  • Rain started falling at around 5:30 p.m., when we ended our evening chores. It's the first rain we received in July.

   

• Saturday, 7/11: Christmas Tree Ornament Fly
  • On Cooper's early morning walk, he sniffed something on the lane, so I looked. It was the wings of a luna moth. Something ate the body and left the wings. It was maybe a bat.
  • Mary picked another quart of blackberries, giving us a total of 13 quarts in the freezer.
  • A ruby-throated hummingbird buzzed Mary and followed her partway on the path to between the ponds. She thinks her gold shirt attracted the hummingbird.
  • I cleaned weeds and grass from the chicken wire fence on the east side of the near far garden. There are several old rabbit or mice nests under that stuff, along with a few praying mantis egg casings. Some of the grass is extra tough. It's almost the strength of wooden saplings. At one point, that fence is stomped down very low by deer, which makes it easy for bunnies to jump into the garden. After getting weeds and grass removed from the entire fence, I'll pull this back up to the correct height.
  • We had a circus of barn swallows flipping through the air for two hours over our house. They'd let out little peeps as they flew about. They sure are happy birds.
  • We switched the chicks to pelleted food that they don't want to eat, so the chicks didn't get any clover until they start eating their own food. By this evening we noticed that they're starting to eat the new food.
  • I have a new online passion called soccer. I watch the recaps of the FIFA World Cup games. They're interesting and fun to watch. 
  • I also watched a fly tyer make a foam dragonfly tail stiffer by hiding a piece of a plastic pop bottle between foam layers. Another fly tyer named Svend Diesel in Salt Lake City showed how to make a Christmas tree ornament on a fly hook that looks like a Christmas tree. He also showed how to make bent insect legs from either pheasant tail feather fibers or rubber leg material by just tying knots while using tweezers.

   

• Sunday, 7/12: Even More Berries & Weeds!
  • Mary picked another quart of blackberries. She's really getting tired of picking berries in the heat. We now have 14.5 quarts of new blackberries in the freezer. Her goal is 24 quarts. With 2025 blackberries already in the freezer, all we need is another 4.5 quarts to reach her goal. If I want any for winemaking, I'll have to take over picking them once she reaches her goal.
  • What we thought were barn swallows flying over our house turned out to be cliff swallows, according to the Merlin app on Mary's cell phone. They're bee bopping around again today.
  • I finished cleaning weeds from both the inside and outside of the far garden chicken wire fence, which involved the north and west sides of that garden. I found some places on the west side where small bunnies could crawl under the chicken wire. I'll pull up stomped parts and tack down bottom portions of the chicken wire fencing tomorrow.
  • Outside work was easier in the heat today, because of a nice northeast breeze.
  • The thermometer reached 110° at Mom's house in Circle, MT, today. I saw online that it reached 118° in Forsyth, MT.
  • Mary and I decided we're going to shorten the far garden. For several years, we haven't used the north end. We just can't get to it and it's growing wild. Taming it back is just too much. We'll shorten the electric fence and maybe plant a weeping willow at the northeast corner of that area.
  • I saw a fly tying pattern online for a blue darner created by Barry Ord Clarke, author of a fly tying book I recently bought. It involves a dacron string tail and white rooster hackle feathers for wings.

June 29-July 5, 2026

Weather | 6/29, sunny, 75°, 91° | 6/30, sunny, 75°, 90° | 7/1, sunny, 73°, 89° | 7/2, sunny, 73°, 91° | 7/3, smokey skies, 75°, 89° | 7/4, sunny, 73°, 85° | 7/5, sunny, 72°, 87° |

• Monday, 6/29: Blackberries & Fixing Fence
  • Mary picked more blackberries. She finished the first quart of the season and it's now in the freezer. Some locations are very sparse of ripe berries. Her final berry picking session took her west, south and east of the house and yielded just 19 berries. "That's a lot of heat for just 19 berries," she said.
  • Mary said that wild bergamot (beebalm) is flowering on the edge of the north yard. Mountain mint is flowering between the ponds. Chicory and dayflowers are also blooming.
  • A field sparrow always flies out of the blackberry plants in the north yard. Mary suspects it's nesting in those brambles, so she's not picking berries from that small patch.
  • Mary says all of the staghorn sumac is blooming. We thought it was dead from deer eating it down to below our kneecaps last winter, but now it's chest high in some places and bearing berries, which is great.
  • I ran supports to three of the four corner posts of the far garden. I have several short metal posts that once had about a foot of their bottom sections broken off. I drove them into the ground at an angle, then ran 4-5 strands of wire from the slanted posts to the top of the corner posts and wound the strands to tighten the tension until the corner posts were solidly in the ground. I didn't do this on the southwest corner, since it's still holding fast in the earth.
  • My thigh muscles are really sore, due to too much of pulling wire tight while walking while doing deep knee bends, yesterday.
  • We have a routine dog. If we get out of our daily routine of activities, things just aren't right with Cooper. While taking a rest from the outside heat and looking at my laptop in the late afternoon, Cooper was nudging my hand to remind me that we were overdue on his before-dinner walk and ball-fetching fun time.
  • I did more online powder paint research. I found a guy via YouTube that mixes his own powder paint colors and has an insane amount of materials. Through him, I learned of a company in Texas that only sells lure making supplies called Barlow's Tackle.

   

• Tuesday, 6/30: A Day Off
  • We decided to take the day off from going outside. My body hurts. Mary wants a day off from stomping through the heat. So, we enjoyed the cool of air conditioning indoors. 
  • Mary cross stitched.
  • I put away a fly tying order that came in yesterday's mail. It doubled my thread supply with several new colors that I put away in new plastic thread boxes that Mary didn't want. It's amazing how fly tying and cross stitching share similar items. I also got cool new sparkly dubbing and crystal flash. I put several new sheets of foam away for tying bugs and dragonflies. I cleaned up my roll top desk giving me more storage space for my fly tying hobby.
  • Mary added up that we got a total of 10.15 inches of rain in June. That's a lot of rain and it is why our ground is mighty soggy.
  • I read that Saharan dust that blew across the Atlantic Ocean was then blown up the Mississippi River these past few days and is in our air. That explains why I see such murky air while looking off to the distance when I get mail at the end of our lane. It's also why we saw a blue moon at night.
  • When we went outside for chores, we heard chimney swifts chattering as they flew about while catching bugs.

   

• Wednesday, 7/1: Two Dead Chickens
  • When I opened the chicken coop's human door, a dead Buff Orpington hen was on the floor next to the roost. It wasn't a surprise. That chicken was acting lethargic for the past four month. Mary said it would stand on the top roost staring straight ahead while all of the other chickens pecked at sunflower seeds that Mary threw on the coop's floor. The surprise was a dead chick under a bucket in the chick area of the coop. Mary left the light off last night, due to the heat. That freaked out the chicks. They panicked and a couple got behind some feed buckets. One live chick was still there in the morning. The other one dived under a bucket and died.
  • Mary picked several nice bunches of blackberries. She finished a second quart and filled two-thirds of another quart. Lots of berries are ripening and if we get a little more rain, we will have even more. There are several green berries yet to ripen. Mary took breaks between going to each blackberry patch. It's too hot to pick blackberries in one long session.
  • Mary never saw it, but she heard deer stomp, then run off. Later, she heard it snorting to the east of her. It was laying down in a north blackberry patch before Mary arrived.
  • I mowed the lane, performing only two round trips with the lawnmower at a time, then taking a cooling down break. It takes more time to accomplish when you need to cool down after each mile of mowing, but it's absolutely essential while working in humid heat.
  • I saw a large Viceroy butterfly on the lane. It was flying about very quickly.
  • While on the very first cut with the mower, a large doe deer ran off and then appeared a few feet further down the lane. She looked very healthy in her summer reddish-tan colored coat. The deer really didn't like that noisy machine I was pushing.
  • On our moonlit nighttime outing with Cooper, we could hear four types of frogs yelling loudly from Bluegill Pond.

   

• Thursday, 7/2: Feathers
  • I took in a Missouri Department of Conservation online session on plumology, or the study of feathers. Some interesting facts...1) There are 30 million chickens in the world, making them the largest population of bird varieties; 2) Birds see UV light, so black feathers might appear different to them; 3) Black feathers are stronger than white feathers, so the black feathers on a white pelican's wings are stronger; 4) Blue colored feathers aren't actually blue, but black, and their color is due to a structural feature that makes them appear blue.
  • Mary picked blackberries to the northeast and the north areas of our property. She's almost done filling the fourth quart of this year's berries in the freezer. It was another hot day out on the berry trails.
  • Mary saw a buck deer that was sporting a nice pair of developing antlers. It knew how to hide. The buck snorted, then trotted to a bush to hide itself and looked at Mary. When she didn't move, the buck jumped the fence dividing the north woods from the north field and disappeared into the north woods.
  • Mary discovered five Shrubby St. John's Wort plants growing in the north field. They're in full bloom. "They're the prettiest things," she said. 
  • I mowed around the near garden and between the electric and chicken wire fences. Mulch went under the Granny Smith tree. I noticed that all of the elderberry leaves growing under the cedars south of the near garden were eaten by deer.
  • We received two solar panels that are part of our new solar generator. The generator hasn't shipped, yet.
  • I finished 24th Alexander Kent British Navy novel entitled Second to None.

   

• Friday, 7/3: Bill Visits
  • Our summertime pain-in-the-ass house wren slammed into screening of the north-facing window of the back porch in front of Gandalf. The cat reacted by moving over and looking out that window.
  • Bill arrived around 10:30 a.m. He's here until Sunday. His boss recently informed Bill that he wants him to take some courses about AI.
  • Mary picked blackberries in the northeast and north berry patches. She now has five quarts of this year's blackberries in the freezer.
  • I mowed under the Empire apple tree. I then mowed inside the near garden and put grass clippings under about a fifth of the Empire tree.
  • It's hard to believe, but humidity rose substantially in the evening, making it feel very hot.
  • There was lightning flashing to the north and northeast after darkness fell. Mary and I saw a faint red glow of northern lights when we walked Cooper on his final outing.
  • Mary found a unique tree in the middle of the north field, next to a couple blackberry patches. We've been trying to figure out what it was for the past couple days. Bill did some online research and figured it out to be an American sycamore.
  • Our neighbors southeast of us lit off several hundred dollars worth of big fireworks after dark.
  • We watched the Independence Day (1996) movie.

   

• Saturday, 7/4: A Quiet Holiday For Us
  • Since today is a holiday and Bill is visiting us, we took today off from most outside chores.
  • Mary made pizza for our midday meal. We ate it while playing six games of Yahtzee. Mary and Bill had even scores through the games. My tallies were either really high or rock-bottom low.
  • We were surprised to see a FedEx van show up on the Fourth of July with part of our solar generator shipment. When I said it was too bad that he was working on a holiday, the driver said, "It's double pay, so I'm fine with that."
  • The item that we received is an extra goodie that the manufacturer threw in for free. It's an EcoFlow Rapid Pro 3-in-1 Power Bank for charging your cell phone or laptop. I charged it and tried it out by charging my phone. It works fine.
  • Mary noticed a chick that was raising cane by nipping feathers off other chicks. She picked a bunch of white clover, violet leaves, and plantain by hand and poured the greens out on the coop floor. The chicks ate everything.
  • We watched a movie that Bill picked out. It was Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).

   

• Sunday, 7/5: Amazing Weather
  • Our little hilltop seems to demagnetize oncoming weather. Storms pushed to us from the northeast, which is an abnormal direction. Some would veer to the east, then reappear to the west or south of us and move onward. Some would just vanish. Even though there were ominous clouds around us, we didn't see one drop of rain. We even heard thunder at times. Unless we see a massive weather front that covers several states, we often don't get rain when surrounding counties receive moisture.
  • Bill left for his apartment around 12:30 p.m. He had an outdoor concert he was attending with his friend, Mike, in the evening. Bill said it was cool with lasers and pyrotechnics.
  • A house wren splatted off the storm door window right when I was getting ready to open the door to let Cooper out after Bill left. It happened inches away from me. 
  • We were going to do some outside work, but upon hearing thunder we stayed inside. This resulted in "Lazy Butt Syndrome" and we never made it outside until it was time to do evening chores.