June 21-27, 2020

Weather | 6/21, 68°, 88° | 6/22, 0.03" rain, 69°, 83° | 6/23, 0.02" rain, 56°, 77° | 6/24, 57°, 80° | 6/25, 57°, 86° | 6/26, 66°, 90° | 6/27, 0.01" rain, 67°, 85° |

• Sunday, 6/21: Mary picked a handful of raspberries, then weeded part of the near garden. She announced that 6 pumpkin seedlings sprouted. Bill called to wish me a happy Father's Day. He didn't get an extra day off, but since where he works is taking Friday off, he has 3 days off and plans to visit over the July 4th weekend. His strawberry wine's yeast is settling down. The NW corner post of the near garden was loose in the soil, so I pounded in more gravel around it and its 2 supporting posts. Then, I re-figured the electric wire locations on the corner posts, found an old piece of 3/4-inch quarter round trim, and marked the height of each wire on that length of wood as a measuring stick for all of the electric wire locations on all posts of both garden fences. Then, I changed wire locations on the rest of the corner posts of the near garden. I changed the wires holding several doughnut insulators on corner posts. We had thunderstorms form to the south, east, and north of us that never dropped rain on us. A couple of them merged together, moved into Quincy, IL, and stalled. They had immense flash flooding. Here are some photos put on Facebook of the flooding in Quincy. Katie called twice, then left a text. I called her back. On her days off, she's working doing other spare jobs. She said a friend who lives in Anchorage got a bush construction job that lasts only a month and the virus testing prior to going to the worksite was a long ordeal and a hassle. Katie said she was the designated driver for the recent Alan Jackson Drive-In concert she attended. It was a real concert, except people watched it from the back of their pickups. We took the dogs for their last walk and the lightning bugs were pulsating from all surrounding trees, making for a spellbinding, mesmerizing sight. There are literally thousands of them showing off at night.


• Monday, 6/22: I've been reviewing pickups for sale online every morning for a year. A few days ago, I found a '97 1/2 ton Chevy with a V6 that looked pretty good. I finally got a message back from the owner this morning and we scheduled to meet the owner in the Macomb, IL Walmart parking lot at 1 pm, tomorrow. Macomb is 99 miles NE of us. Hopefully, it's in decent shape. If it is, we'll drive it home. If not, we will have had a good outing. We want a pickup to haul things...don't want a junker, but we're not interested in a behemoth, monster, fuel-guzzler, that's expensive, either. I looked up the Kelley Blue Book valuation for it, in case we care to dicker pricing. Mary sewed herself a mask, so she can be out in the public for tomorrow's trip. I moved all electric wire insulators to their correct position on metal posts in the near garden according to my measuring stick and added 3 doughnut insulators on 1 corner post. More thunderstorms developed south of us and dumped rain across the Mississippi River in Illinois, today...just a few sprinkles for us. Yesterday's flooding in Quincy, IL, tore up asphalt of some streets to where old bricks under the pavement were washed out, according to news reports.


• Tuesday, 6/23, Karen's Birthday: I sent a birthday ecard to Karen and she sent a thank you ecard back, saying, "We're heading to Big Horn Mountains (WY) today, for a mini two-night camping, trail riding, fishing excursion." The trip to Macomb, IL, to buy a pickup was a fizzle. There was rust that I didn't see on the online photos, I could see through the floorboards to the pavement, the engine had a slow response when the accelerator was pushed, and something in the gearing sounded way too loud. He wanted $2700. I don't think it's worth $300. Oh well, the drive to Macomb for some burgers was nice. I pulled money out our bank this morning and then put it right back in this afternoon. We did notice almost 100% face mask usage when we walked into the Macomb Walmart. Not so in Quincy, where crumb bums live. When we got back, the dogs went bananas, then we relaxed, then did chores. Right after watering the 8 pumpkin plants that are growing, we saw 2 rabbits run from the middle of the near garden and escape through my "solid" electric fence. It just isn't working against the bunny hordes this year. My electric fence tester reads that the charge is at maximum. Mary and I reviewed it and decided to build chicken wire fences around all of the rows in the near garden and half of the rows in the far garden. It will take several rolls of chicken wire that we'll have to buy and wooden posts I'll make from small persimmon trees in the east yard. I have some work cut for me. Electric fence repairs will have to happen later, and they will be needed to keep raccoons out of corn. We got an electronic kitchen scale in today's mail that we ordered a few days ago. It looks nice. I finished Patrick O'Brian's 11th historical novel, The Reverse of the Medal, set in the early 1800s about the British Navy Captain Jack Aubrey, and his medical doctor friend, Steven Maturin. Now onto book 12!


• Wednesday, June 24: Mary mowed 2/3 of the lane, leaving the east side that has poison ivy growing in it for me, which I mowed, plus a patch of thick poison ivy growing right next to the lane at the midway point. The clover pollen that flew up while mowing gave Mary extremely red eyes, so much so that she couldn't see very well in the evening. I found an old chainsaw chain and the old bar, sharpened the chain with a file and installed it on the chainsaw. While sharpening, I noticed how the grinding wheel puts a straight cut into the teeth, whereas the file creates a curve, which is needed to carve wood chips out of the logs. I cut down several small persimmon trees at the west edge of the far garden that I'm going to use as posts for chicken wire garden fences. By using the old chain, I can cut right on the ground without messing up my new chains. Dirt severely dulls chainsaw chains. Mary mowed inside and outside of the near garden and mulched far garden rows. A good-sized prairie kingsnake came out of a mole hole right under the near garden electric fence, wrapped around the hot wire and died. That's too bad. They eat moles that tear up the garden. Mary watered the garden in the evening. There was a pileated woodpecker in the north yard. Mary calls them the Tarzans of the hardwood forest, because they're so loud. We ate one ripe blueberry, each. It was yummy, but not enough.


• Thursday, June 25: While walking dogs along our lane first thing in the morning, we saw 2 deer staring at us from the field west of Bluegill Pond. Mary mowed and mulched all day and finished mulching a row in the far garden. Her eyes were red again with what must be an allergic reaction to clover pollen, because, as she said, "This whole property is one big white clover farm." I cut 30 four-foot stakes from some of the small persimmon trees that I cut down yesterday and pounded 26 of them into the near garden at 8-foot intervals, which will get surrounded by 2-foot high chicken wire. I checked online for area stores with larger quantities of chicken wire. Menards in Quincy is my best and cheapest answer.


• Friday, June 26: We found a torn up east wall on our chicken coop when we did morning chores. Two things saved our chickens from being killed by a raccoon. The first was a mouse nest in the wall, in which the raccoon probably ate the occupant. The second was double-sided bubble insulation that it couldn't tear through, even though we saw plenty of claw marks. Just on the other side of that were our chickens on the roost. Out went our plans for installing garden fencing. It was chicken coop reconstruction time. While Mary cleaned up dead branches stored on top of several 4'x8' sheets of plywood and OSB and sawed them into kindling, I drove to the Quincy Menards store and bought 300' of 2' high chicken wire. I also picked up a few groceries at Aldi. Then, Mary and I tore down about 2/3 of the east wall of the coop. It was a mess. Mice chewed up much of the inch-thick Styrofoam insulation in the wall and built several mouse nests, complete with foam beads and chicken feathers. In the rotten wood were several small ant nests. Even large grubs were in the rotten wood. And, yours truly used enough nails (especially to attach roofing tin) to secure a large house. Eventually, we got it torn apart, then replaced it with sheets of plywood and OSB. Once, while Mary went on break to get a drink of water, she saw a young woodchuck near the steps to our house. In the evening, after baths (MUCH NEEDED), and nachos, we watched the 2019 movie, Knives Out, which is really great. 


• Saturday, 6/27: We both were tired from several days of outdoor work, so we rested today. I made waffles and we ate the yummies with strawberries and blueberries. Mary baked 4 loaves of bread and did some cross stitch. I started installing chicken wire in the near garden, tying it onto 3 posts...only 23 posts to go in this smaller garden. Mary helped me install the east roost in the coop, and I installed in the eye screw to hook a tarp strap to hold the human door open. While I was sawing off a small piece of 1/4-inch lauan plywood to use as backing behind the hinges of the roost, Mary noticed that all she could hear was a house wren singing and carpenter bees buzzing, signifying how rural and peaceful our property is.