August 23-29, 2020

Weather | 8/23, 67°, 91° | 8/24, 71°, 93° | 8/25, 68°, 92° | 8/26, 68°, 91° | 8/27, 70°, 90° | 8/28, 70°, 89° | 8/29, 64°, 79° |

• Sunday, 8/23: Happenings:
  
  • Mary made a turkey pot pie and washed 2 loads of laundry.
  • She also picked an ice cream bucket of green/wax beans. They're coming on strong.
  • We watered the gardens. We're very dry, now. Several trees in the woods are losing yellow leaves.
  • Mary's garden death count: 19 worm eggs and 1 horn worm.
  • I did another wall calendar, Styrofoam job, this time on the pickup's windows.


• Monday, 8/24: We did the following:
  • I called McKenzie Auto about them looking at a few things on the Cadillac. They can get to it Thursday morning.
  • I sharpened my mower's blade and mowed the trail to the north side of the far garden and the outside of that garden's electric fence.
  • Mary did laundry, picked green beans and cucumbers, and cut beans into processed size.
  • We watered the gardens. Mary found 27 worm eggs and 8 horn worms.


• Tuesday, 8/25: Events:
  
  • We dropped the Cadillac off at McKenzie Auto in Lewistown, MO.
  • I mowed the inside of the far garden. Grass was knee-high, so the going was tough.
  • Mary did house cleaning and picked more beans.
  • We watered the gardens. Mary found 34 worm eggs and 3 horn worms.


• Wednesday, 8/26: The lack of supplies in grocery stores is forcing us to do a better job at stocking up this year. We like tea. We drink a lot of iced tea and we prefer Red Rose Tea, which we only found at the Quincy Walmart store. When this store quit selling it, we went directly to the Red Rose Tea website and purchased 12 boxes, each containing 100 teabags (see below). This should keep us in tea for a year. It's nice to be able to find what you want online.
  

  

  When they quit selling what you want, buy it from the source!

  In other news:
  
  • I removed the 3 metal fence posts of the NW corner of the far garden, notched them with a handheld grinder, then pounded them into the ground, complete with gravel punched down the side of the posts with a spud bar and a tension wire crisscross put between them (see photo below). I find this system stays put in clay ground after heavy rains.
  • Mary washed and dried towels, made flour tortillas and chimichangas, and froze 30 servings of green/wax beans. She also turned the hay laying down in the south lawn.
  • Mary started to water gardens and I joined in later. She found 27 worm eggs, 9 horn worms, and an army worm. Without daily watering and worm detection, our garden plants would be gone.

  

  Garden electric corner post, with Plato puppy in the background.
• Thursday, 8/27: Happenings:
  
  • Mary picked 2 ice cream buckets full of beans and two 4-gallon buckets. She then made a batch of pickles. It was going to be 12 quart jars. Unfortunately, one of the jars broke at the base, so we got 11 jars of pickles (see photos below).
  • I ran 2 tanks of gas through the grass trimmer, cleaning out knee-high grass and weeds under the electric fence wires around the far garden (a continuation of grass trimming that I did yesterday). It's tricky, with loose wires and thick vegetation.
  • We watered both gardens...together on the far garden, then I watered the near garden while Mary killed things on plants in far garden. Her count was 23 worm eggs, 8 horn worms, and 1 cucumber beetle.
  • We could see Hurricane Laura's clouds on the southern horizon all day. The edge of high clouds eventually were right overhead, but the sun still scorched through. We are hot and crispy, here.

  

  Washing cucumbers in the sink.

  

  Eleven quart jars of processed pickles.

  
  
• Friday, 8/28: Today's activities:
  
  • I called McKenzie Auto, was put on hold for 10 minutes, so I hung up. Mary and I drove the pickup to Lewistown. Our car was in their garage with nobody around for a couple minutes, then a mechanic walked in. They were essentially done with our car...they found nothing wrong with the front end and fixed chewed wiring that resulted in the dash message of "Service Power Steering." We drove home after paying the bill, Mary in the pickup and me in Cadillac. Mary said the pickup was the nicest to drive of any pickup-related vehicle we've owned.
  • I weedwhacked the rest of the grass/weeds under the far garden's electric fence wires.
  • Mary picked the last of the green beans that she wants to freeze.
  • She also picked up dry hay and put it in the second bin.
  • Mary watered the far garden and I watered the near garden. She killed the normal amount of worm eggs and horn worms.
  • We watched the 2000 movie, Finding Forrester.


• Saturday, 8/29: According to WGEM in Quincy, we're in a drought. Open this WGEM Weather page, scroll down to the drought map, and we're the county NW of the word "Quincy." It's no surprise. Any bare ground is cracked. Leaves are falling out of trees. The gallons of water we pour on the gardens every day keep our plants alive. Our location defies rain development when we get in a dry spell. Hurricane Laura waved wispy high clouds at us as it dumped rain on Arkansas. This morning a weather front marched out of Kansas, then dived south. A massive derecho storm swept across Iowa on 8/10, which was our last rain of half an inch. We live on a rain-repellent hill, where we watch weather go close by, all around us, and we don't get a drop. On the happy side, we also watch tornadoes go by us that never come through our property. It's an odd phenomenon.
  
  In other news:
  
  • Mary processed the beans she most recently picked, yielding 22 additional servings, plus 2 quart bags for a Thanksgiving bean casserole. The grand total is 65 servings. Mary is beaned out! It's time to pull the bean plants.
  • I strung the electric fence wires on the NW corner of the far garden, then reset the metal posts on the NE corner and started stringing those wires. I'm pressing close to the raccoon corn ripping and slashing day for our sweet corn. We keep seeing what I call white raccoon corn cheese, aka poop, all along our gravel lane, so I've got to keep plugging on the far garden electric fence.
  • Katie texted photos of a visiting musk ox to the construction site where she's working at Nuiqsut, Alaska (see photo below). 
  • We did our normal garden watering and worm picking dance...Mary's count was 22 worm eggs and 12 worms of various types.

  

  A musk ox at Katie's worksite in Nuiqsut, AK.