Sept. 6-12, 2020

 Weather | 9/6, 70°, 87° | 9/7, 68°, 79° | 9/8, 0.01" rain, 57°, 61° | 9/9, 0.72" rain, 53°, 60° | 9/10, 0.17" rain, 52°, 59° | 9/11, 0.15" rain, 58°, 70° | 9/12, 2.66" rain, 60°, 77° |

• Sunday, 9/6: Happenings:
  
  • We had high SE winds throughout the day, so we stayed inside during the day. 
  • We watered gardens. Bill and Mary picked worms and worm eggs. 
  • I took a video of a native bumblebee on a thistle blossom (see below). 
  • We lit a campfire on our cement pad in the west yard after the wind died down. I filled 4 buckets with water and took our big fire extinguisher and laid them all near the fire, as a precaution. We roasted pork loin pieces on long weenie roasting forks. We had to use flashlights to determine if the meat was done. We were there for 2-3 hours. 
  
   
• Monday, 9/7: I don't know why, but catching fish is an absolute joy. First, you try to use a lure that matches something fish are eating on that day, at that time. Then, how you show off the lure helps entice fish to bite. For instance, I love flipping a surface lure into waters occupied by bass. A Hula Popper is my favorite. I discovered today that 2 pops with that lure, followed by slowly reeling it in a couple feet, often resulted in a big bass gulping it up. Bill caught a bass on a lure he recently bought. It's a generic lure that we always name a "Walmart Special." It's cheap and always catches fish. You can guess where he bought the lure. He also used a lure he bought me for my birthday, and caught another fish. Mary, Bill, and I caught several bass, threw back little ones, and kept 5 large fish. It was really fun. Fishing photos are below.
  • After we finished fishing, Mary cooked a fish dinner that included a cucumber salad and garlic toast.
  • Bill left  around 4 pm to go back to his place in St. Louis.
  • Mary and I picked about a half of a bucket of tomatillos, hot peppers, and tomatoes.
  • In the evening, thunderstorms passed us to the north, again, as usual!

Bill with a bass caught on his new lure.

Dick with a bass caught on a Hula Popper.

• Tuesday, 9/8: Rain is such a pleasant event, especially when it's been absent for several days. Rain clouds are marching through, from the SW to the NE, which is a prominent moisture-producing direction at our property. Today, it was mainly mist, but future weather forecasts predict higher possibilities. Rain gives garden plants needed sustenance. Rain swells cracks in our clay ground shut and puts a sponginess underfoot. Rain gives us a chance to hibernate inside without remorse. Rain is soothing, really.
  
  In other events:
  
  • Mary did her worm and worm egg picking early, happily reporting that the gardens didn't need watering.
  • She made flour tortillas and fajitas for our main meal, using 2 large bell peppers and onions from our garden, venison meat from last year's hunting, and salsa generated from our garden.
  • I did a bunch of chimney fixing research online...yikes...I'm still not looking forward to that job.
  • I replaced the wheels on a hand truck that we use to haul the big plastic garbage can down our quarter-mile gravel lane.
  • I finished Patrick O'Brian's The Thirteen Gun Salute, his 13th book of the Aubrey/Maturin series.
  • We had a sudden crack from a thunderstorm in the late evening.
    


• Wednesday, 9/9: Happenings:
  
  • Mary thawed, removed ice, and cleaned our oldest deep chest freezer. She tossed outdated packages of blackberries, corn, strawberries, and a 2010 package of pear butter.
  • I drove the pickup to Quincy, mainly to get another bag of chick food...picked up a few other things. Bought gas for $1.79 a gallon on the way back home.
  • We watched the 1998 movie, You've Got Mail.
    


• Thursday, 9/10: We did:
  • Today was a drizzly day, with a lot of mist outside...a good day for hibernating.
  • It was the first of several times when we froze garden items. Mary froze her first bag of tomatoes. I helped her husk several tomatillos, which turned into almost 3 bags in the freezer.
  • I helped Mary husk some hazelnuts. It was only a fraction of nuts still out on the bushes.
  • We ate nachos and watched the 2007 movie, Stardust.
  • Katie texted that she was going to try the taste of whale.
    


• Friday, 9/11: Nineteen years ago on this day, our family woke up in a campground in southern Saskatchewan. The day prior, we left our home in Circle, MT, heading to Besnard Lake in northern Saskatchewan. At the U.S./Canadian border, a very nice Canadian border patrolman leaned in our pickup's window and chatted with us for several minutes. As we drove north on Sept. 11th, car after car passing us, honking as they went by. We didn't have a radio in the 1989 Chevy 1-ton crew-cab pickup, so we didn't know what was happening. We stopped at the Prince Albert (SK) Visitor's Center and the woman at the desk said, "I was hoping people like you wouldn't come in today." We asked why and she said, "It's World War III out there. Oh, you don't know, do you?" Then she pointed to the TV screen and explained. The borders were closed. We stayed at a campground on the edge of Prince Albert. That evening, we walked around the campground peering at TV screens viewed by other campers, seeing the horrific images played over and over, again. We didn't know how long we'd be in Canada, but decided to get on with our vacation. While the world was scared, we camped, fished, and enjoyed our vacation, including an evening watching an amazing northern lights display. We were about the only campers in the campground. It was great. After a few days, we headed home. The U.S./Canadian border was open just a few hours prior to us arriving. A team of about a dozen U.S. Border Patrol personnel met us, asked questions, and checked us out. They even looked underneath the boat trailer and the pickup, using mirrors on handheld extensions. Even so, we went through the border in just a few minutes. A husband and wife with 2 kids and 2 Golden Retrievers don't look like terrorists, I guess.
  
  In today's happenings:
  
  • I racked the blackberry and watermelon wines. The blackberry wine was still at 1.001 specific gravity and the watermelon was at 0.998, or a little stronger. The blackberry tastes amazing, while the watermelon still smells bad, tastes a little better, but not great. I removed a quarter of the lees out of the watermelon wine, reducing it to a full gallon.
  • Mary made venison stew and biscuits.
  • She also picked some tomatoes and tomatillos before an expected rain.
  • It rained in gushers throughout the evening. We kept adding buckets into the sunroom, catching drips in the ceiling and decided to stay up overnight.


• Saturday, 9/12: Events:
  • The rain ended at 4:30 am, so we ate breakfast, did chores at daybreak, then slept for a couple hours.
  • I burned boxes, an old foam pad, and an old boat tarp, all piled up in the machine shed.
  • Mary picked hazelnuts. I helped her husk them.
  • We went to bed early.