March 28-April 3, 2021

Weather | 3/28, 35°, 59° | 3/29, 39°, 69° | 3/30, 52°, 56° | 3/31, 32°, 44° | 4/1, 20°, 46° | 4/2, 25°, 47° | 4/3, 40°, 70° |

• Sunday, 3/28: Grafting Apple Trees
  
  • I grafted pieces from 2 apple trees we have growing in the yard to two of the 10 apple rootstocks I have growing in 4-gallon buckets. I used the saddle graft, which involves a sharp wedge carved on the rootstock and an upside down V cut into the scion that is attached on top of the rootstock. The union is bound in parafin tape, then covered with tree wound material. Since temperatures above 40° are recommended and lows of 30s and 20s are expected this week, I put the grafted trees in the upstairs south bedroom until it gets warmer (see photo below). Grafting cuts must be smooth, in order for the tree cambium layers to match up. I hope I cut them well. "You must have faith," Mary said. One consolation is that if they don't take, I can always do a bud graft in July. I have 8 more trees to graft.
    
  • Mary did major cleaning of the living room of fixtures, walls, the floor, and the ceiling. She got about a third of the room completed.
  • Mary made 2 quiche pies to use up eggs. She also washed some towels.
  • Katie traveled to Las Vegas for some National Guard training.
  • On our last dog walk, a robin flew out of a cedar tree on the lane just inches away from Mary's face.

  

  Apple tree grafts (black area on stems) made today.
  

• Monday, 3/29: Strong Winds
  
  • Southerly wind gusts reached as high as 40 mph. I thought that was high, then I saw a wind advisory from the Glasgow, MT Weather Service website posted on Facebook by an old co-worker that warned of 70 mph gusts. I remember going to a track meet that our kids were participated in. It was in Scobey, MT. On the north side of the track, they had to hurtle tumbleweeds that were rolling across their lanes in the strong wind. Runners disappeared into the blowing dirt on the NW corner of the track. It blows hard across Montana's Hi-Line.
  • I moved the portable workbench to the middle of the machine shed, sheltered from the wind blasting through the south-facing entrance, and cleft grafted 2 more apple trees. The new grafts were from a Roxbury Russet apple scion I bought from Fedco in Maine. I put the new grafted trees in the upstairs south bedroom.
  • Mary made a cherry crunch dessert.
    
  • Mary finished deep cleaning the living room.
  • We watched a couple movies: the 2008 movie, Iron Man and the 2010 movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice. We started to watch Criminal, but didn't make it 5 minutes until we turned it off...too violent. It's out of here! The cherry crunch tasted great.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/30: Cool Wind
  
  • A strong NW wind brought clouds and cooler temperatures to our world.
    
  • Mary worked on cutting up squares of material for a future quilt.
  • I vacuumed bugs throughout the house.
    
  • Mary vacuumed dust off all of the cross stitch Christmas ornaments and cross stitch pictures hanging on walls. She stored the ornaments away in zip lock bags inside totes.
    
  • I updated my wine diary and realized from viewing notes about the last blackberry wine I made that 9 days after the initial racking, I racked that wine for the second time. Today is Day 9 with this current batch, so I racked wine from the carboy, half-gallon jug and beer bottle into the brew bucket. The specific gravity is 0.997, giving the wine a 12.6% alcohol content. The last blackberry wine I made had a 12% level. I strained the leftovers, but it still had a lot of yeast finds in it. It tasted yeasty, fruity, with a strong alcohol taste. After cleaning the carboy and sanitizing it, I racked the wine must into it and two 750-ml wine bottles. The little bit of clear wine must I had left tasted very, very good...not so alcoholic or yeasty, and very similar to the first blackberry wine I made last year.
  • Katie sent photos (see below) of hikes she's done on her own time the past 2 days in a place called the Valley of Fire, a state park 50 miles NE of Las Vegas. She's also found interesting places to eat...an authentic Mexican restaurant and a Venezuelan restaurant. She's in Vegas learning how to build K-span buildings (modern-day Quanset) using a mobile unit called an Ultimate Building Machine (UBM), which looks cool. Katie says it's an interesting process.

Katie's visit to the Valley of Fire.

Another photo from the Valley of Fire.

Petroglyphs in the Valley of Fire.

A Bighorn sheep in the Valley of Fire.

• Wednesday, 3/31: Out Like a Lion
  • On March 1st, we had clear, cool, and calm weather. Today, the last day of March, it was clear, cool, and blasting a strong NW wind.
    
  • I cleft grafted two more apple trees onto rootstocks...a Hewe's Virginia Crab and a Baldwin. While putting a cleft into the rootstock for the Baldwin scion, the trunk, that was only supposed to be split about 1-1.5", split almost to the roots. It's why one is supposed to wrap the rootstock trunk with electrical tape about 2" down from the top to prevent such a long split. I haven't been doing that step, but will do it from now on. I cut more trunk off to bring the splice closer to the ground, got Mary to help hold the two split pieces steady after putting in the scions, then wrapped it with paraffin tape and covered everything with tree seal. I hope it lives. I now have 6 grafted trees in the upstairs south bedroom, protected from nighttime cold temperatures and 4 more to graft.
  • Bill received a used big TV from his friends, Mike and Erin, who recently moved, and didn't want it anymore.
  • We watched the 2006 movie, Miss Potter and the 2002 movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
    
    
• Thursday, 4/1: Cold Morning
  
  • The thermometer was at 20° as the sun rose this morning. Fortunately, the green buds on the Sargent crabapple tree weren't affected by the subfreezing temps. The yellow flowers on the forsythia look pretty good, but there is a general brownish tinge to them.
  • I did 2 more apple tree cleft grafts. Today's grafts were Wickson and Jonathan apple trees. I didn't order Jonathan, but obviously Fedco was out of Porter's Perfection and sent me Jonathan, instead. That's okay. We have one other Jonathan sapling started, so now we'll have 2 Jonathan trees, if this graft takes. I used electrical tape to prevent a Daniel Boone tree splitting event on the rootstock, like I did yesterday. The electrical tape was removed once I finished the grafts.
  • I went to the Lewis County Democrat quarterly meeting at the courthouse in Montecello, MO, something I would have never thought I'd be doing years ago when I was an editor of the Roseau Times-Region (MN), praising Republican thoughts. January 6, 2021 made up my mind to take action against the party I once voted for. Lewis County Sheriff Dave Parrish discussed legislative efforts Missouri sheriffs are addressing statewide. On a positive note, the sheriff organization brought Democratic and Republican U.S. House reps together and worked out where they can agree on police reform. On a negative side, a movement in Missouri's legislature is developing from 2nd Amendment proponents drawing up laws outlawing sheriffs from working with the FBI on gun-related crimes and proposing to fine sheriffs up to $50,000 for involving feds in investigations. "They say we (sheriffs) are against the Second Amendment," said Parrish, "people who wear a gun on our hips throughout our work." He said the Missouri sheriffs are putting out a press release about where they stand in the next couple days. An interesting statistic he threw out. There are 17 million AR-15 gun owners in the country and in January 2021, over 2 million guns were sold. I sat next to Jake DeCoster, Lewis County's prosecuting attorney. He looks like a farmer. I read in the Quincy Herald-Whig that at 65, he participates in triathlon events and coaches a youth swim team. We picked a $500 scholarship winner from 6 applicants who is a young Black woman attending Highland High School. It was a good meeting of about 10 people. I plan to go back to their June 24th meeting.
  • Mary made 4 loaves of bread, cut out quilt material, and did chores while I was in Montecello.
  • Returning home, a barred owl flew across the road right in front of me and once I was on our gravel road, a big wild turkey flew across and then ran parallel to the road in a field to my left. It was as tall as the hood of the car. We were going the same speed. I looked at my speedometer and that turkey was running 20 mph. Man, they can sure boogie across the stubble!
    
    
• Friday, 4/2: Grafting Done
  
  • I cleft grafted the last 2 apple trees onto rootstock. I wanted to do up 2 with the Ashmead's Kernel scion, but there were too few buds on the piece I received from Fedco, so I only did one and put pieces I cut from an earlier clipping off our Esopus Spitzenburg tree onto the final rootstock. Now, 10 grafted specimens are in the upstairs south bedroom (see photo below), to spare them from below 40° temperatures, which should end tonight.
    
  • I checked on shelf brackets I ordered from Menards on 3/3. They're still on order and they don't know when they'll come in. I won't order through Menards, again.
    
  • Mary made baked chicken for our main meal.
    
  • At dusk, we had a visit from Ben Woodruff, who bought the property bordering west of us last fall, and asked Mary a year ago if we want to sell our land. He asked me the same question, saying he'd pay cash to buy it. I said our land is not for sale. He owns several pieces of acreage in the area, including some land about a mile due south of us, where he camps. He lives in Lake St. Louis and works in the Medicare/Medicaid business...whatever that means! He doesn't like his work and wants to move here and build on our property...it's not for sale! He likes to hunt and has permission to hunt turkey on the land bordering us to the north. If they see turkey on our land, could they hunt on it...answer is no, we don't give away hunting rights on OUR LAND! Do we want his phone number, in case we sell? We aren't selling! If we need help with a dozer or a skid steer, he can help. We're fine. He'll be back to see if we want to sell. The answer will be the same...we aren't selling. Since he was so pushy, I looked him up online and found his Facebook page. He once played football for West Point. He helps raise money for a non-profit, which involves taking people hunting who are Christian war veterans. I think he makes money with that endeavor, guiding vets on deer hunting camps. One positive is he's not planning on building in the property west of us.

  

  Ten grafted apple trees. I hope some take new grafts.
  

• Saturday, 4/3: Continuous Wind
  • Wind continues to blow, as it has for the past several days. It prevents me from doing the first spray on all of our fruit trees.
    
  • Bill called and talked to both of us. He recently got a raise in pay. He's visiting Mike Push, his friend, later in the day.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry that easily dried on the line. She also made flour tortillas.
  • I moved all 10 grafted trees into the shade on the east end of the machine shed and thoroughly watered them and all of the strawberries. I also added more tree seal to cover places around the grafts where original tree seal shrunk and cracked. A solid covering of tree seal keeps bugs out and moisture in, so the graft heals correctly.
    
  • Like previous days, both Mary and I vacuumed Asian ladybugs.
  • It's game night, so we played a British board game Mary bought back when the kids were homeschooling called Atlas Adventures. It's fun. I won.
    
  • Katie texted. She visited Death Valley, today.
    
  • On the last walk of the dogs, hundreds of moths were smacking against the outside of the north windows, attracted to the indoor lights. Today's warmth produced a big moth hatch. They were hard to identify, but hopefully they're not 1 of the 2 possibilities, which is a moth that eats oak leaves and sometimes decimates oak forests. Oak is the majority of our timber.