April 18-24, 2021

Weather | 4/18, 38°, 63° | 4/19, 40°, 53° | 4/20, 2" snow, 0.19" moisture, 29°, 44° | 4/21, 25°, 51° | 4/22, 27°, 57° | 4/23, 41°, 60° | 4/24, 0.01" rain, 47°, 64° |

• Sunday, 4/18: Dandelion Pickin'
  
  • I plucked blossoms out of dandelion flowers all day long. It's not a speedy endeavor. Yesterday's pickings gave me 39 grams. Today, I reached a grand total of 112 grams. A quart equals 90 grams. I need 3 quarts to make a gallon of dandelion wine, so I'm a quarter of the way to filling my second quart. After picking dandies all day, my fingers look like a bee's butt...all yellow and sticky.
    
  • Mary is still feeling a slight fever and dizziness from the COVID vaccination. My arm feels fine and I never felt sickly. An online check reveals that older folks feel less affected by the shot. I'm old and Mary is young...ha, ha, ha!
  • In the evening, a deer wondered around through our yard (see video, below). Our big pie cherry tree full of white blossoms is in the foreground of this video. The deer tried to eat an old cherry twig that died years ago, by peeling back the white plastic guard.
    
  • Mary saw 4 more pelicans, today.
  • We're very happy that the garden is not planted. Snow of 1-2" is predicted for Monday night, with a low of 28° on Tuesday morning.

A deer in our west yard. 

This video is taken from our west living room window.

• Monday, 4/19: Shot Symptoms Are Over
  
  • Mary felt fine for the first time since taking the COVID vaccination. She washed 2 loads of laundry and did some housecleaning.
  • I saw a barred owl on top of a small oak sapling SW of the south living room window when I opened the curtain in the morning. It flew down to hunt a mouse on the ground, then flew south. It's amazing how such a large bird can perch on a tiny twig, signifying how light owls are versus how large they appear.
    
  • I picked more dandelions to get a grand total of 181 grams, or a gram above a 2-quart equivalent. Another 89 grams and I'll have 3 quarts to make a gallon of dandelion wine.
  • I moved all of my grafted apple trees into the upstairs south bedroom to protect them from the next 2 nights of cold temperatures. I also moved all of the strawberry plants into the woodshed and helped Mary cover them with sheets.
    
  • I took the tractor/trailer to just north of the NW corner of the west field and cut several small dead trees, since we're nearly out of firewood with expected lows in the 20s for the next couple nights. After Mary did all of the chores, she started walking west to meet me. I came home a different way and didn't spot her until after she turned around to go back home. Together, we unloaded the wagon, stacking the new firewood against the inside of the machine shed's north wall.
  • We watched the 2016 movie, Bridget Jone's Baby.
    
    
• Tuesday, 4/20: Spring Snow
  
  • We woke to 2" of heavy wet snow bending down all tree branches and covering spring fruit tree blossoms (see photo below). This is the second year in a row of April snows.
  • Mary made flour tortillas, taco salad, and did some cross stitch.
  • Most of the snow we woke up to melted and there wasn't any snow damage to the fruit tree blossoms.
    

  

  Snow weighs Sargent crabapple tree branches down.
  

• Wednesday, 4/21: Dentist Visit & Hard Freeze
  
  • We were up at 5 a.m., due to my 8:30 a.m. dentist appointment in Quincy.
    
  • We had a hard overnight freeze. Our low temperature set a new record. Crunchy frost was everywhere prior to sunrise. Mary did a check after sunrise and only blossoms on a small cherry received frost damage. Mary sent me a photo (see below) of an Asopus Spitzenburg apple blossom.
  • My dentist visit went well. My front cap was recemented into place. The underlying tooth stud is sound. He said my teeth look good and cost should be able to be kept low with regard to dental work. The dental full-mouth X-ray was the easiest I've ever endured. He says I brush too hard and recommends a Waterpik. I have a May 12 appointment for cleaning and a cavity check.
    
  • I bought all of Menard's cheap shelf brackets, which was 31, and 300'  of 2' high chicken wire, along with a few groceries, while in Quincy.
    
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal.
  • I checked with Mom and she owns the very same Waterpik that is available at the Quincy Walmart. I'll pick one up the next time I'm in Quincy.
    
  • I picked dandelions for about an hour, bringing the grand total to 212 grams of blossoms...only 58 grams to get enough for a gallon batch of dandelion wine.
    
  • We watched the 1997 movie, Contact.

  

  An Asopus Spitzenburg apple blossom.
  

• Thursday, 4/22: Sun, Bees, and Blossoms
  • After a second-in-a-row morning of frost, we saw sun and bees by the thousands on all of the fruit tree blossoms.
    
  • Mary and I moved strawberry plants out under the weeping willow tree, where they got partial sun. They were covered with sheets inside the woodshed for the past 2 days, due to freezing temperatures.
    
  • I picked dandelion blossoms, getting a grand total of 275 grams, 5 grams over the 270 grams I need to make a gallon batch of dandelion wine.
    
  • Mary finished cross stitching a Halloween ornament, then picked bag worms off cedar trees in the east yard all afternoon.
  • I moved several clay soil bricks from last year's strawberry buckets to fill deep animal holes in the trail that I made last fall, which crosses the west field.
    
  • I lit a small fire to cook smoked scrambled eggs. We enjoyed them with a side dish of asparagus spears cooked with garlic and sauteed in my homemade garlic wine...quite yummy. Even better tasting was the bottle of autumn olive wine that we drank. It was only 12 days since I bottled it and this wine tastes remarkably good for hardly any aging at all. It's very clear (see photo below) and one of the best I've made.
  • Katie texted that she's in Anchorage at her apartment. She got her first COVID (Pfizer) vaccination. She's going to Eek, Alaska (south of Bethel) around May 7-10 to help build a new school. Here's an AP article about funding for that school.

  

  Autumn olive wine, aged 12 days.
  

• Friday, 4/23: Happy Dessert for Blah Day
  
  • It was a cloudy, dark day, even though it never rained until late evening, so Mary made a chocolate pie. We enjoyed half of it for a nighttime snack in order to keep our svelte body shapes in correct alignment.
  • Speaking of snacks, Holly, our smallest cat, ate a bumble bee. A few hours later, she hollered for 20 minutes, straight, then vomited the backside of the bee, along with 1 leg. That silly cat will eat anything.
    
  • I thoroughly inspected my apple tree grafts. I have 4 grafts with tiny visible green leaves emerging (see photos below) and several more with swelling buds. A couple show drying bark on the grafted-on scions, indicating death. Hopefully, the roots are still alive and I can attempt bud grafting in a few weeks on those rootstocks.
    
  • I drew up a new dandelion wine recipe from a combination of online recipes I found and started a batch of dandy wine by bringing 7 pints of spring water to a boil and dumping in the 3 quarts of dandelion blossoms, then letting it cool. It smells like water after boiling corn on cob. I will let is sit for 2 days, then add other ingredients. This recipe includes an orange, 2 lemons, a lime, and some ginger root...ought to be interesting!

Hewe's Virginia Crabapple graft.

Baldwin apple tree graft.

Wickson apple tree graft.

Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree graft.

• Saturday, 4/24: First Mowing
  
  • I mowed the east yard on both sides of the driveway, along with inside and outside of the near garden. We didn't mow earlier, due to me harvesting dandelions for wine and the desire to keep the flowers intact. That resulted in super dense and high grass, so in some places I had to mow using only a quarter of the width of the mower's deck. There was a lot of hay on the ground after I finished.
  • Mary filled 2 wheelbarrow loads of dead grass from the near garden and dumped them near the dry pond, east of the far garden. She then raked up the grass I mowed and added it as mulch to most of the 2 rows in the near garden.
  • She also fertilized the garlic in the far garden.
  • We noticed today that barn swallows and whippoorwills are back for the season. We also have big herds of bunnies of all sizes. We counted 7 while finishing up evening chores, then Mary counted 3 more that were bouncing around, using our trails. I had a 3" long baby bunny hopping around the strawberry buckets while I moved the strawberries out of the woodshed and into sunlight in the morning.
    
  • We also saw 3 doe deer while watching from our bedroom as they wandered through just east of the far garden in the evening.