May 16-22, 2021

Weather | 5/16, 0.54" rain, 47°, 67° | 5/17, 1.09" rain, 55°, 63° | 5/18, 0.66" rain, 57°, 69° | 5/19, 61°, 76° | 5/20, 0.10" rain, 61°, 79° | 5/21, 0.03" rain, 65°, 74° | 5/22, 0.29" rain, 63°, 70° |

• Sunday, 5/16: Our Wild Kingdom
  
  • While we walked the dogs first thing in the morning, 2 Canada geese were startled off our neighbor's pond south of us and flew overhead, very low, and veered off right as they got above us. They're a wonderful sight, when flying near to the ground, overhead.
    
  • I went to get another cup of coffee in the morning when Mary spotted a coyote out our north living room window. I ran outside. Silver, our silver laced Wyandotte hen, was standing on top of the chicken ramp at the coop and that coyote was looking at her. I whooped and hollered and chased the coyote west, through the persimmon saplings. I followed it and the coyote was standing just beyond the persimmons, so I clapped my hands and told it to get. I kept following. There it was, again, standing in the trail and not moving. So, this time, I really got loud. It turned south and ran off through the woods. We think it's the same coyote I photographed on April 10th. It's too cozy with our property.
    
  • I did an aphid check of my grafted apple trees, like it do daily, now, and found more aphids. They got the Dawn soap treatment. I also picked green leaves off the rootstock portions of these trees, to encourage leaf development on the grafted-on scions. This trick is working. Unfortunately, the 2 rootstocks of the Esopus Spitzenburg grafts are dying. Something went wrong in this spring's transplanting with those 2 rootstocks.
    
  • I researched online about yellowing strawberry leaves. It looks like a nitrogen deficiency, so I fertilized the strawberries with a liquid fertilizer.
    
  • Mary weeded part of the potato patch until nearby thunder sent her inside. From 2 p.m. to into the night, we had a steady rain.
    
  • Since it's wet outside, I worked on grapefruit wine. It still had a sulfur smell, so I ran it through a 2' length of 1/2-inch PCV pipe stuffed with a copper scratch pad. It worked. The copper completely wiped out the sulfur smell. Unfortunately, a piece of copper ended up in the bottom of the gallon glass jug. I did an acid test. It's at .725 tartaric. In English, this means the acid level is 7 and a quarter tenths of 1 percent of the wine's volume. White wine needs to be between .65 and .75, so it's good. I added a crushed Campden tablet and 1/8 of a teaspoon of potassium sorbate, to curtail future yeast development. Then, I filtered the wine through a mesh bag to remove the copper scratch pad bit and undissolved Campden tablet particles. The wine dropping from the funnel under the mesh bag into the gallon jug mixed too much oxygen into the liquid, so I installed an airlock and I'll let it sit a week, allowing an oxygen release. It tastes very good, especially without a sulfur smell.
  • We feel better after our 2nd COVID shots, but we're super tired.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of autumn olive wine. It sure tastes marvelous, even though it's only aged a month since I bottled it.
    
    
• Monday, 5/17: Rain, Rain, Rain
  
  • It rained all day, today, which reminds me of southeast Alaska weather. Frogs are singing, everywhere.
    
  • Mary made a zucchini chocolate cake...yum!
    
  • She also checked for garlic scapes. Some are starting to form on the music pink garlic. The Siberian garlic leaves are hip-high, which is unusual.
  • Mary made some comfrey tea, and started work on a new cross stitch kit called Flowers and Lace.
  • I check my EM-1 (essential micro-nutrients) and molasses brew daily. It's bubbling. Once the pH reaches 3.8, it's supposed to rest for 4-7 days, and is then ready to be added to spray for fruit trees. My problem is my pH test paper covers pH from 0 to 14, or the entire pH range. It's not narrow enough to distinguish between 4.0 and 3.8. I always get a reading of 4.0. So, I looked online and bought a 30-foot roll of 2.9 to 5.2 pH paper.
  • The apple/cedar galls are bleeding their orange goo that eventually spread spores which turn to orange spots on apple leaves. I picked a plastic grocery bag of these rust apples off the cedar trees. Worried that I'm actually helping to spread the disease, I then performed some online research. I'm probably right, but picking them might be worthless. Cedar/apple rust can spread up to 7 miles away. I can't pick these things off cedar trees in a 7-mile radius. It's better to select resistant trees or boost the apple trees' immune systems.
    
  • Katie texted us that she's not heading to her construction site until the 1st of the month. It's not surprising. Ellie Napoleon, an old college friend, shows photos on Facebook of snow on the ground, ice on water, and says it's cold. She lives in Scammon Bay, which is 164 miles NW of Eek. I asked Ellie about the word, Eek, since I read it means 2 eyes. Ellie said it's spelled with 2 i's, not 2 e's, in Yup'ik. So, it should be spelled Iik. As usual, English-speaking people goofed up the word.
    
    
• Tuesday, 5/18: Our Property is a Wetlands
  
  • After getting 2.29" of rain in 3 days, water is sitting everywhere. We watched a crawfish wave its pinchers at us while walking the lane with the dogs, this morning. We're also seeing little frogs hopping around everywhere. The sump pump is running regularly. It's very wet.
  • A quick look at the garden revealed that our first strawberries are developing, parsnips are sprouting (we think), more onions are sprouting, and we're seeing the start of more garlic scapes.
  • I exchanged a couple Messenger texts with Ellie Napoleon related to this winter. When I mentioned that Katie is delayed at getting to Eek, Alaska, for her job, Ellie said, "Not surprised. The area got dumped with tons of snow in the last blizzard to hit the area. It was huge and deadly. And we got hit with sub-zero temps about the same time for about a month. Thickened ice. Our river is just now getting thaw pockets but ice still mostly intact. May be a couple more weeks (or more) until it's gone. It's been dang cold, too, in the last week which doesn't help. Snowing here today." When I said I hoped it warmed up, she added, "Yes. It was a mostly blizzardy last 3 months. Terrible!! We got sun about 4 times a month and the rest was blizzards. 2021 winter was a bad one in more ways than one. It may have helped to keep covid #'s down though. Not much interacting going on during blizzard season. Lol. Silver lining."
  • Mary fixed up a shrimp dinner. I helped her shell out the shrimp. She used our homemade garlic wine and chopped garlic as a saute (see photo, below). The shrimp were delicious. We tried a bottle of 2019 pear wine. After aging almost 1.5 years, it tastes much better, and very smooth. 
  • I researched online how to do bud grafting and saved several websites. I might be able to graft buds onto apple tree rootstocks in late summer and early fall that didn't take the cleft or saddle grafts.
  • While washing dishes, we discovered a huge number of sugar ants on the counter. Out came the Terro ant killer. By bedtime, all of the bait stations were surrounded by ant armies. "Ha, ha, ha," we cried as we turned off the lights.
  • We watched the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, and the 2012 movie, Men in Black 3.

  

  Garlic wine and garlic cloves.
  Combined, they make a nice shrimp saute.
  

• Wednesday, 5/19: Fly Away Little Bird
  
  • The Eastern phoebe nestlings that survived cold temperatures are now out of the nest in the woodshed. All that's left is a wheelbarrow tire directly below the nest that's now covered in bird poop.
    
  • We saw our first lightening bug while walking the dogs on the last outing of the night.
    
  • I cleaned our largest window air conditioner with a lots of water from a garden hose, an old toothbrush, and an old wash rag. Then I installed the AC in the west living room window, sealed all edges and small gaps with packing tape. Next, I squeezed 1/4" foam board into the sides and bottom of the outside of the AC, which blocks rain from the outside entering inside the house and blocks light from inside the house from attracting bugs at night.
    
  • Mary weeded half of the near garden, and trimmed the forsythia near the house, which grew branches out preventing us from walking on the trail to the machine shed and near the Cadillac.
    
  • Mary cut tall green grass with her scythe for hay.
  • We had light rain in evening. It's so wet, I won't be surprised seeing fish swimming by our house windows.
    
    
• Thursday, 5/20: Rain & Mud
  
  • Online weather radar indicates clouds are going through us from due south to north. It's bringing very damp air out of the Gulf of Mexico. We only got a little rain, but even a small amount turns on the sump pump, since the ground is so saturated. The chicken yard would make any pig seeking mud envious.
    
  • I drove to Lewistown and bought packing tape from Davis Hardware.
  • Then, I disassembled, cleaned, then put back together a second air conditioner. I installed the AC in our bedroom east window and secured all air cracks with packing tape. I still need to tape aluminum foil on the outside to deflect rain and bugs, which is harder on this one, since I have to use an extension ladder to get to it on the second story.
    
  • Mary oiled the woodstove pipe with mineral oil, to help preserve it until the next heating season.
    
  • She cut the first of the garlic scapes, a total of 11.
    
  • Mary weeded more of the near garden, but was stopped by rain, again.
  • I sprayed a couple of my grafted apple trees for aphids after seeing wilted leaves.
  • We watched the 2014 movie, Interstellar.
    
    
• Friday, 5/21: They Went Postal!
  
  • Mary and I drove to Quincy to get a FedEx package and as we turned onto the gravel road at the end of our driveway, we noticed that our mailbox was flattened (see photos below). Someone in probably a pickup, while driving east, went off the left (north) side of the road, hit our mailbox, drove down the ditch several feet and back up onto the road. The 6x6 green treated post holding up that mailbox snapped off at ground level. If I ever see a pickup with a smashed-up driver's side headlight and front grill, along with yellow paint marks, I'll know who flattened our mailbox. Since we were on our way to town, we bought a new box and lettering at Lowe's. After returning home, I put the pancaked metal box in the car's trunk, got some crowbars, once we were home, and pried it open to reveal that there was no mail inside the box. Gravel semi trucks were rumbling through the past 2 days. We think someone driving too fast and in the middle of the road was barreling over the hill, met a semi gravel truck and instead of getting into a head-on collision, dove off the road and ran right into our mailbox.
  • After an unsuccessful mailbox shopping visit to Home Depot and a fruitful Lowe's visit, we picked up the FedEx package at Walgreens, then bought a secondhand radio/CD player, wine glasses, yarn and 4 DVD movies at the Salvation Army store.
  • The package was 2.9 to 5.2 pH paper from Taylor Scientific. I checked the pH of my EM-1 (essential micro-nutrients) brew and it was between 3.2 and 3.5. All I was getting from my other litmus paper was 4.0, or maybe a little below that number. Paper with more minute gradations of pH measurement is much better. It means this batch is done and I can spray it on plants and trees.
  • It keeps on raining...not much...but enough to prevent working outside. The constant moisture increases the ability of apple tree diseases to spread. I now have 4 of my 10 grafted apple trees that are dying. These tree might be alive in a different, less-wet spring. On a positive note, blackberry bushes are full of blossoms.
    
  • We watched a 1958 movie, Auntie Mame, a movie that Mary wanted, which we found at the Salvation Army, today. It's interesting that Mary recently considered buying it on Amazon, but didn't want to pay $20 for it. Instead, we found a used copy today for $3. Nice!
    

Our smashed mailbox.

Broken-off post and tire track next to it.

• Saturday, 5/22: More Smashed Mailbox Info
  • After reading installation instructions on our new mailbox, I donned rain gear and did some measurements on the smashed post. The old mailbox was 42" above ground. While I was there, the neighbor across the road drove up (he was on his lunch break). He starts work at the dairy west of us at 5 a.m. Yesterday morning, several trucks were parked on the gravel road and in the grass across from our mailbox. He didn't stop to talk with the guys in the trucks, because he had to get to work. He asked around the dairy if anyone was in an accident. The answer was no. He thinks the mailbox smasher was someone who doesn't live in the area, that it happened at night, and all of the trucks and tracks down the field to the pond next to his house have something to do with it. I checked out the tracks after talking to him. The truck that hit our mailbox veered across the gravel road, went all the way down the hill and ended up in the pond. Then, a larger truck, maybe with a winch, drove down and pulled mailbox smasher truck out of the pond. There were a lot of spinning tires and deep tracks on the pull uphill from the water's edge. I bet they just finished when my neighbor went to work. I called the Lewis County Sheriff's office. They took my information and said a deputy would either call or visit. That's the last I heard from them. I'm sure they have more important matters than smashed mailboxes.
  • It rained until about 5 p.m.
  • I lightly sanded the bottom of the new mailbox and painted it with auto primer and extreme rust Rust-Oleum paint. The paint on this new box is super thin and certainly won't stand up to Missouri moist air. 
  • Mary made flour tortillas. She also cut several garlic scapes and worked on patching a pair of her jeans.
  • Katie gave Mary a year's subscription to Book of the Month Club for Mary's upcoming birthday. Mary spent time looking for books on their website.