May 2-8, 2021

Weather | 5/2, 59°, 81° | 5/3, 0.08" rain, 61°, 77° | 5/4, 51°, 59° | 5/5, 38°, 65° | 5/6, 47°, 61° | 5/7, 39°, 69° | 5/8, 42°, 57° |

• Sunday, 5/2: One Garden Planted
  
  • I finished tying up the chicken wire fence to posts in the near garden. I only had to add a 2-foot section of chicken wire to last year's wire to enclose the garden. I took a hatchet and made stakes out of tree branch Y's, turned them upside down, and pounded them through the very bottom square of chicken wire to secure the bottom of wire between each post in the ground.
    
  • I also moved all of my live strawberries into the east end of the near garden for their permanent summer location. 
    
  • Mary planted tomato and tomatillo seeds into Styrofoam cups.
  • She also planted carrot, parsnip, lettuce, spinach, radish, onion, and shallot seeds to finish all planting of the near garden. It awaits rain and sunshine.
    
  • While outside throughout the day, a catbird went nuts with a wide variety of songs of love. Mary had a robin following her wherever she dug in the garden, picking up fat, juicy earthworms from freshly dug earth that was newly planted.
    
  • Five of my grafted apple trees show potential buds that won't develop into emerging leaves. I read that leaves emerging on the rootstocks below the grafts need to be clipped to encourage the grafts to take. I also saw a video from a guy in England who advocated leaving these rootstock leaves in place. I decided to remove the unwanted leaves, clipped them on these 5 grafted apple trees and painted over the cuts with tree seal. I hope it works.
    
  • We have a clump of daffodils blooming just beyond our south lawn (see photo below). I plan on marking them so I can dig them up this fall and plant them in a respectable flower bed.
    
  • I made the mistake of wearing shorts and tennis shoes, instead of full pants and boots during tick season, today. I know better. I pulled 3 ticks off me after outside activities, today. Tick bites balloon into blisters that weep on me.
    
  • On the last dog walk after dark, Plato was sniffing near the end of the cedar trees in our east yard, then suddenly bolted to the house with his ears held back. I shined the flashlight where he ran from, but couldn't see anything. Our guess is he smelled or sensed a coyote and ran for it. While I searched with the flashlight, he stayed at the porch as if to say, "You might need help, but I'm staying right here!"

  

  Daffodils, engulfed in a multiflora rose bush.
  

• Monday, 5/3: Day Off
  • After yesterday's garden push, we took today off.
    
  • Mary did some housecleaning.
  • A thunderstorm rolled through around 2 p.m. Once it hit the Mississippi River, it became a severe thunderstorm with hail in Illinois.
    
  • The grafted Hewe's Virginia crabapple has new leaves on both the top grafted scions and the original rootstock that are curling. I tried to figure out the problem in books and online, but to no avail. So, I sent a message to the MU Lewis County Extension Service office asking for their input.
    
  • We found a 5-to-6-foot long snake in the woodshed and identified it as a black rat snake.
  • We spotted an eastern king bird on the east garden gate, so those birds are home for the year.
    
  • I took the dogs on a walk down the east trail. Halfway down the trail, I picked and tossed ticks by the dozens off the dogs. I did that 2 more times, then finally rushed home. On the lawn just beyond the porch, I picked and killed probably about 50 ticks per dog. We think ticks are bad at the house and along our lane, but they're out in fierce numbers on non-mowed trails. Fortunately, ticks can't climb slick knee-high rubber boots, so I didn't have any on me until I started de-ticking the dogs on the lawn.
    
  • I took Mary back down the trail, because the wild blue phlox flowers, what we've been mistakenly naming as periwinkles, are blooming in the east bottom amongst the woods. She took photos of the flowers and new oak leaves (see below).
    
  • We watched the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Wild blue phlox flowers.

New oak leaves.

• Tuesday, 5/4: Cool Spring Day
  
  • Temperatures never rose above the 50s today. It's cool, for this country.
    
  • I balanced our checkbook. Mary paid bills and moved savings monies into appropriate accounts.
    
  • I got an email from the MU Extension Service's Field Horticulturist Jennifer Schutter-Barnes, who is based in Kirksville, MO, and covers 11 Northeast Missouri counties. She asked for photos of the curling leaves on the Hewe's Virginia crabapple graft, so Mary took several photos that I sent 6 to Jennifer.
  • Mary made an apple pie.
    
  • She also created a shopping list.
  • I discovered online that if a half inch of fines pile up at the bottom of a carboy, wine should be racked. Leaving the wine must on a half inch of lees too long results in a harsh taste. The dandelion wine has this much yeast poop at the bottom of the jug, so I racked all containers into a brew bucket. The specific gravity is 0.994, giving it an alcohol content of 12.21%, which is perfect. It tastes fruity, flowery, and has a tang. It's much better than last year's attempt. I racked the wine into a gallon jug and a 330-ml beer bottle. At Day 9, with fermentation finished, this is the fastest brewed wine to date. Bubbles are present after double racking, but it's probably due to oxygen mixed into the liquid. I didn't add a Campden tablet.
    
  • In the evening, I update my wine journal.
  • In the evening, we had 2 pots of tea, deviled eggs, jam on toast, apple pie, and a couple glasses of 2020 pear wine, which at 4 months of aging, tastes marvelous.
    
    
• Wednesday, 5/5: Shared Mowing
  
  • Back when I went to work daily, Mary got stuck mowing most all of the lawns. Now that I'm home, I'm trying to better share the mowing duties. Mary mowed the inside and south outside of the far garden, plus the north outside of the near garden for 1 hour. When she was done, I mowed the rest of the outside of the far garden, the rest of the outside of the near garden and the east yard for another hour.
    
  • Jennifer at the MU Extension Service office in Kirksville, MO, emailed me to say that I either had aphid issues or pesticide poisoning with my grafted apple tree. Mary and I uncurled the leaves and sure enough, we had an aphid army that moved in. We sprayed all of the grafted trees with a liquid Dawn dish soap and water mixture. This kills aphids on contact. We found more aphids in other trees, besides the aphid army in the Hewe's Virginia crab, plus a worm in the Baldwin grafted apple tree. Later, Mary rinsed the trees with water. I thanked Jennifer for her accurate analysis.
  • While we were reviewing grafted apple trees, we noticed that the nest in the rafters of the woodshed is full of eastern phoebe babies.
  • Mary was buzzed by the first hummingbird of the season. It was attracted to the red of a chicken waterer on the ground, and was snarly, because there was nothing there to eat.
    
  • Mary fertilized the garlic with fish fertilizer and added acid solution to the blueberry soil. She also did a load of laundry.
  • I read up on the apple spray mixtures. I'm already late on the first 2 sprays. I calculated appropriate amounts of various items to fit into my 2-gallon sprayer. A quick check of nighttime weather showed rain prediction overnight, so I didn't spray. I should have, because it never rained and it was a calm day.
    
    
• Thursday, 5/6: Shopping & Mowing
  
  • Mary mowed the east yard, next to the house. She raked yesterday and today's grass clippings and mulched most of one row in the far garden.
  • I shopped in Quincy, visiting 10 places...ugh! I hate shopping and the rat-race traffic. Gas is higher at $2.69 a gallon.
  • We watched the 1995 movie, Sabrina.
  • The eastern phoebe nestlings are getting bigger and saying, "EEP, EEP," anytime we walk into the woodshed.
    
    
• Friday, 5/7: The Aphid War
  
  • Mary inspected all of the grafted apple tree leaves and found more aphids. We used more Dawn spray and killed them. I removed leaves on the rootstock portion of the Hewe's Virginia crabapple, which seem to house the worst aphid infestations. I want all energy to go into new leaf production in the grafted-on scions.
  • Detaching rootstock leaves is working. I now see new leaf shoots pushing out from scion buds on the Jonathan, Roxbury Russet, and the Wickson apple grafts. That gives me a 60% take rate on my grafting efforts, with 6 of 10 grafts successful, so far.
    
  • Mary mowed the west lawn and between the sheds, raked it, and mulched more of a row in the far garden. I took the mower from Mary and mowed the north yards, finishing all lawn mowing. All that's left is mowing the lane.
  • I chopped up leftover persimmon tree branches and put the wood chips around apple and cherry trees south of the house as mulch.
    
  • Mary watered garden seeds in the near garden twice. Radish, lettuce, and a couple of spinach seeds are sprouting.
    
  • We watched the 2006 movie, The Lake House.
    
    
• Saturday, 5/8: Delayed Weather
  • Thunderstorms were predicted for us all afternoon/evening, but everything went around us and we never saw a drop, except for our final dog walk, at midnight, when it was sprinkling.
    
  • Mary cleaned house and made 2 egg quiche pies.
    
  • I mowed the lane. Oak tree pollen is everywhere. It really affected me while mowing. I found the only way to finish was to suck on a cough drop, or I'd continuously cough. After finishing mowing, I had to rest for quite awhile inside.