June 13-19, 2021

Weather | 6/13, 58°, 87° | 6/14, 65°, 88° | 6/15, 57°, 88° | 6/16, 59°, 87° | 6/17, 65°, 91° | 6/18, 76°, 94° | 6/19, 0.62" rain, 67°, 91° |

• Sunday, 6/13: Garden Things, Again, Ugh!
  
  • Mary mowed the east lawn between the house and the lane, raked it into piles, and mulched another row in the far garden.
  • She made flour tortillas.
  • Mary picked another nice batch of black raspberries.
  • Water melon, muskmelon, and 2 kinds of pumpkin seeds are all sprouting.
  • I tied another 42' section of chicken wire to the end of the north end far garden fence, attached the chicken wire to all posts, and made a gate and installed it. The north end is now fenced in, something we didn't accomplish last year. I just need to anchor down each chicken wire section between posts and add stiffeners.
    
  • We celebrated fencing in the north far garden with a bottle of 2020 pear wine. It's really good wine. Since we were so thirsty from sweating outside in the heat, we also drank 64 ounce glasses of iced tea with half a lemon squeezed into each glass.
  • We watched the 2003 movie, Love Actually. We decided since Australia witnesses hot summer Christmases, watching a Christmas movie during summer heat is appropriate. See! You can justify just about anything.
  • Lightning bugs are really intense after dark. The pecan trees just NE of our house pulsate with flashes in the dark of the night.
    
    
• Monday, 6/14: Flag Day
  
  • I read that China and Russia are joining for space exploration efforts, which will start a new space race with the U.S. We humans are still tribes trying to fight one another. As Mary says, "We're still monkeys flinging dung at each other."
  • Mary mowed the east yard, raked up 19 piles of grass, and almost mulched the NW row of the far garden, the longest row of our gardens.
  • I pounded upside down Y-stakes into the middle bottoms of chicken wire sections and added stiffeners to the north end of the far garden fence. The clay ground is dry and hard, requiring me to pour water down where I pound in stakes to ease getting stakes into the earth.
  • Mary picked more black raspberries. 
  • She encountered a large prairie king snake and a garter snake in the near garden. Good! They eat voles and baby bunnies, who in turn, eat our garden plants.
    
  • Katie emailed me an interesting 1988 Anchorage Daily News article about how Venetie (pronounced VEEN-a-tye) became a dry Athabaskan village in 1972. It's where Katie is working the remainder of this summer. Because the airport is privately owned by the tribal government, Venetie (which means "Plenty Game Trail" in Kutchin, the local language) village residents can and do legally inspect all incoming luggage, packages, and mail, in order to intercept liquor. The article details how Venetie developed into a nice place to live.
    
    
• Tuesday, 6/15: A Day Inside
  
  • We decided to take a day away from outside activities.
  • Mary did housecleaning, moved some furniture around, did some cross stitching, and made a turkey and rice dish.
  • On a venture outside with the dogs, I watched a luna moth fly into the yard from the cedar trees (see photo, below). Part of its wings were damaged.
  • I racked the dandelion wine from a gallon jug and a beer bottle into the 3-gallon carboy, added a crushed Campden tablet, then transferred the remaining clear liquid into a gallon jug (see photo, below). We tasted the leftover wine after racking. It had an initial citrus taste, with a flower aftertaste. It's really good. In another month, it should be ready to bottle.
  • Mary and I watered gardens. We are drying out. With predicted highs in the mid-90s later this week, we might not see a wild blackberry crop. I plan to start watering fruit trees, tomorrow.
  • On the dogs' morning walk, a tiny bunny sat at the edge of the lane, refusing to move. The tactic worked. Our dogs never noticed it. During our garden watering detail, we heard a shrill shriek of a rabbit, saw grass moving very quickly, and watched an adult rabbit stand on its hind feet facing the commotion. I checked out the tall grass, afterward, and found a dying small rabbit. We think a mink nailed it, since the movement in the grass was much quicker than a bunny hopping along.
    
  • I finished the 20th book of the Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin novels, called Blue at the Mizzen. It was published in 1999 and the author, Patrick O'Brian, died in 2000. He worked on a 21st novel in this series and the unfinished manuscript was published in 2004, called The Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey. I ordered it from Thrift Books. I also ordered Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian from Alibris. I plan to go back and read all of these novels a second time with that latter book in hand. Mary says I'm nuts. I'm a happy nut. Mary, the book nut, was my enabler, and encouraged me to buy the atlas.
    
  • The lightning bugs are a marvel each and every night. It's as if we have summer Christmas trees in our yard, complete with flashing lights. I need to figure out how to photograph them.

A luna moth with damaged wings.

Racked dandelion wine (left), fines (middle & right).

• Wednesday, 6/16: Name Misspelling
  
  • Katie texted about how often her name gets misspelled. While getting an airline ticket, the agent received an email with her name correctly, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N, then booked a flight for Catherine Melvin. It happens to even common names. Mary's name sometimes gets altered to Maisy or Macy. My name often is switched to Melvin Richard.
  • Katie said she's visiting Venetie on Monday and Tuesday for a site visit.
    
  • I called Roberts Garage. The Cadillac is done, so I poured brake fluid into the pickup's master brake cylinder, drove to beyond Ewing, MO, and swapped vehicles, so Roberts can work on the pickup. The Cadillac received new front brake calipers, pads, and rotors. They also put in the power steering pressure hose. When I first stepped on the brakes, I almost put my head into the windshield. I'm not used to such responsive brakes. They used to be like, "Throw out the anchor and let's wait 'til it sticks!"
  • While driving our lane to get the Caddy, I had 5 woodcocks standing in the middle of the driveway, dipping up and down. They would not move. I think they were kids. I stopped the pickup, and got out. Then, they jumped to the side of the lane. Once I drove by, they flew away.
    
  • Mary mowed the west yard. Then, she mulched all of the onions.
  • With a predicted high on Friday of 99°, I cleaned our last window air conditioner. It was new last summer and not too mucked up, so I cleaned it quickly without taking it all apart.
    
  • Roberts Garage is a huge building surrounded by a vast gravel parking lot. Sparrows roost in the building's eaves. The Cadillac was extremely dusty with multiple bird poop gifts all over it. So, I washed the car and cleaned the windows inside and out. Several weeks of pouring power steering fluid through it put a film on the interior windows. We need rain, so maybe a combination of a clean car and a newly graded gravel road might induce the rain gods to let loose. We can only hope.
  • After walking dogs on their last walk, we stood in the north yard and watched fireflies for several minutes. They are really amazing.
    
    
• Thursday, 6/17: HEAT
  
  • It's hot! We're not only hot, but humid. Spend time outside and you return with soaking wet clothes. YUCK!
    
  • Mary made 45 flour tortillas.
  • She also weeded the carrots and parsnips. She mulched the carrots, parsnips, and potatoes in the near garden. She also mulched the rest of the NW row and a third of the NE row in the far garden.
  • I installed the last air conditioner in the north end of our home's first floor, applying packing tape on the inside and foil and aluminum tape on the outside. It took all afternoon, because I was fighting wind while forming aluminum foil into place.
  • I watered almost all of the fruit trees. I used a wheelbarrow to move buckets of water around. All together, I poured 46 four-gallon buckets of water onto all but the largest trees: the McIntosh apple and the Kieffer pear trees.
  • The last fruit tree spray I did with copper spray really helped the Grimes Golden apple tree. It's growing new leaves that look excellent.
  • I helped Mary water the gardens. We have pumpkin sprouts showing secondary leaves. Some cucumbers are sprouting. 
  • While walking dogs in the evening, we had a doe deer on the lane walk toward us, then veer off to the east. The deer are very reddish tan right now. They turn to darker gray in fall and winter.
  • After dark, I looked up how to perform bridge grafts in order to save trees with bark stripped bare from rabbits, which is something that happened to the Grimes Golden apple tree. It must be done in the spring and only if 50% of the bark is eaten off. I'll need to do a closer inspection. This spring, I thought that tree was going to die, but recent growth says otherwise.
    
    
• Friday, 6/18: Planted Sweet Corn
  
  • Mary planted 162 corn seeds in 27 hills in the NW row of the far garden. Each hill got a healthy dose of compost and wood ashes.
  • An eastern kingbird lives just east of the far garden. At one point, Mary threw some hard clay dirt clods over the east fence of the far garden while making hills for corn and immediately, that bird landed on the fence wire and squawked, as if to say, "Don't do that!" From that moment on, Mary threw clods over the north fence.
    
  • She also picked about a half of a quart of black raspberries.
  • I cleaned most of the weeds and tall grass from the chicken run with the saw blade on the Stihl grass trimmer. I left some blooming motherwort plants for the bumblebees that love them so much and tall weeds along fence lines, which help chickens hide from hawks.
    
  • I assessed the west chicken coop wall. There's a little bit of rot in a square foot where 2 OSB boards meet, but the same area is solid inside. I'll let it be for now, but I plan on replacing the west wall before winter sets in.
    
  • I helped Mary water garden plants. Zucchini and cucumber sprouts are popping through the ground.
    
  • Thunderstorms rolled through from west to east in Iowa, the lightning of which lit up the northern sky while walking the dogs after dark. 
  • The fireflies were even more impressive then ever before, because of the humid air. Hundreds were in the trees and the north yard, creating a magical, twinkling feast for the eyes against the nighttime darkness of the woods.
    
    
• Saturday, 6/19: We Get Rain, Then Faucet Turns Off
  
  • I awoke to loud rain drops on the air conditioner in our bedroom window. A walk downstairs revealed lightening and thunder in the distance, so I unplugged appliances. Later, we heard loud cracks of thunder, followed by a heavy rain around 6 a.m. It was great to get a much-needed rain.
  • Throughout the rest of the day, big billowing clouds developed overhead, moved off to the SE and drowned areas south of us. We didn't see a drop, yet in the county south of us a flood warning was issued.
    
  • Mary made 4 loaves of bread, and picked black raspberries (see photo, below).
  • I balanced our checkbook.
    
  • Mary mulched the watermelon, muskmelon, and pumpkin plants
    
  • I helped Mary with far garden weeding.

  

  Roughly a half quart of freshly-picked black raspberries.