July 25-31, 2021

Weather | 7/25, 70°, 87° | 7/26, 61°, 87° |7/27, 63°, 87° | 7/28, 69°, 91° | 7/29, 0.01" rain, 72°, 93° | 7/30, 69°, 83° | 7/31, 3.46" rain, 62° at 12:30 pm, 68° |

• Sunday, 7/25: Bill Leaves & the Garden is Producing
  
  • We loaded up Bill's cooler with 6 dozen eggs, his 5 quarts of frozen blackberries, and a package of Lalvin RC 212 wine yeast for his future blackberry winemaking project. Before he left for St. Charles, I had Mary take a photo (see below) of Bill and I. She also got a photo of a dragonfly on the Buick's hood ornament (see below).
    
  • Mary picked about 10 pounds of cucumbers, filling 2 plastic grocery shopping bags. Several that were large pickle size yesterday are large cucumber slicing size today. She also placed boards under 11 watermelons, and 17 muskmelons, to protect them from rot and chewy critters creeping up from the ground under them. She counted 13 long pie pumpkins, and 2 Diablo pumpkins. We also have 3 zucchinis growing nicely.
    
  • I picked 2 batches of blackberries...1 to add to tomorrow's breakfast oatmeal and another that we ate as a nighttime snack...33, each, for breakfast and 100, each, for snacks. The dogs joined me for blackberry picking. Amber, who joined Plato as a fellow fruit lover, figured out where the berries were coming from and tried to pull them off the bushes with her teeth. They both loved blackberry picking and the occasional blackberry treat.

My son, Bill, and I.

A dragonfly sits on the Buick's hood ornament.

• Monday, 7/26: Pickle-Making Day
  
  • Mary picked more cucumbers, then cut them up and processed 6 quarts of dill pickles. All of the jars sealed perfectly.
    
  • Mary also ground up 2 zucchinis and froze 2 quarts that will make 2 chocolate zucchini cakes...YUM! The Hamilton Beach food processor has a broken plastic support that holds the shredder blade. I looked it up. Our food processor is considered a vintage one and obviously that piece breaks, because it's not in stock, anywhere. Mary used the chopper blade and it did a better job, so we're not going to worry about getting the plastic piece.
    
  • I used the Stihl grass trimmer and whacked weeds and grass under the electric wires of both the near and far gardens. I revisited areas I cleaned out last Thursday, since weeds were starting to grow, again. You stay in a pretty rigid position operating that trimmer around the inside and outside of both gardens, so muscles get stiff after several hours of running the machine.
    
  • I picked 35 blackberries for my breakfast, tomorrow, with Plato and Amber helping. This evening, Plato gobbled up blackberries I fed him, but Amber ran off and spit the berries into the grass, then tried to dig them out, again. Mary picked 8 nice strawberries from the garden.
  • We watched the 2005 movie, Yours, Mine & Ours.
  • We're not seeing or hearing them, so we figure that the chimney swifts have left us for their winter home in the Amazon.
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/27: Dismal Potato Crop
  • Mary dug up the potatoes. We put a larger volume of potato pieces in the ground than the volume of potatoes that grew. Most were tiny, and in many cases, none grew at all. Mary said several were green and sprouting. She dug a five-foot stretch with not a single potato under the tall plants. We're not wasting our time on planting potatoes, again. We can grow a better crop of sweet potatoes. I think the long stretch of rain swamped the potato plants.
  • Before digging potatoes, Mary killed hundreds of Japanese beetles munching on smart weed growing next to the potato plants. She sprayed 5 bottles of Dawn soap solution on all of the bugs. When she first stepped into the weeds next to the potatoes, she heard a rattling sound. It was from all of the bugs moving about.
    
  • We heard, then spotted a bunch of chimney swifts flying about high in the sky above our house. They weren't the chimney swifts that raised little ones in our chimney, but others flying through.
    
  • I worked on the chicken yard, first by sharpening the blade, installing it on the grass trimmer, and mowing down weeds and grass in the chicken run. I also clipped grass, weeds, and mulberry tree limbs growing through the chicken wire fencing where we enter the yard and along the SE side. I need to put 3-4 metal fence posts in the north end of the yard to stabilize rotting wooden posts and maybe replace chewed up twine holding hardware cloth to the bottom of the chicken wire gate dividing hens and chicks.
    
  • I picked breakfast blackberries in a patch due west of the house and next to the woods with Plato and Amber. The dogs look forward to this evening event. They also like an occasional berry treat.
    
  • I saw where deer nipped a low-hanging winesap apple, so I pulled it, cut off the deer bite, split it into quarters, and Mary and I ate it. It wasn't ripe, yet, bet extremely tasty.
  • We enjoyed a cucumber salad. The Calypso cucumbers we grow aren't bitter and taste great.
    
    
• Wednesday, 7/28: Chicks are Outside
  
  • I solidified the chicken wire fencing in the chicken yard by pounding 3 metal fence posts into the ground and wiring old, leaning wooden posts to the metal posts. One post was covered with several poison ivy vines. I carefully nipped them off using 30-inch long loppers and threw the vines over the fence. After unscrewing the north chicken door, I opened it to let the chicks loose (see photos, below).
  • The temperature was 91° while I was in the chicken run. With humidity, the local radio/TV stations say it feels like 105°. I feel the same way about this as wind chill. Extreme hot and cold is just that...really hot, or really cold. We don't really need to exaggerate it by adding a "feels like" temperature. I've been at 105° in Montana. You feel like you're in a frying pan. Here, you feel like you're in a steamer. Once I came inside, my clothes looked like I took a swim in them. Either way, you're really hot...no need to make sound it even hotter.
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread.
  • Mary watered the gardens. All plants are holding up very well, despite the heat.
    
  • I picked blackberries for an evening snack and for tomorrow's breakfast. I don't feed berries to Amber, now, because she rummages into low blackberry brambles and eats black and red blackberries right of the plants. There are so many blackberries out there.
    
  • I installed 4 metal fence posts around the Stayman Winesap tree with apples in it and strung 3 lines of 50-pound fish line around the posts (see photos, below). Mary read a blog of a couple in the Houston area that did this as an inexpensive way to prevent deer from eating on apple trees. Deer can't see the fish line, hit it with their nose, can't understand what they're touching, but cannot see, and go away without eating the tree.
    
  • There was an 8.2 earthquake off the Alaskan Peninsula, 29 miles under the ocean's surface after 10 p.m. Alaska Time. Ellie Napoleon, a friend from back when I attended UAF, said on Facebook that she felt it and tsunami alerts were given. Fortunately, the tsunami was only half a foot high. She reported that the Homer Spit was evacuated. News reports indicate there were several aftershocks, some above 6 on the Richter scale. A quake of 8.2 is a big one. Katie never felt it...too far away.

Five-week old chicks leaving the coop.

Chicks chomping up weed leaves.

Fish line fence around Stayman Winesap apple tree.

Fish line fence around apple tree.

• Thursday, 7/29: Dead Animal Morning
  
  • Just after letting the dogs out, Plato got into something near the south of the house. I went to where he just left and found the intestines of a rabbit and a lone barred owl feather. Obviously, an owl killed a bunny and ate most of it. Plato barfed after a bit. Mary took a shovel and got rid of the guts while I washed down the dog puke. Later, while driving on the lane, I spotted something, stopped and looked, and there was a decapitated opossum. I think a raccoon killed it. Mary and I hauled it off and tossed it in the north woods. It was kind of a gruesome morning.
    
  • I texted a woman selling 4 bundles of asphalt shingles for $10, each, on Facebook and lined up buying and picking up the shingles from her on Saturday at 11 a.m.
    
  • Mary cleaned house.
  • I drove the Cadillac to Quincy and bought chick/pet food, along with picking up some items at Aldi.
    
  • Dark, lurking clouds developed in the afternoon. We got some lightning and a couple drops of rain.
    
  • We watched the 2006 movie, The Da Vinci Code, and a second DVD containing all of the extras. You get a good feeling about the movie's director, Ron Howard, and the movie's main actor, Tom Hanks, from the extras.
    
    
• Friday, 7/30: Waffle Friday!
  
  • I made waffles that we had with strawberries and honey. We had a few bad berries in the 2 containers I bought from Aldi, yesterday, so we had to eat most of them up...oh, woe are we!!!
    
  • Mary picked about 1.25 plastic shopping bags of cucumbers, and 2 baseball bat sized zucchini squash. She also put pieces of wood under new melons that started developing.
  • Mary removed carrot plants. All were rotten...just too much moisture.
    
  • I spent several hours and picked 6 gallons little pears off the large Bartlett pear tree to try to save it from breaking branches. Too many pears loaded all of the branches down, making them bow over. Without removing some of the pears, the branches will break. I cannot reach pears high on the tree and those branches might break off.
    
  • After pear removal, I pulled 4 metal fence posts out of the ground related to an old electric fence we once ran around an area west of the chicken yard where we were going to put an orchard. I pounded the fence posts into the ground around the large pear tree and created a 4-strand fish line fence to keep deer from eating pears, leaves, and branches. They've already done some eating.
  • Mary picked 11 strawberries.
  • We enjoyed a cucumber salad and paid attention to thunderstorms arriving from Iowa.
    
    
• Saturday, 7/31: Another Deluge of Rain
  
  • A lot of rain fell after 1:30 a.m. At 10:15 a.m., Mary measured 3.46" in the rain gauge. She added it up and we've received 11.84" of rain for month of July. July and August are usually our driest months.
    
  • I drove to Quincy to purchase 4 bundles of shingles for $40. Our gravel road suffered some erosion. The neighbor farmer east of us tiled his field so that water runoff washes across the gravel, putting 1-foot deep gullies across the gravel road. One part is washed down to mud. Later, on the asphalt-covered Highway 156, a low-lying section of the road near Grassy Creek had about 6-8 inches of water running over the road. I picked up the shingles and drove home.
  • While I was gone, Katie called her mother. Katie was in Houston, and had been flying for about 24 hours. She's on her way to Gulfport, MS. She has to go to Air National Guard drill in FL. Her flight from Venetie, AK took in a stop at another village, way north of Venetie, then to Fairbanks. After that, she had a flight to Anchorage, then a direct flight from Anchorage to Houston. Two of the carpenters on her job took 2 weeks off, so her project is behind. She had to do carpentry work, as well as superintendent duties, to make up for the missing workers. Her boss is on the job, now, while she's gone for 2 weeks. She's tired.
  • I unloaded what amounted to 75 tan architectural shingles. I now have the equivalent of 17.5 bundles of this type of shingles, or nearly 6 squares, or 6,000 square feet. The next chore is to measure the roof to see how many more I need.
  • We checked the gardens. The rain made everything boom with growth. There are some big watermelons and pumpkins growing. Corn is just starting to show tassels. More tomatoes are growing.
    
  • I picked blackberries for tomorrow's breakfast. Amber is a major picker of low-level berries. She eats so many, I may need to curtail bringing her along on blackberry picking forays. Tonight she left a three-berry blackberry arf-up present on the floor.
    

July 18-24, 2021

Weather | 7/18, 60°, 81° | 7/19, 63°, 82° |7/20, 65°, 85° | 7/21, 65°, 86° | 7/22, 65°, 86° | 7/23, 67°, 87° | 7/24, 1.00 " rain, 70°, 91° |

• Sunday, 7/18: Family Calls, Text
  
  • Katie called. She's working hard. They got supplies for their housing, but are still waiting on supplies for the school's construction. The housing building, which is a teacher housing, is coming along nicely. We talked about her retirement funds.
    
  • Bill called while we were on the phone with Katie, so we called him back. He was babysitting 2 challenging pit bull dogs for friends of his. One is deaf, so getting his attention is hard. Bill's employer requires employees to wear a face mask if not vaccinated. Most got their vaccinations so they don't have to wear a face mask. He will be visiting us starting Friday, which he has off from work.
    
  • Mom texted that Karen and Lynn left on Friday. They're heading to north Georgia to find a home. They were dropping off their leased Subaru car in Rapid City, SD. Mom said it's incredible hot...104° predicted today and 108° tomorrow. She's watering the garden to try to save her plants and grasshoppers are thick.
    
  • I worked on emptying shingles out of the pickup. Finished up emptying black 3-tag shingles, with many more to go.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
    
  • Mary and I picked blackberries for an hour and froze 3 more quarts for a grand total of 29.
  • Mary startled the buck with a velvet-covered rack on Bramble Hill. We also heard a belted kingfisher, which must have a nest in that area. We both heard fish jumping in Swim Pond and saw several bass swimming near the shore.
  • Mary discovered 10 tiny ticks on her feet after picking blackberries. Rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball removed all of them. She learned after an online search that dry weather kills off ticks. Plus, heavy deer populations equate to high tick numbers. Our June/July rains and high deer numbers equals armies of ticks this summer.
    
  • Two crop duster airplanes are using the dairy's runway, flying over our land. WILL THEY EVER STOP!!! This has been going on for over a week.
  • I picked 45 blackberries right before nightfall for tomorrow's breakfast oatmeal.
    
  • Springfield, MO is witnessing an influx of COVID cases with unvaccinated residents. I'm happy that everyone in our immediate family is smart enough to get vaccinated.
    
    
• Monday, 7/19: Bass Fishing
  
  • Mary and I went fishing at the Swim Pond. It was a blast! We kept 5 fish and tossed back several small bass. Of course the bass that unhooked themselves were monsters...the more you couldn't see them, the bigger they became. Also, the smaller bass are the harder fighters, so they're more fun to catch. The bass were biting softly, so a couple shakes and they unhooked, easily. Mary tried a large lure that resembles a northern pike minnow and got a bite on it.
    
  • Mary watered garden plants and picked ripe strawberries while I cleaned fish. A pair of adult great crested flycatchers battle each other in the trees nearby as I worked on fish. 
  • The bass tasted great for our midday meal.
    
  • Mary worked up a shopping list, and finished 3 Halloween ornaments.
  • The baby chimney swifts were out flying around the yard in the afternoon.
    
  • I stacked more shingles into the machine shed from the pickup. 
  • At twilight, I picked 50 blackberries for tomorrow's breakfast oatmeal...yum!
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/20: A Bunch of Shingles
  
  • I finished moving shingles from the pickup to neat stacks in the machine shed. I got 393 free shingles, or the equivalent of about 18 bundles. Plus, 283 of them are architectural shingles, which are larger, better constructed, and more expensive. Now I must add up our own stack of shingles, measure the SE part of our roof, then figure out how many more shingles I need to get to resurface that roof section.
  • Mary cleaned house and made venison General Tso for our main meal.
  • We saw several chimney swifts heading south. The baby chimney swifts raised in our chimney are still flying around and cheeping in the evenings.
  • I got another batch of breakfast blackberries.
    
    
• Wednesday, 7/21: Shopping
  
  • Mary and I went shopping in Quincy, IL. We wore masks. The ratio of people vaccinated for COVID in Adams County, home to Quincy, is 40%. It's only 33% in Lewis County, where we live. With the current COVID variant infecting unvaccinated people, we'll keep wearing masks when in public. We saw a few masks, but very few. There were signs all over town in Quincy saying "School board, keep masks off our children." If Jonas Salk were alive today introducing the polio vaccine, that disease would survive. We've grown dumber, not smarter, with time.
  • We texted with Bill, who will visit us starting Friday. He asked if he can make pizzas during his visit. He said that he's been working 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. this week and "haven't properly cooked all week," so he'd love to make and eat some pizzas. We said that would be fine.
  • This morning, we had a doe and her twin fawns in our yard (see photos, below). They really loved the long grass in our yard. One fawn started gnawing on a wild lettuce, quickly quit it, obviously not liking its taste, and went on to eat something else. We notice that deer really love mulberry leaves, since several are stripped from trees. This evening, I saw mama deer eating grass down south on our lane.

Twin fawns through our south window & screen.

Hungry mama deer and one baby.

Fawn trying wild lettuce...YUCK!

Deer family high-tailing it west of house.

• Thursday, 7/22: Beating Back High Grass
  
  • I sharpened the mower blade. Then we traded off on mowing for the entire day. With high humidity and heat, 30 to 40 minutes is about all a person can take at pushing a mower.
    
  • Mary mowed the east and west yards and raked some of the grass into mounds. I mowed the lane so our son, with his Hyundai car, won't get lost in high grass while driving up our lane, tomorrow. All of the grass is really high.
    
  • I weedwhacked a little over half of the growing weeds and grass under the electric fence of the far garden.
  • Mary replanted bean seeds in areas that didn't sprout and mulched the rows of beans with grass she mowed in the east lawn.
    
  • I swept asphalt shingle granules out of the pickup bed.
  • Our dogs are low grass lovers. When the grass is high, they won't go very far down the lane. Cut the grass and they trot as far as they can over the shorn lane. Plato loves the taste of wild blackberries. He chews them thoroughly to savor the flavor. Amber tenderly takes a blackberry from your hand, then promptly spits it out on the ground.
  • Today, the Missouri Supreme Court's nine judges unanimously overruled a lower court's decision on not giving Medicaid benefits to low income residents. The lower court said the constitutional amendment approved last year by voters was illegal, because it didn't contain language on how to pay for it. The supreme court said it isn't illegal and sent the case back to a lower to implement its start. Our governor, who stopped the Federal application process, and now has a court order to restart it, said at the end of this year's legislative session, he'd have to wait to see what the courts say. They've spoken.
    
    
• Friday, 7/23: Our Son Arrives
  
  • Mary and I cracked 4 handfuls of hickory nuts. It took an hour.
    
  • Mary set up the twin bed in the north bedroom for Bill. Plato smelled the bed once it was set up and started wagging his tail. He knew that his favorite friend was arriving, soon.
    
  • Bill arrived around 12:15 p.m. Bill and I ate and Mary made Bill's favorite dessert, pistachio tort. It's topped with nuts, which is why we cracked hickory nuts, earlier.
    
  • Bill & I picked 8 quarts of blackberries. We went to all of the major blackberry patches on our property. It took several hours. Bill took a photo of some blackberries (see below). Three quarts went into the freezer, giving us a grand total of 32 quarts. Five quarts were frozen and are for Bill to use for making blackberry wine, if he wants, and to eat.
  • Bill got into a huge number of baby ticks. Using tape, he collected 167 ticks off his clothing and his body. Only 3 were adult ticks. That's a record for the most ticks off of one person in an outing. He also wiped himself down with alcohol on a paper towel. 
  • We spotted a monarch caterpillar on a milkweed next to the lane (see photo, below).
    
  • Mary raked up some of the grass that was cut yesterday and mulched the peppers, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, tomatillos, and corn plants.
    
  • After chores, we built a fire, and had a wienie roast, accompanies by a dark IPA beer that Bill and his friend, Mike, made. It was amazing. Right after sunset, we saw 3 bats flying above us. A whip-poor-will sang to the west. We watched Venus set in the west and the full moon rise over the roof and chimney of our house.

Blackberry photo taken by Bill.

Several ripening red blackberries.

A Monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed.

• Saturday, 7/24: A Quiet Day with Bill
  
  • Bill opened his birthday presents from us. It's early, since his birthday isn't until August 3rd, but he's going on a Kentucky trip with friends on the end of the week of his birthday, so we gave gifts to him now.
  • We had a quiet day. Bill and I discussed making blackberry wine. He snapped photos on his iPad of pages in my winemaking diary related to making blackberry wine.
    
  • Mary did some cross stitching.
  • Mary and I looked at the garden. We have fruit on all types of melons and pumpkins. Several cucumbers big enough to pick. We also have developing tomatoes and peppers.
  • Bill made 3 really great pizzas.
  • After eating pizzas, we had a thunderstorm roll through from Iowa with an inch of rain.
  • We watched a 2018 movie picked out by Bill called The House with a Clock in its Walls.
  • Lightning was still flashing to the SW when we walked the dogs after midnight.
    

July 11-17, 2021

Weather | 7/11, 2.55" rain, 63°, 67° | 7/12, 0.14" rain, 63°, 68° |7/13, 63°, 81° | 7/14, 65°, 85° | 7/15, 1.06" rain, 70°, 83° | 7/16, 0.14" rain, 65°, 80° | 7/17, 61, 80° |

• Sunday, 7/11: Really Wet!
  
  • Between midnight and 9 a.m., we received almost 2.5 inches of rain. In the last 2 days, we've seen 3.93" of rain. We're up to your eyeballs in water. This should put berry production over the top.
  • After I wrote the above bullet point, we went over 2.5 inches of rain, with a heavy mist, interspersed by rain, throughout the day. We experienced dryness for the first half of June. Since June 19th, we have received 11.93" of rain, or close to a foot of rain in 3 weeks. Is it any wonder that frogs are singing just outside our front door?
  • The SE part of our roof is failing, with shingles disintegrating and getting blown off by the wind, because they were put on without tar paper under them. Rainwater drips into the sunroom through the ceiling. Right after I sent a video (see below) of rain running off that portion of the roof to Mom after she asked in a text to send rain her way, part of the plaster board on the ceiling collapsed and was precariously propped from falling to the floor by a bent light fixture. I used several long sheet metal screws and zipped it back up into place. It will need replacement, but not before I redo the roof to stop the leaking.
  • On our morning dog walk, a doe deer ran from our yard, across the south field to Bluegill Pond.
  • Katie called around noon, our time. She had to do Air National Guard work on her day off, so she was up early today to get that accomplished. Some supplies came in on C-130 Hercules and DC-3 airplanes. More supplies, such as paint for the teacher's quarters, where the workers will live, is yet to arrive. Removing rugs in that building revealed squalor from old cat urine, requiring scrubbing and paint, which she ordered. They've deconstructed most of the school building's utility corridor. Removing roofing revealed rotten roof structural damage, requiring additional blueprints to be drawn up and approved before moving forward. A lift station, probably full of sewage, is held up with floor jacks, that will require structural repair. Katie, as the boss, starts work early each day, around 6 a.m., and ends work around 6 p.m., or later, so she doesn't have much spare time. The first sunset at Venetie, located north of the Arctic Circle, was yesterday. She's experiencing mild weather, which is helpful.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas, followed by venison fajitas. They were amazing. Amber loves licking the balsamic vinegar juice leftover on the plates...silly dog!
  • We enjoyed a bottle of blackberry wine in the evening. Even though it was bottled on May 30th, it has an excellent smooth taste.
  • Mary is enjoying Under the Sea Wind, by Rachel Carson. I'm reading The Great Quake, by Henry Fountain. I remember parts of what he describes about the Good Friday Quake in Anchorage, where we lived at the time. He goes into details about Valdez and Chenega, which are amazing. It's an excellent book that I highly recommend reading.
  Rainwater falling off the SE corner of our roof.
  

• Monday, 7/12: In the Heart of Blackberry Season
  
  • I picked blackberries. They are large and plentiful, so much so that I was only able to partially pick in two of the four areas we find blackberries on the property. Two deer snorted at me through the trees when I was on the top of Bramble Hill. I ended up putting 4 quarts in the freezer, with another 3/4-full bag in the refrigerator freezer.
  • Mary cleaned house and made 2 quiche pies.
    
  • A doe was on the lane when I got the mail. She wandered to the west and watched me go by, but was gone when I returned. They're a deep red/brown color, now.
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/13: Picking Berries, Picking, Picking, Berries, Berries
  
  • I picked blackberries. The only berry patch I didn't get to was the thickest patch on Bramble Hill. I added 5 more quarts to the freezer, giving us a grand total of 16 fat quarts for the year. With ever-expanding freezer contents, Mary said if I pick a whole lot more, I'll either have to buy her a new freezer, or go instantly from picking to winemaking. There are many red blackberries that haven't ripened, yet, on our property. Berries are ripening fast. Several places I picked yesterday revealed new ripe berries today. A hike to the south showed that blackberry bushes extend pretty much along the entire area just east of the trees of the south woods. Our blackberry patches have expanded.
  • Mary weeded several rows of the far garden. Some corn is getting munched up by worms and most of it is bent over from last weekend's storm. Onions aren't looking keen...too much moisture. All melon types are looking good. There are several green strawberries. Carrots and parsnips are thriving. Potato plants are starting to die back, indicating they'll need digging in the near future. Tomato plants are starting to bloom.
    
  • I saw 2 deer today. The first was a large buck with a big rack full of velvet that burst out from behind a hog Quonset hut at the top of Bramble Hill. The second was a small doe that roared through the gate of the fence just beyond the north yard when I was walking dogs in the evening.
  • We figured out a bird riddle. There is a bird call we hear in the north woods that sounds like a flute playing multiple notes at once. I used to hear the same sound in Homer, AK, while going to sleep in a tent. I did a search for "bird call like a flute with multiple notes" and found it was a wood thrush. But, these birds don't summer in Alaska. I probably was hearing a hermit thrush in Homer.
    
    
• Wednesday, 7/14: Berries and Weeding
  
  • I picked blackberries in all areas except the south field and put 4 more quarts into the freezer. A yearling deer ran away when I got near Swim Pond. It was especially humid and hot on the top of Bramble Hill. I came away with itchy arms. I thought it was from poison ivy, but after bathing, I'm pretty sure the itching is from chigger bites. They love heat and picking blackberries on top of Bramble Hill involves delicately high stepping around a jungle of spiny blackberry stalks, some that are over 6 feet high.
    
  • Mary finished weeding the far garden. There is no lack of moisture. Several weeds left the ground with a gushing sound as water filled the hole left behind by the plants. Mary fertilized the south end of the far garden, which includes all melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, and squash, along with the corn at the north end of the far garden.
    
    
• Thursday, 7/15: Swampy Times
  • Over an inch of rain fell, today. We've had 7.14 inches so far in July. We got 5.87 inches in June and the rain started falling on June 19th. So, in about a month, we've received 13.01 inches of rain. July is usually our dry month, but not this year.
  • Mary checked the garden. Where she fertilized, the plants that were starting to yellow are deep green. More beans are sprouting and 8 acorn squash plants are up.
    
  • Mary made turkey pot pie. She also sewed backings on Halloween ornaments. Mary did all of the chores, since I was gone.
  • Free asphalt shingles were advertised in Quincy and a response to my request to pick them up came in around 5 p.m., so I drove the pickup to Quincy and loaded them (see photo below). They job leftovers from a roofer called Be Dry Roofing. I don't yet know how many I have, but it's a good start on getting shingles to redo the SE corner of our home's roof. It will be a multi-colored roof, but we don't care. Free is always a good price.
  • While in Quincy, I picked up our rubber boot order at Home Depot. Now Mary can walk outside in dry boots. I also got a couple grocery items at Aldi.
  • I drove through a couple of massive downpours of rain. The pickup handled very well. It was still nice and level, without sinking in the rear, with asphalt shingles level to the top of the wheel wells.

  

  A pickup load of free shingles.
  

• Friday, 7/16: More Rain & Blackberries
  
  • Clouds covered us until after dark. We got more rain. Water lays everywhere, which prevents mowing, so all of our lawns look like hay fields, with grass as high as our knees.
    
  • Mary and I picked blackberries in all areas except the west field. We put an additional 6 quarts into the freezer, for a grand total of 26 quarts of 2021 berries. With all of the rain, blackberries are plentiful.
  • While I was picking berries near Swim Pond, I kept hearing big fish jumping. I looked and they were attempting to catch dragonflies getting close to the pond's surface.
    
  • When we walked dogs in the evening prior to sunset, we saw close to 50 dragonflies dodging about on the lane.
  • A crop duster has been taking off from the air strip at the dairy a mile west of us for several days. Heavy rains and winds fail to stop him. Pesticide and herbicide labels and spraying recommendations mean absolutely nothing to this guy. It was raining hard at one point while he took off with another load of spray to kill plants. All it means is Roundup gets washed off into the waterways. Thanks, Jackass!
    
  • I finished The Great Quake, by Henry Fountain, a good read.
    
  • We watched the 2014 movie White House Down.
  • Fireflies are almost done for the year.
    
    
• Saturday, 7/17: Kindling & Shingles
  
  • Mary broke up and hand sawed dried branches in the machine shed into kindling. She then collected downed branches in the yard and moved them into the machine shed to dry.
  • While collecting sticks, Mary heard chimney swift babies from near the top of the chimney. They'll be flying around, soon.
    
  • I took the 1-inch plastic round caps off Grip-Rite nails, and added them to the sheet metal screws holding sheet rock up on the sunroom ceiling in order to give the screws a better hold. I added more screws, too. Next, I cleaned the ceiling with a bleach/water solution to kill mold and swept up the floor.
  • I backed the pickup to the east end of the machine shed and started moving asphalt shingles to a dry location on a cement pad in the shed. Several of these shingles are slammed on top of one another and when pealed apart, the tar strip peals granules off the underlying shingle. I carefully added plastic in places where it was missing and stacked the shingles so that this sticking won't occur, again. It's meticulous work that takes time. I'm working on several brown architectural shingles and have 30 of them in a nice stake. There are another 11 with some granules pealed off. I also have 42 good hip shingles and 43 bad ones with pealed granules. There are a lot more shingles to get out of the pickup.
  • We picked 10 nice strawberries out of the garden. We keep nipping off strawberry shoots to encourage fruit production. Mary says all existing garden plants are growing nicely. Acorn squash hills have sprouts, some hills with as many as four. Beans are another story. Whole stretches are bare. But, there is cracked soil, so more might emerge.
    

July 4-10, 2021

Weather | 7/4, 61°, 86° | 7/5, 68°, 88° |7/6, 68°, 87° | 7/7, 0.74" rain, 67°, 83° | 7/8, 67°, 81° | 7/9, 61°, 86° | 7/10, 1.52" rain, 65°, 76° |

• Sunday, 7/4: A Working Holiday
  
  • I didn't see any animals on my garden watching shift. Lightening bugs were strong at first. Mary says it's like sitting inside a psychedelic snow globe. Then, around 4 a.m., they settle down into grass. Leo, our rooster, starts crowing and birds start chirping. Nearby robins wake to tell me I don't belong there, then do their normal morning songs. By 5 a.m., stars are gone and it's bright enough to see pretty well. At 5:40, the red sun adorns the NE skyline.
    
  • After sunrise, I powered up the grass trimmer and whacked down grass and weeds under the far garden fence. It took an hour to trim a quarter of that garden fenceline. It always takes longer on the first trim, due to taller, more established weeds and grass. By the time Mary woke, I was halfway done trimming the far garden. Later in the afternoon, I finished trimming that garden, then mowed 1 path on the inside and outside of the electric fence on both gardens. We put grass clippings on the SE row of the far garden.
    
  • Mary weeded most of that row where we later added mulch from my mowing.
    
  • We did a second night of garden guard duty, with Mary taking the first shift. This time, Mary watched huge fireworks to the NE, east, and south as thousands of dollars went up in explosions and smoke. Mary says she gets to see it all for free and never has to clean up fireworks residue. She said it was quite a show. When fireworks blew up to the south, several barred owls went into a panic. She's noticing a bat that makes its rounds every night right after dusk. No garden-seeking critters appeared, tonight. Mary did hear 3 different coyote serenades. Every night, Mary hears a turkey hen cluck around 1 a.m. from the same area. Mary says it's good for the soul to sit up through the night outside. It's an interesting and active time.
    
    
• Monday, 7/5: Day 2 Garden Guarding
  
  • I experienced a quiet time guarding the garden in the early morning hours.
    
  • Once daylight began, I started the grass trimmer and took out weeds and grass under the electric fence wires of the near garden. It's a shorter fence, compared to the far garden, but filled with white clover, so cleaning out weeds took longer. I finished in the afternoon.
  • Next, I pounded in near garden metal corner posts and tightened the 13 electric wires on the near garden fence. One was completely pulled out by a bucking deer last winter. In the process, 2 wire insulators were broken. I got all but 3 wires tightened.
    
  • Mary picked blackberries, adding another quart to the freezer.
    
  • Mary put in nighttime garden guard duty. I slept until 1:15 a.m., instead of 2:15, to give her more sleep time. She saw a bat quite a bit and thinks it lives in a nearby black walnut tree. When I first took my coffee out, both Mary and I saw meteor in the SE sky. The night sky was clearer than last night.
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/6: Garden Guarding Day 3
  
  • By sitting facing the north star at night, I can see that our house and the far garden are slightly angled to the NE, instead of due north. I had coyotes howling close to me to the south. Later, while walking dogs on our lane, I found coyote dung just a few feet down the lane from our house. They were really, really close to me. The sunrise was spectacular. I took photos, the first of which, I put on Facebook. Some later photos are below.
    
  • Before the sun rose, I started working on garden fences and soon I finished tightening the 3 wires of the near garden. I turned on the fencer and had full strength in the near garden. Then, I tightened far garden fence wires. The 10 wires on the far garden weren't bashed up by deer, like the near garden, so the job was done quickly. After connecting wires between the near and far garden, I had full power to both electric fences. I was done before Mary woke up.
    
  • I made Triumphant Tuesday waffles for breakfast.
    
  • Mary mowed the grass in south far garden and added mulch on some plants in that area.
    
  • The New England long pie pumpkins are showing female buds. They look like zucchini. We're trying this pumpkin as a source for pumpkin pies and pumpkin wine. Two Diablo pumpkin plants are dedicated to Halloween Jack-o-lanterns.
    
  • I took an afternoon nap. A tick crawling on my arm woke me up. Ticks are fierce this summer. While walking to the mailbox, we picked a couple dozen ticks off Mary's legs. She was wearing tennis shoes. I wore rubber boots. They're hot footwear, but ticks can't climb up them.
  • With the happy sight of the electric fencer flashing, we went to bed like normal people and wished all garden plant eaters a happy time touching a newly activated electric fence.

Foggy field at sunrise under crescent moon, upper right corner.

Sun rays showing against light blue NE sky.

Sun lighting up high clouds. Far garden in lower left foreground.

• Tuesday, 7/7: Bug Invasion
  
  • I noticed dead pie cherry tree leaves with a lacework pattern and a closer look revealed an army of Japanese beetles in our largest cherry tree, so I started hitting them with a Dawn soap solution in a squirt bottle. That was no where near enough, so I mixed up a batch in my 2-gallon sprayer and hit them in any fruit tree with the beetles. Mary joined in the killing spree. Combined, we squirted the large cherry tree five times. All cherry trees had them, along with one of the winesap apple trees. Mary also killed them on mulberry, elm, and wild grape leaves in the yard.
    
  • I bought 2 pairs of rubber boots through Home Depot. Mary's boots have a crack and mine are due to develop cracks.
    
  • I picked over a quart of blackberries from the field SW of the house. I saw a tiny frog and several praying mantis.
    
  • Mary finished reading Sisters in Arms, by Kaia Alderson, a book she received yesterday through the Book-of-the-Month Club.
    
  • Around 6:30 p.m., a strong storm arrived from the SW with lightning, hard rain, and wind. It only rained for 30 minutes, but rain fell so much, you couldn't see more than a foot out the window.
    
  • After dark, we watched the 1997 movie, Air Force One.
    
    
• Thursday, 7/8: Final Planting of Garden
  
  • Mary planted the last seeds of our gardens, which were acorn squash and beans. She also weeded the rest of the row where she planted beans in the near garden. Now, we just wait, weed, water (if necessary), mulch, and harvest.
    
  • Mary also washed a load of clothes.
  • I changed the feeder for the chicks from the chick feeders to a gravity-fed metal feeder that hangs from roof rafters. The chicks took to it right away (see photos, below). I also filled sealed buckets in the coop from a 40-pound bag of oil sunflower seeds, which we use as chicken treats.
  • I picked 2 quarts of blackberries from Bramble Hill that I put in the freezer. More of the larger bushes are starting to show blackberries. After returning, I picked 22 ticks off my clothes. Packing tape is excellent at quickly removing ticks from fabric.
    
  • I sprayed our large cherry tree with a Dawn soap solution, nailing Japanese beetles. There aren't as many, so our efforts are working. I saw lots of them in the sericea lespedeza plants (a noxious weed) growing between the Swim and Dove Ponds while picking blackberries.

Chicks eating from hanging feeder, new to them.

Chicks on the roost. In 2 days, they're 3 weeks old.

• Friday, 7/9: One Thing Led to Another
  
  • I called Roberts and the pickup is done. The bill is huge, eating up a bulk of the stimulus check, but that's why we took vehicles into a mechanic, since we had the money. When we left in the Cadillac to get the pickup, I noticed it had just under a quarter tank of gas, so we drove beyond Roberts to Fastlane in Taylor, MO. Once we got there, Mary suggested we go into Quincy to get animal food, since we're almost there at the gas station. After gassing up , we drove to Quincy, IL.
    
  • We got chick, hen, dog, and cat food at Farm & Home, then a few food items at Aldi.
  • On the way back home, we stopped at Roberts, paid the over $2000 bill and I drove the pickup home. It has the following new parts: stainless steel brake line kit throughout the pickup, front rubber brake hoses, front brake calipers, distributor cap, rotor, fuel filter, heater blower motor, and heater/AC resistor kit. It also got new brake fluid with the brakes bled, and a tune-up.
    
  • When I walked into Roberts Garage, an employee had a demolition car out front. A section of stainless steel stove pipe stuck straight up into the air from the hood of the car. I said to the woman behind the counter, "Stove pipe on a cars' hood?" She laughed hard and said, "Garth said he wanted some chrome!" She giggled even louder and said, "That's just like him."
    
  • Upon returning home, we did evening chores, looked at the approaching storms developing NW of us in Iowa and decided not to water the garden. I sprayed Dawn solution on the Japanese beetles in the large cherry tree.
    
  • While eating nachos, we watched 30 minutes of the 1995 movie A Walk in the Clouds. We turned the movie off when we heard thunder.
  • We experienced some very strong thunderstorms with high wind and heavy rain. Some nearby areas experienced flooding. A branch fell out of the weeping willow tree, but didn't damage any house plants located under that tree for the summer (see photo below). I'll have to get the chainsaw out for cleanup. There was a tornado watch for Bill in St. Charles, MO, but nothing developed. He says his friends, Erin and Mike, have been without power since midnight, as of 11:50 the next morning.

  

  Downed tree limbs just missed the house plants.
  

• Saturday, 7/10: Down Time Day
  
  • I woke at 3 a.m. with lightning flashing outside. As I checked weather radar online, I started hearing thunder, so I unplugged appliances. It rained very hard after that.
  • We were lucky. Two counties south of us received damaging winds shown in this WGEM slide show.
    
  • With water standing everywhere, we didn't do much outside.
  • I moved chicken feed into the metal garbage can in the coop.
  • Mary and I reviewed plants in the garden. All plants look great. An activated electric fence helps. We picked several shoots off strawberry plants. Many green strawberries are showing. I'll have to transplant strawberry plants out of Styrofoam cups, soon.
    
  • Mary made the venison General Tso dish, this time using homemade garlic wine, instead of cooking sherry. It tastes great. I'll definitely need to make more garlic wine.
  • We watched A Walk in the Clouds again, this time the whole movie. It has wonderful music.