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.