Feb. 27-March 5, 2022

Weather | 2/27, 21°, 47° | 2/28, 29°, 57° | 3/1, 25°, 64° | 3/2, 33°, 71° | 3/3, 29°, 45° | 3/4, 25°, 55° | 3/5, 0.15" rain, 53°, 69° |

• Sunday, 2/27: Apple Tree Planting Ideas
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas, then chimichangas for our main meal. She also sprayed all of the house plants with Dawn to kill scales.
  • I downloaded an iCloud app for Windows onto my laptop after adding to do items to the "Reminders" feature of my phone. It didn't work. Reminders is unreadable on the laptop, since it doesn't contain the software to view it. 
  • I split some of the logs next to the wood splitter for firewood. Most of the logs are wet, so I'm splitting them into small pieces, enabling better drying.
    
  • A large flock of Canada geese, containing multiple Vs, went over us quite low, flying west to east, during our evening dog walk. We were somewhat concealed by the trees around Bluegill Pond.
  • By reading apple growing books and online info, I gathered these ideas when planting trees in clay soils: 1) Dig a hole 3x the width of the root ball...don't go too far down, but more outward. 2) Scar the hole with a pick ax, spud bar, or shovel to crack clay soil, giving roots a starting place to grow. 3) Build up soil to add an additional foot of height to the planting area. 4) Stretch out all roots and don't wind them around the dug-out hole. 5) Plant tree so the ground at the trunk is higher than edge of roots, so there isn't a sunken area to collect water. 6) Add wood chips and small branches a foot beyond planted root ends, encouraging tree roots to grow to nutrients settling into the ground in this area. 7) Use pea gravel immediately around tree trunk to discourage grass growth that competes with young tree roots.
  • I started a To Do list on a Pages (Apple's version of Microsoft Word) on iCloud.
    
    
• Monday, 2/28: Planning & Good Soup
  
  • Mary made a huge batch of minestrone soup. It is delicious. She also did laundry.
  • A quick check of the garlic showed that nothing much is happening. There are only a few tiny sprouts.
  • Mary vacuumed a huge collection of Asian ladybugs and flies. She also made a shopping list.
    
  • I finished a master To Do list and also made a list of maintenance items to accomplish on the GMC pickup. 
  • I used a gas tank full in the trimmer with the blade on it and whacked down more lespedeza weeds in the south field. I'm about halfway down that field.
  • Mary heard the first killdeer of the season. She also saw a bald eagle circling above our property. For some reason, several Vs of snow geese are flying the wrong way, from west to east. Mary thinks so many geese are west of us and the geese we see are heading backward to find feed. I think there's too much snow north of us in Iowa & Minnesota and they're just milling about. Maybe we're both right.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/1: All Hail the March Lamb!
  
  • March entered our world with a very warm and calm day. Geese are flying in all directions. Conditions are very nice.
  • We took the pickup to Quincy and shopped. For the first time in a couple years, we didn't wear masks. It helped that stores were quiet. Prices are significantly higher. A 25-pound bag of flour was $3 higher. We found canning lids and bought some to boost our supply. I found a 16-pound bag of fruit and citrus tree fertilizer for $5 at Farm & Home...a great price. We picked up 4 sweet potatoes to grow slips to plant. At Salvation Army, Mary found a book written Sigurd Olson, who writes about Ely, MN and the canoe country of that area. I bought 2 coolers for storing wine. We also got a 20-movie collection of comedies from 1934 to 2009. We topped the pickup's gas. It was $3.25 a gallon. The pickup's fuel economy is 19.81 mpg...which is good for a full-size half-ton.
  • We returned home by 4 p.m. After chores, we enjoyed nachos and watched the last 2 episode's of Downton Abbey's 4th season.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/2: Pruning and Sawing
  
  • Mary pruned 7 fruit trees and 2 maples. She added wound sealer to cuts she made on the fruit trees. Each year the growth of these trees means pruning takes longer.
    
  • I used the small Stihl chainsaw to cut dead branches off the large McIntosh tree in the north yard (see photo, below). This ancient apple tree has a great deal of dead wood that I removed. I hope to finish cutting off dead wood tomorrow and proceed with some light pruning on green growth.
    
  • Thousands of snow geese flew from east to west throughout the day. A warm day with calm air produced multiple Vs of geese heading out. We saw some cackling in the morning. Smaller Ross's geese flew in with the snow geese...they're much smaller than the snow geese.
    
  • We heard the first spring peepers (small frogs), today. Mary heard a pileated woodpecker in woods.
  • We ordered powdered milk, coffee beans, textured vegetable protein (TVP), and a 1200 Red Rose tea bags. When stores fail to supply items you want, the online shopping commences.
  • Mom texted that upon visiting with a vascular surgeon in Miles City, MT, she learned that her arteries are good and are not the cause of her passing out. She has a cardiologist visit on April 11.

  

  McIntosh apple tree with cut dead branches in foreground, left.
  

• Thursday, 3/3: Pruning Continues
  
  • Mary and I pruned more trees. Mary pruned 4 fruit trees and 3 blueberry bushes. There are 2 more trees to prune, which are the large pie cherry and the large Bartlett pear trees. I finished pruning the large McIintosh tree. More large, dead branches came out of the tree, along with several tall shoots. The orchard ladder I bought last fall is really great at getting me to the top of this tree. This old McIntosh tree needs more pruning, but I don't want to kill it by cutting off too many branches, so I'll wait for another year to continue its haircut.
    
  • Mary baked a large pumpkin, gaining 5 quarts of pumpkin meat for the freezer.
  • She also started 4 sweet potatoes to grow slips for the garden by putting them partway into Mason quart jars and filling the jars with water.
    
  • We heard and saw an eastern towhee. I've heard that bird call for several days around the yard, but this was the first time we actually saw it.
    
  • Several Vs of snow geese flew east to west overhead. With an east tail wind, they were often flying too high for us to to see.
    
  • In the evening, I researched the best chemical tree sprays for our three tough fruit tree diseases, which are cedar apple rust, apple scab, and fire blight. Captan is the best fungicide for killing scab, but it's a known carcinogen, and it lingers on fruit surfaces, so I opted out of that product. Copper spray and neem oil work against scab and we already have those two on hand. I ordered 3 different tree spray chemicals. Two are coming through Home Depot, which are Sevin sulfur dust for apple scab and Spectricide's Immunox, which contains the fungicide, myclobutanil, that controls apple scab and cedar apple rust. I also ordered Fertilome's fire blight spray, with the active ingredient of streptomycin sulfate, that controls the bacterial fire blight infection. Fire blight infected several branches of the large Bartlett pear and a couple branches on the Sargent crabapple tree last year.
  • I redirected two recently ordered packages shipped via FedEx to the Quincy Walgreen's store.
    
    
• Friday, 3/4: Aerial Pruning
  
  • Mary and I finished fruit tree pruning. While I moved 2 wheelbarrow loads of dead McIntosh apple tree branches, which I call Corpse Bride branches, to the machine shed (they'll make great smoke on a future outdoor meat roasts), Mary pruned at ground level on the large pie cherry and large Bartlett pear trees. Then, I used ladders to prune higher level branches while Mary steadied the ladders. At one point, I was sawing a pear branch above my head while standing high on the orchard ladder. It felt like I was up with the birds. All trees look better. We still have pruned branches to cart away.
  • Another east wind helped push snow geese Vs west above our heads.
  • We watched the 1940 black and white movie, The Philadelphia Story. It's good. Watching Jimmy Stewart play the part of a drunk was unique. He and Katharine Hepburn won Oscars in this movie.
  • Karen messaged about all of the birds she sees around their new home. She also sent a photo of spring daffodils that are blooming (see below).

  

  Daffodils blooming at Karen & Lynn's house in Georgia.
  

• Saturday, 3/5: First Thunderstorm
  
  • Strong south winds blew throughout the day and into the night. At one point, after dark, we kept hearing banging on the roof. A check on our final dog walk showed everything in place up there. Around 8:30 p.m., a thunderstorm blasted through, the first of the year. Most of the lightening and thunder was high in the sky.
    
  • Mary vacuumed the usual squadron of  bugs from the insides of windows. She made venison fajitas for our main meal, and did some cross stitch.
  • I picked up pruned branches from the big McIntosh apple tree (a total of 5 wheelbarrow loads of dead branches), the large cherry tree, and the large Bartlett pear tree. Episodes of light mist slowed me down on this chore, but it always subsided, so I was able to finish. Some of the dead McIntosh branches were covered with what looks like black soot. Is it any wonder apples off that tree are stunted and scarred with disease?
  • I updated my wine diary and updated my calendar. Next week, I have two wines to handle. I rack and bottle cherry wine on Tuesday and do the third racking of pumpkin wine on Saturday.
  • Karen messaged a photo of tulip tree blossoms from a tree in her yard (see below). We see such trees in Quincy, where they're not battered by country winds.
  • Mom texted a photo of her amaryllis (see below) with 17° winter weather just outside the window. I sent back a photo (see below) of our amaryllis, with its second set of blossoms, along with newly started sweet potatoes.

Tulip tree blossoms from Karen & Lynn's place.

Mom's amaryllis with wintry background.

Our amaryllis & sweet potatoes in water.