April 3-9, 2022

Weather | 4/3, 32°, 64° | 4/4, 0.02" rain, 37°, 57° | 4/5, 35°, 67° | 4/6, 0.24" rain, 43°, 52° | 4/7, 0.03" rain, 37°, 45° | 4/8, snow showers, 29°, 39° | 4/9, 27°, 55° |

• Sunday, 4/3: Removing Tree Refuse
  
  • Mary made barbecued pork loin for our main meal. She also made a zucchini chocolate cake.
  • Mary vacuumed gobs of Asian ladybugs.
    
  • Bill and Mary tore into the pile of weeping willow branches, breaking up small branches for kindling, throwing tiny branches into another pile, and putting large branches to be sawed up behind the woodshed.
  • I picked up sawed-up stuff from small trees I took down yesterday and stacked them behind the woodshed. I also moved branches that I didn't saw up to piles either SW of the house, or down the hill at the gully where I've thrown other branches away.
  • Bill found 2 fleas on Plato's head. We removed Plato's collar and did a thorough search of his body. Mary also used a flea comb. We found 10 fleas on him. His collar and his blanket went outside to be cleaned at a later date. We never saw more, so we think we got them all. He must have stuck his head in a flea nest today, while sniffing around.
    
    
• Monday, 4/4: Bug Sucking, Car Work, Winemaking, & Triopoly
  
  • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup.
  • She also dedicated her life to vacuuming bugs.
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up the 2 apple trees sent to us by Fedco in Maine. I also got a couple grocery items.
  • Bill said a motor oil shortage meant he couldn't buy oil in St. Louis. I looked in Quincy and found his oil, so I bought a 5-quart bottle and an appropriate oil filter.
  • Bill vacuumed and cleaned the interior of his car, including the seats.
  • I told Bill he ought to change his car's oil and filter, since it was a nice, sunny day. He agreed, and did that instead of helping me right away on winemaking.
    
  • I started a 3-gallon batch of autumn olive wine. This used up all of the autumn olives in the freezer, which involved 14 quart packages equaling almost 15 pounds. This usually would make 3.7 gallons, so this batch will be extra tasty with a little more berry juice. All packages were squished, then dumped into a nylon mesh bag. These berries picked last year were very ripe and large. Bill started helping me. We added 1.2 gallons of boiling water, 5 pounds, 4 ounces of sugar to get specific gravity to 1.084, 3 crushed Campden tablets, and 3.75 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. The pH was 4.4, according to 2 different litmus papers, so I added a tablespoon of acid blend, even though I haven't added it in the past. Then, the pH was 3.8 on the wine litmus paper that I don't trust and 3.4 on the better litmus paper. We covered the brew bucket and let it sit overnight in the pantry.
  • We played Triopoly. All of one side of the 3 boards became double skyscrapers. Mary won. Her ending cash was about $9100. She won the lottery many times. I was second. A monopoly on New York properties helped me. Bill was third, due to horrible luck on huge gambling debts, but even he had double skyscrapers on Washington, D.C. properties. The game was fun.
    
    
• Tuesday, 4/5: Pepper & Radish Seed Planting
  
  • After a midday meal of homemade chicken soup, Bill left for his St. Charles apartment at 2:30 p.m.
  • Mary planted pepper seeds.
  • Bugs are really thick. Mary vacuumed thousands of bugs. I even got in on sucking them up, getting a few more thousand.
  • Mary weeded most of the garlic beds. She would have finished, but thunder forced her to go inside.
  • I planted radishes in 3 tubs of soil that once held winter greens.
  • After adding 1.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the autumn olive wine in the morning, I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin RC 212 yeast and pitched it into the must 12 hours later. It smells very yeasty, yummy, and good.
  • I was going to plant the 2 new apple trees, but predicted thunderstorms delayed that job. I took pliers to the 6-foot long tree box, removing 11 huge copper staples in a very well packaged cardboard box. The trees are in wonderful shape. Fedco's trees are the cheapest and in the best shape. You really get your money's worth on the $22 of shipping that you pay for with this company. Stark Brothers, who is south of us in Louisiana, Missouri, sends you rootless, scrawny sticks that die.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/6: West Winds & Forsythia Clean Out
  
  • West wind gusts to 40 mph blew throughout the day, so planting new apple trees wasn't in the works.
  • We relaxed inside and caught up on journals and this blog.
    
  • Years ago, Mary planted forsythia twigs east of the Kieffer pear tree. Persimmon trees grew up since then and blocked them from the sun, but they persevered. Today, I cleaned up small persimmon trees withing 10 feet of the forsythias, using the small chainsaw. Then, I took the large fencing pliers and cut away the tomato cages surrounding these two forsythia bushes. This was tough going, because the cages were homemade from concrete wire mesh. I kept nearby persimmons with hop vines running up their trunks and I moved a wild grape vine to neighboring persimmon trees. The flowering forsythias are more visible (see photo, below).
    
  • Mary finished weeding the garlic in the far garden. 
  • She also weeded the asparagus bed and found one shoot emerging.
    
  • Mary continued splitting up more weeping willow kindling.
  • We had a big flock of pelicans glide over top of us, floating into the west wind. They're really huge birds.
    
  • I caught up on my wine dairy.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity is 1.080, down 4 thousandths from its starting point. Yeast aroma fills the pantry.

  

  Two forsythia bushes with Kieffer pear in the background, right,
  and small persimmon trees on the ground.
  

• Thursday, 4/7: New Apple Trees Planted
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas and venison fajitas for our main meal.
  • I set an appointment for our second COVID booster shot for tomorrow afternoon in Quincy.
  • Karen messaged me nice photos of flowers at her place in Georgia (see photos, below).
    
  • We planted the 2 apple trees in the west yard, between the clothesline and the chicken yard. Mary cut turf off with a shovel and put the sod in the rut I made with the lift last fall next to the lane. I put the trees in a bucket of water, dug holes, then mixed in amendments in these holes in prep for the trees. We put trees in the ground and tamped down the soil as clouds dumped rain on us. We added rebar stakes, plastic trunk guards (to keep rabbits from chewing trunks), tied trees to stakes, then placed cow panels wired into circle cages (to keep deer from chewing limbs) around each tree. Finally, we watered them. We still need to add mulch. They look good (see photos, below), and hopefully they'll grow and thrive.
  • A check of the autumn olive wine shows a specific gravity of 1.074, with about 1/2" of foam at the top of the brew bucket.

An azalea flower from Karen's house.

Karen's pretty flowers.

Our new Liberty apple tree (weeping willow limbs, top, left).

Our new Porter's Perfection cider apple tree.

• Friday, 4/8: 2nd COVID Booster
  
  • We drove to Quincy and got our second booster, or our fourth COVID shots. Mary felt hers while we were in Walmart. Then, symptoms slowed for her. I didn't feel my shot until I got home, then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wish we could be done with these shots, but until this stuff goes away, or mellows out, we'll keep getting the vaccinations.
  • Snow fell, but nothing stayed on the ground. The drive to and from Quincy was extremely windy. Trees shelter us at home somewhat from the wind.
  • We enjoyed a Roald Dahl movie-watching event. First, we watched the 1971 movie, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, then we watched the 1996 movie, Matilda. It was fun. We once had the first movie in tape format, but purchased it today in DVD form while in Quincy.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/9: Vaccination Blues
  
  • Mary and I feel rotten, today...the result of our vaccination booster shots.
  • Mary heard a brown thrasher...first of the season.
    
  • A crop dusting airplane roared over our house at low altitudes, starting at 8 a.m., and ending just before sunset. With the dairy to the west of us possessing a runway, it puts that loud plane right over us when he's going to fields NE of our property.
    
  • Mary washed a mixed load of laundry.
  • Winds were slight to calm, so I sprayed Immunox on trees that are about to bud out with flowers, which included the Sargent and prairie fire crabapple trees, and the Esopus and Mac apple trees. Today was a perfect day for spraying, so I took advantage of it, even though I felt crummy. Going outside and doing things keeps your mind off your own miseries.
  • Mary and I toured all of the trees and plants. A lone asparagus shoot popped through the ground. The flowers in the woods have barely started to show.
  • The specific gravity of the autumn olive wine is 1.040, a significant drop from 1.074 just 2 days ago. I'll be moving it into a carboy, soon.