May 29-June 4, 2022

Weather | 5/29, 61°, 88° | 5/30, 65°, 86° | 5/31, 0.07" rain, 56°, 77° | 6/1, 1.34" rain, 58°, 77° | 6/2, 51°, 79° | 6/3, 52°, 79° | 6/4, 54°, 81° |

• Sunday, 5/29: Finishing Bill's Rear Brakes
  
  • South winds blew even harder, today.
    
  • I researched bleeding brakes for Bill's car and discovered it's unwise to bleed brakes on vehicles that have Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) brakes, since a professional (and expensive) code reader is required to accomplish the task. The answer is a brake hose clamp, which I don't have. A homemade solution involves clamping the rubber brake line with 2 steel rods and Vise-grip pliers. I cut the heads and threads off 2 carriage bolts, ground the cut ends smooth, then we used 2 locking pliers to clamp the rubber brake hose. It worked great.
    
  • Bill and I changed both rear rotors, calipers and brake pads on his car, using appropriate brake grease between the calipers and the brake shoe brackets. I wire brushed rust off his hubs and added anti-seize to the outer surface, making the next rotor removal easier. The finished brake job looked nice and Bill looked happy after pumping up the brakes after the job was done (see photos, below). We took a test drive to Lewistown. All brakes worked great.
    
  • Mary made 3 pizzas. We enjoyed it with 2021 grapefruit wine, which was tart, similar to grapefruit, with a strong grapefruit flavor.
    
  • Bill synced up his phone with our TV and we watched a movie he downloaded from Netflix called Operation Minchmeat. It's a very good movie.

New driver's side rear brakes of Bill's car.

New passenger side rear brakes of Bill's car.

Bill, a happy owner of a car with new strong rear brakes.

• Monday, 5/30: Bill Leaves After Helping Bottle Blackberry Wine
  
  • This is the third day, straight, of strong south winds.
    
  • Bill and I racked and bottled 29 bottles of blackberry wine. We filled over 3/4th of a 30th bottle that I put into the fridge. The specific gravity was 0.994 at 67°. Corrected for temperature makes it 0.995, giving the wine an alcohol content of 12.45%. We forgot to check the acidity level, but it tastes right. This batch tastes great. It's tangy, with a strong blackberry flavor. The wine is very smooth, too. Mary and I tried some after it chilled, and it tasted better than at room temperature.
    
  • Bill left at 3 p.m. He texted later that the brakes were fine, with no more heat pouring off his rear hubs.
    
  • Mary weeded part of the onion and shallot row in the near garden. She also cross stitched.
  • I harvested the rest of the radishes out of the near garden.
    
  • Katie called to wish Mary a belated happy birthday. She is in Point Hope, as of Thursday.
    
  • At midnight, Mary and I sat outside for about an hour to watch for a meteor storm that never appeared, even though we saw 4 meteors. Clouds that covered the night sky forced us back inside. We saw many lightning bugs, so it was still a pleasant time outside.
    
    
• Tuesday, 5/31: A Day Inside
  
  • A weather system slowly went through our region that included daylong thunder, so we stayed inside for most of the day. It rained a little bit during the day, then overnight, it really came down.
  • A tour of the fruit trees revealed a few more deer eatings. Fish line isn't spooking them, anymore. They're leaning into the fish line to munch on branches. I'll have to do something else.
  • Karen texted me a photo of herself in front of the Melvin Brewery in Jackson, WY, taken in 2017 (see below).

  

  Karen in front of the Melvin Brewery.
  

• Wednesday, 6/1: Flea Fight
  • In the early morning hours we received a big dump of rain. Water sits in puddles everywhere. Mary added up rain amounts. Total precipitation for May is 4.64", which is average for the month. Year-to-date precipitation is 17.57", which is a little bit above average.
    
  • For about a week, we've found fleas on the dogs. It's never a great number...just one, two, or three...and we've never found them in rugs, furniture, or dog bedding. Still, we're being very diligent, taking an extra half hour to thoroughly go over both dogs whenever they go outside. Today, I vacuumed the upstairs, north bedroom floor, where Plato sleeps, the chairs in that room, and all cat beds. Mary ran the dog blanket and furniture covers through high heat of the dryer, the first time it's been used in 3 years. We sprinkled flea powder on the carpet in the north bedroom and worked it in with brushes. Thank goodness we don't own a golden retriever anymore. Plato and Amber are both short-haired doggies.
    
  • Mary made a turkey pot pie.
  • Mary weeded onions and former radish rows in the near garden. She also started sweet potato slips and put 55 slips into 3 quart jars of water. They'll be ready to plant in 2 weeks after growing roots.
    
  • I whacked down all of the grass and weeds in the near garden. I also whacked down tall grass inside and around the cattle panels that surround the Grimes Golden apple tree. I took out poison ivy, little persimmon shrubs, and thistles between Grimes apple and the Prairie Fire crabapple trees.
  • The Stihl trimmer is still not running like it should, so I looked online for solutions. It might be a faulty bulb that purges air out the gas system prior to starting. It maintains slight pressure to push gas into the carburetor. Also, the carburetor might be plugged with oil residue. I'll ask the Stihl guy when I go to Farm & Home yet this week.
  • I forgot to mention that Bill gave us several canning items when he was here a couple days ago. A co-worker's mother was moving and instead of tossing these items, gave them to Bill to give to us, since he talked about Mary's canning at work. Included are several quart jars, lids, and rings, a big 16-quart aluminum Presto pressure cooker (in a lovely 1970s-vintage harvest gold color), and a large water bath canner, the same size as Mary's current canner that holds 7 quart jars at a time. It's all in great shape, except the seal probably needs replacing in the pressure cooker's lid. Thanks, William!
    
    
• Thursday, 6/2: Mowing & Electric Fences
  
  • I mowed both inside and outside of the far garden and around the outside of the near garden in an attempt to uncover electric wires from grass and weeds, so I can work to get electric fences going around both gardens.
    
  • Mary mowed most of the lane. I mowed the section with poison ivy growing into it.
    
  • I straightened 3 corner posts on the near garden by pounding in gravel and bits of broken bricks inside of the base of these posts. The ground is soft from spring rains and solid matter is needed to keep the steel posts upright.
  • A low-hanging twig of our newest Liberty apple tree was chewed off by rabbits. It is a branch that needs pruning next spring, so it's not a big deal. There's a hole in the mulch next to that tree. I suspect a rabbit nest.
    
  • We watched the 2009 movie, Young Victoria, in honor of the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in England.
    
    
• Friday, 6/3: Pea Blossoms & White Mulberries
  
  • White blossoms are now showing on our snow peas. Some tiny onions are popping through the ground. We harvest a small bowl full of strawberries every day that we eat with oatmeal each breakfast, except today, when we had strawberries on our waffles.
    
  • I pounded several chunks of brick into the ground and finished straightening electric fence corner posts in the near garden. I replaced 5 bracing wires. I then weedwhacked grass and weeds from under near garden electric fence wires. That's a long job, with the body held tight in one position. I noticed pain at my back and inside my right rib cage after dark. Some acetaminophen helped.
    
  • Mary mowed all of the north yard.
    
  • Mary determined that garlic harvest starts tomorrow. She hopes to pull 3 varieties.
    
  • On an afternoon dog walk, we noticed that deer ate the tips of poison ivy plants growing along the east side of the lane. When we returned to the porch with the puppies and did a thorough tick and flea search, we found several fleas on the dogs. We now know our flea sources are deer.
  • Birds are loving the mulberry fruit growing on trees in the yard. At one point, Mary saw goldfinches and cedar waxwings munching on mulberries on a tree over the concrete circle, where we hold outdoor roasts. Birds favor white, immature mulberries over red ripe ones, which seems odd. They must taste better.
    
    
• Saturday, 6/4: Cherries Begin & Garlic Harvest
  
  • I picked the first ripe pie cherry from the medium-sized cherry tree. Several are starting to turn on the big pie cherry tree (see photo, below).
  • Mary saw a huge doe and her fawn on the lane near the munched poison ivy patch...probably our flea carriers. She also saw a monarch butterfly feeding on red clover near the mailbox.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas for our main meal.
  • She harvested 3 kinds of garlic, which were Music Pink, German Extra Hardy, and Siberian. They're smaller this year, probably due to cool temperatures. There are no rotten garlic bulbs, which is possible during wet years. That means Mary is pulling them at the right time.
    
  • I removed 2 rusty courses of electric fence wire from the near garden fence and didn't replace them, since there were too many wires on that fence. I put 13 strands around that garden 2 years ago, and was going to add more before we discovered 2-foot high chicken wire does a better job at holding back rabbits. The electric fence discourages raccoons, opossums, and deer, but bunnies jump right through it. When they do, and there are too many wires, they get tangled up and short out the electric fencer. I moved wire and insulator locations on each post surrounding the near garden to mirror the set-up on the far garden. After changing out poor insulators and a gate handle, I tightened a few wires and turned on the fencer. It all works well.
    
  • Mary and I hung 14 bundles of garlic from the machine shed rafters, so they can dry through the summer (see photo, below). Half of the garlic crop is harvested and drying.

Nearly ripe cherries on big pie cherry tree.

Garlic hung to dry in machine shed rafters.

May 22-28, 2022

Weather | 5/22, 38°, 68° | 5/23, 42°, 69° | 5/24, 52°, 70° | 5/25, 1.66" rain, 57°, 73° | 5/26, 0.40" rain, 55°, 75° | 5/27, 0.37" rain, 51°, 69° | 5/28, 49°, 79° |

• Sunday, 5/22: New Strawberry Plant Starts & Shopping
  
  • Mary sorted through all stored garden produce and threw away bad ones. Items, such as squash, onions, and garlic, last a lot longer than predicted with Mary's system of storing.
    
  • She weeded parts of the near garden, and checked garlic scapes. Our garlic plants are a week behind the usual grow dates.
  • Mary started 12 strawberry plants from shoots that are showing.
  • I cleaned out the Buick. Old Styrofoam fish shipping coolers from Petco filled the interior. After vacuuming out mice poop, I scrubbed the inside with Lysol. The bucket of water I used to clean outsides of windows was black once I was finished. Despite the look of mange, from peeling clear coat on top of the car's paint, it looks much better. The battery didn't work, again, so I charged it.
    
  • I shopped in Quincy, driving the Buick. Shopping on Sunday is a poor idea, but we needed pet food. Stores were packed and several items were out of stock. Prices are much higher. I filled the Buick's brake fluid reservoir 3 times. It leaks. A ton of things need fixing on that car. But, it got me there and back. I got a new battery from Sam's Club for the car. From AutoZone, I bought new wipers and an air filter. Gas is $4.19 at Fastlane. It's $4.89 in Illinois. I hate shopping, especially by myself, and driving a wreck. I was glad to be home at the end of the day.
  • While unloading the car, Mary experienced a hummingbird buzzing the back her head, under her hat's brim...rather unusual.
    
  • We had nachos and watch the 2018 movie, Crazy Rich Asians.
    
    
• Monday, 5/23: Mowing and Whacking
  
  • Mary mowed the south and east yards.
  • I fixed the Stihl grass trimmer's spark arrestor, according to directions from guys behind the Stihl desk at Quincy's Farm & Home store, and it works better than ever before.
  • I took down tall grass around the near garden with the trimmer fit with the blade. I also went halfway around the near garden, whacking down grass between the electric and chicken wire fences.
  • I helped mow when Mary took a drink break. Mary raked up all of the grass into piles and moved clippings to mulch the last row in the south end of the far garden. I helped her move clippings.
  • A quick check of fruit trees shows that bug damage is halted and several apple trees need fruit thinning. The big cherry tree is loaded with growing fruit. The sweet cherry has wounded fruit. Something went wrong. I can only count 11 developing pears on the big Bartlett tree.
  • Bill and I texted about maybe changing the brakes on his car when he visits Memorial Day weekend.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of pumpkin wine (see photo, below). It's very tart, because I went overboard on the acid blend, but it tastes great. It's really smooth. Mary says, "You can drink it like water." I wouldn't recommend doing that, though. The taste of pumpkin and raisins is strong, yet cinnamon taste is weak to nonexistent. Perhaps the higher acid amount knocked out the cinnamon.
    
  • We saw fireflies for the first time this year while walking dogs after dark.

  

  Our first taste of 2021 pumpkin wine. It's good.
  

• Tuesday, 5/24: Whacking & Mulching
  
  • I ran the weedwhacker with the steel blade to knock down grass under fruit trees south and west of the house.
  • We found weird, white, fibrous material on suckers at the base of the big Liberty apple tree. Mary looked it up and it's downy mildew. She has a spray bottle of baking soda, Dawn dish soap, and water, that she uses to kill powdery mildew. She sprayed this downy mildew with it and the mildew instantly vanished.
  • Mary picked up hay from tall grass I cut yesterday and today. She used it to mulch the 2 bigger Liberty apple trees.
  • I took the trimmer back to the near garden and cut down more grass. Rain stopped my progress.
  • I picked our first strawberries of the year. I also pulled 2 dozen large radishes from the near garden.
  • Mary made 2 pizzas. We ate one midday and the other in the evening.
  • Bill sent texts about tools he bought to use while changing his brakes this weekend.
  • We watched 2 movies...the 2017 movie, Beauty and the Beast, and the 2013 movie, Whitehouse Down.
  • We noticed over an inch of rain in the rain gauge on our last dog walk.
    
    
• Wednesday, 5/25: Studying a Brake Job & Racking Autumn Olive Wine
  
  • Even though we received over 1.5" of rain overnight, most of it soaked into the ground. Still, light rain or mist fell throughout the day, so going outside was wet.
  • I studied details of replacing brakes on a 2010 Hyundai Sonata (Bill's car). I watched 3 videos on the topic and listed needed parts. Bill and I texted a few times, about it.
  • Mary made a venison General Tzo meal.
  • The part I ordered for the pickup came in today's mail.
  • With an evening break in the weather, Mary picked strawberries, while I picked radishes. 
  • A deer nimbled some branches and green berries off the best producing blueberry bush. DAMN!!!
    
  • Mary heard American toads trilling after nightfall.
  • I racked the autumn olive wine for the 3rd time. The specific gravity was still 0.990 and acid content was also unchanged. I added 2 crushed Campden tablets, cleaned the 3-gallon carboy and refilled to capacity. We had just shy of 300 ml left over, so we drank it. The wine is clear and has a solid autumn olive taste. There's an alcohol taste, but it will go away with aging. It's a very good, smooth wine.
    
    
• Thursday, 5/26: Rain & Little Green Apples
  
  • The moment I finished this blog, writing about no puddles from recent rains, we got a third of an inch of rain in about 10 minutes. Water stood everywhere, including under the pickup, where I'd have to lay to fix the electrical connection on the engine...so much for accomplishing that job! We've received 2.43 inches of rain in 3 days.
    
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread.
  • I thinned small apples on the Esopus, the large, and the skinny Liberty apple trees. It looks like deer are not frightened anymore by fish line, because a lot of the Esopus lower branches are munched.
  • Some online fruit growers advocate bagging growing fruit by slicing corners off a zippered sandwich plastic bag, cutting a slice in the center of the zippered part and placing it over the small fruit. It's supposed to protect the fruit from bugs and disease while it grows. We question whether summer heat will fry the fruit. I'm experimenting with the idea. I put 6 sandwich bags on the Esopus and 6 on the big Liberty apple trees. We'll see what happens.
  • Mary finished weeding the peas. She also filled a plastic grocery bag with scapes cut off the garlic, while I picked strawberries and radishes. Big black clouds developed and Mary got wet at the start of the cloud burst.
    
  • After an evening meal and washing dishes, I cleaned 18 wine bottles to get enough to bottle an upcoming batch of blackberry wine.
    
  • Katie sent Mary a video of angry ravens after she disturbed their nest. She also sent a photo of whale baleen. She texted about Project Chariot, a plan of using nuclear bombs to create a harbor at Cape Thompson, which is near Point Hope, where Katie is currently working. In 1962, that idea was squelched, so instead they buried nuclear waste to measure its effects on native plants and ground water. In the 1990s, documents were uncovered by a University of Alaska researcher about the project. High radioactive levels were recorded at the burial ground. Point Hope residents raised a stink, since their community was experiencing high levels of cancer, and demanded that the contaminated soil be removed. It was. Here is a Wikipedia article about it and a Bureau of Indian Affairs pamphlet about it.
    
    
• Friday, 5/27: Mary's Birthday
  
  • Mary cleaned house and made a blackberry crunch for her birthday, which is today.
    
  • I thinned apples off the McIntosh apple tree to where I can reach with an 8-foot ladder. A few deer are helping me thin fruit and leaves off lower branches. It took all day to do this job.
    
  • Bill arrived around 8:30 p.m. He drove here from his work place. The dragging rear brakes of his car means his fuel economy is lower and at every stop, heat pours off his back wheels.
  • Bill gave Mary a hori hori knife. It's Japanese for "dig, dig." It originated with bonsai trees, but it's become the gardening "go-to" tool. Both Katie and Bill gave Mary fabric-related gift cards for her birthday.
    
  • I sprayed Bt insecticide on all apple and crabapple trees, except the Sargent crab. I started after supper and ended around 1 a.m.
    
    
• Saturday, 5/28: Brake Follies
  
  • The south wind howled today.
  • Bill and I worked on the rear brakes of his Hyundai Sonata. After opening up the passenger rear brake, we discovered that Rockauto sent Bill the wrong brake rotor, because his new rotors are too big. Bolts holding the caliper in place are too rusty and need replacement. 
  • We drove the Buick to Quincy and bought the correctly sized rotors, bolts and washers from Autozone. 
  • After returning home, we easily removed the driver's side rear rotor, but the passenger side rear rotor was stuck on with rust. I beat the bejeebers out of it with a ball peen hammer. After a couple soakings of penetrating fluid and a ton of hammering, it finally broke free. We closed everything up for the night.
    
  • While Bill and I drove to and from Quincy and removed brake rotors, Mary mowed the west yard and the yard immediately north of the house. She moved cut grass to finish mulching the south side of the far garden, then started mulching the north side of the garden.
    
  • I lit an outdoor fire and we roasted pork loin over the campfire. We enjoyed some beer from the Melvin Brewery in Alpine, WY, that Bill brought with him...no kidding...Melvin beer! We watched satellites and lightning bugs until around 11 p.m.
    

May 15-21, 2022

Weather | 5/15, .02" rain, 61°, 68° | 5/16, 47°, 79° | 5/17, .71" rain, 51°, 83° | 5/18, 60°, 80° | 5/19, 56°, 84° | 5/20, .03" rain, 65°, 80° | 5/21, .21" rain, 47°, 64° |

• Sunday, 5/15: Dandy Wine, Nighttime Spraying & Lunar Eclipse
  
  • We experienced a tiny bit of rain in the morning.
  • Katie called. She's in Point Lay. She was just starting to enjoy spring in Anchorage, then flew north and back into winter. Katie and a foreman are setting up a work camp to tear down a water tank. Some of the boiler union guys showed up early. This tear-down job is planned to take 2 weeks. Then, she goes to Point Hope, which involves constructing a new water tank for the village. The job needs to be finished by Sept. 1st, so the village can fill the tank with water before freeze up. 
    
  • Mary cooked venison and gravy on biscuits for our main meal. The nice part about this meal is eating leftover biscuits with apricot or peach jelly, later.
    
  • She also worked on her cross stitch project, Native Raven.
  • I racked the dandelion wine for the 2nd time, since a half-inch of fines were in the bottom of the gallon jug. The specific gravity is 0.996, resulting in 11.79% alcohol. It went into a gallon jug and I topped it up with a couple ounces of distilled water.
  • On a fruit tree tour, I saw bug damage on apple leaves of trees that didn't receive spinosad spray on May 7th. Tons of tiny fruits are forming on 3 of the apple trees.
    
  • We saw a double rainbow just before sunset.
    
  • I mixed up a batch of insecticidal soap spray, using a recipe involving a quarter of a Kirk's bar of soap. Then, I sprayed fungicide and insecticide (either spinosad or soap) on all apple trees, except the Sargent crabapple. Spinosad went on trees that didn't receive it last week and insecticidal soap went on the other trees. This job went on well into darkness.
  • While I sprayed, Mary sat and watched the lunar eclipse. While the moon was partially covered, she watched bird fly over the face of the moon. Once the moon was fully covered with earth's shadow, she spotted 3 small stars in a perfect line just under the moon. As time went on, they rose in relation to the moon, with the middle star blocked by the moon. I visited Mary off and on to watch the eclipse. Mary spotted a cluster of tiny stars right over our heads, which through binoculars, turned out to be a large bunch. She looked it up later and found they are the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Well after the full lunar eclipse, I showed up with what Mary calls my "obnoxious" headlamp and finished cleaning my spray tank. Soon after, we both went back into the house.
  • The neighbor dogs barked constantly, probably due to my headlamp lighting up trees as I sprayed. Then, coyotes howled all around us and those 2 dogs. That shut up the dogs and I commented to Mary that silence is golden. We didn't hear a peep out of the dogs for the rest of the night.
    
    
• Monday, 5/16: Mowing, Onion Seeds Planted
  
  • Mom texted that she also watched the lunar eclipse and while doing so, saw the space station fly by. She sent photos of Nanking cherry bushes she planted 8 years ago that are in bloom and of herself (see below).
    
  • Mary mowed the south end of the far garden while I whacked down knee-high grass next to the rows ahead of her to make mowing easier. I also got halfway around the outside of the far garden's electric fence with the trimmer using the blade attachment.
  • Mary fertilized the blueberries with aluminum sulfate to give them more acid soil.
    
  • When we got the mail, we saw the 2 Canada geese, with several goslings, on the property across the gravel road. For several days, one lone goose was standing guard in the driveway of the trailer across the road. Obviously, it was the male, guarding the hen on a nest nearby. Now they're raising young ones.
    
  • Mary planted onions (round 2), after the replacement seeds arrived in today's mail. 
  • Snow peas are about 4 inches high after 3 weeks, 2 days. High heat summer temperatures last week slowed their progress.
  • I mowed the north yard.

Mom's Nanking cherries.

Ruth Melvin at 87 years young.

• Tuesday, 5/17: Ants, Mulch & Rain
  
  • Mary planted shallot seeds in the near garden.
  • Katie texted the fact that there are no more sunsets until fall, starting today, in Point Lay, AK.
  • A dove on a nest in a low cedar branch next to the west entrance to the machine shed bit the dust. Feathers were near the nest and next to our garbage can. Eggs were gone, too. We suspect a feral black cat we've seen, recently.
  • We spotted a female summer tanager. Mary read that they specialize in hunting and eating bees and wasps, without getting stung.
    
  • Mary raked grass that was mowed yesterday and put it all into the far garden rows.
  • Carpenter ants are invading a crack in the base of branches in the big pie cherry tree. I nailed hundreds of them with Dawn soap solution for several hours. I also discovered the insecticidal soap recipe using a bar of Kirk's soap is ineffective. Dawn works better. I suspect these ants are coming from the weeping willow tree stump that I failed to cut down all the way last fall. It's now sprouted new branches (see photo, below).
    
  • I finished knocking down grass outside of the electric fence in the far garden.
  • I also sharpened the blades on the lawnmower and the grass trimmer.
  • Outside work was cut short with an evening thunderstorm that approached from the west. We got almost 3/4" of much-needed rain. Our clay-based soil was starting to develop cracks. Mary said working a hoe to plant seeds was like chipping away at bricks.

  

  Our weeping willow weed with big pie cherry tree in background.
  

• Wednesday, 5/18: Katie's Letter
  
  • Katie had a nice email from the general manager of UIC, her employer. It read, "Katie, Wanted to let you know how impressed I was at the conclusion of our recent site visit to Venetie. It was clear you represented UIC well while you were working there last year. I saw where lots of good relationships were formed, and your understanding of the scope and the existing facility were very helpful. Your efforts to add this bid and the trip to the site into your workload was very valuable. Great work, Katie. Thank you!"
    
  • While Mary made flour tortillas, I picked all of the radishes out of 3 plastic bins. After cleaning them up, they filled a gallon storage bag. 
  • Mary mowed the lane, minus areas where poison ivy is growing.
  • I used eight 4-foot long pieces of rebar and propped up the chicken wire fence where deer or rabbits knocked it down and broke wooden stakes holding it up. Then I used the grass trimmer with the steel blade and took down grass between the chicken wire and electric fences. Finally, Mary picked up hay from grass I've been dropping with the trimmer and put that mulch around our two new apple trees.
  • While Mary moved hay, I mowed the lane where poison ivy grows.
  • We saw our first monarch butterfly while getting the mail, today.
    
  • In the evening, I bought some Tree Tanglefoot Insect Barrier online, since I couldn't find it in various store inventories in Quincy. I need it to keep carpenter ants out of the large pie cherry tree. I noticed they're back with a vengeance.
  • The Esopus apple tree has some nicely developing fruit. I'm not seeing much for fruit on any of the pear trees. They had lots of bees on blossoms, but somehow rain or wind ruined the crop, unless they're slow to develop and I'm not seeing them, yet. Lots of cherries are growing. We also have several green strawberries developing.
    
    
• Thursday, 5/19: Outside Work
  
  • I weedwhacked the rest of the north end of the far garden, producing an abundance of hay. I also whacked the north trail to the far garden, the trail to the asparagus bed and around the asparagus plants, and under and around the Esopus tree.
    
  • Mary moved the hay in several wheelbarrow loads and mulched 3 blueberry plants and 5 trees, which were the small Bartlett tree, and 4 small cherry trees.
  • Mary fertilized the garlic, strawberries, and herbs with fish fertilizer.
  • I mowed in front of the gate to the near garden yesterday. Today I raked it all up and put the mulch in the far garden.
    
  • I thinned Esopus apple tree fruit where I could reach the tiny apples from the ground. By thinning about 80-90% of the small fruit, it helps the tree to develop larger apples. Something is eating up the leaves at the lower branches. I suspect squirrels or opossums.
  • We were physically pooped from today's work.
    
  • Mary made a shopping list for a trip we'll make to Quincy, IL, tomorrow.
    
    
• Friday, 5/20: Dead Vehicles
  • We intended to go shopping today, but after loading coolers into the pickup, it did not start. The engine turned over, but did not fire. I even tried starting fluid. There was no fuel or spark. I put the code reader on and got a PO0335 code, which means a "crankshaft position A circuit malfunction." I looked it up online. It has more to do with an electronic malfunction, than a problem with the crankshaft. A crankshaft position sensor tells the engine's computer about the crankcase shaft's rotation speed to help calculate and distribute correct gas and air amounts. When it's shut off, the engine won't run. I looked up its location on a 4.3 liter GM V6, jacked up the right front of the pickup and put blocks of wood under the tire, crawled underneath and found 2 chewed off wires. They're in an impossible location to solder back together, so I ordered a new crankcase position sensor connector from RockAuto. It's to arrive in the mail next week.
  • Meanwhile, Mary mowed the far east garden and the path I whacked to the north end of it. She also raked grass and added mulch to a row in that garden.
  • I worked on getting the Buick Park Avenue, that we've let sit since 2019, back running. I changed spark plug wires. Two were chewed in half. I suspect squirrels. I pulled gobs of maple seeds out from around the engine. The air filter is well chewed and I pulled a huge mouse nest from just outside of the filter. Brake fluid was out, so I filled that. The driver's front tire was flat, so I aired up all tires. The battery was dead. I charged it, then started the car. It misses slightly, which is no surprise. I spotted 2 seriously chewed wires in the engine compartment. In one case a good 4-5 inches of wiring is completely gone. After putting stuff away, I went to start it, and it wouldn't start, again. So, I left the charger on for an hour. Rain halted my intentions of changing oil.
  • I helped Mary rake grass and mulch a far garden row. Big wet splats of rain told us to get our butts inside.
  • We're low on pet food. The Buick's plates are outdated. Hopefully, I can get it going well enough to drive 5 miles into Lewistown's Dollar General store and get cat and dog food. I still need to fix a front passenger door latch to pass a vehicle inspection, then get updated license plates...maybe on Monday. Then, we can make a trip to Quincy in the Buick.
  • Squirrel season opens on May 28th. I'm going to be in the woods plinking squirrels on and after next Saturday. I'm tired of them!
    
    
• Saturday, 5/21: Bay Tree Re-Potting & Buick Oil Change
  
  • Bill called. He's working to get his car's brakes fixed. No one will do the job using his parts. He received a recent raise. The receiving department is down to him and another person, who is on vacation right now. That means he is the only person working for receiving. He said he works like a robot and gets it done, but that he is beat by the end of each day.
    
  • Mary cleaned house. 
  • She also re-potted the bay trees, because they were full of ants and not liking life outside. She brought inside, placing them on an old rolling TV cart in the sunroom.
    
  • I mowed part of the east yard, so I had room to change oil in the Buick. I raked the grass I cut and mulched more in the far east garden.
  • I changed oil in the Buick. The last oil only had 350 miles on it, but it was 3 years old. Plus, it was the wrong weight (5W30) for that car. The new oil is the correct 10W30. I test drove the Buick to the pavement and back on the gravel road. The brakes aren't great, but they work well enough if I'm careful. We decided I'll take it on a shopping trip to Quinicy, tomorrow.
    
  • Mary made a wonderful chicken dinner with sweet potatoes. It was tremendous.
    

May 8-14, 2022

Weather | 5/8, 52°, 69° | 5/9, 60°, 88° | 5/10, 69°, 89° | 5/11, 69°, 90° | 5/12, 69°, 89° | 5/13, 65°, 85° | 5/14, 59°, 85° |

• Sunday, 5/8: Mother's Day
  
  • I called mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day. After wearing a heart monitor for a couple weeks, the specialist in Billings said her heart beat had irregularities a couple times. She needs to schedule a stress test in Billings in the future. Her hip bothers her when she gets near the time to get a cortisone shot, which is once every three months. The Circle Banner (newspaper) is going out of business. There was a threat that the grocery store was closing, but someone local bought it. A new dollar store is going into property where Len Kuntz once had a campground.
    
  • Katie called Mary to wish her a happy Mother's Day. Katie had to do some shopping, because she's leaving tomorrow for Barrow, overnighting there, then going on to her water tank projects at Point Hope and Point Lay, AK.
    
  • Bill called Mary to wish her a happy Mother's Day. He bought parts to rebuild all brakes on his car. He will visit us on the evening of May 27 and leave on Memorial Day.
    
  • Mary mowed half of the immediate east yard. The was high (over knee-height), since we haven't mowed that area yet this year. She raked what she mowed and put grass mulch on the peas, radishes, strawberries, and a small patch of bare ground in the near garden. We think lettuce, onions, shallots and spinach drowned and rotted with cold temperatures, because we see no sprouting in those areas of the garden.
  • I cleaned an AC by removing all covers and flushing it out with water. It will go into our bedroom.
    
  • The dandelion wine's specific gravity was 1.030 at noon and 1.010 at 10 p.m., so I moved the wine must to a gallon jug and a 330-ml beer bottle. It put a wonderful fruity and flowery smell into the house.
    
    
• Monday, 5/9: ACs & Garden Seeds
  
  • I installed the air conditioner that I cleaned yesterday into one of our bedroom windows and sealed it up. It's nice to get filtered AC air to breathe while we sleep at night. I then cleaned the largest AC we own. Finally, I cleaned the glass of the window it goes into in the living room.
    
  • Mary cleaned the house. She also made a venison General Tso meal.
    
  • Katie left for Barrow, from Anchorage, today. She texted her mother, "I have a bit of extra baggage on this trip because I packed two cases of water, some dried camping meals, snacks, TP and a sleeping bag and towel to tide us over, and the guy I'm traveling with is making fun of me for it. He won't be laughing when he's hungry, thirsty, and has an itchy butt!"
  • Today is 14 days since a bulk of the near garden was planted. Lettuce and spinach germinates in 5 days, here, and onions and shallots germinate in 10 days. With none of these seeds sprouting, we called it a loss, and ordered more onion and shallot seeds from Fedco. We're still fine on planting them as soon as they arrive in the mail. It's too late for lettuce, so Mary says she'll hoe the weeds out and plan something else in that part of the garden. Extreme wetness and chill that put those seeds under water twice in 2 weeks, killed their germination.
  • We're seeing a worm damaging leaves on the Grimes Golden apple tree. I need to spray insecticide, but winds continue to howl. Based on weather predictions, I should be able to spray tomorrow evening/night.
  • We had a kale, spinach, and radish salad as part of an evening meal. The kale and spinach are winter greens that I'm slowly eliminating as they try to bolt. The radishes I planted in 3 tubs on April 5th. The radishes are tiny, but tasty. Cool temperatures the past several weeks slowed all plant growth. We're now close to record high temperatures.
    
    
• Tuesday, 5/10: More AC Work with Increased Heat
  
  • Summer heat and humidity is here with a vengeance. A little smoke from New Mexico fires makes the air look especially heavy.
  • Mary hoed the near garden in the areas where onion, shallots, spinach, and lettuce were planted, but never germinated.
    
  • I installed our largest air conditioner in the living room west window, sealed it into place, and added foam board on the outside to block rain coming in and light going outside that attracts bugs. I also cleaned a third AC, installed it in the upstairs north bedroom window and sealed it into place.
  • Wind died at sunset, so I sprayed spinosad, an insecticide made from soil bacterium that is toxic to insects. It relaxes their muscles and kills them. Spraying at night or very early morning is best, because when spinosad is wet, it's toxic to bees. After it dries, it doesn't harm bees. It went on the Grimes, the new Porter's Perfection, and the McIntosh apple trees.
  • Katie sent Mary a photo (see below) from her apartment. The woman pet sitting her dogs and cats and living in the apartment while Katie is gone, has a dog of her own that is in the photo. It's name is Dora.
  • Bill texted me that Rockauto sent him the wrong brake pads. What he got fit on a truck. He'll have to exchange them to get the right pads for his Hyundai Sonata.
  • Local news sources revealed today that Target is revamping the building that Kmart left in 2018 in Quincy, IL. They're adding to the building and redoing the parking lot, plus bringing in some restaurants. They plan to open in May, 2023. Reconstruction started last Thursday and since then 80 truckloads of shelving, trash, and other materials were removed from the store.

  

  From Katie's apartment: Prancer (right), DeSoto (middle) with Dora (left).
  

• Wednesday, 5/11: Cutting Grass & AC Work
  
  • It's very hot and muggy, outside. It makes our air conditioned house that much nicer. We take several breaks from outside while sitting in front of the living room AC and drinking a big glass of iced tea or water.
    
  • Mary mowed the the south yard and the patch of lawn just north of house, leaving the grass lay on the ground. 
  • Tree pollen in the air shortens Mary's time outside. Our boots and all vehicles turn greenish yellow from pollen.
    
  • I covered the outside of side slide pieces and underneath on the 2 upstairs air conditioners. I used some quarter-inch thick green fanfold solid foam material to do this job that we bought in Circle, MT, for putting under house siding. It's stored in a grain bin. Carpenter ants bored through several pieces of this stuff to make a nice, cozy home. On top of it were 11 rusty fluorescent light fixtures and 3 boxes of rags...all junk we hauled from Circle to here. On one box, Bill wrote on top, "Yet more rags," while packing it up in Circle. We really need to throw away a pile of old crap!
  • Tomato and tomatillo seeds sprouted overnight after spending time in the hot south upstairs bedroom.
  • A tour of fruit trees revealed tiny beginnings of fruit on the Bartlett pear, big pie cherry (see photo, below), big Liberty, Esopus, and McIntosh apple trees. Now, I just need to keep disease and insects from ruining them, especially the apple tree fruit.
  • We had an inexpensive evening meal of bacon (cheap turkey bacon), eggs (from our laying hens), a spinach, kale, and radish salad (from our winter greens), and muskmelons (from our garden last year, fresh from the freezer).

  

  Pie cherry fruit starting to develop.
  

• Thursday, 5/12: Continuation of Mowing & AC Work
  
  • Mary mowed the west yard, then raked all that she mowed yesterday and today. Finally, she mulched several piles of grass clippings into the near garden.
  • The grass mulch is a huge help to garden plants during our recent hotter temperatures. Mary went with no-till planting this year and that seems to benefit the peas, too.
    
  • A birthday gift came in the mail from Katie to Mary. It's a Blu-ray disc of the Ken Burns' documentary, Benjamin Franklin.
    
  • I disassembled our final and fourth air conditioner, cleaned, reassembled, installed, and sealed it, then blocked outside areas around it in the first floor north-facing window. I'm done with spring AC installation, unless one of them breaks down (knock on wood).
    
  • We heard the first yellow-billed cuckoo of the season in the north woods. While walking the dogs after dark, we heard 3 different Eastern whip-poor-wills calling on our property.
    
    
• Friday, 5/13: No Superstitions, Here!
  
  • We started Friday, the 13th out by seeing a feral black cat run from under the Buick to the machine shed as we let the dogs out for their morning walk. So, we hid inside most of the day.
    
  • Actually, pollen in the outside air was rough on Mary for the past several days, so we took a break from the outdoors and stayed inside. Weather prediction was for rain, but it mostly dried up before getting to us.
  • I looked to buy the same rubber boots from Home Depot that we've been purchasing for years, but they don't have men's size 9, which both Mary and I wear.
  • I caught up on my fruit tree spraying records.
  • We watered all small trees and existing garden plants in the evening. Everything is looking good.
    
  • We now see 4 chimney swifts twittering about as they bust through the air, like flying cigars.
  • We tried to watch the disc that Katie sent Mary, but received an error message while trying to see it. I sent a message to PBS. We'll see what comes of it. We watched the 1996 movie, Twister. 
  • It rained 3 drops on the metal casing of the living room AC just after the film ended. That was our 80% rain prediction for the day. It dropped to 0% by the time we got a few drops.
    
    
• Saturday, 5/14: Mowing & Wienie Roast
  
  • Winds were mild to calm, but tree spraying wasn't possible, with rain in the forecast for tomorrow morning. There is supposed to be a 24-hour rain-free period with most fruit tree sprays. 
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry that filled the clotheslines.
  • She also mowed a path to the far garden and mowed the area south of the far garden. She raked it all up and put the mulch in the near garden.
    
  • I took the muffler off the Stihl grass trimmer to see if I needed to clean carbon out of it, but it was fine. I removed the spark arrestor and thoroughly cleaned it with carb cleaner. I haven't cleaned the screen on the spark arrestor well enough in the past, which meant it filled back up with carbon and made the engine run poorly. 
  • The trimmer worked the best it's run in a year after the cleaning. I whacked down tall grass along the electric fence inside the south half of the north garden. This will make it easier to mow that area.
  • Mary watched a pair of little blue herons fly over our property.
    
  • I built a fire and we enjoyed an outdoor wienie roast as the sun set in the west and the moon rose in the east.
    
  • We also enjoyed a bottle of cherry wine. Mary said it tastes like cherry pie. The wine was bottled in March, so it has a strong alcoholic taste. It will get better with age. There was too much sediment in the bottle that I filtered out by pouring it through some paper towels. I need to rack it more the next time I make cherry wine.
    

May 1-7, 2022

Weather | 5/1, 45°, 62° | 5/2, 38°, 60° | 5/3, 0.81" rain, 47°, 50° | 5/4, 44°, 59° | 5/5, 0.32" rain, 49°, 55° | 5/6, 0.04" rain, 47°, 63° | 5/7, 41°, 68° |

• Sunday, 5/1: Wind, Pizza, & Blossoms
  
  • We had more high winds, but they finally calmed at nightfall.
  • Mary made pizza and cleaned house.
  • I plucked more dandelion petals after enjoying a couple glasses of 2021 dandelion wine. I'm now at 220 grams, with only 50 grams to go to my 270-gram limit. The petal plucking task is less tedious after tasting this delicious wine. It's amazing how an ugly batch of frozen dandelion petals turns into such pretty, golden wine (see photo, below).
  • Bees are busy in cherry and various apple blossoms.
  • We watched the 2011 movie, Larry Crowne, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. It's a fun one that we'll keep.

  

  Glasses of dandelion wine & a bag of frozen dandelion petals.
  

• Monday, 5/2: First Hummingbird & Last Dandy Plucking
  
  • After waking up early, I saw Venus and Jupiter shining brightly in the eastern sky. There was no wind, so I contemplated spraying fruit trees. However, 24 hours without rain is needed for spraying streptomycin and rain is predicted later in the day. Also, there needs to be a 7-day gap between spraying Immunox and sulfur and I'm too early, today. So, I bagged that idea and walked the dogs. I heard several turkey gobbles from all directions.
    
  • Bees were buzzing away in tree blossoms, today.
    
  • While admiring full bloom on the big pie cherry tree, a female ruby-throated hummingbird darted from blossom to blossom and made a chirping sound while feeding. Mary thought it just arrived.
    
  • Mary dusted books in the sunroom, eliminating 4 spiders and a spider nest.
    
  • Green walnut logs cut to firewood lengths and stacked behind the woodshed fell over. I restacked them in a cross-cross pattern in the north side of the machine shed.
    
  • I finished plucking dandelion petals after reaching the 270-gram level.
    
  • Rain started falling at 4 p.m., as predicted. We started and finished evening chores in the rain.
  • Rice would be a better crop to plant some springs. This is such a year. Before rain started falling today, I heard a tractor just start to run to the NE. It's a first. Most farmers aren't getting into fields, due to continuous wetness. That farmer's work lasted less than an hour. Seeds Mary planted in the near garden 7-10 days ago are yet to sprout. Some of that ground was under water, due to heavy rains. It might be a loss, this year. The rain pounded off the roof as we went to bed.
    
    
• Tuesday, 5/3: Cookies & Dandy Winemaking Start
  
  • Mom texted that we can send rain to eastern Montana, where they need the moisture.
    
  • We've had taco noodles with winter greens yesterday and today (see photo, below). A kale plant that I stripped leaves off, yesterday, and threw on the ground grew new leaves and continues to throw flower buds up into the air. Normally, it would die, but moist weather keeps the bare-root stalk alive.
    
  • Mary made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies...YUM!!!
  • I balanced our checkbook and caught up on the wine and fruit tree records.
  • Mary found Blizzard snow pea sprouts in the garden, so there is hope for our drowned, cold seeds. It's raining flower petals under most fruit trees and the orange-colored cedar apple rust jelly is all over cedar trees.
    
  • I started a 1-gallon batch of dandelion wine by bringing 7 cups of spring water to a boil and pouring it over the 270 grams of dandelion petals I've collected, recently. This sits for 2 days, stirred twice a day, before I add other ingredients.

  

  Taco noodles with kale, spinach leaves, topped with salsa.
  

• Wednesday, 5/4: Mowing & Trimming
  
  • Mary figured our savings accounts and paid the bills.
    
  • While walking bills down to the mailbox, we saw our first Baltimore oriole of the season.
  • Mary made two quiche pies. We ate one for our main meal.
    
  • For several days, a dove flies out from under the large cedar tree that's between the machine shed and the chicken coop. It has a nest on a very low branch. I looked and there are 2 eggs in it. Doves nest in the worst places and on nests that are made with just a few sticks.
    
  • Mary mowed the lane.
    
  • I cleaned the exhaust port in the Stihl grass trimmer, then knocked down grass and weeds around apple and cherry trees south and west of the house. I also trimmed grass around the pear trees and the blueberry bushes.
    
  • A few of the first pear blossoms to finish on the big Bartlett tree are now showing tiny  fruit.
  • We saw deer nibbles on a south branch of the big Bartlett pear tree and on an east branch of the McIntosh apple tree.
  • We are going from cool and wet to hot. Record high temperatures above 90 are predicted for next week.
    
    
• Thursday, 5/5: Dandelion Wine While Murky Outside
  
  • Misty cold weather lasted all day. In the newspaper, Mary noted that the only other cities around the country as cold as us were Anchorage and Seattle.
    
  • Katie called, since I've been bugging her asking for the shipper of a gift she got for Mary's birthday. It's DHL. She is in Venetie, AK. Her employer, UIC, got the bid for the second phase of a job on the school at Venetie, where Katie was last year. Katie will be doing work at Point Lay and Point Hope this summer, so another person is handling the Venetie job. Katie was there to help get the project started. She was flying back to Anchorage later in the day.
    
  • I worked on dandelion wine. I shaved pith off peels from 2 lemons, a lime, and an orange. Then I added the fruit peels to the dandelion petals that were soaking for 2 days in water and brought it to a low boil. It boiled an hour while I chopped a pound of golden raisins, a 4-inch stick of ginger and the fruit. After letting the liquid cool, I added the chopped ingredients, a crushed Campden tablet and a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. It sits, now, for 12 hours, overnight.
  • Remarkably, there are still a couple blossoms on the big Bartlett pear and the McIntosh apple trees, despite the wet murky weather we're going through.
  • The headline on the WGEM online weather report today reads, "Are we ever going to see the sun?"
    
    
• Friday, 5/6: Dandy Wine & Shopping Trip
  
  • I added pectic enzyme to the dandelion wine. The must's specific gravity was 1.050 without adding sugar. I added a pound of sugar and it zoomed to 1.115, so I added 2 cups, 2 ounces of water to drop the specific gravity down to 1.086, which is perfect. The pH is 3.55, so no acid blend is needed. I worked up a starter batch of yeast and pitched it 10 hours later.
  • Mary made tortellini soup and dusted books.
  • She also planted tomatoes and tomatillos inside in styrofoam cups. All but one cup of peppers that she planted earlier are up and growing, well.
    
  • I took a trip to Quincy to buy cat litter, a few groceries, and spinosad insecticide to spray on fruit trees.
    
    
• Saturday, 5/7: Tree Spraying & Outdoor Cookout
  
  • We were up at 5 a.m., due to calm winds, so I could spray fruit trees. I put streptomycin on both Bartlett pears, the new Porter's Perfection, and the Sargent crabapple trees. I sprayed Immunox on all cherry, the Liberty and McIntosh apple trees. I mixed a final batch of spray that included sulfur and sprayed the Grimes apple tree, but when I looked at my remaining 3 trees, they were filled with honey bees in blossoms, so I quit until bees were finished at sunset, when I sprayed Esopus, the skinny Liberty, and the Prairie Fire crabapple trees, as darkness fell.
    
  • A check of the dandy wine showed that the specific gravity dropped to 1.069.
  • We enjoyed pork loin roasted around noon hour over an outside fire with a bottle of 2020 pear wine. The wine was nice and mellow and a perfect mix with pork. A hummingbird visited us several times in the top of a mulberry tree, next to the fire. We also watched 3 chimney swifts enjoying the wind currents on a sunny day. A couple hawks circled a few times. It was a wonderful Saturday picnic.
    
  • I took a hike after eating and assessed future hunting blind locations. I spooked a couple deer and a turkey. A little creek I used to jump across to get to the SE deer blind has gutted a deep gorge into the ground, obliterating the trail through the woods to get to that blind. I found a well-worn deer trail through the east woods that goes right be a cedar tree that Mary and I identified as a future potential deer blind location.
    
  • After returning from deer blind prospecting, I discovered several nymph ticks, with a couple biting me. We've found that rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball soaked on these little buggers helps get off easier. They still itch for a few days after they bite.