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.