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.