June 5-11, 2022

Weather | 6/5, 56°, 83° | 6/6, 0.34" rain, 63°, 85° | 6/7, 60°, 80° | 6/8, 0.78" rain, 61°, 77° | 6/9, 54°, 80° | 6/10, 0.17" rain, 61°, 77° | 6/11, 58°, 85° |

• Sunday, 6/5: Garlic Harvest Complete
  
  • Mary harvested the last 3 varieties of garlic, which are Samarkand, Shvelisi, and Georgian Crystal. These varieties involved full rows, so we had more to hang up. Sixteen more bundles of garlic are now hanging in the machine shed rafters. They stay there, drying, until September.
  • I straightened the 4 corner posts of the far garden, pounding in brick pieces to solidify 2 steel posts and replacing 3 brace wires.
  • I picked cherries off the big pie cherry tree in the morning and in the evening. It was about half a quart. I squirted carpenter ants several times, who are planting aphids on new leaf growth. As soon as I get off the garden electric fence detail, I need to apply Tanglefoot on the trunk of the tree. I'm actually late doing the Tanglefoot. Cherry fruit numbers are down.
    
  • I learned from Karen that Mom does her heart stress test on June 9th.
  • Mary and I toured fruit trees. Deer munched most of the blueberry plants (damn deer!) and several apple and cherry tree branches. Nicely developing apples are forming on the large Liberty and Esopus trees. Several tiny apples are on the McIntosh tree. All fruit trees look good and except for a few apple cedar spots on the large Bartlett pear and the skinny Liberty (which is not a Liberty, since its apples are green and Liberty's apples are red), the trees are disease-free.
  • Two red-tailed hawks circled above our place when we first stepped out to work gardens.
    
    
• Monday, 6/6: Quincy Shopping Trip
  
  • I tried to charge the Buick's AC refrigeration, but the AC compressor isn't running. It's probably another chewed wire. I need to build a hermetically-sealed garage for our vehicles.
    
  • Mom texted on how cool, wet, and green things are in eastern Montana, opposite from conditions last year.
  • We shopped in Quincy, driving through town in temperatures close to 90 with the windows rolled down. Mary picked up a 6,000-yard spool of eggshell-colored thread that she ordered as a birthday present. She also bought several DMC embroidery skeins and king-sized batting that was 40% off with a birthday gift card from Bill and birthday money from Mom. We got a heat lamp bulb and chick food for chicks arriving next week, plus a few groceries.
  • An ominous thunderstorm headed our way as we got home. Rain started falling at the end of me unloading the car and Mary finishing up chores. It blew and rained hard for a few minutes.
  • We ate nachos and watched the 1995 BBC 5-hour Pride & Prejudice show. We even watched a couple extras into the wee hours.
  • Lightning bugs were out in full force on the dogs' last walk.
    
    
• Tuesday, 6/7: Potting Tree Starts & Picking Cherries
  
  • Mary did some weeding of onions.
  • She also planted new strawberry plants from runners that were placed in Styrofoam cups. There is just 1 more 4-gallon bucket to put a plant in, so she stuck one more runner into a Styrofoam cup and clipped all of the other runners.
  • Mary planted tree starts. A couple months ago, Mary clipped some live weeping willow branches and stuck them in a Mason jar of water. About a month ago, we added clippings from the base of the big Liberty apple tree from shoots coming off the rootstock and put them in the same jar of water. Today she planted 5 willow starts and 4 apple starts in pots. We'll see what develops.
  • Mary also planted a pot of basil seeds.
  • She cooked up some barbecued pork loins for our main meal.
  • I picked pie cherries all day (see photos, below), starting with what I could reach from the ground, then from the 8-foot step ladder, then from the orchard ladder. We now have 3 quarts of this year's pie cherries in the freezer.
  • Our first snow pea pods are developing.
  • Mom texted that they've received almost 2 inches of rain since Sunday, which is a lot for eastern Montana. They're expecting more this week.
  • On the last dog walk, we stood in the north yard and marveled at all of the fireflies in the treetops. Each tree resembles a Christmas tree with white blinking lights. It's absolutely amazing.

Up in the big pie cherry tree.

Picking ripe pie cherries.

• Wednesday, 6/8: Rain, Weeding & More Cherries
  
  • A loud thunder clap in the sky above the house woke me at 3:45 a.m. My scattering to get out of bed woke Mary and we both scurried off to unplug major appliances. It rained very hard right at that point and in the morning sunshine, puddles were everywhere.
    
  • Mary made venison and gravy on biscuits for our main meal.
  • She finished weeding the onions, then fertilized the onions, strawberries, and herbs with fish fertilizer. Mary also spread wood ashes on the onions.
  • I picked cherries all day, adding 4.25 quarts to our 2022 cherry supply. I'm using the orchard ladder to get high into the top of the cherry tree, where loads of ripe cherries are located. Occasionally, I see opening leaves where carpenter ants are farming aphids into production. A quick squirt with Dawn soap solution puts an end to that nonsense. Scattered in the treetop branches are bird-chewed fruits, but I'm seeing fewer than past years, due to an abundance of berries in mulberry trees throughout the yard.
  • There's a cat bird that belts out the same song throughout the day. It sounds like the bird is shouting, "Don't even think it!" When I say those words right after the cat bird finishes his phrase, Mary says, "Thanks, now I'll have that in my head."
    
    
• Thursday, 6/9: Mom's Great Test Results
  
  • Great news from Mom. After getting up at 3 a.m. to travel to Billings for a heart stress test, then waiting for her skyrocketing blood pressure to settle down, she did the test, then returned home. She received a call from the cardiologist who reviewed the test results and told her that there is nothing wrong with the blood flow to her heart and that everything is good.
  • I picked 2 quarts of cherries. I'm now in the monkey level, at the top of the tree with the orchard ladder. Two hours swinging in the tree top with a NW wind blowing is enough for one day!
  • Mary picked the first snow peas...all 3 of them.
    
  • She mowed the east and south lawns. Mary raked and moved grass clippings to mulch all of the onions, shallots, the area where radishes grew, and where the pumpkin seeds will be planted.
  • I whacked grass from under the electric wires in the far garden. After finishing the outside, I walked by Mary and told her it wasn't dusty. She looked at my face and said, "But it's muddy." I was covered in mud balls.
  • Anytime I lower the RPMs of the trimmer, it wants to die and often quits. I ordered a new carburetor for it through Amazon after doing several days of research.
  • We discovered this morning that deer ate all of the blueberries and a lot of branches off the 3 blueberry bushes. You can't leave anything out in the open. We see that they're munching a lot of leaves off trees around the yard. During hunting season, I've even watched them eat rose bushes with thorns. We need to get a bigger appetite for venison!
    
    
• Friday, 6/10: Quiet Day
  
  • At 4 a.m., while on a piddle venture, I heard water dripping off the roof onto the north AC unit's metal casing, another rain to further boost outdoor plants.
  • I made waffles after a very late morning start. We took most of the day off. Muscles and joints are too tired and achy.
  • As Mary did evening chores, I picked 2.5 more quarts of pie cherries. They came from where I could reach while standing on the ground and from an 8-foot step ladder. Several more are higher in the tree.
  • We enjoyed venison General Tso as our main meal. We drank half a bottle of pumpkin wine after the meal. It's got a wonderful taste. The color of this wine is beautiful...very autumnal, like a mead.
    
  • Mary picked more snow peas.
  • I labeled 29 bottles of blackberry wine and laid them horizontally in a couple coolers. 
  • I have a total of 182 bottles (750 ml, each) of wine stored in coolers, which equals 36 gallons. There's 3 gallons of autumn olive and a gallon of dandelion wine, yet to bottle. So I have 40 gallons of wine. The legal limit is 200 gallons in a calendar year, so I'm good. My total includes several wine varieties made in previous years.
    
    
• Saturday, 6/11: Snow Peas, Pepper Plants & Electric Fence
  
  • Bill called. He's not looking forward to working next week with predicted temperatures as high as 100 in St. Louis, since he works in an non-air conditioned warehouse. He recently trained new help in his department. He needs to ask for the time off and is looking to visit us on June 25-27.
    
  • Mary and I picked several snow pea pods.
  • Mary planted 15 pepper transplants she grew from seed. Ten are various hot peppers and 5 are sweet peppers. She also planted zucchini and cucumber seeds. All were put in the near garden.
    
  • I adjusted far garden electric wires on all posts to the correct height, replaced a piece of rusty wire, tightened all 10 electric wires, and finally, connected feed wires from the near garden to the far garden. The tester gave me medium to weak readings. I still need to seek out shorts and clean up connections, but at least all garden electric fences are fired up. 
  • A few spits of rain fell as I finished checking the fence. I couldn't tell the difference, since I was already soaked from working outside on a hot, muggy day.
    
  • We enjoyed chilled pumpkin wine. It tastes good, both chilled and at room temperature. The chilled version is great to enjoy after a hot day outside.