July 24-30, 2022

Weather | 7/24, 72°, 85° | 7/25, 63°, 76° | 7/26, 0.96" rain, 60°, 75° | 7/27, 69°, 85° | 7/28, 65°, 81° | 7/29, 54°, 80° | 7/30, 54°, 83° |

• Sunday, 7/24: Catching Up With Relatives, Cookies & Electric Fence Work
  
  • Katie called while we were eating breakfast. We talked with her for a long time. With her job project, they're coming along nicely on replacing the huge water tank in Point Hope, AK. She attends 3-day military construction training at Shenandoah National Park in the next couple weeks. The manager of the second phase of construction at Venetie, AK (where Katie worked last summer) isn't working out, so her boss is sending her there to take over. She goes to Hawaii for National Guard work at the end of August. Katie gets all of October off. Towards the end of that month, she's on a tour to Morocco.
  • I spoke with my cousin, Margie, via Messenger, throughout the day. She recently visited Scandinavia, then returned to the high heat and humidity of Philadelphia. Her daughter is a clinical psychologist at a VA facility in La Jolla, which is north of San Diego. Her son is working on a Masters in Public Health and works for a non-profit. Margie is visiting her folks in Clarklake, MI on Aug. 25-29.
  • Mary made wonderful chocolate chip cookies.
  • I hunted squirrels for 20 minutes and saw nothing.
    
  • I cleaned up grass and weeds around and under the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree. I found several half-eaten apples on the ground (see photo, below). I added 2 more wires to the electric fence. They are close to the ground, in case raccoons or ground hogs are the culprits (see photo, below). I also solidified 2 steel posts by pounding in brick pieces with a spud bar next to the base of these posts. I noticed apple blotch on some of the fruit. That tree needs fungicide spray.
  • Mary watered the gardens.
  • I picked strawberries and blackberries for breakfast oatmeal (see photo, below). The blackberry patch west of the house near the woods (see photo, below), is still full of unripe, red berries.
  • We watched the 1971 movie, Fiddler on the Roof. We got the DVD for $3 from Salvation Army on our last shopping trip to Quincy, IL. It hearkens back to Mary's ancestry, because her grandfather left Ukraine around 1917-21. He just wasn't Jewish, but he knew when to get out. This movie takes place in 1905-07.
  • During our last dog walk, a bat dropped into my flashlight beam and picked off a moth. It was really cool.

Green apples chewed by animals.

Two wires added to Esopus fence.

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Blackberries & strawberries. Picking strawberries
in the morning doubles that berry amount.

West blackberry patch is still full of unripe berries.
This spot contains poison ivy, so Mary avoids it.

Monday, 7/25: Fresh Homemade Bread!

• Rain predictions moved some activities inside, today.
• Mary baked 4 loaves of bread and did some cross stitch while guarding cooling bread from cats.
• I knocked down tall grass between the electric and chicken wire fences in 2 places in the gardens and threw downed grass over the electric fence. Light rain kept me from continuing.
• No new chewed apples under the Esopus tree indicates my new low-to-the-ground wires on the electric fence surrounding that tree kept raccoons or opossums out. 
• I noticed a huge pile of raccoon scat on the chicken coop roof and an animal (probably a raccoon) chewed on the chick's exterior door.
• Katie sent a photo of 2 sailboats anchored off Point Hope. Their owners are French. She says their goal is to get to Barrow. I think they need to move quickly, prior to freeze-up.
• We ate the last of the chicken tortellini soup and slices of fresh bread, which was wonderful.
  
  

Tuesday, 7/26: Weed Whacking Electric Fences

• Mary processed 12 packages of half a quart, each, of zucchini to be used in future venison General Tso meals.
• She made venison stroganoff for our main meal.
• I took out weeds and poison ivy around our mailbox and the neighbor's mailbox at the end of our lane. While walking there, a deer and what once was a fawn, but is now the same size as the doe, ran off to the west.
• I ran the trimmer under the electric fence in the near garden. The job took a couple hours, because weeds and grass were so high and thick. I also cleaned up under the Esopos Spitzenburg apple tree electric fence and on the cattle panel fence around the Grimes Golden apple tree.
• Bill reports that other than record rainfalls in St. Louis, his apartment and his place of work didn't flood. He usually travels I-70 to work, but took a different route this morning, which made him late for work. I-70 was under water (see photo, below). St. Louis set an all-time high rain record overnight. Both Katie and Mom texted, asking how Bill was doing.
• The squirrels are back in the McIntosh apple tree, leaving about a dozen half-eaten green apples under the tree. That's what happens when you let your guard down for two days!

Flooded I-70. Bill drives through this exact spot, daily.

• Wednesday, 7/27: Quick Chick Food Shopping
  
  • Chick food is almost out, so I drove the pickup to Quincy, IL, to buy more, plus a few other items.
  • We have chicks this year who just shovel food out on the floor inside the coop, instead of eating it. They're mainly buff orpington cockerels, who will be the first butchered, since they're also the largest of the chicks.
    
  • Gas is down to $3.97 a gallon at Sam's Club in Quincy.
    
  • Mary mowed the center and west sides of the lane. I mowed the east side after returning from Quincy, since it is full of poison ivy and affects Mary if she mows it.
  • On the garden check, Mary says muskmelon, watermelon, pumpkins, tomatoes, and tomatillos are all developing fruit. We're starting to see white buds on the beans.
  • I saw 2 chimney swifts bop down the chimney after sunset. Usually, they are gone by now, heading back to the Amazon rain forest. We think they are tending to a late hatch of chicks.
    
    
• Thursday, 7/28: Mowin' and a Whackin'
  
  • Mary mowed the west yard.
  • She also made 2 pizzas...one for our midday meal and another for our evening meal.
    
  • I weed whacked under the electric fence in the far garden. It took all day. There were lots of thick grass, tall weeds, and a few persimmon saplings.
  • There are 3 chewed up green apples under the Esopus apple tree!!! It must be squirrels. One recommendation online is to start with hardware cloth or chicken wire at the base of a fence, then proceed with electric wires. That way the critter is thoroughly grounded on the fence when it touches the electric wire and really gets a good shock. This idea works especially good with squirrels. I might have to try it.
  • This year's chicks are big food wasters. About 80% of the food is shoveled onto the floor. We've started to scoop it off the floor and pour it back into the feeder.
  • Mary and I watered the far garden. Then, I picked strawberries and blackberries for tomorrow's waffles while Mary watered the near garden.
    
    
• Friday, 7/29: Hunting, Waffles & Fertilizing
  
  • I woke up at 4:55 a.m., got dressed, and went outside to hunt squirrels. I didn't see squirrels. They were smarter than me. They stayed in bed. The sun is rising a little further to the south. At sunrise, it once hit the spot where I hunt from, but now I'm in shadows when it rises.
  • I made waffles for breakfast. Blackberries and strawberries taste great on waffles.
  • Mary checked the cucumbers. She didn't pick any, because a significant number will be ready in 2-3 days. She picked 5 zucchinis, 15 tomatillos, and 1 big tomato.
  • I drove to Lewistown, MO, which is 5 miles north of our home, and bought gas for mowers and the trimmer. We own three 5-gallon cans for gas, but I only filled one, because filling all three costs too much money.
    
  • Mary mowed most of the north yard.
    
  • I took a nap, since I only got about 5 hours of sleep last night.
    
  • Mary watered the gardens. She found 5 tomato hornworm eggs on tomato/tomatillo plants yesterday and 2 eggs today.
  • I mowed the rest of the north yard, where the McIntosh tree grows. I think it might be leaning more to the north. It's an old tree and possesses a hollow trunk.
    
  • I sprayed my fertilizer spray, plus neem and karanja oil (natural pesticides) on the 2 newest apple trees, all cherry trees, the prairie fire crabapple, and the Grimes golden apple tree. Then I sprayed fertilizer spray on all garden plants. I added spinosad to the mix when I sprayed the corn, to kill corn earworms, and on the sweet potato plants, to kill a small green worm putting holes in the leaves. I started spraying at 6 p.m. and ended after 10 p.m. I used a hat light after dark. I saw a huge hawk moth laying eggs on the underneath side of tomato leaves. They are hornworms in the larval stage. Hawk moths move very quickly, about the same speed as hummingbirds.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of cherry wine. I poured the wine through 2 layers of paper towels to filter solids out. The filtered wine fell into the glass pitcher recently bought from Salvation Army. Then I poured the wine back into the rinsed-out bottle. This is my way of decanting, or oxygenating the wine. It tasted wonderful. There's a strong cherry flavor. It tastes so good, you can drink it too fast, which tips your turvy at a 12% alcohol content.
    
    
• Saturday, 7/30: Mowing & Fixing Chick Things
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • She also mowed the south, east and part of the west yards. I moved vehicles so she could mow there.
    
  • Since our chicks this year dish most of their feed onto the floor, I took a piece of quarter-inch hardware cloth and filtered most of the feed dumped on the floor back into the chick feeder. I almost filled it with used feed.
  • I removed the chick door, since I saw a second mound of raccoon poo on the chicken coop roof and this door shows signs of raccoon chewings. I found a half-inch piece of plywood with 5 plies, sawed it down to the correct size, installed hardware removed from the old door, and installed the new door on the coop's north wall. The latches had pieces of wood under them that needed changing to make the door close tighter, which took extra time. Curious chicks wandered up close to me to see what I was doing.
  • I sprayed Immunox on the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree to try to get rid of the apple sooty blotch, a fungal disease, that is on these apples. Internet research revealed that potassium bicarbonate, an ingredient put in fire extinguishers and used in some brewmaking, is an effective organic fungicide for killing this fungus and another that causes fly speck on apples. I'll have to try it in future years.
  • Mary watered gardens and picked strawberries. She found 2 hornworm eggs and one very dead hornworm. We suspect it got into the spinosad I sprayed on the corn, yesterday.
  • We're not hearing chimney swifts in the evening, so we suspect they left for their winter home in the Amazon rain forest.