July 3-9, 2022

Weather | 7/3, 57°, 89° | 7/4, 70°, 95° | 7/5, 76°, 97° | 7/6, 0.98" rain, 69°, 87° | 7/7, 2.04" rain, 65°, 79° | 7/8, 0.54" rain, 70°, 81° | 7/9, 63°, 83° |

• Sunday, 7/3: All Garden Plants Are Mulched
  
  • Weather forecasts reveal expected high temperatures of nearly 100 in the future, so we went back to slogging through garden work to better protect our plants. I mowed the west lawn, bagging the grass and filling wheelbarrows while Mary hauled off the grass clippings and mulched the rest of the plants that needed ground covered near them. This included the remaining tomato plants, beans, onions, peppers, cucumbers, zucchinis and sweet potatoes.
  • After finishing mulching, we watered all gardens.
    
  • I killed another squadron of Japanese beetles. The low-level bugs were tapped into a bucket of soapy water. The high-fliers were hit with soapy solution flying from a squirt bottle. It's fun nailing these bastards until one crawls down your shirt. They have spiny legs. After I peeled one out from under my T-shirt, Mary came out of the house and said, "I saw that!" I guess I was jumping around a bit.
  • We were going to roast pork loin meat on an outside fire, but after a day sweating in the heat, that idea didn't sound appealing. We ate inside. Along with pork loin smothered in homemade barbecue sauce, we enjoyed baked potato and frozen watermelon. We finished the last bottle of 2020 pear wine. It tasted marvelous, with a strong pear flavor that had a bit of tang to it. Aging wine for a year or more definitely improves its taste.
    
    
• Monday, 7/4: A Working July 4th
  
  • Mary figured our savings funds and wrote monthly checks for bills.
  • Mom called. The countryside is green, due to constant rains in eastern MT. Lightning struck the fiberglass siding of Hank's son's home in Glasgow MT. Hank is Mom's boyfriend. She was curious about Katie. I told her more. Mom said a rumor went around Circle that she was packing up to leave town. She got on the microphone at a Circle Senior Center dinner and announced that the rumor was false. Everyone clapped. The Circle Banner newspaper sold, so it's not closing down. The hardware store is up for sale. Someone bought the grocery store, so it's not going away. The Round Town restaurant building across from the Wooden Nickle is for sale, as it's been for years. The Corner Bar is for sale. Karen is visiting Mom for 3-4 weeks toward the end of August. Mom is patiently waiting for Patti Wittkopp, the Physician Assistant (PA) in Circle, to write a note stating that Mom's health is fine, so Mom can drive the senior van. People are already lined up to go with Mom in the senior van to Miles City at the end of this month. Mom wondered aloud to Patti Schipman if maybe the county board thought Mom was too old to drive the senior van and Patti responded with, "You've never acted your age." They laughed after that comment. Mom visits Hank at his home in Glasgow a couple times a month and Hank visits Mom in Circle with about the same frequency.
    
  • Mary watered garden plants in the morning. We both gave all garden plants a thorough soaking in the evening, due to the higher heat. All plants are thriving with their new grass mulch. I watered the 4 east and south apple trees. We are now in a dry spell.
    
  • I spent a couple hours killing Japanese beetles. The Sargent crabapple tree is a good beetle magnet.
    
  • Mary mowed the north yard.
    
  • Bill texted that his new car runs great, has superb brakes, and gets better gas mileage than he experienced with his last car. This 2019 Sonata averages 30 mpg in city driving. He thinks it might reach 36-38 mpg with highway driving.
  • We heard what probably was a $1,000 worth of fireworks going off into the evening. With temperatures in the 80s after dark, we stayed inside.
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/5: First Blackberries
  
  • Mary marched all around the west, south and just east of the far garden and picked just a handful of ripe blackberries. There are some places where blackberries once grew that have none, now. Several red berries are everywhere, so we need to check daily. Red blackberries turn black very quickly.
    
  • I used the Stihl trimmer with the blade to cut down tall grass on the trail from Bass Pond to Bramble Hill and about a third of the way down Bramble Hill to Wood Duck Pond.
    
  • Mary and I then picked just a few more blackberries. We watched small fish jump clean out of the water at Bass Pond. It has an algae and pollen bloom occurring around its edge. We ventured down to Wood Duck Pond, where we saw tons of small bull frogs and bull frog tadpoles. A great blue heron flew away. There are tons of deer and raccoon tracks in the sand on the pond's shore. Today's heat was super intense on Bramble Hill.
    
  • I killed another big bucket load of Japanese beetles.
  • Mary and I watered garden plants and fruit trees. Plants in the gardens are growing fast.
    
  • I have no plastic bags left on small apples on the Esopus apple tree. Deer are munching apples and bags right off the tree.
  • While getting the mail, I spooked up a doe and her twin fawns. The fawns that were about half the size of the doe just a month ago are now almost the same size at the doe. Probably our apples help them grow fast.
    
  • Bill texted that he is tuckered out from a very hot day at work.
  • After we went to bed, several thunderstorms moved through and it rained almost an inch overnight. That's great! We needed the rain.
    
    
• Wednesday, 7/6: Tree Branch Trim & Esopus Electric Fence
  
  • I woke at 4:30 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and went outside. A doe and  a fawn snorted at me just 30 feet east of the lane, then ran away. They were bedded down. I watched another deer walk by NE of the far garden, then follow our trail to Bass Pond. I watched an adult red-headed woodpecker feed a grub to a younger bird. Both birds were on top of an electric power pole in our yard. I killed Japanese beetles, since they were all over the Sargent crabapple tree.
    
  • Mary picked another partial handful of blackberries, reporting that several red and green blackberries are out there.
  • She spent a couple hours trimming branches from the large forsythia bush and from trees along our quarter-mile lane. Now we can walk by the forsythia without getting a branch smacking our heads and the UPS truck can drive our lane without knocking mirrors out of kilter.
    
  • Our chimney is now squeaking. Every time a chimney swift adult goes down the chimney with a bug, a bunch of little babies raise a ruckus. This chimney swift nest is next to the stove pipe entering the chimney, so they essentially sound like they're in our living room.
    
  • I knocked down weeds, grass, and hip-high persimmon shoots in and around the fences guarding the Esopus and Grimes Golden apple trees. I found 5 partially-eaten small apples inside zippered plastic bags at the base of the tree and buried under weeds and grass. There were also 3 other apples torn from the tree and dropped to the ground. I suspect munching deer. I added 4 more metal fence posts to the Esopus fence, bringing the total to 8, and better encircling the tree. I removed the fish line, then added insulators, 3 lines of electrical wire, and a gate. I then buried an electric fence feed wire from the near garden to this new fence. After connecting the fences, the fence energizer went to full strength and I measured a full 7,000 volts at the new fence. I paper clipped 2 pieces of tin foil on the east side of the new fence, where I saw a deer trail coming through the persimmon trees to the apple tree. Then I smeared peanut butter on the foil. Try that on for size, you dastardly apple eating deer! The electric fence fortress looks good (see photo, below).

  

  New electric fence around the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree.
  

• Thursday, 7/7: Moisture Arrives & Plants Are Smiling
  
  • We're no longer dry. Buckets of rain poured down overnight. We woke to falling rain, which ended late morning. Over 3 inches fell in 2 days. We're under a flood watch.
    
  • Tours of the gardens show fast plant growth.
    
  • I gave Mary a haircut. It took about 1.5 hours to accomplish.
    
  • Mary made a turkey pot pie.
  • I killed more Japanese beetles.
  • Plans to go blueberry picking are delayed with predicted thunderstorms.
  • Thunderstorms started banging around us when we went to bed.
    
    
• Friday, 7/8: 100 Years at the License Office!
  
  • We drove to Monticello, MO, our county seat, to renew Mary's driver's license. I thought it would only take a few minutes. I was very wrong. We were gone for over 2 hours. There were several people ahead of us. One young guy was trying to get his commercial driver's license. He was past his deadline to get it and he received a traffic ticket since taking his written exam, so his name wasn't in the state's computer system. He was also getting tags for just about everything he owned, including a watercraft! There was a guy sitting in front of us who probably hasn't bathed this year. Layers of grime showed under his arm revealed through a scrap of a shirt in which the sleeves were torn off...a variation of a dickey. An elderly lady 2 people ahead of us obtained a car license of a vehicle in a trust and that took several minutes. On the way home, we stopped in Lewistown to get a 5-gallon can of gas and their internet was down, thereby rejecting credit or debit cards. I was tired of waiting, so we went on home without the gas.
    
  • Mary and I picked a bigger amount of blackberries, compared to previous pickings. We now have 2 quarts in the freezer.
  • We suspect a chimney swift tragedy occurred. There was a strong smoke odor in the living room for about 45 minutes in the morning. Plus, we don't hear baby chimney swifts, or see adult chimney swifts flying about outside. We think that the skanky willow wood we burned at times last winter put a thicker-than-usual soot layer inside the chimney. We think that the heavy dumping of rain the past couple of days loosened the soot and it all collapsed at once, smothering all of the chimney swifts. When I clean out the chimney this fall, I'll be able to verify our assumption.
  • Katie sent photos and a video of snowy owls (see video, below), taken at Point Hope, AK. She also said she saw some long-tailed jaegers.
  A snowy owl at Point Hope, Alaska.
  

• Saturday, 7/9: Shopping, Weeding, & Fertilizing
  
  • We ran out of chick feed this morning, so I drove the pickup to Quincy. Besides pet food, I got a few grocery items and a windshield sunshade for the pickup. Walmart sunshades were either black or with a red skeleton image...HELL NO!!! I got a good one at AutoZone for the same price as the Walmart garbage. I'm always amazed at the piggyness of people in Quincy while shopping. They're not worried about showing off their mounds of flubber as they slowly waddle about store aisles. That entire town needs to start running. Gas was a little cheaper at $4.34 a gallon.
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry and weeded rows in the far garden.
  • After returning home and eating, I mixed up two 2-gallon batches of liquid fertilizer (essential micro-nutrients, molasses, fish hydrolysate, liquid kelp and a bit of dish soap), which I sprayed on all garden plants. I ended spraying after dark with the help of a hat light.
  • Mary picked some blackberries, starting a third quart in the freezer.
  • We heard and saw a chimney swift, so there is at least one surviving member of the chimney swift family.
  • Two things I forgot to mention yesterday. First, my cousin, Denise, died. She's my mother's sister's daughter. Second, we enjoyed a bottle of pumpkin wine. It's very good.
  • Purple cone flowers are blooming just west of the house (see photo, below). They were planted in 2010 and continue to grow and spread in the area, battling it out with comfrey, that was also planted in 2010.
  • Mom sent a photo of her winning the grand prize at the McCone Electric Cooperative Meeting last month (see photo, below).

Purple cone flowers just west of our house.

Mom pictured in McCone Electric magazine.