March 5-11, 2023

Weather | 3/5, 31°, 60° | 3/6, 51°, 60° | 3/7, 32°, 49° | 3/8, 0.07" rain, 35°, 45° | 3/9, 0.57" rain, 37°, 45° | 3/10, 29°, 39° | 3/11, 0.23" rain, 23°, 41° |

• Sunday, 3/5: No More Snow Geese or Swans...Enter Robins
  
  • On this morning's dog walk, Plato was sniffing for a long time underneath a cedar tree along the lane. After too much sniffing, a Bob White quail flew out from under the tree, heading east.
    
  • Mary did two loads of laundry. A strong southeast wind helped dry clothes quickly on the line.
    
  • She also figured savings for the month and filled out bills.
  • I did online and in-house book research on building roof trusses.
    
  • We enjoyed a barbequed pork loin midday dinner and a bottle of 2022 dandelion wine (see photo, below). It was our first taste of the 2022 version. The larger piece of ginger I put in the 2022 batch adds to its flavor. Mary says it possesses a citrus flavor and the wine is a bit bitter. It's quite good. Unfortunately, it means I need to continue making dandelion wine, even though picking dandy petals takes forever.
    
  • We no longer see or hear snow geese or trumpeter swans, but lots of robins yell at us every evening as they gather in walnut tree tops in the east yard.

  

  The golden glow of a partial glass of 2022 dandelion wine.

• Monday, 3/6: Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!
  
  • The day started out quit warm and quickly went to 60°. A northwest wind blowing off fields of snow in northern states eventually brought our temperatures down.
  • Mom texted that Circle, MT, is receiving snow flurries and cold temperatures. She said, "I wish things would start warming up!" I told her I want colder temps, here, so fruit trees don't bloom prematurely. Her reply was, "We can't win, can we?"
    
  • Morning warm temperatures brought out hordes of Asian ladybugs. Mary and I took turns vacuuming bugs as they marched through windows, walls, and doors.
    
  • As Mary made biscuits, I continuously sucked up bugs in ground level rooms so we wouldn't add crunchy insects to our food. Ain't our house lovely!
    
  • Mary trimmed the tarragon and chives, then watered them, because both are growing in their respective pots. She's considering enlarging their pots or adding additional pots after splitting them up.
  • When I walked the dogs on the south loop trail, I saw two wood ducks on Bluegill Pond that didn't fly off, which is unusual. Most of the time wood ducks sitting on that pond beeline out of there when we show up.
    
  • I cleaned up the big chainsaw, then sharpened one of the two chains using a new file.
  • Through online searches, I found an Amish company called Eicher Truss and Lumber, north of Canton, in our county, that might be a good source for roof trusses.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/7: Cutting Unwanted Trees
  
  • We saw this season's first turkey vulture gliding over the house, today.
    
  • I used both chainsaws to clear small trees and cut them up south and east of the house. Several are black walnuts growing too close to fruit trees. Black walnut trees release a chemical called juglone, which suppresses growth in other plants. Other trees I cut down were maples in the west yard and persimmons directly under the Kieffer pear tree. The persimmons are growing into the lower branches of the pear tree. Ten tall persimmons became stakes. I cut up all of the rest and stacked the green wood in the machine shed to dry. Branches went to a brush pile southwest of the house and near the west woods. Cut branches under the pear tree still need to go to the brush pile.
    
  • Mary mended clothes inside while listening to a Great Courses lecture on World War I.
    
  • I cleaned both chainsaws.
  • While walking into the west end of the machine shed, I saw the legs of a cat disappearing under the north edge of the building. Mary and I heard a deer snorting at us just north of the machine shed while we were talking inside the building.
    
  • I found an online calculator to help decide footing sizes of a post-frame house based on several variables. I also found dead weight amounts online for various post-frame building scenarios.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/8: Cloudy Day
  
  • We were cloudy with an east wind gusting to 20 mph.
    
  • I balanced the checkbook.
  • Mary worked on her Native Raven cross stitch pattern. HERE is an image of the finished product.
    
  • I moved the rest of the persimmon branches from small trees I cut that were growing under the Kieffer pear tree. The brush pile is high, now. It's amazing how many branches grow on these small trees.
  • Our cats were busy. In the morning, they killed a juvenile prairie king snake. While we washed dishes after dark, Mocha ran a mouse out from under the kitchen counter that Juliet promptly grabbed and ate.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/9: A Long Rain
  
  • While walking dogs in the morning, we watched some wood ducks fly out of Bluegill Pond and as they headed south a peregrine falcon flew in to try to intercept them.
    
  • Rain started falling around 9:30 a.m. and continued until around 3:30 p.m. It rained hard, at times.
    
  • Mary cross stitched on her Native Raven pattern.
    
  • I labeled the 25 bottles of garlic wine and filled a cooler with them. Mary says I need to take a break on winemaking, since we're running out of room in the upstairs north bedroom with all of the coolers of wine in there. That might be hard to do.
    
  • Mary and I listened to the Third Reich audio book, featuring the Nazification of Germany by Hitler, including journalism, movies, arts, religion, and education. One religion, banning books, and dictating how to educate children are some present-day topics in today's news.
    
  • We watched the 2003 movie, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and the 1998 movie, The Man in the Iron Mask.
    
    
• Friday, 3/10: Apple Wine Tastes Great
  
  • It was mostly cloudy and windy all day. Wind gusts over 20 mph are a daily event.
  • I made waffles for breakfast. Mary made venison General Tso for our midday meal.
    
  • Both Mary and I performed some light housecleaning chores.
    
  • I finished stacking green persimmon wood in the machine shed.
    
  • We tried a bottle of 2022 apple wine two months after bottling it. Mary said it tasted like cider. It possessed a good flowery apple taste and didn't have an alcoholic flavor.
    
  • I found a 34-page online pamphlet from the Purdue Extension Service entitled Managing Pests in Home Fruit Plantings that is the best fruit tree spraying guide I've seen about the subject.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/11: Rain, Construction Research
  
  • Mary heard, then saw an eastern towhee in the forsythia bush, near our east-facing entrance door. It's the first of the season.
    
  • Mom texted that a blizzard was roaring through Circle, MT, today.
    
  • Gray clouds eventually led to rain in the afternoon/evening.
  • We walked the dogs on the south loop trail and did our chores early, due to expected rain. While on the lane, a great blue heron lifted off from Bluegill Pond and flew south. Then, as we neared the pond, five wood ducks flew off.
  • Mary made two quiche pies and we enjoyed one for a midday meal. We're receiving 5-6 eggs a day from the hens.
  • After updating the wine inventory written on a large sheet of paper in the pantry, I did online research of the four soil types on our property. I found an engineering study for a proposed water tower in a small town between Ames and Davenport, Iowa, involving the same soil type. At 4-6 feet, the soil capacity was 2,000 pounds per square foot, which is double the capacity I thought our land's soil possessed. Plunked into a formula I found, it means we need a 24-inch by 8-inch cement footing at the base of posts on a post-frame building.
  • Bill texted that he has a cold. He's hoping it's better by Monday.
    
  • We watched the 2017 movie, Wonder Woman.