May 21-27, 2023

Weather | 5/21, 41°, 77° | 5/22, 49°, 79° | 5/23, 48°, 83° | 5/24, 55°, 83° | 5/25, 55°, 77° | 5/26, 45°, 75° | 5/27, 46°, 79° |

• Sunday, 5/21: Bill Leaves
  
  • Mary found the first monarch butterfly of this year on the morning dog walk.
  • We haven't seen our resident farm cat, Sherbert, for a couple weeks, but while Mary was checking Plato for ticks, he growled, Mary looked up, and there was that cat trotting across the lawn.
  • I found fire blight in the top of the Esopus apple, the Sargent crabapple, and in some new growth on the Granny Smith apple trees. It's always a struggle. I should have sprayed fruit trees today, but I was too tired for crawling up and down ladders.
    
  • Bill left around 2 p.m. for his apartment in St. Charles, MO. He still has to shop, clean up his apartment, then head to work early tomorrow morning to wade through the hundreds of emails he expects to see after a week away from work. I took the below photo of Bill before he left.
    
  • Mary picked scapes from the garlic. This year's garlic crop looks really great.
    
  • I helped Mary water all garden plants.
    
  • We read into the evening. I started reading Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume I: Fort Sumter to Perryville. I'm only in the Prologue and it's quite good at explaining details about Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln.

  

  Bill, before leaving for his St. Charles apartment.

• Monday, 5/22: Quiet Southern Breezes
  • Weather is sunny, with southern breezes. High wispy clouds decorate the light blue sky.
    
  • We heard, then saw a Carolina wren fly from the forsythia bush to the near garden. We notice them in the winter, but not so much in the summer, even though they are with us year-round.
    
  • I did online research related to my toes. I have what's called Morton's toe, where the second toe next to the big toe is the longest. It's why the right ball of my foot hurts. Toe separators are the answer to solving my pain. I tried making some out of soft foam ear plugs cut lengthwise. They sort of work, but I need to hold them in place, somehow. I'll probably end up buying real toe separators from a drug store.
    
  • Mary cut scapes from the garlic. She figures garlic harvest will start next week.
    
  • I helped Mary water the near garden. Several parsnips are growing. Some sprouted well over a month after seeds were planted.
    
  • We read into the evening. Mary finished Sinbad and Me, a young adult book that see likes. I'm reading more of Shelby Foote's Civil War book. Lincoln's 1860 presidential inaugural speech was very eloquent.
    
    
• Tuesday, 5/23: 2023, The Year of The Fire Blight
  
  • I assessed all of my fruit trees. There is major fire blight damage on the big Bartlett and Kieffer pear trees. I thought Kieffer doesn't get fire blight, but a University of Missouri (MU) website indicates it's less susceptible, not immune, from the disease. Big sections of the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree are infected with it, even on shoots coming off the trunk. That tree might be history. I'm seeing it on new sprouts on the Granny Smith apple tree. The MU website says Granny might get fire blight, but it doesn't harm it extensively. The streptomycin I sprayed this spring seems ineffective against this year's bout of fire blight.
    
  • I mowed inside, outside, and between the fences of the near garden, which was an adventure with all of the tall grass. Mulch went on the far garden.
    
  • We harvested all fully-grown radishes. I pulled them from a tub and Mary yanked them from the near garden, then cleaned them.
    
  • I cleaned cabbage worms out of lettuce growing in a tub, which was too bad, because it's ready to harvest. Somehow, a sulfur butterfly got under the tulle covering the tubs and I didn't discover the worms until today. They wiped out about 75% of the lettuce. Dumping worm-filled lettuce over the fence made for very happy chickens. Two buff Oprington hens learned quickly that my approaching footsteps meant good food. While other hens ran away, they rushed the gate to gobble up wiggly green worms.
    
  • Mary weeded part of the near garden, revealing several emerging onions and a lot of parsnips.
  • Gandalf and Mocha really liked the freshly dried towels, deciding that the clean laundry makes a great cat bed (see photo, below).

  

  Gandalf (left) & Mocha (right) in the laundry.

• Wednesday, 5/24: Weeding, Whacking & Spraying
  
  • Katie sent me some construction photos (see a couple of them, below), then I forwarded family photos to Jeff Olsen for his article about me in the Roseau Times-Region.
    
  • I weed whacked an area between the fences in the near garden that is too tight for a mower to venture. Then I took down tall grass growing in the chicken wire fence using the trimmer at a low rpm. Finally, I trimmed grass/weeds under the electric wire.
    
  • Mary finished weeding parts of the near garden she wanted to accomplish.
    
  • Earlier in the day, I spotted a squirrel next to the nearest pecan tree. Then, while checking the McIntosh apple tree in the late afternoon, a big fox squirrel jumped onto the trunk. I cornered it near the top edge next to an oak tree. I threw a stick at it. The squirrel tried to jump, missed, and hit the ground at my feet. I stomped and shouted while it scampered off. The little bastard is eating apples that are the size of marbles. It's legal to shoot squirrels on Saturday. Bwah, Ha, Ha!!!
    
  • Starting at sunset, I sprayed the following on these fruit trees:
    
    • Copper to battle fire blight on both Bartlett pear trees, Calville, Esopus, Granny, Grimes, and Sargent apple trees.
    • Captan for killing apple scab on Calville, Empire, Esopus, Granny, and Roxbury tree.
    • Immunox against cedar apple rust on Calville, Esopus, Gold Rush, Roxbury, and Prairie Fire apple trees.
    • Spinosad to kill bugs and worms on Calville, Empire, Esopus, Gold Rush, Granny Smith, Liberty, Porter's Perfection, Prairie Fire, and Roxbury.
      
  • While spraying, I heard whip-poor-wills, barred owls, Henslow's sparrows and something growling at me when I ran clean water through the sprayer when I was finished. I'm guessing the growling was from a nearby raccoon. They aren't the cuddly creatures some people like to think. I finished spraying fruit trees around midnight.

Katie (right) in a UIC photo.

Katie on a roof job in Alaska's Bush.

• Thursday, 5/25: The Quincy Heat Sink
  
  • We enjoyed our first strawberries of this year in our oatmeal breakfast.
  • I went shopping in Quincy, since I'm running out of one med this weekend. Quincy is a heat sink, with noticeably hotter temperatures on all of the asphalt and concrete. On the way in, I dropped off aluminum cans at the recycle joint and learned that if I dismantle air conditioners and hand in separate parts, I get paid more than if I just hand over whole AC units. Sam's Club Pharmacy still has me jumping through hoops to get prescription glucometer strips and lancets. I bought two 20-foot long by 3/8" thick rebar at Menards and hacksawed them into eight-foot lengths to fit in the pickup bed. They will become chicken wire reinforcement posts around the gardens.
  • I counted fewer cattle in our east neighbor's lot. He must have permanently lost some in their last flight through his single strand of electric fence wire. I almost ran over the neighbor's stupid lab pup that came out chasing the pickup as I drove by. I rolled down the window and hollered, "GO HOME!" and it instantly stopped and trotted back.
    
  • Back home, Mary mowed around vehicles and the east yard while carefully placing grass mulch around onions and parsnips in the near garden, along with piling it on an empty row.
    
  • We ate delicious taco salad with fresh lettuce. There were more worms in the lettuce, ruining what was left in the tub. Mary found worms in garden lettuce, too. It must be a bad cabbage worm year. I plan on spraying remaining lettuce with Bt, which nails worms.
    
    
• Friday, 5/26: Mowing, Cookies & Wine (Not at the Same Time)
  
  • Original plans were for me to make cookies for Mary's birthday, tomorrow, and for Mary to mow the lane. Poison ivy has really taken over the east side of the lane, where we mow, so I mowed it, instead.
    
  • Mary baked a nice batch of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Of course, we had to test a few to make sure they were good. They were delicious.
  • Jeff Olsen sent several pdf files of old Roseau Times-Region editorials and pro/con pieces that he and I authored from 1992-96, when I was editor of the paper. He called and we talked for 30 minutes. I didn't remember a lot of things that he remembers from that time frame.
    
  • In the evening, after putting the chickens to bed, I saw a big raccoon scampering its butt into the weeds just west of the chicken yard. Right after that, the chickens put up a fuss that lasted quite awhile. Silver, a silver Wyondotte hen, who is one of the survivors of the last time we had a raccoon attack inside the chicken coop, was the ring leader of all of the racket. I'm guessing the big raccoon I saw crawled on the outside of the hardware cloth covering chicken coop windows. Silver remembers the death and destruction of the last raccoon attack and started yelling. Mary closed all chicken coop windows and we did double checks to make sure all was clear inside the coop.
    
  • We cooked up some smoked scrambled eggs. This time, my outdoor fire was very smokey, making the eggs extremely tasty. Mary also make a lettuce/spinach/radish salad, which was amazing. All ingredients were homegrown.
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2021 parsnip wine (see photo, below). It's extremely good. Upon opening the bottle, the cork has a wonderful floral aroma. There's an earthiness to the wine, that suggests a root vegetable, but it doesn't taste or smell like parsnip, at all. The taste is earthy and tangy, with a good floral flavor. It's supposed to age two years. This wine is 13 months out from when it was bottled and it's really good.

  

  The golden color of parsnip wine.

• Saturday, 5/27: Quiet Birthday
  
  • With it being Mary's 57th birthday, we took the day off.
  • I saw a doe running north just beyond our west yard near the edge of the woods. Then, I looked further north and there was another deer munching persimmon tree leaves and heading toward the blueberry bushes. I stepped outside and it ran off. We think we have several doe deer with fawns that are living close to our house.
  • Since we bought Mary's cell phone five years ago, it's been on the same iCloud link as mine. It means that every time one of us takes a photo, it shows up on both of our phones. When I load an app on my phone, it shows up on Mary's phone. When I'm driving in Quincy, Mary could look at her phone and see when the driving block occurs. I created a new iCloud account for Mary and changed her phone over to her own system.
  • Today is the first day of squirrel hunting. I took the .22 rifle to the McIntosh tree and into the woods, nearby, but saw nothing. I did, however, collect three seed ticks...UGH!!!
    
  • A quick check of fruit trees saw no change, but ants are populating aphids into the leaf buds on the Porter's Perfection apple tree.
  • We watched two movies that Mary selected...Young Victoria (2009), and Emma (1996 TV movie).