June 18-24, 2023

Weather | 6/18, 0.05" rain, 63°, 77° | 6/19, 59°, 88° | 6/20, 61°, 89° | 6/21, 63°, 89° | 6/22, 59°, 90° | 6/23, 61°, 93° | 6/24, 65°, 96° |

• Sunday, 6/18: Father's Day
  
  • We relaxed today, while reading inside.
  • A small thunderstorm popped through, giving us a tiny bit of rain. We need a hurricane to barrel up the Mississippi River and give us a big dumping.
    
  • Mary and I watered all of the plants and seeds in both gardens.
  • Bill called, wishing me a happy father's day. He has Friday off, so Bill will be visiting us over the weekend.
  • Katie called, too. She was running (or more like hiking straight up a mountainside) at Girdwood, today.
  • Ansel & Zelma Marquette visited. His son, David, will be moving into the trailer on Ansel's property, which is to the south of us. His son-in-law, Rich, now owns the 20 acres adjacent to the southwest corner of our property. Ansel said his son will inherent his acreage to the south of us. This all came up while talking about Ben Woodruff, who annually asks everyone if their property is for sale. Ansel doesn't hunt, anymore. He fell, hurt his hip, and uses a cane. He's 91. When I asked how old he was, he said 94, then Zelma held up one finger and he said, "Oh, 91, I guess." He repeated things about 20 times, like a chicken coop that he and his dad built for his grandparents when they lived here.
    
  • We had an entire yard of fledgling bluebirds flying around our house in the morning. A cardinal was bathing in tree leaves after it rained. Mary saw the first eastern kingbird of the season.
    
    
• Monday, 6/19: Racking Pumpkin Wine
  
  • We watered seeds and plants early on. If we didn't water, garden plants would be crispy critters. I'm noticing several young trees on the edge of the west woods with brown leaves. This drought is killing young hardwood trees. On the positive side, wild prairie roses are blooming (see photos, below).
    
  • Mary watched two red-tailed hawks circling above us and to the west as they attacked one another.
  • I racked the pumpkin wine for the second time. It was overdue, with a good inch of fines in the bottom of two carboys. I transferred all liquid into the big brew bucket, getting exactly eight gallons. The specific gravity was 0.995 and the pH was still at 3.5. I added 1.4 grams of potassium metabisulfite. We sipped a bit of it. There's a strong odor and taste from the fines, but you can taste pumpkin and cinnamon. It's closer in taste to the first batch of pumpkin wine I made two years ago, which means it's very good. The liquid went into a 6.5-gallon carboy, a gallon jug, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle.
    
  • Mary put more water on garden plants, then picked black raspberries and snow peas. Both the berries and peas are dwindling. She checked blackberries near the west woods and they're all green. One batch of blackberries is ripening in the chicken yard.

Wild rose blossoms just east of our lane.

Wild roses near Bluegill Pond.

• Tuesday, 6/20: Murky Air
  
  • We have very murky skies. Our air quality index, created by the U.S. Weather Service, went as high as 122, today, which isn't good for sensitive people.
  • Mary cooked up a wonderful venison General Tso meal.
    
  • She also picked raspberries and snow peas and watered garden plants and seeds. She put white row covers over the sweet potato plants to save them from the blazing sun.
    
  • I found an online calculator for determining angles and dimensions for constructing a gambrel shed building.
  • I thinned about 5 apples off the Granny Smith apple tree, then pruned off all of the fire blight branches (see photos, below). I put each cut branch in an old laundry basket and cleaned the shears after each cut, so that I wouldn't spread the fire blight bacteria. This meant climbing up and down the ladder with each cut I made, which is a good way to build leg muscles. The tree shows a better appearance, without brown leaves on it.
    
  • We're noticing that our chimney swifts are very quiet as they haul bugs in their beaks to waiting chicks in the chimney, so as not to attract attention to themselves. Later, when they're teaching young birds to fly, they're really loud. The birds that are loud right now are house wrens. They kick out a constant chatter, but especially if you get near their nest.

Pruning fire blight branches off Granny Smith.

Me, with a culled apple in hand.

• Wednesday, 6/21: Summer Solstice
  
  • We start backing away from the sun on the northern half of Planet Earth, which is fine by me. There's too much sun cooking the ground in our neck of the woods. Our clay soil is cracking.
  • I drove the tractor/trailer with dead fire blighted branches from the Granny Smith tree northeast to below the Bass Pond dam and dumped them out. I saw a lot of red-colored blackberries along the way. The plants look dry and really need rain. I thought I heard movement when I walked down below the dam. When I fired up the tractor to drive back home, there was a doe deer running away from me.
  • FedEx delivered a package from Katie. It is three mushroom growing kits that she gave me for Father's Day. Interesting!
    
  • Mary was on the garden watering and pea picking agenda for yet another day. She said it's the end of peas. We have enough and they're struggling.
  • A tree frog shows up inside the watering cans when they're stored in the woodshed (see photo, below). It took Mary a little time to coax the little guy out of the watering can's hollow handle and onto a bay tree leaf.
    
  • All seeds that we recently planted have sprouted. The only garden plant not through the ground yet is potato.
  • I nipped fire blighted branches out of the Empire apple tree. This tree has fewer areas of brown leaves, as compared to Granny Smith, but this tree has a wider growth pattern, so pruning took several hours. Next, I need to thin apples on Empire.
  • There is a strong floral essence in the air, because milk weed flowers are blooming. They smell amazing. We have several beyond the east yard.
    
  • After dark, we heard chimney swift chicks at the base of the chimney while we sat in the living room.
  • Each night, while walking the dogs, we marvel at the number of lightning bugs across the field and in oak tree tops, despite the dry weather we're experiencing. They really like our wild acreage.

  

  A tree frog that likes hiding in a watering can.

• Thursday, 6/22: Getting Ready for Bill
  
  • Mary cleaned the house, so Bill won't be frightened by giant dust bunnies upon his arrival, tomorrow.
  • I mowed the lane, so that Bill's car won't be required to climb Jack-in-the-beanstalk chicory stems. I mowed through the highest heat of the day...90°. It required two long pit stops, complete with 52-ounce drinks of iced tea. The most brutal mowing of our property is on the lane, because it's so hot. And the whirling dust kicked up by the mower at the end of the lane is an added touch.
    
  • We water garden plants at noon and then again around 8 p.m. Such a schedule seems to keep everything moist. This month's water bill ought to be a whopper!
  • Mary chased a big gray raccoon away that was visiting the mulberry tree in the middle of the west yard, just south of the chicken coop. It was too close to chickens, so she made sure it wasn't welcome.
  • Mary watched a hummingbird get chased out of the top of the big Bartlett pear tree by an Eastern bluebird.
  • As I got the mail, a doe watched me from the field west of the lane until I walked to close, then wheeled around and ran westerly.
    
    
• Friday, 6/23: Bill Visiting
  
  • It's my sister's birthday, today.
  • We watched a young fawn feeding on greenery in the north yard this morning.
    
  • Bill showed up around midday. He's here for today and the weekend.
    
  • Mary made pizza for our midday meal.
    
  • I fixed the outside sun and insect blocks on two air conditioners. The vinyl siding I used contains ridges to make it look like wood grain and that hinders aluminum tape from sticking. I used wider pieces of tape, then used my thumbnail to thoroughly adhere the tape to the vinyl siding. While fixing this, I watched several mud daubers drink water emerging from the AC coils.
    
  • I took the weedwhacker down to the mailbox and trimmed poison ivy, tall weeds, and grass away from around the mailbox. It was all getting too high. Poison ivy needs to be trimmed away from the edges of our quarter mile lane, but it was too hot, today, to do that job.
  • On drought maps, we're in a severe drought area. Some parts of Kansas are even dryer and in the extreme drought region.
    
  • We watered garden plants, like always. Everything is doing fine, despite the heat.
    
  • Bill picked out two movies that we watched...Must Love Dogs and French Kiss.
    
    
• Saturday, 6/24: High Outside Heat
  
  • Really hot temperatures kept us inside for most of the day.
  • Mary saw a robin carry a small snack down the lane, then it stopped near a fledgling, pecked away at the dead snake, and feed bits to a fledgling.
  • Bill washed two loads of clothes. With today's high heat, they baked to a fine crisp on the line.
  • Mary processed more snow peas, resulting in 10 more packages, for a grand total of 50. That's a big increase from last year's result of 22.
  • In the afternoon, we saw twin fawns eating grass and weeds under the McIntosh apple tree. They still have spots. About at that same time, a dozen swallows that were perched on the electric line going to our home took off and flew all over the east yard.
  • Outside heat was horrendous. We noticed a few rain drops, but developing thunderstorms grew bigger to the east of us and put a bunch of rain into Quincy and beyond. We're dryer than ever, here.
  • Due to watering two times a day, the garden plants look good.
  • We played a game of Rummy for several hours after dark. Bill and Mary enjoyed a couple IPA beers. I had apple cider and a jug of hot tea, followed by jalapeño wine. We ate copious amounts of popcorn. Mary won. Bill took second place. I brought up the rear. It was fun.