July 2-8, 2023

Weather | 7/2, 1.28" rain, 67°, 81° | 7/3, 63°, 89° | 7/4, 67°, 92° | 7/5, 0.48" rain, 69°, 85° | 7/6, 60°, 76° | 7/7, 0.16" rain, 57°, 76° | 7/8, 60°, 77° | 

• Sunday, 7/2: Blackberry Picking in Full Swing
  
  • Mary handled the monthly bills and made a venison General Tso midday dinner.
  • She also walked around to all known berry patches on our property and picked blackberries. There is over a quart of berries in the freezer. Our main patch on Bramble Hill got too hot and dry. The plants are almost non-existent, there. We do have several red and turning ripe berries in other patches, though.
    
  • I used the tractor and smashed down berry picking paths while dumping fire blight branches below the Bass Pond dam.
    
  • I transplanted my three Antonovka apple rootstock trees into bigger pots. I retrieved the pots from the cow barn in the middle of our property.
    
  • We decided not to try to revive the strawberry plants that are looking terrible, due to intense heat and neglect. We'll buy new plants next spring.
  • I picked six green apples off the ground from under the Empire and Granny Smith apple trees. Strong winds came with the recent thunderstorms and knocked more apples to the ground.
    
  • Mary watched goldfinches trying to tear the middles out of blooming purple cone flowers.
  • With the large amount of overnight rain, we enjoyed another day free from watering gardens.
  • We watched the 2022 movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
    
    
• Monday, 7/3: Clipping Fire Blight & Picking Blackberries
  
  • I clipped fire blighted branches out of the Sargent crabapple tree. I also took one fire blighted branch out of the Granny Smith and Empire apple trees. Conditions must be perfect this year for the spread of that tree bacteria, because it's everywhere and plentiful.
  • Mary weeded peppers and melons in the far garden.
  • We saw a wood thrush hunting bugs in north lawn. It usually stays in the woods.
    
  • We both picked blackberries in the hot afternoon. Each blackberry search starts with a march to a patch at the far end of the north field, then between Bass and Dove Ponds, then Bramble Hill. Next we go to the west field, then Frog Pond, to the gully next to the woods and west of our house, then along the east side of the south woods. I took care of the gully, since it's filled with poison ivy, sometimes up to your chest. We filled two quarts, /We now have three in the freezer, which is not bad for two days of picking berries.
  • I picked 10 green apples off the ground underneath the Empire tree. I saw tiny deer tracks in the mulch. In an attempt to do something fast, I laid down flat strips of two-foot wide chicken wire surrounding that tree. Maybe walking on springy chicken wire will keep these fawns out from under the tree. Eventually, I need to install an electric fence. The Missouri Extension website highly recommends one strand of electric wire baited with four-inch squares of aluminum foil that are paper clipped to the wire with peanut butter applied to the inside of the folded foil. We've used it on big fences and know it works. Putting the peanut butter on the inside would save it from getting washed away by rain.
  • The two loads of clothes Mary washed and put out on the line dried very nicely in today's sun.
    
  • We tried a bottle of persimmon wine...YUCK, TOOWEE!!! It was three months old from bottling. The initial taste had hints of brown sugar, but additional sips gave me a feeling I was drinking whiskey. It wasn't good and hard to finish. We put part of the bottle in the fridge. I hope aging improves the taste. If not, this will not be a future wine to make.
  • No garden watering today, but that changes tomorrow with predicted heat into the lower 90s.
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/4: A Hot Fourth of July
  
  • Mary dusted Epsom salts and bone meal on squash, pumpkin, corn and some potato plants. Then, we watered all garden plants.
    
  • We picked blackberries, adding two and a quarter quarts to the freezer. The grand total is just over five quarts. Today, we divided up in order to pick fruit quicker.
  • I saw a monarch butterfly on a milkweed plant while picking berries. When we first arrived to this property in 2009, we saw lots of monarchs. Now, it's a rare event to see one.
    
  • Juan and Alma, our neighbors in the trailer across the gravel road from us, invited us to a party they are holding on July 6th to celebrate their daughter's first birthday.
  • Outside activities were tough in today's heat and humidity. Each time returning inside, we'd take our soaking wet clothes off, sit in front of the air conditioner, and drink huge quantities of cold iced tea.
    
  • I collected and wrote down my AM and PM glucose readings since April 1 in order to give them to my doctor during tomorrow morning's appointment.
  • We heard some Independence Day fireworks going off, but we stayed inside, instead of going out to view them. It's just too blasted hot!
    
    
• Wednesday, 7/5: Good Doctor Visit
  
  • Mary saw four deer in the west yard when she opened the living room curtains. Two does and two fawns were eating on vegetation. One was munching on the sweet cherry tree, so she waived the curtains. The deer stared and went back to eating. Then Mary knocked on the window glass. The deer stared at the demented woman. Then she opened the window and shouted, which made our dogs bark. The four deer shot out of the yard like they were pursued by demons from hell.
  • I checked the apple trees just south of the house and didn't see fallen apples under the trees. Obviously the chicken wire laying on the grass around the trees is working to keep deer from tearing apples out of the trees.
    
  • My visit to the Lewistown Clinic went well. My doctor likes my glucose numbers and is even concerned some of the readings are too low. The blood pressure check done by the nurse was a little high, at 148/78, so my doctor did a quick check and came up with better results of 110/75. That proves the blood pressure medication is working. If results from my blood and urine tests are good, my next visit is in six months. If the results are less than adequate, I return in three months.
    
  • I went blackberry picking while Mary watered the garden. There are a lot of big, ripe berries out there. I only received two hand wounds from blackberry brambles. I get into some weird yoga positions as I contort my body in and around berry plant spines to reach out and pluck berries. Move too fast and a spine will bite you real hard. Mary showed up midway through the big Bramble Hill berry patch, then started picking in the west field. I started near the Frog Pond until I was rained out. We put three quarts in the freezer, giving us a grand total eight.
  • We gained another half inch of rain which kicked on the sump pump for the first time in several weeks. The once deep cracks in our clay soil are disappearing.
    
    
• Thursday, 7/6: Great Medical News & Hispanic Party
  
  • The Lewistown Clinic nurse called this morning and gave me great news. My A1C is at 6.3, which is in the prediabetic range. This was a major drop from an A1C reading of 9.2 on Feb. 27th. My lipid levels were good, so the cholesterol medication is working. The nurse says Dr. Abueg is happy with the test results. I am to stay with the current medications and visit him in six months.
    
  • We picked a lot of blackberries and put six quarts into the freezer. Our grand total is 14 very stuffed quarts. We added a new spot to our picking routine, which is the southeast field. When I broke down a path to there with the tractor a few days ago, I didn't see berries, but they are showing now. We also found place where blackberry bushes expanded out across the field in that area.
    
  • We are finding lots of ticks and chiggers while berry picking. Mary had nine ticks on the back of her shirt after returning from one berry picking trip. I have about 12 chigger bites. I guess we need to bathe in bug spray.
    
  • In the late afternoon, while feeding pets, Mary spotted a buck deer in north yard, eating grass near the McIntosh apple tree. It had new antlers and one was about 15 inches long. The other antler was shorter. Obviously, deer antlers grow at different rates.
    
  • We attended Juan and Alma's party for their one-year old daughter. They are our neighbors across the gravel road. He works at the big dairy, about a mile west of us. Several Hispanic families attended. It was a crowd of about 35 people. They all spoke Spanish, although several also spoke English. Games they play are fun, especially when the kids whacked away at a piñata. They had three piñatas. A long cord tied to the piñata and looped over an oak tree branch was held by one of the fathers. He pulled it up and down as kids tried to smack it with a big stick. Everyone sang a specific song each time a designated child hit the piñata. At one point, a tall kid really swung hard and a mom yelled for the kids to stand back. She spoke in English at that point. It seemed as if a warning in English meant more to the kids than Spanish did. The night ended with an extremely (and I mean very extremely) sweet cake. I'm sure my blood glucose shot through the roof. It was fun. These people really know how to have fun. It's nice to go to a child's birthday party where you're offered a beer. It's a real family event. My only regret is that I don't know Spanish. If I did, I'd know what everyone was saying and singing.
    
    
• Friday, 7/7: Blackberries, Blackberries, & More Blackberries
  
  • I drove to Quincy for one of my meds, along with hen and dog food.
    
  • Mary picked blackberries while I was gone. She thought the south berry patch would produce very few, but she was wrong (see photo below). These berries are ripening each and every day.
    
  • I returned home to a thunderstorm. Lightning flashed to the west as I turned onto our driveway. We had a couple instant bangs after flashes of lightning. It resulted in a nice little rain.
    
  • We both went berry picking. I filled a medium stainless steel bowl. Today we put over five quarts into the freezer. It's a total of 19 quarts of this year's blackberries.
    
  • The number of ticks are unreal this summer. Mary disposed of 32 ticks she found on her clothing today. Anytime a dog goes outside, we have to do a thorough inspection. Wildlife must be filled with them.

  

  We picked several bowls of these blackberries.

• Saturday, 7/8: Last Planting & More Blackberries
  
  • Mary took a break from berry picking, weeded most of the near garden, and planted beans and some more potatoes. It's the last of garden planting until garlic goes in the ground in November. She also mowed what she needed to add mulch to the area where she put potatoes.
  • A baby hummingbird visited Mary while she worked in the garden. It would zing back and forth in U-shaped arcs in front of Mary. Finally, a larger hummingbird chased it away.
    
  • I went through the blackberry picking gulag again today. This year is turning out to be a great blackberry year. I added six more quarts to the freezer, giving us a grand total of 25. I ended the day at the big berry patch on Bramble Hill. There were ripe berries I didn't get, because my bowl was so full that berries were starting to fall out. The sun was close to setting when I called it a day. I didn't get to three patches.
  • I saw the buck I'm calling Long Horn Short Horn, who has a left antler longer than the right one. He ran off from the berry patch between Bass and Dove Ponds and stood at the entrance to the trail that goes down to the bottom of the Bass Pond dam and looked at me. When both sides of his antlers grow out, he will have a very nice rack.
  • We had relatively strong winds and the local crop duster was flying over our house while spraying fields with his poisons. His plane is without identification numbers on its wings. There are so many things wrong about how this guy operates.
  • We have a wood thrush that sits on the guide wire to the electric pole next to the house that chips at us, which probably means a nest is nearby, maybe in the cedar tree next to the woodshed. These birds are supposed to be timid, hiding in the timber. This one isn't shy at all.