July 23-29, 2023

Weather | 7/23, 63°, 91° | 7/24, 64°, 90° | 7/25, 0.03" rain, 67°, 93° | 7/26, 76°, 98° | 7/27, 75°, 100° | 7/28, 75°, 101° | 7/29, 70°, 93° | 

• Sunday, 7/23: Deer & More Deer
  
  • When we let the dogs outside for their morning walk, Plato scared two or three deer away from the east yard. He walked back very proud of himself. He did his duty!
    
  • I started the mushroom kits that Katie gave me. It will be interesting to see what comes of them.
    
  • We watered all garden plants at midday. There were a lot of wilted leaves at roughly 90 degrees.
    
  • I never could find any online information on how to release the spring to reattach the hood hinge on the pickup, so I ordered a USB stick drive of a GMC Sierra 2000-2006 Factory Repair Manual. It was only $17.
    
  • A buck deer with growing velvet-covered antlers walked to the Empire apple tree in the evening and got interested in what was growing under it (see photos, below). I finally scared it away so it wouldn't start eating apples.
    
  • We noticed several monarch butterflies today. We think it's from a new hatch off the hundreds of milkweed plants on our property.
    
  • I killed several more Japanese beetles. They filled the Virginia creeper surrounding our main door. There were fewer on the fruit trees.

Buck deer close to the Empire apple tree.

Looking into tree before I chased it away.

• Monday, 7/24: Mowing & Whacking
  
  • I sharpened the mower blade and then Mary mowed the lane. Stalky chicory plants growing in the lane meant she had to pass over them several times to mow them down, so it took longer to mow the lane. She was feeling tough after that job.
    
  • I used the steel blade and whacked tall weeds and grass growing under and around fruit trees. The new harness makes the job so much easier. And the Stihl trimmer fitted with a steel blade slices right through thick thistles and persimmon saplings. I still need to clean up under the Esopus tree, then use the string attachment to trim close to fence posts and cattle panels.
    
  • It was rather warmish working outside, but nowhere near as hot as the 102° that Mom said was predicted for Circle, MT.
  • Mary saw both the male and the female summer tanager near the east end of the machine shed. She said that the male is so much brighter than male cardinals.
  • I read an article in the July 2023 issue of Missouri Dept. of Conservation's (MDC) Missouri Conservationist magazine about their master naturalist program. HERE is the article. It's a volunteer program where you go through a summer training session, then through a local chapter, you work at delivering natural resource education and community service. Projects include milkweed for monarchs, assisting with collecting data about chronic wasting disease in deer, invasive plant management, stream conservation, furbearer species surveying, eagle watch, bird surveys, and dark sky promotion. I emailed the MDC contact for the Hannibal chapter to ask how to join. She put me on a list for training that starts after Memorial Day of 2024. It sounds interesting.
    
    
• Tuesday, 7/25: Fire Blight in Esopus Trunk
  
  • Mary watered garden plants twice. They are doing well. She also harvested some cherry tomatoes and hot peppers.
    
  • I whacked weeds under the Esopus and McIntosh apple trees, which took one tank of gas.
    
  • There were gobs of Japanese beetles in the Esopus tree, so I put several bottles of Dawn/water solution into the tree and killed hundreds of bugs. They kept flying in and settling on new growth. The numbers of Japanese beetles in other trees weren't so bad. I think once you've killed a bunch of them in one tree, they avoid the tree.
    
  • While spraying, I noticed that the Esopus trunk bark has turned black, which means the fire blight that killed more than 50 percent of the Esopus branches has settled into the main trunk of the tree. It means the tree is doomed. I'll have to take it down at a later date. The spring hail that fell three times probably contributed to all of the fire blight damage we received.
  • Small cherry tree leaves are turning yellow and dropping. The continuous heat is hard on trees this year.
    
  • We received a short rain right at the end of evening chores.
  • The chicks are big enough to determine sex and chicken varieties (see photos, below). We have three pullets in this year's chicks. The rest (25) are cockerels. Twenty chicks are Buff Orpingtons, as are two of the pullets. Two chicks are Barred Rocks. Two chicks are Delawares. They're white with black markings on the wings and tails. Two chicks are White Plymouth Rocks and one of these is a pullet. She's a very big girl. These are all-white birds. Finally, two chicks are Rhode Island Reds.

Chicks (l to r) a Rhodie, the White Rock pullet,
a Delaware, and a Buff Orpington's butt.

Six-week old chicks (l to r) the Rhode Island Red,
a Buff Orpington, a Delaware, and a Barred Rock.

• Wednesday, 7/26: It's HOT, HOT, HOT
  
  • When we let the chicks outside, close to five jumped on a cedar branch growing through the fence. A couple kept climbing until they were almost to the top of the fence. Much more of that and they could easily hop over the fence. So, I sawed those three cedar branches and eliminated their natural perch.
    
  • With excessive outside temperatures just two degrees shy of 100, we stayed inside as much as possible.
  • Mary watered garden plants for 4-5 hours, today...so much for staying inside! Most plants were wilting, but they looked fine by sundown and they're all growing.
  • The GMC pickup repair manual I ordered still hasn't shipped, and I need to drive to Quincy tomorrow for one medication I'll use up tonight, so I did further online research on connecting the pickup's hood hinge. I was attempting to bolt it to the wrong side of the connector at the hood. I removed the entire hinge, loosely connected the top bolt, then simultaneously lifted the hood and connected the bottom bolt. It's back in place. YAHOO!
    
  • I changed the trimmer to the string attachment and cleaned up weeds next to fence posts and inside enclosures under the Granny, Empire, Esopus, and Grimes apple trees. With handheld trimmers, I cleaned up grass next to the trunks of these trees.
  • I found five apples under Empire, two of which were intact. I cut one up and we tried it. The apple was still green, but the seeds were brown, a sign that it's ripening. It was tart to the taste buds.
    
  • I squirted Japanese beetles after sunset. The main concentrations were on Virginia creeper leaves surrounding the main entrance to our house and on Esopus.
    
    
• Thursday, 7/27: Triple Digit Heat
  • Our thermometer hit 100 today. I saw 101 in Quincy, IL.
  • I drove to Quincy and got a couple meds and a few other items, including cherry winemaking ingredients. Our neighbor's corn is gray with dried up leaves. I don't think it will amount to much. New pavement is on State Highway 156, which is much needed. Black parking lots in Quincy were really hot.
  • Mary harvested about a dozen large onions. They all had bent-over tops. These are the largest onions we've ever grown. More are on the way.
    
  • Mary said wilting garden plants looked bad when she started watering mid-afternoon. She gave them large volumes of water. At one point, she turned around and watched muskmelon leaves rustling and standing upright as they filled with water. She said she's never seen it happen so quickly. By sundown, all plants looked very good. After I got back from Quincy, I helped Mary with the watering chore.
  • Katie told her mother that she sprained her ankle about a month ago. She added that she can count on one hand when temperatures in Anchorage went above 70.
  • There are no ticks on our dogs. I guess it's too hot for even a tick. Actually, it's probably too hot for deer to go marching up, down, and across our lane, thereby dropping ticks off while they're munching grass.
    
    
• Friday, 7/28: 101° With a Wind
  
  • We reached 101°. Southwest wind gusts to 25 mph made it even dryer. We held off on watering gardens, but it didn't make much difference. When we started at 6 p.m., it was 99°. While Mary watered garden plants, I watered all cherry trees and the large apple trees. Each large tree received eight two-gallon cans of water. We're seeing brown leaves on oaks in the woods west of the house. This is awful for wild plants and trees.
  • In texts with Bill, he said his car thermometer at work read 104°, today.
  • The two loads of laundry Mary hung out on the line dried extremely fast.
  • Mary harvested more tomatoes and onions. She saw a two-inch watermelon starting to develop, along with several more smaller ones on the same vine.
    
  • The buck deer featured in photos this Sunday was at the far garden when Mary first ventured there with two watering cans. She said its antlers are much longer. When I got mail after the sun set, the doe and her twins were just beyond Bluegill Pond and on the lane.
    
    
• Saturday, 7/29: Bill Visits
  
  • Mary made the bed in the upstairs north bedroom for Bill and Plato immediately started wagging his tail, ran downstairs, and looked for Bill. He stayed at the door until Bill arrived.
    
  • I changed the Stihl trimmer to the metal blade and whacked down chicory spikes growing in the middle of the lane so that Bill's low-slung car could drive over them easier. Midway through the job, I looked up and there was Bill. He'd been waiting for about a minute before I looked up.
    
  • I picked some lettuce for topping on venison fajitas created by Mary, which were marvelous.
  • Mary harvested a few more onions.
    
  • Mary also made a pistachio tort. We ate part of it and gave presents to Bill for an early birthday celebration. His 30th birthday is actually on August 3rd. Since he won't be here, we're celebrating his birthday early.
  • A storm system moved in from the northwest, divided prior to reaching us, went through us without much more than two drops of rain, then grow bigger after it moved on. The same system knocked out power in St. Louis. Bill got a voice mail that power was out for his apartment. It was still out late at night, but restored sometime after we went to bed.
    
  • Bill, Mary, and I watered gardens. Actually, I watered all small apple trees, the blueberries, the pear trees, along with the Grimes Golden and the Esopus apple trees. A close inspection of the large Bartlett pear tree shows no fire blight signs on the truck, even though branch tips were hit hard. That's better than Esopus, which is thoroughly infected by fire blight.
  • I looked for Japanese beetles. There weren't many.
  • Mary found ripe grapes alongside the pole holding the rain gauge (see photos, below). We all tried them. They taste really good, but are filled with seeds. These wild grapes are really tiny.
    
  • Bill picked out and we watched the 1997 movie, Contact.

Tiny wild grapes.

Bill spitting out grape seeds. Amber is in background.