Feb. 12-18, 2024

Weather | 2/12, sunny, 21°, 45° | 2/13, cloudy, 28°, 56° | 2/14, sunny, 27°, 55° | 2/15, 0.07" rain, sunny, 31°, 43° | 2/16, 2" snow, 0.22" moisture, 25°, 33° | 2/17, sunny, 5°, 26° | 2/18, sunny, 20°, 43° |

• Monday, 2/12: Gathering Firewood
  • Our daily dog walk took us to the strip of woods south of Bluegill Pond, where we found the primary feathers of a great blue heron laying in an opening in those woods. These feathers were roughly a foot long.
    
  • Mary and I cut a wagon load of oak firewood from the east edge of the southwest woods. Small pieces went into the woodshed and we stacked large pieces next to the splitter in the machine shed. At the end of a downed red oak tree that I cut up was a collection of acorn shells, probably left by a squirrel.
    
  • I cleaned up both the small and large chainsaws, since they've been neglected after several firewood cutting missions over the past months.
    
  • The garlic wine is still burping. It's now letting go with a CO2 bubble every four seconds.
    

• Tuesday, 2/13: 2nd Racking of Garlic Wine
  
  • Our daily dog walk took us on an east loop down Black Medick Hill, north on the dry creek bed to Wood Duck Pond, then up Bramble Hill to Bass Pond (see photos, below), then home. Four giant Canada geese flew off when we approached Wood Duck Pond. They're really huge.
    
  • Mary made peanut clusters, our homemade Valentine's Day candy. It's easy to make. A jar of roasted peanuts goes into 1.5 bags of melted dark chocolate chips. Then dollops are put on wax paper on cookie sheets and put in the freezer. You eat them frozen and they're tons cheaper than store-bought candy sampler boxes. We paid $6.40 and there is still half a bag of chocolate chips left over.
    
  • Mary mopped floors, since after today, I'm done for awhile with winemaking messes.
    
  • I racked the garlic wine for the second time. The specific gravity was 0.997 and the pH was 3.0. There was over 1.5 inches of fines in the bottom of the carboy. I had to add three cups of distilled water to top off the 5-gallon carboy after racking the wine.
  • The garlic aroma of everything was so strong that I went through a major clean up. Containers went outside and were thoroughly washed with a hose and Dawn soap. Bleach cut the garlic smell, followed by three water rinses. The plastic brew bucket still smells of garlic. Several days in the outdoor sun MIGHT knock it back.
    
  • We're getting lots of eggs from our hens, with an average of five to six per day.
  • The silver maple tree buds are turning red and expanding. They are the earliest tree to bloom, here.

Bass Pond from the south shore looking west.

East view of Bass Pond's dam area. Water is low.

• Wednesday, 2/14: Recycling Books & Magazines
  
  • The dog walk took us to the west end of the west field and into the north woods, where we found several large dead standing and fallen oak trees. All of the trees in this area are tall with big diameter trunks (see photos, below). There's also a medium cherry tree that recently fell on the trail to Bobcat Deer Blind that will make great firewood.
    
  • Mary drew up a shopping list.
  • She also sorted through magazines to recycle, removing articles of interest. Mary also went through books to donate. She reviewed her cookbook pamphlet collection.
  • I reviewed one bookshelf of home construction and repair books and reduced them by two-thirds to add to the donated books pile. Several are just too old with outdated information, including a Science and Mechanics Handyman Encyclopedia involving 25 books.
    
  • While doing evening chores, we saw several flocks of snow geese at high elevations. A good southeast wind helped scoot them west. A lot of the time, they weren't beating their wings and just gliding along, pushed by the wind. There should be millions of geese at the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Missouri. From there, they go north.

Looking at tall oak trees in the north woods.

Plato next to a thick oak tree trunk.

• Thursday, 2/15: Shopping
  
  • The first rain of February fell overnight.
  • All was quiet on our shopping trip to Quincy. I got two brand new stocking hats at the Salvation Army store for $2. At JoAnn, I bought three containers of Diamond Dotz, tiny pieces of shiny plastic usually used to embroider pictures, that I plan to use to embellish fishing lures and flies. Here is a LINK to what they look like. We dropped off three large boxes of books at the Salvation Army and several bundles of old magazines at the City of Quincy recycling bins in the Home Depot parking lot.
  • Each time we crossed the Mississippi River on our shopping trip, we saw bald eagles flying across the river.
    
  • While doing evening chores, a large flock of snow geese flew over our heads. They changed from flying west to southwest and seemed to drop in altitude. When that happened, their wing beats resembled the sound of a jet. A few seconds later, as their wings came down with each stroke, there was a bright flash due to the angle of the setting sun. It was quite spectacular.
    
  • We watched the 1987 movie, The Untouchables, that we bought at the Salvation Army today. It was a DVD sold from Walmart in 2006 and never opened.
    

• Friday, 2/16: Snow
  • Sometime in the night it started snowing. Snow was falling when we woke and it continued until 1 p.m., resulting it two inches on the ground. We left chickens inside their coop, today.
    
  • Mary made lime zinger cookies for my birthday, which is on the 20th. I helped her with a couple cleaning chores around the house.
  • We had plastic over the winter greens last night. This evening, I put blankets over the plastic, with the prediction of cold temperatures through the night.
  • When I walked down to get the mail, a hundred, or so, robins poured out of the cedar trees on the east side of the lane.
    

• Saturday, 2/17: Bill Arrives
  
  • I took the dogs into the north woods for the daily walk. There were lots of deer tracks through the snow, which was very bright with a full sun shining down. I heard a lot of bluebirds, but  couldn't see them.
    
  • While washing dishes, we saw a broad-winged hawk sitting in a walnut tree northeast of the house. It moved to a different walnut tree just east of the kitchen and sat there for several minutes, looking in all directions. Suddenly it was gone. We also saw an American kestrel out the south living room window.
    
  • Bill arrived around 1 p.m. He said he followed a sailboat for several miles and national guard troop convoys were on the highway near Palmyra, MO.
    
  • Bill said he had a birthday present that he couldn't wrap, so he gave it me today. At first I thought it was a huge tent. Instead, it's a big and tall camp chair that is really huge.
    
  • Mary made three pizzas and we ate one and part of another. We enjoyed a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine, a perfect addition to pizza.
    
  • The chickens were in their coop all day. It was cold with a strong west wind blowing. Mary reported that they were very happy and gobbled up all of the new hay that she put in coop a couple days ago.
  • We enjoyed pots of tea and played Trivial Pursuit. Mary won the first game and Bill won the second game. We all helped the person answering questions by posing the question in a such a way as to elicit the right answer. We sort of cheated.
    
  • There was a strong west wind blasting outside as we went to bed.
    

• Sunday, 2/18: Turkey Dinner
  
  • Bill and I took the dogs on a walk to the Bobcat Deer Blind and then around the west field. We saw lots of deer tracks in the snow on the south side of the west field.
    
  • Mary baked a turkey dinner. It was very good. We all enjoyed a bottle of 2021 parsnip wine during and after the meal. Without food, several tastes are evident in this very excellent wine, such as a pineapple undercurrent, along with a mollases, caramel taste. These are flavors you would never dream could come from parsnips. It's also very golden in color. The parsnip wine currently in the carboy in the pantry possesses a darker color.
    
  • We saw the broad-shouldered hawk in the walnut tree northwest of the house, again. Mary and I chased starlings away twice during the day.
    
  • We watched two movies that Bill picked out. The first was Children of Huang Shi, a 2008 movie about an orphanage during the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s. It's an intense movie. Then, we watched the 2003 movie, Johnny English, which is pure silliness.