March 11-17, 2024

Weather | 3/11, sunny, 37°, 67° | 3/12, p. cloudy, 45°, 73° | 3/13, p. cloudy, 45°, 73° | 3/14, 0.67" rain overnight, sunny, 49°, 65° | 3/15, sunny, 37°, 60° | 3/16, sunny, 38°, 63° | 3/17, p. sunny, 29°, 40° |

• Monday, 3/11: Pruning Granny & Sergeant Trees
  
  • Mary said she heard the first song sparrow of the season while returning from the chicken coop this morning. She also saw it through the binoculars from the living room window.
    
  • Mary took photos (see below) of the red maple that we planted in 2011 in the north yard.
    
  • I finished stacking ash firewood to dry in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary fertilized the blueberry bushes and put wood ashes around the sugar maple tree, since our clay soil is naturally acidic and sugar maples prefer a more basic soil. Mary discovered the wood ash trick in a 1960 edition of the Audubon Nature Encyclopedia about sugar maples.
    
  • Mary and I pruned the Granny Smith apple tree and the Sergeant crabapple tree. Our prune job on the crabapple tree was minimal, since its green buds are well advanced.
    
  • We watched several flocks of snow geese and Ross's geese fly overhead. A strong southwest wind blew them northerly.
    
  • I saw deer, of course, while closing the curtains in windows facing west this evening. They were eating brush at the edge of the west woods.
    
  • Mary and I tried a bottle of 2023 spiced apple wine (see photo, below). Besides the beautiful color, it tastes great, despite the fact that it hasn't aged long. Mary says you taste the apple flavor on the tip of your tongue, the cloves at the middle of your tongue, the cinnamon flavor at the back of your tongue and the tartness as this wine goes down your throat. "It's a sipper wine, otherwise, you miss out on all of the flavors," Mary explained.

Buds on the red maple tree.

Close-up view of red maple buds.

2023 spiced apple wine.

• Tuesday, 3/12: Sandstorm Images from Katie
  • Katie sent photos and a video of a sandstorm (see below). She says the sand penetrates all living quarters and that it's tough on everything.
    
  • Mary and I pruned the big pie cherry and the big Bartlett pear tree, where we could reach with an six-foot step ladder. We pruned less off the pear tree than we expected. Branches obviously hit by fire blight have new buds sprouting all along them. We dabbed Tree Kote on new and old pruning cuts. I still want to prune higher up that tree while using the big step ladder, but today wasn't a good day for that activity, due to high southwest wind gusts.
    
  • I received a call, then I called back to Farm & Home. My chainsaw part is in, so I need to run to Quincy and pick it up.
    
  • We received a thunderstorm in the nighttime hours that gave us less than a trace of rain.

An approaching sandstorm.

Sand infiltrates everything.

In the middle of a sandstorm.

• Wednesday, 3/13: Quincy Trip
  
  • Mary and I saw a spring azure butterfly during our daily dog walk, in which we took the puppies on north loop excursion. The azure butterfly is usually the first we see in the spring. Mary saw a white cabbage butterfly later in the afternoon.
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up the chainsaw part. I also bought five 20-foot lengths of 3/8" rebar that we'll use as chicken wire posts in the gardens. I cut them up with a hacksaw to eight-foot lengths, so they'd fit in the back of the pickup. On the way home, I got chainsaw and lawnmower gas for $3.09 a gallon.
  • During our nighttime dog walk, lightning was flashing all around us and we were starting to hear thunder. Nothing hit us until the next morning. I read online that softball-sized hail fell around Kansas City, and closed Interstate 70.
  • Some plants are amazing. Winterbor Kale, that went through -20° this winter, is now green and thriving (see photo, below).

  

  Kale, after going through subzero temperatures.

• Thursday, 3/14: Chainsaw Fix
  
  • We woke to thunder and lightning around 6 a.m. and went back to bed. We received a nice rain.
    
  • When we walked the dogs on the lane, huge earthworms were squiggling across the gravel.
    
  • I checked Antonovka apple rootstock. The largest is showing green on buds and the other two are not. I might just go ahead and plant the largest one without grafting it.
    
  • After reviewing on ArboristSite.com whether to grease the roller bearing under the clutch hub (those who fix saws advocate doing it while know-it-all types who occasionally use chainsaws say no), I took the large plastic face piece surrounding the big Stihl chainsaw's clutch off, removed the chain brake band, and cleaned gunk out from around the saw's clutch. I shook it several times, in case loose roller bearings were still lodged inside. After putting a light touch of Stihl grease on the inside of the new bearing with a toothpick, I assembled everything. I installed a new spark plug and cleaned the air filter with two washings of Dawn soap. I tried the saw out on a few long sticks of firewood and a thick piece of a downed elm tree. It works like new, again. It makes me feel good when I can perform a cheap DIY fix, instead of spending hundreds on new equipment.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine to celebrate the chainsaw fix. The wine was good, until the end, when it seemed harsh. Maybe an extra month in the carboy will help the next batch age better.
    

• Friday, 3/15: Final Big Bartlett Pear Prune
  
  • I set up the 10-foot ladder next to the big Bartlett pear tree and pruned fire blight damage out of the top of the tree. Most of the tree top, with several water sprouts that grew extra tall over the years, was hit with fire blight last year, so I took it out. I sawed about a 2.5-inch cut. I started sawing it with an old rusty pruning saw that we inherited from Herman, Mary's uncle. The weight was binding the saw, so I switched to a keyhole saw and was able to complete the cut. There were a few green buds, but it only amounted to about five percent of that section. Removing the top changed the tree's profile from a from a columnar to a round shape. I cleaned several other fire blight dead pieces off the tree's other top branches and covered all cuts with Tree Kote. Hopefully, I can keep fire blight to a minimum this year.
  • When Mary walked by to put the chickens to bed for the night (the pear tree is just west of the chicken coop), I watched a peregrine falcon fly west to east at a very fast speed as it descended in elevation. While collecting cut pear branches to toss deep in the north woods, I watched a Cooper's hawk fly to the west.
    
  • There is a frog sound that we hear and then say, "The Gollum frogs are calling." Mary watched to a Missouri Dept. of Conservation movie about different frog calls and determined that it's the call of a leopard frog. They started calling today from Frog Pond.
  • We watched the 2008 movie, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. We picked up the DVD at the Salvation Army store in Quincy recently. It's an excellent movie that takes place in 1939 England and is based on a fictional book written during that era.
    

• Saturday, 3/16: Coyotes & Racking Garlic Wine
  
  • We walked the dogs around Rose Butt Field, the open field, east of Bass Pond. As we walked down the north edge of that field, two coyotes jumped out of the weeds and ran ahead of us. Plato started to bound off after them, so we both yelled at him and he stopped. But, the coyotes really took off with our raised voices. One went south across the field and one ran into the forest north of that field. They were small, about the size of Amber. 
  • On the way back, we spotted two Bradford pear trees blooming near Bass Pond. After taking the dogs home, I went back and tied a blaze orange ribbon around one of those pear trees. The other one is already marked. I plan to girdle them once they're done blooming. Honey bees are in their blossoms right now. Bradford pear trees are an invasive species.
  • We're starting to find ticks on dogs after daily walks.
    
  • I racked the garlic wine for the third time. I thought I'd lose enough liquid with the lees to gain less than the starting five gallons in the carboy. But, when finished, I filled a three-gallon carboy and two one-gallon jugs. Obviously, the five-gallon carboy I pulled the wine out of is larger than five gallons. The pH was unchanged at 3.0 and the specific gravity dropped slightly, from 0.997 to 0.994. I added one gram of K-meta, which is the full dose for five gallons. When finished, the whole house smelled garlicy, but in a good way. The aroma resembled a good Eastern European sausage, or salami.
  • We talked with Bill for over an hour in the evening. A couple days earlier, he noticed a tornado siren blaring as he left for work. At a stoplight on the way to work, another tornado siren sounded. He didn't see anything, but several co-workers had hail damage that destroyed car windshields. His employer might implement work on Saturdays, as they're clearing out inventory with the eventual shutdown of the St. Louis branch of business.
    

• Sunday, 3/17: Quiet St. Paddy's Day
  
  • Mary and I took the day off from doing much of anything. Temperatures are cool outside and a strong northwest wind makes it seem even cooler.
  • We walked the dogs around the west field. There is a four-foot diameter water hole at the northwest corner of that field. It usually contains clear water. For several weeks, the water has been muddy. We think a turtle is in it and stirring up the mud. I'm not testing the waters by wading through it, in case it contains a snapping turtle.
  • I covered the winter greens with plastic and blankets before darkness fell, due to a prediction of temperatures dipping into the low 20s, tonight.
    
  • Mary made what she calls an English Tea. We enjoyed two pots, each, of China Yunnan loose leaf tea, boiled eggs, corn bread topped with jelly, and an orange. We watched three episodes in season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.