April 29-May 5, 2024

Weather | 4/29, 0.09" rain, p. cloudy, 58°, 69° | 4/30, p. cloudy, 50°, 75° | 5/1, p. cloudy, 57°, 74° | 5/2, 0.25" rain, cloudy, 57°, 75° | 5/3, 0.23" rain overnight, sunny, 50°, 71° | 5/4, cloudy, 57°, 69° | 5/5, p. sunny, 44°, 69° |

• Monday, 4/29: Mowing in the Mud
  
  • Rain fell overnight, but a southwest wind dried some things out on a relatively sunny day.
  • When I took dogs for a walk, a carpenter bee buzzed Amber and she wanted inside, immediately. She hates buzzing insects. So, Plato and I walked on the east loop trail (see photo, below). I pulled 38 ticks off him upon returning home.
  • I picked the last of the winter greens. There were four lettuce plants, two that were relatively large. I also picked all good leaves off the kale plants, then fed the removed plants to the chickens. By evening, stalks were all that were left of the kale in the chicken yard. 
  • We had a midday meal of chimichangas with lots of greens on top.
    
  • Mary mowed the far north yard, which was tough, because most of the time the mower and her shoes were sinking into mud. Pushing an 83-pound mower through mud isn't easy. She says that's why we don't need a membership to a gym.
    
  • It was too windy to spray fruit trees, so I finished knocking down tall grass in the near garden with just over two tanks of gas in the Stihl trimmer.
    
  • Mary spotted a summer tanager and an eastern kingbird for the first time this season.
  • Mary saw a wild turkey fly across the east yard, heading north.
  • We watched the 2012 movie, The Avengers. This film's high volume chased Nick, our white and black cat, out of the room several times.

  

  Plato on east loop trail. He gets hot on long walks, lately.

• Tuesday, 4/30: Mowing, Raking & Hockey
  
  • A southwest wind kept me from spraying fruit trees and when it was calm, weather radar indicated that rain was arriving. It never did, despite an 80 percent prediction.
  • I saw the first hummingbird of the season as it zipped across the east lawn to the Sargent crabapple tree.
    
  • While Mary trimmed dog nails in the east yard, she heard a bobwhite quail.
  • Mary mowed the lane.
  • I raked the cut grass in the near garden and hauled away five wheelbarrow loads. Two went in the compost bin and three went around the Granny Smith apple tree.
    
  • I paid attention to four NHL playoff games in the evening...Toronto's overtime 2-1 win over Boston, Carolina's 6-3 win over the Islanders to win the series, Colorado's 6-3 win over Winnipeg to knock the Jets out, and Nashville's 2-1 win over Vancouver. One team I was rooting for won and that was Toronto. I tend to lean north on most of my hockey favorites.
    

• Wednesday, 5/1: Cookies and Spraying Trees
  
  • Mary heard a common yellowthroat, the first of the season. This bird's call sounds like "witchity, witchity, witchity."
    
  • At first, I saw a deer's head near the Kieffer pear tree. Then, I noticed a bouncing branch on that same tree. Finally, I spotted a large, lanky doe marching towards the blueberry bushes, so I ran outside to chase the deer away. Three deer ran off into the north woods.
    
  • Mary baked yummy chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies.
  • Northeast winds were light, so I sprayed Immunox on some of the fruit trees to battle both cedar-apple rust and apple scab. These trees included the two Bartlett pear trees (showing lots of orange cedar-apple rust spots), and the Empire, Granny Smith, Roxbury Russet, Calville, Gold Rush, Antonovka, and McIntosh apple trees, and the Prairie Fire crabapple tree.
  • I found about 10 instances of fire blight in the Granny Smith tree. I cut out the infected branches and covered the cuts with Tree Kote. I didn't see fire blight on any other tree.
  • There are too many tiny apples on the Empire, Granny Smith and McIntosh trees, so I'll be thinning them, soon. It won't be a big pear year, though.
  • I watched the Edmonton Oilers beat the L.A. Kings, 4-3, to advance in the playoffs. While watching ESPN, I listened to the Edmonton radio announcers, who pay attention to the game, instead of telling convoluted stories. It's always fun when the team you're rooting for, wins.
    

• Thursday, 5/2: Rain Means Green
  
  • We experienced sprinkles in morning, then rain set in with thunderstorms around 1:30 p.m.
  • We heard a catbird for the first time in the morning.
  • With all of our recent rains, we are so green that it almost hurts your eyes.
    
  • Mary replanted Asian hot pepper seeds in potting soil where past seeds never germinated. Her new seed came from some of our own dried peppers.
    
  • Mary made a very nice BBQ pork loin for our midday meal.
    
  • I tried getting the switchel jugs started as insect traps in the apple trees, but oncoming rain prevented me from finishing.
    
  • I listened to the last half of the NHL playoff game between Toronto and Boston. The Maple Leafs won, 2-1, to force a Game 7 in Boston in a couple days. The Toronto radio announcers are really good and sometimes quite funny.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 pear wine and it was extremely good.
    

• Friday, 5/3: Mailbox vs. Neighbor's Horses
  
  • When Mary and I walked bills to the mailbox, we discovered that it was dented here and there and the bent lid couldn't close. Horse hair all over it told us what happened. The neighbor's two horses, who are let out to wonder anywhere, used it as a rubbing post. We walked back home, got several sets of pliers, and worked the mailbox metal back in shape so the door would close. Then, I loaded the pickup with tools, a 3/4-inch thick piece of plywood and sawhorses, returned and put a more permanent fix on the mailbox.
  • When I installed this mailbox after the last one was smashed by pickup, I determined its support as wimpy. Eight tiny 1/8-inch bolts through the bottom of the mailbox held it to a metal plate. It wobbled in any wind. Today, I replaced those small bolts with quarter-inch bolts long enough to also go through 3/4-inch plywood. I added four lag bolts through the top of the plywood, countersunk with washers, to solidly secure the plywood to the top of the post. Using 10 roofing screws that have rubber washers, I secured the bottom sides of the mailbox to the edges of the plywood. I also added four more screws holding the metal plate to the post in the ground, increasing the total of those screws to eight. The mailbox's shape went back to normal with a solid structure under it and it doesn't wobble in the wind, now.
  • Once finished with the mailbox, it was 6:30 p.m. I drove to the neighbor's house with the horses. Several dogs greeted me. They're full of inflated ticks, so basic animal care is really lacking. I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door, but nobody answered. When I got back home, I called the Lewis County Sheriff's office about the constantly loose horses. A deputy left me a voice mail, later. I need to get back with them. This is year two of horses left to roam freely by this neighbor. The neighbors across the road tell me that these same horses are rubbing on their vehicles and the mobile home, doing damage and leaving manure everywhere. Alma, from across the road, forwarded a bill for the damages for them to pay and called the sheriff's office, since their mailbox has been knocked to the ground twice by these horses.
    
  • Mary planted tomato and tomatillo seeds in Styrofoam cups.
  • She also scythed the tall grass that was growing around the garlic beds. She put four big wheelbarrow loads of grass mulch around the Granny Smith and Empire apple trees.
    
  • When I got home and walked to the porch, Mary said she watched a hummingbird rush my back while I walked by the forsythia bush.
    
  • We had a pair of red-tailed hawks circling above us early in the day and Mary noticed a  pair of wood ducks flying overhead that landed into Wood Duck Pond in the evening.
  • A day of fixing the mailbox meant I missed Vancouver defeat Nashville and advance in the NHL playoffs. They now play Edmonton. I like both teams in the upcoming series, so I'll root for whomever wins between the Canucks and the Oilers.
    

• Saturday, 5/4: No Rain, No Horses
  
  • An 80 percent chance of rain turned to nothing, but clouds. We got a couple drops in the morning, but rain systems dried up before getting to us throughout the day.
  • I wandered down the the gravel road several times, today. There were no signs of horses, even in the neighbor's fenced-in area. No one seems to be home at the neighbor's house, either.
    
  • I took the small chainsaw down to the ditch behind the mailbox and cut down four small autumn olive saplings. They grow to massive bushes if left to develop. I also cut down a dead rose bush that had poison ivy vines growing through it.
  • Mary did a bunch of house cleaning.
    
  • I listened to Game 7 between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins. Boston won, 2-1, in overtime. According to CBC, Toronto has lost six straight game 7s.
    
  • I discovered four seed ticks biting me on a check prior to going to bed. It's my fault. I didn't spray myself with bug dope prior to doing outside work. I should know better!
    

• Sunday, 5/5: Mushrooms, Deer Traffic, & Switchel
  
  • I sharpened the blade on the old lawnmower. I also changed the oil in the new mower. The manual says to change oil after 10 hours of runtime on the first oil change, which I'm sure we've surpassed.
    
  • Mary made pizza for our midday meal.
    
  • She also mowed the west yard and the grass between the woodshed and the machine shed. Mulch went around the Porter's Perfection and Liberty apple trees, along with one blueberry bush.
  • Mary discovered huge mushrooms along an elm log (see photos, below). She tentatively identified them as false chanterelle mushrooms, but exact identification is still iffy.
    
  • We heard a continuous and exactly repetitious fake turkey hen call. Today is the last day of spring turkey hunting season, so we're guessing hunters were throughout the woods. Real turkey hens vary their call. Dumb hunters seem not to understand the variability of turkey calls and scratch on their slates forever, something that the real animal never does.
    
  • We watched a pregnant doe walk by through the north yard, then through the west yard and into the south woods.
    
  • I saw seven deer cross the lane near Bluegill Pond. We think heavy weekend turkey hunting activity pushed deer onto our acreage.
    
  • I watched a hummingbird eating from comfrey flowers near the basement door.
  • I cleaned out one-gallon jugs and filled them with switchel, which consists of molasses, vinegar, and water. The recipe involves a glug of this and a glug of that...not to exacting. Wires stuffed through a piece of old water hose, or electric fence tubing were used to hang the jugs off tree branches. I put one jug in Granny Smith, two in Empire, and one in the McIntosh tree. The switchel saves the fruit from harmful fruit bugs, such as apple maggots, coddling moths, plum curculios, and fruit flies. They drown in the concoction.

Mushrooms on a three-year old elm log.

ID ran from Jack-o-lantern to chanterelle to false chanterelle.

April 22-28, 2024

Weather | 4/22, p. cloudy, 36°, 67° | 4/23, 0.65" rain, 47°, 67° | 4/24, sunny, 43°, 63° | 4/25, cloudy, 42°, 57° | 4/26, T-storms, 2.13" rain, 41°, 67° | 4/27, cloudy to T-storms, 61°, 79° | 4/28, 2.15" rain, 57°, 67° |

• Monday, 4/22: Mowing, Mowing, Mowing...Keep Those Mowers Rolling!
  
  • Mary and I walked the pups to the Bobcat Deer Blind and around the west field. I took a photo of a hickory leaf shoot (see photo, below). They look like flowers at this stage.
  • We had cool morning temperatures, but no frost. Sometimes a low of the mid-30s can result in spotty frost, especially down our lane.
  • We removed the wood rack from the living room. It's time to get ready for summer.
    
  • Mary and I fired up two mowers. Mary mowed the lane and the west lawn and between the woodshed and the machine shed. I mowed the east and south yards, the south orchard paths, around the near garden, and south of the far garden. I put lawn clipping mulch around two small cherry trees.
    
  • Mary watched a great blue heron dodge a turkey vulture in mid flight. Mary looked it up and the heron has a wingspan 5.5 to 6.6 feet and the vulture has a wingspan of 5.4 to 5.8 feet. The heron didn't want to play chicken with the vulture and veered away.
    
  • I watched the last half of the NHL Stanley Cup playoff game one between the Edmonton Oilers and the LA Kings. The Oilers won 7-4. Connor McDavid got five assists, a new record in any playoff game. Mary went to bed before I did. I was up until 1 a.m.

  

  A hickory leaf bud.

• Tuesday, 4/23: Bottling Garlic Wine
  
  • Heavy rain fell outside as we got out of bed. After breakfast, we heard thunder for about 45 minutes. Radar didn't show the storm's whereabouts, but when it hit around noon, pea-sized hail bounced off the lawn. It proves what we already know, weather radar is pitiful for our area, because a cloud has to be at least 20,000 feet tall to produce hail. Around 1 p.m., rain turned to clear skies.
    
  • Once it was sunny, Mary spotted two chimney swifts circling our house. Later in the afternoon, she saw four of them. We have a Missouri Department of Conservation calendar that announces daily natural events. For today, it states that chimney swifts arrive. Apparently, our birds look at the same calendar.
    
  • I racked and bottled the garlic wine. The specific gravity was 0.995 giving it an alcohol content of 13.75 percent. The pH was 3.2. I added 0.9 grams of Kmeta. I filled three clear wine bottles that I usually use for brewing wine as part of the 25 bottles that I corked, so I didn't have to boil labels off three old bottles. We will use up the wine in those clear bottles, first. The fines were minuscule, so I bottled five gallons, with only 150 milliliters left over. We drank the leftovers and liked the taste of it in a glass for the first time. We usually only use it as a cooking wine. It seems mellower than past garlic wine I've brewed. It might be due to longer brewing time.
    
  • I watched two NHL playoff games, in which the teams I rooted for lost. The Colorado Avalanche beat the Winnipeg Jets, 5-2 and the Nashville Predators defeated the Vancouver Canooks, 4-1...boo, hiss!
    

• Wednesday, 4/24: Spraying for Fire Blight
  
  • I sprayed copper on fruit trees that are susceptible to fire blight, which include the two Bartlett pear trees, and the Calville, Granny Smith, Porter's Perfection, Gold Rush, Empire, and Liberty apple trees. The Sargent crabapple tree can get fire blight, too, but it only had a couple branches infected with it last year, so I didn't spray it, today. Respray time is five to seven days from the last spraying and this was the fifth day.
    
  • Mary mowed parts of the north yard.
  • She also made a delicious chicken noodle soup and drew up a shopping list.
    

• Thursday, 4/25: Book Sale & Shopping Trip
  
  • The Quincy Library's book sale was today, so we attended it and picked up 14 books for $5.75. The highlight was an American Horticultural Society book called Pruning and Training. It's an excellent book.
    
  • We went shopping. Crowds were small, so shopping went well.
    
  • In the evening, we heard and saw a great blue heron fly away from the pond across the gravel road from us after it was startled by a bald eagle that was flying nearby.
    

• Friday, 4/26: Heavy Rain & Devil Crayfish
  
  • We experienced thunderstorms and heavy rain all morning long. The rain gauge indicated over two inches. Maybe our drought is over. I'm glad we didn't get hail and tornadoes that went through northwest of us. Omaha, Nebraska and Des Moines, Iowa saw tornado destruction.
    
  • While walking down to get today's mail after the rain quit falling, I spotted a big crayfish walking down the lane (see video and photo, below). Turn up your sound and at the end of the video, you hear the chirping call of chimney swifts that were flying overhead. The crayfish was a female that carried babies. She turned right and headed to Bluegill Pond to release her youngsters. Mary looked it up and it's a devil crayfish that lives underground. HERE is a link describing it. This was the largest crayfish we've seen on our property.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2023 apple cider. We liked it very much and found it matched well with cheese and crackers. It's light colored and light tasting, with just a hint of apple flavor. We're betting that as more apple varieties develop fruit, I'll be able to make more flavorful apple cider. It probably will be a good drink on a hot summer day.

  

  A huge female devil crayfish.
  

  
  
  A devil crayfish walking on our lane.
  

• Saturday, 4/27: Cleaning Up Garden & Heavy Rain
  
  • I walked the dogs to the northeast and back. It took longer removing ticks off the dogs after walking them than it took to give them a walk. I took 27 ticks off Amber and 16 off Plato, and we found more, later.
    
  • Mary made a venison General Tso meal. She also finished dusting and rearranging sunroom books.
  • I used the Stihl trimmer with the metal blade to whack down tall grass in the near garden. Before using the trimmer, I replaced the spark plug with a new one. A tankful of gas allowed me to clean up about two-thirds of that garden. I raked the grass and dumped five wheelbarrow loads into the compost bin.
    
  • Thunderstorms rolled in after dark. For the longest time, we could see on weather radar that storms were nearby, but we weren't hearing thunder. These same storms were intense further west, but dwindled as they approached us. Around 9:30, a strong wind gust shook the house, followed by heavy rain that lasted for hours (rain was still falling the next morning). Some rain dripped through the ceiling on the north addition to the house. When I reshingled the south-facing roof in 2021, I noticed at the peak that instead of running tar paper horizontally on the north-facing roof, it was put on vertically on a shallow sloping roof. That's why we get drips, occasionally...it wasn't installed correctly.
    

• Sunday, 4/28: Hockey, Hockey, Hockey
  
  • I listened to three NHL playoff games through the radio link on nhl.com throughout the day. I find the play-by-play radio announcers better at covering the game. ESPN announcers are the worst, because they always need to tell a story, instead of announcing the action of the game. The first game I listened to was a 5-1 Colorado win over Winnipeg...boo, hiss! The second was an amazing come-from-behind overtime 4-3 win for Vancouver over Nashville, when the Canucks scored three goals in 3:50 minutes, including overtime. They tied it at 3-3 with only eight seconds left in the game. The third game was a 1-0 win by Edmonton over L.A. After bathing, I got to bed at 1 a.m.
  • I labeled the garlic wine and after rearranging other wine bottles, I got them all stored in coolers in the upstairs north bedroom. 
  • We woke to rain that fell all night. By afternoon, rain quit, but very small showers came through. Rain started falling again after dark. Paths are full of water and pond levels are way up. Local news sources report several small road bridge collapses and culvert washouts.
  • I walked the dogs to Bass Pond and back. While crossing the north field, I saw a turkey running west to east, north of us. At Bass Pond, I saw holes in the south bank that I think are there from a muskrat.
  • Mary cross stitched all day across the room the the NHL rat with earphones on his head, listening to hockey.
    

April 15-21, 2024

Weather | 4/15, sunny, 51°, 80° | 4/16, T-storm with hail, 0.33" rain, 42°, 75° | 4/17, cloudy, 57°, 69° | 4/18, 1.59" rain, 49°, 53° | 4/19, p cloudy, 35°, 57° | 4/20, sunny, 32°, 46° | 4/21, sunny, 29°, 57° |

• Monday, 4/15: Asparagus, Mulching Trees & Blueberry Planting
  
  • I walked puppies to Wood Duck Pond and back. Honey locust leaves are emerging and dark blue violets are blooming in the east woods (see photos, below).
    
  • Mary first picked them and then we tasted our first asparagus shoots of the year. She sauteed them in garlic wine and sliced garlic. They're so tasty.
    
  • I mowed the east yard and half of the area south of the far garden and mulched the three newly planted apple trees with grass clippings.
    
  • Mary planted her new Elizabeth blueberry plant where other blueberries and the two Bartlett pear trees are located, west of the chicken coop. When this blueberry plant arrived, the leaf shoots were white. They slowly greened while in a pot. Mary said soon after transplanting the blueberry into its final location, the leaves turned very green. She put a tomato cage around the plant and then wrapped a piece of chicken wire around the tomato cage to keep gnawing bunnies out.
    
  • Mary also cleaned up sod pieces from planting apple trees and moved them to fill a hole near the blueberries.
    
  • Mary noticed a batch of juncos in our yard that came through on their way north.
    
  • On the final dog walk at night, we heard tree frogs singing.

New leaves emerging from a honey locust tree.

Violets blooming in the east woods.

• Tuesday, 4/16: Aw, Hail?
  
  • I walked our puppies through a little piece of the north woods on a short outing.
  • Thunderstorms rolled through in the early afternoon. The first dropped marble-sized hail. A couple leaves per fruit tree were on the ground, afterward, and there was no vehicle damage. Of course, hail dents might be hard to detect on our old beaters. Around 5-6 p.m., storms developed right over us and moved northeast to dump in Illinois.
  • Grass that we recently cut is growing leaps and bounds. Most all trees are showing green.
  • I labeled and stored 18 bottles of parsnip wine that I corked on April 4th. Wine is supposed to stand upright for two to three days after corking it, allowing surplus air to seep out. Then, the bottles are stored on their sides, allowing wine to soak into the cork and expand, thereby sealing the bottle. I guess 12 days really, really let excess air escape.
  • Mary started a cross stitch pattern called Moonlight (see photo, below).

  

  Mary's latest cross stitch project.

• Wednesday, 4/17: Service Berries are Blackhaw
  
  • In a text to her mother, Katie said she slept for 12 hours once she got home to Anchorage.
    
  • We noticed two first-for-the-season birds: a Henslow's sparrow, and a rose-breasted grosbeak.
  • On a walk to Bobcat Deer Blind with the dogs, we noticed several white blossoms on bushes through the understory of the north woods (see photos, below). Mary identified them a blackhaw bushes. They are what we first thought were shadbush, or a type of service berry. Blackhaw are of the viburnum family and native to the eastern U.S. Mary also took photos of yellow violets, emerging white oak leaves, hickory leaves, and bluebells (see photos, below).
  • Mary mowed the north yard and reported that she saw apples developing on the McIntosh tree. We also notice cherries developing.
    
  • I took down the chicken wire fence in the near garden and rolled it up. Some fencing ripped up as I removed it, due to grass growing over lower portions of the fence for the past couple years when we didn't remove it. I see volunteer onions and parsnips growing in the near garden.
    
  • We watched the 1965 movie, The Sound of Music.

Blackhaw blossoms as seen north of Bobcat Deer Blind.

More Blackhaw blossoms, but west of the blind.

Yellow violets.

New white oak leaves.

Emerging hickory leaves.

Bluebell blossoms.

• Thursday, 4/18: Thunderstorms
  
  • We received over an inch and a half of rain with thunderstorms that rolled through all day. We kept appliances, including our modem, unplugged during times of thunder and lightning.
    
  • Mary made four loaves of bread and was able to bake the bread in the oven during a lull in the thunderstorms.
    
  • I checked the persimmon wine that was bottled over a year ago. It has a blah taste. Mary says it tastes like whiskey, or very alcoholic, with a slight autumn olive flavor. I tried sweetening it with a quarter teaspoon of sucralose and found the sweetened version to taste tolerable. Mary says she won't drink it.
  • We heard our first whip-poor-wills singing to the nighttime stars as we took dogs on their final walk, prior to bed.
    

• Friday, 4/19: First Spraying of Fruit trees
  • On our first dog walk, Mary spotted a Cooper's hawk that took a swipe at flying cow bird over the south meadow. The hawk missed and perched in a tree on the edge of the south woods.
    
  • After walking dogs on the north loop after breakfast, Mary and I pulled 10 ticks off Plato and eight off Amber. Ticks are thicker than thieves.
  • I checked online for fruit tree spraying, outlined different sprays for various trees, then developed a tree spraying plan. Mary helped look details up online.
    
  • Around 2-3 p.m., I did the following spraying:
  • Copper to battle fireblight on the two Bartlett pears, Sargent crabapple, Calville, Granny Smith, Porter's Perfection, Gold Rush, Empire, and Liberty apple trees.
  • Captan & Immunox to go against apple scab on Calville, McIntosh, Empire, and Antonovka apple trees.
  • Immunox for apple scab on Granny Smith and Roxbury, since these two apple trees also got sulfur in their mix and it cannot be mixed with Captan.
  • Sulfur to deter cedar apple rust on Gold Rush, Roxbury, and Granny Smith apple trees and on Sargent and Prairie Fire crabapple trees.
  • I saw lots of small developing fruits on the Empire apple tree.
  • I used a hat light once the sun set in the west to spray the three Antonovka saplings and the McIntosh tree. A couple whip-poor-wills were doing their version of dueling banjos in the north woods not too far west of me. I finished spraying at 9 p.m.
    
  • The 10-foot step ladder I bought last fall was very handy, helping me get higher for better spraying of the larger fruit trees. The only downfall is it is very heavy to haul around.
  • Mary cleaned house and did all of the evening chores, since I was spraying.
    

• Saturday, 4/20: Bill Visits
  • We noticed spotty frost in shaded areas of the lawn and along our lane, this morning.
    
  • Bill showed up for a weekend visit just after 10 a.m.
  • Bill and I took the dogs on a walk to Wood Duck Pond. The water level is high and the creek is full of water. We saw fish in Bass Pond.
  • Mary picked a large batch of asparagus that we ate after she sauteed them in garlic wine and added some bulbs of garlic. It was really good.
  • I started an outdoor fire and we cooked pork loin pieces over the flames (see photo, below).
  • After putting out the fire, we went inside and ate part of an apple/blackberry crisp that Mary made this morning.
  • Mary and I covered the strawberries with blankets, like we did last night, due to an overnight frost prediction.
  • Bill picked out two movies that we watched. They were the 2001 movie, Life as a House, and the 2001 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

  

  Mary (left) & Bill (right) roasting pork loin over an open fire.

• Sunday, 4/21: Gone Fishin'
  
  • Bill, Mary, and I spent a couple hours fishing in Bass Pond. We all caught fish and kept nine of them for a midday meal. Bill's favorite lures were a Tasmanian Devil and a spinner in front of a plastic yellow grub with a bright red tail. Fish chewed up his plastic grub so bad that he had to throw it away after fishing. Mary's favorite lure was a Firestick, which is a skinny minnow replica with hot pink and black racing stripes. My favorite was a Panther Martin spinner with a yellow and black body and a fluorescent red spinner that resembles a bumble bee. I woudl cast it, let it sink for several seconds, then bring the lure in. The bass were biting softly, like walleyes, in that you'd feel a heavy weight, set the hook, then feel a fighting fish.
  • Mary noticed that one of the bass that she caught had bright red, segmented worms in it's mouth and an overstuffed belly full of these creatures. She looked it up and the Missouri Department of Conservation's WEBSITE describes them as midge fly larvae, a major spring food source for bass. Now we know why our bass look so well fed in the spring.
    
  • It took me an hour to fillet the nine fish. I guess I'm out of practice. Mary cooked them up, along with corn-on-the-cob, and garlic toast for an excellent meal. Bill scrubbed up the fish cleaning mess while I doctored my little finger that I nicked with the fillet knife. It was a tiny nick of the outside last joint on that finger that just wouldn't stop bleeding. Again, I'm out of practice on filleting fish.
  • Bill left around 3:30 p.m. for his St. Charles apartment.
  • After evening chores, I checked the fruit trees. They're all just fine, despite an overnight frost.
    

April 8-14, 2024

Weather | 4/8, sunny, 45°, 71° | 4/9, p. sunny, 42°, 63° | 4/10, cloudy, 43°, 68° | 4/11, p. sunny, 51°, 62° | 4/12, sunny, 41°, 64° | 4/13, sunny, 37°, 79° | 4/14, sunny, 62°, 84° |

• Monday, 4/8: Solar Eclipse
  
  • We took the day off from activity, did a cookout, and watched the solar eclipse from chairs next to the outdoor fire in our back yard. Skies were perfectly clear and the wind was minimal...a perfect day. While the sun slowly faded away behind the moon, we roasted pork loin over pieces of burning oak, enjoyed a bottle of blackberry wine, and occasionally glanced through our solar glasses at the sun. We weren't totally dark. The solar eclipse was at 92 percent in our area. It was noticeably darker, though. Birds quieted down. Frogs started singing and cows bellowed from pastures all around us. It was also cooler. Chickens didn't change one bit through the eclipse. We watched a turkey vulture flapping to stay aloft, because less sunlight cut off rising air to keep it coasting. What was surprising was how much light comes from just eight percent of the sun shining (see photo, below).
    
  • Bill sent us a photo taken by his former college physics professor of the solar eclipse taken near Perryville, MO (see photo, below). Bill said that photo was taken through a Coronado telescope, which is used exclusively for solar viewing.
    
  • We noticed blossom buds are emerging from two of the three apple trees we planted last year. They are the Gold Rush and the Calville Blanc d'Hiver apple trees. Cherry blossoms are out, too.
  • While Mary put the chickens to bed, I watched two deer enter the north woods at the Bobcat Trail entrance.

Me sun gazing at the peak of the eclipse.

Eclipse in Perryville taken by Bill's
physics professor, Vayujeet Gokhale.

• Tuesday, 4/9: Transplanting Strawberries
  
  • I walked the puppies around the north loop trails and saw lots of deer tracks in a muddy game trail.
    
  • While Mary did a load of laundry, I cleaned a Plano toolbox that we picked up at Goodwill in Quincy with bleach and let it sit out in the sun all day.
    
  • The Sargent crabapple tree is full of blossoms that are filled with bees (see video and photo, below).
    
  • Mary and I planted 52 Seascape everbearing strawberry plants and one Elizabeth blueberry plant. Mary dumped soil out of 33 cat litter buckets and four tubs onto a large canvas tarp, she mixed in a bucket of sand, some lawn soil that I dug from mole hills, two buckets of rotten wood, and four buckets and most of a garbage can full of old compost. She mixed it all up while I replaced quarter-inch hardware cloth over holes in the bottoms of containers and put rocks over these hardware cloth pieces. Mary said I had the meticulous job. It was easier for my back to handle. Mary planted the strawberries. They came with nice, long roots. I thoroughly watered them. We put old lace curtains over them to shade them from intense sunlight and weighed the material down with bricks. Mary put the blueberry plant into a pot. It needs to gradually adjust to sunlight before it is permanently planted near other blueberry bushes, so Mary put it in the machine shed. As soon as we get the near garden cleaned out and the electric fence turned on, we can move the strawberry plants into the north end and behind critter protection.
  • We watched the 1995 movie, Sabrina.

  

  Sargent crabapple tree full of blossoms.
  

  
  
  Bees in the Sargent crabapple tree blossoms.
  

• Wednesday, 4/10: Removing More Fence Posts
  
  • Mary and I took the dogs to Wood Duck Pond and back. Below is a photo of blue phlox flowers next to the dry creek bed. The pond is full of green algae, probably from fertilizer runoff from our neighbor's fields. On the way back home, we stopped at Bass Pond and saw several fish swimming along the shoreline.
    
  • I removed eight more steel fence posts from the fence along the south side of the north pasture. I also rolled up four strands of barbed wire that equal a little over half of that fence. The whole time I was out there, an eastern meadowlark was sounding off nearby. I now have enough posts for the two orchard fences that I want to build.
  • Mary did all of the chores while I was out wrestling with barbed wire fences.
    
  • Red buds are starting to bloom (see photo, below).
  • Mary said the big pie cherry tree was full of native bees in incredible numbers. If the blossoms are any indication, it should be a big cherry year.
    
  • We watched the 1995 movie, Sense and Sensibility.

Blue phlox near Wood Duck Pond.

Redbud blossoms starting to open.

• Thursday, 4/11: Katie is Heading Back
  
  • Katie revealed that she's heading back to the U.S. soon. Plans were for her to have an extended layover in Baltimore, MD on Saturday, but this morning (4/12) she messaged that her flight was delayed by 24 hours.
    
  • Mary and I watered all of the strawberry plants and the new blueberry bush right after breakfast. The constant wind dried them all out.
    
  • We walked the dogs on an east loop. Turkey vultures followed us. They're often very curious on what we're doing. Mary calls them "flying kittens," because they have the curiosity of cats.
  • Mary found another blue phlox flowering in the woods near where we walked (see photo, below).
    
  • I changed oil on the older lawnmower and Mary and I both mowed grass. Mary mowed west lawns and the area between the sheds and I mowed the near east and south lawns. I collected clippings with the new mower and mulched the apple trees we planted last year south of the house. We were stopped by a short rain shower that blew in from the northwest. It lasted just long enough to wet down the grass.
    
  • I saw online that Apollo 13 launched on this day, so in the evening, we watched the 1995 movie, Apollo 13.

  

  More blue phlox flowers.

• Friday, 4/12: Decided to Buy Tractor Mower
  
  • Mary mowed the lane and finished mowing in the yard north of the house, where she was rained out yesterday.
  • I finished mowing around cherry trees and on a path between them.
    
  • I spotted a five foot wide, PTO driven, pull behind mower that was once used behind an 8N Ford tractor and texted with the owner. It has 14-inch tires and he says it can be towed behind a pickup at highway speeds. After checking with the Missouri State Highway Patrol in Macon, MO to see if it was legal to tow the mower behind my pickup (it's legal during daylight hours), I decided to get it. It's located just north of Sedalia, MO, which is 172 miles southwest of us.
  • I drove to Lewistown and took money out of the ATM machine at the US Bank and filled the pickup with gas.
    

• Saturday, 4/13: Long Drive for Nothing
  
  • I drove to Sedalia, taking the backroads course I plotted out yesterday. I got into some very windy and weavey roads following ridgetops on Highway 156 west of LaPlata, MO. I left at 8:45 a.m. and got to the farm north of Sedalia at 1:15 p.m.
    
  • The mower looked good. I drove it down the road outside his place and back. It wobbled from side to side, shacking the rear end of the pickup. We set the tongue higher and lowered the mower. I drove it a couple miles north on US-65. At 45 mph, it shook from side to side so much that I was afraid of it flipping the pickup. I turned around and took it back. He gave me back my money and I went back home.
  • On the way back, I took I-70 to Columbia, MO, and ran north, for a faster drive home. I left there around 3 p.m. and got home around 6 p.m. It was 342 miles, round trip and several gallons of gas. I didn't ask the important question before going, which was "Have you ever driven this on a highway?" It was his father's mower, who bought it and towed it eight miles, slowly, on back roads, probably in the 1950s.
    
  • Katie send a photo of a glass of Guinness Stout from the airport at Shannon, Ireland, so she's on her way back home. I asked her to tell us when she arrives in the U.S.
  • Back at home, the house wren arrived and is yacking at us all day long.
    

• Sunday, 4/14: Katie's Back Home
  
  • I got a text tonight that Katie was at the airport in Minneapolis, then in Seattle. She was scheduled to land in Anchorage at midnight, Alaska time. Mary read this morning (4/15) that some flights in and out of the Middle East were postponed, due to the recent Iranian missile and drone attack of Israel.
  • Mary planted the three Antonovka rootstock apple trees in the south orchard. She removed sod, dug holes, mixed in compost, soil, sand, and rotten wood, planted the trees, added a rebar stake to keep the saplings upright, and put on a plastic tree guard to protect from bunny chewings. She also pruned side shoots off the largest of the saplings, to give it a single stalk. I moved in cow panels, formed and tied them into circles and put them around the three plants. One cow panel was once around the Grimes Golden apple tree. I sawed that tree down earlier this year. The dwarf rootstock that came with it hated our clay soil and the fruit it grew was disappointing and tasteless. The other two cow panels came from the small corral next to the cow barn. Herman stapled cow panels to 4x6 green treated posts to make his corral. In normal Herman Hutton thoroughness, every heavy steel wire on the cow panel was covered with a big staple to hold it to the post. Between that and rose bushes and small trees growing through the panels, removing the cow panels took quite a bit of time. By the time I got back to the house, Mary was on the last tree transplanting chore. It's cool to start trees from seed and now see them in their permanent locations.
  • We saw three great blue herons fly over our property near sunset. Toads were singing on the last dog walk and a raccoon was squalling near Bluegill Pond.
  • The big cherry tree and the Sargent crabapple tree were snowing white blossom petals all over the lawns, today.
    

April 1-7, 2024

Weather | 4/1, 0.11" rain, 46°, 69° | 4/2, 0.49" rain, 41°, 42° | 4/3, 0.02" rain/sleet, 33°, 45° | 4/4, cloudy, 33°, 48° | 4/5, p. sunny, 30°, 58° | 4/6, sunny, 31°, 56° | 4/7, 0.20" rain, p. cloudy, 45°, 69° |

• Monday, 4/1: Low Activity
  
  • Minimal physical activity wears us out, fast, even though we're slowly recovering from COVID. Mary made tortillas and was shot. I walked the quarter-mile lane to the mailbox and back and was tired. There's so many things that need doing, but it isn't happening right now.
  • Bill's friend, Mike, couldn't make it to the NHL game, so he got another friend, Craig, to go with him. While at Craig's place in Maryland Heights, a St. Louis suburb, hail put some small dings in Bill's car. They waited out a tornado warning before going to the game. The Blues beat the Oilers 3-2 in overtime. Bill said it was a good game. It was Craig's first professional sport's game.
    
  • I found a free live ESPN feed and watched Iowa beat LSU and UConn beat USC in Women's NCAA basketball, which was fun to see.
  • We didn't witness nasty storms. They were all south of us. We only saw a little thunder in the early afternoon.
    

• Tuesday, 4/2: Wet & Wind
  
  • Just after waking up, I saw four of our neighbor's black dogs on our lane and running west across the field. They were gone before I could get outside. What our neighbors need is a big German Shepherd that hates stray dogs.
  • Today we had clouds, rain, mist, and wind. Pear blossoms are coming and going without weather good enough for pollinators to get into them. The Sargent crabapple and McIntosh apple trees are full of opening white blossoms.
  • Mary baked four loaves of bread. Fresh bread made for a great treat this evening.
    
  • For the first time in several days, I didn't take a nap, but I'm still not over COVID. Coughing is what I do, now. Mary is on Day 11 of not enjoying this damn bug.
    
  • I spent time researching how to build house foundation drainage.
    
  • We watched the 2004 movie, Hildago.
    

• Wednesday, 4/3: Clouds, Pizza, and an Order
  
  • Today was dreary, with clouds, rain, mist and northwest wind gusts to 45 mph. We stayed inside and didn't let the chickens out of the coop. The woodstove heat was perfect, but we're almost out of firewood.
    
  • I assessed all of my winemaking supplies and ordered a few things from hobbyhomebrew.com in Carbondale, IL. On top of the list was 200 wine corks. I also put winemaking stuff away that was sitting out in the downstairs west room.
    
  • Mary made two pizzas and paid the bills.
  • Five deer marched around south and west of the house in the evening. They started munching on the lilac bush, so I opened the window and sent then away. They didn't go far. Soon, they were heading back to the south apple trees, so I went outside and clapped to send them running. Then, three other deer ran to the east from the north yard. We really have a lot of deer.
    

• Thursday, 4/4: Bottling Parsnip Wine
  
  • While walking the bills down to the mailbox, we found a smashed crayfish near the gravel road, but in our lane. Mary identified it as a grassland crayfish. We're guessing it was stepped on by our neighbor's horses.
  • The same neighbors that own a roving pack of black Lab mutts made a slipshod electric fence out of plastic pipes and a single strand of electric tape in their yard to hold their horses. The problem is their two horses step right through the fence and wander down the gravel road to our property. These slobs are getting real annoying with their animals spilling onto our land.
    
  • I racked and bottled the parsnip wine. Made 135 days ago, this was the fifth racking. The specific gravity was 1.001 and the pH was 3.2. This wine has a 10.2 percent alcohol content. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta, the full dosage for 3.5 gallons. It has a beautiful orange color (see photos, below). I corked 18 wine bottles. We drank a tiny bit of the clear wine and all of the fines. This is a very good wine. It's hard to describe the taste, since there are so many flavors involved. The second half of the fines we drank chilled. It wasn't nearly as good as at room temperature.
  • Mary counted her canning lids and decided she has enough, but she plans on getting more.
  • Mary covered the winter greens, due to a freeze warning predicted overnight.

18 bottles of parsnip wine.

This wine has a deep gold color.

• Friday, 4/5: Shopping & Scrounging Firewood
  
  • We had a frosty morning. There was no fruit tree damage. The McIntosh and the Sargent trees are full of bees attending to blossoms.
    
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up a FedEx package of strawberry plants and a blueberry bush, medications, and a few other items.
  • The package of winemaking items that I ordered on Wednesday showed up in today's mail, which was super fast shipping. I paid for agglomerated corks, meaning they are made from bits of cork glued together. They sent me the more expensive solid corks.
  • I bought gas in Lewistown, where it's cheapest, at $3.19 a gallon.
  • Our firewood supply is out, so Mary gathered up wood from our wienie roast firewood pile and sawed up some persimmon posts that I never got around to peeling.
  • I watched the two women's NCAA Final Four games on ESPN. The South Carolina team looks very good. They beat NC State. Iowa beat UConn by two points in a very close game. It was fun to watch. Mary is rooting for SC. She attended a SC campus her college freshman year. I'm rooting for Iowa.
    

• Saturday, 4/6: Removing Fence Posts
  
  • The wind blows constantly, day and night. It's been always blowing for several days.
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal. She uses both garlic and jalapeño wines in making this recipe and was running out of them, so I retrieved two bottles from my supply. While lifting a cooler loaded with bottles, I pulled a muscle in my lower right back. I felt it for the rest of the day, but the meal was wonderful.
  • I looked at a couple wooden fence posts in a fence I'm dismantling on the south edge of the north field. They're just as wiggly in the ground as metal fence posts and they weigh a ton. They come from an Osage orange tree and the wood doesn't decay. I also looked at some laying on the forest floor in the north woods. I decided to forego using them, since I'd need something mechanical to hoist them up and put them in the ground, which I don't have.
  • I worked at removing more metal fence posts. I now have 30 and need eight more to have enough for encircling two sets of fruit trees with electric fences. The work is tedious while I dodge multiflora rose bushes and spiky cedar boughs. One post stayed in place. Two cedar trees encapsulated its base. While removing one post in tight quarters amongst cedar boughs, I was wiggling it back and forth and accidentally whacked the tip of it against my forehead, leaving a bloody mark. I went inside and dabbed hydrogen peroxide on the wound. Mary says it looks like she hit my forehead with a brick. I quit at that point.
  • While getting my bucket of fence post removal tools, I watched a mature bald eagle chasing an immature bald eagle as they circled above me. As they got close to one another, the younger eagle would dive to a lower elevation to avoid contact. It was quite spectacular to watch.
    
  • I watched highlights of the two men's NCAA Final Four basketball games. I really like the 7'4" center for Purdue, Zach Edey. I watched a clip of him meeting Shaq O'Neal in a back tunnel and Edey is taller than O'Neal. Edey has a wicked sky hook shot.
    

• Sunday, 4/7: Bad Back Gets Worse
  
  • Bill called and we talked for over an hour. He's winding up the chore of shipping all inventory to other warehouses at his job. The numbers of employees have dropped significantly. He thinks his employer is going to ask him to work at their South Carolina location once work is done in St. Louis. He's against going there. Bill's car received hail damage. He plans on getting estimates on fixing it. Bill plans on visiting here the weekend after next weekend. 
  • We walked dogs westerly and saw trout lily flowers while in the north woods.
  • I watched South Carolina beat Iowa in the NCAA women's basketball championship. Mary's team won. They're really good.
  • I pulled three more posts from the north fenceline and rolled up more barbed wire. With a bad back, it was excruciating, because most of the time you are bent over while dodging cedar boughs. After doing that job, I was pretty stove up and having a hard time just walking. Out came the heating pad. I went to bed in the easy chair, with small pillows behind my back.
    
  • The ticks are back. I picked nine ticks off me after playing with fence posts. Three were biting!
  • Bees are thick in blossoming fruit trees. The McIntosh apple tree smells great. Cherry blossoms are starting to open. Pears are almost done blossoming.
    
  • Mary started pepper seeds in small Styrofoam cups filled with potting soil.
    
  • Mary baked a wonderful-tasting pumpkin cake that we enjoyed with deviled eggs and jam on toast for our evening meal.