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.