August 26-Sept. 1, 2024

Weather | 8/26, sunny, 73°, 94° | 8/27, sunny to T-storm, 0.05" rain, 75°, 96° | 8/28, cloudy, 0.28" rain, 68°, 89° | 8/29, sunny, 70°, 91° | 8/30, cloudy, 69°, 83° | 8/31, sunny, 61°, 83° | 9/1, sunny, 60°, 79° |

• Monday, 8/26: High Heat & Cherry Wine Racking
  
  • We're hot! However, our high didn't reach the National Weather Service's prediction of 99°, so there's some solace in that fact. Everywhere you look, trees are losing their leaves. Our big cherry tree is almost bare. It's been a tough summer for trees.
  • Mary dusted books in the sunroom, where she found nine spiders behind the books. This immaculately sealed house strikes, again.
    
  • I racked the cherry wine for the fourth time (see photo, below). Both Batch 1 and 2 had the same readings. The specific gravity was 0.993 and the pH was 3.3. Both batches received 1.1 grams of Kmeta. All containers had a lining of fines on the bottom. Remaining liquid for each batch filled a 5-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle, and a 12-ounce Jarritos bottle. We tasted about 200 ml of leftovers from Batch 1. It has a very strong black cherry flavor and is very delicious. This cherry wine gives your mouth a feeling of fullness. It's young, so it ought to be really good with time. It sits another month in the pantry before it gets a final racking and bottling.
  • I noticed that when Bill helped me on the last cherry racking a month ago, he got funny with the white grease pencil. Instead of writing #2 on a jug, he wrote # poop. Nice!
    
  • While I dealt with wine, Mary watered all of the garden plants. She threw away three bell peppers that scalded in the intense sun. Losing green peppers isn't as important as keeping the plants alive. Some Black Prince tomato plants have dried leaves. They are on the west row and share roots with persimmon trees, so Mary upped the water amount to all plants.
    
  • Mary had a hummingbird buzz her in the garden. She said they sound a lot bigger than their actual size.

  

  A little over 11.5 gallons of cherry wine.

• Tuesday, 8/27: Hottest Day & Thunderstorms
  
  • Since we experienced the hottest day of the summer, today, we stayed inside.
    
  • Mary and I washed a pile of dishes. My winemaking activities, yesterday, added to the load.
    
  • Rainy weather crept up on us right when we were planning on going outside to water gardens. Thunderstorms developed around us and eventually gave us rain. Online radar showed the storms weren't moving. They looked like an ameba that was oozing outward and inward. We heard thunder for about five hours. Midway through it all, we were at a center point, with storms all around us. We ran outside and did chores, quickly, because we knew it wasn't going to get any better.
    

• Wednesday, 8/28: 20 Hormworms!
  
  • Another rather hot day outside meant we stayed indoors as long as we could, today.
  • Mary finished dusting the sunroom books.
    
  • I put winemaking stuff away in the west room, a neglected chore that was literally stacking up. Two S-shaped airlocks had mold developing that I had to eliminate with bleach. I don't like these airlocks that look like THIS. They are hard to clean. I prefer the three piece airlocks that can be taken apart and cleaned that look like THIS.
  • Mary and I watered gardens, but wet soil from recent rain resulted in less watering. 
    
  • After dark, we went hunting for hornworms while using a UV flashlight. We found 20 worms. They are bright lime green in the blacklight and show off like a neon sign. The only problem is dozens of bugs bombard your face while attracted to the light as you search the plants for worms. It was a healthy haul at collecting worms.
    

• Thursday, 8/29: Catbird is Strawberry Thief
  
  • There was no solid food eating for me today, due to preparing for tomorrow's colonoscopy. At one point in the evening, I was sitting on the couch with Juliet, one of our cats. My stomach rumbled loud enough to startle her. She had big, wide eyes and looked about as if to say, "What was that weird noise!"
    
  • Mary watered garden plants. It was really hot and humid.
    
  • We watched as a catbird jumped down from the Granny Smith apple tree to eat poke berries ripening on huge plants under that tree. Later, Mary heard it in the cedar trees next to the near garden. She figures it's probably our offender who is taking bites out of some of the ripe strawberries.
    

• Friday, 8/30: I Get to Eat!
  
  • We drove to Quincy, where I had the colonoscopy. Quincy Medical Group's hospital is in the old Bergner's store in the Quincy Mall. The building is unrecognizable since this new hospital went in. Two pieces of good news from my visit. My colon is good and today's colonoscopies are fast. We got there at 10 a.m., and we left at 11:30 a.m. Mary drove home, since driving wasn't allowed after anesthesia.
    
  • I looked up rear brake parts for our pickup, decided on brake part makers based on experiences written by others on message boards and recorded prices for items I think we need to fix the truck's brakes.
    
  • Mary and I picked strawberries that tasted divine on the waffles I cooked up. I ate three waffles for supper, which is enough to fill a barge. So much for the nurse's advice to eat lightly on the day of surgery.
    
  • We hunted for hornworms on the tomato, tomatillo, and pepper plants after dark with the UV flashlight. We found 43 worms, a new record for this year. 
  • As we were outside looking for worms, the St. Louis neighbor who owns property west of us was ripping around on a couple of loud four-wheelers at 10 at night. What an idiot! We were hoping he drove his noisy ATV into a tree or a ditch.
    

• Saturday, 8/31: Cutting Hay & Removing the Mailbox
  
  • Mary cut hay in the east yard with her scythe. That's a lawn area that we haven't mowed in a couple months, so it's full of tall grass and plantain with seed heads. Chickens will love it come wintertime and eat most of their bedding.
    
  • I saw a large buck with a rack run to the west as I got near the end of our lane while getting the mail.
    
  • I took our mailbox off the post and painted the plywood board under the mailbox that's lag bolted to the top of the post with Semco liquid membrane. This waterproofs that wood and hopefully makes it last longer. I put five coats on the wood. This Labor Day weekend allows me enough time to repaint the mailbox, allow it to dry, apply lettering, and get it back up prior to receiving mail on Tuesday.
    
  • While I painted, two different large ATVs drove by on the gravel road. There were four guys on one of them. Tomorrow is the first day of dove hunting season, so I'm guessing they're here from St. Louis for that. I'll never understand the rationale for shooting a dove. Only the breast meat is consumed, which is probably half a mouthful. Plus, doves are harmless. Why shoot the symbol of peace?
    
  • Mary picked six cucumbers that she fixed up into a big cucumber salad for dinner.
  • Hops cones are developing (see photos, below) and starting to emit a bitter pale ale aroma.
    
  • After dark, we picked 24 hornworms. Most of them came off the five Jet Star tomato plants in the near garden. Stars were very bright and steady. The Milky Way was bright enough to cast shadows in the gardens, which are mostly surrounded by trees, effectively cutting out city lights from Quincy, which lies 30 miles east of us.

Hops cones growing up the east house siding.

Hops cones on maple tree hanging over north roof of the house.

• Sunday, 9/1: Mailbox Paint Job
  
  • Today is the first day of dove season, so this morning we heard several shotgun blasts from the property north of us. When Sept. 1st is on a weekday, we seldom hear shots. This year, with Sept. 1st falling on Labor Day Weekend, it sounds like the infantry arrived.
    
  • My main job involved painting the mailbox, today. I first peeled off lettering, then removed left-behind stickum and old paint chalk with paint thinner. I gave all surfaces a light sanding, then cleaned the sanding dust and mold in grooves off with paper towels and our ammonia/vinegar/alcohol cleaner. The bottom got a coat of Rust-Oleum brown rust paint and the top received one coat of bright yellow Rust-Oleum paint.
    
  • We watered gardens. Some of the tomato plants are small trees and more green tomatoes are showing.
    
  • We watched the 1988 movie, A Fish Called Wanda.
  • Our pup, Plato, isn't eating much. He did consume a can of dog food, today, so we looked online and decided I'd run to Quincy and get some additional cans at Petco. He just won't touch the current dry dog food that Amber gobbles up with gusto. We moved the dog blanket downstairs so he could sleep on the main floor, overnight.