Oct. 14-20, 2024

Weather | 10/14, p. cloudy, 39°, 57° | 10/15, p. cloudy, 41°, 55° |10/16, sunny, 29°, 57° | 10/17, sunny, 30°, 65° | 10/18, sunny, 36°, 67° | 10/19, sunny, 39°, 73° | 10/20, sunny, 45°, 77° |

• Monday, 10/14: Cleaning Plants Prior to Tomorrow's Killing Frost
  
  • This morning, several dozen robins piled into the poke berries under the Granny Smith apple tree and went after the Sargent crabapples. These robins came in with yesterday's northerly winds. They had very pale breasts. Some were almost white.
  • Mary saw a young deer with a gray winter coat when she walked the first waterer to the chicken coop. I heard it snort just a couple minutes earlier from the north woods.
    
  • Mary and I collected more nuts with the husks on that were under the pecan trees.
  • Mary picked the remaining hot peppers and hung three strings of them in the upstairs south bedroom.
  • Then, Mary picked 90 jalapeño peppers that she will make into refrigerator jalapeño pickles.
  • Next, Mary picked a five-quart pan of cherry tomatoes, and a four-gallon bucket of big tomatoes, including some unripe ones.
  • I took the husks off a 26 pecans.
  • I made noontime waffles, giving Mary relief from cooking.
  • Mary pulled up all pepper and tomato plants. She wanted to get them prior to the killer frost that's predicted for tomorrow night. She says there were probably 1,000 immature green tomatoes that were too young to save. If left until after the freeze, they all would have been pounds of gooey mush. In the future, we must get tomato plants in the garden sooner than we did this year. She moved seven wheelbarrow loads of plants stacked up to head level to a pile down the hill, east of the far garden. Mary had green hands and forearms after that job.
  • I chased squirrels away roughly every 10-20 minutes and husked another 105 pecans for a grand total of 133 put away for the day. There's only 577 left to reach our pecan nut goal for the year.
  • The tool I'm using to husk pecans is nice and black. I remember Dad telling me that prior to trapping muskrats, he and Grandad would soak new steel traps in boiling water filled with walnut husks. Pecans, hickories, and walnuts are all related. I understand, now, how well the juice from these husks blackens steel.
    

• Tuesday, 10/15: Eyes Are Good
  • Katie called us last night after I sent out this blog. She was making a butternut squash soup while she talked to us. She made a recent assessment trip to Kaktovik, AK, on a school project her employer is preparing to start. Katie is getting a new promotion to master sergeant in the Alaska Air National Guard. She got an award for her work in flood recovery efforts she did as a National Guard member in Juneau this summer. Katie reminded us that we need to get a Christmas wish list to her, soon.
    
  • We got to Quincy around 9:50 a.m. for a 10 a.m. surgery post-op visit. Dr. Benedict, my optometrist, took a detailed view of both new lenses and said they looked perfect, with no movement. Eye pressures were 12 in the left eye and 19 in the right eye. Normal eye pressure is between 10-20, so they are good and I can stop taking drops for that symptom. He also said the left eye recovered quicker than normal and the right eye is recovering at a normal pace. I have 25/20 vision in the left eye and 35/20 vision in the right. Dr. Benedict predicts the vision will improve over the next couple weeks in both eyes. I have another post-op visit with him in three weeks on Nov. 5th. Then we decide whether I need glasses or if I can just stick with the cheater glasses for close-up viewing.
  • Mary and I shopped for a few things after the eye appointment. The highlight was frozen turkeys for only 88 cents a pound at Walmart. We bought two of their largest birds. We also got a cheap pumpkin at Menards.
  • We got back home around 1:30 p.m.
  • Mary yanked all of the green bean plants out of the far garden. There are still squash and cucumber vines in the near garden. She'll move them after they're dried out later this fall.
  • We both collected more downed pecan nuts with their husks on and I husked 27 of them while chasing squirrels away. Pecans draw squirrels in better than anything else in the world.
  • Mary and I covered the winter greens with blankets to protect them from the expected overnight freeze. We decided not to worry about the strawberry plants.
  • We're noticing that the juncos are home for the fall/winter.
    

• Wednesday, 10/16: First Frost of Fall
  
  • We got our first autumn frost. We were sure glad that we removed tomato and pepper plants. They would have been blackened mush with this frost.
    
  • Mary and I picked up more pecans left on the ground by marauding squirrels and jays. Squirrels are in such a frenzy that they knock multitudes of nuts to the ground.
    
  • Mary cleaned the insides of all windows. She also washed all curtains. A west to southwest breeze flapped them enough on the line that she didn't need to iron them.
    
  • I husked pecans all day and chased squirrels. I now have a grand total of 3,058 nuts, with only 442 left to gather and husk.
  • One big gray squirrel wouldn't leave the paper pecan tree, even after I threw firecrackers into the tree to scare it away. I debated about getting the .22 rifle out. Mary said since I got a good bill of health from the eye clinic, she thought I could use it. So, with Mary's help at spotting the squirrel high in the tree, I shot it. As the late afternoon progressed, I shot at a few other squirrels, but missed them. I'm rusty at shooting left-handed. Squirrels really change their tune about attacking pecan nuts once rifle shots are fired. They get scarce quickly.
    
  • After the sun set, I heard something in the north woods, but never saw anything. Then, after entering the living room. there were three deer walking north to south just west of the house. That's probably the footsteps I heard in the woods. The leading deer got too close to the south apple trees, so I went outside and shooed them away into the west woods. They all had on their dark brown/gray winter coats.
  • The hunter moon was extremely bright when we walked dogs for their final outing.
    

• Thursday, 10/17: Tasty Salads
  
  • Frost covered the ground again this morning.
  • A dump truck loaded with gravel showed up in front of the house this morning. The first thing the driver said was that he must be at the wrong place and then asked where Rich's hunting cabin is located. Rich owns under 50 acres opposite of our property's southwest corner. I gave the driver directions and he left only small dents in our lawn while turning the dump truck around. It's a good thing we're currently dry!
    
  • Mary and I collected pecans and I removed husks from 127 nuts throughout the day.
    
  • I shot three squirrels. They were all big guys.
    
  • Mary froze cut-up sweet peppers, creating 11 small sandwich bags of peppers for the freezer. She also made three quarts of jalapeño refrigerator pickles. They're hotter than the last batch she made.
    
  • We ate the best tasting salads (see photo, below) of freshly picked winter greens plus cherry tomatoes recently collected from the garden. This was in addition to the venison stroganoff on rice as our main dish.
  • We watched the 2002 film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

  

  Salads consisting of winter greens and cherry tomatoes.
  

• Friday, 10/18: Several Deer
  
  • We heard a great blue heron making croaking sounds to the northeast while walking the dogs before sunrise.
  • A mature bald eagle flew by the west side of the house below the treetops and landed in the south woods. We don't usually see bald eagles that low to the ground.
  • I shot three more squirrels this morning.
  • We picked up more pecans dropped by squirrels and birds and I removed husks from 120 nuts. I need 211 more nuts to reach our goal of 3500 pecans for oatmeal breakfasts for the upcoming year.
    
  • Mary took the garden hose and washed house plants. She also cleaned the sunroom where most of the plants sit throughout the year.
    
  • I saw two deer in the north woods near my newest deer blind this morning and three deer on the second half of our lane when I got mail right after sunset.
    

• Saturday, 10/19: Asian Ladybug Hordes
  
  • White-crowned sparrows are thick in the bushes. Mary and I watched one hopping around while we picked pecans under the trees in the morning. I heard them all day as they kicked over autumn leaves nearby.
  • Bill arrived around 11:30 a.m.
  • Katie sent photos of awards she received from the Alaska Air National Guard (see photos, below). She also said that she "found out today that I was picked as NCO of the quarter for my group and will compete at the wing level."
    
  • I shot two squirrels.
  • I husked exactly 100 pecans, bringing my total to 3,379 and only 121 away from the 3,500 goal.
  • Asian ladybugs started swarming around 2 p.m. and they increased to the worst we've ever witnessed. We hoped last winter's -20 temperature might have killed a few, but today proved that theory all wrong. Poor Mary started vacuuming in the living room starting around 2:30, where the inside west wall was covered with thousands of crawling bugs. She literally vacuumed bugs for hours. I got inside right when the sun was setting and took over vacuuming duties so she could break and do chores. Waterers in the chicken coop were filled with floating bugs. Inside the machine shed, it sounded like it was raining. The sound came from bugs hitting the outside of the tin on the south side of the building. After the sun went down, Mary and I attacked all rooms with the shop vac and cleaned them up. They were horrible and we now have a shop vac stuffed with stinking bugs. The house smelled like Asian ladybug odor for a couple hours after we finished vacuuming.
    
  • Bill, Mary, and I watched the 2004 film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Katie said, "Quite the day at drill," with this photo.

Katie said her dogs were at her promotion.

• Sunday, 10/20: Stargazing with Bill's Binoculars
  
  • Mary sucked up Asian ladybugs starting around 11:30 a.m., which allowed her to keep up with the insect invasion into the house. They were a little less intense, due to a southwest wind, with about 20 mph gusts. I watched them get blown into the north woods throughout the day.
    
  • I husked another 100 pecan nuts, raising the grand total to 3,479, which is only 21 away from the goal of 3,500. After several hundred, I'm getting quicker at the task. However, I have greenish brown Shrek fingers and thumbs, due to pecan juice eventually seeping through the latex gloves.
  • Several times in the late afternoon, squirrels would sneak down the tree directly above me. As soon as I'd take of the gloves and reach for the rifle, they'd scurry back up the tree and hop from tree limb to tree limb, escaping to the north.
  • Bill worked throughout the day on learning his statistics programs.
  • After dark, we peered at the night sky through Bill's Celestron Skymaster binoculars (see photo, below). He had them set up on a tripod and used a very cool app on his phone called Stellarium. Holding his phone at any point in the sky and specific names of stars, planets, constellations and other celestial items showed up on the screen. We looked at several star clusters and nebulae. We looked at craters on the moon, the stars of Pleides, Jupiter and three of its moons, and Saturn. Satellite names showed up on Bill's app, several of which we couldn't see. We watched a row of Starlink satellites move across the west sky. It was a real blast looking through his binoculars.
    
  • We started our stargazing in front of the chicken coop, but moved to the trail going east from the grain bins to view the moon and Jupiter, rising in the east sky. While there, we heard many flying squirrels chirping, moving about, and chewing on pecan nuts. There were either several in the trees, or one extremely active flying squirrel.

  

  Bill's Celestron Skymaster 20x80 binoculars are really big.