Oct. 7-13, 2024

Weather | 10/7, sunny, 40°, 67° | 10/8, sunny, 39°, 73° |10/9, sunny, 42°, 78° | 10/10, sunny, 45°, 78° | 10/11, sunny, 51°, 83° | 10/12, p. cloudy, 58°, 87° | 10/13, sunny, 49°, 67° |

• Monday, 10/7: Trimming Lane Branches
  
  • Mary trimmed tree branches on the east side of the lane that have grown so far that the pickup's antenna and mirrors sometimes touch them while we drive to and from the gravel road. They are mainly cedar branches. She chopped off branches from the house to about two-thirds down our quarter-mile lane.
    
  • I chased squirrels away from the pecan trees all day.
    
  • I weeded grass and weeds out of the spinach tub in the winter greens.
  • I cleaned inside and outside of the pickup's windows to aid Mary in driving the truck, tomorrow, when we go to Quincy for my second cataract surgery.
    
  • I wrote questions down to ask the eye surgeon for tomorrow's visit.
    

• Tuesday, 10/8: Right Eye Cataract Surgery
  
  • We drove to Quincy in the morning for my right eye cataract surgery. 
  • We had to be to the hospital by 11 a.m., but we arrived in Quincy early so I could pick up some cheater glasses enabling me to read and view the computer screen. I got a pair of 3+ reading glasses for close-up reading and a pair of 2+ glasses for viewing the laptop from a little further away. Later in the evening, I tested the glasses and they worked great.
    
  • The surgery on my right eye went fine. It started just a few minutes after noon. I thought it went faster than last week, but Mary assured me that my time in the operating room was about the same, roughly 20-25 minutes.
  • The Quincy Medical Group's hospital is in the old mall where Penneys and Sears once were located and are since gone. We parked in the mall parking lot's northwest side, that is completely empty, ate lunch, and waited until my post-op appointment at 4:10 p.m.
  • We got to the eye office early and checked in. We waited and waited while other customers came and went. Employees started to go home. Finally, Mary and I were the only customers left. I asked the folks at the desk if we were forgotten and I was told we weren't checked in  yet. A couple minutes later, I was called back and went through my appointment. Mary had a remaining employee apologize profusely, telling her that when we were initially checked in, we were listed in their computer system as checked into the hospital, not the eye clinic office. It's a glitch in their computer programming that happens, sometimes. Mary was rather a little bit chewy about that fact!
    
  • Meanwhile, in my post-op diagnosis, my left eye's vision is at 20:20. The right eye is at 200:20, due to all of the floating medicine in it. The pressure inside the right eye was quite high, so the doctor gave me additional medication after answering all my questions. I'll be able to get back to normal on lifting 50-pound bags of feed and cutting firewood with a chainsaw in three weeks, he said. So, we'll celebrate Eye Freedom Day on Oct. 29th.
  • Mary drove us home just in time to get dogs walked and chickens ushered into the coop prior to darkness falling. We were glad for the day to be over!
    

• Wednesday, 10/9: Husking Pecans & Eliminating Garden Plants
  
  • I sat in the shade under the pecan trees and pealed husks off paper pecan nuts with an offset screwdriver while chasing squirrels out of the pecan trees. It's a good activity I can do while recuperating from cataract surgery.
    
  • Mary cut grass in the lawn immediately east of the house with her scythe. We've neglected mowing for several weeks and the grass is too high for a mower. This gets it down to a good height for the mower and gives us more hay for the chickens.
    
  • Mary picked the last of the green beans and thereby eliminated bean plants from the watering schedule. She also picked some tomatoes. She eliminated most of a row tomatoes from the watering schedule that show no promise of producing tomatoes in the next 4-5 days. We were too late at planting tomatoes, this year.
    
  • We're predicted to see a low of 36° on Monday and 35° on Tuesday, which means we will be even colder here on top of our hill, so we're sure to see frost damage in our gardens. Mary plans on cleaning out garden plants prior to Monday and Tuesday, since mucking out dead tomato plants killed by frost is a sloppy and gooey job.
  • Like last week, but in the right eye, I have slowly decreasing octopus ink swirls from the medicine they use in my eye when the new lens is implanted. Vision is fuzzy in that eye, but getting better. Cover my right eye and I see distances quite well.
  • Plato wants to jump off the porch, so Mary puts a leash on him to get him out the door, then removes it once we're outside and on the ground. He limps just a little, but he's improving  every day. Plato often trots a short distance on walks.
    

• Thursday, 10/10: Pecans & Northern Lights
  
  • Mary picked up fully husked pecans under the trees. I spent most of the day removing those husks. I also chased squirrels away several times. Even though I wore latex gloves, I now have the annual autumn disease that I call pecan thumbs (see photo, below). Juice from peeling husks of pecan nuts eventually seeps through the gloves and turns my thumbs black.
  • Mary did a bunch of housecleaning. The Asian ladybugs started flying about and trying to get into the house, so Mary was busy vacuuming them out of windows.
  • We watched the 1998 movie, Practical Magic.
  • Bill received an image from his high school friend, Cole, with a photo of the aurora above Edmonton. Bill also noticed it in St. Louis. When we went out with the dogs, we saw red and green in our northern sky. We went back out and sat in lawn chairs partway down the lane for a couple hours. Unfortunately, the best display was right when we went out with the puppies. Even so, it was fun watching the night sky as the moon set. We saw two meteors streak across the north sky.

  

  Blackness on my thumbs from husking pecan nuts.

• Friday, 10/11: No Gun Shots
  
  • On the first morning check for squirrels, a deer ran off from behind the machine shed through the north woods. It went right by my newest deer blind.
  • Today is the first day of early rifle anterless deer season. I think it's too warm to be handling venison meat. Besides, I can't be shooting a gun or lifting anything over 10 pounds after cataract surgery, so I'll wait for better hunting days. We didn't hear a single rifle shot, today.
    
  • I have diminished floaters in my right eye, but my vision in that eye is blurry. As Mary says, "Patience...you just need patience."
    
  • Bill called. He compared notes with us about last night's aurora and spent the rest of the time chatting. He is coming here for a visit on Oct. 19-22.
  • Mary picked nuts off lower branches and the ground for me. I husked pecans and chased away squirrels all day while sitting under the pecan trees.
  • Mary picked the last of the sweet peppers and nearly the last of the hot peppers. She hung hot peppers up to dry.
    
  • Mary also turned hay that's in the front lawn. It smells wonderful, resembling a barn's hayloft after getting a new supply of hay.
  • Clouds rolled in before sunset. It's the first clouds we've seen since Oct. 4!
  • Plato marched upstairs to say hi to Mary. He was very proud of himself. He ventured down the stairs, too. He's getting better!
    

• Saturday, 10/12: Finishing Some Autumn Chores
  
  • Mary picked the last of the green beans, cut them up, and processed six quarts and three one-serving packages for the freezer. It was a good green bean year in 2024.
    
  • Mary also picked up the hay in the front lawn and stored it in the second grain bin. There were several wheelbarrow loads, enough to replace what she put into the coop after I cleaned it, and then an additional amount. She said she's done with the chore of cutting and storing hay for this year.
    
  • Mary picked a bunch of pecan nuts for me, which I husked, while chasing squirrels away throughout the day and sitting under the pecan trees. Wind picked up in the late afternoon, when Mary found more nuts. A branch came down several feet ahead of me. Mary looked up above me and had me move to just in front of the machine shed, due to the chance of a dead branch coming down on my head.
    
  • Hops are taking over (see photos, below). Soon, they'll be all over the area near our house.
  • The vision in my right eye is still fuzzy. It's taking longer to clear than my left eye after cataract surgery. I noticed that my near vision is slightly better, today. I didn't use cheater reading glasses all day.
    

Hops atop persimmon saplings. Raspberry
patch at the bottom of these saplings

More hops vines climbing persimmon saplings.
Kieffer pear tree is in the background.

• Sunday, 10/13: Pecan Nut Inventory
  
  • I counted all of the pecan nuts that we picked last year and it is 2,343. Then, I added the 442 pecans I husked so far this year for a grand total of 2,785 nuts. I crack 12 pecan nuts per morning to add to oatmeal breakfasts. We eat six oatmeal breakfasts each week. Waffles are our breakfast fare on Fridays. Add in a couple oatmeal breakfasts for Bill when he's visiting each month and we need 300 pecans per month. Multiply by 14 months (pecans take roughly two months to dry) and we need 4,200 nuts, or 1,415 additional pecans. Consuming eight per day and we already have enough with last year's nuts. Consuming 10 per day equals 250 per month or 3,500 over 14 months, which means we need to collect an additional 715. That's our goal.
    
  • I picked up and husked 35 pecan nuts. I also played hide and seek with the always reappearing squirrel hordes. They sneak in over the fallen leaves like a herd of buffalo, then I stomp into the woods and send them running. We repeat this dance several times a day.
    
  • Mary and I picked up several more pecans blown down by the wind. Most had husks that were once gnawed on by either squirrels or birds.
  • There is a large nest just north of the machine shed that is well hidden behind shorter oak trees (see photo, below). It looks like the beginnings of a winter nest built by squirrels. They start with sticks, then fill it with leaves.
    
  • The wind blew out of the northwest too hard for doing much outside. Mary was going to give all houseplants a bath, but wind gusts prevented that activity.
    
  • My right eye is still fuzzy. Time will tell if it gets better. All vision is so much brighter. You don't realize how dark your vision gets until after cataract surgery.

  

  A squirrel nest in the making behind the machine shed.