Tuesday, July 22, 2025

July 21-27, 2025

Weather | 7/21, 0.01" rain, cloudy, 71°, 87° | 7/22, sunny, 73°, 91° | 7/23, sunny, 76°, 91° | 7/24, cloudy, 73°, xx° | 7/25, xx°, xx° | 7/26, xx°, xx° | 7/27, xx°, xx° |

  • Monday, 7/21: Still Picking Blackberries
    • Last night we couldn't find a white hen named Jasmine. We looked all over the woods outside the chicken yard. This morning, she popped out the chicken door from the chick side of the coop. We guessed that she was hiding when we put the chicks to bed last night. We should rename her Houdini.
    • Mary has poison ivy rash showing up on parts of her body. I suggested that she stop picking blackberries, which always involves wading through poison ivy plants. She took me up on that suggestion and stayed home, cleaning some of the house and watering the gardens. Most plants are fine on water, but with high temperatures predicted in upcoming days, she wanted to give the garden plants some help.
    • I picked blackberries from between the ponds and Bramble Hill, gaining 3.5 quarts of berries in the freezer for the day. We now have 25 quarts frozen. I picked 34 ticks off my clothes from two berry-picking outings. 
    • Mary's goal was 24 stuffed quarts in the freezer for morning additions through the year to our breakfast oatmeal. I'm going to add a few more quarts, just to give us extra. If temperatures get as high as they're predicting, the last berries will dry up, so I want to get as many as I can before that happens. I checked blackberry wine numbers and I have over 20 bottles made in 2023. I think I'll skip another year without making blackberry wine. With all of the other wine varieties on hand, we have plenty.
    • We're noticing that at the base of ash trees that were dead due to an invasion of emerald ash borers, new ash saplings are appearing. The ash borers killed the main tree, but not the roots, which are pushing up new shoots.
    • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 cherry wine after supper. It was very good. The cherry flavor is strong, plus it has a kick without an alcohol taste.
  • Tuesday, 7/22: Humid Heat Turning Berries to Mush
    • The outside temperatures are getting stinking hot. A tiny bit of time outside results in soaked clothes, due to sweating. For the first time this summer, we kept the bedroom air conditioner on all night, because when we went to bed, the thermometer was still in the low 80s.
    • Mary mowed and mulched part of the near far garden. Grass was still wet at mid-afternoon.
    • She found that some kind of bug larvae were eating the leaves of one tomatillo. Mary doused them with Dawn spray and killed them. They were close to taking out the entire plant.
    • I picked 1.5 quarts of blackberries from the patch in the persimmon trees west of the house. It gives us a total of 27 quarts in the freezer. Today was probably the last time I'll pick berries. Intense heat and extreme humidity is turning ripe berries into mush, quickly. I threw away over half of the berries I picked. The persimmon saplings block most of the sunlight from hitting the ground. I saw stretches of white mold on the ground that were a foot wide by five or six feet long. Is it any wonder berries start to go bad immediately after ripening with all that mold nearby?
    • The seckel pear tree that we planted this spring is dead. All of the trees we ordered this year came to us with white leaves. They leafed out, but were kept in the dark too long. It was a poor job done by Fedco. They blamed it on employee issues. The two apple trees came out of it and grew new leaves. This pear tree had a few tiny leaves, but they've all dried up.
    • The good news is the two Sargent crabapple transplants I did this spring, which had nothing but a single root that was about one inch wide by four or five inches long, are alive and producing new leaves. I didn't think they'd make it, but they're growing strong.
  • Wednesday, 7/23: Trimming Weeds & Watering Gardens
    • I decided to halt blackberry picking. We have enough and temperatures at night are too hot for ripening berries to stay viable.
    • I used the extension ladder and trimmed Virginia creeper vines that were growing across our bedroom windows. I cleaned poke weeds and mulberry branches from in front of the electrical plug in for the electric fencer unit. Tall poke weeds were knocked down by wind and rain, then grew stalks upward from the main trunks. Layered in between were mulberry branches. It was an amazing thicket of growth. I hauled away four large loads of vegetation. Some poke weed stalks were two inches in diameter.
    • I hauled water while Mary watered all of the gardens. Some of the onion plants have greenery that's bent over. Mary plans on harvesting those onions tomorrow.
    • I took videos (see below) of pollinators in the bee balm. Even though the blossoms are almost spent, bumblebees, butterflies, and hummingbird hawk-moths frequent the flowers. 
    • Bill called in the evening, and we talked with him for awhile.
    Bumblebees, a skipper butterfly, and a hummingbird hawk-moth in bee balm.
     
  • A bumblebee in the bee balm blossoms.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

July 14-20, 2025

Weather | 7/14, sunny, 63°, 88° | 7/15, p. sunny, 67°, 87° | 7/16, cloudy to sunny, 72°, 86° | 7/17, 0.14" rain, cloudy, 69°, 81° | 7/18, sunny, 67°, 85° | 7/19, 0.02" rain, cloudy to sunny, 73°, 85° | 7/20, 0.17" rain, 73°, 79° |

  • Monday, 7/14: Berries, Weeds, & Dead Hen
    • Mary picked more blackberries. She put two more stuffed quarts in the freezer. We now have a grand total of nine quarts of this year's frozen berries.
    • I finished whacking down the incredibly tall weeds in the north chicken yard, leaving three big windrows of downed vegetation that I now need to move. Chickens love grabbing seeds knocked out of motherwart plants. The last half of the stretch I took down next to the east fence of the north chicken yard with the Stihl trimmer was filled with poison ivy plants. I told Mary to avoid that area. She gets itchy just being near newly cut poison ivy. Luckily, it doesn't bother me.
    • We lost a hen a few days ago when three birds refused to go inside the coop in the evening and hid in the south chicken yard motherwart plants. I found the mostly-eaten hen under the north chicken yard weeds. We suspect it was killed by a raccoon. With weeds gone, rounding up hens is much easier.
    • The chicks are five weeks old, today. Their old enough to venture outside. That's why I'm working hard to get their outside area ready for them. We now count five pullets among our chicks. We ordered three barred rocks. The other two pullets are buff Orpingtons, which must be hard to sex as newborn chicks, because we always seem to get a few pullets out of the group that is supposed to be just cockerels.
    • The wild bergamot, or bee balm, has expanded in our north yard (see photo, below). It is a great attraction for giant swallowtail butterflies, monarch butterflies, and hummingbird hawk-moths.
    • Before sunset, we watched a flying circus above our house. Eastern kingbirds, barn swallows, and purple martins were swirling around, apparently catching bugs. At times, two kingbirds would meet in midair, exchange bugs while fluttering for a few seconds, then swoop down and start flying, again. What an amazing sight!
    Wild bergamot, or bee balm, in our north yard.
  • Tuesday, 7/15: The Raccoon Returns
    • When we let the chickens out this morning, we saw bits of paint peelings on the ground under the southeast corner of the chicken coop. It looks like a raccoon was messing around, trying to find a way into the coop. It's probably the one that grabbed a hen a couple days ago. Fortunately, all chickens were inside and we have hardware cloth over all open windows.
    • Mary noticed a crab spider munching away on a metalic green sweat bee in a Gerbera daisy (see photo, below). The spider is camouflaged with the same color as the middle part of the flower.
    • A tour of the gardens revealed that two pepper plants and one tomatillo plant died. A couple hills of squash only have one or two seeds that sprouted and one hill of zucchinis failed to germinate any seeds. All other plants look great. I picked two tiny strawberries and we noticed several blossoms showing on all strawberry plants. Onions are developing big bulbs. Mary picked a shallot that tasted divine in our midday smoked scrambled eggs.  
    • I moved weeds with a wheelburrow and threw them over the north fence of the north chicken yard. It took all day. The humidity makes temperatures in the upper 80s feel extremely hot. I took several breaks that were longer than my time outside.
    • Mary picked blackberries in this humid heat in patches that receive no wind and intense sun. She got another two quarts, bringing our grand total in the freezer to 11.
    • By the end of a day in this heat, Mary and I are both tired. We both yearn for cool white snow.
    A yellow spider eating a green bee on our Gerbera daisy.
  • Wednesday, 7/16: North Chicken Yard Ready for Chicks
    • I mowed the north chicken yard to cut down sedges and grass that evaded the weed trimmer. I then trimmed some tree branches with the loppers that were growing into gate areas. I propped up two posts at the north end of the north chicken yard that were leaning. I repaired the gate into the north yard and the upper latch at that gate. I put bricks along the bottom of the gate to block chicks from crawling under it. All that's left is to open up the chick door tomorrow to let them outside.
    • Mary went between the ponds to pick more blackberries. When I was done with the chicken yard, I went into the persimmon sapling forest west of the house and picked blackberries. Together, we got just over two quarts. There's now 13 total quarts in the freezer. There are many green and red blackberries yet to ripen.
    • Mary heard the bleating sound of a fawn deer calling down the hill to the east of her while she was picking blackberries. She thinks it caught her scent and was panicking.
    • I watched a doe and a fawn run away from the lane when I walked down to get the mail.
    • Bill sent us a link and we both watched a PBS American Experience episode entitled Nazi Town, USA, which is about the Nazi movement in this country in the 1930s.
    • After we went to bed, thunderstorms rolled through and gave us some rain.
  • Thursday, 7/17: Chicks Venture Outside
    • I unscrewed the board on the inside of the door for the chicks and let them outside. They were shy at first, like all chicks are, but by evening, most chicks were outside exploring.
    • I checked the grease fittings I bought recently for the spindles of the riding mower to determine that they have 27 threads per inch. The quarter inch taps I have are either 28, or 20, so I'll need to exchange these grease fittings to fit my taps.
    • I joined Mary on picking blackberries. Together we froze four quarts of berries for the day. The grand total in the freezer is now 17.
  • Friday, 7/18: A Shopping Trip
    • Mary and I went shopping in Quincy. All was quiet and traffic was low. We think a hot summer day prior to the weekend kept everyone away from shopping in the stores.
    • While driving down the lane to leave, we scared up a male and female Bob White quail. They are very pretty birds. Along the way to Quincy in many Missouri lawns, we noticed Destroying Angel mushrooms just like the ones in our lawn.
    • At Dollar General, I bought a silly pillow shaped like a pumpkin (Halloween stuff is out in stores). It's perfect for the small of my back while sitting on the couch. Besides exchanging grease fittings at Menards, I bought a tiny grease gun made by Oregon Tools, designed to grease chainsaw bar sprockets. I'll use it for greasing the gear head of the Stihl trimmer. We grabbed six cans of Repel insect repellent. We use it a great deal when we go marching around picking blackberries, or any outdoor activity.
    • Throughout the shopping trip, we marveled at how well the pickup shifted in and out of gear and how good the brakes worked on sudden stops. Inconsequential vehicle actions that normally go unnoticed are big events after you repair parts and work on the vehicle. 
    • After getting home, unloading, and doing evening chores, we watched a 1995 DVD that Mary picked up at Goodwill entitled Persuasion. We enjoyed a bottle of 2023 apple wine. It was very good and matched quite well with the cheese and crackers we ate while watching the movie.
    • When we walked Plato on his last outing, coyotes were yipping from the bottom southeast of the house. Plato wanted to go back inside pretty quickly.
  • Saturday, 7/19: A Berry Picking Record
    • Mary has a collection of old cookbooks and recipes. One is a 1917 Knox Gelatin recipe. She   moved them from loose-leaf binders and into a plastic covered box for better protection.
    • I went through a bunch of instruction manuals, threw out several outdated ones related to items we no longer own, and moved the remaining manuals into a new accordion folder.
    • Mary and I went back on the blackberry picking trail and picked five quarts, a new daily berry picking record for this year. We now have a total of 22 quarts in the freezer.
    • We're noticing more monarch butterflies as we move about while picking berries.
    • I finished reading the Alexander Kent book, Midshipman Bolitho.
    • The outside humidity is extremely high. On Plato's last outing, we noticed a foggy appearance when viewing the light through our kitchen window while just a few feet away. A quick check showed the relative humidity at 96 percent! Tree frogs love it. They were singing loudly from surrounding trees.
  • Sunday, 7/20: Racking & Bottling Dandelion Wine
    • I saw glimpses of a deer in the brush between the gardens when I looked out the bedroom window this morning.
    • It rained a little bit in the afternoon. There was a lot of rain threats in the forecast, but most of the weather went around us. Still, it was too wet to do much outside, so we stayed indoors.
    • Mary worked on a cross stitch project. 
    • I racked the dandelion wine for the fourth time. The liquid was clear, so I bottled it into six bottles. The specific gravity is 0.994 and the pH is 3.1. The alcohol level is 12.18 percent. Mary and I tasted some leftover wine. It's got a touch of citrus and a flowery aftertaste. It also has a strong alcohol taste. Aging should tame the alcohol flavor. The wine has a deep amber color, probably due to the abundant pollen amount in this year's dandelion flowers.
    • Mary's iPhone 5 SE is getting old and giving her fits. I looked up cell phones and texted with Bill a few times about phone ideas. We haven't made up our minds, yet.

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

July 7-13, 2025

Weather | 7/7, sunny, 70°, 87° | 7/8, 0.16" rain, cloudy, 69°, 87° | 7/9, sunny, 69°, 85° | 7/10, sunny, 70°, 89° | 7/11, sunny to thunderstorm, 1.56" rain, 65°, 92° | 7/12, cloudy, 0.06" rain, 67°, 85° | 7/13, cloudy, 0.02" rain, 67°, 80° |

  • Monday, 7/7: Pickup Steering Cable Installed
    • Work on the pickup's steering cable is finished. Attaching the two halves of the steering cable together went smooth and effortlessly. A quick check indicated I had all gears with the shift lever behind the steering wheel. More time was spent attaching the cable to the underside of the pickup. One tie close to where the cable goes through the cab floor popped into place with ease. Another tie connected to the new cable doesn't fit anything related to my pickup. I pulled an old plastic tie out of the undercarriage and deformed it in the process. I used a new zip tie through the deformed tie and glued it to the undercarriage using some Loctite construction adhesive. Since this glue requires clamping, I propped a forsythia twig between a pickup frame member and the tie to put pressure on the glue joint and left it. Road movement will bounce that twig out of there soon enough (the ultimate in shade-tree mechanics).
    • Mary did her first blackberry picking tour of 2025 and picked just a handful of berries. A blackberry patch in the north field is down in production, with several of those berries infested with worms. The largest potential is between the ponds and in the small persimmon trees west of the west yard. There are a lot of red black berries out there yet to fully ripen.
    • Mary noticed that the acorn crop from oak trees will be huge this year. 
    • She scared away a turkey hen and two poults from the blackberry patch in a hollow just southwest of the house. There's a big difference between the size of the hen, at three feet, and the poults, at 10 inches. The hen and one poult flew away, while the second poult ran away.
    • Mary reports that lotus flowers are blooming in Bass Pond. She said they smell identical to common milkweed flowers. 
    • After Mary's blackberry ventures, she picked 72 ticks off her clothes. It's the worst tick season we've witnessed.
  • Tuesday, 7/8: Blackberries & Shopping
    • Mary picked more blackberries. She wondered if she should skip a day, but while picking ripe berries between the ponds and on Bramble Hill, she collected a little over a half a bowl full (see photo, below), which is a big difference from the piddly few she got just yesterday. They're ripening quickly. 
    • Mary spotted her first Carolina praying mantis of the season trying to get away from her in the tall grass. These brown praying mantis types are native to our area. 
    • I drove to Quincy to get a few supplies that ran out while our vehicle was getting repaired by me. When I went to leave, the pickup's battery was dead, so I charged it and decided to replace the battery, since we've owned the truck for five years, which is longer than the life of a modern auto battery. The shifting mechanism works very well...so much so that I blast the shift lever from park to second gear while trying to just get the pickup into reverse. I'm used to a much stiffer shift, so with the new shift cable, I overdo the motion.
    • Besides a few food items, I got an AC Delco battery, and hen and chick food.
    • Once home, I changed out the pickup's battery and recorded my blood glucose numbers off my monitors for the doctor's visit, tomorrow.
    Blackberries picked by Mary, today.
  • Wednesday, 7/9: Good Doctor's Report
    • I drove to Lewistown for my biannual doctor appointment. It went well. My doctor thinks my average blood glucose readings look good. They drew blood. The Lewistown Clinic is tied to the Quincy Medical Group. The blood work was done by the end of the day. My A1C is 6.5. A reading of 7.0 or lower is good for a controlled diabetic, so my number is good. All other numbers are within good averages. Besides the normal prescriptions that he sent in, he asked that I get a shingles shot. He had a horror story of one of his patients who ignored shingles for three weeks, got an infection in his eye that went to his brain, causing encephalitis. He nearly died. 
    • Mary picked more blackberries. We now have nearly two fully stuffed quarts of this year's blackberries in the freezer. She also picked 69 ticks off her clothes upon returning home.
    • For a second day in a row, I drove to Quincy, this time to pick up medications, since I'm almost out of a couple of them. I got a shingles shot at Sam's Club. The pharmacist said my arm will ache and I might develop a low fever.
    • I dropped off the old pickup battery to get back a $10 core charge. I got grease fittings for the three new spindles on the riding lawnmower and a new rubber hose to replace the old breather hose running from the top of the gas tank to the carburetor on the riding mower. I picked up gas for the pickup, plus I filled two five-gallon gas cans and one gallon of high-octane gas for the trimmer and chainsaws. The price was $2.75 a gallon.
    • When I left for the doctor's office, I saw a deer at the end of our lane, and another deer down the gravel road. Mary saw an immature bald eagle.
    • On the way back home, I saw more wildlife. There was David Marquette, one of our neighbors, driving his 2N Ford tractor and pulling a converted pickup box trailer down the gravel road. It's probably his only transportation for going into Lewistown. He's the epitome of a backwoods hillbilly.
    • By evening, my arm ached and I was cold...probably a slight fever...just like the doctor and the pharmacist predicted, due to the shingles shot. Two acetaminophen pills and off to bed I went. Things were better the next morning.
  • Thursday, 7/10: Blahs From Shingles Vaccine
    • My left arm, which received the shingles shot, hurt all day...enough that it was hard to lift. Anytime I was hungry, I also felt sick. I stayed inside. This shot affected me a great deal.
    • Birds were plentiful on our morning outing for Plato. They including a yellow-billed cuckoo, a red-bellied woodpecker, a rose-breasted grosbeak, a red-shouldered hawk, a house wren, and a cardinal, all first thing in the morning.
    • Mary mowed part of the yard just east of the house and mulched the beans.
    • I balanced the checkbook and did a ton of dishes, so Mary could get some outside items done.
    • We switched to a hanging feeder for the chicks and to all flock feed for them after their 50-pound bag of chick feed emptied out. Past experience tells us that they grow bigger and faster on the all flock feed compared to keeping them on chick feed. We also took out the heat lamp and switched them away from chick grit to adult-sized grit.
    • A few weeks ago, I thought one of my Sargent crab apple saplings was dead. Today, I noticed new growth on both saplings. Timely rains are helping them along.
  • Friday, 7/11: Blackberries, and a Good Rain
    • Reports of thunderstorms hitting us in the afternoon prompted me to help Mary pick blackberries. We first went to the patch between the ponds. I took a quick trip to Bass Pond. About half of the pond is filled with lotus plants. Some have yellow flowers the size of dinner plates. On the second outing, Mary went to the southeast berry patch while I picked berries in the hollow southwest of the house and to the berries in the persimmon thicket west of the house. Mary and I went down the west field, which finished our berry picking. We now have four stuffed quarts in the freezer, with a fifth quart started.
    • On our first outing, Mary picked 26 ticks off her clothes and I found 20. After the second berry trip, I plucked 503 ticks off my clothes! At first I thought tiny seeds collected on my pant legs. Then Mary and I saw those seeds moving. I used four sections of tape to snatch them off my clothes, then used a black marker to help count them (see photo, below). I've never seen so many ticks all at once.
    • We got chores done early, then ate a meal of waffles. Rain start falling from a thunderstorm around 8:30 p.m. It turned into a heavy downpour, giving us over 1.5 inches.
    • Mom texted to me that Dianne Sukut died today at age 72. She was the executive secretary while I worked at Mid-Rivers and a very good friend.
    • I viewed photos from my 50th high school class reunion in Homer, AK. I identified some of the people, but there were several who I didn't recognize at all. Everyone looked old. I'm not that old, am I?
    • Sine we had the internet router off because of lightning strikes, I started reading the first Richard Bolitho book, written by Alexander Kent. It's called Midshipman Bolitho. I read a few of these British Navy novels when I was in high school. They make for a fun read.
    503 ticks collected from my clothes after picking blackberries.
  • Saturday, 7/12: Cutting Motherwart Plants
    • While getting the rain gauge amount this morning, a buck deer walked to the lane from near Bluegill Pond, spotted us, then spun around and ran off. It was very healthy looking and sported a reddish brown summer coat.
    • I sharpened the blade I sometimes use on the Stihl trimmer. 
    • I started cleaning weeds out of the south end of the chicken yard where the hens and Leo, our rooster, hang out in the summer. It's full of motherwart plants that have grown above head height. Flowers that were once filled with bees are dwindling and in their place are thorny seeds. I only whacked down a few plants at a time, so falling plants wouldn't send the sharp seed heads into my rubber boots. Then I moved them down the hill to the north and piled them near the edge of the woods.
    • Mary went to between the ponds to pick blackberries.
    • A sudden downpour, that no weather service predicted, pounded rain on us. I waited inside the machine shed, expecting to see Mary arriving from berry picking. She never showed, so I replaced the fuel tank vent hose on the riding lawnmower's engine. I added a hose clamp to keep the new hose from falling off the nipple under the air cleaner housing.
    • Mary showed up while I was finishing working on the mower. Needless to say, she was really soaked. She waited out the rain from under a cedar tree, then inside an old metal Quonset hog shed. She finished picking berries from that patch after the rain quit. We now have over five quarts of this year's berries in the freezer.
    • I left a pile of motherwart plants just outside the chicken yard gate.
    • The outside air was very thick with moisture after the rain. While giving Plato his final outing of the night, the moon shined with an orange tint, due to the humid air and what we suspect is a slight bit of Canadian wildfire smoke.
    • Bill texted that his friend from Circle High School, Cole McCloy, was recently in Great Britain to replace the mounted King's Life Guard, only the third time in history that a foreign group had this distinction (see photo, below). Cole is a member of the Lord Strathcona's Horse, which is part of the 1st Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group of the Canadian Army, based in Edmonton, Alberta. HERE is a story about the event that Bill sent to us. Also, HERE is a video about their visit to England.
    Bill's friend, Cole, is in the middle with the guidon.
  • Sunday, 7/13: Berries & Weeds
    • We had a small rain shower around noon.
    • Mary took in another berry picking session. She picked blackberries for three hours and added two more quarts to the freezer. We have seven quarts frozen and we're starting the eighth quart of this year's blackberries.
    • Mary flushed up a Bob White quail from the southeast blackberry patch.
    • I moved and finished clearing motherwart plants from the south chicken yard. Carrying six-foot high motherwarts that are full of stickery seeds on a pitchfork isn't very fun. They weigh a lot, so it's best to move small amounts. I also cut about a five-foot wide trail through the weeds in the north chicken yard. Giant ragweed was the plant growing in the north chicken yard in past years. Not so this year. It's all repopulated with tall motherwarts. They grow like giant redwoods with chicken manure at their roots. Once I have all of the north chicken yard clear of weeds and the gate between the south and north yard repaired and in place, we can let the chicks out during the day in the north yard.
    • We have a big, beautiful mushroom growing in our east yard (see photo, below). Mary identified it as a Destroying Angel mushroom. It's quite poisonous. We'll just look at it.
    A 5-inch wide Destroying Angel mushroom.

     

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

June 30-July 6, 2025

Weather | 6/30, 0.11" rain, cloudy, 68°, 85° | 7/1, sunny, 65°, 83° | 7/2, sunny to sprinkles, 64°, 85° | 7/3, sunny, 67°, 57° | 7/4, sunny, 69°, 88° | 7/5, p. cloudy to 1.03" rain, 73°, 85° | 7/6, cloudy, 69°, 85° |

  • Monday, 6/30: A Little More Rain
    • Mary trimmed forsythia branches that shot out this spring into walking and parking areas. She also cut back some Virginia creeper vines that are trying to capture our legs as we walked up the porch steps.
    • We waited for oncoming rain that finally arrived in the late afternoon. We got just over a tenth inch of rain.
    • I walked down to the mailbox to get shifting cable clips that arrived in the mail. Our mail delivery person can never seem to close any mailbox door. She always leaves them open by about an inch, so if rain or snow is eminent, the mail gets wet. What a doofus!!!
    • A recommended fix that I've found on several videos dealing with riding mower spindle bolts that break when they are removed is to tap threads into new spindles. I checked and I have the correct tap to make those threads. My attempt to start tapping threads was detoured due to oncoming rain that required doing evening chores early.
    • With rain starting to fall, we could only get nine hens and Leo, our rooster, into the coop. We got tired of playing chicken games and left the remaining six hens out to get soaked by rain. At sunset, Mary opened the chicken door and six bedraggled, wet hens went into the coop, one by one.
    • Mary discovered that there is a cardinal nest in the forsythia next to our main door. A cat bird followed Mary into the woodshed and kept picking up odd bits off the woodshed floor and throwing them around, like Leo, our rooster, does when he's protecting his flock of hens.
    • We enjoyed a bottle of 2023 pumpkin wine after dinner. It's much improved with aging. This wine once had a strong sulfur taste. It has floating stuff in it, so I filtered the wine through some paper towels and into the glass pitcher. Drinking it chilled is delightful. The taste includes a cinnamon spice element and pumpkin flavor. It's nice and refreshing.
  • Tuesday, 7/1: Near Garden Planted
    • The shift cable parts arrived via UPS. A check with the old shift cable revealed that the new one is the exact same length, which is great. There are two lengths and I need the smaller one, which was hard to determine on the Rock Auto website. I got it right. I'll get to pickup fixing as soon as I get the far garden fortified against bunnies, deer, and various munching critters.
    • Mary planted green and wax bean seeds, zucchini seeds, and sweet potato slips in the near garden. It's now done with this summer's planting. Next will be to plant in the far garden.
    • I finished mowing the area outside of the far garden's electric fence. Then, I tightened all of the far garden electric fence wires after pounding in more rocks to solidify the corner posts. Tightening fence wires requires walking along the fence line, pulling one wire tight at each insulator as you progress along the fence. There are 11 wires, with one length of baling twine at the top of the fence. I had to stoop while walking along for the five bottom wires. Afterwards, my legs were very stiff and sore...like doing hundreds of deep knee bends. The fence is tight. Before turning it on, I need to run the weed trimmer along the bottom to eliminate grass and weeds growing into the wires. After that, I need to work on the chicken wire rabbit fence.
    • Plato started the day eating only a tiny bit. Mary baked chicken for our midday meal and all pets get tidbits peeled off bones after we eat. After I fed my meat bits to the pets, Plato seemed eager to eat more, so I offered him his breakfast dog food that he ate with great gusto. He also snarfed the evening meal. Plato is on the mend!
    • As I washed chicken waterers on the front porch at sunset, lightening bugs slowly emerged from the grass and flew to waste level. It's a cool sight to gaze across the lawn and see glistening lights going on and off.
  • Wednesday, 7/2: Mowing & Whacking
    • Mary mowed part of the north yard. It's so full of poison ivy and ragweed that she just cut it and left it lay. The cut ragweed makes it hard to breathe.
    • I trimmed weeds and grass under the electric fence in the far garden. Well established plants contributed to the job taking all day and several tankfuls of gas in the trimmer. A positive feature was wet soil, so I wasn't kicking up dust with the trimmer.
    • My leg muscles were extremely sore by evening, due to deep knee bends while pulling fence wires tight, yesterday. I pulled a muscle or ligament in my right ribs while working under the pickup's dash a few days back and today's weed whacking exacerbated that sore spot. In Grandpa Melvin's words, "It stinks getting old."
    • Plato thoroughly ate all meals, like a good puppy should!
    • We have always walked dogs down our lane and back home, because in past years, the lane was relatively free of ticks. It's not the case this year. Plato's recent downtime meant he didn't have the energy to walk the lane, which kept us in the yard. As a result, we're seeing fewer ticks on him. Our lane is a major thoroughfare for wild animals that drop off ticks. For now, we'll just stay with yard outings for Plato.
  • Thursday, 7/3: Bunny Fence Cleaning
    • We're seeing a slight drying trend, so Mary watered the garden. Parsnip plants are huge. Onions are starting to put on bulbs. There were no strawberries. High heat has stopped their production.
    • I started cleaning out grass and weeds growing through the chicken wire fence in the near far garden. I cleaned up half of the north side and half of the west side of that garden's bunny fence made of chicken wire. Cleaning out the grass gives us a chance to discover any bunny burrowing holes underneath the chicken wire.
    • I mowed the lane, since Bill arrives tomorrow and I don't want the chicory spikes growing in the middle of the lane taking out the headlights of his car...just joking!
    • I dump excess water from chicken waterers under the two west yard apple trees. On this evening's water dumping, three bunnies ran away from under the tree. We saw bunny remains partway down our lane. Some bird or coyote had a rabbit feast.
  • Friday, 7/4: Bill Arrives
    • Bill showed up for his July 4th visit around 11 a.m. Plato turned himself inside out with happiness. He loves Bill.
    • Mary weeded the onions and noticed they were dry, so she watered the near garden.
    • I sharpened the old pruning shears and used them to clear weeds and grass growing in the chicken wire of the rabbit fence around the near far garden. I made it to the to the northwest corner of that garden.
    • Any time outside right now requires at least a 20-minute inside time to cool off. The heat and humidity makes for uncomfortable outside conditions. 
    • Bill saw two small corn snakes in the woodshed.
    • After dark, someone south of us blew off several hundred dollars worth of fireworks.
    • Bill picked two movies that we watched. They were Star Trek: Voyage Home and Miss Congeniality.
    • We enjoyed a bottle of 2023 cherry wine and a bottle of 2025 spiced apple wine. They were both very good.
  • Saturday, 7/5: Garden Planting Finished
    • I checked all areas of the chicken wire bunny fence in the near far garden for holes along the ground and found one area on the east side, so I cleared the tall weeds and grass from that spot. I counted rotten stakes that hold that chicken wire solid at ground level, cut a persimmon sapling, and made six stakes that I pounded into the ground. I rechecked the electrical fence around the far garden and connected wires at the near garden to activate electricity to the far garden's electric fence.
    • Mary planted six hills of acorn squash and three hills of cucumbers. She moved all pepper, tomato, and tomatillo plants to the near far garden and started digging holes. Bill helped by filling the wheelbarrow with compost,  then adding compost to each hole, followed by wood ash, and bone meal for the tomatoes. He then stirred the mixture in each hole. Mary followed Bill by transplanting all of the plants. I followed them both by watering everything. The heat and humidity made for hot work (see photos, below). We transplanted 19 pepper plants, 33 tomato plants, and four tomatillo plants. This was a grand total of 56 transplants.
    • After a much needed rest inside, we did chores early, due to thunderstorms moving our way. As I walked back from the mailbox, thunder was rumbling west of us. It rained very hard, giving us just over an inch of moisture, which was perfect for newly transplanted garden plants.
    • We ate pizza and played Michigan Rummy on a new playing surface that Bill gave Mary for her birthday. Bill won. I came in second and Mary was third. She had very bad luck, this time.
    • We enjoyed a bottle of 2023 pear wine. It seemed slightly strong in alcohol taste for a wine made two years ago. Mary thought it was smooth, compared to the strong alcohol taste of the recent pea pod wine.
Bill (left) & Mary (right) transplanting.
A newly transplanted row of 19 pepper plants.




  • Sunday, 7/6: Working on the Pickup
    • I worked on the pickup shift cable by first setting up to work under the vehicle by sliding a sheet of old plywood underneath it and covering the plywood with a canvas tarp. Then I replaced the shift lever with a new one. When I checked the bolts holding the shift bracket in place at the transmission, the heads were smooth. An online check revealed they are covered with caps and underneath are torx head bolts that are hard to get to, since they're on top of the transmission. One entry in a forum referenced an urge to pull fingernails out of the hands of the engineer who designed this mess. I decided to leave the old bracket in place.
    • Bill left for his apartment around 2 pm. He ran into spotty rain, but when he got to his apartment, he saw downed trees and large tree branches. A branch of a tree that shielded sunlight from entering a skylight window broke off (see photos, below). We're guessing a microburst hit his apartment complex, because he didn't see downed trees until he turned on the street to get to his apartment.
    • I texted my cousin, Margie, about her mother's death the morning of July 5th. Margie said her brother, Johhny, said Aunt Dorothy declined physically after a March visit for a late celebration of her 95th birthday.
    • I went back outside and worked on the pickup. Installing the section of steering cable under the dash was difficult, as expected. After three unsuccessful attempts, I carefully attached the wire keeper to the shift cable and slowly worked it into place, attached the top of the keeper, then the bottom, and snapped the cable onto the shift knuckle. I got all of the cable into place inside the pickup's cab, along with all dash pieces installed. The other half went in nicely at the transmission. Now, all that's left is hooking the two halves together correctly, tying it up under the pickup, and testing the shifting mechanism. If I can't get the shift lever into all gears, additional adjustments are necessary where the two halves come together. That's for tomorrow. 
Bill's skylight to a broken tree branch.
Downed trees at Bill's apartment complex.




Tuesday, June 24, 2025

June 23-29, 2025

Weather | 6/23, sunny, 73°, 91° | 6/24, sunny, 72°, 91° | 6/25, sunny, 73°, 92° | 6/26, sunny, 75°, 92° | 6/27, 0.47" rain overnight, partly cloudy, 68°, 87° | 6/28, sunny, 69°, 89° | 6/29, 1.48" rain, cloudy, 69°, 77° |

  • Monday, 6/23: Pickup Problems
    • Mary and I moved the riding mower deck to the back of the pickup. When I went to drive off in the pickup, I could not get the vehicle into drive. Later, I hooked the 8N Ford tractor to the front of the pickup with a chain. Mary put the pickup into neutral and steered it as I pulled it back into its parking spot with the tractor.
    • Right after I discovered the pickup wasn't moving forward and I was starting to look online for answers, the welder called. I already texted him that I wasn't moving the pickup. He told me that he will be at the dairy tomorrow, doing a welding job, and will drive here to put the weld on the mower deck. That was very nice of him.
    • I did a bunch of online research. I think my problem is a worn out shifter cable. RockAuto.com has them from $39 to $113. I'll need to order one.
    • Mary watered all garden plants and smaller trees. She reports everything is doing well.
    • Mary mowed more and mulched to the near the end of the row she's filling in the near far  garden. I mowed the lane so when the welder visits tomorrow, our lane looks like someone lives here. 
    • Mary checked a patch of blackberries south of the house and discovered that most of that patch is gone, but what is there has green blackberries.
  • Tuesday, 6/24: A Free Weld
    • On our morning walk with Plato, we saw a doe with twin fawns on the lane ahead of us. Plato was great at just watching them and not barking or running towards them. The fawns still had spots. All three deer looked very healthy.
    • Hudson Welding showed up around 9:30 in a pickup. They had a big Lincoln welder in the back of their pickup powered by a portable generator. Tony, the eldest, who welded our trailer a couple weeks ago, stood by as his son and grandson did the work. A quick rust clean up with a grinder and a 30-second weld was all it took. When I asked how much I owed, Tony said I didn't owe a cent...they did it for free. That was really nice. Prior to showing up, they just left the dairy west of us, after doing some welding. The dairy gives them regular work. After they left, Mary and I moved the riding lawnmower deck to the wagon behind the 8N Ford tractor inside the machine shed.
    • I jacked up the driver's side front end of the pickup, installed a jack stand, and removed the underneath half of the pickup's shift cable. Once I disconnected the cable, I grabbed the lever on the side of the transmission and easily moved through all of the gears, thereby verifying that the problem isn't inside the transmission, but probably in the cable. Prior to removal, I took several photos of the cable's routing underneath the pickup. 
    • I had to take frequent breaks, due to hot, humid conditions. While removing a tiny C-washer that holds the two halves of the cable together, the canvas tarp under me got wet just from sweat dripping off my arm. Mary also had to take several breaks from the heat.
    • Mary performed more of her mowing/mulching dance. The near far garden is now mulched and only requires additions here and there where older mulch has decayed.
    • For a second day in a row, Mary added a couple loads of green clover leaves to the hens and chicks. All of it gets gobbled up by all chickens.
    • In the evening, we enjoyed a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine. It's very mellow with a good berry flavor. Aging greatly helps enhance the taste of homemade wine.
  • Wednesday, 6/25: Pickup Shifting Problem Found!
    • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup. Somehow a dinner of salty liquids seems right after sweating outside in hot, humid conditions.
    • The riding lawnmower parts arrived, but were delivered to the trailer across the gravel road from us. Alma, the Hispanic woman who lives there, drove her pickup to us and delivered the two packages, which was very nice. She doesn't speak English, but her two infant daughters smiled at me and said, "Hi!" 
    • I successfully removed the upper half of the pickup's automatic transmission shift cable. Once I uncovered the floor mat, I found the culprit that hindered correct shifting of the transmission (see photo, below). The outer sheathing of the cable deteriorated to the point that the cable moved sideways instead of up and down the inside of the cable's wrapping. Based on YouTube videos, rotten cable sheathing on the floor and inside of the cab is a common breaking point of these shift cables. I was tickled that I guessed what the problem was, based on symptoms of a rotten shift cable. Up until today, my prognosis was only conjecture.
    • There is a bugger a clamp wire (see photo, below) under the dash that wraps around the shift cable and keeps it above a steering column knuckle. Most videos skip the difficulty of removing this beast, but there's plenty of online chatter about how tough it is to deal with this scummy thing. I battled with it for a couple of long sessions, interspersed with online searches trying to figure it out. I finally got the idea from watching a guy lay on the pickup floor, enabling the ability to push up on the wire to remove it. I copied the technique and got it out. I'm not looking forward to installing the "beast".
    • My body tells me that it doesn't like twisting around a pickup seat on the pickup's floor and reefing on parts deep under the dash. I have sore muscles and joints in weird places.
    • I ordered all of the parts needed to fix the shift cable, including brackets and pins. It's predicted to be here by July 1-2. Meanwhile, we'll keep feeding cut clover to the chickens in an attempt to stretch hen and chick feed.
Bad shift cable that was above pickup's floor.
This clamp wire was difficult to remove.




  • Thursday, 6/26: Quiet Day
    • We took a day off from going outside and cooking in the heat and humidity. Our bodies needed a rest.
    • Strawberry production is dropping way back with the onslaught of high temperatures.
    • The pickup parts that I ordered were shipped today.
    • We watched the 2001 film, The Wedding Planner.
    • Lightening flashed across the sky from an approaching thunderstorm from the west as we walked Plato on his nighttime outing. After we crawled into bed, heavy rain pelted the roof, giving us nearly a half inch of moisture.
  • Friday, 6/27: Removing Old Garden Plants & Other Vile Weeds
    • Mary cleaned snow pea, radish, spinach, and lettuce plants out of the near garden in preparation for planting new garden plants. Radish plants had flowers and seed pods on them. Snow pea plants were turning brown. Lettuce plants were pure slime. Mary would remove a group of lettuce, then wipe her hands on the grass.
    • I did a bunch of weed whacking, taking out tall grass and weeds surrounding the compost bins and then walking down to the mailbox and removing tall weeds and grass growing around it and our neighbor's mailbox. Some of the weeds there were poison ivy vines.
    • Plato feels a little low, today. I think he got too many tick bites, recently. We found nine ticks in his ears yesterday! 
    • We got sidetracked on a YouTube severe weather site called Max Velocity late at night. A 22-year old and recent college graduate of meteorology, Max Schuster, runs this site and is quite good. He was covering live a tornado outbreak near and south of Bismarck, ND. He points out active radar indicating tornado developments and has live video from three different storm chasers as they're spotting tornado activity. Watching his feed is so addictive that we didn't get to bed until the wee hours. I looked at his YouTube site this morning (6/29) and he does a tremendous daily job in a 10-minute weather forecast for the entire country.
  • Saturday, 6/28: Mow, Mulch, Mow, Mulch, Mow, Mulch
    • Mary finished cleaning old plants out of the near garden.
    • She mowed the east yards and mulched where the snow peas were in the near garden. This row will be planted with sweet potatoes and two hills of zucchinis.
    • I mowed inside the near far garden, then between the fences and outside the electric fence on the south and east sides of the entire far garden. I added more mulch on rows already mulched in the near far garden. Mary wanted to finish mulching her future sweet potato row, so I switched to putting down mulch on that row in the near garden. Together, we finished it.
    • After bathing, we were back viewing Max Velocity on YouTube. We're hooked! Tonight, there were tornadoes near Clear Lake, SD. That weather traveled across Minnesota and then hit the west side of the Twin Cities with tornadoes and winds to 80 mph.
    • Plato is eating very little and not venturing very far when outside.
  • Sunday, 6/29: Second Racking of Pea Pod Wine
    • Thunderstorms hit us today and dumped almost 1.5 inches of rain. The first storm started right after we finished morning chores. Then it stormed off and on until 2 p.m. It was cloudy for the rest of the day. 
    • I racked the pea pod wine for the second time. The pH was 3.1 and the specific gravity was 0.990, which gave it a 12.45 percent alcohol content. The fines were rather solid and looked like a moonscape. The liquid is still cloudy. Mary and I tasted it. The wine has a strong alcohol essence, which hopefully fades with aging. There is a nice flowery flavor, with a hint of a snow pea taste. The fines dumped into the sink at first looked like cottage cheese, then congealed into a slime as it seemed to grow. I flushed it all down the sink before a monster emerged!
    • Mary saw a male Baltimore oriole. We watched two cedar waxwings chase one another around in the cedar trees east of the house. An eastern towhee sang from those same cedar trees all afternoon.
    • A quick march around to blackberry brambles close to the house revealed mostly green berries, but we did see one red berry in the north yard.
    • Plato ate last night's meal today around noon, with Mary hand feeding him. He's gradually getting better.
    • On our last walk with Plato, frogs were singing from everywhere...a big frog night.
    • Our chicks ended their third week of life today and are starting to look like gawky teenagers with patches of feathers growing here and there. Their side of the coop was cooler (in the 80s) today and they seemed happy. 

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

June 16-22, 2025

Weather | 6/16, sunny, 64°, 87° | 6/17, sunny to T-storm, 0.63" rain, 63°, 87° | 6/18, 0.42" rain, 65°, 75° | 6/19, sunny, 58°, 83° | 6/20, cloudy to sunny, 67°, 87° | 6/21, sunny, 74°, 90° | 6/22, sunny, 75°, 91° |

  • Monday, 6/16: Hannibal Trip & Snow Peas
    • We decided we aren't planting melons, pumpkins, or corn this year, so a drive to tame the far far garden isn't so urgent. It's overgrown with tall weeds, grass and head-high persimmon saplings that need removal by September, when garlic goes in that area a couple months later.
    • I checked online and called Tractor Supply in Hannibal to located chick grit, which they have on hand. So, I drove to Hannibal. I got the wrong spark plugs for the riding mower's engine when we were last in Quincy, so I exchanged them for the right plugs at the Farm & Home store in Hannibal. It's a much better store than the one in Quincy, which is odd, since their headquarters is in Quincy. I picked up oranges, lemons, and ginger, ingredients for pea pod wine, at Walmart (it's better than the Quincy Walmart store) and bought gas for 2.56 a gallon. I grabbed chick grit and then I picked up two foot-long subs at Subway. On the drive home, I noticed a lot of traffic on Highway 61.
    • Mary picked snow peas and strawberries while I was gone. She also mowed part of the west yard and started mulching another row in the near far garden. 
    • I changed the spark plugs on the riding mower.
    • After dark, I picked stems and flowers off the snow peas Mary picked today. It came to just under three pounds. I need four pounds to make a gallon of pea pod wine.
    • Each evening we hear the call of a wood thrush in the north woods. It has such a wonderful multi-note sound. HERE is their call.
  • Tuesday, 6/17: Rain Stops Outside Work
    • The house wren is back stuffing branches on top of our fencer unit. I removed sticks two times today.
    • Mary mowed more in the west yard and mulched into the far garden until an approaching thunderstorm halted outside activities.
    • I disassembled an air conditioner for the upstairs north bedroom and was in the middle of cleaning it out when the same thunderstorm forced me to stuff all parts into the back of the pickup and quit for the day.
    • We received another good rain. Blackberries ought to thrive this year. 
    • A quick text to the local welder in LaBelle, MO, revealed that he can weld the crack in the riding mower deck and I can take it to him anytime.
    • After our rain, bees were busy visiting the motherwart blossoms in the chicken yard. They must hide under the leaves during a rain, then flip to the top as soon as the rain drops stop falling. 
    • The Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup for the second consecutive year beating the Edmonton Oilers, 5-1, in Game 6. Professional hockey is over for another season.
  • Wednesday, 6/18: Rain & Two Wines
    • We had rain throughout most of today, but the stars were shining when we walked Plato on his final outing.
    • Mary picked strawberries and several blueberries (see photo, below). We'll enjoy them tomorrow on top of waffles.
    • Mary picked the last of the snow peas. This year's snow pea crop was the best, ever, due to cooler temperatures and plenty of rain.
    • I took stems and flowers off enough snow peas to get 4.18 pounds of pods, which is enough for making a gallon of pea pod wine. 
    • I racked the dandelion wine for the third time. The pH was 3.2 and the specific gravity was 0.994, which is about the same as a month ago during its second racking. By using a narrow 1/4-inch hose, I was able to leave just a trace of liquid and put the remaining must into exactly the same size containers (see photo, below). The leftover fines were minimal.
    • I started a gallon batch of pea pod wine. I zested two oranges and two lemons. Afterwards, I juiced the fruit. I thinly sliced 1.7 ounces of ginger root after peeling it. I washed four pounds of snow pea pods in the sink, brought a gallon of water to a boil, then added the pea pods and the fruit zest to the pot and maintained a low boil for 30 minutes. Mary helped me scoop out mushy pea pods that became compost fodder. Mary held a mesh bag open while I poured the pea pod liquid through it to catch more pea pods, peas, and fruit peels. Added to the bucket was another quart of water, a one pound, 12 ounces of sugar, the fruit juice, 1.5 teaspoons of acid blend, and 0.2 grams of Kmeta. I put the sliced ginger in a mesh bag and added that to the brew bucket. The specific gravity was 1.085 and the pH was 3.1. A weird odor of peas and fruit filled the house. I hope the final product tastes better than that smell! But, the parsnip wine also smells weird while making the must, yet parsnip wine is really good. After covering the bucket with a flour sack towel, it sits in the pantry for 12 hours.
Strawberries & blueberries picked today.
Fines (left) & newly racked dandelion wine (right).




  • Thursday, 6/19: Bunny 1, Robin 0
    • Mary watched a rabbit run over a robin on the lane while we were walking Plato this morning. The poor robin was literally flattened!
    • I added a half teaspoon of pectic enzyme and 0.8 grams of diammonium phosphate (DAP) to the pea pod wine after eating breakfast. Through the day, I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Premier Classique, or Montrachet, yeast. When I pitched the yeast at night, the specific gravity of the wine was 1.082 and the pH was 3.3. The yeast gave off an instant aroma, so I think this will be a very fast acting fermentation. It smells very nice.
    • We ate wonderful tasting waffles covered with strawberries and blueberries for our midday meal.
    • I finished cleaning the air conditioner for the upstairs north bedroom and assembled it. I'll install the AC in the room's window tomorrow.
    • Mary mowed most of the rest of the west yard and mulched more in the near far garden.
  • Friday, 6/20: Heat Increases With Start of Summer
    • On the first day of summer, we saw an increase in outside temperatures. Summer is here right on schedule.
    • I installed the air conditioner in the upstairs north bedroom, packing taped the inside, installed pieces of vinyl siding on the outside sill and flexible foam board on the outside on both sides of the unit to shed rain water. I noticed moisture condensing on the side and underneath the outside of the AC. In past years, I covered the outside bottom of the housing with aluminum tape to keep bugs out. With moisture condensing in that area, it's a poor idea, so I left it open. Instead, I covered gaps where you see light around the unit through clear packing tape from the inside with masking tape. Hopefully, blocking light from blasting through clear tape will keep nighttime bugs away. A second AC running upstairs keeps that level nice and cool.
    • I also put flexible foam board into both sides on the outside of the AC in our bedroom and masking taped the inside to block light and keep nighttime bugs away. 
    • While I had the extension ladder up, I chopped off Virginia creeper and hops vines that were starting to cover both windows to our bedroom. Our house is starting to look like a hobbit home with all of the green vines growing up the east side (see photo, below).
    • Mary started sweet potato slips that will soon be ready to plant.
    • She also picked strawberries, which are slowing down, and a meal's worth of snow peas to add to tomorrow's General Tso dish. Temperatures in the 90s predicted for this week ought to halt snow pea production and make all lettuce bolt. We might wilt, too! Thank goodness for air conditioning.
    Our vine-covered Hobbit house.
  • Saturday, 6/21: First Racking of Pea Pod Wine
    • While doing our morning chores, a hackberry butterfly landed on Mary and took a ride to inside the house. She first noticed it in the kitchen and escorted the butterfly outside, where it continued to land of either Mary or me. The Missouri butterfly book indicates that this is a very friendly butterfly.
    • I checked the pea pod wine to discover that the fermentation was faster than I thought. It took only 36 hours for the yeast to run a full cycle. The specific gravity was at 0.998, so I racked the wine into a gallon jug and a wine bottle, leaving a good 3-4 inches for head room, since the must was fizzing and developing foam. This wine has an unexpected smell of grape Kool-Aid. I'm sure I'll be racking this wine for a second time real soon, since it seems to be moving along very quickly.
    • I removed all plastic and rubber parts off the mower deck of the riding lawnmower, getting it ready for welding. The push cap holding the front roller in place was very hard to remove and I damaged it while taking it off the roller pin. I'll just drill a hole in the roller pin and use a cotter pin in front of a washer, instead of a useless push cap. Once I removed the belt, I noticed I have another broken spindle. So, I need to order one more spindle assembly. Damn!
    • A strong south wind and the outside high temperature of 90° really dried out the wet ground from recent rains, forcing Mary to water several garden plants.
  • Sunday, 6/22: Fixing Mowers & Mowing
    • Mary complained about a dull blade on her push mower. It was sharp. I looked under the oldest push mower with a shot engine. That blade is in better shape. So, I took it off, sharpened it, and replaced the blade on Mary's mower with that blade. It did a much better job. The old blade was just whipping grass, instead of cutting.
    • I removed the three blades off the riding mower deck. At first I used a two-foot cheater bar pipe on the socket wrench, but nothing budged. I added Liquid Wrench and used a five-foot pipe on the end of the wrench and finally broke the nuts. Paint from the blades came up on these nuts, which proves that these blades were never removed to be sharpened. It's not hard to imagine, since they look like they were used to mow a rock quarry. I removed the spindles. When I compared the third spindle, or the best one, to a spindle I recently bought, I noticed it had a distinct rubbing sound, compared to the new one. So, I'm replacing all spindles on this deck.
    • Before I got the blade nuts to budge on the deck, a small 2x4, blocking the blade from turning, gave way and I gashed skin off the top of my right hand. Immediately, I thought, "You stupid idiot," as I looked at my leather gloves sitting in plain sight, but not on my hands. A trip inside to apply some cayenne powder to the wound, then some antibiotic ointment, and a bandage, and all was fine.
    • Mary mowed more of the north yard and put mulch on the near far garden.
    • We saw a bright green dragonfly while walking Plato this evening. It was startling how well it blended in with the green background. Mary identified it as a young male common pondhawk dragonfly. HERE is a photo of one.
    • While I was cleaning chicken waterers, I had lightening bugs dancing all around me in the shadow of the house before sunset. Wind was blowing hard out of the south and they were staying within three feet of the lawn. It was quite a sight to see.
    • I ordered two more spindles and eight bolts to install them. These self-tapping bolts are famous for breaking off when removed. Of the 12 bolts I removed, only three didn't break.

Thursday, June 12, 2025

June 9-15

Weather | 6/9, sunny, 51°, 77° | 6/10, sunny, 50°, 80° | 6/11, sunny, 56°, 84° | 6/12, cloudy, 57°, 77° | 6/13, 0.40" rain, cloudy, 68°, 73° | 6/14, cloudy to sunny, 61°, 80° | 6/15, cloudy, 63°, 83° |

  • Monday, 6/9: Cleaning Chicken Coop
    • I cleaned chicken manure from the coop, hauling about 12 wheelbarrow loads to the compost bin. I also installed the wall between the chicks and the hens, with Mary's help on erecting the 2x4 studs and the door. It's now ready for chicks, which left today in the mail from Cackle Hatchery in Lebenon, located in southwest Missouri.
    • Mary picked strawberries, raspberries, and snow peas.
    • She also mowed grass and mulched the onions.
    • We're noticing more monarch butterflies this year.
    • I watched the last half of Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Florida won, 6-1, and lead the series, 2-1. Edmonton was in a continuous fight, racking up a Stanley Cup Finals record number of penalty minutes. I thought the Oilers played stupid goon hockey and will continue to lose if they keep punching, instead of playing.
  • Tuesday, 6/10: Shopping
    • Mary and I shopped in Quincy. We visited the new R.P. Lumber store, which is in the old ShopKo building. It's a nice store. I picked up some pins for the mower deck and a file for sharpening mower blades. Chick grit was nowhere to be found.
    • After unloading when we got home, we watched the 1996 film, Down Periscope.
  • Wednesday, 6/11: Chicks Are Here
    • Our chicks arrived. We got a call at 7 a.m. from the Ewing post office. Mary plugged in the heat lamp. The bulb blew and she replaced it with a new one. I left around 7:15 and met several highway trucks on Highway J. They are seal coating the road, today, and one of the highway crew members suggested I return via Lewistown, which I did after picking up the chicks. A lit sign in Lewistown posted that J Road was closed between June 9-12, which is news to us. A state highway truck driver at J Road and 250th Street told me to hurry, because they were pouring down tar and getting close to 260th Street. I turned onto the gravel in time.
    • Mary and I counted out 30 chicks. We ordered 25 mixed cockerels and three barred rock hens. Cackle Hatchery always throws in extras. They were lively and running around right out of the box, quickly finding food and water. A couple hours later, they were settled in (see video, below).
    • Mary couldn't find the thermometer we bought this spring. I looked all over the place and actually cleaned up a chair near the outside door that became a storage dumping ground. Finally, Mary suggested it might be in the "rat's nest" of a mess on a coffee table next to the couch I sit on in the living room. Sure enough, it was in a Farm & Home plastic bag. I hung it in the chick area of the coop. It showed 95°, so I shut off the heat lamp and cracked open a window.
    • Mary picked snow peas and froze 16 bags of peas. Most of the peas came from today's harvest.
    • She also picked and froze 2.5 quarts of black raspberries, which was a big haul. Mary picked strawberries, too.
    • I picked pie cherries off two small trees near the south apple trees. I almost filled the 18th quart of this year's cherries.
    • I sharpened the blades of the two push mowers with the new file we bought yesterday.
    • I mowed between and outside of the fences of the far garden. Grass clippings went on two rows of the far garden.
    • Mary moved a queen yellow jacket out of the house. Later, that queen visited her while she was picking raspberries in the west patch. She landed on a leave near Mary and looked at her for about 30 seconds, then moved on.
    Two-day old chicks that arrived today, after settling into our chicken coop.
  • Thursday, 6/12: Picking & Mowing
    • Mary picked strawberries, snow peas, and raspberries. All are producing huge numbers, so this gets to be about all she can get accomplished during the day.
    • Mary captured an image of a tree frog resting on a stick in a raspberry patch (see photo, below). 
    • I picked the last of the pie cherries from small trees. We put 18 quarts of this year's cherries in the freezer.
    • Ticks, ticks, ticks...this year is a massive tick season. Mary is really getting hit by them. Every venture outside is followed by a huge search and destroy session. Bug spray helps, but you still must do a thorough clothing and body search. 
    • I mowed the lane. The rear drive on the Cub Cadet push mower means I can mow our quarter-mile lane in half the time it used to take Mary to mow it with the old 83-pound lawnmower.
    • I watched Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals. Florida led after one period, 3-0. After three periods, the game was tied, 4-4. Edmonton won in overtime, 5-4. WOW! What a game! The series is tied at 2-2.
    A tree frog in one of the raspberry patches.
  • Friday, 6/13: Rain & Ordered Mower Deck Parts
    • Rain fell in early morning hours, then we experienced light rain all afternoon. It's nice for all plants.
    • After three days of online sleuthing, I ordered riding lawnmower deck parts. At first I thought I'd order from a Michigan company called 8Ten, but it always helps to read reviews. The pulleys they supply with their spindles are too small. Plus, I saw pictures of spindles broken from decks after 10-12 hours of use due to wimpy bolt-on tabs in the aluminum base. I went with an Ohio-based MTD-authorized parts dealer. MTD owns Cub Cadet, the brand of our lawn tractor. Prices are higher than 8Ten, but the parts are original for our mower.
    • Rabbits bit off flowers and leaves from two potted flowers left on the deck of our porch the past two nights, so I found two pieces of 3-foot high, 1/2-inch square hardware cloth and "sewed" them together with thin wire I saved that is wrapped around chicken wire rolls. Mary put this guard just outside of the flowers pots to keep dastardly wabbits away.
    • Katie sent a YouTube link to a video summarizing the all of the projects done in 2024 by her employer. It's impressive. Katie is in a group photo near the beginning of the video. HERE is a link to that video. 
    • Chicks have settled in nicely to their home in our coop (see photo, below).
    Sometimes you're just too tired to continue running.
  • Saturday, 6/14: Flooded With Produce
    • Mary picked strawberries, snow peas, and black raspberries. All of the incoming produce is amazing...a huge bowl of strawberries, two grocery bags of snow peas, and 2.25 quarts of black raspberries. She picked stems and dead flowers off the snow peas in preparation for freezing them tomorrow.
    • There are tons of bees of all kinds in the persimmon blossoms above where Mary picks raspberries at the west edge of the west lawn.
    • I picked 19 more pie cherries from two small cherry trees.
    • I changed the air filter in the Cub Cadet riding mower tractor. The inside of the air filter housing was full of encrusted dirt and the filter was filthy...not recently serviced, which is what I was told.
    • I straightened up three of four corner posts in the far garden and untangled all of the electric wires.
    • I watched the Florida Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-2, in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Florida was a much better team. The Oilers are duds every other game.
  • Sunday, 6/15: Snow Pea Harvest Done, Now Pea Pod Wine!
    • I got a call from Katie wishing me a happy Father's Day. She's busy coordinating two future construction projects related to her job. She did some biking yesterday. Temperatures are nice, lately, in Anchorage. Katie will be working an Air National Guard construction job on Hawaii's island of Kauai for two weeks in August.
    • I also received a call from Bill for Father's Day. At work, he's trying to recruit professionals (plumbers, electricians, etc) in Rolla, Mo, for a future construction job the company he works for is doing in that community. It's located halfway between St. Louis and Springfield, MO. Bill will visit us around July 4th.
    • Mary picked strawberries and 1.5 quarts of black raspberries. She also processed 43 packages of snow peas, for a total 59 in the freezer. She's done freezing peas, so I can use the remainder in the garden for making a pea pod wine...four pounds of snow pea pods makes a gallon.
    • Mary heard a summer tanager for the first time in a month. 
    • I changed the gas filter on the riding mower tractor. The name on the gas filter I removed turned out to be a Chinese company that makes filters for air compressors. I suspect the original owner of this tractor, the father-in-law to the guy who sold me the tractor, used an air compressor filter that he had on hand. It's not designed for filtering gasoline!
    • I straightened the last corner post of the far garden and restrung baling twine around the top of the fence.
    • Mary and I watched the BBC TV series, North and South

Tuesday, June 3, 2025

June 2-8, 2025

Weather | 6/2, sunny, 57°, 84° | 6/3, 0.25" rain, cloudy, 67°, 81° | 6/4, 1.29" rain, 59°, 63° | 6/5, p. cloudy, 55°, 75° | 6/6, cloudy, 59°, 77° | 6/7, 0.29" rain, 58°, 67° | 6/8, sunny, 0.03" rain, 56°, 77° |

  • Monday, 6/2: New-to-us Riding Mower
    • I drove to Quincy with the trailer to get the riding mower and ran into construction everywhere. Just a few miles down the paved road was a road surfacing crew. The driver of a dump truck told me the road was closed. I turned around (fun with a trailer behind the pickup) and drove north to Lewistown, where I finally saw the "Road Closed" sign. If you enter the road anywhere in the middle, like we do from our gravel road, you have no clue it's closed!
    • After getting cash from our bank, I followed Google Maps to the mower owner's address. When I got near the location, a construction fence loomed across the street, due to a new bridge going in nearby. I stepped through the fencing, found the house, looked at the mower, and gave the guy the money. Then I turned the pickup/trailer around, again, and drove several blocks around the neighborhood to get to the correct location. 
    • I mentioned that there was a clatter when the mower deck was on and he admitted that his wife told him the blade was hitting the deck. I thought the tractor's 25 horsepower Kohler engine seemed sound and I could fix the deck. He gave back $100 due to deck issues, so we got it for $900. We loaded it on the trailer. The tilt feature of the trailer works nicely. Two straps secured the lawn tractor. I checked and retightened the straps three times on the way home. 
    • I returned home via 260th Street all the way from Highway 6, which involves several miles of gravel, to avoid the closure of J Road. Still, I had to drive about an eighth of a mile on J right when they were resurfacing that exact stretch. The guy driving the grader told me to wait until he graded fresh gravel over the tar. A few minutes later, I drove on it, then to home.
    • Mary froze 12 quarts of spinach while I was gone.
    • After that, she finished weeding the onions, which isn't easy when pulling grass from around small onion plants.
    • After unloading the riding mower and parking it in the machine shed, I picked more cherries, adding 3.75 quarts for a grand total of 14 quarts of this year's cherries in the freezer.
    • Mary said she heard a red-bellied woodpecker throughout the day in the ripe mulberries growing in the cedar trees next to the near garden. These berries sort of keep birds out of our cherries. Though, I still see bird-pecked cherries under the tree.
    Our dust-covered riding mower parked in the machine shed.
  • Tuesday, 6/3: A Nice Rain
    • Rain fell around 9:30 a.m. and lasted for an hour. High humidity prevailed for the rest of the day with heavy rain starting again at 4:30 p.m. Rain fell throughout the night. We've been dry enough that puddles don't exist from quite a bit of rain. In a 24-hour period, we received 1.54" of rain. The moisture should help future raspberry and blackberry crops.
    • I meant to finish picking cherries, but never got to it. Just as well, because aching muscles tell me I've gone up and down ladders too much, lately.
    • Elderberries are blooming, which is about three weeks early.
    • Mary keeps picking full bowls of strawberries. They make our morning oatmeal taste exceptionally great.
    • I did a bunch of online research related to the riding mower we purchased yesterday.
    • After spotting an 80% off sale at L.L. Bean, we ordered four T-shirts for Mary and a chamois shirt for me.
  • Wednesday, 6/4: Lawn Tractor Seller was a Fibber
    • Mary and I spotted a brown thrasher fledgling in the lane this morning while walking Plato. It looked miserable and cold. We turned around and left it alone with its parents.
    • I took in a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) Webex presentation featuring chanterelle mushrooms. They never grow on wood, so the orange mushrooms growing on an elm log in our yard cannot be chanterelles.
    • I downloaded three lawn tractor manuals for our riding mower...an owner's manual, engine manual, and an illustrated parts manual. Then I checked maintenance parts on the tractor to discover that the guy who sold me the mower was full of BS. The existing air filter is dirty, so it wasn't changed five mowings ago. One spark plug is super clean and the other is fouled, so that's also not a recent job. I think whoever serviced the plugs only changed one, but not both spark plugs. The oil filter is an off-brand version sold by O'Reilly Auto Parts, proving that Farm & Home didn't change oil in it, like the seller said, since they have and sell Kohler products and would use a Kohler oil filter on an oil change. The oil on the dipstick is black, so not a recent oil change. Kohler filters and spark plugs are expensive, so I found alternative items online and available in Quincy stores. I also looked up prices of decks, discharge chutes, and blades. Of course, all are expensive.
    • Throughout the day, I saw a rose-breasted grosbeak and several cardinals eating berries in a small mulberry bush outside the south living room window.
    • Mary identified wood ear mushrooms growing on a weeping willow root on the path to the chicken coop. HERE is a link to an MDC webpage about these mushrooms.
    • Mary spotted the first ripe black raspberries after we put the chickens to bed for the night. We ate one, each. DAMN! They're really good.
    • I watched the Edmonton Oilers beat the Florida Panthers in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals with a 4-3 overtime win. It was fun to watch.
  • Thursday, 6/5: Cherry Picking (Almost) Completed
    • When Mary and I walked down the lane to mail out bill payments, we found a horde of ants in the mailbox. For the second time this year, I killed them with a Dawn soap solution and wiped the inside of the mailbox out with paper towels. The war is on.
    • I finished picking cherries in the big pie cherry tree and have a grand total of 17 quarts in the freezer. There are still just a few yet-to-ripen cherries in small trees. This year, the sweet cherry tree produced very well. Cherry picking was interrupted today by a few sprinkles. I finished around the top of the big tree in the waning twilight after supper.
    • Mary picked the first raspberries of the season, collecting about 10 berries. She collects a bowlful of strawberries every evening.
    • Mary thinned apples on the Granny Smith apple tree. Just the tippy top is left to thin on that tree.
    • While working in the Granny Smith tree, Mary heard the bleating sound of a deer fawn from down the lane. They make a sound similar to a lamb, but louder.
    • High humidity and heavy dew brought out fireflies that we noticed while walking Plato on his nighttime outing. We walked to the north yard and watched them in the trees. They were exceptionally bright. While watching, we noticed a bat fly over our head a couple times.
  • Friday, 6/6: L.L. Bean Scam
    • During an online check of our credit card, I found that what we thought was a purchase from L.L. Bean was instead from a company called Prolific Market.com in London. The purchase was an obvious scam. I called our credit card company to dispute the charge. A later email from Wells Fargo asked that I contact the company to ask for a refund. There is no contact for that company. I called L.L. Bean. They have no record of me, nor are they doing an 80% off sale, so I called the credit card company to let them know.
    • I removed the deck from the riding mower and discovered another fib the former owner told me. The blades aren't recently sharpened. They look like they were used to mow a field of gravel and are extremely worn. One spindle has bearings so worn that I can tilt it from side to side. That's why the blade under it rubs on the deck. There's also a one-inch crack in the deck. I've got a bunch of work to do to get this in operational shape. I guess we're push mowing for awhile longer.
    • When we put the chickens to bed, two hens refused to go into the coop. Head-high blooming motherwart plants filled with bees make it impossible to chase chickens into the coop. When we tried to coax a hen to the coop door, the bird would walk deep into those weeds. Frustrated, we left them outside. I checked after dark and didn't see them. They probably spent the night under the coop. The next morning (6/7), they were still there and one met Mary at the gate. 
    • I watched hockey. Florida won, 5-4, into the second overtime, evening the series at 1-1.
  • Saturday, 6/7: More Rain
    • Rain fell between noon and 5 p.m. It was a nice, steady, slow rain. All plants are saying, "Thank you!" The air was thick with moisture as you looked to the distance. The junk mail I pulled out of the mailbox was soggy just from soaking up damp air.
    • A cooler and slightly wetter spring means better crops. Snow pea blossoms are very plentiful in the near garden. We see tons of green raspberries and blackberries. Tiny pecans and black walnuts are showing. We've never seen a strawberry crop like the one we're getting this year.
    • Before it rained, Mary picked a bowl of black raspberries. She saw lots of bumblebees in the persimmon tree blossoms near the large raspberry patch in the west yard.  
    • I looked up costs of mower deck parts. They are quite high. I found a new mower deck in Indiana that is minus the discharge chute and spindle guards for $500. I might go with that, if shipping isn't too wild. It is shipped to the nearest Fastenal location, which for us is in Quincy, IL. I'll know more on Monday.
    • While Mary cross stitched, I did some checkbook updating and balancing.
    • The two wayward hens that spent last night outside of the coop were right there tonight when it was time to put them all to bed.
    • I heard a wood thrush in the north woods while we handled chickens this evening.
    • Low-level fog was hovering over the grass as we walked Plato at night. Dew was thick on all grass.
  • Sunday, 6/8: Picking Fruit & Mowing
    • After doing more online research I learned that our riding mower's deck has a GT, or fabricated, designation. That means it has thicker steel that is welded together. The deck I'm looking at in Indiana is stamped out of thinner steel. Stamped decks are how most push mowers are made. It's something we need to consider in buying a new deck versus fixing the existing deck.
    • Mary picked black raspberries and finished a quart bag in the freezer, while starting another quart bag.
    • She also picked strawberries, and snow peas. She has enough for three bags of peas.
    • I picked a third of a quart bag of cherries from the sweet cherry tree and a small pie cherry tree that is next to the Empire apple tree.
    • Mary and I both mowed. I mowed the inside of the near far garden and the near garden, along with between and around the fences of the near garden. Mary mowed the east lawn between the house and the lane. Grass clippings went on a row in the far garden and Mary started a final mulching of the onions.
    • Our mowing was stopped by rain.
    • We saw a mourning cloak butterfly. 
    • Mary was buzzed by a hummingbird that brushed against the side of her head. She had another hummingbird do a zigzag flight in front of her while Mary was picking peas. Her bright blue shirt is a real hummingbird magnet.