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.
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Blackberries picked by Mary, today.
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- 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.
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503 ticks collected from my clothes after picking blackberries.
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- 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.
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Bill's friend, Cole, is in the middle with the guidon.
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- 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.
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A 5-inch wide Destroying Angel mushroom. |