Feb. 24-March 2, 2025

Weather | 2/24, p. cloudy, 39°, 61° | 2/25, sunny, 37°, 60° | 2/26, sprinkles to p. cloudy, 41°, 60° | 2/27, sunny, 33°, 55° | 2/28, sunny, 35°, 67° | 3/1, p. cloudy, 21°, 37° | 3/2, sunny, 12°, 45° |

• Monday, 2/24: A Woolly Bugger
  • Katie tracked the two Home Depot birthday gifts that she ordered for me. By the end of the day, both were in at the Quincy Home Depot location.
  • We saw something parked along the gravel road and Bill said he saw it there when he arrived on Saturday. Today, the crew cleaning the right-of-ways for the Lewis County Rural Electric Cooperative started up that Bobcat and trimmed small trees and grass on our side of the property and inside our fence line along the gravel road. It's not the best time of the year for this work, when the ground is soft due to warming temperatures.
  • We see a few honey bees out in the sunlight, today.
  • Bill took a walk and spotted a raccoon skin, including its tail, hanging from the top of a tall wood snag of a dead tree near Wood Duck Pond. We suspect a hawk or an owl got it.
  • I attended a Webex fly tying class put on by two guys from the Missouri Department of Conservation's August A. Busch Shooting Range and Outdoor Education Center in Defiance, MO between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Half the time involved a slide presentation and the rest was spent tying a woolly bugger fly. My version is sloppy, but it might catch fish (see photo, below). This instructor is good, because he goes slowly through the steps and you see the work from his prospective, making it easier to follow along. It's actually better than viewing it all in person, where you are on the opposite side of the work being accomplished.
    
  • We watched the last three episodes of Genius: Einstein. 
  • Mary and I smelled a skunk while walking Plato at night. We kept him close to us.

  

  My woolly bugger fly. It's okay, but I'll get better.
  

• Tuesday, 2/25: Pruning Trees & Fixing Tire Tracks
  • While Mary and I were letting out the chickens and feeding them, we saw snow geese flying so low from east to west that we could hear their wing beats. Now that temperatures are warmer, we're seeing more snow geese.
  • The crew that is cleaning the electric company's right of ways drove a large machine wielding a buzz saw out the front of the machine on a long retractable pole to north of Bluegill Pond and sawed up tree branches intruding into space near the power lines. Behind that large machine was the other machine that we witnessed yesterday, which munches up smaller trees and branches dropped by the first machine.
    
  • Bill left around 2 p.m. for his St. Charles apartment. He's busy studying materials procurement, since that is what is future job involves.
  • Mary pruned 13 small fruit trees and five blueberry bushes.
  • I drove the 8N Ford tractor up and down the lane to push down marks made in the soft soil on either side of the lane by the large vehicle that cut down tree branches at Bluegill Pond. At the end of the lane, I talked to the guy driving the muncher vehicle. It's a track vehicle with a big set of blades on the front that rotate and slice up wooden matter. He was very polite and talked about how they try not unnecessarily to drive over trees. His machine not only takes out small trees that have the potential of growing to tall threats for overhead power lines, but pulverizes branches dropped by earlier work. I wish I had that machine to handle lespedeza. He said the attachment alone costs over $150,000. I checked out Bluegill Pond. His machine completely eliminated branches dropped earlier in the day.
  • I did a bunch of online research at night on various impact socket sets.

• Wednesday, 2/26: Owl Webex & Birthday Presents
  • I attended a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) webinar on owls that was broadcast from Joplin, MO. It was good. Owls aren't really wise. Nighttime vision for owls means their eyeballs take up a huge percentage of their skulls and there isn't as much room left for a brain cavity. Human eyes would need to be the size of tennis balls to take up a similar percentage of our skulls.
  • I drove to Quincy to pick up two gifts from Home Depot that Katie ordered for me for my birthday. They were 1/4", 3/8", and 1/2" socket adapters and a modular storage case with a 100-piece impact driver bit set made by Milwaukee. I'll be able to drive any screw or socket of most any type or size.
  • While in Quincy, I also picked up two sets of DeWalt impact sockets, each containing seven sockets. One has metric sizes and the other has SAE sizes involving inches and fractions.
  • The on and off ramps from Highway 6 to Highway 61 are blocked while the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDot) rebuilds the overpass of Highway 61 at Taylor. Two summers ago, an oversized trucker hit that bridge two times in a week and damaged it. The detour on Highway 6 takes you through windy roads through Maywood, an tiny village and adds several miles and minutes to the trip. On the way back home, I took a shortcut from their detour that was much faster. It involves rough pavement, so I'm guessing that officials decided to use the long route for a detour so roads wouldn't get further trashed.
  • While I was gone, Mary went through the root crops stored in the back porch closet. She was surprised how well everything is surviving. The only casualties were small sweet potatoes with dry rot and some garlic.
  • Mary vacuumed a lot of bugs and flies. This is the worst year we've ever seen on bugs invading inside our house through the whole winter.
  • We saw the first red-winged blackbird of the season in the yard. I heard the first American woodcock this evening. Plus, Mary watched as a red-tailed hawk use her as a scarecrow. Crows were pursuing the hawk. The hawk dropped lower in the sky and flew right over Mary. The crows spotted Mary and veered off to the east. That was a smart hawk, who continued north, unmolested.

• Thursday, 2/27: March Winds Come Early
  • Mary and I took Plato on a walk on our north loop trail. He loves sniffing in wild areas. With only one dog, we can go as slow or as fast as he wants to move.
  • We saw snow geese struggling to fly west against a strong west, northwest wind. In the evening, we noticed many snow geese were flying back east with the wind at their backs. At one point, we saw a pair of smaller Ros's geese leading a group of snow geese.
  • I undid all of the new tools that Katie gave me, cleaned oil off them, and sorted them into spaces in the new case that came with them.
  • I spent the evening digging into online information about a concrete slab versus a crawl space for a post-frame house, along with termite and carpenter ant information.

• Friday, 2/28: Labeling Garlic Wine
  • Strong west winds blew, today. They changed to northwest wind gusts with the arrival of a cold front. Wind was blowing so hard at noon that Mary witnessed a flock of snow geese totally stalled overhead as they tried to fly westerly.
  • Mary and I walked Plato around the west field and down Bobcat Trail. Walking through the woods involves very crunchy leaves over the top of soft forest soil.
  • I labeled the 25 bottles of garlic wine and then sorted the bottles into available coolers for storage.
  • Mary and I both spent a long time vacuuming bugs from inside the house. Will they ever stop?
  • After watching an excellent example of kindergarten diplomacy exhibited by our weak-minded president and vice president in yelling at the president of Ukraine, Mary and I watched the 1994 film, I.Q., and the 1996 TV series, Nova: Einstein Revealed.

• Saturday, 3/1: Racked Spiced Apple Wine, Batch 2
  • We started the day with a stiff northwest breeze, but it dropped off by nightfall.
  • Mary and I had an indoor wienie roast.
  • Yesterday, Bill signed his final paperwork for his new job. His first day is Monday, March 3rd. Bill received a tour of the office. "It's the nicest office I've ever seen," he said. "The office has its own fitness center, like with showers and everything." It will be a big step up from working in an non-air conditioned warehouse in 100 degree summer heat.
  • Mary chased four deer out of the hazelnut patch at dusk.
  • I racked the spiced apple wine, batch 2, for the fourth time. The specific gravity was 0.999 and the pH was 3.0. There was a tiny bit of fines even though the wine is still cloudy. Similar to batch 1, I added 0.5 grams of K-meta and 4.36 teaspoons of pectic enzyme. After racking, I was left with two one-gallon jugs, a half-gallon jug, and a 1.5-liter bottle of liquid. Mary and I tasted the wine and it was similar to batch 1, but not quite as spicy. It's quite good. We even drank the wine left with the fines.

• Sunday, 3/2: Cutting Up New Firewood
  • Temperatures were quite cool in the morning, but it warmed up throughout the day.
  • Mary saw a bald eagle and a red-tailed hawk circling one another overhead.
  • We noticed lots of snow geese flying east to west. Several flocks were dropping in elevation as they flew over our property.
  • Mary and I went to the southwest corner of the west field and cut firewood from oak branches that fell out of dead trees. We loaded up the wagon. A few pieces were large enough to put next to the woodsplitter in the machine shed, but the majority went directly into the woodshed.
    
  • I tied another woolly buggar fly. It wasn't a very good job, again. I probably need to blunder through several to get better. Mary cross stitched while I muddled through fly tying.
  • At dusk, I cleaned the small chainsaw and greased its clutch needle bearing.
    
  • My evening was spent looking up building techniques required in termite country.