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.

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.

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.

  
   

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.