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.