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°, 87° | 7/25, 0.67" rain, 69°, 84° | 7/26, 0.73" rain, 71°, 84° | 7/27, p. cloudy, 71°, 91° |

• 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.

• Thursday, 7/24: First Onions Harvested
  • Mary harvested about a dozen onions that had bent-over tops. They look good.
  • I mowed our lane in three shifts. I can't stay outside too long with the high humidity. The lane looks nice, but our lawn is an overgrown disaster. Didn't someone buy a riding mower? Yup, but it's still in the fix-it-up mode.
  • We tested an empire apple that I plucked off the tree. It wasn't quite ripe, tasted tart, but good.
  • Our FedEx driver arrived with a package yesterday by backing all the way up our quarter-mile driveway. It meant he didn't need to turn around in our yard with his big rig. When he opened the side door of his vehicle, he said, "I trimmed your trees for you," meaning his truck knocked some low-hanging branches off some black walnut trees. I said, "Thank you," and we both chuckled.
  • We experienced thunderstorms from 6 pm, onward into the night. It made for a comfy time of hot tea and a good book.

• Friday, 7/25: Ordered Pickup Tailgate Parts
  • We had well over a half inch of rain in the morning. There was brief sunshine in the afternoon, then clouds after dark.
  • Close inspection of the pickup's tailgate revealed that I need new tailgate hinge parts, since the old hinges are rusting away. I ordered new tailgate parts from RockAuto. I included ordering two new tailgate support cables, but they would be coming from a different location, so shipping was $23. When I dropped the support cables from the order, shipping reduced to $10. I'll clean up existing cables and rust proof them, instead.
  • I greased the gear box of the Stihl trimmer with the new one-handed grease gun I bought last week. I probably ought to grease that gear box again this fall.
  • After dark, I finished reading the second Alexander Kent book, Stand Into Danger. It's hard to put down these books once you start reading them.
  • Rosemary's life is fading away. She's our oldest cat. She was living in the machine shed when we first moved here in 2009, so she's at least 16 years old and probably even older than that. Mary grabbed her that fall and she gave birth to kittens under our Christmas tree in 2009. Nick, our white and gray cat, was one of those kittens. Tonight, we stayed up well into the morning hours, just to be with her when she died, but she remained alive, although with shallow breathing. At 3:30 a.m., we were too tired to stay awake, so we went to bed.

• Saturday, 7/26: Rosemary Passes Away
  • Our oldest cat, Rosemary, died in her sleep sometime between 3:30 a.m. and when we woke up at 8:00 a.m. For several months, she couldn't eat the dry cat food kernels, so I would grind it up with a mortar and pestle, put one egg in a glass bowl (she loved egg), add the ground cat food powder, stir it, cook it for 30 seconds in the microwave, mash it up into small pieces, and feed Rosemary. Often, I'd add a small bit of wet food to pique her appetite. Rosemary was our indoor feral cat. She survived outdoors before we captured her, because she was all gray and blended into the shadows very well. Rosemary was also very smart and hid under boards in the machine shed, instead of parading outside at night, when coyotes and owls were nearby. She hated getting touched. Pet Rosemary and she'd run away. She was a tiny pixie. Rosemary would often grab a toy mouse, toss it in the air, and jump in the air. She loved heat, often sitting behind the woodstove right next to Plato. That way, she'd feel heat from the stove and heat that bounced off the side of the dog. In the evening, she'd snuggle into the inside corner of Mary's couch and stay there, as long as Mary didn't touch her. She was the tiniest cat that grew even thinner with age. She now lies under the ground next to some aromatic sumac near the love of her life, Merlin, who passed away nine years ago in June of 2016. Below are a couple photos that include Rosemary.
  • We had a long thunderstorm in the morning that gave us nearly 3/4 of an inch of rain.
  • We buried Rosemary after the storm. Since she was so tiny, it was a pretty easy job. 
  • Mary harvested more onions showing greens that were bent over. She also picked some strawberries and blackberries to add to tomorrow morning's oatmeal breakfast.
  • Activities were low, due to a lack of sleep. 
  • We watched the 1993 movie, Dave.

Rosemary (left), then Juliet, Gandalf, Mocha & Nick.

Rosemary (back), Holly (left) & Juliet (front).

• Sunday, 7/27: Huddling Around the AC
  • It is just stinking hot outside. The high heat is exacerbated by wet blanket humidity. There are several outdoor jobs to do, but we stayed inside for practically the entire day. Mary commented that hot summer days are similar to cold winter days. In both cases, we stay inside, only instead of huddling around the woodstove, we huddle in front of the air conditioner.
  • I labeled and put away the six bottles of dandelion wine. 
  • Since I only have a dozen labels left, I ordered 750 more dissolvable labels from a company entitled Brewing America. I used their labels a few years back and they're the best. The last batch of cheap Chinese labels I used aren't so good. Lettering written in pen fades over time on those labels, plus a box of 500 came with 106 fewer labels than promised...CHEATERS!
  • I pulled another apple off the Empire tree to see if they're ripe, yet. An indicator is black seeds. The seeds in this apple were brown. It isn't quite ripe, but close. It tasted tart, yet good, and was quite juicy. I might be picking apples by the end of this week. 
  • We are still seeing fireflies each night. In other years, these bugs aren't around by this time of the year. Damp conditions are keeping them flying about.
  • Muggy nighttime air in our atmosphere amplified light so that we saw flashes from a thunderstorm that was approaching Springfield, Illinois, which is 144 miles east of us.