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, 0.55" rain, 69°, 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.

• 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.