July 28 - Aug. 3, 2025

Weather | 7/28, sunny, 73°, 91° | 7/29, 0.03" rain overnight, sunny, 72°, 91° | 7/30, 0.48" rain, cloudy, 69°, 81° | 7/31, cloudy/mist, 66°, 77° | 8/1, smokey/sunny, 56°, 77° | 8/2, smoke/p. cloudy, 61°, 76° | 8/3, p. cloudy, 55°, 75° |

• Monday, 7/28: Knocking Back Mother Nature's Growth
  • During blackberry picking season, the lawn went nuts with growth. I used roughly three tanks of gas in the Stihl trimmer to whack open trails in the tall grass and weeds. This included paths to the clothes line and under it, to the chicken coop, to the machine shed, to all of the apple trees south of the house, and to the far garden and around the compost bins. This task took me all day.
  • Mary cleaned the refrigerator coils, running the shop vac for about a half hour. It scared Juliet, one of the cats. When Mary shut the vacuum off and peered around the edge of the fridge, there were two big blue eyes staring at her.
  • Mary scythed the tall chicory stalks and common plantain seed heads in the north yard. This makes it easier to mow. Chicory is like wood and takes several passes with a mower to knock it down.
  • Mary picked a nice bunch of strawberries, along with some blackberries. She also harvested 44 onions, adding to the collection of onions stored in an old milk crate in the back porch closet (see photo, below). Most of the harvested onions are of the white wing variety.
  • We went through another really hot day with high humidity. Work outside got a little too hot for Mary. She felt poorly in the evening from too much heat.
  • We still have chimney swifts. Mary saw one drop into the chimney during Plato's noontime walk, then I saw and heard two of them flying about in the evening right after sunset. We thought they left early, but obviously they're still raising their youngsters.

  

  Onions harvested from our garden, so far.
  

• Tuesday, 7/29: More Heat & Humidity
  • Mary picked up the rest of the chicory stalks she knocked down recently with the scythe and hauled them away in roughly five wheelbarrow loads.
  • I whacked down and then mowed half of the outside of the electric fence around the near garden. The electric fencer barely puts a pulse through the wires when the existing high grass and weeds are wet with dew in the evening. Mulch from the mower went around the base of the Porter's Perfection apple tree just south of the chicken yard.
  • It is still very hot and humid outside, which means we spend more time inside cooling off in front of the air conditioner than outside working. It also means we can only do a fraction of the work we normally accomplish when outside.
  • We saw a chimney swift, again, today.
  • While putting the chickens to bed, we noticed that our chicks are really growing quickly.

• Wednesday, 7/30: Rain & Password Enhancements
  • A nice morning downpour gave us just under a half inch of rain. Along with it came cooler outside temperatures, which is a nice relief.
  • Mary read a Moneywise article about an online security breach where 184 million passwords were exposed. I changed online passwords we use, starting with bank websites. Where I could, I enabled two-part verification. I use a free password manager called KeePass and through it I went from websites starting with Abe Books and ended with MoreWine. KeePass can generate random large passwords and keep them in a record. Several websites we haven't dealt with in years deleted our passwords. I still have to get to the end of the alphabet (took all day to get from A to M). I also added a free authenticator app to my cell phone that generates time-based, one-time passwords that are used along with the regular password when signing into sites that allow the authenticator.
  • The pickup's tailgate hinge parts from RockAuto came in the mail and I startled a covey of over a dozen Bob White quail when I walked to the mailbox. They had a good year of producing young quail in 2025.
  • Mary picked a nice big bunch of strawberries and announced that I was making waffles tomorrow, so we can enjoy these berries. That's fine by me!
  • I noticed that one of the Sargent crab apple transplants died in the recent extreme heat. The other one is growing new branches and leaves, so it took to the transplanting quite nicely.

• Thursday, 7/31: Smoke, Passwords & Tailgate Hinges
  • Along with a northern wind and cooler temperatures, our air quality tanked with an influx of Canadian wildfire smoke. Little did we know that back when we were boiling, we had good air, even if it was humid. Mary stayed inside. Poor air harms her breathing and makes joints ache.
  • Dusting books while inside was Mary's job for the day. 
  • I changed more online passwords. Today I did changes to websites starting with letters M through Q.
  • I changed the tailgate hinges and the latch pins. The tail light assemblies must be removed to get to the nuts holding the latch pins. They are held on with two small Phillip's head screws. The head of the bottom screw on the passenger side stripped out. I was able to wiggle the light assembly out enough to get a box wrench on the nut. I'll need to buy a replacement screw and an extractor to remove that screw. The hinges were really bad. It's amazing that the tailgate didn't fall off. The new hinges didn't allow me to get the tailgate back into place. Then I remembered a filler plate behind the left hinge that I removed. With some rubber mallet persuasion, I got the tailgate on. I adjusted the hinge pins so that the tailgate closes nice and tight...so much better than before.
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 parsnip wine in the evening while reading books. It's very smooth and tangy with a great taste. Parsnip is one of the best wines I make.

• Friday, 8/1: Smoke Fills the Air
  • Canadian smoke prevailed today.
  • I drove to Quincy and did a little bit of shopping, including buying screws and an extractor kit for working on the pickup's tail lights, and ingredients for cherry wine. Most importantly, I bought two 50-pound bags of food for the chicks, since they're growing and eating very heartily. From downtown Quincy, a view of the Mississippi River was very smokey and vague.
  • Mary cleaned house while I was gone. The cleaned and rearranged pantry is vastly improved.
  • She also harvested another big batch of strawberries, a number of onions, and a few shallots. The white wing onions are almost done. Blossoms are on the tomato plants and some small cherry tomatoes are developing.
  • In the evening, I finished reading the third Alexander Kent novel about the fictitious British naval officer, Richard Bolitho, entitled In Gallant Company, and started reading the fourth novel, Sloop of War.

• Saturday, 8/2: Truck Tail Lights
  • After letting the chickens out of the coop this morning, we heard the first crow from one of the young roosters. They're developing quickly.
  • The air was still smokey from Canadian wildfires, but it was a little less smokey, today.
  • Mary watered the near garden.
  • I used my new screw extractor kit to remove the stripped bottom screw holding the pickup's right tail light in place. It took the cap of the screw off, but the shank remained. I tried the screws I bought at Lowes in the top location of that tail light. It didn't work very well. The threads were the wrong size. I found on ebay and bought four new screws and four push-in clip nuts to replace all screws and nuts on both tail lights. These are GM parts. Once I get the right parts, I'll use needle nose pliers to bend the clip nuts off the plastic tabs of the tail light assemblies and put on new nuts and screws. I put the tail light back together.

• Sunday, 8/3: Apple Tree, Lawn, & Garden Work
  • We tried an Empire apple in our morning oatmeal. The apples from that tree are still not ripe. The apple was tart and tasty, though. The Empire tree is loaded with fruit this year (see photo, below).
  • I sharpened blades on both push mowers, cleaned air filters, and brought fluids up to correct levels.
  • I removed the cow panel surrounding the Liberty apple tree and tore out all of the tall grass that was surrounding the bottom couple of sections of the panel. That grass was feeding on rotten wood and mulch we add above the tree roots. Over a few years of adding things, the soil under the tree is about 4-5 inches higher as the mulch rots. I then cut down huge poke berry stalks and an apple shoot growing from the root stalk of the tree.
  • Mary mowed the lawn between the woodshed and the machine shed, putting grass mulch under nearby fruit trees.
  • She discovered that the seckel pear is alive. Green leaves are growing from branches where other leaves died just a few weeks ago...yahoo!
  • I mowed the north chicken yard, where poison ivy was starting to reappear. I also mowed the west and north sides, between the fences, in the near garden. The grass is very high. 
  • We had a wayward chick, a buff Orpington pullet, that was in with the adult hens and our rooster, Leo, in the south chicken yard when we went to put the chickens away in the evening. She apparently was frightened by me mowing the chick yard and either flew over the fence or found a hole in the fence between the two chicken yards. After putting all chickens in the coop, we coaxed her through the gate and into the north yard, then through the chick door into the chick side of the coop. 
  • We called Bill on his 32nd birthday. Back a few weeks ago, Katie called him and asked him what present he wanted for his birthday. He answered, "A pony." So, one of the gifts she sent him was a toy Palomino pony with a pink polka dot ribbon called a "HollyHOME Stuffed Animal Pretty Plush Toy." Bill asked his friend, Mike, if his preschool daughter would like the toy for her upcoming birthday. The answer was yes.

  

  The Empire apple tree is filled with fruit this year.