Weather | 8/4, sunny, 56°, 80° | 8/5, p. cloudy, 63°, 83°
| 8/6, p. cloudy, 65°, 87° | 8/7, 0.45" rain, T-storms, 67°, 80° | 8/8, sunny, 69°, 88° | 8/9, 0.59" rain, cloudy, 74°, 87°
| 8/10, cloudy, 73°, 83° |
- Monday, 8/4: Mowing and Mulching
- Mary harvested more onions and a few tomatillos.
- She also watered all gardens. Some of the plants looked like they needed more moisture.
- Mary mowed part of the west lawn, adding mulch to the small Bartlett pear tree and the youngest cherry tree. High grass means mowing goes slower than usual.
- I cleaned out tall weeds and grass around and under three cherry trees, giving Mary and I places to put mulch. I also used the steel blade on the Stihl trimmer to clean out tall weeds and grass on the path between the small cherry trees and around several of them.
- I mowed the east and south sides outside the near garden, and then between the fences of that garden. I changed the trimmer to the string attachment and scrubbed out vegetation under the electric fence of the near garden. The orange string line kept breaking off, which it does when it's all dried out. I was three-fourths completed when the last of the string shot out of the trimmer, so I quit for the evening.
- The apples on the Liberty apple tree significantly enlarged once the poke berry weeds were removed from around the tree (see photo, below). This is the first year that we're seeing apples on this tree.
- We're hearing the call of a wood thrush in the north woods.
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| The Liberty apple tree with fruit developing. |
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A nicely sized Liberty apple.
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- Tuesday, 8/5: Circling Peregrine Falcon
- Mary mowed most of the rest of the west yard and put grass clippings as mulch around nearby fruit trees.
- I replaced line in the trimmer head and whacked down weeds and grass on the rest of the wire under the electric fence around the near garden.
- While at the porch, we noticed birds on the power line, so Mary ran inside to get the binoculars. While she was gone, I noticed the birds flying up into the air. They attacked a larger bird that was circling. Through the binoculars, Mary identified the larger bird as a peregrine falcon and the smaller birds as eastern king birds. The falcon easily dodged the kings birds and kept circling. It got so high in the sky that we eventually lost sight of the bird.
- I helped Mary and we watered the far garden. Plants are all healthy and thriving.
- When I dumped the waste water left over from washing chicken waterers on one of the south apple trees, a young deer bounced off to the southwest and into the woods.
- For two days in a row, we hear the crop duster flying over fields well after the sun sets when it's essentially dark outside. He's taking too many risks. We hope that when he plows that airplane into the ground, it isn't on our property.
- Wednesday, 8/6: A Thousand Ticks!
- We experienced the worst tick situation with Plato. The poor pup got into a big nest of tiny ticks during his morning outing. After the noon walk with him, we noticed multitudes of blown up seed ticks all over his legs. We started pulling them off outside. There were so many that I partially filled a bucket with water and added a big amount of Dawn soap to kill them. Plato was getting hot in the sun, so we moved inside. Mary kept running a flea comb over Plato while I picked the tiny seed ticks off the floor. We literally collected hundreds of ticks. We're guessing at least a 1000 ticks came off that poor dog. One of his front legs was turning red and slightly swelling. But, he was very patient. After two and a half hours, we gave Plato some Benadryl and he slept some in the afternoon. He was just fine by the evening. We're now taking him south, down the lane, because there's only regular-sized ticks there, and no seed ticks, like he picked up somewhere in the yard.
- We watched a fledgling hummingbird feed on comfrey just outside our west living room window. It was chased away by an adult male hummingbird.
- With Bill arriving in a couple days, I mowed the lane.
- Mary watered the near garden and harvested more onions.
- I finished reading the fourth of the Alexander Kent British Navy novels, Sloop of War.
- Thursday, 8/7: Long Thunderstorm
- An unexpected series of thunderstorms ran through us between 8:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. With the storms, we got just under a half inch of rain. There are two nice aspects about the rain. We get a respite from watering gardens and a break from laboring outside in high temperatures.
- I finished changing passwords. Altering the password on the social security website took the longest time, because of all the hoops you have to go through, including a photo of the front and back of a driver's license, along with a photo of yourself.
- We still notice an occasional firefly out at night. This is by far the latest for the season that we've noticed fireflies on our property.
- Mary texted with Bill. He will be here sometime tomorrow morning for a four-day break from work.
- Friday, 8/8: Bill's Birthday Celebration
- Bill arrived around noon. Plato saw him through the front door's storm door, while whining and wagging his tail.
- Mary made a pistachio tort for Bill's birthday, which we're celebrating late. He opened presents wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper (it's what we have on hand). Mary wrote a message within each snowman on the wrapping paper, such as "Don't pet otters, they bite," and "Pass the hot sauce." Bill immediately started reading a book entitled Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer's Guide. Later, he added magnetic side window sun screens to his car. He also sampled a couple of the large chocolate bars.
- Mary picked a nice bowl of strawberries. We enjoyed them on waffles that I made.
- The tail light parts came in today's mail. With Bill's help, I removed the old rusty screws and the push-in clip nuts, then installed the new ones. I added a stainless steel washer with each screw, plus a dab of Permatex Anti-Sieze Lubricant to the screw threads. We checked all tail lights after installation to make sure all was well.
- Bill brought a six pack of Gosling's ginger beer and we tried it. This non-alcoholic brew is extremely good.
- We watched two movies that Bill picked out, which were Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves.
- Saturday, 8/9: A Big Winemaking Day
- Bill and I racked the snow pea wine for the third time. I transferred the liquid into a different gallon jug and left a minuscule amount of liquid in the original gallon jug. Then we added only an ounce or two of distilled water to bring the level into the neck of the jug. The specific gravity was 0.990, which is very low. The pH was 3.1.
- Next, Bill and I made 10 gallons of cherry wine must. I thawed frozen quarts of cherries on the trailer bed outside. The bags thawed quickly in the outside temperatures. Bill wore out his finger muscles while he squeezed 12 pounds of mandarins. He got about 32 ounces of juice in each of the two measuring cups. I zested two oranges per batch and saved the orange fruit. Batch 1 got 332 ounces, or 20.74 pounds of cherries, while Batch 2 received 321 ounces, or 20.1 pounds of cherries. The first batch had two quarts of 2023 cherries and the rest were 2024 cherries. Batch 2 involved 2025 cherries. Each batch received 7 pounds of sugar, 3.5 gallons of water, and 0.9 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity of Batch 1 was 1.073 and it was 1.072 in Batch 2. The pH of Batch 1 was 3.0 and it was 3.1 in Batch 2. Liquid level in Batch 1 was a little over 5 gallons and it was a little under 5 gallons in Batch 2. We let them sit in the pantry overnight.
- Mary harvested another big bunch of onions. After removing their tops, she stores them in milk crates in the back porch closet. She's started her third milk crate of stored onions.
- Around 6:30 p.m., a thunderstorm came through and dumped a nice bunch of rain on us. Along with it were high winds. The weather service issued tornado warnings for areas west of us and we saw online that lightning struck the metal dome on the roof of the Villa Kathrine, a historic house on the Mississippi bluffs in Quincy, and started a fire in the attic that the Quincy Fire Department put out right away.
- Sunday, 8/10: More Winemaking, Pizza & Yahtzee
- Bill and added the following to the two 5-gallon batches of cherry wine: 3.75 teaspoons of pectic enzyme, 4.1 grams of diammonium phosphate (DAP) to Batch 1 and 3.9 grams of DAP to Batch 2. I worked up two batches of Red Star Côte des Blanc wine yeast using 5 grams of yeast for each batch from my 500 gram bag of yeast I bought a couple months ago. Through the day, I added liquid from each brew bucket to the two yeast cultures to eventually get full quart Mason jars of bubbling yeast. Late at night, before pitching the yeast, the specific gravity of Batch 1 was 1.070. It was 1.071 in Batch 2. A nice smell emanated from the pantry after pitching the wine yeast.
- Mary found 18 hornworm eggs in the tomato, pepper, and tomatillo plants in the far garden.
- She also picked four zucchinis from the near garden.
- Midway through the day, we saw an immature bald eagle circling overhead.
- I picked 19 apples off the ground that blew off the Empire tree during the wind from yesterday's thunderstorm. I left one apple that was mostly chewed by bunnies and threw a small, rotten apple away.
- Mary made three pizzas that we enjoyed with a bottle of 2023 apple wine while playing Yahtzee. Bill won through the seven games that we played. He had a grand total of nine yahtzees!
