Weather | 3/16, p. cloudy, 9°, 25° | 3/17, clear to snow dusting, 3°, 30°
| 3/18, clear to cloudy, 25°, 63° | 3/19, clear to p. cloudy, 43°, 72° | 3/20, clear, 49°, 83° | 3/21, clear, 51°, 87°
| 3/22, cloudy, 39°, 69° |
- Monday, 3/16: Single Digits in March
- We had a cold day with a low of 9° and a high of 25°. The newly emerged forsythia blossoms turned to a dull brown/orange color from their original bright yellow tint. We have a thorough coating of snow to keep temperatures low.
- A good thing about cold temperatures is that there are fewer bugs in the house. I only vacuumed once.
- A large number of bluebirds were hanging around the willow stump this morning.
- The sun has lots of power. It melted snow down to bare ground in some spots, despite the cold.
- While Mary cross stitched in the sunroom, I put away all of the rest of my fly tying goodies that were hidden under the rolltop desk. An advantage with a rolltop desk is you can hide all of your stuff. A disadvantage is once you slide the rolltop cover open, your heap falls out onto the floor. Now, I don't have a heap!
- I called the Lewis County Rural Electric Cooperative (REC) to let them know that we saw a spark above our transformer during last night's blizzard. I told the woman I talked to that we still have electricity, so there was no huge rush to come fix it. Within a couple hours later, two REC trucks rumbled up our driveway. The worker driving the bucket truck used a thick plastic yellow stick that expanded upward. It had a hook on top of it that he connected into a loop at the bottom of the clamp holding the lead wire onto the incoming electric cable. He checked the clamp's tightness by trying to loosen it. He said it loosened very easily, so he tightened it up by twisting the pole clockwise. What an ingenious device! We're all set, now.
- Cooper had a hard time seeing a white lacrosse ball in the white snow, so during our game of fetch, I sought out melted trail patches and threw it underhanded, so it landed on tan grass, instead of white snow.
- We had a crystal clear night sky when we walked Cooper on his last outing.
- Tuesday, 3/17: Cold Morning
- It was quite cold this morning, at 3°. It warmed up to 30° and melted more snow. I'm pretty sure emerging pear buds are shot, along with forsythia and lilac blossoms. I hope other trees that showed a bit of green before this cold snap survive.
- I used a big chunk of today to work on federal and state income taxes and forwarded all forms electronically.
- While Mary cross stitched on a pattern called Red Fox Profile, I put thinner in the bottle of head cement to make it viable and applied some on threads of a foam dragonfly and a meat whistle fly. I looked for online instructions for making a more realistic foam dragonfly pattern, didn't find it on my cell phone, but then found a good one I notice a couple weeks back on my laptop. The video instructions were created by an Italian fly tying specialist.
- Wednesday, 3/18: Freeze Assessment
- When we took Cooper on his big noon walk, 13 wood ducks flew out of Dove Pond.
- Mary and I toured all of the fruit trees and garlic plants to assess freeze damage. There probably won't be any blossoms or fruit from the pear trees. Small Sargent crabapple trees might not make it. The crab apple trees probably won't blossom. Several of the garlic plants were hit hard by freezing. There was a strong garlic odor coming off the garlic plants. Most all of the apple and trees haven't started to bud, so they'll be fine.
- Mary fertilized the garlic plants. They were standing upright after our initial check, so Mary decided they needed a little boost of nourishment. They looked better.
- I made a phone call to Birkey's Farm Store. My Stihl chainsaw parts are in.
- I pruned where I could reach from ground level on the big Bartlett pear tree and covered all new cuts with tree wound dressing. Pear trees are the king of water sprouts, which are tall shoots that grow straight up. Some water sprouts on this tree are 6-8 feet long.
- I also cut persimmon saplings growing around this tree and in the path I use to drive the tractor into the west field.
- During Cooper's last outing, we heard barred owls and the first southern leopard frog. They sound like they cackle like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.
- Thursday, 3/19: Shopping
- I shopped in Quincy, today. First, I picked up the Stihl parts I ordered last month at Birkey's Farm Store, which mainly involved items to accurately sharpen chains. Six items came to close to $100. Prices are really high. Shopping in the Quincy Walmart is a nightmare. Not only did they move everything all around the store, they also discontinued several items, like Ultrabright toothpaste. I bought it at Dollar Tree. There's no book now in Walmart to look up a vehicle's air filter number. Instead, you use the Walmart app, which gave me a number for a filter that fits a Toyota. I bought the air filter at the new NAPA store in Quincy.
- While I was away, Mary cleaned floors in the house and did the daily vacuuming of Asian ladybugs. She vacuumed the whole house four times. After dark, I vacuumed two times.
- Bill called. He loves his new job. His immediate boss is giving him free reign to fix procedures of how processes are handled related to shipping and receiving. For instance, the warehouse area has two garage doors, one of which couldn't be used, because boxes of office paper were stacked just inside the door. Today he swapped the paper to the back of the warehouse and moved relocatable carts to inside the door. Now, instead of unloading paper through the other garage door and hauling it through an indoor door to further block the second garage door, it can be unloaded correctly. Bill decided to nix the idea of moving to a different apartment. Rent is too high to obtain a decent apartment and he's better off to stay where he's living right now.
- We heard an American woodcock while walking Cooper tonight. They were quiet during the recent cold snap.
- I have three tick bites on me. It's time to spray bug dope in order to avoid ticks.
- Friday, 3/20: Bugs!!!
- Mary watched seven deer cross the lane at Bluegill Pond when she walked Cooper this morning. Bob White quail were calling.
- On our noon walk with Cooper, we went to Wood Duck Pond and scared off several mallard ducks. On the way there, we also scared off wood ducks that were on Dove Pond. We also looked at Bass Pond. I saw one fish swimming by at Bass Pond. It's water is still murky and hasn't quite finished turning over. All ponds have slightly higher water levels.
- We noticed a bit of smoke from the Nebraska fires brought in with a west northwest breeze.
- Mary and I took turns vacuuming bugs all day. There are times when one sweep with the end of the vacuum nozzle on the top end of a window collects close to a hundred bugs at once. This is the worst it's ever been! If we didn't spend all day sucking up bugs, no creature could stand being in this house. We would have a crawling orange mass of bugs everywhere.
- I fixed loose drywall on our bedroom ceiling. Above the bed is a ceiling that sits at a 45-degree angle. Herman, Mary's uncle, used masonry nails in predrilled holes to nail 3/8-inch drywall to the roof rafters. The original dried oak rafters are so hard, drilling is required to put in any nail. They were coming loose. Not worrying about aesthetics, I used 2.5" hex head roofing screws and 1" washers to refasten the drywall to the angled ceiling. Now we won't worry about a big chunk of drywall falling on our heads while sleeping. We really need to get out of this house!!
- Mary checked garlic plants and pear trees. Some garlic plants are dying with too much stress from extreme cold and hot temperatures just a few days apart. She saw some green flower buds among the damaged pear buds. We're hoping something good comes from them.
- We noticed a tiny bit of redness from northern lights on the northern horizon when we walked Cooper on his last outing at night.
- Saturday, 3/21: More #*@! Bugs!!!
- Mary heard a wild turkey and a Bob White quail sound off at the same time while walking Cooper first thing this morning.
- It was another full day of vacuuming bugs. I started the morning shifts. Mary did the later shifts. They never seem to stop. When Mary emptied the vacuum in the morning, there were more bugs in the shop vac in one day compared to what normally is there after one week of vacuuming bugs during earlier months of the winter.
- In an attempt to get out of this leaky bug-infested home, I staked out the rough area for our new house design in the east lawn with half-inch rebar stakes. I tied fluorescent orange survey tape to the tops of the four stakes, in order to see them better. I didn't worry about getting it square. I simply used due east, west, north, and south on the compass app on my cell phone to get the walls to line up with map coordinates.
- Mary heard an eastern towhee for first time of the season, today.
- We checked out garlic plants. Some are dying, but most of the plants seem to be pulling through.
- Violet blossoms are showing where we laid down bricks on the ground under where water pours off the southeast roof's valley during heavy rains (see photo, below). There are violet leaves sprouting all over our lawns, indicating future flowers.
- Blossoms are opening on a second amaryllis stalk.
- We went to bed with the window open and the fan blowing 70° air into the bedroom. Just four days earlier, the outside temperature was 3°. It's absolutely nutty weather!
The first violets of spring!
- Sunday, 3/22: Helping Fruit Trees
- A titmouse bird teased Juliet at the open bedroom window this morning. It was perched two inches from her nose on dead hops vines.
- Mary and I saw our first spring beauty flower in the woods on the morning walk with Cooper on Bobcat Trail.
- We experienced a strong north wind from noon and into the afternoon and after darkness fell that brought down our temperatures.
- I checked the small Sargent crabapple trees I planted last fall. Both seem to be alive.
- I cleaned out more tree saplings near the big Bartlett pear tree.
- Mary pruned the Prairie Fire crabapple tree. We spotted four small crabapple saplings underneath the main tree that could be transplanted. We cleaned out persimmon and mulberry saplings that were too close to this tree. Climbing false buckwheat vines filled these neighboring saplings and traveled into the Prairie Fire tree last summer. We're hoping that by cleaning out these saplings, the vines stay away from the crabapple tree.
- I untied cow panels surrounding the Liberty and Porter's Perfection trees in the west yard so Mary could put tree wound dressing on the recent rabbit or ground hog chewings on trunks of these two trees. The plastic tree guards are old and falling apart, allowing tree trunks to show.
- I made tree trunk protectors out of quarter-inch hardware cloth by cutting the hardware cloth down to fit under the lowest branches of the trees. Then I formed them around the trunks and stitched the two sides together using tarred twine, along with half-hitch and clove-hitch knots, the same technique used to put netting on a shrimp pot. Finally, I attached each of these small protectors to a rebar stake to keep them in place.
- Mary played fetch with Cooper while I worked on the tree guards. After she let him inside, she went in a little later to discover blood all over house floors. He lands with both hind legs skidding on the grass when he grabs the ball while playing fetch. In his former life at the animal shelter, he chewed on his hind legs. It was a nervous habit that he no longer does. Today's injury involved reopening his old wound. There will be no game of fetch for awhile to let the wound heal up.
- I vacuumed bugs in the morning, and Mary did a round of vacuuming after evening chores, but by nighttime, after outside temperatures dropped significantly, there were a lot fewer bugs.
- Each of the last couple nights when we walk Cooper, the stars shone brightly. Tonight a crescent moon was setting to the west.
