April 6-12, 2026

 

Weather | 4/6, cloudy to sleet, 39°, 55° | 4/7, snow to rain, 30°, xx° | 4/8, xx°, xx° | 4/9, xx°, xx° | 4/10, xx°, xx° | 4/11, xx°, xx° | 4/12, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 4/6: Dandy Wine Collection & Near Garden Prep
  • I looked online whether using whole dandelion flowers that included the green base (calyx) of the blossom is okay for making dandelion wine. It's not, because too much green makes the wine too bitter. However, a tiny bit of green improves the wine's taste. So, I don't need to be so touchy about keeping absolutely any green parts out of dandelion petal collection.
  • I picked six dozen dandy flowers in about an hour's time. Several more days of picking are in my future, but it goes a little faster, now.
  • I cleaned dead weeds and grass out of part of the chicken wire fence line that keeps rabbits out of the near garden. It amounted to about a third of that fence. I then mowed the weeds up and threw them away...too many weed seed heads to compost that stuff.
  • While Mary was hanging out laundry to dry, she heard the tapping of a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Today's Cornell Ornithology online newsletter showed how to identify woodpeckers by their tapping rhythm as they peck tree branches, giving Mary the opportunity to identify this bird that migrates through our property.
  • For a portion of this afternoon, weather websites showed that we had the worst air quality of anywhere in the world. I looked up where testing sites are located and for us, the nearest facility is a lake north of the Iowa/Missouri border. Our air was just fine. Maybe someone idled a diesel truck next to the sensor's air intake. 
  • Mary heard turkey gobbles in property west of us when she walked Cooper around the west field.
  • Every spring, narcissus flowers bloom north of the machine shed near the north wood's edge. They were planted by someone who lived here before we arrived on this property. Mary took a photo of one of the blossoms (see below). The brown tips of the leaves indicate when our low temperature hit 3° on March 17th.
  • When I walked Cooper at night, rain and sleet were falling. Fortunately, Cooper walks very fast, so time spent walking him goes quickly.

  

  An old-fashioned Poet's Narcissus blossom.