June 29-July 5, 2026

Weather | 6/29, sunny, 75°, 91° | 6/30, sunny, 75°, xx° | 7/1, xx°, xx° | 7/2, xx°, xx° | 7/3, xx°, xx° | 7/4, xx°, xx° | 7/5, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 6/29: Blackberries & Fixing Fence
  • Mary picked more blackberries. She finished the first quart in the freezer of the season. Some locations are very sparse of ripe berries. Her final berry picking session took her west, south and east of the house and yielded just 19 berries. "That's a lot of heat for just 19 berries," she said.
  • Mary said that wild bergamot (beebalm) is flowering on the edge of the north yard. Mountain mint is flowering between the ponds. Chicory and dayflowers are also blooming.
  • A field sparrow always flies out of the blackberry plants in the north yard. Mary suspects it's nesting in those brambles, so she's not picking berries from that patch.
  • Mary says all of the staghorn sumac is blooming. We thought it was dead from deer eating it down to below our kneecaps last winter, but now it's chest high and blooming, which is great.
  • I ran supports to three of the four corner posts of the far garden. I have several short metal posts that once had about a foot of their bottom sections broken off. I drove them into the ground at an angle, then ran 4-5 strands of wire from the slanted posts to the top of the corner posts and wound the strands to tighten the tension until the corner posts were solidly in the ground. I didn't do this on the southwest corner, since it's still holding fast in the earth.
  • My thigh muscles are really sore, due to too much of pulling wire tight while walking while doing deep knee bends, yesterday.
  • We have a routine dog. If we get out of our daily routine of activities, things just aren't right with Cooper. While taking a rest from the outside heat and looking at my laptop in the late afternoon, Cooper was nudging my hand to remind me that we were overdue on his before-dinner walk and ball-fetching fun time.
  • I did more online powder paint research. I ran into a guy via YouTube that mixes his own powder paint colors and has an insane amount of materials. Through him, I learned of a company in Texas that only sells lure making supplies called Barlow's Tackle.