July 20-26, 2026

Weather | 7/20, sunny, 69°, 93° | 7/21, 0.12" rain to sunny, 71°, xx° | 7/22, xx°, xx° | 7/23, xx°, xx° | 7/24, xx°, xx° | 7/25, xx°, xx° | 7/26, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 7/20: Creating a Mesh Tube Darter
  • Any time we went outside, the temperatures were just too hot and the air was orange with wildfire smoke. We stayed inside. At 93°, we hit our hottest temperature of this year.
  • Mary worked on her cross stitch project called "Mod Cat," a Halloween ornament.
  • I spent all afternoon online trying to find a fly tying pattern to help me understand the poor notes I took during a web session with Missouri Department of Conservation Educator Matt Murray describing how to make a Mesh Tube Darter. He used a rabbit fur piece called a "zonker strip" by fly tyers. Using that term, I found similar fly tying recipes. 
  • Mary watered the far garden twice and the near garden once. It was a very hot job. Three tomato plants look like they're dying. Some are growing nicely.
  • Bill sent some images and texts about a Mediterranean House Gecko in the support room at his place of work. He released it outside.
  • At roughly 8 p.m., Mary shut chicken coop windows with thunderstorms approaching from Iowa. It was entertaining with all but two chicks piled into three open windows. She moved 29 chicks. We only have 24 chicks. Once set onto the roost, several chicks flew back to the window sills. When she finally got all of them on the roost, she completely closed the lower parts of windows and opened the upper halves to a 3" crack.
  • I built a mesh tube darter (see photos, below). I got the mesh tubing at Dollar Tree for next to nothing. The rabbit fur died in a rust color pushes down the tubing to make it resemble a fish belly. I used two feathers from our Silver Wyandotte hen we call "Silver" (very original) for pectoral fins. Unfortunately, one is longer than the other. I used a plastic fish mask with holographic fish eyes covered with UV gel preservative, which hardened nicely after three minutes exposed to a UV flashlight. I need to buy more colors of rabbit fur to make future versions of this unique lure.
  • On Cooper's last walk, the setting moon backlit clouds in the southwestern sky while lightning flashed to the northwest. We fell asleep to thunder.

Side view of a Mesh Tube Darter.

The same lure viewed from underneath.