July 27-August 2, 2026

Weather | 7/27, p. cloudy, 77°, 95° | 7/28, p. cloudy, 75°, 91° | 7/29, hazy, 68°, 85° | 7/30, p. cloudy, 63°, 83° | 7/31, 0.82" rain, cloudy, 67°, 81° | 8/1, 0.23" rain, 62°, 70° | 8/2, sunny, 62°, 81° |

• Monday, 7/27: Doctor's Visit
  • During today's semi-annual doctor's visit, my doctor told me that the six-month glucose reading numbers were excellent. Lab results from the blood sample they took were available by mid-afternoon. My A1C is 7.2, up from 6.5 a year ago, but down from 7.4 in January. All of the other items they check for are within the normal ranges.
  • I ordered three bags of coffee beans and 100 tea bags of Stash green tea. I like green tea. It ought to last for quite some time.
  • Mary made bread. After we paid $5 a loaf for two dinky loaves of bread in Walmart, Mary said, "Never again," and decided to go back to baking our own bread. She let the four loaves cool and then sliced them up. Then she packaged two slices at a time in sandwich bags, put those bags in two layers of two-gallon freezer bags, and froze them. Done this way, we only use what we need on any giving day. There was waste in the past with freezing whole loaves of bread when some would grow mold, due to us not eating them up soon enough. We ate sandwiches made from her bread as an evening meal. The bread was incredibly delicious.
  • Today was another episode of high heat. Twice we watched thunderclouds approach from the north, but fade to nothing as soon as they reached us. When the sun was low on the western horizon and the temperature was slightly lower, we watered the gardens. Plants are doing fine, but our daily strawberry numbers are drastically reduced.

   

• Tuesday, 7/28: Mesh Tube Minnow
  • The high heat continues. We stayed inside until late in the day.
  • I built a Mesh Tube Minnow similar to what Ginger Miller demonstrated in the last Virtual Vise online session I took in (see photos, below). It's rather goofy and I don't know how it will fish. The materials I used in this big fly are lead wire for weight, fluorescent green mesh tubing and thread, light green chenille, and a #2 streamer hook. I goofed up on the first attempt with too big of a wad of chenille for the belly, making it impossible to fit the mesh tube over the chenille. The second attempt was better. I might add some google eyes, but I need to test out glues on mesh tubing to see what works and if various glues melt the plastic of mesh tubing.
  • We watered gardens. We're seeing several developing peppers. The plants are surviving the heat. I gave the Carpathian walnut a half bucket of water. Tall foxtail grass surrounds the sapling and probably protects it from intense solar heat. We have the same phenomenon occurring with onions.
  • While putting chickens away for the night, we heard a wood thrush. 
  • We can't believe it, but we're still seeing a few fireflies at night.
  • I watched several how-to fly tying videos by InTheRiffle on YouTube. 

A Mesh Tube Minnow.

Most materials used in making this large fly.

 
• Wednesday, 7/29: Mowing, Solar Generator & Laundry Detergent Stink
  • Mary mowed the lawn between the machine shed and the woodshed, putting most of the grass mulch around tomato plants in the far garden. We haven't mowed through high-heat spells, so our lawns look like hay fields.
  • I washed the three fuzzy items I bought last week from thrift stores. All garments coming from thrift stores are washed with a heavy dose of stinky laundry detergent. I don't want to make lures from items that reek of manmade stinkum. Some time on the clothesline will help dissipate the odor. 
  • I set up the solar generator with the two solar panels on the trailer, pushing the stored energy from 60 to 99 percent. I read in the manual that it's best to take the generator to full capacity, then drop it to 60 percent for storage. So, I used the generator to provide power for my laptop in the evening, dropping it to 96 percent.
  • I mowed the lane. I had to go slower than usual, in order to knock back the chicory stalks. 
  • Black walnut trees have leaves that are turning yellow early. The tall grass is yellowing. There is just too much heat this summer!
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 pear wine. It has great flavor, but a healthy kick. Pear wine requires at least a year of aging. Three years is even better.

   

• Thursday, 7/30: A Mowing Blitz
  • I sharpened the blades of both push mowers.
  • Mary and I both mowed the lawn just north of the house and to the west, which were knee-high in grass, tall chicory stalks, and cherry/persimmon saplings. We added grass mulch to all existing plants in the far garden. It was cooler today, so we took fewer and shorter breaks in order to get this area cleaned up. It looks much better. Bill is interested in enjoying an outdoor fire when he visits this weekend, which was an incentive to mowing down these hay field lawns.
  • Bill's current job allows him to take his birthday off. So, his weekend visit will include Monday, August 3rd, which is his 33rd birthday. 
  • Mary keeps picking up the call of a mockingbird on her Merlin app. The app indicates that it is an unlikely resident. Mockingbirds usually reside further south in the summer. Mary thinks it has taken up summer residence on our property.
  • My three items I bought for fly tying aired in today's sun and wind. Only the infant garment still has a fake laundry soap odor. The two blankets smell normal. I hung them over interior room doors for further airing, just in case residual odors exist.

   

• Friday, 7/31: Trimming Electric Fence
  • I used the Stihl trimmer and whacked down grass and weeds under the electric fence of the near garden, a task I'm accomplishing for the first time this year. I only got the north side cleaned up. Needless to say, it is very thick with vegetation and takes additional time to accomplish.
  • Initially, while using the trimmer, I was breaking off nylon string about every three to four feet. After two or three years, that string is brittle. Once I soaked it with WD-40, the string stopped breaking. Apparently, I should buy trimmer string on an annual basis.
  • Rain squalls forced me to quit my trimming work. Mary started chores earlier than normal. I had to wait for rain to subside prior to starting my evening chores.
  • When Mary put the chickens to bed, she was missing a hen. She started walking Cooper and suggested that the hen might be on that nest under the cedar tree next to the woodshed. I spotted five eggs there yesterday while I was mowing. I looked. Sure enough, our Houdini who escapes the chicken yard daily was sitting on that nest. A few minutes later, Mary grabbed Houdini, who put up a big squawking fuss, while Mary carried her to inside the coop.
  • Mary noticed a brown thrasher for the first time since spring. It was out enjoying the freshly cut lawn.
  • I'm chasing woodpeckers out of the Empire and Granny Smith apple trees. That probably means some of the apples are getting close to ripening.

   

• Saturday, 8/1: Bill Arrives
  • It rained intermittently all day to give us just under a quarter inch.
  • Bill arrived around noon.
  • I added dragon eyes to the mesh tube minnow I made on Tuesday (see photo, below). They are attached and covered with UV gel. While shining the UV flashlight to harden the UV gel, the tinsel of the mesh tubing was purple.
  • Mary finished three Halloween ornaments (see photo, below). They are named Mod Cat, Autumn Silhouette, and Ghoulish Glow.
  • We gave birthday gifts to Bill two days early so cats wouldn't eat them. One of the presents was a bar of dark chocolate.
  • Bill took a photo of milk weed tussock moth larvae (see photo, below). I've noticed several of them on milk weed plants next to the lane. Touching them gives a person a nasty rash.
  • The upper part of a dead ash tree fell into the north chicken yard and scared chicks so that when Mary put them to bed for the night, all chicks were huddled inside a corner of the chicken coop.
  • Bill took a photo of Gandalf crawling out from a kitchen cabinet (see below). 
  • We watched two movies. The first film was a DVD we gave Bill for this birthday entitled A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), about Fred Rogers. The second film we watched was Dave (1993).

Dragon eyes on the mesh tube minnow.

Mary's cross stitch Halloween ornaments.

   

Two milk weed tussock moth larvae.

Gandalf emerging from a kitchen cabinet.

 
• Sunday, 8/2: Wiener Roast
  • I cut up the ash tree that fell across the north chicken yard with the small battery-powered Stihl pruning saw. Our chicks sure live strongly by the name chicken. They stayed inside the coop the whole time I was cutting up the tree. Then I took the big chainsaw and cut up the trunk on the east side of the chicken yard fence. It was actually three pieces of trees...the ash tree, an old oak tree, and an ash limb. I noticed later in the day that the top of a live tree was gone. It maybe blew down in the wind and tilted old dead trees over.
  • Mary used her scythe to cut down part of the lawn between the house and the lane for hay to use through the winter on the floor of the chicken coop. It was deep, tough, and wet, which made for grass that flopped over and hard to cut.
  • Bill helped me move firewood from the chicken yard by opening and closing gates. He helped Mary move hay in a wheelbarrow and spread it out on shorter grass to dry.
  • We lit an outdoor fire and roasted wieners. We also played washers. Bill won most of the games. We watched the sky as darkness revealing stars. There are several more satellites moving across the nighttime sky compared to past years. We saw several shooting stars.
  • Before it was dark, we saw a couple common nighthawks. Mary saw a bat fly only five feet above our heads. Mosquitoes were really chewing on Bill. Mary and I noticed them, but they weren't biting us...probably because we're old coots with no blood.