July 11-12 '09

Sally was getting over flu like symptoms, so stayed home with Tender.

Weather
Hot and dry -- mid to upper 90's. Had .6" in the rain gage from storms 7/3 and 7/4. A few leaves were falling from the Walnut trees and being blown about.

Garden
Looked good but little produce: 2 tomatoes, 2 jalapenos, 1 radish that had been missed, the remaining bock chow (6-8), and a handful of green beans mostly too big or too small. The pole beans are going crazy and have blooms but only 3 beans. Sally says we should pull them up. Spent lots of time watering and weeding both Sat. and Sun. Thinking about bringing a sprinkler out.

Work

• Mowed to the pond, around the barn, and around the spring.
• Cut up the downed ice storm limbs from white oak in the pasture on the way down the hill. That was 1/3 of a truck load. Then went to the big red oak beyond the pond (first time it has been dry enough to drive past the seep on the south side of pond) and cut up two more large limbs that had fallen since my first cleanup there. Some of these were splitting size. Loaded up the rest of the truck and still left limbs. Had trouble re-starting my Stihl MS250, and couldn't re-start it at the next stop. Got to get that figured out.
• Raked the algae and dead weeds around the edge of the pond. I can still see the weeds growing in the deeper portions of the pond, but only a few were reaching the surface. I was out of copper sulfate or would have applied more.
• Sprayed more sumac in the upper pasture. There is lots more, but I finally feel like I am making progress.
  

Bluebirds
Cleaned out both bird houses near the house. The back one had three dead babies. Don't know what happened there. Both houses had to hatchings this year.

Orchard
I watered the apples, though all three look pitiful. There were web worms on one pear (and the lilac by the house), and one branch of the 3in1 was stressed and leaves were browning out. I did get almost 2 quats of blackberries, but they are relatively small and not the plump juicy ones I would prefer.

Firsts

• Live armadillo on the road to the pond.
• Live scorpion in the house (dead now).
• The dam was leaking again around both culverts, which I could only tell before because the water level had dropped. This week the beavers had built a dam in front of both culverts with smooth mud -- I suspect plugging the leaks plus backing up water in the pond. I opened up a channel through the mud in front of one culvert on Sat., but it was plugged back up on Sun. Want to see what they have done next week, and what happens after a heavy rain.