June 30, 2013

Another month gone.  I really have not done much the past several weeks other than work.  If I was not at work, I was working at my prairie restoration site or working in the garden.  With all of the rain we have gotten this year, gardening has come down to mainly weed management as the weeds are out of control.  The vegetable garden is not doing too well this year due to all of the flooding and the insects.  Everything is getting eaten within an inch of its life.

This past Monday we had another storm rip through and this time I lost power.  Fortunately it was on a Monday and at night so I was able to get out the generator to keep the basement pumped out.  The power came back on after 11:00 PM so I was grateful that I didn't have to get up for work in the morning.

I have also been making lots of jam as the serviceberry and cherry trees put out a bumper crop of fruit.  I made 11 1/2 pints of cherry jam and 10 1/2 pints of serviceberry jam.  This morning I might make some nectarine preserves as I was able to buy some really nice nectarines this week. 

Yesterday I went downtown to Soldier Field in the morning for the annual Chicago Food Depository Hunger Walk.  I used to do that walk years ago but haven't made it down there for quite some time.  This year I didn't walk but only went down with the rest of the Star Wars costumers as "entertainment" for the morning.  I wore my Imperial Gunner costume because it was a pretty cool morning and I wasn't too much worried about the fact that I can't seem to get enough air going in my helmet with the two fans I have in there.  Those fans are pretty useless so I think I am going to remove those two fans and put in one larger one.  Even with 3 nine volt batteries hooked together there is not enough juice to power two of the larger fans.  I thought that the cfm moved by the two smaller ones would be about equal, but it does not work really well at all so back to the drawing board.

I have also been out butterfly monitoring a couple times this month.  Results have been pretty dismal.  I guess the cold and way to wet spring has played havoc with the butterflies this year and it just does not look like it will be a very good year.