[Mike Nolan]

When we got up this morning, two of the window hummingbird feeders had their bottoms knocked off, with sugar water all down the window and on the deck.

Our back patio security camera shows that around 3:30 AM a group of at least 3 raccoons were prowling the back patio, and one or more of them climbed up on the window ledge and knocked the feeder bases off.

So I've moved the feeders up about a foot and refilled them. Fortunately, nothing broke. The hummers waited, oh, maybe 30 seconds after I rehung the first feeder before they were at it.

I wasn't aware raccoons had a sweet tooth, not all mammals do. (Cats don't, for example.)

[Mike Nolan]

I concluded that the two seal failures I had last week were both due to operator error. I managed to get two lids stuck together on one jar, and the other had too much headroom.

[Mike Nolan]

There are canning lids available on the Internet, but they're not brands I've heard of and I don't know if I'd trust them.

[Mike Nolan]

I did an eye of round with some mashed potatoes and gravy for supper tonight.

Her shoulder and arm are improving slowly (though her physical therapist thinks it is going faster than he anticipated), but an hour of therapy really wears her out.

The orthopedist thought the X-rays looked good on Friday, one more follow-up X-ray next month.

She may be having therapy for another two months.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, the 8x8 is for today and the 10x10 is for our anniversary on the 17th. (This will be #49 for us.) I just need to figure out where I have space in a freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm going to make two small Texas Sheet Cakes today, to celebrate my birthday.

[Mike Nolan]

I put out 3 new feeders last night, I think it spread the frenzy out a bit.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a bunch of eggs that I had hard boiled a few days ago that needed to be used up, so we had egg salad and deviled eggs.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tuna melts last night. I might have to make marbled rye bread soon, I slice it and freeze it, and there may not be enough left for another round of tuna melts.

[Mike Nolan]

The females outnumber the males by something like a 3-1 or 4-1 ratio, so males are less commonly spotted.

[Mike Nolan]

The hummingbirds are here in force now, too many to count, probably well over a dozen visible at times.

Most of them are females, but we've seen at least one male. (The hummingbird migration site says the males arrive later.)

One of the females has decided that a plant my wife has sitting on the table near two of the feeders is a great place to sit and guard those feeders.

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[Mike Nolan]

We had sliders done on the outdoor grill.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tomatoes and salami for supper tonight, I could have picked a very large bowl of them, and will probably have to do so soon, so more tomato processing is coming, maybe Thursday, for sure by Saturday. The Amish Paste tomatoes tend to come in all at once, and they make very good sauce or juice.

[Mike Nolan]

Turned out only one needed reprocessing, the other sounded like it was sealed yesterday evening and it felt sealed, too. I did reprocess the other jar, and it sealed up fine.

I may need to do another batch this coming weekend, probably no more than 3-4 jars this time.

[Mike Nolan]

I made Hamelman's semolina bread today, 1 1/2 loaves went into the freezer for later.

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