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Tuesday, Jul. 16, 2002 - 7:27 p.m. The squirrels have returned. They started their yearly invasion last weekend, eating a few bites out of several very green peaches, and then leaving the rest of each to rot on the ground. This is early, even for them. They usually wait until the fruit is at least a little ripe. Not this year. Might be because of the dry weather, but they have started their destruction a week or soon sooner then in the past. I decided to string up my plastic bird netting yesterday evening.Yeah, I know �it�s called �bird netting�, not �squirrel netting�. It discourages the furry monsters, so that�s what I use it for. I wrapped several loose bundles around the bottom 4 foot of the trunk. This is to make it harder for them to make their initial leap up the tree. I then used several more pieces to wrap, haphazardly, the largest clusters of fruit. This alone won�t stop the damage. It will leave me with a majority of the fruit, though. That is all you can hope for when you have such a small crop. The peach crop this summer will be pretty sad, I am afraid. Last year, I managed to keep enough of my two tree�s peaches away from the local squirrels to make two batches of peach salsa, one batch of jam, and enough sliced peaches for a couple of deserts. That doesn�t count the many peaches that I salvaged from the ground, cleaned up and sliced for my lunch the next day. This year, the weather has been far less cooperative. Too wet and cold when the blossoms were setting fruit, and now very dry and unusually hot for this part of summer. I have about one-third of the fruit I had last year (when things were near perfect). If I am lucky, I will have enough for the jam and a few deserts. If I want to make the peach salsa, I will have to buy some from the local growers. It�s not the cost that bugs me. It�s the fact that my attempt to be somewhat self-sufficient (by growing my own fruit) has been less than a success. Maybe next year, if the weather is better and the DrugDealingNeighbor and I get the evil Black Walnut tree cut down, I will have a better crop�� I did make a batch of jam out of some of the Rainer white cherries tonight. It might be the most expensive jam I have ever made. Have you ever seen White Cherry jam in the store before? Does Smuckers� produce it? Well then, I guess it might be worth the cost. I think it tastes just like the ripe cherries, although Codeman said he could also taste lemon. I had to add some (fresh) lemon juice to bring the jams� ph towards the acid side of the scale�. I was frying a few (tiny) Yukon Gold potatoes from the garden for a side dish tonight, when the burner they were on made a �btttzzzzz� sound, and then the outlet began belching black smoke from under the skillet. I turned the burner off and moved the potatoes to the other large burner. I knew what had happened, because it�s not the first time it happened with this stove. It�s more like the third. The elements on our 8-year-old White-Westinghouse� have a cheap plug-in setup. The coils have what looks like two spade terminals, and they go into a lightweight plastic housing. After all the high-temperature batches of canning jars and such, the plastic becomes brittle, causing it to crack. Sooner or later, the two sides have a large enough opening for the electricity to arc, causing the above damage to happen. I opened up the stove, and the first thing I noticed was that the wires had also broken loose from the element. I think the only damage was to the socket, but won�t know for sure until tomorrow. I will stop by the appliance store and by another socket. It all goes well, it will be as good as new when I finish rewiring it. If not, I will have to replace the stove. Soon. Salsa-making season is almost here�.. One last thing: Our state released it�s yearly report on which schools are not reaching the minimum level of academic achievement, as a result of standardized testing given each year. There were 232 schools on this years �fail� list. With 179 of the schools located in that big city at the top of the state, that meant only 53 schools downstate were deemed unacceptable. There was only one school in our county on this list: (you know where this is going, don�t you?) Yes, I am proud to announce that Southeast grade was the lowest-scoring school here in Mohall. The grade school I went to for grades K-6. Now you know why I write the way I do. And no, I didn�t use the calculator to figure out how many schools were from downstate. They were nice enough to put the number in the article��
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