I headed outside this afternoon to check things out. Before I get to that, though, I just have to share!

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We have a first sighting of Caramel’s babies! I thought they might be in the wood pile (which we thought was a junk pile, until we took the junk off the top), since I would sometimes see her disappear under it, but cats in general like to shelter under there.

As I was heading back to the house, I spotted a grey tabby by the opening under the tarp. When it saw me, it ducked under. For the briefest of moments, I saw an orange face peek out, then Caramel stuck her head out and stared at me. She seemed to be okay with my watching from where I was and came out. Her little grey one came out soon after, and then the orange one – which turned out to be orange and white – came out and stayed behind Caramel. I stayed long enough to see if any others would come out, but it looks like there are just the two of them.

As for things outside.

The water has been absorbed in some places, though everything is still very wet. I lifted the mosquito netting cover off the potatoes, since the elms are no longer dropping seeds, and over the chain link fence. I will leave it there for now, as the blowing of the netting should startle the deer away. Not that they’ll eat potato plants, but it might keep them from going into the yard and eating other things. I considered lifting the netting off the chocolate cherry tomatoes, too, but they don’t seem to be hampered by it at all, so I’m leaving it for now.

I took the cover off the bed with the German Butterball potatoes. They’re getting so big, they are starting to crowd against the netting. I set the cover on top of the old dog houses by the outhouse, for now. It’s pretty much the only place with enough for it, while also keeping it off the wet ground.

It looks like I will need to try planting the Seychelle beans again. Only a few have come up in one row, and none at all in the other. The seeds are a few years old and, between that and the weather we’ve been having, it’s no surprise if they don’t come up.

I did plant more of the Royal Burgundy bush beans. In fact, I had enough seeds to plant a row on either side of the original row, which has only one successfully sprouted bean plant coming up. I still have seeds left over, too. For some reason, I remember having only enough seeds to plant one short row, but these are the same brand’s seeds as before. I’ll have to check my seeds bin and see if I still have some left, after all. With only one bean successfully germinating (plus one more that broke ground and that’s about it), I figured planting two more rows on either side of the original row would hopefully ensure we have at least a few bush beans survive!

The water around the bed I was going to work on next has been mostly absorbed into the ground, and I considered working on it – but only for a moment. It’s 22C/72F out there, with a humidex of 28C/83F. I was not about to do that kind of work in full sun with this level of heat and humidity. I did do a bit of weeding, through. With the ground so wet, I could pull some of the weeds out, tap root and all. A bit of that was more than enough to convince me, turning new sod and shifting the remains of that bed over is just not something I should be doing right now! If I get out early enough tomorrow morning, though, I should be able to get it done and, if all goes well, transplant the last of the onions. Since I have so many, and this bed won’t have anything else in it, I should be able to get away with planting them a bit denser, too. It would be great if I could get all the onions, plus the last few shallots, in. It’s getting really late for onions. They really should have been planted in late May, as they prefer the cooler temperatures, but we shall see how they do.

Once that’s done, I can breathe a sigh of relief for a little while. Then I can look into seeing what I can do in the gaps where things that were direct sown didn’t come up, and replant where the spinach was sown. What little spinach came up and actually grew is now bolting in the heat! We never got anything to harvest, even out of those.

Maybe I’ll just plant more of the Uzbek carrots. I intended to plant a lot more carrots, but the beds are all full of winter squash and melons, which grow too big to interplant carrots under. I could have planted them under the tomatoes, but the onions needed to be transplanted – plus, the onions should help deter deer and other pests from the tomatoes.

Well, writing this just got interrupted quite a bit. A racoon was back in the sun room and had to be chased off repeatedly. We’re prepared to deal with it, once the opportunity arises. There is, however, a second one, and I haven’t seen both at the same time since last night.

For now, I’m going to enjoy watching kittens on the critter cam.

Oh!!! Did I just see a white kitten running by past a window??? It would be so great if the white babies came back, too! We were making such good progress in socializing those ones.

Ah, well. What will be, will be.

Oh… that’s a skunk I just saw walking by this time…

The Re-Farmer