Market day in the heat!

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The older I get, the less I’m able to tolerate heat. In my youth, it was the other way around.

I was outside early to water the garden before it got too hot – and it was already feeling hot! I very promptly spotted a friend.

What an adorable toad! We rarely see toads. Most commonly, we see wood frogs. Seeing toads is pretty rare. I don’t know that the toads themselves are rare; we just don’t see them much.

After the watering was done, we had a bit it time before my daughter and I loaded up the box of the truck for the market, and what few things we needed to bring along from the house, and left early. I wanted to stop at the general store to pick up some canned drinks to use as display items for the new can cozies I’d made. Plus, I picked up a sandwich for breakfast. My daughter didn’t pick anything, and even drank only water (we brought ice packs and small insulated bags), because eating makes her sick, and there’s only a porta potty available at the market.

We drove past the rescue on the way to the general store, and there was already a tent set up! We later heard that someone had set up by 8:30am. The rescue doesn’t open to tours until 9am, and the market officially opens at 10am.

We got what we needed, then drove back to set up for the market, quickly unloading everything so I could park the truck as soon as possible. Otherwise, we block access.

We had the same neighbour as last week. Before, they had really struggled with having only a sun umbrella. This time, they had a tent with mesh walls. A much better set up – until the wind gust started hitting. Their tent started blowing around and they were going to at weight to one corner when I realize they didn’t even have any tent pegs. I’d bought extra at the dollar store, then found the ones that came with our canopy tent, so they were still in the packages. I was able to give them a package of 4, and it made a huge difference! Once pegged down, their tent actually handled the wind gusts better than ours side. It’s supports were more flexible and would bend with the wind. Our felt like it was about to become a kite at times!

Things were a bit busier than last time, and we made a few sales. It was only the second day of a first time market, so I really didn’t expect much. Add in the heat, and I’m surprised they had as many people visiting for tours as they did!

The highlight of the day was their cat. Last time, it was their Great Pyrenees, who did show up later. This time, it was their long haired ginger cat with the Maine Coon face, but not the Maine Coon size. This cat just hung out at various tents, sometimes visibly splayed out in the shade, other times emerging from under a table, and absolutely loving attention. Towards the end of the day, it came out from under a table at the tent next to us, walked over to my daughter for pets, climbed up into her arms and went for a nap on her shoulder.

It was the most precious thing, ever!!!

While we were there, my phone kept pinging with security cam notifications. My brother and SIL had come out yesterday evening and will be here for the weekend. My SIL brought out their big zero turn mower and was out there for hours. Not only did she mow the outer yard, around their equipment, caravan, to the barn, etc., but she did much of the inner yard, too! There’s one section that can’t be done because there’s still part of that fallen maple in the way. The grass doesn’t get very tall, anyhow. I’m just blown away. Yes, it’s on a riding mower, but it was still around 33C/91F, with the humidex making it feel closer to 40C/104F

After the market was done and the truck packed up, my daughter and I stopped at home just long enough to take the things in the box of the truck out, then grab a couple of water jugs for refilling before heading to town. I was in the truck, waiting for my daughter to come back from the house when my brother came by. I commented on the lawn mowing, and he told me that was all my SIL! He has been working on his tractor. He got it fixed and started again and…

Something else broke on it.

*sigh*

He also got stung by hornets, three times – with one of them somehow getting into the sleeve of his coveralls!!!

Once my daughter got back to the truck, we headed to town. My daughter finally felt it was safe to eat, so she bought us “lunch” first, then we went to the grocery store. They have two stations for refilling water jugs and one was being used, so we started using the second one, only to find it had no pressure. Both stations have signs on them saying that, if there is no pressure, use the other station while it recharges, with apologies.

The women using the other station were clearly also having issues. Both machines had low pressure. We tried to do some of our shopping, then come back, but it still wasn’t long enough. In the end, I was eventually able to refill one jug, and didn’t bother with the second one.

We each had a few small things to pick up as well before heading home again.

One thing I noticed during the drive is that the battery gauge was fluctuating a lot again. At one point, the needle kept dropping as I watched, while we were stopped. Still within the normal range, but it really shouldn’t be doing that. This has happened before when we were above 30C/86F, and I had it checked, so I now know it’s because of the heat. After today, we’re going to avoid going anywhere for the next couple of days. Especially tomorrow, when we’re expecting a high of 35C/95F or, depending on what app we look at, potentially 37C/99F – and that’s not counting the humidex. Other areas of the province are expecting higher temperature.

A good day to stay home!

Two more days of this, and then the highs are supposed to stay below 30C/86F for the rest of the 10 day forecast. I’ll still want to be watering the garden twice a day.

Anyhow…

Once at home, I backed up to the house to unload. Once everything was put away, I wanted to feed the outside cats so I could safely drive the truck to the garage. They still had lots of dry kibble, but were swirling.

They wanted their cat soup!

I am thrilled to say that when I headed out of the sun room with the morning cat feeding, I found Sweetie among the cats just outside the door. She was there again, when I did the evening feeding.

Since they had plenty of kibble, I decided to use the large bowl and scoop I use for the dry kibble to make a larger batch of cat soup, with just a couple of scoops of dry kibble added to the freeze dried cat food mix.

The cats were in heaven. Including Sweetie. She still acts nervous when she looks at me and startles easily, but she still went for the food bowls and was not shy about getting her share!

It also gave me a chance to park the truck in the shade of the garage. It stays remarkably cool in there, considering we don’t close the main door at all. In the summer, I park with enough room in front of the truck to access the counter against the wall. That leaves the back end sticking out a few feet. Somehow, it just doesn’t get hot in there.

I still have to get outside to do the evening watering, but it’s past 7:30pm and still 30C/86F out there, with the humidex still at 35C/95F. The mosquitoes are out like crazy, too. We’re not expected to cool down to a decent temperature until 3am.

*sigh*

The garden must be just baking, though.

Well, time to stop procrastinating, cover myself in bug spray and get watering. I’ll have to be careful not to shock the overheated plants with freezing well water!

Just a couple more days of this…

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: deer damage? and infrastructure progress

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This morning, I made sure to give the garden beds a through watering before things got too hot.

I found this.

On the one hand, I was happy to see another poppy blooming.

On the other, I was sad to see one of the flower buds got chomped!

I have a suspicion that it didn’t taste very good, or the rest would have been eaten, too.

So… we’re down to just 3 Giganthemum poppies instead of 4!

The nasturtiums are kicking into high gear with blooms right now.

The transplanted Crackerjack marigold and white dwarf cosmos that were supposed to be red cosmos are still blooming, too. The bush beans in the high raised bed have flower buds, and I spotted a flower on one of the Caspar eggplant. There are also more flowers showing up on various types of tomatoes. The musk melon and watermelon transplants I bought have also been flowering, but I’m picking those off. The plants are still way too tiny, but they finally seem to be growing.

Once the morning watering was done, we all just stayed indoors and out of the heat. I even crashed for a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

In the afternoon, after the cats were fed, it was back into the garden. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done.

First, I wanted to work on the corn patch.

In the first image of the slide show above, you can see the corn leaves are starting to press up against the netting. This is not a tall variety, but it does get taller than this. I considered finding a way to make the hoops higher, but decided to just remove the netting completely.

Once the netting was off, the corn got a thorough weeding, and then mulched with grass clippings. Parts of where I mowed yesterday do not have Creeping Charlie, so the clippings were safe to use. You can see it all done in the second image. I have left the hoops. Corn gets knocked over by wind very easily, and the hoops will provide at least some support. I’m considering other ways of adding more support as well.

I’ve got the motion sensor deer scarer set to go off at night, though I’ve set one off when it was still dusk, so “night” is a very brought frame. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep them away – and the raccoons! I might have to switch it to be active both day and night, though that would mean I would be setting it off while tending the garden. Which I might be willing to put up with!

Once the corn was weeded, it got a thorough watering, then the mulch was added, then it got watered again. From there, I kept watering the beds until I got to the next one I wanted to work on.

It was hard to see through the turnip leaves, but it did seem the red noodle beans were getting bitter. So, I harvested most of the turnips, partly to let the beans have more light, then added the trellis supports for them to climb. They look like they’re just starting to throw out tendrils.

This bed also got grass clippings added to mulch between the remaining turnips, and between the turnip row and the beans. The daikon radish is looking good – the one survivor from the winter sowing is not only still blooming but starting to develop seed pods. We will have seeds to collect for next year. The onions along the radish side of the bed are looking good, but not to much the ones on the turnip side. Those might start doing better, now that most of the turnips were pulled and they’re no longer shaded out by large leaves.

There was one more bed to water in this area before I moved to the next beds I wanted to work on.

The first section was around the dwarf peas. I wanted to remove the netting, partly because it was a pain to get under it to collect ripe pea pods.

I left the hoops, but added the wire decorative fencing to keep the cats from lying on the peas. After weeding and watering, grass clippings were added. This bed already had some leaf mulch on it, but that was breaking down quite a bit.

I found a surprising number of self seeded tomato plants while weeding! I removed the protective plastic collar that had been around the mystery flowers I’d found and transplanted here. They’re large enough now that I don’t think they need it. Very few of the onions I’d found and transplanted here in the fall made it, but the garlic I’d ground and planted are doing rather well.

Next, I worked on the rest of the wattle weave bed.

The Florence Fennel was pushing up against the netting already, so I took it off completely. I’ll probably remove these hoops later, but left them for now. The fennel, chicory and strawberries, with the two surviving summer squash I’d transplanted from thinning the other bed, are now well mulched with grass clippings and well watered again.

There was one last bed I wanted to work on.

The summer squash.

After removing the netting, each surviving summer squash got its own stake for vertical growing. It looks like four spots, from three different types of squash, didn’t make it. Once the stakes were in place, I went to use garden wire to start securing the larger vines to the stakes, but I think I may have accidentally killed one of them. I moved the stem to put it up against the stake and heard a noise that sounded like it was pulled right out of the ground! It wasn’t, but it may have been pulled up and the roots damaged. I’ll probably know by tomorrow morning if I killed it.

With four plants not making it, I found myself with four extra bamboo stakes, so I wove them across the vertical stakes on the inside, just a bit higher than the hoops. If I can find more bamboo stakes long enough, I’ll do the same on the outside row, too, just to help keep them stable and better able to hold weight.

Hopefully, the garden will survive the heat we’re going to have over the next few days. We’re expected to go above 30C/86F for the next three days, then the highs are supposed to be in the mid 20’sC (around 77F) for the rest of the month.

Definitely “water twice a day” weather.

It’s going to be brutal at the market tomorrow. Thankfully, we do have the canopy tent for shade, at least!!!

The Re-Farmer

Melting cats…

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So… it’s getting pretty hot out there… We’re currently under a weather advisory, due to the heat.

Sunday, we’re looking at a potential high of 35C/95F. The weather warnings are saying the humidex could reach 45C/113C

Ugh.

Today, we “only” hit about 28C/82F, with a humidex of about 30C/86F

The cats are coping pretty well out there…

… taking advantage of any shade out there!

I had a pleasant surprise this morning. I’d done out outside cats’ kibble and was coming out with the cat soup when I startled a cat splattered on the sidewalk in front of the sun room door.

It was Sweetie!

Though startled, she didn’t run far. As I moved away from the sun room door, she ran into the sun room and straight to a tray with cat soup in it!!

This is HUGE progress. She is readjusting to familiar places after being away for a couple of months.

I tried doing a head count this morning and got “only” 18. I didn’t see Adam, though you can see her in the melted cats picture. She’s the one in the middle. I’m seeing Slick a fair bit. She’s had her kittens, but I can’t tell if they’ve survived or not. She seems to be here an awful lot. I’ve not seen that one kitten I spotted a few days ago again.

I also realized, I haven’t seen Domino in a while. I see Bug and Batman, the two other little mostly black cats, but no Domino.

*sigh*

One thing I’ve noticed, now that I regularly give out cat soup. I don’t put out a lot, considering the number of cats out there, but they really like it. They like it so much that when I come out to do the kibble, they do start eating a bit, but then they run around while I do the various bowls further out, waiting for the cat soup! When I come back out again for the afternoon feeding, there’s lots of kibble left, but every bit of cat soup and kibble that had cat soup poured over it, is gone.

Which works fine for now, but it’s not something we can do in the winter. It would freeze before they could finish eating it.

Which is really hard to think about, with the heat we’re having right now!

The Re-Farmer

Sweetie sighting, and bee bombed

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Thanks to the generous donations from the rescue, one of the things I’ve been able to do for the outside cats is to use the freeze dried cat food powder to make a thin cat soup. Not a lot, but enough to spread around several bowls, in hopes to lure the more feral cats closer to the house.

Sweetie has finally discovered this. For the past while, by the time she showed up to eat, the other cats would have eaten all the cat soup. They absolutely love the stuff. (Interestingly, the inside cats keep trying to get into the boxes, but once it’s mixed up, they have no interest.) I mixed up a bowl of cat soup then leave it to rehydrate while I put out the dry cat food. I actually spotted Sweetie this morning, already at one of the food bowls under the shrine, looking for food. She ran off a bit when I came out and put food into the bowls in the area.

Not only did she come back for the soup but, when other cats bullied their way in, she went into the isolation shelter and found the cat soup in there!

Not only that, but when she saw me stop to take a picture (using zoom; I was not going to go too close!), she went back to eating.

This is progress!

After doing the cat stuff, I did the rest of my rounds, including checking on the garden.

That’s when I spotted our first Gigantheum poppy was blooming!

Of course, I stopped to take a picture and immediately got photobombed.

By a bumble bee.

You can just barely see it in the first image. If you click through, there are two short videos, too.

I didn’t do the morning watering today. Partly because I was heading into town for a meeting at the nursing home, and partly because we were supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon.

I got a message from my brother and SIL, letting me know they were on the way. My brother had to take a day off work for this. I ended up getting there about half an hour early, and met with my brother in the chapel to wait, as the meeting room was being used for another meeting. Their grandsons are still with them, so my SIL took them out around town and to the nearby beach.

The meeting is something that will be happening every year, though when they found out my brother took a day off work, they said future ones could be done over the phone.

Being the first one of these meetings, there was a fair bit to cover, as we gave them some background information that would explain some of my mother’s behavioural issues, etc. There was some discussion about my mother’s cognitive decline – something my mother notices in herself, even if she doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. One of the people looked through the binder of my mother’s files and found the past several cognitive test results. One she had done 2 years ago had a score of 14. One she had done this year had a score of 29.

Out of 30.

That is a huge fluctuation. It does match what we all have observed. In many ways, and on her good days, my mother is extremely sharp. On her bad days, she can’t understand some of the most basic stuff. What we have no way of knowing is, when she’ll be having a good day or a bad day!

The meeting went on for about half an hour. My plan had been to visit my mother, then do some grocery shopping. My brother had brought another radio for my mother (she was unusually cruel about the “junk”, high end radio he’d provided for her before, not understanding that it’s simply difficult for any radio to catch a frequency where she is) because she complained he’d taken her radio away.

…

He hadn’t planned to actually visit her, though, but when he called my SIL to let her know we were done, she said their grandsons wanted to visit their great grandmother, and they were already on their way.

So we all went to visit my mother, very briefly. She turned out to be in bed, asleep, when we got there and was very tired.

For a short visit, she managed to make digs and each of us. Not the boys, thankfully, but… yeah. She actually complained a bit that we were there, asking what the “celebration” was. My SIL explained that she was driving the boys back home tomorrow, so this was their last chance to see her for a while. I told her I was going the the grocery store and was visiting her first. We didn’t bother telling her about the meeting, as she would not have been able to grasp it. As it was, she never got up at all. Which was fine. Lunch was going to be brought over, soon, so we didn’t want to linger. As we were leaving, she twisted something in conversation into an accusation against my brother, then told him that she wanted him to come visit for longer… by himself… because she wanted to “talk” to him.

My poor brother. He practically ran from the room after saying his goodbyes.

From there, they invited me to join them for lunch so we could fill each other in and catch up on things. It also gave me a chance to see the boys for a bit longer before they left for home tomorrow.

After we parted ways, I did a small grocery shopping trip. Most of what I got was on sale, but it still came out to almost $130. I did finally get a decent amount of butter, though; it was on sale for under $5 a pound. At least the house brand butter was. With other brands, the half pound sizes cost more than that.

Oddly, by the time I was packing things up at the truck, I was hit with a wave of sleepiness that did not stop. I felt weary to the bone, and could barely stay upright.

What I got fit into three hard sided bags (I even remembered to grab some, since the back of the truck cab is filled with my market supplies) so I messaged home, asking if someone could meet me at the garage to grab one, so I wouldn’t have to pull up to the house or make two trips. Then I started driving, so I never saw what the response was.

I had also picked up an energy drink for the drive home.

It didn’t make any difference, that I could tell.

Much to my surprise, when I drove up to the garage, my husband was waiting for me! He’d gone over with just a cane, not his walker. When I asked him about it, he told my that our younger daughter had been up all night and had finally been able to fall asleep, and her sister has had a relapse and couldn’t walk to the garage.

!!!

We got everything in and I put it all away, and then went to bed. I pretty much passed out for a couple of hours, with the exception of when several cats decided they absolutely needed to use me as a bed.

I didn’t realize how hard I’d fallen asleep until the phone rang. When I answered, the person on the other end asked for my older daughter. From the tone of her voice, I knew immediately is was about her relapse. There was a distinct sense of urgency, almost alarm, in her tone. Talking to my daughter yesterday, she told me she intended to take the “use as needed” medication she has, and that they intended to phone the doctor at the women’s hospital today (her sister being the one to make sure she didn’t put it off again!).

In the end, she was told to go ahead and take the “as needed” medication again. The nurse that called was going to consult with the doctor about any changes in her prescriptions, and will hopefully call back tomorrow. My daughter has her pre-op appointment on the 17 and she was instructed to not worry about that at all and, if things get worse, get to an ER right away. For now, my daughter says it is manageable. When she filled me in on this later, I made sure to tell her that I will drive her to the ER, even if it’s 2am, if necessary.

After my much needed nap, I headed outside to take care of the cats, then stayed out to try and get as much of the lawn mowed as possible.

For all that I waited for things to dry out after the last rains, the grass in the more overgrown section of lawn I focused on was so wet, it actually clogged the riding mower ejector opening, several times!

Then it started raining.

*sigh*

At least I got the tallest grass done. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get more done tomorrow, because the day after is market day, and I don’t expect to have the energy to do it when we are done there. I’m doing the riding mower parts, though, so we’ll see.

Also, there are SO many frogs! Many times, I had to reduce my speed or stop outright to avoid running them over. This makes me very happy. More frogs means less slugs and other nasty bugs! They don’t do much about the mosquitoes, unfortunately, but we’ve had a lot of frogs for two summers now, and I haven’t seen a single slug in the garden! 😁

Meanwhile, I think it’s time to pain killer up and head back to bed. That wave of sleepiness is coming over me again. The only thing keeping it from getting as bad as earlier is my increasing pain levels.

*sigh*

Less than 2 weeks to my telephone appointment with my doctor.

Being broken really sucks.

Being broken and not knowing what’s going on makes it that much more frustrating!!

The Re-Farmer

A quiet day, and learning something new

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So… today has turned out to be a “non” day, of recovering and staying out of the heat. I’ve been spending the time making more crochet items for the market on Saturday.

At some point, I popped onto Pinterest and a random thing showed up in my feed that caught my attention. After doing my evening rounds and checking out our linden tree, I looked it up.

It seems that a chocolate substitute can be made using the green seeds of the linden tree. Who knew?

The seeds on our tree would still be too small for this. I keep meaning to pick the flowers for tea, but somehow always miss their peak blooming time.

I looked around and found information on it at Forager Chef. This link has pretty much all the information needed to make some, including a video and a recipe.

The article says to gather the seeds in July, but they are obviously in a warmer climate than we are. Maybe at the end of July/beginning of August, the green seeds on our tree might be large enough.

I think I want to actually try this!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: peas, gooseberries and volunteers

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Last night turned out to be a rough night for all of us. No one got much sleep at all. We couldn’t even blame the heat for it, as we had a decently cooler night.

In my case, when I finally fell asleep, I was down so hard, I never even heard a cat knock a display off a shelf, onto the floor. Ghosty, for some reason, has been determined to climb up onto the shelf, through or over the display shelf, to jump down the other side, rather than simply walk on the floor to get to the same spot. It’s an ongoing problem, and she only does it when I’m asleep! I discovered it when I had to get up to go to the washroom and had to pick everything up, just to be able to get to my door.

*sigh*

I was outside, feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds early enough that I could go back to bed for a few hours.

Well… I tried to, that is. Didn’t actually get much sleep, again. I didn’t put the display shelf back again, figuring it was just an invitation to disaster, which meant half a dozen cats all wanted to explore the now empty top of the shelf it rested on.

Loudly.

Eventually, I gave up and headed out to get the mail and pick up a few things, including a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. Later in the afternoon, my older daughter joined me and I found out her night was bad, too. She has her pre-op appointment booked next week, but she’s considering finding the doctor’s phone number to talk about increasing her meds again. The girls and I had plans to do a deep clean of several rooms today, but with how we’re all feeling, it’s going to have to happen piecemeal, over several days.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I headed out to do the evening cat feeding and rounds. I was coming about to go to the isolation shelter when I realized there was a cat inside, watching me.

It was Sweetie! She actually was willing to go into the isolation shelter again!

She took off when she saw me walking towards the shelter, but at least we know she’s coming closer for food, and willing to go into the space she spent so much time in, before going to the rescue.

I saw Slick this afternoon, too.

Slick is no longer pregnant. *sigh*

She’s lost two litters this year. It’ll take time before we know if this one survived.

No sign of the one kitten I spotted not long ago, still. Hopefully, it will start showing up at the furthest food bowls, and we can start working on socializing it, or at least getting it comfortable with coming to the house for food and shelter.

After the cat feeding, I watered the south garden beds from the rain barrel. We’re not expecting rain again for almost 2 weeks, and it’s supposed to get above 30C/86F on the weekend. After today, I’ll be making a point of trying to get outside early, before the heat hits, to water the garden. On the plus side, the water table is high enough that I don’t need to water any of the trees and berry bushes. It’s only the garden beds that drain and dry out quickly, even if there are still puddles in the lower areas.

In the old kitchen garden, I actually did a tiny harvest.

The Tom Thumb Dwarf peas had pods large enough to pick. Or should I say, thick enough. They are not at all large, just like the plants themselves!

We have some volunteers in the wattle weave bed.

Next to the peas are three self seeded tomatoes. They won’t have time to reach full maturity, but I’m leaving them be, anyhow.

In the next image of the above slide show, growing along the edge by the path along the wattle weave bed, there are a few self seeded chamomile, including one that has started blooming!

After the south beds were done, I watered the main garden area, too, though with a hose. One of these days, I’d like to set up a water tank so that the main garden area can be watered with ambient temperature water, rather than from a hose. By the time it’s done, the well water is so cold, it can shock the plants.

With that watering done, I went to check on the food forest trees and bushes, and spotted something that made me smile.

We have gooseberries!

They are unripe and still rock hard, but we have them!

Unfortunately, by the time I was finishing up, I was starting to have pain issues. It seems to kick in after I’ve done a fair bit of walking. It’s almost at the point where I’m wondering if I should go to the ER or something. My own doctor is away right now and we have a phone appointment booked for when she gets back, but if this keeps up, I might have to find an alternative. There are no urgent care clinics out here. We don’t even have any walk in clinics any closer than my doctor’s clinic, so the ER would be pretty much the only other option. If I did that, I would expect to spend many hours in the waiting room, since I would not be an “urgent” case. At least the diclofenac works, though it can take a while to kick in. When the pain hits, it doesn’t matter if I’m sitting, standing or lying down.

Oddly, while talking to my older daughter and describing where the pain it, it’s almost identical to the pain she is having! Hers is worse in other ways, given what the cause is for her.

Ah, well. Nothing much either of us can do about it right now. I don’t even have a diagnosis, and I won’t until I talk to my doctor. Even then, that would only be if the ultrasounds actually found something.

Still, I’m managing to at least get outside and get at least a few things done. I’m quite excited that we have our first gooseberries since getting planting that bush. It brings back memories. We had a gooseberry bush here when I was a kid and I used to love eating them fresh off the bush. In retrospect, I was eating them under ripe, but I loved that sour taste. I did taste one of the biggest gooseberries today. It was pretty nasty! 😄 They still have a ways to go before they are edible!

On my list of things to get done in the garden over the next while, along with loosening up the area near the corn bed and sowing tillage radishes, it’s getting time to uncover the corn and put a mulch down around them. Right now, there are a lot of weeds and I’ve been leaving them, since they are acting a bit like a living mulch right now. We’ll see what I manage to get done over the next while. If the yards dry out enough, I might be mowing, instead. That, at least, shouldn’t trigger the pain levels like walking does.

Being broken really sucks sometimes!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: poppies, melons, and a deluge

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I was rather late in heading out this morning to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. A thunderstorm rolled in when I normally would have gone out and lasted a couple of hours.

We got a lot of rain in a very short time! The upstairs window started leaking again; the same one that used to leak a lot when the snow started to melt in the winter, before we got the new roof. This is the second time it has leaked during a heavy downpour. I’ve contacted my brother about it, since he had the warranty papers and was able to pass on details he thought the company would need. He’ll let me know what he gets back from the roofing company.

The usual low spots that were finally drained were full again. Even the inner yard had standing water all over the place. I was rather hoping to be able to mow the lawn or at least do some weed trimming. Lawn mowing was out of the question and likely will be for a while, but I did managed to get the weed trimmer going to clear the paths in the old kitchen garden. It’s higher there so no standing water there. I kept trimming until I went through all three batteries.

The lower eavestroughs are terribly full of elm seeds that are sprouting. None of us are able to get up to them safely with a ladder. Last year I got a cleaner brush that can be used from the ground. It came with two brushes, and the first one broke rather quickly.

The second one broke before I could get very far with the cleaning.

*sigh*

My daughter has been looking into hiring someone to do it for us. Someone with a lift or a harness… and insurance. Meanwhile, I’ve just ordered a hose attachment, but it won’t get here for a couple of weeks.

After failing to get much done on the eaves, I switched to working in the garden. There are a couple of things I want to get done. One of them is to work over the entire area that was supposed to be planted with corn to loosen the soil, then scatter sow the tillage radish seeds I got a while back as a cover crop. These can grow up to 6 feet long and should be able to force their way through the layers of gravel, sand and clay under our shallow top soil. They are left to freeze and die off over the winter. The decomposing radishes create channels and enrich the soil, and the leaves can be worked into the topsoil to compost in place. At least, that’s what I’ve read they can be used for. Over time, this area will be getting a combination of perennials, annuals that self seed and can be treated as perennials, and possibly some shorter, 12′ long raised beds. We’ll see.

The exposed ground that had been under the black tarp is starting to get taken over, even though it’s pretty compacted. I will work on that later. For today, I decided to work on the small bed where I’d planted the giant poppies. A few actually survived, but the area was being overtaken by weeds.

I forgot to take a “before” picture, so the first one in the slide show below is after I’d started clearing around one side of the poppies.

The second picture shows the area all cleared. The soil here is really, really good. I could dig into it easily with my bare hands. Which I needed to do to try and get as many of the tree roots as I could.

*sigh*

With more than half of this little bed empty, I decided to transplant into it. In the next image, you can see a couple of little sprouts. One of those was quite a bit smaller this morning, and the other was barely breaking the surface. They just sort of exploded in a few hours! So I figured, why not. These are Canary Yellow melons, with 80 days to maturity. I made sure to get a photo of the label, since I haven’t been labeling anything from my own transplants. I’m using my photos as a record of what things end up where.

We have about 60-70 days left to our average first frost date. At this point, I’m counting on that Super El Nińo giving us an extended growing season.

I transplanted them in protective collars, then mulched the whole bed heavily with straw. The soil was still moist from today’s deluge but, once the straw was down, I gave the bed a thorough watering, focusing more on getting the straw soaked through.

In the last photo, you can see one of the poppy buds. This variety can potentially get poppy heads the size of a softball. I don’t expect to get any that big, considering how relatively small the plants are right now, but it should be interesting to see how large they do get by the end of the season. I did get another packet of the seed when I thought none had survived, but plan to save seed from these, too. The seeds are edible, but there won’t be enough poppy pods to harvest for eating. There should be plenty of seeds to save for planting.

Unfortunately, by the time I was done with this, my pain levels had kicked in pretty high. Once inside, I was able to take some painkillers, hydrate and start this post while my daughters made supper – and brought some over to me so I didn’t have to get up again! That was much appreciated.

Time to eat before it gets cold! 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and a general update

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We were expecting a very hot day today, so I was up early to water the garden thoroughly before things got too hot – even though we have rain in the forecast. Depending on which app I check, we’ll either get rain or thunderstorms. Just before I started writing this, our phones started going off with tornado warnings, but it looks like the system will be passing to the north of us. We might get some rain from the edges of it. We did hit 31C/88F today. As I write this, past 7pm, we are at 28C/82F right now, with the humidex making it feel like 30C/86F.

After I did the morning cat feeding (with some cats very confused by the early hour!) and garden watering, I went back to bed. I must have been really beat because I slept for about 3 hours, checked the time, then passed our for another 2 hours.

Unfortunately, today has turned out to be a bad pain day, and not just for me. My daughter somehow ended up getting a sun burn yesterday, even though she was in the shade most of the day. I’ve been getting so much sun since it got warm enough to work outside longer, I don’t get burned, though apparently I’m quite the redneck right now. 😄 Meanwhile, my other daughter has had increased health issues again. Her pre-op appointment in the city is a couple of Fridays from now – the day the bin my brother is renting is supposed to be delivered! My younger daughter will have to stay home so she can meet them and tell them where to drop the bin off.

Aside from the pain related to why I got those ultrasounds done, my left hip has decided to start working wrong again. Not a lot of pain there. The joint just isn’t moving right and wants to give out.

I am so thankful for all the arm bars and hand rails that were installed for my father, all those years ago!

Eventually, though, I did head outside. I had to use the walker for it, but I set up the new deer scarer my brother picked up for me.

I’ve set this one up by the corn, which is going to need the netting removed from it pretty soon. I set the other one up by the peas to keep the deer away with the sound of a dog barking. With this one, I expect raccoons to be more of an issue, and I set it to the ringing of a bell, since I think raccoons would get used to the sound of a dog barking very quickly.

Once that was set up, I wandered around and checked on various things. In the next image in the slide show above, you can see some chard leaves. These are planted between the garlic and are finally starting to grow! Still pretty much nothing on the spinach in the other row; what little germinated and survived promptly bolted. It does look like we will at least have some Swiss Chard for greens this year.

In the next image, we have a red nasturtium flower. The seeds I collected were from a package with a variety of colours in it, and so far we’ve had yellow and red. They are still quite small, but adding that straw mulch once they got big enough has really helped.

Next is the row of summer squash. Those are picking up quite nicely. The plan is to grow them vertically, but I’ll need to remove the netting to do that, and they still need that protection for now.

The last picture is of the fennel and chicory. They’ve had a bit of a growth spurt! Unfortunately, some of the fennel at the end of the bed got flattened. Stinky found his way under the netting and I found him lying there. I opened the netting up at the other end, so as not to spook him, then moved to scoot him in that direction. Instead, he panicked and started running into the netting over and over before I finally got him to go out the open end. *sigh* He didn’t do too much damage, at least. We added more rods to the hoops over the fennel and it’s getting so tall, it’s almost touching the top of the netting again!

We just got another tornado alert on our phones while I was writing the above paragraph. While that is passing to the north of us, our region and the entire south end of the province are currently under a severe thunderstorm watch this evening and overnight. The warning includes 4-6cm (about 1.5-2.5in) hail, 50-70mm (about 2-3in) of rain and wind gusts up to 100km/h (about 62m/h). For us, we’re to expect rain starting around 4am tonight and lasting until about 10am.

We are definitely not going to be hit with the worst of it, for which I am thankful, but my heart hurts for the people that have been slammed by these storms, over and over again.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: a harvest, some transplanting and direct sowing

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But first, the cuteness!

Colby is one of several cats that just love that garden bed cover. So adorable!

And yes, those are garlic scapes on the netting beside him. Those are from the few garlic that are growing in the wattle weave bed. More on that later.

Today was our first market day at the large animal rescue. My younger daughter and I loaded up the cab of the truck, then headed out to arrive at around 9:30. They are only a mile away from us, so it was a quick drive.

A couple of vendors were already setting up, with vehicles all backed up to the spots they were setting up in. After pulling the truck in, along the row of vehicles, I went into the large shelter where there is a gift shop, admission is paid, and a petting zoo.

They have three kittens; two orange and a grey tabby that were free ranging. They really, really enjoyed the attention they got from the vendors! The kittens will be available for adoption at the end of the season. I expect they will have a waiting list of people interested by then!

I found someone and got instructions on where we could set up and where to park the truck after we unloaded. It didn’t take long to get everything out, then I moved the truck. Thankfully, the splayed leg style of the canopy tent we have was not an issue. We set that up, then the table with a cloth over it, then my daughter and I set out price tags on my inventory and made the display look pretty.

Thankfully, there was a pleasant breeze, and we had our shade. A couple next to us just had an umbrella, and it kept getting blown over. We took turns checking out the other vendors – there was 7 of us altogether on this first market day. I was told more are expected next weekend.

It was extremely quiet, and most of us made zero sales. I bought things from two different vendors, and those were very close to being the only sales for all of us today! We had plenty of time to talk and get to learn about each other, which was nice. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized one of the vendors is the mother of the woman that runs the rescue. Which means she’s the mother of our mechanic and his younger brother that drove the tow truck (though not anymore; he’s moved on to somewhere else). Too funny that I keep meeting more and more members of this family We had a great chat.

We were super appreciative of the shade and the breeze, as we hit 26C/79F. Things shut down at three, but we didn’t start packing up right away. The truck would have blocked others from being able to get around to load up then leave.

I got quite a laugh when I finally did bring the truck over. The vendor next to use had finished loading and was in her car with her family, waiting patiently as I turned and backed up to our tent. Then I reached out the window to open the door, and one of the guys in the car with her started to laugh and opened his window to say, “you’ve got a broken handle, too?” Sure enough, one of their doors was missing the handle on the inside, and they have to open the window to reach out and pull the handle from the outside, too.

While we were there, we kept the family updated, and I started to hear from my brother. They have their grandsons with them and today they visited my mother. They even managed to get her outside to enjoy the sunshine in a park that is right alongside the nursing home property.

Just as we were finishing loading the truck, I got a message that they’d be swinging by the farm to drop off some stuff, including the second solar powered, motion sensor noise maker they ordered for me. They got here shortly after we did. We’re leaving the truck loaded, except for the box of the truck, as we wanted to be able to put the cover back. I was still outside when the arrived and I was able to chat with my SIL and the grandkids while my brother rushed to get things out of the back of their car and into their caravan. The mosquitoes and horseflies were insane, and he didn’t want them getting into the vehicle. I got the box with the noise maker – I told my SIL that I plant to set it up by the corn, in hopes it will keep the raccoons away. Raccoons are very good at decimating corn, just when they get ripe!

We also talked about where to set the bin they are having delivered to haul away junk. My SIL was telling me they’re feeling quite frustrated. They hadn’t knows they’ve had their grandsons with them for so long before they’d ordered the bin. They’re having a blast with the grandkids, but it means they can’t come here to do any of the stuff they had planned to in preparation for the bin. We talked about where it should be dropped off, as I’ll likely be the person meeting with the delivery people.

They were in a bit of a hurry, so when they were ready to leave, I went ahead to the gate to close it, so they wouldn’t have to stop. Then I went straight to working in the garden.

With the heat of the day, I wanted to do some watering, but first I wanted to do some transplanting.

There were two that I decided to try and transplant. The largest, in the first image of the slide show above, is a Golden Hubbard squash, while the smaller one is a Gille’s Golden Pippin. They both got planted in empty spots in the bed along the chain link fence. Then I started watering everything out of the rain barrel.

As I started on the East yard beds, I remember I’d bought some fresh bush bean seeds (actually, my daughter bought it, along with the other groceries we picked up the other day). The square garden bed is down to four surviving plants!

The Arikara Squash on the middle is looking good! Big enough that I removed the protective collar.

I picked the Gold Rush variety to plant this time. I just wanted a yellow variety, as they are easier to see. Hopefully, these will back it. I have remarkably few bean plants this year!

That done, I continued watering in the main garden area with the hose. I’d picked the few garlic scapes that were on the wattle weave garlic They were much smaller than the ones in the main garden area with a hose.

While watering, I noticed the pods on the Spring Blush pea were looking very good. After i finished watering, I checked them out, then very carefully removed several.

Along with the scapes, I was concerned about the next bed. The red noodle beds are looking like they are doing what they did last year; growing just a few inches, then nothing. I harvested some of the largest turnips, as the greens are getting big enough to shade out the sun.

The turnips were pretty small, but the leaves where useful – and they are edible so we at least have that!

Not too bad for a first harvest. There are the turnips, scapes, Spring Blush peas, and a handful of herbs. Oregano, lemon balm and sage.

They made a nice addition to supper this evening.

Tomorrow morning, I plan to be back to watering the garden earlier in the day, before the heat hit. We are expecting the heat to potentially get up to 32C/90F tomorrow. Nowhere near as bad as other areas, but still not something anyone should be working in, if they can avoid it!

So… in the end, I would call today successful, even though nothing was sold. All the vendors were talking about coming back next weekend. It should be fun, and there should be more people.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Sweetie is back!!!

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Most of today went to plan.

This morning, my younger daughter and I headed into town. Our first stop was to visit my mother which… went as well as can be with her, I suppose. She did try to launch into how my brother basically needs to be her slave because she “gave” him “two farms” (the remaining two quarter sections of the family farm) but now he does nothing for her. Which is so completely opposite of reality it’s mind blowing. Then she tried to say that she “gave” us a “roof over our heads”, as if we owed her something, and I had to remind her that we had an arrangement (and she definitely got the better end of the deal, we learned after we moved out here). She actually asked me, what arrangement? *sigh*

After the visit, we made several stops along the way. I picked up a few things for tomorrow’s market and a float, while my daughter picked up prescription refills for herself and her sister. Then she got us some food. It was past 1pm by then, but it was breakfast for her, and lunch for me. We made one more quick stop at the grocery store, which she also paid for, then a bit of gas before heading home. Just in time for the rain to hit.

By the time we were done in the grocery store, my pain was back and I was having difficulty standing. As soon as I could, I made use of the topical pain killer, though it took quite a long time to kick in. I remembered to call the pharmacy about getting the prescription for that extended. I don’t have any refills on this. I’m not out, by my doctor is going to be away for 2 weeks, making today the last day that the pharmacy can fax in for the extension before she’s gone. If this keeps up, I might run out before she gets back, so I wanted to make sure I could get a refill, if needed.

I was having difficulty staying upright, whether sitting or standing, so I asked my daughters to take care of the outside cat feeding again. After a while, though, I did have to get outside. My younger daughter helped me get the outside folding table I’ll be using at the market cleaned up and in the box of the truck. It’s longer than the box of the truck, so we had to roll up the cover so we could lean it on the tail gate, and my daughter crawled in to strap it down securely. Everything else can go into the cab.

Once that was done, I brought out my inventory to check on it and get things ready in the cat free zone, to load into the truck in the morning. I won’t be using grid wall to hang things, so I’ll be finding other ways to display the wearables.

It was still a while longer before the pain went away, and I wanted to go outside for a walk to get some fresh air and a bit of exercise, since I did no yard work or gardening today. As I did, I noticed that all the kibble trays were empty. My daughter had fed the cats, which means the skunks and raccoons had already cleaned up the remains. It seemed that some of the cats hadn’t had any and were hungry, so I got out some more kibble.

Which is when I spotted her.

Sweetie came back!

I first spotted her behind the isolation shelter. I zoomed as I took pictures, then looked back at older photos to confirm that it was her. She has a distinct dark patch on her nose.

While she was back there, I skirted around her to put kibble in the trays in the catio and under the shrine before going the isolation shelter, just so I wouldn’t startle her. she didn’t run away – but then Bobert came along. I was heading back to the house when I started hearing scrambling and growling. Bobert had gone after her and chased her up a tree!

I got him to scoot away, but I couldn’t see her. I decided that I would make up some cat soup to try and lure her back. I made more than usual with the freeze dried mix and made sure to pour some into trays in the sun room, first, to lure the other cats in. Otherwise, the super friendly cats like Havarti and Curtis push their way into the isolation shelter for pets, while others like The Grink go in to eat up the cat soup. I wanted Sweetie to have a chance!

While I was coming over with the cat soup bowl, I heard scrabbling noises and saw Sweetie coming down the tree. I put some cat soup in the two food bowls under the shrine, and that was what she went for.

She still looks nervous, but not anywhere near as terrified as she looked when she first came back. I made sure to give her space, but I also didn’t stay too far away, and she still came down. She was clearly hungry and willing to go for the food even though I was still relatively close.

I’d had messages from the rescue chat earlier in the day and I was honest in saying that I was starting to lose hope. I made sure to send photos to the chat right away. Everyone is so relieved and happy she is back!!!

Now we have our work cut out for us, to slowly get her to trust us and know that it is safe for her to come closer to the house for food and shelter, rather than hiding wherever she was hiding in the outer yard.

It is so good to see her coming back and eating!!!

Now, we just have to make sure cats like Bobert will leave her alone!

The Re-Farmer