It’s not the rain that’s giving the garden trouble.
It’s the temperature. 9C/48F is chilly for fresh transplants, but that “feels like” humidex of 1C/34F, with the potential to feel colder, is another thing entirely.
Most of what I’ve got out there can either handle the chill, or has protective collars that will provide some protection, but it’s hard to say just how much is going to survive the night.
*sigh*
The Re-Farmer
Today we are expecting rain, off and on, with possible thunderstorms, until tomorrow morning. After that, we are expecting a break in the rain for at least a week. For the past while, more people are sharing images and information about damage in the region. This morning, I learned that an iconic building, known for a cheerful message to drivers on the highway passing by, is gone. Just… gone. Blown away. The highway that runs nearest us, with a second closed off due to a sinkhole, is now washed away clear across the lanes with a raging river running through it. The electric company has restored power to many places, but others will take longer to repair. They shared photos of sections where the cedar power poles were snapped like twigs, lying on the ground.
All of this is to the south of us. In our immediate area, we were very fortunate. There was some wind, hail and water damage in places, but nothing like what’s been happening in other areas.
There wasn’t any rain while I was doing my morning rounds, and everything seems to be doing well. The dwarf Korean lilac is coming into full bloom, and has a much more intense scent than the earlier varieties.
I also spotted a friend in the flowers. Always happy to see dragonflies. They eat mosquitoes.
I’ve got sunflower seeds emerging, as well as corn. The summer squash is getting big enough that I will soon be removing the protective collars, though one variety still has no seedlings germinated yet.
After doing my rounds and grabbing a quick breakfast, I headed into town with my brother’s car. My first stop was at a local greenhouse by a hardware store to see what I could find to replace some of the things we have lost. There’s just one place selling transplants locally, and there isn’t a lot to choose from, but I did find a few things.
I got two trays with a dozen green cabbages. I also got three pots of muskmelon, two of butternut squash and one of watermelon, all of which have two transplants in them. Not in the photo is the new watering can I got, just like the one that cracked over the winter, at a remarkably low price compared to where I’ve seen this style elsewhere. I probably should have got two.
All the transplants were 25% off, so that was a nice little bonus.
After that, I made a quick stop at the grocery store next door to get some basic fresh stuff, plus I was able to get a few extra items for stocking up because they were on very good sales. Then it was home, where I pulled up to the house to unload. It had started raining again, by then. After my daughter took care of the grocery items, I tucked the transplants into bins and set them in the portable greenhouse frame.
For something that lost its cover, it’s still getting a remarkable amount of use!
By the time I put the car back in the garage, it had stopped raining again, so I quickly changed into my grubbies and rubber boots to head into the main garden area. Between the weather and my pain levels, I haven’t been able to get to that area with the weed trimmer. There is one bed in there that was still covered with plastic, and that’s where most of the transplants will go.
The first photo is after I’d removed some things I’d had resting on the plastic to keep them out of the way, but hadn’t removed the various things weighing town the edges. Once I moved everything off the sides and at the far end, I used a garden hose to pressure wash the elm seeds and debris off the surface, first. Then the whole thing got rolled up and set aside.
You can see in the next image that the bed is pretty clear. There is one spot with a weed where there was a hole in the plastic, and weeds pushing up around the edges. I will need to clear those out but, before I do, I wanted the bed to get watered by the rain.
Unfortunately, pretty much as soon as the plastic was off, there was a cat going for the fresh dirt! Which meant I had to get it covered right away. Which I could do, now that I’ve got another hoop kit and a couple of 10′ x 20′ sheets of insect netting.
You can see that set up in the last photo. This is temporary and will be redone when it’s time to do the transplanting. For now, it just needs to keep the cats from using the bed as a litter box!
It started and stopped raining several times while I was working on this, so I was pretty wet by the end of it!
I really like this insect netting. The mosquito netting we have been using, which my daughter bought for us years ago, is great mosquito netting, but not as good for what we needed to use it for. The weave is so dense, it catches on the wind like a sail quite a lot for netting. The weave is also tight enough that, when I water through it, there needs to be enough pressure to push the water through. If the spray of water is too gentle, most of it drains right off. This new stuff is slightly more open, so both air and water will flow through more easily, while still being fine enough to keep the bugs out. It’s also got quite a lot of stretch to it, is more flexible and easier to work with in the wind.
I might be buying more of this insect netting. It’s also available at a 10′ x 40′ size. At some point, I’ll be making moveable cover frames, so having more that can be cut to size would be useful. For now, the 10′ x 20′ size is sufficient length to cover hoops over our 18′ long garden beds. The width is almost double what is needed, depending on how wide the hoops are set up.
Once that was done and stuff was put away, I did some harvesting. I picked a whole bunch of rhubarb (I got the missing ingredients for the rhubarb upside down cake my daughter likes to make), then cut some herbs.
Across the middle is lemon balm, and there is oregano at the bottom. On the left is chives, with blossoms and buds, and on the right, near the top of the photo, is walking onion greens with developing bulbils. I don’t actually want the walking onions to walk any further than they are now, so we’ll focus on trimming the bulbils more. We have so much chives and walking onion, we can start dehydrating them.
Looking at the weather radar, it seems we’ll be getting one more rainfall soon, but the main part of the system will be passing north of us. Which means that, tomorrow, I should be able to get those transplants in the ground.
Oh, I almost forgot, and neglected to take a photo. While doing my rounds, I checked the bed where I’d broadcast the giant poppy seeds in a small bed that got rolled on and dug into by cats. Much to my amazement, I actually found some poppy seedlings have emerged! Basically just one cluster of them in one spot. I don’t know if poppies can handle transplanting well. Otherwise, I’d thin by transplanting. I’ll have to look them up to see, first.
Meanwhile, I just realized that I went to the post office too early in the day. There are now parcels waiting to be picked up! I’ll have to go get them soon because, if I don’t get them today, I won’t be able to until Monday.
Time to head out again!
The Re-Farmer
Today has been an odd feeling day.
The assessor from the insurance company wasn’t going to come this morning, but we were still expecting the prescription delivery, so when I headed out this morning, I made sure to open the gate for him. While doing my rounds, I decided to check in the old garden shed to see if the raccoons were still there. They were, but the mama was on the seat of the rolling cart, and some of the stuff I’d moved from on top of their nest had been knocked back down. The mama hid in the back of the shed while I wrestled with a tomato cage and wrapped up balls of trellis netting to get them off the babies. They weren’t too happy about it, but they stayed. They are getting definitely getting bigger!
I was feeling really tired for some reason so, after breakfast, I tried lying down for a couple hours. It was a frequently interrupted attempt at a nap. Between my phone going off with notifications and cats wanting to nap on my head, I didn’t get much rest.
I did, however, get a message about our truck. The owner apologized for the delay, telling me they were having troubles with their new lifts. The truck would be ready today, though. I told him I’d have to work out transportation so we could return our borrowed vehicle, then messaged my brother. He had already asked me if we were getting power outages, which we were not. They have been getting brief outages off an on, and he was wondering. After a bit of back and forth-ing, we decided to do the vehicole switch on Monday, when they are coming out for the funeral. I passed that on to the garage, so that is now arranged.
One of the things I’d noticed while checking on trail cam files from the camera by our sign is that I was getting a LOT of images triggered by saplings. The open area between the fence and the road is slowly refilling with poplars and, now that they have their leaves, they are triggering the motion sensor when the wind hits them. I headed out there with the wagon and loppers to start cleaning things up.
Not all of the saplings are visible in the first photo. The second photo was after I was done in the area at the corner of the property, where the camera and the road intersection is. After hauling away the first load, I came back and did a smaller load, working my way towards the gate. That area had been done more recently than the corner by the intersection, so there wasn’t as much to clean up.
By the time that was done, I was already feeling way too tired, and starting to feel a lot of pain – in areas where I had the ultrasounds taken. It’ll be three weeks before my doctor gets the results. Should be interesting to see if I’ve got more cysts dancing around in there again.
It wasn’t too bad yet, though, so after I put away the stuff for this job, I got out a weed trimmer to finish clearing the edges around the house, pausing to do other things along the way, like help out the poor Mock Orange beside the dining room door.
What you’re seeing on the ground are the Virginia Creeper vines that I pulled loose from the branches. These can completely smother a bush, and I’ve found spruce trees that had been killed by them. Unfortunately, the bases of these are right in among the Mock Orange’s roots, so there’s no way to really get rid of them completely. I got as much as I could out, and set them in the fire pit to dry out so that we can later burn them.
These flowers right near the fire pit are coming into full bloom. There are so many things blooming right now!
I got done with trimming around the house and had just moved on to the fence around the tulips when the battery died. It was past 2pm by then, so I decided to put away the weed trimmer until after I got back from the post office.
I getting ready to go when the prescription delivery came. I asked the driver how the roads were; he is also a school bus driver, and his route is in our area. He said the gravel roads were quite good. Just a few places with barricades, though the one nearest us has been there since before the storms. He says he may have lost all his tomatoes, though, as his garden is in a lower lying area. It’s mostly under water right now. We’d talked before about how he was considering doing raised beds or Hügelkultur, and I’d told him that my own beds were a sort of combination of the two. When he said he was losing his tomatoes, I encouraged him to do even low raised beds, telling him about when we had that major flooding a few years back. I lost entire sections of the garden we still haven’t reclaimed, but beds that were even just 6 inches higher had survived. I think next year, he’s going to give it a try.
After getting my husband is prescriptions to him, I headed out to the post office to pick up some parcels. I got another hoop kit – another of the set with the slightly longer rods and metal connectors – and another package that turned out to be some insect netting I’d ordered. My cabbages and kohlrabi seem to be completely gone. I plan to at least get cabbage transplants and, when I do, they will have insect netting over them!
Along with the mail, I picked up another 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. I’m so glad our general store now carries them. It saves me from having to drive further afield. Right now, I want to use the borrowed car as little as possible.
By the time I was loading the car up, I was in major pain. There was no way I was getting back to anything else outside, so I just took some pain killers and tried to lie down while my daughters took over, including feeding the outside cats. Most of the outside stuff is going to have to wait. We’re supposed to get more rain – possibly another thunderstorm – in about an hour. Just a short one. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to start raining from about 2 pm to 6 am the next day! After that, we should have about a week’s break from the rain. Time enough for farmers to see how many of their crops survived the flash floods.
Late last year, we were getting predictions for another drought year this summer. From the looks of it, that is not going to be an issue!
As for me, right now, I’m getting absolutely slammed with fatigue and overall body pain. I suspect much of it is a reaction to changes in barometric pressure.
It’s just past 8pm as I write this, and I am seriously considering going to bed shortly.
Again.
Before I do, I got some shipping notifications in my email.
Yes, I bought more seeds, and they are on the way.
The first is an order from West Coast Seeds. I wanted to order more of the Giganthemum poppy seeds, since the bed I planted them in got flattened and dug into by cats. I have yet to see any poppies germinating. So I have a new package, which I will sow in the fall, and make sure the bed gets protected. For the winter, it will have mulch over the seeds, and I might just lay some chicken wire over the top, too. In the spring, when the mulch is removed, I’ll make sure to set up netting over the bed to keep the critters out.
I couldn’t just buy one packet of seeds, though, so I looked around. They have different varieties of kohlrabi that were on sale, so I ordered one each of the white and purple. Then I spotted a lovely, larger looking variety of fennel that I decided to try. These will all be started indoors in the spring.
My other order was from MI Gardener. Some are re-orders, some are new and, right now, everything on their site is on sale.
I can’t remember now if I’ve tried growing Atomic Red carrots before. If I did, they were from somewhere else. I ordered the rainbow mix before, and it does look like some have survived, but they’re still very tiny. I figured I’d try this variety next year. Unless I do some succession sowing. That’s an option, still.
The tri-colour green bean mix is a re-order, and I decided to try out the Broccoli Rabe next year, which is more likely to grow here than regular broccoli, and a relatively short season variety of green cabbage.
I also ordered more of the purple savoy cabbage – two packages this time. Next year, I’ll try starting the two varieties of cabbage indoors, and will make sure the transplants have insect netting on them.
The winter squash and pumpkin are all re-orders. After re-sowing the tray that got decimated by a mouse before we moved it outdoors, I ran out of seeds for several of them, and have only a few seeds left of the others. I want to try these again next year. It’s still possible our re-sown seeds might germinate, but it’s getting to the middle of June and, unless we have a super long and mild fall (which we have had before), they won’t have enough time to reach maturity.
Hopefully, for next spring, I will be able to have a better set up for seed starts. Our basement is just too cold, and we have a mouse that eats our seedlings. At least it’s most likely to be a mouse. I can’t think of anything else it could be, even though there is zero evidence for mice. Usually, if there are any, droppings are left all over the place, and there are none.
If we can reclaim our living room – the cat free zone – from all the stuff we’ve had to shove in there, I hope to start seeds in there again.
We really need to figure out what to do with the stuff from my mother’s apartment. Our other storage areas are already full of my parents’ stuff, plus more from my mother’s apartment, and now we have stuff in our basement that I had to find ways to elevate from the damp concrete because there was no room in the storage buildings to put them in, and more stuff in our living room. All of which was have been told to keep. My mother is finally in the nursing home she wanted to be in and can’t have much stuff at all, but she is adamant what we keep everything of hers. She also expects us to be able to know exactly where everything of hers is, and be able to dig things she suddenly wants out and bring them to her.
*sigh*
Our house is a disaster.
That’s part of why I enjoy working in the yard and garden so much. It actually feels like I’ve accomplished something out there!
The Re-Farmer
The storms that hit last night were absolutely brutal.
Thankfully, we seem to have escaped most of it, but there is massive damage to the south of us. Highways were flooded over, and people shared images of cars with nothing but the top of the roof showing, along them. One of the highways we regularly take to the city has been shut down due to flood damage. One person reporting a sink hole the size of a car. Others posted pictures showing chunks of road missing. The highway and weather groups I follow were constantly posting warnings. Funnel clouds were scene, and there has been serious damage in the city. Parts of the province are without power and will probably remain so for another day, at least.
I was up by 4am and already getting notifications and started to message with my brother about highway conditions. Thankfully, where they now live hasn’t had any flooding or major damage, that we know of so far. My husband’s sister is in one of the areas without power, and says there are a lot of downed trees.
Once it was light enough out, I went outside to check on things, fully expecting to find more dead trees had fallen, or at least lots of broken branches.
I found neither!
We were expecting an assessor from the insurance company my brother hopes to switch to this afternoon, so I made sure to open the gate while I was doing my rounds. The mostly filled in and grown over pond in the old hay yard, near that gate, was singing loudly!
There were SO many frogs, and they were so very loud!
Along with checking around the outer yard, in the barn and around my brother’s equipment, I made sure to check the garden beds. Amazingly, they were all just fine. No damage at all! The netting, etc. on almost all the beds protected them from hail, and the collars protected delicate transplants and new sprouts from high winds.
In the image after the brief video above, you can see the nice new leaves showing on the Manchurian walnut! Checking the Black walnut, one of them doesn’t seem to have survive the winter, but the others are leaving out nicely. In the last image, you can see the two rows I direct sowed recently, with the re-seeded row of Daikon radish seedlings on the left, and red noodle beans on the right. Both of them germinated so very quickly!
I was also looking around to see how the yard cats were doing. They seem to have all been able to take shelter and were looking downright content.
I have been catching Sprig on the netting over this bed repeatedly, leaning against it and squishing the garlic. So I moved the hoops from being in the soil to jamming them into the wattle weave as best I could – the ends kept trying to go completely through. This raised the net high enough to make more room for the garlic and dwarf peas – and it turns out to be able to support the weight of Sprig, too!
In the next image, you can see Misha – a beautiful furry flower among the roses, being very nervous because I was getting too close.
In the next image, I caught Curtis, mid yawn! He, Bug and The Grink have been cuddling together a lot lately.
I got the last picture of Colby – mid yawn! – later in the afternoon. He is such a beauty!
I managed to get some weed trimming done around the house. I hoped to get more done, as we’re expecting more rain tonight. I only had two fully charged batteries, though, and it took more time and effort than usual. The Chinese Elm seeds have been drifting against the edges that I needed to trim, and the driving rain packed them into solid masses. In some places, I had to get the stiff bristle yard broom out to clear the stuck masses of seeds away before I could even try to trim the edges. There was a lot of starting and stopping, as I also had to move things around to get under or around them. In some places, I had to break out the pruning shears to trim things too thick or strong for the weed trimmer line.
One thing that didn’t happen today. The insurance company assessor didn’t make it. My brother had contacted her to tell her not to use a particular highway, but suggested a different one. At first, she said it would be okay, but after that she must have heard more damage reports and wanted to reschedule to Monday. That’s when the funeral is, though, so it was instead rescheduled to tomorrow morning. Which doesn’t make much sense to me, because not a lot will change overnight. Especially with more rain on the way. We’ve also got a prescription delivery tomorrow. We don’t actually know what the conditions of the gravel roads are, other than what’s immediately around us. What is immediately around us is fine, and there’s only a couple of sections that might be of concern if there was flooding. Based on what I can see so far, though, I don’t think there would have been any flooding. Our own ditches and driveway would be a lot fuller, if it got to that point.
As I’m writing this, I can hear thunder. We’re expected to get rain roughly and hour from now, for about an hour, then more rain is supposed to be from about 5am to noon tomorrow.
The assessor is supposed to come at around 10. She’s supposed to walk around the property to look at the house and outbuildings from the outside, and the scheduled time slot is for 2 hours.
Hmmm… We’ll see if she even makes it at all. I expect our gravel roads are fine, but if she’s coming from the city, from what I’m hearing, there is plenty of damage and debris on the other two highways she could take to come out here. From what I can see on the highways map, a couple of intersections are closed down due to flooding (unlike the many miles shut down on the highway nearest us), while other small sections are marked as “incidents”, stating water on the road and proceed with caution.
I’m chatting with my brother as I write this. He says he is thinking of cancelling the assessment outright for now.
That might be a good idea. After the upcoming rain, who knows how much worse it will be! We don’t have tornado warnings anymore, but do have warnings for flash flooding and hail.
Which reminds me. I’ve heard nothing from the garage about my truck. It’s entirely possible either mechanics couldn’t make it into work, or they’ve been deluged with vehicles damaged by hail, debris or flooding. Or both.
We’re oddly relieved that it broke down when it did!
Okay, that thunder is a lot closer. I think it’s time to shut down my computer, just in case!
For anyone else under this weather system, be safe out there!
The Re-Farmer
My daughter and I headed out for my ultrasound early. I had instructions that included drinking 500ml of water by a certain time, so we first went to the Walmart parking lot, since it was nearby, and and I chugged it. We were early for the appointment, but didn’t wait too long before heading over to the hospital.
They actually got me in a bit early, and the ultrasounds – I got two different types in three different locations – were done quickly.
The tech had asked questions and I gave her some back ground. She was really nice and just sort of kept talking. At one point, I mentioned that I almost had to cancel the appointment because of what happened to our truck. She was glad I hadn’t, because these appointments are hard to get! I ended up telling her the name of the garage the truck was towed to, and that they had a second location in this city. Turns out, she had heard of them. Her son had taken his vehicle there to get a diagnostic. When he decided he would do the work himself, then asked how much he owed, they didn’t charge him for anything. When she takes her own Honda in to the dealership garage, it’s $200, just for a diagnostic. Every time she has to get work done, it seems it’s always at least a thousand dollars. I told her I had zero hesitation in recommending our garage and told her about when I’d gone to the second location after dropping cats off at the vet, so very last minute, and never got charged for all the testing he did to try and find why my battery gauge was doing what it was doing. She was quite happy to hear a first hand recommendation like that.
After I was done at the hospital, my daughter and I filled the gas tank, then headed back to the Walmart area. I went to the same place as last time. Where I saw others on the way out at $1.569/L, this one was $1.529 – and they had their 5¢ off/liter sale again, too, so I got a nice little discount! Even so, I was shocked that it took less than $45 to put in 3/4 of a tank. The car’s tank is so much smaller than our truck!
Once at the Walmart, we had a late lunch, then both did a bit of shopping. We took our time about it, but we didn’t need much and the store is still undergoing renovations, so it wasn’t that long. The one thing I did remember to get, for both my husband and I, were iron supplements and vitamin C. The type of iron I was after turned out to be behind the counter, so I had a nice chat with a lovely pharmacist.
As we were leaving and heading to my brother’s car, we could see dark clouds moving in and were starting to hear thunder. We weren’t sure if the system would reach where we lived, but it was definitely coming close. We loaded up the car and headed out. It started raining as we drove and I had to get my daughter to figure out how to get the wipers going, since I couldn’t look around to figure it out while driving.
It was way more convoluted that it should have been! 😄
For most of the drive, we were heading in the same direction as the storm, but eventually we were driving along side it. We could see the mass of clouds and rain heading towards where we knew the house was.
I had planned to back up to the house to unload, but we were just pulling up to the driveway when we realized it had started to hail. My daughter quickly got out to open the gate, and I drove straight into the garage. We got the car inside just in time!! The car is a lot smaller than our truck, so there was plenty of room to pull forward, and we could close the garage door.
In the video above, the first one was taken as I waited for my daughter to catch up to me from the gate. We hadn’t brought our re-useable bags, so she used the back door and dashed to the house to get some. As we set up to unload the back of the truck, I was able to close the door part way and got the second part of the video. The noise you hear is the hail hitting the metal garage door.
Thankfully, in the time it took for us to fill the bags and gather things up to go to the house, the hail had stopped, if not the rain, so we just got wet while dashing to the house.
Well. Hobbling somewhat quickly.
My older daughter was waiting to open the door for us, too.
Once we were all settled in, I headed out again to feed the yard cats and do a quick status check. It had pretty much stopped raining by then. The transplants done this morning are looking okay, so far.
Back inside, I took the time to update my brother and SIL. I haven’t heard back from the garage yet, which means they didn’t get a chance to install the part today, and I wanted to let my brother know.
Before starting this post, I remembered to text the garage to change a burnt out headlight for me. I have a new bulb waiting in the truck. It would just be a pain – literally – for me to get at that third bolt in the wheel well that would allow the light fixture to be removed. Once the truck is ready, we have to work out how to get their car back to them after I pick up the truck.
In other things, before we headed out this morning, we got messages from my SIL. She had found out when the funeral for our vandal was going to happen and where, through Facebook posts. I had messaged my sister about it, knowing she wouldn’t see the messages until after she got home from work, but never heard from her. My brother already promised my mother that he would get her to the funeral, so it doesn’t matter. If people have a problem with us being there, that’s on them. He may have hated us, but we still loved him.
Anyhow.
We’re currently expecting to keep getting rain off and on – more on than off – until about 2am. Our phones have been going off with tornado warnings, but not so much for where we are. The system is moving directly over us, though, and we are definitely getting some lightning. Tomorrow is supposed to be clear of rain, which is good, because we have an insurance appraiser coming out to look at the buildings on the property. Hopefully, my brother will be able to find a better property insurance policy with a better company. The nights of rain and days without will be good for the garden, that’s for sure.
Getting more done outside today is definitely not going to happen. Hopefully, I’ll get at least some of it done tomorrow. If we do end up getting the truck back tomorrow, I’m hoping it’s early enough to check out a greenhouse in town and see if they have cabbage and winter squash transplants available. I’m really unhappy about the destruction of what we’d planted ourselves. I want to try these varieties again next year, and this time I’ll make sure to start them indoors earlier – and protect them from any mouse looking for lunch! I’m already looking to order new seeds for the varieties I ran out of because I had to do second sowings.
One good thing about the storm, though. We went from 31C/88F to the current 20C/68F, and it feels so blessedly cool! I might even be able to get a decent sleep tonight!
The Re-Farmer
Oh, what a day yesterday turned out to be.
I had not planned to go out at all yesterday, for starters. I had my medical appointment in the the smaller city hospital this afternoon, and anything we might have needed could wait until we were done with that. My younger daughter was even going to come along to help out.
While I was doing the watering, I couldn’t resist taking these photos.
The white lilacs are in full bloom, and the honeysuckle in the old kitchen garden are just getting into that phase. They are looking just gorgeous!
Though, if you look at the background behind the white lilacs, you can see some of the clusters of dry Chinese Elm seeds among the leaves. They’ve been falling like snow for days, and won’t be done for a while, yet, even with the high winds we were having.
I did not expect to be later picking some of these to make a bouquet for my mother.
I was just finished up with the watering and gone inside, where my daughters updated me on the water pressure issue. They’d been doing dishes when suddenly the pressure dropped, dramatically. One of them was headed to check the pump and about to send a message to me, asking if I was using the hose, when they got my message asking them to check the pump because I’d lost pressure on the hose!
So we all just stopped using water for a while!
In the middle of all this, the phone rang. Twice. I managed to pick up and saw the display showing it was my mother, just in time to hear her hanging up.
I called her back immediately, and she was all surprised to I did. Yes, she had just tried to call me, she confirmed. I told her, you have to let it ring more than twice for us to reach it! She just laughed with a “you know me…” response.
No, I don’t recall her ever doing this before, so it’s not typical of her.
Then she informed me that our vandal had passed away on Friday. This was Monday. She had just found out from my sister.
For those who have been following this blog for a long time, you have been reading about the issues we’ve had with our vandal. When we first moved out here, things had been fine, but he had been working for years, trying to talk my parents into changing their wills and NOT leaving the property to my oldest brother. This included many verbally abusive messages left on my mother’s answering machine, and showing up at her place to yell at her. The property was originally supposed to go to the youngest of my brothers, who died in a quite horrible accident, more than 10 years ago. Our vandal expected the property to be left to him instead of my oldest brother, since he and my late brother had been so close, and he helped so much. When I told him I was good with it going to my oldest brother, he became furious. He’d spent the last few decades hating on my older brother, who was never able to find out what went wrong, and soon shifted that to me. Over the next while, we had to deal with verbal abuse, stalking, harassment, and the vandalism of our gate. He even went after my daughters. It got to the point where we though he might show up drunk and try to burn the house down, or even come over with one if his guns.
After we got him on trail cam video, vandalizing our gate, I pressed charges. They were stayed, unfortunately. When I caught him trying to do it again, I filed for a restraining order. Then the illegal lockdowns hit, and court dates kept getting cancelled and rescheduled, so it took almost a year before I finally got the restraining order. He retaliated by filing a civil suit against me for money, based on all the stuff he had abandoned on this property (while helping himself to pretty much everything that still functioned and ever returned them – a large part of why my mother asked us to move here and take care of the place). It was because of him that my mother transferred ownership of the property to my oldest brother, so it was taken out of the will completely.
The restraining order was for a year, and he did stay away. When it expired, I didn’t try to renew it. It’s such a pain to go through the court system, and I didn’t want to go through that again if I didn’t have to. For the most part, he did still stay away, though there were still a few incidents, some of which we caught on the trail cams. Then he got his cancer and blamed me and my oldest brother for it. We somehow gave him cancer. There were a few more incidents, from him yelling at me from the road while waving his colostomy bag at me, to showing up at my mother’s to yell at her, and leaving more of his vile letters slipped under her door. He kept using my late father and brother to try and manipulate and guilt her into giving him property that was no longer hers to give, anyhow.
We had been quite close in the past, and it was clear his behaviour was the result of his drinking and an undiagnosed mental illness. My mother kept ragging on us to reconcile with him, but couldn’t accept that we had tried, our doors were still open, but we would not put up with abuse and threats, and that is was on him to take the steps. Basically, in her mind, we should have just put up with his abuse to “keep the peace” and give him whatever he wanted. Except the land. She and my father never wanted the remaining two quarters to go to him.
Which leads me to something I have not said on the blog before, and will only say now, and only this once, since it no longer matters.
I had three other brothers. My middle brother already got his quarter section across the road from our driveway. He was our vandal.
This was a man with a big heart who did help us out quite a few times over the years. He helped a lot of people, many of whom took advantage of that big heart – especially girlfriends. What I later found out was that, when he helped us, it wasn’t out of generosity, but manipulation. He felt that, because he helped us with things years ago (even though we reciprocated whenever we could), that meant we had to let him say and do whatever he wanted to us, and we had to put up with it.
Hence why I feel so conflicted. On the one hand, I grieve losing another brother. On the other, I am thankful that he is finally at peace. There was something very wrong with him, and the people that should have helped him seemed to mostly enable him, instead. Of just didn’t realize he was literally inventing things in his mind that we never said or did, and told everyone about them. He alienated my late brothers children from us, telling them they were banned from the property, even though we’d never done anything of the sort. His inner demons destroyed someone I loved, leaving behind a shell of hatred, bitterness, envy and anger aimed at me and my daughters (he somehow seemed to forget I have a husband).
Obviously, there’s a lot more that happened that I can’t write about on this blog.
After my mother told me about his passing, we spoke for a while and I told her I would pass it on to my oldest brother, as I knew my sister wouldn’t. My mother had told my sister to email me about it, but she never did. She was the only one that still had any contact with our vandal (I will continue referring to him as such again, from now on), and had been visiting him. His wife had called to let my sister know, and probably told her not to tell me and my brother. We already knew our vandal didn’t want us at his funeral.
My mother wants to go to the funeral, of course, which would require transportation for her and her wheelchair. Something my brother is willing to do. We just don’t know when the funeral is. Talking to one of my daughters about it after, we came to the same conclusion. If we do show up, it would be bad – my daughter even thinks his wife might physically attack me. If we don’t show up, it would also be bad.
But we don’t know when the funeral is, and there have been no announcements or obituaries.
I passed the news on to my brother and SIL. Some time later, I got a message from them saying that they were going to visit my mother with flowers and a card to check on her.
Not knowing when I’d next be able to visit my mother, I decided I would meet them there.
My brother had brought my mother some lilacs he picked here, when they visited her on Sunday before going home. I decided to pick some white lilacs to go with the purple ones, then grabbed some honeysuckle, too. I wrapped the cut ends in a damp paper towel and tucked the bundle into a vase. Even without water in the vase, I seat belted the vase in place.
Earlier, my husband and I had talked for a bit about treating the family to burgers, and getting some red meat into everyone, when I came home from my medical appointment. Since I headed into town unexpectedly, I figured I would do that one the way home.
I got to my mother’s before my brother and SIL did. After I got the flowers set up in the vase with water, I sat down and asked how she was feeling.
Oh, you know… and she started describing her aches and pains.
Okay… so how are you feeling?
She went on about her being tired and her other usual complaints.
I finally said, okay, but how are you feeling about the news.
She seemed startled by the question, then started talking about how he was no longer in pain and at peace now, etc.
What I could see was that she really didn’t care, one way or the other. Which can’t be blamed on cognitive decline, because she was much the same way when my father passed away.
At one point, she started telling me how wonderful our vandals wife was because she stuck with him, even when he was sick. Other women would have left him.
Oh, how I was biting my tongue to not say flat out, “you mean like you did with Dad?” When my father needed her most, she moved out – largely because of our vandal – leaving my dad to what I later learned was continued verbal abuse, that my mother won’t even acknowledge happened.
After a while there was a knock at the door and my brother and SIL came in. They had brought her a bouquet, which my SIL started setting up in a vase they had brought, while my brother tried to give her a card. My mother started chastising them for spending money on flowers, unlike me, who brought flowers I picked and didn’t pay for. We managed to cut that off and suggest, “just say thank you…”
Aside from a few odd tangents, the visit actually went rather well. My mother had started to give me a shopping list, which included Voltaren, but I saw the staff had left her a printout of her medications and treatment, and the prescription version of Voltaren was on the list. I told her I’d talk to the nursing station about it, first. The rest was stuff from the grocery store; some fruit (she complained they only gave bananas and mandarins, and she wanted apples and grapes), some Ginger Ale in small bottles, because she found them so handy, and some crackers.
With how light things are for so late, I almost lost track of time. When I realized the grocery store was going to close soon, I grabbed the list and quickly headed out. My mom kept trying to delay me so she could give me cash, but I left my brother and SIL to explain to her I didn’t have time for that.
I managed to get the items and out of the grocery store a little more than 5 minutes before closing.
My mother was quite happy when I got back. I spent the next while washing the grapes and apples ahead of time for her, while my brother helped her look at the receipt and get out cash to pay me back. Which I would have been find if she hadn’t, but it wasn’t worth making a bit deal out of it (the nursing home doesn’t want residents to have cash with them at all, for obvious reasons). Then I made sure one of the packages of crackers was open, so she didn’t have to fight with the plastic sleeve.
Meanwhile, different staff came by several times. Someone came by with the snack cart, another came by with her bed time pills, and one even came by to help my mother get ready for bed, though she said she would come back after we were done visiting.
After I’d brought the stuff for my mother, we realized it was getting quite late – my mother’s window faces west, so we were getting lots of sunshine, making it feel more like the afternoon than evening. So we wound down our visit, then said our goodbyes, with all of us talking about our efforts to find out when the funeral would be and passing it on once we did.
On the way out, I made sure to stop at the nursing station to talk about the Voltaren, since my mother wanted me to buy more for her. It was confirmed, she now is getting the prescription version, two applications a day, so there is no need for me to get the Voltaren.
Then she told us there had been some… incidents, with my mother.
In general, she had been very easy, but as she has settled in, things have started to change. My mother is a big one about everything being quiet around her, but there is one non-verbal resident that makes vocal noises, but can’t speak. My mother kept telling her to shut up, and even grabbed her arms. !!!! There were other incidents, but this was the only one that got physical. She had handled it, and we were very appreciative of how she did it – and for informing us about it. We’ll have to have a talk with my mother. As it is, her behaviour has meant she can’t be included in some activities on another floor for now.
We had a good talk with the nurse before leaving.
After we parted ways, I headed for the DQ to get the burgers my husband had requested. As usual, I parked in one generic spots along the street rather than into their lot, as I find maneuvering in the lot with the truck is not worth the hassle. I got the stuff, loaded the truck and started backing out when I realized I’d forgotten to let the family know I was on the way home with food. So I pulled back into the parking spot and sent out a message.
That done, I backed out into the street again, and that’s when the sword dropped.
I tried to go from reverse to drive, but the shifter just slid smoothly from one side to the other, without any of the “clicks” while passing gears.
I knew exactly what happened.
A year ago, this happened after I’d gone to my mother’s apartment to do her grocery shopping. The truck got towed to a garage in that town, where it was found to be the linkage to the transmission. He had to order a part but, while waiting, he had jerry rigged it with a C clip, and it was working find. When he found the company sent the wrong part, we talked about it and decided to just go with the C clip. He told me he couldn’t say how long it would last. It might last a few years, or never break at all.
Clearly, it broke.
So there I was, in the middle of the street, unable to move the truck.
I popped my hazards on and sent a quick message to my brother, asking if they were still relatively close and saying I needed to get the truck towed. I quickly messaged my family, then called CAA.
Amazingly, I got a human being right away. After talking to the agent for a while, a tow was arranged. They even had the new address for the garage we use in their system already (they officially relocated barely a week before).
I got a message from my brother telling me they were just one town up the road – they’d spontaneously made a stop along the way, so were much closer than they normally would have been, otherwise. I updated the family, and then had to wait.
The truck broke down at really the best possible spot. Yes, I was in the middle of the street, at an angle, but vehicles could get around me, and I wasn’t blocking the driveway into the DQ. I had quite a few people stop, asking me if I needed help. Some even offered to push the truck out of the way, but I told him, it wasn’t going to move. It technically was still in reverse.
After awhile, my brother and SIL arrived and parked nearby. I told them more details about what happened and about the C clip that likely broke. My brother popped the hood but couldn’t see anything. He started the truck and tried to get it into gear, but nothing happened.
We still had people stopping and offering to help, which we greatly appreciated, even though we had to say know.
Then this couple came by. On hearing our brief explanation on why we couldn’t push the truck out of the way, the guy – a young, skinny little guy – said, Oh, I know what’s wrong!
He then got down on the ground and shimmied under the truck – he was small enough to fit! – while my brother stepped on the brake, just in case. He immediately saw that the wires had come loose from the transmission, then crawled back out and said to try it again.
Sure enough, he had temporarily “fixed” it. My brother was able to drive the truck across the intersection and into a parking spot.
He was pretty sure he was able to get it into neutral, but that was it. It would no longer move.
We were extremely thankful to this guy – and I noticed his girlfriend on the side, with a grin, proud grin on her face the whole time. At one point, he was talking to my SIL and mentioned he was a mechanic that worked on big rigs. As to what he found under the truck, he said “this happens all the time.”
!!!!!
So now we were no longer blocking the road and just had to wait for the tow truck.
CAA had sent me a link with a live status map that I kept checking. I knew I would be getting a phone call from the tow truck driver as soon as they were on the way. I didn’t recognize the company name on the page linked to, though. I also noted that, while they had the town right and the address for the DQ I was next to right, the cross streets listed did not exist in this town.
???
It took a while before I realized what I was seeing for the expected arrival of the tow truck, though.
Apparently, a tow truck wasn’t expected to arrive until this afternoon.
Which would have been roughly a 15 hour wait.
Yes, the system said things were busier than usual, but the next afternoon???
My brother recommended I call back, which I did.
This time, it went to the automated system, and the robot voice started asking questions – after telling me I had no open calls on file.
The robot voice even cut me off while I was giving the address, saying they could find no such address, before I finished.
Finally, it said it sounded like I was asking to speak to a live agent. Which I hadn’t, but I took it.
I finally got a real person. A different voice from before.
The first thing I did was confirm that I had an open call, which she told me I did. I brought up that the ETA was for the afternoon the next day, and how was that even possible? (Particularly since I’d made a point of telling them I was blocking a street) She asked me who told me that ETA. I told her, I got it from the link they texted to me. She said she would talk to dispatch and put me on hold.
For quite a while.
Finally, she came back and told me that there were no tow trucks in the area available, and they might have to dispatch one from the city.
Not the smaller, nearer city. The further, larger city. An hour away.
At that point, I told her that first, the truck was moved and no longer blocking the way, though we were still at the same intersection. The next while was a jumble of trying to explain to her where the truck was, and having to spell out the name of the business whose parking lot we were now in. Then I had to explain that I could not stay by the truck for that long (I didn’t say it to her, but my brother and SIL really needed to get home, and it was well past 9pm by then). She told me that, if I weren’t with the truck, they might not be able to take it. I told her, yes they will, and that I would give instructions to the driver when they called me.
The call was winding up when the agent hung up on me.
This particular agent was the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. In fact, I’ve never had a bad call with CAA before, even at times when I was on the side of the highway with zero street information to give them, because I wasn’t even near a cross road. I’ve had some difficult calls, but not like this.
After that, I dug out the envelop my mother had put the cash she gave me into, took the cash out and wrote a note to leave under the windshield wiper, since the truck wasn’t really parked well. It just said “tow truck is on the way” on the front, then on the back I put my first name and phone number. That way, if the tow truck didn’t make it until the next day, the staff at the company could see the note and know it was being take care of, and could call me if necessary.
At this point, I was prepared to cancel my medical appointment today. As my SIL started driving us away (I’d already transferred our food and drinks to their car), she then told me that they were driving to their place, then I would take their car and drive myself home.
!!!!!!!
I don’t know what I could do without them!
As we were driving to their place, I checked my phone and saw that the tow truck drive had tried to call me and text me, but my phone made no noises. I completely forgot that my “do not disturb” setting had kicked in at 9.
I called the tow truck drive back. After explaining things a bit, he told me to text him the details, which I did.
Then I texted our garage to let them know why our truck was there, and what was wrong, knowing no one would see the text, or the truck, until this morning.
Once we got to my brother’s, they made sure I knew how to start this car – it doesn’t use a regular key – even though it’s almost identical to the one they’ve lent us before.
Which is currently in the shop, getting thousands of dollars of work done on it.
They even made sure my phone was linked with BlueTooth, which I would not have bothered to do at all.
It was around 11pm by then and full dark when I finally started home. It was just past midnight when I parked in our garage.
When I got into the house with the food and drinks, I could hear the girls rushing down the stairs to get to me, and I promptly got buried in hugs. They are in total disbelief about the truck breaking down, yet again! And thankful that I didn’t have to cancel my medical appointment!
My husband was unable to stay up and was already in bed, so we tucked his food away. I hadn’t eaten since before noon, and was getting pretty famished, so I ate and went straight to bed.
Of course, I had a hard time sleeping.
Still, I did get some sleep. Enough that I’m not really feeling very tired.
So I got up early and did the usual morning cat feeding, then did some transplanting.
My daughter and I will be heading out for my medical appointment fairly soon. I’m hoping we get home early enough that I can at least finish the weed trimming before the expected thunderstorms hit this evening.
Meanwhile, we wait until we hear from the garage (I’ll probably phone them first) and find out what they can do with Damocles and when.
*sigh*
This is getting so ridiculous. Like we need vehicle troubles on top of everything else!!!
The Re-Farmer
(ps: my apologies for any typos. I don’t have time to go over them again! I hope they aren’t too egregious!)
I’m going to catch up on the garden stuff before I write another post about yesterday’s bizarreness. I didn’t get home until well past midnight by the time it was all done!
Yesterday, some plans went out the window. I’d hoped to be able to get another bed ready to plant more short season corn, but I ended up focusing on watering, instead.
I was very happy to see this.
These are one grouping of summer squash. If I remember correctly, these are the Early Prolific Straightneck Squash. I’ll have to go through my photos to confirm, since I haven’t actually labelled anything yet.
Of the five varieties, all but one has a least one seedling growing.
I also saw that we have LOTS of the resown Daikon radish germinated, and even some of the Red Noodle beans were emerging already! The bush beans in the high raised bed and mostly come up and already have their true leaves, though a couple of them look like they got chomped. There is just a bit of stem above the seed leaves and that’s it. Which makes little sense, since the beds are protected by netting, so all the usual things that would eat them like that can’t get at them!
The last area I watered were the trees and bushes in our developing food forest. One of the mulberry trees now has lots of unfurled leaves, and I was happy to see that at least one of them survived. In looking at the other one, I thought it was dead, but there was a bit of green peaking at the base, partially covered by mulch. I cleared around and, sure enough, they were mulberry leaves! It has survived – barely!
I even found that one purple raspberry that survived last year has emerged. There is still a possibility we’ll have more of these, but it’ll take a few years!
To water the trees, I keep an old hose in the rain barrel that leaks. I connect the active hose to it to start filling the barrel while I use a watering can to water everything but the silver buffalo berry. I start off with the ones furthers from the barrel and, by the time I start watering the ones close to the barrel, it is usually almost full. I then unhook the hose and leave the barrel to slowly leak, giving the trees closest to it a deep watering in the process. As I was starting to water the closer trees and bushes, however, I noticed the water level was lower than usual. I lifted the hose end out of the water and saw the flow was very slow. There was almost no pressure.
So I unhooked the barrel hose (I love those quick connects!) and finished watering with what I could from the barrel, and messaged the girls to check the pump in the basement. As I took the active hose back to the main garden area, I turned on the nozzle and there was still very little pressure. Setting that hose where it belongs, I went to the front hose, and there was almost no pressure at all, and the tap for that hose is right next to the pump and pressure tank in the basement!
It turned out the girls were trying to do dishes, not realizing I was still watering. We were using water faster than the pump could refill the pressure tank.
We need to replace that pressure tank, but a tank the same size costs almost $500.
So that was in for the watering.
I had just gotten into the house when my mother phoned, and a couple of hours later, I headed out for what was supposed to be just a few hours, until our personal sword of Damocles fell. I’ll talk about that in my next post.
With brings me to what I managed to get done this morning. We’re supposed to get thunderstorms later today and tomorrow and rain for the next couple of days after that – though the forecast changes so often, who knows what will actually happen. The remaining tray of cucumbers, melons and winter squash that got decimated and resown had a few seedlings in it that I decided to transplant now.
The largest transplant was a Black Futsu. There was also one Gill’s Golden Pippin. From the melons, there were three Hale’s Best Jumbo, plus two little Tigger melons. The Hale’s Best were the only seedlings that survived the carnage we discovered when we moved the transplants out of the basement. Nothing else in the tray that were resown have germinated.
I might be buying winter squash transplants. We’ll see.
My husband had a lot of empty distilled water jugs for his CPAP dehumidifier set aside, so I grabbed seven of them and cut the tops and bottoms off to make more protective collars. I was able to loosen the netting and raise just the area I was working in, rather than the whole thing, which was nice. I started by loosening the soil, setting the collars in place, then giving the soil inside the collars a deep watering. While the water was left to be absorbed by the soil, I went and very carefully used a teaspoon to lift the seedlings out of their cells in the growing tray, as there was no way I could have lifted the cell tray to push them up from below, without disrupting all the other cells where things might still germinate.
I had set up the new protective collars in a line continuing from the luffa and gourds already there, just spacing them out a bit wider. Staring from near the luffa (still nothing germinating there), I transplanted the three Hale’s Best melon, then the one Gill’s Golden Pippin, the two Tigger melon, and finally the one Black Futsu. Then the netting got put back in place. It is very much needed! Even in the short time I had it up, there were cats checking things out in the bed, and I had to chase them away. Which I hated to do to cats we are urgently trying to socialize enough that we can get them spayed and neutered!
The transplants are protected now, by both netting and collars, and hopefully, they will survive.
I don’t expect I’ll be able to get much else done in the garden today, as I have my medical appointment this afternoon, and we’re also expected to hit 30C/86F, right around the time I’ll probably be returning home.
Using my brother’s car.
*sigh*
I’ll explain that in my next post…
The Re-Farmer
Things stayed way too hot overnight. None of us got much sleep, even though the house is so much cooler. With today supposed to reach 31C/88F today, I headed outside shortly after 6am.
My plan to dig more beds for the corn quickly changed. We had high winds, I could hear thunder in the distance. So I quickly planted one package of corn, first.
We’ve grown the Yukon Chief variety before, and I was happy to see the seeds back in stock. They are only 55 days to maturity! I’ve got two packages, and planted one of them. Then I used the hoops and netting that I took off the garlic bed to protect the corn bed.
Ideally, these would have been planted in a large block, but that just wasn’t working out. If I can manage it, I plan to dig out three more beds like this one. I can then plant the second package next to this one. I have another short season variety of a white corn I’d like to plant as well. It is short season, but not as short as this one, so there won’t be an issue of cross pollinating, if I want to save seeds.
At this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to get the other beds dug in time, though. We shall see. We’re just a week into June, so I’m not behind for a lot of things.
It’s starting to look like I’ll be looking for kohlrabi and cabbage transplants, though. It looks like the kohlrabi seedlings have all disappeared while still only at the seed leaf stage. In the cabbage bed, there are so many self seeded radishes popping up, I am having a hard time seeing which ones might be the cabbage, so I will wait a bit longer before deciding anything there.
After planting, protecting and watering the corn, I kept on watering, even though I was still hearing thunder. I got the main garden area watered when it started to rain, so I began heading inside.
It stopped raining, then started again, then stopped…
Checking the weather radar, I could see the system. Major thunderstorms and driving rain expected… all to the west of us. The system was going to miss us entirely. We just got a bit of splattering.
It gave me time for breakfast, as least.
Then I headed outside again, this time to dig out the push mower. My brother also got out their big zero turn mower and finished going the outer yard.
With the push mower, I finally managed to get the edges, areas the riding mower can’t go, and FINALLY, the paths between the garden beds in the main garden area. I didn’t do all the areas I would have done with the push mower, though, as it was getting way too hot. I took a break, then headed back out again, this time to use the weed trimmer.
My brother has three batteries for the weed trimmer. I went through all three of them before heading back inside!
Among the areas I mowed and weed trimmed was around the east yard garden beds – and the “found object” art display. I even stopped to clear it off of all the debris that had blown onto everything, then set it up again. The branch is something my daughter added because she liked the shape. Everything else there is things we found while doing clean up, most (not all) around the spruce grove, including the table itself.
It’s silly, but I like it.
I was able to use the trimmer around the east garden beds, including the square bed I still need to work on. The crab grass around it was so tall, the bed was almost completely hidden.
After doing the east garden beds, I trimmed the paths in the old kitchen garden and around the edges. I got that done, then started around the cat shelters when the third battery died.
At that point, we’d reached the high of the day for some time, and I was done for the day. As I write this, at almost 4:30pm, it’s still 31C/88F, and the humidex is at 33C/91F It’s not supposed to start cooling down for a couple more hours, and tonight’s overnight low is expected to be even warmer than last night.
*sigh*
Thankfully, tomorrow is no longer predicted to get as hot as today. Hopefully, that means I’ll be able to get more progress in the garden.
Meanwhile, as I look out my window while writing this, I can see the big maple branches being thrashed by the wind every now and then – and there are so many dried elm seeds blowing around, it’s like snow. I don’t have any of these elms outside my window. This is all being blown in from the trees on the other side of the house. The bloody things are starting to drift.
While sitting down to enjoy the lunch… er… supper my daughters made for me, I watched this video that I think you’ll enjoy as well.
I had no idea that squash leaves were edible!
My list would be slightly different, partly because of our very different climate. Partly because… why does everyone have kale on these lists? Blech. 😄😄
The Re-Farmer
As I write this, it’s coming up on 4:30pm, and we’re at 29C/84F, with the humidex at 33C/91F – and we are just reaching our high for the day. Things are not supposed to start cooling down for another couple more hours.
We have a 1% chance of rain where we are now, but some areas to the south of us and into the US are expecting storms with high winds, heavy rain and potentially baseball sized or larger hail.
!!!
I’m still hoping to get outside and get more done, but my goodness, I just can’t handle the heat like I used to, anymore!
Which is why I was out by about 8am, when it was still relatively cool.
My main task of the day was to start working on where I plan to plant corn this year.
A few years back, this area had been a squash patch, but we had to cut back and lost control of some areas. Little by little, I’ve been working to reclaim areas, and this tarp covered area is one of them. I keep calling it a tarp, but I think it’s landscape fabric of some kind. It’s been sitting in this spot for several years now, moved only a short distance to plant where the asparagus and strawberries are now.
The first thing I had to do was remove the things that were keeping it from being blown away. Pieces of wood. The old kiddie pool we sometimes use as a planter. Bricks. Rocks. Lots of rocks. I’ve been tossing rocks onto there while weeding, and some were put into piles to hold corners down. I grabbed as much of the rocks as I could and loaded them into the wheelbarrow, and they have been set on a piece of sheet metal I use in the winter to cover the fire pit. The fire pit has enameled bricks around it – those bricks are everywhere. The problem is, the enamel gets incredibly slippery when wet, and quickly get buried. We will be removing the enameled bricks and replacing them with something else, as we are able. Around the fire pit, it will be rocks from the garden.
Once most of the rocks were removed, I lifted the edges and pulled the tarp over itself to push any remaining rocks and debris together, to make it easier to gather the rest of the rocks.
Which is when I found the ant hill.
Fair warning, if ants give you the heebie jeebies. The second picture in the slide show above is of the ant hill, and the third file is a brief video showing just how many there were, and how they got just everywhere! I uncovered more ant tunnels closer to the opposite corner, and I suspect those were part of the same colony of ants.
In the next file, you can see the whole area that had been covered for so long. It’s amazing how much still managed to grow under there! For the most part, though, any grass or weeds under that tarp has been killed by it.
Ideally, I would have taken the lawn mower or weed trimmer over the next area, but I just didn’t want to lose the time. What I did do was drag over logs, each about 4′ long each, that we used to make temporary frames on the low raised beds several years ago. Logs, a board, the kiddie pool, bricks and larger rocks were laid out or scattered over the tarp. Over time, it will flatten more, and I can stretch the edges out to reduce the slack, over time.
This newly uncovered area is now quite compacted, so it’ll need quite a bit of digging and loosening of soil before anything can be planted.
I started at one corner and immediately hit something, stopping my garden fork. I shifted, tried again, and hit it again. Then again. I finally manage to get under it.
That was one of the bigger rocks I found. Most were more of a size that can be used around the fire pit. As I worked, the rocks all got dumped into the wheelbarrow.
Worse than the rocks were the roots. They were flippin’ everywhere! I was able to pull up some longer ones, but only so far before they stopped dead, because I hit another root they’d gone under.
I had to get the loppers, which meant going into the old garden shed.
The raccoon mama and her babies are still there. The mama didn’t move, one of her babies was nursing, I could see one other that was just sort of leaning against a wall joist, I couldn’t see a third one, but the fourth was just looking at me curiously. No chittering warnings or acting nervous. They have learned I will leave them alone.
I grabbed the lopper as quickly as I could and left them be.
In the next photo, you can see several of the larger roots I tried pulling up before they hit something below ground and stopped.
Loosening the soil alone would not have taken long at all, but between the roots and the rocks, I ended up working at it for almost 3 hours. I got a roughly 4′ wide area loosened, cleaned up, de-rooted and most of the larger rocks removed (there are always more…), then leveled and smoothed out with a landscape rake. Then I brought straw over and set it around the edges, like a frame.
I have two types of corn I want to plant, so I plan to dig at least one more strip like this, with straw covering the paths in between. Someday, these areas might be reclaimed as raised beds, or be converted to a perennial beds.
After finishing up this bed, I watered all the garden beds deeply. The garlic was getting too tall for the netting, so I took that off. I can see some second sowing of spinach and chard where they were planted in between, but not many. I think it’s just been too hot for them. If they don’t take, I might plant some bush beans, instead.
Then I went inside for lunch. Which is when I heard a lawn mower.
My brother had brought out their zero turn mower and started mowing the outer yard.
After I had my lunch, I grabbed the wheel barrow and the landscape rake and headed to the side of the garage their zero turn mower is stored in. The cats have been using the lean-to’s on both sides of the garden as litter boxes over the winter. With the mower out, I was able to rake things up into the wheel barrow to dump out, then use the rake to level the floor, so they would have a nice clean spot to park their mower in.
While getting the wheel barrow I realized my SIL was now mowing – and she was mowing the inner yard! So I moved hoses and logs aside. She even went into the jungle of un-reclaimed main garden area. An area that is extremely rough and is what broke our own push mower. I had planned to very carefully use their push mower they’ve made available to us, with the mower set as high as it can go. I’ve used their little riding mower there before, but really didn’t want to risk damaging it again. That zero turn mower is way more robust and made light work of the mess!
After cleaning up in the garage and putting things away, I backed our truck up to the house to load it with our garbage bags – it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone to the dump, so there was a lot – then headed to the dump. By the time I got back, my SIL was almost done mowing both the inner and outer yards. Since I left the gate open while I was gone, she even mowed the sides of the driveway outside the gate.
I so, so appreciate that she did this! I still need to get the push mower and weed trimmer out, but I no longer have to worry about those huge areas.
It’s now past 5pm as I write this, and I have been seriously considering asking the girls to do the outside cat feeding and calling it a night. I’m falling asleep at my keyboard (which I am now thinking isn’t just being tired from the heat, but from the low iron levels I found out about just yesterday). I should at least try to get the push mower out in some areas, though. It’s not something that can be done in the mornings, because the grass is too wet and would jam the mower. Which means working at it in the evenings, when things would finally have a chance to dry – but we’re not really expected to cool down much overnight, and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, even before the humidex is taken into account.
The second corn bed is definitely going to wait until tomorrow morning. Digging through all those rocks and roots to prepare the bed is not something I want to be doing during the heat of the day!
Oh, dear. The weather group I’m on just sent a notification out. Some areas now have tornado warnings. Not our area, thankfully, but between potentially baseball sized hail or potential tornados, the south end of the province is not looking good right now!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 