Things continue to remain mild; I think last night was the first time we didn’t go below freezing, overnight.
This morning, there was no kibble at all left outside, and even the sun room bowls were empty, and the room was slightly ransacked. The outside heated water bowl was overturned, the there was still liquid water in the other bowls – and the hole in the ice left by the heated water bowl is full of water! That cats even seem to prefer drinking out of the ice bowl instead of the actual bowls. :-D
As expected, when I did my rounds, I found the new path dug to the fire pit had lots of new hoof and paw prints going back and forth. :-D
No digging today, though. Too wet. Supposedly, we’ve had rain today, though it seems to be one of those things that showed up on the weather radar, but not outside our window.
So today, I got some work done on an indoor project, which I will post about next. :-)
I noticed some of my favourite gardening channels were posting videos showing first-day-of-spring tours of their gardens. This one in particular inspired me.
I was so inspired, I just had to get out there and take some video of our own first-day-of-spring garden.
It’s a quick and dirty video, but I had fun making it. I hope you like it, too!
As you’ll see, we’ve … uhm… got quite a bumper crop going right now… ;-)
The outside cats don’t mind at all, and have been widening their horizons. This morning, I only saw 10 of them, even though there was no kibble left in the kibble house at all. The warmer temperatures has them needing fewer calories to keep themselves going.
When I put seed out for the birds and deer, our three usual visitors took off. They seem to have formed an actual little herd together. The piebald has always been a loner until now, but the mother and her yearling seem to have accepted her as part of their group.
Even if they do still bicker over the seeds.
Since digging the path to the sign cam, I now head over to switch the memory card right after putting the seed down. The deer usually come back to the feeding station right away, so my going in that direction seemed to confuse them! They went onto the road, milled around the intersection, then ran off down a different road.
While I was switching out the memory card, I heard noises.
They were running back again! Then they stopped and watched me while I finished with the trail cam. As I walked back to the house, they came running along the road again. There’s one spot along the north fence they have been able to use to use to get into our yard, and that’s what they were heading for.
They’ve been in front of our living room window, on and off, ever since.
While things were still below freezing, I decided to keep working on the path to the fire pit.
This is as far as I got, yesterday. You can see the shape of the BBQ under the remains of the tent – and the piece of tree that fell on it!
The tent, not the BBQ. The tent protected both the picnic table and the BBQ from damage.
To the right, there’s a bar with a handle on it sticking out of the snow. That’s where the fire pit is. That handle is for the cooking grill.
This is why I didn’t want to wait until it was warmer. I’m standing on the cat path to the storage house to take this photo. There’s a low spot that fills with water, and it’s still too chilly for my rubber boots. ;-)
Here, I’m standing where the path curves, so the rest of it can be seen. I’d dug out most of the fire pit by this point. Yesterday, I had dug to just past the big maple tree.
We have a fire pit again! Yay!
Now that it’s uncovered, the sun should melt away the remaining snow in it rather quickly. There are two concrete blocks on the sides, and a the support for the cooking grill is in a half-block. Those will warm up quite a bit, once the sun hits them.
I don’t know where my parents got those glazed bricks around the fire pit. They are everywhere, and I don’t remember a time when we didn’t have them. I like them but, my goodness, they are dangerous! So incredibly slippery! I accidentally stepped on them more than a few times while shovelling, and almost lost my footing, every time.
The space around the fire pit still needs to be widened, so there’s room to set up chairs or even just stand around a fire and not be too close to it. From here, I’ll dig to the collapsed tent to access the BBQ and finally put the new over on it. The snow on the fire pit side of the tent isn’t as deep as around the other side.
There are a couple of large, hollowed out spaces under a nearby spruce tree. I think they are where deer had lain down in the snow.
Then a path needs to be dug to the wood pile.
Critters have already made their own path to the pile!
There’s a cover over most of the wood, so if we did want to do a cookout, we have dry wood available.
Here is the entire path, looking back towards the house.
There is something absolutely delightful about walking down these paths, through hip and waist deep snow. They’re like some sort of secret passageway!
I fully expect to see hoof and paw prints down here, soon. :-D
Now we just need an excuse to have a cook out! For the past few years, we’ve hardly been able to use the fire pit at all, due to dry conditions. Winter has been the only safe time to light a fire.
Hhhmmm… Now I’m thinking of what we’ve got that would do well, cooked over a fire… LOL
Yesterday morning, I spotted a Cup of Moldova seedling starting to break the surface. By the end of the day, it was up, and another had emerged. This morning, I found several more. They are tiny and barely visible in the above photo, but they’re there!
The Cup of Moldova are set up lower from the lights than the other tray, and no extra heat source.
This morning, single Sophie’s Choice showed up, too!
This tray is on a heat mat and slightly higher. With the heat mat, the water in the tray dried out a lot faster than the metal tray. At the moment, both need a top up, but the pots are still quite moist and could do with a little bit of drying out. The new luffa seeds still show no signs of germination. They are the ones that need the heat mat the most.
The seedlings in the corner pot are Wonderberry. They actually showed up really fast. After only 3 days, if I remember correctly. Much, much faster than our first seeding. I planted 5 seeds in that pot, so we’re looking at a 20% germination rate on the second seeding.
I keep forgetting to take photos of the onions in the small tank. They have stagnated. I think I will find a way to move them into the mini-greenhouse to see if that helps.
As for what’s in the mini-greenhouse…
As for the seedling that survive the Great Cat Crush, they are still struggling. A few pots that had been in the corner look like they got eaten, even though we had a screen in front of the open mini-greenhouse cover. We do still have a few surviving peppers and eggplant, and even a few tomatoes, but not very many. We didn’t plant many peppers or eggplant to begin with, so I’m thinking it might be a good idea to plant more when we start our next batch of seeds. Hopefully, the new tomato starts will survive the cats. While we’ve got a few Sophie’s Choice seeds left, plus a couple other varieties that will be started next, we have no Cup of Moldova seeds left, and those are the paste tomatoes I wanted to have a lot of.
The luffa and Canteen gourd in this tray are struggling, too.
The new Canteen gourds are doing much better. The first Wonderberry is managing well, too. There had been a second on in there, but I thinned it out, as it was so tiny.
The shallots seem to be doing better than the onions in the small aquarium greenhouse – except that it looks like the tray got dug into in one corner by a cat.
Also, absolutely everything is covered in cat hair. *sigh*
I think we’ve finally got things worked out to keep the cats out while increasing air circulation in the mini-greenhouse. We really should at least be leaving the front open completely, if not removing the cover entirely, but we’d lose everything to the cats if we did that.
It will be good when we can finally transfer them to the sun room. Overnight temperatures are still too low, though; the thermometer in there read just below freezing when I headed out this morning. We could make use of the ceramic heat bulb in the corner the plants will be in to help, if necessary. I’m also thinking of making use of some of the larger sheets of rigid insulation we’ve got left, cover some pieces with foil, and set them up to reflect light for the seedlings. We’d still need to rotate the trays, but it would help keep them from getting too leggy, plus actually provide some warmth and insulation overnight. We’ll see if we can figure out a set up that will work.
As mild as things are right now, we are expecting things to dip a bit over the next few days, and there’s usually at least one more blizzard around our anniversary in April, before winter finally breaks. For parts of the province, that might actually happen today. It looks like we’ll be mostly clear where we are, but the south of the province is getting predictions of both rain and heavy snow.
Today may be the first day of spring, but winter isn’t ready to let go, quite yet!
Today was originally forecast to be only 0C/32F. Then the predictions were for us to be “5 degrees colder than yesterday’s high” – apparently we reached 8C/46F at some point!
Even as I was reading that on my app, we’d already surpassed that adjusted forecast, and as I write this, we have continued to warm up and are now at 6C/42F.
It’s awesome out there!
The outside cats are loving it.
I think the heated water bowl is working again. The metal bowls had iced over, though they weren’t frozen solid. The hole formed around the heated water bowl, however, was a pool was water. I’d chipped the ice and snow away from part of the cord so I could see if there was any damage (I couldn’t see any), so I had enough slack to move the bowl to a new location, out of the water. It had no ice in it at all.
We’ve been clearing snow off the winter sowing experiment as best we could. They all have holes in the tops for air circulation, but I did put snow inside them every now and then. That has completely melted away.
In comparing the 4 different types of containers, so far I like the milk just style (it’s actually a water jug) the least. The plastic is a lot softer, so if feels less stable, and the packing tape I used to hold the top and bottom halves no longer sticks to it. Other than that, they all seem to be responding to the light and temperatures the same, as far as I can tell. We’ll have a better idea of which type of container works best once the seeds start to germinate.
If the seeds start to germinate, I suppose!
Today is Saturday, which means the dump is open longer hours. Between the weather and vehicle troubles, we were way overdue for a dump run, and finally got it done today. The van was backed up closer to the people gate in the chain link fence for loading, but the packed snow of the driveway had softened so much, we almost got stuck trying to leave!
The part of the drive that bothered me the most, however, as the lane to the dump itself. I’m particularly paranoid when it times to tires. Between the vans we’ve had and my mother’s car, we’ve dealt with quite a few tire problems. I’ve had tires blow out on me on the highway. I’ve had to drive on a rim for blocks before finding a safe place to pull over. I’ve had tires suddenly and unexpectedly go flat on me (only one of which I could reasonably say was not vandalism). I’m far too familiar with how it feels to drive on a flat.
Driving down that lane was so rough, it felt like driving on 4 flat tires.
I was never so relieved to get back onto a muddy, pothole ridden gravel road than after we were done at the dump! :-D
Once at home, my daughter was sweet enough to take the time to clean the windows and lights on the van. They needed it!
I took advantage of the warmth and started digging out another new path. This time, towards the fire pit. In past winters, we were able to maintain paths around the entire house, a path to the fire pit, the area around the fire pit itself, and of course, a path to the wood pile.
This winter, even if we’d managed to start some of those paths, we couldn’t have maintained them. Maybe if the big snow blower was working, it would have been possible, but certainly not with little Spewie. There was just too much snow for that little electric machine.
One of the main reasons I want to clear a path to the fire pit is because the BBQ my brother gave us is there. We had a gazebo tent over it, but then a storm broke a tree branch on top of it, and the whole thing collapsed. It was still covering the BBQ and the picnic table, so we left it for the winter. My brother, however, bought us a new cover for it that is the right size; the one that was on it when they brought it over was for a smaller BBQ, and while we could get it to cover the important parts, the wind ended up tearing it to shreds, which is why I had it under the tent. So along with clearing the fire pit out, I want to be able to put the new cover on the BBQ, too.
This is going to be a multi-day job, though. For now, I just got a path about 2/3rds of the way to the fire pit. The warm weather is supposed to continue through into April, with the exception of 1 day that’s supposed to dip below freezing, so we’ll have plenty of good days to work on it.
The sun room, meanwhile, has been reaching almost 20C/68F during the day! The overnight temperatures are still a bit too chilly, but it’s going to be time to stop letting the outside cats have access to the room, now that their water outside is no longer freezing, and start prepping space for the seedling trays, and work out how to set up the new shop light.
I am so looking forward to being able to get more seeds started!
She has been coming out more often, even with other cats around, though she wants nothing to do with them, and is more likely to growl and hiss, even if they’re just going by, than anything else.
Interestingly – and not necessarily in a good way – she and Beep Beep are not getting along at all. I’m sure they remember each other, but Beep Beep has been pretty aggressive towards Butterscotch. Mind you, Beep Beep bullies the other cats a fair bit, too, but she seems to be unhappy to be reunited with Butterscotch!
The main thing is the Butterscotch actually does seem to be happier now that she’s indoors, which was so totally unexpected based on her past behaviour. She would just rather be with people (not me, though! LOL) instead of other cats.
We are having another lovely, warm day today. Not as warm as yesterday ended up being, but still enough that things are melting.
Things are starting to look really messy and gross as the snow melts away to expose layers of dirt, but it’s so uplifting to finally feel “spring” happening, no one cares. Least of all the cats!
I checked the tracking on our Purolator package last night, and was happy to see that the replacement bands for our vacuum cleaner finally came in. I headed into town this afternoon to pick them up, which is when I saw the one unfortunate thing of the day. The first sign of trouble was when I saw two sets of headlights, side by side, coming towards me on the road – with a third vehicle on the side of the road in between. I started slowing down, of course, but so did the truck that was passing a car – which also pulled over to the side of the road!
When I saw the driver of the first vehicle on the side of the road get out and start walking around her car, I considered stopping to see if she was okay, but the truck stopped beside her to talk to her, so I kept going. Then I saw someone get out of the other vehicle that had just pulled over, which is when I spotted something on the road, across the lane.
It turned out to be a deer. The woman in the first car must have just hit it. The woman in the second car pulled it off the road.
This time of the year, we always see a LOT of deer crossing the roads. It makes driving unexpectedly dangerous.
Since I was in town to pick up our package anyhow, I made a quick stop at the grocery store. Bizarrely, the staff are still all wearing masks, as where most of the customers. Even outside, walking around by themselves. The psychological addiction can be very strong.
I was very happy to see one familiar face, though. A friend of mine that I used to work with, the last time we lived in this area, many years ago. She was just as pleased to see a face as I was. We chatted a bit about it, as well as the vaccine mandates that have also been lifted. Like us, she and her husband would be far more at risk from the vaccine than getting Covid, so the whole thing was very frustrating for them.
They have a farm to the north of us, so of course we started talking weather! Such a relief to see things melting. The amount of snow we got this year is not enough to make up for the last couple of years. Much will depend on spring. When she hears people complaining about how much snow we got this winter, her thought has been like mine: this is what our normal winter’s snow is! We needed more, to make up for last summer’s drought, and the conditions of year before. The response she usually gets to that has been comments on spring rains taking care of that, but she says we haven’t and spring rains around here for 7 years. Yes, we did get some last spring, before the heat waves hit, but nothing close to the average amounts. So these drought or near drought conditions have been around for quite a while now.
Of course, they garden as well, plus they have an assortment of animals. The cost of feed has been going up, and seed is running out. They’ve noticed lots of people diving into gardening as well, contributing to the supply shortages and increased prices (at least until the seed companies can catch up). As we were chatting, her husband joined us and commented on the cost of oats for human consumption. Seed oats cost over $17 a bushel right now. It used to cost about $3 a bushel!
Time to stock up on oatmeal while it’s still affordable!
Before I left the store, I picked up a lotto ticket. I figure if they can win the jackpot, so can I! :-D
Once at home, I opened up the vacuum cleaner and changed out the broken belt, and immediately started to vacuum my disgusting, disgusting floor. The carpet in my office/bedroom is a strange, felted sort of surface, and it probably 50 years old. It used to be in our living room, but when we got the current shag carpet put in, this one got slapped down on the floor of what used to be my parents’ bedroom, like a rug, with molding along the bottoms of the walls holding it in place. It’s severely stretched and lumpy-bumpy in places, and attracts dust, dirt and cat hair like nothing else I’ve ever seen! I was so thrilled to finally…
… break the new band on the vacuum cleaner.
It turned out I hadn’t quite lined the cover up right over the beater bar when I put it back.
I’m glad I got extra bands! If I break it again, there’s still a couple more.
It feels so good to finally have a red carpet again, instead of grey with cat hair. :-D
You know you’re getting old, when being able to vacuum a carpet is exciting.
Unfortunately, with the noise of the vacuum, all the cats ran off, including Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. Nosencrantz has started to explore the house more on her own, and has even visited the girls upstairs, but Butterscotch still hadn’t even shown an interest. Nosencrantz has made her way back and is settled down on my bed with several other cats, but not Butterscotch. Right now, I have no idea where she is!
Well, I guess that’s one way to get her to check out the rest of the house! :-D
This afternoon, I went to the post office, where I was able to get a money order made out and mail it off, along with an improved printout photo of myself, to the RCMP for my PAL application. Hopefully, that means I’ll have my PAL certificate soon.
Since I was there, I took the opportunity to pick up a few things and…
I couldn’t help it.
I got sucked in.
There was a new seeds display.
We don’t need more seeds.
I got some, anyhow.
The peas we have now are shelling peas. Which would have been enough, but I do like snap peas, so I went ahead and got some. We also have a variety of beets already, but I decided to try the cylindra variety, too. The elongated shape is apparently much easier for getting consistently sized pieces for canning.
At least they aren’t something that need to be started indoors!
I think this is the first time I’ve picked up seeds from Lindenberg. Unlike a lot of other seed companies, they don’t have all their products viewable at their website, but had a downloadable catalog you can scroll through, instead.
Oh, dear.
I might just have to spend a bit of time ogling their selections now.
I’ve made a post that’s now pinned to the top of the main page on this blog, while we’ve got a fundraiser going for the Cat Lady. I got a call from her while I was outside this morning and got some other news.
With her new cat rescue organization started, she had an interview with a community paper. Not one we get in our area, though. Anyhow; she wanted to let me know about it, because they had asked a lot of questions about Cabbages’ history. She assured me she was careful and tactful about it, to respect our privacy, but also used our situation to illustrate the need for affordable spay and neuter programs in rural areas. Which I greatly appreciated.
She also expects to be able to take another cat to the vet she has worked an arrangement out with. It sounds like it will be one at a time, at first. It will be Turmeric. She has Saffron and Nicco listed on her new website, and has noted that Saffron’s sister will soon be available for adoption, too. She was asking me about keeping Saffron and Turmeric together or not. Saffron is apparently the most chill and adaptable cat she’s ever worked with. Nicco has been getting along well, too, but there doesn’t seem to be any bond between her and Saffron. Which doesn’t surprise me. Nicco never really had a chance to bond with any of the other cats here, as she was on the bottom of the pecking order here. I think she will be much happier somewhere with much fewer other animals around! The Cat Lady will contact us again when she has timing worked out between the vet and the foster families.
Speaking of bonding…
Check this out!
Nosencrantz joined a cuddle pile!!!
She was snuggled right up to David’s butt.
A lot of the cats like to snuggle up to David. :-D
This is HUGE, because Turmeric and Beep Beep are right there, and they tend to hiss at Nosencrantz pretty regularly. They hiss at the other cats, too, but as the new kit on the block, Nosencrantz hasn’t learned to just roll with it, yet.
There was another cuddle pile happening.
It involved me.
Fenrir decided to snuggle into my arms and take a nap on my chest while I was at the computer earlier.
This is Fenrir being all sweet and cuddly.
Yeah. She always has that “murder” look in her eyes.
The forecast was for a high of 0C/32F today. As I write this, just past 5pm, we are at 4C/39F!
It was a perfect day to work outside.
This morning, after feeding the critters, I tried to keep the burn barrel going while hauling away more snow from near the house. It was so warm, I had to take off my parka, and I was still overheating in my sweatshirt!
I actually meant to post these photos yesterday, when the melt was just starting to kick in. Today, that trickle was pouring. There is nothing slowing it down, either, so while the end of the diverter is still buried, the water has obviously cleared itself an opening, somewhere inside the pile of snow.
The ceiling in the sun room is dripping like crazy. The drips are right over a shelf, and I had some boxes stored on top. My efforts to cover those and divert the water away were clearly not working anymore, and the boxes were getting soaked in places. They only have packing material in them, so I ended up putting those into an old feed bag, and the boxes went into the burn barrel. The top shelf got covered with an old feed bag, then I made use of the under-bed storage box that we used to start seeds in last year. Between the container and the lid, I was able to get under most of the drips, and for those that still missed, I had buckets on the floor.
You can see how much water has already accumulated, after about… 6 hours? Maybe 7.
We need a new roof so badly. *sigh* I shudder to think about how much water damage is in that ceiling!
On the plus side, by the end of today, most, if not all, of the snow should be gone from the roof, and the leaking should soon stop.
After a run to the post office this afternoon (more on that in another post), I went back out to do more digging. This time, to the trail cams. With all the cold and snow, I was no longer switching out the memory cards every morning. Today, I decided it was time to see how they fare.
The driveway cam was easy enough to deal with. I just had to re-dig a short path to it’s stand, and I could change the batteries and the memory card.
The sign cam, on the other hand, was a whole different ball game!
I took this photo when I was a little more than half way to the corner. In previous years, this area was crisscrossed with deer paths and the tracks of other wildlife. Between the deep snow over the garden area, and the piles of snow left by the plows along the road, the animals stayed away from this area completely. The roads, driveways and cleared paths in people’s yards were much more accommodating!
Even under the trees, sheltered by branches, I had to shovel a path right to the corner.
This picture was taken just clear of the trees at the corner, where the snow was nowhere near as deep.
Here, I was actually standing on the hard packed snow of the deer path to the fence.
There was just no way I could have gotten to the corner, without digging this path. I don’t have snow shoes!
There’s something we might need to invest in at some point!
It will be about where this path is now, or a bit to the left (west) of it that we will be planting silver buffalo berry bushes, this spring. :-) We still want to keep an avenue between the berry bushes and the trees at the fence line open for access.
At the time I was digging out this path, it was 3C/37F. I had on a light coat and a t-shirt this time, so at least I wasn’t overheating, by my goodness, it’s amazing how hot 3C feels, after the temperatures we were having not that long ago! With the snow melting, it was very wet and heavy, too. Even if we could get a snow blower this far out, we couldn’t use it; it would just clog up.
Thankfully, I really enjoy shoveling. :-D What an excellent workout!
With these paths cleared, I’ll be able to add switching memory cards back into my morning routine. I finished uploading the files from the trail cams while I was writing this. The gate cam, which is set to take short video files only, recorded 160 files before the batteries died. The sign cam, which is set to take 3 stills, then a short video, recorded only 58 files before the batteries died. With the high piles of snow along the side of the road, and no wildlife going through the deep snow between the sign and the road, there wasn’t a lot that could trigger the motion sensor on that one!
It’s going to take me a while to go through all those files!
The Re-Farmer 