What a gorgeous day today! We seem to have skipped spring and gone straight to summer, reaching a high of 19C/66F this afternoon.

The weather is not done with us yet, though. We are getting weather alerts again, for tomorrow. More rain is on the way, with the south end of our province expected to get another 2-3cm (under an inch) of rain. With waterways already full and the ground saturated, this could make the flooding situation worse. The municipalities to the north and south of us, which have rivers and large creeks running through them, are also on high water level alerts. Besides the expected rain tomorrow, looking at the 14 day forecast, we’re supposed to get showers almost every other day.

Talk about one extreme to the other! Drought last year, and now this.

I took advantage of the lovely temperatures today and spent some time at the picnic table, taking apart the collapsed canopy tent frame.

There it is! All the bits and pieces. I was even finally able to get the broken leg out of the ground – the hole was full of water, making it much easier.

The frame pieces to the left of the unbroken legs on the table top are all broken. They are still perfectly useable, though. There were a couple of longer pieces that were bent but not broken. I was able to bash on straight again with a brick, but the one you can see in the photo was more stubborn. 😀

The great thing about all these frame pieces is that they’ve got holes in them. We’ll be using the longest ones to support temporary fencing around small garden areas, like the old kitchen garden or an individual block of corn. They all have these handy screw holes in them, which will allow cord to be threaded through them, to provide extra support for any netting they will be holding up. The short pieces can be used to support netting or plastic over individual beds. We have been keeping our small water bottles, and those can be used as caps on the tops, to further support any netting or plastic laid over them.

I’ve also kept all the connectors, with their nuts and bolts, as well as the piece in the middle of the canopy, with the handle that allows for one person to pop the tent up at the highest point. The hub from the peak of the canopy has a crack where one of the nuts went through. I have no idea if we’ll ever find a use for all these connectors, but I’m sure we’ll find one at some point. 😀 I’m also not sure what we can do with the legs. Especially with one of them damaged. If we don’t extend them, though, they can still hold a surface. We might come up with something.

The canopy cover was a total loss and severely torn apart, so that got thrown away.

There are seeds that we can direct sow right now, but we need to protect the beds from critters – like the pair of groundhogs I saw at the feeding station today! I saw one of them come out from the den under the stacked, salvaged boards at the edge of the spruce grove that used to be covered in junk. They would make short work of any new seedlings! Salvaging the pieces from the canopy tent will go a long way in helping protect our garden beds.

Well worth taking the time to disassemble it!

The Re-Farmer