While doing my rounds this morning, I actually did a bit of watering – something we have done just a couple of times, this year. While working on the squash patch, I found a lovely little surprise.

This is a Baby Pam pumpkin!

We have quite a few squash and gourds blooming or showing buds, but the first flowers are almost always male flowers. To see a female flower so early was unexpected. The problem is, I don’t see any male flowers to go with it. Which means there may be nothing to germinate this one, and that beautiful little budding pumpkin won’t have a chance to grow. I’ll check again later, and if I see any male flowers starting to open, I’ll hand pollinate it.

Pretty much everything in the garden is still really, really small. It feels like everything is so far behind this year. And yet, for our area, it probably isn’t. I think part of the problem is I see to many blog or social media posts from people, and their gardens are so much further along. It’s one thing to see that from someone living in a climate zone with a longer growing season. It’s quite another to see people in my Zone 3 gardening groups posting pictures of their lushly growing plants. Just this morning, I saw someone posting pictures of their cucumbers, asking if they were ready to harvest yet or not.

They were.

Meanwhile, most of our cucumbers are barely bigger than they were when they were transplanted. Only a couple of plants are looking much bigger and lively, and even they are still really small. Looking at our peas and beans, I start off thinking they’re doing great, then I see Zone 3 gardeners posting pictures and their peas and beans are easily 5 times the size of ours, blooming and starting to develop pods. I remind myself that these climate zones cover a massive area, with different frost dates within the same zone. In the end, though, I’m never quite sure if ours are so far “behind” because of our microclimate, or because of our poor soil, or because things were so wet, or because… there are so many possibilities!

Well, all we can do it work with what we have, and try to improve things as we go.

Meanwhile, I still need to water the beds in the south yard. This afternoon, however, I called up my mom about heading over. My brother had let me know she had shut off her AC because it started making water noises. She has the portable type that is on wheels with a hose out the window. I asked my mother if she wanted me to come over, and she started to say she didn’t want to bother me, didn’t want me to come out for just that, etc. At the same time, she told me she was expecting my brother to come over. Something he did not mention to me when we spoke, even as I told him I would be able to go over and drain the AC for her. I live the closest to her, and it’s the easiest for me to pop over there, and she’s talking about not wanting to bother me. My brother has an hour an a half drive to her place, but she was expecting him to come over and do it.

*sigh*

I went over.

I got it unhooked and rolled it into her shower to drain. While it was doing that, I got her little hand-held, cordless vacuum and used it to clean up the dead bed bugs in the corner. She was completely surprised they were there, telling me she thought they were “supposed to” stay in the bed. I explained to her (again) that they can be anywhere, including under the pictures on the wall, under outlet places, etc. She acted completely amazed, even though I’ve told her this before. I don’t think it’s so much that she forgets what I told her before, as her refusing to accept t and refusing to believe it. She still thinks we were too concerned about it.

Well, it’s done, and that’s the most important part.

On a completely different note, while chatting with my mother later, she started to bring up some issues she was having involving my siblings. Issues that should not have been issues at all, so I had to ask a lot of questions before she finally told me about something she’d done. The something that hurt my brother so, so much. I was not impressed and told her outright that she’d stabbed my brother in the back. The one person among our siblings that has done the most for her, and she threw him under the bus.

She doesn’t get it. At all. It’s so incredibly frustrating. All I can say is, I am so incredibly glad the property was signed over to my brother, because if it hadn’t been, her actions could have lost the property completely. She’s starting to be confronted with the consequences of her actions, and cannot grasp her own part in it. I don’t know if I was able to get through to her in any way, but I did try. This is not even something that could be blamed on her age or cognitive abilities. She’s done stuff like this for longer than I’ve been alive, and others around her have had to pick up the pieces and fix the damage. This time, however, no one else can fix the damage except her, and she doesn’t understand that there is any damage at all.

My poor brother. And there’s really nothing I can do to help, other than try and explain things to her, over and over.

Bah!

Enough of that.

It’s starting to cool down a bit, so now is a good time for some garden therapy!

The Re-Farmer