Today, my new-new keyboard came in! And by mail, too, so I didn’t have to drive to town to pick it up. 😄
Here is a comparison.
The top keyboard (the one already full of cat hair!) is the French keyboard my husband ordered for me by mistake. The bottom is the English keyboard that came in today.
Interesting.
That extra key next to the left Shift key is gone, as is the extra key by the Enter key, which I am quite happy about. The arrangement of keys by the Enter key is also back to what I was used to. No more keys with a third symbol on them I couldn’t use. The Alt key on the right of the space bar is now just a regular Alt key again. The new edit key, MS Office shortcut and emoji keys are still there. I’m amused that the emoji keys have different symbols on them.
The physical differences are minor, but it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes in my ability to touch type. Everything “fits” my hands better.
The French keyboard still works perfectly fine, and I was intending to give it to my husband. However, he went and bought himself a gamer keyboard that also came in today. (Discovering that things can be purchased through Amazon on payment plans is a bit too convenient!) The keys and letters light up, which is something I would love on my own keyboard. Lights won’t wear off. However, I am not willing to give up the ergonomic design for it!
I like being able to type without pain!
So the French keyboard is now set aside as a backup, available to use the next time we have a keyboard die on us. Which is more of a thing for me, since I’m the only one that can’t use the other back up keyboards we had!
No rain this morning, so the bitty kitties were out and about!
This one looks disheveled because I had just been holding it. 😻 Not only did it let me pick it up and cuddle it, but when I put it down in the food tray, it just started to eat, ignoring me while I continued to pet it.
*melt*
The little calico acts conflicted. It’s curious enough to slink around, watching me closely, sometimes inching closer, but shy enough to not let me anywhere near it.
This one is not conflicted. It will stay and watch me, only if it’s behind something. It will not come any closer, and will leave it I pay too much attention to it, even if it’s holding my phone off to the side to try and get a picture.
It was, however, more than happy to get into the water tray, after I refilled the gallon water bottle that I’ve set up to drain slowly. They seem to like it when I put the frozen water bottle in the tray to help keep the water cool longer, too.
As I continued on, I did a double taken when I realized I was seeing something new. A self-sown poppy had opened.
When we moved there, we found ornamental poppies growing among the lilacs along the side of the house, so seeing poppies show up in other places was no surprise. This one, however, is a completely different flower! The others are more of an orange, and don’t have the ruffled petals. So far, the is the only red poppy like this we’ve seen. A couple of self seeded poppies have sown up in our beet bed. I kind figured they were from the bread see poppies that we have in a nearby bed, but I know my mother had ornamental poppies growing in the old kitchen garden for quite a few years. When I was a kid, she had seed poppies in that garden. It should be interesting to see if these volunteers turn out to be an ornamental poppy, or an edible seed type!
As for the red ornamental poppy that just bloomed, I’ll be sure to allow it to self seed. This area needs more cleaning up, and it would be nice for the stuff we want to get rid of to be crowded out by something we would like to keep! :-)
While continuing my rounds, I had another nice surprise. Our very first golden pattypan squash is forming! It was too small to try and get a picture of, among the foliage. Hopefully, it’ll get well pollinated and not just wither and fall off.
We’ve got a very few other things trying to produce. The sugar snap peas are not doing well, but I did find a single well formed pod.
I ate it. It was tasty!
The King Tut purple peas grown from our own seeds are producing pods, but they are green instead of purple. There aren’t very many, but I have been able to pick the odd pod and give them a taste.
They are not tasty. Quite bitter, instead! Which is different from last year. I wonder if they had cross pollinated with the pod peas growing on the other trellis. The peas did so poorly last year, I would not have expected so. The one King Tut volunteer from last year has produced a single purple pod, which I’ve left to dry out and keep for seed. Now I wonder if it’ll stay true to type. It bloomed well before the shelling peas and snap peas did, so it should be fine.
Some of the Chocolate cherry tomatoes needed additional support. Not all of them are blooming yet, and no tomatoes forming yet. Some of them are growing well, but others, not so much. One end of that bed along the chain link fence got drowned, even though the bed itself it raised about 4-5 inches. We’ve lost quite a few of the shallots from sets to the wet, and it looks like none of the shallots from seed have made it, but I was able to give the yellow onions grown from seed a “hair cut”. I now have more green onions dehydrating in the oven, along with a tray of mint.
I was still able to pick some lettuce this morning. They have not yet bolted from the heat, which is nice. The chard I planted not long ago has started to sprout! I should sow more of those soon.
Though we had a decently cool night last night (it was a wonderful 17C/63F at about 7am), it quickly heated right up to our expected high of 27C/81F. We’re not supposed to start cooling down until about 8pm. Hopefully, between the heat and the wind, things will have a chance to dry up. Yesterday’s downpours flooded out quite a few towns. I’d heard the town my mother lives in got 5 inches of rain in 3 hours, however it now seems it wasn’t quite that much. More than enough to flood streets and parking lots, however. The town to the north of us was among those that got hit the worst in our province, and they had flooded streets as well. We certainly don’t have much to complain about, where we are! Still, it does keep us from getting a lot of outside work done. Frustrating, but we’ll live. 😉
When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, we were having a steady, heavy rainfall. I got completely soaked!
The rain did nothing to slow the mosquitoes down, of course. *sigh*
The rain kept falling for hours. It has stopped for now, so I made a quick check on how things are outside, and to see if an expected parcel got dropped off at the gate (it had not). The driveway is half under water again. The low area along the fence line on the north side of the driveway is a pond again, as is the spot in front of the outhouse, behind the garage. The grass hides most of it, but that whole east yard is under water.
People have been posting photos and video online, and I just had to call to check on my mother. The town she is in has been flooding. I have not been able to confirm, but I’ve heard they got about 5 inches – inches, not cm – of rain in 3 hours. That’s almost 14cm. In the news, I’ve heard that parts of the province are expected to get 15cm of rain, but that’s over the day, not in just a few hours! My mother told me that the lane behind her building is a river right now, and the front of her building is under water. Water had been leaking into their common room, too, but people had already been brought in to fix it. The photos I’m seeing posted online are amazing. Even with all the flooding we had this spring, this town did not get that sort of flooding!
We didn’t get anywhere near as much rain as where my mother is, though we got enough that there are areas of water in the paths around the low raised beds. Not so much that the ground level beds are under water, at least. Our squash, melon and potato beds are just very wet, but not in puddles, though there is some standing water in between the sweet corn. I just had to get a picture of the tomato bed in the main garden area. There are so many tomatoes on all the plants! The other tomato beds are also handling things well, and I’m starting to see Yellow Pear tomatoes starting to form. No Chocolate cherry, yet.
I very briefly spotted some kittens on the board pile. They seem to be quite okay with their kibble being softened by the rain. I didn’t try to do more than top up their kibble, as the clouds of mosquitoes along the edge of the spruce grove, where the board pile is, are pretty insane.
We are still under thunderstorm watch, though more for the southern areas than here, with possible hail and torrential rainfall. For us, we’ve still got high winds, but so far, just enough to flatten the hay I haven’t scythed yet, but not enough to take down branches or trees. At least not around the house and inner yard.
Checking the 30 yr record for our area, we are still pretty average. Nowhere near breaking any records for temperature or rainfall. I suspect my mother’s town may have broken some rainfall records today, though!
While we aren’t about to go anywhere soon, because of the condition of our own driveway, the spring flood damage on the roads around us have been almost completely repaired, so at least we will be able to get out, if we really need to. We’re doing quite all right, here, and for that, I am grateful.
Rolando Moon likes to keep me company when I’m puttering in the garden. She accepts a few pets, before attacking my hand. Mostly, she just hangs out…
Not always in good places! She moved before I could get a picture, but I caught her sprawled in the middle of the bed. Mostly on the far row that isn’t seeded yet, but she also rolls around, and pushed wood chips over the other row, where the fall chard has been planted.
Laster on, I caught her in another bed, rolling on an onion plant! She prefers to go through the beds to walking on the grass.
I’m glad I was able to get this picture; usually, this mama runs away if I come too close. I think she just didn’t want to move in the heat. 😄 Instead, she posed for the camera, so adorably!
Since we weren’t going to get any cooler, I headed out before I lost light, to see what I could do with the small batch of cardboard I got today. There wasn’t much, so I decided to use it here…
To the right of the sweet corn are five Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins, barely visible in the grass and weeds coming up through the straw.
Once the cardboard was down, you could see that the plants are actually fairly large! Smaller than they should be for this time of year, but still larger than most of the squash. In fact, all the hulless pumpkins seem to be doing better than most of the other squash.
After laying down the cardboard, I gave it a soak, then tromped on them to flatten them a bit. I would have stomped the grass down before the cardboard was laid down, but I didn’t want to risk accidentally stepping on a pumpkin plant. As we get more cardboard, the Boston Marrow and the G-star patty pan squash will be done first, then any spaces in between will be covered, including beside the rows of corn.
We need lots more cardboard for this.
Once this was done, I went to check the other garden beds and found a wonderful surprise.
Our first summer squash! There’s a second, smaller one on another plant. I’m really happy, not just to finally see some vegetables, but because this is a Madga squash. The first time we grew them, only 2 plants made it, and last year we had only one. They did not produce as much as the other summer squash, either. This year, we’ve got 4 surviving plants, and they’re the first to produce fruit!
We also got a second harvest this evening.
The garlic bed that is so far behind the one in the main garden has scapes ready to harvest! This is almost all of them. There’s just a very few left that aren’t ready to pick yet.
It may be late in the season, but at least we’re getting something from the garden!
Today is working out to be slightly cooler than yesterday; it’s coming up on 6pm as I start this, and we’ve been at 28C/82F for some hours. We’re not expected to start cooling down for at least another hour. Longer, if today is at all like yesterday.
It was getting pretty late last night before I finally headed outside, fogging myself in mosquito repellant, and started on the squash patch.
I did remember to take a before picture. Every pair of sticks shows where there is a summer or winter squash, a pumpkin or a gourd. The straw mulch we laid down may help keep the soil cool and moist, but it isn’t thick enough to choke out the weeds. It also makes weeding – or even using the weed trimmer – impossible.
One of the apple gourds is relatively robust. The hulless pumpkins, Baby Pam pumpkins and Crespo squash plants are also doing comparatively well. The green zucchini, Teddy, Georgia Candy Roaster and Winter Sweet winter squash, however, are all very tiny. They should all be much, much larger for this time of year.
I am hoping that using the cardboard to smother the crab grass and weeds around the squash plants will help. I did things a bit differently this time. Previously, when preparing an area with cardboard to be covered with a straw mulch, I laid down flattened boxes in overlapping layers, making everything at least 2 layers thick. The overlaps were 4 layers thick or even 6 layers, depending on how they ended up overlapping.
Obviously, I couldn’t do that, here.
Most of the boxes were roughly the same dimensions; there were a lot of banana boxes in the pile! When flattened, they made long rectangles. I cut each in half, so that I could lay each piece down as a single layer, positioning 4 such pieces at right angles around each plant. That meant two boxes for each plant – mostly. I barely had enough cardboard to finish the job, but some of the boxes were large enough that I could cut them down further, and use just one box around a plant. I got them all done, with no cardboard to spare at all.
It was a brutal job.
For all that I used mosquito repellant, I was still being swarmed. Any spot that didn’t get sprayed was attacked. It’s one thing to find myself being bitten in the butt because my shirt shifted as I bent over. It’s quite another when they would fly under the lenses of my glasses and go for my eye lids. Yes, I actually got mosquito bights on my eye lids! On top of that, because of the heat, it wasn’t long before I sweated off the repellant. At which point, I was just a mosquito buffet! By the time I was putting down the last pieces of cardboard, I was spending more time flapping my arms and doing the mosquito dance than anything else!
By the time I was done, it was quite dark, so an after photo had to wait until the morning. We did have a small thunderstorm during the night. As usual, the bulk of the system blew right by us.
None of the cardboard blew away, however! That was my big concern. Interlocking the pieces of cardboard seemed to have done the trick.
As we get more cardboard, I do want to fill in the spaces in between, but the squash and corn patch needs to be done, first. For now, this should help. I’ve picked up a slow release, granular fertilizer that will be applied soon. I just don’t want to be feeding the crab grass as well as the squash!
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get another van load of cardboard, soon. I did manage to get a few boxes today, when I stopped at the post office/general store. Possibly enough to do one row in the squash and corn patch. We shall see.
Another thunderstorm is being predicted for tonight. I do hope it actually happens, and gets swept northward. Not only to help cool things down here, but there are some major fires to the north of us. At least one of the reserves had to be evacuated yesterday. Rain would certainly help get those under control. For all the flooding we had this year, most of it affected the south of our province. The further north you go, the less affected it was, which means those areas will still be prone to fires.
Just out of curiosity, I checked our 30 year temperature records for today. We’re still at 28C/82F as I write this. Our average for today is 26C/79F. The record high was 33C/91F, set in 2011, while our record low was only 6C/43F, set in 2000. So we’re pretty normal for this time of year. If our spring hadn’t been so awful, this would have been a very productive gardening year.
It’s hitting the girls in their upstairs “apartment” the worst. My younger daughter just cut all her hair off, to help keep cooler. Their switching to sleeping during the day and being active during the night hasn’t been working that well this year; the nights are simply not cooling down much. As a surprise for them, I made a trip to a Canadian Tire this morning, and got one of those Arctic Air cooling fans. I’d much rather have picked up a portable AC unit for them, but not only are they ridiculously expensive, there aren’t any in stock in most places right now. The window AC units are much more affordable, but there is only one window it could possibly be installed in, and it won’t fit with the way that window opens. In fact, that’s true of all our windows. Best bet would be to actually have one installed through a wall, not in a window. Since we don’t actually own the house, that’s not something we’re going to start doing!
Actually, I’m not seeing very many of them, but there are a few braver ones that come out more often. Like this long haired beauty.
Of the ones I see the most often, he’s one of the shier ones, and runs off very quickly.
This little guy is the one that hangs out around the house the most. This morning, I found him trying to catch the mosquitoes that congregate under the roof of the kibble house.
So. Many. Mosquitoes.
That mama looks so very … tired. 😄
Of the slightly older kittens, the calico seems to prefer spending her time with the younger kittens, though she will make her way to the kibble house every now and then.
The little kitten beside her is one that tends to run off before I can get a good look at it. Shy, but not as shy as three of the six that I pretty much just catch flashes of, as they run away!
I’m not sure about the oldest litter. I think they are in the pump shack, but it might be more of a place they explore than where their “nest” is. Particularly since a skunk seems to be using it, too. This morning, I saw the black and white kitten, watching me through the tall grass as I brought kibble to put in front of the pump shack door, and the table beside it, before running off. I’ve seen only two of that litter, lately.
Those are just the litters we have seen. For sure, Broccoli has had a litter that must be getting quite big, and yet none have followed her to the kibble house. We probably won’t have any idea of just how many kittens there are this year until fall, when I expect they would be large enough to come for the kibble, with or without their mamas.
On a semi-related note, I’ve recently heard from the cat lady. We’re talking about the next cats to have spayed or neutered. Unfortunately, she’s been in and out of the hospital quite a lot, lately. So we are in no hurry. Her health take priority! Cabbages, meanwhile, is doing great, though dealing with a mosquito bitten nose! She prefers to be outside in the catio with the mosquitoes, than in the house! :-D
At some point, I’d love to build a catio, too, but I’m not quite sure where would be a good place to put one. No hurry on that, either. Other projects are much higher on the priority list!
I am happy to say that all the kittens that were in the branch pile, are now in the board pile (formerly a junk pile) near the house. I managed to get this photo this morning.
One older kitty and one bitty kitty. :-) I could movement in the undergrowth from others, and another of the itty bitties came up for a snack.
I brought over another tray for water, including a frozen bottle of water to help keep things cool.
Most of the older kittens are still coming to the kibble house, and I got this picture of bliss, yesterday evening.
I just love the face on the kitten snoozing on the bench!
In other things, we are still getting heat warnings, and some areas are getting severe thunderstorm warnings. As I write this, we are at 32C/90F, with the humidex at 34C/93F Mind you, the same app that’s telling me that is also telling me we’re having light rain right now, when we’ve actually got a cloudless sky.
I did some weeding and pruning of tomatoes this morning, but the ground was still moist, so I didn’t need to water. We’ll see if that’s still true by this evening. I was able to get another load of cardboard today. Originally, I was going to use it to fill in the spaces around the silver buffalo berry, but other areas need it more. The squash patch in particular. Yes, we put straw down as a mulch, but that’s pretty much it. With most of the squash struggling so much, but weeding is almost impossible in that area. Laying down some cardboard will help. While I was out, I was also able to stop at the hardware store and pick up some slow release, granular tomato and vegetable fertilizer. Last year, we used water soluble fertilizer, but they only had versions suitable for flowers or shrubs, not vegetables or tomatoes.
While I was at it, I picked up 150 ft of clothes line, so we can finally get ours fixed. This time, they had in stock a much stronger version, but at more than double the price. Hopefully, what I got will last. With a line as long as ours, that’s a lot of potential weight it will need to hold. The spacers I got will help with that, though.
Once I got home, I backed the van up near the garden then prepped the cardboard, removing any tape, staples and stickers, as I unloaded. Thank goodness I was parked in the shade! I was still roasting. I used the garden hose to dampen my hat and shirt to help keep cool. The water in the hose was scalding hot, so I had to be careful! It did work, though.
We’re supposed to get rain tonight, so I want to get the cardboard down before then. Unfortunately, we’re not expected to start cooling down for another three hours!
After parking the van, I made sure to refresh the water bowls for the cats. Several of the mamas, and one of the kittens, were sprawled in the shade of the kibble house. It’s so hot out, the cats are actually panting! Not good. For the kittens in the board pile, I grabbed a 1 gallon water bottle and pokes some strategic holes in it, then put it on the water tray, where it can slowly drain. Unfortunately, in keeping the trays on to of the pile, so the skunks won’t get at it, it means the metal trays are in the sun. I’m trying to think of what I can use to create some shade that won’t blow away in the wind. Hmm.
For now, though, I’ll be staying inside until things start to cool down, then finish up with the cardboard. I don’t think there’s enough to cover the entire squash patch, but I should be able to get it around the smallest of the plants that need the most help!
Actually, this first photo is an evening find. While doing my evening rounds, I walked past the feeding station, and found a family of skunks at the bird seed!
I left them be, since I’d rather they were eating the sunflower seeds than the kibble. On the way back, I startled a couple of little ones. This one went up against the house and just froze, watching as I went by.
Such a cute little baby!
On uploading the photo, I saw the strange dot on its head. Now that I’ve “upgraded” by trading phones with my husband, I have a camera with much better zoom quality, so I was able to get a closer look.
It’s a wood tick. A big, blood filled tick.
😥
Poor baby! Mind you, it probably doesn’t even notice it’s there.
All the kittens have most definitely been moved out of the branch pile. I found one of the mamas on the wood pile (formerly a junk pile), so I brought a tray over and put it at the top for some kibble. In the past, we’ve got kibble trays on the ground near the pile, but with the skunks eating the kibble, and a ground hog still living under the pile, I figured it would be better for the kittens at the top. Not long after, I came by and saw three kittens at the tray. Two ran off immediately, but I managed to zoom in and get a picture of the little calico.
Oh, and that shredded orange tarp on there? It used to cover the entire top of this wood pile. It has been torn to shreds by the groundhogs, who have been taking the strands back to their dens to line their nests.
I suspect we’ll start seeing baby grogs in the not so distant future!
I’ve got some heavy duty tarps I found at Costco. They’re only 8′ x 10′, but that should be enough to cover the top of this pile. The layers of wood at the top had all rotted from years of exposure, but I’ve finally reached wood that looks useable, and I want to protect it. Hopefully, the grogs will leave non-torn tarps alone! If I do that now, though, I suspect the mama will move the kittens again. :-/
The fourth kitten – the little tabby trying to get under Mom to nurse – was already at the laundry platform when I first came out with the morning kibble. The other two are the ones I saw running away from the kibble tray on the wood pile.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of the 6 bitty kitties. I don’t know where the mom took them.
This is another surprise find. The Wonderberries are starting to bloom again! The berries they had when they were transplanted have all ripened and fallen away (those that we didn’t eat), but there are new green berries forming, and new flower buds, too!
Next is a surprise find that shows just how wet the ground still is in places.
As our spring kept dragging on, we had a melt followed by a large snowfall. When our angel with the front end loader cleared our driveway for us, the snow was so deep, he couldn’t see where the driveway ended and the grass on the sides began. There was water under the snow, and when he went off the gravel with one side of the front end loader, the tires sank, leaving a trench several inches deep. I’ve yet to be able to mow that area as much as we normally would, because that side is still so much wetter. As I headed out this morning, I spotted these, growing in the sunken tire track.
Do you see those sprays of broad, flat leaves coming out of a central point in the mud? They are coming up along the entire length of the muddy tire track. Nowhere else along the driveway.
Those are bullrushes. AKA cattails. These normally grow in ponds. I’ve never seen bullrushes growing here before. The nearest bullrushes in the area are in a series of small ponds in the ditch along the road, a couple hundred yards away. Even the low area in the old hay yard, which actually became a bit of a pond this spring, does not have bullrushes in it.
I’m going to leave these be. Bullrushes are something I want to encourage, even if it is in an odd place. We’re not in a position to make use of them now, but we have plans to in the future. The more of them that starts growing now, the more they will spread and increase. That way, by the time we are ready to use them, there should be enough to harvest, without over harvesting. When we finally get to turning that low spot in the old hay yard into a pond that should hold water all year, I want to make sure bullrushes start growing in there, too.
Every year since we’ve moved here has been very dry. With this year actually having adequate amounts of rain, it’s been interesting to see what things are now growing where we didn’t expect.
Butterscotch was very cuddly with me this morning.
She looks so kittenish!
She comes over to cuddle when I sit at the side of my bed to take my supplements. As soon as she hears those bottles rattling, she comes right over. She still doesn’t like to be picked up and held though – and I’ve got the scratches on my arm to prove it! She slid herself right off, taking her pound of flesh along with her, then got all adorable on the bed beside me. Like she knows she’s just too cute to be mad at! :-D
The Re-Farmer 