For some reason, our line is active, as if someone were on the phone.
We have a phone with two cordless handsets, and a hands free head set. The base with the answering machine is in my office. I noticed a red light blinking on the base that normally is off, which is when I saw the “line is busy” message on the handset display. That’s what the red blinking light was showing; that the line is in use.
The second handset is in another room, and was not in use. With both of them, I activated them to listen, and could hear crackling noises. On hanging up, I get the usual “call ended” display, then it goes right back to “line is busy”. I even checked the headset, which we don’t use because the ear piece no longer attaches to the head piece, and got the same thing. Crackling noise.
We do have a corded phone. This is our emergency back up, and is tucked away in my husband’s bedroom. I had to actually move furniture to reach it, then brush off the dust and cat hair.
It was not off the hook. When I picked it up and listened, it was the same. The line is open and active, but no one is on it. Hanging up made no difference.
With all the phones, I tried hanging up repeatedly, disconnected the power and disconnected the phone line. No change.
After not finding a solution, I went online to see how I could get technical support. After logging in to my account, the first thing I tried was the live chat, but that’s available only during office hours. It’s past 10pm now.
After much looking around at support options, I finally tried to call 611, which is their 24/7 service number, using my cell phone.
The call kept dropping.
I do have my cell phone set to use Wi-Fi calling, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Even when the call didn’t drop, there would be just dead air for about a minute – and then the call would drop. I did actually get a pick up, once, got their automated system, and the robot voice disappeared in mid sentence.
Then the call got dropped.
In the end, I had to send an email.
I got their automated response with a ticket number, and a message saying they’ll get back to me within 2 business days.
Meanwhile, our line is still active, though no one is on it. We can’t call out, and no one can call in.
The mock orange is blooming beautifully right now!
I pruned away a lot of dead branches this spring, but the rest is just thriving!
The other one at the side of the house is still just budding. It doesn’t get as much direct sunlight as this one. I’m actually amazed it’s still alive. The groundhog has dug a tunnel behind it, damaging and exposing quite a lot of roots in the process. I keep filling the hole in, pushing back the dug up soil with a hoe, sometimes taking a hose to it, too. It can stay filled in for days. Then the grog will suddenly be back. I happened to be at the door above the steps when I saw it going by with a mouth full of nesting materials.
Despite all the root disturbances and damage, that mock orange looks like it’s going to have massive blooms, too.
At some point, I’d like the move both of them. The one by the house doesn’t get enough sunlight, and is far enough under the eaves to get hardly any water when it rains. This one is right up against the laundry platform. It gets in the way when we try to use the clothes line, even with all the pruning. Plus. we need to paint the platform. We have not yet decided on a new new spot for them, though. I still want to keep them close to the house. Just not too close!
Last night, I had to get this picture through a sun room window, as they would run off as soon as they heard the door open.
There are three kittens nursing in this photo. We usually see 4 kittens together, so this suggests to me that the third kitten – the almost black one – is from another litter. I had thought the one that looks like it’s going to be a long haired cat was from another litter, but it’s in the photo, nursing with the calico and the tabby.
Every now and then, I see the black and white kitten from the first litter. It runs off as soon as it sees me, no matter how far away I am. I have not seen the other 3 from that litter. Hopefully, they have all survived, and they’re just shier.
My goodness, where did the day go? I just realized it’s past 6pm, but it feels like it should be 2pm. This, even though I ended up doing the rest of our monthly stock-up shopping today.
The mamas were out in full force when I came out to do my rounds this morning – and so was Sad Face! I just had to try for a picture of him on the shrine. I couldn’t get any closer, as he runs off. Which I’m good with, because he has been beating up Potato Beetle and The Distinguished Guest a lot!
He is, however, waiting his turn for the food, letting Rosencrantz eat her fill, first!
It’s entirely possible she’s pregnant with his kittens.
Before coming in from my rounds, I paused to get eaten alive by mosquitoes while picking the rest of the garlic scapes in the main garden. There are only a couple that weren’t ready to pick. Looking forward to using them!
With the other garlic so far behind, we should have more scapes to harvest in about a month or so. A bonus to that garlic coming up so late!
While I was putting food out for the cats and the birds, Potato Beetle appeared in the sun room, enjoying his very own private breakfast. When I was leaving to do the shopping, I found him like this.
Awwww… So cute!
He’s still really skinny again, so I hope he stays around long enough to put some meat back on those bones. And with both Sad Face and The Distinguished Guest prowling around, I’m much more comfortable with him safe in the sun room!
The last of our stock-up shopping for the month was a Walmart trip this time. Partly because I finally wore out my last pair of jeans and needed to get new ones.
Very little of what I needed to get was food times. I got four 7kg bags of kibble; hopefully, we now have enough to last the month. With the skunks and the racoons also eating the kibble, I’ve taken to setting out less kibble, more often. Hopefully, the cats will get more of it that way, and the kibble will last longer.
We needed to stock up more on paper products, in non-Costco sizes. We’re slowly building up an inventory of non-perishable products, with a goal of having at least a 3 month supply by winter. That way, if we get snowed in, or vehicles break down – or if we get another spring of flooding and washed out roads – we will be set. We need to be doing that with cat kibble, too, but with how many big bags we need just for 1 month, stocking up extra is much more difficult!
The brand of bug spray I bought last time didn’t seem to work well at all. During the cookout, we all used it liberally, but the mosquitoes were practically mainlining the stuff instead of being repelled by it. I was able to find the brand that we find works best and bought a couple of cans – along with more AfterBite!
Finding a new pair of jeans was annoying. I tried on a couple of pairs and found ones that fit – on the upper body. Unfortunately, it seems the popular style is skinny leg jeans. The only reason I could get them on my calves at all was because the fabric was part Spandex. Went through rack after rack before finally finding one style that were regular cut on the legs. Thankfully, they had some in my size, too.
It shouldn’t be this hard to find clothes that fit! Honestly, I think the next time I need to get a pair of pants, I should just go to the men’s department. At least if they’re too long, I can get my daughter to hem them for me or something.
I did have a small splurge today. Nosencrantz and Butterscotch still refuse to leave my office. I have a scratch board for them that they completely ignore. Nozencrantz has been using my office chair as a scratch post. Usually, we get the scratch pads made out of corrugated cardboard, and I was originally going to get two of them, but I found a cheap little cat tower that I got instead of a second scratch pad. Hopefully, they will figure out how to use that, instead of my constantly having to stop them from clawing either my chair, or the carpet!
Well, that didn’t take long! As soon as there was a space while unpacking the shopping, Tissue jumped right in!
I gave the cardboard scratch pad to the other cats, but kept aside the cat nip that came with it. After assembling the new little cat tower, I put cat nip all over it, and on the other scratch board they’ve been ignoring, then gave the last of the cat nip to the other cats. Which is always hilarious.
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz seemed happy enough with the cat nip, and mildly curious about the little scratch tower. Then Cheddar wanted in and discovered the tower. It’s barely taller than he is! It has a curved portion with a “comb” under it for cats to rub up against, and I’m not sure he can even fit through it, but he was certainly enjoying the hanging toy and bell, while going into a cat-nip fueled frenzy over the thing. Nosencrantz just sat on a nearby foot stool, looking at Cheddar like he was crazy!
Well. He was a bit high on catnip, so I guess in a way, he was!
They’re all sleeping it off on my bed right now.
I still don’t know if they’ve figured out they can scratch at that thing, yet.
When I next went into the dining room, I found cats splayed all over the place, in a stupor, with Susan all curled up on the cardboard scratch pad (which got its own catnip application), taking a nap!
Aside from the regular monthly shopping, my husband asked if I could get some prices for dimensional lumber, so I stopped at a hardware store on my way home. It’s in the town my mother lives in, and I know they deliver. After getting the prices, I remembered to pick up some new clothes line to replace what broke this spring. I hope 100 feet will be enough. I also got proper clothesline spreader. Two of them, actually. There’s a lot of distance between the poles! I’d been using S hooks, and they don’t slide very well.
When I headed into the city, I drove into a deluge of rain, and by the time I got home, the rain had reached our place. Enough that we have water all over, again. I’m not complaining, though. It means the garden doesn’t need to be watered, and it’s not so much that things are drowning again.
One of the things I was able to get done yesterday was finally prune away some large branches from the ornamental apple trees in the old kitchen garden. Where we have the bunching onions planted is not doing well, and drying out faster, because of the thick mat of interlocking branches above. There was one large branch from each tree that I wanted to take out but, once those were down, it uncovered a whole lot of dead branches. By the time I got that all cut away and cleared out, it was looking much more open and bright at the end of the garden. Which means the retaining wall blocks and the bed along them all got today’s rain better, too!
Oh, my goodness! I am so happy!
Just moments ago, I had to stop Nosencrantz from scratching at my chair again. She left – and then I heard her using the new scratch post directly behind me! She’s figured it out!!! Yay!
Okay, time for me to get my butt back outside and do my evening rounds.
Because even though it still feels like it should be the afternoon, it is well into the evening right now!
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.
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!
We had a very successful cookout, with great company and lots of food!
And lots of mosquitoes.
Insane numbers of mosquitoes.
We had bug spray, citronella candles, and even the smoke from the fire, and we still got invaded.
Still, we had a great time of it.
Having company was my excuse to finally use our new Dutch oven.
I’ve been looking up recipes for quite a while, and it’s been rather frustrating. So many of the sites I’ve been finding are just the same links to the same recipes, over and over. I had better luck with YouTube and survivalist/bushcraft type channels.
In the end, I realized I really didn’t need any special recipes so much as get a handle on the technique.
With our planned cookout, we were going to have burgers on the grill, with wieners and hoagies over the fire. So for the Dutch oven, I decided to do scalloped potatoes. I just slightly modified my usual recipe for them.
The first thing I made for them was a cheesy white sauce. A basic white sauce is a table spoon of butter, melted, a tablespoon of flour added and stirred to keep smooth, then slowly add about 2 cups of milk (how much milk depends on how thick you want the sauce), stirring constantly. The sauce it cooked until the desired thickness, then seasoned to taste (I used salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder). For today’s sauce, I also added a handful of shredded Old cheddar cheese, stirring until melted. The sauce was then set aside until it was time to do the rest.
Along with the sauce, I used bacon slices, sliced onions and peeled and sliced potatoes.
The Dutch oven we got was pre-seasoned. According to the instructions, we could use it straight out of the box. However, since it was our first time using it, I still gave it a wipe down, then gave it a light coat of oil.
My first modification to my usual scalloped potatoes recipe was with the bacon. Pre-sliced bacon would have worked, but we happen to have a slab of bacon right now, so I cut a bunch of slices from that. They were not at all even and pretty, but who cares? :-D
The bacon is there to keep the potatoes from directly touching the surface – at least not right away. As they cook, the fat from the bacon renders out, making another layer between the sides and the other ingredients, until they absorb it. At least, that was the plan.
The sliced potatoes were in a bowl of water, and I didn’t try to shake it off much. The water would add to the moisture that would cook the potatoes, without making things too runny. The potatoes were layered on top of the bacon first, then a layer of sliced onions. Because of the bacon and seasonings in the sauce, no other seasonings were added between the layers.
Because I was making enough for 8 people, I used about 7 – 8 pounds of potatoes and 2 sliced onions. The layers made for a VERY full pot! Once the layers were down, the bacon ends were folded over the top.
Then the cheesy sauce was poured over the whole thing. The sauce had thickened more as it cooled, so I smoothed it out and pushed it down the sides to get it down into the potatoes.
Because it was so very full, I thought it might end up touching the lid, so I gave the underside of the lid an extra coat of oil. Just in case.
Our Dutch oven set came with a carry bag. I put the full Dutch oven into the bag, tucking an ice pack under it, and a couple more along the sides, until it was time to get cooking. The carry bag made it much easier to move the whole thing to the fire pit later on, too.
About 2 hours before we were expecting our guests, I got the fire going.
I made sure to use all maple wood at first. That piece of tree that fell on our canopy tent and destroyed it was nice and dry, and burned really well.
Still, it took an hour to get it down to the coals I needed.
I put a bunch of coals in between the fire bricks I found. We will need to empty the fire pit of ashes, soon, so one of the benefits of using the bricks under the Dutch oven is that it keeps the legs from sinking. More ashes were added to the lid (they got spread out better, after I took the picture), and then I built the fire up again, for later roasting of wieners. :-)
By this time, I was starting to use pieces of apple wood we’d set aside was we pruned branches or cut away dead trees.
Since the fire was going, with so much more heat on the one side, I set a timer on my phone to go off every 15 minutes, at which point I rotated the pot a 1/3 turn. Getting the legs to rest on the bricks equally was more difficult than expected. I can’t see them while using the lid lifter on the handle to turn it, and I’d sometimes miss. At the very end, though, with my last rotation, I missed the bricks entirely, and the Dutch oven was resting directly on the bricks. It was more than an hour by then, and the coals were starting to die down, so I left it that way.
After about 1 1/2 hours, I decided it was time to take it off. Being cast iron, which holds heat for a very long time, if the potatoes weren’t quite done yet, they would continue to cook, even off the fire.
I ended up using a BBQ scrubbing brush to get as much of the ashes off the lid as I could, then used my fire fan to blow more ashes off the top. We brought out our pizza stone to use as a trivet on the picnic table.
The potatoes turned out to be perfectly done. The bacon was nice and crisp, and the potatoes absorbed the sauce completely. They were perfectly soft – almost creamy in texture, but still holding their shape. While things were crispier around the bottom and edges, nothing was burnt. Just toasty.
They were an absolute hit. So incredibly tasty!!
With how well these worked, we are looking forward to trying other dishes in the Dutch oven as we do more cookouts!
When that will be is hard to say, though, with so many mosquitoes to do battle with!!!
With company coming tonight, I headed out this morning to do a couple of errands.
I’m glad I was able to do at least a bit of mowing around the driveway yesterday, so our guests will have someplace to park. Even if the grass had not gone to hay, I couldn’t have mowed all of it, as there is still open water along one side of the driveway.
Definitely a place to dig a drainage ditch.
As it was, just mowing along the edges took quite a bit of going back and forth, even though I had the mower set higher than I usually do. The rest will have to be done with the scythe.
Since all the dandelions have seeded and died back, we could actually keep the hay we scythe for mulch in the garden, now. As long as we cut it before the seeds are fully developed. Otherwise, we’d just be planting lots of grass in our garden!
My errand of the morning was to head to our little hamlet’s general store/post office/gas station/liquor store to pick up some booze for our guests. We’re all out of our home made hard cider (looking forward to making more!).
They have a small seed display from Lindenberg Seeds Ltd, and I ended up picking up a couple of packets.
The spinach we planted in the high raised bed is doing well. The spinach we planted in the low raised beds, not so well. In fact, they’re barely there. I can’t tell if they’ve been eaten by insects, or if it was just too wet for them. I know they haven’t been eaten by critters, because the beds have onions planted around them, and if anything had gone through, the onions would be flattened in places. They care completely undisturbed.
We do have seeds from one variety of spinach left, if I remember correctly, but I decided to pick up two more. Bloomsdale and Hybrid Olympia. It’s getting too for spinach now, though. These will be planted at the end of July/early August for a fall harvest. Hopefully, we will have generous quantities like we had last year, that we can dehydrate for later use. It was very handy to be able to add a spoonful of dry spinach to dishes every now and then. We’ve been out for a while, though, and I miss it!
Spinach is definitely one of our favourite greens, for all of us.
Some of them now seem to actually prefer eating kibble on the roof of the cats’ house rather than from the trays!
Rosencrantz is also in the picture, out of frame, at the food dish under the shrine. She and at least one other cat look pregnant, and I’m sure the rest of them are mamas.
Potato Beetle showed up this morning. He’s been away for a few weeks, but has been making appearances within the last few days – looking very skinny and hungry! This morning, as I went out of the sun room, he dashed through the door and went straight for the kibble bowl we still keep in there.
We’ve been seeing less of The Distinguished Guest lately, and more of Sad Face. They have been fighting, and Sad Face looks to be getting the upper hand. TDG has a big chunk of fur missing from one shoulder, but he won’t let us near him, even while in the kibble house, anymore. Otherwise, we’d be putting anti-biotic ointment on the wound. Sad Face, meanwhile, keeps his distance from us, even as he skulks around the outskirts.
Which means I’m quite happy to see Potato Beetle going into the sun room to eat. If he would just hang out there more often, that would mean Sad Face can’t go after him, too! Alas, he did no such thing today. He ate like he was starving, but then contentedly let the sun room and soon disappeared.
Later on, as I was about to go out the sun room, I saw a strange cat in the kibble house.
No. Not a strange cat.
A much larger black and white kitten! This would be the black and white from the first litter we found in the cats’ house.
The kitten was in alarm mode, though, it’s back arched and leaning against the middle board framing the kibble house, looking off into the corner. That corner is hidden from view by the cats’ house, but it was no surprise when I came out and saw a skunk in there. I chased off the skunk which, unfortunately, chased off the kitten, too.
Later on, I saw mamas and kittens going in and out of the hole at the bottom of the pump shack door. I know the oldest kittens were moved somewhere beyond the pump shack, but as they are getting bigger, the mamas may have moved them closer again. For sure, the kittens that have been under the cats’ house and the laundry platform are in there now, and seeing the growling mama, I’m sure the newest litter is in there, too.
Hmm… With the kittens gone from the cats’ house, this would be a good time to finally open it up and clean it out!
Yesterday, I was doing as much advance prep as I thought useful, for tonight’s company cook out (weather will). That meant a lot of back and forth-ing from the house to the fire pit.
When I first started and walked past the storage house, I noticed something strange at the back window the cats and skunks use to get in and out from that side.
Something big, round and puffy.
Then, this happened.
A bandit face poked out of the hole in the boarded up part of the window, to watch me.
That tail and that face are one big racoon.
This big bruiser seems to be a regular. We don’t usually see the racoons, as they tend to be nocturnal, but I’ve seen this one heading towards the kibble house in the morning. When it saw me coming towards it, it ran under the storage house from the side opening, and I saw it peeking out this window when I came around the back.
We definitely want to discourage their visits, but my goodness, they are so cute! It’s the same with the skunks. There’s at least three of them that go for the cat kibble regularly. I figure at least one of them is a hungry mama. One of the little ones looks to be a male – unlike the cats, the skunks give us a full view of their nether regions! LOL We’re having to chase them away pretty frequently. It’s gotten to the point that if I see one heading towards the kibble house and start my usual “hey, skunk! Go on!”, they will actually stop, turn around and leave!
I also had some other observers as I was doing my thing outside.
Squeeeee!!!
They still won’t let me near them, though. Especially the little calico.
I’m starting to think the 4 kittens under the cats’ house may not be all one litter. I’m seeing these two together pretty constantly, but the other two don’t always seem to be around. Especially the long haired one.
With the lawn mowing and other noise, the mama with the kittens in the cats’ house has moved them. I believe they, and these older ones, are now all in the pump shack. Aside from the lane I mowed to it, I’m avoiding the pump shack, so as not to disturb them.
They may sometimes be a pain in the butt, but seeing all the critters does make me happy!
The Re-Farmer 