The snow we had yesterday morning was gone by the end of the day.

Yesterday…

… and today…

I counted 29 cats this morning. Before coming back inside, I even had a chance to catch and cuddle the bitty baby!

The snow may be gone, but the temperatures are below freezing and staying there. At least it will be fairly mild for the next week or so before the highs are expected to start dipping below -10C/14F. I’m hoping the temperatures stay mild like this for a while. That will give the bitty baby more time with mama. We are fully expecting to bring this one indoors before the temperatures get really cold, but it’s definitely not old enough to be weaned yet.

We’re at the point where my morning rounds will now consist more of just switching out the memory cards in the trail cams, and checking on things. Today, I did finally move the stack of logs leftover from the giant branch pile getting chipped. These are logs that seem strong enough and straight enough to use somehow. I ended up restacking them in the old kitchen garden, between the double lilac and the honeysuckle. This is part of the space in that garden we’ve given up on, as it’s so filled with invasive flowers. I’d cleared away the creeping bellflower before they went to seed, but there’s nothing we can do about the low, creeping flowers that look kinda like periwinkle.

Okay, I just went and looked it up and confirmed, it is periwinkle, and yes, it’s considered an invasive plant! It’s been a real struggle to keep it out of the L shaped bed, because they spread through their roots, and my goodness, those roots are hard to get rid of!! I’m hoping turning it into a raised bed will help to at least keep it out of where I want to grow food.

I’d say having the stack of logs there will help keep them under control, too, but they are there to be used next year, and I expect the stack will be gone long before the flowers in that corner start reaching mature sizes.

There is another type of flower that grows in that corner, and all long the house, right through the rocks we put there when we built the path. These spread through their seeds, not their roots, so they’re not as hard to get rid of. I let those go to seed, then gathered most of them. I took them behind the storage house, where there are two rows of trees, all planted way too close together. It’s very hard to keep this area clear and tidy. This is where I’d scattered seeds from an alternative lawn mix we got, but with this spring’s flooding, that area was under water. None germinated, or if they did, they got drowned. So I’ve scattered the seeds from these white flowers in there. I don’t expect the coming spring to have anything other than normal spring snowmelt, so at least some of the seeds should take. I’ve been looking up invasive species in our province and, while I don’t know what these flowers are, I’m not seeing them come up in the lists. It’s one thing for something to be prolific, as these white flowers are, and another to be destructive, as the periwinkle and creeping bellflower are. At least the periwinkle are just in the old kitchen garden. The creeping bellflower is popping up everywhere that we’ve been clearing and cleaning up among the trees. We won’t be able to get rid of them entirely, but we’re hoping to drive them out by planting the things we do want growing there.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

With the weather turning chilly, we’re moving back into planning stages, thinking ahead to the next growing year!

The Re-Farmer