Last night was another chilly one, as we went down to 9C/48F – but not chilly enough for the furnace to turn on this time! The thermostat was turned down to 10C/50F for the summer, but we never expected it to actually get lower than that!

Today we hit 26C/79F. We keep getting storm warnings, but I can’t rely in them hitting us, so I made sure to water the garden. Starting by hooking up the soaker hose and just leaving it while I made a run into town to pick up some prescription refills for myself, refill a couple of our 18.9L water jugs, and fill the tank on my mother’s car. Thankfully, the gas prices in town have not gone up with the new tax, though it has in other parts of the province, including the city. Rather backwards on that, but I’m certainly not going to complain!

I haven’t heard from the garage about our van, yet, which means he hasn’t had a chance to look at it. Thankfully, we have access to my mother’s car, so it’s no hurry.

I wasn’t going to do any heavy stuff in the heat of the day – the rest of the week is supposed to be much more reasonable! – but that just meant catching up on smaller things. While moving the hose to the different beds with sprinkler hoses, I went ahead and planted some of the Red Swan beans we have so much of, in with the purple corn. These beans are both a fresh eating and dry bean, but this late in the year, I think we can only reasonable expect to have fresh beans in what’s left of the growing season. Hopefully, they will work out with the corn to climb. I considered planting bush beans, instead, but I’d rather pick beans from higher up!

After finding the newly sprouted summer squash eaten by slugs already, I sprinkled fresh corn meal around all the squash mounds. I spotted another seedling in the next mound over, and I didn’t want that one eaten, too! I also sowed more summer squash again. If this third planting doesn’t take, that’ll be it for trying to sow them. I just came back from checking the garden beds while there was still enough light, and I did find a few slugs around a couple of squash, but that’s it. Hopefully, this new application of corn meal will be enough to keep them from returning.

Along with watering the main garden with the hose, it was time to refill the old rain barrel out by the Crespo squash and new raspberries. I’m trying to make sure the squash out there get extra water, because that corner gets so dry and sun baked. For the garden beds in the south yards, I used water from the full rain barrel by the sun room, then left the diverter off so that, if we do get more rain, it’ll get refilled.

While watering the old kitchen garden, I took the time to take the cover off the shallot bed and do a thorough weeding. The first of the poppies in there has started to open, and I can tell these are more of the Double Scarlet, not the Giant Rattle poppies we grew there before. Darn. Still, these do seem to be an eating poppy, not an ornamental one, so that’s okay.

The shallot greens were starting to get too tall for the wire cover – a problem I did not anticipate! – and were falling over too soon, so I harvested enough of the greens to take some of that weight off. Then I decided to harvest some of that mint that’s been invading our paths; it’s much taller than the ones I transplanted into the retaining wall blocks! My younger daughter might try some of the mint to flavour a panna cotta. Sounds good to me!

I also spotted our can of marking paint when I got back inside, which reminded me to head back out again and use it to mark the rocks and high roots in the southeast yard, so we can see them when mowing the lawn. We’ll have to get more of that marking paint. I finished off the can, and it has been very handy.

I made sure the kibble was topped up for the evening – I don’t want to do it too late in the day, or we’re just feeding skunks and racoons. Of course, I still saw a skunk before coming back in, just a little while ago. The kittens were also out and playing. I was able to catch and pick up another of the white and greys, and give it a cuddle. It didn’t like being picked up and put down, but it tolerated being held and snuggled just fine!

I was happy to see the tiny tuxedo enjoying the bed and stuffy the Cat Lady donated to the yard cats. There are other beds in the cat house, but these are in the water bowl shelter. Even the littlest kittens have figured out how to use the board leaning on the edge as a ramp, to drink water in there. Of course, we have water bowls at their height, but it’s good that they can get at the ones in the shelter, too.

Among the two litters that now spend so much time in the sun room, there are a couple that are white and black, very much like their mother, but one of them is most definitely a tuxedo, even tinier than the singleton! I spotted the two tuxedos playing together, and can see that it’s going to get hard to tell them apart, once they’re both adult sized!

I think I managed to get a decent amount of stuff done today, even if it wasn’t the big stuff that needs to be done, too, just yet.

The Re-Farmer