First, the cuteness! I came into the sun room and spotted this ball of adorableness.
I sometimes like to add some kibble onto the feed bag stuffed with packing material they like to use as a bed. They have a proper bowl, but they can’t all fit around it. Especially when some of the adults decide to eat from it, too!
The kibble bin was running low. We bought four 9kg and two 11.6kg bags of kibble during our last Costco trip. The kibble bin for the inside cats just got refills, which left the equivalent of less than a bag for the outside cats.
All that, and it’s only July 11!
So I made the trip to the nearest Walmart, at the smaller, nearer city, to pick up more. I ended up buying their last three 11kg bags, then two more 9kg bags.
All the bags were the same price. 🤔
Of course, I took advantage of the outing and got a few more things we needed. A smaller case of wet cat food for the cats in my room and the kittens – I’m now seeing other kittens eating the wet cat food, too! The replacement coupling for the hose I needed. That sort of thing. But I completely forgot to look at shoes! I need a pair of work shoes that are not boots. 😁
Gas prices I saw were pretty high. Passing through the town my mother lives in, they’re at 158.9¢/L, and in the city it was 157.9¢/L. I took a chance and took a different route home, in hopes the prices were still lower in the town we usually go to. Sure enough, the prices are still 149.9¢/L I don’t know why this one town has prices that are so much lower than elsewhere, but I’m not about to complain!
One thing I did before heading out was leave a message at the garage, asking if they’d had a chance to assess what’s going on with our van, yet. It was something they were going to do in between other scheduled jobs. Still no word, though. I hope I hear something soon! As much as I appreciate being able to use my mother’s car – and the working air conditioning! – I much prefer driving the van. Especially when we need to get things like 5 or 6 big bags of cat food!
Of course, it’s entirely possible that noise I was hearing in the back will require more expensive repairs, and we’ll have to decide if it’s worth fixing at all.
Just a few more months of using my new credit card and paying it off every month, and my credit rating should be good enough to apply for financing on a newer van, with an interest rate and payments we can afford.
From what I’ve been able to see on the trail cams, we’ve only got one deer still coming into the yard, since we got rid of the bird feeders and stopped putting deer feed out all winter. A few nibbles here and there were found in the beds by the vehicle gate into the inner yard. I was working on plans on how to protect the corn, carrots and turnips. I didn’t think of the beans as a priority, since the deer have never really gone for them all that much, before.
This high raised bed, however, must have made for a nice buffet table for a deer!
We planted so few beans this year, too. This bed is basically it. I have no idea how the pole beans planted with the purple cord will do, since they were planted so much later.
There were still flowers, and I think the plants might recover. We shall see.
Then there was this.
Something keeps flattening the potatoes in this bed! Usually, they stand back up again on their own by the end of the day, but this is the flattest I’ve seen them yet. I don’t know of it’s cats fighting on the bed, or skunks or racoons, but something is mashing them during the night.
I ended up going out today, which I will write about later. When I got back, I repaired another leaking hose and, then set up the spray thing for the water soluble fertilizer I picked up and gave the entire garden a watering with it. I hope it helps the Roma tomatoes in particular. They’re having the hardest time, but more on one end of the bed than the other. We’ve had issues with that end of the bed in previous years, so there is something going on with the soil there.
After the watering was done, I decided on how to protect the beans from further damage. After several failed attempts, I was able to finish this.
I’d hope to be able to fix the supports for the hoops on the outside of the logs, but that just didn’t work out. It now has netting that will still allow pollinators in.
I didn’t think to take photos, but before I did this, I worked on the Indigo Blue and Black Beauty tomato supports, too.
Oh, dear. There has been scrambling noises behind me as I wrote that. A kitten has managed to get out of baby jail. This is the second one that has managed it, so far!
My daughters are now on kitten duty! 😄
Where was I?
Ah, yes. Tomato supports.
The Indigo Blue has a twine support, but the weight of them was making the vertical twines sag in the middle. The boards that were used to cover the Uzbek Golden carrots were long enough, so I lashed them to the tops of the posts, then added more twine to pull up the sagging vertical twine supports, which pulled the horizontal twines and their tomato plants up and straight quite nicely!
The Black Beauty tomatoes each have their own bamboo pole to support them, but the one at the end that broke in the storm was still tippy – and is a lot shorter now! I ended up lashing horizontal bamboo poles across the bed, just high enough to support the shorter pole. Now, each vertical pole has more stability. The tomato plant on the pole that broke also needed more support. They didn’t get pruned in time, and now they have big, extra branches that are starting to grow tomatoes. I attached the horizontal support at that end with an overhang that I could use to hold the twine I used to support the branches, with more twine added along the row to catch a few other branches that needed extra support.
It’s not pretty, but it does the job!
I was still thinking about ways to deter the deer from the rest of the garden. I want to avoid the posts and netting we did last year. They not only kept the deer out, but us, too!
For now, we’re using distractions. I went around and hammered some of the posts we used to support netting last year in strategic places, while my daughter went around and used electric tape to attach pinwheels to them. Then more pinwheels were added to things like trellis supports. My daughter added posts and the last of the pinwheels to the low raised beds with carrots and popcorn in them.
All we need now is some wind. After having high winds so often, now that we have pinwheels up all over, suddenly there isn’t even a slight breeze!
All of this took much longer than I thought it would, and were not the jobs I had planned for the day, but they needed to be done.
My evening rounds today included picking up fallen branches, and assessing storm damage. It’s been a long time since we’ve had so many fallen branches, I needed the wheel barrow to help pick them all up!
Here is a slideshow of what I found in and around the spruce grove.
While I was out with my mother, my daughters tell me the rain, then the storm with hail, went through so quickly, it was like a tap was turned on in the sky. One of them actually saw the top of the spruce come down.
Walking around the perimeter of the spruce grove, I found where a large chunk of dead poplar had fallen, causing damage to an apple tree nearby. As I went closer to see how big it was, I realized I was seeing more than one tree top. It’s hard to see in the undergrowth, but the top of another dead spruce had come down, and the two actually overlapped each other on the ground.
In the same general area, there was also an entire tree that had fallen. No surprise that the based had been destabilized by ants. That’s usually why the dead trees finally fall.
Going past the garage and along the fence line, there was a pile of downed branches from several trees. After that, things seems pretty normal. A few dead branches and there, but there are already so many in there, it makes little difference. There is one tree, however, that keeps tipping further and further. It’s actually still alive, but slowly falling. Meanwhile, there are two dead trees right next to it that are still standing, straight and tall!
Making my way back to where I started around the spruce grove, I suddenly saw a little kitten running across the grass, towards the covered pile of boards – what we used to call the junk pile, but I’ve clear the junk off and discovered a carefully stacked pile of salvaged boards. Whatever tarps had covered it before were disintegrated by the wind, but we were able to cover it with a new, heavier duty tarp, in hopes that we’ll be able to keep them from rotting even more, and be able to use some of them. This pile has been home to litters of kittens for a very long time – and is how Junk Pile Cat got her name!
So I had no doubt little grey tabby was returning to its next under the pile. I took a couple of zoomed in photos, but didn’t try to come any closer, as I made my way back to the house, where I saw Junk Pile (or her doppelgänger; I can’t tell them apart unless they are next to each other, and I haven’t seen one of them in ages) cross the yard to the covered pile. When I came around the lilacs, I startled a little white and grey kitten! As I slowly paused and took its picture, I spotted another kitten peeking at me from under the down spout. When the two of them got together, I had to try and get some video. The image quality drops off the more I had to zoom in, but at the end, another white and grey kitten is there with Junk Pile – and this one is much larger than the others! I’ve no doubt they’re being cared for together as one litter, but the last white and grey kitten is clearly older.
After checking things around the inner yard, I headed out to check things in the outer yard. There are several maples with a lot of dead sections, and I wanted to see if any more dead branches had come down in the storm.
As I came close to one of them, I heard some scrabbling and at first thought it was a cat climbing the tree.
I went looking for branches, but found three little racoons, instead! They kept freezing, the moving a few inches, then freezing, the shifting a bit, then freezing again.
That gave me a chance to get quite a few photos, and even some video.
Gosh, they are so cute!
But I do wish they wouldn’t keep eating the cat food! We already had to stop feeing the birds because of them (and the deer), but they are quite the opportunistic omnivores!
On top of all this, I was being followed all over by at least three yard cats the whole time. This was a very critter filled evening!
About a week ago, we found this bright blue caterpillar on one of the grape leaves.
Absolutely stunning colour!
We’d never seen one before and had no idea if it was a “good” or “bad” caterpillar, but we left it alone. After a rainstorm, I was surprised to find it still there, and then it just disappeared.
This morning, I found a different coloured one!
I almost brushed it off because at first I thought it was a dead leaf hanging, and then it moved and curled up like this!
It took some searching, but we finally found out what it was. It’s the caterpillar for an Abbott’s Sphinx moth, or Sphecodina abbottii. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the adult moths around, but had never seen the caterpillar. Turns out, they can have quite a few different colours and patterns on them, but that blue is my favorite, hands down! The caterpillars do actually eat the grape leaves, though I haven’t seen any damage, so they don’t eat much, it seems! The adults eat nectar from lilacs and honeysuckle, both of which are done blooming in our area.
That false “eye”, by the way, is over its butt. It has claspers at its hind end and, when startled, curls up and hides its head.
I think they’re gorgeous!
Anyhow.
We had another cold night last night. The predicted low was 9C/48F, which isn’t too bad. I didn’t sleep last night, so I was awake to see when it had dropped to 6C/43F – with a “RealFeel” of only 4C/39F! An hour later, we dropped even further to 5C/41F, but at least the “RealFeel” didn’t get any colder. I do wish I’d had some idea that it would get that cold, because we really should have done things to help protect our tomatoes!
When I checked them this morning, however, they seemed to be okay.
I was scheduled to help my mother with grocery shopping today. She wanted to go shopping at a different store after picking up her new glasses, so she kept postponing the trip, even though I reminded her they would come in, in 7-10 business days. When we arranged this, it was Saturday, and I offered to help her on Sunday (which was yesterday), but she acted all surprised and said, not on Sunday. Which is odd, because between my siblings and I, we’ve taken her shopping on Sundays pretty often. My brother visited her yesterday morning and, when he saw how empty her fridge was, offered to take her shopping, but she said no. I was going to be coming over today. He did go out to at least get her some milk and butter, but the grocery store wasn’t open yet, and he ended up going to a gas station. They didn’t have butter, so he got her some cream cheese, just so she’d have something to spread on her morning toast. An 8oz package of cream cheese and a 2L of milk cost him $16!
He had intended to go to church with her, and then take her for lunch, but she turned out to be having one of her bad days and got really nasty with him. So bad, he actually left, which takes an awful lot for him to do that! So I was a bit concerned about how she would be today.
Turns out, she was having one of her better days, and things went pretty well.
She’s been making a big deal in telling me not to pick up lunch before visiting her. The last time I got take out, including the food she’d been asking for previously, she gave me a hard time about it, so the next time I was set to come over and she told me to not bring anything, but if I did, to bring her onion rings, I made sure to eat first and didn’t bring anything. She was all surprised I didn’t bring her onion rings, when I didn’t even go to that particular restaurant. I told her; she said not to bring anything, so I didn’t bring anything! Then she had to make herself something to eat. This time, I simply picked up some fridge chicken and potato wedges (from the gas station; only place that was open at the time) and didn’t tell her. I just came in with the food. This time, she didn’t complain! She didn’t even complain that I bought a couple of fruit smoothies to drink, even though she’d never tasted them before. So we at least had a decent lunch! She did start to make comments about how we shouldn’t be eating so much “goody goody”, until I asked her, just how often do we do this? Now I wonder if she thinks we should only have food that tastes bad or something. She keeps seeing on TV or whatever, about how this food or that food is “bad” for you, to the point that she’s stopped even buying perfectly healthy food at the grocery store, but replacing them with stuff that isn’t any better, and sometimes worse.
It had been so long since she’d gone to the grocery store, she really needed to stock up. I think her good behavior likely had more to do with how tired she was. Tired enough that she got me to run in to get a couple of things for her from the pharmacy store, rather than go in herself. I got her the 2 things she needed and was done, but if she’d gone herself, she would have walked through the whole store and probably found other things to get!
But, she is well stocked now, and she was more than ready for a rest after I’d put everything away for her. She didn’t even try to guilt trip me into staying longer!
Before I headed home, though, I went back to the grocery store, as my daughter had asked me to pick some things up while I was out. Then I went to the hardware store and talked to someone about that water pipe to the garden tap that’s got a hole in it.
The pictures I took came in handy. After showing them to a staff member, she showed me some options. The problem is, I don’t know what the exact diameter of the pipe is. However, once I know that, I have a plant to fix it, without having to dig up the entire pipe! I can simply cut out the damaged part, and insert the cut ends into a flexible PVC coupling with stainless steel clamps. Once I know for sure what size I need, it can be a very quick and easy fix – and won’t have to dig out the entire length of pipe and replace it!
Though I am curious as to how it switches from the pipe I uncovered, to the hose end that connects to the tap.
She was very very helpful and likely saved me a lot of unnecessary work!
While there, I also picked up some water soluble fertilizer for the garden, which was planned, but also got a 50′ soaker hose, which was not planned, but the price was too good to pass up. I’d been looking at those in the city, and they were typically about twice the price or more – and the one I got wasn’t even on sale! I want to set it up in the bed with the purple corn.
While I was out and about, I got messages from my family. The first was to let me know there was a nice downpour happening – that started just minutes after I left! The next was to let me know it was hailing! Once it was clear, they checked the garden. One of the garden stakes supporting a tomato plant had fallen, but that was all – and the tomato plant was not damaged.
By the time I got back, the storm system had blown over, but the winds are still very high. We’ve reached 18C/64F, which is lower than the predicted high, and temperatures are supposed to start dropping now. Our overnight low is supposed to be 9C/48F, but that’s what it was supposed to be last night, too! Still, we are supposed to creep up to above 20C/68F for the next week or so, so the garden should be okay.
It would be nice if the winds would die down a bit, though. Driving home, I could feel the wind trying to push the car off the road! Oh, that reminds me; in one of the messages my daughter sent me, they had actually watched the top of a dead spruce tree break off. I’m going to have to make sure to check on that when I do my evening rounds.
Oh, there is one more happy bit of news. Last night, we reset things in baby jail, after taking out and washing all the bedding, including the cat cave. This cat cave is like a big bag that is drawn closed at the top with a rope. My daughter managed to wrestle the sides down to fold it in half, so the kittens couldn’t climb up it anymore, and risk them accessing the parts of the cage with wider openings in it.
They also now have a shallow litter pan, and I’ve actually seen a kitten using it! The whole set up is more open, though we can no longer casually reach in to pet the kittens in the cat cave. I look forward to seeing the pet cage the Cat Lady said she picked up for us to use!
The babies are really active and want to explore, so we have to be careful. We’ve changed things up enough that they shouldn’t be able to reach sections of wall where the wire is further apart, but they’re determined little buggers. I don’t want to get up in the night and discover kittens have gotten underfoot! They seem happy and playful, though, so that’s good!
The Cat Lady will be coming for Ghosty and her sibling soon, but I do hope she’ll be able to find homes for the younger ones, and Decimus, after they are weaned, too.
The inside kittens are starting to get very mobile!
This morning, I took them out to run around on the bed for a while.
David came over to investigate.
Then to groom!
David likes the babies. Also, in just a few minutes, he groomed them more than I’ve ever seen Decimus grooming them!
While doing my morning rounds, I remembered to go into the storage house *shudder* to see if I could find something to use as a litter pan for the kittens. I found a stack of broiler pan drip trays that I considered, but ended up choosing a very old, rectangular roasting pan. It has straight sides that are about 2 inches high. Low enough for the kittens to climb over, but high enough to keep the litter in. I hope!
I heard from the Cat Lady last night. They got back from their trip, but came home to a kitty that got hand, foot and mouth disease while they were gone, so they’ve already had to go to the vet. He might lose an eye to it, and he’s got sores all over inside his mouth. Poor thing!
Once they deal with stuff at home, they’ll need to go to their cottage to assess storm damage that happened while they were gone, too. That’s a lot closer to us, so she plans to come by to pick up Ghosty and her sibling (who got some eye washing this morning), and drop off stuff for the cats. She did a lot of couponing while in the US and found a metal pet cage for us. It’s a smaller one, she says, but big enough for cats, so we won’t have to use baby jail anymore.
Which would be very useful. The kittens are starting to climb a lot more, and reaching the second level. The metal wire squares that make up some of the walls, plus the door, have larger openings that the kittens can easily fit through. A new cage where they can’t climb through the walls will be much appreciated!
The outside kittens were also out and about. As I was finishing up and preparing to go back inside, I spotted this.
One of the mamas had brought the babies a present!
So I went in through the main doors instead of the sun room!
I’ve been seeing the mamas bringing mice for the babies more often. Last night, while I was checking on some banging noises outside (fire crackers, not gun shots), I came into the sun room for a moment. I heard a kitten making a very strange, deep sounding growling noise from behind the inner door. I tried to see what was going on and found two kittens. One, the younger tuxedo, ran off, but he was the source of the strange growl. After a bit of effort, I could finally see the front of him and why he was making such a strange noise. He was trying to growl while clutching a mouse in his teeth!
The yard cats are most definitely earning their keep!
Oh! I hear thunder coming closer. Time to shut down the computer!
While doing my morning rounds for the past while, I’ve been able to snack on the occasional early pea pod. This morning, there were enough of them that I went and got a container to harvest them!
Not a large harvest, by any means. Basically, enough for one person – but it’s the real harvest, so I’m happy!
I’m glad I broke out the riding mower and mowed as much as I did yesterday. I got most of the area round the main garden beds. The rest out there is so rough, I’ll be using the push mower or weed trimmer. I also got the East yards done. The West yards have some things than need to be moved or trimmed first, that I left for today. Which might not happen, as the grass it now too wet. Last night, it rained off and on. Not enough to fill the rain barrel, but enough to give the garden a good watering.
But was it enough to do this?
One of the Black Beauty tomatoes got knocked to the ground. The stem is quite dry at the end, so it could have even happened yesterday. I suspect it wasn’t the rain that knocked it down, but a cat.
I picked it and now it’s sitting in the living room, in hopes it will continue to ripen.
The first African Drum gourd, in the main garden area, has started to bloom!
I don’t know that we’ll have enough growing season left for these. I tried starting them early enough indoors compensate for that, but these are among the ones that were sown a second time. The first ones that survived are at the chain link fence and, while they have been blooming for a while, there are still no female flower. Even the Crespo squash, which have also been blooming for a while, are almost all male flower. There were two female flower buds that started to form, but the first one wizened and fell off rather quickly, and now the second one looks like it’s doing the same.
Some of the winter squash are starting to show flower buds, though, which is encouraging. What’s discouraging is that the very few summer squash that are just germinating now seem to still get eaten by the slugs. They definitely prefer those freshly emerged leaves! Yes, I scattered out more cornmeal, but the rain washed that away.
I also quickly transplanted the one lemon cucumber that germinated. I ended up planting it in the mulched bed behind the compost heap, where we had ground cherries last year. I’d planted the three Ozark Nest Egg gourds along one side of that bed, but it looks like there’s only one left. For some reason, the cats really like to use the grass clipping mulch as a litter – but only where there is an open area around a seedling or transplant!
Anyhow.
The lemon cucumber is now right in the middle of the bed, with plenty of room to grow. If it survives, I’ll add something for it to climb.
We had another cold night last night, for this time of the year. Temperatures dropped to 6C/43F. It’s coming up on noon as I write this, and we’ve warmed up to 21C/70F, with an expected high of 23C/73F. I made sure to get outside to do my morning rounds a bit earlier, as we got word that my brother and his wife were coming out with the repaired riding mower, and it was just beautiful out.
Of course, I was checking all the garden beds, and saw so many of these…
A lot of the purple corn seem to have exploded with tassels emerging, overnight! I had expected them to get much taller, first. I may have made a mistake in choosing pole beans to plant with them, instead of bush beans! 😄
I also was able to pick a handful of the wild-ish raspberries growing around the old compost pile. Until this year, I would usually find enough to nibble on a few while doing my rounds, but not usually enough to be worth picking. They’re just starting to ripen now, and I’m already finding more than before – and that’s just in this patch. There are still the raspberries growing wild in other areas that we can pick from.
I even found a couple of fully ripe pea pods to nibble on, and some Saskatoons. The peas will have more ready to pick soon. So will the Saskatoons, if we can stay ahead of the birds! Even the sour cherry tree by the house is starting to ripen.
When I later put the washed raspberries on the kitchen counter, I had a good laugh. My daughters can be so silly at times! Last night, my younger daughter made mint syrup for the first time, and set it aside on the counter to cool, with a Post It note to let everyone know what was in the bowl.
Her sister added to the note…
Too funny!
My brother and his wife came out in their truck; the riding mower fits quite well in there. Once it was out, he showed me the things he replaced and repaired, and some of the things he found. There was one wire connector, for example, that he found was completely off. Which means the mower blade could not be lowered. Even if the chain he replaced was working, we couldn’t have use the mower! I have no idea when or how that happened, because the last time I tried to use it was right after it had had the chain put back on. The chain immediately fell of, so I never got to a point where I’d have tried to engage the mower.
He replaced the seat. I didn’t even think it needed replacing, but he explained it to me. It seems there was some video of me he’d watch, riding around on the mower, and the bottom of my sweater was on the top of the mower – a part that spins! This seat has a back on it, so that won’t happen anymore.
He’d replaced the battery cables and the corroded connectors, and they are now covered with a protective grease. He also found a new battery holder. That was one of those things where I’d seen something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. There was a vertical metal bar that was wobbling around. I knew it should be attached to something, but couldn’t figure out what. It turns out it was one of the bars that held a plastic piece that was supposed to be holding the battery in place. There was no sign of the plastic piece. It was held in place with a couple of nuts and washers. This is something that can only be seen if the seat and cover are lifted. How or when the plastic piece fell off, I don’t know, but it had to have been fairly early on, because I have zero memory of ever seeing it there in the first place.
After showing all the changes to me and my younger daughter, who’d joined us by then, he started it up and tested it out on the outer yard grass before driving it into the garage.
As for their mower, the best I could do was make sure the tank was full, have it out and ready for them to load, and clean it off. They were happy to get their mower back. It’s slightly narrower and can store in their garage – ours was too wide! It’s also too wide to fit between some of their trees, so they couldn’t use it for that, either.
I am so thankful that my brother was able to do all this for us. He’s so sweet!
Once done with the mowers, we did a “tour” of things. They checked out inside the shed with the roof that collapsed; there’s still quite a bit of stuff in there, and my brother even borrowed the wheel barrow so he could move some of it to the barn, so it wouldn’t be exposed to the weather anymore. He was able to identify some of the things in there, including some things that really had me wondering why they are there at all – they are for equipment that the farm has never had! My SIL found some ripe cherries to try out, and we all got to snack on Saskatoons. She’d never had them fresh off the tree before, and loved them. They planted a Saskatoon bush at their place, but it’s too early to be producing yet.
We talked a bit about some of the trees we need to deal with. The elm in front of the kitchen really needs to come down, but that is one for the professionals, as are the dead spruces closest to the house. The cost is prohibitive, though. My brother, being the sort of person he is, just sort of took off suddenly and went on the roof to empty the eaves toughs. While there, he checked out the elm tree, which has branches overhanging the roof. At the very least, those need to be cut back, so they don’t damage the nice new shingles!
Altogether, we had a wonderful time, wandering around the yards and chatting about what we’ve been doing, what needs to be done, and what we’d like to do.
They had another surprise for us, though that will be brought out later. They found themselves with an air conditioner they’d bought for someone else, but is no longer needed. It’s been used for only a year. They have central air and don’t need it themselves, so they will be gifting it to us. It’s not the kind that fits in a window, though. It’ll need to be installed in a wall, and near a 3 prong outlet. We have a limited number of those. My brother walked around the house, talking to my daughter about where to install it. It was decided there was no way to install it upstairs and be able to plug it in. It also can’t go into any of the log walls. Since we have cat proofed the living room, that’s where it will be installed. So we will have to do some rearranging in there… again… in preparation for that.
It won’t be the most efficient location for air conditioning, but it’ll still make a world of difference!
They are so awesome!!!
So now I’m looking forward to using the riding mower around the main garden area. I didn’t want to use their riding mower for that, because it’s so rough, I was paranoid about breaking their machine.
I think today would be a great day to finally get that done! Or at least started. 😊
I was feeling well enough to do my evening rounds. In fact, I feel as though I was never sick in the first place! Bizarre!
One of the first things I did was catch Ghosty’s sibling, and my daughter and I gave it a face wash.
Its eyes weren’t stuck, but there was a lot of crud around one of them, and its nose was partially blocked, so my daughter cleaned it up as much as the kitten could tolerate while I held it. This kitten is starting to get used to being handled, and doesn’t run away like the other kittens. It even comes right up to me, sometimes, and lets me pet it.
While checking the garden, I spotted this beauty.
The Black Beauty tomatoes have a lot more tomatoes forming than seems obvious, at first glance. Some of the stems are so dark, it’s hard to see the dark tomatoes against them. This one, however, is so dark, and was shining in the sun! What gorgeous tomatoes!
I tended to a few things from this morning, including reopening the gate by the fire pit, and using the bucket of water I’d left for the cows to water the Korean pine. Two of the Korean pine wire covers had been knocked off. They’re just held in place with ground staples. I’m going to have to find something better to hold them in place, so they don’t get knocked aside so easily.
I was puttering around the kibble houses before going inside, hoping to lure some playful kittens closer, when I spotted … a new kitten?
My apologies for the picture quality, but I didn’t dare come any closer, so this is zoomed right in from across the yard.
That is a rather large kitten!
Usually, then the mamas bring the kittens to the house, they are old enough to be weaned, or close to it, and able to start eating solid food. The tiny tuxedo that showed up first is the oldest; the others still have blue eyes.
This kitten looks much larger and older than any of the kittens around the house. It looks almost “teenager” size! I’ve never seen it before. It makes me wonder that the mother didn’t bring it to the kibble house earlier!
I’m glad we kept up leaving food so far from the house for cats that aren’t ready to come closer. We have a couple of kibble bowls further from the house, but this one has more shelter under the spirea, and is more popular with the kittens.
We are expecting to see more kittens show up at the house throughout the summer, but younger kittens, not an older one!
I actually took this photo yesterday. I haven’t taken any today.
This morning started out pretty normal. There were just a couple of things that had me wondering, as I did my morning rounds. For example, some of the slug trap jars were out of place, by quite a bit. I checked every squash plant for slugs (found only one!), and there were three of the jars knocked off the mulch and into the paths.
Later, while passing through the maple grove, I went to check on the pipe from the tap. I’m thinking we might be able to just patch the hole, rather than dig up the entire line. The bamboo stake I used to mark the location of the pipe and hole was snapped off at ground level.
It wasn’t until I was taking some fallen branches to the pile near the fire pit that I discovered the cause.
There was a cow on the wrong side of the outer yard fence! The entire herd was there, but one was most definitely not on the side was was supposed to be.
I sent a message to the renters to let them know, then closed off the gates to the inner yard. When I came back with a bucket to fill with water for the cow, as there is no open water source in the outer yard, I spotted a couple more cows – and possibly some calves, mostly hidden by the tall grass! A trail of cow patties by the fire pit gate, leading towards the yard, confirmed that at least a couple of cows had gone into the inner yard during the night. Thank goodness, they didn’t eat anything in the garden!
I sent an update to the renter and she said she would be there soon. I was quite relieved that she even looked at my messages, since we are connected through Facebook Messenger, but haven’t use it since before my account got stolen. I wasn’t sure if she knew I’d recovered it or not.
Next, I went to check the “gate” by the barn, where the cows often sometimes get through. The chain across it was still there, but one of the poles supporting the electric fence was down, and the wire was clearly broken somewhere, and was lying on the ground for as far as I could see.
I popped inside for a while and had a quick breakfast. When I could hear cows suddenly mooing, I headed outside again. The renter had come over in their utility vehicle – with her littlest one along for the ride! – and was by the gate in the fence leading towards the gravel pit. It’s a barbed wire gate, and a pain to open, but she had it down by the time I was crossing the outer yard in that area. At that point, I could see there were quite a few cows on the wrong side of the fence, and they were very curious about what was going on. I went around in one direction, so they’d move towards the opening, while she went around the other way. Unfortunately, one of the cows panicked, and that set them all off. The herd outside the fence stampeded off towards the gravel pit, and the ones inside the fence began panicking even more, trying to find their way through. A couple of cows found and went through the open gate, but at least one cow and a couple of calves barreled their way through the barbed wire fence. Then one last cow went and ran in the opposite direction. We got her going back again, but she wouldn’t go for the open gate. She eventually went through an opening in another part of the fence, which normally has the electric wire across it.
We got the gate closed again, but a couple of lines of barbed wire were loose. She brought out a fence tightener she’d grabbed on her way out, but it turned out to be broken. Her husband usually does this stuff, but there was some sort of accident involving a fence on another section of property he was dealing with, and he probably had the working tightener.
Thankfully, we have some. I’ve found at least 3 of them, and 2 of them were in the garage, so I went and got them. The first one we tried worked, and now I know how those things are used! It was the first time I’d seen one in action.
Once that was done, I went to put the tighteners away while she checked the fence line, so see how many fence posts would need to have the barbed wire re-stapled to them, and the status of the electric fence wire.
We continued to check the fence from both sides, though there were some sections I couldn’t get at, as it’s so overgrown. I even commented about how I don’t mind the cows getting through, because they can eat the overgrown grass we can’t mow, and how I wouldn’t mind borrowing a couple of cows for that. I’d said that to her husband, when he was her last, and they actually wouldn’t mind that, except that we have no way of knowing what might be buried in there that a cow might eat or hurt themselves on. Which is completely understandable!
While I was working my way around piles of stuff on our side of the fence, the renter found a broken end of electric fence wire, but there was no side of the other end.
The section of fence that is open is by the septic outflow pipe, which is on the outside of the fence line, near a collapse log building on the inside of the fence line. There used to be fences around the entire area where the outflow pipe and a low section it drains into is, but those fences have fallen down long, long ago. The only think keeping the cows out there is the electric fence. That’s where we found where they got in; the tall grass was all tramples and the electric fence wire had been dragged far into the outer yard. There wasn’t enough slack for her to connect them again, so she was going to have to get more tools and supplies.
I went inside and intended to go back out again to help later on, along with doing a number of other outdoor tasks on my list, now that we’re having such gorgeous weather right now. Unfortunately, that plan went out the window, when I was suddenly hit with a bout of severe intestinal discomfort. For several long, uncomfortable hours, I didn’t dare stray far from the washroom. As if that weren’t bad enough, my husband was hit with the same problem, at the same time! We have no idea why, but we were both fighting for the bathroom, and even our daughter’s had to get rushed out a couple of times. I didn’t even dare drive the 3 miles to the post office to pick up a parcel, and had to get my daughter to do it for me.
We seriously need a second bathroom. Yeah, we have the outhouse, but it’s too far from the house for times such as these! Thankfully, whatever it was, seems to have passed and I’m almost feeling stable again.
So plans for today have been thrown completely out the window. Thankfully, I’m feeling stable again – at least enough to do my evening rounds! I was even able to head out and harvest some more mint for my daughter. She decided to use the mint harvested earlier to make a simple syrup, but the longer she cooked it down, the less it tasted like mint, and the more it tasted like sugar. Once the syrup is strained and cooled, she plans to use it to make mint flavoured panna cotta. I’m quite looking forward to it!
Plus, mint will be good for my digestive tract. I just wish I knew why it went crazy in the first place, so I can make sure to avoid it in the future!
Thank goodness, the weather is supposed to stay good for the next week or more!
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 