Month: April 2024

Good grief, what a day!

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Today, I would normally have done our second stock up trip to the city. I did the Costco trip last week, so this week would have been our non-Costco run through several stores all along one route.

With all the running around into town I had to do, however, I was able to take advantage of some excellent sales at the local grocery store. The only things left to pick up are more cat food and litter pellets, and we don’t actually need to do that immediately. Those can also be done in the smaller, nearer city, instead of dealing with the big city traffic. I was thinking of leaving the trip until later in the month.

Then yesterday’s flood happened.

We need to replace that old, metal blower fan in the basement with something safer and more efficient.

I had looked at one in Costco last week for $80 and almost bought it, but decided it could wait another month.

After talking about it with my husband, he decided to try buying it online. He found the same fan on Amazon, but it was over $100, so he went to the Costco website. They had two versions – white and not white. The not-white is what I saw in the store. They were otherwise identical, but the white one was cheaper. Still more expensive than what I saw in the store – about $85 for the white one, almost $90 for the not-white one. So my husband was going to order two of them. The only option was for delivery, though, not in store pick up. Slower, but saving us the gas to drive in.

He couldn’t order it. They don’t ship to postal boxes, and there was no alternative to the mail to have it shipped.

Okay, then, I would just head into the city and buy them direct.

Then I got a phone call.

From my mother.

Of course, she acted as those what happened the last I saw her, didn’t happen at all.

She started off asking how I was doing, but in a tone I recognize to mean “can you do something for me”. I also recognized her “I’m dying” voice.

Sure enough, when I asked how she was doing, she said she was terrible. She started to say how she couldn’t sleep for the past few days – then launched into an attack on my brother. She had called him first, but there was no answer, so she was saying that he blocked her number, or he was ignoring her calls, or he cancelled his number… It was well into the conversation before she finally mentioned that she got a “the customer is not available” automated message.

I had to cut her off and really press to get her to tell me what she was feeling, and what she wanted me to do about it. I finally got her to describe some of her symptoms. Basically, the same ones she’s been complaining about for a while now, but she says it’s worse. She can’t sleep more than an hour.

Aside from talking in circles about a dozen barely related things, she also brought up about wanting to move into the nursing home. She really wants to move into the nursing home, now! My brother told her about her needing to get a doctor to say that’s what she needed, and she mentioned that, vaguely, but she still didn’t quite understand the whole process. I started to get the impression that she thought that if she saw the doctor today, and the doctor authorized it, she’d move in right away. I told her, if she does get the doctor’s authorization, that just puts her on a waiting list. After that, it’s basically waiting until someone died and frees up a bed – and then they work their way through the waiting list.

I think she understood that, but didn’t agree with it, or something. I couldn’t quite get the gist of her thoughts.

Given the time she was calling me, I asked if she wanted me to take her to the emergency, reminding her that if we did, we’d likely be there all night, or to take her to the clinic as a walk-in, tomorrow. She really didn’t want to make the decision, but it eventually came around to, she would try to sleep in her recliner chair tonight, then call me in the morning to let me know how she as feeling.

So much for my trip to the city to get the new blowers.

At least the fans and the old blower we have now has made a big difference. By the time I checked before heading to bed, most of the floor was dry. Dry enough that I could plug in the box fan and not be standing in a puddle! I aimed that one partly towards the root cellar’s open door. The floor there has some odd low pockets that held puddles, but it was mostly dry all around them. I was able to move one of the pedestal fans and aim it right at the low spot of the floor under the counter shelves. Those are slightly elevated, so at least there’s a bit of air circulation under them.

This morning, expecting to get a call from my mother, I didn’t even do my morning rounds. I just fed the outside cats, and stayed close to the phone.

When she didn’t call by about 9 or 9:30, I called her.

She did actually sound a bit better, but she was still wanting to go to the clinic. She was getting ready. We talked a bit more about how she felt. She didn’t sleep in the recliner; she couldn’t get it to recline more than a tiny bit, and it was too uncomfortable, so she stacked up pillows to sleep more upright. It helped. The more she talked about how she felt, the more it seemed to me that she was having really bad indigestion. With the stuff going on in her building, that could easily be a stress response, too. Since she was clearly doing better, I suggested trying Pepto before bed and giving it another night. She didn’t have any and wasn’t sure what I was talking about, but she wanted to go to the clinic. She was even packing a bag, in case she was admitted to the hospital.

I told her that I could call the clinic ahead of time, so they’d know to expect her, before we left her place. After I got off the phone, though, I went ahead and called the clinic sooner.

It’s a good thing I did.

My mother’s doctor doesn’t work this clinic on Tuesdays, but the clinic, which is in the hospital building, was down to only one doctor today, and she was all booked up. They couldn’t do walk ins. There wasn’t even a doctor in the ER. The clinic and the hospital were down to this one doctor!!! There would be a doctor available tomorrow, though.

My mother wasn’t going to the clinic today.

When I asked about alternatives, the receptionist mentioned a quick care clinic in the nearer city. I wasn’t sure my mother would be up to that, so I called her before looking it up.

She was surprised that there were no doctors at the hospital and just one in the clinic, and I had to explain to her, there just aren’t enough doctors.

In the end, she decided she was willing to wait until tomorrow, though I will phone the clinic again, before I head to her place.

This meant, however, that I could go to the city, after all.

So I offered to swing by, pick up some Pepto, and bring it to her to try. Just in case. At worst, it won’t do anything at all. When she found out I was going to be going to the city anywhere, and wouldn’t be making a special trip, she agreed.

When I got there, even though she knew I was on the way to somewhere else, and said I would stay long enough to explain the directions to her, she still expected me to sit and stay. I told her, I was going to be doing plenty of sitting in the drive to the city! We went over the instructions, and she even took some right away, as she was planning to rest.

She was actually looking and sounding much better. Even between the two earlier phone calls, she sounded better.

Oh, there was one other thing, though… After all the phone calls I made, I got another one – this time from the person with senior’s support that had visited my mother for an evaluation not long ago. She had promised to follow up with me, after she filed her report.

In a nut shell: there are two question-tests she does in these visits. One is for the “big stuff”. This is where they determine if someone might start doing things like forgetting the stove on, wander off, or start forgetting who the people are around them. There was pretty much no change at all in that area, which I was sort of expecting. The other is for the “little stuff” – and for these, there was a substantial decrease. This is the area where we were noticing issues. So we talked about that for a while, and there are medications for cognitive improvement that can be prescribed (the report was sent to my mother’s doctor as well as the doctor they work with), but my mother is already messing with her pills now, because she’s taking soooo many pills (she isn’t), and would likely refuse to take any new medication. I mentioned about her now wanting to move to the nursing home, and we talked about that for awhile. It can definitely be a help for her. Especially when it comes to making sure she takes her medications.

So the cognitive issues of concern I’ve been noticing have been confirmed, and we are already taking what would have been the next steps, anyhow.

Anyhow.

After dropping by my mother’s, I made the trip to Costco to get the blower fans – with turned out to be cheaper than I remember from last week! They were $75 each.

I am so happy with them!

They’ve got 10′ cords (the old blower fan’s cord is barely a foot long), and can be plugged into each other in a series, if desired – or something else can be plugged into them. They have four positions they can be set at, and three power settings for the fan. They automatically shut off if they start to overheat, and have a reset button.

Both of them are now aimed at the stairs, and maximum settings. One mostly at the bottom steps, which are the wettest, while the other is blowing into the corner under the steps; the first area water was pooling at, and still one of the wettest areas.

The old blower fan is now unplugged. I left it otherwise untouched so the motor can cool down, before I try picking it up to set it aside, into retirement!

What a day it’s been!

I’ve got no idea how things will turn out tomorrow, with my mother. I’m really hoping she’s feeling better because, honestly, I don’t think any doctor’s visit or hospital stay can help her. She has too hard of a time explaining her symptoms, skips things, conflates things and, if I have to be honest, I strongly suspect she’s more interested in the attention than anything else! She’s cried wolf too many times in the last few years. It’s not that I think she’s faking her symptoms, but more that she doesn’t understand them and is making assumptions based on what she wants the problem to be, and wants other people to do something about it. No idea what. Just “something”. We’re all supposed to be able to magically know exactly what her problem is and fix it, and she sometimes gets quite angry when we aren’t also mind readers, knowing exactly what she means to say, even when she doesn’t say it. Very frustrating!

Meanwhile, it’s the time of year when we have the most work to do outside, that we need to get done when the weather is good. My brother, for example, didn’t get her call because he and his wife were outside doing yard work. He did eventually get through to her after she spoke to me, but that didn’t make her any happier. These days, he can’t do anything right by her, and it’s really starting to get to him. *sigh*

Ah, well. It is what it is. We do what we have to do, and that’s all there is to it.

I just wish it wasn’t so frustrating at times!

The Re-Farmer

Oh, man, when I screw up…

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… I don’t go half way.

With the issues we’ve been having, we’ve made a point of using the biological drain maintenance stuff regularly. Mostly, it’s through the toilet or the bath tub. The kitchen sink isn’t done as often, since that section of the main drain got augered last year. More rarely, we do the drain for the washing machine. That one is more because of how the drain and taps are protected by a 2×4 box with a shelf above. Putting anything down that drain requires the use of long, flexible funnel.

With plans to do laundry today, I remembered to pour some of the drain maintenance stuff into the washing machine drain last night.

This morning, after making my trip to the post office, I started a load of laundry, then started working other stuff while my daughter started doing the litters. Since we use stove pellets as litter, it goes into buckets that gets dumped into its own compost pile behind the outhouse.

I heard my daughter head to the main entry to put the first full bucket outside, which got interrupted by an alarmed exclamation.

The entry way was flooded!

This is what happened when the main line was blocked before. It could handle the slow drain of a kitchen sink, but not the fast drain of a washing machine, so the water backed up the drain and all over the floor. This time, though, there was way more water than before! How could the drain have blocked so badly??

While my daughter went for the mop, I sloshed my way to the basement, where I could get the extra sump pump hose. Water was pouring down the stairs, and there were huge puddles all over the concrete floor.

I found the hose, though. This is what we used before, attaching the drain from the washing machine to the hose, and running it out the window on the storm door, which is missing its screen.

As I was preparing to set that up, pausing the washing machine, I suddenly realized…

There was no hose in the drain pipe.

When I took it out to pour the maintenance stuff into the drain, I forgot to put the hose back. At some point a cat must have knocked it behind the machine.

The load was about 3/4 done, which means there was at least two drain cycles that had gone completely onto the floor behind the washing machine.

I pulled the hose up from behind the washing machine and put it in the drain pipe.

*sigh*

So my daughter and I have just spent the last couple of hours mopping up the mess, filling mop buckets repeatedly. We got the bulk of it out of the entry way, then I left her to that and started on the basement. My daughter did set the hose up to drain out the window, though, before restarting the laundry, just in case.

As for the basement…

Well, it sure does show us how uneven the floor is down there!

The root cellar is directly under the entryway, and a lot of the water flowed into there. From there, it flowed to one side of the middle of the basement.

The side where there are counter shelves on the floor, of course.

Since we don’t let the cats down there anymore, I’d moved the screen barrier between the new and old basements. After much mopping and several runs up the stairs to empty the mop bucket outside, I went to turn on the light switch near the opening between the two basements, and discovered water had flowed along the wall and into the old basement, too!!

That basement doesn’t have weeping tile, so it’s set up for wet. There wasn’t enough to bother doing any clean up there.

Once I got to the point where it wasn’t practical to keep mopping up the water, and there was no way we could get to the water pooled along the wall, it was time to set up fans. We have the blower fan that’s used to keep the old basement floor dry – not a problem this year, since it’s too dry – as well as a couple of pedestal fans. Those are now set up where the floor is still dry, aimed at the wet areas. I also brought down a box fan and set it up so it could blow towards the new basement stairs – they have carpet nailed to them, so we really need to get that dry! We have extension cords set up all over the place, all hanging from the ceiling, but I wasn’t willing to plug in the box fan yet, since I would have to stand in a puddle of water to do it! I’d like to find another fan and set it up, facing the root cellar, too.

I also got the Styrofoam insulation out of the basement windows to open them up and allow more air circulation. Only one still has a screen, though. I opened the south facing one, just a crack, but the second east facing one not only doesn’t have a screen, but the plastic part on the glass that is pulled on to slide the window open is basically disintegrated. Since I wasn’t about to move out the shelf that’s under the window to fight with it, I left it be.

With the nights still chilly, we haven’t switched the old basement winter window to its summer screen window, but I might just have to do that early!

What. A. Mess.

Meanwhile, the package my husband was expecting wasn’t among the 4 I brought home – one of which was for my daughter. We finished in time for me to change out of my wet clothes and start another load of laundry, before heading back to the post office to see if the postmaster had processed it, yet.

I’m happy to say that at least that went well. His package was there – along with three others that came in early!

So for the next while, we’re going to have to keep checking on the basement and the fans. I’m not happy using that old blower fan. I imagine it’s something that was acquired through salvage somewhere. The cord to plug it in is clearly not original, and it starting to look old and worn to me. So does the motor itself, to be honest. Costco has industrial blowers at a really good price. They are also plastic, not metal. Since we’re using them for wet floors, I’d much rather not be using a metal fan! We might have to invest in a couple.

We’ll have to set up a fan in the entry way. My daughter was able to mop up quite a bit, but not move the washer and dryer out. There just isn’t much space in the entry.

All because I forgot to put a hose back into the drain pipe.

What a mess I made!!

The Re-Farmer

Morning beauty, first garlic, and apparently, I’ve been hardening off wrong.

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First, the cuteness!

I counted 28 yard cats this morning, and Driver was really wanting attention, following me the entire time I did my rounds. I even picked him up a couple of times, though he didn’t like it much and quickly jumped back down – then demanded more pets!

Of course, I’ve been checking the garlic beds daily. I spotted what might have been our very first garlic, maybe 2 days ago, in the tiny raised bed. It’s now big enough that I can be sure that it is, indeed, a garlic sprouting. Today, I could finally see more emerging.

This one is in the long, rectangular bed closer to the house. The last garlic cloves were planted all down the middle of it. The first ones in the bed along the retaining wall are starting to show, and I think I even saw one or two in the short part of the wattle weave bed. In the long part of the bed, I’m seeing fresh green leaves from some of the strawberries we started from seed, too.

Of course, I checked on the trays and bins of transplants that spent their first night in the sun room. They are all exactly as I left them; no cats (or racoons, or skunks) have gotten into them. While the outside temperatures dropped to just below freezing, the sun room’s thermometer stayed hovering around 10C/50F. Our living room, where they were moved out from, typically stays around 15C/59F during the day, so while the overnight temperatures may be cooler in the sun room, they’re going to get a lot warmer during the day. I’ll have to remember to turn the ceiling fan on for at least a few hours.

Doing a quick look and video channels I follow while having my breakfast, I enjoyed this new one from MI Gardener, about hardening off transplants.

I’ve been doing it wrong, of course. 😄

Actually, what I’ve been doing is closer to how he describes in the video, mostly because it’s such a pain timing things to bring them in and out. The main problem I have is that the only accessible and level space we have that also allows us to keep the cats out, is right outside the sun room. Which means the transplants are getting that peak period of sunlight in the middle of the day, and are at risk of getting sunburned – something that happened to quite a few tomatoes transplants, last year. We did make use of the old market tent to keep some of them shaded at the hottest part of the day. Ideally, we’d put them on the East side of the house, but it slopes quite a bit on that side. The West side has the old kitchen garden. The North side gets no sun. So that leaves the south side.

This year, though, I might be able to set things up across the yard, so the transplants can be shaded by the willows and white lilacs during peak sunlight hours.

We’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, I was just informed that a package is in at the post office, so I’m off to get it, before they close for a few hours at lunch time.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: making room, and starting melons

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We got some progress with our transplants today!

We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.

As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.

All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.

The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.

Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.

The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.

For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.

The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.

The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.

I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.

The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!

The Re-Farmer

Morning finds!

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Doing my morning rounds this time of year can be so much fun.

Of course, all year, I get to play with the yard cats.

Well. The ones that allow me to, anyhow.

The face Hypotenose is making… too funny!

I even got to pet Broccoli!

You might need to click through to Instagram to see the above video. Some of the boys really fight for attention! Broccoli decided to get in on the action, which was nice. Still not to the point that we’d be able to get her into a carrier and to a vet. I’m trying to think of some way we can isolate her before she has her kittens. She has her nest somewhere in the outer yard, or possible across the road, so we don’t see her kittens until they’re old enough to follow her to solid food. In the past, we’ve used the basement for this, but the set up down there has changed and is going to change some more, so that’s not an option anymore.

We’ll figure something out.

Meanwhile…

Look what I found!

Again, you might have to click through to Instagram to see the photos. Our first snow crocus flower buds have appeared!

We’ve also got a crowd forming in the tulip patch.

I counted at least 21 tulips coming up. Some, I can’t quite be sure if what’s poking through the leaf litter is a tulip plant, or something else.

I can see something has been digging in the leaves, but not into the soil. Skunks will dig for grubs, but there are no divots of soil pulled up, so I’m guessing it’s cats. They can get in and out of the fencing around this patch fairly easily. That’s not much of a problem. We just need to keep the deer out!

As for the day, I forgot something I should have picked up for my husband at the pharmacy yesterday, so I’m going to have to go into town again, after they open at noon. I checked on the remaining pre-germinating Wild Bunch squash seeds, and there are more ready to pot up. Time to get some of the melon seeds pre-germinating, too, and maybe some other winter squash that need the extra time.

Ah, spring is most definitely in the air!

The Re-Farmer

Baking Day

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Today has been a productive day – finally!

While my daughter continued her deep cleaning into the kitchen, I got the truck loaded up for a much delayed trip to the dump. Each day the dump was open, I found myself at my mother’s place with the truck, so it had to wait.

After that lovely rain we had, the gravel roads were a mess and so were the grounds near the pit. I don’t like driving up to the pit. Not only am I always paranoid about backing up too close to the edge, on days like today, the edge is full of garbage people didn’t make the effort to throw further in, which means there’s all sorts of stuff where tires would go. Like the big shard of glass I found as I went around to open the tailgate!

Garbage and recycling properly disposed off, it was too to town and the pharmacy. My husband’s new painkillers at his new dose were already waiting, and I got my own prescription refilled, since I was there.

Then it was a quick trip to the grocery store for a couple of things – plus I was able to take advantage of a couple of good sales – then home. I pulled the truck into the yard and got a daughter to grab the stuff and put them away, while I took a hose to the truck to take off the caked on clay and mud! The main road to our place is really bad in patches, after all that rain. This road is designed for heavier and more traffic than a lot of the other gravel roads, many of which are in even worse condition. I know of at least one person in our municipality’s FB group that is hesitant to take her car through, for fear of getting stuck – and she’s got an infant! Unfortunately, no one in the group could give her any idea of when her road will be worked on. We’ve had a new council since the last election (I forgot it was election day, so we missed the chance to vote), and things have been crazy. Several municipal staff quit, the By Law Officer quit, then just a little while ago, most of the council members also quit. There are no longer enough council members for quorum, so no decisions can be made. The province has had to step in and take over until another election can be arranged, but they haven’t sent anyone over, yet.

As bad as the road we use has gotten, we’ve actually got it pretty good. I don’t even try to take the roads in other directions, knowing they’d be much worse. I’d rather go the long way around – and am thankful I have that option! Having to hose off the truck is a small problem, in comparison.

My daughter, sweetheart that she is, was just finishing cleaning the oven when I was done. Just in time for me to do some baking!

I wanted to do baking, but hadn’t decided what I wanted to bake, so I went through some of my old cookbooks for really basic recipes. I was going through the one we all got given to us in Home Ec class – still one of my favourites – and spotted a recipe for cream puffs, which I haven’t made since I was a teenager, so I decided to go for it.

The cooked part of the cream puff batter, which whips up incredibly quickly, has to cool before the eggs can be added, so while it was cooling, I tried an oatmeal cookie recipe from the same cookbook that I hadn’t baked in years. I couldn’t remember liking them or not, but I’d highlighted there title at some point, so I figured that meant they were good! 😄

The recipe said it would yield 5 dozen cookies. !! I think that was a typo. I got 2 dozen, plus one giant cooking I baked in a small cast iron pan. They spread out really flat. Not the best oatmeal cookies I’ve ever had, but certainly tasty. They were probably meant to be made with quick oats, not the thicksome ones I was using. 😉

Once they were done, I increased the heat for the cream puffs while I beat the eggs into the batter. They bake at 450F for 15 minutes, then at 325F for another 25 minutes.

I had made them smaller before, but the recipe said it yielded 8 large puffs, so today, I made 8 large puffs! Later on, we’ll make some whipped cream to go in them.

Once those were out of the oven, my daughter and I took a late lunch break. Later, I plan to make some basic cupcakes. Last of all, I plan to mix up an overnight no-knead bread dough and set that to rise in the safety of the oven, where the cats can’t get at it. I might make another batch in the bread machine at the same time and leave that to rise overnight, too.

Things outside will probably need another day for the mud to become less of an issue, and I’ll be getting back at working on the garden beds. It’s been a long time since I’ve done baking – my younger daughter is usually the one that does the baking – so I’m taking advantage of the break from outside stuff.

The Re-Farmer

Costco stock up trip: this is what $911 and change, in total, looks like

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Today, we woke up to rain. Not a little bit, either, but a wonderful steady and heavy rain. It’s expected to keep raining through to tomorrow morning, and I am quite happy to see it. Even in the hours it took me to go to the city and back, the leaf buds on the lilacs beside the house have gotten huge!

It wasn’t heavy enough to cause problems with the drive to and from the city, even with reduced visibility, so that was good, too.

Costco was really busy while I was there. Almost weekend level busy! I was in no hurry, though, which was a good thing. They must have just gotten a huge shipment in, because the wider aisles all had rows of pallets down the middle, with barely enough room for a flat cart to get through on either side. Then there were the abandoned carts, and all the people who would just block traffic. I spent a lot of time waiting for things to clear enough to be able to maneuver around with the flat cart. Of course, there are always those who seem to think I can stop on a dime, and cut me off.

*sigh*

I hate shopping.

But, the first stock up shopping trip for May is now done. This is what a total of $911.58 looks like.

The scary thing is, this is almost all our budget for the month, yet this will not last us the entire month, and there’s really nothing there that’s being added to the pantry. Some things, like the paper products, will last us the month, and I did manage to pick up some good deals on protein. Our next trip will be for the fresh stuff that I generally don’t get at Costco, though I did get more of those bagged salads that they have as much cheaper prices than others.

Once at the till, I had the cat food put on a separate bill again.

With the leaky butt issues with the cats, I did not get the Kirkland brand dry cat food at all, and instead got six 11.6kg bags of Whiskas. For dry cat food, those are pretty much the only two options. Kirkland has 2 options, with one being smaller, more expensive bags.

I also got two cases of wet cat food. Each has 48 cans, which puts the price at 78¢ per can.

Grand total for cat food this time: $340.17 after taxes.

Six bags of kibble will probably last us only 2 or 3 weeks.

*sigh*

Then there was the stuff for us.

Among the non-food items, we got facial tissue (on sale), paper towel (with cat clean ups, we go through quite a bit of that) and toilet paper. There’s ibuprofen for my daughters and acetaminophen for me. That, at least, is inexpensive.

For dairy products, I got our usual 5 pounds of butter; I used to get 10 pounds every month, but with the price of butter going up, while the Costco buckets of ghee are still such a good price, we use that instead for many things. Whipping cream is a much better price at Costco, so I got two of those. Then there were the block cheeses (mozza and old cheddar) and soft cheeses (cream cheese and goat cheese).

Among the fresh items were the double bags of salad mixes; each pair of bags is not much higher than the price of one bag, elsewhere. So I got two double bags in two flavour mixes. That’s the one down side. Not a lot of flavour options. I also got a container of cremini mushrooms (the “mini bellas” on the receipt).

I got only one double flat of eggs this time, plus 2 two-packs of rye bread and three packs of tortilla wraps.

Then there was the mayo, peanut butter, strawberry jam, butter chicken sauce, a bag of hazelnuts, a bag of flour and popcorn.

I did grab a decent amount of protein this time, including fish for the girls. Some, like the ribs and the trout fillet, were on sale. I got canned chicken and their 4 pk of bacon, mild Italian sausage, cod fillets, a really nice, big meaty slab of pork belly, and two hot rotisserie chickens.

There were some good deals in there but, with the cat food, it still broke $900.

Ouch.

Then there was the gas. On the way out, I put $30 in the tank, at $1.449/L That brought my tank to half full so, of course, it was below half by the time I got to Costco.

Filling the tank at $1.329/L totaled $75.96, so my total for gas for the day was $105.96

With $911.58 spent at Costco, that brought the total for the day to $1017.54

Ouch.

The scary thing is, due to a “price break” our provincial government extended on the gas taxes, we have probably the lowest gas prices in the country right now. Yup. I just double checked. Our provincial average price is the lowest in the country. The highest provincial average today is $1.978/L in BC. I just took a look at BC prices overall, and the highest price they’ve got today is $2.239!

If we had those prices here, we couldn’t afford to do the driving that we do.

Speaking of which, my husband had a follow up telephone appointment with his doctor about the new pain meds they are trying him on, to replace the ones that aren’t available anymore. He had only 2 weeks of meds for the trial. His dose has been increased, and the doctor sent the prescription to the pharmacy. I didn’t realize when my husband messaged me about it, that I was supposed to pick them up on the way home. So I’ll have to do that, tomorrow.

While making these trips to the city to stock up saves us a lot, they just suck the energy right out of me. It’s only 6pm as I write this, and I’m fighting the urge to just go to bed!

The Re-Farmer

I’m done.

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Just done.

Things started going down last night, with Little Miss Leaky Butt making a mess on my bed.  I changed my bedding and got the first load of laundry started before going to bed.

This morning, I woke to find another mess at the foot of my bed.  A small one, but wet enough to soak through to the mattress cover.

So I take the sheets off, but leave the cover for later, since I was out of clean bedding.  With the price of king size sheets, I don’t have extra spares.  There was just one small damp spot, anyhow.

Then Peanut Butter Cup jumped onto the bed next to me while I was taking my supplements, and aimed her butt at me like a shotgun.

I shooed her away, but she still managed to leave a drip behind!

Meanwhile, my younger daughter had already gone through the dining room on her way to the kitchen, where she discovered Ginger had peed on the dining table.

Unfortunately, the dining table being a flat surface, it had stuff on it.  Some of which had to be thrown away.

So for the next while, we were starting more laundry and more clean up.  I did the litters, and after I left, my daughter continued doing a deep clean.

I left early so I could pick up our order of lysine for the cats, then continued to town.  I picked up a couple of cheap vinyl table cloths, then got a few things at the grocery store.  Including tweezers to dig out the sliver I got yesterday, but didn’t discover until this morning, and antihistamines.  I don’t normally have allergic reactions to anything, but I am definitely allergic to something outside.  Likely tree pollen.

Budget?  What’s that?

*sigh*

I made sure to grab a food for lunch to eat in the truck, then called my mother to let her know I would be early.  She was just starting her own lunch, so that was going to work out.

When I got there, I found she had already started on her apartment, and even pulled some furniture from the wall.  As we were talking, she mentioned that she might stay at a motel for tomorrow night, because my sister suggested it.

Of course, both my brother and I had also suggested it, but my mother does love trying to play us against each other.

Which is how things started going downhill.

First, she started attacking my brother, making all sorts of accusations about how he is after her money (as if she has any worth fighting for!). Then she started defending our vandal, who really is after the millions he believes she has squirreled away.  Then she started playing us against each other, while saying how she just wanted us to all get along.

Of course, I defended my brother, while also pointing out how some of the things she was complaining about were the consequences of her own actions.  She still doesn’t understand how badly she screwed herself up when she stabbed my brother in the back, months ago.

I’m not going to say more about the things she said, but she started getting increasingly vile.

Then she brought my daughters into it. 

My daughters, who were doing a deep clean at home, so I could be at my mother’s to take care of her place, due to the consequences of her own actions.

At which point, I told her, that’s it. I’m done.

Then I left.

So I never got in further than her dining table, just a few feet from her door.

On the way out, I pulled over to email my siblings about the situation, then let my family know I was on my way home, and why.

When I got home, my poor daughter was totally wiped out.  She’d had to scrub on her hands and knees in places, and she wasn’t feeling well in the first place.

Oh, and the power was out.

It just came back as I was writing this.  It was out for about an hour.

What a mess of a day.

I’m done. 

I keep saying I’m done with my mother, too.  I don’t need to put up with her abuse.  Who am I kidding, though?  I’ll still help her out.  Not so much for her, but for my brother.  After what she did to him, he tried to cut her out, but he is too good of a man.  He will always do the right thing, even when it breaks his heart.

I think that, more than anything else, bothers me the most about my mother.  She can’t hurt me anymore, but she sure hurts the ones I love.

The Re-Farmer

Got a bit done (video)

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I had a very rough time getting going this morning, and I’m not sure why. Bad pain day, joints and muscles, and so very sleepy. I got the girls to do my morning routine for me so I could sleep in as much as the cats would allow. Still, I had to do something outside, on this gorgeous day! This afternoon, I picked a smaller job and worked on the garden bed my daughter weeded and prepped for me yesterday. Like the others, it was bowing out where the boards were jointed at a support.

Since posting a lot of photos isn’t an option for me right now, I took the pictures I would otherwise have included here and made them into a short video.

After I was done with the raised bed, I puttered around the yard and enjoyed the day. One thing I decided to do was raise the old market tent higher and secure the corners. Particularly the corners on either side of where it’s broken. At some point during the winter, the canopy supports collapsed, but I couldn’t see why.

I got three legs extended, but the fourth one just would not happen. I even lubricated it and took a hammer to the base plate, but it just would not extend! Meanwhile, even after attaching cords to the other three corners and securing them, the canopy supports kept folding down for some reason.

Which is when I realized the pins at the corners had snapped free of where they were hinged at the corners, and were literally floating free above the legs!

Well, that tent is toast.

We’ll dismantle it and keep the parts and pieces, like the one that had a piece of tree fall on it. We’re still finding uses for those pieces in the garden, so I’m sure we’ll find plenty of uses for these pieces, too. At some point, we’ll pick up another Walmart cheapie. These tents are very handy.

One of the things I want to do is move the home-made folding table that had been sheltered under the tent all winter, closer to the house. It will be used when it’s time to harden off the transplants.

I won’t be able to get much done outside tomorrow, though. I don’t want to start anything then have to leave it when it’s time to go to my mother’s and start bagging things and moving furniture for when the exterminator comes the next day.

Oh! My brother ended up calling me when he had a few minutes at work. He’d actually made it to that funeral my mother had tried to guilt me into going to, even though I really don’t remember these relatives. My brother does, and he hadn’t known about the funeral until we talked about my mother. He went to work super early to get things done, then even booked the time for a meeting he couldn’t miss for when he knew he’d be in the town it was held in – a town north of us! – so he could attend the meeting by phone, from the parking lot. He wasn’t even sure he’d have a cell phone single, but it worked out. He was glad to have been able to go and catch up with a distant cousin. The only down side was, our vandal was there, too. Our vandal has been treating my brother cruelly for many years longer than we’ve been back. My brother is much more tender hearted than I am, so being around our vandal actually made my brother feel ill, even though they had no contact. He wasn’t even sure if our vandal saw my brother among the crowd. Ah, well.

Then we got to talk about my mother, and I found out something disturbing, if not surprising. Not long ago, my mother had proudly told me that she’d skipped all but one of her medications, instead taking the echinacea my sister had brought for her, for her cold. I had quite the talk with her about how potentially dangerous that can be, partly because she’s been on them for so long. I’m also concerned that she isn’t remembering which pill is for what, getting what they are mixed up, and so on. Well, it turns out she’s still doing it, and told my brother about it.

This is on top of her putting her own tenancy at risk by refusing to allow the exterminators in, and accusing them of theft.

We’ve talked to her already about moving away from where she is now, partly because of some of her neighbours messing with her head, partly because our vandal randomly shows up. Mostly, though, she’s going to start needing more help, and there is an assisted living apartment not far from her. However, we’ve also talked to her about going to the nursing home her sister and my father both spent their last years. My mother isn’t at that point, and it would require a doctor’s assessment, first. She’s in favour of living there, when the time comes. The question is, with the things she is doing, is the time coming faster? The added benefit for her living there would be the extra security. If she moves there and our vandal finds out, we can make sure he’s on the list as not being allowed to see her. She would also have access to physiotherapy for those knees of hers, and there’s even a chapel, right in the building. They’d make sure she was taking her medications, having proper meals, and hydrating. If I remember correctly, they even have doctors coming in to see the patients there, instead of the patients having to go to a clinic. I know my father was very happy there. When I made my weekly phone calls to him, he would go on and on about how well they were treating him and taking care of him. But then, my father was someone who told the staff what a great job they were doing, while my mother is the sort that would only complain and find fault.

Still, as she’s messing around with her prescriptions, this is something we need to consider more seriously.

*sigh*

Well, I’ll be seeing her tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully, things will go well though, to be honest, just thinking about it makes me feel overwhelmed. She lives in such a tiny little apartment, but she has so. Much. Stuff. I’m the last person to have any credibility when it comes to that sort of judgement, but I’m not living by myself, with no pets, in an apartment that’s about the size of the room that was her bedroom, here at the farm. The room that is now my bedroom, office and craft room, altogether.

Hhmm… Now that I think about it, this room might actually be a bit bigger than her apartment.

I am not looking forward to tomorrow.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: potting and potting up, and stuff

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Today I was going to be helping my mother with her grocery shopping, so I took advantage of the trip, leaving a bit early to swing by a hardware store. I didn’t find everything I was looking for, but found other things I needed, instead. Then I swung by another store to pick up something for my mother I knew she was intending to skip this time, before finally going to the grocery store. I was intending to pick up a couple of their prepared hot meals that my mother likes so much, for our lunch. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any this time. They did have pieces of hot rotisserie chicken, though, so I got some and other ingredients for our meal. We were running low on kibble again, so I bought an 11kg bag that I hope will last us.

After taxes, it cost $50, which is totally insane.

My mother was happy with what I got her for lunch, which was nice. As we were eating, I kept waiting for her to bring up about the situation with the exterminators coming in at the end of the week. We went over her shopping list, then discussed whether she was up to going to the store with me, or just giving me the list to do the shopping for her. In the end, she decided to stay at home. The local senior’s centre has social activities in her building on Tuesdays, which she loves, and all she needs to do it walk down the hallway to attend.

I finally brought up that we needed to talk. I could tell by the look on her face, she new exactly what I wanted to talk about. It was a look of rather scornful humour that I see way too often. I explained to her that the public housing department is required to do this, and they really could evict her if she doesn’t go along. She kept smirking and scoffing in response, (all this for just one bug?) before bringing up the things she is convinced an exterminator stole from her. Particularly the old passports. She had four of them together, she says, and now there’s just two. I didn’t even think to ask, why would someone not only go digging through her boxes papers to find them, then take only two of them. Particularly since the exterminator is in and out very quickly. I reminded her that she’s accused people of stealing before, only to find the “stolen” item later. It’s entirely possible she decided to put them someplace “safe” and forgot where, as happens to everyone. I also brought up a few things she does that are far more of a safety and security thing than someone using 70 year old passports that look nothing like modern ones to make fake ID, but that just had her going off on a rant that completely contradicted her concerns about “scam people”.

I managed to get the conversation back to the exterminator visit – and found out hers is not the only apartment that’s going to be treated. I took a moment to check my email and found a response from my sister. It turned out she had also suggested that my mother just get a motel room for Thursday night, but she refused. My sister’s house is not very accessible, and my mother didn’t want to stay at her place, anyhow. So my sister was planning to come out at 7am on Friday morning! With that confirmed with my mother, we worked out that I will come out on Thursday afternoon to bag her fabric items and move furniture away from the walls in most of her apartment. My sister will have to do the stuff in my mother’s bedroom when she gets there, since the bedroom is so tiny, it can’t be done in advance and still have space for her to sleep. Plus, of course, her bedding needs to be bagged.

That finally worked out, I headed to the grocery store with her list. As I was getting her stuff, I noticed they had some sale prices on some things that were even better than in the city, and decided it was worth going back, later. I got my mother’s stuff and was at her place just as the social event was being set up and my mother was already in the lounge, so I took care of putting everything away. She didn’t like that I used the main doors (the other people would see her shopping), though. I used them because they have the automatic door openers that I can activate with my knee, rather than putting the bags down and fighting with keys and very heavy doors. After I put everything away, I started going down the hall to the lobby to say my goodbyes, only to have her meet me and tell me to leave out the other doors! 😄😄

Which was fine by me, but I found it very funny.

I went back to the grocery store for the third time (the cashiers were laughing at seeing me again!), got a few things that were sale. I got about $160 of stuff that would otherwise have cost me about $300 at regular prices in the city. More, if they were regular local prices! A quick stop at the gas station, and I was on my way home. I only had one more side trip, as my husband message me to let me know he had a notification that another package had arrived at the post office. As I was getting it, though, the postmaster had another package she hadn’t make a pick up slip for yet.

I love it when packages come in early!

By the time I got home, though, I was totally drained. While I took a break, my younger daughter headed outside to weed the third raised bed in the west yard for me.

With how things have been going, the past few days, I’d neglected to check on the squash seeds that were still pre-germinating. I remembered to check them this morning, and found little squidlings! So once I was done taking a break, I went to get them planted.

Squidlings! 😄😄

I had three 5″ biodegradable pots left from last year, so I used those for the three biggest seeds, and 4″ pots for the rest.

Because the seed leaves were already pushing themselves out of their shells, I planted them so that the leaf portions were partially emerged from the soil.

The previous batch of seeds I planted are still on the heat mat, and I can see little hills forming where the seedlings are starting to emerge, but these ones are far enough along, they don’t need to be on a heat mat. I did set the pots in water, though. The soil was premoistened, as always, but I want those pots to absorb water, so they don’t dry out the soil.

The gourds, meanwhile, have finally been moved to the mini greenhouse frame in the window.

The next thing that needed to be done was to pot up the early peppers from their tiny tray.

Yes, one pot looks completely empty. There was one cell that I didn’t think had any peppers germinating, but two seedlings started to show up this morning. I wasn’t going to leave just one cell in the tray, so I transplanted the stronger looking one, with as much of the soil around it as I could include. It’ll probably not survive being potted up, but you never know!

Most of the cells had just one seedling in them, but a few had two, and one had three. I thinned them to have just four seedlings (including the one that you can barely see in the vermiculite) per variety. With the hot peppers we already have, plus the Sweet Chocolate peppers, we have way more than we need, and can afford some losses.

At this point, we have pretty much run out of space in the living room for seedlings – and we don’t have anywhere near as many as we started last year! Tomorrow is supposed to be a warm and dry day, so I’m planning on snagging a daughter to help me empty the sun room, clean up the messes the critters left for us over the winter, then set things up for the transplants. The sun room is staying warm enough overnight that I think it’s safe to start moving them out of the living room set up.

Looking at the 10 day forecast, I’m seeing days forecast with highs above 20C/68F! At those temperatures, the sun room will probably be hitting closer to 30C/86F, so if we are we are able to start putting transplants there this week, we will have to make sure to have the ceiling fan going, and the doors wide open during the day.

The bed my daughter weeded today is also bowing out at the sides, to I’m hoping to fix that, tomorrow, then work some sulfur into the soil.

Oh, that reminds me; while at the hardware store, I found they had a sulfur powder available. This can apparently be dusted directly onto the plants, or added to a watering can, rather than being worked into the soil like the granular stuff we got. That might be worth getting later on, but I want to see how the beds do with the granular sulfur worked into the soil, first. Getting a bale of peat would be higher on the priority list right now, though.

For all the running around I was doing today, at least we got a few things accomplished at home, too!

The Re-Farmer