Well, I finally got my mid July garden tour video done and uploaded. I actually finished it yesterday, but waited to go over it one last time today before deciding it was done. It’s just a plain narration video with very little editing. I hope the video quality is okay.

I’m happy to say that, since this was taken, we do have a couple of white scallop squash growing, though not in the pot and, so far, they are still surviving!

In other things…

We had another loss this morning, but it was a new one. When I went into the sun room to start feeding the cats, I saw something through the window in the old kitchen garden. A little ball of black and white fur. *sigh* Several adults paused to sniff at it, and one or two seemed to try and move it.

Once the kibble was dispersed, I went to look, and it was a very young kitten. Maybe a few weeks old, so not one we’ve seen before. I am thinking it didn’t survive the mother trying to move it. No visible evidence of why it died, though.

I was able to bury it under a rose bush.

It looked like we got a light rainfall some time in the night. Just enough to make things damp, but that’s about it. (I wonder if the rain was a contributing factor re: the kitten…) So I went ahead and watered the garden before the heat of the day hit. As I write this, it is almost 3:30pm, and we’re at 27C/81F. The humidex has us at 31C/88F, and we’re still supposed to get warmer. Even while I was out early with the watering, we broke 20C/86F, having never really cooled down during the night. Yesterday, it was so hot upstairs, my older daughter gave up trying to sleep and went into the living room to be in the AC and ended up passing out on the couch. Today, her sister is crashing on the couch. It isn’t much better on the second floor during the night, when they are up and about, for all their fans and ice packs. Granted, the ice packs are more for their computers than for themselves! For all that the AC helps on the ground floor, it really doesn’t do much for their “apartment” upstairs. Especially with the high humidity.

Well, we do the best we can. Among the things the girls have been doing is the bulk of the dishes and the cooking at night, so it doesn’t have to be done during the hottest part of the day, which I greatly appreciate!

They were still doing some cooking when I finished the watering this morning, then grabbed a bowl to pick some raspberries and a bunch of the small strawberries. We don’t have a lot of raspberries, relatively speaking – most of the bushes are first year canes – but they ripen so quickly, they can be picked twice a day. I am thinking it would be good to prepare a place to transplant some of them, in the fall. Right now they are basically a big wild mass of plants covering the old compost pile. We were never able to use that compost, after I moved the ring out. When I started digging into it, I found it was filled with tree branches and someone had been using it for garbage. I got the garbage out and just left it to continue to decompose, and the raspberries are taking full advantage of that! We should be able to transplant out a very decent sized raspberry patch, when the time comes. It will be much easier to harvest them in rows than from one giant mass! There are others that are easier to reach, but not being in the old compost pile and getting too much shade from the chokecherry tree, they are much smaller. I’m really not sure why my mother decided to transplant the raspberries from a sunny location into a shady one. This was a flower bed. After we move the raspberries out, I want to convert it back into a flower bed and select shade loving flowers for it. There’s a black currant bush right under the chokecherry tree I want to move out. It bloomed a lot this spring, but I see almost zero berries forming. Currants need at lot more sunshine, but the two large bushes that were here when we moved in were both planted right under trees! Actually, one of them may have been seeded by birds.

While at the farmer’s market yesterday, talking to my cousin, I saw he had red currants for sale and talked to him about it. He told me currants can be propagated by just cutting a branch off and sticking it in the ground. Like a willow, they will take root, just like that! Which is good to know. They need regular pruning, too, which we’ve never done, and I know my mother never did. My sister gave her the currant that’s under the chokecherry, but my mother told me she never ate the berries. She was unfamiliar with them and afraid they were poisonous – as if my sister would give her a poisonous berry bush! I guess my mother thought it was just decorative. Meanwhile, she potted up and grew a cutting from a bush near her place and gave it to me to transplant. She told me she didn’t know what it was, but people in her building were eating berries from the bush, so she took a piece for the farm. I’ve planted it in the south yard, near the chain link fence, finding a spot not shaded by the elm trees or lilacs, and it’s doing really, really well this year. I don’t think it’ll have berries for another year or two, but the plant sure is looking strong and healthy. I had to ask my mother a lot of questions before I got enough information to conclude it was a black currant, too.

Ugh. I’m procrastinating right now. I’ve got stuff to do, but it’s so hot and sticky, I just don’t want to move.

From the state of my bed, neither do the cats. Cat puddles, all over the place!

I will need to make a trip into town, but I want to connect with the Cat Lady, so I’m waiting to hear back from her before I do. It might be a while. I believe she and her family have gone sailing today!

It must be pretty crowded at the beach right now! We should try and remember it exists, and make a trip out during the week, when it’s quieter, and take a dip in the water. Gotta make sure to have water socks, though. Zebra mussels can be very painful to step on.

But I digress.

Come on, Re-Farmer. Get your butt out of the chair and do something productive…

😄😄😉

The Re-Farmer