I’ve definitely been running around too much, over the past while.
With the trips to the city, I haven’t been doing as much physical labour, but I’m still in a lot of pain. Mostly the OA joint pain, but it’s definitely more of a mental fatigue than a physical one.
I headed out early today to do the morning watering. I didn’t need my older daughter to help out this time, nor was my younger daughter heading out with me, so they got to do some catching up on stuff in the house, instead.
My younger daughter was going to get the lawn mowing done as much as she could, in the heat. So, just riding mower stuff! We will just need to do the areas that can only be reached with either the push mower or the weed trimmer, later on.
I picked up some of my mother’s favourite fried chicken and potato wedges for our lunch today, so we had a relaxed visit over food, first. She was having one of her better days, behaviour wise, which made it much more pleasant! After that, we went over her shopping list. I spotted some gaps and asked a few questions, and did end up adding a couple of things to her list, too.
Before I headed out, I changed her bedding for her, so she could lie down while I was gone. She is really having a much harder time moving around her apartment of late. For all the heat, she’s also been finding herself getting cold!
I hit a couple of stores to get her shopping list done. It wasn’t a large list, but still came out to over $90. That’s just for one person for a week, and she has Meals on Wheels three times a week!
After her groceries were put away, I did some light housekeeping for her, then headed out. I made a brief stop at the hardware store, hoping to find some buckets in smaller sizes than 5 gallons, or watering cans. There weren’t any in the store, but I did remember to get handles to attach to the isolation shelter, to make it easier to move around, and caps for the end of the emergency septic pump bypass, so we can close that off and finally set aside the last of the outside parts of the emergency bypass.
The hardware store did have their garden centre section open, so I checked it out. I did find watering cans there, but only got one, as the price was pretty steep. I also spotted some lovely looking sage transplants and picked up two. There’s just enough room in the tiny raised bed, with the other herbs, for them.
All of this took long enough that, when I got home, it was already time to do the outside cat feeding, so I took care of that right away. A couple of kittens needed eye washing, and I changed out the ice packs in the sun room cat cage, for Poirot and her babies.
It’s barely past 5pm as I write this, and I am so drained, I’ll be heading to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done supper. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, and then we’re going to cool down a touch for the next while. I’m hoping to get the rest of the transplants in, and maybe even get the direct sowing done. I noticed this morning that some of the Spoon tomatoes have started to show flower buds!
This is what WP’s AI image generator thinks I look like. 😄
At some point, I need to edit my May garden tour video, too. I decided to keep the video files I took, back on the 21st, and here we are, last day of May, and it still hasn’t been put together!
Little by little, it’ll get done.
I just wish there weren’t so many distractions pulling me away, at times!
With another trip to the city planned for today, I got my older daughter to help we water the garden and trees this morning, while things were still cooler. Much to my surprise, things actually looked damper than with just the morning dew. Then I spotted the turnip leaves in the high raised bed. It looks like we got a touch of rain last night!
All of these larger leaves had drops of water around their edges. Nothing else. I guess these ones had just the right “pockets” for it!
My younger daughter and I headed out later in the morning, making a stop at a gas station just outside of town, about 15 minutes away, to pick up some energy drinks for the road. While there, we decided to get a car wash, too. I figured, it was a good time to do it, while there’s no box cover.
The car wash couldn’t quite get all the gravel dust out of the corners of the box. 😄
By the time we got to the city, it was lunch time, so our first stop was at a mall near the Costco for food, then a stop at the Dollarama. I was looking for more buckets or watering cans to replace the ones we’ve been using. The buckets with plastic handles I’ve been using to water the walnut tree/seeds all have broken handles now. I had one small bucket with a metal handle that I’ve been using in the food forest area, and the bucket itself is breaking apart. These are all buckets I found around the property, so they predate us living here, and are either so old, or so exposed to the elements, that the plastic has become brittle and is breaking up.
Both the buckets and watering cans we found were too small, but we did find some other things. For the garden, I picked up 10 wire tomato cages that will go over the pepper and eggplant transplants – I’ll need at least 8 more. My daughter found another sparkly baseball cap that she got for my collection. 😄 Then we ended up spending some time choosing artificial flowers and a heavy vase for my MIL’s grave. The last time we tried to visit her grave, we never found it. We did eventually find a sign saying that, due to the spring flooding, a number of stones were damaged and removed for repair, and that they would eventually be returned. We haven’t been able to make it back, since. We want to fix that!
Once we were done there, we headed to the Costco, filling the gas tank, first. Gas was at $1.219/L, while elsewhere was about $1.309 in the city. In town, it had dropped from $1.359 yesterday, to $1.329 today.
That done, we finally were able to grab a flat cart and start shopping.
We did a much smaller trip this time.
This is what $586.66 looks like.
*sigh*
This time, I got a picture of the receipt.
We got two 9kg and two 11.6kg bags of dry kibble and two cases of 48 cats of wet cat food. We got more puppy pads as well.
This trip, we got a large bag of flour for under $10, which is a really good price right now. Everywhere else, I’ve been seeing the same size bag with sale prices of about $12. I get the cheap stuff. Going with the brand name stuff, a big bag of flour is closer to $20.
There’s a case of Monster energy drinks, which I will be paid back for, and we ended up getting a bulk sized box of instant oatmeal.
We got a couple of Kirkland brand jars of mayonnaise, plus a couple of jars of Peanut Butter, some brown sugar, and a large cannister type container of peppercorns, and a large container of ground pink salt. I prefer course, to use in our salt drinker, but this is what they had. My husband prefers the pink salt over regular table salt.
We still have butter in the freezer, so I only got two more, a block of Old cheddar cheese, plus we got a 3 pack of orange juice for the girls. I would have gotten oat milk for them, but my daughter told me they still have. There’s a 3 pack of all beef wieners and a pack of Spam – the only meat we got today. There’s a 9 pack of pasta, and my husband requested some tortilla chips, olives and dip. They didn’t have the 7 layer dip he wanted, so we got him roasted red pepper hummus instead.
They had a fundraiser thing going on. I could tell by the sudden bell ringing and cheering. When my items were all scanned and the cashier asked if I wanted to donate, I first made sure: no bells and yells! She just laughed and said yes. I think they get that a lot! So I donated a bit, too. That brought the sub total to $549.34, and we paid another $37.32 in taxes, for a total of 31 items.
[Edit: I completely forgot about the Pizza Pops! Which is what we’re having for supper tonight.]
We got almost no meat, there’s no eggs, no milk or cream, no breads or wraps.
And it still came to almost $600! A little over $250 (after taxes) of that is all cat supplies.
Part of the reason we did a smaller trip is because we had to squeeze so much of it into the back of the truck cab. The other reason is, we need to empty out the chest freezer and defrost it, so I didn’t want to get anything that would need to go into the chest freezer, other than the ice packs we brought to put with the cold stuff.
By the time we got home, it was about 4pm, so once everything was unloaded and put away, I fed the outside cats. The ice packs around Poirot and her babies needed to be changed out, though when I picked up one water bottle, I found it was still cold, if no longer frozen, so I tucked it right into the cat bed. Before long, I came over and found the kittens all but hugging it! There’s a large ice pack under their bed that probably needs to be changed out, but I didn’t want to disturb the kittens too much. Instead, I changed out the ice pack that’s on the floor of the cube above the bed. The second level cubes have pieces of rigid insulation over the wire to create floors they can walk on, which I set on top of the ice pack. This way, the cook air will flow downwards, and the bit of insulation will slow down the thaw a little bit.
All their water bowls needed to be refilled, but the water in the hose was so hot, I used it to refill the garbage can “heat sink” in the portable greenhouse. I still haven’t found the leak in that thing, but at this time of day, filling it will actually help cool the greenhouse down. The only plants in there are the pots with luffa, and they seem to be quite liking the heat! The thermometer in there was reading about 55C/131F.
Filling the can in the greenhouse also gave me time to scrub the water bowls as best I could. With this heat, algae starts to grow very quickly. The plastic water bowls get pretty stained, too. When refilling the bowls in the sun room, I also wet down the floor mats, so the evaporation could help cool things down, too.
As I write this, at almost 6pm, we’ve cooled down to 26C/79F, with the humidex putting us at 29C/84F – which is the high we hit a couple of hours ago. Tomorrow is supposed to be at least as hot, and the day ever, we’re supposed to hit 32C/90F.
Heat or no heat, things need to get done. Tomorrow morning, I’m hoping to get some of the winter squash transplanted, as they are growing out of their pots, and my daughter is planning on mowing the lawn. With going to the city three days in a row, we’re pretty behind on things! It’ll be good to catch up.
Unless I end up doing grocery shopping for my mother tomorrow.
We shall see.
The Re-Farmer
addendum: yes, I’m doing my mothers grocery shopping tomorrow!
The weather apps say we’re anywhere from 24-26C/75-79F out there this evening but, strangely, it felt much cooler! Very enjoyable, in fact. Well. Except for the blood red sun from all the wildfire smoke.
I decided to head into the outer yard and check on the walnuts this evening; something I usually do in the mornings, but my daughter did the watering out there today. I was very thrilled to see this.
It was very hard to get the camera to focus on such a small spot! Surprisingly, it did better when I accidentally took some video. Of course, it didn’t help that I had cats pushing their way into things!
What we have here is our very first walnut tree leaf bud! It was taking so long, I was starting to think it might not have survived being transplanted. I’m so happy! No signs of anything from the walnut seeds, yet, but hopefully they will start emerging soon.
This evening I decided to take the cover off the winter sown bed in the east yard. It has the same mix of seeds as the high raised bed, plus lettuce from our own saved seed. The two beds could not be more different!
For starters, the one thing that is thriving in this bed is the Jebousek lettuce, which is the only variety of lettuce we planted this year. The rest is onions and root vegetables. There’s so much lettuce, though, it’s choking things out!
So I thinned some by picking a bunch out by the roots. I grabbed a couple of radishes, too.
We’ll need to thin the lettuce out more, as I could see scrawny beet greens being crowded out by them. There are some larger leaved plants in there I wasn’t sure of, so I carefully took a closer look at their bases. It looks like we have a few Zlata radishes growing! These seeds were gifted to me, and I’ve never seen them before. They are very round and have a yellowish colour to them. I’ve left them for now. The radishes I did pick are the longer French Breakfast variety. The first lettuce and radish harvest for this year! I ended up picking another French Breakfast radish from the high raised bed, the picked some spinach from the old kitchen garden. We’ve been using the spinach mostly in sandwiches, but we’ve got the makings of an actual salad from our garden right now!
And it’s not even June, yet.
Yeah, I’d say winter sowing like this is something we’ll be doing again!
With yesterday’s stock up shopping getting cut short, with virtually no actual food purchased, my daughter and I headed in today to hit the international grocery store we had skipped yesterday.
We had a slight detour into town first, so by the time we got to the city, our first order of business was lunch, which we had in the dining area of the grocery store. Dim sum and sushi!
Driving to the city for our stock up shopping does have its perks!
My daughters had their own shopping list, so after lunch my daughter and I split up and met at the truck later. Without a cover on the box, we had to keep in mind that anything we got had to fit into the back of the cab. We already have a fair bit of stuff back there, from our supply of hard sided grocery bags to our emergency kit, etc. We did take out the bin of winter supplies, though, so that freed up a bit of space, but we are still limited. Basically, we used the space that’s kept open specifically to fit my husband’s walker.
We might have to split our Costco shopping up into two trips, because that’s where we get the most of our supplies for the month.
Anyhow.
This is what $209.20 after taxes looks like.
That’s… not a lot.
In the non-food category, I finally found a nail brush to replace the kitchen one that fell apart. We use it for scrubbing vegetables.
The only vegetable I got today was celery, which was on sale, and the only fruit, grapes, which was also on sale. I picked up some cheese wedges; Irish Whiskey cheddar, Porter Beer cheddar and Maasdam. The Maasdam is a new one for us. It looks much like a Swiss. There was a sale on antipasto sliced meats, so I got two packages of those, plus three garlic baguettes that were on sale. The girls and I might have a charcuterie movie night soon!
There was a good sale on New England Clam Chowder, which I usually get at Walmart, so I picked up a bunch for my daughters and I. My husband no longer likes it. I also got a couple of cans of clams. We like to add some to the chowder, but I haven’t seen any in ages. Not something I would have expected to be hard to find! That they were on sale, too, was bonus. Oh, and I got a bottle of my husband’s favourite Filipino soy sauce.
There was a sale on sirloin tip beef, plus I got an extra discount through my loyalty card, which was nice. There are also some locally produced smoked, and applewood smoked, slabs of bacon, both on sale. For the girls, I got some frozen cooked white shrimp, which was both on sale, plus extra off with my loyalty card, and basa fillets that were on sale.
Since no one is up to doing dishes and cooking in this heat, we picked up food for quick eating. For my husband, I got a huge Lumberjack sandwich; it’s big enough to be lunch for him tomorrow, too! I’m glad he likes those. It’s getting harder to find foods he can eat, these days! I picked a bento box for myself, and my daughter picked a couple of boxes of steak taquitos for herself and her sister. They’ve been looking for that flavour in that brand for years, but they just disappeared for some reason. Now they’re back, so she was really happy to find them. They are not fond of the other flavour options. There were some Verka cream rolls on sale, so I picked up a pack of 4 for desert.
That’s it. That’s all I got. All those sales, and it still cost over $200. Even my daughter’s purchases cost over $130, and their list was mostly jars of Asian seasonings we can’t get locally.
At least I got extra points on top of the extra sale prices, too. I’ve already got enough to get at least one free turkey when those promotions come up in the fall.
We’re expected to reach around 30C/86F today, with the next couple of days potentially getting even hotter. So I’ve been heading out early in the mornings to water the garden and the saplings. This morning, I snagged my older daughter to give me a hand, since it was already 16C/61F by 6am.
While I went to the old kitchen to start getting food ready for the outside cats, my daughter shoed up and went out through the main door. It makes things easier to pass things from the old kitchen to someone in the sun room through the old kitchen door with the missing screen.
I had quite a surprise when I opened the inner door, though!
Miss Lemon, Hastings and Japp were tucked in, between the doors again!
The old kitchen is quite a bit cooler, so I’m guessing Poirot moved her babies to get them out of the heat again.
With that in mind, we left them there for a while, and worked on the cat cage. My daughter set one of the larger ice packs right under their cat bed. As thick as the cat bed it, it should still feel cooler, and it won’t melt as quickly. We set a couple of frozen water bottles around, too, before I started passing the kittens over for my daughter to tuck them back into the cat cage. By then, Poirot had come in and was very interesting in what we were doing to her babies!
After that, I headed out with the kibble and some leftover cat soup to distract the adult cats, while my daughter started preparing the wet cat food for the bigger kittens, mixing in some lysine/pumpkin seed powder and splitting it up between all the little bowls we have for them. We switched out a frozen water bottle in one of the cat beds in the water bowl shelter, too.
My daughter then grabbed the wagon, which already had containers of water waiting, to the outer yard and watered the walnut and Korean pine trees while I did the rest of my rounds. By the time I was switching out the memory card at the sign cam, my daughter was done refilling containers to finish watering the trees in the outer yard, while I got the hose going into the leaky rain barrel, and used a bucket to water the trees out there.
The very first leaf bud on the Opal plum has emerged! It was rather strange to water a stick in the ground, not knowing if it survived its time in the mail, and being transplanted. Today, we have proof of life!
Once the food forest saplings were watered, I worked on the main garden area. There are quite a few potato leaves pushing their way through the mulch!
I think I’ll grab a small bucket of stove pellets, though, and head back to the garden before my younger daughter and I head back to the city today. The bed the flowers were replanted has no mulch at all, and it’s just baking in the sun. The high raised bed, and the newly planted strawberries, also need protection. On being watered, the pellets will break up into sawdust, so they won’t disturb the more delicate seedlings, will hold water longer, and should help keep the soil at least a bit cooler.
These lilacs are at almost full bloom in most places! The double lilacs in the old kitchen garden are also opening up. I’m not seeing white lilacs yet. The dwarf Korean lilacs by the house will bloom later on, and the variety I can’t remember the name of right now, closer to the chain link fence, will bloom last of all.
I like having such an extended lilac season.
We’re already creeping up to 20C/68F, just in the time it took me to write this. I’d better get out there with those pellets before things get to hot!
My daughter and I went in to the city for our first stock up shop today. In the end, we didn’t make it to all the placed intended, so we’ll have to go back tomorrow.
Our first stop was actually a mall next to the Canadian Tire for lunch. In the end, neither of us was hungry enough to finish, so we brought our leftovers home for supper.
We had a short list for Canadian Tire. A couple of 40 pound bags of stove pellets for the cat litters, plus I found replacement cord for our weed trimmer. I got two of those. Grand total of $48.12 With the pellet bags in the truck box and no cover for the box anymore, we weren’t worried that anyone would walk off with 40 pounds of compressed sawdust while we did our next stop!
Which was Walmart.
This is what $252.98 looks like.
There isn’t a lot in there.
There are two bags of dry kibble for both the inside and outside cats. We’ll be stocking up on that a lot more at Costco and, later on, one of the feed stores for 40 pound bags. The 32 packs of canned cat food is one for the inside cats, one for the outside kittens. The kittens have been getting sticky eyes, so I’ve been mixing up a couple of cans with water and a powdered mix of lysine and pumpkin seeds. The lysine seems to be doing the trick, as their eyes have gotten much better already. The pumpkin seeds should help with worms and poops, so we probably won’t actually see if that’s working or not. 😄
There is a case of giant freezies for my husband, for the hot days ahead. There are the XXL side puppy pads; I’ll be getting the Costco puppy pads, too, which are smaller. There’s a package of toilet paper under the cart, though we’ll be getting more of that at Costco, too. We grabbed a package of paper towels, too. We won’t need to get more of those at Costco.
I picked up a couple of Lavender scented air freshener cones. One is for the truck; I like these better than the scented dandling things. The other is for my bedroom. Lavender is supposed to be calming for cats, so I’m hoping it’ll help!
There are 4 cans of Monster energy drinks for my daughters and I; we’ll be picking up a case at Costco, so this is just for the next few days.
While making our way to the tills, we passed a display of instant oatmeal at 2 for $5, so I grabbed a couple of variety packs. Sometimes, we just want something really quick for breakfast, and I didn’t want to get boxed cereal. I also picked up a couple of cold drinks for the road. The only other item that can’t be seen is a small donation to the children’s hospital.
Normally, after this, we would have gone to the international grocery store. We even remembered to grab ice packs to add to the insulated bags so things wouldn’t thaw out on the way home. My husband, however, requested we bring home some McDonald’s for him. Since there was one in the Walmart, and I didn’t want to run around trying to get to a different one later, we got a meal for him and for my other daughter (my younger daughter and I still had our leftovers from lunch), and we headed home.
Not much of a stock up trip, at all. We didn’t even get any food, really. My daughters have their own shopping list for the international grocery store, so we’ll be making another trip tomorrow. The day after will be our Costco trip.
Part way home, I pulled over and my daughter took over driving, because I found myself feeling like I was falling asleep. So I got to close my eyes for most of the rest of the drive home.
I did get a text message from the autobody shop about the truck, just before we got home. I had to wait until my phone could connect to our Wi-Fi before I could respond. She’d included a photo of the truck box cover they thought was closest to what we had, and the total of what we would be paying for, asking me to call her about it. The “betterment” charge would be $225. Add in the deductible and extra charge for painting because rust damage is not included, we’d be looking at over $860.
I had found a cover almost identical to what we had, though, so I sent her an image of it, which included the price, then called the shop. I got her just as she was looking at the image I’d sent. It was a lot less expensive than what they were looking at, so she asked me to send her a link, which I emailed to her. She wasn’t sure if they could get the one I found – they’re not able to order things online, oddly enough – but she wanted to find out if they could. If they can get this one, or an equivalent, it’ll save us quite a bit of money. She’ll get back to me as soon as she can. We might be able to get this done next week, if all goes smoothly.
Then, I got very different phone call. It was the home care aide. She was at my mother’s place for her supper time med assist, but my mother’s walker wasn’t outside the door, and the door was locked. This is very unusual. She did check the usual places, like the common room or other areas my mother might be sitting and enjoying some fresh air. After we talked for a bit, she said she would do her next med assist, then come back, while I contacted my family to see if anyone knew where my mother might be. I thought maybe my sister might have come out on her day off and taken my mother somewhere, but I think yesterday was her day off. The other possibility that came to mind, which was more worrisome, was if our vandal had shown up and persuaded her to go with him somewhere. Neither possibility seemed likely, though.
I messaged my family but only my brother got it and responded. He had no knowledge of any appointments or anything she might have had. We were wondering if the Life Line people could find where she is, but I think to find out, I’d have to use the home base machine at her place to contact them. I was already prepared to go to my mother’s, since I have a spare key to her apartment, so that was a possibility.
Eventually, I got a call back from the home care worker. My mother’s walker was still gone, the door still locked. She was walking around the building as we spoke, looking for her. We were just about to say our goodbyes and I was going to head over, when she found my mother.
She was behind the fence in the garden area.
Hoeing.
I need to figure that out, because the garden area is on the side of the building outside my mother’s apartment. The fence is on the far side of the garden area. So if she were behind the fence, she would be off the property, where there are a number of trees and an empty lot. No wonder my mother was hard to find back there! But why would she be hoeing behind the fence? Or hoeing at all? My mother doesn’t have a garden plot anymore, though she does have some perennials against the fence, just outside her window. She wouldn’t need to go behind the fence to hoe anything there! With her mobility decreasing, it wouldn’t be safe for her to be hoeing anywhere, never mind going around to the other side of the fence. !!!
I’m just glad she was found!
I’ll be calling her to check in on her, very soon. Just in case…
Just a little while ago, all our phones started going off with alert warnings. Our province has declared a state of emergency due to wildfires. We are fortunate in that there are no fires near us, but several towns and a small city to the north have been, or are in the process, of evacuating. The closest fire is actually to the south of us, and much closer to my sister’s farm, but it is listed as “under control”.
As you can see from the live fire map, there sweeping line of fires runs across the prairies. That area is pretty much all boreal forest. The red ones are all wildfires. The orange ones are prescribed fires.
While we are in no danger where we are at the moment, we always closely monitor the wildfire situation, every spring. ’tis the season, unfortunately.
One a more “normal” note, here is something to smile about.
Sir Robin the Brave, it turns out, can squeeze through a gap between the raised bed cover and a corner of the raised bed walls!
The bigger kittens are all doing rather well outside, taking advantage of shade. The littles in the sun room are getting extra help with ice packs and frozen water bottles, frequently changed out, because they thaw out so quickly.
The littles are getting big, and much more active! It won’t be long before they’re making their way out of the cat cage and exploring. 😊
It’s hard to be having a heat wave like we are now, and have to think about last frost dates before planting things! Our average last frost date was June 2, but this year it’s listed as a range from May 28-31.
On the one hand, I’ve been eyeballing the long range forecasts. They tend to change often, sometimes multiple times in a day, but we are no longer having predictions of overnight temperatures below freezing. So far, nothing lower than 5C/41F in the overnight lows expected in early June.
On the other hand, I’ve been eyeballing the dandelions. If you’ve been following Maritime Gardening, you may have heard his way of using the stages of dandelions to judge when to plant things. When the greens emerge, the soil is warm enough to plant cold hardy seeds like peas and spinach. When the flowers are blooming, the soil is warm enough to plant things that need a bit more warmth, but can still handle a night of frost, like brassicas. When the dandelions go to seed, the soil is warm enough to plant everything else.
Our dandelions have been blooming for a while, and lots are starting to go to seed.
So I should be able to direct sow or transplant pretty much everything right now, but I still want to be able to cover things if we do get a frost.
Since I didn’t want to render myself immobile again, today I decided to work on the tiny raised bed garden and transplant the herbs I bought a few weeks back.
This bed got prepped in the fall, so there wasn’t much it needed – other than finally reinforcing the cover that cats keep lying on!
I took the cover over to the garage, along with some leftover pieces of hula hoop, which is what is already being used in the cover, to add to it. I got one installed, but when I tried to set up the other, it kept snapping on me. Thankfully, I had a piece of pipe of some kind my brother had passed on to me, along with lumber, shelving and numerous other small items he knew I would find uses for. It was perfect for the job, and I still have some left over. There was also a short bamboo garden stake that I wove through the chicken wire across the top. That will both support the wire (and the weight of cats) and make it easier to carry the cover.
Then it was time to ready the soil. It had a grass clipping mulch that was set aside, then I used my little hand cultivator to loosen the soil so I could better remove the rhizomes. Unfortunately, I was also finding tree roots; this time, from the nearby ornamental crab apple. I think there’s actually a large root running under the bed, but if there is, it’s deep enough it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s the little capillary roots that can become an issue!
After a few years of amending this bed, the soil was really nice and fluffy, already. I did amend it more with the rehydrated coconut coir, plus some manure. The soil was insanely dry, so I made sure to give it a very thorough watering once the amendments were mixed in.
I then set the pots in and moved them around until I figured out where the herbs would go. I’ve got English Thyme and Golden Yellow Thyme that are kitty corner from each other. The other corners have oregano and Greek oregano. In the middle, closer to the walking onions, is lemon balm, with the basil across from it. Once transplanted, they got another watering.
After they were transplanted, I carefully scattered the mulch around them, making sure it was under their leaves and stems.
Then it got another watering.
Last of all, the cover was set in place. No kitties will be rolling around on or digging these up!
The next area I plan to work on is the wattle weave bed. The tiny strawberries in there are blooming up a store right now, so I’m not going to transplant them until the fall. They don’t take up a lot of space. I think there is enough room to plant both the eggplants and peppers in this bed. We’ve grown both in there before, and they did surprisingly well, so that should work out.
We’re going into the city for our first stock up shopping trip tomorrow, though, so that won’t happen for a couple of days. The transplants are all looking really strong and healthy this year – even the ones that got dumped upside down when the wind knocked the greenhouse half over! If things work out, we should be able to get all the transplanting and direct sowing done over the next week or two. I’ll be quite happy when that is all finally done!
I have to keep telling myself. It’s still only May. With the weather we’ve been having, it feels like I’m behind on things, but I’m actually ahead!
Today, we reached our expected high of 25C/77F. The morning, at least, was more pleasant, at about 16C/61F while I was doing my rounds at about 6:30am. By the end of the afternoon, however, it was getting rather unpleasant out there. The sunroom, of course, was hotter, in the 30C/86F.
I am so glad Poirot moved her babies down to floor level!
In the morning, I put the flexible ice pack along one end of their cat bed, and it wasn’t long before they graduated towards to. I set a frozen water bottle next their mother, in the other cube. Later in the day, I took the partially thawed water bottle and put it into the cat bed with them. The next time I looked, they had moved over to it. I took the flexible ice pack out, and it was actually warm!
The other cats and kittens were sprawled out in the shade, all over the place. Over time, we’ll set out more frozen water bottles, in their water bowls or in various cat beds. We’re supposed to keep getting hotter over the next few days.
The picture of the mostly white cat nursing Sir Robin… Sir Robin is Brussel’s baby, not hers! She is a good creche mama. I’ve seen her nursing Caramel’s babies, too. I don’t see Brussel around as often. I think she’s getting to the “I’m done, you’re being weaned” stage. 😄
At this time of year, I’m on the lookout for more kittens. End of May, June and July is typically when the most feral cats, who had their litters somewhere in the outer yard, start bringing them to the house for solid food and water. Hopefully, there won’t be very many. Last year, we had so many kittens – and so many losses. The four litters we’ve had by the house have all been smaller litters, compared to previous years. More of the adults seem to have disappeared, too, as is typical of the summer months. I haven’t seen Judgement in ages. If they survive the summer months, the wanderers usually return in the fall, as things start getting chilly.
We’re better able to beat the heat indoors as well. The downstairs is much improved, thanks to the portable AC unit my brother set up for us in the living room, installing a vent for it through the wall. My daughters bought themselves a much needed portable AC in their “apartment” upstairs. They had to board up the rest of the window to install it. The upstairs has only 4 outlets in total, and only two of them are grounded outlets, so they had to sacrifice their little fridge to be able to plug it in.
I now have a fridge in my bedroom. 😄
I was trying to figure out how to keep the cats off of it, as they would use it to get to areas they are not supposed to go on, when I realized it was the perfect surface for my oscillating fan.
The house is going to be so much more bearable this summer! My older daughter has even started to shift her working hours more into the day, since it’s no longer so hot up there, it was overheating her computer and drawing tablet. That, and her new computer has a much better cooling system. We’ll actually be able to see her more than a few minutes a day again! 😄😄
After the work I did in the garden yesterday did a real number on my body, today was more of a day of rest. My younger daughter and I made a trip into town to refill our big water jugs and fuel for the lawnmowers. Tomorrow we’re going into the city for our first stock up shop. It’s also supposed to be hotter than today, so I decided I was up to doing at least a bit of work in the garden.
Which will be the topic of my next post.
I am so glad to be able to work in the garden again! Even if it’s ridiculously hot.
It was way too hot for this kind of work today, but once I started, it had to be finished!
I had picked up some asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries at Canadian Tire, some time ago. According to Instagram, I posted this 5 weeks ago (as of this writing).
The Purple Passion is the same variety of asparagus we’ve got in the failed bed (though some new spears showed up recently, so they are still trying to survive!). The plan had been to add a new bed of green asparagus the next year but, for a variety of reasons, that just didn’t happen. Which is probably for the best, as it gave us more time to learn the different areas and decide where to plant. The current bed seemed like a great place for something that’s expected to produce for 20 years. We had no idea at the time, how much that location was affected by spring flooding! We should have been able to start harvesting from there two years ago, at least. Instead, I’m shocked if any spears show up at all.
For green asparagus, I chose Jersey Giant. With the strawberries, I wanted to try the White Carolina again. We tried growing those a few years back, but not a single one survived. The spot we’d tried growing them in was overrun by grass and weeds almost immediately. Now, it is the resting place for one of the yard cats that passed last year. For the red strawberries, I chose another everbearing variety, Ozark Beauty. With most strawberries, it’s recommended to prune any flowers in their first season. That isn’t necessary with everbearing varieties.
Here is a slideshow of the new bed. Instagram is letting me do slideshows of more then 10 images now. I don’t know why, but I appreciate it!
The first couple of photos shows the location I decided on. This area was a squash patch for a couple of years. We dug holes and amended the soil to create hills for individual transplants, since it was impractical to do the entire area. The rest of the space was mulched with carboard, straw and grass clippings. A section of it has been covered with the black … landscape fabric? I salvaged from around the old wood pile, for the past two years. It came in handy to spread out grass clippings to dry in the sun a bit, before using it as mulch, so that was an extra layer to ensure no sunlight got to the soil. With so much crab grass, dandelions and other weeds, it took a lot to kill that off! Even so, it’s amazing how much I still saw trying to grow under there!
The new bed was to be built along the northernmost edge. It will get the most sunlight, there. Unfortunately, it’s also closest to the row of maple and elm trees my mother allowed to grow. She used to have a row of raspberries there. After a few years, she transplanted them to a new location, and these trees were found growing in between them. My mother decided to leave them for “shelter from the wind”.
Which wasn’t needed there.
I once estimated and calculated how much of the original garden space here was lost because these trees were allowed to grow there. It came out to roughly 1200 sq ft. What I didn’t know at the time, however, is just how invasive the elm tree roots are, and it’s been a battle to reclaim garden space from them, ever since.
Before I started preparing the soil, though, I set the roots and crowns into buckets of water from the rain barrel to hydrate. I wanted them to have at least an hour to soak, but they couldn’t stay in there for too long, either. Once they were in the water, that was it. There was no option to stop part way through, and continue tomorrow or something.
The soil under the fabric was pretty compacted, of course, so the first thing to do was simply go over it with a garden fork to coarsely break it up, starting about four feet away from the garlic bed. That bed will eventually have log walls around it, and I took that into account while pacing off what will be a four foot wide walking path.
This was also the start of taking out rocks and roots, but mostly I just wanted to get things broken up, from end to end. Unfortunately, there was a fairly large ant hill in the very last squash hill. It had been completely under the fabric, so I had no idea it was there until I started on this today.
Once the first pass was done, it was time to get the soil fluffed up and cleared out. Which involved straddling the worked on area and twisting the garden fork into the soil until it was broken up enough to get into it by hand. In places, there were entire mats of small tree roots to pull out. Then there were the thicker roots that needed to be cut with the loppers. And, of course, there were the rocks.
So.
Many.
Rocks.
Not even particularly large rocks. Yet, every time I tried to push the garden fork into the soil, I was hitting rocks. If I was lucky, the tines would scrape and slide through them. If not, I’d get jammed into a dead stop. Which could get rather painful at times!
The roots got tossed into the grass towards the trees. The rocks got tossed onto the landscaping fabric. We might find a use for them. They did keep the wind from blowing the folded over section back over where I was working, at least.
I worked on that, section by section, little by little. After about an hour, I still hadn’t reached the half way point! I’d set up the rolling seat in the shade and brought water bottles, but ended up messaging a daughter to see if more could be brought out, because I went through those pretty fast! It wasn’t even the hottest part of the day, yet. My daughter was a sweetie and brought me four water bottles, just in case. 💖
The roots and rocks were the worst at the far end, where the ant hill was. I was very thankful for gloves and tall boots, at that point! The ants were very angry.
We’ll never get any garden bed completely clear of rocks and roots, but I could at least make it better. Once I had done as much as was reasonable, I used the landscape rake to pull the loosened soil to one side and create a trench for the asparagus. That, of course, exposed more roots and rocks to clear out.
Once the trench was dug, I emptied the remains of a bag of manure along the trench, then used the garden fork to work it into the soil at the bottom a bit. Then, I filled with it with water, using water pressure to level the soil on the bottom of the trench, more or less. After a thorough soaking, I raked back a hill to plant the crowns on, and gave that a watering, too.
Each bag had 5 crowns in it, so I paced out and marked where to plant them, about a foot apart (they should be more like 2 feet apart, but the bed wasn’t large enough for that), from the ends. That way, there was a slightly larger gap in the centre, between the two varieties.
The Jersey Giant crowns were huge compared to the Purple Passion ones. You can see the Jersey Giant in the image showing the entire bed. The photo with just the one asparagus crown in it is of one of the larger Purple Passion crowns. A couple of them were so small that, once they were pressed into the dark soil, they practically disappeared!
The crowns got another watering, and then the rest of the soil was pulled back to bury them, creating a hill where the trench was. I used the landscaping rake – that thing is so useful! – tamping the soil down and leveling the top. The bags the crowns were in had wood shavings with them, so I scattered that on top. It isn’t enough to be a mulch, but it will protect the soil at least a little bit. These will be mulched thoroughly, over the next while.
The asparagus planted and watered, I made another shallow trench in front of them, from end to end. The covered asparagus crowns got another watering, then I used the jet setting on the hose nozzle to drill into the mini-trench for the strawberries. I emptied a couple of buckets of rainwater that the roots had soaked in, into the trench as well.
The white strawberries were planted in the half closer to the garlic bed. The packages had 10 bare roots each, so I placed a marker at just each end of where the varieties were planted. The white strawberries actually had a bit of growth starting on them! As with the asparagus, I started at the ends and worked my way to the middle. The red strawberries turned out to have a couple of extra bare roots in them, so the spacing got adjusted a bit. Of course, once they were planted, they got watered again. The bags the strawberries were in had what looked like peat in them, and I dumped that into the buckets the strawberry roots were rehydrating in, to soak for a bit. After the strawberries were planted and watered, I carefully emptied the buckets with the hydrated peat over the rows, too.
I used the packaging to label both the strawberries and the asparagus at the centre of the bed.
Then everything got watered again.
Last of all was protective measures.
I had a log that was meant for the trellis beds that was too damaged by weather, so I set that along the far side of the asparagus. Then I grabbed the wonky log in the old kitchen garden that is going to be replaced with wattle weave, and used that for the rest of the bed. This log is a lot longer, so there’s excess, but that’s okay. We just have to watch not to trip on it.
Then there were the strawberries. I raided the old garden shed for some old dollar store wire border fencing that was here when we moved in. I set those out almost right on top of the strawberries. Hopefully, that will keep any cats from digging in the loose soil and using it as a litter box.
All of this took over 4 hours to do. Probably almost twice as long as it would have taken on a cooler day, where I wasn’t making sure to stop and hydrate so often!
Over the next while, mulch will be added on and around where the plants are. Especially the asparagus hill, as those were not buried as deep as they should have been. I couldn’t dig any deeper, with all the rocks I was hitting.
I’m going to have to replace the handle on my garden fork again.
The main things it, it’s finally done! Now, we wait and see what survives!
It’s not even 6pm as I write this, and I am ready to go to bed right now. Partly because I had a terrible night last night, starting with Butterscotch deciding to pee on my shoulder and my bed. ???!!!??? I had just changed my bedding, too.
Fenrir, I found, was loafed beside the one litter box Butterscotch will use. Fenrir chases Butterscotch away when she tries to use the litter. When Butterscotch peed on my shoulder, I chased off Fenrir and put Butterscotch directly into the litter box, and she immediately started to use it.
While three tabbies suddenly converged in stalking mode, with her as the target.
I chased them off, only for Fenrir to come back and make a bee-line for Butterscotch.
In the end, I had to sit there with a spray bottle, standing guard over Butterscotch, so she could use the litter.
Then I snagged a daughter to help me change my bedding again, after I cleaned myself up and changed.
I finally got back to bed and even fell asleep when a cat crashed onto my head.
My first thought was that my glasses were broken, until I woke up enough to remember I wasn’t wearing them. I thought it might have been Butterscotch, but she was loafed in the shelf above my pillow, so I don’t know which cat dive bombed my skull. This morning, I actually spotted a couple of wounds on my forehead from it, though!
Eventually, I was able to get back to bed and try to sleep when…
… the next thing I know, Butterscotch is peeing on my bed, right next to my head, again.
Thankfully, I caught her fast enough that no bedding change was needed again. I chased her off, but she panicked and disappeared. I had to chase all the other cats out of my room for the night. Butterscotch was alarmed by my reaction and hiding. My older daughter helped me out with giving the cats treats to try and give me some peace before they started clawing at my daughter.
At this point, it was late enough that she offered to take care of the morning routine, including feeding both the inside and outside cats, so I could sleep in. With the kittens getting lysine laced cat soup now, I spent some time letting her know what the routine currently includes. I made sure that the morning feeding for Butterscotch was done right away, so my daughters wouldn’t have to open my door to do it, in the morning.
After all those hours in the sun in the garden, they’ll be taking over the evening rounds today, too!
During the night, I kept getting awakened by the sound of litter use. With the other cats gone, it was as if Butterscotch was testing out all three litter boxes! From the crunching noises, she seemed to be trying out the other food bowls, too! I keep food and water bowls, just for her, on my craft table, and the other bowls to distract the cats from her, but they always converge on her bowls, as if they somehow taste better than the same food in other bowls! So she doesn’t get any peace from them there, either.
Then she came over for aggressive snuggles.
At one point, I woke up and she was lying on top of me, her face pushed under my hand. Even in the dark, I could see she was watching me with an almost loving gaze. Well. As loving as a gaze from Butterscotch can be. 😄 She was really appreciating not having other cats around!
I was, of course, awakened several times by cats scratching at my door.
*sigh*
This morning, I spent some time on Amazon, looking for cat calming things to try out. Hopefully, the postal strike won’t be a problem. They went on strike just before Christmas because, of course, and were ordered back to work by the government. The strike didn’t actually end, though, and now they’re talking about walking the picket lines again. They aren’t garnering much public sympathy at all, though. They already have high wages and massive perks that most people can only dream of. Demanding extras like free sex change surgery while 25% of the Canada’s population is needing to go to food banks right now is not helping their cause. The postal system needs to be revamped to match modern requirements, but as a crown corporation, that requires Parliament to act, and they’re just going into session for a few days before breaking for summer. Canada effectively has had no functioning government for the past 3 years, and Parliament has been out of session for months. We won’t be getting a budget this year, but the Governor General is still authorizing billions in spending that is supposed to be approved by Parliament. The GG doesn’t have that authority under these conditions, but our new dictatorship is just as bad as the old dictatorship, if not worse.
Needless to say, they don’t give a rip if Canadians stop getting their mail because Canada Post is throwing a tantrum to get their way.
Living where we do, it’s not like we have other options. So I could order something from Amazon on payday, but the chances of actually getting it aren’t very good.
Wow. What a ramble, brought on because we’ve got a super stressed out cat that needs help!
I, on the other hand, would just love to get a full night’s sleep, so I can get more work done!
I am very happy to have finally gotten those asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries in. I’ll take what progress I can get!
The Re-Farmer 