Month: June 2025

Self sabotage

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*sigh*

My mother did it again.

Last night, I had a voice message on my cell phone, letting my know that there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist.

Early this morning, I got a call from the home care coordinator, and found out what happened.

My mother’s supper and evening med assists are usually done by the same person. When the home care aid came in for the suppertime visit, apparently my mother started making racist comments about “brown people” being “cockroaches”.

(in retrospect, I am second guessing this; that is not a word my mother would use. I don’t think she knows what a cockroach even is.)

The home care aid said that she found this insulting, because she is Metis, and my mother apparently responded by saying she was a cockroach.

The aid now refuses to go back to my mother, and did the paperwork for that. It went up the chain, and that’s why I got the call.

We talked about it for a while, and there is recognition that my mother’s cognitive decline is playing a part on this. The problem is that this can affect her long term care panel. My mother actually wants to be in a nursing home. A very specific one, and we’re trying to accomplish this for her. The staff at long term care and supporting living, however, are of all races, so this could be a problem.

My mother is basically self sabotaging herself.

When I was done with the call, I sent out a group message to my siblings about it. Not long after, messaged to let us know he’d phoned her from work. My mother did admit she shouldn’t have said what she said to the home care worker, and even said she was sorry. My brother told her that he wasn’t the one she should apologize to – she needs to apologize to the home care worker, but she won’t be coming back, because of how my mother treated her.

My mother was dismissive about it, saying there are lots of workers, and there’s always people looking for jobs. He told her, no, there is a shortage of workers, and you just don’t treat people like that.

She did seem to catch on that she had actually done something wrong.

The morning med assist arrived while they were talking, so they got off the phone. I later found out that my mother had told the morning person to extend her apologies.

I had my appointment in town, though, so I was going to call my mother later.

I got to my appointment early, so I popped into the Red Apple (a rural department store) for a bit. A display caught my eye and distracted me from what I planned to look at, and before long, I was walking out with a caftan and what I at first thought was a sleeveless summer dress, except it was pants, not a skirt. Something that is stepped into from the top, with no zippers or buttons. They were both “one size fits all”, but I didn’t have time to try on either of them. I figured if they didn’t fit me, they might fit my daughters. What I was really after was the caftan, though, for the upcoming summer heat.

Yes, this is relevant.

After my appointment, I remembered to pop over to the autobody shop to ask some questions. Since they were going to be working on the truck at some point, I asked about the door handle and the driver’s seatbelt. The handle broke off and I have to open the window to open it from the outside. I’d called our garage and got an estimate for it, but they don’t normally do that sort of work. The driver’s seatbelt buckle has a terrible habit of suddenly coming undone. Once it catches, it catches, but sometimes it feels like it’s buckled, but isn’t quite all the way, so it’ll suddenly come undone while I’m driving.

It turns out that yes, they could do this work for me, but it would be expensive. The door handle, which is snapped off, is expensive and would cost about the same as the garage would charge me. The garage, however, could go to a scrap yard or something, and find a second hand one. Something they can’t do. As for the seatbelt, that would also be really expensive, because they would have to replace the entire thing, not just the buckle, because that’s how it’s sold. Again, the garage could look for a second hand one for us at a better price.

Then we talked about our insurance claim.

Normally, the insurance will cover like for like and, if that can’t be found, they’ll allow an improvement, but the client pays the difference. The problem is, box covers like the one we had fit newer models, which have different sized truck boxes. The only one she could find that would fit our truck was an off market version, and the insurance company normally wouldn’t approve that. After talking to the adjuster, he said he would have to pass it up the line for approval and get back to her.

He hasn’t gotten back to her yet.

If they don’t approve the off market cover, and there are no other options, they might offer us cash, instead. We would still need a box cover, of course. As for cash, the adjuster put the value of the old box cover at a dollar, because he couldn’t find anything to tell him what it actually cost. So who knows what we would get.

The twisted frame is covered, though, as it needs to be fixed before a box cover can be installed. We’d be charged for part of the painting, because of the rust on the fender, around the wheel well. She told me she would ask the repair guys to try do it so only the top of the frame needs to be painted, not the whole panel. That would save us up to $140.

Then there was the broken tail light cover. The insurance company won’t cover that and, since I can’t prove it wasn’t broken before the box cover was ripped off by the wind, I am not going to contest it. She’s going to see if they can find an off market one for us. The entire tail light assembly gets replaced, not just the cover, and a new market value one can cost $250-$300.

So now I know the status of our insurance claim, and to contact our garage to see if they can find the parts we need from the scrap yard or something. Getting the door handle fixed before winter would be good, that’s for sure!

By the time I got home, it was about mid afternoon. I grabbed a quick lunch, then headed outside. I decided to work on the permanent trellis bed, but needed to clear around it, first. In this area, it made more sense to break out my brother’s push mower first, then go back with the weed trimmer.

Of course, since I had the mower going anyhow, I kept mowing further out. I hadn’t refilled the tank before I started, so I basically just kept going until I ran out of gas, then went to get some more.

Which is when I discovered I had a voice mail message.

From home care.

There was no one to do my mother’s suppertime or evening med assists.

Then, while I was listening to this message, a text message came in.

If was from my mother’s LifeLine provider, telling me it looked like the pendant was no longer connected to the based, and saying to test it. If a test didn’t work, it gave a number to call.

I put away the gas can, and the lawn mower.

Once back inside, I called up my mother. The first thing was to explain about the text I got, and get her to press the button on her LifeLine pendant.

There was no response.

I would have to phone the company.

I then told my mother about the call I got from home care, and that there was no one to come for her two evening med assists. She asked if I knew why, and I told her, I just had a phone message. Her response was, “oh, they’re trying to “get” me”, or something like that. My mother thinks the home care aids are deliberately not coming to give her her meds so that she’ll die. I told her, no, you did this to yourself. Because of how you treated the home care aid, they don’t want to work with you anymore.

Oh, you know about that, she said…

I told her I got a call this morning from the home care coordinator about it. My mother said she’d called her, herself, and wanted her to “visit” (have a meeting). By then, the office was closed, so I told her she wouldn’t hear back until Monday. I then told her I needed to call the LifeLine number, and would be coming over to do her med assist.

After being on hold for awhile, I got through to someone and explained the text message I got, and that I got my mother to test her pendent, with no response. He looked up her file and it seemed her pendent was no longer synced with the base. So he gave me step by step instructions on how to reset it and test it again, and told me that if it didn’t work, call back.

That done, I finally got to finish cleaning up and changing. Our predicted high of 22C/72F turned out to be 27C/81F, so I decided to wear my new caftan, which did fit (the other garment did not, so I have it to my daughters to try one). It is a very loud, mostly deep red, with bold colours in the patterns. More importantly, it’s made of a very light, breezy fabric that feels as close to being naked in the heat, without actually being naked.

So, off I went to my mother’s. When I got there, she was fussing in the kitchen and didn’t stop, so I asked for her LifeLine pendent and did the reset, as instructed, ending with a test. When it was done, what should have happened when I pressed the pendant button at the end was an almost instant human voice responding.

There was nothing.

So I called the number on the machine, using my cell phone (the machine is linked through my mother’s land line). I got the guy on speaker as we talked and he walked me through doing the reset again, then doing the test call.

Nothing.

At which point, they simply replace the machine, and he started that request going. If necessary, they know to call me on our land line first, before trying my cell phone.

That done, I went back to my mother, who was at her dining table, so update her and start getting her meds.

Which is when she noticed what I was wearing.

She commented on it and I told her I had picked it up, just today.

She started laughing at me, because of course she would, and told me it looked like something for sleeping in.

*sigh*

I told her no, not at all. It would be terrible to sleep in (it’s ankle length, I’d be tangled in it in a heartbeat!).

She still said it looked like something to sleep in, but that’s okay, she’s got something similar that she uses to sleep in, too.

…

No, she doesn’t have anything like a caftan. She has night gowns.

She was absolutely oblivious to the idea that laughing at me for what I was wearing was not a nice thing to do. It’s something I have come to expect from her, so it doesn’t really bother me, but she does this to everyone.

That did give me the segue to talk about what happened yesterday.

Long story short, it seems my mother did genuinely seem to realize she had done something wrong. She still tried to justify it. Saying things like, she gave her opinion, the home care worker gave her opinion, like it was some normal conversation. Then she started saying, she’s alone at home all day, and she wants to talk.

I told her, when they come to her place, they are there to do their job and leave. They are not there to talk about politic or religion or race or whatever. She needs to treat people nicely, and I stressed that her behaviour could keep her from getting into the nursing home she wants to be in.

As we talked, she mentioned again that she’d called the case coordinator, while bringing out the home care worker list of names and times they’d be coming. The number on there is what she called and left a message.

She called the shift scheduler.

I told her, this number was for someone else. I’d given her the number for the case coordinator, and it was with the schedule, but it was gone. Meanwhile, my mother was angry that the number she wanted wasn’t on there. I told her, this number would have different people answering, depending on the time of day and day of the week. The number she wanted is office hours only.

Meanwhile, I got her supper time meds out, and she took them a bit early. That freed up her little pill counting bowl and I set out her before bed pills, plus her inhaler, for later. I also updated the notebook I keep inside the lock box for the next home care aid to see.

Once all of that was done and everything was put away, I stayed for a while longer, and we talked some more about her behaviour. This time, my mother took out what she’d showed the home care worker. It was a photocopy from a new article, showing a grown of anti-Western, pro-terrorist demonstrators, in Canada, and she had basically asked the woman her opinion. Apparently, she said she agreed with the pro-terrorist demonstrators, which ticked my mother off. The women then told my mother that her ex-husband was black, and her kids were half black.

…

The case coordinator told me she’d said she was Metis.

So we have another discrepancy on the stories, here!

I asked my mother, why do you even have this? (She would have had to get someone to print out or make a photo copy of the image for her) And why would you show it to the home care aid?

My mother started talking about being lonely and wanting to have someone to talk to. (It sounds like her neighbours in the building are avoiding her now.) I said fine. Talk about the weather. Talk about the gardens (the building’s garden plots are visible out her window). Don’t talk about stuff like this.

I also recommended she stop watching TV news, because it’s not good for her!

My mother agreed that she would not talk about things unrelated to her med assist when the home care workers came.

Once I was sure she was set up for the evening, I headed home. By then, it was time for my own supper. My plans to work in the garden after clearing around the bed I was going to work on were out the window, but it was light enough to at least do the watering, including the new trees and bushes.

While I was watering the high raised bed, I picked a couple of things.

One is a Purple Prince turnip. I thought the yellow one should have been a Zlata radish, but it was so big, I thought maybe I somehow had some Gold Ball turnip seeds in there.

Later on, while watering the low raised bed in the east yard, which as the same mix, plus lettuce seeds, I picked a few more of the yellow ones. They really are radishes, not turnips. It just happens that this one is very large for a radish!

While I was still out there, my older daughter came out to talk about a potential visit from my son from another mother, later in the year. It has been a long time since we’ve seen him! She stayed out to help with the watering, too. The girls had already taken care of feeding the outside cats while I was done, but after I was done watering, I stayed out to play with Poirot’s kittens. They REALLY want attention, and love to get under foot!

Some of the bigger kittens have infected eyes, but I was able to wash only Sir Robin’s eye. I tried to get Havarti (the one orange tabby kitten) to wash one of his eyes, but he would not let me get him. I hope I’ll be able to wash it out, tomorrow.

Kitten therapy is good.

This has turned out to be a pretty messed up day. I really hope my mother takes our warnings to heart, and starts behaving better.

In talking about the situation, my brother had a good point, though. As people age, this sort of thing is not at all unusual. This is usually something that would play a part in getting someone IN to long term care, not out of it. My brother remembers an eye doctor we used to go to, many years ago. He was the sweetest man every, but when dementia hit, he suddenly starting saying some incredibly racist things. It was actually a big part of how he ended up in long term care. I supposed it’s different with my mother, since she has always been racist. Her cognitive decline is just bringing it out more, not creating it. The end result is the same, though, and as bad as my mother can be, others in long term care are far worse.

*sigh* again.

Well, whatever happens, happens. We do the best we can.

What other choice is there?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: corn, bush beans, and another outing, after all

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I had a late start in the garden today.

I woke at my usual time, which is basically when it starts getting light out (about 5-5:30am, these days), but was in massive pain. I did manage to get outside to feed the yard cats, but wasn’t able to do the rest of my morning rounds. Instead, I took some painkillers and headed back to bed.

I didn’t wake up again until about noon!

I did feel a lot better by then, though, which is good, because – as always – the job I needed to do took more than expected!

The bed I need to work on is where I had eggplant and hot peppers growing, last year. These had been mulched first with cardboard, then grass clippings on top of the cardboard. In the fall, I just did a chop and drop, leaving it pretty much as it was for the winter.

What you see in the first photo is what was able to grow through the openings in the cardboard where the peppers and eggplant were growing through, and areas around the edges where rhizomes in particular were able to work their way up the side walls of the bed.

The box frame was secured to hold plastic I’d set around the eggplant and peppers to form a sort of open top greenhouse. The twine wrapped around was there to reduce billowing in the wind. If the wind were not an issue, it would have worked out quite well, but it was a pretty constant battle. Even the cover with the wire that is stored on top of the box frame would get blown off, and it was there to weigh down the tops of the plastic, and didn’t have anything else over it! Which is why it got lashed down with paracord, later on.

Removing the mulch and remaining bits of cardboard did clear a lot of the elm seeds off, but there were so many seeds, the mulch can’t be used again, nor would I want to put it on the compost pile. Instead, I put it around the base of the box on the outside, to hopefully smother any weeds that would come up through the gaps.

Then it was time to fluffify the soil and pull the weeds, including the roots.

Which was absolutely brutal. It was like concrete.

I normally would have gone over it with a garden fork, first, but with the box frame in place, that wasn’t an option. So I was just using my little hand cultivator.

That has got to be my favourite garden tool right now. It really does the job! It was still pretty difficult. In the end, I spent more than an hour, just breaking up that soil. There weren’t a lot of weeds to pull, thanks to that mulch, but getting the roots out was almost impossible. Even after breaking up the soil first, if there were any clumps at all, the roots and rhizomes would just break apart.

I keep water with me while I work but, once the soil was prepped, I had to head inside for a sit down and hydration break. Thank God for cooler temperatures! Unfortunately, I’m out of any amendments that would help reduce this sort of compaction.

For this bed, I wanted to plant the Orchard Baby corn, which has only 65 days to maturity, with some beans. I had some yellow Custard bean seeds left. Which is a bit funny because, a few years back, we grew a different variety of corn in this bed, with beans from this same packet, in between!

Given that the beans are a few years old, I don’t expect a high germination rate, but bean seeds last a lot longer than other things.

Using the end of one of the larger plastic coated plant stakes, I marked off 5 fairly deep lines in the soil – three for corn, two for beans – then filled the resulting little trenches with water. Then I ran the stake over the lines again, and this time used the hose on the jet setting, to drive the water deeper in the planting areas.

In the slide show above, right after the photo of the seeds, the seeds are laid out in the rows. Even the bright pink inoculated bean seeds are hard to see, but they’re there!

The beans were planted pretty far apart; there were enough that I knew there would be plenty left behind. They’re more of a “bonus” crop.

The corn was supposed to be about 50 seeds per packet, and I did hope to get them all in, but there just wasn’t the space, even setting them pretty close together. They will be thinned later, if the germination rate is high.

To actually plant the seeds, I cheated, and used the end of the plant stake I used to make the rows to push the seeds into the soil, which you can see in the next picture. For each one, I’d give the stake a spin to make sure no seeds stuck to the end, before moving to the next one! Then I gently dragged the stake over the rows to cover the seeds before finishing off with a gentle watering, which further ensured the seeds were well covered.

I still had those leftover corn seeds, though. I didn’t want to hang on to such a small amount, but what to do with them?

Well, there was this little bed nearby, with the Arikara squash in it.

Corn and squash are supposed to do well together!

So I opened up the mulch, where there seemed to be the most room, including right in the very middle, and planted the leftover seeds there. These beds are close enough that wind pollination between them should work out fine. For now, though, the mosquito netting cover got put back on until the squash is large enough I won’t have to worry about something getting at them.

Then I went to the tomato bed and, using the plant stake to make holes in the soil, planted more beans down the middle of the bed, plus the gap between the Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. Bonus beans, plus they will act as a living mulch later on.

That done, I brought out the stove pellets for the corn and beans bed. I scattered them all over the bed, then misted them with water. After the pellets had a chance to expand and start breaking up into sawdust, I sprinkled some more pellets on and misted it again.

As there is nothing in this bed with protective collars or anything like that, it was going to need something to keep the cats out. A few years back, my daughter bought us a large roll of netting. I’ve been reusing pieces of it in other areas but, for the amount I needed, I brought the remaining roll out. You can see it in the second last photo of the corn and beans slideshow. The netting on that roll is actually folded in half. I left it as it was, though. Using ground staples to fasten the netting to the wire above the box cover, I unrolled it all the way around, with a decent amount of overlap, before cutting it. Roughly 25 feet, in total. There is still lots on the roll.

About this time, I got a notification on my phone for a voicemail message. Turns out my Wi-Fi calling had shut itself off. Why I was still able to listen to the voicemail message, but not get the call itself, I have no idea.

It was home care, letting me know that there would be no one available for my mother’s bed time med assist.

It was almost 6pm when I got the message, which means she would have just had her suppertime med assist.

I had time to finish setting up the netting. The top was secured with ground staples to the wire cover at several points. This netting catches on everything, so I was able to make use of that and got it “stuck” at each corner. Then, just to be on the safe side, I used more ground staples to secure the netting between the box frame and the walls of the bed. The box frame is tied down tight enough that it was hard to make the space to slide the ground staples through. Those aren’t going anywhere! The netting would rip, first.

Once that was finished and everything cleaned up and put away, I got a daughter to take over and do the watering of the rest of the garden, while I washed up and changed, before going to my mother’s.

It’s been almost a week since I did my mother’s grocery shopping, and I have an appointment in town tomorrow, so I left early enough to hit the grocery store, first. I knew she’d be running out of milk, at the very least – she is always running out of milk, but refuses to buy more than one 2L carton at a time – so I got that, plus a few other things I thought she might be running out of by now. Since I was there anyhow, I spotted some excellent sales and picked up some stuff for ourselves, too.

When I got to my mother’s she was so very happy when she saw I’d brought her more milk! She had told me, she even considered asking me if I could pick some up on the way, but had decided against it.

I was early for her evening pills but, once everything was put away, I opened up the lock box and got them ready for her. Which gave her time to tell me why the cover was missing on the tiny tagine shaped bowl I gave her to put her pills into, so they could be double checked and counted before she took them.

It turns out that, a couple of times now, someone would open the bowl to put in her dose for the time, only to find one of her half pills from the previous med assist, still sitting in the bowl. It had been counted out, but she missed it when she took them – and clearly, the home care aid didn’t double check to make sure my mother had actually taken all the pills!

So it was decided that she would tuck the lid away so that, if a pill got accidentally left behind again, it could actually be seen and she could take it right away.

Good thinking, but really, part of the home care aid’s job is to make sure my mother takes her pills properly. That’s why they’re there, and the pills are in a lock box, after all!

I did get a bit of a visit in before I headed home, much appreciating the longer daylight hours! I’ve made these trips in the winter, when it was dark by the time my mother was supposed to get her suppertime visit, but this time of year, I was driving home in full light. Much easier to watch for deer!

Tomorrow, I’ve got an appointment in town, but my afternoon is free. I’m waffling between working on the bed at the chain link fence, or the bed that will have a permanent trellis built into it.

I’ll see what I feel up to, after I get home!

For now, it’s time to take some pain killers and get to bed. Maybe even before midnight!

Ha!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: transplanting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, and creating supports

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I am very happy to say that, as of today, ALL the transplants are in! There is just the final direct sowing to do, now.

The first transplants to get in where the tomatoes, and they all fit into one garden bed.

This bed had already been prepped, then covered with plastic, except for one end, where there had been onions gone to seed. They did not survive another winter, though.

The plastic didn’t solarize the weeds to death, but at least it kept most of the elm seeds off! The challenge was to get the plastic off again, without dumping them all onto the soil.

For a bed that had already been weeded before the plastic was laid down, there were a LOT of weeds to clear out. As I worked around the bed, I suddenly realized that I was pulling out baby carrots! Last year, we had a couple of Uzbek Golden Carrots bolt and go to seed, so I left them to it, so I could collect the seeds in the fall. When I went to gather them, though, the seed heads were shriveled and messed up looking, and there were no seeds to collect.

Looks like one of them did have seeds, after all!

There was no way they could be transplanted or anything like that, so away they went.

Once the bed was clear of weeds and roots, I finished off our last bag of manure into it, and worked that into the soil.

Then it was time to figure out where the tomatoes would go.

I used the collars (I found an extra “stash” of the water bottles I make the collars from in the basement, so I had plenty for the tomatoes) to figure out the spacing. There were four Black Beauty, four Chocolate Cherry and nine Sub Arctic Plenty.

We’ve grown the Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry before, so I know what to expect with those. They both get quite tall, while the Black Beauty became really heavy. They had trellis supports, and I ended up having to add supports to the supports, to keep the whole thing from tipping over in the wind!

With that in mind, I made sure that these were on the north side of the bed, so they wouldn’t shade out other plants. So I set out eight collars on that side, with a space in the middle.

If I remember correctly, the Sub Arctic Plenty are a bush type tomato, so I don’t expect them to get tall. I’m thinking they will be more like the Forme de Couer tomatoes we grew last year. Each tomato plant had a pair of bamboo stakes to support it, and I’d used twine around the plants to secure them. The plants got so heavy with tomatoes, the supports started falling over, and some of the bamboo stakes even broke from the weight.

With that in mind, I planted the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes along the south side of the bed, where they would get the most sunlight.

As with everything else, this bed was dry, dry, dry, so it got repeated waterings at every stage. I’d taken the cover off the other bed and every time I watered the tomato bed, I gave the other bed a gentle watering, too.

Once the tomatoes were in, it was time to give them support. For the verticals, I used 6′ plastic coated metal stakes. I’m glad I got more of these! Every collar got one of these tucked against one side. I used up all the stakes from last year, and used a couple of the new ones, to make one for every tomato plant.

Once those were in place, I used bamboo stakes to weave through the verticals. I did three horizontal rows on each side, and more can be added later, if need be. I then added some sticks to connect the two sides. There’s just a couple at the ends of one level, and a couple more further in, at another level. We may not need any more than that. We’ll see how things progress over time.

I did not have any clean grass clippings left for mulch, so I made use of the stove pellets we use for cat litter. I scattered them around, and even inside, the collars before giving the whole thing one final watering, to get the pellets to break up into sawdust.

I think it worked out rather well, and should be able to hold the weight of the tomatoes we can expect from these varieties,

Once this was done and cleaned up, and I took a break for lunch, it was time to work in the old kitchen garden. I decided it was time to remove the cover and netting from the greens bed, so the first thing to do was roll up the two sheets of netting, then take the cover off.

The kittens are going to miss their little mosquito netting hammocks!

The greens bed was really dry, so I spent time time watering it from the rain barrel – the rain we had was almost enough to refill it – and weeding. The spinach is bolting and we’ve decided to let them go to seed. I also found a second tiny bok choi that is staring to bloom.

That done, the herb bed got a watering, too, and then I did the pruning and clearing I mentioned in my earlier post, before I could even start on the wattle weave bed.

I decided that the Sweetie Snack Mix mini bell peppers would go in the short part of the L shaped bed, and the eggplant in the long section, among the strawberries.

The short side of the bed didn’t need a lot of weeding, and I was careful to work around the garlic that got missed and started growing this year. The old mulch got pushed up against the wattle weave sides, and the hard packed soil was broken up and fluffified. It was surprisingly hard packed. So I added some of the remaining rehydrated coconut coir over the area and worked that into the soil.

I laid the transplants out, in their cups, to figure out the bed way to space them. After that, it was the usual routine of wetting everything down, then again and again, in between every stage of transplanting. When the peppers were finally planted, I made sure to press down around each one, to create a shallow “bowl” to collect water and drain it towards the plant. Then each pepper plant got its own wire tomato cage to grow up into.

That done, it was time to work on the other side. It was a bit more challenging, working around the strawberries and onion survivors that are there. There was no sign of any of the chamomile self seeding, and the thyme that almost survived the winter was long dead, so that gave a bit of extra space. The mulch was moved aside, the compacted soil broken up, and the last of the coconut coir worked into the soil.

The transplants in their cups were laid out to figure out the spacing, along with the mystery flower. I decided to plant that at the very end of the bed, where it could stay permanently. If it survives! The flower did get a plastic collar, more to keep the cats from rolling on it.

Once the eggplant were in, each with their shallow “bowl” around them, they got their wire tomato cages set in place, and they were done!

Almost.

The mulch I’d moved aside was mostly old wood chips. I didn’t want to push that back. I did, however, have some leaf mulch that had been pulled off and set along the inside of the L shape, by the double lilac. It was old and dry, so I was able to crush handfuls of it, and shake it out over the transplants, to give the soil a light protection. More mulch can be added as the plants get bigger.

I forgot to take an “after” picture when I was done, so I went back out later, and got a picture of the entire finished bed, which is the last image in the above slide show.

That done, I went on to water the new trees in the fruit forest area, and the walnuts in the outer year. Still no sign of anything emerging where the seeds are planted, but the year old sapling is starting to get some bigger leaves on it.

I headed outside shortly after 7am to go my morning rounds and start on the garden. By the time I was done and heading back inside, it was past 8am. Taking into account stopping for breakfast and lunch, I got about 10 hours in the garden today!

Which is great, because all the transplants are IN!!!

Tomorrow, my main goal of the day is to get the third low raised bed near the compost rind cleaned up and planted with short season corn and yellow beans. After that, I want to work on the permanent trellis bed where I want to plant red noodle beans. That will make sure the trellis gets finished off, because they’re going to need something to climb!

Last of all, I will be clearing the bed at the chain like fence, salvage what I can find, replant with what I can manage, then cover it up again. Somehow. I like the netting that’s over it, but it really need something better than the wire to support it. I’m not even sure I can salvage the ones that cats have bent up!

I’ll figure it out.

Just another day or two, and the garden will be officially in!

Almost there!

On a completely different note, while I was working outside, my daughter let me know that the shop I took our push mower to had called and left a message. As expected they can’t find the part that’s needed. It’s simply not available, anywhere.

I was expecting this and had been thinking about it. I’d told them not to worry if they couldn’t find it; I’d just come pick it up. However, it would just end up as more junk here. So when I called them back and talked about it, I suggested they could keep the mower and use it for parts. If I ever buy a push mower again, it won’t be that brand, so it would be of no use to me. They, however, might be able to scavenge it if some other poor soul has the same brand of mower and needs a part that’s hard to find. They happily accepted the offer. Win, win!

Thankfully, my brother has provided us with mowers we can use! I was going to take my mother’s old mower in, but my brother thinks he can fix it himself, so we don’t even need to bring that in.

Oh, my goodness. It’s past midnight as I finish this! I need to get my butt into bed!

Have a good night!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: two quick supports

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I had an entire day at home, with excellent weather. Which means I got lots done!

Of course, I took full advantage of it. While getting the transplants in was my primary goal, I got as many other things done in between that I could.

One of them was to add some horizontal supports for the Spoon tomatoes.

Spoon tomatoes can get pretty tall, but they don’t tend to get particularly large or heavy. Each transplant has its own pair of vertical supports, and I wove the horizontal supports through. The bamboo stakes I used are about 6′ long, and the row of tomatoes is about 13 or 14 feet long. I ended up weaving two bamboo stakes through, then using whatever sticks I had handy to finish off the last bit. The tomato plants should be light enough that this should be enough to hold them. I might have to secure the supports to the metal posts, if they start to get tippy, as the tomatoes get bigger. There’s a possibility that, once the trellises start filling in, they will start acting like sails in the wind. We’ll see, as the season progresses.

With the temperatures at a more reasonable level, I haven’t had to water every morning to protect the garden beds from the heat. Even with that lovely rain we got recently, though, things dry out really quickly, so I watered the beds in the main garden area, after I was done with the tomato supports. The other beds got watered as I was working in the areas, later on.

When working in the old kitchen garden, there were a few things that needed to be done before I could start on the transplants. One of them was dealing with the pink rose bush. This rose bush is insanely thorny, and it wants to sprawl. Part of it died over the winter, too.

So this afternoon, I broke out the leather gloves and pruned away the dead parts. There was more of that then I expected! Then I dug out the pair of wire supports I’d picked up at the dollar store last year. I used them on their own, as three sided supports, last year, but for the rose bush, I joined them together.

I didn’t think to get a picture until much later, though, after the transplanting was mostly done.

The green wire is hard to see with all the other greens around it, but you can just make it out in the photo. It’s tall enough that it should keep the branches from leaning into the garden bed or the paths. It had a tendency to flop all over the place, so we’d tied it off with twine and, for the tallest stem, I actually had it tied to a branch of the ornamental crab apple tree.

I think that tree might be why the rose bush doesn’t seem to be doing as well this year. We pruned it back quite a bit, years ago and, once it started getting sunlight, the rose bush finally recovered and started to thrive. The crabapple tree has filled in again, though, and the rose bush is being shaded out again. We’re going to have to prune it back again.

The ornamental apple tree at the other corner did get some pruning. Aside from a few low hanging branches that kept catching on my hat, there were some large, dead branches that needed to be cleared away, too. On that side of the garden, there is a white rose bush that is aggressively spreading. I cleared spreading little rose bushes away from the wattle weave bed and out of the rhubarb, old asparagus and some flowers in that area. It was even coming up through the stack of small logs I’ve got stored in that corner. There is more that needs to be cleared away, but for today, I just cleared enough that I could get into where I needed to work, without getting attacked by rose bushes or crabapple branches!

These were the “little” things that gone done today.

I did manage to get all the transplants in, though! That will get its own post. See you there in a bit! 😊

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: Spoon tomatoes, bush beans and summer squash

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I’m rather happy with how things went this morning!

The first order of business was to get the Spoon tomatoes, which are starting to bloom, into the ground, and plant some bush beans in the same bed.

I had nine transplants, so that worked out with using the trellis posts as spacing guides.

Since I was going to plant bush beans along the edge of the bed, I did things a bit differently from the other half. With the melons, I set out the collars, added a handful of manure into each one and worked that in, in situ, then made narrow trenches around each collar. For this half, I started out by making a shallow, flat trench along the length of the bed I’d be planting into, pushing soil up against the log wall, and towards the trellis line. I added manure into the trench and worked that into the soil before giving it a thorough watering. Then I added the collars, closer to the centre/trellis line, than the melons are. Then I watered it again, filling each collar with water, as well as the trench.

To transplant the tomatoes, I scooped out a hole in each collar, deep enough for the entire root balls, then added it back in after the tomatoes we in place. Even with filling each collar and letting it absorb water before hand, I was still pulling up dry soil! Once the tomatoes were in, I filled the collars with water again.

Each tomato got a pair of bamboo stakes set on either side, placed right against their collars. Later one, once I have the time and the ties, I will be adding cross pieces to make them sturdier, and also secure them to the wire trellis. Growing these before, I’ve been able to just wind their stems around a single bamboo stake but, after a while, it starts to get tippy, so I’ll better secure them this time.

Once done with the tomatoes, I made another long, narrow trench to plant the beans into. That got watered using the jet setting to drill the water deeper into the trench, which also helped level it out and even break up some of the clumps I missed. I didn’t have a full packet of the Royal Burgundy purple beans, but I had just enough to evenly space the seeds from end to end. I don’t expect a 100% germination rate, so we might end up with a few gaps, but these are new seeds, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Once I spaced the beans out evenly, I pushed them into the soil in their little trench and covered them, then went over the trench with a more gentle flat spray of water to fill it and level out the soil again.

That done, I used the last of the grass clippings left in the wagon to mulch around the tomato collars, and the edge of the bed along the bean’s little trench. I ran out of grass clippings with just one corner left to cover, but I still had some leaves and grass clippings mulch set aside from the winter sown beds I could use.

Then it all got watered again, making sure to soak through the mulch.

With how dry that bed was, it’s really not possible to over water it.

Since this bed had been covered in plastic while we had our recent rainfall, I fully expected it to be so very dry. After working on the next bed, however, it turns out that it really didn’t make much of a difference. It still would have been that dry!

The next bed I worked on was the end of the garlic bed, where I’d winter sown some of the same seed mix of root vegetables that is in the high raised bed. Nothing survived in this bed, though.

I didn’t have time to break out the weed trimmer to clear around the bed, so I used a rake to knock the weeds and dandelion seed heads down and way from the bed. This little section still has netting over it, though the cats have still been lying on top of it! So before I started, I had to pull the netting away, starting at the garlic end, leaving it still tacked down at the other end. The bed then got a weeding, and finally some manure was worked into the soil.

Next, I used some of the small plant support stakes I was no longer needing at another bed, to add more supports for the very loose twine, including adding one in the very middle of the bed, where the twin crossed.

Once the soil was ready and watered, I made three round, shallow “bowls”, which got watered again. Each “bowl” got three squash seeds planted in them. On one side, I planted the White Scallop squash. On the other, Black Zucchini.

Then the “bowls” got watered again.

This garden bed was fully exposed to the rain we got, and yet it was every bit as dry as the bed I’d just worked on, that had been covered in plastic while it was raining! You’d never know we had any rain at all.

This bed had been mulched for the winter with a mixture of leaves and grass clippings, that had been pulled to one side of the bed in the spring. I was able to use that to mulch around the “bowls” the seeds were planted in, with a light scattering of mulch in the bowls, too. Once that was in place, the netting was put back in place. Then it got watered again.

Hopefully, the new supports will help keep the cats off!

By the time the squash is large enough that the netting will need to be removed, they won’t need the extra protection anymore. We shall see how many of the seeds actually germinate. If I end up with extras, I will thin by transplanting. Hopefully, this year, we will actually have a decent amount of summer squash!

So that is now done. In the main garden area, the only bed left is the trellis bed. I won’t work on that again until everything is planted, though.

From the looks of the weather forecast, I should be able to get lots done tomorrow.

Gosh, I’m so enjoying all the progress in the garden! I might be in a lot of pain when I’m done, but it feels so good otherwise, it’s totally worth it.

The Re-Farmer

Morning pretties, and a longer day than expected

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My daughter had a doctor’s appointment today, so I headed out to do my morning rounds early, then stayed out to work in the garden for a couple of hours. I’ll write about that in a separate garden post.

Before we headed out, I couldn’t resist getting a picture of Ginger.

Since Butterscotch has gone into another stressed out and hiding all day phase, I’ve been kicking the other cats out of my room for the night, so she can come out to eat, drink, use the litter box, and not be hiding under an armchair all night. Ginger is the one cat I’ve been allowing in the room at night, since he’s a bundle of nerves, too. He is taking full advantage of the perk, and luxuriating in comfortable cat beds and oodles of pets. Thankfully, he and Butterscotch get along!

This time of year, we’ve got quite a few things blooming, or starting to get into bloom. This year, a couple of bushes that normally don’t, are blooming prolifically for the first time since we’ve moved out here!

The white flowers are on a small bush near the house. It has been bashed and battered, and at one point, I was sure it was dead. Whatever it is, it’s incredibly hardy! This year, not only is it the largest I’ve seen it since our first year here – a major recovery – but it is covered in these clusters of white flowers.

The lilacs are on a bush that is at the fence on one side of the gate at our driveway. This area gets baked in the sun, though it at least gets some shade from a giant spruce tree in the evenings. It also doesn’t get a lot of moisture. This year, however, we have enough moisture that the “pond” not far away in the old hay yard still has some moisture in it. Since moving here, I’ve seen it bloom a couple of times, when we had very wet springs, but nothing like its blooming this year!

There is another lilac planted at the fence line on the other side of the gate. That area gets baked out from sunrise to sunset, and I’m amazes it’s surviving. No flowers this year, though.

When we finally get around to making the people gate near that sad lilac, I’m hoping to improve conditions around it and find a way to get water to it.

As my daughter and I were heading out, she got the truck out of the garage while I opened the gate, so I picked a few clusters of lilacs for her. She set them on the dash. When we came back to the truck after her appointment, they were completely flat and shriveled from the heat! I hope she remembered to take them out when she parked the truck in the garage.

Thankfully, she and I left really early for her appointment. My plan was to have lunch before her appointment. About twenty minutes from home, she suddenly remembered the prescription, an injection, she was supposed to bring with her today. It was still in the fridge at home! So we turned around and headed back while I messaged her sister to meet us at the gate with it in an insulated bag and some ice packs.

Even with the return trip, we got there early enough that we could have had lunch at the Subway next door – until we saw the line up. So we skipped that and headed for the clinic. She got into the examination room a bit early, but the doctor was running late and even had to leave part way through the visit and come back later. It was just a follow up visit, though, and there were no changes to my daughter’s mediations. She did get a chance to show and ask the doctor about some skin issues she’s been having. She’s had issues that she traced to an allergy to something in her deodorant, but with the recent heat, that’s gotten painfully worse, plus she’s got all sorts of skin issues. The doctor said it looks fungal, and recommended…

Head and Shoulders, used as a body wash.

She could have prescribed an anti-fungal cream but it turns out Head and Shoulders contains anti-fungal ingredients that work just as well, and it’s a lot cheaper!

She also recommended doing her laundry in hot water, and hanging her clothes on the line instead of using the drier. My daughter had already switched to using hot water and we’ve started to use the clothes line more often, too. Often enough that we’re looking to hook up two more lines. When I was growing up here, there were three laundry lines set up, so the hooks for pullies are already on the posts. I have no idea what happened to the pullies that used to be there. I spotted some kits that include 150′ (which is how much we would need) of medium strength, plastic coated metal laundry line, and all the parts and pieces, for about $50. The pullies and tightener, however are plastic, so I think we’d be better off paying a bit extra and getting metal pullies and tightener.

Anyhow, sunlight is also anti-fungal, so we’ll be using the clothes line more often. We’ll need to get more clothes pins, though. The kittens have discovered them and think they are toys!

After my daughter’s appointment was done, we finally had lunch. We were both pretty famished by then! We’d both had only very light breakfasts.

We also had a shopping trip planned. I was prepared to have to go to town to pick up new prescriptions, if necessary, but it wasn’t, so that made the day a bit shorter! The nearest Walmart to us is just 15 minutes away from the town our doctor is in, so that worked out well, too.

Since we were planning to get things that needed to stay cold, we popped over to the Dollarama, first. I got the rest of the tomato cages I wanted, which will be used over the eggplant and pepper transplants. I also got more plant clips, as my bucket with them seems to have disappeared!

The Walmart shopping was both stuff for my husband, and my daughters’ list. Nothing came out of my regular grocery budget, so I didn’t do my usual “this is what $X looks like” photo. The important thing is that I remembered to get more distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier.

This year, I’ve been using his empty water bottles to make collars for transplants, much more than usual, since we’re expecting a dry year. I’ve used up all the old collars I’d used last year, plus made more with all the bottles I’ve been saving all winter. There’s only a few empty water bottles left and, if I want one for each of the remaining tomato plants, I’m going to have to find more.

Oh! I just remembered! I have a bunch of them on posts at the chimney block garden bet at the chain link fence! Which means I’ll only be short about 5 or 6 for the tomatoes I have left to do. I’m sure I can find enough other containers I’ve been saving to reuse somehow.

By the time we got home, it was about 5pm. As we pulled into the yard to unload, the yard cats were absolutely everywhere, waiting for their feeding time! As soon as my daughters and I got most of it in, I headed over to feed them and distract them away from the truck, so my daughter could safely leave the yard and park it.

One of Poirot’s babies made an achievement today. Japp got out of the cat cage! I’m not sure if s/he climbed out the “door”, or if s/he found the opening at the bottom (it was blocked with a stuffy). We’re really going to have to watch our step, now!

The days are long enough and warm enough that I seriously considered going back out to at least work on the garden bed I’ll be planting in tomorrow, but I need to keep my limits in mind. I’m already pushing them on a daily basis right now. Plus, we’re getting weather alerts for possible thunderstorms. Looking at the weather radar, I don’t think we’ll be hit with any, but it’s possible I certainly won’t complain about getting more rain!

I’ve got a couple of days with no outings or appointments planned. If all goes well, I should have everything transplanted or direct sown by then. After that, it’s more construction type stuff, like making the wattle weave walls on the bed in the old kitchen garden, and working on the permanent trellis supports.

The main focus right now is just to get plants and seeds in the ground!

Tomorrow.

I’m done for today.

😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: setting up a trellis, and transplanting melons

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Once the frame for the low raised bed was finally assembled, it was time to set up a trellis, then do some transplanting.

This time, I got to use actual new, never before used by anyone else, metal posts to hold the wire! I had picked up four of these posts at Dollarama, and they seem like a really good product.

Rather than set the posts right at the freshly attached end logs, I set the end posts about a foot in from the ends, which turned out to be roughly 15′ apart in the 18′ bed, so the other two were set about 5′ apart. And by “feet”, I mean literally my booted feet. 😁

At the end closer to those trees we need to get rid of, I had to actually dig around with the garden fork to pull up the rocks I kept hitting, trying to push the post in!

Then I went to the old squash tunnel and snagged the last 2″ square wire mesh. There’s still one section with chicken wire on it. I find the 6 sided shapes bend and stretch out of shape too much for my liking, so I’m not sure what I’ll use that for.

The square wire mesh was about 18′ ong, so there was excess to work with.

One of the things about these posts is that they have hooks on them to hold stuff like this, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. There’s four hooks like that, with the opening facing up, along the top 2/3 or so, then two in the bottom third, facing the other way.

Very convenient, except it was remarkably difficult to get all of them hooked up at the same time!

It was still much easier to get the wire mesh up evenly than on the salvaged T posts I used for the pea trellis.

Once the trellis was done, it was time to finally do some transplanting!

Once again, the trellis posts dividing the bed into 3 sections came in handy, as I had three types of melon to transplant. There were four each of the honeydew and Sarah’s Choice (cantaloupe type) melons. Then there were the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon. There are two larger plants, plus one really tiny one I probably shouldn’t have bothered with, but I can’t just toss the poor thing!

I decided to transplant all of them melons on the East side of the trellis, so they will get the morning sun, and the three watermelons would be on the south end of the bed.

As with the winter squash, I set up collars made from 4L water bottles that my husband uses for his CPAP humidifier. Those are turning out to be very handy!

Once I spaced out each collar and set them into the soil, just enough to keep them from blowing away, I added a handful of manure into each. That got well mixed into the very, very dry soil, the collars reset in place, and then I made low trenches in the soil around them, to drain water down towards the roots.

Then everything got a thorough soaking. Which got sucked up like a sponge, so I did it again.

Even with filling the collars with water, as well as the trenches around them, when I dug down to plant the melons, I was still reaching super dry soil!

Everything got another thorough watering, once the transplants were in.

Then I grabbed the wagon and headed to the outer yard to rake up grass clippings to use as mulch. Thankfully, that area is far enough away that it’s not filled with Chinese elm seeds! The inner yard is practically drifted with them.

Once the melons were surrounded by mulch, it got yet another thorough watering. I wanted to make sure the mulch was wet all the way through, not just on top.

As these get bigger, I plan to train them up the trellis as best I can. Last year, we had a 4″ plastic trellis net, and it really sagged under the weight of the vines, so I’m hoping this set up will work better. I will probably still have to add cross pieces at the tops. The wire extends about 4″ above the top hook on the posts, so I should be able to weave supports through the mesh fairly easily. The posts also have holes in them so, if necessary, I can use twine or something to stake them out at the ends, so the weight of melons doesn’t pull them towards the middle.

That took care of one half of the bed.

I have decided that I will plant our Spoon tomatoes in the other half.

Several of them are staring to bloom now! These are indeterminants that can grow quite tall, so they will have their own individual supports, plus the trellis, to hold them up. I’ve got nine Spoon tomato transplants, so there will be room to plant something else with them, if I wanted to. Some bush beans, perhaps.

I’m hoping to be able to get them in tomorrow morning, since the bed is pretty much ready, and there’s even extra mulch waiting in the wagon for them. My daughter has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and we’re planning on leaving early. Chances are, we’ll need to go to the pharmacy after her appointment, and I will likely take advantage of the driving around to do some of the shopping we weren’t able to do during our stock up shops, so it might be a long day of driving around! Which means the morning will be pretty much the only time I’ll have available to get any more transplants in.

After the Spoon tomatoes are in, that leaves the peppers and eggplant to be planted in the old kitchen garden, and the rest of the tomatoes should fit in one of the low raised beds in the East yard. The other low raised bed will have our short season corn planted in it, with more bush beans planted in between.

By the time those are in, the elm seeds should be done dropping, and I can finally do something about that bed along the chain link fence. The mesh tunnel may be all bent up, but it’s still doing its job of keeping the bed from being suffocated by seeds. I’ll be replanting the bed with my remaining packet of Hopi Black Dye sunflower seeds, and pole beans.

I might skip planting into the chimney block planters at the other section of chain link fence entirely, this year. I’ll have to see how badly the elm roots have invaded. There’s still the trellis bed that still needs work, but can be planted in before that’s done. Plus, the bed in the old kitchen garden that will be getting wattle weave walls added. It could probably be planted in before that’s done, too.

It feels like I’m way behind on getting the direct sowing done, but it’s only June 2 today – our previous average last frost date. Which means most things couldn’t actually be safely direct sown until after today, anyhow! We had so many insanely hot days, lately, everything feels off.

Having said that, it’s June, now.

Half the year is pretty much gone already.

Good grief.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: finally assembled!

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Today, my goal was to at least plant the melons in the main garden area. Before I could do that, however, the bed needed to be prepared.

Not the soil, though. That was already done.

The frame that never got fully assembled last year.

First, though, I had to be able to access it, which meant using the corded weed trimmer, so I had to wait until everything was dry enough from this morning’s rain.

After weeding the bed earlier, I covered it with plastic to keep out windblown seeds, cats and hopefully bake any new weeds that tried to come up. Considering the paths were so full of dandelions in full seed, I was glad of it!

I did pause while I was doing that to check on the carrots. I’d seen some starting to come up yesterday, but with how hot it was expected to get, I left them covered to keep them moist and cool. Today, I took the boards off and set them on the sides of the bed to protect the soil from erosion and digging cats.

For the frame, all I needed to do was attached the 4′ ends to the sides. I debated between attaching them to the ends of the logs, which would make the beds slightly longer, or to set them on top of the logs. I decided to set them on top.

The first step, after moving the 4′ logs away, was to move the soil away from the ends to make space. Then the end logs were lined up with the sides logs, so I could use the width of the side logs to make a stop cut for the section that I needed to remove. The first one worked out pretty good.

Once the sections were cut out, I set the log on the sides and used it to make stop cuts on the side logs to match the width of the ends.

From there, it was cutting away enough wood that, once the end log was in place, the top would be about the same height as the side logs. That part took a bit more fussing and more removal of material.

Once it was done and the end log was in place, there was quite a gap under it. I used the bits and pieces of wood that was cut off to fill the space, rather than just fill it with soil. I didn’t want to waste good soil!

Then I repeated the process on the other side.

Which I did a really crappy job on! But, they fit together, and that’s all I really needed! Once again, the scrap bits of wood were pushed under the log at the end to fill in the space, before the soil at both ends was leveled.

The whole thing was more of a pain then it should have been, but it is what it is!

The only thing that needs to be done now is to drill holes through the corners, then drive a rod through to secure the logs together. Right now, the end logs could get knocked of fairly easily.

In time, more logs will be added to make this bed taller, but for now, the priority is to frame all the beds and make the new trellis beds. In time, I hope to make all the beds about 4 logs high (assuming logs the same size as now). That’s what the high raised bed is, and I’m finding that height ideal to work with.

It’s going to get a few years to get to that point, though! There’s only so many dead trees we can harvest for this. That and having nice, straight 18′ lengths for the sides is not as easy as you’d think!

This one, however, is finally done!

It only took about a year… !!!

The Re-Farmer

The little buggers!

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The outside cats do like to get into – or onto – things they aren’t supposed to!

In the first image, Fluffy has parked her fluffy self on the newly transplanted and covered Arikara squash. Thankfully, she’s not actually squishing a plant – the collars would prevent that! – but there’s hardly any slack on that netting. Still, she managed to make a bed of it!

Then there’s the second image in the above slideshow. Little Grommet in our clothes pin bucket! There’s half a brick inside, so it doesn’t blow away or get knocked over by the kitties. The little bugger is looking all sweet and innocent, but there’s supposed to be more clothes pins around the edge of that bucket.

It’s a good thing they’re so cute!

The Re-Farmer

We got rain!

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Before heading to bed last night, I noticed the forecast was starting to suggest rain by this morning. Just a bit, and a fairly low chance of it.

By morning, my weather app was telling me things like, “rain expected to end in 30 minutes” or the like. When I headed out to do my morning rounds, though, it was barely even spitting.

With today expected to be much cooler, I didn’t water everything this morning, so my rounds were done a lot faster. Then my daughter came by to let me know that she had called in a prescription that she needed to bring to her doctor’s appointment, tomorrow. I didn’t realize just how much faster I was done my rounds until we had left and I was thinking to stop at the post office and realized they had only just opened!

By the time we left, though, it was actually raining. A gorgeous, solid rain!

It was still insanely smoky, though, and the smoke got thicker, the closer we got to town. There’s a large fire on the other side of the lake, so they were getting hit by the smoke a lot more than we were.

Both my daughters were not feeling well all last night, and no one was up to cooking, so they decided to treat us with burgers. When we finished at the pharmacy, they still weren’t open, so we drove around to take a look at the lake.

Which we could barely see! It was still pouring rain when I too the above photo.

It was no longer raining when we got home, and the smoke was far less. The good news was in checking the weather radar. The rain we got was being pushed straight towards the biggest fire across the lake. There’s rain up north, too. As welcome as it is, there isn’t anywhere near enough to do much for all the fires. From the looks of it, we won’t be getting more for almost a week.

My goal for today is still to get more transplants in, but delay due to rain is not a bad thing!

The Re-Farmer