Month: July 2025

Costco stock up: This is what $635 looks like

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I am so glad to be home.

I forgot. We’re coming up on a long weekend. Even though today is Thursday, Costco was insanely busy! When I was done, it took several minutes going further and further to the back of the store before I found the end of the line I needed. The self check out line was almost as long!

Thankfully, everything went quickly.

Before going to Costco, though, I made a stop at the mall nearby for breakfast, then made a quick run through the Dollarama. I found a few things for both kitchen and garden, totaling just over $35 – including a couple of boxes of McKenzie Seeds wildflower mix. I’m considering trying again in the same spot I tried winter sowing last year, only this time, I want to find some way to keep the cats from digging and rolling all over it, even though I never removed the leaf litter mulch. We really need more wildflowers for the pollinators. I’ve left the sections of the old garden area uncut because they were pretty much the only things blooming right now. Once they start dying back, I’ll start working on taming the jungle. I’m not seeing as many pollinators lately, though. The constant smoke from the wildflowers is causing them problems.

I also got a couple of metal pinwheels that are weather vanes, so they will turn with the direction of the wind to spin. I plan to set one beside the peas that are trying to recover, and another near the plum and apple saplings. The plastic pinwheels I have now don’t seem to catch the wind very well, but something that moves with the wind should work better to distract the deer.

I’m glad I didn’t stop to get a bit of gas on the way into the city. I normally put in just a few bucks if I’m expecting to drop below half a tank. I did stop at the gas station in my mother’s town along the way, but that’s because the truck informed me that I was low on washer fluid. The only fluid I have in the truck right now is for winter. Gas prices there were $1.349/L At Costco, it was $1.199/L!! There rest of the city was $1.339/L It cost me $67.15 to fill my tank.

When it comes to shopping at Costco, this is where we bulk buy most of our non-food items, so that took up a significant portion of the budget. This is what $636.55 looks like.

There were two things on my list I didn’t get, because Costco doesn’t carry them. Those are for the next Walmart trip. I lost count somewhere along the line, as I ended up going a bit over my budget for this shop, when I thought I was still under budget. Ah, well.

With the long receipt, I ended up taking two pictures of it.

Unfortunately WP messes one of them up, due to the different dimensions. You should be able to see it properly if you click on the image.

For the non-food stuff, we got:

  • scent free laundry detergent
  • puppy pads
  • four 9kg bags of dry kibble
  • one case of canned cat food
  • toilet paper
  • Shake ‘n’ Feed fertilizer (on sale)
  • a 2 pack of parchment paper

All of that cost $250 and change before taxes.

*sigh*

For beverages, there is a flat of Monster energy drink, which I will be paid back for, and a 3 pack of oat milk for the girls.

Then there’s the actual food:

  • spaghetti
  • Ramen noodles
  • 2 pack of Honey Nut Cheerios (on sale)
  • 2 jars of Hellman’s Mayo (the sale price made them cheaper than the Kirkland brand)
  • double flat of eggs (5 dozen)
  • 4 pounds butter
  • Old Cheddar, 1 block
  • Mozzarella, 1 block
  • pork tenderlion
  • pork sausage (on sale)
  • two packs of drumsticks (on sale)
  • two rotisserie chickens (cheaper than raw, whole chickens)
  • two 2 packs of salad mix
  • Basmati rice
  • two 2 packs of rye bread
  • two 2 packs of wraps
  • 1 bag hazelnuts

The food and drink part of the shop came to about $348 and change, before taxes.

What I didn’t get was beef. I checked out a fairly small flank steak, and it was over $88! A family pack of stew meat was over $43. They had a sale on ground beef, but they came in long chubs that all cost in the $60 range, before discount. Then there were the larger cuts of beef that were in the $200 plus, range. *choke* Even the pork is starting to creep up in price again.

We aren’t even going to be able to buy a beef share this year. Normally, we would have made payments throughout the year until they butchered in the fall. We already dropped from a quarter beef to an eighth, the last time we got a beef share, because of how tight our budget got once we had truck payments. We talked when I met to pick up the meat in January, and she said they weren’t sure what they were going to be doing, nor what price/pound they’d have to charge yet. All they knew for sure was that they were going to have to increase the price. So we didn’t start making payments at the beginning of the year, like I planned. Which, I suppose, worked out for the best, because we’ve had so many things needing to be replaced or repaired – and we’re still not done with that – that we couldn’t have made monthly payments this year, anyhow. They haven’t updated their website, nor have they announced anything on their social media pages, so I have no idea if they were even still selling beef shares.

I wonder if we can buy a steer from the farmer that rents most of this property? We have enough pasture in the outer yard to sustain 1 or 2 calves. Then butcher in the fall.

Oh, dear Lord. I just looked up the average prices for feeder steers and heifers, per hundredweight, in Canada right now.

*choke*

Never mind that idea! Yeah, we’d save money in the long run, but yikes! No wonder beef prices are so high right now!

Okay, so beef is going to be a rare treat for the next while.

😢😢

Anyhow.

That’s our Costco stock up shop for this month. It won’t last us the month, either.

*sigh*

Oh, that reminds me. Our federal overlords graciously “gave” people on CPP and CPP Disability a 2.7% raise that kicked in for July’s payment, which was a couple of days ago. My husband gets both CPP Disability, plus Disability through his private insurance with SunLife. With private insurance he was “allowed” to make a certain amount above the payments, then everything else gets deducted. The CPP Disability uses up all that “allowance”, which is why I can’t get a job. Anything I earn would be deducted from his SunLife disability payments.

He recently got a letter from SunLife telling him what his payments will be, starting at the end of July, meaning today.

Yup. While the CPP Disability payments went up by a few bucks, his SunLife payments went down by a few bucks.

They cancelled each other out.

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Honestly, I thank God that the company my husband worked for had such a good insurance plan. It’s keeping us afloat. I also thank God that we have the arrangement with my brother to live here and take care of the place in exchange for rent. We still have to be creative in making ends meet – like making these trips to the city to buy in bulk and stock up where we can. Especially in years like this, where we have next to nothing to harvest from the garden, never mind preserve for winter. Like my SIL said about their own garden, years ago: if we had to rely on our garden, we’d starve!

Well, it is what it is, and we do what we can with what we have.

What other choice is there?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: still kicking! Plus, bonus kittens and insane prices

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First, the cuteness!

When I went out this morning to feed the yard cats, I had an adorable little surprise. Fluffy Colby was with some other cats INSIDE the sun room! I found the other three kittens around the cat shelters and they did run off, but Colby stayed close.

When it was time to bring out the kitten soup bowls, I found him sharing a tray with Havarti. He ran off a bit when I put the kitten soup bowl down, but he was soon back, sharing with with his cousin.

I want to pet that kitten so much!!

The garage kittens, sadly, still won’t come closer.

Today, my plan was to focus on finally giving the garden, and the food forest additions, a deep watering. Particularly since tomorrow will be hotter again, and I will be doing my Costco shop in the city. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 25C/77F. Today reached a comparatively cool high of 23C/73F. I didn’t need to go anywhere today, so I hoped to get some progress outside.

Well, of course, that changed.

My husband called in refills for his injections, so a trip to the pharmacy was in order. Of course, I combined errands as much as possible, grabbing our big water bottles to refill at the grocery store after getting the meds. Then, since I was there anyhow, I checked out the sales and picked up a few things.

There were also a few things I did NOT pick up.

Like Necterines.

$5.49/lb, or $12.10/kg

*gasp*

*choke*

Nectarines always tended to be more expensive, but they still were usually under $2/lb in season.

The next image is of a beef tomahawk steak. This is a cut I almost never see. I know people on carnivore that prize these as having an excellent protein to fat ratio. I just can’t imaging spending $84.95 ($55.09/kg) for about 3 pounds of bone-in meat (1kg=2.2lbs) that would be just one meal. Sure, that might be enough for the entire day on carnivore, but… yikes!

I did pick up a family pack of stew meat, though, which was in the $20 range.

Once back at home, I was soon outside doing the watering. When I got to the high raised bed, though, I also did some harvesting. In this bed, I had left one Purple Prince turnip to go to seed. Which it did.

Then the deer at the seed stalk.

So, I harvested the turnip.

Look at the size of that thing!

It’s probably past its best stage for eating, but it wasn’t regrowing a new seed stalk, so I figured it was harvest it, or it would start rotting.

In the next photo, you can find the fuzzy friend I found on one of the leaves. I broke off that section of leaf and set it aside, so as not to disturb the caterpillar. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is. Hopefully, not something I will regret saving!

In the last image, you can see the turnip with the Uzbek golden carrots I also harvested. I was careful to pull the biggest ones. I’m leaving the smaller ones to give them a change to get bigger, instead of just harvesting the entire bed as I was considering doing. I found a single orange Napoli carrot large enough to harvest. I see hints of orange on some of the other carrots, but for the most part, it’s the Uzbek Golden carrots that have been growing. The Napoli carrot seeds were a couple of years older, and I finished off the last of what was left in the packet. I didn’t expect many of those to germinate.

For all the garden struggles this year, things are still kicking! In both winter sown beds, the radish seed stalks that the deer ate are trying to recover.

They’re blooming again, and sending out more leaves in some of them.

While watering the Spoon tomatoes, I noticed something. When they were being transplanted, I pruned off the bottom leaves before planting them inside the protective collars. One transplant had a larger branch that I pruned off. It was so nice and strong, I decided to just stick it into the ground between two other tomatoes and giving it a chance to grow.

It’s still tiny but, as you can see in the next image above, it’s producing tomatoes!!! The entire plant is maybe 8 inches high, if that. Just one little branch, and it’s producing!

As for those Royal Burgundy beans in front of the Spoon tomatoes – the whole three plants that emerged – one of them has a tiny bean starting to grow! I didn’t get a picture, but one of the yellow Custard beans planted with the tomatoes in the East yard had a whole bunch of tiny bean pods forming. It’s really late in the season, but we might actually have beans to harvest before summer is over!

Even the sugar snap peas are trying to make a come back! Some of them are dying back – they are well past their season – but after the deer munched away at them, some of the plants are pushing out new growth, and blooming! I’ve got one Super Sugar Snap pea plant that I’m leaving (and the deer have left alone) to fully mature so I can save the seeds, but it looks like we might have a few more fresh pods to enjoy, too.

If the deer don’t get to them, first!

It’s encouraging to see some signs of the garden trying to recover and grow. The tiny summer squash are getting a bit bigger, and blooming, though still just male flowers. The winter squash seem to be recovering a bit, too, and some are blooming. The melons are still tiny, but some of them are blooming. The pumpkins are doing quite well, and one of them even has a female flower bud showing!

Whether or not any of this will have time to recover, grow and produce before our season runs out is questionable. With some things, unlikely. Looking at the monthly forecast, it’s possible we’ll have all of September with no frost, though we would probably still need to cover things on colder nights. August, at least, looks like it’ll stay pretty warm. Of course, such long term forecasts are completely unreliable. I’m still going to assume our average Sept. 10 first frost date.

After finished up in the garden and bring the little harvest in, I used some of the carrots, onions from last year – yes, we still have a few! – and an entire head of fresh garlic in a beef and barley dish for my husband and I. The girls hate barley, but my husband and I love it, so they get to make their own supper using some of the fresh fish I picked up for them, yesterday. There will be enough of the beef and barely for my husband to have tomorrow, as well, while I am in the city. My younger daughter is having some PCOS issues right now, so she won’t be able to come with me this time. Which is fine; I don’t actually need the help, but I do like her company. I’ve been doing so much better myself, since I’ve been on the anti-inflammatories, I’ve actually been able to handle these outings better, too. I’m only taking them at the end of the day, instead of twice a day, before with my last meal before bed. I can take them up to 3 times a day, as needed. I just haven’t needed to take that many!

I haven’t taken any pain killers at all since I started on the anti-inflammatories. I do still have pain. Particularly if I lie on my left hip for too long, and I still have issues with my injured left arm. The pain, however is now more specific, and really not all that bad. Nothing worth taking more meds over. I should probably take some painkillers before I leave for the city, though, since I’ll be doing a lot of walking on concrete, and these shopping trips really take a lot out of me.

Stocking up: this is what $263 looks like

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Plus another $137 I don’t have a picture of.

This morning, I headed into the city to do our first stock up shopping trip. Usually, on this first trip of the month, I would visit a Canadian Tire, a Walmart and an international grocery store, which are all along one street. This time, I did the Walmart trip, but then went to a Superstore, instead.

At the Walmart, I got only cat supplies. Two 9kg size bags of dry kibble and two 32 count boxes of canned cat food. I did the “round up to the next dollar” donation option, so the total was exactly $137 for the whole thing.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to Superstore. It’s also been a long time since I did a shop that was just groceries. Not cat supplies or paper products or cleaners, etc. Just groceries.

Weird, right? 😂

This is what $263.49 looks like.

I got some good deals, too. It’s all packed pretty thoroughly, and you can’t see everything, so I took a picture of the receipt this time, too.

I must admit, I really like how organized their receipts are!

Under “groceries”, there’s a big bag of pasta, then some water flavours for my husband. I picked up some sunflower cooking oil, and a big bag of pretzels for my husband. The Monster energy drink was one of the things I got for the drive home.

There’s the soy sauce my husband prefers and some Basmati rice. We usually get a specific brand at Costco, but we were out, so I got a different brand today. I hope it’s good. We’ve tried other brands and not liked them at all.

In Dairy, there’s 3% milk, Old Cheddar and Mozza, plus a flat of eggs. I also got oat milk for the girls, but that’s under “Natural foods”. In Frozen, there are two bags of perogies. Odd that they only that that under “frozen” when I got frozen meats, too.

In Bulk Foods, I got more raw pumpkin seeds to supplement the cat food. Produce included a 6 count bag of avocados. I also got 8 ears of corn, cherries and blueberries. All were at much better prices than anywhere else.

Under Meats, there’s a frozen bag of chicken nuggets for quick eats, a pack of ground turkey consisting of 4 plastic chubs of meat. There’s a bag of cheese hoagie style sausages, and a pack of ground beef. The price of beef is insane, and that was the only beef I could justify picking up.

The boneless pork loin was frozen, and a very good price.

Under Seafood, I got a package of frozen Pollock fillets, a package with two fresh pink salmon, whole except for no heads, and a package with two salmon fillets.

It’s really saying something when salmon is cheaper than beef these days.

At the bakery, I was really looking forward to picking up their torpedo buns, but the bakery was mostly empty. Too early in the day, perhaps. All I was able to get there were three $1 baguettes.

Under Deli, I got a little package of fig goat cheese and a Camembert that was discounted 30%, and needs to be eaten quickly. I got an antipasto mix of meats and a dry salami. We have the makings of a charcutier! The “euro pepprini” on the list is a package of small “European Style” dry sausages I got to snack on, on the way home. I don’t know what “European Style” is supposed to mean, but they were a dry sausage with zero heat in them, so I knew I could safely eat them. They were oddly sweet, but quite tasty.

There was have it. A grocery shopping trip that is basically all just food for humans, totaling $263.49 after taxes.

On the way home, I put in $30 in gas and that was it.

There we have it. Our first, smaller, stock up shopping trip. The next one will be Costco, and that one will include more cat food and other sundries, like paper products.

That will be on the last day of the month, which means tomorrow, I get to stay home!

Yay!

The Re-Farmer

Alert kitties, and an update

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I was able to record all four of the feral kittens that come to the shrine feeding station, together with Mom, all in one shot!

As you can see in the video after the image in the slideshow above, they are all very nervous and alert!

Sadly, I ran out of canned cat food last night, so no kitten soup this morning. I can tell they were waiting for it! That got taken care of with our first stock up shop, today. I’ll follow up on that in my next post.

I completely forgot to do an update after I got home from meeting with my friend, then seeing my mother, yesterday.

This turned out to be one of those “fine threads” situations. Since no one in my family was available to drive me to my mother’s town and pick up the truck from the garage, my friend was a sweetheart and drove me.

Being paranoid about vehicles the way I’ve become, I had to ask her about the noise her car was making. She said it was her transmission. Her car, a Toyota, has a recall on transmissions, and it hadn’t been done yet.

I suggested she talk to the guy at the garage about it. Which turned out to be a really, really good thing.

After talking to him, and going for a spin, he thought it might be the wheel bearings, except it wasn’t acting like it was the wheel bearings. So an appointment was booked, accidentally missed, then rescheduled for yesterday.

Originally, my friend was going to pick me up at 8am and we were going to drive in together. After doing my mother’s med assist on Sunday night, I realized I would have to run errands for her. I suggested to my friend that I take my truck and meet her at the garage. So that was arranged.

Since the garage opens at 9, and that’s when she was booked, I didn’t leave until about 8:30. I got to the garage before 9, yet there she was, watching as her car was already on the lift!

When I got there, the owner/mechanic was manually turning her rear driver’s side wheel, which is where he narrowed down as the main source of the noise, though the front tire was also making noise. He was really excellent as explaining to her what we were hearing, which was a normal sound, as he spun the tire. What he couldn’t do was spin is fast enough to hear the other noise. He was going to have to take the tire off and try to see what was going on.

So I took my friend out for breakfast.

We had an excellent time, catching up with each other. I mentioned to her about my mother’s medications and that I wanted to go to the pharmacy and see if her bubble packs were ready. The pharmacy is right near the garage, so that’s where we went next. I had just parked the truck and we were chatting when I spotted what I thought was her car, driving by behind us. It turned the corner and drove past on the other side, so we could see that yes, the mechanic was driving her car around the block!

She walked over to the garage, just as he was pulling back in, while I went to the pharmacy. My mother’s bubble packs were ready, and I found out how much they were. I didn’t pay for them because, the last time I did that, my mother got really angry and seems to think it cost as much as it did (she expected it to be “free”) because I used my card to pay for it. The folks at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my mother and her… peculiarities, shall we say! She completely understood why I just wanted to know how much it cost. I’m glad I did stop by, because there was no arrangement for delivery, from what I could tell, and my mother didn’t have any evening meds left for Monday, though she did have a full day’s worth for Tuesday.

Once I got the information, I headed over to the garage.

I could tell as soon as I walked in and saw them talking at the counter, that the news was not good.

My friend’s brakes were severely worn out, with the driver’s side half the thickness as the passenger side.

Worse, he couldn’t do anything about it.

One problem was that his 6 month old $10,000 diagnostic computer couldn’t connect with her on board computer. They can’t talk to each other. He’s never had this happen before, even when working with other Toyotas. Since he can’t connect with her computer, he can’t do the repair. He could jerry rig something together and it might last 6 months, but he wasn’t going to do that.

She was going to have to go to a dealership, and they charge typically twice as much for everything, including both parts and labour.

My friend was really unhappy to hear that, as the dealership has been really awful to her. One of the more recent issues was about the transmission recall. She phoned them about it and the guy she was talking to said, oh, I see you’ve missed a payment. She had only two or three payments left (the last payment was made just a week ago). She said yes, I missed one payment in 4 years – and what does that have to do with my transmission? To which she was told, “we can’t do anything for you”, and he hung up on her. !!!!

I don’t think that’s even legal when it involves a recall. The mechanic didn’t know for sure, but he said it shouldn’t be!

That was just one example. Knowing the dealership she went to, he had more. Turns out he had a story involving someone that turned out to be a mutual friend. She had towed her vehicle to the dealership and they told her she needed a new engine. Which would have been $8000 at the time.

She had it towed to him and he took a look.

Her engine was flooded. That’s all.

He told her about another location in the city, but they’re franchises owned by the same parent company. The only other one he knew of that was NOT a franchise dealership is in another small city that’s a 2 hour drive away.

My friend is going to take it there, because she refuses to deal with the place in the city.

He spent time explaining to her what he did, what he was, and why he couldn’t figure out what was going on to cause her brakes to wear like that. There’s something happening that he can’t see, nor diagnose with the computer. When he first mentioned the problem, I suggested proprietary software, but he said that’s illegal. They can, however, make it so that it’s really, really hard for anyone else to be able to do anything. Whatever the problem is, he can’t tell.

For now, he says he’s not worried about my friend driving her car normally. The way he put it, he could tell she isn’t a “rally driver”. The problem would be if she had to suddenly brake to avoid an accident, the brakes might not work. She needs to get it fixed as soon as possible.

I could see my friend was getting really worried, so I asked if he could give some sort of ballpark figure on how much it will cost, so she at least had some idea. That’s the issue. If he did the work, with what he charges for labour per hour, and being able to use off label parts, it would be a few hundred dollars. At dealership prices and how long they tend to charge for, it’ll be probably more than double that. She’s probably looking at $800 or more to get it done at a dealership.

But it’s her brakes, and there’s no messing around when it comes to brakes! They need to be done!

At least we know that where she plans to go is likely to be ethical about it. The entire town (city? I’m not sure if it’s officially big enough to be a city) has a strong reputation for reputable car dealerships. A lot of people will go out of their way to get vehicles there. So she should be in good hands.

Since he had to take her tires off, he made sure to let her know she needs to get her tires torqued between 50 and 100km. She didn’t know what that was, so he explained it to her. Since she lives in the town nearest us, I recommended to go to our regular garage. We reassured her, no one will charge her for torquing her tires.

Then she asked how much she owed him.

Nothing.

He said he couldn’t do anything to fix her car. He couldn’t even diagnose it properly. He wasn’t going to charge her for anything.

She was so thankful! He spent more than an hour trying to diagnose her vehicle, and no one would have had an issue with him charging for his time. She tried to pay him anyhow, but he refused.

What a good man.

From there, we parted ways. Given the distance to town, she was going to go straight to our regular garage and get her tires torqued sooner rather than later.

As for me, I headed over to my mother’s.

She was surprised to see me, even though I told her I’d be in town and wanted to take care of getting her medications. I told her how much is was going to be, and she asked me to pick something else up for her as well. She gave me the cash for it, but couldn’t find her loyalty card anywhere. She kept looking through her purse, but she has so many odd things in there, and has a habit of going through it and moving things around. After a while, I told her it was okay; I could just get her stuff and she could keep the receipt to get her points later. The only thing she uses them for is to get cash back off her purchases, so they add up.

After I picked her stuff up at the pharmacy, I tried going to a small department store across the street to see if they had some sort of organizer wallet for my mother. Unfortunately, the only designs they had were not accessible for my mother’s arthritic and twisted hands.

My sister works at a Walmart, so when I updated my family, I asked if she could keep an eye out for something that would be easy for my mother to use.

Once I got my mother’s bubble packs home, I made sure to put them into the lock box, before she had a chance to hide one of them away. When I went to open the combination lock, I realized that it was already on the combination. Whoever did her morning meds forgot to roll the tumblers after they closed up the box!! Thankfully, my mother didn’t try to open the box herself!

All of this was done by 11:30am, and my mother’s Meals on Wheels would soon arrive. She was looking really tired and overwhelmed, too, so I didn’t stay for very long. My mother wasn’t the only one feeling tired! As soon as I got home, I crashed in bed and didn’t get up until it was time to feed the outside cats!

Which means I didn’t get much done at home. Laundry doesn’t count. 😄

Today hasn’t been any more productive at home, either, but at least I got the shopping done!

Which will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Cheeky buggers!!

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I paused this morning to try and get some photos of the feral kittens that come to the shrine feeding station. This involves zooming in from quite a distance, so as not to scare them away.

Which turned out to be a moot point.

Video in the next file.

It’s bad enough the adult cats crowd the kittens away from the kitten soup. The skunks are doing it, too!

When I came back later, I found three… THREE… at the kibble bowl in the catio.

Turns out the skunks like kitten soup, too.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: “just enough” harvests

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This afternoon, I harvested just a few things to use right away.

In the first image, I finally harvested that White Vienna kohlrabi I’ve been eyeballing for a while now! I also grabbed a smaller Purple Vienna kohlrabi.

They were peeled and quartered to go into a roaster with potatoes and carrots, including the Uzbek Golden carrots in the photo. I made sure to taste test them, first. If I had to choose, I’d say the Purple Vienna was tastier, but I think I might have allowed the White Vienna to get too big before I harvested it, so that might account for the taste difference. Once peeled, there’s really no visual difference between them.

In the next photo in the slideshow above, I picked some of the largest beets that had their greens eaten by deer. On one of the albino beets, you can see where the deer actually chomped off part of the beet root, too! These, I’m leaving for my daughters to get creative with.

I went to my mother’s this evening to do her med assist, as home care didn’t have anyone for her two evening med assists. I didn’t bring anything from the garden for my mother at the time, but I will be in her town again tomorrow. I’m meeting a friend as she drops her car off at the garage to be checked out. Originally, she was going to come by and pick me up on the way, but my mother’s almost completely out of her medications, so I want to make sure to get her bubble packs from the pharmacy – and that they get properly locked way in her lock box! Last month, she snuck one of the bubble packs away and hid it, for those days when home care simply doesn’t show up.

Since I’ll be leaving quite early to meet my friend, I’ve already prepared a bag with some fresh potatoes and some garlic bulbs from the ones curing under the canopy tent outside for my mother and left it in the truck. I had already promised her some garlic, and I think she’ll really like the fresh potatoes, too.

Also, I’m happy to say that my not being up to watering the garden this morning was not a problem. We got a lovely little downpour this afternoon!

Tonight is supposed to be a fair bit cooler. Hopefully, that means I’ll finally be able to get some real sleep!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden

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I have to admit, I’m feeling disoriented right now, looking at the time. It’s still morning??

It was another mostly sleepless night, so I did my morning rounds, then went back to bed. I did get some sleep, but my brain just wouldn’t shut off. I’m starting to feel rather ill at this point.

Thankfully, we did cool down during the night, and today is not as hot. We’re supposed to have some rain in about an hour, and it should keep raining for a couple of hours. Which is good, because I wasn’t able to water the garden this morning.

I started off feeding the yard cats, as usual. This morning, little Colby – the fluffy orange and white feral – was actually in the space between the cat shelters, meowing for food! What a brave little one. Even the other three were in the grass, heading towards the cat shelters near the house. As I came closer, the tortie ran into the isolation shelter and watched me go by with the kibble from the bottom level, rather than running away. Alas, my hands were full, and I wasn’t able to get any pictures!

After the dry kibble is set out, the bowls of kitten soup get set out. Some of the cats have started to actually wait for the kitten soup before they start eating! I have to set a couple of bowls up higher for the four socialized kittens, then quickly set out more bowls in various spots outside, so they have a chance to eat before the grownups push them away. One of the larger two-sided bowls goes to the shrine feeding station for the Colby and his sibling. I also have the mixing bowl and add some kitten soup to some of the dry kibble bowls before taking the rest of it to the garage for the kittens and their mom living in there. These days, they are almost always outside and seem to have moved out of the garage and into the area directly behind it. This morning, I spotted the two kittens were making their way through the sun choke and asparagus beds. They seemed to be aiming for the shrine feeding station! It would be great if they did that.

After the cats were fed, I did my usual rounds, which includes switching out trail cam memory cards. For one of them, I get to check on the crab apple trees along the way.

There are lots of apples forming, and some of them are starting to blush. The apples on this tree still have a long way to go. They get larger and tend to be ripe in September, or even October. The big tree with smaller edible apples tends to ripen a month earlier.

Checking on the garden beds, there was this blooming pumpkin. Of the five plants, this one is the largest. It has one primary vine that is long enough that I’m starting to train it up the bean trellis – since the beans clearly will not grow large enough to start climbing it. You can see how yellow they are, in the background.

In the top right corner, you can see the sunflower that got its top eaten by a deer. It is sending up a pair of new tops that grew out from the bases of the remaining leaf pair.

The onions from last year are blooming nicely, and one of them was serving as a bed.

I could not resist getting a bunch of pictures of the sleepy bee!

While doing my rounds, it’s not unusual for me to be followed by one or more cats. Usually, Stinky comes along and wants all sorts of attention. Lately, though, I’ve had a tabby hanging out and calling to me. He has a high pitched, peeping sort of meow, and he meows at me like he wants attention. He’s feral, though, and will not let me near him. Instead, he circles around, lays on the ground when I stop, but if I move towards him, it’s a big NOPE!

This morning, he was rolling around adorably in the grass. He stopped when I tried to get video of his cuteness, though. 😄

It’s hard to be sure, but I do think I actually have been able to pet this cat – when it was a teenager! I think he’s the one that would hang out in the upper level of the isolation shelter, when it was set up against the house for the winters, waiting for me to fill the food bowl. That was the only time he allowed me to pet him, and he stopped doing that after the isolation shelter was moved to its summer spot. He’s much bigger now, but he’s got a mark on the side of his nose that makes me think it’s the same cat. That might explain the almost-socialized behaviour.

Today being Sunday, I do normally try to make it a day of rest, and it seems like today, I won’t have much choice. Lack of good sleep is doing me in. I do hope things improve, since I need to go to my mother’s for her evening med assist.

Ugh. I just checked the weather. According to two of my weather apps, it’s raining right now (it’s not). We’re at 26C/79F right now, and the humidex is 29C/84F. We’re supposed to cool down a bit, then reach our predicted high of 27C/81F at about 6 or 7 pm. Checking the weather radar, more thunderstorms are happening to the south of us. There’s still that huge, out of control fire across the lake. It has crossed provincial borders. Then there are more fires to the north, including an ever bigger one, also still out of control. There are so many fires, in a big swoop along the Boreal forest, starting from Alaska, all the way down into Northern Ontario.

We could really use a whole lot of rain right now!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden

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Today is going to be a killer.

It never cooled down much during the night, so none of us got much sleep. We are now expected to reach a high of 30C/86F, with a humidex of 38C/100F While nothing much reached us, a massive storm blew in from the US across the south of our province, with alerts telling people to seek shelter.

As I write this, it’s 26C/79F, which is only slightly hotter than it was while I was watering the garden this morning. Humidex puts us at 30C/86F right now.

About all I can say for now it, at least it’s not windy like it was last night. I’m happy to say that we did not lose any trees. At least not anywhere that I could see.

My morning, of course, started off with feeding the yard cats. With the expected heat, I set frozen water bottles in the water bowls, too. I’ll change them out for fresh ones, later in the day.

I saw little Colby running around and playing in the grass.

In the second photo above, you can see his sisters still eating. I didn’t see the white and grey one anywhere, though. I hope it’s all right.

After doing my rounds, I gave the garden beds a deep watering, which ended up taking about 2 hours, maybe longer. I didn’t even make it to the trees. The heat and humidity was already getting to me. They still need to be done, though. I’ll have to go out again, later.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to say that some of our corn finally has tassels!

Only in the bed with the Arikara squash, where they are bigger than the ones in the corn bed. No sign of cobs, though.

When doing the watering, I often see lots of frogs jumping out from under the mulches and hopping away. Usually, they are the greyish, brownish wood frogs. Sometimes I’ll see some tiny copper or emerald ones.

Today, I got to see this beauty.

Apparently, this is a Pacific tree frog! Which is strange, because we are nowhere near their range. The other possibility is the common tree frog, but from the images I’m finding, that’s not it.

Well, whatever kind of frog it is, I am happy to see it!

Today is looking to be a day of staying out of the heat as much as possible. None of us tolerate heat very well, it seems!

The Re-Farmer

Food forest first, tiny harvest, and many changes of plans!

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If today had gone as originally planned, we would have dropped the truck off for the insurance claim repairs this morning, and been driving a Caravan until Tuesday.

The courtesy vehicle being broken down, the repairs and truck box cover replacement are now on hold.

Which should have meant a day at home, with no driving around.

Ha!

Last night was actually a very rough night for me. Zero sleep. You know those nights when you start to drift off, suddenly wake up and… that’s it. The more tired you get, the less you’re able to sleep.

That was my night.

I finally got up to do my morning rounds as usual. The morning was still pleasant. The high of 29C/84F my weather app said we were supposed to get, when I went to bed last night, with 31C/88F tomorrow was reversed by this morning. We did, indeed, reach 31C/88F this afternoon, and the humidity is at 85%.

I had intended to water the garden again this morning, but everything was still damp from last night’s watering, and I was feeling like I got hit by a truck, so I skipped it.

I did find a lovely surprise, though! Some flashes of red in a silver buffaloberry.

We have a food forest first.

Our first silver buffaloberry bushes have produced berries! Only two of them.

The berries are edible, but I didn’t try them yet. I believe they’re supposed to ripen to an even darker red, so I will wait a little longer before tasting one.

My morning rounds done, I intended to crash right away, but ended up chatting with my brother for a while, then making a call. My daughter’s computer was supposed to be shipped to their address yesterday, but it didn’t show up. The tracking information now said it would be delivered on Monday. My brother can’t work from home on Monday, which means it would get left at their front door with no one to bring it inside before it got stolen. We considered coming over and just hanging out on Monday, but to do that, we would need a house key, and we don’t have one.

He suggested we might be able to find out where the computer was, and perhaps pick it up from the depot, directly. After much searching on the website, I was able to find a customer support number to try calling.

Of course, the first thing I had to do was navigate the automated menu system. That finally sent me to the appropriate customer service department.

Which got me to the strangest recorded lecture I’ve ever heard. First, there was a bizarre speech about Canada Post being “accepting” of “diversity” and all the usual Woke butt kissing BS. Then it started to say that racism, bigotry, and abuse would not be accept – oh, and they were very polite. Be polite.

I would have taken the second part better if they hadn’t started with the first part, which is the epitome of racist and bigoted ideology, but I digress.

After a minute or two of a robot voice lecturing me, I finally got sent to…

… an AI support voice.

It took a couple of times go get it to understand that no, I did not have a business tracking number, but I did have a tracking number, and let me read it out. Then it basically told me exactly what the website did, and told, hey, did you know you could get all this from the website? You should really use the website.

When it ended by asking if there was anything else, I said no, I’d like to speak to a person.

“It sounds like you would like to speak to an agent!”

It then repeated the same thing it had before, ending with, is there anything else?

It took me three times asking to talk to a person before it finally transferred me to a person.

Who, much to my surprise, answered almost right away.

I explained the situation – after he got the tracking number and repeated to me exactly what the website and AI support voice already told me, assuring me that the package absolutely would be delivered on Monday. I told him that what I was asking was, where is the package now, and if we could pick it up ourselves, rather than wait until Monday.

Once he understood what I was after, he told me that the last time it was scanned was on the 22nd, when it got processed and shipped.

Three days ago.

Since it had not been scanned at any point since then, even though it was apparently in transit to my brother’s place, yesterday, they had no idea where it actually was.

…

So, there was nothing we could do. He couldn’t even tell me if it was in our province, never mind if it was in the city.

Well, so much for that idea.

I passed that on to my brother, and we left it for then, and I was finally able to crash for about an hour.

I had just woken up when I got a message from my brother.

With a picture of a package left next to their lock box. He just happened to catch the delivery as it happened!

Well, that changed our plans entirely!

My brother had to finish things up by 3pm, as he’s heading out of the province for the weekend for one of their grandson’s birthday. I updated my daughter and we were able to be on the road within the hour! Which is good, because it takes about an hour to get to his place, and by then it was just past lunch time.

We didn’t stay for long, as we knew he had lots going on. Much thanks and hugs were given!

Neither my daughter nor I had eaten yet, though, so on the way home, we swung by the Walmart we were at yesterday, and we had a quick lunch. While we were there, I picked up a big bag of kibble that I forgot to get yesterday. The outside cat’s kibble bin was going down fast, and I knew it wouldn’t last until our first city stock up trip.

By the time everything was done, we got home shortly after 3pm. Which is close to when I would normally do the evening cat feeding.

That didn’t happen quite yet, though. I noticed we had a message.

It was from home care.

They didn’t have anyone for my mother’s evening med assists tonight, nor for Sunday evening.

*sigh*

In the middle of all this, I started getting messages from the large animal rescue. They’ve had guided tours and a petting zoo open, as part of their fundraising and educational efforts. Poirot’s kittens are a big hit, and people are interested in adopting.

Of course, they all want a fixed and fully vetted cat, but not pay for it.

They do have adoption fees, but a spay is $300.

I made sure to tell them about the clinic we’ve been going to through the Cat Lady’s rescue, which is $175 for a spay.

We’ve been trying to adopt out cats for a long time now, and I’m starting to get really frustrated with people. Everyone wants a “free” cat, or at least very low adoption fees, but they also want the cat to have hundreds of dollars in vet care spent on them first.

Which is almost like saying they want to be paid to take the rescue.

Just one of the many reasons the Cat Lady is dropping out of rescue.

I had time to send in some of the information the local rescue lady was asking for. Mostly. I’m sure she’ll have more questions. Then I quickly did the evening feeding of outside cats before heading to my mother’s.

Of course, since I was there anyhow, my mother had stuff for me to do. 😄 Things the home care aides don’t do, like floor sweeping, or refilling her water bottles. The aides in the city will do light stuff like that, but not out here in the more rural communities.

My mother then wanted me to leave her morning pills out for her.

It turned out she thought I would be coming for all her visits for the entire weekend. I told her that she was covered for tomorrow and for Sunday morning, but I would be back on Sunday evening.

I did set out her bed time pills, and her inhaler, so that I wouldn’t have to come back for… pretty much the time I’m writing this, right this moment. As I was filling out the booklet where I record when I do these visits, my mother almost took her inhaler, which is supposed to be just before bed. Simply because it was there.

My mother is still convinced she can do her own meds, and doesn’t even really realize that, if I weren’t still there to stop her, she would have taken it at the wrong time. In this case, it would not have harmed her, but that’s why she has a lock box! Well. One reason why.

Once I was back home from my mother’s, I did the evening rounds I normally would have done after doing the evening cat feeding. I spotted this adorable sight and had to get a picture.

After getting the picture (I couldn’t see the second kitten anywhere), I went over and Pinky let me pet her. She even started purring and rolling around in that old barrel.

The kitten, however, disappeared behind the sheet of metal roofing and stayed hidden.

I had considered watering the garden for the evening, but we were getting severe thunderstorm warnings. The wind was picking up, and I could hear thunder in the distance.

Looking at the weather radar, it appears that particular storm passed to the north of us, but it’s still really windy, and I think more little storms are blowing towards our area. I even had some broken branches to pick up as I checked around the yard.

I did manage a tiny little harvest in the garden this evening.

A little handful of Spoon tomatoes!

I gave them to my husband as a little treat. He got a laugh out of them. They are so adorable!

Good grief…

As I sit at my computer, I can see out my window facing part of the maple grove. I’m watching these giant maple branches being violently blown about in the wind. I’m half expecting a chunk of that tree to break off! It has an overhanging branch that is so old and so thick, it’s basically another tree trunk.

Anyhow…

That has been my day today! Not at all as planned or expected.

Tomorrow, I’m expecting to be able to stay home for a change.

We’ll see if that actually works out!

Meanwhile, I think I’ll go visit my daughter and see how the new computer is. 😁

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, eye tests, and oops! I missed one!

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Gotta start out with the cuteness!

When I came out this morning, I found all four of the feral kittens in the grass around the catio area, like they were coming towards the house. The little orange one does come to the kibble tray under the water bowl shelter, and I’ve even seen it a bit closer to the sun room, but the others are much shier, so it’s great to see them inching closer.

The garage kittens, I notice, have been spending more of their time hanging out outside. Still right up against the garage, where there are things they can hide behind, but they seem to prefer being outside of the garage rather than inside it, now.

While doing my morning rounds I did my usual check of the garden beds. When I got to the potato bed, I spotted something strange. I guess a cat or something had been digging in the loose soil, and uncovered something I missed!

A single potato! A pretty big one, too! I don’t know how I missed that! 😄

Today I had my eye appointment booked. I was going to be getting the dilation drops, so my daughter came along to do the driving afterwards. Plans for after my appointment included possibly going to my brother’s to pick up her computer, that was supposed to be delivered today.

It wasn’t.

As I write this, and the tracking information still says it’s “in transit” and expected to be delivered between 9:30am and 1:30pm today.

It’s just past 10pm right now.

My daughter and I left early as I wanted to stop at a gas station before my appointment. I was going to go to one in the town my eye doctor is in, but when we got close to the gas station I saw it was mostly blocked off by the truck refilling their tanks.

So we kept on going and got to the eye clinic almost an hour early.

As we drove into the parking lot, though, we noticed a new ice cream store had opened in the same building. When I checked in, and was told that not only was I very early, but the doctor as behind and hadn’t even had her lunch yet, we decided to go for ice cream.

The place was so new, they weren’t finished setting up yet. The menu boards were dark and there was no seating inside, though they did have picnic tables outside. They did, however, have many varieties of ice cream for us to check out, and we got a couple of waffle cones. The tables outside were occupies, so we cross the street to a tiny park where we could sit on some large rocks in the shade. It was very pleasent.

By the time we got back, they took me in very quickly, for the initial photographs of my eyes they needed to take, first. I have the tiniest of hemorrhages in my eyes that the doctor is monitoring. I didn’t have to wait long before the doctor called me in. We started out by looking at the images, comparing back to when I first started seeing her, in 2023. There are slightly more of these tiny hemorrhages, but nothing has gotten worse, so we are still in “monitoring” mode.

Then she tested my vision. Much to my surprise, there is almost no change in my prescription. The tiny big of change in my left eye is so minor, there’s no reason to get new glasses.

Then it was time to dilate my eyes.

Those drops really burn!

After the drops were done, I was sent to the waiting room for a while to give my eyes time to dilate before being called back in. Then I got to get that bright light flashed into my eyes while she examined inside them. Of all the tests, that’s the one that bothers me the most. Not even the puff test bothers me much. I mentioned that and she told me that with some people, it’s the field of vision test that bothers them the most, while others have issues with the puff test. I told her about my mother and her macular degeneration, and how she got the eye injection. I told her, my mother handled them like a champ, but I honestly don’t think I could get that done! She asked me who the doctor at the special eye clinic in the city was that saw my mother. I told her, and she said she had heard very good things about him. She’s read some of his papers, and was quite impressed by them. I told her, he’s really excellent – and has a great “bedside manner”. He was always very sweet with my mother. I was happy to have a chance to share how good he was; if she ever found herself with a patient with newly developed eye issues beyond what she can do in her clinic, it’s that clinic in the city she’d be referring people to, and she would know that this particular doctor is highly recommended for more than his very impressive credentials.

Those tests done, the doctor wanted me to get one of the sets of pictures taken earlier done again, while my eyes were still dilated, since they’d be able to get more detail. After that, she wanted me to book another appointment for 6 months from not. That would put us in January, though. After talking about it, and our issues with travel in winter, which I try to avoid if I can, we decided that I will come back in October for a field of vision test – but no eye dilation! – and then come back for the dilation test again in 6 months after that. This way, my appointments will be spring and fall instead of summer and winter.

While at the counter, settling my bill (a whole $5.50, after the insurance coverage was deducted), there was a guy trying to book an appointment during a certain week. The other receptionist kept telling him they were going to be up north. Somehow, he understood that to mean they were fully booked, which they are – but the staff will all literally be up north. The receptionist I was with told me, she was the one who got them doing this. She mentioned having a lot of First Nations friends up north, and I completely understood. They just don’t have these sorts of clinics up there. They’d have to go south to the city. She said, that’s exactly it. It’s easier for a few staff at the eye clinic to be flown up north and see 200 patients, then to fly 200 patients to the city! And that’s just from one place. They now go up to visit 9 different northern communities throughout the year. It’s fantastic that they can do that!

By the time I was done, we’d heard from my brother that my daughter’s computer was not delivered. She and her sister had their own shopping list, though, which meant a Walmart trip. It would have been on the way home from my brother’s, but we went straight there, instead – after getting some gas, since the station was no longer blocked by a giant tanker truck! Since we were at the Walmart anyhow, I picked up a few little things as well, to tide us over until we do our first stock up shop, next week.

By the time we got home, it was past 5pm, and we were greeted by some very hungry kitties! My daughter took care of putting everything away, then making a heat-and-eat supper, while I quickly took care of the kitties.

The next two days are supposed to get really hot, so when things started cooling down this evening, I went out to give the garden a thorough watering. I plan to water twice a day, when it gets really hope. I am still holding out home that at last some things will start growing again, instead of just stagnating. It’s starting to look like all the red noodle beans are not only stagnating, but starting to die. I did spot one new sprout – a late germinating bean – and it’s all nice and green, like all the others were when they first sprouted. Now, they seem to be getting yellower, every day.

I wish I knew why. Even the extra seeds I had that got planted in the gaps among the peas that didn’t germinate, they’re looking yellow, so it’s not something specific to the beds. I’m at a total loss about it.

The winter squash, at least, seem to be recovering, though it’s unlikely there’s enough season left for them to develop fruit, even if they had an explosive growth spurt. The melons are just… not happening.

So furstrating!

I’m still tending them, just in case they recover. Who knows what will happen in the next couple of months.

Aside from all this, I have something good to share, and that’s how good I’ve been feeling. It’s only been a couple of days on the anti-inflammatories, and I can’t believe how pain free I’ve been. I haven’t even been taking the max dose I can “take as needed”. In fact, I even reduced how many capsules I cat at a time; I can take 2 capsules up to 3 times a day. I’ve taken 2 capsules, twice a day. This evening, I took just one. We’ll see how I feel overnight before I decide if I’ll take 1 or 2 in the morning.

I still have various pains, but the last couple of days have been the closest to being completely pain free as I can remember being in a very long time. Particularly when it comes to how much my body stiffens up if I’ve been sitting for a while, such as while driving, or sitting at my computer. I’m just blown away by how much difference I’m feeling, in such a short time!

Things are now winding down and I’ll be heading to bed soon. It should be interesting to see if half the dose will still be enough for me to be able to sleep without various joints keeping me awake with pain during the night.

I am so happy I thought to ask about trying the anti-inflammatories! What a difference they are making!

The Re-Farmer