I was going to simply say “the morning,” until I realized it’s not even 10am yet. 😄
We had the crock pot going all night, making food for the outside cats. I was up early to take the bones out and finish making the “cat soup”, so it had more time to cool down at least a bit before it was time to feed the kitties.
They really miss their kibble! Even the inside cats. You’d think they would find having all wet cat food would be a real treat for a change, but no. They keep begging for kibble!
I’ve heard from my brother this morning. They’ll be able to go into the nearest town to switch the insurance, so we can drive their vehicle legally. That’ll take a couple of hours so, once I get the word, I’ll be making a trip to pick up kibble. Which is good, because we’re almost out of the meaty bones we’ve been using to make the cat soup base for the outside cats. Doing this has certainly made more room in the chest freezer!
The yard cats still seem a bit perplexed about the cat soup they’ve been getting. They’re eating it, but they don’t prefer it. Except the really feral ones. The ferals will scarf down anything.
I did leave a bowl of food in the garage for the secret kitties, just in case. I have no idea where the mama moved then, but she still comes back to the garage – that’s her “home”, it seems – and I’m hoping her kittens are old enough to come out on their own and go back to a familiar place. Or, better yet, discover the inner yard, and all the things in there for the kitties.
I did see three of the four other feral kittens this morning. Colby is definitely the bravest of the bunch.
I love that first picture! I caught him in a yawn (just guessing he’s a he, because gingers are more likely to be male). He watched me from the tree and let me come pretty close. Later, I saw him going into the isolation shelter, where there was still some food left in the bowls in there.
I was able to get a surprisingly good picture of his torie sister. I had to zoom in from quite a distance.
I might have seen the white and grey, but I’m not sure. We have several really small adult white and greys, and this kitten is almost as big as they are. When they’re running around all over, it can be very hard to tell who I’m looking at.
After the kitties were fed, I did my morning rounds. I did not need to do any watering today, so they didn’t take too long. I did pick some sugar snap peas this morning, but it wasn’t really enough even for a day’s meal.
So I ate them for breakfast.
I thought there would be raspberries to harvest, but not really. There are lots of red berries, but they’re not “ripe”. Between the heat and the lack of rain, the berries don’t have a lot of moisture in them, so they aren’t letting go when I try to pick them, unless they’re almost over ripe. I’ve been trying to water the patch when I can, but it would need me to set up a sprinkler for an hour, every few days, to make up for the lack of rain this year. So I’ve been snacking on a few raspberries in the morning, but there really isn’t enough to do an actual harvest.
While checking on the eggplants, looking for flowers, I found this.
Give the location, I would guess it is a Black Cherry tomato, as that’s what was growing here, last year. No chance of it reaching maturity, this late in the season, but I’ll leave it be. If the eggplant seems to be covering it too much, I might transplant it to where it can get more light, but that’s about it.
I did find some eggplant flowers, on another plant.
They were set back quite a bit by that one cold night last month, so it’s good to see them recovering. Hard to say if they still have enough season to produce eggplants to full maturity, though. If we get a long and mild fall, they might have a chance.
Before heading inside, I did one last harvest of rhubarb. I’ve been leaving them without harvesting for quite a while, giving them plenty of time to recover from the previous harvest. After today, they will be left to recover and store their energy to survive the winter.
I trimmed the leaves and ends outside and took advantage of their huge leaves, using them as a mulch around where my daughter’s surviving double daffodils are trying to grow. Just one cluster has emerged, and they’re not doing well. We certainly won’t be getting any flowers from them this year, but if they can last long enough, hopefully their bulbs will have enough energy stored to grow and bloom next year.
Once the rhubarb was trimmed outside, they got a thorough washing inside before being cut up.
I wasn’t able to water the garden last night – I was just too burned out and went to bed early. It was going to be hotter again today, so I wanted to make sure it was done this morning, including the walnut trees and Korean pine, in the outer yard.
To water those, I drag the hose out as far as it can go, then grab a couple of watering cans. I keep those by the rain barrel against the house, filled with water, so they don’t blow away. Since they’re already full, I use that water on the first two saplings.
The last time I did this, something was clogging the water, and it turned out to be a frog in the watering can. So when the first watering can started clogging again, I figured it was another frog!
I took the rose off just in time to see a little frog face duck back into the spout. 😂
I poured it out and found the lovely green friend.
It seems that once a frog gets into the watering can, it can’t get out – but it can go up into the spout, above the water line, so it won’t drown, either.
When I was done and put the watering cans back, I refilled them – then removed the rose. If a frog gets into one of them again, it’ll be able to get out through the spout.
When feeding the yard cats this morning, I have been making sure to bring a bowl of food to the garage, where the secret kittens are. I never saw the kittens, though I did see the mama coming up the driveway from across the road, at the time. After the watering was done, I went to retrieve the bowl for this evening’s feeding. I peeked through the open door first, of course, and didn’t see anything, so I went right in.
A white and grey kitten suddenly bolted from my brother’s big mower, and hit under the stuff in the corner where their “nest” is.
Then I saw the mama, starting at me in alarm.
She had been curled up with her babies, nursing them, on the comfortable seat of the mower! The seat has a back to it, plus arm rests, so they were completely hidden from view from behind.
The mother was acting really nervous, but she did let me come closer. I reached my hand out and she sniffed my fingers, and allowed me to pet her for a bit before she ran off.
My goal was really just to touch the kitten, and give it a chance to learn my scent. It hissed at me, but not very enthusiastically. It gave my fingers a sniff, and hissed again, but didn’t move.
I went for it.
I pet the kitty – and it let me!
I was even able to give it skitches on the neck and ears. It just looked at me, but didn’t try to get away.
I was leaning awkwardly across the mower, so I had to pull my arm back and shift positions. I got another light his, but the kitten still stayed.
It let me pet it again.
As I was petting it, I thought again; do I dare?
I dared.
I very gently scooped the kitten closer to me on the seat, so I could pick it up.
It let me.
I was able to hold and snuggle the baby for a couple of minutes!
This kitten is a solid baby. All dens muscle! Even its fur is thicksome.
We have another kitten with blue, blue eyes!
After holding it for a while, I didn’t want to push it too far, so I gently put it back on the mower seat, then took the bowl and headed back. I am so amazed that I was able to pick it up at all! I would have been happy if I only managed to get it to sniff my fingers without running away!
Hopefully, I will soon be able to touch the other kitten, too – and bring them to the house, where they will have access to food, water and comfortable beds, and other kittens to play with.
This baby is an absolute stunner.
I don’t know where the mamas find them, but we’ve got some gorgeous genetics showing up in our colony!
Years ago, I read in a homesteady/pioneer living type book (I no longer remember where; it wasn’t in the book I thought it was in) that growing radishes for their roots only is a pretty recent thing. Our pioneers more often grew them for their seed pods, and that they were often pickled.
I am not a fan of radishes, though my family is okay with them. I was curious to find out if I would like the seed pods, instead, and wanted to know what they were like, pickled.
The past few years, I’ve tried to grow radishes with very little success. They either didn’t germinate, germinated but got eaten by something, or when they finally did grow, they didn’t grow well. The one time a radish bolted and went to seed, it was too late in the season for any pods to develop.
This year, I put the last of my old radish seeds, plus some from a seed pack I was given, into my root vegetable seed mix that was direct sown in the fall. I can’t remember exactly, right now, but there was at least four, possibly five, varieties in the mix.
For the first time, we got radishes! Including yellow ones. Some of them immediately bolted – with the heat we had, that is no surprise – which I was quite happy with.
They do grow into a rather large and pretty plant! The seed pods that have been developing have ranged from a little, round pea sized ball to long and slender pods. Some all green, some with red stripes. The branches of the plants tend to be somewhat fragile, though.
I’ve been snacking on radish pods while doing my rounds or tending the garden for a while now. I definitely like them better than radish roots. I find they have a mild radish taste, and just a hint of a kick to them. They have a nice, satisfying crunch.
Since I never found where I’d read about pickling the pods, and the recipe I think was there as well, a friend was a sweetheart and sent me this link. Interestingly, the beginning of the post describes the pods as being more intensely flavoured than the roots. I wonder if the variety makes the difference, because I find it to be the complete opposite! It does say “winter radishes” tend to be milder than spring or summer ones, but I can’t tell if they mean varieties, or sowing time. If it’s sowing time, then that would explain why I find ours to be milder, not more intense, in flavour.
Last night, my older daughter was able to mixed up a double batch of the brine from the website, so that it would be fully cooled down by morning.
The recipe calls for both rice vinegar and white wine vinegar. I’m not sure if we had any white wine vinegar left, and keep forgetting to ask my daughter, but if we were out, she would have used basic white pickling vinegar (5% acidity).
This morning, I picked a whole bunch of the larger pods, shooting for about 4 cups worth, in total.
I collected from the bed in the East yard garden first, which is most of what you can see in the colander in the first photo above. The pods there were all long and slender. The big plant in the high raised bed was mostly the round “pea” looking ones, but there were a few longer ones. Plus, there are a couple of other plants in there.
After collecting the radish seed pods, I also gathered some sugar snap and super sugar snap peas as well. I’ve tried and compared both varieties. I find the flavour is pretty much the same, but the sugar snaps tend to be a touch for fibrous. Stripping the top of pod, where the flower is, and removing the string gets rid of that.
Once inside, they all got a good wash and I left the radish pods to soak while I separated out the peas and put them in the fridge for later.
When it was time to set everything up, I lifted the seed pods into a measuring cup, and it seemed to be just a bit under the 4 cup mark. I was using two 500ml jars for this, so I thought I might be a bit short. In the end, I found I had some left over! They aren’t easy to pack into the jars. I didn’t want to crush them.
Since this is just a quick pickle, I filled the jars with the brine to the top, and used screw on caps instead of lids and rings.
I found myself with some extra brine, too.
I ended up making a third jar with the pea pods jammed into the bottom, then the last of the radish seed pods on top, then emptied most of the leftover brine into it. I didn’t bother taking a picture, though. All three jars are now in the fridge, and we will taste them tomorrow.
One thing I can say from the start about the difference between growing radishes for their roots, or their seed pods. Growing them for their pods would be more efficient. You can grow lots of radishes for their bulbs, and each one is one bulb, and it’s done. They’re all used up. When growing for their pods, one radish plant can provide a surprising amount of edible pods. So just a few radish plants would give you enough pods for both fresh eating and for preserving.
As long as the deer don’t eat them first!
If all goes to plan, I’ll be writing about how they turned out, by tomorrow evening!
It was just at one end of the bed in the east yard, and there’s still plenty left. What I ended up doing is gathering pretty much the last of my support stakes to create a carrier around three sides. Hopefully, it will be enough of a deterrent.
This morning, I “stole” kibble from the inside cats and made a big bowl of cat soup for the outside cats. There isn’t enough kibble to do that again. There’s plenty of wet cat food for the inside cats, but not enough for the outside cats, too, other than what I had already been using to make kitten soup on top of the dry kibble feedings.
I made sure to leave a bowl of food in the side of the garage where the kittens are, leaving one of the doors open. This would be their first taste of anything besides what their mama has been bringing – and she’s been acting very hungry when she comes to the house by herself. I did see the kittens run and hide but that was it.
My plan was to head to the feed store, using my brother’s vehicle, when they opened at 9am. I found their website and they’re open for short hours on Saturdays and closed on Sundays.
Thankfully, my brother messaged me, first.
I thought they’d gone into town yesterday about the insurance on their old vehicle stored here, but it turns out they ran out of time because they stopped to help me with the broken down truck, instead. They checked the insurance this morning, and saw they had only storage insurance on it. It can’t be legally driven.
The public insurance company wouldn’t let them change the insurance online or over the phone. They would have to come in, in person.
They are at a campsite with their son and grandsons right now, and the nearest insurance place is closed on Saturdays.
After much searching to find another location that was open today, the nearest one turned out to be over 2 hours drive away. Which meant at least 6 hours to do the drive, switch the insurance, then drive back again.
No. Not going to happen.
My brother was so apologetic!
I assured him, the only thing we needed was dry cat food, and we’ve got wet cat food we can use for now.
We are, however, completely stuck at home, with no transportation.
The feed store website said they could do deliveries, though. So I called them up and left a message, saying what I needed and asking if they could deliver to where we are.
Because they were on short hours today, I tried again about an hour later, and left another message.
They never called back.
So, no kibble delivery.
After looking at our options, we got some meaty soup bones out of the freezer and started those going, boiling the bones for a couple of hours, then putting the meaty bits back into the stock. I ended up making a very modified cat soup, thickened with a bit of rice, using the immersion blender to make the meaty chunks smaller, plus adding and a couple of cans of regular cat food. I even tossed the bones out for them to pick at, and for the raccoons to chew on, later in the night.
When I set that out, the cats were… confused. They would eat it, but not for long. They seemed to like it, but maybe not like it, but they did like it? But not… 😄
The more socialized cats, that is.
The more feral cats inhaled it. I ended up moving a tray I’d put on the cat house roof that was being ignored, under the shrine for the feral kittens, because they’d already finished off what I’d put there earlier. I wanted to make sure there was enough for the two shier ones. I also put a bowl in the garage again.
When I went to check on the bowl I’d left in the garage, it was already empty, and the mama was licking it clean.
I did my evening rounds, then came back to retrieve the bowl.
The mama, Pinky – a grey tabby with white, and a very pink nose – is one that has let me pet her at times. While I was in the garage, she was acting totally feral, but wasn’t quite ready to run off and abandon her babies.
The babies ran into the stuff in the corner, but did come out to take a look at me.
I thought the one was looking very Siamese, but maybe not? From the red glow in the picture (no, the flash did not go off), I’m thinking it might have eyes like Ghosty. That fur colour is soooo interesting! It gets darker towards the tail, and the tail is almost black.
When I had the chance, I messaged the Cat Lady, who is out of town right now. She’s mentioned to me that she only makes her own cat food now – and that’s for a LOT of inside cats – so I asked her for her recipe. I’ve tried looking up recipes, especially for “costs less than store bought!” recipes.
Yeah… no.
Not only did they tend use expensive meats, like rabbit, but they all included supplements that would require a trip to a health food store, and are also very expensive. Yet these recipes all claim to be cheaper than store bought cat food?
It turns out the Cat Lady just uses chicken drumsticks. That’s it.
She had less than flattering things to say about the online recipes.
The only exception is The Wolfman, who is allergic to poultry. He gets a salmon fillet a day, plus some herring dry kibble.
Oh, the tragedy… 😄😂
We actually do have a big family pack of drumsticks in the freezer right now, but we won’t use that unless we absolutely have to. We can use a meaty bone broth as a base, along with some leftover cooked meats and other suitable ingredients.
To make things easier for tomorrow, we’ll put more bones in the crock pot overnight, for the morning cat soup.
There were, of course, all the other usual things that need to be done, but by the time I was doing my evening rounds and seeing that the garden needed to be watered, in spite of rain we got early this afternoon, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do it. The last few days have drained me completely, and I’m burning out.
The worst of it is, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now.
My younger daughter is still limited in what she can do while her wrist heals. She does as much as she can, though. Her sister, however, is down with PCOS related… issues, shall we say… She can’t lift, bend or stretch in any way at the moment, without unfortunate consequences.
My husband, of course, is pushing it just to go from his room to the kitchen or to the bathroom.
Thank God my daughter was able to get us all that early birthday take out food before we lost use of the truck! All we’ve had to do for the past couple of days is just reheat leftovers.
Still, I can feel myself giving out. I’ve tried to rest as much as I can, taking naps when I get the chance, but there’s just been too many things in too short a time.
I need to slow down and pace myself, but there’s so much that needs to get done. Thankfully, the temperatures will continue to be more reasonable for the next while, so at least I’ll be able to have some progress with the outside projects I’m falling behind on, little by little. We just have to watch for the smoke. We’re still under air quality warnings, and it’s still pretty bad. Everything is under a haze of smoke right now.
Little by little, it’ll get done.
I just wish it wasn’t quite so little, some times!
After a morning that turned out to be way more hectic than it should have been, going out to water the garden was a much needed stress reducer!
It actually did start raining a bit while I was watering, and it’s rained a bit more since then, but so little, the watering was still needed.
What I’d really like to see is a whole lot of rain going over all those wildfires. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future.
When watering the beds in the south east yard, I noticed more missing tops of greenery along one side of the winter sown bed. I’m actually not too worried about that, as the deer aren’t eating the radish pods I want to keep. I do have some lettuces I’m leaving to go to seed, though, so I might have to do something to protect what’s left in this bed. The other two have netting around them, and the little square bed has plastic around it. The deer can reach over, but I don’t think they like winter squash or corn plants. Corn cobs, yes, but not the plants.
It was when I got to the main garden beds that I found more damage.
Most of the damage was in the high raised bed, which is really just the right height for a deer buffet. A whole lot of beet greens disappeared. In the trellis bed (the next image in the slide show above), a single Hopi Black Dye sunflower lots its top. It will probably grow a new one, though.
While doing the watering, I was seeing all sorts of frogs coming out of the mulch. Some of them were huge! Well… huge for our native varieties of frog, that is.
There was one tiny one that emerged that really caught my attention, though. Would you look at that colour!!!
What an incredible green! That is not a common colour for frogs here, at all. It’s almost metallic.
I did the trees in the outer yard, too. To do that, I drag the hose out to the outer yard, where it almost reaches one of the Korean pines. Then I go back to get a couple of watering cans. I keep those next to the rain barrel (which still isn’t even half full) with water in them, so they don’t blow away.
Since they already have water in them, I got straight to the two furthest walnut trees. The one seed that had been almost dug up did survive, and a seedling has finally emerged!
As I was watering it, I notice the watering can seemed to be getting clogged. That happens a lot with this can. It has some algae, I guess it is, stuck to the inside that I haven’t been able to get off. It comes off in bits, which then clogs the holes in the rose. When that happens, I take the rose off and use the water to rinse off the stuff clogging it while still watering the plant.
Except that there wasn’t anything clogging the rose.
Then something landed in my hand before falling to the ground.
First, I grabbed some support posts and traded them out for three of the post I have with pinwheels at their tops. I put a couple in the corners of the high raised bed, where the beets are, and one at the end of the trellis bed where the sunflowers can be reached. The other end doesn’t have anything the deer like near the end, and the side that doesn’t have the trellis netting is lined with onions, which are a bit of a deterrent for deer, so it was really just the one end that needed something.
In the high raised bed, I put overlapping hoops on the sides, and one at the end. I set the hoops under the radish plants, so they’re not hanging almost to the ground anymore. Then I added a hoop to each end of the trellis bed, including the one that didn’t really need it. The asymmetricy without it was bugging me. 😄
I deer can still stick it’s head through, but they don’t have good depth perception, so I’m hoping the extra things in the way will prevent more carnage.
There is one massive turnip in the high raised bed. I’d left it to go to see, but it’s not bolting. What I thought was from the turnip turned out to be from another radish.
I need to look up recipes for pickling radish pods. I’ll have enough to harvest to be able to fill at least a pint sized jar or two, to do a quick pickle. Now that we finally have radish pods, it’s our grand experiment to see if we want to do this again next year – which would mean planting them this fall. I did order icicle radish seeds, but those won’t be grown for their pods (thought I might let one go to seed to actually collect seeds.
Anyhow. We’ll see how the new additions to to keep the deer from chomping more of my veggies!
I was watering the future food forest when I heard some scrambling. Syndol had climbed to the top of the old squash tunnel. He looked so very majestic, silhouetted against the sky, so I had to get a couple of pictures!
Even the shy ones are exploring the isolation shelter. I think that’s their sibling in the upper level, with Eyelet.
When doing the evening feeding, Colby has been getting brave enough to actually start coming back to the food bowls, while I’m still nearby. I almost touched him today! The shy ones in the photo, though, ran off even though I was across the yard from them still.
Speaking of feral kittens, while I was out, my daughter took care of paying the septic guy, then making sure the gate was closed after he left. As she was going past the garage, she spotted the mama that lives there, the white and grey kitten I spotted this morning, and a second kitten! She tried to get pictures, but was too far away, and the ran under the door as soon as they saw her. From what we can make out, the second kittens looks SO much like a Siamese!
We have got to get them closer to the house somehow. The mother just isn’t bringing them. At least they’re going outdoors!
As for my day…
Good grief.
Everything was fine when I headed out. I made sure to leave the gate open for the septic truck, so I didn’t have to stop to close the gate behind me. I got to my mother’s in good time, and did her morning med assist. Then we went over her grocery list and she made sure to give me cash. She just couldn’t resist making a nasty comment about how she didn’t want me using my card again. Somehow, she seems to be blaming the high cost of her inhaler on my using my credit card to pay for it. As if it somehow would have been free, if I hadn’t done that. Very confusing.
Speaking of confusing, I made sure to get pictures of my all my mother’s bubble packs. She has three “active” bubble packs, and one completely untouched one – and her secret stash bubble pack is now in the lock box, thankfully. There’s still one pack that has a single bubble in it with pills still in it from a day no one showed up for her morning meds. My mom made comments about how confusing it all was, as if it was the fault of the home care aids. It old her, it’s a mess because of what she’d been doing!
Once I was done going over her grocery list with her, I headed out to the truck to go to the store.
It wouldn’t go.
It started fine, but when I went to shift out of part to drive, nothing happened. The lever just moved up and down, freely, with no resistance.
My immediate thought was that something was wrong with the transmission. Which was a worst case scenario, really.
Whatever it was, the truck wasn’t moving.
After turning it off, then on and trying again several times, I finally went back inside, while sending messages to my family and my brother – I knew my brother was coming out to the farm this morning, but didn’t know when.
Once inside, I told my mother what was going on, and finished sending my messages. Then I told her I would just walk over to the grocery store, do her shopping then, when everything was put away, I planned to walk to a garage that was up the street from her place.
My mother suggested that I get them to deliver her groceries, which would have been done after the store closed, but I said it was fine. The store is just a couple of blocks away, and she didn’t have a large list.
As I headed out, I stopped at the truck to get a couple of hard sided grocery bags I knew would fit all her shopping. Of course, I tried the truck again.
Nothing.
Off I went to the grocery store and picked up my mothers items, then brought them back. As I going past her with the bags to get into the kitchen and put things away, she shoved a box of chocolates at me and said to take some. She wanted me to sit down with her and finish off the last few chocolates in the box. I said no thanks for now, I wanted to put the groceries away first. I always make sure to show her what I got, as I put things away, even if I didn’t have to make any changes to her list.
Then I sat down for a bit and did have a couple of chocolates while messaging with my brother and my family, and updating her, before going walking to the garage.
Which is when she asked me to sweep her floor.
Now, I had expected to do some housework for her today, but that went out the window once the truck stopped working. I needed to somehow get it to a garage and find a way home! We only have the one vehicle. I was still thinking “transmission”, even though, after trying to get it out of park a few times, it didn’t seem like the transmission was being engaged at all.
So I told her I needed to work on getting the arrange to get the truck to a garage.
She wanted me to sit down and “rest” for a while.
I really needed to get on this.
“So, you’re done with me, then?”
…
Yes, today, I am done and have to go!
I went to give her another hug before leaving, and she hung on to me, like she was trying to stop me from leaving.
Now, if this were someone else, I’d be flattered, but this is my mother. It wasn’t that she wanted my company or anything like that. It was because I had a problem to solve instead of paying attention to her and doing stuff for her. It was like some sort of test.
Which I’m sure I failed.
We said our goodbyes and I headed out. My brother suggested something to try first, so I did.
Nothing.
They were on the road to the farm, and said they would meet me at the truck along the way.
The cab of the truck was way too hot to sit in, so I dropped the tail gate and sat to wait for my brother.
It turned out that he misunderstood what I meant when I said the truck wasn’t moving. When he tried it himself, he figured it had to be a linkage problem. He then popped the hood and got me to move the lever while he watched inside. My SIL had to actually look around the hood to confirm that yes, I was moving the lever back and forth, continuously.
Nothing.
We now had to get the truck to a garage. My brother suggested I call CAA and arrange a tow, but I told him I needed to find out where to tow it, first. That’s why I wanted to walk over to the garage, first, so see if they would take the truck.
So they drove me over, with my poor SIL squished in the middle seat, and my brother went in with me. We talked to the woman behind the counter and explained what was happening with the truck. Her immediate thought was that it sounded like a linkage problem! I asked about getting the truck towed to them and she checked their schedule.
They wouldn’t be able to look at it until Wednesday.
Today is Friday.
My brother and I talked about it briefly and she suggested we try one of the other garages, in case someone else could look at it sooner.
So that’s what we did.
The other garage is one I’ve been to before, but not in many years, since we now go to a garage in the nearer town. The original owner sold the garage to one of his mechanics, but kept working his towing company, in the same location. When we got there, I was surprised to see the towing guy, but we talked to him about the truck and he looked at their schedule.
Tuesday. Maybe Monday.
Well, that was better than Wednesday!
So we agreed and he wrote my into the schedule. As we were talking about getting it towed, I found he no longer did CAA tows at all, but they would use the garage a couple of blocks away. He suggested I call CAA for the tow, since it’s covered, and that would save me $100.
That done, I started making the call to CAA while we drove back to the truck. The plan was for me to leave the keys hidden in the truck and then I would go home with my brother.
The call continued after we got to the truck and I had it on speaker phone so my brother could hear as well. We also had a hard time giving the name of the garage, as the guy couldn’t find it. My brother finally looked it up on his own phone and it turned out the only name that showed up was the towing company name, so that was the location they put it in as. The entire call was made extra difficult as we were suddenly getting some of the loudest traffic going by, ever!
As we arranged the tow, the guy told me I had to be with the truck when the tow truck arrived.
???
They haven’t required that in years.
Oh, and the tow would arrive at around 1:30pm
It was barely 11am at the time.
I told him, I can’t do that. I don’t live here, and I don’t have transportation. He said, if I wasn’t there, the driver couldn’t tow the truck.
My brother finally just said, we’ll be here, so I confirmed that with the guy.
I was thanked for my cooperation.
Uh huh.
Once the call was done, my brother suggested I hide the keys in the truck, then we would go back to the garage.
So that’s what we did.
Because of the trouble we had finding the place on the map, I made sure to look for the spelling on the sign when we got there.
The sign wasn’t there.
There was the towing company sign.
Looks like the original owner owns the garage again!
Which I’m good with. I liked him better.
So we talked to him about the call with CAA and what they told us about needing to be there when the truck arrived. Now, he used to do towing for CAA, so his reaction was a big WTF?
The towing company was just up the road, so he suggested we talk to the guy about it.
Meanwhile, I already received a text confirming the arrangement with the towing company, complete with reference number.
So we went over to the other garage (this town has one grocery store, but at least three garages!) and got to talk to the tow truck driver directly. We explained what CAA told us, and he was all, WTF? No, I did not need to be there. I told him where the key was hidden, and made sure he knew that the truck wouldn’t go out of park. That was useful for him, because they normally need to put the vehicle into neutral to be able to move it. I also warned him about the missing handle inside the driver’s side door. My brother laughed and joked, “you probably see that all the time.” The guy said yes, yes he did!
In the middle of all this, my daughter let me know when the septic guy came and went, she took care of paying him (with tip. The septic guy always gets a tip) – and about the kittens she saw! All was being taken care of on the home front.
So arrangements with the garage and the tow was finally done. We then squeezed back into my brother’s truck and drove to the farm!
My brother and his wife, meanwhile, were going to lend us a vehicle.
The one that’s stored in the barn.
Now, there are reasons they replaced it, but it still runs and they were pretty sure the registration hasn’t expired yet, either. My brother would get it out of the barn for me and we could use it until we got the truck back.
!!!
Once we got to the farm, they had to rush to get what they needed to do done – and now they had the extra job of getting the car out of the barn! A lot of stuff had been shoved into it and around it, in their hurry to get everything off their property before possession was turned over to the new owners.
My brother and his wife are the best. I don’t know what we’d do without them!
A few hours later, I was in my room folding laundry, my older daughter came in to let me know that she’d heard the storm door open and close. She went to check and found my brother had dropped some peas on the floor and left.
Peas?
Okay.
As we were talking, I mentioned that they were in a huge hurry, but were making sure to have the vehicle available for us.
Which is when I realized my daughter had said, keys. Not peas.
Auditory processing disorder can be really funny, sometimes.
Thanks to the new security camera my brother installed at the gate, I was able to check the live feed to see them leave. My brother drove the truck out with their trailer, and my SIL followed behind with the care they’d loaned us in the past. When she stopped to close the gate behind them, I was able to use the camera to say thank you again, and wish them safe driving, and hear my SIL’s response.
I love technology!
Not long after, I got a call from the garage.
He had a few minutes, so he got the truck in and took a look.
It was exactly what everything thought it might be. A linkage problem. The cable broke.
He was able to use a clip and put it together and it was working, but he couldn’t give any sort of guarantee on how long it would hold. A few months. A few weeks? Eventually, the part would need to be replaced, which would be the entire assembly. It has been a long time since he’d replaced one, but he thought it was around $400plus.
This is our only vehicle. We can’t take chances.
I gave the go ahead. to order the part, asking him to call me back when he knew how much the part would cost. Labour would be $100 an hour, and he estimated about 2 hours to replace it.
I was getting ready to go out and water the garden when he called back.
Was I good with an off market cable for $150?
Uhm… yeah!!!!
So that’s what he ordered for me. The total, with 2 hours of labour and taxes, would come out to less than the part if it came from GM.
So that will be done on Tuesday.
Just in time for my daughter and I to have our joint medical appointment on Wednesday.
Then my eye test on Thursday that she has to drive me home from.
I had completely forgotten about the medical appointments on Wednesday. If we’d gone with the first garage, we would have had to reschedule, and who knows when that would have had to be.
Thank God the problem turned out to be relatively minor and not the transmission!!!
Plus, my older daughter has said she can cover the cost, so it’s not a hit to our budget, either.
That’s a huge relief!
Meanwhile, I’m going to have to use my brother’s vehicle tomorrow, though I was planning to avoid it. It all the fuss, I completely forgot I was going to hit the feed store for more kibble for the outside cats.
I used the last of their kibble to do this evening’s feeding, and even had to stretch it a bit by making a big bowl of cat soup with it.
The cats didn’t complain, that’s for sure!
After all that, I finally headed out to water the garden and baby food forest, which I’ll write about in my next post.
On the one hand, this was a pretty stressful day and another expense we just don’t need.
On the other than, things couldn’t have worked out better, under the circumstances.
The problem didn’t happen until after I got to my mother’s, and I could still do her grocery shopping.
My brother happened to take the day off today so they could get their trailer set up and out for the rest of the summer, so stopping to help me out was on their way.
They still had their hold vehicle, it was being stored here at the farm, and it’s insured (though they did have to run into town to make sure of that).
We went with the second garage that could work on the truck a day earlier than the first one, which meant we don’t have to reschedule medical appointments I’d forgotten about.
I mean, if something’s going to go wrong, it couldn’t have happened under better circumstances.
As my SIL said, someone is watching out for me, and I totally agree – and give thanks!
I have noticed the feral kittens are starting to go into the catio more often, and even going into the isolation shelter. Last night, I saw the little calico in the bottom of the isolation shelter, but it got really spooked by me and kept trying to run through the mesh walls, even though I stayed well away. The calico and torie are much shier.
The orange one, however, is getting really brave! So is the white and grey.
They were under the shrine, eating kibble, as I came closer with the kitten soup bowls. There was a third kitten – the calico, I think – that ran off and hid behind the tree. As I came over with the bowl, the Colby (the orange one) started coming right back! The white and grey followed, almost immediately, even as Sprout sat there, hissing at me. I might even have been able to reach out and touch Colby, except Hypotenose came over to eat the kitten soup, even though I’d already left other bowls all over the place, closer to the house. I tried to shoo him away, but that was too disturbing for the kittens, so I just left them be and put the last bowl in the isolation shelter. Eyelet was napping in there again. 💕
Coming back to the house, I heard some very distinctive crunching.
A stinky kitty was already there! This is one of two very little skunks I’ve been seeing. There’s a big one somewhere, too, but it doesn’t come out as often.
The big mama racoon and her two babies were in the sun room again last night. I used the critter cam to chase them out and saw there was a skunk, too. By the time I got to the door, the raccoons were out, but the little skunk squeezed itself under the counter shelf.
I went to see how far the raccoons when, and could hear growling and snarling. I found that one was peeking through the opening that the critters use to get under the storage house. There was another hidden in the lilac bush in the corner – and they were growling at each other! I used a garden hose to chase them off. I didn’t see the little ones, so I’m guessing they were already under the storage house.
As I continued my rounds, I made a point of checking the lean to on the garage, where we store our mowers, etc.
I heard a noise and finally spotted it. For the first time, I saw the kitten my brother said he’d seen, about a week ago.
It was difficult to get a picture, and these are the best I could do. I don’t understand why the mama hasn’t brought this kitten to the house, yet. She comes over to eat regularly, before coming back to hang out in the garage. There is no food or water around this area, so the kitten is getting only what the mama can bring it – and at this size, it’s probably not enough!
My brother gave us several traps, including two small ones. Perfect to catch a kitten! I’d like to set up a camera that’s got a live feed on it, then set up a trap.
Not right away, though.
Time to get ready to head out. It’s going to be a long day at my mother’s, today, I suspect.
Ah, well.
At least today is going to be cooler. We might even get a bit of rain. The smoke is really bad, though. There are so many fires up North this year. We could really use a LOT more rain!
What I was planning to do, after finishing my post this morning, was get a couple of hours a sleep in before my younger daughter and I headed out for errands.
Then my husband asked me if we had an extra box fan somewhere, because his just stopped working.
I remembered that we had one in the new basement that would normally be set up in the old basement window. We haven’t had to do that yet, this summer, so I was going to go get it. I was next to the door to the old basement, so I was going to go through that way to get it.
I didn’t make it all the way down the stairs, when I had to go back up and get my rubber boots.
Our septic was backing up the floor drain.
Now, on the plus side, it was just toilet paper, really. There was enough of it, however, to actually lift the floor drain cover up.
Once booted and gloved up, I opened the access pipe. It, thankfully, was not full of TP. So some water was still getting through, somewhere.
Thanks to the commercial drain auger we have, I was able to punch through the clog – right at the bottleneck, of course, – and get things draining. I didn’t even have to turn on the motor, and just used the drain snake. It’s rigid enough that I could push it through manually – and I could tell immediately when I got through, as what standing water there was, flowed away. I took the hose and ran water through the length of the pipe and into the tank, and nothing backed up. The septic pump did turn on, though, which was a good sign.
Nothing from the floor drain, though.
For that, I had to manually remove as much as I could into a garbage can. It wasn’t actually a lot, once I saw it together in one spot, but enough to be an issue for the size of pipe.
Once I got the bulk of it out, things started to flow and I could use the hose in the access pipe, flushing it back to the weeping tile under the new basement as well.
Then it was time to clean up the floor.
So that was a big, messy job though, thankfully, not as gross as it could have been!
While the water was flowing freely again, we did need to empty the tank. We normally would have done it in early spring, but too many other things messed up our budget. I was really hoping we could last until fall. When pushing the drain auger and the hose all the way through into the tank, I could feel how full it was. So, once I was done and cleaned up, I called the septic company and left a message.
He called back almost immediately.
He will be coming out tomorrow morning.
On updating the family – and assuring them that yes, we can use the toilet! – and telling them I’d have to take cash out from another budget, my older daughter came to the rescue, and transferred over enough to cover the bill. Including tip!
She was still on for getting Chinese food for my birthday, too.
What I think we need is to replace our entire toilet. We’ve already replaced the riser, but it just doesn’t hold a lot of water. The tank is lined, so there isn’t as much there, but there’s also very little in the bowl, even though I’ve set the dial on the riser to max. Meanwhile, there is some sort of leak in the overflow pipe, and we would have phantom flush, unless I allowed the refill hose to fill the tank directly, instead of through the overflow pipe. As a bonus, the tank would actually refill quickly, instead of taking forever.
There are other issues with the toilet, like no shut off valve, but I really like it. The bowl is 18 inches high, instead of the standard 16.5, so it is much better on the knees and back. My daughter and I did some searching and we found a 17″ one that has smooth sides under the bowl, so it’s easier to clean. That’s what we would replace it with, if we could. Price after taxes, though, would be heading towards $400. So that’s not going to happen any time soon!
Speaking of the price of things…
I got the estimate for replacing the door and frame in the entryway.
*sigh*
Over $4100, after labour and taxes.
The problem isn’t the pre-hung door. Even taking into account we are getting a more expensive one, with a window that can be opened. It’s the stucco. To remove the old frame, they’ll have to cut through the stucco to get it out. Then, once they’ve measured with the new frame, cut more stucco to size before installation can be done. Then they’ll hopefully be able to install the old storm door. This is not going to be a quick and easy job.
The estimate even says that, while they’ll try to be as careful as possible, there may be issues with the stucco breaking up, so if they have to repair that, it would be an additional cost.
That’s more than double what I though the cost might be. With how much it’s going to cost when the truck gets worked on through our insurance claim, plus so many other things sucking away at any emergency funds we had, we simply don’t have it. We might have to have another talk with the bank and try to come up with something.
When I told my mother that the door and frame needed replacing and why, she had asked me to let her know how much it cost. She would help.
There’s no way she’ll be doing that with the bill this high. Talking to my younger daughter about it and mentioning what my mom had said, she just laughed out loud. As she put it, that kind of money is “vandal” money, not “us” money. Our vandal would go to her for money, constantly, and she almost always gave in, and often more than the amount of this estimate. But to help us or my brother? Nope.
I don’t know what we’re doing to do, but we have 30 days to accept the estimate. After that, they have to do another estimate. Also, 1/3rd needs to be paid up front, before they start.
So that was another downer.
Things got better after that, though, as my daughter and I headed out…
Not without interruption.
Our phones started going off with emergency alerts. Due to wild wires, our province has again declared a province wide state of emergency. Evacuation orders are in effect in some of the reserves up north. Nothing in our area, though, so we are all right where we are. After pausing to check the fire maps, we continued on.
Our first stop was the post office, to get her birthday present: a new cane. My husband had ordered one, months ago, and it never arrived because the delivery company messed up. After giving on on that order, my husband and daughter went looking, and found this for her.
It’s also not a pretend novelty item. This thing is solid and functional.
Most importantly, it is a very comfortable cane for my daughter.
She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious, and she loves it! She started using it right away, and hasn’t stopped.
Cane acquired, it was off to town. First stop was the Chinese restaurant. My daughter went in to place the order, and then we were going to the grocery store while it was being made.
My daughter forgot her wallet.
We decided we could drive back to get it, giving the restaurant an estimated time it would take us, and then off we went.
Into rain with drops so big, I thought they were hail!
Sadly, no rain reached our place.
We got home, my daughter dashed in, and we were off again. Just in time for the food to be ready for pick up!
As I was catching up to my daughter in the parking lot, my phone began to ring.
It was home care.
*sigh*
Thankfully, they weren’t calling about tonight, but for tomorrow morning. Which worked out, actually, as I knew my mother would be needing a grocery shopping trip and probably laundry, etc. By the time I was off the phone, I was having to hold the doors open for my daughter, with the food!
That done, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things on their list – including a cake for me!
Thankfully, I remembered to go to a bank machine before we left town, so we would have cash for the septic guy tomorrow. I’ll be at my mother’s before he gets here, so I’ll be leaving the gate open, and have the cash ready for whoever is available at home to pay him, then make sure the gate is closed, afterwards. With how or vandal has been behaving, none of us feel we can leave the gate open for long.
That done, we could finally head home! Once everything was unloaded at the house, I started feeding kitties to get them away from the truck, so my daughter could park the truck.
She is fine with driving, which means I don’t have to reschedule my eye test next week.
There was still a lot of dry kibble out – the cats have not been eating as much, in this heat! – but I got the kitten soup out. As I was going to set the bowls out for the feral kittens, I spotted a pair of ears in the front window of the isolation shelter. Someone was in the hammock, but was so small, only the ear tips were visible!
Which means Grommet got the biggest bowl of kitten soup, all to himself!
That done, I left the girls to get things organized and called my mother about tomorrow. When I said I got a call from home care and that I would be coming in tomorrow morning, she started to get angry, but I distracted her by saying I could do her grocery shopping and laundry. It turns out she was already starting a grocery list, because her fridge is getting empty.
😄
We ended up talking for a while, and I did tell her about what our vandal has been doing. When repeating some of the things he said, even my mother was saying, how is that his business? Why does he care?
At one point, she brought up going to the police about it, and I told her I probably should, but we’ve had so much going on, it’s just really difficult. Out of curiosity, I brought up the septic backing up into the basement, which she didn’t even acknowledge years, and that we got an estimate about the door, reminding her about the front door and frame needing to be replaced. She just vaguely said that this was stuff to talk to my brother about.
Then she offered to call the police for me, herself. After all, this was happening at “her” place.
…
I told her, no. You aren’t directly involved. This is for me to do. So she left it at that.
Yeah. She’s already backed out of her offer to help with the door and frame replacement. I doubt she even remembers making it.
We ended up talking for quite a while before I could finally say goodbye and have supper. The rest of the family was already done by then! I hadn’t realized just how long the call turned out to be.
The food was delicious, as always. We got enough to feed us for a couple of days, at least! The less cooking we have to do in this heat, the better.
It’s now coming up on 8pm as I write this, and I’ll be doing my evening rounds, soon. Looking at the weather radar, we are still under severe thunderstorm alerts. There even seems to be a system heading our way that will actually pass over us, in a couple of hours. Which means rain, for a couple of hours! Maybe. 35% chance of rain.
So… do I water the garden again tonight, or leave it for the morning? We’re still at 25C/77F, humidex at 27C/81F, and we won’t be reaching comfortable temperatures until about 3am. The humidity is at 81%.
I’ll see how things look while I’m doing my checks. To be honest, I’m ready to crawl into bed right now. The heat has sucked all the energy out of me. Which is insane, because we’ve got AC now, and it’s so much better in the house than in previous years! My heat tolerance is dropping so much, as I get older.
This day has turned out to be all over the place. Tomorrow doesn’t look like it’ll be any better. While I’m at my mother’s, I’m going to miss my brother and SIL as they come out to take their trailer to somewhere else for the next while.
After what happened with our vandal yesterday, my older daughter joined me while doing my morning rounds. My own personal bodyguard.
Nothing was untoward; he didn’t come back and vandalize anything in the night. I’ve gone through the trail cam files. It was interesting to see that he had stopped at the end of our driveway with his tractor, when going in the other direction, before my incident with him happened. He didn’t actually do anything other than look like he was about to climb down, but then kept on going. It’s like he was just looking to start something, so the timing of my coming home as he was returning was an “opportunity” he couldn’t pass up on.
This morning, however, has been routine, other than extending my rounds to include more of the outer yard. My watering last night was thorough enough that I didn’t need to water again this morning. Which is good, because we never really cooled down during the night. We apparently briefly dropped to 20C/68F at about 6am, and immediately started heating up again. We’re supposed to hit 31C/88F or higher today. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings and, to be honest, I’d love a good thunderstorm right now. It’s really muggy out there. Everything seems to be passing to the north and south of us right now, but there is a large system making its way across the prairies that might reach us, maybe by tomorrow. We shall see.
The yard cats were already feeling the heat. They got their kibble and kitten soup – I actually saw Sprout eating inside the isolation shelter, though she ran off right away. I refilled the garbage can “heat sink” reservoir in the greenhouse, as it will actually help cool things down during the day. The luffa pots are on the ground, where it’s coolest, and they are heat loving plants, but I don’t want them to get cooked!
After filling the reservoir, the water in the hose was almost cold (our well water usually gets ice cold, even in the summer), so I refilled all the cat water bowls. The one in the sun room was filthy. I heard distinctive racoon noises in the sun room last night. When I went to chase out the racoon, I spotted the two baby racoons, struggling to hide between the lower window and the counter shelf. One couldn’t quite squeeze in after the other. So I left them be. They do leave the water bowls incredibly filthy, though!
I also put frozen water bottles in all the water bowls. By the time I finished my rounds, they were almost thawed out already. I will switch them out, once the previous ones have had a chance to freeze again.
While checking on the grapes before coming inside, I spotted an adorable Eyelet.
That top step to the storage house is a favourite spot for many cats!
With the heat, manual labour outside is not going to happen today. So we made other plans. My older daughter is treating us to Chinese food, as I have a birthday this month. We’ll be loading up on the proteins, as we can do the vegetables and rice ourselves. The girls are thinking of doing a stir fry, so I went out to gather a few things to include with some of the vegetables I harvested yesterday.
Just enough for today. There’s a variety of radish pods from both beds with them, plus a few of both types of sugar snap peas. Then I figured, why not? and gathered a few herbs. The plants aren’t very big, so I didn’t want to pick much. On the right is some basil, with a few lemon balm leaves, sage in the middle, a few sprigs of thyme – just one sprig of the lemon thyme, as it’s smaller than the English thyme – and then some dill fronds on the left. These are self seeded, so picking these was a bit like weeding. There are even some poppies coming up – most likely the “wild” double poppy that’s been growing in that area since before we moved here. I did try growing bread seed poppies in this location before, but when it comes to self seeding, it was the old variety that has been coming up, just like the dill has been, for years!
We’ll be heading out this afternoon, when the post office reopens, to pick up a package along the way. We had tried to get my daughter a cane for her birthday, ordering one from Etsy, but that never made it, thanks to the delivery company f*****g with us. My husband contacted the maker about it and they took our physical address, but nothing came of it and, as far as I know, my husband was never refunded the money.
So he bought another cane for my daughter, from somewhere else, and it came in yesterday. The store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so by the time my husband got the email notification, we couldn’t pick it up anymore.
We’ll pick it up today, then go to town to pick up the food order. My younger daughter will be coming with me.
Her surgical site is doing fantastic, as is her recovery. So fantastic, she’s had to wear a wrist brace, just to keep from using her hand too much. She has full mobility, and the pain of the surgery is far less than the pain of the ganglion. She is so thrilled to have finally evicted Squidly!
She also finally got the call back from the endocrinologist today, confirming an appointment in October. We’ve looked up the clinic address in the city. I am not looking forward to trying to find parking! It’s basically in the heart of downtown. There are plenty of parkades to choose from, but the streets are all one way and it’s always a hot mess of stupid traffic, a major transit hub and suicidal pedestrians. I used to work in the area, many years ago, and even lived across the river from there. So I still sort of know it.
Really not looking forward to driving around there. We’ll have to make sure to leave extra early, to give plenty of time to drive in circles to get into where we want to go.
A couple of days ago, when checking our trail cam files, I saw our vandal. He was driving his quad and, at the sign cam, drove onto the space between the fence and the road, got off his quad and walked up to the fence, where the camera is. He showed off his colostomy bag, then got back onto his quad and drove off.
About minute or two later, he was pulled into our driveway where he got off his quad, went to the gate, then went back to his quad and left. If he did any more, it was in the 5 second gap of time before the motion sensor could be triggered again after recording.
It was creepy and weird.
It’s been too windy to get anything done outside, even without the high temperatures, so I grabbed our water bottles and went into town. Since I was there anyhow, I was able to get my husband’s prescription refills, so we won’t have a delivery, tomorrow.
As I was heading home and turning onto our road, I could see a tractor further down the road, moving slowly. I had plenty of time to pull into our driveway before it got closer. As I got out to open the gate, then go back to truck, it was close enough that I could see the driver – and it was slowing down.
It was our vandal.
Okay. He’s just going to drive by. No problem. I got into my truck and drove through the gate, then stopped to go back and close up the gate.
As I was putting the chain on, the tractor stopped at the end of our driveway, and our vandal got off. He had his shirt open and his colostomy bag hanging out. As he walked towards me, he grabbed it and sort of shook it at me.
My only respond, as I kept closing up the gate, was to say, “yeah, I know about that.”
He came closer and started yelling at me, in an absolute rage.
He had cancer. He was dying. Because of me. (I caused his cancer, apparently.) He’s dying. It’s my fault.
I pretty much ignored him and was walking away when he said that I put him in jail. I just paused and said, “I put you in jail?” shook my head and kept walking. As for as I know, he’s never been jailed because of my pressing charges against him after he vandalized our gate. Nor after I got a retraining order against him. The restraining order was just for a year and long expired, but he’s been staying away – until I saw him doing on the trail cam files a couple of days ago. My brother has had a few really horrible voice mail messages, where it was clear I remain the focus of our vandal’s hate, and he has only gotten worse, but he stopped calling and texting me, long ago.
He also started yelling about how I never needed to work again, and neither do my daughters. I have no clue what he was talking about there. All I can guess is, he’s seeing all sorts of stuff here at the farm, and he things we suddenly bought all this stuff, so we much have oodles of money somehow. It must be driving him insane, to see all this stuff and not be able to come here and help himself to it, like he did while my father was still living here, and during the couple of years no one was living here. He still seems to think he’s entitled to the property – or at least access to it, any time he wants – and everything on it.
As I ignored him, he started yelling and waving his arm, saying for me to call the police, call the police. I just got into the truck and drove away, so he got onto his tractor and left.
I pulled up to the house to unload, so I couldn’t see through the trees, but I could hear the tractor. As slow going as it was, it seemed to be on the road for a very long time. I wonder if he stopped at the other camera again or something. I’ll have to be extra observant when I do my evening rounds.
The whole incident lasted only a couple of minutes. It was pure chance that he was driving on the road with his tractor as I was getting home.
Now I have to decide if I want to go through the hassle of reporting the incident to the police. I’m not even sure which RCMP detachment covers our area anymore. It’s changed a few times. It’s not like they’ll do anything about it, but at least there would be a record of the incident.
*sigh*
Ha! This is what the WordPress AI image generator came up with for this post…
Imaged created by WordPress AI.
He didn’t come anywhere near that close to me, and the gate was closed between us, but… that’s hilarious.
Also, that’s not what a colostomy bag looks like but, whatever!
Gotta find the humour of the situation, somewhere!
The Re-Farmer
Adendum:
Well now.
As I was outside, watering the garden, I heard a quad coming up the road. With the lilac hedge providing a privacy screen, I couldn’t see who was going by, but I had my suspicions.
I was right.
Our vandal went up the road, then drove into our secondary driveway. This is completely overgrown with grass on the road side of the gate. When I realized the quad was in the driveway, I started walking over and recording video with my phone. After a while, I was able to see through the trees as the quad backed up into the road again, in a herky jerky sort of way. I could identify our vandal at that point. I think he was drunk again, from the way he was driving. Eventually, he got completely back on the road and kept on going, probably to visit at one of the other farms in that direction.
I went to the driveway and could just see where his tires had flattened some of the tall grass, so I could tell how far he went in, and how he was facing. He was checking out my brother’s stuff stored by the warehouse. Of course, our vandal has no way of knowing who the stuff belongs to. From his earlier ranting, he seems to believe they belong to me, which means – in his mind, at least – I’ve suddenly come into a whole lot of money or something.
Seeing this stuff and not knowing what’s going on seems to be driving him insane. Possibly literally.
Looks like my morning and evening rounds will now need to include checking on that gate, and my brother’s stuff in that corner.
The Re-Farmer 