Last night turned out to be a rough night for all of us. No one got much sleep at all. We couldn’t even blame the heat for it, as we had a decently cooler night.
In my case, when I finally fell asleep, I was down so hard, I never even heard a cat knock a display off a shelf, onto the floor. Ghosty, for some reason, has been determined to climb up onto the shelf, through or over the display shelf, to jump down the other side, rather than simply walk on the floor to get to the same spot. It’s an ongoing problem, and she only does it when I’m asleep! I discovered it when I had to get up to go to the washroom and had to pick everything up, just to be able to get to my door.
*sigh*
I was outside, feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds early enough that I could go back to bed for a few hours.
Well… I tried to, that is. Didn’t actually get much sleep, again. I didn’t put the display shelf back again, figuring it was just an invitation to disaster, which meant half a dozen cats all wanted to explore the now empty top of the shelf it rested on.
Loudly.
Eventually, I gave up and headed out to get the mail and pick up a few things, including a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. Later in the afternoon, my older daughter joined me and I found out her night was bad, too. She has her pre-op appointment booked next week, but she’s considering finding the doctor’s phone number to talk about increasing her meds again. The girls and I had plans to do a deep clean of several rooms today, but with how we’re all feeling, it’s going to have to happen piecemeal, over several days.
Towards the end of the afternoon, I headed out to do the evening cat feeding and rounds. I was coming about to go to the isolation shelter when I realized there was a cat inside, watching me.
It was Sweetie! She actually was willing to go into the isolation shelter again!
She took off when she saw me walking towards the shelter, but at least we know she’s coming closer for food, and willing to go into the space she spent so much time in, before going to the rescue.
I saw Slick this afternoon, too.
Slick is no longer pregnant. *sigh*
She’s lost two litters this year. It’ll take time before we know if this one survived.
No sign of the one kitten I spotted not long ago, still. Hopefully, it will start showing up at the furthest food bowls, and we can start working on socializing it, or at least getting it comfortable with coming to the house for food and shelter.
After the cat feeding, I watered the south garden beds from the rain barrel. We’re not expecting rain again for almost 2 weeks, and it’s supposed to get above 30C/86F on the weekend. After today, I’ll be making a point of trying to get outside early, before the heat hits, to water the garden. On the plus side, the water table is high enough that I don’t need to water any of the trees and berry bushes. It’s only the garden beds that drain and dry out quickly, even if there are still puddles in the lower areas.
In the old kitchen garden, I actually did a tiny harvest.
The Tom Thumb Dwarf peas had pods large enough to pick. Or should I say, thick enough. They are not at all large, just like the plants themselves!
We have some volunteers in the wattle weave bed.
Next to the peas are three self seeded tomatoes. They won’t have time to reach full maturity, but I’m leaving them be, anyhow.
In the next image of the above slide show, growing along the edge by the path along the wattle weave bed, there are a few self seeded chamomile, including one that has started blooming!
After the south beds were done, I watered the main garden area, too, though with a hose. One of these days, I’d like to set up a water tank so that the main garden area can be watered with ambient temperature water, rather than from a hose. By the time it’s done, the well water is so cold, it can shock the plants.
With that watering done, I went to check on the food forest trees and bushes, and spotted something that made me smile.
We have gooseberries!
They are unripe and still rock hard, but we have them!
Unfortunately, by the time I was finishing up, I was starting to have pain issues. It seems to kick in after I’ve done a fair bit of walking. It’s almost at the point where I’m wondering if I should go to the ER or something. My own doctor is away right now and we have a phone appointment booked for when she gets back, but if this keeps up, I might have to find an alternative. There are no urgent care clinics out here. We don’t even have any walk in clinics any closer than my doctor’s clinic, so the ER would be pretty much the only other option. If I did that, I would expect to spend many hours in the waiting room, since I would not be an “urgent” case. At least the diclofenac works, though it can take a while to kick in. When the pain hits, it doesn’t matter if I’m sitting, standing or lying down.
Oddly, while talking to my older daughter and describing where the pain it, it’s almost identical to the pain she is having! Hers is worse in other ways, given what the cause is for her.
Ah, well. Nothing much either of us can do about it right now. I don’t even have a diagnosis, and I won’t until I talk to my doctor. Even then, that would only be if the ultrasounds actually found something.
Still, I’m managing to at least get outside and get at least a few things done. I’m quite excited that we have our first gooseberries since getting planting that bush. It brings back memories. We had a gooseberry bush here when I was a kid and I used to love eating them fresh off the bush. In retrospect, I was eating them under ripe, but I loved that sour taste. I did taste one of the biggest gooseberries today. It was pretty nasty! 😄 They still have a ways to go before they are edible!
On my list of things to get done in the garden over the next while, along with loosening up the area near the corn bed and sowing tillage radishes, it’s getting time to uncover the corn and put a mulch down around them. Right now, there are a lot of weeds and I’ve been leaving them, since they are acting a bit like a living mulch right now. We’ll see what I manage to get done over the next while. If the yards dry out enough, I might be mowing, instead. That, at least, shouldn’t trigger the pain levels like walking does.
Being broken really sucks sometimes!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 