Today is October 10, and yes, we have garden progress!
Last month, the 10 was our average first frost date, so I took garden tour video. I might do that again, later today, depending on how other things go. I might also leave it for the middle of the month. We shall see!
While doing my rounds this morning, I finally pulled the red onions in the high raised bed and set them to cure.
The strong fence wire on this cover was perfect to hang them on! Only a few didn’t have enough greens to hang them, so they got set out on the frame to cure.
After I took this photo, I also gathered the whole three shallots that were left by the summer squash, and hung them on the frame wire, too.
I am perplexed by these onions. As far as I can remember, these were supposed to be the Red Wethersfield onions, which have a round, flattish shape. These look more like the Tropeana Lunga or Red of Florence onions we grew before, but we didn’t have seeds for those this year.
So I decided to look at my old post about planting in this bed.
Well, that explains it.
These aren’t onions.
They are the Creme Brulé shallots.
I completely forgot that I planted shallots in this bed. I was sure I’d planted Red Wethersfield in here!
It’s a good thing I use this blog as a gardening journal!
So… those shallots are HUGE! Their size was another reason I didn’t think they could be shallots. Particularly since the ones planted in the bed with the yellow onions and summer squash were so much smaller.
Which had me wondering…
Where are all my Red Wethersfield?
Well… I did know where some of them were, but did they survive?
I had planted some of them among the Forme De Couer tomatoes, but we weren’t able to keep the cats off of them. This was all I could find. A few got planted in the wattle weave bed, but I could see no sign of those.
I was sure I had more transplants than this, though!
Ah, well.
I will be keeping these. As we clean up and prepare the beds for the winter, I will find a place to transplant them, then mulch them over the winter. Hopefully, they will survive the winter and go to seed next year, and we can try again.
As for the bean pods with the onions, those are the Carminat purple pole beans I’d left to go to seed. There had been at least a couple more pods, but I couldn’t find them. With one, I did find the torn remains of the pod, so I’d say the racoons were at it again.
These are all the seeds that were in the bods. It looks like only one is damaged.
They will sit in the cat free zone to dry a bit more, now that they are out of their pods, then I’ll package them up for next year. These do grow very well here, so when we plant them again, I want to mark off one or two plants to specifically leave for growing more seed.
Meanwhile, it’s getting close to the time to plant garlic for next year. I will select our largest heads of garlic in the root cellar, rather than buying more.
Which means we will have onion seeds (with still more to collect from the garden), pole bean seeds, and garlic from our own garden for next year. I’ve also saved seed from that blue squash we had to harvest when it broke off its own stem, and we plan to save seed from that one big Crespo squash. There is the possibility of cross pollination with the Wild Bunch Mix winter squash we grew, though, so any seed we save there may not be true to the parent, even if I was able to hand pollinate from the same plant.
It doesn’t look like those Uzbek Golden carrots that bloomed are producing any seed. The flowers are died off, but there’s no seed. Perhaps because these are first year blooms? I don’t know.
We are slowly getting to the point where we will be able to save more and more of our own seed. I don’t expect to be 100% using our own seed, if only because I like to try new things, and we are still working out what varieties we like best in some things, but I do expect to be able to grow at least 90% of our garden from our own seed within a few years.
Just a little big closer to our goal of being as self sufficient as possible!
It was eating on its own! This is the first time I have seen it eating since we first noticed there was something wrong with it. Even when we brought it into the old kitchen to give wet cat food, it was more interested in cuddles, and yesterday morning I was feeding it with a syringe.
This is a huge step forward! I even saw it moving to the other tray to eat, then some of the adult cats got a bit too pushy.
This is the cat that we aren’t sure where it came from. I asked the girls about it, and they’ve seen it hanging around for a little while, but don’t really recognize it, either.
When I saw that it was in the sun room, eating at one of the trays, rather than hiding in a corner of the shelf shelter, I took a chance.
It was facing away from me while eating, so I was able to reach down and start petting its back.
That startled it, and it stretched its head way up to look around, but didn’t run away. When I started to scritch it’s neck, it finally turned to look at me, but did not run away.
Shortly after, it actually came up to me, wanting more pets!
This actually confirms to me that it not likely one of our cats from last year, returned, which was one possibility. If it was, it would have been one of the more feral ones that we’d never been able to get close to. I also would have expected it to be an older cat. This one seems barely more than a “teenager”.
That it actually took to pets so quickly suggests to me that this is probably a cat that got dumped in the area. There’s no way to know for sure. It may even be a yard cat from one of the neighboring farms, though if it were, I would actually expect it to be more feral, not less.
If we can get to where we can handle it, we can look for things like an ear tattoo.
It’s nice to have some good progress with the kitties!
Please don’t try to answer that rhetorical question.
Guess what?
Now we don’t have hot water.
There is tepid water, but no hot water.
We’ve already had our tank replaced on warranty twice – normally, it would never be done more than once, and we know we won’t be able to get another warranty tank.
I had an unusually hard time getting out to do my morning rounds, today! 😁
As is now the routine, I started off by setting the outside cats’ kibble to soak in hot water before heading out. The cats were very hungry and eager for food!
There was even a skunk already there, coming in to eat along with the cats! I was going to chase it away, but I noticed it has some sort of injury around one eye and…
What can I say. I’m a suck for the skunks, as well as the cats!
At least the soaked kibble won’t cause problems for the skunk. They shouldn’t eat kibble, because of how their jaws are hinged. It can cause problems. Soft kibble, however, won’t do that.
It was very hungry.
Of course, I was keeping an eye out for the kitten that seems to be having issues. When I started putting food out, I saw it laying on the cat bed on the bottom of the shelf in front of the window.
It wasn’t moving, as I put the food out.
I was honestly prepared to have to dig a hole this morning, but when I came back with the empty food bowl, I saw the kitten. It was in the middle of a food tray, food right in front of it. Other cats were head butting it to get at the food, but it wasn’t eating.
So I picked it up and moved it to another tray, to see if it would start eating there.
It didn’t.
We’d tried to give it wet cat food last night. It wouldn’t eat that, either. The bowl was covered and still in the old kitchen, so I took it in to see if it would eat the wet cat food.
It didn’t.
I even tried to scoop it up with my fingers and put it right to its mouth.
It still wouldn’t eat.
It did, however, like and bite at my fingers. Eventually.
What it really wanted was snuggles.
Oh, my goodness, did it ever want snuggles!
I ended up sitting in my late father’s walker for a while, just holding it.
It still needed to eat something, though, so I ended up taking it, and the bowl of food, into the bathroom. I added warm water to the food, then used a larger syringe we now have to try and feed the kitten.
It did actually eat eagerly for a while, actively licking at the syringe.
But only a short while. I did force feed it a bit more, but it was far more interested in checking out the bathroom, and its own reflection in the mirror.
I do still get the impression there is something going on with its vision, yet it can clearly see at least somewhat.
It also seems wobbly on its legs.
I gave its eyes a wash, and cleared its crusty nose. There are definite lung issues going on, but that seems like the standard herpes related issues all the yard cats have.
Finally, I took it back to the sun room and managed to escape before it started finding my feet and laying its head on my boots again!
I had some followers as I did my morning rounds, though, including Eye Baby!
It was really hard to get a picture of him. He wouldn’t stop moving!
That eye looks so, so much better. I don’t know that it will ever improve beyond how it is now, but he seems to be completely adjusted to his condition. It certainly doesn’t slow him down in any way!
As I finished my rounds and started heading back in, through the sun room, I found this pile of cuties, watching me!
That’s one adult cat and four kittens, all mashed into that tiny cat bed! There is a larger cat bed right next to them, with a single kitten sleeping in it, but nope. They all needed to crowd together in the little one. 😄
His legs may be wobbly at times, but he still managed to get into the cat cage and settle onto one of the beds in there.
We will keep monitoring him and keep feeding him with the syringe. That will give him both food and hydration. Hopefully, he will start eating and drinking again on his own soon.
Or she. I haven’t tried to look, yet. 😄
In other things…
While I was working on this, I got a call from the supportive living coordinator about my mother. I updated them on some of the more recent changes, such as her macular degeneration, and starting Meals on Wheels. My mother is on that line, where she doesn’t quite fit for the services available in one level of care, but needs more care that would be a good fit for the other. The long term care coordinator also has my mother’s file, and the two of them will connect to talk about my mother, including the updated information I was able to give them just now, see where my mother needs to be, and how best to get her there!
My mother, meanwhile, just wants to be in one specific long term care home in the town nearest us. We’re trying to encourage her to take whatever they have available, because there’s just no way of knowing when a space will open. Once she’s in the system, she can be transferred later. She just needs to get in, first!
Progress is progress, though, and we’re slowing getting her there!
The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!
When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.
This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.
So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.
We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.
Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.
So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁
Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.
Normally.
It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.
Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.
Then she made herself a sandwich.
The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!
Then her fingers started to burn.
It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.
She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!
Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!
Gloves needed!
Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!
These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!
Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.
We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.
Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.
So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.
We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.
Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄
That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.
I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.
We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.
Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.
The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.
That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.
That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.
So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.
There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).
We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.
Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.
Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.
On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.
On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!
It was a nice, crisp and cool morning as I was doing my rounds. I made sure to get the kibble for the outside cats to soak in hot water before I headed out, so they could have a nice warm breakfast.
There is one kitten that I noticed last night; a friendly little tabby. It had been curled up in the cat bed at the bottom of the shelf in the window. While topping up their kibble at the end of the day, it basically didn’t move, while all the other cats and kittens came running as soon as they heard kibble hit tray.
This morning, it was still in the same spot, but meowing strangely. It reminded me of how eye baby used to meow, when he was pretty much completely blind and wandering around the yard.
Eye baby seems to be doing quite well, btw. The one eye is still shaped differently, but he can blink it and seems to be able to see out of it.
I was able to get the kitten out and tried to bring it near the warm food. It did not seem interested in the food at all.
I cuddled it a bit, but had to continue my rounds. As I was making my way back to the house, I could here it meowing, and found it following a couple of other kittens into the old kitchen garden. I went to pick it up and it really enjoyed being carried, started to purr and knead the sleeve of my shirt.
I tried to put it near food again and managed to free myself long enough to bring a water bowl into the sun room. It’s one of the working heated water bowls (at least I hope it’s still working!), and we will have it plugged in during the winter, so they’ll have a heated water bowl both inside and outside.
As I moved the kitten to different places, as much to get it out from under my feet as to show it where the water bowl and food trays were, it seems to me the kitten is not very steady on its feet. It does seem to be having vision issues though, as far as I could see, the eyes are clear and dilating normally.
There’s nothing we can do about it, other than monitor the kitten and see how it does. We do still have antibiotics we can give it, if it seems warranted.
Meanwhile…
My brother was finally able to get back to me on Messenger, this morning. With great hesitation, I had told him we would need help with the bathroom, as we don’t have the tools we need to cut away the rotten chip board – aspenite is the proper name for it. I never remember that, but my brother mentioned it.
He asked what tools we needed, but I honestly don’t know. What tool is the right tool to cut away the aspenite, without damaging what’s on the other side of it?
He did mention something that should have been obvious, though we hadn’t thought of it yet.
We’re going to have to take the tub out entirely. The rot extends down the wall where the water pipes are, and in the middle of the back wall.
*sigh*
That is not going to be an easy job. Not just because of the size of the tub in a rather small bathroom. This tub is old school. I’m pretty sure it’s enameled cast iron. When you first get into it, it’s absolutely freezing, but once it warms up, it holds heat so much longer than a modern tub.
Gosh, I miss being able to take a bath!
We basically went from, the taps and faucet need to be replaced, to a major repair and replacement job. The more we uncover, the more we find will need to be done.
My brother barely remembers what’s behind that aspenite. We know there’s log behind the two walls, and that there are more pieces of whatever was handy, like we found under the fake tile paneling, used to try and level the walls.
We’ve still got the fan set up on the bath chair to get things as dry as we can. Every now and then, I’ve been using more CLR on the rust stains under the taps. May as well try and clear that as best we can, while we’re at it.
As much as I like this tub, if we had the funds for it, I would replace it with one of those walk in tubs. The kind with a door on the side, and a seat at one end. This would allow both my husband and I to be able to get in and out safely, and get the hot, soaking baths that would give us at least some temporary pain relief. Especially for him, when his back starts to spasm.
A plain walk in tub with a seat starts at over $3600 at Home Depot. There are slightly cheaper walk in tubs, but they don’t have a seat which, for us, completely defeats the purpose of having one.
If we did get one, we would probably have to add more structural support to the floor in the basement. Which is not that big of a deal. I think we even have an adjustable steel pillar somewhere around the farm that could be used. The only down side of that is, it would make it harder to get at the well pump, sump pump and pressure tank, as well as the plumbing, that are all under the bathroom.
Ideally, we would be hiring someone to do all this and renovate the entire bathroom in the process. If we were to include installing a walk in tub at the same time, though, that would easily cost at $10,000. Probably more like $15,000 since we’d also be getting at least the walls around the tub tiled. When we looked it up before, the cost to tile the bathroom alone was in the $5000 for a room the size of ours.
*sigh*
If we had that kind of cash available, we wouldn’t have truck payments right now.
Well, we’ll figure it out.
Meanwhile, my brother plans to come out here with another load, after work on Friday, and he will take a look at the bathroom while he’s here.
So today’s priority will be working on my husband’s bedroom. I’m hoping we can set his computer up on his leatherworking desk in the living room first. Then we can start clearing and rearranging his room, so we can access the corner on the other side of the tub and look into cutting an access panel.
One of the things we need to take out of his room is my late father’s wardrobe; it matches the vanity and nightstand I’m using in my room. In talking to him about it, he said we could take the wardrobe out completely and leave it out, as he doesn’t use it very much, but we have nowhere else to put it! It’s pretty darn big.
It seems like every thing we discover that needs to be done requires something else that needs to be done to do it… which requires something else to be done so we can do that…
When my mother asked us to move out here, we knew it wouldn’t be easy, and the house wasn’t “perfect” like she claimed it was, but my goodness, we never expected it to be this bad.
Things are going to be slow when it comes to dealing with our water problems in the tub.
Today, we were able to cut away the bottom of the fake tile paneling, to see the damage behind it. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect back there. Especially with the two walls that are log.
On the one hand, that’s really gross. Especially around the taps, where quite a few bugs were uncovered. They looked a bit like pill bugs, but I really didn’t want to look too closely! Others were too small for even that much of an identification.
There were so.
Many.
Nails in that paneling! My guess is, before the tub surround was added, the paneling was coming loose from the wall, so it was very thoroughly nailed in place before the surround was installed. The problem is, the nails were very hard to see. While I was cutting through the paneling, I kept hitting nail heads in the intersecting lines. Then, as I tried to pull the paneling off, I had to pry it off more nails. Some of them pulled right out. Others, the paneling broke around it.
The back wall and the section of wall on the right are the log walls. I’m hoping that chip board managed to protect the logs somewhat. My brother had told me that shims were used to level the walls so the paneling could be attached.
I didn’t expect there to be scrap pieces on top of the chip board. I even recognize some of the pieces as scraps from the paneling used on the rest of the ground floor of the house. You use what you’ve got!
For now, we have the bath chair set up to support a box fan to dry the rotted walls.
At this point, in updating my brother about all this, I had to ask for help. We simply don’t have the tools to cut away that rotted chipboard.
I am rather afraid to find out what’s behind the wall around the pipes.
Once we get to a point where we can actually install the new taps, we will probably cover the open sections with plastic. That would allow us to turn the newly installed shut off valves, on, and we could use the shower as we get the materials we need to patch and repair. My older daughter has told me she will cover the costs, but we don’t even know what the costs will be. Plus, she’s a freelancer, so the money comes when the jobs get done. Thankfully, she has a pretty steady stream of commissions for her digital art.
With how things are going, though, I expect it will take weeks to get it done, as we slowly uncover things and figure out how bad the damage is, and what we will need in order to repair it.
Until then, we continue to sponge bathe!
Meanwhile, we’ve had a change in schedule. My husband called the clinic about his CT scan tomorrow and cancelled it. He’s in too much pain to handle the drive.
So that frees up the day though, under the circumstances for my husband, I would rather have had it otherwise.
Yes, the tiny strawberries are still growing, still blooming and still producing berries! Only a couple were ripe. Whatever variety of strawberries they are, they are certainly appropriate for our climate! It should be interesting to see how they do, when they are transplanted somewhere they can grow wild.
My trip to my mother’s was productive, though she was physically not up to climbing in and out of the truck to go to the bank. Hopefully, my sister will visit on one of her days off and can take her with her car. It’s much easier for our mother to get in and out of her vehicle.
At her request, I picked up a large pizza for our lunch. Today was her first day on the Meals on Wheels program, though. We were done eating before it arrived, and my mother still has half a pizza. That will be two or three meals for her, right there, and the Meals on Wheels will be her supper.
The place that cooks the meals usually sends out invoices at the end of the month, but my mother wanted to pay in advance. She doesn’t trust the post office, though, so she asked the volunteer delivery person – who happened to be one of the social workers that hosts all sorts of activities in the building – to hand deliver it. My mother has been making use of their services on an as-needed basis and always paid cash per meal directly to the delivery person, so we knew this was acceptable.
Lack of volunteers means they only deliver meals three days a week. As we were talking about the delivery days, the social worker told my mother that, if she wanted, she could request more than one meal. She could, for example, order two meals each on Monday and Wednesday, then order three meals on Friday. This way, she could have a meal for every day of the week. My mother was happy to hear that, and said that she would think about it. For now, we’ll just see how the three days a week works out for her.
The meal comes with a container of soup, which my mother wanted to eat right away, leaving the rest of the meal for later in the day. So I headed out with her list and did her shopping for her. It didn’t take long, even with going to both the pharmacy and the grocery store. My mother is set for a good while now.
By the time all was done and I was heading home, I noticed that I would reach our area in time for the post office to reopen for the afternoon. I knew one package was expected today. Another was due in a couple of days, but sometimes they come in early.
There turned out to be three packages waiting for me!
One was the pair of clamp lamps, the other was the ceramic bulbs. I tested both lamps and bulbs, then set them aside for now. We won’t need to set them up for a while, yet, and one of them is meant to go into the cat isolation shelter. We have a larger clamp lamp that we used last year, but the bulb didn’t make it through the entire winter. When the budget allows, I should pick up another two pack.
The other package was a chainsaw sharpening kit. My husband, sweetheart that he is, sharpened the chain on the mini-chainsaw (battery powered pruning saw) for me. I’ll have to find the spare and get him to do that one, too, plus the chain for our larger electric chainsaw.
My husband likes sharpening things. 😁
After having the supper my older daughter prepared, I headed outside to take care of the eggplant and pepper bed. I removed the plastic that was surrounding it and rolled it up around a couple of narrow boards for storage. We might use one section to put around the catio for the winter, so for now, they’re being stored on the catio roof.
The eggplant leaves were definitely killed off by the cold, but I was surprised by how well the eggplants held out.
Even some really tiny Little Finger eggplant seemed salvageable. Only a few were too frost damaged to bother picking. There were only three Classic eggplant left to harvest, and all three had minimal frost damage on them.
That plastic did the job, even if it couldn’t completely protect the plants!
The Cheyenne hot peppers in the middle of the bed fared better. There were SO many peppers, and none of them were too frost damaged to pick!
I should have used the bigger colander! It’s being used for something else, though. When I brought them inside, they almost filled the basin I’d dug out of the old kitchen recently.
We don’t have the space to spread them out, so I guess we’ll have to string them and hang them. They should continue to ripen.
We most definitely don’t have the space for all the things that need to ripen indoors, though!
Which is a good problem to have, I suppose!
I’m just happy to have a harvest in October.
After this, the potatoes need to be harvested. Oh, and the red onions are still hanging in there!
The sunchokes should also be harvested, but they are still quite green and growing. The frost hasn’t really bothered them at all. I’m curious as to how well they did, after not harvesting them at all last year.
In a few days, we’ll be bringing the rest of the winter squash from the garage to the root cellar.
The root cellar is going to be pretty full this winter!
Not too bad, considering what a rough start the garden had this year. I’m quite pleased!
Today has been gorgeous and sunny, with almost no wind. The weather apps say we’re at 13C/55F, but feeling like 10C/50F.
The thermometer in the shelf shelter, which was getting hit with full sun, was reading almost 30C/86! 😄
My daughter took on the very messy job of starting to scrub the walls around the tub, as we let the rotten parts we found under the tub surround, dry a bit. There is very little room to assist, so I took advantage of the pleasant day to start winterizing the sun room, as well as making some changes in the old kitchen.
Last winter, we set things up for the cats on one side, while the other side was used to store our tools and supplies.
Unfortunately, the cats knocked so many things off the shelves and all over the floor. Then, because it’s darn cold out there in the winter, they used all sorts of corners to do their business in.
The girls started cleaning it up in the spring, but it never quite got finished.
So I got it mostly done today, which included moving some things out of the old kitchen.
The first thing was to get the broken pieces of tub surround and get that onto the junk pile for later hauling to the dump. Once those were out of the way, I could get at a rocking chair that was here when we moved in. We can’t use it in the main part of the house – too many creatures with tails! – and it’s just taking up space in the old kitchen, so I ended up putting it in the storage house. That gave me access to the small shelf I wanted to move to the sun room. It was meant to be used to hold things like extra packages of toilet paper or paper towel, cases of canning jars and the like. It ended up getting blocked off, and not just by the rocking chair! There were cases of canning jars on it that we never opened. Last year, we didn’t have enough produce to make it worthwhile to can, and this year will be much the same. I just moved those over to a plastic couch for now.
The old kitchen had been cleaned out and set up to be someplace we could sit and relax in, but that didn’t work out, either. We had to move the kibble into the old kitchen because the racoons kept knocking the bin over and spilling it onto the floor. Then we found ourselves having to use it to store our garbage until we could make a dump run. That basically took up most of the space.
I’d like to get that couch moved out, too, but there really isn’t any room for it in the storage house, either.
Still, once I cleared out the rocking chair and the shelf, I could move my late father’s walker in the space where the shelf was. Now we have all sorts of room in the old kitchen again!
I’m keeping the walker handy, because I see the day coming when I will need to be using it myself.
As for the sun room, I didn’t have to empty it entirely, which was nice. I started off cleaning and clearing around the cat cage until I could move the cage, and the interlocking floor mat it sits on, towards the middle of the west facing windows, then clean up the corner where it had been. The collection of cat carriers we keep in there got taken outside and dismantled to varying degrees, depending on the design, before getting scrubbed down and left to dry in the sun. Basically it was clear a spot, clean up under it, clear a spot, clean up under it…
The cats may use the great outdoors to do their business in the summer, but the skunks and racoons will drop their messes anywhere and any time!
Ew.
Then I had to take out a whole lot of stuff on the storage and tools side of the sunroom, and empty the matching shelf that needed to be moved into the other corner.
Quite a bit of stuff ended up getting thrown away due to cat damage.
Other stuff got moved to the garage for storage, including all the paint supplies I could find. Others got tucked into the counter shelf, where the cats can’t get at them.
Finally, the shelf itself got taken outside, where I could hose it down.
Once the shelf was out, I had to mop the floor several times to get the messes that were uncovered in the process.
Ew, again!
Finally, I was able to shift over the wooden shelf that was under the bathroom window, and move it into the corner. That cleared enough space to be able to open one of the doors under the counter shelf all the way. The floor isn’t level, so I had to put scrap pieces of rigid insulation under it, so it can’t fall forward. Then the small shelf from the old kitchen was set in place, and I could finally start putting things away again. This shelf got mostly gardening supplies, plus the critter cam was set up on to top of it, too. I ended up getting a piece of scrap 2×4 to raise the camera up a bit higher, with pieces of Alien Tape to hold them in place.
Eventually, I was able to bring the big shelf back in and set it up in the corner across from the one in the window. I had to get creative to work around the shop lights we’ve got hanging across there. These are set to turn on with motion activation after dusk.
Once the lights were adjusted for the new shelf, I was able to set up a folding closet door we found while cleaning up after moving here, and have found so many uses for! It is long enough to create a platform between the shelves, with enough space above the cat cage for the cats to still use the top as a bed.
With the cooler temperatures, we no longer have the wire mesh door we made to keep the cats out of the old basement, allowing us to keep the door open and let cool air circulate. Last year, we set that up between the shelf in the window and the top of the cat cage, with a box on top to level it. We then had to use some scrap 2x4s to support the wire mesh door, since it was bending under the weight of cats, plus we put a sheet of rigid insulation under it, partly to keep things warmer below, where the heat lamp was, partly so the cats could walk over the wire mesh without their paws falling through. We still put cat beds and another piece of scrap insulation on top.
The folding closet door I set up between the shelves is narrow enough to fit inside the wire mesh door frame, so that can now be stored and used for the cats at the same time again – and the closet door is far more solid! The wire mesh door is longer, too, making the entire platform more secure.
Then I could start putting some things back on the shelf for storage, including the cat carriers.
This is how the cat side of the sunroom looks now.
There are two small cat carriers on the bottom, and larger ones in the next two shelves above. Hopefully, the cats will just use them and not knock them about!
The platform now has a couple of cat beds, plus the self warming mat, on it. Two of the shelves against the window have the canopy and walls from the broken market tents on them for the cats to use as beds.
We have a number of other cat blankets that need to be washed, and then they’ll be set up inside the cat carriers or draped over the shelves of the mini greenhouse frame, though those will need cardboard or something laid on the wire shelves, first.
The sun room kibble trays were then returned to the sun room and, last of all, I got the critter cam positioned were I wanted it.
I have the live feed running as I write this. I can see cats in the cat beds and self warming mat on the platform, and more on the shelves in front of the window. I can’t see into the cat carriers to know of they are being used or now right now.
Later on, we will set up the heat lamp, clamped to the platform, and the heated water bowl near the small shelf that’s now in there, where it can be plugged into the same cord that powers the critter cam.
Aside from little things like that, the sunroom is ready for the winter, and moving things to the garage has given us a lot more open floor space, too.
One thing I’ve been considering it setting up the canopy tent I got on clearance, somewhere close to the house, as an extra shelter in the winter. Perhaps in the corner, where it could be over the window to the old basement, if I could find a way to secure it. For now, though, the tent is in its package, on the shelf between two windows.
It has been claimed by these cheeky little buggers!
Quite a few cats have decided it is an excellent bed. Especially the kitten in the foreground of the photo above!
At least they’re not trying to knock it off the shelf!
This was not the job I planned on working on today, but it was one that needed pleasant weather to do, so the other stuff will just have to wait a bit longer. This was a big and messy job, and I’m glad it’s over with!
Meanwhile, my daughter scrubbed at the bathroom walls until her arms gave out – it was so bad under that tub surround, she only got half of it done. My other daughter made supper for all of us, then cleaned detritus out the tub as best as can be done right now.
All in all, it was a productive day.
I’ll have to leave productiveness to the girls for the next couple of days, though. I will need to help my mother with groceries tomorrow because, the day after, my husband has to be at the hospital in the nearer city for an 8:30am CT scan. Which means we need to leave here by 7:30am at the latest.
Time to go call my mother and work out what time I’m coming over!
Until then, thanks for reading all my blathering, and I hope you have an awesome night!
It’s about 10:30am as I start this and, according to the weather apps, we’re at 6C/42F right now, with a “feels like” of 1C/34F
Which means it was probably a couple of degrees colder, at least, while I did my morning rounds, which I finished a couple of hours ago.
I didn’t even need a jacket while I was out there. Sweats and a sweatshirt had me more than warm enough!
Still, it’s rather chilly for the kitties – especially the littles – so I took the time this morning to set their kibble to soak in hot water until completely softened, and also had warm water to top up their water bowls.
The cats that prefer to eat on the cat shelter roof aren’t too happy when I just walk past them – some even reach out to grab my arm as I go by! – but they do eventually go to the trays.
I’d say the warm food is worth it for them!
As I was doing my rounds, I had quite a few branches to pick up. Mostly smaller branches around the yard. Then I found this in the maple grove, out by the fire pit.
When I first saw it, I was a bit confused. How could we lose a tree, but all the trees are still standing? Where did it come from?
Click through to the next photo, and you’ll see.
We just lost half a tree! 😄
Clearly, it had been dead for some time. As I was cleaning it up, I left the biggest piece of trunk for last. The smaller pieces and branches went to the two branch piles we have – one in the yard as fuel for the fire pit, one just on the other side of the fence that will eventually need a commercial wood chipper to get rid of.
The trunk turned out to be so dry and partially rotted that, when I went to pick up the larger end to drag it out, it broke in half!
Those pieces got dragged over next to the pile of cut logs we have for the fire pit, to be broken down more, later.
We haven’t used the fire pit even once this year. It’s usually been too windy for a fire, and when it wasn’t windy, there were too many mosquitoes. Now that it’s getting cooler and the bugs are mostly gone, I’m hoping to get it going at least once or twice – if the wind allows!
Another reason I want to get our outdoor kitchen built. We’ll move the fire pit into the shelter. It won’t keep the bugs out, but it’ll have at least some shelter from the wind and rain.
Until then, we won’t be getting much use out of the fire pit where it is now. Not only is wind a concern, but there are too many dead branches around that the sparks could ignite, as well as a nearby spruce. Spruce is basically a big torch waiting to happen.
After finishing cleaning up the wind damage around the yard – mostly very minor stuff, thankfully – I started heading inside, and found all sorts of adorableness in the sun room!
Poor judgement, trying to squeeze his way into the cat bed with the kittens and… I believe that is Not-Junk-Pile in with them.
If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see a kitten cuddle puddle. The “bed” they’re on is an old feed bag, from when we could still afford to buy deer feed and bird seed, we found, stuffed with… I can’t remember what. It was stored on the shelf and the cats knocked it flat to make a bed out of it! 😄
We will be rearranging the sun room as we clean it up for the winter, bringing in another shelf from the old kitchen that isn’t being used as intended. We’ll set up this side of the sun room for the cats, so they will have more places like this to stay warm in the winter.
Well, it’s time to go help my daughter in the bathroom. There is much to do to fix things up!
