Author: Re-Farmer

One more little harvest, and how the morning went

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, I did get some more stuff done in the garden, even remembered to upload a couple of photos – then completely forgot about the post I meant to write! 😄

Anyhow…

I decided to harvest most of the eggplant, just pruning the entire plants at their base so I could reach the fruit better.

They look so much like tomatoes, don’t they?

In the end, I left three plants. In the next photo, you can see the green eggplants on one plant. On another plant, I did find a few tiny green eggplants, and on the third, I couldn’t find anything at all – that’s the one that was the most damaged by cold – but I left it anyhow. After removing the extra cages and doing a bit more clean up, I moved the jugs of water in between the remaining three plants to act as heat sinks on nights they’ll need to be covered. I did a bit of clean up in the rectangular bed as well, then gave everything a watering from the rain barrel.

Today was supposed to reach a high of 24C/75F, but we ended up hitting 26C/79F. The over night low is supposed to be around 12C/54F, so I didn’t cover the winter squash, but I did give them and the summer squash a thorough watering, too. It was starting to get pretty dark by then, which is when both my daughters came out, looking for me. They’d messaged me, but I never heard the notification, so they were coming out to make sure I was okay! That was sweet of them. :-)

The end of the day was a lot calmer than the start.

This morning was my telephone appointment with my mother’s doctor, so I did short rounds so that I could be close to the phone during the 1 1/2 hour time frame I was given for her to call. Thankfully, she called closer to 8am than 9:30!

We talked about my mother’s inhaler being out, and about her refusal to spend to much money on the refills (the one inhaler cost almost as much as her bubble packs). We also talked about how it really wasn’t helping her breathing, anyhow, and I suggested it get dropped from her med list. The doctor asked about my mother’s breathing issues, and I told her she does still have problems, particularly at night, and described her situation.

In the end, she agreed to drop the inhaler from my mother’s meds, which would require a letter to home care. I could hear her typing it as we spoke, so she was right on that.

After that call was done, I called the home care coordinator. It’s actually a different one, in another region, as the one for our area is on holidays. When I told her about the call with the doctor, and that she could expect the letter, she told me she’d sent a note to the doctor, yesterday, asking for her letter to be sent to her office in another town, since there’s no one to check emails at our local office. I don’t think the doctor had seen it before she called me.

It will take some time for the change to my mother’s med assist instructions to go through. Once the home care coordinator gets the letter from the doctor, it gets sent to a nurse. Only a nurse is allowed to make the actual med assist instructions. Once that is updated, the revised instructions will go into my mother’s file that the home care aids have with them, when they do her assists.

Until then, the coordinator can let the home care aids know the change is in the works. Since my mother is out of that inhaler, anyhow, it will be as if it’s gone through, already.

That done, I updated my siblings in our group chat, then phoned my mother. By this time, it was past 9am and I knew her med assist should have come and gone for the morning.

When I mentioned to my other that I spoke to the doctor, she told me that doctor had already called her! She must have called right after talking to me. She had asked my mother, what can I do for you? My mother wasn’t expecting the call, so she told her that she was having her breakfast just then – and then the home care worker arrived to give her her meds, so they finished off the call. Then my mother asked me, what should she tell the doctor?

???

I told her that we’d been talking about her inhaler not helping, getting it off her med list, and that I had told the doctor she was still having breathing issues. My mother knew I was doing this for her, but I guess she forgot all about it.

As for having the inhaler removed from her med list, you’d think she would have been happy, as she’s always complaining that she is taking soooooo many medications and keeps wanting to drop them. Nope. She just told me that the home care aid that had come in this morning – her favourite one – had actually used one of the other brand inhalers in my mother’s lock box. Which, technically, she should not have done, but it’s what the hospital has been using with her and given her a prescription for. She had prescriptions for two different types of inhalers at the same time, for a while.

After I explained to her that it might take a while before the home care aids officially have a change in her med assist instructions, they will be told the inhaler is being dropped, so they don’t have to fuss about her not having the one on their list anymore.

We were just finishing what had been a pleasant conversation when she remembered the Pepto.

The eight bottles of Pepto my brother had bought for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about running out. It’s one of the few things she takes where she can actually notice she feels better.

She started off saying, she never asked him to get it for him. As if this was somehow his “fault”. I was eventually able to say that I was the one that mentioned to him and my sister that I hadn’t been able to get any for her, so she didn’t need to ask him.

Then she started ranting and railing. It’s too many, it’s up high in her cupboard, and it’s such a terrible thing that he got her so many bottles. I told her, this is a good thing. This is a helpful thing. She should have enough to last her a year! It’s something she takes regularly.

Oh, no, she told me. She only takes it when she needs it.

…

I told her, I didn’t mean that she was taking it every day, several times a day. Just… regularly.

What I was eventually able to figure out is that my mother thinks that they will go back. Because they’re medicine. They’re liquid. She’s not stupid.

…

I told her, they are fine. This is not like a prescription medication. They’re not like food. They last for years.

It does explain why she insists on keeping her open bottle in the fridge, though.

After I told her, several times, that they will be fine and won’t go bad, telling her that we keep ours in the bathroom cupboard with no issues, she said that she would see; she would ask a “professional” about it. A doctor even. They will tell her.

I told her, she’ll just be told the same thing I was telling her. Then I told her to call the pharmacy. Talk to the pharmacist. He’ll tell her.

Which got her to asking where my brother got them from, the pharmacy? (meaning the one in her town). I told her no, he got them at Costco (which turned out to be wrong; I later found out they were out at Costco, and he found them at Superstore).

Her response?

Oh, from China, then.

?????

I told her, it’s the exact same brand that I get for her a her pharmacy. It’s the same.

Oh, you know there are so many scams out there, she tells me.

…

I told her to stop making problems up where there are none.

She kept on ranting that my brother should not have gotten her so many. I told her, he was being kind to her. “It was “too much” kindness”, she retorted. Like she was being sarcastic, except meaner.

During this, it occurred to me that I might just take the bottles and bring them here to the farm to store until she starts running out again. I wasn’t going to bring that up at the time, though.

I did remind her to use the little cup to take a full dose. She usually just throws them away and uses a teaspoon. As in, a spoon for tea, not a measuring spoon, so the actual amount she’s taking is probably less than a third of what the dose is supposed to be. Apparently, that’s all it takes to help.

By the time I got off the phone with her, my brain was pretty fried. It can get so very hard to follow what she’s saying, to get to what she actually means. I completely forgot to ask her how things went with the mental health assessor, yesterday!

I did make sure to update my siblings again before I started forgetting details. Which happens very quickly, with how convoluted conversations with my mother can get.

My poor brother. Every time he tries to do something nice for her, she gets weird about it in some way. I think it bothers me more because if it were our vandal getting something for her, she would be singing his praised for years. Which she actually does. No matter how horribly he treats her, she makes him out to be a saint because he did something nice for her, 20 years ago. But my brother has been taking care of her and her affairs, diligently and with great care for her, often seeing what she needs long before she sees it herself, and he just can’t do anything right by her. Something as simple as getting her a supply of something she has made a big deal over how much better it makes her feel has been blown out of proportion into this huge drama as if he’d done something nasty to her.

My heart aches so much for my brother. He deserves so much better. And she still doesn’t understand just how badly she stabbed him in the back, some time ago. She’s fortunate he’s a good man and a good son, and hasn’t simply cut her out of his life entirely.

*sigh*

Once I was done with the calls, I needed to take some time to wind down and decompress. I had to go into my mother’s town – something I did NOT mention to her at all – to hit the feed store for more kibble, which my daughter generously paid for. The bag of donated kibble was a 7kg bag, so it didn’t last long, and we were down to dregs by this morning..

A forty pound bag of the brand we get, which is more expensive (not even the outside cats will eat the cheaper brand if they can avoid it), comes out to $62 and change, after taxes. Forty pounds is just over 18kg. That works out to about $3.44/kg after taxes.

Locally, a 9kg bag costs $45 and change (or more), before taxes, which is about $5/kg. At Walmart, a 9kg bag costs about $35, before taxes, or about $3.88/kg. The Costco Kirkland brand of kibble is a better price, but not by much. There is the other feed store, to the north of us, that has a brand that cats like that has a slightly better price, but the drive is longer. Worth it, if I’m getting more than one bag.

All of that, including a trip into my mother’s town, and it was barely noon when I got home.

It felt like it should have been several hours later!

Speaking of later, I just realized what time it is! It’s past 1am! When did that happen?

😄😂

Time to get to bed! There’s lots of work to do outside, while the weather is good!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: last of the potatoes, prepping beds and a bumper crop

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I’m happy to say I was able to get some progress in the garden yesterday evening, and again today.

I did not continue cleaning the sun room today. My daughter will finish that, but she will restart tomorrow. It turned out that, after trying to keep up with me yesterday, she hurt her back! I keep forgetting, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now. The kittens, meanwhile, have been piling into the cat cage. It got a bit chilly last night – cold enough that I covered the winter squash, but not cold enough to cover the summer squash, peppers or eggplant – and they was a whole crowd of littles in the cat cage’s cat bed. Most of the other cat beds they could access are outside right now. Only one of the smaller kittens has figured out there are cat beds on the platform, and is able to climb up the shelf to get to them. With the floor now dry, I did put one of the cat beds and the self heating mat on the floor for them to use.

This is what I was able to get done yesterday, before it got too dark.

This is the bed that had three types of tomatoes, bush beans and self seeded carrots in it. I pulled the remaining stems and roots of the tomatoes an the bush beans and set them aside. They will get buried in the bed later on. In the second picture, you can see the finished bed. Most of what I pulled out of there can’t go into the compost, as their roots will spread. In the last picture, you can see the bonus Uzbek Golden carrots that were large enough to keep. The greens will also be buried in the bed. I’ll be doing some amending later one. I’ll be using this bed for winter sowing, but have not yet decided what I will put in it.

This afternoon was pretty hot, so I chose to harvest the last of the potatoes, then work on that bed. At this time of the year, and at that time of the day, most of the bed was shaded by trees, so it was a lot more comfortable to work on.

This is how many potatoes I found in the remaining two or three feet of the bed.

I was really surprised by how many tree roots I was finding while I dug them up. That’s quite the distance! I thought that maybe they were from the other direction, but the nearest tree on the south side is the chokecherry tree. They spread through their roots, but the suckers all come up close to the main trunk. As I worked on the bed, though, it was clear what direction the roots were coming from.

I ended up making a short video when I was done.

I cleaned up only one long side of the bed before I had to stop for hydration and sustenance. I’ll probably work on the rest tomorrow. At the end, you can see all the rocks I “harvested”. !!! Keep in mind that this bed had been amended several times, the soil sifted several times, most recently when all the beds were sifted over into their permanent positions. Not only that but this bed was winter sown with summer squash, which did not take, so it was trenched and cleaned up before we planted the potatoes.

All those rocks were what we “grew” since the potatoes were planted in the spring. Just the bigger ones that were easier to pick up, and I know there were plenty that got missed because they kept getting buried in the soil while I loosened it and pulled as many weeds and roots as I could.

Before I headed in for a break, I just had to check out the blooming asters.

Sir Robin was already checking them out.

Still no Cosmos, but there do seem to be a few more flower buds trying to develop.

Tonight is supposed to be a bit warmer, so I don’t plan to cover the winter squash again, unless that changes. The next couple of nights are looking chilly enough that I might cover the other beds, too. Unless I decide to harvest the Turkish Orange eggplants, first. The peppers can stay for a while longer, as long as the weather holds.

I have decided the bed I’m working on now will be where I plant the garlic in a few weeks. This time, I’m thinking of making sure to mark exactly where they are planted, and then interplanting with something else before the ground freezes. Maybe spinach and/or some other greens. In theory, the garlic should protect any greens growing with them from the deer, same as onions can. The greens would be finished before the garlic is ready to harvest, and could be succession sowed with something else that’s quick growing. Bush beans, perhaps. We shall see.

It’s not a lot of progress. As usual, it was a bigger job than expected. Particularly as I got closer to the north end of the bed, where both the tree roots and rocks were so much denser. Still, a little progress is better than none at all!

The Re-Farmer

Starry night, and the start of a huge job

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I went for a walk last night. Yesterday was the solstice, so it’s already getting dark a lot earlier. The sky was clear, so I tried some of the “pro” settings on my phone to try and get some pictures.

I didn’t have any sort of tripod set up, so I lay my phone on a surface and used voice commands to take the pictures – turning off my flashlight before I did, of course. Which worked for the most part, except the cats were very curious. Especially when I used the wall of a raised bed to set my phone on. Photobombing a camera while taking night results in some rather unusual glowy fuzzy shapes. 😄

Today, meanwhile, my younger daughter and I got started on the sun room. It needs to be cleaned out and prepared for winter.

The first part of the job was just… aweful. I did not take “before” pictures. Too gross! One side of the sun room was supposed to be for storing some of the yard and garden tools, folding camp chairs, a large garbage can and spare litter pans. Of course, the cats knocked things all over the place and, despite having a litter box available to use, they would go into the tiniest corners to do their business. The skunks and raccoons sometimes did, too. It should have had a spring cleaning, but that didn’t pan out, so basically it was a year’s worth of critters getting into things, knocking things about, and making biological messes.

Thank God it’s just a concrete floor in there!

We started off filling some garbage bags first, until I could get at some of the storage bins and whatnot and started moving them under the canopy tent. I’m going to have to go through the bins themselves to organize and probably throw away some things. Yeah, they even found a way to make messes in some of the storage bins!

We also took out all the kibble trays to hose them off and set them soaking, along with various buckets, the extra litter pans. The broom I keep in the sun room has very stiff bristles so, once we got the floor clear enough, I hosed it down a bit and used it as a scrub brush.

The problem with hosing the floor down, though, is that the sun room’s floor is no longer level. I’m guessing the rain barrel was allowed to overflow too many times, and the corner is undermined. Mostly, the concrete sidewalk block the rain barrel rests on is sinking at one end, but when I was cleaning up the old kitchen garden after we moved here, I found that the corner of the sun room floor next to it was losing the rocks and gravel from under it. This is why we had such a hard time replacing the outer sun room door. The door frame is no longer straight.

Anyhow, as I was scrubbing the floor on one side of the room, the water started draining towards the sinking corner. Which meant it was going under the cat cage. The cat cage is sitting on top of interlocking foam mats for insulation, so at least it wasn’t getting anything inside the cat cage wet.

The first picture was taken after sweeping, but before scrubbing. The table saw still needs to be taken out, and that counter shelf will need to be moved out so we can clean under it. The cats have knocked all sorts of things under there, and both kittens and skunks like to hide under there. The skunk has gotten so big, it can barely fit anymore, but it still squeezes its way under!

The second picture is after the initial scrubbing. The floor was still wet and the interlocking foam pieces were outside, getting cleaned in stages, so I grabbed some of the rigid foam insulation that used to be used between the main entry doors to try and keep the frost from building up inside. Now that the inner door is removed, since it can no longer be closed, we’d set the insulation sheet up against the storm door when we had a few really cold nights a while back. The cats, however, LOVE this insulation for scratching, which they would do when no one was around to chase them off. They scratched their way through until it broke. So I used the pieces to put on the still wet floor and moved the cage cage over it.

A couple of kittens got a ride in the process!

When Brussel had her litter in the cat cage so early in the season, I’d put the windshield sun shade around the back of the cat cage – the window side – to try and keep the chill out. It eventually got knocked out of reach, but once the cat cage was out, I could get at it. I decided to set it on top of the cat cage. Cats like to hang out on there, squeezed under the platform, and there’s carboard to make a floor over the wire panels, but one corner wasn’t covered. I decided to put the sun shade on to, making sure the open corner was covered. I think the cats will like sitting or lying on it.

Once the cat cage was out, I could clear under the platform. Huge mess around where the cat cage was, including from the water that had just drained under there while I was scrubbing the floor on the other side. Of course, there was also stuff that got knocked about. Under one of the heat lamps was a cat bed that needed to be hosed down. In the next picture, you can see the initial cleaning. Tomorrow, we’ll need to dismantle the platform and take it, and the shelves, out completely, so we can give the area a good cleaning. Kittens and other critters would hide in the corners and left “presents” for us to clean up.

Just barely visible behind the inner door is a metal garbage can. That’s used to store things with long handles – hoes, rakes, spades, etc. I made sure it was resting on scrap pieces of rigid insulation, not directly on the floor, and I’m really glad I did that!

When it was time to stop for the day, and brought the cleaned food trays in and set them near the cat cage. Then I did an early cat feeding. I am still giving some cat soup for Frank’s babies, inside the cat cage, so I hope they’ll accept it and be okay with the new location. I put the littles inside the cage with the cat soup, but they left right away. They seem to prefer dry kibble more! Hopefully, Frank will also be good with the new location. While I was cleaning under the platform, she kept running in and out, looking pretty alarmed about the while thing.

Good grief. It feels like the day should be almost over, but I’m looking at the time and just realizing it’s not even 5pm yet!

I am not at all up to working on the sun room more, but there’s plenty of time to do some clean up in the garden. A much more pleasant job!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: winter squash and finally some buds! Also, a general update

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was still comfortably cooler when I did my rounds this morning, but we were set to have a hotter day again. And by “hotter” I mean a high of 23C/73F (we actually hit 24C/75F) and sunny. It was strange to be walking around the yard and hearing what sounded like the patter of rain, only to realize it was the sound of leaves falling!

I was very happy to finally see our very first Cosmos flower buds!

In the next picture, you can see the one group of asters is opening up nicely. I’m glad they survived the frosts we got at the start of the month, because – as with pretty much everything else but the winter sown beds – they are about a month or more behind.

In the last picture, you can see the remains of one of the peas I found a couple of days ago. *sigh* Of course the deer would eat the biggest one, too. There’s just the tiniest remains of a stem poking through the mulch, and a tiny branch that got left behind.

With today being so much warmer, I made sure to move the plastic off the winter squash. While condensation under the plastic showed that there was still moisture under there, they did need a very thorough watering. In the process, I found a few new female flowers and hand pollinated them.

I uncovered them in the morning, but these pictures were taking in the early evening.

This first group of photos is of the Baked Potato squash.

There were the two already developing ones, plus a couple to hand pollinate.

Then there was the Mashed Potato squash.

That group had a couple of small, older squash, plus some smaller ones that I’m not sure will make it, and finally one that I could hand pollinate.

There is nothing with the Sunshine squash. Those seem to be mostly dead. The transplanted zucchini seem to be making it, but are still very small.

I don’t know what the chances are of these surviving long enough to develop before the hard frosts come, but as long as they are covered when it gets cooler, they at least have a chance!

Then, finally, there is a pepper I found to pick.

Not quite ripe, but as soon as I lifted it to see, the stem broke off, so inside it went! It will continue to ripen indoors.

In other things, I headed out this afternoon to meet someone for a kibble donation. She’d suggested meeting at an intersection on the highway. I got there a little bit last. First, because I had to pull over while going through my mother’s town to check my phone. I kept getting notifications. One of them was to let me know that home care called and wanted to talk about my mother. Not the scheduler, but a coordinator covering for our usual coordinator. I asked my daughter to send me the number, then continued on my way. I caught up to a car that was driving a bit slower. Then it slowed down more, started signaling a left turn, started breaking…

Then kept on going.

They did this every mile for the next five or so miles. It wasn’t until we were in the last mile before the highway that the vehicle started signaling a right turn. I thought at the stop side ahead, but nope. They pulled over completely!

I’d say someone was very lost!

Meanwhile, I pulled over just short of the stop sign myself, where the woman I was to meet was already waiting with a large bag of kibble for us. It’ll be enough to last us until CPP Disability comes in, and I’ll be able to go to the city for a stock up shop. That will be after dropping the truck off for the insurance claim repairs, so I will be doing the shopping in a courtesy vehicle.

I’ll have to make sure to transfer over some of our hard sided insulated and non insulated grocery bags when I switch vehicles.

After picking up the kibble, I called the home care coordinator. It went straight to voice mail, so I left a message, giving my cell phone number, but adding that I would be driving and it would be a while before I could answer.

My next stop was at the pharmacy. Since I was heading out anyhow, I was able to pick up some prescription refills for my daughter. It was getting close to 4pm when I got there, and the home care office closes at 4, so I tried the number again as soon as I parked.

The woman had a bit of a laugh when she answered and it was me. She had just finished listening to my message!

It turned out to be about my mother’s inhaler. It’s out. There’s still two in the lock box, but they are a different type, so home care isn’t allowed to use them. We had a fairly long talk about that. I explained that I didn’t know why my mother was still on an inhaler, as it was a test to see if they helped with her breathing, and they’ve made no difference, confirming my mother does not have asthma. Plus, my mother went ballistic when I picked up her last refill and she saw how much it cost. She can afford it, but she expected it to be “free”. She still doesn’t understand that she has the provincial insurance or what a deductible is. I don’t know of this type of inhaler is even covered, though.

What I’ll be doing is calling my mother’s doctor’s office tomorrow, and trying to get a telephone appointment with her to talk about it. Then the doctor can send instructions to home care, either saying they can use the other type, or that my mother doesn’t need to use an inhaler anymore. Which is what I am hoping for.

We spoke about other things involving my mother as well. I told her about the person that’s coming to see my mother tomorrow for a mental health assessment. We talked about my mother’s declining mobility and increased pain. I mentioned that my mother should not be living independently anymore. She was really surprised when I mentioned my mother actually wants to go to a nursing him. Not being familiar with my mother’s file, she didn’t know that it’s been over a year since the paneling process has been started.

The main thing is that I wanted to stress how much more difficult my mother has been finding it to just get in and out of a chair, never mind walking around her apartment, or standing to cook for herself. Meals on Wheels is just three days a week.

We’ll see how that goes. At this point, my mother isn’t even on any waiting lists, which frustrates me to no end.

After that, didn’t take long to get the prescriptions and then head for home.

Our overnight low is supposed to be 13C/55F, so I will be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night. Tomorrow is supposed to be ever so slightly cooler. If the forecast over the next few days is accurate, I should be able to leave them uncovered for three more days, and two more nights. We’re still supposed to be warm during the days, but overnight temps are looking to drop below 10C/50F more most nights after that. Around the middle of October, we’re supposed to get our first days with a mix or rain and snow, while overnight temperatures are supposed to drop below freezing before then. Of course, long range forecasts can change quite dramatically, so who knows.

It’s time to get the mostly done beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing. We’ve got lots of leaves available to use for mulch right now, and I’d better start collecting them before they are blown away entirely.

I’m really looking forward to a more planned out winter sowing! We’ll need to prepare a bed to plant garlic in, too. None of those will go into the ground for at least a couple of weeks for the garlic, and probably longer for the direct sowing. I don’t want any of the seeds to germinate before the ground freezes.

It’s been slow going, but it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

So tired

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Not physically tired.

Mentally tired.

Emotionally tired.

My brother and I visited with my mother today, at her request. We were there for almost three hours, with my brother ordering and picking up a lunch for us.

I’m not even going to get into it much, but she was all over the place. From getting mad at my brother, instead of grateful, because he picked up enough Pepto (which she says helps her so much) that she won’t run out again for probably a year (she actually said that she might sell some of them, before my brother even finished taking them out of the bag!), to talking about our vandal like he was some kind of saint for “helping” my dad so much before my dad went into the nursing home (he was actually pretty abusive to my dad, and his abusive behaviour towards my mother is why she moved off the farm in the first place), and so on.

When she started on how wonderful our vandal is, I figured that was a good time for me to take out her garbage. I just had to get out of there. A part of me understands that here’s some sort of guilt association on her part towards him. Considering how she treats those who are actually kind and helpful to her, and how she treats someone who was abusive towards her in between “helping” (because he thought he would get this property for it), really doesn’t sit well with me. Truthfully, though, theirs was a mutually abusive relationship.

We never got around to talking about her car at all, nor about her possibly helping us with the cost of replacing the door and frame, but she did bring up some “grand” ideas that would have completely messed up her own finances, which my brother, thankfully for her, has been keeping in order for her.

At least she was grateful, sort of, I think, for the cordless kettle my brother got for her. I had no idea she was worried about using her stove top kettle. Now she has a kettle that will shut itself off. We made sure to get it set up and tested out for her, and made sure she knew how to use it.

By the time we left, I was honestly feeling the most depressed and psychologically exhausted I have in ages – and this was a “good” visit!

So here is some cuteness, instead.

I’ve moved that blue tray into the portable greenhouse so it wouldn’t get rained on. A lot of the kittens like to hang out in there, so it didn’t take long for them to find it!

The size difference between these two was just too adorable. They look like they could be father and offspring! That’s Stinky, though, and he’s neutered, so they’re probably half-siblings, instead.

This evening, I did take recordings for the September garden tour video. I started and restarted several times before I could get into it, just because my head space was still messed up from the visit with my mother. I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much today, but I’ve been finding myself on the verge of tears repeatedly, since I left her place.

On another topic, Eyelet has settled in quite well at the foster’s. Meanwhile, I’m going to be meeting up with the woman who started the new rescue tomorrow afternoon. She has some cat food donations for us! That is so very appreciated. Plus, I’ll finally get to meet her in person!

For now, I should start editing the garden tour video. Hopefully, that will help my mood, somewhat. 🫤

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: Surprise finds!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

While going through what’s left of the garden as I do my evening rounds, I’m constantly surprised by what’s still surviving. The still blooming summer squash and eggplant. The pumpkin vines growing new leaves and blooming. The bush beans still blooming and producing.

This evening, however, I had some more unexpected surprise finds.

The first was tomatoes!

Yes. Actual tomatoes are ripening. The tiny self seeded tomatoes in the trellis bed got hit hard by the frosts we got at the beginning of the month, but mostly survived. To find a spray of ripening tomatoes, however, was the last thing I expected to find! It also confirms that they are Spoon tomatoes.

The next two pictures are of pea plants I found near the end of the bed with the newly completed log frame around it. The last picture was of a group of three pea plants I had unknowingly stepped on! We didn’t grow peas in that bed. They were in the bed next to it, roughly 7 feet away.

My guess is a deer eating the pea plants might have dragged a section of vine away, dropping a pod in the process. Which still seems unlikely, but it’s the most logical explanation I can think of.

I’ve since stuck some short pieces of bamboo stakes into the ground beside them, so I won’t accidentally step on any again. I don’t expect them to get very big before the season ends, but I don’t want to walk all over them, either.

What a strange, strange gardening year this year!

The Re-Farmer

The rain has stopped, and Eyelet is in being spoiled rotten!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, today’s schedule sure changed.

First, a quick update with the home care crazy from yesterday. The plan was, if the guy didn’t come back to do my mother’s bed time med assist, as he said he would, by 9pm, I would drive over to do it.

My mother called me at 8:50 (the actual scheduled time) so say, no one arrived. I wasn’t 100% sure she was scheduled for 8:50, and sometimes they come late, which is why I asked her to call me if no one showed up at 9. I asked her to wait a bit longer and if he still didn’t come, let me know and I’d go over.

My other told me to not bother. She would just take some Tylenol and go to bed. She would be okay.

*sigh*

I hated to do that, but I also really didn’t want to drive to her town, in the dark, in the rain.

This morning, after I did my rounds (it was still raining), I gave her a call.

In which I will pause to share the cuteness! The first picture was taken last night, the second this morning.

Seeing Colby on top of his sister like that is adorable!

She needs a name.

Anyhow… back to calling my mother!

My mother told me she’d had a great night.

Then started going on about how the Tylenol helped so much more than her medications did.

Red flag time! My mother has done this before. Basically, she’s convincing herself that the medications aren’t doing her any good, because she has these other problems. How can she be taking all these medications, but still feel have all these other things? This time, because Tylenol did such a great job with her pains, to her that meant it was working better than her medications.

I have explained this to her before, but I did it again. NONE of her medications are for pain. They are all for different things, and I mentioned a few of them. Unfortunately, I could hear in the tone of her response that she was basically not believing me.

It’s a good thing she gets home care med assists, or she would start skipping her meds regularly, or picking and choosing which ones to take. Again.

To distract, I then asked her about her grocery shopping. She said she was only out of milk and hadn’t started a list. She was in her night gown and didn’t feel like getting dressed. I told her, don’t bother getting dressed, and I’ll help with the list. She was quite happy with that arrangement!

Since I was going to be dropping Eyelet off in the early evening, I wanted to get to my mothers a little bit earlier than usual. Once there, I first focused on her meds. I found a pill organizer and took the meds out of her “orphan” bubbles; last night’s bed time meds and a Monday morning bubble that’s been carried over to new packs for a couple of months now. I made sure to write down which meds they were and tucked the note in one of the organizer spots and tucked the whole thing away. My mother has strict instructions to leave them, unless there’s an “emergency”. I also prepared her bed time meds for tonight – I brought another of the tiny tagine sauce bowls to keep them in – and set up another note with it, setting it aside with the note facing where my mother sits at her table.

That done, we started working on her shopping list. It was mostly her usual items, but we did remember to include things we’d forgotten last time, like the instant oatmeal that makes things so much easier for her. Some things were just “see what looks good” type stuff. When she gave me cash for the trip, she included a bit extra, asking me to keep an eye out for anything else I might spot and know she would like.

Which worked out well. I was able to get her extra fruit that she likes but normally wouldn’t get. Today, they happened to be on sale. Her favourite bread was on sale, so I got extra for her freezer. That sort of thing. As I put things away, I always go over what I got and what changes I made, and she was very happy with the selections. Before putting the milk carton in the fridge, I made sure to open it for her, and I’m glad I did. For some reason, every now and then, they just don’t want to open. If it’s difficult for me to open, that would make it almost impossible for my mother to open! I do wish her grocery store still had their 2L milk in jugs as well as cartons, as jugs are so much better for people with mobility issues in their hands.

That done, I made sure to give her floor a sweep before heading out. One of her neighbours that has a garden plot has been sharing their bounty of tomatoes by leaving them in the common room for anyone to take. My mother keeps taking some, even though she already has, and is supposed to avoid acidic foods like tomatoes. So she gave me an ice cream bucket full to take home! We still haven’t finished off the last bunch she gave us!

Once I was in the truck, I started messaging my family to let them know the status of things. Which is when I started getting messages from the woman I was to bring Eyelet to. She was wondering if I could bring him to a different address, as she’d forgotten she was supposed to go there after her work this evening. It wasn’t far from her own address, so that worked out okay.

We continued our conversation as I got home when she asked when I was planning to head out with Eyelet. I told her, but mentioned that I was flexible, now that I was done with my mother’s grocery shopping. She asked if I could bring him in right away. The new address is for a foster that already had a room ready for him and was home.

!!!

I was back on the road with Eyelet within 10 minutes. My daughter went looking for him as I got a carrier prepared. Finding him was easy. He was napping in the sun room.

He did not appreciate being awakened, then stuck into a carrier!

I grabbed a donated carrier that is triangle shaped and opens on one side, which makes it easy to take cats in and out. It is, however, not our largest carrier.

Eyelet was not happy!

So not happy, he stress pooped in the carrier during the drive out.

*sigh*

He went back and forth between trying to claw his way out of the carrier, to just lying down calmly, and back again, which meant he got messy in the process.

When I got to the address and the woman came out to greet me, I made sure to let her know! I then followed her in to Eyelet’s new home for the next few days.

What a set up! An entire little bedroom, all to himself, with several beds, including one at a window, a cat tree, toys and, of course, a litter pan and food and water. He was enough of a mess that she brought a cloth to wipe him off a bit before taking him out of the carrier.

Dude was not impressed!

He did, however, start purring as soon as she touched him! He was very open to pets in general.

I’ve since gotten an update that he has settled into his new digs very well. I’m not at all surprised. The set up is pure luxury compared to the yard cat life!

The best part is that this was all done well before I was originally scheduled to deliver Eyelet. It even stopped raining shortly after I got home.

It was an awesome rain, too. Almost 24 hours of constant rain. Nothing too heavy, either. The sort of rain we could have used so much of over the summer!

Meanwhile, my brother came out today. I didn’t even realize he was here until I left for my mother’s and saw his car. He’s been busy preparing their trailer for the winter, including driving it out to where the tanks can be emptied. When I got back from delivering Eyelet, he was able to come over and tell me what he’d been able to do for my mother’s car. There’s still more to be done, but it can wait. The priority was to deal with that tire that keeps going flat. He just used the spray stuff in it, then made sure to drive it around, and even put it up on a jack to just spin the tire, so it wouldn’t cure in a puddle inside the tire.

Tomorrow afternoon, he and I will be going to my mother’s tomorrow, and her car is one of the main things she wants to talk about. She says she wants him to get it all fixed up, and that she would pay for it, so that we have a second vehicle, and one that she can get in and out of. It might be better off to sell it, or maybe trade it in for a newer vehicle. My brother is in a better position to make recommendations on that than I am.

So we’ll see how that works out.

Weather wise, next week is looking to be warmer again, and dry. That will be when we seriously need to get the sun room cleaned out. That requires basically emptying it, so we can wash the concrete floor. The cat cage can’t fit through the door without being dismantled, so the room has to be done one half at a time. It’s going to be a big, messy job. I’m going to have to stop storing most of my tools and garden supplies in there. The cats, skunks and raccoons get into it all and make such a mess – and make messes on top of things!

With the rain, I’ve made little additional progress in cleaning up the garden, but tomorrow is the 21st, which is when I’ve been typically doing my garden tour videos. It also happens to be the first day of our new average frost date range. Instead of one day, they now have a range of days. Which isn’t how an average works, but whatever. They now say our average first frost days is between Sept 21 and 30, from the previous Sept. 10. Of course, this year, we had two frosts before Sept. 10! Well, it’ll be another 30 years before they do the math again. I’m still sticking with Sept. 10, when I work out when to do things in the garden, and what the length of our growing season is. It was 99 days before. Now it’s supposedly 125-150 days, since the last frost date has changed, too.

Yeah… I don’t think so. Not a chance, where we are.

Gosh, though… having a 125 day growing season would be amazing. 150 days would be heavenly! There’s so much more we could grow with a season that long!

Ah, well. A girl can dream but, in the end, we have to deal with what we’ve got in our local climate, not what a map of averages says.

Time for me to head outside for my evening rounds before it gets dark, and see examples of that along the way!

The Re-Farmer

Home care crazy!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Their right hand doesn’t know what their left hand is doing!

This is what WordPress’ AI image generator thinks I look like. 😂

I was just sitting down with my supper when the phone rang. I recognized the number as the home care scheduler.

*sigh*

She was very, very apologetic, but they had cancellations and there was no one to cover my mother’s bed time med assist for tonight and tomorrow night. Other visits are covered.

Bed time only?

Yes, she confirmed.

This confused me because her supper time and bed time meds are always done by the same person. If someone cancelled, how does it work that only the bed time assist wasn’t covered, and for two nights in a row?

She explained that they had to pull for a client.

…

I asked what that meant.

It turned out that the cancellation wasn’t one of my mother’s scheduled home care aids. It was someone else. Someone that did not have anyone that could over for them (like I do for my mother). So she had to pull people away from other clients that did have people to cover for them, like my mother. She was able to find someone that could do her supper visit instead, but not her bed time visit.

…

So… I would be covering for someone so they could cover for someone else, that was covering for someone that did not have anyone to cover for them.

It took me a moment just to worth through that verbally and a while longer for her to work through what I’d just said and…

Yes. That’s exactly what was happening.

Well, at least I had time to finish my supper before I had to leave, since my mother’s suppertime med assist was covered.

First, I updated my family and my siblings, then I called my mother.

She was in a great mood when she answered, telling me she was just finishing her supper and “a very pretty boy” had just left after doing her med assist.

So I told her that he wouldn’t be coming back, because I was going to be coming in.

This confused her. Before he left, he had assured her he would be coming back. Around 8, she asked (I believe she’s scheduled for 8:50), and he said yes.

…

I told her I would call the scheduler back and find out what’s going on.

The problem?

It’s now outside office hours. It went straight to voice mail. Their message gave a bunch of information, including that no one would be listening to any messages during evenings and weekends.

Any message I left on a Friday night wouldn’t be heard until Monday.

*sigh*

Very quick update message sent, and I called my mother back. I explained that I wouldn’t be able to get through to the scheduler and confirmed again that he said he would be back.

Yes.

So I told her that, if no one came by 9pm, let me know and I would go over to do her meds. I would also leave her meds for tomorrow’s bedtime assist, just in case. If she didn’t call me, I would know that he showed up and everything was okay.

She told me she would call me, either way.

What a s**tshow.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, and some afternoon progress

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was a very pleasant morning today. I’m liking the cooler temperatures, even though I’ve also decided it’s been cool enough to keep the winter squash covered by plastic during the day. With the bits of rain we’ve been getting, I had some concern they would dry out, but I can see plenty of condensation inside the plastic, so they’re definitely not drying out.

I’m finding what’s left in the garden to be rather remarkable. The pumpkin vines, for example, aren’t just still blooming after all that frost damage, but are growing healthy looking new leaves. Except the one that has a pumpkin hanging in a sling on the trellis. That one seems completely dead, but the pumpkin is still slowly yellowing, so we’re leaving it for now.

Five vines. One pumpkin. *sigh*

Then there are the sunflowers. Especially that one stalk with all the extra seed heads on it.

There’s the one seed had at the top that has barely any outside petals, but the little ones along the stalk are opening right up! I don’t know how well they’ll do, given how late in the season it is, even if we do end up with a long and mild fall (which I don’t expect). There are hardly any pollinators right now. Between the wildfire smoke all summer, and then the early frosts, followed by a heat wave, and now cooler temperatures again, it’s just not been a good summer for the pollinators are much as for the garden.

The next two photos are of the blooming memorial asters, with more buds developing. I’m hoping the weather holds out long enough that they can develop seeds for me to collect.

The last photo, photo bombed by Sir Robin, is of our very first White Scallop squash female flower.

Yes, I hand pollinated it, though I really don’t know why I bothered. We’re past the middle of September. The chances of any of these squash developing is very, very low!

Morning rounds done, I headed in for breakfast, and was soon back out again. We’re expecting rain this evening, through to tomorrow, and there were a couple of things I wanted to get cleaned up while I could. One was the burn barrel area. We have several recycling bins for aluminum, which we take to the scrap yard once there’s enough to fill the box of the truck, one for stuff for the burn barrel, one for general recycling at the dump and one last one for glass to take to the dump, as glass has it’s own bin there.

The burn barrel bags would get taken out to where we would normally burn them. The barrel itself, which was here when we moved in and already in rough shape, basically fell apart, long ago. Instead, we set up a metal ring I found in the spruce grove, so we have a burn ring, instead.

The problem is, we haven’t been able to actually burn anything for a long time. Usually because there’s too much wind. Lately, it’s been because of burn bans. So the bags have been accumulating to the point that I’ve just started taking a few to the dump after loading up with household garbage and recycling. Most of the bags, however, have gotten torn up. Not from animals; there’s nothing in the bags to attract them. I’d say, mostly from the wind. The rain has also soaked a lot of it. It’s gotten to be a real mess.

To today I headed out with some garbage bag it up. A few bags were still intact, but most of it had to be completely re-bagged. It’s a good thing we’ve got heavy duty garbage bags, because a lot of it was very wet, so it didn’t take long to make the bags quite heavy, for the amount in them. So now, it’s all looking much better, though there’s still quite a few bags out there! They are next to the branch pile that needs to be burned, as that’s where I’ve been tossing diseased branches and garden plants. Unfortunately, my brother didn’t know that, so when he trimmed branches for their trailer to fit through, he put them on the same pile. At that point, I’ve just started to do the same. Plus, there are some sections of maple set near the pile that were too big for my brother to throw on top, and I’ve been making a point of keeping maple wood for the fire pit.

The fire pit we haven’t used this year, at all, yet!

That done, I then started working on the last bags of cans against the garage. We’ve had to stop storing the bags there, as the cats kept tearing them up. Most of our aluminum is from cat food cans, and they can smell it. My daughter and I had cleaned most of it up and we now have all the bags in the basement, taking up space. The only bags left were from a while back that have metal mixed in by mistake.

So today, I got bags set up for the aluminum and the not-aluminum and started sorting. I got through two torn up bags before it started to rain. Just a light rain, but enough that I called it and will work on the last bag another time.

What I did manage to do before heading in was finally deal with the mesh covers on the garden bed against the chain link fence. This is the one that was winter sown with tall and climbing things, mostly, but was a complete failure. The mesh was to protect the bed from the Chinese Elm seeds, which would have worked just fine, except for the cats. They would play on top of the mesh, or get under it, only to not be able to find their way out again, panic, and bounce of the inside of the mesh until the finally reached an opening.

Needless to say, nothing in that bed survives. Except some Jebousek lettuce, which I allowed to go to seed and have already collected their seeds.

I had already pulled the netting with their wire supports up and set them on the stump bench. Today, I got the wires out so that I could fold up the mesh to put away for the winter.

I had help.

I stretched out and folded one section, turned around and there they were! Eyelet, Grommet and The Grink, claiming the rest of them as beds. 😄

In that picture and the next one, you can see just how bent up the wire supports got. Some might be salvageable, but others might be just too twisted. I wouldn’t use them again for this, anyhow. They would have been fine if all they needed to do was keep the seeds off the garden bed, but they just couldn’t hold the weight of playing kittens! The channels in the mesh that the wire ran through might be large enough for the Pexx pipe hoops I now have. Maybe. It would be a tight fit, but I’d prefer that over loose.

The kittens were not all “helpful” though. Each section of netting has a drawstring at the ends, with a sliding cord lock bead to hold it closed.

The Grink discovered one. Started playing with it. Got startled. Tried to run off with the bead in her mouth.

The next thing I know, she’s running down the patch, a section of netting dragging behind her, catching on the wire supports and dragging them along!

She finally let go at the end of the path, having dragged almost a dozen of the wire supports down the path with her!

Definitely not helping!

While the wire supports may or may not be salvageable, the netting is just fine. For a Dollarama purchase, these are really good. I still have one package, unopened. If I can find something better to slide through the channels to support them, they would work to keep kittens off as well as elm seeds!

Since it was still raining a bit, I headed inside once the mesh and wires were added to the sorting pile at the bench near the garden shed. The rain and stopped and started a few times since I came in. If the weather radar is accurate, it’s going to rain steadily from now on until tomorrow evening, so I guess that’s it for outside stuff. I’d hoped to get a few more small things done before the rain. Ah, well. It won’t go away.

The dump is open tomorrow, so I might make that trip, but we don’t have much of anything to take to the dump right now, unless I want to grab what I bagged up by the burn barrel today. The main thing is that we’ll be taking Eyelet to the new rescue. He’s a bit young to be neutered still, but he’ll be getting that and all the usual vetting before he’s put up for adoption. The main thing is that he will be indoors and at less risk of becoming coyote chow, since he can’t hear.

Some lucky person out there is going to get themselves a stunningly beautiful and sweet little cat!

Speaking of cats, time to get the kibble out!

The Re-Farmer