It’s always interesting to go through the garden after the first frost of the season, and see what survived and what didn’t. I’m rather used to finding things that end up dead after a few days, but it’s a real boost to my day when I find things that not only survived, but continue to grow!
The first photo is of the Ozark Nest Egg gourd, near the compost pile. All the volunteer squash in the compost pile were frost killed, and it looks like this little thing was, too, yet here it is, blooming!
The second photo is the yellow patty pan squash. There were some developing squash that were killed by the frost, but now I see that lower down the stem, there are both male and female flowers growing! I am not cutting back any of the frost killed leaves, since clearly they provided enough protection to keep the plant alive. In fact, I’m not pulling or cutting back any of the squash plants. Not even the winter squash. There’s no rush to do it, but who knows how many others are like this.
The last photo was a real surprise to see. The second light frost did damage the luffa leaves more, but they are still alive. What I did not expect, however, was to see fresh vines climbing the lilac, and new female flowers! I don’t see any male flower buds anywhere, but they might just be hidden among the lilac leaves.
The last couple of days has seen rain, off and on, especially overnight. Just enough that I’m not getting out there to do work that involves things like the electric chainsaw. We’re supposed to warm up again over the next few days, then get cool again.
My husband was expecting a parcel at the post office so, before the post office reopened for the afternoon, I called the Chinese food place in town to see if they were open. They were, so I was able to place the order (thanks to my daughter, again!) we’d wanted to place, yesterday.
Also, it turns out they just changed their name. Everything else is the same, but it seems there are two restaurants with the same name in the city, and they were getting calls meant for the city locations, instead. Enough calls to warrant the name change!
My post office trip was an unexpected surprise. My husband’s package wasn’t there, but there was a surprise package for me!
More on that later.
Since I was going to town after the post office, anyway, I took advantage of the trip and refilled a couple of our 5 gallon drinking water jugs – and some energy drinks for my daughter and I.
I should learn to drink coffee. It’s much cheaper than energy drinks. I just don’t like coffee as a beverage, unless it’s so adulterated, it’s more coffee flavour than coffee, and the amount of caffeine in tea just doesn’t cut it for me.
But I digress!
Because ordering take out is such a big deal, when living in the boonies, we tend to order enough to last us for several days, and this was no exception. Plus, when the orders at this place are more than a certain amount, they start adding things like free rice or deep fried won ton chips, so there was even more than we ordered. They were kind enough to provide boxes to make it easier to carry, and I had help carrying them out to the car, too.
Once at home and unloaded, we had ourselves some excellent food – with lots left over! I think it’s been about a year since we last ordered from then, and boy did it hit the spot! What a treat.
After that, I got the parcel that came in the mail – after removing the cat that decided it was her bed – and opened it up. So many amazing things! Thank you, M! You’re a sweetheart!
There were a few things for the garden, including packages of catnip seeds, and seed “eggs” with pollinator seeds in them. There were some toy mice for the kitties, treats and two different bags of catnip, including this herbal mix.
I have not seen this brand since we moved out here, but then, I haven’t been seeing catnip of any kind, except for one small, insanely expensive, bag just a few weeks ago at the local grocery store. I have no idea why there would be an apparent shortage of cat nip in this province. Granted, I haven’t been hunting it down at pet stores, but the pet sections of the stores I do go to used to always have cat nip, and now they just don’t.
The other bag in the care package was the usual catnip and nothing else. This one has valerian, honeysuckle and catmint, too.
So I gave the mix to the cats to try, first! Valerian is supposed to have a calming affect, and we could really use some of that! Especially for the night. 😄
The adult cats sure got excited when I started strewing out some of the cat herbs. Even TTT, who has never had any before, was real interested in it!
The kittens even got some but, while they were all over the packaging when I got it out, they weren’t as interested in it once the herbs were actually available. I even put some right next to Soot Sprite, curled up on their favourite blanket bed, and he just curled back up and went to sleep, surrounded by herbs!
They did eventually discover it and have some, and that calming thing really does seem to be working right now! All but one of the kittens are asleep, which is not unusual for this time of day, but one of them is away, and very laid back while playing with a strip of carboard from off the parcel package.
There were some other lovely things, including treats like Truffle salt – something else I haven’t seen since we moved – and useful things like medical glass droppers. Considering how easily the plastic ones that come with the cat medication break, these will be very handy! There was even a old Canadian cookbook I look forward to going through, and an old book on preserving food that is going to be so handy. Some of the canning recipes may not be considered safe to use anymore, but it also includes other methods of preservation, and I even saw a section on sheds and attics for storing preserved foods!
Oh, that last kitten is now asleep, too. It’s so nice and quiet right now!! Even the adult cats seem to have all quieted down, even though not all of them eat catnip. It might be a good idea to give them some after their evening feeding, instead of the late afternoon, as I did today. We might just get some proper sleep, for a change!
While I was out, the lady from the financing company had tried to call and left some messages, so I called her back.
Ha. That was an amusing call!
First of all, yes, we have been preapproved for financing a car, up to a maximum amount of $22,000 (that’s roughlyUS$16,200 at the current exchange rates). Way higher than anything we’d actually be getting.
This was the funny part.
We were also approved for a maximum of $800 a month in payments.
Nope!!!
That is NOT going to happen!
Yeah, I laughed out loud with that. I told her, if we could make payments like that, we wouldn’t need a loan! She understood.
Here’s the other thing.
This would be for just 1 year, as we rebuild our credit. After a year, they would expect us to either trade in the vehicle, or refinance it.
That’s another nope. I don’t want a temporary vehcile!
Now, I already talked to our mechanic about what we can afford for monthly payments. Whatever upper limit we might be approved for, he would be looking for something for us that we can actually afford the payments on.
I told the lady what we could afford for monthly payments on our budget. We’re on a fixed income, but the cost of living is increasing at insane rates, so we have to take that into account, too. Plus, of course, we’d have the monthly insurance and registration payments, so that adds another $100 a month, give or take, depending on the vehicle. She confirmed that our mechanic knew this, and I told her I’ve been very open with him about what we can manage.
Getting payments that low will not be easy; she was up front about that. However, there is still one more bank she’s waiting to hear from, and she said they would start going at it from a different angle to get us a vehicle on payments we can afford. She assured me, however, that they would get us a vehicle.
Oh, that reminds me. Any vehicle we get can have a maximum 250,000 km on it. The first time we went through this, we were applying for a Caravan, and that company’s limit was 180,000 km. The van we wanted was 1000 km over, so they wouldn’t finance it.
One of the things she asked about was the possibility of a down payment. I told her how much we could potentially put down, but said we would prefer not to, because it’s basically our emergency fund. Which mostly goes to vet bills. I mentioned having a recent cat leg amputation. Yes, my daughters did cover it between them but it still needed to be paid for first, then get replaced later.
She completely understood and told me she found herself with an $1100 vet bill after her dog ate a sock! Sadly, after 6 months, the dog passed away due to complications from the surgery, but she at least got those last 6 months with the dog.
So, yeah; she completely understood the need for a contingency fund!
Anyhow.
She once again promised me that they would find us a vehicle we could afford, and we will likely get another call about it tomorrow.
We shall see how it works out!
Until then, I’m just thankful we at least have my mother’s car to use.
I really look forward to when we can let the bigger kittens out. Once or twice during the night, they all wake up and the bigger ones spend about an hour going insane all over the place. Even the littles – except for the newest, tiniest one – try to get in on the action. This morning, I discovered they somehow managed to remove the liner on one of my steel toe shoes. I hadn’t picked up insoles for them yet, so this was the permanent inner part! Thankfully I was able to fit it back in, but there was a sort of padded layer in between has mostly disappeared. I only discovered there was something missing because bits of it, deepest into the toe, were still there.
I never found the bits they pulled out.
On the plus side, they are very cuddly when they sleep. When I woke this morning, I had one kitten on a hip, and another cuddled against my back. Except it turned out to be three of them cuddled against my back, including the tiny new baby I brought in.
It still needs a name.
So… sleep is a precious and rare commodity right now.
I did try leaving my door open once. The bigger kittens sure liked it, but the little ones were not at all happy about strange adult cats coming over to sniff them. Then Tissue decided to pick fights with some of the bigger kittens, and that was the end of that. For now, at least.
Anyhow.
My husband was a sweetheart and fed the outside cats for me, earlier on. While checking on the garden beds, it seems that one of the hot pepper plants in the grow bags may have been more frost damaged than it looked at first. I still have hope for the melons, though.
The wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden seems to have really lived up to what I hoped it would be. The second frost did in most of the luffa – at least the parts climbing up the lilac bush – but all the peppers, strawberries and herbs look completely free of frost damage. I’m really impressed by this…
The Classic Eggplant is still blooming!
A lot of the peppers are still blooming, too, but only one Classic Eggplant started indoors survived to be transplanted.
It has been raining off and on since yesterday, so not a lot of outside work is going to get done today. I’ll be heading out this afternoon to pick up a parcel in the mail, and will be likely heading into town after that. My daughter treated us to take out yesterday, but the Chinese food place turned out to be closed, and we got fried chicken, instead. Which was good, but now we’re all craving Chinese food. So she’s treating us again! We had been in town yesterday for my husband’s medical appointment, so we didn’t phone ahead. This time, we have no other reason to go into town, so I’ll call first to make sure they’re open, and then place the order if they are. If they’re still closed, we’ll try again tomorrow.
In other things, my daughter’s house sitting is going well. She made a trip to the grocery store yesterday, which involved driving over in one of my brother’s two mobility scooters (they got them for my mother, who refuses to take one, while also complaining about not being able to go far with her walker because her knees are so bad). It was funny, because when she got to there and parked it before walking into the store, a guy passing by complimented her on her sweet ride! 😄
Meanwhile, my brother and his wife are having the time of their lives, and have managed to take in several countries so far. What a way to celebrate their 40th anniversary! I’m so glad they were able to do this.
Well, time to see if I can get anything productive done today.
What I’d really like to do is go for a good, long nap!
When I came out to feed the outside cats this morning, I spotted these three. The tabby was curled up and asleep when I came over. I reached in to pet them, and the other two started purring before I even touched them! I got to pet the tabby while it was asleep, but once it woke up, it would not tolerate pets and ran off – though I did manage to pet him more while he was trying to get out of the bin and onto the shelf above!
As I was finishing my morning rounds, I decided to pick the potato berries from the large volunteer potato plant from last year’s potato patch. The frost has killed the plant off completely, which is interesting, because the potato plants in the grow bags are still undamaged by frost and barely dying off for the end of their growing season.
Potato berries are toxic, but these all should be full of potato seeds. I will do a bit more research on what to do with them, but during one brief search, I read that the seeds need to be fermented, much like tomato seeds. Which makes sense, since they are related.
For now, though, they are tucked away in the cat proof living room.
This morning, my husband had his meet and greet medical appointment with a new doctor. That went better than he expected, and he now officially has a new primary care doctor. The paperwork to transfer his medical files have been signed, and he’ll need to update the pharmacy and disability insurance company.
Some of the medications my husband is on are not at all familiar to her, so she’s going to be doing some research. We will probably do a follow up appointment with her in the near future, if only because some of the blood test results from yesterday are not in yet.
My husband was happy with her. More so than the interim doctor, that’s for sure. I had my issues. The first being, she was the only person I saw all day wearing one of those useless masks. After years of being surrounded by mask nazis, being treated like trash, and having an ever shortening list of places I could go without risk of being physically or verbally assaulted, either by customers or staff, spending so much time around a faceless person is still something that triggers anxiety. That we still have medical professionals, who should know about the mountains of data and research showing how wearing them are more harmful than beneficial, also immediately lowers my opinion of their competency. There were a few other things that came up when I asked questions about medication that are red flags for me, such as her response on my husband being on statins (he should not be on statins) or Ozempic (the side effects can be very… messy), neither of which have actually done anything to improve his health. But, this is a first time visit, and beggars can’t be choosers.
After the appointment, I did ask at the desk about any other doctors taking patients, which my mother in mind. It turns out that no, even this doctor we just saw is already closed to new patients. My husband is basically the last one. Not that I would ever make an appointment with her for my mother. She has a hard enough time with a doctor that is black (and has an accent strong enough to make it difficult for my mother to understand what she’s saying). This doctor may be the “right” colour but, in a passing comment, she mentioned her wife, and that would just be too much for my mother to handle!
The receptionist suggested I ask again in a few months about doctors taking new patients. Which is much the same situation in the other clinic. As much as I’d like to have the same doctor as my husband, since I go to all his appointments, anyhow, I’ll see if I can have the same doctor as my mother for the same reason. It’s just convenient to have the same doctor.
After the appointment, we were going to try and get my husband’s photo ID, since he has no up to date photo ID right now. Unfortunately, there’s a public sector union strike going on right now, so he decided against it. Even if we got the ball rolling locally, who knows when the processing will actually happen. So he decided to skip that – though I think the state of the streets might have had something to do with his decision. They are rougher to drive on than our gravel roads, and his back feels every bump!
Our daughter was a sweetheart and send money for take out. We were going to get Chinese food, but the place was closed today, so we ended up getting a whole lot of fried chicken, instead. It’s good, but we got less food for her money with that. Ah, well. It was still delicoius food that someone else cooked for us!
After we got home, I found a couple of messages from the financing company. I called her back and she told me everything is proceeding well. We have a conditional approval, and there are two banks vying for our file. She will choose the one that gives us the best deal, then negotiate the best contract for us. Meanwhile, we’re at the stage where we have to send in our ID, income confirmation, etc. She had tried to email us already, but the emails bounced back. Turns out she misheard part of mine, and had the wrong language spelling on my husband’s – pretty common problems with our emails, to be honest! 😄
One thing I’ve never heard of before is that they want an “ID selfie”. Basically, a photo of ourselves holding our photo ID next to our face. Which does make sense, with everything being done electronically, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of that being requested.
I mentioned that my husband does not have current photo ID, which may be a problem. He does have his old driver’s license, which is expired, but still a government approved photo ID. He also has his Metis card from when we lived in this province before. That has no expiry date, but I don’t think it counts as government approved. So for him, we got pictures of the fronts and backs of 4 different IDs, when only 2 are needed, plus a picture of him holding both his old photo IDs next to his face. I had to get one of those for myself, too. Then there’s the proof of income, which was his annual letter from the insurance company saying “yes, you’re still disabled, yes, we’re still paying you!” , etc.
So that’s all sent in. Hopefully, it’ll be enough. One bit of info I did include was that the vehicle will be in my name only; with all his medications and pain levels, my husband simply doesn’t drive. Even when he still had his license, he voluntarily stopped driving, long ago. That might also make a difference. It did with a previous company, and my husband’s name was removed from the application completely.
Either way, we’re one step closer to approval, and getting a replacement van.
Which we really, really need. The check engine light on my mother’s car has turned on again, plus I had to pull over at a gas station to top up the air in one tire. It might have a slow leak, and will need to be checked. I did a cursory check, myself, but could see nothing. I’m so paranoid about tires. We’ve had way too many problems with tires, on three different vehicles, over the years!
I already posted a photo of the new kitten on the block. This is a photo I took, just before I caught it.
The kitten in the back is the one I caught. The puff ball in the front is also on the list for kittens that are so tiny, they need to come indoors.
It is not at all cooperative.
There are two more black kittens with white spots on their chests from this litter (plus a much bigger one from another litter that is more catten then kitten, now). One of them should be fine and is bigger, but the other is staying teeny tiny. I don’t know why there is such a difference in sizes in the same litter, but the littles are at far greater risk, so if we can snag them for indoors, we will.
In other things…
My husband and I headed out fairly early today to get our blood work done. The results should be ready in time for his appointment with a doctor, tomorrow. Hopefully, this is a doctor that will take him on as a new patient. Once of the requirements for his disability income is to be under the care of a doctor, and he doesn’t have one right now.
These were fasting blood tests, so after it was done, we had to go for breakfast. With all the medications my husband is on, he doesn’t feel hunger anymore, but I was at the “getting dizzy and nauseous” stage of hunger. There was one restaurant we’ve been to before that I thought would be open, but it turns out to open just before lunch, not for breakfast, so we stopped at a hotel café not far away. This is one of those places that has been around forever, and where locals go to regularly for breakfast. I haven’t been there in years!
It’s not accessible, though, so my husband had to cane it up the stairs. Once we were there and settled, looking at the menu, I happened to glance across the room and saw a familiar face I hadn’t seen in years! It was an old friend of ours from high school! The last time I saw her was before she’d moved up North to one of the territories! It was really great to run into her like that!
After breakfast, we made a stop at the pharmacy to pick up prescription refills that would normally have been delivered today, then headed home.
My husband told me to go ahead and park in the garage, rather than drive up to the house, once we got home.
Then he fell, trying to get out of my mother’s car.
Well. More like a half fall. He ended up with one knee on the ground, one leg still in the car, and stuck in a most awkward position. After some struggling, he managed to get himself up. There was little I could do to help him.
He thought he was fine at first, but after a few hours, that knee that hit the ground (we have a dirt floor in our garage) was starting to really hurt.
Thankfully, he has plenty of really powerful pain killers, including one that’s “take as needed”.
I had intended to wait until closer to the end of the month but, after this, I sent a message to our mechanic, who also used vehicles available for sale. It’ll be 6 months at the end of September, that I’ve been using a low limit credit card to rebuild my credit score. Which means I should be able to apply for financing on a vehicle and have payments we can actually afford. The last time I applied for financing, the terms and interest rates were insane, they wanted a high down payment, plus the payments would have been $700 a month!
We messaged back and forth for a bit. He actually has a truck available right now. I had walked over to see what he had available, the last time I was at the grocery store across the street, and it’s a really nice truck. We could certainly use one but, for our primary needs, we need another minivan, though we could possibly get away with a SUV. He told me he would look for something for us. He knows our needs by now.
Not long after, I got a call from him. He told me he was with a new financing company now. One that specializes in helping people rebuilding their credit. He’d talked to her about our situation, and that we were living on a disability income. She told him that they could do pre-approved financing. That would go a long way in helping him know exactly what he could find for us, and not be stuck with a vehicle to sell to someone else, if we can’t afford the financing.
So I gave him permission to pass on my contact information and I got a call from the company already. The initial process has been started. The next step at our end will be to send in our ID and probably proof of income, etc., like we had to before. We should know in the next couple of days, what we can get for financing. From there, our mechanic will be able to look for something that meets our needs, and falls into the financing parameters.
I pray this all works out. As much as I appreciate having my mother’s car to use, it meets my mother’s needs, not ours. Plus, that thing needs to be replaced, too! My mother has already told my brother and that we should just sell it, but it’s too difficult for her to get into a larger vehicle, so a small car is needed for her. She won’t buy another car, though. She doesn’t drive or even have a license anymore. She’s got no problem with the idea of us buying another car for her, though… Not that we could afford to have two car payments!
I’m just going to post this photo for now; I took some video and will upload that later.
Until then, this is what I was able to harvest today.
We did get another frost last night. I was out doing my rounds early enough to see some frost still on the ground. Once again, there was no frost warning and, according to the official past 24 hours record, we never dipped below 6C/43F, while I know I saw 4C/39F on my app when I checked before heading out this morning.
I should get one of those high/low thermometers that have needles to mark the highest and lowest temperatures on the dial.
So for now, all the stuff affected by the frost has been harvested that could be harvested. I left the melons, because they look like enough of the vines survived for ripening to continue. We’re supposed to warm up over the next while, so that will give more time for things like the melons, peppers, Spoon tomatoes and the one eggplant to ripen. The other things, like the carrots and onions, can handle frost so they’ll be fine for quite a while longer.
My computer was misbehaving, and I think I discovered the cause. There was an operating system update waiting for me to power down the computer.
So while that’s doing it’s thing, I’ll just use my phone to share this bit of adorableness.
Can you spot the new face?
There are now 8 kittens in there. I managed to snag the tiniest outside kitten. This is one of the 8 that were born in the barrel, almost 2 months ago. Some of them are really tiny, still. We now have 3 of them indoors.
I was able to catch Pom Pom only because of a dislocated arm that, thankfully, reset itself.
I had been able to catch and hold Soot Sprite before, so he was a bit more used to human contact. He adjusted to indoors faster than Pom Pom.
The new baby (in the top middle) was a providential catch. I managed it shortly after I headed outside to get some work done, so it was just a quick drop off in my room.
It almost immediately found the food bowls.
When I came in again later, all 8 kittens were curled up in a pile on my bed. It took a while before I could get a picture.
Not only was the new kitten immediately absorbed into the creche, when I walk past, it allows me to pet it, along with the other kittens, as I go by!
They are all solidly asleep right now. Which likely means another sleepless night of mayhem and destruction by the older kittens, while the Littles watch in stunned disbelief!
There are at least 2 more really tiny kittens that need to come in. In time, I will take photos of all of them to pass on to the Cat Lady to share among her contacts for adoption.
I headed out to check the garden as the day warmed up, to get a better idea of how much frost damage there was. As things warm up, the damaged/dead parts turns a lot darker, which showed me that the tomato plants in the main garden area did get killed off. Not the ones in the old kitchen garden, though! The melon plants might make it. Lots of dead leaves, but not the entire plants.
Tonight, we’re looking at a low of 5 – 6C/41 – 43F which, if things go the way they have been, lately, may actually end up being 3 – 4C/37 – 39F.
The high for today ended up being 18C/64F. I took advantage of it and got some work done on the trellis bed. It was actually feeling too hot while I worked! This is where I stopped for the evening.
The first thing I needed to do was finish off the wall on the left. I rolled the top log off, then used a chain saw to try and smooth and flatten things a bit, mostly to get rid of odd lumps and bumps, then putting the top log back. I still ended up with some gaps, but those will be filled with pieces of wood from the inside
The next thing was to use an auger to match the size of the pieces of rebar I have. Thanks to my husband, I have a nice set of long auger bits for my drill. They’re a touch shorter than the rebar, so after drilling holes through both logs, I removed the top log again, then drilled further through the bottom log. Once that was done, the rebar got hammered through the holes in the top log until it came out the other end, which I could then use to position the top log back again before hammering the rebar flush with the top.
The base log for the other wall was already debarked, but needed some clean up to remove bits of branches and other lumps and bumps. Then I got out the garden fork and loosened the soil between the markers where the log would be positioned. I found a large rock in the process that would not move. Since it’s under a wall, I left it. Once the soil was loosened, and the worst of the weed roots removed, I spun the log around so that the wide end was facing the other way. The ground is a bit lower on that side. I should have laid the base log in the other wall that way, but didn’t think of it until I’d already positioned it.
This base log itself has a long bend in it. I made sure it was positioned to bow outwards. That will be taken advantage of later in the build. Once in place, I used the chain saw again to remove any parts that looked too uneven and lumpy, and trimmed a few branch stubs a bit more.
The top log then needed to be debarked and prepped. This wood actually took the knife a lot better, so I went ahead and shaved a flat strip, so it would lay flatter on the base long.
That didn’t quite work out!
While the top log is a lot straighter than the bottom one, when I put it in position, the narrow end of the top log, which is set above the wider end of the base log, was floating at least 8 inches above! After rotating the log until it finally set the most evenly, the shaved part was now on the top!
There were still some lumps and bumps in the way, though, mostly on the base log. The wood on that tree did not take to the draw knife well, so I used the chain saw to level it off some more, then made another matching flat area on the top log.
With the bend in the base log, though, the top log is lined up on each end, but almost completely off the bottom log at the bend! It wasn’t going anywhere, though, so I repeated the process for inserting the rebar, more or less matching where the ones in the other wall are set.
With the rebar holding the logs together, I used a board to line up and mark the ends for cutting, then removed the jagged ends of the logs. I had to be careful with the bottom logs, so as not to be cutting into the ground!
The two logs you can see set aside in the photo will at least partly be used to close up the ends of the beds. These beds are meant to be 18′ long and 4′ wide on the outside. With the ends trimmed, they are no longer 18′ long, but the end pieces will be used to make up the gap. It doesn’t have to be exact, but I’d rather they be a bit longer than shorter. With how the logs taper, I might have to find thicker pieces of logs to finish the ends and get that 18′.
Once the end pieces are in place and secure, I’ll start working on attaching the 4 vertical supports for the trellis, which will then get horizontal supports across their tops. They’ll be added after the verticals are in place. The ground is uneven, but I want the horizontals to be level. Since I’m not going to be digging post holes as originally intended, and just attaching them to the outside of a wall, I’m no longer going to be losing about a foot of height on these 7′ posts, so I will likely mount the horizontals at 6 1/2′ rather than 6′, then trimming off the excess height. When the second bed is built at the other markers, it will have matching trellis supports and, eventually, they will be joined at the top to create a tunnel.
If all goes well, we’ll make at least one more trellis tunnel set up in line with this one. My priority, however, is going to be making more high raised beds, once this is done. Mobility, reach and pain reduction while tending the beds are becoming more of an issue for me.
Not before this bed is finished, though, and that will include filling it and preparing it to plant in, next year. That means layers of carboard on the bottom, maybe some small branches, wood chips, fresh green material such as the frost bitten bush beans I pulled earlier today, grass clippings and topping it with some of that purchased garden soil we still have left. Last of all with be a grass clipping mulch to protect the soil over the winter.
The bed the Roma tomatoes were in needs to be prepared for the winter, and if I could at least make that into a high raised bed, that would make life easier for next year!
When I woke this morning and checked my weather app, just before it refreshed itself, I saw something I did not want to see!
2C/36F
Considering the time of that reading, it was entirely possible we had frost last night.
We had no frost warnings at all before I went to bed.
Not that we could have done much about it. All those support poles and trellises are great, but make it impossible to cover the plants. At least not with the material we have. The squash patch is just too big.
When I first started my rounds after feeding the outside cats (I tried for a head count and saw 26 or 27. I may have double counted one) and headed towards the gate cam, I was somewhat encouraged. Usually, even if we have a light frost, I would still see signs of it in the shaded areas along the driveway long after it melted elsewhere. I saw only dew.
Then I started checking the south garden beds. Everything looked fine as I made my way through. Even the Little Finger eggplant in the concrete blocks, and the Caveman’s Club gourd, seemed unchanged.
Then I saw the squash growing in the compost pile.
Still, this area is a lot more shaded than others, especially in the mornings. The nearby beds of onions, carrots and the popcorn cobs drying on their stalks are frost hardy, so they were fine.
Going to the sign cam, I pass the Crespo squash patch. That spot doesn’t get shade until the sun is at its lowest in the winter, so even this time of year it gets the full morning sun.
The leaves were all drooping, and I think I might even have seen the remains of frost glittering on some stems. It’s done.
When I got to the main garden area, I was a bit more encouraged. The plants supported on trellises seemed to fair better. The melons did show some cold damage in areas, while others looked just fine. Even the tomato plants seemed mostly all right. Much to my surprise, all the pepper plants in their grow bags looked absolutely fine!
The squash patch, unfortunately, was completely done in. Half the patch gets more shade than the other. In the heat of the summer, the plants that got more shade were doing better than the ones that got more sun but, right now, it’s the rows that get more sun that are looking less damaged than the others.
I’ll leave them alone for now, and see what happens over the next couple of days.
The old kitchen garden, much to my surprise, was fine. Even the luffa! The peppers here also showed no signs of cold damage, the Classic eggplant and all the transplanted tomatoes in their plastic shields seem completely unaffected. Even the Spoon tomatoes looked undamaged, and I was able to pick a bunch of them.
What’s frustrating is that there were NO frost warnings. I found a site that gives temperatures for the past 24 hours, and I did find it dipped to -2C/28F at around 6am – in the city! When I did a search for our area, plus the areas north and east of us, where I know there are weather stations, the lowest recorded temperature was 5C/41F Yet, my own app showed we were at 4C/40F at a time when the past weather chart was showing 7C/45F.
Today, we’re looking at a high of 17C/63F, with an overnight low of 6C/43F Those overnight lows have been consistently wrong on the high side. Which means that we’re not getting any of the frost warnings that would normally be set off, once the temperatures are expected to drop low enough, even as the real temperatures drop below that warning threshold.
Again, there’s not much we could have done, but we would have at least picked all the remaining tomatoes and brought them inside. Including the mostly green tomatoes still out on screens under the market tent.
As things warm up today, I’ll head back out and reassess the damage.
I’m not sure what to do about the winter squash. All those big, beautiful Pink Banana and candy roasters! They are not fully ripe, but if we leave them out and the vines die back, will they continue to ripen? We certainly won’t be able to store them for the winter, but I don’t even know how edible they are at this stage.
So, in theory, we can bring them inside and lay them out to continue to ripen. Since they won’t store for the winter at this stage, we could cook them and freeze them, instead.
I don’t think that will work with the melons as well, but those plants might survive.
Unless we get another frost with no warning again.
