A large chunk of a dead maple finally break off and landed on the hawthorn living fence. I’m impressed that the hawthorn is holding the weight! Another section cracked as well, but it’s being held up by the still living section of another maple.
This tree has been dead for a while. The main trunk is still solid, and, I made sure to debark the lower section of it so no carpenter ants would start compromising the wood. As for the branches that came down, it was just a matter of time.
I’ve been wanting to cut this dead tree down, as well as the dead sections of the ones on either side of it, for some time. The problem was one of, how to do it without causing more damage. I knew part of it could only fall onto the hawthorn; there was no other direction it could fall. I also knew the other part would get hung up on the other tree. Again, there was no other direction it could fall. In the video, you can see another broken off part of the trunk. That came down a few years ago, landing right on top of a canopy tent we had near the fire pit.
Well, looks like I have a clean up job for today. At the very least, I want to get the section off the hawthorn without causing more damage.
The tree that’s holding up the other section is also partially dead. The dead section stretches off in the other direction, right into some nearby elms, so it would get hung up on the branches if we try to cut it away.
The alternative, of course, is to hire a tree company that has the equipment needed to get right up there and take it down in sections. Something that would be very expensive. If we’re going to hire a tree company, the priority would be to remove the tree in front of the house that’s overhanging the roof. These trees by the fire pit area a lot lower on the priority list!
Hmm… I might not be cleaning this up today, after all. Checking the weather for the day. Not only did we end up a lot colder than expected last night, but our expected high is now only 8C/46F, and it’s supposed to start raining in about half an hour, and continue raining until 7pm.
Our chain saw is a corded electric. Not going to have extension cords running across the yard to work in the rain!
From what I could see, this tree was the only thing that came down during the night. Thankfully, the winds have died down, so we wouldn’t be having any more dead trees breaking or falling for at least a little while!
Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!
We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.
We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.
I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.
The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.
I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.
I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!
Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.
The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.
While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.
The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!
I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.
In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.
My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.
As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.
Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!
We have several black and white kittens that have such dense, fluffy fur, they look like little puff balls running around.
When feeding the cats this morning, I tried to do a head count of the adult. I got either 12 or 15. I’m not sure. Either way, that’s still a lot less than usual. I’ve noticed that not only am I not seeing Brussel around anymore, but her sister, Sprout, has also not been showing up at feeding time of late.
I haven’t really tried to do a head count of the kittens. Some are still hiding in the junk pile near the shrine feeding station, and they just more around and hide too quickly. I can say that I think several are “missing”. There was one in particular that I noticed was not doing well, and by the end of the day, it was simply gone, and I haven’t seen it since.
While it’s possible they simply aren’t around while I put the food out, there is another way I can tell that there are fewer yard cats. There is leftover kibble, even hours later, when it’s time to do the evening feeding. Not at all the trays or feeding stations, but in the sun room and close to the house. I actually have reduced how much kibble I put out, this evening. It’s all cleaned out overnight, but I know that’s because the skunks and raccoons are sneaking over and eating what’s left.
Such is life with colony cats and kittens, but it’s been a strange one this year.
Well, the installers for our new door on the main entry were expected at about 9:30am, and got here half an hour early. They got to work right away.
It’s about 9:40am right now, and they are gone.
The guy was so, so apologetic, but the door that was ordered is the wrong size. There is just no way they can get the new door and frame into the space. Part of the issue is that they would need to install a new header. Another issue is the stucco.
I would actually have been good with a bigger door. Ours is 34″. The new door is 36″. Apparently, 34″ doors are pretty rare these days.
They offered to find a way to make the old door smaller so they could put back on until a proper sized door came in, but I explained the frost and moisture damage to the door. They also offered to put some foam in the door for now. I told him, that was not a problem – we were already using foam insulation to barricade the entry from the cats, so he could see we already had some. We won’t need to use it, though, as we already have a piece cut to size, and even with a space cut so we could have the hose running out the storm door when we did laundry in the winter. Yes, we’re still going that. The girls are convinced that if we use the drain pipe, it’ll just back up and flood the entry again.
So, we are still without a proper door in the main entry. Just the storm door. For which I am thankful! Without that, we’d have had to board the doorway up somehow.
He said he would see if they can do a rush order on a replacement door, as it can take a while for them to be made. I hadn’t realized their doors are actually custom made on order. I was thinking something like Home Depot, where they have entire aisles of doors and pre-hung doors, interior and exterior, that you can just buy then and there. I guess it makes sense. A small town hardware store has neither the space, nor the sales, to warrant keeping that sort of inventory on hand.
On the plus side for me, is… I can go for a nap. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Mostly because of cats going nuts, including Tin Whistle getting the zoomies across me in bed.
I just need to go close up the gate first. Then sleep! Hopefully.
Setting the hoops over the winter squash bed worked. They’re taller than I would have liked, but they are held in place by stakes, not pushed into the ground, and in places, I could barely get the stakes pushed into the ground. Too many little rocks.
Thankfully, I had enough hoops and stakes for decent spacing. I still ran three lines of twine across, to keep the cover from caving inward too much. I removed the staked holding the boards along the sides. Those were there to keep the soil from eroding from the edges, but with the mulch there, and time, they’re not really needed for that anymore. Instead, I planned to use them to hold the cover in place.
My original intension had been to use mosquito netting, until I remembered I had picked up 10’x25′ medium weight plastic drop clothes specifically to fit over these beds. “Medium weight” is still very thin, unfortunately (you can see the package in the second photo of the slight show above).
Once the hoops were set, I left it until it was starting to get cooler before we covered all the beds that we are able to. We were able to fill six 4L/1 gallon water bottles with hot water, which is all the empties my husband had from his distilled water at the moment. All the others we had have already been cut to suit other uses in the garden.
Two of them went at each end of the row of eggplants, where they are the least protected by the too-short fabric we have for that. The peppers are planted more densely, so they are covered better.
The remaining four bottles of water were spaced out in between the winter squash before my daughter and I put the cover on. At 25 feet, it was more than long enough to cover the hoops on an 18′ bed. I’d hoped we could keep it folded in half, length wise, but at 5′ wide, it was too short to be able to secure it on the sides. We had to open it up completely, but that did give us more material to wrap around the boards up to the bases. It will certainly not be blowing away!
The down side is, kittens.
While we were covering the bed, Sir Robin and Grommet decided that we were making a lovely tunnel, just for them. After fishing them out and setting the plastic out on the ground, so the boards could be used to roll up the excess, Sir Robin started pouncing on the plastic and promptly made holes in it. Holes in a section that’s now wrapped around a board, but gosh, that didn’t take long!
One bonus in having plastic to cover this bed is that I could probably leave it there. We’re only supposed to reach 12C/54F tomorrow, and only 9C/48F the day after. We’re supposed to get rain a couple of times tonight, and they’re still saying we’ll be getting a low of 7C/45F, but the next night, they’re saying we’re dropping to 4C/39F. If we leave the plastic, or only partially lift it for watering, it should act as a greenhouse.
With the cat cave – their usual favourite spot – unavailable last night, these kittens took up the beds inside the water bowl shelter, instead. I checked inside the cat house, which has three cat beds in it, and only saw one kitten in there. I actually thought it might have been another loss, but when I tried to poke around the carpet strips over the entry, it moved, so it was just napping. *phew*
Today we decided to do my husband’s birthday take out, and his choice was our favourite Chinese food place. He actually would have preferred pizza, but his lactose intolerance has been getting pretty bad. So this afternoon, after checking to make sure they were open today, my daughter and I headed into town.
Sir Robin and Eyelet followed me to the truck and would NOT leave! My daughter came back from opening the gate and tried to shoo them away, only for Eyelet to go under the truck, while I was in it, getting ready to back out! She stopped me and started looking for him, and found him grooming himself – directly behind a tire! Eyelet is deaf, which makes it more challenging. By the time I could safely back out, she had both of them, one under each arm!
We really, really need to find a home for Eyelet, if he’s going to survive!
Once in town, we first stopped at the restaurant to place our order (and pick up an up to date take out menu), letting them know we’d be at least half an hour before coming back to pick it up. Then we went to the grocery store to pick up some other celebratory things, including lactose free ice cream for my husband. My daughter are also lactose intolerant, but they are good with using the digestive enzymes for that.
That done, we got the food – we ordered enough to feed us for a couple of days, at least! – then headed home. Once home, my daughters took care of putting things away and getting everything ready while I popped outside to feed the yard cats early.
As I came out the Old Kitchen into the sun room, I disturbed a big skunk.
This skunk has been a regular since it was little, and it would always hide under the counter shelf, instead of running out the door.
It is no longer little.
It still thinks it can fit under the counter shelf.
After much scrambling and flattening of its butt, it finally squeezed itself under the shelf.
That done, we settled in for our celebratory take out. We’ll be doing cake and ice cream later, though maybe after the girls and I have gone out to cover garden beds for the night.
We did get interrupted with a phone call, though.
A happy interruption.
It was the company that’s replacing our front door for us. He’d emailed me while I was in town and I hadn’t checked my email yet, so he called. It turns out the installers can come out here tomorrow morning, and he wanted to know if that worked for us.
We’ll make it work!!!!
So another task for today is to find a way of barricade the entry, so no cats will get out while there is no door at all!
Hopefully, there will be no issues with the stucco and they won’t find anything bizarre when they remove the old, cracked frame.
It will be so good to have a solid door there again! Bonus if they can put the storm door back on again, too.
It will be so good to have a winter with no frost on the bottom of the door. On a really cold year, the frost would be up to the bottom hinge on one side, too.
It’s also going to be a major financial hit. When we had to remove the old door because it wouldn’t close anymore, and I mentioned it to my mother, she had told me to let her know how much it would be, hinting that she would help pay for it. Because God has been so good to her and she had the money (she does, thanks to my brother taking care of her finances for her; God has blessed her with an amazing son!). When I did find out what it would cost, and we made the down payment, I did end up telling her how much we still needed to pay. Only because she was asking about related things. When she heard there was still another $2700. When she heard that, she scoffed and basically accused them of cheating or something, because there was no way it was that expensive. I told her, my brother had replaced a door on their house (on the property that they sold, almost a year ago now), it was the same type of door, he didn’t replace the frame, and he did the work himself, and it still cost them over $2000. I didn’t even bother mentioning that prices have gone up since then. She refused to believe me. So… unless my brother talks to her or something (he’s already paying for so many other things here, they’re in no position to pay for this, too), there won’t be any help from her end.
And we will still have almost $750 we’ll need to pay for our insurance claim repairs on the truck, at the end of September – and that’s after the autobody company went out of their way to reduce the cost to us as much as they could. We’ve got a $500 deductible, and the rest is the “betterment” cost to replace the box cover.
So many years, we managed to stay debt free, and then everything just went nuts in the past year. *sigh* It wouldn’t be so bad, if we didn’t have the truck payments. They got the cost down as much as they could, but it was still more than our budget could handle. Add in how expensive everything is getting, and it just keeps getting worse. I could literally go into town and get myself a job within the week (not that I would want to do that over the winter) but anything I made would just be deducted from my husband’s disability payments, and put his health insurance at risk.
Well, we’ll figure it out.
Adopting out a dozen or so cats, inside and out, would help! 😄
After the hot days we had recently, the 14C/57F we had when I headed out this morning felt cold! We were supposed to reach a high of 16C/61F, but that changed to 15C/59F, which is what we’re at right now, as I write this in the late afternoon.
We are supposed to drop to 7C/45F tonight, then down to 5C/41C tomorrow night. Which means we will want to cover the more cold intolerant plants.
Which are still blooming. In fact, some are blooming more than ever right now!
Unlike the Arikara squash. We finally have a couple of female flowers blooming, but the male flowers that had bloomed have died off a while ago, so there is nothing to hand pollinate with.
The winter squash are also blooming. Male flowers again, as the female flowers are done, though I was (hopefully) able to use male flowers that had bloomed the day before to hand pollinate them. There was even some zucchini to hand pollinate, too. The White Scallop squash finally has a single flower blooming, but there’s no sign of any female flowers.
I think I have figured out how I can cover the winter squash bed. There are a surprising number of developing squash right now, considering this year’s growing conditions, and I want to give them the best chance of surviving. This bed was made narrower than the 4′ that was marked for when it gets a permanent frame around it, but I think the Pexx pipe I used to make hoops is flexible enough to be used. I’m thinking of covering them with the mosquito netting we have. It wouldn’t be enough to protect from an actual frost, but it should be enough to keep them insulated. Especially if we add a few jugs of hot water around the plants before putting the netting on.
That’s a project for this evening.
Both the eggplant and the peppers are still blooming, though I don’t think they are setting any more fruit. The Turkish Orange eggplant looks really intersting!
There are two photos in the slide show above. I’m not sure how to tell when they are ripe, but in the back of the second photo, there is one eggplant that is a very deep orange, so I’m thinking they need to be at least that dark. The cover we have for the eggplant isn’t long enough to cover the ends well, but I plan to include bottles of hot water at each end to give the most exposed plants at least some extra protection. The peppers will be fine.
I also picked a few Chocolate Cherry and Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes this morning.
We will probably have to pick the remaining unripe ones tonight, or maybe tomorrow, as we have no way to cover this bed. It already has netting around it. We just don’t have anything that will protect from cold that’s large enough to cover them.
Looking at the 10 day forecast, it looks like we’ll need to cover the beds every night for the next week, before overnight temperatures start warming up again. Enough time for little squash to mature? No. But who knows what the weather will actually do over the next while! The old average last frost day, which I’m still going by, is Sept. 10, but we might get cold enough to get frost on the 6th.
Today is Labour Day, a statutory holiday here in Canada. I was still set to do my mother’s grocery shopping, though, as she didn’t want me coming over on a Sunday. I knew the grocery store in her town would be open for short hours, though. With that in mind, I wasn’t planning to head out until 11.
Which meant the usual morning routine, plus I would have time to water the garden in anticipation of one more really hot day, before the temperatures drop significantly. First things first was feeding the outside cats.
I had to zoom in from quite a distance so as not to interrupt. Lady Hypotenose does not look pleased!
The first thing I spotted as I headed out with the morning kibble, however, was a kitten laying half out of the new cat cave, clearly passed on. Then I spotted a second one in the box nest in the water bowl shelter!
I messaged my daughter and she came out to help find a place to bury them. Once the food was out, I gathered up the remains while my daughter dug a hole to bury them in. I was quite surprised by the one in the cat cave. This was the kitten with one sticky eye I’ve been washing. Other than a sticky eye, it was looking pretty strong! The second kitten was also one that I saw no signs of illness in. One thing in common, though, is that they both had a bout of diarrhea. Which is the same thing I found with the previous three kittens I’d found and buried.
Once that sad morning job was done, I continued my morning routine, then got the garden watered. I even had time for a late breakfast before heading to my mother’s. By the time I headed out, my brother and SIL were out by his tractor that he needs to fix. It’s outside, so he wanted to put a shelter over it, so he could work on it under at least some protection. Since I didn’t know how long I’d be, and they had to go back home today, I swung by to say hello/goodbye. While I was doing that, they told me they got a voicemail message from my mother saying that she’d been trying to call me, but there was no answer. ?!?! I told them I was on the way to her place to do her grocery shopping, but that our phone had not rung. My brother was planning to visit her briefly on their way home, so I was asked to let her know (and to let her know my brother was in work clothes, not dressed to the nines; my mother has suddenly started to criticize my brother for not dressing “civilized” because he was wearing jeans or whatever).
I was more than happy to wage interference for him.
As I was heading to the truck, I messaged my family to check the land line. When I got to my mother’s, there was a message waiting for me, saying the phone was working fine. When I came inside, I mentioned this to her, only to be told she hadn’t tried to phone me today. It was yesterday! That’s when I realized what had happened (and it was actually the day before yesterday that she’d tried to call me). When I saw the missed call (no message), I called her back and she told me she’d tried calling my brother and sister, too, but no one was home. Somehow, my brother didn’t get my mother’s message on his voice mail until today!
I did let her know that he was at the farm, working on a tractor, and that he planned to visit while on his way home – and yes, I did bring up that he’d be in work clothes, and probably dirty, so don’t give him a hard time! She laughed and said she wouldn’t.
My mother, however, was having a hard time. She said she was not feeling well, and hadn’t bothered to change out of her night gown. I tried asking questions to pin down exactly how she was feeling. She got frustrated and just repeated her usual litany. The problem is, she keeps saying she feels like she’s about to die, but… well… She’s already been to a doctor about these things, time and time again. For some things, like her legs swelling, something could be done – her water pill dosage was doubled, and she now takes it twice a day instead of once a day, for example. There are other things recommended, like keeping her feet elevated, or sleeping on an include. She’s been recommended for a hospital bed so she can do that more easily by me and my siblings, home care and her doctor, and she simply refuses. She won’t even put her feet up in her reclining chair. Eventually, if we ask enough questions, it comes out that she wants the doctor to “fix” her – but not give her more pills – somehow, like magic. And if a doctor isn’t able to do that, well, they’re just hiding something for her, or they just want her to die, or the doctor is [insert racial/sexist slur here] and not a “real” doctor, and she wants us to find her another one. This when we have a major doctor shortage and she’s lucky to have a doctor at all!
Anyhow. It’s frustrating for all of us, including my mother!
She had not felt well enough to make a list, so we worked on that together. I did have to go into her lock box to get a pen. All the pens on her table were gone. I found five in the lock box. Every time home care give her her medications, they have a form to fill out. Instead of using the pen that’s always there for them to use, they’ve been grabbing whatever pen is in reach on the table – then putting it in the lock box when they’re done! 😄
In making her list, she had a few items that would be picked up at the pharmacy. She had also mentioned wanting me to change her bedding, so I knew I’d be there for a while. I was expecting that.
I had some warning as to how things were going to go when my mother started going on about how my brother should really be the one doing this, not me. She “gave” him the farm, after all, and it’s his responsibility. I reminded her that I’m the one in the best position to help her. Oh, I have too much to take care of at home. I had my (disabled) husband and two “babies” to take care of.
Yup. My mother has got it in her head that we’re basically forcing the girls to live with us, and they do nothing. She just sort of invents scenarios on how we live.
As I was deflecting as best I could, she got weird and asked me if my daughters were born boys or girls.
*sigh*
With the way she treats them, my daughter have little interest in spending time with her, plus my older daughter works on her commissions at night, so she hasn’t even seen my older daughter in years. My younger daughter came with me not long ago, as we were on the way to somewhere else and she was coming along as my mobility assistant, really. My younger daughter has pretty severe PCOS, and the symptoms includes having a pretty rad beard. She can even make little braids in it. She gave up trying to shave it years ago, as shaving was damaging her skin, and frankly, it’s just hair. We’re more concerned about the more debilitating PCOS issues.
When I, rather stunned, said that yes, my daughters are female, she asked, why the beard? I told her, it’s a medical condition. My daughter is seeing a doctor and getting referred to specialists about it. My mother just scoffed and made a comment about how she thought I wasn’t telling her everything. I told her, correct. I’m not telling you everything because she just twists everything to be nasty, anyhow, plus my daughter’s health is none of her business.
At which point, my mother twisted what I said to be nasty.
*sigh*
I managed to get away from that conversation and get back to making her shopping list!
As we were talking groceries, she started going on about how bad she feels, but especially after eating. She loves to blame certain foods for anything, because of something she might have heard on TV (sometimes decades ago!) or read in a magazine. She was winding up to the conclusion that she should basically stop eating anything but “liquid”. So… I guess that’s why she waters down her instant oatmeal so much!
After hearing her describe how she was feeling after she ate, it triggered something in my memory about digestive issues with seniors, so I looked it up. Soon I was reading to her about how our digestive systems tend to slow down as we get older, causing various issues. Going through the list, there were only a couple of things that applied to her. One being the heartburn (that she was convinced were heart attacks for many years), which I’ve already gone over with her about, with what foods can trigger it and what can help. She already ignores that. I’ve made printouts for her in large letters that she can ready easily, and she just throws them out. Another was to eat more small meals instead of large ones; again, something that would help her heartburn. She reacted as though this were a revelation, apparently not remembering that we’ve talked about this before. Last of all was physical exercise – something she just doesn’t have the mobility to engage in, at levels that would make a difference.
Then she asked about dry mouth again. She is constantly bringing it up, even though it, too, is something she’d talked about, and she even still has the spray she was given while at the hospital earlier in the year. She used it at one point, thinking it was an inhaler that would help her breathing. It worked so well! When I realized what she was talking about and told her that no, the only inhalers she has are in her lock box. The spray was for dry mouth, she stopped using it.
She has decided her dry mouth is because she had diabetes, and asked me about her blood tests. While at the doctor, she said she couldn’t hear what the doctor had said. I told her what her A1c was (she is not diabetic), and repeated what the doctor had said; she’s sleeping with her mouth open. All she heard was that it was not related to diabetes and she’s not diabetic, so it was another revelation for her.
As you can imagine, it took a while to get her shopping list done!
Today was a Meals on Wheels day. I made sure to leave before that was delivered, so my mother could have her lunch without interruption. I was going to the pharmacy, first, only to find that they were closed for the holiday. I hoped I could find at least some of what she wanted (she was not out completely, thankfully) at the grocery store, but the only thing they did have was ridiculously expensive, so that didn’t happen.
In the end, if was a much smaller than usual shopping list. My mother did make a request for something she could eat with her medications. Some are not supposed to be taken on an empty stomach. She usually eats a few crackers, but I think she’s tired of crackers. She didn’t really know what she wanted, so I told her I would look around the grocery store for something.
I went through the (rather small) store three times.
What kind of snack was there that was “healthy” (as my mother would accept), that didn’t need any sort of preparation, was either shelf stable or could stay in the fridge for a while after opening, and was easy for her to chew, since she refuses to get her dentures fixed after having a broken tooth removed. Some of the things I saw that would have been good, healthy snacks were things I knew she would refuse to eat, because she heard somewhere that they are “unhealthy”. Others were things that she would have a hard time chewing.
I finally settled on some fruit filled breakfast bars. I knew she’s complain because they are “sweet” (as anything fruit filled would be), but it was something to try.
After I was finally done and the truck was loaded, I found a message from my SIL. They were going to be heading out soon, and would I be able to stay longer, while my brother was there? Of course, I said yes. My SIL no longer visits my mother, after my mother started going on about how she wasn’t really family, just my brother’s wife, and blaming her for my brother not being ay my mother’s constant beck and call. So she was going to be dropped off, while my brother was going to pick up some chicken, then meet me at my mother’s.
Once back at my mother’s and everything was put away, and I explained about the pharmacy being closed, my mother started going on about how her “pink” pills were now a different size.
She doesn’t have any pink pills.
My mother was convinced her pills were changed but this time, after asking some questions, she told me that they were different from what she was taking before they started doing bubble packs.
Which has been for at least five years.
I ended up taking one of her bubble packs out so we could look at them together. The “pink” pill she was talking about was actually orange. My mother’s eyesight is failing, so it’s not really a surprise that she sees colours differently, but she’s interpreting that as the pharmacy changing her meds.
As we went over what was in her bubble packs, I went through how the only change has been is the one pill that she’s taking twice a day instead of once a day. Then I talked about how different manufacturers might have slightly different colours or shapes (this was an issue in the past), but the important thing is the dose. The colour or shape of a pill doesn’t matter, as long as the dose is right.
We were in the middle of this when my brother arrived. While he went through to the kitchen with the food he’d brought, she started to tell him that he should look at the pills, because he’s the one that knows all about them.
…
My brother told her that no, I’m the one that knows the most about them now!
At one point, while I was again explaining to my mother about her medications and doses, etc. I realized my brother had started to record the conversation. Which would be a good thing, as it would be a record of how my mother can get.
It’s such a good thing her meds are kept in a lock box now. In the past, when she got it in her head the her meds were changed, she actually took her pills out of the bubbles and “sorted” them. I found the ones she had issue with a while back and had to take them to the pharmacy for disposal. There was at least 50 of these pills that she had stopped taking, because she thought they weren’t the same medication anymore.
Once her bubble packs were put away and my brother was taking the food out, I remembered seeing my mother’s water bottles were needing to be refilled. So I got my brother to pass them to me, then left for the tap her building has in the laundry room for drinking water (I think it’s softened water, but my mother can’t quite remember the explanation she was given to use that water for drinking, not her tap water).
When I came back, my mother was already at my brother.
It got…
Interesting.
In the end, what became clear is that my mother still has zero understanding of the thing she did a while back that stubbed my brother in the back, and the year. In fact, she doesn’t seem to remember what she’d done, and isn’t accepting that she is now facing the consequences of her own actions. She also seems to have forgotten that she has already prepaid for her own funeral, years ago – she basically accused us of planning to have her cremated, like the sons of an old neighbour of ours did when their mother passed. She was also going on about all the things my brother should be doing for her when she passes – things he will not have the legal authority to do, once again thanks to her own actions. She pulled every trick in the book. Guilt tripping. Gaslighting. Accusations. She even started calling herself and orphan, because we were trying to explain to her that she was asking for things that could not be done by my brother. She even brought our sister into it, and had some pretty unpleasant things to say about her!
It took some doing, but we eventually got her calmed down and to some semblance of understanding of how things were, not how she thought they were.
Meanwhile, my mother refused to eat the food my brother bought; not even a single piece of chicken. Because she had her Meals on Wheels (some time ago, by then). I ate only a bit, as did my brother, which meant my mother would have enough prepared food for herself, for at least a couple of days. Which is good, because Meals on Wheels is available only three days a week. She seems to be thinking that, because she gets those meals on those days, she shouldn’t need any other food for the rest of the week… because… she needs to slim down???
*sigh*
Finally, my brother said he had to leave, because he still had a long drive and needed to go to work tomorrow.
My mother immediately started to give him a hard time for leaving “so soon”.
*sigh*
I left at the same time and walked my brother to his car – then gave him a huge hug. I think he really needed it by then! He had come, expecting some sort of behaviour like this from my mother. The good thing is that I was there, which tempers her a bit. When he’s there on his own, she is much, much more difficult and downright abusive. I’ve flat out told her, she teats my brother terribly. Her response is always to justify her treat meant of him because she “gave him everything” by signing the farm over to him. She seems to have completely forgotten that this was done so that her will could not be contested by our vandal, and to take a burden off of her. Since my brother was already taking care of everything for her before then, she doesn’t even understand just how much of a burden it was.
*sigh*
No one has done more for my mother than my brother, and she has no understanding of that. Instead, she seems to actually hate him. It breaks my heart to see how much she is hurting him, and she has no clue. None.
*sigh* again.
After that, I was more than happy to come home and just decompress for a while. I still need to go out and water the garden; I’d gone out earlier, and it was still too hot to stay out for that long. I might not actually need to, though. We’re going from a high of 25C/77F – 28C/82F (depending on which app I checked) today, to a high of only 16C/61F tomorrow. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 15C/59F, but tomorrow’s low is supposed to drop to 7C/45F, and then down to 4C/39F the night after. On the weekend, we’re supposed to get a low down to 3C/37F, and then it’s supposed to warm up again. If the garden is going to have any chance to survive, we’re going to have to cover some things, even if there’s no frost.
This morning, I found and hand pollinated more winter squash. If I can find a way to cover that bed, they might survive the colder nights. It’s so unlikely, but I want to give them every possible chance to produce! As for the tomatoes, we’ll probably just have to pick whatever green tomatoes there are, and let them ripen indoors. Except the Spoon tomatoes. They’re so tiny, and have been nice and productive, we’ll probably just leave them be for the season.
We’ll see how it works out.
For now, I’m going to at least enjoy doing my rounds outside, get some fresh air, and get my brain space back to where it should be, instead of constantly going back to all the things my mother was saying today. Just writing about it here actually helps with that. Now that it’s “documented”, it’s easier to let it go.
I just really, really feel for my brother. He deserves so much better than this.
With all the extra stuff that needed to be done yesterday, I did finally get to water the garden yesterday evening. The poor Turkish Orange eggplant were drooping so badly!
This morning, I made sure to give it another watering, before things got too hot – we’re supposed to break past 30C/86F, and the humidex will make it feel even hotter! Before I did, though, I checked on things and got a harvest done.
I’ve been hemming and hawing for a while now about the corn. Being a short season corn, with only 65 days to maturity, they should have been ready to harvest a while ago but – like everything else – they were way behind. In the process of taking a closer look, I found something else.
Our very first female Arikara squash flower buds. There had been only male flowers until now, but now that we’ve got some females about to bloom, there isn’t a male flower to be seen!
*sigh*
Today is the last day of August. We’ve got one more hot day, and then things are going to cool right down, with overnight temperatures low enough that we’ll need to cover some things.
While watering, I also spotted new female flowers on the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato squash. I’ll have to check them again this evening and see if they opened up and can be hand pollinated.
Why I bother, I have no idea. They won’t have enough time to mature, and they are in beds we won’t be able to cover.
Ah, well. You never know. It’s not like weather forecasts don’t constantly change!
I came prepared to do some harvesting, including stainless steel container for the Spoon tomatoes.
I decided to go ahead and harvest some of the corn. Since the stalks had one cob each, I pulled the entire stalk on the ones that looked ready enough. Handily, the beds are right next to the compost pile.
While I was picking beans and corn, I had company.
Sir Robin was absolutely fascinated by the reflections inside the stainless steel bowl and was busy trying to catch whatever he was seeing.
In the next picture, you can see I got a whole bunch of tiny corn cobs. This is not a large cob variety of corn, but they should have been bigger than this. A few little ones had so few developed kernels on them, they weren’t work keeping. So I just ate them. 😄
It was SO nice to finally pick a decent amount of beans! Finally!
The one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato looks like it should have been picked earlier. I think the heat got to it a bit. There was a decent amount of chocolate cherry tomatoes to pick this time.
The carrots are from the bed that was sown in the spring, rather than the ones sown in the fall. With the Atomic Red ones, it’s still somewhat of a thinning by harvesting situation. The Uzbek Golden carrots were planted using home made seed tape, so spacing was not an issue.
I’m always amazed by the Royal Burgundy bush beans. We have only three surviving plants, and one of those got chomped by a deer. Yet even that one had beans to harvest today! The plants are still really prolific, considering how small they are and how delayed their growth has been.
It wasn’t until later, when I was watering the summer squash, that I realized I missed a zucchini! Just one, though I found a couple that I was able to hand pollinate.
I’m quite happy with this harvest. Sure, we’ve had better in previous years. A harvest like this was something I had picked every couple of days throughout the summer but, for how things have gone this year, this is pretty amazing!
Also, it took forever to pick all those little Spoon tomatoes. Aside from the plants being stunted and short this year, it was pretty painful to pick them from the low raised bed. It did help that I could put a foot on the log wall when I needed to, to take some of the pressure off. In theory, I should be squatting to pick them, but I can’t squat with the condition of my knees, so I’m having to bend over, instead.
Thankfully, I got the harvesting and watering done before it got too hot. The watering got interrupted for a while as I spent some time with my brother, going over my mother’s car. It’s going to need a new battery, and that tire was almost flat again. My brother will take care of a few things on it, and we will take care of emptying it out and getting it detailed, and then it’s going to be sold.
As much as it would be good to have a second vehicle again, we just don’t have the budget to insure and fuel two vehicles anymore – and I would really use the space the car it taking up in the garage! That addition was made to be a work/storage space. My mother’s car is just small enough to fit in there, as long as the passenger side it close enough to the wall, so the driver’s side door can be opened wide enough to squeeze out. I would rather store things like the lawn mowers, snow blowers and wood chipper in there, so that the other side they are stored in can be a work shop again. When I was building the cat isolation shelter, I had to keep our vehicle parked outside for months, so that I had the space to build in.
All in good time. There is no hurry, but it would be nice if we could sell it before the winter.
Winter is on my mind a lot these days, even when we’ve got heat like today!
I had a pretty sleepless night, with concerns about our foundling kittens. I kept checking the critter cam and had to chase out the raccoon family and a couple of skunks. The foundlings were set up in the carrier that has a lid in the roof, in hopes the mother, or one of the creche mothers, would go in to them, but none did. One of my daughters and I fed them kitten soup with a syringe again. They were very hungry, but it was a very messy way to feed the kittens! A couple of them preferred to either lick the food off my hands, or “nurse” on my hand while my daughter carefully squirted the food next to their mouths. Before returning a kitten to the sun room, I made sure to wipe down their bellies and tried to stimulate their neither regions, like a mother grooming them, with a cloth to get them able to eliminate.
The first picture is the kittens, after we found them yesterday, and the second is where we found them. Not the clearly visible mower on the right. We had to move that one out completely to reach the second one, barely visible on the left. That’s the one they were under!
With a couple of kittens preferring to lick at the food, we also place a small shallow plate in the carrier with them, in case they wanted to eat again during the night. It was empty by morning, but that could have been some other cat jumping in with them and eating it. When we fed them this morning, we left the plate with some food in it with them, again.
Meanwhile, I reached out to a stray cat group chat I normally just lurk on. After talking to the Cat Lady, I am a bit leery of being active on there.
I explained about the kittens, and that we had come to the conclusion that the mother is no more. I was hoping someone knew of anyone able to foster the kittens, as there’s no way we could keep up with the care they needed. Even just feeding them every 2 hours was not something we could manage, and we aren’t even in a position to bring them into the house. I estimated them to be about 3 weeks old but, after looking at some photos, came to the conclusion that they are less than 3 weeks old. Not by much, but definitely not more than 3 weeks.
After some discussion, my morning plans changed. I needed to go into town to pick up some refills for one of my husband’s injections. It was suggested I try the local branch of the humane society, so I looked up their hours. They had some very strange hours, but they were open today, for two hours starting at 8am, then again for two hours starting at 5pm. I left in time to get there just a few minutes past 8am…
… only to find a hand written sign saying they were closed for the “rest of” the day. “Rest of?” They hadn’t even opened at all!
So much for that.
My next stop was at the vet clinic to see if they had any kitten formula. They did, so I picked up a tin. Talking to the staff as I bought it, I got the names of two other rescues to try.
That done, I had half an hour before the pharmacy opened, so I made a stop at the grocery store to pick up a breakfast I could eat in the truck while waiting for the pharmacy to open their doors. My husband’s refill was already prepared, so that didn’t take long at all, and I was soon on my way home.
Throughout all this, I was updating various people, including the Cat Lady, keeping them up to day. One of the people on the stray rescue group started messaging me privately. She was in the city and ran a small cat rescue, and she told me that, if I couldn’t get through to any of the other places recommended to me, to let her know, as she would take them. As we were talking, I explained why we were in no position to give the kittens the level of care they needed. In the end, she told me to please bring them to her! All she asked was for me to include the formula for them, which I was more than happy to do.
I had not been home for long when that decision was made. I mixed up a small amount of formula and was going to feed them, before we worked out when I’d be heading out. The kittens were sleeping peacefully, though, so we skipped it for the time being. The kittens, however, were a real mess! They looked like they had taken a bath in the now empty plate of kitten soup!
When the time came to leave, I quickly grabbed a puppy pad to put between the kittens and the now messy cat bed that I’d put on the bottom of the carrier for them, then headed out.
I had my phone set up on the dash board holder with Google Maps giving me directions to where I needed to go in the city. I was almost at my mother’s town when my cell phone started to ring. I recognized the name as the woman from the group that had given us huge amounts of donated cat food last year. I should have been able to answer the call hands free, but it just wouldn’t work. I finally had to pull over and tried to talk more directly into the phone, but it still wouldn’t work. I could sometimes hear here talking, but couldn’t even turn on the speaker phone to hear her properly. All I could tell is that she was starting to get angry because I was … using up her minutes? Her battery? Something like that.
It was the Google Maps app that was messing up the call. I finally figured out how to stop it from trying to give me directions, even after I’d closed the app, and could finally talk to her on the phone.
She had called to tell me, don’t give the kittens to this women.
???
I asked why, of course.
She is overwhelmed. She takes on too many cats. She keeps asking for food donations. She was asking for ear mite medication. She had some cats with really bad ear mites… Her heart is in the right place, but…
Funny. When I was going to meet up with her about the donated cat food, I’d gotten a warning about her, too, saying “her heart is in the right place, but…”. In her case, though, her actions have gotten the province involved and resulted in colony cats being killed rather than rescued. To have her now “warn” me about this other woman with a rescue that said she would take the kittens was… intersting.
She again basically ordered me to not give the cats to this woman. I finally told her, I’m pulled over on the highway, on the way to the city, right now. Do you have somewhere else I can take them, or what? Because we are not in any position to care for such small kittens.
Oh, you’re doing a good job already…
She was making assumptions based on what I had been telling the group about what we were doing with the kittens. I did not, of course, tell them about other stuff, like the various disabilities and other health issues we are dealing with in this household.
When it became clear that I was going to this woman’s place anyhow, she seemed to get pretty angry at me again. She then told me to scope her very small house myself when I got there, and to only believe a quarter of anything she told me.
I thanked her for the warning, and continued on my way.
Thankfully, getting to her place was pretty straightforward. After parking as close to the house as I could, I messaged to let her know I was there, and what I was driving.
Which is when I saw the messages in the group chat, where the woman that called me was telling the woman I was about to meet that she should not take the kittens because she already had too many cats and had an ear mite issue. Both claims that she responded by saying it was already dealt with.
Before I could even get out of the truck, she was coming over with a box to transfer the kittens into.
She told me that she had already been to a dollar store and back to get puppy pads and other such supplies in preparation for the kittens – and she mentioned the woman that had told me not to bring the kittens! I told her that I had just read the conversation about it, and that I’d gotten a phone call, too. It turned out that the ear mite situation had already been addressed, and she was just looking for more meds to have on hang, in case she got more cats with ear mites again. The other issues had already been dealt with.
From all I could see, everything was looking fine. I had zero issues over turning the kittens over to her.
That done, I was soon back on the road and headed home.
By the time I parked the truck, I had received messages and photos. The kittens have been bathed, toileted, fed and set on a warming pad.
Here are the before and after pictures; the second one was sent by the women who took them in.
I took the first picture through the door of the carrier, after they were loaded into the truck. What a mess! that cat bed turned out to be just covered in spilled kitten soup.
The second picture is after they got bathed and fed, and there is a warming pad under the blanket they are on. She got all that taken care of so quickly!
Meanwhile, I’d kept the Cat Lady up to date. Once home, I let her know about the kerfuffle on the group chat and being ordered not to give the kittens to this person. The Cat Lady knew both of them and was honest in saying she didn’t trust either of them! It seems the cat rescue community if filled with all sorts of such antagonism.
No wonder she’s getting out of rescue.
The kittens, however, are now rescued and will be well cared for!
I am now more convinced that their mother was Brussel, though I’ve gone from about 10% certainty to maybe 25% certainty.
Note I say “was”. Once again, Brussel did not show up at feeding time today. By now, I don’t expect to see her again.
I was talking to my brother this evening and mentioned to him that, if I didn’t go outside, looking for a data signal during the power outage yesterday, I would not have heard the kitten crying. With no mother around, they probably would not have lasted long at all, and we would never had known there were even kittens in that old shed.
Serendipity, to be sure!
Speaking of my brother…
Not long after I got home, I got a message from my SIL, letting me know they were on their way out! I was not expecting to see them this weekend, but I guess their grandson was already returned home, and now they’re here.
My brother had a bunch of things he wanted to check out, including their riding mower that I told him I feared I’d broken, because it wouldn’t move anymore, though everything seemed to be fine about it.
Before I even realized they were here, my brother had already taken it out and checked it.
Then he wanted to check on my mother’s car, but it’s been sitting so long, the battery was almost completely dead, so he had to charge it, first. We parked it after I tried using it, and it started making a very alarming banging noise when I tried to drive it. I turned around and came right home, and it hasn’t moved since.
It also had a flat. I’d found it with two flat tires during at the end of the first winter it was parked. I used the compressor to pump them up and the rear tire has been fine, since, but the front tire was flat by morning, every time I pumped it up. So I eventually stopped.
Then there was the compressor itself, which had started to trip the breaker every time we used it. When that happened, I would have to get a daughter to come over with a small step latter to climb onto the counter against the back wall of the garage, to reach the breaker panel and switch it back on.
Today was a scorcher and I’d intended to water the garden this morning, but with all the kitten stuff, that never got done. I went out to water it last this afternoon, while my brother was checking and fixing things, and my SIL was already mowing the rest of the outer yard with their zero turn mower (which I won’t touch!).
When to got to where I was taking the hose to water the East garden beds, I suddenly realized my mother’s car was in the yard, as my brother hosed off the accumulated gravel dust it was covered with. I went over to talk to him and learned:
… the riding mower that wouldn’t go? Worked fine for him. He got it up on a ramp and checked under it and he found zero damage.
… the compressor was working fine. He’d even used it last weekend, with no issues.
… the banging noise I heard from my mother’s car? He found zero damage. There was nothing to make the noise. After charging the battery enough to start the engine, and pumping up the tire, the car was running fine. He was driving it around the inner and outer yard, leaving the engine running to keep charging the battery. No banging noises. Not troubles at all. We just have to make sure it’s plugged in, for the trickle charger.
… I told him why I’d stopped pumping the front tire and said it would be flat in the morning. He said that yes, it will be!
So there’s all these things that went wrong for us, but as soon as my brother checked on them, it was all working fine.
I told him afterwards, I feel like an idiot now.
He told me, that’s just how it is with him. Even at his work, it’s the same thing, People have troubles with something, he comes over to try and fix it, and there’s nothing to fix. Things just start working again for him, all the time!
So it’s not just me… 😄
I still feel like an idiot. All this time, and we could have had access to my mother’s car.
Well.
Not really.
Now that we have the truck payments, we don’t have a budget to pay for the insurance on two vehicles anymore, not to mention the extra gas. The insurance for my mother’s car, however, is just suspended, not cancelled. If we need to, we could get it active again, even if for just a short time.
Not until that tire is replaced, though.
Which means that we will still be needing the courtesy vehicle while our truck’s box frame is being repaired and the new cover installed, at the end of September.
So we almost have a back up vehicle…
Meanwhile, not only did today turn out to be another 30C/86F day, but tomorrow is expected to be even hotter. Tomorrow, I will do what I intended to do today; water the garden early in the morning, then again in the evening. Today, I used the rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden. The poor eggplants were seriously drooping in the heat! That garden got ambient temperature water, and I drained the barrel as much as I could, watering, watering and watering again! I got the other garden areas done with the hose. I even did the fruit trees and berry bushes. Everything was just so, so dry.
We’ve got just a few more hot days, and then it’s supposed to drop right down, and I’ll likely have to cover the more sensitive plants in the garden at night, in less than a week!
As for right now, I am so very tired. Hopefully, I will get a good night’s sleep tonight, now that I’m not concerned about the foundling kittens!
The Re-Farmer 