The first shot was just some of the weeds and whatnot in where the area I’ve been slowly getting mowed. The second is of one of the Hopi Black Dye sunflower seed heads. That’s among the largest seed heads, too. This frost seems to have finally done them in.
*sigh*
The coldest part of the night tends to be around 6am, so it was still chilly while I did my rounds. I didn’t uncover the garden beds until the afternoon, when it was finally getting decently warm.
In fact, they’re looking pretty darn good. In the next two photos, you can see some of the developing squash are actually getting bigger, too! I had some concern that the pollination didn’t take and they’d just wither away, but nope; we actually have winter squash trying to mature!
Tonight’s low is expected to be 10C/50F. Since the actual overnight lows have been trending lower than forecast, though, I’m still going to cover the beds again for tonight, and probably the next two nights as well. After that, the overnight lows are expected to stay above 10C/50F, so they should be okay without covers – except for the winter squash, which I will keep covering.
While planning on what we need to do around the yard over the next while, I checked the RM (Rural Municipality) website and found that we are no longer under any fire bans. That means we can use the fire pit, if we want. I’d like clean it out and reset the fire bricks we set up for the Dutch oven to stand on. These are larger fire bricks I found while cleaning up around the yard, not the ones we’ve been slowly stocking up on for when we build our outdoor kitchen. It’s been such a long time since we’ve used the fire pit. We also now have two Dutch ovens. There’s a traditional round one on three legs that we got a while back, and now we have a smaller, square one I got on clearance at Canadian Tire this summer. I’m hoping we can have a family gathering and cookout, probably in October, before things start getting too cold. My husband hasn’t seen his family in a long time because he couldn’t physically handle the trip to and from the city, plus the time for a visit, for the last family dinner we were invited to. Kinda scary to think his father, who is in assisted living, is probably more mobile than my husband is!
We’ll see what we can work out, as we get the place ready for whatever winter throws at us!
Things are starting to warm up today, which means I got to spend more time working outside. I was finally able to use the push mower around the cat shelters, then break out the weed trimmer.
Before I started making lots of noise and scaring the yard cats, I got to enjoy some adorableness.
I have almost, not quite, been able to pet the kitten in the first picture. Progress is, it moves away when I touched it back, but didn’t panic or jump off the rail and run off.
Of course, I checked in Frank’s babies in the cat cage, and was amused to find their guardian kitten asleep on the level above them.
The last picture was taken while I was moving things and prepping to mow – and spotted a skunk going after the food and water bowls in the catio! I went to chase it off, but it went inside of the catio instead of away. The door had been tied off so it wouldn’t blow in the wind, so I untied it, then went around to the back of the catio to persuade the skunk to leave. Then I found the garage kittens were inside, too, and very nervous about the whole thing!
This morning, I was able to stop the smokey kitten from running away when I brought the food, put it back at the bowl and started petting it. It was hungry enough to let me, and started eating. Progress!
While using the push mower, I made a point of mowing where the catio is going to be moved to, once I can snag a daughter to give me a hand. Little by little, we’ll get those kittens to start coming to the house! They seem to be like their mother; they don’t seem to like other cats and have no interest in any of the other kittens. Hopefully, that will change by winter.
We’ll have some nice weather over the nest week to 10 days, which means we need to focus on getting winterizing done. The sun room needs to be cleaned out for the winter, the cat house needs to be opened up and cleaned out, the winter window to the old basement needs to be set in place, etc. That’s all on top of cleaning up the garden and preparing as many beds as I can for winter sowing. If things go really well, I hope to have some beds we didn’t use this year ready for next year, and get the second trellis bed at least started. We need to cut more dead spruces to get the 18′ logs we’ll need for that. The trellis bed will be two logs high, so we’ll need four 18′ logs and four 4′ logs. The existing low raised beds will be framed just one log high to start with. We’ll add more height to them as we’re able to get the materials. There’s only so many dead spruces in the grove that we can harvest, and not all of them are nice and straight.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to get lots done while the weather holds!
Today was my mother’s 94th birthday, so I had plans to head over to her place, not long after doing the morning rounds.
With the appearance of kittens in the sun room cat cage, I was expecting to see a fourth kitten by this morning, since I knew that the mama had four active nips.
My guess is, the fourth kitten was a loss, and that might have had something to do with why the mama, Frank, suddenly moved her babies into the sun room. Normally, the ferals don’t bring their kittens to the house until they are closer to weaning age. Frank is getting to be more semi-feral than feral, as she does allow some pets every now and then. The good thing is, we now have a chance to socialize her babies, which increased their chances of survival, and our chances of getting them fixed when they’re old enough and big enough.
I headed to my mother’s town a bit early, as I had plans to pick some things up for her. I was hoping to get her a small cake, as I knew she’s complain about things being “too much” (which she did), but there was none to be had, so I got her a cheesecake with two slices each of four flavours. I figured, it was something she could share. Then I picked up her favourite fried chicken and wedges for lunch. When I got there, she was in her living room, so I made a joke about how she wasn’t allowed to come to the table until I was done. Of course, she still had to come to the table – her glasses were on it! I had picked up a candles in the shape of a 9 and a 4 and got everything all set up and the candles lit. She got a good laugh out of it when I started singing happy birthday to her and brought it over. On her 90th birthday, when she was more mobile still, we’d celebrated her birthday at my brothers, and I’d bought her a little tiara to wear. I got it out and had her put it on before I took pictures for the family. She got a laugh over that, too, before blowing out her candles.
We then had lunch together. As she was close to finishing her meal, she did stop to say, she wanted to tell me something, but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. 😂 Yeah. She complained about the food! Or, more accurately, that I was buying her too much food. I told her, she doesn’t have to eat it all at once! Oh, but it’s temptation, she said. 😄 She said she doesn’t want to get fat(ter). I just shake my head. She’s been fat for as long as I can remember, and she just turned 94. In her family, all the women that got fat after having kids lived to grand old ages. All her skinny relatives (the ones that didn’t have kids) died young.
I don’t think she needs to worry about it!
With the cheesecake, I told her she could share it with her neighbours. She stopped to consider the date and told me the next event in the common room would be on Tuesday (three days from today). They usually have a pot of coffee going, and sometimes snacks. She told me, she’d think about whether or not she wanted to share her cake with them! 😄
Since I was there anyhow, I did some light housekeeping and refilled her water bottles. Then I went to the pharmacy to get the things I couldn’t get last time, because they were closed for the holiday. This gave me a chance to finally talk to the pharmacist – I kept forgetting to phone them! – about just how close my mother was to running out of her prescriptions before her new bubble packs were ready. He was able to change the date so that her refills will be done a week earlier. Which means that I’ll be heading over to pick up her bubble packs two weekends from now, and getting them into her lock box. This gives some flexibility, in case I’m not able to get them on the day for some reason. We don’t want them to be delivered anymore, since the delivery person wouldn’t have the code to open the lock box, and we can’t trust my mother to not do something to her meds if they’re not locked away.
While my mother was in a good mood overall, that didn’t stop her from talking smack about my brother and sister. They don’t call her enough. They don’t visit enough. She knows my brother is out of province right now – running a “marathon” with his grandson! Then she started going on about both of them. I was done everything that needed doing by then, and still had to go to town, so it was definitely time to leave.
One of the things on my list to do in town was to go to a different grocery store with our water bottles. This place has a sanitation station, and our bottles were due. I had two to refill, got them both sanitized and started filling them. I had finished filling the second one and was starting to put a new cap on it before putting it in the cart when…
It split open at the base!
There was water spraying all over before I was able to shift it into the sanitation sink to drain. There was a woman using the second fill station and we got the attention of the staff. One guy came over but all he could do was take over holding the jug in place over the sink as it emptied. All 5 gallons!
So… I had to buy a new jug. I don’t like the new jugs that they have now. With the older ones, the handle is part of the jug itself. The new ones have the handle as a separate piece attached. We’ve already got one like it, and it always feels like the handle is about to break off when the jug is full. Ah, well.
That done, I picked up a few things we’d run out of. My husband had requested water flavours, but I couldn’t find any at all, so I ended up going to the other grocery store for those, plus the rest of my list. They happened to have a good sale on stewing beef (good being relative, these days!), so I got a family size pack. I look forward to having a beef stew! We eat beef so rarely these days.
From there, it was a stop at the gas station – the prices had dropped from $1.449 to $1.409 – then home. I pulled up to the house to unload. My daughters were sweethearts and got everything into the house, then distracted the yard cats so I could get the truck out of the yard!
It was feeding time for them, anyhow, so while they put everything away, I took care of the feeding.
It’s getting time to move the catio closer to the house. Even the smokey garage kitten is finally started to sneak closer to the house. Sort of. She’s been skirting the edges of the flower bed at the far end of the yard, along with her brother (I’m still just guessing that she’s a she). They are MUCH more comfortable eating in the catio, though.
The kittens in the cat cage were alone at the time, though Frank was no far away. I noticed their eyes were getting stuck shut, so I made sure to give them a wash. This was a first time experience for these kittens, and they did not like it, but they actually handled the whole thing rather well.
Since coming home, the weather geek group I follow on FB sent out some info. Parts of the province are under a frost warning. Our area is not included. Uh, huh. We already had our first frost night, and there were no frost warnings in advance for that one! It’s still rather warn as I’m writing this, but we’re still getting a low of 2C/36F being forecast for tonight. I’m expecting it to get colder than that. I’ll wait a bit longer before covering up the beds again.
Oh, that was something my mother had a hard time with. I showed her garden pictures, including the winter squash bed with its plastic cover. She had the hardest time understanding why one would do that. I had told her about how everything was behind this year and she was all, you know what that means, right? You planted too late.
…
I talked to her about our spring, and how in May we had such hot days, but very cold nights, so the soil didn’t warm up enough. We had drought this year. We had heat waves this year. Then there was the smoke, smoke and more smoke. She just shook her head and told me how she didn’t remember every having problems in the garden.
…
Now, I do remember her making a passing comment a couple of years back, when we had issues in the garden, saying that some years things are good, some years they’re not. This was several years ago. She did remember having bad years in the garden here. This stuck in my memory because she always made a big deal about how she had such a big healthy garden here, and was upset with me for not instantly recreating exactly how her garden used to be, some 20 or 30 years ago. Now, with things not turning out well, in her mind, it’s because I caused it somehow. She’s still wrapping her mind around the idea that I can garden in different ways than she did. Not that I have any choice. It’s physically impossible to do otherwise, at this point. She’s having difficulty accepting that things are not the same as she remembers! She would much rather think that the garden is struggling because I don’t know how to tend thins properly, like she did. 🫤
Ah, well. We do the best we can!
She did manage to throw dig at me, this time about how I didn’t bring her out to the farm for a visit this summer, and now it’s getting cold.
*sigh*
I told her, it’s been a very rough year. We don’t even have a front door right now. Which is absolutely true but, in past visits, we learned very quickly that my mother has zero interest in visiting us. What she wants is to look at everything, from how the yard and garden looks, to rifling through the cabinets in the bathroom while pretending she’s using the toilet (apparently, it didn’t occur to her that we could hear it). She would then follow up with declarations about how useless I was as a human being, and how terrible my family is, for not living the way she wanted us to, and because things aren’t exactly the way she remembers leaving it, when she moved out some 10 years ago. Not how it actually was. How she remembers it was. End result is, none of us want her to come out here again. Her motivations for wanting to come out here – even though, after we moved in, she declared she never wanted to see the farm again – are far from kind, to put it mildly.
My mother has no understanding of just how much her own actions drive people away – and then wonders why no one wants to call her or talk to her! I’ve told her, but she just goes on about why she’s entitled to behave the way she does, and doesn’t see how much she hurts the people who are trying to help her the most. She really and truly doesn’t care, either. *sigh*
Ah, well. We just do the best we can. What else can we do?
At least I can say that she was happy I visited her for her birthday, even if I did it all wrong. 😄😂
Once again, the overnight temperatures dropped lower than was forecast. Today was also supposed to have high winds in the morning, then rain in the afternoon.
We had rain in the morning, and it’s been windy all day.
I really had to drag my butt out of bed to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. Short rounds, and then I crawled back into bed. Even after several more hours of sleep, I woke up bleery and out of sorts, stiff and sore, though not as bad as it used to be, before I got on the anti-inflammatories. I’ve been feeling like that for a couple of days now. It took me a while to make the connection. I always get like this when it’s rainy and overcast!
I felt much better when the sun came out!
Aside from a quick run to the post office, it was a home day. My daughters have been having a hard time, today, too. It’s hit my younger daughter the worst, and she’s been caning it most of the day.
I did finally get outside to get a few things done, when I discovered something in the cat cage.
These are very young kittens! Definitely not a mama bringing her older babies to the house for solid food.
There was only one cat I could think of that might be the mother. That would be Frank, and I was recently able to pet her enough that she showed me her belly. She had four active nips.
If she were the mama, then we were definitely going to be finding more.
I checked on the kittens and, other than a bit of dried gunk on the edges of their eyes, they looked chunky, well fed and healthy. Very fluffy!
I fed the outside cats and worked on a few other things before mixing up a jar of kitten soup. I put just a few spoonfuls into a shallow container and put it into the cat bed with them.
Sure enough, I came back into the sun room later and found Frank in the cat cage, eating the kitten soup. It wasn’t much longer before I saw the kittens nursing on her, too.
I was out for a while longer, and when I came back, she was gone again. Her kittens were sleeping peacefully. I took a peak at some other kittens in the cat cave when I spotted something white, moving around a plant stand we leave for the cats to use to get onto the platform.
It was a little, mostly white grubling!
Frank hopped into the cat cage just as I picked it up, and was very nervous, so I just quickly put the kitten with the other two and left. The next time I came through, she was nursing the three of them.
I went back out to finish things – for all that it rained, the garden needed watering, though there isn’t much left to water! By the time I was done and headed back in, Frank was all curled up and nursing her babies in domestic bliss.
If you look at the second image of the slide show above, you can see her and maybe, possibly, a fourth kitten, under her front leg. I thought, at first, it was her bottom leg, but I don’t recall any of her legs having spots like that on it.
I never did figure out where she had her kittens. All I knew was that it had to be really close.
I got a few things done that were manageable with the wind. I wasn’t able to get that fallen branch off the hawthorn, yet. I’ll have to get in there and cut it up in small pieces to get it off without damaging the hawthorn. The problem with that is, it’s really embedded in hawthorn branches, and hawthorns have massive thorns!
One of the jobs I finally got done was to add legs to the wind break box that I made to go over the opening of the isolation shelter. We had it up on bricks over the winter, so now it has legs that are just a bit taller than the thickness of the bricks. I was also going to add length of wood to each side to act as handles, so it would be easier to move around, but I ran out of the right length of wood screws. I had just enough to add the legs, and that’s it. For now, the box is sitting on the concrete well cover, over a kibble bowl. After the new door is installed, we’ll put the insulation back around the base of the house under the kitchen window, then set up the winterized isolation shelter there again. I need to find a better way to wrap clear plastic around the bottom of the shelter again. The tacks held fine, for the most part, but the plastic kept tearing free of them. It didn’t help that, when we had cats recovering from being spayed/neutered in there, the other cats were clawing through the plastic to try and get in! I might invest in some transparent tarps at some point. They’re expensive, but they’re also 20mm thick. Even greenhouse plastic is only 6mm thick, and the plastic dining table covers I’ve been using are, I think, only 3mm thick. I’ve been looking them up, and one Canadian company that makes them says they’re rated down to -23C/-10F. Which would be really useful for all sorts of things, really!
Speaking of which…
I had intended to uncover the winter squash bed to check on them. Through the plastic, I can see the bright yellow of new flowers, and I wanted to see if anything could be hand pollinated. It was just too windy, though. So windy, it was starting to tear the plastic free of the boards we rolled up in the excess on each side!
I rolled them back up and made it as snug as I could before adding bricks to weigh down the boards that were weighing down the edges!
With the sun out and things warming up, I finally uncovered the other beds. The cover over the summer squash was half blown off, already. The zucchini seems to be doing quite well, really! Some of the leaves around the very edges have cold damage, but mostly, they’re still growing and producing more zucchini. Even the white scallop squash is starting to bloom!
Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F, but last night we were supposed to drop to about 5 of 6C/41 or 43F, but we actually hit about 2C/36F, so we’ll be putting the covers back on later this evening. Meanwhile, what’s left got a deep watering. The rain barrel by the sun room was finally filled, though not to the top, so I used that to water the old kitchen garden. Checking on the peppers, it looks like the oldest pepper is finally starting to turn colour, and it’s looking like it will be a red one. The Turkish Orange eggplants are getting brighter in colour, so it looks like they are managing all right, as long as they get that overnight protection.
The frost hardy plants, like the carrots and remaining beets, kohlrabi, little onions, etc. are doing fine. Surprisingly, the pumpkins haven’t been killed off entirely, and the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers seem unbothered by the colder temperatures. Their developing seed heads are still so tiny, though. The yellow bush beans, much to my surprise, are looking undamaged.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler, with a high of 12C/54F expected (today, we hit 15C/59F), but the overnight low is supposed to be 2C/36F, which means we will probably drop down to, or even below, freezing. Then we’re supposed to warm right up again, with highs in the 20’sC/68F range, and overnight lows hovering on either side of 10C/50F. The long range forecast has us going even warmer, the week after, including as high as 28C/82F.
So many people have been struggling with their gardens this year.
As always, there would be a combination of factors. Where we are, we had a weird spring with hot days, but cold nights, resulting in it taking longer for the soil to warm up enough for seed germination . We also had drought conditions and heat waves, while other areas had very cold summers. All of which we’ve had before.
Then, there’s this.
We’ve had bad wildfire years before, too. I remember in one of our early gardening years, we had drought conditions and also a lot of wildfires. There was so much smoky in the air that particular matter collected on our glasses. I would wash mine off with soap and water, but one of my daughters just used a cloth, as usual, not realizing what was on her lenses. She ended up scratching her lenses, both inside and out, before she realized what has happening.
So yeah. We’ve had it all before.
This year, however, has had the most fires in 30 years. We currently are not under any air quality warnings, but the fires are still burning. As I look at the live fire maps, we still have 94 fires that are “uncontained”, 13 are “being held”, and 14 that are “contained”. We’ve had 4 new fires in the last 7 days.
That’s just one province.
The mountains in south and central BC, all across the territories and northern prairie provinces and into Ontario, is a mass of fires. Then there are the more isolated fires in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Every province and territory in Canada, except PEI, I think, is dealing with wildfires.
So while we’ve had all these conditions before, affecting our ability to grow food (small or large scale), when it comes to the smoke, this year really kicked it up a notch.
Between that and… politics, shall we say… food prices are looking to keep skyrocketing.
I found myself staying up late very last night, which meant I was up to see what the weather was doing. So I was not at all surprised by what I found in the garden this morning.
The first picture in the above slideshow is the Arikara squash, which only recently had its first female flowers start to bloom. I’d wanted to grow these specifically to save seed, as it’s a rare variety.
Not going to happen this year.
Thankfully, I do have a few seeds left and can try again, next year.
The next two pictures are of some of the pumpkin plants. It’s a bit hard to tell in the photos, but the leaves are that darker colour they get from cold damage. In one of the pictures, you can see the leaves starting to droop, too. We do have the one pumpkin in its sling on the trellis. It does not appear to be frost damaged, but it might take a day or two before we can see for sure.
The next picture is of the summer squash, still under their covers. They actually seem okay, even though they aren’t completely covered. I did not try to check on the winter squash, under their plastic. They should be fine, and I don’t plan to uncover that bed at all today.
I didn’t uncover anything this morning. It was still too cold at the time. It’s not going to get much warmer, though, and now it is supposed to rain all day. From what I could see, the peppers held out fine under their sheet. So far, the eggplants do, too, but they tend to start dropping later on. It’s the plants at each end, that are the most exposed, and take the brunt of the cold. I’m hoping the jugs of hot water we set beside them helped, but it’ll be a while before we can tell, one way or the other.
Last night, I worked on getting the radish seeds out of their pods, which ended up taking a VERY long time. I stayed up a while longer to monitor the oven, so my daughters could go to bed. Which is why I was up to check the weather apps and get the screen captures in the next two images.
So much for a low of 4 or 5C/39 or 41F. We were expecting it to be colder, to be honest. We did end up hitting 0C/32F. There were no frost warnings.
I’m actually thinking of turning the furnace back up for today! I do have one of the heat lamps in the sun room turned on – the one with the 250F bulb, not the 150F lamp. It hangs above the space in front of the new cat cave, and the sun room littles have definitely figure out that this is a good spot to hang out! 😄
Our daytime highs are supposed to increase quite a bit, about half way through next week, and stay high for about 2 weeks. That will be the time to empty out and clean up the sun room for the winter, and do things like bring the isolation shelter back near the house, put the heat lamp back in and get it set up, so we just need to plug it in to the outdoor outlet there, as needed.
I am not looking forward to winter. My daughters love the colder weather. I can tolerate cold a lot more as I get older – it’s heat I’m having a harder time with now! – but I don’t like the season. Too many things that need protecting from the cold – including the house itself – and too many things that can go wrong that, in the summer, would be just an annoying but, in the winter, can be dangerous, or even deadly.
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.
The Re-Farmer 