Ginger does love to roll around! He doesn’t seem to mind a bit of spilled water in the way, either. :-D He was quite happy to let me pet him, as I went in and out to feed his brothers.
Nutmeg actually let me touch him this morning, and even skritch his head a bit – but not until there was food in the bowl!
Gosh, Creamsicle Jr. looks ornery! :-D
Even their calico cousin came by for eats.
Would you call that a calico? I don’t know. I am fascinated by the fact that the patches of both grey and orange fur have tabby stripes in them.
With the high winds we had in previous days, I actually shifted the kibble house to have the back facing south, instead of being at an angle to the cat’s house. We had so much wind from the south east, it was actually blowing around the smaller kibble bowls. I had it an an angle because I wanted the space in front of the entry to the cat’s house more open, but the whole point of it is for the cats to be sheltered while they ate, and that wasn’t happening!
Ginger actually let me pick him up and cuddle with him after I fed his brothers and cousin. I even tucked him into my coat, though it wasn’t anywhere near chilly enough for it. He was a bit restless in my arms shifting about until he was curled up on my chest, with his head hanging down. It made it easier to give him head skritches, which he really, really liked.
Then he started licking my hands! He went into full grooming mode. Apparently, my fingers and wrists in particular, are very tasty. :-D
What a sweetie!
I think I spent about half an hour, cuddling with him before I had to head out again, and he was quite happy with the attention. He was also up to jumping down himself when I stood up, rather than waiting for me to put him down.
Day after tomorrow, and he’s at the vet to get the sutures removed. :-)
Before I update on how Ginger is doing today, I just wanted to quickly add that the fire that happened last night remained under control, and all is quiet – though there were certainly a lot of files to check out on the trail cams this morning! The fire trucks went past our driveway, lights flashing, but we heard no sirens at all at that time. We still don’t know what caught fire. The local news included stories of several grass fires, including one where a home was lost and 20 others evacuated, but these were all in the southern end of our province and nowhere near us. I hope to find out more, just to be assured that no one was hurt.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled spice boy update!
Ginger really was a bit spicy this morning! He was quite active, watching at the window, ducking under the swing bench, checking out the fresh food and water, and generally making it hard to get hold of! He finally flopped down on my feet and start rolling, and I was finally able to pick him up.
He was also eyeballing the door while I went in and out to feed the outside critters! As I headed out with kibble for the outside cats, Butterscotch dashed into the sun room. Which I was okay with. I figured a visit from his mom would not be a problem! She doesn’t like being indoors, though, so she was ready to dash back out as soon as the door was open again. :-D
It was nice and cozy in the sun room, so no tucking into the coat this morning. :-) He wouldn’t settle down, though, and I got only a brief snuggle in before he jumped down again.
Once on the floor, he couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to keep rolling around, or to tackle the toes of my shoes! :-D
His surgical site is looking pretty good. He still has a couple of tender looking spots, but they seem to be lessening.
He’s got 2 more nights of his pain medications left, I believe, which means he’ll be out of them before he’s back at the vet to get the sutures removed. Hopefully, he will not need them anymore. He’s been remarkably tolerant in being given the medication, but we’ll be happy to not have to put him through that anymore!
Transitioning him from a room all to himself, into a house full of cats is going to be interesting.
Not long ago, we heard what is a very unusual sound for this area.
A siren.
It stopped for a little bit, then started up again. I was in my “office” at the time, so I happened to see the lights of the vehicle going by on the live feed of the security camera. I couldn’t tell what kind of emergency vehicle it was, though my initial thought was that it was a police siren.
I decided to go outside and check. When I opened the door, the winds from the south-east almost tore it from my hands! I headed to the gate and looked around, saw nothing, but there was the smell of smoke in the air. With how incredibly dry we are right now, I was keeping my eye out for signs of a grass fire, but there were none. One of my daughters came out to join me, and neither of us could see anything of concern.
Once I was back inside, I decided to check our garage security cam email. It’s set to email an image any time the motion sensor is triggered, and I was wondering if the vehicle had triggered it from the road or not. There were a few emails with images waiting for me to check.
This was one of them.
There WAS a fire! A huge one, for us to be able to see it through the trees like that. What’s out there is mostly open fields and trees.
The series of images with the glow of fire covered about a 10 minute time period, bracketing 9pm.
While I was checking the images, I saw another vehicle in the live feed, heading in that direction. I could also see lights through the trees. Usually, I see lights there that are the reflectors on the abandoned vehicles in there, but this was something else. They looked like headlights. We never see headlights from vehicles driving on the road through the trees there. The angle is wrong for that, so this told me there were vehicles facing our way from somewhere other than the road.
So I bundled up, grabbed a flashlight and headed out again. I went to the gate, but still could see nothing. I decided to walk closer. I didn’t want to take the road, though, since if more emergency vehicles or whatever came by, I would be in the way, so I cut through the barn and headed towards the field beyond the trees, where the renter plants his crops.
My phone camera could not get a good photo, of course. I counted what looked like at least 7 vehicles. I think three of them were emergency vehicles. While I could still smell smoke, I could see no sign of a fire. After a while, I could hear the sounds of people yell-talking. Not yelling in alarm, but the sort of volume one would need to be heard over these winds.
Everything seemed to be under control. Seeing where all these vehicles were, though, had me concerned. There is a house, hidden away among some trees on the far side of that field, and those vehicles were about where that house is, about a mile from us. There is another house across the road as well, but I don’t think the vehicles were that far away. I do hope no one’s house burned down!!
As I was writing this, I saw more headlights going to and from the direction of the fire. More going from, than going to, which I hope is a good sign. I can still see headlights through the trees every now and then, too.
While things may be under control, I am not going to assume anything. We are just too windy and too dry, and if flames kick up again, those winds are blowing our way. It’s unlikely to happen, with emergency personnel on sight, and likely to be there for quite some time.
While walking out behind the barn to where I could see better, I first tried to go to a spot where I knew the fence was more open and clear of trees, because there used to be a gate there. When I got there, however, I found that two trees were fallen on the fence, and one of them looked like it had fallen recently. The whole area is littered with fallen trees. It reminded me again, why I want to get the spruce grove by the house cleaned up so much. I’d love to clean out the dead and fallen trees further out, but that is well beyond our abilities. We just don’t have the equipment for that large of a job, and it is way too big of a job to do manually. Basically, it’s all a tinder box, and that concerns me greatly. Particularly this time of year!
I must say, though, I am really appreciating that my brother set up that security camera, so we could see down the driveway. He has about a dozen cameras like it on his own property! :-D Without the images the camera captured, we would not have seen that there was a fire at all.
More security cameras are also part of our plans as we fix things up. The trail cams are great, but having a live feed and motion sensor triggered images sent to us is what we need more of.
I never thought I’d want them to keep an eye out for fires, though!
We had such a lovely day today, even with fairly high winds, that I couldn’t resist going outside and doing a bit of clean up. This time, I decided to work in the old garden area.
As we clean up around the property, there is one thing I find myself struggling with that I did not expect.
Trees.
In the decades I was away, my parents slowly reduced the size of their gardening, which made perfect sense. Unfortunately, at the same time, they planted trees. Poorly placed trees, many of which I am now having to cut down for various reasons, while trying to save as many as I can. At the same time, they also allowed self sown trees to grow where they really shouldn’t have. Some of them now need to be removed because they are causing damage. Others… well. Let me show you.
This is the before picture.
My mother had a row of raspberry bushes here. Elms and maples had self-sown among them. When my mother transplanted the raspberries (into an area that’s full shade!), she left the self-sown saplings. For a “wind break” she told me. The garden used to extend another 6 feet or so to the north. As they are now, the trees take up a space about 10-12 ft (3-3.6m) wide, and about 100 ft (30.5m) long.
That’s a lot of square feet of full sun garden space that can no longer be used.
Between these and the shade created by the trees they’d planted into the garden area on the south side, huge amounts of garden space have been taken out of production. Space that’s the closest to the house and water.
When I brought up taking them out and reclaiming the garden space, my mother was adamant that they not be touched. Apparently, if we take them out, we won’t have any wind break anymore or something, even though there are plenty of other trees and the lilac hedge to shelter us from Northern winds. :-/
Well, we’re not in a position to actively remove the trees quite yet, though the arborists recommended taking them out while they’re still small enough to be pulled out by the roots with a tractor. While trying to garden near these on one side, and tend the lawn on the other, I figured the least that should be done is to trim and clear them.
Yes, I know. This is probably the worst time of year to be trimming trees, but these are not trees we plan to save. They’ll do just fine, though. In fact, they’ll probably thrive. :-/
Starting at the end I took the photo at, I worked at it using both the baby chainsaw (aka: cordless pruner) and the long handled pruners. Loppers, I think they’re actually called. I used those quite a bit, because the branches and suckers were so dense, I couldn’t get in with the baby chainsaw to cut where I needed to. Which is fine. It reserved battery power for the pieces too large for the loppers. I got about 1 1/2 hours in before the battery died, then I continued for another half hour or so with the loppers.
Here is how it looks now.
That log that is now visible marks the corner of the mulched area we gardened in last year. I cleared until just past that log.
This is my branch pile.
I at first tried to trim the larger pieces and set them aside for potential use later, but that was taking up too much time, so I just added to the pile. When it’s time to deal with the pile, it will be easier to use hand pruners to trim any larger branches that might be usable for other things. The smallest pieces will go onto a chipping pile.
I did use pruning paint on the cut ends of the trees, though the maples were pouring so much sap, a lot of it was washed away! The elm sap isn’t running yet.
For all my mother’s admonitions to leave the trees alone, I found evidence that I was not the first to try cutting these away. In fact, some of what I found were growing out of stumps. Someone had tried cutting them down, and they grew back.
I also found this little group.
Three elms growing into each other! We couldn’t see this until I cleared things away. In fact, I couldn’t stand in the spots I was in to take the photos, either.
I worked on a maple just past this group of elms and found myself pulling out large strands of vines as well. The rest of the section has more of these vines. My mother had planted them (not here!) years ago, not realizing they were invasive. Now they’re spreading all over, and I’ve found at least a couple of trees that have been killed by them. So I stopped to continue another day, since more time will need to be spent pulling up these vines, which will need to be burned.
The irony of pulling up vines that are killing trees we plan to get eventually get rid of is not lost on me!
By the time I’m done with these, we should be able to walk through and around the trees without having to fight branches. I’ll even be able to mow past them without branches pulling off my hat!
Hopefully, their roots won’t make gardening near them too much of an issue. Eventually, we do plan to build some permanent, high raised beds in this area closer to the house, so it won’t be an issue for long. When we build the permanent garden beds to the south of the house, that will be where we will focus more on things that take longer to mature and get harvested in the fall, while areas closer to the house will be more kitchen garden type things that mature quickly, or have a continuous harvest.
We had another fairly chilly night, but things are definitely warming up again. Enough that the outside cats were all running around by the door when I came out this morning!
They were both hungry and thirsty! Even Junk Pile cat didn’t quite run away, waiting for some food. The kibble bowls were all empty, and even their heated water bowl was almost dry. The other bowls were frozen, so they were very happy for the warm water.
We really need to work on getting Creamsicle Jr. to let us near him. I want to get a look at one of his eyes. It seems to be leaky.
This is the same pussy willow I posted a picture of, less than a week ago. It’s really, really trying to develop those catkins! It should be warm enough from now on for them to finally develop fully. The brief cold of the past few days set it back quite a bit.
We never got much snow out of what should be the last winter blow out, and it’s already pretty much gone. Which means things are still very dry out there. I’m hoping we will get some good rain this spring. We’re going to need it!
I received an interesting hint that the weather is warming up and expecting to stay that way. I got a bank notification that a charge from Veseys came through. I expect to soon get a shipping notification. The only things we have with them right now are items that will be shipped when it’s time for planting. It was a very small charge, so not everything that’s waiting is going to be on it’s way, but the ground it still frozen solid. I’m curious to check what we ordered that can be planted this early in the season!
We had another bank transaction that had my husband and I wondering. Something got credited to our account, but neither of recognized the listing it was under. It seemed to be a refund of some sort. It took me a while, but I finally found the original debit, almost a month ago. After some searching, my husband finally figured out it was the new ergonomic keyboard he had ordered for me that we were waiting for (not the only thing we are still waiting for, either). For some reason, we got refunded, but have had no notification. He’d ordered it from this company (the name of which was not what was listed in the bank statements, lending to the confusion) as a “guest” and gave them my email address, but I’d received no notifications from them. I even searched my spam folder. He thinks he may have accidentally put in an old email address of mine that I no longer have. We decided to try and order the keyboard again, but this time he created an account with the company, rather than ordering as “guest”.
Which is when he found out what happened. As soon as he tried to place the order, he got a warning that they don’t ship to box numbers. He never got that warning when ordering as a guest, and since the email address was likely goofed, they couldn’t get through to us to fix the problem, so they canceled the order and refunded the money.
Unfortunately, he’d ordered it originally at a sale price. The sale is over, so this time, it’ll be full price. Ah, well.
While he was going through the purchase, he just had to call me over to see the shipping costs. There were three options, with different expected delivery dates. Two of them were free, but the expedited shipping cost was actually more than the full price of the keyboard. Including taxes!
There was still the issue of their not delivering to box numbers. We don’t get postal delivery, so there’s no point in giving them our physical address. Hardly anyone can find our place, even then. This is not a new problem, unfortunately, but my husband found a workaround. He inputs the physical address for our post office/general store. Since the package would have his name on it, and the population here is so low, the post master knows which box number such packages belong to, so we still get our parcel pick up card in the mail box.
It may still take 2 or 3 weeks to get here, but it should work.
It’s interesting how much more difficult it has been to get things delivered out here today, compared to when I was growing up here. We didn’t even had driveway markers until not all that long ago, but people could still find us with our section number. The modern delivery systems just sort of assume people live in cities and towns, with street addresses. Box numbers are now associated with security problems or scam artists. Never mind that so many people still use box numbers, even if they live in towns. The town we go to for most of our shopping and errands, for example, has an organized street address system (unlike our hamlet, which does have some street names, but no street numbers), but all mail goes to box numbers at the post office. If there is only a street address, the post office employees have to figure out whose box number it belongs to. A little more difficult when the population is several thousand, instead of a couple hundred.
You’d think, with modern technology, it would actually be easier, but the systems don’t recognize section numbers, can’t figure out our rural road systems, and don’t accept box numbers.
So we have to get creative, just to get things to go to our nearest post office!
I love my technology, but sometimes, it just makes things harder! :-D
Ginger wasn’t sure if he was happy to see me this morning.
Until I refilled his food and water bowls. ;-)
Then he was just rolling around, luxuriously. While giving me death glares! :-D
At least it gave me a chance to look at his surgical site. There’s still a touch of pink in the areas that had looked irritated before, but they are improving. The few times we’ve seen him start to scratch himself, he stops right away. As if he started to scratch a normal itch, but stopped when he scratched the tender areas instead. That has been a relief.
After topping up his food and water, I took care of the outside critter feeding. I’d mostly closed the inner door into the sun room while going out to the kibble house, but got a surprise when I opened the outer door to return to the sun room. The little bugger had squeezed his way in between the doors and almost escaped! It took some quick foot work to block him from running outside. He wants to join his brothers! After his attempt was foiled, he settled for sitting at the window and watching until I was done and could stay with him for a bit. He was hesitant to let me pick him up, since that usually means we’d soon be trying to shove a pill into his mouth, but he did let me, and we sat for a while with him in half in my coat for cuddles. There are no more morning medications for him now, so it was just uninterrupted cuddle time! :-)
Four more days until it’s back to the vet and the sutures are removed!
Well, I certainly got distracted today. For some reason, I thought I’d already written this post this morning! While fiddling with the computer to try and see things on my monitor without the magenta and neon green all over the place, I found I hadn’t even uploaded the photos!
So, here is today’s very late update on Ginger!
It was a cold night last night, but he was toasty and warm in his favourite spot!
The outside cats were very happy to have their very empty bowls refilled!
And for the warm water.
It was -15C/5F at the time I headed out, with a wind chill in the -20sC-4F. It had gotten cold enough that even Ginger’s water bowl started to get a bit slushy, being as far away from the heater bulb as it is.
By the time I finished taking care of the outside critters, he was out of his warm spot and allowed me to pick him up for cuddles today. This time, I remembered to unzip my parka a bit before picking him up…
… which allowed me to tuck him half into my coat while we sat and cuddled. :-)
I think he liked that!
We stayed like this for about half an hour, before my daughter came with the last of his morning pills. He’ll only have a single evening pill for a while longer. We’ll know how much longer, after he sees the vet to get the sutures removed on Monday.
Ginger may have been toasty warm, but after sitting in the sun room at 0C/32F for so long, I was the one starting to get pretty chilled! So we tucked him back into his warm bed, and I quickly finished my outside rounds before making a quick trip into town to get water refills, and the last few things needed for our Easter basket. The day warmed up quite a bit, and when I checked the sun room in the afternoon, it was almost 20C/68F! What a difference! We’re going to stay warm from now one, so we’ll have to make sure things don’t over heat for him in there, during the day.
Less than a week, and we should be able to bring him in to join the other kitties. :-)
While in the dining room, I heard a familiar thumping noise from the living room window.
The distinctive sound of a bird hitting the glass. :-(
I took a look and saw Junk Pile cat wandering by, so it looked like she had startled the birds. It took a while, but I eventually saw a bird lying upside down in the snow.
I figured it was dead, but decided to check, anyhow, because if it was just unconscious, either a cat would get it, or it would freeze to death in the snow.
I’m glad I checked.
It was definitely very stunned when I picked it up, but after a few moments, it lifted its own head, so I ducked around the house, out of the blowing snow, and kept it warm in my hands.
Poor thing lost a few feathers!
After a while it start to stand up a bit more, but made no effort to leave my hands.
After a while, it got more active and looking a bit anxious. I would have preferred to keep it warm in my hands for longer, but I didn’t want to scare it too much, as that could be harmful as well.
Once it seemed like it was able to stand up and move around better, I tucked it onto the bigger bird feeder, where it would be sheltered from the wind.
Checking on it after going back inside, it was still there, with juncos and chickadees fluttering around to get the seeds. About fifteen minutes later, I checked again and could no longer see it. I am hoping it fluttered away to a nice sheltered spot to recover fully!!
It’s cold with blowing snow outside. What better time to prepare for this year’s garden!
I had been doing some research on how to grow luffa for some time, but it was just a few days ago that I found someone who had managed to grow luffa in zone 3.
After reading this post, written by someone in Saskatchewan, I certainly wished I’d found it earlier.
MUCH earlier!
Realistically, the chances of my being able to successfully grow luffa here are very, very low. They have a 150-200 day maturity range. All the resources I’d been looking at suggested starting the seeds indoors 4-6 weeks before last frost date, but from this person’s experience, I should have started them in January! Ah, well. I’m going to try them, anyhow!
These required some advance preparations.
First, I set a few seeds to soak for 24 hours. Then tucked the bowl into a container I could seal, to protect them from cats. Like Susan, whom you can see at the bottom of the photo!
I was going to use the Jiffy pots in the red solo cups to collect drainage, but I found that three pots fit into a take-out container I’d saved. This will make watering from the bottom easier. I had some pre-soaked peat and filled the pots well in advance, so that the pots themselves would absorb some of the moisture.
I also prepared the small fish tank-greenhouse. I raised the level closer to the light, and added the light with the incandescent bulb to warm it up, since I don’t have a heat mat. The light has a full spectrum bulb in it, so it will be useful for the seedlings later, on, too, but for now, it’s the warmth that’s needed.
These are the seeds after soaking for 24 hours.
I was really surprised when I saw them, as every resources I’ve looked up showed black seeds!
I know there are different varieties, though, so if anyone knows anything about luffa aegyptiaca, please do leave a comment!!
I planted three seeds into each pot, pushing them into the peat to the required depth with a drinking straw. I am hoping to have 3 good transplants, but honestly, I’d be happy if I get just one!
Then, it was into their little greenhouse.
I think they need to be raised closer to the lights above!
The little light is staying in the tank for the warmth.
Yet another item repurposed from when we had fish; I’m keeping the aquarium thermometer in the tank, too. It’s reading about 24C/75F, which is impressive, considering the top is now just covered with a screen. The rigid insulation and aluminum foil definitely helps. We shall see how things go!
The other gourd seeds will be started after Easter, though I’m tempted to just go ahead and start them now. Which I might still do! ;-)
On a completely different note, I have come to the realization that a problem I thought was with our crappy internet connection is actually my monitor giving up the ghost. Images not loading is a common problem, but I was having them only partially load, and the parts that didn’t finish loading tended to be bright, neon green. Or entire backgrounds of web pages would have blocks of this eye-blinding green. Then text started not loading completely, though I could still read it if I highlighted it, or it would sometimes work if I reloaded the page. When I started having this happen, or letters of text randomly showing as magenta or that green instead of the default colour, even when I wasn’t online, I figured I couldn’t blame shoddy internet anymore! My husband has already ordered me a new ergonomic keyboard (it’s a good thing I can touch type, because the letters are worn off most of the keyboard) that should have arrived weeks ago. Now he’s gone and bought me a monitor already! Now those are some sweet anniversary gifts. :-D
Hopefully, this monitor will last long enough for the new one to come in! :-D
Yesterday evening, the girls decided to go out for a walk and headed out past the barn.
They found this, among the trees.
A squashed kettle.
Among the trees.
I have questions.
How did it get squished like this?
And why was it out there to get squished, in the first place?
When I was a kid, we had a large pig pen beyond the barn and, after that, there was a large manure pile. Past that was trees. Just trees. Nothing where someone might set up a kettle, then mysteriously leave it there to be crushed.
The girls have set it with my “art display” of other found objects. :-D
