I just got back from doing my evening rounds. Our yard is littered with fallen branches. Especially willow branches in the South yard. I only picked up the biggest ones tonight. When the weather next allows for it, we’ll need to go around with the wagon to pick up all the smaller branches.
Two of Junk Pile cat’s kittens were running around while I was out. Little Braveheart was following Creamsicle around. He seems to get along with them very well! I topped up the kibble bowls, and while he was eating, Little Braveheart came over and booped her head against his before starting to eat, herself. :-) So cute!
I didn’t see Butterscotch’s kittens, which is no surprise in this weather. I did, however, get to spend some time with them yesterday, and they were co-operative enough to let me get some good photos of each of them!
Their eyes are starting to settle into their adult colours now. Which means the calico no longer looks terrifying up close! :-D Now she’s just all adorable!
We’re going to have a hard time telling these two apart!
Creamsicle Junior? He seems to be fuzzier than Creamsicle was at this age.
I think I have spotted another older kitten around. I’ve seen it at least twice, and had mistaken it for Junk Pile cat, but it has more white, and looks to be about the same age as her kittens. I have no idea where it is coming from, or which mama cat it is with! Perhaps one of Rosencrantz’s kittens? I thought she had three, but I just went back through my old photos, and I only ever captured two in the pictures; an orange one that we haven’t seen since, and the white one with grey and orange spots that I sometimes see.
Today was the day we were planning on having an outdoor family gathering to celebrate 3 birthdays and an anniversary. I’d been keeping a close eye on the weather radar, and aside from one bit of rain that sidled past us early in the day, it looked like the main system was going to miss most of the province completely. An Alberta Clipper was making its way across the prairies, and we were getting all sorts of warnings for thunderstorms, frost, rain, and even possible snow. None of that was going to reach us, though.
The only thing for us to watch out for was the wind.
In the morning, things were looking well enough that I started putting the walls on my daughter’s market tent that we had set up near the fire pit, over the picnic table. It was windy enough that we thought the fire might be an issue, but the tent seemed fine.
I had ordered Chinese food, which my brother picked up on his way over. It was around the time we were expecting him to arrive that we decided to start the fire. We wanted to get some good coals built up in case anyone wanted to roast some wienies later, plus the wind made it a bit on the cool side, and a fire would help keep us warm.
I must say, it was a bit surreal to be at the fire pit and have a car suddenly pull up to us! :-D I rather like having a yard big enough that not only could my brother drive right up to the fire pit, but when he moved his car later, he had room to turn around.
It was at about that time that the gusts started picking up.
Hard.
At that point, my brother started trying to tie the corners of the tent to nearby trees.
Then one side collapsed completely.
The tent has sides that close up like an accordion. That means there are a couple of hubs, with 4 pieces of metal affixed to them, on each side. One of those hubs gave out.
No, not the plastic piece in the middle. All 4 aluminum supports it held, snapped.
Once we realized there was no way it was going back up, it took 4 of us to take the sides off, shorten the legs and fold the tent into itself – with a picnic table in the way – while increasing gusts of winds tried to tear everything out of our hands.
And my daughters had just got the fire going, too! That promptly turned into a mini fire tornado. So that got put out right away.
Then we went to plan…
C.
Plan B was to use the sun room and old kitchen, but we figured my mom would rather be at the dining table. Once we got all the supplies in (the only thing we hadn’t taken out yet was the food!), we opened up the table to fit everyone and started setting up there.
My sister arrived with my mother just in time for that!
As for the family gathering itself, it was … good, but very draining! My mother was in fine form, which we do expect, but my goodness, it just sucks the energy out from everyone. Once she was sitting at the table, and we were all doing various things to set up food and drink, she kept making demands and asking where this, that or the other thing was, and if she couldn’t see someone (never mind that her back was to the kitchen, which meant if she couldn’t see us, it was because we were there and busy), she kept asking where that person was, because only that person could do whatever it was she wanted. Including people who were already doing the things she wanted them to do!
Still, we did eventually get it all settled. Though we got a “dinner for 6” and there was 7 of us, there was more than enough for everyone – plus my brother got a bit extra, just in case, my sister brought some tomatoes, cucumbers and onions from her garden and made a salad, plus we’d made a fruit salad. My mother had brought a sausage, because she was afraid there wouldn’t be enough to eat. She also brought her own box of tissues; apparently, she thought we wouldn’t have any. My sister told me she once brought soap when visiting her place. Just ordinary hand soap. Because she didn’t think my sister would have soap?? Anyhow. We had so much food, we forgot about the sausage (which she insisted we keep), and settled in for coffee and tea. After getting her tea, my mother started asking for something to go with it. I’d already asked her if she wanted milk or sugar, and she’d said no. So what was she looking for?
Something to eat, with the tea. Like crackers or cookies or something. !!!
So I broke out the cake I’d picked up. I figured we would take some time to digest first, since we were all so full, but nope! My mother had to have something with her tea! :-D
It wasn’t until they were getting ready to leave that my mother remembered she’d brought a bottle of wine. My brother and sister, who were both going to drive soon, couldn’t have any. She started saying that “just a little” was okay, and when everyone politely declined, she suggested my husband have some (he’d already had to move away from the table, due to pain, but was still nearby). At that point, we were all, NO! He *can’t* have alcohol, because of the medications he’s on. Just a little will be okay? No. None. No alcohol for him. Since she was the only one who would be drinking any, she decided it wasn’t worth cracking open the bottle and took it home. :-D
Overall, it was a pretty good visit. There was only one incident where my mother lost it and started shouting (over the ceiling fan, of all things), but we were able to calm her down. She had some confusion when my brother said he would like to drive her home, and she couldn’t seem to understand that, as far as driving goes, it made no difference if he or my sister drove her. They both had to go through her town, first. As he took her stuff to his vehicle (she took some of the crab apples we picked. :-) ), I followed out and discovered some branches had come down in the yard. My mother followed and asked for my dad’s walker, so my brother was kind enough to pick up the biggest one while I got the walker for her. The winds were still really high, and small branches were falling everywhere. As I came back from the sun room with the walker, I found my mother had taken the broom we keep by the main entry, and was sweeping the concrete in front of the door. She’d already made numerous passive aggressive digs at me for things like not clearing the table fast enough for her, or whatever other perceived failure in my housekeeping she found (like not dusting the ceiling fan before they arrived), but to start sweeping the front, in the middle of a wind storm, while branches were still falling down… that was a bit much, even for her!
Then she decided she wanted to walk around the yard and look at my garden – specifically, the area where the old wood pile used to be, that I now have beets, carrots and parsley growing. She’d missed that area, the last time she was here. When she saw the parsley, she asked for some to take home, which I was happy to do. We have much more than we need. :-) She tried walking around more of the yard, but with the winds, she turned around rather quickly!
There was only one last confused round of shouting as everyone was getting ready to leave. It turned out my mother had cards for all of us, but none of us knew this, so when my sister started to leave while my mother was in the bathroom (going through the cupboards and drawers, with the water running to try and hide the noises), she almost started panicking! But it all got done, and they were all able to head out at the same time. After locking the gate, I picked up a few more larger branches that had come down. This evening, I’m going to have to be more thorough in doing my rounds, to see what else has come down.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I am SO glad we got those trees cut away from the roof and the power lines!
Ah, as much as the winds have been an issue for us, at least we didn’t lose power. I just got off the phone with my brother, and the power there had been off for about 3 hours. Thankfully, he has an inverter and can hook his truck up to provide power to the house. The power came on while we were talking on the phone, so that’s a relief for them. They’re quite a bit further south than we are, so they tend to get the weather systems that miss us entirely!
Meanwhile, I’ve had some kitten therapy to recharge, and had better go do my rounds while it’s still light out!
Last night, I finally had a chance to clean up and move out the temporary fire pit I’d set up to burn things that wouldn’t fit in the burn barrel.
It was too dark for photos at the time, so I went back this morning.
This is where it had been sitting, and you can really see how the heat affected the ground, through the metal sheet it was on.
I’ve set it aside near the burn barrel for now. It worked out so well, I want to have it handy for future use.
That weed that managed to grow through a hole in the metal sheet was certainly tenacious!
I had originally intended to dump the ashes behind the old outhouse. That is where we’ve started to dump things that are compostable, but not appropriate to use in the garden later. Then I remembered something.
Not far from the burn barrel, there were two tractors. My dad had given one of them to my nephew. He and my brother, amazingly enough, got it running and were able to move it, though my nephew had to come back another time with a buddy to help him get it home. The tractor had been sitting there so long, its wheels had sunk into the ground, leaving behind holes. They had filled the holes with scrap wood and rocks that they found around the area, but it wasn’t quite enough. While we don’t usually go into this overgrown area, it was still a safety hazard. Especially when the renter’s cows got through the fence. Human or cow, it would be easy to break a leg in them.
I could use the ashes to fill the holes the rest of the way!
So I did.
Here, you can see 3 of the tire holes. The fourth is hidden by the little maples. The holes from the back tires each needed a full wheelbarrow of ashes to fill. A third wheelbarrow was enough to fill the smaller holes from the front wheels. That was even with the pieces of wood and rocks filling them! After those three loads, the fire pit was empty enough that, with maybe another shovelful or two scraped up, I could remove the ring and use the sheet of metal to pick up and pour the remains into the wheelbarrow. That last little bit went onto the larger holes.
So I was able to accomplish two things at once; remove the temporary firepit, and fill in some holes!
As for the little maples growing where the tractor was, I am debating if I want to let them grow, or if I should take them out. In time, we plan to fill in and level out this area, and maybe put in some polytunnels, raised beds, etc. This would be years in the future, and I don’t even know if we’d go into this space. If we leave them, and then find we want to build around there, they would be much harder to get rid of than now.
I still need to cut away the trees growing through the remaining tractor. I can decide then.
More and more of the sunflowers are opening up, and today I spotted one that’s different.
Most look like this.
Bright, sunny, mostly yellow with light oranges and greens around the developing seeds.
Then there was this one.
The camera actually lightened it up a bit. Compared to the others, this one looks almost black in the middle! Very dramatic.
This may be the first of the slightly shorter variety of giant sunflowers we first planted, so start opening its seed head. If so, I expect to see more. :-)
Last year, we made apple cider vinegar using the bright red apples from just one tree. The result was a delicious, delicately pink cider vinegar, and we were looking forward to making it again.
There was just one problem.
The instructions we followed said to put the jar in a dark place, so we tucked it into a cupboard. Unfortunately, it attracted fruit flies. The jar was covered with a coffee filter and they couldn’t get in but, as it fermented, some had bubbled up enough to dampen the paper. Which meant any time we opened the cupboard, we’d find a cloud of fruit flies inside!
Not good.
Since then, we’ve bought the things necessary to make mead. This includes smaller bungs to fit airlocks into gallon jars. We will be using some to make hard apple cider out of our crab apple juice, later. With airlocks being so cheap, I’ve picked up extra, so we could have all our gallon jugs, plus the 5 gallon carboy, all going at once, and still have extras.
This year, I will be taking advantage of our mead making supplies.
Since making the ACV requires using apple pieces, I need to use a wide mouth jar. I also want to make more than last year, so I wanted to use something bigger than a quart jar.
Every now and then, we picked up the big gallon jars of pickles at Costco, and I’ve been keeping the jars. That’s what I’ll be using to make the vinegar this year.
The question then becomes, how do I use an airlock on one of these?
Now, if I had some silicon grommets (which I learned the name of only yesterday), I could drill an appropriately sized hold in a cap, pop on a grommet, and insert an airlock.
I don’t have those. I do have extra bungs, though.
I don’t have anything I can use to simply drill a hole that big into a cap, though, so I had to do it the use-watcha-got way.
The first thing to do was mark the size of hole I needed. After protecting the bung with plastic wrap, I traced around it with permanent marker. As the bung is tapered, the actual size of the hole needs to be slightly larger than the inside of the circle.
With a scrap of wood underneath, I punched a series of holes well within the marked circle, then used pliers to break off the middle.
Working directly over a garbage bag, I used a series of metal files to grind away at the opening to smooth it out, then make it larger.
Once I’d reached the inside of the marked circle, I switched to the Dremel to grind and smooth the metal.
Then it was time to test the size of the opening. A perfect fit!
We’re not done yet!
Though the metal was ground smooth, it still is sharp enough to potentially damage the bung, if I were to push it in tight enough to great a proper seal.
Silicon sealant to the rescue!
I used the same stuff we got to fill screw holes when our satellite dishes got moved, then again, for a final seal in the cracks on the rain barrel we set up by the garden. It’s a multipurpose, indoor/outdoor product that is coming in very handy.
The tube it comes in is also very easy to control, even for a job as small as this. After giving the cap a very through cleaning, I lay a bead down on both sides of the cap, right on the edge of the hole, so that top and bottom would touch and completely cover the metal edge. Basically, I imitated a silicon grommet. This should both protect the bung, and ensure an air-tight seal is created.
Now it just needs time to cure before I can test it again with the bung.
Since we have so many apples, I might make two; one with the airlock, and one without, to see which works better. I’ve also picked up some fancy-schmancy ACV “with mother” to use as a starter (last time, we just used water and sugar). Using just a coffee filter, it relies on exposure to the air to get the bacteria needed for fermentation. So it’s touch and go, whether you get a good bacteria or not. With an airlock, it won’t get that exposure, so using a vinegar with the mother in it will ensure the right kind of bacteria is already in there.
There are areas around the house that we do and do not allow the cats. For example, they are not allowed on the kitchen counter the sink it in, nor where counters were food is prepared, but there is one small counter by the window they are allowed on, so they can sit and look out the window.
The dining table is another place the are not allowed.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to enforce this when we’re asleep.
This is what I found this morning.
The bowl of carrots and potatoes were scrubbed last night, to be cooked today. The cucamelons are kept out for snacking.
It turns out the cats like to drag off the carrots.
Shortly after I took this photo, I spotted Saffron running by behind me.
Then she dropped a pilfered cucamelon she had been carrying, and started batting it around.
Today, I headed out to pick the apples off of one of our crabapple trees.
This is the one that has such bright red, sweet apples. It also ripens earlier than the other trees.
Last year, most of the apples disappeared before I had a chance to harvest them, so I wanted to get them before the … deer? … get them first.
When we were cleaning things out, I was flummoxed by finding a grabber with spoons attached to it. My mother eventually remembered that my dad used it to pick apples.
I’m happy to say that it works absolutely beautifully!
Since there were so many apples to pick this year, I laid out a sheet on the ground for them to fall on. It also made it much easier to move the apples into a bucket.
I was able to fill a 5 gallon bucket just with the apples I could reach with my hands, or the grabber. I did try shaking the trees, too, but the branches are a bit too thick to be able to shake much at that height, so I didn’t get a lot that way.
Using the step ladder, I was able to fill another 5 gallon bucket. I could have gotten more, but by then, it was getting too dangerous to try and get the apples, even with the grabber. The remaining apples will be for the birds. :-)
Ten gallons of apples is so awesome! Last year, I used the apples from this tree to make apple cider vinegar. After trimming and chopping, I filled a quart jar 3/4s full.
That’s it. That’s all we had.
This year, I plan to make more apple cider vinegar, then juice at least a gallon, to make hard apple cider. There should still be plenty to give to my family, when they come out this weekend, if they want some.
For the hard apple cider, we have gallon jugs, bungs and airlocks to use. When we made apple cider vinegar in a quart jar last year, it was a success, but there was a problem with fruit flies being attracted to the coffee filter covered jar in the cupboard. So this year, I plan to use an air lock (they’re so cheap, I’ve been buying extras).
I’ll be using a repurposed gallon sized pickle jar for this, which means I need to find a way to get an airlock into the lid.
Which I’ve already gotten started, and will show how in my next post. :-)
What a difference in how they looked, two years ago, and now! The above photo is from 2 years ago. This year’s grapes are easily double in size – and these are not a large fruit variety!
It’s even more appreciated, since after cleaning out and trellising them last year, we didn’t get any grapes at all last summer. Not a one.
In picking the grapes this morning, I did have a bit of a problem. Most of the grapes were on the other side of the trellis. Which is when I realized the trellis was so close to the wall, I couldn’t get at them.
Thankfully, the trellis is just on a couple of bars pushed into the ground for support. I was able to move them a few inches away from the wall, and that was enough for me to be able to get back there to harvest the grapes. I’ll have to go back to them to pound the supports into the ground more, but I will likely do that when I prune the vines before winter.
At the moment, we’re not really sure what we want to do with the grapes, so they’ll be given a wash, then frozen, like we did with the chokecherries. If we do decide to do something like a jelly or syrup, or add them to the must when making mead, freezing them first will make it easier to extract the juice.
I must say, for a variety that clearly isn’t a table grape (my mother doesn’t remember what they were), they taste quite good, just as they are!
The first seed head to blossom is already losing its little flowers!
I think I should be able to harvest it and set it to dry at this point; at least that’s what I’ve learned from my research. But would the seeds normally be this white?
I think I’ll leave it a bit longer. So far, no birds seem to be going for it.
Pollinators aren’t’ the only ones interested in the budding sunflowers.
The leaves make great shelter for resting dragonflies!
Those leaves have a lot of holes in them. I can’t see what’s causing them, though. They still seem to be doing all right, so I’m not concerned at this point.
