Author: Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: Arikara squash is in

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Of the four types of winter squash we have this year, there is one type that I specifically want to save seeds for. That is the Arikara squash, which was listed as extremely rare.

That meant they needed to be planted well away from the other squash, to avoid cross pollination.

I decided to put them in the new little bed I successfully grew Crespo squash in, last year.

As you can see in the first image, we have been rather behind on clearing things lately! My daughter was able to do the main lawn mowing, but this area needs the weed trimmer.

So that was my first step. I cleared around all the beds and, since there are two more that need to be cleared for planting soon. One of them will have tomatoes in it. The other will have direct seeded corn and beans.

The small bed was fairly compacted, so it took a while to loosen the soil enough with the garden fork, just to be able to pull the weeds. That one little space, and I was pulling the usual crab grass, creeping Charlie, dandelions, white clover and thistle. There was also lambs quarter and a weed with leaves I keep mistaking for while strawberry, until they get bigger.

There was one surprise in there. I pulled up something with very distinctive spike leaves of a flower that look like a small version of the irises we have growing near the house. I set it aside by the transplants, with the roots in water, until I decide where to transplant it. I’m very curious as to what it is!

One the soil was clear of weeds and the clumps broken up, I added some manure and mixed that in thorough.

There are only three Arikara squash transplants, and I had considered planting something with them, like I did with the Crespo squash last year. In the end, I decided against it.

As we are expecting a dry year, the bed got a lot of watering. It was incredibly dry, so that took a while. Once the soil was damp more than just on to top, I set the transplants with collars around them, then created trenches around the collars, to collect as much water towards the roots as possible. The collars do a good job of holding the water and allowing it to slowly seep down.

I had a bin nearby, with grass clippings for mulch, from last year. It turned out to be exactly enough to thoroughly mulch the entire bed around the collars. Earlier, I had cut the sets of 3′ plastic coated metal plant stakes in half, and set one in each corner. I had pipe for hoops I intended to set in an X over the bed, but they are 5′ long, and that’s not long enough to reach from corner to corner. So I set the hoops at the ends.

I had a piece of mosquito netting to put over the hoops, but I didn’t want it to come in contact with the squash plants – and they’re already pretty big! So I joined the hoops with three 4′ plant stakes. The one in the middle hangs under the hoops, but I put the ones on the sides on top of the hoops, to keep the mesh off the leaves.

The netting was more than long enough, but not quite wide enough. The ends got rolled up in more plant stakes and pinned down with ground staples. I could just reach the top of the mulch on the sides, and those are secured with a couple more ground staples and rocks.

This covering is temporary. Once the transplants are well established and bigger, I’ll remove the cover. When they start blooming, I’ll be hand pollinating them as well as letting the insects do the job, just to be on the safe side!

By the time I finished here, it was 26C/79F, with the humidex putting it at 32C/90F. It was also coming up on noon, and my daughter was sweetheart and had lunch ready for me. She has been feeling quite sick today, and has spent much of the day in bed, yet she still made me both lunch and supper!

I am so grateful for that AC my brother set up for us in the living room. It was downright heavenly to take a break and cool down!

I still had a lot of work to do, though, so I was soon back out. By this time, I knew I wasn’t going to get all the transplants in, but I needed to at least get the rest of the winter squash done.

Yeah. That one turned out to be a big job, too. I did, however, have a bonus for the day!

Which you can read about in my next post. 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: healthy transplants, and the sage is in

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I don’t know if starting our seeds in the relative cold of our basement has anything to do with it, or maybe having the portable greenhouse, but this year’s transplants are some of the strongest, healthiest looking plants I’ve grown yet!

The first image is all our tomatoes. There’s one bin of Spoon tomatoes, one of Sub Arctic Plenty, and one with a mix of Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry. One of those was lost when the wind tried to tear apart the portable greenhouse, so there was space enough for me to tuck in the two sage transplants I picked up yesterday.

In the next image, we have two bins on the left, one with eggplant and one with peppers. In the middle are our melons, and on the right are the winter squash. It was the winter squash that was my priority for today, as they are outgrowing the cells in their tray.

I did the safe first, though, since there was just the two of them, going into an already prepared bed.

I tucked them into the middle, between the other herbs.

I look forward to seeing how this bed looks, once the herbs reach their full sizes. They should fill the whole thing. I’m curious to see if we’ll need to remove the cover later on. For now, the main thing is to protect the transplants from cats.

Speaking of which…

The older kittens have discovered the portable greenhouse – and the pots with luffa in them! The pots have a thick layer of sawdust from the stove pellets added around them as mulch.

Apparently, sawdust makes a great bed.

Grommet was in the pot with the larger luffa and wouldn’t leave. Which was a surprise, since he normally runs away when I come too close. This time, however, he let me pick him up and carry him around for a while enjoying pets!

The luffa now have gallon size water bottle collars around them, to keep the kitties from squishing the luffa!

The next thing I wanted to get done was the Arikara squash.

The sage was quick and easy to do.

The squash took a lot more work.

See you in my next post!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: new asparagus bed, garlic and potatoes

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My goal for the day was to get all the transplants in.

Ha!

No, I didn’t achieve that goal.

I did, however, get a LOT done, until the 34C/93F heat finally did me in. Enough that I’ll be breaking it up into several posts.

The start of the day was the same as it has been for the past while; after my morning rounds, everything got a watering in preparation for the coming heat. I was quite appreciating the new watering can, which holds twice as much as the breaking apart bucket I’ve been using! So that part of the watering went a lot faster.

Before I started watering the new asparagus bed, though, I did some modification. The landscape fabric or whatever it is had just been folded back to uncover the space I planted in, and the rocks I pulled out was just tossed on top. I lifted the folded side to shift all the rocks towards the opposite side, then laid the edge out close to the little wire fence protecting the strawberries. After weighing that down, I pulled the other end to cover a new section of what had been our squash patch in previous years.

There was still some grass clippings on the fabric, and that got used to lightly mulch the asparagus area, and heavily mulch along the wire fence. Once that was done, it all got a thorough watering.

The light mulch should be enough to protect the soil, while still making it easy for the baby asparagus to poke through. The heavy mulch should, hopefully, keep any weeds from coming back by the strawberries.

I’d left a couple of buckets filled with water to keep them from blowing them away. I noticed the cats have been drinking from them, often, so now I keep them full for the kitties. 😊

Next to the new asparagus bed is our garlic bed, then the potatoes.

The garlic is looking so good! We should start getting scapes soon. We are all looking forward to cooking with those!

The potatoes are coming up a lot faster now. When watering that bed, I noticed there are SO many frogs! They get startled when I water the potatoes, and jump into the netting. They seem to be able to get in and out just fine, though – at least when they’re not being scared by something!

Once all the watering was done, it was finally time to start transplanting things.

See you at my next post!

The Re-Farmer

So tired

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I’ve definitely been running around too much, over the past while.

With the trips to the city, I haven’t been doing as much physical labour, but I’m still in a lot of pain. Mostly the OA joint pain, but it’s definitely more of a mental fatigue than a physical one.

I headed out early today to do the morning watering. I didn’t need my older daughter to help out this time, nor was my younger daughter heading out with me, so they got to do some catching up on stuff in the house, instead.

My younger daughter was going to get the lawn mowing done as much as she could, in the heat. So, just riding mower stuff! We will just need to do the areas that can only be reached with either the push mower or the weed trimmer, later on.

I picked up some of my mother’s favourite fried chicken and potato wedges for our lunch today, so we had a relaxed visit over food, first. She was having one of her better days, behaviour wise, which made it much more pleasant! After that, we went over her shopping list. I spotted some gaps and asked a few questions, and did end up adding a couple of things to her list, too.

Before I headed out, I changed her bedding for her, so she could lie down while I was gone. She is really having a much harder time moving around her apartment of late. For all the heat, she’s also been finding herself getting cold!

I hit a couple of stores to get her shopping list done. It wasn’t a large list, but still came out to over $90. That’s just for one person for a week, and she has Meals on Wheels three times a week!

After her groceries were put away, I did some light housekeeping for her, then headed out. I made a brief stop at the hardware store, hoping to find some buckets in smaller sizes than 5 gallons, or watering cans. There weren’t any in the store, but I did remember to get handles to attach to the isolation shelter, to make it easier to move around, and caps for the end of the emergency septic pump bypass, so we can close that off and finally set aside the last of the outside parts of the emergency bypass.

The hardware store did have their garden centre section open, so I checked it out. I did find watering cans there, but only got one, as the price was pretty steep. I also spotted some lovely looking sage transplants and picked up two. There’s just enough room in the tiny raised bed, with the other herbs, for them.

All of this took long enough that, when I got home, it was already time to do the outside cat feeding, so I took care of that right away. A couple of kittens needed eye washing, and I changed out the ice packs in the sun room cat cage, for Poirot and her babies.

It’s barely past 5pm as I write this, and I am so drained, I’ll be heading to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done supper. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, and then we’re going to cool down a touch for the next while. I’m hoping to get the rest of the transplants in, and maybe even get the direct sowing done. I noticed this morning that some of the Spoon tomatoes have started to show flower buds!

This is what WP’s AI image generator thinks I look like. 😄

At some point, I need to edit my May garden tour video, too. I decided to keep the video files I took, back on the 21st, and here we are, last day of May, and it still hasn’t been put together!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

I just wish there weren’t so many distractions pulling me away, at times!

Food, next, then bed!

The Re-Farmer

We got a bit of rain, plus this is what $586 looks like

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With another trip to the city planned for today, I got my older daughter to help we water the garden and trees this morning, while things were still cooler. Much to my surprise, things actually looked damper than with just the morning dew. Then I spotted the turnip leaves in the high raised bed. It looks like we got a touch of rain last night!

All of these larger leaves had drops of water around their edges. Nothing else. I guess these ones had just the right “pockets” for it!

My younger daughter and I headed out later in the morning, making a stop at a gas station just outside of town, about 15 minutes away, to pick up some energy drinks for the road. While there, we decided to get a car wash, too. I figured, it was a good time to do it, while there’s no box cover.

The car wash couldn’t quite get all the gravel dust out of the corners of the box. 😄

By the time we got to the city, it was lunch time, so our first stop was at a mall near the Costco for food, then a stop at the Dollarama. I was looking for more buckets or watering cans to replace the ones we’ve been using. The buckets with plastic handles I’ve been using to water the walnut tree/seeds all have broken handles now. I had one small bucket with a metal handle that I’ve been using in the food forest area, and the bucket itself is breaking apart. These are all buckets I found around the property, so they predate us living here, and are either so old, or so exposed to the elements, that the plastic has become brittle and is breaking up.

Both the buckets and watering cans we found were too small, but we did find some other things. For the garden, I picked up 10 wire tomato cages that will go over the pepper and eggplant transplants – I’ll need at least 8 more. My daughter found another sparkly baseball cap that she got for my collection. 😄 Then we ended up spending some time choosing artificial flowers and a heavy vase for my MIL’s grave. The last time we tried to visit her grave, we never found it. We did eventually find a sign saying that, due to the spring flooding, a number of stones were damaged and removed for repair, and that they would eventually be returned. We haven’t been able to make it back, since. We want to fix that!

Once we were done there, we headed to the Costco, filling the gas tank, first. Gas was at $1.219/L, while elsewhere was about $1.309 in the city. In town, it had dropped from $1.359 yesterday, to $1.329 today.

That done, we finally were able to grab a flat cart and start shopping.

We did a much smaller trip this time.

This is what $586.66 looks like.

*sigh*

This time, I got a picture of the receipt.

We got two 9kg and two 11.6kg bags of dry kibble and two cases of 48 cats of wet cat food. We got more puppy pads as well.

This trip, we got a large bag of flour for under $10, which is a really good price right now. Everywhere else, I’ve been seeing the same size bag with sale prices of about $12. I get the cheap stuff. Going with the brand name stuff, a big bag of flour is closer to $20.

There’s a case of Monster energy drinks, which I will be paid back for, and we ended up getting a bulk sized box of instant oatmeal.

We got a couple of Kirkland brand jars of mayonnaise, plus a couple of jars of Peanut Butter, some brown sugar, and a large cannister type container of peppercorns, and a large container of ground pink salt. I prefer course, to use in our salt drinker, but this is what they had. My husband prefers the pink salt over regular table salt.

We still have butter in the freezer, so I only got two more, a block of Old cheddar cheese, plus we got a 3 pack of orange juice for the girls. I would have gotten oat milk for them, but my daughter told me they still have. There’s a 3 pack of all beef wieners and a pack of Spam – the only meat we got today. There’s a 9 pack of pasta, and my husband requested some tortilla chips, olives and dip. They didn’t have the 7 layer dip he wanted, so we got him roasted red pepper hummus instead.

They had a fundraiser thing going on. I could tell by the sudden bell ringing and cheering. When my items were all scanned and the cashier asked if I wanted to donate, I first made sure: no bells and yells! She just laughed and said yes. I think they get that a lot! So I donated a bit, too. That brought the sub total to $549.34, and we paid another $37.32 in taxes, for a total of 31 items.

[Edit: I completely forgot about the Pizza Pops! Which is what we’re having for supper tonight.]

We got almost no meat, there’s no eggs, no milk or cream, no breads or wraps.

And it still came to almost $600! A little over $250 (after taxes) of that is all cat supplies.

Part of the reason we did a smaller trip is because we had to squeeze so much of it into the back of the truck cab. The other reason is, we need to empty out the chest freezer and defrost it, so I didn’t want to get anything that would need to go into the chest freezer, other than the ice packs we brought to put with the cold stuff.

By the time we got home, it was about 4pm, so once everything was unloaded and put away, I fed the outside cats. The ice packs around Poirot and her babies needed to be changed out, though when I picked up one water bottle, I found it was still cold, if no longer frozen, so I tucked it right into the cat bed. Before long, I came over and found the kittens all but hugging it! There’s a large ice pack under their bed that probably needs to be changed out, but I didn’t want to disturb the kittens too much. Instead, I changed out the ice pack that’s on the floor of the cube above the bed. The second level cubes have pieces of rigid insulation over the wire to create floors they can walk on, which I set on top of the ice pack. This way, the cook air will flow downwards, and the bit of insulation will slow down the thaw a little bit.

All their water bowls needed to be refilled, but the water in the hose was so hot, I used it to refill the garbage can “heat sink” in the portable greenhouse. I still haven’t found the leak in that thing, but at this time of day, filling it will actually help cool the greenhouse down. The only plants in there are the pots with luffa, and they seem to be quite liking the heat! The thermometer in there was reading about 55C/131F.

Filling the can in the greenhouse also gave me time to scrub the water bowls as best I could. With this heat, algae starts to grow very quickly. The plastic water bowls get pretty stained, too. When refilling the bowls in the sun room, I also wet down the floor mats, so the evaporation could help cool things down, too.

As I write this, at almost 6pm, we’ve cooled down to 26C/79F, with the humidex putting us at 29C/84F – which is the high we hit a couple of hours ago. Tomorrow is supposed to be at least as hot, and the day ever, we’re supposed to hit 32C/90F.

Heat or no heat, things need to get done. Tomorrow morning, I’m hoping to get some of the winter squash transplanted, as they are growing out of their pots, and my daughter is planning on mowing the lawn. With going to the city three days in a row, we’re pretty behind on things! It’ll be good to catch up.

Unless I end up doing grocery shopping for my mother tomorrow.

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

addendum: yes, I’m doing my mothers grocery shopping tomorrow!

Our 2025 Garden and food forest firsts

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I just got in from doing my evening rounds.

The weather apps say we’re anywhere from 24-26C/75-79F out there this evening but, strangely, it felt much cooler! Very enjoyable, in fact. Well. Except for the blood red sun from all the wildfire smoke.

I decided to head into the outer yard and check on the walnuts this evening; something I usually do in the mornings, but my daughter did the watering out there today. I was very thrilled to see this.

It was very hard to get the camera to focus on such a small spot! Surprisingly, it did better when I accidentally took some video. Of course, it didn’t help that I had cats pushing their way into things!

What we have here is our very first walnut tree leaf bud! It was taking so long, I was starting to think it might not have survived being transplanted. I’m so happy! No signs of anything from the walnut seeds, yet, but hopefully they will start emerging soon.

This evening I decided to take the cover off the winter sown bed in the east yard. It has the same mix of seeds as the high raised bed, plus lettuce from our own saved seed. The two beds could not be more different!

For starters, the one thing that is thriving in this bed is the Jebousek lettuce, which is the only variety of lettuce we planted this year. The rest is onions and root vegetables. There’s so much lettuce, though, it’s choking things out!

So I thinned some by picking a bunch out by the roots. I grabbed a couple of radishes, too.

We’ll need to thin the lettuce out more, as I could see scrawny beet greens being crowded out by them. There are some larger leaved plants in there I wasn’t sure of, so I carefully took a closer look at their bases. It looks like we have a few Zlata radishes growing! These seeds were gifted to me, and I’ve never seen them before. They are very round and have a yellowish colour to them. I’ve left them for now. The radishes I did pick are the longer French Breakfast variety. The first lettuce and radish harvest for this year! I ended up picking another French Breakfast radish from the high raised bed, the picked some spinach from the old kitchen garden. We’ve been using the spinach mostly in sandwiches, but we’ve got the makings of an actual salad from our garden right now!

And it’s not even June, yet.

Yeah, I’d say winter sowing like this is something we’ll be doing again!

The Re-Farmer

Small stock up trip: this is what $209 looks like

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With yesterday’s stock up shopping getting cut short, with virtually no actual food purchased, my daughter and I headed in today to hit the international grocery store we had skipped yesterday.

We had a slight detour into town first, so by the time we got to the city, our first order of business was lunch, which we had in the dining area of the grocery store. Dim sum and sushi!

Driving to the city for our stock up shopping does have its perks!

My daughters had their own shopping list, so after lunch my daughter and I split up and met at the truck later. Without a cover on the box, we had to keep in mind that anything we got had to fit into the back of the cab. We already have a fair bit of stuff back there, from our supply of hard sided grocery bags to our emergency kit, etc. We did take out the bin of winter supplies, though, so that freed up a bit of space, but we are still limited. Basically, we used the space that’s kept open specifically to fit my husband’s walker.

We might have to split our Costco shopping up into two trips, because that’s where we get the most of our supplies for the month.

Anyhow.

This is what $209.20 after taxes looks like.

That’s… not a lot.

In the non-food category, I finally found a nail brush to replace the kitchen one that fell apart. We use it for scrubbing vegetables.

The only vegetable I got today was celery, which was on sale, and the only fruit, grapes, which was also on sale. I picked up some cheese wedges; Irish Whiskey cheddar, Porter Beer cheddar and Maasdam. The Maasdam is a new one for us. It looks much like a Swiss. There was a sale on antipasto sliced meats, so I got two packages of those, plus three garlic baguettes that were on sale. The girls and I might have a charcuterie movie night soon!

There was a good sale on New England Clam Chowder, which I usually get at Walmart, so I picked up a bunch for my daughters and I. My husband no longer likes it. I also got a couple of cans of clams. We like to add some to the chowder, but I haven’t seen any in ages. Not something I would have expected to be hard to find! That they were on sale, too, was bonus. Oh, and I got a bottle of my husband’s favourite Filipino soy sauce.

There was a sale on sirloin tip beef, plus I got an extra discount through my loyalty card, which was nice. There are also some locally produced smoked, and applewood smoked, slabs of bacon, both on sale. For the girls, I got some frozen cooked white shrimp, which was both on sale, plus extra off with my loyalty card, and basa fillets that were on sale.

Since no one is up to doing dishes and cooking in this heat, we picked up food for quick eating. For my husband, I got a huge Lumberjack sandwich; it’s big enough to be lunch for him tomorrow, too! I’m glad he likes those. It’s getting harder to find foods he can eat, these days! I picked a bento box for myself, and my daughter picked a couple of boxes of steak taquitos for herself and her sister. They’ve been looking for that flavour in that brand for years, but they just disappeared for some reason. Now they’re back, so she was really happy to find them. They are not fond of the other flavour options. There were some Verka cream rolls on sale, so I picked up a pack of 4 for desert.

That’s it. That’s all I got. All those sales, and it still cost over $200. Even my daughter’s purchases cost over $130, and their list was mostly jars of Asian seasonings we can’t get locally.

At least I got extra points on top of the extra sale prices, too. I’ve already got enough to get at least one free turkey when those promotions come up in the fall.

I’m dreading going to Costco tomorrow.

The Re-Farmer

A slightly different morning!

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We’re expected to reach around 30C/86F today, with the next couple of days potentially getting even hotter. So I’ve been heading out early in the mornings to water the garden and the saplings. This morning, I snagged my older daughter to give me a hand, since it was already 16C/61F by 6am.

While I went to the old kitchen to start getting food ready for the outside cats, my daughter shoed up and went out through the main door. It makes things easier to pass things from the old kitchen to someone in the sun room through the old kitchen door with the missing screen.

I had quite a surprise when I opened the inner door, though!

Miss Lemon, Hastings and Japp were tucked in, between the doors again!

The old kitchen is quite a bit cooler, so I’m guessing Poirot moved her babies to get them out of the heat again.

With that in mind, we left them there for a while, and worked on the cat cage. My daughter set one of the larger ice packs right under their cat bed. As thick as the cat bed it, it should still feel cooler, and it won’t melt as quickly. We set a couple of frozen water bottles around, too, before I started passing the kittens over for my daughter to tuck them back into the cat cage. By then, Poirot had come in and was very interesting in what we were doing to her babies!

After that, I headed out with the kibble and some leftover cat soup to distract the adult cats, while my daughter started preparing the wet cat food for the bigger kittens, mixing in some lysine/pumpkin seed powder and splitting it up between all the little bowls we have for them. We switched out a frozen water bottle in one of the cat beds in the water bowl shelter, too.

My daughter then grabbed the wagon, which already had containers of water waiting, to the outer yard and watered the walnut and Korean pine trees while I did the rest of my rounds. By the time I was switching out the memory card at the sign cam, my daughter was done refilling containers to finish watering the trees in the outer yard, while I got the hose going into the leaky rain barrel, and used a bucket to water the trees out there.

I was very happy to spot this.

The very first leaf bud on the Opal plum has emerged! It was rather strange to water a stick in the ground, not knowing if it survived its time in the mail, and being transplanted. Today, we have proof of life!

Once the food forest saplings were watered, I worked on the main garden area. There are quite a few potato leaves pushing their way through the mulch!

I think I’ll grab a small bucket of stove pellets, though, and head back to the garden before my younger daughter and I head back to the city today. The bed the flowers were replanted has no mulch at all, and it’s just baking in the sun. The high raised bed, and the newly planted strawberries, also need protection. On being watered, the pellets will break up into sawdust, so they won’t disturb the more delicate seedlings, will hold water longer, and should help keep the soil at least a bit cooler.

Some things are enjoying the heat, though.

These lilacs are at almost full bloom in most places! The double lilacs in the old kitchen garden are also opening up. I’m not seeing white lilacs yet. The dwarf Korean lilacs by the house will bloom later on, and the variety I can’t remember the name of right now, closer to the chain link fence, will bloom last of all.

I like having such an extended lilac season.

We’re already creeping up to 20C/68F, just in the time it took me to write this. I’d better get out there with those pellets before things get to hot!

The Re-Farmer

First stock up shop: this is what $252 looks like

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My daughter and I went in to the city for our first stock up shop today. In the end, we didn’t make it to all the placed intended, so we’ll have to go back tomorrow.

Our first stop was actually a mall next to the Canadian Tire for lunch. In the end, neither of us was hungry enough to finish, so we brought our leftovers home for supper.

We had a short list for Canadian Tire. A couple of 40 pound bags of stove pellets for the cat litters, plus I found replacement cord for our weed trimmer. I got two of those. Grand total of $48.12 With the pellet bags in the truck box and no cover for the box anymore, we weren’t worried that anyone would walk off with 40 pounds of compressed sawdust while we did our next stop!

Which was Walmart.

This is what $252.98 looks like.

There isn’t a lot in there.

There are two bags of dry kibble for both the inside and outside cats. We’ll be stocking up on that a lot more at Costco and, later on, one of the feed stores for 40 pound bags. The 32 packs of canned cat food is one for the inside cats, one for the outside kittens. The kittens have been getting sticky eyes, so I’ve been mixing up a couple of cans with water and a powdered mix of lysine and pumpkin seeds. The lysine seems to be doing the trick, as their eyes have gotten much better already. The pumpkin seeds should help with worms and poops, so we probably won’t actually see if that’s working or not. 😄

There is a case of giant freezies for my husband, for the hot days ahead. There are the XXL side puppy pads; I’ll be getting the Costco puppy pads, too, which are smaller. There’s a package of toilet paper under the cart, though we’ll be getting more of that at Costco, too. We grabbed a package of paper towels, too. We won’t need to get more of those at Costco.

I picked up a couple of Lavender scented air freshener cones. One is for the truck; I like these better than the scented dandling things. The other is for my bedroom. Lavender is supposed to be calming for cats, so I’m hoping it’ll help!

There are 4 cans of Monster energy drinks for my daughters and I; we’ll be picking up a case at Costco, so this is just for the next few days.

While making our way to the tills, we passed a display of instant oatmeal at 2 for $5, so I grabbed a couple of variety packs. Sometimes, we just want something really quick for breakfast, and I didn’t want to get boxed cereal. I also picked up a couple of cold drinks for the road. The only other item that can’t be seen is a small donation to the children’s hospital.

Normally, after this, we would have gone to the international grocery store. We even remembered to grab ice packs to add to the insulated bags so things wouldn’t thaw out on the way home. My husband, however, requested we bring home some McDonald’s for him. Since there was one in the Walmart, and I didn’t want to run around trying to get to a different one later, we got a meal for him and for my other daughter (my younger daughter and I still had our leftovers from lunch), and we headed home.

Not much of a stock up trip, at all. We didn’t even get any food, really. My daughters have their own shopping list for the international grocery store, so we’ll be making another trip tomorrow. The day after will be our Costco trip.

Part way home, I pulled over and my daughter took over driving, because I found myself feeling like I was falling asleep. So I got to close my eyes for most of the rest of the drive home.

I did get a text message from the autobody shop about the truck, just before we got home. I had to wait until my phone could connect to our Wi-Fi before I could respond. She’d included a photo of the truck box cover they thought was closest to what we had, and the total of what we would be paying for, asking me to call her about it. The “betterment” charge would be $225. Add in the deductible and extra charge for painting because rust damage is not included, we’d be looking at over $860.

I had found a cover almost identical to what we had, though, so I sent her an image of it, which included the price, then called the shop. I got her just as she was looking at the image I’d sent. It was a lot less expensive than what they were looking at, so she asked me to send her a link, which I emailed to her. She wasn’t sure if they could get the one I found – they’re not able to order things online, oddly enough – but she wanted to find out if they could. If they can get this one, or an equivalent, it’ll save us quite a bit of money. She’ll get back to me as soon as she can. We might be able to get this done next week, if all goes smoothly.

Then, I got very different phone call. It was the home care aide. She was at my mother’s place for her supper time med assist, but my mother’s walker wasn’t outside the door, and the door was locked. This is very unusual. She did check the usual places, like the common room or other areas my mother might be sitting and enjoying some fresh air. After we talked for a bit, she said she would do her next med assist, then come back, while I contacted my family to see if anyone knew where my mother might be. I thought maybe my sister might have come out on her day off and taken my mother somewhere, but I think yesterday was her day off. The other possibility that came to mind, which was more worrisome, was if our vandal had shown up and persuaded her to go with him somewhere. Neither possibility seemed likely, though.

I messaged my family but only my brother got it and responded. He had no knowledge of any appointments or anything she might have had. We were wondering if the Life Line people could find where she is, but I think to find out, I’d have to use the home base machine at her place to contact them. I was already prepared to go to my mother’s, since I have a spare key to her apartment, so that was a possibility.

Eventually, I got a call back from the home care worker. My mother’s walker was still gone, the door still locked. She was walking around the building as we spoke, looking for her. We were just about to say our goodbyes and I was going to head over, when she found my mother.

She was behind the fence in the garden area.

Hoeing.

I need to figure that out, because the garden area is on the side of the building outside my mother’s apartment. The fence is on the far side of the garden area. So if she were behind the fence, she would be off the property, where there are a number of trees and an empty lot. No wonder my mother was hard to find back there! But why would she be hoeing behind the fence? Or hoeing at all? My mother doesn’t have a garden plot anymore, though she does have some perennials against the fence, just outside her window. She wouldn’t need to go behind the fence to hoe anything there! With her mobility decreasing, it wouldn’t be safe for her to be hoeing anywhere, never mind going around to the other side of the fence. !!!

I’m just glad she was found!

I’ll be calling her to check in on her, very soon. Just in case…

The Re-Farmer

Silly kitties, and under warning

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Just a little while ago, all our phones started going off with alert warnings. Our province has declared a state of emergency due to wildfires. We are fortunate in that there are no fires near us, but several towns and a small city to the north have been, or are in the process, of evacuating. The closest fire is actually to the south of us, and much closer to my sister’s farm, but it is listed as “under control”.

As you can see from the live fire map, there sweeping line of fires runs across the prairies. That area is pretty much all boreal forest. The red ones are all wildfires. The orange ones are prescribed fires.

While we are in no danger where we are at the moment, we always closely monitor the wildfire situation, every spring. ’tis the season, unfortunately.

One a more “normal” note, here is something to smile about.

Sir Robin the Brave, it turns out, can squeeze through a gap between the raised bed cover and a corner of the raised bed walls!

The bigger kittens are all doing rather well outside, taking advantage of shade. The littles in the sun room are getting extra help with ice packs and frozen water bottles, frequently changed out, because they thaw out so quickly.

The littles are getting big, and much more active! It won’t be long before they’re making their way out of the cat cage and exploring. 😊

The Re-Farmer