Today the girls and I headed into the city for our monthly shop.
I know that there are people out there who actually enjoy shopping. I don’t get it. I really don’t!
Okay, so today turned out to be a more complex shop than usual, but still… Ugh. It’s just so draining!
So here is a picture of a fungus. Because it cheers me up!
Today turned out to be too cold and damp to do the mowing between the trees I cleared last year, that I hoped to do today. I thought I might be able to at least use my reciprocating saw to cut some of the smaller stumps of trees I took down last year to ground level, so I could mow over them. In the end, I decided it was just too damp to drag out the extension cords and use electric tools.
Instead, I worked on an area I left partly unfinished last year; a double row of elms leading to the garden gate at the west fence line.
Here is how it looked before I started.
Continue readingToday started early for me, as I had to drive to my mother’s to take her for an appointment to get her CT scan. She had a requirement to drink a litre of water an hour before her appointment, then restrictions on going to the bathroom shortly before, so I wanted to make sure she got there early enough to not have to worry about the restriction. Given how long it takes to drive from her town to the city where her appointment was, that meant she had to start drinking her water while we were driving.
She also had to fast 4 hours before the scan, but my mother went a bit overboard and, aside from eating some crackers with her morning medications, she had fasted since the supper! So as soon as we were done, I made sure to take her to lunch somewhere fast.
By the time I got home, it was mid afternoon. The weather was holding, so I decided to break out the push mower and get as much done as I could. (I only got rained on a tiny bit! :-D ) I was going to start working in the trees, but then decided to do the old, overgrown garden, instead.
When my brother brought the mower back, he walked me through what he had done. It started fine when we tested it, but he mentioned that he felt the prime pump wasn’t doing its job. So, just in case it wouldn’t start, he showed me where to open up the side of the engine, where there is a filter and an opening behind it, and told me I could basically just splash some fuel into it, and that should be enough to start it.
I’m very glad he told me that, because it wouldn’t start. I ended up having to do it twice! The second time was after I ran out of gas, but I found that if I filled the tank before it was completely empty, I didn’t have to do it again. Except I didn’t just splash it. I tipped the mower onto its side and poured a tiny bit, using the cap of the jerry can spout to hold the tiny bit of fuel I needed. After that, it started just fine.
Mowing the old garden ended up taking about 4 hours.
It is not a small garden.
It was also incredibly rough. Plus, I had to look out for stuff like this.
Thankfully, it wasn’t sticking too far out of the ground, but that’s something we’re going to have to dig up at some point. Maybe. Depends on how big it is, underground!
Here are the before photos.
Right now, the garden area is split by the section we covered with straw to mulch it, used some RoundUp when things started to grow through the mulch, then covered with tarps, that I worked around. That is where we are hoping to be able to start planting something next year. I also tried to get into those trees my mother left growing when she transplanted her raspberry bushes, as much as I could.
Here is what it looks like now.
Did I mention it was rough in there?
This picture barely begins to show how rough it was! It’s hard to grasp from the photo, just how big that hill in the foreground is. When this area was last plowed, this is where the tractor turned, so there are huge ridges all over.
If the weather continues to hold tomorrow, I want to work on mowing between the trees in the maple grove, plus the area leading from the big garden to the gate. My mother said she planted elms in there, so the area had not been mowed, but I see no signs of them.
And now I have to try and get the burrs out of my pant legs.
The Re-Farmer
Despite a very foggy, moist start to the day, it dried up enough that I got to use my new toy; the push mower my awesome brother fixed for me.
I love his work-around for the seized throttle cable.
Continue readingInsects count as critters, right?
While walking the beach not long ago, there were a surprising number of lady beetles all over.
So many, in fact, in some places, it was impossible not to step on any.
I also saw a couple of these guys…
At first, I thought this one was dead. Especially when a wave reached its wings and it didn’t move. It wasn’t dead, though, and I was able to move it a short distance, where the waves could no longer reach it.
Have I mentioned before, that I have the most awesome brother?
Maybe just a few times.
Because it’s true!
After spending about 6 or 7 hours working on the garage door, while packing up his tools, he remembered he also wanted to fit the headlight on my van.
We burn lights out on the van rather quickly; there seems to be an electrical problem in the system. My driver’s side low beam bulb was burnt out again, but the passenger side low beam light would sometimes be on, sometimes be off.
When I bought a new bulb, I got a pair of them to replace both bulbs. While changing the bulb on the passenger side, I discovered why it was doing the flicky thing.
A wire was breaking. While changing the bulb, it finally broke completely.
There was not a lot of wire to work with there, but when I sent a photo to my brother, he said he thought he could fix it.
And he did.
After stripping, cleaning and tinning the wires, he slipped a piece of shrink wrap over one wire, then soldered the exposed ends together. There wasn’t enough wire available to twist them together, as I would normally have thought to do. I couldn’t even help him, other than to hold a light for him, because there was just no room for more fingers in there! He managed to hold the wires together, while also holding the hot soldering iron in one hand, soldering wire in the other.
The shrink material has adhesive on the inside, so after using a heat gun on it to shrink it, it formed a permanent, water tight seal.
Which didn’t stop him from also adding some electric tape around it, too!
There used to be a both soldering irons and soldering guns here, and while packing things up and looking around, I have found soldering wire, but that’s it. I do have my own soldering iron; just a tiny thing that’s part of a wood burning kit. This is one thing I might have been able to do on my own, and now that I’ve seen it done, I know I can. I don’t have the shrink wrap or a heat gun, so I couldn’t do that part, though.
The main thing is, I now have two working headlights again! :-)
The Re-Farmer
I’ll start with the things I found today. :-)
The first thing I found this morning was a Pump Shack kitten! After opening up the sun room to let the other kittens out and get some cat kibble, I turned to find him at the door, waiting to see if he could sneak past me for some food!
He never did come in while I was there, but after I put food out by the junk pile and pump shack, I came back to find him, with Junk Pile kitten and Rosencrantz (his mom), sharing food with Doom Guy and Keith.
We rarely see Rosencrantz these days, and we haven’t seen Guildenstern in ages. Same with Jim, Bobby and Rolando Moon. I hope they are okay, wherever they are.
While checking the yard for any fallen branches or damage, I found…
One of the tree mushrooms had fallen.
That thing is really big!
I looked around for the others I’d spotted a few days back; they are not only still there, but bigger than ever. All this rain is definitely mushroom weather!
The final find of the day was something my daughter had to point out to me, or I would have missed it entirely.
During the night, I kept hearing the kittens getting onto the dining table, where they are not allowed to be. In coming out to chase them off, they were usually already down, but I could see the cords from our ceiling fan swinging. They were getting on the table to try and play with them!
A friend of mine has had success with using aluminum foil to get her cats from doing where they are not supposed to, so I figured I’d give it a try, leaving sheets of them in front of each chair that they are using to get onto the table.
As you can see by the paw prints, it didn’t work!
Another find I made was a few days ago, during my rare times to the basement. I needed a washer of a particular size and hoped I could find one among the various drawers and cabinets down there.
I found this.
The old syringe my dad used to use to treat cattle. I remember it used to be stored in a case, together with needles of various sizes, but there is only the syringe, now. Check out the inner chamber, that would be sterilized and reused, again and again – as did the needles! They certainly don’t make them like this, anymore!
Interestingly, we found these just the next day.
I found them with my feet. These are the sorts of medicine bottles that would have been used with that syringe.
Knowing my brother was coming with some wheels to try on the old trailer frame in the hay yard by the barn, my daughter and I went to pull it out of the grass. It’s really heavy, so we were not going to be able to drag it out of the old hay yard, through the barn, and into the outer yard, as I’d hope we might be able to, but we didn’t want to just leave it in the grass again, either. Leaning against the barn were some old tires, so I dragged several out to put under the frame. While pulling out the first tire, I stepped on something that my foot slipped on, and found an old medicine bottle, half buried in the dirt. I moved it aside but when I came back for the next tire, I stepped on another one!
We took them into the barn. I don’t know what we’ll do with them, but I want to keep these! :-D
The Re-Farmer
The last couple of days have been very, very wet! :-D First, we had a series of thunderstorms that lasted all day Friday and on through the night. On Saturday, we were no longer getting thunderstorm warnings, but we were still getting weather warnings for heavy rain.
As usual, the weather systems were more to the north and south of us, but we did still get quite the light show, and a lot of rain.
Oh, and our internet cut out.
Repeatedly.
So I have some catching up to do!
The rain and damp did not stop my amazing, fantastic, wonderful brother from coming out to fix our garage door!
I honestly thought it wasn’t going to happen, and we’d need to get a new one – something we certainly cannot afford – but he found a way!
Have I mentioned my brother is amazing?
Continue readingOne good thing about living in the middle of nowhere. When I see a snake on the gravel road, I can stop and shoo it off.
It’s that time of year when the garter snakes are heading north to the dens where they spend the winters. Sadly, many never make it as they try and cross the roads. Especially on the highways. It’s almost impossible to avoid them. Often, they can’t even be seen until it’s too late to even try.
