Author: Re-Farmer

That worked out unexpectedly well!

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First, the cuteness!

I just got back home again and spotted Poirot in with her babies, and had to pause for this.

I actually couldn’t see the little black one until viewing these files on my desktop! The little voidling disappears into the void of his mother’s fur. 😁

Last night, I remembered that we hadn’t done my mother’s monthly blook work yet, and that she had a fasting blood test to do as well. I made arrangements with her to come over this morning, aiming to get her to the lab, which is just a few blocks from her place, as early as possible, so she wouldn’t have to keep fasting for so long.

I ended up having a ridiculously early morning. I’ve been waking up as the days get light, which means I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier for a while now! This morning, it was about 5:30am, and I didn’t need to get up until later. While in the washroom, though, I heard suspect kitten noises, so I got a daughter to join me to check on them while feeding them. It’s much easier to get wet cat food to the kittens with a second person! I still had to close up the inner door on the sun room to let the babies have a chance to eat. Poirot and Brussel had left when I started dispensing the kibble, with Poirot heading off somewhere in the outer yard. Caramel’s kittens were in the cat house, of course, so I tucked their tray into the entry, hoping they would find it and eat before the other cats discovered it. I have noticed that the other adult cats don’t go into the cat house at all, now that the babies are in there, which is good.

By the time I finished my rounds, Poirot was back and at the sun room door, wanting in but too scared to let me come close and open it for her. It doesn’t actually close all the way; things have shifted too much over the winter. It jams onto the threshold enough to stay closed, but if a cat were to push against it, it opens – something some of the other cats have already figured out!

I headed out to my mother’s for about 8:30am. As I parked and headed in, I saw someone leaving and immediately thought it was probably the health care worker. Sure enough, I was right; I had just missed her. My mother remembered not to have breakfast with her pills, which was good. She was all dressed and ready to go, too… including a grocery list! Which I was happy to see, as I forgot to suggest I could do her grocery shopping while I was there. We had time to go over her list and the new flier. Whole chicken was on an excellent sale and she was okay with getting one, which made me happy. She is not getting enough protein, and we all need more protein as we get older.

That done, we headed to the lab in the hospital. She was the only one there, so they were able to take her in and get it done very quickly. So quickly, she actually complained as I was helping her out of the chair, that everyone is in such a hurry! The technician didn’t actually hurry, but was efficient in doing a very basic blood draw, but for someone who struggles just to get in and out of their slightly higher chair, I’m sure it feels way too fast!

Since she was out and about, and in need of breakfast, I suggested we try out the newly renovated and re-opened restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to for some time. Even when they were still closed and very much under renovation, she tried to get me to stop and go inside to see if they were open yet. 😄 I drove past it on the way to her place, so I knew it was open for breakfast. She happily agreed, but was then surprised when I drove to the highway. She wanted to go to the “new” restaurant, and this building has been there for a long time.

???

She then told me her neighbours were talking about a new restaurant. This was the only one that I knew about.

With the new renovations, this place now has a wheelchair ramp, but no automatic doors, which I found a bit odd. If I had not been there with her, my mother would have had a very hard time getting in on her own. They are clearly not completely finished with their plans, with dining tables in only one half of the space. Tables spaced nice and far apart, with plenty of room for someone to get through with a walker, even if there were people sitting in the chairs. At this time, though, there was only one occupied table.

We had a basic eggs, hashbrowns, meat (I had sausage, my mother had bacon) and toast breakfast. It was quite good, and the portions generous. Given that my mother was literally breaking her fast, she was quite hungry, so that worked out very well.

More people came in while we were eating and, my mother being my mother, she started talking to people at the other tables. As I was coming back from paying the bill, I caught the tail end of someone explain to Mom about the new restaurant she had been hearing about. It turns out it was more like a canteen in the rec centre that is only open a few days a week. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!

Once we were done there, I took my mother home, since she was clearly getting pretty tired. When we got to her door, though, we found something in front of it.

A reusable grocery bag with a card in an envelop sticking out of it.

My immediate thought went to our vandal, while my mother started listing off all sorts of other possibilities.

I was right. Our vandal and come by and, with my mother away, had left things at the door for her.

My mother was so tired, she settled into her chair without pausing to take her jacket off. The bag turned out to have four mini fruit pies in it. I opened the card for her, too. It was a mother’s day card, and she was quite delighted by the chickadees pictures on the front. I opened it up and there was a note written inside from our vandal. It was from both him and his wife, though clearly his handwriting. The note was a brief mention about something his “cancer counsellor” told him. It was unusually benign, which suggests to me his wife actually saw and knew about the card, though it still reeked of manipulation. Other cards and letters he has left with her were typically quite nasty.

My mother was too enamored by the pretty chickadees to notice or care.

Once she was settled and comfortable, I headed out with her shopping list. I also needed to go to the post office, which is almost directly across the street from the grocery store, so I parked at the grocery store, then grabbed the envelopes to walk across and mail them, first.

I immediately noticed a very familiar looking vehicle.

While I was getting the envelopes out, I saw our vandal getting into it. My mother and I must have just missed him at her place by minutes!

As I walked across to the post office, he left the parking lot and I was concerned that he might have seen and recognized me, and would decide to go back to my mother’s again. So I got things mailed and did the shopping quickly. Not that it would have taken long, anyhow; my mother’s shopping lists are not long.

When I got back to my mother’s place with her shopping, the first thing I asked was if everything was okay. She was surprised to see me back so quickly – she hasn’t even taken her jacket off, yet! I explained to her about seeing our vandal and that I was concerned he would come back, if he’d seen me.

Then we promptly forgot all about him.

After the groceries were put away, I stayed longer to do a bit of housekeeping for her. There wasn’t much she needed done, so I was soon on my way home.

It was actually quite disorienting to realize it was not even 11:30 when I left.

By this time, things were starting to get quite hot, and the high winds were in full force. Our expected high of 27C/81F has been dropped to 25C/77F, which we are at right now and are expected to stay at for several more hours.

When I got home, I had to check on the raised bed covers, and they are all holding up to the wind. The portable greenhouse, however, is not doing as well. We had to tie the door open, as it was over 50C/122F in there. The door faces the house, and the wind is from the south, so at least the doorway is sheltered, but plastic covering the frame is still ballooning. At some point, the ties for the door came loose, so it was flapping. My husband’s window faces it, so he was able to let us know and my daughter fixed it. She ended up draping a broken hose over it, and pushed the cat trap right against one side of it, to try and reduce the ballooning. That actually helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, the plastic around the doorway is starting to tear. Where it’s attached to the zipper already had some tears, and that’s gotten much worse, but even at one corner, where the tie down loop is, has started to tear.

*sigh*

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but I really was hoping it would hold out longer. At least the roof and three sides are still holding out. It’s just the side with the doorway. We’ll still be able to make it work out.

It’s getting time to feed the outside cats for the evening, so I’ll be heading outside to check on things soon. With this wind and heat, though, there is no way I’ll be able to continue clearing out the garden bed I started on, yesterday. The high winds are supposed to continue through the night, but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler (as in, just under 20C/68C) and the winds are supposed to die down by then, so I should be able to finish clearing that bed then. I have decided that I will plant peas down the middle of this bed, and potatoes on either side. Once the bed is clear, I will set up posts to hold trellis netting down the middle, then get netting on it right away, so that’s over and done with, before planting anything. If things go smoothly, I should be able to get the peas and potatoes planted by the end of the day.

If things go smoothly.

I don’t really count on that. 😄

Now to go feed some kitties and check for wind damage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: prepping a bed, and walnut finally planted

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Finally!

I got that poor little walnut sapling planted!

The seeds still need to be done, but they are not as urgent.

I had debated where to plant the sapling, and decided to plant is to the south of the ash tree. This location is almost straight out from the gate by the fire pit, so if we need to, it would be fairly easy to get a hose out to it. It’s also closer to the ash tree than the Korean Pine that got drowned out. When things were at their wettest, this area did get wet, but not to the point of standing water.

Here is how it went.

In the first photo, you can see the area is thick with dead thatch. I actually started out by pulling a lot of it out by hand, around the marker, before going over it again with a rake. In the second photo, you can see it after the raking. The dead grass I raked up is basically hay, so I set it aside to use as a mulch, later.

The next step was to dig out the sod around the marker. Since a sapling is going into here, I dug it wider than I would need to do if I were planting a seed.

Of course, I hit rocks.

After removing wedges of sod to the side, I dug around to loosen the soil and get it a bit deeper. Which wasn’t very deep before I started kitting gravel. Quite a while was spent finding and removing the flat pieces of rock that you can see in the next photo. These would all be from a single piece of limestone that fractured in layers, which is very typical. There was also a big chunk of granite.

The soil here is very black, very sticky and very heavy! It wanted to stick to my spade like clay.

After digging down as much as I intended to – just to the gravel layer – I went through the chunks of sod to remove any larger roots, and to loosen them up a pit. Then, leaving them upside down, I put them back into the hole, slightly beyond the edge, so the points of the wedges all sort of sunk downwards. Then a hacked at the sod around the middle with a hoe to loosen more soil and refill the hollow in the centre a bit. On top of that, I added about half of the soil I brought. My brother had a leftover bag of soil he passed on to me. After reading the label, I decided to use that instead of making our own mix.

I then used about half of the container of water I brought to water the hole before planting the walnut sapling. I wanted to make sure it would be slightly higher than what the ground level was when I started, but also wanted to make it so any rain would drain towards the middle before getting absorbed by the soil. I’d brought a collar to put around the sapling as well, which will help with both keeping it slightly higher, and also allowing water to percolate into the soil slowly around the sapling itself, rather than draining away and eroding the soil away from the transplant.

Then, since I had these handy flat rocks I needed to do something with, I set them around the sapling, on the upturned pieces of sod. This would both direct water flow towards the sapling and keep any grass or weeds from coming up around it. While this area gets pretty wet at times, we tend to have more drought conditions than flooding conditions, overall.

The marker was placed near the sapling. I forgot to bring something to gently secure the sapling to the marker, to keep it upright. Something I will want to do sooner rather than later, to keep it secure in place until its roots become established.

Last of all, the raked up hay/dried grass was set around the collar to act as a mulch. I ran out, but it was just a matter of raking nearby to get more.

Little by little, over the next while, we’ll get those walnut seeds planted at the other markers. For those, at least, they won’t need as large a hole to be dug!

After that was done, I decided to finally work on one of the garden beds that was being solarized.

Ha!

That didn’t quite work.

The thing with solarizations is, the plastic has to have direct contact with the soil. It needs to be held down tightly. Which we weren’t able to do – and with this bed, it just became a greenhouse for weeds!

In the first picture, you can see how “puffy” the plastic looks, as it gets lifted by the greenery below.

The second picture shows how completely overgrown this bed had gotten! It is mostly dandelions – which were even blooming on the north end of the bed, where it gets longer sunshine.

This bed has had a few years of amendments to it, and was completely reworked last spring, so the soil would be nice and loose. Between that and how large the weeds were, it was going to be a lot easier to clean it up than it looked! The first thing to do was go over the entire bed with a garden fork to loosen the soil and root systems. Once that was done, I brought out my little hand cultivator to loosen it more, so I could remove as much of the root systems as possible. Along with the dandelion tap roots, there were some crab grass rhizomes, and waaaayyyy too much Creeping Charlie. Creeping Charlie roots really do creep, mostly near the surface of the soil, as it spreads. These mats of roots would even get all caught up in my hand cultivator, making it easier to get them out. Unfortunately, even the tiniest remaining root can start growing and spreading, but at least I could get the bulk of it out!

While working on this, I disturbed a surprising number of frogs, and even a Wooly Bear!

With the bed so low to the ground, though, this was an uncomfortable and painful job. I brought over the rolling seat, which helped, but I was only up to weeding one side. Since this is all infested with Creeping Charlie roots, it all went into a wheelbarrow to add to the burn pile, rather than to compost.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll finish the other half of the bed and get it planted. I have decided

The caterpillar was something I ended up picking up and moving. My apologies for the terrible picture, but it was in the leaf litter under the nearby black currant bush, and I had to zoom in quite a bit!

The frog in the next picture was really tiny, so I caught that one and moved it, too. The others I disturbed were larger, and I left them to hop out of the way on their own!

By the time I was done, it was time to feed the outside cats for the evening. With giving the littles wet cat food, what I end up doing is chasing out the adult cats and closing up the door to the sun room, to give them a chance to eat. With Caramel and her babies, I set a bowl with both wet and dry cat food inside the entry to the cat house – and spotted Caramel peaking at me from around the opening inside! I couldn’t see her babies but, when looking through the window next to the entrance, I couldn’t see her babies in their cat bed, either. I went to the other window, where I could see Caramel from the other side, and could just spot her darker kitten half under her, waiting. She was already bringing her babies to the entry, expecting food for them! This is a good sign!

While tending to the kittens in the sun room, I noticed Kale’s front leg had a scab fall off, so I got a daughter to bring the cat safe polysporin to put on the leg. It’s not bleeding, and the wound is closing up, but there is still a chance of infection. There is also the wound on her back leg but, right now, there just seems to be a spot of matted fur. My daughter had to look at it while I tried to hold on to a squirming Kale. She thinks the matting is from dried puss, but she can’t see anything other than the matted fur right now. The wound there seems to have closed up. We can’t say for sure what caused these wounds, but I still think it was from being excessively licked after some squeeze treat accidentally dripped onto her while I was giving it to Brussel.

That done, I was glad to get inside and sit down to the supper my daughter had made for me – but did remember to call my mother, first. I’ve been forgetting to take her in for her monthly blood work. This time, she’s also got a requisition for fasting blood work. We are now arranged for me to take her to the lab when they open at 9am, so that she won’t have to wait too long before eating. When I told her not to eat anything with her morning pills, she told me that she would stop eating for the rest of today; the home care aid for her suppertime meds had left just before I called. I told her she could still have a snack before bed or something; just not breakfast. It seems she’s gotten it into her head that it’s somehow a morally superior thing to not eat for the rest of this evening, too. That would be way too long for her to go without eating!

I remembered to ask her about her new prescription painkillers, to find out if she’d taken them before bed, as I’d suggested, and how they worked. It turned out she hadn’t taken any at all, but was feeling enough pain that she was just about to. I’m glad I asked about it, because she thought that she was supposed to take 2 tablets at a time, “as needed”. The actual instructions are to take 1 tablet, twice a day, as needed. As we went over the instructions again, she started saying that maybe she should not take them at all until she finished her other ones – the extra strength Tylenol she normally takes. I had to explain to her that she could take both; that if, for some reason, she had taken her prescription painkillers twice, but was still feeling pain, she could safely take a Tylenol, because they are in the same family of painkillers (which is the same thing for me, with the different painkillers I’ve been tried on so far). While I was trying to explain that if she had taken the prescription painkillers, she kept interrupting me to tell me that she hasn’t taken any at all. I’d say again, yes, I know, but IF you had taken them… I haven’t taken any of them! she would tell me, again and again, cutting me off before I could finish what I was trying to explain to her! I did finally finish what I was trying to say but, by then, I’m not sure she was still following me along, or if her mind had already gone somewhere else.

So… I think she was still going to take one after we were done on the phone, and knew that she could take a second one before she went to bed if she needed to, but I am not sure what she will actually do.

She also brought up, in the middle of everything else, that she has been having troubles with her headaches and her chest. I had to ask her what she meant by her “chest”. Oh, you know… my head and my chest…

No, Mom. I don’t know! I understand headaches, but what to you mean by chest?

I had to clarify, because sometimes she complains about different physical pains in her chest, but sometimes, she means her breathing.

It turned out she meant her breathing.

I asked if she was seeing any swelling in her legs.

Oh, yes… but it’s my chest that’s the problem.

*sigh*

She then started saying that she’s fine if she is just sitting, but when she walks around, she starts having trouble breathing.

So I had to explain to her again, the doctors warned her that if she has swelling in her legs and has trouble breathing, she might need to go back to the hospital. She couldn’t make the connection between the swelling and her breathing, so I explained again that if she has swelling in her legs, that means her body is holding water, and she might have water in her lungs, too. She then wondered how this could be happening, with all the pills she’s taking.

*sigh*

She has somehow convinced herself that, because she is taking soooo many pills, she should never get sick with anything. I told her that there is only one pill she is taking that has anything to do with her swelling, and that’s her water pill. The other pills are for different things, and none of them are specifically about breathing.

We’ve had similar conversations many times, so I expect she will have forgotten it already. I did suggest that she ask the home care aid to check the swelling on her legs tonight; the last time I was there and she said she had swollen legs, when she showed them to me, they weren’t swollen at all. She actually had sagging skin, which suggests that she did have swelling recently, but it had gone down by the time I was there to see, one way or the other.

The home care office is closed, but I’ll call up the case coordinator and leave a message with her. She was at the meeting with the doctor in the hospital before my mother was discharged, so she is aware of what we were told to watch out for.

The lab I’ll be taking her to, tomorrow, is in the local hospital. Which isn’t really a hospital, since they don’t have the doctors to actually do anything, but there are Nurse Practitioners in the clinic in the same building. That’s where she had gone when they saw that she needed to be hospitalized, and she was transferred to a hospital that has actual doctors, a functioning emergency room and can admit patients.

At this point, my mother being hospitalized again could actually be another of those “blessings in disguise” when it comes to getting her into some sort of assisted living or long term care situation, like she wants so much. With the updates to her panel application for long term care, it might just be enough to get her in.

We shall see how that works out!

The Re-Farmer

So many bebehs!

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By the time I was done with my morning rounds and garden stuff, the kittens had eaten their fill and were ready for naps!

The first picture was taken just as I was starting to feed the outside cats. Poirot quickly left her babies to go eat, and I could sneak a peak.

Three tiny grublings, all piled together!

Poirot is still very nervous when I’m around, and scared to go into the sun room while I’m going in and out, so it took a while for her to discover the food bowl I set up, just for her, in front of her carrier nest, with both wet and dry cat food. Hopefully, she will pick up on the routine and learn that she can stay with her babies, and will get her very own food that doesn’t involve fighting over it with other cats!

I did have to hang out in the sun room for a while to make sure The Grink in particular didn’t eat up the other wet cat food, before the bitter kittens got to eat. The one kitten that was returned to the creche is also still new to the routine, and it took some time for it to discover a food bowl and dive in.

The second picture is of the bigger kittens in a food coma. The three white and greys are easy to stop. We’ve got Eyelet and Grommet… What should be name the third one? I’m thinking Zipper or Buckle to stay with the theme. 😄

In the middle of the three mostly white kittens is Caramel’s little grubling, who is starting to get into the solid food a lot more. She’s actually smaller than her siblings that Caramel has with her in the cat house, I think.

She needs a name. The girls have come up with something, but it’s more like me calling them grublings than a name, and I can’t remember what it is.

You can see Kale the calico in the foreground, using her brother as a pillow – you can just see his black and white hind end sticking out from under her!

We had started calling him Oofus the Brave (a play on something my husband has said), but the girls felt it didn’t suit him very well. So he is now Sir Robin the Brave. 😄

Which means that, at this moment, we have a total of 9 kittens in the sun room, plus two in the cat house, that have an excellent chance of being socialized, then spayed and neutered!! Hopefully, their moms as well. It’s really unusual to have two really feral moms that chose to have their babies at the house! They may not be socialized, but they do seem to at least understand that they are safer close to us than wherever they’ve been finding nests in the outer yard.

I’ll call that progress.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: where the sprouts are!

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It was a very calm morning, with almost no wind, so this was a good time to water the plastic covered winter sown beds.

The first image is under the cover of the low raised bed in the East yard. This one has a root vegetable mix of seeds, plus 1 type of lettuce and onion seeds. There are a lot of sprouts in there! I’m guessing mostly radish and beets. I’m not seeing signs of carrots or onions sprouting, but it’s really hard to tell at this point.

This bed was getting the most difficult to tend to with the high winds, so when I took the cover off to water it, I spent a lot of time securing the plastic after the cover was put back on. The plastic on all the beds is meant to be there only until the plants establish themselves and don’t need as much warmth or protection. It will likely be replaced with netting later in the season. So securing the plastic involves a lot of rolling and carefully tucking under the frame. With this one, that also meant completely redoing how it was weighted down on top. Hopefully, it will hold. We’re expecting high winds again, in a few days.

There wasn’t much to see in the high raised bed or the ground level bed with mixed flowers in it. There are sprouts, but not very many. The main thing is, they are no longer being dried out by the wind, nor dug into by the cats!

The next picture is of the old kitchen bed. There is quite a bit of spinach coming up in there, and I can even see tiny onion sprouts. The cluster of larger leaves visible came up very early and I thought it had to be a missed onion from last year, but now I can see that these are most definitely garlic. We had garlic planted in here, two years ago! I did try to pull things that were most obviously weeds – crab grass and dandelions – but only if I could do so without disturbing any seedlings, so there wasn’t a lot I could pull.

The other winter sown beds got watered as well. I think the summer squash bed, and the end of the garlic bed, are lost causes. The only things coming up in the summer squash bed is clearly not summer squash, and the few feet of the garlic bed shows nothing at all. I don’t think they made it!

There are more sprouts coming up in the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, though still just the one pea shoot. This is the bed that has Dalvay shelling peas, a few King Tut purple, Royal Burgundy bush beans, Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflowers, a few black Montano Morado corn seeds, plus onion seeds. So there should be more pea seeds showing, as peas prefer to germinate in cooler soil. That suggests to me, most of the peas did not survive the winter. As for the sprouts I am seeing, about all I can say right now is that none of them are corn.

Unfortunately, while covering the bed with netting will protect it from the Chinese Elm seeds that are forming right now, the net only partially protects from the cats. There are a few smaller cats that are absolutely determined to get under the netting. Then, when I go to get them out, instead of leaving through the open space next to them that they got in on (the netting slides on the wire hoops), they run down the length of the bed, bashing themselves against the netting every now and then, in a panic. Or, like this morning, they simply climb on top of the netting and play on it! This set up wasn’t designed to actually hold that kind of weight, so quite a few of the wire hoops are now bent out of shape. It is really frustrating.

This bed is still made with temporary materials. Along the path side and ends is loose bricks. The chain link fence there are old boards to keep the soil from spilling through. When we finally have the materials to make it more permanent, we will need to keep protection in mind. It’s not enough to just cover it with netting to keep the elm seeds from smothering the bed, stop the cats from using it as a litter box, or keep the deer from eating whatever is grown there. We need the cover set up to be able to hold the weight of cats – we just can’t keep them from going right on top of any of the covers!

The cover that we have over the old kitchen garden bed is the one that was made using fence wire. When it was done, I swore I never wanted to work with that again! It’s so thick, I had to double up the frame on the sides to secure it in between, then double up the ends, just to keep it from falling apart. However, while it was on the high raised bed, I found it worked out really well, in that I could reach through the wire to tend to the bed, without having to remove it. The openings are not all the same size, though. It’s meant to be installed with the narrower openings at ground level to keep small critters out, while the larger openings at the top are all that’s needed to keep mid sized critters out. Which means there are spaces where I cannot fit my hands through, but I can still reach around from other openings.

The wire is also strong enough that no support hoops were needed. Not only can it hold itself up, but when the plastic was placed over it and the cats started jumping on it, it held their weight, too!

The cover that’s on the winter sown bed in the East yard is almost there. The hoops are strong enough to hold weight; especially now that I’ve secured them permanently, and they no longer slide through the pieces of metal strapping I used to hold them in place. I originally thought it would be useful to be able to remove the hoops at some point, but that potential convenience caused more problems than solved any. They do, however, still bend inwards, slightly. Particularly the ones at the ends.

The hoops are supporting a plastic mesh that is stiffer than netting, but more flexible and easier to work with than hardware cloth. As you can see in that first photo, it’s wide enough that it creates more shade, so this is a cover that would be idea to use for things like lettuces, which like more shade. The plastic mesh does sag when the cats jump on it. My plan is to add horizontal supports in between the hoops. These would keep the hoops at the ends from being pulled inwards, plus keep the plastic mesh from sagging downwards. I am hoping it will only need horizontal supports across the very top, but it might need more halfway up each side, too.

Once the plastic sheet is no longer needed, I will have to put something across the open ends, to keep the cats out. I have some black plastic mesh that should work out well, once I figure out how to secure it!

I don’t want to be spending too much time or effort on these covers, though. These were my first experimental raised bed covers. Now that I know how these have been working out, I plan to build new ones using better and stronger materials, taking into account what we have found works, or doesn’t work, with these ones. These ones still have a few years in them, though, and we will keep building more raised beds, so we will need more covers as time goes by.

Meanwhile, as I was watering the bed at the chain link fence, I took a good look at the haskap bushes.

*sigh*

I have one “Mr. Haskap” and two “Mrs. Haskap” bushes – cross pollinating varieties. With haskap, you need two varieties for cross pollination. The “Mrs. Haskap” is the Borealis variety. I can’t remember what the “Mr. Haskap” is, but that one still has its label, so I can check later.

Here is now they looked this morning.

The first image is the “male” haskap. It’s leafing out beautifully and, in the second picture, you can see it even has flower buds forming!

The next two photos are the “female” haskaps.

The larger one was bought at the same time as the Mr. Haskap and, at one point, I was sure that one had died. It has barely any leaves opening on it. The smaller one is still really small, even though it’s only one year behind the other two. At least it has more leaves, but still, they are way behind their pollinator variety! This is why, after all these years, we’ve never had more than a small handful of berries. They simply aren’t blooming at the same time long enough for proper pollination.

The varieties I have coming later in the month are Aurora (the pollinator) and Boreal Blizzard. These will be planted out in the food forest area, near where the apple and gooseberry just got planted. The Opal plum should be shipped at the same time as the haskap, and it will be planted in that area, too.

Hopefully, this will work out better than what we’ve got now, and we’ll finally have berries to eat! Two bushes should be enough to meet our needs; they are supposed to be quite productive. We’ve got three, and have barely had enough to taste.

At least we know we like them!

So that is how things were in the garden this morning. With today being a calm day, I hope to get back out there soon, and get some work done!

The Re-Farmer

Baby moving day and a visit to the doctor

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First, and update on Poirot and her babies.

We tried getting her to move into the cat cage. The babies were tucked into the cat cave, for darkness and warmth. We watched and could tell that she knew where they were, and I kept an eye on the critter cam. My older daughter, who works at night, checked as well, though there was no way to see if a black cat was in the darkness of the cat cave.

When I came out to do the morning feeding (waaayyy to early for me!), I took a peak and could see the babies. I pet them, mostly to make sure they were actually alive, and they immediately started crying for mama.

My daughter helped me with putting the food out, with me setting the dry kibble out first, to distract the other cats, while she split up a couple of cans of wet cat food for the babies, then passed them to me. I made sure to put some wet cat food inside the cat cage, but could not see Poirot anywhere.

So I continued my morning rounds and, while coming back from switching out memory cards at the gate cam, I spotted a whole bunch of cats following from a distance on the driveway.

Including Poirot.

I continued me rounds, hoping she would go to her babies in the sun room but, as I finished up, she was still outside. She just would not go to them.

So I decided to take the cat cave, babies still inside, and moved it back to the water bowl shelter, where she seemed to be hanging out the most. I even put some wet cat food inside the cat cave.

She did come over and stick her head in to eat, but would not go inside.

I hung around behind the cat house, watching her, but she just jumped onto the roof to eat, then back down again. I could hear her kittens crying, and she would stick her head in, but not go in all the way. Which you can see in the first image below.

Okay, so she doesn’t like the cat cave. I decided to take them out and put them on the cat bed she gave birth in, that was right beside it.

I then headed into the sun room and stood by the old kitchen door, messaging the family to update them.

Which is when Poirot suddenly ran into the sun room.

With something black in her mouth.

Her black kitten.

I froze and watched through the sides of my eyes so as not to scare her out. She brought the kitten to the set up just behind me, only to drop it. She tried again and dropped it again.

The way we have things set up in that area, we have a couple of plant stands of different heights in front of the mini greenhouse frame that is now used only by the cats. These are against one of the shelves that supports the platform, and where we store several open cat carriers for the cats to be comfortable and familiar with them. At the moment, there is one on the bottom shelf, and the cats keep pushing the door closed – not latched, but it doesn’t swing open on its own. There had been one the next shelf up, but we had to use it and it is now sitting directly on the floor, opposite the cat cage. I even toss a bit of kibble inside so the cats are comfortable going in and out of it. Then there is a cat carrier on the third shelf up, which is the shelf that supports the platform at that end. Because of the platform, it’s turned sideways, so the open doorway faces the top of the mini greenhouse.

That’s where we found the black kitten, yesterday evening. It has a cat blanket inside that the cats have managed to not drag out and onto the floor, like the other ones.

It was clear to me that Poirot was wanting to get to that carrier. After dropping her kitten yet again, it started crying loudly, so I took a chance. As soon as I moved, she backed away from her kitten, but not very far. I picked it up and put it into the carrier.

She immediately jumped up the shelves, into the carrier, and settled to nurse and groom her kitten.

At that point, I decided to give in. I went and got her other two kittens and brought them over. As I came close, she started hissing at me, but immediately stopped when I put a kitten in, and was grooming it before I could put the last one in. The kittens immediately went hunting for nip.

I then went and got some for the remaining wet cat food intended for her and put it in close enough that she could eat while her kittens continued to nurse. I then hung around and found things to do until I could see she had mostly finished eating.

I then went and got the last squeeze treat for her. She once again started hissing at me when I got close, but then she discovered the treat, and she started eating it. As with Brussel, once the tube it too empty to comfortably squeeze with one hand (I have to use my other hang to hang on to something, since I’m having to lean forward so much to reach the mama), I pulled it back, then squeezed the last of the treat out of the tube and onto my finger and thumb, then reached in again to let her lick the last of it off my fingers.

Which she did, without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Brussel was sitting in her spot by her kittens, under the platform, watching me. I had developed a routine of giving her a squeeze treat before going into the house, but I had none left. We did still have other donated treats; they look a bit like squares of chocolate. I opened a couple of them and broke them into their little squares. There was enough for me to scatter some for Brussel and her kittens, Poirot in her cat carrier, then around the kibble trays for any other cats that happened to still be around.

If you scroll through the Instagram post, you’ll see a video of a very happy Poirot.

The problem is, if the kittens ever squirm their way out of the carrier, which would not take much to do, there is a very real chance they’d fall to the concrete floor below. The girls and I are doing to use some of the cardboard I’ve set aside for the garden and sort of box the area in, so if they do get out, they’ll just be on cardboard, and there will be no gaps for them to fall through.

Poirot definitely won this battle! It would be safer for her to be in the cat cage and, especially, in the warmth of the cat cave, but being in a carrier is hardly a bad thing. I tried calling the rescue in the city the Cat Lady recommended to me, but there was no answer and no option to leave a message. If we can get through to them and they are in a position to taken in a mama and kittens, it will be much easier to do that with them already in a carrier!

So that was my morning adventure!

Once back inside and breakfasted up, it was still quite early, so I took advantage of it to lie down for about an hour. I’d say “take a nap”, but my phone’s notifications kept going off, so not much sleep was to be had.

My daughter’s appointment with the doctor was at 1:30, and we needed to be on the road by 12:30. We ended up leaving shortly after noon, instead, which gave me time to swing by the feed store in my mother’s town and pick up a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats.

Which I have forgotten in the truck… 😄

That done, we continued to our appointments. We were early, but not early enough to have lunch, first, so we just went in and waited. My appointment was at 2, and we both got called in about half an hour late.

The primary thing for both of us was to take care of the disability paperwork the doctor asked us to bring in. We’d already filled out our portions. For me, it was all about my osteoarthritis, which she listed as severe. At one point, I told her that it’s really hard for me to even think of being disabled. I mean, it’s just arthritis, right? Everyone gets arthritis, eventually (meaning OA, of course, not rheumatoid), right? Everyone gets sort feet, right? She just started laughing and shaking her head.

The forms ask about things like being able to walk and needing to use mobility aids (I did have to use a cane, just yesterday evening, which I haven’t needed to do in quite a while), and she listed canes, arm bars, hand rails and the bath chair, as well as sometimes needing to have someone else prepare food for me. What the paperwork doesn’t have a space for it specifically about hands. Just walking. While my walking is affected, my hands are really the more of an issue for me, as I have trouble turning door nobs, or being able to do things like hold a cup.

Which reminds me. We’re going to need to replace the door knob on our bathroom door with a lever style handle, sooner rather than later. As we were talking and she was filling in different parts of the form, I mentioned that I was diagnosed back in 2000, and was already using a cane before then, and she went back and added that in, too. I had checked off the box giving the okay to get retroactive disability payments, but I really don’t think that’ll happen all the way back to 2000!

Now, I fully expect us to both get rejected immediately. That happened with my husband. When he took the letter of rejection to his doctor, the doctor told him they always reject the first application. Just send it in again. Which we did, and my husband’s application was accepted the second time. Now, that was back in…. 2014? 2025? Somewhere around there. So we’ll see if that’s still the case. After the paperwork got the appropriate clinic stamp and scanned for our files, we got them back – after paying $50 each – and will need to mail them out ASAP.

Beyond that, we went over various things and talked about my meds. I’ve been bumped up from T2s to T3s.

I mentioned how I’ve started getting Charlie Horses again, now that I’m active outside more. I’m already taking the supplements that would help, and she suggested I add squats to my regimen. This would actually be quite difficult for me, since my knees are shot. My legs are already over developed, since muscle is the thing keeping them from bending in directions they are not designed to do, but doing squats (and stretches, but I am already doing that) should also help. Talking about it with my daughter, later, I’m not entirely sure how I would do them. My knees are simply not stable enough. We do have an exercise bike, so that might work, too. I will try doing squats, too, though. As long as I’ve got something I can grab on to for support, I might be okay.

Meanwhile, the doctor says she doesn’t need to see me for a follow up for 3 months, and wrote me up to get bloodwork done just before then. My daughter had more bloodwork done after her appointment, so she’s booked to come back next month.

We both had changes in prescriptions, so we messaged my husband to call the pharmacy and let them know to fill the faxes they would get, as we were on the way. This gave him a chance to add anything he needed for himself, but there wasn’t anything this time.

By the time we got to the pharmacy, it was letting late in the afternoon, and neither of us had had lunch. So we ended up getting some take out before heading home. It was late enough that I left my daughter to take things in and split up the food while I went out to do the evening cat feeding.

Poirot was still curled up with her babies in the cat carrier. She did growl a bit at me, until I put the food bowl down in front of her, just outside the carrier. Hopefully, we will have better luck at socializing her than we’ve had with Brussel. For all that she now expects to get the wet cat food and the treats, she still growls and attacks my hands. Aside from a couple of times I took advantage of proximity and managed to pet her, she does not like it when we get within reach, if it doesn’t involve food!

The bigger kittens, meanwhile, are all over the sun room. The third white and grey kitten is still there and joining the cuddle piles with its siblings – litter mates and adopted siblings alike!

The long days are really starting to throw me. It feels like it should be the middle of the day right now, and it’s getting past 6:30pm as I write this! We’re expected to drop to freezing, or even below freezing, tonight, so I’ll be heading out one more time to make sure the heat lamps are on, and the plants in the portable greenhouse are brought into the old kitchen for the night. Our temperatures are expected to lurch back and forth all over the place, from highs of near 30’sC/86’sF and lows of 12C/57F or higher, to much more pleasant daytime highs, but lows just barely above freezing again. We’ll be getting high winds again, soo, too.

Somewhere in there, I need to get all sorts of things done outside!

Ah, well. Spring does tend to be a very mercurial season! We just do the best we can.

What else can we do, right? 😁

The Re-Farmer

Not the day I planned

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But first, the cuteness.

While doing my rounds this morning, I tried to move Poirot’s kittens into the cat cage in the sun room. I set them into the cat cave in one of the cubes and waited, but Poirot would not go into the sun room. So, I eventually moved things around in the water bowl shelter.

I accidentally reposted the first picture, and Instagram won’t let me delete it. If you scroll through, you’ll see a video of mama getting wet cat food while her littles try to nurse.

After she was done eating and moved away, I first put them into a cat carrier set in the space between the three shelters. She went in, and when she came out, the white one was clinging to her side! It fell off and Poirot ran a short distance away, so I but the kitten back into the carrier, then took it into the sun room. I made sure she could see me moving them into the cat cage. I then went inside and monitored the critter cam.

She wouldn’t go in.

After while, I moved things around in the water bowl shelter, then took the kittens, still in the cat cave, and set that up in the water bowl shelter. My concern is, we’re supposed to get a couple of cold nights, and that shelter is too exposed. Inside the cat cave would, at least give them more protection.

She seemed to accept the new set up. When we did the evening feeding, she went to the kibble bowls, then had some of the wet cat food we gave her. This time, though, she didn’t finish it off, so it went elsewhere.

Just a little while ago, my older daughter came in to tell me she found the white and grey kitten on the floor in the sun room. The white kitten was still in the cat cave, and she was asking, how many did Poirot have? The black kitten was missing!

I ended up finding it in one of the cat carriers we keep in one of the shelves supporting the platform.

On the third level.

I really hope that kitten she found hadn’t fallen down from that height!!

I ended up setting the cat cave back into the cat cage. Today was another warm day, but with a cold wind. I think she was trying to find a warmer place for her babies. That carrier would have been okay, if it were at floor level, but she ignored the two that were at floor level!

So now I’m back to monitoring the critter cam.

Meanwhile, Brussel’s two are very active.

Gosh, Kale looks just like her mother!!!

Also, Oofus the Brave is now Sir Robin the Brave. 😄

While my daughter was helping feed the outside cats and taking the wet cat food to Poirot, she found a strange kitten!

It was one of Caramel’s. They are getting active enough to actually climb out of the cat house! We do have a board set up as a ramp, just for the little kittens to be able to get in and out.

So my daughter took one of the other food bowls for the kittens that wasn’t being used, and put it inside the entry to the cat house.

The kittens loved it!

When I took this picture, I saw the food was all gone, so I brought over the container of wet cat food that Poirot didn’t eat and switched bowls. Caramel and her kittens cleaned it all up!

Meanwhile, after my daughter told me about finding the kitten in the sun room, I went looking for the black kitten. We were concerned it might have crawled under something and couldn’t get out. While I was looking for it, I found something – or should I saw, someONE – else!

The missing mostly white kitten! I had seen the mother trying to lure away Eyelet last night, and was afraid they would be gone by morning, so I was relieved to see Eyelet and Grommet were still there. Now it seems the mama has brought her third baby back to the sanctuary of the sun room!

Now I just hope Poirot will join her babies in the cat cage. It’s the safest, warmest place for the babies. That forecast of 0C/32F in a couple of nights is now a forecast for -1C/30F

We shall see how things work out.

Meanwhile…

I was outside way earlier than I wanted to be, doing my morning rounds, and had intended to try and get a bit more sleep after breakfast.

It was shortly after 9 when my phone rang.

It was my mother, and she was in high dungeon.

The home care worker had shown up to do her morning med assist, but her Monday bubble pack was missing its morning pills. This is because, some time ago, my mother had gotten the extra bubble packs down from on top of her fridge and taken them herself. She didn’t follow the days, but just took from the top corner; the Monday morning position. Her extra bubble packs are now stored in the lock box. The home care workers make sure to take the meds from the correct day’s bubble, even if it ended up being in the middle of a pack – which drive my mother bonkers. End result is, now that she was almost finished her current set of bubble packs, the Monday bubble was empty, and the home care worker refused to take them from another day.

It was difficult to understand my mother, as she was in rant mode and all over the place, but from what I got out of her, there was an old bubble pack that had just one day’s meds in it, and the home care worker could have given my mother that, but it was a Friday set of pills, not a Monday. So my mother didn’t get her pills this morning, and she was really angry about it. I asked if she wanted me to come in, and she said no. She didn’t want me driving all that way.

Her refills were to be delivered today, but she said they deliver after the pharmacy is closed, so that would be after her supper time med assist.

I told my mother I would call the home care case coordinator and talk to her about the situation, then call my mother back. I actually had to hang up on my mother because she started basically shouting “stupid, stupid, stupid” over and over again when I’d already said my goodbyes and told her I would call bac soon.

When I called the home care office, the case coordinator answered after the first ring. She was obviously expecting my call!

We talked about the situation and she confirmed what I already tried to explain to my mother (and the care aid did, too). They absolutely have to go by the days and times on the bubble packs, because some people take different pills on different days. The home care aids aren’t trained on the medications themselves. They just have to follow the care plan.

Then she told me she wanted to get together with me to go over my mother’s panel for long term care. Things have changed, and the paperwork needed to reflect that. So we made an appointment for this afternoon.

I then called my mother back.

She was in a completely different mindset, and was actually pleasant on the phone.

As we were talking, I decided I needed to get her meds, rather than wait for delivery. I told her I had an appointment in her town, so I would leave early, get her meds, drop them off and go to my appointment.

Once that was arranged, there really wasn’t anything of note I could start working on in the time period before I had to leave, so I ended up leaving even earlier than needed. I got her refills, which were already in the delivery area. It ended up costing over $200 (her pills are so cheap!), so I took care of that, then headed to my mother’s. She did pay me back.

The first thing I did was confirm that her new painkiller prescription was in. She told me that, after the doctor suggested it, she started using the topical painkiller she uses on her knees, on her back. Between that and Tylenol, she’s fine. But she also complained about waking up in so much pain, she couldn’t move to even reach her painkillers, so… I’m not even going to try and figure it out.

I opened up the lock box to put her bubble packs in, which is when I found out she still had pills for the rest of today, and tomorrow morning. She started telling me how she had told the care worker to just give her the pills for tomorrow morning, and started to get all angry again.

That was much of my time with my mother today. She would go from calm and normal speech, to getting really angry about something – but was associating thing with other things that are completely disassociated!

After a while, I got a message from my daughter. The case coordinator had call the farm to let me know she was available early. So I said my goodbyes and headed out right away.

When I got there, we updated each other on what happened this morning. It turns out the care worker had called the case coordinator from my mother’s place and she could actually hear my mother start to yell at the care worker.

The sad thing is, these home care aids probably deal with much worse in other homes!

We went through the entire panel for both physical and cognitive areas. Some of the questions are hard to answer, because we’re simply not with her to hear or see her engaging in the behaviour.

Along the way, I did tell her about what our vandal has been doing, since it does affect my mother’s health.

That reminds me; apparently, the last time he spoke with her, he said she had called the police on him and wanted to put him in jail. Which she never did, but he believes it.

By the end of it, the case coordinator told me she would go through it all and sort through the information to make sure they got to the right spots. With how my mother has been behaving, it’s looking like she may have crossed the threshold they need to get her into long term care/assisted living. I do hope it works out that way, because my mother really shouldn’t be living alone. As I was getting ready to leave, my mother was again saying how much she wanted to live in the long term care home so many of her old friends, her sister and my father, lived out their last days. I told her to take whatever comes available, just to get into the system! She can get into where she wants to be, later.

All of which has been very long and mentally exhausting. I’m literally falling asleep at my keyboard as, I type this, and have been correcting some of the craziest typos, and more than a few weird sentences!!! I’m hoping to get to bed early today. Tomorrow afternoon, my daughter and I have doctor’s appointments. We’ll both have the paperwork the doctor asked us to bring in, to start the application for disability.

Which means another day of delay with the stuff I want to get done as quickly as possible!

Ah, well. Such is life, eh?

I will be calling it a night soon, though. I’ll just make one more walkabout outside to check on things, then start heading to bed.

I am so…

…so…

…so…

…tired.

The Re-Farmer

New baby update

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After the heat of yesterday, this morning felt almost cold, at 16C/61F!

One of my goals with the new babies is to try and get them and their mama into the cat cage in the sun room. While setting out the kibble, Poirot joined the crowd on the cat house roof to eat, giving me a chance to see her babies in the cat bed.

I had already prepared bowls of wet cat food for the sun room kitties, and for Poirot. Once the cats were distracted with eating kibble outside, I closed up the inner door to the sun room (sort of; it doesn’t close completely without being forced) so the kittens and Brussel could have their wet cat food. Then I set things up in the cat cage, returning the cat cave into one of the bottom cubes. I’m hoping a nice, dark cave will be accepted by Poirot after we move her babies into it. When I was done, however, she was back with the babies and nursing them, so I just brought over her container of wet cat food. She was not happy with me coming close, but once the bowl was close enough, she devoured the food.

I hung around a bit to make sure the other cats didn’t come to steal her food before going back into the sun room and leaving the door open; the littles had eaten their fill by then. The other cats seemed to be ignoring Poirot and her babies, so I did the rest of my rounds, taking the time to water the winter sown beds that aren’t covered in plastic. By the time I got back to the house, Poirot had licked her bowl clean. She hissed at me when I moved it out. Before going in, I saw Brussel was tucked under the platform, on top of the cat cage, so I went to get our last two squeeze treats. Three of the littles were in the cat cage, so when Brussel wouldn’t come closer to have some treat, I was able to give a few squeezes to the babies. She did finally come closer to eat her treat. When the tube is almost empty, I squeeze the last of it out onto my finger and thumb, and she will lick that right off – then start growling at me for being too close!

I then went to give the last tube of treat to Poirot. When I came out, she was squeezing herself into the box covered part of the cat bed, getting her kittens in with her. I tried reaching in with the open squeeze treat, but I couldn’t see where her head was without lifting the top of the box (cats like to sit on it, so it’s bent). She was disturbed enough to start coming out of the box, at which point I practically shoved the squeeze treat to her mouth. Only then did she clue in that this was something good! I was able to give her most of the tube after that, but there was no chance of squeezing the last of it out only my fingers and letting her lick off the rest of it. That would have been pushing her tolerance too far! Stinky and Kohl were on the cat house roof while I was doing this, so they got the remains.

It’s not going to be easy to get Poirot into the cat cage. We were spoiled by Brussel actually giving birth in it, then willingly moving her babies into the shelter of the cat cave when we tucked into the cube next to her. Basically, I’ll have to wait until the kittens are alone, but Poirot is nearby enough to see me moving them. Tonight, we’re expecting a lot of 7C/45F, but tomorrow night we’re expecting a low of 0C/32F, so I really want to get them into a cozier shelter as soon as possible!

The Re-Farmer

Well, this heat was good for one thing! Plus, a surprise.

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My daughter and I headed outside for what was supposed to be one last check around the yard. That one raised bed cover needed more fussing with to keep the plastic from ballooning.

As we were finishing up, I asked her to go into the basement while I went to the ejector, so we could test it out. The septic pump had gone off not long ago, so I asked her to run the pump manually for just 30 seconds. My brother told me he’d left the cap off, in hopes it would warm up better in today’s heat.

Yes!!!! It’s working!!!

The stand pipe promptly got filled, because there is still ice on the bottom, but the venture pipe is finally clear! Every now and then, the water coming out would go completely black as it cleared settled gunk out.

My brother was so thrilled to hear the news!

Now, we just have to hope the warmer water flowing through will keep it from freezing up again, and actually help melt the ice in the stand pipe and the frozen ground, faster.

After messaging with my brother for a bit, I went to get a screwdriver to put the cap back on, forgetting that the screw on the elbow portion is a different size. So it was back to the house to get a smaller screwdriver and get it all put back together. My daughter, meanwhile, left the valve to the diverter closed. We’ll leave the diverter set up for a bit longer and, once we are sure it’s not going to freeze up again, we’ll store the pipes and hose used to direct the flow away from the house, then put a cap on the end of the pipe from the basement. With the valve installed, the diverter pipes in the basement can stay permanently, so if we ever had another emergency like this, all we would need to do is set things back up outside, then open the valve. Which, hopefully, we will never have to do again, but you never know, with this place!

While going back and forth to the house through the sun room, I made a sudden discovery.

With our water bowl shelter set up, we’d put a blanket in the back for cats to lie on. Then we added a couple of cardboard boxes, over time, just because cats love cardboard boxes. Plus, it would give them a bit more shelter from the elements, particularly in the winter.

This spring, while moving some of the cat beds around, I added one of them into the shelter, turning one of the boxes sideways and shoving half the cat bed into it, to create a sort of private cave. Something a mama might feel safe enough to have babies in, even. Not likely, considering the water bowls are in there, getting refilled a couple of times a day, and plenty of cat traffic, but you never know, right?

This afternoon, while topping up the water bowls, I spotted black fur on the cat bed, with the rest of the cat hidden by the box. My topping up the water bowl didn’t seem to disturb it, though, so I figured it was sleeping.

Well, apparently it wasn’t sleeping.

It was giving birth.

When going by this evening, I startled Poirot, and her new grublings!

It appears she has three. A white and black, a black with some white on the belly, and one that looks almost all white, but possibly with some cream patches, like Ghosty was when she was tiny.

After I was done putting the cap back on the ejector, I saw that Poirot was comfortably nursing, so I got a can of wet cat food for her. She is one of the more feral cats and doesn’t let us go near her, so I put it into a wider container, so I wouldn’t have to get too close for her comfort. She did start to get up, babies suddenly disturbed from nursing, and looked ready to either run away or go on the defense, but that gave me space to put the container into the cat bed with her.

I then stood guard to make sure no other cats went after her food while she was eating.

She must have been very hungry, because she ate the entire can and was licking the bowl clean before I could finally reach in and move it away.

We’re supposed to have some very cold nights coming up, so I’m hoping to perhaps move her and her babies into the cat cage.

While standing guard, I was hearing some maternal noises behind me. It was the white and grey mama.

She was trying to lure Eyelet away. Probably to wherever she has her third kitten hidden. I tried to discourage this and kept putting Eyelet back in the sun room. If she gets them away from the sun room, they won’t be getting their wet cat food anymore, and we won’t be able to socialize them. Well, Eyelet is quite happy with human attention. He brother is not!

Oh! I just thought of a good name for feisty brother!

Grommet!

Anyhow, I definitely would like to get them socialized, so they can be adopted out.

I’ve talked to the Cat Lady. This will be her last summer working with rescue. It has been taking a toll on her health, and she needs to back off. It’s a real struggle for her, as she’s been doing this since her teens, and she feels like she hasn’t made a difference. She says she will get three spays and a neuter for us over the summer, before she stops entirely. She also gave me the name of a no-kill rescue in the city she trusts that might be able to help out. This would get us on a wait list, but if we work on socializing the kittens, they might be able to have room to take them in for adoption by the time they are old enough to wean. So that’s a call I need to make, tomorrow.

Anyhow, finding Poirot just after she gave birth was a surprise. I suspected she was pregnant; the only reason we realized she was female was because I saw one of the other cats having his way with her. She didn’t look pregnant, though! She’s a fluffy cat, but not THAT fluffy, that we couldn’t see. I’ve even been looking at her, any time I’ve spotted her in the last while, trying to see if she was looking rounder or not, and deciding, not. Now she’s got three babies!

Meanwhile, I’ve moved the trap closer to the kibble house. I’ve even seen cats lounging in it – usually Syndol, who is already done! Now that it’s closer, and the overnight temps are warmer, I want to actually set the trap and see who we catch that isn’t already fixed. Tomorrow is Monday, so if we do one, Wednesday is the earliest we could get a cat to the clinic – if they can take us in on such short notice – because my daughter and I have medical appointments on Tuesday.

Here’s hoping!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty update, and… discovering unfortunate things

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With today’s heat, the cats have been splayed out in the shade absolutely everywhere!

The sun room thermometer was reading 30C/86F, which was actually the same as outside. The kittens were also puddled all over the place! I got the ceiling fan going, though, so that will help.

We spotted some excellent progress with the kittens!

They have discovered, and are using, the litter box! Something most of the adult cats haven’t figured out. So far, I’ve seen three of the four bigger kittens using it, including the adorable one above.

I had started calling this one Baby Button, because it reminds me of button so much. Today, my daughter came up with a much more entertaining name.

Eyelet.

So we now have Oofus the Brave and Eyelet named.

I checked on the cat house kittens. With today’s heat, I unplugged the power to the cat house, so the heat bulb will now be off, and so is the heated water bowl. Unless we drop below freezing overnight, we probably won’t need to plug it back in again.

I so wish we could reach into there! Once we have the chance, I want to cut a section out of the back wall and turn it into a door. That way, we can reach in and give them their own food and water, without having to lift the roof. The only other way to do it is through the entrance, which is at the opposite side of the cat house, and there is a sort of “porch” over what had been the original entrance. We can’t reach in very far, and other cats would just eat it first. These kittens look like they aren’t even leaving the cat bed yet, though they’re getting close.

My brother and his wife had come out again, today. I wasn’t expecting them at all and didn’t realize they were here until I went outside, just in time to see them leave!

With the message my brother got from our vandal yesterday, he wanted to talk to my mother about how our vandal found out they’d sold their property. He was too tired to visit her after hours working on that tree that fell on the outhouse, so he stopped by today.

Surprisingly, it actually turned out to be a good visit. He brought lunch, which turned out to be a good thing. My mother had gone to church, which tired her out enough that she went to sleep after, and she hadn’t eaten since whatever crackers she had when she got her med assist in the morning. After lunch, he set up my mother’s AC, in spite of her admonishing him that it’s too early, and then was all surprised that he got it done so quickly. He asked about the remote control so he could set it up, and she didn’t know where it was. He did some digging and finally found it, and was able to reprogram the default temperature on it. My mother does prefer things a lot warmer, as she gets older!

He did play the message our vandal had left him. My mother started going on about how he was the reason she moved away from the farm, because she was tired of his abusive behaviour (leaving my dad to be abused by him instead, but that’s another issue). Then she said that he keeps coming over and bringing her soup, and she tells him not to because his behaviour makes it taste bad.

She also said that the things he said in the message are much like what he says to her, and that he doesn’t let her get a word in when he’s there.

Yet… she doesn’t tell him to stop coming by.

When my brother asked about how our vandal knew they’d sold their property, she admitted that she might have mentioned it to him, a couple of weeks ago.

…

*sigh*

Then we found out that when he comes to visit my mother, when he walks down the hall, he tells everybody he meets all the accusations against me, my daughters and my brother about the farm and what he thinks we’re doing and saying. It turns out he even wrote out some long letter describing what he thinks we’re doing and left it in the common room. My mother didn’t see it until some time later and she tore it up. *sigh* She keeps all sorts of junk, but something important like this, and she tears it up!

Finding this out did explain something for my brother. While we was at his car and getting things to go inside, he started chatting with a guy that lives in my mother’s building. Not someone he’s met before. As they were talking and the guy realized he was my mother’s son, he said, “oh, so you’re the one who took the farm…”

My brother was so stunned and confused, he couldn’t say anything in response.

Now he knows why this guy said that.

The crazy thing is, the people in my mother’s building see me and recognize me. We’ve exchanged greetings and light conversation. I’m sure some of them have seen my brother, too. They know us.

So why would they believe the rantings and ravings of our vandal? Why would they even put up with him blathering at them in the common areas?

It’s getting to the point where I think I’m going to have to consult with a lawyer again. I’ve still got my Legal Shield membership, so any consultations are covered. It’s one thing for our vandal to be saying his crazy stuff about us to my mother or on phone messages. While I’ve suspected as much for some time, this is the first time it’s actually been confirmed that he is slandering us to others – even complete strangers. I don’t know that there’s much in Canadian law that we can do about it, but I can at least find out!

*sigh*

For someone who claims to be dying of cancer, he apparently hasn’t slown down even a little bit when it comes to his hate towards us. All because he thinks he’s somehow entitled to the property! I do understand that it isn’t even about him wanting it for himself so much and not wanting my brother to have it, or for us to be living here. In the 10 Commandments, it says “thou shalt not covet…” This is an example of covetousness. It’s one thing to see what others have an think “I wish I had that” and resent them for it. That’s your basic envy. It’s quite another to see what others have and think, “I should have that, not them,” and try to prevent others from having what they want, or try to have it taken from them. Marxism/socialism in a nutshell, really. The covetous person would rather see a thing destroyed, then see someone else have it. Or destroy the person who has what they want, and be willing to misuse the law and those in authority to do it. That is what our vandal is like.

Which makes it so frustrating when my mother just enables him and even allows him to turn her against my brother and me. He manipulated her so easily!

Another reason to try and get my mother into long term care or assisted living as soon as possible. There will be that extra layer of protection, and hopefully, our vandal won’t know where my mother will be at all.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: first pea shoot! and fighting the wind

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Good grief, what a day!

It’s past 5:30pm as I start this, and we’re just now starting to cool down to what was or forecasted high of 28C/82F

Knowing today was supposed to be hot, I made a point of watering the winter sown chain link fence bed, where I’m happy to say, I spotted a first!

A very first pea shoot!

I have no idea what the other shoots are, yet.

As things got hotter in the afternoon, I headed out again, hooking up an extra hose to the front tap to water that bed again, as the winds are drying everything out. Inside the portable greenhouse, it was above 50C/122F. Since this is just a plastic covered frame, there is no way to vent the heat, other than to keep the door tied fully open. So I misted everything in there, several times, to try and cool things down. Even the chitting potatoes got misted, a little bit.

The wind was threatening to blow away the plastic covers in the East garden bed and on the high raised bed. The heavier plastic on the old kitchen garden bed cover was handling things much better, even though that cover is slightly elevated by bricks and whatnot, allowing some air flow underneath. I did open up one end and gave it a watering, too. Normally, I would have lifted the cover off completely to water that bed, but that was just not going to happen with this wind!

The covered raised bed in the East yard was getting hit the worst. I ended up tying some more sticks together to drape across the top, but they were still too light. This bed did get a watering, too, and I kept tucking the excess plastic under the frame itself, but the wind kept blowing it loose. I even tied it down around the entire base of where the mesh connects with the frame, but that just got blown loose, too. Eventually, I raided a pile of rocks I’d taken out of the sun choke bed and stacked against the garage, grabbing the larger ones, and using them to weigh down the edges more, rolling them up in the excess plastic where I was able.

The high raised bed was also being blown around like a balloon. Even the extra hoops on the outside of the plastic were getting pulled loose from the stakes they were set on. I used the 3′ extra piece of pipe at one end to give a bit more something to keep the plastic from ballooning in the wind. Between that and the stone and board I already had to secure it, it finally held.

This bed got a pair or sticks joined with twine draped over it, too. These sticks were heavier, but still not heavy enough. I had already used rocks rolled up in the excess plastic as weights, but they were not heavy enough, so I raided another rock pile for larger ones to weight the edges. One of the hoops on the outside kept getting blown loose and I finally had to find a longer piece of bamboo stake – going from about an 8″ piece to one almost 2 feet long – before I could finally secure one end enough that it couldn’t get blown loose again. Once that end was secure, the other end was no longer being pulled loose.

In between fighting with the wind, going back and forth between the two beds, I also set up several hoses from the back tap to the main garden area and got a daughter to open the valve in the basement. I managed to water inside the high raised bed cover first. I’ve got one of those long reach spray guns and the sprayer end can be adjusted up and down. I had it spraying upwards, into the plastic, to rain down, so I wouldn’t accidentally damage the sprouts under there with water pressure. The weight of the water also helped with securing the plastic cover a bit.

The garlic bed also got a thorough watering, including the end that has the same mix of seeds as the high raised bed. The bed winter sown with summer squash got a thorough watering, too. There are things sprouting in the squash bed, but definitely not any squash seedlings, yet!

The one bed I didn’t have to do anything with is the one with flower seeds winter sown into it. When my daughter and I covered that one with plastic last night and weighted down the edges with bricks, I ended up using the mulch set to one side and basically burying the edge of the plastic along that side. That was all it took to keep that bed’s cover from being blown around! I could also see condensation inside the plastic, so I knew it wasn’t going to need watering yet.

Tomorrow, we’re expecting heat again, so I’ll be doing more watering early in the day. I’m hoping the wind will die down by then. One of my weather apps says possible rain tomorrow might, but looking at more detail, it’s only a 1 or 2% chance of rain. So I’m going to keep watering.

Weather willing, I am hoping to get to the outer yard and transplant that Walnut sapling. The way things are going, I’m going to shoot to do just one planting out there a day, starting with the sapling that should have already been planted by now. The walnut seeds are less urgent for planting. Each is going to be a big job on its own. I’m rather dreading to see how many roots I will be hitting when I try to dig transplant holes!

I watched this video this morning, and I might be changing up a few things.

After watching the video, I checked and it seems our last average frost date has changed from June 2 to May 21-31. This is based on the town to the north of us, which is now the same as the town to the East of us. The town to the East of us had a last frost date of May 28, so it’s still in that range now.

This means that, once I get the beds ready, we should be able to get things into the ground about a week earlier than I expected to. Some of the direct sowing can be done now, if I had beds ready for them. I’ve got a couple of beds solarizing that will be easier to prep, and I want to get the potatoes in soon. We still need to finish building the trellis supports on one of the low raised beds, but the climbers I want to plant there can be planted before the trellis is ready.

We’re supposed to cool down to more reasonable temperatures in a few days, then get hot again. The overnight lows are still expected to drop to just above freezing a few times. We’ll see how it actually turns out, when the time comes!

For all the fighting with the covers in this wind, I’m glad we got them on.

On a related note, the water table is high enough that I had to set up a the blower fans in the old basement, where water is starting to seep through. The sump pump has even gone off a couple of times, which will be great for the bed in the old kitchen garden it is set up to drain at. My brother came over again today and checked on the ejector; the stand pipe still has ice in it, but with this heat, I’ll be testing it more often, to see if we can finally start getting through the venturi pipe. Even if it’s just a dribble, once fluid starts going through, it will thaw out faster at the bottom.

It’s hard to imagine, with how hot it is today, that the ground is actually still frozen further down!

The Re-Farmer