It’s been a while since I had a whole crowd of cats and kittens following me around in the mornings, but now that Potato Beetle is back, he does tend to join me.
After breakfast, of course.
I was quite tickled to go into the sun room this morning and discover not only the adult cats waiting for me, but Broccoli and Chadicous, too! Even Junk Pile’s kittens were hanging around, though they kept running off anytime I came near.
Potato has a habit of trying to climb me when he wants attention. I managed to dodge him while opening up the trail cam to switch the card, so he climbed the post, instead.
The photo was taken the moment before he leapt onto my shoulders.
He did it again from the saw horse next to the summer squash, and the garden cam!
I have no idea where he’s been for the past few months, but he does seem happy to be back!
While checking the remains of the purple corn, something odd on one of the deer chomped cobs caught my eye, so I took a closer look.
A corn fungus had set in. I’ve seen a few people posting photos on gardening groups of this, asking what it is. Others got very excited about it. Apparently, this stuff is edible and very tasty.
I have no intention of finding out. :-D
Then there is something I checked on that I actually discovered yesterday.
The old kitchen was tacked onto the log cabin portion of the house at a later date. It has it’s own foundation with a crawl space under it, and it the only part of the house that is not on a basement.
That foundation has cracks in it. One of them is on the North side, near the septic tank.
Yesterday, I spotted wasps all over the area and realized they were going in and out of the crack.
Of course, getting picture of the actual wasps didn’t work out too well. LOL There is one in the shot, crawling through, where the arrow is pointing.
Last year, we had issues with wasps in the corner nearby, under the eaves where the old kitchen and the rest of the roof joined. It was bad enough to pick up wasp killer to get rid of them. So far, this nest hasn’t been a problem, but we will probably have to get rid of it before we get the septic tank emptied for the winter.
What this does tell me, though, is that the crack is open all the way through to the crawl space.
Which also tells me the old kitchen is sinking.
We did sort of know that already. We have seen that the sun room is shifting quite a bit, too – enough to affect the angles of the door, and crack windows.
Which reminds me. We’re having to use the old kitchen to go in and out of the house again. The fix I did on the main doors has given out. You can read about that here, here and here.
There is so much major work that needs to be done on this house, it’s pretty discouraging. What should be done it to get it all fixed before things get worse and end up costing more, but we’re still looking at repairs and renovations probably costing more than the house is worth. Even if my entire family pooled our resources to fix up the home we grew up in, we couldn’t come up with enough.
We’ll just take care of what we can as we go along. I must say, though, a lottery win would sure come in handy right now! :-D
Now, this was a strange thing to see outside or living room window!
Broccoli and Caramel weren’t just chillin’ with the grog. They were eating, too. I think they may actually have been eating the sunflower seeds! The only other things there are grass and leaves, and I know they weren’t eating those.
I am happy to say that, yesterday, I was wrong in doubting we could get any of the predicted rain.
Very wrong!
It poured hard! This is the rain shooting off the end of the rain barrel diverter. Everything is getting so nice and green again. I might even have to mow the lawn again at some point! It’s a bit late to add grass clippings as mulch in the garden, but it certainly will be used, if we do get some.
One of the things I am happy to see when I first come out to do my rounds is Junk Pile’s kittens. They have been coming to the kibble house more often, and while they still run away in a panic when I come out, they are quicker to return.
Inside the kibble house are three of Butterscotch’s kittens, plus Junk Pile in the far corner, while Butterscotch is eating from the container on the ground. That is the container I’d been leaving out by the junk pile, and later the concrete steps, for her and her babies, but now that they are also coming to the kibble house, I brought it over. After taking the photo, I moved it to under the roof on the other side of the kibble house. I did see Junk Pile’s kittens in the kibble house with Butterscotch’s kittens, but with how shy they are, I figure having food on the other side would be nice for them. They come from that direction and, sometimes, instead of running off, they’ll squeeze under the cat’s house to hide. It’ll eventually join the other containers in the kibble house, but this will also keep things a little less crowded. Especially with the adult cats asserting their pecking order with each other.
Which is why I’m still putting food out by the other junk pile for Rosencrantz, Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz. It helps keep the peace, and they seem to prefer eating there.
I’d been moving the kibble container for Butterscotch and her babies around, to encourage them to come closer to the house. Having it on the concrete steps has been a bit of an issue, as I kept finding the container elsewhere. Likely dragged around by skunks. So yesterday, I put it in the slightly raised bed near the steps, where the cats like to hang out.
This morning, I found it half under the lilacs.
I also found this.
That corner is exactly where I’d put the kibble container. This is the first time I’ve seen this area dug up like that! The skunks don’t usually dig that deep. The larger hole goes under the wood, and was dug from the other side, too.
I suspect the rains brought a lot of grubs closer to the surface, and with this bed being so heavily mulched, it’s a lot softer than the soil outside of it. Snack time for the skunks!
Today, we are supposed to have a break from the rain, at least in our area. There are, once again “overland flow flooding” warnings near rivers. I should check out the gravel pit dugout again, later today. Light rains are supposed to return tomorrow, and again later in the week. After that, it should warm up again, a bit. We’re at 17C/63F right now, but in a few days, we’re expected to reach 20C/68F and stay in that range for at least the next couple of weeks. Perfect to get some big jobs done, outside!
For now, I leave you with one more photo. The adorable Nosencrantz, watching me as I checked on the potatoes!
She is such a cutie! And my younger daughter has even managed to pet her!
During a break in the rain, yesterday, we were able to bring in the onions that were still on screens under the canopy. They at least were dry enough to brush off the remaining soil, before their roots were trimmed and I strung them on twine, the same way I did the garlic.
The strings of garlic are cured and now in a cardboard box, while the braid of onions are now in the kitchen, making room for these to continue curing. It’s cool enough, but unfortunately, the humidity was at 77% at the time we hung these up. Which is still better than outside! With the fan going, I hope they will cure okay. I kept the tops on, so that they could later be braided.
While doing my rounds, I found several clusters of mushrooms had sprung up in front of the cucamelons and gourds, over night. An encouraging sign of soil health improving. :-)
There were a lot of hungry kitties! Junk Pile’s kittens are showing up at the kibble house more often, but I only see them because they heard me coming out of the house and ran off. One has been running under the cat house, whiel the others dash out of the yard. Our chances of socializing these ones seems rather low, unfortunately.
We are still leaving kibble further out for Butterscotch’s and Rosencrantz’s babies. There seems to be a bit of territorial disputes happening, and this ensures everyone still gets some food.
We didn’t get the predicted thunderstorms, but we did have high winds along with the driving rain, resulting in this wind damage to some of the sweet corn. This is the middle block, which has the tallest of the sweet corn.
I think some of those cobs may actually be ready to pick!
With so much rain overnight, I decided to go and check the gravel pit dugout. This is how it looked yesterday morning.
This is how it looked about 24 hours later.
That is so amazing!!!!
For a bit of perspective, though, look at the green parts to the right of where I’m standing to take the photo, then at the top left, where there is an opening in the trees.
The green part on my right is part of the original gravel pit. While it wasn’t as deep as where the dugout is now, it would normally have been part of the pond that had developed in here. The area in the background on the left is basically mash, and would at least have been muddy. Which means, when we get an more average year of moisture, that entire pit should be full of water, with water extending into the low area on the right, and the marsh in the background. Where I am standing to take the photo would be a few feet from the water’s edge.
With so much water here, I just had to go and check the pond, too.
Yes!!! There is even water at the bottom, here!
That is just so awesome to see!
Okay, it took me a while to find, but I knew I’d posted photos of the gravel pit. Here is a photo of the old gravel pit, taken in June of 2019.
All that area of water that’s furthest away is where the new dugout was made. The area to the left is the shallower area that was left alone.
What a huge difference!
So appreciating the rain we got. For the cows and the wildlife, too!
We have been rather entertained by our resident groundhogs under the junk pile of late.
The grog actually managed to drag some of the tarp down into the den entrance!
This tarp is one of several that I found when cleaning the junk off this pile of wood. They had clearly been used to cover and protect the wood, but had been blown aside and torn apart by the elements, along with all sorts of things being tossed into the area. Torn up as they were, I was still able to use them to cover the wood pile a bit, but the groundhogs are taking advantage of the deteriorated state. They are trying to gather it into their den for nesting material.
Last night, I cleaned it up a bit and tucked the tarp under some boards.
This is how I found it this morning.
I was able to see the groundhog in action through the living room window.
That little bugger is really working at it! :-D
I put together the videos I took from the window, too. :-)
These next photos were taken after the video was made.
It got quite a lot of that tarp down and into the den entrance!
In taking this photo, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.
There is now a third entrance to the den in the back of the pile!
I cleaned up and tucked things away again. It should be interesting to see how long this lasts.
While I was working in a nearby beet bed (which will be in my next post), I could hear the grog trying to drag a corner of the orange trap around the back, too.
The gravel you see at the bottom of the photo is from the second entrance to the den.
I don’t think you can see it in the photo above, but there is the nose of a grog in their main entrance. It was watching me.
You’ll notice the gravel is different in this photo. I took advantage of their hard work and used it. I’ll be posting about that after I’ve processed the photos I took.
We seem to have made a truce with the groundhogs. I’m relieved, because we were getting to the point of taking some rather permanent steps. Something I won’t even consider right now, as they are nesting, and I don’t want to end up depriving babies of their mother. The cayenne pepper and covers are working, overall (more on that in my next post), and they seem content with eating the bird seed, grazing on whatever they’re finding in the grass, and leaving our garden beds alone now. From what I’ve been able to find about them, they don’t actually like to have overlapping territory, so if there are any babies, they will not stick around once they are big enough to live on their own.
For all the predictions of rain we’ve been getting, I don’t think we’ll actually get anything of substance, so I will be applying more cayenne pepper this evening. If it rains, well, I’ll just have to do it again.
Today has turned out to be – so far – not as hot as predicted. On the down side, the smoke came back with a vengeance this morning. It has gotten better since then, thankfully.
While heading out to move the sprinkler, yesterday, I spotted Butterscotch and her brood.
I’m not sure if this is Bradicous or Chadicous. Either way, he’s adorable!
While tending the furthest garden beds, Butterscotch and her babies went through the squash tunnel on their way to the neighbour’s farm across the road. So much space they could have gone through, and they chose the squash tunnel! :-D
I also saw a lot of birds in the garden. They were appreciating the water on the ground from the sprinkler!
I decided to pick the two biggest, oldest melons to check them out. The one on the left is a Halona melon, and the one on the right is a Pixie.
Here, the Halona is at the top, and the Pixie at the bottom.
First thing I could tell is that they were not fully ripe yet. So we knew, when we taste tested them, that they were harder and less sweet than they should be.
They were still very tasty, though. General consensus is that we like the Pixie a bit better than the Halona, though it was really hard to pick one as better than the other.
With the weather predictions including thunderstorms over the next few days, I decided it was time to harvest the rest of the onions.
The canopy has been moved over the picnic table, so that’s where we set up the screens to lay them out on.
The screen with the fewest onions on them are the ones grown from sets I bought locally. About half of those had already been harvested earlier and are hanging in the root cellar.
The red unions are the sets we got from Veseys, and the screen in the middle has the onions we grew from seeds. These will stay outside until the soil is dried enough to brush it off and trim the roots. At that point, I will decide if I will leave them under the canopy to cure longer, or set them up in the root cellar. It will depend on the weather.
This morning, we are finally seeing yellow petals on the sunflowers! Most don’t even have heads developing yet. The Mongolian Giants are the only ones with developing heads right now. Given we’re in the second half of August right now, I don’t know that we have enough season left for them to develop. The sunflowers in the fields we pass are not only in full bloom, but today I drove by a field where the seed heads are already past blooming and starting to dry up.
In checking the rest of the beds this morning, I found this carnage in the purple corn.
Quite a number of stalks have been knocked down to the ground. From the looks of it, I think there may have been a cat fight in here or something. This is not the damage of a critter trying to eat the corn. I had to head out, so I left it until later today, when we’ll head out to clean up the mess. Hopefully, when it’s a bit cooler.
*sigh*
Anyhow.
Today I made a run to the nearer little city to do a Walmart run and pick up some more cat kibble, among other things. The smoke actually got thicker the further south and east I drove; most of the smoke we’d been getting before was from fires to the north. We are now getting predictions of possible thunderstorms starting tonight, which would go a long way to helping with the wildfires. I’m debating whether we should do an evening watering of all the garden beds or not. Some beds, like the tomatoes, got done already. Though we didn’t reach the predicted highs, I still had to run the hose into the rain barrel for a while, to get rid of the hot water, first. Otherwise, it would have scalded the plants. After letting it run, our well water still is not getting cold like it usually does. Even our ground water is warm! Which means there’s no danger of shocking the plants, I guess. I watered the potato bags, and those looked like something went crashing over them, too. Those, at least, can handle it better than the corn!
This year’s gardening has certainly been a learning experience.
It’s been a long time since I was able to stop to get pictures of the bison while they are at the fence!
There are so many babies this year! <3
Gosh, they are beautiful creatures!
Though I think they lost a bull. I saw a local notice being shared on Facebook, warning people in the area to be on the lookout for it, and to stay well away from it. This is the only bison ranch I know of in this area, so I’m guessing it’s theirs. Hopefully, it has been found and brought home by now!
Well, the forecasts have changed again. Instead of things starting to cool down starting today, we’re now supposed to hit 33C/91F with a humidex of 40C/104F this afternoon, and hit 30C/86F over the next couple of days. Thunderstorm warnings are back for tomorrow, but now extending over two days.
I really hope we do get them!
Overnight temperatures are high, too, making it hard to sleep. Especially since the box fan I had in my window broke. I suppose I could take the one we’ve got in the root cellar, but I think our curing garlic needs it more than I do.
The cats, meanwhile, are melting.
David is just so… magnificent!
Layendecker spent hours in my butt spot, splayed out like this, until I had to claim my chair.
We were able to have our very first BBQ (grilling, for the purists) yesterday.
This is the first time we’ve used the BBQ my brother gave us. It was insanely hot, even in the shade, but being able to cook everything at the same time, and not heating up the house, was worth it.
After the meat was set on the warming grill, I took the zucchini strips and put them directly on the grill, just enough to get some char on them. It was awesome! Unfortunately, the photos I took of the finished meal did not turn out, but it was as pleasing to the eye as to the palate. The purple corn was interesting. The kernels were far harder than I expected. I liked them. I look forward to growing enough for both fresh eating (or making chicha morado) and to make corn flour. That will be a few years, which will also give us time to pick up a decent quality mill.
The steaks are the sirloin steaks from the meat pack we got from a local ranch. I kept it simple. Just a bit of oil (okay, maybe not so simple; I used (fake) truffle oil), salt and pepper. Oh, man. It’s been so long since we’ve had steak! My husband and I even made a “date” of it and ate at the table. He usually isn’t able to sit at the table for very long, but he put up with the pain for steak! :-D
We got a nice little haul of tomatoes yesterday evening; these are mostly the Spoon tomatoes.
I am quite enjoying having these, but have found I still can’t eat fresh tomatoes. About the best I can say when I tasted one last night is, at least I didn’t gag.
Much.
Which is weird, because I like tomato in things, to a certain extent. I just can’t handle eating them fresh. My younger daughter is much the same. No loss, though. We planted these for my older daughter and my husband. They enjoy tomatoes!
As the temperatures started to drop a bit, yesterday evening, my husband opened up various windows and the inner door in the dining room – setting up the little step latter so the cats can look out the window of the outer door, of course. We still have food and water set up on the concrete steps for Butterscotch and her kittens. Even though they have moved to the empty property across the road, she still brings them over.
Not long after things were opened up, I heard a commotion outside the door, and the cats were very interested in whatever was under their perch. So I popped over to the living room window to see what was on the steps.
I never saw anything on the steps, but I did find a shadow on the post for the hanging bird feeder! It was getting dark by then, but I could tell it was a raccoon. Not the big one we saw the first time, but a slightly smaller one.
So I went outside to shoo it away.
Now, normally, they run off as soon as they hear the door open, and I come around the corner just in time to see them dashing away.
Not this time!
As I came closer to the feeder, making shooing noises, the raccoon was far too busy eating to take off. It was sitting with its lower body on the bird perch – what used to support a platform feeder on the post before we cleaned it up and painted it – and was grabbing the base of the hanging feeder with its front paws. When I got to the post, it just froze.
And stared at me.
So there I am, standing RIGHT next to the post, face to face with a raccoon.
Before anyone starts, yes, I know what to watch out for re: rabies and so on. I am very aware that wild animals are unpredictable and can F you up, in general. I was being cautious and giving it plenty of opportunity to jump down and run away.
I think, however, the way it was hanging onto the feeder, it couldn’t just let go, and with this big human standing there, it probably didn’t want to off balance itself and drop to the ground.
So it froze.
And stared at me.
With that adorable face.
Since it wasn’t moving, I carefully reached out and poked the end of its tail.
Nothing.
I poked it again.
Nothing.
I wiggled its tail a bit.
Still nothing!
I poked its hip.
It just kept staring at me.
I even gently poked at its strange little man-hand foot.
Not a twitch.
Finally, I reached out and began to pet its lower back.
It let me.
The only time it really moved was then Potato Beetle started weaving around my feet. I paused to pick him up and the two of them stared at each other for a bit, but Potato Beetle was far more interested in being held than in the creature on the bird feeder post.
So I pet the raccoon some more for a while, the left it be. It took a minute or two before it finally got down and ran off.
I got to touch a raccoon. !!!!!
The rest of the family missed all this. I didn’t even have my phone with me to try and take a photo, though it was probably too dark for one. I certainly wasn’t going to use a flash on the poor thing. When I told them, I got chastised by my daughters, first for taking the risk, then for terrorizing the poor raccoon. :-D
Meanwhile…
With today’s heat, the garden beds are getting a thorough watering. Instead of standing out there in what is already 28C/82F, I’ve been using the sprinklers, moving them every 45 minutes or so, and will be finishing with the spray and soaker hoses. Though someone had already put kibble out for the cats, I did have to top up the containers by the junk pile and concrete steps already.
The kittens were out and about.
Toesencrantz won’t come anywhere near us, but she will watch from a distance.
I was watering the tomatoes and cucamelons from the rain barrel, going back and forth, and in one of my trips, I found I had an audience!
I love how Toesencrantz has her toes on the log like that. So adorable!
Since the rain we did get, and now the heat being back again, the squash are all blooming like crazy.
I really like the luffa flowers!
Still no luffa, though. For those who grow luffa, is that normal? Shouldn’t there be gourds by now?
The ants really like the luffa vines. I’m not sure why. They seem to just be climbing them. As long as they are not damaging them, I don’t mind. Ants are pollinators, too. I find it odd that they are only climbing the luffa, though, and nothing else growing at the squash tunnel.
The one Red Kuri squash is getting bigger. :-)
I am starting to think we can harvest some of our melons, but I’m not sure. The bigger ones don’t seem to be getting any bigger, so I figure we can at least start harvesting those.
Maybe I’ll pick one of each type, when I hook up the soaker hose, later on. :-)
The Re-Farmer 