I neglected to write a post yesterday, so I will make up for it today. ;-)
Starting with some inside cats for a change. :-)
Cabbages and Tissue needed to nap after their battle with the deadly flip flops.
Ginger, meanwhile, took advantage of the girls for some double cuddles on the couch.
Later, I found these furry shrimps on my bed. Cabbages, Turmeric, Beep Beep (or Big Rig) and Susan.
It was so fabulous to get a visit yesterday, and I’m so glad he was able to make the side trip to our place while on his way home. He was able to stay for a couple of hours, and even my husband was able to join us and visit for a while. Sitting at the picnic table did a number on his back, but he says it was worth it. :-) It was great to be able to sit outside and enjoy the breeze; something we had never been able to do before our move. Of course, we gave him the tour. He got too meet some of our new kitties, and reunite with our old mama cat that moved out with us, too. :-)
It was a good day, and I’m glad we were able to spend so much of it outside, before the heat came back!
No, not the nasty critter that’s eating our summer squash!
Pleasant critters.
Like Nosencrantz, who was very curious about me as I was checking the cucamelons.
She still won’t come close enough to touch, but she very deliberately came to check me out several times, while I was topping up their food and water, and checking the south yard garden beds.
Such a cutie!
Meanwhile, yesterday, I heard a distinctive and familiar thumping on the dining room window. I immediately went to check, and found this bird, stunned on the ground.
It’s a fledgling robin, and I’m guessing it was testing out its wings when it hit the window, because this little guy couldn’t fly yet!
With so many yard cats around (even if they were smart enough to not be out in yesterday’s heat!), I wasn’t going to leave it on the ground. When I first picked it up, it fluttered out of my hands, fell to the ground and basically somersaulted onto it’s own head. It was still too stunned to even stand up on its own. I picked it up again and put it on the platform of the big bird feeder, hoping it would just stay there until it recovered.
Nope.
It fluttered right off the edge, hit the ground and somersaulted onto its head again.
So I picked it up again and just held it. It made an attempt to bight the palm of my hand, but not with any real force. Then it sat there and glared at me! I kept a hand over its wings for a while, until it seemed calmer, then took a couple of photos. Eventually, it hopped out of my hand, fluttering its wings enough to land gently on the ground, then started hopping across the yard.
Unfortunately, it was hopping right out of the shade and into the baking sun – and out of the yard, away from safety!
I followed at a distance until I saw it hope into the shelter and shade of some trees near and old shed. At that point, I could be sure it was okay.
Meanwhile, it’s parents were squawking up a storm the entire time!
Poor thing! I’m glad it wasn’t injured.
And that there were no cats around, to get to it before I could!
I moved the garden cam again, this time onto the summer squash. I’d had to tie some of their stems back onto their supports, and wasn’t sure if they’d come loose under their own weight, or if something caused them to fall.
Our sunburst squash is looking prolific, but we’ve had very little to pick. Lots of them have been withering on the vine, but there have also been bite marks on them.
It is confirmed who is the cause of this!
I had the camera low on its pole, and at some point during the night it slid down and spun a bit to the left. Which is why it caught a raccoon going by. There was a possibility that the raccoons were doing damage, but it completely ignored the squash, other than to go around them.
I was about 99.9% sure it was the woodchuck doing the damage. Now it is 100% confirmed.
Of course, because I actually needed to get a good sleep because I had to head out early for court this morning, that meant I got almost no sleep at all!
Only part of that could be blamed on the cats being destructive in the night. ;-)
Amazingly, it got cold enough that, for the first time in a couple of month, at least, I had to sleep with a blanket! Of course, I could have just closed the window, but I didn’t want to fight with the box fan, which is tied down so the cats won’t knock it over. When I finally did sleep, I was awakened by the sound of our furnace running! We had actually dropped to 8C/46F overnight. Some areas dropped to 6C/43F, and people were concerned about frost hitting their gardens! Our frost date isn’t until September 10, and that’s earlier than the areas the got colder last night.
Meanwhile, we’re supposed to hit highs near 30C/86F or higher, over the next few days.
I turned the thermostat on the furnace way down, so it wouldn’t turn on again. We keep so many windows open during the night, the last thing I want is for the furnace to kick in! :-D
Anyhow.
Since I was up anyhow, I did some of my morning rounds quite early. Which the cats seemed to appreciate. :-)
I was really thrilled to see both Rosencrantz and Nosencrantz, in the kibble house. Rosencrantz ran off when I got closer, but her baby stayed. Even when I topped up their food bowl by their junk pile home, Nosencrantz stayed in the kibble house to eat.
Progress!
I found the canister for the new bird feeder on the ground again this morning. I am guessing the raccoons have figure out how to open it. I might move the garden cam to face the bird feeder, just to confirm what’s going on, so we can use that to figure out how to stop it.
I didn’t have time to check the trail cam files, though, before I headed to the courthouse. I got there good an early, and the only person already there was the security guy.
Starting after midnight tonight, our province is lifting our police state, somewhat. No more mask mandates and a number of other restrictions are lifted, though of course they’re still restricting actual healthy social gatherings, like weddings and going to church, even though there are pretty much no limits to how many people can go into retail stores. It’s all so arbitrary, it’s a wonder anyone takes the restrictions seriously anymore.
I could see a huge difference when I got to the court building. For starters, the security table was right outside the courtroom door, rather than at the entrance. I still wore my Mingle Mask, just to avoid the hassle of having to explain my medical exemption, and no one even reacted when they saw me.
After identifying myself as the applicant, the security guard looked up our vandal’s name, marked that I was there, then told me I could wait there in the hall, where they have comfy chairs to sit on. The last time, people were made to wait outside. While I was waiting, quite a few people that appeared to be staff congregated around the security table, just chatting, or sitting in the nearby chairs with their laptops. I could hear the security guard asking people what they thought about no masks starting tomorrow, but couldn’t hear the responses.
Eventually, our vandal showed up, and I honestly did not recognize him at first, because he was wearing a mask. Of the many things I hate about the masks, the elimination of people’s identities is one that I think is among the most damaging. I’m glad we live as isolated as we do, because being surrounded by non-entities, even as little as I am, is seriously starting to wig me out. As a lifelong student of psychology, I understand the how and the why of it, which does help, but it still doesn’t stop it from happening.
Anyhow.
The main reason I figured out it was our vandal was because, as he checked in, I heard him mention his lawyer’s name. That and the security guard made a point of turning to look at me. Then the lawyer showed up, and they disappeared around the corner for a while. Eventually, the lawyer came over and introduced himself to me, asking if I was okay with talking to him. He assured me he was double vaxxed. I told him I didn’t care. (His personal health information is NONE of my business.) We did have a bit of an issue with him moving away when I got closer to him, and I had to explain that I couldn’t hear him, because of the mask. He accommodated that, though I still had to adjust things. My hearing is actually quite excellent, but I have an auditory processing problem. Instead of hearing words, sometimes I just hear parts of words, gibberish, or even have blank “spaces” where words should have been. Basically, somewhere between my eardrums picking up the sound vibrations, and my brain interpreting them as words, the signal is lost. If there are a lot of distractions, or if there is something like a mask to muffle speech, it makes it that much more difficult. So I do things like close my eyes, so I can “hear” better or, as I had to today, lean an ear closer and not look at the person speaking. Thankfully, the lawyer had good enunciation, so that helped.
What he wanted to talk about was the sort of conditions for the restraining order I would agree to. Much to my surprise, he was the one who brought up our vandal voluntarily giving up his guns. He also said our vandal had mentioned video I had of him doing stuff, and I ended up giving him copies of images I had in my stack of papers. These included screen captures of our vandal actually damaging the gate, both times, doing things like walking up to the gate and giving the finger down the driveway, the glued locks (from his response to those, our vandal had actually told him about that; he’s never admitted that he glued our locks to us before), the barn doors being screwed shut, etc. I even included the partial list of things our vandal took from the property, that we know off. I told the lawyer flat out that, if he could have a “psychotic break” and do what he did to the gate, what’s going to stop him from having another “psychotic break” and coming over with a gun? Or trying to burn the house down?
When I brought up the need for a psychiatric assessment, he started to say, going for counseling or therapy. I said no, and explained that when I pressed charges before, our vandal had done that, by court order, and while he was apparently going to weekly counseling, he was still leaving horrible messages on my mother’s answering machine about me and the property (I explained the property ownership situation, too, since our vandal thinks my mother gave me the farm, for some reason). Counseling clearly did not work. He needs a psychiatric assessment and a diagnosis.
He then went back to talk to our vandal. When he returned to me briefly, before we went into the courtroom, he asked if I were willing to drop the application if our vandal got a psychiatric assessment. I said no. There’s a reason the police kept recommending we go through with this and, as much as I’d like for this to all be over, we can’t trust him. As it was, something the lawyer said in passing tells me he had to convince our vandal to agree to at least getting an assessment.
Which is actually a big step forward, even if he still can’t admit he’s responsible for his own problems. So when we finally went in front of the judge, it was officially recorded that I agreed to not go forward with the application for a month. During this time, our vandal has to get a referral to a psychiatrist and get an assessment. There is another court date in September to follow up, but I may not need to be there at all. The lawyer (with warnings from the judge about potential conflicts of interest) agreed that he would keep me informed, so I don’t have to be calling the court office all the time. I was actually asked to take the stand, where there was a microphone, from the start, so the judge could ask me questions and clarify some details.
After I left the courtroom, the lawyer soon followed and asked for my email address (I already gave him my phone number). He then asked if I wanted to agree on a certain number of sessions with the psychiatrist, but I said no; let’s wait to hear what the psychiatrist has to say, because this is such an individual thing.
Then that was it. We were done.
Now it’s all on him to meet the conditions within the time frame.
In the end, I think this went well. Our vandal may actually get the help he needs. We used to be so close in the past, and I would love to have a relationship with him again, but that can’t happen until he gets that help.
One of the things I made clear with the lawyer is that if he does anything stupid again, I’ll be applying for the restraining order all over again if I have to. He was agreeing with me before I even finished saying it. Our vandal may be in denial, but his lawyer knows full well he has no defense.
We shall see what happens over the next month.
I don’t intend to get my hopes up too much, to be honest. I fear our vandal is a bit too far gone for that, but you never know. I’m just relieved that we finally got in front of a judge and got to move forward. It’s been 9 months since I made the application.
The skies have been teasing us with the possibility of rain, all day today! The weather app says we’re at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 30C/86F, but we’ve been getting some wonderful breezes that are making it feel cooler.
It was while we were outside, enjoying the breeze, that I noticed we were being watched.
The renter rotated his cows to the home quarter today! I am so happy to see them. :-)
While we were out, we even got a few spatters of rain and could hear thunder in the distance. I really hope we get a decent rainfall! Particularly since we’ve decided not to water the garden beds this evening.
While heading over to the furthest beds, we ended up chasing a woodchuck out of one of the corn blocks. He seemed to be just passing through, and wasn’t eating anything. In looking at the developing head on this Mongolian Giant sunflower, I can see something has been eating it. This would be the grasshoppers. Thankfully, those seem to be fewer, though compared to the clouds of them we had not long ago, that might not be saying much.
The sweet corn in the middle block seems to be developing the fastest. It’s interesting to see how a few stalks just shot up (relatively speaking!) while the others are staying small.
I don’t know how much corn we’ll actually get from these, given this year’s conditions, but it does look like we’ll at least have some for fresh eating, if not for freezing or canning.
Dang. Looking out my window, it seems the clouds have moved on. I think I’ll pop outside and enjoy the breeze a bit longer, while there is still light. :-)
My morning rounds were a bit shorter than expected. Though we are still supposed to get a hot on – not as hot as yesterday, thankfully – we are also getting predictions of a thunderstorm and possible rain. It’s even overcast right now, so I didn’t even put the shade cloths over the fall plantings this morning.
The first “find” I had this morning was one of adorableness!
We still have separate food bowls for the kittens (except for Junk Pile’s, because we don’t really know where their home is), and I was on my way to top up the one for Butterscotch’s kittens, when I found this little cutie, just chillin’. She didn’t even run away as I went by with the kibble, then paused to take her picture. :-) Broccoli seems to be the most willing to put up with us humans, though she still won’t let us touch her.
The new hanging bird feeder was found in pieces this morning! I’m guessing the raccoons got to it during the night. Nothing else has the hands to turn the canister and unlock it from it’s base.
The big birdfeeder was also completely empty. The foam covered wire I’d used to reduce how much it wobbles on its post were all at the bottom of the post, with the foam torn up. Since I pruned away the branches the raccoons were using to reach the feeder, it looks like they scrambled up the post itself, taking out the padding in the process. I’m going to have to find something else to pad the top of that post, and steady the feeder.
Then there was this…
One of the new support hoops covering the carrot bed was pushed over, and the carrot greens beneath were looking a bit squashed.
I’m glad I had those tent pegs, as well as the weights, along the edges of the netting!
I was a bit concerned about how well the one hoop would hold out. When I was setting it up, I could hear the wooden dowels supporting it, making cracking noises and I bent the pipe onto them. It would have been better to use metal rods of some kind, but we don’t have any. The dowels are about 18″ long, and they were embedded into the ground by at least a foot, but the flags they were on have been out in the elements for the past year, so it’s no surprise that the wood was brittle enough to crack under the stress of holding the PVC pipe. I was able to straighten it up again, without having to take everything apart. We’ll see how it holds.
I actually think this was done by cats. Possibly even kittens. They like to roll around in the garden, and I’ve had to chase them off of, or out of, the mesh before. The opportunity to roll around on the mesh and on plants, at the same time, would have been too much for some of our kitties to resist!
Aside from being a bit flattened, though, the carrots are fine. Another reason I think it was the cats. If it were a woodchuck, they would have gotten through pretty easily, if they wanted to!
I’m happy to say that Potato Beetle is still with us! He seems to have simply moved back home, as if he were never gone for almost 6 months! The only down side is, he’s aggressive to the other cats. I realize they’re establishing their pecking order, but it looks like he’s already driven off Nutmeg, who was very much a beta cat. Creamsicle Baby is also showing submissiveness to Potato Beetle, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping him. He’s even going after the mamas. Normally, the males don’t go after the females like that. He’s even growled at Butterscotch; his own mother!
I’m hoping things will settle down as they get used to each other again.
The cats spend most of their days, sprawled all over various surfaces, usually in bizarre positions, sleeping away the hottest parts of the day.
None, however, can match David the Magnificent, in all his glory.
He looks like he’s broken! :-D
We’ve been trying to brush him as often as we can. Oddly, he has almost no fur coming off on the brush! Then there’s Cheddar, who has very short, coarse fur, that fills the brush in only a few strokes!
Unfortunately, David will not let us brush his armpit area, which is the only place he’s getting clumps in his fur. We end up having to cut them off.
I have to admit, after yesterday’s damage, I was quite trepidatious about checking the garden beds while doing this morning’s rounds!
I was, however, greeted with a happy sight, first thing.
Potato Beetle is still here!
With him being gone for so many months, there’s no reason to assume he’s here to stay, so every day that we see him will be a gift. :-)
The down side is, he’s been mean to the other cats. Though he used to be part of the crowd filling the kibble house since we built it last fall, he chased all the other cats away this morning. Yesterday, he went after Nutmeg for no reason, and even growled at Junk Pile cat while she was hiding under the cat shelter. I’m hoping this will settle down once he’s been back for a while.
I found an Ozark Nest Egg gourd blooming this morning. Between the density of the leaves, the chain link fence and the protective wire around them, there’s no way I can look to see if there are any female flower buds developing. Of the few I could see, they were still only male flowers. The vines are pushing their way through the chain link fence, and we should be able to start training them up the fence soon.
If they don’t get eaten, first!
More and more tomatoes are starting to change colour. Until today, the most Spoon tomatoes we’ve had ripe at the same time was only three. Plus, we have our very first ripe grape tomato, from the Mosaic Medley mix of seeds!
Alas, there was more deer damage this morning, though nothing like what we found yesterday. This time, it was the yellow beans that got nibbled on.
I was able to pick a small handful of both green and yellow beans this morning, but I am not finding anything in the purple beans. While moving aside their leaves to look, I was seeing a lot of stems, and I wonder if they’d been eaten. The purple beans have so much more foliage, it’s harder to tell, compared to the other beans.
While the sweet corn and sunflowers appeared untouched, I found an entire Dorinny corn pulled out of the ground. The plant next to it has a big chomp taken out of the cob.
The ants were all over that cob!
I also found a cob that had been torn off another plant, with nothing but a nibble off the top. Curious, I went ahead and shucked it.
It was almost completely ripe! It was so well pollinated, too.
Well, I wasn’t about to let it go to waste, so I washed it and ate it raw.
It was delicious!
However things go for the rest of the season, at least I can say I’ve tasted both the Dorinny and the Montana Morado corn this year. :-D
I had one more find that I wanted to share, but I saved the photo for last. If spiders bother you, you might want to quickly scroll on by.
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Still here?
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I found a garden friend among the purple bean leaves.
I had been pushing aside and turning the leaves, looking for beans underneath, so it was a real surprise to see this spider, not being startled away. Just look at the grip it’s got on that egg sac! It didn’t move at all while I got close to take the photo. Such a good mama!
When I was done, I took the leaf off and put it on the ground in between some bean plants, where it was more sheltered.
Once I was back inside, I checked the garden cam files and confirmed that yes, it was a deer that had done this morning’s damage. The only other critter that triggered the motion sensor was Potato Beetle, while he was keeping me company in the garden yesterday evening.
I have a few ideas on what to try next to keep the deer out, but I’ll need to go into to town to find the materials for it. Today is a holiday here in Canada, and there is a festival going on in town right now, so I’m going to avoid it completely. :-/
When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, I found the sun room door open, and a bag of kibble on the floor, a couple of corners chewed open and kibble all over the floor.
Given the size of the raccoon I saw on the garden cam, I find myself thinking they’ve figured out how to open the door.
After I modified the row cover, I finished up the watering, then headed inside. It wasn’t until much later that I saw I’d forgotten the sun room door open after getting a utility knife, which I’d also forgotten out by the garden. So I headed outside, got the knife, then went to put it away in the sun room.
I was just reaching the door when I startled a cat, leaving the sun room.
An adult grey tabby.
What the heck???
The cat started to run off but quickly stopped and meowed at me. When I called to him, he came right over and before I knew it, I was being happily snuggled by a Potato Beetle. I didn’t have my phone with me, so it wasn’t until he went to get a drink of water that I was able to dash in to get it and get photos.
I haven’t seen Potato Beetle in months! I even checked my photos, and the last ones I have of him were taken in February. That’s when we found him with a big bite in his hip. We got him to the vet, then had him isolated in the sun room for a few days. Shortly after he had access to the outdoors again, he disappeared. The next month, Nostrildamus disappeared, then Creamsicle, and then Ginger showed up with his leg dangling and had his amputation.
It was a very rough winter for the male yard cats.
Usually, if they don’t come back for a while, it means something got them, and we don’t expect to see them again. So it was a very happy surprise to see Potato Beetle again, after all this time!
I think I spent about two hours sitting on a camp chair under the gazebo tent with him in draped across my body, sometimes in very odd angles, napping. Or cuddling. Or nuzzling my face. He was so incredibly calm and loving!
When he did finally jump down to the ground, he lay there for a while until something caught his attention in the distance.
It was Junk Pile cat and her kittens, slowly coming closer. In the above photo, she and three of her kittens are almost at the kibble house.
The fourth one had been drinking water from a container by the grape vine before joining its siblings.
This is the closest they’ve been willing to come to a human, yet! They were watching me closely, but still came to the kibble house.
It may have been a disappointing start to the day, but seeing Potato Beetle again, getting to cuddle him, and having Junk Pile and her kittens come over, has made this a very good day! :-)
The Re-Farmer 