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! :-)
Today is supposed to be hot again, so I wanted to make sure to get the garden watered early in the day, while it was still cool. I started with the soaker hose at the squash tunnel, then went around checking the melons, squash and gourds.
I was extremely disappointed to find this.
Our one and only Teddy winter squash was gone.
Et.
Munched.
Masticated.
The two Teddy plants are blooming, and there is even a female flower developing, but that one baby squash had grown so much after the rain, I was really looking forward to watching it develop.
This is one of the nearby Little Gem winter squash. There were no developing squash down here to be eaten; those are much higher on the trellis. Still, it means energy will be going to recover from the damage, instead of into developing squash.
Thankfully, that was the only damage here. The melons and gourds had no critter damage. I did find one of the nearby Dorinny corn had been gotten into, the remains of a cob on the ground. The corn may have been a deer, but I figured the squash was a groundhog. The deer don’t go along that side of the garden beds, preferring to walk through the open areas in the middle.
I was wrong.
When I checked the garden cam, I almost missed the shadow moving in the darkness. It was a huge raccoon! So big that, if it hadn’t turned at the end of the bean bed and I could make out its tail, I would have thought it was a bear cub.
I continued checking the beds, and was so disappointed to find this.
A deer got into the Montana Morado corn. In the above photo, several stalks in the outermost row are gone.
I found corn cobs scattered on the ground, each looking like they had only a single bite taken out of them.
Hoof prints left no doubt as to what was responsible for this damage.
The deer had traipsed right through the middle of the corn block, leaving damaged plants and nipped corn cobs in its wake.
These are all the cobs I picked up off the ground.
I think it would bother me less if the deer actually ate the corn, rather than taking a bite here and a bite there. and leaving a trail of damage.
On checking the cobs, you can see that a couple of them were almost completely ripe, if poorly pollinated. When ripe, the kernels should be an even darker purple.
One cob is looking like it was going blue, instead of purple!
Several of the cobs had been beautifully pollinated, full of developing kernels.
I am so incredibly unhappy. Clearly, the flashy spinny things around the corn block are no deterrent.
Not even our purple beans escaped damage. The purple beans are lusher and bushier than the green and yellow beans – except for at this end of the row, where the leaves have been thinned out by nibbling.
And here is the beast that did the damage – nibbling on a sunflower!!!
I. Am. Not. Impressed.
I even added bells to the lines around the corn and sunflower beds, but the deer came from the other side!!
Venison is sounding very good right now.
What a disappointing way to start the day.
Other things went well, though, and I will save those for other posts!
As I write this, we’ve had several rainfalls, and even a couple of downpours. We’ve had more rain today than we have had all year until now! It is so exciting!
We actually got our first bit of rain this morning, while I was quickly doing my rounds. In fact, it was a bit of a problem at the time. While changing the micro disc cards on the driveway cam, the card I took out of the camera slipped through my fingers and fell to the ground.
I never found it.
I had a fresh card to put in and came back several times today, and nothing. I have extras, but I’d really hate to have lost it completely!
When checking the garden beds, I found a couple more sunflowers got nibbled on.
Almost every one of the transplanted Mongolian Giant sunflowers in this row have had their head bitten off. :-(
The culprit was caught on the garden cam!
Anyhow.
This morning, I made a trip to the smaller city to do the Walmart part of our monthly shopping, then swung by town on the way home to pick up my husband’s prescription refills. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized mine weren’t in there. I’ll have to remember to call them and get mine delivered. I only have one prescription, compared to my husband’s bubble packs and injections.
I wanted to make sure I got all the errands done early, because we were going to have visitors this evening. My brother and his wife were going to swing by, on their way to somewhere else. I’ve been sharing photos of the garden progress with them, and they wanted to see it in person.
It was while they were on the way over that the first thunderstorm hit. It stopped and started a couple of times, then stopped before they arrived. Meanwhile, during their drive, they saw no rain at all! It wasn’t until they got close that they finally saw wet highway. When they got here, we did the tour, including my showing them where the groundhogs have been hiding out.
I saw one crossing by the spruce grove just before they arrived, heading under the junk pile. When I took a look, there it was, watching me!!!
The cheeky little bugger.
While checking out around the junk pile, I was disappointed to see this.
These are Saskatoon bushes. We have a couple of them here, and they are in terrible shape. Not only do they show signs of fungal disease, but their leaves are riddled with insect damage, and little growths where insect eggs are. There is even a sudden grown of lichen on the trunks and branches! Lichen is supposed to be slow growing, yet these bushes, and even the dead branches on nearby spruce trees, have suddenly turned bright green and thick. Or perhaps it’s just the rain waking up what was already there? That sounds more likely.
There are a few places where we will have to clear out the diseased trees and bushes, then not plant anything nearby for a few years.
We were just finishing off our tour of the garden beds with my brother and his wife when it started to rain heavily again. We still have the gazebo tent set up, where we had painted the kibble house. The kibble house it back where it goes, so we had plenty of room to be sheltered from the rain, while still enjoying the lovely cool wind and freshness. They were really hoping some of the rain would make it their way; they’ve been pretty much as dry as we have, and while they have had a bit more rain than we have this year, it’s been more like a tease than anything else.
When the rain let up a little big, we made a dash to the pump shack. I had asked my brother if he remembered when the pump got changed, and he wanted to see what I was talking about.
He had no idea.
He remembers better than I do, what the set up was like before, when there was a motor to operate the pump with electricity. When I pointed out that the current pump was not attached to anything, but just sitting on the pipes, loose enough to move while I was pumping, he mentioned something interesting. It seems the pipes into the well are “floating”, and the pump itself will actually move up and down with the water table. !! He also described the piston system at the bottom of the well. The fact that I could get water but couldn’t keep it going suggest to him that the O rings are giving out.
We are still left with the mystery of what happened to the motor and the frame that supported it.
Later this evening, my mother phoned and I remember to ask her about it. Not only does she not remember, but as far as she knew, there was never electricity to that pump. She insisted it was only ever manual. This tells me that it was my dad that had it set up, after they moved out here. As far as I remember, there was always the electric system, which suggests that it was installed in the 5 or so years before I was born, but my mother no longer remembers this at all. I find that a rather strange thing to forget!
Which leaves us with the mystery of what happened to the old pump system. I suppose it’s possible my late brother had it removed, perhaps with plans to get the old well repaired? I can’t think of any other reason someone would have removed it. If he had, however, the parts and pieces would still be around, and they aren’t. So what happened to it?
It seems that there is no longer anyone alive that could tell us.
By the time we were done looking at the pump, it was starting to pour again, and my brother and his wife still had other places to do, so they had to quickly head out. I’m really happy they were able to stop by, and we could show them how things have been going. Including with the woodchucks. My brother brought up a possible solution, and it’s one I’d already taken steps towards. Hopefully, it’ll work and I’ll be able to post about being free of woodchucks! We shall see. Until the problem is solved, however, I’m not even going to try to plant the fall spinach and lettuces I was planning on. I’m not going to go through the effort, only to have it eaten!
I think I may have come up with a way to keep the grasshoppers off, too. They are decimating our poor radish and kale seedlings as thoroughly as the groundhogs have been wiping out our carrot beds!
At least our garden beds have finally had a thorough soaking. No amount of watering with the house can match a good, solid rainfall!
Here’s hoping the rain helped with the wildfires to the north of us, too!
I have a bit of time before I head off to pick up our meat pack, and just had to make a quick post.
It was a bad morning in the garden.
While heading over to switch out the memory card on the garden cam, the very first thing that I saw was this.
Of the surviving Dorinny corn, there was one plant on its own at the very end of a row. It is now in two rows.
The critter didn’t even eat the whole thing. It just chomped on half a corn cob.
Another Dorinny corn got it’s developing cob torn off and nibbled on.
This one got to me. These are the transplanted Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. The ones we started indoors months ago, but didn’t actually germinate until all the others were direct sown or transplanted. While small, they had been doing well. Now, all but one have their heads chopped off, and the one that didn’t, is broken.
You can see the single surviving pink celery transplant, near it. That got ignored, at least.
Then there’s this. You can even see the hoof print in the ground!
This is the purple corn, way on the other side of the garden. The last two corn in this row had already been partially eaten and were growing back, only to be eaten again. A third one has it’s tall stalk broken right off, and you can see it lying on the ground. Thankfully, that was as far as the damage went, with the purple corn.
And here we have our culprit! At least for the Dorinny corn and sunflowers. The tracks in the purple corn head in the opposite direction, so it was either another deer, or this deer took the scenic route.
In the trail cam files, I did see a woodchuck in the sweet corn during the day, but there was no damage to that corn. It looked like it was eating the grass or weeds in the path.
The woodchuck – or another of them – is likely the cause of this damage, in one of the summer squash. It’s definitely not a deer that did this.
*sigh*
Later today, I’ll be moving some of the things we put around the tulips to keep critters away. The tulips have died back and they are no longer needed there. The bells and spinners would probably be useful in startling critters. Clearly, the flapping grocery bags, motion activated light and aluminum tart pans are no longer enough.
I suppose the damage is pretty minimal, given how much we’ve got planted overall, but even a little bit adds up after a while. It’s so frustrating.
When we plant trees where the temporary garden beds are now, we at least know we’ll have to take extra steps to protect the saplings from critter damage.
This spot is, hands down, a favourite of pretty much all the cats…
There had been three of them here, all sitting with their front paws at the window, watching the activities outside. Susan took off before I could get her in the picture. :-)
They have plenty to watch out there! Butterscotch’s kittens like to play on the concrete steps below the door. Recently, I moved their food and water bowls to the steps, partly to get them used to being closer to the safety of the house, and partly to have them spending less time at the junk pile, now that a grog – my daughters’ word for the woodchucks – has dug a den under it.
One time, the cats suddenly became very alert, so I went over to the living room window to see what they were looking at.
There was a grog, standing up like a little man, next to the lilacs!
Unfortunately, our hanging bird feeder got broken yesterday. I had refilled it that morning, but didn’t notice that I hadn’t hung it properly on the hook. That time of the morning, this time of the year, I get blinded by the sun when I hang it back up, and I keep forgetting to move. :-D I noticed it out the living room window, with the hanging cable sitting on top of the hook, instead of in it. For some reason, the hook is wrapped in electric tape, and that was keeping it from sliding off. Then I promptly got distracted and forgot to go outside to fix it. A few hours later, my daughter noticed it was gone completely. We spotted it about 15 feet away, in pieces, and the seed reservoir had a chunk broken off.
Though it had been refilled this morning, there was no sign of the birdseed that was in it! It was already all eaten up. My guess is, some larger bird landed on it, it slid off the hook, cracked when it hit the ground, and then a grog dragged it off and broke into it to get at the seeds. Just a guess, but a likely scenario.
When the girls were done the evening watering and went to shut off the back tap, they found another watcher.
This adorable BIG tree frog, just hanging out on the wall. :-)
Anyhow…
With the hanging feeder broken, I finally got around to attaching a piece of wood to the bottom of the big feeder, reattaching the metal fixture, then setting it back up on its post. The fixture is larger than the post, so I found some foam covered wire I had left and wrapped it around the post. It still wobbled a bit, but not as much as before.
The birds were happy to have the big feeder back up.
So where the raccoons.
I happened to pop outside some time after midnight and startled at least two of them. One ran off into the darkness, while the other ran up the tree outside our kitchen window, and just stayed there, frozen, until I left.
Unfortunately, they came back.
*sigh*
This is how I found it this morning. I’m going to have to find me some longer screws. Most of what I have are actually too long, and would go right through the base of the feeder.
I was heading to the city today to do our monthly shop, so I had to do a quick version of my morning rounds, which is when I found this.
Three sunflowers in one row, and one in another row, have lost their heads! The three with the twine around them were the larger, transplanted ones.
Given the height, I would say this was done by a deer, but when I finally got to check the garden cam, whatever did this did not trigger the motion sensor. I would have expected something as large as a deer to trigger it, but if it were something smaller, like a grog or a raccoon, it would have eaten the bottom leaves, or broken the stem, pulling it down to reach the heads.
The plants are far enough along that they will grow side shoots to replace the missing heads, but it will certainly slow their development.
The critters invading our yard this year are causing some issues of their own.
Having moved the kittens’ food bowl closer to the house also means the skunks will be coming closer, too. Which I’m not too worried about. They just eat the kibble, not our garden. When my daughter came around the house on her way to the garden, she startled a skunk at the steps. It ran off and went under the old garden shed.
Then suddenly began chittering like crazy, ran out and ran off.
The garden shed began making grog noises.
It seems the skunk ran to hide under the shed, only to run face first into a woodchuck.
I’m amazed it didn’t spray!
In other things, I’ve hit a bit of a delay in working on the bench I was doing to make, over the pair of stumps near the garden. I brought out the electric chainsaw to cut the stumps flat across the top, and to even heights.
The first curiosity was finding the chainsaw’s oil reservoir was empty. I’d only used it once since we had it services, and even then, just for one cut, before moving on to other tools. Once that was refilled, it was doing the job all right – until it wasn’t! The chain stopped turning. It didn’t stop running, though. After fussing with it, the chain started turning again, then would stop soon after.
I’ve had this thing services twice, and no one spotted anything that would cause this.
I noticed the chain was really dry, too. I don’t think it’s getting oiled as it runs, the way it’s supposed to. It has a button to push to oil the chain, but it doesn’t seem to do anything.
I don’t think I’ll bother getting it serviced again.
I’m hoping to be able to use our reciprocating saw to do that job, instead. The last time I used it, however, it was having issues, too. It’s a cheaper brand, and has seen a lot of use, so that doesn’t surprise me. It does, however, have a blade on it that’s longer than the bar on the electric chain saw, so if it does work, it’ll actually be easier to use on the larger stump than with the electric chain saw.
I think it will wait until tomorrow, though, which is supposed to be a bit cooler.
For now, I’m going to start the evening a bit early, since I wasn’t able to water the garden beds this morning.
The Re-Farmer 