Little Nosencrantz turned her nose up at the freshly filled food bowl near their home in the big junk pile, in favour of clambering into the kibble house to join Mom and Uncle Creamsicle.
Do you get the impression Rosencrantz is trying to warn me off from her baby? ;-)
The Re-Farmer
It took moving the garden cam a few times, but I finally managed it.
I caught him in the act.
It is confirmed that the woodchuck is eating our peas plants.
The green peas are completely shot this year. Between the heat, the dryness, the poor soil and Woody here, eating them, they’re toast. I don’t even know why we still water them, but we do.
Oddly, the purple peas aren’t being eaten. They’re still struggling from the drought conditions, though.
If we are to get any peas this year, it’s now down to the ones I planted among the corn as nitrogen fixers. This morning, I think I even saw a single sprout, under one of the purple corn plants!
When the girls were watering last night, they picked some zucchini and sunburst squash. One of the zucchini had a bite taken out of the end! Like something took a taste and decided they didn’t like it. I’ve seen a few eaten leaves, too. The deer leave the summer squash alone; the spikes on the leaf stems are too much for their tender lips. The woodchucks seem to have a slightly better tolerance for it.
This really, really frustrated me. We put the wire mesh around the Crespo squash in the morning, and by evening, large amounts of it were gone. These have far fewer spines on their stems compared to the summer squash.
Looking around the barriers, I found the likely place they got through. Not that it would have been hard, anywhere around it.
When we made this squash hill, we took advantage of a hill that was already there, created by drunk plowing. There are lower furrows near it, making the ground even more uneven than in other parts of the old garden area. That left a furrow and a drop that made it really easy for a critter to slip under the wire.
I tried to use wire soil staples to peg the bottom of the chicken wire to the ground, but couldn’t. There are so many rocks under there, I couldn’t push the wire through far enough to hold it down. I tried an area about two feet long by a foot wide, and there wasn’t a single place I could push the wire through before being blocked by buried rocks. I ended up folding the bottom of the wire mesh under, then weighing it down with bricks. When I checked this morning, there was no new damage.
At this point, we’re thinking we’re not going to get an Crespo squash. The plants are using their energy to recover from critter damage. Of the flowers we’ve seen, there have still been no female flowers, and as long as stuff like this is happening, they won’t have the energy to produce fruit. If any fruit does start to develop, there is no longer enough of a growing season left for them to fully mature.
I did not invest all this time, effort and money to feed rodents instead of my family.
Those critters have got to go!!
The Re-Farmer
Every now and then, we’ll discover we have company in the bathroom.
We’ll find Keith in his favourite spot, hiding behind a hanging towel. This time, he happened to be napping. Other times, we’ll discover eyes, peering at us from the shadows. :-D
Keith has such distinct behaviours, his name has become a verb in this household!
The Re-Farmer
Butterscotch’s babies were extremely active in the cool of the morning. :-)
It took them stopping for a nursing break before I could get pictures!
I didn’t want to disturb them, so I used the zoom on my phone’s camera, which takes the worse pictures. :-(
I still ended up disturbing them. Ah well.
Earlier, I noticed a couple of the kittens playing around under the bird feeder (the flowers under there are totally mashed!). Something seemed odd about their actions, though, so I went and checked. It turned out they were “playing” with a chipmunk. :-( It was still very much alive and the kittens were… well… being cats about it. I shooed them away and the chipmunk just sort of set itself into a defensive stance and stayed there. When I found it let me touch it, I picked it up and carried it to the pile of maple logs near the garden shed, so it had a place to rest and recover. It was bleeding, but I don’t think it was mortally wounded. Hopefully, it will be okay.
Later I found Bradicus just going nuts in this tree! :-D Chadicus is at the bottom of the tree, and Caramel is in the foreground.
Broccoli, meanwhile, was busy hunting grasshoppers in the grass. :-D
I want.
To boop.
That nose!!!!
The Re-Farmer
Well, we’ve passed our forecasted high of the day and have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex putting us at 35C/95F, this afternoon. We did, however, get RAIN this morning! I was awakened by the sound of thunder, so I quickly went outside to make sure the cats and birds had food before the rain hit. The storm blew past us, but it did start to rain while I was still outside. I’ll take the nice, gentle rain, thank you very much!
Unfortunately, it looks like this will be the last rain we’ll have in a while, and tomorrow the smoke is supposed to be back. What rain we did have never reached the fires up north. :-(
While doing my evening rounds yesterday, and checking the old kitchen garden (the floating row covers are doing their job; no signs of critters trying to get under them, and our carrots are recovering!), I stumbled on a pretty green friend!
It was just hanging out on the leaf of one of the flowers that made its way through the layers of mulch we put on this garden, two summers ago. We’ve seen a lot of frogs this year (likely because all the ponds and ditches have dried up), but we don’t often see the green tree frogs.
It didn’t seem to like us giants hanging around, so we let it be, though I must admit, it is very tempting to want to hold it.
I also was able to get a picture of some furry friends.
Rosencrantz and Nosencrantz were calm enough to just watch me as I went by. Toesencrantz, unfortunately, is more skittish and was hiding.
I so want to boop Nosencrantz’s nose. :-D
While the girls and I were checking the garlic beds, I showed them this odd garlic.
It looks like garlic is forming inside the stem, and this one is getting pretty big. I’d noticed another had started to show signs of this happening a few days ago. This is only in the Racombole garlic, which is split between the two garlic beds, so the girls started looking around in the other bed, and we found several more.
This one was the strangest looking one, and it may explain what’s happening.
This looks like a garlic scape! This might explain why the Racombole seemed to have fewer scapes than the other two varieties. Instead of growing out the tops, as they should have, the scapes look like they got stuck in the bottoms of the stems in quite a few of the plants. Since they didn’t get harvested, bulbils are now forming inside the stems, eventually bursting through. Only this one had the rest of the scape emerge from the stem for us to see.
It also looks like something tried to give this one a taste!
In theory, we can keep the bulbils and plant them in the fall. Hardneck garlic are bi-annual, growing seeds in their second year. Planting the cloves, rather than the bulbils, and harvesting the scapes by passes that, allowing for large bulbs with lots of cloves to form. If we planted bulbils, we sould get small bulbs that are basically one big clove. Kind of like the garlic we had to harvest early, because the plants died back so soon.
It should be interesting to see the bulbs that form under the plants that have these trapped bulbils growing in their stems. I would expect they would be smaller bulbs, though with conditions this year, I expect all of them to be smaller. I don’t expect to have any suitable for planting next year. This year, for our fall planting, we are looking to double the amount of garlic we plant. I should order them soon; they will be shipped when ready for planting in our zone, so ordering early will not be an issue. We will just have to decide where we want to plant them this fall, as we rotate things.
I am finding that half the fun of gardening is planning out next year’s garden! :-D
The Re-Farmer
Well, we seem to be back to having all the rain systems passing us by again. We are a bit cooler – as I write this, we are at “only” 26C/79F – but our humidex puts us at 33C/91F. Which I suppose helps, as we didn’t need to water the garden at all, yesterday. I probably could have left them be for another day, but I used a water soluble fertilizer on most of it, this morning.
This is the biggest of the Pixie melons that I checked on this morning. I just love how perfectly round they are! :-D
We had a whole bunch of poppies blooming this morning, including this tiny one. So far, it’s the only one with petals that are almost the pink they are supposed to be.
Unfortunately, the potatoes are getting more grasshopper damage these days.
They seem to prefer to eat the flowers! There is a fair bit of leaf damage, though the potatoes are doing so well, they can handle it pretty well right now. Though this seemed odd.
The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes have virtually no damage at all! I think I found only two leaves that had been chewed on. That’s it. All the other varieties, meanwhile, have quite a lot of chewed up leaves. Apparently, these potato leaves taste bad to grasshoppers! :-D
I don’t know what it is about today, but the entire household seems to be having a hard time. Perhaps it’s the humidity? I’m actually feeling an oppressive weight in my upper chest and throat that gets worse when I lie down, making it hard to sleep, and my chronic cough has been an issue, even though the rain we did get cleared the smoke out of the air. I don’t know, but we’re all barely able to drag our butts around to get anything done, and we all feel like falling asleep where we stand. Even the cats are sprawled all over the house in furry puddles, sleeping.
Speaking of furry puddles…
The big woodchuck was under the bird feeder earlier today – along with a chipmunk! You can’t really see it in the photo, but the woodchuck’s back hips are just sort of flattened to the ground, like a puddle.
It came back again later, then got some company.
The little one wandered over and started munching. They look peaceable in the photo, but when the littler one got too close to the big one, the big one attacked it! Had it flipped over on its back, teeth at its throat, in a heartbeat!
Then it let the little one go. This was clearly a dominance thing, not an attempt to do real damage. The little one didn’t fight back, but submitted to the big one. Given the size – and likely age – difference, that was probably a wise decision on the little one’s part!
With today being a day where manual labour seems to be out of the question (and there is much of it that needs to be done, but couldn’t be, because of the heat we’ve been having), I decided it was a good time to write out some plans and lists, and make some diagrams, for next year’s garden. I’ve got our catalogues out and started some wish lists, as well as working out what we want to do for next year. The girls and I will go over things and hash out details, using what we learned with this year’s gardening. Having this worked out early will be useful as we clean things up at the end of this growing season. The main thing I’m trying to figure out is what to use to build the first permanent, high raised beds, which will be where we currently have the low raised beds bordered with logs. Buying lumber is out of the question for our budget, but the barn and sheds got picked over by our vandal over the years before we moved here, quite thoroughly. The barn used to be full of salvaged lumber. I have a few ideas in mind, but it looks like it’ll be a while before we can see if they’re even possible. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out.
The Re-Farmer
While heading back and forth between garden and house today, passing by the hanging bird feeder, I kept disturbing woodchucks, eating the sunflower seeds on the ground. I saw all four of them today, including the little one the girls had told me about. A few times, there were two of them at the bird seed at once.
Usually, they’d run off into the spruces, or under the garden shed. Then one of them decided to run along the back of the house, where we still have a row of various things used to hold the insulation we put around the based of the house in the winter. We just kept forgetting to move them. :-/ The little bugger decided to hide in the ceramic chimney inserts, running from one to the other, then back again. I didn’t want him using the house as a place to hide, so I tried to get him to go elsewhere, but he just wouldn’t leave the inserts.
I got close enough that I could have touched that angry looking face (not that I would have!), and he still wouldn’t run off! I finally had to get a long stick and basically shepherd him along before he finally ran to the garden shed.
Of the various woodchucks we’ve seen, there’s just the one that tends to freeze in a sort of panic mode, rather than run off like the others. He was especially unhappy that Nutmeg was with me. Nutmeg completely ignored him and kept trying to rub against me to pet him, even when the woodchuck tried running his way, saw him, froze and started to… growl? I’m not sure how to describe the noise it made!
Among the things I’ve read to use to keep woodchucks from eating the garden is to scatter cat hair around the plants, because cats are their natural predators. Which I find hilarious. The woodchucks are bigger than any of our yard cats! They also seem to get along just fine. I even saw a woodchuck drinking from the water bowl we have by the junk pile for Butterscotch and her kittens.
Cheeky little buggers.
Also… just look at that hand in the photo!!! :-D
The Re-Farmer
Last night, as I was topping up the food dishes near where kittens are, I found Butterscotch and her babies playing around the concrete steps at the side of the house. So I sat on the stairs and scattered some kibble at the bottom to see if I could convince them to come closer.
This was about as close as Bradicus got. At least I could see him! Chadicus just hid in the lilacs and peaked at me. :-D
While I was trying to get a picture of Chadicus (I never did), I heard a small noise beside me.
Broccoli had come over and was licking the container I used to carry the kibble in! :-D
Of course, I scattered some kibble on the step for her, as she ran off a little ways.
Those eyes!!!! My goodness!
Caramel is definitely one of the braver ones. My daughter has actually been able to put Caramel on her lap and scritch her ears.
Eventually, I had both Caramel and Broccoli on the step by my foot, eating kibble, and I was even able to touch and pet both of them!! They’re not comfortable with that at all, but were interested in the food enough to put up with it. A bit.
Gosh, they are cute. I just wish Butterscotch wasn’t leading them to the empty farmyard across the road. These babies need to stay close to the house!
The Re-Farmer
Today, we finally have cooler temperatures! According to the hourly forecasts, we should be at about 23C/73F right now, but we’re still at only 18C/64F, which is awesome. There are still predictions of rain, all of which have been passing south of us. We desperately need rain. I’ve been reading about how it’s affecting some of our farmers. Those growing things like oats have had their crops gone crispy. Cherry producers (I didn’t even know we had a cherry industry in our province!) have had their cherries bake, right on the trees.
On top of all that is the smoke. I had to make a trip into town this morning, and it’s even worse there. There are fires on the other side of the lake, which is likely why. There are no fires near us but, today, the smoke is heavy enough to affect visibility quite a bit. I was talking to my mother on the phone a little while ago, and the smoke coming into the house was so bad, I had to excuse myself for a couple of coughing fits while talking. I’ve been able to reduce my mystery coughing fits pretty well over the last few years, but with this smoke, I’ve had more in one day than I’ve had in the last 4 years since we’ve moved here. I’ve actually reversed the fan in my window to blow the smoke out, even though I would normally be drawing the cooler air in while we’ve got it.
This adorable monster was eating our bird seed this morning. I saw one of the smaller ones out my window, heading to the bird feeder, just a little while ago. I should probably chase them away, but as long as they’re eating the seeds, they’re not eating my garden, so… I’m letting them be for now.
I’ve got the garden cam set up to try and see what has been eating our peas. The only things that got caught were a skunk and Butterscotch going by. Skunks are omnivores, so it could potentially be a skunk, but the one I saw was just passing through.
When doing the watering last night, I uncovered the beds with radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi. This morning, I left them uncovered. We’re overcast, so they don’t need the shade, and if we do get rain, I want them to get some!
While talking to my mother about the current drought conditions, I mentioned that there are people whose wells have gone dry. I told her I thought my brother had said our well is 80 feet deep. It’s a number that’s been bothering me, but I couldn’t remember him saying anything different for this well. The old well in the pump shack (which predates my family owning this property), I remember him saying is about 110 feet. My mother, however, corrected me. She didn’t know about the old well, but she did remember that the well by the house is a little over 150 feet deep.
I suddenly feel much, much better. There is no way my brother would have been wrong about that, since he was heavily involved when all the work was being done, so I don’t know where I got that 80 feet from. Especially since I know we have a deep well pump. “Deep” is a relative statement, depending on the geography and elevation, but I know that in our area, even 80 ft would be considered pretty deep. However, if we’re loosing pressure while using two hoses at the same time (granted, one of those hoses had been running a sprinkler for an hour) at 150 ft in current conditions, at 80 ft, our well would probably be dry right now. Which is a rather alarming thought.
And so we pray for rain, for respite for our farmers and firefighters, and to clear some of that smoke out of the air!
The Re-Farmer
Today, we did indeed break the 30C/86F mark, but by the “cool” of the evening (you know you’re acclimatizing to the heat when 27C/81F starts to feel cool!), the kittens were out to play!
I haven’t had much luck getting Butterscotch’s babies to come close while I’m sitting in the camp chair, but they’ve come closer to my daughter when she sit on the ground. So when I had the chance, I decided to get down on the ground to see if I could lure them closer.
It worked.
This was totally worth the pain of having to get back up again! :-D
Also, I would like to introduce to you, Bradicus, of the twins, Bradicus and Chadicus. These two look very much alike, but Bradicus has the distinct white line going up his forehead, and a white tip on his tail.
Out of focus in the background is Caramel, with her caramel coloured swirls on her sides.
Awww… Butterscotch and all her babies. :-)
Nutmeg was enjoying attention this evening, and he even let me pick him up! As long as we don’t try to walk, he will let us hold him, and he gets very cuddly!
Rosencrantz’ babies were running around, too.
Meet Nosencrantz.
I wasn’t able to get a picture of her orange sibling, Toesencrantz, this evening.
Then there are Junk Pile’s four, but when we see them, it’s usually in the form of a tornado of kitten, running away across the yard. Hopefully, they will start hanging around more.
So many furry babies! <3
The Re-Farmer
