Critters

More deer damage, and a medical update

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

We had a really hot day today, so when things cooled down enough, I went out to water the garden plots and sunflowers.

Which is when I found this.

All the leaves on one side of this one have been eaten!

This is the first of the large sunflowers that has had this kind of damage. :-( At least the top didn’t get chomped off.

One of the more recently chomped smaller ones is showing signs of recovery.

It also had a friend!

We’ve got a lot of grasshoppers and locusts this year, but this is the first green one like this that I’ve seen. :-)

When I was done and dragging the hose back to the house, I found Creamsicle napping on top of the straw bale. :-) My coming close for a picture woke him up…

I caught him mid stretch. :-D

Meanwhile…

Today, my husband and I had our doctor appointments that we should have had back in March. They were supposed to be physicals, but the doctor wasn’t expecting that. Which is when I found out he does physicals in the mornings, when, as he put it, his mind it still fresh. Which was not a problem, since we had lots to catch up on. He hasn’t seen my husband since December, and has seen me only while I was accompanying my mother.

Us all having the same doctor is coming in handy.

Before doing a full physical, he wanted us both to get fasting bloodwork done. For my husband’s part of the appointment, we updated the doctor on his upcoming visit with the pain clinic. Even though he hasn’t seen my husband in more than 6 months, he remembered that we’d already been waiting for almost 2 years, so he was a bit shocked that this was going to be a first visit. We also told him about the appointment at the cardiac clinic to discuss my husband getting a defibrillator implanted. He had questions about that. Mostly, why does my husband suddenly have such a low ejection fraction? It turns out that the cardiac clinic has not been sending any files to our doctor, so he had nothing. He still has nothing, really, because the cardiac clinic has not been able to find why my husband’s ejection fraction is so low, and are openly perplexed by him. The doctor has requested for us to remind the clinic to send the files to him, so he can see what’s going on. Same with the pain clinic, when the time comes.

In our previous province, all medical files were electronic, and could be accessed by any authorized doctor. So my husband could go from his GP to the specialists at the pain clinic (all 4 or 5 of them that were assigned to his case), to any other specialist, and they would all have access to the same information. Here, there is no connectivity. When our previous doctor suddenly moved out of province, we had to pay to have our files sent to the new clinic. A GP can access the electronic files at their own clinic, but not the files at the heart clinic or the pain clinic. They all have to send their files to each other, as needed. All of the specialty clinics should be sending everything back to the primary caregiver every time, so that at least that one person has all the information. Why that isn’t happening for my husband, we don’t know, but the doctor was not happy with having so much information missing.

We spent some time talking about my husband’s medications, and the problems he’s been having getting refills for the painkillers. So that’s been updated but, after we get the bloodwork done, he wants to look at switching my husband to morphine, and focus on pain management a lot more. There’s one medication in particular that he was wondering why my husband is on at all, and he just didn’t know anymore. I suspect the total number of prescriptions my husband is on will be reduced.

I’m happy to see him being pro-active about it. The previous doctor didn’t want to change anything until after my husband was seen by the pain clinic, but that took so long, the doctor moved out of province before that could happen!

My own part of the appointment was short. I have only one prescription, and I’ll see him again after my bloodwork is done. We ended up chatting a bit about my mother, since I’ll be bringing her back to see him tomorrow.

As for our follow up appointments, he started to ask if we could book them in the mornings when I mentioned I’d asked for the afternoon, because of the drive. When he realized how far away we live, he completely back tracked and said to make the appointment for whenever works best for us, and to book another “joint” appointment, and he will accommodate us. Since our bloodwork requires fasting, we will book the appointment after we get it done, which likely won’t be until Monday.

So we’ll have at least one more medical appointment this month, on top of the others.

With this doctor wanting to work proactively on managing my husband’s pain, I suspect we’ll be back fairly regularly.

By the time we were done, my husband was at his limit – and we still had the drive home to do. He was worried about his appointment at the cardiac clinic next week. The letter said that there have been a lot of delays, and to expect to be there for as long as 2 hours. That’s after a 1 1/2 hour drive. We’ll have to make sure to call in advance so they can have a stretcher available for him to lie down on; something they were able to arrange to do for him before, after a previous appointment was so late, he ended up walking out because he was in just too much pain. They’re a cardiac clinic. They don’t take into account any other issues a person might have, unrelated to the heart, unless it’s brought up directly.

Another reason why not having central files is a problem. When he goes to any specialist, he has to explain everything else to them. At the cardiac clinic, he could see any one of a team of 5 that works together, so he has to explain his disability, and why he uses a walker, all over again with each one. Otherwise, they assume that his use of a walker is related to his heart condition.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

At least now we’re able to actually get appointments and treatment. The months of delays because of the pandemic shut downs have really messed things up for him. Our province has once again had more people testing positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus, and people are freaking out and demanding things shut down again. What the media isn’t including in their reports (though it’s on the provincial government website, for all to see), those new cases are from 5 days of testing, and represent only .9% testing positive. The total number of positive and presumptive positive cases for the province since March is .03% of the entire population. A person is more likely to get hit by a car than test positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus. People don’t seem to understand risk factors at all anymore, and the panic means people like my husband are having a hard time getting medical care. During our appointment, the only time it came up at all was when I mentioned we were supposed to have today’s appointments back in March, when everything got shut down. My husband’s appointment at the cardiac clinic got cancelled. While my husband did get one appointment rescheduled at the cardiac clinic, for a test in nuclear medicine, next week will be the first time the cardiac team will be seeing him. He’s had a couple of telephone appointments, but that’s it. He had also finally gotten contacted by the pain clinic just before the shut down, which that added a few more months to his wait.

If things shut down again, lack of treatment would certainly mean his condition degenerating further. Lack of treatment is more likely to kill him, than any of us coming in contact with the Wuhan strain of coronavirus.

He is certainly not the only person in this position.

Frustrating is really quite an understatement.

The Re-Farmer

Fur baby progress!

/ Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

It had been a while since I’d seen the outside kittens, so I was happy when they showed up this evening. Little Braveheart had follow Junk Pile to the food bowls by the house, but ran off when I came out. They hung out by the steps into the storage house, before hiding in the grape vines, so I decided to sit on the steps and see if I could tempt them to play.

Braveheart was immediately curious!

Just look at that intense gaze! :-)

And who’s that back there?

Another baby, chewing on a grape vine! :-D

Junk Pile, meanwhile, came over and lay on the mulch, growling at me the whole time! That seems to be her default attitude these days. :-D

I broke off the spent flowers of a spirea growing under the stairs to wiggle around on the step. It worked a bit!

Braveheart pounced at it! :-)

Her sibling even came a bit closer.

I saw no sign of the third kitten, though. I hope it’s all right.

After this, they ran off with Junk Pile into the spirea, so I let them be.

Once indoors, I got entertained by more kittens.

The cats love the base of the washing machine packaging so much, we don’t have the heart to get rid of it, yet! :-D

Layendecker had been napping on it when Turmeric crawled on and woke him up. :-D

They are so sweet. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Sleepy kitties

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I woke up this morning, surrounded by cats, including one curled up on my belly.

It was this one.

Can I go back to sleep now?

She barely woke up as I got her off, and was more than content to join a sleeping Susan, who’s paws you can see on the side of the photo. :-D

Another kitty had a harder time of it.

Yaaaaawwwwnnn!!!!

Turmeric had been peacefully sleeping on a box in my shelf, when Two Face jump up and tackled her. :-D

Turmeric is not pleased.

The Re-Farmer

I touched a kitty!

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While doing my evening rounds, I decided to check the pump shack to see if Rosencrantz’ kittens were still there. I have not seen them since that first time.

I didn’t see them, but Junk Pile was following me around – growling the whole time.

Then, as I passed the junk pile, I saw Junk Pile – and her three kittens!

Two went and hid among the pallets before I could take a picture.

Junk Pile was growling at me while staring me down! :-D

This was also the closest I’ve had Junk Pile come near me since she was a kitten herself!

Eventually, little Braveheart went down and out of sight. I ended up going around the back of the rotten pallets and could see two kittens – including the bravest one – looking up at me.

I started playing the finger wiggle game, and Braveheart was more than willing to stalk and tackle them!

You can see the second kitten as a blur, slinking away below.

While playing with little Braveheart, I noticed a face staring at me from inside a pallet.

I saw the second one and tried to get a photo, which didn’t work, but when I uploaded this photo, I was thrilled to see I got them both!

They were intensely curious, but not quite willing to tackle the wiggling fingers.

I’d have stayed out longer, if I weren’t being eaten alive by mosquitoes!

I am so thrilled. We were never able to socialize Junk Pile, but maybe we’ll be able to socialize her babies!

The Re-Farmer

Cookout, cats and cucamelons – what a beautiful day!

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What a lovely day today turned out to be!

The area we have the picnic table set up for painting is near where the cucamelons are planted. After painting last night, the girls checked them out and spotted baby cucamelons! When I’d checked them earlier, they weren’t even blooming.

Of course, I had to check them out, this morning.

The tiniest cucamelons on the tiniest of flowers! There are lots of them, and they are all barely visible. :-D

I had another smile waiting for me when I got back in the house. Our feline matriarch has laid claim to the base from under the washing machine; she likes the Styrofoam. Before heading outside, I took the piece that was inside the drum of the washer and set it on the floor.

She took the bait.

She’s been in it pretty much all day – and if she hasn’t, one of the other cats was in it! :-D

I think we’ll keep it, just for her. :-)

The girls and I planned a cookout today. Usually, we do these later in the day, when it’s cooler and the fire looks great as it gets dark. The girls have plans for the evening, so we did it earlier than usual.

Though we bought a big bag of potatoes while stocking up for the month, I ended up getting some from the store that were already wrapped and ready for grilling or baking. What can I say. The price was really good, and I didn’t feel like fussing with foil.

Along with the potatoes, I put together something we’ve never gone before, based on a recipe I’d found online. Ground beef meatballs, stuffed with cheese, encased in onion rings, then wrapped in bacon. I have a cooking sheet that’s designed to do things like vegetables on a BBQ, and I used that as my base. I lined it with heavy duty aluminum foil and made “sides” around the edges after the meatballs were set up, then covered with another sheet of foil. I also prepped corn on the cob by peeling off only a couple of the other husks, pulling back the rest so I could remove the silk, covered the cobs with the husks again, then let them soak in a giant bowl of water.

Once everything we ready, I got a fire going and built it up until I got a good, solid base of coals. While I was doing that, the girls painted one last coat on the picnic table.

Since the picnic table wasn’t ready to use, and we needed a table of some kind, we ended up bringing a pair of saw horses and a couple of 3×4’s that we’d been using to hold things near the picnic table. The sheet of high density plastic that I’ve been hanging on to (I think it was used to cover the basement window for the winter at some point) was brought over as a table top.

Once I had a decent amount of coals, pushed them to the back, then set up one of the oven racks from the broken stove over them. Sitting on the concrete blocks, the rack is still pretty high above the coals, so I used an old roaster lid to cover them and keep the heat from above, like a sort of oven.

After about 20 minutes, I set up the other rack and put on the meatballs. My daughter had added a baking sheet over it, just in case the cats decided to go for them, and I ended up leaving it on to serve a similar purpose as the roaster lid.

I’m not used to cooking thick hamburger like this over fire, and we had some concerns about getting them cooked all the way through (the cheese in the middle would help with that, at least), but within moments of putting the pan over the fire, I could hear it sizzling!

After about 10 minutes, we checked how they were doing.

Wow! The cheese just exploded out of them! :-D There was quite a bit of liquid, so I left the baking sheet off and just loosely covered it with foil again.

The potatoes were ready by then, so I moved them to a corner away from the coals, and covered them again to stay warm.

We kept a close eye on them and, after a while, flipped them.

Sort of.

They kept wanting to fall apart, and the bacon was sticking to the foil!! My daughter managed to get it done, though. :-D

Once they were done, the pan was moved to the other corner, and the corn was put on.

The corn cooks very quickly, compared to most things. Still, after flipping them, I ended up using the roaster lid to cover them.

My husband wasn’t able to join us, so when the food was ready, I prepped a plate for him.

The plate was too small for both of his cobs of corn. :-D

The husks make a great handle to use while eating the corn. :-)

It all turned out absolutely delicious! I don’t know that I would do the meatballs again – at least not over a fire. They were quite difficult to get off the foil. Still, they were so tasty, they’re worth the fuss.

It was so nice, sitting outside then enjoying a delicious meal. We were serenaded by cicadas. Two of them. LOL (Cicadas are not really a thing in our area.) There was a constant snapping and crackling as caragana seed pods exploded in the sunlight, while we played “chase the shade” with our chairs. LOL We had feline company too, of course. Potato Beetle demanded attention, and kept steeling our chairs for naps!

While waiting for the fire to burn down, the girls (who had missed breakfast) had brought out hot dog fixings and toasted a couple of dogs early on. They left the supplies behind (in an insulated back with ice packs, of course) when they had to leave. Once the cooking was done, I started to build up the fire again and began working on the pile of branches against the old log cabin. I was out there so long, I ended up having hot dogs for supper, too! :-D

I found another smile waiting for me on our makeshift table.

Of all the places he could lay down for a nap, he chose the picnic backpack, and used the cutlery as a pillow. What a silly boy!

I’m not sure when this happened, but I noticed it after I had started to rebuild the fire again.

The half-block cracked in the heat! I pushed it back into position after the photo was taken and I moved the piece of wood off of it.

I check the other blocks, when the fire died down a bit, and can see that one of them has cracks, too. Only on the top of the brick, though.

Eventually, the piece on the half block fell right off. As I moved it to one side, I noticed this.

One of the bricks under it has not only cracked, but when I tapped it while moving the ashes around, chunks broke off.

Well, they still do the job, so I don’t mind!

Meanwhile, I’m already thinking ahead to what I want to try cooking on the fire pit next!

The Re-Farmer

Watching the show

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I started another load of laundry in the new machine, just before I went outside for my evening rounds.

This is what I found when I came back.

I was wondering which of the cats would be first to discover the window!

Also, there are two things that really stand out about this new machine.

The first is, what a huge difference not having an agitator makes on how much can be put into the machine! The drum itself is only slightly bigger than the old one, but a full laundry basket barely filled it half way. I actually had to add more to the first load to help keep it balanced. According to the manual, the “fill line” is the top of the drum, right under the lip of the opening. I don’t think our dryer can even hold that much, and it’s a large dryer!

The second thing is, how much quieter this machine is!! What a difference!

The test run on the machine was finishing when the girls came into the room. Just in time for us all to hear the little victory music the machine plays, to let you know it’s finished! Too funny! The tones it make when it’s powered on and off are hilarious, too. None of us expected it to be so musical. ;-)

Having the old machine break down wasn’t fun, and it put a major dent in our savings, but I’m glad we got this machine. The technology has really improved! Granted, I could do without the fancy electronics; the more there is, the more there is to break down! But the mechanical function of it is quite the advancement.

Who knew laundry could be so much fun?

At least for now..

The Re-Farmer

A lovely day

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Today has worked out to be a lovely day!

First, I had a cheering squad waiting for me when I went to feed the fish.

Saffron, Cheddar, Big Rig and Two Face

The top of the big aquarium we can’t use right now has long been a favorite place for the cats to sit. Now, the kittens are big enough to appreciate it, too!

Also, Saffron wanted my phone.

It’s amazing, how one little fish fascinates the cats. :-D

Both girls ended up going into the city with me, which worked out rather well. I went into town first, to pick up my husband’s prescription refills. He got just one week’s worth, because of the weird rules over some of his more powerful medications, so he can’t get the rest until after Tuesday. We have actual doctor appointments on Thursday, so they should have updated prescriptions by Friday. Hopefully, that will end the problems we’ve been having regarding his refills, lately.

The bubble packs weren’t ready yet, so I made a quick run to the garage to see about my mother’s car. I was surprised to find it closed! My mother’s car was there, along with one other car, but that was it. Then I remembered that they often go into the city to pick up parts on Fridays. I’ll have to remember to call them tomorrow. I was able to get a medical appointment for my mother on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday this weekend), and it be nice to surprise her with her own car.

My mom’s car has been sitting there for so long, it has spider webs on the side mirror!

After getting the medications and heading home, it started to rain. I even drove through a very nice downpour! By the time I was unlocking the gate, it had slowed down a bit, but started to come down hard again as the girls and I were leaving.

By the time we were driving through the town my mother lives in, we had left the rain behind us and everything was dry! Which is basically the opposite of how it usually goes. :-D

The shopping went smoothly, which is something I can’t say about the drive. It was one of those days where it seemed like every other driver out there was determined to either tail gate me, or pass me into oncoming traffic!

Okay, I exaggerate.

A little.

A very little.

We had way too many close calls for my comfort.

I am so glad to not have to drive through city traffic all the time anymore!

We only had two places we needed to go, and once in the stores, things went much better. We found pretty much everything we needed, and the rest we can get locally as we need to throughout the month.

It feels good to be well stocked again.

Back on the highway, we drove into the rain again. By the time we got home, it was pouring. The girls unlocked the gate for me, so of course they got soaked while walking to the house. I pulled into the yard, right near the door, but got just as soaked while unloading the van.

It was beautiful! The rains have been passing us by for a while, now, so it was really nice to finally get some.

After the van was unloaded, one of my daughters went to check the picnic table under the tent. We hadn’t bothered to put on the walls, so it was possible rain could have been blown in from the sides. The back of the house provided enough shelter, though, to prevent that. The table was bone dry! The bird house I’d scrubbed last night was mostly dry, too. When doing my rounds this morning, I found something I could put the bird house on under the tent, just in case it rained, and I’m glad I did!

Tomorrow, if all goes to plan, we’ll flip the table and do the first coat on the top, as well as the bird house. I have to remember to bring the screened window over to paint, too. I’m leaving that as long as possible, since I’ll have to switch to the high density plastic window we use in the winter. I’ll be plugging in the big blower fan in the old basement to make up for the lack of air circulation while that one is in.

Right now, the sky is blue and there’s a lovely breeze.

I think this is a good time to do my evening rounds.

:-)

The Re-Farmer

Internet status

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Soooo… a few things happened today.

Long story short, we are still down to just one account.

Long story long…

First, we got a call from the tech guy, saying that he would be here between 1 and 3pm to see what’s going on with our secondary internet account.

Second, we got our ebill for the month.

Yeah. Over $550. They charged us $2 a gig in overage fees, even though my husband had been told they wouldn’t.

Which is when he had a conversation with them!

At first, they tried to say they couldn’t credit us the amount, or credit us for the account we couldn’t use all month that we paid for, anyway.

So he told them to cancel the secondary account.

Well, they couldn’t credit the whole amount, but they could credit us $10 a month for 6 months.

He told them to cancel the secondary account.

He got put on hold while she went to see what she could do.

In the end, he agreed to a credit of $20 a month for 6 months. Which basically covers the cost of the secondary account for a month.

After all the huge expenses we had this month, like having to get a new lawn mower and new washing machine, among other things, plus we’ve still got the rest of the bill for my mom’s car to pay soon, we’ll be paying this bill down slowly for a while. I’d already budgeted a higher amount for the bill, but not that much!!

Meanwhile, we still had the tech guy coming out.

Shortly after noon, I headed out to unlock the gate – just in time for him to pull into our driveway! Yup, he arrived almost an hour early. We got a good laugh over my being there to unlock it at just the right time. :-)

He started off by bringing in his own router to test with. While he did his best to make sure he wouldn’t disconnect us from the one account that was still working, if badly, my daughter stopped working, just in case. The last thing she needed was to be in the middle of something, and suddenly, no internet. So she and I started on the picnic table.

The tech ended up switching modems, changing connectors, changing the entire cable, replacing the receiver on the satellite itself, all while constantly checking and rechecking the signal we were getting.

He was actually getting negative numbers. Which never seen before. I mean, if there’s no signal, it should be zero, but to get negatives?

He was at it for about three hours, in 25C/77F heat, with the humidex at about 30C/86F, in full sun on the roof, and not even a breeze!

Thankfully, we had just picked up a case of van water, and what didn’t fit in the cooler in the van, I brought to the house. I had some nice, cold water bottles to give him!

He did everything he could, and nothing worked.

That one dish is just not getting a signal.

In the end, there was just one thing left, and it was not something he could do.

I identified a specific tree branch that might be causing the problem.

It was actually one I’d narrowed it down to, myself, though partly because it’s the one we can reach to try.

I was ready to just grab a ladder and take it down right away.

Thankfully, my daughter stopped me.

This is the trunk of that tree.

Do you see those holes?

The elms are all riddled with them.

They are made by bald faced hornets. Which are wasps that burrow into trees to make their nests.

That’s right. The tree itself is the nest.

In the fall, they all die. The ones that hatch, build a nest elsewhere.

The tree we’d already pruned huge branches from had been a nest last year, but is empty now.

The year before, they had been in this tree, but in other branches.

This year, their nest is this branch.

Now, these wasps are actually pretty docile. They will leave you alone, if you leave them alone. They are not aggressive. In fact, they are desirable, as they keep down other insects.

If, however, you F* them up, they will F* you up.

Cutting down the branch that is their nest is about as F’ing them up as you can get.

The guy was still hear as my daughter explained all this, which I think he appreciated. He may well need that information at someone else’s place, in the future!

Which reminds me…

I had talked to him earlier about how the satellites had worked for the past while, and that the trees themselves actually have a lot less branches than before. We can tell when the branches are a problem during high winds, as they block and unblock the signal. So when he told me which particular branch he thought my be the problem, we also talked about what to do if we took the branch down, and it still didn’t work!

After he was gone, we had a talk about it.

One option is to pick up a whole lot of wasp and hornet killer, spray the branch, then cut it down. The problem with that is, this isn’t an external nest like with paper wasps that we can spray. The nest is inside the branch, and it’s very unlikely we’d be able to kill them all. We’d probably have to empty 3 cans over the length of the branch, and hope the contact kill gets the ones we miss.

Unlike the paper wasps, though, we don’t actually want to get rid of these guys. These ones are “good guys”. Plus, they will die on their own in the fall. Until then, they will help keep actual problem insects down.

My daughter suggested we just get used to having one account for a while, then take the branch down after the tree stops buzzing.

So tomorrow, my husband will call our provider back and ask them to suspend the account for now. We’ll just have a small fee each month, instead. If we keep paying what we normally budget at the same time, we’ll pay off the current bill much, much faster, too.

In a couple of months, we should be able to remove the branch, then ask them to activate the account again and see if it worked. If not, it’s time to call someone to come out again. Which is what the “care” charge on our bill covers.

Until then, we just have to keep rationing our internet usage, and get used to having horrible internet. The guy did check the primary account, too, and it was working fine, though as I type this I’m noticing we have lost internet again.

Oh, it’s back.

Anyhow.

So I’m kinda feeling really lucky right now. I had been eyeballing that tree and thinking of that one branch that was most likely to be at least part of the problem. I was thinking of just taking it down, and even decided on where to cut it, so that new branches growing out of the remains would still provide shade.

I just never got around to doing it.

When going under the tree, you can hear buzzing, but I’d never been able to see where the buzzing was coming from. My daughter was able to point it out, and you can actually see the wasps crawling around. If I had cut that branch, once it crashed to the ground, I would probably have been swarmed.

I seemed to have really dodged a bullet on that one!

So that’s where we stand now.

Given that my husband already got them to credit us for the next 6 months, they might balk at suspending the account. Still, it’s not the same as cancelling it, and I would hope that they would be understanding once he tells them why we have to wait before we can take the branch down and see if that’s what’s causing the problem. The tech couldn’t even say that it would work. It’s just that he tried everything else he could do. It’s the only thing left that he could think of.

We’ve been wanting to get rid of that tree for various reasons, but now we have a new one.

Wasps!

We’ll just have to find some other way to provide shade.

The Re-Farmer

Mystery critter, and order placed

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Just minutes ago, we saw our mystery critter again – this time out by the compost pile!

We ended up bringing the DSLR, with it’s 700mm lens, and tripod over to try and zoom in for some pictures.

Unfortunately, the window we were looking through is the one that was not replaced, when all the others were. It has a sheet of plexiglass mounted on the inside, to keep the drafts out. Which means that there was nothing we could do to keep the auto focus from focusing on the glass, instead of the critter. I even tried manual focus, and the pictures I got were actually worse.

So these are the best of the bunch. I cropped the photos and resized them, but that’s it.

The question is: what is it?

It was eating grass and what I think were dandelion leaves. In one of the photos, it looks like it has a stuffed cheek!

It’s surprisingly large. About the size of our big skunk, but bulkier. Almost as big as a beaver! It kinda has a beaver shape, too, but the tail is completely different.

So it is a gopher? Groundhog? Prairie Dog?

Whatever it is, it’s adorable!

In other things, I just finished making our fall plantings order from Vesey’s. This is what we have ordered (all links should open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place!):

Fall garlic collection 2: This collection of hard neck garlic includes Porcelain Music, Rocambole and Marble Purple Stripe. The Purple Stripe is supposed to be really good for roasting. The collection has 1 pound of each. We are planning to plant these where we currently have the beets and carrots.

The rest that we ordered are flowers.

Muscari: aka Grape Hyacinth. I’ve wanted these since I was a kid! When we lived in Victoria, BC, they grew everywhere, like weeds. I loved them! We’ve ordered 2 packages of 100 bulbs.

The girls picked the rest.

Snow Crocus Collection: “This collection contains 105 bulbs including 25 Dorothy and 20 each of Blue Pearl, Tricolour, Snowbunting and Spring Beauty Snow Crocus.” Our plan is to mix these bulbs with the Muscari, then plant them randomly in the areas we have picked for them.

Double Tulip Collection: “This collection contains 58 bulbs, 8 of Black Hero, Pamplona & Vanilla Coup and 10 each of Pinksize, Orca and Brownie Double Tulips.” The girls aren’t big fans of the typical tulip shape, but they really love the more unusual shapes.

Speaking of unusual tulip shapes, definitely click on the next link!

Bulls Eye Tulip: We got 1 package of 8 bulbs of these. What an unusual tulip! I can hardly wait to see how they grow.

Eye of the Tiger Iris: They could have had so many punny names for this one… :-D This one comes in a package of 15. We do have some irises in the flower garden the bird feeder stand is currently in. They’ve been there for as long as I can remember! Only 2 of them bloomed this year, and they were done so fast, my daughters never saw them!

Gardenia Daffodil: These come in a pack of 6, and quite different from the usual yellow daffodils I’m used to seeing. When we lived in a PMQ in Victoria, BC, there was a field between our duplex and the military hospital that was just filled with bright yellow daffodils. It should be interesting if these will have the same spreading habit!

And spreading is something we actually want, and they will be planted with that in mind. Especially for the muscari and crocuses. For those, we are hoping they will form a floral carpet to fill in areas between trees, so we don’t have to mow such awkward places.

For our zone, we expect these to be shipped to arrive in the second half of September, in time for immediate planting.

Looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer