Finally! Rain! or not…

June 22, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Plus an adorable photo shoot.

My daughter was able to get the most adorable Eyelet pictures when she joined me for the evening walkabout.

Eyelet really loves to be carried and cuddled. So does Sir Robin.

Now for the boring stuff.

I’m happy to say my left arm did rather well during the night. I was pro-active on the pain killers and getting my husband to rub the joints with the Voltaren cream, from my hand to my neck. Oddly, it was less painful on my arm to sleep on my left side, which seems rather backwards. I wasn’t going to complain, though.

All day, I was practically crawling out of my skin, wanting to do stuff. It was a gorgeously cool day out, and it would have been perfect for so many jobs that need to be done around the garden beds and yards. I kept having to stop myself. I had to get my older daughter to do most of the work with feeding the outside cats; basically, I passed the kitten food bowls out to her. I didn’t do my full rounds, but we did walk around the garden beds closer to the house.

I’m glad we did because, as we were in the old kitchen garden, she spotted something odd about the pink rose bush. The stems, in between all those thorns, were covered with little bumps. They were the same colour as the stems, so I didn’t really see them, but she realized they were bugs.

There were so many of them, the rose bush was starting to droop, and the roses that have started to open were showing browned edges on their petals.

We weren’t too sure what to do about it but, just to start, we got the spray bottle of soapy water and sprayed it down.

It was still quite early when we headed back inside, so I tried to lie down again.

That didn’t work.

I finally realized I was getting light headed, so I got up and made myself something to eat. While I was doing that, I started getting some messages from my SIL. I knew my brother was coming out today, so she said she’d find out when he planned to be here.

He already was.

He went into ninja stealth mode and left without her even hearing him – then got here shortly after my daughter and I came in, so we never saw him drive in! He parks by their trailer, which is blocked from our view by trees.

As soon as I could, I headed out to say hello. He was still unloading from his car and hadn’t have breakfast himself, yet, so once everything was in, we chatted in their trailer for a while, as he ate. It gave him a chance to show me the new security camera he picked up for the gate, along with a wi-fi booster.

Over the next while, he plans to do here what he used to have at their house that they sold; add security cameras all over the place. The main thing, though, is the main gate and driveway, since that’s been our vandal’s primary trigger for rage and vandalism. Now that they have so much of their equipment here, our vandal can see bits and pieces of it from the road, and it’s driving him bonkers that he can’t come onto the property to see what’s going on and help himself to things. So I’m quite content with my brother wanting to set up more security cameras!

My brother had lots to do, though, so as soon as he was done eating, I left him to it.

I did head back out and harvested some things from the garden and put them together in an insulated bag for my brother to take home. I finally harvested the garlic scapes, so there was plenty for them, as well. I was also able to pick a couple of turnips, lettuce and chives, with blossoms for them. My younger daughter had cleaned up and smoothed out the stuff she made in her blacksmithing workshop. She set aside her two best ones as a thankyou gift for my brother and SIL for the gifts of that workshop, and I was able to add that in, too.

My brother wasn’t at his trailer, though, so I left it on the step for later and headed back in.

Which is when I got the phone call.

From home care.

*sigh*

Yup. For the third day in a row, no med assist for my mother. Yesterday (Saturday), it was the two evening visits, which get done by the same person. The day before, it was the morning visit. Today, it was the evening visit again.

During our family chat about how things went with my mother, my brother said he was planning to visit my mother, so if it happened again, he could take care of the med assist. Which is great, but I really wasn’t expecting us to have to cover med assists, three days in a row! Yes, we’ve had that happen before, but what was because someone was sick. These visits were all different people.

Before calling my mother, I went to talk to my brother. He wasn’t sure if he would be finished before her first scheduled visit – he had a lot he needed to do before the predicted rain hit. So when I called her, I told her that it might be either me or my brother, but one of us was going to cover her med assist tonight.

My mother wasn’t impressed (none of us are). The weird thing is, she got a double visit on Saturday morning. She had mentioned it to me while I was getting her supper meds out. The last time she said this happened, when the second person came in, my mother said she’d already taken her morning pills – but her morning pills were still in the bubble pack. So I checked, and that was not the case this time, and promptly forgot about it with all the other stuff going on.

As we talked on the phone, my mother was able to tell me when they’d showed up and who they were, though she can’t quite remember the name of the second person.

Then she told me about the 17th, and things got confusing. I thought she was still talking about her double visit, but it was about something else entirely. She said that someone had given her her meds for the 18th instead of the 17th.

???

So she kept her morning meds from the 18th, and stashed them away for the next time no one shows up in the morning.

???????

What I was finally able to get from her is that, when the second person came in for her med assist on the 17th, she noticed a mistake the morning person had made in the form they have to fill out. She had marked the date as the 18th, when it was the 17th.

Which my mother has concluded means that she got the wrong day’s medications. Or something. She’s been furious at me or the home care workers for not giving her the medication from the days that that were missed for some reason, so it’s not really getting the medications from the “wrong” day that bothers her. Basically, she thinks her medications were messed up, even though it was just the date that was wrong.

So when she got her morning medications on the 18th, she didn’t take them, and the home care aid left without making sure she took them.

She then started going on about how we are worried about her messing up her meds (she did that quite a bit), meanwhile the home care workers were the ones messing up her meds…. Except they didn’t. Someone just wrote down the wrong date in their form.

A lot of this was new to me, so I couldn’t get into it too much with my mother at the time. I needed to get off the phone and write it down, while I still remembered the details!

So all that got passed on to my family.

None of us is happy, and my SIL is planning to write a letter to the provincial government, which runs the home care system, about it. I don’t expect that to make any difference. This sort of thing has been going on for as long as the system has been around.

That taken care of, I spent some time doing some research, then tended to a rose bush. From what I could find, the first recommendation for dealing with scale is to prune away the infected branches. Which would cut away too much of the bush. We can cut it back severely in the fall, and it’ll come back, but not this early in the spring.

We don’t have anything like Neem oil or other suggested sprays, but one site I looked at mentioned dish detergent.

Well, we already started that.

A few other options came up that were not of any use to us, but apparently, using an old tooth brush to take them off can work.

So that’s why I tried.

I then spent the next while searching the rose bush, wetting it down with the soapy water, and using a tooth brush to get rid of the scale. This rose bush is a mass of short thorns, so I used a scrap of rigid foam insulation to stabilize the sections I was working on. The thorns could get pressed into the foam and stay in place, while also protecting my fingers from being ripped to shreds!

Once I got them all (that I could tell), I sprayed it down with a hose, then gave it another dousing with the soapy water.

I’m hoping this actually works.

The other thing we need to do is get that ornamental crab apple tree cut back. Sunlight is another thing to help prevent scale!

While all this was going on, I could hear the sounds of power tools being used. My brother had installed a post near the stand I have our trail cam on. He told me he was going to put in a post, and I was thinking “fence post”. Instead, he dug out a 4×4 post from some of their lumber that they brought over before the house sale, and set that in.

The camera is something like 10 feet off the ground.

He even added a few extras, some decorative, some practical – like a little roof over the camera to keep snow from building up on it. The camera itself is solar powered, and the solar panel could be mounted separately from the camera, unlike my solar powered trail cam, which can just pivot slightly to get a different angle. The solar panel is now mounted at the top of that 10′ or so post.

Which means we don’t need to have our trail cam at the gate anymore!

I’m thinking we can move it to record the cat shelters. I want to see how many “visitors” we get (as I have the critter cam up and have used it to chase out a racoon).

But not now, when I can only use one arm!

My brother was rushing to get things done before the rain started, but the rain wasn’t starting. I kept getting weather warnings on my phone about how, the rain will stop in about half an hour, or the rain will start at… but at most, we got spit on a bit.

Which was driving me nuts, because the garden needs to be watered, but I didn’t do it because we were expecting rain. In fact, we were supposed to get rain from about 1pm to about 2 or 3am!

We didn’t.

Later on, when my daughter and I were walking around with Eyelet, it did start to finally rain…

…only for it to stop soon after we got back inside.

I’ve just been itching to get outside, and watering is really about as much as my arm can handle right now.

Currently, we’re now expecting to get a thunderstorm between 7 and 9 this evening. It’s past 6:30 as I write this, and I see now sign of a storm. All of that seems to be passing to the south of us.

I did manage to finally try out those biscuit mixes I picked up at the dollar store. I ended up using two of the four packets. With the first one, I added a lonely piece of Prosciutto, chopped fine, and a garlic scape, also chopped fine. It was so fast, while the first batch was in the oven, I got another one going – this time with cheese to go with the garlic scape – waiting to add the water at the last minute.

I got enough biscuits out of the packages that I was able to bring a bunch to my brother. He was using the big riding mower, trying to clear the tall grass closer to his equipment, and could neither see nor hear me, so I just tucked it into the trailer for him.

When we did finally connect, he told me which app I needed to download and what I needed to be able to log on.

By then, he really had to hurry to finish and get to my mother’s. There was lots more he wanted to do, but they have decided they will come back next weekend – both of them – and stay the weekend to catch up. My brother was telling me what he really wants to do is to stay here, full time, for 6 months so he can get things done.

I’m practically swooning at the though. There is SO much we simply can’t get done, but he can, he has the equipment for it, and if he doesn’t, he has the ability to get it. With the stuff we’ve got going right now, we’re barely treading water and going into debt to pay for necessary repairs. Stuff like this is why we have credit in the first place, but to have so many things expensive things needing to be done, all at once, is good at all.

Well, we’ll see how things go. While I was at my mother’s, yesterday, she started talking about how she’ll pay to get her car fixed up. Which is great, but we can no longer afford to keep two vehicles insured at the same time. Our insurance has actually gone down, thanks to my excellent driving record (which will not be affected by our insurance claim due to wind damage), but everything else just keeps going up and up and up. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind selling the car, so we can use the space it’s in, in the garage. My brother thinks he can fix it.

Ah, well.

My brother is probably still at her place as I write this. He always goes over her banking with her in detail, leaving the printouts for her, all of which she promptly forgets as she throws away the printouts. She’ll keep some political party donation request letter from 5 years ago, but she won’t keep last month’s bank statements. Which is really, really frustrating for my brother!

Meanwhile, I’ve tried to log into the new security camera, and it says it’s offline, so I think I should go check on it.

Tomorrow, my husband has an appointment at the new pain clinic that’s closer to us. I think my arm will be fine for driving, but I might have issues getting his walker in and out of the truck!

Hmm. According to my weather app, it’s raining right now.

It isn’t.

I should ask my daughters to water the garden while we’re gone. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lovely, cooler day, but no rain.

Well, what we get, we get. Not much we can do about it.

*sigh*

It sure was great to see my brother, though, and we can look forward to seeing them both, next weekend! Yay!

Meanwhile, time for some more painkillers, then one last walkabout outside… and maybe cuddle a few kittens in the process.

The Re-Farmer

Plans? What plans?

June 20, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First off, I’m happy to say, we did get rain last night! A lovely, heavy downpour, enough to refill our rain barrel to the top.

I happened to get up at around 4am or so. I was able to see the flashes of lightning around us, and at one point, could hear the rain. My daughter was up working, and she told me we had a power failure during the night, too.

I was unfortunately, heavily disturbed during the night, so I didn’t get much sleep. I tried to leave my door open to allow all the cats in but eventually had to chase them out so Butterscotch could eat and use the litter without being bullied and attacked. That meant frequent scratching at the door for the next while. I’ve finally figured it out. It’s Ghosty, scratching at the new mat I have under my door, to replace the one they shredded. She doesn’t want in. She just wants to scratch at the mat under the door! I finally let them in again after a while, only to have to chase them out again after a couple of hours.

Interrupted sleep is far worse than no sleep at all!

It did mean the inside cats got fed early – I make lots of noise doing a barely there top up on their kibble to lure them out of my room – so I tried sleeping in a little bit before going outside to feed the yard cats and do my morning rounds. The plan was to do my rounds, which would be short, since no watering was needed, have breakfast, then get to work on the permanent trellis before things got too hot.

*sigh*

I was about half way through checking the garden beds when my cell phone rang.

It was home care.

*sigh*

No one was available to do my mother’s morning med assist, which was scheduled for 9:30.

My mom is right that they keep coming later and later. Her meds are supposed to be done between 7 and 9am.

I had time to quickly finish checking the rest of the garden on my way back to the house, update my family on our group chat, since I thought everyone else was asleep, grab my purse and go, still wearing my gardening grubbies.

My younger daughter, it turned out, was up and had come down to check on what was going on.

She was walking with a cane again.

I wasn’t the only one to have a bad night!

I haven’t talked to my mother since I walked out on her abusive behavior on Monday, and today is Friday. I did quickly phone her to say I got a call from home care and that I was leaving for her place right away.

I got there just a little bit before her scheduled home care visit time, so that worked out.

My mother was up, dressed and ready, complete with her cup of water and a cracker to eat with her pills. She noticed what I was wearing and commented, and I told her I was in the garden when the call came, so I just dropped everything and came over. She seemed surprised about how early I was working in the garden (I was actually a couple of hour later than usual) and I told her, I was trying to get things done before it got too hot out. She actually understood.

She seemed genuinely apologetic about my having to come out to do her meds again, and expressed gratitude that I did it. Which is actually pretty rare with her. She did say she didn’t want to do the inhaler, which I was okay with. She was prescribed the inhaler only to see if it would work, and she doesn’t feel it’s making any difference. I don’t really know why her doctor wants her to continue it, if it’s not doing anything. My mother, however, then said she didn’t want to take it because she woke up with a really dry mouth, and she thought it was because of the inhaler (she takes it in the evening, too). Usually, she tries to blame it on her food, or her other pills. Somehow, she just can’t accept the idea that she’s sometimes simply sleeping with her mouth open.

After she took her medications, she asked me…

Would I be able to stay and do her grocery shopping for her?

I told her I couldn’t today, explained about getting new tires yesterday, and that I would be going straight to the garage from her place to get our tires torqued (without using the word, since she wouldn’t understand it), rather than making another trip in the afternoon. I then mentioned that I’d asked my sister if she had a day off during the week when she could do it, and she said she could come today. My mother told me that yes, she was coming. !!! It was already arranged, but she still asked me to do her shopping for her!

She prefers I do her grocery shopping for her. I’d taken her for her errands so often before she could no longer go herself, I know what my mother likes, what substitutes are okay and sometimes even what to add to her list if it is within budget and I thought she might need/want it. I also know how to go over her list with her before I leave and notice if she missed anything, and what questions to ask. My sister doesn’t. She simply never had to do it before.

I told my mother to just make sure she has a good list and talk to my sister about it. My sister does the best she can. My mother assured me, she already had a list ready!

That done, I quickly updated my family and headed to the garage, which is about a half hour drive from my mother’s town. When I got there and the mechanic that worked on the truck saw me, he immediately grabbed the torque wrench and came out to take care of it. As we were chatting, I told him how glad I was that I asked them to check the tires, and that I hadn’t realized how much they were bothering me until the new tires were on. I could feel the difference right away. He was nodding along when I asked, just how bad where they? He told me that, in some places, they were worn down to the metal.

!!!

I mentioned to him that I’d originally intended to come in the afternoon, but had an unexpected trip to my mother’s town this morning. That got us to talking about distances and where I lived.

Turns out, we’re “neighbours”.

Okay, he lives about 5 or 6 miles from us, but in this area, that’s “neighbours”.

That done, I messaged my family and my older daughter started messaging me. Normally, she would have been in bed by then, after her night’s work, but was staying up because her sister was feeling so terrible. I was going to pop into the grocery store to grab something to eat on the way home, since I’d skipped breakfast and was starting to feel light headed. My daughter ended up sending some funds with a request for birthday cake and heat and eats for her sister.

(As an aside, we don’t tend to celebrate actual birthdays, but instead do nice things for the birthday person, all month)

That done, and another top up on the gas, since the extra driving basically used up what I’d put in yesterday, I finally headed home.

By then, it was already starting to feel warm, but I was still hoping I could get outside to work on the trellis.

Instead, I found myself falling asleep while checking the trail cam files on my computer. I finally gave up and tried to lie down for a nap. The hottest part of the day wasn’t expected until 4, so I might still get something done.

After a couple of hours, I woke to find a message from my husband, saying a prescription refill was called in and ready to be picked up in an hour.

…

???

Normally, he calls his prescriptions in for delivered on Thursdays, but obviously wasn’t going to do that on a Friday. Especially since some of his medications cannot be filled until 3 days before he’s out, because they are listed as controlled substances. But why did he call it in after I’d already come home from town?

My younger daughter was feeling better enough to come with me, and I found out what happened as we drove. When she saw his message about the refills, she went to ask him about it. My husband knew I was planning to be in town to get the tires torqued this afternoon, so he called it in for while I was in town. He never saw my messages I’d sent this morning and had no idea I’d already been to town and back, and was taking a nap when he sent his message!

Oops.

No matter. While at the pharmacy, I picked up some supplements I was low on, too.

By the time we got home, it was late enough to do the outside cat feeding. In this heat, their water bowls get gross pretty fast, so those got a scrubbing. It took a while to get the scalding hot water out of the hose before I could refill them. Then they all got new frozen water bottles added to them. The sun room thermometer was above 30C/86F, but with the littles now much more mobile, it’s not as life threatening as it was during the heat spell we had when Poirot’s babies were really tiny and in that cat carrier up on the shelf. I do still put ice packs out around the cat beds at times, but it’s not as necessary now.

So all my original plans, and then my adjusted plans, got thrown out the window. As I write this, it’s coming up on 6:30, and we’re still at the hottest part of the day. We’re still at around 24-25C/75-77F, while the humidex puts us at about 29-30C/84-86F. We’re barely expected to cool down at all, even in a few hours when we’re expected to get more rain and possible thunderstorms.

Tomorrow is supposed to be slightly cooler, so I’ll be shifting things over to tomorrow morning and will hopefully get things done then. Along with putting up the permanent trellis supports, I want to take the netting off the potato bed, as it no longer needs the extra protection, and put it around the tomato bed in the east yard. While checking the bed this morning, one of the cats actually used it as a little box behind my bad – and dug up one of the beans to cover his business!

I was not impressed. We have very few bush beans coming up!

Before starting this post, I realized I hadn’t even taken an pictures today.

I was going to say I planned to take some garden tour video tomorrow, as it’s the first day of summer, but double checked and realized that today is the solstice, not tomorrow!

Happy first day of summer!

Maybe I’ll head out and take some video this evening, instead.

Since I have no pictures to share from today, I thought I’d finish off with some adorableness from a couple of days ago.

Adorable sleeping Ginger!

For month, he had isolated himself pretty much to the dining room table. He had been bullied by other cats and it was his only escape, so he and Toni (our two tripods) became the only cats allowed on the dining table. We turned a box into a bed for them, to a certain extend. It didn’t stop the bullying. For some reason, the cats that do the bullying are particular about attacking while Ginger (or Butterscotch) try to use the litter.

After a while, though, we just couldn’t keep the cats off the table anymore, and would often find two or three of them smashed together in the box bed. Cheddar and Toni have become especially snuggly.

Then Ginger started showing up in my room again.

So now, when I chase the cats out for the night, Butterscotch and Ginger get to stay together in my room. Ginger has a particular fondness for that green frog bed that was donated to the cats. The “hood” that forms the frog’s head always gets flattened, though. They seem to light it that way. In the second picture, you can see what a beautiful round loaf Ginger forms while in there!

Time for an evening walk and, hopefully, a early and good night’s sleep. I really need to get work done, before it gets too hot!

The Re-Farmer

Plenty done today!

June 19, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was a productive day today – and in a good way, if rather expensive. How expensive, we don’t quite know yet!

First up, when doing my morning rounds, I was able to water the trees as well. It’s been a few days, and wow, a lot can happen in a few days, when it comes to growing things!

While all the transplants seems to be doing all right, the Opal Plum had one heckuva growth spurt with that one branch!

The real surprise while I was watering was spotting this.

This is the Royalty raspberry! One has still survived! We got a bundle of three, and they actually fruited in their first year, even though they were first year canes. The next year, only one survived the winter, and really didn’t grow much at all. So it was no surprised when there was no sign of any at all, this spring. Until this morning!

Needless to say, it has been added to my group of trees and bushes that get watered. I’ve included a single silver buffalo berry as well, as it’s the only one that seems to not be doing well. The watering doesn’t seemed to have helped. Makes me wonder if there’s something under it that’s causing a problem. A large rock, perhaps, or meandering poplar roots.

Now that I know what silver buffalo berry bushes look like, I think we actually have some growing wild, just a short distance away! The sign cam is right near the corner of the fence line, and I can see some bushes in the ditch that look like our own silver buffalo berry bushes. If we can confirm that at some point, we might transplant a few to fill in the gaps for the ones we planted that didn’t make it.

After watering all the garden beds, I still had time to water in the outer yard, where the Korean Pine and walnuts are.

We now officially have three walnut saplings.

Two of them are from seed, one is the year old sapling we got at the same time. Yay!!!

After finishing my rounds and chores, I grabbed a late breakfast, then headed to town early for my first appointment with the truck. The autobody place is not far from a lumber yard and hardware store that I keep forgetting exists, as we don’t usually go to this area of town. I dropped the truck off almost an hour early and had a chance to talk to the lady that’s been in charge of dealing with the insurance company and trying to get our truck done. I told her where I was going after leaving the truck with them, and that I had an appointment for the front tires to be replaced a half hour after my appointment with them was scheduled. She told me that was plenty of time.

We get fliers for this hardware store that I check out, so I did know that they did doors and windows. What I wasn’t completely sure of was if they did pre-hung doors and, more importantly, if they did installations.

I was very happy to find out that they did! My searched for companies that could do it came up with rather useless results, and I was starting to get concerned. The one company I knew of that my brother had hired to install new windows here, the summer before we moved in, disappeared during the illegal lockdowns, as so many other small, independent businesses did.

The guy I spoke to filled out a form and gave me the business card for their installer. In a day or two, we will get a call to book a time for him to come here to take measurements and see what we’ve got now. We’ll then be able to talk about what pre-hung doors we want (or can afford), and things like making sure the arm bar get reinstalled.

That was done so quickly, I decided to look around the store a bit. In the gardening section, of course.

While there, I remembered that we are wanting to add more clothes lines (our posts can support three lines), and went looking for that section. They had the exact same kits that I’d seen at another store, but at a better price.

I decided to get one.

My daughter has been diligent about following her doctor’s instructions to help fight the skin infections she’s getting, and that includes washing her clothing and bedding more often, in hot water, then hanging them on the line so the sun can further disinfect them. We’ve got a long clothes line, but when things like bedding are included, it runs out of space, fast!

Eventually, we’ll have three lines set up again, but just having the second one will be a huge help.

That done, I headed back to the autobody shop. It was still early for my appointment, but I saw the truck was no longer where I’d parked it. They took it in early!

As I waited, I had a chance to chat with both ladies behind the counter. When I told them how things went at the hardware store, they both started telling me how they’ve had them do work for them, too, and how great they are! One of them said she lives in an old farmhouse that she and her family basically rebuilt the old farmhouse they bought (admitting, they probably should have just torn it down and built a new house!), and they did much of the work for them; doors, windows, flooring… She was really happy with them. So that was certainly encouraging!

A little while later, the woman working my file came around to tell me that their guy says there is no need for them to paint more than the top rail part of the box frame, after it’s straightened out, not the entire side of the box, which would include an old dent and the rust around the wheel well. That will save us $140, as the insurance company does not cover rust damage, so we would be charged for that portion of the paint job.

We talked about the tail light as well, and she made the call to find out how much a new one would cost, right then and there.

$350.

!!!!!

Good grief!

What she did do was give me the part number, then did a quick search for it on Amazon.

$135.

What a difference!

If we can get it delivered.

I explained the issues we’ve been having, and how Amazon has simply cancelled orders that would be mailed, due to the threat of a strike. If there is an alternative delivery method available, either to our physical address (which doesn’t exist on any maps) or to the store our post office is in, we could still order it, though.

She has been trying so hard to bring the costs down for us! Talk about awesome.

Towards the end, when I got the keys and was ready to head out, she told me the parts would be ordered right away, and when they came in, we would get a call.

Then she mentioned they would need the truck for a couple of days.

…

I told her, we’ve only got one vehicle. I’d have to make arrangements of some kind. She said that, when we get the call later one, we can talk about that.

As far as I know, they don’t offer the loan of a service car, as some places in the city can do.

If nothing else, I might be able to borrow one of my brother’s cars for a couple of days, but I’d really prefer to avoid that. They use both their cars quite a bit.

That done, it was off to the garage to drop off the truck and the keys.

A friend from high school had messaged me a couple of days ago, saying she was in town, and we had arranged to get together after I dropped the truck off. She doesn’t have her own transportation this time, so we walked around for a while, stopping at a couple of places, before sitting down in one of the smaller restaurants for a very late lunch.

I didn’t know how long the truck would take, but by the time we were done lunch, I figured it was time to start heading back. Which turned out to be just right; they finished with the truck maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I got there! My friend was able to join me for most of the way before we said our goodbyes. We’ll be able to get together again, before she heads home.

As for the truck, I was happy to hear they found no other issues while working on it. 😄

In the end, though, it cost over $660 after taxes, including a “new tire enviro tax”.

*sigh*

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to bring it back whenever I have a chance to get the tires torqued. It should be done withing 100km of driving.

That done, I drove across the street to the grocery store.

In that short drive, I could already feel the difference. I had not realized just how much I was feeling something of off about the tires! Not even anything I could specifically pinpoint, but gosh, once it was no longer there, I could sure tell!

One thing I needed to get at the grocery store was more kibble for the outside cats. With the cost of gas jumping 5 cents per liter, and only needing a couple of things, it wasn’t worth it to drive to the nearest Walmart for better prices.

Their shelves for large cat food bags were completely empty!

The only other thing I needed was eggs, so I got those, then headed to the one other grocery store available. With this one, I was able to pick up a couple of bags of their house brand in 8kg sizes, totaling about $45. They had one 7.5kg bag of name brand kibble available, and it cost $45 just on its own!

The outside cats are going to just have to put up with no-name cat food for now.

I did have to pick up a bit of gas before leaving town, feeling rather frustrated with myself for forgetting to get gas the last time I was in town, when it was still $1.299 a liter, instead of $1.349 a liter!

I’ve been getting weather alerts for incoming rain or thunderstorms all day, so after everything was put away and the outside cats were fed, I did my evening rounds to check on things.

I spotted this guy, that I haven’t seen in a while.

I tried zooming in to get a picture of his face. It looks like he’s sporting a rather large new scar on his head!

He is pretty feral, and won’t let me even walk in his general direction without running away. I still haven’t completely figured out if he is one of ours, returned after months away, or a stranger that discovered we are a source of food and relative safety.

There is still no sign of Caramel’s two little ones, though this morning, I think I caught her trying to lure Havarti away. I so wish she would bring her littles back! They need access to solid food, and she’s been hanging out here most of the time, instead of tending to them, or hunting for them.

No sign of Zipper, either.

😢

I checked on all the garden beds, of course, which had me walking past a large currant bush my sister had given to my mother. My mother planted it near the main garden area, right under a chokecherry tree, so it’s completely shaded out almost all day. I almost never find berries on it, though, and it was years before I found one and could confirm it was a black currant bush.

This spring, it bloomed prolifically, so I was hopeful for a grand harvest.

Nope.

Not going to happen.

I think I finally found out why it hasn’t been producing.

The leaves have yellow spot all over them, I just realized, now that I can see them in the photo, that these are egg clusters!!!

As you can see, the forming berries are being killed off. I had thought the spots might have been some sort of fungus that’s also killing the berries, but if the spots are actually eggs, and there are so, so many of them, perhaps it’s whatever is laying the eggs that’s doing it. I haven’t seen anything on the leaves that was laying eggs. Certainly not in such numbers. There’s hundreds of leaves, covered in these spots.

The second picture shows more what the berries should be looking like, at this stage, though it’s got an odd bump on it.

Gotta do some research on this!

My weather apps keep saying we’re supposed to be getting rain or storms, but as I finished my evening rounds, I just got hit by a couple of raindrops, and that’s it.

We could really, really use some rain. It just keeps missing us!

Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter, but the hottest part of the day is not supposed to hit until 4pm. Hopefully, that will give me a chance to finally get back to working on that trellis bed in the morning. I plan to take the truck in to get the new tires torqued in the afternoon.

Must. Get. Sleep!!!!

Well, we’ll see how that goes, when the time comes!

Altogether, though, it has turned out to be a very good and productive day.

It will be a while, though, before we find out how much getting the front door replaced, and the truck done, will end up costing us.

It’s going to be expensive. That’s all I know for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Reclaiming space

June 18, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

When it came time to start working on our first permanent trellis bed, I had hoped to be able to get in with the weed trimmer, first. It just up and died on me while I was using it a few days ago. I hoped it just needed to cool down or something, so I tested it.

Nothing. Not a click or a whirr or a home. Nothing.

*sigh*

So I went and got the push mower my brother has loaned us.

Where the trellis beds are going to be built is over an area we actually made garden beds, a few years ago. Sections were covered in cardboard, potatoes and melons planted, then heavily mulched with straw.

We had spring flooding that year and very little survived.

After that, we just lost control of the space and it became completely overgrown.

To reclaim the space, we will be building pairs of raised beds joined by trellis tunnels. One beds it built and being used right now, but we need to finish adding three vertical supports before we can have something our Red Noodle Beans can climb.

Before working on that, though, I wanted to clear the overgrown space beside it. One part of it had been measured and marked off for the next bed. I had cut poplars to use for the vertical supports, and those had been stacked nearby – and were completely hidden by the tall grass.

So my first job was to find and pull out all the logs, and set them aside in an area that was already mowed.

Which you can see in the first photo of the slideshow below.

After making sure there were not chunks of wood, rocks, markers, etc. hidden in the grass, I went over it with the push mower, set at its highest level.

Then I went over it again, set a mid height.

Then I went over about 2/3rd of it again, this time with the mower as low as it could go, and only in one direction. At this point, I was hitting the old straw mulch in places, and I wanted the clippings to be easy to rake up, later. They will make a good mulch, after sitting in the sun for a day or two.

In the second photo, you can see the entire cleared area.

It was getting insanely hot, and I knew I wasn’t up to working on the trellis in the heat, so I decided to get the next raised bed space prepped.

I have a couple of small logs that are exactly 4′ long. These beds are going to be 4′ wide, with 4′ wide paths in between, and I’ve found these logs make it easy to mark the spaces. Which is what I’ve done in the next photo. I’ve butted the logs up against the frame, not the vertical supports at the corners. That marked off the width of the path. Then I got out one of my rolls of plastic to set over where the new bed is going to be, to start solarizing.

Well. Sort of.

To have the plastic really cook the weeds and grass and seeds in the soil, the plastic needs to be taught against the soil surface. Since I couldn’t use the weed trimmer to get the space cleared right to the soil surface, the plastic will be sitting on top of the cut stems. It’ll still get cooked in places, but will also act like a greenhouse.

Which is fine. I can work with that.

I also hosed the area down, first. The moisture will get really hot under there and help cook the weeds and seeds, too.

The plastic is wider than 4′, so there is some overlap into the paths, which is also good. The big sheet is actually folded in half and I considered opening it up and covering a larger space, but it’s starting to get old and tattery, so I just re-folded it more neatly, then set it out. It’s not long enough to cover the full 18′ the bed will be, so the last section is covered with a clear dollar store shower curtain.

Then is was time to weigh it down.

I shifted the 4′ logs over so that they are now marking the next 4′ that will the the width of the next raised bed. Then I used some of the logs I’d pulled out of the tall grass to weigh down the edges. There were a couple of small gaps, so I used bricks to weight those down.

I had been using some old conduit pipe I’d found in the barn to mark off where the beds would be. I ended up adding those, plus another short little log, on top of the plastic, to try and get it closer to the soil surface. Then the whole thing got sprayed with water to try and weigh it down even more.

By the time all that was done, so was I. At least for working in direct sunlight.

I did have the lawn mower handy, though.

I hiked the deck up again, then started working on the maple grove. We haven’t been able to mow in there all year, except for the beginnings of a path I’d started before running out of gas, and not being able to get back to.

When I was done, I ended up taking a little video of how much I’d managed to do.

I sound out of breath because I literally just finished mowing. The grass was about 2-3 feet high in there, and still is in places I couldn’t get into with the mower.

When we first moved here, this area was not only overgrown, but filled with trees that had been cut down but never cut up and removed, lots of fallen branches, and it was basically impassible. When I was a kid, I used to keep this area mowed regularly, as was as inside the spruce grow.

It’ll be a few years before we get to that level again!

It does feel good to have finally gotten at least this much mowed.

Then I came in for hydration, rest and supper!

It’s still light out and starting to cool down… oh… never mind. I just checked the temperature, and it’s gone back up again! We are getting thunderstorm warnings which don’t actually affect our area, but the winds are certainly picking up.

I might just have to call it a day. Tomorrow, I’ve got to take the truck into town for the autobody shop to go over, then to get new tires. A old friend from high school is in town and contacted me, so we’ll be meeting up somewhere while the tires are being done. That’s all in the afternoon, though. If I can manage a solid night’s sleep, I should be able to get work done on the trellis bed in the morning.

We’ll see what the morning brings!

I may not have gotten the trellis sports up, but I am glad to have started reclaiming more of those old garden beds, though.

I’d call that a win.

Oh, and I have a bit of cuteness to share. I spotted some eyes watching me from the creeping bellflower leaves…

This seems to be one of the more feral cats we can’t get close to, but I’m not sure. It does like to hang around to watch what’s going on, though. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Cats, kittens, garden stuff, truck stuff, a tiny harvest and more!

June 17, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Good grief. How is it not even 6:30pm as I start this? It feels like it should be much, much later!

It’s been a long day. 😄

Once again, I was awakened way too early by cat shenanigans. I finally gave up and got up at around 5:30 to top up their kibble and give the hoard access to my room before heading outside to feed the yard cats and do my morning rounds.

Checking on the garden as part of my rounds at this time of year is a bit like Christmas. There seems to be something new, every time! I just came back from doing the evening watering, and there was more new stuff to see, in just the space of about 9 hours!

One of the things we have blooming right now are the ornamental poppies.

Very few of them, this year, but they sure are show stoppers! Those are irises in the background, that have been growing there since before I was born.

I also got a tiny little harvest.

Just a few scapes and ripe wild/alpine/whatever-they-are strawberries.

When approaching the low raised bed with most of the tomatoes, interplanted with yellow bush beans, I startled away a bird that had been digging in the dirt. As if cats digging wasn’t bad enough, the birds are, too!

When checking on the damage, I spotted our first yellow bush bean sprouting! I was really happy with this, as these seeds are several years old, and I wasn’t sure any would germinate.

When I was back at the bed to water it this evening, I found almost all the other beans I’d planted in the bed had sprouted while I was gone! I only planted a single bean in each spot, no extras, and at the moment, it looks like just one hasn’t germinated yet.

I didn’t see more corn sprouting in the other bed in the morning, but this evening, I spotted the tips of perhaps a dozen, breaking through. Still no beans in the alternating rows sprouting there, yet.

This morning, I had the usual cats following me around, but I was also joined by an Eyelet!

Who really looks ticked off at getting his picture taken. 😄

The cats really love that grass mulch. It does protect the soil from them a bit, but they do dig it up to use the gardens beds as a litter box, if I’m not there to chase them off. Those collars around the transplants are probably the only things saving them from being flattened by cats rolling in the beds!

In the second image of the above slide show, you can see the cuddle puddle I discovered, just before coming inside.

Adorable, but a concern.

Caramel is in there, cuddling with the kittens. Only the orange tabby, Havarti, is hers. Her other two are still missing. While my first thought was that she took them to the property across the road, I am no longer sure. Every time I got outside, she’s here. Which means if she did take them across the road, they are there alone, not being nursed by her or any of the creche mothers, and not getting any of the cat soup I’ve been giving out specifically for the kittens. I now wonder if they are even still alive. I don’t get it!! Zipper is also still missing.

Later on, as I was preparing to leave for town, I just had to get this picture of Leyendecker.

Chonky boy! Gosh, he’s so big. I don’t just mean he’s a fat cat. He’s just a giant, overall.

He’s also one of the bullies.

I picked up that calming liquid to try, but the instructions aren’t particularly clear. It basically says to add it to their food, no mixing required, and that cats love eating it. Add how? Just… pour it on?

It also sort of assumes feeding one cat directly and individually.

Which is our problem.

How do we dose just the most stressed out and/or aggressive cats?

After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to just add it to their cat soup. It’ll be a very low dose, but basically all the cats would get at least some. Except Potato Beetle. He still won’t eat wet cat food. He’s a chill dude, though, and not one we’d be dosing, anyhow. I honestly can’t remember even seeing him try the cat soup. I use 6 cans of cat food for one batch of cat soup, so this evening, I decided to add one tsp per can (the recommended dose is 1.5 tsp for under 10 pounds, 2 tsp for 10 pounds or over, per day).

We’ll see how it works out.

Meanwhile…

I headed out early because I wanted to remove the remains of the truck box cover, first. We kept wanting to do it, but once the truck is in the garage, there really isn’t a lot of space to move around in. Then we’d forget again.

So today, I got the truck out of the garage, grabbed a tool kit and got to work. It ended up taking way less time than I thought it would. There were just two of one type of clamp on one side, then one each of a different type on both sides. I was fully expecting the nuts to be seized or something, but nope. They came off easily, as did the remaining piece of the box cover.

Once it was done, I just went ahead into town right away, anyhow. I did remember to stop at the post office along the way; I kept forgetting to do it all last week.

Our mail box was completely stuffed.

With fliers.

With the threat of a strike hanging over us, no one is using the mail for anything but junk mail right now. Not even for packages. The threat of a strike alone must be costing Canada Post millions of dollars – and they have already been running in the red for years. People living in cities and larger communities have plenty of alternatives to choose from. People like us, however, are stuck with pretty much only Canada Post. There are a couple of delivery companies that will actually find us and deliver directly to our place (which is impressive, since our physical address doesn’t exist on any maps), or will deliver to the store the post office is in, but they are rarely an option when we place orders online. Right now, a lot of places won’t even take orders. It’s not just Amazon cancelling orders that can only be sent by Canada Post. I’ve noticed some tree nurseries and seed companies have notices on their websites, saying they’ve stopped taking orders completely until the threat of a strike are over. Some say they have found alternative methods and are taking orders again, but for those that don’t have the option, they could well lose their businesses entirely because of Canada Post. Of course, these are almost always the small, independent and family run companies that are most affected, but public sector unions don’t give a rip. It’s insane how bad they’ve become.

So, junk mail is all we’re getting.

While heading into town, I kept a close eye on that oil pressure gauge. At first, it seemed to be back to normal; that half liter of oil we’d put in last night seemed to have made a difference.

And then it didn’t. The pressure kept slowly dropping until it was just barely in the range it’s supposed to be in.

When I got to the garage, the owner was there, so I had a chance to talk to him about the booked oil change, and what was going on. I was honest about the fact that I really couldn’t tell if it was low on oil or not, because I simply can’t see the line, but it did seem to me that it was low. They had done so much work on it when we had the issues before, it really didn’t make any sense for anything to be leaking now, so he was definitely going to check on it for me.

I then asked if they could check the tires, too. We have the one front tire with the slow leak in the valve step that needs to be replaced first, but there are three altogether that need to be done, because the sensor batteries are dead. As for the one that was already done, I told him that it always seems to look low to me. I’d check the pressure and it would be fine, but it still looked low. So he said he would get that checked, too.

I reminded him about the broken handle inside the driver’s side door, and it can only be opened from the outside. We talked a bit about the possibility of getting a new one from a scrap yard or something. He does make use of those for parts and says they usually don’t sell just a handle like that, but the entire door. So it is unlikely to actually save us anything. He did say he would keep it in mind, though.

Not that we’ll be able to get it done, anytime soon.

That done, I turned over the keys and started walking. I was 2 hours early for my appointment, so I had plenty of time to run any errands and have lunch.

I had lunch first, since I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I walked across town towards the marina and decided to stop at a fish and chips place. I don’t normally like fish anything, but they have the best fish and chips anywhere, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been there!

I forgot how massive their portions are. A really great deal for the dollar – a rare thing, these days!

I think next time, I should see if I can get just the fish and skip the fries completely. 😄

This place happens to be next to a Thai store that we rarely get a chance to visit, so after lunch, I went to check it out. My younger daughter, who’s birthday is this month, has a couple of pairs of very unique, very comfortable, pants from this place that she loves. I was thinking of possibly finding her more – after going through some of the other Thai stuff they had. There were some really nice things, but not anything I thought would be good as birthday gifts.

While trying to find a rack with the type of pants my daughter had found, I was approached by the lone saleswoman holding out a dress for me to possibly try.

I was rather amused by the small size of it, but told her I was looking for something for my daughter.

She came back with something even smaller, so I told her my daughter was an adult. She didn’t speak much English, but we managed to communicate.

In the end, she helped me find a sundress that’s actually pants, that looked like it would actually fit my well endowed daughter. So that turned out all right!

After that, I started making my way back towards the garage, stopping at a couple other places along the way. There wasn’t much that I needed, so I wasn’t stuck carrying much during the walk back.

By the time I reached the garage, it was shortly past my actual appointment time. I half expected the truck to be in a bay still, but I found it parked in a different spot outside, so I knew it was done.

The owner was in the office when I got there, but he wasn’t the one who worked on the truck, so he went and got the guy who did. Which turned out to be the same guy who had worked on it last time.

I am so glad I asked them to check the tires.

One of the things this guy had found before was that our tires were starting to wear on the insides, showing that we needed a wheel alignment. That was done along with most of the other stuff at the same time.

In the months since the alignment was done, the worn spots had gotten worse, and were now completely bald on the inside. Something I wouldn’t have been able to see. It was, however, very likely contributing to why both front tires would sometimes be low, even though one of them had had its leaking valve replaced already.

We talked about it for a while, and could confirm it was just additional wear and tear; I’d already had the wheel bearing replaced on the driver’s side, then they did the alignment. They would have spotted any other possible contributing problems at the time.

While, technically, I could still drive on them, this is not something I was going to mess around on, so I asked how much it would cost to replace them.

It’s going to cost over $600, after taxes, for new tires, installation, balancing and labour.

*sigh*

I am thankful that we now have credit cards that we can do stuff like this, but … yikes!

I asked how long it would take for the tires to come in, since they have to order them first, and was told if they ordered them today, they’d be in tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, I’m taking the truck in to the autobody place for them to go over and determine what parts they need for our insurance claim repairs, so I booked the new tires to be installed after that.

Then we talked about the oil change.

It turned out that the oil level really was low. As in, almost half what it should have been. !!! He told me that it was wet all over underneath, so they couldn’t pin point exactly where it was coming from. The leak was so slow, there was no dripping under the truck for me to see. So what they’ve done for now is cleaned it all up so that, when I come back for an oil change again, they would be better able to see where it’s coming from.

If there’s still a leak.

They recommended an oil treatment concentrate to use before then. Every now and then, over the next while (which might be weeks, or months), I’m to check the oil when the engine is cold. Once the level reaches between the “fill” and “full” lines, I’m to add this stuff, instead of more oil. This should improve all the seals and stop any leaks. They both said it works really, really well, and should solve the problem.

That done, I paid the bill, which turned out to be lower than I expected. Especially with the additional product. When I commented on that, the mechanic I was talking to said it looked like the owner, who have left for the day, had given me a deal!

He is so awesome.

While all this was going on, we chatted about other things with the truck. I mentioned the issues we were having with the insurance company and how, because of the things they won’t cover, it’s still going to cost us a lot – and they won’t cover the tail light at all. We’d talked about the broken tail light earlier, when describing the damage to the truck box frame. I told him the insurance guy says it’s from an impact, not from the cover being blown off. Yet when I described what I saw in my mirror when it went flying, the mechanic immediately said that it would have been broken when the box frame was twisted. I agree, but there is impact damage under the tail light. I didn’t hit anything, and that damage wasn’t there when I bought the truck, so all I can think is that maybe someone hit the truck while it was parked in a parking lot, and I just didn’t notice until I checked for damage after the cover was blown off – and I have no way to prove that the tail light cover wasn’t broken before the box cover was blown off.

When he found out they wouldn’t cover the cost of the tail light, the mechanic suddenly got excited and asked which tail light it was. He quickly became disappointed when I told him it was the passenger side. It turned out he had a spare tail light for the same truck as mine, but it was for the driver’s side. He would have let me have it for free, if it had been the right size!

Have I mentioned how much I love our garage? The owner is awesome, and the guys he has working with him are also just fantastic.

So we’ll see how things go with the autobody shop, and their guy has a chance to price out parts.

Once done at the garage, I made a quick stop at the grocery store before heading home. By the time I was done there, I was heavily using the shopping cart as a walker. My hips were starting to really give out. I mentioned that when I messaged my family that I was on my way home, and was pleasantly surprised to find the gate open for me already. After I was done parking in the garage, I was going to leave the couple of bags I had in front of the garage while I went back to close the gate, only to find my daughter already on her way to do it for me!

She is so sweet!

She also noticed and commented on the pretty bag I was carrying, so I asked her if she wanted her birthday present now, or later? 😄😄

She decided, now.

So, once we were inside and everything was put away, I presented her with her gift. She put it on right away, and we were very happy to find it fit just fine – unlike the previous one I picked up that was “one size fits most” that didn’t fit either of us. My daughter has some matching fabric and will be adding gussets to the side seams, but until then, she now has a floofy, flowy, gorgeously patterned pants-dress to wear on those really hot days. It also looks quite beautiful on her, but my daughter always looks beautiful, so that’s no surprise. 😊

Not much later, after taking some pain killers, I headed back outside for my evening rounds, and the evening yard cat feeding. After Caramel apparently moved two of her smaller babies away (or…?), I’m now very concerned that Poirot might do the same, but so far, nope!

She seems quite content to keep her babies close to the house. They are getting so much more active and starting to go further around the house, and using the old kitchen garden as their very own playground – even when I’m watering the beds!

Oh, I’ll have to make a point of heading out after dark and getting some pictures. When I was last at the Walmart, I took advantage of a clearance sale and got a box of 8 solar lights on stakes. Most of them are now in the wattle weave bed – literally in the weave – with a couple in the rectangular bed near the house. They look really nice and, if the price is right, I’d like to get more for other areas around the garden beds.

The cats aren’t the only ones that like the garden beds, or the mulch. Every time I water, there are frogs jumping out all over. The beds with the heavier mulches often have a dozen or more emerging and jumping away from the water!

This evening, however, I spotted a different frog. The usual ones tend to be coloured in browns and greys. Sometimes, I’ll see one that looks copper coloured. What I haven’t seen before it one that was green!

There are two images of this frog, above.

Usually, any green frogs we see are tree frogs, and I haven’t seen any of those this year, yet. The only other native frog that I know of that’s green is the leopard frog, which is now pretty rare to see. This one looks like our typical wood frog, except for the colour. What a beauty!

I am so happy to see so many frogs in the garden this year!

So that was how things went for most of the day.

I do, however, have some concerning updates about my mother.

After what happened yesterday, I updated my siblings in our group chat to let them know what went down.

I got a message from my sister late this afternoon. She had phoned our mother earlier in the day. Apparently, my mother got two med assist visits this morning for some reason.

???

She also said she would try and walk to the grocery store (it’s just a couple of blocks away) to do her own shopping, then have them deliver it. She also had stuff to get at the pharmacy, though, and that’s much further.

I responded by saying I’d gone over there on my one free day, and I’m booked up through to next week (not all of which is stuff away from home, but including time dependent stuff that must get done outside, while the weather is good). My sister said she told my mother that people would be far more willing to help her, if she treated them nicely!

(I’m hoping my sister or my brother can do the shopping for her, but my mother doesn’t like their shopping. I know her list so well, I can pick out exactly what she likes, even when I get things not on her list. They don’t know as well and pick the “wrong” things – which might only be a brand from their local store they shopped at for her, rather than the one next to her place.)

Not long after I got home, I got a call from the home care coordinator.

It was about the double visit this morning.

When the home care aid got to my mother’s, she insisted that someone had already been there and given her her medications. The aid went into the lock box to check. This morning’s medications were still there, and no one had signed the form. Yet my mother insisted, someone had already come and done her meds. The home care workers have the lock box code on their instructions file for my mother. She’s not the only one with a lock box, and there are quite a few different people doing her med assists, so it’s not like any of them are going to be remembering everyone’s lock box combinations, nor is it possible anyone NOT a home care aid would be going into there. Not even my sister has the code for it (my brother is the one who programmed it so, of course, he knows what it is).

I read to her the message I got from my sister, about my mother saying that two people had come to do her morning meds today.

There is no record of any home care aid going to my mother’s place before the one that made the report on my mother saying that someone did.

I told the coordinator that I’d been there yesterday morning, but left very soon after, because of my mother’s behaviour (she understood!), but I was there long enough for my mother to mention no one had shown up on Saturday morning. I hadn’t gone back into the lock box to check if the Saturday morning meds where still there; it never even occurred to me. The coordinator looked at the record for Saturday, and there was nothing about her morning med assist being missed.

She was going to instruct the supper time med assist person to check the bubble pack to see if Saturday morning’s pills were still there.

This morning’s home care aid, the coordinator and I all agreed that it was very unlike my mother to be mixed up about someone coming and giving her her pills, when no one had actually come. Now we have the possibility that she can’t remember someone coming on Saturday morning. This is very concerning! My mother was very prone to messing with her meds, forgetting what they were for, thinking they had been “changed”, etc. But she had never actually forgotten to take them, or thought she’d taken them when she hadn’t.

It’s going to be looked into, and I will be contacted about it later.

It does not seem like my mother would invent (whether she knows it or not) that someone came when they didn’t. Could someone else have come to her place that she mistook for a health care aid? If so, they couldn’t have given her her meds, since they’re locked away.

This is just so bizarre.

Another reminder that my mother really shouldn’t be living on her own. She wants so much to be in a nursing home (a very specific one), and it still seems like she somehow doesn’t “qualify” yet, according to our system.

Whatever they find in their investigation, maybe this will be the final hurdle that will get her into, at the very least, some sort of assisted or supportive living situation.

Assuming there are any spaces available.

*sigh*

There isn’t much we can do until then, which is the most frustrating part. It’s not like any of us can have her move in with us. Either we’ve got our own family health issues to deal with, or lack of accessibility in our homes, or both – it just couldn’t work. She would hate it, anyhow. She knows she needs to have a higher level of care, especially at night, than any of us can give, but she would also go bonkers without the social activities she has access to in her building, now.

Well, it is what it is. We can only deal wit the hand we’ve been dealt, no matter how messed up it is.

My mother certainly isn’t helping herself out, with her behaviour, though!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: sprouts!!

June 16, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I just got back from giving the garden beds a watering for the evening. Tomorrow is not supposed to be as hot as today, but we haven’t gotten any of the rain that hit other parts of the province, some of which got serious thunderstorm warnings!

When I got to the trellis bed, I was rather blown away by how much bigger the noodle bean sprouts were, even compared to this morning.

They were not the only ones.

In the first image, you can see four of the five collars around pumpkin seeds – and they are all sprouting! Nothing in the fifth one, yet, but these were the very last seeds I planted, and they’re already up! I remember last year, being amazed by how fast these free pumpkin seeds grew, too.

I have also confirmed, and you can see in the next photo: we have sunflowers! Not a lot, but the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers are starting to sprout. I wasn’t sure if these seeds were still viable or not, so anything we get of those is bonus!

While watering the new asparagus and strawberry bed, I got another pleasant surprise. I am pretty sure I planted the bare roots and crowns too late; I had not expected it to take so long, or I would have stored them properly. And yet, I found a single Jersey Giant asparagus, sprouting along the stake I place to mark where the crowns were planted. It’s so adorable!

I spent a fair bit of time working on the snap pea bed, carefully using the hose to pull weeds without also pulling the peas and tiny carrots out. As I worked my way from one end to the other, I was startled to find a bean sprout. Several of them. I had completely forgotten that I’d planted the last few bean seeds in the gaps between pea plants in one row! Gosh, the red noodle beans germinated fast!

Meanwhile, the Royal Burgundy bush beans I’d plant much earlier, beside the spoon tomatoes, have finally shown signs of life. All of two beans have sprouted. Hopefully, this means more will show up.

I didn’t bother trying to get a photo, but I also saw more corn seedlings showing up in the corn and yellow bush bean bed. Still very few, while the leftover seeds that got planted with the Arikara squash have more sprouting, and the earlier ones are getting quite big!

The Black zucchini has been doing really well. I planted three seeds in three spots, and 8 out of 9 seeds are now sprouted! With so many sprouting, I will probably have several to thin by transplanting, later. Even where the White Scallop square are planted, one seedling has appeared. Last year, those ones took three tries and a much longer time before any germinated, so that makes me very happy.

So far so good! I have to keep reminding myself that I finished planting everything such a short time ago. It just feels so late in the season. Probably because we had that heat wave in May.

On a completely unrelated note…

We seem to be missing three kittens.

Caramel’s tabby, Li’l Rig, and her tortie, Wormy, are nowhere to be seen. Yesterday, I spotted Caramel “luring” Li’l Rig into the maple grove on the north side of the inner yard. I strongly suspect she has taken them across the road. I was really hoping that, after I brought Li’l Rig back to the sun room yesterday evening, she wouldn’t try again. Caramel has been hanging around the house, which seems very strange for her to do, if she took her babies onto the property across the road.

Their brother, Havarti, is the biggest of the litter, is still very much around. He is so active and independent, I doubt he’d follow his mother anywhere right now. The other two are much smaller and were both recovering from oogey eyes. I can’t find them to check if their eyes still need washing.

The third missing kitten is Zipper. He was the sickest and the last on the road to recovery. He did seem much improved but, to be honest, in looking for him, I was looking for a body. No sign of him, anywhere. I do hope he’s okay. I can’t imagine he would have followed Caramel across the road.

I’m probably going to go outside one more time and do a walkabout. Maybe I’ll find him then.

The Re-Farmer

Looks like it’s going to happen!

June 15, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I heard back today from the large animal rescue not for from us. I had approached them about Poirot and her babies. They are interested in taking them in, and will be contacting me later in the week!

Oh, how I hope this works out!

Inspector Japp will have to find new things to teeth on.

That’s one of the tie downs for the portable greenhouse. The paracord was added for visibility. We often see various cats playing with them. 😁

Now, if we could find a home for this beauty, too.

Eyelet’s eyes are actually bluer in the photo than in real life. They are so pale, they are almost white.

Most of the kittens around the house can be handled now. Zipper went from being very skittish to appreciating being held while we wash his eyes with warm water. Only Havarti is getting harder, rather than easier, to approach. Gotta find a way to lure him in!

It’s going to be a challenge to get Poirot, though. She is great about jumping into the cat cage in the morning, and waiting for me to bring her a squeeze treat, but aside from then, she runs away when we come close. At least we know she’ll go for the squeeze treat, though, so maybe we can use one of those to get her into a carrier with her babies. The rescue that will hopefully be taking them is aware of her socialization status. She and her babies will be used as a way to raise awareness for the problem of ferals and rural colonies like ours, and hopefully result in increased donations, adoptions and resources.

We shall see how it works out in the next while!

The Re-Farmer

A bit more done, and froggy friend

June 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Once things cooled down a bit, I did manage to get a bit more done in and around the garden.

The main thing was to get the netting up around the trellis bed.

While I went around, unrolling the netting, my older daughter fussed with getting it up on the supports. They were too tall to leave the netting folded as it is on the roll, so she had to carefully open it up and get the excess over the tops of the support stakes. It turns out the netting isn’t folded in half, but in thirds! That made opening it up rather more difficult for her.

Once I got the netting all the way around the bed, remembering to go behind the vertical trellis supports, I left the roll near the starting point and went to get a bunch of ground staples and ties. That gave my daughter time to finish opening up the netting and setting the excess over the stakes. After that, we used the ground staples to try and get it as taut as we could. On the side I was working on, it was easier, because I was securing the netting to the ground. The side my daughter was working on is the one with the lower log that’s curved into the bed around the middle. The ground staples pulled up very easily around that area!

We just need to get it secure enough that the cats can’t get under it. In a few places, we used tied to tighten up any slack, and that’s about it.

One thing I’ve noticed about this netting. The frogs seem to be able to go through the mesh just fine. Even the larger ones.

Like this one.

This one was almost 3 inches long, from nose to tail bone.

The frog is looking quite damp because, after we were done with the netting, I gave the garden beds another watering. There were SO many frogs popping out of the mulches while they were being watered! Quite a few big ones like in the photo above, but also the teeniest, tiniest frogs! Dozens of them, all over the place. This has been a very good year for frogs and bees. Especially bumble bees. Which makes me very happy!

There was one thing I have been seeing all over the place not that does NOT make me happy!

See those tiny pairs of leaves?

Those are sprouting elm seeds.

They. Are. Everywhere.

At this point, they’re almost too delicate to weed. While they look so small on the surface, these things have ridiculously long tap roots. I did try pulling some of them while I was watering, as it’s easier to get the entire root out when the water is flowing. The tap roots are over an inch long. The exposed stems break off easily, leaving the tap roots, which tend to just throw up new shoots.

These elm trees are the bane of my gardening existence. My daughter mowed the lawns today, and I can’t even use any of the grass clippings for mulch, nor put any in the compost pile. There are more elm seeds than grass clippings.

These elms need to go. Their seeds suffocate everything from above, their capillary roots take over garden beds, choking out plants from below, and the one my mother planted to make shade for the kitchen window is not only lifting and tilting the patio blocks, but causing cracks in the basement wall. That one needs to go, first! We try to keep it cut back, but its branches are a danger to the roof, too.

When I was looking through the garden sections while waiting for my daughter’s workshop to be done, I was seeing pots of Chinese elm, spirea and Virginia Creeper being sold. All of which are wildly invasive, and almost impossible to kill. Any time I see them, I feel like I should be leaving warning signs up for people.

Tomorrow, the only thing I have planned for the garden is to water everything again, early in the morning before it starts getting really hot. We’re supposed to hit 26C/79F tomorrow. (Yes, I can hear you folks in southern climes, giggling at me for thinking that’s hot. I totally get it! 😁)

It’s also Father’s Day. Since my daughter already sprung for pizza for her sister’s birthday, tomorrow we’re planning to do ice cream. Or anything else cold that catches our fancy!

Thankfully, on Monday, we’re supposed to start cooling down – and get rain in the afternoon/evening! Hopefully. At most, we have a 50% chance of rain. We’ll see. Every drop we get is something to be thankful for! There’s still that big fire across the lake that’s out of control. Almost 219,000 hectares/541,160 acres have been burned so far, in just that one fire. There are several others burning out of control up North, including one that has burned more than 370,000 hectares/914,290 acres, and another that’s burned more than 554,000 hectares/1,368,964 acres.

This isn’t even an unusually bad wildfire year, other than some of them requiring towns and small cities to be evacuated. There aren’t a lot of people living that far north, so that is unusual. From what I’m seeing on the weather radar, though, the system that’s moving our way has a few scattered thunderstorms with lightning in it. Lightning is the last thing we need right now!

We’ve got it pretty good, right where we are, and for that, I am grateful.

The Re-Farmer

Goodbye, sweet Kale

June 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

When I didn’t see Kale this morning, I feared the worst. She was looking really sick, yesterday. So was Zipper, and and I was on the lookout for him, too, while doing the morning feeding. I did eventually spot him inside the cat house, in the kittens favourite cat bed for cuddling. His eyes were stuck shut and he wasn’t coming out to eat. He did actually look a bit better, though, which gave me some hope.

All day today, I was on the lookout for Kale, including looking through the cat house windows, every chance I got. I only saw other kittens. It wasn’t until I was doing the evening cat feeding and all the kittens were out and about that I finally spotted her.

She was on the bottom of the cat bed. I hadn’t seen her before because the other kittens were blocking my view. It was quite obvious she was no longer with us.

After the cat feeding was done, my daughter helped me wash some eyes. Zipper still looks a hot mess, but does seem to be improving. Li’l Rig is one that looks all right until we start washing his eyes and goo starts coming out. We washed Wormy’s eyes, too, though she is almost completely recovered, as have the other kittens that went through their sick phase. That includes Kale’s brother, Sir Robin.

The eye washing done, my daughter helped me lift the roof of the cat house so I could retrieve little Kale. I had a hard time figuring out where to bury her. We buried so many kittens last year, all the spots I could think of already had kittens buried in them. Then I remembered that we still have walnut seeds that need to be planted. We keep forgetting about them.

Sweet little Kale is now laid to rest and, hopefully, will have a tree growing in her memory.

I know we have too many yard cats, and it’s so hard to get them spayed and neutered – a socialized kitten would have been easy to get done! It’s still really sad when we lose any. It’s one thing for them to just disappear, as the adults do, pretty regularly. We never know what has happened to them. It’s entirely possible, if unlikely, that someone found them and took them and kept them. This is the second kitten we’ve lost this year, and the other one looked like a still birth, so even that was very different. It was so special to have a feral cat like Brussel trust us enough to have her kittens in the sun room, where we could keep watch over them and socialize them right from the start. There was even someone interested in adopting Kale, though I think that was another person that backed out, since I’ve heard nothing since.

*sigh*

Rest well, little one.

The Re-Farmer

Getting stuff done, a small miracle, and an attempted kitnapping

June 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s mid afternoon as I start to write this, and time to take a break from the heat.

Depending on which weather app I look at, our expected high today is supposed to be 22C/72F or 24C/75F. As I write this, one app tells me we are at 23C/73F, while another tells me we are at 21F/70F, with the humidex putting us at 25C/77F.

All our outdoor thermometers are in full sun, so they’d be reading high, but given how I felt while outside, I’d say at least the humidex making it feel like 25C/77F is accurate!

My morning rounds finished off with watering all the garden beds, trees and bushes. For the vegetable beds, I set up the fertilizer sprayer, because of this.

These are the Arikara squash, but all the winter squash and melons in the main garden area are also getting yellow and droopy like this. So are all the tomatoes. They’re still blooming and stuff, but looking very sickly. These seems like more than transplant shock.

The peppers, eggplant and herbs show no sign of this.

I looked up possible reasons for why this could be happening, and there are many possibilities. Most could not apply for various reasons. One very possible cause is lack of nitrogen; for all our amending, our soil is still nutrient deficient, being low on nitrogen in particular, though it is starting to improve.

The fertilizer I got was and 18-18-21; a tomato, fruit and vegetable ratio. With the hose attachment applicator, I went through most of the container by the time all the beds were done. It’s recommended to apply every 7-14 days. I’ll need to get another container before then, because there isn’t enough to do a complete watering with what’s left in the cannister right now!

When I got to watering the walnuts and Korean pine, I had a couple of surprises.

The first photo is the year old sapling, and it’s doing very well. The second photo, though, is what I found after removing the mulch that somehow ended up on top of the plastic collar, completely covering where the seed was planted.

Something was digging in there!

My first thought was that a squirrel or something stole the walnut seed. Still, I started digging, just to confirm it was gone.

I found it.

Whatever was digging had stopped a couple of inches above the walnut seed! So I just replaced the dug out soil and gave it a thorough watering.

I was encouraged to find that the soil was still moist at the level of the seed. Just barely, but at least it wasn’t dried out!

Then I found what looks like our first sprouted sapling. At least I hope that’s what it is. Until the leave unfurl, it’s hard to tell. While I tried to remove any roots I found while digging the hole for it, it’s still possible something else is sending up shoots.

Speaking of sending up shoots, I saw our first zucchini sprouts today!

Just in 2 out of 3 spots planted, so far. No sign of the white scallop squash, but I remember those took a lot longer to germinate compared to other summer squash we planted last year. We are seeing a remarkable number of frogs this year – more than we’ve ever seen since moving out here – which gives me hope that the squash sprouts will survive. I haven’t seen a single slug this year, yet, and I’d say we have all those frogs to thank for that!

My daughter, meanwhile, headed out this morning to start mowing the lawn with the riding mower, after I came inside for lunch.

Some time later, I heard a knocking at my window.

My daughter needed help. She had tried to mow closer to the crab apple trees. She got caught on a branch that flung off her hat…

… and her glasses!

Crabapple branches are horrible for that sort of thing. It’s like they reach out and grab at you, like something out of a cartoon scare scene!

She had been looking for them but, without her glasses, she couldn’t see very well. So I went out to help her look, but had no better success. Her biggest fear was that she’d run over them with the mower, so of course that was the first place she looked, but when it came to the grass, who knows how far a springy branch could and flung them!

After a while I suggested she go inside to get her prescription sunglasses while I kept searching. Then she would at least be able to see while looking!

While she was gone, I remembered her worry about having run over them, so I decided to look at the mower, too. She had stopped it well away from where the tree branch had caught her.

When I found them, I just had to take a picture, or no one would believe me.

There they were, sitting like someone had very carefully folded them closed and put them in the safest spot possible. They couldn’t even be accidentally stepped on in that spot. While needing a lens cleaning, they were completely undamaged.

An absolute miracle! I brought them to the house just as she reached the door to go back out with her prescription sunglasses. She was so incredibly relieved!

Then she was happily back to mowing.

When I headed back to work in the garden, I didn’t get much done. It was getting way too hot by then, and I was in the full sun. I went through the soil in the kiddie pool we tried using to grow zucca melon before, only to have them eaten by slugs. The soil was full of crab grass but, being contained as they were, it was easy to clear them away. I then used about half of it to top up the row of asparagus, against the log border. I wasn’t able to dig down to the proper depth when they were planted, as it gets too rocky, so I was glad to have the soil available to top them up.

If there is anything alive to help out. I strongly suspect that it took too long for use to plant the asparagus and strawberries. I don’t expect to see the asparagus quickly, but the strawberries should have appeared by now. I’ll keep watering the new bed, just in case, but it might be a total loss.

One thing I’ll have to do later today, and hopefully snag a daughter to assist, is set netting around the trellis bed. This is where the red noodle beans and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers were planted, along with the free pumpkin seeds and the baby onion sprouts I found while cleaning up the bed Aside from overwintered onions and the collars where the pumpkins are planted, this bed is pretty open.

The cats have been digging in it.

So far, they don’t seem to have actually dug up any seeds, but they did dig up at least one or two tiny onions. I’ve set the rest of my tall metal plant stakes, plus some bamboo stakes, around the bed to hold the netting. I’ll wrap the entire bed in netting, like I did with the corn and beans bed. That should be enough to keep them out.

In the process I found my first red noodle bean sprout! There was just a bit of stem visible, elbowing its way through the soil surface, so I didn’t bother taking a picture, but I’m very happy to see it! There should be others, soon!

I’ve set things up so that, after the netting is in place, it won’t block access to where the remaining three vertical support posts for the permanent trellis need to be installed. Keeping the cats out of the bed is the priority right now!

That will wait until things start to cool down a bit, though. I just don’t have any tolerance for heat anymore!

On a completely different note, I have some cuteness to share with you.

We still don’t have a name for this mama. For a mostly feral cat, she is thankfully quite comfortable hanging around the house. Very unlike the other more feral mamas! She takes very good care of her kittens – and any others that happen to be around!

There is a gorgeous long haired tabby that I decided to start calling Rabi, because I thought it might be Kohl’s brother, but I think I’m wrong. While we can’t see to know for sure, I think he might be a she.

This is what I caught her doing, today.

That’s her, trying to kitnap Havarti!

I saw her trying to carry off Hastings, yesterday.

She’s acting like a mother cat trying to carry her own kittens away, but these aren’t her kittens, and they don’t want to be carried off by her!

It has me wondering if perhaps she lost her own litter, and some maternal instinct has her wanting to carry off other kittens to mother. I’ve noticed she (I’m going to just assume “she” at this point) has been following me around the yard, but never quite allowing me to get close or reach out to her. I can’t say she ever looked pregnant – another reason we thought she might have been male. I don’t quite know what to make of it!

We’ll have to keep an eye on her. Hopefully, we can get her friendly enough to get her into a cat carrier end get her spayed!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

Critters

Finally! Rain! or not…

Plans? What plans?

Plenty done today!

Reclaiming space

Cats, kittens, garden stuff, truck stuff, a tiny harvest and more!

Our 2025 Garden: sprouts!!

Looks like it’s going to happen!

A bit more done, and froggy friend

Goodbye, sweet Kale

Getting stuff done, a small miracle, and an attempted kitnapping

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