I ended up going into town this morning. One of my stops was not far from the marina.
I forgot it’s fish fly season right now.
Buildings and sidewalks are covered with them. Piles of them were under street lights. I walked past a poor guy using a leaf blower, trying to clear the sidewalk in front of retail outlets. Before going inside, I had to shake my shirt to knock the still living ones off of me. Ew.
While in line at one of my stops I – with permission, of course – removed a number of them from the back of the woman in front of me, and she was kind enough to check if I had any on my back, too! 😄
The good thing is, they emerge, mate, hatch their eggs and die, all within 24 hours, so this won’t last long!
After I got home, I was able to make the medical appointment for my mother to go over her prescription changes. They were actually able to fit her in this coming Friday, which is nice and fast.
Then, with the temperatures a much more bearable 20-22C/68-72F outside, and no rain expected, I finally got outside and got some progress in the garden. That will be for another post. For now, I share the cuteness!
Two of Brussel’s kittens are now regularly at the sun room. If the other two are around, I’m not seeing them.
Broccoli’s calico looks like a grizzles old man!
Then I found one of Brussel’s kittens in one of my summer squash pots! Thankfully, not on the one seedling that has managed to germinate. I was able to harvest the fuzzy little squashling and move it to the sun room.
It did not appreciate this.
This is a kitten that hunches down rather than runs away, and it did hiss at me. I think it did clue in that I mean it no harm, because I was able to handle it later, without getting hissed at. I just got a death glare, instead!
Button’s habit of sleeping right in the doorway is a bit of a pain, but with all our losses this year so far, every time I see him sleeping like that, I find myself checking to see if he’s still breathing!
Yes, he was fine. 😁
Seeing Brussel with only two of her kittens does make me wonder about the other two.
Then there is a pair of white and grey/black kittens that have decided the hand rail is the place to hang out.
They are not socialized, but I was able to pet them. Once actually stopped and let me, but the other disappeared under the branches of the rose bush that covered half the hand rail. I did manage to pet its back as it duck into the foliage, though.
Gotta keep working on the socialization thing, if we’re going to be able to get them adopted out! The Cat Lady even contacted me today, as she has someone looking for a kitten, and we do have some that we can handle regularly now, that are also old enough to be weaned.
Getting any adoptions done at all right now would be amazing!
These are from the ones growing pretty much wild in the old compost heap that have been there since before we moved here. With how much rain we had this spring, I honestly wasn’t expecting any to be ripe for at least a couple more weeks, so this was such a bonus.
Speaking of bonuses, while walking past the garlic at the end of the old kitchen garden I spotted one last garlic scape that I missed this morning, when I’d picked another that I’d missed when I did the last harvest of them.
While heading back into the house, I had to step over another bonus. Kittens!
There was two of them, this time, and I’ve even been able to pick up and cuddle the fluffy one. Button seems to have quite the preference for that spot and I often see him napping there.
The problem is, between him being so incredibly tiny, and the losses we’ve had this year, when I see him conked out there, or in the middle of the floor (another favourite napping spot of his!), I find myself checking to make sure he is okay.
Before doing my evening rounds, I topped up the kibble and was happy to see Broccoli’s two, curled up on the sidewalk block by the rain barrel. The black and white (Kohl) immediately ran off towards the garden shed, but the calico (Rabi) just stared at me, ready to flee.
Now, if they will just start going into the sun room and the shelters…
Today, being Sunday, is my day of rest, and I’m going to take full advantage of it!
Not that it means I don’t do my usual rounds and checks, of course. My daughters, however, were sweethearts and took care of feeding the outside cats before going to bed for the day, so I could sleep in.
That was quite early in the morning, so when I did head out, I topped up their kibble. As I was doing it, I heard a bit of a cat fight in the space between the cat shelters.
I saw a cat get run off by Adam, who then settled in among a few kittens. I do believe she was protecting them!
I have no idea which of the kittens in the photo are hers anymore! There are just a few that I know for sure are not.
She is such a good mama!
While checking the garden beds, I’m now always on the lookout for developing female flowers and squash. There is one pumpkin vine that has a couple of baby pumpkins that are pretty darn big, for the stage they are at!
I’m hoping they got pollinated and will keep growing, but it’ll be a while before we know for sure. The pumpkin flowers, both male and female, are larger than most of the winter squash that are blooming. There are a few winter squash, though, that have had some equally large male flowers blooming. It should be interesting to see what kind of squash they turn out to be!
After I was done outside, I grabbed our empty water jugs and headed to town. I had considered taking them with me to the city yesterday for refills, but I’m glad I didn’t. We don’t usually allow our drinking water get down to just one jug, though, and the last one was set up last night, so I wanted to make sure to get the empties refilled right away.
I was rather surprised by how busy things were in town, though. Even for a summer Sunday in a tourist town. My first hint at what was going on was as I left the grocery store and had to wait for an absolutely gorgeous old low rider, painted black with red and yellow flams all over, drive by. Then, as I was leaving the parking lot, I could see the street ahead was closed and filled with people.
There was a classic car event going on.
No wonder it was so busy! For the population of the area, it’s amazing just how many classic cars there are! The show is very popular and with good reason.
Still, I was glad to leave the crowd behind. It’s been more than 6 years since we moved out of the city, and I’m still peopled out. 😄
In other things, we are supposed to get more rain, off and on, late this afternoon and evening. We still have a lot of standing water all over, and I wasn’t able to pull into the yard to unload the truck. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get more rain from 4am – 6am and then continue to be cooler and drier for the next few days. Hopefully, that means I’ll finally be able to get out with the electric weed trimmer and clear the spaces around the garden beds I need to work on. I really don’t want to be dragging an extension cord through wet grass!
Last night, it actually got cool enough that I had to turn off my fan! Last year, I had a box fan set up in the window, but I hadn’t done that yet, this summer. Part of the problem is the power bars (we have surge protection power bars at almost every outlet – and this house does not have enough outlets!). I’ve got different things plugged into the one I needed this year, and some of them are the larger plugs that take up two spaces. I was able to move things around between power bars and free up a plug in the power bar that can be reached from the window, and I could finally set the box fan back up. What a difference that made!
The cats are not happy. 😄 They like to sit on the wide ledge to look outside, or use it to get to the top of the shelf, where there are beds set up for them.
During the day, I have the fan facing the screen and blowing hot air out. At night, I flip it around to blow cool air in. We dropped to 13C/55F last night! It was glorious!
As for right now, even though it’s 23C/73F, with the humidex at 28C/83F right now, I’m having a hard time not going back outside to try and get some things done before it rains again. Even if I weren’t taking a day of rest, things are still just too wet for the work I want to do! None of it is urgent anymore, like it was to get those beds shifted so we could finish getting the transplants in. It can wait. It would be nice to get some more progress done before I do my next garden tour video, though.
We shall see. It all pretty much comes down to what the weather allows!
Today, things are a supposed to be a bit cooler than the past couple of days, but it sure didn’t feel that way while doing my rounds this morning! I’m writing this at a little before 7:30pm, and we’re still at 25C/77F. We were expected to hit 27C/81F this afternoon, but I’m pretty sure we beat that.
We did have rain overnight. Enough to refill the rain barrel, so I made sure to put the diverter back on. I’m glad I did!
Though several hours had past, and it was quite hot out already, it was so humid that nothing was drying. The grass and plants, I would expect, but even the sidewalk and patio blocks, and the front steps, were all still damp. By the time I was done and got back to the house, my feet were soaked!
After finishing my morning rounds, I was planning to go to the city, but made sure to call my mother and check on how she was doing. She sounded really good. We talked a bit about her prescription change, and that I would be calling the clinic on Monday to get her an appointment with the doctor to talk about them and get her prescriptions updated for the pharmacy. Of course, now that she’s back on one pill she was told to stop for a short while, then get the blood tests she had done at the beginning of the week, plus another pill is now morning and evening, instead of just evening, she has immediately begun to associate starting the medications again with whatever she happens to be noticing at the time. Lately, it’s been “dry mouth”. Not anything close to the medical dry mouth that can be a symptom of various things, but she doesn’t understand just how extreme the medical condition can be. From what she describes, it makes me think she is either dehydrated (for all our encouragement, she is just not drinking anywhere near enough water) or sleeping with her mouth open at times – or both! Well, she woke up with a dry mouth this morning, so it must be because she restarted taking that one pill, yesterday. More alarming, she started saying that maybe she should stop taking it again, and…
I stepped in at that point and reminded her to not start messing with her medications. Again!
*sigh*
We talked about it for a bit, and I reminded her that she’s been complaining about that for quite a while now, both with and without that one pill. She did admit that this was true.
As we were talking and I mentioned I was planning to go to the city, as my own little “day off”. This is my birth month and, when I was asked if I wanted to do the usual take out again, I said no. I wanted a grocery shopping trip! Not just any grocery shopping trip, though, but a more luxurious one. 😄 So I got a rather generous budget, instead!
I mentioned my birthday was coming up, too, and my mother had forgotten about it completely. Which doesn’t bother me at all. If it weren’t for my family and Facebook, I’d forget my own birthday. I even forget my age, most of the time. 😄
Anyhow.
When she found out I was going to the city, my mother wondered if I could pick up some milk for her along the way. 😄 I had intended to take a different route, but that was fine. I told her I’d do it on the way out, not on the way back, since I would have things in the truck that needed to stay cold.
So that was worked out. Before heading out, I remembered to return our reusable bags – most of them insulated – to the truck, including one filled with ice packs.
Then it was off to my mother’s town, a quick stop to pick up her milk, and a brief visit.
She was sweet enough to have an envelop with a monetary gift for me. Which I made sure to say, she did not need to do. I appreciate the gift (gas money!), of course, but I don’t want her to think she’s in any way obligated to gave me anything.
I did have to chuckle when I transferred the cash to my wallet, though. It was $50, which was very kind of her. What is funny is, with my brother as PoA keeping track of her finances, I know that she sent our vandal a check for $1000 for his birthday, a few months ago.
*shakeshead*
She has such a terrible habit of making things worse for herself and is completely oblivious as to how what she does can be such a problem. I mean, it’s her money, she can do what she wants with it, but to even keep having contact with our vandal, after his years of verbal abuse and trying to get her to change her will to leave this farm to him instead of my brother… what was she thinking???
Ah, well.
Once done at her place, I made a stop at the gas station. This time, I just preset the pump to $30, then went inside when it was done to get some food and a drink for the road as well, since I forgot to have breakfast. After I paid for everything, making sure to say which pump I’d used, I drove away from the pump and off to the side and parked. After opening my drink and setting up my food (I even keep a plastic plate in the truck, to protect the seat, for times like this), I checked my phone for messages before leaving.
There was a purchase notification from my bank that I started to clear, when I noticed something strange about the number.
I hadn’t paid too much attention inside the gas station as I was paying, and I don’t normally keep the receipt. I thought I’d heard the woman on cash give me the total, but clearly I’d heard wrong. This number was way too low!
She forgot to charge me for the gas!
So I went back inside.
I explained that I hadn’t got my receipt, but I saw my bank notification, and I didn’t think they charged me for the gas. At this point, I was talking to two women behind the counter, including one I see almost all the time. As soon as I mentioned the gas not being included, they both looked at each other and said “The $30!” After I’d left, they’d noticed the indicator on the machine inside, but I guess neither had seen who had gotten gas there!
I’m so glad I checked my phone before I left! If I hadn’t, I would not have seen the notification until I’d parked at my first stop in the city! I’m also glad I have my bank app set up to send me those notifications, too, I might not have noticed at all, even when checking my accounts, later!
Once that was cleared up, it was off to the city. I had a regular shopping list as well as personal shopping, and my first stop was at a large Walmart. I ended up getting most of what was on my list there, including more kibble. For myself, I picked up a couple of t-shirts, since I’m managed to stain pretty all of mine, including my new ones. I tried looking at shoes, too. I need to replace my indoor shoes, which I’d found at a Walmart, but I just can’t find another pair like them. The ones that are similar don’t fit my feet right. I ended up having to skip the shoes again. I did amuse myself by first looking at women’s shoes, including some “wide” pairs. Ha! Wide compared to what? I was looking at several sizes larger than my feet, and they were all so narrow, I didn’t even bother trying any on.
It’s not just a problem with shoes. Most of my clothes these days come from the men’s section. Even the Plus Size women’s clothes are just wrong for my body type. The fabrics and overall quality tend to suck, too, and even plain shirts tend to be more expensive.
So I’m happy with my very plain, very generic, men’s t-shirts!
That done, I packed everything into the truck, but was left with a bit of a conundrum. One of the things on my list that I picked up was a couple of packs of ice. They went into an insulated bag along with some other things that needed to be kept cold, plus ice packs I’d brought from home. I made sure to keep those bags in the cab, with air conditioning, but once the truck is parked, it gets so hot, the insulated bags can only do so much!
It just meant I needed to do the rest of my planned shopping a bit faster.
The next stop was at the international grocery store, which I haven’t been to in ages. It shares a parking lot with a Dollarama, so I dashed in there, first. They had the taller, plastic coated metal support stakes in stock, so I bought 8 of them. These ones each some with an adjustable plant tie, and cost $3. The same size support stakes, without the ties, cost more than twice as much at Canadian Tire, and Walmart doesn’t even have them.
That was my mother’s birthday gift to me. 😄
Part of why I wanted to go to the international grocery store was to go to their eatery section and treat myself to dim sum for lunch. Oh, how I love their dim sum!
It was also the place to pick up a nice selection of cheeses and charcuterie meats. I even found truffle enhanced gouda this time!
The fungus, not the chocolate.
I’m thinking, a Columbo marathon and some charcuterie with the girls. My husband wouldn’t be joining us, though. He likes Columbo. He doesn’t like charcuterie. 😄
While I was in the city, I got a message from my husband. He told me they’d just been hit with a wicked thunderstorm! They didn’t lose power or anything, but there was definitely a nearby lightning strike!
There was also a deluge.
Did I mention I was glad I put that rain diverter over the full barrel?
It was probably another hour and half after the storm ended, that I got home. Before leaving the city, I’d sent a message about driving into the yard to unload. My daughter went out to check the status of things, and suggested that was not going to be an option.
When I got to the gate, the driveway was still full of water. So was the entry through the vehicle gate into the yard. The ground there is already really soft, but with open water all around behind the garage again, the truck would have torn up the grass, or even gotten stuck, if I’d driven in!
My daughter helped me carry everything in. We didn’t even try to use use the wagon. Once loaded with things like 9kg bags of kibble, it would have sunk into the mud, too!
Once everything was unloaded, I gave the cats their evening feeding, then checked around the yard. It was the wheelbarrow that really showed me just how much of a deluge we got. This morning, the wheelbarrow had just a couple of inches of water in one corner. That corner now had about 8 or 9 inches in it! All the low spots around the garden were full of water.
Everything in the raised beds, though, is very happy! They got their fertilizer just a little while ago, and now they got a deep watering. Nothing seemed to be damaged by the rain itself. The winter squash is getting really big, and even the much smaller melon vines are seeing a growth spurt!
I’m happy to see that Brussel’s babies are hanging out around the house now! Well. At least the orange one. The other two are black and white and, while one has a distinctive patters on its nose, there are so many black and whites or grey and whites, and they run around so much, it’s hard to identify them at times.
Thanks to a donation of kitten kibble, I’ve been making a point of mixing a bit of it in with the adult kibble, then putting the food around outside the sun room, first. Once the adults are distracted by eating, I put kitten kibble in the bowls inside the sun room, where the kittens prefer to hang out. Not all of them, though. Quite a few are coming to the house to eat, but they haven’t discovered the sun room, yet. By including some kitten kibble with the adult kibble that gets spread in some of the areas they are willing to go to, they will at least get some of it before the adults eat it all!
When I was done with the feeding and checking of the yard, though, I wasn’t able to go back in through the sun room, as Adam was busy nursing some babies in front of it. So I went in through the main doors, then went into the old kitchen to finish putting things away. From there, I spotted Adam through the window. She had moved outside, and was nursing a whole bunch of kittens – including Brussel’s orange baby! She had kittens climbing all over each other, trying to reach the nip, and she was just laying there, putting up with it all!
What a good creche mother she is!
I do sometimes see two other mamas nursing babies besides their own, in or near the sun room, but none on the scale that Adam does!
So, that has been my day today. All in all, I’m pretty happy with a more relaxed trip to the city, and am looking forward to treating myself to some really awesome cheeses!
I wonder if the girls are up to a Columbo marathon tonight?
Drier Sheet is back today, and still just a bundle of nerves. I was, however, able to get a look at the stitches on his leg. We were not able to dose him with the remaining painkillers the vet sent home with him because he simply disappeared for several days. The wound seems to be healing nicely, though, and the dissolving stitches are still holding.
Button has been an easy one to catch and hold. In fact, we have to be really careful walking around the sun room, and just outside, because he has this terrible habit of going under our feet.
This kitten has the absolute bluest eyes, and I think that may be his permanent colour! I tried to get a picture to capture the colour, but did not succeed. Still cute as a Button, though!
One of the things in the packages I picked up today was a donation of kitten food and some cat treats. When I did the evening feeding, I used the regular kibble outside to lure the adults away, then put kitten food in the sun room and other places the kittens tend to congregate in, in hopes the adult cats wouldn’t eat the kitten food before the littles got some.
It was somewhat successful. There are several male cats that prefer to eat inside the sun room, though. We have several bowls, spread apart, and sometimes I’ll find a kitten eating with an adult cat. Mostly, though, the adults just push their way over the bowls and scarf down the food. With the kitten food, I actually had to chase some of the adult cats out so they wouldn’t eat all the kittens’ food!
All the while I was out there, I was hearing thunder in the near distance. I decided to take advantage of possible rain and quickly weeded and loosened some soil in the potato bed at the chain link fence, where the potatoes didn’t come up, and direct seeded some White Vienne kohlrabi. I’ve seen several resources saying that they can be planted now as a fall crop in our area. In the past, I’d always planted them in the early spring, but if they ever germinated, something ate them right away. Perhaps if I try them now, it’s past the season of whatever ate them. That and they are in a completely different location, which might also help. We shall see!
Meanwhile, as I worked, it was so hot and humid, I had sweat just pouring off my face!
I used to dream of some day living in, or at least visiting, a tropical paradise. I could have handled it in my younger days, but as I’ve gotten older, I just can’t seem to tolerate the heat anymore!
As for the thunder I was hearing, I just checked the weather radar, and it passed us by completely. It’s almost 10pm as I write this, and we’re still at 25C/77F with a matching humidex. The predicted rain that was supposed to start around 11pm and last until about 2am, is now expected to to be light showers, starting at 2am, lasting about an hour, then starting again at about 5am and lasting another hour.
It’s a good thing I gave the freshly sown kohlrabi a through watering. Later, I’ll cover it with some mesh or something, to keep the cats off.
Aside from planting the kohlrabi, about the only other thing I got done in the garden was to harvest the last of the garden scapes. We have been hanging on to most of the previous harvests, so we can make a big batch or two of… something. We haven’t decided it. Tonight, though, the girls are planning to use some to make a pasta sauce. Sounds wonderful!
As for me, given that I got pretty much no sleep last night, I should probably got to bed but…
Yup. You guessed it.
The later it gets, the more awake I am!
That and it’s so hot and humid in my room, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sleep anyhow. Especially when Butterscotch, Cheddar, Clarence, Peanut Butter Cup, Ghosty, Fenrir and Freya, all decide they need to snuggle right up against me as they sleep! Not necessarily all at once, but usually at least 4 of them at a time. You’d think they’d try and avoid more heat, but nope…
We have the old basement door open, hardware cloth barrier in place to keep the cats out of the basement, and a blower fan at the bottom of the stairs, blowing cooler air up. It helps quite a bit, but the basement door has to be fully open.
When the basement door is fully open, it covered the doorway into my room. Which means all that cool air doesn’t go into my bedroom at all. I do have a box fan in my room, but it mostly just blows around warm air.
Ah, well. Better the heat than the cold. If we lose power or something major breaks down now, it’s not that big of a deal. If the same thing happens at in the winter, it can be life threatening.
Adam was blocking my way into the house again, nursing the bebbies – including Button! I’m so happy to see he’s been absorbed into the creche.
Now for the more serious stuff.
Last night, I got a call from my mother. She had called for an ambulance and, as we had discussed before, she was letting me know so that I could update the rest of the family and check on her place, etc.
That was at about… 4:30pm – ish.
After several hours with no word, I tried calling the closer hospital ER I thought they would take her to.
She wasn’t there.
So I tried the next hospital, and there she was.
She was stable and doing fine, but a doctor had not seen her yet.
After confirming phone numbers for myself and my brother, who has PoA, that was about it.
My plan was to head over to check on her place in the morning. I wasn’t decided on whether I should call the hospital before I left, or from my mother’s town.
I ended up not being able to sleep at all until past 5am. Since I was intending to do some driving, when I woke up less than 2 hours later, I asked my daughters to take care of the morning outside stuff and tried to get more sleep.
It didn’t work.
About an hour later, I found a direct message from my brother, asking if I’d heard anything. No one had called him. I had not heard anything, either.
I was tying my shoes, getting ready to head out, when the phone rang. It was the hospital, letting me know my mother was discharged and ready to go home with a prescription. After confirming which entrance I’d be picking her up at, I was on my way.
It turns out she’d spent the entire night basically in the waiting room, in between getting tests and Xrays done. There were no beds available. When I got there, she was talking to another older woman who had been there just as long as my mother, and still hadn’t been seen by a doctor! It was 15 hours in the ER by then!
I got my mother into the truck, and she was so tired, she wanted to go straight home. She was, at least, given a meal while she was there!
I tried to ask lots of questions about how things went, and she was already starting to forget details. I got information in dribs and drabs over the next while. When we were at her place, she showed me the hand written prescription she was given. I didn’t think she had one, since she also told me the doctor assured her copies of everything would go to both her doctor and the pharmacy.
The good news is, the issue found the last time she saw the doctor has improved. The bad news it, it had nothing to do with why she called the ambulance. She did get one of her prescription doses increased, though, and – little by little – she told me things the doctor suggested that we’ve already been trying to get her to do for … oh… several years now? She still flat out refuses to get a hospital bed.
Then she showed me the physical prescription. I couldn’t read some of it, but it looked like one medication’s dose was increase, so I said I would take it to the pharmacy and talk to them about it.
I’m glad I did. They needed that physical copy.
It turned out one medication was back to normal; the pharmacy didn’t even know there was a chance, since it was a temporary experiment. Another did have an increased dose. After some discussion, I went back to my mother’s to get her bubble packs, so they could add the change to them. It was going to take long enough that I had time to have breakfast while I waited!
By the time I got the updated bubble packs and brought them to my mother. She was sleeping soundly, so I just left them on her table with a note.
I think hung around town just long enough that the post office would be open when I got to our little hamlet. M, I got your surprise parcels, but have not looking them them yet. Thank you so much! I ended up having 4 packages, including a large but light one, so I messaged my daughters to have one of them meet me at the garage, to bring them in.
Once we got everything inside, it was late enough that I decided to top up the kibble for the outside cats.
That’s when I found a less pleasant surprise, on the ground under the water bowl shelter.
A stillborn kitten, still fully encased in its amniotic sac and attached to its placenta.
I went around to put kibble in the bowls under the shrine, and found a second one!
After that, I decided to do some walking around to see if there were any others.
There was not, so I buried the two that I found.
I don’t even know what cat was pregnant. There is one – I believe a sibling to Peanut Butter cup – that we’ve not been able to get close to, but I’ve been able to confirm as female. I think she might be pregnant. She’s so fluffy, it’s hard to tell, but if she is, she still is, and the stillborns were not hers. No other cat that I know is female looked even remotely pregnant.
After the sad job of burying the babies, I made a point of checking things I normally would have in my morning rounds. I find my morning rounds to be very meditative and enjoyable.
It was, however, hot and muggy. As I write this, just past 4pm, we’re at 29C/84F with the humidex at 32C/90F, and we haven’t even reached our high of the day, yet.
Yesterday, when I saw no rain in the forecast, I wrote that I would have expected thunderstorms. Well, last night, I did hear thunder in the distance as storms passed us by. While I was driving to get my mother, there were storm warnings on the radio, including the possibility of golf ball sized hail! Our local forecast now says rain should be starting around 11 or 12 this evening, and continuing until about 2am. We are now also expected to have rain all day Monday. We’re supposed to cool down slightly over the next few days, then get hot again. For us, that means close to, or hotter than, 30C/86F.
The conditions are frustrating. The coolest part of the day is in the morning, but the humidity is so high, it’s too damp to do anything like mowing or weed trimming. I need to get the weed trimmer out to work on the log frame of the low raised bed, but the winter squash plants are getting so big and long, it’s going to be a challenge to do the work without damaging them. I should be able to temporarily fix them to the trellis netting for the peas and beans, though.
So the grass cutting and weed trimming needs to wait until things are no longer too wet – but by then, it’s too hot. The temperatures don’t start coming down until about 7pm – and if the heat doesn’t get us, the mosquitoes and horseflies will! Bug spray or not bug spray!
Bah. At least the garden is planted. If we’re expecting rain tonight, I might take a chance and plant some kohlrabi in the empty space where the Purple Caribe potatoes didn’t come up.
But not until things start to cool down.
Until then, I’ve got a couple of boxes to open up and see what’s inside!
We’ve got a hot day coming, so I wanted to give the garden beds a solid watering, to help them cope with the coming heat. It was already 22C/72F at the time. I can’t remember what the humidex was.
While doing my morning rounds, though, I got a bit of a harvest.
There were quite a lot of scapes to harvest! There’s a few left to harvest over the next few days, but at this point, the bulk of them are harvested. We just need to figure out what we want to do with them all!
There were a few sugar snap peas large enough to pick. The little strawberries are the ones grown from seed last year, and the larger ones from the bare root plants we planted this spring. There is one plant among the asparagus that has berries, but the other three have been eaten, in spite of the barriers I put up to discourage the deer. *sigh*
I have spotted our first female pumpkin flower. The camera on my phone just did NOT want to focus on it, though. After I got the picture, I found a male flower and hand pollinated it. I later found a new female flower among the winter squash and was able to hand pollinate that one, too.
After a quick breakfast, my older daughter and I headed outside – my younger daughter is out of commission and walking with a cane again. 😢 We finally got around to removing the insulation around the base of the newer part of the house. This uncovered two windows – a third was already uncovered. These two windows don’t have screens on them, so I’m hoping to build some new screens for them. This way, we can have the windows open and allow more air circulation in the basement and hopefully help it dry out.
The insulation was taken to the barn for storage. My daughter took the smaller pieces in the wagon, fighting her way through the tall grass. With both of us, though, it took only two trips to get it all stored away.
Since I was going to be watering the garden anyway, I had decided to use the hose attachment and water soluble fertilizer. We have the 30-10-10 Acidifying fertilizer we’d found when cleaning out the old kitchen. Everything in the box was well sealed in plastic bags, so even though the box got wet at some point, the fertilizer is fine. With our alkaline soil, I decided it was worth trying. The peas and beans, of course, won’t get any benefit from the high nitrogen content, but anything that makes our soil at least closer to neutral will be a help.
I had a bit of trouble getting back into the sun room to get what I needed, though.
I was NOT about to interrupt Button getting some nip. Especially when he wasn’t having to fight the bigger kittens for it.
So I took advantage of the time to clear things on the patio blocks in front of the south facing basement window. The swing bench is there. The seat cushions have needed replacing for years, but I keep forgetting to get the measurements for cushions. Being out in the elements, moisture and debris gets caught in the fold between the back and the seat portions, so I undid the Velcro holding them in place and flipped the folds backwards for them to dry.
We stuck an old wooden bench against the wall that my daughter helped me move away after the insulation pieces were taken out. I ended up taking it off the patio blocks completely. All sorts of buckets and other things were stored under the bench, some of which got garbaged, some hosed off and set to dry in the sun. After that, it was old leaves, twigs, and other nature debris that needed to be scraped off the patio blocks and swept away. The window and the basement wall, of course, had to be swept clear of debris that got between the wall and the insulation pieces.
By the time I finished clearing that, Adam and Button were done, and I could fill the hose attachment and get to watering. The box of fertilizer has one large bag in it, with four smaller bags. One had been opened, but hardly anything had been used. Each one of the smaller bags was premeasured to put into the hose attachment. Handy! Of course, I used the one that was open already, even though it was missing a small amount, and set it up on the hose at the main garden area.
All the beds got a watering then, after the first watering had time to be absorbed by the soil, a second watering. Hopefully, it will be sufficient to protect the plants from the heat, even though a lot of these are heat loving plants.
I don’t know if the last Zucca melon will survive. When I did my evening rounds and checked on it, it was just covered in slugs, eaten to the point the stem with the newest growth on it broke off while I was removing the slugs! It still got a fertilizer watering, though.
That done, I switched to the front yard hose and did the East yard garden beds, and the beds along the chain link fence. There’s a section where we planted the Purple Caribe potatoes that never came up. I’m thinking of direct sowing something for a fall crop. I’m told we can actually still plant kohlrabi now, so I might do that. There is a single self seeded Jebousek lettuce that showed up in the gap, and I’m leaving it to go to seed, as it would be acclimating to our local conditions quite nicely by now. That, and the seed it came from survived the entire bed being reworked!
By the time the south and east beds were watered, the water in the attachment was looking pretty clear, so for the old kitchen garden, I switched gears. I used watering cans and water from the rain barrel, opening another bag of fertilizer and adding measured amounts into the cans after filling them. As I was watering, I spotted some Forme de Couer tomatoes developing!
I just realized; I forgot to water the green zucchini in the pot. The Magda and White Scallop pots still have nothing in then, and I’ve figured out part of the problem. I’ve got stakes to keep the cats out, but the kittens still fit! I’ve been finding kittens curled up in between the stakes, right over where the seeds were planted.
*sigh*
Oh, that reminds me. We now have all four G-Star seeds I planted, in the bed with the onions and shallots, germinated and starting to show their true leaves. Still nothing with the Magda and White Scallop I planted at the same time. I was really hoping to get those. We quite enjoyed the few Madga squash we’ve been able to grow over the years, and the White Scallop patty pans are a new variety we were really looking forward to trying. The G-Star, however, seem to thrive here, so we should at least get some of those!
After everything was watered, I took the time to put away some plastic for the garden. I’d laid the pieces out on the grass, weighted down to keep them from blowing away, to dry. Instead, it rained, and ended up with puddled. After a while, they were starting to kill the grass, so I finally gave up on that idea. Yesterday evening, I hung them up on the clothes line, instead. They’re pretty long, even with the biggest piece folded in half, so there was a risk the cats would start playing with the ends and tearing them up.
The wind was starting to pick up, and the plastic was starting to get twisted on the line, so I took them down. The biggest piece got folded smaller, before being rolled up into a bundle. The other pieces were long and thin – mostly clear garbage bags with the sides cut, and used to solarize a garden bed. Those got rolled up around a stick.
By the time I got inside and checked the temperature, we were – and still are – at 28C/82F, with the humidex at 31C/88F. The high for today is expected to reach 30C/86F.
I can’t complain. In the city we lived in before moving here, they hit 36C/97F with the humidex at 40C/104F, yesterday. Mind you, we’re expected to reach a humidex of 40C/104F today ourselves, even with a lower expected high. Most of the prairies, now extending into southwestern Ontario, are under extreme heat warnings. Tomorrow is supposed to be much of the same.
Looking at the extended forecast, we’re not supposed to get any more rain until the beginning of August, and temperatures are expected to remain high. Given the heat and humidity levels, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get sudden thunderstorms in there.
Well, all those squash and melons, peppers and eggplants, are going to love the heat! They might get a chance to really get growing.
Hmm. This is interesting. I just checked a completely different weather app, and it says we have a 100% chance of rain on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Every app seems to have a different forecast!
We shall see.
Until then, we’re going to hunker down inside the house. It’s not supposed to cool off out there until 7pm, and even our overnight temperature is supposed to be a low of 21C/70F!
Gotta love the prairies. We get as hot in the summer as we do cold in the winter!
It’s a hot and muggy day today! As I write this, past 3:30 pm, we are at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 31C/89F We are not expecting any rain, but with the heat and humidity, I wouldn’t be surprised if a thunderstorm suddenly appeared.
No storms, but we did have a power outage this morning! The power went out in the area for more then an hour. After it came back, I learned that the outage, which included several towns in the area, was due to a fire on a power pole. !!
I did get my morning rounds done before we lost power, checking on the babies and the garden beds.
I found a new female winter squash blossom forming! Hopefully, when it opens, there will be some male flowers open to pollinate it. I’m rather happy with how the winter squash is recovering from being transplanted.
The kittens are doing all right. As I was coming back to the sun room, I actually found Broccoli’s two babies had come around to eat. They ran off as soon as they saw me, though, and are really skittish.
I’m not sure what to make of some of the adults, though. Sprout, one of Broccoli’s calico babies from a couple years ago and sibling to Brussel, comes over for food, but she is not just skittish of me. She frequently growls and snarls at the other cats. I don’t remember her doing that before, but then, this is the first year she’s really been coming this close to the house for food, too. She’s not the only one, though. There’s a grey and white cat that I think it is a mama that is also snarly. This morning, a male that is all black except for a white blaze on his chest showed up, and he was growling and snarling at other cats, too, though with him, I got the impression he has not had food for awhile.
That was this morning. Yesterday evening, things seemed to be okay.
We had some power flickers due to storms, and I had to go back and forth between the house and the garage to reset the device we have for our garage security camera. WiFi isn’t reliable at the garage, so it’s plugged into a device that uses our power lines to send the signal, which gets converted to WiFi inside the house.
Some of the kittens are getting quite used to my coming and going, and don’t bother moving, never mind running away (unless I approach them).
Two of them ran off into the tall grass, while two of them just loafed on the driveway!
I left, then came back, and found just a black and white fluff ball still loafed on the driveway. I also saw a tiny black and white face peaking at me from the hole under the doors to the side of the garage we store the lawnmowers in.
I decided to see how close I could get to the one loafed in the driveway. As I got closer, it ran to the edge of the tall grass, then leaned against the grass to hiss at me. I came closer, and it rolled onto its back and hissed at me.
I picked it up and it lay on its back in my hand, and hissed at me!
Also, it’s a boy. 😂
A carried him over to the garage and put him down next to the hole under the door, where I could just see the legs of his sibling. Once on the grown, under the door he went!
So I guess that’s where Brussel has her babies now. Which she might have issues with, when we need to get at the lawn mowers.
I do hope she brings her babies to the house, soon!
Today, however, I saw no sign of them when I headed out.
I did not have plans to head out.
I got a call from my mother this morning. She started telling me about how she has stuff that she’s packing up and setting aside to go to my sister. Then she mentioned adding more things to her bag for the hospital – long story behind that I won’t get into here. Then she said she had stuff she wanted me to take to the farm. It took a bit of questioning, since she talks as if I already know the background of what she’s saying, but I eventually figured out that she is starting to go through her stuff, basically to give to people she things they should go to, after she dies or something. The stuff she wanted me to take was things like fabric (???) that she thought we could use, and if we don’t, then we can donate it to a second hand store. She started talking about she has so little room (true) and needs to get rid of stuff, so they can go to the farm…
I told her, we have too much stuff here already!
That’s when she suggested we could donate things to the second hand store. I wasn’t sure these would be things suitable for donation, okay.
I asked when she wanted me to come over.
Can I come over today?
…
So, that was my unplanned trip out!
I did stop at the post office first, though. Our reordered 4lb bucket of lysine is supposed to arrive today – but when I look at the tracking information, it says it’s still at a carrier facility in the US, and hasn’t moved since June 27.
It wasn’t there, but I just checked the tracking information again. It still says it’s in a carrier facility in the US, but also it’s supposed to arrive locally by 8pm today. ???
Anyhow.
Once at my mother’s, she at first basically ignored why I was there, as she kept going through her “important” papers. Which are basically all old newspaper clippings, printouts of photos of dead relatives, and various other papers that she considered of great historical value.
My poor sister is going to be getting all this stuff.
Eventually, I got her to tell me what she was wanting me to take to the farm.
Which turned out to be a storage bin she wanted me to dig out of her closet.
So we went through that together, and most of it we might actually be able to use. I did put my foot down when it came to taking an old bra. She said it could go to the second hand store. I told her to just throw it away!!
Then there was another storage bin to go through.
It was quite a mix of things. Pieces of fabric that she used to use as a cover for an old couch here at the farm – a couch our vandal stole while the house was empty. Old curtains that had been using in the living room window. Why would she even take those with her? The living room window is huge, and there’s nothing in her apartment they could have been used on! There were some table cloths that look like they were among those my late brother salvaged from a restaurant he demolished, years ago (a lot of the cutlery we still use now was from that one job!). One thing I was very happy to take was a lacy crochet table cloth. My mother crocheted it. I remember it being used when I was a child! That, to me, is a treasure! There were a few things from Poland, and some strangely old sewing kits material, crochet hooks and knitting needles. Apparently, my mother bought the sewing kit – woven box – for me. I have no memory of that, though I do remember the woven box. What I was really excited to see what the darning mushroom inside! I remember using it to darn socks when I was a kid. I’ve been wanting one for years, but they are rather hard to find, and the few I have found over the years are strangely expensive.
After going through the bins, she got me to grab a bucket that was full of yarn and other odds and ends.
Including the Bamboo Silk yarn I’d used to make a wheelchair shawl for my aunt. A shawl my cousin gave to my mother after her sister passed away. Which my mother undid.
I talked to her about that, trying to get her to understand how I had made this for her sister, and it was something she could have used herself, that would have reminded her of her sister, but she undid it.
I washed it first, she assured me.
???
Also, her sister is dead now, so it doesn’t matter.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just…
…
no words.
I just have no words.
What makes it extra bizarre is that, here she was, spending all this time and effort to divide up her possessions to the family members she thinks they should go to, because she thinks she’s going to die any day now. She actually asked me what I thought about how much longer she’ll last. I told her I thought she had many years ahead of her, yet, and I truly believe that. Barring her doing something weird to herself again, like messing with her medications, she’ll probably outlive us all, even as her mobility and cognition decreases. She’s got the most amazing constitution.
But, she thinks she’s about to go any time now, yet still refuses to call an ambulance when she’s having the breathing problems she complains about. She did call my sister yesterday, knowing my sister works on Sundays, then hung up when, after complaining about burping so much (my mother has got it in her head that if she forces herself to burp, it makes her feel better, but she talks about burping a lot as if it’s something happening to her, rather that something she’s doing to herself), and my sister said people don’t go to the hospital for burping. My sister was so confused after being hung up on, she called me. I told her, my mother wouldn’t call me or my brother, because we’re both telling her that if she feels that bad, call an ambulance. This time, she tried my sister. But she won’t call an ambulance, and prefers talk about how she’s going to die any minute now.
*sigh*
So…
She was given stuff that belonged to her sister, including things that were hand made by me for my aunt, and she had no problem destroying them, but we’re all supposed to be falling over ourselves for the stuff she is “leaving” to us, most of which is important only to her, and a lot of which is literally just garbage, and expects us to keep them and value them long after she’s gone. As my mother set aside a stack of papers for my sister, most of which were printouts my sister made for her, at my mother’s request, I suggested that maybe she doesn’t need the empty, used envelop.
It’s not empty, I was told.
Well, I just saw her removing the contents and adding it to the pile of papers, but.. okay.
So the bucket of yarn and other items were combined with the other stuff in the storage bins.
Then my mother started talking about calling the lab to see if they were open, before I took her there.
I was taking her to the lab?
She had told me she was going to take the Handi Van to get her blood work done. She hadn’t done it yet, and since I was there…
Okay, fine. I put the bins in the truck, moved it to where she could wheel right up with her walker, prepped the foot stool for her, came back and…
She was still going through papers for my sister, and kept offering me juice or whatever… “sit down… have a rest…”
I told her, this was not a planned trip. I do have stuff to do at home. Oh, but you have helpers. I don’t have any helpers.
*sigh*
I did finally get her to set the papers aside, and focus on having her blood work requisition form ready, as well as her health card, so she wouldn’t have to dig for it once at the lab.
She really would have done better taking the Handi Van.
I had the foot stool out for her, but still had to physically help her get up into the truck. It’s much easier for her to get out – no foot stool needed – but getting in is so diffuclt.
That fact that she can get in at all is pretty amazing, to be honest.
The hospital the lab is in is just a few blocks away from her place. She was the only person there, so she got in very quickly. She only needed to give one vial of blood for the 5 things she’s being tested for. She asked about what she was being tested for, and the technician explained it – whether my mother didn’t remember me already explaining it to her after dropping off the form, or didn’t believe me when I did, I don’t know. When she mentioned one of the things being tested for was urea, my mother immediately launched into how this was a problem, and how she has just a few drops…
For the sake of the technician, I mentioned that, while that may be a problem, this blood test isn’t about that at all. Once the technician understood my mother was conflating different things, she made a point of saying that this was correct; the test results from this are about kidney function only.
I don’t think my mother got it, but that’s okay.
As we were leaving, I asked my mother if there was anything she wanted me to get for her while we were out, but the only thing she’s going to need to do is go to the bank, and I can’t do that for her. This trip already exhausted her, so it will wait for another day. Perhaps my sister will be able to visit during the week and can take her, using her car. That would be much easier for my mother to get in an out of.
Speaking of cars…
When I went in to reset the garage cam device, I noticed my mother’s car now has two flat tires on the driver’s side!
It hasn’t been used since the day I tried driving it and it started making a banging noise from the back.
I’ll have to use a hand pump on them. After discovering the leaking valves on our truck, it now makes sense to me why my mother’s car got flats so often. I suspect she has leaking valves, too. The other two tires look just fine. Which is good, because that side of the car is parked closer to the wall, so that the driver can get in and out without hitting a shelf against the opposite wall.
So that’s one of the things I was wanting to do today.
I think I’ll wait for things to cool down a bit more, though – and use lots of bug spray! We’ve been storing our bags of aluminum in the garage, in front of my mother’s car. Most of the cans are from cat food, so critters have been getting into them. Before I can pump up her tires, I will need to pick up and bag a lot of cans, first!
The cats have also been using the dirt floor as a litter all winter. With how much rain we’ve been having, we haven’t been able to clean it up.
They turn a remarkably bright green under those conditions.
So that’s going to need to be raked up, too. It’s still a bit damp for it, but it needs to get done!
The problem is, it won’t even start to cool down for another 3 hours or so, and the front of the garage faces south. Full sun and full heat!
*sigh*
It would have been good to get started before it got hot, but that’s when my mother called, wanting me to come over.
Well, I’m hoping the heat will be good for the garden. I was trying to remember how it was last year at this time, so I went looking at some of my garden tour videos for June and July of last year.
This was recorded on June 1, 2023
This is the one I recorded on June 16, this year.
Then there is the one I recorded on July 4, 2023.
We were much further ahead, as for as growth, at the start of July last year, than we are this year. We actually had peppers forming at the start of July last year! This year, only the hot peppers, which were started much earlier, are starting to bloom. The luffa are a lot smaller this year, too, even though they were transplanted at about the same time, and had a stronger, healthier start indoors this year. We also already had tomatoes forming by the start of July last year. Right now, we just have some of them blooming.
All that rain this spring has really set a lot of things back!
I did my June garden tour video in the middle of the month, so I will wait until the middle of the month before doing a July garden tour. Hopefully, things will have picked up at least a bit by then!
This has been a very different gardening year. Not only because of the weather, but just everything we ended up planting this year. I had so many things planned for that just didn’t happen. The balance between things that can be harvested earlier and throughout the summer, and things that get harvested all at once, is way off.
Next year will be different, again. Hopefully, we’ll have more progress on the trellis beds, and the area that was a squash patch last year will have new beds built into them, and we’ll have much more growing space.
The shelling peas planted in one of the winter squash beds are starting to get tall, so it was time to put up the trellis netting. My older daughter and I headed out early in the morning to avoid the heat.
It didn’t really work. 7am, and it was already feeling too hot!
The first thing we had to do was steal some of the lighter posts marking the 4′ distances for the low raised beds and attaching them to the tops of the bamboo stakes already in place, to support the netting at the top.
The netting wasn’t long enough, but we were reusing wire twist ties, and some of them were long enough to cross the distances at the ends. Later on, I’ll use jute twine or something to lace through the ends, so they don’t pull and sag too much once the weight of the peas are on it. We also made sure to leave a gap at the bottom for the winter squash vines to pass through. We don’t want any of those climbing! They would be way too heavy for this set up.
Later, we’ll at another trellis net on the other side, for the pole beans. The Seychelle beans planted in the gaps between the few carminate haven’t germinated yet, so it’s entirely possible we won’t end up needing it.
After that, it was just the usual morning rounds which, these days, includes cuddling as many kittens as we can convince to let us.
Right now, there is one white and grey that doesn’t run away and allows us to pick it up at any time. It even purrs. The tiny foundling – I think we’ll call it Button – needed no time at all to be okay with human contact. In fact, I have to watch my feet when it’s around! It is SO much smaller than the other kittens! It starts purring pretty much as soon as we picked it up, will crawl around on our shoulders, and when we put it down near out feet, it starts to rub on them.
I make sure to put it down near a food or water bowl as a distraction. 😄
I’ve made a point of adding water to one or two of the sun room kibble bowls to soften the kibble. I’m also seeing Junk Pile nursing the new baby. It appears to be in good hands!
I just came back from topping up the kibble outside, and Syndol was back and very hungry. I hadn’t seen him since yesterday evening.
When I paused to take a picture of Button, he wanted me to take his picture, too!
Oh, and today, I finally found a spot to transplant the Orange Butterfly flowers (milkweed) that have still been languishing in their Jiffy Pellets. Only three had germinated, and I had intended to direct sow more, but we just didn’t have a good place for it.
Well, since we didn’t end up planting poppies in where I’d intended, and yesterday, I buried Driver there, I figured it would be appropriate to transplant the butterfly flowers onto his grave. This bed can be a milkweed bed.
There are a lot of things that need to be done outside, of course – the list is never ending – but it’s going to have to wait. There are dozens of little thunderstorms blowing across the prairies right now, in both the US and Canada. I was hearing thunder while I was out, just a little while ago. Plus, as I write this, we are 26C/79F, with the humidex putting us at 30C/86F. I think the garden, in general, is going to like the heat we’re supposed to have over the next while. Much of what we planted this year prefers hotter temperatures. We’re supposed to keep getting hotter over the next few days and, a week from now, we’re supposed to have highs of 30C/86F. We’re supposed to have the storms blowing through today, plus a bit of rain tomorrow afternoon, but after that, we’re not expected to get more rain withing the 10 day forecast.
This morning, while feeding the cats before doing my rounds, I made sure to be on the lookout for the newly snipped boys, and the kitten I found yesterday.
I’m happy to say the kitten is still hanging around the sun room, and I think I even saw one of the creche mothers – Adam – nursing it.
As for the newly snipped boys, I saw Syndol in the sun room a lot yesterday evening, but not this morning. I did see Stinky and Nosey, who were their usual selves. With Nosey, that means a combination of PET ME NOW and I’M GOING TO BITE YOU! Of course, I checked their nibs, and everything looks fine.
There has been no sign of Collin since he ran out of the carrier. It may be a while before we see him again!
I was scheduled to help my mother with her grocery shopping this afternoon, but I remembered that I still hadn’t picked up her bloodwork requisition at the clinic. I was supposed to do it while going to and from the city, since this town is on the way, depending on which highway I take. I completely forgot.
So, after I finished my rounds, I left early enough to pick up a couple of packages at the post office before they closed, then drove the 45 minutes to the clinic, got the requisition printed out, then drove to my mother’s place.
She didn’t quite understand what I was giving her when I handed her the printout. She thought it was test results of some kind, but she hasn’t had any tests done recently. She just remembered that they took 5 vials of blood last time, and thought this was the results. I had to repeat myself a few times, and read out what she is being tested for (she might be getting 6 vials taken, this time) and why. The call from the doctor telling her to stop taking her water pills for a month was based on her last bloodwork, and this is to see if anything has improved.
Once she understood, she said she would go to the local lab and get her bloodwork done, no appointment needed, on Monday. The town she lives in has a handi van available that, for a few dollars, will shuttle people with mobility requirements around town. It would be far easier for her to use that, than for me to drive her in the truck.
After getting that cleared up, we went over her shopping list, for both a pharmacy trip and the grocery store, talked about potential substitutions if things weren’t available or didn’t look good, and then I headed out.
I had a pleasant surprise while at the grocery store part of her shopping. I ran into an old friend/former co-worker and her kids that I haven’t seen in ages. They live on a farm in the area, and I pass their place fairly regularly, but we just don’t cross paths very often. So that was really nice.
After the shopping was done, I went through everything with my mother while I put things away. While talking about her blood tests, I’d asked her about drinking more water, and she remembered to add water bottles to the shopping list. I was happy to hear she found them very handy, though I got the impression she has not been drinking more water like she’s supposed to. Anyhow. The water turned out to be on sale, so I got her a bigger case this time. Water bottles will help her keep track, visually, of how much she is drinking, too.
She didn’t have protein of any kind on her list, as she apparently still had, but there was such a good sale on chicken legs and thighs, I got her a package. That one package could last her a week. She was quite happy with my additions and substitutions (all within her budget, of course), and even complimented me on how I’ve got so much “experience” with this sort of thing. I’m not entirely sure how she means it, but I’ll take the compliment.
In fact, the entire visit with her was good. She definitely was having one of her good days.
She had something going on in her building in the afternoon, so I wasn’t going to stay long. I did remember to ask her about the commode home care got for her. She told me, she doesn’t use it.
??
The problem was in emptying the reservoir. It’s light and easy to remove, but requires two hands to carry it. Since she would have one hand either using a cane, or using the walls and furniture to steady herself, she can’t carry it to the bathroom to empty it. So she has continued to use an ice cream bucket at night, rather than going to the washroom. How using the ice cream bucket is easier than walking to the bathroom in the first place, I can’t understand. I have no idea how she actually uses it, what with her messed up knees, but it has handle and she can carry it with one hand, so…
The solution turned out to be easy.
The ice cream bucket fits inside the commode reservoir, and the seat opening fits over it, almost exactly. She can use the commode, then easily carry the bucket away to empty it during the day.
Problem solved.
There was one other thing I remembered to ask my mother. When arranging for me to come out today, she mentioned having an appointment this morning – but it was a secret and she wouldn’t tell me what it was, and no one else was supposed to know.
Which means, of course, I had to warn my brother about it, because she has a terrible habit of causing problems he ends up having to fix.
So I jokingly asked her how her seeeecret meeting went this morning.
Well, it turned out, our vandal had somehow arranged with her to come over for a visit. Since his phone number is blocked, I don’t know how this was done.
The first thing I wanted to know was, was he alone? He has been behaving properly, when there is someone else there as a witness, but when it’s just him, that’s when he is verbally abusive towards her. It did turn out that he was alone.
I’m not sure what he was after, but whatever it was, I don’t think he got it. Apparently, he’s got cancer and is undergoing chemo, but she can’t even remember if it was his lungs or kidneys or whatever. But he’s taking lots of pills, and is getting surgery soon.
Whether this is true or not, I have no way to know, but I’m guessing he’s going to milk it for all he’s worth on her for… something. Usually, money, but who knows. Whatever it is, though, it’s going right over her head. After only a few hours, she was already forgetting most of what he talked about.
At least he didn’t start yelling at her in the doorway, like he usually does when he’s on his own.
After that, I headed home. Before settling in, inside, I made a point of doing some outside stuff first. Our high of the day was supposed to be 26C/79F, which I’m sure we did reach. As I write this, it’s past 4:30, and we’re at 25C/77F, with the humidex putting us at 30C/86F. It was definitely feeling hot out there, and the humidity isn’t helping. Especially when it comes to mosquitoes. We have SO many mosquitoes right now! They are just loving this weather.
I went to top up the cat kibble outside but, in this heat, they aren’t actually eating all that much. I still made sure to leave some spread out in spots around the house, where I know kittens are starting to come closer.
Then I was going to continue my evening rounds, when I saw a cat lying in the grass, in the shade of the storage house, looking like it was asleep.
Except, cats don’t sleep there. It’s too open and exposed.
It turned out to be Driver (Adam’s sibling), and he was dead.
There was no sign of injury of any kind on him. Since the snow melted, we had only been seeing him every once in a while. The few times I’ve seen him recently, he was very skittish and nervous around the other males; particularly Shop Towel. There was no evidence he’d been in a fight of any kind, though. He was just lying there, like he was taking a nap in the shade.
So bizarre!
I then had the problem of finding a place to bury him. We’re running out of places to bury cats and kittens. Too many big tree roots and rocks. In the end, I buried him where we were supposed to have a poppy bed this year, but it never got cleared out in time for sowing. We can build up the bed and plant flowers over him, next year.
*sigh*
This has been a pretty rough week or so for that. The litter of newborns, the baby raccoon, and now Driver…
Yeah, I know; this is to be expected when you live in the boonies, and we do have way too many cats, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
The Re-Farmer 