Gardening

Damocles is home, and other good stuff

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Well, I’d say today was a productive day, in a very positive way!

Quite early on, I started getting a whole bunch of messages.

Some were from my brother regarding our mother. She has come down with a cold, though they are still waiting for test results to confirm, and is currently in quarantine, and the staff made sure to let him know.

Then I started getting messages from the rescue. Domino, one of the cats they took in from us quite some time ago, has not been doing well with the foster. She has been staying in hiding this entire time. She comes out to eat when no one is around, and that’s it. She’s been seen by a vet and as medication no one has been able to get into her. She’s booked to be spayed this Friday, and would we be able to take her back?

After some back and forth messaging, it was worked out that Domino would be staying with one of the rescue people for observation, first, then she will be brought back here, where we can keep her in the isolation shelter she is so familiar with for her recovery period, and then she will be back with the other yard cats. While in the isolation shelter with no other cats, we will be able to give her the medication in her food, if that’s still needed. She should be back here some time next week.

Then they asked how we were doing for cat food. I told them, I need to pick up more kibble for the outside cats today, and that I will never say no to the offer of cat food! At first, they talked about bringing some with Domino, but then someone said that, if I can meet her in our usual spot (thankfully, that particular stretch of road is no longer closed from the recent flash floods) this afternoon. Which I was happy to do.

Today being Wednesday, the store the post office is in closes at noon, and I had some packages to pick up, so I figured I would do that, first. The rescue worker, however, said that she could meet me shortly after 11, if that worked. That worked out very well, since it meant I could pick up the mail and then keep on going to meet her.

Then I got a call.

In between all the messaging, I managed to call the garage and left a voice mail asking about the status of the truck, suggesting texting me might work best, since I was suddenly going to be out and about.

The owner phoned me back very soon after I left the message.

The truck is fine.

They checked it out and found nothing wrong, but a code was coming on on the diagnostic computer. They cleared the code and took it for a test run. Everything is working find. They figure that the code was triggered while the part was being replaced. The only change is that, with the new part installed, moving the shifter is a lot stiff than it was before, which is to be expected.

Also, there was no charge. !!! They don’t charge for diagnostics, and they didn’t charge me for their time. There was nothing for them to fix.

I made sure to let him know how much I appreciated that! We were pretty stressed out by the potential bill.

I told him I was meeting someone soon and would be in the area, so I could pick up the key afterwards but leaving the truck, as needed to work out when my brother and I could switch vehicles, which he was good with.

I messaged with my brother and SIL about the truck, letting them know the status of the truck, and I would get the key after meeting someone with a kibble donation, and we could work out switching vehicles by their schedule. Which was settled until they messaged again, suggesting I take the truck home and leave their car at the garage. They’d pick it up with their spare key, then get the other key back from me the next time we meet up.

Plus, if something went wrong with Damocles again, at least their car would be nearby and available!!

So that was all worked out, and I was soon on my way, with my first stop at the post office.

One of the packages I picked up was my order of replacement seeds.

I have different varieties of purple and white kohlrabi, plus a different variety of fennel, all to try next year. The Giganthemum poppies are to sow in the fall. The last packet I got turned out to not have a lot of seeds in it, so I was going to order two. That size was sold out, though, so I got the next size of packet up.

If you check out the label, this one gram packet has about 1,691 seeds in it.

I don’t think I’ll be running out so quickly this time!

These are also for next year, but I will be direct sowing them in the fall.

I didn’t check the package out until after I got home, of course. From the post office, I headed out to meet the rescue person at our usual intersection. She had six 8kg bags of kibble for us!!!

As we were transferring the bags, she pointed out that some of them were taped. It turned out to be exactly what I thought. These were damaged bags that could not be sold retail anymore. She has a family member that works in a warehouse and she’s been able to collect the damaged bags to donate to the rescue, instead. Which is great, except she is retiring soon, so that donation source is not going to be around for much longer. For now, however, they have lots of these damaged bag donations.

After we parted ways, I headed into town to fill my brother’s gas tank before going to pick up the truck. After talking to the owner about the truck for a bit, and he told me about the test drives and so on, I asked about being able to leave my brother’s car for them to pick up later. He was good with that, and told me where I could park it.

I just had to transfer stuff over, first. Including those bags of kibble.

I am so incredibly grateful for this. This should last us to the end of the month, and maybe a bit beyond!

Once everything was transferred over, I parked my brother’s car as directed, then took Damocles home.

Of course, with the way things have been going, I was absolutely expecting something to go wrong.

Nothing did! N warning lights or messages on the onboard computer. No alarms dinging. Everything was running smoothly.

Also, it felt so good to be driving the truck again. My brother’s car is a sweet ride, but I find I really prefer to drive a larger vehicle! This truck is just on the edge of being too large for my comfort, but that’s been okay.

Damocles has been that most bizarre combination of being the best vehicle we’ve ever owned, and the worst vehicle we’ve ever owned!

Once at home and unloaded, I headed out again, this time with a daughter to help out.

It was time to protect some walnut trees.

One of them already has protection, which left three surviving trees to protect. One of the unprotected black walnuts was untouched, another black walnut was down to a stick in the ground, as was the new Manchurian walnut. It had leafed out so well, too! Both of the deer damaged walnuts, though, were already showing new leaf buds.

Once we brought supplies over (and my walker), I paced around the Manchurian walnut to decide how long a piece of chicken wire to cut, then my daughter and I unrolled the wire onto the ground so I could pace out the length. The roll is getting close to the middle, so it kept wanting to roll into itself. Annoying, but still workable.

We cut out the three lengths we needed, then set them up.

Here you can see the two black walnut, and the Manchurian walnut way at the end. This time around, I didn’t skimp on the wire, so the protective ring is a lot larger than others I’ve made, Plus, I didn’t cut the width in half, like I usually do. Once we had the wire overlapped, it was pegged to the ground and we secured the overlapping cut ends as best we could. I had considered using bamboo stakes to secure them more and add to the visibility, but the ground it just too hard. The bamboo would have broken. I did, however, bring some high viz, reflective cord. Each cage got the cord wrapped around the top, making sure to use it to secure the overlap more, and tied off.

Once that was done, I dragged the back garden hose over – which I was able to do while using my walker – as my daughter put the wagon of supplies away and brought me a pair of watering cans. The hose from the back tap reaches a decent amount into the outer yard. I set my walker up near the end to use while refilling, and gave all the trees we’ve got out there a deep watering.

That done, I brought the hose back and started watering the garden beds. I did as much as I could with the back hose, then continued with the front hose in the south and east yard garden beds.

While watering in the east yard garden beds, I was considering whether I should cut my losses rework the kohlrabi and cabbage beds, or keep watering it. I’m not seeing anything in the kohlrabi bed, but I watered it anyway. Then I started to water the cabbage bed.

Which is when I finally saw them.

This bed was getting overgrown with what I thought were self seeded radishes or turnips, but they were already bolting and starting to bloom. Yellow flowers. The radishes I grew for their seed pods had white flowers.

I took the cover off and weeded the bed, finding a surprising number of cabbage seedlings.

They are hard to see in the photo. That these are a purple savoy cabbage helped identify the seedings from everything else, as they have a darker purple in them.

Unfortunately, while the raised bed covers protect the garden beds from cats and other critters, they don’t block the elm seeds. They are everywhere, and many are starting to germinate. They are practically everywhere and, in some places, they are starting to germinate and crowd out the plants I actually planted.

The watering done, I remembered one last thing that I wanted to do. Clear out some stuff in the garden shed, that the raccoons had knocked about and could potentially harm them.

They didn’t like the commotion at all. Too many things tangled around each other. I did move the felted grow bags from previous years to make a sort of bed for them.

When I checked again this evening, after doing my walkabout, they were gone. I guess it was too much for them, and the mama moved them. Which, technically, is a good thing, but I’ going to miss the adorable little buggers! I’ll check again in the morning, though. Maybe she’ll bring them back after things have quiteted down again.

Meanwhile, I’ve since received a message from my SIL. They have retrieved their car and got it home.

I am so thankful for them. I honestly don’t know what we could do without them at times like this!

I am also ridiculously tired.

Time to go to bed.

It’s been a good day, though, and I am happy we have Damocles home!

Even if I do expect it to break down every time I drive it…

….

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: critter rescue, and redoing a garden bed cover

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First, though, an update.

I have had no word back about the truck yet, which means they haven’t had a chance to look at it or do a diagnostic. I should try phoning directly, tomorrow.

Before I share about today, I wanted to share what I found last night. I am so glad I decided to enjoy the long daylight and walk around the yard before bed! This, of course, included checking the garden beds. In of them, I saw unexpected movement.

It was a garter snake.

Stuck in the excess black netting over the Daikon radish, turnip and red noodle bean bed.

I tried to get it loose with just my hands at first, but quickly realized that was not possible, to I ran… well.. hobbled…. to the house to get a utility knife. I then very carefully cut at the netting where it was tight against the snake’s body – and even its mouth! This netting is something even frogs can get through, but there is something about the garter snake bodies that get caught. The more they struggle to get loose, the worse they get caught. Last year, my daughter was helping me remove some of this netting from around the trellis bed and found a snake had been caught up in it, in a spot where it couldn’t be seen until we pulled the netting out. That one was already dead when we found it. This one was still alive, thankfully. Once I got its mouth and head free, it tried to curl up on itself as they are wont to do, but it had obviously been struggling for a while and didn’t have a lot of energy left.

Once I got it free, I set it aside in the greenery under where I stack the logs and boards we use in the garden. This morning, it was gone!

I am so glad I found it in time.

We really need to find different critter netting. This stuff is to keep the larger critters out while still letting the pollinators in, but I’m quite unhappy about how it catches on everything – including our much desired garter snakes!

So that was a happy start to the day.

We were expecting the insurance company assessor to come today at around 12:30. I did my morning rounds as usual, then had my breakfast before heading back out again at about 11 and do some work in the garden until she arrived. I started out by using the very full rain barrel to water the garden beds by the house and in the south and east yards.

I have been checking out the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, and they appear to be a total loss. The cabbage bed is full of self seeded radishes, which would be a good thing, except they are all bolting. The only thing doing well in that bed are the shallots and onions I transplanted while redoing the bed by the chain link fence. As for the kohlrabi, I can see a few seedlings here and there,, and they are quite eaten up. No sign of what did the eating. Normally, I’d say flea beetles, but there’s no sign of any. Those tend to show up later in the season, anyhow, after the canola fields are harvested.

After watering in front of the house, I moved to the main garden area to water there. That done, I was getting ready to set up the hose to fill the old rain barrel to water the food forest trees and bushes.

While I was watering everything else, I could hear a utility vehicle, and it was definitely coming closer, so I went to take a look. It was the wife of the couple that rents the rest of the property, checking the fence line. So I headed over to say hi. While she kept following the fence line, it gave me a chance to check on the walnuts.

*sigh*

The Manchurian Walnut, that had been doing so well, has been eaten by dear. So has at least one of the Black walnut, and it looks like the ash tree my mother gave us was also eaten.

I hadn’t gotten to making cages for them fast enough.

I still plan to do that; they should regrow their leaves again. It’ll set them back probably a year, though.

Around then, our renter was closer so we stopped to chat at the fence for a while. I told her where I had planted the basket willow, and how I’d set up the T posts and used a partially collapsed fence line to hopefully ensure their cows won’t trample them. She said they will be rotating the cows to this section very soon.

After a lovely conversation with her, I checked my phone because I’d heard some notifications while we were talking.

It was well past 12:30 when my brother messaged me, asking if the assessor had arrived. I told him no, and updated him about the renter and their cows. It was a little past 1 when my brother messaged me again. He just received a text from the assessor, saying she would be here shortly after 2.

Hmmm.

I went back to watering the food forest trees. When that was done, I moved on to the old kitchen garden.

The bed with the tiny bok choi, mixed beets, onions and parsnips needed weeding, and I decided I would remove the old mosquito netting, which is two lengths cobbled together, and replace it with the second sheet of new insect netting I picked up, one of which is currently protecting the cabbage transplants.

In the first image, I had removed the netting and done nothing else yet. While I was putting the mosquito netting pieces away, I heard some noise out by the barn and went to check it out. It was the renter; some stuff had blown around and she was moving them back onto their pile, so the cows wouldn’t step on it. We talked for a while again. The grass in this area is incredibly tall – tall enough to short out the electric fence, so she was going to have to come back with the weed trimmer. The fence posts in that section are getting really rotted. Part of the rental deal is that they are responsible for the fences, and she told me of what she would be telling her husband about the fences and what she sees that they need to do.

Then I went back to the garden.

That big green thing in the top right of the image?

That’s an invading rose stem! Likely from the pink rose bush at the end of the bed. In the wattle weave bed, it’s the white roses that invade.

While weeding the bed, I found the remains of some of the tiny bok choi, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. That little strip was almost the only ones I found at all.

There are beets and parsnips coming up, though. There was some self seeded spinach, but it was all bolting, so I weeded those out. The onions that got transplanted in the fall along the south side of the bed are looking nice and strong. You can see how the bed looked after clean up in the third image above.

Then I recovered the bed with the new insect netting. This stuff is much lighter and flexible, but it is still quite strong. It’ll hold the weight of cats using it as a hammock! I didn’t want to cut the netting to size, though, as it will be used differently in the future, so the excess length got rolled up at the end near the rose bush, and the excess width got pulled up over the top, then fastened in place with safety pins. There is a gab between the cover and the frame along the north side of the bed, so I used a board to hold the netting down and below the based of the cover.

By this time, it was past when the assessor was supposed to arrive, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I went inside and the girls were cooking, so I went to sit and take a break.

Before I knew it, there was a knock at the door!

The assessor had arrived, but parked her car in front of the garage, out of view.

Now, as far as I knew, she was going to look at all the outbuildings.

Turns out, she needed to come into the house, too.

I warned her, the house is a disaster, and that we had 21 cats.

We did that part last.

We started out going to the garage, though she asked about the storage house along the way. She never took measurements of that, but did take pictures. Once at the garage, I told her about the ages of the different parts. She took her pictures and measurements. Then we moved on to the barn, though she did take pictures of one of the sheds beside it that is still used for storage. She checked out, photographed and measured the barn, then we headed to the pump shack. I explained to her the fence line marking where its rented out and where we are responsible for taking care of. While checking out the pump shack, she asked about the log building that used to be the chicken coop, and I told her that’s the last log building we have that is still salvageable; it needs a new roof, but the walls are still solid. So she took pictures of that, too. My brother’s caravan and trailers are not permanent, so she ignore those, but did check the warehouse, stuffed with my parent’s belongings.

Finally, we made our way back to the house, and I showed her where the septic tank is, where the well is, which part of the house was original log, and about what year it was built, and the additions.

Then she had to come inside.

*sigh*

We haven’t been able to do the spring cleaning of the sun room yet, because of the weather. Then there’s the old kitchen – I made sure to tell her that the old wood cook stove was broken and cannot be used. I’d already told her about the new roof, and that the chimney to the old wood burning furnace had been removed, so there’s just the chimney to the old kitchen.

Then she had to go through all the rooms in the house, which was downright embarrassing. Our house really is a disaster. Then we went into the basement, starting with the “new” part basement. Once in the old part, I made sure to tell her that we had a new well pump, and she checked out the other pumps, too. The blower fans are going continuously now, and I explained the the old basement was built before weeping tile was a thing, so it does get wet, but doesn’t flood.

I apologized for the disaster, and she basically said, between the cats and being on a farm, she knows how it can get.

Oh, and it turned out she’s allergic to cats!

After she was done, I followed her car out to close the gate behind her. By this time, I was getting pretty famished, so I headed in to finally have my lunch (it was well past 3 by then). We were running low on kibble for the inside cats which, for the price, would normally be a trip to Walmart. Chatting with the family, my older daughter ended up sending me funds and a list, so I ended up doing a bit of a grocery shopping trip. I checked out the garden centre after the shopping to see if they had any transplants worth picking up.

They did not.

So I headed home. If I hadn’t had frozen stuff in the car, and forgotten to bring insulated bags, I would have gone across the road to see the garden centre at the Canadian Tire, but everything would have just melted in the car while I did.

By then, it was late enough that my daughter took care of the outside cat feeding while I was gone. I will be heading out again after I finish this post to do my evening rounds and checks. It’s still nice and light out.

Hopefully, I won’t find another trapped garter snake, but I’ll bring my utility knife with me, just in case!

Tomorrow, I think I will re-work those failed beds and see what I can plant in there, that has a short enough season for it.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: transplanting and our furry family

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We had another chilly night last night, with temperatures dropping to 7C/45F Today reached 22C/72F, but we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F again, tonight! In fact, over the next while, our overnight lows are expected to be below 10C/50F more often that above.

Not good for the garden.

This morning, after doing my rounds, I started on transplanting the purchased plants. I decided to plant the butternut squash in the bed along the chain link fence.

Each pot had two plants in it, so I prepped four spots. Unfortunately, there was no way I could separate them without damaging the roots too much. So I kept them together. I plan to train them up the chain link fence, and/or the sunflowers. You can see some sprouted sunflowers in the bottom of the above images. These went into the middle third of the chain link fence, and the two varieties of sunflowers each got half the entire bed, so the seedlings coming up next to the butternut squash would be the Mammoth sunflower variety. Both varieties should have stems strong enough to support climbing vines, if they get a chance to get big enough, first.

That job went quickly. The next one took quite a bit longer.

The rest of the transplants were to go into the bed in the main garden area that I had to put the insect netting over, to keep the cats out of the exposed soil. Newly exposed soil. The first thing to do was to remove the netting and hoops. I made a point of spreading out the netting and folding it up right away, because it was rather breezy and I didn’t want it getting blown around and tangled up.

Next, I went over the bed with the garden fork to loosen the soil and get rid of any weeds. There were hardly any weeds, which was nice for a change.

Once the soil was loosened and leveled, I spaced out the cabbage transplants to be more or less a foot apart. Or, slightly more than the length of my trowel. As this bed only recently had the plastic cover removed, the soil didn’t get much chance to be rained on. Moisture drains away and disappears so quickly, I made the extra effort to deeply water the planting holes before the cabbages were transplanted. I also made sure they were slightly below grade, so that any water would drain towards the plants. The dozen transplants took up about half the bed. Once they were in the ground, that half of the bed got a thorough watering, not just the plants. Then I started cutting up pieces of cardboard to set around the transplants as a mulch, which also got a soaking. Finally, I added straw on top of the cardboard and thickly along the edges. Then the straw got a soak.

The cabbages need insect netting to protect them, but the rest of the transplants need insects for pollinating, so I set hoops up over the cabbages only. For the entire bed, I’d made 7 hoops, but used 5 over the cabbages. I used the extra rods and connectors to add one more rod to the hoops. This way, the hoops could cover the width of the bed, including the straw mulch, completely. For the netting, I set it so that the salvage edge of one side was at the base of the hoops along one side, and the excess length was at the end of the bed instead of the middle. After clipping the salvage edge to the hoops, close to the ground, I pulled things snug to clip the netting close to the ground at the other side. That left me with a lot of excess netting, which got pulled up over the top and clipped on the other side as far as it could reach.

It isn’t set up yet when I took the last photo in the slide show above, but I later added weights along the edges of the netting between the hoops, too. I didn’t want to use ground staples as, with the straw mulch in place, they get pulled up very easily.

That done, it was time to do the melons.

For this, I had a large, heavy duty card board box that I could use to cover the entire remaining half of the bed. I decided to lay it down and cut squares out where the melons would be planted, first. It got moved aside after that, so the soil could get a good watering. Then I laid the cardboard down to give it a thorough soak, turned it over to soak the other side, then turned it back again to soak it some more.

For here, I have one pot of watermelon and three of muskmelon. All have two transplants per pot but, as with the butternut squash, there was no way to divide them without damaging the roots too much. Which means I have six muskmelon in three spots and two watermelon in one spot.

As always, the planting holes got a deep watering, before the plants were added. Again, I made sure they were planted into a slight depression for water flow, then the whole area got watered again.

That done, the straw mulch was added, including in the area that has nothing planted in it. If I find more transplants worth buying, I have room. I would just need to push aside the straw mulch, then cut a hole in the cardboard below.

The straw got a very thorough watering. If the straw is too dry, it’ll act as a thatch.

That done, and everything put away, I wanted to get some trellis netting out of the garden shed. Which meant disturbing our little furry family.

Things had been knocked about by the raccoons, and the wrapped balls of netting were coming undone and getting caught on things, which meant it took a while for me to get them. In the end, I grabbed several different types of nets and the tomato cage they were getting hung up on, just to not disturb the raccoons to much.

They didn’t seem to care.

The mama didn’t move. She actually seemed to be asleep. The babies just watched me. No chittering. No getting upset or scared. Not even looking particularly curious. They just stayed snuggled up to Mom and watched me.

These buggers have no business being that cute. 😄

The netting got set aside for now; the peas in the trellis bed are getting tall enough that the trellis netting will soon be needed.

Once everything was done and set aside, I got changed to head into town. My younger daughter forgot to call in her meds for delivery on Thursday and she just ran out of one of them, so she called her refills in when the pharmacy opened which, on Sundays, is at noon. My older daughter sent me funds to pick things up at the grocery store, too.

After picking up the prescription refills, I made a point of heading to the cash desk, just to show the cashier that there was nothing owing on the meds. Along the way, I passed a new display of what turned out to be bouncy balls. I had no idea. All I saw were all these round critter faces looking at me. Including a hilariously adorable dragon, though it took some doing to figure out that it was a dragon.

It called to me.

They weren’t expensive, so I bought one for my daughter and hid it in her bag of prescriptions. She loves dragons, and I knew she would get a giggle out of it.

The cashier started chatting about today’s weather, and how we are finally supposed to not get rain for a while. Where she lives, the flooding was pretty bad, but not as bad as an area south of her that got 12 inches of rain in 6 hours.

12 inches.

30 cm.

In six hours.

That’s just insane!

No wonder highways were being washed away!

That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up a few things, then home.

My daughter loved the dragon. She thinks it’s hilarious.

By the time I got back from town, it was time to feed the outside cats, so I quickly did that while my older daughter made supper. After supper, I headed back outside again. First thing was to break out the weed trimmer and clear the grass away from several rocks in the west yard, so I could see them and not high them with the riding mower.

I am so thankful to my brother for letting us use their push mower and little riding mower. The riding mower they gave us years ago still runs but, for some reason, doesn’t cut. The grass just bends – and my brother had sharpened the blade when he repaired the chain that kept falling off. Our push mower lost pieces and couldn’t be repaired. We don’t have the funds to replace the push mower, and we can’t figure out what’s wrong with the riding mower. Thanks to my brother, we can still do the mowing.

I was able to do most of the inner yard. As I was moving into the West yard, where all the cat shelters are, I spotted a huge raccoon coming out of the catio, where it was stealing food! Not the mama, but a bigger one; likely a big male.

I didn’t even try to mow around the main garden area, nor did I start on the outer yard. That will wait for another day.

Not tomorrow, though.

On the way into town, I took a quick side trip to find where our garage’s new location is. It was very easy to find, and our truck is parked under the shade of a tree. Tomorrow morning, I will take my brother’s car into town to pay for the repairs and get the key, but will leave the truck there. After the funeral and internment, we’ll be able to switch vehicles, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that before the garage closes. It’s unlikely my mother will be physically up to anything beyond the funeral itself, but we are working out the timing so that we all arrive together with my mother, who will be using her wheelchair for this outing. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult for her to transfer into my brother’s vehicle.

I really hope things work out well tomorrow. A part of me still suspects someone that believed our vandal’s lies about us might make a scene and try kicking us out or something. We shall see.

Time to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: mulching the potatoes and garlic

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We have ourselves a downright cold day, for this time of year. As I write this, we’re at 11C/52F, with a humidex at 5C/41F Our expected high of the day is only 15C/59F

With that in mind, I decided to leave the transplants I purchased in their bins and will transplant them tomorrow. Today, I focused first on weed trimming around the main garden beds for as long as the batteries lasted. After I drained two batteries around the log framed beds, I switched gears to focus on the potato bed.

The potatoes had gotten big enough that they were pushing up the netting that kept the cats and elm seeds out. The first photo was taken after I’d removed the weights and ground staples holding the edges of the netting down.

There was enough debris and elm seeds on the netting that I took care to drag it well away from the bed before rolling it up. After the supports were removed, I got the weed trimmer going again. The battery lasted me long enough to finish around the potato bed and almost all the way around the garlic bed next to it.

With the potatoes, I brought out the wagon and started hauling straw from the round bale to mulch around the potato plants. It took 3 1/2 loads to get it all thickly mulched. Especially around the edges, where the crab grass and creeping Charlie keeps trying to invade.

Then, since I had half a wagon load anyway, I started mulching around the garlic bed. It already has a leaf mulch around the edges, but things are starting to grow through. A couple more wagon loads finished the job. The short distance that didn’t get cleared with the weed trimmer got an extra thick layer.

There is spinach and chard planted in between the garlic, and they are just not growing. I can see seedlings. They are there. They are just not getting bigger! I’ve had the same problem in previous years. The first time we grew spinach, we had three bed with three different varieties and they thrived. That was the last year we were able to grow really good spinach. Even the winter sown spinach we grew in the old kitchen garden were not as lush. That was also the only time we successfully grew chard. Every other time we tried to grow it, we’d get seedlings and that was it. They just stopped growing. I have no idea why.

The garlic is looking good, though. I’m looking forward to when the scapes start showing up!

When I was all done putting everything away and heading in, I was rather surprised when I checked the time. It was barely past noon. I hadn’t paid attention tow what time it was when I headed out, and the day felt like it should have been more like 5pm!

Checking the temperature again. It hasn’t changed, except for the “real feel”, which has dropped to 4C/39F. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 21C/70F, and it’s expected to be the hottest day for the next 10 days or so.

Welcome to spring in the prairies.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: replacement transplants and herb harvest

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Today we are expecting rain, off and on, with possible thunderstorms, until tomorrow morning. After that, we are expecting a break in the rain for at least a week. For the past while, more people are sharing images and information about damage in the region. This morning, I learned that an iconic building, known for a cheerful message to drivers on the highway passing by, is gone. Just… gone. Blown away. The highway that runs nearest us, with a second closed off due to a sinkhole, is now washed away clear across the lanes with a raging river running through it. The electric company has restored power to many places, but others will take longer to repair. They shared photos of sections where the cedar power poles were snapped like twigs, lying on the ground.

All of this is to the south of us. In our immediate area, we were very fortunate. There was some wind, hail and water damage in places, but nothing like what’s been happening in other areas.

There wasn’t any rain while I was doing my morning rounds, and everything seems to be doing well. The dwarf Korean lilac is coming into full bloom, and has a much more intense scent than the earlier varieties.

I also spotted a friend in the flowers. Always happy to see dragonflies. They eat mosquitoes.

I’ve got sunflower seeds emerging, as well as corn. The summer squash is getting big enough that I will soon be removing the protective collars, though one variety still has no seedlings germinated yet.

After doing my rounds and grabbing a quick breakfast, I headed into town with my brother’s car. My first stop was at a local greenhouse by a hardware store to see what I could find to replace some of the things we have lost. There’s just one place selling transplants locally, and there isn’t a lot to choose from, but I did find a few things.

I got two trays with a dozen green cabbages. I also got three pots of muskmelon, two of butternut squash and one of watermelon, all of which have two transplants in them. Not in the photo is the new watering can I got, just like the one that cracked over the winter, at a remarkably low price compared to where I’ve seen this style elsewhere. I probably should have got two.

All the transplants were 25% off, so that was a nice little bonus.

After that, I made a quick stop at the grocery store next door to get some basic fresh stuff, plus I was able to get a few extra items for stocking up because they were on very good sales. Then it was home, where I pulled up to the house to unload. It had started raining again, by then. After my daughter took care of the grocery items, I tucked the transplants into bins and set them in the portable greenhouse frame.

For something that lost its cover, it’s still getting a remarkable amount of use!

By the time I put the car back in the garage, it had stopped raining again, so I quickly changed into my grubbies and rubber boots to head into the main garden area. Between the weather and my pain levels, I haven’t been able to get to that area with the weed trimmer. There is one bed in there that was still covered with plastic, and that’s where most of the transplants will go.

The first photo is after I’d removed some things I’d had resting on the plastic to keep them out of the way, but hadn’t removed the various things weighing town the edges. Once I moved everything off the sides and at the far end, I used a garden hose to pressure wash the elm seeds and debris off the surface, first. Then the whole thing got rolled up and set aside.

You can see in the next image that the bed is pretty clear. There is one spot with a weed where there was a hole in the plastic, and weeds pushing up around the edges. I will need to clear those out but, before I do, I wanted the bed to get watered by the rain.

Unfortunately, pretty much as soon as the plastic was off, there was a cat going for the fresh dirt! Which meant I had to get it covered right away. Which I could do, now that I’ve got another hoop kit and a couple of 10′ x 20′ sheets of insect netting.

You can see that set up in the last photo. This is temporary and will be redone when it’s time to do the transplanting. For now, it just needs to keep the cats from using the bed as a litter box!

It started and stopped raining several times while I was working on this, so I was pretty wet by the end of it!

I really like this insect netting. The mosquito netting we have been using, which my daughter bought for us years ago, is great mosquito netting, but not as good for what we needed to use it for. The weave is so dense, it catches on the wind like a sail quite a lot for netting. The weave is also tight enough that, when I water through it, there needs to be enough pressure to push the water through. If the spray of water is too gentle, most of it drains right off. This new stuff is slightly more open, so both air and water will flow through more easily, while still being fine enough to keep the bugs out. It’s also got quite a lot of stretch to it, is more flexible and easier to work with in the wind.

I might be buying more of this insect netting. It’s also available at a 10′ x 40′ size. At some point, I’ll be making moveable cover frames, so having more that can be cut to size would be useful. For now, the 10′ x 20′ size is sufficient length to cover hoops over our 18′ long garden beds. The width is almost double what is needed, depending on how wide the hoops are set up.

Once that was done and stuff was put away, I did some harvesting. I picked a whole bunch of rhubarb (I got the missing ingredients for the rhubarb upside down cake my daughter likes to make), then cut some herbs.

Across the middle is lemon balm, and there is oregano at the bottom. On the left is chives, with blossoms and buds, and on the right, near the top of the photo, is walking onion greens with developing bulbils. I don’t actually want the walking onions to walk any further than they are now, so we’ll focus on trimming the bulbils more. We have so much chives and walking onion, we can start dehydrating them.

Looking at the weather radar, it seems we’ll be getting one more rainfall soon, but the main part of the system will be passing north of us. Which means that, tomorrow, I should be able to get those transplants in the ground.

Oh, I almost forgot, and neglected to take a photo. While doing my rounds, I checked the bed where I’d broadcast the giant poppy seeds in a small bed that got rolled on and dug into by cats. Much to my amazement, I actually found some poppy seedlings have emerged! Basically just one cluster of them in one spot. I don’t know if poppies can handle transplanting well. Otherwise, I’d thin by transplanting. I’ll have to look them up to see, first.

Meanwhile, I just realized that I went to the post office too early in the day. There are now parcels waiting to be picked up! I’ll have to go get them soon because, if I don’t get them today, I won’t be able to until Monday.

Time to head out again!

The Re-Farmer

Some progress done, and oh… did I order more seeds again?

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Today has been an odd feeling day.

The assessor from the insurance company wasn’t going to come this morning, but we were still expecting the prescription delivery, so when I headed out this morning, I made sure to open the gate for him. While doing my rounds, I decided to check in the old garden shed to see if the raccoons were still there. They were, but the mama was on the seat of the rolling cart, and some of the stuff I’d moved from on top of their nest had been knocked back down. The mama hid in the back of the shed while I wrestled with a tomato cage and wrapped up balls of trellis netting to get them off the babies. They weren’t too happy about it, but they stayed. They are getting definitely getting bigger!

I was feeling really tired for some reason so, after breakfast, I tried lying down for a couple hours. It was a frequently interrupted attempt at a nap. Between my phone going off with notifications and cats wanting to nap on my head, I didn’t get much rest.

I did, however, get a message about our truck. The owner apologized for the delay, telling me they were having troubles with their new lifts. The truck would be ready today, though. I told him I’d have to work out transportation so we could return our borrowed vehicle, then messaged my brother. He had already asked me if we were getting power outages, which we were not. They have been getting brief outages off an on, and he was wondering. After a bit of back and forth-ing, we decided to do the vehicole switch on Monday, when they are coming out for the funeral. I passed that on to the garage, so that is now arranged.

One of the things I’d noticed while checking on trail cam files from the camera by our sign is that I was getting a LOT of images triggered by saplings. The open area between the fence and the road is slowly refilling with poplars and, now that they have their leaves, they are triggering the motion sensor when the wind hits them. I headed out there with the wagon and loppers to start cleaning things up.

Not all of the saplings are visible in the first photo. The second photo was after I was done in the area at the corner of the property, where the camera and the road intersection is. After hauling away the first load, I came back and did a smaller load, working my way towards the gate. That area had been done more recently than the corner by the intersection, so there wasn’t as much to clean up.

By the time that was done, I was already feeling way too tired, and starting to feel a lot of pain – in areas where I had the ultrasounds taken. It’ll be three weeks before my doctor gets the results. Should be interesting to see if I’ve got more cysts dancing around in there again.

It wasn’t too bad yet, though, so after I put away the stuff for this job, I got out a weed trimmer to finish clearing the edges around the house, pausing to do other things along the way, like help out the poor Mock Orange beside the dining room door.

What you’re seeing on the ground are the Virginia Creeper vines that I pulled loose from the branches. These can completely smother a bush, and I’ve found spruce trees that had been killed by them. Unfortunately, the bases of these are right in among the Mock Orange’s roots, so there’s no way to really get rid of them completely. I got as much as I could out, and set them in the fire pit to dry out so that we can later burn them.

These flowers right near the fire pit are coming into full bloom. There are so many things blooming right now!

I got done with trimming around the house and had just moved on to the fence around the tulips when the battery died. It was past 2pm by then, so I decided to put away the weed trimmer until after I got back from the post office.

I getting ready to go when the prescription delivery came. I asked the driver how the roads were; he is also a school bus driver, and his route is in our area. He said the gravel roads were quite good. Just a few places with barricades, though the one nearest us has been there since before the storms. He says he may have lost all his tomatoes, though, as his garden is in a lower lying area. It’s mostly under water right now. We’d talked before about how he was considering doing raised beds or Hügelkultur, and I’d told him that my own beds were a sort of combination of the two. When he said he was losing his tomatoes, I encouraged him to do even low raised beds, telling him about when we had that major flooding a few years back. I lost entire sections of the garden we still haven’t reclaimed, but beds that were even just 6 inches higher had survived. I think next year, he’s going to give it a try.

After getting my husband is prescriptions to him, I headed out to the post office to pick up some parcels. I got another hoop kit – another of the set with the slightly longer rods and metal connectors – and another package that turned out to be some insect netting I’d ordered. My cabbages and kohlrabi seem to be completely gone. I plan to at least get cabbage transplants and, when I do, they will have insect netting over them!

Along with the mail, I picked up another 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. I’m so glad our general store now carries them. It saves me from having to drive further afield. Right now, I want to use the borrowed car as little as possible.

By the time I was loading the car up, I was in major pain. There was no way I was getting back to anything else outside, so I just took some pain killers and tried to lie down while my daughters took over, including feeding the outside cats. Most of the outside stuff is going to have to wait. We’re supposed to get more rain – possibly another thunderstorm – in about an hour. Just a short one. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to start raining from about 2 pm to 6 am the next day! After that, we should have about a week’s break from the rain. Time enough for farmers to see how many of their crops survived the flash floods.

Late last year, we were getting predictions for another drought year this summer. From the looks of it, that is not going to be an issue!

As for me, right now, I’m getting absolutely slammed with fatigue and overall body pain. I suspect much of it is a reaction to changes in barometric pressure.

It’s just past 8pm as I write this, and I am seriously considering going to bed shortly.

Again.

Before I do, I got some shipping notifications in my email.

Yes, I bought more seeds, and they are on the way.

The first is an order from West Coast Seeds. I wanted to order more of the Giganthemum poppy seeds, since the bed I planted them in got flattened and dug into by cats. I have yet to see any poppies germinating. So I have a new package, which I will sow in the fall, and make sure the bed gets protected. For the winter, it will have mulch over the seeds, and I might just lay some chicken wire over the top, too. In the spring, when the mulch is removed, I’ll make sure to set up netting over the bed to keep the critters out.

I couldn’t just buy one packet of seeds, though, so I looked around. They have different varieties of kohlrabi that were on sale, so I ordered one each of the white and purple. Then I spotted a lovely, larger looking variety of fennel that I decided to try. These will all be started indoors in the spring.

My other order was from MI Gardener. Some are re-orders, some are new and, right now, everything on their site is on sale.

I can’t remember now if I’ve tried growing Atomic Red carrots before. If I did, they were from somewhere else. I ordered the rainbow mix before, and it does look like some have survived, but they’re still very tiny. I figured I’d try this variety next year. Unless I do some succession sowing. That’s an option, still.

The tri-colour green bean mix is a re-order, and I decided to try out the Broccoli Rabe next year, which is more likely to grow here than regular broccoli, and a relatively short season variety of green cabbage.

I also ordered more of the purple savoy cabbage – two packages this time. Next year, I’ll try starting the two varieties of cabbage indoors, and will make sure the transplants have insect netting on them.

The winter squash and pumpkin are all re-orders. After re-sowing the tray that got decimated by a mouse before we moved it outdoors, I ran out of seeds for several of them, and have only a few seeds left of the others. I want to try these again next year. It’s still possible our re-sown seeds might germinate, but it’s getting to the middle of June and, unless we have a super long and mild fall (which we have had before), they won’t have enough time to reach maturity.

Hopefully, for next spring, I will be able to have a better set up for seed starts. Our basement is just too cold, and we have a mouse that eats our seedlings. At least it’s most likely to be a mouse. I can’t think of anything else it could be, even though there is zero evidence for mice. Usually, if there are any, droppings are left all over the place, and there are none.

If we can reclaim our living room – the cat free zone – from all the stuff we’ve had to shove in there, I hope to start seeds in there again.

We really need to figure out what to do with the stuff from my mother’s apartment. Our other storage areas are already full of my parents’ stuff, plus more from my mother’s apartment, and now we have stuff in our basement that I had to find ways to elevate from the damp concrete because there was no room in the storage buildings to put them in, and more stuff in our living room. All of which was have been told to keep. My mother is finally in the nursing home she wanted to be in and can’t have much stuff at all, but she is adamant what we keep everything of hers. She also expects us to be able to know exactly where everything of hers is, and be able to dig things she suddenly wants out and bring them to her.

*sigh*

Our house is a disaster.

That’s part of why I enjoy working in the yard and garden so much. It actually feels like I’ve accomplished something out there!

The Re-Farmer

Brutal

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The storms that hit last night were absolutely brutal.

Thankfully, we seem to have escaped most of it, but there is massive damage to the south of us. Highways were flooded over, and people shared images of cars with nothing but the top of the roof showing, along them. One of the highways we regularly take to the city has been shut down due to flood damage. One person reporting a sink hole the size of a car. Others posted pictures showing chunks of road missing. The highway and weather groups I follow were constantly posting warnings. Funnel clouds were scene, and there has been serious damage in the city. Parts of the province are without power and will probably remain so for another day, at least.

I was up by 4am and already getting notifications and started to message with my brother about highway conditions. Thankfully, where they now live hasn’t had any flooding or major damage, that we know of so far. My husband’s sister is in one of the areas without power, and says there are a lot of downed trees.

Once it was light enough out, I went outside to check on things, fully expecting to find more dead trees had fallen, or at least lots of broken branches.

I found neither!

We were expecting an assessor from the insurance company my brother hopes to switch to this afternoon, so I made sure to open the gate while I was doing my rounds. The mostly filled in and grown over pond in the old hay yard, near that gate, was singing loudly!

There were SO many frogs, and they were so very loud!

Along with checking around the outer yard, in the barn and around my brother’s equipment, I made sure to check the garden beds. Amazingly, they were all just fine. No damage at all! The netting, etc. on almost all the beds protected them from hail, and the collars protected delicate transplants and new sprouts from high winds.

In the image after the brief video above, you can see the nice new leaves showing on the Manchurian walnut! Checking the Black walnut, one of them doesn’t seem to have survive the winter, but the others are leaving out nicely. In the last image, you can see the two rows I direct sowed recently, with the re-seeded row of Daikon radish seedlings on the left, and red noodle beans on the right. Both of them germinated so very quickly!

I was also looking around to see how the yard cats were doing. They seem to have all been able to take shelter and were looking downright content.

I have been catching Sprig on the netting over this bed repeatedly, leaning against it and squishing the garlic. So I moved the hoops from being in the soil to jamming them into the wattle weave as best I could – the ends kept trying to go completely through. This raised the net high enough to make more room for the garlic and dwarf peas – and it turns out to be able to support the weight of Sprig, too!

In the next image, you can see Misha – a beautiful furry flower among the roses, being very nervous because I was getting too close.

In the next image, I caught Curtis, mid yawn! He, Bug and The Grink have been cuddling together a lot lately.

I got the last picture of Colby – mid yawn! – later in the afternoon. He is such a beauty!

I managed to get some weed trimming done around the house. I hoped to get more done, as we’re expecting more rain tonight. I only had two fully charged batteries, though, and it took more time and effort than usual. The Chinese Elm seeds have been drifting against the edges that I needed to trim, and the driving rain packed them into solid masses. In some places, I had to get the stiff bristle yard broom out to clear the stuck masses of seeds away before I could even try to trim the edges. There was a lot of starting and stopping, as I also had to move things around to get under or around them. In some places, I had to break out the pruning shears to trim things too thick or strong for the weed trimmer line.

One thing that didn’t happen today. The insurance company assessor didn’t make it. My brother had contacted her to tell her not to use a particular highway, but suggested a different one. At first, she said it would be okay, but after that she must have heard more damage reports and wanted to reschedule to Monday. That’s when the funeral is, though, so it was instead rescheduled to tomorrow morning. Which doesn’t make much sense to me, because not a lot will change overnight. Especially with more rain on the way. We’ve also got a prescription delivery tomorrow. We don’t actually know what the conditions of the gravel roads are, other than what’s immediately around us. What is immediately around us is fine, and there’s only a couple of sections that might be of concern if there was flooding. Based on what I can see so far, though, I don’t think there would have been any flooding. Our own ditches and driveway would be a lot fuller, if it got to that point.

As I’m writing this, I can hear thunder. We’re expected to get rain roughly and hour from now, for about an hour, then more rain is supposed to be from about 5am to noon tomorrow.

The assessor is supposed to come at around 10. She’s supposed to walk around the property to look at the house and outbuildings from the outside, and the scheduled time slot is for 2 hours.

Hmmm… We’ll see if she even makes it at all. I expect our gravel roads are fine, but if she’s coming from the city, from what I’m hearing, there is plenty of damage and debris on the other two highways she could take to come out here. From what I can see on the highways map, a couple of intersections are closed down due to flooding (unlike the many miles shut down on the highway nearest us), while other small sections are marked as “incidents”, stating water on the road and proceed with caution.

I’m chatting with my brother as I write this. He says he is thinking of cancelling the assessment outright for now.

That might be a good idea. After the upcoming rain, who knows how much worse it will be! We don’t have tornado warnings anymore, but do have warnings for flash flooding and hail.

Which reminds me. I’ve heard nothing from the garage about my truck. It’s entirely possible either mechanics couldn’t make it into work, or they’ve been deluged with vehicles damaged by hail, debris or flooding. Or both.

We’re oddly relieved that it broke down when it did!

Okay, that thunder is a lot closer. I think it’s time to shut down my computer, just in case!

For anyone else under this weather system, be safe out there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new growth and more transplants

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I’m going to catch up on the garden stuff before I write another post about yesterday’s bizarreness. I didn’t get home until well past midnight by the time it was all done!

Yesterday, some plans went out the window. I’d hoped to be able to get another bed ready to plant more short season corn, but I ended up focusing on watering, instead.

I was very happy to see this.

These are one grouping of summer squash. If I remember correctly, these are the Early Prolific Straightneck Squash. I’ll have to go through my photos to confirm, since I haven’t actually labelled anything yet.

Of the five varieties, all but one has a least one seedling growing.

I also saw that we have LOTS of the resown Daikon radish germinated, and even some of the Red Noodle beans were emerging already! The bush beans in the high raised bed and mostly come up and already have their true leaves, though a couple of them look like they got chomped. There is just a bit of stem above the seed leaves and that’s it. Which makes little sense, since the beds are protected by netting, so all the usual things that would eat them like that can’t get at them!

The last area I watered were the trees and bushes in our developing food forest. One of the mulberry trees now has lots of unfurled leaves, and I was happy to see that at least one of them survived. In looking at the other one, I thought it was dead, but there was a bit of green peaking at the base, partially covered by mulch. I cleared around and, sure enough, they were mulberry leaves! It has survived – barely!

I even found that one purple raspberry that survived last year has emerged. There is still a possibility we’ll have more of these, but it’ll take a few years!

To water the trees, I keep an old hose in the rain barrel that leaks. I connect the active hose to it to start filling the barrel while I use a watering can to water everything but the silver buffalo berry. I start off with the ones furthers from the barrel and, by the time I start watering the ones close to the barrel, it is usually almost full. I then unhook the hose and leave the barrel to slowly leak, giving the trees closest to it a deep watering in the process. As I was starting to water the closer trees and bushes, however, I noticed the water level was lower than usual. I lifted the hose end out of the water and saw the flow was very slow. There was almost no pressure.

So I unhooked the barrel hose (I love those quick connects!) and finished watering with what I could from the barrel, and messaged the girls to check the pump in the basement. As I took the active hose back to the main garden area, I turned on the nozzle and there was still very little pressure. Setting that hose where it belongs, I went to the front hose, and there was almost no pressure at all, and the tap for that hose is right next to the pump and pressure tank in the basement!

It turned out the girls were trying to do dishes, not realizing I was still watering. We were using water faster than the pump could refill the pressure tank.

We need to replace that pressure tank, but a tank the same size costs almost $500.

So that was in for the watering.

I had just gotten into the house when my mother phoned, and a couple of hours later, I headed out for what was supposed to be just a few hours, until our personal sword of Damocles fell. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

With brings me to what I managed to get done this morning. We’re supposed to get thunderstorms later today and tomorrow and rain for the next couple of days after that – though the forecast changes so often, who knows what will actually happen. The remaining tray of cucumbers, melons and winter squash that got decimated and resown had a few seedlings in it that I decided to transplant now.

The largest transplant was a Black Futsu. There was also one Gill’s Golden Pippin. From the melons, there were three Hale’s Best Jumbo, plus two little Tigger melons. The Hale’s Best were the only seedlings that survived the carnage we discovered when we moved the transplants out of the basement. Nothing else in the tray that were resown have germinated.

I might be buying winter squash transplants. We’ll see.

My husband had a lot of empty distilled water jugs for his CPAP dehumidifier set aside, so I grabbed seven of them and cut the tops and bottoms off to make more protective collars. I was able to loosen the netting and raise just the area I was working in, rather than the whole thing, which was nice. I started by loosening the soil, setting the collars in place, then giving the soil inside the collars a deep watering. While the water was left to be absorbed by the soil, I went and very carefully used a teaspoon to lift the seedlings out of their cells in the growing tray, as there was no way I could have lifted the cell tray to push them up from below, without disrupting all the other cells where things might still germinate.

I had set up the new protective collars in a line continuing from the luffa and gourds already there, just spacing them out a bit wider. Staring from near the luffa (still nothing germinating there), I transplanted the three Hale’s Best melon, then the one Gill’s Golden Pippin, the two Tigger melon, and finally the one Black Futsu. Then the netting got put back in place. It is very much needed! Even in the short time I had it up, there were cats checking things out in the bed, and I had to chase them away. Which I hated to do to cats we are urgently trying to socialize enough that we can get them spayed and neutered!

The transplants are protected now, by both netting and collars, and hopefully, they will survive.

I don’t expect I’ll be able to get much else done in the garden today, as I have my medical appointment this afternoon, and we’re also expected to hit 30C/86F, right around the time I’ll probably be returning home.

Using my brother’s car.

*sigh*

I’ll explain that in my next post…

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: corn is in, and some clean up done

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Things stayed way too hot overnight. None of us got much sleep, even though the house is so much cooler. With today supposed to reach 31C/88F today, I headed outside shortly after 6am.

My plan to dig more beds for the corn quickly changed. We had high winds, I could hear thunder in the distance. So I quickly planted one package of corn, first.

We’ve grown the Yukon Chief variety before, and I was happy to see the seeds back in stock. They are only 55 days to maturity! I’ve got two packages, and planted one of them. Then I used the hoops and netting that I took off the garlic bed to protect the corn bed.

Ideally, these would have been planted in a large block, but that just wasn’t working out. If I can manage it, I plan to dig out three more beds like this one. I can then plant the second package next to this one. I have another short season variety of a white corn I’d like to plant as well. It is short season, but not as short as this one, so there won’t be an issue of cross pollinating, if I want to save seeds.

At this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to get the other beds dug in time, though. We shall see. We’re just a week into June, so I’m not behind for a lot of things.

It’s starting to look like I’ll be looking for kohlrabi and cabbage transplants, though. It looks like the kohlrabi seedlings have all disappeared while still only at the seed leaf stage. In the cabbage bed, there are so many self seeded radishes popping up, I am having a hard time seeing which ones might be the cabbage, so I will wait a bit longer before deciding anything there.

After planting, protecting and watering the corn, I kept on watering, even though I was still hearing thunder. I got the main garden area watered when it started to rain, so I began heading inside.

It stopped raining, then started again, then stopped…

Checking the weather radar, I could see the system. Major thunderstorms and driving rain expected… all to the west of us. The system was going to miss us entirely. We just got a bit of splattering.

It gave me time for breakfast, as least.

Then I headed outside again, this time to dig out the push mower. My brother also got out their big zero turn mower and finished going the outer yard.

With the push mower, I finally managed to get the edges, areas the riding mower can’t go, and FINALLY, the paths between the garden beds in the main garden area. I didn’t do all the areas I would have done with the push mower, though, as it was getting way too hot. I took a break, then headed back out again, this time to use the weed trimmer.

My brother has three batteries for the weed trimmer. I went through all three of them before heading back inside!

Among the areas I mowed and weed trimmed was around the east yard garden beds – and the “found object” art display. I even stopped to clear it off of all the debris that had blown onto everything, then set it up again. The branch is something my daughter added because she liked the shape. Everything else there is things we found while doing clean up, most (not all) around the spruce grove, including the table itself.

It’s silly, but I like it.

I was able to use the trimmer around the east garden beds, including the square bed I still need to work on. The crab grass around it was so tall, the bed was almost completely hidden.

After doing the east garden beds, I trimmed the paths in the old kitchen garden and around the edges. I got that done, then started around the cat shelters when the third battery died.

At that point, we’d reached the high of the day for some time, and I was done for the day. As I write this, at almost 4:30pm, it’s still 31C/88F, and the humidex is at 33C/91F It’s not supposed to start cooling down for a couple more hours, and tonight’s overnight low is expected to be even warmer than last night.

*sigh*

Thankfully, tomorrow is no longer predicted to get as hot as today. Hopefully, that means I’ll be able to get more progress in the garden.

Meanwhile, as I look out my window while writing this, I can see the big maple branches being thrashed by the wind every now and then – and there are so many dried elm seeds blowing around, it’s like snow. I don’t have any of these elms outside my window. This is all being blown in from the trees on the other side of the house. The bloody things are starting to drift.

While sitting down to enjoy the lunch… er… supper my daughters made for me, I watched this video that I think you’ll enjoy as well.

I had no idea that squash leaves were edible!

My list would be slightly different, partly because of our very different climate. Partly because… why does everyone have kale on these lists? Blech. 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: reclaiming for corn beds started

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As I write this, it’s coming up on 4:30pm, and we’re at 29C/84F, with the humidex at 33C/91F – and we are just reaching our high for the day. Things are not supposed to start cooling down for another couple more hours.

We have a 1% chance of rain where we are now, but some areas to the south of us and into the US are expecting storms with high winds, heavy rain and potentially baseball sized or larger hail.

!!!

I’m still hoping to get outside and get more done, but my goodness, I just can’t handle the heat like I used to, anymore!

Which is why I was out by about 8am, when it was still relatively cool.

My main task of the day was to start working on where I plan to plant corn this year.

A few years back, this area had been a squash patch, but we had to cut back and lost control of some areas. Little by little, I’ve been working to reclaim areas, and this tarp covered area is one of them. I keep calling it a tarp, but I think it’s landscape fabric of some kind. It’s been sitting in this spot for several years now, moved only a short distance to plant where the asparagus and strawberries are now.

The first thing I had to do was remove the things that were keeping it from being blown away. Pieces of wood. The old kiddie pool we sometimes use as a planter. Bricks. Rocks. Lots of rocks. I’ve been tossing rocks onto there while weeding, and some were put into piles to hold corners down. I grabbed as much of the rocks as I could and loaded them into the wheelbarrow, and they have been set on a piece of sheet metal I use in the winter to cover the fire pit. The fire pit has enameled bricks around it – those bricks are everywhere. The problem is, the enamel gets incredibly slippery when wet, and quickly get buried. We will be removing the enameled bricks and replacing them with something else, as we are able. Around the fire pit, it will be rocks from the garden.

Once most of the rocks were removed, I lifted the edges and pulled the tarp over itself to push any remaining rocks and debris together, to make it easier to gather the rest of the rocks.

Which is when I found the ant hill.

Fair warning, if ants give you the heebie jeebies. The second picture in the slide show above is of the ant hill, and the third file is a brief video showing just how many there were, and how they got just everywhere! I uncovered more ant tunnels closer to the opposite corner, and I suspect those were part of the same colony of ants.

In the next file, you can see the whole area that had been covered for so long. It’s amazing how much still managed to grow under there! For the most part, though, any grass or weeds under that tarp has been killed by it.

Ideally, I would have taken the lawn mower or weed trimmer over the next area, but I just didn’t want to lose the time. What I did do was drag over logs, each about 4′ long each, that we used to make temporary frames on the low raised beds several years ago. Logs, a board, the kiddie pool, bricks and larger rocks were laid out or scattered over the tarp. Over time, it will flatten more, and I can stretch the edges out to reduce the slack, over time.

This newly uncovered area is now quite compacted, so it’ll need quite a bit of digging and loosening of soil before anything can be planted.

I started at one corner and immediately hit something, stopping my garden fork. I shifted, tried again, and hit it again. Then again. I finally manage to get under it.

That was one of the bigger rocks I found. Most were more of a size that can be used around the fire pit. As I worked, the rocks all got dumped into the wheelbarrow.

Worse than the rocks were the roots. They were flippin’ everywhere! I was able to pull up some longer ones, but only so far before they stopped dead, because I hit another root they’d gone under.

I had to get the loppers, which meant going into the old garden shed.

The raccoon mama and her babies are still there. The mama didn’t move, one of her babies was nursing, I could see one other that was just sort of leaning against a wall joist, I couldn’t see a third one, but the fourth was just looking at me curiously. No chittering warnings or acting nervous. They have learned I will leave them alone.

I grabbed the lopper as quickly as I could and left them be.

In the next photo, you can see several of the larger roots I tried pulling up before they hit something below ground and stopped.

Loosening the soil alone would not have taken long at all, but between the roots and the rocks, I ended up working at it for almost 3 hours. I got a roughly 4′ wide area loosened, cleaned up, de-rooted and most of the larger rocks removed (there are always more…), then leveled and smoothed out with a landscape rake. Then I brought straw over and set it around the edges, like a frame.

I have two types of corn I want to plant, so I plan to dig at least one more strip like this, with straw covering the paths in between. Someday, these areas might be reclaimed as raised beds, or be converted to a perennial beds.

After finishing up this bed, I watered all the garden beds deeply. The garlic was getting too tall for the netting, so I took that off. I can see some second sowing of spinach and chard where they were planted in between, but not many. I think it’s just been too hot for them. If they don’t take, I might plant some bush beans, instead.

Then I went inside for lunch. Which is when I heard a lawn mower.

My brother had brought out their zero turn mower and started mowing the outer yard.

After I had my lunch, I grabbed the wheel barrow and the landscape rake and headed to the side of the garage their zero turn mower is stored in. The cats have been using the lean-to’s on both sides of the garden as litter boxes over the winter. With the mower out, I was able to rake things up into the wheel barrow to dump out, then use the rake to level the floor, so they would have a nice clean spot to park their mower in.

While getting the wheel barrow I realized my SIL was now mowing – and she was mowing the inner yard! So I moved hoses and logs aside. She even went into the jungle of un-reclaimed main garden area. An area that is extremely rough and is what broke our own push mower. I had planned to very carefully use their push mower they’ve made available to us, with the mower set as high as it can go. I’ve used their little riding mower there before, but really didn’t want to risk damaging it again. That zero turn mower is way more robust and made light work of the mess!

After cleaning up in the garage and putting things away, I backed our truck up to the house to load it with our garbage bags – it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone to the dump, so there was a lot – then headed to the dump. By the time I got back, my SIL was almost done mowing both the inner and outer yards. Since I left the gate open while I was gone, she even mowed the sides of the driveway outside the gate.

I so, so appreciate that she did this! I still need to get the push mower and weed trimmer out, but I no longer have to worry about those huge areas.

It’s now past 5pm as I write this, and I have been seriously considering asking the girls to do the outside cat feeding and calling it a night. I’m falling asleep at my keyboard (which I am now thinking isn’t just being tired from the heat, but from the low iron levels I found out about just yesterday). I should at least try to get the push mower out in some areas, though. It’s not something that can be done in the mornings, because the grass is too wet and would jam the mower. Which means working at it in the evenings, when things would finally have a chance to dry – but we’re not really expected to cool down much overnight, and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, even before the humidex is taken into account.

The second corn bed is definitely going to wait until tomorrow morning. Digging through all those rocks and roots to prepare the bed is not something I want to be doing during the heat of the day!

Oh, dear. The weather group I’m on just sent a notification out. Some areas now have tornado warnings. Not our area, thankfully, but between potentially baseball sized hail or potential tornados, the south end of the province is not looking good right now!

The Re-Farmer