I started with the parsnips and took extra effort to try and get entire roots out, without them snapping on me. I managed it with most of them. Interestingly, the widest ones were also the shortest ones.
Then I harvested some carrots from both the rainbow mix row, planted earlier, and the orange carrots, planted later. There is a definite size difference!
It blows me away that we are able to harvest anything at all, in November. I quite like having a longer growing season, even if it turns out to be just for one year!
We have a change of plans for tomorrow. My SIL and her closest friend – someone my in-laws considered another daughter – have been packing up my FIL’s apartment, since he will not be going back. Some things will be divided up, but the rest needs to be sold or gotten rid of somehow. They’ve asked and we’ve mentioned a few things we would like to have, but I also let them know that if they have things no one else will take, or they cannot sell, they can be brought here. Nothing will go to waste, and we can store things here until someone else that wants them has room.
This morning, we learned that a load is coming out here tomorrow. Aside from what we asked for (which isn’t much), I have no idea what is being brought over. We don’t know what time, either, so my daughter and I will stay home and do the small Walmart trip we were planning, the day after. Unless she comes really early or something. It gets dark pretty early this time of year, and I don’t want to do be doing any night driving. Too many deer.
Today, my daughters got some progress outside. The last 4 haskaps have been planted, and all 144 of them got a deep watering.
The garlic bed also got a deep watering, before a straw mulch was added. If all goes well, the garlic should start growing under there, before the ground freezes.
Over time, the haskaps need to be mulched, too, but with so many, that will be done slowly, over time.
I was able to head outside for my daily walkabout, before things got dark. Of course, I checked on things and did what little I could. I even remembered to move the trail cam and it’s stand away from our sign at the corner of the property, since we no longer have to worry about the sign being vandalized.  I’m hoping to find a way to use the stand to hold the solar critter cam to monitor the isolation shelter, once it’s set up under the kitchen window for the winter.
While looking at where my daughter planted the last haskaps, I noticed the spade was forgotten, so I took it to the sun room.
Where I promptly startled four skunks
!!!
I left the sun room, since the cats and I were blocking the exit. Three left.
One stayed and looked like it was settling down for the night. 😆
There’s really no way to persuade it to leave from there. Too many things between it, and the door. Namely me and swirling cats, wanting their evening feeding!
So I took care of that and left the skunk alone.
Aside from that, I’ve spent most of my day in the cat free zone, doing little crochet projects. I’m trying to use up two colours of mill end cotton I’ve had for quite some time.  We now have more dish cloths and coasters, and I’m working on another bowl.
I’m hoping to have a better night tonight. Last night, I went to bed early, and promptly became wide awake. At one point, I gave up trying to sleep, got up and made another pot holder in Tunisian stitch, because why the heck not? I’d love to do more than drift off and wake up, over and over, all night again, though.  Not something surgery or recovery related, as far as I can tell. In that respect, things are going quite well.
Normally, tomorrow would be our second stock up trip to Costco in the city. That will be delayed. If we need anything over the next week or so, we can make a short trip into town.
This afternoon, when temperatures were at least a bit above freezing, I headed out to see my daughters’ hard work.
Wow.
Because these last haskap transplants are so much smaller, with tiny, over crowded root balls in tiny little pots, they are harder to see. So I marked every one of them with a garden stake, then raided our recycling bin for plastic bottles to put on top of them. Aside from improving visibility, they should rattle in the wind and potentially startle away critters.
The first image is the main “plot” where my daughter added three more rows of 10 haskaps.
The next two images are different views of the ones she planted around the fruit trees and the two haskaps we’d planted two summers ago.
The last image is the four that were left, because it was too dark to keep going. They will be planted where our original three haskaps are – the ones that have not been doing well at all, because the cross pollinating verities don’t bloom at the same time, and one of them just isn’t growing.
I counted a total of 140 transplanted haskaps, plus there are the four left to do.
There had been 95 already in the ground. My daughters – mostly my younger daughter, as her sister could come out only after she finished working on commissions – planted 45 haskaps last night.
That makes for a total of 144 haskaps that my brother and SIL managed to acquire, plus the 5 we already had previously.
Wow.
If they all survive – which is highly unlikely, given the state some of them were in – that makes for a grand total of 149 haskaps for our food forest.
Wow.
For the four of us, just a couple would be enough for personal use. Maybe 5, if we wanted to do really get into making preserves of some kind with them.
At least it would be, if we had any that produced. Of the original three, only the “Mr. Haskap” has been even remotely healthy, the first to bloom, and finished blooming before the “Mrs. Haskap” I got at the same time even got into full leaf, never mind bloom. The third one, a “Mrs. Haskap” purchased the following summer, remains stunted and exactly the same size as when we planted it, some 3 or 4 years ago.
The two that we got at the homesteaders event, planted in a much better location, had their second summer this year and didn’t seem to get any bigger at all. Much like our highbush cranberry, that have not gotten any bigger since we planted them at the same time as the silver buffalo berry that is doing so well.
If even a quarter of these haskaps survive and produce, we could potentially have enough to sell at markets within a couple of years.
If they survive and produce.
With how root bound they were, they have a rough start already. For now, though, we will focus on watering them often, even though none of them have any leaves left, to give the roots every chance to grow and establish themselves at least a bit, before the ground freezes.
Which, if the long range forecast is to be trusted even slightly, will be at least another 3 weeks, if not until December. As long as we still have daytime temperatures above freezing, the ground should only freeze at the surface overnight, and mostly thaw during the day.
My daughter really busted her butt last night! By the end of it, she was getting chilled and starting to cough, so she slept in today, and has been taking care not to come down with a cold or get sick, as much as she can.
In a couple of days, we will be doing our first stock up shopping trip. I am still banned from driving, and my daughters don’t want me to travel too far. For the things we need, though, we at least need to do a Walmart trip, so we are planning to go to the one in the smaller, closer city. They’ve expanded, but still don’t have the inventory the big city locations do, but we should be able to get what we need. There’s also a Canadian Tire across the street, where we can get our litter pellets.
Normally, on the last business day of the month, we would do our Costco shopping. That one will be postponed, probably by a couple of weeks. Yes, my daughter can do the driving, and we don’t have to worry about weird parking issues or insane city driving conditions, but it’s also about recovery and mobility for me. My 6 week recovery period is over at the end of November, so by December, we should be back to our normal driving and errands.
I am so looking forward to spring, when I can physically do the things I wasn’t able to do all this past summer!
… and to seeing how many haskaps survived the transplanting and winter conditions.
I mentioned yesterday, how I had felt strangely sleepy all day.Â
Typically, when that happens, as soon as I lay diwn to try and sleep, I end up wide awake.
Not this time!
I lay down, planning to just rest a bit. I woke up some 8 or so hours later, having not moved the entire time.Â
It was coming up on 5am, and I figured I would just hit the heads, then lie diwn until my alarm went off for my meds.
The alarm woke me from a dead sleep. I shut it off, then passed out for another 3 hours.
Thankfully, I’m not on any meds that are strictly timed, anymore. Including my painkillers, which are back to “take as needed”.
Most of the day, for me, was pretty quiet. The girls started the laundry, which is one of the things I’m banned from doing. My younger daughter headed out when it got as warm as it would, in the afternoon, and started planting more haskaps. Adding more rows to where the previous ones are planted. By tye time she stopped, it was full dark. She says there are still some left. !!!Â
Meanwhile, the guy that bought a couple of scrap vehicles and dragged them out with his crane truck came back today, with a trailer. Staying out with him was my only real accomplishment.
He got one loaded and was expecting to cime back for the second one. When it got quite dark, I figured he would come back another day, but he still made it. His crane truck has flood lights on the back, it turns out.
It was about 7:30 and fully dark when my younger daughter came over. I hadn’t realized until then that they were both out still planting haskaps!! She stayed with me until the guy left, to help close the gate behind him.
So that is now done, though there are other vehicles he’s interested in. He’ll be talking to my brother about those, though. My brother knows more about them than I do.
As for me, I’m working myself up to eat something, before going to bed early again. I’m hungry, but have no appetite. 😒Â
I look forward to taking a walk outside tomorrow, and seeing what my daughters have done!
Today was a remarkably warm day for October – we hit 22C/72F this afternoon! We are expecting a thunderstorm this evening, now, while other areas to the West are already getting snow, and north of us is still getting blizzard predictions. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 15C/59F as the high. Things are expected to drop significantly after that, with highs barely above freezing, and lows consistently below freezing.
Which means we are running out of time.
My daughters and I have gone over a list of things that need to be done over the next few days. Most of which, I am banned from doing.
There were a few things, however, that I could help with.
This afternoon, I gathered most of the hoop kit pieces, tomato trellis supports that the muskmelons were trained up, and other things gathered. To make things easier on my body, I set it all into the wagon, then set myself up on a seat near the floating bench I’ve been collecting everything at, until they can go into the old garden shed for the winter.
Then I sat on the rolling garden seat to start sorting and bundling.
The hoop kit on the left is the first one I got. It has the plastic connectors and the rods are slightly shorter and thinner. The plastic connectors bend under stress, so I won’t get that kit again.
The one in the middle has slightly longer, thicker rods and metal connectors. I liked that one so much, I got a second one and plan to eventually get a third. They’re just that handy. With that kit, we still have them supporting the netting at the chain link fence. I was not planning to take those down, yet. Partly, the net needs two people to be removed, folded, rolled up and put away, and I can’t be one of them. The other reason is, those rods and the net are the only thing that has kept the Mammoth sunflowers from being completely blown over by high winds.
So those will wait.
I bundled the rods into 10s, and did the same with the ground staples, with some still loose because there are more to gather and bundle, along with sorting and bundling other supports I took out.
In the garden, there is just some netting left that needs to be taken down, as far as materials go. Once we’ve got all the stuff gathered, sorted, bundled, etc., my daughter plans to re-organize the old garden shed for more efficient storage.
One of the things she was able to do today was clean, then set, the rigid insulation back around the base of the house for the winter, and secure them from being blown away. Now that the insulation is set up under the kitchen window, the cat isolation shelter can be moved onto the patio for the winter. It needs the bottom level to be cleaned up – the litter box under there got tipped over recently – straw added, two fresh litter boxes set up, and the vinyl wrapped about the bottom again, to keep the wind out. Then the heat lamp and the extension cord for the lamp and the heated water bowl will be set up.
At some point, we need to add better wheels to that thing. It is amazingly heavy, and the small wheels – all I could afford at the time – sink right into the soil. It takes two people to move it over the grass. For the summer, I set pieces of floor tile under the wheels, thick enough (hopefully) that it didn’t sink too much. We definitely need to get wider, heavier duty wheels under there. For now, once it’s on the patio blocks, it moves a lot more easily.
At the same time, I’ve contacted the rescue about Shrine Kitten. My daughter thinks she can get her into a carrier, during the morning feeding, but we can’t do anything else. Someone is being contacted to book a spay appointment and, once we have a date to work around, someone is going to come out here to pick her up before the appointment for her fast, and then we expect her to come back for here recovery. As much as I would love for her to be fostered and adopted out, all the rescues are closed for intakes right now. We expect her to come back, and want to have the isolation shelter moved and ready for her 2 weeks of recovery and observation.
It isn’t much, but it did feel good to get some stuff outside done. While I spent most of the time sitting, I did reach my limit for bending and stretching, I think. Or close to it. No pain, though, which is important. Just tired.
I am having another good recovery day today. Finished off a crochet bowl, but haven’t started anything else, yet.
It was warmer today, so when I headed outside to walk around, I decided to stay out and give the haskaps a deep watering.
About 5 minutes in, there was a sudden clap of thunder.  No rain. No lightning. Just thunder.
As I was working on the very last row, there was more thunder, and it started to rain.
There had been no rain in the forecast for today.
It was just a light right, but I headed inside, anyhow. Which is when my younger daughter told me her sister had just gone out to look for me. We used different doors and missed each other. 😆
I went to the door to get her, and it was pouring rain. My daughter came in, completely soaked!
The rain stopped as abruptly as it started. Then did it again.
All I can say is, it’s better than snow. Which might be happening to the north of us, this weekend. We have rain in the forecast, but the northern communities might be getting a blizzard. !!!
Oh, and we’re also looking at a high of over 20C in a cooler of days.
Much of it was spent doing some crochet. I got a walk in outside, with lovely weather to enjoy, as well.
My daughters got the one garden bed cleaned up and weeded. As usual, the north end of the bed was filled with elm roots. They got two rows of garlic planted, and will be adding a third row, tomorrow. Then it will be mulched and pretty much done for the winter.
When I went over to see them, I got a few comments on the colorfulness of my bruising that they could see. 😆 I got these pictures, yesterday.
The first one is the arterial line site. It went in and was removed while I was under anesthetic.  Being arterial, it is the “riskiest”, but looking the best.
The second is the IV port location. The student nurse removing it had trouble with the tape and dig a fair bit of pulling and tugging.
The third one looks the worst, and should have been the mildest. That’s were the anti- coagulant was injected, in my tricep. It was also the only one that hurt.
Funny how it all seems backwards in severity.
Meanwhile, I finished off a crochet hanging storage bag I was working on. Then, I whipped up a little critter, more as a reason to use some safety eyes I got, but never started a project that needed them. I’ve always used buttons or embroidered eyes on things, previously.  It had to be tiny, because I could find only a little handful of polyfil to stuff it with. A quick project is always satisfying.
The enforced reduced mobility should be a good time to catch up on various incomplete projects. Something to make the time feel less wasted!
It’s been another good recovery day, and I’m feeling better than I have in a very long time.
It does mean keeping to restrictions is not easy! Still, I did manage to get a few useful things done. I’ve been able to make my own meals, even if it’s just reheating leftovers or making a sandwich, though I’m not supposed to lift pans or do dishes. Last this afternoon, my daughter got my walker outside for me and walked around the yard with me. We checked on the sunflowers and found the birds have been eating the Black Russian seeds, so she cut what seed heads there were that looked like they had salvageable seeds. The seeds in the Mammoth sunflowers are still blooming and quite white. With the temperatures we’re expected to have for the next while, they might actually have time to mature!
I collected what seeds I could from the Black Russian seed heads, and they are now set aside to cure. My younger daughter, meanwhile, stayed outside to prepare the bed the garlic will be planted in, incorporating the compost my brother brought for us. The garlic bulbs won’t be broken up into cloves until just before planting, and that will be done tomorrow. While walking around, I showed my daughter how to collect the marigold seeds, which are not as obviously visible as one might expect. She’s planning to find places to scatter them, to hopefully germinate in the spring.
Speaking of which…
There are a surprising number of things that we can plant in the fall. We won’t be able to do very much of it this fall, as we probably won’t be able to even finish cleaning up most of the beds before the ground freezes, never mind plant anything besides the garlic.
All in all, it’s been a quiet and calm day. Including for this sweet boy.
I suspect I will not be getting my leaning sheep back. Ever. It’s turned out to be a perfect cat bed. 😄
Meanwhile, I’ve found that I have not needed to take the anti-inflammatories I was prescribed, at all. I’m still taking the T3s at more or less scheduled times, though 3 times a day rather than 4, and am honestly wondering if I need to take them at all. I did start taking them for my osteoarthritis, and even that has been doing better of late.
I’ve tried to get a good look at my abdomen in the mirror. With five gauzed and taped incision sites, I’m not exactly getting a good view. I have always carried my weight front to back, rather than side to side – the sort of shape that has had people mistake me for being pregnant in the past. To do the surgery, they had to inflate my abdomen. Which means my belly is looking very deflated right now! Interestingly, it looks to have a different shape now, and there even seems to be a sort of hollowed out area on my right side. Not at all where I might have expected to see some changes, if any, after a full hysterectomy. Of course, everything is going to keep looking different as things heal up over the next few weeks. For now, though, I’ve got me a very wrinkly, deflated looking, floppy belly, with patches of gauze and medical tape scattered around it.
It’s a good thing I have absolutely 0 sense of vanity when it comes to my body, because it’s looking a hot mess right now. 😄
When I had a laparoscopy done, some 15 or so years ago, the thing that surprised me most was how it basically wiped me out for a month. I felt so weak for so long, and completely drained.
Now?
I feel none of that. If anything, I’m feeling downright energetic! The fact that residual pain from the areas they worked in has reduced so much, so quickly, certainly helps. Basic biological functions that were painful yesterday are pretty much pain free now. I still have to watch myself, of course, but I’m really amazed by how quickly the pains are passing.
I will continue to sleep on the couch in the living room for some time, though. Which means that cats have my king size bed to themselves. You’d think they’d be happy with that, but it hasn’t stopped them from trying to tear down the door into the living room. This set up was made to be temporary and easy to remove. It’s basically just famed chicken wire, with a hook and eyelet on either side of the door to keep it closed. Last night, several different cats decided they absolutely needed to get through that door, because I was there, grabbing at the chicken wire with their claws and trying to pull it open.
My older daughter stayed up almost all night, so that she would be available in case I needed help, and she ended up luring the cats away with wet cat food, after which they finally stopped trying to tear down the door. Mostly. I did actually get some sleep, and found getting in and out of the low couch much easier than I feared. I’d still like to raise it up by about 4 or 5 inches but, for now, it is working. My daughters set up my walker near the couch so I could use it to help get myself up and down, and that worked out very well. By morning, though, I found I didn’t even need to use it.
My brother and his wife did end up coming over for a few hours today, making sure to let us know we didn’t need to even come out to greet them. They had some winterizing to do, and very little time to do it. My daughter did head out to return their container from the lovely turkey soup my SIL had sent home with us, though.
I spent much of my day in the cat free zone. Got some crochet done until I found myself being blinded by the morning sun once it cleared the spruce trees. My husband and daughters made sure I got my high protein meals and plenty of hot tea.
Temperature wise, today was a lovely day, but we had high winds again. In the late afternoon, the girls helped get my walker outside so I could do some walking around, and we were seriously buffeted. We found a lovely surprise on our compost ring; my brother had left a bag of their compost for us. I had been perplexed by this, when he brought us several buckets of compost in the spring but, while staying overnight and their place, they showed me their electric compost machine. I’d never heard of such a thing before, though I’ve seen other types of countertop composters. This thing cooks down the kitchen waste and the end result is a compost that looks a lot like course coffee grounds. I was very happy to see more of it.
When I first started walking around the yard, I checked out the vines on the chain link fence. I’d picked the tiny yellow winter squash a while ago, but those were easy to reach under the frost cloth I’d draped over them. I remembered the green one from nearer the middle of the fence. The wind had torn most of the frost cloth loose, so I could reach around and finally found it. As we walked around the main garden area, I ended up picking the muskmelons that were under the plastic all this time.
In among the frost killed bush beans, fresh onions are growing! I’d harvested the onions from there, but obviously missed a few. These are quite small, so it’s possible they are transplants that simply didn’t grow until the bush beans died back.
While walking around, the girls and I talked about where we could plant more of the little haskaps, and the various things that need to be taken down and put away for the winter. There’s no way we’ll be able to get all the beds cleaned up and prepped before winter. As long as we get one done, planted with garlic and mulched, I’ll be happy. The next while should have good daytime temperatures, so my daughters will be able to harvest the last of the carrots, beets, parsnips and the rest of the chicory root, little by little. That has priority over clearing beds for next year. They are also wanting to get as many more of those smaller pots of haskap as possible planted, too. Looking at the long range forecast, it doesn’t look like the ground will actually freeze until about mid-November. That is unsure, of course, since the forecast that far ahead is based entirely on averages, and this winter is not supposed to be average with that Super El NiÅ„o. It’s entirely possible the ground won’t freeze until some time in December.
I’m rather okay with that.
The hardest thing for me right now is to not go out there and try to do stuff, because I’m feeling way too good and way too energetic!
