Yes! I was able to get a tour video done. Just a little one.
No walker. No cane.
Got out of breath easily, while talking and recording, but that’s it.
I’m rather pleased.
Enjoy!
The Re-Farmer
Gardening
A quiet day, saving seeds and garden progress
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. 😄
The Re-Farmer
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Doing well, and some garden surprises
I am happy to say, recovery is going very well.
So well, I’m suspicious! 😄
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.
I don’t think any of them are at all edible, but I’m curious to see what they’re like inside.
I also found a surprise in the high raised bed.
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 Nińo. 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!
I won’t do it.
I just really want to.
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2026 Garden: a surprise harvest – and I got him!
I was feeling good when I headed out to do the evening cat feeding, so of course, I stayed out longer.
As I was feeding the cats, Colby actually wanted attention. So much so that I got him, and was finally able to dose his ear. Just one. The one with the wound behind it from being scratched so much. Not ideal, but better than nothing! The medication says to dose once ever 24 hours, so hopefully we’ll get it done tomorrow again, before we head out to my brother’s for the night.
Colby is such a handsome boy!
Depending on what weather app I check, we’re looking at going below freezing tonight. Cold enough that the frost cloth over the self seeded tomatoes won’t be enough to protect them anymore.
So I harvested them, to let them finish ripening indoors, leaving the tomatoes on their vines.
The vines themselves were remarkably strong and healthy, so I chopped them up quite a bit before dropping them on the bed for now. Some of them were even still blooming! The frost cover alone is not enough to explain how well they were doing. This section of the bed seems to be very well sheltered from the cold. Something to keep in mind, when deciding what to plant there next year.
I have been very curious about the nearby chicory. They never did bloom, and I could see no sign of flower stalks anywhere. Where there any roots? I decided to dig one up to find out. I used the handle-less garden for to do it.
It took a lot of wrestling and loosening of soil all around a single plant before I could finally pull it up.
So this is what chicory root looks like.
All of the tips seem to have torn off in the soil as I pulled it, even with all the loosening of soil I’d done first.
I need to look up how to process it so we can try it as a drink. I only harvested the one for now.
Okay, this is what I’ve found. After a thorough cleaning, they get cut into uniform pieces and completely dehydrated. Then they are roasted. After roasting, they can be processed into powder or granules for use. One site I found, though, skips the dehydration and the roots are just roasted at low temperatures until crispy.
Looking at photos, it seems they can have very different root shapes. I’m guessing different varieties? Most images show them looking a lot like parsnips; a single large root. Fewer images show them with multiple thin roots like ours has.
After rinsing it off with the hose, I broke off the greens and set them in the compost ring. The greens are supposed to be edible – at least while young – but we have no interest in them that way.
Since I was by the compost ring anyhow, I decided to clear the tomato plants from the bed next to it. I didn’t dig them up, but cut their stems at the bases, and tossed them all onto the compost ring. The next step will be to get all the protective collars out and give them a cleaning for the winter, then pull up all the elms that have been trying to grow in there.
I really, really want to get rid of those Chinese elm, and their billions of seeds.
I was just finishing up when my older daughter came out, looking for me. She had been quite worried about me, given my condition earlier in the day. The pain has gone away completely, and I was feeling like it was never there. I still made sure not to act like I normally would, though, because I can be really stupid that way and easily end up causing more problems for myself!
In talking about what I was doing, I mentioned the tomatoes and chicory, which my daughter had noticed before seeing where I was. As we went back to the old kitchen garden, I started talking about the HUGE beet greens in one of the beds, and how curious I was to see what they were. With some of the – much smaller – beets, we could see some of the roots, and they did not look very large. These, however, had no visible roots.
We were both curious enough to dig up the largest beet plants, and boy did we get a surprise!
Would you look at these giants! (and the three largest red beets, too) I kept my food in the picture for perspective.
These beets are from a package of mixed varieties, with nothing to say what those varieties are. So I have no clue, but these white beets look like sugar beets! We’ve never grown sugar beets before, and only ever seen photos.
What’s curious is how they have all spiraled like that. Even the little one.
From what we can see of what’s still in the bed, there are no other larger red beets, and maybe one more white beet like these.
My daughter helped me with rinsing them off and bringing them inside. The beets went into the kitchen to use right away, while the tomatoes went into the cat free zone. We’ve suddenly had issues with fruit flies and, unfortunately, hat to throw away a lot of the ripening tomatoes. Of the ones that didn’t end up in the compost, they got set in the bin with the newly harvested tomatoes, with paper towel below, and a lid.
Some of the chocolate stripe tomatoes, and the California Wonder bell peppers, however, were quite ready.
Those got put into produce bags and brought to the kitchen for the family to enjoy. I can’t eat tomatoes or peppers, so I’ll have to rely on them for feedback. I’ve already been told that the California Wonder bell peppers are worth growing again. We’ll see if it’s the same for the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes. They are awfully pretty.
So here we have a lovely surprise harvest.
It’s remarkable that I had tomatoes still on the vine in the middle of October!
The Re-Farmer
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A difficult day, but getting better
One more day.
One more day after today, and then I’m in for surgery.
It was not a good day today.
Oddly, for the past couple of days, I have been feeling not just frequently hungry, but famished. I don’t have much appetite, but I make myself eat adequate portions yet, only a couple of hours later, I’m famished again. This morning, I woke feeling so hungry, I felt like I would pass out if I didn’t get some food in me.
I did manage to get the outside cat feeding done first. I later found out my daughters were having a difficult time, too.
I got a head count of 14 this morning, as they enjoyed their cat soup. From the state of the sun room, it looks like raccoons were digging around and moving things that cats just don’t have the bulk to move themselves.
The cats definitely are more comfortable with my cat whisperer daughter than with me. Even my older daughter has been able to walk up to and pet the Shrine Lady. You can see her in the second image, eating cat soup outside. She had been in the sun room but ran out with my moving around, even though I had made no effort to approach her. Meanwhile, my daughters have even managed to pet the remaining calico. I saw her this morning. She ate from the tray under the water bowl house and won’t let me anywhere near her. I ended up not topping up the water bowls because I didn’t want to scare them away by dragging the hose around.
I then made myself a large, high protein breakfast, as per my instructions in the homework I got from the cancer clinic. I had to make myself finish it. That whole “being hungry but having no appetite” thing is unpleasant, to say the least. Unfortunately, my pain levels kept getting worse, to the point I had difficult standing up straight and had to walk… in an… interesting posture, shall we say… to reduce strain on the pertinent areas. My daughter had to do the driving and most of the dashing around today.
Which she was having trouble with, too.
I’d considered leaving a bit later, closer to when the post office closed, as I thought a package might be in. I wanted to give the postal clerk time to process things. I checked tracking and found the expected delivery date had changed from tomorrow to Oct. 21, which is the same date as a second package. The depots the packages were in were also in different provinces. There was no way they’d be in this week at all.
So, we headed out about an hour earlier than I originally planned, but still stopped at the post office to get our regular mail. My daughter had to go in to get the mail while I stayed in the truck. It was good that we stopped, because my daughters got what looked like Government of Canada envelopes, and I got my annual notice about our vehicle renewal registration.
My daughter also came back with the package I had thought might come in today, but was suddenly listed as coming in on Oct. 21. So very strange.
As for my letter about our vehicle registration, it also included my driver’s license renewal reminder for next month. I have “safe driving” discounts, so the $55 for the license had a $15 discount. There was, however, another $20 driver’s license fee added on, so the total is $60. One fee goes to the province for issuing the license. I believe the other goes to the insurance company for processing it.
The monthly payments for the insurance on the truck, meanwhile, have gone down again. I have enough merit points on my license that it’s been going down every year. Not by much, but every little bit helps.
Our next stop was in town at the hardware store. My daughter went in with my cards to ask if they had any Roof Melt and pick up a bucket, if they had any in stock. It turned out that it was too early. They’ll be getting some later. I should remember to call them and ask them to set one aside for me and let me know when the inventory has arrived, so we can come in and get it right away.
From there, we finally made it to the pharmacy, and I had to go in for that one. I had to let my daughter take the walker out for me and get it set up before I could even get out of the truck. I felt a bit guilty about about that, as it was clearly painful for her to get it out of the truck for me. She was caning it the whole time herself, and looked like she could have used a walker of her own!
My daughter had her own prescription to refill, but they couldn’t do it today. Tomorrow is their delivery day and it will be ready for then. Which means she will have it before we leave to spend the night at my brother’s.
Then I talked to them about my husband’s refills, and they weren’t able to fill those today, either. They needed to fax his doctor for more refills on one of them. So I made arrangements for those to be delivered tomorrow as well. The pharmacist that helped me looked them up from last time to see the cost, and they weren’t covered, it seems, by either his private nor the province’s prescription insurance. Either that or his 75% coverage still left him with almost $150 to pay.
Then I asked to get a refill on my T3s, but also asked if I had any other painkiller prescriptions on my file. I knew the tramacet wouldn’t be there, as it was only for 14 days, but I couldn’t remember if I still had tramadol available.
I did not.
That’s okay. I just had to wait about 20 minutes to get my 3 month’s worth of T3s. That was less than $45 for the 3 months, after insurance covering 75%.
During this whole time, I was heavily relying on my walker, even as something to lean against while sitting on one of their very comfortable waiting area chairs.
We had one more stop before going home, this time at the grocery store. My husband needed distilled water, which happened to be on sale, so it worked out to be less than what it would have cost at Walmart, for his four 4L jugs. He requested some “healthy crunchies”, which is never easy to find. He was happy with what I managed to find, though. Since I’m supposed to be low carb/high protein, I found some snack meats for both of us – also on sale, which was nice. Since we’re all going to be having much to deal with over the next while, I ended up getting boxed cereal for all of us – all on sale – even though I won’t actually be able to eat any of it for a while. My daughter remembered that we had not picked up pasta at Costco, and some brands were on sale, so we got a few packages. It was a good sale, so there wasn’t much choice left on the shelf. There was a really good sale on a brand of pasta sauce, too, but those shelves were completely empty! Even with all the discounts, it still came out to just over $100, but it came out of my husband’s budget, not our regular grocery budget, which was nice.
Thankfully, by the time we were done there, I was finally starting to feel a bit better and the pain was slowly starting to pass. Which is good, because my daughter was in so much pain that she was trying – and failing – to hide, I could get the walker into the truck myself. Normally, with heavier stuff like the water bottles to bring in, we would have backed up to the house to unload, but my daughter said she wasn’t up to getting back into the cab again to park in the garage, and she didn’t want me driving, so she parked straight into the garage. Thankfully, I have this convenient walker and I used that to carry the heaviest bag with the water bottles, along with another bag, to the house with it.
I did stop along the way to check out the sunflowers.
The Mammoth sunflowers are still blooming, and are pretty much the only thing left for the pollinators (the alpine strawberries are also still blooming). Today is a bit warmer, but it’s still cool enough that the pollinators weren’t moving very much!
The plan had been to take advantage of today’s warmer weather to get things done outside, but that’s not working out. Both my daughters are having issues preventing them from physically doing the stuff today. As for myself, while the pain has finally passed by the time I started writing this, if I try to do any of this stuff myself, it would be back again in a very short time; probably worse. I’ll be heading out to do the outside cat feeding soon and will at least walk around the yard to get some fresh air and sunshine, but that’s pretty much my limit right now.
One more day.
One more day of this, then it’s surgery day! I am so looking forward to it! If all goes to plan, I’ll have my 6 week recovery period, and then I’m going to once again be the most able bodied person in the household again. 😄 By then it will be December, though. Anything we don’t manage to get done in the garden by then will have to wait until spring, unless we have a ludicrously mild winter. Which is possible. We’ve had them before. I recall seeing a local photo, taken in the early 1880’s, of farmers plowing their fields – on Christmas Eve!
A thought occurred to me, though. My daughters both have appointments in the city on November 3 and 4. My older daughter’s appointment is at the Women’s hospital. The original plan had been that I would drop them off, then leave the downtown area and hang out at a shopping area, with free parking, until they messaged me to come get them.
I will still be restricted from driving at that point. Which means we could park where I did last time and I would keep adding $2 to the machine ever half hour until they are done. Or my daughter would have to drive around the maze of streets to find a parking spot and we all walk over, which I would be very limited in doing. Or we would drop off my oldest daughter and my younger daughter would drive us to a shopping area with free parking and stay with me. The hospital has free wifi, so my older daughter, who has a phone but no plan and doesn’t want one, could message us to come back for her.
For her sister’s appointment, the creepy clinic does at least have a whole 3 free parking spots available, just behind the building.
It’s frustrating that we haven’t been able to get my younger daughter her full license by now, and she has to have someone with a full license beside her when she drives. We can’t use our truck for her road test, with the various dashboard lights on. We know what they are on for, but the tester can’t accept that. She has to get 2 hours with a driving instructor before she can do a road test, and we’ve heard of places where they do the 2 hours and then the road test is booked for right after, using the driving school’s vehicle, but there is no one local that does that.
Her sister, meanwhile, can’t even take the written test until she gets her new glasses prescription and finally gets new glasses, and a road test isn’t going to happen until after she has her own surgery. Whenever that will be. Same surgery as what I’m getting in a couple of days, but they’re talking about a 6 month wait, still. Somehow, she’s not considered as urgent as me, even though it nearly killed her.
Bizarre.
But I digress.
Time to go outside and feed some kitties for the evening.
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2026 Garden: we have parsnips!
This is the first year I’ve tried to grow parsnips, and it was not planned. They went were something else had failed.
They grew incredibly well – at least from what we could see. Huge greenery that got so tall, it grew through the higher raised bed cover we had on this bed, because it’s strong enough to hold protective plastic or netting, plus the weight of cats. For the past while, it was just the wire, nothing else, to keep cats out in general. Once I removed that, not long ago, in preparation for harvesting, the parsnip greens were so tall, the stems on the outside flopped over and couldn’t hold themselves up without the wire.
What I couldn’t see was parsnips.
I had tried probing around the surface of the soil, but could neither see nor feel any roots. I tried pulling some up at one end, some time ago, and there was basically nothing. I was prepared to have a whole lot of paltry roots of the sort I see when carrots or radishes bolt, though no parsnips bolted.
With Thanksgiving dinner happening tomorrow, as I was covering the self seeded tomatoes for the night, I decided to try and harvest some parsnips to go with the carrots my daughter was digging up. She had the garden fork, and the spades are all by the haskaps, so I tried with the flat blade of the ice chipper, first, thinking to loosen the soil beside the parsnips so I could pull them without just tearing the greens right off.
The first thing I noted was there was definitely something there. Not near the surface at all, though. I ended up switching to the tines of an old garden fork that the handle had broken off long ago. We meant to get a new handle and simply forgot. I found it while cleaning up around the house in preparation for winter. The lack of a handle actually came in handy in a raised bed.
It worked much better, though I found I still couldn’t get deep enough!
Yes, we got parsnips!
You can see a couple with tips that broke off because they were deeper than I’d been able to loosen the soil, as well as some surface damage from the tines. The soil surface was about an inch above the tops of the roots. No wonder we couldn’t see them!
I wonder if I’ll find the same thing when we start digging up the beets, growing in the same bed?
This is all I picked for today. Parsnips and carrots can both handle frost, so there’s no hurry to harvest them all. Same with the bunching onions we also picked, to go with our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. I forgot to take the turkey out early enough to thaw, so we’re going to have a pork roast, instead. 😄
All this was done after we did a little stock up trip at Walmart, since we weren’t up to doing Costco, while recovering from colds, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving! We will just make sure to do it on Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest, since my daughter and I will be spending Thursday night at my brothers before my surgery in the city on Friday morning.
We need to be pretty organized ahead of time.
We were starting to run out of things, though, so the Walmart trip had to be done today, if only it the smaller one that’s closer.
Stock up post, coming up, next!
The Re-Farmer
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More transplants, and I have a date!
This morning I was feeling rather well, while my daughters are both still fighting colds, so I decided to do the morning cat feeding.
Which turned out to already be done, except for the cat soup! I never heard my older daughter go out to do the feeding. She doesn’t do the cat soup part, though, so the cats were happy to see me. 😄
I counted 12 this morning. I did not see the calico, anywhere.
I was still feeling good so I stayed outside, uncovering the tomatoes for the day. Tonight is supposed to be quite a bit warmer than the past few nights, so they won’t need covering tonight. Then I went to check on the haskaps and water the remaining transplants in the trays.
When I got there, I decided to sort through the trays with the spruce saplings. I took out all the empty pots and dead ones, and set all the remaining living saplings together.
I refilled four trays of 18, plus there were another 8 in little pots that fit the trays and one more in a larger pot, making for a total of 81. !!!! These are what’s left from the what my SIL could fit into the back of her car, too, and there would have been room for probably 10 trays. Granted, none of them would have been full of live plants like these sorted ones, but that’s still a LOT of saplings! My brother has ideas on where to try planting these.
Any pots that still had soil in them got emptied into a couple other trays I had brought over. Almost all the little pots were pretty much disintegrating.
Then I checked on the haskap trays and found them quite windblown again. They are so tall in those little pots, all it takes is a stiff breeze to knock them out, even though they are in trays designed to hold each pot individually.
I decided to plant in the gaps among the silver buffalo berry, which has the same spacing requirements as the haskap.
They didn’t need very big holes but in this area, I was digging up mostly wood chip mulch and soil filled with grass and weed roots. So I used most of the soil from the pots to make up for it. Then I made sure they were all clearly marked and visible, using some of the posts and reflectors that came along with the drip irrigation system supplies.
It ended up being a group of two at the south end of the silver buffalo berry rows, which is in the first image above, and a group of three at the north end, which you can see in the second image. That puts us at 95 planted haskaps now.
With the extra length of the repaired hose, I was able to go around the block of large transplanted haskaps and just reach the furthest of today’s transplants. At some point, I want to set sturdy posts at the ends of each row, to make sure hoses don’t end up dragging into the stems and damaging things.
That done, the hose got dragged around to the trays and they got a good watering. Which is when my older daughter came out to check on me. She had tried messaging me when she realized I wasn’t in the house, but I was making too much noise to hear it come in. She wanted to make sure I hadn’t tripped and fallen (again) or something like that!
Once the watering was done, I headed back inside and, just as I was going into my office, my pocket started singing.
I am so not used to my cell phone actually getting calls.
It was the women’s hospital.
I have a surgery date!
In 8 days!
I got all my instructions on various things. I need to be there for 9am, which means we would need to be on the road by 7am. Or earlier, considering construction, then trying to find parking. They do have parkades near the hospital, but I’ve already been warned off of those, as they are difficult to navigate in a pick up truck.
Anyhow. I need to start fasting at midnight the night before, fluids only until 7am, then no fluids, either. Even with fluids, the options are black coffee, plain tea (no milk, cream, sugar…), water and, if I wanted to have juice, only apple juice. No other kind of juice.
I got my other instructions on where to go and how to get in. It sounds like I’ll be on the same floor that my older daughter was in after she got transferred there from the ER across the street.
I am quite thrilled to have a date, and that it’s so close.
We still have to work out the details on getting there, including considering what our options are if I end up spending the night instead of being discharged the same day, which is what they prefer to do.
So that is done.
I then spent some time on the computer, trying to figure things out at Canada Revenue. I couldn’t confirm that I still had my disability tax credit active, and was curious about it because my husband and I both got letters about our disability benefit. It turns out the letters were for something different. There is a Canada Disability Benefit, that would be on top of the Disability Tax Credit. Potentially an extra $2400 at tax time. Meanwhile, my husband still hasn’t got his DTC because his expired and we had to do the paperwork all over again. I was able to apply for the CDB over the phone, but the website said I could apply for the DTC online, which shouldn’t have been there if I was already approved for it. Right?
I had to stop part way through as I could feel pain levels coming back, so I took my T3s early and tried lying down. Which turned out to be a good decision. It was another 3 hours before I was feeling well enough to get up again, but taking the painkillers right away, instead of waiting another hour for my alarm to go off, seemed to make a difference.
Once I was up and about again, I still had time to phone the CRA and actually talked to a human being. He was able to confirm that yes, I’m set up with the DTC until 2030, so I don’t need to apply all over again.
Then I was back on the website trying to find why I didn’t get the grocery rebate that was supposed to be deposited on Monday. These sorts of things get deposited very three months. They call it a grocery rebate now, but it is just the GST rebate under another name (rather like the government says they stopped charging a carbon tax, but all they did was give it a new name, then made a big deal about how they got rid of a tax they didn’t actually get rid of). I had never qualified for the GST rebate before, nor did my husband. Apparently, he makes “too much money” on disability. ???
So I finally found it and it turns out the deposit I got three months ago was the annual amount I qualified for.
It was just over $130.
For the year.
That’s what our government thinks is supposed to help with groceries – after they artificially inflated the cost of groceries with all those hidden carbon taxes. Oh, and the tariffs they keep putting on things, then blaming the US for our high prices. Meanwhile, we’re currently at something like 1 in 20 Canadians now relying on food banks.
*sigh*
I did at least get things straightened out at Canada Revenue.
While lying down helped, I’m still dealing with pain issues, so I think that’ll be it for me today. My daughters just took care of the evening cat feeding, which I usually try to do. Ah, well.
After next week, I should be in recovery for 6 weeks, and then all of this should no longer be an issue. They’ll be sending my lady parts for testing to see what stage the cancer was at but everyone is pretty confident this got caught early and no further treatment would be expected. By then, we’ll be going into our winter “hibernation” period, and by spring I should be fully recovered and back to being able to do manual labour outside again!
If all goes well, of course.
The Re-Farmer
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Our 2026 Garden: survivors and a little October harvest
Today turned out to be a rather nice day, that none of us really got to take advantage of.
I found myself awake at 4am and wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so I did the morning cat feeding. Which turned out to be greatly appreciated, as both my daughters were feeling quite sick with colds.
They stayed well away from my and my husband!
I did wake with a sore throat, which could also have been from sleeping with my mouth open, but I’m going to be proactive to try and avoid getting a cold. The last thing I need is for the cancer clinic to call me with a date and time for my surgery, then having to cancel it because of a cold!
The outside cats were quite happy this morning, as I made their cat soup with a couple of little cans of donated wet cat food as well as some cat milk and soaked kibble. We have so many bags of donated cat treats, I ended up scatting three (small) bags of treats all over.
I only saw 11 cats. I did not see Sprout (Sprig?) at all. Hopefully, she came by later. I did get to pet the shrine kitten, though, who no longer eats at the shrine feeding station at all anymore. There is a particular tray she prefers to eat from. The problem with that, though, is that there’s usually four other older cats insisting on eating from that tray, too, even though there are so many others around, scarfing down the food, and she doesn’t get as much. She doesn’t seem to want to eat out of any of the other trays for some reason.
After taking care of the kitties, I stayed out to enjoy the morning and do some light work in the old kitchen garden. I uncovered the self seeded Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and had a chance to give them a good look.
They are doing remarkably well.
Hidden in the thickest greenery, there are tomatoes ripening on the vine!
The frost cloth isn’t long enough to completely cover one end, so the branches there were more frost damaged. I broke off the most damage branches, and found a number of little green tomatoes that had fallen off. So I picked them, which you can see in the second image, and brought them inside to ripen. Between the frost cloth and the more sheltered position in this bed, these tomato plants are protected enough from the colder nights that they’re not being killed off. I’m quite impressed!
After that, I finally removed the cover over the beets and parsnips, and the herb bed. The herb bed was more difficult to remove, as the oregano on one side had grown through the chicken wire quite thickly. I managed to get it off without uprooting anything.
Then I started working on the summer squash, removing all the wire garden ties securing the stalks to their vertical bamboo stake supports, then the ones holding the ends of the woven horizontal supports together, before finally pulling them all up. I was able to make a couple of bundles of 10 stakes all the same length, with the garden wire to secure them. Then I did my usual morning rounds, checking on the other garden beds and the haskaps. With the high winds we had, a lot of the smaller ones in the trays were blown right out, so those got fixed, then watered. I made sure to water the spruce saplings, too. Those little pots will dry out fast.
I didn’t try to take down other covers and rods on other beds yet. The netting and clear vinyl sheets are something I will wait to have a second person help with. With the winds we’ve been having, it’s rather difficult to fold and roll them up for winter storage with just one person.
That done, I headed back in and tried to go back to sleep.
It didn’t work.
I did send a bit of a list to the girls of what I’d gotten done, and what needed to be done with them, mentioning that all the transplanted haskaps would need a deep watering.
I also found an email update on my FIL’s condition. He is, unfortunately, deteriorating and it’s looking like he is not going to be around much longer. His dementia is failing particularly fast, and he has been “sundowning” by the end of the day, talking about things like going to see his parents. They passed away decades ago. It’s been particularly hard on my husband, as he physically can’t make the trip to see his father, and now it seems he won’t even be able to talk to him on the phone. His father is unlikely to even know who he is.
It does make me appreciate just how well my mother is doing.
My SIL messaged to check on me and how I was doing, and we chatted for a fair bit before I finally gave up on lying down. I had intended to go back outside again in the afternoon, but the pain levels suddenly kicked in and I ended up having to lie down again. My daughters, sick as they were, headed outside and deep watered the haskap.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to sleep, because I kept getting notifications! I got some texts from my sister, letting me know she had visited my mother. She was updating me when the phone rang – and it was my mother! She wanted to know how things had gone yesterday. It was a mostly good call, though she did try to go on about how my brother should be doing stuff around here, not us, because he’s a man and we women shouldn’t be doing things like planting trees. Which is bizarre, since she planted many, many trees over the years! (Mostly in terrible places! 😄) She did start talking about how my brother has many important responsibilities, both at work and at home, and how he goes out of province to visit the grandsons, etc. Then, much to my shock, she switched to Polish and said a blessing on him for good health and a long life. My mother rather hates my brother and he can never do anything good enough for her, so when she does stuff like this, it makes me suspicious. She seemed to be genuine, though.
By then, a few hours had gone by and my pain levels finally eased and I did finally make it outside. I meant to just walk around and check on things but, of course, I found small things that I could do.
Including getting a small harvest.
In the East garden bed where I’d planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, I was able to dig up these.
A couple of them were self seeded, while the others were the only ones that germinated from the older seed tape I’d made with them a couple of years ago.
While checking things out in the main garden area, I tried digging up some of the Daikon radish that all bolted. There were no radish roots at all in the ones I dug up. Just the woody material that happens when they bolt, instead.
I did, however, dig up a few Red Bearded bunching onions.
Just enough for today.
As I write this, I’ve got a pork stew going in the Instant Pot, with all these carrots and onions, plus the last of the summer squash I’d picked before the frost got them, along with our own potatoes and our own garlic. The liquid is gelled meat juices from the last of the big brisket I got a while back, cut into individual size roasts that my daughter seasoned well and slow roasted, low and slow, for something like three hours.
I am quite looking forward to it! We don’t have a lot from the garden this year, but we at least have enough for a few meals. Which is better than nothing!
I’m just really appreciating the fact that I was able to harvest anything at all, in October. Looking ahead on the 10 day forecast, we’ve got some mild weather for the next while, and even another day with an expected high of 20C/68F! Things are supposed to be cooler after that, but still relatively mild. The ground isn’t going to freeze for a while, yet. Right now, my time limit is not the weather anymore, but my surgery date. After the surgery, I’m out of commission for 6 weeks, so the more I can get done before the surgery the better, though my daughters will be taking over a lot of things as they are able.
Oh! What is that beeping I hear?
’tis the Instant Pot, finished cooking the stew and now depressurizing.
This is going to be good!
The Re-Farmer
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The longest half hour, ever…
Well, this was a day!
Thanks to my SIL offering to drop us off at the hospital the cancer clinic is in, we didn’t have to leave as early as originally planned, but it was still early enough to see this.
It’s a bit shaky, since I put my phone’s camera on the night setting and had to try and hold still for several seconds, since I had nothing I could use as a tripod. Still, it captured the image quite well, including the stunning deep blue of the sky before the sun rose some 15 minutes later.
Once on the road, we took the highway past our place first, which meant we had a town to drive through. We stopped for gas, because I didn’t want to go below a half tank.
$50 at $1.799/L added a quarter tank. *sigh*
The route we took allowed us to bypass all the construction, which was really important, though we did get stuck behind someone doing 90kph in a 100kph zone for quite a while. My daughter kept my SIL updated on our progress the whole way so, when we got there, she was outside and ready to go. All we had to do was park in their driveway and transfer my walker over. Something I almost forgot to bring along and, when I remembered, considered not bringing, since I was feeling so well.
I am so glad I brought it along, just in case.
From their place, the drive to the hospital was pretty straightforward. It meant going through the heart of downtown and traffic was heavy, but she got us there with about 10 minutes to spare! Thankfully, she knows the hospital well (having spent quite a bit of time going there herself for various reasons over the years) and knew which doors were the ER doors she needed to drop me off at, rather than the ones I was used to and through were the ER doors for some reason.
Once there, my daughter got my walker out and my SIL headed out to find somewhere to stay. I was told the appointment should take about half an hour, so we figured it wouldn’t be long before we could message her to pick us up.
Ha!
The woman who called me with the appointment time and instructions (and gave me a time frame) said to use the doors south of the ER doors. I was expecting a completely different set of doors, but there weren’t any. So we went into what we thought were the ER doors to look for instructions. It turned out they were the correct doors to go into, and we immediately saw direction bubbles and arrows on the floor for various places, including the cancer clinic.
Bonus!
We got to the registration desk and checked in, then sat in the waiting room. Before long, I was called in. I had my phone in my hand, so I was able to check the time, and it was exactly my appointment time!
We ended up in the room for about 3 hours.
First, the nurse that got me from the waiting room took my weight and height. When she told me my height, I told her, nope. That’s not right! I took off my shoes. It turns out my shoes added a full inch to my height. 😄
From there, I was taken to an examination room and she started to fill out forms and give me information, including a sheet with the names and photos of the team that I will be seeing. There was the specific doctor I was told I’d be seeing, but I would be able to see any member of the team during follow up visits and they’d all be fully informed about my file. My daughter was with me, which is great because she’s been with me with other visits and can sometimes remember details I forget to mention.
Once she was done, someone else from the team came in and talked with me some more. Then she left, and the nurse came back. Then the second woman came back, along with a guy. More talking ensued.
Something I found interesting was how many different people started out by asking me “do you know why you’re here?” After a while, my knee-jerk reaction was to think this was supposed to be some sort of trick question.
I got so, so many questions about my health background. What past surgeries have I had. What past health issues have I had. What tests have I had over the years. When talking about specific past tests I’ve had, I kept saying how they always came back normal, showed no problems, etc. By the end of it, I got comments about how great my overall health has been and I just had to joke about being the healthiest sick person around! Especially during times when we were trying to find the cause of something, like my chronic cough (which has pretty much gone away on its own), and everything kept testing normal.
We never did find out the reason for that cough.
I did get to explain the timeline of when all this started, and the connection to that anti-inflammatory I had been taking, and what happened when I stopped taking it.
Eventually, though, I had to have a physical examination, which was to be done by the guy, with the second woman assisting.
It was a decidedly invasive examination. Which I expected but, gosh, it really sucks.
They both left long enough for me to get into a gown, then change back into my clothes, then came back to give me the final information they are currently able to. I’m doing to get a dye that will help them map my lymph nodes to see which ones are directly being used by my uterus. If that works, they will remove only those nodes. If the mapping doesn’t show them any specific nodes, they’ll remove them all, along with my uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and cervice.
Also, it’s going to be done by a robot.
Yeah, my daughter and I started geeking out.
The surgeon will be controlling the robot arms directly, and that will be used for an internal procedure. If they find things are scarred or attached in unexpected ways, they might need to switch to an external incision to do the job.
I got all the usual warnings of risks and possible negative outcomes.
If all goes well, I’ll be going home on the same day.
At this point, the waiting list for this is quite short, and the OR schedule is not overly crowded. I might actually get in within a week, but more likely within 2 weeks. I’ll be getting a phone call with the exact date and time, and detailed instructions. They also gave me a 4 page form to fill out with more historical information – some going back so far, I couldn’t even give the level of detail the form requested. Like the exact dates for some of them, or even which hospital I’d gone to, that long ago.
Interestingly, one of the instructions I was given is, in the days before the surgery, they want me eating a high carb diet. After the surgery, they want me on a high protein diet. I’ve never had anyone give me diet instructions around a surgery before!
After going over all that and signing the consent forms, they left and the first nurse came back with more forms. She had requisition forms for pre-op lab work, EKG and chest X-rays. After I finished filling out the 4 page form, I had to give that to the receptionist, then I could do all the rest, right there, rather than figure out when to get them done in one of the surrounding towns after we got home.
The sheet for the lab work had almost everything checked off on it! I was to do the EKG next but by then it was noon, and they were closed for an hour. Which worked out because I could get the X-rays done while waiting.
We were so glad for the volunteers at this hospital that are available to take people where they need to go. Even with all the floor markings and signs everywhere, the place is a maze and some things just weren’t obvious. Like having to go to the admissions desk on one floor to get registered before going to where the EKGs are done, on another floor. Altogether, we went to three floors to get it all done.
Meanwhile, my SIL was waiting this whole time. She did find somewhere she could go and wait, but we didn’t expect things to go this long, and she ended up spending a lot of time just sitting in her car! My daughter kept her and the family updated frequently, during those times when I wasn’t able to.
While the X-rays were done very quickly, the time taken to walk around, check in, then wait until being called really added to things.
Unfortunately, after that physical exam, the pain levels started kicking on, and I was so, so glad I brought that walker!! I did have T3s with me to take, but I honestly don’t think they made a difference. It just kept getting worse until I was having difficulties sitting up straight in waiting room chairs and had to lean into my walker.
By the time the EKG was done, more than an hour after I’d taken the painkillers, the pain levels started to decrease. When we headed outside to wait for my SIL to come around and pick us up, it had dropped significantly.
My SIL, angel that she is, had said she planned to take us out for breakfast after we were done.
It was getting close to 3pm by the time she got us to a restaurant. Before we’d left, I had made sure to grab an apple and some cheese for breakfast, which was at about 6:30am. During the drive, before 7:30am, my daughter had some beef jerky that we keep in the truck. That was all we’d eaten all day. We were pretty famished by then!
That “half hour” appointment ended up being about 5 hours!
Longest half hour, ever.
From there, she drove us to her place and we just transferred the walker over and said our goodbyes right away, and she was finally able to go home!
My SIL is such a saint.
Since it was pretty much on the way from their place, we had planned on stopping at a Canadian Tire and a Walmart in the smaller city on the way home. I was feeling well enough that we could still do that.
Canadian Tire was our first stop, where I was able to return the two 1/2 inch Quick Connect repair kits my brother had picked up for me and picked up a 5/8 inch set, with the female coupling attachment, which was not included in the kits my brother had picked up. That one little piece and the larger size almost doubled the price!
That done, we crossed the street to the Walmart to pick up a few groceries and some kibble for the inside cats, since I don’t know when we’ll finally do that Costco run. Between focusing on getting those haskaps transplanted and my pain levels, it just keeps getting delayed. Of course, now I will be waiting on a phone call for a surgery date, too. This time, though, they do have permission to talk to my husband about anything, so even if I’m not home, they can give the information to him. In theory, they could call my cell phone but there’s no way I’d be able to make notes while I’m out and about.
For me, I had my pain levels increase, then decrease, over the hours of those 5 hours. My daughter, however, is fighting a cold and had her own pain issues to deal with. By the time we were done and heading home, she was having trouble walking, even with her cane, and had pretty much lost her voice entirely!
Once home and everything was unloaded and put away, I did go outside for a while. After all that time sitting on waiting room chairs or lying on examination tables, I really, really wanted to get outside in the fresh air and just walk around.
I ended up watering the remaining trees in the trays. We had high winds again and a lot of them had been blown right out!
Then I remembered the Quick connect repair kit. With that kit, it took about 10 seconds to repair the broken hose. Then I got the metal hose out from all the hoses we’ve got for watering the trees and put the repairs hose back on. The repaired hose is about 30 feet longer than the metal one, which is useful to reach the transplants. Especially once we are able to set some of the little ones into the blank spots where silver buffalo berry didn’t make it, as those are even further from the house. It might still not be enough, since I will not try to run the hose through the rows of transplanted haskap, but there is still the old rain barrel and a watering can out there that can be used, if necessary.
Then, because I just couldn’t help myself, I also sorted the support stakes that we used to mark the spaces and started some bundles of 10, getting ready to put them away for the winter.
All of this was very light stuff, with no risk of overdoing it and causing pain levels to increase.
I’m going to be going stir crazy after the surgery, though. I will be on 6 weeks of recovery restrictions. No lifting. No manual labour. Not even light manual labour. I won’t be able to do much more than simply walk around, and even that will be limited.
I’m already chafing at my limitations now.
Still, it’ll only be for 6 weeks.
Which should be until around the end of November. I won’t be able to do any of the fall clean up and winterizing outside.
*sigh*
Ah, well.
The girls will do as much as they are able to, while working around their own pain levels, and some things will just have to wait for spring.
Just not the garlic. Those have to go in this month. In fact, looking at the overnight temperatures for the next while, they should probably be planted within the next week to 10 days, and we don’t even have a bed prepared for them yet!
Little by little, it’ll get done. We just do what we can!
The Re-Farmer
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Ninety
Today has been a lovely day, though it is getting quite windy right now.
A perfect day to get things done, and we were even feeling well enough to do it.
The first order of business was a trip to the general store to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, and check the mail.
We had a surprise waiting for us.
This box had one side completely covered in stamps, plus two ends! This was the alternate chair my husband ordered to replace his broken one, after his last order completely failed. It’s more of a frame that holds and exercise ball that acts as a seat. It came with one that was remarkably small. We didn’t expect one to come with the chair, and my husband already had an exercise ball – a larger one, more durable one – to use on it.
So far, he’s quite happy with it. He replaced the wheels with the heavy duty ones he’d put on the broken chair, right away. The new chair has 4 legs, though, and the broken office chair has 5, so we have a spare. For now, the new chair’s wheels are on the broken chair. Once we wrangle it to the junk pile for hauling to the dump, we will keep all the wheels. The ones from the new chair can be locked, which is nice. I’m sure we’ll find a use for them at some point. For now, the old chair is waiting in the dining room.
The cats like it.
I got a picture of Big Rig on it, but several cats have been taking turns napping on the seat! 😄
After we got home from the post office, and my daughter refilled the kibble bin for the outside cats, she headed straight for the food forest to start digging. By the time I joined her, she had dug another 5 holes for the 10 large potted transplants. While she continued digging, I watered the finished holes, then started getting the haskap out of their pots and setting them into the watered holes. After a while, my older daughter came out and she buried the root balls, and we kept that up until all 10 were in the ground.
While my older daughter finished burying the root balls, my younger daughter started to water them. With the remaining marked spaces, I raked the spaces that were deep tilled level again. That done, I grabbed the largest, strongest looking plants from the trays and laid them out at each spot before digging small holes with a hand trowel in the leveled spots for them.
There wasn’t enough for all three of us to do at that point, so my older daughter went back inside to work on commissions while my younger daughter kept watering, including the smaller holes I’d dug. While she did that, I started sorting through the remaining plants, pulling pots with larger live ones out of the trays until I could start putting them all together again, with no empty spots. There were quite a few empty pots, empty spaces and a few small plants that were beyond saving.
Before I finished that, my daughter finished watering the holes, then went inside. She was already in pain before she started digging, and simply could not bend to work with the smaller plants at all. Which was fine. I was feeling well enough to do it, and got the last 13 spots planted, then finished sorting the trays. The remaining plants needed some very serious watering! In the end, I was able to refill three trays of 18 plants.
I also brought over some taller bamboo stakes and set out one for each smaller transplant, except for the corner that got a stake with a pinwheel on it. The bamboo stakes got water bottles added to their tops to make them more visible, then I used garden wire to secure the stems to the stakes. Being the size they are, this will not only keep them growing straight, but will protect them from snow load in the winter.
Here they all are!
A grid of 90 haskap planted in rows 6′ apart, with each transplant 4′ apart in their rows.
Ninety.
Plus another 54 transplants in the trays. I moved those in between some of the rows, out of the shade of the crab apple trees, which you can see in the second image above.
We have spaces to plant some of them, but not another 54!! I don’t know what we’ll do with the extra!
Then there are the little spruces left over. I have no idea what we’ll do with those!
The trays all got watered well. They had so little soil in each pot, they will dry out quickly. A lot of roots escaped their pots and grew along the bottoms of the trays that are now exposed, which is not a good thing. Nothing we can do about that unless I can find a way to just cover them all with soil until they can be transplanted.
All the pots are garbage. They are too brittle from exposure to be used again.
I was cleaning up when my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers, which I was starting to need by then. I over did it a bit and, as I write this, several hours later, I find I am having difficulty sitting or standing up straight because of it. It’s been worse, but it’s not at all comfortable, that’s for sure!!
Aside from seeing how many more of the little ones we can transplant, we have more to do around the 90 that are in the ground now. We’ll have to go through with the wheelbarrow and pick all the bigger rocks. Once those are removed, we’ll need to rake the loose soil from the digging and level things out. The larger ones will all be getting a water trench made around them. The smaller ones don’t need it, as they are properly below grade in an area large enough to create drainage towards the roots, rather than flowing away into the paths. They will all also need to be watered regularly for their roots to start growing out from the root balls before the ground freezes.
Looking up on how to care for these, one of the biggest issues we can expect to have is problems with birds eating the berries. We won’t be able to set netting over the bushes, which would be the most effective protection. Instead, we will look into setting taller stakes set up all over the area to make “scarecrows”. Most likely with lots of reflective pinwheels and whirligigs, or other reflective things to flap in the wind.
For now, the main thing is done. All those big pots are now transplanted and the marked out space is full. Any other transplants after this is bonus, though if they don’t get in the ground soon, they’re going to die.
I’m definitely paying for it, though. Pushed things a bit hard. Hopefully, things will be better for tomorrow, when I go in for my appointment at the cancer clinic. With my SIL’s offer to drive us in from their place and dropping us off, so we don’t need to hunt for parking, we don’t have to leave quite as early in the morning.
It’s barely past 4pm as I write this, and I am so ready to go to bed right now.
Tomorrow should be interesting.
The Re-Farmer
