After my last post and how little seemed to have been done after all that mowing, when I headed out again this evening, I just had to get pictures from the other side.
In the first photo, you can actually see how little there is left to clear.
It’s also the densest section, so it’s going to take probably just as long to clear that section as it did to clear everything around it.
The fruit trees and bushes by the leaky rain barrel look so much better, now that it’s been weed trimmed and mowed around. Not that you can even see them in the photo! Over time, they will get a wood chip mulch around them, too.
The next picture is taken from the other end of the silver buffaloberry rows, and near the end of the crab apple tree row. That section by the crab apple trees was part of the super dense area, but it is also some of the roughest and uneven soil. When this section was plowed – badly – before we moved out here, there seemed to be some issue with turning the tractor in that corner. This was done by our vandal to “help” my parents. My sister is sure he was drunk when he did it. From the state of things, even after all these years, I think she’s right.
At this end, we will be planting more fruit trees on the north side, around where the newest ones are planted now. Along the east side we will probably be planting raspberry varieties that mature at different rates, so we can have raspberries for many months, along with other berry bushes and some varieties of nuts that grow on bushes, rather than trees. There are few nut trees that can grow where we are, and they can get very large, so those will get planted in the outer yard, as we acquire them.
Aside from feeling better about things after seeing just how little is left to clear in that corner, I got to enjoy some adorableness. My daughters took care feeding the yard cats while I was mowing, so they were all pretty calm.
While walking past the isolation shelter, I spotted a kitten looking back at me. Then another from the hammock.
Altogether, I saw three in the hammock, plus two by the water bowl.
I was considering moving the catio closer to the garage for the garage babies, but it was occupied, so I left it for now.
In the next image in the slideshow above, I managed to get a picture of the absolutely gorgeous little black and white kitten I’d been wondering about earlier, and whether it was a newcomer. I have concluded that is it not a new one; just one that I’m finally able to see well enough to identify it.
Must socialize the babies – and find them forever homes!!!
While I was outside, I could hear some thunder. Some areas of our province was getting tornado warnings, but where we are. Instead, the rain that was supposed to arrive in the wee hours of the morning was expected to hit this evening, instead. Then that changed again, and now we’re supposed to get rain closer to midnight, and it is supposed to keep raining for about four hours.
The littles are happily discovering the perks of being close to the house. They’ve been sleeping on various cat beds all over the place, enjoying reliable access to food and water, and the creche mothers are taking good care of them. Some are still super shy, but even they are getting brave enough to go into the sun room.
I was on the late side getting out this morning. I had a rough night. What little lawn mowing a managed with the push more did more than remind me I hadn’t fully recovered from suddenly getting sick.
It reinjured me.
My left arm, that I injured in a fall more than a month ago, had been feeling fine for awhile. Well enough that I wondered just what we’d be talking about when I see my doctor at the end of the month, to go over the X-rays.
Last night, all the joints were hurting enough that I got my older daughter to come over and rub them down with Voltaren. Only after that could I finally get some sleep. By then it was around 3am.
My left hip has also increasingly an issue. Not so much with pain, but stability. The lack of it! It’s gotten so that I have to sit down to put on my pants, because I can’t stand on my left leg. When taking the two steps from the original part of the house to the addition, I can only step up on my right leg. If I try to step up using my left leg, my hip just gives out.
Something else to talk about when I see my doctor!
With that in mind, I got one of my daughters to help me in the garden at the end of my morning rounds.
When I first got into the old kitchen to start preparing the wet and dry cat food mixture I feed them in the mornings, I spotted one of the white and grey littles, right at the window! This window used to be an exterior window, before the sun room was added on, so the sill on the outside is angled down for any moisture to drain away from the window. It makes it a challenge, but the smaller cats and kittens are still able to get onto it and not slide right off. To see the littles up there – I think the one I saw traded off with a second one while I was filling the kibble bowl – is good progress. They have figured out where the food comes from, and are comfortable with that.
Now if only the garage kittens would come out! They are SO hungry by the time I arrive to feed them, because they don’t come to the house where there is more food, after their bowl is empty. I’m seriously considering moving the isolation shelter closer to the garage, and use it to slowly get them closer to the house. The problem with that it, the littles and the outside yard kittens are already using it regularly.
Maybe the catio would work, instead.
After the cats were fed, I continued my rounds and checking on the garden.
I’m quite happy with what’s happening in the trellis bed. The noodle beans are still stunted, but the sunflowers and pumpkins are looking great!
One pumpkin plant – the one with the pumpkin in a sling – is the biggest of the five, and opened up a couple of massive flowers this morning. There’s just male flowers, though. I’ve been seeing tiny female flowers start to form but, so far, they’ve all shriveled up and fallen off, long before they opened up. So it looks like we’ll get a single pumpkin this year.
In the second image of the slideshow above, you can see the tallest of the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. it has almost reached the height of the top horizontal support for the temporary trellis netting, which is at least 6 1/2 feet from the ground, so about 6 feet from the inside of the bed.
I’m surprised by all those little tomatoes I found when doing a major weeding, some time ago, and transplanted. I’ve since found three more that got missed, but I won’t bother moving those. Some of the transplants are getting surprisingly bed. The largest one is hidden under the leaves of the biggest pumpkin plant! One even has blossoms on it. I suspect that some of them, at least, might be Spoon tomatoes.
Speaking of Spoon tomatoes…
My younger daughter came out to help me pick them. With the instability of my hip, I can only pick from one side, where I can lean against the log wall. My daughter can actually get right into the bed, standing on the mulch in between the melons (which are not really growing, even if some are blooming) and pick the tomatoes on that side of the plants.
Yes, those are grapes! My daughter found the ripest looking clusters. There are lots more, but they are still more on the green side. If my guess is correct, these are Valiant grapes and they should get much bigger, not be the same size as the Spoon tomatoes. Once we figure out a place to transplant them, hopefully they will do better. The vines themselves are doing great where they are, but the fruit is not what it should be.
This is the first time in a couple of years we’ve been able to harvest some grapes before the raccoons ate them all.
Under the colander is a selection of fresh herbs; two types of oregano, two types of thyme, sage, basil, lemon balm and even some dill weed from the self seeded dill that came up among the herbs. I also gathers some walking onion bulbils; we don’t want them to spread beyond where they are now, so the bulbils are for eating, not growing! There’s a small amount of bush beans, some Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes.
At the bottom are some nasturtium seeds. My daughter was admiring the flower bed (the Cosmos are getting so tall!) and asked about the nasturtiums, which are winding down right now. While checking them out, we noticed some of the seeds had started to dry up and fall off the plants. Rather than leave them there to likely rot, we gathered them up. They are now in the cat free zone (the living room) where we are keeping gathered seeds and seed pods to stay cool and dry before they get stored away.
As for the rest of today, I’m not sure what I’ll manage to get done outside. I’ll give myself a chance to rest, but I most likely will just pain killer up and head out later and do as much as I can. We shall see.
I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!
I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.
There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.
I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.
After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.
Good for the digestion.
We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.
Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.
Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.
I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.
They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.
Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.
It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.
I went back to the corn/squash bed to get the formerly trellis fence set up. I set the posts as best I could. They had to go right at the corners for the wire to fit all the way around, so I didn’t have the option of moving them if I hit a root or a rock. So they aren’t quite as deep as they should be.
Once the posts were in, I set the wire back on the built in hooks in the posts, tightening things up as much as possible.
In the first image above, you can see my “door”. I wove a couple of 6′ support stakes through the wire, near the ends. The ends themselves just barely overlap, and I can hook them together a bit. The support stakes are long enough that I can drive them into the soil.
Well. Almost. One of them was hitting something and wouldn’t go any further. Probably a root.
In the second image, I tried to get a view of the top, which is wide open, of course. Ideally, it would be covered.
Ideally, I wouldn’t have to do this at all. Those squash should be sprawling all over, not barely meandering between the corn. I don’t know how big this variety of squash vine normally gets, but the Crespo squash we had last year in this spot spread out far enough to start climbing the cherry trees.
I’m hoping this will work. It should at least keep the cats out. A determined raccoon would get through fairly easily, but I’m hoping they’ll just be too lazy to get through the wire to get at the corn.
We shall see soon enough, I guess. The corn in this bed is developing faster than in the other bed, and there are some really nice looking cobs starting to form!
This morning I collected our largest harvest yet, for this year!
I had some help, too.
When I prepared to transplant the melons, I set up a trellis for them using Dollarama steel fence posts and welded wire mesh salvaged from the old squash tunnel from years ago. When the Spoon tomatoes were planted in the other half of the bed, I use bamboo stakes to make them their own trellis.
Well, with the melons barely growing at all, they’re not going to need the trellis. So, with my daughter’s help, we pulled the posts, with the wire still on them, and moved them over to the corn and Arikara squash bed. It’s loosely set up for now, but the 4′ square bed will get a wire fence around it – the mesh is just long enough! – to hopefully keep the raccoons from getting into the corn, when the cobs are ready. I’ll probably have to put some sort of cover over it, too, or they’ll just climb up and over.
The corn bed has plastic netting around it. Hopefully, they will be dissuaded from the corn rather than tearing their way through.
After moving the melon trellis away, the Spoon tomatoes can now be reached from both sides, so my daughter helped me pick tomatoes on one side, while I did the other.
I’m glad I remembered to bring a separate container for the Spoon tomatoes!
There was also a whole two Royal Burgundy beans to pick, from the three surviving plants. I did pick a small handful of yellow bush beans last night, though, so there was enough to actually use. While checking last night, I noticed some ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and this morning, one was ready to grab.
After that, I dug up some potatoes, then winter sown carrots from the high raised bed.
In the next image in the slide show above, you can see a very wonky potato!
That was from roots.
These potatoes were picked from about the middle of the bed, so at least twenty feet away from the trees. My garden fork was digging up more roots than potatoes.
Those trees have got to go.
Then I remembered we have herbs and stuff, so I went to the old kitchen garden, where I gathers some lemon thyme, lemon balm and oregano. In the winter sown bed, I grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves. I even grabbed some bulbils from the walking onions, since we don’t want them to spread any further.
Once inside, the longest time was spent getting all those little green bits of stem off all those Spoon tomatoes! I also set aside some of the ripest looking ones to collect seeds from, later. Their seeds are so tiny, I’ll have to consider how best to do that!
In the last photo – which looked much better and in focus on my phone, I swear! – it what I made with it. There’s still potatoes and Spoon tomatoes left, plus the one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, but I used up all the carrots, julienned, a handful of bush beans cut small, the onion bulbils and a whole head of garlic. We still have fresh garlic left of the ones that were too far along for curing and winter storage. Then there was the chard and herbs.
When I went into town to get kibble yesterday, I also picked up some chicken legs and thighs that were on sale, which my older daughter prepared last night, so breakfast (brunch?) was the vegetables gathered this morning, plus oven roasted chicken legs.
We did finally get the predicted rain this morning, which made thinning the row of Atomic Red carrots much easier!
I’d manage to space the seeds out pretty well when I planted them, so most of the “thinning” I’ve done until now has been to pull up weeds and sprouted Chinese elm. Which is why what I pulled today looked like this.
They were all much bigger than I expected them to be! They look really small from the surface.
At that size, they’re useable, but too small to peel or even scrub. I washed them off with a hose before bringing them inside, the rinsed, trimmed, and rinses some more. As I write this, they’re soaking in water to try and loosen any last bits of soil stuck to them, before we use them.
Or just eat them as snacks.
They’re not at their best at this stage, of course; they’ll be much sweeter once fully mature. I did make sure to taste one, though – it’s a new variety for us – and they’re still quite good.
As we expand our garden beds, we’ll be growing a lot more carrots, as they are a good storage crop, and such a staple in the kitchen. We’re still trying new varieties, too. Now that we know how well they can do with winter sowing, we’ll be planting some this fall for next year.
In the first photo above, you can see our growing pumpkin now has a sling to support it on the trellis. Or, more accurately, to take the weight off the plastic trellis netting so it won’t snap. The weight is now being held by the vertical supports for the permanent trellis, plus I wrapped garden twist ties around the strand of the netting holding the most weight, to strengthen it and put some of that weight onto the horizontal support bar above.
The next picture is of the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I gathered. I keep getting that name wrong, but I looked up the old post from when I got them as free seeds with an order from Baker Creek, back in 2022, for our 2023 garden.
The seeds in the container are actually from today’s pods I gathered, plus some I gathered earlier, as the pods dried out earlier. We will have plenty of seeds to plant this fall, for next year.
The funny thing is, we’ve never actually grown any of this variety of bok choy. The first year I tried them, they were in the bed by the chain link fence, before we know how destructive those Chinese elm seeds were. The entire bed was completely choked out. Yet, a couple of little bok choy survived and promptly bolted. All of two plants. I left them be and collected the seeds. They got planted last fall, in the “greens” mix of seeds planted in the old kitchen garden.
The problem was, the mix was scatter planted and things were pretty crowded out. I never saw the bok choy until the bolted – again, just a couple of plants – sending their flower stalks up through the mass of kohlrabi leaves. They were able to get much bigger, even being crowded out as they were, and I had a lot more pods to collect once they dried up. The pods were so dry, they started snapping open in my fingers as I tried to collect them. Most of the seeds ended up in my hand, but I’m sure a few ended up on the soil. I finally broke off the flower stalk lower down and brought the whole thing inside. For now, the seeds are in the cooler living room, with the container open to make sure they are completely dry.
When I do the winter sowing this fall, it will be a lot more organizes and planned, know that I know how the different things worked out. These tiny bok choi will be planted where they won’t be hidden or crowded out by other plants, and with protection from cats. Hopefully, next year, we’ll actually be able to harvest some and find out what they taste like!
There might still be some stalks of pods hidden under the kohlrabi leaves, but I definitely got most of them. While looking around, I did a bit of weeding and suddenly realized I was looking at a whole lot of new sprouts that were NOT weeds.
We left more spinach to go to seed than we need, and some of them got so leggy and spread out when they bolted, I pulled them like weeds, and just dropped them as mulch. Well, it looks like those seeds continued to develop, even after the plants were pulled!
We’ll be having an unintended fall spinach crop!
I was really struggling this morning, though. I couldn’t sleep for some reason, and after I did finally sleep, I woke up (was awakened) with this simmering undertone of anger, and it just hasn’t gone away. It didn’t get better after I had breakfast, so I tried for a nap.
It didn’t get better after a nap.
So I’ve asked the girls to take over on various things, but the outside jobs I could have done today, aren’t getting done. My head space is so messed up right now, I can’t even think of which project I would be working on. On top of it all, even though I just bought more kibble during the Walmart trip, it was just one 9kg bag for the inside cats, and another for the outside cats, and we’re already running low. I need to go to the feed store and pick up a couple more 40 pound bags, if I want to last until the first stock up trip at the end of August. I’m in no shape to do it today, but I will have to do it tomorrow.
Weather forecast is now saying we’re going to have more rain tomorrow morning. Maybe. The weather app on my phone was saying thunderstorms starting in the wee hours and ending by late morning. Now, it says no rain at all. The app on my desktop says we’ll get a bit of rain in the late morning, then again in the evening. We’re also supposed to get a lot hotter. It’s going to be topsy turvy temperatures for the next while. Last night, the forecasted low was 10C/50F. We ended up dropping to 8C/46F, instead. I actually got cold last night, and when I did my rounds, I wore a sweater for the first time in months. While not cold enough to need to cover things, anything below 10C/50F is not good for our garden, when everything is so far behind.
Anyhow.
I did head out to do the evening cat feeding earlier than usual as I wanted to make sure the littles hiding under the counter shelf could have a chance to eat without the bigger cats pushing them around. I’ve only seen one or two at a time, so I still don’t know how many are under there. For all I know, one of the moms has moved some of them.
After putting the food out, I did a head count of adult cats.
Five.
Yup. Just five! Not twenty five or thirty five. Just five
Of course, there were a lot more in the morning, but I haven’t been able to do a head count. They move around too much.
I did get a couple of pictures this afternoon, though.
Eyelet couldn’t hear the sound of the food being added to the trays and stayed in his comfy bed, making it easy to get his picture. Syndol REALLY wanted me to be paying attention to him instead of Eyelet, though!
As I write this, I have the critter cam live feed up. I can see one little kitten – the one I found in the garage, and later rescued from following other cats around the yard – running around. I saw a skunk earlier and my husband went to try and check it out, but it went under the counter shelf, instead.
Not as fast as usual, though! It would have come face first with however many kittens are under there.
They seem to have made peace, though, as the skunk’s tail is no longer visible, and he’s all the way under.
*sigh*
I’ve accomplished pretty much nothing today, and I feel like I got hit by a truck. Not pain wise. That’s been so much better since I started the anti-inflammatories. Some of it is just a general malaise. My chronic cough hasn’t been very frequent for some time, but today it’s hitting me again. I’m not coughing a lot, but when I do, it’s bad enough that my old daughter was calling down from upstairs, asking if I was okay – and she was wearing headphones while she worked! My cough is like my throat is being torn up. I spent more than 10 years in two provinces going to different specialists to find the cause of my cough, and none was found, and I finally gave up. Nothing drives a doctor more insane than being a short, fat woman that every test shows as being extremely healthy, other than physical damage, like the OA and bone spurs. Aside from not having the laundry list of fat-people ailments they think I should have, they can’t find the cause of my respiratory issues. After test after normal test, they start looking at me sideways, and thinking I’m making it up. With my new doctor, I haven’t even brought it up. She knows it’s an issue, and it’s all in my file, but I see no point in asking for more tests again. I just live with it.
Still, it’s not my cough that’s causing me issues today. I know part of it is the cats and their destructiveness, which is what woke me up this morning. We just have too many cats in the house, and chances of adoption these days has basically dropped from slim to none. I don’t blame the Cat Lady for getting out of rescue, that’s for sure.
I think that might have something to do with that underlying anger I’m feeling today. I think maybe it’s just caught up to me. We do the best we can, but there are limits, and we’ve passed ours, long ago. I can’t even reach out to the stray and feral rescue group I’ve been following; people are very quick to make assumptions and get nasty. You’d think rescues would be a whole lot of people actually interested in rescuing cats and finding homes for them, not virtue signaling, one upping each other or reporting people to the province to “help”.
Oh, I need to stop. That underlying feeling of anger is bubbling up.
After soooo much wonderful rain yesterday, I really wanted to see how things were going in the garden while doing my rounds.
When I got to the bed with the ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes, I decided to go ahead and harvest them. They’re a touch on the green side, but they will continue to ripen inside. I also grabbed the few bush beans that were available to gather.
I rather like the effect of the tomatoes reflected in the stainless steel bowl I put them in!
The next photo is of the one developing pumpkin that I hand pollinated; there’s another on that vine, but its flower has now opened yet. I’ve added support to the vine itself, to take some of the weight off the plastic trellis netting, but the pumpkin has already gotten heavier enough to start pulling down on it again. We will construct a sling for it soon. The vine can handle the weight. The temporary plastic trellis netting cannot.
The Hopi Black Dye sunflowers have had a lovely growth spurt and are getting quite tall. They should have seed heads by now, though, so it’s unlikely we will get anything to harvest. Even the Red Noodle beans have started to show signs of growth. Just barely. I don’t expect them to even start climbing the trellis before the growing season is done.
Of course, I checked on the new food forest transplants. Especially the Opal plum, with its fresh new growth.
And newly missing leaves.
I guess all that rain washed off the anti-deer spray I used on it, and the protective frame.
I went and got the piece of chicken wire I’d used to try and protect the Albion strawberries last year. It turned out to be just long enough to to around the frame. This, at least, the deer will not be able to get through!
The big crab apple tree that has the small but delicious apples is just reaching its peak period. Many of the apples are looking very red right now, though there are still plenty that aren’t ripe yet, among them. We could probably start harvesting some crab apples now, though they’re so small, it’s a lot more work to use them for any cooking. I grab a few on the way by to munch on as I do my morning rounds.
I was debating which project to work on today, but everything it still so wet, I might just stick to indoor projects and start some laundry. No hanging on the line, today, even though we’re not expecting rain. It’s still too humid. We’re also still under an air quality warning for smoke, though we are now on condition yellow instead of condition red.
We have had enough rain that even the grass has come out of dormancy and had started to grow again. We might even have lawn to mow, instead of having just a few patches growing. The overgrown area where the old garden used to be is going to need cleaning up soon. I’d left the alfalfa that was coming up to bloom for any pollinators we might have – there’s a lot less these days, than in the spring, probably because of all the smoke. Their bloom time is ending now, and the burdock is starting to get big, will start flowering soon, so we need to cut all that back before the burrs get too nasty. We might be able to start on that tomorrow. Depending on how things go today, I should be able to go in with the loppers and cut back the poplars saplings that are trying to take over.
I didn’t get a picture but the rain came down so yard yesterday that the almost white lengths of maple used in the wattle weave bed in progress are now grey with splattered soil from inside the bed! Which is saying something, since the soil is all pulled into the middle, to make room to work on the wattle weaving.
According to the forecast, today and tomorrow are going to reach a relatively cool high of 19C/66F, but the day after, we’re expected to scream up to a high of 28C/82F, with a possible small rainfall in the early evening. Then its supposed to drop down to more humane highs, hovering around 20C/68F, for the next while. No more rain, though. The monthly forecasts sees only one more rainfall between tomorrow and the end of the month. It also says we can expect the temperatures to climb up to 31C/88F on the last day of the month, and 33C/91F by Sept. 1st.
We’ll see what actually happens.
If we’re going to get any sort of harvest with the winter squash or pole beans, we need to have all of September to be warm. Especially the overnight temperatures, and that’s where things get dicey.
What this does show me is that, as we build our raised beds, we’ll have to think ahead to including ways we can cover them to protect them during cold nights, or even create mini greenhouses, with frames that can go over relatively tall plants. I couldn’t cover the radish bushes to protect them from the deer, for example, because none of the covers I have had room for them, except the box frame which is currently protecting the corn bed. We are working to keep the same dimensions on all the beds, so the covers can be interchangeable. The beds in the East yard are all 3’x9′, and that’s the size we’re working with. The log beds in the main garden area will all be 4′ wide on the outside which, with the thickness of the logs, means about 3′ of growing space inside. They will all be 18′ long, so two covers will fit on each bed. Once we have chickens, some of those covers will be mobile chicken coops, too, so we can let the chickens clean up and fertilize the beds after they’ve been harvested from.
Every year has been a different gardening year – especially weather wise! – and every year, we learn a bit more of what conditions we can expect, and can plan around in the future.
That is a process I expect will never quite end, and I’m okay with that!
In the first photo of the above slide show, you can see more of the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes are ripening. There are more than what’s visible in the frame of the photo.
The second photo is of some wonderful new leaves coming up on the Opal plum, recovering from what the deer ate.
Last of all is a developing pumpkin. Sir Robin was happy to pose for size reference. 😄
We apparently had rain not long before I went out this morning, so no garden watering needed. In the evening, though, I did water the things that need it the most; the winter and summer squash! I did the melons, to, even though I really don’t see any chance of them growing. Some are blooming, though, so you never know!
Late this morning, I headed out to meet my brother, SIL and their grandkids for a surprise lunch with my mother. That turned out not at all as planned, but it worked out in the end. I brought along several take out containers of the turkey and vegetable soup I made in the slow cooker yesterday (I had it for my breakfast, too) for her freezer. During lunch, I ordered a 3 pc chicken and fries, then packed up most of the fries and the biggest piece of chicken for my mom to have for supper. Between two very active young boys and having to distract my mother when she started to go into one of her odd tirades, we were all very exhausted by the time lunch was done! The boys did really well, considering how many hours they’d spent in a car. My mother wanted them to go to her place, which was not an option. It’s soo small and too full of things rambunctious children could get into and hurt themselves or destroy. They ended up going for a walk with my SIL when we were done, while my brother focused on getting my mother home and I went ahead with their stuff along with what I brought for her. I had time to get the meals I brought into the freezer, and left the restaurant food on the counter to cool, then get to the side door and open it before they had to fight with keys. My mother can get in and out of my brother’s car without a stool, so he could park closer to the side door she prefers to use.
We both had to head out as soon as she was settled in. By the time we got out, my SIL was almost there with the boys. We’d talked about them coming her to the farm afterwards, but that went out the window. They’ll be coming out next weekend and staying overnight in their new abode, so we’ll get to visit with them and the boys soon.
As we were settling her in, my mother made a point of telling us not to make “surprises” like this for her anymore. Which we really can’t do. If we plan this stuff and tell her in advance, she works herself up and behaves even worse – downright cruel, in fact – than if she doesn’t know about it, first.
At least my brother was able to get a visit in, and she got to see her great grandsons. Of course, all she cared was to lecture them about making sure to take them to church. This was the time! When they’re young! Of course, they had just gone to church with her earlier (which was not planned). My SIL had to repeatedly tell her, they don’t live with us. It’s not up to us. They don’t live with us.
I was sitting next to my mother and repeated to her with slightly different working, that they don’t live here.
Well, where do they live, then? she asked.
…
Uhm… with their parents?
That one really threw us. It seems that my mother somehow decided that the boys being with my brother and his wife today meant that they… have moved in with them? Or she forgot that they live with their parents in a different province?
Something to bring up with the home care case coordinator, that’s for sure.
It was really good to see the boys, though. I haven’t seen the younger grandson since he was a babe in arms, still.
We also got some surprises at home today. Kitten surprises! That will get its own post, though.
There’s another one under it that bloomed and was done before I ever saw that it was a female flower.
There were no male flowers open at the time, so I grabbed a couple of older ones and tore off the petals so I could access the pollen and hand pollinate. The first one had water pour out when the petals were torn off, so I used a second one, too, just in case the first one didn’t have any viable pollen. At this point, it’s too early to tell if the one I missed had a chance to be pollinated before it was done blooming.
This afternoon, I decided to use up a whole bunch of odds and ends vegetables in the fridge, along with some fresh stuff, in the slow cooker. I’ve been leaving the potato bed for the past while but decided to dig some up for today’s use.
I had dug some up before under the potato plants that had died back the most, which was at the north end of the bed, closer to that row of self seeded trees my mother left to grow. The entire potato bed died back early, without ever developing flowers, but the north end of the bed had them dying back the fastest.
The potatoes in that basket are from under four potato plants that were at the end of that bed. That mass beside the basket is capillary roots from the elm trees nearby that came up while I was digging around for the potatoes. I was hitting more, larger roots as well. I’ve de-rooted these beds several times, and they come back so fast!!
Those trees have GOT to go! They’re killing our garden!
I dug up more potatoes closer to the middle of the bed, and was still getting a lot of capillary roots like that, but found more potatoes under two plants, than under the four I’d dug up first.
Since I finally had a container on hand, I harvested Spoon tomatoes. It’s been a while since I picked any, so there were plenty to gather. Thankfully, the mesh on this basket is fine enough to hold the tomatoes! Some of them were so small, they would have fallen through if they weren’t being held in place by the larger ones. I had to be careful to keep the potatoes from rolling over and squishing them.
Then I grabbed a few more carrots to add to what we already had inside, and the only ripe bush beans I could find.
In the last photo of the slide show above, it shows all the vegetables I prepared for the slow cooker, seasoned and tossed with avocado oil. All from our garden!
There are the potatoes, carrots and Spoon tomatoes, of course. Plus I finally used that one big turnip that I’d left to get big and go to seed, but the deer ate most of the greens. There’s kohlrabi in there, and more beans that we had in the fridge. It took three “harvests” of bush beans to have enough to make it worth using them in anything! Oh, and there is Swiss Chard and a whole bulb of fresh garlic in there, too.
We have a large Crockpot, and the vegetables almost filled it completely. They will shrink as they cook down, though. After I left for my mother’s, my daughter browned some ground turkey, along with some of the yellow onions we still have left from last year’s garden (they have lasted a really long time!!!) and mixed that in later on.
The slow cooker was set to high for 3 hours. Since I’ve come back from my mother’s, I’ve checked on it a few times and added more time. All those potatoes need extra time to cook through, as I deliberately left them in big chunks. For I still don’t know how it turned out!
The house is smelling amazing, though, and I’m getting hungry! 😄
The Re-Farmer 