When I opened the door to the basement to check on Beep Beep and the kitties, I found Beep Beep sitting in the basement window at the stairs.
She immediately bolted through the door.
She had to go through the several cats that were trying to bolt down the stairs at the same time! :-D
It’s a good think I was intending to leave the door open for a while, anyhow.
The babies are definitely getting more curious and mobile! Beep Beep is getting more comfortable with leaving them for longer periods, too.
The girls are calling Butterscotch’s baby “Nickypants” because his fur pattern makes him look like he has white pants, just like Nicky the Nose. :-D
After a while, I had to go hunting for Beep Beep to bring her back down, so I could close up the basement again. I found her on the kitchen counter! Bad Beep Beep! ;-)
We’ve been having some very chilly nights lately, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seed trays. I was happy to see some new growth.
More pattypans/sunbrust squash are emerging, a few more of the zucchini surprise mix are showing, too.
It’s funny how there is this one large sunburst squash that showed up next to the zucchini mix. If I hadn’t put those straws in to mark the different groups, I would have thought it was part of the mix!
Still no sign of gourds, though. There were no new seedlings emerging in the other tray.
I was supposed to presoak the carrot seeds a while ago, but things got busy and it just didn’t happen. Now I’m glad it got delayed, and I think I will delay a few more days. We’re supposed to get a couple of centimeters of snow tomorrow evening! It looks like things will warm up and stay above freezing, even overnight, by Tuesday, so I will aim to start the seeds soaking on Saturday. The video I’m using said it should take 3 or 4 days for roots to show, so we’ll see how that goes.
The chain link fence in front of the house has two gates in it. One smaller, people-sized gate, and a larger vehicle-sized gate.
Both are broken at the hinges.
I had been leaving both gates open; we only ever needed to close them when the renter’s cows got into the outer yard, when his electric fence failed. With the people gate, when we closed it to keep the goat in the inner yard, the top hinge came completely loose from the pin. It still was doing the job, though – until today!
While I was working on the new garden plot, I heard a commotion. I don’t know how she did it, but the goat knocked the gate off its hinges, and got a hoof caught in the chain link!
She was able to get herself out without any help, but I had to just set the gate aside until later.
In the early evening, while I was in the pen, trying to get the goat comfortable with the idea of being in there with me, the girls were kind enough to fix the gate. Well. As much as it can be fixed, for now.
The ring around the post ended up needing to be lowered. The clasp on the gate side was twisted open, and has been closed up again around the pin, as much as we can. The bottom one, at least, just needed the pin straightened out, then it could be slipped right into the clasp.
Unfortunately, the other post has shifted, so while the latch parts now line up again (with a bit of adjusting), the post is leaning too far away for the latch to catch. So we’ll just use the rubber cord that was already on the fence when we moved here. :-D
The vehicle gate has been left as is. I don’t know if we’ll even bother trying to fix the hinges on that one. They are pretty twisted up, but at least they can’t be knocked to the ground, as they currently are.
We partially succeeded in getting the goat to go into the pen, then let her be, so as not to create bad associations with the pen. We still wanted to be out and around her, though, so it was a good time to start soaking the new garden plot.
She and Potato Beetle kept us company!
The cats are still intimidated by her, but their curiosity seems to be slowly overcoming their nervousness!
Also, we need to pick up a new 100 ft hose. The old ones, in spite of my repairs last year, are not holding out well! The only good hose we have right now is the new 50 ft hose we picked up last fall. With two hoses together to make 100 ft, it doesn’t reach the plot, so we can’t set up a sprinkler. We just have to spray it from a short distance away.
We will be giving the garden plot thorough waterings over the next few days, while I start the carrot seeds germinating indoors. According to the video, it should take up to 4 days. We’re not expecting any rain in that time, so it’s up to us to get the soil watered deeply.
As for the seeds I started in trays…
This is the tray with all squash seeds. No gourds have come up at all, yet. The middle is the “summer surprise” mix and, so far, I’m thinking only one variety as started growing. On the right are the patty pans, and only a couple have showed up, there.
These are the cucamelons, and I’m actually rather pleased with how many have sprouted, so far.
Once I see how many have successfully sprouted for transplants, I’ll have a better idea of how I need to prep the garden area, and what I need for trellises. I was going to build those in advance, but I decided to see how many sprout, first, so I know how many I’ll need. From the looks of it, that was a good decision.
Then there is the fennel.
I’m rather disappointed with these. The only ones that have sprouted where the ones that showed up while it was still set up in the living room. They got really leggy, immediately, and no other seeds have sprouted! We might not have any fennel at all this year, if this doesn’t improve.
Meanwhile, I got notified by Veseys, with a tracker number, that our Yukon Gem potatoes have been shipped. They are expected to arrive in 8 days, so we have time to prepare where we want to plant them.
Thankfully, the weather is pleasant during the day, though temperatures are still dipping below freezing overnight.
There is lots to get done outside in the next little while!
This morning, I was able to finish prepping the new garden plot!
Woo hoo! It’s done!
Well… okay. Maybe not. But it’s almost there.
At this point, there are two things that need to be done to the area. One is a thorough watering before planting. The other is to adjust the acidity. Hopefully. According to the meter, the soil has a pH of 7.5. This plot will have beets and carrots in it, and the packages say they should be in soil with a pH of 6.5
From what I’ve been reading, I could increase the acidity several ways. One it to add compost or wood chip mulch. Which is interesting, because the whole reason the soil here is so soft is because it basically is compost. This area had firewood on wooden pallets, with whatever organic material (leaves, needles and grass, I would figure) was under the pallets. Which means it should be more acidic than alkaline.
Another thing that can be done is to add sphagnum peat moss. We would have to buy that, because there isn’t much left of the bale we got last year.
Other suggestions are for additives we would have to hunt down and buy, and that’s just not going to happen right now.
There was even a suggestion to water the area with highly diluted vinegar, but that tends to be a short term solution.
I might just have to go with what we’ve got.
The seeds we have that are supposed to be planted as soon as the ground can be worked are parsley and carrots. They should already be in the ground right now. :-( The parsley was to be planted in a different area. As for the carrots and beets, I have 3 varieties of each, and I’ve plotted out 6 rows. They are cross marked, making a grid of 6 x 5 squares, as I was thinking of working in square foot (ish) plots rather than single rows. For the carrots, and any other really small seeds, I plan to use this method of planting.
Then I have to find a way to cover them, to protect them until they sprout. I could lay a board over them, but if I can find some, I think I would prefer to cover them with semi-transparent plastic row covers.
We shall see when the times comes.
For now, I think it’s time to go soak some carrot seeds!
I spent a bit of time sitting on the bench by the door, hoping to get her interested in some pieces of apple. While I was hoping to help the owner with her this morning, my husband helped in a way that he could: doing research on how to catch a runaway goat.
Short answer?
You can’t. :-D
All the reference he found said that you have to get them to come to you, and suggested luring with food such as fruit or raisins.
I’d already tried a carrot, which she ignored, and it was no better with the apple!
Still, I wanted her to get used to the idea of us being around, and maybe getting curious enough to come close. Since she is absolutely attached to our door, I decided to do some work in the future garden plot. I wouldn’t normally be doing something like this on a Sunday, but being out there was needed.
I had the idea that, if the owner came back with one of the tamer goats on a leash, this goat would probably follow it all the way home. It’s not much more than a mile away, and it would be slow going, but I thought it would work better than trying to catch her and put her in a car! I was able to send a note to the owner with the suggestion, but he said he would try coming back after lunch with some chicken wire to try and corral her.
So I got some progress on the garden while I waited for him to come over, and to let the goat get used to me.
The darker area is what I got done today. I won’t go much further than this, as I don’t want to go too close to the elm tree.
There are so many roots in there! I could go back over the same area over and over, and keep finding more roots!
Also, see the little green dot on the left?
That’s our new soil tester.
For some reason, I thought it tested soil temperature, but no, it doesn’t. It tests for moisture, sunlight and pH.
There is a little switch at the bottom for each setting. Moisture and light were not things I was too interested in at the moment, since I’m still digging roots out.
This is what I was really wanting to know, right now.
The pH. The range for that is marked at the bottom, and I can see that it’s at about 7.5
With 7 being neutral, I find it interesting that is goes down to 3.5 on the acidic side, but only up to 8 on the alkaline side. I guess soil is more likely to be acidic than alkaline? I’ve never really thought about it before! :-)
Anyhow, this will help me know if I need to amend the soil in any way, before I plant in it. I’ll be testing the soil in the old garden area, where the squashes will be planted, later.
When the owner of the goat came back, we used his chicken wire and whatever we could find around the yard, including the saw horses, to hold it up around the front steps. When she went to have some of the food he brought, he tried to close her in, but she ended up plowing through the wire. After that, she figured out what it was and didn’t allow herself to get corralled in there again.
Several times, we just stood off to the side, avoiding looking directly at her, quietly talking and waiting. I ended up telling him about how we were planning to have milk goats in the future, but in the shorter term, were thinking of perhaps borrowing some goats and have them in a moveable paddock to eat our grass in the outer yard, where I can’t mow. He agreed that goats would be very efficient at that! He also gave me some information on what we would need to do to have a milk goat producing; I hadn’t known, for example, that the kids were weaned at 3 months, and that the goat would need to spend some quality time with a ram right away. She would continue to produce while pregnant, then the cycle would start all over again.
I also told him about our trying to tempt her with apple, but that she ignored it. He told me that she’d never had anything but animal feed! At least now, there is grazing available, but she wouldn’t have had even that for long, in the pen she and the other goat were in, with their original owner. It would have been all gone, quickly, and this was not a moveable pen.
After a couple more attempts to corral the goat, he had to leave for the city. I had assured him that we are quite enjoying the goat, and would happily take her if we could (we just aren’t ready to own a goat!), and I think that was a relief for him. No more talk of shooting the goat for meat! He does have the other milk goat with his ram right now, and he’s really like to get this one in, next. We are absolutely okay with her staying in the yard for however long she needs. It’s not good for goats to be alone for too long, though, so for her sake, I am hoping it will be sooner rather than later.
As we were chatting, and he was talking about wanting to breed her, he even brought up the possibility of giving us some kids!
Before he left, leaving the chicken wire behind for us to use, I assured him that he didn’t need to worry about her, and we would keep him up to date on how things went.
What we did, however, will be for another post! :-)
She spent the night sleeping in front of our door, ignoring the shelter I rigged up for her.
Shortly after 7 this morning, I looked out the kitchen window to see a very chilled man in a hoodie, sitting at the front step, very diligently not making direct eye contact with the goat, a container of feed in front of him. Later, I saw him almost manage to lure the goat into the garage.
No success.
Thankfully, we have multiple doors.
I went through the sun room to bring food out for the cats. When it came time to put feed out for the birds, I went around the house from the other side.
The poor guy doesn’t know what to do. He can’t catch her, and he can’t stay around here, trying, when he’s got a farm to run. I assured him again that we were okay with her being here. There is someone here all the time, so we can slowly work on taming her. The only problem is, we don’t have any feed or shelter or anything. He commented that he’s running out of the feed mix he was trying to bait the goat with and, like so many, money is tight. He won’t be able to get more until Wednesday. The goat can at least graze now, if she wanted to. Except she really doesn’t want to leave that door! He said he would come back later, and hoped we would be able to at least lure her into the garage, where he’d left the container of feed, but I think she’s already forgotten about it. As he was leaving, he commented on how he’d really like to get her back (I think our being so okay with her here has ended any notions of killing her for meat!) and had hoped to breed her, and just doesn’t know what to do. Then he made a passing comment of, well, she was a free goat for him, she might be a free goat for us. !!
We shall see.
Meanwhile, I was able to do my morning rounds, followed by not one, not two but three boys!
Yes, I was finally able to confirm that Pump Shack cat is a boy. Not only was he following me around with the other boys, he was coming closer to me than ever before.
They weren’t following me for any sort of affection for each other. Not at all, as you can see.
No, they were following me because Butterscotch was also following me. They’ve been trying to breed with her. :-( She seems very ticked off with that idea and has been fighting them off fairly easily. She’s less than 2 weeks from having kittens, so I don’t imagine she’s in any condition to go into heat right now. That doesn’t stop the boys from trying!
I noticed something yesterday that I made a point of checking out this morning, and I am very excited.
While following the goats around, I noticed that the surviving haskap bush we planted last year is leafing out very nicely.
This is the male plant. I’m impressed with how large those leaves are. All the other trees are just starting to show buds. I’ve read about how cold hardy these are supposed to be, and it definitely shows!
It was the other one that I was most happy to see.
This is the female haskap. It is very hard to see, but it has leaf buds! Each spot that has the remains of leaves from last year, when it suddenly just died off in the fall, has tiny leaf buds under them.
I don’t know what happened to it, but I am glad it survived!
With this spring actually having real moisture, unlike our first two springs here, the sump pump is doing its work to keep the basement from flooding. It doesn’t turn on often, but enough to notice. While the new part basement, with its weeping tile, is dry, the old part basement is showing some moisture this spring.
This is where wood for the furnace used to be store, and I remember well how very wet it would get, when I was a child. This is very dry in comparison. On the other side of the little wall is the sump pump reservoir, and there is a bit of a puddle there, but again, not much at all. Hopefully, it will stay that way.
On the other side of the old basement, where the floor drain it, is is drier, but still shows signs of seeping water.
Some of it is following the concrete patch over what I now know covers the weeping tile drain pipe from the new basement. There are also patches at the base of the wall shared with the new part basement. I’m glad we were able to clean that area out and elevate the things we put back.
Beep Beep and the kitties, meanwhile, are dry and cozy on the other side. I just wasn’t able to get photos this morning. Beep Beep was keeping them all warm with her own body, and I wasn’t going to disturb them. :-)
I’m a little frustrated by the long range forecasts right now. Even just yesterday, I was seeing that we would be chilly for a few days, but only a couple nights would dip below zero. Then the temperatures were expected to warm right up again. Well, the forecasts have now changed dramatically. We’re supposed to continue to be chilly for longer, with lower temperatures overall. Even when it is supposed to warm up, it’s no longer expected to warm up as much, and the nights are all expected to dip below freezing. The warm temperatures we were to expect by the middle of the month have been pushed back to the end of the month, with not a lot of sun. Which is not good for our seed starts. Even in the sun room, they will have a hard time getting full sun, and while the room is certainly warmer, I’ve still taken steps to keep them even warmer. I considered moving them back into the house but the house is actually a bit colder than the sun room is. :-/ I even turned the furnace back up a couple of degrees so it would turn on during the night.
Well, we shall see how the seed starts do. If they won’t work out, we’ll manage.
For now, though, we’ll be focusing more on taming a goat! :-D
Beep Beep was doing a good job of keeping her babies warm on this chilly morning.
She didn’t come out at all while I topped up her food and water
The basement actually maintains a pretty constant temperature, but while we didn’t get the predicted thunderstorms in our area, we did get quite a bit of rain, so the humidity has gone up a fair bit. The sump pump is doing its job, though, so that’s good.
Yesterday evening I spent some time working in the basement, leaving the door open. At first, only two of the upstairs cats came to check things out, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how interested most of them are over that door. Eventually, the others discovered the open door and came to visit. Beep Beep, however, preferred to check out what I was doing! :-D
Then she demanded cuddles. :-D
We did get the rest of the cats out for the night; they might be ignoring the babies for now, but why take chances?
Temperatures have gone down quite a bit, today, and it looks like we had rain on and off all night. As I write this, the temperatures outside are 4C (39F), with a “realfeel” of -2C (28F), and it’s expected to warm up only a couple of degrees. I am happy for the rain, but even though the sun room is still pretty warm, I decided to put the seed trays into the mini-greenhouse along with the light I used as a heat source for the cats’ water bowl last winter. Just for a little while. I don’t have grow lights, but I can at least give them a bit more warmth.
Even when doing my rounds, I didn’t see any of the outside cats at all, until I was coming back to the house and found Rosencrantz had come out for food. They’re all holed up somewhere, keeping warm and dry.
My daughter has her one shift of the week today, but other than heading to and from town, this will be an inside day, for sure. Definitely not going to be getting any work done on the new garden plot. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as chilly, but no rain, so by Tuesday, I hope to be able to get back at it. Things are not supposed to get actually warm again until the middle of the month. If all goes well, it will stay warm, I’ll have the new garden plot finished, get the carrots planted, and we’ll be ready to do transplants by the end of May.
Assuming the seed starts do well. I’m not too encouraged by what I’m seeing of the fennel. :-(
Today, while the girls worked on the replacement sun room door, I was able to get some progress what will be a new garden bed.
I normally like to take lots of before and after pictures, but today, I decided to experiment. I have a little Gorilla Pod with a phone holder, so I set it up to take time lapse images every 60 seconds. I ended up taking 3 sets of them, then put them together in a little video. This is the result. I hope you like it!
I started with the camera set up in a tree facing the house, but the girls don’t like having their images posted online, so when they started working outside on the door, I moved it to another location.
With images every minute, it actually missed some of the surprisingly large roots I dug out. At one point, I was fighting over a mass of roots that just didn’t want to budge. They were the remains of a group of cherry trees, some live, some not, growing through a couple of pallets that I cleared out last year. After she finished painting the door, my daughter came and helped me get it out. That thing was a beast to get rid of!
There were a few times when I tried to pull up some roots – especially the large spruce roots – but could only get so far. After removing enough soil, I would find that they were being held down by cherry roots growing across them. I would have to dig those out first, then I could pull out the ones I’d started with.
I ended up having to stop long before I was done (I would say it’s a bit more than half done right now), simply because it was getting too hot! Which is an amazing thing to say considering that, depending on whether I am looking at the weather app on my phone, or on my desktop, we’ve reached our high of either 14C (57F) or 11C (52F) out there right now. Which, in the summer, would be considered cooler! :-D
We’re not going to get all the roots out. There are just too many, and lots are quite small. As long as we can get the soil clear enough that the carrots will be able to grow straight, that’s good enough for our first year.
When we had the chance, my daughter and I talked about building raised beds at some point. I do want to do this, but when we do, these will be tall raised beds, for accessibility. So once built, they will be pretty much permanent, and we’ll have to keep that in mind when deciding where to put them. We’ll see how things go this year, as the first year we’re able to plant any gardens at all.
Interestingly, while talking to my mother as I drove her back from the hospital, she started telling me that, if she were still at the farm and my dad were still around and able to help, she would fill the area where the old garden was with trees. Which is a complete change from when we first moved here, and she kept saying we needed to plow it and plant it and garden right away, and was very upset when didn’t do that, no matter how much I explained other things were higher priority. Anyhow, I told her that planting trees there is exactly what we would like to do, and told her (again) about our wanting to plant a nut orchard and fruit trees. So she started telling me that we have to prepare the area before we start buying trees, and how I should be doing that, because once the trees come in, they need to be planted right away! :-D I assured her that yes, that is exactly what we plan to do, and will be starting to do this year. I reminded her that one of the things we were planning to do this year was plant the giant sunflowers that are tall enough to act as a wind break, so we’ll have seed heads for the birds over the winter. She told me that they had tried planting sunflowers too (I even remember them), but that the birds would eat all the seeds before they even ripened. That is, indeed, something we will have to plan for, though I do remember eating sunflower seeds that we’d grown, so at least some of the seed heads made it to harvest!
Speaking of seeds, I’m happy to say that some summer squash seeds have started to sprout, so I’ve taken the cover off the second planting tray in the sun room. They seem to like the warmth in there! Even overnight, the temperatures have been holding out well enough that I have not put them into the mini-greenhouse in the evenings.
As for the garden plot I’m working on now, it’s going to be at least a couple of days before we can get back to it. Tomorrow, we will be heading into the city for our big shop, and on Friday, we’re expected to have thunderstorms. If I can, I’ll try and get a bit more work in there, but it’s unlikely we’ll have a chance to do that before Saturday.
It’s slower going than I’d hoped, but good progress has been made.
I will soon be heading out to continue working on the new garden bed, but first I wanted to share the progress my daughters did yesterday, while I was away.
This is turning out to be a pretty big job! You can see the pile of roots that they added to. They also set some things aside, because they knew I would want to check them out!
The group of thick roots are all from a single root. While the tree whose stump it came from has been dead for a long time, and the roots were rotting enough to break apart, it still look them quite a bit of effort to get it out. Especially with having to make do with what tools they could find.
That really long root is a cherry root that took both of them to yank out of the ground. I would not be surprised to find more like this as we continue to clear the area.
Also…
This was found buried near a different stump. Where it was found is where there was a makeshift pallet fence, a roll of old carpet, and a bunch of other junk. It was deep enough in the soil that I missed it entirely last year, even as I was digging around to get out as many pieces of rotten pallet wood as I could find.
I hope to get this area done quickly, so we can plant things that don’t have to wait until after last frost, but with how many roots we’ve been finding so far, I am thinking it won’t be that quick at all! :-D
I got a little reminder today, of why I need to start using the sun room as a greenhouse.
The cats have already knocked the mini-greenhouse over once, and despite our best efforts at making sure the bottom of the plastic is pushed under the frame, the cats are determined to get in. Especially Susan! They’ve even clawed a hole in the plastic at one corner. As adorable as she was, taking a nap half in and half out, this is just not a good thing. :-(
The first order of business was to measure and cut the door down to size. We did remember to remove the hinges first, though. ;-)
I’m so excited. I got to use the chalk line we found in the basement to mark where I needed to cut! :-)
I also got to use the circular saw that was gifted to use last year. I’ve never actually used one before. With so many older brothers, I didn’t get to use a lot of the tools we had. Still, it’s pretty self explanatory.
I am, however, a lefty.
It wasn’t the straightest of cuts, but that’s okay!
When we put the hinges back on, we’ll make sure to line them up with the existing spaces on the door frame.
Speaking of which…
The door knobs on the replacement door turned out to be about half an inch off from the old door. So, while the girls scrubbed and cleaned the door, I removed the plate from the door frame, then measured off where it needed to be moved to. After a bit of hunting, I found a chisel and prepped the new location for the plate.
I won’t put the plate back on until the door is installed, in case I have to make any adjustments.
I also moved my seedling trays into the sun room.
The sun room has been reaching more than 20C (68F) during the day. It’s the night time temperature that concerns me a bit, which is why I also moved the mini-greenhouse in. The plastic cover will help keep heat in a bit, so the trays can be moved into there before it gets too chilly.
All clean! This is the outside of the door. It’s not in the best of shape, but it’s better than the old one, and will do just fine.
While it was drying, I decided to check out the future garden space where the old wood pile used to be. I figured I would use the potato fork and see how the soil is, where we covered it with black plastic.
The soil is amazing! The tines of the fork sank all the way into the soil. No ice in there at all, and it is so soft. It will be perfect for the beets and carrots we plan to plant there.
Except…
It’s also full of roots. You can see the dark pile to the side in the above photo; those are the cherry roots I’ve pulled up so far.
The area is just cris-crossed with cherry roots that we will need to dig out. I was also finding pieces of rotten pallet wood I’d missed last year, and some huge roots from the old spruce stumps nearby. We’ll need axes or saws to get those out.
Hopefully, the girls will be able to give me a hand and we’ll get this entire area free of roots tomorrow. Beets are supposed to be planted as soon as the soil can be worked, so as soon as we get it cleared, we can get those started. The ground is so soft that, when it comes time to plant, I’ll have to make sure to put boards between the rows to walk on, so I don’t sink. !!
That reminds me. I got a notice today that my soil tester and garden auger have been shipped and should arrive on Friday. The soil tester measures temperature, moisture and PH levels. The auger is a drill attachment, and we won’t need that until we’re ready to plant in the old garden area, probably in late May.
While I was working on this, my daughter came out with a respirator and a can of spray paint.
This is the same blue we used on the driveway gate. :-) It took an entire can to do two coats on this side.
Then, because it looked like it was going to rain, we made space in the sun room and brought the saw horses and door in to finish curing.
Tomorrow, we would normally head into the city for a big shop. Talking to the girls about it, we decided to wait a couple of days. Instead, I’ll go into town and pick up some more paint, so we can do the other side of the door.
Plus, takeout food. I am just dying for some takeout. :-D I have no idea where; the Chinese restaurant we normally go to is closed on Tuesdays, and the pizza place we order from doesn’t open until 4 pm.
There is, however, that fish and chips place that opened their summer time take-out window early, so they could stay open during the shut down. They’ve got the best pollock and fries I’ve ever tasted – and I don’t particularly like fish and chips in the first place! :-D
Oh, wow. I’m feeling hungry just thinking about it…
So tomorrow, we should be able to go the other side of the door, and get that garden area de-rooted.
Beep Beep came half out of her baby nest to have a bit of food while I was there, with the babies peacefully snoozing in a pile. I was even able to get a picture, despite her best efforts to use her butt to block my attempts. :-D
She was more co-operative later.
That is one happy, contented bunch of wormies!
Beep Beep looks ticked off at the flash. :-D
While I was outside, doing my rounds, Butterscotch and her boys followed me around.
Creamsicle really, really wanted up – and not just with me!
He does love climbing things!
Including my leg. :-D
Potato Beetle was more polite about it.
Just look at that face!
He has a terrible habit of running in front of us as we are walking, then flopping down on the ground, right in front of our feet. It can be very hard not to step on or trip over him! :-D
He likes to go up on the roof and watch the girls through the upstairs window. I’m told he even falls asleep with his forehead against the glass! :-D He is such an affectionate boy. :-)
Butterscotch not only let me pet her this morning, but even let me pick her up, if only briefly. This let me get a quick feel of her belly. The one teat that was very swollen yesterday is still swollen, but already getting softer. This is good, since her not suckling could potentially lead to mastitis.
Before heading outside this morning, I checked on the seeds I’d started earlier, and found there are some seedlings sprouted among the fennel, so I took the dome off the tray. They are already really leggy. I need to get them set up in the sun room soon. The main concern I have for there is how much the temperatures drop during the night. We can’t get a good sense of that with the doors propped open all the time, so I was going to close the outer door, leaving the inner door with its much smaller window, open. We could then keep an eye on the temperature through the bathroom window, throughout the day.
Unfortunately, the door can’t close.
Even when we first moved here, this door was difficult to close. I had to lift it and basically force it shut. Now, not even that works.
Not that it matters anymore. We need to replace the door.
A part of the door’s edge appears to have changed shape and just hits the frame. That’s the part that prevents the door from closing. If this had been the only issue, I could just use one of the planes we found in the basement and shave it down. However, as you can see in the photo, the door itself is coming apart at the bottom, and the window is no longer attached along one side. The caulking is old, brittle and has been breaking off all long that side.
Theoretically, I could take the door off its hinges and repair all of this, but it’s really not worth the effort. I’m pretty sure this is a standard sized door, and we should be able to switch it out with one of the doors we’ve found in a shed.
It’ll be worth a try, at least.
If that doesn’t work… we’ll have to figure something out, or I won’t be able to use the sun room as a greenhouse. I need to be able to protect the trays from the cats.
So that’s something I hope to get done this afternoon.
The Re-Farmer 