After the heat we’ve had for the past while, it actually got remarkably chilly last night.
It was great!
I had some concern about how it got for the kittens, but the basement is pretty good at remaining a constant temperature.
This morning, I took one of the long boxes that held pieces of my new bed frame and lay it out on the floor for the kittens to play in.
They just loved it!
Leyendecker, however, got distracted by something that was apparently much more interesting.
Me.
He climbed me like a tree! All the way up to my head, where he began to tackle my ear and try to eat my hair.
What a silly boy!
The outside cats were eagerly awaiting me when I got outside. Their food bowls had been completely cleaned out. By them, or other animals, I’m not sure.
Butterscotch allowed my daughter to check her out yesterday, and it seems she is pregnant again. Considering how it went when we tried to bring her in before, that is just not something we can do again.
I’m happy to say that, when both Butterscotch and Creamsicle joined me while checking out my mother’s flowers, there was NO fighting, at all.
When checking out the squash beds, I’d found a pleasant little surprise.
Some pumpkins are sprouting!
These two hills had 3 seeds each planted in them. The other one had 5 seeds in the package, but so far, none have sprouted.
Most of the more recently transplanted squash are noticeably growing bigger, though they have also gotten pretty yellow. One of the possible reasons I’ve seen is a lack of iron. Which means we likely should supplement the soil with bloodmeal. I just haven’t been able to find any!
More potatoes are starting to show up through the straw mulch. When mowing last night, I moved out the wooden frames that were around the beds. They are no longer needed, and taking them out makes it easier to mow around the beds. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the mowing today; we might be getting showers this afternoon.
This evening, we’re planning to get all wild and crazy. Father’s Day and my daughter’s birthday fall on the same day this year. Knowing how busy things are likely to be on Sunday, we’ve decided to celebrate today. Our favorite Chinese restaurant is open again, so we’re planning on ordering a whole lot of take-out!
One of the things I’ve been keeping an eye on has been the grape vine I accidentally cut, then hoped to root.
It didn’t make it.
The rest of it seems to be doing just fine, though.
Just look at those adorable baby grapes! :-)
Things have cooled down quite a bit, after we got some rains. It would be absolutely fantastic out there, if it weren’t for the insane amount of mosquitoes. Unfortunately, the same weather that cooled things down is ideal for them.
I don’t know if things will dry up enough to continue some of the projects that need to be done outdoors, but if it does, I’ll have to make sure to absolutely engulf myself in bug spray!!
Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources and sites I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.
I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!
As we continue to clean up, repair and improve things here on the family farm, we do have an ultimate goal to be as self sufficient as we can. Our health and mobility requirements mean we’ll probably never be completely “off the grid”, but there is still a lot we can do.
Growing up here, we were basically subsistence farmers. We grew, raised, preserved, butchered much of our own food, and for our animals, grew most of their feed, too. When it came to gardening, there was a time when the garden was close to an acre in size. This was your typical garden of everything planted in long rows, far enough apart to run a tiller in between. In my mind, gardening meant growing food. Flower gardening was just an aside, and not something I understood as “real” gardening, for may years. Even now, when I think “gardening”, my mind always goes to growing food.
As productive as my mother’s garden was, however, it is not how I want to garden, for many reasons. Everything from the rocky soil where the garden used to be, to mobility and accessibility, leads me to wanting to do raised bed gardening.
The following resource is very much the sort of thing I have in mind. Self Sufficient Me (WebsiteYouTube) is an Australian site, so obviously, there is a lot that won’t apply to us in central Canada! We’re not going to be growing papayas anytime soon. :-D However, this resource has lots of information that can be used pretty much anywhere. Along with their website and YouTube channel, they are on other social media, which you can find linked here. They also have a second YouTube channel here.
It was through the videos that I discovered this resource. I haven’t been able to go back through all 8 years of them, but I’m slowly working on it. ;-)
The videos include some very basic stuff, perfect for beginning gardeners.
This next video really caught my attention, as hugelkultur is sort of the method we will be using when we build our raised beds. We might not use such large stumps and logs, but will likely have lots of big branches!
I especially appreciate that he talks about what didn’t work about the raised bed, as well as showing how the soil looks after 4 years.
Also, I love his tools!!!
Of course, he covers building raised beds as well.
He’s got all my prerequisites: height, strength, easy and cheap! :-D
Don’t have the space to do raised beds? He’s got you covered there, too.
He also goes beyond growing vegetables, and has videos on raising animals, too.
He readily admits that he is no carpenter, and that’s one of the things I love about it. He’s big on going ahead and building things, without worrying about being perfect.
We don’t have to worry about snakes where we are – the snakes we have would be more in danger from the chickens than the other way around – but definitely predators are an issue.
Chickens are not the only critters he raises, and you will find videos about raising quails and ducks, as well as videos reviewing products – the good and the bad! – about pest control, composting, watering, and so much more. I definitely recommend going through the many videos available. I’m sure you will find plenty to inspire you!
For the first time since we cleaned and refilled this barometer, it has overflowed!
As I write this, it’s already 28C/82F and we’ve got weather alerts for heat and thunderstorms. Looking at the weather radar, it looks like we might actually get some rain. That would be nice!
At least the winds have died down for now.
My morning rounds, meanwhile, have been full of smiles.
Well, okay. I wasn’t exactly smiling when I was trying to wrestle kittens back into the basement, but once that was done, it got fun. :-D
Unfortunately, Keith and Fenrir in particular do not like the kittens, and they’re a bit too small to defend themselves if they get nasty. Big Rig ran right up to Susan and booped noses with her, leaving Susan looking astonished and confused! :-D
Temperatures were still on the pleasant side of hot while I did my rounds outside. The dwarf lilac is starting to explode.
The scent in our yard is amazing!
The carrot and beet beds seem to be doing all right.
We’re doing a fairly limited amount of weeding right now, as we don’t want to be pulling up too many seedlings. Whatever cat that decided to use a carrot bed as a litter box has done quite enough of that already.
The kohl rabi, on the other hand, may be a write off. Some things, I can tell are weeds, but others, I’m not so sure. A surprising amount of clover is showing up.
We’ll see how it works out over time!
My favourite pollinators!
The white roses were filled with a constant drone of insects buzzing around, but it’s the bumbles that have a special place in my heart. What beautiful creatures!
Also, I had very affectionate company. He just loved it when I carried him around like a baby! LOL
Once inside, I checked the trail cam files. I love it when doing that leaves me smiling. :-)
I got to see this deer from two angles! :-)
I notice there is a time difference on the cameras. I’ll have to figure out which one is off and fix that.
As for the new camera location, I really would rather it be a bit further back and higher, but it will have to do for now.
We’ve got ourselves a lovely – and windy! – day today. It made doing the morning rounds quite pleasant.
The routine started, of course, with babies. :-)
One of the down sides of not being able to do stairs very well is, even with my daughter at the top of the stairs to help keep the other cats away from the door, kittens manage to run across the length of the basement and up the stairs before I can get far enough down to close to door behind me.
Having a door that opens over the stairs doesn’t help, either.
Of course, while kittens are being wrangled, other cats try to take advantage of the confusion. David got into the basement, which we’re okay with, since he’s very good with the babies. I think Two Face got in, as well, but I’m honestly not sure if I remember that correctly. My daughter was dealing with the adult cats after we got the escaped babies back down.
Eventually, all the adult cats were herded upstairs, and the kittens got to have some wet cat food.
These guys have very hearty appetites!
After a while, we let Beep Beep down again, so she could have some, too. If she’s around when the wet cat food is first set out, she’ll push her own kittens away to get at it, no matter how much we spread it out!
Among the things I look out for when doing my rounds is fallen branches. Thankfully, between what we’ve been able to clean up ourselves, plus what the arborists were able to take down, there are far few of those than there was when we first moved here.
Usually, we’re just picking things up like the willow branch you can see in the photo. Willows are always dropping branches, but after having the power lines cleared, there are a lot less of those in the south yard. Recent winds did bring down one of the larger dead branches we can’t get at to clear. Even as I stood to take this picture, I could hear the winds knocking branches together, above my head.
Dead branches sound distinctively different from live ones.
Speaking of which…
The crab apple trees are not the only ones that are struggling. This plum tree seems to be mostly dead. There is one section that leans off to the right that is still alive, but it looks like the other two are completely dead. What few leaves there were, just weeks ago, have shriveled and died. It looks like another of the plums, behind it, is also dead or dying.
Other trees and bushes are doing just fine, though.
The pollinators were having a hard at my mother’s white roses, in the wind! I believe these are called Cherokee roses, and they have just exploded with flowers! Between these, the honeysuckle that is still if full bloom, and the double lilac that is nearing the end of its blooming period, this little garden is just a riot of flowers!
While the more common varieties of lilacs are finishing their blooming period, the dwarf lilac will soon be a mass of flowers!
I had cleaned up in this bush, taking out a maple that had been allowed to grow in the middle of it, cutting away dead wood and pruning things back. Now, even the new growth shooting up from below is showing masses of flower buds!
There is one more variety of lilac that blooms later, but I notice it is struggling, too. There is another maple that had seeded itself and was allowed to grow, near it. I think that maple is what’s killing the lilac. It’s keeping the lilac in shade for most of the day. I don’t think it gets any direct sunlight at all, really.
I’m going to have to choose: keep the healthy maple while the lilac slowly dies off, or take down the maple and hopefully save an unusual variety of lilac, that we have only one of.
The decision would be a lot easier, if I could only be sure that taking out the maple would save the lilac.
Meanwhile, while checking the sunflowers, I found we are down a couple more. I really wish I knew what is doing this. Then we could know how to stop it!
When I got back to the house at the end of my rounds, I had a lovely surprise.
Rolando Moon came back for a visit! I haven’t seen her in ages. The last time couple of times she came here, Creamsicle and Potato Beetle chased her up into a tree. My daughters could see her, but I never did spot her. The boys were away, though, so I got to say hello to Rolando. :-) She, Beep Beep and Butterscotch are the only yard cats remaining, that were here when my father was still alive. I have some photos from when we made the trip out to visit him, back in 2015. He did love the yard cats – and they loved him right back! Me, not so much. :-D After we moved here, it took a while to socialize them, to varying degrees. Most just sort of disappeared. Especially the males. Rolanda Moon has always been an ornery cat, aggressive with the others, but she seemed very happy for the attention, today! It was very good to see her. :-)
Today, being Sunday, is my day of rest. No unnecessary work. So the most I’m doing outside, really, is setting up the sprinkler to water the squash and potatoes. We’ve had some rain, off and on, but not very much, and these winds are really drying things out!
Time to go shift the sprinkler off the squash and give the potatoes a good drenching. :-)
The kittens were too active to get good photos this morning.
Plants, on the other hand, are much more co-operative.
The first potato leaves have made their way through the mulch!
Yay!
Sadly, we are also down another sunflower. We found another one with just a stem, the leaflets gone. Total count is one less than yesterday.
We’ll still have a decent “wall” of sunflowers, but it will definitely have large gaps. If we do this again next year, we’ll know to get at least twice the number of seeds to start, and maybe even start them indoors, first. The sunflowers that have developed their true leaves seem to be left alone.
Today started off very well, so I’ll start with that, too!
I’m happy to say that the new bed has made a huge difference. There must be something about no longer being so close to the floor, because I slept like a rock – for almost 11 hours!
Which meant I got a late start to doing my morning routine.
The kittens were in fine form this morning!
They found perfectly kitten sized places to hang out, about it all!
These little nooks exist only because the area under the entryway was walled off to make the root cellar. The ceiling there is slightly lower than the rest of the basement, so the top ledge there is actually level with the entryway floor, while below is the root cellar wall.
The upstairs cats wanted to play, too.
In the one photo, you can see David’s nose – and the glowing eye of another cat!
I’m going to have to delay doing the kitten stuff until there are others available to come down at the same time. Saffron and Turmeric got upstairs before I could close the door, while David, Cheddar and Two Face made it downstairs. While wrestling her kittens downstairs, Beep Beep went up and stayed there. I only saw three kittens, though, so I started looking around for Leyendecker and Big Rig. I realized Leyendecker had also snuck upstairs, when I saw tiny little black and white paws going past – right about where you can see David’s nose in the above photos. :-D So I got him down, but I still couldn’t find Big Rig. I feared she may have gotten into the old part basement, but after some searching, my daughter found her curled up asleep, under the bed frame. The box my husband’s computer came in had a cardboard divided that fits under there perfectly, and they use it to sleep in. I’d pulled it out, but apparently not enough, and never saw her. I felt no weight, and didn’t think to pull it out all the way! It was a relief to find her. Once we managed to get the adult cats out, we were able to treat the babies with some wet cat food, then persuade Beep Beep to come down again.
Once outside, I was joined by Creamsicle and Butterscotch.
Lots of things are blooming now.
More wild roses are blooming now.
I also checked on, and counted, the sunflowers.
I counted 30 this morning, with some having just broken ground. We also lost more; in one spot where I was sure there was a seedling growing, I checked more closely, and found the remains of a stem. :-(
I was very happy to find this. Last year, I spotted two little bunches of red berries on this bush. Using the magic of the internet, it turns out to be a cranberry bush.
It was not planted there deliberately.
This is another of the things that are getting more light, after I cleared away trees from the fence line. Last year, that resulted in this bush having just a few berries. This year, it is covered with clusters like this! I am thrilled to see them!
These are tiny wild strawberries growing at the base of a dead tree in the maple grove. We need to be weeded with great care, as the other growth is so close, it’s hard to pull them up, without also pulling up the strawberries.
This will require a lot of time set aside (after being liberally covered in bug spray) for delicate weeding. At some point, I’d like to transplant them to a better location, but transplant wild strawberries is another delicate thing!
I don’t know what these flowers are, but I really like them! Near them are some lilies that are full of buds.
The hawthorn my mother planted as a “living fence” bloomed so fast, I missed it! Berries are starting to form now.
I’ve read that hawthorn berries are edible. We might try something with them, one of these days.
My mother’s white roses and double lilacs planted near the old kitchen and sun room as looking good. The lilacs are almost done their blooming time, but the roses are just covered with buds!
After making sure it was okay with my mother first, checking to make sure there was nothing she wanted saved, I completely covered and mulched the old kitchen garden, two years ago. You can see what it was like when we started here (back when I thought the ornamental apple trees were cherry trees, because that’s where the original cherry tree had been planted, years before). As I cleaned up, you can see in this post, just how much the above flower had spread all over. I got it to the point where I could lay down a layer of cardboard, and finally cover it all in mulch. The idea was to basically kill off what was already growing there (especially the invasive vines we were finding all over the place!), and eventually use the space to grow vegetables and herbs that we use most.
After I finished all that, my mother suddenly started talking about some blue flowers that were there that she wanted me to keep, because they reminded her of flower that grew in Poland, when she was a child. I reminded her that she’d given me the okay to get rid of everything! Still, some things have worked their way through the mulch, including her little blue flowers, so she was happy to see them and asked me to save some. Which I can do. :-)
After I’d finished my rounds, I called my mother, then went to help her do a grocery shopping trip. That went quite well, and I was happy to be able to help her stock up on the bigger items she would normally have to pay to get delivered.
It was when I got home that things started to go wrong.
I had just driven through the gate and stopped the van so I could close it again, when I saw someone in my rear view mirror.
It was our vandal.
He’d seen me go by and came over.
He then proceeded to yell verbal abuse at me – all while recording me closing and locking the gate – from where he stood. I just ignored him while taking care of the gate, and he eventually just walked away, but he was yelling loud enough that the girls came out to see what was going on.
Based on past experience, from long before we moved out here, I knew I had to sit down and write down exactly what happened to record it. While I was in the middle of that, I got a call from my brother. It seems our vandal went straight from hurling verbal abuse at me, to calling my brother – who was at work – and verbally abusing him. There were things he said to both of us, though, that got us wondering about a triggering event. Once I had the chance, I called my mother.
Sure enough, it went back to her. He had left another abusive message on her answering machine, and she made the mistake of calling him back. She’d left a message, basically asking what he wanted from her, and they ended up speaking in person. He told her that he wanted to sell the farm and split up the money, part of which he believes he is entitled to. The farm, however, is supposed to stay in the family name, and that’s why she transferred the ownership to my brother. We had been trying to keep that quiet, but it’s public knowledge now. We have the same arrangement with my brother that we had with my mother. We are taking care of the place for him. So now we know, by his own words, that our vandal was pressuring my parents to change their wills for years, just so he could sell the farm to line his pockets.
This revelation explains why he started showing up recently on the trail cams, giving us the finger. He thinks something has been taken from him. I’m still a target, since we live here, and he believes the things that are here belong to him. Of course, he’s got his own place, so there is no reason anything of his should be here. He’s also the reason so many things disappeared over the years, and especially while the place was empty for 2 years.
Now that he knows about the transfer of ownership, it’s hard to say how he will continue his harassment. At least when it came to ownership of the farm, there was some predictability. Now that he knows the farm belongs to my brother, not my mother, he’s going to be coming up with something new. The only thing we can be sure of, is that he won’t stop. He’s become obsessed with this place, and my family living here.
*sigh*
Ah, well. It’s still better than what we left behind by moving here. We just have to worry about one crazy person, now. :-/
The kittens now being able to climb to the top of the stairs makes visiting them in the morning rather treacherous!
Getting into the basement is difficult enough as it is, with the door opening over the stairs the way it does. Doing it while juggling a pitcher of fresh water, a bucket for the old water, while dodging kittens who want to climb my legs or dash into the entryway before I can close the door makes it that much more challenging! :-D
The cats upstairs, and the kittens downstairs, have discovered the space under the door.
Oh, and to make things even more challenging, I had Beep Beep trying to climb me, too!
Thankfully, the lure of wet cat food was enough to draw them away, so I could leave safely! :-D
While doing my rounds outside, I had to check out the grapes.
Because I may have killed one. :-(
Now that they are leafing out, a couple of evenings ago, I took the pruners to cut away the old, dead growth that should have been pruned away last fall. A piece I cut away twisted as it fell, and I suddenly realized that a fresh vine I thought was growing from behind and below, was actually growing out the back of the piece I’d just cut.
I was so upset with myself. This was a strong, healthy vine I’d just killed.
Could I save it?
I cut the live vine from the stem and tried to see if I could bury the end, so it would root itself. Attached to the trellis as thoroughly as it was, I couldn’t pull it down far enough.
Well, there’s a tire planter right there, with a giant insulator I’d used as a shallow planter last year, in the middle of it.
I attached the vine to another piece to hold it in place, then added soil from the planter to the bottom. Once the cut end was buried, I watered the whole thing, thoroughly.
Can you tell which vine got cut?
I came by, fully expecting the cut vine to be drooping and dying, but it’s looking as fresh and green as the others!
It’s the one on the far left of the trellis.
Here is the base of it. There are even fresh new leaves, still strong and healthy looking.
Could I have actually have managed to salvage my mistake?? Does anyone reading this know much about grape plants? Will this root itself and survive?
I certainly hope so!
The rest of my rounds included checking the garden plots, and I was disappointed to find one area of carrots looked like something had dug them up. It turned out a cat had used it as a litter box. :-(
It also looks like we lost at least one more sunflower to something, but in total, there are more seedlings today than yesterday.
My rounds, however, were very fast this morning. The mosquitoes were insane! While we did not get the predicted storms – they swooped even further south than I thought they might, and we didn’t even get much rain – it is hot and muggy and perfect conditions for mosquitoes.
Once the morning rounds and chores were done, I had to make a quick run to the post office, then into town for some errands, so I’m a bit behind on things I intended to do outside. I’m going to have to start on clearing away where we’ve decided to build the cordwood outhouse, and since it’s too wet to continue working on the lawns, today would be a good day to get into that.
I will have to slather myself in bug spray, first, and hopefully not sweat it all off in the first few minutes. :-/
Everything we started from seed has finally been transplanted.
At least, everything that sprouted…
These are all the pellets that didn’t sprout. The tray in the background was the squashes tray. I’d say most of those empty pellets are the gourds. The ones in the foreground are mostly fennel, with maybe a cucamelon or two.
It’s entirely possible some might eventually sprout, so I’m just leaving them out.
Today, both my daughters were able to help, at the same time! Things went very fast with three people working at once.
The first thing we did was transplant the cucamelons in the chimney block retaining wall. It had been our intention to bring up the remaining blocks from the basement, to use as planters in another location, but there is no safe way to take them out. At least not while the kittens are downstairs. So we planted them here, instead. With the ornamental apple trees growing nearby, they won’t have the full sun they should be getting. There are 3 metal posts I couldn’t take out, when I removed the fence that used to be here, so we will use them to hold a trellis. Hopefully, that will help them get more sunlight as they grow bigger.
The few fennel that sprouted were planted in the soil beside the blocks. All 6 of them. They are so leggy, I don’t know that they’ll even survive, but we’ll see.
That done, we moved on to the squash garden.
We had exactly 11 transplants, so we marked a spot in the middle of the row, then measured and marked out every 2 feet in each direction.
In this photo, each has been transplanted into its “pot” of soil mix, and we were starting to add the mulch. These would mostly be the zucchini mix and pattypans (it’s all a surprise mix now, after the tray got knocked over!), but some of them are the birdhouse gourds. We’ll figure out which is which, as they grow! :-D
I had intended to build some rather heavy duty trellises for the squashes, but things aren’t quite working out to get that done, so I picked up some bamboo poles. We’ll use them and, if I can find some, some plastic mesh instead of the chicken wire. The wire, I want to reserve for when I finally do make something more heavy duty.
After we finished mulching and watering, I set out the poles.
I’ve mentioned a few times, how rocky this area is. Just pushing in those flags typically involves readjusting a few times, to get around rocks we hit, inches into the soil.
When pushing in the bamboo poles, I made a point of pushing the narrower ends into the ground, as they were more pointed. I had to make several attempts on pretty much every pole.
Including this one.
I still managed to hit a rock hard enough to break the end off the pole!
This is how it looks now.
It’s hard to say how many of the frost damaged squash will survive, but I still put poles in to trellis whatever makes it. We’ve got the mixed squash on the far right and far left, three pumpkin hills in the middle, and now a row of mixed squash and gourds along the back.
And it’s all done! No more planting!
While working in the area, we also took the time to water various things, including the gooseberry bushes.
Which are not gooseberry bushes.
While cleaning in the maple grove, two springs ago, I uncovered several gooseberry bushes. They were not doing well, with the lack of space and sunlight from all the overgrowth and closely planted, some dead or dying, trees.
Last year, they started to recover, but with the drought, there were almost no berries. Of the few there were, I noticed they were much smaller and darker than I expected, but with the drought, that was true of many of the berries we had.
It was when I was going through the Vesey’s catalog that I saw photos of gooseberries, right next to currants, and realized these might not be gooseberries at all. The leaves look much the same, but the berries are slightly different.
When I had the chance, I asked my mom if the gooseberry bushes really were gooseberries.
Nope. They weren’t.
So what are they?
She had no idea.
My sister had brought them and planted them, but my mother did not know what they were. Since she didn’t know what they were, she figured they were poisonous (as if my sister would give her poisonous berries for her garden???), so she’d never tried them. I happened to mentioned I’d eaten some of the very few berries we had last year, and she was all “oh… you’re okay, so I guess they’re safe.”
*facepalm*
So I think we actually have currants, not gooseberries.
This year, we’ve been better able to water them, and they are looking much better. There are lots of flowers, so I hope that means that, this year, we’ll have lots of fruit!
It had taken a lot of work, but we found quite a few fruit and berry bushes as we cleaned up many years of neglect. After a couple of years, now that these foundlings have space and sunlight again, they are all looking stronger and healthier. Hopefully, that will mean higher yields, to go along with our first attempt at gardening, since moving out here!
I just got back from a much needed walk outside, to do at least part of my evening rounds. I would happily have stayed out longer, but the mosquitoes were out in their masses, and I didn’t want to cover myself with bug spray, this late in the day.
While out, I checked on a different sort of babies we’ve got growing right now.
Baby grapes!
Our first summer here, I had no idea my mother had grapes. They were completely engulfed in spirea. They did produce some bunches of grapes, though, which was really awesome. They were pretty small, but quite delicious. :-)
I did a lot of clean up around there, including cutting away the spirea from the grape vines (there turned out to be 2 of them) the next spring, and making a trellis for them. After a very harsh winter, I wasn’t sure they had survived, but I fastened what I could to the trellis and was diligent about watering them.
They did survive, but there wasn’t a single grape.
We had some harsh conditions this past winter, too, and for a while, I wasn’t sure they’d made it through, but they are finally leafing out, and there are quite a lot of little grape clusters showing! Now that they are no longer being strangled by the spirea, I am hoping we will have nice big bunches of grapes.
It was cheering to see them, after a rather frustrating and unproductive day. I had two time dependent things on my schedule; one was an afternoon telephone doctor’s appointment. Nothing urgent; just some follow up questions. Once that was done, I was going to pick up the rest of my husband’s prescriptions, which needed to be done before the pharmacy closed, but otherwise was just slated for “the afternoon”.
I got a call from the pharmacy late in the morning. They didn’t have enough of one of the meds to fill all the bubble packs, but they would have more tomorrow. Did I want to just get a week’s worth today, or wait until tomorrow?
Thankfully, my husband has enough to last him the rest of the week, so I said I would come in tomorrow.
With the timing of things, I was never able to get outside to do the transplanting I had intended to in the morning, and by afternoon, it would have been too hot for the job, anyhow. I figured, since I no longer had to go into town, I could do it after the phone call.
The time came and went, and there was no call.
After about 45 minutes, I finally called the clinic myself. Was there a problem? Was I the one who was supposed to call? No, I was still scheduled, and the doctor would still call me.
So I waited. It meant I couldn’t start anything that couldn’t be stopped instantly, so nothing particularly useful could be started while I waited.
And waited.
Eventually, it got late enough that the clinic would have been closed, but I still waited a bit longer, in case he stayed late.
Nothing.
I can’t fault the doctor. He was the on call doctor, so for all I know, he ended up in the emergency or something. It still left me feeling like my entire day was wasted.
Here’s hoping I can get at least the transplants done tomorrow!
