We had some rain, off and on, during the night, and today was mostly overcast. Overnight temperatures were quite nice, and the garden survives.
This morning was very good, on the pain scale, for myself, but not for my daughter. I headed to the garage this morning on my own, and didn’t even bother to bring the walker – though I did remember to bring the water jugs.
I always leave early, but I forget that the new location is closer enough to make a difference in travel time. I got there almost 45 minutes early.
He took the truck in almost right away.
The oil change got done and, when I asked, I found out he’d already checked the steering linkage for me when he was doing the diagnostic on Monday. All is good. We talked for a while about the check engine light. The most common fix he’s seen for that code is changing the gas cap, but we might not need to do that. It could be as simple as the cap not being on tight (we know it is), or the O ring not sealing as well. Applying some oil to the O ring would help with that. It could be dust in the EVAP system, especially since we drive on gravel roads. He described the system to me and told me about a number of other possibilities. My scan showed it as a “very common” code to come up. He assured me it won’t affect drivability. He never recommends getting work done, if it isn’t actually necessary. We can clear the code ourselves with the scanner, or it might even go away on its own.
In the end, he charged me for the oil and filter change, and an hour of labour for the diagnostic testing done on Monday. Considerably less expensive than I feared, at the start.
The whole thing was done before my actual appointment time!
I didn’t have a lot of driving after that, but I could already feel the truck felt like it was running smoother. The oil gauge was where he said it should be, and looking better than before. We’ll be doing many trips into the city next week, so it’ll get a work out, then.
I headed into town to refill the water bottles and picked up a few other little things, then headed home. My older daughter helped me with bringing the bottles in, as her sister has barely been able to get out of bed for the pain.
Later on, after I’d gone out to do the outside cat feeding, I hosed down the mats from the sun room some more, then checked on the garden. I ended up with a little harvest; just enough for a meal or two.
It’s been a while since I’ve tried harvesting, or even weeding, any carrots. The Rainbow Mix carrots are harder for me to reach, but are the one planted earlier, so I made sure to take from that row. They were a lot thicker than I expected! Then I grabbed the two Lemon Squash from the old kitchen garden. My older daughter is making a hearty potato soup for supper and made sure to include some of this!
The 10 day forecast is looking pretty good. Aside from a trip to the post office, we don’t need to go anywhere and the weather looks like we should be able to get things done outside – and finish clearing and cleaning the sun room!
My daughter and I headed into town this morning, hoping to get the truck worked on, even though I hadn’t received a message back from the garage with a time. I had my suspicions, but my daughter had something to do in town after, so I knew it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.
Oh, my. I really feel for the owner of the garage.
When we got there, he was outside, on the phone. My daughter stayed outside by the truck while I went into the office and waiting for him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying on the phone, but I could hear his tone, and it was a lot tenser than his usual laid back manner.
When he came to the office door, he was furiously texting while also apologizing. He had meant to text me back with a time, but had never had a chance to look at his schedule to tell me when. He was finally able to set his phone down on a shelf just outside the door, telling me how, after he’d had to go home yesterday, unable to work on our truck, things ended up taking hours longer than it should have. Of course, that absolutely screwed up his schedule completely.
He had just sat down at his desk and started getting his schedule out when his phone started ringing again. From where he’d left it just outside the door! He had to answer it and went outside again to talk. When he came back, he looked absolutely frazzled.
He was, of course, needing to catch up on things, and I could already see his bays were full, so there was no way we’d be getting in anytime soon. He had no openings today and, at best, could squeeze me in between other scheduled jobs. Of course, that would me us waiting in his office, since there’s nowhere else to go in the industrial park his shop is now located in. Alternatively, he had openings tomorrow.
We’ll be back tomorrow morning.
Poor guy. Yes, there was another mechanic, but there are things only the owner can take care of and, when it comes to our truck and needing to figure things out, he had taken that on himself rather than delegating.
That arranged, my daughter and I headed into town. I had forgotten our water bottles to refill, but we’ll be back to do that tomorrow. My daughter ran her errand and we were soon home.
I was feeling really good today – left the walker in the truck and didn’t even need a cane. After we had lunch at home, I headed outside to see what I could get done, as we are expecting rain.
I got the cat beds soaking in the tub finished and set out to drain and, if it doesn’t rain, dry. Floor mats got hosed down, which will need to be done again another time or two. I got the cat cage dismantled and the interlocking mat under it set out for soaking, then hosing down.
With the cat half of the sun room finally empty, I swept as best I could, but the floor washing and window washing will have to wait. Instead, I brought out all the cleaned cat beds and blankets and set them on one side, then brought all the food trays that had been removed and laid them out on the other, along with a water bowl. This way, the cats will at least have someplace warm and dry to hang out in, should the weather get wet. The wind, at least, seems to be dying down.
By the time all that was done, it was time to do the outside cat feeding. The singleton kitten would not let me touch her today, but she kept calling at me. She looks so sad without the little kittens to play with! I’m glad she’s staying close to the house now, though. Hopefully, with all the trays returned to the sun room, she will start hanging out in there more often, and the other cats won’t chase her out.
Before heading in, I did my evening rounds and checked on the garden. I watered the muskmelon, since they are under their own mini greenhouse set up. Then I noticed a strange bit of colour among the yellow leaves of the red noodle beans in the other bed.
There it is. Our single, sad, floppy little red noodle bean! I couldn’t see any others. Which I found funny because the same thing happened the first time we tried growing this variety during what turned out to be a drought year. We got just one sad little bean that year, too.
I would really like to successfully grow this variety, but I think I’ll wait a year or two before I try again.
I was still able to get a little harvest for today, though.
I got a handful of beans from the ones planted later in the season, with the Arikara squash. My pain levels started to kick in, so I asked a daughter to make supper, and I now have those beans on my cooling plate as I write this. I also grabbed a few of the Blueberry Tomatoes for the girls.
Sept. 23, and we still have a few things we’ll be able to harvest. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, we will have no danger of frost at all for at least the next 10 days.
I’m appreciating every frost free day we’re getting as a gift right now!
I’m happy to say that I woke feeling very well today. It was also a lovely, warm day, which meant getting things done outside. That included moving the cat stuff out from under the canopy tent to dry in the sun.
I got this picture before they got put back under the canopy tent for the night. The self warming mats were dry, and I ended up putting them into the catio for now, and the smallest cat bed was dry enough to go back into the shelf shelter it had been in before. The rest will eventually go back into the sun room, after that finally gets cleared out and cleaned.
In the back, you can see the summer window for the basement. It got a very thorough hose down, after the winter window was put back in. I’m glad I put hardware cloth as well as window screen on that. The screen has all sorts of little holes and tears in it. Without the hardware cloth, we would have had cats and probably racoons and skunks getting into the basement!
One of the top priorities on the list for today was to finally get a dump run done. My younger daughter helped, though there was nothing so heavy that I needed to be concerned about lifting it. The one thing I noticed during the drive, however, was that frustrating oil pressure gauge reading. As the engine warmed, the pressure reading dropped even faster than the last few days, just barely within the “normal” range, even at highway speeds. It wasn’t that long ago that the gauge didn’t start reading that way until we’d reached the city, and it would drop when I was stopped in traffic for one reason or another. When stopped, the needle dropped below the normal range. Not enough to set any alarms, but not where it should be.
*sigh*
I think we’ll be sure to not drive anywhere until we get it to the garage on Monday!
After the much needed dump run was done, I stayed outside while my daughter headed in. I’d pruned the dead branches from the pink rose bush in the old kitchen garden last night, and today I added to the branch pile. The white Cherokee Rose bush in front of the sun room it remarkably tall and tied back, but when I had tried to get to the laundry platform, I was having to duck under violently thorn covered branches drooping over the path. We can now get to and from the laundry platform without risking serious injury! 😄
My daughter came out soon after with heavy leather gloves and cleaned up the pile or rose branches, straight to the fire pit rather than the branch pile. I got things moved out of the way in preparation to mow the lawn with the riding mower while she did that. My brother and SIL had gone out with their truck and trailer early in the morning, and they got back while I was doing that. I went to say high and mentioned I was planning to mow the lawn in the inner yard. My SIL was concerned, and she had been planning to do the lawn mowing herself, but I told her I can use the riding mower. I just can’t use the push mower. She still looked worried and told me she would do whatever areas I wasn’t able to get it.
Then I had to fight off my daughter from using the riding mower. 😂
So she switched gears and started working on the old kitchen garden, doing a job I can’t do right now. She started bringing wheelbarrow loads of wood chips to the old kitchen garden.
She got the one path done before her back started giving out. This is quite a thick layer of wood chips over the closely trimmed path. Hopefully, that will keep the weeds and grass from growing back for at least a couple of years! There are a couple more paths to cover, but that will be slowly worked on while the weather is good.
It was just reaching 1pm when I got the riding mower out and got started. In the half hour or so before my alarm went off to take my afternoon meds, I was able to get the southeast and southwest lawns done. The grass was still pretty wet, but it couldn’t really wait any longer. Then I parked the riding mower beside the pile of elm tree pieces that is still by the house, then went in for my scheduled painkillers and a late lunch.
At this point, I should not that the riding mower was working fine the whole time, and there were no bumps or ruts or other such things that might get run into.
Which means I had no warning for when I got back.
I started the mower, put it in gear, released the brake and…
Nothing.
It wouldn’t move.
I spent the next while trying different things, turning the mower off and on several times. Everything seemed to be working just fine until I tried to move.
Nothing.
Now, we had that happen with the riding mower my brother and SIL bought for us soon after we moved here. A chain kept falling off. This mower doesn’t have a chain.
I went to my brother’s caravan and my SIL was there. I told her what happened and she let me know my brother was working on his tractor – something he’s been trying to get to for the past three weeks!
On my way over there, I walked past his dump truck and, for a moment, I though he might have been working on that. The last weekend they were here, he’d been able to set concrete blocks under the tires, so they wouldn’t sink into the ground, with wooden blocks in front of the tires to keep them from rolling forward into the driving lane. The truck had been rolled backwards, completely off the blocks and onto the grass. As we walked past it later, he asked if we had moved it. !!! Of course, we hadn’t.
It had been rolled off the blocks by the wind!!!
I found my brother under his tractor and told him what happened with the mower. He went over to take a look as best he could. I shifted from reverse to forward to neutral while he tried to see what was wrong. He could see nothing.
In the end, he pushed the mower back to the garage, so he could go back to working on the tractor. He was going to have to put the mower on a lift so he could see better, but that will have to wait.
Since I could no longer mow the lawn, I worked on other things. I cleaned out in front of the basement window, put on the winter window and hosed down the summer window before setting it aside to dry. Then I cleared out along the side of the entry, next to where the basement window is. There were a few things being stored there, and others that just ended up there. I needed to empt the area because those *(^&$#%&$(#& elm tree seeds were sprouting. Plus, a larger elm sapling I’d cut away during our first spring and summer out here has been growing suckers. So everything got moved out and either set aside nearby or it went into the junk pile. Several things needed to be hosed down first. There was a whole lot of leaves, elm tree seeds and dirt to clear out and I had to start out with the landscape rake, then the fan rake and, finally, a broom to get most of it out. It needs to be hosed down, but the row of bricks closest to the house are all leaning towards the house and would drain against the root cellar wall that’s there. The area there is lined mostly with the glazed brick that we have around the house, which gets incredibly slippery.
My daughter had gone inside by then, so I was able to grab the wheelbarrow to haul the debris away. As I was putting it back my SIL rode their zero turn mower into the yard and stopped to talk for a while. She had been doing the outer yard and wanted to know how much I’d done on the inner yard before the little riding mower stopped moving. I told her what had been done, then we just talked. I told her about where I was working on, and the enameled bricks. We wondered where on earth my dad had managed to get so many! They are everywhere! I told her about how dangerous they are when wet, and that I wanted to pull them all out from around the house and lay down gravel, instead. Much safer! She agreed with that. The bricks are really nice and I told her I could see being able to use them – just not as a floor!
She had seen the water bottle collars I used when starting the summer squash stored on some T posts along the retaining wall and asked about them, and we talked garden stuff for a while before we both went back to work. I just had some things to put away, as I’d done as much as I could for the corner. Then I gathered the cat stuff and took care of those before heading inside.
Before I did, though, I made one last pass around the south yard to check the things growing on the chain link fence. Which is where I spotted this…
Four bees found the one late blooming sunflower (Mammoth variety) to gather pollen from! Some of the Mammoth sunflowers are looking to be more than 7 ft tall right now, and several have small seed heads that haven’t opened yet. Hopefully, that means more pollen for the bees. There isn’t much else blooming right now!
All in all, I’m rather happy with how much I was able to get done outside, though unhappy that my brother’s lawn tractor stopped moving. He has so many other things to deal with!
The main thing for me is that I’m still feeling good. I didn’t push myself too far and am not feeling any abdominal pain. Hopefully, it will stay that way!!
The only way we could do it was to have my daughter stand on the digital scale to get her weight, then weigh her while holding a cat and doing the math.
The problem with that is, the digital scales reading changes based on how the feet are positioned, how you might be leaning while standing, or even what part of the floor it’s on. When my husband came over and I mentioned this, he tried getting on the scale.
My husband has no balance.
He wobbled so much, the numbers never settled, and the scale turned itself off to no display at all, like it does after you step off the scale. !!!
I’m both surprised and not surprised that Leyendecker turned out to be the heaviest at 30 pounds.
He’s not just a fat cat. He’s a tank. He’s got a skull almost as big as a softball. Hard to believe he was the smallest of his litter!
The lightest cat was Susan, at only 7 pounds.
I passed the numbers on to someone at the rescue. We will be able to buy ear mite medication through them. The kind that’s applied to the skin between the shoulders, since treating the ear canals hasn’t been working well. When it doesn’t take for just one cat, they all end with getting the mites again. We will work out getting the medication after the truck is looked at, on Monday.
Later today, I was able to head outside with the girls. While one daughter did the evening cat feeding, the other helped me with the washed cat blankets and beds, before we got the rain expected tonight. Some were dry, but most were too thick to be fully dry yet. The damp ones all got laid out under the canopy tent, most on the wire mesh curing frame, to continue drying. Hopefully, we’ll get more sunny days to set them out in, to dry and bleach in the sun.
That done, I stayed out to check the garden beds. It’s surprising to see how much survived the one night that reached freezing temperatures!
I took a closer look at some of the sunflowers, brushing dried petals off so I could see the developing seeds. The seed heads are all very small for the varieties, but it does look like there may be viable seeds.
After checking on things, I grabbed the loppers to prune dead and dying branches from the pink rose bush in the old kitchen garden. They are insanely thorny, but I was able to use the loppers to move the pruned branches aside, for the girls to clear away tomorrow.
While I was working on that, my brother and SIL arrived for the weekend, and I got to talk to them for a bit before finishing the pruning. I really enjoy spending time with them.
Overall, today was a good day. I was even up to making a quick run to the post office by myself. I didn’t start having pain creeping up until shortly before my evening meds alarm went off. It’s been getting worse since then, and I’m currently writing this while in bed, rather twisted up to find the least painful position. It’s not too bad… yet? We shall see.
One thing about the new dose and variation of painkiller. It makes me sleepy. My sister happened to call only a minute past my meds alarm going off. I had meant to lie down right away, but we spoke for a while. I ended up having to say goodbye, before I dozed off and dropped the phone!
Of course, now that I’m finally lying down, the sleepiness has passed. 😒
Not that it’s anything to complain about. Just something to work around.
Anyhow. I’m mostly really happy that we got the cats weighed as best we could. It’s been delayed for too long!
This morning, after taking my scheduled meds and supplements, I was feeling well enough to do the morning cat feeding. Which meant, of course, I stayed out to check on the garden.
There is definitely cold damage on a lot of things, but most might actually have survived. The winter squash on the chain link fence was my biggest surprise.
The first one is what should be a Black Futsu. It had been protected by a large leaf. The other images, save the very last one, are of the butterneck squash – and they are still producing female flowers! Even the summer squash, which could not be covered, seems to have had minimal damage. The last image above is of some lemon squash developing in the plant in the wattle weave bed that was a thinning by transplanting location. It’s smaller, but further ahead in maturity, than the plants in the retaining wall bed that were direct sown and never moved!
It will be another day or two before we really see how much the cold damaged things, though.
Yesterday had been quite damp and chilly, so we never did take the frost covers off. I did that this morning. The chocolate stripe tomatoes look like they didn’t handle the cold too well, but it’s still too early to be sure. The peppers and our single developing eggplant seem okay. We had rain yesterday and the frost covers were quite wet, so those went on the clothes line. The mock orange my mother had planted at the laundry platform has grown a lot this summer and was very much in the way.
My daughter and I headed out to our appointment at the garage at noon. The plan was to basically just hang out in their waiting area while the oil change was being done. My daughter even brought along her knitting. She has finished the socks she was making for herself and has started a pair of ankle socks for me with the glitter yarn.
We got there about half an hour early, even after being stuck behind a slow moving vehicle. The garage owner was there when we came into the office – me with my walker, my daughter with her cane. What a pair we make! For me, though, the walker was more of a “just in case”. I was actually feeling really good still. Usually, the pain levels start to creep up in the afternoon.
I asked him if he’d received the screenshots of the OBDII scan I sent him yesterday and he had. He spent some time going over the readings and noted that replacing the oil sensor had come up as a fix again. We talked about the other things, and they did not concern him. One of them is the gas cap sensor, which I didn’t realize until then. I’d look the part up on Amazon, following the link from the app, but didn’t look any further into it – I was pretty distracted by other things at the time. I described to him the changes I saw with the oil pressure gauge readings over the months since it last got replaced, and that I thought the oil change might help with. He said, only a little bit. Maybe. I should not be getting those readings. He asked more questions and spent some time looking things up on his computer.
In the end, he asked if I could bring the truck back on Monday and leave it with him for the day. He wants to set up an oil pressure tester and drive it around. This would tell him if it’s the sensor acting up again, or if there’s something else going on. I told him the only problem with that is, we have no other transportation. We talked for a while and, in the end, he asked me to bring the truck back on Monday morning. They’ll drive us into town, so we’re not stuck in his waiting room while he tests it out. He does not want to do the oil change until he’s had a chance to run the test.
So we booked that and headed home. We actually got home at almost exactly our appointment time. 😄 We didn’t even stop to get the mail because the post office wasn’t going to open again for another hour, and we have a parcel to pick up.
While we were gone, our prescription delivery came in, which included my new painkillers. My doctor is quite serious about pain management! I went from Tramadol/hydrochloride, 50mg, up to 3 times a day, as needed, to Tramadol/acetaminophen, 325mg, 4 times a day for two weeks. In two weeks, I should be in the city getting more tests done, so if I need more or something else, that’ll be taken care of, then.
Which means that when my afternoon alarm went off for my next painkiller dose, I had my new Tramadol to take, instead of the T3s I had in my purse I expected to take while the oil change was being done. I read the paperwork that came with it and noted that the potential side effects include dizziness and nausea, which is what I started getting about a week into the Percocet trial. Something to watch out for.
I was still feeling really good. So good, in fact, I was decidedly suspicious. At this point, not feeling pain is downright weird. (Even stranger is, the bleeding seems to have stopped, too!) After taking the meds, though, I got incredibly sleepy, falling asleep at my computer. That passed, though, and I was feeling good enough, I decided to take a chance and headed outside.
I didn’t push myself with anything too “manual labour”-ish. The outside cats got fed and I was going to finish washing and rinsing the cat beds and blankets from the sun room, but my presence was keeping the singleton kitten from going to the food bowls, so I switched gears.
I got the weed trimmer out. My brother had fixed the cracked handle on the larger one and brought it back, but I noticed there was only 2 batteries instead of 3 for that. Which was probably good, as it made sure I didn’t push myself too much. The lawn needs to be mowed, so the first thing I did was trim around the low rocks in the yard, so no one will hit them with the lawn mower, then moved to the old kitchen garden. The paths there have not been trimmed for quite a while, and some areas were getting pretty thickly overgrown. So much so that I needed to rake it all up before doing a bit more trimming around the garden edge and the nearby cat shelters. Now that we have a lovely, huge pile of wood chips, I want to lay down a thick layer on the paths in the old kitchen garden.
But not today.
Instead, I went back to the cat beds and blankets. They’ve had several soaks in the old tub with detergent, but for the past few days, they’ve been sitting on the grass, getting rained on. I got the wheelbarrow to wash individual pieces, having to use a scrub brush on some of them, to get the mats of cat hair and burrs off, then set them in the old tub for rinsing.
The first things I worked on were flat things I could hang on the line, so after the first few were done, I headed over and took the dry frost protector sheets off the clothes line.
Then I pruned the mock orange back, so the laundry would no longer catch on it. What a difference that made! I left the branches for a daughter to clear away tomorrow, though.
That was what I worked on for the next while; scrubbing a few pieces in the wheelbarrow, rinsing them in the tub, hanging them on the line, then doing another batch. Both the wash water and rinse water had to be changed several times. An entire winter and spring, plus part of a summer, of cats, skunks and raccoons make a serious mess! The last items could not be hung on the line. Some because of their shape, like two cat caves. Others because they were just too thick and heavy to be able to hang on a line. Some of those ended up on the water bowl house, which has a metal roof, to drain and dry. They’ll need to be flipped a couple of times, I’m sure. The last ones got draped over the upturned wheelbarrow to drain. Once they’ve had a chance to drain most of the water they soaked up, they’ll get moved onto one of the cat shelter roofs to dry in the sun. We are expecting rain tomorrow, but not until the evening, so we’ll have to keep an eye on things. The thicker items will probably take several days to dry.
I’m happy to say that I still felt really great, even after all this. I don’t know how much I can attribute to the new pain meds and how much to it just starting out a good day and staying a good day!
So the main thing we needed to get done today – get Damocles an oil change, at least – didn’t happen, but today still worked out to be a productive day.
That makes me happy!
Gosh, I miss being able to work outside more! That’s the part of all the health issues that bothers me the most. I really enjoy the work, and not being able to do it is so very frustrating. I’ve gone over the things that need to be done over the next while with the girls, to prepare the yard and garden for winter. Getting the sun room emptied and cleaned out is a priority right now. Nights are starting to get cold, and the cats will need their winter shelter. My older daughter has her commissions to work on, so there’s not as much that she can do, but my younger daughter is planning out her days based on the to-do list, now that we expect to be able to stay home for a few days, other than a much needed dump run on Saturday.
Time to catch up on things while the weather holds!
This evening, I was able to head out to the garden before things got dark and cold. We are looking at a potential low of 1-2C/34-36F, depending on what app I look at. 1C/34F is cold enough for potential frost.
So I first made sure to bring our single winter squash that was curing, into the house. Then I took our frost cloths (repurposed old sheets) to see what we could cover. My older daughter came out to help.
Embedding from Instagram seems to crop the images quite a bit. Irritating!
Three of the clothes I brought were the right size to wrap around the protective tomato cages around the California Wonder bell peppers, and another around the Sweet Chocolate peppers and eggplant. I got some garden wire and my daughter helped me fasten the bamboo supports for the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes at the top. This old sheet was large enough to drape over the supports and reach all the way to the ground on all sides! All of these got secured with garden clips and clothes pegs, to keep them from blowing away.
After that, my daughter started to harvest the fully dry caraway seed heads while I started harvesting some bush beans. She finished first, then helped me pick beans. After that, she watered the melons – we had lots of rain the past few days, but they were covered, so they didn’t get any direct watering – while I moved on to pick beans from beside the Arikara squash plant. Then I picked some of the ripest larger tomatoes. My daughter joined me in time to work on harvesting the Orange Currant tomatoes.
She had to go inside before we got all the tiny tomatoes. This bed is one we don’t have anything large enough to cover and protect from frost.
I was finishing up and gathering the containers when I noticed something in the next bed.
Every single Swiss Chard in that bed is gone.
*sigh*
They never got quite large enough to be worth harvesting yet!!
From there, I went to the old kitchen garden and harvested what little there was that looked big enough. Then I used my last and largest sheet to cover the self seeded tomatoes in the wattle weave bed, which you can see in the second image of the slide show above.
In the last picture, you can see the harvest. The larger tomatoes that are split, I will cut the split off then dehydrate the rest of the tomatoes. I finally harvested the one green scallop squash I had been leaving to get bigger. There was only one other that was at all large enough to harvest. I grabbed a few little yellow zucchini.
If we do get a frost tonight, this is very likely the last harvest we get of the summer squash, beans and tomatoes. There are so many green tomatoes on the plants. I was talking to the girls about bringing them inside to ripen, but they tell me that it’s not worth it. They say tomatoes ripened indoors don’t test as good, but mealy instead. I’ll have to take their word for it.
One thing that isn’t having a hard time with the cooler weather are the marigolds and cosmos!
These are the French Dwarf marigolds that suddenly got quite a bit taller. I neglected to get a picture, but the Crackerjack marigolds by the high raised bed have gotten taller than any marigolds I’ve ever seen before – well above the height of the high raised bed. The cosmos are a dwarf variety, so they aren’t as tall as what we had last year, but some of them still reach higher than the high raised bed, too.
With the cooler weather, there are still some thing I expect to harvest. There are the carrots, which we haven’t been trying to get at lately. We will need to start digging those up, though they can stay in the ground for quite a while longer. There are also the Red Beard bunching onions, which can stay longer. None of the onions from our own seed appear to have survived much after transplanting. They got smushed at some point. Probably rolled on by cats. There’s the beets and the parsnips, and I still can’t tell if we have much root development in those. I’m also not sure about the chicory. At this stage, I don’t expect them to bloom anymore, but will they still have roots worth harvesting? The Florence Fennel all bolted, but I should be able to harvest seeds from them, instead. I don’t expect to have any Diakon radish, since they all bolted, too. I don’t think we can even harvest seed pods from those, they are so badly damaged.
If we get frost, that’ll be it for the winter squash on the chain link fence. The sunflowers might be okay, but it doesn’t look like we’ll have any seed heads worth harvesting.
Tomorrow morning, the covers will need to come off. We are supposed to get rain from about 3pm – 9pm, and the overnight low is supposed to be warmer than tonight, so we might be able to get away with not covering them again for quite some time. The rain itself would prevent an actual frost and covering them while it’s raining might be worse than not covering them at all. It looks like things will actually be decently warm for the next 10-15 days or so! All it takes is one cold night to kill everything off, though.
We need to leave by about 9am tomorrow morning for my daughter’s appointment at the Women’s Hospital in the city. This time around, I’m not even going to try an park by the hospital and keep adding $2 to the meter every half hour, when we don’t know how long it’ll be. I’ll drop the girls off at the door, then head back out to a shopping area with free parking. Maybe check out a Michaels and see their craft supplies. My bead kit came in today, so there isn’t much more I need to find before I can start making the Christmas ornaments I have in mind. I’ll just need somewhere to hang out until my daughters message me to come pick them up. Depending on how long her appointment ends up being, we might be able to get home before the rain starts.
What I should be working on now is preparing beds for the winter, and for the garlic we need to be planting in October. Something may not be physically able to do, if I’m going to be having surgery by the middle of October. There’s only so much my daughters can do, as they are dealing with quite a lot of pain issues, too, though very different from my own.
This year has basically been in a holding pattern. Virtually no progress. We even had a lot of good weather days that I should have been able to take advantage off. Instead, I am largely banned from manual labour, and spend way too much time having to lie down due to pain.
Ah, well. It is what it is. We do what we can with what we’ve got!
I’m glad I was able to get outside this morning. It started raining in the afternoon and is expected to continue through to about 3am.
Last night, we dropped to about 5 or 6C/41 or 43F, depending on which app I check. Tonight, it’s supposed to drop to 9 or 11C/48 or52F, depending on where I look, so no worries of frost. The next night, however, is expected to drop to 3 or 4C/37 or 39F Definitely enough to start covering things, even if we don’t get frost.
Some things can’t be covered, though. Things like this Butterneck squash.
These are the two largest ones. In the second photo, you can just see a bit of wind damage. The Black Russian sunflowers on this side are shorter than the Mammoth ones, and the high winds have been pushing them all over the place. I’ve had to untangle both varieties of sunflowers from each other. In this corner, a couple of shorter sunflowers had gotten tangled with the squash vines climbing the fence. One of them ended up right against that second developing squash. The stalks of sunflowers are quite course and the winds pushing them around damaged the squash’ skin like sandpaper.
I know these are unlikely to survive an actual frost. Will they survive temperatures just above that? Hard to say. The colder temperature and shorter daylight hours also mean they are growing more slowly, so they will take more time to mature even without the colder temperatures.
These squash are from the second sowing of seed starts I did after discovering all the squash and melon seedlings were destroyed overnight, so these are also already quite late. One of the other things from the second sowing that got transplanted is a Black Futsu squash. When I bought some butternut transplants and the plants seemed to be growing all right after being transplanted, but they are barely even blooming now. The winter squash in that area that is growing and actually has female flowers and developing melons are the Black Futsu. They look like little green golf balls right now, and one of the earlier ones seems to have disappeared. So we won’t be getting any butternut squash from from the purchased transplants at all.
I headed out again not long ago to do the evening cat feeding, but it was raining pretty hard, so I didn’t check any of the garden beds. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ve lost more cats. Neither my daughters nor I have seen Bug for a while now. My precious little Bug is missing! I was never even able to get her to accept pets from me again, other than sneaking them while she was eating.
We need to do another head out in the morning. That’s when most of them show up.
I’m so glad we got Slick’s orphans to the rescue when we did. I got a quick update on them. They are allowing themselves to be held, and the one that was the most alarmed and scared and fighting us off? That was the first one to start purring!
Well, I’m certainly glad I was able to cover those melons yesterday. According to the weather app on my phone, we dropped to 4C/39F last night. No frost, but still cold enough to potentially cause problems for heat lovers like melons.
When I headed out to check the garden beds this morning, I made sure to fill the slow watering jugs by the melons. Hopefully, that will help give them the heat and moisture they need for those few little melons to develop.
What can I say. I’m an optomist.
Nothing seemed to be damaged by the cold night, thankfully. The Spring Blush peas are completely dried out, so I collected the pods. They’re not in a bowl in the cat free zone, waiting to be put into a jar or something. Then I completely forgot about them. 😄
When I headed out again this evening, I took care of a few things. The first was to bring in the onions, which have had enough time to cure.
They all got their stems trimmed off and the dirt on them gently removed. I also trimmed the Giganthemum poppy pods off their stalks and brought those in. In the next image, you can see what seeds we got (some of the pods were empty), in an amber glass jar. The plan it to sow those in the fall, just before the ground freezes. Between these and the bread seed poppy seeds we have, I am hoping to finally grow enough poppies to have seeds for baking with as well as for sowing the next year. I have a couple of spots in mind to sow the different varieties, so they don’t cross pollinate.
I also finally harvested our single Arikara squash.
The first photo is to give a perspective of how big it is, in the wheelbarrow. As it got bigger, I set it on a brick, then later added a board, so keep it off the damp ground. The rough surface you can see is what was face down on the board. It was a bit damp so, when I set it on the curing frame (over the cross piece, to support the weight), I made sure the damp part was facing up.
This, I expect, will be the only winter squash we will get this year, and I’m glad we finally got an Arikara squash, since I specifically want to save the seeds from this rare variety. There’s no chance of cross pollination since there were no other winter squash around to cross pollinate with.
We do have the winter squash on the chain link fence, and we do have a few Butterneck squash developing. Some are large enough now that I could be harvesting them as a summer squash. I don’t expect that they will have a chance to reach full maturity, but even young winter squash can be eaten.
According to the weather app on my desktop, we dropped to 6C/43F last night, not 4C/39F. Tonight might be just as chilly as last night, but shouldn’t be any colder. By Tuesday night, though, both apps are saying we will be dropping to 3C/37F overnight. At that point, I might want to add jugs of hot water under the plastic with the melons, and drape frost cloths over the peppers and eggplant. After that, we’re expected to warm up again for a while.
I definitely need to remember to close my window for the night. It’s only open a few inches, and I was cozy under my covers, but I woke to find 6 cats plastered against me, 4 around my face and shoulders, trying to keep warm! 😄🤣
I am so not looking forward to winter. My tolerance for cold, and winter in general, has really dropped a lot in the last few years! Medical emergencies and vehicle breakdowns have contributed significantly to that. 😄
Today, I went through my supplies to figure out what I could use to create a makeshift greenhouse over the melons. It was a cooler day today, and some areas of the province – not ours – are getting frost warnings. Our local forecast for overnight lows are not that far, but last year we frequently had nights colder than predicted, rather than warmer, which caused a fair amount of damage.
Some things, there isn’t much we can do to protect them. The winter squash on the chain link fence for example, share the bed with sunflowers that are quite a bit taller, and there’s no real way to cover them. In theory the tomato bed, which has the box frame around it, could be covered, if I had anything large enough to go over the vertical support stakes as well. I do not.
The peppers, eggplant and Chocolate Stripe tomatoes could be rather easily covered, if necessary, at least. The summer squash, growing vertically, could also be potentially covered if we had anything large enough. Again, we do not.
The melons, however, can be done. I had a couple of options and this is what I ended up with.
I ended up using two clear shower curtains. Must stronger than the other plastic I had. I had to push the hoops and vertical stakes down quite a bit and, at the end over the very tiny surviving transplant from our own seeds, I made the hoop shorter by one rod. Just pushing the hoops in took a lot more effort than expected, as I started hitting rocks. One of them had to be pulled up and moved several times before I had to be satisfied with the height it was, because there was no getting them any lower, and they weren’t at a location where I could simply remove one of the rods.
I set the shower curtains with the grommets at the ends where I could weave ground staples through the holes to gather the excess and secure it to the ground, then weighting them down. Of course, the wind started picking up, trying to blow things away while I worked, but I made sure the overlap was facing a direction where it was less likely to be picked up by the wind. I was able to use clips from the hoop kit to secure the plastic in key areas, though the thicker plastic made that more difficult. Hopefully, not less secure.
Then I put together more rods to make a couple of hoops to go on the outside of the plastic, further securing it. Wind will still be an issue, but hopefully not by much.
It started to rain while I was working on this. We barely hit 13C/55F today, so it was pretty chilly!
One of the sheets of plastic can’t quite reach the ground near the south end. It’s still enough to keep the heat in, and still allow some air circulation. I should be able to raise the sides on hotter days, or to be able to water them. I even tested that out without even having to raise them much at all, and was able to fill the upside down gallon water bottles I’ve got in between the plants for slower, deeper watering.
Hopefully, this will work out. As we build the walls around these beds, I will be making wire mesh covers for them that will be easier to cover with insect netting or plastic. This will do for now, as least.
Hopefully, this will be enough to protect the melons and give them the heat they needs. The developing melons are about the size of a golf ball, with some slightly bigger. It’s highly unlikely they will have time to reach full maturity, but I at least want to give them a chance!
I had intended to get the riding mower out and work on the lawn but, even with just a light rain, the grass was just too wet. So I started working on the cat stuff that had been soaking in the old bath tub. I took everything out, dividing them into piles of stuff that can be hung on the clothes line, and stuff that can’t. I started washing fleece cat blanket, using the wheelbarrow as a tub, only for the rain to start up again. So I left it to soak – there’s a lot worked into the fabric I will not be able to work loose, but the soaking will help – and headed back inside.
Unfortunately, even this little bit of manual labour is messing with me and the pain is returning, even with T3s. I will still be able to go out and do the evening cat feeding, but I won’t be able to help my daughter, who is currently starting to break down the fallen tree. For now, she’s just removing branches and hauling them away, using non-power tools. The downed tree is completely blocking the open lane between the spruce grove and the crab apple trees, so we really need to get that cleaned up.
It isn’t a lot, but it felt good to at least get this project done. We’ll just need to make sure it holds against the winds!
Today, the girls and I headed into the city. Something we decided on later last night. The amazing thing is that my older daughter came along, too. Not for any medical appointments or another ER trip. Just because she wanted to get out of the house, and actually felt well enough to do it!
After the last few years of barely being able to get outside the house, this is HUGE!
As for me, I took the last of my generic Percocet and almost immediately got hit with dizziness. At that time, I was able to just go back to bed, though, so it didn’t mess things up for me too much.
Potato Beetle took his turn on my leaning sheep. Which I seem to have lost entirely. After washing it, I had found it worked well as support under my knees so I could lie on my back, so I hadn’t put it back in the shelf that is my “headboard”. The cats have all claimed it at one point or another! It is now a cat bed.
*sigh*
We didn’t head out until about 11 and as I was on the way to the truck, I just had to stop and take some photos.
There were a couple of very sleepy bees on the sunflowers! It was a nice warm day by mid afternoon, but the morning was still cool enough that the bees were sluggish.
Our destination in the city was a Medigas. My husband had ordered new nasal “pillows” that he has instead of a CPAP mask. The pressure he needs on his CPAP is so high, the type of mask that covers the nose and mouth leaks air unless it’s tightened so much, he actually developed lesions. He’s gone through various styles of nasal prongs over the years, as designs changed and older ones were no longer being made. He isn’t able to order from his usual source in the US, though. For some reason, they no longer accept his prescription that’s required to buy replacements. So he had to buy from Medigas.
He got two nasal prongs, and it cost $110.
When he was able to buy them from the US supplier, he got a package with 6 different sizes for maybe Cdn$30.
He’ll be able to submit his receipt to his insurance company to be reimbursed for most of that, but the cost of CPAP supplies from Canadian sources is just insane and always has been.
By the time we got to the Medigas, we’d been on the road for over an hour and I was starting to hurt. My alarm for my afternoon dose of painkillers was about to go off after we got the nasal prongs, so I made sure to take the T3s I had with me before we made our next stop. I had hoped to take advantage of being in the city to stop at the Walmart to do a bit of shopping, but wasn’t up to it. The Medigas is on the same highway that we do our non-Costco stock up shopping on, and the international grocery store was on the way home, so we stopped there to get supper for when we got home. I picked a couple of things for my husband and I while the girls remembered they were out of oat milk and went to get some. They ended up coming back with a few other things as well, then went looking for something they wanted for their own supper – while I had to sit down. The T3s never really seemed to kick in.
In the end, the girls were sweethearts and paid for everything.
One thing I meant to get on the way out of the city was gas. Prices had gone up to $1.799/L, even in the city. On the way to Medigas I spotted a place that was $1.639 and on the same side of the highway we were on, so I got gas there. It was pre-pay only, so I went in to pay for $40 while my daughter took care of the pump. It turned out to be just enough to fill the tank from about 3/4s, which was nice.
After we picked stuff up at the grocery store, I had to get my younger daughter to take over driving. There was no dizziness at all with the T3s, but they don’t work as well. Frustrating.
Once we got home and my daughters brought things inside, my younger daughter took care of feeding the outside cats, before we had our food and relaxed a bit. I felt well enough later to head outside and into the garden to do some harvesting.
These are the California Wonder bell peppers, which are starting to turn colour. The Sweet Chocolate peppers are also starting to ripen. We won’t be getting a lot of peppers, but we’ll at least have a few! Since these have the tomato cages protecting them, if things get chilly overnight, they can be easily covered with some fabric we have for frost cloth.
What amazes me is just how many bush beans I was able to harvest! Most of them still from the high raised bed, that were planted earlier in the season.
The yellow beans on top are from the later planted ones in the Arikara Squash bed. There are a couple of Blueberry tomatoes, and a whole bunch of Orange Currant tomatoes. Some of them are fully red, like Spoon tomatoes, instead of orange. I also grabbed a couple of yellow zucchini.
I think we have enough bush beans to actually be worth blanching and freezing in a medium sized freezer bag – and there are still developing beans we’ll be able to continue harvesting!
I am so grateful for the mild weather we are having so far. The forecast has changed again, of course, and now it’s looking like we won’t be hitting below 6C/43F for a couple of weeks, and will mostly be closer to 10C/50F. Not that I trust long range forecasts, but it does give something to plan on.
Tomorrow, we have no plans to go out anywhere. If we hadn’t gone in today to get my husband’s nasal prongs, it would have had to wait until Monday, and I didn’t want to do that to him. He really needed replacements, long ago. My younger daughter has been wanting to work on breaking down that fallen tree for a while now, but we have either not been home long enough, or it’s been too windy and rainy.
At some point, we’re going to need to get a gas powered chainsaw. There’s only so far we can get on extension cords, and battery powered anything won’t last long enough to finish the jobs we need to do. Our baby chainsaw (electric pruner) has two batteries and my brother’s weed trimmer has three, and none of them recharge fast enough to be able to cycle through them and finish most jobs.
Anyhow.
I’m just thankful to be able to get as much done as we have been, with all the crazy medical stuff going on.
