Here it is! I hope you enjoy it.
The Re-Farmer
Gardening
Our 2025 Garden: Surprise finds!
While going through what’s left of the garden as I do my evening rounds, I’m constantly surprised by what’s still surviving. The still blooming summer squash and eggplant. The pumpkin vines growing new leaves and blooming. The bush beans still blooming and producing.
This evening, however, I had some more unexpected surprise finds.
The first was tomatoes!
Yes. Actual tomatoes are ripening. The tiny self seeded tomatoes in the trellis bed got hit hard by the frosts we got at the beginning of the month, but mostly survived. To find a spray of ripening tomatoes, however, was the last thing I expected to find! It also confirms that they are Spoon tomatoes.
The next two pictures are of pea plants I found near the end of the bed with the newly completed log frame around it. The last picture was of a group of three pea plants I had unknowingly stepped on! We didn’t grow peas in that bed. They were in the bed next to it, roughly 7 feet away.
My guess is a deer eating the pea plants might have dragged a section of vine away, dropping a pod in the process. Which still seems unlikely, but it’s the most logical explanation I can think of.
I’ve since stuck some short pieces of bamboo stakes into the ground beside them, so I won’t accidentally step on any again. I don’t expect them to get very big before the season ends, but I don’t want to walk all over them, either.
What a strange, strange gardening year this year!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
The rain has stopped, and Eyelet is in being spoiled rotten!
Well, today’s schedule sure changed.
First, a quick update with the home care crazy from yesterday. The plan was, if the guy didn’t come back to do my mother’s bed time med assist, as he said he would, by 9pm, I would drive over to do it.
My mother called me at 8:50 (the actual scheduled time) so say, no one arrived. I wasn’t 100% sure she was scheduled for 8:50, and sometimes they come late, which is why I asked her to call me if no one showed up at 9. I asked her to wait a bit longer and if he still didn’t come, let me know and I’d go over.
My other told me to not bother. She would just take some Tylenol and go to bed. She would be okay.
*sigh*
I hated to do that, but I also really didn’t want to drive to her town, in the dark, in the rain.
This morning, after I did my rounds (it was still raining), I gave her a call.
In which I will pause to share the cuteness! The first picture was taken last night, the second this morning.
Seeing Colby on top of his sister like that is adorable!
She needs a name.
Anyhow… back to calling my mother!
My mother told me she’d had a great night.
Then started going on about how the Tylenol helped so much more than her medications did.
Red flag time! My mother has done this before. Basically, she’s convincing herself that the medications aren’t doing her any good, because she has these other problems. How can she be taking all these medications, but still feel have all these other things? This time, because Tylenol did such a great job with her pains, to her that meant it was working better than her medications.
I have explained this to her before, but I did it again. NONE of her medications are for pain. They are all for different things, and I mentioned a few of them. Unfortunately, I could hear in the tone of her response that she was basically not believing me.
It’s a good thing she gets home care med assists, or she would start skipping her meds regularly, or picking and choosing which ones to take. Again.
To distract, I then asked her about her grocery shopping. She said she was only out of milk and hadn’t started a list. She was in her night gown and didn’t feel like getting dressed. I told her, don’t bother getting dressed, and I’ll help with the list. She was quite happy with that arrangement!
Since I was going to be dropping Eyelet off in the early evening, I wanted to get to my mothers a little bit earlier than usual. Once there, I first focused on her meds. I found a pill organizer and took the meds out of her “orphan” bubbles; last night’s bed time meds and a Monday morning bubble that’s been carried over to new packs for a couple of months now. I made sure to write down which meds they were and tucked the note in one of the organizer spots and tucked the whole thing away. My mother has strict instructions to leave them, unless there’s an “emergency”. I also prepared her bed time meds for tonight – I brought another of the tiny tagine sauce bowls to keep them in – and set up another note with it, setting it aside with the note facing where my mother sits at her table.
That done, we started working on her shopping list. It was mostly her usual items, but we did remember to include things we’d forgotten last time, like the instant oatmeal that makes things so much easier for her. Some things were just “see what looks good” type stuff. When she gave me cash for the trip, she included a bit extra, asking me to keep an eye out for anything else I might spot and know she would like.
Which worked out well. I was able to get her extra fruit that she likes but normally wouldn’t get. Today, they happened to be on sale. Her favourite bread was on sale, so I got extra for her freezer. That sort of thing. As I put things away, I always go over what I got and what changes I made, and she was very happy with the selections. Before putting the milk carton in the fridge, I made sure to open it for her, and I’m glad I did. For some reason, every now and then, they just don’t want to open. If it’s difficult for me to open, that would make it almost impossible for my mother to open! I do wish her grocery store still had their 2L milk in jugs as well as cartons, as jugs are so much better for people with mobility issues in their hands.
That done, I made sure to give her floor a sweep before heading out. One of her neighbours that has a garden plot has been sharing their bounty of tomatoes by leaving them in the common room for anyone to take. My mother keeps taking some, even though she already has, and is supposed to avoid acidic foods like tomatoes. So she gave me an ice cream bucket full to take home! We still haven’t finished off the last bunch she gave us!
Once I was in the truck, I started messaging my family to let them know the status of things. Which is when I started getting messages from the woman I was to bring Eyelet to. She was wondering if I could bring him to a different address, as she’d forgotten she was supposed to go there after her work this evening. It wasn’t far from her own address, so that worked out okay.
We continued our conversation as I got home when she asked when I was planning to head out with Eyelet. I told her, but mentioned that I was flexible, now that I was done with my mother’s grocery shopping. She asked if I could bring him in right away. The new address is for a foster that already had a room ready for him and was home.
!!!
I was back on the road with Eyelet within 10 minutes. My daughter went looking for him as I got a carrier prepared. Finding him was easy. He was napping in the sun room.
He did not appreciate being awakened, then stuck into a carrier!
I grabbed a donated carrier that is triangle shaped and opens on one side, which makes it easy to take cats in and out. It is, however, not our largest carrier.
Eyelet was not happy!
So not happy, he stress pooped in the carrier during the drive out.
*sigh*
He went back and forth between trying to claw his way out of the carrier, to just lying down calmly, and back again, which meant he got messy in the process.
When I got to the address and the woman came out to greet me, I made sure to let her know! I then followed her in to Eyelet’s new home for the next few days.
What a set up! An entire little bedroom, all to himself, with several beds, including one at a window, a cat tree, toys and, of course, a litter pan and food and water. He was enough of a mess that she brought a cloth to wipe him off a bit before taking him out of the carrier.
Dude was not impressed!
He did, however, start purring as soon as she touched him! He was very open to pets in general.
I’ve since gotten an update that he has settled into his new digs very well. I’m not at all surprised. The set up is pure luxury compared to the yard cat life!
The best part is that this was all done well before I was originally scheduled to deliver Eyelet. It even stopped raining shortly after I got home.
It was an awesome rain, too. Almost 24 hours of constant rain. Nothing too heavy, either. The sort of rain we could have used so much of over the summer!
Meanwhile, my brother came out today. I didn’t even realize he was here until I left for my mother’s and saw his car. He’s been busy preparing their trailer for the winter, including driving it out to where the tanks can be emptied. When I got back from delivering Eyelet, he was able to come over and tell me what he’d been able to do for my mother’s car. There’s still more to be done, but it can wait. The priority was to deal with that tire that keeps going flat. He just used the spray stuff in it, then made sure to drive it around, and even put it up on a jack to just spin the tire, so it wouldn’t cure in a puddle inside the tire.
Tomorrow afternoon, he and I will be going to my mother’s tomorrow, and her car is one of the main things she wants to talk about. She says she wants him to get it all fixed up, and that she would pay for it, so that we have a second vehicle, and one that she can get in and out of. It might be better off to sell it, or maybe trade it in for a newer vehicle. My brother is in a better position to make recommendations on that than I am.
So we’ll see how that works out.
Weather wise, next week is looking to be warmer again, and dry. That will be when we seriously need to get the sun room cleaned out. That requires basically emptying it, so we can wash the concrete floor. The cat cage can’t fit through the door without being dismantled, so the room has to be done one half at a time. It’s going to be a big, messy job. I’m going to have to stop storing most of my tools and garden supplies in there. The cats, skunks and raccoons get into it all and make such a mess – and make messes on top of things!
With the rain, I’ve made little additional progress in cleaning up the garden, but tomorrow is the 21st, which is when I’ve been typically doing my garden tour videos. It also happens to be the first day of our new average frost date range. Instead of one day, they now have a range of days. Which isn’t how an average works, but whatever. They now say our average first frost days is between Sept 21 and 30, from the previous Sept. 10. Of course, this year, we had two frosts before Sept. 10! Well, it’ll be another 30 years before they do the math again. I’m still sticking with Sept. 10, when I work out when to do things in the garden, and what the length of our growing season is. It was 99 days before. Now it’s supposedly 125-150 days, since the last frost date has changed, too.
Yeah… I don’t think so. Not a chance, where we are.
Gosh, though… having a 125 day growing season would be amazing. 150 days would be heavenly! There’s so much more we could grow with a season that long!
Ah, well. A girl can dream but, in the end, we have to deal with what we’ve got in our local climate, not what a map of averages says.
Time for me to head outside for my evening rounds before it gets dark, and see examples of that along the way!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Morning in the garden, and some afternoon progress
It was a very pleasant morning today. I’m liking the cooler temperatures, even though I’ve also decided it’s been cool enough to keep the winter squash covered by plastic during the day. With the bits of rain we’ve been getting, I had some concern they would dry out, but I can see plenty of condensation inside the plastic, so they’re definitely not drying out.
I’m finding what’s left in the garden to be rather remarkable. The pumpkin vines, for example, aren’t just still blooming after all that frost damage, but are growing healthy looking new leaves. Except the one that has a pumpkin hanging in a sling on the trellis. That one seems completely dead, but the pumpkin is still slowly yellowing, so we’re leaving it for now.
Five vines. One pumpkin. *sigh*
Then there are the sunflowers. Especially that one stalk with all the extra seed heads on it.
There’s the one seed had at the top that has barely any outside petals, but the little ones along the stalk are opening right up! I don’t know how well they’ll do, given how late in the season it is, even if we do end up with a long and mild fall (which I don’t expect). There are hardly any pollinators right now. Between the wildfire smoke all summer, and then the early frosts, followed by a heat wave, and now cooler temperatures again, it’s just not been a good summer for the pollinators are much as for the garden.
The next two photos are of the blooming memorial asters, with more buds developing. I’m hoping the weather holds out long enough that they can develop seeds for me to collect.
The last photo, photo bombed by Sir Robin, is of our very first White Scallop squash female flower.
Yes, I hand pollinated it, though I really don’t know why I bothered. We’re past the middle of September. The chances of any of these squash developing is very, very low!
Morning rounds done, I headed in for breakfast, and was soon back out again. We’re expecting rain this evening, through to tomorrow, and there were a couple of things I wanted to get cleaned up while I could. One was the burn barrel area. We have several recycling bins for aluminum, which we take to the scrap yard once there’s enough to fill the box of the truck, one for stuff for the burn barrel, one for general recycling at the dump and one last one for glass to take to the dump, as glass has it’s own bin there.
The burn barrel bags would get taken out to where we would normally burn them. The barrel itself, which was here when we moved in and already in rough shape, basically fell apart, long ago. Instead, we set up a metal ring I found in the spruce grove, so we have a burn ring, instead.
The problem is, we haven’t been able to actually burn anything for a long time. Usually because there’s too much wind. Lately, it’s been because of burn bans. So the bags have been accumulating to the point that I’ve just started taking a few to the dump after loading up with household garbage and recycling. Most of the bags, however, have gotten torn up. Not from animals; there’s nothing in the bags to attract them. I’d say, mostly from the wind. The rain has also soaked a lot of it. It’s gotten to be a real mess.
To today I headed out with some garbage bag it up. A few bags were still intact, but most of it had to be completely re-bagged. It’s a good thing we’ve got heavy duty garbage bags, because a lot of it was very wet, so it didn’t take long to make the bags quite heavy, for the amount in them. So now, it’s all looking much better, though there’s still quite a few bags out there! They are next to the branch pile that needs to be burned, as that’s where I’ve been tossing diseased branches and garden plants. Unfortunately, my brother didn’t know that, so when he trimmed branches for their trailer to fit through, he put them on the same pile. At that point, I’ve just started to do the same. Plus, there are some sections of maple set near the pile that were too big for my brother to throw on top, and I’ve been making a point of keeping maple wood for the fire pit.
The fire pit we haven’t used this year, at all, yet!
That done, I then started working on the last bags of cans against the garage. We’ve had to stop storing the bags there, as the cats kept tearing them up. Most of our aluminum is from cat food cans, and they can smell it. My daughter and I had cleaned most of it up and we now have all the bags in the basement, taking up space. The only bags left were from a while back that have metal mixed in by mistake.
So today, I got bags set up for the aluminum and the not-aluminum and started sorting. I got through two torn up bags before it started to rain. Just a light rain, but enough that I called it and will work on the last bag another time.
What I did manage to do before heading in was finally deal with the mesh covers on the garden bed against the chain link fence. This is the one that was winter sown with tall and climbing things, mostly, but was a complete failure. The mesh was to protect the bed from the Chinese Elm seeds, which would have worked just fine, except for the cats. They would play on top of the mesh, or get under it, only to not be able to find their way out again, panic, and bounce of the inside of the mesh until the finally reached an opening.
Needless to say, nothing in that bed survives. Except some Jebousek lettuce, which I allowed to go to seed and have already collected their seeds.
I had already pulled the netting with their wire supports up and set them on the stump bench. Today, I got the wires out so that I could fold up the mesh to put away for the winter.
I had help.
I stretched out and folded one section, turned around and there they were! Eyelet, Grommet and The Grink, claiming the rest of them as beds. 😄
In that picture and the next one, you can see just how bent up the wire supports got. Some might be salvageable, but others might be just too twisted. I wouldn’t use them again for this, anyhow. They would have been fine if all they needed to do was keep the seeds off the garden bed, but they just couldn’t hold the weight of playing kittens! The channels in the mesh that the wire ran through might be large enough for the Pexx pipe hoops I now have. Maybe. It would be a tight fit, but I’d prefer that over loose.
The kittens were not all “helpful” though. Each section of netting has a drawstring at the ends, with a sliding cord lock bead to hold it closed.
The Grink discovered one. Started playing with it. Got startled. Tried to run off with the bead in her mouth.
The next thing I know, she’s running down the patch, a section of netting dragging behind her, catching on the wire supports and dragging them along!
She finally let go at the end of the path, having dragged almost a dozen of the wire supports down the path with her!
Definitely not helping!
While the wire supports may or may not be salvageable, the netting is just fine. For a Dollarama purchase, these are really good. I still have one package, unopened. If I can find something better to slide through the channels to support them, they would work to keep kittens off as well as elm seeds!
Since it was still raining a bit, I headed inside once the mesh and wires were added to the sorting pile at the bench near the garden shed. The rain and stopped and started a few times since I came in. If the weather radar is accurate, it’s going to rain steadily from now on until tomorrow evening, so I guess that’s it for outside stuff. I’d hoped to get a few more small things done before the rain. Ah, well. It won’t go away.
The dump is open tomorrow, so I might make that trip, but we don’t have much of anything to take to the dump right now, unless I want to grab what I bagged up by the burn barrel today. The main thing is that we’ll be taking Eyelet to the new rescue. He’s a bit young to be neutered still, but he’ll be getting that and all the usual vetting before he’s put up for adoption. The main thing is that he will be indoors and at less risk of becoming coyote chow, since he can’t hear.
Some lucky person out there is going to get themselves a stunningly beautiful and sweet little cat!
Speaking of cats, time to get the kibble out!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Morning flowers and absorbed into the crèche
This morning, I woke up to the sound of rain. Lovely rain!
There was absolutely nothing in my weather apps calling for rain. Even the weather radar showed nothing.
I was glad to have it as we got very little rain yesterday. Before my trip into town to pick up prescriptions, I helped my daughter gather garden and yard tools to the bench under the canopy tent, and she spent several hours cleaning, sharpening, removing rust an otherwise tending to them. The job’s not done, as some things need repairs as well, and others just took a really long time, so this is a multi-day project.
The good thing is that she was set up under the canopy. I headed out later on and, while I was in the garage, it started to pour.
No, we were not expecting rain.
Then it stopped as abruptly as it started.
Then it started again, with another downpour.
This happened a few times, on and off like a tap, but in the end we didn’t actually get much rain. Even this morning, after whatever rain we were getting when I woke up, I found the level in the rain barrel had hardly moved.
The garden – what’s left of it – still appreciated it.
The pumpkins, which look so dead, are still popping out massive flowers. So are the winter squash, though not anywhere near as big.
In the next photo are three of the stem sunflower seed heads that exploded open yesterday. They’re looking a lot better developed and healthier than the main one at the top!
That first aster that bloomed, in the next photo, was looking so pretty with the rain drops on its petals. The buds on plants next to it look like they will be a very light colour.
One of the things about working outside – at least when the grass is dry – is that we have certain cats that like to follow us around. There is one kitten, a white with grey tabby spots, from the deluge of younger kittens that showed up weeks ago that loves to follow us around. The problem is, he is absolutely tiny. Though he is weeks older, Frank’s litter that she moved into the cat cage, which are the youngest of them all, are the same size as him. I often find myself picking him up and carrying him around, just because he’s so tiny, I fear he can’t keep up. He loves being carried, though, and loves attention.
One of the things I’ve started to do is put him into the cat cage with Frank’s litter. Sometimes, just to keep him out from underfoot to I can do things. Sometimes, so he can help himself to the bowl of cat soup we put in there and not have to fight through larger cats and kittens. Usually, he leave the cat cage right away, though.
He’s also one of the kittens that makes a dash through the door when I come out with their food in the mornings! I really have to watch my step as I go through, so as not to step on him or any of the other cats in the swirling horde. This morning, it was my older daughter who was available to help me get through the doors, then herd the kittens out again. This tiny one being the most determined to stay inside!
We had to wash the eyes of two of Frank’s kittens again. One always gets two eyes stuck shut, but that doesn’t stop him from finding his way out of the cat cage and to the food trays (we have confirmed that all three of Frank’s kittens are male). The other has one eye that sticks shut. Once the eye washing was done, I had a chance to tuck the little adventurer into the cat cage to enjoy the kitten soup. There was a fluffy little tabby already in there, sitting in the litter box. Not using it. Just sitting in it. 😄 I was happy to see the tiny white and tabby kitten start eating the kitten soup.
From there I did my rounds, checked on the garden, and all the usual things.
When I came through the sun room to go inside, I spotted a cuddle puddle in the cat cage.
With an extra head peeking out.
The white and tabby was right in there with the other three.
Before I could get a picture, Frank jumped in.
In this picture, you can see her three milling about. You can’t see the white and tabby, because he’s underneath her.
Nursing!
She has accepted him as one of her own! I’m happy to see this because the crèche mothers all have older kittens and are pretty much done with nursing. Slick is the only one we regularly see nursing her kittens, but they’re all out by the shrine feeding station near the junk pile, where the litter lives. The sun room kittens tend not to go there at all, so the little one isn’t there to be included.
I’ll be honest in that I don’t think this little one is going to make it. He’s active and eating and playful and friendly, but he’s just not growing. I’m hoping that with Frank allowing him to nurse, he will get stronger and better able to fight off whatever is going on with him.
I am very glad to see him snuggling with kittens his own size, too. I’ve never seen him with other kittens in a way that would suggest they are litter mates. He seems to be on his own. Perhaps his siblings are among those we had to bury. It makes me happy that Frank has accepted him as her own.
Oh, before I forget, I just have to share this picture from yesterday evening.
So adorable!
Also, so glad I’ve got those protective collars around the luffa! 😄
In other things…
Today and the next few days are supposed to be a bit cooler, though the overnight lows are still supposed to be warm enough that I shouldn’t need to cover any of the garden beds at night. Hopefully, that means we can get some more stuff done outside today. We shall see how it works out!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Morning in the garden, and good grief, what a day
It’s the noon hour as I start this, and it’s already been a day!!! It feels like it should be evening by now.
Morning was pretty typical. I had to get my daughter to help me with getting into the sun room as kittens swirled their way through the door under my feet. My main focus is to not step on anything while holding the kibble bowl high so I can see. Once I got some food out, my daughter was able to put a food bowl of fresh kitten soup into the cat cage, was wasn’t able to take the old one out, as she was in a vortex of hungry kitties! By the time I got back from adding food to the different feeding stations in the yard, things had calmed down. My daughter and I had the chance to snag Frank’s two babies that had sticky eyes – one had both eyes stuck shut, the other just one eye – into the bathroom to wash their eyes until they could open again.
Then I could do the rest of my rounds and check on the garden bed. I’m glad we did water it last night, as the predicted storms and rain we were supposed to get yesterday fizzled out and we got no real rain at all.
The first photo above is of the blooming luffa. One by one, male flowers in different clusters are blooming. Still no female flowers. Not that it matters at this point. It’s the middle of September. Under normal circumstances, we’d have fully developed luffa gourds right now.
I had a surprise when I got to the trellis bed. The one sunflower seed head that was opening up has gotten much bigger, just overnight. This particular sunflower also has multiple seed heads, two of which just exploded open overnight! I tried to get a picture of all the seed heads that are starting to open along the stalk and did get most of them. In the third picture, you can see four along the stalk, but there’s a fifth one hidden by a leaf at the bottom that is also starting to open.
In the next picture, you can see our first aster flower bud has finally opened! The package of memorial seeds these are from had a mixture, if I remember correctly, so I expect different colours from the others I see forming buds.
In the last photo, we have our “just for today” harvest. There was a handful of beans to pick this morning, along with a single zucchini. I decided to go ahead and harvest the last of the kohlrabi. The remaining plants don’t seem to be forming their… bulbs? … at all. I also grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves.
There was one wonky purple kohlrabi that I decided to use right away in my breakfast, along with the chard leaves and stalks and a small Turkish Orange eggplant that I’d harvested previously. Those got stir fried to go along with some leftovers.
I didn’t peel the eggplant, partly because I’d picked such a small one. I did find the peels to be a bit on the bitter side.
My older daughter had used one to include in her stir fry last night. I’d gone to bed before she was done, so when I was talking to my younger daughter this morning, I asked how it turned out.
She told me, her sister had had to throw it away.
????!!!!
They may her lips go numb! They were the only new thing in her stir fry, so they were the only thing that could have been causing it. We’ve eaten eggplant before and she’s never reacted to any of them before, but those were the more typical purple varieties. The Turkish Orange is very different. Being so different is why I got the seeds to try.
I had no such reaction. I just found the skins bitter. Very strange! It does mean that we won’t be growing this variety again, though.
As I was setting down with my own breakfast, I noticed I had a phone message.
From home care.
Thankfully, it was NOT a call for me to come in. My mother’s med assist for this morning was scheduled for 8:50, and I was getting the message at past 9:30. The message was to let me know that there had been a last minute cancellation. They did find someone else to cover the med assist, but it would be much later; perhaps 9:45.
I called my mother right away to let her know. When she answered, she mentioned she was making her breakfast at the time, but didn’t say anything about no one showing up to do her meds. I told her about the message I got and when to expect someone to come. It was almost that time, so it was a short phone call.
That done, I finished my breakfast and was starting to upload the photos for this post on Instagram when my younger daughter came over to talk about what to work on today. She decided that this would be the day to do work on the yard and garden tools. So, for the next while, she got her supplies set up on the bench under the canopy tent while I gathered the various things that needed to be worked on. Some needing repairs, as well. It’ll probably take her a couple of days to work through them all.
After she was all set up (and we paused to wash kitten eyes again!) and working on cleaning and sharpening various cutting tools, I headed back in to work on this blog post. I got a message from my daughter who remembered there were some tools in the basement that needed to be worked on. Since I hadn’t started writing yet, I headed down right away to look for them. I knew I’d put all the ones that needed work into one container, but couldn’t find the container – in fact, I couldn’t even remember what container I’d put them in (it turned out to be an old plastic lunch box. 😄) – when the phone started ringing.
I was expecting an important call, so I started heading upstairs, promptly losing my slippers as I rushed up the stairs. The answering machine picked up before I got to the phone, and I heard my mother’s voice starting to rant at the machine.
I picked up the phone while she was doing that. It turned out she had tried to call my sister, first, and there was no answer, so when she called me and it went to machine, she was really upset. Was my sister gone on holidays already? She’s supposed to be gone for two weeks… I told her, I knew nothing about this. (This is the time of year for her church’s harvest feast – one of only two “Biblical” holidays they’re allowed to celebrate – but she’s not mentioned anything about it to me.)
My mother then started telling me how badly she was feeling. She was dying. She’d used the life line and talked to the responder, who asked her what she wanted them to do. She said, they kept asking what she wanted them to do until she finally told them to just leave her alone.
…
I told her, the proper response would have been to have them call an ambulance if she were feeling that badly!
She didn’t want an ambulance. She didn’t want the hassle (I can’t blame her for that!). She would need to someone to get her bag (her prepared hospital bag), her purse, and if she’s in the hospital “they” will come in and steal her stuff.
???
I told her that if she’s really feeling that bad, have the Lifeline call an ambulance (911 seems to be too much for my mother to grasp), and the paramedics could make sure to grab her prepared bags.
No, she doesn’t want strangers. She needs us (me and my siblings). She needs someone around her all the time. She relies on us…
I told her, we can’t live with her! What did she want me to do for her?
She had no answer. She just kept on about how poorly she is doing, how hard it is to do things, and her breathing. She needs someone with her. She needs to be in a nursing home.
But she doesn’t want to go to the hospital. She relies on us… then she started trying to rag on about my brother; he doesn’t call, he doesn’t visit. They’ve actually just gone through a rather scary health emergency with my SIL while she was out of province, but they don’t want to tell my mother about it. My mother handles such information very badly and can be downright cruel. They just got back home today and my brother immediately had to go to work to take part in a couple of important meetings. His job is in internet security at an international level. This is at a level even I have a hard time grasping, it’s so above my pay grade, so to speak. Not something my mother can even begin to understand. I did tell her that he was at an important meeting right now, but added that we did arrange to come out to her place on Sunday, as she requested. I’d forgotten to mention it when I called her this morning.
That mollified her somewhat. She told me that she would “be brave” and hold out until Sunday.
*sigh*
What I told her I would do is call the home care office for her town as soon as I got off the phone with her. I’d let them know that my mother’s condition is deteriorating. All the home care coordinator can do, however, is update the files with this information and send it up the chain. It’s another department that makes the decisions on whether someone can go into a nursing home or assisted living facility. I had to remind my mother about how shocked her doctor was that they hadn’t already approved her for a nursing home.
I wish I’d thought of it at the time, but if my mother did decide to go to go to the hospital, that might be just the thing that would finally get her into a nursing home, like she wants. That’s the typical way it works; a person ends up in the hospital with a broken hip or something, and only then do they get to go to a nursing home from the hospital. My father was an exception. He was getting home care three times a day, but his care included things like helping him use the toilet, bathing and even eating. A hospital bed was set up in the living room next to the window, so he could see outside, with a commode nearby, because he could no longer take the two steps between the old and new parts of the house to get to the bathroom. It was the home care aids that said he’d reached a point where they could no longer provide the care he needed, and that got him into a nursing home right away. Six months later, he passed away.
It is so incredibly frustrating. My mother should not be living on her own. She insists that she can still cook and dress and bath and toilet herself, when I really don’t think she should be. Every time home care offers what they can for her, she turns it down.
Among my siblings, none of us are able to have her live with us and give her the care she needs. None of us have accessible enough housing, even if we did. She is struggling, but refuses to make the decisions she needs to be making. She expects everyone else to make those decisions which, in many cases, they aren’t even allowed to make on her behalf. This is not a new thing; she’s always been one to deflect responsibility to others. It’s just gotten more extreme as she gets older.
Anyhow.
After telling my mother I would call the home care coordinator as soon as I got off the phone with her, my mother kept me on the phone for another few minutes. I finally had to get almost rude to get off the phone so I could make the call!
By then, it was past noon, and she was probably on lunch. I got her voice mail and left a message about my mother’s condition deteriorating.
That done, I updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to looking for the tools my daughter had asked for – and retrieve my slippers. The box I was looking for turned out to be on a shelf right at the bottom of the steps. I’d put it there specifically so it would be easy to find!
So I brought that out to my daughter and updated her, since all I was able to do was sent a message that I’d gotten a call from my mother and needed to make more calls.
Updating her also gave me a chance to catch my breath.
Now that I’m almost done this, I’ll soon be going into town to pick up prescription refills for my husband. I’m still half expecting a call, but if it hasn’t come in by now, it probably won’t. While in town, while I’ve got a strong data signal, I’ll have to try and set my phone up for Wi-Fi calling again. I can’t even get text messages right now. Which is a pain when I try to log into my bank account on my desktop. They don’t do it on my phone, but if I use my desktop, they always want me to input a code. Every. Time. I try to log in. The problem is, by the time the texted code gets to my phone, the log in session is expired. Sometimes, if I go outside and walk around the yard, it’ll come in faster, but I’m not always in a position to do that.
Frustrating.
Ah, well. It is what it is.
Time to get ready to head into town!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Our 2025 Garden: eggplant and seed harvest
Well, I went and did it. I harvested some of the Turkish Orange Eggplant, even though I really have no idea if they’re ripe or not.
I harvested the ones with the most orange colour, and there are still quite a few green and mostly green ones on the plants. From what I found, looking it up last night, these should be ripe. They are still firm, but not hard. One still has green on it I couldn’t see while I was pushing through the leaves with my pruner to cut the stem but, according to what I found last night, it should continue to ripen if kept at room temperature.
With the eggplant, and in the next picture, is a cluster of carrot seeds. I’m pretty sure these are Uzbek Golden carrot seeds, as the only other carrots winter sown in this bed were some old, pelleted Napoli seeds I had. Very few of those germinated. When I grew them before, none bolted to seed. Carrots normally go to seed in their second year, not their first, but every year we’ve grown Uzbek Golden carrots, there’s been at least one that went to seed early. At this point, there is just the one seed cluster that has fully dried off, and I didn’t want to be losing seeds into the garden bed. We have self sown carrots where we grew them last year. I’d wanted to collect seeds from them but, when I thought they were ready to collect, none of the seeds seemed to have developed. That would most likely be a sign of poor pollination. Clearly, some viable seeds did develop and fall to the ground, at least at one plant. The self seeded carrots are growing only in one area, not all the areas where there had been bolted carrots.
Amazingly, the “dead” pumpkin vines are still blooming.
That dead leaf is from the same vine as the flower. This heat we’ve been having has given a surprising boost to things I thought for sure were killed off!
The asters are soooo close to blooming!
I honestly thought the Cosmos would bloom first, as they grew so big so much faster. I don’t see any potential flower buds on them at all! Including the ones that do not have frost damage on them. They should have finished blooming by now, but there’s nothing. Very strange.
Today is turning out to be another hot one. We exceeded the forecast and hit 27C/81F, with the humidex at 28C/82F. As I write this, we’re at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 29C/84F. Currently, we have gusts of high winds and are under a severe thunderstorm watch. Parts of the province are under tornado warnings. Looking at the weather radar, it seems the system won’t hit our area for another three hours.
The high winds limit what I can do outside. From where I’m sitting as I write this, I can see a big maple and a corner of the spruce grove. It’s bright and sunny, with some clouds right now, but the wind comes and goes. Sometimes I’ll look up and there doesn’t seem to be any wind at all. Moments later I’ll look up because suddenly, the maple is being whipped around like crazy. This maple is HUGE and needs to have large branches that are bigger than some trees removed, before they break. Where they join at the main trunk is showing rot and, to be honest, I’m amazed one branch in particular hasn’t come down yet. I’ve removed parts of it that I could access, which may have taken off enough weight to help. Since then, things have grown back to the point that we have to duck under the branches when mowing the lawn under part of it. I might be able to get some of it down with the extended pole pruning saw, but most of it is simply too thick. Ideally, we’d have a lift or scaffolding (the scaffolding we have is meant for indoors, so it’s pretty short) and take it down in sections with a chain saw. My brother has all sorts of ladders that would allow us to reach, but the only thing there would be to secure a ladder to is other sections of the branch that needs to come down. Sections that would lift as weight was removed, potentially enough to lift a ladder secured to it right off the ground. Even branches this thick have remarkable bounce to them.
Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.
Unless it finally comes down in these high winds. At which point, it would be a pretty huge clean up job!
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Our 2025 Garden: first pepper, sunflowers and almost asters
While doing my morning rounds, I just had to try for a picture of one of the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers.
This one is the tallest of the sunflowers, looking close to 7′ tall, taking into account that it’s in a low raised bed. It’s also one of several with seed heads that are working on opening up, late in the season as it is.
I have been checking on the asters. It’s so late in the year, but a few of them are so close to blooming!
Now, as long as I can keep critters like Sir Robin (visible in the second picture) from rolling over them or something, I still have a chance to collect seeds.
Remarkably, I actually had a harvest this morning!
Yes, the yellow bush beans are still producing. This is also the most zucchini I’ve picked at once, all year. I also finally picked our single ripe Sweetie Snack Mix pepper – which had a surprise little green pepper growing out of its top!
I am thinking it’s time to pick the Turkish Orange eggplant. I have confirmed that they do continue to ripen after being picked. In fact, I found out a whole bunch of information on harvesting them.
Today, we hit 26C/79F, which was warmer than forecast. It’s past 6:30pm as I write this, and it’s finally starting to cool down. I’m planning to head out to the garden to water what’s left, before things get too dark. Looking at the 10 day forecast, while we’re expected to cool down soon, it won’t be anything severe, so I should still not need to cover the garden beds. We’ll see as the forecast changes whether we’ll need to cover the winter squash beds, at least for the night.
I’m rather surprised by how the garden – parts of it, at least – is still chugging along.
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Sudden changes in plans, and morning photos
First, a follow up from yesterday. It took many hours, but the debilitating pain that had set into my left hip during the night did recede. I found myself able to walk normally again – not even a limp! – but my hip still feels very… unstable.
Which turned out to be a good thing, because my evening plans changed completely.
Yesterday evening, after a very warm day, I took advantage of being able to walk again, headed out and watered what’s left of the garden. I was back inside and settled down with my supper when I saw there was a message on the answering machine.
From home care.
The message told me they had a last minute cancellation and there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist (they are just a few hours apart and typically done by the same home care aide). I was, however, assured that Saturday and Sunday were covered.
I got the message about an hour after it was left, since I was outside when the call came – and about 15 minutes away from when my mother’s supper assists are scheduled this cycle.
It takes about half an hour to get to her place, even if I just grab and go. I did quickly call my mother to let her know I was on my way, got my husband to tuck my supper into the oven, and headed out.
When I got there, my mother did try to do her usual snarky comments about, have they hired me yet? and the usual giving me a hard time for covering for home care again. I’ve still been in a dark place in the last while and I just told her, please don’t. I’m not in the mood for it. She paused a moment, then said, neither am I.
She did, however, have a good day. My sister had come out on her day off. Being a Friday, it was my mother’s scheduled turn for the laundry room, so my sister took care of that for her, as well as doing her dishes and light housework. It was much appreciated.
I helped my mother settle in with her supper to take her supper meds with, so I could then get her bed time meds ready, and she asked if I wanted a piece of her birthday cheesecake that I got for her. She had just a couple of pieces left, and had already had one with my sister. I agreed, and it gave me a chance to ask my mother about when she wanted me to do her grocery shopping.
It turned out she was already working on her list. I asked if she wanted me to come back tomorrow (which would have been today), and she said she had an appointment with her hair dresser – someone who comes to her apartment to cut her hair, which is really nice! – in the afternoon. As we were going back and forth I suggested, I could just do it right then. That way, I wouldn’t have to come back over the weekend. My mother was surprised by this, as she thought the grocery store closed much earlier. It was too close to closing for the pharmacy, though, so that got skipped. She only needed one thing there, anyhow, and not urgently.
So I did her grocery shopping and got everything put away. As we were chatting, she asked how I was and I mentioned I was out of sorts and explained a little bit about why. My mother had heard of the assassination but, of course, she only heard it from the TV news – “that guy from the states?” – and Canadian news has been lying about Charlie Kirk at every turn. Especially the CBC. So I told her who he really was. None of which was talked about on the TV.
I don’t think it’s possible to hate the mainstream media enough. I’ve had plenty of personal experience as to how dishonest and manipulative they are, over the span of decades, yet it still surprises me, just how bad they can be.
I didn’t stay too long, though, and was soon back home and having my supper. Then I noticed a notification on my cell phone.
I had a voice mail message.
My cell phone never rang.
After fussing with it for a bit, I realized the Wi-Fi calling had been turned off again – my phone keeps doing that on its own, and I don’t know why. I wasn’t able to get the message because there wasn’t enough signal. I couldn’t even go through the process of getting the wi-fi calling set up again, which required once again confirming my identity. I ended up having to go outside and wander around the yard, trying to find a strong enough data signal, to finally get it set up. Only then could I finally listen to the message.
It was home care.
The scheduler was very apologetic, but there was another cancellation. There was no one to do my mother’s morning med assist for today.
*sigh*
We were already planning to do a dump run, then a trip to a Walmart, and now I had to go to my mother’s again. The timing for it worked out, but it did mean almost another hour extra of driving.
So I called my mother again, thankfully getting her before she went to bed, and let her know I’d be back in the morning. She was not impressed. None of us are. My husband is getting right ticked off. He even went online to try and find somewhere to complain. What he did find were some forums with many, many other people in the same home care region we are in, having to deal with the same problem.
With the time scheduled for my mother’s morning med assist in mind, I managed to get to bed early and, happily, I did not have a repeat of what happened to my hip the night before. I still don’t know what triggered it in the first place!
I did my morning rounds early. There isn’t much to do in the garden, so things are done faster these days.
I did have to get a picture of that one Hopi Black Dye sunflower again.
Every day, more and more of it is actually developing seeds and they’re starting to bloom! I’m still amazed it survived the frosts.
In the next picture, you can see a huge cluster of tree mushrooms I found. I’d heard a cat commotion by the collapsing log building by the fire pit and checked to see what it was. It turned out to be The Grink, chasing after Sprout’s little calico (Sprout, once again, is AWOL). It was way up in a tree next to the log building. I did get The Grink away enough that the little one was able to get down.
Speaking of little ones…
Frank is such a good mama! And her littles are getting used to being handled. The one kitten who’s eyes have been getting stuck shut seems to be past the worst of it. No eye washing needed today!
The next photo is of, I think, one of Slick’s little tabbies. It was enjoying the cat bed in the catio that we moved over to lure the garage kittens to the house. They’re not using the catio since we moved it, but the littles are enjoying it! The garage kittens still seem to be using the garage as “home base”, but I am seeing them near the house a lot more often now.
Last night, I was hearing that we were supposed to have a dense fog this morning. It wasn’t too close around the property as I was doing my rounds.
Then I started driving to my mother’s.
I had to pull over at one point, just to take pictures, about a mile from home. When I was driving between the trees, there wasn’t much, but as soon as I cleared the trees and reached fields, it was like driving through a wall!
Keep in mind with the above photos, that the camera “cleans up” the shots, so the fog was actually denser than it appears in the photos.
Very moody.
Also, by the time I was heading out, the sun was fully up and we had bright sunshine!
Once I got onto the highway, it was even thicker, to the point that I had to reduce speed due to lack of visibility. I did eventually catch up to a shadow that turned out to be a car. Then we’d go through a section of highway bordered by trees, and the fog would disappear and we could see just fine. Then we’d enter a section surrounded by fields, and it would be like driving into a wall of fog.
Then… it was gone. Such a stark delineation!
When I got to my mother’s she was really struggling. She was still in bed and really didn’t want to get up. I can’t blame her! She’s had a sleepless night, too.
Yesterday’s grocery shopping trip had missed a few things. Particularly milk. It wasn’t on her list and I’d considered getting some anyway, but my mother has specifically said she had milk. I figured my sister had brought her some. It turned out my mother was thinking she had enough to last until I came to do her grocery shopping… on Sunday.
The day she told me she didn’t want to have her grocery shopping done on anymore…
She was so out of sorts, though, one minute saying she needed milk, then asking me to check and see if she needed milk (she did), and not to get this other thing that got missed, or maybe something else or…
I finally told her to just enjoy her breakfast, and I would get her some milk. The rest could wait.
Then, as I was heading out the door, I hear “and apples!”
😄
So that was a short shopping trip.
That done, I headed home where my daughter had things ready to start loading up the truck for the dump run. When we got to the pit, we were happy to see that they had finally cleared the wall of garbage at the pit edge. There was room to turn again!
Once we were finished there, we continued on, first making a stop at a gas station in town, along the way. The price there was still $1.409, whereas in my mother’s town, it was $1.419 With all the extra driving, I was down to a quarter tank. I really try to avoid letting it get below half. I asked for $50 in gas, and it didn’t even get me to 3/4 of a tank. By the time we reached the Walmart, I was at half a tank again.
*sigh*
I had a short shopping list for myself – mostly more cat food – while my daughter had a list for herself and her sister. She couldn’t find everything on it, though, so we decided to go to a regular grocery store further on. As we were driving to it, we passed an independent gas station.
The price on their sign was $1.349
After we finished at the grocery store (my daughter still had trouble finding one item!), I made a point of stopping at that gas station again and added another $30.
The price on the pump was $1.299
That $30 sure went a lot further!
From there, we could finally head home, unload, and finally settle in. Today was originally supposed to be just a dump run day, and instead I was out for most of it.
It’s been hotter today than yesterday, and it just now starting to cool down for the evening, so I’ll be heading out to water things again before bed. The next three days are supposed to be as hot, or hotter, than today, so still no need to cover garden beds yet. After that, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit. Enough that I will probably keep the winter squash bed covered both day and night. I’m still amazed that was have any squash developing at all, so I want to give them every change to mature!
Getting outside and being productive has also been good for my overall mood, too, so the more of that, the better.
The Re-Farmer
Share this:
Our 2025 Garden: still blooming!
I did my morning rounds as usual, today, which includes checking on the various garden beds. I even did some watering as, at the time, we were expected to get quite hot. Instead, we had a slightly cooler, dreary day, with some parts of the province hit with thunderstorms.
I’m really surprised by how some things are going in the garden. Things I though for sure were killed by the early frosts are blooming!
I think the Arikara squash is the most surprising. They look completely dead, and yet there are new blossoms!
In the next photo, you can see our one pumpkin this year is changing colour. Next, you can see that the pumpkin vines themselves, as frost damaged as they are, are blooming. I’m even seeing little flower buds all over.
It was warm enough last night that I didn’t cover the winter squash, and they’ve started blooming more, too! We have two Baked Potato squash developing, plus one Mashed Potato squash. Nothing on the Sunshine squash, though.
In the flower bed, there’s still the odd nasturtium flower showing. The Cosmos should have bloomed long ago. Some have got frost damage to their tops, but they do actually look like they’ll be showing flower buds soon – if the weather holds. The asters are also way behind, but a few plants are now showing where flower buds will be forming. I really want to be able to collect seeds from the asters, as they are from a packet of memorial seeds.
The smaller crab apples have gotten so very red, and so very delicious. They are that perfect combination of sweet and tart that I like. In the next photos, I’ve got one next to the crab apples in another tree with edible apples. They form much larger apples, as you can see. I don’t think they are quite ripe yet, but they are edible now. They are much milder in flavour and, as my daughter describes them, have a floral taste to them.
One of my weather apps still says we were supposed to hit a high of 21C/70F. Which we did not. We probably didn’t go higher than 18C/64F. The overnight low is supposed to be 15C/59F, so I’ll be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night again. It’s supposed to keep getting hotter over the next few days. Today, however, didn’t get the sun and heat we were supposed to. Just clouds and a smattering of rain.
Even the sky is weeping, today.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 