Medical

An actual productive day!

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This morning, my daughter and I headed out for errands. Too early, it turned out. I had a package waiting at the post office, but while the general store it’s in opens at 9, the post office itself turns out to open at 9:30. I could have sworn they opened earlier! My daughter had dashed in and did get the mail, but left the parcel card for on the way home.

When we got to town, my daughter was a sweetheart and took me out for breakfast (lunch, for her) before we hit the grocery store. This time, we were actually able to refill a couple of water bottles – last time we barely managed to fill one, as both dispensers had no pressure. We picked up a few things, including some things for my husband to make sure he’d have easy food available while my younger daughter and I are away all day tomorrow. My older daughter will be home to make sure he doesn’t have a repeat of last week and almost die on me again!!!

After that, we made a stop at the gas station that ended up taking an unexpectedly long time. On the way home, we just made it to the post office before they closed for a couple of hours over the lunch period, and my daughter was able to get my parcel.

Unfortunately, by the time we finished in town, my pain levels were kicking in again. By the time we got home, I was able to help bring things inside, but had to pain killer up and used some diclofenac cream, then lay down for a while. After a couple of hours, there was no relief in pain. It was long enough that I could take more T3s, and that eventually did it. I’m really hoping that new prescription does the job and this pain goes away, but I’d only had one dose so far. It’ll take at least a little while before I can tell if it’s working.

By the time I was able to get up again, I was eager to test out the contents of my parcel.

My eavestrogh pressure washer was finally in!

I was pleased to see it had a quick connect, but when I tried to attach it to the hose, I realized it had two male couplings. I had to remove the quick connect nozzle and attach the piece with the on-off switch (not visible in the photo) directly to the hose. Very odd.

I then spent the next hour or so, trying to clean a couple of the shortest eavestroughs.

I did not succeed.

I knew it would be difficult. The eavestroughs all have tiny forests of elm seeds growing in them. The debris was dense enough to break the brush head on the other cleaning tool I’d picked up – it came with two brush heads, and the first one broke the first time I tried to use it!

I was able to get some debris cleared out, but found myself with a different problem. The downspouts were getting clogged. After fighting it it for quite some time, I gave up and tried to clear the eavestrough on the other side of the old kitchen/sunroom. It was even worse. Finally, I have one last try at a corner of the living room, just trying to clear the opening to the downspout. Water could barely leak through at all!

I had to stop. There was no point in continuing. The eavestroughs were just too badly clogged.

I’d been updating my brother and SIL about all this, knowing they’d be coming out some time tonight. After failing to clear the eavestroughs, I got out the chain saw and a 100 foot extension cord, instead.

I FINALLY got that big piece of fallen maple branch cleared! It had broken up a bit when it hit the ground and I’d been able to drag off the narrow part of the branch, but the remaining piece was just too large and heavy to move – and it was taking up a significant portion of the lawn.

Not any more!

It took two wagon loads to clear away the logs and the scattered pieces of bark. Anything big enough to be a problem for the law mower. In the second image of the slide show above, you can see most of the logs (a couple of pieces are hidden behind the pile) set up and ready for the fire pit. Maple will make some good cooking fires, and this wood has been dead and dry for some time, so it can be used right away.

It was while I was finishing up putting the logs away and cleaning up as much bark out of the grass as I could, that I heard my brother and SIL arrive.

Since I had the chainsaw out anyhow, I moved on to the sections of maple I’d dragged under the hawthorn “fence”. This includes the pieces that had broken off another maple some time ago that I hadn’t got to, yet.

With these, I stacked the logs in between trees in the living “fence”. There are still some branches to do, but they were too thin to bother using a chain saw. I’ll come back with a hand saw.

I had considered cleaning up more fallen trees in the maple grove, right near the old branch pile and the fire pit logs. I decided against it. I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, and the chainsaw needs sharpening.

Part way through the cutting, I had to refill the oil in the chainsaw, so I went to the garage to get the jug. My brother was in lean to side where their mower is stored, looking for something. When he came out and saw me, chugging a water bottle I’d got from the truck, he told me he was going to go up on the roof to check where the leak is coming from. While he did that, I remembered to grab a broken old hose reel he’d dug out of the junk pile for me. I’d found it in the barn some time ago and we tried to use it for an actual hose, but it didn’t work and the hose ended up splitting and cracking. He had the idea that it could still be used to store the longer extension cords, and I was finally able to give it a try when it was time to put things away.

It worked beautifully.

By the time I was putting things away, my brother had done checking the roof over the second floor, and was clearing the eavestrough over the “new part” of the house. He mentioned he might need a hose, so I passed that up to him and he was able to grab it with the tool he was using the clear the eavestroughs. He was up there for quite a long time. The eavestroughs were horribly clogged. Thankfully, he was also able to clear the downspouts.

As for the roof that was leaking, he said the eavestrough over the 2nd floor windows were also clogged. Which is odd, because the girls told me that it never gets clogged. He concluded that this was why there was a leak at one of the windows.

I’ve since passed that on to my daughter and they disagree. This area was a problem before we moved out here. They’d patched the damaged wall, only for it to become damaged again in our first winter. It had stopped after the roof was replaced, until this past winter. They don’t see a connection between the state of the eavestroughs and the leaking.

Well, we’re supposed to get more storms in the next while, so I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

While trying to clear the eavestrough from the sun room, I almost refilled the rain barrel, so while my brother was using the hose to pressure wash the eavestroughs he had cleared of debris, I use the rain barrel to do some watering, even though we had rain this morning.

I was quite happy to see this.

I’m really hoping these were successfully pollinated. I’d hate for these lovely zucchini to whizzen away!

I was also really happy to confirm something that I wasn’t sure I was seeing right, over the past few days.

This is a luffa seedling! I direct sowed them because this variety needs only 55 days to maturity, which means it still has a chance to make it, and we might actually have luffa. I still have not been able to find my package with the remaining seeds, so it would be really awesome if it survives long enough that we can collect seeds.

After my brother was done on the roof, he brought over some tools and a reciprocating saw, with a blade that can cut metal, to work on the tire around the elm tree stump. He was able to cut through it in three places, then we used a pry bar and my chisel tip bar to try and work things loose.

There was progress, but my brother was so tired by then, we left it for the night.

After he left, I brought the hose over to rinse the dirt off my tools when I decided to use the highest pressure setting to try and wash away some of the soil inside the cut up tire.

That ball of dirt is so filled with swirling tree roots, almost no soil got washed away at all. !!!

Still, we’ll probably have it off by the end of the weekend, which means the tree guys will not have to figure out how to deal with it when they come back with their stump grinder. That tire has been sitting there for so long, the rubber is starting to disintegrate in places. It was still hard to cut through, though!

So that’s where we’re at now.

Tomorrow is going to be a very long day at the market, but I’m looking forward to it.

Now, to try and get some actual sleep, so I’m not drifting off at my table tomrorow!

The Re-Farmer

Bad pain day

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Well, so much for being productive…

One of my daughters took care of feeding the outside cats for me this morning, so I could get a bit more sleep after doing a wellness check on my husband.

My first attempt at lying down got interrupted by a phone call. It was the pharmacy. They noticed I was to get prescriptions delivered today, but my husband’s were listed as a pick up. Did I want his delivered, too? After confirming that an in person pick up was not required (which sometimes happens, due to regulations around some of his meds), I absolutely said yes! That made things more flexible for me when it came to getting the mail and going to town.

Then my daughter was a sweetheart and kept a handset with her upstairs, so she could answer the phone if it rang again.

After I got a couple more hours of attempted sleep, I eventually made it outside and started with the watering. The rain barrel was finally full again, so I used watering cans to do all the south garden beds and the old kitchen until the barrel was empty, finishing by using the hose to water the grape vines.

By then, I was really struggling and having difficulty standing up straight, so I went inside. I let the family know that the front was watered, but not the main garden area, but that I was going to take some pain killers and try lying down. Not to sleep, but because it was sitting was just as painful as standing. Granted, lying down wasn’t any less painful, but at least I didn’t have to try to keep myself upright.

I had meant to finish the watering after I felt better, but my younger daughter went out to finish the watering for me, leaving the phone with my husband. Over time, however, the pain increased rather than decreased. When my daughter came in to check on me, I was wanting to sit up so I could take another painkiller, but needed her to help me. My prescription says to take two or three at a time, but I was only taking one. I’m going to have to change that.

Getting up was not an option, though. So when the prescription delivery came, my daughter went out to meet him.

For my own meds, I got a refill on my topical painkiller, more T3s, as I was running low, and my new prescription. My older daughter just came down while I was working on this to take a look, because she’s on the same medication, but my dose is 5 times higher than hers. It turns out to be a different type of the same thing – and a lot less expensive. It is covered 100% by our provincial pharmacare system, though, so it’s not even billed to my husband’s insurance. It is also the only medication I’m on where the time between doses makes a difference. It says to take one before bed, and I never get to bed at the same time, so I’ve set a daily alarm for myself.

For today, though, I took my first dose right away, after getting a daughter to help me sit up again. Then it was back to lying down. My SIL messaged me around this time, and we talked about the bill for the bin for trash that was hauled away already, and asking about the bill for tree removal that my brother hasn’t received yet. They’ll be coming out for the weekend again and my brother plans to check the roof and the window where it’s leaking. A major concern would be mold. I know the roofers put an extra layer of underlay on that section of the roof, because it’s such a low slope, and it has held out fine until this year, and even before the new roof was put on, it had never leaked with rain. Just from the ice dam that forms during spring melt. So something has gone very wrong up there, but we can’t see it from the ground, and none of us are able bodied enough to climb onto roof to see.

I’m really hoping the new meds help, because what I was dealing with today was some of the worst pain yet. The T3s, at least, seemed to finally kick in, and was was feeling much better later. Well enough that I could feed the outside cats – and got to see Sprout bringing her little white and grey kitten to the food bowls under the shrine! That’s a first that we’ve seen.

I even felt well enough to finally rake up some grass clippings that were thick enough to start killing the lawn under them, and even do a walkabout. As I was doing that, spotting the kitten and then the skunks coming in, too, I realized something. I haven’t seen Domino for a while. We let her out of the isolation shelter just before Sweetie came back, and Sweetie broke out during the storm her first night here. I think Domino disappeared soon after that. I haven’t seen Adam for about a week now, and today I realized that I haven’t seen Havarti for several days. That’s three cats disappearing in a relatively short time, for long enough that I wouldn’t expect them to come back at all. Domino is the missing one that bothers me most. She was at the rescue for a couple of months, could not adapt to the indoor life, so we took her back. She seemed so happy to be back and let me pet her far more often than she ever did, before she’d gone to the rescue. Now, she’s just gone.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

In the end, it was a pretty rough day. Even my family later commented on how much better I was looking this evening, and how terrible I’d looked earlier!

Tomorrow will be my first test on how the new meds are working, but the real big test will be on Saturday, when I plan to have my table at the market open from 10am to 8pm. Those last four hours should be the busiest, as the large animal rescue has a big event planned.

Personally, I’ll be happy if I can just stay upright all day tomorrow, and not end up back in bed, curled up in pain, for hours again.

The Re-Farmer

Good stuff and not so good stuff

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First, the good stuff.

My husband’s condition has stabilized, and he is feeling so much better. He’s looking a lot better, too – though some of that is partly because, with the heat we’ve been having, he finally shaved his head and most of his beard off, a few days ago. Today, however, was a much cooler day; more like our typical summer heat.

We had predictions of rain and possible thunderstorms for the afternoon, so I did not water the garden this morning. I did end up adding more rods to the hoops over the bush beans on the high raised bed. The onions planted with them were starting to poke through the netting. It’s now as high as the netting can go and still be secured around the edges. No sign of beans, though. Lots of flowers, but I’m not seeing a lot of pollinators. I’ve pretty much only seen bees on the poppy flowers. Nothing in the flower beds. With our spring lurching from hot during the day to almost freezing at night, that would have affected a lot of our emerging pollinators.

Our corn started to show tassels a few days ago. Today, I saw my first corn silk. Those, at least, get pollinated by the wind. In the next image of the slide show above, you can see the sudden burst of poppy flowers that opened this morning. In the last photo, we have two yellow zucchini flowers open – both female. No sign of male flowers.

While doing my rounds this morning, I also finally had a kitten sighting, enough to take pictures! I hadn’t seen the kitten in so long, I feared a coyote got it, but then I spotted it in the junk pile. The pile that has since had stuff removed from to the bin (which got taken away today), and other stuff sorted for other types of disposal. That area is going to be disturbed quite a bit before it’s all finally cleared away by winter but, for now, it’s still the place they can hide in! I am happy that Sprout is bringing her baby to the food bowls. We now have a chance to socialize it.

These are not the best pictures, since I had to zoom in so much. I didn’t want to scare them away before the kitten had a chance to get to the food bowls!

Later in the morning, I headed out to town, with a stop to visit my mother before I ran errands.

*sigh*

Before visiting her, I stopped at the nursing station to ask about the swelling in her legs. It’s not at a stage they are concerned about, so I asked if there was anything else. She told me my mother was being mean to people more often. It turns out she’s been going into the hallway, sitting there and mocking the guy in the room across the hall from her. They’ve had to have talks with her about her behaviour.

*sigh*

Then there was the visit itself.

I barely made 40 minutes before I had to leave.

When I asked how she was doing, she was feeling terrible, then started talking about how the staff is neglecting her because they want her to die. They want the old people to die, because there’s so many of them and they want to open up the rooms.

Then my mother brought up our vandal’s funeral, asking me what I thought of it. She has asked me this before, but I don’t think she remembered. Before I could say much, she started telling me how proud she was of him, how he had done so well for himself, etc. All I could do was stare at her as she spoke. I had no clue what she was talking about. Then she mentioned how SO many people were at the funeral. That’s when I clued in that she was rewriting her mind to make him out to be some sort of saint, instead of the person who stole from her, verbally abused her, squeezed many thousands of dollars from her over the years, demanded she pay for things he wanted for himself, vandalized things after we moved here, stalked and harassed us, left the most awful messages on her answering machine, continued to verbally abuse her and, the last time she saw him, he got up out of his wheelchair and walked out after she refused to pay for his funeral, which he’d already told her weeks before he’d taken care of. She saw lots of people at the funeral, and people said nice things under his obituary that my sister printed out and put into a binder for her, so now all the stuff he did no longer matters. She mentioned one comment in particular that I looked up, that included a story about horses. I told her that, when we moved here, he had two horses, but one disappeared. I later found out what had happened to it, and it was basically injured due to neglect and had to be put down. Mentioned that to her, and reminded her of how abusive he was towards dogs.

She changed the subject.

There was no way that I could tell her about the stuff going on around here. Especially the health related stuff, which meant I didn’t have much to talk about with her. So I tried showing her garden pictures, and photos of some of the maintenance stuff I was doing. During the conversation, it also came up that her lunch would soon be delivered, and I mentioned I wouldn’t stay to watch her eat (she wanted me to stay and watch her eat), and I’d be going to the grocery store then going home to have my own lunch, before the storm hit.

*sigh*

Every time I said anything, or tried to describe things I was doing to maintain the property, she somehow twisted it around. She was upset because I used the word “kill” when telling her I got rid of the vines that were killing trees and bushes. She accused me of talking only about “bad things” and complaining, when I was trying to describe how I was fixing things and making them better. She got upset because I was doing things she didn’t understand (she thought I had pulled up the grape vines for some reason), using words she didn’t like, and thinking about other things besides her.

Literally.

She got upset when I told her I was going to the grocery store, because I should only be thinking about her and visiting with her.

It got to the point where I finally said, that’s it. It’s time for me to go. She said no, she wanted my company. I pointed out that no, she did not want my company. She doesn’t enjoy my company. She doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like what I say, she doesn’t like what I do. It was time for me to go. As I walked out the door, I heard her staring her “remember your mama!” line that she uses so often, when she tries to guilt us about how when she’s gone, we will “remember your mama”, so we should go whatever she wants now.

*sigh*

From there, I did get my grocery trip done, focusing on stuff my husband requested. While I was driving home, I heard a notification from my phone and somehow knew exactly what the message was. When I got to the highway we cross before the gravel roads, I was not at all surprised to see a big truck coming up. Sure enough, it was the truck hauling away the bin of garbage – and the notification was my husband letting me know it was picked up! 😄 Talk about timing!

After I was home for a while, however, things started getting painful again, so I had to take some painkillers and lie down for a couple of hours. It did get interrupted by a phone call from my daughter, from her doctor’s office about her upcoming surgery. Then I got a call from the tree company.

Twice.

The first was to let me know they should be able to come by later this week, which is great news. The second was to let me know they’ll be able to come out tomorrow afternoon!

That tree in front of the kitchen will finally get taken down. No more big heavy branches over the roof! They’ll also take down a dead spruce that is tall enough that, if it fell, it could also hit the roof.

I still had my phone appointment with my doctor at 4:15, though I knew it might be a while before he got to me. She’s just back from vacation and would have a lot of other phone appointments to catch up on, too. It was closer to 6:30 when the call finally came in.

The first thing she wanted me to do was tell her exactly what was going on with me, and so she could connect it to the ultrasound results and figure out the next steps. Two of the ultrasounds came back normal, but one was not what it should be for a woman my age. I’m going to get a referral to a specialist and will get a biopsy, and then she gave me a prescription. I found all this quite hilarious, because so much of it is matching my daughter – we’re even on the same prescription now. The causes are different, but the symptoms and current treatment are the same. Even my daughter, on finding out the details, thought it would be hilarious if we ended getting “bulk surgeries”.

Yes, we joke about stuff like this.

Oh, I did ask and the doctor told me there was no sign of any cysts. I’m actually a bit surprised by that, since I am prone to them, but it was good news.

Meanwhile, this afternoon, we did get a very brief, very heavy deluge and thunderstorm pass through. After today, things should be both cooler – meaning average temperatures for this time of year – and no rain. I should finally be able to catch up on things outside. I should finally be able to get the electric chainsaw out and take care of that last big piece of tree that’s still lying in the middle of the west yard and cut that up for fire wood for the fire pit. Maple will make for great cooking fires. I also need to get the push mower into the maple grove. The Creeping Bellflower is taking over and starting to bloom, and that’s the last thing we need! That stuff is just as bad as Creeping Charlie.

I am so looking forward to when the tree guys get here. It will be such a relief to have those to trees down! Every time we have high winds, we half expect pieces of tree to fall on the roof.

The yard cats are not going to like it. They won’t be able to get onto the roof and peek through the upstairs windows anymore! 😄

So this has turned out to be a much more hectic day than expected, but at least most of it was good news. Yes, I consider the doctor’s call good news, too.

I’m quite looking forward to tomorrow.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and how things are going.

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First, the garden stuff, then the updates…

I was out before things got too hot, giving the garden a solid watering. I was able to work on some weeding as well, particularly in one of the beds in the East yard.

I need to work on the purple cabbage bed next, but I got some solid weeding in the mixed bed.

I ended up taking some short videos.

The plants look wimpy in the video because I used the watering to help make it easier to pull the weeds. Several times, I went to pull up crab grass and the rhizome ended up lifting a section of the tiny bok choy with it! The rhizome had run directly under the bok choy, so their roots were grown around it. I was able to set them back and hopefully, they will recover.

The bok choi all bolted and I’m leaving them to collect seed from. I still have seed from last year and am going to try planting them again as a fall crop, as they clearly do not like this heat!

The spinach doesn’t like it, either, and it has bolted, too, but it looks like we’re going to get a decent amount of Swiss Chard.

I’ll need to do the cabbage bed, next.

On the one hand, I’m impressed with how much the purple savoy cabbage has grown. They were so tiny when I found them while weeding the bed. Unfortunately, they are rather leggy and not forming heads, like the green cabbage transplants I bought have started to do. This bed does get sunlight, but not enough for cabbage, it turns out. Something to keep in mind for next year!

I’m really, really happy with the Arikara squash! This is the biggest squash plant we have right now, and it’s grown so much, I had to lift the netting off one corner for the vine to run through. The netting will need to be removed soon, but I first have to figure out how to still protect the bed. Deer love to eat bush beans and, of course, I don’t want cats going in and rolling around or digging in there.

I’m also quite happy with our little flower bed. The nasturtiums we direct sowed are blooming enthusiastically. The transplanted not-red cosmos are winding down, but still have flower buds developing. The transplanted Crackerjack marigolds look like they’ll be going for awhile. All of these, I plan to let go to seed. My only disappointment is there were no self-seeded asters from last year, since the seeds I collected in the fall have completely disappeared; one of several packages of collected seeds that have disappeared.

The trellis bed is another area I spent some time using the hose to make weeding easier. Unfortunately, with the bed as low as it is, I can’t reach very far, so the first carrot planting isn’t getting the weeding it needs. The peas on the trellis are winding down. I did pick a handful, then ate them all before moving on to the next area to water. 😁 The super sugar snap peas aren’t at the blooming stage yet, and the dwarf peas are not very productive, so I’m thinking a sowing of more peas near the end of July for a fall crop might be good, if I can find the space.

After taking a break for breakfast, I headed back out to use the push mower around the edges of the yard. Some spaces are too tight to use the riding mower, but too big to use a weed trimmer. As long as I was in the shade, it wasn’t bad, but by then we were at full heat (and we still are). Every time I stepped out of the shade, it was like walking into a wall of heat! I managed to get the south and east yards done, but still need to do the west and north yards, plus the paths in the main garden area.

When switching to the second half of the south yard, I did a walkabout to pick loose branches and whatnot, then stopped to take care of this poor spruce tree.

Yes, there’s a tree in there! If you click through to the next image, you’ll see what I uncovered. The tree is not looking very healthy right now, but it should get better now that it isn’t being smothered by vines!

This is a tree that I’ve been wanting to transplant, but it’s starting to get too big for that. My mother planted two of them, right next to the chain link fence. One died since we moved out here. When I told my mother we needed to transplant them, she demanded they stay. When I explained that, if we left them there, they would eventually destroy the chain link fence. She told me she didn’t care, and insisted they stay. When one of them died, she thought I had killed it on purpose because she told me not to transplant them.

We’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile…

My brother was out by about 5am, doing more mowing, then getting getting the truck and trailer out to load more junk into the bin. They went through a number of areas and cleared a lot of the junk pile near the chain link fence, and filled it. They’ve called it in and it should be picked up tomorrow, but it won’t be coming back again right away. They got enough area cleared that they can start organizing things more, and have the bin brought back in the fall. Until then, my brother is going to focus on getting the metal stuff to the scrap yard, where he’ll at least get some money for it. I did remember to tell them that the old bath tub in the junk pile is a keeper – though they never found it! I’ve found I need something larger to wash things that too big or too dirty for the washing machine, like the outdoor cat beds and blankets. I’ll need to pick a spot for it that is out of the way, but still easily accessible.

In other things…

My husband is doing a lot better today. During the night, his blood glucose did drop very low again, though not as dangerously as before. He was able to eat something, then went back to bed. Between us, we’ve been making sure he actually eats regularly.

I found out something that was a surprise, though. My husband has been on a ludicrously high dose of Ozempic, which is supposed to help control his blood glucose. Something I have a real problem with, because it didn’t seem to help that, but the side effects were causing problems. He has decreased his slow-release insulin and I remembered to suggest he might want to decrease his Ozempic dose, too.

He isn’t taking it, and hasn’t been for a while.

The pharmacy has been sending him refills for he regular meds, even if he hasn’t called them in, because it pops up on their files. Some things are “take as needed” so he has to call those refills in. When he ran out of Ozempic, he never got a refill – and he never called to ask for one. I don’t know how long he’s been off it, but considering how low his blood glucose had dropped, it’s scary to think how much worse it would have been if he had still been taking it!

As for the rest of us, we’re managing all right, though the heat is brutal upstairs, even with their AC and fans. My older daughter has had to send notes with apologies for some of her commissions, saying they may be late. It’s hard to use a drawing tablet when it’s covered in sweat! I am so thankful for the new roof and the AC. It was bad enough in the summer on the second floor before. With the temperatures and humidity we are having now, it would be unlivable up there.

So that’s where we are at now. It’s coming up on 6pm as I write this, and we are still at 30C/86F I need to get out and do the evening cat feeding, though I might wait until later to finish my evening rounds!

Tomorrow, thankfully, it will be quite a bit cooler – though that is a relative statement! I’m planning to head into town to do some errands and visit my mother. I’ll have to remember to leave the gate open for the guy picking up the bin. The family will have to keep an eye out, as much to make sure the renter’s cows don’t get through the electric fence as for the bin pick up!

Okay. Time to stop procrastinating and go feed some kitties! (and skunks… and racoons… *sigh*)

The Re-Farmer

So… that could have gotten much, much worse

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One thing is for sure. I am incredibly glad I didn’t try to do the market today.

I did the usual morning stuff, including watering the garden. My brother had his zero turn mower out already, which amazed me, because the grass was still so very wet from dew. He just did the areas he needed to work around, and this mower can handle it.

Then they started loading things into the bin!

After I finished the outside stuff, I came in and started making myself breakfast. Between the fan and the cooking noises, I could hear nothing elsewhere in the house, so it was a surprise when my oldest daughter came rushing in, telling me my husband had been calling for me.

He had his door closed to keep the cats out, and when I got to him, I found him sitting on the side of the bed, barely able to sit upright. He kept falling backwards, and he couldn’t speak. He tried to, but could only manage making noise, while his lips simply could not move. While I was holding him up, he managed to gesture towards the top of his medication fridge, where his Dex 4 bottles were sitting.

He was suffering from low blood sugar. I helped him down a couple of the sugar pills and, once I was sure he wouldn’t fall over again, got a glucometer. During that time, he took a couple more sugar pills. I used the glucometer – which was not easy, as he doesn’t bleed well – and got a 2.5 For those of you in the US, that’s a 45.

By that point, I was on the phone with 911, which was a pain because I could barely make out what the person who answered was saying. I got transferred to the ambulance dispatcher and while I talked to her, my husband visibly improved, in that he could speak, though very slurred. He was able to open the bottle of Dex 4 and took 3 more sugar pills while I had the dispatcher on speakerphone.

Once the ambulance was on the way and the dispatcher got the other information she needed, I tested him again. He was still at 2.5, but already getting much, much better. His could hold himself upright and could speak more coherently. He told me that he’d had to drag himself into consciousness. He had ripped his CPAP mask off, though at the time he wasn’t even sure what he was removing.

Meanwhile, I told my daughter an ambulance was on the way and to open the gate. I had sent a quick message to my brother and SIL, but they were outside so my daughter had shouted out to them that there was an ambulance coming, but she didn’t know why.

Once she was back inside, she started moving stuff around to make room for a stretcher to come through but, in the end, that wasn’t needed. With help, my husband was able to get dressed and use his walker to get outside, where he waited by the front steps, with half a loaf of bread, as he needed to eat something but couldn’t stomach anything else. I’d offered part of my own breakfast that I’d been making (which a daughter tended to and later finished for me), but that was too much for him.

Meanwhile, my brother came over to talk to us. My SIL was at the road, ready to direct the ambulance. My brother told us, they always drive right by – they’ve had to call an ambulance for my late father in the past, and that’s what what had happened before.

Once he was outside, I tested his sugars again and he was up to 3.1mmol/L, which would be about 55mg/dL He was looking and acting dramatically better by then, too.

The ambulance got there very quickly. When they arrived, my husband was able to walk up the steps through the side door while the tended to him, and one of them stayed to ask me questions. My husband had told him he’d dropped to 1mmol/L (18mg/dL). I told the paramedic that the last time that happened, he was in the hospital and they’d given him too much insulin. So the paramedic understood that my husband knew what a 1 felt like. I told the paramedic what readings I’d gotten and, with how much my husband had clearly improved, he jokily apologized that they took so long to get here, we fixed him ourselves.

They did not take long at all to get here. Especially considering they did not come from the nearest town.

They kept him in the ambulance for a while longer and when they checked his sugars, he was at 6mmol/L (106mg/dL) and safe. After talking to him about it, my husband decided to not go to the hospital.

While they were tending to him, my daughter finished cooking my breakfast and I went in to eat – since I was so hungry by then, I was feeling dizzy! Part way through, the paramedic came in to update me and we talked about the situation some more.

Then Leyendecker came over and demanded pets. The paramedic accommodated quite happily. The Potato Beetle came over. He was so taken by then that, when he went back to the ambulance, my husband said the paramedic and brought it up with glee. Sadly, he has two big dogs that have never seen a cat, so adopting one wasn’t an option. 😄

Meanwhile, with everything under control, I could see my brother and SIL tossing things from the junk pile into the bin, leaving behind the electronics garbage, appliances and metal. They also loaded a trailer of stuff to dump, and my brother even went and gathered the toilet collection (I think we found 6 toilets scattered around the yard in total, right after we moved here).

Once my husband was back inside and the ambulance was gone, we took advantage of so many things being shoved aside to make room for a stretcher that never came in. We moved out a couple of boxes from my mother’s apartment and cleared the top of the old dishwasher that can’t be used. It’s the sort that gets wheeled over and attached to a sink’s tap, but it won’t work with the tap we now have, nor could we even plug it in anymore. The top of the dishwasher is what we were using to hold our big jug of drinking water. Once the dishwasher was cleared, I was able to get it out of the house and roll it to the end of the sidewalk. I had to leave it there, as the wheels would not roll well on the grass, so getting it to the bin was going to be a 2 person job. Then I took out some of the electronics waste we kept not getting to the dump and set that with the appliances in the remains of the junk pile. The old dishwasher was sitting where it was for a reason; we have a cube shelf with storage cubes for winter gear that the cats kept tearing up to get into, so the dishwasher was protecting it. Now that it’s gone, we moved our recycling bins to that spot so the cats still can’t get into them.

The main thing about getting the dishwasher out, though, was that we could set up the laundry hose out the window to do my husband’s bedding.

Thankfully, my husband is almost back to “normal” (for him, anyhow). He’s going to be testing his sugars a lot more often over the next while, not to check for highs, but lows, while he adjusts how much Tejeo he is talking. This is a slow release insulin that it taken only once a day.

We have figured out what triggered this. While the girls and I were in the city, we made sure that my husband had food he could easily get for himself. The problem is, between the chronic pain and the Ozempic, he has no appetite. He ate next to nothing, all day, then went to bed early and on an empty stomach. The slow release insulin, meanwhile, keeps doing its thing no matter how much he has or hasn’t eaten. He later told me that what he was feeling this morning was WAY worse than what he’d gone though while at the hospital. It’s entirely possible his blood glucose had actually dropped below 1mmol/L(18mg/dL)

Which brings me to a huge frustration. When my husband had to start seeing a Nurse Practitioner, after our doctor disappeared (he went on medical leave and never came back), she basically ignored his back injury and was focused completely on his blood glucose and on getting him to lose weight. Even the diabetic nurse he was referred to told us that he would not be able to control his blood glucose until he got control of the pain, and he has never been able to get control of the pain, no matter what painkillers they’ve put him on. I firmly believe there is an overdiagnosis of diabetes. A LOT of things can result in high blood glucose. Sleep apnea is one of them, so my husband is dealing with both the chronic pain and the sleep apnea. Also things like high stress levels, anxiety, etc. He’s on a ludicrously high dose of Ozempic now and, frankly, I don’t know that it’s actually helping him. There’s nothing he can do about the spleep apnea; he was diagnosed at a sleep research facility and the head researcher, who was also a university professor, actually asked permission to use his test results in class as an example of how bad it can get. They actually took measurements inside his throat, and found the tissues were smaller than typical for someone of my husbands 6′ plus frame. As he ages, everything gets looser and starts to cause problems. He could lose all the “extra” weight, and would still have severe obstructive sleep apnea.

Which means he may not actually be T2 diabetic. The high blood glucose is more likely a symptom of other issues that cannot be fixed. There is no surgery. Not therapy. No anything that can “fix” the ultimate cause of his back injury, and certainly not the spine damage he was born with that wasn’t discovered until he was finally referred to a spine clinic, after 2 years of the NP focusing completely on his blood glucose and weight.

There is a lot out there about how dangerous high blood glucose is and, in the long term, that may be true. The reality is, low blood sugar is far more dangerous. High blood sugars can cause problems after decades. Low blood sugars can kill you within minutes – and my husband came very close to dying this morning.

The scary thing is that the powers that be keep lowering the threshold. It used to be that you weren’t considered T2 until our BG levels were at 8/144 or above, and after you had that reading after two blood tests (lab tests, as glucometers weren’t common yet) and after several other tests were done to factor other things out. Then the threshold was dropped to 7/126 or higher, and all it took was a single glucometer test at the doctor’s office. Then a new category was invented: pre-diabetes, which is declared if you get a reading of 6.5/117 or higher. Then there was “metabolic syndrome”.

Scarier still is that they lowered the range of “normal”. While looking for conversion charts for this post, I also got charts of what the different ranges were. “Normal” in Canada (probably elsewhere, too) is now a fasting BG of 4 – 5.5/72-99. The first time my husband was “diagnosed” with T2 (which miraculously went away once he got a proper CPAP to treat his sleep apnea), we were told that anything below 5/90 was concerning, anything below 4/72 was dangerous. The safe range was from 5-7/90-126. Now, one chart I found includes a BG reading as low as 2.6/50 as the bottom range of “excellent”.

To top it off, having T2 and higher BG readings is also increasingly viewed as a moral failing rather than a symptom or a side effect, or even just a data point. Treating T2, however, has become incredibly lucrative. I expect attitudes and treatments are going to get worse before they start getting better.

end rant

I’ll get off my soap box now. I’m just so frustrated. I almost lost my husband this morning. I am so very thankful that he recovered so quickly, though he says he’s still shaky. This, on top of the constant pain he’s dealing with. He isn’t living. He’s existing – and there is really nothing that can be done about it anymore. That window closed many years ago.

The Re-Farmer

Garden first, and a quick run down

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Before I get into an update with things, I wanted to share this adorable little guy with you.

I found this while using the rain barrel to water the garden from the rain barrel. I had taken the caps off the watering cans, just in case frogs got into the filled cans again. They are kept full so they don’t blow away. I have no idea what kind of caterpillar that is, and hope it’s beneficial. It’s quite adorable.

I also found these…

The first image is our very first fully open winter squash flower. A male flower; I don’t expect to see female flowers for a while yet. The second image is a bit hard to see, but our caraway is starting to bloom!

Today was getting hotter and I normally would have watered the garden in the morning, but the girls and I were planning to head out a couple of hours early for my older daughter’s pre-op appointment. Thankfully, I made a comment about parking at the women’s hospital when my daughter reminded me that the appointment was somewhere else entirely! I had completely forgotten! I would have taken the wrong highway into the city!

So… we took a different route and stopped briefly at a gas station in the one town along the way for drinks and some fresh potato wedges to eat along the way. My younger daughter didn’t eat at all until afterwards, as she didn’t want to get sick at the start of the trip (eating in general always makes her sick for some reason).

The clinic we went to is clear across the city, and took well over an hour to get there, but the route was straightforward and there was plenty of free parking, which was greatly appreciated. We even got there a bit early, with more than enough time for my daughter to do the “first visit” paperwork.

Her appointment went well. She needs to book another pre-op appointment, but the person wasn’t in today so she’ll have to call them tomorrow. By the time she sees this person, they should have a time and date for her surgery. She was told it should be withing 3-6 months which, for Canada, is incredibly fast. She’ll also be getting a requisition for bloodwork emailed to her, which she can get done locally.

Since we were in the city, once the appointment was done, we went to a nearby Walmart to pick up cat supplies for the inside cats, plus a few other things for ourselves. I also wanted to pick up some food for all of us. This Walmart had a Subway instead of a Walmart – nothing on the menu I could eat while driving, but my daughter was able to get a sub for herself and her sister (who stayed in the truck). I tried looking around the grocery section of the Walmart for something I could eat while driving, but there was nothing. As we left, we got more gas and I went in to pre-pay, so I could use a discount coupon, and ended up getting some beef jerky to eat on the road, once clear of the city, with my daughter to hand me pieces.

Once at home and the truck unloaded, I changed and headed out. First to do the outside cat feeding, then to water the garden. After the watering, I was able to finish weed trimming around the East yard garden beds, but was not going to stay out to do more. Too many mosquitoes, even though I had bug repellant on!

I was almost done the watering when my brother and SIL showed up for the weekend. Before I headed in for the night, I quickly popped over to say hello. I was too much of a mess to go inside and visit, so it was a short one. We caught up for a bit, then my SIL remembered she had some things for us. One turned out to be a bag of frozen meat! Some butcher’s shop sausages that they found they couldn’t eat, and a packet of venison that had been given to them, but they aren’t fond of venison. If it turns out we don’t like any of it either (I already know I’m going to enjoy the venison!), we can always give it to the cats!

Oh, after looking at the forecast, I’ve decided I will skip the market tomorrow. I don’t want the truck to be baking in the heat. Not when those high temperatures somehow seems to be causing problems with the battery – or at least has the battery gauge doing weird things! Next weekend might be just as hot but for that one we will be there until 8pm, and things will be cooling down by then.

I will definitely be watering the garden again in the morning, before things get hot. I’m hoping the grass will be dry enough before it gets too hot that I can get the push mower out, as well as more weed trimming!

We shall see what the day brings.

The Re-Farmer

A good night, a rough day

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Last night, we were expected to drop to about 17-18C/63-64F

We dropped to 14C/57F

It was glorious. Best sleep I’ve had in a while!

I still headed out early to do the watering, after after the rest of my morning routine. While watering in the old kitchen garden, I decided it was time to remove the insect netting from the rectangular garden bed.

The self seeded poppies had pods pushing up against the nettings from below, as well as some onion seed heads. They are now free to bloom and be pollinated. The parsnip and beet greens are looking nice and lush.

The cats are going to miss their hammock!

While laying the netting out on the grass so I could fold it up to put it away, I spotted a couple of spots where eggs had been laid. When I folded the netting over, I discovered that one of them still had the spider mama on it! She would not move, and stayed clutching the cocoon of eggs.

I ended up folding the netting in such a way that the spider was on top and uncovered, then found a place in the sun room to tuck the netting away that should be safe from having cats climb on it.

Yeah, I’m a suck.

Even for spider mamas and their eggs.

By the time the watering was done, it was almost time for the general store to open, so I headed out right away. The kibble bin in the sun room was pretty much empty after this morning’s feeding, so I needed another 40 pound bag of kibble.

It is so much handier now that the local general store carries that size. Otherwise, I’d be driving to towns with feed stores, to the north or south of us.

Once back home, I had my breakfast and was on the computer when I started having issues. I was starting to fall sleep at my keyboard. Plus, the pain in my lower abdomen was back. So I decided to lie down for a couple of hours.

That seemed to help, but as I was up and about, the pain got worse again. It got so that I could neither stand nor sit properly because of it. So I tried lying down again. I fell asleep again, covered in cats, and after a couple of hours I woke feeling much better.

Until I moved.

All I did was shift a leg to a more comfortable position, and the pain was back. It went away after a while, until I had to move again. Then, just to top it off, I found I had a headache behind my eyes.

*sigh*

In the end, I had to ask a daughter to do the outside cat feeding. I’ve taken pain killers and am hoping to be able to at least do the evening watering, in a couple of hours or so.

On the plus side, we didn’t break 30C/86F again, as was being forecast last night. We “only” hit 28C/82F. The overnight low is supposed to be 18C/64F. The forecast for later in the week has also changed to less extreme highs. For me, I’m mostly looking at Friday, when I take my daughter to the city for her pro-op appointment, and Saturday, when I will be doing the market again. By myself, this time. My daughters have both been invited to a digital wedding on Saturday that they will be “attending”. For our time zone, it will be in the afternoon. It seems the couple live in different countries and are unable to travel, so they are getting “married” in a game, using their game characters as proxies. Obviously, not a legally recognized marriage, but it’s what they are able to do for now.

What a strange world we live in.

Anyhow.

My telephone appointment with my own doctor is next week. I find myself wondering what the next steps will be, if nothing showed up in those ultrasounds. An MRI, perhaps? I don’t know, but something is very wrong, and it’s causing problems. This started out as a side effect from anti-inflammatories I am no longer taking. While the initial side effect is almost non-existent now, it hasn’t gone away completely, and the pain has gotten worse. It’s gotten to the point that my husband, broken and in constant pain as he is, looks at me and comments on what bad shape I’m in, and that I’m moving around worse than he is!

Speaking of which, my husband finally broke down and placed an order for a new chair. An ergonomic, bariatric chair that he could potentially use as a sleep chair, if it ever came to that. Putting one more thing on his credit card is not something we wanted to do, but we were supposed to get it when our tax return came in, and that mess still hasn’t been sorted out. The new disability tax credit paperwork got sent in a while ago, and he did check off the box giving permission for them to go over his previously filed taxes, and that takes time. He should at least get the tax credit that didn’t come in this last time. Who knows, though. He was officially on long term disability back in 2014, and we didn’t know the tax credit even existed back then. We only found out about it after going to a different tax preparer a few years back, and she had asked me why he wasn’t getting it. She was able to set him up on it, right then and there, and set me up for the caregiver tax credit – something else we didn’t know existed.

Meanwhile, the chair he’s got now is breaking and unsafe, and this is a medical necessity. Perhaps not the specific type of chair. I suppose he could have gotten a prescription for a chair from his doctor, but that would just had more time, and he can’t really put it off for much longer. The chair he ordered should arrive before the end of the month. That’s the most important thing.

All four of us dealing with painful health issues, all at the same time, was not something any of us thought would happen, that’s for sure!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Sweetie sighting, and bee bombed

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Thanks to the generous donations from the rescue, one of the things I’ve been able to do for the outside cats is to use the freeze dried cat food powder to make a thin cat soup. Not a lot, but enough to spread around several bowls, in hopes to lure the more feral cats closer to the house.

Sweetie has finally discovered this. For the past while, by the time she showed up to eat, the other cats would have eaten all the cat soup. They absolutely love the stuff. (Interestingly, the inside cats keep trying to get into the boxes, but once it’s mixed up, they have no interest.) I mixed up a bowl of cat soup then leave it to rehydrate while I put out the dry cat food. I actually spotted Sweetie this morning, already at one of the food bowls under the shrine, looking for food. She ran off a bit when I came out and put food into the bowls in the area.

Not only did she come back for the soup but, when other cats bullied their way in, she went into the isolation shelter and found the cat soup in there!

Not only that, but when she saw me stop to take a picture (using zoom; I was not going to go too close!), she went back to eating.

This is progress!

After doing the cat stuff, I did the rest of my rounds, including checking on the garden.

That’s when I spotted our first Gigantheum poppy was blooming!

Of course, I stopped to take a picture and immediately got photobombed.

By a bumble bee.

You can just barely see it in the first image. If you click through, there are two short videos, too.

I didn’t do the morning watering today. Partly because I was heading into town for a meeting at the nursing home, and partly because we were supposed to get thunderstorms this afternoon.

I got a message from my brother and SIL, letting me know they were on the way. My brother had to take a day off work for this. I ended up getting there about half an hour early, and met with my brother in the chapel to wait, as the meeting room was being used for another meeting. Their grandsons are still with them, so my SIL took them out around town and to the nearby beach.

The meeting is something that will be happening every year, though when they found out my brother took a day off work, they said future ones could be done over the phone.

Being the first one of these meetings, there was a fair bit to cover, as we gave them some background information that would explain some of my mother’s behavioural issues, etc. There was some discussion about my mother’s cognitive decline – something my mother notices in herself, even if she doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. One of the people looked through the binder of my mother’s files and found the past several cognitive test results. One she had done 2 years ago had a score of 14. One she had done this year had a score of 29.

Out of 30.

That is a huge fluctuation. It does match what we all have observed. In many ways, and on her good days, my mother is extremely sharp. On her bad days, she can’t understand some of the most basic stuff. What we have no way of knowing is, when she’ll be having a good day or a bad day!

The meeting went on for about half an hour. My plan had been to visit my mother, then do some grocery shopping. My brother had brought another radio for my mother (she was unusually cruel about the “junk”, high end radio he’d provided for her before, not understanding that it’s simply difficult for any radio to catch a frequency where she is) because she complained he’d taken her radio away.

…

He hadn’t planned to actually visit her, though, but when he called my SIL to let her know we were done, she said their grandsons wanted to visit their great grandmother, and they were already on their way.

So we all went to visit my mother, very briefly. She turned out to be in bed, asleep, when we got there and was very tired.

For a short visit, she managed to make digs and each of us. Not the boys, thankfully, but… yeah. She actually complained a bit that we were there, asking what the “celebration” was. My SIL explained that she was driving the boys back home tomorrow, so this was their last chance to see her for a while. I told her I was going the the grocery store and was visiting her first. We didn’t bother telling her about the meeting, as she would not have been able to grasp it. As it was, she never got up at all. Which was fine. Lunch was going to be brought over, soon, so we didn’t want to linger. As we were leaving, she twisted something in conversation into an accusation against my brother, then told him that she wanted him to come visit for longer… by himself… because she wanted to “talk” to him.

My poor brother. He practically ran from the room after saying his goodbyes.

From there, they invited me to join them for lunch so we could fill each other in and catch up on things. It also gave me a chance to see the boys for a bit longer before they left for home tomorrow.

After we parted ways, I did a small grocery shopping trip. Most of what I got was on sale, but it still came out to almost $130. I did finally get a decent amount of butter, though; it was on sale for under $5 a pound. At least the house brand butter was. With other brands, the half pound sizes cost more than that.

Oddly, by the time I was packing things up at the truck, I was hit with a wave of sleepiness that did not stop. I felt weary to the bone, and could barely stay upright.

What I got fit into three hard sided bags (I even remembered to grab some, since the back of the truck cab is filled with my market supplies) so I messaged home, asking if someone could meet me at the garage to grab one, so I wouldn’t have to pull up to the house or make two trips. Then I started driving, so I never saw what the response was.

I had also picked up an energy drink for the drive home.

It didn’t make any difference, that I could tell.

Much to my surprise, when I drove up to the garage, my husband was waiting for me! He’d gone over with just a cane, not his walker. When I asked him about it, he told my that our younger daughter had been up all night and had finally been able to fall asleep, and her sister has had a relapse and couldn’t walk to the garage.

!!!

We got everything in and I put it all away, and then went to bed. I pretty much passed out for a couple of hours, with the exception of when several cats decided they absolutely needed to use me as a bed.

I didn’t realize how hard I’d fallen asleep until the phone rang. When I answered, the person on the other end asked for my older daughter. From the tone of her voice, I knew immediately is was about her relapse. There was a distinct sense of urgency, almost alarm, in her tone. Talking to my daughter yesterday, she told me she intended to take the “use as needed” medication she has, and that they intended to phone the doctor at the women’s hospital today (her sister being the one to make sure she didn’t put it off again!).

In the end, she was told to go ahead and take the “as needed” medication again. The nurse that called was going to consult with the doctor about any changes in her prescriptions, and will hopefully call back tomorrow. My daughter has her pre-op appointment on the 17 and she was instructed to not worry about that at all and, if things get worse, get to an ER right away. For now, my daughter says it is manageable. When she filled me in on this later, I made sure to tell her that I will drive her to the ER, even if it’s 2am, if necessary.

After my much needed nap, I headed outside to take care of the cats, then stayed out to try and get as much of the lawn mowed as possible.

For all that I waited for things to dry out after the last rains, the grass in the more overgrown section of lawn I focused on was so wet, it actually clogged the riding mower ejector opening, several times!

Then it started raining.

*sigh*

At least I got the tallest grass done. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get more done tomorrow, because the day after is market day, and I don’t expect to have the energy to do it when we are done there. I’m doing the riding mower parts, though, so we’ll see.

Also, there are SO many frogs! Many times, I had to reduce my speed or stop outright to avoid running them over. This makes me very happy. More frogs means less slugs and other nasty bugs! They don’t do much about the mosquitoes, unfortunately, but we’ve had a lot of frogs for two summers now, and I haven’t seen a single slug in the garden! 😁

Meanwhile, I think it’s time to pain killer up and head back to bed. That wave of sleepiness is coming over me again. The only thing keeping it from getting as bad as earlier is my increasing pain levels.

*sigh*

Less than 2 weeks to my telephone appointment with my doctor.

Being broken really sucks.

Being broken and not knowing what’s going on makes it that much more frustrating!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: peas, gooseberries and volunteers

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Last night turned out to be a rough night for all of us. No one got much sleep at all. We couldn’t even blame the heat for it, as we had a decently cooler night.

In my case, when I finally fell asleep, I was down so hard, I never even heard a cat knock a display off a shelf, onto the floor. Ghosty, for some reason, has been determined to climb up onto the shelf, through or over the display shelf, to jump down the other side, rather than simply walk on the floor to get to the same spot. It’s an ongoing problem, and she only does it when I’m asleep! I discovered it when I had to get up to go to the washroom and had to pick everything up, just to be able to get to my door.

*sigh*

I was outside, feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds early enough that I could go back to bed for a few hours.

Well… I tried to, that is. Didn’t actually get much sleep, again. I didn’t put the display shelf back again, figuring it was just an invitation to disaster, which meant half a dozen cats all wanted to explore the now empty top of the shelf it rested on.

Loudly.

Eventually, I gave up and headed out to get the mail and pick up a few things, including a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. Later in the afternoon, my older daughter joined me and I found out her night was bad, too. She has her pre-op appointment booked next week, but she’s considering finding the doctor’s phone number to talk about increasing her meds again. The girls and I had plans to do a deep clean of several rooms today, but with how we’re all feeling, it’s going to have to happen piecemeal, over several days.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I headed out to do the evening cat feeding and rounds. I was coming about to go to the isolation shelter when I realized there was a cat inside, watching me.

It was Sweetie! She actually was willing to go into the isolation shelter again!

She took off when she saw me walking towards the shelter, but at least we know she’s coming closer for food, and willing to go into the space she spent so much time in, before going to the rescue.

I saw Slick this afternoon, too.

Slick is no longer pregnant. *sigh*

She’s lost two litters this year. It’ll take time before we know if this one survived.

No sign of the one kitten I spotted not long ago, still. Hopefully, it will start showing up at the furthest food bowls, and we can start working on socializing it, or at least getting it comfortable with coming to the house for food and shelter.

After the cat feeding, I watered the south garden beds from the rain barrel. We’re not expecting rain again for almost 2 weeks, and it’s supposed to get above 30C/86F on the weekend. After today, I’ll be making a point of trying to get outside early, before the heat hits, to water the garden. On the plus side, the water table is high enough that I don’t need to water any of the trees and berry bushes. It’s only the garden beds that drain and dry out quickly, even if there are still puddles in the lower areas.

In the old kitchen garden, I actually did a tiny harvest.

The Tom Thumb Dwarf peas had pods large enough to pick. Or should I say, thick enough. They are not at all large, just like the plants themselves!

We have some volunteers in the wattle weave bed.

Next to the peas are three self seeded tomatoes. They won’t have time to reach full maturity, but I’m leaving them be, anyhow.

In the next image of the above slide show, growing along the edge by the path along the wattle weave bed, there are a few self seeded chamomile, including one that has started blooming!

After the south beds were done, I watered the main garden area, too, though with a hose. One of these days, I’d like to set up a water tank so that the main garden area can be watered with ambient temperature water, rather than from a hose. By the time it’s done, the well water is so cold, it can shock the plants.

With that watering done, I went to check on the food forest trees and bushes, and spotted something that made me smile.

We have gooseberries!

They are unripe and still rock hard, but we have them!

Unfortunately, by the time I was finishing up, I was starting to have pain issues. It seems to kick in after I’ve done a fair bit of walking. It’s almost at the point where I’m wondering if I should go to the ER or something. My own doctor is away right now and we have a phone appointment booked for when she gets back, but if this keeps up, I might have to find an alternative. There are no urgent care clinics out here. We don’t even have any walk in clinics any closer than my doctor’s clinic, so the ER would be pretty much the only other option. If I did that, I would expect to spend many hours in the waiting room, since I would not be an “urgent” case. At least the diclofenac works, though it can take a while to kick in. When the pain hits, it doesn’t matter if I’m sitting, standing or lying down.

Oddly, while talking to my older daughter and describing where the pain it, it’s almost identical to the pain she is having! Hers is worse in other ways, given what the cause is for her.

Ah, well. Nothing much either of us can do about it right now. I don’t even have a diagnosis, and I won’t until I talk to my doctor. Even then, that would only be if the ultrasounds actually found something.

Still, I’m managing to at least get outside and get at least a few things done. I’m quite excited that we have our first gooseberries since getting planting that bush. It brings back memories. We had a gooseberry bush here when I was a kid and I used to love eating them fresh off the bush. In retrospect, I was eating them under ripe, but I loved that sour taste. I did taste one of the biggest gooseberries today. It was pretty nasty! 😄 They still have a ways to go before they are edible!

On my list of things to get done in the garden over the next while, along with loosening up the area near the corn bed and sowing tillage radishes, it’s getting time to uncover the corn and put a mulch down around them. Right now, there are a lot of weeds and I’ve been leaving them, since they are acting a bit like a living mulch right now. We’ll see what I manage to get done over the next while. If the yards dry out enough, I might be mowing, instead. That, at least, shouldn’t trigger the pain levels like walking does.

Being broken really sucks sometimes!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and a general update

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We were expecting a very hot day today, so I was up early to water the garden thoroughly before things got too hot – even though we have rain in the forecast. Depending on which app I check, we’ll either get rain or thunderstorms. Just before I started writing this, our phones started going off with tornado warnings, but it looks like the system will be passing to the north of us. We might get some rain from the edges of it. We did hit 31C/88F today. As I write this, past 7pm, we are at 28C/82F right now, with the humidex making it feel like 30C/86F.

After I did the morning cat feeding (with some cats very confused by the early hour!) and garden watering, I went back to bed. I must have been really beat because I slept for about 3 hours, checked the time, then passed our for another 2 hours.

Unfortunately, today has turned out to be a bad pain day, and not just for me. My daughter somehow ended up getting a sun burn yesterday, even though she was in the shade most of the day. I’ve been getting so much sun since it got warm enough to work outside longer, I don’t get burned, though apparently I’m quite the redneck right now. 😄 Meanwhile, my other daughter has had increased health issues again. Her pre-op appointment in the city is a couple of Fridays from now – the day the bin my brother is renting is supposed to be delivered! My younger daughter will have to stay home so she can meet them and tell them where to drop the bin off.

Aside from the pain related to why I got those ultrasounds done, my left hip has decided to start working wrong again. Not a lot of pain there. The joint just isn’t moving right and wants to give out.

I am so thankful for all the arm bars and hand rails that were installed for my father, all those years ago!

Eventually, though, I did head outside. I had to use the walker for it, but I set up the new deer scarer my brother picked up for me.

I’ve set this one up by the corn, which is going to need the netting removed from it pretty soon. I set the other one up by the peas to keep the deer away with the sound of a dog barking. With this one, I expect raccoons to be more of an issue, and I set it to the ringing of a bell, since I think raccoons would get used to the sound of a dog barking very quickly.

Once that was set up, I wandered around and checked on various things. In the next image in the slide show above, you can see some chard leaves. These are planted between the garlic and are finally starting to grow! Still pretty much nothing on the spinach in the other row; what little germinated and survived promptly bolted. It does look like we will at least have some Swiss Chard for greens this year.

In the next image, we have a red nasturtium flower. The seeds I collected were from a package with a variety of colours in it, and so far we’ve had yellow and red. They are still quite small, but adding that straw mulch once they got big enough has really helped.

Next is the row of summer squash. Those are picking up quite nicely. The plan is to grow them vertically, but I’ll need to remove the netting to do that, and they still need that protection for now.

The last picture is of the fennel and chicory. They’ve had a bit of a growth spurt! Unfortunately, some of the fennel at the end of the bed got flattened. Stinky found his way under the netting and I found him lying there. I opened the netting up at the other end, so as not to spook him, then moved to scoot him in that direction. Instead, he panicked and started running into the netting over and over before I finally got him to go out the open end. *sigh* He didn’t do too much damage, at least. We added more rods to the hoops over the fennel and it’s getting so tall, it’s almost touching the top of the netting again!

We just got another tornado alert on our phones while I was writing the above paragraph. While that is passing to the north of us, our region and the entire south end of the province are currently under a severe thunderstorm watch this evening and overnight. The warning includes 4-6cm (about 1.5-2.5in) hail, 50-70mm (about 2-3in) of rain and wind gusts up to 100km/h (about 62m/h). For us, we’re to expect rain starting around 4am tonight and lasting until about 10am.

We are definitely not going to be hit with the worst of it, for which I am thankful, but my heart hurts for the people that have been slammed by these storms, over and over again.

The Re-Farmer