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Taking a sort of break

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I just need to take a brain break for a moment. Writing this is my brain break! :-D I have just spent the last hour or so at the local cemetery, with my mother and sister. It went well, overall, but things are always a bit stressful with my mother around.

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com

I actually started my day with a telephone appointment with the doctor to talk about my mother. One of the things that he will get the ball rolling on is to have the home care department call my mom for an assessment, so see what sort of help she needs, if any. They can’t do that until my mother deals with her bed bug situation, which she is still treating as a big joke. She will be getting a phone call first, though, and hopefully they will talk to her about it. The doctor had questions about my mother getting infections or rashes from the bed bugs, but there is nothing he can do beyond that; it’s all on my mother to make the call to get her place treated.

At the same time, he had the results of my bloodwork and updated my prescription. It’s handy having the same doctor as my mother! So as soon as I got off the phone with him, I called the pharmacy. My husband called in his own refills to be delivered today, so I told them they would be getting a fax with my updated prescription, and asking them to include it with the delivery. I ran out of mine months ago, but without being able to go in to do my bloodwork, I was only getting 30 day refills. Each time it ran out, the pharmacy would have to contact the clinic and wait for another 30 day refill prescription to be faxed to them, so I didn’t bother calling in anymore. When I mentioned that to the doctor, he was a bit startled and assured me I’d be getting a 90 day prescription. In 2 months, I need to get more bloodwork done to see if anything needs to be changed. Meanwhile, my husband and I will be seeing the doctor in person in a couple of days.

My sister made the trip to my mother, to bring her out to the cemetery. She tries to manage it at least once a year. We met in town to have lunch at our hamlet’s single restaurant. I left a bit earlier, before the store with the post office closed. I’m happy to say, my PAL finally came in! I can now legally buy non-restricted guns and ammunition. Not that we have the money for it right now, but at least it’s an option.

So we had a nice lunch, and I let my mother know about the call she could expect from home care, but mentioned that they can’t come out until she gets the bed bug situation dealt with. She just smirked about that. I don’t know how to get through to her about her need to do this! Otherwise, her behaviour was pretty good, up until we were getting ready to leave, and she called the two staff over and started telling them to take away the “ugly” picture on the wall. There are paintings and photos from local artists for sale on the walls, and this one happened to be a portrait type painting of an old First Nations man, with slightly disheveled hair. She said a few tactless and somewhat racist things – things she gets away with, simply because of her age! My sister and I still called her out on it, so that didn’t last too long, at least. The staff handled it well, at least.

After lunch, I transferred some framed pictures my mother asked me to get out of storage – I’m glad I was able to find them at all! – into my sister’s car, then we headed to the cemetery.

It’s a very tiny cemetery connected with a church that has been closed for years now. It’s off the beaten path and tucked away among the trees. A very lovely spot. It was a bit of a surprise to see vehicles already there, including one I recognized.

It turns out our vandal had volunteered to cut the grass, and was doing it today.

He’d already used the weed trimmer around the half of the cemetery we needed to go into. When he realized I was there, he quickly packed up and left, in compliance with the restraining order. Meanwhile, my mother was there, calling out to him to come over. *sigh* I tried to explain to her that he couldn’t, and not to get him in trouble, but I don’t think she understood. Or maybe just didn’t care.

Since the grass had just been trimmed, it was all over the graves and stones, and he hadn’t had a chance to put things back. So I got a snow brush out of the van and started sweeping around the family graves.

There’s quite a few of them.

My sister, meanwhile, had brought a brush to scrub away the bird droppings, and water and rags to clean off the stones. They’d also brought a whole bunch of artificial flowers, so once everything was cleaned up and decorations returned, we set flowers out as my mother directed. She kept getting mad at us when we would ask her if she liked a particular colour grouping of flowers, but hadn’t finished setting them in place yet, because we hadn’t set them in place yet. !!

It took a while.

Then, after she said some prayers, she wanted my sister to get pictures of her by the freshly cleaned up and decorated family graves.

That was my cue to go. I suggested to my sister that she text our vandal before they left, to let him know I was gone and he could come back and finish what he was doing.

The whole thing went over pretty well, as far as such things go, but I’m mentally exhausted. It’s also the hottest part of the day, now, so I lost my productive time in the garden. I just talked to my daughters about it, and we’ve decided I need to have a “day off” from the garden. I’ve been pushing myself hard, and am in a lot of pain for it, so I really do need to back off a bit. My older daughter is going to do as much commission work as she can today, so she can take a day off work tomorrow. We’ll make a big push to get the last of the garden planted. Even if we don’t manage to get the A frame trellis supports in place, that can be finished after things have been planted. We just need to get the last stuff into the ground! I am just so incredibly tired right now, to the point it’s hard to think straight as I’m writing. Lack of sleep is part of the problem. It isn’t helping that Nosencrantz is determined to have access to the window ledge again, and keeps knocking out the window fan, leaving it dangling by its cord and bounding off the wall.

Usually at around 4:30am

It’s now doubly secured and, when I got home from my outing, I found it shifted out of place, but still on the ledge, so it’s working so far.

So, I think I’ll try and get some rest (and pain killer up!) today, and we’ll make the big push tomorrow.

Once the garden is in, we’ll celebrate with my younger daughter’s birthday pizza. It’ll be early, but her sister plans to get her some celebratory Taquitos and beer, cake and ice cream, closer to her actual birthday. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Water, water everywhere

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It’s rained pretty steadily all last night and this morning. Then, when the rain sort of stopped, it was wind we had to deal with. I must say, watching those 60′ plus spruce trees swaying so much and not snapping always amazes me!

Also, the “road closed, local access only” sign is back.

Water is accumulating everywhere in both the inner and outer yards. Even with all the snow melt this spring, I’ve never seen this much water accumulated here. The water extends the length of the spruce grove, though not as deep.

This is one of the highbush cranberry my daughters transplanted yesterday. In the back, you can see one of the holes dug for the silver bison berry, full of water.

Those are expected to arrive by Friday, but I just checked the tracking number, and they have arrived in the city, so they may be here by tomorrow! It’s going to be interesting, transplanting them all, with the ground so saturated.

We certainly won’t need to water them!

Even the paths between the garden bed are puddles, which we’ve never seen since moving here.

Another benefit to raised bed gardens, even if they are low raised beds. Just a few inches higher is enough to protect the newly seeded beds from being drowned out.

I checked the high raised beds, with their sprouting spinach, as well as the onions, shallots and purple peas. Everything seems to be handling the heavy rainfalls just fine. There are even new lettuce sprouts! Just the section of Buttercrunch in the L shaped bed. There’s also the spot next to the rose bush where I just scattered the last of the lettuce seeds, all mixed together, and there are sprouts there, too.

Most of the inner yard is so very wet. I’m seeing standing water where I don’t remember ever seeing standing water before. The storage house has a moat around it again, but the spot between the storage house and the corner of the old kitchen garden just keeps growing. When cats or skunks get startled, they still run through it, so I get a good idea of just how deep it is!

I’m also seeing a lot of people in the area posting photos of roads that are flooded over, both on highways and on gravel roads. Some of the gravel roads have been washed out, just like with the earlier flooding when the snow melted. One person shared a photo of a section on the side of the highway that collapsed.

As you can imagine, we didn’t do the second half of our city shopping today! I’m very glad I was able to help my mother do her shopping yesterday, because I doubt I could have done it today.

There is also a lot more water in the basements right now. Both of them. The old basement has its usual accumulation that we sweep into either the floor drain to the septic tank, or into the sump pump reservoir. There’s also water seeping through in the new basement, in spite of the new basement having weeping tile. It’s mostly in that corner my brother found flooded out and molding, when a rain barrel outside that corner was left to overflow for possibly months, before we moved here. It’s not in big puddles, like we get in the old basement, but water does accumulated in the one corner. Right now, that whole side of the basement looks wet. All we can do about that basement is put a fan on it. The only drain is in the old basement.

There were a few times when the power kept flickering on and off. I’m glad I shut down my computer. I was preheating the oven, and had the range hood light on, and I was seeing both of them flickering on and off. Of course, our internet went out a few times; according to the app, it wasn’t anything at our end that caused it.

As I write this, we are at only 8C/46F, but the RealFeel is 3C/37F. The cool weather crops we planted will be fine, though. Looking at the 5 day forecast, it’s hard to judge when we’ll be able to start transplanting our warm weather crops. They are starting to really need to be transplanted, though.

As we plant things out, and thinking of how to protect our garden beds, wind is something we’re going to need to think about, too. I find myself wondering if we might make use of the rolls of snow fence we’ve found in a couple of places. They would help cut the wind, as well as discouraging critters.

Something to consider, for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Interference

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Just a quick note from my phone.

There has been much rain for the past day, but now it is the wind that is causing the most problems. The electricity has been flickering frequently.

Not good while on my desktop.

So once my computer finishes restarting itself after the last flicker that happened while I was prepping to do a blog post, I will be doing a proper shut down and leaving it off!

Hopefully, this will “blow over” soon.

Yeah. My sense of humour sucks. 😆😆

The Re-Farmer

Yesterday’s monthly shop

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I’m glad I was able to do the city trip yesterday. It rained all night, so today, the gravel roads are all muddy again – especially that one really bad spot near our place – and the yard is completely saturated. Yesterday, I was able to back up to the house to unload. The vehicle gate was still muddy, but I could at least drive through with minimal spinning of tires. Today, that area of the driveway is all water again. So are a number of areas in the yards.

I’d left a bit earlier than usual, making my regular stop to get a bit of gas at the town my mother lives in. Too early for their fried chicken to be available, so “breakfast” was a protein bar, instead. :-D I also paid the “idiot tax” and bought a lotto ticket, as well as a couple of on-sale energy drinks for the cooler in the van. Grand total was just over $45.

This trip is our usual series of three stores, finishing at Costco. The first was Canadian Tire, where I picked up a couple more 40 pound bags of the stove pellets we use as cat litter. We still had plenty, but I’m starting to use it as mulch in the garden again – it works really well for the finer seedlings – so I wanted to get more. I also got an extra spool of line for the weed trimmer, as it’s going to get a major workout in the old garden area, soon, and a package of short bamboo stakes that I thought might work for some hoops for the garden (more on that in another post). The PVC pipe I got to use as hoops last year is a bit too stiff and kept breaking the doweling I used last year. Metal stakes would be better, but finding any small enough to fit into the pipe is more difficult, and more expensive, so I’ll try the bamboo for now. I also picked up a roll of half inch PEX pipe. It is more flexible, and we can cut it to the lengths we need. Plus, it’ll be easier to find metal stakes to hold it in place.

I also finally picked up something I’ve been eyeballing for a while, now.

White Carolina strawberries! We have 4 transplants of red strawberries, which will be planted with the purple asparagus. There are 10 roots in this package, and I’m not really sure where we’ll plant them – several options come to mind – but we’ll figure it out. More perennial food plants is worth it. Altogether, this stop was just over $100.

After that, it was off to the international grocery store, though I did make one extra side trip, first. They share a parking lot with a Dollar Tree, and I wanted to see what gardening supplies then had. I ended up getting a selection of plant supports. I got 4 tomato cages, though they will probably be used for the eggplants or peppers. Then I got 4 supports that are a narrow metal spike with a spiral at the top to wind a stem through. I’m not sure what we’ll use those with, yet. Then I got 4 each of plastic coated metal stakes in two sizes. These came with adjustable ties for the plants. The heavier duty ones look like they would do very well for vertical growing summer squash. That worked out okay last year, except we had a hard time getting the lengths of poplar we’d cleared from part of the spruce grove to stay upright. The narrower ones might do well for that, too. After testing the 4 different types of supports, we’ll know which ones to get more of – if any at all. I also picked up a couple of fabric “raised beds” to test out. We already have a couple of grow bags that I was planning to grow the sweet potato slips in, once they arrive. We’ve got 5 sweet potato slips, 10 Jerusalem Artichokes and 2 highbush cranberry that will be shipped when it’s time for planting in our zone, which is pretty soon. With so many transplants, so many things to direst so, and so few beds to plant in, I thought it was worth trying out. I also picked up some S hooks and ground staples. The ground staples will work better than the tent pegs we are currently using for the protective netting we’re putting over the beds. Altogether, this part of the shop was just under $50.

Once those were all put away in the van, I headed into the grocery store and finally had “breakfast”. One of the bonuses for making these trips is being able to have dim sum!

This store is where we find some favourite frozen dumplings, international condiments and less common types of cheese. They also have a section of locally produced slabs of smoked bacon. Sometimes, they only have small pieces of unsliced bacon, but this time, they had some of the big ones in stock. It’s also where we get things in non-Costco sized quantities. ;-) Prices for some things have gone up quite a bit, and this stop ended up being just under $200. Plus the dim sum (which also went up in price) and drink I bought, it was about $215 in total.

Then it was Costco time.

*sigh*

Gas was 6 cents per litre cheaper, so I filled the tank first. That still came out to a little over $50. Then there was inside the store.

Ugh. There was a fair bit of sticker shock for some of the food items. I got more canned chicken for our stock, and that had gone up in price again. Six cans now cost about $20. Last month, they’d gone up to about $15. Basics like butter, eggs, rice, even toilet paper, have all gone up in price. The only other meat I got was the all-beef wieners and buns for a planned cookout. It’s a good thing we stocked up on meats previously, and we still have plenty. All the meats and fish have gone up in price substantially. Oddly, dry cat food hasn’t gone up in price as much as people food. I would have liked to get more than the 4 bags I got, but our van doesn’t like heaving loads, and I already had 80 pounds of stove pellets in there. The canned cat food has gone up in price more than the dry has. The popcorn we get (in the excellent, heavy duty, food-safe plastic containers that we are keeping for dry-storing other foods) hasn’t gone up, nor has mayo, but mixed nuts (to keep in the van) has gone up more, as has the Basmati rice. Even their flats of water (for the cooler in the van) has gone up.

The frustrating thing is that I was looking to pick up non-food things for our stash, like more of those heavy duty tarps, and some non-scented, “flushable” wet wipes for washing up should we lose our water for some reason, as well as some work gloves that are stronger than the gardening gloves we have right now. I had to put them all back. The grand total for this trip was just under $550, which isn’t unusual for how much we spend at Costco, except that we got way less actual food this trip.

More incentive to keep increasing what we grow in the garden, and to get a coop and brooder set up, so we can finally have chickens.

Altogether, I spent over a thousand dollars, but our fridge is only half full. Granted, the pantry and freezer are still good for now, but the stash is not growing as well as I’d like.

Ah, well.

Next week, we have the rest of our monthly stocking up to do. I’m planning on going to the Wholesale Warehouse again, now that I’ve got a better idea of what we can get there.

It was a very hot day, and I’m glad I remembered to grab the ice packs from the big freezer this trip. We do have insulated bags, but even with saving those purchases for last, the van doesn’t have air conditioning, and those bags can only protect so much.

While I was gone, the girls were taking care of things on the home front, including frequently checking on the transplants to make sure they weren’t being baked, misting them as needed. They were still better off outside than in the sun room; it hit 30C/86F in there.

One of the things a daughter had tried to do while I was gone, was vacuum the living room. She’d done about half when the new vacuum cleaner basically lost all suction. We still don’t know all the quirks of this machine, so we left it until I got back.

We then spend probably 2 hours in total, fighting with that thing. What we eventually found was that the main hose was clogged, but it took figuring out how to dismantle the vacuum cleaner part way. The hose itself runs through a part of the vacuum cleaner that holds it in place, but doesn’t come off, so all the fighting we did with the hose included pulling it back and forth through the back of the machine. It ended up taking one of the metal plant supports I got at Dollar Tree to finally punch a hole through the clog, but we still couldn’t get it out. My daughter remembered a computer tool kit we have, which has a screw grabbing tool that was long enough and narrow enough to reach the clog, and the grabber could pull it out, little bits at a time.

The clog turned out to be mostly fibres of sisal rope from the cats’ scratch post. That stuff is nasty on the vacuum cleaner!

Plus cat hair, of course. Everything has cat hair.

One of the downsides of doing this is, we were in the living room, which has no air circulation. I was dripping with sweat, and by the time we were done, we were covered in dust, cat hair and little bits of sisal fibres.

Well, at least she was able to finish vacuuming the carpet. It was my turn to do the bathroom, which was done by LED flashlight, because the breaker was being kept off until the burnt outlet could be repaired. Not much air circulation in there, either, even with the window to the sun room open.

We were all pretty exhausted by the end of the day. I hate housework even more than I hate shopping. That’s why I’m usually the one doing the outside stuff, while the girls take care of the inside stuff. :-D

Still, I’m glad I got the Costco shopping done, at least, and I won’t have to do that again for another month!

The Re-Farmer

It’s fixed!

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Before I catch up on the other stuff, I just have to share the best part of all.

My brother made it out today, and he got the outlet fixed for us!

He tried getting here using his usual route, only to find the road closed sign was still at the south end of the road past our place, so he turned around and took a different route, adding an extra 3 miles of gravel road to the drive. It rained steadily all last night, and the section of road near our intersection was so muddy, he had difficulty getting through with is 4 wheel drive. The grader went through a couple of days ago, but even it went around that spot! It’s just mush in the middle of the road.

But he made it and checked the outlet for us, and it turned out to be less damaged than he feared it might be.

When I noticed what happened, I quickly unplugged the 2 power bars that were plugged into it and just dropped them. After that, we were more interested in making sure nothing started burning in the wall. When we moved the DVD shelf to access the outlet, I never even thought to look at either of them.

I think we found the cause of the fry out.

This power bar had the TV plugged into, as well as the Xbox, I think (we use is as a DVD player, but it doesn’t always work) and the USB adapter for our Roku. He thinks something had to have been drawing a lot of power, but they should have only been using just a trickle. So we still don’t know why it blew.

As my brother was removing the receptacle, he commented that our father had installed it some 50 years ago!

Can you tell?

I’m pretty sure that 61 visible on the white sticker is the original price.

Marshall Wells hasn’t been around since 1988 and, even before then, it had been bought out a couple of times and was under a different name since about 1978.

While replacing the receptacle, my brother found one of the wires was loose, and the ground was no longer attached at the wall. He replaced the ground wire but discovered he couldn’t screw it in to the wall – it was stripped. There was a second hole, and that was stripped, too. He had to drill a third hole and use a new, longer screw! The end of the black wire was melted, so he repaired that, too.

Of course, it was tested out right away, after I turned the breaker back on, and all worked perfectly!

And my daughter’s computers started turning on. A light upstairs turned on, too. I had no idea until then, that any of the ceiling lights was on that breaker, too.

We now have a light and fan in the bathroom again. :-D

Then, because he’s a sweetheart, and had his bag with 5 or 6 different lengths of screws handy, my brother “fixed” the main door by replacing some of the hinge screws with longer ones. I hadn’t done it before, because the door is hollow, so I didn’t think it would help any, but it did. He was able to pull a couple of the other hinge screws out with just his fingers. !! We still need to replace the entire door and frame, as the fame itself is splitting at the top and middle hinges. My brother suggested I use longer screws into the frame, too, to compensate. A door is only as secure as its frame, though, and I want an insulated metal door with a metal frame! He doesn’t think it needs to be replaced, but if we want to do it, he’s okay with that.

The main thing is, we can use the main door again. I don’t know how long that will last, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, my older daughter has been busily catching up on commissions. I believe all of her clients were okay with the delay, too, which is nice.

Then, after he was finished here, my brother was going to go to town to pick up some milk for our mother, in the plastic 2L jugs that are no longer available where she lives, then drive back to her place – adding almost an extra hour to his drive home!

My brother is the best!

He mentioned talking to our mother last night, and that they’d talked about her getting home care and Meals on Wheels, since she is in so much pain right now. I had brought that up with her, too, and she seems agreeable to that. I’m also thinking she might finally be willing to get a hospital bed through home care, like my husband was able to do. I think being able to adjust the height, and have support under her knees or sleep at an incline would be a help.

We shall see how her telephone appointment with the doctor does, a couple of days from now.

The Re-Farmer

Exhausted

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Today was my day to go into the city to do part of our monthly shop. I ended up going to 4 places today, spent about as much as I usually do, but came home with a lot less groceries for our money. The non-grocery purchases were pretty much unchanged. :-/

It’s been a really long, hot day, and while we got a lot done, it feels like I got nothing done. Does that make sense?

Definitely a day to get to bed early. Which probably won’t happen, but I can daydream, can’t I? ;-)

I hope my brother does make it out tomorrow morning, though knowing him, he’ll probably be leaving his place at 5 am or something. :-D We’ll see. I have no idea if he’ll be able to fix the outlet, but we just really enjoy his company.

I’ll have to do a catch up post, some time tomorrow. I’m too exhausted to think straight right now!

The Re-Farmer

That’s not good

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Yesterday evening, while puttering in the kitchen, I heard a strange and sudden noise. A very out of place noise, coming from the living room.

So out of place, even the cats started to gather round, searching for the source.

In fact, it was the cats that lead me right to the source, partially hidden by a shelf.

For some reason, this outlet fried itself.

There were two power cords plugged into it. On one of them, nothing plugged into it was being used. On the other there was a salt lamp and a Orbi WiFi mesh device, both of which are always on, neither of which take a lot of power.

The breaker tripped, as it should, which has lead to some other problems.

We’re discovering what else was on that breaker.

On the panel, it’s labelled living room and bathroom. The living room has only 3 outlets. There’s the one that fried, of course. Another that powered the aquarium greenhouses, which are empty right now, is no longer working. The third, which powers the charger for a cordless phone handset, is still working.

The bathroom lights and fan no longer work. At least the bathroom already had a battery operated LED light switch to use, rather than blinding ourselves when going to the bathroom at night. With a second portable LED light next to the mirror, the room gets let up pretty well. Plus, there’s the window into the sun room. That gives us some light during the day, and we can open it more to make up for the lack of a fan.

I discovered an outlet in the new basement, which was being used to power a fan aimed at a damp spot in the corner, was no longer working. Nor is the light switch for the unfinished bar we’re now using as cat-proof storage. I was able to plug the fan in at another outlet, though it needed a much longer extension cord. That actually allowed me to put the fan in a more efficient spot, so no real complaints there.

Overall, things would be fine, except for one more outlet that stopped working. An upstairs outlet.

The one the girls’ computers is plugged into.

That room has only two outlets, a two prong and a three prong. So they can’t even plug into the other outlet.

Which means my older daughter can’t work.

She now has to find a way to email her clients and ask if they’re okay with a delay in their commissions, or if they want their money back.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get our electrician in to fix it, but we can’t do that until my husband’s disability payment comes in – which, thankfully, is soon.

Not good – but it could have been a lot worse!

The Re-Farmer

It’s wet and ugly out there

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It’s been raining off and on throughout the night, and will continue to do so for the next couple of days. We still have predictions of some snow overnight, two days from now.

After I was back inside from doing my damp morning rounds, I heard the distinct beeping and rumbling of heavy equipment. Someone was working on the really bad spot on the road near our intersection. I was happy to see that, since I needed to pick up a parcel at the post office.

That first mile of gravel road was absolutely awful. It’s so saturated, it’s just being destroyed. I still had to skirt around the really bad spot near our place. I could see that the road had been worked on for a full 2 miles. I hate to think how bad it was before it got fixed! Well. Fixed as much as possible for now.

Not a whole lot accomplished outside today! I did get some hoops up on the high raised bed, so it can be covered overnight when we’re supposed to get snow. Later on, the girls and I went back out to where we are looking to plant the trees when they come in, marking off where we need to dig holes with orange paint, though a couple of spots didn’t get marked, because there are puddles where we need to dig. Working out the distances and where we will start from, we’ll actually be able to plant all 30 silver bison berry in two rows where we had the corn and sunflowers last year. Where the sea buckthorn will go, and the highbush cranberry that is coming from another supplier, also got marked off. We also talked about where the 6 Korean pine will go, though there’s no point in marking anything there.

I had been thinking if using the netting we got to create a temporary fence around the whole garden area and where we will be planting the trees, but my daughter, who bought the netting, pointed out that it isn’t suitable for that. It’s a finer mesh that is meant to be used like the mosquito netting she got last year. So many insects got trapped under those, many of which were beneficial insects.

So… no temporary deer fencing around the entire area. We’ll be protecting individual beds and plots, instead, and getting something else to put around the trees to protect them from critters.

Well, at least all this rain will make it easier to dig the holes we need for all those trees.

The Re-Farmer

*heavy sigh*

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Last year, May was a very warm month. More like the height of summer, than spring.

This year?

Snow? Really?

Yeah, I know. It’s not really that unusual. It’s just that all those warm days that were being forecast keep turning into colder days. Predicting 2-4 cm (under 2 inches) as well feels a bit like getting kicked when you’re down.

The Re-Farmer

Not much progress today

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It’s been a chilly day today, with off and on rain. Too chilly to try and put the transplants out to harden them off.

While doing my morning rounds, I spent some time fussing with the garden shed to see if I could secure the sheets of metal roofing a bit better. I was trying to figure out why they wouldn’t lie flat, then remembered: a smaller piece of aluminum had been put on the roof, over where there is a hole that water was getting in. A rock was tossed on to keep it from blowing away. You can’t see the rock from the ground, and it was forgotten about. Now, the sheets of metal roofing are on top of it! :-D I was able to arrange them in a more centered way, was able to nail down one of them above the door, and found a way to clamp down the other. Between that and the strap the girls put back on, it should stay. It’s just a matter of time before we get rid of it completely, so we’re not too worried about it.

I got a phone call from my brother today. Our mother had called him this morning and left a message with him, saying something about not feeling well. She’s mentioned to me, when I last spoke to her, that “everything hurts”, but when my brother called her back, now she says she’s got a headache, too. My brother says it sounds like she has the flu. He convinced her to do the usual things she would do to take care of herself, and get lots of rest, so she stayed home from church. Apparently, she’d planned to walk to the grocery store after church, but also insists she has enough and doesn’t actually need to buy more food, so we’re not sure why she still planned to go shopping.

Since she needs to rest, my brother will be the only one calling her to check up on her, so she’s not constantly getting up to answer the phone. If it becomes necessary, he’ll let me know and I’ll head over.

That gave me extra reason to make sure to get to the hardware store in town today – I wanted to see if the gravel roads had improved enough to drive on with my mother’s little car. The high winds we’ve been having are at least good for that. The rough spots are still very rough, but no longer muddy, and the tires weren’t sinking as much while driving through them. It should be fine to use my mother’s car without damaging it.

Once at the hardware store, I found the roof repair tar and new caulking gun that we needed, then decided to look around. Which is always a dangerous thing for me to do, since I will always find something we can use! :-D Today, however, I found the lamp oil I’ve been looking for! I was able to get a large bottle of paraffin based lamp oil at a better price than what I’d found online at Canadian Tire, and without any scent. I got just one bottle for now; enough to fill all 4 of our oil lamps, if we needed to, though we’d probably only use two at a time, at most. Now that I know where to find it, I’ll pick up more for our stash, as we are able.

The main thing is we have what we need to patch up the roof, and should the need arise, we’ve got what we need to use our oil lamps. I feel much better having that option available, now. :-)

The Re-Farmer