Not very long ago, after walking around and seeing that our dugouts were completely dry, I had given permission to the renters to dig them deeper, if they wanted to, to have water for their cows. It wouldn’t be much use this year, but I wanted them to at least know they could.
Since this looked like something that wouldn’t be done this year, if they decided to at all, I forget to tell my brother I did this.
You know. The guy who actually owns the property. :-D
I was talking to him on the phone this morning when I got a message from the renter. They had decided to hire someone to deepen the old gravel pit and I was informed that the guy should be there in a few hours, so I would know what the commotion was. The funny thing is, I was already hearing the “beep, beep, beep” of heavy equipment backing up!
So… I told my brother I’d given them permission, then headed out to take a look.
A pretty good start was made, by the time I got out there.
As I moved around and took pictures, I was noticing that there were some really nice pockets of beautiful sand.
When the guy saw me, he stopped and came over and we chatted for a bit. When I mentioned the sand, he pointed out one area in particular that had really, really nice, fine sand.
I remember, as a child, playing in pockets of sand among the gravel. Those were all on the north side of the pit. I don’t think we’d ever dug that far on the south side before, and that’s where he’s uncovered the nicest sand.
I’m really excited about this.
I asked if he expected to reach water, and his immediate response was, NO! He did mention there was an area that was a bit damp (you can sort of see it in the picture), and that he was hitting clay on the bottom. If there is rain, it might collect in there, and there might even be seepage. He also said it might take a few days to finish. I’ll have to come back later to take more pictures.
Since we were standing right next to what had been a muddy area (of all two places they could have dug deeper, they made the right choice by deciding on the old gravel pit), I mentioned that this was the first time I’d seen this old pit completely dry. I actually do think that, given how deep he’s going, water might start to seep in. Here’s hoping! Otherwise, this is basically being done for next year, and to prevent future water issues like we’re having this year, but if water can start seeping in now, that would be a big benefit to our renter and his cows. I’m sure the deer and other wildlife would appreciate it, too!
Me, I’m just so excited by what I’m seeing. My brother had been told that this gravel pit was basically depleted, but he can’t remember who told him that anymore. Clearly, it is not. The renter may eventually be getting water for his cows from here but, at the same time, we’re going to get sand and gravel we can use. Very much a “win win” situation!
I’m already daydreaming of sand covered paths between garden beds, infill around the house, and if we can get plywood for the floor of that trailer frame we’ve got, we might even be able to get enough gravel to spread on our driveway.
Of course, if the Bobcat were still here, we could have dug into the pit ourselves, though not at this level, of course. Having it would have made getting gravel to where we need it a lot easier.
Of all the things that got taken while this place was empty, that Bobcat is the one that I pine for the most. Maybe because a part of me still hopes it might get returned. Most things we can make do, one way or another, without them. It’s a lot harder to make up for the loss of that one, large piece of equipment. The Bobcat is on the list of items we know our vandal took, included in my response to his suit against us. The optimist in me hopes the judge would see fit to not only throw the case out, but order our vandal to return some of this stuff. Much of it can’t be; the lumber, for example, was used in buildings on his property. But things like the Bobcat and it’s attachments, or even some of the tools he took, would make our lives much easier when it comes to taking care of this place! Since the property now belongs to my brother, all this stuff would have been included with it, so he would be the owner of it all, too.
Ah, well. One can dream, right?
For now, however, I will happily dream of sand and gravel, and the things we can do with it!
Of course, because I actually needed to get a good sleep because I had to head out early for court this morning, that meant I got almost no sleep at all!
Only part of that could be blamed on the cats being destructive in the night. ;-)
Amazingly, it got cold enough that, for the first time in a couple of month, at least, I had to sleep with a blanket! Of course, I could have just closed the window, but I didn’t want to fight with the box fan, which is tied down so the cats won’t knock it over. When I finally did sleep, I was awakened by the sound of our furnace running! We had actually dropped to 8C/46F overnight. Some areas dropped to 6C/43F, and people were concerned about frost hitting their gardens! Our frost date isn’t until September 10, and that’s earlier than the areas the got colder last night.
Meanwhile, we’re supposed to hit highs near 30C/86F or higher, over the next few days.
I turned the thermostat on the furnace way down, so it wouldn’t turn on again. We keep so many windows open during the night, the last thing I want is for the furnace to kick in! :-D
Anyhow.
Since I was up anyhow, I did some of my morning rounds quite early. Which the cats seemed to appreciate. :-)
I was really thrilled to see both Rosencrantz and Nosencrantz, in the kibble house. Rosencrantz ran off when I got closer, but her baby stayed. Even when I topped up their food bowl by their junk pile home, Nosencrantz stayed in the kibble house to eat.
Progress!
I found the canister for the new bird feeder on the ground again this morning. I am guessing the raccoons have figure out how to open it. I might move the garden cam to face the bird feeder, just to confirm what’s going on, so we can use that to figure out how to stop it.
I didn’t have time to check the trail cam files, though, before I headed to the courthouse. I got there good an early, and the only person already there was the security guy.
Starting after midnight tonight, our province is lifting our police state, somewhat. No more mask mandates and a number of other restrictions are lifted, though of course they’re still restricting actual healthy social gatherings, like weddings and going to church, even though there are pretty much no limits to how many people can go into retail stores. It’s all so arbitrary, it’s a wonder anyone takes the restrictions seriously anymore.
I could see a huge difference when I got to the court building. For starters, the security table was right outside the courtroom door, rather than at the entrance. I still wore my Mingle Mask, just to avoid the hassle of having to explain my medical exemption, and no one even reacted when they saw me.
After identifying myself as the applicant, the security guard looked up our vandal’s name, marked that I was there, then told me I could wait there in the hall, where they have comfy chairs to sit on. The last time, people were made to wait outside. While I was waiting, quite a few people that appeared to be staff congregated around the security table, just chatting, or sitting in the nearby chairs with their laptops. I could hear the security guard asking people what they thought about no masks starting tomorrow, but couldn’t hear the responses.
Eventually, our vandal showed up, and I honestly did not recognize him at first, because he was wearing a mask. Of the many things I hate about the masks, the elimination of people’s identities is one that I think is among the most damaging. I’m glad we live as isolated as we do, because being surrounded by non-entities, even as little as I am, is seriously starting to wig me out. As a lifelong student of psychology, I understand the how and the why of it, which does help, but it still doesn’t stop it from happening.
Anyhow.
The main reason I figured out it was our vandal was because, as he checked in, I heard him mention his lawyer’s name. That and the security guard made a point of turning to look at me. Then the lawyer showed up, and they disappeared around the corner for a while. Eventually, the lawyer came over and introduced himself to me, asking if I was okay with talking to him. He assured me he was double vaxxed. I told him I didn’t care. (His personal health information is NONE of my business.) We did have a bit of an issue with him moving away when I got closer to him, and I had to explain that I couldn’t hear him, because of the mask. He accommodated that, though I still had to adjust things. My hearing is actually quite excellent, but I have an auditory processing problem. Instead of hearing words, sometimes I just hear parts of words, gibberish, or even have blank “spaces” where words should have been. Basically, somewhere between my eardrums picking up the sound vibrations, and my brain interpreting them as words, the signal is lost. If there are a lot of distractions, or if there is something like a mask to muffle speech, it makes it that much more difficult. So I do things like close my eyes, so I can “hear” better or, as I had to today, lean an ear closer and not look at the person speaking. Thankfully, the lawyer had good enunciation, so that helped.
What he wanted to talk about was the sort of conditions for the restraining order I would agree to. Much to my surprise, he was the one who brought up our vandal voluntarily giving up his guns. He also said our vandal had mentioned video I had of him doing stuff, and I ended up giving him copies of images I had in my stack of papers. These included screen captures of our vandal actually damaging the gate, both times, doing things like walking up to the gate and giving the finger down the driveway, the glued locks (from his response to those, our vandal had actually told him about that; he’s never admitted that he glued our locks to us before), the barn doors being screwed shut, etc. I even included the partial list of things our vandal took from the property, that we know off. I told the lawyer flat out that, if he could have a “psychotic break” and do what he did to the gate, what’s going to stop him from having another “psychotic break” and coming over with a gun? Or trying to burn the house down?
When I brought up the need for a psychiatric assessment, he started to say, going for counseling or therapy. I said no, and explained that when I pressed charges before, our vandal had done that, by court order, and while he was apparently going to weekly counseling, he was still leaving horrible messages on my mother’s answering machine about me and the property (I explained the property ownership situation, too, since our vandal thinks my mother gave me the farm, for some reason). Counseling clearly did not work. He needs a psychiatric assessment and a diagnosis.
He then went back to talk to our vandal. When he returned to me briefly, before we went into the courtroom, he asked if I were willing to drop the application if our vandal got a psychiatric assessment. I said no. There’s a reason the police kept recommending we go through with this and, as much as I’d like for this to all be over, we can’t trust him. As it was, something the lawyer said in passing tells me he had to convince our vandal to agree to at least getting an assessment.
Which is actually a big step forward, even if he still can’t admit he’s responsible for his own problems. So when we finally went in front of the judge, it was officially recorded that I agreed to not go forward with the application for a month. During this time, our vandal has to get a referral to a psychiatrist and get an assessment. There is another court date in September to follow up, but I may not need to be there at all. The lawyer (with warnings from the judge about potential conflicts of interest) agreed that he would keep me informed, so I don’t have to be calling the court office all the time. I was actually asked to take the stand, where there was a microphone, from the start, so the judge could ask me questions and clarify some details.
After I left the courtroom, the lawyer soon followed and asked for my email address (I already gave him my phone number). He then asked if I wanted to agree on a certain number of sessions with the psychiatrist, but I said no; let’s wait to hear what the psychiatrist has to say, because this is such an individual thing.
Then that was it. We were done.
Now it’s all on him to meet the conditions within the time frame.
In the end, I think this went well. Our vandal may actually get the help he needs. We used to be so close in the past, and I would love to have a relationship with him again, but that can’t happen until he gets that help.
One of the things I made clear with the lawyer is that if he does anything stupid again, I’ll be applying for the restraining order all over again if I have to. He was agreeing with me before I even finished saying it. Our vandal may be in denial, but his lawyer knows full well he has no defense.
We shall see what happens over the next month.
I don’t intend to get my hopes up too much, to be honest. I fear our vandal is a bit too far gone for that, but you never know. I’m just relieved that we finally got in front of a judge and got to move forward. It’s been 9 months since I made the application.
Today is our only “cool” day before things start heating up again. Our high of the day was merely 25C/77F. We’re going to have another few days hovering at or above 30C/86F, so I wanted to get some clean up done while it was still relatively pleasant out.
I decided to clear things out to uncover the woodchuck’s den opening, under the junk pile.
This was a job I’d deliberately left for a while, as there were kittens in the junk pile and I didn’t want to scare them. Plus, the spirea and other undergrowth provided them with shade, and things to play with.
Since the kittens have been chased out by the grog, it’s time to clean up!
The first thing was to cut away the spirea and wild roses, until I could remove the old pallet. Since they were just cut to the ground, rather than being pulled up by the roots, the roses will come back next year. Unfortunately, so will the spirea!
Immediately after I took the above picture, a furry little face poked out and looked at me. The grog was home! I imagine he headed out the “back door” on the other side of the pile, as I kept causing a disturbance here.
As I worked my way along the fallen tree, I was able to pull more things up by the roots. The wine barrel planter that I uncovered was not yet collapsed when we first moved here. We used to be able to watch yard cats sitting on it in the winter, sunning themselves. After the pieces collapsed, it became a favourite play area for kittens.
The bushy Chinese elm next to the log are hiding an upright barrel planter.
I also uncovered what looked like a sprinkler hose. I have no idea how long it’s been there, but it appears that the tree fell on top of it. !!
After cleaning up the collapsed barrel planter, it was time to turn my attention to the upright one. On the ground to the right of it, you can see a bit of a red brick. Like other things I’ve found around the yard, I figured I’d be finding more bricks under the planter, once I cleared it out.
The first thing to do was pull out the pieces of wood. I was then able to remove the top metal ring (I’m keeping all of them), but the bottom ring has a smaller diameter, so it had to wait.
I can cut away the Chinese Elm that had been growing in this planter before, and what was growing this year was from the remains of the ones I cut last year. You can almost see the “stumps” that the new growth emerged from.
This is the wood from both barrel planters, plus a few odd pieces I found as well. Since doing a burn would still be stupid dangerous right now, these all went on the junk pile in the outer yard, waiting until we can hire someone to haul it to the dump.
After clearing away the wood and the metal ring, I broke up the soil so that I could take out the roots of the Chinese elm as best we could. Then I started poking around with a garden fork to take out any bricks that I expected to find buried under the planter.
I found a third metal ring, completely buried in the soil.
I also found that it was mostly flat rocks under the planter, not bricks! The one long, concrete brick I found was buried under where the collapsed barrel planter was likely sitting, before it got knocked over.
I find it interesting that care was taken to make sure the planters were on something solid, rather than on bare ground, yet they were sitting there for so long, everything sank into the soil.
After spreading out the soil that was in the planters and filling in the holes I’d made while pulling shrubs out by their roots, I dragged out the hose. I figured it was junk, since it seems to have been sitting there for a long time. I’ve found many hoses scattered about in sheds or the barn, and most of them were so old, they were brittle and cracked. I figured much the same with this, but decided to hook it up to a hose and test it out.
Much to my shock, it actually worked! The couplings were leaking, but all they needed were new rubber washers. There were two hoses together, and they both work. Which means, if we pick up some end caps for them, we can set them up in garden beds, like we currently have the soaker hose at the squash tunnel, for more efficient watering.
It was about this time we reached the hottest part of the day, so I stopped for now.
To get at the stuff where the sprinkler hose was, I’ll need to clear away the underbrush on the other side, then cut up the fallen tree to remove it in pieces.
Which will give me access to the back of the junk pile, too. There appears to be some wire fencing that may actually be usable back there!
This is the next area that needs to be worked on. All the underbrush to the right of the path through the trees needs to cleared out. This will give access to the dead trees that need to be cut down, as well as the back of the junk pile.
Clearly, that junk pile didn’t start out as a junk pile. The wood was carefully stacked and covered with tarps, but then junk got tossed on, the tarps blew off, and now the stacked boards are badly rotted. They’re also very full of nails and screws. !! I’d already cleared underbrush to access this side of the pile of wood, which was used when I worked on what are now the garlic beds, but what I cleared up is now mostly full of thistles. :-/
Where I’m standing to take this photo is about where we plan to build the cordwood practice shed that will become an outdoor bathroom, with composting toilet. We had intended to start work on it last year, but not it will wait until all those dead trees are taken down, since they would need to be felled towards where the shed will be. As it is, the new location for our compost pile, and the beet bed, may be in the way. These are very tall trees!
So that’s progress for today. It isn’t a lot, but it’s amazing how much difference even that little bit makes.
Plus, we now have a couple of “new” sprinkler hoses!
I had cleaned up the dead spruce tree I’d cut down, a few days go, but only now got to continue working in the area.
Because of how the tree had landed, I used the baby chainsaw to clear away all the non-weight bearing branches first, and was left with this giant insectoid shape! :-D After clearing away the last of the branches, I was going to break the trunk down further with the electric chain saw, but when that turned out to not be working properly, I just left the trunk to the side. We’ll have to take care of it later.
Today, I broke out the reciprocating saw and used it to finish trimming the top of the stump.
Happily, the wood in this stump is nice and solid.
The other trunk, from the tree we took down 3 summers ago? Not only did it have ant damage, but as I was trimming it with the reciprocating saw, it was vibrating at root level!
Well. That changed my plans.
At first, I figured I would just make a seat instead of a bench, but I really wanted a bench.
I used one of the boards that would be a horizontal support to mark off and cut the stump, using the reciprocating saw. At this point, I was still thinking of making a seat, but figured this stump was solid enough to support a bench. I cut the support pieces to a couple of inches shorter than the board that would be the seat, found the middles, then drilled pilot holes.
Despite using a level when positioning the support pieces, they still ended up uneven!
Though at least part of that is because one of the boards was warped.
Ah, well. I wasn’t going to start over! The only thing I did have to do was trim the top of the stump with a hand saw a bit, to make it even with the support pieces.
Then it was time to screw on the board for the seat.
You can see on the far right, that there was a substantial gap! I ended up making a wedge from a scrap piece of wood and jamming it in, then screwing the board in place, though the wedge and into the horizontal support.
As I was doing that, I could feel the bench wobbling a bit and decided the ends needed extra support. I didn’t want to put too much stress on the screws holding it to the stump, even though there are quite a few of them, and they are longer than needed. I had the pieces of wood I’d cut off the horizontal supports, so I trimmed those to size and added them at the ends to make legs. The main support is still the stump. The legs are just enough to give a little extra support, if there is too much weight at an end. The ground under them is soft, so if they were to be weight bearing, I would have wanted to add something solid under them, like a brick or some flat rocks
And there we have it! Our very first tree stump bench. :-D And I must say, it felt SO good to have someplace to sit down when I was done! It was the perfect height for me and my messed up knees, too. In fact, I used my knees to judge what height to trim the stump down to, and with the height added by the thickness of the seat board, it worked out just right.
Now it just needs a good scrubbing and a paint job to protect it from the elements. The board I found for the seat still has some paint on it, so it’s not too urgent.
I am quite pleased with how this turned out. We have so many dead trees in the spruce grove that need to be cut down, with some of them fairly close to each other. My thought was to cut them to leave stumps that could be used to make seats and tables, making sure that some of the seats are a bit higher, for my husband to be able to use comfortably. This bench is the first experiment to see if the idea is viable, and I’m happy to say that it is. Most of the greenery you can see behind the bench are a flower patch that we uncovered when cleaning up in this area, and have been leaving alone, as we mow or trim around it. Which means that, over time, we’ll be able to sit here in the shade, surrounded by lovely yellow flowers. :-)
Over time, we will have many seats like this, scattered all around the the inner yard, as we continue to clean up among the trees, and turn the inner yard into a lovely haven.
The winds died down today, which means that the smoke is back. Today is one of the worst days I’ve seen yet. Usually, we don’t get visible smoke in the yard until the end of the day, but that’s how we started, today!
In going to pick up the meat pack we ordered, I drove to a town north of us. The fires are all well to the north of us. By the time I got to the exit for the town, I could barely see past a hundred yards or so!
The parking lot we met at was near a bridge. The river, thankfully, is not as low as I thought it might be, with our drought, but it is still much lower than usual. The smoke is actually thicker than it looks in the photo. By the time we finished chatting and said our goodbyes, my throat was completely raw from the smoke.
Once I was back on the highway, I just had to pull over to get another photo. Again, the camera on my phone automatically cleans up the haze, and it was much denser in real life.
On the plus side, we got our meat order, and we’re quite happy. The individual packages were smaller than we would see in a grocery store, but we also got a larger variety of cuts. They change up the package, depending on the time of year. For the summer, they try to include things for the BBQ (though they do have a separate BBQ package, too), while in the winter, they try to include more things like stewing beef. It’s all frozen solid, so for now, we’re just thawing out the sausages and peppettes to try, first.
Around November, when they do their butchering, they’ll have half or quarter beef available. They have to figure out new pricing for this year, due to the increased costs of having to buy feed for their cattle this year, but I am hoping we’ll be able to get a quarter beef for the winter.
The first chance I got, I headed outside to take care of the bird feeders, starting with fixing the base of the big feeder.
I was able to find some longer wood screws that weren’t so long, they’d go through the wood I added to the base. Hopefully, the 6 screws will now be enough to hold! Then I got the loppers out and pruned the Korean Lilac. The raccoons have been using it to get to the feeder, and they’d already broken a couple of branches. Though they look close, the ones in the background are well away from the feeder. I also pruned some low hanging branches from the Chinese Elm in front of the kitchen window, as much as I could. Once I’d removed the weight of the first branches, the main branch lifted out of reach! Hopefully, the raccoons won’t try to use them, because their weight would bow the branches down to the feeder. I don’t think they actually used the elm at all, but I wanted to at least take away the option!
It wasn’t until I unloaded the van that I noticed the new hanging feeder didn’t have a cable to hang it from! The instructions didn’t even show one, though there were holes in the top for it. I ended up using the one from the broken feeder, so that worked out.
This feeder hold a bit less than the old one, but I think it will be easier to refill. Instead of trying to pour the seeds into a small hole at the top, the container comes out and can be used to scoop the seed. It even has a convenient handle. We shall see if it really is helpful. Unfortunately, so much seed has been lost to the breaking of feeders, we’re running out of seed, and the amount in the bin was too shallow to scoop the new feeder full.
As you can see, the birds were quick to use the new feeder!
I had the soaker hose going in the garden while I did this, and spent the rest of the evening moving the sprinkler around every half hour or so, for the evening watering. While checking on the sunflowers and sweet corn, I found proof of what nibbled on the sunflowers!
This hoof print was in the row of corn nearest the nibbled on sunflowers.
The deer managed to step right on a new pea sprout!!
I could see several other hoof prints through that corn bed, which really made me wonder how the garden cam’s motion sensor missed it! Well, if we get any other visitors in there tonight, I hope the new location will be better to catch the critters!
There are very few, so far, but it was nice to see some bigger green beans have developed.
I also checked on the sad purple peas. They aren’t as small or as chewed on as the green peas, but they certainly aren’t doing well. The plants aren’t being eaten, but the few pods are! Amazingly, we are still seeing pea flowers. With so little growth, the peas aren’t climbing their trellises as they normally would, but some of the purple peas are long enough that I would wrap them around the vertical twine. Much to my surprise, I found a couple of pods.
Dried pops.
The first one I found had three peas in the pod, and then I found one with a single pea in it.
These can actually be saved to plant next year!
I still have the envelope the King Tut peas came in, so that’s where they are now, and the envelope has been added to the packets of leftover seeds for next year.
We have officially saved our very first seeds for our own garden! :-D
In between moving the sprinkler until it was back to watering manually, the evening was so lovely and cool, I hang around outside.
With kittens.
I’ve got a camp chair set up near the steps, and was able to play with the babies a bit. They still won’t come up to me, but I can at least wiggle a stick on the ground and get them close!
From left to right is Chadicus, Bradicus, Caramel, and Broccoli, next to her mother.
While watering the south garden beds, I got to see Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz. They are much shier than Butterscotch’s babies. Not as shy as Junk Pile’s babies, though! They are coming to the kibble house for food, but if we step outside, they immediately run off in a panic, even as their mother stays in the kibble house and watches us. I don’t have much hope for socializing that particular litter!
Tomorrow I’ll be doing the morning rounds quickly again, though I’ll have a chance to make up for it before it gets too hot. I’m going to be heading out to a town north of us to do a pick up. We found a fairly local beef farm that does direct sales, and I’ll be meeting them to pick up our package tomorrow. Which is handy, since it meant we didn’t have to pick up much meat during our city shop. I got the invoice and an itemized list of what will be in the mixed pack we ordered – the contents of the pack depends on what’s available at the time – and I’m really looking forward to it. There are cuts of meat in there that we could never afford to buy before! I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a steak, never mind a high quality cut. The price per pound, compared even to city prices, is so much better! I don’t begrudge retail stores their prices; there’s a lot those prices have to pay for. Things that don’t have to be included when buying direct from the farmer. I’m so happy I found this place! I’d found another company that is further away, but does regular deliveries to meet-up locations in the city. If we’d placed an order with them now, we wouldn’t have been able to get it until November, at the earliest.
I’m really looking forward to bringing home the beef! :-D
Today, I finally had a chance to move my dad’s old welder aside, so I could access and test the well in the old pump shack.
Do I want to know why there is apart of a toilet seat there?
No. No, I do not.
I moved a few more things around, then set the old cream can under the pump’s spout, just in case I actually got water flowing.
I took an accidental picture while pumping the handle. I thought it looked very dramatic, so I kept it! :-D
We got water!!!
Sort of.
This well was here before my parents bought the property, and it is a design that does not need to be primed. After much pumping, I was able to get water flowing, but if I so much as slowed down, the water would stop and I would have to start pumping hard, all over again. Which meant I wasn’t able to get a photo of actual water flowing from the spout. :-D
On the one hand, this is very encouraging. If something ever happened to our well, we will still have access to water. We should get the water flowing more to clear it out a bit, and then just get it going regularly. There is a problem, though, and you can see part of it in the above photo.
The pump is not fixed. It’s just sitting on top of the pipe. It actually rotated while I was pumping!!
When I was a kid, we had a different pump completely. It had a sort of frame around it, supporting the mechanical pump mechanism, which was run with electricity. If the power went out, we could attach a handle and pump it manually.
I don’t know when or why the old pump was removed, and I am flabbergasted that this manual pump was hooked up, without some sort of base to attach it to, so it won’t move.
My brother tells me there are repairs to the well pipe needed. I suspect that getting that done would result in it becoming much easier to pump water.
It would be worth getting that done. I would also like to set up the electric/manual system we had before, too. We still have the attachment for the spout of the pump that we used to divert water out a hole in the wall, to a water trough for the cattle outside.
Being able to use electricity to pump the water would make life easier in general, but if I had to choose only one, I would go with a manual pump over electric, as this would be a back up source of water should we ever lose power.
It was too dark to take progress photos last night, so this is how the dead spruce tree I took down looked when I was done for the day.
When I get back to it later today, I’ll be using the mini chainsaw (cordless pruner) to finish de-branching it. Depending on how things go today, I might even be able to break the trunk down more with the electric chainsaw. I’ll have to watch myself, though. My body is already warning me not to overdo it. Power tools will help with that, at least, but it was quite painful getting up this morning. :-(
This is the larger of the vine pieces that were still wrapped around the trunk.
After fighting off the Virginia Creeper since we moved out here, it actually stuns me when I go into garden centres and see it for sale. People actually pay money for this invasive plant! I get that they’re pretty, but my goodness, do they ever kill off anything they wrap themselves around! I’m still pulling it from areas I cleared two summers ago. Any little root left in the soil will keep trying to sprout.
Speaking of invasive, you can see in the background of the above photo, how the chokecherry tree is trying to spread! Gotta get that under control, too!
One of the frustrating things about the heat we’ve been having is that it’s preventing us from doing a lot of outside work. The sort of work that involves a level of manual labour that becomes dangerous to do, simply because of the heat.
The work still needs to be done, however.
So tonight, when it was a bit cooler and there was still some light out, I decided it was time to take down one of the dead spruce trees.
No, not one of the big ones in the spruce grove. This little one.
Because it was nearing 10pm, I didn’t want to use the electric chain saw. It’s just big enough to do a tree of this size. Instead, I used a buck saw. In this photo, you can see I’d already cut out a wedge on one side.
Once it started to fall, it got hung up on some maple branches! In the end, I had to use a narrow fence pole from the pile you can see in the first picture, to push the dead tree free of the branches.
It was remarkable, how much brighter this spot become, once the tree was down!
After felling the tree, I used a hand saw to cut off branches until it became to dark to continue.
There had been a second dead tree near this one. Our first summer here, as I was cleaning up in the area, I pulled off a giant triffid of a vine from the two of them (you can read about and see photos, here). There were still pieces of it in this tree! It is likely the vine that killed both trees.
I was just about to head in for the supper the girls were making when I saw the motion sensor light on the squash tunnel get triggered. I headed over with my phone as a flashlight, but never found what triggered it.
Anyhow.
I will continue breaking down this tree tomorrow morning, before things heat up again. Unless, miracle of miracles, we get the showers that are being predicted. The trunk has a crack in it, but otherwise, it’s solid. No sign of rot. Which means we can use the wood. If we can take down more of the dead trees and they are solid like this, they will be used to make our permanent raised beds.
While I was working on the tree, it had supposedly cooled down to 17C/63F. Which would have been a gorgeous temperature to do this kind of work in, but I suspect the actual temperature here was quite a few degrees warmer! We’re supposed to be at 30C/86F, or close to it, over the next few days. For the next week, the humidex is supposed to be about 33C/81F. Which means we’ll only have small windows of time in the morning and evening when we can work on this sort of thing. But it has to be done. It’s already been delayed for far too long!
Now that this dead tree is down, I have two tall stumps that are relatively near each other. Once things are cleared away, I’ll be cutting them to matching heights, and they will become the supports for a much needed bench. :-)
Today is supposed to be the hottest day of our current heat wave.
Of course, forecasts remain all over the place.
We’re going to hit 34C/93F but it will feel like 40C/104F
No, we’re going to hit 37C/99F and it will feel like 37C/99F.
We’re going to get thunderstorms today.
No, tomorrow.
No, the evening of the day after and into the following morning.
No, we’re going to get thunderstorms today – but only a 60% chance, with less about 5mm of rain.
We’ll see what actually happens! As I write this, we are at 30C/86F, and there’s enough wind to make it rather pleasant in the shade. While I was doing my rounds this morning, it was a very comfortable 17C/63F.
One of the few non-garden areas we’ve been giving at least some watering has been the spirea next to the storage house – the one area we are allowing the spirea to grow – and the grape vines (there are only a couple of clusters on the vine this year). More specifically, right at the corner of the house, where these flowers are growing.
When we first saw these flowers, it was a real surprise, because the plants were completely buried by the spirea. Since then, we’ve been cleaning up the spirea, taking out the dead bits and keeping it under control, but it still hid the plant and we wouldn’t see anything of it until the flower spikes shot up.
This spring, with the warm May we had, the spirea had been leafing out and starting to show flower spikes. Then that -8C/18F night hit and killed off the flower buds and damaged the youngest leaves. So the spirea is a lot thinner this year, even with our watering. Which means, for the first time, we could actually see the plant this flower is from, and it has grown much larger. You can tell by the flowers, though, that even with watering, the heat is getting to it. The flowers are smaller and shriveled looking compared to how it usually blooms, even when buried by spirea.
The spirea, meanwhile, has recovered to the point that it is starting to bud again. This will make the pollinators quite happy!
We have more poppies blooming this morning, too. About 4 of them were open, or partly open. I gave the old kitchen garden a bit of a watering this morning, too, making for some very photogenic flowers. :-)
Yesterday evening, after the girls were done watering the garden beds, I filled the rain barrel at the house, so that we would can water the old kitchen garden with a watering can, while the hose is running. I don’t expect to get any rain to actually fill the barrel. :-/
While at the barrel, I saw something scuttle across the two kohlrabi plants in the carrot bed that are covered with netting. It turned out to be this little friend.
That’s the downside of using floating row covers to protect our plants. The frogs have a harder time getting under the cool leaves. The netting isn’t stopping the flying insects from getting under them; they just cant’ figure out how to get out again. Which should be a big foggy buffet, if the could just find the edges that they can crawl under! :-D
The Re-Farmer 