My older daughter just finished a whole bunch of quick commissions, and after sitting at the computer for so many hours, she really needed to get out and walk!
So we headed out together, and wandered around beyond the outer yard, cutting through the old hay yard.
I just had to share this photo of a floating tree.
This tree is a bit of a mystery. It is one of several trees that had not fallen on their own, but were cut down and just left in the hay yard. Perhaps the intent was to clean them up, but it just never happened. Who knows?
This tree, however, has a piece missing.
Unlike the others that were lying near their stumps, there is what I estimate to be about 8 feet of trunk missing. The nearby stump is much wider than the cut end of this tree’s floating remains. There is no sign of the missing piece, anywhere! I find myself curious as to why someone would remove a section completely like that, and what it was used for!
While we were walking around, my daughter asked her if I’d seen the old outhouse.
…
Which old outhouse? I had to ask, since several came to mind.
Apparently, there was an old outhouse my daughters found in the bushes.
So of course, I had to see it!
You know how you can walk past something time after time, yet not “see” it, until something calls your attention to it? And then you wonder, when did that get there? Or, is this new?
I had to have had this sort of situational blindness, because I’ve gone through this area several times, and yet I can’t remember seeing this. It’s in the bushes, between the car graveyard and old gravel pit, and most definitely has been there a long time!
Truly an odd place for an outhouse. It’s not like this was a place people spent so much time, they’d need an outhouse!
The use of wood shingles for siding like that is another curious thing. Very unusual.
It’s possible I missed seeing it because I’d gone through here at a time of year when the bushes were in full leaf.
At this angle, you can see the hinged door at the bottom, for access to emptying the… contents.
There does not seem to be a pit under it.
I wonder if it was brought in from somewhere else, and just dumped here, like so many other things were, over the years?
The roof is gone and it’s collapsing into itself to the point the door cannot be opened, though it is somewhat ajar.
I was able to stick my phone into a gap and get a photo of the inside.
I’m guessing that little blue shelf was hanging on the nails under the coat hook.
What a curious thing to have somehow not seen while going through here! Or perhaps I did see it, but just dismissed it. There have been so many odd finds since we’ve moved here, they aren’t really odd anymore! :-D
While doing my evening rounds, I figured it was time to get a recent photo of our found object “art” display. ;-)
The table itself was dragged out from under a fallen tree while clearing the edge of the spruce grove. We weren’t able to get at it until the old wood pile was cleaned up. The chair frame (barely visible at the bottom) was found somewhere else in the yard.
My daughter showed me where they found that crushed tea kettle, and now I’m even more perplexed as to why it was there and how it got crushed. Being driven over is not as likely as I thought, since it was in between some trees, where no vehicle – not even an ATV – could fit. The steel trap and the strip of rusted metal beside it was buried in the dirt under where the wood pile used to be, found while clearing out roots to turn the space into garden beds. Quite a few of what’s on there was found while cleaning up that old wood pile! The beer bottle was found along the East fence line along the spruce grove, most likely left there by my late brother. He did like his beer! The group of three cups to the right of the tea pot, plus the two Old Spice bottles, are the newest additions, found by my daughter in the junk pile way out by the plowed field.
While walking around and thinking of the things we need to do, and what we need to do it, I decided to drag something out of one of the sheds. We’d seen some wire mesh fencing rolled up in a corner, and I thought it might be useful for when we build our trellises or something. So I moved a few things to get to the corner, dragged it out and brought it to the house.
I was really surprised. There is a LOT more in there than I thought there was. As far as I have seen, we don’t have any fences made with this wire, so I have no idea why it’s here or what it was used for. Whatever it was for, not much of the roll was used!
This will come in very handy.
This morning, after switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, I took another look at the fence by the gate post, where we want to put in a small people gate. The gate post itself has three holes in the steel where we could potentially attach things. At the moment, the ends of the barbed wire are attached to the post through these holes. We’ll have to put in a new post first, attach the wire to the post, then detach the wire from the gate post. We still need to settle on how wide we want the gate to be, before we know where to put in a post.
While looking at where the barbed wire was attached to the gate post, I noticed this.
*sigh*
It wasn’t like this in the fall. This is damage from temperature fluctuations over this past winter.
I checked the other sides, and the other gate post. The other gate post has no cracks in the concrete at all, but this one…
These are the two corners of the south facing side.
These are the west and east facing sides.
I don’t know that these can be patched, or if the base needs to be replaced. I recall my brother telling me about a particular type of concrete he wants to use to repair the cracks in the bottom portion of the barn wall, that could probably be used on these cracks. I will bow to his greater knowledge and ingenuity on this one!
Well, this does show which post was responsible for the gate shifting. When we hung the gate back up after repairing our vandal’s damage, it was level. Over the winter, it shifted enough that the pin for the sliding bar could no longer be used. By the end of the winter, however, the gate shifted back, and the pin can be used again. My daughter had thought it was the other gate post that had shifted, but with these cracks, I’d say it was this one!
Since I had to slip through the fence to get pictures on all sides of the gate post’s base, I decided to check out the fence line from that side. New fence posts had been put in until just past the end of the spruce grove. The rest of the fence has been slowly falling down. From the outside, I was able to shift the posts – they are so rotted, they’re broken loose at ground level – so that they were leaning into the yard, rather than towards the road.
The entire stretch of fence is basically toast. I think there might be one fence post that isn’t broken. At one point, I noticed a large tree had fence wire on either side of it. One of the wires had a break repaired. It looks like, when the break was fixed, whoever did it deliberately put the wire on the other side of the tree, so the tree would keep the fence up.
For that spot, at least, it’s working.
I will have to prioritize cleaning up along this fence line, so it can be repaired. We’ll need to pick up more fence posts; I’ve found some scattered all over the place, but I don’t think there are enough, and they’re different sizes, too.
My daughter just popped in and we talked about the fence. If we were just replacing a post or two, we could make do with the old post hole diggers we found around the property. However, there are just too many posts to replace for that to be practical for us. We’re not that able bodied! And since the equipment that we could have used is gone (the Bobcat had a soil auger attachment), or no longer functional (the post pounder my late brother built), we figure it might be better to just hire someone. All we really need is for the posts to be installed. Once they’re in, we can do the rest ourselves. Since this is a permanent fence line, we would also want to not just have posts in dirt, but to install them in such a way that they won’t rot away as quickly.
We also want to move away from barbed wire, so we would probably want to install posts closer together, and use other materials. We might start off with the “rustic look” and use materials on hand to make a simple rail fence, until we can come up with something more durable and permanent – and preferably deer proof!
But first, that section of fence line needs to be cleared. We’ll lose a lot of privacy in the process, but once the corn and sunflowers are grown in, that will suffice for the summer, at least.
My older daughter and I went for a walk, and decided to head through the pasture, towards the plowed field.
This was the route I took to check how much I could see of the fire from the night before, and I’m surprised I missed this. I may have been distracted by seeing a bald eagle fly off. It was the first time I’ve seen one this close to the house and outbuildings!
Yeah. That’ll be my excuse for not seeing this.
This, lying in open pasture.
It looks like an oil drum converted into a furnace.
Like so many things we find, we are left with questions.
Converting oil drums into various things isn’t all that unusual. The unusual thing, as so often is the case, is the location.
Why is this here?
I can’t even say it has something to do with the junk pile that’s out this way. This pile, I know my late brother had dumped there, because I recognize the concrete filled oil drum. This was stuff he’d cleared away from the property my parents used to own. That was where we’d lived the last time we lived in this province. The building he’d converted to a workshop and is now being used for storage had been brought from there.
But this was not from there. It’s also quite far from the junk pile, so it’s not like a cow had somehow managed to drag it out (like so many other things we find, scattered about), even if a cow could somehow roll this around.
Yet another mystery!
After checking this out, we went to the junk pile, which my daughter had not yet seen. While poking around she found a few more things for our “found object art display”, where the crushed teapot now rests. Three mugs and two worn Old Spice bottles. :-D There’s also a toilet, which I intend to salvage and use with the others we’ve found, as a planter or something. The weird thing is, the toilet looks to be in excellent shape. No idea why it’s there, either, but at least with that, I hadn’t walked past it several times since we’ve moved here, and somehow not seen it.
Like the oil drum furnace that’s been sitting there long enough to have lichen growing on it! :-D
Not long ago, we heard what is a very unusual sound for this area.
A siren.
It stopped for a little bit, then started up again. I was in my “office” at the time, so I happened to see the lights of the vehicle going by on the live feed of the security camera. I couldn’t tell what kind of emergency vehicle it was, though my initial thought was that it was a police siren.
I decided to go outside and check. When I opened the door, the winds from the south-east almost tore it from my hands! I headed to the gate and looked around, saw nothing, but there was the smell of smoke in the air. With how incredibly dry we are right now, I was keeping my eye out for signs of a grass fire, but there were none. One of my daughters came out to join me, and neither of us could see anything of concern.
Once I was back inside, I decided to check our garage security cam email. It’s set to email an image any time the motion sensor is triggered, and I was wondering if the vehicle had triggered it from the road or not. There were a few emails with images waiting for me to check.
This was one of them.
There WAS a fire! A huge one, for us to be able to see it through the trees like that. What’s out there is mostly open fields and trees.
The series of images with the glow of fire covered about a 10 minute time period, bracketing 9pm.
While I was checking the images, I saw another vehicle in the live feed, heading in that direction. I could also see lights through the trees. Usually, I see lights there that are the reflectors on the abandoned vehicles in there, but this was something else. They looked like headlights. We never see headlights from vehicles driving on the road through the trees there. The angle is wrong for that, so this told me there were vehicles facing our way from somewhere other than the road.
So I bundled up, grabbed a flashlight and headed out again. I went to the gate, but still could see nothing. I decided to walk closer. I didn’t want to take the road, though, since if more emergency vehicles or whatever came by, I would be in the way, so I cut through the barn and headed towards the field beyond the trees, where the renter plants his crops.
My phone camera could not get a good photo, of course. I counted what looked like at least 7 vehicles. I think three of them were emergency vehicles. While I could still smell smoke, I could see no sign of a fire. After a while, I could hear the sounds of people yell-talking. Not yelling in alarm, but the sort of volume one would need to be heard over these winds.
Everything seemed to be under control. Seeing where all these vehicles were, though, had me concerned. There is a house, hidden away among some trees on the far side of that field, and those vehicles were about where that house is, about a mile from us. There is another house across the road as well, but I don’t think the vehicles were that far away. I do hope no one’s house burned down!!
As I was writing this, I saw more headlights going to and from the direction of the fire. More going from, than going to, which I hope is a good sign. I can still see headlights through the trees every now and then, too.
While things may be under control, I am not going to assume anything. We are just too windy and too dry, and if flames kick up again, those winds are blowing our way. It’s unlikely to happen, with emergency personnel on sight, and likely to be there for quite some time.
While walking out behind the barn to where I could see better, I first tried to go to a spot where I knew the fence was more open and clear of trees, because there used to be a gate there. When I got there, however, I found that two trees were fallen on the fence, and one of them looked like it had fallen recently. The whole area is littered with fallen trees. It reminded me again, why I want to get the spruce grove by the house cleaned up so much. I’d love to clean out the dead and fallen trees further out, but that is well beyond our abilities. We just don’t have the equipment for that large of a job, and it is way too big of a job to do manually. Basically, it’s all a tinder box, and that concerns me greatly. Particularly this time of year!
I must say, though, I am really appreciating that my brother set up that security camera, so we could see down the driveway. He has about a dozen cameras like it on his own property! :-D Without the images the camera captured, we would not have seen that there was a fire at all.
More security cameras are also part of our plans as we fix things up. The trail cams are great, but having a live feed and motion sensor triggered images sent to us is what we need more of.
I never thought I’d want them to keep an eye out for fires, though!
We had such a lovely day today, even with fairly high winds, that I couldn’t resist going outside and doing a bit of clean up. This time, I decided to work in the old garden area.
As we clean up around the property, there is one thing I find myself struggling with that I did not expect.
Trees.
In the decades I was away, my parents slowly reduced the size of their gardening, which made perfect sense. Unfortunately, at the same time, they planted trees. Poorly placed trees, many of which I am now having to cut down for various reasons, while trying to save as many as I can. At the same time, they also allowed self sown trees to grow where they really shouldn’t have. Some of them now need to be removed because they are causing damage. Others… well. Let me show you.
This is the before picture.
My mother had a row of raspberry bushes here. Elms and maples had self-sown among them. When my mother transplanted the raspberries (into an area that’s full shade!), she left the self-sown saplings. For a “wind break” she told me. The garden used to extend another 6 feet or so to the north. As they are now, the trees take up a space about 10-12 ft (3-3.6m) wide, and about 100 ft (30.5m) long.
That’s a lot of square feet of full sun garden space that can no longer be used.
Between these and the shade created by the trees they’d planted into the garden area on the south side, huge amounts of garden space have been taken out of production. Space that’s the closest to the house and water.
When I brought up taking them out and reclaiming the garden space, my mother was adamant that they not be touched. Apparently, if we take them out, we won’t have any wind break anymore or something, even though there are plenty of other trees and the lilac hedge to shelter us from Northern winds. :-/
Well, we’re not in a position to actively remove the trees quite yet, though the arborists recommended taking them out while they’re still small enough to be pulled out by the roots with a tractor. While trying to garden near these on one side, and tend the lawn on the other, I figured the least that should be done is to trim and clear them.
Yes, I know. This is probably the worst time of year to be trimming trees, but these are not trees we plan to save. They’ll do just fine, though. In fact, they’ll probably thrive. :-/
Starting at the end I took the photo at, I worked at it using both the baby chainsaw (aka: cordless pruner) and the long handled pruners. Loppers, I think they’re actually called. I used those quite a bit, because the branches and suckers were so dense, I couldn’t get in with the baby chainsaw to cut where I needed to. Which is fine. It reserved battery power for the pieces too large for the loppers. I got about 1 1/2 hours in before the battery died, then I continued for another half hour or so with the loppers.
Here is how it looks now.
That log that is now visible marks the corner of the mulched area we gardened in last year. I cleared until just past that log.
This is my branch pile.
I at first tried to trim the larger pieces and set them aside for potential use later, but that was taking up too much time, so I just added to the pile. When it’s time to deal with the pile, it will be easier to use hand pruners to trim any larger branches that might be usable for other things. The smallest pieces will go onto a chipping pile.
I did use pruning paint on the cut ends of the trees, though the maples were pouring so much sap, a lot of it was washed away! The elm sap isn’t running yet.
For all my mother’s admonitions to leave the trees alone, I found evidence that I was not the first to try cutting these away. In fact, some of what I found were growing out of stumps. Someone had tried cutting them down, and they grew back.
I also found this little group.
Three elms growing into each other! We couldn’t see this until I cleared things away. In fact, I couldn’t stand in the spots I was in to take the photos, either.
I worked on a maple just past this group of elms and found myself pulling out large strands of vines as well. The rest of the section has more of these vines. My mother had planted them (not here!) years ago, not realizing they were invasive. Now they’re spreading all over, and I’ve found at least a couple of trees that have been killed by them. So I stopped to continue another day, since more time will need to be spent pulling up these vines, which will need to be burned.
The irony of pulling up vines that are killing trees we plan to get eventually get rid of is not lost on me!
By the time I’m done with these, we should be able to walk through and around the trees without having to fight branches. I’ll even be able to mow past them without branches pulling off my hat!
Hopefully, their roots won’t make gardening near them too much of an issue. Eventually, we do plan to build some permanent, high raised beds in this area closer to the house, so it won’t be an issue for long. When we build the permanent garden beds to the south of the house, that will be where we will focus more on things that take longer to mature and get harvested in the fall, while areas closer to the house will be more kitchen garden type things that mature quickly, or have a continuous harvest.
Yesterday evening, the girls decided to go out for a walk and headed out past the barn.
They found this, among the trees.
A squashed kettle.
Among the trees.
I have questions.
How did it get squished like this?
And why was it out there to get squished, in the first place?
When I was a kid, we had a large pig pen beyond the barn and, after that, there was a large manure pile. Past that was trees. Just trees. Nothing where someone might set up a kettle, then mysteriously leave it there to be crushed.
The girls have set it with my “art display” of other found objects. :-D
With the warmer weather and longer days, the girls have been walking beyond the outer yard to check on things, such as the old gravel pit and pond areas.
Sometimes, they bring things back.
I believe these were found somewhere towards the old gravel pit.
Well, today – after three delays due to pandemic lock downs – I finally went to court for our restraining order application against our vandal.
Only to find it was delayed for a fourth time.
The frustrating part is that I called to confirm, just a couple of days ago. I was even put on hold while the person talked to someone else to be sure. Then she gave me the number for the Crown office, where I could get other questions I had answered, and I spoke to someone there, just yesterday. Though the prosecutor I spoke to had no connection to my specific application, as far as he knew, this courthouse was open.
Worse, my brother booked a day off work to be there for me.
We both came very early (more on why, later) but couldn’t figure out which court room was going to be used. One of them turned out to have a trial in session in it, but I went to the court office nearby and asked.
One of the people there recognized me and remembered my call from a couple of days ago. As far as she knew, I had been told of the date shift. Everything had been delayed again, until April 23rd. Near that date, I’m going to have to call again to find out if it’s been shifted again, or if I have a new court date. While I was there, the person at the counter looked up the file, and it did say today’s date. However, only those files that have legal representatives are going ahead today, virtually, through the big city. Mine is a private prosecution, so even if our vandal lawyered up, it still would have been shifted.
I had actually gotten through to the Crown office, yesterday, so I knew what to expect. There were three possible outcomes, assuming our vandal showed up. The judge would first ask if both parties agreed to the application. In his experience, the person the order is being applied against never accepts that option. Next, we would be offered mediation. For this, we would sit down with a third party, who would try to work out an arrangement between us. I don’t know if our vandal would agree to that, but even if he did, I don’t know that I would. After we pressed charges when he broke our gate, he had to go through some sort of program where he was seeing a psychiatrist (or a psychologist? I don’t know. We were never informed) regularly. Once the program was complete, the charges were stayed. The thing is, even while he was going through the program, he was still making abusive calls to my mother, and actually using it against her. He still hasn’t taking any sort of responsibility for his actions. If that didn’t work, how would mediation be any better? Anyhow. If mediation was not agreed upon, it would then go to a hearing, another court date would be booked, and for that we would be able to file additional evidence, affidavits, bring witnesses, etc.
None of this can happen, though, because everything got shifted again.
This is getting beyond ridiculous. We have been fortunate, in that our vandal has (so far) only engaged in property damage, creeping around the driveway, watching us from the road, and verbal abuse. However, considering the sudden bunch of calls he left on my mother’s answering machine not long ago, he is not all there. For all we know, he might go on a drinking binge after his wife leaves for work, have another “mental break” (as his wife described it), grab one of his many guns and come after us. We may have a crossbow now (and yes, it’s assembled, but the scope isn’t sighted yet), but that isn’t much defense against a gun.
How many other people in similar situations – or worse – are there, whose applications are being repeatedly delayed like ours? In our province alone, likely dozens. And for what? Schrodinger’s virus, where we hadn’t even been part of the pandemic until our provincial government created the very environment that would create an epidemic? Even at the highest rates, our uptick of excess deaths at the end of last year happened after the strictest lock downs, which cannot possibly stop a virus, were enforced, and includes people who died because of the restrictions – and still didn’t reach exceptionally high rates. We’ve had much higher spikes in excess deaths just within the last five years. The increases in suicides and other deaths of despair, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence and child abuse is a consequence that is being acknowledged in at least some places. People have been trying to warn for months about the increases in deaths due to lack of timely medical care that are happening now, and which we’re going to be hit with for years, because of the restrictions. Situations like ours isn’t even on anyone’s radar, from what I’ve seen.
Okay. Rant over.
The session was supposed to start at 10am. The smaller city it was to be held in is about 45 minutes away, on the highway. Last night, we started to get a combination of snow, sleet and rain. Not heavy, but enough to make the roads more dangerous. Normally, I would have left and hour + early and taken a particular route, but this morning, I left 2 hours early and took a route that was longer (in time, not distance), but less isolated. I am glad I did, because it took me more than an hour to get there. I was happy to see the plow trucks out, clearing the slush away. It seems the conditions had actually improved by the time I was on the road. I saw one car (empty) far into a large ditch. What was more telling was the tire tracks I could see in the slush on the shoulders. Something happened in that area that had people swerving all over and, in some areas, I could tell people had reversed and pulled over.
When I got to the building the courts and court office is in, it was mostly empty. Not seeing security guards at the door should have been my first warning, but I was so early, I thought they might not have set up yet. After a quick run to the washroom, I came out to find a single person walking down the hall towards the court rooms, and that was it.
That person turned out to be my brother. I didn’t recognize him, because he was masked. *sigh* He recognized me, though. Even with the light from windows behind me, I was the only person with a visible face (I had my Mingle Mask). That and, let’s face it, I have a rather distinctive short, rotund silhouette. ;-)
We were trying to figure out which court room was going to be used when I saw a lawyer looking dude come around, so I asked if he knew which room was being used for general session. He only knew of a trial that was happening in one room, already started, and suggested we try the court office. Only one person was allowed in at a time, so my brother waited in the lobby while I went in, and that’s when I found out about the shift.
So my brother and I headed out – he happened to park right next to my van – and talked along the way, but there’s nowhere to even sit over a hot non-denominational beverage (I don’t drink coffee… LOL) and talk. He booked a day off work, drove all the way over to the courthouse – about the same distance as my drive – and it turned out to be for nothing. Watching my gas gauge on the way home, I figure it cost us about $30 in gas for this trip. Each.
At least I was able to take advantage of it and make a quick Walmart run. My brother just headed home.
Once I was safety parked, I made a point of calling my mother to update her on what happened. Or, should I say, what didn’t happen. She was frustrated, too. She is really worried about our safety.
But what can we do? Apparently, nothing at all.
I’m not going to waste my time or energy worrying about it, and will just do what we can for now.
So I promptly let it go and did my shopping.
Walmart is getting their Easter inventory in. There were so many eggs, they were on pallets in the aisles, rather than in the fridges! (For those outside of North America, our eggs get washed before they get packed in cartons, which removes their coating, so we have to keep our eggs in the fridge to keep them from spoiling). I don’t think it was much of a concern, though, considering how fast people were already grabbing eggs from the pallets. I’d actually forgotten about Easter preparations. It’s still too early for that, isn’t it??
They did get more canning supplies in, but I didn’t see more 750ml jars. I didn’t see a lot of snap lids or rings, either. Thankfully, I don’t need more rings or lids right now. I got another case of 500ml jars. We will continue to stock up on the jars throughout the summer, little by little. They sell out fast, but I don’t think there is currently any shortage of canning jars at the moment. I imagine there will be, later in the year. A lot of people will be gardening for the first time this year.
Speaking of which…
I decided to pick up some Jiffy pots. I’ll talk about why in another post, but as I was going through the till, the cashier asked me about them. She wondered if you had to somehow use the Jiffy pellets in them, and I told her that she could use whatever soil mix she wanted, and that they were designed to be buried with the transplants. It turned out that she was going to try growing a garden this year, but she is in an apartment and would be growing indoors. I told her that, if she were growing in containers, she could still bury the pot with the transplants in her containers.
I hope her indoor gardening attempts work out well for her. :-)
I hope the same for all the people who are going to try growing their own food for the first time this year!
For us, if nothing else, focusing on the gardening and taking care of this place helps relieve the frustration of dealing with our vandal. Very good for mental health! :-)
We’re still on the chilly side these days, and will continue to be for a while longer. As I write these, we are just below freezing, and our predicted highs aren’t going to be much warmer. It’s like that mild weather we had, and my being able to do some clean up in the spruce grove, was just a tease!
I think the cats are still appreciating the kibble house, and not having to be on the frozen ground to eat. Their water is freezing solid overnight again (except for the heated water bowl, of course), and they’re enjoying the warm water they’re still getting every morning.
I look forward to when we can take that tarp off the kibble house and give it a good paint job! It’s still too cold for paint.
At least the snow is mostly gone, so I can extend my rounds, checking the fence lines, etc. Which is where I found this poor little pussy willow, desperately trying to develop its catkins! :-D At least since we cleared this fence line, it is finally getting morning sun and warmth.
One of the things we will need to do today is go into town and retrieve my mother’s car. A bit late to help my mother, though! Yesterday, shortly after noon, I got a call from my mother. When I asked how she was doing, she told me she was “dressed”. Meaning, she was dressed up and all ready to head out. !!
We had been talking about me helping her with errands when I got her car back, and I was suggesting Wednesday or Thursday, hoping it would be done by then. Somehow, my mother thought it had been settled for Wednesday! So she was all ready to go for her errands, and for me to show up at the usual time. Of course, I didn’t show up because I didn’t know this! :-D I told her I didn’t have her car, but she had quite a few errands to run, and didn’t want to delay them. So I headed out right away and, just in case, brought our little step stool for her to use to get in and out of the van. She has one just like it, but I wasn’t sure if she’d grab it or not. I’m glad I did, because she had forgotten hers. She realized this while waiting for me, outside the door where I usually meet her, sitting in her walker. She was going to give me her keys so I could run in and get hers, but it wasn’t necessary. It turns out she doesn’t need it so much to get out of the van, but getting in is much harder for her.
One of the stops she needed to make was at the Senior’s centre which, unfortunately, has stairs, so she has to leave her walker outside and hobble in. :-( I helped her with the door and saw there was quite a few people inside, so I told her I’d wait for her outside. One of the social workers that I’ve been talking to about the horrible caretakers in my mother’s building came out to chat. She asked how my mother was doing, since my mother has a habit of saying she’s having troubles when she’s actually doing pretty well, but saying she’s doing well when she’s having troubles. Which isn’t all that unusual, I’ve found! ;-) One of the things I mentioned was that my mother was getting some serious cabin fever.
Which is when I found out something interesting. Not a good interesting, either.
When our province locked down even harder (which, as I predicted a year ago, actually caused an increase in deaths and illnesses; the first uptick of excess deaths our province had was during the annual winter increase, since the pandemic bypassed our province entirely until then, and no one in either of our municipalities has ever tested positive), buildings such as my mother’s locked their doors and only “authorized” personnel were allowed in, while residents were told to stay in their own apartments as much as possible, though they were “graciously” allowed to not wear masks within their own homes. :-/ “Authorized” personnel included the social workers, and people making deliveries. Because of the caretakers, my mother would sneak me or my siblings in through a side door, as we brought her groceries in. Yes, technically we were allowed in the building to do this, but the caretakers look for any excuse to harass people. Especially my mother, who is one of the few people to stand up to them.
Well, it turns out that my mother’s building is the only one that’s still locked up. All the other buildings run by the province are open. The social worker speculated on just who was responsible for keeping the residents locked up, and I half-joked that it made it easier to “control the inmates”. Unfortunately, the joke was too close to reality. She told me that one of my mother’s neighbours is considering putting a sign on her door to turn her apartment number to “Cell ##”, because she feels like she is in a prison. To be honest, in a real prison, they’d have more freedoms than the people living in my mother’s building, it seems. The frustrating thing is, there’s nothing we can do about it. The people living there are too afraid of the caretakers to complain, and since it’s a government run building, instead of a privately run building, getting abusive employees fired is pretty much impossible. The social workers have been trying to get the problem addressed for years – long before my mother has lived there – and had their own jobs threatened, instead.
It’s so frustrating. I was hoping my mother was serious about escaping to another building in town – one where meals are included, so she wouldn’t even need to do grocery shopping – but she chose this building because her church is right across the street. She wouldn’t be able to walk to church from the other building. That and she really doesn’t want to go through the hassle of moving again, even though this time I’d be available to help with our van. Truthfully, with the exception of the caretakers, this place is pretty ideal for her. She shouldn’t have to move, just to get away from crappy employees.
What a mess.
After my mother finished at the senior’s centres, we did the rest of my mother’s errands, finishing with some grocery shopping. After everything was brought in and put away, I was even able to stay for tea. Before I left, I gave my mother a big hug. She almost started crying. :-(
Just before I got home, I heard my phone going off, so I checked my messages before unlocking the gate. It was from the garage, letting me know my mother’s car was ready! It was too close to their closing time, though. I suppose I could have grabbed my daughter and left immediately, but since I had just finished helping my mother with her errands, there was no longer any rush.
Meanwhile…
Today, I need to focus and prepare for tomorrow. We finally have our court date for the restraining order against our vandal. I really don’t know what to expect. I think the most likely thing to happen is that they will run through the docket as quick as they can, and it’ll be rescheduled for a hearing at a later date. Of course, what I hope will happen is that the restraining order will be granted. A restraining order is just a piece of paper, but it does give the police more to work with and, more importantly, our vandal will have his guns removed, and he’ll have to stop drinking. The order is for a year, and then I would have to re-apply, if I felt it was warranted, but I would hope that a year of being dry, and having to prove it regularly, will make a difference in his mental state. It’s a faint hope, but it’s there, nonetheless. There’s still his vexatious litigation against me to deal with, but that court date is in July. If he were at all sensible, he would drop that, as he has no case. It’s basically just his way of getting back at me for applying for the restraining order after he tried to break the gate again.
What a mess.
As crazy at it is, I have no regrets for moving out here. The positives far outweigh the negatives, and it’s still better than what we left behind.
Still, it would be nice if all we needed to do was take care of this place for my family, which is why we moved out here to begin with!
I’m really glad we were able to plug power back into the cat’s house, when we couldn’t do it through the sun room any more. Temperatures have dropped, and while we are reaching above freezing during the day, it’s getting quite a bit colder overnight.
Since it’s too cold to continue with the clean up, when I was finishing my morning rounds, I decided to move the poles closer to the house and the garden area, so they will be handy when it’s time to start building the trellises and supports.
This gave me the opportunity to somewhat sort them by size. While I deliberately chose our winter squash to be smaller, shorter season, varieties, they will still need very sturdy supports, as will the gourds. While all of these will be temporary, they still need to be strong enough to hold a fair bit of way, and sturdy enough to not blow over in high winds.
We haven’t even decided on what form these supports will take, yet! But at least we’ll have ample materials, and can figure things out as we go.
