With having to use a wheelbarrow to haul things from the basement to the barn, one of the things I really wanted to do this pay period was pick up a utility wagon of some kind.
Yesterday, at Costco, I found one. Today, I got to break it in!
Ideally, I would have picked up one of the types with rigid metal mesh sides and bottom, with removable sides. They cost about $250, though, which was not in the budget this month. Instead, I picked up a folding version with fabric lining, which has almost the same dimensions as the metal version I was looking at.
While I ran into town to run errands, the girls assembled it and left it waiting for me in the garage, so I could test it out.
It folds up to a nice, compact size, and it quite light.
It isn’t visible in this photo, but there is a loop in the middle of the wagon to pull on to fold it up again. On the handle, near the frame, is a lever that lets you adjust the handle length. In the first photo, you can see a red button on one side of the handle. That is the release button to unlock the handle for use.
I picked up a lot of larger, heavier things while running errands. One of the reasons I chose this specific wagon is because it’s rated to 300 pounds. Normally, I would have had to drive into the yard and unload at the house. Instead…
… I got almost everything in the wagon!
I did have to use the neck of one of the two 18L water bottles to hang bags off of, and had one last bag I needed to carry, but I was able to get everything from the van to the house in one trip. This included a 20kg (44 pounds) bag of bird seed and, along with the big water bottles, a couple of gallons of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, and a 12 pk of cola, on top of everything else.
It did a great job of rolling all that over the rough ground to the yard; only the one Amazon box ended up falling off part way through.
This would have made hauling all that stuff to the barn SO much easier! We’re going to get a lot of use out of this.
Because it is fabric sided, though, we plan to cut a board to fit on the bottom. One of the things we expect to use it for is to roll 5 gallon buckets of water around the garden, once we start transplanting things. Having a “floor” will be a help with that.
Oh, and the Amazon box that fell of had this in it.
Yay!!!
It will be some weeks before we need to use the soil auger, but I’ll be putting one of those soil testers in the garden bed we’re working on as soon as I can!
It has been a very productive day today – and it’s only half over. Much better than trying to get things done in the city, yesterday!! And no snarky people. Not one.
One of the things I picked up today was a bottle of white wine. Historical Italian Cooking released another video recently, and I am really looking forward to trying it!
Well, today’s trip into the city turned out to be decidedly unpleasant.
We usually plan the order of stores we go to around whether or not we’re getting fresh or frozen food. Which means Walmart is usually the first stop (after having breakfast or lunch somewhere) and Costco the last. Today, our first stop was actually a pet store to get some long overdue filters for the fish tank. It’s near the Walmart we usually go to, but when we got there and saw the line outside the door, we turned around and left. Walmart lines just don’t seem to move and, after the long drive and having lunch in the van, I needed a bathroom!
The search for one that was open to the public was not a good start to the day. We ended up going to a chain grocery store location we’d never been to before. It had a line, too, but it was a small one and it was moving fairly quickly.
You know those arrows they have on the floors now? At first, I thought that was a great idea.
I was wrong.
Very wrong.
My daughter and I split up, each with our own cart because they use the carts to keep track of how many people are in the store, so she could pick up some needed items and I found and used the public washrooms. As we tried to reconnect, I found that the arrows forced people to all go from one side of the store to the other. We wanted to go back to the produce section, but there were only arrows pointing out. After a while, with no customers around anyhow, I just went in. My daughter saw an employee and, indicating the arrows, asked “how do we get back to the produce section?”
“You don’t,” she was told.
!!!
She did eventually say that, if there was no one around, to go ahead in, so my daughter soon caught up to me.
I was really glad to get out of there.
We ended up going to the Costco next – it had a very long line outside, but it moved very quickly – and it now has those arrows on the floor, too. Not in all the aisles, though, and some had arrows only at one end of an aisle. We ended up using two carts, with all the big, heavy stuff that would not be unloaded at the cash desk in one cart, and the smaller stuff in the other. Both ended up very full and heavy.
Then it was time to get into the one line from which staff directed people to different cash desks. I spotted the end of the line, and we had to wrestle our carts back and forth through several aisles to reach it. We got there just ahead of an old guy who was coming straight up the main aisle. The next thing I know, an employee is telling me we have to go behind the old guy. Apparently, he complained that we’d cut him off or something. Whatever. My daughter and I had to wrestle the carts around to get behind him, only to have the guy in front of us make some snarky comments about keeping our distance. We hadn’t actually gone nearer to him, so I thought maybe he meant between myself and my daughter. A little while later, though, he snapped an an employee for getting too close. An employee that had to make her way through the line. An employee wearing mask and gloves, and carrying a spray bottle of sanitizer. The old guy was probably more of a danger to her, than the other way around!
What is it about some people that think they are entitled to be nasty to people and get away with it, just because they’re old? I came very close to just abandoning our carts and going home! It was a decidedly unpleasant experience, overall.
After we were done there, we made one last attempt to go to a Walmart. On seeing the line, we just kept right on going and headed home. Most of what we wanted to get there, we should be able to get locally. Not all, though.
Unfortunately, the entire trip left me feeling ticked off for hours, so I decided to head outside while there was still enough light out and do a walkabout. I headed through the barn, into the old hay yard, to check out the pond that is there. The last couple of springs, there was only a small amount of water in there, but this year, it is nice and full. I decided to keep going through the area behind the barn and check out the bigger pond. Along the way, I noticed some new fallen trees and branches. The area is littered with dead trees. :-(
For the last couple of years, this pond has had almost no water in it at all. This is how it looks now!
It is completely full! Even the lower area at one end that meanders through the pasture has water in it! After the drought of the last couple of years, and especially the horrible spring, this is very encouraging.
Potato Beetle, Butterscotch and Creamsicle followed me the entire time, and I got some pictures of Creamsicle playing on the remains of an old boat.
Also… that’s the remains of an old boat. When did that get there? How long has it been there? How have I missed seeing it there? Okay, that last part, I know the answer to. We’d gone through here at a time of year when the grass was very tall, just before the renter rotated his cows into the quarter section we’re on. So this would have been completely hidden by tall grass.
Since I was out here, I decided to head towards the field where the renter planted corn last year. Since moving here, we just never went beyond this pond, so I figured tonight was a nice night for it.
As I got closer, though, all I could feel was dismay.
I found another junk pile.
Why? Why is this here? Who dumped stuff here, instead of taking it to the landfill?
Also… is that what I think it is?
No way!!
Another toilet.
That makes six toilets we’ve found since moving here. Only one of which could be attributed to the bathroom in the house, where the original toilet got switched out for a higher, more accessible one, as part of the changes made to the house as my father’s mobility decreased. Which means people went out of their way to bring toilets out here and dumping them.
Along with so much junk.
This, however, gave me an answer as to who brought this stuff here.
I remember this concrete filled oil drums. Years ago, my parents had bought what they hoped would be an investment property in the “downtown” of our little hamlet. The place used to be a general store. In the back, there had been a shed sitting on top of these barrels, making it high enough that delivery trucks could back up to it and unload easily. When my parents gave up trying to rent the place out, after years of horrid renters that cost them thousands in damages, we ended up living there for a while. The shed was long since gone, but these barrels were still there, tipped over on the concrete pad that had been under them. My daughters still remember playing among these barrels.
After we moved out of province, my late brother cleaned up at area, taking away the barrels and breaking up the concrete pad. That pile of broken concrete would be the remains of that.
What I don’t understand is, why did he drag it all here, instead of to the landfill?
And this is junk the renter’s cows now graze around, too. :-(
As disappointing as it was to find this, I did find something else that delighted me.
We have a creek with actual flowing water!
Now, as I grew up here, I somehow never seemed to have gone into this area before. I have no memory of it. I knew there was a low area here – it is even visible on satellite maps of the farm. It’s part of the municipal drainage system which, in this case, took advantage of a natural marsh system. I knew it got wet and muddy along this way, too. I remember going with my mother into the trees to a hazelnut bush she new of, to gather nuts, and losing my shoe in the mud.
And yet, I never, ever, saw it as an actual creek with fast flowing water! It was always more like a bit of a ditch, or a marsh, of either standing water or much.
I’m still blown away! I ended up following it all the way to the road. Then I continued to the old gravel pit area. I was eager to see how much water was there, too.
I found this along the way.
Actually, I found three of them, not far from each other. These are cow sized vertebra! They weren’t here last year, either.
Then I reached the old gravel pit area.
I don’t remember ever seeing it this full of water before – and my late brother and I used to play in it.
Which, now that I think about it, is rather gross. The pond that formed where my father dug out the gravel pit became a watering hole for the cattle.
I must have anti-bodies to all sorts of things because of the things I used to play in as a child! :-D
The marshy area at one end of the pond extends to the pond in the very first picture of this post. It is also near the car graveyard, which I decided to go through.
The cows eating down so much grass last year meant I could see quite a few things more easily. Including this.
It’s really hard to tell, as rotted away and covered with grass as it is, but I believe this is the remains of an old sledge or wooden trailer. Possibly a stone boat.
I also think it might actually be upside down.
One my way back to the barn, I also paused to check out a shed near the barn that’s still standing – next to another building that collapsed many years ago. I’ve gone into it before but, after living here for a couple of years, I am looking at things with new eyes. And today, those new eyes spotted something else to be excited about.
A lovely stack of boards, leaning against a wall. They’re pretty old, to be sure, but they are clean and dry, and may be exactly what I need for some projects I have in mind. There was also what looks like a full package of asphalt shingles.
We can use this stuff!
At some point, I think I will move the wood into the new part basement, along with anything else of value or use in there. This old shed has some huge holes in the roof, and I could see through the back wall. I’d rather not loose useful stuff to a collapsed roof.
I’m glad I took this walkabout. It was just what I needed after such an unpleasant trip to the city!
And now, I am going to give myself a thorough check before bed. I’ve found two wood ticks crawling on me since I started writing this, and now my entire body is feeling creepy crawly!
After bringing my mother home from the hospital yesterday (I called her this morning and she is doing well today, and did not have any episodes during the night), I’d gone to the hardware store in her town to pick up the paint we needed to finish the replacement door for the sun room.
I also got myself a new toy.
Since I am cutting so many slices from the lilac wood, and plan to do more with maple and cherry that I’ve set aside. I even have a couple more branches of lilac waiting outside, so I decided it was worth the splurge. With the kittens in the basement, I’m not as comfortable using loud power tools. I have hand saws that are done the job, but when I saw this saw – and its affordable price – I went for it.
This is a fine toothed, fine bladed pull saw. I hoped that it would cut more smoothly than the saws I was already using, so of course I had to test it out.
On the left are the round slices I’d cut using a regular carpenter saw, which is what I had that worked the best at the time. To the right are slices I cut using the new saw, in the miter box at 45 degrees. None of these have been sanded.
It’s hard to see, but the cut edges with the new saw are smoother than the other ones. They also didn’t leave that jagged edge that sometimes happens at the very end of a cut. The larger saw also left occasional black marks that need to be sanded away. So, right off the top, the new saw will save me on sand paper. I also splurged on sheets of sand paper in grits starting at 50, up to 220. The slices I cut with the old saw needed that 50 grit, but the new slices don’t need to be started with such coarse sandpaper.
There were a couple of other benefits I noticed. The sawing itself is quieter, which means less noise to disturb the babies nearby. It cuts faster, and with less vibration, so things are not being shaken off the shelf on the work table quite as much. :-D
The blade is so much thinner, there is less loss of wood as sawdust, and it’s easier to cut thinner pieces. However, this also means the blade bends more easily. Since it’s shorter than the other saw, I had to take greater care while sawing in the miter box, as the blade would sometimes bend and hit the inside of the miter box rather than go through the slot. After a while, because the piece of wood I was working on was wonky in shape, I started to use the miter box just to start a cut, then take it out and hold it in my hand to finish the cut. After a while, I didn’t even do that, and just eyeballed the angle and started it without a guide. I don’t know that I would have been able to do that with the other saw. Previously, I’d used the vice to hold the wood, but this branch had too many bends in it for the vice to be able to grip it.
As before, I use the last 3 1/2 inches of the branch to make lengthwise cuts in the miter box, and found an unexpected problem. Cutting the wood lengthwise resulted in sawdust clogging the teeth very quickly. I kept having to pull the blade out, remove the sawdust in the teeth, then make a few more passes before I had to do it again. So while cross cutting went faster than when using the other saw, cutting lengthwise took longer.
Of the branch I brought downstairs, I’ve now cut the two thickest sections into pieces. There are more smaller branches I’d taken off to work on later. I’m still thinking of what to make with the pieces I’ve already cut, but the smaller pieces will be of a size and weight suitable for earrings, so I know I will be making at least a few of those.
My new toy will make it much faster and smoother to cut the pieces to size. I hadn’t planned on getting a new saw, just for this project, but now that I have, I’m already glad I did. Definitely worth it.
While doing my morning rounds, I decided to go into a couple of the sheds and look around.
The first one is among those that is falling apart and really needs to be torn down. There are many holes in the roof, so the dirt floor is quite wet and muddy inside.
We would need to go through its contents and figure out what to do with them. We can’t tear it down yet, because that will leave a gap in the fence into the hay yard, and the renter’s cows go into there. I want to change where the fence is, eventually, so I don’t want to put in new fence. It will stay there for probably a few more years. If it doesn’t collapse, first.
I’ve been in here several times, but didn’t really look closely at the pile of stuff in the corner. I might have noticed this before, but it feels like I’m seeing it for the first time. I’ve tried to outline it and make it stand out better, so you can see it, too.
This is a small plow. I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be pulled with a horse.
When my dad bought the property, he upgraded to tractors, but a horse and her foal came with the farm. No horse drawn plow has been used here in something like 50-60 years.
This is definitely a keeper.
There’s also an object near it; you can see the metal wheel and a gear near the front of the plow. I can’t see it well enough to even guess what it is. It should be interesting when we finally get to cleaning up that corner, and finally see all of it.
I next went into the side shed of the garage and moved the snow blowers to the back and lawn mowers to the front. There is a shelf against the back wall that seems to be tipping more and more. Thankfully, there is lots of stuff in front of it, so it can’t actually fall over.
While looking in it, I noticed this box.
Cool! That would be so awesome, if there were an actual angle grinder in the angle grinder box.
Of course, I know by now that the likelihood of that is very low.
Even so, this has got to be top of the list of weird things we’ve been finding.
Yes. Those are teeth.
Human teeth.
I’m pretty sure they are real teeth. You can see that one molar has cavity holes in it.
Judging from the adhesive on many of the plastic pieces, it looks like quite a few have fallen off. The bottom of this box is likely covered with loose teeth.
Now, I can probably imagine how these were acquired. My late brother did demolitions, and this was one of his workshops here at the farm. When tearing down buildings, he often found unusual things, and was able to bring home some things that would otherwise have ended up in the landfill. Many were quite usable. For example, he tore down old restaurants, and we still have commercial quality table cloths he’d found, and my favourite cutlery is from one of those demos. It’s amazing what gets left behind in places. He likely was doing a demolition of a place that once had a denturist or something in it.
However they were found, the questions remain: why keep them? Why leave them in this shed? What was the plan for these?
As we find keep finding odd things, I now keep them in mind for some future found object art pieces I plan to make and set up around the property.
These teeth will likely have a prominent part in this! :-D
Our windy day continues! While we have a few millimeters of rain predicted for this evening, as I type this, I am hearing thunder rolling, and just saw a flash of lightning out my window!
Here’s hoping we don’t loose power while I’m working on this post! :-D
I have continued working on the section of lilac wood I’d experimented on earlier. I decided to try using the cutting tool on my Dremel to make the job go faster – if the Dremel was quiet enough not to disturb Beep Beep and her babies too much.
It was quiet enough, but… there were other issues.
The Dremel I have is not a particularly powerful one. Just a Walmart cheepie, really. Lilac is a surprisingly hard wood, and it was just too much for it!
I ended up stopping part way through my attempt to cut through the wood and finished with a hand saw.
You can see where the friction actually “burned” the wood as the blade ground to a halt!
So I did the rest using a carpenter’s saw, cutting the piece into slices. It took a while, but I eventually got into the rhythm of it, and things went fairly quickly. I cut slices off until I had exactly 3 1/2 inches left – the width of my miter box – to try something different.
It fit just right, and I was able to cut the piece into 4 lengthwise sections. Not as evenly as I would have liked, since it kept trying to roll on me, but that just adds to the interest!
Here are all the pieces I got out of the section of lilac wood.
I really like how the length wise cuts look.
Also… do you notice something about the pieces?
The next step was to take a wire brush to the edges to remove loose bits of bark and clean off any debris. As I worked, I kept noticing a soft spot in the middle of the slices. I finally stopped to take a closer look, and it turned out every round piece had it, as did the centre lengthwise cut.
I used a non-metal brush on them, and eventually decided to just poke at it with a very small screwdriver.
It was basically just wood dust and came right out.
So I cleaned out every disk. Some were small enough that I had to use a wire to clear them out, but every single disk now has a hole in the centre!
I was even able to use the wire to push through the centre cut piece, then use a brush to clean up the open section.
Oh! That was a quick little storm, and I noticed some crazy orange light outside. I just dashed out to see a gorgeous double rainbow!
Also, I got rained on. *shiver*
Now, where was I?
Oh, yes.
Tomorrow, I hope to be able to get back to these and start sanding them smooth and giving them a light coat of oil.
I’m still not sure what I’ll be doing with them, but they’re going to look very pretty when they’re done.
Since all of these had the holes in them, I double checked the first two I’d done, so see if they had that soft spot, too. They did. Barely big enough to use a sewing needle to clean them out. So those two pieces now have tiny holes through them, too. The colourful rings in one of them looks very much like an eye, and now the “pupil” has a tiny hole you can see though. It’s kinda like those “fairy stones” you find at the beach, with natural holes in them. :-)
I like it!
For the size if these, I’m thinking they might make nice pendants. The rings of colour are so dramatic, I feel doing anything more than sanding and oiling them is unnecessary. A possible exception would be to perhaps put a glass bead or something like that into the ones with the larger holes.
A storm last year damaged a lot of trees and bushes around the yard, including breaking off a large piece of a double lilac my mother planted in the little garden by the old kitchen. Noticing the beautiful pattern in the wood, I set the pieces aside for later.
Today was “later.” :-D
I brought one of the branches into the basement to work on it (I am really enjoying having this work space!!!) and started by cutting various sections off, then working on the thickest “trunk” part of it.
What striking colours!
The photo on the left is the base, where it had broken off in the storm, and I had cut off the split part. The one on the right is where I’d cut a pair of branches off.
That’s the end I decided to cut a couple of slices off.
With Beep Beep and the kittens nearby, I didn’t want to use any power tools, even though I now have a Dremel with steel cutting blades that would be perfect for the job. It’s way too loud.
Lilac wood, I am discovering, is a surprisingly hard wood! It may have been quieter, but it was a lot longer to do it by hand.
Since I’m just experimenting right now, I only cut two slices, then used a brush on the edges to take off any dirt or loose bits of bark.
Then I sanded them smooth. Here’s how they looked, after I finished with the finest grit of sandpaper I have.
Then I applied a light coat of mineral oil.
I am really happy with how these look! Those purple rings are really something.
So… I’m a suck. Especially when it comes to the cats.
But if you have been following this blog for a while, you knew that already. ;-)
While our basement maternity ward is certainly warmer than outside, when I checked on the mamas and babies earlier today, I noticed that the babies felt a bit chilly.
Therefore, on the principle of “put on a sweater, Mom is cold”, I decided to borrow and set up the upstairs heater at the end of the basement where the newborns are. Then, I had to stay in the basement, since it’s not supposed to be left on unattended.
Which gave me the opportunity to finish the hanging rig I’d whipped together when making cheese.
I had already done some basic sanding, as well as a bit of damage repair, a couple of days ago. Having picked up some more sandpaper yesterday, I could now finish the job.
The piece with the crack I’d glued was rough enough that I actually used a rasp we found while cleaning the basement, to get the roughest parts a bit smoother. I then spent the next couple of hours working my way through sandpaper grades until all the pieces were silky smooth.
The basement got nice and warm while I was doing that. The mamas and kitties seemed to be quite content with this. :-)
Then, because I had some, I rubbed the wood with mineral oil.
If I hadn’t had any, I would have eventually picked up some type of varnish, or maybe paint, to finish it with later.
In my rush to make the rig, I’d drilled a pilot hole in the cross piece a bit off. I was going to drill a new hole, lined up with the other side, but when I measured it, the new hole would have been just too close to the existing one. So I left it. I’ll just have one leg a bit off from the other.
The final step was to reassemble it, using wood glue at the ends of the side pieces to stabilize it.
Here are the before and after pictures.
It really doesn’t look a lot different, but trust me. It is! No possibility of getting splinters anymore, for starters. :-D I’m glad I happened to have the mineral oil to treat the wood. Once the glue has cured, it will be nice and solid, too.
We’re now all set for any future preserving we do that requires hanging a bag to drain. Plus, if we had to, we could even add a couple more cup hooks to hang up to three jelly bags or something, if needed.
No, we didn’t find the source of the knocking in the van.
We picked up the van, dropping off my mom’s car at the same time, then did a quick trip to the grocery store before we had to pick Two-Face up from the vet. My daughter also made an appointment to get our original Mama, who showed up as a stray on our balcony, years ago, and brought us her baby. She has been acting very ornery lately, growling and hissing at the other cats, and sometimes nothing at all. So she will be brought in for a check up on Monday.
Then we headed home, and…
The van is running smooth as butter.
We had talked to the mechanic for a while, and we still can’t figure out what caused the knocking and shuddering. If it had been the CV joint, it would have made a different noise. Still, I’m glad that in the process of trying to track down the noise, we were able to find and fix another problem before it became a bigger problem in the future.
Two-Face, meanwhile, seems to be doing okay. She’s found a place to sleep things off, and I haven’t even seen the surgical site yet.
No, what I found today was the source of an odd pain I would get in my foot, when I wore my runners. One of those little stabbing pains that I couldn’t quite tell if something was stuck in my shoe, or stuck in my sock. Then, while I was moving things we’d taken from the basement to the barn, I happened to step on an edge of concrete, and something stabbed me in the foot again. Hard.
So I took my shoe off right there in the barn and this time, I could feel something inside my shoe. It took some hunting on the sole, but I finally found what stepping on the concrete had pushed into my foot.
Thankfully, among the things we brought to the barn from the basement was a tray full of odds and ends, including the remains of a small standard tip screwdriver. I was able to use it to pry the nail loose from my shoe. It had to be pushed in really deep before I could finally find it from the inside! I have no idea when I stepped on this but, thankfully, it went in at an angle, or it would have gone right into my foot.
Meanwhile, the girls and I were able to clear most of the stuff away from the front of the house, either to the barn, the burn pile or the junk pile that we’ll need to get hauled away with a trailer. What’s left needs to go to the dump. The van has already been filled, ready for tomorrow. We’ll have to make sure to take multiple trips this week, to catch up on all the trash and recycling we normally would have taken to the dump earlier in the week.
It feels so much better not to have all that stuff in front of the house!!!
My other project of the day meant I got to spend some time with the (still pregnant) mamas in the basement. I dismantled the hanging frame I made for the cheese and started cleaning up and sanding the wood.
Some of the wood needed to be shaved and smoothed with a knife, first. One of the side pieces had a bit of a crack in it, so I glued and clamped it. I’ll need to pick up some coarser sandpaper before I can continue working on that one. I was able to get some progress with the rest of the pieces, though.
Here’s a before and after, so far. I was able to whip the rig together in about half an hour, and it did the job. I just want to get it finished properly, now that there is no rush. My daughter has a shift tomorrow, so I should be able to swing by the hardware store and pick up more sandpaper and be able to continue.
Well. Not right away. With the van already packed for the dump, I’ll have to do that first. I’ll just have to remember to go back into town to pick up my daughter early enough to catch the hardware store before it closes.
I just got a call from the garage about our van. Apparently, he’s been trying to call me since yesterday, on both the land line and my cell phone, and couldn’t get through. I have no idea why; my mother phoned earlier, and got through no problem. I had just got off the phone with her when my cell phone started ringing. There wasn’t enough of a connection and the call got dropped, but I could see that it was the garage and called back on the land line. Weird, but not too unexpected out here, really.
Anyhow.
He gave me estimate for 2 options. One was to fix the boot, the other was to replace the axle. He said that a small amount of dirt has gotten into the grease. I started talking about replacing the axle right away, which was going to be his recommendation. It would cost less to fix the boot, but we’d end up needing to do the axle later anyhow, so we’ll just get that done now, before it becomes an issue.
It still shouldn’t be the cause of the knocking and shuddering, though. It just wasn’t that bad in there. Still, I’m glad it’s getting done now, before it’s a major problem.
He might be able to get the job done by the end of today, but we have an appointment with Two Face and the vet tomorrow, so we’re going to combine trips. When it comes time to pick up Two Face at the end of the day, we’ll drop my mom’s car off at the garage and pick up the van. I’ll be leaving my mom’s car there so he can check it out whenever he gets a chance, and see why there is still a noise coming from the differential. There is no hurry on this. In fact, I’d prefer it wait until the end of the month, when pay comes in, though that decision will be made after he’s had a chance to figure out what’s going on.
Ah, vehicles. They are such a necessity, but such an expense, too! :-(
In re-arranging the living room, the girls and I also moved around the plants. The living room is the only space we have for our bigger plants – and some have gotten very big since we’ve moved out here! – so it’s a bit of a challenge.
One of the things we have a lot of is jade plants. The jade plant that we thought might not survive the move is now a massive, healthy beast of the tree. We also have lots and lots of aloe vera. I knew that aloe propagates itself easily, but I didn’t realize how easily jade plants do as well. It turns out any leaf that breaks off can grow into a new plant.
Leaves break off easily. Especially with our cats. They keep trying to get into the pots, lying in the dirt, and generally wrecking havoc. I recently ended up using the extra legs of the plastic utility shelf we got as supports for the big one, because it was almost completely flattened. (As a bonus, because these are tubes, I can now water the plant through the tops.) This is not a good thing, since jade plants are poisonous to cats.
One of the treats I’ve started to get at Costco are these large plastic containers of Cheese Balls. I’ve been keeping the containers because I thought they’d make great cloche coverings in the garden at some point. When the cats were determined to use one of the plant pots as a bed, mashing the jade plant flat, I put one of these over the plant to protect it. It worked well, but when we arranged things, I figured the plant was big enough to not need it any more and took it off.
Well… they did leave that one alone.
Another smaller one, not so much. The pot was knocked over, the poor little jade plant was on the carpet, and there was soil all over.
I’m glad we thought to put that plastic over the shelves to protect their tops!
I put the soil back and replanted the jade plant. It should actually survive this, but we’ll see. Meanwhile, this and another pot are small enough that I cut the tops off of two of those plastic containers, so that they are not straight sided, and they can completely cover the pots and their plants, with room to grow.
This morning, I ended up using the cut off tops to put over a couple more plants that showed signs of cats bashing their way through them.
Meanwhile, while doing my rounds this morning, I remember to check on the pair of trees my mother planted right against the chain link fence. One of them had looked like it was dead, but I wasn’t up to slogging through the snow to check it. The snow is mostly gone now, so…
Yeah, that is one very dead tree. Both of these were fine in the fall.
I had wanted to transplant them away from the fence, but my mother demanded they stay right where they are. When I pointed out that they would eventually grow big enough to damage the fence, and were too close together, she said they were exactly where she wanted them to be, and she didn’t care if they damaged the fence.
Now that one of them has died, knowing my mother, she’s probably going to think I killed it because I didn’t want them there.
Ah, well. I’ll deal with that when the time comes.
One of the things that has really hit home for me as we’ve been cleaning up around the yards, is how incredibly important it is to think years ahead when planting trees. We intend to plant many, many trees, with a focus on food trees, and this gives us an opportunity to learn from what my parents did 10, 20, even 40 years ago.
The Re-Farmer 