For us, building our raised beds is a matter of using what materials we can get without having to buy anything. We’re scrounging and salvaging whatever we can.
If, however, you are in a position to actually purchase raised beds, there are a lot of options, kits and companies out there to choose from.
Gardening in Canada covers some of the things to think about – and a few things I didn’t think about at all, since they’re pretty irrelevant to our situation. This video is well worth a watch.
After we’ve built more of our raised beds, I think I might do a video about them. Everyone has their own very individual situations to consider. Perhaps it might be useful to people if I go through my thought processes as to why we made the choices we did, and apply that process to their own situation.
I try to keep Sundays as my day of rest, but that doesn’t always work out. Today, I finally did, though not from much choice! 😄
I was awakened early by hungry cats, so I went ahead and did my morning rounds early, too.
The outside cats get rather confused when I come out that early! The sun was barely up. I got a head count of 28 or 29, though.
Also, I can tell when the racoons have gotten in. Now only is the garbage can typically knocked over, but they leave the water bowl absolutely filthy! Ew.
As I was heading back in, these four posed beautifully for me. When I moved to pet them, after taking this picture, the tuxedo with his back to me took off. Syndol, of course, wanted aaaaalllll the pets and pushed the orange and white away to get them. 😄 I tried to pet the tuxedo with more white on its chest. He wouldn’t let me, but he didn’t run away, either. As I pet Syndol, he sniffed my hand – then started giving me kisses!! It was so sweet!
Once back inside, I uploaded and went through the trail cam files. No computer troubles! Yay! I did have a surprise, though. The gate cam is set to take one still image, then a 10 second video. I was going through the stills when I saw a great big racoon near the gate, but the next image… what the heck was that? Something looked to be jumping through the bottom bars of the gate, but I could not tell what it was.
Then I checked the video.
It was a fox!
We know we have foxes around, but very rarely see them. I think we saw a fox crossing the outer yard once, our first summer here? I only vaguely remember.
So… now I’m wondering if we’re feeding foxes in the kibble house, too!
One of these days, I’d love to set up a critter cam facing into the cat shelter area, just to see what visitors we get! Any camera there would have its motion sensor constantly triggered, so I’d be looking for something NOT on batteries.
Maybe some day.
Anyhow.
After going through the files, I tried to get other stuff done on the computer, but was falling asleep at my keyboard, so I finally gave up and tried for a nap. After fighting the cats for space on my bed, they converged on me as soon as I was lying down. Potato Beetle was really cuddly! He kept shoving his face into my hands, and ended up sleeping curled up around the top of my head, with his face snuggled up against my forehead. It was so sweet!
I’m happy to say that, at some point, PBC joined the pile and napped with me, too! She’s getting quite socialized. She still gets a bit standoffish, but likes pets, purrs lots, and cuddles with the other cats.
Speaking of cats.
I heard from the Cat Lady last night. She has someone that’s looking to adopt. It’s an older person who is healthy and living on her own, but is lonely. So she’s looking for a calm and affectionate cat. Given her age, her family has already said that they will take care of the cat when she passes, but that’s unlikely to happen soon. The Cat Lady told her about Ginger, but asked if we had others that might fit the bill. So we sent her pictures and told her about several others, including Cheddar and Potato Beetle. Ginger would still be top of the list. She asked about PBC, but while she’d be great to adopt out, I don’t think she’d be appropriate for someone that’s elderly.
So that information has been passed on. It would be good for Ginger to be away from so many cats, and to have his very own human. Things like his needing help to clean his ears, since he can’t do the ear on the side of his missing leg – something Toni manages to not have a problem with! – have been mentioned. If he gets picked, he will first stay with the Cat Lady as he gets vet checked and shots, etc. first. With our history with cats, that makes me nervous. The vets always seem to find some hidden but major health problem! Okay, so it hasn’t been all of them, but enough to be rather alarming. Not that Ginger has shown any signs of health problems, but then, neither did some others that got adopted out.
Gosh, I feel teary just thinking about giving up Ginger! He’s so sweet. It’s better for him, though.
I just have to keep telling myself that.
So we’ll see how that goes. For all I know, the Cat Lady might have other cats that would be a better fit with this potential adoptee. Whatever happens, happens!
The German Winter Thyme has sprouted. Gosh, they are so tiny! I actually had to wait a day before I could get a picture where they could be seen for what they are.
I expect the oregano to sprout next – unless we have problems like last year. It will be a while longer before I expect to see the peppers sprouting.
We made the living room a cat free zone to protect our house plants. It has a huge east facing window and gets lots of light for a brief period in the morning. After that, it’s a pretty dark room. It’s not too bad for the plants near the window, but our huge jade tree… well… one of them… is against a wall in the middle of the room. We have another that’s gotten just as big, but with needing the window for seedlings, it’s off to one end of the shelf it’s on, and no longer in front of the window. The only light it gets is from the shop lights I have over where the seedlings and small plants are.
Then there are the aloe Vera. They’re on plant shelf near the older jade tree, which puts them pretty low down.
The old jade tree is not doing well. I regularly rotate the pot, so all sides eventually get light – not easy to do, with such big branches, so close to the wall! Unfortunately, I can see the leaves are getting thinner and less succulent, and a lot of leaves are simply shriveled up. It does get adequate moisture, and is in a self watering pot. It’s just not thriving in this location.
There is no room for it, anywhere else.
What we need is a light fixture along that back wall. When we moved here, there was a light fixture in the corner where the big aquarium greenhouse is now. It reaches floor to ceiling, held in place with pressure, and has 3 lights that could have their directions adjusted. It’s in the storage shed now. If that thing still works, we could set it up with standard bulb sized grow lights, near the Jade tree. Those types of grow bulbs are more affordable, anyhow.
Looks like I need to trek through the snow and see what I can find in the storage shed. I hate going in there, though. Every time I do, I’m afraid a cat might sneak in behind me and accidentally get closed in. That shed is so full of my parents’ stuff, we can’t even access most of it, anymore. Lots of places for a cat to hide!
I should grab a daughter to go with me and stand guard!
This is the time of year many are starting their seeds indoors, and there are many growing mediums available. Some swear by ordinary garden soil, straight compost or the compressed pellets of peat or coconut coir – though I hear many in my local gardening groups with a definite hate on for the pellets!! Then there’s potting soil and seed starting mixes.
What to choose? Let a soil scientist explain!
I currently have two different brands of seed starting mix, because those were the ones available at the time I was there to buy them. So far, I don’t see any difference between them.
I had a much interrupted night, so I asked the girls to feed the outside cats. I’m supposed to be trying to get sleep right now, but the interruptions continue!
While a daughter was outside, feeding cats, I checked the weather. Good grief!
Twenty below zero, with a windchill of -27C!!!
And my daughter hadn’t bothered to put on a coat!
She informed me that she was able to pet the super fluffy little tabby.
Today, our high is supposed to be -10C. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach 5C!
The critters outside must be so confused.
Speaking of critters, the raccoons are showing up in the sun room at night, more often. I chased at least 4 out last night!
Anyhow.
I don’t think I’ll be getting that sleep I need. The interruptions just aren’t slowing down! I’m going to be a useless wreck, today. 🙁
But first, the pleasant stuff. Like this adorable beast.
No name here just can’t get enough attention!
This morning, I counted only 20 yard cats while I was feeding them.
This coukd have something to do with it.
The high forecast for today actually changed, increasing from 1C to 2C, within an hour. The forecasts are all over the place! It’s already 1C as I write this, but -10C tomorrow, followed by 4C the day after?
Well, we’ll see what we actually get.
Meanwhile, I’m struggling with my computer again. At first, while trying to upload the trail cam files, it seemed to be the same problem. This time, I just left Windows Explorer to do its thing, and moved onto something else for a minute or so, and UT would work itself through. It was just being incredibly slow. I checked my RAM and CPU status, but there wasn’t anything taking up massive resources to explain it. Eventually, though, it sorted itself out and everything worked fine again. I was even able to go through the back up data on the external hard drive and continue setting the new computer up with it.
It wasn’t Windows Explorer I was having troubles with. I’ve been using Firefox as my browser, but today, it simply stopped loading pages. I checked around and discovered my computer was unloading a couple of gigs to One Drive! All the changes I’d just made were being uploaded. I thought I’d turned off permissions for that.
So I spent some time shutting that, and other things I found, off.
Firefox still wouldn’t load anything.
Looking around some more, I saw it had an update. So I updated it and tried again.
It still won’t load.
The problem isn’t the internet connection, as other things connected are working fine. It’s just Firefox. In fact, I’m using my phone to make this post, while trying to get something – anything! – to load.
At this point, I think I’ll have to try MS Edge and maybe use it to download another browser. Assuming Edge works at all.
What a pain.
The Re-Farmer
Update: Well, it worked. I was able to us MS Edge and ended up downloading Opera. It works fine. I still have no idea why Firefox just stopped working!
Now I have to input all my passwords and bookmarks again. *sigh*
Okay, so I last wrote about the issues I was having with my Windows Explorer. It just kept crashing on me, constantly.
I downloaded and tested two different file manager apps. They both worked perfectly. I had no problem navigating through my system. Even going into the external hard drive was without issue.
The new one. The old one is not even detected right now. I think my old computer corrupted something on it.
I took a break from beating my head against my keyboard, slithered my way in between the cats on my bed and took a nap.
I woke to find a useful comment from Silk (thank you!) suggesting I go to the Windows 11 website. One of those obvious things I probably should have already tried, but I really haven’t had this computer for long.
It turns out that “Windows 11 explorer crashing” is a common enough search term, it was the first term suggested when I started typing it into DuckDuckGo. One of the top results was this link here.
There were a few step by step fixes on the page, and I tried the first one.
Could it really be that easy???
Basically, it was Control Panel>File Explorer Options, select the General tab, open the Open File Explorer drop down menu, and select “this PC”. That’s it.
The screen cap in the instructions showed only “quick access” and “this PC” as options, but mine had a third. When doing the initial set up, after reinstalling Windows, it apparently named my PC with my initials, and that’s what it was set to.
After setting it to “this PC”, I opened explorer and tested it out.
It’s working perfectly.
Not only was I able to navigate through my PC and the external hard drive with zero issues, I found the February sub folder I’d started to upload pictures from my camera into. I’d been able to dump the photos into the folder, but was never able to organize them the way I usually do. I was able to create a series of sub folders and sort all the photos in there, without any issues at all.
While doing my morning rounds, I got this rather serendipitous shot of Shop Towel.
That piece of kibble looks like it’s stuck to the tip of his tongue. 😁
I know the girls named him Shop Towel, since he’s clearly Tissue’s dad. I still think of him as Sad Face. Just look at that poor beat up face and sad, sad eyes! Even his body language, as he moves around the sun room, looks heavy and sad.
Having said that, he seems to be integrating into the colony rather well. Since Judgement got fixed, there has been a dramatic drop in cat fights. They do still happen, but seem more due to being startled, than active “I’m going to kill you” cat fights. He now spends much of his time, curled up on the platform set up in the sun room, sleeping. When I bring the kibble out, I put some right on the cat bed or warming mat he’s always on, so he doesn’t have to jump down and battle it out with the swirling mass at my feet. Given how he looks, I imaging getting up and down may be uncomfortable for him.
Any time I’m in the bathroom, I always look out the window to check on the cats. Often, I’ll see a big pile of cats on the platform, above the heat lamp, and Sad Face curled up and asleep on his own, on the other half of the platform. In the last few days, however, I’ve started to see other cats curled up with him! I wasn’t able to get a picture, but just day ago, I saw Patience with his chin draped over Sad Face’s back. Last night, it looked like there were two or three of the smaller cats, curled up around him.
Five years, he’s been showing up at our place and causing trouble. I managed to sneak up behind him while he was eating and pet him once last summer, and it’s like he’s a whole new cat. We’re now able to pet him regularly, though he still has his nervous times. We need to get him comfortable enough to be able to get him into the big carrier. That’s kept in the sun room right now, with the door open, so they can all be used to going in and out of it. I usually find Judgement sitting on top of it when I go into the sun room!
Yesterday, my husband let me know he had a package in, so after I did my rounds, I headed to the post office. It turns out he got more RAM for my new computer!
Which brings me to my odd computer issues.
I was having insane problems using Windows Explorer. It kept locking up on me. I couldn’t even browse through the folders to get where I needed to go without it locking up. With some things, like uploading trail cam files, I was at least able to right click on the Explorer icon in my task bar and select the trail cam folder from the “recently used” choices. That allowed me to at least be able to make a new folder for the files I needed to upload, but it would lock up and I’d have to end task and start over. When I opened it again, the new folder would be there, at least. When it came time to renaming the folder, it would lock up again, half way through typing the new name, I’d have to end task it, and start over. Then I’d have to do the same thing, over and over, to access the trail cam files through the card reader.
Last night I downloaded and installed the Advanced System Care recommended to me, along with their Driver Booster. I did scans, updated drivers, etc. This system came with only 8g of RAM and we thought that might be the problem, but the ASC actually has a little widget that continuously shows how much RAM is being at any given moment.
By last night, I concluded, it’s not the RAM. I don’t have problems with anything else. The one almost exception was when I tried to test out my video making software. When it came to importing the files – which is basically through Explorer – it would lock up. It was so impossible to work with, I had to give up until we solve this problem. I haven’t even installed my photo editing software yet because, what’s the point?
So there is something wrong with our Windows 11 Explorer.
When the new RAM came in, though, we gave it a try. There was one 8G card, and he says RAM cards should always be paired, so he took out the original one and installed the pair of cards he got. I now have 16g of RAM and I still have 2 slots left. If we get another 8g card and use the original card, we could potentially double my RAM again.
I don’t think that’ll be necessary for the things I do with my computer.
Unfortunately, it made no difference with Windows Explorer. I went to upload the trial cam files, and started having the same problems.
Now, one possible issue is that I’ve been trying to upload these to the new external hard drive that computer repair place backed up my data to. One of the changes in Windows 11 is that the “pictures” folder is now in One Drive, and stored in the cloud. I really don’t want that, but navigating through USB on anything is always going to be slower. So I tried navigating through my local disk and got to the “saved pictures” folder under users. It did fail on me once, but I was eventually able to create a new trail cam folder and upload the files. It seems to me that the photos are now being stored both in my computer, and in the cloud, at the same time. As I went through the files and deleted what I didn’t need to keep, I got a pop up warning me that if I deleted the files, they would no longer be accessible by other devices through the cloud. Which I’m just fine with.
What I also found was that, as I added or deleted things while going through the files and it seemed to lock up again, if I left it alone long enough, it would start working again. So, if I made a new sub folder and it would not appear, I ignored it and did stuff on my phone, until suddenly the folder would appear. I’d then rename the folder, nothing would seem to happen, so I’d work on my phone again, and eventually it would appear. So while Explorer still locks up on me completely, it also seems to just be incredibly, ridiculously slow in responding.
I don’t know what to make of it. Everything else is working fine. Not that I’ve done transferred or installed much from my old computer’s back up data to the new machine, mostly because of this problem.
I wonder if I dare install my photo editing software now? All I’ve got is a very old version of Paint Shop Pro that I’m happy with and, for my uses of it, have no need to upgrade.
Hmm. My husband just came over and suggested I get a different file manager to try, and see if it works any better.
The only thing I had planned for today that was time dependent was a trip to the dump, which opened at 9am today. Everything else was flexible. I figured I may as well head out as soon as I finished my morning rounds. I managed to get this adorable picture of Syndol in the process.
I caught him in mid stretch!
Gosh, he is such a beauty!!!
I also managed to zoom in to get a picture of this next cat. He (she?) is one of the more feral cats. I’m pretty sure he is one of Brussel’s kittens. She had hers well away from the house, and while we eventually saw them running around the shed with the collapsed roof and the garage, they did not come to the house for a very long time. One of them is the orange and white that now accepts pets, but this tuxedo plays strange, still. Hypotenose is also Brussel’s, if I remember correctly. They both have distinctive nose patterns.
There’s also something weird going on with this one’s eye.
I zoomed in, then cropped, to get this picture and finally get a good look at it. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it. We’d have to trap him to get him to a vet, and with so many yard cats, it would be hard to trap any one particular cat.
We did have another cat with an eye that was basically gone. He disappeared some months ago, so I’m guessing the coyotes or bobcats got him. I’d rather think that some local farm family was able to catch him and take him in. At least with this cat, he does seem to still be able to see out of the damaged eye, so that increases his chances of survival. I might still send this photo to the Cat Lady, just to see if she has some information she can share with me.
Speaking of which…
Since my husband asked me to pick up some more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier, plus we had a couple of our big water jugs to refill, after going to the dump, I messaged the Cat Lady, to see if we could meet up at at the nearer Walmart parking lot again. Getting the donated cat food makes it well worth the gas for the trip, and I could run my errands there, as well as locally. Both the distilled water at Walmart and the water jug refills at Canadian Tire are much cheaper there, too. She was available to meet me at our usual spot in the parking lot behind the Dollarama, before her kids came home from school for lunch. I had just enough time to make the drive from the dump and meet her, which worked out perfectly.
We had a chance to chat for a bit – and she got a chance to vent for a bit, too! I can understand why she recommended against us becoming a rescue. People can really suck. All the money to the rescue has been going to spays and neuters. They’ve been paying vet bills out of pocket, both for the rescues and for their own cats (all 27 permanent cats!). I feel bad that they found themselves with so many of our cats, permanently, because they turned out to have so many health problems, they couldn’t get adopted! They did adopt out more than they kept, but still… yikes! I could just feel her frustration with some of the people she’s been having to deal with through the rescue. So we got to commiserate, and I got to give her a great big hug!
She, meanwhile, gave me these.
When she told me about getting a good deal on kibble at Amazon that she ordered for us, she sent me a screen cap. She’d ordered four 7kg bags.
These are 9.1kg bags!! And yes, there are four bags. One is completely hidden by the bag on top of it.
Then she brought out the box of cat treats, catnip, canned cat food and an open bag of cat food for senior cats. Apparently, the cat these were intended for, didn’t like them. Our cats will be more than happy to have it! We are so incredibly grateful for any donations. It helps us out a lot, and many times it means the cats get better quality stuff than we can usually afford.
After we parted ways, I ran my errands at Walmart, then headed to the Canadian Tire to refill our water jugs. The Walmart has a water refill station, but Canadian Tire has three, plus a sanitation station.
Today turned out to be a great day to drive around with errands. Bright and sunny! As I write this, we’re at -3C/27F, and are still expected to reach our high of -2C/28F, but the way things were melting by the time I got home, it feels like it’s warmer. While loading the garbage into the truck this morning, the sun room thermometer was already reading 10C/50! The yard cats are very happy cats these days. 😊
After I got home and everything was unloaded and put away, the inside cats got their first wet cat food feeding of the day. With Butterscotch acting the way she is, we’ve been making sure to close the door to my room before putting food out, so she has a chance to eat, drink and use the litter without being bothered. Since the donated cat food is in smaller tins, I’ve started using those in my room, so she gets an extra treat of fancier food, along with whichever cats are in the room with her. Our elderly Freya is one we can allow to stay, along with Potato Beetle, who has no interest in wet cat food for some reason, and just loafs on my bed.
I’m happy to say that Butterscotch seems to be relaxing a bit. She’s actually come out of her hiding place in the wall shelf, and is now sleeping on the window shelf I built for them, instead.
We think the cat that set Butterscotch off must be Susan, and possibly Leyendecker as well. When Butterscotch sees Susan, she immediately starts growling, even if Susan is not even close to her, and completely ignoring her. She sometimes growls like that at Leyendecker. At least now, she’s growling from her bed on the window shelf, instead of while hidden in the wall shelf. Any progress is good progress!
All in all, it’s been a very productive morning, and I’m glad I was able to make the trip out to meet the Cat Lady! I’m always happy to see her. She is such an awesome person!
Now, it’s time to see how productive the rest of my afternoon can be. 😊
After marking out the weeks backwards from our June 2nd last frost date on our calendar, I then went through my bin of seeds and organized them by when they need to be started indoors. Then I picked out the ones I could get started now.
We won’t be starting everything that we have seeds for.
Starting from the 3-4 weeks list:
I still haven’t decided if we’re going to plant any gourds at all this year. There are several I really want to grow, but we just don’t have the space. With the winter squash, we have the new packet of mixed winter squash seeds to try, plus one type for pies my daughter asked for. With the mixed seeds pack, we will of course want to plant the entire package, and see what we’ve got! I would still like to try the Honeyboat Delicata squash again; the few we got didn’t get a chance to fully mature, but they were great in the pie my daughter made! We also really liked the Pink Banana and Georgia Candy Roaster. There are other varieties that didn’t do well that I want to try again, just so we can decide if we like them or not, but that will depend on how much space we have. The problem is, there are a LOT of things that need to be started in that 3-4 week time span. I’m still not sure if we’ll do cucumbers this year. I’d rather use the space for the melons and winter squash. We’ll be skipping the hulless seed pumpkins this year, but I really want to try the Crespo squash again. Last I saw, Baker Creek didn’t carry the seeds anymore, so I want to successfully grow at least one to collect seeds from!
As for the tomatoes in the 6-8 week list, we’ll not be planting all that we have seeds for. We’ll do the San Marzano paste tomatoes for preserving and the Black Cherry for fresh eating. The free seeds we got are tempting me greatly, and I always want to grow more Spoon tomatoes! They’re just fun. I want to start quite a lot of the San Marzano, but not as many of the cherry tomatoes. I don’t want a situation like last year, where we ran out of space and had to give away so many transplants!
From the 8-10 week list: the Butterfly Flower is a type of milkweed, so I definitely want to get those going. We have three varieties of “early” peppers that I waited to start last year. They have such a short growing season, technically we could direct sow them. It didn’t work out. They didn’t get to produce, though with most of them I now know that the grow bags they were planted in were invaded from below by roots from the nearby Chinese elm. So we’ll definitely need to keep that in mind, when deciding where to transplant them this year. I will be starting fewer seeds, shooting for at least 2 plants per variety in the garden, but between the 6 varieties I’ll be starting this year, we’ll still have plenty for our needs. Hopefully, my family will have peppers of each kind to try, so we can decide which varieties we like enough to keep growing, year after year.
You’ll notice there are no summer squash on my list. Those got moved to the direct sowing bin. I’m not going to have the space to start them indoors. As long as I can keep the slugs away from them, they should be okay to start outdoors.
There were four things I could start today. Since I was after fewer plants per variety, I decided to go with the Red Solo cups to start them in, rather than the larger trays with smaller grow cells.
With the herbs, I’m just doing the oregano and German Winter Thyme again. The chamomile we planted last year should have self seeded, and we’ll see if the spearmint survived the winter in their pot. We ended up not using the lemongrass at all, so I’m not trying them again this year. We’ll plan out our herbs more, as time goes by. The herb seeds are so incredibly fine – especially the oregano! They got surface seeded over the pre-moistened seed starter mix, then covered with a light dusting of dry starter mix to just barely cover them, followed by a spritz to moisten the tops. Vermiculite would have been better, but I don’t have any. The herbs went into two cups each. With such tiny seeds, there’s no way to know how many I managed to sprinkle onto them. I still had seed left over, too, so if they don’t take, I can try again. The oregano really struggled last year, and I ended up with only one surviving seedling to transplant. That one plant did well, at least! They were started in the little Jiffy pellets last year, so I hope they do better in the larger cups and a different growing medium.
I decided to go ahead and plant the last of our Purple Beauty seeds, which are two year old seeds. The first time we planted them was a year of drought and heat waves, and they did very poorly. Last year, what was planted in that bed also struggled, so I think it’s more a problem with the soil in that bed. I split the last 7 seeds of Purple Beauty between two cups.
The Sweet Chocolate peppers were the one pepper that we were actually able to harvest mature peppers from last year, and they were also the only ones I started quite early. We saved seed from them, too, but there was still plenty in the packet, so I used those. There was enough to plant three seeds into each of three cups, with plenty of seed left over. I had intended to do just two cups, like the others, but the bin they’re in for bottom watering holds 9, and I just had to fill in that last space! Yeah, it’s a bit OCD, but I have an excuse. If there are gaps in the bins, the cups tend to fall over more easily when the bins get moved around.
So these are now in the big aquarium, on the warming mat.
The next seeds don’t need to be started until the second half of March, at the earliest.
The Re-Farmer 