I had a wonderfully productive day in the garden today, so I am splitting things up into a couple of posts.
I decided to shift gears today. After looking at what I was wanting to winter sow and where, I decided to leave cleaning up the last two beds in the main garden area for later. Possibly until spring, depending on how things go over the next while. I needed to move on to other areas. Areas I knew would be faster to work on, since I wouldn’t be dealing with the roots and rocks situation!
The priority was going to be the old kitchen garden, but first I decided to do the winter sowing in the garlic bed. I didn’t want to have the plastic cover over the garlic for too long, as I was concerned the mini greenhouse it created might mess with the garlic.
Here is how it looked, after the plastic was removed.
I’d already raked up as many leaves as I could stuff into the wagon and the wheelbarrow for mulching.
As for the plastic, I was going to roll it up for storage, but remembered the low raised bed I had recently cleaned up. The cats have been digging in it, so I tided that up, then just shifted the sheet over.
The boards and bricks that had weighted down the sides against the hoops before are now being used to keep the plastic snug against the soil, and from blowing away. I found a short log that I could roll the excess up into. Later on, I did take all those rocks you can see at the end, and set them on the plastic, under the roll. It is slightly elevated, and the wind was moving it around quite a bit, considering how litter wind we had today. The rocks weighing down the other end weren’t enough, so I found a short board I could wrap the plastic around and weighted that down with the rocks. If it were spring, this would be a good solarization set up. For now, it’ll just keep the soil a bit warmer, and keep the cats from leaving me more “presents”. 😄
Then it was time to get back to the garlic bed, and clear away the hoops. With the twine marking the three rows of garlic, I used those as a guide while using stick to create furrows in between. I went back over them with my hands to lightly compact the bottoms for better soil contact – and remove as many little rocks as I was able to!
For the varieties, I chose American Spinach and Yellow Swiss Chard.
I didn’t mark the rows, so this picture is to help me remember what I planted and where!
I chose this variety of spinach because, after reading the back, it seemed the most appropriate for the location, as well as winter sowing. The Yellow Swiss Chard is a new variety, with an unusual colour for Chard, so I wanted to give it a go. Both packets still have seeds left, so we could potentially do another sowing in the spring, after these have germinated.
The seeds got lightly covered, and gently tamped down, again for better soil contact. I had made the furrows deep enough to form shallow trenches. The soil was damp and didn’t need watering – I don’t want them to germinate too early! – but next year, the trenches will help hold water, in case we end up with another drought year. Plus, it makes it easier to see where the seeds were sown.
You can see that in the next picture, along with the “first” mulching of grass clippings taken from other beds. Because the garlic is so close to the outside of the bed, and the bed has no log frame, I wanted to give the sides extra insulation. When the leaf mulch is removed in the spring, the grass clippings will be left as erosion and weed control.
I was originally going to remove the twine and stakes marking the garlic rows, but decided to leave them, and put the leaf mulch right on top, which you can see in the last photo. I finished off both the wheel barrow and the wagon of leaves before it was done. I got another wagon load to finish mulching the garlic bed, and had just enough left over to mulch the Albion Everbearing strawberries I’d transplanted from their original choked out bed to beside the new asparagus bed. The strawberry plants were still very green! Hopefully, they will survive the winter and we’ll have nice, big strawberries next year.
So the garlic bed is now DONE!!!
With the stakes left behind, the bed will be visible after the snow falls. This area gets very flat with snow in the winter. If we can get at the beds this winter, I would want to dig snow out from the paths and onto the winter sown beds for even more insulation – and moisture – in spring.
That done, I started moving my tools and supplies over to the old kitchen garden, where I wanted to work next, but first, I decided to gather a small harvest.
I dug up just a few Jerusalem Artichoke plants around the edges of the bed, and this is what I was able to gather from under them. I will leave the rest of the bed to overwinter. Later on, I’ll use loppers or something to cut the plants, which are still very green, and drop them on the bed as a sort of mulch.
The Jerusalem Artichokes (aka: sunchokes) did not grow very tall this year, compared to others. I did water it at times but, I’ll admit, it was largely ignored this year. As with everything else, I think the heat, the drought and the wildfire smoke set them back. I think they also got less light this year. The Chinese Elm trees beside them had been pruned, but the branches have grown back. I want to get rid of them entirely, because of the billions of seeds they drop in the spring, but for now we’ll just try to prune them again, when we can.
As for the sunchokes, I noticed a difference this year. For starters, I didn’t find any of those grubs I found so many of, when I harvested this bed completely, last time. Sometimes, I’d find them half burrowed into a tuber – both living and dead! Other times, I’d see the holes, then find a dead grub inside when cutting open the tuber. I was not impressed! This time, I saw zero grub damage. Sweet!
The tubers themselves are actually less nubby, too. A lot of the ones we harvested at the end of the season last year had so many nubs on them, they were hard to clean. This time, there are a couple of nubby ones, but most are smoother. Which I much prefer!
With leaving the rest of the bed to overwinter, I hope that we will have a much better growing season overall, and a lot more plants to harvest from. That seemed to work out when we did it before, as last year’s harvest was quite decent.
This done, I could finally move on to the old kitchen garden and start on the beds there.
Which did take longer than expected, but for a very different reason this time!
I am very happy to say, I got another bed in the main garden area done today!
I decided to work on the trellis bed, as I figured it would take the least time. I was going to loose light fast, and it was getting cold and damp!
This bed had the sunflowers, pumpkins, red noodle beans, onions – mostly self seeded – and self seeded Spoon tomatoes in it.
My first order of business was to loosen the soil enough to pull up the remains of the sunflowers and set them aside in the wheelbarrow, for later use.
You can see how the bed looked, once the sunflowers were out.
From there, I wanted to work the opposite side, where there are still onions. Some grew well and went to seed. Others just sort of disappeared. Still others were tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted along the one side, in hopes they would have enough season to grow.
Most of those disappeared, too.
Some, however, had started to show new growth!
I wanted to dig up what onions survived and replant them as seed onions again.
For the first pass, I just loosened the soil with the garden fork enough to find and remove what onions I could see. A couple of the ones that went to seed were completely spent and went into the wheelbarrow, but all the onions I found were set aside for later.
In the second picture of the above slide show, you can see what I pulled up, plus four tiny onions I’d found while cleaning up elsewhere and set aside for today.
I knew I would find more, once I started doing a thorough weeding, which I certainly did. Quite a few were hiding in the soil. There were a surprising number of larger ones that should have grown and gone to seed this year. Some of them were showing growth only now! In the third picture, you can see the final number of onions I’d found. Most were red onions, but a few little ones were yellow onions. There’s one big yellow onion that had gone to seed.
Cleaning up the bed did go a lot faster than the other beds. What a difference one more log in height makes! I did find tree roots, but nowhere near as many, and not as close to the surface. There were also almost no rocks at all. I was hitting rocks with the garden fork as I loosened soil, but they were further down than what I was clearing of weeds. What few rocks I uncovered could be tossed into the trees. No bucket needed!
Towards the end of the clean up, I was really pushing to get done. I could hear thunder in the distance, and the wind was picking up. I thought I might have to stop before finishing when it started to rain, but then the rain moved on, and I got it done!
Once the weeding was done, I used the landscape rack to pull the soil to the sides to make a trench in the middle. That’s where the sunflower stalks and pumpkin vines got trench composted. I even included the frost killed sunflower heads. They were killed off before any seeds could reach viability, so they should be okay to bury.
Once the stalks and vines were laid out in the trench, I stomped on them a few times. Then I paused to take the next picture in the slide show above, before burying it.
When everything was buried, I raked up the weeds and roots I’d pulled out. In the next picture of the slide show, you can see what was the smallest pile of weeds I’d pulled up yet!
Then, I started planting onions. In the next picture of the slide show, there’s the finished bed and the onions visible. They were planted all along one side, plus the ends.
The last picture is of the row along the side of the bed.
For this bed, I am considering winter sowing one of our shelling pea varieties along the trellis side of the bed, then something planted in the spring, in between.
While these onions are meant to be left to grow seeds, I do intend to start onions indoors for spring transplanting. They would need to be started in January or February.
I’m so glad I got that bed done, and got rained on only a little bit!
There are a couple more beds there to work on that I expect will have a lot more elm roots in them. I am hoping to be able to get at least one bed done tomorrow. Two, if the weather holds!
I’m actually kind of dreading it, though, as I expect the roots to be bad in them.
Meanwhile, as I was putting things away and tidying up, I noticed a lot of dead walking onion stalks and a WHOLE lot more new growth. I cleaned up the dead bits, being careful not to damage any of the new growth. Any bulbils on the stalks I cut away got broken off and returned to the soil for more growth.
There are so many weeds in there, but that doesn’t seem to bother the onions any!
You can also see almost all the herbs in the tiny raised bed are doing well. Just the basil got killed by the cold. The chives are also doing well, and some are even blooming!
By the time all that was done, I was more than happy to get inside to warm up with a hot cup of tea and supper…
… plus my daughters’ fresh baked cookies, for dessert.
All in all, it was a productive day, even in the garden, after being gone for so long!
Since we needed to get cats into carriers and meet someone in town with them in the mid morning, I headed out to feed the outside cats earlier than of late. In the summer, I would go out to feed them quite a bit earlier, as I would be awakened by the sun by 5 or 5:30am. Now, the sun doesn’t rise until almost 8am. The cats were rather confused about being fed while it was still dark! Which did make it easier to get through the door, at least.
It also made for a beautiful sunrise while I continued to do my morning rounds.
The photo does not do it justice. The horizon was aflame in red and orange!
I headed out again a short while later to get the carriers ready, and find the cats we were to bring in. Pinky was in the catio, snuggled up with her two that were going out together. The cat with the infected ear was in the sun room. And the kittens?
In their favourite spot, for full belly cuddle puddles.
My daughter came out to give me a hand but, by the time she got there, I had already put the cat with the messed up ear into a carrier. I couldn’t believe how easily she went in! Then we got the three littles. The friendly white and grey that went in is in the cuddle puddle on the left of the first photo. That one, I believe, is female. The super friendly white and grey tabby (a male) was buried in the cuddle puddle and came out on his own. Both were quite easy to put into the biggest carrier, which opens from the top as well as one end.
Then it was time to look for the friendly tuxedo. There are several of them, and two of them are very hard to tell apart, except that one will allow pets.
We ended up getting a different friendly tuxedo. This one was easier to tell apart, even though the markings are almost identical, because it’s fluffier. I have no idea if it’s male or female.
Once the carriers were closed up, they weren’t happy, so my daughter grabbed our squeeze treat supply and gave them treats through the carrier doors while I grabbed two more carriers to get the siblings.
The white and grey male came to check things out as soon as I put the carriers down. He was easy to snuggle, then put into a carrier. Smokey, I had to pick up from the bed in the catio, where she was still snuggling Mom, but she started purring as soon as I held her. She got a snuggle, and was also easy to get into the carrier.
I felt bad about Pinky, though. She doesn’t get along with the other cats, and here I just took away here teenagers she was snuggling!
This was all done so quickly, I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t want to leave them out in the carriers until I had planned to leave. I’d already brought the truck out of the garage, so my daughter and I got them in, and I left ridiculously early. You can see them, all stacked up, in the second photo of the slide show above.
My daughter took care of the gate for me, so I didn’t have to disturb the cats by stopping to get in and out a couple of times. I did remember to pull over to send a message to the woman I was meeting, letting her know I would be very early!
Unfortunately, the cats did not like what was going on, and it wasn’t long before I could smell that someone had a stress poop! By the time it was all done, three carriers needed to be cleaned out when I got home. 😞
Once I was parked, I split our last two squeeze treats between the carriers. Some of them were too stressed to eat any of it, though. I was able to get pictures through each carrier door, though, which are the next four photos of the slide show above.
I was going to leave the door open so they could get some sun and fresh air, but the wind was blowing straight into the truck, and it was too cold! So I got to sit and wait for over an hour, with the windows cracked open just a bit. All but the tiny white and grey tabby seemed to settle in. The vocal one is just always vocal, though.
When the lady from the rescue arrived with her husband, she said she first wanted to transfer over the donated kibble they were giving us. I opened up the box of the truck – which is where the stinky carriers were going to go as soon as they were empty! – as she brought over a big bag of kibble.
Then a second bag.
Then a third bag. !!!
I was so happy. We were running low of kibble for both the inside and outside cats, and I was going to possibly drive to a Walmart to get more. The inside cats don’t like the feed store kibble and were barely eating, and I’d just emptied the kibble bin for the outside cats this morning.
Then she told me, there was more, and came back carrying two more big bags!
She told me there was more, and came out with a box. Inside were several small bags of higher end donated kibble. She told me they were past their best before date, but they had not been opened, and would be fine. There turned out to be three small bags in that box.
Then she brought over a sixth big bag!
Finally, she came out with one more bag, inside a bag. It was a medium sized bag of kibble that had never been opened, but her dog had got at it and tore a hole through it, so she put it in a recycling bag to bring it over.
I was over the moon! I thought a couple of bags, maybe, but six big bags, plus the smaller ones?
Needless to say, I was profuse in my expressions of thanks.
Then it was time to transfer cats.
We started with the one with the messed up ear. That one was growling, so she actually went into their truck, handing one of the carriers over to her husband so she could get in, and closed the door, just in case she escaped. When she came out with my empty carrier, she said they got her, but she did get bit. Then she noticed her finger was starting to bleed quite a bit. I noticed she had blood beading on her forearm, too! She brushed it off, though, and we went to transfer the kittens.
That went much more easily! We could set up on the tailgate of my truck, with carriers face to face, and quickly get them over. She had a larger carrier for the three kittens, and they were much easier to transfer over, from the top of one carrier, then through the top of another.
As we were doing this, we chatted. She told me they are short on fosters, so they’ve had to stop intakes. She herself has 26 cats in her house! I don’t know if that counts our 6 or not.
I had mentioned feeling sad for Pinky, losing her babies like that. She said they would see about grabbing her, too, since she’s a friendly. She and Frank are the two we could catch for spays, without having to trap. Frank is also high on the priority list. She’s so small, I’m amazed she survived being pregnant, and we definitely don’t want her getting pregnant again. They have spots available for spays and neuters, but she doesn’t know which clinic, as the rescue they’re connected with for that is up north in one of the reserves. They don’t have a clinic there.
I mentioned we have three super friendly teenagers, but they’re male, and we really need to get the females spayed as a priority. They will also help us adopt out some of the indoor cats, too. For those, we could be the “fosters”.
Once everything was done, we went our separate ways. I brought our water jugs for refilling, so I just parked closer to the grocery store (we met at the far end of the parking lot). Thanks to the very generous donation of kibble, I was able to use the money that would have gone for cat food for groceries and gas for ourselves.
What a novel concept!
The grocery store carries 2L of milk in the plastic jugs. The grocery store in my mother’s down now carries only the cartons, which my mother struggles to open, or even hold. I hadn’t called my mother about her grocery shopping – I didn’t have the energy to argue about how she needs to have a shopping trip done before she runs out of everything – but she is always running out of milk, so I got her a 2L jug.
A gas station near the grocery store had prices down to $1.229/L, where the other two stations in town were still at $1.269. I had some cash and was at just under half a tank, so I got $25 in before I left for my mother’s town.
Much to my surprise, when I got to her town, the two gas stations there were at $1.199! That town never has lower prices than the town we usually go to!
I went straight to my mother’s to deliver her jug of milk. I hadn’t called ahead, so it was a surprise for her. She was actually happy to see me. Normally, she hates surprises and complains.
I told her I was on my way home and couldn’t stay, but that our usual grocery store had the plastic jugs, and I knew she’d be running out of milk, so I got it for her. She was happy with that, too! I did open it for her before putting it in her fridge. I actually had a hard time getting the cap off myself; she would have really struggled. Then there was the seal underneath. The kind with the plastic tab you lift and pull on to get the seal off. Something else my mother would not have been able to do on her own! She would have used a knife to cut into it, instead.
I asked her about her grocery shopping and she told me, now that I brought her milk, she didn’t need one. In the end, it was decided that I would go her shopping on Wednesday, since I will be there for her appointment with home care to reassess her care needs, anyhow.
Then, after checking on the budget, I stopped to get more gas before heading home. That worked out rather well, in the end!
Once home, I backed into the yard to unload. The cats were very curious when I opened up the tail gate and started unloading kibble and carriers! I had to give them a feeding before I could move the truck safely.
Pinky came over to eat while I was filling bowls, so I stopped to pet her – and discovered an injury on one paw! One of her nails is flipped up and sideways! I have no idea of it’s a fresh injury or not – there’s no bleeding – and she doesn’t seem to be favouring it. She wouldn’t let me check it out, though.
I was able to get a picture and send it to the rescue group chat. I got some questions about it and, in the end, I’m just to keep an eye out for if it gets infected. She’s already on the priority list to bring in.
This evening, just as I was getting ready to start this post, I got an update on the cats.
The adult that bit her took a while to come out of the carrier to eat, and is now settling in. Smokey and her brother have been absolutely delightful, and are eating well. The littles all needed face washes, which they got. Because they are so small, she checked with me to see if they were eating solid food, and when they were born. They would have been born in June, at the latest, and none of the kittens are nursing now. They’re just really small! They’re definitely interested in food now. The tuxedo was hiding for a while, but is coming around.
We talked about the one with the messed up ear for a bit. I told her that there’s a possibility that she’s one of ours from last year that disappeared for the summer, then came back – but if she’s the one that I’m thinking of, she bulked up a lot! I could see no sign that she’s been pregnant, which would be unusual. She was shy but friendly when she showed up. I suspect she might have been dumped in the area and eventually found us, food and shelter. Given how scared she was during transport and exchange, even to the point of biting, if she had been dumped, that would explain her behaviour.
They are all in good hands now. Ear cat will get the vet care she needs. The teenagers will get vetted, spayed and neutered. Well, maybe not neutered, yet. I don’t think his balls have dropped, yet. The littles will need more time, of course. They are way too small for spays or neuters, but they will get vetted. I suspect they will all be treated for ear mites and possibly worms.
I expect Smokey in particular will be adopted out quickly. Hopefully, together with her bother, as a bonded pair.
Once all that was done, it was still early enough and light enough that I wanted to get some work done outside, and I actually managed to do it . That will be for my next post!
Today turned out to be too damp to work on more garden beds outside. Another day lost when there are very few days left to get the beds ready for winter sowing. Hopefully, I’ll get more progress done over the next couple of days. After that, we’re supposed to have another day of rain, and then it’s actually supposed to slowly warm up a fair bit, so I should still have time to get beds ready and winter sowing done.
While I’m focusing on the main garden beds right now – they are the largest and most difficult, thanks to the tree roots I’m battling – we do actually still have things growing! The greens mix I sowed in the old kitchen garden still has a few things that have done quite well with the frosts we’ve had.
The most visible are the Swiss Chard. We’ve just been harvesting leaves from the larger plants as we want some, and they soon fill out with more.
The first photo in the slide show above show the two largest of them – the ones we’ve harvested from the most! There are other, smaller ones in the bed. These had germinated in areas where the kohlrabi was growing, so they got shaded out. Interestingly, I harvested a few kohl rabi but cutting the stems at the bases, rather than pulling the whole plant, and the stumps are growing new leaves!
All of the winter sown seed mixes had onions seeds, which didn’t make it, for the most part. This bed has a few poking up, including a few clusters of greens. As those greens have gotten bigger, however, their leaves turned out to be flat! They look like garlic! Now, we did have a couple of garlic show up in this bed. In a previous year, we planted garlic in it, and it seems a couple of cloves that hadn’t germinated then, survived to germinate this year. The thing is, this bed was completely reworked to make the soil as fluffy as possible before the winter sown seed mix was added. I never saw garlic cloves. Looking at the clusters, if those are garlic, they look like they are growing out of a whole bulb of cloves, not individual ones!
I’ll be digging them up as I clean the bed and, if they are indeed garlic, they will be replanted and mulched for the winter.
One of the garden related things I did today was start going through the seeds I’d collected and set out to dry in the cat free zone, aka: the living room. Today, I started jarring some of them up.
In the first photo, I’ve got some of them in spice jars that were gifted to us. There are the mixed Jewel nasturtiums, radish seeds from whatever plants had pods ready (we had 4 or 5 different types of radish in the root vegetable seed mix), Super sugar snap peas, and the Hedou Tiny bok choy. I had to look up the name for those. I keep wanting to call them Hinou instead of Hedou, and I don’t know why!
In the next picture, I’ve separated carrot seeds out from their clusters. Same with the onion seeds, after that. The last picture is the Jebousek lettuce seeds I’d collected by trimming off the stalks. They are now separated out from their stalks and will be left to dry out some more. Some of them are still surprisingly green.
I’ve also started planning on where I want to do the winter sowing, and choosing what will go where. There are a number of things I need to consider. Some faster growing/maturing things will be planted closer to the house, while stuff that will take much longer before they can be harvested will be further from the house. Some will need extra protection from deer and/or insect damage. Others will be interplanted with things that will be sown or transplanted in the spring. I’m even considering things like which things will get harvested the most often, for the high raised bed.
Which means none of what I’ll be winter sowing. That bed is going to get bush beans again. Must easier on the back to harvest from there! I had bush beans in there a few years ago, and it was SO much easier to find and pick the beans.
I picked up so many seeds, taking advantage of MI Gardener’s sales on their already low priced (even taking into account the dollar difference) seeds, that we have lots of extras, and that doesn’t even take into account the seeds I already have in stock. We can pick and choose what we want to try growing this year. I’ll be going through them with my daughter’s, too, to see what interests them.
In other things…
We’ve heard from the company that’s replacing our door and frame. Today was out, because of rain, and the installers don’t do Saturdays, so Monday is the earliest it will be installed. Monday, however, has a 70% chance of rain, so it will likely be done on Tuesday. I have my eye appointment on Tuesday, and my daughter will have to drive me home, but it’s not until the afternoon, so that’s not an issue.
I’ve also been in touch with the woman who is taking 6 yard cats tomorrow, with a time and place to meet arranged. She says she has a kibble donation for us, too, which is greatly appreciated! The three littles are so small, they can go into the same carrier together. Being together will probably help keep them calmer, too. Four carriers in the truck will be much easier to arrange than six! Especially since I want to refill a couple of water jugs while I’m in town.
This evening, before the light was gone, I got my mother’s angel statue set up by the trail cam, facing the gate. I hope I’ve secured it to the block it’s on well enough. It’s rather top heavy. Ideally, it would be secured to a post hidden behind it. Maybe with something pretty, or at least a neutral colour to match the neutral colour of the statue, around her waist so it looks like it’s supposed to be there. When I’m able to, I’ll drag out some larger rocks to set around the bottom to hide the block it’s on for now. Eventually, the rocks will form the walls of a slightly raised flower bed around the base of the angel.
I’m even thinking of moving my mother’s Mary statue to be part of the display. It’s currently mostly hidden by the mock orange beside the laundry platform. Unlike the angel, though, this statue is concrete. It weighs anywhere from 80-100 pounds. No chance of that one blowing away in the wind!
This will be a longer term work in progress. It’s going to involve a lot of digging and the hauling of a lot of heavy rocks! For now, the main priority is to make sure the angel doesn’t get blown over. Especially now that we know how easily it breaks!
I haven’t told my brother that I’ve set it up, yet. I am pretty sure he’ll be coming out this weekend again. He still has plenty to do with his own stuff, but our motion sensor light over the door has stopped working. We thought it just needed a new bulb and tested it by turning it on manually, but it still didn’t work. I think he intends to replace it completely, since he asked me to send him pictures of it in daylight, after I sent him a video of the light occasionally flashing like a strobe light.
In the end, even though I didn’t get stuff done outside because it was so wet, I did manage to have a productive garden related day!
I’m really chafing about not getting those beds ready faster, though! 😄😄
Well, no surprise that the forecast changed overnight. Instead of rain all day on Friday, the rain started here last night, and continued off and on throughout the day.
Thankfully, it was a light rain.
As usual, I started out the day with feeding the outside cats. Before starting on softening the bowl of kibble, I quickly tossed a scoop full through the screenless storm door window to tide them over and distract them, first. I still have gelled turkey stock and meaty bits to mix into to their morning kibble with hot water and some canned cat food, too. Once I got it all mixed up, I left it to soak for a few minutes.
I’d seen on the critter cam that they’d somehow knocked the big cat carrier off its shelf, and it was in the middle of the floor, so I knew it would be in the way as I stepped out of the old kitchen. I snagged a daughter for cat herding duty, then tried to get through the doors as quickly as possible.
There were cats and kittens trying to get in, while others were milling around and eating the kibble I’d tossed in earlier.
Including a strange new ca….
Not a cat.
There, in the crowd of cats and kittens munching away, was a skunk! It and the cats were completely indifferent to each other!
As I got through and added softened kibble to several trays, I paused to pick up the carrier while my daughter dealt with the cats that managed to get through the doors before she could close the storm door. The skunk did leave while I was doing that, as did some of the more feral cats. It seemed unbothered by me as well as the cats!
Not a good thing, but there isn’t much we can do about it.
Once the feeding and watering was done (I’m bringing warm water to top up their bowls now, instead of using the hose, which will soon be put away for the winter), I did my morning rounds. My weather app said it was raining, but it seems our climate bubble was doing its thing again.
With the trellis netting and other stakes and supports done, the deer could access the sunflowers. I’d already grabbed the seed heads that looked like they might have viable seeds in them, so the remaining ones had immature seed heads on them. A couple of the tallest ones were untouched, but the shorter ones were either broken with the seed heads eaten, or the entire stalks were munched down to just a couple of feet in height.
Cheeky buggers!
After the morning rounds were done, I popped inside long enough to have breakfast, then headed out to work on the next garden bed.
I decided to work on the log framed low raised bed. I hoped it would not be as bad as the last two beds I worked on. This one had the failed melons, the successful, if stunted, Spoon tomatoes and the failed purple beans and Swiss chard.
The first picture is how it looked after the grass clipping mulch was removed. There were very few weeds and most of those were crab grass.
The question was, how bad were the tree roots?
Since I would be dealing with rhizomes, I started by loosening the soil of the entire bed before I started clean up at the south end of the bed. This is the end furthest from those trees we need to get rid of, being the source of so many of our problems.
I started finding roots right away. The bed is 18 feet long, plus it’s another dozen feet or so to the nearest trees on the north side.
This bed turned out to not only have fewer normal weeds than the other beds, but fewer rocks, too. As for the roots, the closer to the middle of the bed that I got, the harder it was to get the tree roots out. With some of them, it was because the roots were running under the log wall. I could also feel that there was a large root, somewhere deeper below the bed, because I was finding roots that were basically growing vertically from something deeper than I was going with my garden fork, not horizontal, as usual. By the time I got to the middle, though, even with the pre-loosened soil, there were too many roots I couldn’t pull out of the soil, so I went to the north end to work my way back to the middle.
I promptly hit a larger root.
After fighting around it with my garden fork, I went and got a spade to dig around it, plus the loppers. I was able to cut away one larger root that I found in the process, but it was not the one causing me the most problems.
That’s the one you can see in the second picture of the slide show above.
This was not the root that was causing an issue further down the bed, though. This one ran diagonally across the bed, so I was able to use the loppers to cut it close to where it went under the log frame.
In the next picture, you can see where I’d made my way closer to the middle, and some of the other roots I was having issues with. Some would have to be dealt with when working the other side of the bed.
In the last picture of the above slide show, I had finished clearing one side. At the middle, I’d pretty much dug a pit to try and get the roots out.
In the end, though, there weren’t as many roots to fight with as in previous beds. There wasn’t even as many rocks to remove. The amount I had in the bucket after getting the first half done was about what I’d picked from a third of one side on the other two beds I cleared!
It had started to rain while I was working on this. A light and gentle rain, so I kept working, but I was getting pretty damp by the time I finished the one side. It was well past noon by then, so I headed in for sustenance and hydration.
I took my time with my late lunch, which turned out to be a good thing.
I got a phone call from home care, just as I was wrapping up and getting ready to head out again.
They were unable to find someone to do my mother’s evening med assist for Friday evening. They were still working on finding someone, but it was possible I might have to cover for Saturday and Sunday evenings, too.
!!!
Then they told me, they did actually have someone available, but this home care worker was male, and my mother had said she didn’t want men doing her med assist, so they were stuck.
?????
I hadn’t heard about this at all. My mother hadn’t had anything negative to say about the male home care workers, either, other than to mention that they were “from other places” (meaning, recent immigrants that weren’t white). But for her to say no men at all?
We talked about it for a bit, and I told them I could call my mother to find out what was going on. They told me that, if anything changed, to call the number for the home care coordinator (it was the scheduler and a new trainee that had called me) to talk about it.
After the call, I quickly updated my family, as well as my siblings in our group chat, then called my mother. There was no answer so I left a message. I puttered around on my computer while waiting, staying close to the phone, but I didn’t have a lot of time before the home care office would close for the day, plus I was going to start losing daylight to work outside. After a few minutes, I tried again.
This time, my mom answered just as the answering machine picked up. She’d been in the common room and was just coming back when the phone started ringing, so she’d never heard my earlier message.
I told her about the call from home care, that they didn’t have anyone to cover for Friday night’s med assists, and possibly Saturday and Sunday, too. Before she could start going on about how terrible they were, I told her that they actually did have someone available, but it was a male, and they told me she’d said told them, no male.
My mother confirmed this. She had called the home care office and told the home care coordinator, she didn’t want any med doing her med assists.
I asked more questions, and she said she didn’t want a man rubbing the Voltaren onto her bad and seeing her partially naked body. Which, as far as I knew, was something only done in the mornings, as they have extra time booked for stuff like that. She admitted, she had never asked one of the guys (it turns out there are three different male home care workers that have been visiting her) to do it, but eventually said that, if they had been women, she would have asked them to. She also admitted that they have never been unkind to her, and had never caused problems – unlike for example, one of the female home care workers recently not bothering to count my mother’s meds from the bubble pack, and one was missing. It turned out to have fallen to the floor. Or another that always leaves without making sure my mother took her meds, first.
The conversation got very intense as she tried to blame home care for not having enough people, etc. She was all over the place with it, and I kept having to bring it back to it just being about her getting her med assists. Eventually, though, we got to the heart of the issue.
My mother didn’t want brown people doing her med assists.
I had no patience with this and pointed out that, because of her not liking brown people, I might have to do her evening med assists, three nights in a row. She tried to make it their fault, saying “they” (the home care office) did this to me but I told her, no SHE is doing this to me.
In the end, I got her to agree to have a male med assist only to do her meds. No rubbing the Voltaren onto her back. If they were doing a morning assist, they could still do her commode, but no back rubs. If she’s uncomfortable with being touched like that, fair enough, but at least they could do her pills.
Once we got that decided on, I told her I had to call the home care office back quickly, as the office wasn’t going to be open for very much longer. She kept going on and on, keeping me on the phone, even after I told her I had to get the call done as quickly as possible. She did, however, finally talk about getting extra home care services, though in a way that had me rather confused, but I didn’t care at that point. We’ve been trying to get her to accept more home care services for quite some time now, and she’s been refusing, even though she really needs more help. I told her I would bring it up with the coordinator when I called her, and they would probably need to make an appointment with her to discuss it, but I needed to get off the phone to call the office. She STILL tried to keep me on the phone and I finally had to cut her off so I could hang up and make the call.
Thankfully, the home care coordinator was in her office at the time, so I was able to talk to her and not just leave a message. I told her about the situation and that I’d talked to my mother about it. I said that my mother had agreed that, as long as it didn’t involve rubbing the medication onto her back, she was willing to accept male home care aids. The coordinator filled me in on the call from my mother and, apparently, one of the men did offer to rub the medication onto her back for her, and she’d said no. I told her that, if the workers visiting her were women, she would be asking them to do her back, but not the men. Which would have been an understandable restriction, but the home care coordinator knows my mother by now, and she already figured out it was really about race.
So that was taken care of. They would be able to schedule men for my mother’s med assists, with the one restriction regarding applying the medication onto my mother’s back.
I then brought up about my mother bringing up her need for more care, and the first question she asked was, is my mother willing to accept more care? Which has been the biggest problem. My mother simply refusing it. I told her that yes, she is willing to do it.
My mother was due for her annual re-assessment anyhow, so we quickly made an appointment for next weed. Along with the care assessment, the coordinator wanted to go over the panel for a nursing home again, as that needed to be updated, too. I told her about how my mother can barely get around her apartment of later, needing to hang on to furniture or the walls to move around, and how I’d actually heard her crying out in pain at times, when I was last at her place to help out with things.
That done, I called my mother back with the appointment time and updated my family.
Grommet was very determined to “help”. Usually by being directly in front of me while I worked, trying to give my hands kisses, or even trying to climb up my legs for attention!
The second side was done a lot faster, thankfully. Here is the finished bed!
The bed actually seems fuller, now that the soil is all fluffy again, instead of compacted. I’m out of stuff to cover it to protect if from the cats, though. When it comes time to do winter sowing in there, I’ll have to watch out for “presents” from the cats!
While working on the bed, I did find three frogs! One had come out of the mulch on its own. I was able to catch it and release it in and area where it would be able to burrow down for the winter. While picking rocks and roots, I uncovered two more frogs! I’m so glad I didn’t accidentally stab them with the garden fork. I was able to catch and move them to a safe place, too.
It was still pretty light out when I was finished, but not for long enough to start another bed. Instead, I did my evening rounds. While I was at it, I cleared up the pile of regrown maples my brother had cut away from the back of the pump shack for me. I set aside the straightest pieces for use in the garden, and the rest went onto the burn pile. Later on, I’ll trim the trigs and side shoots off the straight pieces, then bring the useable pieces to the old kitchen garden. They will made good stakes for the bed that still needs the wall on the inside to be finished.
Now that I have written this, I realize I’ve not switched out the trial cam memory cards yet, and it’s full dark right now. That’s the down side of changing from switching them in the mornings! Ah, well. I’ll survive.
Time to shoe up, grab a flash light, and go take care of that!
One more bed is done. Three more in the main garden area to go!
I’d say I did have a productive day today, though not quite how I originally planned.
Being a warmer day, I was going to head outside to work in the garden earlier, but with my telephone appointment from the sports injury clinic in the afternoon, I decided I didn’t want to be working in the dirt before handling the phone.
So I worked with epoxy, instead.
My mother had an angel statue in her apartment for many years. It’s meant to be outdoors in a yard or garden, but she kept it in her living room. It’s about three and a half feet tall and, I’ve determined today, made of fiberglass.
My mother has been trying to get us to take things or claim things of hers for when she “goes up up”, and she decided the angel should go here to the farm. My brother and I decided that it will be set up by the gate, for our vandal to see the next time he gets all creepy for the cameras again. My mother loved that idea!
As we were taking it from her place, though, my brother discovered one of the wings was cracked. We didn’t want water to get in, so we wanted to use some epoxy on it to seal it up, first.
I decided I would do this today, so that we could get it outside by the weekend. We already have a spot for it, with a chunk of old side walk block for it to stand on. I just have to figure out how to secure it, or the angel will go flying in the wind!
I had picked up some clear epoxy for it. When my brother came out this past weekend, he brought me some clear epoxy for it, too – the exact same stuff that I’d picked up! So we have extra now. 😁
The type I got has a plunger that squeezes out both the resin and hardener in equal amounts at the same time, which made things easy. I mixed a bit up and applied it to the crack. There’s no way to clamp such an odd shape, though, so I had to try and press the edges of the crack together with my hands while the epoxy set.
So now I had to figure out how to set the angel so I could use gravity to help me hold the wing in place, so I could epoxy the whole thing together. At least we could see that no water would get into the body of the angel.
As I tried setting the angel flat on the floor, I heard another cracking noise.
The angel is holding a bird in its hands. I just broke a wing tip off.
*sigh*
I was able to lean the angel against a shelf, applied the epoxy to the wing and had to stand there and hold it in place for at least 5 minutes, which is what the packaging says is the set time. It was probably closer to 10 minutes before I felt I could let it be and could go do something else for awhile.
While I was standing there, holding the wing in place, I could see on the other wing why it broke off so easily. The wings were added onto the angel separately, and I could see a seam where the wing joined the body.
You can see on the second picture, how it looked before I finally dared straighten the angel back up again. Then I mixed up a bit more epoxy, and attached the broken wing tip onto the bird. I had to sit there and hold it in place, too. This time, I remembered to use the timer on my phone. After 5 minutes, I moved away to start putting away the epoxy syringe into its packaging when I heard a clunk. The wing tip fell off! So I held it for another 10 minutes. It seems to be holding fine, now.
When it gets set out, I’ll probably just find a way to tie it down to the concrete base to keep it from blowing away, for now. Eventually, I will make a little flower garden around it. Since that area is lower and tends to flood in the spring, I am thinking to dig out some of the sod in the lower area, where I can see someone started to make a ditch at some point, and use that as the base to build up soil around the agnel. I am thinking of bringing rocks to frame the flower bed. Digging up sod from nearby will create a deeper, mini-pond like area for the spring run off to collect in, and maybe I won’t be slogging through water when switching out the trail came for a change!
That is for the future, though. The important thing is so make sure the wind won’t carry the angel away!
Like it tried to do with this tree I noticed while doing my evening rounds today.
We never heard it go down, but it clearly came down during the recent high winds. You can see the difference in the wood from the freshly fallen tree and one that fell many years ago.
This tree is one of the ones I wanted to harvest for raised bed walls. It’s hung up on other trees, but pretty low to the ground, so I should be able to harvest it to use in the garden, still.
Anyhow…
After I got the angel done, I basically just stayed indoors until I got my call. The doctor was right on time, too! It was a very quick call. When the doctor asked how I was doing, I was able to give him a glowing report on what a huge difference the injection made for my hip. From the sound of his voice, I don’t think he gets such an enthusiastic response very often! 😄 In the end, all he had to do was tell me to get back to them should I have issues again in the future, and we were done.
When it was time to head outside, my daughter came out with me to help put away the things I organized last night. I fed the cats first, and she took advantage of that to try and pet as many kittens as possible. There are a few that are starting to allow touches, if not outright pets.
Smokey was purring and snuggling and enjoying every minute of it!
Oh, she is going to make someone very happy when she gets adopted out!
Just a few more days, and she’ll be off to the rescue with her brother, along with four others, for fostering as they get prepped for adoption. She and her brother, plus one other cat, are large enough for spays and neuters. The three littles we’ll be snagging will need to grow bigger before they are ready.
Once my daughter sadly put Smokey down, she went ahead of me to the old garden shed to make some space in it, and get the rolling seat in, first. From there, I started bring stuff over for her to put away in an organized fashion. She’s very good and Tetrising things!
Once everything was put away, I wanted to finally finish off the garden bed I’ve been working on for way too long now! Between being pulled away to other things, and the weather, it’s been very slow going even without the issues with roots.
I had so little left to do, but there were so many tree roots in there! I can’t believe how bad it was! No wonder the peas and carrots didn’t do as well as they could have. It wasn’t just drought conditions! I’m amazed they survived at all, with so many roots choking them out.
Once the bed was leveled out some more – the back of a fan rack is great for that – I brought out the plastic that was used to cover the winter squash, folded in half, so the big hole was not an issue, and set that over the bed, to protect it from cats until I can winter sow into it. Even while I was working on it, not only was I finding “presents” the cats had left, but when I stepped away to do things, like get the loppers to cut the larger roots, I came back to find fresh presents in the soil! Grommet (you can see him in the second photo) was particularly interested in what I was doing and, at one point, was about to use the spot I was working on, like I’d dug it out just for him to use as a litter box, while I was right there, picking out roots, weeds and rocks!
What a cheeky bugger!
That done, it was time to head inside for sustenance and hydration that my daughter prepared for me. I didn’t head out again as, by the time I was done, it was getting too dark.
Meanwhile, I’ve heard back from the company about our main entry door replacement. The door was delayed during the pre-painting process, but it will arrive tomorrow afternoon (Thursday). The guy was working on booking the installers, but it’s expected to rain on Friday, so he’s hoping they can come in on Saturday.
*sigh*
I’m looking at the forecast now. It has changed, of course. We are now expecting to get rain starting tomorrow afternoon, continuing off and on through Friday.
Which means that if I’m going to get more beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing, I’d better be getting out there much earlier tomorrow!
Hopefully, the remaining beds won’t be as ridiculously full of roots like this one was, and they will go faster! There are four beds left to do in the main garden area – these are the 18′ long ones, so I want to get them done, first. There is a 9’x3′ bed, plus a 4′ square bed to do in the east garden area, and then the old kitchen garden needs to be done. Once the main garden beds are done, the others should go a lot faster. Aside from being smaller beds, they shouldn’t have as many tree roots growing up into them!
Looking at the long range forecast, it does look like we’ll have the weather to get this done. Amazingly, it has changed from the possibility of snow in the last week of October (I can’t believe the month is half gone already!), to warmer temperatures, and even a day that’s forecast to hit a high of 20C/68F! Then it’s supposed to rain during the last 5 days of October. That’s when we’ll be doing our city stock up trips, so that actually works out for me.
Of course, the forecast will change when I look at it again, tomorrow. I’ll take what I can get for pleasant weather, though. It’s not as pleasant as the one fall where we got our first frost in November, but still better than getting snow storms, like some have gotten up north already, but I’ll take what I can get!
Yes, there was frost on the cover but, if you look at the next photo in the slide show above, much of that frost was coating the inside of the cover!
I waited until things warmed up after I’d run my errands today before taking the cover off to see. In the third photo, you can see that all the plants were killed by frost. The next few photos are of the winter squash that seemed to have survived the cold. Two Baked Potato and three Mashed Potato squash made up the littler harvest you can see in the last photo of the slideshow above. The little ones should still be okay to eat. I am curious if the largest one has mature seeds inside. These are not varieties that produce large squash, so that one might actually be the full mature size.
That done, I then started working on gathering up all the hoops and stakes and netting and protective collars. The plastic cover that was over the winter squash got folded up length wise – it has a hole in it but, folded in half lengthwise, it should still be useable – a couple of times before getting rolled up.
Folding a very long, damp sheet of plastic took quite a while! Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind, but what little breeze there was sure didn’t help!
The trellis netting and the stakes holding them got taken down. Finding a way to store the netting, which has 4″ squares, without getting it all tangled took some doing.
For the past while, I’ve been putting the material together by the tree stump bench near the old garden shed. Aside from what is still covering the garlic, I think I’ve been able to gather everything from all the garden beds. I’d already partially sorted and bundled some of it. Today, I worked on finishing off the organizing, bundling and collecting it all.
The first photo above is how the garden looked, after I took all the stuff down. The garlic bed will be done after I’ve winter sown something with it, then give it a thick mulch of leaves. Until then, the cover is needed to protect the bed from cats wanting to use is as a litter box!
The next photo is all my bundles of stakes, hoops, the hoop nets I can still use, and even the twisted up wire hoops. I’ve got my soaker hoses all rolled up. The garden hoses will be done soon, too, but they are still being used. Ties, clips, short stakes to hold the Pexx hoops in place, and even the pieces of pool noodle used to go over the support posts that had twine threated through them, when used to hold netting over a bed to keep the cats out. I’m even hanging onto the water bottles that were set on the tops of stakes to rattle in the wind and hopefully startle deer away. I’ve got a bundle of 8 metal posts I found at the dollar store in there, too. Four of them had been used to support a trellis for the melons that they never grew big enough to grow up on. The other four were ones I found more recently and have not been used yet.
In the future, I intend to get more of the tallest, plain metal stakes, but I also really liked the taller tomato cage sets. The sets are three posts with connectors. The shorter ones came with two connectors per post, the taller ones with three connectors per post. The same connectors can fit both lengths of posts. I have two sets of the larger ones currently around the plum tree, supporting chicken wire, to keep the deer from eating it. I have shorter sets around the gooseberry bush and apple tree. I used several sets of the taller ones to make a deer barrier in front of the pea trellis. I can see being able to use them in a lot of other ways, too. They are surprisingly sturdy for a dollar store purchase, and I plan on getting more in the future.
The last picture has the collection of protective collars on t-posts, to keep them from blowing away. The round wire tomato cages that were used for the pepper and eggplant are all stacked up, with a large plastic bottle covering the sharp points. The water bottles used to help keep the frost at bay under covers are hanging off a smaller stake set into the wire cages to hold it up. The water bottles with their bottoms cut off that were used to deep water the summer squash are stored on there, too. There’s a couple or rolls of the black netting, plus a couple of roles of wire mesh, as well, plus the rest of the T-posts.
Now that I have all these sorted out, I need to figure out how to store them. Some can fit in the old garden shed, but the rolling garden seat needs to fit in there, too. I’ve got more stuff to store than last winter, plus there are the hoses and the garlic bed’s hoops and cover to add to the pile, and it won’t all fit in there. That shed is in serious need of replacing, too. Lots of rotten spots in the walls and roof that are slowly getting worse. In the last photo, you can see part of it. The door is a simple piece of plywood, and it’s comping apart in layers from weathering!
I’ll figure it out.
The next couple of days are supposed to be warmer. Friday is supposed to be the warmest day, but it’s also supposed to be raining off and on all day. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, aside from the one rainy day, we should have about a week and a half of decent, if chilly, weather to finish preparing garden beds and getting the winter sowing done. That’s the priority. After that, I can work on finishing the wall on that garden bed in the old kitchen garden that I’ve decided to do slightly differently. It would be nice to finally get that bed finished!! I can’t believe how long it’s been taking to get it done. That’s what happens when a job gets worked on piecemeal. 🫤
So while I didn’t get any progress on preparing beds for winter, I did actually get a lot done. By the time I was done with all the sorting and bundling for storage, it was getting pretty darn cold out there (we’d already passed our high of 8C/46F by the time I started). I’m hoping to get an earlier start tomorrow, partly because I have an afternoon telephone appointment with the sports injury clinic about my hip. Not only is it expected to be warmer tomorrow, but we’re supposed to stay at our high of 11C/51F for about 6 hours, rather than the eye blink of time we were at our high today! We’ll be dropping down to 8C/46F again by Saturday, then warming up a bit again. I will be delivering cats on Saturday, anyhow, so that works out!
Wow, were the outside cats ever determined this morning!
When mixing up their softened morning kibble, I made sure to include the turkey stock I made for them, along with some of the meaty bits that fell off the bones. Maybe they could smell it because, even though I’d tossed out a scoop of kibble to distract them before I started mixing, I could hear them clamoring at the door. I got a daughter to stand by for cat herding duty while I tried to get out the door, and she was completely overwhelmed by the stampede before I could even get through!
As much of a crowd as there was in the sun room, some prefer to eat outside, and the ferals hover around, waiting for their chance.
By the time I got all the kibble divvied up around the yard, and topped up their water bowls with warm water (the unheated ones had a layer of ice on them), the kibble was almost all gone already!
Even on the cat house roof, there were just crumbs left.
You can tell the heat bulb inside is working – no frost on the roof above it!
I ended up giving them another light feeding later on, just to make sure the shier and less assertive cats had a chance to eat their fill, too.
I tried for a head count and got 40. Then I tried to count only the kittens, including the teenagers. I think I got 18 or 19, and I’m sure I missed some.
I sent pictures to the chat group I have with the new rescue. They are pretty taken aback by the numbers!
With the temperatures, I didn’t try to get anything done outside after my morning rounds. Instead, I headed out in the late morning to pick up prescriptions for both myself and my husband. We were almost out of kibble for the indoor cats, though, so I made a side trip to the feed store in my mother’s town. They were out of the brand of kibble I usually get, so I had to pick up the more expensive brand. It was still cheaper to get that, then either buy smaller bags locally elsewhere, or drive all the way to a Walmart to get some.
I then headed to our pharmacy, where I was able to pick up my husband’s refill, but not mine. They checked the system and it turned out my doctor hadn’t responded to their fax yet. In the end, I asked them to put it on their delivery schedule in a couple of days. Hopefully, that will be long enough for the updated prescription to come in.
I did remember to pick up some more potassium supplements. I’d run out a while ago and hadn’t bothered to get more. I think that was a mistake. I was wondering why I started to get leg cramps again. Not Charlie Horses, though those were threatening last night. Just weird leg cramps. They would happen any time my legs or feet got uncovered during the night. I’m guessing the temperature change triggered them, but it was very unusual for me. It was usually my calves that would start cramping, but my feet would, too, pulling at my toes, of all things. All of them. It’s the strangest sensation! The cramping would start, I’d pull my feet back under the covers, and they would soon stop.
I haven’t been doing any level of physical exertion that normally would trigger these, so I was at a loss as to why this was happening, until I remembered I’d run out of potassium a while ago. Adding the potassium to my vitamin regimen seemed to be the last thing to finally stop my Charlie Horses. That the cramping started up like this is enough confirmation of that for me!
Once done at the pharmacy, I remembered to stop at the grocery store at my husband’s request, then headed home. By then, it was about time for the outside cats evening feeding. After refilling the bin for the inside cats, the rest of the kibble went to the outside cats. Most of them aren’t old enough to have had this brand of kibble before, and they really seemed to like it!
Through all this, I was messaging with the cat rescue group, including the woman that’s going to be taking six cats from us. She’s going to be in the town nearest us to drop a cat off on Saturday, so we’ll be meeting her there, instead of further out on Sunday. We still have to work out a time, as she’s not sure what her schedule will be. As long as we have enough time to get the six cats and kittens into carriers, we can make it work.
Just a little while longer, and six cats and kittens will get their first step to finding forever homes indoors!
Once all the running around was done, I actually did get some work done outside, but that will be in my next post.
Well, the wind never really slowed down today until is was basically dark out. I was really feeling it when I headed out to visit my mother for Thanksgiving, fighting the wind for the entire drive. It wasn’t as bad on the way home, as I no longer driving against the wind, but it was still threatening to blow me off the road!
My mother was quite happy with my surprise visit. I made sure to time it for after she got her Meals on Wheels, which she said was extra special for Thanksgiving. She was back in bed when I got there, so I went to her to show her what I’d brought. She told my that my brother had visited the other day, also bringing food for her, and how we feed her so well! I told her, it’s Thanksgiving! It’s all about the food! She was also quite happy when I told her the girls had done all the cooking, so I could get some rest.
I stayed for a fairly short visit, letting her know what the weather was like, and that I wanted to get back home again sooner rather than later, because of it. It was even a good visit, with only one side track when she started going off on a racist tangent and I started saying it was time for me to leave. She stopped and asked me to stay, and that she would stop. Which was a first! Usually, she doubles down!
Since I was there anyhow, I did a few little things about the apartment for her and made her some tea, then we just sat and talked for a while before I headed home.
I didn’t mention it to her, but my brother and SIL were at the farm when I left. My brother wasn’t up to visiting with her along the way, as he had things he needed to do while there was light to do it, and she would have demanded he stay longer than he was able to. When I got back, they were settling in for a late lunch and messaged me when they saw me get back, inviting me to join them. Which I was happy to do, and we got all caught up, until my brother had to get back at things, so I left to get out of their way. 😄
I was soon back outside to try and get things done. It was too windy for some things, but I was at least able to putter around and get quite a few little things done.
I had lots of cat company, like Fluffy, watching me from the top of the shelf in front of the bathroom window.
What a stunning cat! We can even pet her, sometimes.
Most of what I needed to go outside was putting things away for the winter, though some things were kept handy so I could use them when we have a calmer day. The 100′ extension cords were all wrapped and put away, the space around the old basement window was cleaned up again, and the winter window put in. The folding camp chairs that had been in the sun room got brushed clear before getting stored in the old kitchen. I’d given the “roof” of the broken market tent a good scrubbing with the stiff bristled sun room broom, then hung it on the chain link fence to dry. The wind was starting to blow it away, so I made sure to fold it up and stored in in the old kitchen for the winter. The frame may be broken, but the canopy and four wall panels are just find. I’m sure we can find some way to make use of them.
I didn’t work in the main garden area, but I got to put things away from the old kitchen garden and the portable greenhouse. That is also slowly being set up so that the cats can use it for shelter in the winter, with a couple of food bowls in it. One of them had been kept on the well cap with the isolation shelter’s entry protecting box over it. That’s at the isolation shelter now, and I didn’t want to leave the food bowl out without some kind of shelter over it. I did end up setting it over the isolations shelter door to try and block at least some of the winds that’s blowing things around inside.
Stinky is quite happy that it’s there! I’ve seen a few cats sitting on the ramp, now that the box is there, taking advantage of the shelter. I’ll need to figure out a better way to secure the vinyl that will be wrapped around the bottom, to protect it from the winter weather. Last winter, I just used tacks, which mostly did the job, but they weren’t enough for the severely windy days.
While cleaning things up and putting things away outside, I had a pile of scrap pieces of rigid insulation in odd sizes I needed to deal with. One of the walls in the upper level of the isolation shelter has a piece of insulation cut to fit that the cats have been using as a scratching post. to the point that one corner is basically gone. I didn’t have any pieces large enough to cut a new piece, but I did have a piece larger enough to cover the area that was scratched out. It fits snug enough that it’ll take quite a bit for it to be pulled out of position by cats.
Then I decided to use some of the pieces in the cube shelf in the sun room. A few cats are using it, but it’s a harder surface and could potentially get cold on the toa beans over the winter. So I found a piece large enough to cut to size and fit on the bottom of a cube. Once I had the size worked out, I used it as a template to cut as many more as I could, out of the scrap bits of insulation I had to work with.
I was able to cut enough to set into 7 cubes. They are really snug, so they won’t get knocked out of the cubes easily. It wasn’t long before I saw cats and kittens checking the cubes out. If I happen to find more scrap pieces of this rigid insulation that are large enough, I want to cut and add more to fit into the cub shelves. This way, in the winter, the cats can use the shelf to watch things out the window, and their to beans won’t get too cold.
I also found a place to secure the second heat lamp. This one has a 150 watt heat bulb. The other one is 250 watts.
There are 11 kittens in that bottom shelf, plus Grommet under the heat lamp. That tuxedo in the front is, I think, the one that I expect we’ll be able to snag for the rescue, next weekend.
Speaking of which…
As I was heading inside, I spotted Smokey on the hand rail outside the sun room. It took a little while, but I was able to start petting her, and she started purring! Then Collin came by and pushed his way under my hand, and Smokey jumped down onto a bin that’s stored under the rail. I was still able to pet her there, and then…
*drum roll please!*
… she let me PICK HER UP!!!! Not only that, but she let me cuddle her for about 5 minutes, purring the whole time!!! That is massive socialization progress! By the time we bring her in to the rescue, I’m hoping she will be fully socialized.
Now, that is something to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving day!
All in all, I was able to actually get some decent work done outside before It was starting to get dark. Stuff that I would normally defer until later, while I prepped beds for winter sowing. Since it was too windy to prep garden beds for the winter, I’m quite happy to have been able to get the work done on a day like today.
As I write this, we are at 3C/37F, or 1C/34F, depending on which app I use. The wind chill right now, has it feeling like -3C/27F right now. Among the things I did was bring the rechargeable battery tools for winter storage indoors.
Meanwhile, good progress on getting things ready for the winter, though it does ten to be… questionably, that is! There’s still lots to do. We shall see how it works out.
Well, Canadian Thanksgiving has blown in like a tempest. Northern parts of the province have had snow and conditions severe enough to shut down a highway.
I can’t complain. I think it was our first Thanksgiving here, when we got hit by a blizzard.
The high winds, at least, as supposed to go away this afternoon. We’re supposed to warm up a bit over the next while but, depending on which weather app I look at, on the warmest days we’re expecting rain. I’m just hoping the weather holds so I can get more beds ready for winter sowing. Aside from a pharmacy trip tomorrow, and a telephone appointment to follow up on my hip injection, I should be able to stay home enough to get things done. Weather willing!
When I headed out to feed the cats outside this morning, they were absolutely bonkers. I used our turkey carcass to make a stock for them in the slow cooker last night, and that’s what I used to soften their kibble this morning.
They inhaled it so quickly, I mixed up a bit more so the less dominant cats could get a chance to eat!
I also had to pick up the catio, which had been knocked over by the wind (I left the vinyl wrapped around it for last winter, specifically to cut the wind and provide passive solar warmth in there. We will need to re-wrap it!). I had removed the weights on the roof to use them while painting. A couple to left the plant stand above the grass, and a couple more to weight down corners of the isolation shelter roof, where I’d used some wood glue under a support. I hadn’t put the weights back. Last night was windy, and the catio seemed fine, but the wind picked up so much since I did my evening walkabout!
Once the cats were fed and the catio secured as best I could, I moved the isolation shelter’s ramp door box in front, to reduce at least some of the wind. The upper level is enclosed, but the lower level is all wire mesh walls. We’ll be wrapping it in vinyl for the winter again, but not quite yet. The wind from below has been enough to actually blow one of the corners of the hammock loose from its hook.
I then did a thorough walk about, looking for wind damage. In the outer yard, I only found this.
The door on that rotting old … storage shed? … finally fell.
It’ll be good when we can clean up that garbage in there and get that away. It’s a shame it was allowed to fall apart like that. It’s got several shelves in there and looks like it used to be pretty sturdy. Once the roof was allowed to fall apart, that was it. I have no idea when this was built, but I expect it was built by my late brother, probably about 20-30 years ago.
For now, all I could do was lean the door back and find an old tire still on its rim as a weight to hold it in place.
While going through the inner yard, I found quite a few fallen branches. Not enough to need a wheel barrow or anything. This was the largest one I found.
There were 11 kittens on that shelf, but Sir Robin jumped out while I was taking the picture.
Seeing Smokey in there is encouraging. She’s starting to enjoy being around other cats. The only concern is, she’s getting old enough to go into heat. I don’t expect her to, as they tend not to when the weather starts getting cold. Thankfully, she will be going to the rescue, next weekend.
Meanwhile, I’ll be heading to my mother’s this afternoon, with a couple of turkey dinners for her. My brother and SIL are actually coming here to the farm today, to do some more winterizing around their stuff. I’ll have a chance to see them before I head out to my mothers, but they’ll probably be gone before I get back.
It already looks like the wind is dying down, and the sun is shining! Our expected high for the day is still only 6C/43F, and we’re at only 4C/39F. We’re supposed to go below freezing overnight, too.
I did plug in the cat house, so they should be getting heat in there when the light sensor turns on the bulb as it gets dark enough. The heated water bowls are plugged in now, too, except the one in the isolation shelter. That one is nowhere near an outlet, yet.
We’re fortunate, really, so have temperatures as nice as they are right now. More time to get things done before the snow flies!
The Re-Farmer 