Last night, I got horribly ill for some reason. I have no idea what triggered it, but it was very painful and unpleasant. I spent most of the night in the bathroom, unsure which end of me was about to explode.
Thankfully, whatever it was responded to some good ol’ Pepto, and I finally got some sleep. I woke up to this.
Nosencrantz had actually been lying on her back, paws in the air, but moved when I managed to reach my phone to get a picture.
She kept trying to cuddle me throughout the night. Such a sweetie! It’s too bad I had to move her every time I had to get up! I like to think she was trying to make me feel better. 😊 Now that I’m up and about, she’s ignoring me. 🤣
Whatever it was that hit me, I haven’t completely recovered. I feel weak as a kitten right now, get dizzy easily, and have been very nervous about eating anything. The girls were sweet and took over most of my morning routine for me, but it sounds like one of them is now not feeling well, either. It’s not whatever hit me, though.
We finally have a day where it’s not too hot to work outside, and here I am, unable to do the manual labour I want to do! *sigh*
This evening turned out to be a very pleasant 23C/75F, with a lovely breeze. I was able to stay out longer when doing my evening rounds, and take care of a few little things – with the help of a lot of mosquito repellant! We got enough cardboard from packages in the mail that I was able to lay some around the G-star patty pan squash, with only minor gaps. After topping up the kibble trays, I was able to hold a couple of kitties, including one I’ve never been able to touch before.
It was not happy, but it didn’t quite freak out, either. 😁
I also finally got the clothesline up.
The old line tightener worked just fine, and the new spacers will help a lot, too. We’ve never actually used the clothes line much, but now that we’ve got a nice, clean new line, I think we will use it more often. If nothing else, it’s a back up if we don’t want to use the dryer for some reason.
Like now. I did some laundry yesterday and, after popping it in the drier, the entire entryway and dining room filled with steam, basically. One of my daughters was able to clamber to take a look and discovered the hose was damaged and no longer properly attached. Best guess is, a cat fell off a nearby shelf and landed on it. We really need to build some kind of shelf back there, to keep the cats out! They wrecked the old dryer hose, too, as well as making a huge mess behind both the washer and dryer.
Oh, my other daughter just informed me that her sister managed to get behind the dryer and fixed the hose. Only a few inches of damaged hose needed to be removed. I’m still glad I got the clothes line fixed, though!
When I was a kid, we had three clotheslines set up on these posts. The hooks to hold pulleys are still there, if we ever want to set up one or two more lines. One of them has a pulley hanging off a length of twisted wire. It looks like someone had a line that wasn’t quite long enough, so they added length to the pulley to set it up. I have not seen any other laundry pulleys, though, so if we do want to set up the other two lines, we’d need to get 3 more pulleys, and another 240 or so feet of clothes line.
I doubt we’ll ever need to do that, but at least the option is there!
It was so pleasant out that, after I finished with the clothes line, I sat on the laundry platform bench to enjoy the cool breeze.
I had company.
There is a kitten in the above picture! One of two that were watching me.
The fuzzy one was watching me from behind the lettuce bed, and its darker sibling joined him while I was trying to get pictures.
They do not like the mesh over the beds, and kept going further and further around, trying to find a way through to where their sibling was playing in the path.
Their sibling didn’t stay in the path.
Instead, it came around the beet bed, walking along the logs, so get a better look at the weird human that keeps pointing a strange object at them. 😁
I keep expecting this one to be a good candidate for socializing, since he hangs around the house the most, and tends to stay and watch me when I’m moving about. So far, no go. He simply will not let me come closer. *sigh*
Oh, that reminds me. I heard from the Cat Lady today. We now have an appointment at the vet for spays and vaccinations. The two left among the inside cats are Tissue and Big Rig. She had slots for 2 females and a male, but the only male we’d be able to bring in is Potato Beetle, and he’s not around right now.
The appointment is for Aug 3, and they’ll be coming home with us after. Right now, she’s focusing on spays and neuters more than adoptions. No one is looking to adopt right now. The shelters are all full from so many “pandemic pets” being surrendered. !!!
Once the indoor ladies are done, and the yard mamas have weaned their babies, the next thing to do will be to start trapping yard cats to get them done. I expect that won’t happen until much later in August or even September. As long as it’s before the snow flies. Otherwise, trapping is more dangerous for them, due to potential exposure.
The Cat Lady has been in and out of hospital lately, and told me she’s been really missing Cabbages while she’s away! It’s so funny. Before they took in Cabbages, she didn’t like calicos, and preferred male cats, but Cabbages has completely won her over. 😄
I’m not surprised. Cabbages has a way of worming her way into people’s hearts! 😁
While putting the kibble and water out this morning, I found the bitty kitties playing on top of the board pile. I managed to catch a picture of a kitten that usually runs off before I can get a good look at it.
There were six kittens from this litter in the branch pile, but since they’ve been moved to the board pile, I’ve only been seeing 5 at a time, and that includes the calico that is from an older litter.
I can usually count on seeing this one around the kibble house or laundry platform, often by itself. While I saw its calico sibling with the bitty kitties, I saw one of its other siblings later on. Mama had gone onto the laundry platform, and the darkest kitten of this litter appeared out of nowhere and practically pounced on her, going for the nip, barely giving her a chance to lie down! 😁
Oddly, I didn’t see a lot of adult cats while doing my rounds this morning, but I did see the black and white kitten near the pump shack when I brought kibble that way, then later saw a tabby eating the kibble I leave on the table by the door.
I suspect something other than kitties has been around during the night. When I came outside this morning, I found the diverter for the downspout above the rain barrel on the ground – along with the screen cover for the rain barrel, and the board and bricks that support the diverter and hold the screen over in place. My guess is, something heavier jumped onto the board and knocked it all down. The shelf on the other side of the door has two shelves for the cats to shelter in, while the top shelf is full of various stuff. Something had gone into there and knocked things about, too. Even one of the bricks that are part of the counterweight for the cats’ house was knocked out and onto the ground. My guess is racoons, since none of the cats are heavy enough to knock some of this stuff about, and skunks can’t climb up to some of the other stuff. Even some of the board at the top of the board pile that I’d straightened out, after the groundhogs knocked things askew while pulling down the old tarp that had been covering it, were pulled aside. At least the wood and water trays were still on the pile and not on the ground.
One of the things I got done this morning was use the slow-release granulated fertilizer on the garden. It’s an organic fertilizer made from chicken manure, designed for tomatoes and vegetables. There wasn’t enough to do everything, so I focused on the heavy feeders, and the things that seem to be struggling the most. I ran out before I could do all the squash in the squash patch, but I was able to get everything in the corn and squash patch, the tomatoes and the bell peppers. The fertilizer releases nutrients when it gets wet, but we’re not expected to get rain again for a few days. With how damp the ground it, it’s unlikely anything will need to be watered before then. Ah, well. It might take a while, but it should be interesting to see how the plants that got some of the granules will do, compared to the ones that didn’t.
Today, my new-new keyboard came in! And by mail, too, so I didn’t have to drive to town to pick it up. 😄
Here is a comparison.
The top keyboard (the one already full of cat hair!) is the French keyboard my husband ordered for me by mistake. The bottom is the English keyboard that came in today.
Interesting.
That extra key next to the left Shift key is gone, as is the extra key by the Enter key, which I am quite happy about. The arrangement of keys by the Enter key is also back to what I was used to. No more keys with a third symbol on them I couldn’t use. The Alt key on the right of the space bar is now just a regular Alt key again. The new edit key, MS Office shortcut and emoji keys are still there. I’m amused that the emoji keys have different symbols on them.
The physical differences are minor, but it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes in my ability to touch type. Everything “fits” my hands better.
The French keyboard still works perfectly fine, and I was intending to give it to my husband. However, he went and bought himself a gamer keyboard that also came in today. (Discovering that things can be purchased through Amazon on payment plans is a bit too convenient!) The keys and letters light up, which is something I would love on my own keyboard. Lights won’t wear off. However, I am not willing to give up the ergonomic design for it!
I like being able to type without pain!
So the French keyboard is now set aside as a backup, available to use the next time we have a keyboard die on us. Which is more of a thing for me, since I’m the only one that can’t use the other back up keyboards we had!
No rain this morning, so the bitty kitties were out and about!
This one looks disheveled because I had just been holding it. 😻 Not only did it let me pick it up and cuddle it, but when I put it down in the food tray, it just started to eat, ignoring me while I continued to pet it.
*melt*
The little calico acts conflicted. It’s curious enough to slink around, watching me closely, sometimes inching closer, but shy enough to not let me anywhere near it.
This one is not conflicted. It will stay and watch me, only if it’s behind something. It will not come any closer, and will leave it I pay too much attention to it, even if it’s holding my phone off to the side to try and get a picture.
It was, however, more than happy to get into the water tray, after I refilled the gallon water bottle that I’ve set up to drain slowly. They seem to like it when I put the frozen water bottle in the tray to help keep the water cool longer, too.
As I continued on, I did a double taken when I realized I was seeing something new. A self-sown poppy had opened.
When we moved there, we found ornamental poppies growing among the lilacs along the side of the house, so seeing poppies show up in other places was no surprise. This one, however, is a completely different flower! The others are more of an orange, and don’t have the ruffled petals. So far, the is the only red poppy like this we’ve seen. A couple of self seeded poppies have sown up in our beet bed. I kind figured they were from the bread see poppies that we have in a nearby bed, but I know my mother had ornamental poppies growing in the old kitchen garden for quite a few years. When I was a kid, she had seed poppies in that garden. It should be interesting to see if these volunteers turn out to be an ornamental poppy, or an edible seed type!
As for the red ornamental poppy that just bloomed, I’ll be sure to allow it to self seed. This area needs more cleaning up, and it would be nice for the stuff we want to get rid of to be crowded out by something we would like to keep! :-)
While continuing my rounds, I had another nice surprise. Our very first golden pattypan squash is forming! It was too small to try and get a picture of, among the foliage. Hopefully, it’ll get well pollinated and not just wither and fall off.
We’ve got a very few other things trying to produce. The sugar snap peas are not doing well, but I did find a single well formed pod.
I ate it. It was tasty!
The King Tut purple peas grown from our own seeds are producing pods, but they are green instead of purple. There aren’t very many, but I have been able to pick the odd pod and give them a taste.
They are not tasty. Quite bitter, instead! Which is different from last year. I wonder if they had cross pollinated with the pod peas growing on the other trellis. The peas did so poorly last year, I would not have expected so. The one King Tut volunteer from last year has produced a single purple pod, which I’ve left to dry out and keep for seed. Now I wonder if it’ll stay true to type. It bloomed well before the shelling peas and snap peas did, so it should be fine.
Some of the Chocolate cherry tomatoes needed additional support. Not all of them are blooming yet, and no tomatoes forming yet. Some of them are growing well, but others, not so much. One end of that bed along the chain link fence got drowned, even though the bed itself it raised about 4-5 inches. We’ve lost quite a few of the shallots from sets to the wet, and it looks like none of the shallots from seed have made it, but I was able to give the yellow onions grown from seed a “hair cut”. I now have more green onions dehydrating in the oven, along with a tray of mint.
I was still able to pick some lettuce this morning. They have not yet bolted from the heat, which is nice. The chard I planted not long ago has started to sprout! I should sow more of those soon.
Though we had a decently cool night last night (it was a wonderful 17C/63F at about 7am), it quickly heated right up to our expected high of 27C/81F. We’re not supposed to start cooling down until about 8pm. Hopefully, between the heat and the wind, things will have a chance to dry up. Yesterday’s downpours flooded out quite a few towns. I’d heard the town my mother lives in got 5 inches of rain in 3 hours, however it now seems it wasn’t quite that much. More than enough to flood streets and parking lots, however. The town to the north of us was among those that got hit the worst in our province, and they had flooded streets as well. We certainly don’t have much to complain about, where we are! Still, it does keep us from getting a lot of outside work done. Frustrating, but we’ll live. 😉
When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, we were having a steady, heavy rainfall. I got completely soaked!
The rain did nothing to slow the mosquitoes down, of course. *sigh*
The rain kept falling for hours. It has stopped for now, so I made a quick check on how things are outside, and to see if an expected parcel got dropped off at the gate (it had not). The driveway is half under water again. The low area along the fence line on the north side of the driveway is a pond again, as is the spot in front of the outhouse, behind the garage. The grass hides most of it, but that whole east yard is under water.
People have been posting photos and video online, and I just had to call to check on my mother. The town she is in has been flooding. I have not been able to confirm, but I’ve heard they got about 5 inches – inches, not cm – of rain in 3 hours. That’s almost 14cm. In the news, I’ve heard that parts of the province are expected to get 15cm of rain, but that’s over the day, not in just a few hours! My mother told me that the lane behind her building is a river right now, and the front of her building is under water. Water had been leaking into their common room, too, but people had already been brought in to fix it. The photos I’m seeing posted online are amazing. Even with all the flooding we had this spring, this town did not get that sort of flooding!
We didn’t get anywhere near as much rain as where my mother is, though we got enough that there are areas of water in the paths around the low raised beds. Not so much that the ground level beds are under water, at least. Our squash, melon and potato beds are just very wet, but not in puddles, though there is some standing water in between the sweet corn. I just had to get a picture of the tomato bed in the main garden area. There are so many tomatoes on all the plants! The other tomato beds are also handling things well, and I’m starting to see Yellow Pear tomatoes starting to form. No Chocolate cherry, yet.
I very briefly spotted some kittens on the board pile. They seem to be quite okay with their kibble being softened by the rain. I didn’t try to do more than top up their kibble, as the clouds of mosquitoes along the edge of the spruce grove, where the board pile is, are pretty insane.
We are still under thunderstorm watch, though more for the southern areas than here, with possible hail and torrential rainfall. For us, we’ve still got high winds, but so far, just enough to flatten the hay I haven’t scythed yet, but not enough to take down branches or trees. At least not around the house and inner yard.
Checking the 30 yr record for our area, we are still pretty average. Nowhere near breaking any records for temperature or rainfall. I suspect my mother’s town may have broken some rainfall records today, though!
While we aren’t about to go anywhere soon, because of the condition of our own driveway, the spring flood damage on the roads around us have been almost completely repaired, so at least we will be able to get out, if we really need to. We’re doing quite all right, here, and for that, I am grateful.
Rolando Moon likes to keep me company when I’m puttering in the garden. She accepts a few pets, before attacking my hand. Mostly, she just hangs out…
Not always in good places! She moved before I could get a picture, but I caught her sprawled in the middle of the bed. Mostly on the far row that isn’t seeded yet, but she also rolls around, and pushed wood chips over the other row, where the fall chard has been planted.
Laster on, I caught her in another bed, rolling on an onion plant! She prefers to go through the beds to walking on the grass.
I’m glad I was able to get this picture; usually, this mama runs away if I come too close. I think she just didn’t want to move in the heat. 😄 Instead, she posed for the camera, so adorably!
Since we weren’t going to get any cooler, I headed out before I lost light, to see what I could do with the small batch of cardboard I got today. There wasn’t much, so I decided to use it here…
To the right of the sweet corn are five Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins, barely visible in the grass and weeds coming up through the straw.
Once the cardboard was down, you could see that the plants are actually fairly large! Smaller than they should be for this time of year, but still larger than most of the squash. In fact, all the hulless pumpkins seem to be doing better than most of the other squash.
After laying down the cardboard, I gave it a soak, then tromped on them to flatten them a bit. I would have stomped the grass down before the cardboard was laid down, but I didn’t want to risk accidentally stepping on a pumpkin plant. As we get more cardboard, the Boston Marrow and the G-star patty pan squash will be done first, then any spaces in between will be covered, including beside the rows of corn.
We need lots more cardboard for this.
Once this was done, I went to check the other garden beds and found a wonderful surprise.
Our first summer squash! There’s a second, smaller one on another plant. I’m really happy, not just to finally see some vegetables, but because this is a Madga squash. The first time we grew them, only 2 plants made it, and last year we had only one. They did not produce as much as the other summer squash, either. This year, we’ve got 4 surviving plants, and they’re the first to produce fruit!
We also got a second harvest this evening.
The garlic bed that is so far behind the one in the main garden has scapes ready to harvest! This is almost all of them. There’s just a very few left that aren’t ready to pick yet.
It may be late in the season, but at least we’re getting something from the garden!
The Re-Farmer 