I just have a bit of time before I head to the city, but I just had to share this first!
While putting kibble out, I heard the distinctive sounds of cat asserting their dominance, somewhere in the outer yard. So as soon as I was done putting kibble in the tray under the shrine, which is nearest the gate to the outer yard, I went to look. A quick pause to check the box next I put near where Rosencrantz has her kittens showed it untouched, which did not surprise me – though she already surprised me by teleporting next to me while I was putting kibble in the tray near the kibble house! Which makes me think she may have moved them already, though I have no idea where.
Once in the outer yard, I could see The Distinguished Guest and Rolando Moon by the pump shack, looking very, very tense. Both had their fur all puffed out. I headed over to chase The Distinguished Guest away and realized…
That wasn’t Rolando Moon.
That’s a long haired ginger.
We don’t have any long haired gingers!
Well, I guess we do, now!
Given their behaviour, I’m just going to assume this is a male.
Then I went back to put warm water out for the cats and saw movement inside the cat’s house window they are under.
Much to my surprise, I saw little squirmy wormies in the sunlight, and a Junk Pile coming up to them.
Since I was already so close, when I was finished with the water, I tried to take a photo through the very dirty window. I didn’t want to step right in front of it or do anything to startle Junk Pile.
Coming back from the rest of my rounds, I tried again, because I could see them so clearly in the sun spot through the window. I stayed well away and zoomed in.
There is at least one, maybe two, tuxedos in there!
I’m amazed any cat would have her kittens in here. This is a large space and a lot of cats use it.
I notice she is about as close to directly under the ceramic heat bulb as possible in there. :-) With the sun shining in so brightly, it would be off right now, but as soon as the sensor on the timer is in shadow, it’ll turn back on again.
I do hope the other cats leave her alone! I saw several of them in there when I was doing my evening rounds. These babies are so new, they look like they’re still a bit damp!
This will be Junk Pile’s second litter. Agnoos and Tuxedo Mask, both her babies from last year, have not been seen in quite a while. Likely, they are out expanding their territory and finding themselves some lady cats. Two of the ‘iccuses are hers, but I’m not sure which ones, other than not Bradiccus (who is still around) or Chadiccus (who is also AWOL). Those two are Butterscotch’s. There is one ‘iccus that has more white on him and looks a lot like Junk Pile, and I think that one is hers. We have no way to know for sure, but I think at least one of them is Ghost Baby’s.
I know we’re about to have a population explosion that is going to make things a bit more crowded out there, but I can’t help but be excited for kittens. We’ve never been able to socialize Junk Pile, but with her kittens in there, we at least have a chance with them – as long as she doesn’t move them! If we can socialize them, there’s a better chance of adopting them out.
We’re at -1C/30F right now, with no wind chill. Which is weird, because while my app says -1, when I go to the Weather Network website, it says we’re actually at 2C/36F. Yesterday, they were forecasting a high of 0C/32F, which is what my phone app says we are. Whatever. It’s bright and sunny and warm, and there’s a whole lot of melting going on, so I suspect the website is the accurate one.
Nutmeg was quite enjoying the sun!
I headed out to tend the sun room so it wouldn’t overheat – the thermometer in there was just under 20C/68F. I’d already left the inner door to outside open, so air could get in through the partially open window in the outer door. I opened that window all the way. As I did, I could hear all sorts of cats meowing at me.
Their kibble trays were completely empty.
When I first came out, I was going to walk past to check something else, but Rosencrantz grabbed me by the ankle with both front paws and yanked, while meowing angrily!
I got the hint.
I left the door open behind me while getting the kibble. Rosencrantz went into the sun room and cautiously went for the kibble bowl that still had some food in it. Then Rolando Moon came in, and Rosencrantz attacked her!
Rolando Moon did not do well in that, and orange fur was flying. I broke them up, put food out, and they settled down, though Rosencrantz was still hissing at all the cats.
She is not a happy mama.
I checked the nest box I left out and moved it closer to where her kittens are. We’ll see what happens with that. For all the melt that’s happening, it’s not not enough to clear access to where she is.
I did do a bit of shoveling to clear the drift partially blocking driveway at the gate, as well as clearing the half of the gate that was blocked with snow. We can now close the gate again.
The deer will not be happy. ;-)
Tomorrow, we are supposed to reach a high of 4C/39F. By Saturday, we’re supposed to reach 10C/50F, with some rain and snow, and yet… we are actually getting warnings of ANOTHER potential Colorado Low forming, that would hit us on the weekend.
Which would be insane.
By the time spring finally gets here and stays, it’ll almost be summer!
First, though, I want to share a photo I took last night.
Doesn’t she look so malevolent? :-D We’ve still been keeping the cats out of my office/bedroom most of the time, because too many of them go after Nosencrantz and Butterscotch. Cheddar is the only one that is allowed in any time he wants, because he’s also the only one that gets along with them. Every now and then, I’ll let others in and see. Fenrir had a habit of laying across my chest and sleeping while I was on my computer. When I let her in, she took advantage of that and made it impossible for me to get any work done. :-D
Then she started to stalk Nosencrantz, and pick fights with Butterscotch, so I had to kick her out. She can be such a mean one!
Anyhow.
While we are a few degrees below freezing right now, it’s a bright, clear, sunny day, with no wind to speak of, and it feels much warmer outside. So when Potato Beetle showed an interest in going outside from the sun room, I let him out.
He was quite happy, until The Distinguished Guest spotted him and immediately went on the attack!
There wasn’t much of an altercation, as the lure of kibble was much stronger. Potato Beetle had no interest, since he had access to kibble in the sun room, any time he wanted.
In the photo, there are the eight cats in the kibble house, plus Rosencrantz hidden from view at the tray on the ground. Rolando Moon had tried to go in to eat, too, but Rosencrantz started fighting with her, and I had to break them up. Rolando ended up going into the sun room to eat Potato Beetle’s kibble, in peace.
Rosencrantz was behaving very oddly this morning. I did a burn this morning, and after covering up the burn barrel and heading in, she came right to me, wanting attention, but not wanting attention, but wanting attention… It was like she wanted something from me.
What I did get to see was a whole lot of wet fur at her back end, and realized she had just had her kittens.
So I started to follow her.
That was what she wanted. She kept looking back to make sure I was behind her, then disappeared into the junk pile. She took me to where her kittens are!
More specifically, into the back of the big old chest freezer we’d dragged out of the inner yard, and is now waiting to be hauled away with all the other junk.
We’ve been putting smaller junk inside it, so it wouldn’t blow away or otherwise be an issue. The broken old large tire planter is leaning against it, and there are things like the old broken door from the sun room, and the broken stove and washing machine, all waiting to be hauled away, in front of it.
She really did seem to want me to do something for her, but what? Help with her kittens? I tried to get at the freezer, but everything is too frozen to be moved.
She wasn’t happy with me knocking about, though, and I could hear her growling.
After a while, I tried to rig up a sheltered box nest and set it up as far into the opening of the freezer (which is on its side) as I could, hoping she would move her kittens into it, and then we could move them all into the sun room. Unfortunately, the hard plastic bin I used to shelter the box nest from the elements was too large to fit into the space. Too much frozen stuff I couldn’t move out of the way. I left for a bit and she was out when I came back. She veered from wanting me to pet her, to attacking my hand, from moment to moment. I had to move the box nest out, because it seemed to be blocking her too much. We’ll have to check it again later, but I think it’s jut too exposed for her to try and use now.
Crud. If there is a problem with her kittens, we have no way to help her until things thaw out enough to get in there. That will take days.
While I was fussing around the junk pile, I heard another altercation, and saw Sad Face – he’s still around! – chasing a tabby up a tree. I’m pretty sure it was one of the ‘iccuses. I at first thought it might be Potato Beetle, but he’s not big on climbing trees right now. He’s still favouring that leg.
I spotted him later on, blissfully rolling in the snow – and had to chase away The Distinguished Guest, who was stalking him!!
I do hope Potato Beetle will go back into the sun room again for the night. There are just too many cats wanting to beat on him!
While doing my rounds, I was able to get at the trail cams and switch memory cards. Getting to the sign cam meant breaking a trail through some new drifts blown over the low spot where water was accumulating. The water under the snow was deep enough to overflow my (short) rubber boots, which means it was at least about a foot deep – with another foot or so of snow drifted on top! Aside from the drift, though, most of the path to the sign was blown clear.
When switching the driveway cam, I also tended to the gate. One side is clear – I could even see it being blown back and forth by the winds on the garage cam live feed, so I wanted to check on it. The other side is still stuck in snow. There’s a hard packed drift across the driveway, right at the gate posts. Other than that, though, the driveway is passable. The only concern I’d have right now is how soft the gravel is, and whether or not we might get stuck in it. There’s one lower spot, about half way to the gate, that’s full of water, but I think we could get through it okay if we had to.
We’ll see how things are tomorrow, which is when we would be making the big shop in the city.
While we are doing all right where we are, quite a few people are having much more to deal with. I’ve seen local photos people are sharing, showing ice and snow covered highways, ditches and fields filled with water and, in some areas, washed out roads. Where my brother lives, closer to the city, one of the highways he would normally take as part of his commute is completely undermined. The asphalt looks fine on the surface, but the road materials around the culvert have been washed away, so it’s basically just hovering. The road is closed but, amazingly, people have been moving the roadblocks aside and driving right over it, anyway! The water below is flowing at a very high rate of speed, so if anyone ever broke through, their vehicle could easily be swept away. What are people thinking when they do stuff like that? I don’t get it. It’s not like there aren’t ways to detour around it.
Things are warming up, starting today, so all this snow is going to melt and add to the water levels. The ground is still too frozen to absorb all the water, so I’m actually hoping for cooler temperatures and a slow melt. Still, I expect we will soon have even more water seeping into our basement to tend to. The gravel roads around our place were already in rough shape from the daily freeze/thaw cycle we were having, and it will be a while before the municipality will be able to do anything to fix them. We were also already avoiding travelling south on the road past our driveway, because I know there are low spots that would be trouble in these conditions. Instead, we take the main gravel road. It means driving past our vandal’s place, but I’m not worried about that. I’d be too busy watching out for deer running across the road, anyhow!
Once the snow is going and the water has receded, we’re going to have a fair bit of cleanup to do.
Another batch of seeds were started today: the last of the gourds and pumpkins we will be planting this year.
We are trying three varieties of hulless pumpkins. I really love pumpkin seeds, but they are quite expensive, so hopefully we will get lots of seeds to eat from these. We’ve got Lady Godiva, Kakai and Styrian. We’ll see which variety grows and tastes best to save seeds from. Or we might just save seeds from all of them. The Styrian pumpkin seeds are a good oil seed, and getting an oil press is on our wish list. The Kakai are supposed to be really excellent, roasted, while the Lady Godiva are supposed to be really excellent eaten fresh out of the pumpkin, as well as roasted. Three varieties with three different ideal ways to use them.
The remaining gourds we will be planting this year are Apple and Yakteen. Both are edible when young, and apparently Apple gourds are very healthy. I’m growing the Apple gourds for crafting purposes. We’ll try them both. Then we’ll decide whether the Yakteen gourd will be used as an edible, as well as for crafting. The Yakteen gourd is listed as very rare, so we’ll be saving seeds for those, regardless. If we succeed in growing them! We do have two other varieties of gourd seeds from last year, but we’re skipping them this year.
The Baby Pam pumpkins are a small, short(ish) season variety that is supposed to be an excellent eating pumpkin, especially good for pies. Veseys doesn’t seem to carry them anymore, though, so I’m glad to still have these seeds from last year. We had none germinate last year, but I think that has more to do with the troubles we had with our starting medium, rather than the seeds themselves. This year, we’ve bought soilless seed starting mixes, and I think that’s working out much better.
I decided to just plant two pots with three seeds for each of these. The gourds and Baby Pam pumpkin seeds got scarified and soaked for a while before planting. Depending on how well they germinate and how strong they are, we might thin by dividing to get more to transplant in June. My daughter did the planting while I cut up and wrote out more labels.
The ground cherry seedlings got moved to the mini-greenhouse, and now the warming mat is under all pumpkins and gourds right now.
Yes, I added water to the tray after the photo was taken. LOL
Here’s what’s in the mini-greenhouse right now.
I’d rotated all the trays before taking photos. Here are the ground cherries, just added to the tray with second planting eggplants, peppers, luffa and Crespo squash, along with one Canteen gourd that was thinned out from one of the pots now in the sun room.
There is one empty shelf below, ready for when we need to move more things out of the big aquarium greenhouse to make room for more starts.
Here we have the second planting Sophie’s Choice tomatoes, plus the first planting eggplant and peppers that survived the Great Cat Crush.
Here we have the Cup of Moldova tomatoes that were smaller and didn’t need to get moved to the sun room yet. They’re getting quite tall, so we’ll likely have to move them to the sun room fairly soon.
For the next batch of starts, in a couple of days, we’ll be moving on to the winter squash. Particularly the larger varieties that need a longer growing season.
I’m really looking forward to those, and will be looking to start more of each, if we can find the space. These were selected to be a major part of our winter food storage, so I’m aiming to plant quite a lot of each variety, if possible.
We are starting so many seeds indoors this year, but I’d much rather be planting more. Partly because we just don’t know how many will actually make it. Even if they all germinate, the cats don’t manage to destroy any more of them, and we transplant them all, they could still die of transplant shock, a late frost, critters, insects… Gardening is really a touch and go endeavour. As the poem says, one for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow. I’m also reminded of a “prepper” saying I’ve recently come across. Two is one, and one is none. Redundancy is a good thing, whether it’s how many bags of rice to store, how many can openers to have handy, or how many seeds to plant!
If we had the space, I would be planting double what we’re doing for our indoor starts.
The snow continued to fall all night, with more wind than snow, and we’re still supposed to get the odd flurries today. The winds have died down a bit. I haven’t been able to do my usual walk-around to see how many downed branches there are. It doesn’t look like we’ve lost any more trees in the spruce grove.
I saw about 8 outside cats while putting their kibble out, than at least a couple skulking around the yard, heading towards food while trying to avoid me. Thanks to the shoveling done yesterday, their paths and feeding areas were clear enough to put food out without having to redo them.
The water accumulated near the storage house has frozen over, which I’m actually happy to see. It covers the path the cats use to get under the storage house for shelter. Yesterday, I saw cats running over it, and the meltwater was all slush they were splashing through. Getting wet in these temperatures is not a good thing. Thankfully, the space under the storage house seems to stay completely dry, except maybe around some of the edges.
It’s almost noon and -8C/18F as I write this, which is colder than our overnight low. I did find a way to set up the ceramic heater bulb in the sun room, and it does seem to be enough to keep the temperatures in there above freezing. All the seedlings are looking fine.
Warm enough that Potato Beetle has no interest in leaving! :-D Thankfully, he also had no interest in where I’ve got the heat bulb set up, on a small plant stand to keep it elevated off the floor, just in case water gets in. I had some concerns he might knock it over, but he’s completely ignoring it. With his favourite spot on the plant shelf now filled with a bin with kulli corn (it would be too cold for those to germinate, but hopefully, they’ll just remain dormant until it’s warm enough), he’s using the swing bench a lot more. :-)
Gotta love that tongue blep!
I was just able to take a quick peek at his leg, and everything seems okay there. I am amused that after escaping the sun room and disappearing for a few days, he just waltzed back in again on his own, and now doesn’t want to leave! Silly boy. :-)
I did a bit more shoveling this morning, clearing the sidewalks and patio, and a path to the burn barrel. I started a path to the garage, but stopped when I hit water. The path to the compost pile was mostly clear; just a couple of drifts needed to be broken through. The feeding station and the east side of the house was almost completely blown clear, so no digging was needed there. I ended up leaving extra feed out for the birds and the deer – who were already in the yard, waiting and watching while I cleared a path on the south side of the house, so I could bring the feed out.
We still have water seeping into our basement. I’d set the blower fan facing more towards the new part basement, and the seepage there was slow enough that most of that area was able to dry out. I adjusted the fan so it’s now aimed more towards the opposite corner, where the sump pump is. Any standing water gets swept into the floor drain. Meanwhile, our septic pump continues to be our acting sump pump, getting triggered often with all the water seeping through the drain from the weeping tile under the new part basement. With the old basement regularly getting wet, when we cleaned it out, we made sure elevate everything, or otherwise protect it from water. That has come in handy a few times, with the septic problems we’ve been having. It’s kind of nice to be dealing with clean water instead, for a change!
For those who are newer to this blog, getting the basements cleaned up was a HUGE job. If you’re interested, you can read about it at the following links. All links will open in new tabs.
Wow. I forgot how long it took to get that job done. And that’s just the old basement. We still had to do the new basement after that.
This place was such a disaster when we moved here. Mind you, it still is, but at least now it’s our disaster, and not 40 years+ of my parents’ disaster. ;-)
Welcome to my second “Recommended” series. Here, you’ll find various sites and channels that I’ve been enjoying and wanted to share with you. With so many people currently looking to find ways to be more self sufficient or prepared for emergencies, that will be the focus for most of these, but I’ll also be adding a few that are just plain fun. Please feel free to leave a comment or make your own recommendation. I hope you enjoy these!
I hemmed and hawed over including this on on my Recommended list. Not because it isn’t a fantastic resource, but because “prepper” sites tend to include a lot of stuff that is well beyond what the average person can, or even should, do.
This one is a bit of an exception, though. City Prepping is, as you can probably guess by the name, geared more towards those living in urban environments. I’ll just quote a portion from their About page.
This channel’s goal is to help everyday people learn the basics of survival in times of crisis. With over 80% of Americans living in an Urban/Suburban environment, many lack the basics to ensure they have the necessary food, water, medical skills, and security in the event of a catastrophe. City Prepping’s chief aim is to help provide survival basics for everyday people that are practical and easy to implement to be prepared should calamity strike.
The YouTube channel has been going since 2015. If you visit the About page, you’ll find links to their other social media and Odysee pages. They have a website, where you can read articles on their blog and shop for supplies.
Their focus is geared towards emergency preparedness, without the sort of “doomsday, the world is about to end” cloud over it that others have. Oh, they do address “doomsday” scenarios. I just find the entire attitude is far more realistic. In fact, that’s one of the first things they address in this older video of theirs.
A lot of the videos are very practical; how to store water properly and safely, how to make a family bug out bag, and …
… how to cook after a disaster.
That’s one we’re working to keep on top of, based on what situations we are most likely end up in, such as losing power.
They also look at and compare various equipment, from freeze driers to solar generators, and much more. You’ll even find videos on gardening, bee keeping and easy meals to cook, should you find yourself in an emergency situation.
They even cover growing vegetables, if you live in an apartment.
Other topics include medical and health considerations, financial concerns and the spectre of economic collapse, and how to form mutually beneficial communities. Many videos deal with current events and situations, and discuss what to look out for, in an uncertain future. They even cover the importance of things beyond the physical.
One of the major differences with this resource is that it comes from a place of experience. This is someone who has lived through some pretty extreme SHTF experiences.
They are also very response to comments and their online community. Shortly after I discovered the channel, they put out a survey that I took part in, asking about what areas we felt were important to address. They also realized that, with so many videos scattered over so many years, it would be difficult for anyone to find the information they need. Especially for people just starting out. To address that, they created a course: The Prepper’s Roadmap.
From the website:
With 18+ hours of video trainings housed inside a private members area, teaching you step by step how to prepare for ANY disaster.
Holding your hand every step of the way, as we move from creating your 3 day “bugout bag”, to storing 3 weeks of supplies – Enough to survive 95% of potential disasters…
To bringing it all together into a 3 month SHTF survival plan that builds your prepping foundation and helps you become self-sufficient for longer and longer time horizons.
And what sets this course apart from every other course out there, is it isn’t just some data dump about how much water, food, and supplies you need…
Instead, it’s customized to your specific situation, with checklists, exercises, and guides for you to follow along with me as we help you reach 3 months of preparation.
Which I think is really fantastic, and would go a long way to keep from becoming so overwhelmed with all the things we “should” be doing, or getting, should some disaster take place.
After the past couple of years, a lot of people are realizing that it really is a good idea to be prepared for emergency situations, whether is it a natural disaster, a job loss, or even the quintessential doomsday event. Even if it’s just to put a few things away for a rainy day, City Prepping is a good resource to get started, and just good a recourse for those who’ve already been working on their preps for years. I highly recommend them.
It looks like the storm is finally passing by – at least in our area! Right now, we’re just dealing with high winds. Ontario and Quebec continue to be hit with snow and rain, though.
The winds are coming from the north, so I was able to shovel out the nearest cat paths wearing just my reading jacket (a sort of cross between a shrug and a cardigan), with the house sheltering me from the wind. The cats were very happy with a kibble top up. Funny how, with 4 trays in the kibble house, they still crowd together like that. I saw several cats inside the cat’s house, and The Distinguished Guest, who is looking like a wet rat right now, came out of the shelf shelter against the sun room window. I’m glad I put those pieces of rigid insulation back, and made the opening smaller. A much cozier spot for weather like this.
Potato Beetle, meanwhile, remains happily in the sun room, which is just under 10C/50F. I was able to take a peak at his leg, and it seems to be healing up quite nicely. I couldn’t tell if he was favouring it or not, though.
Nosencrantz seems to have an idea of how good she’s got it right now! :-D
As for the storm, we are still getting rainfall alerts, and there is a long list of regions with either overland flooding or high water levels. None near us. As crazy as the weather seems to be, I think we all tend to have short memories. I was looking at the 30 year average and records for today, and the record low of -7C/18F was set in 2021 – just a year ago – while the record high of 23C/73F was set in 2000. I think we like to remember the warm and pleasant times better than the cold and snow. The average high for today is 11C/52F, and the average low is 0C/32F. As I write this, we are at -3C/27F. Which made finding this article timely. (click on the headline to read the rest of the article)
Reality check: April is never really that ‘nice,’ Canada Digital Writers The Weather Network Thursday, April 21st 2022, 5:41 am – Spring – the season the breaks the hearts of Canadians year after year, when in reality, it shouldn’t.
“It’s the season that most often breaks our hearts,” says Tyler Hamilton, a meteorologist at The Weather Network. “We have that expectation of the spring and the beautiful picturesque weather, beautiful sunshine and temperatures into the 20s, but the reality is, it’s a season that can bring everything from snow to hail and cold, cold lake breezes.”
This month as a whole as been the perfect reminder of just that.
It certainly has!
Oh! The “rainfall alert” just went away. We’re still looking at isolated flurries and blowing snow for the next couple of days. Power outages are also a possibility.
One thing I’m really appreciating.
We still have internet.
Looking at the StarLink app, it showed we had dozens of outages, last night and through the morning, yet we’ve had no noticeable disruption in service. The longest outage was for about a minute. Most were mere seconds. With our previous satellite internet, we would have lost our internet repeatedly, and for long periods. What a difference!
Last night the forecasts had changed, saying that we wouldn’t get much accumulation of snow, as it would melt on contact.
Well, that didn’t last long.
I made sure to top up the trays in the kibble house, late last night, because I knew they’d be extra hungry. It was raining fairly heavily, and the kibble tray on the ground was full of water, as the one under the shrine would have been. I’m so glad we built that kibble house, so the cats could have a dry, sheltered place to eat!
The trays were completely empty by morning, of course. Not a lot of cats were about, and I noticed several coming out of the cat shelter.
By the time I was done putting warm water out for them, Potato Beetle had emerged from somewhere. He ate a little – then followed me into the sun room.
He’s still there.
:-D
We will have more shoveling to do, I think.
This is how things look all over the place; that slushy layer of snow built up on all the standing water.
We’re still getting rainfall alerts, though.
Rain with isolated thunderstorms continues this morning. However, a strengthening northerly wind will bring falling temperatures today. The rain will turn to snow this morning and then taper off this afternoon or evening as the Colorado Low departs the area.
Wind gusts of 70 to 80 km/h will also weaken this evening. Only minor accumulations of up to 5 cm are expected as much of the snow will melt on contact with the ground.
This much precipitation over frozen or saturated ground may lead to localized flooding including basements, underpasses, and the like. For larger scale overland flooding risks, please consult the provincial flood forecast.
I don’t know that we got any thunderstorms in our area last night, but before I went to bed, I was reading about the different areas with flooding and power outages. Thousands of households were affected by outages, mostly in the south east corner of our province, but also a few not all that far away from us.
In our case, I am actually happier with the snow instead of the rain. The ceiling in the sun room has stopped dripping, and this is what our basement looked like this morning.
Which is not too bad at all. In fact, I’d say it was better than when I last checked it at about 1:30am. My daughters checked it some time after that, too. Because of how lumpy-bumpy and uneven the concrete floor is, we sweep the standing water into the drain. There are those two drains chipped into the concrete that are helping, and there is a steady stream of water flowing through them, but water still puddles.
The drain for the weeping tile goes through here and into the septic tank, and there is enough water draining that the septic pump is triggered quite often. Our septic system is basically our sump pump right now. On the one hand, that’s a lot of wear and tear on the pump that I’d rather not have. On the other, this is pumping the excess water well away from the house, and into a low area out by the barn, rather than by the house.
My daughter shocked the hot water tank with hydrogen peroxide last night, which means it got partially drained into the sump pump reservoir. I checked the level, and it’s looking just fine. On that side of the basement, the only place I’m seeing water seeping through the concrete is a tiny patch near the furnaces, where there is a new layer of concrete on top of old, and the edges are broken up.
Right now, we are hovering around the freezing mark, and the high of the day being forecast on my desktop app is now a bit colder. Tomorrow was supposed to have a high of -5C/23F. Now they’re saying tomorrow’s high will be -3C/27F – then in just 3 days, we’re supposed to reach a high of 11C/52F! It’s supposed to drop down again to 6C/41F the next day. The 14 day trend shows our highs slowly warming back up until reaching 11C/52F again by May 5, and then just staying there. Of course, the app on my tells me something different, so we’ll see which one is the most accurate.
Interestingly, while on Facebook yesterday, I got one of those reminders of things posted on that day, years ago. This time, it was a photo I posted 14 years ago. We were still living in an apartment building at the time, and my daughter was in the lounge, standing on a chair by the window, trying to see over the snow drifted against it.
Mind you, in that city, it was not unusual get snow any month of the year, or have green grass in the middle of winter. Mountains on one side, and open prairies on the other, makes for some pretty dramatic weather changes in very short time frames. We’re actually a bit more south now, compared to the city we lived in before moving here, but here we are surrounded by lakes. It makes for some pretty significant differences.
Well, it is what it is. For now, we’ll keep monitoring the basement, and think warm thoughts.
Excuse me while I have another mug of Rooiboos tea!
The Re-Farmer
addendum: just as I was finishing up this post, I paused to pop outside and give the cats a treat – and had to chase 2 deer away from the kibble house! Then I got a call from my brother, following up the email I sent last night, about how things are going here. Their sump pump is going off every 15 minutes or so, but they also have a sump pump they set up outside, to pump water to the other side of their dike. It broke down. He’s been trying to find one, but the entire city is sold out of sump pumps. They’ll be okay for now, and he does have a spare pump he can rig up to use instead. It does remind me that I had been looking at getting a spare sump pump to have, just in case. It’s not like we can pop over to a store if ours breaks down. I think a spare septic pump would be a good idea, too. That’s something I’d have to talk to my brother about, to make sure I get the right one for our system.
All in all, we’re doing all right. I know other areas are not so fortunate, so I am thankful.
We’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather, as the Colorado Low continues to push northwards. We’ve had a few short downpours and high winds from the north, with milder rain continuing throughout the day. The forecasts are still saying it will turn to snow in our area overnight, but that there will be almost no accumulation, as it’s expected to melt on contact.
Which means there’s water leaking from the sunroom ceiling, and there is water starting to seep through the concrete in the old basement. Oddly, it’s puddling on the north side, not the south, where it usually gets damp first. I’ve got the blower going to try and dry things a bit. So far, the water in the sump pump reservoir doesn’t seem to be increasing yet.
A perfect day to start more seeds!
Here we have the purchased seeds. The Zucca melon is actually a gourd. It can grow to prodigious size, with 130 days to maturity, but when they’re young they can be picked and eaten like zucchini. The Halona melon seeds are left over from last year. We do have some saved seeds, but I decided to use up seeds from last year, instead. The Kaho watermelon is a rare, yellow fleshed variety we wanted to try, and hopefully save seeds from.
Then there are the other seeds we saved from grocery store melons. One has the sticker from the melon itself, so I know the name of it; Crenshaw. With the other two, the stickers were lost, and I couldn’t remember what they were. I do remember the one on the right had a wonderful, crisp texture to it.
After deciding how many of each I would plant, I scarified the larger seeds, then set them all to soak while the pots were prepared.
I was originally going to put these in the little biodegradable Jiffy pots, with several seeds per pot, but decided against that. I decided to use more toilet paper tube pots, with one seed each, in one of the small bins.
The tubes I had left were a smaller size than the ones we used for the kulli corn, so they wobbled around more in the bin. After deciding how many of each type I would plant, I cut up a couple of disposable plates we happen to have. Several pieces were used as dividers between the different types, then leftover edge pieces were tucked along one side to hold all the tubes in place.
After shifting the Solo cup pots to make room, the bin fit quite nicely beside them. I decided to plant 8 each of the Kaho watermelon and the Halona melon, then 4 each of the others. Hopefully, we’ll have a good germination rate and have lots of melons this year, but honestly, I’ll be happy if we get only one of each. What was that poem again?
Four seeds In a row One for the rook One for the crow One to die and One to grow
Thankfully, we don’t need to worry about rooks and crows when starting indoors. Just cats.
While we’ve had the odd bit of rain this spring, today is the first real rain we’ve had. It’s been coming down for a while now. Looking at the weather radar, it seems the main part of the system has already passed over us. As the Colorado Low pushes it northwards, the system spreads wider, with severe rain being pushed to the east, over Ontario and Quebec, and snow to the west, over Saskatchewan, with Manitoba in the middle, getting bits of both!
With our colder climate and short growing season, I can’t help but feel a bit of envy when I see people sharing photos and talking about what they’ve got growing in their gardens, what they’re planting, what flowers are blooming already, and seeing the complete lack of snow on the ground. Then we have times like this, where I see the most severe weather conditions are all to the south of us, and think… you know? I’ll put up with the cold and snow. :-D
Right now, we’re still getting snow forecasts for tomorrow, with most of it hitting the southern parts of the provinces. We’re also still supposed to reach highs above freezing tomorrow, but Monday is supposed to dip down. I am thinking that, now that Potato Beetle has escaped the sun room and won’t let me bring him back, I can get away with putting the ceramic heat bulb out overnight, for that little extra bit of warmth for the seedlings. As warm as the sunroom can get during the day, it doesn’t hold any of that heat, and is not much warmer than outside at night.
I saw very few cats outside this morning! Wise kitties, staying out of the mud and rain! There’s the 6 here, and then I spotted Broccoli later on.
I have a strong suspicion that she has a litter of kittens in that junk pile. While I did zoom in for the photo, she still would normally have run away if I got as close as I did. Mind you, she could also just be not wanting to move in the wet, unless absolutely necessary!
Speaking of wet…
This is what I had to slog through to get to the sign cam. The water extends under the snow in the background. We need to keep this in mind, when we plant our silver buffalo berry here. While this area is low and collects melt water in the spring, once summer hits, most of this area starts baking and is incredibly dry. Particularly where I’m standing to take the photo.
The remains of the dugout in the old hay yard is the fullest I’ve seen since we moved here. I find this encouraging. It shouldn’t take much to dredge this out again and make a nice pond.
We most definitely need a ditch, if we ever want to plant fruit trees along here!
I look forward to being able to take that fence out. Most of those posts are rotted out at ground level, and only being held up by the barbed wire and the few strong posts left.
It would be good to open up this drainage ditch as well, too. Maybe even put in a small culvert. I’ve found one among the scrap beyond the outer yard that might be long enough and looks useable.
The rain is supposed to continue until the wee hours of tomorrow morning, when it’s supposed to change to snow, so we’ll be getting quite a bit more water. There are warnings for overland flooding for some areas, but I think we’re safe from that, here. Still, even the driveway is mostly standing water right now, so I’m glad we don’t need to drive anywhere. The driveway is in bad enough shape as it is; I don’t need to be making deep ruts in it, too!
Today is definitely a good day to stay inside.
Right, Butterscotch?
She most definitely agrees.
I’ve been keeping the door to my office/craft/bedroom, so that the other cats won’t bother Butterscotch and Nosencrantz. Butterscotch is finally coming out of her little corner in the shelf and now spends most of her days on the blanket we have for the cats on one corner of my bed. I’ve even been finding her on the window sill, and sometimes she’ll play with Nosencrantz! Nosencrantz, meanwhile, has discovered the spaces on my storage shelf that are set up for the cats, and has found a new favourite spot to snooze.
Among the other cats, the only one was let in regularly is Cheddar. He doesn’t bother them at all, so they’re good with him. Sometimes, we’ll let David in, too, but he’s not as interested. Fenrir, Beep Beep and Tissue, on the other hand, are actively aggressive towards Butterscotch and Nosencrantz, and even Ginger and Layendecker will bother them. Which is unfortunately, because hate having to keep the door closed. Butterscotch and Nosencrantz still show no interest in leaving the room, but sometimes I’ll open the door and find a crowd of cats, sitting there… watching… waiting… ready for an opportunity to leap into the room… and not just because they want to nap on my bed!
:-D
What a pain. But we love them, anyway.
Meanwhile…
I went through the rest of the seeds to start indoors last night. Most of them actually say to plant 3-4 weeks before last frost. Which would be another 2 weeks or so from right now. I find using the “days to maturity” a bit more useful. I think I’ll be starting some melons today. I was surprised to not find any pixie melons, though. I thought we still had some. We don’t have any saved seed from them, either. I wish I’d remembered that, because I would have ordered more. Still, we have the Halona melon, both as leftover seeds and saved seeds, plus we saved seeds from other cantaloupe type melons from the grocery store that I want to try.
Looking at the days to maturity on our summer squash, we could actually direct seed all of them and still have enough of a growing season left. I still want to start some indoors, though, just in case, but those can wait another couple of weeks. After the melons, we’ll start some pumpkins, including the hull-less varieties, then the remaining gourds, winter squash and cucumber. The summer squash can be the last ones to start.
If all goes well, we’ll be able to do the earliest direct sowing of cool weather crops in about a month.
For now, however, I will appreciate the rain we are getting, as that will help the ground thaw out a bit faster, too. As long as we don’t get too much at once, we’ll be good.
The Re-Farmer 