Wattle weave bed experiment

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Okay, so this project has been incredibly slow going!

I first started preparing the area at the beginning of July. That was just to prepare the bed in advance. It wasn’t until the middle of the month that I could finally get started on the wattle weaving.

For the vertical support posts on the long sides, I used the openings of the chimney block retaining wall to space them out. They’re not quite 2 1/2 feet apart. The bed itself is roughly 12 feet long. For the bottom wattles, I was using maple, which is not very flexible, even when freshly cut, green and newly stripped of its bark. So in that respect, the wider distance was better.

The problem is, I had I think only one straightish piece that was 12′ long. I had a few that were long enough that I could use two, but anything less than that, and there was just too much space between the verticals to do any weaving.

So that got set aside while I figured out where I could find long enough materials.

For the retaining wall side, I decided to experiment, and to completely the other direction. Each of the chimney blocks has three openings in the sides on the front and back. I spaced the verticals with four opening between them. In retrospect, I should have done it with three, but it’s too late to change that now!

I decided to add vertical supports in every opening, and try weaving with much shorter, thinner wattles.

I used the remaining pieces of maple and cut them slightly shorter than the verticals that are already in place.

Then I made a point at one end.

That mostly white cat on the left is Frank, aka: Old Blue Eyes.

Yes. He turned out to be a she, and she is pregnant. *sigh*

I used a scrap piece of board to hammer in each of the new verticals. I ran out of the maple, though, and use some willow for the last four. You can see those set in place in the second image of the slide show above. The willow I used is from what I harvested a couple of weeks ago, yet when I peeled them, they were still pretty green! Which is why I had to peel them. If I just stuck them into the ground, they would root themselves and start growing, and I don’t want to grow willow in my retaining wall blocks!

Once those were in place, it was time to harvest as many willow switches and maple suckers as I could find.

In the last picture, you can see the two piles I gathered. One is of willow switched, the other of maple suckers. I took advantage of needing these to clear out some growth that needed to be cut back completely, so I knew that some of them would not be useable for this. For the weaving, I need long, flexible, straight pieces. Unfortunately, even with the shorter, younger pieces I was harvesting, they tend to grow just a few feet before suddenly ending and splitting off into two.

Once the material was gathered, I grabbed my first piece of willow to start trimming the twigs and branches off when…

My pocket started to ring.

There’s only one place that calls my cell phone.

Yup. It was home care.

They didn’t have someone for my mother’s supper time med assist. They did for her bedtime assist. Just not supper. Normally, they are both done by the same person, so it looks like they found someone to cover for her for the end of day assist, but not the supper time one.

My mother was scheduled to get her med assist at 4:45pm.

I had just enough time to clean up, change and head out.

*sigh*

I did phone my mother in advance and left a message on her answering machine before I left. When I got to her place, however, she was sitting outside, enjoying the day, and was very surprised to see me!

I was early enough that we could sit outside together and chat for a while before heading in. Since I was there anyhow, once I got her meds set out, I helped her get her supper together, did some dishes, etc. I’m going to be back tomorrow morning to take her to the lab for blood work, so I didn’t stay for very long. I reminded her not to have breakfast tomorrow, as one of the tests requires fasting.

This makes three days in a row I have had to do med assists for my mother because there was no home care aid to do it.

While I way away, my daughter made supper and was feeding the outside cats for me again. I was very happy to grab some food, and then head back out again. I wanted to at least get those maple suckers woven in, as they will dry out and get brittle much faster than the willow.

Yes, Sir Robin is chewing on the tip of a maple!

I got about a dozen out of the maple I’d harvested and got started with the weaving.

At those length, I needed three to go the length of the bed.

I made it to two.

Even as thin and green as they were, with how close together the vertical pieces are, they just weren’t flexible enough. While trying to weave through, I broke a vertical. I managed to scrounge a long enough piece of older maple to replace it, but when I broke a second one, that was it. I found another piece of maple to replace that one – at this point, the remaining pieces were among those that were rejected for being too bent or whatever – and gave up using the maple suckers.

The willow was much faster to prepare. I didn’t even need to use pruning sheers.

For the first three passes, I wove the willow switches – it took three to complete one run – up higher. They didn’t want to bend around the verticals until I got to the skinniest tips, and would instead push them to one side or the other, if it was just one run of the willow switches. Once the first three runs were done, I used a scrap piece of board to hammer them down, little by little, to the base.

I kept that pattern up, but still had problems with the willow switches basically being stronger than the vertical supports. I ended up snapping one of the verticals after several passes. It didn’t break off completely, though. I was able to find a strong and straight piece of willow harvested last time and drive it into the space, alongside the vertical that snapped.

Some time later, another vertical snapped right off. This time, the piece of willow I found to add into the space had to be trimmed flat on one side to be able to fit alongside the remains of the broken vertical.

It took some doing, but I eventually figured out how to force the wattles to bend around the verticals as I went along. Unfortunately, that’s when the wattles started snapping, too!

In the end, I was able to get about a dozen runs woven through the verticals, sometimes having to get creative with shorter pieces to make up for not quite being able to reach the ends.

If you scroll through the slide show above, you’ll be able to see a picture I took from above the wattle weave, where some switches bent to the point of breaking, while others were just running straight through!

I don’t need to make the wattle weave on this side any taller. I had to stop at this point and head in, and will continue tomorrow, which is basically to tidy things up. At each end, the wattles will be trimmed evenly, and the shorter verticals will be trimmed to just above the wattles. The original, taller verticals will be left long. As they match the verticals on the other side, they will be left tall so that, should this bed ever need to be covered with netting or something, the taller verticals will be available to attach support hoops to.

Aside from the tidying up, this side of the new wattle weave bed is done. For all the pain in the butt it was, it looks much nicer than the other side. I’m not sure how those pieces that snapped during weaving will hold out, but on this side, it’s not going to be holding soil.

The ends, of course, can be woven in with any short pieces we’ve got; there are only three supports to weave around.

It’s the other long side that is going to be more of a challenge. I need to find more materials long enough to weave around those widely spaced vertical posts.

So, my conclusions on how this is going.

Obviously, on the inside, the posts are two far apart. On the retaining wall side, they’re too close together for the base thickness of wattles I was weaving, even though they are MUCH thinner than what I had for the other side. This is where it would be handy to have basket willow instead of the varieties we’ve got. Side note: if you noticed that some of the willow looked green, while others looked more yellow, that’s because they came from different trees that seem to be different varieties of willow.

With the closer spacing, the biggest advantage is that there are fewer gaps between the wattles. Which means they’ll hold soil in place better. What I have now on the other side has gaps large enough that I will have to line the inside with something to keep the soil in. With the L shaped bed, I had cardboard at the bottom of the bed that was wide enough to go partially up the sides. The rest of the height was lined with grass clippings. The soil in this bed has already been amended, so there’s no lining the bottom with cardboard again. I will probably just use cardboard along the inside.

I’m seriously considering removing the weaving I’ve done so far on the inside of the bed, and adding another vertical between each of the ones currently in place. I don’t know that I’d be able to reuse the maple wattles, though. If I had something long enough for them that could hold water, I would soak them for a day or two, to make them more flexible, but I’ve got nothing like that. It might be worth sacrificing the maple wattles to get a better and tighter weave. If I did do that, some of them would be used to make the additional vertical posts.

I’ve been eyeballing the trees in the spruce grove, and I might be able to harvest some poplar to use for weaving.

It’s a good thing I have time to figure it out. It won’t be used until it’s needed for next year’s garden, which might include getting winter sown this fall. As long as it gets done before the ground starts to freeze, that will be fine.

I really like the wattle weave beds, but gosh it’s hard to get enough materials for them. They use so much more than you’d think, and it’s surprisingly hard to find material that is the right combination of long, straight and flexible.

In the end, though, I think it’s worth it.

It is another reason for us to get basket willow, though! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Kittens and pumpkins!

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This morning, my darling daughters took care of feeding the outside cats so that I could sleep in. Between the city shopping trips and having to get up extra early to get things done before driving out to do my mother’s morning med assists and other errands, I really needed it. I am NOT a morning person at the best of times!

Of course “sleeping in” is a relative statement. Especially with so many cats that like to use me as a bed. So it was still pretty early when I headed out to do the rest of my morning rounds.

I got to see the garage kittens.

The white and grey one was brave enough to sniff my fingers!

They have discovered my brother’s baler that’s parked beside the garage, and that’s their new playground.

The first couple of pictures are from this morning. Their mama came over and let me pet her, which gave me a chance to get closer to the kittens. There was an area they were hiding under where I could reach in from the side or the other end, so I was able to touch briefly before they moved. At one point, I just held my hand out and the white and grey one was juuuuust brave enough to touch my fingers with his/her nose and give them a sniff before backing away, several times.

While checking on the garden beds, I got some pictures of a couple of the pumpkins.

A couple of them are blooming, but only one has a female flower budding (second image above). That one is on the largest pumpkin plant. Since the beans are completely stagnated and not going to climb the trellis I prepared for them, I’m training the bigger pumpkin up the trellis netting. As the main vine gets bigger, I’m getting it to grow towards one of the vertical support posts, as well as to where a pair of vertical and horizontal netting support posts cross. Any pumpkins would get too heavy for this netting to support on its own, so I want to use the structural supports as much as possible.

Today was slightly cooler than yesterday, but I still wanted to stay out of direct sunlight while working outside. With that in mind, I decided to get back to the wattle weaving in the old kitchen garden.

Of course, things didn’t quite go as planned. Do they ever? But that will be in my next post!

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

August coming in hot

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We’re only 3 days in and August is already hammering us, and it looks like it’s not going to get much better for a while! As I write this, it’s just past 6pm and, depending on which app I look at, we’re still at our high of 27C/81F, or we’re 25C/77F with the humidex putting us at 29C/84F.

I just got back from outside, and I’d go with the humidex of 29C/84F.

Looking at the long range forecasts, we’re looking at highs of 30C/86F or higher. In a couple of weeks, though, we might start getting overnight lows dropping below 10C/50F here and there. We’ll see what actually happens!

This morning, at least, was pleasantly cool. When I first headed out, early since I had to go to my mother’s for her morning med assist, I at first thought the smoke was really bad again. Happily, it wasn’t smoke, but fog.

Well. Mostly. Once the fog dissipated, it was still really smokey. Last I read today, several new wildfires have been spotted, while several others have merged. High winds and poor visibility have prevented helicopters and water bombers from being able to go out, but things have cleared up a bit, and they were able to see the changes.

There was, of course, morning cuteness.

I didn’t see the calico this morning, but fluffy little Colby now likes to join the crowd of cats converging at the sun room doorway, calling for food. The garage kittens wouldn’t move away from the garage this morning, so I brought their bowl back. I was hoping if I left it closer to the house, they’d be encouraged to come over, but they’re still too scared. It doesn’t help that their mother is so stand-offish and aggressive with the other cats. She will let me pet her sometimes, and starts purring right away, but she does NOT like other cats! The kittens did seem curious about the other kittens, when I saw them by the house, so they might be different as they get bigger and braver.

The cats fed and my morning rounds done, I was soon off to my mother’s to do her morning med assist. Since I was there yesterday morning, there wasn’t a lot else that needed to be done.

Since I was out anyhow, I kept on going to the smaller, nearer city. I hit the Canadian Tire first to get more stove pellets for the litter boxes. While there, I picked up some deer repellant spray that I can spray directly onto our fruit trees, as well as surfaces. It’s supposed to repel racoons and mice, etc. too.

My peas had been getting a second growth spurt, with several plants blooming and developing new pods.

This morning, they were gone. The pea pods and fresh growth, that is. Not the entire plants.

I’m not going to spray my peas with this stuff, so I stopped at a Dollarama next. I found more of the taller tomato cages, like I set around the plum tree. I picked up four sets of them and plan to put them along one side of the bed with the peas as a sort of wall, and spray those, instead. I’m going to just do the side with the Super Sugar Snap peas, since those are the ones still trying to produce, and where I have a couple of drying out plants with pods I’m allowing to fully mature to collect seeds for next year. I’ve bought more pea seeds, but none are sugar snaps.

Last of all, I hit the Walmart, starting with an early lunch at the McRaunchies. One of the things on my list was some ibuprofen for my daughters, but I was still too early. The pharmacy department was still closed and the extra strength stuff was covered and locked, still. So I took my time getting the other things on my list, plus a few other items I remembered.

In the end, I got four 4L bottles of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, the ibuprofen (the most expensive item), a container of beef bullion powder, a couple of containers of sour candy for my husband (for when his blood sugars drop), four little bottles of sugar free water flavours for him as well, plus a bag of praline covered peanuts and two containers of gum to keep in the truck. Last of all, I grabbed an energy drink for the drive home. It cost just under $83. !!! The scary thing is, if I’d bought all this locally instead of at Walmart, it would have cost about 50% more.

That done, I headed home with only a stop at a gas station along the way. Gas in the town nearest us is the same as the city, at $1.379, instead of the $1.389 that it is in my mother’s town. I’ll be back at her place on Tuesday, to take her for her monthly blood work, and I wanted to make sure I got gas at a slightly better price.

Once I was home and the truck was unloaded by the house, I couldn’t move it because there were too many kittens around the tires. It was too early to feed them to lure them away, so I left it to move at feeding time. Once my daughter and I put everything away, I decided to just lie down for a bit. Between my aversion to shopping and the heat, I was wiped out, so I thought a bit of a rest was in order.

Two hours later, I woke up to find myself encased in cats. 😄

Good grief. I just checked the temperature again, as I want to do the evening watering, and it has actually gotten hotter!

Well, the garden needs to be watered. Time to put on my big girl panties and suck it up.

I really don’t tolerate the heat like I used to, that’s for sure! I used to love temperatures like this!

Ah, the joys of getting old.

😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Future gardens: did I over do it? 😄

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Okay, so I took advantage of MI Gardener having a 40% sale on seeds. Which means I got a lot of things I wouldn’t normally have been able to get and still stayed in budget. Most of these will be for future gardens, as we continue to build more beds and extend further afield.

Here is what I ordered today. Click on the images to see them better. I’ll include links as I list them below, this time in alphabetical order.

Oh, the crazy thing about going back and looking up the links. When I placed the order, I selected “in stock” items only. Going back, I just went through all the seeds, not just categories and not just “in stock”. I found that quite a few things I ordered are now listed as out of stock – but there are things that I see listed as in stock, but weren’t there when I was placing the order from the in stock only list!

Must. Not. Place. Another order!!

Ah, well. Here is what I chose today. All links should open in new tabs.

Anise One for our developing herb garden. I had no idea anise could grow here, but it’s only 75 days to maturity, so we should have no problem.

Bachelor’s Button – blue
Bachelor’s Button – pink Years ago, I lived in a city where Bachelor’s Button practically grew wild and always loved them, but I had no idea they were also edible! These are deer resistant, so they will be planted strategically.

Butterneck Squash This one is a Canadian heirloom variety that is apparently almost extinct! So of course we’ll have to grow some to save seed. 90-100 days to maturity.

California Wonder Bell Pepper these are to restock our pepper seed inventory. It’s a thick walled pepper, which caught my attention. Some varieties we’ve tried had surprisingly thin walls. 75 days to maturity.

Canary Yellow Melon I’m as much a sucker for melons as I am for winter squash! 80 days to maturity

Caraway Another one for our future herb garden. 70 days to maturity.

Chocolate Stripes Tomato A pretty slicing tomato for the family to try. 75-80 days to maturity.

Coffee Seeds (coffea arabica) I always like to have at least one “for fun” thing and one “challenge” thing. This will be a “challenge” thing – and to be grown as a house plant, as this is a zone 11-13 item. 2-4 years to maturity, and yes, this is a real coffee plant that we could potentially harvest beans from to make our own coffee. This one is more for the girls, since they are the coffee drinkers in this household.

Dazzler Red Cosmo I got this because the red is a less common colour for them, and they are great for attracting pollinators. 75-90 days to maturity.

Gold Rush Wax Bean (Bush) I did already get a tri-colour mix of bush beans, but I’ve almost used up the yellow bush bean seeds I had in my current collection, so this is a replenisher. 55 days to maturity.

Golden Boy Celery I’ve never grown celery before. The one time I tried, it was a pink variety and I started them way too late. These ones, however, are 80-90 days to maturity, so I shouldn’t have that problem.

Golden Hubbard Squash Yeah, I’m a sucker for the winter squash! These are a smaller and more prolific variety of Hubbard that grows to “only” 5-15 pounds. 95-110 days to maturity

Hales Best Jumbo Cantaloupe Melon Yup. Another melon! These are described as being more drought tolerant and thrives in hot weather – kinda like we’ve got right now. 85 days to maturity.

Long Grain Rice I looked these up out of curiosity and was shocked. We can actually grow this variety of rice here! Gotta try it! 90-100 days to maturity.

Manitoba Tomato This is an all purpose tomato, and the variety my mother used to grow here, so I know these should work. With only 65 days to maturity, we could direct sow these, instead of starting them indoors.

Meadow wildflower mix One of these days we’ll get a wildflower mix that will take! 90 days to maturity.

Oaxacan green dent corn (x2) There aren’t a lot of seeds per packet, so I got two of these. As a dent corn, we would be growing these to make corn flour. Only 80 days to maturity, too!

Orange flesh honeydew melon Oh, look! Another melon! We have the green flesh honeydew (none of the melons we have this year are going to produce, and I still don’t know what happened), and now orange flesh. 75-110 days to maturity.

Red Long of Tropea onion We’ve grown this variety before, and they did really well. We have our own onion seeds, but none of this variety. 90-110 days to maturity.

Red Wethersfield onion While I think we these are the red onions we have in the mix of our own seeds collected, they were from onions that had died off after transplanting – we thought! – but came up the next year. We’ve never actually successfully grown edible bulbs of these, so I figure it might be worth trying again. 100 days to maturity.

Rouge vif D’Etampes / Cinderella Pumpkin This variety caught my attention partly because it’s listed as being able to last in storage longer. 110 days to maturity.

Russian Tarragon Another one for the future herb garden, and it apparently overwinters well with little protection. Not sure if that applies to our zone 3 winters, but no zone is listed at all for it. 60 days to maturity.

Stowell Evergreen Corn (x2) Another corn, and another addition to our collection of white things! This variety is listed as drought tolerant, which is important for where we are. There aren’t a lot of seeds in the packet for something that needs to be wind pollinated, so I got two. 80-100 days to maturity.

Tom Thumb Dwarf Pea (x2) This variety grows to only 13-18 inches high. No trellis needed. Which would make it much, much easier to protect from deer! Not a lot of seeds per packet, so I got two. 45 days to maturity.

Triticale (x2) Okay, this one is for well into the future! At some point, we do want to grow our own grain to make flour. I’ve already got some heirloom wheat that is particularly noted for making good bread flour though, even with two packets, the amount of seeds I have for those would be grown only to collect more seeds for the first couple of years! The triticale comes in 500 seed count packets, but I still got two. Even so, the first crop would be mostly to get more seed for larger, future plantings. Thinking well ahead on this one! 85 days to maturity.

There we have it! My second order with MI Gardener, in as many days, and third order this summer. 😄

While there are still some things we will get from other sources, these orders will set us up for several years, as we build and expand on our garden beds and growing areas, plus more flower seeds for the pollinators. The additions for the herb garden has brought that goal closer to reality by quite a bit. There are many other herbs I’d love to get, but most of them need a much longer growing season than we’ve got. At least until we get a permanent greenhouse.

I seem to have become addicted to getting seeds like I used to be with getting yarn. Seeds are cheaper, though! Especially with sales like this one. This order totaled US$36, with a savings of US$24. No shipping costs, either. Plus, they have a points program and I now have enough points to get $5 off my next order.

Which is not going to happen for a while. I’ve got lots of seeds now!

Honest!!

At least until their new inventory comes in, after this blow out sale clears space for them.

😂🤣😄

The Re-Farmer

They’re here! Plus another outing, and I just couldn’t resist.

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I got a call from home care last night.

No med assist for my mother this morning, nor for tomorrow morning.

*sigh*

Which meant I was out a bit earlier to feed the cats and do my rounds, but I didn’t have time to water the garden. The heat is on and is staying for the next few days, so we will likely be watering twice a day again. My daughters took care of the watering while I was out.

When setting out the cat food, I’ve been putting some in a try by the back door of the garage, where the garage kittens have been hanging out. Usually, I see them playing behind the garage, then running to hide as soon as I come near. They weren’t there this morning, though their mother followed me.

It wasn’t until I was heading back to the house with the bowl that I saw them! The white and black one was at one of the water bowls. It is a large former heated water bowl and was needed refilling, so the kitten was basically climbing the side of the bowl to be able to get to the water. The smokey one was a few feet away, chewing on some taller grass. As I very slowly and quietly got closer, it saw me and ran away…

In the direction of the house!

I still had to put the food bowl in the sun room, so I tried to skirt around, worried I would scare it away completely, but nope.

It ended up running into the sun room – then started eating!

I ended up leaving the bowl outside and finishing my rounds, leaving the water refills for later, so as not to scare them off.

I am so happy they have finally come to the house!!

That done, I was soon on the road to mother’s. When I called her about it last night, I remembered to ask her to make a shopping list so I could do her groceries as well. She had that ready when I got there. After giving her her medications, we went over the list, and added a few more things to it.

Her shopping goes pretty fast, so I was soon back and putting things away. My mother was getting dressed for the day and asked me to rub some Voltaren on her lower back, where things have been bothering her. The morning med assist with home care has extra time to do stuff like that for my mother. She tells me they don’t do a very good job of rubbing it in, though!

There were only a few odd things with my mother on this visit. During conversation, it got around to getting the door fixed, and I told her it was going to cost over $4000. She had asked me to let her know how much it would cost some time ago. I did mention it shortly after we got the estimate, but she got distracted by something and I don’t think she heard me. Her immediate response when I told her the amount today was, “I don’t believe it.” I’m not sure if she was accusing me of lying, or that the company was over charging. I went with the latter and told her that my brother had replaced a door on his house – just the door, not the frame – and did all the work himself, and it still cost them over $2000. That was years ago, too, before all the prices started going crazy.

She still doesn’t believe it.

Since she did ask, I mentioned a few other things we’re dealing with when she suddenly got all overwhelmed, saying it was “too much for me” and too much for her to deal with.

???

I said to her, I’m not expecting you to do anything. I’m just telling you about it! This isn’t for you to fix. Then I realized what was going on and added, I’m not our vandal. He used to go to her for money constantly – and she would give it to him! He got many thousands of dollars out of her, and I think she was expecting me to ask her for money. Now, she did imply that she would help with the cost when she first told me to let her know how much it would be, but this is my mother we’re talking about. She’ll throw money at our vandal at the drop of a hat, likely due to some odd feeling of guilt over how he’s turned out. Especially after the youngest of my brothers died, and he took full advantage of that. When it comes to me or my brother, however, she will often make promises about paying for things, then try to back out at the last minute. She did that when it she said she would pay for our moving out here to take care of the place, then tried to do it again with the new roof. So I don’t ask. She still acts as if I’m making demands of her.

Makes it very hard to have conversations with her at times.

As I was getting ready to leave, my mother asked about our crab apples. I told her, we won’t have apples until the end of August on one tree, end of September on the others. Well, someone had left a big box of crab apples in the common room, and she’d taken some for herself and for me. I’d seen the apples in the box and, while I knew my mother would have picked the best she could find, they weren’t in good shape. She started bagging up some crab apples for me and I tried to tell her we didn’t need any, I just did our big stock up shops, we have plenty of fruit, etc. She scoffed and started telling me how I should cook them, what I should do with them. All desserts. I told her, we’re not really dessert people. She scoffed again and said she was saving me money by giving them to me. I’m not sure how, but she then started talking about how I should be cooking our own food, and I would be saving money by cooking…

???

I told her, of course, I’m cooking. What does she think? We get food out of the air?

She started talking about how we’re “modern” and about food in boxes.

So… because I didn’t want to take the crab apples, she thinks I don’t cook, and we only eat prepared food from boxes?

I told her, do you know how expensive boxed food is? I do the cooking!

Ah, but we must be buying boxed food all the time, and that’s why we’re always short on money.

…

So…

Things are tight (which I didn’t even talk to her about in any way) isn’t because everything is breaking down and needing to be replaced or repaired. Not because the cost of living has gone through the roof. No. It’s because, in the almost 40 years since I moved off the farm, I apparently never cooked and we only eat prepared food.

I told her she was starting to make things up, just like our vandal. Her response? Well, I guess he had to learn it from somewhere.

…

*sigh*

So I now have a bag of bruised crab apples. We’ll find something to do with them. They won’t go to waste. My mother does have an incredible talent at making what was supposedly a gesture of kindness into a pretty nasty attack on my uselessness as a human being. Absolutely bizarre.

Ah, well. Not much we can do about it.

I had considered going back to the grocery store for ourselves, but just didn’t have the energy. I had tried to go to bed early last night, but that didn’t work. My left hip was particularly bad last night, so I got up to take painkillers – the first since I’ve been on anti-inflammatories – but didn’t have a water bottle handy. I now have a small drinks fridge in my bedroom that my daughters gave me to make space for the AC upstairs, so I just had to stand up and take two steps to get a water bottle.

Instead, I got hit with a Charlie Horse in my left thigh. I couldn’t even stand up, never mind take those two steps.

It’s been a a while since this has happened!

Thankfully, what I could reach was the Tei Fu lotion. Also thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as others I’ve had, and the lotion soon did its work. Getting back to sleep after that, though, was not easy, as my leg would still twitch and twang as if it was going to start cramping up again, for hours.

Being as tired as I was, and after dealing with my mother – and this her on a good day! – I was more than ready to just go straight home.

As I write this, it’s coming up on 5pm, and I’ll be heading out to do the evening yard cat feeding. I’m not looking forward to going out there. I think doing my evening stuff in the heat yesterday is what triggered the Charlie Horse last night. Plus, we’re still in the hottest part of the day. We already hit our expected high of 28C/82F, while the humidex put us at over 30C/86F. We’re not expected to cool down to our overnight low of 16C/61F until 6am tomorrow, and then it’s going to scream right back up again. There is rain in the forecast but not for another 4 days.

Definitely need to water the garden again tonight. I did use that Shake ‘n’ Feed fertilizer on most of the beds, so hopefully that will help with every watering as well.

Speaking of gardening.

Yes. I did it again.

I placed another seed order.

What can I say? MI Gardener went from having a 25% off sale, to a 40% off sale.

This time, I got some more unusual items, as well as varieties that I want to try at some point. Most of this is pure seed inventory stuff. I’ve already got the order confirmation, so I’ll write about that in my next post.

After I feed the kitties.

I wonder if the garage kittens are still close to the house, getting to know their cousins?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden (and beyond): Oops. I did it again

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Yup.

I ordered more seeds.

I placed an order with MI Gardener previously, and it arrived a while ago. So why did I order more? Well, MI Gardener prices are some of the best around right now, even when ordering from Canada. I’m on their email list and they announced a 25% off sale that started today. I happened to be up past midnight, so I went ahead and placed an order to take advantage of it. In fact, I might even made another one. I haven’t decided yet.

I took advantage of our winter sowing experiment to clean out my seed inventory of older seeds, so part of my goal was to replace things with fresh seed. With the sale, I’m continuing that, but I am also building my my seed inventory with extra. How much we actually plant will depend on how many beds we have ready this fall for winter sowing as well as for spring sowing and transplanting next year.

So, without further ado, this is what I ordered last night/this morning.

This time, I’m going to link to each item I ordered. All links should open in a new tab. They are list below in the same order as in the images above.

Tigger Melon This was something I had in my wish list. It’s a tiny, personal size, melon. More importantly, it takes 90 days to full maturity, and we average 99 days between first and last frost. In theory, we could direct sow them and get a harvest, though I would start them indoors, just to be safe.

Summer Savory This year, I bought a summer savory transplant. We plan to expand our culinary herb garden, and this will be part of that. Only 65 days to maturity.

Golden Sweet Pea I got another colourful variety last time. We have other peas as well. I just like to have a variety to shake things up. 😊 60 days to maturity.

Black Futsu Squash We have a variety of winter squash seeds, but we’re still experimenting to see what we like. This variety has an edible skin and stores 4-5 months. It needs 110 days to maturity, so definitely one to start indoors.

Orange Currant Tomato This looks very much like an orange version of the Spoon tomatoes we’ve been growing for a few years now – and it the only tomato that has anything we can harvest at the moment. It would be great if these do as well. 65-70 days to maturity.

Yellow Swiss Chard We have Rainbow Chard. We have Fordhook Giant Chard. Why not Yellow Chard, too? As with the other chards, this one is heat tolerant, drought tolerant and can grow in cold weather, so it can be succession sowed as well as winter sown. 28-57 days to maturity.

Sweet Siberian Watermelon One of these days, I’d really like to get watermelon! I only get short season varieties, of course, but so far, none have done well. The one Cream of Saskatchewan melon we got last year about about the size of a baseball, and they’re supposed to be much bigger. This variety is supposed to produce 15-20 pound fruit, yet has only 80 days to maturity. It does come with the warning that it needs lots of room to spread!

Shogoin Turnip a good cool weather variety that needs only 40-60 days to maturity. Plus, it’s really pretty.

Lemon Squash In our first couple of gardening years, we had good summer squash production. Then… nothing seems to be growing! I’m hoping this variety will do better. It’s supposed to be prolific, and only 50-60 days to maturity.

Hailstone Radish with finally being able to grow radishes, and even radish seed pods, through winter sowing, I’m more than happy to experiment with different varieties. This one is only 25 days to maturity!

Garbanzo Bean Okay, this is an odd one. Until fairly recently, I didn’t even know garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas, could grow here. I happen to really like chickpeas. However, they are also drought tolerant, nitrogen fixers. They are 100 days to full maturity, though, so it’s touch and go for this one.

Early Prolific Straightneck Squash So this seems to be another winter squash with an edible skin? The description specifies it is like zucchini, and that the whole thing can be eaten. I’m not sure, but with our luck with any squash these days, I’m willing to try it! Heat tolerant and somewhat drought tolerant. Only 70 days to maturity.

Chicory Okay, I’m not sure how to categorize this one. Perhaps it’s one for the kitchen garden. The leaves can be eaten, and it can be used medicinally, but it’s mostly the roots I’m interested in, as they can be used as a coffee substitute. I remember my parents sometimes buying it at the store, but never tried it. I don’t drink coffee, but my daughters do, and that stuff’s getting really expensive. So… worth a try. Especially with only 80 days to maturity.

Caspar Eggplant I’ve definitely got a “white” theme going on this year! This is described as a rare Japanese variety. Of course, I see “rare” and I’m all for growing it to save seeds. 😄 75 days to maturity.

Blueberry Tomato yes, another tomato to try! A cherry tomato with a lovely appearance. Hopefully, it’ll taste as good as it looks. 75-85 days to maturity.

Purple Savoy Cabbage Growing cabbages is something that’s been our list for when we have more space in the garden. Cold tolerant and good for storage. Only 65-70 days to maturity, too.

Daikon Radish I actually meant to order this last time, but they were sold out. I got the icicle radish instead. My younger daughter really likes Daikon radish. The last time we tried to grow it, something ate them as soon as they sprouted. With winter sowing, we might actually succeed this time! Best of all, only 55 day to maturity. Long for a radish, but well within our growing season.

Florence Fennel This is another one that we tried before, but it did not succeed. We didn’t have the right growing conditions for it. This is one of those vegetables we like, but almost never buy, just as a matter of budget priorities. 70 days to maturity.

And now I’ve gone and removed everything I’ve ordered from my wish list, so I don’t accidentally buy them again! 😄

All of these cost US$27, which is pretty darn good!

Oh, look at me… I’m already going through what they’ve still got in stock to see if there’s something else I want to order.

😂

Anyhow.

We will now have lots of options to choose from when we do our winter sowing in the fall. Last fall, I just scattered mixes of seeds. This time, now that I’ve seen how things worked out, the sowing will be more planned and more attention paid to spacing. Plus, our seed inventory is built up again, so if some things don’t work out, there are other things that can be sown in their stead.

Of course, that means continually adding more garden beds!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Costco stock up: This is what $635 looks like

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I am so glad to be home.

I forgot. We’re coming up on a long weekend. Even though today is Thursday, Costco was insanely busy! When I was done, it took several minutes going further and further to the back of the store before I found the end of the line I needed. The self check out line was almost as long!

Thankfully, everything went quickly.

Before going to Costco, though, I made a stop at the mall nearby for breakfast, then made a quick run through the Dollarama. I found a few things for both kitchen and garden, totaling just over $35 – including a couple of boxes of McKenzie Seeds wildflower mix. I’m considering trying again in the same spot I tried winter sowing last year, only this time, I want to find some way to keep the cats from digging and rolling all over it, even though I never removed the leaf litter mulch. We really need more wildflowers for the pollinators. I’ve left the sections of the old garden area uncut because they were pretty much the only things blooming right now. Once they start dying back, I’ll start working on taming the jungle. I’m not seeing as many pollinators lately, though. The constant smoke from the wildflowers is causing them problems.

I also got a couple of metal pinwheels that are weather vanes, so they will turn with the direction of the wind to spin. I plan to set one beside the peas that are trying to recover, and another near the plum and apple saplings. The plastic pinwheels I have now don’t seem to catch the wind very well, but something that moves with the wind should work better to distract the deer.

I’m glad I didn’t stop to get a bit of gas on the way into the city. I normally put in just a few bucks if I’m expecting to drop below half a tank. I did stop at the gas station in my mother’s town along the way, but that’s because the truck informed me that I was low on washer fluid. The only fluid I have in the truck right now is for winter. Gas prices there were $1.349/L At Costco, it was $1.199/L!! There rest of the city was $1.339/L It cost me $67.15 to fill my tank.

When it comes to shopping at Costco, this is where we bulk buy most of our non-food items, so that took up a significant portion of the budget. This is what $636.55 looks like.

There were two things on my list I didn’t get, because Costco doesn’t carry them. Those are for the next Walmart trip. I lost count somewhere along the line, as I ended up going a bit over my budget for this shop, when I thought I was still under budget. Ah, well.

With the long receipt, I ended up taking two pictures of it.

Unfortunately WP messes one of them up, due to the different dimensions. You should be able to see it properly if you click on the image.

For the non-food stuff, we got:

  • scent free laundry detergent
  • puppy pads
  • four 9kg bags of dry kibble
  • one case of canned cat food
  • toilet paper
  • Shake ‘n’ Feed fertilizer (on sale)
  • a 2 pack of parchment paper

All of that cost $250 and change before taxes.

*sigh*

For beverages, there is a flat of Monster energy drink, which I will be paid back for, and a 3 pack of oat milk for the girls.

Then there’s the actual food:

  • spaghetti
  • Ramen noodles
  • 2 pack of Honey Nut Cheerios (on sale)
  • 2 jars of Hellman’s Mayo (the sale price made them cheaper than the Kirkland brand)
  • double flat of eggs (5 dozen)
  • 4 pounds butter
  • Old Cheddar, 1 block
  • Mozzarella, 1 block
  • pork tenderlion
  • pork sausage (on sale)
  • two packs of drumsticks (on sale)
  • two rotisserie chickens (cheaper than raw, whole chickens)
  • two 2 packs of salad mix
  • Basmati rice
  • two 2 packs of rye bread
  • two 2 packs of wraps
  • 1 bag hazelnuts

The food and drink part of the shop came to about $348 and change, before taxes.

What I didn’t get was beef. I checked out a fairly small flank steak, and it was over $88! A family pack of stew meat was over $43. They had a sale on ground beef, but they came in long chubs that all cost in the $60 range, before discount. Then there were the larger cuts of beef that were in the $200 plus, range. *choke* Even the pork is starting to creep up in price again.

We aren’t even going to be able to buy a beef share this year. Normally, we would have made payments throughout the year until they butchered in the fall. We already dropped from a quarter beef to an eighth, the last time we got a beef share, because of how tight our budget got once we had truck payments. We talked when I met to pick up the meat in January, and she said they weren’t sure what they were going to be doing, nor what price/pound they’d have to charge yet. All they knew for sure was that they were going to have to increase the price. So we didn’t start making payments at the beginning of the year, like I planned. Which, I suppose, worked out for the best, because we’ve had so many things needing to be replaced or repaired – and we’re still not done with that – that we couldn’t have made monthly payments this year, anyhow. They haven’t updated their website, nor have they announced anything on their social media pages, so I have no idea if they were even still selling beef shares.

I wonder if we can buy a steer from the farmer that rents most of this property? We have enough pasture in the outer yard to sustain 1 or 2 calves. Then butcher in the fall.

Oh, dear Lord. I just looked up the average prices for feeder steers and heifers, per hundredweight, in Canada right now.

*choke*

Never mind that idea! Yeah, we’d save money in the long run, but yikes! No wonder beef prices are so high right now!

Okay, so beef is going to be a rare treat for the next while.

😢😢

Anyhow.

That’s our Costco stock up shop for this month. It won’t last us the month, either.

*sigh*

Oh, that reminds me. Our federal overlords graciously “gave” people on CPP and CPP Disability a 2.7% raise that kicked in for July’s payment, which was a couple of days ago. My husband gets both CPP Disability, plus Disability through his private insurance with SunLife. With private insurance he was “allowed” to make a certain amount above the payments, then everything else gets deducted. The CPP Disability uses up all that “allowance”, which is why I can’t get a job. Anything I earn would be deducted from his SunLife disability payments.

He recently got a letter from SunLife telling him what his payments will be, starting at the end of July, meaning today.

Yup. While the CPP Disability payments went up by a few bucks, his SunLife payments went down by a few bucks.

They cancelled each other out.

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Honestly, I thank God that the company my husband worked for had such a good insurance plan. It’s keeping us afloat. I also thank God that we have the arrangement with my brother to live here and take care of the place in exchange for rent. We still have to be creative in making ends meet – like making these trips to the city to buy in bulk and stock up where we can. Especially in years like this, where we have next to nothing to harvest from the garden, never mind preserve for winter. Like my SIL said about their own garden, years ago: if we had to rely on our garden, we’d starve!

Well, it is what it is, and we do what we can with what we have.

What other choice is there?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: still kicking! Plus, bonus kittens and insane prices

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First, the cuteness!

When I went out this morning to feed the yard cats, I had an adorable little surprise. Fluffy Colby was with some other cats INSIDE the sun room! I found the other three kittens around the cat shelters and they did run off, but Colby stayed close.

When it was time to bring out the kitten soup bowls, I found him sharing a tray with Havarti. He ran off a bit when I put the kitten soup bowl down, but he was soon back, sharing with with his cousin.

I want to pet that kitten so much!!

The garage kittens, sadly, still won’t come closer.

Today, my plan was to focus on finally giving the garden, and the food forest additions, a deep watering. Particularly since tomorrow will be hotter again, and I will be doing my Costco shop in the city. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 25C/77F. Today reached a comparatively cool high of 23C/73F. I didn’t need to go anywhere today, so I hoped to get some progress outside.

Well, of course, that changed.

My husband called in refills for his injections, so a trip to the pharmacy was in order. Of course, I combined errands as much as possible, grabbing our big water bottles to refill at the grocery store after getting the meds. Then, since I was there anyhow, I checked out the sales and picked up a few things.

There were also a few things I did NOT pick up.

Like Necterines.

$5.49/lb, or $12.10/kg

*gasp*

*choke*

Nectarines always tended to be more expensive, but they still were usually under $2/lb in season.

The next image is of a beef tomahawk steak. This is a cut I almost never see. I know people on carnivore that prize these as having an excellent protein to fat ratio. I just can’t imaging spending $84.95 ($55.09/kg) for about 3 pounds of bone-in meat (1kg=2.2lbs) that would be just one meal. Sure, that might be enough for the entire day on carnivore, but… yikes!

I did pick up a family pack of stew meat, though, which was in the $20 range.

Once back at home, I was soon outside doing the watering. When I got to the high raised bed, though, I also did some harvesting. In this bed, I had left one Purple Prince turnip to go to seed. Which it did.

Then the deer at the seed stalk.

So, I harvested the turnip.

Look at the size of that thing!

It’s probably past its best stage for eating, but it wasn’t regrowing a new seed stalk, so I figured it was harvest it, or it would start rotting.

In the next photo, you can find the fuzzy friend I found on one of the leaves. I broke off that section of leaf and set it aside, so as not to disturb the caterpillar. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is. Hopefully, not something I will regret saving!

In the last image, you can see the turnip with the Uzbek golden carrots I also harvested. I was careful to pull the biggest ones. I’m leaving the smaller ones to give them a change to get bigger, instead of just harvesting the entire bed as I was considering doing. I found a single orange Napoli carrot large enough to harvest. I see hints of orange on some of the other carrots, but for the most part, it’s the Uzbek Golden carrots that have been growing. The Napoli carrot seeds were a couple of years older, and I finished off the last of what was left in the packet. I didn’t expect many of those to germinate.

For all the garden struggles this year, things are still kicking! In both winter sown beds, the radish seed stalks that the deer ate are trying to recover.

They’re blooming again, and sending out more leaves in some of them.

While watering the Spoon tomatoes, I noticed something. When they were being transplanted, I pruned off the bottom leaves before planting them inside the protective collars. One transplant had a larger branch that I pruned off. It was so nice and strong, I decided to just stick it into the ground between two other tomatoes and giving it a chance to grow.

It’s still tiny but, as you can see in the next image above, it’s producing tomatoes!!! The entire plant is maybe 8 inches high, if that. Just one little branch, and it’s producing!

As for those Royal Burgundy beans in front of the Spoon tomatoes – the whole three plants that emerged – one of them has a tiny bean starting to grow! I didn’t get a picture, but one of the yellow Custard beans planted with the tomatoes in the East yard had a whole bunch of tiny bean pods forming. It’s really late in the season, but we might actually have beans to harvest before summer is over!

Even the sugar snap peas are trying to make a come back! Some of them are dying back – they are well past their season – but after the deer munched away at them, some of the plants are pushing out new growth, and blooming! I’ve got one Super Sugar Snap pea plant that I’m leaving (and the deer have left alone) to fully mature so I can save the seeds, but it looks like we might have a few more fresh pods to enjoy, too.

If the deer don’t get to them, first!

It’s encouraging to see some signs of the garden trying to recover and grow. The tiny summer squash are getting a bit bigger, and blooming, though still just male flowers. The winter squash seem to be recovering a bit, too, and some are blooming. The melons are still tiny, but some of them are blooming. The pumpkins are doing quite well, and one of them even has a female flower bud showing!

Whether or not any of this will have time to recover, grow and produce before our season runs out is questionable. With some things, unlikely. Looking at the monthly forecast, it’s possible we’ll have all of September with no frost, though we would probably still need to cover things on colder nights. August, at least, looks like it’ll stay pretty warm. Of course, such long term forecasts are completely unreliable. I’m still going to assume our average Sept. 10 first frost date.

After finished up in the garden and bring the little harvest in, I used some of the carrots, onions from last year – yes, we still have a few! – and an entire head of fresh garlic in a beef and barley dish for my husband and I. The girls hate barley, but my husband and I love it, so they get to make their own supper using some of the fresh fish I picked up for them, yesterday. There will be enough of the beef and barely for my husband to have tomorrow, as well, while I am in the city. My younger daughter is having some PCOS issues right now, so she won’t be able to come with me this time. Which is fine; I don’t actually need the help, but I do like her company. I’ve been doing so much better myself, since I’ve been on the anti-inflammatories, I’ve actually been able to handle these outings better, too. I’m only taking them at the end of the day, instead of twice a day, before with my last meal before bed. I can take them up to 3 times a day, as needed. I just haven’t needed to take that many!

I haven’t taken any pain killers at all since I started on the anti-inflammatories. I do still have pain. Particularly if I lie on my left hip for too long, and I still have issues with my injured left arm. The pain, however is now more specific, and really not all that bad. Nothing worth taking more meds over. I should probably take some painkillers before I leave for the city, though, since I’ll be doing a lot of walking on concrete, and these shopping trips really take a lot out of me.

Stocking up: this is what $263 looks like

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Plus another $137 I don’t have a picture of.

This morning, I headed into the city to do our first stock up shopping trip. Usually, on this first trip of the month, I would visit a Canadian Tire, a Walmart and an international grocery store, which are all along one street. This time, I did the Walmart trip, but then went to a Superstore, instead.

At the Walmart, I got only cat supplies. Two 9kg size bags of dry kibble and two 32 count boxes of canned cat food. I did the “round up to the next dollar” donation option, so the total was exactly $137 for the whole thing.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to Superstore. It’s also been a long time since I did a shop that was just groceries. Not cat supplies or paper products or cleaners, etc. Just groceries.

Weird, right? 😂

This is what $263.49 looks like.

I got some good deals, too. It’s all packed pretty thoroughly, and you can’t see everything, so I took a picture of the receipt this time, too.

I must admit, I really like how organized their receipts are!

Under “groceries”, there’s a big bag of pasta, then some water flavours for my husband. I picked up some sunflower cooking oil, and a big bag of pretzels for my husband. The Monster energy drink was one of the things I got for the drive home.

There’s the soy sauce my husband prefers and some Basmati rice. We usually get a specific brand at Costco, but we were out, so I got a different brand today. I hope it’s good. We’ve tried other brands and not liked them at all.

In Dairy, there’s 3% milk, Old Cheddar and Mozza, plus a flat of eggs. I also got oat milk for the girls, but that’s under “Natural foods”. In Frozen, there are two bags of perogies. Odd that they only that that under “frozen” when I got frozen meats, too.

In Bulk Foods, I got more raw pumpkin seeds to supplement the cat food. Produce included a 6 count bag of avocados. I also got 8 ears of corn, cherries and blueberries. All were at much better prices than anywhere else.

Under Meats, there’s a frozen bag of chicken nuggets for quick eats, a pack of ground turkey consisting of 4 plastic chubs of meat. There’s a bag of cheese hoagie style sausages, and a pack of ground beef. The price of beef is insane, and that was the only beef I could justify picking up.

The boneless pork loin was frozen, and a very good price.

Under Seafood, I got a package of frozen Pollock fillets, a package with two fresh pink salmon, whole except for no heads, and a package with two salmon fillets.

It’s really saying something when salmon is cheaper than beef these days.

At the bakery, I was really looking forward to picking up their torpedo buns, but the bakery was mostly empty. Too early in the day, perhaps. All I was able to get there were three $1 baguettes.

Under Deli, I got a little package of fig goat cheese and a Camembert that was discounted 30%, and needs to be eaten quickly. I got an antipasto mix of meats and a dry salami. We have the makings of a charcutier! The “euro pepprini” on the list is a package of small “European Style” dry sausages I got to snack on, on the way home. I don’t know what “European Style” is supposed to mean, but they were a dry sausage with zero heat in them, so I knew I could safely eat them. They were oddly sweet, but quite tasty.

There was have it. A grocery shopping trip that is basically all just food for humans, totaling $263.49 after taxes.

On the way home, I put in $30 in gas and that was it.

There we have it. Our first, smaller, stock up shopping trip. The next one will be Costco, and that one will include more cat food and other sundries, like paper products.

That will be on the last day of the month, which means tomorrow, I get to stay home!

Yay!

The Re-Farmer

Alert kitties, and an update

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I was able to record all four of the feral kittens that come to the shrine feeding station, together with Mom, all in one shot!

As you can see in the video after the image in the slideshow above, they are all very nervous and alert!

Sadly, I ran out of canned cat food last night, so no kitten soup this morning. I can tell they were waiting for it! That got taken care of with our first stock up shop, today. I’ll follow up on that in my next post.

I completely forgot to do an update after I got home from meeting with my friend, then seeing my mother, yesterday.

This turned out to be one of those “fine threads” situations. Since no one in my family was available to drive me to my mother’s town and pick up the truck from the garage, my friend was a sweetheart and drove me.

Being paranoid about vehicles the way I’ve become, I had to ask her about the noise her car was making. She said it was her transmission. Her car, a Toyota, has a recall on transmissions, and it hadn’t been done yet.

I suggested she talk to the guy at the garage about it. Which turned out to be a really, really good thing.

After talking to him, and going for a spin, he thought it might be the wheel bearings, except it wasn’t acting like it was the wheel bearings. So an appointment was booked, accidentally missed, then rescheduled for yesterday.

Originally, my friend was going to pick me up at 8am and we were going to drive in together. After doing my mother’s med assist on Sunday night, I realized I would have to run errands for her. I suggested to my friend that I take my truck and meet her at the garage. So that was arranged.

Since the garage opens at 9, and that’s when she was booked, I didn’t leave until about 8:30. I got to the garage before 9, yet there she was, watching as her car was already on the lift!

When I got there, the owner/mechanic was manually turning her rear driver’s side wheel, which is where he narrowed down as the main source of the noise, though the front tire was also making noise. He was really excellent as explaining to her what we were hearing, which was a normal sound, as he spun the tire. What he couldn’t do was spin is fast enough to hear the other noise. He was going to have to take the tire off and try to see what was going on.

So I took my friend out for breakfast.

We had an excellent time, catching up with each other. I mentioned to her about my mother’s medications and that I wanted to go to the pharmacy and see if her bubble packs were ready. The pharmacy is right near the garage, so that’s where we went next. I had just parked the truck and we were chatting when I spotted what I thought was her car, driving by behind us. It turned the corner and drove past on the other side, so we could see that yes, the mechanic was driving her car around the block!

She walked over to the garage, just as he was pulling back in, while I went to the pharmacy. My mother’s bubble packs were ready, and I found out how much they were. I didn’t pay for them because, the last time I did that, my mother got really angry and seems to think it cost as much as it did (she expected it to be “free”) because I used my card to pay for it. The folks at the pharmacy are quite familiar with my mother and her… peculiarities, shall we say! She completely understood why I just wanted to know how much it cost. I’m glad I did stop by, because there was no arrangement for delivery, from what I could tell, and my mother didn’t have any evening meds left for Monday, though she did have a full day’s worth for Tuesday.

Once I got the information, I headed over to the garage.

I could tell as soon as I walked in and saw them talking at the counter, that the news was not good.

My friend’s brakes were severely worn out, with the driver’s side half the thickness as the passenger side.

Worse, he couldn’t do anything about it.

One problem was that his 6 month old $10,000 diagnostic computer couldn’t connect with her on board computer. They can’t talk to each other. He’s never had this happen before, even when working with other Toyotas. Since he can’t connect with her computer, he can’t do the repair. He could jerry rig something together and it might last 6 months, but he wasn’t going to do that.

She was going to have to go to a dealership, and they charge typically twice as much for everything, including both parts and labour.

My friend was really unhappy to hear that, as the dealership has been really awful to her. One of the more recent issues was about the transmission recall. She phoned them about it and the guy she was talking to said, oh, I see you’ve missed a payment. She had only two or three payments left (the last payment was made just a week ago). She said yes, I missed one payment in 4 years – and what does that have to do with my transmission? To which she was told, “we can’t do anything for you”, and he hung up on her. !!!!

I don’t think that’s even legal when it involves a recall. The mechanic didn’t know for sure, but he said it shouldn’t be!

That was just one example. Knowing the dealership she went to, he had more. Turns out he had a story involving someone that turned out to be a mutual friend. She had towed her vehicle to the dealership and they told her she needed a new engine. Which would have been $8000 at the time.

She had it towed to him and he took a look.

Her engine was flooded. That’s all.

He told her about another location in the city, but they’re franchises owned by the same parent company. The only other one he knew of that was NOT a franchise dealership is in another small city that’s a 2 hour drive away.

My friend is going to take it there, because she refuses to deal with the place in the city.

He spent time explaining to her what he did, what he was, and why he couldn’t figure out what was going on to cause her brakes to wear like that. There’s something happening that he can’t see, nor diagnose with the computer. When he first mentioned the problem, I suggested proprietary software, but he said that’s illegal. They can, however, make it so that it’s really, really hard for anyone else to be able to do anything. Whatever the problem is, he can’t tell.

For now, he says he’s not worried about my friend driving her car normally. The way he put it, he could tell she isn’t a “rally driver”. The problem would be if she had to suddenly brake to avoid an accident, the brakes might not work. She needs to get it fixed as soon as possible.

I could see my friend was getting really worried, so I asked if he could give some sort of ballpark figure on how much it will cost, so she at least had some idea. That’s the issue. If he did the work, with what he charges for labour per hour, and being able to use off label parts, it would be a few hundred dollars. At dealership prices and how long they tend to charge for, it’ll be probably more than double that. She’s probably looking at $800 or more to get it done at a dealership.

But it’s her brakes, and there’s no messing around when it comes to brakes! They need to be done!

At least we know that where she plans to go is likely to be ethical about it. The entire town (city? I’m not sure if it’s officially big enough to be a city) has a strong reputation for reputable car dealerships. A lot of people will go out of their way to get vehicles there. So she should be in good hands.

Since he had to take her tires off, he made sure to let her know she needs to get her tires torqued between 50 and 100km. She didn’t know what that was, so he explained it to her. Since she lives in the town nearest us, I recommended to go to our regular garage. We reassured her, no one will charge her for torquing her tires.

Then she asked how much she owed him.

Nothing.

He said he couldn’t do anything to fix her car. He couldn’t even diagnose it properly. He wasn’t going to charge her for anything.

She was so thankful! He spent more than an hour trying to diagnose her vehicle, and no one would have had an issue with him charging for his time. She tried to pay him anyhow, but he refused.

What a good man.

From there, we parted ways. Given the distance to town, she was going to go straight to our regular garage and get her tires torqued sooner rather than later.

As for me, I headed over to my mother’s.

She was surprised to see me, even though I told her I’d be in town and wanted to take care of getting her medications. I told her how much is was going to be, and she asked me to pick something else up for her as well. She gave me the cash for it, but couldn’t find her loyalty card anywhere. She kept looking through her purse, but she has so many odd things in there, and has a habit of going through it and moving things around. After a while, I told her it was okay; I could just get her stuff and she could keep the receipt to get her points later. The only thing she uses them for is to get cash back off her purchases, so they add up.

After I picked her stuff up at the pharmacy, I tried going to a small department store across the street to see if they had some sort of organizer wallet for my mother. Unfortunately, the only designs they had were not accessible for my mother’s arthritic and twisted hands.

My sister works at a Walmart, so when I updated my family, I asked if she could keep an eye out for something that would be easy for my mother to use.

Once I got my mother’s bubble packs home, I made sure to put them into the lock box, before she had a chance to hide one of them away. When I went to open the combination lock, I realized that it was already on the combination. Whoever did her morning meds forgot to roll the tumblers after they closed up the box!! Thankfully, my mother didn’t try to open the box herself!

All of this was done by 11:30am, and my mother’s Meals on Wheels would soon arrive. She was looking really tired and overwhelmed, too, so I didn’t stay for very long. My mother wasn’t the only one feeling tired! As soon as I got home, I crashed in bed and didn’t get up until it was time to feed the outside cats!

Which means I didn’t get much done at home. Laundry doesn’t count. 😄

Today hasn’t been any more productive at home, either, but at least I got the shopping done!

Which will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer