Sometimes, when I am awakened by cats using me as a bed, the only way I can tell which cat has trapped me is by taking a picture!
Especially when I’ve got one or two more of the on my chest. :-D
Apparently, Tissue finds my legs make a perfect hammock. :-D
While I was pouring out the kibble, the tuxedo and the grey and white kittens were brave enough to jump into the kibble house at the same time. The grey and white was so interested in the food, I was able to give her a couple of full body pets before she realized I was touching her, gave me that most shocked expression, and ran off. :-D As you can tell, she didn’t stay away for long!
Hmmm. Looking at this photo, I’m seeing four almost identical tabbies! There’s Bradicous and Chadicous, Butterscotch’s two. Then there is one of Junk Pile’s kittens, which the girls have been calling Thadicous, but it looks like her fourth kitten, that we have been seeing as mostly flashes of grey as it runs off, looks just like the other three.
Hold on.
Butterscotch’s four kittens are all in the kibble house, along with Butterscotch and Potato Beetle.
Junk Pile has the tuxedo, the grey and white, Thadicous and another tabby looking kitten. Three are in the kibble house, one is at the tray on the ground.
I see an extra kitten!!
Nosencrantz and Toesencrantz much preferred their private dining area! With these two, plus the kittens I can see in the previous photo, that makes a total of 11 kittens, instead of 10! Could the stranger be Ghost Baby’s? We have never been able to confirm if Ghost Baby is male or female, but if we go on the assumption that she is female, she would have had a litter at about the same time as the other three. And if she did, her litter would be old enough to start coming out to the kibble house.
Could this be a Ghost Baby baby?? Awesome!!
While I was doing my rounds this morning, Rolando Moon followed me around. Even Potato Beetle joined me for a bit, but we’ve been discouraging him more, since he has been attacking Rolando. Last night, while I was picking tomatoes, he chased her up a tree and they were fighting in the branches. I was very concerned one would fall out, as at the height they were at, that would have resulted in serious injury. I got the hose and tried spraying Potato out of the tree, but he doesn’t seem to actually mind getting sprayed with water! He was very wet, when he finally came down. So when he joined me this morning, I made a point of carrying him until I could no longer see Rolando, then put him down.
As you can imagine, that leaves Rolando Moon always on the defensive, so she is hissing a lot more than her usual mean self, even when there are no cats visible. This morning, while tending the garden, I heard her hissing, but this time I found that Nosencrantz had come to see what I was doing. Rolando ended up driving her off with her hissing. Which sucks, because Nosencrantz is becoming the most socialized of the kittens, and if she starts following me around in the mornings, that improves our chances of getting her friendly and used to humans.
When I did my morning rounds, I didn’t harvest anything, as there didn’t seem to be any need, yet. Then I did my evening rounds, and found that a lot can change by the end of the day!
Spoon Tomatoes (and Potato Beetle)
Mosaic Medley tomatoes
As you can see, the tomato plants are dying back, and yet there are so many tomatoes! In the photo with the Spoon tomatoes, I had already picked the ripe ones, so all the red you see are ones that are still not quite ready.
One of my daughters joined me, and we ended up filling two red Solo cups, almost to the top – our biggest haul of these tiny tomatoes, yet!
I was really surprised when we checked the summer squash, and I saw the Madga squash. It was noticeably bigger than when I checked it this morning! Same with the zucchini. We won’t get much more zucchini this season, but there are so many little pattypan squash. It was starting to get dark fast, though, so I’ll see what we can pick tomorrow morning. I think there are even beans to pick, too!
When I placed our order for fall garlic, I also ordered a pack of seeds for next year’s garden.
It felt kind of weird to order just one pack of seeds. Especially since the garlic will be shipper later, when it’s time to plant them in our zone.
This is a variety of tomatoes my daughter really wanted to try. We now have seeds for two colourful varieties of little tomatoes for next year. We will also be getting two other, larger sized varieties. For me, I will be getting paste tomatoes, while my daughter wants to get some sort of big, lumpy heirloom variety. :-D I think this time, we will start them indoors a bit earlier, so I don’t mind getting seeds will in advance. Last year, we ordered the majority of our seeds in early December, because so many were already selling out. I don’t expect there will be quite the same level of shortages as last year, but I still want to place our orders as soon as our budget allows.
Alas, one thing we won’t be ordering this year are the bushes we were talking about planting where the corn and sunflower blocks are now. We missed the deadline; they have already stopped taking orders for the year! We will need to make sure we can place an order as soon as they open up for orders again, next year. The saplings wouldn’t be shipped until spring, anyhow.
I think half the fun of gardening is planning for the next year’s garden! :-D
The Re-Farmer
ps: the package under the packet of seeds is a set of 12 inch drill bits my darling husband got for me. He’s the best!!
There’s nothing like heading outside to do my morning rounds, and being greeted by so many kitties!
It’s going to be hard to tell those tabbies apart. :-D
Ghost Baby even made an appearance this morning. She is very shy and skittish, so I didn’t try to move any closer to get a photo. My apologies for the horrible zoom shot. She kept going from tray to tray for food, but she’s shy even of the other cats. I did eventually see her at a kibble tray by herself, so I’m happy to say she did get something to eat.
Our mild days and overnight temperatures continue, but I’m still surprised by how many squash and gourd blossoms are still opening.
So pretty!
On the down side, it looks like the lack of pollinators has lost us some Teddy squash. A couple of the smaller ones got wizened and fell off, and it looks like we’re going to lose one more. Which leaves us only 2 Teddy squash, one on each plant, that are actually growing.
I did my rounds a bit earlier and faster, as I had to drive my mother around for an appointment and some errands. There was even plans for her to stop by at the farm for a visit, but after her appointment and one other stop, she was just too tired. We’ll have to do it another day. However, my brother had visited her yesterday, and left a gift for us.
This is a bag of dill! It’s huge! The whole plants are in there, in various stages, so we’ll have dill leaves to dehydrate, crowns to use for pickling, and dried seeds to plant next year. I want to find a spot that can be a permanent dill bed, so they can reseed themselves year after year, and not be growing around other herbs or vegetables.
My mother was so tired from the trip, she practically kicked me out after I picked up the bag! :-D
I had a more welcoming response when I got home. I noticed the kibble trays were empty, so I topped them up a bit. While I was doing that, Nosencrantz came up and let me give her enthusiastic, full body pets and ear skritches!
More progress with her, at least! :-D Still no luck with the others. :-)
I just got back from doing my evening rounds. The kibble trays were empty, so I had a whole crowd of kitties hanging around the sun room door. Even Rosencrantz was there this time, and she let me pet her. Nosencrantz let me pet her, too.
The surprise, however, was when I saw an orange and white come running up to the kibble house, along with the kittens. It’s been so long since I’ve seen orange and white, my initial reaction was, “who is that??”
It’s Creamsicle Jr.! I haven’t seen him since shortly after Potato Beetle came back and drove him and Nutmeg away.
When I mentioned it to my husband, he told me that when he went outside to give the kitties some treats from the kitchen, he’d seen Creamsicle Jr. That was a couple of days ago.
Creamsicle Baby was looking quite hale and hearty, if a bit on the skinny side. Rolando Moon was hissing at him, without stopping eating, so he was a bit nervous. However, when I was done my rounds and about to head in, he was at the kibble house alone, so I went over – and he let me pet him! Creamsicle Jr. had not been letting us pet him before he disappeared. To me, that’s a sign that he’s glad to be back home. :-)
Potato Beetle, Rolando Moon and now Creamsicle Jr, all come back. That gives me hope that Nosy and Nutmeg will come back, too. :-)
Today is likely to be the last hot day of the year. As I write this, we are currently at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 30C/86F. We are expected to reach 28C/83F with the humidex making it feel like 31C/88F. We are supposed to get a couple more days in the mid to low 20’s before the highs start dropping to the mid to high teens. So far, overnight temperatures are also still supposed to remain high enough that there are no frost warnings.
I headed out to do my rounds later than usual this morning, and we had already reached 22C/73F.
There has to be something wrong with the squash tunnel thermometer. It may have felt warmer than the 22C it was when I took this photo, but there is no way it was feeling like 42C/108F! Not even being in full sun, like it is, should result in that extreme of a difference. I suspect the dial is stuck. I haven’t been looking at it since the temperatures finally cooled down, so it may well have been sitting at this reading since our last heat wave.
In checking the sunflowers, there was only one little pollinator that I saw! I think the heat waves we had over the summer killed off a lot of our pollinators. There just wasn’t enough food to sustain them. The mild temperatures we are having means more of our sunflowers are actually budding and opening their seed heads, but I don’t know that they’ll have a chance to be well pollinated.
Some of the Mongolian Giants are finally taller than me. Hopefully, the opening sunflowers will lure any remaining pollinators to them. They may not have time to fully mature, even with our predicted mild temperatures, but they will at least provide some food for our surviving pollinators.
These are the Hopi Black Dye transplants that got chomped by a deer. They have all recovered surprisingly well, and are budding and blooming. They don’t need as long of a growing season as the Mongolian Giants, so it should be interesting to see if any of these get a chance to mature.
The green peas are enjoying the cooler temperatures we’ve been having, and I’m seeing more pods developing. This photo is of one of the pea plants growing among the Dorinny corn, the remains of which are being left to go to seed. The three blocks of sweet corn are still green, but they aren’t really growing. At this point, I don’t expect anything from them, really. They’re just there for the peas to have something to climb. Any pea pods we get is just gravy, as their main purpose is to fix nitrogen into the depleted soil in this area.
The winter squash and melons are the ones I am monitoring the most right now.
Remarkably, even as the plants are dying back, we are still getting fresh blooms, and the newer Red Kuri squash are getting noticeably bigger.
The mutant seems to have stopped getting bigger, and is now deepening in colour and developing a harder skin.
As this other, larger Red Kuri is still doing.
I did a nail test on the oldest of the developing Red Kuri, and you can see the mark left behind. Still not ready.
The Teddy squash are also still managing as well.
If we do end up getting frost before any of these larger squash can fully mature, we will still be able to harvest them and eat them. We just won’t be able to store them for long.
The melon vines are dying back faster than the winter squash vines, but their fruit are still hanging in there! I was able to pick this Pixie melon, only because the vine it was attached to had died back completely. I suspect it isn’t quite ripe.
My daughters discovered something about these little melons. After they are cut in half and the seeds scooped out, they make perfect ice cream bowls! I’m not big on ice cream, but I finally had some last night, in half of a Halona melon. It was quite excellent! :-D
I am glad we found these little, short season melons. They have been among the most enjoyed producers this year. I think we will try different short season varieties next year, but the Pixie and Halona are definitely varieties we would grow again. I’ve also saved seeds from some grocery store melons that I plan to try. They are larger varieties, but if we start them indoors early enough, and we don’t have another drought, we should be able to grow them. :-)
Yes, Nosencrantz allowed me to pet her again this morning! She still won’t let me walk up to her to pet her, but only lets me pet her at the food tray, but she doesn’t quite run away, either.
Elevator butt. :-D
Gosh, she looks so much like Nicky the Nose! There is certainly no question as to who her daddy is. :-D
I also got to touch a nose this morning. Or should I saw, a nose touched me! While putting food into the kibble house, the tuxedo had come over, started to run away, then came back. I reached out a hand and he sniffed my fingers, booping himself in the nose in the process!
I got to give Nosencrantz full body pets this morning!
She hadn’t even started eating yet when she let me pet her – and she was purring!
Then she joined her Grandma Butterscotch for breakfast. :-)
Do you see that orange over on the far right?
That’s Rolando Moon. She’s still around! It looks like she spent the night either in the tree in front of the kitchen, or on the roof. I love how she looks so happy to see me when she comes running across the lawn. Even if she does end up hissing at me, while she stands up on her hind legs, asking for pets! :-D
No sign of Rosencrantz this morning, but her babies took turns having breakfast with Grandma and … cousin? Little sister? Not sure how the genealogy works, at this point! :-D
Mornings are starting to be quite cold these days, and this morning was quite windy, but I wanted to make sure I picked what I could from the garden early. The girls and I had a “date” with my mother, and I wanted to give her some of our tiny tomatoes! She won’t eat the pattypan squash, because they are unfamiliar to her, but I did grab a couple of zucchini for her that we picked yesterday, instead.
My mother has been wanting to take the girls to a local marsh and wildlife centre for some time. The birds are starting to head south, and the place is now open until dusk until the end of the migration season. Due to restrictions being reinstated, the interpretive centre is closed and the restaurant is take-out only, so we picked up some of my mother’s favourite fried chicken and wedges, and had a picnic outside. The winds had picked up even more, but we managed to find a picnic table next to a bush that was more sheltered. I’m pretty sure it’s a type of bush we have on our list that we plan to get ourselves, to create a hedge where our furthest garden beds are right now.
My mother isn’t up to walking far, even with her walker, but she encouraged the girls to look around. They ended up doing a 2km hike! :-D In the process, they found a picnic area with lots of tables, so the next time we do this, we will know to park in the overflow parking lot, where it is closer and easier for my mother to access. Their hiking paths are very solid, wide and well groomed, which will make it easy for her walker, too. Between the condition of the paths and the many benches along the way, my husband could even navigate it. The girls and I want to go back and, if he’s up to the drive, it would be fantastic if my husband could come a long, too. We shall see!
All it all, it was a good trip. We were able to distract my mother away from her more… unfortunate… favorite discussions. ;-) Along with the chicken, my mother brought some of her quick pickles which, to be honest, I am very uncomfortable eating. Her safe practises are minimal, but she loves them and they haven’t made her sick, yet! LOL I brought out the container of tomatoes as well. Of course, her response was to talk about the wonderful tomatoes my sister gave her, but then she tried one. She still wouldn’t say anything positive, but she sure scarfed a bunch down! That’s good enough for me. :-D
Where we were sitting, we didn’t actually see a log of waterfowl, but the girls saw more as they hiked the trail. What they were really excited to see was all that water. With this year’s drought conditions, that would have been a concern, but the marsh still has water. Even with the rain we finally got, most of the usual places I see water are still completely dry.
We definitely want to go back again on our own and hike the trails.
Today was dry enough that I could work on cutting up the dead tree that had finally fallen, thanks to recent high winds.
This time, I could use power tools! I used my baby chainsaw (aka: cordless pruner), with it’s 4″ blade, to trim off branches, then a reciprocating saw, with a 12″ blade to cut the measured lengths. Unfortunately, my reciprocating saw is giving up the ghost. It cuts, but it doesn’t stop. Sometimes, it’ll slow down when I release the trigger, but other times it would just keep right on going. I had to unplug it to turn it off!
At the last minute, I changed my mind on the longer lengths I would be cutting. These will be used to make high raised beds in the main garden area, and I had been thinking of building them at 10 feet long. As I was measuring, however, I decided to make them 9 feet long. The boxes we built for the beds where the garlic had been planted are 9′ x 3′. I figured if I did these at 9 feet long, any future cover frames we build will fit on both. I kept the short ends at 4 feet, though. With the width of the wood, the inside of the beds will be roughly 3 feet wide, so any covers would still be interchangeable.
So here we have two 4′ and two 9′ lengths. Enough to make one course of logs to frame a high raised bed.
By the time I cut these, the rest of the tree was light enough that I could drag it closer to cut a couple more pieces.
That gave me another 9′ and another 4′ piece. At the top of the long pieces is the remaining top of the tree, which is about 7 or 8 feet. I set that aside for potential future use. When I was trimming the branches off, I found another 6 or 7 feet of the top had broken off and was dangling from a nearby tree. With three 9′ lengths, three 4′ lengths, plus another, say, 7 feet of trunk, and 6 feet for the top that broke off, we’re looking at a tree trunk that was roughly 52 feet. Add in the roughly 3 feet of stump left behind, we’re looking at a dead tree that was about 55 feet tall when I cut it down.
The one that’s still stuck on another tree was a bit taller.
At this point, I had salvaged logs to do 1 1/2 courses to build a raised garden bed. I needed two more pieces.
I didn’t have to cut down another tree, though. I still had the trunk of the dead tree I’d cut down and used the stump to make a bench.
After I finished trimming the branches, the trunk was eventually rolled up against the patch on the right, where there is a currant bush, chokecherry tree, raspberries, some flowers and a crab apple tree that died this spring. So after dragging/carrying the first pieces over to where the garden bed will be built, I cut a couple more lengths from this tree trunk, then set the remaining top piece aside with the top of the other tree, for potential future use.
You can see that the new raised bed will be quite a bit shorter than the low raised beds we had this year. Those are about 13 feet long. We will be losing planting space, but we should also be able to plant more densely, once they are at a more accessible height. For now, I want to make these at least 3 logs high, then see how they work. I expect to finish them off at 4 logs high.
Which would translate to roughly 3 or 4 trees to harvest, per bed. In this area, there are six low raised beds that will be converted to high raised beds, so that means as many as 12 trees to replace all the low raised beds with high raised beds.
Considering that we have more than 20 dead trees that need to be cut down, having enough logs won’t be a problem, even if some of them turn out to be too rotten to use. Some of those trees are thicker and taller than the two I used today, so I’ll probably need even fewer. With the new beds being several feet shorter than the current beds, we could potentially have a double row of beds. That will depend on the space for paths. These are meant to be accessible raised beds, with room for a walker or wheelchair in between, so the paths need to be 4′ wide.
The one thing we do have is the luxury of space. While we are starting with raised beds in this area we are already gardening in, as time goes by we will be adding more beds in this area. Not a lot more, though, as there are too many tall trees on the south side casting shadows. The plan is to build more permanent raised beds in the outer yard, where they will get full sun.
But that is for after we’ve done a lot more logging of dead trees in the spruce grove!
Once the last of the logs were dragged over, I took advantage of having the tools handy and finally took down the dead crab apple tree.
For this job, I was able to use the baby chain saw, and didn’t need anything else. I love that thing!
In the photo, you can somewhat see where the bark as split off the trunk at the bottom. This tree had started to get leaves in the spring, but then just died off, and seeing that damage sure explains why. The tree itself was showing signs of disease, even last year, so all this wood is for burning, not the chipping piles. I noticed that even the raspberry plants near it were also showing signs of disease, so what we will likely have to do is remove any plants growing around the tree and not plant anything at all here for a few years. That should be time enough for whatever disease has gotten into the soil to die off.
Once cutting and clearing away to the base, I could see that this tree was actually the sucker of a larger tree that had died, long ago! The inside of the old stump was so rotted out, I could brush it aside with my hands.
I kept cutting and breaking up bits and pieces for a while, but what I will ultimately do is bring a small metal ring I found and have been using as a portable fire ring, and light a fire on top of the remains of the tree. That will prevent any suckers from trying to start growing and, hopefully, sterilize the soil of whatever disease has gotten into it, at least a bit.
It was good to finally get this cleared up. There are a few other dead and dying crab apple trees that will need to be cleaned up, too. Over time, once enough time has passed, I hope to replace them with other fruit trees that are more disease resistant. This spot, however, will not get anything tall planted in it. There are already too many tall trees shading the area. An awful lot of garden space was lost to shade because my parents planted so many new trees on the south side of the garden, instead of the north! Most frustrating is that they also planted them too close together, so none of them thrived, and quite a few died. I removed a lot of these when I cleaned up the maple grove, our first summer here, but I think I will have to take out an entire row of crab apple trees I discovered in the process. They simply aren’t getting enough light to bloom and produce, even after I cleaned the area up. That’s not a priority right now, though.
But I digress!
I’m happy to have gotten as much done as I did today. Tomorrow, the girls and I have an outing with my mother planned, so we won’t be able to get more done then. I’ll have to use Sunday to take down another tree and hopefully get enough wood to start on the first permanent high raised bed before winter. With several days of rain predicted next week, we shall see how far we will be able to get on that!
Heading out to do my morning rounds is pretty awesome these days. ALL of the kitties come running!
I even got to give Nosencrantz full body pets – but only while she was eating! Toesencrantz started to come close, but she was too nervous with me being so close, and kept going away. So I left, to give her a chance to eat.
The other eight kittens, plus Potato Beetle, converged on the kibble house! :-D What a crowd! Gosh, they’re getting big. :-)
While I was out by the furthest garden beds, I started hearing some exciting meowing. It took a while, but Rolando Moon came over from wherever she had spent the night across the road, all excited. She let me pet her, then followed me as I went around the garden and made my way back to the house. As we got closer to the house, she would start hissing in between her meows, even though there were no other cats in sight. She was sure on the lookout for a nasty Potato Beetle!
By the time we got to the kibble house, all the other cats were done eating and were gone, so she had a chance to have breakfast in peace.
There were a few squash large enough to pick this morning; a small enough harvest that I could fit them in my jacket pockets! :-D
I found another Madga squash ready to pick, and even one of the mutant sunburst patty pans – the one that’s part green, part yellow – was a nice size to pick, and even one zucchini was ready.
Just one.
While going through the squash tunnel, Rolando Moon ran ahead of me to the end, then flung herself to the ground, waiting for pets.
Right next to a zucchini.
When I had picked squash yesterday, I was carrying them in my arms rather awkwardly, and it looks like I dropped one! :-D
With the fix on our main entry door hinges giving out, we’ve been using the sun room to go in and out of the house. This requires going through a door into the old kitchen, where the cats are not allowed. The door is an old style door with a skeleton key lock on it – though there is no key for it anymore. From there, there is a pair of doors going into the sun room; in the summer, we leave the solid, inner door open. The outer door, which has a window with a screen that we keep partly open for air circulation, is a sort of buffer between the old kitchen and the sun room, in case an outside cat is in the sun room, or an inside cat sneaks into the old kitchen. There are a couple of them that REALLY want to get into the old kitchen!!
Finally, there are the sun room doors. Once again, for the summer, we leave the inner, solid door open, while the outer door, with its screen window partially open for air circulation, is one last barrier. I used to leave the sun room doors open while working outside and have to go in and out frequently, but sometimes an outside cat slips in to investigate and I accidentally close them in when I’m done, so I try to keep that one closed most of the time, too.
When I came into the sun room after finishing my rounds this morning, I spotted a cat jumping off the old wood cook stove in the old kitchen, though the window in the old kitchen door. My initial thought was the Fenryr had once again slipped by me so fast I didn’t see her.
Boy was I wrong.
You see, the old door leading from the house to the old kitchen has… issues. Sometimes, when it seems to be closed, the latch doesn’t actually catch. Then, after a while, the door simply pops open.
By the time I came back, it was wide open, and most of the cats were in the old kitchen, exploring.
As soon as I opened the door from the sun room, there was a rush of cats going into the sun room.
Thank goodness that outside door was closed!!
It took a spray bottle and a few minutes, just to get the cats out of the sun room and into the old kitchen, so I could close that door. Then it took a few more minutes to get them out of the old kitchen and into the rest of the house, so I could close that door. Only then could I empty my jacket pockets of vegetables onto the big freezer, though as I hung my jacket up, I spotted a Nicco in the little niche by the wood cook stove, hiding under my late father’s folded up wheelchair. At that point, I left her along, put things away and, by the time I came back, she came out on her own and I was able to get her to leave.
Inside and outside cats all together, I had 28 cats to deal with this morning! And I didn’t even see the three mamas, yet. :-D
