I got to see the kittens again this evening, but this morning, I had quite the critter surprise!
To top up our potato grow bags, I headed to the outer hard with the wheelbarrow, with the tools needed to rake up some grass clippings for much, and get a load of garden soil from the pile.
As I headed passed the big branch pile, I saw movement at the garden soil. Two furry creatures, right where I needed to go to shovel soil!
When they saw me, one of them dashed under the branches, but the other froze in place.
Watching me.
Even as I came closer, it didn’t move.
Which means I finally got a good picture of our mystery critter!
It didn’t move away until I picked up the shovel and started walking right up to it! Then it dashed under the branch pile, too.
I have no idea what they were doing on the dirt pile. They weren’t digging or anything. They seemed to be just looking around. Maybe playing?
As I came back several times to get more soil or rake up more clippings, I had to pass the branch pile each time. A couple of times, the branch pile screamed at me! Of all the names these guys have – woodchuck, groundhog, marmot, etc. – whistle pig seems the most appropriate to the noise they make!
Gosh, it’s so cuty.
Speaking of cute…
As I finished the evening watering and came around to the front of the house to put things away, I saw a skunk running out of the kibbled house and towards the storage house. As I went to the sun room, I saw the mama skunk peek out at me, her babies tucked close against her. When she saw me staying by the house, she decided it was safe to head towards the kibble house.
With her THREE babies!
Three! I hadn’t seen the third one before!
Though they went for the kibble house, when I came around the other side to look at them, they all ran off again, this time leaving the yard completely.
While going back and forth to put things away, I paused for a while to say hello to the kittens, who were with Butterscotch at their food and water bowls.
I was never able to get a picture with the calico, though.
I left a camp chair near the food bowl, so we can sit comfortably while letting the kittens get used to us. This kitten was very fascinated by the wiggling toe of my shoe!
I just managed to get a picture of her when she decided to stand up on her hind legs and bat at her mother. :-D
This morning, it was time to add to the potato grow bags.
They were topped up with a mix of grass clippings and garden soil, and the bags were unrolled a bit in the process. Some of them look like they could have done with more, but I must say, it was pretty awkward to top these up. The row against the fence was hardest to reach, of course. I really need to remember how short my reach it! :-D
The mulch and soil had to be added a handful at a time, carefully spread around the sides of the bag, where there turned out to be quite a lot more room than I expected. I tried to put more soil than mulch in the middle, between the plants, compared to around the sides. As early in the morning as it was, the heat and humidity was already up there, and I was just dripping with sweat. Much of it getting onto the inside of my glasses. :-/ So as soon as I was done topping them up, I headed inside, saving the watering for later. This afternoon was our early birthday and Father’s day celebratory pizza night, which involved a couple of hours of driving to get it and bring it home, so it wasn’t until evening that the potato bags got watered.
This evening, we fertilized our garden beds for the first time this year. We found an all purpose, water soluble vegetable fertilizer while cleaning up the old kitchen, and I’d bought a tomato and vegetable water soluble fertilizer as well. Both have a higher nitrogen percentage, which is needed for our nitrogen depleted soil. There’s only so much the new garden soil can contribute. My daughter used the tomato and vegetable one, with a watering can to mix it in, and did the front garden beds, except the potatoes. I did the potatoes using the hose with the fertilizer attachment on it, before moving on to the garden beds on the north side of the house. I particularly wanted to make sure the corn, squash and gourds got a good feeding, but everything got at least a little bit of fertilizer. We even have some left over to do it again in a couple of weeks.
Today was also a day of critters, including some surprises, but that will be for my next post. :-)
After yesterday being such a crappy day, I’m happy to say that today was much improved!
This morning, I found several bright bits of sunshine in the garden.
Several of our summer squash blossoms are now fully open! There are just male flowers right now, so it’s still too early to expect baby squash, but it’s still very exciting to see!
The summer squash was not the only thing in bloom.
Some irises in the flower garden outside the living room window started blooming today. These have been here for as long as I can remember, coming back year after year, decade after decade. They may well have originally been planted here before I was even born.
We got the trip to the smaller city that I meant to do yesterday. One of our stops was to Canadian Tire, where I was finally able to find the air filter I needed for the push mower. After double checking exactly what I was looking for, I realized that the last couple of times we’d looked for a filter, this type wasn’t in stock at all, so I was happy to find one.
We also made a stop at the nearby Walmart. We ran out of kibble this morning, and had a few other things we needed to pick up. Thankfully, we were able to get everything on the list, and still stayed under budget – something we couldn’t have done if we’d had to buy in town.
One of the other things we needed to get was more gas for the lawnmowers, so pretty much as soon as we got home, I changed the air filter on the push mower, and was finally able to finish most of the mowing.
I had started to move along the driveway with the riding mower, a couple of days ago, but there was no way I could use the riding mower to do the area in front of the barn. This is the first time this area has been mowed this year, and it was tall enough to make hay! I’ll go back with a rake and the wagon to pick up clippings for mulch. There was no way I was going to use the bag. I’d have needed to stop to empty it so often, I would never have been able to finish it all in one evening. As it is, there is still another area that needs to be done, but it’s not used at much. At least now, we don’t have to wade through knee high grass to get to the barn and shed!
I also finally got to cut the main garden area, that is too rough to use the riding mower on. Frankly, found myself thinking I maybe should have used the weed trimmer over all of it, but at the highest setting, the push mower was able to do the job.
I had done most of this area with the riding mower; the strip along the right was done with the push mower; you can tell by the darker green, because I had the mower set so much higher. This strip had been plowed, so there are still furrows. If I wanted to get the rest, among those trees, I’d have to use the weed trimmer.
It’s just a guess, but I’m pretty sure where I was standing to take the photo is where the telephone lines are buried. A thing to keep in mind when we plant the trees we are planning on.
This photo was taken from the same spot, facing the other way.
Not much left of that pile of garden soil!
Part of this section was also plowed. You can see the gate in the back, where the tractor and plow would have entered. The plow was dropped starting along the trees on the right. Why there, I have no idea. There hasn’t been garden there since I was a babe. My parents did try gardening here, when they first moved the garden closer to the house (it used to be way out by the car graveyard, when my parents first moved out here). As I child, I remember when the area that has the trees right, now, was a cabbage patch. The area the dirt pile is on now was no longer being used by then. I remember asking my mother why they stopped using this section, and she told me it was too rocky.
Considering how many rocks are everywhere else, that’s saying a lot! :-D
Anyhow, I still wonder why the plowing was starting that far back, but then, my sister thinks the person who did it was drunk at the time, so who knows? The furrows mean it’s another area for the push mower, though the section to the right is flat enough for the riding mower.
I was even able to do some mowing among the trees, to open up some of the paths. The plants at the bottom of the dead spruce tree in the left foreground bloom beautifully, so I’m making sure to leave them be. I’ll have to do the rest of the area around the trees with the weed trimmer.
Mid term goal is to plant low growing ground covers that we can walk on in the paths, while in between the trees will be a combination of ground cover and flowers, with one exception. The morel mushroom spawn my husband got for me for Christmas will be “planted” under one of the elms in the maple grove. He also got giant puffball spawn for me, too, but they like to grow among grass, not under any particular type of tree. I still haven’t quite decided what area I want to inoculate with those, yet. Just somewhere we won’t be going over with the mower.
That is not the only thing I have to figure out where to put. We also have these.
These are the Jiffy pellets we planted the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers in, some 2 months ago. The one that had sprouted got transplanted into the old kitchen garden. When a second one suddenly sprouted, almost a week later, I transplanted it a short distance away.
That made me curious enough to look at the rest of the pellets. I haven’t been watering the tray they were in, but when I lifted some of them up, I saw roots! No sprouts, just roots.
So I moved them all onto one of the baking sheets we got to hold the Solo cups we were using to start seeds, and added water.
Almost overnight, more started to sprout.
Currently, there are 7 new sprouts!
Why did it take these so long to sprout? Especially when the ones that were direct sown, in far less ideal conditions, sprouted so quickly??
And what will we do with them? At this point, I don’t think there’s enough growing season for them to fully mature, but now that they’re finally germinating, I don’t want to just toss them. Also, there’s no more room for sunflowers in the old kitchen garden, and the space they would have gone into in the garden got the Mongolian Giants transplanted into it, since these hadn’t sprouted at all at the time, and we thought they were a lost cause.
I think we will transplant them near the Dorinny corn. That wicked frost we had in late May didn’t seem to affect the corn sprouts at the time, but then they disappeared. They are supposed to be a Canadian frost-hardy hybrid, but that was an unusually cold night. While they looked unharmed the next morning, I guess it took a couple of days for the damage to become visible. However, the other corn seeds that hadn’t geminated yet came up soon after, so we will still have Dorinny corn, but it also means we have entire rows in the block with only one or two corn plants in them. I figure, we can make use of the empty space and transplant these sunflowers into them. Sure, they may not reach full maturity, but at least they’ll have a chance. Who knows. We might have a long and mild fall.
Then there are these.
These are the pink celery that should have been started indoors much earlier. They’ll eventually go into a container (or two?), so we can keep them outdoors for most of the growing season, then try using the sun room as a green house to extend their growing season though late fall.
Assuming they survive being transplanted. We’ll see.
All in all, it’s been a really good day. I finally got things done that kept getting delayed, I got to see the kittens, we had a fabulous supper of butter chicken one daughter made while I was mowing, and there’s panna cotta setting in the fridge, made by my other daughter. And tomorrow, we will be celebrating Father’s Day and my younger daughter’s birthday, early, with a pizza night. :-)
They were in the junk pile by the house. Her favorite kitten spot. Whether they’ve been there this whole time, or if she recently moved them there, I don’t know, but the girls spotted them today. There are four of them.
My younger daughter had gone out to check on some new flowers blooming and spotted them. She sat on the ground and they came up to her. She was able to touch three of them. They were pretty chill about it.
When I came by, I could see movement among the spirea, but both of us being there seemed to be too much for them, so I went back to what I was working on.
Butterscotch was pretty chill about me being there! Which was a bit of a surprise. She has been very stand-offish of late, and most of the time, won’t even let me pet her. This evening, she was downright cuddly.
When I had the chance, I brought over some kibble and water near the junk pile, wetting down the kibble a bit so it would be soft for the babies.
The kittens got their first taste of kibble today.
In the low light, plus trying to zoom in, it was hard to get decent photos. The one next to Butterscotch’s head REALLY loved the kibble! It got right in the middle of the pile of food and stayed eating almost the entire time I was there.
The little calico had a bit, then went off to play.
Unfortunately, the girls are already talking about snagging the kittens and bringing them inside! At least the calico, since it’s most likely to be female. We still need to adopt out cats we already have inside, never mind bringing more in.
I’m not impressed that they’re even considering it.
Me, I’m happy to see the kittens, happy to work on socializing them, and happy to let them stay outdoors!
The kind where things start going wrong from the start, and nothing goes to plan.
Today was one of those days.
Thankfully, it ended on a more positive note.
Things started very early, with hearing noises from the basement and discovering Saffron had somehow found her way into the old part basement, discovering another cat had gotten into a plant pot and scattered dirt everywhere in the living room, to my daughter trying to vacuum the carpet and our vacuum cleaner suddenly starting to smoke and no longer creating a vacuum. I was planning to head to the smaller city to get a new air filter for the push mower, but my sleep had been interrupted so much, I felt too tired to be safe to drive. I figured I’d get a nap in, and go later. Of course, that got interrupted a few times, too, with scam phone calls about credit cards we don’t have, cats getting into the old basement again (my daughter found where they were getting through and blocked it), and so on. When I finally got up – which was disorienting, because it was still morning – my daughters convinced me to save making the trip for another day. I must have looked a sight for them to do that!
So basically, it was a pretty wasted day. I got nothing useful accomplished until evening, when it cooled down enough to do the evening watering. It was so windy today, the sawhorse the garden cam is attached to was knocked over, and I had to do some repair work on one of the stakes and lines over a row of sunflowers that had blown apart.
Also, the sound of wind going through the wire mesh on the squash tunnel is very musical!
I was quite happy to see a few of the summer squash are starting to bloom.
When I was finishing up watering at the front of the house, and was moving the hose out of the way, I heard an odd noise coming from the kibble house. I was behind it, so I couldn’t see, but figured there was a skunk inside. So I carefully walked around it and…
… it was empty.
But I was still hearing that noise.
So I ducked to look under the kibble house, where there is still a sheet of rigid insulation on the ground. There I saw a little black critter, and the noise was claws making warning scratches on the insulation. It was one of the baby skunks, all by itself!
It ended up dashing under the cat’s house. On seeing there was no food at all left in the kibble house, I topped things up a bit, then went to sit on the stairs to the storage house, where I had a view of the back of the kibble house and cat shelter. Sure enough, after a while, I saw the little guy come out, then make a run for the storage house. I did get a short video, but apparently, I can’t upload anything right now, or I’d include it here! As I walked away from the storage house, I just caught sight of the skunk family, ducking under the chain link fence and out of the yard. I’m glad the little one was reunited with its family!
So I guess that was a cute end to an otherwise miserable day.
For now, I’m hoping to get some decent – uninterrupted – sleep, so I can make the trip I was supposed to do today.
When we find the skunks in the kibble house, we have been chasing them away with the hose. Today, I went out to do the watering and saw a couple of skunks. One immediately ran off and I saw it head under the storage house. The bigger one kept on eating. When I sprayed it with the hose, it disappeared behind the cat shelter, so I went around the kibble house to spray it away.
Instead, I saw her run off, but something looked very different. She had something in her mouth, and… a second tail?
It was her babies. She ran off, carrying one in her mouth, while a second one stayed close beside her.
I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t chase off hungry babies!
They’re not hurting the cats, nor being aggressive. They’re digging up the yard for grubs, but that doesn’t bother me. The only real issue is that kibble is bad for them, but not nutritionally. It’s about how their jaws are hinged. But we have hungry mamas that feel safe enough to bring their hungry babies to the kibble house! How can I possible keep chasing them away?
While doing the morning watering, I noticed the grapes have babies!
The teeniest of bunches of baby grapes are now visible. :-)
Doing the watering this morning was a bit of a challenge, as we were having some pretty high winds. High enough to blow the water all over the place. :-D
As always, I check the weather frequently throughout the day. Especially before heading out in the morning. Between the app on my phone and the one on my desktop, I can usually get some idea of what to expect for the day. There are differences between them, but usually they’re pretty minor.
Today, not so much.
My desktop app, which is with The Weather Network, says we’ll hit our high of 31C/88F by 7pm, with variable cloudiness and no precipitation.
My phone app, with AccuWeather, says we’ll hit our high of 31C/88F by 6 pm…
… but around 4pm, it’s predicting thunderstorms, adding “Watch for a strong thunderstorm this afternoon; storms can bring gusty winds and even an isolated tornado.”
Tornado?
Yeeeaahhh…. I don’t think so.
This is definitely the most extreme difference I’ve ever seen in the forecast between the two apps!
Well, we’ll see what actually happens. I just went ahead and did the watering, in case we get no rain at all. That’s one thing about all the rocks and gravel where we live. It’s pretty much impossible to over water. Drainage is exceptionally fast!
The Re-Farmer
[addendum: our internet connection has been unusually bad of late. It took me four hours and three different browsers just to open the WordPress editor so I could write this post! Much of the problem is with our satellite internet provider. Apparently, they over sold and are in a permanent state of over capacity, now that so many people are working from home or staying home in general. One of our neighbours with the same provider contacted them for service only to be told their “slow speeds” were adding to the over capacity of their towers, and their contract is being terminated. Which makes no sense whatsoever. So… we’ll deal with the connectivity issues until the new Star Link service is available in our area!
Which is my long winded way of saying that, if posting becomes more sporadic, or the posts themselves start getting truncated, that is likely why!]
Today was set to be a scorcher, so when I did my morning rounds, I took the time to water all the garden beds before things got too hot, even though they got a thorough watering last night.
When I got to the spinach beds, I saw evidence of skulduggery!
The sacrificial spinach, at the ends of a couple of rows, were duly sacrificed.
I moved that pinwheel over from one of the beds with the wire mesh covers, after the fact. Not that they seem to be accomplishing much, anymore!
No surprise, when I finally went inside and checked the trail cams, that a deer was captured, wandering through the corn beds, on the way out of the yard. Considering that the deer did not even pause to nibble on anything, I’d say the sacrificial spinach did its job! ;-)
Late this afternoon, when things were supposedly getting cooler again, the girls and I finished the squash tunnel.
Almost.
We got the cross pieces put in place, then brought over the wire mesh for the vines to climb.
The roll of wire mesh I got was 50 feet long, and that was enough to cover 3 of 4 sections. At only 4 feet wide, there are gaps at each post, but we can weave twine between the sections of wire mesh, if it’s necessary.
My original thought was to use U nails (also called staples) to attach the mesh, but we ended up only needing to attach it to the bottom cross pieces. With one, we used wire saved from a previous roll of wire mesh that had been wrapped around it to keep it from unrolling. In cutting the first length, the second length had one end with the wire ends sticking out, and we were able wrap the end around the cross piece, then just twist the wire ends around to hold it in place. Other sections were tied in place with twine.
We just need to buy another roll of this mesh, and we can finish the last section. The main thing is that the end where the luffa is growing, now has something for them to climb.
The girls also noted that one post seemed to need support, so they added the rope and peg to hold it in place.
It’s a good thing this is meant to be temporary! :-D
By the time we were done, we were totally baked and headed inside to cool down for a while. We were at “only” 25C/77F with a humidex of 28C/82F but we were also in full sun, and there was no breeze. At least we could pop into the shade of the nearby lilac hedge, every now and then.
While I was doing the evening watering, the girls brought over the last of the straw and mulched around the squash tunnel. You can see in the photo that some of the luffa was grown long enough to reach the mesh, already. Hopefully, they will soon be making their way up the side on their own.
This whole thing really is rather slipshod and wonky. I look forward to when we have our permanent raised garden beds, and can build something more solid, elsewhere. But this will do for a year, maybe even two, depending on how our plans to plant trees in this area progress. Well, Not where this tunnel is, I don’t think. There are telephone lines buried somewhere under here.
Anyhow.
I’m glad we finally got this done. At least as done as possible until we get more mesh for that last section. The forecast has changed again. Tomorrow, instead of thunderstorms, we’re expected to hit 31C/88F and maybe get some showers at some point. While I was doing the watering this evening, I used the water to make doing some hand weeding easier, and I could not believe how dry the soil was. I’d hate to think how dry it would have been if I’d decided it was damp enough this morning, and skipped the watering! The added mulch at these squash, gourds and melons will help keep their moisture better, at least. I look forward to having more mulch to add to the other beds as well.
Meanwhile, I hope we have some happy little squash, gourds and melons!
The wonderful rains we’ve had has meant everything has exploded in growth.
Including the grass and weeds.
Today, I decided to break out the weed trimmer and get around some areas before mowing.
In progress, I figured I would keep trimming some other areas. Just the rougher areas, I told myself. I’ll do the rest with the push mower, I told myself. I’ll just do the places the mower won’t fit, I added.
Of course, it’s all rough out there.
Before I started, I took a look at the crab apple tree by the old compost pile. This one was looking pretty diseased last year, but other trees were looking worse, so this is a bit unexpected.
Parts of it almost started to grow leaves. Then that wicket frost we got in late May hit, and it never recovered. Now it just looks dead.
Dang. That was one of the edible crab apples, too.
Note, however, the background of the photo, and how high the grass and weeds are. It’s high enough that getting the hose over to water the corn and squash is made more difficult than it should.
It was at the other crab apple trees that I started.
The tree in the foreground has just a few live branches left. It is one of several that we will eventually be cutting down.
As for the weed trimming, the ground is pretty flat on one side, so I just went far enough that I wouldn’t be getting my head caught in the branches when I mow. There is something about apple branches are just grab onto things! If I’m wearing a hat, I usually get it pulled right of. If not, I end up having to untangle twigs from my hair. :-D
On the other side, there’s the first ridge of plowed soil. Aside from making it hard to mow over, when the grass gets tall, it’s one of those places we’ve turned an ankle, more than once!
Once at the far end, I trimmed around the summer squash. It’s particularly rough around there, as that’s where the person who plowed it last, turned the tractor, going in circles instead of turning the soil in straight lines in the same direction.
This photo was taken after my daughter had given the beds their evening water. The summer squash was looking pretty droopy while I was working around them, but they sure perked up fast after a good soak! :-)
Also, you can see where the garden cam is currently set up, on that saw horse sitting on its side. Last night, nothing at all triggered it. No deer visits to the garden! :-)
When I started working around the bean beds, I had to get one more length of extension cord to finish the job. Where the bean beds are is actually fairly level, but I didn’t want to run a lawn more in between them.
The extra length was enough for me to be able to reach all the sweet corn and sunflower beds – the pea trellises were prefect to drape the cord over, so it wouldn’t get dragged over plants. One of my daughters had already gone through the area to get rid of the tree saplings that are trying to overtake the area, so I was able to trim all the beds without having to work around little trees. This is not the most powerful of weed trimmers! ;-)
Then I just kept on going. I trimmed around all the main beds, and even in between the old raspberry plants under the dead crab apple tree and the chokecherry. My mother had transplanted some there before we moved out, and when we started reclaiming parts of the old garden area, we found more that we transplanted into there. Eventually, they will be moved to a location that isn’t under trees. ;-)
The last area was the biggest job.
I had stopped for a break when I took this picture. Not only were the grass and weeds thickest and highest here, this is where the plow took the tightest turns, leaving the biggest ridges. One of which now has the Crespo squash growing in it.
All this, and we still need to mow in the areas that aren’t as rough! But at least it’s done, and we’ll have less chance of hitting something hidden in the grass, with the mower!
But that will wait. I was supposed to work on the squash tunnel today. Having the area around it trimmed will make that a bit easier to move around while it gets worked on, tomorrow. ;-)
That cheap little weed trimmer has done really well! It may be a pain, dragging the extension cord around, but it does the job. :-)
Before we converted the big aquarium into a greenhouse, it was used to store our collection of baskets. They got moved to the top of the piano, and ended up just staying there.
This is partly why.
The cats discovered they fit perfectly, as Big Rig is demonstrating in the most adorable way.
This is not what we see, btw. This is me holding my phone up high to get the picture. What we usually see is nothing at all, until a cat suddenly gets up and stretches from a nap. Before I took this photo, all I could see of Big Rig was a paw (sticking over the edge, on the left) and an ear. My daughters, from across the room, could see a mound of fluff.
We used these baskets for Easter baskets. The little ones tend to be used for small baskets we give as gifts, while the big ones are used for our traditional family baskets.
The Re-Farmer 