Ginger continues to settle in. With so many cats in the house there are, of course, moments of aggression. He has no problem standing his ground when one of the other cats decides to take out their bad mood on whichever other cat happens to be nearby. I’ve even seen him running around and tussling playfully with the spice girls.
He does have a habit of squirming around too close to the edge of the bed and sliding right off. :-D
His fur is growing back in the shaved area, but not evenly! He’s got patches of longer hair that’s surprisingly dark. Being right next to the corner where the incisions meet, it looked like he somehow got the area very dirty. :-D
Best of all, he’s now starting to actively seek out people for attention. :-)
These are the Tennessee Dancing Gourds, and they are the first of the gourds to sprout!
This is how they looked this morning! So awesome, to see how much they grew in less than 24 hours!
I’m hoping this means we’ll start seeing some of the other gourds sprouting soon, too. :-)
I also checked on the soil sample that was left overnight to settle.
Hmm.
It looks completely unchanged!
The instructions said that soil heavy with clay could take 24 hours to settle, but… I don’t think that’s clay. I think it may actually be organic material.
With how long this is taking, I think I’ll find another jar and test the next soil sample while this one continues to sit.
But not right away.
My older daughter got a call back from the tax preparer. They can’t log into her file at Canada Revenue. Like with her sister, it’s telling them there’s something wrong with her name. We have no idea what that could be. We’re going to have to call up Canada Revenue again. I’ve found a directory, and the numbers all have wait times listed. The number we need to call has a wait time of just over 2 hours.
So we’ll be taking turns monitoring the phone while on hold.
I managed to get a picture of Ginger this morning.
This was just a moment before he leapt up and tackled my phone! :-D
He was very fierce-some this morning!
I got this picture of David the Magnificent, yesterday, and just had to share.
He is such a pretzel!
Meanwhile, I had a whole crowd, outside!
The Ghost Baby was peeking between the shelters to see if it was safe to go eat!
She finally dared!
My daughter told me that she sometimes shows up at their second floor window, describing her as a ghost baby. I figure that’ll do just fine as a name. Better than “that sort-of calico cat…”.
My daughters have also been telling me about another grey and white tabby. I honestly can’t remember (I’m losing track!), but they say it’s Junk Pile’s baby from last summer, and it looks like here, except thicker. So they call it Thickilous.
:-D
I may well have seen it and thought it was Junk Pile, but until I see them both at the same time, I have no way of knowing.
So we have these 7, possibly Thickilous, and Nicky the Nose, hanging around. We have more cats inside than outside right now!
Well. At least until the kittens are born. Only Butterscotch looks pregnant, but that doesn’t mean the others aren’t!
Before I get into this post, I just wanted to add that this is my first post written using the SeaMonkey browser. It’s also the first time I’m actually using the browser, yet I’m already seeing a HUGE difference while working in the WordPress editor. Everything is loading SO much faster. The image uploads, the block editor, everything. I’ve just opened a whole bunch of blogs I follow in new tabs, and not a single one is showing the weird colours, not a single image has failed to load, and when I scroll the bottom of posts, everything is loaded. Including the “like” button which, frustratingly, was often the one thing that would fail to load, even as the rest of the page would load. I have yet to try and leave a comment anywhere, but I’ve uploaded media, including directly into this post, without a single problem. I had been using Mozilla Firefox for this blog (to keep is separate from my personal stuff), and it’s been really awful. SeaMonkey is like Mozilla Netscape, and it works a dream, so far! Many thanks to The Hinoeuma for telling me about it!
And now, back to our regularly scheduled post…
I broke out our soil tester and began with a sample from the newest garden bed. This is soil that was under the old wood pile. You can read about that massive clean up job, here. Under it was the only soft soil we had!
The soil test kit I have is from HoldAll Decorative Plant Accessories, and this is our first use. It has the supplies to do 40 tests; 10 each for pH, nitrogen, phosphorous and potash.
The test of pH is the quickest; soil gets put directly into the test tube with the contents of a capsule (all are colour coded), shaken, then allowed to sit for a minute. The other tests required a soil sample to be mixed with water at a ratio of 1 part soil to 5 parts water, so I started that first. Though only the pH test could be done right away, I readied the capsuled for all the tests, so I wouldn’t have to go into the mylar bag again.
I had just finished setting the pH sample in the test tube holder when something large and white caught my eye through the window.
It was the tarp over the load of garden soil in the outer yard, blowing around!
A daughter and I dashed off to get it before it blew away.
The wind has only been picking up! I don’t think I’ll be moving soil onto the new garden bed today. :-(
We fixed the tarp, adding more rocks and even a tire rim onto it, to keep it from blowing away.
Then we came inside, and I found three cats on the table, going after the remaining three test capsules!
They were licking them, and the gel capsules were starting to dissolve. :-( I don’t think any of the powder was ingested, though. They are now sealed in a container.
The pH test had more than enough time to be ready, but the water and soil mixture will need a lot more time! The instructions said it could take anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours, depending on how much clay is in the soil.
The soil in the new garden bed came up as neutral. We have a soil meter that is simply stuck into the ground that reads sunlight, moisture and pH. It had been used in the area that now has garlic, and read at about 7.5, so this was pretty much what I was expecting. Most of the things we are planting do better in a slightly acid soil – about 6 – 6.5 – but what we planted in this area last year did pretty good anyhow.
As I write this, the soil and water mixture has been sitting for more than an hour, and is still totally opaque! From the looks of it, it may need to stay overnight.
Meanwhile, I’ve already gathered a sample of the next test I want to do: the new garden soil! I suppose I could do a pH test right away, but I’ll wait until the other three tests on this first sample is done, first.
Testing the soil in the old garden is going to be a challenge. The samples are supposed to be as free of rocks and organic matter as possible.
Ha!
We’ll see how close to that we can manage!
Meanwhile…
As I was working on this post, I got a phone call from my mother. After a while, she asked what we’ve been doing, so I told her about the new garden beds. I tried to describe to her where we put the new bed for the tomatoes, and made the mistake of starting with, “you know where your yellow flowers are?” She immediately launched into “you mean you destroyed my flowers!!” I had to stop her and tell her, “wait, no… you know that space between those flowers and the chain link fence?”
I honestly think my mother forgets that the chain link fence even exists at times! It took her a while before she realized I was talking about the grassy area. Which confused her even more, because nothing was ever grown there, and how can I plant without plowing the soil first? Or at least tilling it? So I described to her what we did with the layers of cardboard, straw and soil. Once she knew our garden soil was delivered, that helped, but she still accused me of killing off her flowers again! Then she brought up the shade of trees, and I told her we only had to take down the one tree that was killing her lilac, anyhow, and that we picked that spot because it will get full sunlight now.
She still had a hard time understanding that we’re planting anything on that side of the house, in the yard, and was all, “so you’re letting the garden go to weeds again”, meaning the area she used to garden in. I told her no, we’re going to be planting all sorts of things there. Without plowing? Yes. Without plowing.
That lead to a whole lot more explaining of things, even though we’ve had this conversation several times, now. She has the hardest time with the concept of no-till gardening. It’s just too wrong! :-D
At least this time, she ended by saying, when everything is in and growing, we need to bring her over so she can see it! :-D So that’s progress, at least! She certainly wasn’t impressed by what she saw last year, but we’ll see how it goes this year. I’m sure she’ll find lots to be angry about! :-D
I didn’t even try to explain to her about the soil testing, though. Maybe another time. Us planting in an area she never planted in was already pressing her limits! :-D Which is funny, because she would stick little gardens in, or plant trees, all over the place. Some of them in places that are now very difficult to work around! :-D So it’s not like I’m doing something she hadn’t already done herself.
One thing that was funny was when we talked about starting things indoors, and I mentioned needing to start squash. She asked if we were growing zucchini, and I told her yes, in green, yellow and a different green, plus the bright yellow round squash (the pattypans) that I’d given her last year. Oh, those are just toys! she tells me. :-D I reminded her that we find them quite delicious!
Hmm. Now I’m suddenly wondering. Did she eat the fresh pattypan squash I’d given her? Or did she get rid of them, because they were too new for her?
I don’t think I want to know the answer to that. :-D
As we talked more about starting things indoors, she had the hardest time understanding that yes, we already have tomatoes started from seed. I think she was disappointed that she couldn’t chastise me for not having them started already. :-D
Talking to my mother about this place can be very challenging! I don’t think she forgets that she doesn’t own it anymore, but she still wants to control everything that is done here, including things she doesn’t understand (if only because my dad and brothers took care of them for her, over the years). I try to respect her wishes as much as possible, but our job is to take care of the place, not keep it in stasis. It’s slowly working out, though. It just takes a lot of explaining, sometimes! Or, in some cases, not even bringing them up.
Like testing soil. I’ll bring that up only if we have a lot of time for me to explain things in ways that make sense to her. It’s not so much that she isn’t aware of some things; it’s more likely she’s never encountered the terms to describe them before.
It’ll work out. It’ll just take time and patience!
The forecast for today has changed, and we are expected to be even warmer than originally predicted. Before trying to get my husband to the lab in town for his blood work (he never even got to the counter to get his requisition; the line up was out the door, and was moving so slowly, he ended up leaving, due to his pain levels), I saw we’d already reached 13C/55F, which was originally our predicted high. The new high for the day was listed as 18C/64F. As soon as I could after we got back, I headed out to get the new bed done, before things got too hot.
Yeah. I know. It’s not really “hot”, but we’re not acclimatized yet!
This is what it looked like before I started.
I would like to point out how deep into the soil the spade is. This is actually really, really impressive. Pretty much anywhere else in the yard, I would not be able to get the spade that deep, even while standing on it – and I’m no lightweight! Typically, I’d shove the spade into the ground, turn around to do something else, only to have it fall over, moments later. What a difference with soil that has been buried for decades under where the wood pile for the furnace used to be.
The first thing to do was remove that lovely soft soil.
And more roots.
We’ve de-rooted this area three times, and I was still finding old cherry roots!!
Also, worms. Lots of worms!
I dug down until I hit gravel. Which was not as deep as the other two beds that our garlic is planted in.
You can see a root sticking out that I couldn’t remove. I decided it wasn’t worth going back to the sun room to get something to cut it with. Some of the other roots I pulled out went under the boardwalk on the side! I’d dug those areas down to the gravel, too.
Being near the compost ring, this bed is narrower than the others, as well as shallower.
Being right next to the compost ring came in handy, though.
I pretty much emptied the compost ring, then walked back and forth on it to stomp it down.
Using the contents of our compost pile like this, we aren’t getting a chance to get any finished compost! Which is fine. It’s still organic material for our garden beds.
Speaking of which…
Next came a layer of straw.
Unfortunately, the wind was really picking up, and things were blowing away, so I made sure to tromp all over the straw, too.
When it came time to return the soil, I did much of it by hand. This allowed me to break up lumps, remove rocks, old tree roots, weed roots, and gently cover the worms.
This is where a soil sifter would make things a lot easier.
Well. Except for the “gently cover the worms” part. That would be more of a “bash the worms to bits” thing. So I don’t mind doing it by hand!
With the previous beds, I returned the soil that was dug up, plus added the soil from where the paths are. I’m not making a path on the other side, so it’s just the soil I removed. I’d used that side area to pile grass clippings last year. Most was used elsewhere, but there still was some left, and that got added to the bed as well.
We will be adding some of the lovely new garden soil to this, but not yet. By this point, it was just too windy to keep working on it. Hopefully, it will calm down a bit, later. After today’s high of 18C/64F (it’s already 17C/62F), we’re supposed to drop to -3C/26F, with “isolated flurries”. Tomorrow’s high is only 2C/35F, so if I can get this finished today, that would be great.
I do want to break out the soil testing kit first, though. I want to compare soil samples from this area, with the big garden area, and with the new garden soil. That should be quite interesting!
So there is the new, layered, garden bed, almost complete. This will be a good bed for root vegetables. I think we’re planning to put a variety of beets in here, though maybe it would be better for carrots. We have several varieties of both beets and carrots, so we might even do one of each. We shall see!
A lot of our seeds packets say to direct sow “as soon as the ground can be worked.” Which, obviously, can be done now. With the predicted overnight temperatures, though, I don’t think I’d be willing to chance it for another week even if we cover them with plastic. Even cool weather crops have their limits! That will just give us more time to prepare the beds. We’ll have to go over the seed packets and figure out just how big some of them will need to be and start marking them out. That will help us make some decisions on exactly where different things will be planted. Especially those that will need trellises and other supports.
We have lots of work to do, and I’m so thankful to finally be able to get at it!!
He’s been running around all over the house, but I managed to catch him and lure him with some cephalopods.
It’s not the squidlies he’s hunting.
It’s my phone!
:-D
As a side note, my spell check dictionary does not recognize the word “cephalopod”. Which is weird enough on it’s own, but the alternative spelling it suggests for the plural is “hydrocephalus”, while the suggestion for the singular is “cephalic”.
Excuse me while I “add to dictionary.” :-D
I dug up the patterns to make more of these. I am in error. Neither of these are squids. The pink one is a cuttlefish. :-D
The cats love them!
But not as much as Ginger loves to attack my phone while I try to take his picture. ;-)
My younger daughter and I took advantage of it and built a new garden bed in the area we plan to plant tomatoes.
The tomato seedlings are doing well, as are the luffa.
They have roots starting to show out the bottoms of the pots already!
The onions in the sun room are doing well, but not to much the ones planted more recently.
As for the gourds, none have sprouted yet but, from what I’ve read, they do take a long time to germinate.
Here is where the tomatoes will be going.
We did absolutely nothing to the ground before we started. There really wasn’t any point of even trying.
The first step was to cover the grass.
Actually, the first step was to cut down that maple. I’d already noted that it was creating so much shade when in full leaf, that a unique lilac in the flower bed beside it was being killed off. The stump was left high and will become the support for a seat. The main trunk and some of the larger branches are being kept for future projects.
We’ve been saving the cardboard boxes from cat litter, and their flaps were placed against the fence as a short barrier to hold in the soil.
Well… after spending some time removing all the tape. It took more time to get all the tape off than to lay out the cardboard!
Those and some moving boxes were enough to cover the entire space between the flower bed and the fence. :-)
Then, we broke out the new soaker hose! :-)
We will likely be going below freezing tonight, so the water will still need to be shut off from the basement when we’re done, but for a warm day like today, we could use the hoses for a while.
The soaker hose is 50 ft/15m, so we’re looking at approximately 25 ft/7 1/2m for the new bed.
While letting that soak, my daughter and I began bringing loads of straw over from the bale in the big garden area.
We probably could have left the water running all day to soak it thoroughly, but we didn’t bother. We did move the soaker hose over by the haskap berry bushes, though, and left the water running while we moved on to the next step: spreading the straw.
Actually, I spread the straw while my daughter filled a couple of wheelbarrows of soil and brought them over. Once the cardboard was covered, we tromped back and forth on it, stamping it down, then lay the soaker hose back over it.
We left that to soak and took a walk around the big garden area and talked about changing a few things.
The above image shows the existing beds from last year’s garden, in green. The three smaller beds in the middle were going to be where our three varieties of spinach would be planted. I was thinking we might change those up completely. Instead of three short beds oriented East-West, it would probably be better to have two longer beds oriented North-South, like the two we already have. One of the North-South beds was supposed to have shallots planted in it, but the shallot seedlings failed, so we’ll still have three beds available to plant spinach (and whatever else we interplant with them).
Eventually, we will be building accessible raised beds here, so nothing is permanent at this point, anyhow.
There’s also the two small beds – the shorter green rectangles in the above pictures – where we’d planted potatoes last year. There’s nothing stopping us from making those longer, stretching into the skinny bit that’s marked in orange.
So that’s what we’ll do with those areas.
By the time we went back to the new bed, my older daughter was done work for the day and was able to join us.
The first thing they did was stop using the larger wheelbarrow, because it sucks. :-/ Actually, they both do. We need to get a new wheelbarrow! Just one good one is enough. :-)
So one daughter had shovel duty, filling the smaller wheelbarrow, while the other brought it over and dumped it, then I spread the soil until a new load was brought. The job was done very quickly!
The area of straw left uncovered will be a pathway. At some point, we’ll put in some pavers or something, but for now, the straw and cardboard will keep the weeds and grass down. That and lots of tromping it down with our feet. :-)
Each of the haskaps got a load of soil around them, too.
Then, because the hose was handy, the soil got a brief watering, more to keep it from blowing away than anything else.
Our last frost date is June 2, so this will have more than a month for the straw to settle. We’ve got one more warm day, then we’re supposed to get snow. Long range forecast sees more snow and rain into the first few days of May. Any precipitation we get will help settle it more, and we’ll be able to see if we need to add more soil or not.
If all goes well, I will use tomorrow to dig a new bed next to the garlic beds, before things cool down again. That one will be a lot more physical labour than this one was!
My daughter’s orchids are looking beautiful this morning!
They have been doing very well since she starting using kokedama, though finding a place to hang them where the cats couldn’t get at them was more of a challenge!
Unfortunately, one of them seems to be struggling. You can see some of the dead leaves behind the flowers in the above photo. My daughter has figured out that, when we had the polar vortex hit us in February, it simply got too cold for them at the window, and one in particular is having a much harder time recovering.
Now that we have the aquariums converted to cat proof greenhouses, next winter we will be able to move them into one of those to keep them warmer.
I also saw some fluffy, furry flowers this morning. ;-)
I was able to bring them some meaty treats from the kitchen this morning, and they were very happy!
I love how Creamsicle Jr. is licking his chops! :-D
We’re supposed to have a nice, warm day today, and I’m looking forward to getting some garden preparations done outside. The cats have already discovered the soil my daughter moved to the old kitchen garden. They LOVE rolling around in dirt. We have several trees with bald patches at their bases, because the cats roll under them so much. One of them is an ornamental apple tree in the old kitchen garden, and now they have bonus dirt to roll in.
I don’t mind them rolling at the bottom of the tree. We can’t plant anything under them, anyhow – but it’s going to be a problem if they decide to roll in the new soil after we’ve planted!
I just finished switching the new keyboard with my husband’s old keyboard. I was wrong about his keyboard, though. It’s identical to my old one. It doesn’t have lit keys.
Here is my new, old keyboard! :-D
Believe it or not, I actually cleaned this a bit, already… :-D
As for the broken leg, it turns out the legs are exactly the same height as the width of an old tape measure I had on my desk. Something I’d found while cleaning out my late father’s desk and kept handy. The clip on the back even fits into the space the leg used to be in, so I can slide the keyboard around, and it goes along for the ride. :-D
My wrists and hands are already thanking me! :-D
My husband, meanwhile, is quite happy with the new keyboard. He doesn’t type anywhere near as much as I do, so the issues I was having just don’t bother him. Plus, I’m the one with arthritis in my wrists and fingers.
I suppose I should pop the keys off and clean them, but honestly, I don’t think I care enough to bother. It works. That’s all the matters.
The new keyboard was the closest my husband had been able to find like what we already had, in a split keyboard. Since my husband had to place the order a second time, he missed a sale price, so the new one was pretty expensive, too. Quality wise, as far as construction goes, it is nowhere near as good as the old keyboards, which are both from Microsoft and well over 10 years old.
Considering how much use my keyboard got, I’m rather impressed that it lasted this long. I’m still going to keep it. It may be a bit janky, but it still works well enough that it would do as a back up, should something happen to one of the others that are in use. Now that I think about it, the light up keyboard I remembered my husband had was one that came with a desktop system he’d bought, years ago. That one died after a cat knocked a drink all over it, which is why he was using the one I have now.
My wrists are thanking me. My thumb, in particular, is much, much happier now! :-D
The Re-Farmer 