Kitties in the heat, our two headed cat, and first appointment with the new pain clinic physiotherapist

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

As I write this, it’s just past 4:30pm, and we’ve surpassed our predicted high of 31C/88F and reached 33C/91F.

That couple of degrees makes a huge difference!

It could be worse; some areas to the south of us reported up to 40C/104F today.

It was a relatively cool 16C/61F when I did my morning rounds at about 6am. I even spotted the two feral kittens that are starting to show up regularly. No idea what’s happened to the other one or two that I saw.

When we got home from the physio appointment, there we were immediately greeted by Sir Robin, while Havarti and Eyelet remained splatted in the shade. Eyelet got up, waiting for their special food, while Havarti just lay there, unmoving – so I got a picture! The last image above was taken after everyone had a chance to eat their fill, and the full belly babies were back in the shade. Grommet was around, too; just not where I could get him in the picture.

Before we headed out, I spotted this on my bed and had to get a picture.

It looks like we’ve got a two headed cat in there! Ghosty and Tin Whistle had merged into one. 😄

That inside cats have also been splayed all over, but it’s a whole lot better for them, that’s for sure. Thank God for the AC my brother gave us. Between that and the living room, and a fan blowing the cooler air to there rest of the house, it’s so much better than previous years – and now my daughters have their AC set up in their upstairs “apartment”. It’s the fist summer since living here that the upstairs has been at all bearable. Even with that, they had to strategically place a fan to counter the wave of hot air coming up the stairs.

My husband and I got to enjoy the truck’s AC when we headed out just before noon for his appointment at the pain clinic. This was his first appointment with their physiotherapist, which made it more of a meet and greet. We met him last week, of course – he even remembered us a bit – but this was a more dedicated meeting.

It was a combination of interesting and encouraging… and not.

The interesting thing was, after asking questions about my husband’s specific issues and past treatment (the conclusion with the doctor, last time, was basically what we expected; he’s already tried everything there is to try, and there isn’t anything more or new they can offer him), he talked a fair bit about how things have changed in physio in more recent years. He talked about all the typical recommendations given out for decades; loose weight, exercise more, focus on core exercises, etc. simply haven’t been working. They weren’t helping people get past their pain or improve healing of injuries. There have been a lot of studies trying to figure out why, and they found many factors were at play. An example would be how they’d have two groups of people doing comparable exercises. Some people would report improvement, even though there was no measurable improvement in their condition. Others would report no improvement at all. When taking blood tests before and ever activities, it was found that people all had inflammation. The group that reported feeling better has less inflamation, the other didn’t – and the only difference was that the ones that reported improvement actually enjoyed the activities they were doing. The ones with the worst outcomes did not enjoy the exercises they were doing, and they had higher inflammation after their activities. Inflammation in general, it was found, played the biggest role in how people felt. It basically came down to individual body chemistry.

There were also things like how doing small amounts of activity more often was more beneficial that doing lots in a short time. He also talked about how misleading the “in your head” idea was. When he did talk about weight, he mentioned studies that found that when people enjoyed their activities, did them regularly without overdoing it, etc. they reported improvements, both physical and mental, with no change in their weights at all. This was something I appreciated hearing, since part of why my husband’s conditions deteriorated so much was because he started seeing a nurse practitioner (the only person available after our regular doctor went on medical leave and didn’t come back), she basically ignored the reason he as there – his back injury – but focused almost entirely on his weight. His blood sugars, too, but it all came down to his weight. Of course, in being the “good” patient, he just went along with it. For some two years. It was like she believed if only he would lose the weight, all the other things would magically go away. Of course, he never lost any weight at all in that time, and we finally insisted that she start focusing on his back injury. When he saw the spine specialist, the damage was too severe, and there was really nothing that could be done but give him stronger and stronger pain killers.

So having someone who knew to focus on the actual reason my husband was there, and not pet causes, was always a relief.

That was the encouraging part.

The discouraging part was, we already knew all this. This is really old news, even though most doctors don’t seem to know anything about these studies. I’ve been reading papers on this stuff for more than a decade.

After some discussion, a plan of action was worked out. My husband will start doing tai chi again (he used to teach it at one point), starting out by finding his limit, then maintaining the activity regularly, based on those limits.

Next month, we’ll be having a phone appointment with him.

As we were leaving and talking about it, my husband said he felt like the guy was a puppy discovering a new and fabulous toy and being all excited about it. Which is only because we were already aware of the stuff he was talking about already.

We shall see how it pans out.

Once the appointment was done, with a follow up telephone appointment booked at the end of this month, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to have lunch – breakfast, for my husband. My older daughter got quite sick last night, and hadn’t even been able to eat all night, while she was working. I made sure there was something she could eat before going to bed for the day! She sent me some funds to pick up heat and eats, which I did while my husband finished his lunch. Then it was off for home, with a brief stop at the post office. My husband had ordered more Tei Fu lotion for me, since it helps so much with the Charlie horses. He ordered three tubes, so the company added a freebie. It was a bottle of cordyceps, for “… energy, stamina, endurance and strength”. That one free bottle costs more than one tube of Tei Fu lotion! That’s quite a freebie!

I’m happy to be well stocked with Tei Fu lotion, though. I was running low.

When we got back, we found my younger daughter had the gate open for us, and was out hanging laundry in this heat! She’d done all their laundry, including bedding, plus my laundry, too! What a sweetie.

I planned to head out to water the garden this evening, but I’m not so sure about that right now. We’re at 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and apparently won’t be dropping below 30C/86F until after 9pm! Even the overnight low is expected to be 21C/70F

I think I’ll just do my evening rounds and go to bed much earlier than usual. I’ve been waking up as it starts to get light out, anyhow, so I may as well wait and do the watering in the morning. That way, I won’t be shocking the plants with cold well water. Something the winter squash and melons could certainly do with out, with how much damage they got from that one cold night a while back! We’ve definitely lost a few completely.

Not looking forward to doing my evening rounds this evening, that’s for sure! Stepping outside is like walking into a wall of heat.

Ugh.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: rescuing neglected strawberries, mulching potatoes and more

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last year, we planted a little plot of Albion everbearing strawberries. They did fantastic!

Until they got eaten by deer.

Repeatedly.

They even tore through the net barrier I’d put around them, and I ended up having to use some leftover pieces of chicken wire. By then, there wasn’t much of the season left, but the bed did get heavily mulched for the winter, with some chicken wire draped over the whole bed for protection.

I did remove some of the mulch in the spring, but in the end, the bed got severely neglected this year.

Amazingly, some strawberries survived.

The strawberries I’d planted in front of the new asparagus bed, however, did not. Not a single one made it. I had simply taken too long before planting them, I think.

We do, however, now have a third Jersey Giant asparagus fern growing! So I still have some home for the rest of those, and the purple asparagus.

The first thing to do was to find and dig up the Albion strawberries and see how many there were.

I’m afraid I had to be pretty rough with them. The crab grass rhizomes were bad enough, but I was also finding new elm roots invading from below. When I planted this bed, I’d dug up as many roots as I could, then covered the bottom with several layers of carboard before adding fresh soil on top, in which the strawberries were planted.

You’d never know I’d done all that, from the roots I was finding!

Those elm trees have got to go.

I actually found quite a few more strawberry plants than I expected! In the end, I found 10 plants, plus a runner with fresh roots in it, though no leaves yet.

All of these went into a bucket with some water while I worked on where to plant them.

At first, when I thought there were just a few, I had expected to plant them at one end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes, but there were enough that I decided to reclaim the space I’d planted bare root strawberries in that failed. The shallow trench they were planted in were, of course, filled with elm tree seedlings, along with plenty of other weeds.

There was still some soil left in the old kiddie pool we used as a planter last year, so once the weeds were cleared out, I used that to fill in the shallow trench the strawberries had been planted in. This was more for the asparagus, since I didn’t feel I’d been able to cover the crowns properly on that side.

While clearing the weeds out, I did not find a single sign of the bare root strawberries that had been planted there.

Totally my own fault. They should have gone in the ground as soon as I got them. Instead, they sat for about a month.

Then I decided to take some short logs from the old kitchen garden retaining wall and set them along the little wire fence, to prevent erosion and water run off.

That done, I thoroughly watered the newly added soil. It was bone dry in that little pool. Once everything was well hydrated, I spaced out the strawberry plants in between where the asparagus crowns were planted.

Once those were in and watered again, I went and got more grass clippings to mulch both the strawberries and the asparagus.

Then, because I had enough for it, I got more loads of grass clippings and mulched the potatoes.

By this time, it was getting pretty late, and I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

I did continue watering the rest of the garden beds for the night, though. As long as I was moving the mosquitoes weren’t as bad.

While I was watering the grapes, I spotted some friends.

We haven’t seen these in a couple of years! They are Abbott’s sphinx Sphecodina abbottii  and look VERY different, at different stages of development.

Around the edge of the spruce grove, I paused to check on the wild saskatoons growing there.

We actually have ripe berries developing!

I got a picture, then I ate them!

They’re not as big and juicy as they could be; we haven’t had a lot of rain, and the undergrowth is starting to crowd them again. We need to get under them with the loppers and clear it all out again.

All in all, things are going pretty good in the garden. At least, for our region. I have to keep reminding myself of that when I watch gardening videos, and I see all these people posting about their huge plants and amazing harvests. They all tend to be at least a month ahead of us!

I’m happy I got as much done this evening as I did. I’m not sure how much I’ll get to go tomorrow. Not only will it be hotter, but I’ll be driving my husband to his appointment. Thankfully, the AC in the truck works fine, because that heat is going to be brutal on him.

After tomorrow, the highs are supposed to drop a bit for the next while, then get right back up to the “heat warnings in effect” level again.

On the plus side, the peppers and eggplant will be just loving these temperatures!

😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: summer squash, thinning by transplanting

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This evening, I finally had a chance to do some transplanting! I’d really wanted to do them earlier, but things just didn’t pan out.

My first priority was to get the summer squash bed cleaned up, and to transplant our “extras”.

I’d planted three groups of three seeds of Black Zucchini and White Scallop squash. The zucchini almost all came up – one spot had only two come up – but the white scallop squash saw only two germinate, in one spot.

That left me with two empty spots – and those were being filled with tiny elm seedlings taking over!

So the first thing I had to do, after taking the protecting netting off, was move the mulch aside and get in with the hand cultivator to weed as much as possible.

That took a while.

I really, really hate those elm seeds.

With the white scallop squash, I simply moved the smaller plant into the empty spot beside it. I did the same with the zucchini that had only two plants growing. Then I very carefully removed the extras from the other two spots that had all three zucchini seeds germinate.

I turned out to be wrong. I must have dropped a seed or something, because one of them had four!

I found spaces for them in other beds. Two went into gaps between the three types of winter squash, which are still recovering from getting hit with that one cold night. One went into the end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes in it. Those all got protective plastic collars. The last one went into an open space in the high raised bed, left from harvesting some radishes and turnips.

Thanks to my SIL using their big zero turn mower on the outer yard, I had a whole lot of grass clippings available. I needed more mulch around the original summer squash bed, plus the one in the high raised bed got a grass clipping mulch, with a final watering to soak the mulch.

Hopefully, the transplants will survive alright. Squash don’t like their roots disturbed, but there was no way I could take them out without using a lot of water and washing the roots off completely. Those ridiculous elm seedlings were wrapping their tap roots around everything!

That done, I had time to work on the next job.

Rescuing strawberries.

Coming up next!

The Re-Farmer

A quick (ha!) run down

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!

I spotted a couple of the new kittens while doing my rounds this morning. Just the two of them.

I also spotted a garden friend.

What a unique looking frog!

Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.

Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.

The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.

When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.

Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…

That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.

Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.

She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!

Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.

It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.

The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.

The thing is…

Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.

The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.

They were empty.

So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.

Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.

Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.

When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.

The time stamp on the message was 10:01.

*facepalm*

Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.

I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…

My mother doesn’t remember that call.

I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.

So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.

It was a very strange day with her, this time!

I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.

By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.

It felt like it should have been much later!

She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.

Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.

I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.

Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.

July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!

Anyhow.

I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.

I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!

That will get it’s own post – or more, though 😊

The Re-Farmer

A productive evening, and kitty updates

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, my attempt to get stuff done early before things got hot, taking a nap, then continuing working outside when it got cooler almost worked.

The nap part was a fail.😄 I can’t complain too much, considering what kept me up was adorable snuggles and kisses from Cheddar. Usually, he just slams himself against my back when I sleep, so I wasn’t going to turn down a snuggle session from him.

My daughter got out the riding mower to do the inner yards, then grabbed the loppers to remove the little poplars that are starting to take over one side of our driveway. By then, it was getting into the hottest part of the day, and that area is in full sun, so she just got a start on it for now. There are a lot of them do remove, so any progress at all is bonus.

Unfortunately, the hottest part of the day tends to be late afternoon, early evening. We hit 28C/82F by 3, and it stayed there until about 6, which is roughly when I headed out again.

The garden definitely needed a second watering, in this heat. I took the time to do a bit of weeding, using the hose to make it easier to remove their roots. Despite being watered in the morning, it was amazing how dry the soil was already.

I’ve been thinking on where to thin by transplanting some of the zucchini, and the surviving strawberry plants from last year that have been neglected, but didn’t get to that this evening. The weeding was needed more.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get it done tomorrow evening, after I get back from helping my mother with various things. I called her to remind her I’d be there in the morning to take her to the lab for her monthly blood test, and she immediately started telling me to go to her place first, then the pharmacy. I wasn’t expecting to go to the pharmacy; her meds are supposed to be delivered. I suspect she intends to give them a hard time over having to pay for her meds. I think she’s re-convinced herself that I paid for all her meds when I picked up her inhaler. Well, I’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.

I got the supports I picked up for the black currant bush in the South yard set up.

These are dollar store supports marketed for tomatoes, but I find them handy for other things. I’ve got two sets put together around the currant bush. After I got the first picture, I decided to raise the upper connectors almost to the top of the stakes, which you can sort of see in the second picture. The hard part was getting the stakes into the ground evenly, since I kept hitting rocks or roots or something. I think this will work out just fine!

I also got the string of solar powered LED lights set up. I decided to just wrap it around the top of the section of chain link fence between the two gates, with the solar panel set into the end of the top horizontal bar, rather than into the ground. I will check it out after it gets dark, to see how it works out. The yard light might be too bright for them to work, there. If that turns out to be true, I’ll move them to the driveway gate to replace the old string of lights on the fence, there. We used to have white Christmas lights strung together all along the fence line. I really liked how that looked but, for LED lights, they failed an awful lot, and I ended up not being able to find the right type of replacement bulbs. The little string of solar powers lights I’ve got there now has actually outlasted the Christmas lights rather handily!

While I was out and about outside, I found myself being followed by a little blue eyed beauty, and managed to get a few more photos. I just had to post the whole series of them…

The expression on Eyelet’s face after Stinky pushed his way between us was just hilarious!

The first couple of pictures come closest to showing how white his eyes can get at times.

The Cat Lady has said she will try to find a home for Eyelet; a Siamese cross can sometimes be easier to place than other cats, though not a lot people would be willing to take on a deaf kitten. I don’t want her to end up with yet another permanent keeper.

She sent me some security camera images today. She’s actually out of the country right now, and her mother is house/cat sitting. A strange cat showed up, triggering their cameras, and was lounging on the roof of a catio. He managed to get into the house and won’t leave. He was intact, had all the usual ear mites, fleas, etc expected in a stray, and has permanent damage likely from being hit by a car. She hasn’t even seen the cat in person yet, and has already spent some $700 in vet bills on him! After asking around, one of the neighbours recognized him as a cat they saw getting dumped this past spring. It ran off and disappeared.

….ggggrrrrr….

What is it with people, that they do that?

Now he seems to have claimed the Cat Lady’s house as his new home. Even though Cabbages has been territorial and going after him, he won’t leave!

Looks like they’ve got another cat. Not sure how many that makes now. I think it’s over 30 now!

So you can understand why I’m hesitant to have her take another cat from us to adopt out. Too many people have backed out of adopting, even after assuring that they understood that they were taking in a colony cat that would likely need more vet care than typical. The Cat Lady and her family have quite a few cats permanently living with them, and not just from us, because of that. There is, however, a rescue that specializes in Siamese cats. They were going to take Ghosty, once they had an open space for her.

They seem to have ghosted the Cat Lady about Ghosty, though.

I can certainly understand why the Cat Lady is bowing out of rescues at the end of this summer. Other small rescues have shut down this year already, for much the same reason. Burnout.

Of course, being deaf, Eyelet’s chances for survival are pretty low, and we can’t take any more cats in. We already have way too many inside, and we don’t have the space they should have. It’s very stressful for them, and causing problems.

Well, it is what it is, and we do the best we can.

What else can we do?

The Re-Farmer

Shedding a new toy?

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We have a couple of long haired tabbies that look very much alike, that are quite feral. A while back, I spotted one of them with a strange thing on her back. It turned out to be a mat of winter fur, still stuck to her.

It finally dropped off! It’s a good thing I saw it on the cat first, because that was one heck of a thing to find on the side walk in front of the sun room. 😄

I was able to get a picture of the cat’s back this morning.

There’s a bit of a bald spot where the mat was dangling. It must have been such a relief for her to finally get that off!

As I was finishing my morning rounds, I came up on Sir Robin. He had discovered the clump of fur and was having an absolute blast, attacking it! I got a little video of that, which you can see if you click through, above. We have toys available, scattered around in the sun room and the isolation shelter, but I’ve never seen them being played with. A clump of fur, however… 😂😂

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: developing tomatoes and peas

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The garden and future food forest got a thorough watering this morning, and I spotted some future harvests, too!

The first image is of the Spoon tomatoes in the main garden area. I’ve been seeing tiny tomatoes developing for a while now. I had expected them to get much taller before forming tomatoes – when we’ve grown these before, they always got really tall and lanky. This year, they seem to be staying short and bushy. I’m not bothering with pruning side branches away, after seeing some videos about that from Gardening in Canada, so I was expecting them to be bushier. These are still indeterminate tomatoes, though, which are more of a vining type. Which is why I made sure they had a nice, sturdy trellis to climb. We’re just into July, though, so maybe they’ll still get taller. We’ll see.

In the second image, we have our first sugar snap peas developing. There are quite a few more flowers blooming now, too. Most definitely the biggest, strongest and healthiest peas we’ve ever grown, this year. I don’t know if it’s the location, this year’s weather, or what, but I’ll take it!

The final photo is my morning surprise. There are Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes forming! Yes, these are super short season tomatoes but, like the Spoon tomatoes, the plants haven’t really grown much since being transplanted. The plants are so short, the developing tomatoes are inside the protective collars!

The Chocolate Cherry and Black Beauty tomatoes are getting taller, at least, and getting to the point that I’ll need to start clipping them to their supports, soon. Those, we’ve grown before, and I am expecting them to get quite a bit taller – but then, I was expecting the Spoon tomatoes to get quite a bit taller, too! There were flowers blooming on all the tomato varieties when I transplanted them, but I remember that the Black Beauties took a very long time to ripen. The plants had loads of tomatoes, and I remember they tended to crack and split a lot, long before we had any ripe enough to pick.

It should be interesting to see if there is any difference in how quickly they ripen, this time around.

The Re-Farmer

Costco stock up shopping: this is what $606 looks like

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Fuuuuuu…..

Before I show you what I did get, I’ll show you what I didn’t get!

Beef. I did not get beef. Not even ground beef.

The strip loin grilling steak was $47.89/kg. One kilogram is 2.2 pounds. For those of you in the US, that’s US$15.99 per pound, as of today’s exchange rate.

The whole strip sirloin in the second picture is actually cheaper at “only” $41.99/kg or US$14/pound.

These weren’t even the highest prices/kg for beef. They are some of the largest cuts of beef, which made for a savings/kg compared to buying them in smaller, more prepared packages.

Even ground beef was off the menu on this trip.

So this is what we got for our $606.14, after taxes. I got a lot of stuff on sale, too.

Yeah. That’s it.

We ended up getting six 9.1kg bags of dry kibble. Normally, I like to get at least a couple of 11kg bags, but the price per kg was better with the Kirkland brand. At $27.99 each, or $167.94 in total, I think these have actually gone down in price. At the very least, they haven’t changed. There are two cases of wet cat food at $37.99 each, which is about the same, too. The puppy pads were $20.99 which I don’t think has changed, either.

The Kirkland brand toilet paper was $23.99, which is high, but unchanged from the last couple of shopping trips – they used to be under $20.

Also on the non-food list, we stocked up on a double pack of large Head and Shoulders at $22.99. This has been working well for my daughter as a anti-fungal wash. My husband has similar issues, particularly in this heat, so he will be using it as a body wash, too. We picked up the Kirkland brand of laundry detergent at $19.99 The cold water detergent was cheaper but my daughter is having to wash all her clothing and bedding with hot water (anti-fungal), so we aren’t doing cold water washes anymore.

The flat of Coke Zero, at $16.99, is the same. The flat of Monster (which my older daughter paid for) is normally $44.99, but were on sale for $9 off. We ended up getting two containers of iced tea mix because they were on sale for only $9.99 each. The regular Costco price was $12.99, which is still a good price. At local grocery stores, I’ve seen them as much as $26. We also got a three pack of 2L oat milk for my daughters, at $11.99

For breads, we finally found the tortilla wraps; the last couple of times, they were out. We picked up two packs of 36 wraps for $9.99 each. We also got two 2 packs of rye bread for $6.99 each.

We still had some butter in the freezer, so we got only four pounds today, at $5.45 each. That was it for dairy.

For protein, we got our double flat of eggs (60 eggs) for $20.39, and a pork loin for $24.15. We got two panini packs this time. Normally, they are $14.99 each, but they were $3.50 off today. The biggest sale price, however, was for wild caught salmon. They were normally about $49.99/kg, but were on sale for $24.99/kg, so I got two fillets for the girls; one at $10.05 and the other at $8.45. Both were on the smaller size of what was available.

Then we stopped, because we’d reached my budget for this trip.

*sigh*

The gas prices, at least, were a huge savings. While everywhere else was at $1.349 or $1.359 per liter for regular gas, Costco was at $1.099/L It still cost me $72.05 to fill the tank.

We did have other purchases today. When we got to the city, the first thing we did was have lunch for breakfast. We went to a nearby mall’s food court and got food and bubble teas from different places, which totaled over $40. I ate only half of my Chinese food meal. The other half was supper.

We also made a quick stop at the Dollarama, where I got a few things for the garden, including supports for that black currant bush. I also found a broom for outside with plastic bristles, so it’ll last longer than the straw broom we have for outside, now, which is ready for the trash. I got more plant clips, and my one splurge was for some solar powered LED string lights. I’m torn between using it in the garden, or replacing the string of lights on the fence by the gate, which are getting old and starting to dim quite a bit. The total was just under $30 for everything.

We also stopped at the Canadian Tire to get a metal replacement winch for the clothes line. The one that came with the kit for the new line was slipping. There were several options available, but we went with the one that turned out to be exactly the same as what’s on the older clothes line. We also got four more line separators; the kind with the wheels on them. Now, each line has three of these.

While there, we found more clothes line kits that got us rather excited. The kit I got, locally, was the only option available, and had a medium duty line. Canadian Tire had kits for heavy duty and super heavy duty lines. The super heavy duty kit was about $90. Looking at the contents of the kit, sold separately, and it’s actually a huge savings. The 150′ of heavy duty line alone cost more than half what the kit cost. So when we’re ready to set up a third line, we’ll definitely be getting one of these sturdier kits. That way we can have an extra strong line for things that are very heavy when wet, like towels or blankets, while light stuff can go on the medium duty lines.

The winch and four line separators cost just over $40.

So, everything together today cost about $788, give or take a few dollars.

About $265 of that, before taxes, was just cat stuff. Closer to $244, if we don’t count the puppy pads.

Actual food and beverages for us humans came out to about $225.

There is something wrong with that picture. Especially considering the prices of cat food hasn’t gone up in quite a while.

Hey, did you know there’s a Ko-fi donation button at the top? All proceeds go directly to the care and feeding of cats!

*sigh*

So our stock up shopping was a bit short on the “stock up” part, but we did get a few really good prices in there. We’re supposed to be buying extra for the pantry, though, so that we have at least an extra month’s supplies for the winter, in case we can’t get out again. We can’t count on having another mild winter, or on not having spring flooding washing out the roads again.

We are actually very fortunate in our situation, too. I’m counting my blessings here. If we were still living in the city, we’d be in far worse shape, that’s for sure!

So I give thanks for what we have, and ma grateful for it.

The Re-Farmer

How things have gone today

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Rather all over the place!

Today was our Costco shopping day, and I’ll post about that separately. My day, of course, starting with feeding the yard cats and going my morning rounds.

Which included spotting this little guy.

So far, he’s the only new kitten we are seeing regularly. I saw no sign of any others, so far today.

I think I’ll call him Colby.

While checking on the garden beds, I remembered to take a picture of our new blooms.

Our Sweetie Snack Mix bell peppers are flowering!

I’d seen flower buds starting on the Turkish Orange eggplants, but they got quite a bit of cold damage a few nights ago. They are recovering, but it definitely set them back.

Since we were heading to the city this morning, I didn’t do the watering. I had done it last night. With the expected heat in the next few days, we will have to start watering morning and evening. Even if we do get the rain predicted, in a few days, unless we get a downpour, we’ll still need to water.

Before we had to head out, I got a phone call from the autobody shop. The truck is now booked for repair and replacement of the box cover. I will be dropping it off on the 25th, a Friday, and most likely will get it back the following Tuesday.

They will have a courtesy car for me!

I am just so happy with this place. They have gone above and beyond in dealing with the insurance company, trying to keep costs down for us as much as possible, and now even ensuring we still have transportation – small town shops like theirs typically can’t afford to have courtesy cars available. They were even able to make it so we won’t be charged for part of the paint job, dropping the total cost to us by about $140.

That wasn’t the only call we got to get things worked out. While we were driving into the city, my daughter got a call from the hospital, regarding her upcoming ganglion eviction. She now has an exact time to come in, plus they’ll be calling her a few days before to go over her medical history in more detail.

When we got back from the city, it was getting close to when we’d be feeding the outside cats, so once everything was unloaded, I started on that so my daughter could park the truck. The kittens sure to like to go under the truck when we’re unloading!

And under our feet.

With the heat, part of the routine includes switching out frozen water bottles in their water bowls. Before refilling them, I had to run the hose for quite a while, so it wouldn’t be scalding hot. I refilled the leaking “heat sink” container in the portable greenhouse to get all that hot water out. The handy thing about that is that, while the container was put in the greenhouse to release its heat during cold spring nights, when it gets refilled during the day, it absorbs heat and cools down the greenhouse surprisingly quickly.

It’s still hot AF in there. Just not quite as much. 😄 The luffa seem to be doing all right in it, though.

Once I was finally back inside, there were a couple of messages for me – one from the pharmacy, and one from my mother. Both about her bubble packs that were supposed to be delivered today.

I called the pharmacy back, first.

As soon as I said my mother’s name, the pharmacist was all, “oooohhh… yes…”

They did try to deliver her bubble packs today – which is the last day of her medications she had left from the previous month’s packs – but when the delivery person got there and told her how much it would be, my mother told them she didn’t have enough cash.

Also, she told them I’d already paid for it.

I had picked up her inhaler, and it cost almost $200. Her bubble packs were over $200.

What they ended up doing, since today she would be out of her medications, was giving her a week’s worth of her medications – for free! – until we could clear this up.

Once I got all the info from the pharmacist, I told her I would either got to them before they close to pick up the bubble packs, and my mother would pay me back later, or they could deliver them on Wednesday (tomorrow is Canada Day, so they will be closed). I just had to talk to my mother about it, first, and had the exact amount ready for her.

Also, I was startled that my mother said she didn’t have enough cash. She uses only cash, but can’t go to the bank herself anymore so my brother, as PoA, has been making sure she gets her cash for her monthly spending.

Then I called my mother.

*sigh*

When I confirmed with her that I had only paid for her inhaler, not her bubble packs (because there were no bubble packs ready yet), and that I’d told her this at the time, she started to get really, really angry, and even started yelling at me because I used my credit card to pay for it. As if my using my credit card somehow was why there was a charge for the inhaler? Which, according to her, was supposed to be free. Now, she did get to keep the one they used on her while she was in the hospital – back in February! – but that was it. Then there was the cost of her bubble packs. She’s never spent that much on medications in one month before! Except… of course she has. Maybe not all at once, but she has.

I tried to explain to her that she just hasn’t paid her deductible on her insurance, which is through our province’s health care system. (Something not all Canadian provinces has.) She got mad about that, too, telling me she has never had insurance.

Except she has. Even before Canada brought in our medicare system, my father told me, he always made sure they had insurance. Plus, she’s been covered by our province’s prescription insurance for decades. She has to sign a form for it, every year. She’d commented to me about how she sometimes got her prescriptions for “free”, and sometimes not, in the past. Apparently, she had no idea why. I’m not sure why she would get angry at the idea of having insurance, either. She seemed to think having it was a bad thing.

Then she got even angrier when I offered to come into town to pick up her meds. She actually started yelling at me.

Her neighbours must get quite an earful at times.

It took a while to calm her down enough to tell her that the pharmacy knew that, if I didn’t come in today, before they closed, to go ahead and deliver it on Wednesday.

Then I made sure she knew how much she would have to pay for them, and write it down. She tried to say she would remember it, but I insisted she write it down, just in case!

Then I asked if she really was low on cash, and she said she was.

…

I also made sure she understood that the pharmacy gave her a week’s worth of medications for free, because of the mix up. It took a while for her to get what I was telling her, and she was finally happy about something.

Among the other things she got angry at me about was when I talked about her inhaler. What’s “haler”? What is that? I told her, it’s your puffer. Then she got angry that I was calling her puffer an inhaler – followed by my talking about her bubble packs. What bubble? You mean pills?

I use the term “bubble pack” all the time when talking about her pills, but today, she decided she had never heard the term before and was angry at me for saying it.

On the plus side, as quickly as she became angry, she calmed down.

As soon as I got off the phone with her, I messaged my siblings to keep them up to date. My brother ended up phoning me because of what she was saying about being low on cash. There is no way she’s low on cash. There seems to be a combination of things going on. One is that that she probably just lied to the delivery person about not having enough cash because she believed they were already paid for, and thought the pharmacy was trying to cheat her. The other is, she doesn’t use a wallet and keeps her cash in between the pages of a very old booklet I think is a calendar, forgetting that the cash my brother brought for her are still in their envelopes in other parts of her purse. Or, she “hid” some of the money and then forgot about it. Again. The last time she did that, she couldn’t find the envelop and decided one of her neighbours went into her unit while she was in the common room and stole it. She made the accusation many times during social gatherings, without actually saying the person’s name. Then, months later, she found the envelop with all the money still there.

She never did apologize, nor did she ever acknowledge that there was anything wrong with her behaviour.

By the time I got off the phone with her, I was exhausted!

Then I started on this blog post, with some minor interruptions. One of those was to go outside and help my daughter replace the plastic clothes line winch (I kept forgetting the word “winch” when I wrote about setting it up in the first place!) with a metal one we picked up today. We got some more clothes line separators, too, and now both lines have three each. With how long the clothes lines are, they are needed more to keep the bottom of the line from sagging too much under the weight of laundry than to separate the top and bottom. Two was not quite enough. I even remembered to tighten the winch on the older clothes line; that one has had more than a year to stretch out, even though we didn’t use it all that often. We’ll be using them a lot more from now on, weather willing.

Speaking of weather, my daughter and I talked about the upcoming heat. I’m going to be changing my sleep cycles quite a bit. Basically, I’ll be out early to get as much done outside as I can before it gets too hot, get a few hours sleep during the hottest part of the day, before going out again to do as much as I can until it gets too dark, then have another short sleep during the night. None of us tolerate heat well, but there is much that needs to be done!

Which includes working on that permanent trellis again. My arm is doing a lot better since I fell while working on it before. As long as I don’t over do it, I can get back at it. Mostly, it’s just my palm and my shoulder joint that are still hurting, but the entire arm gets tired and sore very quickly, still. At this stage, we’ll be bringing out the little folding scaffold we got last year, and it is definitely going to be a two person job – and not just in case I trip and fall again!

Oh, and I have more adorableness to share with you! After helping my daughter with the clothes line, I spotted Eyelet and managed to get some pictures. He does NOT like to stay still!

Those eyes! Button had the bluest eyes, but Eyelet’s eyes are so much paler. They almost glow blue, when the light hits them right, but I wasn’t able to capture that with my phone’s camera.

Well, it’s time for me to get outside and start watering the garden. It’s about 7:30pm right now, and we’ve barely started to cool down. It’s going to keep getting hotter every day for the next four days, too. Even the overnight temperatures are not much lower. It’s also really muggy, so that’s not much fun, either!

We’re not going to be doing anything for Canada Day tomorrow. I’ve got one day at home to get stuff done, then I’m booked up for the next couple of days.

*sigh*

Looking at the times, I realize I won’t be able to do that shift in my sleep cycle, after all. I’m going to be driving around, instead of sleeping during the hottest parts of the day!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.

Time to go water a thirsty garden! Then work on my stock up shopping post.

That was painful, and I don’t mean physically.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer