It’s been a much cooler day today, so I took advantage of it and continued working along our west fence line.
In all, the before and after photos below represent about 2 1/2 hours work. This includes pausing to take some video, and also pausing to drag away the branches and tree trunks I took down.
What a job!
Let’s start at that group of three maples, where I left off last time. Continue reading
That face…
I actually thought he was asleep when I saw him sprawled on his back like this. Then I saw the eye. Staring. At me.
The Re-Farmer
And getting hotter.
For those in the US, 34C = 93.2F
43C = 109.4F
By 4pm, we are expected to hit 36C, or 96.8F, but it’s supposed to feel like 44C, or 111.2F
I hope we do get that storm tonight, even though it’s still supposed to be 32/40C (89/104F).
Thankfully, even though we don’t have air conditioning, we’ve been able to keep the house fairly cool. Closing the windows before it starts heating up (except the kitchen window, because of the frog), and having the basement door open, makes a difference!
The Re-Farmer
Yesterday evening, while walking around the yard, I was followed by a little beast!
I was even able to pick him up and pet him for a bit. I dragged the end of a stick on the ground that he and his mother had a blast trying to catch, and I caught him (her? still don’t know). He was tense about it, but not freaking out, which is progress!
I found that the plums are now ripe.
These tiny little plums are almost all pit. If I were to do something with them, I would be harvesting them now.
I might just leave them for the birds this year.
I can think of a number of things to do with them, Continue reading
I finally got some photos of a drink mixed using the chokecherry vinegar I made not long ago.
I have been using it for other things already. One of the things I like to do is put some frozen mixed berries in container to thaw out over night and enjoy them with breakfast. Usually, I sprinkle a bit of vanilla sugar over them while they are still frozen. I tried it with a drizzle of chokecherry vinegar, and it worked out very well! It made plain, ordinary toaster waffles really something!
I’ve drizzled some over fresh cantaloupe, which was also really nice. It would work just as well over any melon or fruit salad. The vinegar adds just the right tang.
For a drink, we spooned some over some ice (about 3-4 tablespoons for a large glass), then added ginger ale.
Give it a bit of a stir, and that’s it!
Very refreshing.
I don’t actually enjoy ginger ale as a drink on its own, but I do like it as a mix. Half and half with orange juice or cranberry juice, with frozen berries instead of ice, is a favorite of mine. This chokecherry vinegar would be right at home in any drink like that!
Perfect for a 34C day!
The Re-Farmer
The beach was quite lovely this morning. :-)
Someone’s sand castle looks like part of its wall has already been claimed by the waves.
I played around with the settings on my phone’s camera and was happy to get more true-to-life photos.
The closer to the marina, the rockier the beach. I find the beach much more interesting, the rockier it gets.
These boulders are right at the wharf. It’s not unusual to see someone sitting on them, reading a book or something, and just enjoying this quiet little spot.
There is a little cove on the other side of the marina. The lake shore here is lined with boulders to protect from erosion. The entry/exit through the breakwater into the marina is near here, and the yacht club is nearby as well.
A beautiful day for a sail.
Near the frog fountain are a couple of mountain-ash trees, aka rowan. They are gorgeous trees. We had a couple, around where our plum trees are, when I was a kid, but I have no idea what happened to them. These trees are of similar size. When we first moved to the city we were in for the past 14 years, one of the things that amazed me was how many mountain-ash trees there were, and how HUGE they were, compared to here. When we first moved into the housing co-op, we were in a townhouse on the second and third floors at the end of the row, and there was a mountain-ash right outside the third floor bedroom windows. Every spring, it would fill with waxwings, eating the remaining berries. Gorgeous birds, though it didn’t take long for their incessant fee-fee-fee! noise, that would start at about 3 a.m. and continue for hours, to get very annoying. :-D
While in the area, I saw some gazebo tents set up and remembered that it was Saturday – Farmer’s Market day. This was the first time I was able to take it in, since our move. It was still early, to I walked for a while before coming back to the market and seeing what was there. I even had a bit of cash on hand, for a change. I normally never have cash and use my debit card for everything, but I had decided to take some money out this morning, just in case.
Then I found my cousin’s honey booth.
I no longer have any cash on hand, but I now have a big bucket of creamed honey!
That should last us through the winter. :-D
The Re-Farmer
It was smokier today than yesterday. Oddly, when I tried to go online and find local smoke advisories, I kept getting hits from 2014 and 2015, but nothing recent! Strange.
From what I’ve been able to figure out, the smoke seems to be coming from the fires in California and BC right now.
When I headed back from locking the driveway gate, I found myself looking at the most amazing red orb in the sky. The smoke had dimmed the sun enough that I could look right at it – it wasn’t even as bright as a full moon!
I tried to get some photos to capture the colour. This first photo shows how much daylight there still was as I took the photo.
I then played around with the white balance and ISO (who would have thought a phone camera would allow that, when they first came out? *L*) and got the sun to match the red I was actually seeing. So imagine the daylight in the above photo, but with the sun as red as this…
I expect we will have red suns like this every evening for some time, from what I’m reading about the fires out west. :-(
My reason for going out to lock the gate was at least a good one; it was after my electrician friend came over, with his daughter, with the new motor for our bathroom fan. We now have a working bathroom fan again! And didn’t have to pay to install a new one and cut things up to fit it. The new fan will wait for when we install a second bathroom.
When they first got here and I went outside to great them, we heard the sound of kittens. When his daughter commented, I told her about the two litters, and how we hadn’t yet been able to really touch them.
As I was at the bathroom door, talking to her dad, suddenly there she was – with the tuxedo in her arms! She had meowed at it and it came over, then went for her toes. She was able to pick it up! It was obviously not too happy, but was also not freaking out and clawing, either.
My younger daughter ended up taking it out, along with a can of wet cat food, as a mollifying treat. :-D
Any day that involves cuddling kittens is a good day! :-D
The Re-Farmer
My daughter had a slightly later shift today, so the sun was well up by the time I got to the beach.
During the drive in, we could see the haze of smoke, everywhere. The lake was no exception.
Normally, I’d be able to see at least a bit of the other side of the lake from here. Especially when the water is so calm.
(I believe there is an advisory against going into the water right now. The birds are pretty, but their fecal matter can result in E. coli problems.)
The camera on my phone automatically “clears up” images taken in fog or haze. The trees in the distance were not actually as visible in real life as in the photo!
While walking along the beach, a splash of colour caught my attention.
Someone left a bit of cheer for others to enjoy. :-)
I hung around town long enough for the post office to open, and for the postmaster to put out the mail, so I wandered over to the marina and sat by a fountain (and added a Pokemon into the gym that is there, which was controlled by my team at the time. :-D ).
It still feels weird to see the bright green frogs. They used to be just the brass, which developed a natural patina.
I still like them. Because they’re frogs. :-D
I headed home shortly after this and was able to stop at the post office. Sadly, my husband’s CPAP has not come in yet. The company could only guarantee speed of delivery within the US. Once in Canada, they have no control over how quickly something gets delivered. Usually, packages get processed quickly. Much faster than envelopes, anyhow.
Usually.
The Re-Farmer
Yesterday evening, I went out to rake out the leaves and twigs where I had cleared away earlier. There are too many twigs and pieces of wood to use to layer onto the garden by the house, so I got the fire pit going.
I also discovered the Butterscotch has moved her babies to the log shed by the fire pit.
I was watched, but none came near!
Later on, I did a walk around the yard and noticed the setting sun was an incredible red colour. I wasn’t able to capture it adequately in this photo.
Imagine the deepest red you can see was the entire ball of the sun.
The redness was because of the smoke of fires burning. There are none burning near us. The smoke may well be from another province!
That pile of wood in the foreground is part of what I’d cleared away earlier.
As I headed back into the yard, I discovered one of Butterscotch’s kittens in the area I had raked, dancing around.
I don’t think it ever did catch the moth. :-D
I raked up 3 wheelbarrows full out of that area. I’m going to have to clear the ashes out of the fire pit again!
The Re-Farmer
After dropping my daughter off at work this morning (and a quick visit to the beach), I continued clearing the west fence line, working away from the fire pit area.
When I did my evening walk around the yard last night, there was still enough light to rake up the dead leaves and twigs where I had been working last time. It was not really something I’d intended to do yet, but I had issues last time that I wanted to check out.
This morning, with enough light to see, I checked it out.
Yikes! No wonder I kept stubbing my toes, tripping and twisting.
I had cut those lilacs and caragana to as close to ground level as I could at the time. I didn’t take into account the thickness of years of dead leaves. Once raked out, I could see that I was no where near ground level on these!
Thankfully, I did not need to go over this area again today, because I didn’t want to use up what little time I had before the heat hit, cutting it down shorter.
This is the next section I worked on.
(Click on the images to see larger)
There’s one before picture, and two after pictures of the space around the two elms.
I did end up taking down some caragana and lilac growing together that I’d originally though I could leave. You can see it to the right of the two elm trees in the before picture. However, to clear the fence line, they had to go. Like so much else, there was a lot more dead in there than I expected. Even after I’d already cut away dead sections, some time ago!
Here is how it looks now.
I had no energy to cut it down closer to the ground than this. By the time I’d got to this point, the heat was already getting to be an issue.
I also needed to clear it to get to the next section, which I had not expected to get to this morning. Here are some before pictures.
The first two are around a bigger maple with three trunks. The third picture is of some maple next to it. All dead, it turned out. When I grabbed the first piece, preparing to cut it, it just broke loose immediately!
Here is how it looks now.
Two of the three trunks in the bigger maple turned out to be dead. I will take them down, the next time I’m working in the area.
On clearing away the smaller maple, I found the remains of an old, rotting stump under the leaves. What I cleared away had been the suckers growing out of a maple that had been cut down long ago, that did not survive for very long.
The next section I will be working on will include that big willow in the background.
Of course, while clearing and cleaning, I found questionable things.
The first was…
A single sock, buried in the leaves.
When I first saw fabric, I figured it would be a painter’s glove, like the many I packed away from various places as we put my parents’ things in storage. Nope. A sock. Just one.
Then there was the barbed wire.
The first being this rolled up wire on a fence post. You can also see the end of the cable that extends from the gate post. I can’t quite figure out why it’s there. It doesn’t seem to be actually supporting anything.
Note the post itself. It’s basically just a piece of tree someone cut to size and used as a fence post. Untreated wood like this cannot last long.
Most of this fence seems to be made up of this sort of post. :-(
On the next post over, there was more barbed wire.
Just a length of barbed wire, with worn out twine at its end, dangling there.
I’ve left the lilacs and caragana growing through the fence at this point, to hold the fence up. It’s no longer even attacked to some of the fence posts at the top anymore.
It wasn’t until I had cleared around the bigger maple that I realized what I was seeing.
Someone wrapped a loop of barbed wire around the trunk to hold up the fence post.
A temporary fix like this, I can understand. But the whole point of temporary fixes is that they are… well… temporary.
That maple trunk is the one that’s still alive of the three trunks growing together.
I don’t think I was out much more than and hour, working on this, before I had to get out of the heat. We’ve got heat wave warnings for the rest of the week, across the prairies. As I write this, we’re at 31C (87.8F), with a humidex of 35C (95F). It’s not expected to start cooling down for the evening until about 7pm. At least we’re not supposed to go any higher, today. By Saturday and Sunday, we’re expecting to get temperatures of 35C with a humidex of 41C (105.8F).
Ah, Canada. Where the summers can get as much above freezing as the winters can get, below freezing! :-D
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 