What. A. Day.

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… and it’s only 6pm.

What I was planning to do, after finishing my post this morning, was get a couple of hours a sleep in before my younger daughter and I headed out for errands.

Then my husband asked me if we had an extra box fan somewhere, because his just stopped working.

I remembered that we had one in the new basement that would normally be set up in the old basement window. We haven’t had to do that yet, this summer, so I was going to go get it. I was next to the door to the old basement, so I was going to go through that way to get it.

I didn’t make it all the way down the stairs, when I had to go back up and get my rubber boots.

Our septic was backing up the floor drain.

Now, on the plus side, it was just toilet paper, really. There was enough of it, however, to actually lift the floor drain cover up.

Once booted and gloved up, I opened the access pipe. It, thankfully, was not full of TP. So some water was still getting through, somewhere.

Thanks to the commercial drain auger we have, I was able to punch through the clog – right at the bottleneck, of course, – and get things draining. I didn’t even have to turn on the motor, and just used the drain snake. It’s rigid enough that I could push it through manually – and I could tell immediately when I got through, as what standing water there was, flowed away. I took the hose and ran water through the length of the pipe and into the tank, and nothing backed up. The septic pump did turn on, though, which was a good sign.

Nothing from the floor drain, though.

For that, I had to manually remove as much as I could into a garbage can. It wasn’t actually a lot, once I saw it together in one spot, but enough to be an issue for the size of pipe.

Once I got the bulk of it out, things started to flow and I could use the hose in the access pipe, flushing it back to the weeping tile under the new basement as well.

Then it was time to clean up the floor.

So that was a big, messy job though, thankfully, not as gross as it could have been!

While the water was flowing freely again, we did need to empty the tank. We normally would have done it in early spring, but too many other things messed up our budget. I was really hoping we could last until fall. When pushing the drain auger and the hose all the way through into the tank, I could feel how full it was. So, once I was done and cleaned up, I called the septic company and left a message.

He called back almost immediately.

He will be coming out tomorrow morning.

On updating the family – and assuring them that yes, we can use the toilet! – and telling them I’d have to take cash out from another budget, my older daughter came to the rescue, and transferred over enough to cover the bill. Including tip!

She was still on for getting Chinese food for my birthday, too.

What I think we need is to replace our entire toilet. We’ve already replaced the riser, but it just doesn’t hold a lot of water. The tank is lined, so there isn’t as much there, but there’s also very little in the bowl, even though I’ve set the dial on the riser to max. Meanwhile, there is some sort of leak in the overflow pipe, and we would have phantom flush, unless I allowed the refill hose to fill the tank directly, instead of through the overflow pipe. As a bonus, the tank would actually refill quickly, instead of taking forever.

There are other issues with the toilet, like no shut off valve, but I really like it. The bowl is 18 inches high, instead of the standard 16.5, so it is much better on the knees and back. My daughter and I did some searching and we found a 17″ one that has smooth sides under the bowl, so it’s easier to clean. That’s what we would replace it with, if we could. Price after taxes, though, would be heading towards $400. So that’s not going to happen any time soon!

Speaking of the price of things…

I got the estimate for replacing the door and frame in the entryway.

*sigh*

Over $4100, after labour and taxes.

The problem isn’t the pre-hung door. Even taking into account we are getting a more expensive one, with a window that can be opened. It’s the stucco. To remove the old frame, they’ll have to cut through the stucco to get it out. Then, once they’ve measured with the new frame, cut more stucco to size before installation can be done. Then they’ll hopefully be able to install the old storm door. This is not going to be a quick and easy job.

The estimate even says that, while they’ll try to be as careful as possible, there may be issues with the stucco breaking up, so if they have to repair that, it would be an additional cost.

That’s more than double what I though the cost might be. With how much it’s going to cost when the truck gets worked on through our insurance claim, plus so many other things sucking away at any emergency funds we had, we simply don’t have it. We might have to have another talk with the bank and try to come up with something.

When I told my mother that the door and frame needed replacing and why, she had asked me to let her know how much it cost. She would help.

There’s no way she’ll be doing that with the bill this high. Talking to my younger daughter about it and mentioning what my mom had said, she just laughed out loud. As she put it, that kind of money is “vandal” money, not “us” money. Our vandal would go to her for money, constantly, and she almost always gave in, and often more than the amount of this estimate. But to help us or my brother? Nope.

I don’t know what we’re doing to do, but we have 30 days to accept the estimate. After that, they have to do another estimate. Also, 1/3rd needs to be paid up front, before they start.

So that was another downer.

Things got better after that, though, as my daughter and I headed out…

Not without interruption.

Our phones started going off with emergency alerts. Due to wild wires, our province has again declared a province wide state of emergency. Evacuation orders are in effect in some of the reserves up north. Nothing in our area, though, so we are all right where we are. After pausing to check the fire maps, we continued on.

Our first stop was the post office, to get her birthday present: a new cane. My husband had ordered one, months ago, and it never arrived because the delivery company messed up. After giving on on that order, my husband and daughter went looking, and found this for her.

It is a Kommando Tactical Survival Hammer.

It’s also not a pretend novelty item. This thing is solid and functional.

Most importantly, it is a very comfortable cane for my daughter.

She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious, and she loves it! She started using it right away, and hasn’t stopped.

Cane acquired, it was off to town. First stop was the Chinese restaurant. My daughter went in to place the order, and then we were going to the grocery store while it was being made.

My daughter forgot her wallet.

We decided we could drive back to get it, giving the restaurant an estimated time it would take us, and then off we went.

Into rain with drops so big, I thought they were hail!

Sadly, no rain reached our place.

We got home, my daughter dashed in, and we were off again. Just in time for the food to be ready for pick up!

As I was catching up to my daughter in the parking lot, my phone began to ring.

It was home care.

*sigh*

Thankfully, they weren’t calling about tonight, but for tomorrow morning. Which worked out, actually, as I knew my mother would be needing a grocery shopping trip and probably laundry, etc. By the time I was off the phone, I was having to hold the doors open for my daughter, with the food!

That done, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things on their list – including a cake for me!

Thankfully, I remembered to go to a bank machine before we left town, so we would have cash for the septic guy tomorrow. I’ll be at my mother’s before he gets here, so I’ll be leaving the gate open, and have the cash ready for whoever is available at home to pay him, then make sure the gate is closed, afterwards. With how or vandal has been behaving, none of us feel we can leave the gate open for long.

That done, we could finally head home! Once everything was unloaded at the house, I started feeding kitties to get them away from the truck, so my daughter could park the truck.

She is fine with driving, which means I don’t have to reschedule my eye test next week.

There was still a lot of dry kibble out – the cats have not been eating as much, in this heat! – but I got the kitten soup out. As I was going to set the bowls out for the feral kittens, I spotted a pair of ears in the front window of the isolation shelter. Someone was in the hammock, but was so small, only the ear tips were visible!

It turned out to be Grommet.

Which means Grommet got the biggest bowl of kitten soup, all to himself!

That done, I left the girls to get things organized and called my mother about tomorrow. When I said I got a call from home care and that I would be coming in tomorrow morning, she started to get angry, but I distracted her by saying I could do her grocery shopping and laundry. It turns out she was already starting a grocery list, because her fridge is getting empty.

😄

We ended up talking for a while, and I did tell her about what our vandal has been doing. When repeating some of the things he said, even my mother was saying, how is that his business? Why does he care?

At one point, she brought up going to the police about it, and I told her I probably should, but we’ve had so much going on, it’s just really difficult. Out of curiosity, I brought up the septic backing up into the basement, which she didn’t even acknowledge years, and that we got an estimate about the door, reminding her about the front door and frame needing to be replaced. She just vaguely said that this was stuff to talk to my brother about.

Then she offered to call the police for me, herself. After all, this was happening at “her” place.

…

I told her, no. You aren’t directly involved. This is for me to do. So she left it at that.

Yeah. She’s already backed out of her offer to help with the door and frame replacement. I doubt she even remembers making it.

We ended up talking for quite a while before I could finally say goodbye and have supper. The rest of the family was already done by then! I hadn’t realized just how long the call turned out to be.

The food was delicious, as always. We got enough to feed us for a couple of days, at least! The less cooking we have to do in this heat, the better.

It’s now coming up on 8pm as I write this, and I’ll be doing my evening rounds, soon. Looking at the weather radar, we are still under severe thunderstorm alerts. There even seems to be a system heading our way that will actually pass over us, in a couple of hours. Which means rain, for a couple of hours! Maybe. 35% chance of rain.

So… do I water the garden again tonight, or leave it for the morning? We’re still at 25C/77F, humidex at 27C/81F, and we won’t be reaching comfortable temperatures until about 3am. The humidity is at 81%.

I’ll see how things look while I’m doing my checks. To be honest, I’m ready to crawl into bed right now. The heat has sucked all the energy out of me. Which is insane, because we’ve got AC now, and it’s so much better in the house than in previous years! My heat tolerance is dropping so much, as I get older.

This day has turned out to be all over the place. Tomorrow doesn’t look like it’ll be any better. While I’m at my mother’s, I’m going to miss my brother and SIL as they come out to take their trailer to somewhere else for the next while.

I need sleep.

The Re-Farmer

Morning cuteness, morning harvest

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After what happened with our vandal yesterday, my older daughter joined me while doing my morning rounds. My own personal bodyguard.

Nothing was untoward; he didn’t come back and vandalize anything in the night. I’ve gone through the trail cam files. It was interesting to see that he had stopped at the end of our driveway with his tractor, when going in the other direction, before my incident with him happened. He didn’t actually do anything other than look like he was about to climb down, but then kept on going. It’s like he was just looking to start something, so the timing of my coming home as he was returning was an “opportunity” he couldn’t pass up on.

This morning, however, has been routine, other than extending my rounds to include more of the outer yard. My watering last night was thorough enough that I didn’t need to water again this morning. Which is good, because we never really cooled down during the night. We apparently briefly dropped to 20C/68F at about 6am, and immediately started heating up again. We’re supposed to hit 31C/88F or higher today. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings and, to be honest, I’d love a good thunderstorm right now. It’s really muggy out there. Everything seems to be passing to the north and south of us right now, but there is a large system making its way across the prairies that might reach us, maybe by tomorrow. We shall see.

The yard cats were already feeling the heat. They got their kibble and kitten soup – I actually saw Sprout eating inside the isolation shelter, though she ran off right away. I refilled the garbage can “heat sink” reservoir in the greenhouse, as it will actually help cool things down during the day. The luffa pots are on the ground, where it’s coolest, and they are heat loving plants, but I don’t want them to get cooked!

After filling the reservoir, the water in the hose was almost cold (our well water usually gets ice cold, even in the summer), so I refilled all the cat water bowls. The one in the sun room was filthy. I heard distinctive racoon noises in the sun room last night. When I went to chase out the racoon, I spotted the two baby racoons, struggling to hide between the lower window and the counter shelf. One couldn’t quite squeeze in after the other. So I left them be. They do leave the water bowls incredibly filthy, though!

I also put frozen water bottles in all the water bowls. By the time I finished my rounds, they were almost thawed out already. I will switch them out, once the previous ones have had a chance to freeze again.

While checking on the grapes before coming inside, I spotted an adorable Eyelet.

That top step to the storage house is a favourite spot for many cats!

With the heat, manual labour outside is not going to happen today. So we made other plans. My older daughter is treating us to Chinese food, as I have a birthday this month. We’ll be loading up on the proteins, as we can do the vegetables and rice ourselves. The girls are thinking of doing a stir fry, so I went out to gather a few things to include with some of the vegetables I harvested yesterday.

Just enough for today. There’s a variety of radish pods from both beds with them, plus a few of both types of sugar snap peas. Then I figured, why not? and gathered a few herbs. The plants aren’t very big, so I didn’t want to pick much. On the right is some basil, with a few lemon balm leaves, sage in the middle, a few sprigs of thyme – just one sprig of the lemon thyme, as it’s smaller than the English thyme – and then some dill fronds on the left. These are self seeded, so picking these was a bit like weeding. There are even some poppies coming up – most likely the “wild” double poppy that’s been growing in that area since before we moved here. I did try growing bread seed poppies in this location before, but when it comes to self seeding, it was the old variety that has been coming up, just like the dill has been, for years!

We’ll be heading out this afternoon, when the post office reopens, to pick up a package along the way. We had tried to get my daughter a cane for her birthday, ordering one from Etsy, but that never made it, thanks to the delivery company f*****g with us. My husband contacted the maker about it and they took our physical address, but nothing came of it and, as far as I know, my husband was never refunded the money.

So he bought another cane for my daughter, from somewhere else, and it came in yesterday. The store the post office is in closes at noon on Wednesdays, so by the time my husband got the email notification, we couldn’t pick it up anymore.

We’ll pick it up today, then go to town to pick up the food order. My younger daughter will be coming with me.

Her surgical site is doing fantastic, as is her recovery. So fantastic, she’s had to wear a wrist brace, just to keep from using her hand too much. She has full mobility, and the pain of the surgery is far less than the pain of the ganglion. She is so thrilled to have finally evicted Squidly!

She also finally got the call back from the endocrinologist today, confirming an appointment in October. We’ve looked up the clinic address in the city. I am not looking forward to trying to find parking! It’s basically in the heart of downtown. There are plenty of parkades to choose from, but the streets are all one way and it’s always a hot mess of stupid traffic, a major transit hub and suicidal pedestrians. I used to work in the area, many years ago, and even lived across the river from there. So I still sort of know it.

Really not looking forward to driving around there. We’ll have to make sure to leave extra early, to give plenty of time to drive in circles to get into where we want to go.

I am, however, looking forward to this afternoon!

The Re-Farmer

*sigh* [updated]

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I suppose I was expecting something to happen.

A couple of days ago, when checking our trail cam files, I saw our vandal. He was driving his quad and, at the sign cam, drove onto the space between the fence and the road, got off his quad and walked up to the fence, where the camera is. He showed off his colostomy bag, then got back onto his quad and drove off.

About minute or two later, he was pulled into our driveway where he got off his quad, went to the gate, then went back to his quad and left. If he did any more, it was in the 5 second gap of time before the motion sensor could be triggered again after recording.

It was creepy and weird.

It’s been too windy to get anything done outside, even without the high temperatures, so I grabbed our water bottles and went into town. Since I was there anyhow, I was able to get my husband’s prescription refills, so we won’t have a delivery, tomorrow.

As I was heading home and turning onto our road, I could see a tractor further down the road, moving slowly. I had plenty of time to pull into our driveway before it got closer. As I got out to open the gate, then go back to truck, it was close enough that I could see the driver – and it was slowing down.

It was our vandal.

Okay. He’s just going to drive by. No problem. I got into my truck and drove through the gate, then stopped to go back and close up the gate.

As I was putting the chain on, the tractor stopped at the end of our driveway, and our vandal got off. He had his shirt open and his colostomy bag hanging out. As he walked towards me, he grabbed it and sort of shook it at me.

My only respond, as I kept closing up the gate, was to say, “yeah, I know about that.”

He came closer and started yelling at me, in an absolute rage.

He had cancer. He was dying. Because of me. (I caused his cancer, apparently.) He’s dying. It’s my fault.

I pretty much ignored him and was walking away when he said that I put him in jail. I just paused and said, “I put you in jail?” shook my head and kept walking. As for as I know, he’s never been jailed because of my pressing charges against him after he vandalized our gate. Nor after I got a retraining order against him. The restraining order was just for a year and long expired, but he’s been staying away – until I saw him doing on the trail cam files a couple of days ago. My brother has had a few really horrible voice mail messages, where it was clear I remain the focus of our vandal’s hate, and he has only gotten worse, but he stopped calling and texting me, long ago.

He also started yelling about how I never needed to work again, and neither do my daughters. I have no clue what he was talking about there. All I can guess is, he’s seeing all sorts of stuff here at the farm, and he things we suddenly bought all this stuff, so we much have oodles of money somehow. It must be driving him insane, to see all this stuff and not be able to come here and help himself to it, like he did while my father was still living here, and during the couple of years no one was living here. He still seems to think he’s entitled to the property – or at least access to it, any time he wants – and everything on it.

As I ignored him, he started yelling and waving his arm, saying for me to call the police, call the police. I just got into the truck and drove away, so he got onto his tractor and left.

I pulled up to the house to unload, so I couldn’t see through the trees, but I could hear the tractor. As slow going as it was, it seemed to be on the road for a very long time. I wonder if he stopped at the other camera again or something. I’ll have to be extra observant when I do my evening rounds.

The whole incident lasted only a couple of minutes. It was pure chance that he was driving on the road with his tractor as I was getting home.

Now I have to decide if I want to go through the hassle of reporting the incident to the police. I’m not even sure which RCMP detachment covers our area anymore. It’s changed a few times. It’s not like they’ll do anything about it, but at least there would be a record of the incident.

*sigh*

Ha! This is what the WordPress AI image generator came up with for this post…

Imaged created by WordPress AI.

He didn’t come anywhere near that close to me, and the gate was closed between us, but… that’s hilarious.

Also, that’s not what a colostomy bag looks like but, whatever!

Gotta find the humour of the situation, somewhere!

The Re-Farmer

Adendum:

Well now.

As I was outside, watering the garden, I heard a quad coming up the road. With the lilac hedge providing a privacy screen, I couldn’t see who was going by, but I had my suspicions.

I was right.

Our vandal went up the road, then drove into our secondary driveway. This is completely overgrown with grass on the road side of the gate. When I realized the quad was in the driveway, I started walking over and recording video with my phone. After a while, I was able to see through the trees as the quad backed up into the road again, in a herky jerky sort of way. I could identify our vandal at that point. I think he was drunk again, from the way he was driving. Eventually, he got completely back on the road and kept on going, probably to visit at one of the other farms in that direction.

I went to the driveway and could just see where his tires had flattened some of the tall grass, so I could tell how far he went in, and how he was facing. He was checking out my brother’s stuff stored by the warehouse. Of course, our vandal has no way of knowing who the stuff belongs to. From his earlier ranting, he seems to believe they belong to me, which means – in his mind, at least – I’ve suddenly come into a whole lot of money or something.

Seeing this stuff and not knowing what’s going on seems to be driving him insane. Possibly literally.

Looks like my morning and evening rounds will now need to include checking on that gate, and my brother’s stuff in that corner.

*sigh*

Our 2025 Garden: first large harvest, first flower bud, and a kitten fix!

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Gotta start with the kitten fix!

Eyelet is so flipping adorable.

Today and tomorrow are supposed to be in the 30C/86F or higher range. I made sure to water the garden beds last night. This morning, I gave everything another watering, including the food forest additions that need it. I even watered the raspberries growing on the old compost pile. I’m starting to see the first red berries, and might even be able to pick a few by the end of the day! The garden will get another watering tonight, and the whole shebang will get watered again in the morning. After that, we expect to be staying below 30C/86F again, at least for a few days, so I will probably just water in the mornings again.

While watering the high raised bed, I decided to do some thinning of carrots and beets.

I ended up harvesting some of the biggest beets we’ve ever grown!

The one white thing is also a beet. There were some albino beet seeds in the mix, but very few germinated, it seems. The Uzbek golden carrots are from the same bed. Some of those bolted, and I’m leaving one of them to go to seed.

In the other root vegetable bed, I’d included our collected lettuce seeds that basically took it over. More than we can possibly eat. I’ve been thinning those out and found several turnips crowded together, so I picked those. I found two others that have bolted and I’m leaving those to collect seed.

All along one side of the bed, the tops of plants have been monched. Looks like a deer has been snacking on the way by. !! The damage isn’t too bad and, after one got eaten, they seem to be leaving the radishes and their pods alone! All that extra lettuce is now protecting other things in the bed from deer.

In the greens bed in the old kitchen garden, after the spinach bolted and I pulled most, leaving some to go to seed, the Swiss Chard has started to grow. They were being choked out, before. There aren’t a lot of them, but a couple have leaves and stems large enough to harvest. Just a few.

While watering the flowers next to the high raised bed, I spotted some colour this morning.

Our very first nasturtium buds are appearing!

The Cosmos are getting tall enough they were starting to grow through the protective netting, so I removed that. I left the hoops, though, just in case I need to add something on the sides, to keep the cats out.

I have to figure out what I can add to the sides of the trellis bed. Along the edge on the side with no trellis net, and thankfully where no seedlings were affected, I found evidence of cats burying their “treasures” in there already.

I had been thinking that today, I’d be cutting the maple suckers I’ve been allowing to grow larger, so use in the wattle weave bed. With how quickly it’s getting hot, I might not get to that. It’s also getting really windy.

A trip into town to refill water bottles is going to be needed, so I might do that and avoid the heat, and the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are insane right now!!! Oddly, I get attacked my mosquitoes more in the old kitchen, while preparing the food for the outside cats, than outside. There’s one window that’s open just enough to allow extension cords through, so I assume that’s where they’re getting in, but so many of them? It’s brutal. Every now and then, I’ll see the back of my hand or part of my arm, and there will be five or six mosquitoes, sucking me dry. Thank God I don’t react much to mosquito bites!

I keep forgetting to look for our cans of bug spray, too.

I’m very happy with what is our first substantial harvest. All of which is from beds sown in the fall. Without that, we’d still have next to nothing to harvest!

Yup. Direct sowing in the fall is definitely going to be a regular thing for us from now on!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed order

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Yup.

You read that right.

I’ve ordered seeds for next year’s garden already.

There’s a reason for that, though. For starters, we can already see how things went with direct sowing in the fall, and how they’re doing now. So while these are for our 2026 garden, some will be planted this year, before the ground freezes.

Another reason is, MI Gardener has refused to raise their prices making them more affordable, even when taking the dollar difference into account.

As low as their prices already were, they also have a 20% off sale, and free shipping to boot.

I took advantage of that.

Well. Just for the seeds. Everything in their site is on sale for a week, but ordering things bulkier than seeds over the border is not something I plan to do.

When I did the winter sowing, I made seed mixes using up a lot of our seeds that were starting to get old. All our radish seeds, spinach, a summer squash seed mix I’d accidentally bought extras of a few years ago, beets, Swiss Chard, etc. were all finished off when I made our seed mixes for the winter sowing.

Here is what I ordered today. I ended up taking three screen caps of the entire order, to get all the little thumbnail images.

Borage: this is an herb I’ve been meaning to get for a long time. Many uses, and a great pollinator attractor.

Kandy Korn Sweet Corn: I have the super short season Yukon Chief for next year already. Having a longer season variety means we can have a longer season for corn, and no overlap on pollination times, so we can still save seeds.

Fordhook Giant and Rainbow Swiss Chard: the same types that I finished off in my winter sowing seed mixes, these will be planted in the fall.

Giant Nobel and American Spinach: while I am looking to save seed from what we have now (we didn’t eat much spinach this year; they bolted too quickly), these are new varieties that I hope will do well. They will be planted in the fall.

White Egg Turnip: all our turnip seeds were used up, so I will be trying this interesting looking variety for our fall planting.

White Icicle Radish: these will be sown in the fall, but not for their pods, though I will probably allow at least one go to seed. My younger daughter likes the daikon radish, which was sold out. This is a smaller relative, and I think she will enjoy these. I recall seeing a variety of radish sold specifically for their large seed pods that I’ll keep an eye out for as well.

Spring Blush Pea: a new variety to plant in the fall, along with other peas we still have.

Bi-Colour Pear Gourd: my “for fun” item.

Purple Vienne Kohlrabi: I used up the last of our old kohlrabi seeds to plant in the fall, and most of the ones that are growing now are the purple ones. Definitely doing to plant more in the fall!

Red Beard Bunching onion: I’ve tried a red variety of bunching onion twice before, and they didn’t succeed. I want to try again with this variety. For bulb onions, we will have our own seed.

Assorted Beet Mix: I planted the last of our beet seeds in the fall, and have the most robust beets growing right now. I decided to go with a mix this time. I like variety!

Green Scallop Benning’s Squash: we’ve got white scallop squash, but they don’t seem to like germinating here. We have more seeds for next year, but I want to try a green variety, too.

Gill’s Golden Pippin Squash: a new and versatile variety to try. I have lots of different types of winter squash seeds, still, both large and small. I like variety!

Tri-colour Green Bean mix: we have a number of different beans left, but the first bush beans we ever grew were a tri-colour mix, and they were the most successful we’d ever grown.

Rainbow Mix Carrot: to plant in the fall. We still have a couple of varieties of carrot seeds left, so we could also start some in the spring, as space opens up, too.

White Vienna Kohlrabi: of our old seeds, it looks like only a couple of the white kohlrabi germinated. These will be planted in the fall. I think they will fair better, not in a mix.

Yellow Scallop Squash: because I like variety, and I really like patty pan squash!

While I will probably pick up other seeds for next year between now and spring, between this order and what I still have in my seed bin, we don’t actually need anything else, besides things like potatoes. It may still be July but, with fall planting in mind, plus working on getting more beds either reworked or made new, I hope to have a larger garden next year, and get a head start on it, this year. After all, almost half of our growing season is already gone!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026? garden: prepping the next wattle weave bed

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With today’s heat, I chose a job that had me mostly in the shade.

It was still way too hot, which was bad enough on its own. Being eaten alive by mosquitoes while I worked was brutal! Gotta find our cans of bug spray!

The goal for today in this bed was simply to weed it and move the soil away from where the wattle weave wall will be.

The first couple of pictures in the slideshow above are the “before” views. Then I removed the sticks that were used to hold the logs used as walls in place. Most of them were broken, but a few looked salvageable.

I had intended to leave that bottom log in place, but I think I’ll leave it out. It’s not the complete length of the bed, for starters, and there were shorter logs and pieces of logs added to the ends. Plus, one end of the longest log is looking pretty rotten. I think it can still be used somewhere else. Just not here.

This bed has had a few years of amendments in it so, while it was somewhat compacted, it didn’t take much to use a garden fork and loosen it again. Which is good, because this is the first time I’ve put my left arm through this level of work since I injured it. I can use my right arm, if necessary, but it doesn’t hold out as well, and the motor control is not as good. It was more of an issue when using the garden fork. I never really thought about it before, but it turns out I use that mostly left handed. Once I was doing the actual weeding and using the little hand cultivator, though, it was less of an issue. Turns out I use that mostly with my right hand.

There weren’t actually a lot of weed in there. It hasn’t been watered, other than by rain, all year, so it was incredibly dry. What weeds did make it were easy to pull up.

It was the roots that were the main problem.

Some of the roots were from the ornamental crab apple trees. All along one section, I was pulling up smaller roots that were clearly attached to a much larger root running down the length of the bed, deeper down. From the direction others were coming from as I pulled them up, I think they were probably from the lilac bush. A few may have been from the rose bushes.

Wherever they came from, most of the debris in that wheelbarrow is tree or bush roots, not weeds!

After the weeding and loosening of soil was done, I used a hoe to pull the soil towards the retaining wall, then level out the ends and the edges, where the wattle weave will be done.

I’ve decided to make the bed shorter. At each and, I will find something I can lay down to use to step on to go into the garden from the other side of the retaining wall.

I’ve also decided I will use the retaining wall itself and add a short wattle weave wall along the middle of the bed, right on top of the blocks. I figure, if I’m going to be redoing this bed anyhow, I may as well make it a fair bit higher, so it’s easier on the back. It’s already only about 2 feet wide, which should be good for reach, but the lower the bed, the further the reach. As it has been, I could reach across, but it would get pretty painful, pretty fast. It will depend on how much material I can collect, but it would be really good if I could get this bed’s walls at least two feet high. Getting posts to weave around at that height will not be a problem, but the weaving takes a LOT of material.

I’ve been monitoring various willows and poplars and maples for potential material. For the vertical posts, I will be using maple again; the inadvertent coppice by the pump shack needs to be cleared away from the power line anyhow, and it looks like there are some nice, strong suckers suitable for the job.

With the first wattle weave bed, I kept running out of materials, so in there, I ended up using mostly poplar, but also some maple and willow. This time, I think I will have a decent amount of willow I can harvest, but I should have a fair amount of useable poplar, too. The problem is that a lot of the switches that I’d be harvesting aren’t straight all the way, but either branch off or completely split off, part way up. Since I plan to have closed ends on this, I’ll need quite a few pieces that are only about 2 feet long, so they would still be useable.

I plan to gather the materials as I need to use them. The vertical posts will be done, first, which I’m hoping to get done tomorrow, weather willing. For the weaving, I want cut and use the switches right away, so they are still green and flexible. The weaving will loosen up as they dry out and shrink, but at least they will be less likely to snap on me as I weave them around the vertical posts. Alternatively, I could harvest the switches and let them dry out completely, then soak them before use, but I don’t have anything long enough to soak them in. I’d need a water trough of some kind. Which we probably have, lying in the junk in the outer yard or beyond. Something we might plan for in the future, as I expect to make more wattle weave structures over time.

So the soil part of the job is done for now. Once the walls are built higher, more will need to be added, which will be a good time to amend with sulfur granules for next year. I might even have a chance to pick up a bale of peat to add to it as well. It’s going to take years of amending to get our soil less alkaline, never mind slightly acidic.

Since this garden is right up against the house, over time it will become our culinary garden, with herbs and greens and fast maturing vegetables that we can just pop out and harvest as we need. Herbs for tea and/or medicinals will also be included. There are a lot of herbs that can be used as all those things. I’d like to transplant the rhubarb to a better location, though. They are very handy where they are, but they’re at the foot of the crab apple trees, which keep them from getting adequate sun and rain. We’re not quite ready to get rid of the ornamental crab apples entirely, yet, and I don’t know that we’d be getting rid of both of them. It’s the one in the south west corner that is causing the most problems, but they do provide nice shade, look amazing when in bloom, and the grossbeaks love those tiny little apples.

All in good time.

For now, I’m just glad I got as much done as I did, in the heat!

The Re-Farmer

Kitten fix

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Something weird has happened with my traffic stats again, today. I have no idea why this is happening to my little Canadian blog. From about 4am to 10am today, I have gotten hit with over a thousand views, with the highest number at about 8am. Most are from Lansing, Michigan, with a significant portion from Ashburn, Virginia. This has happened before, and the hits are from the same two place, artificially inflating my stats. These are obviously bots of some kind, and they do nothing good for my blog. Whoever is doing this, I wish they would go away and not come back!

With that out of the way, here is our kitten fix for the day!

It took some doing, but I managed to get a shot of the little calico.

Big brother Colby is fluffy enough that he completely hid the calico from view until he moved to the other side of the kitten soup bowl. I’m glad to see Little Sprout getting some kitten soup, though she ran away while I was taking pictures, and didn’t get much. It would be great if we could lure the babies closer and socialize them, but we seem to have very little success with the calicos. I thought we’d be able to socialize Brussel, when she had her babies in the sun room, but now she’s almost as strange as her sister, Sprout.

While working outside today, I just had to pause and snap this picture of Eyelet.

He is so, so small! Absolutely dwarfed by the rhubarb leaves.

Those incredible eyes. Wow.

Much later in the day, as we were approaching our high of the day, I was finding cats splattered all over the place, trying to find any cool spot. The kittens especially like this spot.

The like that roll of mosquito netting, too! There’s another one that they ignore. This one is smaller and lighter, and I often find it knocked off the platform.

When it’s not being used as a bed or pillow by kittens!

On a completely different note; one thing about this time of year, when tending things outside, is there are more and more little things I can pick to snack on. The radish pods are getting prolific and there are many, many more tiny pods developing. Currently, we also have some wild saskatoons to enjoy!

With how dry things have been, they are not as big and juicy as they could be, but they’re not dried out, either. One of the jobs in my list over the next while is to clear the underbrush so we can better access the saskatoon bushes – and get rid of the stuff that’s crowding them and competing for water and nutrients.

It isn’t a lot, for July, even in our short season climate, but things are progressing. Hopefully, we will have another long, mild fall for an extended growing season.

Ha! I just checked the Government of Canada average first frost date for our area. I’ve been going by September 10. According to the updated map, if I go by the town to the north of us, it’s now between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21. If I go by the town to the east of us, it’s between Sept. 21 and 24. Yet another source has it between Sept. 21 and 30.

The Farmer’s Almanac still has our last frost date at June 2, and first frost date at Sept. 10, for a 99 day growing season. Frankly, I think the Farmer’s Almanac is the most likely to be correct.

We shall plan accordingly – both for the garden, and for taking care of the kitties!

The Re-Farmer

Surgery went well!

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We didn’t need to leave until 11, so the morning was our normal routine. As usual, I started off feeding the yard cats, and got to see these two again.

Colby looks like a real scrapper! That white and grey is so big, I’m starting to mistake it for one of the three from last year that are really small!

Yesterday, I happened to be in the right place to see Sprout lying in the grass in the outer yard, nursing these two, plus the tortie. The calico is definitely the shiest of the four. The orange one, Colby, is the bravest. Last night, I saw him at the top of the ramp into the isolation shelter. Just a little while ago, while gathering bowls for the evening kitten soup feeding, I spotted the tortie inside the cat cage, inside the big no-longer heated water bowl that’s been repurposed as a food bowl in there. I didn’t see it when I brought out the kitten soup bowl, though Colby, was back again.

Last night, after I mused about how far behind parts of our garden is this year, I did go and look at last year’s photos. Wow, are we ever behind this year! At least with the winter squash and melons. At this time last year, the winter squash in particular were getting huge, and by the middle of the month, I was taking pictures of the developing squash with my hand for a size reference. I get a strong feeling we won’t have any winter squash or melons this year! The transplant shock, plus those bugs on the winter squash, followed by that one unpredicted cold night, has really done damage. The eggplants were set back, too; last year, they were in full bloom by now. The peppers are going okay, though, compared to last year, at least.

I’ve also definitely lost at least two of the summer squash that got transplanted out, including one of the White Scallop squash. Last year was a bad year for summer squash, but I think this one might be even worse!

I was done my rounds early enough that I took a quick nap before we left. I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be falling sleep while waiting for my daughter to come out of surgery!

We ended up on the road shortly before 11. My poor daughter was fasting, and was so very hungry! The surgery was booked for 12:30, and we got there shortly before 12. We went to the outpatient clinic first, where she registered and got her paperwork. Then we went to the day surgery section on the second floor. The staff found that, while she was on their list, for some reason her chart wasn’t printed out yet, so we sat down in the waiting room while they took care of that. Which took no time at all, and she was soon passing my her glasses and phone, etc. as they took her in to be prepped for surgery.

She told me afterwards that everything went very smoothly. She was even complimented for not being at all nervous about it, as they strapped her down to the “crucifix” operating table. The staff and the surgeon were all really nice, too. She REALLY appreciated the pre-warmed blankets and towels they used on her, too!

While that was happening, I made a quick trip to the nearby Walmart to get a few things. It started to rain while I was inside. I always bag my purchases at the truck, so I was standing in the rain, filling an insulated bag, when my phone started ringing.

My first thought was that it was the hospital, and why would they be calling me so soon? Did something go wrong???

Nope.

It was the home care office. Not the usual coordinator, but someone who was covering for her at the moment.

She told me that this morning’s home care aid got to my mother’s place 10 minutes late. When she got there, my mother told her she’s already taken her pills. The aid opened up the lock box and this morning’s beds were still in their bubble, of course. I told the coordinator, my mother has a secret stash of her pills somewhere. The coordinator told me something like that had been reported. As for my mother taking them herself after the aid was only 10 minutes late (which means she arrived at the time she was scheduled to leave, rather than the time she was scheduled to arrive), she would have decided the aid wasn’t going to show up at all. I told the coordinator that my mother believes that the aids don’t show up sometimes, because they want her to die. That’s something I’d already told the regular coordinator before, so it’s probably somewhere in the file. This is why she snuck out and hid one of her bubble packs.

I asked if my mother treated the home care aid all right, and was told nothing was reported about any such behaviour. After clarifying with me about the medications, she said she would make notes for the file, then follow up with the aid.

Meanwhile, I got a message from my older daughter. The land line had rung, but she never got to it in time, and she was worried it was the hospital. So I quickly told her it was home care, then finished bagging things up and got out of the rain so I could explain further.

That done, I quickly updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to the hospital. I still had about 2 hours to wait, and I just stayed in the waiting room.

Where I dozed off again!

Why am I always so sleepy during the day, but can easily stay up all night?? It’s not like I’m in my 20’s anymore!

After about an hour or more – my daughter would have been out of surgery and in the recovery room by then – I started hearing a strange noise from the bag of my daughter’s stuff beside me. Her phone was ringing! So I answered it, using my hotel receptionist voice. 😄 Even though I identified the phone as my daughter’s, and that I wasn’t my daughter, the person on the other end launched into their reason for calling. I don’t think she caught on that I wasn’t my daughter!

It turned out to be a clinic in the city. My daughter has been referred to an endocrinologist about her PCOS, and they were calling about an appointment they have for her. I was in no position to take anything down, and explained that I was in the hospital, and my daughter was coming out of surgery just then. We eventually worked out that they will send my daughter a letter with the information, plus they will call back to follow up tomorrow. The appointment is in October some time, so there’s no rush on that.

Not long after, my phone rang. It was the surgery staff, letting me know my daughter would be ready to leave withing half an hour. When she found out I was already in the waiting room, she asked me to go to the main entry, where they have wheelchairs available for patient transport to the vehicle. Standard procedure, and I already knew where the wheelchairs were kept, so off I went.

Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of options. There was the extra wide bariatric wheelchair. I wasn’t going to use that, because they only have one. There was another wheelchair that was so low, it had to be for a child. Then there was another, but it was so narrow, it was probably also for a child, but at least her feet wouldn’t be dragging on the ground. So that was the one I took.

When I got there, the person behind the desk immediately asked who is was for, and I told her. She then went to take it, to go get my daughter. When she saw it, she commented that she didn’t think my daughter would fit! I told her, I wasn’t sure, either, but I didn’t have much choice.

When they brought my daughter out, she was in a completely different wheelchair. 😄 She had her discharge papers in hand, and a package with a couple of cookies in it. She inhaled those as soon as she got into the truck!

As I was pushing her out of the hospital, she showed me her incision site. I couldn’t believe how tiny it was! She said she was also feeling really good, but for safety reasons, she wasn’t allowed to walk out on her own. She had to be careful not to use the hand or arm, because it wasn’t hurting at all, and her mobility was really good.

Once at ground level, we made a side trip so she could use the washroom. As I was looking out the windows, I spotted something moving around.

Something very familiar looking!

They had a grog in their flower garden!

Interestingly, it was only eating the thistles, not the flowers. We had one summer where we had about 5 or 6 groundhogs in our yard, then they basically disappeared. It was really nice to see one again. I did pause at the reception desk on the way out to let the staff know they had a groundhog in there, just in case they didn’t already know. They buggers are adorable, but they can do major damage!

I brought the truck around for my daughter and, once she was settled in, checked to see how she was feeling. Was she up to eating? I knew she would be hungry, but straight out of anesthesia is not always a good time to eat. She said she was famished, so we headed over to a nearby Subway I knew the location of. Just a few bites into her food, and she told me she was feeling SO much better. Post op, they had told her a number of things to watch out for and, if she had any of those symptoms, to get to a doctor right away. This included feeling light headed or nauseous. Which she was feeling, but she was pretty sure it was because she was hungry. It was. Once she started eating, it all went away!

From there, it was straight to home. As we were driving, I updated her on the calls I got on both my phone and hers. As we talked about her referral to endocrinology, I remembered to asked about her referral for a reduction mammoplasty; I knew she had a call about that, and that is why she has an appointment with our regular doctor on the same day that I do, next week. Since I had my own done in this province, I was curious to know how much things have changed. It turned out there are only two doctors in this province that does them. One has his own clinic, while the other is new to our province, and is in one of the city hospitals.

The one with the cardiac clinic that wouldn’t accommodate my husband’s disability, then ghosted him on the phone appointments.

So… I’m thinking going to the doctor with his own clinic would be worth the extra time on the waiting list.

Which could be a year or two!

When I had the ball rolling for mine, the clinic told me they wouldn’t even book appointments past 6 months, and anything before 6 months was booked solid. I was looking at a long wait for surgery, but I was also put on the cancellation list, and my doctor at the time flagged my file as urgent, because of how much pain I was in. I ended up getting in due to a cancellation, within a couple of months. Hopefully, they will be able to do the same for her, but I don’t know that they’re allowed to flag files like that anymore.

It’s good that my daughter is finally getting all this stuff done. Now, if I could just talk her sister into starting to see a doctor, too!

My daughter may have been feeling good after her surgery, but it still took a lot out of her, and she dozed off on the ride home. When we got to the gate, she started undoing her seat belt to open it. I just looked at her, asking, are you up to that?

Nope. She wasn’t. But she was in the passenger seat, so it was automatic! 😄

Now that we’re all inside and settled in, she decided a nap on the couch would be a good idea!

I’m so glad everything went smoothly. She’ll probably start feeling pain more as things wear off, but for now, she’s mostly just feeling drained. I’m still wildly impressed by how small the incision is. Squidly has been evicted! Once it all heals up, it’s going to make a huge difference for her, to be able to use that hand without pain.

Meanwhile, it has still be raining, off and on today. It isn’t a lot, but enough that I don’t need to water the garden this evening. The yard cats got fed as soon as everything was settled in. I’d picked up more pumpkin seed, so I’ve been able to add powdered pumpkin seed to the kitten soup lately, though the adult cats are certainly getting their share. Hopefully, that will help get rid of any worms they might have. I suspect that’s why some of the really small cats and kittens are as small as they are.

Eyelet is so much like Button was in that respect. I have been putting the 4 friendly kittens inside the old kitchen to get a chance to eat the kitten soup before the adult push them away. Only Eyelet and Sir Robin like to stay and eat. Havarti and Grommet will eat a little, then they want out. Eyelet has discovered the plastic couch that’s in there, so when he’s done, that’s where I’ve been finding him. When I picked him up today, his pupils were so dilated, it concerned me. That’s what Button’s eyes started to do, to the point his irises are almost completely hidden. So I used the flashlight on my phone to test, and was happy to see his pupils slowly undilate, before he started blinking and trying to look away. That was a relief.

So that’s where were are at now. It looks like the rain has stopped for now, and it’s been blessedly cooler. It’s supposed to get really hot again in a few days, but I should have at least one cooler day to get some manual labour done outside! Thankfully, I don’t have any scheduled outings for the next while. Unless I get called to do my mother’s med assist, I should be able to get some decent progress in.

We shall see.

I’m so happy my daughter was able to get this surgery done so quickly! It’s going to make a big difference, once everything is healed up.

I’d say it’s been a very good day.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: updates, radish pods, temporary trellis, and volunteers!

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I figured I should get some pictures of the East yard garden beds, now that they’ve got some fresh stove pellet sawdust mulch on them.

The beans with the tomatoes are doing really well. At first, it seems that one of the seeds had not germinated, but it did eventually show up. That makes for a 100% germination rate of these old seeds.

Too bad a cat dug one of them up. *sigh*

In the foreground of the first photo, you can even see some of the self-seeded carrots coming up!

In the next image, you can see the second planting of beans coming up in between the corn. Of the first planting, there ended up being a total of three, maybe four, that came up, and only one of them came up strong and healthy. Considering these are the same seeds in the same bed, it’s hard to know why the first sowing failed so badly.

The last image is of the Arikara squash bed – and the corn in there is so much bigger than the ones in the other bed!

I really like using the stove pellets to mulch around seedlings. The pellets land around the small plants, rather than on top of them. Then, after being watered, the pellets expand and fall apart, with the sawdust creating a nice, fairly thing, but really light, mulch. So far, it seems to be working out with anything I’ve used them around. It helps that the 40 pound bags are so cheap, and a little goes a surprisingly long way!

Once my rounds were done, my older daughter came out to help me remove the netting around the trellis bed. We had an unfortunate surprise while pulling it out, though. I’ve seen frogs – even large ones – squeeze through the rather fine mesh but, unfortunately, a garter snake didn’t make it. My daughter found it stuck around and under the corner of the bed. It hadn’t been dead for long, but long enough that a big beetle was chewing on its head. We had to cut a section of the netting off, because we couldn’t get it loose from the netting.

As my daughter said, it’ll be good when we no longer need to use netting! At least not this netting. It’s always a concern that a kitten or a bird will get caught in it. I never thought a garter snake would get caught!

We were being eaten alive by mosquitoes while we got the net down, stretched it out, folded it in half length wise, then started rolling it up on a bamboo stake for storage. They were after my daughter a lot more than me for some reason, so once the netting was rolled up enough, I sent her inside while I finished. It’s now tied off and in the garden shed. I made sure it was resting higher up in the shed so, hopefully, no critters will get into it.

That done, I brought out some of the trellis netting we’ve used in previous years. This netting has 4′ square spaces, making it easy to reach through to weed or harvest.

I started off by weaving a bamboo stake through one edge of the netting, where there is a pair of lines about a half inch apart, instead of 4 inches. I tied one end to the vertical post at the corner, then stretched out the netting flat before tying it to the next post. Then I added the next bamboo stake, weaving it into the netting and joining it to the first stake, before tying it off to the next couple of vertical supports, then did it again.

The netting ended on the third stake, so I added another piece of it to a fourth stake before joining the stakes and matching the netting up. That left a lot of excess netting at the end, but I just bunched that up and secured it while trying off the stake to the vertical.

I had woven in a plastic coated metal stake at each end of the bed to keep the netting straight. After the horizontal stakes were in place, I pushed the netting down so any excess was at ground level. I then took the garden stakes there were already in place to hold the protective netting that was there before, and used them in the trellis netting. Each one got woven vertically through the netting, then I used them to tighten things up a bit before pushing them into the ground. Where the two nets overlapped happened to be where there was already a longer bamboo stake, so I used that to join the sections together at the same time. Once all the stakes were woven through and pushed in the ground, I used ground staples to secure the netting to the soil, catching in the excess, to make it all fairly stretched out and tight.

I recall from using the netting before that the weight of plants climbing it can cause issues, so I added another level of horizontal bamboo stakes along the middle. These got tied to the vertical garden stakes, rather than the posts for the permanent trellis. This way, the netting is at a slight angle for the beans to climb.

Then it was time to weed.

This bed hasn’t been weeding since the protective netting was placed all around it. A lot of the self seeded onions I transplanted into rows were no longer visible.

I started weeding along the trellis side. I probably should have done it before the trellis net was added, but the mesh is open enough to reach through easily. The problem was more my hat constantly getting tangled in it!

As I was working my way along the beans, I spotted a little volunteer tomato plant! I remember finding volunteer tomatoes in this bed last year, too. I’m not sure where the seeds came from!

When I found one, I left it, thinking it would be fine were it was. Then I found another.

And another.

So I thought I would come back later and transplant them once I weeded and could see a space for them.

Then I found another.

And another.

And several others!

As I was working my way down the onion side of the bed and kept finding more even tiny tomato plants, I started pulling them up with the weeds, then transplanting them wherever I had enough space between the onions or the pumpkins. Then, when I finished weeding the bed, I went around the beans side to dig up the ones I’d left there and transplanted them.

By the time I was done, I counted 14 volunteer tomatoes.

Or 15.

I actually counted 13, first, after all the weeding and transplanting was done. Then noticed one I’d missed, so I counted again and got 15. Then I counted again, as I was scattering stove pellets around the bed and counted 14. I counted again and kept getting 14, so I either keep missing one, or I double counted one before.

Of course, it’s also possible I missed some volunteers when I went back to find and transplant them. If so, they’ll be easier to see, soon enough!

The last photo was taken after I’d scattered the stove pellets, but I forgot to take one after it was watered and the pellets were all expanded and breaking up.

This bed now has Red Noodle beans and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers along one side. On the other is onions from last year, going to seed, plus a whole bunch of tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted after clearing and preparing this bed for the beans and sunflowers. Then there is the pumpkins, and now the volunteer tomatoes.

This bed is going to look really interesting, once everything has reached maturity!

Today, I remembered to take some pictures of the radish seed pods that I’ve been snacking on.

The first three pictures are all from the same plant. What a difference! Some pods have just one pea-sized seed “bubble”. Others are longer, looking like they have a couple of seeds developing in them. Then there was a branch that has seed pods of all shapes and sizes!

The last pictures is of a different variety of radish in the winter sown East yard garden bed, with distinctive red lines on them. The seed mix had four different varieties of radishes in it, and I don’t know which is which, though I’m guessing the yellow variety is the one plant I’m seeing with yellow flowers.

I’m really happy with how the winter sowing experiment worked. The last time I tried it, I did the mild jug version, and it failed completely. Now I know that sowing directly into the beds, then heavily mulching, is the way to go for a lot of things. There are a few things I will now plan ahead to winter sow, but not as a mix. Beets, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, spinach, and radishes for their pods. Also, that one variety of lettuce I planted was insanely prolific, and good at self seeding! I’ll have to be careful when collecting seeds this fall! Oh, the tiny bok choy worked, as did the chard – when they’re not being overwhelmed by other plants! There are also tiny onions all over, but they’re so far behind, I don’t expect we’ll be getting any bulb unions this year. Which is okay. We have the ones that are going to seed, so we can start onions indoors, using our own seeds, in January or February. The turnips also worked out much better than any other time we’ve tried them, so I think we will run through the varieties again to see which ones we like best.

I get the feeling we’ll be doing a lot of direct sowing in the fall from now on! Just in a more organized way. Peas are something else that are supposed to be good for winter sowing – we just have to make sure the bed they’re planted in doesn’t get destroyed by cats, to find out!

Obviously, tomato seeds survive the winter just fine. What variety they are, I have no idea, but if we’re going to winter sow tomatoes deliberately, they’ll have to be a very short season variety, if we’re going to get anything from them. If the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes turn out to be a variety the family likes, they would be an ideal candidate. Their growing season is so short, we could actually direst sow in the fall, then again in the late spring, to extend the harvest, if we wanted to.

We just need to be sure we actually enjoy eating them, first.

It’s taking us years to get things worked out, with a couple of major set backs along the way, but those set backs have actually helped us in our decision making for the future. Like now knowing that parts of our garden area are prone to flooding during wet years! Having beds raised even just a few inches has saved come of our plantings already.

I do look forward to when we can make the low raised bed higher, though. Working on the bed this morning, while much improved from working at ground level, was still pretty painful! Plus, the lower the bed, the shorter the reach. Even though these beds are 4′ wide on the outside, it was still hard for me to reach the middle of the bed. With the high raised bed, I can reach clear across, if I wanted to, without difficulty.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the morning’s work.

My next garden project will be finally working on the old kitchen garden bed that will get wattle woven walls, but I’m going to have to put another job higher on the priority list. When going through the trail cam files this morning, the gate cam had over 100 files – and this camera is set to just take single still shots. Most of those were from the poplars coming up on the other side of the fence, blowing in the wind. Which is not really a step back, since some of them, at least, are of a size that could probably be used in the wattle weaving!

Lots to do, and the weather is finally cool enough to get to it. I’m loving every minute of it!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitten sightings

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It’s about 12:30 as I type this. Trying to figure out why I fell ready for a nap. Stopped and realized, I’ve already put about 5 hours outside already, then had “breakfast”. 😄

Before I get to that, though, I have kitten sightings to share with you!

First were our two “regulars”.

I put the dry kibble out to distract the adult cats first, so I can get the kitten soup bowls out and the littles have a chance to eat. That doesn’t work so well, further from the house, where the newbies are showing up. The kittens are too shy still, so the adult cats get at the kitten soup first.

That orange one is getting more used to me, though, and doesn’t quite run off when I come out with the kitten soup bowls. I leave one under the shrine. The kittens were already there and eating kibble and ran off when I came close. They tried to come back right away, but some older cats pushed them away. I managed to shoo the older cats away, but that scares the kittens, too, so I had to let one stay. I do have a second, larger kitten soup bowl I leave in the nearby isolation shelter I’ve seen some of the new kittens in the catio at the food bowl there but, as far as I’ve seen, they haven’t explored the isolation shelter yet.

As I headed into the outer yard to continue my rounds, I spotted two more kittens!

There was the one that I saw yesterday, and it is now confirmed, there is a calico as well. I had to zoom in to get the other two photos, so they kinda suck, but it’s better than nothing!

So we now have confirmed four feral kittens have started braving their way into the inner yard for food. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to socialize these ones. Unlike their feral mothers!

It does appear that we have more nursing mothers visiting the food bowls, so there are probably at least three younger litters out there, somewhere. If they survive, we’ll start seeing them coming to the food bowls around the end of August, perhaps.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer