The rhubarb is doing fantastic, and there’s even a flower coming up in southwest corner patch.
I didn’t get anything else done in the garden. I didn’t even do the watering, counting on the rain we are supposed to get today.
My first task of the day was to call up our tax preparer to see if they could figure out why our return was shortchanged by about $2500. The person I talked to before was still on holidays, but the person I spoke to was able to look at my husband’s account at the CRA – something my husband still can’t do – and saw the numbers. She couldn’t see why we didn’t get the full amount. Basically, we were shorted my entire Disability Tax Credit, and then some. The person who did our taxes will be back next week, so she will make sure what happened gets passed on to her and hopefully she can figure it out.
So at least a week before we find out what happened.
Meanwhile…
I decided not to go to Costco for our stock up shop (I’ll cover that in my next post). Instead, I headed into town to visit my mother, then continued on to the nearer city to stock up at Walmart.
The truck behaved normally on the way to town. As I started to do my shopping, the battery gauge had dropped again, still within the normal range and returning to where it usually is after driving for a while.
It’s hell on my nerves.
Knowing I would have refrigerator and frozen stuff after shopping, I made a slight detour first to pick up gas, did my shopping at Walmart, then headed home.
Once everything was unloaded and the truck parked, I quickly changed into my grubbies and fired up my brother’s little riding lawn more. I’d intended to use the push mower to do the edges first, but that would have taken too long. I was already heading thunder in the distance and just needed to get the jungle under control.
I definitely put that mower through its paces! It’s been so humid that the tall grass and dandelions don’t really dry out from the morning dew. It was all quite wet on top of being thick and overgrown.
While I was mowing, I got our first alert blaring on my cell phone. A tornado warning for our region. “Our region” clearly didn’t include where we are, though, as the system hadn’t reached us yet, and I kept mowing.
Still, I managed to get the east, south and west lawns done before I started getting slightly rained on. I did a few checks around the yard before going in, during which we got a second alert blaring on my phone, and just had to grab some rhubarb. I have no idea what it’ll be used for. If my daughter’s don’t use it, I’ll just make a quick compote.
As I write this, we are finally getting an actual rainfall. According to the weather map, there is a thunderstorm right on top of us. As I look out my window, I see no wind waving the branches of the big maple. In fact, from this part of the house, I couldn’t even tell it was raining. My daughters have their window open and told me they could hear it, but it’s definitely not a major storm. Checking the alert map, the “severe weather alert” area is to the south of us, and well into the middle of that is a single patch of “extreme weather alert”.
The rain is supposed to continue all night until about 8am tomorrow. Which is good timing, since we need to be on the road by 8:30am to get my older daughter to her follow up appointment at the Women’s hospital. She did get a call already and given the biopsy results – she does NOT have cancer – but she will probably need surgery.
The rain is supposed to start up again by 7pm tomorrow and continue through the night, with a bit of rain the Thursday after. I might be able to get more transplants in then, or on Friday. I have my medical appointment on Friday afternoon, but it’s a telephone appointment and not until 3:30. Thursday and Friday as going to be downright cool in comparison, then it’s supposed to heat up again, so I’m really hoping to get the rest done by the end of Friday. Well, the stuff that’s ready, anyhow. It really sucks that my melon and winter squash seeds and seedlings got eaten! Right now, I’ve got some surviving melons, and a couple of winter squash very quickly germinated, but I’m not seeing anything else coming up yet.
Ah, well. We’ll work with whatever survives. I’m rather happy with the non-stormy rainfall we’re getting so far. It means the transplants have a better chance of surviving!
Hopefully, it won’t be much longer before we have something besides rhubarb to harvest.
Here is what I have been able to manage before the temperatures reached the point of risking heat stroke. I’ve been getting up at about 5am, when the ski was getting light, and outside by about 6 am. Of course, the yard cats got taken care of before I started on the garden. Aside from stopping for lunch and hydration, I was able to stay out until about 1pm before the heat and sun drove me inside. We’ve been hitting “only” about 30C/86F instead of the 34C/93F we’d been hitting before. Tomorrow evening, thunderstorms are supposed to start rolling in and stay day day after, through to the next morning. I want to get as much planted and protected as possible before that hits.
There are barely visible leaves hidden by millions of seeds. This is just one of seven Chinese elm around the front yard. The green seeds are already dropping a bit but, once they turn brown, they will drop in drifts. I’ve covered the newly finished bed along the chain link fence with netting, but seeds are still getting through. Before they start dropping for real, I’m going to have to find something else to cover them. Something finer than the current netting, but not as fine as the mosquito netting we’d used before, that would turn into a sail in the wind. Enough to cover the strawberries on the other side of the people gate.
I’m not sure what’s available out there. I’ve been looking at netting at various stores, but the dollar store seems to be the only place that has anything that might work.
For now, though, I need to get things in the ground.
First, what I was able to get done yesterday.
This first bed I worked on was the smallest; the tiny raised bed with herbs in it. Click through to see the slide show.
I transplanted the summer savory and Russian tarragon into here. I’m actually surprised they survived. They were doing so poorly before I “up potted” them to the snail rolls. The Russian tarragon seems okay, but the summer savory is still insanely leggy. I would not be surprised if they don’t make it.
As for the other herbs in the bed, the one type of oregano in the top left corner is doing really well, and spreading. The bottom right is the Greek oregano and it went through a rough patch, but is recovering. The lemon balm in the top middle has also been doing well. On either side of that, in the middle, is the sage. Those seemed to have died back when we got hit with that cold spell, but they are leafing out quite nicely now. In the top right corner, the lemon thyme seemed to have died off, but is starting to grow back again. The thyme that was in the bottom left corner died off completely, so that’s where the summer savory went. The tarragon went where the basil was last year.
That one got done nice as fast, which is why I started with it first.
Next, I started on the bed against the retaining wall that I finished reworking last year. Again, click through for the slide show.
The first thing to do was get hoops ready and find netting – I ended up not using the netting in the first photos, as it was too short. Then the leaf mulch was removed into the wheel barrow. I reworked the bed a bit to remove any weeds that started invading. The cats had been digging in it in one spot and leaving me “presents” that had to be removed, too.
Then the hoops needs to be set in place. For those, I picked up some zip ties rated to 50 pounds. Even setting the hoops as low as they could go, they were pretty high. The first piece of netting I’d found, cut for use for something else, several years ago, was a bit longer than the bed, which meant there wasn’t enough length to close off the ends. Thankfully, I had another leftover piece of netting that was more than long enough.
The hoops divided the bed quite handily into 5 sections, so I planted 5 different types of summer squash. Green Scallop Bennings, Lemon, Early Prolific Straightneck, Yellow Scallop and Gold Rush zucchini.
I planted a couple of seeds each, in groups of four, setting collars around where I planted them. Then I set 4L size water bottles with the bottoms cut off, upside down, into the ground in between each group of 4 collars, for watering. They each got stakes set inside them to 1) keep them from blowing away, 2) allow for any critters that might fall in to have a way of getting out and 3) partially block the opening so the water doesn’t flow out too quickly.
Finally, last of all, the netting was put over the hoops, which is barely visible in the last picture. I picked up some plastic clothes pegs to use as clips to hold the netting in place on the hoops and on the retaining wall side. Ground staples are holding it in place on the garden side.
Everything got a very thorough watering, first the entire bed in general, and then filling the upside down water bottles. That bed was pretty dry!
For now, that bed is done. Later on, I might transplant some onions in between, or maybe some marigolds. Or I’ll just set a straw or leaf mulch around it. I’ll thin the squash as needed and, eventually, the netting will be removed as I plan to train them to grow vertically.
That done, I moved on to the main garden area and the high raised bed.
It’s hard to see, but that soil thermometer was reading about 20C/68F!!!
I brought over the Red Wethersfield onions to transplant among the bush beans. The onions were transplanted first, with a short row at each end, and a row straight down the middle. The Tricolor beans mix were planted until I ran out of seeds, which were enough to do all of one side, and about half on the other. The rest of that row was finished off with the Gold Rush yellow beans.
The handy thing with the hoops and netting on this bed is that it’s fairly easy to lift the netting and secure it at the top of the hoops, giving plenty of space to move around in. At some point, though, the bush beans might get too big for the netting. We shall see.
That done, I moved to the flower bed at the end of the high raised bed. With that one, I could use the bamboo stake rolled up at the side to lift the whole side up and over, so there was plenty of room to work in.
Not very much room for what I transplanted, though!
First up was clearing away the invading weeds (creeping Charlie is viciously invasive!!), being careful not to disturb the nasturtiums I’d direct sown that survived.
For some reason, I got it in my head that I’d started nasturtiums indoors, but I hadn’t.
I brought over the largest flowers that desperately needed transplanting. The Crackerjack Marigold were the biggest, and they went in closer to the high raised bed. They have flower buds on them already.
The dwarf Cosmos actually had a couple of open flowers on them!
White flowers.
These are supposed to be red.
Not sure what happened there.
Oh, dear. I just got a notification on my phone. Thunderstorms possible in the next hour. So much for starting to storm tomorrow evening!
I’m going to have to pop out and get the remaining transplants in bins protected.
Be right back…
Well, that’s done. I hope the transplants in the greenhouse frame will be okay. They are too big to cover in their bins, but we set covers on the shelves above them that should provide enough protection, and secured everything so it won’t get blown away.
Looking at the weather radar on my desktop, I’m not seeing any side of potential storms, or even rain, coming up over our area. My phone’s weather app, on the other hand, has bumped up the thunderstorm timeline. It’s entirely possible the system will miss us entirely.
I really hope we just get a nice rain. Something the transplants won’t get damaged by.
So… where was I…
Still yesterday’s work…
The last bed I worked on was the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed, where I transplanted the Florence Fennel.
The first image is after I removed the leave mulch, but before I weeded, cleaned up and loosened the soil.
The Florence fennel got really big in those snail rolls! For their size, they should have been transplanted long ago.
There turned out to be a dozen transplants, plus one tiny one that I probably shouldn’t have bothered with, but I stuck it in between a couple of others, anyhow. You never know.
Today, I carefully added some of the leaf mulch back in between the fennel, so now the still drooping stems are on mulch rather than damp soil. Hopefully, they will perk up soon!
That was it for yesterday, before I went inside to get away from the heat. I never made it back out. The girls ended up doing the evening watering for me. I went to bed early to get an early start today.
This morning, I wanted to get tomatoes in. I have four varieties, and I wasn’t sure if they would all fit in one bed, but in my garden map, I did have an idea of where I would plant any that didn’t fit.
This is the bed I recently got cleaned up and covered – though a determined cat still managed to dig into a gap in the plastic!
After moving the plastic and doing a bit of weeding and loosening of soil, I got some of the household compost my brother gave me and worked that into the soil as well.
The first variety I planted were the largest; the Manitoba tomato. There were 10 of them and, being the largest, I set them along the north side of the bed, so they wouldn’t shade out anything else as they got bigger.
I used the protective collars to help space out the plantings before digging holes. The collars actually helped by keeping the sides of the soil from falling in. The bed was pretty dry, so I made sure to deeply water each hole first. The collars helped with that, too, keeping the water where I needed it.
After transplanting the tomatoes, I added one of my heavier 6′ tall plastic coated metal stakes against each collar, than used garden twist ties to carefully secure the transplants upright.
Then it was time to move on to the next ones, which were the Blueberry tomatoes. There were only six transplants, and they all went into a block at one end of the bed.
Those got transplanted and secured to stakes as well. Each of the stakes get lined up with the previous ones, in case I want to add horizontal supports between them, later on. Beyond support for the tomatoes, the stakes will keep the protective collars from blowing away. They’re not pushed deep into the soil, so as not to entrap the tomato’s roots.
After counting out how many transplants were in the last two snail rolls, the rest of the bed got planted with the Orange Currant tomatoes.
These were a lot smaller than the others. I planted in fourteen collars, which filled the remaining space while lined up with that first row of 10, though the last collar got two tiny transplants. We’ll see which of them survives and grows! They all got the plant stakes added, but I ran out and the last ones got bamboo stakes instead.
Everything then got watered around the collars. Doing a deep watering also allowed me to use the shower setting on the nozzle to gently level off the soil around the collars.
Another bonus to using the collars. It makes it easy to mulch the bed, deeply, right away.
The first image is after the soil was watered, around the collars. Then I got a wheel barrow load of straw and set it around all the collars, with particular attention put into a thick layer around the edges, where the crab grass and other weeds tend to push their way through. Then the straw itself got watered, so it wouldn’t act as a thatch.
I just checked the time stamps on the photos. This one bed took me three hours.
Then I went inside for lunch before heading to the main garden area.
I’m not sure what happened there, but I am “missing” photos. I suspect that when I thought I was taking progress shots, my fingers may have been too damp for the touch screen to read my tapping on the screen to take the picture.
Ah, well.
I had thought that this bed might get the last of the tomatoes, the peppers and the celery.
I ended up including the Caspar eggplant as well, because I had the space.
First thing to do, though, was remove the plastic protecting the bed from cats.
The first thing that needed to be transplanted were the Golden Boy celery. These were way too big.
I had decided that things would be transplanted in short rows across the bed, since I wasn’t sure how many things I’d have room for. The celery ended up taking only three rows, even though I tried to space them out as much as I could. As usual, I watered the trenches before planting. This variety of celery is not supposed to require blanching, so I didn’t need to dig too deep, but I still ended up with new trenches in between the rows as I pushed the soil against the transplants.
I filled those with compost.
Then I laid down a straw mulch, which is one of the pictures that didn’t take. I made sure the deepest mulch was around the edges of the bed, where that blasted creeping Charlie keeps trying to creep! I made sure the soil around the celery was moist before adding the straw, then wet down the straw. I kept up that pattern with the straw for everything else.
Once the celery was in and protected, I transplanted the California Wonder bell peppers. These were the largest of the transplants, and there were the most to plant.
Somehow, I missed getting any progress pictures at all, even though I stopped at each stage. I used collars to first space out where they would go, then did the usual loosening of soil, setting the collars, deep watering in them, then transplanting. I had six collars, though one of them got two tiny peppers in it.
For these, I used cheap tomato cages to secure the collars and protect the peppers. Because the collars were so close together, I could only fit them on the outside collars, which were still touching each other, so the middle peppers will still be supported, as they grow.
Next, I did the Caspar eggplant, which were really tiny. They really struggled to grow in our cold basement!
I got progress photos for those, at least!
There were two large seedlings and two tiny ones, so I set up three collars and planted the little ones together. Straw mulch and watering process was repeated.
Next were the Sweet Chocolate peppers. There were only three surviving peppers. There had been a fourth one but it was so small, I didn’t even try to plant it. Not even with another plant.
The last picture was taken before I added the straw mulch, and then I guess I forgot to take one last photo after that was done.
At this point, two hours had gone by and we’d reached our high of the day. I was baking in the sun, so I tucked the last transplants – a snail roll of tomatoes, and another of hollyhocks – into the shade and went in.
I’d hoped to head outside once things cooled down but, even if we don’t get the thunderstorm I got a warning notification for, it’s not going to start cooling down until about 8pm – another two hours from when I’m writing this.
With the thunderstorm warning, my daughter and I went out and the bin with the transplants is now safely secured and protected in the portable greenhouse frame.
Tomorrow, depending which app I check, we’ll either start storming at 10pm, or we’ll have scattered showered and thunderstorms starting in the afternoon.
My hope is to be able to get our Costco stock up trip finally done. I’m not looking forward to it. There are fewer and fewer things priced better there that make it worth the trip.
The weather app on my phone now says thunderstorms all day tomorrow, rain during the day on Wednesday with more thunderstorms by evening. If it’s accurate, the earliest I’ll be able to continue in the garden will be Thursday.
I might be taking my daughter into the city on Wednesday for a follow up medical appointment at the Women’s hospital, unless it becomes a telephone appointment. I don’t think she got the call today that was supposed to let her know, one way or the others.
At least my husband’s medical appointment on the same day is a telephone appointment, as is mine on Friday. Next week, however, I’m headed to the nearer city for my ultrasound.
Somewhere in there, I need to visit my mother, too.
Unfortunately, with all the troubles we’ve been having with the truck – which has earned its name of Damocles – I dread driving anywhere further out. Especially to the city. We don’t have much choice, though.
Today, I’ve been pushing to get things in the ground. Normally, I wouldn’t even try doing the transplanting until after June 2, when the risk of frost is theoretically past. Instead, we’ve got the heat and a thunderstorm coming in a few days. Soil thermometer tells me the soil is more than warm enough for direct sowing and transplanting – too warm, for some things. So I’m going for it.
I got as much as I could before it started getting too hot. It’s past 6:30 as I write this, and we’re still at 28C/82F. I’d hoped to get back out later today, but we’ll see. Aside from getting things planted in the garden, the lawn seriously needs to be mowed. It can’t be done in the cool of the morning, as the grass is too wet, and I needed to focus on the planting.
My brother and his wife had stayed the night in their caravan, though, and he was an absolute sweetheart. He checked on the push mower and the riding mower they have available for us to use and tested them out, saving me the time of having to do the maintenance checks myself. I can just start them up and get going.
I got a lot done, which I will write about later. Today, when forced inside by the heat, I finally got the video I took on the 20th put together into a garden tour video. It’s was hard to go through the clips and not what to start over – so much has changed in 10 days! We went from cold, rain and even snow, to brutal heat waves.
After how bloody and swollen he was after his spay yesterday, then disappearing when the cleaned out isolation shelter was dry and ready to hold him for the night, I honestly would not have been surprised if he didn’t make it. Instead, when I came out to do the feeding this morning, there he was, mostly cleaned up, among the cats swirling under my feed, very eager for food!
I just came back from the evening feeding. He is doing very well – but it’s so hot out there, most of the food I set out this morning was still uneaten! No appetites in this heat, that’s for sure. They have plenty of water available, and plenty of shade, and we have cat puddles all over the place.
One of the things I did today was pick up the trees at the post office.
I haven’t bothered to open the box, yet. It’s in the living room, where the air conditioner is, and no cats to try to tear into it.
The house is cooler – we’ve got the AC, my husband and I have box fans in our rooms, and the girls have their AC in their upstairs apartment. They also managed to get the old basement door to open (the knob needs replacing) and the wire mesh door we made for it is set up, allowing air circulation from the cooler basement.
The old basement is damp enough that I got two blowers and an oscillating fan going. The new basement has weeping tile but, after a rain barrel was allowed to overflow the summer before we moved here, the corner where that barrel was still gets damp, so I’ve got an oscillating fan on that corner, too. I still need to set up the summer window in the old basement, which is a combination of wire mesh and window screen, so no critters can get through. The extra air circulation will help with the dampness in that basement, too.
With the sump pump going off fairly regularly, and the hose set up to drain under a bed in the old kitchen garden, it means our tiny bok choy, beets and parsnips will get watered from below, too.
The heat was still getting to me and I ended up going down for a nap in the living room, with the AC running, for an hour and a half – I set a timer this time – shortly after lunch.
Then I went into the new basement. With all the transplants now outside, I cleared the set up that was on my work table, putting the full spectrum lights away (now I suddenly can’t remember if I shut off the shop light…). This gave me room to re-organize my seed packets and think about what I can direct sow, now that the soil temperatures are more than warm enough. Normally, I wouldn’t sow these things for another week, but the soil thermometer I picked up tells me the soil is ready, and the long range forecast shows no sign of frost. With all the protective netting I’ve been setting up, though, if there was a possibility of frost, I would be able to cover the beds that need it with cloth.
After going through my seeds, I set aside a number of packets into a separate bin, as thinks I can potentially direct sow in the next few days.
No, I won’t be sowing everything in that bin! The second picture shows part of why. Granted, that’s in the sun room, but still…
Most of what’s going into the garden beds will be transplants. I don’t actually have a lot to direct sow.
In the high raised bed, I will be planting bush beans, interplanted with onion transplants. I will be planting pole beans in the middle of the bed that has the daikon radish and white turnips winter sown into it.
The flower bed at the end of the high raised bed will have cosmos and nasturtiums transplanted into it. I have marigolds to transplant among the vegetable beds, but I also plan to direct sow more. I have bachelor’s button and other flowers I’d like to direct sow, but I’m not sure where, yet.
There is a space in the trellis bed that should have room to transplant cucumbers into it – if we have any to transplant. I do have the bi-colour pear gourds, though. I might transplant those, instead. There is also enough space between where the carrots are planted (I still can’t tell if we have any, after the second sowing) to direct sow something that isn’t too large and bushy.
One of the empty beds in the main garden area is meant to have some tomatoes, plus the celery and peppers transplanted into it. Onions will be interplanted among them. There aren’t a lot of surviving peppers, though. The spacing I have will determine what I will direct sow there. These are long beds and I might have extra space for the celery. They are a short season variety I could potentially direct sow more of.
Another bed, where the garlic was planted last year, is meant for squash or melons, but after the tray of winter squash, melons and cucumbers got decimated by something in the basement, it will be a while before the new seeds even germinate, never mind be ready for transplant.
I have two varieties short season corn to direct sow, but the area they are going in still needs to be uncovered and prepared. If we have any that survived, I hope to interplant winter squash transplants, or direct sow pole beans among them.
The bed along the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden will be direct sown with summer squash. I have 5 varieties to plant, possibly 6, if I have the space. That bed still needs to have hoops to hold protective netting set up over it, though.
In the newly finished bed I have at the chain link fence, I am looking to transplant winter squash and melons – if the new seeds replacing the eaten ones germinate and survive! I might end up buying transplants at some point, but I don’t know if it’s necessary, yet.
Among the other seeds I will sow as I find space are things like fern leaf dill, which I plan to treat as a perennial, and other varieties of peas and beans, including garbanzo beans, though those might wait until next year. The Caspar eggplant transplants don’t look very robust, but they are a short season variety, so I might direct sow more along with the transplants, just so see how that will work out.
With the heat holding on for so long in the day, I expect to only get the evening watering done tonight. I will try to get up earlier tomorrow and see what I can get done before it gets too hot out there. The highs are supposed to very slowly get “cooler”; starting tomorrow, we’re expected to be below 30C/86F for the next while. One of my apps says to expect rain starting Tuesday night (today is Friday), thunderstorms on Wednesday, and rain continuing through Thursday morning.
Right now, at almost 7:30pm, we’ve finally dropped to 28C/82F, though the “real feel” is still 29C/84F.
Time to find the bug spray and do the evening watering!
I started things off a bit early, and it was still lovely and cool. My priority, after I did my morning rounds, was to water the garden beds before the heat hit.
I’m happy to say that I am seeing new sprouts in the rows of spinach, chard, turnips and radish in the main garden area. I checked under the boards in the trellis bed and saw what might be carrot sprouts, so I removed the boards. It’s hard to say for sure, as a lot of weeds were trying to come up under there, too.
I’m pretty sure I saw new sprouts in the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, too. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing tiny bok choy and beet seedlings through the mosquito netting, thought it’s hard to be sure. I didn’t see any this morning, but this evening, I’m sure I could see the first dwarf pea sprouts!
After I finished outside, I came in and had breakfast, then tried to go down for a nap before I planned to visit my mother, then pick up anything we needed before doing our first stock up shop, tomorrow.
It was a failure.
For some reason, both Butterscotch and Cheddar have decided that, when I lie down, they absolutely MUST cuddle my head. Aggressively. Then curling up right at my head to nap themselves.
That doesn’t count the other cats that like to settle on my hip, against my back or on either side of my legs.
*sigh*
Next time, I’ll try napping on the couch. The living room is a cat free zone.
I eventually gave up and got ready to head into town. Before I did, I noted activity notification on my bank app and checked.
My husband’s tax return, which is supposed to include my first Disability Tax Credit, came in.
It was short by about $2500.
Unfortunately, my husband still can’t log into his CRA account to see why. I’m going to have to wait until our tax prepared is back from holidays at the end of the month and phone her, because she can log in and see his account – and maybe find out why he can’t log in, himself. anymore!
My younger daughter never got her disability tax credit, either. She did her taxes herself.
Frustrating.
Anyhow.
I headed into town and realized my mother would be just starting her lunch, so I decided to go to the grocery store, first. I actually picked up some ground beef that was on sale. I haven’t seen ground beef for under $6 a pound for a long time, even with sales.
My visit with my mother was pretty good. As I was headed to her room, I spotted her in the dining room and popped in. We then went to her room for the visit.
She is so enjoying having a room – and a bathroom – to herself! She says being in the nursing home, compared to the TCU, is like night and day.
Of course, she still had things to complain about. With her medications, as usual. Apparently someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time? Then the count for her morning meds was off. She said she asked who was in charge of the medications and was told it was the pharmacy in town. I suspect the person didn’t understand what my mother was asking, but she now believes the pharmacy decides what medications she gets, at their whim. She then started going on about how the staff all think she is stupid, and everyone living there is stupid, and that’s why they are deliberately messing with their medications.
*sigh*
She had asked my brother for a radio and he’d given me one to pass on to her. I plugged it in and tried to find the station she told me the number of. There was nothing on either AM or FM (she didn’t know which is was; she doesn’t understand anything about AM or FM). Since I couldn’t pick up her station (though I could pick up others), she decided it was a bad radio and started asking me if an old radio that belonged to my husband when we were in high school – a ghetto blaster, which tells you just how old it is! – was still around. It is, but I told her, it still won’t pick up that station. I tried to explain again about things interfering with frequencies, but she decided it meant that the radio stations were the problem, for having “weak” signals.
Then I tried to show her the sliding switch that goes from off to FM then AM. She demanded “just show me what button to push”. I told her, it’s not a button. It’s a switch that slides, and showed her again; Off – FM – AM.
She got angry that my brother would give her a high tech radio that she can’t understand.
*sigh*
It was a shorter visit, since there really wasn’t much we had to talk about. Now that she is in town, I can visit her more often, anyhow. Before I left, I spent some time at the nursing station. I explained what my mother told me about the medications, and that someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time. She was startled to hear that and said she would look into it. She got out the medication binder and looked up my mother’s file, going over everything, which is basically the same that it was while she was at the TCU. She said they tried looking at my mother’s list to compare (the hand written one she makes after she counts her pills, with little diagrams), but it was in Polish, so they were trying to translate it. My mother had been promised a list of her medications and they were going to try to get it translated into Polish for her, too. I told her, my mother knows pre-WWII Polish; she would not be familiar with modern medical terms in today’s Polish!
As we were chatting, the nurse told me how so many of the staff were startled when my mother was transferred over. Many of them had cared for Baba – “grandmother” – which is what they called my aunt. My mother looks SO much like her sister did. My aunt passed away a few years ago, so for the staff to suddenly start seeing their Baba again was a bit of a shock until they found out they were sisters.
This nurse had just started working there when my father came to live there. I’ve had it confirmed that he was there for only 5 months before he passed away; I thought it was 6 months. She remembered my father, and I told her about how, when I phoned him every Sunday, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him, how well taken care of he was, and how much he liked the staff. She was so touched to hear that!
So far, my mother has been very nice to them. I hope that lasts! She has been saving the nasty comments about the staff for when we are there. 😕
It was a good chat with the nurse, and I expect we will have many more opportunities to talk now that my mother is there!
That done, I headed home, then stayed indoors to stay out of the heat. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter. I finally headed out at around 6:30, which is about when we hit 27C/81F.
The predicted high was 25C/77F.
We’re supposed to keep getting hotter, with the hottest day in the forecast being Friday, which they are now saying is supposed to hit 34C/93F.
The yard cats are laying in puddles all over the yard, in whatever shade they can find.
Bobert was looking adorable in the cat bed I tucked under the isolation shelter’s door box, to keep the weather out in the winter.
With the heat, I made sure to do the watering again. This time, I did watering in the food forest area.
I’m happy to say that it looks like the apple tree survived, in spite of the damage to the stem. A single branch with new leaf buds has shown up. The plum tree also has leaf buds showing up finally, but only in branches coming up just above the graft at the base. None of last year’s growth is showing buds. Neither are the mulberry trees. They survived their first winter, but it looks like they didn’t survive their second. The poor little highbush cranberry have free leaves showing, but they are still remarkably tiny, including the one that the deer did NOT nibble one. The silver buffalo berry bushes, which I don’t bother watering because there are too many, had been covered with what I thought were leave buds. It turns out they were not leaf buds, but flower buds! The leaf buds are showing up now. The sea buckthorn also have leaf buds unfurling.
After the watering was done, I started working on the larger of the two East yard beds that had not been prepped in the fall.
I first removed the two lengths of twine that went around the sides. Those were there to keep anything wrapped around the box frame from flapping in the wind too much, but they were in the way for working in the bed. I considered taking the box frame off entirely, but decided it wasn’t necessary and worked around it.
In the second picture, you can see the cleaned up bed. Unfortunately, while I was leveling the cleared soil with the hoe, I caught the line running across that helped keep the sides from bowing outwards at the joins. The wood is rotting and the screw eye got pulled right out!
Honestly, I’m surprised these beds have lasted as long as they have. I used lumber I found in the barn that had been sitting there for probably at least a decade before I found them. They were not in particularly good shape, but they were the best I could find for the job. I expected them to last about 3 years, maybe, and they’ve lasted twice that by now.
Weeding the bed didn’t really take that much, except that I found a remarkable amount of tree roots! Given where this bed is located, they would not be from the elm tree, but from the nearby cherry bushes.
I look forward to when we can make these into high raised beds. These beds are about a foot high, but it was still really painful to be bending to work in it.
Once the bed was clear, I took some plastic that was rolled up and set aside from previous uses in these beds and covered the soil to protect it from cats, until we can plant in it. I’m looking to transplant tomatoes into this bed. We have four varieties to transplant, and couple probably fit three varieties in this bed. We don’t have a lot of each variety.
The pieces of wood frame on the left of the first photo are on the 4′ square bed that also needs to be done. By the time I finished the longer bed, I was too hot and in too much pain to do that one. Aside from weeding it – and that one has been infected by creeping Charlie – I will be adding the additional wood frame pieces to make it a bit higher, and can then add more soil into it. I’m planning to put the eggplant in here. It’s a small enough bed that I can add plastic walls around it, to protect them from high winds and create a semi-greenhouse around them.
I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done over the next few days. I’ll be doing our city stock up trips and a vet trip in between. Shopping always drains me, so it will depend on how much energy I have left – and what my pain levels are at. At the very least, I plan to water everything in the morning, and again in the evening, because of the heat.
Once the city trips are done, I expect to be able to start the direct sowing, and then hopefully start transplanting soon after. Somewhere in there, I’ll be uncovering and reclaiming the area to plant our corn in.
Ah, life on the Canadian prairies. One extreme to the other. A short while ago, we were still getting snow and overnight temperature at or below freezing.
Today, we reached a high of 25C/77F – I don’t know what the humidex was – and passed 20C/68F by about 8 or 9am.
I headed out a bit earlier than usual to do the outside cat stuff. Then I checked the garden shed. Sure enough, the raccoon and her babies were still there. I decided to very carefully and as quietly as possible, take out as many things I expect to need in the next while.
I heard a lot of loud chittering as I was taking things out, most sounding like they were coming from the littles. They seemed to be chittering more about trying to latch on than what I was doing. The mama barely moved. After I cleared away things that were on top of the wheeled garden chair they are under, I stuck my phone into gaps to get the first three pictures.
Those are such roly poly babies! There are at least three, possibly four.
The last photo is most of the stuff I removed.
That roll of netting is long enough to go completely around the trellis bed, so I am saving it for this, if we need to do it again, as it would be way too long for anything else.
After that, I headed in for breakfast, iced up a water bottle, then got started on the covered bed that I wanted to plant our potatoes in.
In the first picture, you can see how it’s been since the fall, minus the bricks waying it down – something has dug holes through the plastic.
As you can see in the next picture, the solarization didn’t really work, and it was more like a greenhouse. So the first job was to loosen the soil and weed it. Especially at the end where the excess was rolled up, which was packed with creeping Charlie.
That stuff is just nasty.
Once weeded, I got it all leveled out, while leaving the soil thermometer in place. That soil is quite warm!
By this point, I was really starting to struggle with the heat and had to go inside for a bit. After grabbing a light lunch, I headed back out with the potatoes. I have 5 pound bags each of Viking and Yukon this year. Not a lot for our useage needs, but that’s all we have the space for right now.
In the photo where the potatoes are laid out, ready to be buried, you can see a board across the middle. That’s to mark between the two different types of potatoes in the same bed.
Next, the bed had to be protected. I decided to use the long roll of mosquito netting this time, which isn’t very wide, so I used shorter stakes. These were salvaged from a broken market tent and are all from pieces broken in half. The broken ends got pushed down so the end with the screw holes were at the top.
I had to gather things next, so I set up a cheap dollar store sprinkler hose over the potato bed. Double duty: I could start watering the bed while doing something else, and it kept the cats off while I wasn’t there to keep them away.
One of the things I had to go was get the roll of netting which, as you can see in the next picture, Gouda was using to nap on!!
In the past, I have strung twine from support to support, along the sided and crossing the middle. I wanted something stronger than that. This bed is 18′ wide, and I have 6′ bamboo stakes, so I ended up attaching three along the top of each side to hold the mesh up. The stakes were spaced out just under 6′ apart, allowing for some overlap. I used the screw holes in the supports and wire from one of the hoop kits I got to hold them in place. I still had to put the stakes deeper into the soil so that the netting could be secured to the ground on each sides. The sides are secured with ground staples.
Yes, I took the sprinkler hose out. It was a pretty terrible hose – but then, you get what you pay for, and this did not cost very much! It was just there for the moment, anyhow.
After I took that last picture, I gave the bed a very through watering.
Then I went inside, because I was getting dangerously overheated. I kept myself hydrated, but was feeling very exhausted. It was around 2pm by then, and I decided to nap for a couple of hours. I would then continue when the temperatures were starting to drop.
I passed right out and slept for three hours.
During this time, the girls took care of things like the outside cat feeding and starting supper.
We are going to need to get the AC going in the living room, and the onion snail rolls have been sitting on top of it, so I decided it was time to take them outside. Onions are hardy and I’m not worried about them, plus I need to start transplanting them as soon as possible. They are meant to be planted in between other things, as we go. The frame for the portable greenhouse is sitting in the shade near the shrine, so I put them there. I’ll need to start moving some of the trays from the basement out there, too.
Then it was back to the main garden area, where this is one bed that didn’t get cleaned up last year I wanted to prepare.
As you can see in the first couple of photos, the creeping Charlie is a real problem.
I had put the soil thermometer in there earlier, and it was reading a couple of degrees cooler than the first bed. By the time I removed it, though, it was just as warm as the first bed I tested! Having that plastic over the bed didn’t seem to make much difference. So much for solarization!
This bed turned out to be so filled with tree roots, too. I pile the creeping Charlie aside, half filling the wheel barrow, so it could be disposed of further away. I’d burn it, if I could. Getting those out means losing a fair bit of soil, too. In the fourth photo, you can even see some of the finer tree roots on top. I pulled out as much as I could, but somewhere under there is a major root. I was hitting it every now and then with the garden fork, but couldn’t lift it up at all.
No root vegetables in this bed, for now!
Once it was cleared and prepared, I gave it a thorough watering. For all the rain we had, that soil was pretty dry. Then I covered it with the plastic that had been over the bed the potatoes are in, covering the holes with scrap boards.
The potato bed is going to be a problem. I kept having to chase the cats off the netting! It stretches enough and is low enough that their weight pulls it down to the ground. Ideally, there would be horizontal supports across the top, joining the vertical supports, but I don’t have anything the right length.
At least they won’t be using it as a litter box.
I’ll have to figure something out.
By this time, it was around 8pm and the temperatures were downright pleasant. We’re expected to drop to 8C/46F tonight, but after that our overnight temperatures are expected to be no lower than 10C/50F On Thursday and Friday, we’re supposed to break 30C/86F, and the overnight temperatures are expected to be close to 20C/68F. It’s supposed to cool down a bit in the second week of June, but that’s a relative statement by then!
For the next while, with the exception of days where I have to drive into the city or something like that, my pattern is going to change. I’ll be getting up earlier to work outside while it’s cooler, then be inside (and probably nap) at the heat of the day before going out again when the temperature starts to drop. With the heat, I’ll be watering things in the morning. Possibly in the evening, too.
I have a couple of beds to take care of in the east yard, plus prep the old kitchen garden bed along the retaining wall. In the beginning of June – after I’ve done all our city trips and vet trip – I should be able to start direct sowing. I’m really trying to focus on getting each bed covered in some way to protect them from the cats. The one area I won’t be able to do is where I intend to plant corn. That area is currently covered by a black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, and has been for several years. Everything under it should be dead by now. I need to move that aside and prepare blocks to plant corn in and, possibly, interplant them with winter squash. That area will simply be too large to cover. I’ll have to figure something else out.
It’s going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!
Getting that raised bed at the chain link fence done has taken way too long!
I’ll get to that in a moment.
My brother and SIL have been out working on their caravan, and whatever else my brother was able to do outside as the weather allowed, this weekend and had invited me to join them for breakfast this morning. I wasn’t able to join them last time, but was happy to do be able to join them today. They took me to the single restaurant in our little hamlet. The last time I was there was two owners ago!
Before that, I was outside doing my usual morning rounds.
There are so many tulip flower buds, with one early tulip just starting to open up.
When it came close to the time we were going to meet up, I headed out to open the gate, then took advantage of the time waiting to check the fence line and see what else needs doing. I’m going to have to head through the area with loppers again, and trim away all the poplar that’s trying to grow back, among other things. Not a priority right now, though.
When I got back to the gate I saw they had parked in front of the house and were waiting for me there! 😄
I closed the gate behind their car after they drove through which, with all the rain we’ve had recently, was rather muddy. Which got us to talking about how badly that driveway needs gravel! My brother has his front end loader here, but it still won’t run, and he hasn’t figured out why, yet. Not that he’s had much opportunity to troubleshoot the beast.
We talked about the two trees threatening the house that will be coming down – when the arborists arrive will depend on the weather. It will be a while longer before the saturated ground is dry enough to hold the weight of their equipment.
It was great to catch up with them, and compare notes on things like Mom and our vandal, while enjoying a lovely breakfast. I really like what the new owners have done with the place. It’ s longer a bar with a small restaurant on one side, but a pub and family restaurant. Which is what the last owners had converted it to, but I never saw what changes they did. We did order take out from them a couple of times, but could pick our orders up without ever going all the way into the restaurant, so I never saw what they’d done with it.
After breakfast, they dropped me off at the gate, then headed out again to a hardware store. They were back before I was ready to head outside. I needed to get that raised bed at the chain link fence finished.
The walls are done, but it needed some preparation before the soil could be returned.
In the first image above, I’ve taken straw and stuffed it into all the gaps I could find in the front wall, as well as tucking some against the end walls, to prevent soil from falling in or through the walls.
In the second image, I’ve covered the bottom and sides with two layers of carboard. Then, using the fence to steady myself, I walked across the length of it, tromping the cardboard down as much as I could.
In the last image, I had started to saturate the cardboard. I went it down, tromped on it again, then repeated the process several more times while working on the next stage.
I started by using a hoe to spread the pile out – and remove as many cat turds as I could find. The pile of soil was absolutely saturated and sticky like glue! I got it spread out though, and then scattered Sulphur granules over it. I then mixed it in with a hoe, and then by lifting the tarp to turn the soil over itself, from all sides.
Did I mention it was saturated?
Not only did that make it sticky, but heavy. Shockingly heavy!
Once mixed, I shoveled the soil into the wheelbarrow and started adding it into the raised bed. The soil was so sticky, I actually had to stop and scrape it off the blade of the shovel, because it was so coated, it was hard to push it into the pile of soil, and there wasn’t much room for it to pick up more soil, either!
The first thing I did was spread out a couple of wheelbarrow loads on the carboard, pushing it up against the sides so that the soil would hold the cardboard against the walls, and no soil would fall between the cardboard and the straw filled walls. It wasn’t as much of a concern on the back wall, since that was in protected by a layer of vinyl. You can see that in the first image.
Then, FINALLY, I could dump in the rest of the soil and spread it out as evenly as I could. Which you can see in the second image.
At this point, I couldn’t really stop for a break or anything like that. Even as I was refilling the bed, I was chasing cats out that were determined to use it as a litter box. After I leveled the last of the soil, I turned to get something, turned back, and there was another cat, starting to dig in the soil!!! It was Flopsy, so not a feral. He just started at me while I tried to shoo him away and didn’t run off until I was practically on top of him!
The bed needed to be protected right away.
For this year, the supports will be temporary, and I debated whether to use robs from the hoop kits, or some of the Pex pipe hoops I have. In the end, I decided on a hoop kit, because I wanted to use the clips, and on the new one because it had more rods left.
My original plan had been to use the pairs of taller vertical supports to secure the hoops to. Which I could have done, though this bed is so much narrower, I wouldn’t have wanted to bend the rods quite that much. However, it occurred to me that, for this bed, I don’t actually want hoops. Once those elm seed start dropping, they would gather at the back of the raised bed, along the chain link fence, and would get under that way. Also, the cats will climb on top and lie on it, and I would prefer to avoid that completely.
So I only attached the rods – connecting three rods together for each length – to the front supports, using little zip ties to hold them securely. The top of the rods were curved into the chain link fence, near the top.
You can see the rods in position in the first image above.
In the past, we tried protecting this bed with mosquito netting, and I still have the netting that was used, rolled up and waiting. The mosquito netting ended up acting like a sail in the high winds, with the edge pinned to the ground blowing loose constantly, and the whole thing flapping. So I decided to use the black netting we still have on the roll. I unrolled it on the other side of the chain link fence, which you can see in the next photo, so get the length I needed before cutting it.
Then came the hard part. This netting is folded into thirds on the roll. I needed it folded in half. After cutting the length I needed, I dragged it over to an open part in the yard and spread it out flat, with rocks to hold it in place at the corners, because it was fairly windy.
Which is about when my brother and SIL drove by on their way home, so we chatted for a bit before they headed out.
Then I messaged my daughters for help, and my older daughter !!!!! came out. A testament to how much better she is feeling!
Between the two of us, we got the net folded in half length wise, then straightened it out as best we could in the wind. Then we very carefully moved it into position, with the salvage ends set to go over the chain link fence, and the folded edge to the ground. This netting catches on EVERYTHING, so it took some doing to get it in position and straightened out as smooth and tight as we could. then I draped the salvage ends over the chain link fence at my end – at this point, the “catches on everything” was a help – and slowly made my way down the fence, pulling the netting over until I got to my daughter’s end.
At that point, I could finish off the rest myself.
The first thing to do was use ground staples to secure the folded edge to the ground at the base of each longer vertical supports the hoop rods were attached to. I started from the middle and working to the ends, pulling the netting tight between each support along the way. Once the bottom was secured, I went outside the chain link fence, lifting and pulling the netting to get it as snug as I could. I wanted as little slack as possible in between the hoop rods.
Then I went back and got the clips. Once again, starting from the middle and working my way out, I pulled the netting up and snug before clipping it to the middle rods, just above the connector. Then I went on the other side of the fence to lift and tighten the netting over the fence again. I repeated the clipping process again, this time adding clips to the next higher rod, above the connector.
Once the netting was secured to the rods, I grabbed some more ground staples and went back to the outside of the fence. I lifted and tightened the netting over the fence one more time, this time using the ground staples, woven around the chain link, to secure the salvage edges in place.
Last of all, I worked on the ends, rolling and tucking the netting until it was closed off, using ground staples to secure the bottoms to the ground, and the garden wire to secure the rest to the chain link fence.
You can see the finished product in the last photo. It’s very hard to see the clips.
No cats are getting in there. No wind is going to blow it loose. With the netting folded in half, no elm seeds should get through. Plus, with the netting set up the way it is, it can stay there for most, if not all, of the growing season, depending on what gets planted there. To access the garden bed, I can lift the ground staples and, if necessary, remove the lower clips to raise the netting as high as I need.
It’s done.
It’s finally done!
Our temperatures are expected to go from one extreme to the other. The colder nights in the long range forecast into June are no longer expected to get as cold.
Which means I can start getting my transplants out.
I’m not hardening off this time. I just don’t have the cat free space to do it, without the portable greenhouse. I will be using the water bottle collars as protection for some things. For other, larger, transplants, I’ll figure something else out. The onions are the one thing that won’t need any of that, and they need to be transplanted so badly! The snail roll thing has been working a bit too well, in that respect. 😄
I need to get as much as possible done over the next two days, because after that I just won’t be home much. Wednesday is our first stop up shopping day. Thursday, I’ll be taking cats to the vet again, which means staying in the smaller city until it’s time to go home, unless I’m picking up chicks that day. I still haven’t gotten a call about those, so I’m guessing not. Then Friday is our second stock up shop. I will finally be home long enough to work in the garden more by the weekend, though somewhere in there I need to get a visit in with my mother. My brother left me with a couple of things for her that she wanted that I want to drop off, too.
Oh, and I still need to put together my May garden tour video. I took the video clips but just haven’t had a chance to sit down and put them together and edit them. I hoped to do it tonight, but it’s already coming up on 9am, and I am tired enough to go to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done writing this!
It feels so good to finally get this done!!!
It feels so good to finally have the weather we need to get outside stuff done again.
The rain came to a stop this afternoon, so I headed out and grabbed the draw knife so I could put points on the prepared stakes I’d made for the chain link fence bed’s deadwood wall. That did not take long.
With the rain we’ve been having, I took advantage of the soil being softer, making it easier to drive the stakes into place.
In the first picture, you can see I’ve laid out the sharpened stakes in the most open spaces between the current vertical supports.
These were all much longer than needed. Even with the softened soil, there was only so far I could drive them into the ground.
The second image shows all the stakes pounded into place. In the third image, I’ve taken the loppers to all of the new stakes, cutting them down to just a bit above the height of the deadwood wall.
The charred stakes are staggered, but where the inside stakes were places were not consistent in relation to the taller outside stakes. For the most part, the stake placement for of zig zagged across, but there were a few places where there were two stakes on the outside without a matching stake on the inside. So I decided to use some of the pieces I’d trimmed off that were longer, and set them in the gaps. They didn’t get pushed down into the ground too far, or they would have been too short, but I hand pushed them in to match the other posts in height, more or less.
I did end up having to rifle through some other leftover bits to find one last piece long enough.
After that, I used up all the smaller pieces of deadwood we gathered fall and tried to fill in as many gaps as I could. Then I grabbed the loppers and went back into the spruce grove to try and fine more that were thin and pliable enough to fill in more gaps. I ended up harvesting some younger poplars – gosh, those spread fast – to fill in more spaces. After a while, I decided an needed more height, so I went back into the spruce grove and went hunting. I was able to find some tall, mostly straight, cherry to use.
I plan to remove all of those cherry trees in the spruce grove. They don’t produce much, if anything, at all. We’ll keep the one by the house, as the house provides enough of a microclimate for it to procure lots of fruit. The rest can go.
But not today.
After cutting and trimming the straightest once I could get, I set them in between the stakes. Then I used twine to zig zag from stake to stake, pushing down the wall in places. I wanted to make sure the stakes – especially the extra lengths I added didn’t get pushed away from the middle, plus the twine will help push down the deadwood, reducing gaps a bit that way, too.
There are still gaps, though not as much. I have decided I will stuff straw against the front wall as a soil barrier, before replacing the soil I took out so I could start this project. Once the soil is back, I will use one of the hoop kits to attach to the taller takes, then put netting over the whole thing, to keep the cats out as well as the Chinese elm seeds then they start drifting. At that point, it will be ready for planting. I believe I will be planting winter squash in here, where they can use the fence as a trellis. This will likely not be the only place I transplant winter squash into, though.
We’ll see how the weather treats us over the next while!!
First, though, we got a few other things accomplished today.
Bug looks like she is doing quite well. She is eating with her usual enthusiasm and is moving like she’d never had surgery.
I did, however, make a confirmation.
We were pretty sure the mostly black cat in there was female, partly because the females have been so much harder to socialize. When talking to the rescue, I’d forgotten this one had been named Batman, and had told them this one and the black and white were unnamed. One of the rescue workers named this one Marta for the spay appointment.
Today, however, I was able to see dangly bits. She is a he.
Batman it is.
Unfortunately, part of the reason I could see dangly bits was because he seems to have diarrhea. His fur it all flattened along his back end. After what happened with Furriosa, I am bracing myself for getting bad news at the appointment. Granted, I still have no idea how we’re going to get them into carriers.
Meanwhile, poor Adam, having only recently lost a litter, is being chased by the boys already. It’s been raining all today and, when we were outing and abouting, I saw her trying to get a drink of water out of a puddle, followed closely by a tabby, her fur absolutely matted with mud.
Both she and Slick have not been showing up at much at feeding time, and when Adam does, she can’t stay long because the boys are too agressively after her.
*sigh*
One of the first goals of the day was to head into town to see my mother at the nursing home. My younger daughter came along to help me bring in my mother’s stuff I’d taken before her transfer. That allowed us to bring it all in, in one trip.
The last time I was here, it was to visit my aunt, and she was in a completely different part of the building. I must have looked pretty lost, because someone came right up to ask me who I was there to see! When we got to the right floor and started heading to the hallway, a guy gathering linens into a trolly saw me and told me he thought my mother was asleep.
We recognized each other from when my mother was still at the TCU! He works in both places. Most of the staff is rotates between various nursing homes and TCUs, but it was still quite funny to have someone who recognized me and knew who I was there to see, less than 24 hours after her transfer!
My mother woke when we came in and we put her stuff away where she directed us to. She has quite a nice room. Not as big as the single room she had at the hospital, but a decent size, and all to herself. She has a nice view of a park outside her window, and plenty of closet and storage space. My mother seems… not so much happier to be there, as relieved. There are still things to figure out as far as how things are done. My mother has gotten used to having her meals brought to her, for example, and here they encourage residents to come to the dining room to eat, if they physically can, to get them moving around as much as possible. There is a monthly calendar of events on her wall, and every day has three or for things going on, from sing alongs to physical activities, to church services and so on. They even have bingo, which my mother enjoys.
So we had a nice little visit before heading back out. Now that she is here, I can visit her more often, simply because I go to this town so much more often, and it’s closer than where she was before.
We are all so much happier with this place, not just my mother! It’s going to be so much better for her.
She was starting to have pain issues, as no one has applied Voltaren this morning, and she wans’t even sure if they had any (it’s not a prescription, so we have to supply it), so on the way out I talked to someone at the nursing station, asking if the doctor would consider getting my mother a prescription for the stuff that I have, which is the same active ingredient, but 5 times stronger, as Voltaren. She said they will bring it up with the doctor. With a prescription, we won’t have to keep track of her supply, and they’ll be able to order it in with her other medications.
Our next stop was the pharmacy to pick up the rest of my older daughter’s prescription, plus her sister and I found other things we needed to get for ourselves. My daughter hadn’t eaten yet and it was almost lunch time, so we stopped at the DQ for lunch, then got two more meals to go for my husband and her sister. A quick stop for gas, then a stop at the post office, where I was also able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats, then home.
After things were settled in and taken care of, my daughter and I headed back out and loaded my mother’s old mattress and box spring into the box of the truck. We FINALLY got them to the dump!
From the muddy paw prints on them, the cats are going to miss them. 😄
My brother and SIL had come out while we were in town, working on their caravan, so we popped over to get caught up with them for a bit – not going in because our boots were muddy, so we didn’t stay long. My mother had asked for a radio and my brother had one for her, so he gave it to me, since we’ll probably be seeing her before they get a chance to.
Our visit done, we headed inside for the next thing on my to do list.
Starting the last of our seeds for transplants.
These are the things that get started about 3 weeks before last frost date. Technically, we are less than that, but the way the weather has been, I don’t expect to get most things transplanted until probably the middle of June, though things like the onions can handle going in now.
With such a short time for these seeds, I decided to use my new hex cell planting tray. This has 6 rows of 12 cells, so they are pretty small.
I decided that I would start 12 different things, and see how it goes!
The first thing we had to do was make space and move the full spectrum LED light fixtures aside, then set up a heat mat. While my daughter filled the cells with pre-moistened seed starting mix, I went through my seed packets to decide on what to start.
I decided not to try and start any summer squash and will direct sow those.
I went with four types of melons (we have seeds for quite a few more); Canary Yellow, Tigger, Sweet Siberian Watermelon and Hale’s Best Jumbo cantaloupe. In winter squash, I chose Golden Hubbard, Black Futsu, Butterneck squash and Gill’s Golden Pippin. I also decided to try the Arikara squash again, because it’s a rare variety I want to save seeds from. I also chose the Cinderalla pumpkin (Rouge vif D’Estempes). Last of all are two types of cucumber; lemon and Eureka. These are older seeds, but I have a request for cucumbers this year. I have another variety we got as free seeds that I almost chose as well, but we’re not big cucumber eaters and two varieties will be more than enough.
After the initial filling of the tray with seed starting mix, my daughter was a sweetheart and cut up a sour cream container for me, to make more plant markers, because I was down to two blanks.
She cuts much neater, straighter markers than I do!
While she was working on that, I wrote the names and details for each packet on the markers. She finished before I did, and I have a nice stack of extra markers now.
The initial filling of the planting cells all got gently pressed down, leaving enough space for the planting depths of these larger seeds. My daughter started with the winter squash seeds, gently scarifying them first. Once I was done with the labels, I started at the other end of the tray with the cucumbers, then melons.
So we now have 12 rows with six cells planted, each. Hopefully, we’ll get a decent germination rate. I’m rather concerned about that, as it all seems so cold down there, and I don’t know that the heat mats are enough to make up for it. Half the time, they don’t even seem to be on. I realize that’s part of the temperature control, but it still feels wrong.
I ended up moving a couple of snail rolls around, putting two of them with the last batch of seed starts.
The orange current tomatoes are not looking very healthy, so I thought they might do better back on a heat mat, with less taller transplants overshadowing them. I also moved the roll with both the tarragon and summer savory. I’m actually amazing they are both surviving! They were in rough shape before going into the snail roll.
In the next picture, you can see the rest of the snail rolls. Things are getting way too big and need to be transplanted. I can’t pot them up any more at this point. No space.
Things are supposed to get quite a bit warmer – and drier – over the next while. There are even 30C/86F days in the forecast! Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 6C/43F, but after that we’re supposed to get overnight temperatures above 10C/50, with lots of sunshine. That should finally warm the soil up. Even in the first half of June, where we’re expecting overnight temperatures to drop, they’re still expected to be above 6C/43F, which is where it needs to stay above consistently for the soil to have a chance to warm up and stay warm.
We shall see.
That done, I was able to head outside and get other work done, but that will be in my next post.
We dropped to -3C/27F last night but, from now on, our days are supposed to be hot, and our overnight temperatures are expected to drop no lower than 7C/45F for the next while, though in the first 10 days of June, we’re supposed to have overnight temperatures barely above freezing.
I just realized. Today is the 20th. My day to do a garden tour video. It was still light out, so I quickly did that. I hope the videos turn out all right, because I won’t be able to try again until tomorrow evening!
With the next few days finally being hotter, my priority was to take off the plastic on the two raised beds and replace them with netting, so any seedlings under there won’t bake.
The first one to do was the smaller bed in the old kitchen garden, with the beets, bok choi, onions that will probably go to seed and the last minute addition of parsnips where the transplanted onions didn’t make it.
This time, I took the mosquito netting from the chain link fence above the blocks with transplanted strawberries. I knew this one was shorter than one of the lengths I have been using previously. It had been rolled up and secured with ground staples for quite a long time, so I took the time to unroll it and get rid of any accumulated leaves before dragging it part way into the old kitchen garden.
The netting had been cut into narrower lengths from the original, the first year we used them, which meant this piece was the perfect length – but not quite wide enough to cover the raised bed cover. This cover is quite a bit higher than all the others, to accommodate for taller plants, but it means quite a lot more width is needed to completely cover it.
After removing the vinyl covering the frame, I made sure to give the bed a thorough watering from the rain barrel. I’ve left the soaker house, but laundry was started in the house, so I didn’t want to use the hose. Especially now that we know for sure that the pressure tank needs replacing. Thankfully, I had a nice full rain barrel, so everything got a thorough watering.
It was windy, so I had a bit of a struggle to get the first section of netting on and secured enough to overlap with the next section of netting I had ready. I was able to use garden clips, clothes pins and the one safety pin my daughter could find, to keep them together and close off the ends. The cats like to use this cover like a hammock, so it needs to be really secure. Hopefully, it’ll hold.
Before I started on this, I remembered to grab the soil thermometer from the basement and set it in the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed.
The second picture shows the reading just before I went inside at the end of the day. The soil there is about 7C/45F. Tomorrow I will set it in other beds and see what they are at, too. Higher raised beds like this one should be warmer than lower ones, but this section of the wattle weave bed also gets a bit more shade than the lower raised beds in the main garden area.
Once this bed was done, it was time to move to the main garden area, and I brought along the hoop kits.
The first picture is of the new kit, which did end up coming with garden gloves. The weirdest feeling stretchy things we’ve ever tried on. 😄
The second picture compares both sets. The new kit’s rods are a half inch longer and a touch thicker, so the clips and connectors will not be interchangeable.
I haven’t even tried on the gloves that came with the first kit. It’s highly unlikely they will fit my hands.
Even the wire that came with the kits are different.
I was definitely looking forward to seeing how those gaskets would work with the ground staples.
Once in the main garden area, I double checked to make sure the roll of netting I had brought out a while ago was long enough for the 18′ bed, plus the height of the hoops, and it was. When it came time to deal with the poly and setting on the netting, though, it was a two person job, and my younger daughter came out to help.
This is how the bed looked, after I’d reworked the poly to make sure rain no longer pooled where the rolled up boards weighted the sides down, so no more worms would get stuck. Once we got the ends unsecured and the boards freed, we carefully shifted the poly over, then walked it to an open area and laid it out flat, using some of the boards to keep it from blowing away. Then I got my daughter to help me lay the netting over the hoops and secure it just enough that it wouldn’t fall off or blow away, before going back to the poly. It took both of us to fold it in half a few times, and then I rolled it up around the board the netting had been rolled around, and set it aside.
At that point, I no longer needed a second set of hands and continued on my own.
The netting didn’t have a lot of extra length but, even folded in half, there was quite a bit of extra width. I don’t want to cut it, in case we need to use it for something higher in the future.
I spent the next while making the netting fairly snug with clips before securing the ends and adding more clips to hold it in place. Then I tested out the new ground staples and gaskets.
I rather like them, though this bed had some issues. You can see them in place in the second image, where it’s holding rather well. On the other side of the bed, however, they pulled up very easily. The problem is the leaf mulch along the edges inside the bed. They add too much bulk for the staples to push through, and they tend to just pop up again. Later on, though, the mulch will be removed. Most if it, anyhow. Down the centre of the bed, I plan to plant pole beans. Along the outside, I will be transplanting some onions. The pole beans will need a trellis, so the netting and hoops will need to be removed completely. Hopefully, interplanting with onions will keep the deer from eating it all, after the protective netting is gone!
In the next image, you can see a little turnip seedling. There are quite a few radish seedings in the other row. It doesn’t look like any re-sowing will be needed at all.
The last image is the completed bed, seedlings no longer at risk of being cooked under the poly, and protected from cats.
Which led me to the next area. The high raised bed.
This bed had been prepared in the fall but, of course, it was catted. They love to roll around in the dirt.
It needed a bit of weeding, plus I grabbed a bucket of the compost my brother brought for me. After using the hand cultivator to loosen the soil and pull the weeds, I incorporated the compost into the top couple of inches.
For this bed, I used the new hoop kit. One of the big differences is the metal connectors, while the other kit has plastic connectors. I have a bit of concern that the metal ones might rust.
In both beds, I made hoops 4 rods long, which means there is a connector right in the middle. You can see the metal connector in the next image. The image after that, you can see a plastic connector from the other bed I’d just finished. It’s a bit hard to tell at that angle, but the plastic connector is slightly bent. In fact, all down the row, the plastic connectors are bent enough to make it look like the hoops almost have a point in the middle. So… definitely a point for the kit with the metal connectors, and a point against the kit with the plastic connectors.
Before adding the netting, I needed to add a length of twine across the top to keep things in place. The problem was, how to secure the twin at the ends? With the lower raised beds, I use a ground staple to tack them down. That is not an option with this bed.
Bonus towards having a raised bed made of logs.
I found some short lengths of broken bamboo stakes and jammed one between logs at each end. That gave me something to secure the ends of the twin to.
They also came in handy, to hold the netting in place while I set it out. This netting gets stuck on EVERYTHING. I could at least take advantage of that to keep it in place at the ends, while getting the things set up and snug. Ground staples are holding it in place on the sides, and I was able to use the twine to secure the gathered ends, which you can see in the last two pictures.
I had enough energy left to do one more section.
I’d already cleaned up the section at the north end of the high raised bed, where we grew flowers last year. I even tried direct sowing some nasturtiums, in the off chance they’d grow.
They did not.
I failed to protect the bed.
So… Some more clean up, and then more hoops, twine and netting.
The netting that had been over this area last year was now on the high raised bed, so I needed to find another short piece. I took a quick look in the garden shed, disturbing a raccoon sleeping on the wheeled garden chair seat. It woke up and groggily moved away. The only netting in there, though, was a huge piece that we’d set around the entire trellis bed last year. So I let the raccoon be and looked elsewhere. I found a piece that was the perfect length and used that.
This time, I tried something different to secure the sides of the netting. I had a couple of full size bamboo stakes handy, and I rolled them up in the netting, then used ground staples. The bamboo isn’t long enough to reach end to end, but it’s long enough to make the netting more secure than the staples alone.
Now I don’t have to worry about the cats rolling all over the bed and messing in it. I’ve got cosmos and nasturtiums that will be transplanted into here as soon as the temperatures allow.
By this time, I was starting to hurt pretty bad, so that was my limit for the day. Hopefully, I’ll get more ready tomorrow. Specifically, I hope to get the potatoes planted in one of the beds that is already prepped and still under plastic. I’d hoped they would be solarized somewhat but, from what I can see along the sides, it’s more like a greenhouse, even though the plastic is flat against the ground. I can see dandelions blooming in places, under the plastic!
Tomorrow, I need to get my husband to the lab for some blood work (he wasn’t up to it, today), then I plan to visit my mother, since I’ll be taking cats to the vet on Friday. With our longer days, I should still be able to get more garden beds ready in the evenings. I also checked on the stakes for the chain link fence garden bed and they’re feeling nice and dry under the sun, so I hope to get points on those and that bed finally ready and covered, before the Chinese elm seeds start to fall!
The Re-Farmer 