2026 garden

Our 2026 Garden: survivors and a little October harvest

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Today turned out to be a rather nice day, that none of us really got to take advantage of.

I found myself awake at 4am and wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so I did the morning cat feeding. Which turned out to be greatly appreciated, as both my daughters were feeling quite sick with colds.

They stayed well away from my and my husband!

I did wake with a sore throat, which could also have been from sleeping with my mouth open, but I’m going to be proactive to try and avoid getting a cold. The last thing I need is for the cancer clinic to call me with a date and time for my surgery, then having to cancel it because of a cold!

The outside cats were quite happy this morning, as I made their cat soup with a couple of little cans of donated wet cat food as well as some cat milk and soaked kibble. We have so many bags of donated cat treats, I ended up scatting three (small) bags of treats all over.

I only saw 11 cats. I did not see Sprout (Sprig?) at all. Hopefully, she came by later. I did get to pet the shrine kitten, though, who no longer eats at the shrine feeding station at all anymore. There is a particular tray she prefers to eat from. The problem with that, though, is that there’s usually four other older cats insisting on eating from that tray, too, even though there are so many others around, scarfing down the food, and she doesn’t get as much. She doesn’t seem to want to eat out of any of the other trays for some reason.

After taking care of the kitties, I stayed out to enjoy the morning and do some light work in the old kitchen garden. I uncovered the self seeded Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and had a chance to give them a good look.

They are doing remarkably well.

Hidden in the thickest greenery, there are tomatoes ripening on the vine!

The frost cloth isn’t long enough to completely cover one end, so the branches there were more frost damaged. I broke off the most damage branches, and found a number of little green tomatoes that had fallen off. So I picked them, which you can see in the second image, and brought them inside to ripen. Between the frost cloth and the more sheltered position in this bed, these tomato plants are protected enough from the colder nights that they’re not being killed off. I’m quite impressed!

After that, I finally removed the cover over the beets and parsnips, and the herb bed. The herb bed was more difficult to remove, as the oregano on one side had grown through the chicken wire quite thickly. I managed to get it off without uprooting anything.

Then I started working on the summer squash, removing all the wire garden ties securing the stalks to their vertical bamboo stake supports, then the ones holding the ends of the woven horizontal supports together, before finally pulling them all up. I was able to make a couple of bundles of 10 stakes all the same length, with the garden wire to secure them. Then I did my usual morning rounds, checking on the other garden beds and the haskaps. With the high winds we had, a lot of the smaller ones in the trays were blown right out, so those got fixed, then watered. I made sure to water the spruce saplings, too. Those little pots will dry out fast.

I didn’t try to take down other covers and rods on other beds yet. The netting and clear vinyl sheets are something I will wait to have a second person help with. With the winds we’ve been having, it’s rather difficult to fold and roll them up for winter storage with just one person.

That done, I headed back in and tried to go back to sleep.

It didn’t work.

I did send a bit of a list to the girls of what I’d gotten done, and what needed to be done with them, mentioning that all the transplanted haskaps would need a deep watering.

I also found an email update on my FIL’s condition. He is, unfortunately, deteriorating and it’s looking like he is not going to be around much longer. His dementia is failing particularly fast, and he has been “sundowning” by the end of the day, talking about things like going to see his parents. They passed away decades ago. It’s been particularly hard on my husband, as he physically can’t make the trip to see his father, and now it seems he won’t even be able to talk to him on the phone. His father is unlikely to even know who he is.

It does make me appreciate just how well my mother is doing.

My SIL messaged to check on me and how I was doing, and we chatted for a fair bit before I finally gave up on lying down. I had intended to go back outside again in the afternoon, but the pain levels suddenly kicked in and I ended up having to lie down again. My daughters, sick as they were, headed outside and deep watered the haskap.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to sleep, because I kept getting notifications! I got some texts from my sister, letting me know she had visited my mother. She was updating me when the phone rang – and it was my mother! She wanted to know how things had gone yesterday. It was a mostly good call, though she did try to go on about how my brother should be doing stuff around here, not us, because he’s a man and we women shouldn’t be doing things like planting trees. Which is bizarre, since she planted many, many trees over the years! (Mostly in terrible places! 😄) She did start talking about how my brother has many important responsibilities, both at work and at home, and how he goes out of province to visit the grandsons, etc. Then, much to my shock, she switched to Polish and said a blessing on him for good health and a long life. My mother rather hates my brother and he can never do anything good enough for her, so when she does stuff like this, it makes me suspicious. She seemed to be genuine, though.

By then, a few hours had gone by and my pain levels finally eased and I did finally make it outside. I meant to just walk around and check on things but, of course, I found small things that I could do.

Including getting a small harvest.

In the East garden bed where I’d planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, I was able to dig up these.

A couple of them were self seeded, while the others were the only ones that germinated from the older seed tape I’d made with them a couple of years ago.

While checking things out in the main garden area, I tried digging up some of the Daikon radish that all bolted. There were no radish roots at all in the ones I dug up. Just the woody material that happens when they bolt, instead.

I did, however, dig up a few Red Bearded bunching onions.

Just enough for today.

As I write this, I’ve got a pork stew going in the Instant Pot, with all these carrots and onions, plus the last of the summer squash I’d picked before the frost got them, along with our own potatoes and our own garlic. The liquid is gelled meat juices from the last of the big brisket I got a while back, cut into individual size roasts that my daughter seasoned well and slow roasted, low and slow, for something like three hours.

I am quite looking forward to it! We don’t have a lot from the garden this year, but we at least have enough for a few meals. Which is better than nothing!

I’m just really appreciating the fact that I was able to harvest anything at all, in October. Looking ahead on the 10 day forecast, we’ve got some mild weather for the next while, and even another day with an expected high of 20C/68F! Things are supposed to be cooler after that, but still relatively mild. The ground isn’t going to freeze for a while, yet. Right now, my time limit is not the weather anymore, but my surgery date. After the surgery, I’m out of commission for 6 weeks, so the more I can get done before the surgery the better, though my daughters will be taking over a lot of things as they are able.

Oh! What is that beeping I hear?

’tis the Instant Pot, finished cooking the stew and now depressurizing.

This is going to be good!

The Re-Farmer

A very productive day – but I’ll start with the cuteness

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Would you look at that face?

In the second picture, you can see him enjoying pets.

Midnight still has a mark on his nose. For most of the summer, he had an odd wound there that would get bigger, burst, start going away, then get bigger again. Which was rather gross because he kept trying to rub his nose, wound and all, against us while demanding attention! At some point, it simply started to heal and now there’s just a bit of bald skin where it used to be.

Then there’s this lovely lady.

Fluffy lets us pet her regularly now, and is often found lounging on various beds and blankets.

Today, I finally got progress done in the sun room, which meant taking all the beds scattered on the floor out, as well as the food trays and water bowl, so clear the half of the room so the floor could be scrubbed. I put all the beds and blankets into the wagon and set it outside. It was always either Fluffy or Midnight in the wagon, enjoying a nap in the sun.

Once the floor was clear, I unhooked the shop lights from one end, then cleaned all the windows on the inside.

Then I did the outsides.

Then, since I had the bucket with glass cleaner and long pole window washing tool out anyways, I did the outsides of all the first floor windows.

Then I did the windows in the isolation shelter.

Plus the roof.

That done, I got the bucket refilled with all purpose cleaner to start on the floor in the sun room. I’ve got a broom with super stiff bristles on it and I used that to scrub the floor, because there’s no way a regular mop can do the job. It was a very dirty job, but I got a little more than half the floor in the room done. Then my daughter brought me a mop bucket and I used a mop to rinse the floor – which required several changes of water.

It’s going to take quite a while for the floor to dry. Once it’s dry, we can clear the other half. Most things will go outside, but the counter shelf will be moved to the cleaned half, since it’s easier than trying to fight it through the door.

I did get the lights set up again before doing in, and the wagon with the beds was tucked into the other half for the night, in case it rains. The cats are going to have to find other places to sleep tonight!

They have lots of places to choose from.

Through the window of the above photo, you can see the beds with the self seeded tomatoes. That got covered for the night. The other beds in the main garden area did not get covered again. Instead, I harvested.

There are a few California Wonder bell peppers and the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes that will be left to ripen indoors. The single Caspar eggplant is about as ripe as its going to get, so we can try that out at any time. It’s unfortunate that we got only one one successful eggplant, and even that is smaller than it should be.

This morning, my younger daughter and I made a dump run. When we got back, she went straight to the food forest to keep working on the transplants. Her sister took a break from working on commissions to come out and help. Even I was able to help out. With the 18 holes my daughter got done last night, I started by watering each of them – something that would have been good to do with all of the transplants, but there wasn’t the opportunity. Then we worked assembly line style, getting plants out of their big pots, then my younger daughter brought them to the pre-dug holes while her sister went along and put soil back around them.

I found more pots with self seeded willow in them.

Some, like in the photo above, showed signs that someone had already cut away willow earlier, and new ones had started to grow from the same stems. We tried to cut away as much as possible, but there’s just no way to separate their roots out. In the second image, you can see the pile of most of the willows I’d cut away, including from haskaps that had already been transplanted! The leaves are quite similar, but the stems are very different, which helped in finding where to cut them away.

Then my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers (just T3s now), so I left the girls to it and worked on other things. One of those was doing a scan of the truck. The check engine light had turned itself off a couple of days ago, but turned on again while we were driving to the dump. It was the same code as before, that our mechanic says is likely the gas cap. The other possibilities are all things we’ve taken care of already. I cleared the code, then sent our mechanic screen caps of the scan results, asking for suggestions. We’ll be doing our Costco run tomorrow, so it should be interesting to see if the light is still there.

By the end of the afternoon, this is how far the girls got.

They got 18 haskap into the pre-dug holes, then dug and planted another 7, making for 25 transplants done today. There are still another 10 large pots waiting to go into the ground that will need larger holes dug, before we can switch to the ones in the trays that don’t need such deep holes. In the third photo of the slideshow above, you can see what’s left.

It’s unlikely we’ll have a chance to work on them tomorrow, but we might be able to finish getting things in the ground on Monday. At least for the pre-measured area. Once that’s filled, we can start sticking more of them wherever we can find space.

After that, we go back to clear out the rocks that got dug up. Then the soil around each one will get raked smooth, and finally a water trench will be made around each one.

Then we can start hauling over wood chips and start mulching.

Meanwhile, we have various garden beds that need to be cleared out. The carrots need to be harvested, but those can wait, since they handle frost just fine. At the very least, a bed needs to be prepared for the garlic, which needs to be planted this month.

On the plus side, we should have a couple more weeks of relatively mild weather before overnight temperatures start consistently going below freezing. Which I am grateful for. Today I saw one of those Facebook “X years ago today” photos come up. It was a photo taken out of the living room window, 8 years ago, and there was snow on the ground. I think we even had a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend, that year. So I am quite happy with the weather we’ve got happening right now! In fact, it was a perfect day to be working outside today, and not get too hot while doing it!

I’m also happy that I was feeling well enough to be outside most of the day, and finally work on the sun room, too. We’ll see how things are with our Costco trip tomorrow. I’ll definitely bring the walker along and have my daughter push the cart, instead of using the cart as a walker, just to be on the safe side.

Lots to be thankful for.

The Re-Farmer

Frost damage, garden and transplanting progress

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Well, we most definitely dropped to freezing last night, so I was expecting to see much of the garden finally killed off for the season.

I didn’t make it outside for quite some time, though.

I was doing great in the wee hours when my alarm went off – so much so, I skipped the painkillers and fell back asleep. I was still feeling good when the morning alarm went off and I took my meds and supplements as usual, then promptly fell back asleep again.

Then the phone rang. I was expecting a call back from what I missed yesterday, at 10am. The call came at about 9am, and I was still hard asleep.

It did turn out to be the cancer clinic calling. Finally! I have a date to come in on Tuesday next week. I had thought I’d be getting a procedure done – another biopsy and testing of my lymph nods – but she said the appointment should be only half an hour. So it sounds like I’m just talking to a doctor? I will find out when I get there.

The clinic is in the same hospital the cardiac clinic is in. The cardiac clinic that would not accommodate my husband’s disability while always being very late calling him in and making him wait in painful waiting room chairs, then ghosted him when he refused to put up with it anymore.

Hopefully, the cancer clinic is better.

What isn’t better is the length of the drive, downtown driving to cross the river to a sort of second “downtown” of the French part of the city, and endless parking issues around the hospital. The woman that called me even brought up the parking as a potential issue, and I told her about taking my husband in and having to park several blocks away. She completely understood. I appreciate that she brought it up. It is clearly a major problem.

Oh, and the appointment is for 9:15am. The drive, with heavy downtown traffic, is about an hour and a half. More, with construction issues. Then we’d need the time to find parking, then walking however many blocks it’ll take to get to the hospital. We’d have to leave at around 6:45am to be sure to get there in time.

I passed on to my brother and SIL about the appointment. While chatting with me SIL, I mentioned that the parking issues was brought up.

She had a suggestion. We could drive to their place, just outside the city, and leave the truck in their driveway. She would drive us to the hospital, drop us off, then come back for us later.

!!!!!

My SIL is such an awesome person. I very gratefully accepted the offer.

By the time that was all worked out, I’d had breakfast and was getting ready to head outside. Unfortunately, pretty much right from when I lurched out of bed to get the phone, the pain started kicking in. It kept slowly getting worse so I held out until my afternoon meds, using the topical painkiller lotion in between, hoping that with the two of them, things would improve.

It never really did. I’ve just taken my evening painkillers and it’s only now starting to get better.

My younger daughter, meanwhile, had gone out to start working on the transplants. She had come in briefly in the mid afternoon when I remembered that I wanted to go to the post office. I had a thumb drive to drop off for someone, care of the store’s owner, as well as getting the mail, in case there were more medical letters in.

My daughter came with me. I drove but stayed in the truck while she did the running around. By the time I was driving home, I had to hunch over the steering wheel, as the angle helped ease the pain a bit.

Once home, I decided to stay outside and finally look at the garden as I’d planned to do earlier. My daughter offered to bring my walker over – she had set it up under the crab apple trees as somewhere she could sit to rest and hydrate every now and then. I said no and just took my time over things.

Of course, I couldn’t NOT do stuff while out there.

The winter squash vines all seemed to be frost killed, even with the frost cloth I had over it. Which I’d left, because it’s white and still lets light in. Plus, I wasn’t up to moving it. The vines looked damaged, but the developing squash did not seem to have damage to them. So I left them.

The bush beans, in the first photo above, are all killed off. The Cosmos and Crackerjack marigolds in the second photo seem to be killed off, too. Looking through the plastic over the melons, they look dead, as well. I did not try to uncover the peppers, Chocolate Stripe tomatoes and eggplant. The celery, which I have not been able to harvest to dehydrate as planned, looks just fine!

The summer squash, in the third picture, were completely frost killed – revealing a few squash that looked big enough to harvest and not very damaged by frost!

So, I harvested them. Two Lemon squash, some Prolific Longneck, and some yellow zucchini.

In the other images, you can see that some zucchini flowers look surprisingly strong and like they might still bloom!

After that, I checked on the tomato and bean beds by the compost ring. The self seeding tomato plants in the old kitchen garden, which is still covered, seem to have survived, but the ones in the tomato bed did not. After checking on the state of the tomatoes still hanging on the vines, I decided they were worth picking, with the split ones going into the compost ring. Only the larger tomatoes. The Orange Currant tomatoes are so small, there was nothing salvageable there.

I was being haunted by cats while doing this, so I did the evening cat feeding. Which is when I got to love on this beauty.

Colby SO loves attention now! He’s such a gorgeous kitty!

That done, I finished picking tomatoes and set them in the cat free zone, aka: the living room, to see if they will ripen, then decided I was up to doing at least some clean up work on the tomato bed.

I basically just took off all the plant ties and clips, then pulled the stakes out. With the green stakes, I was able to make a bundle of 10 but, since we stole some to use for the haskaps, I didn’t have enough to make a second bundle of 10, so those will just wait there for now. The bed is at the stage where the protective collars can be removed, but that was more than I was able to do today.

I did have a surprise in the next bed, though.

The deer ate the entire row of Swiss Chard, but it’s trying to grow back! Chard can handle frost quite well, and the little leaves have no frost damage at all.

After that, I felt I had enough energy for one more thing. I measured inside the water bowl shelter, then cut a narrow piece of plywood to length.

The first image shows the new board, which is in the middle, plus I added back one of the other narrower boards I’d tried adding to make it wider, previously. Originally, it was just that white board in the back (there’s a spare piece of wood I’m just storing there for now). I set the self-warming shelter back, and it now has enough space to be set sideways, with the peak matching the angle of the roof. Hopefully, nothing will try climbing on top of it and crushing it again!

Under the shelf, you can see the last beds and blankets that need to be cleaned for the winter, but in the second photo, you can see I’ve added another bed, already cleaned, to the second floor. As the season progresses and we plug in the cat house, there will be power to the heated water bowl for the winter. We still need to pop the roof on the cat house to clean it for the winter, and check the heat bulb and smoke detector.

That was about it for me, by then. I did go over to see how my daughter was doing. She’d been at it almost all day. She had planted 6 more haskap, but then switched to just digging holes. While she was doing that, I gave all the pots and trays a watering. I hadn’t realized until then that my SIL wasn’t able to take all the spruce trees! There are still about 5 trays and a few loose pots of them!

My daughter dug another 18 holes before calling it a day. Digging the holes is actually the “easy” part of the job – getting the root bound haskap out of their pots is far more difficult.

Unfortunately, as she moved her way down the tilled rows, the top soil was getting shallower in places, and she was digging up a lot more gravel and rocks. Including hitting some rocks too big to dig out!

You can see the edge of one in the first photo above. The second photo shows some of the “smaller” rocks she’d gotten out of another hole. As for the third picture…

Yeah… that’s a crack in the spade’s wooden shaft. It finally broke while she was digging around that rock in the first photo.

Thankfully, my brother had brought a couple of his spades out and left them for us to use, too. We have another one that has a metal shaft that my daughter doesn’t like to use. She’d started using one of my brother’s that had a wooden shaft, but the top was some sort of ergonomic handle that she found actually caused her more pain. Which left only one last shovel available that she could use! Another wooden shaft, which she prefers. Hopefully, no more big rocks will become an issue.

Here, you can see the day’s work. Six more haskaps transplanted, on the left of the photo, and 18 holes dug. That leaves another 30 holes to dig, but the last ones won’t need to accommodate the big pots. The last ones could be done with a hand trowel, for the haskap in the trays.

You can see the piles of soil that have more gravel in them, too.

By the time she was done, my daughter fully needed to use my walker to go back to the house! The poor thing could barely walk by then.

While all this was happening, I got a message from my sister saying they might be swinging buy to drop off some tires, then head back out again. We’d been inside for a while when I checked the cameras and saw they were here! So I went out to talk to them.

Oh! I completely forgot to mention last night!

A few years ago, someone had come out here to buy several old vehicles out of the car graveyard. Two years ago, he came back wanting to buy a couple of little cars parked by the old threshing machine. They’ve been there so long, they sunk into the soil right to the undercarriage, and there were caragana and red osier dogwood growing around them.

We made arrangements and he just needed to figure out how to get them out and take them home.

I never heard back from him. I thought he might have changed his mind but, last night, I got a call. He was at the gate!

It turns out he had started a new business this spring, and now has a crane truck. He was able to use it to lift the cars out and tow them to an open area closer to the gate, where they can be easily accessed to load onto a trailer, which will happen another day.

Of course, I let my brother know and kept him up to date, then sent him video I took of the crane work. My brother, however, was visiting my mother at the time and didn’t see all of it; all he saw was that someone had come for the cars – and he completely forgot about the arrangement made, two years ago. Not a surprise. At the time, they were frantically trying to get their own stuff off their property they’d sold to bring here, before the possession date. He ended up phoning me after visiting my mother and had seemed very confused and anxious about it.

By the time they got here tonight, though, he had had a chance to see everything I’d sent them. When I realized they were here and I came out to see them, my brother was just coming back from the main garden area, where they’d checked out the progress. Then I saw my SIL come around the trees on her phone, look up and laugh, because she had just messaged to tell me what a great job was done with the digging! I told them, it was all my younger daughter! They were very impressed.

Then we had a chance to talk about the vehicles, and about the lack of paperwork for them. Even scrap yards need proof of ownership when it comes to old vehicles. That’s all gone, and the people who would have had them have passed on. Most of them have been there for so long, they would be considered abandoned, anyhow. We’ll need to figure it out.

I mentioned the guy is still interested in some of the other old vehicles, and my brother wants to talk to him about that. They’ve taken two trailer loads of stuff from here to the scrap yard and for the last one, they barely got enough back to cover the cost of gas to take them there. Selling the individual vehicles to someone who wants to rebuild them, and can pick them up himself, would have a much better rate of return. Plus, my brother is also now looking to sell more of their farm equipment, because he’s not going to be farming with them after he retires in a couple of years.

They weren’t able to stay long, though, but thanks to her generous offer, I’ll be seeing my SIL next week, when she drives me and my daughter to the cancer clinic.

Which means we will need to do our Costco trip on Sunday. Tomorrow, the dump is open so we’ll be doing that, then planting trees before more holes are dug. I know myself well enough to admit that I wouldn’t be able to do a Costco trip on Monday, without putting myself in a physically bad situation for the cancer clinic appointment on Tuesday, which leaves us only Sunday to do the Costco stock up trip, leaving Monday to do any recovering I might need. Particularly since I am now out of the Tramacet and am back to using only T3s for pain.

So, that’s where we are at now. Thanks to my daughter, much progress was made on the digging, and I was even able to do some stuff in the garden to prepare it for winter. I continue to pray for a mild fall, because I will need the time. I’m going to be severely limited in what I can do to prepare the beds for winter, and the girls aren’t that much better than I am, until they get their surgeries. Which won’t be for months, while I should get mine within October.

Meanwhile, with the weather changes, my husband is getting hit with a lot of pain, too.

What a broken and battered household we are right now!! 😄

Ah, well. It is what is it, and we do what we can. What else is there to do?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: harvesting tomatoes and beans

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This evening, before things started to get dark, I headed outside to do my evening rounds. I remembered to bring a bowl to finally harvest some tiny Orange Currant tomatoes!

I actually dropped quite a few of them that were damaged by frost to the ground. Which means we might have some self seeded tomatoes showing up in this bed next year, which I am okay with. I still managed to get quite a few, plus a couple of Blueberry tomatoes. I even found a Manitoba tomato that was getting ripe, with no cracks in it! All over those, I’m seeing green tomatoes already cracked. The cracked ones I’d brought in before, intending to dehydrate the non-cracked portions, ended up molding almost right away and had to be composted. *sigh*

Once the tomatoes were picked, I checked the beans in the bed beside them and found a few ready to harvest. A couple of the plants have lots of developing beans still, so this will probably not be the last beans we pick from there.

While checking the main garden area, I found myself really impressed by this bolted carrot.

It is HUGE! Those flower clusters are downright massive! We’ve had carrots bolt before. Usually Uzbek Golden carrots. This one is from the Rainbow Mix carrot seeds, and I’m not sure which colour of carrot this is from. When we can finally harvest this bed, we’ll be able to see. I’ll make sure to leave the bolted carrot. If it survives long enough before it gets too cold to develop seeds, I intend to harvest them.

We’ve got at least three more mild nights before temperature drop enough that I would want to cover as much as I can, just in case the actual temperature drops lower than the forecasted temperature – again. Overall, though, we’ve possibly got almost two weeks of fairly mild overnight temperatures.

I’m really hoping for a mild winter overall. My tolerance for our typical prairie winters is getting shorter as I get older! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Wet and dreary, taste test and a little harvest

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Today, we had rain off and on all day, so very little got done outside.

After I posted yesterday, though, I headed outside before it got dark and ended up gathering a little harvest.

Last time, I’d gathered bush beans from the ones planted later in the season around the Arikara squash. This time, I harvested beans from the high raised bed. The plants there have considerably more frost damage, and yet are still producing!

Along with the beans, I picked the two Prolific Long Neck summer squash that looked ready.

The girls ended up using this summer squash in their roasted Arikara squash soup, which they tell me turned out very excellent. It included carrots and bell peppers from the garden, too. Not something I can even taste, but that’s okay. I had some of roasted Arikara squash separately, and made sure to taste some on its own, with no seasonings, first.

Definitely something we would be okay growing again. The flavour was mild, and smooth and stringless, with a texture much like mashed potatoes.

The girls also taste tested our first California Bell peppers before adding it to the soup, and they liked it enough that we set aside some seeds, though I still have some in the package. So we now have two varieties of peppers – these and the Sweet Chocolate – that pass the taste test with the family.

Aside from that, today was a home day, though it could have been our first stock up shopping day. My husband’s CPP Disability came in early, as it does when deposit day falls on a Monday. I was feeling well enough for the trip, but rainy days like this make me very sleepy, and my daughter is still fighting her own pain levels. We’ve decided to do the shopping tomorrow, instead.

One thing I started on today was a Christmas garland, crocheting around a purchased bead garland, 6 feet long, with lace weight white crochet thread paired with a strand of silver reflective thread, using a 3.25mm hook. I was working on the second row of the pattern, about 3/4 through, when I spotted an error…

Made about 6 inches from the start of that row.

I’d already found the same error made after about a foot and ripped the stitching back to fix it, but that just isn’t going to work with something closer to three feet. The strand of reflective yarn is quite thin, and I don’t want to end up breaking it or adding too much wear to it. Plus, the sheer length of what I’d have to undo would be difficult to keep from tangling. Just the short amount I’d ripped earlier, kinked into waves from the stitches, kept wanting to tie itself into knots.

So, I’m going to finish the second row and not do the third row I had planned on. On its own like this, the error would not be visible unless someone knew what they were looking for, but would throw the pattern of a third row off completely.

I still can’t believe I did that. The girls are still laughing at the wail of despair I made when I found it and realized where it was.

Ah, well.

I still have a fair bit to do to finish the second row, but I won’t finish it tonight. I’ll just have to make sure to tuck it away somewhere safe from that cats for the night. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: another little harvest, plus an update

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We had some rain, off and on, during the night, and today was mostly overcast. Overnight temperatures were quite nice, and the garden survives.

This morning was very good, on the pain scale, for myself, but not for my daughter. I headed to the garage this morning on my own, and didn’t even bother to bring the walker – though I did remember to bring the water jugs.

I always leave early, but I forget that the new location is closer enough to make a difference in travel time. I got there almost 45 minutes early.

He took the truck in almost right away.

The oil change got done and, when I asked, I found out he’d already checked the steering linkage for me when he was doing the diagnostic on Monday. All is good. We talked for a while about the check engine light. The most common fix he’s seen for that code is changing the gas cap, but we might not need to do that. It could be as simple as the cap not being on tight (we know it is), or the O ring not sealing as well. Applying some oil to the O ring would help with that. It could be dust in the EVAP system, especially since we drive on gravel roads. He described the system to me and told me about a number of other possibilities. My scan showed it as a “very common” code to come up. He assured me it won’t affect drivability. He never recommends getting work done, if it isn’t actually necessary. We can clear the code ourselves with the scanner, or it might even go away on its own.

In the end, he charged me for the oil and filter change, and an hour of labour for the diagnostic testing done on Monday. Considerably less expensive than I feared, at the start.

The whole thing was done before my actual appointment time!

I didn’t have a lot of driving after that, but I could already feel the truck felt like it was running smoother. The oil gauge was where he said it should be, and looking better than before. We’ll be doing many trips into the city next week, so it’ll get a work out, then.

I headed into town to refill the water bottles and picked up a few other little things, then headed home. My older daughter helped me with bringing the bottles in, as her sister has barely been able to get out of bed for the pain.

Later on, after I’d gone out to do the outside cat feeding, I hosed down the mats from the sun room some more, then checked on the garden. I ended up with a little harvest; just enough for a meal or two.

It’s been a while since I’ve tried harvesting, or even weeding, any carrots. The Rainbow Mix carrots are harder for me to reach, but are the one planted earlier, so I made sure to take from that row. They were a lot thicker than I expected! Then I grabbed the two Lemon Squash from the old kitchen garden. My older daughter is making a hearty potato soup for supper and made sure to include some of this!

The 10 day forecast is looking pretty good. Aside from a trip to the post office, we don’t need to go anywhere and the weather looks like we should be able to get things done outside – and finish clearing and cleaning the sun room!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: a single bean, and a little harvest

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My daughter and I headed into town this morning, hoping to get the truck worked on, even though I hadn’t received a message back from the garage with a time. I had my suspicions, but my daughter had something to do in town after, so I knew it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.

Oh, my. I really feel for the owner of the garage.

When we got there, he was outside, on the phone. My daughter stayed outside by the truck while I went into the office and waiting for him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying on the phone, but I could hear his tone, and it was a lot tenser than his usual laid back manner.

When he came to the office door, he was furiously texting while also apologizing. He had meant to text me back with a time, but had never had a chance to look at his schedule to tell me when. He was finally able to set his phone down on a shelf just outside the door, telling me how, after he’d had to go home yesterday, unable to work on our truck, things ended up taking hours longer than it should have. Of course, that absolutely screwed up his schedule completely.

He had just sat down at his desk and started getting his schedule out when his phone started ringing again. From where he’d left it just outside the door! He had to answer it and went outside again to talk. When he came back, he looked absolutely frazzled.

He was, of course, needing to catch up on things, and I could already see his bays were full, so there was no way we’d be getting in anytime soon. He had no openings today and, at best, could squeeze me in between other scheduled jobs. Of course, that would me us waiting in his office, since there’s nowhere else to go in the industrial park his shop is now located in. Alternatively, he had openings tomorrow.

We’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Poor guy. Yes, there was another mechanic, but there are things only the owner can take care of and, when it comes to our truck and needing to figure things out, he had taken that on himself rather than delegating.

That arranged, my daughter and I headed into town. I had forgotten our water bottles to refill, but we’ll be back to do that tomorrow. My daughter ran her errand and we were soon home.

I was feeling really good today – left the walker in the truck and didn’t even need a cane. After we had lunch at home, I headed outside to see what I could get done, as we are expecting rain.

I got the cat beds soaking in the tub finished and set out to drain and, if it doesn’t rain, dry. Floor mats got hosed down, which will need to be done again another time or two. I got the cat cage dismantled and the interlocking mat under it set out for soaking, then hosing down.

With the cat half of the sun room finally empty, I swept as best I could, but the floor washing and window washing will have to wait. Instead, I brought out all the cleaned cat beds and blankets and set them on one side, then brought all the food trays that had been removed and laid them out on the other, along with a water bowl. This way, the cats will at least have someplace warm and dry to hang out in, should the weather get wet. The wind, at least, seems to be dying down.

By the time all that was done, it was time to do the outside cat feeding. The singleton kitten would not let me touch her today, but she kept calling at me. She looks so sad without the little kittens to play with! I’m glad she’s staying close to the house now, though. Hopefully, with all the trays returned to the sun room, she will start hanging out in there more often, and the other cats won’t chase her out.

Before heading in, I did my evening rounds and checked on the garden. I watered the muskmelon, since they are under their own mini greenhouse set up. Then I noticed a strange bit of colour among the yellow leaves of the red noodle beans in the other bed.

There it is. Our single, sad, floppy little red noodle bean! I couldn’t see any others. Which I found funny because the same thing happened the first time we tried growing this variety during what turned out to be a drought year. We got just one sad little bean that year, too.

I would really like to successfully grow this variety, but I think I’ll wait a year or two before I try again.

I was still able to get a little harvest for today, though.

I got a handful of beans from the ones planted later in the season, with the Arikara squash. My pain levels started to kick in, so I asked a daughter to make supper, and I now have those beans on my cooling plate as I write this. I also grabbed a few of the Blueberry Tomatoes for the girls.

Sept. 23, and we still have a few things we’ll be able to harvest. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, we will have no danger of frost at all for at least the next 10 days.

I’m appreciating every frost free day we’re getting as a gift right now!

The Re-Farmer

Weighing in, and hardy survivors

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Well, we finally managed it.

We weighed all the cats.  All 21 of them.

Sort of.

The only way we could do it was to have my daughter stand on the digital scale to get her weight, then weigh her while holding a cat and doing the math.

The problem with that is, the digital scales reading changes based on how the feet are positioned, how you might be leaning while standing, or even what part of the floor it’s on.  When my husband came over and I mentioned this, he tried getting on the scale.

My husband has no balance.

He wobbled so much, the numbers never settled, and the scale turned itself off to no display at all, like it does after you step off the scale. !!!

So we got estimates.

I’m both surprised and not surprised that Leyendecker turned out to be the heaviest at 30 pounds. 

He’s not just a fat cat.  He’s a tank.  He’s got a skull almost as big as a softball.  Hard to believe he was the smallest of his litter!

The lightest cat was Susan, at only 7 pounds.

I passed the numbers on to someone at the rescue.   We will be able to buy ear mite medication through them.  The kind that’s applied to the skin between the shoulders, since treating the ear canals hasn’t been working well.  When it doesn’t take for just one cat, they all end with getting the mites again. We will work out getting the medication after the truck is looked at, on Monday.

Later today, I was able to head outside with the girls.  While one daughter did the evening cat feeding, the other helped me with the washed cat blankets and beds, before we got the rain expected tonight.  Some were dry, but most were too thick to be fully dry yet.  The damp ones all got laid out under the canopy tent, most on the wire mesh curing frame, to continue drying.   Hopefully, we’ll get more sunny days to set them out in, to dry and bleach in the sun.

That done, I stayed out to check the garden beds.  It’s surprising to see how much survived the one night that reached freezing temperatures!

Those (wild? Alpine?) strawberries are amazingly hardy.  There are still loads of tiny berries, and they are still blooming.

Even more surprising is how well the tomatoes that could not be covered are doing. Especially the Orange Currant tomatoes.

The California Wonder bell peppers were covered the night it reached 0C, and are getting quite red.

I’ll have to look it up, but I was sure they were supposed to be a yellow pepper.  😄

I took a closer look at some of the sunflowers, brushing dried petals off so I could see the developing seeds.  The seed heads are all very small for the varieties, but it does look like there may be viable seeds.

After checking on things, I  grabbed the loppers to prune dead and dying branches from the pink rose bush in the old kitchen garden.  They are insanely thorny, but I was able to use the loppers to move the pruned branches aside, for the girls to clear away tomorrow.

While I was working on that, my brother and SIL arrived for the weekend, and I got to talk to them for a bit before finishing the pruning.  I really enjoy spending time with them.

Overall, today was a good day.  I was even up to making a quick run to the post office by myself.  I didn’t start having pain creeping up until shortly before my evening meds alarm went off.  It’s been getting worse since then, and I’m currently writing this while in bed, rather twisted up to find the least painful position.  It’s not too bad… yet?  We shall see.

One thing about the new dose and variation of painkiller.  It makes me sleepy.  My sister happened to call only a minute past my meds alarm going off.  I had meant to lie down right away, but we spoke for a while.  I ended up having to say goodbye, before I dozed off and dropped the phone!

Of course, now that I’m finally lying down, the sleepiness has passed. 😒

Not that it’s anything to complain about.  Just something to work around.

Anyhow.  I’m mostly really happy that we got the cats weighed as best we could.  It’s been delayed for too long!

The Re-Farmer

A really excellent day – except for Damocles being weird again

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This morning, after taking my scheduled meds and supplements, I was feeling well enough to do the morning cat feeding. Which meant, of course, I stayed out to check on the garden.

There is definitely cold damage on a lot of things, but most might actually have survived. The winter squash on the chain link fence was my biggest surprise.

The first one is what should be a Black Futsu. It had been protected by a large leaf. The other images, save the very last one, are of the butterneck squash – and they are still producing female flowers! Even the summer squash, which could not be covered, seems to have had minimal damage. The last image above is of some lemon squash developing in the plant in the wattle weave bed that was a thinning by transplanting location. It’s smaller, but further ahead in maturity, than the plants in the retaining wall bed that were direct sown and never moved!

It will be another day or two before we really see how much the cold damaged things, though.

Yesterday had been quite damp and chilly, so we never did take the frost covers off. I did that this morning. The chocolate stripe tomatoes look like they didn’t handle the cold too well, but it’s still too early to be sure. The peppers and our single developing eggplant seem okay. We had rain yesterday and the frost covers were quite wet, so those went on the clothes line. The mock orange my mother had planted at the laundry platform has grown a lot this summer and was very much in the way.

My daughter and I headed out to our appointment at the garage at noon. The plan was to basically just hang out in their waiting area while the oil change was being done. My daughter even brought along her knitting. She has finished the socks she was making for herself and has started a pair of ankle socks for me with the glitter yarn.

We got there about half an hour early, even after being stuck behind a slow moving vehicle. The garage owner was there when we came into the office – me with my walker, my daughter with her cane. What a pair we make! For me, though, the walker was more of a “just in case”. I was actually feeling really good still. Usually, the pain levels start to creep up in the afternoon.

I asked him if he’d received the screenshots of the OBDII scan I sent him yesterday and he had. He spent some time going over the readings and noted that replacing the oil sensor had come up as a fix again. We talked about the other things, and they did not concern him. One of them is the gas cap sensor, which I didn’t realize until then. I’d look the part up on Amazon, following the link from the app, but didn’t look any further into it – I was pretty distracted by other things at the time. I described to him the changes I saw with the oil pressure gauge readings over the months since it last got replaced, and that I thought the oil change might help with. He said, only a little bit. Maybe. I should not be getting those readings. He asked more questions and spent some time looking things up on his computer.

In the end, he asked if I could bring the truck back on Monday and leave it with him for the day. He wants to set up an oil pressure tester and drive it around. This would tell him if it’s the sensor acting up again, or if there’s something else going on. I told him the only problem with that is, we have no other transportation. We talked for a while and, in the end, he asked me to bring the truck back on Monday morning. They’ll drive us into town, so we’re not stuck in his waiting room while he tests it out. He does not want to do the oil change until he’s had a chance to run the test.

So we booked that and headed home. We actually got home at almost exactly our appointment time. 😄 We didn’t even stop to get the mail because the post office wasn’t going to open again for another hour, and we have a parcel to pick up.

While we were gone, our prescription delivery came in, which included my new painkillers. My doctor is quite serious about pain management! I went from Tramadol/hydrochloride, 50mg, up to 3 times a day, as needed, to Tramadol/acetaminophen, 325mg, 4 times a day for two weeks. In two weeks, I should be in the city getting more tests done, so if I need more or something else, that’ll be taken care of, then.

Which means that when my afternoon alarm went off for my next painkiller dose, I had my new Tramadol to take, instead of the T3s I had in my purse I expected to take while the oil change was being done. I read the paperwork that came with it and noted that the potential side effects include dizziness and nausea, which is what I started getting about a week into the Percocet trial. Something to watch out for.

I was still feeling really good. So good, in fact, I was decidedly suspicious. At this point, not feeling pain is downright weird. (Even stranger is, the bleeding seems to have stopped, too!) After taking the meds, though, I got incredibly sleepy, falling asleep at my computer. That passed, though, and I was feeling good enough, I decided to take a chance and headed outside.

I didn’t push myself with anything too “manual labour”-ish. The outside cats got fed and I was going to finish washing and rinsing the cat beds and blankets from the sun room, but my presence was keeping the singleton kitten from going to the food bowls, so I switched gears.

I got the weed trimmer out. My brother had fixed the cracked handle on the larger one and brought it back, but I noticed there was only 2 batteries instead of 3 for that. Which was probably good, as it made sure I didn’t push myself too much. The lawn needs to be mowed, so the first thing I did was trim around the low rocks in the yard, so no one will hit them with the lawn mower, then moved to the old kitchen garden. The paths there have not been trimmed for quite a while, and some areas were getting pretty thickly overgrown. So much so that I needed to rake it all up before doing a bit more trimming around the garden edge and the nearby cat shelters. Now that we have a lovely, huge pile of wood chips, I want to lay down a thick layer on the paths in the old kitchen garden.

But not today.

Instead, I went back to the cat beds and blankets. They’ve had several soaks in the old tub with detergent, but for the past few days, they’ve been sitting on the grass, getting rained on. I got the wheelbarrow to wash individual pieces, having to use a scrub brush on some of them, to get the mats of cat hair and burrs off, then set them in the old tub for rinsing.

The first things I worked on were flat things I could hang on the line, so after the first few were done, I headed over and took the dry frost protector sheets off the clothes line.

Then I pruned the mock orange back, so the laundry would no longer catch on it. What a difference that made! I left the branches for a daughter to clear away tomorrow, though.

That was what I worked on for the next while; scrubbing a few pieces in the wheelbarrow, rinsing them in the tub, hanging them on the line, then doing another batch. Both the wash water and rinse water had to be changed several times. An entire winter and spring, plus part of a summer, of cats, skunks and raccoons make a serious mess! The last items could not be hung on the line. Some because of their shape, like two cat caves. Others because they were just too thick and heavy to be able to hang on a line. Some of those ended up on the water bowl house, which has a metal roof, to drain and dry. They’ll need to be flipped a couple of times, I’m sure. The last ones got draped over the upturned wheelbarrow to drain. Once they’ve had a chance to drain most of the water they soaked up, they’ll get moved onto one of the cat shelter roofs to dry in the sun. We are expecting rain tomorrow, but not until the evening, so we’ll have to keep an eye on things. The thicker items will probably take several days to dry.

I’m happy to say that I still felt really great, even after all this. I don’t know how much I can attribute to the new pain meds and how much to it just starting out a good day and staying a good day!

So the main thing we needed to get done today – get Damocles an oil change, at least – didn’t happen, but today still worked out to be a productive day.

That makes me happy!

Gosh, I miss being able to work outside more! That’s the part of all the health issues that bothers me the most. I really enjoy the work, and not being able to do it is so very frustrating. I’ve gone over the things that need to be done over the next while with the girls, to prepare the yard and garden for winter. Getting the sun room emptied and cleaned out is a priority right now. Nights are starting to get cold, and the cats will need their winter shelter. My older daughter has her commissions to work on, so there’s not as much that she can do, but my younger daughter is planning out her days based on the to-do list, now that we expect to be able to stay home for a few days, other than a much needed dump run on Saturday.

Time to catch up on things while the weather holds!

The Re-Farmer