Today was a much nicer day, and I finally got some work done outside.
Today, I decided to work on the bed by the chain link fence. Mostly, because I want to use the bricks that are lining it for something else. Once we figure out where the chicken coop is going to go, I want to put the bricks under the coop frame, so that there is no contact between the wood and the ground.
The first image in the slide show above is the “before” picture. I’ve started nothing at this point.
Before I moved the bricks out, I went through the pile of maple lengths I gathered in the fall and cut a couple pieces to roughly 2 feet in length, then put them in the vice and used the draw knife to create points at one end, before debarking them. I set one at each end, inside the row of bricks. They aren’t all the way to the ends, though. The posts for the chain link fence are set in concrete, so I worked out how far the concrete extended, first, and used that to determine where to pound in the stakes. When the deadwood walls are built, the stakes will line up, front and back, so they can be used to support hoops or whatever I decide on to support future covers for this bed. Once the two stakes were pounded in, I removed the bricks and took them to where I am thinking the coop is going to go.
The next job was to remove the bulk of the weeds in the bed. It’s mostly crab grass, but there were also dandelions and – or course – elm tree roots.
*sigh*
I also found a bunch of shallots and a couple of onions! I planted shallots and onions along the edge of this bed for several years, but they’ve never been able to mature. Either that cats rolled on them, or the elm seeds smothered them. Yet they still survive!
I transplanted them into the winter sown cabbage bed.
I was able to get 2/3rds of the bed cleared before my body started to give out. I did remove a couple of wheel barrow loads of soil onto a tarp, and will remove more as I finish weeding the bed. This will make it easier to reach the back of the bed. There are currently boards all along the bottom of the chain link, to keep the soil from falling through. I’ll be adding pairs of stakes on either side of the boards, then adding deadwood on top of the boards to make a higher back wall. Once that’s done, I’ll do the front and ends to match the back in height, before returning the soil. I still have some sulphur granules, so I will probably mix some into the soil before returning it, to try and increase the acidity.
Once it is done, I need to decide on how I want to add supports across the bed. I could use hoops, but I’ve only got so many of those. I could also add wood cross pieces at the stakes, permanently attached, but do I want something permanent? Even if it’s likely to hold the weight of cats better than hoops? Whatever I use will be supporting either netting or plastic or frost protection, depending on the time of year and what ends up grown in here. I need to protect the bed from being smothered by elm seeds, to keep the cats from getting under any cover, hold the weight of cats on top of any cover without collapsing, and be able to protect from deer.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer than today. After that, it’s supposed to cool down for a couple more days, but it should still be nice enough to get work done outside. I hope to get it mostly done tomorrow, but I know I will need to gather more materials for the dead wood walls before I can finish it completely.
Once this is done, I’ve got just a few other beds that need to be cleaned up and prepared for planting, that didn’t get done in the fall.
Then I need to pull back the black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, that’s over where we had winter squash a few years back and prepare it for the corn I will be planting there, this year. It’s been laying there for a few years, now, so any weeds and crab grass under it should finally be dead!
Lots of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it. I can’t believe we’re already a week into May. I can hardly believe we’re into May at all!
Today, I was supposed to do a dump run, but I was just too tired and in pain. It’ll have to wait until they’re open again on Tuesday.
I had a rough pain night and didn’t get much sleep, so I was going to try lying down for a bit, then visit my mother in the afternoon. I wasn’t looking forward to that, after her last phone call, but it needed to be done. I wasn’t down for long when I got a message from my SIL. My brother was on his way to see our Mother, and would then come here to the farm.
So I decided to head out to my mother’s earlier and meet him there. When I got there, though, I found another message from my SIL, as well as from my husband. My brother had tried to call me, but he was calling the land line. He was going to the farm, first.
Which worked out. I got the messages just as I parked at the hospital and realized my mother would be getting her lunch tray, so I walked around for a bit to give her time to finish eating before I went in. I stopped at the nursing station to find out about the phone call I didn’t get on Tuesday, about arranging a family meeting with the doctor. The person at the desk wasn’t the one in the know, so she made a note for the nurse in charge to come see us while I was visiting her.
The first part of the visit was okay. My mother talked a lot about things she remembered from back in Poland. All stuff I’d heard before, but that’s okay. I took a chance and showed her pictures of the chicken coop. She asked me why I didn’t build a shed for them instead of something with so many “windows”. I told her, because we can’t do that right now, this is what we’ve got. She laughed at me for having a chicken coop but no chickens. I told her we were getting chicks at the end of the month. Just 10 for now. Only 10? So few?
…
I told her, the coop is only big enough for 10 chicks.
Then she started going on about how wonderful our vandal is, because he buys his eggs from the Hutterites, and he bought chickens for the freezer from them, too. Now, it’s entirely possible he did this once or twice, years ago, but in her mind this is something he always does. I told her, the Hutterites have a huge operation; we just need enough chickens for eggs for ourselves.
Oh, and my sister’s husband visited our vandal, who told him he doesn’t want me or my brother at his funeral. Which I figured. My mother told me, she wanted us to do what was the right “Christian” thing to do. *sigh*
Then the nurse came and things got… brutal, though in a relatively calm way, for my mother.
In a nutshell; the doctor will not see her or have any meetings about her, because he simply doesn’t have the time. She does not have any medical need for a doctor’s care. She went on about her hearing and her vision, but neither is something that requires him. My mother is undergoing the mineral oil treatment on her ears again – it will be for 5 days this time – before they try flushing it again, and my mother had all sorts of things to complain about with that. Meanwhile, my mother is adamant that they are not giving her her second eye vitamin pill of the day. She writes it all down, she counts all her pills, but they tell her different things about different pills – the nurse and I both realized that my mother was mixing a blue pill up with a green pill, thinking they were the same pill, so that’s why she was getting different answers. My mother is also now convinced that her hearing was “perfect” before she came there, and her hearing problems have something to do with not getting her pills. When I pointed out that she used to have her TV and radio incredibly loud when I’d come over to her apartment in the past, she switched to Polish and accused me of taking their side and of lying. She also wants a pill for her eyes. I had to go over how the eye vitamin is only helpful for her left eye and the dry macular degeneration. The only treatment for the wet macular degeneration in her right eye is the injections she would have to go to the city for. She has rejected that and demands another pill; going back to how she claims they have stopped giving her the second one of the day. Even her own notes show that she is getting two pills at 5pm, but now she says she only gets one.
Even after the nurse left, my mother kept insisting they were not giving her these eye vitamins, and all her health problems have now only started after she came to this TCU. Things she has been dealing with for a long time. I kept trying to explain things, but she just went back to the manipulation, saying I was taking their side, etc. etc. I finally said, it was time for me to go.
As I was getting ready to leave, my mother brother up her wheelchair. This is a folding wheelchair that had been my father’s.
She asked me if I recognized it. I saw it in the hallway and said I did. She asked me to bring it over, and began questioning me about recognizing it. The staff had clearly given it a really good cleaning; whatever they used on the heavy vinyl got it all nice and supple and looking brand new. They even oiled the squeaky food rest. However, it’s an old chair, and there are cracks in the wheels and spots of rust that I could say where there before.
My mother clearly didn’t believe me. She has decided it’s not the same chair anymore. The hospital switched it.
This is not a new thing. For as long as I can remember, she accused my father of “trading” cattle, vehicles, furniture, the TV, etc. and he was giving the “good” versions the second family she believed he had, and the “bad” versions for us. When she tried to convince me a particular cow had been traded because it looked different – it had matured and filled out, looking bigger, strong and healthier – I pointed out that if this cow had been “traded”, we now have a better cow, so how did her accusations make sense?
I had a very confusing childhood at times.
The visit done, I headed home, utterly drained. My brother was still here, so we sat in their mobile home and I filled him in. It was good to talk to him about it in person, and we had a great visit! He was dreading his visit with Mom, but I just heard from him. He ended up staying with Mom for a couple of hours and the visit went well. It seems my mother got her nasty out of her system before he got there. I’m very glad it worked out that way, because she has been incredibly cruel to him during most of his visits with her.
After filling in my brother, I headed inside and took a bit of a break before changing into my grubbies and going outside for some manual labour. That, more than anything else, really helps decompress after a visit with my mother.
My focus for today was getting the straw off the septic tank. I had just started when I began getting messages from the cat rescue.
They are trying to get ahold of special traps to borrow and bring here. Traps with motion sensors and operated by remote. We can set up the camera currently facing the isolation shelter to monitor the traps. When the motion sensor goes off, check the camera to see what critter is in it. This way, we can trigger the trap only if the specific cat we are after – Slick, for example – is in the trap. Skunks and raccoons can be ignored. 😄 That would be amazing!
My brother was getting ready to head out around then, and dropped off some lovely compost they’d made from their own kitchen scraps for me. He had time to check out the chicken coop and we talked about the septic area, and the emergency bypass set up I had set off to the side until the straw was gone. After he left, I continued and got it all clear. The surface straw was set aside in a pile, but the damp straw touching the ground, which was already starting to rot, got raked up and repurposed as mulch around the honeysuckle and white rose bushes in the old kitchen garden.
That clear, I set up all the parts and pieces for the emergency bypass against the old kitchen wall for their summer storage.
That done, I also set up a hose at the tap in the wall next to the pipe running out of the basement for the emergency bypass. The shut off valve in the basement can now be opened. I won’t set all the hoses up until things warm up more, but I can at least fill watering cans for the pre-sown beds, etc., for now.
My next garden priority is to start more seeds inside. That keeps getting pushed back, but most of what we have left to start indoors are for 3-4 weeks before last frost, so for those we still have a bit of breathing room. I have only a few things in the 4-6 week range that need to be started now.
So this has been… a day. I’m very happy I got to see my brother and that I got some work done outside. As for my visit with my mother, it is what it is.
It just left me feeling so incredibly drained! Getting the straw cleared off actually helped with that. Now I’m just physically tired, not both physically and mentally tired! 😄
My broken old body may betray me now and then, or the weather may not be cooperative, but gosh I do love it when I can do physical labour!
I actually ended up going into town again today. I realized we weren’t going to have enough kibble for the outside cats to last us until our first stock up shop next week, and with other things on my calendar, it was either get it now, or run out before then.
I did wait until later in the morning to go, though. While we got a smattering of snow last night, mostly we got freezing rain. The highway conditions group I’m on has been quiet the last while, other than warnings about deer activity or accident sites, as road conditions have been really good. This morning, I was seeing warnings as soon as I opened my FB app about how dangerously slippery various highways were.
Even as I was heading out, when things had warmed up, I almost slipped while opening the gate. There is a pair of large spruces that shade it for most of the day – especially this time of year – so it was still all ice. Today was pretty warm, and tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, so hopefully it will all dry up before tomorrow night, when I have to drive to and from my mother’s, after it gets full dark and the temperatures are below freezing.
Normally, I would have gone to the nearest Walmart for more kibble, but with the cost of gas, I decided to try the other grocery store in town. They have a house brand kibble that the cats will actually eat, even if they don’t like it as much as other brands, that is more affordable. I lucked out. Their 8kg/17.6lbs bags were on sale for $17, which made it cheaper than the one 15kg/33lbs house brand bag that was available. Since I was there anyhow, I was able to take advantage of some sales and got a few more little things, but it was still mostly the cat food.
That done, I headed outside after lunch to see what I could do to take advantage of the lovely weather. One of those things was to set up the little scaffolding we picked up second hand, a couple of years ago, under my bedroom window that leaks. I was going to caulk it, originally, but changed my mind and decided to go with a spray sealant.
I’m glad I did.
While scrubbing off cob webs and debris, I got a good look at the outside of that window for probably the first time in my life. On the side that we used to be able to open, I could see that there was a pane of glass added, with moveable clips holding it in place. The other window has the clips, but not the extra pane of glass. The clips are painted over, so they don’t actually move anymore, but that could be changed, if necessary.
Looking around, though, I could see why the window was having issues with leaking, when the winds drove rain in just the right direction. The house was painted the summer before we moved in, and some of it was starting to peel away. I could see gaps that should have been filled. I don’t think they were there when the window frame was painted.
I hope the spray sealant works, but there might be issues. It’s supposed to be used at temperatures between 10-35C/50-95F. At the time I started working on it, we were at about 4C/39F.
The directions said to wait 10 minutes between coats so, after I applied the first coat, I set a timer, then started working into the spruce grove.
With the leaves down and the foliage dying back, I went through to find the last section of tree trunk from one of three dead spruces my brother cut down for me, several years ago, to use as raised bed frames. I step counted what was left, and figured I could get 18′ out of it, after trimming off the remains of the tree top. My daughter had already trimmed the branches away when we used part of the trunk for the low raised bed frame most recently completed.
There was still the issue of getting to it, and that required cutting away some new growth. I also noticed a lot of nice, straight poplars, as well as cherry suckers. In time, I went to get rid of that entire stand of cherries, as they are not the right type for our climate and don’t produce. They just spread through their roots. For now, though, I started to widen the opening into the spruce grove by cutting away cherry suckers. I was getting enough nice, long and relatively straight pieces that when my timer went off and I stopped to apply another coast of sealant, I messaged my daughter to see if she could come help. I dragged the pile with the straightest stems over to the branch pile (the more crooked ones went straight onto the pile), and she came out to trim away all the little twigs and branches, and setting aside the longest, straightest sections.
I got quite a bit of the cherry cleaned up – and two more coats of sealant on the window – before I stopped with the cherry stand and started working my way to the downed tree trunk. At this point, I was saving the straightest poplar suckers. Like cherry, these spread through roots.
All of this took a couple of hours of before I finally got things clear enough around the downed tree. This part of the trunk was fairly narrow, and I was able to trim the top of it with a pruning saw to get it clear.
Then there was the question of how to drag it out.
We have a rock pile near our power pole that I’d gone through to collect rocks that will form the wall of a flower bed near the gate, where my mother’s angel statue is on display. Lying upside down on the rock pile was an old child’s sled. How many decades it’s been sitting there, I can’t be sure. I decided to grab it and try something, to make dragging the tree trunk out easier. I brought that, some rope with heavy duty latch hook clips at each and, and a metal bar to use as a handle, over to the tree trunk. The sled went under the far end – the top of the tree – so that it would slide through the remaining underbrush, rather than dragging along the nubs of branches that were bound to be on the underside of the trunk.
At the near end, I looped the rope under the trunk, past some branch nubs, so it couldn’t slip, then put the metal bar through the latch hooks to make a handle.
It did actually work.
For a while.
The only problem was that I had no way to secure the tree trunk to the sled. After a while, the sled got hung up enough that the tree finally slid right off. By that time, however, I’d gotten it through the worst of the underbrush and could keep dragging it as it was.
Well… almost.
Without the sled, there were still branch nubs catching and digging into the dirt. When it got to the point that I needed to turn the trunk so that it could be dragged between trees and into the main garden area, I called my daughter over for help. The trunk itself was not that heavy, relatively speaking. The first section of it that we dragged out before was the thickest part of the trunk, and THAT was heavy!
Between the two of us, we maneuvered it through the trees and into the main garden area, near where the next trellis bed will be built. From the looks of it, compared to the nearby 18′ raised bed, I’d say it’s about 18.5′, maybe closer to 19′ long. Which gives me some wiggle room to trim the ends when it’s time to use it for a garden bed wall.
We “just” need three more 18′ lengths, plus four 4′ lengths for the ends, to make a matching trellis bed.
By this time, it was getting too dark to keep going, so we just gathered things to be put away and did some clean up. My daughter had managed to trim quite a lot of the cherry and poplar I’d harvested, and those got added to the pile on the chain link fence garden bed, where they will be used to make new, slightly higher, walls. I doubt I’ll be able to actually build them this year, but we should at least have most of the materials needed to do it in the spring. Since these will be deadwood walls, not wattle weave, I don’t have to worry about keeping the lengths flexible. They can stay where they are all winter, and still be useable.
Since it was so dark by the time we were done, I didn’t get any pictures of our progress, but I did get this…
Would you look at how that little mostly white kitten is splayed out? 💕💕
That tuxedo’s eyes are too big for its head. 😄
Tomorrow, I’m going to look around in the spruce grove some more and see what can be done next. Several dead spruces have fallen on their own already. The based of their trunks, however, are huge. The ones that are too big to use for raised bed walls without being milled, will be cut to 10′ lengths and set aside. I need a total of ten of them for the posts of the outdoor kitchen we want to build and, so far, I have only one!
Unfortunately, the space I’d set it aside in, with plans to add more as I was able to harvest them, now has my brother’s baler parked in it. I’ll have to find somewhere else to store nine more 10′ logs!
There are, however, more dead spruce trees that need to be cut down, that are not so wide at the base. Not only am I looking to harvest them for the pairs of trellis beds that will become trellis tunnels, but there are another 5 or 6 already prepped low raised beds that need walls. The trellis beds will be 2 logs high for starters, but the low raised beds will be one log high for starters. We can add more height to them over time, as we are able, but the main thing is to get them framed. The goal is for most of the beds to be 4 logs high, like the current 9′ long high raised bed. That one is the perfect high for excellent reach without back or joint pain. Some beds will remain lower, to be used for tall climbers or things like corn, but I still want them to be at least two logs high.
I’ve been thinking ahead to the open area closer to the food forest. I’m hoping to have at least two more pairs of trellis tunnel beds beyond what is being worked on now. Give the amount of sun, etc. the open area gets, I am thinking of how to set up polytunnels. Perhaps we can continue to build more pairs or raised beds, but instead of forming trellis tunnels over the paths in between them, we can add supports to the outsides of the beds and cover them with greenhouse poly. I think we’d have room to build two, maybe three, pairs of beds as we get closer to the food forest area. If we can do that, it would allow us to grow perennials that would otherwise not survive our winters, and extend our growing season significantly. With the amount of direct sun that area gets, a polytunnel would be very warm, even in winter. We’d just have to find a way to keep it from getting too cold overnight.
Things to think about!
We will, eventually, run out of dead spruces we can harvest for this and will have to go further afield to find materials. Once we’ve cleared the spruce grove of dead trees and underbrush – and those spirea that I’d pulled out but came back anyhow! – I want to start transplanting spruces from other areas and make the spruce grove a spruce grove again. With how poplar spreads through its roots, it’s taking over. They are a useful material to harvest for various projects, but they are not as good at protecting from winter winds as the spruces are. With all the stumps we are leaving taller, we’ll also be able to use those to create benches and tables, and make ourselves a nice little park in there. When I was a kid, I used to be able to mow in there. Not any more! It would be great to have a space in there that my husband can go into with his walker, and just sit and enjoy the outdoors. Plus, once we’ve cleared out the cherry stand and all the dead spruces, we’ll be able to finally build that outdoor bathroom with a composting toilet I’ve been wanting to build, to replace the outhouse over a pit.
It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for 8 years now. When we first moved here, we’d developed a year by year plan on what we wanted to work on, staring with the inner yard, then moving outwards.
Things certainly have changed. Not the main goals, perhaps, but how and when we plan to reach them. That all four of us are also now broken, one way or another, with three of us officially considered disabled (my older daughter still won’t see a doctor and, really, I can’t blame her), that has changed our focus as well.
Which makes me appreciate days like today, when I can get out there and do things like drag tree trunks around! Even if I do need some help from my daughter. 😄
I so love it when the weather is good and I don’t have to go anywhere. I got so much done today – and it’s not even 2:30, yet, as I start this!
First was a morning of phone calls.
Priority was to call about my mother’s Meals on Wheels being cancelled. I got through to the kitchen number and talked to a woman there. She told me she had listened to my message, but there is no management in today, so she couldn’t find out more for me. She did check their list, though.
My mother’s name is still on it.
Her service did not get cancelled.
So what was the phone call she got about? That is a question for when a manager comes in, tomorrow!
Needless to say, my mother was both relieved and confused when I called to let her know she would be getting her Meals on Wheels as usual.
I also got through to the septic guy.
Yup.
His truck broke down.
He’ll be here tomorrow to clean out our tank.
We’re good with that – the weather will still be good, too.
That all done, it was time to head outside.
One of the first things I worked on was emptying the rain barrel by the sun room and setting it aside for the winter. It had a solid layer of ice on the top, so I had to use the ice scraper tool to chip a hole through. Thankfully, the barrel was not completely full, and I was able to carefully tip it over to drain. It took some doing, since the hole in the ice was just off centre, but I was eventually able to get it empty enough that I could tip it completely upside down. Then it could be rolled to the spot by the honeysuckle where it stays for the winter, lying on its side. There is still a thick layer of ice in it, so I made sure that end was facing south. There’s a chance it will at least melt enough to break apart or fall flat. The barrel will serve as extra potential critter shelter in the winter, so it would be good to get the ice out.
That done, I went and dragged the insulated tarp over to the septic tank, just in case we don’t get a straw bale soon. I’m not hearing back from the renter, who is the one I usually get it from. They did give me the names of others I might be able to get from, but I’d rather get it from the renters.
Bringing the tarp over meant going past the pile of bricks that used to be the chimney from the old wood furnace that isn’t used any more. When the new roof was done, that chimney was removed and I asked them to leave the bricks, rather than haul it away with the junk. The plan had been to use them as part of a path we plan to make along the back of the house that will eventually be part of a shade garden. They piled it all on an old tarp they could leave behind, and it’s been sitting there, ever since.
I didn’t want to move the pile twice, but I don’t know when we’ll be able to make that path and it’s in the way. So I cleaned that up, next.
That old chimney needed to be replaced back when my parents bought this place, before I was born. The chimney blocks I am now using as a retaining wall and for planters were meant for that, and it just never happened.
Those bricks were in terrible shape! Most were broken. There were a few whole bricks. I stacked those, and the larger broken pieces, against the pile of logs still sitting from when we had trees cut away from the roof, years ago. The tarp was intact enough that I could use it to drag away the collected debris and pieces too small to be worth keeping. That’s now with the junk pile for hauling to the dump.
It means moving the pile twice, but it’s now out of the way, and even sorted, more or less, so they’ll be easier to work with when we finally get around to making that path.
We’ll need more broken bricks, though. 😄
That done, it was time for the big job.
I was going to wait until after the tank was emptied, but decided to take my chances and clean up around the ejector today.
Grabbing gloves and tools, I headed out to the gap in the fence closest to it. This meant going through where some old farm equipment and various outbuildings are.
Plus some really massive burdock.
I started cutting back the burdock when I got distracted. There’s an old Farm Hand tractor that I’d cut clear of self seeded maples a few years back. They were growing back. Since I had the loppers with me and was using them to cut the burdock, I cut the maple suckers away from the tractor. That didn’t take very long, though, so I was back to cutting away the burdock. Several of the burdock stems were thicker than the maple suckers I’d cut away from the tractor! Try as I might, I couldn’t avoid getting burrs stuck to me, so pulling those off was fun. Not.
I didn’t clear it all away, though. Just enough to make a path to the opening in the fence. There’s just the renter’s electric wire across it. There are some huge willow trees there, so the cows don’t seem to try to get through the opening here, unlike the old gate opening, which has a chain across it, as well as the electric wire. They do go under the willows enough to graze the tall grass on that side of the fence down, though.
The cows were moved off some time ago, so the electric fence is not hooked up to a power source right now.
In the first picture, I’m standing in the lower area the grey water is supposed to be draining towards. You can just see the small trench I made to help it flow through. The whole area was really rough after the excavator buried the new ejector, so that needed to be worked around.
Those boulders and all the other rocks you can see were from the hole they dug to reach the pipe.
The second picture in the slide show above is where the problem lies. Instead of draining down the slope, things are pooling at the end of the old sheet of metal roofing that’s there as a diverter. The snow fence is something my brother had put around to keep the renter’s cows from accidentally trampling the new ejector. It’s nowhere near as tall as the old one was.
The third picture is of the inside of the fenced area, where the diverter is. Yes, there is a long sheet of metal hiding under that mess!
The last picture in that series is the view from just inside the “gate” of the snow fence.
I had to cut my way through burdock to get to the fence and access the area. To get to the rigged gate of the snow fence, I had to cut my way through Canadian Thistle. Those were as big as the burdock, and getting stuck on those was a lot more painful!
Inside the snow fenced area, it was mostly old nettles I had to get through, plus some young burdock and a LOT of crab grass. Plus a few burrs.
This is what it looks like, after I cleared all that out as best I could.
One of the main concerns with laying that sheet down as a diverter was that it might get blown away, so we put some logs and a big rock on it, to prevent that from happening. In the first picture, you can see the logs at the end.
The second pictures shows the first part of the problem. So much debris had lain over the metal, it actually flattened it on one side that the grey water was, at least partly, draining off of their instead of all the way to the end.
In the third picture, you can sort of make out the other part of the problem. The soil is rough and there’s a bit of a lump on one side. It seems to be just enough to keep the grey water from flowing to the lower area. Instead, it’s draining to a different area, where it is pooling, first.
Worse, it was also flooding back under the diverter.
Last year, we had to use the emergency diverter for the grey water to be pumped into the yard, far from the house, because the new ejector froze. With the ground around it saturated, because the grey water isn’t flowing away as it should, there is a risk of that happening again.
The first thing to do was to get those logs off (the rock didn’t need to be moved) and clear the debris off the diverter. The logs then went under the sides of the sheet to create more of a channel, which you can see the start of, in the first picture below.
There was still the problem of things pooling at the end, instead of flowing away. I’d already opened up the trench more, but there was still that lump of soil that prevented the grey water from draining straight to the trench. There was no way I was going to be able to level that whole area enough with just a spade. Plus, the soil is already partially frozen.
The diverter needed an extension.
I went over to the pile of stuff nearby, where we’d salvaged this sheet of metal from in the first place, and looked around. There are still cast off pieces of metal roofing in there. I found a shorter one that I could use.
It took some fussing to get it under the snow fence, then under the big diverter sheet. The smaller piece was already curving on its own, so I could take advantage of that. I set it at a bit of an angle, then used rocks to flatten it more on one side, while raising it up on the other – then added more rocks on top, to make sure it didn’t blow away.
This left a corner of the metal sticking up, and that was something the renter’s cows could get injured on. I needed to make some sort of barrier.
Well, there are those willows nearby, and willows are known for dropping their branches. I had lots of deadwood around to drag over!
In the third picture, I tried to stand in the same place is when I took the first “before” picture. There’s a willow branch that does off to the left. Out of frame, it’s actually still attached to the tree. I dragged it across, but it wouldn’t break all the way, and I didn’t have the tools to do anything about it. I decided to take advantage of it, instead, and it added to the deadwood barrier I was making.
The fourth picture is the “after” shot from just inside the makeshift gate. Looking so much better!
The fifth picture is after I adjusted a bit more at the end. It looked like there was still a possibility of grey water flowing back under the long sheet, after pouring onto the new extension, so I put more support under one side that will hopefully prevent that from happening. I also stepped on key points, on both sides of the snow fence, to bend the metal and make the channel more defined. You can see that on the outside, in the last photo.
With the tank not emptied yet, this whole time I was working, it was possible that the pump would be triggered and I’d have grey water to deal with while I worked. All it would have taken was someone flushing a toilet or washing some dishes. It seems the pump’s float had been triggered recently enough that it didn’t happen. I did consider asking a daughter to turn it on manually, so I could see how it flowed with the new set up, but in the end, decided against it. If the tank was recently pumped out, there might not have been enough greywater to run through, and I didn’t want the pump running dry. I can check on it later and will be able to see.
Once the septic guy empties the tank, it will be a while before the grey water side is filled enough to trigger the pump. Hopefully, that will give the soil enough time to drain. It shouldn’t need long, since it’s all sand and gravel, but we do have a lot of clay, too, so it’s hard to say. Between the cleaned up diverter, the heat tape that’s still on the above ground portion of the ejector, and the wind shelter my brother built around it, hopefully it won’t freeze again this winter!
So that was the main project I wanted to work on today. I still want to head out again later to see what else I can get done while it’s still light out and warm enough. I don’t be digging up and cleaning any garden beds, but there’s always something that needs to be done! Since I’m taking the truck in on Thursday and going to my mother’s on Friday, I basically have today and tomorrow to get as much done as possible. After Friday, the day time highs are expected to just barely rise above freezing, so it’s hard to say what progress can be done after that.
I can’t believe almost half of November is already gone. Where did it go???
The rest of the month is expected to be relatively mild. With or without progress outside, I am appreciating that. The older I get, the less I enjoy winter. My hands are cracking and splitting from the dry cold already, just for starters. Winter is just rougher on everything, from our bodies to the house to the truck to the yard cats… everything!
So I am enjoying and appreciating every bit of mild weather we can get!
Today was going to be a warmer, less windy day. My plan had been to get out the chain saw and start breaking down some of the fallen trees. It’s an electric chain saw and in the end, I decided I didn’t want to be dragging an extension cord – two 100ft extension cords, most likely – across the yard to do the job, when getting more garden beds cleaned up would be more productive.
I didn’t head out until after lunch, though, waiting for things to warm up a bit. This morning, though, I got a call from my mother. It was about a minute or two after 9am. When I answered, the first thing she did was ask me if I’d just phoned. Someone had called her but hung up before she could get to the phone to pick it up, and they didn’t wait for the answering machine. My mother’s phone does have caller ID, but she doesn’t know how to use it.
I had not called, of course. If I did, I would have left a message. I’ve told her that a few times, but she still does this.
Which turned out to be a good thing because she then told me that home care didn’t show up (at 9am), so she took her pills herself.
Now, I know she has the correct time on her clocks because my brother had changed all her battery operated clocks for daylight savings while he was there. She also has a “dementia clock” he got for her, which shows the date, day, time, and has images to show if it’s day time or night time. That one changes itself for daylight savings.
I really like that clock and am considering picking one up for myself!
My mother had mentioned hiding a bubble pack away, just in case, a few weeks back. I had been going through her lock box to see if she was in need of refills, and it has several weeks worth of bubble packs, so I wasn’t sure how she could have a spare to set aside. I told her I was checking to see if it was time to pick up her refills soon, and she got mad at me because she had lots, so why was I wanting to pick up refills? This is a regular thing. She refuses to consider getting refills before she runs out, but leaves it until she’s on her last day or two.
Anyhow, when I said, don’t do that, give them time to get there, she immediately said, ok, I won’t do that anymore. Which, knowing her, meant she’ll do it but just not tell me anymore. Again, she has done this before.
Meanwhile, I looked up to confirm her schedule that I got emailed to me from home care. I had called and talked to her about her new schedule and times yesterday. Her first visit of the day was scheduled for 9:15, and they had 20 minutes scheduled to help her out. I had repeated the times to her several times and explained that she would be getting a lunch visit now, too.
So she had taken her secret pills before calling me which, considering what time she called me, after just missing another call, meant she had actually taken them at least 5 minutes before 9, when she claimed she was expecting them to come AT 9am. So even if they had been scheduled for 9, she had already decided they weren’t going to show up and took her meds from her secret stash.
My mom didn’t talk for long, which is out of character for her, but as soon as the call was done, I updated my siblings, sent an email to the home care coordinator about it, since the first scheduled visit on the day was still to come, then called my mother’s pharmacy.
I confirmed that they had delivered her refills to her on the 17th, which explains why there were so many bubble packs in her lock box when I checked. I was supposed to pick them up for her, specifically so I could put them in the lock box right away. Since they were delivered, that meant she had access to them until the next home care worker arrived and could put them in the lock box.
I explained what happened and they now have instructions to not deliver refills to my mother anymore. Instead, when the refills are ready, they will call me, and I will pick them up and get them into her lock box right away.
By the time that call was done and I updated my siblings about it, I had a response from the coordinator about it. She was worried that this might have been older pills that my mother had stashed away, so I was able to confirm that these were part of her most recent refills. The home care workers can’t look for her hidden stash, but the last time this happened, she showed the worker the stash herself and the worker was able to put them into the lock box. If they are in the open, or my mother brings them out herself, only then can they take them and put them in the lock box. My siblings and I can, of course, actually search for them, if necessary.
My mother’s first visit of the day was done by the time the home care coordinator got back to me – as soon as she got my email, she would have called the scheduled aide to let her know my mother had already taken the pills for the morning – and was able to update me. My mother had allowed the worker to make her breakfast, but was not willing to let her help her with washing herself. We’re trying to be delicate with this; we can understand my mother not being willing to allow someone to assist with such intimate care. The problem is, she needs the help. She sponge bathes herself, because she’s afraid of falling in the shower, even though her shower is an adapted one and has a built in seat. Sponge bathing only accomplishes so much, since it’s hard to reach in areas, and extra hard for someone of my mother’s size and with mobility issues. So we’re all going to have to encourage her to accept that help. We haven’t been saying anything to her directly but, the truth is, sometimes we can tell that my mother hasn’t been able to clean herself properly – and I have a terrible sense of smell.
For someone who is self aware enough to actually WANT to be in a nursing home and is upset that, after all this time (we started this more than a year ago), she still can’t get in, you’d think she would actually be willing to accept the sort of help she would be getting while living in a nursing home, while still in the comfort of her own home.
The home care coordinator has already submitted her panel report, after her most recent interview with my mother. Hopefully, between that and my mother actually accepting the help she is scheduled for, she will finally be accepted for a bed in a nursing home.
Now, if my mother would just stop self sabotaging herself!
Anyhow.
After a frustrating morning, I did have a productive afternoon.
The first area I decided to work on was the newly re-finished bed in the old kitchen garden.
Along with the weeding, there were plenty of “presents” from the cats to get rid of. I thought it would need more soil added but, once it was weeded and no longer compacted, the soil level was even with the top of the retaining wall blocks!
Once it was all cleaned up, I raked up leaves to mulch it for the winter, mostly to keep the cats from using it as a litter box.
I know I stopped to take a picture of the bed after it was finished, but I must have failed to do it somehow, because there was no “after” picture on my phone!
The bed itself did have tree roots in it as well – mostly from the crab apple trees, but I’m pretty sure some of them were from the pink rose bush and the double lilac bush, too. It wasn’t all that bed, though.
That done, I turned my attention to the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed. It had already been cleaned up, but the cats had been digging in it. I got that all cleaned up, then gave it a leaf mulch, too.
Collecting the leaves was actually more difficult than cleaning up either bed. It was still pretty windy today, and every time I tried to rake leaves into piles, then get them into the wheelbarrow, the wind would blow a substantial portion away!
The beds old kitchen garden are now finished for the winter.
That done, there was still enough light in the day to get one more bed done. This time, I went to the main garden area.
I decided to work on the bed that had the garlic and summer squash in it.
The part that had garlic in it has been empty for some time, so a fair number of weeds had taken over. Mostly, it was tree roots I was expecting to have issues with, and I did, right from the end furthest from the elm trees. So I loosened the soil around the entire before before I settled into actually digging in to weed and remove rocks. That way, any roots I did find would be easier to pull out.
In the end, most of the roots I found were running across the bed instead of running the length of it, which also made them easier to remove. I did find one large root running through, but it was large enough and deep enough that I decided not to fight with it and just left it.
I hope I don’t regret that.
In the second picture, you can see the bed after it was all cleaned up. You can also see the pile of roots and weeds I pulled out at one end, plus some of the rocks I’d been pulling out, tossed onto the fabric covering the ground nearby. While it was in reach, I was tossing them into the kiddie poll, so what is visible in the picture is nowhere near all of what I pulled out.
In the last picture, you can see the bed, covered with plastic for the winter. Again, this is more to keep the cats out than anything else!
In this area, there is one more 18′ bed that needs to be cleaned up, plus the 4′ square bed, off to the side, that I transplanted the surviving Albion Everbearing strawberries out of. If I do get to that small bed before the hard frosts hit, it will be winter sown with bread seed poppies.
Outside of this area, there is one more 9’x3′ raised bed, plus the 4′ square bed, in the East yard to clear up. Those should not take long at all.
Depending on the weather, and if I have time to gather and process materials, the only bed that will be left to work on is the one along the chain link fence. Considering how long it took me to do the bed in the old kitchen garden, I might get this one started this year, but will probably be finishing it next year! Maybe. With the one in the old kitchen garden, I was experimenting more before finally figuring out things weren’t working as I wanted and coming up with an alternative. That alternative is what I plant to do in the chain link fence bed, so there is no “figuring out” time to factor in. Just a “gathering materials” time. Looking at the long range forecast, there is a possibility we’ll have decent weather for such work, after the other beds are cleared up. Those beds have priority. If the weather doesn’t hold, that’s okay. These can be done in the spring.
By the time I was done, things were getting dark and chilly, and it was definitely time to get inside!
Ghosty had been sleeping across Cheddar when I stopped to take the picture, and disturbed her nap in the process.
She does not look impressed by the interruption!
I just looked over to see is they were still there and yes, they are – but have traded places! Ghosty is now curled up in the cat bed, and Cheddar has been squeezed off to the side, half on top of Ghosty, busily grooming Ghosty’s face.
That’s Tin Whistle on the bottom, mid yawn. Nuzzled into her is Toni. I think that’s Shadow using Toni as a pillow. Or it might be Clarence. Clarence is there as I write this, but without seeing distinctive face features, I can’t tell Shadow, Clarence and Mitsy apart.
Toni is not a cat that seeks out attention from humans, in general, so I’m glad to see that she gets along with the other cats as well as she does.
Anyhow, that’s been my day for today.
Tomorrow, I take the truck in for an oil change and for them to check out the work done in the city to make sure everything it all right. I have to remember to ask them to take care of a burnt out headlight for me, too. I already got the bulb, but it’s a pain in the butt to access the light to switch the bulb.
I got an email from the company we did our insurance and registration with, letting me know that it’s time to renew. The vehicle registration and insurance doesn’t need me to do anything, since they’ll just continue taking monthly payments, as usual, but it’s also time to renew my driver’s license. Normally, I would get something in the mail with all the information, including any changes in how much things will cost, and I could take care of it online. However, with the Canada Post strike disruptions, I haven’t gotten the letter. So after I drop off the truck, I’ll walk over and take care of it in person. I also need to take cash out so we can get the septic tank emptied for the winter. After that tank is emptied, we will winterize it as usual, but I also want to set up the emergency diverter, just in case. This way, if the ejector freezes again, all we would need to do is open the shut off valve to the emergency diverter, and not have to be digging around in the snow to set up the pipe and hose outside.
So I will be out for most of tomorrow and, if all goes well, I’ll be finally doing our Costco stop up trip the day after. These are pretty much our last two “warm” days before temperatures drop a fair bit. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, we’ll then get about a week of relatively warmer weather to potentially get more done outside. We shall see what actually happens! This time of year, it’s always touch and go.
I’m just glad I got more beds done. It means less that needs to be done next year, and there is no hurry on getting those fallen trees broken down and cleaned up.
I got back from the city early enough, and it was still warm enough, to get some progress done in the garden.
My first priority was to winter sow in the east yard low raised beds. Two of these beds were already prepped, but not covered in any way, so they did require some clean up. The cats have been using them as litter boxes!
Some of their “presents” were astonishingly huge.
Ew.
My original plan had been to do the kohlrabi and cabbage on the outside of the beds, then have peas down the middle of one, while leaving a gap in the middle of the other to plant pole beans in the spring.
I forgot. The kohlrabi and cabbage will need to be covered in netting to keep them from being decimated by flea beetles and cabbage moths. Having something growing on a trellis in the middle is probably not a good idea!
In the first picture below, the beds are cleaned up, leveled and rows marked out.
In the second picture, you can see the planted rows of purple and white kohlrabi. If I had gone ahead with the plan to grow pole beans down the middle, these rows would have been further apart. I decided to stick with just the two rows and moved them closer to the middle. These raised beds are more prone to freezing than the beds in the main garden area, simply because the boards are so much thinner than the logs used in the longer beds. We’ve lost almost entire beds of garlic over the winter due to excessive cold, even with a mulch. I’m hoping that, with sowing them closer to the middle, deep mulching them with leaves, plus the predicted milder winter we’re expected to have, they will survive. The plant spacing for these, according to the package, is 4-6 inches, so I tried to scatter the seeds with my little hand seeder fairly lightly. If they survive and germinate, they will still need to be thinned later on, but not by too much. Hopefully, if I have the space, the will be thinned by transplanting.
In the next picture, I have the Purple Savoy cabbage. This is the first time we’ve tried to grow cabbage. I originally planned to have two rows on the outside, then peas in the middle, but decided to do three rows of cabbage. As they need about a foot per cabbage for spacing, I tried to scatter two or three seeds every foot or so, though a few spots accidentally got quite a bit more! You can sort of see a grid in the soil, from where the seeds were covered and the soil gently pressed down, while the rest of the rows I made with a hoe remain untouched.
Grommet REALLY wanted to “help” me with the sowing!
I had made sure to rake up plenty of leaves into the wagon and the wheelbarrow before I started, and was able to give the beds a good mulching for the winter. Then I transferred one of the raised bed covers for the winter. There is another one on the third bed I could move over, but I decided against it. That cover’s wire mesh does not have hoops to support it. Cats would knock that flat and out of shape in a heartbeat. So it’s up on top of the box frame one the other bed, which I’ve found surprisingly useful. I plan to make more 3′ x 9′ covers like this over time, but we need to buy more lumber for it, first.
That done, it was time to shift over to the old kitchen garden.
The cats have been having a field day in the cleaned up wattle weave bed, so that got a clean up, first. My plan is to winter sow dwarf peas in the back of the south facing section of the wattle weave bed, and transplant any onions, etc that I found in the rectangular bed in the front.
That… might not quite work out! At least, not so much for the onions part.
The first thing was to harvest the remaining Swiss Chard. It wasn’t until I uploaded the pictures onto Instagram that I realized I forgot them outside! They should be okay overnight.
In the second picture, you can see an area on the south side of the bed, where the cats dug into the dirt. I suspect there was a mouse or something that got their attention for them to dig it out that much. There had been grass clippings chinked in the gap between the logs, but that disappeared. It’s been filled repeatedly, and the cats keep pulling it out. So one of the things I needed to do was find a way to block that gap in a cat proof way.
Once the chard and remaining kohlrabi roots were cleared out, it was time to loosen the soil, pull the weeds and set aside any little onions I found.
I found so many, I started just tossing them with the weeds after a while!
What I really wanted to find out is what was going on with what looked like a cluster of garlic coming up, and another cluster of what I thought were onions but, as they got larger, the leaves started to look like some sort of ornamental allium, instead.
In the next picture, you can see that there were two entire bulbs of garlic that somehow got missed! I planted garlic in here a couple of years ago. This year, two garlic bulbs grew among the seed mix in this bed. They grew into nice sized bulbs that got harvested.
Now I find two full bulbs of garlic that somehow got missed over two growing seasons! I will probably separate the cloves and transplant them.
Next to the garlic is the cluster of alliums growing near by that did turn out to be onions. Several of them were growing together like bunching onions, rather than bulb onions, but I’ve never grown bunching onions. They are large enough that I will probably transplant them, too.
In the next photo, you can see most of the other onions I found while cleaning the bed. There were so many tiny ones! One red onion was quite large. I will transplant the larger ones, but I don’t know if I’ll bother with the teeny ones.
While working across the bed, I was finding a surprising number of roots. Some were definitely from the rose bush at the end of the bed, but it’s possible others were from the ornamental crap apples and the double lilac. It definitely made the job take longer. As I worked my way up the bed, I took advantage of having lots of old stakes handy from the bed along the retaining wall, before the wattle weaving was added on top of the retaining wall blocks. Some of the largest, strongest ones were used to stabilize the top side logs, as their supports were getting old and starting to break.
To block the gap, I used some flat pieces of scrap wood that were in the corner, then a whole bunch of old stakes, on the inside of the wall. Once the bed is done and ready for planting, these will be mostly buried and hidden from view.
As you can tell by the last picture, and the flash needed for the pictures of the onion and garlic, I had to stop before it was all finished. It was simply getting too dark. I was working by the light of the shop lights at the sun room window by then, and those were on only because their motion sensors were being triggered.
I don’t have anywhere to be at tomorrow, so I’ll be able to finish the job then, and do more winter sowing. I should also be able to clean out that little bed off by itself in the main garden area, where I’ve decided to plant bread seed poppies. Since I didn’t winter sow a variety of peas I’d meant to plant between the cabbage, I’m considering finding somewhere else to winter sow them. Once the dwarf peas are planted, that’s two varieties of peas that are winter sown, so leaving the third variety I was planning to winter sow for the spring would be fine, too. I also have our own saved sugar snap pea seeds that can be sown in the spring.
The rectangular bed that’s being cleared now will have beets and tiny bok choi winter sown in it, probably interplanted with some of those onions and/or garlic I’ve been finding! I was thinking of planting something down the middle, but I can’t for the life of me remember what that was right now. I’ve got diagrams drawn out, but those are in the basement, along with my seed inventory.
So that’s the garden and winter sowing status, for now. We should have a nice head start into next year’s garden, if this works out.
I will also be making what will probably be my last garden tour video of the year. Last year, I ended up doing my October video using video recorded on November 1, because the video I’d taken on October 31 was done too late in the day, and everything was too dark. So I want to make sure to get it done earlier, and earlier in the day.
Thankfully, it looks like the weather will hold for a while yet, and I should be able to get other things done before the snow flies. We’ll see how that works out!
Once I was done winter sowing in between the garlic and mulching that bed, it was time to start getting the old kitchen garden beds ready.
In this garden, the plan is to have things that mature faster, or that we can harvest from regularly throughout the season, with it eventually becoming more of an herb garden. I do plan to winter sow in at least the two larger beds, so it was time to get cleaning!
I decided to start on the wattle weave bed, and to finally transplant those tiny strawberries.
Which, amazingly, are not only still very green, but still blooming and producing! At this point, though, the tiny strawberries get mushy almost as soon as they ripen.
These strawberries were grown from seed that came in a kit aimed at kids that I got on sale a few years back. There was no variety named, and it was a surprise to find they produced such tiny strawberries. I don’t know if they are a variety of wild strawberry, or an alpine strawberry or whatever. They are very productive and ridiculously hardy, but the berries are so small and tasty for about an eye blink of peak ripeness, I don’t want them taking up space in the garden bed that could be used for something more productive. However, I don’t want to just get rid of them, either. I’ve been debating with myself for some time, trying to figure out where to transplant them where they can stay.
The first photos is the first section I wanted to work in, with two clusters of strawberries, plus three more in the bend of the L shaped bed.
I decided to transplant them into the retaining wall blocks along the west end of the garden. At one end, three blocks have chives in them, with one open block right at the corner. The rest of the blocks have mint planted in alternating blocks. The other blocks have had a variety of things planted in them, but this year I hadn’t tried to grow anything in them. There were just a few onions surviving from several years ago; they start growing every year, but never get far, yet somehow survive to grow another year!
Surprisingly, the mint has not been doing very well. The original of this mint is from my late grandmother’s garden, and had been taking over a large area of the old kitchen garden. I do want to keep some and transplanted them into the blocks, so we could focus on getting rid of the ones that were invading the rest of the garden. This spring, hardly any mint grew anywhere, though the blocks turn out to be doing a poor job of controlling their spread. Still, we didn’t have enough to make it worth harvesting any.
Since I didn’t plant anything in the “spare” blocks this year, they just needed a quick prep. Right?
Ha!
They turned out to be so full of roots! There were invasive flowers and roots from the ornamental crabapples, mostly. I pulled out so much material, some of which you can see in the second picture of the slide show above, the soil level in the blocks dropped by several inches!
I also found three surviving onions to transplant later. One bed that should have had mint in it, didn’t anymore, while the bed next to it had mint that it shouldn’t have, so I transplanted those right away.
Once the blocks were cleaned out and ready, I dug out a clump of strawberries and started separating individual plants.
After failing at that for a while, I got a bucket of water from the rain barrel and started dipping and swishing the roots around until I could finally start pulling them apart.
There were so many individual plants in there, I ended up filling all nine available blocks, some with two plants in one block.
There were still four more clusters of strawberries!
You can see the blocks after transplanting in the next photo. They got a thorough watering. The blocks dry out pretty fast, plus I need to empty the rain barrel.
I decided to leave the three clusters in the bend of the bed, but what was I to do with the second cluster in the area I needed to clear?
Well…
I did have more of those blocks to plant in.
In the next picture, you can see there’s a row of eight of them along the chain link fence by the people gate. I hadn’t planted anything in them this year. I had some concerns on how they would be. The last time I tried to clean up those blocks, I ended up having to move them out completely, because they were so full of Chinese Elm roots, it was the only way they could be cleared.
The last time I tried to grow anything in them, it was tomatoes in 7 of them, and a summer squash in the eighth. The tomatoes did okay, but the squash really struggled. My expectations for today were quite low.
Much to my surprise, they actually were pretty clear! It was mostly crab grass I had to remove. I was pleasantly surprised.
That done, I dug out the other cluster of strawberries and – live and learn! – dumped them into the bucket of fresh water from the rain barrel and brought them over. The next while was spent getting the individual plants separated – these strawberries do not have runners! – and setting them out. This time, I counted.
In the end, I had 21 strawberry plants to go into 8 blocks.
Most of them got three plants each, but I saved the largest ones to be planted in pairs, which you can see in the last photo.
I have no idea if the strawberries will survive in these blocks, but they are so hardy, I figure if anything can, it’s them!
That done, I could finally start cleaning up the wattle weave bed!
Here is how it looked before I started, with the frost killed pepper and remaining three eggplant plants still there.
Those Turkish Orange Eggplant did not handle any cold well, but they had a surprise for me. When I’d harvested most of the eggplants, I’d cut the stems with pruning shears rather than pulling them out by the roots. The remaining stumps were showing new growth!
Where the eggplants had been, there’s a protective collar around a few mystery plants I’d found while cleaning up other beds in the spring. They appear to possibly be types of lily. I want to find out, so those were left alone in their protective collar. They are still green and growing, whatever they are! Perhaps next year, they will bloom and we’ll see what they are.
Near where the remaining strawberries are, there had been a few red onions growing, one of which had gone to seed. I dug those up for transplanting while cleaning up the bed.
It went quite quickly. There were basically no weeds in there, though there were some roots from the double lilac the bed wraps around. A bit of crab grass and another type of invasive flower we’ve been fighting, and that was it.
Once the bed was clean and clear, the red onions, plus the yellow onions I dug out of the retaining wall blocks, were transplanted at the end near the protective flower collar, which you can see in the second picture of the slide show above.
When I clear the rectangular bed, I expect to find more onions, and possibly garlic. Depending on how many there are, I will transplant them all along the front of the south facing section of the wattle weave bed. Aside from that, I will be planting the dwarf peas in there. These are a variety that don’t need trellising, so that should work out in this bed.
Next, it was time to work on where the peppers were grown. The dead plants were pulled – all of these were set aside for trench composting, later – and the soil cleaned up and loosened, which you can see in the next picture. Once again, there was almost nothing to clean out. It did have more of the lilac roots invading, but nothing major. I haven’t decided what to put in this section, yet. I’m thinking herbs. Possibly fennel, as both herb and vegetable, but that will not be for winter sowing.
One of the pepper plants had a tiny pepper I hadn’t bothered to harvest when I brought them in to ripen indoors. As an experiment, I broke it open and it did have seeds in it. I had loosened the soil between the strawberry plants, so I scattered the seeds between the strawberries and the back of the bed and lightly buried them. Who knows. They might survive the winter, and we’ll have pepper seedlings in the spring!
The last picture is how it looked when the bed was all cleaned up.
By then, it was past 3:30 and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I headed indoors for a while. My younger daughter had food ready, so I was able to get back out again, while it was still light.
I didn’t want to start on the rectangular bed, as that will involve harvesting the last of the Swish Chard, and transplanting any onions and garlic I find. There wasn’t enough daylight left to start that large of a job.
Instead, I started working on stakes. These will be for what had started out as a wattle weave wall in the bed beside the retaining wall, which wasn’t working out. I’ve decided to make a different type of wall, and need a lot more stakes to hold things.
My brother had cut away the maple sucker that were growing back behind the pump shack, so he could access things and run power to their home-away-from-home. I’d cleaned up the pile and set aside the straightest ones. Today, I moved those over and trimmed away side branches and twigs and so on. I got quite a nice pile of strong sticks to use as stakes.
The stakes will be shorter than the ones already in place, so I went looking for the shortest of the pieces I had in the pile, which was pretty much the size I wanted. I then fired up the miter saw and trimmed the ends. That became the piece I cut all the other ones to match in length, more or less. They don’t need to be exact as, once they are pounded into the ground, they’re never going to be exactly the same height, anyhow. They just need to be close, and will be trimmed later, if needed.
I double checked my count, and will need 15 stakes to add to this wall – three in the spaces between each of the stakes currently there. I cut 16, just in case. I was also left with some leftover pieces that were shorter, but close enough that they could be used, if necessary. Those are set aside, just in case.
Once I had the pieces cut to size, I got to use my favourite tools to work with! My draw knife, and the big vice in the workshop side of the garage, which you can see in the next photo.
There is something so satisfying about using a draw knife.
The next photo, all the stakes now have points on them. It was time to debark!
I set up a camp chair in the old kitchen garden, next to a spot that had been overrun by mint at one point. I’ve been putting rhubarb and kohl rabi leaves over it as a mulch to choke out the mint and crab grass, and that’s where I wanted to drop the bark. The next while was spent pulling the bark off, withthe aid of a utility knife. The wood was still very green, so it was easy going, overall. By the time I was done, it was around 7pm and starting to get quite dark! I took the pile of debarked stakes into the sun room, where there was enough light to get a picture, which is the last one in the slide show above.
It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so I won’t be able to get any more progress done outside. The day after, the installers for the door should be able to finally come over to get the job done. I’ll be leaving for my eye appointment, shorter after noon, but I should have time to at least drive the stakes in where they need to go. That’s Tuesday. Wednesday, I’ll be at my mother’s to do her grocery shopping and for her appointment with home care for a re-assessment of her care needs. Which means the earliest I’ll be able to continue prepping beds and winter sowing is Thursday.
Things are supposed to start warming up on Friday and for the weekend. At this point, I have no appointments, nor planned errands other than a dump run on Saturday. If all goes well, I hope to actually be able to finish cleaning up all the remaining beds, and get the last of the winter sowing done.
If things go REALLY super-duper well, I might even be able to harvest more dead spruces and build more beds before the snow flies.
I am very happy to say, I got another bed in the main garden area done today!
I decided to work on the trellis bed, as I figured it would take the least time. I was going to loose light fast, and it was getting cold and damp!
This bed had the sunflowers, pumpkins, red noodle beans, onions – mostly self seeded – and self seeded Spoon tomatoes in it.
My first order of business was to loosen the soil enough to pull up the remains of the sunflowers and set them aside in the wheelbarrow, for later use.
You can see how the bed looked, once the sunflowers were out.
From there, I wanted to work the opposite side, where there are still onions. Some grew well and went to seed. Others just sort of disappeared. Still others were tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted along the one side, in hopes they would have enough season to grow.
Most of those disappeared, too.
Some, however, had started to show new growth!
I wanted to dig up what onions survived and replant them as seed onions again.
For the first pass, I just loosened the soil with the garden fork enough to find and remove what onions I could see. A couple of the ones that went to seed were completely spent and went into the wheelbarrow, but all the onions I found were set aside for later.
In the second picture of the above slide show, you can see what I pulled up, plus four tiny onions I’d found while cleaning up elsewhere and set aside for today.
I knew I would find more, once I started doing a thorough weeding, which I certainly did. Quite a few were hiding in the soil. There were a surprising number of larger ones that should have grown and gone to seed this year. Some of them were showing growth only now! In the third picture, you can see the final number of onions I’d found. Most were red onions, but a few little ones were yellow onions. There’s one big yellow onion that had gone to seed.
Cleaning up the bed did go a lot faster than the other beds. What a difference one more log in height makes! I did find tree roots, but nowhere near as many, and not as close to the surface. There were also almost no rocks at all. I was hitting rocks with the garden fork as I loosened soil, but they were further down than what I was clearing of weeds. What few rocks I uncovered could be tossed into the trees. No bucket needed!
Towards the end of the clean up, I was really pushing to get done. I could hear thunder in the distance, and the wind was picking up. I thought I might have to stop before finishing when it started to rain, but then the rain moved on, and I got it done!
Once the weeding was done, I used the landscape rack to pull the soil to the sides to make a trench in the middle. That’s where the sunflower stalks and pumpkin vines got trench composted. I even included the frost killed sunflower heads. They were killed off before any seeds could reach viability, so they should be okay to bury.
Once the stalks and vines were laid out in the trench, I stomped on them a few times. Then I paused to take the next picture in the slide show above, before burying it.
When everything was buried, I raked up the weeds and roots I’d pulled out. In the next picture of the slide show, you can see what was the smallest pile of weeds I’d pulled up yet!
Then, I started planting onions. In the next picture of the slide show, there’s the finished bed and the onions visible. They were planted all along one side, plus the ends.
The last picture is of the row along the side of the bed.
For this bed, I am considering winter sowing one of our shelling pea varieties along the trellis side of the bed, then something planted in the spring, in between.
While these onions are meant to be left to grow seeds, I do intend to start onions indoors for spring transplanting. They would need to be started in January or February.
I’m so glad I got that bed done, and got rained on only a little bit!
There are a couple more beds there to work on that I expect will have a lot more elm roots in them. I am hoping to be able to get at least one bed done tomorrow. Two, if the weather holds!
I’m actually kind of dreading it, though, as I expect the roots to be bad in them.
Meanwhile, as I was putting things away and tidying up, I noticed a lot of dead walking onion stalks and a WHOLE lot more new growth. I cleaned up the dead bits, being careful not to damage any of the new growth. Any bulbils on the stalks I cut away got broken off and returned to the soil for more growth.
There are so many weeds in there, but that doesn’t seem to bother the onions any!
You can also see almost all the herbs in the tiny raised bed are doing well. Just the basil got killed by the cold. The chives are also doing well, and some are even blooming!
By the time all that was done, I was more than happy to get inside to warm up with a hot cup of tea and supper…
… plus my daughters’ fresh baked cookies, for dessert.
All in all, it was a productive day, even in the garden, after being gone for so long!
I’d say I did have a productive day today, though not quite how I originally planned.
Being a warmer day, I was going to head outside to work in the garden earlier, but with my telephone appointment from the sports injury clinic in the afternoon, I decided I didn’t want to be working in the dirt before handling the phone.
So I worked with epoxy, instead.
My mother had an angel statue in her apartment for many years. It’s meant to be outdoors in a yard or garden, but she kept it in her living room. It’s about three and a half feet tall and, I’ve determined today, made of fiberglass.
My mother has been trying to get us to take things or claim things of hers for when she “goes up up”, and she decided the angel should go here to the farm. My brother and I decided that it will be set up by the gate, for our vandal to see the next time he gets all creepy for the cameras again. My mother loved that idea!
As we were taking it from her place, though, my brother discovered one of the wings was cracked. We didn’t want water to get in, so we wanted to use some epoxy on it to seal it up, first.
I decided I would do this today, so that we could get it outside by the weekend. We already have a spot for it, with a chunk of old side walk block for it to stand on. I just have to figure out how to secure it, or the angel will go flying in the wind!
I had picked up some clear epoxy for it. When my brother came out this past weekend, he brought me some clear epoxy for it, too – the exact same stuff that I’d picked up! So we have extra now. 😁
The type I got has a plunger that squeezes out both the resin and hardener in equal amounts at the same time, which made things easy. I mixed a bit up and applied it to the crack. There’s no way to clamp such an odd shape, though, so I had to try and press the edges of the crack together with my hands while the epoxy set.
So now I had to figure out how to set the angel so I could use gravity to help me hold the wing in place, so I could epoxy the whole thing together. At least we could see that no water would get into the body of the angel.
As I tried setting the angel flat on the floor, I heard another cracking noise.
The angel is holding a bird in its hands. I just broke a wing tip off.
*sigh*
I was able to lean the angel against a shelf, applied the epoxy to the wing and had to stand there and hold it in place for at least 5 minutes, which is what the packaging says is the set time. It was probably closer to 10 minutes before I felt I could let it be and could go do something else for awhile.
While I was standing there, holding the wing in place, I could see on the other wing why it broke off so easily. The wings were added onto the angel separately, and I could see a seam where the wing joined the body.
You can see on the second picture, how it looked before I finally dared straighten the angel back up again. Then I mixed up a bit more epoxy, and attached the broken wing tip onto the bird. I had to sit there and hold it in place, too. This time, I remembered to use the timer on my phone. After 5 minutes, I moved away to start putting away the epoxy syringe into its packaging when I heard a clunk. The wing tip fell off! So I held it for another 10 minutes. It seems to be holding fine, now.
When it gets set out, I’ll probably just find a way to tie it down to the concrete base to keep it from blowing away, for now. Eventually, I will make a little flower garden around it. Since that area is lower and tends to flood in the spring, I am thinking to dig out some of the sod in the lower area, where I can see someone started to make a ditch at some point, and use that as the base to build up soil around the agnel. I am thinking of bringing rocks to frame the flower bed. Digging up sod from nearby will create a deeper, mini-pond like area for the spring run off to collect in, and maybe I won’t be slogging through water when switching out the trail came for a change!
That is for the future, though. The important thing is so make sure the wind won’t carry the angel away!
Like it tried to do with this tree I noticed while doing my evening rounds today.
We never heard it go down, but it clearly came down during the recent high winds. You can see the difference in the wood from the freshly fallen tree and one that fell many years ago.
This tree is one of the ones I wanted to harvest for raised bed walls. It’s hung up on other trees, but pretty low to the ground, so I should be able to harvest it to use in the garden, still.
Anyhow…
After I got the angel done, I basically just stayed indoors until I got my call. The doctor was right on time, too! It was a very quick call. When the doctor asked how I was doing, I was able to give him a glowing report on what a huge difference the injection made for my hip. From the sound of his voice, I don’t think he gets such an enthusiastic response very often! 😄 In the end, all he had to do was tell me to get back to them should I have issues again in the future, and we were done.
When it was time to head outside, my daughter came out with me to help put away the things I organized last night. I fed the cats first, and she took advantage of that to try and pet as many kittens as possible. There are a few that are starting to allow touches, if not outright pets.
Smokey was purring and snuggling and enjoying every minute of it!
Oh, she is going to make someone very happy when she gets adopted out!
Just a few more days, and she’ll be off to the rescue with her brother, along with four others, for fostering as they get prepped for adoption. She and her brother, plus one other cat, are large enough for spays and neuters. The three littles we’ll be snagging will need to grow bigger before they are ready.
Once my daughter sadly put Smokey down, she went ahead of me to the old garden shed to make some space in it, and get the rolling seat in, first. From there, I started bring stuff over for her to put away in an organized fashion. She’s very good and Tetrising things!
Once everything was put away, I wanted to finally finish off the garden bed I’ve been working on for way too long now! Between being pulled away to other things, and the weather, it’s been very slow going even without the issues with roots.
I had so little left to do, but there were so many tree roots in there! I can’t believe how bad it was! No wonder the peas and carrots didn’t do as well as they could have. It wasn’t just drought conditions! I’m amazed they survived at all, with so many roots choking them out.
Once the bed was leveled out some more – the back of a fan rack is great for that – I brought out the plastic that was used to cover the winter squash, folded in half, so the big hole was not an issue, and set that over the bed, to protect it from cats until I can winter sow into it. Even while I was working on it, not only was I finding “presents” the cats had left, but when I stepped away to do things, like get the loppers to cut the larger roots, I came back to find fresh presents in the soil! Grommet (you can see him in the second photo) was particularly interested in what I was doing and, at one point, was about to use the spot I was working on, like I’d dug it out just for him to use as a litter box, while I was right there, picking out roots, weeds and rocks!
What a cheeky bugger!
That done, it was time to head inside for sustenance and hydration that my daughter prepared for me. I didn’t head out again as, by the time I was done, it was getting too dark.
Meanwhile, I’ve heard back from the company about our main entry door replacement. The door was delayed during the pre-painting process, but it will arrive tomorrow afternoon (Thursday). The guy was working on booking the installers, but it’s expected to rain on Friday, so he’s hoping they can come in on Saturday.
*sigh*
I’m looking at the forecast now. It has changed, of course. We are now expecting to get rain starting tomorrow afternoon, continuing off and on through Friday.
Which means that if I’m going to get more beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing, I’d better be getting out there much earlier tomorrow!
Hopefully, the remaining beds won’t be as ridiculously full of roots like this one was, and they will go faster! There are four beds left to do in the main garden area – these are the 18′ long ones, so I want to get them done, first. There is a 9’x3′ bed, plus a 4′ square bed to do in the east garden area, and then the old kitchen garden needs to be done. Once the main garden beds are done, the others should go a lot faster. Aside from being smaller beds, they shouldn’t have as many tree roots growing up into them!
Looking at the long range forecast, it does look like we’ll have the weather to get this done. Amazingly, it has changed from the possibility of snow in the last week of October (I can’t believe the month is half gone already!), to warmer temperatures, and even a day that’s forecast to hit a high of 20C/68F! Then it’s supposed to rain during the last 5 days of October. That’s when we’ll be doing our city stock up trips, so that actually works out for me.
Of course, the forecast will change when I look at it again, tomorrow. I’ll take what I can get for pleasant weather, though. It’s not as pleasant as the one fall where we got our first frost in November, but still better than getting snow storms, like some have gotten up north already, but I’ll take what I can get!
Yes, there was frost on the cover but, if you look at the next photo in the slide show above, much of that frost was coating the inside of the cover!
I waited until things warmed up after I’d run my errands today before taking the cover off to see. In the third photo, you can see that all the plants were killed by frost. The next few photos are of the winter squash that seemed to have survived the cold. Two Baked Potato and three Mashed Potato squash made up the littler harvest you can see in the last photo of the slideshow above. The little ones should still be okay to eat. I am curious if the largest one has mature seeds inside. These are not varieties that produce large squash, so that one might actually be the full mature size.
That done, I then started working on gathering up all the hoops and stakes and netting and protective collars. The plastic cover that was over the winter squash got folded up length wise – it has a hole in it but, folded in half lengthwise, it should still be useable – a couple of times before getting rolled up.
Folding a very long, damp sheet of plastic took quite a while! Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind, but what little breeze there was sure didn’t help!
The trellis netting and the stakes holding them got taken down. Finding a way to store the netting, which has 4″ squares, without getting it all tangled took some doing.
For the past while, I’ve been putting the material together by the tree stump bench near the old garden shed. Aside from what is still covering the garlic, I think I’ve been able to gather everything from all the garden beds. I’d already partially sorted and bundled some of it. Today, I worked on finishing off the organizing, bundling and collecting it all.
The first photo above is how the garden looked, after I took all the stuff down. The garlic bed will be done after I’ve winter sown something with it, then give it a thick mulch of leaves. Until then, the cover is needed to protect the bed from cats wanting to use is as a litter box!
The next photo is all my bundles of stakes, hoops, the hoop nets I can still use, and even the twisted up wire hoops. I’ve got my soaker hoses all rolled up. The garden hoses will be done soon, too, but they are still being used. Ties, clips, short stakes to hold the Pexx hoops in place, and even the pieces of pool noodle used to go over the support posts that had twine threated through them, when used to hold netting over a bed to keep the cats out. I’m even hanging onto the water bottles that were set on the tops of stakes to rattle in the wind and hopefully startle deer away. I’ve got a bundle of 8 metal posts I found at the dollar store in there, too. Four of them had been used to support a trellis for the melons that they never grew big enough to grow up on. The other four were ones I found more recently and have not been used yet.
In the future, I intend to get more of the tallest, plain metal stakes, but I also really liked the taller tomato cage sets. The sets are three posts with connectors. The shorter ones came with two connectors per post, the taller ones with three connectors per post. The same connectors can fit both lengths of posts. I have two sets of the larger ones currently around the plum tree, supporting chicken wire, to keep the deer from eating it. I have shorter sets around the gooseberry bush and apple tree. I used several sets of the taller ones to make a deer barrier in front of the pea trellis. I can see being able to use them in a lot of other ways, too. They are surprisingly sturdy for a dollar store purchase, and I plan on getting more in the future.
The last picture has the collection of protective collars on t-posts, to keep them from blowing away. The round wire tomato cages that were used for the pepper and eggplant are all stacked up, with a large plastic bottle covering the sharp points. The water bottles used to help keep the frost at bay under covers are hanging off a smaller stake set into the wire cages to hold it up. The water bottles with their bottoms cut off that were used to deep water the summer squash are stored on there, too. There’s a couple or rolls of the black netting, plus a couple of roles of wire mesh, as well, plus the rest of the T-posts.
Now that I have all these sorted out, I need to figure out how to store them. Some can fit in the old garden shed, but the rolling garden seat needs to fit in there, too. I’ve got more stuff to store than last winter, plus there are the hoses and the garlic bed’s hoops and cover to add to the pile, and it won’t all fit in there. That shed is in serious need of replacing, too. Lots of rotten spots in the walls and roof that are slowly getting worse. In the last photo, you can see part of it. The door is a simple piece of plywood, and it’s comping apart in layers from weathering!
I’ll figure it out.
The next couple of days are supposed to be warmer. Friday is supposed to be the warmest day, but it’s also supposed to be raining off and on all day. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, aside from the one rainy day, we should have about a week and a half of decent, if chilly, weather to finish preparing garden beds and getting the winter sowing done. That’s the priority. After that, I can work on finishing the wall on that garden bed in the old kitchen garden that I’ve decided to do slightly differently. It would be nice to finally get that bed finished!! I can’t believe how long it’s been taking to get it done. That’s what happens when a job gets worked on piecemeal. 🫤
So while I didn’t get any progress on preparing beds for winter, I did actually get a lot done. By the time I was done with all the sorting and bundling for storage, it was getting pretty darn cold out there (we’d already passed our high of 8C/46F by the time I started). I’m hoping to get an earlier start tomorrow, partly because I have an afternoon telephone appointment with the sports injury clinic about my hip. Not only is it expected to be warmer tomorrow, but we’re supposed to stay at our high of 11C/51F for about 6 hours, rather than the eye blink of time we were at our high today! We’ll be dropping down to 8C/46F again by Saturday, then warming up a bit again. I will be delivering cats on Saturday, anyhow, so that works out!
The Re-Farmer 