We’ve got a much cooler day today – as I write this, it’s coming up on 1pm, and it’s still only 6C/39F, with a high of 13C/55F by about 6pm expected. I took full advantage of the cooler temperatures to get some things done! We’re supposed to start getting rain tomorrow, have more rain, off and on, over the next few days, so the more we can get done out there, the better!
The first job, of course, was to feed the yard cats. I counted 28 in total, I think. Knowing that we have kittens in the junk pile, I now put food out under the shrine, and even on the bench nearby. Which the Blue Jays appreciate… 🫤
Stinky, Hypotenose and Syndol were all pushing each other around, trying to get at pets!
I spotted Broccoli at the food bowls, so I interrupted my usual morning rounds and dashed to the garden shed.
I started taking out as many things as I could think to grab – garden stakes, hoses, netting, etc. I had to get under where the kittens were, so I lifted them all up in the self heating mat and set them on the ground as I worked. Once I got the stuff I thought I would need right away, I returned the tarp and the felted grow bags Broccoli has made her nest in, made sure it was flattened in such a way that no kittens would accidently roll off and get stuck somewhere, then carefully put them, still half snoozing, back in in their soft, fuzzy and warm mat.
By this time, Broccoli had come around the house and was watching me. When I was done and continued my rounds, she followed me around the garden. I’m hoping she will be okay with what I did, and not take her kittens away and hide them. By removing the stuff I did, I’m hoping we won’t need to open the door and disturb her and her babies for a while. I’ll still check on the, of course, but will try to do it only when I know Broccoli isn’t in there with them.
That done, I started doing garden related stuff. While rain may be on the way, we can’t count on it actually reaching us, so I did the watering. It looks like we finally have carrots sprouting, so I’ve moved the protective boards off of them. The German Butterball potatoes got the grass clipping mulch returned. I’m still putting the cover with the plastic on it over them, to keep the cats out. The garlic also got their mulch returned, now that they’re bigger, and watered.
After all the watering was done, I checked on the grapes. The false spirea growing nearby is trying to spread into them again, so I got some pruners to cut them away. Normally, I’d try to pull them up by the roots, but I can’t do that when they are right in with the grape vines.
Then I started clearing other spirea to clear more space around the grapes.
Before I knew it, I’d gone through the entire corner, clearing away dead false spirea, trimmed dead branches and last year’s flower husks, finding and clearing around a perennial flower that gets buried by the bushes every year, and really opening things up and cleaning them out.
The cats are very happy with this! They like to go under there. When they are in full leaf, it’s a shady spot they can hide in, and now it’s nice and clear of dead branches and twigs.
While the false spirea is leafing out, and the grapes are showing leaf buds, other things are further along. The “Mr. Honeyberry” haskap is in full bloom right now. I even saw a bumble bee among the flowers! The “Mrs. Honeyberry”, however, might have some leaves, not no flower buds yet. There’s no way proper cross pollination can happen, which means no berries.
*sigh*
The plum trees are blooming; they always bloom before they get their leaves. Quite a few tulips are showing flower buds, which is pretty awesome. The trees are also getting very green. So nice to see!
I look forward to getting back to work, when I get back from running errands!
Things started out a bit rough, this morning. While I was in the kitchen, my husband opened the door to my room to let some of the bigger kittens in/out (usually we get both happening at the same time), when Soot Sprite dashed out.
The littles are still too little to be let out.
Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t catch him, but he also thought it was kinda cute, so he started following the Sprite around to keep an eye on him.
Right on down to the basement. The one place that we absolutely did NOT want him getting into. At Sprite’s size, there are too many places he can squeeze into that are not safe or healthy for him. We learned that when we had Beep Beep and Butterscotch have their kittens down there.
I put the food I was working on aside, protected from cats, then went down to see if I could catch him.
I could not.
Worse, I ended up losing sight of him entirely. I was pretty sure he’d squeezed under a counter shelf, but couldn’t be sure. That is one of the worse places (though not the only one) for him to be hiding in. When cleaning up in that basement, we weren’t able to move that shelf. We did clean out stuff inside it, though, which included things like pain cans that had spilled or leaked – it was a long time before we were able to clean out enough to finally get rid of whatever it was that was making the basement smell like a chemical factory! It’s very likely things leaked under that shelf, but we really don’t know.
I ended up messaging my daughters to see who was available to help out, and my younger daughter came down. Part of the problem was that, wherever Sprite ran off, the bigger kittens would run after him and tackle him, like it was a game, which it partly why he ended up disappearing entirely. My daughter had brought a toy to lure him, while I ended up going up and down the stairs with arm loads of other cats and kittens that were causing problems.
Have I mentioned that stairs and I do NOT get along?
My knees are just not stable enough. It isn’t too bad going up the stairs, but going back down is something else entirely. Basically, I have to take one step at a time and hang on to the door, the wall, the window ledge and finally the rail, to get to the bottom.
It took toys, wet cat food and finally letting Clarence (formerly Tweedle Dum) down to finally lure Soot Sprite out. He could barely squeeze his way out from under that counter shelf!!!
That done, my daughter could finally take a shower before heading out. She and her sister had a grocery shopping list and were thinking of going to town, but I took advantage of that to get one more bag of kibble before our stock up shopping, so we went to the nearest Walmart, instead. They carry a 10kg size that costs less than the 7kg sizes that are available locally. Not enough to drive all that way for just a bag of cat food, but worth it if we’re buying other stuff, too.
I made a point of not getting gas on the way out. I’d put some in on Wednesday, before taking the truck home, and got it to just above half. We’d had another trip into town for my husband’s medical appointment, but didn’t go anywhere yesterday. This is our first city trip, enough though it was to the smaller, closer city, so just a 45 minute or so drive, one way. After we did our shopping, we took a different route home so I could get gas at the same station I got gas at a few days ago.
The trip ended up taking just over a quarter tank of gas – I can’t see the odometer to keep track, because we still can’t find where we can cycle through the computer display, and we’ve got that “service tire monitor system” warning. (Which should just be a battery change on the module.) Our model just doesn’t have the computer display buttons that are in the owner’s manual diagram, and there’s nothing else we can find.
The gas station in town we normally go to now has just switched to full service today, which was a nice surprise. Happily, the prices have also dropped a bit again. We are currently at 154.9¢/L When I added gas on Wednesday, it had dropped to 155.9
It cost $102 to fill our tank from the 1/4 mark – and that’s after my CAA discount!
Ouch.
As for mileage… it’s hard to say, considering the substantial difference in tank size between the truck and my mother’s car, and not being able to see the odometer, but I’m pretty sure it’s better for gas than my mother’s car. Probably about what the van did.
I’m glad to have a full tank of gas, but that was painful.
Once at home, I pulled up to the house to unload, then left my daughter to take care of putting things away while I parked the truck in the garage. I even managed to get it in far enough to close the door behind it.
Except….
Well, when I opened the door before we left, I had a bit too much momentum and opened it all the way. The pull strap broke off long ago, so I usually leave it down a few inches, so I can reach to pull it closed again.
Ah, the joys of being short! I could barely touch it with the tips of my fingers, never mind actually grab it to close it!
So I texted the family to let them know, then went to feed the outside cats. My husband, sweetheart that his is, came out to close the door for me. He’s probably the only one that can reach without jumping or standing on something. My older daughter might have been able to reach. Maybe.
We really need to replace that pull strap.
As for the drive itself, it was fantastic. It was a smooth ride, without any of the shuddering or creaking that my mother’s car does, that drives me bonkers. Also, it’s so nice to be driving a larger vehicle again! I can see!
Once we were home and settled in, I headed out to do some clean up in the main garden area. All the stakes and supports needed to be gathered and sorted and tied into bundles, along with tools and supplies. All those feed bags used as grow bags had to be bagged up for the dump, the tree roots growing through the felted fabric grow bags needed to be pulled out as much as possible – they didn’t dry out as much as I’d hoped, given the off and on rain we’ve been having – and everything put away in the old garden shed.
It was also time to harvest the last of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and see what there was among the turnips, beets and radishes.
Would you look at the size of some of those carrots! I am quite happy with this variety.
Much to my surprise, I also found a few yellow onions that got missed, including one fairly larger one.
In digging up the turnips and beets, I honestly did not expect to have anything worth harvesting, but there were a few little turnips of a useable size that weren’t all chewed up by slugs. This variety is meant to be harvested at about golf ball size, if I remember correctly, and these are pretty close to that.
The beets were a complete loss.
There was also one really big radish that I thought was actually the root from one of the two blooming radishes, but it turned out to be next to one of them. Only one other radish was big enough to harvest. I left the two that are still blooming alone. The bed cover I’d set over them got moved to the new trellis bed for storage for now.
What I found interesting about the turnips and radishes, though, it that most of them had lots of fresh new growth. The greens on both had been pretty damaged. Whatever insect has been eating them – I never did see what it was – seems to have gone away with the frost and cooler temperatures, and the greens were actually starting to grow and recover!
This is the last of what was in the main garden area, and as I’ve been writing this, my family has been enjoying the carrots as a snack while making supper! After this, we have the sunchokes to harvest, and the Red of Florence onion bed. The orange carrots will be left and harvested as needed, until it starts getting cold enough to deeply mulch them for winter storage. Beyond that, it’s just preparing the beds for the winter, and hopefully making more beds before the snow flies and the ground freezes. The garlic, saffron crocuses, strawberries, asparagus and the Liberty apple tree will all also need to be given an insulating mulch, but not too early. It’s a balancing act between covering them early enough that they don’t freeze too much over the winter, but late enough that they don’t stay too warm and start growing before the real cold hits.
Which, if the long range forecast is to be trusted (ha!), won’t be for a little while. We’re expected to be consistently below freezing, including daytime highs, in the middle of November. For now, though, we’re supposed to get heavy rains this evening and into the night, and we’re under a weather advisory, as the first Arctic air blast of the season is expected to hit us later this week. We’re still supposed to get days above freezing, though not by much, and we may even get a mix of rain and snow on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
I am so glad we have the truck NOW, before the weather turned! Thank God!
We have reached a lovely 16C/61F today, with wonderful sunshine. You know what that means!
Time to get work done outside!
Today, I focused on using the last of the soil in the kiddie pool the melons were grown in and soil from the grow bags, to top up our first trellis bed. The potato bags were already emptied and the soil all in a pile, so that was nice and quick to transfer over. Between that and the soil from the kiddie pool, more than half the trellis bed was covered.
Then I started on the grow bags the bell peppers were in.
I think I discovered why the peppers never thrived in those.
I had two shallow “raised beds” from the dollar store, plus two deeper, higher quality bags. As soon as I started trying to break up the soil with the spade, I found it to be remarkably solid and hard to cut through. That bag in the photo was the last of these fabric grow bags. It flipped inside out as I tried to empty the soil, and was still stuck.
Those are tree roots.
It turns out those horrible elms from the self seeded row of trees my mother allowed to grow not only release millions of seeds every spring, their roots will actually grow up into the grow bags and smother whatever else is growing there! The only bags where this was not a problem were the potatoes. Those had a thick layer of straw on their bottoms. I did see a few roots here and there, but nothing in the soil layer like this. These fabric grow bags had some grass clippings added to their bottoms. Those were completely decomposed. I didn’t do the feed bags the hot peppers were in until later. Those had straw on their bottoms, too, but not as deep a layer as the potatoes.
So most of my time ended up being spent trying to break up the soil enough that I could finally shake it from the roots, before it could be dumped into the trellis bed. The four bags the bell peppers were in were just enough to finish topping up the trellis bed.
That left five feed bags; four that had the hot peppers and onions in them, and one that had just onions. I left those and shifted to the high raised bed. The grass clipping mulch was moved and the bed was weeded – leaving two little onions to keep growing.
It’s really amazing, how deep dandelion tap roots can grow!
I found what looked like a couple of mouse tunnels in two of the corners. Grass clippings were used to fill in gaps in the corners, and all along the edges, as well as to chink some gaps on the logs that I found. I also debarked it a fair bit. That’s to keep insects and moisture from the logs, so they’ll last longer.
Once that was all cleaned up, I leveled the soil, pushing some of it up against the grass clippings around the edges. Once that was done, I went back to the remaining grow bags and de-rooted them. All five ended up in the high raised bed.
Last of all, the soil was topped with a light sprinkling of grass clippings before both beds got a thorough soaking. I want the water to soak through all the layers, but don’t want to compact the soil layer, and the grass clippings will help with that at least a little bit.
The beds have now been put to bed for the winter!
When adding soil to the trellis bed, I could see it bouncing! I did stomp on them, but the layers of grass clippings, leaves, kitchen compostables, straw, wood chips and bark, all still have quite a bit of space in them. By spring, I expect the whole thing to have sunk and settled at least 4 inches. The main thing, though, is that it is ready for planting in the spring, even if it takes longer to build the trellis part of the trellis beds!
Now for my happy Butterscotch news!
She’s back indoors!
I’d gone out to feed the cats a bit early, yesterday evening. Butterscotch came around and I got to pet her and cuddle her. She still wouldn’t go near the other cats, and if they came close, she would leave, even from the food I’d put near the storage house for her. Shop Towel in particular was interested in that.
After trying – and failing – to bring her to the kibble house to eat, I tried a different tactic. I’d seen a kitten running around around the front of the house, so I left a pile of kibble on the concrete steps for it. Butterscotch let me pick her up again, and I walked around the back of the house, avoiding all the cats, to bring her to the lone pile of kibble.
I almost got there, too.
It just happened that the girls decided to come outside, and as soon as the doors started rattling, Butterscotch got spooked, and I couldn’t hang onto her anymore. Once the girls realized what happened, they worked with me to encourage Butterscotch to come to them at the steps, and got her eating.
My younger daughter stayed with her while her sister and I played interference with the other cats. Several of them suddenly decided they needed to check out what she was doing at the steps!
Including Shop Towel.
Shop Towel has become an enigma. He’s been hanging around and eating with the other cats, and they are mostly okay with that. Driver and Judgement have not been targeted by him, nor have any of the other males. Mind you, he’s clearly the father of most of the adult males, but I don’t know how much of a difference that would make.
The problem starts when he seed Butterscotch and Nosencrantz.
He hasn’t really targeted Nozencrantz, but he has in the past, and she’s clearly nervous around him. When he goes for the food, she leaves. At least she’s not running up a tree anymore, but it means she doesn’t eat. This morning, I left kibble on the red bench for her, just so she could have something!
Butterscotch, however, has his attention, and he wants to chase her.
Between him, and her not wanting to go near any of the other cats, this was a problem. If only we could get her inside, but she wouldn’t let us take her close to the house!
Well, we found a way.
It started with my younger daughter going over to Shop Towel as he was milling around the storage house. She squatted down (oh, to have functional knees like hers!), held her hand out – and he came right over! She was able to pet him as he purred and rubbed against her legs! We were all pretty stunned by this.
That gave us an opportunity.
The cat carrier was in the sun room, in hopes we’d be able to catch one of the adult females for spaying and adoption. While my younger daughter kept Shop Towel distracted, I got the carrier and her sister and I managed to get Butterscotch in.
She was not happy about that.
The carrier also allowed me to get her past all the indoor cats and bring her into my room.
She was not happy with the kittens. She snarls at them, and spent the night hiding under my printer table. She still came out for pets and cuddled, though, and she was very happy to have wet cat food!
The kittens are curious, but we let the big ones in and out, so she’s not overwhelmed by them. The three tiny ones are still too small to let out.
After I finished up in the garden, had a shower and came into my room, I was able to persuade her to come out for pets, and even go up onto my bed for cuddles. The kittens still in the room were all asleep, so there was no snarling involved.
As I write this, she is still on my bed, curled up and having a nap!
I feel much better having her inside. She probably would have been fine outside, but that whole thing with her not being able to get food because she wouldn’t come closer to the house or other cats was a concern. Plus, she’s one of the originals that my late father cared for. Grandma deserves a warm and comfortable retirement!
I really hope this works out for her.
Once we get some of those kittens to the clinic for spays then adoption next month, I’m hoping we can convince Nosencrantz to come back in, too. I miss her nightly cuddles!
After the almost constant rain yesterday, it was too wet to be working on the trellis bed. So today, I got the remaining tomato beds cleaned up. Or, at least the trellis set ups removed and the tomato plants pulled. Both beds still have other things in them.
In the foreground is the bed that had the Black Beauty tomatoes in it. It still has the Uzbek Golden carrots in it, and those don’t need to be harvested for quite some time. The volunteer sunflower was headless this morning, so I pulled that. The volunteer lettuce among the carrots had been going to seed, but that got eaten, too!
The next bed had the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes. Now, there are still the Gold Ball turnips, and the sad little beets that never really started to grow.
Both beds still had a few yellow onions in them, so those got picked and are set on the bed cover over the radishes in the background. It still has netting on top of it, so they are secure on there for now.
Both beds also had sprinkler hoses in them, so those got taken out, too.
While pulling things out, I saw SO many slugs! They have even started eating onion greens, and very few things will eat onions!
The mostly empty high raised bed is a convenient place to set things aside! Here, you can see the three T-posts and boards that were used to trellis the Indigo Blues, and the bundles of bamboo were used to support the Black Beauties. I made sure to keep all the garden twist ties, clips, etc. Some of the twist ties were long enough to use on the bamboo bundles. This all got put away into, or leaned against, the old garden shed, along with the soaker and sprinkler hoses.
We’ve been wanting to build a larger garden shed as a cordwood practise building. This old shed has a leaky and rotting roof, and there’s a rotted out hole in the back corner that the cats get in and out of.
Taking a closer look, though, the frame is still pretty solid. Some pieces on the roof may need replacing, but that’s about it. We could take off the roof and walls, and repair it.
After moving it. It may have been in a good spot when it was first put there, but the trees it was squeezed in between have gotten much bigger, and the whole thing is tilting.
Something else we could salvage and reuse, instead of get rid of completely! We’ll still be building a larger shed, but you really can’t have too many sheds!
Absolutely wasted, and will probably be sore and barely able to move tomorrow, but happy!
My daughter and I got so much done today. But first, the cuteness!
Would you look at that flat pancake of a kitten!
This one actually allows me to pet it, and even pick it up at times.
After our failure this morning in getting a shelter over the stump bench, I decided we may as well cut down the dead tree beside it. I was then going to clean up the bench and get at least one coat of paint on it.
The first photo is the “before” image. Instagram crops things weird, and their crop options suck, so you can’t see the bench in that one.
Which direction to get it to fall was the issue. No matter where it fell, it would be landing on something. The thing was to get it to land on something with the least amount of damage. So I tried to get it to fall on the bench, in the middle, where it has the most support. It would still be hitting the big maple on the way down, but not as much of it.
As you can see in the second photo, it came down about as perfect as could be! One maple branch broke off and that was it.
My daughter and I then cut off all the branches; me with the chain saw, her with the electric pruner/baby chainsaw.
Once the branches were clear, I cut away the few bits of wood that were holding the trunk to the stump still, then cut the end flat. We then measured out 18′, and cut it with a few inches extra. This log is the right size to match the largest log we’ve got for the trellis bed. The two largest logs will be the bottoms longs for the sides, then the thinner ones will go on top.
Next, we cleared away all the branches and extra pieces. There was another stump that had originally been intended to be part of the stump bench, but it was too rotten. That finally got cut down to ground level. The new stump was also got trimmed lower, though not quite to ground level. Maybe we’ll put a planter on it or something, at some point. 😊 We also used a rope and dragged the 18′ piece over to where the trellis bed will be built.
It was SO much easier to grad that big log with two people!
This is the third dead spruce we’ve cleared out of this one little section. At least one of them was killed off by the Virginia creeper that had been allowed to attach itself to it. This tree that we had cleared away had still been alive until last year or so.
Then, since I had the chain saw handy, and 200 ft of extension cord, I took advantage of it.
The easy part was cutting away the remains of a dead crab apple tree that was off by itself. In the photos with the dead spruce tree, you can actually see it through the dead branches of the fallen tree.
In the above photos, the first one is in between two large crab apple trees. These were suckers growing out from around the remains of trees that died long ago. They were much harder to cut away and clean up, because they were so tangled up in the two live trees. In one of those, I cut away some dead branches, too.
Now that the suckers are gone, there are branches from the live trees hanging really low, as they are no longer being held up by the suckers!
The second photo shows where the single dead crab apple tree had been. Between the freshly cut stump and the next live tree are another three stumps cut to ground level, plus two more behind where I’m standing to take the photo. Way too many trees were planted way too close together!
There is still one more at the very end that will need cleaning up. Again, the original tree had died long ago, and there are just suckers growing. There may still be one that produces tasty apples; another that I knew for sure had good apples broke in a storm last year and didn’t recover. We’ll see if any of the remaining ones are worth salvaging, but they won’t be ripe for at least another month.
My daughter made many trips to the branch pile past the fire pit, clearing away as I cut. As we were finishing up, I decided to take a closer look at the stuck tree my brother had cut down for me. I wanted to see if I could safely cut away the dead tree it was stuck on. There were actually a couple of trees that were holding it up. One was a small spruce that got bent under the fallen trunk. Sadly, I had to cut it, even though it was still alive. I could see that even if I got the bigger tree cut away, the little one would still hold up the tree we were trying to access, and cause the tree we were after to roll towards other trees, rather than fall to the ground
I was able to cut through the little spruce’s trunk, but with everything so jammed together, nothing moved. I was, however, able to get a good look at the dead tree the fallen tree was stuck on.
What you’re seeing in that first photo is a tree top. You can see that, at some point, the tip had broken off, and two branches grew upwards, forming a double top. This is pretty common for spruces. As the tree my brother cut down fell and got caught on other trees, it broke this tree top. As it slowly continued to fall lowers in high winds, the tree top ended up vertical, with its broken end on the ground as it it had grown there!
In the second photo, you can see the tree with a broken off top that I think it came from.
So I grabbed the rope my daughter and I used to drag the 18′ log out, and wrapped it around the bottom of the tree top. I wasn’t able to get it completely off, as there were branches getting caught, but it is no longer holding up the stuck tree. Since I had also cut the other little tree, that came off its stump and fell, too. Finally, the stuck tree came down! No, it’s not on the ground, but that’s just fine. It’s only being held up by its own branches and undergrowth now, and it completely accessible!
We can now clear it, cut it to size and drag the pieces out.
But not today! My daughter and I were both completely beat by then. Thank goodness it was a “cooler” day, with a high of “only” 27C/81F.
So… we didn’t paint the bench and, with possible thunderstorms or showers starting tomorrow afternoon and over the next few days (depending on what app I look at), it may not get done for possibly another week.
That’s okay. The bench and the folding table I want to also paint won’t melt. It just means we work on something else, instead. Like finally continuing that trellis bed!
I’m just so happy we were able to get all this stuff done. It feels so good!
It’s coming up on 4pm as I write this. We’ve actually started to cool down slightly. We’re now at 31C/88F, and the “feels like” is down to 34C/93F My daughter was keeping an eye on the temperatures, and she saw us at 32C/90F, and feeling like 38C/100F while we were still working outside.
Before they arrived, I did a bit of cleaning up of dead lilac, as the branches would be in the way as we mowed.
This corner of the storage house is usually hidden by the lilacs. It’s looking quite naked right now! Not a lot survived last year’s flooding, but there is plenty of new growth at the bottom, so it will recover soon enough.
This pile is just the lilac I cut away, none of the other trees trying to grow against the storage house. I did cut a few live branches. One was by accident. Other, much smaller, ones got cut because it was the only way to reach the dead ones they were next to.
When they arrived, I was surprised to see they brought two riding mowers. I didn’t know they even had two riding mowers! One has two blades on it, and that was the one I was expecting to see. It turns out they don’t use the smaller one much, but have it because it fits in between trees the bigger one can’t get through. They also brought a push mower and, as usual, my brother loaded the back of his truck with all sorts of tools and equipment. After many years coming out here, once a week, to help our late father with stuff, my brother learned he could not count on the tools and equipment he needed to still be on the farm. Even then, our vandal was “borrowing” things and not returning them. Of course, now, we’re about one step ahead of the stone ages, so he comes out loaded for bear!
Once the mowers were unloaded, I went to finish using the weed trimmer around the house, then switched to their push mower to do the tighter spaces while they worked on the inner and outer yards. Even their big mower, however, couldn’t do much in the area in front of the barn, where we had no been able to mow at all last year. That layer of thatch hidden under the fresh grass is just too thick. Enough was done, however, to leave me with a generous amount of dry clippings to use as mulch!
They were also able to mow the sides of the driveaway right to the fence lines, and continues the lane past the pump shack, all the way to the warehouse shed. Then my brother even mowed a path past some of the Korean Pine we planted in the outer yard, nearer the fire pit, all the way to the secondary gate.
I kept on using the push mower in the tighter spaces, and almost ran over this surprise.
I haven’t seen a Lady’s Slipper orchid in years! I certainly would never have expected to find one in the maple grove!
Once the push mowing was done, my brother got me to show him which 4 trees I wanted to have cut down, before showing me how to use the smaller riding mower. My SIL and I worked on the old garden area, which is really rough, while he worked on bringing down the trees.
That turned out to be a bigger deal than expected!
First, he brought out his gas powered weed trimmer – yes, he brought one of those, too! – to clear around the base of the dead trees a bit. Then he tried to first use his gas powered chainsaw. It hasn’t been used in a while, but it started.
Then it stopped, and would not start again!
He had a back up, of course. He brought out his battery powered chainsaw. With that, he was able to finish cutting down the first tree, then two more. The battery died while cutting down the 4th one. It was almost all the way through, so he went and got his extended pole chainsaw, which has only a 10 inch blade. It was enough to finish cutting the tree.
It didn’t fall.
The very tip of it was hung up on another dead tree.
By this time, my SIL and I had finished mowing. I had even manged to get a bit more done near the barn, but when even doing just a few inches at a time got to be too much for it and it died, I stopped. The rest is going to have to be done with the push mower.
It would have taken me days to get even half of all this done, without their help!
Of course, we did stop for breaks, hydration and food. Sitting in the shade with a breeze, it was actually quite nice out. The moment the wind stopped, or we stepped into the sun, though, it was like being in an oven!
After one of our breaks, we all went to see what was going on with the stuck tree. My brother ended up using a ladder to tie a rope as high as he could on it, and we tried to pull it loose. No go. We eventually brought out our electric chain saw, and he was able to free it up a bit more, and then we could finally get it moving.
Only for it to get stuck on another tree.
That was it, though. I have enough to start with.
It was while we were dealing with this when I started hearing a strange meowing sound from the lilac bush behind me. A bit of searching, and I found a familiar looking pair of ears above the deep grass.
Judgement was back!
I haven’t seen Judgement since the day before we got the email response from the vet, about how to bring him in without an appointment. After all this time, I was sure a coyote had got him.
He is not limping, either.
He seemed a bit standoffish at first, but eventually let me pet him. Then he followed me around for a while.
Before packing things up, my brother serious considered taking down the dead spruce tree closest to the house. That tree finally died just a couple of years ago. In the end, though, he didn’t dare take it down. There wasn’t much of a wind, but it would have been pushing against the direction the tree needed to fall. He considered having it fall the other way, but then it would have landed on top of a huge maple branch leaning over the north yard.
So that tree was left alone for now.
They still had one more surprise for me before they loaded the riding mowers onto the trailer and left.
They realized how ridiculous it would be for me to keep up on the lawn with just a push mower. Between the weather and all the other, higher priority jobs that need to be done, it would be near impossible for me to keep up just what was mowed today.
They left the smaller riding mower for us to use, and my brother took the Bolens they bought for us our first summer here, and will see if he can fix it.
The shop I’d taken it to basically told me it wasn’t worth the cost to fix it, because it would be expensive, but would not be a permanent fix. We have neither the equipment, nor the knowledge, to do it ourselves. Heck, we don’t even have a safe way to work under it.
So we now have a riding mower, about the same size as the old Bolens mower, to help keep up on the lawns!
Did I mention, my brother and his wife are the best?
They are totally the best.
Meanwhile, the storms the weather apps said we might have, did not come even close to materializing. We’re going to have to do some deep watering this evening!
As for me, I can’t barely keep my eyes open as I write this.
I think, however, I will go cut myself an aloe vera leaf and make good use of the gel before I give in to the heat!
I put together a video of the work I did yesterday. No audio, so I wanted to add music to it today.
I spent so much time trying to find public domain music that fit the mood I wanted. Then my daughter came in and helped me pick music that was already in the software I’m using, in a matter of minutes.
She’s now interested in making videos. I have no doubt she would do a better job than me! So at some point, you might start seeing better quality videos getting posted.
For now, this is what I got done yesterday.
We settled on this location for the new Liberty apple tree for several reasons. The main one is, it is a zone 4 tree, which means it will need more protection in the winter. Where I was thinking of planting it originally is far more exposed, and will remain so until the silver buffalo berry reaches maturity.
Here, it will get full sun, but also be sheltered from the north by the lilacs. It also needs another variety of apple tree for pollination. While I took down the one crab apple tree, there are the ornamental crab apples in the old kitchen garden, plus another crab apple tree, though we’ll see how well that one does. It will likely be taken down, eventually.
The little plum trees were also removed; we’ll see how the larger ones do this year. These are not edible plums, though my father did use them for wine making sometimes. They have almost no flesh around their pits.
If all goes well, we’ll start having apples to harvest in a few years. The new apple tree can reach a mature height of 18-20, so if we do plant any other fruit trees here, we will need to keep that in mind. If we do end up taking out the one crab apple, and possibly the remaining inedible plums, I figure we have room for one more fruit tree here.
My parents planted so many things in this little area over the years; I remember there being mountain ash (there are none left at all now), a pear tree, other crab apple trees, plus I thinned out caragana and lilac. Oh, and there’s the big linden tree at one end, now. It’s one of the few things that is doing well! I’m sure there were other things that came and went in the 30 or so years I’ve been away.
Now that I’ve cleared as much as I have, the lilacs will hopefully grow better. When I first cleared the area of dead stuff back in 2018, I found most of the lilacs had stretched to very unusual heights. They had leaves pretty much only at the top, as they struggled to get sunlight. They are recovering, but still a lot lankier than lilacs normally would be.
The main thing, though, is that the new apple tree and the tulips have that barrier around them. It’s small enough that I hope no deer will consider it worth trying to jump it. Over time, we will add things to the wire to blow, flash and make noise in the wind.
One thing I noticed only after watching the time lapse video I took.
I had a LOT of cats running around while I worked!
Okay, so I was supposed to take it easy today, so that I wouldn’t be too sore for manual labour tomorrow.
But I kept going outside because, aside from the wind (I’m so tired of the wind!), it was gorgeous out. Unfortunately, the wind limits some of what I could do.
No limits on feeding the kitties, though!
Not-Junk Pile kept watching me closely, but would not let me near her. From what little I could see as she moved around, it does look like she is probably nursing. I haven’t the slightest clue where her litter might be.
One of the things I ended up doing was tending the bed we’ll be planting peas into, a bit.
I just pulled the mulch back from the fence line to expose the soil to the warmth of the sun. There are a fair number of weeds and grass coming up. If I let them get bigger, they’ll be easier to pull up.
I also watered the beds we planted, as well as where the girls sowed the alternative lawn mix in the maple grove. That included pulling back the plastic on the hoops over the carrots to water them. I couldn’t see any carrots germinated, but I am seeing some weeds we missed, pushing their way through. I won’t try to pull those until the carrots have established themselves, so I don’t accidentally pull of carrot seedlings.
Since I had the plastic off anyhow, I improved the hoops set up. I’ve got a pair of bamboo stakes across the tops, and added two more pairs on the sides, just a few inches above the soil, to make sure the plastic doesn’t end up on top of the carrots planted closest to the walls. Then I zig zagged twine from the bottoms of the hoops, to the bamboo stakes at the top. I was noticing the wind was pushing the sides of the plastic inwards more than I liked, so that should help prevent that a bit. By the time it was done and the plastic put back, it didn’t really look any different, so I didn’t bother taking photos.
That was in the afternoon. In the early evening, after feeding the cats, I decided to extend my evening rounds in the outer yard. I went into the warehouse to look again at what’s in there, besides the many bags and boxes of my parents’ belongings and furniture. There’s what appears to be a folding table that we could make use of, but we’d have to move quite a few things to access it. Not as much as what we’d need to access what looks like good lumber and plywood in another corner.
I also went looking under the warehouse. Quite a bit of stuff had been shoved under there. Boards and beams of various sizes. Old drawers. Electrical wire. Lead pipes, some with taps still attached. Some is potentially useful, but others are looking like they’re breaking down, even though they are well sheltered under there.
I also made sure to check the area around our septic outflow. We’re going to have to do some clean up around it, as branches from nearby trees have been falling around it. There is a low spot nearby that, when I was a kid, had a pond in it most years. Since moving here, it had water during last spring’s flooding, but was otherwise bone dry. Right now, it’s full of water – and frogs, from the cacophony I was hearing!
While back there, I was looking around the back of the collapsed log building and noticed something half buried in the tall grass. I ended up pulling out a metal fence post. There were a couple of wooden fence posts under there, too, one of which was still quite useable, so I dragged both of those over to where I have two other metal fence posts leaning against the back of the garage. The one I found is covered in rust, but still solid – and the same length as the other two! Seven feet, I think.
I spent some time looking at stuff in the barn, too. It seems like every time I go in there, I see something “new” that I hadn’t noticed before. One of the things I wanted to look at were the “spare” windows that I’m hoping we can use to replace the windows in the sun room that have lost their inside pane, and the one where the inside pane is cracked. Looking at the larger windows, though, I realized we won’t be able to use them for the sun room. Taking a closer look at them, I realized they are much bigger!
There are a lot of old windows all over the place. Many have broken glass, but many more are still intact. I went into the shed near the barn; the one with the tarp on the roof. There are so many more old windows in there, some of which we could probably find uses for, as we build various sheds and shelters. There are also a lot of doors of various types, styles and ages. I took a closer look at some of them, and they turned out to be closet doors. One pair are a type that are made to slide on tracks. The other is a pair of folding doors, like we are already using as a table top for our transplants. What we used to hold the transplants to harden them off and keep them safe from cats last year are not available. If we can find solid supports that are tall enough, these closet doors would probably give us enough space to set out all the transplants for hardening off!
On the way back to the inner yard, I decided to start moving some things along the side of the garage, where we’re looking to have a shed offered to use placed and used as a chicken coop. There were some odds and ends, some boards on the ground, one of which was so rotted, it had grass growing through it in places, and a length of steel pipe buried in the tall grass. There’s also a small maple that was growing in the space between the boards, and a small red osier dogwood, that we’ll need to get rid of. But first, I grabbed a rake and did more clean up.
I’ll have to come back with the loppers to cut away the maple and dogwood. You can’t really see the dogwood in the photo. It just sort of disappears in the grass by the garage wall. I was finding bits and pieces of the branch pile that used to be here as well. We’ll have to come back with the wagon or wheel barrow to haul away the pile of dead grass and branches for burning – which will have to wait until the wind dies down!
Now that everything is clear, we’ll have to bring a ladder over and clean the eavestroughs on the garage. They haven’t been done since we moved here. On this side, it was because of the branch pile in the way. On the other side, it’s just a lot harder to get to, with so many trees growing near the garage.
Then we’ll have to bring over the old tire rims I’ve decided to use to put under the shed, and level things off at the front of this area, in line with the front of the garage, as best we can. It needs to far enough forward to not shade the garden beds on the other side of the chain link fence. Then I need to contact the guy who offered the shed to use and work out when he can bring it over. Once it’s in place and gets the repairs it needs, and set up as a coop, we should be able to use those metal fence posts we’ve found for the chicken run we’ll need.
I’m looking forward to getting at it, so we can finally have chickens!!!
So that’s what I ended up doing today. I didn’t push myself, and so far, I don’t feel the need to take more painkillers, which is a good sign!
We’ll see how well that last, overnight! I don’t know how much outside work I’ll be able to get done tomorrow, though. I’ve asked the girls to work on cleaning up and de-catting the sun room, so we can start moving transplants into there. I’ll be heading to my mother’s in the afternoon, then hit the hardware store on the way home to pick up the lumber I need to make proper frames for the garden beds. The one thing I haven’t figure out for them yet is what to use across the middles, to keep them from bowing outwards. I don’t want to use wood, or anything larger like that, as I don’t want it to end up being in the way of any plants. I’ve been looking at threaded rods but, at the lengths I need, they are way too expensive. So I was thinking of a steel cable of some kind. I’ll have to look around and see what they have – and how much it costs! – to figure it out.
It was pretty mild when I came out to do my rounds this morning.
The older cats really prefer to eat kibble on the cat house roof, even in the snow!
Also, once it was pointed out to me, I just can’t unsee the fact that Caramel is plaid.
Also, also… I counted 30 this morning.
When I was done my rounds, I decided to stay out and get a weather dependent job done. There was no breeze at all, and snow on the ground, which meant it was safe to burn a branch pile.
When the big branch pile was chipped and cleaned up, they left a pile of debris that could not be chipped. While preparing branches for the wattle weave raised be, we added quite a lot of small, green branches to it. The conditions that made it safe to do a bonfire like this also made it hard to keep a fire going – especially with all those green branches – so I took advantage of the situation and started bringing over branches from the pile by the garage that was too decomposed to chip. Those have been sitting there for years, so the fire really got going once they caught!
I was even able to rake up most of the debris. I know there’s still some left, but I won’t be able to dig those out until spring.
By the time I was finishing up this pile, it had started to snow, but that didn’t last long.
Once that was raked up, I also raked up the path of twigs that got dropped along the way. 😁
After about three hours, I banked the fire by raking up more debris and soil. It should continue to smolder for some time, but should not flame up. Even if it does, there’s a large ring of bare soil around it, and beyond that, any grass and the other pile of wood that needs to be burned are far enough away and have enough snow on them that they are not at risk.
I’m glad to finally get this done.
Next is the logs the chippers set aside that I stacked around some garbage that was too much for the burn barrel.
That’s going to be quite the bonfire when we finally get around to it!
When we first moved here, one of the things we noticed was the junk pile near the house, at the edge of the spruce grove. It’s one of the places mama cats would hide their litter of kittens, which is how Junk Pile got her name.
When we finally got around to cleaning it up, it turned out to not be a junk pile at all. It was a pile of salvaged boards, very carefully and neatly stacked. Some of the “junk” we found were the remains of tarps that used to cover it.
Years of exposure left the top board pretty rotten, and being salvaged from who knows where, a lot were full of nails. Still, we’ve been able to make use of them and, as we work our way deeper into the stack, the less rotten the boards.
After cleaning off the junk, we did use the original tarps to cover it up, and weighed it down with various things.
Then the groundhog that made a den under the stack decided the tarps would make good nesting material. Tore them to shreds!
With the horrible spring we had this year, we didn’t keep the yard as clear and mowed as we wanted, which meant one side of the stack got completely engulfed in thistles that reached nearly 5 ft tall in places.
Today, I finally got around to cleaning it up, so I could access the stack.
The kittens were very interested in what I was doing!
That groundhog did not leave much of those traps left at all. There was a blue one in there, as well as the orange one!
The grey tarp on the side is covering a pile of boards too rotten or full of nails to use; they’re laid over an old metal bed frame I found in the maple grove (there are still two more in there!) to keep them off the ground. I also found some old children’s toys, so I tucked those underneath, then covered the whole thing with yet another old tarp I found among the junk. This gives the yard cats yet another place they can tuck into for shelter, until we finally clean it out properly.
The hill the thistles are growing on is a bit of a mystery to me. It is one of those things that showed up in between our rare visits to the farm over the years. I think it might be where the ashes from the furnace got dumped, until the electric furnace was installed. It would take a lot of years of ashes to make a hill that big!
Also, I need better quality garden gloves. Thistles go right through them!!!
The next step was to take everything off the top for a few layers. There’s a lot of spruce debris in there. I would have to take the whole pile apart to get it all out, but I just wanted to get the worst of it near the top removed. Then the boards went back more neatly, making sure that any with nails in them had their nails facing down!
The stack itself is built up on some pallets, and there are more pallets, and other miscellaneous things, on the far side of the stack. They’re all pretty rotten, but only one of them was also in the way. I had to fight to get it out, as it kept getting stuck on the other two pallets one corner was in between, but it was so rotten, I could just tear it apart and drag it out! That went into our own junk pile that is waiting until we can hire someone to haul it to the dump.
Once that was all cleaned up and ready, I grabbed an 8’x10′ tarp from the 3 pack I bought at Costco a few months ago and brought it over to cover the stack. I’ve already used another one of them to replace the tarp I’d found in the barn to cover the post pounder by the garage. It was a huge tarp, but the wind tore it to shreds. An 8’x10′ tarp doesn’t cover it completely, but they’re heavier duty tarps, and I tied it down like crazy. I can see it on the security camera live feed, and absolutely nothing flaps around on that thing! With the stack of boards, I needed to do the same thing. I had to make sure the wind could not get ahold of it, once it was over the stack.
My goodness, the kittens went nuts while I was going that! They just could not get enough of running around and playing on it!
Which made tying it down a real challenge!
I think I spent twice as much time tying down the tarp as it took me to clear away the thistles and clean up the top of the pile! Thanks to all the leftover pieces of wood that I brought over to do the wattle woven raised bed, I had plenty of sticks I could use for pegs.
At the far end, the tarp is tied to the old pallet still back there, and even the dead trees. In a few places where the tarp was tight around corners of boards, I added some bits of pool noodle foam (we used scrap bits on supports around some garden beds, to protect the netting they were holding up, and the last of the netting was removed today) and even some paper towel from a roll kept in the garage. I didn’t want the corners of the boards to rub their way through the tarp in the wind. The remaining three sides were pegged to the ground. While probably not needed, I returned the stuff we were using as weights before, just in case. I can easily imagine kittens playing with the twine and pulling pegs out of the ground. 😄
The boards may be old, but at least now they won’t get any worse over the winter. I have no idea what we might use them for – there is no consistency in lengths, thicknesses or even how the ends are cut – but better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!
By the time I finished putting everything away and got inside, it was full dark. It was very disorienting to look at the time and realize it wasn’t even 7pm yet! At least it was a more productive day today. The pile of garden soil is once again covered, and since I was out near the barn anyhow, I brought the frame pieces for the carport to the yard. I’m sure we’re still missing a cover piece, but even if we are, I’d like to find a way to set it up near the house, over where the old basement window is. It was warm enough to do one final watering of the Korean Pine; my daughter got the sliver buffaloberry and sea buckthorn done yesterday. We’ll have to be careful putting the hoses away, so they don’t crack in the cold. We even got a dump run in.
The next couple of days are supposed to reach highs of just above freezing, then a couple of days of slightly warmer temperatures. After that, our highs are going to be below freezing, and staying there. At least that’s what one app is telling me. Another weather app is a bit different – and forecasting colder temperatures. About the only thing that really needs to get done in the next few days, though, is to cover the hole in that shed roof with the large tarp I got for it. Getting it up and over is not going to be easy, never mind fastening it down. What we could really use is scaffolding! Ah, well. I’ll just add that to the list… 😉 Anyhow, we’re looking at possible rain and snow a few days from now, so we really need to get that taken care of. There are too many things in that shed that are useful. I don’t want the roof to collapse, if I can avoid it!
The Re-Farmer 