This morning, I got a message from one of the rescue people, asking if today was a good day to bring back Domino.
We were ready to set her up in the isolation shelter. She was spayed just 4 days ago, and should be in there for 10 days.
While the rescue people where on the way, I broke out the weed trimmer and cleared around the isolation shelter and catio, then kept on going until I drained all three batteries. Then I switched to sweeping up all the grass clipping and elm seed covered steps, sidewalk and patio blocks. I was part way through that when the rescue people arrived with Domino. Two months, and she made zero adaption to the indoor life!
Once the carrier was brought to an isolation shelter window, though, she dove right in! For the next while, she went from settling in the bed she spent so much time in before, and prowling around, trying to fund a way out!
They also had some cat food donations for us, including something I’ve never seed before. Freeze dried meals that get warm water added to them. Should be interesting to see how that goes over!
When I did the evening cat feeding, I allowed Curtis into the isolation shelter. They used ti snuggle together regularly.
After I got that second picture of them eating together, Domino swatted at him! She is so stressed out. Hopefully, she will calm down over the next while. We will allow other cats she used to snuggle with, in and out, so she’s not always alone in there.
Domino was back and I finished the clean up by lunch time. I headed in for lunch and was considering heading back outside when the phone rang.
It was the garage. He’d just listened to my voice mails!
Turns out they are no longer open on Saturdays in the new location.
I told him what happened, and he was very surprised. He’d never had this happen before. He asked if I could come by today so he could look at it. Of course, I said yes!
I got there soon enough, and he took the truck into a bay immediately. He jacked it up a bit so he could slide under and take a look.
The linkage was just a hair away from falling off again!
I told him about what my brother did, as the video I sent did not get to him. He checked his company phone again, and they showed up (my text app doesn’t like sending images or video over wifi, but they got sent once I had a strong enough data signal in town) so he watched both videos my brother had made.
What my brother had noticed and done would not have had any effect, he told ne. The linkage simply should have held. He said he’d installed about 500 of this specific part, and not once has this happened before.
He went back under the truck and worked on it some more.
The only thing he could think of for this to happen is that the mechanic that installed it pushed it in, heard a click, then stopped. When it is in properly, there are two clicks. He can’t say for sure, as he wasn’t there to see it, but he can’t think of anything else. Which likely means my brother had done the same thing though, again, there is no way to know.
He added another zip tie to further secure it, just in case. If it happens again, they will replace the whole thing.
If it happens again???
He told me, it should hold. But he understood my concern. He gave me some instructions in case it does, and even gave me the after hours phone number for their tow truck.
I went straight home after that.
Tomorrow, I will be going back into town. My husband had to get his doctor to start the paperwork so he could re-apply for his disability tax benefit. He finally got through to the CRA, and they wouldn’t let him renew it without doing the paperwork all over again
Which will cost us $70. My husband had a phone appointment with his doctor about it today, and the form is now ready for pick up. Once he fills in his part of it, we can mail it out.
My doctor’s clinic charged $50 to fill mine out.
This will be a test run for the truck. The day after, my younger daughter has a medical appointment in the city. After that, we’ve got our stock up shopping, her blacksmithing workshop, and we are even going to be able to go to my husband’s brother’s cottage for Canada Day.
It’s been years since my husband has gone anywhere other than doctor’s appointments.
Hopefully, Damocles is done dropping the sword on us.
I have had no word back about the truck yet, which means they haven’t had a chance to look at it or do a diagnostic. I should try phoning directly, tomorrow.
Before I share about today, I wanted to share what I found last night. I am so glad I decided to enjoy the long daylight and walk around the yard before bed! This, of course, included checking the garden beds. In of them, I saw unexpected movement.
It was a garter snake.
Stuck in the excess black netting over the Daikon radish, turnip and red noodle bean bed.
I tried to get it loose with just my hands at first, but quickly realized that was not possible, to I ran… well.. hobbled…. to the house to get a utility knife. I then very carefully cut at the netting where it was tight against the snake’s body – and even its mouth! This netting is something even frogs can get through, but there is something about the garter snake bodies that get caught. The more they struggle to get loose, the worse they get caught. Last year, my daughter was helping me remove some of this netting from around the trellis bed and found a snake had been caught up in it, in a spot where it couldn’t be seen until we pulled the netting out. That one was already dead when we found it. This one was still alive, thankfully. Once I got its mouth and head free, it tried to curl up on itself as they are wont to do, but it had obviously been struggling for a while and didn’t have a lot of energy left.
Once I got it free, I set it aside in the greenery under where I stack the logs and boards we use in the garden. This morning, it was gone!
I am so glad I found it in time.
We really need to find different critter netting. This stuff is to keep the larger critters out while still letting the pollinators in, but I’m quite unhappy about how it catches on everything – including our much desired garter snakes!
So that was a happy start to the day.
We were expecting the insurance company assessor to come today at around 12:30. I did my morning rounds as usual, then had my breakfast before heading back out again at about 11 and do some work in the garden until she arrived. I started out by using the very full rain barrel to water the garden beds by the house and in the south and east yards.
I have been checking out the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, and they appear to be a total loss. The cabbage bed is full of self seeded radishes, which would be a good thing, except they are all bolting. The only thing doing well in that bed are the shallots and onions I transplanted while redoing the bed by the chain link fence. As for the kohlrabi, I can see a few seedlings here and there,, and they are quite eaten up. No sign of what did the eating. Normally, I’d say flea beetles, but there’s no sign of any. Those tend to show up later in the season, anyhow, after the canola fields are harvested.
After watering in front of the house, I moved to the main garden area to water there. That done, I was getting ready to set up the hose to fill the old rain barrel to water the food forest trees and bushes.
While I was watering everything else, I could hear a utility vehicle, and it was definitely coming closer, so I went to take a look. It was the wife of the couple that rents the rest of the property, checking the fence line. So I headed over to say hi. While she kept following the fence line, it gave me a chance to check on the walnuts.
*sigh*
The Manchurian Walnut, that had been doing so well, has been eaten by dear. So has at least one of the Black walnut, and it looks like the ash tree my mother gave us was also eaten.
I hadn’t gotten to making cages for them fast enough.
I still plan to do that; they should regrow their leaves again. It’ll set them back probably a year, though.
Around then, our renter was closer so we stopped to chat at the fence for a while. I told her where I had planted the basket willow, and how I’d set up the T posts and used a partially collapsed fence line to hopefully ensure their cows won’t trample them. She said they will be rotating the cows to this section very soon.
After a lovely conversation with her, I checked my phone because I’d heard some notifications while we were talking.
It was well past 12:30 when my brother messaged me, asking if the assessor had arrived. I told him no, and updated him about the renter and their cows. It was a little past 1 when my brother messaged me again. He just received a text from the assessor, saying she would be here shortly after 2.
Hmmm.
I went back to watering the food forest trees. When that was done, I moved on to the old kitchen garden.
The bed with the tiny bok choi, mixed beets, onions and parsnips needed weeding, and I decided I would remove the old mosquito netting, which is two lengths cobbled together, and replace it with the second sheet of new insect netting I picked up, one of which is currently protecting the cabbage transplants.
In the first image, I had removed the netting and done nothing else yet. While I was putting the mosquito netting pieces away, I heard some noise out by the barn and went to check it out. It was the renter; some stuff had blown around and she was moving them back onto their pile, so the cows wouldn’t step on it. We talked for a while again. The grass in this area is incredibly tall – tall enough to short out the electric fence, so she was going to have to come back with the weed trimmer. The fence posts in that section are getting really rotted. Part of the rental deal is that they are responsible for the fences, and she told me of what she would be telling her husband about the fences and what she sees that they need to do.
That big green thing in the top right of the image?
That’s an invading rose stem! Likely from the pink rose bush at the end of the bed. In the wattle weave bed, it’s the white roses that invade.
While weeding the bed, I found the remains of some of the tiny bok choi, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. That little strip was almost the only ones I found at all.
There are beets and parsnips coming up, though. There was some self seeded spinach, but it was all bolting, so I weeded those out. The onions that got transplanted in the fall along the south side of the bed are looking nice and strong. You can see how the bed looked after clean up in the third image above.
Then I recovered the bed with the new insect netting. This stuff is much lighter and flexible, but it is still quite strong. It’ll hold the weight of cats using it as a hammock! I didn’t want to cut the netting to size, though, as it will be used differently in the future, so the excess length got rolled up at the end near the rose bush, and the excess width got pulled up over the top, then fastened in place with safety pins. There is a gab between the cover and the frame along the north side of the bed, so I used a board to hold the netting down and below the based of the cover.
By this time, it was past when the assessor was supposed to arrive, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I went inside and the girls were cooking, so I went to sit and take a break.
Before I knew it, there was a knock at the door!
The assessor had arrived, but parked her car in front of the garage, out of view.
Now, as far as I knew, she was going to look at all the outbuildings.
Turns out, she needed to come into the house, too.
I warned her, the house is a disaster, and that we had 21 cats.
We did that part last.
We started out going to the garage, though she asked about the storage house along the way. She never took measurements of that, but did take pictures. Once at the garage, I told her about the ages of the different parts. She took her pictures and measurements. Then we moved on to the barn, though she did take pictures of one of the sheds beside it that is still used for storage. She checked out, photographed and measured the barn, then we headed to the pump shack. I explained to her the fence line marking where its rented out and where we are responsible for taking care of. While checking out the pump shack, she asked about the log building that used to be the chicken coop, and I told her that’s the last log building we have that is still salvageable; it needs a new roof, but the walls are still solid. So she took pictures of that, too. My brother’s caravan and trailers are not permanent, so she ignore those, but did check the warehouse, stuffed with my parent’s belongings.
Finally, we made our way back to the house, and I showed her where the septic tank is, where the well is, which part of the house was original log, and about what year it was built, and the additions.
Then she had to come inside.
*sigh*
We haven’t been able to do the spring cleaning of the sun room yet, because of the weather. Then there’s the old kitchen – I made sure to tell her that the old wood cook stove was broken and cannot be used. I’d already told her about the new roof, and that the chimney to the old wood burning furnace had been removed, so there’s just the chimney to the old kitchen.
Then she had to go through all the rooms in the house, which was downright embarrassing. Our house really is a disaster. Then we went into the basement, starting with the “new” part basement. Once in the old part, I made sure to tell her that we had a new well pump, and she checked out the other pumps, too. The blower fans are going continuously now, and I explained the the old basement was built before weeping tile was a thing, so it does get wet, but doesn’t flood.
I apologized for the disaster, and she basically said, between the cats and being on a farm, she knows how it can get.
Oh, and it turned out she’s allergic to cats!
After she was done, I followed her car out to close the gate behind her. By this time, I was getting pretty famished, so I headed in to finally have my lunch (it was well past 3 by then). We were running low on kibble for the inside cats which, for the price, would normally be a trip to Walmart. Chatting with the family, my older daughter ended up sending me funds and a list, so I ended up doing a bit of a grocery shopping trip. I checked out the garden centre after the shopping to see if they had any transplants worth picking up.
They did not.
So I headed home. If I hadn’t had frozen stuff in the car, and forgotten to bring insulated bags, I would have gone across the road to see the garden centre at the Canadian Tire, but everything would have just melted in the car while I did.
By then, it was late enough that my daughter took care of the outside cat feeding while I was gone. I will be heading out again after I finish this post to do my evening rounds and checks. It’s still nice and light out.
Hopefully, I won’t find another trapped garter snake, but I’ll bring my utility knife with me, just in case!
Tomorrow, I think I will re-work those failed beds and see what I can plant in there, that has a short enough season for it.
We had another chilly night last night, with temperatures dropping to 7C/45F Today reached 22C/72F, but we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F again, tonight! In fact, over the next while, our overnight lows are expected to be below 10C/50F more often that above.
Not good for the garden.
This morning, after doing my rounds, I started on transplanting the purchased plants. I decided to plant the butternut squash in the bed along the chain link fence.
Each pot had two plants in it, so I prepped four spots. Unfortunately, there was no way I could separate them without damaging the roots too much. So I kept them together. I plan to train them up the chain link fence, and/or the sunflowers. You can see some sprouted sunflowers in the bottom of the above images. These went into the middle third of the chain link fence, and the two varieties of sunflowers each got half the entire bed, so the seedlings coming up next to the butternut squash would be the Mammoth sunflower variety. Both varieties should have stems strong enough to support climbing vines, if they get a chance to get big enough, first.
That job went quickly. The next one took quite a bit longer.
The rest of the transplants were to go into the bed in the main garden area that I had to put the insect netting over, to keep the cats out of the exposed soil. Newly exposed soil. The first thing to do was to remove the netting and hoops. I made a point of spreading out the netting and folding it up right away, because it was rather breezy and I didn’t want it getting blown around and tangled up.
Next, I went over the bed with the garden fork to loosen the soil and get rid of any weeds. There were hardly any weeds, which was nice for a change.
Once the soil was loosened and leveled, I spaced out the cabbage transplants to be more or less a foot apart. Or, slightly more than the length of my trowel. As this bed only recently had the plastic cover removed, the soil didn’t get much chance to be rained on. Moisture drains away and disappears so quickly, I made the extra effort to deeply water the planting holes before the cabbages were transplanted. I also made sure they were slightly below grade, so that any water would drain towards the plants. The dozen transplants took up about half the bed. Once they were in the ground, that half of the bed got a thorough watering, not just the plants. Then I started cutting up pieces of cardboard to set around the transplants as a mulch, which also got a soaking. Finally, I added straw on top of the cardboard and thickly along the edges. Then the straw got a soak.
The cabbages need insect netting to protect them, but the rest of the transplants need insects for pollinating, so I set hoops up over the cabbages only. For the entire bed, I’d made 7 hoops, but used 5 over the cabbages. I used the extra rods and connectors to add one more rod to the hoops. This way, the hoops could cover the width of the bed, including the straw mulch, completely. For the netting, I set it so that the salvage edge of one side was at the base of the hoops along one side, and the excess length was at the end of the bed instead of the middle. After clipping the salvage edge to the hoops, close to the ground, I pulled things snug to clip the netting close to the ground at the other side. That left me with a lot of excess netting, which got pulled up over the top and clipped on the other side as far as it could reach.
It isn’t set up yet when I took the last photo in the slide show above, but I later added weights along the edges of the netting between the hoops, too. I didn’t want to use ground staples as, with the straw mulch in place, they get pulled up very easily.
That done, it was time to do the melons.
For this, I had a large, heavy duty card board box that I could use to cover the entire remaining half of the bed. I decided to lay it down and cut squares out where the melons would be planted, first. It got moved aside after that, so the soil could get a good watering. Then I laid the cardboard down to give it a thorough soak, turned it over to soak the other side, then turned it back again to soak it some more.
For here, I have one pot of watermelon and three of muskmelon. All have two transplants per pot but, as with the butternut squash, there was no way to divide them without damaging the roots too much. Which means I have six muskmelon in three spots and two watermelon in one spot.
As always, the planting holes got a deep watering, before the plants were added. Again, I made sure they were planted into a slight depression for water flow, then the whole area got watered again.
That done, the straw mulch was added, including in the area that has nothing planted in it. If I find more transplants worth buying, I have room. I would just need to push aside the straw mulch, then cut a hole in the cardboard below.
The straw got a very thorough watering. If the straw is too dry, it’ll act as a thatch.
That done, and everything put away, I wanted to get some trellis netting out of the garden shed. Which meant disturbing our little furry family.
Things had been knocked about by the raccoons, and the wrapped balls of netting were coming undone and getting caught on things, which meant it took a while for me to get them. In the end, I grabbed several different types of nets and the tomato cage they were getting hung up on, just to not disturb the raccoons to much.
They didn’t seem to care.
The mama didn’t move. She actually seemed to be asleep. The babies just watched me. No chittering. No getting upset or scared. Not even looking particularly curious. They just stayed snuggled up to Mom and watched me.
These buggers have no business being that cute. 😄
The netting got set aside for now; the peas in the trellis bed are getting tall enough that the trellis netting will soon be needed.
Once everything was done and set aside, I got changed to head into town. My younger daughter forgot to call in her meds for delivery on Thursday and she just ran out of one of them, so she called her refills in when the pharmacy opened which, on Sundays, is at noon. My older daughter sent me funds to pick things up at the grocery store, too.
After picking up the prescription refills, I made a point of heading to the cash desk, just to show the cashier that there was nothing owing on the meds. Along the way, I passed a new display of what turned out to be bouncy balls. I had no idea. All I saw were all these round critter faces looking at me. Including a hilariously adorable dragon, though it took some doing to figure out that it was a dragon.
It called to me.
They weren’t expensive, so I bought one for my daughter and hid it in her bag of prescriptions. She loves dragons, and I knew she would get a giggle out of it.
The cashier started chatting about today’s weather, and how we are finally supposed to not get rain for a while. Where she lives, the flooding was pretty bad, but not as bad as an area south of her that got 12 inches of rain in 6 hours.
12 inches.
30 cm.
In six hours.
That’s just insane!
No wonder highways were being washed away!
That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up a few things, then home.
My daughter loved the dragon. She thinks it’s hilarious.
By the time I got back from town, it was time to feed the outside cats, so I quickly did that while my older daughter made supper. After supper, I headed back outside again. First thing was to break out the weed trimmer and clear the grass away from several rocks in the west yard, so I could see them and not high them with the riding mower.
I am so thankful to my brother for letting us use their push mower and little riding mower. The riding mower they gave us years ago still runs but, for some reason, doesn’t cut. The grass just bends – and my brother had sharpened the blade when he repaired the chain that kept falling off. Our push mower lost pieces and couldn’t be repaired. We don’t have the funds to replace the push mower, and we can’t figure out what’s wrong with the riding mower. Thanks to my brother, we can still do the mowing.
I was able to do most of the inner yard. As I was moving into the West yard, where all the cat shelters are, I spotted a huge raccoon coming out of the catio, where it was stealing food! Not the mama, but a bigger one; likely a big male.
I didn’t even try to mow around the main garden area, nor did I start on the outer yard. That will wait for another day.
Not tomorrow, though.
On the way into town, I took a quick side trip to find where our garage’s new location is. It was very easy to find, and our truck is parked under the shade of a tree. Tomorrow morning, I will take my brother’s car into town to pay for the repairs and get the key, but will leave the truck there. After the funeral and internment, we’ll be able to switch vehicles, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that before the garage closes. It’s unlikely my mother will be physically up to anything beyond the funeral itself, but we are working out the timing so that we all arrive together with my mother, who will be using her wheelchair for this outing. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult for her to transfer into my brother’s vehicle.
I really hope things work out well tomorrow. A part of me still suspects someone that believed our vandal’s lies about us might make a scene and try kicking us out or something. We shall see.
Time to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
The storms that hit last night were absolutely brutal.
Thankfully, we seem to have escaped most of it, but there is massive damage to the south of us. Highways were flooded over, and people shared images of cars with nothing but the top of the roof showing, along them. One of the highways we regularly take to the city has been shut down due to flood damage. One person reporting a sink hole the size of a car. Others posted pictures showing chunks of road missing. The highway and weather groups I follow were constantly posting warnings. Funnel clouds were scene, and there has been serious damage in the city. Parts of the province are without power and will probably remain so for another day, at least.
I was up by 4am and already getting notifications and started to message with my brother about highway conditions. Thankfully, where they now live hasn’t had any flooding or major damage, that we know of so far. My husband’s sister is in one of the areas without power, and says there are a lot of downed trees.
Once it was light enough out, I went outside to check on things, fully expecting to find more dead trees had fallen, or at least lots of broken branches.
I found neither!
We were expecting an assessor from the insurance company my brother hopes to switch to this afternoon, so I made sure to open the gate while I was doing my rounds. The mostly filled in and grown over pond in the old hay yard, near that gate, was singing loudly!
There were SO many frogs, and they were so very loud!
Along with checking around the outer yard, in the barn and around my brother’s equipment, I made sure to check the garden beds. Amazingly, they were all just fine. No damage at all! The netting, etc. on almost all the beds protected them from hail, and the collars protected delicate transplants and new sprouts from high winds.
In the image after the brief video above, you can see the nice new leaves showing on the Manchurian walnut! Checking the Black walnut, one of them doesn’t seem to have survive the winter, but the others are leaving out nicely. In the last image, you can see the two rows I direct sowed recently, with the re-seeded row of Daikon radish seedlings on the left, and red noodle beans on the right. Both of them germinated so very quickly!
I was also looking around to see how the yard cats were doing. They seem to have all been able to take shelter and were looking downright content.
I have been catching Sprig on the netting over this bed repeatedly, leaning against it and squishing the garlic. So I moved the hoops from being in the soil to jamming them into the wattle weave as best I could – the ends kept trying to go completely through. This raised the net high enough to make more room for the garlic and dwarf peas – and it turns out to be able to support the weight of Sprig, too!
In the next image, you can see Misha – a beautiful furry flower among the roses, being very nervous because I was getting too close.
In the next image, I caught Curtis, mid yawn! He, Bug and The Grink have been cuddling together a lot lately.
I got the last picture of Colby – mid yawn! – later in the afternoon. He is such a beauty!
I managed to get some weed trimming done around the house. I hoped to get more done, as we’re expecting more rain tonight. I only had two fully charged batteries, though, and it took more time and effort than usual. The Chinese Elm seeds have been drifting against the edges that I needed to trim, and the driving rain packed them into solid masses. In some places, I had to get the stiff bristle yard broom out to clear the stuck masses of seeds away before I could even try to trim the edges. There was a lot of starting and stopping, as I also had to move things around to get under or around them. In some places, I had to break out the pruning shears to trim things too thick or strong for the weed trimmer line.
One thing that didn’t happen today. The insurance company assessor didn’t make it. My brother had contacted her to tell her not to use a particular highway, but suggested a different one. At first, she said it would be okay, but after that she must have heard more damage reports and wanted to reschedule to Monday. That’s when the funeral is, though, so it was instead rescheduled to tomorrow morning. Which doesn’t make much sense to me, because not a lot will change overnight. Especially with more rain on the way. We’ve also got a prescription delivery tomorrow. We don’t actually know what the conditions of the gravel roads are, other than what’s immediately around us. What is immediately around us is fine, and there’s only a couple of sections that might be of concern if there was flooding. Based on what I can see so far, though, I don’t think there would have been any flooding. Our own ditches and driveway would be a lot fuller, if it got to that point.
As I’m writing this, I can hear thunder. We’re expected to get rain roughly and hour from now, for about an hour, then more rain is supposed to be from about 5am to noon tomorrow.
The assessor is supposed to come at around 10. She’s supposed to walk around the property to look at the house and outbuildings from the outside, and the scheduled time slot is for 2 hours.
Hmmm… We’ll see if she even makes it at all. I expect our gravel roads are fine, but if she’s coming from the city, from what I’m hearing, there is plenty of damage and debris on the other two highways she could take to come out here. From what I can see on the highways map, a couple of intersections are closed down due to flooding (unlike the many miles shut down on the highway nearest us), while other small sections are marked as “incidents”, stating water on the road and proceed with caution.
I’m chatting with my brother as I write this. He says he is thinking of cancelling the assessment outright for now.
That might be a good idea. After the upcoming rain, who knows how much worse it will be! We don’t have tornado warnings anymore, but do have warnings for flash flooding and hail.
Which reminds me. I’ve heard nothing from the garage about my truck. It’s entirely possible either mechanics couldn’t make it into work, or they’ve been deluged with vehicles damaged by hail, debris or flooding. Or both.
We’re oddly relieved that it broke down when it did!
Okay, that thunder is a lot closer. I think it’s time to shut down my computer, just in case!
For anyone else under this weather system, be safe out there!
My younger daughter and I were out shortly after 6am to try and snag cats into carriers. Particularly the two in the isolation shelter with Bug.
We let Bug out. She’s been in there for a week since her spay, and my daughter was able to give her the dewormer pill finally, yesterday. She will be better outside the shelter – especially in this heat!
Unfortunately, we had zero luck getting the other two. They know exactly where to go that we can’t reach.
So we tried for Adam, who suddenly was no longer friendly.
In the end, we were able to easily get Havarti and Curtis, plus we got Hypotenose because he was basically blocking the carrier while we were trying to reach Adam and practically went in on his own.
Then the door closed and he panicked. It was very concerning, but he did settle down a bit. I put the carrier with Curtis in it, door to door with Hypotenose, and I think that helped.
At this point, I left right away. I’d be very early, but I thought the vibrations of the drive would calm them.
It did.
However…
Along the way I suddenly realized the battery gauge was not where it usually is. It was still within the “normal” range, but well into the low side. I have never seen it there before. Not even the time we got low battery warnings.
Then I got to an intersection where I needed to stop at a stop sign for a while before I could turn, and the gauge went up to where it normally is.
By the time I reached the junction, maybe a mile away from the vet clinic, it started dropping again.
So, while I was parked and waiting, with the cats very quiet behind me, I started looking up the second location of our usual garage in town. I wasn’t able to phone right away, though, partly because my phone needed to be restarted before any calls would connect, and partly because the clinic opened and I went in.
When giving the info for Hypotenose, I made sure to mention that I was afraid he might have injured himself in his panic. He had been clawing and biting at the door, and it looks like there might be blood on his face. They were forwarned.
Once the cats were processed and taken to the back, I went to the truck and called the garage. After telling him what was happening, he said he was just going an oil change at the moment, and could take a quick look. I got directions to where the garage was (not anywhere near where I thought they were!) and headed over.
My phone started to ring while I was driving. I don’t answer my phone when I’m driving, but I thought it might be the vet clinic.
When I found the place and parked, I checked, and yes, it was. My phone will transcribe voice mail messages into text, so I did that. I had mentioned that we assume the cats all have ear mites and worms, but there was a misunderstanding. The rescue didn’t include deworming in what the cats were signed up for. I clarified things and said that, if they thought it was necessary, I would pay for the dewormer.
While I was on the phone, the mechanic came out with his tester, figuring I was the one who called earlier. I told him I was on the phone with the vet, so he went ahead and popped the hood while I walked around. When I was on hold, I came over to talk to him and see what was going on.
He tested the battery.
It was fine.
Alternator checked out fine.
He got another tester, opened up the fuse box (I now see how to open it, and can’t understand why I couldn’t manage it before!) and tested all the fuses. They were fine.
I stepped away for a bit when the vet clinic got back on the call and when it was done, I talked with the mechanic some more. I’m glad I took a picture of what the gauge was at, because it was back to normal when I drove over, and a bit of our history, as I’ve noticed something’s been draining the battery, every so slightly, somewhere.
He couldn’t find our electrical gremlin, but he explained to me what to watch for.
As he was testing the fuses, I joked that, since I was there, I might get him to change my headlight bulb. I picked up a new bulb yesterday, but the last time I tried to chance the bulb, it was a real pain. I ended up changing it from inside. He agreed it was a pain, because the whole light assembly comes out. He pointed out, this screw has to be taken off, there’s another under the shield, and one underneath, accessed through the wheel well.
…
I didn’t know about that third one. No wonder I couldn’t get it out!
When he was done checking and filling me in, I asked what I owed him, and he said, nothing. He didn’t charge me for the testing!
If I had gone to Canadian Tire, they would have charged me for the diagnostic and given me a printout of all the other things they wanted me to get them to do, costing many hundreds of dollars, most of which I have later found out were not at all needed.
That done, I headed back to the area of town where the vet clinic is nearby and basically tried to hang out at the Walmart. And the Dollarama. Then back to Walmart. I checked out the garden centre at the Walmart first, which is accessible only from the outside and by going around a construction and detour zone. I spotted a couple of things I wouldn’t mind picking up to fill in the gaps where we lost some sliver buffalo berry. Josta berry interests me. So does logan berry. We will decide that later on, though. I’m not buying transplants until I’ve actually transplanted what we have now, and have an idea of what survived and what hasn’t.
When lunch time started rolling around, I really didn’t want to do the usual McRaunchies, Subway or even the Timmies across the street. I haven’t gone to Timmies in a long time. They are not good, like they used to be. After watching the menu board for a while, I left without ordering anything. Nothing appealed to me. I ended up going to the McRaunchies in the Walmart.
At least the iced blueberry pomegranate drink was a nice change.
I tried to take a lot of time, but I just can’t sit still for that long, so I wandered the store some more.
I ended up driving over to the Canadian Tire after a while and hanging around there as long as I had the tolerance for.
I did pick up a few things. some for the lawn and garden, but also a birthday gift for my younger daughter, whose birthday is next month. I found a blacksmith hammer for her. Yes, I gave it to her early. She is thrilled!
Normally, I would have gone back to the truck and napped for a bit, since I have been up since 4:30 and never fell asleep until past 1am (I did sleep in the cat free zone, with the AC running, so that helped), but it’s just too hot. We slowly heated up to 34C/93F and are only now starting to cool down. If you can call 33C/91F at pat 6:30pm “cooling down”.
When it got around 1pm, I just went over to the vet clinic.
It turned out they hadn’t even started on them yet. I asked if I could stay and they were okay with that, except that they close their doors to the public between 3 and 3:30 for a staff meeting, and I would have to leave for that. The cats would be done and in recovery by then. After asking her for some ideas, I decided to go hang out at a library not that far away.
With the little bit of driving around I did, the battery gauge went from behaving normally, to suddenly dropping down again, and back again.
Once at library, I tried to park in the tiniest bit of shade I could find and headed it. They have a little cafe and I was able to get an iced drink and cool down for awhile, before going into the main library area and finding a comfortable armchair to wait in. Along the way, I updated my family, my brother and SIL, the rescue chat group, etc.
Part way through, I got a text message from the rescue worker who arranged these appointments.
The vet had called her to let her know, one of the cats had to be euthanized. She couldn’t remember which one, but she said he had major dental issues. I thought of Hypotenose and the damage he might have done to his teeth, but she said severe gingivitis was part of it, which means this was a long time problem, not something that started today. She thought it might have been Hypotenose, but wasn’t sure.
I was told the other two were doing well, and they would be ready for pick up at 3:30. I updated the family, and even the cat lady, who had been out of the country for a while and came back to discover Button and broken a lot of plates while she was gone! She sent me a picture of Button, yesterday. You can see the blue of his eyes more, now, which means the dilation is reducing and he would be able to see at least a bit more. The Cat Lady ended up phoning me and we chatted for a bit. She has been in a similar situation with some of the ferals she has brought in, even though she is not a rescue anymore. They just show up at her place. So she understood how it can happen.
By then, I decided to start heading back to the clinic. I was about 15 minutes early, so I was parked with the engine running and the AC on, while messaging with my brother and SIL. I had told them about what the truck was doing. Then, while I was sitting parked, I realized a new warning light was on the dash.
The “slippery conditions” light.
While I was parked.
The gauge was dropping again, too. The doors were almost open, so I opened the windows, shut the engine off and went to stand in the shade for the last few minutes!
This time, the vet didn’t come out to talk to me, so I don’t have details on what happened, but the tech asked if the rescue person had let me know what they had to do with Hypotenose. They gave me the paperwork for the other two, then went to get them and the now empty carrier.
I did tell them in advance that these are yard cats and would be going back outside. I was told to keep Havarti at least in the carrier for longer, as he had some scrotal bleeding. Just until the blood clotted. I said we would do the best we can, but he was in the smallest carrier, so he couldn’t stay in there for very long!
From there, I headed home – with my SIL making sure I knew to call them if something happened with the truck!
Everything was right were is normally is, the whole ride home.
*sigh*
Once home, my younger daughter came out to help unload and I told her the vet instructions. I was thinking of setting the carriers in the shade in the yard, but she suggested we put Havarti in the old kitchen for a while. It’s cooler in there. So she took care of that, and made sure he had a bowl of water and a bit of food.
Then we let Curtis out, since he’d already been in there for about an hour, which the tech recommended as a minimum. Curtis is going great.
The girls had supper ready by the time I got home, so after bringing everything in – and giving my daughter her birthday present, we ate, then moved on to other things for the next while. My daughter had a timer set to check on Havarti, so she let me know it went off, asking if I wanted to check on him, too. By the time I got there, she had already taken the carrier out and check on him. When I came in, she was aghast. Havarti came out, covered in blood. His back end saturated, and all his underbelly. He’d spilled some of his water bowl, and that didn’t help any!
He was moving around slowly, eventually splaying out on a sidewalk block in the shade, while I stayed out to do the evening cat feeding. When he flopped down, I could see his bits, and the bleeding looks like it has stopped, but he’s terribly swollen! I’ve never seen this happen after a neuter before, and we’ve had a LOT of cats neutered. In fact, I’ve never seen any of them have bleeding afterwards, until today!
In a little while, my daughter and I will be rolling the isolation shelter out and I’ll do my best to clean it up, then see if I can get Havarti in there for the night. In all honestly, though, it wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t make it.
It’s past 7pm now, and we’ve cooled down to 30C/86F. It might be an okay time to try and move the shelter into the shade of the white lilacs now.
I started things off a bit early, and it was still lovely and cool. My priority, after I did my morning rounds, was to water the garden beds before the heat hit.
I’m happy to say that I am seeing new sprouts in the rows of spinach, chard, turnips and radish in the main garden area. I checked under the boards in the trellis bed and saw what might be carrot sprouts, so I removed the boards. It’s hard to say for sure, as a lot of weeds were trying to come up under there, too.
I’m pretty sure I saw new sprouts in the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, too. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing tiny bok choy and beet seedlings through the mosquito netting, thought it’s hard to be sure. I didn’t see any this morning, but this evening, I’m sure I could see the first dwarf pea sprouts!
After I finished outside, I came in and had breakfast, then tried to go down for a nap before I planned to visit my mother, then pick up anything we needed before doing our first stock up shop, tomorrow.
It was a failure.
For some reason, both Butterscotch and Cheddar have decided that, when I lie down, they absolutely MUST cuddle my head. Aggressively. Then curling up right at my head to nap themselves.
That doesn’t count the other cats that like to settle on my hip, against my back or on either side of my legs.
*sigh*
Next time, I’ll try napping on the couch. The living room is a cat free zone.
I eventually gave up and got ready to head into town. Before I did, I noted activity notification on my bank app and checked.
My husband’s tax return, which is supposed to include my first Disability Tax Credit, came in.
It was short by about $2500.
Unfortunately, my husband still can’t log into his CRA account to see why. I’m going to have to wait until our tax prepared is back from holidays at the end of the month and phone her, because she can log in and see his account – and maybe find out why he can’t log in, himself. anymore!
My younger daughter never got her disability tax credit, either. She did her taxes herself.
Frustrating.
Anyhow.
I headed into town and realized my mother would be just starting her lunch, so I decided to go to the grocery store, first. I actually picked up some ground beef that was on sale. I haven’t seen ground beef for under $6 a pound for a long time, even with sales.
My visit with my mother was pretty good. As I was headed to her room, I spotted her in the dining room and popped in. We then went to her room for the visit.
She is so enjoying having a room – and a bathroom – to herself! She says being in the nursing home, compared to the TCU, is like night and day.
Of course, she still had things to complain about. With her medications, as usual. Apparently someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time? Then the count for her morning meds was off. She said she asked who was in charge of the medications and was told it was the pharmacy in town. I suspect the person didn’t understand what my mother was asking, but she now believes the pharmacy decides what medications she gets, at their whim. She then started going on about how the staff all think she is stupid, and everyone living there is stupid, and that’s why they are deliberately messing with their medications.
*sigh*
She had asked my brother for a radio and he’d given me one to pass on to her. I plugged it in and tried to find the station she told me the number of. There was nothing on either AM or FM (she didn’t know which is was; she doesn’t understand anything about AM or FM). Since I couldn’t pick up her station (though I could pick up others), she decided it was a bad radio and started asking me if an old radio that belonged to my husband when we were in high school – a ghetto blaster, which tells you just how old it is! – was still around. It is, but I told her, it still won’t pick up that station. I tried to explain again about things interfering with frequencies, but she decided it meant that the radio stations were the problem, for having “weak” signals.
Then I tried to show her the sliding switch that goes from off to FM then AM. She demanded “just show me what button to push”. I told her, it’s not a button. It’s a switch that slides, and showed her again; Off – FM – AM.
She got angry that my brother would give her a high tech radio that she can’t understand.
*sigh*
It was a shorter visit, since there really wasn’t much we had to talk about. Now that she is in town, I can visit her more often, anyhow. Before I left, I spent some time at the nursing station. I explained what my mother told me about the medications, and that someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time. She was startled to hear that and said she would look into it. She got out the medication binder and looked up my mother’s file, going over everything, which is basically the same that it was while she was at the TCU. She said they tried looking at my mother’s list to compare (the hand written one she makes after she counts her pills, with little diagrams), but it was in Polish, so they were trying to translate it. My mother had been promised a list of her medications and they were going to try to get it translated into Polish for her, too. I told her, my mother knows pre-WWII Polish; she would not be familiar with modern medical terms in today’s Polish!
As we were chatting, the nurse told me how so many of the staff were startled when my mother was transferred over. Many of them had cared for Baba – “grandmother” – which is what they called my aunt. My mother looks SO much like her sister did. My aunt passed away a few years ago, so for the staff to suddenly start seeing their Baba again was a bit of a shock until they found out they were sisters.
This nurse had just started working there when my father came to live there. I’ve had it confirmed that he was there for only 5 months before he passed away; I thought it was 6 months. She remembered my father, and I told her about how, when I phoned him every Sunday, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him, how well taken care of he was, and how much he liked the staff. She was so touched to hear that!
So far, my mother has been very nice to them. I hope that lasts! She has been saving the nasty comments about the staff for when we are there. 😕
It was a good chat with the nurse, and I expect we will have many more opportunities to talk now that my mother is there!
That done, I headed home, then stayed indoors to stay out of the heat. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter. I finally headed out at around 6:30, which is about when we hit 27C/81F.
The predicted high was 25C/77F.
We’re supposed to keep getting hotter, with the hottest day in the forecast being Friday, which they are now saying is supposed to hit 34C/93F.
The yard cats are laying in puddles all over the yard, in whatever shade they can find.
Bobert was looking adorable in the cat bed I tucked under the isolation shelter’s door box, to keep the weather out in the winter.
With the heat, I made sure to do the watering again. This time, I did watering in the food forest area.
I’m happy to say that it looks like the apple tree survived, in spite of the damage to the stem. A single branch with new leaf buds has shown up. The plum tree also has leaf buds showing up finally, but only in branches coming up just above the graft at the base. None of last year’s growth is showing buds. Neither are the mulberry trees. They survived their first winter, but it looks like they didn’t survive their second. The poor little highbush cranberry have free leaves showing, but they are still remarkably tiny, including the one that the deer did NOT nibble one. The silver buffalo berry bushes, which I don’t bother watering because there are too many, had been covered with what I thought were leave buds. It turns out they were not leaf buds, but flower buds! The leaf buds are showing up now. The sea buckthorn also have leaf buds unfurling.
After the watering was done, I started working on the larger of the two East yard beds that had not been prepped in the fall.
I first removed the two lengths of twine that went around the sides. Those were there to keep anything wrapped around the box frame from flapping in the wind too much, but they were in the way for working in the bed. I considered taking the box frame off entirely, but decided it wasn’t necessary and worked around it.
In the second picture, you can see the cleaned up bed. Unfortunately, while I was leveling the cleared soil with the hoe, I caught the line running across that helped keep the sides from bowing outwards at the joins. The wood is rotting and the screw eye got pulled right out!
Honestly, I’m surprised these beds have lasted as long as they have. I used lumber I found in the barn that had been sitting there for probably at least a decade before I found them. They were not in particularly good shape, but they were the best I could find for the job. I expected them to last about 3 years, maybe, and they’ve lasted twice that by now.
Weeding the bed didn’t really take that much, except that I found a remarkable amount of tree roots! Given where this bed is located, they would not be from the elm tree, but from the nearby cherry bushes.
I look forward to when we can make these into high raised beds. These beds are about a foot high, but it was still really painful to be bending to work in it.
Once the bed was clear, I took some plastic that was rolled up and set aside from previous uses in these beds and covered the soil to protect it from cats, until we can plant in it. I’m looking to transplant tomatoes into this bed. We have four varieties to transplant, and couple probably fit three varieties in this bed. We don’t have a lot of each variety.
The pieces of wood frame on the left of the first photo are on the 4′ square bed that also needs to be done. By the time I finished the longer bed, I was too hot and in too much pain to do that one. Aside from weeding it – and that one has been infected by creeping Charlie – I will be adding the additional wood frame pieces to make it a bit higher, and can then add more soil into it. I’m planning to put the eggplant in here. It’s a small enough bed that I can add plastic walls around it, to protect them from high winds and create a semi-greenhouse around them.
I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done over the next few days. I’ll be doing our city stock up trips and a vet trip in between. Shopping always drains me, so it will depend on how much energy I have left – and what my pain levels are at. At the very least, I plan to water everything in the morning, and again in the evening, because of the heat.
Once the city trips are done, I expect to be able to start the direct sowing, and then hopefully start transplanting soon after. Somewhere in there, I’ll be uncovering and reclaiming the area to plant our corn in.
Ah, life on the Canadian prairies. One extreme to the other. A short while ago, we were still getting snow and overnight temperature at or below freezing.
Today, we reached a high of 25C/77F – I don’t know what the humidex was – and passed 20C/68F by about 8 or 9am.
I headed out a bit earlier than usual to do the outside cat stuff. Then I checked the garden shed. Sure enough, the raccoon and her babies were still there. I decided to very carefully and as quietly as possible, take out as many things I expect to need in the next while.
I heard a lot of loud chittering as I was taking things out, most sounding like they were coming from the littles. They seemed to be chittering more about trying to latch on than what I was doing. The mama barely moved. After I cleared away things that were on top of the wheeled garden chair they are under, I stuck my phone into gaps to get the first three pictures.
Those are such roly poly babies! There are at least three, possibly four.
The last photo is most of the stuff I removed.
That roll of netting is long enough to go completely around the trellis bed, so I am saving it for this, if we need to do it again, as it would be way too long for anything else.
After that, I headed in for breakfast, iced up a water bottle, then got started on the covered bed that I wanted to plant our potatoes in.
In the first picture, you can see how it’s been since the fall, minus the bricks waying it down – something has dug holes through the plastic.
As you can see in the next picture, the solarization didn’t really work, and it was more like a greenhouse. So the first job was to loosen the soil and weed it. Especially at the end where the excess was rolled up, which was packed with creeping Charlie.
That stuff is just nasty.
Once weeded, I got it all leveled out, while leaving the soil thermometer in place. That soil is quite warm!
By this point, I was really starting to struggle with the heat and had to go inside for a bit. After grabbing a light lunch, I headed back out with the potatoes. I have 5 pound bags each of Viking and Yukon this year. Not a lot for our useage needs, but that’s all we have the space for right now.
In the photo where the potatoes are laid out, ready to be buried, you can see a board across the middle. That’s to mark between the two different types of potatoes in the same bed.
Next, the bed had to be protected. I decided to use the long roll of mosquito netting this time, which isn’t very wide, so I used shorter stakes. These were salvaged from a broken market tent and are all from pieces broken in half. The broken ends got pushed down so the end with the screw holes were at the top.
I had to gather things next, so I set up a cheap dollar store sprinkler hose over the potato bed. Double duty: I could start watering the bed while doing something else, and it kept the cats off while I wasn’t there to keep them away.
One of the things I had to go was get the roll of netting which, as you can see in the next picture, Gouda was using to nap on!!
In the past, I have strung twine from support to support, along the sided and crossing the middle. I wanted something stronger than that. This bed is 18′ wide, and I have 6′ bamboo stakes, so I ended up attaching three along the top of each side to hold the mesh up. The stakes were spaced out just under 6′ apart, allowing for some overlap. I used the screw holes in the supports and wire from one of the hoop kits I got to hold them in place. I still had to put the stakes deeper into the soil so that the netting could be secured to the ground on each sides. The sides are secured with ground staples.
Yes, I took the sprinkler hose out. It was a pretty terrible hose – but then, you get what you pay for, and this did not cost very much! It was just there for the moment, anyhow.
After I took that last picture, I gave the bed a very through watering.
Then I went inside, because I was getting dangerously overheated. I kept myself hydrated, but was feeling very exhausted. It was around 2pm by then, and I decided to nap for a couple of hours. I would then continue when the temperatures were starting to drop.
I passed right out and slept for three hours.
During this time, the girls took care of things like the outside cat feeding and starting supper.
We are going to need to get the AC going in the living room, and the onion snail rolls have been sitting on top of it, so I decided it was time to take them outside. Onions are hardy and I’m not worried about them, plus I need to start transplanting them as soon as possible. They are meant to be planted in between other things, as we go. The frame for the portable greenhouse is sitting in the shade near the shrine, so I put them there. I’ll need to start moving some of the trays from the basement out there, too.
Then it was back to the main garden area, where this is one bed that didn’t get cleaned up last year I wanted to prepare.
As you can see in the first couple of photos, the creeping Charlie is a real problem.
I had put the soil thermometer in there earlier, and it was reading a couple of degrees cooler than the first bed. By the time I removed it, though, it was just as warm as the first bed I tested! Having that plastic over the bed didn’t seem to make much difference. So much for solarization!
This bed turned out to be so filled with tree roots, too. I pile the creeping Charlie aside, half filling the wheel barrow, so it could be disposed of further away. I’d burn it, if I could. Getting those out means losing a fair bit of soil, too. In the fourth photo, you can even see some of the finer tree roots on top. I pulled out as much as I could, but somewhere under there is a major root. I was hitting it every now and then with the garden fork, but couldn’t lift it up at all.
No root vegetables in this bed, for now!
Once it was cleared and prepared, I gave it a thorough watering. For all the rain we had, that soil was pretty dry. Then I covered it with the plastic that had been over the bed the potatoes are in, covering the holes with scrap boards.
The potato bed is going to be a problem. I kept having to chase the cats off the netting! It stretches enough and is low enough that their weight pulls it down to the ground. Ideally, there would be horizontal supports across the top, joining the vertical supports, but I don’t have anything the right length.
At least they won’t be using it as a litter box.
I’ll have to figure something out.
By this time, it was around 8pm and the temperatures were downright pleasant. We’re expected to drop to 8C/46F tonight, but after that our overnight temperatures are expected to be no lower than 10C/50F On Thursday and Friday, we’re supposed to break 30C/86F, and the overnight temperatures are expected to be close to 20C/68F. It’s supposed to cool down a bit in the second week of June, but that’s a relative statement by then!
For the next while, with the exception of days where I have to drive into the city or something like that, my pattern is going to change. I’ll be getting up earlier to work outside while it’s cooler, then be inside (and probably nap) at the heat of the day before going out again when the temperature starts to drop. With the heat, I’ll be watering things in the morning. Possibly in the evening, too.
I have a couple of beds to take care of in the east yard, plus prep the old kitchen garden bed along the retaining wall. In the beginning of June – after I’ve done all our city trips and vet trip – I should be able to start direct sowing. I’m really trying to focus on getting each bed covered in some way to protect them from the cats. The one area I won’t be able to do is where I intend to plant corn. That area is currently covered by a black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, and has been for several years. Everything under it should be dead by now. I need to move that aside and prepare blocks to plant corn in and, possibly, interplant them with winter squash. That area will simply be too large to cover. I’ll have to figure something else out.
It’s going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!
First, though, we got a few other things accomplished today.
Bug looks like she is doing quite well. She is eating with her usual enthusiasm and is moving like she’d never had surgery.
I did, however, make a confirmation.
We were pretty sure the mostly black cat in there was female, partly because the females have been so much harder to socialize. When talking to the rescue, I’d forgotten this one had been named Batman, and had told them this one and the black and white were unnamed. One of the rescue workers named this one Marta for the spay appointment.
Today, however, I was able to see dangly bits. She is a he.
Batman it is.
Unfortunately, part of the reason I could see dangly bits was because he seems to have diarrhea. His fur it all flattened along his back end. After what happened with Furriosa, I am bracing myself for getting bad news at the appointment. Granted, I still have no idea how we’re going to get them into carriers.
Meanwhile, poor Adam, having only recently lost a litter, is being chased by the boys already. It’s been raining all today and, when we were outing and abouting, I saw her trying to get a drink of water out of a puddle, followed closely by a tabby, her fur absolutely matted with mud.
Both she and Slick have not been showing up at much at feeding time, and when Adam does, she can’t stay long because the boys are too agressively after her.
*sigh*
One of the first goals of the day was to head into town to see my mother at the nursing home. My younger daughter came along to help me bring in my mother’s stuff I’d taken before her transfer. That allowed us to bring it all in, in one trip.
The last time I was here, it was to visit my aunt, and she was in a completely different part of the building. I must have looked pretty lost, because someone came right up to ask me who I was there to see! When we got to the right floor and started heading to the hallway, a guy gathering linens into a trolly saw me and told me he thought my mother was asleep.
We recognized each other from when my mother was still at the TCU! He works in both places. Most of the staff is rotates between various nursing homes and TCUs, but it was still quite funny to have someone who recognized me and knew who I was there to see, less than 24 hours after her transfer!
My mother woke when we came in and we put her stuff away where she directed us to. She has quite a nice room. Not as big as the single room she had at the hospital, but a decent size, and all to herself. She has a nice view of a park outside her window, and plenty of closet and storage space. My mother seems… not so much happier to be there, as relieved. There are still things to figure out as far as how things are done. My mother has gotten used to having her meals brought to her, for example, and here they encourage residents to come to the dining room to eat, if they physically can, to get them moving around as much as possible. There is a monthly calendar of events on her wall, and every day has three or for things going on, from sing alongs to physical activities, to church services and so on. They even have bingo, which my mother enjoys.
So we had a nice little visit before heading back out. Now that she is here, I can visit her more often, simply because I go to this town so much more often, and it’s closer than where she was before.
We are all so much happier with this place, not just my mother! It’s going to be so much better for her.
She was starting to have pain issues, as no one has applied Voltaren this morning, and she wans’t even sure if they had any (it’s not a prescription, so we have to supply it), so on the way out I talked to someone at the nursing station, asking if the doctor would consider getting my mother a prescription for the stuff that I have, which is the same active ingredient, but 5 times stronger, as Voltaren. She said they will bring it up with the doctor. With a prescription, we won’t have to keep track of her supply, and they’ll be able to order it in with her other medications.
Our next stop was the pharmacy to pick up the rest of my older daughter’s prescription, plus her sister and I found other things we needed to get for ourselves. My daughter hadn’t eaten yet and it was almost lunch time, so we stopped at the DQ for lunch, then got two more meals to go for my husband and her sister. A quick stop for gas, then a stop at the post office, where I was also able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats, then home.
After things were settled in and taken care of, my daughter and I headed back out and loaded my mother’s old mattress and box spring into the box of the truck. We FINALLY got them to the dump!
From the muddy paw prints on them, the cats are going to miss them. 😄
My brother and SIL had come out while we were in town, working on their caravan, so we popped over to get caught up with them for a bit – not going in because our boots were muddy, so we didn’t stay long. My mother had asked for a radio and my brother had one for her, so he gave it to me, since we’ll probably be seeing her before they get a chance to.
Our visit done, we headed inside for the next thing on my to do list.
Starting the last of our seeds for transplants.
These are the things that get started about 3 weeks before last frost date. Technically, we are less than that, but the way the weather has been, I don’t expect to get most things transplanted until probably the middle of June, though things like the onions can handle going in now.
With such a short time for these seeds, I decided to use my new hex cell planting tray. This has 6 rows of 12 cells, so they are pretty small.
I decided that I would start 12 different things, and see how it goes!
The first thing we had to do was make space and move the full spectrum LED light fixtures aside, then set up a heat mat. While my daughter filled the cells with pre-moistened seed starting mix, I went through my seed packets to decide on what to start.
I decided not to try and start any summer squash and will direct sow those.
I went with four types of melons (we have seeds for quite a few more); Canary Yellow, Tigger, Sweet Siberian Watermelon and Hale’s Best Jumbo cantaloupe. In winter squash, I chose Golden Hubbard, Black Futsu, Butterneck squash and Gill’s Golden Pippin. I also decided to try the Arikara squash again, because it’s a rare variety I want to save seeds from. I also chose the Cinderalla pumpkin (Rouge vif D’Estempes). Last of all are two types of cucumber; lemon and Eureka. These are older seeds, but I have a request for cucumbers this year. I have another variety we got as free seeds that I almost chose as well, but we’re not big cucumber eaters and two varieties will be more than enough.
After the initial filling of the tray with seed starting mix, my daughter was a sweetheart and cut up a sour cream container for me, to make more plant markers, because I was down to two blanks.
She cuts much neater, straighter markers than I do!
While she was working on that, I wrote the names and details for each packet on the markers. She finished before I did, and I have a nice stack of extra markers now.
The initial filling of the planting cells all got gently pressed down, leaving enough space for the planting depths of these larger seeds. My daughter started with the winter squash seeds, gently scarifying them first. Once I was done with the labels, I started at the other end of the tray with the cucumbers, then melons.
So we now have 12 rows with six cells planted, each. Hopefully, we’ll get a decent germination rate. I’m rather concerned about that, as it all seems so cold down there, and I don’t know that the heat mats are enough to make up for it. Half the time, they don’t even seem to be on. I realize that’s part of the temperature control, but it still feels wrong.
I ended up moving a couple of snail rolls around, putting two of them with the last batch of seed starts.
The orange current tomatoes are not looking very healthy, so I thought they might do better back on a heat mat, with less taller transplants overshadowing them. I also moved the roll with both the tarragon and summer savory. I’m actually amazing they are both surviving! They were in rough shape before going into the snail roll.
In the next picture, you can see the rest of the snail rolls. Things are getting way too big and need to be transplanted. I can’t pot them up any more at this point. No space.
Things are supposed to get quite a bit warmer – and drier – over the next while. There are even 30C/86F days in the forecast! Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 6C/43F, but after that we’re supposed to get overnight temperatures above 10C/50, with lots of sunshine. That should finally warm the soil up. Even in the first half of June, where we’re expecting overnight temperatures to drop, they’re still expected to be above 6C/43F, which is where it needs to stay above consistently for the soil to have a chance to warm up and stay warm.
We shall see.
That done, I was able to head outside and get other work done, but that will be in my next post.
It was a very early day for me, mostly because once I woke up at around 4am, I wasn’t able to fall back asleep. I finally have up well before my 5:30 alarm.
We expected to need a lot of time to get Furriosa and Bug – we knew we wouldn’t be able to get Marta – into carriers, so my daughter and I were out shortly after 6. Since she has had better luck making contact with them, I held the carrier while she tried to get them.
Bug turned out to be really easy to get. First try, even!
Furriosa took a bit longer, but my daughter was finally able to grab her by the scruff of her neck and quickly sneak her into the carrier.
It was done so quickly, I had plenty of time before I planned to leave for the vet! I still brought the truck over and opened the gate, while my daughter did the outside cat feeding, then we made sure the carriers were secure in the sun room before going inside for a while.
I headed out shortly after 7, shooting for an 8am drop off, though I’d been told 9am. The clinic opens at 8 and it takes a while to process, so I prefer to be early. Once the carriers were in the truck and no longer being moved around, Bug and Furriosa settled right in. I had Furriosa on the passanger seat, with the door facing me, and she watched me for the entire drive!
I wasn’t the only one to get there just before the clinic opened. We didn’t have long to wait.
When it was my turn to get them checked in, the receptionist was able to find both Bug and Furriosa still in their system from when we tried to get them spayed before. I mentioned that they might be pregnant so, even if though they were still small, they really needed to get done. Neither would survive a pregnancy. Being yard cats, we also went on the assumption they have ear mites and worms. She double checked what the rescue would cover and it was basically just ear mites, but they planned to use ivermectin, which can also have a deworming effect.
I made sure to tell them that I had a long drive and would be hanging around town until they called me, and she said they would try to get them done as quickly as possible.
I then spent the next while going to the Dollarama and the Walmart, picking up a few things, then trying to nap in the truck.
That didn’t work.
I had updated the people in the rescue chat group earlier, and they had some questions. Then I started getting messages from my brother and SIL. My brother was able to get the day off, so they could go to my mother at the TCU and help things ready for her transfer to the nursing home. For some reason, the staff thought I was given the list of my mother’s medications, which they hadn’t. As my mother’s PoA, my brother had paperwork to sign and take care of on her behalf. Then they waited until the Handi Van came to pick her up.
After I while, I gave up trying to nap and went across to the Canadian Tire. I needed another quick connect hose repair kit, but I couldn’t remember if I needed the male or female connector. Not that the packages say that any more. They have “tap end” and “accessory end” or some such. I also got a new multi function spray nozzle. I had one I really liked that I used last year, but when I set it up this year, I found it was leaking in between sections of the handle.
In this one, the handle is all one metal piece.
The greenhouse portion of their garden centre was open, so I looked around. There were a few things that interested me, including some berry bushes, but today was not a day to pick them up. I still need to mark out and prepare for the basket willow that are in the process of being shipped. There is also a Manchurian Walnut, which will be planted in a completely different location from the willow. I have a tracking number, as a shipping label has been created, but the won’t actually be in the mail until Monday. I need to prepare for those before I start thinking of getting more trees or bushes!
By the time I was done at Canadian Tire, it was past lunch time, and I ended up going back to Walmart, just to walk around and look at things indoors, out of the heat. Past 1pm, I finally decided to just go to the clinic and see.
When I got there, I asked to find out what the status was and she got the names to look them up. She told me, they were just about to call me, and that the vet wanted to discuss the care routine, first.
That part is typical. What wasn’t typical is when a tech came back and told me to go to one of the examination rooms and the vet would come and talk to me.
Usually, they just give us the print out and, if there is anything extra, talk to me in the waiting area near the reception desk.
I’ve been in this room before. This is where we spent our last moments with our elderly Freya. This room has its own private exit, so people don’t have to go through the waiting room to leave. This is also where the vet talked to us about Bug, Furriosa and Domino when we brought them in for spay, and we were told they were too small. So it was obvious, there was something going on.
When the vet came, she told me that things went well with Bug.
Then she told me she made the decision to euthanize Furriosa.
It turns out she was in very bad condition. Being so fluffy, we couldn’t see that she was basically skin and bones. She had gained no weight since we tried to spay her before. She said Furriosa’s teeth were badly broken (!!!???!!!) and she had skin issues. All things we couldn’t see because we couldn’t handle her. The vet knew that they were colony cats, so she understood we couldn’t have known. She suspected there might have been liver problems. She said, we could have gone through much testing and diagnosis and what would likely be extensive treatment, but she felt that Furriosa’s condition was just too poor to put her through that.
*sigh*
She did ask if anyone had explained about the possibility of euthanasia, and I said yes. It wasn’t done this time, but we’ve brought in so many cats by now, we are well aware of the risks.
As for Bug, the vet she had diarrhea and needed to be cleaned up before they could do the spay. She’s very small for her age and, while she was treated for ear mites, she decided to send home a deworming pill (half pill, actually) into her, tomorrow. We’ll put it with some wet cat food or a squeeze treat and get her to eat it that way.
After the vet filled me in, I was sent back to reception to wait while someone brought Bug and the carrier Furriosa had come in. I hadn’t brought a donation towards this, as was done last time but, when I found out how much the pill cost, I was at least able to cover that. Aside from arrangements with rescues, this clinic also accepts donations specific to spays and neuters – the two receptionists talked about transferring from the donation account to cover today’s spay. They also had a container of what I at first through were lapel pins that were going for a recommended $1 donation each. The backs were odd, so I had to ask what they were.
They were decorations for Crocs.
My daughters both have knock-off Crocs.
I had some toonies, so I got four of them. Every little bit will help someone else in our position to get spays and neuters done.
We are booked to come back next week with Misha and Marta – if we can get them into carriers!!
While that was happening, Bug and the empty carrier were brought out and I got my printouts with care instructions. Once in the truck, I quickly updated the rescue group and the family, then got caught up on messages about my mother’s transfer – she had arrived by then – before heading home.
Bug started at me through the carrier door, completely silent, for the trip.
I pulled up to the house and my daughter came out to help me get Bug into the isolation shelter. Which went very quickly. Once the carrier door was open, she ran right into the shelter, then went straight for the food bowl! There was still some softened kibble from the morning cat soup she could safely eat.
Then we unloaded the truck and my daughter parked it while I put things away, then got on my computer to properly update everyone and catch up on message.
I really dislike using a touch screen for messaging.
I hadn’t eaten lunch and it was well past three by then, so my daughter was a sweetheart and took care of feeding the outside cats while I made myself some food. She said she got to give Bug all sorts of scrubs!
We’re all saddened about Furriosa, but in the end, it’s better that it worked out this way. Otherwise, she would have just stayed sick outside until she disappeared, and we wouldn’t have known what was going on.
This picture was of her watching me in the truck, just before I started driving to the vet.
Poor little thing.
After I finished eating and getting more updates about my mother – and a glowing report on how much better the nursing home is, compared to the TCU, from my SIL – I headed outside. We had a hot day and I wanted to get some watering done, as well as take care of things with what I picked up. We might still get rain tonight, but even with all the rain we already had, the beds were baking.
Before I started the watering, I got out the box of larger safety pins I’d picked up and secured the mosquito netting better to the wire of the raised bed cover.
This is why I wanted to make sure it was very secure.
That cats so lover to use that mosquito netting as a hammock!
That done, I went to the hose that was missing its end (I got the wrong connector for it last year, but didn’t realize it until after I’d cut off the damage end). I set that hose up in the rain barrel bout by the plum, gooseberry, apple and haskap row, and added one more length of hose to the back tap. Now the main part of the hose is long enough to reach up to the rain barrel hose for a quick connect. I watered the main garden beds – I really like the new sprayer! – first, then set up the hose to the rain barrel. While that was filling, I used a watering can to water the sea buckthorn, highbush cranberry and mulberry, before doing the row by the barrel. The barrel is between the gooseberry and the apply tree. Neither the apple nor the plum are showing leaf buds year. Nor is the mulberry.
I think I found out why, with the apple.
Only visible from one side, I found critter damage.
The damage is all on one side, so I’m hopping the rest of it is enough to keep it going.
By the time the watering was done, the barrel was mostly full. This barrel leaks, and I am taking advantage of that. It will slowly drain between the gooseberry and the apple and, with about 30-35 gallons of water in there, will probably benefit the plum and at least one haskap, too.
After switching the hose back to the spray nozzle and returning it to the main garden area, I worked on the old kitchen garden, watering it and the east garden beds of kohlrabi and cabbage, from the nice and full rain barrel. Ambient temperature rain water is much preferable to our very cold well water.
With that done, I still had enough energy to put the end walls on the chain link fence raised bed. Being barley 2 feet wide, I wove the skinny, still flexible, maple and poplar I’d gathered last fall, wattle weave style, trimming them with pruning sheers.
They look so much better than the deadwood walls! 😄 I’ll continue working on the front wall once I sharpen points onto the stakes, but at the moment, that might be a few days.
So that has been my day today. It was mostly good stuff. Getting both cats into the carrier and to the vet. Bug getting spayed, thanks to help from the rescue. My mother finally in a nursing home of her choice – the staff remember her sister, and some of them remember my late father, too! – while my brother and SIL could be there to help out and take care of the paperwork. Being able to get a few things I needed while out today, and getting at least a bit of work in the garden.
The only sad thing is not being able to bring Furriosa home. We couldn’t even be with her at the end. I know the vet took good care of her, though. It was the same vet that took care of our Freya.
Tomorrow, I’m hoping to get to my mother’s in the morning with the stuff in the truck that I’d taken from her room at the TCU. None of it is essential stuff, but I need it out of my truck. Tomorrow is Saturday and the dump is open longer hours. I need to finally get my mother’s old mattress and boxspring, which have been hanging out against a wall in the garage since January, to the dump!
I don’t know how much I’ll get done outside, though. We’re supposed to have rain from 2am to 2pm, so we’ll see how it goes.
Now that spring has finally arrive, things should be getting busy outside, but the rain is limiting what I can get done!
I’m not complaining, though. We need the rain.
So that’s where we’re at now.
With only a few hours of sleep last night, I am so very exhausted right now!
Today has turned out to be a dreary day with rain on and off all night and continuing on through today.
Translation: I feel like I’m about to fall asleep at my keyboard right now.
The ground is way too saturated for the work I hoped to do outside today, but I can’t complain.
First good news.
I got Bug!
She had come into the sun room to eat kibble and was hungry enough that she didn’t run off when I came near. I grabbed the bowl of cat soup for the isolation cats and saw her still there, so I snuck a pet on her back.
She looked at me, then went back to eating.
I gave her neck scritches.
She kept eating.
So I picked her up.
She wasn’t too happy with that, but I had the bowl of warm cat soup, so I basically stuck it under her face and started walking. Every time she made like she was going to escape, I moved the food closer. She didn’t try to eat it while I held her, but it did seem to calm her down.
Once at the isolation shelter, she allowed me to put her in! I took out the food bowl inside and closed the window before she could make a run for it.
After taking out the leftover cat soup from last night, which the other cats pounce on immediately, I refilled it with fresh cat soup and set it back in.
Curtis was very interested in getting into the shelter and I ended up letting him in, too.
I did a quick check around the yard and, thinking of the raccoon I saw in the garden shed, decided to check and see if it was still there.
There’s a litter of baby raccoons under that ball of fur. At the start of the video, you can hear the extra chittering from the babies.
Hmm… I just realized that Instagram shortened an 11 second video into something barely a second long – but I’m also getting “we are having trouble playing this video” messages. That’s on my desktop, though. On my phone, I can see the whole thing. Do let me know if you are getting the full 11 seconds, please!
I did move that garden feeder attachment aside after getting the video. I could just see part of her face after moving it, but she stayed all hunched around her babies.
I’m going to have to figure out how to get the stuff in the shed that I’ll need for the garden without scaring the heck out of them all. I don’t expect aggression from the mama, unless she feels threatened, which she might if I start moving out the bundles of garden stakes and plant supports. There’s that rolling seat/cart, but I won’t need it now that I’ve got my walker.
We’ve had cats have their litters in there, but this is a first for raccoons!
I paused to get a picture of the isolation kitties before I headed out this afternoon. Curtis is in the big cuddle puddle. Bug wants out again. 😄
Tonight, they have their overnight fast. In the morning, we have to get two into carriers. On file, we’re supposed to bring in Furriosa and Batman (aka: Marta), but they will take any two we can bring. I can see being able to get Bug. Furriosa… my daughter might be able to get her, but I’ve barely managed to sneak touches on her back. The other two, not even that, but we’ll have another week to work on them.
Once the outside cat stuff was done, it was time to head into town. My husband was finally up to getting his blood work done. That is always a challenge. They always have a hard time to get a vein on him – and they needed to take 8 vials! The tech barely got two done before she had to find another spot and was eventually able to fill the remaining vials.
That done and home again, I was going to grab an early lunch, then head over to visit my mother, since I wouldn’t be able to do it tomorrow.
Which is when I got a call from my brother.
It has finally happened.
He got a call from the nursing home. The one my mother actually wants to be in.
They have a bed for her – tomorrow!!!!
After well over two years – probably closer to three, by now! – of my mother fighting to get into a nursing home, it is finally going to happen! Yay!!!!
They wanted us to do the transport, which we thought the TCU would do. I wasn’t going to be home tomorrow, plus my mother can’t get into the truck. She can barely get into my brother’s car. So that was something that needed to be worked out.
Things were still very much in the air, except for what her room number will be, and “check in” time. She will have a room to herself, too.
I told my brother I was planning to visit after I finished my lunch, and he said he would phone Mom right away, since he was at work and was doing this between other things.
When I got to the TCU, I stopped at the nursing station first. The head nurse was there and they had already been called by the nursing home. I brought up about transportation and she told me they had already arranged a Handi Van. There will be a charge for it, since my mother is being transferred to her “forever home”, not another TCU, but it won’t be a lot. This way, they can use her wheelchair to get her in and out, and can safely secure her for the trip. The nurse suggested I take as much of my mother’s belongings as I can, to make it easier for them to transport her.
Then I went to my mother’s room. My brother had got through to her, and she was very happy with the news. She can’t wait to get out of the TCU!
We talked for a while and worked out what I should take with me for now, and I started taking things to the truck. Then I packed almost all of her remaining things in a couple of hard sided grocery bags, leaving just what she would need for the night and the morning. The head nurse came by and we talked a bit more about the transfer. She even remembered that they need to include Mom’s Pepto supply.
I visited a bit longer and we talked about how things will be done tomorrow, what they will take care of, and how she will be transported in the wheelchair while they bring the walker as well (I was specifically instructed to leave the walker).
My mother then insisted that her wheelchair has been “switched”. That her wheelchair was wider than this one. I told her, it’s the same wheelchair. I scrubbed that thing. I know what it looks like.
Only later did I remember about the cushion. Our vandal had brought her a “wheelchair” cushion, except it was basically just a memory foam cushion for a regular seat. It doesn’t actually fit in her wheelchair. Which is why it would be feeling smaller when she’s in it.
My mother has decided they’ve “switched” the wheelchair and nothing will convince her otherwise. She also claimed they “forgot” one of her meds, and went on about how terrible this place is for taking care of her medications and of her, and how she hoped it will be better in the nursing home.
It will be better, for sure, but not in the ways my mother will understand, and some things won’t change. Even while I was there, with her room mate out, she got mad and demanded I close the door, because someone in the hallway was talking. I closed the door but pointed out that, here she was, alone in the room, and complaining about noises in the hall. She’s going to hear noises in the nursing home, too. Her response was, “I’m not alone, you’re with me.”
…
So I rephrased that her room mate was not there. She will have her own room in the nursing home, but there are other people living there. She will hear noise. There is no escaping that.
I get the impression she believes that in the nursing home, things will be completely silent in her room. Granted, it’s not a transitional care unit in an old hospital, but there are a lot of people living there, and a lot of staff. She also thinks that the staff will all be white and Christian, because this place was built by a local Christian community, I forget how many decades ago. She is familiar with this place, since this is where my father spent his last 6 months, and her sister spent quite a few years before passing. Interestingly, when it came up with the head nurse, my mother talked about her sister living there, which she has brought up before, but she never mentions my father living there. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten my father existed, in many ways – and I don’t mean due to dementia. Which really doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. Ah, well.
Hopefully, things will work out. When my father was there, he always spoke about how well they were taking care of them and he would tell them how much he appreciated them.
That’s not something my mother is capable of, unfortunately, and I strongly suspect that, probably within days, she will find things to be angry about, and she will likely be lashing out at people before long. It is just the way she is.
Overall, though, it was a better than usual visit, even though she got mad at me for things like putting some of her items in the box of the truck, covered and hidden from view, because it doesn’t lock. She thinks people will steal her odds and ends. In fact, as I was leaving, the last thing she said to me was to keep her stuff safe. She’s more worried about her possessions than anything else!
Some things just don’t change.
Meanwhile, I have also been in touch with the rescue. They are happy that Bug is back in the isolation shelter. I’m really hoping all goes well, and we can get cats into the carriers in the morning!
It’s time for me to go out and feed them now. I want to make sure the isolation kitties get their fill of cat soup before we have to remove the bowl this evening. We’re going to have to be up quite early and, once we get two cats into carriers, the other cats will get their morning feeding.
The Re-Farmer 