Our 2026 Garden: reclaiming beds and succession sowing

June 18, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I was able to get a couple of big jobs done in the garden. It’s going to be an odd growing year. We had another cold night last night, dropping to about 6C/43F It looks like the cold has killed some of the melons and at least one winter squash transplants that managed to germinate in the tray that got resown after a mouse got to the seedlings. A couple more winter squash have germinated in the tray and I’ll transplant them when they get their true leaves, but it’s really too late for them, unless we have a super long, mild fall. The next time I have a chance to check out a garden center, I’m hoping to find more winter squash, at least.

Right now, I’m thinking of what can be direct sown for succession sowing. I’ll be doing more peas and bush beans, I think, and possibly some beets, but that’s not what I sowed today.

The first bed I worked on was the winter sown kohlrabi bed.

The down side of having a cover that can keep the cats out is, it’s much less convenient to weed.

Lots of crab grass. Thankfully, the remaining mulch kept most of the elm seeds from germinating. That is getting to be a real problem in other areas. Especially inside the protective collars around the tomatoes in the bed next to this one, and in the chain link fence bed.

In the next image of the slide show above, you can see my little surprise. There are actual kohlrabi growing! Absolutely tiny, but surviving. I was going to leave them to grow bigger but, as I was clearing the weeds, there were rhizomes going right under the little cluster. I ended up transplanting them to one end – a whole four tiny seedlings that probably won’t survive, but at least there’s a possibility.

The rest of the bed got completely worked over as I pulled all the rhizomes I could. Unfortunately, there were quite a few tree roots in there, too, and there isn’t much I can do about those. In this location, the roots could be either from the elm in one direction, or the cherry trees in the other. Both are close enough and spread roots far enough to be possible. It might even had been both, not just one.

Once the weeding was done, I have the bed a deep watering. Especially in the three rows I planned to sow into, which you can see in the third image.

In the fourth image, you can see what I decided to plant. American Spinach, Rainbow Swiss Chard, and I had some seed tape of Uzbek Golden Carrots left. They are old seeds so I don’t expect a good germination rate, and I hoped there was enough to lay down a double layer.

Before sowing anything, I noticed my brother had left some cardboard in the garage for me that was just right for this bed, so I cut strips to lay it down as a mulch between the rows, plus a couple that would be used to lay over the carrots to protect them until they germinated.

I didn’t need much. I had only enough of the home made seed tape left for half a row. I thought I had more seeds left in the packet and went looking, but couldn’t find it. So I grabbed the Hedou Tiny bok choy seeds we collected last year – something got to the ones planted in the old kitchen garden. The rest of the new row in the middle got those. The carrots got covered with the strip of cardboard, but not the bok choy.

Then the spinach and chard got planted in the rows still marked by twine on either side. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packets, relatively speaking, and both got emptied in the planting. Then the cat proof cover got set back on.

Hopefully, these will take. We do have some seedlings from the rainbow carrot mix growing, but very few. I might try planting more carrots later on, but we’ll see. The chard and spinach planted between the garlic are just not growing, and what seedlings there were seem to be disappearing. It would be nice to have some greens that survive!

That done, I moved on to reclaiming the small, square bed near the compost ring.

The first image is the “before” picture. The boards on the side are from a same size frame that had been around another bed. They’re pretty rotted out, but they should last at least a couple more years. They still had their screws, so I took those out, first.

In the next image, the bed is all weeded, and the soil pulled away from the sides.

My original plan had been to join the corners opposite of how the frame already in place is, but it turned out the pieces weren’t all quite the same length, so I mixed and matched to get them to line up to the existing frame as best I could. Once the corners were screwed together, I had to be careful shifting it around to lay on top of the bottom frame properly. The wood is dry and rotten enough, I could hear it cracking at the corners.

I rummaged around in the scrap lumber pile in the garage for a while, and found some pieces I could cut into eight 8″ lengths, which is the new height of the bed. Four of them were screwed into corners, and four into the middles of the sides. One side didn’t line up at one corner. After screwing the vertical support piece to the bottom board, it left a gap between the support and the top board. More rummaging in the scrap lumber pile and I found something thin enough and cut it to 4″ in length. It was a bit narrower than the gap, but nothing the 3″ screws I was using couldn’t secure.

That done, I cleared a path to the remaining pile of garden soil we bought years ago and uncovered it. I thought I might be getting two wheelbarrow loads but, in the end, only needed one to top up the bed. In the next image, you can see the finished bed, all cleaned up, topped up and leveled.

The next thing was to protect the bed from being used as a litter box!

I had decided to use the rods from my hoop kit to made supports, running to opposite corners and crossing in the middle. This time, I decided to try something different. I found a drill bit that was the same diameter as the rods in this kit and drilled holes in each corner of the frame.

Which was fine for three of the corners, but one corner is a lot more rotten. There was no solid wood near enough to line up with the rods in the other corners, so I had to make do with what was there. Hopefully, it will be enough. The hoops will not be holding anything heavier than netting, and there shouldn’t be a lot of stress on it.

In the end, it took 6 rods to create each hoop. The hoop set into the rotten corner is a bit wonky, but otherwise it’s holding.

For the netting, I decided to dig out some green dollar store netting from last year, instead of the black netting I’ve been using elsewhere – the black netting that snakes can get caught in. The green netting is quite long, and I wasn’t sure it was wide enough to simply drape over the top, so I decided to wrap it around, instead. It was wrapped low enough that the netting could be secured to the ground with ground staples in the middles, outside the frame, while also being clipped at the bottom of the hoops at each corner.

I still had a lot of leftover netting, but I didn’t want to cut it, since it’ll be used elsewhere, some other time. After fussing with the netting to gather the excess toward the top and securing it with clips, I just pulled the excess length up and over the top and back again, before securing it in place with a clip, too. You can see the final mess in the last image of the slide show above. 😄

With this bed, I might transplant the one Arikara winter squash that has germinated in the middle, and then I will likely plant bush beans around the perimeter.

But not today.

That done, I headed inside for supper before coming back out to do the watering.

Which is when the phone started ringing. I hadn’t bothered to tell the family I was outside, so when the phone started ringing, they thought I was in my office and could answer. After four calls and no messages left on the answering machine, my daughter came looking for me. I went in and saw it was my mother, which was a surprise. I’d gotten a call from the nursing home this morning – at her request – to be informed that my mother was not feeling well. They’d already informed my brother yesterday, as he’s the primary contact, and he let me know. I was told she’d had a very rough night and was doing worse today, coughing, having a hard time breathing and talking. I was informed as to what treatment she was getting, and that she’s still in quarantine. She’s not the only one that’s sick, and if enough people in her ward are ill, they have to shut it down to visitors. For now, she can get visitors that need to wear a gown and mask, which rules me out because I can’t wear a mask.

I had asked the nurse that called me to let my mother know that I knew she was having a hard time talking, so I would not be phoning her. So it was very odd that my mother would phone me! She would have gotten the message, but when I mentioned it, she didn’t say anything about getting it. She did say that the nursing home phoned me this morning because she asked them to, but I told her they’d also already contacted my brother, yesterday. I told her about the medical treatment she was getting. She knew about the antibiotics but was saying they weren’t helping – I had to explain to her that it takes at least a few days before she would feel any difference, but she expects immediate response. I told her about the medication to help with her breathing, but she couldn’t remember anything about that one, then told me whatever pills they give her, she takes. I think she’s having a harder time remembering what she’s taking and when.

Of course, she started saying how she was so sick and didn’t think she was going to live much longer. Which she has been saying for the past… five? six? or so years. Thankfully, she is in the nursing home now. She’s coming up on 96 years old, and a simple cold can be dangerous at that age.

That got her to talking about the funeral and what I thought of it, and how she was surprised to see so many people. Then she told me, in a round about way, that she wanted us to make sure that her funeral had lots of friends there. I told her, we would let people know, but didn’t mention that she’s pretty much outlived most of her friends already.

By the end of the call, her voice was getting pretty squeaky, though she sounded a lot better than I expected, and even seemed to be in good spirits. Finally being where she has wanted to be for so long has definitely made a positive difference in her, even when she’s feeling sick.

After the call, I took the time to update my brother, then headed back out to finish watering the garden beds before it got too dark.

There are a few things I want to get done tomorrow, which is Friday, because I’m going to be doing some driving around on Saturday. June is a birthday month, and Sunday is Father’s Day, so we will be combining both on Saturday, to avoid crowds. My older daughter has offered to spring for Pizza Hut, which we haven’t had in at least a year. The nearest one is about an hour’s drive away. I’ll have other errands to do as well, including a dump run, which I did not do while we had my brother’s car and the truck was in the garage. Next week has got medical appointments, my daughter’s blacksmith workshop (she’ll be bringing home a forge when it’s done), and our first stock up shopping trip. So the more I can get done in the garden in between all this, the better!

Hard to believe we’re coming up on the solstice and the first day of summer already. With the cold nights we’ve been having, it feels like it should be April or May, not coming up on the end of June!

The Re-Farmer

Some progress done, and oh… did I order more seeds again?

June 11, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today has been an odd feeling day.

The assessor from the insurance company wasn’t going to come this morning, but we were still expecting the prescription delivery, so when I headed out this morning, I made sure to open the gate for him. While doing my rounds, I decided to check in the old garden shed to see if the raccoons were still there. They were, but the mama was on the seat of the rolling cart, and some of the stuff I’d moved from on top of their nest had been knocked back down. The mama hid in the back of the shed while I wrestled with a tomato cage and wrapped up balls of trellis netting to get them off the babies. They weren’t too happy about it, but they stayed. They are getting definitely getting bigger!

I was feeling really tired for some reason so, after breakfast, I tried lying down for a couple hours. It was a frequently interrupted attempt at a nap. Between my phone going off with notifications and cats wanting to nap on my head, I didn’t get much rest.

I did, however, get a message about our truck. The owner apologized for the delay, telling me they were having troubles with their new lifts. The truck would be ready today, though. I told him I’d have to work out transportation so we could return our borrowed vehicle, then messaged my brother. He had already asked me if we were getting power outages, which we were not. They have been getting brief outages off an on, and he was wondering. After a bit of back and forth-ing, we decided to do the vehicole switch on Monday, when they are coming out for the funeral. I passed that on to the garage, so that is now arranged.

One of the things I’d noticed while checking on trail cam files from the camera by our sign is that I was getting a LOT of images triggered by saplings. The open area between the fence and the road is slowly refilling with poplars and, now that they have their leaves, they are triggering the motion sensor when the wind hits them. I headed out there with the wagon and loppers to start cleaning things up.

Not all of the saplings are visible in the first photo. The second photo was after I was done in the area at the corner of the property, where the camera and the road intersection is. After hauling away the first load, I came back and did a smaller load, working my way towards the gate. That area had been done more recently than the corner by the intersection, so there wasn’t as much to clean up.

By the time that was done, I was already feeling way too tired, and starting to feel a lot of pain – in areas where I had the ultrasounds taken. It’ll be three weeks before my doctor gets the results. Should be interesting to see if I’ve got more cysts dancing around in there again.

It wasn’t too bad yet, though, so after I put away the stuff for this job, I got out a weed trimmer to finish clearing the edges around the house, pausing to do other things along the way, like help out the poor Mock Orange beside the dining room door.

What you’re seeing on the ground are the Virginia Creeper vines that I pulled loose from the branches. These can completely smother a bush, and I’ve found spruce trees that had been killed by them. Unfortunately, the bases of these are right in among the Mock Orange’s roots, so there’s no way to really get rid of them completely. I got as much as I could out, and set them in the fire pit to dry out so that we can later burn them.

These flowers right near the fire pit are coming into full bloom. There are so many things blooming right now!

I got done with trimming around the house and had just moved on to the fence around the tulips when the battery died. It was past 2pm by then, so I decided to put away the weed trimmer until after I got back from the post office.

I getting ready to go when the prescription delivery came. I asked the driver how the roads were; he is also a school bus driver, and his route is in our area. He said the gravel roads were quite good. Just a few places with barricades, though the one nearest us has been there since before the storms. He says he may have lost all his tomatoes, though, as his garden is in a lower lying area. It’s mostly under water right now. We’d talked before about how he was considering doing raised beds or Hügelkultur, and I’d told him that my own beds were a sort of combination of the two. When he said he was losing his tomatoes, I encouraged him to do even low raised beds, telling him about when we had that major flooding a few years back. I lost entire sections of the garden we still haven’t reclaimed, but beds that were even just 6 inches higher had survived. I think next year, he’s going to give it a try.

After getting my husband is prescriptions to him, I headed out to the post office to pick up some parcels. I got another hoop kit – another of the set with the slightly longer rods and metal connectors – and another package that turned out to be some insect netting I’d ordered. My cabbages and kohlrabi seem to be completely gone. I plan to at least get cabbage transplants and, when I do, they will have insect netting over them!

Along with the mail, I picked up another 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. I’m so glad our general store now carries them. It saves me from having to drive further afield. Right now, I want to use the borrowed car as little as possible.

By the time I was loading the car up, I was in major pain. There was no way I was getting back to anything else outside, so I just took some pain killers and tried to lie down while my daughters took over, including feeding the outside cats. Most of the outside stuff is going to have to wait. We’re supposed to get more rain – possibly another thunderstorm – in about an hour. Just a short one. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to start raining from about 2 pm to 6 am the next day! After that, we should have about a week’s break from the rain. Time enough for farmers to see how many of their crops survived the flash floods.

Late last year, we were getting predictions for another drought year this summer. From the looks of it, that is not going to be an issue!

As for me, right now, I’m getting absolutely slammed with fatigue and overall body pain. I suspect much of it is a reaction to changes in barometric pressure.

It’s just past 8pm as I write this, and I am seriously considering going to bed shortly.

Again.

Before I do, I got some shipping notifications in my email.

Yes, I bought more seeds, and they are on the way.

The first is an order from West Coast Seeds. I wanted to order more of the Giganthemum poppy seeds, since the bed I planted them in got flattened and dug into by cats. I have yet to see any poppies germinating. So I have a new package, which I will sow in the fall, and make sure the bed gets protected. For the winter, it will have mulch over the seeds, and I might just lay some chicken wire over the top, too. In the spring, when the mulch is removed, I’ll make sure to set up netting over the bed to keep the critters out.

I couldn’t just buy one packet of seeds, though, so I looked around. They have different varieties of kohlrabi that were on sale, so I ordered one each of the white and purple. Then I spotted a lovely, larger looking variety of fennel that I decided to try. These will all be started indoors in the spring.

My other order was from MI Gardener. Some are re-orders, some are new and, right now, everything on their site is on sale.

I can’t remember now if I’ve tried growing Atomic Red carrots before. If I did, they were from somewhere else. I ordered the rainbow mix before, and it does look like some have survived, but they’re still very tiny. I figured I’d try this variety next year. Unless I do some succession sowing. That’s an option, still.

The tri-colour green bean mix is a re-order, and I decided to try out the Broccoli Rabe next year, which is more likely to grow here than regular broccoli, and a relatively short season variety of green cabbage.

I also ordered more of the purple savoy cabbage – two packages this time. Next year, I’ll try starting the two varieties of cabbage indoors, and will make sure the transplants have insect netting on them.

The winter squash and pumpkin are all re-orders. After re-sowing the tray that got decimated by a mouse before we moved it outdoors, I ran out of seeds for several of them, and have only a few seeds left of the others. I want to try these again next year. It’s still possible our re-sown seeds might germinate, but it’s getting to the middle of June and, unless we have a super long and mild fall (which we have had before), they won’t have enough time to reach maturity.

Hopefully, for next spring, I will be able to have a better set up for seed starts. Our basement is just too cold, and we have a mouse that eats our seedlings. At least it’s most likely to be a mouse. I can’t think of anything else it could be, even though there is zero evidence for mice. Usually, if there are any, droppings are left all over the place, and there are none.

If we can reclaim our living room – the cat free zone – from all the stuff we’ve had to shove in there, I hope to start seeds in there again.

We really need to figure out what to do with the stuff from my mother’s apartment. Our other storage areas are already full of my parents’ stuff, plus more from my mother’s apartment, and now we have stuff in our basement that I had to find ways to elevate from the damp concrete because there was no room in the storage buildings to put them in, and more stuff in our living room. All of which was have been told to keep. My mother is finally in the nursing home she wanted to be in and can’t have much stuff at all, but she is adamant what we keep everything of hers. She also expects us to be able to know exactly where everything of hers is, and be able to dig things she suddenly wants out and bring them to her.

*sigh*

Our house is a disaster.

That’s part of why I enjoy working in the yard and garden so much. It actually feels like I’ve accomplished something out there!

The Re-Farmer

Conflicted, and our Sword of Damocles

June 9, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Oh, what a day yesterday turned out to be.

I had not planned to go out at all yesterday, for starters. I had my medical appointment in the the smaller city hospital this afternoon, and anything we might have needed could wait until we were done with that. My younger daughter was even going to come along to help out.

While I was doing the watering, I couldn’t resist taking these photos.

The white lilacs are in full bloom, and the honeysuckle in the old kitchen garden are just getting into that phase. They are looking just gorgeous!

Though, if you look at the background behind the white lilacs, you can see some of the clusters of dry Chinese Elm seeds among the leaves. They’ve been falling like snow for days, and won’t be done for a while, yet, even with the high winds we were having.

I did not expect to be later picking some of these to make a bouquet for my mother.

I was just finished up with the watering and gone inside, where my daughters updated me on the water pressure issue. They’d been doing dishes when suddenly the pressure dropped, dramatically. One of them was headed to check the pump and about to send a message to me, asking if I was using the hose, when they got my message asking them to check the pump because I’d lost pressure on the hose!

So we all just stopped using water for a while!

In the middle of all this, the phone rang. Twice. I managed to pick up and saw the display showing it was my mother, just in time to hear her hanging up.

I called her back immediately, and she was all surprised to I did. Yes, she had just tried to call me, she confirmed. I told her, you have to let it ring more than twice for us to reach it! She just laughed with a “you know me…” response.

No, I don’t recall her ever doing this before, so it’s not typical of her.

Then she informed me that our vandal had passed away on Friday. This was Monday. She had just found out from my sister.

For those who have been following this blog for a long time, you have been reading about the issues we’ve had with our vandal. When we first moved out here, things had been fine, but he had been working for years, trying to talk my parents into changing their wills and NOT leaving the property to my oldest brother. This included many verbally abusive messages left on my mother’s answering machine, and showing up at her place to yell at her. The property was originally supposed to go to the youngest of my brothers, who died in a quite horrible accident, more than 10 years ago. Our vandal expected the property to be left to him instead of my oldest brother, since he and my late brother had been so close, and he helped so much. When I told him I was good with it going to my oldest brother, he became furious. He’d spent the last few decades hating on my older brother, who was never able to find out what went wrong, and soon shifted that to me. Over the next while, we had to deal with verbal abuse, stalking, harassment, and the vandalism of our gate. He even went after my daughters. It got to the point where we though he might show up drunk and try to burn the house down, or even come over with one if his guns.

After we got him on trail cam video, vandalizing our gate, I pressed charges. They were stayed, unfortunately. When I caught him trying to do it again, I filed for a restraining order. Then the illegal lockdowns hit, and court dates kept getting cancelled and rescheduled, so it took almost a year before I finally got the restraining order. He retaliated by filing a civil suit against me for money, based on all the stuff he had abandoned on this property (while helping himself to pretty much everything that still functioned and ever returned them – a large part of why my mother asked us to move here and take care of the place). It was because of him that my mother transferred ownership of the property to my oldest brother, so it was taken out of the will completely.

The restraining order was for a year, and he did stay away. When it expired, I didn’t try to renew it. It’s such a pain to go through the court system, and I didn’t want to go through that again if I didn’t have to. For the most part, he did still stay away, though there were still a few incidents, some of which we caught on the trail cams. Then he got his cancer and blamed me and my oldest brother for it. We somehow gave him cancer. There were a few more incidents, from him yelling at me from the road while waving his colostomy bag at me, to showing up at my mother’s to yell at her, and leaving more of his vile letters slipped under her door. He kept using my late father and brother to try and manipulate and guilt her into giving him property that was no longer hers to give, anyhow.

We had been quite close in the past, and it was clear his behaviour was the result of his drinking and an undiagnosed mental illness. My mother kept ragging on us to reconcile with him, but couldn’t accept that we had tried, our doors were still open, but we would not put up with abuse and threats, and that is was on him to take the steps. Basically, in her mind, we should have just put up with his abuse to “keep the peace” and give him whatever he wanted. Except the land. She and my father never wanted the remaining two quarters to go to him.

Which leads me to something I have not said on the blog before, and will only say now, and only this once, since it no longer matters.

I had three other brothers. My middle brother already got his quarter section across the road from our driveway. He was our vandal.

This was a man with a big heart who did help us out quite a few times over the years. He helped a lot of people, many of whom took advantage of that big heart – especially girlfriends. What I later found out was that, when he helped us, it wasn’t out of generosity, but manipulation. He felt that, because he helped us with things years ago (even though we reciprocated whenever we could), that meant we had to let him say and do whatever he wanted to us, and we had to put up with it.

Hence why I feel so conflicted. On the one hand, I grieve losing another brother. On the other, I am thankful that he is finally at peace. There was something very wrong with him, and the people that should have helped him seemed to mostly enable him, instead. Of just didn’t realize he was literally inventing things in his mind that we never said or did, and told everyone about them. He alienated my late brothers children from us, telling them they were banned from the property, even though we’d never done anything of the sort. His inner demons destroyed someone I loved, leaving behind a shell of hatred, bitterness, envy and anger aimed at me and my daughters (he somehow seemed to forget I have a husband).

Obviously, there’s a lot more that happened that I can’t write about on this blog.

After my mother told me about his passing, we spoke for a while and I told her I would pass it on to my oldest brother, as I knew my sister wouldn’t. My mother had told my sister to email me about it, but she never did. She was the only one that still had any contact with our vandal (I will continue referring to him as such again, from now on), and had been visiting him. His wife had called to let my sister know, and probably told her not to tell me and my brother. We already knew our vandal didn’t want us at his funeral.

My mother wants to go to the funeral, of course, which would require transportation for her and her wheelchair. Something my brother is willing to do. We just don’t know when the funeral is. Talking to one of my daughters about it after, we came to the same conclusion. If we do show up, it would be bad – my daughter even thinks his wife might physically attack me. If we don’t show up, it would also be bad.

But we don’t know when the funeral is, and there have been no announcements or obituaries.

I passed the news on to my brother and SIL. Some time later, I got a message from them saying that they were going to visit my mother with flowers and a card to check on her.

Not knowing when I’d next be able to visit my mother, I decided I would meet them there.

My brother had brought my mother some lilacs he picked here, when they visited her on Sunday before going home. I decided to pick some white lilacs to go with the purple ones, then grabbed some honeysuckle, too. I wrapped the cut ends in a damp paper towel and tucked the bundle into a vase. Even without water in the vase, I seat belted the vase in place.

Earlier, my husband and I had talked for a bit about treating the family to burgers, and getting some red meat into everyone, when I came home from my medical appointment. Since I headed into town unexpectedly, I figured I would do that one the way home.

I got to my mother’s before my brother and SIL did. After I got the flowers set up in the vase with water, I sat down and asked how she was feeling.

Oh, you know… and she started describing her aches and pains.

Okay… so how are you feeling?

She went on about her being tired and her other usual complaints.

I finally said, okay, but how are you feeling about the news.

She seemed startled by the question, then started talking about how he was no longer in pain and at peace now, etc.

What I could see was that she really didn’t care, one way or the other. Which can’t be blamed on cognitive decline, because she was much the same way when my father passed away.

At one point, she started telling me how wonderful our vandals wife was because she stuck with him, even when he was sick. Other women would have left him.

Oh, how I was biting my tongue to not say flat out, “you mean like you did with Dad?” When my father needed her most, she moved out – largely because of our vandal – leaving my dad to what I later learned was continued verbal abuse, that my mother won’t even acknowledge happened.

After a while there was a knock at the door and my brother and SIL came in. They had brought her a bouquet, which my SIL started setting up in a vase they had brought, while my brother tried to give her a card. My mother started chastising them for spending money on flowers, unlike me, who brought flowers I picked and didn’t pay for. We managed to cut that off and suggest, “just say thank you…”

Aside from a few odd tangents, the visit actually went rather well. My mother had started to give me a shopping list, which included Voltaren, but I saw the staff had left her a printout of her medications and treatment, and the prescription version of Voltaren was on the list. I told her I’d talk to the nursing station about it, first. The rest was stuff from the grocery store; some fruit (she complained they only gave bananas and mandarins, and she wanted apples and grapes), some Ginger Ale in small bottles, because she found them so handy, and some crackers.

With how light things are for so late, I almost lost track of time. When I realized the grocery store was going to close soon, I grabbed the list and quickly headed out. My mom kept trying to delay me so she could give me cash, but I left my brother and SIL to explain to her I didn’t have time for that.

I managed to get the items and out of the grocery store a little more than 5 minutes before closing.

My mother was quite happy when I got back. I spent the next while washing the grapes and apples ahead of time for her, while my brother helped her look at the receipt and get out cash to pay me back. Which I would have been find if she hadn’t, but it wasn’t worth making a bit deal out of it (the nursing home doesn’t want residents to have cash with them at all, for obvious reasons). Then I made sure one of the packages of crackers was open, so she didn’t have to fight with the plastic sleeve.

Meanwhile, different staff came by several times. Someone came by with the snack cart, another came by with her bed time pills, and one even came by to help my mother get ready for bed, though she said she would come back after we were done visiting.

After I’d brought the stuff for my mother, we realized it was getting quite late – my mother’s window faces west, so we were getting lots of sunshine, making it feel more like the afternoon than evening. So we wound down our visit, then said our goodbyes, with all of us talking about our efforts to find out when the funeral would be and passing it on once we did.

On the way out, I made sure to stop at the nursing station to talk about the Voltaren, since my mother wanted me to buy more for her. It was confirmed, she now is getting the prescription version, two applications a day, so there is no need for me to get the Voltaren.

Then she told us there had been some… incidents, with my mother.

In general, she had been very easy, but as she has settled in, things have started to change. My mother is a big one about everything being quiet around her, but there is one non-verbal resident that makes vocal noises, but can’t speak. My mother kept telling her to shut up, and even grabbed her arms. !!!! There were other incidents, but this was the only one that got physical. She had handled it, and we were very appreciative of how she did it – and for informing us about it. We’ll have to have a talk with my mother. As it is, her behaviour has meant she can’t be included in some activities on another floor for now.

We had a good talk with the nurse before leaving.

After we parted ways, I headed for the DQ to get the burgers my husband had requested. As usual, I parked in one generic spots along the street rather than into their lot, as I find maneuvering in the lot with the truck is not worth the hassle. I got the stuff, loaded the truck and started backing out when I realized I’d forgotten to let the family know I was on the way home with food. So I pulled back into the parking spot and sent out a message.

That done, I backed out into the street again, and that’s when the sword dropped.

I tried to go from reverse to drive, but the shifter just slid smoothly from one side to the other, without any of the “clicks” while passing gears.

I knew exactly what happened.

A year ago, this happened after I’d gone to my mother’s apartment to do her grocery shopping. The truck got towed to a garage in that town, where it was found to be the linkage to the transmission. He had to order a part but, while waiting, he had jerry rigged it with a C clip, and it was working find. When he found the company sent the wrong part, we talked about it and decided to just go with the C clip. He told me he couldn’t say how long it would last. It might last a few years, or never break at all.

Clearly, it broke.

So there I was, in the middle of the street, unable to move the truck.

I popped my hazards on and sent a quick message to my brother, asking if they were still relatively close and saying I needed to get the truck towed. I quickly messaged my family, then called CAA.

Amazingly, I got a human being right away. After talking to the agent for a while, a tow was arranged. They even had the new address for the garage we use in their system already (they officially relocated barely a week before).

I got a message from my brother telling me they were just one town up the road – they’d spontaneously made a stop along the way, so were much closer than they normally would have been, otherwise. I updated the family, and then had to wait.

The truck broke down at really the best possible spot. Yes, I was in the middle of the street, at an angle, but vehicles could get around me, and I wasn’t blocking the driveway into the DQ. I had quite a few people stop, asking me if I needed help. Some even offered to push the truck out of the way, but I told him, it wasn’t going to move. It technically was still in reverse.

After awhile, my brother and SIL arrived and parked nearby. I told them more details about what happened and about the C clip that likely broke. My brother popped the hood but couldn’t see anything. He started the truck and tried to get it into gear, but nothing happened.

We still had people stopping and offering to help, which we greatly appreciated, even though we had to say know.

Then this couple came by. On hearing our brief explanation on why we couldn’t push the truck out of the way, the guy – a young, skinny little guy – said, Oh, I know what’s wrong!

He then got down on the ground and shimmied under the truck – he was small enough to fit! – while my brother stepped on the brake, just in case. He immediately saw that the wires had come loose from the transmission, then crawled back out and said to try it again.

Sure enough, he had temporarily “fixed” it. My brother was able to drive the truck across the intersection and into a parking spot.

He was pretty sure he was able to get it into neutral, but that was it. It would no longer move.

We were extremely thankful to this guy – and I noticed his girlfriend on the side, with a grin, proud grin on her face the whole time. At one point, he was talking to my SIL and mentioned he was a mechanic that worked on big rigs. As to what he found under the truck, he said “this happens all the time.”

!!!!!

So now we were no longer blocking the road and just had to wait for the tow truck.

CAA had sent me a link with a live status map that I kept checking. I knew I would be getting a phone call from the tow truck driver as soon as they were on the way. I didn’t recognize the company name on the page linked to, though. I also noted that, while they had the town right and the address for the DQ I was next to right, the cross streets listed did not exist in this town.

???

It took a while before I realized what I was seeing for the expected arrival of the tow truck, though.

Apparently, a tow truck wasn’t expected to arrive until this afternoon.

Which would have been roughly a 15 hour wait.

Yes, the system said things were busier than usual, but the next afternoon???

My brother recommended I call back, which I did.

This time, it went to the automated system, and the robot voice started asking questions – after telling me I had no open calls on file.

The robot voice even cut me off while I was giving the address, saying they could find no such address, before I finished.

Finally, it said it sounded like I was asking to speak to a live agent. Which I hadn’t, but I took it.

I finally got a real person. A different voice from before.

The first thing I did was confirm that I had an open call, which she told me I did. I brought up that the ETA was for the afternoon the next day, and how was that even possible? (Particularly since I’d made a point of telling them I was blocking a street) She asked me who told me that ETA. I told her, I got it from the link they texted to me. She said she would talk to dispatch and put me on hold.

For quite a while.

Finally, she came back and told me that there were no tow trucks in the area available, and they might have to dispatch one from the city.

Not the smaller, nearer city. The further, larger city. An hour away.

At that point, I told her that first, the truck was moved and no longer blocking the way, though we were still at the same intersection. The next while was a jumble of trying to explain to her where the truck was, and having to spell out the name of the business whose parking lot we were now in. Then I had to explain that I could not stay by the truck for that long (I didn’t say it to her, but my brother and SIL really needed to get home, and it was well past 9pm by then). She told me that, if I weren’t with the truck, they might not be able to take it. I told her, yes they will, and that I would give instructions to the driver when they called me.

The call was winding up when the agent hung up on me.

This particular agent was the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. In fact, I’ve never had a bad call with CAA before, even at times when I was on the side of the highway with zero street information to give them, because I wasn’t even near a cross road. I’ve had some difficult calls, but not like this.

After that, I dug out the envelop my mother had put the cash she gave me into, took the cash out and wrote a note to leave under the windshield wiper, since the truck wasn’t really parked well. It just said “tow truck is on the way” on the front, then on the back I put my first name and phone number. That way, if the tow truck didn’t make it until the next day, the staff at the company could see the note and know it was being take care of, and could call me if necessary.

At this point, I was prepared to cancel my medical appointment today. As my SIL started driving us away (I’d already transferred our food and drinks to their car), she then told me that they were driving to their place, then I would take their car and drive myself home.

!!!!!!!

I don’t know what I could do without them!

As we were driving to their place, I checked my phone and saw that the tow truck drive had tried to call me and text me, but my phone made no noises. I completely forgot that my “do not disturb” setting had kicked in at 9.

I called the tow truck drive back. After explaining things a bit, he told me to text him the details, which I did.

Then I texted our garage to let them know why our truck was there, and what was wrong, knowing no one would see the text, or the truck, until this morning.

Once we got to my brother’s, they made sure I knew how to start this car – it doesn’t use a regular key – even though it’s almost identical to the one they’ve lent us before.

Which is currently in the shop, getting thousands of dollars of work done on it.

They even made sure my phone was linked with BlueTooth, which I would not have bothered to do at all.

It was around 11pm by then and full dark when I finally started home. It was just past midnight when I parked in our garage.

When I got into the house with the food and drinks, I could hear the girls rushing down the stairs to get to me, and I promptly got buried in hugs. They are in total disbelief about the truck breaking down, yet again! And thankful that I didn’t have to cancel my medical appointment!

My husband was unable to stay up and was already in bed, so we tucked his food away. I hadn’t eaten since before noon, and was getting pretty famished, so I ate and went straight to bed.

Of course, I had a hard time sleeping.

Still, I did get some sleep. Enough that I’m not really feeling very tired.

So I got up early and did the usual morning cat feeding, then did some transplanting.

My daughter and I will be heading out for my medical appointment fairly soon. I’m hoping we get home early enough that I can at least finish the weed trimming before the expected thunderstorms hit this evening.

Meanwhile, we wait until we hear from the garage (I’ll probably phone them first) and find out what they can do with Damocles and when.

*sigh*

This is getting so ridiculous. Like we need vehicle troubles on top of everything else!!!

The Re-Farmer

(ps: my apologies for any typos. I don’t have time to go over them again! I hope they aren’t too egregious!)

Our 2026 Garden: one more bed prepped, and got a visit in

May 26, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The temperatures continued to climb today.

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.

A lot to do in a very short time!

The Re-Farmer

Today was a mixed bag…

May 22, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

There was good stuff and sad stuff.

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.

*sigh*

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!

The Re-Farmer

Good news!

May 21, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

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.

Yes, SHE was.

Turn your volume up a bit for this one.

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.

Wish us luck! We’re going to need it!

The Re-Farmer

Everything, all at once!

May 15, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had one real goal today. That was to visit my mother in the afternoon.

While doing the morning routine over the past week, my younger daughter and I had been making sure to open the gate, just in case. It was late morning when we heard a honk and I saw a thing of beauty.

The septic truck had arrived!

I headed out to meet him as he got out to check on where he needed to set the truck up. He was apologetic about not getting back to me about the delay – he’d lost my phone number! I was just glad his truck was up and running again, and he could make it at all.

Once he confirmed that he could back up around the back of the house – I wasn’t sure if our straw bale would be an issue or not – he opened up the tank to check inside. I told him about how we’ve had things backing up into the basement because there seems to be a bottleneck that I estimate to be roughly under the wall. He mused about how something like that could be fixed until I told him it was a cast iron pipe joining plastic. He just shook his head. Cast iron, over time, can start crumbling, and it’s likely near the join with the plastic pipes. As for fixing it, I told him I figured it would require tearing up the concrete and replacing the pipe. He said we’d have to excavate outside, too. I mentioned this had been done, before we moved out here and he wondered why it wasn’t fixed them. I told him, no one knew. My dad was living here alone by then. With just one person, it wasn’t a problem. He understood.

With the tank open, I stayed out on cat watching duty, to make sure none came too close to the open tank. Which is much easier, now. The rescue took so many of the cats, there’s a huge difference in what we’re seeing. Even when I check the sun room critter cam at night, I have been seeing no cats at all, many times, or just a few in the cat beds. None of the swirling masses we used to get! With the very loud truck, the cats almost all immediately disappeared. The Grink was the only one that came to check things out, and it was easy to persuade her to leave.

He was done very quickly and was soon leaving the yard, stopping when I came out with the envelope of cash we had ready for quite some time now, to pay him. Every time we’ve done it this way, he’s never even looked in the envelope, trusting me that I had the right amount. Of course, I tip him, too. Always. There have even been times when I couldn’t get to a bank machine to get cash before he came out here, and he just did the job and told me where his house was, trusting I would drop the payment off when I could.

He may be more expensive than other places; I don’t actually know for sure anymore, but I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else.

When he left, it was late enough that I was going to get changed, have a quick lunch, then head out to my mother’s.

Which is when the phone rang.

Earlier in the morning, I’d noticed that the wind was tearing off a tarp covering one of my brother’s pieces of equipment. It was too torn up for any chance to secure it again, so I took some video and sent it to my brother. He called to thank me for that, and asked if I could get some measurements, so he could pick up another tarp. So I quickly got some shoes on again and headed over with a measuring tape to get the info for him. He might come out tonight to take care of it.

Not too much longer, I was on the road to my mother’s for what turned out to be an okay visit. She was having one of her better days. The last time I was there, she had asked for a couple of apples because she missed having fresh fruit. I’d passed that on to my siblings, because I knew it would be a while before I was back. When I reached her bedside, I saw an apple on her tray, so I knew my sister had come by on her day off and remembered to bring some for her – I had completely forgotten. Once my mother was settled on her bedside, she picked up the apple and reminded me that she’d asked me to bring her apples. I guess my sister bringing her apples wasn’t good enough??

The next thing I knew, she was talking about giving me some money to get something for her, but started talking about her vision, her vison, her vision… Her vision is so important. She started going down a rabbit hole so I cut in to ask what it was she wanted me to get for her.

The eye vitamins. Because they’re only giving her the eye vitamin once a day, not twice, and she wanted me to get the gel type that she used to get in her bubble packs.

I told her, the TCU has her prescription now, not the local pharmacy – and they were definitely giving her her eye vitamin, twice a day. She insisted they were not; she was supposed to get it at the end of the day, as well as in the morning, but she wasn’t getting the second one. When I didn’t immediately agree with her, she started saying “oh, you think I’m stupid… you’re just like them… you’re taking their side“, and so on.

She also said that her vision was getting worse, because they weren’t giving her the eye vitamin, and that it was for both eyes.

I explained to her again, she has two different problems. The vitamin can only help with her left eye. For her right eye, she would have to go into the city to get the eye injection, because there is only one place that does this treatment. I even tried to ask her how her vision is getting worse. “It’s getting dark“. I asked if it was with one eye or the other, and what did she see if she covered one eye, but she wouldn’t do it and just made like it’s both eyes going the same thing.

That conversation got nowhere.

As we were chatting, her new room mate was wheeled in and transferred to her bed, promptly falling asleep. The privacy curtain was already pulled and we just kept talking. At one point, I spotted a tiny insect flying near one of my mother’s eyes and I mentioned it was there, in case she saw something moving in her peripheral vision (which is pretty good, based on the last tests she had). Her response?

Her room mate sleeps with her mouth open.

???

This confused me so I asked what that had to do with anything. She talked in circles for a while before dropping it, but she said enough that I realized she thought the insect had come from her room mate’s mouth, because she sleeps with her mouth open.

?????????

Meanwhile, I started to get messages from home.

The tree company had arrived.

My daughter and husband knew which tree was being assessed for removal, but there were details they weren’t sure of, so we messaged back and forth on that, while I told my mother about my brother wanting to hire a company to safely remove the tree.

My mother started saying, she planted that tree there, and did I know why? Yes. It was for shade. She’d told me before about how the sun through the kitchen window made it so hot. I suggested it would have been easier to put up a curtain (that window did have curtains, but they were lacy things that did not block any light), so she started telling me about how, at her childhood home back in Poland, they had a cherry tree right by the house. I pointed out, they didn’t have a basement. Oh, of course – no one had basements! So I talked a bit about how this tree’s roots were causing cracks in the basement wall, and the branches were threatening the new roof.

She brought up the extended pruning saw that should have been here. I told her I use it often, but it can’t be used on these branches. They’re just too big, and if we cut them, they’d fall onto the roof. So she started to give instructions on how we could put a rope around the branch to pull it so it would fall the way we wanted it to. I told her, that might work somewhere else, but not over the roof. It would be much better to get someone with the proper equipment and get it down right, with no risk to the roof. Oh, it’s not my business anymore.

…

*sigh*

I didn’t stay for too much longer, as my mother was looking forward to Bingo starting soon. Before I left, I stopped at the nursing station and talked to the nurse that gave my mother her meds this morning, and would again, at supper time. I told her, my mother keeps insisting that they are not giving her the second eye vitamin.

It turned out that not only is she getting it at both breakfast and supper time (it has to be taken with food), but the pill is so big, at my mother’s request, they break it in half for her. She always sets out the pills on her tray and counts them out, and when she does that, she counts the two halves as one pill, recognizing that they belong together (she has another half pill, but it’s tiny, and she takes only one half at a time).

The nurse promised that she would make sure to explain to my mother that the big pill split in half is her eye vitamin, and why she’s taking it with her supper, not at the end of the day. We talked about some other pills she has issues with, like one that she is completely convinced she used to take twice a day, but she only ever took once a day.

That done, I headed out, but not home, yet. I went to the feed store to ask about the chicks. The woman who was working out the splitting of the minimum 24 chicks order was not there. I talked to the guys that were that and was told that, if she hasn’t called me by now, she wasn’t able to confirm the arrangement. One of them made a note for her to call me when she is back next week.

Then I confirmed the date the chicks will arrive.

It’s the same day I’m supposed to bring three of the isolation cats in for their spays.

Crud.

I would be dropping them off at 8am, though, and they said the chicks tend to arrive at 11am or later, so we would have time to drop off the cats, then drive to the feed store to get the chicks. We would then have to take them home and get them set up in a brooder before I would have to drive back to pick up the cats and bring them home!

That’s going to be a lot of driving.

While there, I got an extra 40 pound bag of kibble, plus a chick feeder and waterer, both gravity fed. I’ll get the pine shavings and chick feed another time. I may not be able to get chicks, if I can’t split a minimum order with someone, but if that doesn’t work out, I know people I can guy adult laying hens from.

On the way home, I remembered to stop at the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but it’s been a while.

I’m glad I did.

I got a letter from the health care system. I’m booked for a pelvic ultrasound on June 9, in the hospital that’s literally across the road from the vet clinic we get spays and neuters done at. 😁 The appointment time is in the afternoon, which will be much easier for us to get to.

I’m surprised I got the appointment so fast. My younger daughter had to wait for almost a year before she got an ultrasound done, but the images weren’t clear, so they want to to come back. That was two winters ago.

Meanwhile, there isn’t much news from my older daughter. Things are improving, but not where they should be, yet. She really wants to just go home. Which I can understand, that’s for sure! Still, it means we have no idea when she’ll be discharged.

While today was nowhere near as windy as yesterday, we were still dealing with high winds – though we didn’t lose any trees, where I could see! – and it was overcast and rainy. The sort of weather that always makes me sleepy. After I got home, I settled at my computer for a while, watching the latest Tasting History video, and fell asleep in my chair! Aside from the evening cat feeding, the only thing I managed to get done outside today was a bit of clean up in the old kitchen garden.

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to freezing or lower – I made sure the heat lamp in the isolation shelter was plugged in and on – and tomorrow is supposed to be chilly. Which is actually a good time to do some of the direct sowing I want to do. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work on that. I’m also hoping to finally get my mother’s old mattress and box spring to the dump, but we shall see when the time comes. We’ve got a few chilly days ahead, then we’ll warm up moderately. There is still much to do out there in the garden, and the month is already half over! The long range forecast says we’re supposed to suddenly get very hot during the day, approaching 30C/86F, and staying high for all of June.

We’ll see what actually happens.

For now, though, I need to get any seeds that prefer cold soil direct sown right away.

At some point, I’ll be able to get back to working on the walls of that garden bed!

What I really want to do right now it crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

A visit in, and getting things done

May 9, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning, I woke to find a message from my older daughter. She had been up all night, not feeling well at all. Her sister stayed up with her to be available to help out.

Not being in a position to cook for herself, she sent me some funds and a request. After talking to her about it, I added a Walmart trip to my list of places to go today.

The first order of business, was to load up the truck with garbage and recycling for the dump. My younger daughter helped me, but she had been up for more than 24 hours, so she was pretty dead on her feet! She headed to bed shortly after the truck was loaded.

Silly me, I headed out right away, forgetting that the dump is not on summer hours. They open at 10am now, not 9am. Thankfully, I remember that before I was a mile away, so I turned around and headed home. It worked out for the better, since I had time to have a real breakfast before going.

The dump was surprisingly busy today. Driving up to the pit, I found a row of four trucks, two with trailers, unloading. I rarely see more than two vehicles at once.

When I checked in with the attendant and told him I had household garbage and recycling, he said I hoped I had only glass! They have one recycling bin for glass, and the rest for general recycling. Six big bins, and they were all full. The recycling gets taken to the city for processing, and it hadn’t been done yet. After I was done unloading into the pit, I found the least over filled bin. Normally, as per instructions on signs, recycling would be removed from any bags; there’s even a separate blue bin, the size of a large trash bin, just for the bags. I didn’t do that today, and just set all the bags on top. When I saw the attendant going by, I made sure to tell him I was leaving them in the bags, so things wouldn’t get blown away. He appreciated that!

Once done, I headed home long enough to change out of my grubbies, then headed out.

On the way to the truck, I spotted this adorableness.

I’ve turned off the heat lamps in the sun room again, since it stays warmer overnight, but for the next couple of days, I’m leaving the heat lamp on in here. When things warm up again, I’ll shut it off during the day and turn it back on at night.

The cats were really appreciating the heat lamp!

It’s been a while since I’ve been to anywhere I could pick up a card, so I stopped at a small department store to get a Mother’s Day card and signed it before going to the TCU to visit my mother. I stopped at the nursing station first, to ask how she’s been.

The woman that had spoke to us before to talk about my mother wanting to see a doctor, and about her medications, was there. She told me that, after our little meeting, my mother had gone to the nursing station to watch her prepare my mom’s supper time medications – and was already telling her, they were the wrong medications.

They aren’t.

In the end, it comes down to my mother simply refusing to believe the nurses know what they are doing, and believing that they are deliberately messing up her medications, because she’s old and they want old people to die.

*sigh*

The staff tell her what the different pills are, every time they give them to her, explaining which is which and what they are for. She apparently just looks at them and nods her head, most times, and that’s about it. Yet I know she’s been writing notes on a pad she keeps in the drawer under her bedside table, of what she’s getting and when, writing down the descriptions of each pill and making little doodles of them, later on.

As we were talking, another nurse came behind the counter and settled in. Hearing us, she said, “Oh, we’re talking about [my mother].”

“Yes.”

“Ah…”

All I could do was shake my head. It’s not the first time I’ve had that response about my mother! She did clarify that this was a good “ah”. She was my mother’s nurse, this morning.

As we were talking, I brought up about my mother calling me, demanding I take her over to the clinic down the hall, so she could make an appointment with a doctor there. I had told her, I already asked them about it. They won’t do it. Which the nurses both confirmed with me. I told them, I had repeated this several times, until my mother hung up on me – and that’s the last time I have talked to her!

They wished me well on the visit. 😄

After getting updated on things, I went to my mother’s room to see if she was there. She wasn’t, so I headed to the common room. There were other people visiting with another resident in some armchairs by the door. My mother was in her favourite spot; an armchair right in a corner, between two large windows. Snoozing!

She woke right away, though, as I grabbed a chair and settled in beside her. I gave her the card, which she asked me to take out and read to her.

There wasn’t much to talk about, really. My brother had called her yesterday, as he and his wife were going to spend Mother’s Day weekend with their grandsons, in another province. The TCO recreation person had gotten permission from us to take her out for a Mother’s Day meal at a nearby restaurant, which is fully accessible. There were enough ladies to do this with, so they were splitting it between two days. I didn’t know which day my mother was going to be going, and I asked her about it. She said she didn’t go, because she hadn’t been feeling well. In the end, it worked out, because my sister visited that day.

She then asked me what I was planning for Mother’s Day and I ended up telling her about the all-terrain walker my husband got for me, which should arrive soon. Something that can handle being used around our yard as I work, and to keep hand in case I have another fall, like I did last year, where my daughter brought my husband’s walker for me to use to get back to the house. I even mentioned to her that I have my appointment at the sports injury clinic in the city on Monday. That got my mother talking about how my brother and I should really get my sister to be more involved in taking care of my mother, because I have so much to deal with, even though my sister doesn’t understand my mother’s medications like we do. I told her, it makes more sense for me to be the one, because I am the most available, and live the closest.

After a while, my mother brought up about wanting to see a “real” doctor at the clinic down the hall. There are three doctors that some in from the city, she says. Women doctors. She should see them. I tried to explain, again, that the clinic won’t do that. She is under a doctor’s supervision where she is, and there are nurses to take care of her. Nurses that play doctor, she told me. With some of them, she doesn’t believe they are nurses at all. One, because he’s male, and men can’t be nurses, in her mind. She had the same attitude about the male home care workers.

Before she could go off on another tangent, she then told me about the nurses messing up with her medications and not giving her what she’s supposed to, at the right times. She described an incident she says happened more than once that made absolutely no sense to me. Partly because she said she was supposed to have her blood pressure medication at that time, which I knew she didn’t. She got that one earlier in the day. She insisted, and then told me about how this person had given her her Tylenol, but not her other medications. When my mother brought it up, she claimed the person said she got was she was supposed to, but then took a pill out of a blister pack and gave it to her. My mother said she took it.

None of this made sense to me.

In the end, it was a short visit. My mother got her lunch while I was there. A chicken burger, with lettuce and tomato, cut in half, potato salad, canned peaches, tomato juice, milk and the hot water she requests in place of tea. She ate only half her burger, the potato salad, her peaches, had a few sips of tomato juice, but mostly drank the warm water. She offered me the other half of her burger, because she didn’t want it to go to waste. She said she doesn’t have as much appetite anymore. Overall, she seemed pretty down, tired and depressed. She did add that she looks forward to when it’s warmer, so maybe one of her children will take her out to that restaurant for dinner. Considering it was cloudy and trying to rain, I can understand that. Overcast and rainy weather always leaves me feeling drained and tired, too. The only time she showed any sort of energy was when the group of people across the room suddenly started to laugh. My mother glared at them, her eyes filled with absolute rage. That is something she complains about constantly, every time she’s been in the hospital over the years, and now that she’s in the TCU. Other people laughing. She has even berated people in restaurants for laughing. She complains about the noise and how disruptive it is, but I’ve come to realize, it’s not really the noise. She just hates other people showing happiness. Often times, she also believes that they are laughing at her, specifically. I think part of the problem is that she can’t conceive of other people being happy, because she, herself, never is. When – if – she laughs, it’s never out of happiness. It’s usually to mock people, or to try and manipulate them. I honestly can’t remember my mother ever laughing out of happiness, in all my life. I’m sure she had at some point, but I was probably too young to remember it.

My mother’s mind must be a terrible place to be in.

There was very little to talk about, so I helped her put aside the bedside table with the food tray so she could get up, and walked her to her room before heading out.

From there, I drove to the nearer city to do my Walmart run. Since it shares the parking lot, I swung by the Dollarama first, to see if there was anything to pick up. The gardening supplies are being stocked, and they have some really good stakes and plant supports and much better prices. They didn’t have much for those, this time, but I did end up getting a sprinkler hose. Something I can set up under a covered garden bed, so I can water without having to take the cover off completely. I do have a couple of soaker hoses, but they release water so slowly, it takes forever to water a bed. It’s just a cheap one, dollar store hose, so I don’t expect it to last very long, but it’ll last long enough that I can decide on whether it’s worth getting more. At some point, when the budget allows, we’ll probably get a drip irrigation system. Not until we trench a hose from the house and set up a replacement garden tap.

That done, I headed to the Walmart. I had a small list of my own, as well as stuff my daughter requested, and it didn’t take very long. I kept feeling like I was forgetting something, but had no idea what. It didn’t help that this location is still in the process of being renovated, and everything has been moved. It was also really busy, not just with customers, but with pallets, trollies, pallet jacks and more, blocking the aisles.

I remembered what I was forgetting, just now. I don’t even know where the section is, anymore. I was going to pick up water soluble fertilizer to add to the water for the earliest transplants. They’re getting big enough to need it. It’s will probably be at least 4 more weeks before any of them can be transplanted outside, unless I’m able to cover the beds with plastic.

That done, I headed home, though I did have to stop for gas along the way. Gas prices are still $1.889/L

After everything was unloaded and put away, I updated my siblings, then called the TCU. The woman I spoke to before visiting my mother answer the phone, which made things easier. I explained, as best I could, what my mother had told me. It didn’t make sense to her, either.

What I now know, however, is that the Tylenol they get comes sealed in blister packs. The medication my mother gets before bed, which is a blood thinner, not a blood pressure pill, comes in a paper packet that is torn open. My mother had said the nurse had waited and watched her take the Tylenol, but it had to have been her blood thinner – yet she’s never said anything about a pill being taken out of a paper packet.

I was assured that, when my mother is given her medications, each one is shown to her and explained. When talking to me about it later, it’s clear my mother doesn’t believe them. She’s had it explained to her, many times, that even though the pills might look a little different – or a lot different, as is the case with her eye vitamin – they still have the same medication and dose in them. My mother keeps saying, they are the wrong pills. Especially with that eye vitamin. Before, she had been getting the gel version, which is large and almost black in colour. Now, it’s a round white tablet.

I explained that this has been an issue in the past, when the pharmacy changed suppliers for one of her meds. It looked every so slightly different in size and tint. My mother decided that the pharmacist had changed her prescription and was giving her something else. My siblings and I explained it to her. The pharmacist explained it to her. The doctor explained it to her. She never accepted that. I told her about my mother having to have a lock box for her meds, and that I’d found a pill organizer with probably 50 pills in it that she’d taken out of her bubble packs, long before she got the lock box.

I don’t think the problem is that my mother isn’t able understand that the same medication can come indifferent forms. I think it’s more that she refuses to accept that as a possibility. She would rather believe people are incompetent, or deliberately messing with her medications.

*sigh*

Still, the nurse said she would look into what my mother described. She asked if I knew what the nurse looked like, or when it happened, but my mother’s sense of time has gotten very bad, and she only gave a description of things that bothered her for some reason. The hat the nurse was wearing, the fact that she had curls of hair hanging out from under it, behind her head, and that she was wearing a cross body “purse” (with how my mother described it, I don’t think it was a purse) that she never took off. It wasn’t much for her to go on. All I could be relatively sure of is that what my mother described would have happened after the nurse had her meeting with us, so within the past week. In the end, though, I can’t even be 100% sure of that. My mother made it sound like it was recent, but she’s done that about things that have happen days, weeks, even years ago. So who really knows.

Meanwhile, I’m getting messages, photos and video from my brother and SIL, hanging out with their grand kids. Oh, and their son and daughter in law, too. 😁 They’re having a blast! I’m glad they could make the trip out.

All in all, even with the short but rather odd visit with my mother, it’s been a good and relatively productive day. Tomorrow is expected to be cooler again, so I will use that as my excuse to get a real, honest to goodness, day of rest. I hadn’t pushed myself hard yesterday, but I still needed to get my husband to slather on the diclofenac last night. Even between that and the painkillers I took before bed, I was awakened this morning by sharp pain in my hips. Both of them. Which, strangely, lessened as soon as I was up and moving around.

I’m really looking forward to my appointment at the sports injury clinic on Monday!

Hopefully, I won’t have to deal with it again, tomorrow morning!

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

sigh

May 5, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Yup. More snow.

At least the rhubarb (second picture) can handle it. The garlic seems fine, too. I think my winter sown beds are toast.

I’m skipping the dump run today.

On another note, I got the new topical painkiller, diclofenac, applied last night. Between that and regular painkillers, I actually slept, with only a couple of interruptions, for nearly 10 hours last night. I could still go back to bed for another 10 hours, if I could, but I recognize that this fatigue is my usual response to dreary days like today.

Oh, dear. I just got interrupted by a phone call from my mother.

*sigh*

She was demanding I take her to the doctor. She wants me to walk her across to the clinic in the same building (the doors to the TCU are locked to prevent residents from wandering) and she would make the appointment herself. I tried to explain – again – that I already called about making an appointment for her and they said now, because of where she is. She is under constant medical supervision. The staff there can tend to her current needs. After several times asking, she finally told me why she wanted to go to the doctor.

It’s her ears.

She got her 5 days of mineral oil treatment, but no one has flushed her ears. I pointed out, it’s not even 9am yet. Give them time. It took a while before she told me that one of the staff had said she would find someone experienced with ear flushing, and then she left. She’s gone. Maybe it’s her day off (I have no idea if this happened yesterday or this morning; my mother’s sense of time is pretty much gone). I said again, give them time. If she said she was going to find someone with experience, she needs time to do that.

My mother went back to demanding I take her to the clinic so she could make an appointment, accompanied by various insults on how I’m “afraid of the doctor” and how she’s “not allowed” to see a doctor, and “is this Russia or Canada?” The irony of that is, she’s probably be getting better care in Russia right now, than anywhere in Canada.

I kept trying to explain to her how things work, but she ended up hanging up on me.

*sigh*

What a way to start the day.

And it’s still not even 9am yet.

The Re-Farmer

A draining visit, a good visit and some spring clean up done

May 2, 2026May 2, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today, I was supposed to do a dump run, but I was just too tired and in pain. It’ll have to wait until they’re open again on Tuesday.

I had a rough pain night and didn’t get much sleep, so I was going to try lying down for a bit, then visit my mother in the afternoon. I wasn’t looking forward to that, after her last phone call, but it needed to be done. I wasn’t down for long when I got a message from my SIL. My brother was on his way to see our Mother, and would then come here to the farm.

So I decided to head out to my mother’s earlier and meet him there. When I got there, though, I found another message from my SIL, as well as from my husband. My brother had tried to call me, but he was calling the land line. He was going to the farm, first.

Which worked out. I got the messages just as I parked at the hospital and realized my mother would be getting her lunch tray, so I walked around for a bit to give her time to finish eating before I went in. I stopped at the nursing station to find out about the phone call I didn’t get on Tuesday, about arranging a family meeting with the doctor. The person at the desk wasn’t the one in the know, so she made a note for the nurse in charge to come see us while I was visiting her.

The first part of the visit was okay. My mother talked a lot about things she remembered from back in Poland. All stuff I’d heard before, but that’s okay. I took a chance and showed her pictures of the chicken coop. She asked me why I didn’t build a shed for them instead of something with so many “windows”. I told her, because we can’t do that right now, this is what we’ve got. She laughed at me for having a chicken coop but no chickens. I told her we were getting chicks at the end of the month. Just 10 for now. Only 10? So few?

…

I told her, the coop is only big enough for 10 chicks.

Then she started going on about how wonderful our vandal is, because he buys his eggs from the Hutterites, and he bought chickens for the freezer from them, too. Now, it’s entirely possible he did this once or twice, years ago, but in her mind this is something he always does. I told her, the Hutterites have a huge operation; we just need enough chickens for eggs for ourselves.

Oh, and my sister’s husband visited our vandal, who told him he doesn’t want me or my brother at his funeral. Which I figured. My mother told me, she wanted us to do what was the right “Christian” thing to do. *sigh*

Then the nurse came and things got… brutal, though in a relatively calm way, for my mother.

In a nutshell; the doctor will not see her or have any meetings about her, because he simply doesn’t have the time. She does not have any medical need for a doctor’s care. She went on about her hearing and her vision, but neither is something that requires him. My mother is undergoing the mineral oil treatment on her ears again – it will be for 5 days this time – before they try flushing it again, and my mother had all sorts of things to complain about with that. Meanwhile, my mother is adamant that they are not giving her her second eye vitamin pill of the day. She writes it all down, she counts all her pills, but they tell her different things about different pills – the nurse and I both realized that my mother was mixing a blue pill up with a green pill, thinking they were the same pill, so that’s why she was getting different answers. My mother is also now convinced that her hearing was “perfect” before she came there, and her hearing problems have something to do with not getting her pills. When I pointed out that she used to have her TV and radio incredibly loud when I’d come over to her apartment in the past, she switched to Polish and accused me of taking their side and of lying. She also wants a pill for her eyes. I had to go over how the eye vitamin is only helpful for her left eye and the dry macular degeneration. The only treatment for the wet macular degeneration in her right eye is the injections she would have to go to the city for. She has rejected that and demands another pill; going back to how she claims they have stopped giving her the second one of the day. Even her own notes show that she is getting two pills at 5pm, but now she says she only gets one.

Even after the nurse left, my mother kept insisting they were not giving her these eye vitamins, and all her health problems have now only started after she came to this TCU. Things she has been dealing with for a long time. I kept trying to explain things, but she just went back to the manipulation, saying I was taking their side, etc. etc. I finally said, it was time for me to go.

As I was getting ready to leave, my mother brother up her wheelchair. This is a folding wheelchair that had been my father’s.

She asked me if I recognized it. I saw it in the hallway and said I did. She asked me to bring it over, and began questioning me about recognizing it. The staff had clearly given it a really good cleaning; whatever they used on the heavy vinyl got it all nice and supple and looking brand new. They even oiled the squeaky food rest. However, it’s an old chair, and there are cracks in the wheels and spots of rust that I could say where there before.

My mother clearly didn’t believe me. She has decided it’s not the same chair anymore. The hospital switched it.

This is not a new thing. For as long as I can remember, she accused my father of “trading” cattle, vehicles, furniture, the TV, etc. and he was giving the “good” versions the second family she believed he had, and the “bad” versions for us. When she tried to convince me a particular cow had been traded because it looked different – it had matured and filled out, looking bigger, strong and healthier – I pointed out that if this cow had been “traded”, we now have a better cow, so how did her accusations make sense?

I had a very confusing childhood at times.

The visit done, I headed home, utterly drained. My brother was still here, so we sat in their mobile home and I filled him in. It was good to talk to him about it in person, and we had a great visit! He was dreading his visit with Mom, but I just heard from him. He ended up staying with Mom for a couple of hours and the visit went well. It seems my mother got her nasty out of her system before he got there. I’m very glad it worked out that way, because she has been incredibly cruel to him during most of his visits with her.

After filling in my brother, I headed inside and took a bit of a break before changing into my grubbies and going outside for some manual labour. That, more than anything else, really helps decompress after a visit with my mother.

My focus for today was getting the straw off the septic tank. I had just started when I began getting messages from the cat rescue.

They are trying to get ahold of special traps to borrow and bring here. Traps with motion sensors and operated by remote. We can set up the camera currently facing the isolation shelter to monitor the traps. When the motion sensor goes off, check the camera to see what critter is in it. This way, we can trigger the trap only if the specific cat we are after – Slick, for example – is in the trap. Skunks and raccoons can be ignored. 😄 That would be amazing!

My brother was getting ready to head out around then, and dropped off some lovely compost they’d made from their own kitchen scraps for me. He had time to check out the chicken coop and we talked about the septic area, and the emergency bypass set up I had set off to the side until the straw was gone. After he left, I continued and got it all clear. The surface straw was set aside in a pile, but the damp straw touching the ground, which was already starting to rot, got raked up and repurposed as mulch around the honeysuckle and white rose bushes in the old kitchen garden.

That clear, I set up all the parts and pieces for the emergency bypass against the old kitchen wall for their summer storage.

That done, I also set up a hose at the tap in the wall next to the pipe running out of the basement for the emergency bypass. The shut off valve in the basement can now be opened. I won’t set all the hoses up until things warm up more, but I can at least fill watering cans for the pre-sown beds, etc., for now.

My next garden priority is to start more seeds inside. That keeps getting pushed back, but most of what we have left to start indoors are for 3-4 weeks before last frost, so for those we still have a bit of breathing room. I have only a few things in the 4-6 week range that need to be started now.

So this has been… a day. I’m very happy I got to see my brother and that I got some work done outside. As for my visit with my mother, it is what it is.

It just left me feeling so incredibly drained! Getting the straw cleared off actually helped with that. Now I’m just physically tired, not both physically and mentally tired! 😄

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

dealing with elderly parents

Our 2026 Garden: reclaiming beds and succession sowing

Some progress done, and oh… did I order more seeds again?

Conflicted, and our Sword of Damocles

Our 2026 Garden: one more bed prepped, and got a visit in

Today was a mixed bag…

Good news!

Everything, all at once!

A visit in, and getting things done

sigh

A draining visit, a good visit and some spring clean up done

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