dealing with elderly parents

Plans changed… and I’m not surprised

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First, the more pleasant stuff!

It’s a wonderfully cool morning today. The entire time I was doing my morning rounds, it was gently misting instead of raining. And would you look at this!

We still have strawberries, blooming and ripening! Recovering from being eaten by deer has resulted in very late production. I’ll take it! 😄

I wasn’t able to get pictures, but I did have a small harvest today. I wasn’t expecting to, so I didn’t bring my colander and ended up using my shirt. I really ought to keep at least one of our harvesting colanders by the sun room! I was actually able to harvest some ripe looking Black Beauties today, as well as a few Indigo Blues. I left the Romas for later. There were some more summer squash to hand pollinate, as well as a couple large enough to harvest.

In looking over the winter squash and the melons, I just have to shake my head. The melons have been blooming like crazy, with both male and female flowers, but there are only 3 melons forming that I can find. This morning, however, there are suddenly a plethora of female flowers! Too many to even try to hand pollinate. With the size of the flowers, I’d have to use something like a cotton swab, anyhow. Hopefully, the insects will take care of it, though to be honest, it’s coming up on the end of August, so not much time for any fruit to reach maturity. Our first average frost date is Sept. 10, but with the strong El Nino this year, we might actually have a chance.

As for the winter squash, there had been two new Honeyboat Delicata forming, then one shrivelled up. The remaining one is getting noticeably bigger, every day. This morning, however, one of the other plants suddenly has a whole bunch of female flowers! Until now, it’s been all male flowers. One was open enough that I could hand pollinate it. The others should open over the next few days. Will they have a chance to mature? During a typical year, no. It would be way too late in the season. But if the frost holds off… we might just have some.

On a slightly more frustrating note, I saw Junk Pile again this morning. This photo is from last night.

That is one round belly.

I saw Caramel walking by this morning, too, and she’s looking pretty round.

More kittens at the end of August/beginning of September?

Crap.

Junk Pile has had a strange year. She had a litter of kittens extremely early and lost them. For a short while, she would follow me as I trudged through the snow to do my rounds and allow me to pick her up and carry her. She was clearly upset about losing her babies. After a few days of that, though, she went back to making strange. She will sometimes allow me to pet her when she’s on the cat house roof, eating, but that’s about it.

I’m sure she had another litter, but not being able to tell her and not-Junk Pile (now Two Toes Tony) apart, it was hard to tell. Once we saw not-Junk Pile/TTT with scratching wounds behind her ears, we could tell them apart, so I could see that it was TTT had a litter of six, though by the time we found her with the broken leg, it seems she was down to three. I would sometimes see that Junk Pile had active nips, but I never saw her with kittens. If her kittens are here at the house now, I don’t know which are hers, and the creche mothers – mostly Adam and Beep Bop – will nurse any and all kittens by the house that want to. Beep Bop is often seen nursing Caramel’s three – so I guess it’s no surprise that Caramel is pregnant again, too, even though her kittens are not old enough to be weaned.

*sigh*

Now, on to the main change of the day.

I’m not going to my mother’s.

I was indisposed when the phone started ringing, and it wasn’t even 7:30 in the morning yet. We get only two types of calls before 8am. Scammers, or my mother! 😄 I found a message from my mother, sounding very conciliatory, saying I didn’t need to come over. I could go to my appointment. She would be all right. (As if I needed her permission to go to my appointment??)

So I called her back. She told me she would take the shuttle bus for her errands. I could go to my appointment. She’d be fine. It’s only $6. She absolutely insisted I did not need to come over.

Which is fine, but between yesterday’s call and her attitude this morning, my suspicions are almost confirmed. She didn’t want me to come at all, because she had plans for my sister. She can talk my sister into taking her places that I can’t – or won’t! – take her. Considering the things she’s been saying about my brother lately, I have a very good idea of what that would have been, and there is no way I would have had the time to drive her around for that. Also, even if I did, there are things she can talk my sister into doing that she can’t talk me into. I sometimes worry about my sister’s cognitive abilities, to be honest, because she got talked into helping my mother stab my brother in the back, and she still seems to have no understanding of the harm she’s done, among other odd things.

Well, whatever. My day just went back to my original plans.

Sort of.

A nap is now part of those plans.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. With TTT not using the litter, and peeing on my pillows, I think I found something suitable to block her preferred area. My husband got a wedge for his knees, years ago, but with his hospital bed, he no longer needs it. I brought it down from it’s storage spot and have it on my bed. I considered she might just decide to pee next to it or something, but she really seemed to be wanting to use my pillows, so I hoped it would work.

After being awakened many times by either the kittens running wild, or Snarly Marlee growling and snarling at them – even when they were nowhere near her! – I am pretty sleepy right now! I was, however, awakened yet again, shortly before my alarm was supposed to go off . A distinctive rustling sound.

Sure enough, TTT was under my desk. She’d dug around the puppy pads and took a dump, right next to the litter box.

At least it was on a puppy pad.

There was no puddle, however. I couldn’t find a puddle anywhere, which had me concered that she’d found some hidden corner to use that we can’t get at.

Then I sat in it.

I keep a towel on the seat of my desk chair. It’s fake leather and the surface has been peeling off, with more than a little assistance from cats. I have the towel so that I don’t have little pieces of fake leather stuck to my butt when I get up.

TTT had jumped onto my chair and peed on the towel.

With a litter box RIGHT THERE and easier to get to.

*sigh*

I’ll be sure to talk to someone at the clinic today about it, but to be honest, I suspect we won’t solve that problem until the kittens get adopted out. Too many kittens using all of the litter boxes.

I’d really like to adopt out TTT, too. She’s new to this indoor life thing, but I’m sure she would be better in a household with far fewer cats in it!

We’ll figure it out.

The Re-Farmer

Use Watcha Got Creamy Chicken and garden vegetable soup

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One of the odd things about our garden plans not panning out this year is that, while we are harvesting more of some things faster than we can conveniently eat, it’s not enough to make it worth canning or freezing.

Today, I decided to take most of what’s been slowly building up to make a large soup. We roasted a couple of chickens yesterday, so that was my main protein.

Since I was using whatever was on hand, I measured nothing. I just chopped everything so that they would finish cooking at about the same time.

So here’s my not-a-recipe.

First, a couple of shallots and a small onion that got accidentally harvested while weeding, were sautéed in butter along with some Uzbek golden carrots and a few Gold Ball turnips, and the one tiny Honeyboat Delicata squash that got accidentally harvested when the stem broke off while in was checking on it. All of those needed the longest time to cook. A small handful of Spoon tomatoes went in, then green and yellow beans, and finally some green and yellow patty pan squash. A whole bulb of garlic went in, too – all 2 cloves that were so big, I was able to dice them. After those sautéed for a while, I took the pan juices from the chicken roasting pan and ran them through a sieve into the pot, along with just enough water to barely cover all the vegetables, bringing it to a boil, adding a big spoon full of chicken stock powder as well. I didn’t need to add any other seasoning. Last of all went some Irish Cobbler potatoes. These were the small ones I’d brought in, leaving the larger ones to continue curing, that had gotten a thorough scrubbing last night. I picked out the smallest ones, most of which didn’t need any chopping at all. More water was added until it seemed like enough, and it was brought to a boil.

At that point, my daughter too over for me so I could make a quick run to get more kibble. With the running around I have to do over the next while, I wanted to get more while I had the time.

My daughter simmered the soup until the potatoes were soft, then added some diced roasted chicken. For the final creamy touch, she also added an 8oz block of cream cheese and took the immersion blender to the whole thing!

It definitely went over well. By the time I got home, there was just over a bowl of soup left for me to try!

It was delicious.

Even the parsley I sprinkled on top was dehydrated from our own parsley we grew a few years ago. We dehydrated so much, we still have some!

I had it with a couple of slices of bread. The girls have been making at least a loaf every day, then sometimes starting another one during the night. I’m really glad we picked up that bread machine!

Meanwhile, on a less cheerful note…

I got an email from my sister letting me know she wasn’t going to be able to visit my mother tomorrow as planned, asking me to go over instead, as her car is in the shop. Turns out that knocking noise in the back was a loose wheel! TTT is getting her staples out tomorrow, but not until 3, so I would be able to go, but earlier than I normally do. I called my mother and the first thing I asked was if she’d talked to the pharmacist about the T3s she’s refusing to take. She said no; my sister was coming over tomorrow, and she was going to get her to drive her to the pharmacy so she could talk to the pharmacist in person. Not just any pharmacist, though, but the new store manager. I told her about my sister’s email about her car, and said I could come in to drive her around, but since I had an appointment, it had to be earlier. I suggested 11. In reality, 10 would have been better, but I didn’t think my mother would accept that. Well, she didn’t like 11, either, and asked if we could make it 12. I said no, I wouldn’t have time for that. Oh, so I’m always in a hurry…

???

Long story short…

I’m always in a rush and never spend time with her. My sister’s car troubles were just an excuse she made up, and now my mother’s entire day’s plans have to change (as if ours didn’t change as well!) Also, my brother is dropping the responsibility of taking care of her on me and my sister. None of us call her or spend enough time with her, we’re all terrible people who don’t go to church and don’t know right from wrong, my brother should practically be her slave because she “gave” the farm to him, and she paid for “everything”, so we should all be doing whatever she wants us to do, no matter how badly she treats us, because she needs our help. Oh, and I don’t allow her on the farm anymore, but when I do, I don’t serve her tea.

When I finally said, if I’m so bad, maybe I should stop coming over to help her completely. Did she still want me to come over tomorrow? Of course, she twisted that around and said that, if I didn’t want to come over, she would just find a way to walk over.

To the bank, the pharmacy and the grocery store?

I called her on the manipulation and guilt tripping, then simply told her I’d be there for 11, while she kept insisting she would walk. Her knees are so bad, she is starting to have trouble navigating her tiny apartment, never mind the half block to the grocery store. The pharmacy is something like 6 blocks away.

Of course, she’d have an easier time of it if she would take the T3s, but she sure as heck wouldn’t want that!

Do I sound a bit frustrated?

Yes. I’m frustrated.

I’m especially ticked off over how she is about my brother. No one has bent over backwards for her more than he has. Now he has the burden of this property on his shoulders – we are helping him by being here, but the place has problems well beyond either of our abilities or finances to fix, plus he still has the headache of dealing with property taxes and insurance for a place companies don’t even want to insure! She has no understanding that she didn’t do him a massive favour in signing the property over to home now, rather than in her will, but saddled him with a white elephant. Then she turned around and stabbed him in the back, and still can’t understand how badly she hurt him. He has pulled her butt out of the fire so many times over the decades, with zero gratitude or appreciation, it’s mind boggling he hasn’t cut her off completely.

He’s a much better man than I am, that’s for sure!

Well, we’ll see how it goes. She may act as if nothing happened at all. Or she may decide to be vindictive. Either way, she’s going to be ticked off that I will have to leave early enough to drive back home, pick up TTT and take her to the vet in time for her appointment to get her staples removed. I certainly didn’t tell my mother is was an appointment for a cat. She would have completely lost it, if I did. She’s always hated having pets in the house (my father loved them), and cats in particular. Dogs were accepted only because they helped with the cattle. They never took a dog to a vet. Not even when one of them got kicked in the heat by a horse and lost its eye. That dog lived to a grand old age, with a very messy, untreated eye. As a child, I had no understanding that this was not a good thing. Heck, I didn’t even understand that there was such a thing as a vet when it happened. So you can probably imagine that she would not be happy that we took a cat to a vet at all, even if it meant the cat living outdoors with a dangling broken leg. For us to be taking a cat to a vet on a day when she wanted me to devote my time entirely and slavishly to her would be just that much worse.

*sigh*

We’ll see how it turns out.

I’ll go back to thinking about how good that soup turned out!

Well. Try, to, anyhow.

The Re-Farmer

My sense of time is a little off!

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I was absolutely sure yesterday was Saturday. Right up until I told the girls I would finish something, then go get the car to load it for a dump run, and my daughter asked, are they even open today?

Well, they’re open on Saturdays.

Not Fridays!

I still had to go to town yesterday and refill a couple of water jugs, then run a couple extra errands since I was out, anyways.

I did the dump run this morning. 😄

I was so absolutely sure yesterday was Saturday, I still feel disoriented!

I got an adorable picture of Decimus last night that I just have to share.

Would you look at that pile of kittens! 😄 They are quite enthusiastic about nursing when she comes in, but she doesn’t let them stay for long. She’s there for food for herself. She knows we feed the cats in my room at different times than the girls do the cats in the rest of the house. She’s the only one allowed to have “extra” by coming in here. 😁

We feed all the cats with wet cat food at the same time we do Two Toes’ medications. We still have to watch closely as TTT gobbles down her little dish of medicated food, because there’s usually at least Nosencrantz and two of the kittens just fighting to get at that little dish while my daughter is measuring out doses.

I also find it funny how Decimus’ one eye just disappears in the black fur!

What’s not funny is getting this picture – after many attempts to get a closer look – this morning. Warning for those who might not want to see a messed up eye. You might want to just scroll right past.

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This is NOT the tuxedo with the gummed up eye we’d been trying to catch but never succeeded. That kitten is older, and everything cleared up on its own. I was sure that one’s eye was lost, but it looks just fine now.

This kitten showed up later, and I never saw it with gummed up eyes. Just really red around one eye. It’s one of those kittens that sees us and runs away immediately, so a glimpse of a red rimmed eye was about all we could get. Today, it happened to be hiding out near the food trays and I was finally able to zoom in to get a shot. This photo is the best look of that eye we’ve been able to get.

We have to somehow catch it and get it to the vet to have the eye removed, but we’ve already had several expensive vet bills in the last few months. It’s going to be a while before we can scrape the funds together for another surgery. Considering how hard it is to get near the kitten, I think we’ll get the time for it.

On a more pleasant note…

These two were watching closely as I was doing my morning rounds!

We still can’t get near that white and grey one, but I’ve been able to sometimes pick up the orange tabby and pet it. Yesterday, it was because the wind was making so much noise while it was eating outside, I was able to walk up behind it and it never heard me coming! He (not confirmed, but statistically more likely, with an orange cat) did hiss a bit and half-heartedly tried to jump out of my hands, but didn’t fight too much, and enjoyed the cuddles at least a little bit! His orange and white sibling – confirmed male – is comfortable enough that I can just walk up to him and pet him now, and he doesn’t run away. They have a fluffy white and grey sibling that I can also sometimes catch and pick up. More often than the all orange one, but not by much!

In other things, I’m happy to say that the new bread machine has been working well, and the girls have been setting it up regularly. It only does one loaf at a time, so they’re trying to build up a supply! 😁

We were all amused by the French labeling on the box. Where English says bread machine, the French says bread robot! The girls, however, have come up with their own name for the machine.

Doughregard.

Ahahahaha!! I love it!

We need to go over recipes and see what ingredients we need to make something other than basic white bread. My daughter has been using a favourite French bread recipe when she bakes, whereas I like to use a basic bread recipe and modify it to include things like oatmeal, flax seed, chia seeds, or whatever else we might have on hand. The machine came with a variety of recipes, but their oatmeal bread, for example, is in their sweet bread section, and includes oat bran, which we don’t normally buy.

Today, we’re looking at a high of 25C/77F. It’s already 23C/73F. The humidity is at 58%, though, so even while doing my rounds earlier, I was just dripping. I was able to finally cut away a branch that broke some time ago, getting stuck on another branch, that has been blocking part of our security camera’s view of the driveway. It took the telescoping pruner at maximum length to reach the broken branch and reach and get almost half of it cut off. The other half will just have to stay there! It had been sitting on the lower branch for so long, that one was growing at a downward bend, so I took about half of that one off, too. I can now see the gate clearly again on my live feed! 😊 Anyhow, even that little bit of work had me sweating in the humidity. When I got back from the dump, I dragged the branches away, and by then it was even worse.

Even last night, it never really cooled down much. I have a box fan in my window, but it makes little difference. The way things are oriented, the fan blows air straight over my bed. The window is high enough, and the bed frame low enough, that I’m not being blasted directly, but even with the fan on its highest setting, I can barely feel the air moving. Once it gets hotter, I flip the fan to blow hot air outside, but my desk is in a corner that feels like it gets no air movement at all. Once the fan it blowing hot air out, that corner with my computer gets much hotter, almost immediately. Enough that I finally went and got the tiny fan we use on our seed starts when they’re in the various greenhouse set ups. It’s a very gentle fan, but it makes a difference.

So I’m not sure what I’ll be able to get done outside today. It might be a good day to get out with the riding mower. I’m loath to terrify all the kitties, but the grass is overdue for a cut. I’ll just have to keep an eye out for fallen branches! The bigger ones are easy enough to spot, but lots of little pieces are coming down, too, and disappearing in the tall grass.

In other things, I got an unfortunate call from my mother. I had taken her to the interim doctor to renew my mother’s prescriptions, only to have her assure my mother that she will take her on as a patient. My mother didn’t say anything, but she’s not happy with having a black doctor. And a woman, no less! She did ask about another doctor whose name is still on the list (along with other doctors that have been gone for years) that saw her once, before we even moved out here, that she likes. He’s white and male, so she would have preferred him, but it turns out he only comes out 3 times a week, and has his primary practise elsewhere. Anyhow, when my mother brought up that she wanted to talk about her knees, the doctored examined her briefly, then wrote her up for x-rays. We’ll come back another time to go over those. Until then, she added T3s to my mother’s prescriptions, to try instead of the usual Tylenol she’s taking now. If those don’t help, the next possibility is steroid injections. At my mother’s age, surgery is not an option.

After taking my mother home, I brought all the paperwork to the pharmacy, and arranged to have the new prescription filled and delivered the next day.

Which was yesterday.

The person who delivered it explained some things to her, then said if she had questions, she talk to the pharmacist. My mom said she would read the papers that came with it.

Which she did.

Which is the problem.

Of course, the law requires that all possible side effects get listed. Now, my mother is terrified and refuses to take it.

Her problems with it, aside from all those possible side effects that she interprets as “will happen” rather than “might happen”, include…

The doctor and I had talked about Tylenol, but the person who delivered it never used the word Tylenol, so it’s not Tylenol. (I explained, that’s what the T in T3stands for)

The person used the word narcotic. It’s a narcotic, which my mom understands only as deadly illegal drugs. I explained that narcotic is just a descriptive word, and that lots of medications are narcotics. My husband is on opioids. Those are much, much stronger than the T3s. I tried to explain that a lot of illegal drugs that are killing people, like fentanyl, are medicines that are being used wrong. But she won’t use them wrong. She will follow the directions.

So she said, if this is Tylenol, there’s stronger Tylenol than what she usually uses at the drugstore. She could take that, instead. I told her, those are narcotic, too, and the whole point is that those are not strong enough for her pain. This is just to try and see if they help with the pain. Then she got angry again, saying she wants something that will heal her, not take the pain away. She doesn’t understand that this is not something that can just be fixed.

Then she wanted to know how I know all this stuff. I told her, I I’ve dealt with it before, before we moved out here. Not for myself, but I know lots of people who have been on them. This stuff is bottom level for prescription pain medication. Not even close to what my husband is on.

My mother didn’t like that I was giving her this information, instead of being all upset like she was, so she started to get angry with me. She wanted me to validate her fears. Then she said maybe she should talk to the pharmacist. I said that was a good idea.

There were a few odd things she tried throwing out at me. For example, she talked about her one knee is “just” sideways. I said, there is no “just” sideways. Knees aren’t’ supposed to do that! So why do both knees hurt the same? I explained that one knee had to work harder to make up for the injured one. Then I reminded her (again) that she was in a car accident, where she hurt her knee. She dismissed that (she doesn’t like to be reminded of an accident was was totally her fault). Instead, she tried to suggest that it was because, when she was a child in Poland, she didn’t have proper shoes, and her feet got so cold! I said, we’re talking about her knees, not her feet. Well, her feet hurt, too!

She has massive bunions and bunionettes on her feet, not to mention arthritis. But no. It’s because she didn’t have good shoes as a child, in pre-WWII Poland.

Then, out of the blue, she started saying, I wonder why [my brother] doesn’t phone me or visit anymore?

I just took her out to visit them on Sunday.

I asked, where did this come from, since we were talking about something else entirely.

She said, she gave my brother $40 to cover the long distance charges.

What she did was hand my brother some cash and say “for long distance”. We though she meant for his previous calls. Nope. Turns out she was paying him to call her. I told her, we had no idea that’s what she gave him the money for.

She’s the one that doesn’t like to call him, because it’s long distance. She also doesn’t understand that he’s incredibly busy. Especially right now, because they’ve got a trip of a lifetime planned for their upcoming 40th anniversary. She wants him tending to her now, before they leave. It’s a massive control thing. She’s mostly giving up trying to control me and what we do at the farm. She’s shifted her attention to my brother, instead, because she “gave” him the farm. Meanwhile, every time she’s talked to him on the phone lately, and she asks him why he doesn’t call more often, he tells her point blank; it’s because he’s tired of her abuse. She usually launches into something within 30 seconds of a call.

I managed to get the conversation back to her new prescription and encouraged her to tall the pharmacist, but for now, she’s refusing to take the painkillers.

*sigh*

As someone who doesn’t like or trust many prescription medications very much myself, it was strange to be defending them to my mother.

When it comes to my mother’s knees, she has had several braces given to her over the years that she has refused to wear. If she had worn those, it would have saved her other knee and kept the bent one from bending so much! Now, she’s even refusing to take painkillers for them. At that point, I was even saying that if she won’t do anything herself for her own knees, she’d better stop talking to the doctor about it, because there’s no point. I didn’t get to finish saying it, through, because she started talking right over me, as if I wasn’t saying anything at all. Also very typical.

Ah, well. We’ll deal with whatever comes of it.

It does get very frustrating, though. She causes so many of her own problems.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: a harvest gift, and taste test

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I’m heading to my mother’s this afternoon, then taking her to a medical appointment, so I thought I would bring some things from our garden to her.

I picked the potatoes from under just one Irish Cobbler plant, which had a pretty decent amount of larger potatoes. There were also small ones, so I just buried them and the plant roots again. There’s a few orange carrots, a zucchini we harvested earlier, some Roma and Indigo Blue tomatoes and a Sweet Chocolate bell pepper. While cutting some thyme, I noticed a shallot that got missed, so I grabbed that, then added a couple more we’d harvested earlier. I also cut some spearmint for her. I decided to add one of the Black Beauty tomatoes we harvested earlier, too. The softest one I could find among the lot. After bagging it up, I remembered to grab a head of garlic for her, too.

My mother being my mother, I expect to get a lot of snarky comments and backhanded insults. 😄 She’ll have issues with the brown pepper and different coloured tomatoes. She did ask me to give her some of the tomatoes to try, but then launched into a long speech about how bad it is to have not-red coloured tomatoes. And, of course, she’ll tell me how my sister brought her soooooo much from her garden, and it’s so much better, and she’s just one person, so it’s all too much, and how bad it was for me to bring more.

My mother is very predictable. 😁

But I’m giving them to her anyways. Who knows. She might actually show appreciation for a change. 😄

We did have one really nice, ripe Indigo Blue Chocolate tomato for my daughter to taste test. I’d picked three and put them in my pocket so I could use both hands. One was so ripe, it split when I bent over, so it needed to be eaten right away.

My daughter found them absolutely delicious. Nice and sweet. Juicy, but not too juicy, with a rich tomato flavour. We have others harvested that will need to be eaten quickly, and I don’t think that’s going to be a problem at all! 😄

The Indigo Blues are an indeterminate tomato, so I can expect to be able to harvest small amounts of them more often, from now one. The Romas are starting to ripen in mass quantities, so I might just wait on processing the ones we’ve picked, so we can do larger quantities all at once.

On another note completely, we did try to use the new bread machine yesterday.

Something went wrong, but I don’t know what.

I came into the kitchen to check on it, and it was off. There was still power to it – the display was showing the exact settings I started with for a basic 1.5lb loaf. It should have been showing a count down on the time. It just wasn’t running. The bread dough had been completely kneaded and was just sitting and rising the pan, so I left it. Later on, my older daughter took the dough out and baked it in the oven, so we now have one, perfect little loaf in bread jail to try.

Hmmm… I wonder. We keep our bread in a bin – bread jail – to protect it from the cats. I wonder if maybe a cat stepped on the controls while we were not around, and shut it off? We’ve set the bread machine up on the counter near the microwave, where it could be plugged into an outlet on a different breaker, and plenty of space around it for when it’s hot and baking. It’s the one counter the cats are allowed on, as they like to sit and look out the window.

That’s about the only thing I can think of, other than mechanical failure.

My daughter plans to try again, later, so we’ll see!

Who knows. I might come home to some fresh bread to try. :-)

The Re-Farmer

A quick update

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This morning, I took video and will be putting together a garden tour video tonight, after I finish watering the garden. Until then, here is some cuteness!

Inside cuteness…

… and outside cuteness!

I have been finding piles of outside kittens in that bed in the sun room more often.

The inside kittens quite enjoyed the freshly laundered fluffy blanket and towel!

Today was a wonderfully cool day. We had a high of only 18C/64F We had scattered showers in the region throughout the day, but I did eventually get to put a second coat of paint on the folding table and stump bench. I don’t think they will need a third coat. We’ll have lots of paint for other projects.

I also worked on trimming the lumpy bits on the debarked log. I drained both batteries on the mini chainsaw, with only one last large lump that needs to be trimmed.

We did not get enough rain, though, so I’ve been working on watering the garden. As I write this, I’ve got the last sprinkler set up in the main garden area, and a timer running. Once that’s done, I still need to water the front garden beds. I should be able to get that done while the light holds. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to start editing a garden tour video.

My day was almost disrupted completely. Thank God my sister phoned, first. She started off asking if we wanted cucumbers, which I thankfully declined; we still have pickles from last year! I said no to slicing cucumbers, too.

What does it mean that my sister’s call had me feeling slightly suspicious – and that my suspicions proved warranted?

As we were talking, I suddenly heard my mother announcing that they were in our little hamlet. It turns out they had gone to the cemetery to tend the family plot, and were at a nearby park (where they have public washrooms and water available), where they had their lunch. As we were talking, my mother suddenly asked, “are you going to invite us over?”

I was expecting that.

My answer was, no.

I then reminded her that we need to plan ahead for visits. Just dropping by suddenly is very disruptive.

First, she tried to guilt me. “Don’t forget, you’re living in my house”.

“It’s not your house anymore.”

Again, I repeated that we need time to plan visits. Then she threw a real whopper at me.

“Are you afraid of [my husband]?”

That one had me laughing out loud.

She kept trying to find ways to blame my family, but I finally said that it was HER behaviour that’s the problem.

She went silent after that. My sister and I talked a bit more before she finally said that our mother was in a “mood” and it was time to go.

My mother completely cannot accept that her own behaviour causes her own problems. When she comes here, she’s rude and often cruel. She has no interest in visiting us. Her only interest is in seeing what we’ve done and to criticize me for it – and I don’t mean constructive criticism! But she also expects us to wait on her, hand and foot, and dote on her. She treats my family like crap, insults them, then wonders why they don’t want to be around her. My husband is in constant pain, but he’s supposed to come out and pander to her as well. My older daughter works nights, but she’s supposed to interrupt her sleep to dote on her. My younger daughter has pretty severe PCOS, which affects her physical appearance that has my mother being particularly cruel. Today she wasn’t feeling well, either. My mother, however, gives zero thought to how other people might feel, or what they are dealing with. Her world revolves around herself, and she expects our worlds to revolve around her. There’s only so much of that that can be blamed on her age. Frankly, she’s been like this for a long time.

Oh! There goes my timer. Time to turn off the sprinkler and water the front garden beds.

<<< one hour later >>>

I’m back!

Gosh, it’s so gorgeous out there. I didn’t want to come back inside!

Anyhow. Where was I?

Ah… yes. We managed to not get what would have been a highly disruptive and unpleasant “visit” from my mother.

I’m sure she’s going to try and find some way to punish me for not allowing her to abuse me and my family. I’m just glad my sister made sure to phone ahead this time. The last time my mother talked her into suddenly showing up here, it was quite unpleasant and set my weather dependant work back for days, so she promised to always call first!

For now, the garden is taken care of, the outside cats have been tended to, and now it’s time for me to start on that video! Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish it tonight and be able to upload it by morning. We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

This is why I stay flexible

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When it comes to overall plans for the day, I tend to be very loosey goosey. Mostly it’s because I hate making solid plans, then having something else come up and disrupt them. Which happens.

A lot.

This morning, I was able to get out while it was still cool to do my morning rounds, sex up some squash flowers, prune the tomatoes and harvest a few carrots.

I only picked a few to add to a chili type dish I plan to make. I intend to leave the rest in the ground for as long as I can, to get bigger. These are the Naval carrots that we made seed tape with. There’s a bit of damage on a couple of them because I had to use a digging tool to loosen the soil enough to pull them out without breaking them. For all the amending and mulching we’ve been doing, compaction remains a huge problem.

It was getting quite hot and muggy by the time I came in. I ended up having my breakfast… er… lunch… in the living room. Partly to enjoy the cool of the AC, but also because I usually eat while working at my computer, but the kittens have started to try and get at my food when I do that! We have a Roku set up on our TV, so I got to enjoy my lunch while watching The French Chef on Tubi.

I was just finished up and planning to head outside again when the phone rang.

It was my mother, wondering if I could come over and help her with shopping.

😄

When we spoke on the phone a few days ago, I specifically asked about when she would need to go shopping next. She told me she was done, well stocked up, etc. She then spent the next while listing off what my sister had brought her from her garden, and that she had going to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things for her, and she had this, and that, and this other thing…

My response was, so… why don’t we plan on it for Friday?

Nope. She didn’t want to set a date, because she’s well stocked…

Today is Friday.

She almost sounded sheepish when she asked if I could come over!

So I changed out of my grubbies and headed over to her place. We had a bit of a visit, first. Of course, she found ways to criticize and insult me within minutes, because she’s like that. Apparently, it’s a complete shock that I was wearing socks. It’s summer. Why am I wearing socks? There was also something about hose. As if she thought I was wearing panty hose, until I lifted my pant leg to figure out what she was talking about.

We ended up talking about the new steel toe shoes I was wearing, instead of the boots I usually do, which lead to me telling her (again) that I’d injured my feet long ago, by being over active so that’s why I have to wear really good shoes all the time. My mother, of course, just had to make a dig about how it (my foot injuries) was because I was fat. She is utterly obsessed with my being fat, and always finds ways to point out how this is some sort of moral and personal failing, the cause of all my problems, and that if I just did what she told me, I’d be skinny. Or something. I reminded her that I injured my feet before I got fat, and it’s why I started getting fat. Well, that and childbirth. All the woman in my mother’s side of the family got fat after having babies. They also all lived to hale and hearty old age, while all my skinny ancestors died young, but that’s a conversation beyond her ability to understand. Yes, my mother is fat. She’s been fat for as long as I can remember and, for all her hypochondria, astonishingly healthy at 92 years old. Anyhow, I called her on her behaviour, and her habit of finding sly ways to point out how disgusting she finds me. She, of course, tried to gaslight me, going on about how I shouldn’t be so upset (pointing out her behaviour is always translated as being angry or upset, or otherwise out of control; typical of gaslighting), or that I was the one attacking her, and when that failed, she started talking to the picture of Jesus on the wall.

It didn’t work.

Eventually, my pointing out that it was her own behaviour that was the cause of the problem, not my inability to accept her verbal abuse, got her to a point where she couldn’t find a way to twist it around and make it my fault anymore.

At which point, I went back to says, yes, I wear socks with my work shoes in the summer.

After that, the visit went really well! 😄

I helped her run her errands, going to various places. She is really struggling to get in and out of the car these days. She would have just given me a list to do her shopping for her, but there were things she wanted to look at and choose herself. What I used to do at the grocery store was bring a cart for her to use as a walker, but now I insist she use the walker while I push the cart, so she has something to sit down on if her knees start to give out on her. And she’s taken advantage of that!

What was funny is that after everything was put away and we were sitting for a brief rest and visit, she actually “kicked me out”, saying she wanted to take a nap. Usually, when I try to leave, she tries to guilt me into staying longer, and how this is my “holiday”, and the girls can take care of things at the farm, and she’s not going to be around forever, so I should spent more time with her! Nope. Now, she’s tired. Time for me to go!

I’m quite okay with that. I was tired, too!

Not too tired, though. When I went to get some gas, I saw the farmer’s market was open, and my cousin’s truck was there. It’s been ages since I got honey from him! Last year, the weather destroyed most of his hives. Usually, we would get a 5kg bucket of honey from him, but not this year. I was able to get one of his large 1.5kg jars, though.

I also picked up some fresh baked sourdough bread and strawberry rhubarb pie!

I would never pay those prices at a grocery store – the pie cost more than the honey! That size jar – the largest he had available – was only $13. I also checked out, but skipped, a booth with fresh vegetables that looked really good. Just not vegetables we typically eat, or stuff we have our own of. Lots of people thought they looked good, to. There was an actual line up of people waiting to pay for their selections.

Small farmer’s markets like this are hard for me to go to. I want to support all of the vendors! Even if I’m not entirely sure what it is they’re selling. 😄

One of the other things I did while at my mother’s was to clean up her answering machine, saving the calls from our vandal that she’ still getting. I recorded them and sent them to my brother. We are very perplexed by some of the things our vandal has been saying. My vandal has been leaving me alone, but he recently called and left messages with my brother, and also called my mother, saying some very strange things about me. One text message he sent to my brother was so bizarre and disjointed, I honestly wondered if he had a stroke or something.

It did give me a chance to talk to my brother, though. Normally, I hate talking on the phone, but not with him! I think we spoke for about an hour or more!

Then I forgot about this post in progress. Oops.

Well, at least I sexed up some more squash flowers, watered the garden, added more supports to the melon trellis (we have baby melons!), got the slow cooker going, started laundry and had my supper in the living room with Marlee, to give her a break from the kittens!

By the end of the weekend, though, we will be down a kitten. The Cat Lady and her family are in the area, and she will swing by to pick up Ghosty, whose eyes are starting to get all sticky again, when they are on their way back to the city.

Soon, we’ll have to get some good photos of the other kittens and Decimus to send to her, so she can pass them on to her contacts and hopefully get them adopted out when they are weaned.

The kittens are sweet and adorable, but I’m going to be happy when they’re gone!

Not as happy as Marlee, though.

The Re-Farmer

Thinking ahead

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What shall we do with these babies!

They’re still on the bottom of that old and rotting barrel. As I write this, it’s raining, and I’m afraid rain is getting through the opening the mama is jumping in and out of, and they’re right under it. Where the barrel is is very sheltered, though, so not a lot of rain is reaching the barrel to begin with.

I hope!

I’ve cleared out a corner of the sun room, then used boxes and cat blankets to create a nest, with other stuff placed around it to make it even more cave-like. What I’m hoping to do is get the kittens out of the barrel and move them to the nest. Hopefully, the mama will accept the offering and leave them there. We can even put other things around it to make it more private, so she won’t be disturbed as we go in and out of the sun room.

But that is a job I can’t do without someone more spry and agile to get at the kittens. We can reach to move the boards out and then maybe tip the barrel over, very carefully. It might just fall completely apart once we start moving it.

Is it worth trying? What do you think?

Anyhow…

This morning, the girls were out before I was and took care of feeding the outside cats, then put together two more frames for the raised beds for me. The third one wasn’t done because somehow we missed drilling pilot holes at one end of the 3′ pieces, and they didn’t want to be making noise with the drill while my husband and I were trying to sleep!

I headed out early to go to my mothers, stopping for the mail, then pick up lunch. I went to the Chinese restaurant right next to her place and got myself a full meal, but just onion rings for her. Now that she’s been convinced they are using cat meat and refuses to even consider she might be wrong on that, onion rings are the only thing she’s willing to eat from there! Her loss. The food was delicious, as always.

Before we left, my mother said she had a letter to mail, but she didn’t want to mail it at the local post office. As we were going to get her new glasses, she started talking about the $45 she put in an envelope to pay, but wasn’t sure what she had paid for. I explained to her (again) that it was for her eye test, because it wasn’t completely covered by our province’s Medicare. She said something about the cost of her glasses, as she had written a check for half the cost and I said no, it was just for her eye test, not at all for her glasses. She then commented on not having any receipts, and I reminded her she got two receipts; one for the glasses, one for the eye tests. I had folded up the receipts and put them in the envelope she’d had the cash for the test in. I’d even made sure to show them to her once at home, them back, telling her to put them with her other tax receipts.

She didn’t remember that, and doesn’t know where that envelop is, anymore, but also had no interest in looking. Hhmm.

So, off we went to the town her glasses were in, which is about half way to the city from where she lives. Along with going to the post office, she talked about wanting to go to a grocery store, too. Once at the eye place, my mother got excellent care as they made sure everything was just right.

Then she started asking about the $45, and what was that for?

*sigh*

I’m not sure why my mother didn’t believe me, or what she thought that cash paid for. The lady patiently explained exactly what it was for; it turns out there is just one specific test she had that is not covered. Honestly, I’m still not sure she accepted the explanation.

She was happy with the glasses, though. After getting them to fit just right, she was told to start wearing them tomorrow, when she first gets up, rather than try and get used to a new prescription part way through the day. Since she already uses a walker, there’s a higher risk of falling if she gets dizzy or has depth perception issues.

When it was time to pay, the lady wrote the check out for my mother to sign, and my mother started talking as if they weren’t going to give her a receipt, but she would like one. She was assured they would give her a receipt. Then we made sure she saw the printout, and that it went into the bag with her glasses.

While we were chatting, my mother asked where the post office was, as she couldn’t remember. We got excellent directions. Once we were done, though, she wanted to go to the grocery store, first, since it was so close. As we parked, we saw a Canada Post sign on a pharmacy that shared the parking lot, so we tried going there first. Turns out they just had a postal box, and my mother refuses to use postal boxes anymore. The one outside the post office in her town was stolen, several years ago, so now she things if she puts mail in a post box, it will get stolen.

I didn’t mind stopping at the post office, though, because I was out of antihistamines, and I’m allergic to something out there!

Then it was time to go to the grocery store, but suddenly my mother didn’t actually want to buy anything there, though she did look through the bakery section. Their bakery section is one of the things she looks forward to in that store, as they carry types of bread she can’t get locally. In the end, I did some of my own shopping while she rested in her walker, but as I quickly went around for things on my list, I found her checking out the meat department! 😄 So she did get one thing – just not the thing she came to the store for! I paid for it with my own stuff, so she wouldn’t have to stand in line.

Next, it was off to the post office. She remembered what the building looked like, but the post office hasn’t been in that building for many years. I don’t know what the building is now, but it’s unique enough that it frequently gets used in movies. There have been a few times I’ve come to this town in the summer, and had to drive around blocks closed off and decorated with fake snow and Christmas trees, because another Hallmark movie was being filmed. Even explaining this as we drove past the original building, when we next drove by the old town hall, with similar architecture, she was telling me that was the post office!

I’m glad we got such excellent instructions, because the real post office turned out to be hidden in a strip mall breezeway! So well hidden, after I parked the car, I walked over to see, and discovered the doors where hidden by post boxes. 😄

When I went back for the envelope my mother wanted to mail, I got very specific instructions. My mother has sent mail to Poland (months ago, though she makes it sound like yesterday) that didn’t arrive. When mailing another letter to Poland, the lady behind the counter thought it was to Ukraine, apparently. I honestly don’t see how that could be, but that’s what my mother tells me. She also writes “Polska” on the address, rather than the English “Poland”, and the lady asked what that was.

So now my mother is convinced that the lady at the local post office just throws away her letters. Or that they are being stolen. Or that no one at the post office understand that Polska means Poland.

My instructions were to make sure they knew this was going to Poland, and whether she should write Poland in English rather than Polish.

When I got to the counter, I explained my questions. The lady at the counter even double checked to make sure if having Polska on there was fine, and was assured it was. In the end, I think the questions I made on behalf of my mother made her day!

My mother didn’t even need postage. All that, because she refuses to drop a letter into a postal box!

She was happy with the responses I got, though. But now I’m wondering, what is she going to do the next time she has to mail a letter to Poland?

That was the last of her errands, though, so we made the drive home. I didn’t even get guilted about staying longer after I helped her in. The folks from the seniors centre had some sort of coffe night in the lobby, and it was still going. My mother was happy to kick me out and be able to catch the end of it. 😂

Which is was fine by me – I didn’t have any insulated bags in the car, so I needed to get my few groceries home! I did stop at the hardware store first, though. I wanted to look for the coupling I needed to repair the pipe to the garden tap.

Turns out, the smallest size they had was for a 1 1/4″ pipe. The pipe I need to repair is 1″.

*sigh*

I was really hoping to avoid ordering it online.

Ah, well. Once I got home, I did exactly that. It comes in a 2 pack, so we’ll even have a spare.

That done, I headed outside. After setting up the kitten nest in the sun room, I did a bit of garden tending, then dragged the roll of fence wire over to where the frames were.

I had thought the wire was 4″ squares, but I was wrong. Once I started unrolling it, I could see it was several sizes. All the squares are 6″ long, but there are rows of 5″, 4″ and 3″ spaces.

The roll itself is just over 3″ wide. I decided for the first frame, I would try 5′ long pieces. Three of them will fit along the inside of the frame, with a bit of overlap. Bolt cutters made cutting the wire an easy thing, and I used pliers to bend the cut ends back. Being rolled up for so long, the pieces all have a curve we can take advantage of when attaching them to the sides of the frame.

I didn’t get that far, though. It started to rain while I was working on the last section, so I just put things away to finish tomorrow. Once I see how it looks with 5′ of fence wire, I’ll decide if the next one will get longer or shorter pieces.

For these ones, I plan to cover the fence wire with the black netting we used to protect beds last year, making sure to close up the ends in the process. The cats like to go into the garden beds and just lay on top of my vegetables, so this will at least keep them out! In the future, we’ll have to make a cover sized for the bed the Irish Cobbler potatoes are in right now. I never thought those would need covering! The other potatoes are fine, but the critters seem to really like that one bed! I keep finding kittens in there, but something bigger has been flattening the potato plants. So far, they have been able to recover okay, but there’s only so much abuse they can take! It’s too late to do anything about it this year, but we’ll have to keep that in mind when using the bed next year.

Funny how every year of gardening, I spend much of my time thinking about the next year’s garden! Everything we learn this year will make for a better garden next year.

I hope!

The Re-Farmer

Long day

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I managed to get a few things done before I had to head out to my mother’s. This is what I was greeted with, when I started getting the kibble for the outside cats.

This kitten has moved right into the shelter area! He runs away from me, but waits until I’m fairly close before he does. For example, I was able to walk past him while he was on this rail, and all he did was tuck himself further under the rose bush.

After feeding the cats and doing my morning rounds, I got out the extended pole pruner and cut away some of the problem branches from Chinese elms near the chain link fence. We’ve been pruning them back pretty much every year since we’ve moved here, but the branches grow back very quickly. Pruning one tree now allows for more light to reach where the peas are planted, but the branch that’s casting the most shade is too high for the pruner, even at maximum height. I dragged off the one branch I did get down, to add it to the pile by the fire pit. I really should have broken it down to smaller pieces, first! Elm is a very heavy wood, and once it was on the ground, I realized the branch was quite a bit bigger than I thought.

I also worked on the elm near the vehicle gate into the inner yard, next to the asparagus patch. This is another tree we’ve cut back before, but when the septic truck came out, it was hitting branches again! I got a couple of the problem branches down but started running out of time, so I just broke them down quickly with the mini-chainsaw pruner and piled them for the girls to haul away later. Some of the branches that need to be taken down will probably have to wait until fall, as they would end up falling right on the asparagus and strawberries. If I wait until they are mulched for the winter, they will protected enough.

Then it was time to change and head out to get some gas, then pick up my mother. We then drove to the next major town, about half way to the city from her place, for her eye appointment. I wanted to get her there early, since she was a first time patient. I explained to her that they would need her health care card and do the “paperwork” to get her into their system, and that they would need to take her glasses to measure her current prescription and do some pre-tests. When we got there, though, she actually seemed surprised when they actually did all the things I explained to her. It was as if she didn’t believe me or something! The timing worked out just right, though; all the pre-stuff was done just before her appointment time, and the eye doctor called her in, right on schedule!

There were a few tests she did with my mother that she didn’t do with me when I had my appointment, like checking my mother’s peripheral vision. My mother will have a fairly minor change in her prescription. She mentioned having headaches, mostly when reading, so we hope the change will make those go away. If the headaches turn out to be caused by something else, she’ll at least be seeing better!

Then the doctor went over the photos taken of the inside of my mother’s eyes. She is showing early signs of macular degeneration, but it is still dry, so there is no treatment for it. She was given a booklet about a specific multivitamin that can help slow down further degradation, that also has a grid eye test on the back page. The doctor got her to use it as instructed, looking at a center dot with one eye covered, and what to look for. It turns out that, with one of her eyes, the grid lines look wavy. For now, the thing to watch out for is if it starts to get worse and, if it does, to get back to her right away.

The one odd thing was when she asked if we had any other questions, and my mother started asking about why an eye might turn all red. The doctor said there could be many reasons and, as my mother continued, I realized she was talking about what that happened to her, four or five years ago. After having a sneezing or coughing fit (I can’t remember which, right now), she popped a blood vessel in her eye. I drove her to the hospital in this town every day for a week, so she could get a blood thinning injection, to help it heal faster. And it did.

Turns out, she either doesn’t remember why it happened, or doesn’t believe that her sneezing/coughing fit actually caused it, anymore. It looks like she’s rewriting her memory about it, too. When I realized what she was talking about and mentioned driving her to the hospital for the injection daily like that, she gave me this death glare for saying something. *sigh*

But, the appointment went well, and she got her prescription. She had brought up with me earlier about the possibility of going to Walmart to get her glasses, because one of the people in her building suggested it. I told her that she could probably get cheaper glasses there, but recommended getting them here, because she’d get better care. After her appointment, when she was told she could look at frames to get her new glasses if she wanted, she started hemming and hawing. I again recommended doing it right away here, if only to get it over and done with, and she sort of agrees. But first, I took her to the counter to pay for the appointment. That confused her and, for some reason, she thought they wanted her health care card again. She had the money for the payment already set aside in an envelope in her purse. She was told she could pay for it together with her new glasses, but that confused her even more, so I told them to just process the payment for the appointment on its own.

With her knees being an issue, my mother wasn’t up to wandering around to look at frames, so one of the staff asked her some questions, then went looking for frames that were sort of like what my mother already had. She ended up bringing two metal and two plastic frames. One of the metal frames were a bright red that matched the shirt my mother happened to be wearing, but my mother would not consider such a bright colour! What was funny about that is that the frames she did choose were a plastic pair with blues, browns and greys, and very trendy! 😄 They look good on her, though, and she liked them, so that’s all that mattered – though I know my mother well enough that she chose them more because she was overwhelmed by having to choose at all.

Then they started asking her about what coatings she wanted, and that was almost more than she could handle. She basically told the woman that was helping her at this point to just give her good glasses, and that she would trust her! 😄 They checked her current glasses and basically matched what she already had.

As we were talking, my mother kept asking questions about the chain and how long they were here, etc. They didn’t quite understand what she meant at first, and told her about other franchise locations, but she was really trying to ask if they’d been located anywhere else. She was still convinced that there was only one eye clinic in this town. They told her there was another one, and where it was located, so she figures that’s what she was remembering. I don’t know when she was last taken to this town to get her eyes tested, but considering she says she was taken to it by her niece, it had to have been well over 10 years ago!

I’m amused that it took them telling her there was another eye clinic for her to finally believe it. We even drove past it later one.

The main thing is, her glasses are ordered. They’ll call me when they are in, and I’ll bring my mother in to pick them up.

That done, even though she was clearly tired, my mother wasn’t ready to go home. So we ended up going to a chicken place for a late lunch/early supper. This is a place she normally goes to in this town, but I don’t know that she’ll be willing to go back again, even though the food was excellent, and so was the service. There seems to have been a change in ownership since we were last there, the the people running it are *gasp* not white. We heard another customer talking to the guy that seated us (well; my mother ignored him and walked right to the table she wanted, so… tried to seat us) and he said he was from Pakistan, so when the waitress came by towards the end of the meal, my started asking her where she was from and how long she’s been in Canada…

She was born here. Second generation Canadian, it turned out.

Thankfully, my mother behaved, and didn’t make any rude comments.

Oh, that reminds me. During conversation, she brought up not going back to the Chinese restaurant that’s right next to her building. Why? Because she’s been seeing so many strange cats lately. *sigh* I think one of the people in her building told her this, but when I asked, my mother said there was something in the news about a Chinese restaurant in the city, where they were caught serving cat meat. The problem is, she could have seen something about this years ago, and who knows in what context it was in. Now, very suddenly, she has decided that because she once saw a strange cat in the field outside her window, it means the Chinese restaurant next to her place is using cat meat…

*sigh*

Anyhow…

When it came time to take care of the bill, I made sure to pay it, because my mother doesn’t believe in tips. Before we left, though, she took the receipt from me. When I got her home and she looked at it, she was really shocked by the amount. I told her that included the tip, and she was all “why did you give a tip? She just did her job. She should be happy to have a job…” The usual.

I told her, I tipped her because she gave us really good service. I know the tipping expectation has gotten pretty extreme these days, but some people will always get tips from me. Wait staff is one of them (especially if my mother’s behaviour has been particularly bad!). Our septic guy is another. 😄

By the time I got my mother home and was getting ready to head home myself, I realized I’d been out for 6 hours already. Almost 5 1/2 of those were with my mother. No wonder I was feeling so tired!

One the way home, though, I swung by the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I did want to see if the tomatoes and peppers were gone. The peppers were all gone, as well all the Black Beauty tomatoes, but there were still a few Spoon and Romas left. I hope someone will take them, but if they’re still there the next time I check, I’ll take them back and try to find someplace to plant them!

Once at home, I went straight back out again to do my evening routine with, today, included giving the Korean Pine in the outer yard a deep watering.

I was watched the entire time by cows. 🐮🐮🐮🐮

I thought I had been hearing them for the past couple of days! I love it when the renter’s cows are here!

I was planning to go to bed early tonight, and get and early start working outside, but it’s already 9pm as I finish writing this, and I still need to update my siblings about how things went with my mother!

Then, it’s bed time. Hopefully, I’ll actually fall asleep instead of suddenly becoming wide awake once my head hits the pillow! 😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer

First day of summer

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Well, here it is! The longest day of the year, and the first official day of summer. It’s going to be another hot one, though not as hot as yesterday, thank God. We’ve had thunderstorms blowing past us through the night. Here, we did get a decent amount of rain. The rain barrel by the sun room is now about 3/4 full, which is roughly double what was already in there.

While feeding the outside cats, I spotted a wound on one of the mamas.

I thought it might be the cause of all the blood I found in the kibble house a few days ago but, to be honest, it doesn’t look bad enough for that. Though I suppose if it was from more than one wounded cat, it’s possible. We can’t get near her, so we can only monitor from a distance.

The bitties under the cat house are now gone. I’m actually surprised it took Caramel so long to move them. It’s a very high traffic area, and where she had them was where many other critters would squeeze under, so she probably had to face down other cats, kittens and the odd skunk while there. She was waiting for me with the other cats when I came out with kibble in the morning. I hope that means here babies are close by. I’m seeing far fewer cats at the same time these days – typical for this time of year. This morning, I counted only 14 in total.

The rainfall seems to have been enough to make the garden beds very happy. I posted a few photos on Instagram (I keep forgetting that exists!).

The flowers on the Irish Cobbler potatoes are starting to open, and I’m starting to see flower buds on the Red Thumb potatoes. More of the Sweet Chocolate peppers are starting to bloom, and the one that bloomed a while ago has the tiniest of peppers forming. The zucca melon continues to bloom, and now one of the Caveman’s Club gourds has started to bloom. Still male flowers only. The peas have started to bloom as well! In the main garden area, I spotted more Roma VF tomatoes developing, while the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes are still just blooming; no developing tomatoes yet.

In the old kitchen garden, I found a surprise. Quite a number of things come up around the side of the garden, where the tiny raised bed and step stones are, some of which I have been keeping, like the dill and the poppies. There were a couple of tiny plants next to some old asparagus ferns, very similar looking to dill, that suddenly shot up flower stalks. I swear, they weren’t there last night, when I weeded the shallot bed! One has pink flowers, the other purple. I’ve never seen them before. I guess with weeding everything else, they finally had a chance to grow and bloom!

Temperatures are supposed to stay pretty high over the next while – slightly above average for this time of year. As uncomfortable as I find it, it’s great for the garden – as long as we keep getting a decent amount of rain! So far, so good, at least.

I’m looking forward to when the tax assessor comes and goes, tomorrow morning. We delayed the joint Father’s Day, birthday pizza night my older daughter planned out, so that’s going to be done tomorrow, too. Then it’s time to get back to work.

Of course, my mother phoned this morning. Even though she told me my sister was able to get groceries for her recently, she suddenly wants me to go over and help her with groceries. BUT she says she doesn’t want me to be in a hurry. In other words, she wants me to stay with her for a long time. I’d just told her we were going to be busy for a while, and had plans, including celebrating my daughter’s birthday (which was already postponed) but she told me we should postpone it to Sunday, so I could spend time with her, instead.

She brushed past the whole “birthday” part as if it wasn’t there. She’s never cared about any of her grandchildren, other than expectations for them to be always sending her cards or phoning her or visiting her. And when they don’t, because she treats them like crap, she starts talking about how, “oh, if they only knew that if they would come to visit me, I’d give them money.”

Okay. I have to admit. I’m still irritated by her phone call. When I called her on it, she started making “joking” comments about how she only thinks about herself, and that she’s my biggest “baby”. I simply said, yes. She has zero respect for other people’s time or priorities. While it has gotten worse as she’s gotten older, this is not a new thing, by any means. It’s one thing when she does it to me. It’s quite another when she does it to my kids or my husband.

Bah.

Anyhow.

When she found out I’d gotten my eyes tests, she asked me to make an appointment for her, but things have been busy and I kept forgetting. So when she brought it up, I told her I’d call the clinic, make the appointment, then call her back.

Well, it went to machine, and now I’m sitting here, waiting for a call back, when I should be doing other things. At least it’s giving me a chance to write this post.

I think, however, I will call them again, in case they simply haven’t checked their messages.

I have stuff to do.

The Re-Farmer

Dealing with the heat… and family

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

It’s coming up on 7pm as I write this. We’re finally down to 24C/75F, from reaching 32C/90F earlier. All the thunderstorms we’re getting warnings about are going around us. We haven’t even been getting a smattering of rain.

The house is getting ridiculously hot and muggy. Even the cats are feeling it.

They moved before I could get a picture of Cheddar and Ginger, sleeping with their foreheads pressed against each other. My room is one of the coolest in the house, but not by much. The upstairs has been getting so hot, my younger daughter woke up this morning feeling sick from the heat. Cold showers and baths help, but only so much.

I called my mother last night and arranged for her to come out to the farm, now that the grass is cut and she can actually get around in her walker. She’s been talking about wanting to see the new roof she paid for. When I actually called to arrange it, though, suddenly she was hemming and hawing, as if trying to find some excuse not to. I guess she would have preferred to have my sister bring her out for an unplanned visit again, instead, like that last couple of times she came out here. Then she can get mad at me for being in my work clothes, or interrupt any work I was doing so I would have to drop it to tend to her, then complain because the work wasn’t getting done…

She did finally agree to come out, so we arranged for me to come to her place after church, and have lunch at a restaurant before coming to the farm. She started insisting I not to bring food from the Chinese restaurant like I did last time, so said we could go to a different restaurant and she was good with that. She has gone from really liking the Chinese restaurant, to not wanting food from there anymore, and I’m at a loss as to what’s going on. I did try asking her, and she made a comment about seeing a lot of cats running around lately…

???

My guess is, one of her neighbours made a disparaging remark or joke about Chinese food and cats, and she now thinks they are serving cat meat. And now she’s suddenly noticing cats running around outside her building which, in her mind, confirms it (though you’d think seeing a lot of cats around would mean the exact opposite, but this is my mother, we’re talking about here! 😄)

I left a bit early so I could pick up some drinks and a snack we could have outside while she was here. While driving out, I passed a farm with a full dugout right near the road. It was full of cows, just standing in the water, trying to cool down!

When I got to her place, she already had the table set and microwaved Costco perogies and kielbasa for us to have for lunch. When I mentioned I thought we were going to a particular restaurant, she just said, “to heck with [restaurant]”.

Aside from not wanting to eat her supply of food, my mother’s cooking habits have always been very hit and miss, and today was more miss than hit. There’s a reason we tend to take my mother out or bring food in when we visit her!

Anyhow.

After a bit of a visit, we headed off to the farm.

*sigh*

Just from how conversation went before we left, I knew there would be issues, but then, there pretty much always are. An odd one was when she suddenly started saying, “we can take that road!” indicating in the direction of a road we just passed, and then a driveway that looked like it rarely gets used. I was totally confused when she kept insisting we could take a different road to get to the farm. At this point, we were driving through a set of curves about half way between her town and the farm. It wasn’t until she added, “so we don’t have to drive by [our vandal]” that I figured out which road she meant.

I told her, we’re still driving through the curves. We’re nowhere near the turnoff to the farm. Plus, I don’t take that road. It’s not kept up as well, and is hard on her car. On top of that, I don’t think our vandal even recognizes my mother’s car. When we finally did reach the road she meant, she did recognize it, but it was very confusing for her to suddenly suggest a different route, never mind getting our location so mixed up!

Once at the farm, I made sure to drive right into the yard and park in the shade. I got her walker out and she settled under a tree. She had insisted we bring along two ice cream buckets of vegetable peelings, etc. for the compost pile. For “Mother Earth” she now says. She also brought along a couple of plant pots; one with some flowers that were blooming, and one with a couple of little trees she removed from her own little garden plot, insisting that I need to plant them somewhere here on the farm. One is a maple, the other an elm. I don’t know what kind of elm, which makes me very hesitant about planting it.

After I got things settled, my mother started walking around the house. For someone who wanted to see the new roof, she showed zero interested in going anywhere where she could actually see it.

The next while was… challenging.

Let’s see what she came up with…

Quite a few times, she would ask “what’s that?” or “why is that there?” while being very vague on her directions. When I didn’t understand she was indicating the box beds in the west yard, she then declared that those had nothing planted in them this year. Once I figured out what she was talking about, I told her that they had carrots, corn and spinach in them. She couldn’t see them from the house, therefore there was nothing there.

While sitting in the shade in view of the main garden area, knowing she wouldn’t be up to going any closer, I described to her what was in each of the beds, and what was in the grow bags. I could tell she wasn’t really listening to me when she suddenly asked “Is that garlic?” I told her (again), yes, and that we lost a lot of them over the winter; there was far less than we planted. She then said that I needed to give her some. I told her they’re not ready yet. That’s okay, she told me. She eats the greens.

Some of the soft neck garlic was coming up in clusters instead of single bulbs, so I went ahead and thinned a couple of those and gave them to her.

Over the next while, I was told I should have weeded around the raspberries (the self seeded ones in her old flower bed) and loosened the soil around them, and I should have cut down that dead apple tree, and I should not have cut the suckers away from the (now very healthy looking) chokecherry tree, and I should remember what those still small flowers she planted there more than a decade ago are called, and I was laughed at for growing potatoes in grow bags. Then as we moved to another area, she squeezed her walker in between the pile of bricks that used to be the chimney and a stack of wood, rather than going around where there was more room, and I was told they were in the way and I needed to move them… even though I just told her we were going to move them once we figured out where we wanted to use them. Nope. I must move them out of her way for purely aesthetic reasons. I tried to show her the potatoes that are doing so well in the old kitchen garden, but she was only interested in her invasive Periwinkles. Had zero interest in anything we were actually growing. Moving on, why is that fence there? I’d told her a few times about it being there to protect the tulips and the new apple tree from the deer. What tulips? They were done blooming, so I guess they no longer existed. Then she saw some white flowers that are blooming. What are those? I have no idea, Mom. You planted them!

Then she made her way to the fire pit area, where the trays of transplants now live. We no longer take them indoors. I was then chastised for having so many tomatoes, and they need to be planted right now, and everything should be planted, and what are those big things over there? And I should sell my extra tomatoes because they are very healthy looking, and I could make some money from them. Don’t the girls help you with the garden? Then she got mad when I showed her the tiny strawberries I started from seed, because there’s not fruit there! They don’t have fruit! They’re not going to have fruit! I finally said, “next year!” and suddenly she was mollified.

And on it went.

Finally, we settled in the shade of the south yard, and I set up a bench to use as a table, and we had our drinks and a snack.

Judgement joined us, staying nearby and rolling in the cool grass!

I was chastised for the cranberry juice (I chose it because it’s what she buys for herself), but when I went to add Ginger Ale to make a punch, she was suddenly happy. Juice bad. Ginger Ale, good. She then refused to eat the blueberry mini strudels I brought, because she really avoids sugar now.

…

As we sat and chatted, she then got quiet before saying, “I guess the girls don’t want to see me.” I’d already told her that my older daughter was in bed after working last night, my husband was in bed because the heat makes his pain so much worse, and my younger daughter was doing laundry (she was also sick from the heat and trying to cool down with cold baths and showers, but I wasn’t going to get into that). Ah, but they don’t know! If they came to see me, I would give them money!

…

I reminded her of what I said before, but she dismissed it, of course.

Shortly after, I got a message from my younger daughter, letting me know she was almost done and about to come out, soon.

I told my mother this.

Suddenly, she was ready to leave.

We had been hearing thunder for a while, and the wind had picked up, and my mother kept saying the rain was coming closer. It wasn’t, but weather does what it does. I started to put some things away, then turned around to find her putting herslef into the car. She wasn’t going to wait for my daughter!

I kept putting things away, though, taking enough time that my daughter could make it out. She then suggested she come along with us for the drive, which I happily accepted. The back seats on my mother’s car are laid down so we can put her walker in without having to fold it, so while my daughter went to open the gate, I quickly moved things around and got a seat up for her.

The conversation during the drive was only slightly uncomfortable, with my mother asking my daughter odd questions, then switching to Polish to tell me I need to have the girls help me put transplants in the garden, so they know how to do it.

They, of course, know full well how to put in a garden.

Once at my mother’s place, we stayed for a brief visit, until my mother suddenly veered into a racist rant, and my daughter suggested it was time to leave!

Which we did.

We stopped to get gas first, and I picked up some fried chicken for my daughter, as she had been too sick to have breakfast. We then parked the car with the AC going to eat. That gave me a chance to decompress by filling her in on how the visit went.

The whole thing left me feeling more tired than the 8 or so hours working outside in the heat, yesterday, did!

My husband and daughters all question why my brother and I haven’t just cut my mother off completely by now. Which we won’t do, because that would be wrong. Plus, my being here helps my brother out. He’d be the target of all her venom and bizarre behaviour, otherwise. She doesn’t really do it with our sister anymore, for some reason. But my goodness, it does get hard to “Honour thy father and thy mother” at times!

Well, it is what it is, and there’s not much we can do about it. Chances are, it’s going to get worse as she gets older, too. Or, I should say, keep getting worse.

We will handle it. That’s all we can do!

I am sure glad to get this over with, though, and I hope she won’t find another reason to want to come out here. Quite a difference from when we first moved here, and she still owned the property, when she told me that now that we were taking care of the farm for her, she never wanted to go back here again! Now when she doesn’t own it anymore, she still wants to use it to try and control me and my brother.

Ah, well. Such is life in our corner of the world.

The Re-Farmer