Thinking ahead

July 18, 2023July 19, 2023 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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

June 26, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

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

June 21, 2023June 21, 2023 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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!).

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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

June 4, 2023June 4, 2023 / 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

Our 2023 garden: Roma tomatoes, mystery squash and other non-gardening stuff

June 2, 2023June 2, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

It’s barely 3:30pm right now, and I could easily call it a day and go to bed right now!

I tried to get out early to beat the heat, but by 7:30, it was already feeling hot and muggy. The humidity is very high, and the uncut grass is covered with dew. Which means that, when the outside cats come over for breakfast, they tend to be completely soaked!

Like this bedraggled beast.

Decimous is so matted and full of burrs! Today, however, for the very first time, I got to give him ear and neck skritches – and he let me! He even started purring. He wasn’t sure about the situation, but he did let me reach out to give skritches – not pets – a few times. His fur is so full of lumps, burrs and mats, I’m sure petting him would be somewhat painful.

I was even able to confirm something.

He is a she.

Yup. Decimous is female.

She doesn’t look pregnant, though. I’m trying to think of how we can catch her and bring her inside, so we can lavish her with love (and wet cat food) and socialize her enough to get those mats cut out of her fur!! The problem, of course, is we already have too many cats in the house. I’d have to bring her into my room and have her in baby jail for a while. That is Marlee’s favourite hangout, though, and Marlee typically isn’t too keen on other cats.

We’ll figure it out.

My priority for this morning was to get as many of the Roma VF tomatoes transplanted in the last available bed as I could.

I focused on getting the largest ones in, first. I didn’t want to do three rows, since it’s harder to reach the middle, but … well, it is what it is. I’m sure I planted them closer together htan they should be. I staggered the rows to use the space more efficiently, and was able to get 41 transplants in It took a couple of hours. I didn’t have time to transplant tomatoes around the perimeter of the bed, nor mulch it right away. My daughter shredded more of our collected fliers and other garden safe paper while I was doing this, and brought out a couple of bags. As I write this, I honestly don’t know if she was able to get back outside to lay the shredded paper around the tomatoes. After that, they’d just need to be dampened, because the tomatoes were deeply watered while being transplanted.

Speaking of which…

These are the mystery squash that showed up with two of the tomatoes. I’d reused seed starting soil from pots where things did not germinate at all, and somehow missed that there were still viable seeds as I pulled out the sticks and rocks I was finding in the mix. We’ll see if they survive. If they do, I’ll find somewhere to plant them, after we get more beds ready. Right now, aside from a couple of scattered spots, we have nowhere left to put any transplants – including the more than 20 Spoon tomatoes, none of which are out, and another 20 or so leftover Romas!

So much work to do!

Today is our average last frost date, but in some places, we’re breaking 30 year heat records. I took some garden tour videos yesterday that I’ll put together and upload later. Lots of heat warnings and warnings for thunderstorms, with possible hail, etc.

The question is, will any of that rain reach us?

Once the transplants were in, I headed out early to my mother’s, stopping to pick up some Chinese food, which was my breakfast. Previously, my mother has started to say not to get rice, because rice makes her cough. She said to get her just lemon chicken. Unfortunately, the timing was off, and I was at her place on the one day of the week they closed. Then she mentioned some of her neighbours would get just onion rings from the restaurant; they have a small North American menu along with Chinese food menu. After that, she started saying she wanted onions rings. So today, I picked up both lemon chicken and onion rings for her, and a combination platter for me.

When I arrived with the food, she was first taken aback that I came early, but I told her I’d been working in the garden, and hadn’t and breakfast. I came early so we could eat together. Then she chastised me for not calling her first, because she’d had a large breakfast (she later mentioned what she had, and it was not a large breakfast. Just not typical breakfast fare). I hadn’t planned to do this, though, so calling ahead was not an option. After I set out the food, setting hers aside on the table while I sat down with my breakfast, she started nibbling on the onion rings anyway, then suddenly demanded to know why I got the lemon chicken, too, instead of just the onion rings. I reminded her that she’d talked about wanting lemon chicken in the past, and she didn’t have to eat it all at once if she didn’t want to . She then started talking about how it’s a “temptation” for her, and if there’s food in the fridge, she eats it…

…

I’m pretty sure that’s what food in the fridge is meant for.

I think she was trying to say that she had little self control when it came to food, but had a hard time coming up with the words for it!

After I’d eaten, and she nibbled, I suggested we head out earlier. She didn’t seem to want to go out and procrastinated. It wasn’t until we were in the car and on the road that she mentioned that, next time, she would give me a list and let me do her errands for here. Her knees are increasingly giving her grief. There’s one errand I can’t do, though, and that is to go the bank for her.

So we got her errands done and her groceries put away. She wanted me to take a couple of trees home with me, along with her vegetable peelings and a plant she’s decided is blocking her window too much (it isn’t).

I did have a bit of a surprise while checking on her air conditioner, next to her plant table. For some reason, it was set to go off at 26C, which is just way too hot. I lowered that, and it turned on and starting cooling things down, but for some reason, I was also feeling heat.

Yes, her heat was also on!

I checked her thermostat.

It was set to about 26C.

So she was heating and cooling her apoartment at the same time.

I turned that right down for her!

I didn’t take any plants from her, because I didn’t want them baking in the car while I did my own errands after I finished with hers. I had to ask her where the trees came from. Basically, she’s got a little maple and an elm in the pot together, and it looked odd. Turns out she’d found them in the few feet of garden space where she has some garlic growing – pretty much the only “gardening” she does right now – so she decided they should go to the farm and stuck them in a pot.

*sigh*

She has also been gathering linden seeds and is trying to get them to grow. She’s got at least a dozen that I could see, scattered at the top of a pot of soil. Something else she has in pots and plans to send to the farm.

This from the person that was laughing at me when I showed her pictures of the garden, because I had some herbs in a pot.

Somehow, my mother has got it in her head that, because the trees around her building drop seeds, she MUST gather then, give them to me to grow, or start growing them herself, so the trees can go to the farm, because they are “free”.

I’m getting a better understanding of why we have so many problem trees right now.

Also, we have GOT to get rid of the Chinese elms. There are millions of seeds drifting everywhere, and every bit of bare soil where I’ve planted seeds or transplanted something is getting filled with them. They have very deep tap roots, even as tiny seedlings, and are so hard to get rid of! There are other elms here that don’t do this, and they’re just fine, but the few Chinese elms are just horrible to deal with!

A job for another time, though.

Anyhow.

Even though my mother basically abandoned the farm a decade ago, she still wants to control what happens here, including giving me trees to plant that are basically weeds out of her own garden space.

She brought up when we can bring her out to the farm to see things – she still has seen only photos of the new roof. I told her that, weather willing, my brother and his wife are hoping to come out this weekend with their lawn mowing equipment to do the lawns. Right now, she wouldn’t be able to get through the grass with her walker! After that, we’ll see.

Once done at my mother’s, one of my errands was to go to the egg lady’s place. While driving out there, I went through several sections of driving rain! It was so good to see! There were a few times I was sure the car was being hit with hail. It wasn’t raining at the egg lady’s homestead, though, and they sure could have used some! She just finished processing 40 chickens, and was dying in the heat!

My next errand was back at my mother’s town, and I drove into rain again. It was awesome! The temperatures dropped about 10 degrees almost instantly, from 31C/88F (“feels like” 34C/93F!), to 20C/68F. It was still coming down so hard when I was ready to come home, I sent a message to let the family know it might be slow driving. And it was.

For a little while.

Then I drove out of the rain, and the closer I got t home, the drier it got.

As of this writing, we still have had no real rain at all. There might have been a few drips here and there, but nothing more.

*sigh*

Looks like our climate bubble is back in action.

We’ll see how things turn out. If it stays dry and keeps cooling down with the wind, I might be able to get more weed trimming done. I need to focus around the garden beds, and where we need to build up the squash patch and where the permanent trellis beds will be built.

Meanwhile, my poor daughter has been busting her butt, cleaning the kitchen and trying to catch up on the dishes, in this heat!

I think I need to shut down my computer, though. It’s starting to act up in the heat. It’s a good thing I know how to touch type, because I’ve been typing entire paragraphs, without anything actually showing up on the screen for almost a minute.

So if there are a lot of typoes or strange sentences in this post, it’s because I’m typing blind right now!

The Re-Farmer

A pleasant change in plans!

May 6, 2023May 6, 2023 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Before I get into today, I just had to share what I saw yesterday, while doing my evening rounds.

One of the things that got done was switching the winter window to the old basement to the summer window. This spring, things are wet enough that we are starting to have moisture seeping through the concrete floors, and the sump pump is going off every now and then. Nothing like what we were dealing with last year, of course, but more typical than the dry years we had previously.

The summer window is one that I built a few years ago to replace the makeshift cover that was being used before. Having air circulation through there helps keep the old basement from getting too damp and humid. My brother built a platform on the inside to hold a box fan to blow air out of the basement that helped, too, but that disappeared before we moved in.

We have a cat barrier between the two basements. The opening in the old basement wall was basically bashed out, so it’s uneven on the sides, making it impossible have a proper door. We have a wire mesh frame over it that was meant to be easily moved to one side if we needed to cross through. The old basement has the pumps, sump pump reservoir and breakable stuff, so we want to keep the cats out. In the end, we have had to brace the barrier with stuff on one side, while having Bungee cords holding it in place on the other.

Well, it wasn’t enough.

I was trying to see what Gooby was finding so interesting down there, and found a Susan on the window’s platform, looking back!

I messaged the picture to my family and my younger daughter went down to take care of it. She found David and Big Rig in there, too!

They could get in, but couldn’t get back out, and were very eager to leave when she opened the door!

Later, with her in the new basement and me in the old basement, we managed to secure the barrier a bit more. Hopefully, it will be enough!

I had a different surprise this morning, when checking the gate. When the snow melted enough that we could finally close it, it was like this.

They had shifted quite a lot over the winter!

If it had shifted a small amount, we could micro adjust the nuts on the J pins that make up the hinges, but for that distance, the gate posts themselves would have to be adjusted – once we brought out a level to see which one had moved the most.

Well, that’s no longer an issue. This is what it looked like, this morning!

I haven’t been able to slide that pin through so easily in probably a year!

That’s a lot of shifting in less than a month!

The funny thing is, I got a call from my sister in law this afternoon. She and my brother were on their way with the arm chair they were passing on to us, plus my brother was bringing tools so he could fix the gate! I was happy to tell her, it no longer needed fixing!

And that was our big change in plans.

After dropping off the armchair, they were going to visit my mother and take her out to dinner and invited me to come along, which I decided to do.

But first, we had to clear a path from the door to the living room for a rather wide armchair. Then, when they got here, I was on both door duty and cat duty, while my brother maneuvered it through. My SIL can’t come into the house, though, as she is quite allergic to cats. So my brother just left the chair on its side in the living room, waiting for the legs to be put back on. After a quick visit to the sun room to see all the transplants, they headed out and I followed in my mother’s car.

The plan had been for my SIL to be dropped off at a restaurant first, then my brother would take his truck over to pick up my mother. They even brought a footstool to help her climb in. Since I was there with her car, though, my brother took that, instead.

When he got there, he first made a point of setting up her air conditioner for the season, and testing it out. The batteries in the remote were dead and my mother didn’t have the right size, so he brought it with him as he took her to the restaurant.

She was very perplexed when he took her to her car. Was that her car? How did he get her car? Then she saw me when they got to the restaurant! It was quite a surprise for her.

While we got her settled in, my brother quickly ran to a store across the street to buy the batteries needed, and then we had a nice dinner together.

Mostly.

I’m glad I decided to come along. It took all three of us playing interference to keep the conversation from getting derailed into a racist rant or a political diatribe from someone who doesn’t actually understand politics very well, guilt tripping, or the many other ways she makes things difficult! It takes a lot of energy, but we managed to actually have a very good time. After a while, though, I could see we’d reached the limit of what we’d be able to do, and she was winding herself up, so I suggested to my brother it was time to go!

Since he wanted to test her air conditioner, now that he had fresh batteries in the remote, he drove her back while my sister in law and I stayed and waited until he got back. My mother was all surprised we weren’t all going to go to her place to visit! As if we’d all fit comfortably in her tiny apartment to begin with!

So, off they went, and my sister in law and I got to have another excellent conversation with just the two of us. For longer than expected. When my brother finally came back, he looked so frazzled! On the way, my mother first had him stop to pick up a few groceries, then while he was testing the air conditioner, she gave him a hard time because she thought he was fixing her TV remote, and she didn’t care about the air conditioner! Then she tried to keep talking to keep him from leaving, but he finally had to tell her he needed to go, because we were waiting for him. Of course, she tried to guilt trip him over things. It always amazes me how he does the most for her, yet she gives him the hardest time about anything and everything. He has such a good heart, and she stomps on it without even realizing what she’s doing, half the time. The other half, she knows exactly what she’s doing! I was very glad to be able to keep that down, at least somewhat!

They still had an hour and a half to drive home, so we parted ways soon after. I so enjoy spending time with them! It was also encouraging to hear from my sister in law that they are quite happy with the things we are doing here. Us being here saves them from having to take care of two properties, but they are also appreciating the work we’ve been able to do, and the plans we have. I really needed to hear that today, as I was feeling particularly useless. I had a number of jobs planned for today, but I woke up in quite a lot of pain. My left knee and left hip have suddenly started giving me a lot of grief. My plan had been to start working outside early, before things got too hot, but as I was checking the files on the trail cams, I found myself falling asleep in my chair, and ended up lying down for a couple of hours, instead. When I mentioned that to her, she told me she’s been struggling with the same thing; fatigue and joint pain. Especially in her hands. Perhaps the seasonal changes are affecting both of us!

Still, I feel like I should be accomplishing so much more. It does help that they understand the challenges we’ve been having here. Particularly with my mother’s expectations and demands, even though she walked away from the farm more than 10 years ago. I do wish we could get together more often! I actually feel both encouraged and refreshed after spending time with them.

Let’s see if that extends into tomorrow! I try to avoid unnecessary work on Sundays, but right now, I’ve got a lot of very necessary work that needs to get done!

Meanwhile, my daughter put the legs on the armchair they brought over and set it up.

It may have been just an old chair on its last legs to them, but right now, it’s the most comfortable chair in the house!

😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Pushing her limits, and changes of plans

March 26, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Now that we have the living room barricaded to the cats and turned into a plant room, we’ve decided that we will work on bringing Nosencrantz and Marlee in with us every now and then, to try and get them used to being outside of my office/bedroom, but not have to worry about other cats.

Yesterday, I was able to grab Nosencrantz and give it a go.

She was not happy.

I set her on the couch while setting up my tea and trying to find something to watch on TV for a while. Ended up watching The French Chef, because absolutely nothing newer appealed to me! Once I settled on the couch, I shifted her over against my leg, she leaned hard against me and did. Not. Move. for nearly an hour. When she finally did move, it was to tuck her face against my leg.

Which is an improvement from previous times we tried bringing her out. The last time I did, she crouched onto a step between the old and new parts of the house, frozen in panic, even as other cats had to basically jump over her to go through the doorway. She was so stressed, she shat herself. *sigh*

With no other cats around, she was definitely stressed, but not to that point. We’ll need to do this more often.

The frustrating thing is that, if I could just leave my door open, I’m sure she would eventually go exploring. As would Marlee and maybe Butterscotch. Unlike the other two, Butterscotch is not the least bit stressed out, has zero interest in leaving the room, and is very happily living her best life. If the door is open, some – not all – of the other cats come in and out, which would be fine…

Except for Turmeric.

While other cats will sometimes go for Nozencrantz in particular, or maybe even act aggressive towards Butterscotch and Marlee, it’s not much different from when they get ticked off at each other. Even with Potato Beetle added to the mix, aside from the rare altercation with one of the other males, his integration into being an indoor cat has been seamless. Why it’s so different with both the ladies, I just can’t figure out. Especially since, when Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were first brought into the house, Nosencratnz did leave the room and start exploring. Then some of the other cats got aggressive with her, and she’s been a bundle of stress and anxiety ever since.

Turmeric, however, is the one cat that is most aggressive. She’ll be absolutely fine, but as soon as she comes into my room, it’s like she’s hunting for the ladies. I tried having my door open last night, just because I was tired of having to get up every few minutes to let Leyendecker, Cheddar or Fenrir in and out, over and over. The other cats ignored the open door. Only Turmeric came in, saw Marlee in her favourite spot in Baby Jail (we still have the cage set up, simply because Marlee likes going in there so much, and Butterscotch likes to sit on top of it), and made a beeline straight for her, snarling away. She wouldn’t stop, and I had to close my door again. *sigh*

So we’ll see how it works, bringing them out for supervised time in the plant room. Marlee doesn’t like to be picked up or carried, so it might be a bit harder to get her in there.

All in good time.

Meanwhile…

My plans for the day changed a bit. I was debating whether or not to go to my mother’s today or tomorrow, as I had some things for her. Then I got a call from my brother. He just had a very strange call from my mother. She started talking to him about some disturbing dreams she had, then said she thought he should come visit. He told her he was taking a test right then, so that wouldn’t be a good idea.

The line went dead.

He tried calling her back, but her line was busy. After about 7 times trying to get through to her, he finally called me.

Only then did he realize he’d forgotten to pause his test. It’s a timed exam!

He’s really stressed out about this exam. The last I talked to him, there were no exam times available until next month, so getting to do it today had to have been a pretty last minute thing. He’s been working on this course for some months now, and he’s concerned that if he doesn’t pass it, it might actually put his job at risk. I can’t imagine him failing the exam, but understand the stress he’s feeling. His employer has paid thousands of dollars for this course, and the exam along costs over a thousand dollars – and if he fails, it’s another thousand + to take it again later.

My mother would have no ability to understand what he’s going through. It’s so completely out of her experience, and outside her ability to comprehend.

So he was quite concerned about her. He wasn’t sure if she’s accidentally hung up by pressing a button on the phone with her face, or if she deliberately hung up, or of something else happened. Especially with the line being busy immediately after. Even with calls between him and I in the past, we’ve had weird things happen with the line, and one of us would try to call back the other only to get a busy signal because, at the other person’s end of the line, it hadn’t been cut off yet.

I told him I was considering visiting her this afternoon, and promised I would check up on her. He, meanwhile, did try to call her again, and finally got through.

It turns out that yes, she did hang up on him, and immediately called our sister, because she “didn’t hear what she wanted to hear”. So was our sister going to come over? Oh, no. She’s working today. I don’t think my mother even asked her to come over.

First, our sister works nights. She had plenty of time to come over for a quick visit.

Two, since he was in the middle of this test when my mother called, she was actually calling him while he was working, but still expected him to drop everything and visit her.

On top of all that, I don’t think she even considers how badly she hurt him, a few months ago. Frankly, it’s a testament to what a good man he is that he hasn’t cut her out of his life completely.

Yes, it was that bad.

And she totally doesn’t get it.

*sigh*

I had other errands to run, so I did those in my mother’s town instead of the one closer to us – things are noticeably more expensive where she lives, but for the amount I needed to get, it wasn’t worth the cost of gas to go elsewhere.

There were a couple of things I brought for her, and one that I made for her. I wasn’t sure how she would handle it. She kept saying she needs a new chair, to replace the one she uses at her little dining table. She said it was breaking, but it turns out that only the vinyl seat is starting to crack. So I got some blanket yard and crocheted a cushy for her tushy. Just a rectangle in waffle weave stitch, so it’s twice as thick as ordinary single crochet. I made ties at each corner, even though I couldn’t quite remember how the legs were on this chair. It’s got a metal frame, and the legs are all one piece of metal tubing, forming a triangle shape on the sides from the back for the legs. Turns out there’s just open space under the front half of the seat, so my ties at the front were too short, but I could at least tie the back to the frame. I told her it would hide the cracks until she can find a suitable replacement chair. She did laugh about it, but accepted the cover. I knew it would be either that, or she would get angry and rant about how she’s worth having a new chair, or that I wasted yarn or something. There’s no in between with her!

The bottom of the triangles that form the legs has also been leaving black marks on her flooring, from being slid back and forth constantly, for years. So I got some self adhesive felted floor protectors that came in a long, narrow strip that could be cut to size. I cut a couple of pieces and stuck those on the bottom of her chair, and she seemed happy about that, too.

Overall, it was a very good visit. She was definitely having one of her better days. It wasn’t until I was almost ready to leave that she started to tell me about her dreams. They were definitely nightmares, where she thought she was losing her mind, and needed to get home – but home was an area of the city my parents lived in, before they bought the farm – and so on. Then she started asking me if I knew what these dreams might mean. Which seems to be the crux of the problem. It’s not just that she had these nightmares (it turned out she woke from one nightmare, couldn’t sleep for hours, then when she did fall asleep, she had another nightmare). She thinks these dreams had some sort of prophetic meaning.

So we talked a while about dreams, and how sometimes things you worry about in the back of your mind can lead to disturbing dreams. I also described similar dreams that people often have, about needing to get somewhere, or trying to run away from something, but it’s like something is holding you back and keeping you from getting where you need to go. She practically lit up as I described these, as it was familiar to her. Knowing other people get dreams like this was a sort of revelation for her.

I think she felt better by the time we were done talking about it and I headed home. It’s hard to know. She might feel better about it now, but start feeling bad about it again, later.

Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I sent a message off to my brother to reassure him. As far as I know, he was still working on his exam at the time, so I don’t expect to hear back from him for a while. He’s got enough on his plate, that’s for sure!

Hopefully, she’ll ease off on giving him a hard time. Probably not, but it would sure be nice!

The Re-Farmer

K, I’m exhausted, plus hard times for kitties!

March 20, 2023 / Re-Farmer / 8 Comments

Today I took my mother for her follow up appointment with the specialist, to tell her how her scope went.

The one she still thinks didn’t happen, because she doesn’t remember the procedure.

The one where, even after the explanation by the pharmacist that seemed to mollify her, she still thinks prescribed her new medications, replacing other medications she suddenly now things worked so well (which rather contradicts why she went to the doctor over concerns that lead her to this specialist in the first place).

It didn’t help that, once we got there, we ended up waiting in the examination room for an hour before he came to see her!

My mother wasn’t at her worse behaviour towards me, but she certainly wasn’t having one of her better days.

I am so exhausted.

As for her procedure, they found no problems. No damage to her esophagus or trachea at all. No, he didn’t change her medications on her and did not give her any new prescriptions.

As for her not remembering the procedure, he talked about the medicine they put into her IV (she’d never mentioned an IV to me; only the throat spray) and how he’d talked to her about not finding any reason to take any samples…

…

It wasn’t until we were driving home that something finally cleared up for me. After her procedure, she talked to me about how a doctor she’d never seen before had spoken to her and told her they didn’t “finish” because she was on blood thinners, so she was convinced that taking samples was THE reason she was there, but they didn’t do anything at all, because she didn’t stop her blood thinners.

On the drive home, she suddenly asked me, was this the same doctor that we saw last time?

Yes, it was.

She didn’t recognise him. It must be because he was wearing a mask.

No, he wasn’t. No one at the clinic was wearing a mask.

Which is when I asked her if she hadn’t recognized him at the hospital. There was a pause, and I could almost hear the “click” in her brain, and she said, no, she hadn’t.

All this time, she thought the procedure had been done by a completely different doctor she’d never met before.

Once she realized what was going on, she commented that she’s been having a harder time remembering faces.

There was a whole lot of other stuff we talked about during the hours I spent with her, and most of them were not pleasant. Even telling her mundane stuff, like how we had to replace the parts inside the toilet tank, and need to call a plumber for the bathroom fixtures, she suddenly went off on a tangent about how I only ever talk about “bad” stuff, and how if I only went to church, we would have blessings and nothing would ever go wrong anymore. *sigh* She’s been watching too much TV prosperity gospel. Particularly stuff by people on talk shows, selling their books. God is not a magic genie in a bottle, there to answer our wishes.

It gets really mentally exhausting trying to keep up with the sudden changes in topic or getting blindsided by illogical assumptions.

It made the hours seem so much longer, that’s for sure.

But, it went over okay overall, even if she went off on how she wished she never saw this doctor, and that the procedure was a total waste of time, etc., etc.

I was more than happy to get home.

Before I settled in for the evening, though, I decided to feed the outside cats, first.

When I go into the old kitchen, the cats in the sun room hear the noises I make and get pretty active. I started to hear a very unusual meowing, though. One I did not recognise. I opened the inner door to see, and discovered The Distinguished Guest was there.

Then he turned to walk towards an empty food bowl.

Using only three legs.

He wasn’t putting any weight on one front paw, if he could avoid it. I couldn’t see any blood or obvious injury, but recently we’d heard a cat fight outside, and when my daughter checked, she saw it was Shop Towel and TDG again – the two toms that wander in and out, but don’t live here.

I’m so glad we brought Potato Beetle inside.

Poor TDG is having a really hard time, but he won’t let us near him. He was hungry enough to not run away completely while I was putting kibble out, but he did keep running off to other trays, as I moved around.

I’m still sure that he used to be a pet that got dumped. When he first showed up, he did allow us to pet him, but now he’s gotten completely feral.

I really don’t know how to help him. I don’t want to contact the rescue about him. For starters, we have no way of knowing when he’ll be around, so it’s not like we can count on trapping him. Plus, she’s still recovering from major surgery.

She did contact me last night, sharing about how Cabbages, the bitties, and the other outside kittens that got adopted out.

Including Plushy, who just went through some major surgery, too!

Thankfully, he went to a family of means!

He had been perfectly fine until one morning, he threw up and there was blood. They immediately took him to a vet. They X-rayed him and found an intestinal blockage, from a twist. It’s the sort of thing that can happen randomly and has no specific cause. They put him into surgery immediately, and found all his intestines were messed up. It ended up taking a team of 3 vets 4 hours (and $6000, up front!!!!) to save him. Apparently, they were amazed he didn’t die as a kitten, with how is insides looked. !!!

He is now on special food, because his intestines are now shorter, but is doing fine. In fact, other than throwing up blood that one time, there had been no sign of any problems at all! While he was living with the cat lady and getting vet care, there was no sign of problems. Of course, while he was living here, when he finally decided that human contact was an enjoyable thing, we saw no issues, either. Yet, apparently his insides were messed up and, while it’s not actually unusual, when it happens, they usually die as kittens.

The Cat Lady even commented about how so many cats from us have had problems. With Tissue, it was behavioural. Cabbages had her major health problems (she’s doing fantastic now, and angry at the Cat Lady for being chastised after stealing a chicken leg off the counter), Muffin is a total homewrecker that is all over her husband, but won’t let the Cat Lady come near her, and of the two bitties they still have, the tuxedo turns out to have a “grade 3” heart murmur, which is apparently the most common type. Not a major issue, but still something to keep an ear on.

The bitties are going to be fixed during spring break, and they are totally loving life with the Cat Lady and the other rescues!

I wonder if we’d ever even discover they had issues if they had remained yard cats? Yard cats tend to have such short life spans, we’d probably never know if they disappeared because of something like this, or if a coyote or eagle or something got them.

I’m just glad the family that has Plushy now was both willing and able to have her taken care of!

The Re-Farmer

Plans? What are those?

March 13, 2023 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day! Just look at that sky!

It was nice and mild, with almost no wind, too.

Among my plans for the day was to take my mother’s car out for a test run, but also get some seeds started, now that the living room is barricaded from the cats and the shop lights are hung up by the window the current seedlings will be rotated to.

Well, that changed.

First, I got a call from my mother.

She was upset, because the specialist had put her on new medication, and she hasn’t been feeling well since the procedure she still thinks didn’t happen, and he’s not her doctor, so why did he change her blood thinners to something else?

After asking questions, things became less clear! I couldn’t tell if she had a new medication added to her bubble packs, or if there was a new medication outside of her bubble packs, or what was going on with her blood thinners, which were now a different colour, and another pill was now a different size and no longer has a number on it, and…

I asked if she could read or spell to me the name of the new medication, but she just started talking about her blood thinners, and how she hasn’t been feeling well since the procedure and it’s because the specialist changed her medication… but she got her prescriptions delivered only recently, so she’s only been on these “new” medications for a few days. But she was telling me it’s the new medications that where making her not feel well…

It got very confusing.

So…

I asked if she wanted me to come over to take a look.

Well, she did need to go to the bank, and the pharmacy, and she’s running out of groceries…

Well, now!

So we worked out a time for me to come over, and for me to pick up lunch, since her fridge is getting empty… oh, and I’d better make sure the girls would take over for me at home, so that I could stay with her for a long time.

*sigh*

All righty, then!

So I talked to the girls about what I needed to get done, so that I could at least have space to start on the seeds, then headed to bed.

It was a very cat-interrupted night, so I didn’t get much sleep.

Then, I made a discovery when I popped out to use the bathroom during the night, then paused to talk to my husband.

The door of the cat barrier was open.

I know I latched it after I turned the lights over the aquarium greenhouses off. Did someone open it during the night? My husband had seen it open, but thought I’d done that deliberately. I mentioned it to the girls, and they basically said the same thing.

So I latched it again, after making sure there were no cats in the living room, and went back to bed.

In the morning, it was open again, and the living room was full of cats.

After spending some time checking the hook and eye latch and trying to figure out what was going on, my husband suggested pulling on the bottom of the door, like a cat might do.

Sure enough, a couple of pulls on the bottom of the door, and the hook bounced right out of the screw eye and the door swung open a few inches.

Well.

So much for a cat barricade!

I let the girls know what we found, so they could figure something out while I was away.

Because I didn’t have a chance to test drive my mother’s car to see if that shudder was done, now that I’d knocked the ice away from the moving parts of one wheel, I used our van. My mother has a little folding step stool she can use to help her climb into the van.

I left early enough to hit a bank machine before going to the Chinese restaurant for the lunch that she wanted (but no rice, because rice makes her cough… ???), only to find the door locked. Again! The sign said they were open 7 days a week, and they should have been open for more than an hour, by the time I got there. The last time I tried to go there was when I spent the night at my mother’s after her scope procedure, and she wanted take out for supper, and they were closed then, too. Was the restaurant gone?

I decided to go with the fall back option and went to the gas station that has the most awesome fried chicken and potato wedges (just chicken for me, since I’ve given up starches and sugar for Lent; the breading on the chicken is pushing it! 😁), though my mother has decided it makes her sick. While paying for it, I asked about the Chinese restaurant, and it turns out that they are now closed on Mondays – they just haven’t changed their signs yet!

Good to know!

Thankfully, my mother didn’t complain too much about the fried chicken, though she did mock me a bit for not eating any potatoes. Because, of course… 😄

After lunch, I got her to show me her pills, and we got out her bubble pack. She showed me the pills that were now different; she had called them pink, but they were more orange than the lighter yellow they had been before – and in certain lights, those lighter yellow ones had looked pink to me in the past, so that had added to my confusion! She had the prescription list from an old bubble pack that I could compare with.

There were no new medications, and no changes to her dosages.

The only difference was the prefix to the name of her blood thinners, which I told her probably meant they were from a different company.

But why would this doctor change her medications? He’s not her doctor!

Since one of her stops was the pharmacy, I told her we could ask them, but said again, she has no new medications, and no new doses, so it must be a different company – and the doctor would have nothing to do with that. It’s just that sometimes, one brand isn’t available, so the pharmacy has to substitute with another brand that’s the same thing. This has happened to my husband’s medications quite a few times, over the years. She was not reassured, but looking forward to talking to the pharmacist about it.

Before we headed out, though, my brother had reminded me to call for maintenance to tend to my mother’s shower drain. She hasn’t been showering for about a month now, because so much water accumulates at the bottom, she has to stop before it starts flooding into the rest of the bathroom. She’s been refusing to call because the call goes to the city, and that’s really bad and a waste, and she shouldn’t have to call anyone, she should just tell someone here (who that someone is I’m not sure, since she still believes the social workers from the Senior’s Centre are managers for her building), and so on. So before we headed out, I tried calling the number for the department that owns her building, only to get a recording giving me another number for maintenance calls. I didn’t have paper and pen, so I hung up and started getting paper and pen together – until my mother brought me a letter that had the maintenance number right there! She could have given that to me right from the start, instead of directing me to the other number. 😄 It was an 800 number, so not long distance, which she was concerned about, too.

I called the number, followed the automated system, and found myself talking to what sounded like a guy in his truck. Talk about going right to the source! I explained the issue, with my mother confirming details and giving permission for them to enter her place if she wasn’t home.

That being arranged, we headed out.

Sure enough, when we talked to the pharmacist, the change in her pills was exactly what I thought it was. Just a change in companies. Seeing my mother’s concern, the pharmacist took the time to explain how it works legally for when they have to do substitutions, and that if it’s made by a generic company, they have to prove to the government that the pills are exactly the same for doses, etc. before they can be approved as a substitute. When she could see my mother’s eyes start glazing over, she started explaining more to me, so that I could “translate” things in vocabulary my mother would understand. She did such a great job of it, my mother was actually reassured, and that’s saying something!

The last stop for her errands was the grocery store and, by then, it was getting to be too much for her. Even with the stool, by the end of it, she was having a really hard time getting into the van. She was even saying to me, when we get a new vehicle, to make sure it has a handle by the door that she can grab onto! There actually are handles for the seats by the sliding doors, but when we tried having her climb into the middle of the van, instead of the front seat, it was even worse! Her knees are definitely giving her a hard time – which she has also been trying to blame on her medications, because now she thinks they should somehow make her knees better, even though none of them are painkillers or related to her knees in any way. She’s been on these meds for more than a decade, and before the car accident that messed up her one knee in particular, so I don’t know why she would think that!

I might be doing more grocery trips for her, while she stays home! Mind you, with so many errands to run today, it was a lot more stress on her knees than just a grocery trip would be.

Once back at her place, with everything put away, we settled down for a cup of tea. She kept offering me pie or toast or cookies or crackers – the crackers don’t have sugar! – to go with the tea, and made sure I knew how silly she thought it was for me to give up sugar and starches! I told her she could have whatever she wanted with her tea, and didn’t have to change anything for me, but she went with just tea, too.

While we were having our tea, there was a knock at the door.

It was someone to tend to my mother’s shower drain! I couldn’t believe it! I was expecting someone to show up sometime in a few days, not right away!

The woman turned out to be a manager for the building, and she used the same super powerful stuff we had tried on our own drain when the water from the washing machine kept backing up the drain. The smell was really awful, even with the door closed and the fan on in the bathroom. As she was leaving we talked for a bit in the doorway as I asked for instructions, which helped – except that one of my mother’s neighbours popped out and started yelling and ranting at her for talking in the doorway, because everyone could hear us.

The manager took it in stride, like someone who has dealt with plenty of this sort of thing before!

We also had a small world moment; it turns out she’s related to my SIL, and has known her and my brother for many years! Too funny!

One of the things she said to do was run cold water for a while and, if it still backed up, to let a specific person know when she came in, in a couple of days, and they’d go from there. I waited a while after she left, then ran the water…

… and heard some very familiar sounds, as gurgling water filled the pipe before starting to fill the bottom of the shower!

So I quickly ran out in the off chance she hadn’t left yet, and caught her just as she was returning to the building to fill out a log book.

I was able to give her a good description of what I was hearing as the water backed up, and she was all “you’ve dealt with this before, have you?” 😄 Why yes! Yes, I have! I told her about having to get about 30 feet of drain pipe augured. At this point, it has to go to a plumber, so she told me she’d call to make those arrangements as soon as she got back to her vehicle. The plumber might come tonight, but more likely tomorrow.

!!!

I couldn’t believe how fast it was being dealt with! And to think my mother has been putting up with this, and sponge bathing, for a month because she wouldn’t make the maintenance call!

We had a chance to talk some more about our my brother and his wife – she thinks they’re fantastic, too! – and when she found out where I lived, she asked if I happened to know…

Sure enough, we have mutual friends, too!

That done, I updated my mother about the plumber needing to come in and when he might show up. After that, I did have to go before the post office closed, as my husband messaged me to let me know a package had arrived.

Since it was such a nice day, I didn’t stay home long. Instead, I switched keys and left to test drive my mother’s car. If the shuddering was no longer there, I planned to go into town and run it through a car wash to get any last ice and dirt out from the undercarriage and wheels. If it was still shuddering, I’d turn around and come home, instead.

The car was definitely running better. Of course, on the gravel road, I couldn’t really tell at all, but once I reached our little hamlet, it seemed to be running pretty smoothly – at least while I was on smooth parts of the road! Once I got to highway speeds, I could still feel some shuddering, but was that the wheel, or the road conditions? Of course, I was paranoid the whole way, but did keep going to town.

When I parked to run in and buy a car wash, the driver’s side was facing the sun. As I returned to the car, I could see that the last chunk of ice I couldn’t break off had finally fallen loose. Landing on the moving parts, of course! 😄 At least I could just knock it off, easily!

What a difference it made. While it hadn’t been bad before, the ride home was noticeably smoother, even on the rougher parts of the road! What a relief! We had been so concerned that something had broken, and it was just a matter of finding and clearing ice out of one wheel. Blows me away how it had made the entire car shudder to such an extreme!

Too bad I hadn’t been able to do this yesterday, so that I could have used my mother’s car to run her errands, today!

Ah, well. It’s taken care of now.

Once at home, I found the girls had taken care of things for me, including moving the hook part of the hook and eye latch, so it wouldn’t bounce out anymore. The only concern is that there’s still a lot of play at the bottom of the door, and Tissue is the one who’s been digging at it. She is a remarkably muscular cat, and if any of them manage to pull it out enough to get through, it’ll be her! A second latch should solve that, I think, but the package I got had only two of them, and we’ve got one on each side, so we can latch is closed behind us when going into the living room.

The main thing is, tomorrow, I need to finally get more seeds started! Tonight, I’ll be going through the packets again to bring out the ones that need to be started this early, and set a few of them up to soak overnight.

It’s a few days late, but it should still be okay, I think.

Until then, I can prep some trays and get some Jiffy pellets soaking overnight, too.

I’m just so excited to be able to finally plant seeds again! The gardening bug it hitting hard, with these mild temperatures we’ve been having, even though the ground it still covered with a couple of feet of snow. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Unexpected progress

March 3, 2023 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

What a gorgeous day it is today! As I write this, we are at -2C/28F, with beautiful sunshine and next to no wind. Snow is melting all over the place! Including our nice new roof – with not a single leak into the sun room!

I’m not sure how many cats I saw this morning – I lost track after 20. That long haired tabby even let me pet him, as he followed me up the driveway. On the way back, I spotted The Distinguished Guest, tucked into a path in the snow, waiting his chance to come closer to the house and get some food.

I got a message from the garage, letting me know our van was ready to pick up. The final bill was $216 and change. It meant setting a little bit less aside for our “car payment”, but not by much.

We got to talk about his trip to the auction, and no, he was not able to find anything, and he was able to explain the issue.

We actually got approved for a larger amount loan than the cost of the vehicle we were interested in. The problem was that the monthly payments would have been $750 a month, because of the interest. As my credit score is so bad, the interest rate would have been 29%. Which is insane. To get a vehicle that meets our needs, with payments we could afford, that was also 2014 or newer, with a maximum 180,000 km… well, it just doesn’t really exist.

Of course, right now, we have nothing to improve our credit rating. We have no debt. No rent or mortgage. Nothing that would improve our credit rating.

His suggestion?

Get a credit card.

More specifically, get a card with a $300 or $500 credit limit. Max the card out every month, and pay it off every month. Which we could easily do with a single Costco shopping trip. In 6 months, we’d have a good credit score. Together with the money we are setting aside every month towards a down payment, he’d be able to get us a much newer and better vehicle, with payments within our budget.

While we were talking, his mechanic joined the conversation. He knew full well what we were going through. Thanks to the lockdowns, he lost his small trucking business 2 years ago. It wiped him out completely and, of course, his credit score was wrecked. He wanted to get a loan for a truck to start over, but couldn’t get one. He got himself a $500 credit card, maxed it out and paid it off every month, and it repaired his credit rating enough that he was able to get a lone for a truck – and those things go for about $200,000!

It’s basically the only way we have available to us to repair my credit score, so when I got home, I went online with my bank and started looking up what was available. Once I got to a certain point, though, I decided I needed to talk to someone, so I called it in. As I spoke to the representative, he told me the main issue was that I have no income – it will be based on household income. My chances of being approved was pretty low, but I could apply for a secured credit card. That, however, had to be done in person. He recommended I do that, rather than continue trying to apply over the phone.

Well, it was early enough in the day, so off I went to the nearest branch, in the town my mother lives in. I tried calling my mother to see if she would need groceries, but got no answer, so I took her car just in case.

I got in to see someone fairly quickly and explained our situation. We started the application for a secured credit card. The down side of this is they work it by locking the amount – in this case, $500, which is their minimum – in our account, so that if we ever reneged on a payment, they would get their money out of the locked funds. However, she suggested we go ahead and try for an unsecured account, first, and see how it that went.

Much to my shock, I got approved for a $1000, unsecured credit card!

I asked if it could be reduced to $500, which she was able to do.

I should be getting my card in 7-10 business days.

The whole thing was shockingly painless!

Once it comes in, it will be used only for gas and groceries, within our usual budget, that’s it!

With that done, I finally managed to connect with my mother and popped in for a visit. She only needed a few things, so I just ran out and picked them up for her. She commented that she wasn’t feeling that well, after the procedure – then started to tell me again that if they couldn’t do what she was there for, because she was on blood thinners, then what was the point? I told her, she was there for the scope; the taking of samples would have been only if they found something of concern, and for that, they would have had her come back. She started to get angry and insisted she never left the room and never had the procedure. She watched other people come and go, but not her. I explained the light sedation to her, and told her I don’t remember getting my bronchoscopy, either. Turns out she’s working herself up to thinking that the stuff they sprayed in her mouth, and lying about doing the scope on her, and her now not feeling as well is them trying to kill off old people to save money.

The sad thing is, I can’t fault her for thinking that. However, our “wonderful” health care system is now using MAiD – Medical Assistance in Dying – for that, so there’s no need for the elaborate scene she’s building up in her mind. So far, no one has tried to talk her into offing herself, at least. It’s a good thing we don’t live in BC. 😕

Anyhow, I temporarily mollified her, but I know it won’t last long. Aside from that, it was actually a really good visit, and I even got to talk to her about our plans for getting chickens (which she enthusiastically supports), and to make it so that if things happen, like the power going out for a long time, we’d be okay. Every time I bring that up, she starts talking about being able to use the old wood cookstove in the old kitchen, and I had to explain to her again, how badly damaged it is, and why it would be wildly unsafe to use it, even if we did manage to repair it. We may some day be able to fix it up, but until then, there are other things that we can do that we can do ourselves, at little cost, like building and outdoor kitchen under a shelter. In the past, she would have mocked me for the things I was talking about, but she doesn’t do that anymore. Since we’ve moved here, she gave us the hardest time over our plans, because they were so different from how she did things, and she didn’t believe we would actually do them. One example being the retaining wall I wanted to build at one end of the old kitchen garden. When I described to her what we had in mind, she laughed out loud. Then she told me how the family that used to live across the road from here (no one lives there now) had all sorts of grand plans for how they wanted to fix up the property, with retaining walls and garden beds and more. In all the years they lived there, they never did any of it. Therefore, neither would I.

Then I build the retaining wall, and we did several other things I’d told her about that she laughed at me over, or even became angry over, because she would not have done things that way. But they worked. So now, she no longer laughs.

Progress!

For now, anyhow.

So it’s been a pretty productive day, even if not in the ways I expected or planned on!

I’m okay with that. 😁

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

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

dealing with elderly parents

Thinking ahead

Long day

First day of summer

Dealing with the heat… and family

Our 2023 garden: Roma tomatoes, mystery squash and other non-gardening stuff

A pleasant change in plans!

Pushing her limits, and changes of plans

K, I’m exhausted, plus hard times for kitties!

Plans? What are those?

Unexpected progress

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