How things went today

October 4, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I’ll start with the more pleasant things!

First up, while doing my morning rounds, I spotted something very white in the wood chip pile, from quite a distance. Check these out!

The first picture was of a group of three very round mushrooms – I thought they were puffballs at first, until I saw the stems. The next three pictures are with my hand for perspective – then I found a fourth one, off to the side!

I have no idea if they are edible, and have no intention of finding out.

As I was heading inside, I found this adorable cuddle puddle.

Two of them! The smallest kittens really like to pile together.

Once the morning round were done, I was able to get a few things done before heading to my mother’s. My brother came out today, but he had to focus on replacing the radiator on one of his tractors that got damaged last fall, then try to get it going. Days are short, so I just popped over to say hello before I headed out.

When I got to my mother’s, she was all “prepared” for me. I barely got through the door! She had ice cream buckets of tomatoes she wanted me to take home. One of her neighbours in her building has had a great tomato year in their little garden plot and has been leaving boxes of them in the common room for people to help themselves. My mother keeps taking more than she needs for herself, because apparently no one else is taking any, and she doesn’t want them to go to waste.

So… she gives them to me.

While I was getting the two ice cream buckets of tomatoes out from under her table for her, I saw her collection of jugs for her drinking and cooking water, so I refilled those right away.

There were other errands she wanted me to do, but I told her I’d do them after I’ve put away her groceries.

She didn’t have a list, so I sat down to start that with her. It took a while, because she kept wanting to go on about other things. There’s one home care worker she has issues with in particular. For a basic med assist, they are supposed to be there for 5 minutes, making sure she takes her medication before they leave. The morning assist is for 10 minutes, as they are supposed to help with emptying the commode or helping apply her Voltaren to her back. This one rushes to put the meds in the little bowl she has for them, to make sure they’re all there (sometimes, they can get caught in the packaging), locked the box up and leaves without making sure my mother takes her meds. Apparently, she’s been so rough with the lock box, she ended up knocking my mom’s phone off its charger and just left it where it fell.

My mother was also angry about her new schedule. She has five evenings, which is two med assists done by the same person, plus four mornings, done by someone else (out of a 2 week schedule) listed as “unfilled”. I tried to explain to her that they have to have the schedules out by a certain time, so if they don’t have someone for a specific date or time, they have to list it as “unfilled”. That doesn’t mean they won’t find someone. Just that they hadn’t, before the deadline. My mother thinks it means people are going to show up because they’ve… called in sick, in advance? She doesn’t understand how scheduling works.

It did give me a chance to try and talk to my mother about things she can do to try and get herself into a nursing home faster. I tried to explain that, because she’s only getting med assists, they basically view her as being able to care for herself. But if she takes advantage of the other assists they have available – meal assists, bathing assists, dressing assisted, etc. – that would go a long way to helping her get in faster.

She just got angry at me. She doesn’t trust the home care workers (there’s one that she says is really good at her job, and that’s the one that helped care for my father, before he went into the nursing home) and doesn’t want them touching her or preparing her meals. I tried to explain why she needed to get it anyhow and, besides, if she were in a nursing home, she’d be having that all done for her, anyhow. To which she said, in a nursing home, she would have “professionals”. I told her, the home care workers are “professionals”. They may or may not be good at their jobs, but they get training, first.

At one point she told me she had been talking to a woman that used to live in our little hamlet, that I went to school with. Her mother lived in the same building as my mother, having moved in a few years ago. It turns out her mother is in a nursing home now! She was visiting a friend and stopped to chat with my mother. As my mother told her how much she wants to be in a nursing home, she was told to try falling down! Which is pretty much what I was thinking, but hadn’t mentioned. My mother is constantly afraid of falling down, so she is super careful not to. If, however, she did have a fall, she’d have to use her Lifeline to get help, because she certainly couldn’t get up again on her own. They could call her an ambulance (and would call me to inform me of any issues). Chances are if that happened, my mother would end up going straight to a nursing home or supportive living, somewhere.

She did mention about the last time she used her Lifeline to talk to someone about her she was feeling. At the end of it, she was asked if there was anything else they could do for her. She said, help me get into a nursing home! The person on the Lifeline said they would talk to someone higher up about it.

I don’t know what they can do, but if there’s something, it would help! Lord knows, my mother isn’t willing to do anything herself that would get her in faster. We keep telling her things that would help (like getting other home care assistance that they have available), but she just refuses. I can understand why, but she doesn’t understand that she is sabotaging herself. She much prefers to complain and expect other people to do things for her, not do them herself. This is not a new thing. She’s been like this for as long as I can remember.

After much circular conversation, I did manage to get a shopping list written down for her. Some of it was “see how it looks” or “depends on the price” type stuff. She needed more of her Voltaren, too, so a trip to the pharmacy was also in order.

I was able to find everything she wanted, and even got her a pumpkin pie as a treat I was pretty sure she would be happy with. Either she’d be happy, or she’d be angry. Thankfully, she was in a good mood, and was very happy to see the pie!

Once everything was put away, she insisted I sit with a cup of tea for a while before I finished doing things like sweeping her floor, taking care of her garbage, etc. Then she foisted a bag of aluminum foil she saved from her Meals on Wheels packaging onto me, together with the tomatoes! She’s been carefully washing and setting aside the foil each part of her meal is wrapped in. From the amount in the bag, it’s been probably a year’s worth of foil! She thought I might be able to use them in the garden (??) or something. I told her, I could add them to our aluminum recycling. We save up our aluminum until it’s worth the trip to the salvage yard. She was quite happy with that idea.

All in all, the visit with my mom was pretty good. Just one racist rant I had to distract away from, and during the times she did get angry because she didn’t like what she was being told, it wasn’t quite the personal attacks on me such things often become. It was actually a pretty good visit, as far as that goes with my mother!

That done, I had a request from my husband, so I went to the town we usually go to for our local shopping. The difference in prices between grocery stores was worth the extra driving.

Thankfully, fruit cake was not part of his shopping list.

I could not believe how expensive these fruitcakes have become! Not that long ago, seeing them at prices above $7 was considered expensive!

After I got the few things on my husband’s list and made a stop at the gas station, it was time for home.

My brother was still working on his tractor, so I headed over for a quick hello and to update him a bit about how it went with Mom. Then I went in to change into my grubbies to do some work in the garden, instead of in the sun room, while there was still light enough.

I made sure to water the winter squash and cover them for the night, first. We’re supposed to get rain, but it’s also supposed to get cold enough that I’m not sure the winter squash would survive it. They might be kept covered for several days, if the 7 day forecast is at all accurate. The next three nights in particular will probably put an end to the eggplant, peppers and summer squash, so if there’s anything to bring in an ripen indoors, tomorrow will be the day to do it.

I need to get more garden beds ready for winter sowing, though, and today I started working on the bed the carrots and peas were grown in.

*sigh*

I got a little more than a quarter of it done. As I was working my way down one side, I kept getting tangled up in tree roots. It was a while before I found root they were all coming from and got that pulled out. Then I found more from another root!

It was starting to get dark, so I didn’t want to start fighting with roots I couldn’t quite find yet, so I decided to call it a night. For all the work done in these beds, particularly when they got shifted to their permanent locations, getting them ready for the winter should be easy. All of these roots I’m hitting were not there in the spring. I’m blown away by how far they are extending from the trees, and how big they are.

According to the weather apps, we’re supposed to get rain all night and all through tomorrow, with heavy rain warning. So it might be a couple of days before I can continue. The overnight lows that had been forecast to drop below freezing have changed to just at freezing. Hopefully, the cover will be enough for the winter squash. After that one cold night, we’re actually supposed to get decent, if cool, weather again. That would be a good time to get the garlic in.

Well, we’ll see what actually happens! I’ll take the mild weather for as long as possible!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, the truck is back and… sigh

September 29, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, let’s start with the good stuff!

I’ve been feeding the outside cats a bit later every day, simply because it’s dark for so much longer. Which means getting through the old kitchen door with hungry cats and kittens swirling under my feet can get pretty dangerous! My younger daughter was on cat herding duty this morning. I can get through the door with the kibble bowl and avoid stepping on cats (barely), but I can’t also stop them from running into the old kitchen or close the door behind me at the same time! So I just try to get through as quickly as possible and start dropping food into trays to get their attention, while a daughter herds kittens making a mad dash through the door back out again until she can close at least one of the doors.

Later on, after the cats were fed, I’d done my rounds and I popped into the sun room to get some pruning sheers, I found this.

A great big bowl of kitties! Sir Robin seems content to be snuggled up with seven littles!

After the chat I had with the rescue, where they were trying to get an idea of how many cats we have, I did a head count as best as I could, of all the cats and kittens I could see. Usually, I try to count just the adults, as it’s so hard to spot the running around kittens at times. I think I got a total of 35, but I’m not 100% sure. I am sure that there were some “missing”, but I may also have counted some of the kittens twice.

We’re going to be warm for the next while, so this morning I uncovered the winter squash and watered the few things left to water, including the sunflowers, which are blooming more and more!

The sunflower in the first photo had been chomped by a dear. It sent up two new shoots, which then branched out more, so now it has four or five stems reaching upwards. All the flowers in the first photo are from that one plant.

The second photo is from the one that got flower buds developing at the base of almost all the leaves. I couldn’t fit them all in a photo what would fit on Instagram. “Only” eight blooming seed heads are visible in that photo!

The last photo is of the tallest sunflower. So pretty!

I still have no idea if we’ll get any viable seeds out of these. We have almost no pollinators around these days. At least not the flying types. This past smoky summer, with drought and heat waves, was brutal on everything. There are still other types of pollinators, but I don’t tend to see them on the sunflowers. We shall see how it works out.

I’m happy to finally see some colour on the Cosmos flower buds. There are so few buds at all! Most of the plants don’t seem to be developing any at all, even though they are quite tall and healthy looking, other than a bit of frost damage on a few.

I’m even happier to see so many of the memorial asters blooming. I’m pretty sure the plants are supposed to be much bigger (the nasturtiums were much smaller than normal, too), but they seem to be doing okay. If all goes well, I’ll be able to harvest seeds from them before the hard frosts hit.

Speaking of which, this is why I went back for the pruning shears.

Those are all the onion seed heads in the trellis bed. They were starting to open and I decided to bring them in to finish off indoors, so I don’t lose too many seeds into the bed itself. I found so many tiny onions while working on the bed in the spring, from seeds lost last year!

The other bowl is the driest of the carrot seed heads. There are still more on the plant that were quite green, so I’ve left them for now. We even still have some carrot flowers.

I’ve got quite a collection of seeds “curing” in the living room now. I need to settle in one of these evenings and package them up soon.

Once done outside, I came in for breakfast. I just sat down when I got a notification on my phone that there as a new voice mail. My phone never rang.

Yes, it was home care.

I’ll have to get back to that, though. I’m still shaking my head over the whole thing.

I was booked to drop off the courtesy van and pick up the truck for 1:30. I left early so I could fill the van’s gas tank (as required) and put it through a car wash (not required, but it was getting pretty covered in gravel dust already). I still got to the autobody shop quite early. As I was driving in, I could see a truck that looked like it might be ours, but I wasn’t 100% sure until I spotted my phone holder on the dash.

The truck was so clean, I barely recognized it!!!

I headed in to switch keys, sign what needed to be signed, and pay what needed to be paid. The final damage, including the “betterment” cost, insurance waiver for four days and the deductible, was $720 and change.

If this were not covered by insurance, it would have cost us almost $1500.

I am really happy with the work done!

I’m glad I went with the bed liner stuff instead of regular paint. It looks really good, and I like that it has a texture and won’t be as slippery anymore. The inside of the tail gate was already coated with that, so it even matched that.

Then I got into the truck. Wow!!! They actually cleaned out the whole thing! The truck hasn’t been this clean on the inside since we bought it!

Once I was parked at home, I opened up the tail gate to check out the new cover. The latch to free it is much easer to find than the old one’s was. It rolled up nice and easy, and at the cab end, there are loops. Under the cover are straps with hooks to go into the loops. Waaaaayyyy easier to fasten then the buckles the old cover had!

That was about it for differences between old and new that I could see.

The trip to get the truck was almost enough for me to reduce my blood pressure after this morning.

The voice mail from home care was to let me know that the person scheduled to do my mother’s 9:30am meds today had called in sick.

It was past 9:37 when I was listening to the message.

She scheduler told me that they did find someone to cover it, but he wouldn’t be able to get to my mother’s until 10:30. She was concerned it might be late and wanted to know if I preferred to cover it myself. She wanted me to call back, but said she would schedule the 10:30 visit, just in case.

She didn’t leave a number.

Since my phone never rang (which means my Wi-Fi calling needs to be reset again), there was no caller display number. I couldn’t call her back. It would have been to give the go ahead for the late visit, anyhow, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

Being past time for her med assist, I was more concerned about calling my mother to let her know they’d be late.

When she answered, she told me she had just finished her breakfast. I don’t think she’d noticed they were late, yet.

I told her what the situation was and that someone would be coming, just at 10:30, instead.

She started making disparaging comments about how they call in sick so often.

Then she started going on about how we need to stop leaving her to strangers to take care of her. We need to take care of her. All weekend, and no one even phoned her.

…

I told her, my brother and I were AT HER PLACE on Saturday. It’s like she completely forgot that I came in to do her meds, grocery shopping and some housekeeping, just the day before yesterday, plus the surprise visit from my brother, and our taking her angel statue when we left, at her request.

When I told her that, she paused a moment, but just kept on going.

She was feeling sick. She’s been feeling sick for days. I tried asking her, sick in what way? but she got mad and told me to let her speak.

It turns out she meant her breathing, which makes everything else worse. So she was feeling bad overall, but blaming her breathing.

Then she told me she used the inhaler that I’d left out of the lock box for her, and was feeling SOOO much better, so she’d decided she will keep using the “puffer”.

…

I told her, she could finish that one off, but she no longer has a prescription. Because she’s been using it for a long time (more than a year) and it wasn’t helping.

Oh, but this one’s from the hospital, not the other one, and the one from the hospital works so much better.

I told her, they are the same medicine. The only different is how it’s released. Inside, it’s the same medication.

Oh… she says. Well I’ll still take it.

I reminded her that when I got her refill last time, she freaked out at me over how much it cost. I can afford it, she says (she could afford it before, too, but that didn’t stop her from yelling at me because it wasn’t free).

This went on for a while and I was starting to lose my patience. We do all we can to help her, and she keeps sabotaging our efforts. I told her I’d done a lot to get things the way she wanted, talking to the doctor, etc., and now she’s messing with everything again.

Ah, but this is my mother, so she took that to mean that I was complaining about how doing all that I do to take care of her is just too much for me. It really should be my brother doing all this, because he’s got the “biggest piece of the pie” (meaning, he now owns the farm). She has zero understanding that the farm is a burden for him, not a benefit, even with us helping as much as we can by living here, plus she thinks that transferring the ownership to him basically means he should be her slave, at her beck and call at all times.

My brother is on a flight across the country for his work right now. He works in internet security, at an international level. She has no clue how stressful or important his work is. All she wants is for him to be available to her at all times, and obey her every command. She’s been pretty blunt about that expectation, too. All because she transferred ownership of the property so it wouldn’t be part of the will anymore, in hopes our vandal would stop harassing her. Which he hasn’t. He just thinks she gave the property to me, for some reason. At least he can’t contest ownership of the property in the will, because she no longer owns it. Instead, she now thinks she owns my brother.

*sigh*

Then she started begging, pleading, for us to get her into a nursing home. Which we’ve been trying to do for more than a year, now. As she started that, she suddenly started talking about how Canada is turning into an African country, and this is a bad thing. I kept asking her, what does this have to do with being in a nursing home? She just kept repeating about Canada turning into an African country, then shifted to, it’s about her health. She needs to have people around her. She could start screaming.

???

Eventually, she was able to tell me that if she were in a nursing home and having troubles at night, she could start screaming, and someone would come to help her. But where she is now, she could start screaming, and no one would come (which has actually happened). I told her, that’s why you have the Lifeline. If you need help, push the button.

The entire conversation was very confusing and all over the place, with a lot more than what I’m including here – and all I was wanting to do was let her know her morning med assist would be an hour late.

I finally told her, again, I was calling to let her know her morning med assist would be late, adding that my breakfast was getting cold (sometimes, that works), and cut the call off. I just couldn’t handle the call anymore. There was no reasoning with her in any way.

While I was working on this post, I called and left a message with the mental health assessor that had come out this past Tuesday, mentioned that I had just found out the appointment had been interrupted by our vandal. I mentioned I had a phone call of concern just this morning and wanted to talk to her about it.

I do have my medical appointment in the city tomorrow, though, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to connect with her. If she’s able to call before I had to leave, that would be great (I did get a time frame). Otherwise, it might be a few days.

We are very much at a loss with my mother. She really does need to be in a nursing home or supportive living, but we’ve done everything we can to get her in. Unfortunately, she’s sabotaging a lot of our efforts by refusing the home care help she should be getting, like meal assists, dress assists, bathing assists. Not that I blame her for not wanting it, but if she can’t handle home care doing this stuff for her, how is she going to handle nursing home staff doing this stuff for her? Meanwhile, because she is NOT getting all this extra care that she actually needs, she’s viewed by the system as being too able bodied and independent to qualify for a spot in home car.

*sigh*

My brain is tired.

The Re-Farmer

Work in the garden is good for the heart – especially when our mothers aren’t.

September 27, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had two main goals for today. The first was to take care of my mother’s morning med assist and do her grocery shopping. The second was to get more progress cleaning up in the garden beds.

My mother turned out to be having one of “those” days.

It actually started off okay. She was in bed and not wanting to get up. I can’t say I blame her! She told me she feels like she just wants to lie in bed all the time, these days.

I got her morning meds out. I took out her other type if inhaler, too – the one that home care workers aren’t allowed to give her. I’d already talked to her about the doctor removing it from her med assist list for home care, and she doesn’t need to take it anymore, but when I’d called last night to let her know I’d be coming over, she told me she decided she would keep taking it after all.

When I brought it out, I told her again, she doesn’t need to use it. The doctor removed it from her prescription list. The experiment was to see if she had asthma, and she clearly doesn’t. It won’t hurt her to take it, but it’s not helping her and she doesn’t need to.

Usually, my mother is all about trying to drop her medications because she doesn’t think they’re helping. If they were helping, why does she feel this, or that, or this other thing? when her meds are for completely different things. Now she has a medication that was a trail, it isn’t helping her, she doesn’t need it… and suddenly she wants to keep taking it?

I told her I’d planned to take it to the pharmacy for proper disposal, but in the end I just left it out of the lock box for her to take or not take. It only has 28 doses left in it, so 14 days of daily use, if she keeps it up.

She had not made her shopping list, so after she took her medications, I went through her fridge and cupboards and we talked about what she needed before sitting down and making her list with her. Then she gave me cash in an envelope; I always make sure that the change and receipt is put back into it for her to go over at her leisure, later on.

All of that went smoothly, and I was soon back and putting everything away for her.

My brain is already trying to wipe things out, but I think it was the spaghetti squash that started it.

*This is what WP AI image generator thinks my mother looks like.*

My mother no longer has a garden plot, officially, but she did grow a spaghetti squash along the fence outside her window, which produced for her a single spaghetti squash. She’d already eaten half of it, but struggles with the hard skin, so she offered the other half to me. I politely declined, saying I was the only one in the family that likes spaghetti squash.

That lead to a lecture on how we’re all so fussy, and that it just needs to be cooked right (she still thinks I don’t know how to cook), etc.

Then she offered me some of the seeds she’d saved from her spaghetti squash. Again, I politely declined (I just told her I’m the only one that likes it; why would I grow something no one else wants to eat?) and told her I have lots of seeds.

While all this conversation was going on, I started sweeping her floor and doing other little things, as I usually try to do for her. She kept going on about the garden, asking me about how our garden is. I had told her before that it was a messed up year, but I told her again, things were really behind this year. We had the spring with hot days in May, but too cold nights. Then we had drought conditions, heat waves, and wildfire smoke. So the garden really sufferred.

Oh, I’m the only one complaining about the smoke! No one else is! (I wasn’t complaining, just listing it among other things) I have two daughters to help me! I should have a big garden, etc. etc. etc. I should have so much food from the garden, etc. etc. I told her, we did have some, just not much, and even tried to show her pictures of the winter squash and said I have been managing to keep them from freezing. Freezing? she asked. I guess she forgot that we’ve already had frost, and that our nights are getting pretty cold.

Then she just flat out said: I’m a bad gardener

My response was, And you’re very rude.

She agreed.

???

It was around that time, when I’d just finished sweeping her floor and was about to start emptying all her garbage cans, that the door opened and my brother walked in! He’d been on the way to the farm and decided to swing past my mother’s place to see if I was still there. He saw a Caravan parked, and knew the courtesy vehicle I had was a Caravan, so he decided to pop in.

He barely walked in and gave her a hug hello when she started going at him, immediately asking about pictures of his grand kids. My brother has shown her digital pictures, but she wants something she can tack onto her wall. The problem is, the last time he gave her prints of the grand kids, the first thing she did was ask if one of his grandsons was Downs Syndrome or something. Which neither of them are, but she didn’t like how one of them looked and basically said he looked retarded.

Needless to say, he’s not eager to give her more photos of his grandsons.

I don’t even know if he has a printer anymore. My sister’s the one that’s into that stuff, so she’s got a high end printer. I think my mother even paid for it. Anyhow, I tried to distract her away from that, then continued into empty her garbage cans into one bag then, emptied her commode.

Which is how I missed the first part of what they’d started talking about. I didn’t get the straight of it until much later, here at the farm, as we filled in my SIL.

It turns out our vandal had showed up at my mother’s place on Tuesday. The day the mental health assessor was interviewing my mother. It seems he walked right into her apartment and immediately started ranting at her, right in front of a stranger, about how she gave the farm to me (????), then started saying nasty things about my one of my daughters, (getting them mixed up, apparently) that were complete fabrications. He hasn’t seen either of them in years. Someone, however, seems to be telling him things (like my younger daughter having a PCOS beard), and then he’s going from there and just making things up. He didn’t even use my daughter’s correct name! Whichever one he meant to be talking about, anyhow.

My mother, however, believed him. ?!?! She started saying that it was true. As if she knows any better?

I’d asked my mother before about how that meeting with the mental health assessor went, and she just brushed her off in disgust, saying she wasn’t any use, and had told my mother something along the lines of, “there are people worse off than you”. Which is true, but pissed my mother off. My mother did NOT mention that our vandal showed up.

Or that the interview was cut short and that the assessor left with our vandal.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Red flag time!

Now that we know this happened, both my brother and I plan to phone the mental health assessor. If I’d known earlier, I would have already phoned her by now!

Meanwhile, in the middle of all this, my mother found the time to ask us to take her angel here to the farm. Years ago, my brother bought her a resin garden decor angel that my mother just loves. She’s been doing a lot of “when I go up-up, who is going to take this? Who is going to take that?” After confirming that no one else among my siblings wanted it, I assured her it would go to the farm. It’s made to be outdoors, so I said I would set it up somewhere nice.

My brother and I then joked that we should set it up facing the gate, so our vandal would see it and maybe be reminded that the things he’s doing isn’t particularly Godly. Or whatever.

Today, my mother brought it up and asked if we could take it.

That was our cue.

My poor brother was there for less than 10 minutes, and got jumped all over right from the moment he came in. He didn’t even have time to finish giving her a hello hug before she started, and he was more than happy to leave right away.

In bringing the angel out, he noticed there was a crack under one wing. That led to a whole other thing with my mother, because she didn’t know it was there. My brother suggested it had fallen over, but she said it had never fallen. We quickly distracted away from guessing, though. Later on, my brother said it probably happened when her apartment was being fumigated, and someone knocked it over. She’s already convinced the exterminator stole things from her, so my brother wasn’t about to bring that up around her!

We headed out together, with me taking her garbage out and my brother carrying the angel to load into the van. I used the fob to open the rear gate for him before going out the other door to the building’s garbage bin.

As I came around, my brother was trying to figure out how to get the angel into the back. One of the third row of seats would need to be folded down. As he was looking around, I decided to open up the side door to try and see from the other side. I had the key fob in my hand as I did.

I accidentally hit the panic button on the fob – or so I thought. The horn started honking an alarm.

I tried hitting the panic button again, but it only changed the pattern of honking. I couldn’t see how to shut the honking off, and the buttons I pushed didn’t work! My brother has seen this type of square key fob before, so I showed it to him, but he didn’t know either. He just started smashing buttons, and it stopped.

Well, the entire neighbourhood now knew we were there!

In the end, I figured out that I hadn’t accidentally hit the panic button. I had tried to open the door, while it was still locked. I didn’t even know the van had an alarm, but with the rear gate open, I thought the other doors were unlocked as well for some reason. So I had set off the car alarm. I think it stopped when my brother hit the unlock button while button smashing!

At least it worked.

We then headed off here to the farm.

I brought the angel to the door, messaging a daughter to bring it in. Because of the cracked wing, it will need to be repaired and sealed before we set it up outside. Otherwise, water will get inside it.

I joined my brother and SIL in their “new” camper – it’s the first time I’ve been inside it – and we had a chance to catch up my SIL on how things went. My brother and I both needed to decompress, that’s for sure! There was more than what I mention here, of course. The main concern was our vandal showing up like that – and leaving with the mental health assessor!

After we had a visit, I left them to their work. They needed to winterize the camper and the trailer, and would only be around for a few hours. I headed in to grab lunch, change and get to work in the garden.

Which was very therapeutic. Part way through, my younger daughter even came out to check on me and make sure I was okay, after that visit, which was much appreciated.

My focus for today was on the beds with carrots in them, both winter sown and spring sown. I started on the East yard garden bed, removing the bamboo stake trellis that was holding up the radish bushes, first.

After the trellis was removed, I pulled all the remaining radishes – this bed had quite a few go to seed – and lettuces. Some of the lettuce were going to seed, so I broke off the tops and set them aside to collect the seeds later. Everything else went onto the compost pile.

While this bed had the same root vegetable mix as the high raised bed, it also had lettuce seeds added. Those grew so well, they became a weed and choked other things out. I was curious to see how the carrots did, under those conditions.

The answer is “surprisingly well”.

They’re mostly small, and some of the smallest ones at the end just got added to the compost pile, but it was actually better than I expected. There were even a few of the orange “Napoli” carrots in there. Those seeds were pretty old, so I wasn’t sure what to expect with them.

Once the carrots were harvested, I went over the entire bed, loosening the soil and pulling weeds, none of which could be added to the compost pile, or they’d start growing again!

There was one carrot that had gone to seed, so I gave it a support stake and left it to finish maturing.

The soil was pretty compacted and hard to clear. I know there’s still lots of weeds in there, but I plan to amend the soil before any winter sowing gets done, so there will be time to get more of them.

From there, I moved on to the high raised bed.

Again, I pulled the few radish bushes that were left in there, then started on harvesting the carrots. These ones were not crowed out, like the other winter sown bed was, and I could really see a difference!

I was pleasantly surprised by how many orange Napoli carrots there were.

Once the carrots were out and I started weeding, I found these…

A couple of those beets are supposed to be white, but they look more yellow than white. Then there are the teeny onions. I’d picked what beets we had, earlier, but these had no greens left (thanks to the deer), so I’d missed them. As for the onions, I’d included onion seeds in the mixed, but only a couple managed to form proper bulbs. With these ones, I could potentially use them as sets for next year.

Once again, I left a carrot gone to seed. It had branches sprawling all over, but now they’re held together in the support stake. I’ve already cut some of the seed heads off a while back, as they were fully dry, and now there’s more that I could probably harvest now.

The next bed to work on was the spring sown bed. Being in an almost ground level bed, it was easier. I could just go along each side with the garden fork to loosen the soil, first.

Which was much needed. Compaction is a definite problem.

The first carrots I picked where the Uzbek Golden carrots using our home made seed tape.

I’m rather surprised by how well these did.

There was also a surprise orange carrot among them! I also noticed that some of the yellow carrots had a more orange caste to them as well.

The other side were the Atomic Red carrots.

With these ones, we’ve been thinning by harvesting, as needed. That gave them space to get bigger… but they didn’t get much longer! These are supposed to be a deep red and quite long. Instead, we have light orange and stubby.

Odd.

I didn’t continue cleaning up the bed, though. That’s for another day. This took several hours – my brother and SIL headed out before I even finished the first bed, it took so long – and it was time to stop.

Not before gathering the harvest and giving it a quick hose down, first.

A lot of them are pretty small, which will make them harder to work with, but that’s a pretty decent amount of carrots. Plus a few bonus beets!

I was glad to have the work to do. Physical labour goes a long way to working out any stress and, after being with my mother this morning, I had plenty of stress to work off!

Now, I need to head back outside. It’s getting dark, and we’re in for a cold enough night that the winter squash need to be covered again.

But I’m such a bad gardener, don’t ya know!

The Re-Farmer

One more little harvest, and how the morning went

September 25, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, I did get some more stuff done in the garden, even remembered to upload a couple of photos – then completely forgot about the post I meant to write! 😄

Anyhow…

I decided to harvest most of the eggplant, just pruning the entire plants at their base so I could reach the fruit better.

They look so much like tomatoes, don’t they?

In the end, I left three plants. In the next photo, you can see the green eggplants on one plant. On another plant, I did find a few tiny green eggplants, and on the third, I couldn’t find anything at all – that’s the one that was the most damaged by cold – but I left it anyhow. After removing the extra cages and doing a bit more clean up, I moved the jugs of water in between the remaining three plants to act as heat sinks on nights they’ll need to be covered. I did a bit of clean up in the rectangular bed as well, then gave everything a watering from the rain barrel.

Today was supposed to reach a high of 24C/75F, but we ended up hitting 26C/79F. The over night low is supposed to be around 12C/54F, so I didn’t cover the winter squash, but I did give them and the summer squash a thorough watering, too. It was starting to get pretty dark by then, which is when both my daughters came out, looking for me. They’d messaged me, but I never heard the notification, so they were coming out to make sure I was okay! That was sweet of them. :-)

The end of the day was a lot calmer than the start.

This morning was my telephone appointment with my mother’s doctor, so I did short rounds so that I could be close to the phone during the 1 1/2 hour time frame I was given for her to call. Thankfully, she called closer to 8am than 9:30!

We talked about my mother’s inhaler being out, and about her refusal to spend to much money on the refills (the one inhaler cost almost as much as her bubble packs). We also talked about how it really wasn’t helping her breathing, anyhow, and I suggested it get dropped from her med list. The doctor asked about my mother’s breathing issues, and I told her she does still have problems, particularly at night, and described her situation.

In the end, she agreed to drop the inhaler from my mother’s meds, which would require a letter to home care. I could hear her typing it as we spoke, so she was right on that.

After that call was done, I called the home care coordinator. It’s actually a different one, in another region, as the one for our area is on holidays. When I told her about the call with the doctor, and that she could expect the letter, she told me she’d sent a note to the doctor, yesterday, asking for her letter to be sent to her office in another town, since there’s no one to check emails at our local office. I don’t think the doctor had seen it before she called me.

It will take some time for the change to my mother’s med assist instructions to go through. Once the home care coordinator gets the letter from the doctor, it gets sent to a nurse. Only a nurse is allowed to make the actual med assist instructions. Once that is updated, the revised instructions will go into my mother’s file that the home care aids have with them, when they do her assists.

Until then, the coordinator can let the home care aids know the change is in the works. Since my mother is out of that inhaler, anyhow, it will be as if it’s gone through, already.

That done, I updated my siblings in our group chat, then phoned my mother. By this time, it was past 9am and I knew her med assist should have come and gone for the morning.

When I mentioned to my other that I spoke to the doctor, she told me that doctor had already called her! She must have called right after talking to me. She had asked my mother, what can I do for you? My mother wasn’t expecting the call, so she told her that she was having her breakfast just then – and then the home care worker arrived to give her her meds, so they finished off the call. Then my mother asked me, what should she tell the doctor?

???

I told her that we’d been talking about her inhaler not helping, getting it off her med list, and that I had told the doctor she was still having breathing issues. My mother knew I was doing this for her, but I guess she forgot all about it.

As for having the inhaler removed from her med list, you’d think she would have been happy, as she’s always complaining that she is taking soooooo many medications and keeps wanting to drop them. Nope. She just told me that the home care aid that had come in this morning – her favourite one – had actually used one of the other brand inhalers in my mother’s lock box. Which, technically, she should not have done, but it’s what the hospital has been using with her and given her a prescription for. She had prescriptions for two different types of inhalers at the same time, for a while.

After I explained to her that it might take a while before the home care aids officially have a change in her med assist instructions, they will be told the inhaler is being dropped, so they don’t have to fuss about her not having the one on their list anymore.

We were just finishing what had been a pleasant conversation when she remembered the Pepto.

The eight bottles of Pepto my brother had bought for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about running out. It’s one of the few things she takes where she can actually notice she feels better.

She started off saying, she never asked him to get it for him. As if this was somehow his “fault”. I was eventually able to say that I was the one that mentioned to him and my sister that I hadn’t been able to get any for her, so she didn’t need to ask him.

Then she started ranting and railing. It’s too many, it’s up high in her cupboard, and it’s such a terrible thing that he got her so many bottles. I told her, this is a good thing. This is a helpful thing. She should have enough to last her a year! It’s something she takes regularly.

Oh, no, she told me. She only takes it when she needs it.

…

I told her, I didn’t mean that she was taking it every day, several times a day. Just… regularly.

What I was eventually able to figure out is that my mother thinks that they will go back. Because they’re medicine. They’re liquid. She’s not stupid.

…

I told her, they are fine. This is not like a prescription medication. They’re not like food. They last for years.

It does explain why she insists on keeping her open bottle in the fridge, though.

After I told her, several times, that they will be fine and won’t go bad, telling her that we keep ours in the bathroom cupboard with no issues, she said that she would see; she would ask a “professional” about it. A doctor even. They will tell her.

I told her, she’ll just be told the same thing I was telling her. Then I told her to call the pharmacy. Talk to the pharmacist. He’ll tell her.

Which got her to asking where my brother got them from, the pharmacy? (meaning the one in her town). I told her no, he got them at Costco (which turned out to be wrong; I later found out they were out at Costco, and he found them at Superstore).

Her response?

Oh, from China, then.

?????

I told her, it’s the exact same brand that I get for her a her pharmacy. It’s the same.

Oh, you know there are so many scams out there, she tells me.

…

I told her to stop making problems up where there are none.

She kept on ranting that my brother should not have gotten her so many. I told her, he was being kind to her. “It was “too much” kindness”, she retorted. Like she was being sarcastic, except meaner.

During this, it occurred to me that I might just take the bottles and bring them here to the farm to store until she starts running out again. I wasn’t going to bring that up at the time, though.

I did remind her to use the little cup to take a full dose. She usually just throws them away and uses a teaspoon. As in, a spoon for tea, not a measuring spoon, so the actual amount she’s taking is probably less than a third of what the dose is supposed to be. Apparently, that’s all it takes to help.

By the time I got off the phone with her, my brain was pretty fried. It can get so very hard to follow what she’s saying, to get to what she actually means. I completely forgot to ask her how things went with the mental health assessor, yesterday!

I did make sure to update my siblings again before I started forgetting details. Which happens very quickly, with how convoluted conversations with my mother can get.

My poor brother. Every time he tries to do something nice for her, she gets weird about it in some way. I think it bothers me more because if it were our vandal getting something for her, she would be singing his praised for years. Which she actually does. No matter how horribly he treats her, she makes him out to be a saint because he did something nice for her, 20 years ago. But my brother has been taking care of her and her affairs, diligently and with great care for her, often seeing what she needs long before she sees it herself, and he just can’t do anything right by her. Something as simple as getting her a supply of something she has made a big deal over how much better it makes her feel has been blown out of proportion into this huge drama as if he’d done something nasty to her.

My heart aches so much for my brother. He deserves so much better. And she still doesn’t understand just how badly she stabbed him in the back, some time ago. She’s fortunate he’s a good man and a good son, and hasn’t simply cut her out of his life entirely.

*sigh*

Once I was done with the calls, I needed to take some time to wind down and decompress. I had to go into my mother’s town – something I did NOT mention to her at all – to hit the feed store for more kibble, which my daughter generously paid for. The bag of donated kibble was a 7kg bag, so it didn’t last long, and we were down to dregs by this morning..

A forty pound bag of the brand we get, which is more expensive (not even the outside cats will eat the cheaper brand if they can avoid it), comes out to $62 and change, after taxes. Forty pounds is just over 18kg. That works out to about $3.44/kg after taxes.

Locally, a 9kg bag costs $45 and change (or more), before taxes, which is about $5/kg. At Walmart, a 9kg bag costs about $35, before taxes, or about $3.88/kg. The Costco Kirkland brand of kibble is a better price, but not by much. There is the other feed store, to the north of us, that has a brand that cats like that has a slightly better price, but the drive is longer. Worth it, if I’m getting more than one bag.

All of that, including a trip into my mother’s town, and it was barely noon when I got home.

It felt like it should have been several hours later!

Speaking of later, I just realized what time it is! It’s past 1am! When did that happen?

😄😂

Time to get to bed! There’s lots of work to do outside, while the weather is good!

The Re-Farmer

So tired

September 21, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Not physically tired.

Mentally tired.

Emotionally tired.

My brother and I visited with my mother today, at her request. We were there for almost three hours, with my brother ordering and picking up a lunch for us.

I’m not even going to get into it much, but she was all over the place. From getting mad at my brother, instead of grateful, because he picked up enough Pepto (which she says helps her so much) that she won’t run out again for probably a year (she actually said that she might sell some of them, before my brother even finished taking them out of the bag!), to talking about our vandal like he was some kind of saint for “helping” my dad so much before my dad went into the nursing home (he was actually pretty abusive to my dad, and his abusive behaviour towards my mother is why she moved off the farm in the first place), and so on.

When she started on how wonderful our vandal is, I figured that was a good time for me to take out her garbage. I just had to get out of there. A part of me understands that here’s some sort of guilt association on her part towards him. Considering how she treats those who are actually kind and helpful to her, and how she treats someone who was abusive towards her in between “helping” (because he thought he would get this property for it), really doesn’t sit well with me. Truthfully, though, theirs was a mutually abusive relationship.

We never got around to talking about her car at all, nor about her possibly helping us with the cost of replacing the door and frame, but she did bring up some “grand” ideas that would have completely messed up her own finances, which my brother, thankfully for her, has been keeping in order for her.

At least she was grateful, sort of, I think, for the cordless kettle my brother got for her. I had no idea she was worried about using her stove top kettle. Now she has a kettle that will shut itself off. We made sure to get it set up and tested out for her, and made sure she knew how to use it.

By the time we left, I was honestly feeling the most depressed and psychologically exhausted I have in ages – and this was a “good” visit!

So here is some cuteness, instead.

I’ve moved that blue tray into the portable greenhouse so it wouldn’t get rained on. A lot of the kittens like to hang out in there, so it didn’t take long for them to find it!

The size difference between these two was just too adorable. They look like they could be father and offspring! That’s Stinky, though, and he’s neutered, so they’re probably half-siblings, instead.

This evening, I did take recordings for the September garden tour video. I started and restarted several times before I could get into it, just because my head space was still messed up from the visit with my mother. I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much today, but I’ve been finding myself on the verge of tears repeatedly, since I left her place.

On another topic, Eyelet has settled in quite well at the foster’s. Meanwhile, I’m going to be meeting up with the woman who started the new rescue tomorrow afternoon. She has some cat food donations for us! That is so very appreciated. Plus, I’ll finally get to meet her in person!

For now, I should start editing the garden tour video. Hopefully, that will help my mood, somewhat. 🫤

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

The rain has stopped, and Eyelet is in being spoiled rotten!

September 20, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, today’s schedule sure changed.

First, a quick update with the home care crazy from yesterday. The plan was, if the guy didn’t come back to do my mother’s bed time med assist, as he said he would, by 9pm, I would drive over to do it.

My mother called me at 8:50 (the actual scheduled time) so say, no one arrived. I wasn’t 100% sure she was scheduled for 8:50, and sometimes they come late, which is why I asked her to call me if no one showed up at 9. I asked her to wait a bit longer and if he still didn’t come, let me know and I’d go over.

My other told me to not bother. She would just take some Tylenol and go to bed. She would be okay.

*sigh*

I hated to do that, but I also really didn’t want to drive to her town, in the dark, in the rain.

This morning, after I did my rounds (it was still raining), I gave her a call.

In which I will pause to share the cuteness! The first picture was taken last night, the second this morning.

Seeing Colby on top of his sister like that is adorable!

She needs a name.

Anyhow… back to calling my mother!

My mother told me she’d had a great night.

Then started going on about how the Tylenol helped so much more than her medications did.

Red flag time! My mother has done this before. Basically, she’s convincing herself that the medications aren’t doing her any good, because she has these other problems. How can she be taking all these medications, but still feel have all these other things? This time, because Tylenol did such a great job with her pains, to her that meant it was working better than her medications.

I have explained this to her before, but I did it again. NONE of her medications are for pain. They are all for different things, and I mentioned a few of them. Unfortunately, I could hear in the tone of her response that she was basically not believing me.

It’s a good thing she gets home care med assists, or she would start skipping her meds regularly, or picking and choosing which ones to take. Again.

To distract, I then asked her about her grocery shopping. She said she was only out of milk and hadn’t started a list. She was in her night gown and didn’t feel like getting dressed. I told her, don’t bother getting dressed, and I’ll help with the list. She was quite happy with that arrangement!

Since I was going to be dropping Eyelet off in the early evening, I wanted to get to my mothers a little bit earlier than usual. Once there, I first focused on her meds. I found a pill organizer and took the meds out of her “orphan” bubbles; last night’s bed time meds and a Monday morning bubble that’s been carried over to new packs for a couple of months now. I made sure to write down which meds they were and tucked the note in one of the organizer spots and tucked the whole thing away. My mother has strict instructions to leave them, unless there’s an “emergency”. I also prepared her bed time meds for tonight – I brought another of the tiny tagine sauce bowls to keep them in – and set up another note with it, setting it aside with the note facing where my mother sits at her table.

That done, we started working on her shopping list. It was mostly her usual items, but we did remember to include things we’d forgotten last time, like the instant oatmeal that makes things so much easier for her. Some things were just “see what looks good” type stuff. When she gave me cash for the trip, she included a bit extra, asking me to keep an eye out for anything else I might spot and know she would like.

Which worked out well. I was able to get her extra fruit that she likes but normally wouldn’t get. Today, they happened to be on sale. Her favourite bread was on sale, so I got extra for her freezer. That sort of thing. As I put things away, I always go over what I got and what changes I made, and she was very happy with the selections. Before putting the milk carton in the fridge, I made sure to open it for her, and I’m glad I did. For some reason, every now and then, they just don’t want to open. If it’s difficult for me to open, that would make it almost impossible for my mother to open! I do wish her grocery store still had their 2L milk in jugs as well as cartons, as jugs are so much better for people with mobility issues in their hands.

That done, I made sure to give her floor a sweep before heading out. One of her neighbours that has a garden plot has been sharing their bounty of tomatoes by leaving them in the common room for anyone to take. My mother keeps taking some, even though she already has, and is supposed to avoid acidic foods like tomatoes. So she gave me an ice cream bucket full to take home! We still haven’t finished off the last bunch she gave us!

Once I was in the truck, I started messaging my family to let them know the status of things. Which is when I started getting messages from the woman I was to bring Eyelet to. She was wondering if I could bring him to a different address, as she’d forgotten she was supposed to go there after her work this evening. It wasn’t far from her own address, so that worked out okay.

We continued our conversation as I got home when she asked when I was planning to head out with Eyelet. I told her, but mentioned that I was flexible, now that I was done with my mother’s grocery shopping. She asked if I could bring him in right away. The new address is for a foster that already had a room ready for him and was home.

!!!

I was back on the road with Eyelet within 10 minutes. My daughter went looking for him as I got a carrier prepared. Finding him was easy. He was napping in the sun room.

He did not appreciate being awakened, then stuck into a carrier!

I grabbed a donated carrier that is triangle shaped and opens on one side, which makes it easy to take cats in and out. It is, however, not our largest carrier.

Eyelet was not happy!

So not happy, he stress pooped in the carrier during the drive out.

*sigh*

He went back and forth between trying to claw his way out of the carrier, to just lying down calmly, and back again, which meant he got messy in the process.

When I got to the address and the woman came out to greet me, I made sure to let her know! I then followed her in to Eyelet’s new home for the next few days.

What a set up! An entire little bedroom, all to himself, with several beds, including one at a window, a cat tree, toys and, of course, a litter pan and food and water. He was enough of a mess that she brought a cloth to wipe him off a bit before taking him out of the carrier.

Dude was not impressed!

He did, however, start purring as soon as she touched him! He was very open to pets in general.

I’ve since gotten an update that he has settled into his new digs very well. I’m not at all surprised. The set up is pure luxury compared to the yard cat life!

The best part is that this was all done well before I was originally scheduled to deliver Eyelet. It even stopped raining shortly after I got home.

It was an awesome rain, too. Almost 24 hours of constant rain. Nothing too heavy, either. The sort of rain we could have used so much of over the summer!

Meanwhile, my brother came out today. I didn’t even realize he was here until I left for my mother’s and saw his car. He’s been busy preparing their trailer for the winter, including driving it out to where the tanks can be emptied. When I got back from delivering Eyelet, he was able to come over and tell me what he’d been able to do for my mother’s car. There’s still more to be done, but it can wait. The priority was to deal with that tire that keeps going flat. He just used the spray stuff in it, then made sure to drive it around, and even put it up on a jack to just spin the tire, so it wouldn’t cure in a puddle inside the tire.

Tomorrow afternoon, he and I will be going to my mother’s tomorrow, and her car is one of the main things she wants to talk about. She says she wants him to get it all fixed up, and that she would pay for it, so that we have a second vehicle, and one that she can get in and out of. It might be better off to sell it, or maybe trade it in for a newer vehicle. My brother is in a better position to make recommendations on that than I am.

So we’ll see how that works out.

Weather wise, next week is looking to be warmer again, and dry. That will be when we seriously need to get the sun room cleaned out. That requires basically emptying it, so we can wash the concrete floor. The cat cage can’t fit through the door without being dismantled, so the room has to be done one half at a time. It’s going to be a big, messy job. I’m going to have to stop storing most of my tools and garden supplies in there. The cats, skunks and raccoons get into it all and make such a mess – and make messes on top of things!

With the rain, I’ve made little additional progress in cleaning up the garden, but tomorrow is the 21st, which is when I’ve been typically doing my garden tour videos. It also happens to be the first day of our new average frost date range. Instead of one day, they now have a range of days. Which isn’t how an average works, but whatever. They now say our average first frost days is between Sept 21 and 30, from the previous Sept. 10. Of course, this year, we had two frosts before Sept. 10! Well, it’ll be another 30 years before they do the math again. I’m still sticking with Sept. 10, when I work out when to do things in the garden, and what the length of our growing season is. It was 99 days before. Now it’s supposedly 125-150 days, since the last frost date has changed, too.

Yeah… I don’t think so. Not a chance, where we are.

Gosh, though… having a 125 day growing season would be amazing. 150 days would be heavenly! There’s so much more we could grow with a season that long!

Ah, well. A girl can dream but, in the end, we have to deal with what we’ve got in our local climate, not what a map of averages says.

Time for me to head outside for my evening rounds before it gets dark, and see examples of that along the way!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, and good grief, what a day

September 16, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s the noon hour as I start this, and it’s already been a day!!! It feels like it should be evening by now.

Morning was pretty typical. I had to get my daughter to help me with getting into the sun room as kittens swirled their way through the door under my feet. My main focus is to not step on anything while holding the kibble bowl high so I can see. Once I got some food out, my daughter was able to put a food bowl of fresh kitten soup into the cat cage, was wasn’t able to take the old one out, as she was in a vortex of hungry kitties! By the time I got back from adding food to the different feeding stations in the yard, things had calmed down. My daughter and I had the chance to snag Frank’s two babies that had sticky eyes – one had both eyes stuck shut, the other just one eye – into the bathroom to wash their eyes until they could open again.

Then I could do the rest of my rounds and check on the garden bed. I’m glad we did water it last night, as the predicted storms and rain we were supposed to get yesterday fizzled out and we got no real rain at all.

The first photo above is of the blooming luffa. One by one, male flowers in different clusters are blooming. Still no female flowers. Not that it matters at this point. It’s the middle of September. Under normal circumstances, we’d have fully developed luffa gourds right now.

I had a surprise when I got to the trellis bed. The one sunflower seed head that was opening up has gotten much bigger, just overnight. This particular sunflower also has multiple seed heads, two of which just exploded open overnight! I tried to get a picture of all the seed heads that are starting to open along the stalk and did get most of them. In the third picture, you can see four along the stalk, but there’s a fifth one hidden by a leaf at the bottom that is also starting to open.

In the next picture, you can see our first aster flower bud has finally opened! The package of memorial seeds these are from had a mixture, if I remember correctly, so I expect different colours from the others I see forming buds.

In the last photo, we have our “just for today” harvest. There was a handful of beans to pick this morning, along with a single zucchini. I decided to go ahead and harvest the last of the kohlrabi. The remaining plants don’t seem to be forming their… bulbs? … at all. I also grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves.

There was one wonky purple kohlrabi that I decided to use right away in my breakfast, along with the chard leaves and stalks and a small Turkish Orange eggplant that I’d harvested previously. Those got stir fried to go along with some leftovers.

I didn’t peel the eggplant, partly because I’d picked such a small one. I did find the peels to be a bit on the bitter side.

My older daughter had used one to include in her stir fry last night. I’d gone to bed before she was done, so when I was talking to my younger daughter this morning, I asked how it turned out.

She told me, her sister had had to throw it away.

????!!!!

They may her lips go numb! They were the only new thing in her stir fry, so they were the only thing that could have been causing it. We’ve eaten eggplant before and she’s never reacted to any of them before, but those were the more typical purple varieties. The Turkish Orange is very different. Being so different is why I got the seeds to try.

I had no such reaction. I just found the skins bitter. Very strange! It does mean that we won’t be growing this variety again, though.

As I was setting down with my own breakfast, I noticed I had a phone message.

From home care.

Thankfully, it was NOT a call for me to come in. My mother’s med assist for this morning was scheduled for 8:50, and I was getting the message at past 9:30. The message was to let me know that there had been a last minute cancellation. They did find someone else to cover the med assist, but it would be much later; perhaps 9:45.

I called my mother right away to let her know. When she answered, she mentioned she was making her breakfast at the time, but didn’t say anything about no one showing up to do her meds. I told her about the message I got and when to expect someone to come. It was almost that time, so it was a short phone call.

That done, I finished my breakfast and was starting to upload the photos for this post on Instagram when my younger daughter came over to talk about what to work on today. She decided that this would be the day to do work on the yard and garden tools. So, for the next while, she got her supplies set up on the bench under the canopy tent while I gathered the various things that needed to be worked on. Some needing repairs, as well. It’ll probably take her a couple of days to work through them all.

After she was all set up (and we paused to wash kitten eyes again!) and working on cleaning and sharpening various cutting tools, I headed back in to work on this blog post. I got a message from my daughter who remembered there were some tools in the basement that needed to be worked on. Since I hadn’t started writing yet, I headed down right away to look for them. I knew I’d put all the ones that needed work into one container, but couldn’t find the container – in fact, I couldn’t even remember what container I’d put them in (it turned out to be an old plastic lunch box. 😄) – when the phone started ringing.

I was expecting an important call, so I started heading upstairs, promptly losing my slippers as I rushed up the stairs. The answering machine picked up before I got to the phone, and I heard my mother’s voice starting to rant at the machine.

I picked up the phone while she was doing that. It turned out she had tried to call my sister, first, and there was no answer, so when she called me and it went to machine, she was really upset. Was my sister gone on holidays already? She’s supposed to be gone for two weeks… I told her, I knew nothing about this. (This is the time of year for her church’s harvest feast – one of only two “Biblical” holidays they’re allowed to celebrate – but she’s not mentioned anything about it to me.)

My mother then started telling me how badly she was feeling. She was dying. She’d used the life line and talked to the responder, who asked her what she wanted them to do. She said, they kept asking what she wanted them to do until she finally told them to just leave her alone.

…

I told her, the proper response would have been to have them call an ambulance if she were feeling that badly!

She didn’t want an ambulance. She didn’t want the hassle (I can’t blame her for that!). She would need to someone to get her bag (her prepared hospital bag), her purse, and if she’s in the hospital “they” will come in and steal her stuff.

???

I told her that if she’s really feeling that bad, have the Lifeline call an ambulance (911 seems to be too much for my mother to grasp), and the paramedics could make sure to grab her prepared bags.

No, she doesn’t want strangers. She needs us (me and my siblings). She needs someone around her all the time. She relies on us…

I told her, we can’t live with her! What did she want me to do for her?

She had no answer. She just kept on about how poorly she is doing, how hard it is to do things, and her breathing. She needs someone with her. She needs to be in a nursing home.

But she doesn’t want to go to the hospital. She relies on us… then she started trying to rag on about my brother; he doesn’t call, he doesn’t visit. They’ve actually just gone through a rather scary health emergency with my SIL while she was out of province, but they don’t want to tell my mother about it. My mother handles such information very badly and can be downright cruel. They just got back home today and my brother immediately had to go to work to take part in a couple of important meetings. His job is in internet security at an international level. This is at a level even I have a hard time grasping, it’s so above my pay grade, so to speak. Not something my mother can even begin to understand. I did tell her that he was at an important meeting right now, but added that we did arrange to come out to her place on Sunday, as she requested. I’d forgotten to mention it when I called her this morning.

That mollified her somewhat. She told me that she would “be brave” and hold out until Sunday.

*sigh*

What I told her I would do is call the home care office for her town as soon as I got off the phone with her. I’d let them know that my mother’s condition is deteriorating. All the home care coordinator can do, however, is update the files with this information and send it up the chain. It’s another department that makes the decisions on whether someone can go into a nursing home or assisted living facility. I had to remind my mother about how shocked her doctor was that they hadn’t already approved her for a nursing home.

I wish I’d thought of it at the time, but if my mother did decide to go to go to the hospital, that might be just the thing that would finally get her into a nursing home, like she wants. That’s the typical way it works; a person ends up in the hospital with a broken hip or something, and only then do they get to go to a nursing home from the hospital. My father was an exception. He was getting home care three times a day, but his care included things like helping him use the toilet, bathing and even eating. A hospital bed was set up in the living room next to the window, so he could see outside, with a commode nearby, because he could no longer take the two steps between the old and new parts of the house to get to the bathroom. It was the home care aids that said he’d reached a point where they could no longer provide the care he needed, and that got him into a nursing home right away. Six months later, he passed away.

It is so incredibly frustrating. My mother should not be living on her own. She insists that she can still cook and dress and bath and toilet herself, when I really don’t think she should be. Every time home care offers what they can for her, she turns it down.

Among my siblings, none of us are able to have her live with us and give her the care she needs. None of us have accessible enough housing, even if we did. She is struggling, but refuses to make the decisions she needs to be making. She expects everyone else to make those decisions which, in many cases, they aren’t even allowed to make on her behalf. This is not a new thing; she’s always been one to deflect responsibility to others. It’s just gotten more extreme as she gets older.

Anyhow.

After telling my mother I would call the home care coordinator as soon as I got off the phone with her, my mother kept me on the phone for another few minutes. I finally had to get almost rude to get off the phone so I could make the call!

By then, it was past noon, and she was probably on lunch. I got her voice mail and left a message about my mother’s condition deteriorating.

That done, I updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to looking for the tools my daughter had asked for – and retrieve my slippers. The box I was looking for turned out to be on a shelf right at the bottom of the steps. I’d put it there specifically so it would be easy to find!

So I brought that out to my daughter and updated her, since all I was able to do was sent a message that I’d gotten a call from my mother and needed to make more calls.

Updating her also gave me a chance to catch my breath.

Now that I’m almost done this, I’ll soon be going into town to pick up prescription refills for my husband. I’m still half expecting a call, but if it hasn’t come in by now, it probably won’t. While in town, while I’ve got a strong data signal, I’ll have to try and set my phone up for Wi-Fi calling again. I can’t even get text messages right now. Which is a pain when I try to log into my bank account on my desktop. They don’t do it on my phone, but if I use my desktop, they always want me to input a code. Every. Time. I try to log in. The problem is, by the time the texted code gets to my phone, the log in session is expired. Sometimes, if I go outside and walk around the yard, it’ll come in faster, but I’m not always in a position to do that.

Frustrating.

Ah, well. It is what it is.

Time to get ready to head into town!

The Re-Farmer

Fast little grublings, and … possible help?

September 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I just have to start with this adorableness.

Frank’s kittens have gotten big enough and active enough to get in and out of the cat cage.

There are two of them.

My daughter’s t-shirt is appropriate. It reads “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” It’s actually an old design by her sister.

With so many kittens figuring out where the food comes from in the morning, it’s getting really difficult to get into the sun room from the old kitchen, while holding the kibble bowl, going through two doors, trying not to step on any kittens and trying to stop them from running into the old kitchen. There’s one kitten in particular that is so incredibly tiny, and so determined to get underfoot! He loves to be picked up and help, but hasn’t learned to stay away from feet!

So my daughter has been joining me to help with the doors, catching kittens as they try to run inside and then, once I’ve distracted cat enough by filling the kibble trays in the sun room and starting to do the ones outside, put a bowl of kitten soup into the cat cage. So far, the littles have just sniffed at it, but their mama can at least enjoy her own special treat when she comes in to nurse them.

My daughter has also been able to help with eye washing. One of the kittens she’s holding in the photo had one eye stuck shut, and we’d just finished washing it. Aside from the occaisional stickiness, Frank’s kittens are looking really strong and healthy. More so than some of the older littes!

Today turned out to be another day of going to my mother’s place. I almost forgot that it was arranged for me to pick up her bubble packs at the pharmacy. The pharmacy opens at noon on Sundays in her town, and I knew someone was going to be bringing her communion after church, so I was shooting to get to her place closer to 1pm. Since I was there anyhow, I made sure to pick up the Tylenol and kitchen garbage bags I hadn’t been able to get at her grocery shopping trips. I figured she probably forgot that I was supposed to pick up her medications today, so I called her before I left the pharmacy, but got her answering machine. When I got there, she was in the common room, enjoying the view out the window, and was very surprised to see me!

Even though we talked about it before, my mother was a bit ticked off that her got her refills so “early”. She had the equivalent of 8 days left in her lock box, and she still has the mindset of not getting refills until the last minute. They make up their bubble packs on Saturdays only, and I had told her I talked to the pharmacist to push her refills back a week so there would be less chance of her running out before they make the next refills. I don’t think she remembered the conversation, but that’s okay.

I remembered her telling me that my sister hadn’t taken out her garbage yet, because she was out of garbage bags, so I took care of that – and found that she did still have a few garbage bags left. The box was hidden behind the garbage can. 😄

My mother was very happy that I’d picked up more Tylenol for her. That was something she was almost out of.

After I came back from taking out her garbage, my mother started getting some cash out to pay me back for her stuff. Which reminded her of something she had meant to talk to me about.

The next while was very confusing, as she first started asking me about if the front door had been replaced yet, and how much it was going to cost. Then she started talking about her car, and “using that” to pay for it. Now, the last time she talked about her car, it was to tell me to go ahead and sell it. At first, I thought she was suggesting we get her car fixed up to sell and use the funds to pay for the door, except she wasn’t talking about the door anymore. I did get a chance to tell her my brother had checked the car out and tried to explain what he’d found, but she wasn’t interested and got annoyed that I was telling her this, even as she was telling me she wanted my brother to get the car fixed.

After much confusing and questioning, I finally got the straight of what she was wanting. She wants my brother and I to sit down with her and talk about the car and her money that she has in a tax free savings account. She wants my brother, with his Power of Attorney, to use that to get her car fixed up and running, because I need two vehicles, and she can’t get into my truck anymore. When I told her, now that we have truck payments, we can’t afford to pay the insurance on two vehicles anymore, she said she would pay for the insurance. She then started saying some other things and…

I’m not going to count on this, because of her history on such promises in the past, but I think she was offering to cover the cost of getting the new door installed. Considering we’ve had to go into debt to pay for it, on top of the truck repairs we had to do (having to replace the front tires, the MAF sensor issues, etc), that would be a huge help for us. Her comment was, the money is just sitting there, may as well use it.

!!!

Once I finally understood what she was trying to tell me – half the time, she talked as if I could read her mind, or she thought she’d already told me some things – I told her I would pass that on to my brother. She insisted, no talking this out on the phone or messaging or whatever. She wants us to both be at her place, in person. Which is the slower way to do it, but I do understand why she wants that.

She also insisted that we not be in a hurry to leave, but to spend time with her. The only problem with that is, her idea of being “in a hurry to leave” can change pretty dramatically at times! I’ve been at her place for hours and, when I finally had to leave, she accused me of being in a rush, etc. Other times, I’ve been at her place for less than an hour and she’s all but kicked me out, because she was done with company! 😄

Like today. I asked my mother if there was anything else she needed help with, and offered to make lunch for her, but she said she was fine, then told me I could leave, now. 😄 I think I was there for maybe 15 minutes. Twenty, at most.

Once I was done, I had to make a side trip. I’d used my card to pay for my mother’s stuff and she paid me back in cash. Our bank that we have our main accounts in used to have a branch in my mother’s town, but it was closed some months ago, so I can no longer use a bank machine to deposit the cash. The nearest branch of our bank is now much further away, so I decided to go to the town nearer to us where there’s a bank I have my own personal banking in. I’ve had an account there since I was in my teens and just never closed it when we moved and moved and moved again. I could deposit the cash there, then do e-transfers to pay off what I used on my card.

I had just reached town and was slowing down for a stop sign when something strange happened.

The check engine light started blinking.

It didn’t just turn on. It was blinking. I’ve never seen that happen before.

Then it went away.

So now, after all the weird stuff we’ve had going on with it, I’m absolutely paranoid about the truck.

My brother and I had been talking about selling my mother’s car, as she originally wanted us to do. The truth is, we really do need a second vehicle, and that sudden blinking light on the dash just reminded me of why.

Tomorrow, I need to remember to hook up the OBDII scanner and see if it picks up anything of concern. I’m also due for an oil change within another 1000km, so that will give the guys at the garage a chance to check it out.

I’ve already passed on the message to my brother and we’ll be visiting my mother together next Sunday. We can work things out if my mother backs out on helping us again, but if she follows through with it, and my brother is made responsible for taking care of things, the help would be much appreciated. So we’ll see how that goes!

At least she no longer rants at me about how the house was perfect, everything was perfect, when we moved in to take care of it for her, so why are there all these things that we need to fix? It took a few years, but now she’ll say things like “nothing lasts forever”. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Sudden changes in plans, and morning photos

September 13, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, a follow up from yesterday. It took many hours, but the debilitating pain that had set into my left hip during the night did recede. I found myself able to walk normally again – not even a limp! – but my hip still feels very… unstable.

Which turned out to be a good thing, because my evening plans changed completely.

Yesterday evening, after a very warm day, I took advantage of being able to walk again, headed out and watered what’s left of the garden. I was back inside and settled down with my supper when I saw there was a message on the answering machine.

From home care.

The message told me they had a last minute cancellation and there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist (they are just a few hours apart and typically done by the same home care aide). I was, however, assured that Saturday and Sunday were covered.

I got the message about an hour after it was left, since I was outside when the call came – and about 15 minutes away from when my mother’s supper assists are scheduled this cycle.

It takes about half an hour to get to her place, even if I just grab and go. I did quickly call my mother to let her know I was on my way, got my husband to tuck my supper into the oven, and headed out.

When I got there, my mother did try to do her usual snarky comments about, have they hired me yet? and the usual giving me a hard time for covering for home care again. I’ve still been in a dark place in the last while and I just told her, please don’t. I’m not in the mood for it. She paused a moment, then said, neither am I.

She did, however, have a good day. My sister had come out on her day off. Being a Friday, it was my mother’s scheduled turn for the laundry room, so my sister took care of that for her, as well as doing her dishes and light housework. It was much appreciated.

I helped my mother settle in with her supper to take her supper meds with, so I could then get her bed time meds ready, and she asked if I wanted a piece of her birthday cheesecake that I got for her. She had just a couple of pieces left, and had already had one with my sister. I agreed, and it gave me a chance to ask my mother about when she wanted me to do her grocery shopping.

It turned out she was already working on her list. I asked if she wanted me to come back tomorrow (which would have been today), and she said she had an appointment with her hair dresser – someone who comes to her apartment to cut her hair, which is really nice! – in the afternoon. As we were going back and forth I suggested, I could just do it right then. That way, I wouldn’t have to come back over the weekend. My mother was surprised by this, as she thought the grocery store closed much earlier. It was too close to closing for the pharmacy, though, so that got skipped. She only needed one thing there, anyhow, and not urgently.

So I did her grocery shopping and got everything put away. As we were chatting, she asked how I was and I mentioned I was out of sorts and explained a little bit about why. My mother had heard of the assassination but, of course, she only heard it from the TV news – “that guy from the states?” – and Canadian news has been lying about Charlie Kirk at every turn. Especially the CBC. So I told her who he really was. None of which was talked about on the TV.

I don’t think it’s possible to hate the mainstream media enough. I’ve had plenty of personal experience as to how dishonest and manipulative they are, over the span of decades, yet it still surprises me, just how bad they can be.

I didn’t stay too long, though, and was soon back home and having my supper. Then I noticed a notification on my cell phone.

I had a voice mail message.

My cell phone never rang.

After fussing with it for a bit, I realized the Wi-Fi calling had been turned off again – my phone keeps doing that on its own, and I don’t know why. I wasn’t able to get the message because there wasn’t enough signal. I couldn’t even go through the process of getting the wi-fi calling set up again, which required once again confirming my identity. I ended up having to go outside and wander around the yard, trying to find a strong enough data signal, to finally get it set up. Only then could I finally listen to the message.

It was home care.

The scheduler was very apologetic, but there was another cancellation. There was no one to do my mother’s morning med assist for today.

*sigh*

We were already planning to do a dump run, then a trip to a Walmart, and now I had to go to my mother’s again. The timing for it worked out, but it did mean almost another hour extra of driving.

So I called my mother again, thankfully getting her before she went to bed, and let her know I’d be back in the morning. She was not impressed. None of us are. My husband is getting right ticked off. He even went online to try and find somewhere to complain. What he did find were some forums with many, many other people in the same home care region we are in, having to deal with the same problem.

With the time scheduled for my mother’s morning med assist in mind, I managed to get to bed early and, happily, I did not have a repeat of what happened to my hip the night before. I still don’t know what triggered it in the first place!

I did my morning rounds early. There isn’t much to do in the garden, so things are done faster these days.

I did have to get a picture of that one Hopi Black Dye sunflower again.

Every day, more and more of it is actually developing seeds and they’re starting to bloom! I’m still amazed it survived the frosts.

In the next picture, you can see a huge cluster of tree mushrooms I found. I’d heard a cat commotion by the collapsing log building by the fire pit and checked to see what it was. It turned out to be The Grink, chasing after Sprout’s little calico (Sprout, once again, is AWOL). It was way up in a tree next to the log building. I did get The Grink away enough that the little one was able to get down.

Speaking of little ones…

Frank is such a good mama! And her littles are getting used to being handled. The one kitten who’s eyes have been getting stuck shut seems to be past the worst of it. No eye washing needed today!

The next photo is of, I think, one of Slick’s little tabbies. It was enjoying the cat bed in the catio that we moved over to lure the garage kittens to the house. They’re not using the catio since we moved it, but the littles are enjoying it! The garage kittens still seem to be using the garage as “home base”, but I am seeing them near the house a lot more often now.

Last night, I was hearing that we were supposed to have a dense fog this morning. It wasn’t too close around the property as I was doing my rounds.

Then I started driving to my mother’s.

I had to pull over at one point, just to take pictures, about a mile from home. When I was driving between the trees, there wasn’t much, but as soon as I cleared the trees and reached fields, it was like driving through a wall!

Keep in mind with the above photos, that the camera “cleans up” the shots, so the fog was actually denser than it appears in the photos.

Very moody.

Also, by the time I was heading out, the sun was fully up and we had bright sunshine!

Once I got onto the highway, it was even thicker, to the point that I had to reduce speed due to lack of visibility. I did eventually catch up to a shadow that turned out to be a car. Then we’d go through a section of highway bordered by trees, and the fog would disappear and we could see just fine. Then we’d enter a section surrounded by fields, and it would be like driving into a wall of fog.

Then… it was gone. Such a stark delineation!

When I got to my mother’s she was really struggling. She was still in bed and really didn’t want to get up. I can’t blame her! She’s had a sleepless night, too.

Yesterday’s grocery shopping trip had missed a few things. Particularly milk. It wasn’t on her list and I’d considered getting some anyway, but my mother has specifically said she had milk. I figured my sister had brought her some. It turned out my mother was thinking she had enough to last until I came to do her grocery shopping… on Sunday.

The day she told me she didn’t want to have her grocery shopping done on anymore…

She was so out of sorts, though, one minute saying she needed milk, then asking me to check and see if she needed milk (she did), and not to get this other thing that got missed, or maybe something else or…

I finally told her to just enjoy her breakfast, and I would get her some milk. The rest could wait.

Then, as I was heading out the door, I hear “and apples!”

😄

So that was a short shopping trip.

That done, I headed home where my daughter had things ready to start loading up the truck for the dump run. When we got to the pit, we were happy to see that they had finally cleared the wall of garbage at the pit edge. There was room to turn again!

Once we were finished there, we continued on, first making a stop at a gas station in town, along the way. The price there was still $1.409, whereas in my mother’s town, it was $1.419 With all the extra driving, I was down to a quarter tank. I really try to avoid letting it get below half. I asked for $50 in gas, and it didn’t even get me to 3/4 of a tank. By the time we reached the Walmart, I was at half a tank again.

*sigh*

I had a short shopping list for myself – mostly more cat food – while my daughter had a list for herself and her sister. She couldn’t find everything on it, though, so we decided to go to a regular grocery store further on. As we were driving to it, we passed an independent gas station.

The price on their sign was $1.349

After we finished at the grocery store (my daughter still had trouble finding one item!), I made a point of stopping at that gas station again and added another $30.

The price on the pump was $1.299

That $30 sure went a lot further!

From there, we could finally head home, unload, and finally settle in. Today was originally supposed to be just a dump run day, and instead I was out for most of it.

It’s been hotter today than yesterday, and it just now starting to cool down for the evening, so I’ll be heading out to water things again before bed. The next three days are supposed to be as hot, or hotter, than today, so still no need to cover garden beds yet. After that, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit. Enough that I will probably keep the winter squash bed covered both day and night. I’m still amazed that was have any squash developing at all, so I want to give them every change to mature!

Getting outside and being productive has also been good for my overall mood, too, so the more of that, the better.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, adorableness, and unexpected outings

September 8, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I headed outside this morning with my usual feeding of adorable beasts and doing my rounds. I had a bit of a surprise when I got to the main garden area.

In the first picture, you can see a Hopi Black Dye sunflower, still trying to bloom! All of the sunflowers, which I thought were killed off by our last frost, look like they’ve actually recovered! Wild!

I had some plans to make a stew later today, so I decided to do a small harvest (second image above). Just enough potatoes for the day, plus our only bulb onions of the year! These were in the high raised bed and their necks were bent by rolling cats, so they weren’t going to get any bigger. The only onions we planted this year were the seeds included in our seed mixes. Quite a few came up, then disappeared. In the high raised bed, just these got big enough to form bulbs. All the others were basically just the greens. Even the really strong and healthy looking ones in the old kitchen garden are nowhere near starting to form bulbs.

Next year, we’ll be starting seeds indoors again. 😄 From our own seed, too.

I was back inside, helping my daughter, who’d been working on the “cat free zone” (the living room) for most of the night. We’ve basically been just shoving things that needed to be protected from the cats into there, but never quite getting the chance to go back and put them away properly. It had gotten to the point that there was just a path in between furniture to the shelves in front of the window, where I’ve got tomatoes ripening and seeds drying.

I didn’t get to help her for long before the phone rang.

It was home care.

I have to admit, it’s been a long time since they’ve called. The scheduler was very apologetic, but they had a last minute cancellation. Someone called in sick.

My mother’s meds were scheduled for 9am.

It was about 8:35 when she called. Driving time alone to my mother’s is 25 minutes.

I didn’t even bother changing out of my grubbies. I just made a quick call and left a message with my mother, grabbed my purse and headed out. So she got her meds just a little bit behind schedule.

Apparently, the person who was supposed to come this morning was also supposed to do my mother’s two evening visits, and she didn’t show up for those, either. Apparently, a guy came to do it, and he was all the way from the city! I appreciate that they found someone to do her evening meds. Her and however many other people are on that home care aide’s list!

In the end, it worked out. My mother was still in bed and not feeling well. I ended up making some toast for her, so she’d have something to eat with her meds. She also likes to have milk, half and half with boiling water, as her beverage, so I made that, too – finishing off both her milk and a loaf of bread in the process of making her breakfast. I told her I would get her more milk and asked if she needed anything else. I figured I would go get it while she was having a peaceful breakfast.

Which is when things got strange. I have no idea how she interpreted my request, but she seemed to think I was trying to rush her and was leaving right away or… I don’t know. She started going on about how she needs to rely on me and my siblings more now, and making …. less than charitable, shall we say … comments about my brother and sister. Now, I admit, to a certain extent, I can understand about my sister. She used to call my mother almost every say, and visit on some of her days off from work (she only works 3 days a week at a Walmart). In fact, my mother used to lord it over me, how my sister was calling her every day. Then my sister started to get more involved in their church again. The Worldwide Church of God, which is recognized as a cult. Her behaviour has changed since then, and she has been … not cutting the family off, but definitely cutting us out of things. She’s back to refusing to celebrate birthdays (they’d relaxed on that for a while) and hating Christmas and Easter, going on with the long debunked claims about them being pagan holidays, etc. There are definite issues there, but my sister does still do things like to my mother’s laundry, or mop her floors, and will pick up things like clothes and other things from Walmart for her. My sister used to sew her own clothes all the time and she knows my mother’s measurements, so anything she gets for my mother, she tailors to fit. So while there is definitely tension and issues, she does still help out in ways my brother and I can’t. We each have things we can do individually for my mother that the others aren’t able to.

Anyhow.

She made a comment about my wanting to leave so soon (I think she decided my wanted to get her milk while she was having breakfast meant I was in a hurry to leave?) and how there are two girls at home that can help take care of my husband. Which threw me, because my mind wasn’t there at all. I told her, we’re winterizing. There’s lots of work to do. She actually seemed confused by that. I don’t think she ever knew all the things my dad and brothers did to prepare the house and yards for winter.

I kept trying to bring her back to, I want to get you milk, do you need anything else? but she kept going back to saying things about my brother and sister. Finally, I just grabbed my hat and purse and told her, I’m going to get you some milk.

To which she told me to hold on… she might need something else…

…

*sigh*

In the end, there were just a couple of things from the grocery store she wanted, but we also checked her Volataren supply. She still had but, since she’s using it on her back now, as well as her knees, it was worth picking up more. Which meant a trip to the pharmacy.

My mother then started getting cash out, took out a 50, and asked if I wanted an envelope. I said it would be good, since I put all her change and receipts back into the envelope for her to go through later. She started looking for an envelope, found one on her table – and it still had the change and receipts from the last time I did shopping for her! Then, just in case, she took the bills from that and included it with the $50 bill she already had ready.

I then left her to her breakfast and my first stop was at the pharmacy. They know me pretty well by now, and I’ve had pleasant chats with the manager a few times. They are aware that I’m shopping on behalf of my mother, and I’ve also talked about having to come in to cover for home care way too often. So when I came in and the manager saw me coming in so early in the day, I told him about home care cancelling again this morning – but, it turned out to be okay, since it meant I could run errands for my mother, too.

He laughed and said, “let’s not tell them that!” 😄

My mother’s Voltaren turned out to be on sale, which was nice – until I tried to hand over the $50, then went into my own wallet for the change. The manager very sheepishly asked if I had anything smaller. This early in the day, making change for a $50 would have emptied his float! He even commented that he should have a bigger float, but almost no one pays in cash anymore. In the end, I had enough of my own cash to add to my mother’s smaller bills and was able to pay with exact change. He was so very thankful!

I’ve worked retail for many years. I totally get it!

We talked about how so few people use cash these days, but then you have people like my mother. She simply could not use a debit card. It’s beyond her. He commented that, if ever the machines go down, though, it’s people like my mother that will be in the better position!

That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up the few things my mother wanted, plus I got a couple of extra things that were on sale that I knew she’d enjoy and could put in her freezer. It was still a really small shopping trip.

When I got back to my mother’s and put things away, showing her what I got different, I tried to entertain her with what happened at the pharmacy. In the end, I think I only confused her. She seemed to be trying to figure out how they were trying to cheat her by not being able to make change for a $50 bill, that early in the day.

*sigh*

Then she started going through the envelope with the change and receipts and the contents didn’t make sense to her. I told her again, because I used the smaller bills, adding in my own cash, there was no change from the pharmacy. The change in the envelope was only from the grocery store.

I’m not sure she got it.

In the end, I didn’t stay much longer. My mother was feeling very tired and I encouraged her to go back to bed, which she said she would do. She told me she’d even used her LifeLine last night, to talk to someone about how she was feeling. She wanted them to tell her what to do, but they can’t really do that. The guy did ask her if she wanted him to call an ambulance, and she told him no. Instead, she told him he could go back to bed, and she would do the same.

I hope she did go back to bed after I left!

From there, I went straight home. My daughter had managed a lot more progress on the living room while I was gone, including moving some things to the basement. (If we can figure out how to get it down the steps, I’d like to move the big aquarium to the basement, too.) She was really exhausted – I think she was up all night! – and was feeling sick, but had just remembered that she had a prescription to pick up for our joint appointment tomorrow. It’s a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated, so it was something to call in at the last minute. She did that and was told it’d be ready for pick up this afternoon, and I told her I’d take care of it, and sent her off to bed. She was more than happy to do that!

Which meant that, after a couple of hours, I was on the road again. My husband needed a few things from the pharmacy, too, so that worked out. Before heading home, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a couple of small trays of sushi as a thank you for my daughter. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t eaten, again.

By the time I got home again, it was time to feed the outside cats. I headed out again later, to close some things up.

Which is when I spotted this.

Some of the kittens have discovered they really, really like the portable greenhouse! That’s Colby snuggling with a much, much smaller tabby in the foreground. I’m not sure about the other older kitten, watching me through the doorway. I’ll have to remember that distinctive black chin. When I moved around, I spotted two more littles, curled around each other on the grass near a luffa pot. Today was a decently warm day, but they quite enjoy the extra warmth, when they can find it!

I’ll be heading outside one more time before calling it a day. With the extra trips out, I did not accomplish what I’d intended to, but none of it was particularly time dependent. We’ll be out again for much of tomorrow, too. After that, there are no more planned outings until I have to pick up my mother’s refills on Sunday, then my husband and I have a dental appointment later next week. We’re supposed to have good weather so, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the bigger outside projects done. Getting the sun room cleaned out for the winter will probably be the biggest and longest job. The critters have made a real mess in there – and I don’t mean just the cats!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

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

dealing with elderly parents

How things went today

Morning in the garden, the truck is back and… sigh

Work in the garden is good for the heart – especially when our mothers aren’t.

One more little harvest, and how the morning went

So tired

The rain has stopped, and Eyelet is in being spoiled rotten!

Morning in the garden, and good grief, what a day

Fast little grublings, and … possible help?

Sudden changes in plans, and morning photos

Morning in the garden, adorableness, and unexpected outings

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