dealing with pain

A difficult day, but getting better

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

One more day.

One more day after today, and then I’m in for surgery.

It was not a good day today.

Oddly, for the past couple of days, I have been feeling not just frequently hungry, but famished. I don’t have much appetite, but I make myself eat adequate portions yet, only a couple of hours later, I’m famished again. This morning, I woke feeling so hungry, I felt like I would pass out if I didn’t get some food in me.

I did manage to get the outside cat feeding done first. I later found out my daughters were having a difficult time, too.

I got a head count of 14 this morning, as they enjoyed their cat soup. From the state of the sun room, it looks like raccoons were digging around and moving things that cats just don’t have the bulk to move themselves.

The cats definitely are more comfortable with my cat whisperer daughter than with me. Even my older daughter has been able to walk up to and pet the Shrine Lady. You can see her in the second image, eating cat soup outside. She had been in the sun room but ran out with my moving around, even though I had made no effort to approach her. Meanwhile, my daughters have even managed to pet the remaining calico. I saw her this morning. She ate from the tray under the water bowl house and won’t let me anywhere near her. I ended up not topping up the water bowls because I didn’t want to scare them away by dragging the hose around.

I then made myself a large, high protein breakfast, as per my instructions in the homework I got from the cancer clinic. I had to make myself finish it. That whole “being hungry but having no appetite” thing is unpleasant, to say the least. Unfortunately, my pain levels kept getting worse, to the point I had difficult standing up straight and had to walk… in an… interesting posture, shall we say… to reduce strain on the pertinent areas. My daughter had to do the driving and most of the dashing around today.

Which she was having trouble with, too.

I’d considered leaving a bit later, closer to when the post office closed, as I thought a package might be in. I wanted to give the postal clerk time to process things. I checked tracking and found the expected delivery date had changed from tomorrow to Oct. 21, which is the same date as a second package. The depots the packages were in were also in different provinces. There was no way they’d be in this week at all.

So, we headed out about an hour earlier than I originally planned, but still stopped at the post office to get our regular mail. My daughter had to go in to get the mail while I stayed in the truck. It was good that we stopped, because my daughters got what looked like Government of Canada envelopes, and I got my annual notice about our vehicle renewal registration.

My daughter also came back with the package I had thought might come in today, but was suddenly listed as coming in on Oct. 21. So very strange.

As for my letter about our vehicle registration, it also included my driver’s license renewal reminder for next month. I have “safe driving” discounts, so the $55 for the license had a $15 discount. There was, however, another $20 driver’s license fee added on, so the total is $60. One fee goes to the province for issuing the license. I believe the other goes to the insurance company for processing it.

The monthly payments for the insurance on the truck, meanwhile, have gone down again. I have enough merit points on my license that it’s been going down every year. Not by much, but every little bit helps.

Our next stop was in town at the hardware store. My daughter went in with my cards to ask if they had any Roof Melt and pick up a bucket, if they had any in stock. It turned out that it was too early. They’ll be getting some later. I should remember to call them and ask them to set one aside for me and let me know when the inventory has arrived, so we can come in and get it right away.

From there, we finally made it to the pharmacy, and I had to go in for that one. I had to let my daughter take the walker out for me and get it set up before I could even get out of the truck. I felt a bit guilty about about that, as it was clearly painful for her to get it out of the truck for me. She was caning it the whole time herself, and looked like she could have used a walker of her own!

My daughter had her own prescription to refill, but they couldn’t do it today. Tomorrow is their delivery day and it will be ready for then. Which means she will have it before we leave to spend the night at my brother’s.

Then I talked to them about my husband’s refills, and they weren’t able to fill those today, either. They needed to fax his doctor for more refills on one of them. So I made arrangements for those to be delivered tomorrow as well. The pharmacist that helped me looked them up from last time to see the cost, and they weren’t covered, it seems, by either his private nor the province’s prescription insurance. Either that or his 75% coverage still left him with almost $150 to pay.

Then I asked to get a refill on my T3s, but also asked if I had any other painkiller prescriptions on my file. I knew the tramacet wouldn’t be there, as it was only for 14 days, but I couldn’t remember if I still had tramadol available.

I did not.

That’s okay. I just had to wait about 20 minutes to get my 3 month’s worth of T3s. That was less than $45 for the 3 months, after insurance covering 75%.

During this whole time, I was heavily relying on my walker, even as something to lean against while sitting on one of their very comfortable waiting area chairs.

We had one more stop before going home, this time at the grocery store. My husband needed distilled water, which happened to be on sale, so it worked out to be less than what it would have cost at Walmart, for his four 4L jugs. He requested some “healthy crunchies”, which is never easy to find. He was happy with what I managed to find, though. Since I’m supposed to be low carb/high protein, I found some snack meats for both of us – also on sale, which was nice. Since we’re all going to be having much to deal with over the next while, I ended up getting boxed cereal for all of us – all on sale – even though I won’t actually be able to eat any of it for a while. My daughter remembered that we had not picked up pasta at Costco, and some brands were on sale, so we got a few packages. It was a good sale, so there wasn’t much choice left on the shelf. There was a really good sale on a brand of pasta sauce, too, but those shelves were completely empty! Even with all the discounts, it still came out to just over $100, but it came out of my husband’s budget, not our regular grocery budget, which was nice.

Thankfully, by the time we were done there, I was finally starting to feel a bit better and the pain was slowly starting to pass. Which is good, because my daughter was in so much pain that she was trying – and failing – to hide, I could get the walker into the truck myself. Normally, with heavier stuff like the water bottles to bring in, we would have backed up to the house to unload, but my daughter said she wasn’t up to getting back into the cab again to park in the garage, and she didn’t want me driving, so she parked straight into the garage. Thankfully, I have this convenient walker and I used that to carry the heaviest bag with the water bottles, along with another bag, to the house with it.

I did stop along the way to check out the sunflowers.

The Mammoth sunflowers are still blooming, and are pretty much the only thing left for the pollinators (the alpine strawberries are also still blooming). Today is a bit warmer, but it’s still cool enough that the pollinators weren’t moving very much!

The plan had been to take advantage of today’s warmer weather to get things done outside, but that’s not working out. Both my daughters are having issues preventing them from physically doing the stuff today. As for myself, while the pain has finally passed by the time I started writing this, if I try to do any of this stuff myself, it would be back again in a very short time; probably worse. I’ll be heading out to do the outside cat feeding soon and will at least walk around the yard to get some fresh air and sunshine, but that’s pretty much my limit right now.

One more day.

One more day of this, then it’s surgery day! I am so looking forward to it! If all goes to plan, I’ll have my 6 week recovery period, and then I’m going to once again be the most able bodied person in the household again. 😄 By then it will be December, though. Anything we don’t manage to get done in the garden by then will have to wait until spring, unless we have a ludicrously mild winter. Which is possible. We’ve had them before. I recall seeing a local photo, taken in the early 1880’s, of farmers plowing their fields – on Christmas Eve!

A thought occurred to me, though. My daughters both have appointments in the city on November 3 and 4. My older daughter’s appointment is at the Women’s hospital. The original plan had been that I would drop them off, then leave the downtown area and hang out at a shopping area, with free parking, until they messaged me to come get them.

I will still be restricted from driving at that point. Which means we could park where I did last time and I would keep adding $2 to the machine ever half hour until they are done. Or my daughter would have to drive around the maze of streets to find a parking spot and we all walk over, which I would be very limited in doing. Or we would drop off my oldest daughter and my younger daughter would drive us to a shopping area with free parking and stay with me. The hospital has free wifi, so my older daughter, who has a phone but no plan and doesn’t want one, could message us to come back for her.

For her sister’s appointment, the creepy clinic does at least have a whole 3 free parking spots available, just behind the building.

It’s frustrating that we haven’t been able to get my younger daughter her full license by now, and she has to have someone with a full license beside her when she drives. We can’t use our truck for her road test, with the various dashboard lights on. We know what they are on for, but the tester can’t accept that. She has to get 2 hours with a driving instructor before she can do a road test, and we’ve heard of places where they do the 2 hours and then the road test is booked for right after, using the driving school’s vehicle, but there is no one local that does that.

Her sister, meanwhile, can’t even take the written test until she gets her new glasses prescription and finally gets new glasses, and a road test isn’t going to happen until after she has her own surgery. Whenever that will be. Same surgery as what I’m getting in a couple of days, but they’re talking about a 6 month wait, still. Somehow, she’s not considered as urgent as me, even though it nearly killed her.

Bizarre.

But I digress.

Time to go outside and feed some kitties for the evening.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: survivors and a little October harvest

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today turned out to be a rather nice day, that none of us really got to take advantage of.

I found myself awake at 4am and wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so I did the morning cat feeding. Which turned out to be greatly appreciated, as both my daughters were feeling quite sick with colds.

They stayed well away from my and my husband!

I did wake with a sore throat, which could also have been from sleeping with my mouth open, but I’m going to be proactive to try and avoid getting a cold. The last thing I need is for the cancer clinic to call me with a date and time for my surgery, then having to cancel it because of a cold!

The outside cats were quite happy this morning, as I made their cat soup with a couple of little cans of donated wet cat food as well as some cat milk and soaked kibble. We have so many bags of donated cat treats, I ended up scatting three (small) bags of treats all over.

I only saw 11 cats. I did not see Sprout (Sprig?) at all. Hopefully, she came by later. I did get to pet the shrine kitten, though, who no longer eats at the shrine feeding station at all anymore. There is a particular tray she prefers to eat from. The problem with that, though, is that there’s usually four other older cats insisting on eating from that tray, too, even though there are so many others around, scarfing down the food, and she doesn’t get as much. She doesn’t seem to want to eat out of any of the other trays for some reason.

After taking care of the kitties, I stayed out to enjoy the morning and do some light work in the old kitchen garden. I uncovered the self seeded Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and had a chance to give them a good look.

They are doing remarkably well.

Hidden in the thickest greenery, there are tomatoes ripening on the vine!

The frost cloth isn’t long enough to completely cover one end, so the branches there were more frost damaged. I broke off the most damage branches, and found a number of little green tomatoes that had fallen off. So I picked them, which you can see in the second image, and brought them inside to ripen. Between the frost cloth and the more sheltered position in this bed, these tomato plants are protected enough from the colder nights that they’re not being killed off. I’m quite impressed!

After that, I finally removed the cover over the beets and parsnips, and the herb bed. The herb bed was more difficult to remove, as the oregano on one side had grown through the chicken wire quite thickly. I managed to get it off without uprooting anything.

Then I started working on the summer squash, removing all the wire garden ties securing the stalks to their vertical bamboo stake supports, then the ones holding the ends of the woven horizontal supports together, before finally pulling them all up. I was able to make a couple of bundles of 10 stakes all the same length, with the garden wire to secure them. Then I did my usual morning rounds, checking on the other garden beds and the haskaps. With the high winds we had, a lot of the smaller ones in the trays were blown right out, so those got fixed, then watered. I made sure to water the spruce saplings, too. Those little pots will dry out fast.

I didn’t try to take down other covers and rods on other beds yet. The netting and clear vinyl sheets are something I will wait to have a second person help with. With the winds we’ve been having, it’s rather difficult to fold and roll them up for winter storage with just one person.

That done, I headed back in and tried to go back to sleep.

It didn’t work.

I did send a bit of a list to the girls of what I’d gotten done, and what needed to be done with them, mentioning that all the transplanted haskaps would need a deep watering.

I also found an email update on my FIL’s condition. He is, unfortunately, deteriorating and it’s looking like he is not going to be around much longer. His dementia is failing particularly fast, and he has been “sundowning” by the end of the day, talking about things like going to see his parents. They passed away decades ago. It’s been particularly hard on my husband, as he physically can’t make the trip to see his father, and now it seems he won’t even be able to talk to him on the phone. His father is unlikely to even know who he is.

It does make me appreciate just how well my mother is doing.

My SIL messaged to check on me and how I was doing, and we chatted for a fair bit before I finally gave up on lying down. I had intended to go back outside again in the afternoon, but the pain levels suddenly kicked in and I ended up having to lie down again. My daughters, sick as they were, headed outside and deep watered the haskap.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to sleep, because I kept getting notifications! I got some texts from my sister, letting me know she had visited my mother. She was updating me when the phone rang – and it was my mother! She wanted to know how things had gone yesterday. It was a mostly good call, though she did try to go on about how my brother should be doing stuff around here, not us, because he’s a man and we women shouldn’t be doing things like planting trees. Which is bizarre, since she planted many, many trees over the years! (Mostly in terrible places! 😄) She did start talking about how my brother has many important responsibilities, both at work and at home, and how he goes out of province to visit the grandsons, etc. Then, much to my shock, she switched to Polish and said a blessing on him for good health and a long life. My mother rather hates my brother and he can never do anything good enough for her, so when she does stuff like this, it makes me suspicious. She seemed to be genuine, though.

By then, a few hours had gone by and my pain levels finally eased and I did finally make it outside. I meant to just walk around and check on things but, of course, I found small things that I could do.

Including getting a small harvest.

In the East garden bed where I’d planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, I was able to dig up these.

A couple of them were self seeded, while the others were the only ones that germinated from the older seed tape I’d made with them a couple of years ago.

While checking things out in the main garden area, I tried digging up some of the Daikon radish that all bolted. There were no radish roots at all in the ones I dug up. Just the woody material that happens when they bolt, instead.

I did, however, dig up a few Red Bearded bunching onions.

Just enough for today.

As I write this, I’ve got a pork stew going in the Instant Pot, with all these carrots and onions, plus the last of the summer squash I’d picked before the frost got them, along with our own potatoes and our own garlic. The liquid is gelled meat juices from the last of the big brisket I got a while back, cut into individual size roasts that my daughter seasoned well and slow roasted, low and slow, for something like three hours.

I am quite looking forward to it! We don’t have a lot from the garden this year, but we at least have enough for a few meals. Which is better than nothing!

I’m just really appreciating the fact that I was able to harvest anything at all, in October. Looking ahead on the 10 day forecast, we’ve got some mild weather for the next while, and even another day with an expected high of 20C/68F! Things are supposed to be cooler after that, but still relatively mild. The ground isn’t going to freeze for a while, yet. Right now, my time limit is not the weather anymore, but my surgery date. After the surgery, I’m out of commission for 6 weeks, so the more I can get done before the surgery the better, though my daughters will be taking over a lot of things as they are able.

Oh! What is that beeping I hear?

’tis the Instant Pot, finished cooking the stew and now depressurizing.

This is going to be good!

The Re-Farmer

The longest half hour, ever…

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Well, this was a day!

Thanks to my SIL offering to drop us off at the hospital the cancer clinic is in, we didn’t have to leave as early as originally planned, but it was still early enough to see this.

It’s a bit shaky, since I put my phone’s camera on the night setting and had to try and hold still for several seconds, since I had nothing I could use as a tripod. Still, it captured the image quite well, including the stunning deep blue of the sky before the sun rose some 15 minutes later.

Once on the road, we took the highway past our place first, which meant we had a town to drive through. We stopped for gas, because I didn’t want to go below a half tank.

$50 at $1.799/L added a quarter tank. *sigh*

The route we took allowed us to bypass all the construction, which was really important, though we did get stuck behind someone doing 90kph in a 100kph zone for quite a while. My daughter kept my SIL updated on our progress the whole way so, when we got there, she was outside and ready to go. All we had to do was park in their driveway and transfer my walker over. Something I almost forgot to bring along and, when I remembered, considered not bringing, since I was feeling so well.

I am so glad I brought it along, just in case.

From their place, the drive to the hospital was pretty straightforward. It meant going through the heart of downtown and traffic was heavy, but she got us there with about 10 minutes to spare! Thankfully, she knows the hospital well (having spent quite a bit of time going there herself for various reasons over the years) and knew which doors were the ER doors she needed to drop me off at, rather than the ones I was used to and through were the ER doors for some reason.

Once there, my daughter got my walker out and my SIL headed out to find somewhere to stay. I was told the appointment should take about half an hour, so we figured it wouldn’t be long before we could message her to pick us up.

Ha!

The woman who called me with the appointment time and instructions (and gave me a time frame) said to use the doors south of the ER doors. I was expecting a completely different set of doors, but there weren’t any. So we went into what we thought were the ER doors to look for instructions. It turned out they were the correct doors to go into, and we immediately saw direction bubbles and arrows on the floor for various places, including the cancer clinic.

Bonus!

We got to the registration desk and checked in, then sat in the waiting room. Before long, I was called in. I had my phone in my hand, so I was able to check the time, and it was exactly my appointment time!

We ended up in the room for about 3 hours.

First, the nurse that got me from the waiting room took my weight and height. When she told me my height, I told her, nope. That’s not right! I took off my shoes. It turns out my shoes added a full inch to my height. 😄

From there, I was taken to an examination room and she started to fill out forms and give me information, including a sheet with the names and photos of the team that I will be seeing. There was the specific doctor I was told I’d be seeing, but I would be able to see any member of the team during follow up visits and they’d all be fully informed about my file. My daughter was with me, which is great because she’s been with me with other visits and can sometimes remember details I forget to mention.

Once she was done, someone else from the team came in and talked with me some more. Then she left, and the nurse came back. Then the second woman came back, along with a guy. More talking ensued.

Something I found interesting was how many different people started out by asking me “do you know why you’re here?” After a while, my knee-jerk reaction was to think this was supposed to be some sort of trick question.

I got so, so many questions about my health background. What past surgeries have I had. What past health issues have I had. What tests have I had over the years. When talking about specific past tests I’ve had, I kept saying how they always came back normal, showed no problems, etc. By the end of it, I got comments about how great my overall health has been and I just had to joke about being the healthiest sick person around! Especially during times when we were trying to find the cause of something, like my chronic cough (which has pretty much gone away on its own), and everything kept testing normal.

We never did find out the reason for that cough.

I did get to explain the timeline of when all this started, and the connection to that anti-inflammatory I had been taking, and what happened when I stopped taking it.

Eventually, though, I had to have a physical examination, which was to be done by the guy, with the second woman assisting.

It was a decidedly invasive examination. Which I expected but, gosh, it really sucks.

They both left long enough for me to get into a gown, then change back into my clothes, then came back to give me the final information they are currently able to. I’m doing to get a dye that will help them map my lymph nodes to see which ones are directly being used by my uterus. If that works, they will remove only those nodes. If the mapping doesn’t show them any specific nodes, they’ll remove them all, along with my uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries and cervice.

Also, it’s going to be done by a robot.

Yeah, my daughter and I started geeking out.

The surgeon will be controlling the robot arms directly, and that will be used for an internal procedure. If they find things are scarred or attached in unexpected ways, they might need to switch to an external incision to do the job.

I got all the usual warnings of risks and possible negative outcomes.

If all goes well, I’ll be going home on the same day.

At this point, the waiting list for this is quite short, and the OR schedule is not overly crowded. I might actually get in within a week, but more likely within 2 weeks. I’ll be getting a phone call with the exact date and time, and detailed instructions. They also gave me a 4 page form to fill out with more historical information – some going back so far, I couldn’t even give the level of detail the form requested. Like the exact dates for some of them, or even which hospital I’d gone to, that long ago.

Interestingly, one of the instructions I was given is, in the days before the surgery, they want me eating a high carb diet. After the surgery, they want me on a high protein diet. I’ve never had anyone give me diet instructions around a surgery before!

After going over all that and signing the consent forms, they left and the first nurse came back with more forms. She had requisition forms for pre-op lab work, EKG and chest X-rays. After I finished filling out the 4 page form, I had to give that to the receptionist, then I could do all the rest, right there, rather than figure out when to get them done in one of the surrounding towns after we got home.

The sheet for the lab work had almost everything checked off on it! I was to do the EKG next but by then it was noon, and they were closed for an hour. Which worked out because I could get the X-rays done while waiting.

We were so glad for the volunteers at this hospital that are available to take people where they need to go. Even with all the floor markings and signs everywhere, the place is a maze and some things just weren’t obvious. Like having to go to the admissions desk on one floor to get registered before going to where the EKGs are done, on another floor. Altogether, we went to three floors to get it all done.

Meanwhile, my SIL was waiting this whole time. She did find somewhere she could go and wait, but we didn’t expect things to go this long, and she ended up spending a lot of time just sitting in her car! My daughter kept her and the family updated frequently, during those times when I wasn’t able to.

While the X-rays were done very quickly, the time taken to walk around, check in, then wait until being called really added to things.

Unfortunately, after that physical exam, the pain levels started kicking on, and I was so, so glad I brought that walker!! I did have T3s with me to take, but I honestly don’t think they made a difference. It just kept getting worse until I was having difficulties sitting up straight in waiting room chairs and had to lean into my walker.

By the time the EKG was done, more than an hour after I’d taken the painkillers, the pain levels started to decrease. When we headed outside to wait for my SIL to come around and pick us up, it had dropped significantly.

My SIL, angel that she is, had said she planned to take us out for breakfast after we were done.

It was getting close to 3pm by the time she got us to a restaurant. Before we’d left, I had made sure to grab an apple and some cheese for breakfast, which was at about 6:30am. During the drive, before 7:30am, my daughter had some beef jerky that we keep in the truck. That was all we’d eaten all day. We were pretty famished by then!

That “half hour” appointment ended up being about 5 hours!

Longest half hour, ever.

From there, she drove us to her place and we just transferred the walker over and said our goodbyes right away, and she was finally able to go home!

My SIL is such a saint.

Since it was pretty much on the way from their place, we had planned on stopping at a Canadian Tire and a Walmart in the smaller city on the way home. I was feeling well enough that we could still do that.

Canadian Tire was our first stop, where I was able to return the two 1/2 inch Quick Connect repair kits my brother had picked up for me and picked up a 5/8 inch set, with the female coupling attachment, which was not included in the kits my brother had picked up. That one little piece and the larger size almost doubled the price!

That done, we crossed the street to the Walmart to pick up a few groceries and some kibble for the inside cats, since I don’t know when we’ll finally do that Costco run. Between focusing on getting those haskaps transplanted and my pain levels, it just keeps getting delayed. Of course, now I will be waiting on a phone call for a surgery date, too. This time, though, they do have permission to talk to my husband about anything, so even if I’m not home, they can give the information to him. In theory, they could call my cell phone but there’s no way I’d be able to make notes while I’m out and about.

For me, I had my pain levels increase, then decrease, over the hours of those 5 hours. My daughter, however, is fighting a cold and had her own pain issues to deal with. By the time we were done and heading home, she was having trouble walking, even with her cane, and had pretty much lost her voice entirely!

Once home and everything was unloaded and put away, I did go outside for a while. After all that time sitting on waiting room chairs or lying on examination tables, I really, really wanted to get outside in the fresh air and just walk around.

I ended up watering the remaining trees in the trays. We had high winds again and a lot of them had been blown right out!

Then I remembered the Quick connect repair kit. With that kit, it took about 10 seconds to repair the broken hose. Then I got the metal hose out from all the hoses we’ve got for watering the trees and put the repairs hose back on. The repaired hose is about 30 feet longer than the metal one, which is useful to reach the transplants. Especially once we are able to set some of the little ones into the blank spots where silver buffalo berry didn’t make it, as those are even further from the house. It might still not be enough, since I will not try to run the hose through the rows of transplanted haskap, but there is still the old rain barrel and a watering can out there that can be used, if necessary.

Then, because I just couldn’t help myself, I also sorted the support stakes that we used to mark the spaces and started some bundles of 10, getting ready to put them away for the winter.

All of this was very light stuff, with no risk of overdoing it and causing pain levels to increase.

I’m going to be going stir crazy after the surgery, though. I will be on 6 weeks of recovery restrictions. No lifting. No manual labour. Not even light manual labour. I won’t be able to do much more than simply walk around, and even that will be limited.

I’m already chafing at my limitations now.

Still, it’ll only be for 6 weeks.

Which should be until around the end of November. I won’t be able to do any of the fall clean up and winterizing outside.

*sigh*

Ah, well.

The girls will do as much as they are able to, while working around their own pain levels, and some things will just have to wait for spring.

Just not the garlic. Those have to go in this month. In fact, looking at the overnight temperatures for the next while, they should probably be planted within the next week to 10 days, and we don’t even have a bed prepared for them yet!

Little by little, it’ll get done. We just do what we can!

The Re-Farmer

Ninety

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Today has been a lovely day, though it is getting quite windy right now.

A perfect day to get things done, and we were even feeling well enough to do it.

The first order of business was a trip to the general store to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, and check the mail.

We had a surprise waiting for us.

This box had one side completely covered in stamps, plus two ends! This was the alternate chair my husband ordered to replace his broken one, after his last order completely failed. It’s more of a frame that holds and exercise ball that acts as a seat. It came with one that was remarkably small. We didn’t expect one to come with the chair, and my husband already had an exercise ball – a larger one, more durable one – to use on it.

So far, he’s quite happy with it. He replaced the wheels with the heavy duty ones he’d put on the broken chair, right away. The new chair has 4 legs, though, and the broken office chair has 5, so we have a spare. For now, the new chair’s wheels are on the broken chair. Once we wrangle it to the junk pile for hauling to the dump, we will keep all the wheels. The ones from the new chair can be locked, which is nice. I’m sure we’ll find a use for them at some point. For now, the old chair is waiting in the dining room.

The cats like it.

I got a picture of Big Rig on it, but several cats have been taking turns napping on the seat! 😄

After we got home from the post office, and my daughter refilled the kibble bin for the outside cats, she headed straight for the food forest to start digging. By the time I joined her, she had dug another 5 holes for the 10 large potted transplants. While she continued digging, I watered the finished holes, then started getting the haskap out of their pots and setting them into the watered holes. After a while, my older daughter came out and she buried the root balls, and we kept that up until all 10 were in the ground.

While my older daughter finished burying the root balls, my younger daughter started to water them. With the remaining marked spaces, I raked the spaces that were deep tilled level again. That done, I grabbed the largest, strongest looking plants from the trays and laid them out at each spot before digging small holes with a hand trowel in the leveled spots for them.

There wasn’t enough for all three of us to do at that point, so my older daughter went back inside to work on commissions while my younger daughter kept watering, including the smaller holes I’d dug. While she did that, I started sorting through the remaining plants, pulling pots with larger live ones out of the trays until I could start putting them all together again, with no empty spots. There were quite a few empty pots, empty spaces and a few small plants that were beyond saving.

Before I finished that, my daughter finished watering the holes, then went inside. She was already in pain before she started digging, and simply could not bend to work with the smaller plants at all. Which was fine. I was feeling well enough to do it, and got the last 13 spots planted, then finished sorting the trays. The remaining plants needed some very serious watering! In the end, I was able to refill three trays of 18 plants.

I also brought over some taller bamboo stakes and set out one for each smaller transplant, except for the corner that got a stake with a pinwheel on it. The bamboo stakes got water bottles added to their tops to make them more visible, then I used garden wire to secure the stems to the stakes. Being the size they are, this will not only keep them growing straight, but will protect them from snow load in the winter.

Here they all are!

A grid of 90 haskap planted in rows 6′ apart, with each transplant 4′ apart in their rows.

Ninety.

Plus another 54 transplants in the trays. I moved those in between some of the rows, out of the shade of the crab apple trees, which you can see in the second image above.

We have spaces to plant some of them, but not another 54!! I don’t know what we’ll do with the extra!

Then there are the little spruces left over. I have no idea what we’ll do with those!

The trays all got watered well. They had so little soil in each pot, they will dry out quickly. A lot of roots escaped their pots and grew along the bottoms of the trays that are now exposed, which is not a good thing. Nothing we can do about that unless I can find a way to just cover them all with soil until they can be transplanted.

All the pots are garbage. They are too brittle from exposure to be used again.

I was cleaning up when my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers, which I was starting to need by then. I over did it a bit and, as I write this, several hours later, I find I am having difficulty sitting or standing up straight because of it. It’s been worse, but it’s not at all comfortable, that’s for sure!!

Aside from seeing how many more of the little ones we can transplant, we have more to do around the 90 that are in the ground now. We’ll have to go through with the wheelbarrow and pick all the bigger rocks. Once those are removed, we’ll need to rake the loose soil from the digging and level things out. The larger ones will all be getting a water trench made around them. The smaller ones don’t need it, as they are properly below grade in an area large enough to create drainage towards the roots, rather than flowing away into the paths. They will all also need to be watered regularly for their roots to start growing out from the root balls before the ground freezes.

Looking up on how to care for these, one of the biggest issues we can expect to have is problems with birds eating the berries. We won’t be able to set netting over the bushes, which would be the most effective protection. Instead, we will look into setting taller stakes set up all over the area to make “scarecrows”. Most likely with lots of reflective pinwheels and whirligigs, or other reflective things to flap in the wind.

For now, the main thing is done. All those big pots are now transplanted and the marked out space is full. Any other transplants after this is bonus, though if they don’t get in the ground soon, they’re going to die.

I’m definitely paying for it, though. Pushed things a bit hard. Hopefully, things will be better for tomorrow, when I go in for my appointment at the cancer clinic. With my SIL’s offer to drive us in from their place and dropping us off, so we don’t need to hunt for parking, we don’t have to leave quite as early in the morning.

It’s barely past 4pm as I write this, and I am so ready to go to bed right now.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

The Re-Farmer

Almost…

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Okay, main goal of the day: getting the truck to the garage for our afternoon appointment.

As usual, we planned on leaving early. My daughter was really struggling this morning, unfortunately. She’d had a bad night. We’ve had more outings than usual that she came along with to help me out, and it’s starting to wear on her.

I spotted this guy, on the way to the garage.

This time, it was Gouda, parked on one of the inside out cat beds under the canopy tent. So adorable!

I was having a good day, when it comes to pain levels, and started off driving but right away realized I was feeling unusually sleeping. A down side of having to take painkillers every 6 hours. I never get more than a few hours of sleep at a time, if I manage to fall sleep at all.

We got to the garage about half an hour early and settled in the waiting room chairs. We could hear the owner working on something in the back and he didn’t see us, which was fine. We were in no hurry. I actually started to fall asleep in the chair.

Then he walked by the door to the office, focused on his phone, stopped and did a double take when he realized we were already there and waiting. He greeted us then continued outside, going back to his phone.

Shortly after, he came back and apologetically asked us if we wanted to go into town for lunch or something; he needed to go home to take care of something. We were okay with that and he said he would text me when he was back.

I got my daughter to drive and we ended up going to the Dairy Queen, because I had some coupons. My daughter was a sweetheart and insisted on paying for it, too.

We took our time about it, though I wasn’t that hungry and ended up saving my burger for home. I just snacked on some fries. I don’t really like fries all that much, and gave the last of them to my daughter, since she hadn’t eaten before we left. After a while, we decided that we could just as easily go back to the garage and stay in the truck, where I’m sure I would have fallen asleep. We were getting ready to head out when I got a text.

The thing he had to take care of at home was taking longer than it should have, and he had no idea how long it would be. Rather than have us wait, he asked if we were willing to come back tomorrow.

I answered yes, then asked if he wanted us back for the same time. By that point, I don’t think he was able to keep checking his work phone. I’ll just assume the same time if he doesn’t respond.

So we headed home, instead, stopping only to pick up some gas.

$1.899/L

Ouch.

At least I got my 3¢/L CAA discount, so we paid $1.869/L instead. Every little bit helps.

Once at home, I sat at my computer for a while, but was still so sleepy, I couldn’t actually accomplish anything useful. My husband came over to talk and the first thing he said was that I looked really horrible! 😄😂 I did consider just going to bed but, by this time, it was past 3 and I knew that would screw up my night.

After a while, though, I started feeling better. Well enough to go outside to do the evening cat feeding. The singleton kitten, I noticed, is no longer a junk pile cat. She is now and under the cat house cat! The sun room trays are all outside right now, as we’ve made very little progress on clearing and cleaning the sun room, and spread out on the ground near the cat shelters. As I was topping them up, the little one was peeking out from under the cat house, meowing at me. I could see she wanted to come out so badly, but was also too scared to actually do it!

She did come out eventually, though. Especially after I started to add cat milk to some of the trays, too.

I was still feeling good, so I decided to do some yard stuff and garden watering in between topping up the cats’ water bowls a bit at a time, so as not to scare them away from the food. I checked the drying cat beds and stuff, and they were finally all dry, so I tucked those into the wagon and under the screen for now. I’ve got other pieces soaking with detergent in the tub, so I agitated them for awhile. That water got quite brown in the process! They are still soaking, as I wasn’t up to scrubbing them today. Then I started watering the garden.

Yes, the garden is still worth watering! Not all of the beds, but some of them. The strawberries, squash and sunflowers at the chain link fence all got a watering. I’m really impressed that the squash – winter and summer – is still surviving and blooming.

The old kitchen garden got watered and I found a surprise. In the beets and parsnip bed, the parsnip greens have gotten so tall, their leaves were sticking through the wire of the cover. Some of the beets are also quite tall and the only reason they aren’t going through the wire is because they’re in the middle of the bed, under the highest part of the curve.

About a third of them were gone.

Not completely, but at one end, there was a substantial empty spot that had been full of leaves.

My first thought was deer, but that seems so unlikely. The deer don’t typically go through that garden; too many paths and obstacles. Plus, my daughter added more wood chips to the paths yesterday, and that’s not a surface a deer would want to walk on. The alternative is skunks or racoons, and they would have cause more damage than just a bunch of leaves eaten. So it must be from a deer.

The wire cover did protect the plants at least somewhat, as they were not completely eaten down to the ground, like the Swiss Chard all was. So frustrating!

The tomato bed in the east yard got watered, but I didn’t bother with the other two beds. Since our single Arikara squash has been harvested, I cut away the vine, so that bed is now just bush beans. The leaves do have some minor frost damage, but I could see there are still beans developing. I probably could have harvested some, but didn’t have a container for them and didn’t want to push my limits.

In the main garden area, I did some more selective watering. I was doing the very last bed when my older daughter came out. I asked how her sister was doing, and she said not very good. She’s dealing with with increased pain levels now, so she’s settled down in the cat free zone to have some movies playing while she continues knitting my ankle socks for me.

While I finished watering the last bed, my daughter told me her plans for roasting the Arikara squash and to use half of it to make a squash soup. Personally, I look forward to having straight up roasted squash. I want to get a good taste of it to see if this is something we want to keep growing in the future, other than to keep collecting seeds for a rare squash variety.

I started telling my daughter how surprised I was with how little frost damage there was, and that I could probably harvest some things – then asked if she wanted some peppers. We had two California Bell peppers that are fully red now, plus a couple of Sweet Chocolate peppers that were ripe. She happily took them and will be using them in her soup. There are still some green peppers on the plants that will hopefully do all right. With peppers, though, we can also harvest them early and let them ripen in the house.

I did remember to look up what colour the California Bell peppers get, since they are bright red and, for some reason, I thought they would be yellow. I found images of both red and yellow peppers. 😕 I got them from MI Gardener and looked at their page, and their image is of green peppers!

So… red it is.

I headed inside soon after, as I didn’t want to push myself. At this point, I might head into town tomorrow on my own, rather than dragging my daughter out with me again. This time, I want to remember to grab a couple of 5 gallon water jugs to refill in town, after the oil change and whatever else needs to be done.

For now, I’m coming up on my schedule evening painkillers time, and I think I’ll try to go to bed after that and get a few hours of sleep before the next set. I tried that last night and it didn’t work. I ended up awake until somewhere past 4am. That might actually help me finally get some sleep tonight, though!

An odd thing about taking the painkillers every 6 hours. I’m not entirely sure how much it’s making a difference. I still get hit with the lower abdominal pain, enough that I’ve used the topical painkiller to help with that. Yet even when I’m not feeling the abdominal pain, I’m still feeling other pain. Particularly that left shoulder’s rotator cuff. The painkillers don’t seem to be touching that at all. Which makes me wonder; if they’re not helping with something as relatively minor as the shoulder pain, how much can it be helping with the abdominal pain? Granted, my shoulder has never hurt badly enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but you’d think a dose as strong as what I’m taking now, 6 times a day, would reduce the shoulder pain too, wouldn’t you??

Ah, well. It is what it is. At least I’m not getting side effects like that violent dizziness I was getting with the Percocet.

So… that’s how the day went today. We almost got the truck done! Our mechanic had told us what he’d needed to go home for, and I really hope it all worked out for him and his family.

If all goes well, the truck will finally be done tomorrow, and it’ll be ready for the winter, as well as all the trips to the city we’ll be needing to do over the next couple of months!

The Re-Farmer

We pet the baby!

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My daughter came in from doing the morning feeding of the outside cats, so very excited!

She was able to pet the shrine baby. The single older kitten – who has started to come to the house, not just eating at the shrine feeding station!

What my daughter noted was that if she made eye contact with the kitten, it ran away – but if she faced another direction, it came back to the food bowl. Then she came back with the cat soup. It moved away, so she just crouched down near the bowl, looking in another direction.

While the kitten was eating, my daughter was able to reach out and pet it – and she let her! She even got an elevator butt response, while the kitten kept eating soup.

The kitten’s fur, my daughter told me, was astonishingly soft.

I was not doing very well today and ended up going back to bed. While I was down, my younger daughter headed out to start clearing and cleaning the sun room. This is something that needs to be done in stages, and it a huge and filthy job, since we were never able to get a spring cleaning done. She got some cat shelves out and cleared about a quarter of the room to bare floor, before she stopped for the day.

Unfortunately, I never got to see my brother and SIL before they had to leave. It turned out to be a good day for repairs. When he went to move his old pick up truck to move it and the trailer still attached, it wouldn’t start. After checking it over, he thought it might be the starter and was prepared to have it towed to our usual garage. Today, however, he thought of something else to try and it worked. He was able to do some other repairs, move the antique dump truck back onto the concrete blocks it had rolled off of, and even was able to check on the riding mower and get it working. It turned out that something was stuck, and nothing had actually broken. phew!

This evening, I decided I was well enough to do the outside cat feeding. Mostly because I needed to get outside and get some fresh air. Today is the 20th, so I was also hoping I’d be up to doing garden tour videos.

All the food trays that had been in the sun room are currently spread out on the grass near the cat shelters, since the sun room is being cleaned out. While setting the kibble out, I spotted the lone kitten.

So I tried what my daughter tried. I can’t crouch, but I could stand nearby and look the other way, until the kitten came back to the tray to eat. Without looking directly at her, I was able to slowly bend down and touch her.

She let me!

I didn’t stay for long, though. We don’t do cat soup for the evening feeding, but I do add a couple of little cartons of the donated cat milk (we’re on the last case that was given to us) spread out among various trays. I did only trays near the house, since we want to encourage the little one to stay close by.

She came back to the tray with Fancy Pants, whom she seems to get along with, and started eating again.

This time, I was able to pet her more.

She even started to purr!!!

After a while I went to put things away when I heard a noise. A little skunk had come running and pushed itself onto the tray, shoving the kitten aside, startling Fancy Pants away, and started eating greedily. I scooted it away a couple of times before it left. I don’t mind them finishing off the kibble, but I want the cats to have a chance to eat, first!

After the cat feeding, I walked around a bit before going back inside and weighed in on how I felt. I decided to go ahead and do the garden tour videos. I haven’t gone over them yet, so I’ll see if I end up making new ones tomorrow or not.

Tomorrow, we take the truck in and I will be away until it’s ready to take home again. That’s partly way I made sure to get as much bed rest as possible today. My husband will make sure to keep the phone handy, as I never got the call from the cancer clinic in the city on Thursday or Friday, as we were told to expect. It means not much will get accomplished. My daughter will be coming with me, just in case I need help or need her to drive home when we get the truck back.

For now, I’m just happy we finally got to pet the lonely baby!

The Re-Farmer

Weighing in, and hardy survivors

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Well, we finally managed it.

We weighed all the cats.  All 21 of them.

Sort of.

The only way we could do it was to have my daughter stand on the digital scale to get her weight, then weigh her while holding a cat and doing the math.

The problem with that is, the digital scales reading changes based on how the feet are positioned, how you might be leaning while standing, or even what part of the floor it’s on.  When my husband came over and I mentioned this, he tried getting on the scale.

My husband has no balance.

He wobbled so much, the numbers never settled, and the scale turned itself off to no display at all, like it does after you step off the scale. !!!

So we got estimates.

I’m both surprised and not surprised that Leyendecker turned out to be the heaviest at 30 pounds. 

He’s not just a fat cat.  He’s a tank.  He’s got a skull almost as big as a softball.  Hard to believe he was the smallest of his litter!

The lightest cat was Susan, at only 7 pounds.

I passed the numbers on to someone at the rescue.   We will be able to buy ear mite medication through them.  The kind that’s applied to the skin between the shoulders, since treating the ear canals hasn’t been working well.  When it doesn’t take for just one cat, they all end with getting the mites again. We will work out getting the medication after the truck is looked at, on Monday.

Later today, I was able to head outside with the girls.  While one daughter did the evening cat feeding, the other helped me with the washed cat blankets and beds, before we got the rain expected tonight.  Some were dry, but most were too thick to be fully dry yet.  The damp ones all got laid out under the canopy tent, most on the wire mesh curing frame, to continue drying.   Hopefully, we’ll get more sunny days to set them out in, to dry and bleach in the sun.

That done, I stayed out to check the garden beds.  It’s surprising to see how much survived the one night that reached freezing temperatures!

Those (wild? Alpine?) strawberries are amazingly hardy.  There are still loads of tiny berries, and they are still blooming.

Even more surprising is how well the tomatoes that could not be covered are doing. Especially the Orange Currant tomatoes.

The California Wonder bell peppers were covered the night it reached 0C, and are getting quite red.

I’ll have to look it up, but I was sure they were supposed to be a yellow pepper.  😄

I took a closer look at some of the sunflowers, brushing dried petals off so I could see the developing seeds.  The seed heads are all very small for the varieties, but it does look like there may be viable seeds.

After checking on things, I  grabbed the loppers to prune dead and dying branches from the pink rose bush in the old kitchen garden.  They are insanely thorny, but I was able to use the loppers to move the pruned branches aside, for the girls to clear away tomorrow.

While I was working on that, my brother and SIL arrived for the weekend, and I got to talk to them for a bit before finishing the pruning.  I really enjoy spending time with them.

Overall, today was a good day.  I was even up to making a quick run to the post office by myself.  I didn’t start having pain creeping up until shortly before my evening meds alarm went off.  It’s been getting worse since then, and I’m currently writing this while in bed, rather twisted up to find the least painful position.  It’s not too bad… yet?  We shall see.

One thing about the new dose and variation of painkiller.  It makes me sleepy.  My sister happened to call only a minute past my meds alarm going off.  I had meant to lie down right away, but we spoke for a while.  I ended up having to say goodbye, before I dozed off and dropped the phone!

Of course, now that I’m finally lying down, the sleepiness has passed. 😒

Not that it’s anything to complain about.  Just something to work around.

Anyhow.  I’m mostly really happy that we got the cats weighed as best we could.  It’s been delayed for too long!

The Re-Farmer

Birthday treat and playing with bebbies

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Today was quiet, for the most part. We’re all pretty drained, exhausted and fighting different kinds of pain.

I’m incredibly frustrated. The weather and temperatures are absolutely ideal for working outside, and I can do next to none of it.

I never took the hydromorphone my husband gave me, last night. I waited until I was more confident that I had no T3s left in my system and, by then, the pain had subsided on its own. I wasn’t about to take such a high dose without genuine need. When my 6 hour alarm went off during the night, when I would normally have taken more T3s, I wasn’t even dealing with a lot of pain in my hip, so I skipped it. In the morning, there was just a dull ache. This time, I took a tramadol instead.

It made no difference.

Aside from my daughter doing the morning routine outside for me, we mostly just took it easy. We did have a planned outing, though. My husband has a birthday this month and my older daughter treated us to his dinner of choice. Normally, that would be pizza, but he can no longer tolerate dairy, even with Lactase, so he chose Chinese food, instead. With this, we typically order just a lot of meat and seafood, with my husband also getting some chicken fried rice. We order enough to last us a couple of days, at least, which got us some free rice and deep fried wontons, and we prefer to do our own vegetables at home. This time, my older daughter baked the last of the bush beans and summer squash we had in the fridge, which was quite delicious.

My younger daughter and I headed out shortly before 1, to miss the lunch rush and to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble on the way out. We both were thinking today was Tuesday, though. It’s Wednesday, which means the general store closed at noon. We’ll have to go tomorrow, instead. Which is fine.

When we got to the area around the restaurant, we had to drive around the block a couple of times trying to find parking. There was nothing nearby at all, and we ended up parking closer to the marina. I wasn’t even sure it that area was public parking, or parking for boat owners.

By this point, I was having trouble walking, but still well enough that I turned down a cane when my daughter offered to get one out of our collection in the back of the truck for me. We placed the order and paid for it, then set a pick up time long enough for us to make a side trip to the grocery store. We wanted to pick up drinks for everyone, but ended up getting a Boston Creme cake that was on sale, even though there is still a bit of the Costco slab cake left. I noticed some good sales on grapes and a few other things, so my daughter and I also picked what we needed to have a small charcuterie later on, to go with the new cheeses we got in the city. By the time the groceries were paid for, I was relying on the cart to use as a walker.

When we got back to the restaurant, there still wasn’t any parking nearby, so I dropped my daughter off by the door then pulled over in the lane around the corner. After she got back with the food, I had to ask her to do the driving. My alarm had gone off for my afternoon T3 dose just as we returned to the truck after ordering the food, but it made no difference. The pain just kept getting worse.

It has since subsided again, and I’m down to a dull ache. Tomorrow, my Percocet gets delivered. I’m really hoping that works better than the T3s. If it doesn’t, then I’ll probably end up with my own prescription for hydromorphone – just not as high a dose as what my husband is getting!

After we enjoyed our first day of birthday take out, I felt well enough to go outside and do the cat feeding. I even watered the south garden beds, though I wasn’t up to doing the main garden area, too. After a couple of hours, I went out again to top up the kittens’ bowl of kibble softened with cat milk in the catio, since other critters have been stealing their food. Then I set up the camp chair and started fishing for kittens.

The little black one with the white stripe up the side of its nose is more enthusiastic about it. One of the tabbies got curious and started coming over, but not close. The other kittens were much more interested in playing among the white lilacs.

The Grink wasn’t interested this time, but Sweetie sure was! At one point, she was stalking the lure at the same time as the kitten, but she does not like the kittens at all. Without the distraction of the lure, she growls and spits at them, and I’ve even seen her bat at them.

I did manage to get the little black one close enough that I could reach down and touch its back, but it did not like that, so I didn’t push my luck with it.

Then my alarm went off for my evening meds, so I headed back inside.

Tomorrow and the day after, there are people from the rescue available to meet up with us, so I’ve talked to my daughter about working on getting kittens closed up into the carrier. That will mean heading out fairly often to see if they’ve gone in, and maybe setting some treats out as bait. Hard to do that and keep the other cats away, though. Thankfully, the rescue have us quite a lot of donated treats, including some just for kittens, so we could probably set out some for the bigger cats as a distraction, then put the kitten treats out for the little ones.

I pray for quick success on this! With their mother gone, there’s only so much we can do to protect them. We really need to get them in to the rescue for fostering and adoption! Otherwise, their chances of survival are very low. At this point, it even looks like Sprout and Sprig, the two calicos, are gone! Sprout had Sprig last year, along with two others that disappeared. The older white and grey that we are also trying to catch is Sprout’s from this year, and I am sure she actually had more than one kitten.

We have had so many adult cats disappear this year. We would expect that with some of the males disappearing for the summer, then coming back for the winter, but these are mostly females that have disappeared. At least a couple that I’m sure had a litter somewhere. Among the others, both fixed and intact cats have disappeared. The person at the rescue whose daughter had been fostering Domino is pretty devastated that they brought her back, and now she’s gone.

Such is the reality of yard cats.

I say as I hear the sounds of cats fighting outside my window!!!

Excuse me while I go check on that.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: still something to harvest

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There isn’t a lot in the garden now that can be harvested regularly. Most of it is waiting until everything can be harvested at once, but today, we had something.

My younger daughter took care of the morning routine. She had exciting news for me. She saw the missing kittens! She saw three at the shrine feeding station, then three at the catio!

Still no Slick. At this point, there’s no chance we’ll be seeing her again. All we can do is try and get those kittens.

My daughter then stayed out to do the weed trimming until she ran out of batteries, then used the push mower to clear areas I couldn’t get at with the riding mower. She was out there for about four hours straight.

I may not be able to go out and do this physical stuff outside, but I could at least have a lunch ready and waiting for her when she got back in!

We will do our second stock up shop tomorrow.

Late this afternoon, I was feeling well enough to feed the outside cats. I’ll head out again later on to give the kittens an extra feeding at the catio, since there are so many critter stealing their food that far from the house. Daytime highs are pretty hot again now; we hit 26C/79F today. It’s past 5pm as I write this, and we’re still at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 31C/88F. We’re starting to get thunderstorm and tornado warnings for tomorrow afternoon and evening, for the southern end of our province. For our area, we’re expected to get just rain in the wee hours of tomorrow night. We shall see.

After feeding the cats, I stayed out to harvest the bush beans.

The yellow bush beans planted later by the Arikara squash are reaching their peak now, though we are still getting plenty of purple beans in the high raised beds. There seem to be almost no green beans at all.

I grabbed another Golden Boy celery for dehydrating, and there were a couple of Green Benning scallop squash big enough to grab. Then I went ahead and picked some crab apples, too. The ones on this tree are brilliantly red now and much sweeter, though still very tangy at the same time. Peak ripeness! I didn’t pick a lot, as we have no real plans for them, other than straight eating. Later in the season, I will probably shake the branches to try and drop the highest apples so the deer can eat them off the ground, and not break branches trying to reach them.

This afternoon I got a strange call from my mother. Strange in that she was in a good mood, cheerful sounding, and didn’t insult me or my brother even once. Even when she did start in on some of her favourite topics to complain about, she actually stopped herself and changed the subject.

She thought I was going for surgery on Monday, though, so I had to explain to her that I’m seeing the doctor to talk about what’s going on; it’s too soon to know if I’ll be going for another surgery. For some reason, this time she seemed to finally clue in that the specialist I’m seeing is female, and she was quite surprised about that. I mentioned that she had probably seen this doctor, too, a few years back, and that I recognized the clinic from when my brother and I had brought her there for an appointment, but she didn’t remember that at all. Which is fine.

Oh, she also mentioned that she’s got a birthday coming up. She’s turning 95 in September. She made sure to tell me not to get her any “stuff” for her birthday. Which is good, because she doesn’t have room for a lot.

We didn’t have much to talk about. We’re not going out much or doing a lot. She was happy to hear the girls are taking good care of me. I apparently sounded quite tired on the phone, because she ended the call herself, saying she would let me rest.

Which I probably should be doing. I feel like I’m falling asleep at my keyboard. I’m glad I learned out to touch type. Several times, while writing this, I found I was typing with my eyes closed. I seem to have fewer typos when I do that! 😄

I didn’t do a lot of walking today, but I’m starting to feel the consequences of it. It’ll be a couple of hours before I can take more painkillers. *sigh*

Hopefully, things will improve for tomorrow, when we head into the city. We will make sure to bring my walker along!!

I am so tired of this. It certainly gives me a bit more insight on how my husband must be feeling, every day. His back pain is barely controlled with meds, there’s nothing that can be done to “fix” it, and he’s been coping with it for more than 20 years now.

Brutal.

The Re-Farmer

I accomplished something today!

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Okay, yes, the stock up shop did get done yesterday, but my daughter did most of the actual work, so that doesn’t count. 😁

This morning, she did the outside stuff for me, as usual, and even stayed out to do a deep watering of the garden. We’ve been dealing with flea beetles, all of a sudden. The nasturtiums work as a trap crop for those, and they are absolutely covered with them. So many that, when startled, you can hear them bouncing off the leaves and petals like rain.

They also love the Daikon radish. These had all bolted and were being left to go to seed. They are now all stems and pods. No leaves left at all. My daughter has been blasting the beetles off with the hose, but there’s really nothing that can be done. They’re also on the remains of the cabbages. I’m not sure if the netting would have been enough to protect them, had they not already been harvested!

In the early afternoon, my daughter and I headed in to town. We wanted to get some ice cream to go with the birthday cake, among a few other small things. We ended up getting several ice creams. A small tub of lactose free ice cream for my husband, and another small one for me, since I’m not big on ice cream, and my daughter chose a larger tub to share with her sister. They like to add a scoop to their coffees, sometimes.

By the time we were done the shopping, I was starting to feel dizzy, so my daughter took over the driving. It wasn’t that bad, but just bad enough that I didn’t feel it would be safe for me to drive.

After everything was brought in and put away, it wasn’t too much longer before it was time to feed the outside cats, and I was feeling well enough to do that. I was eventually able to spot the four remaining kittens. We have the food and water bowls set up in the catio, which is great for luring them out, but is also a problem. The other cats and the skunks go in there and steal the kittens’ food! Hard to chase them away without also scaring the kittens.

Once that was done, I broke out the riding mower. There’s no way I can use a push mower of the weed trimmer – my daughter will be taking care of that part of the lawn care – but I can at least use the riding mower!

I ended up mowing for almost 4 hours, and I am so happy! I was able to get all the inner yard done, including in the main garden area. Everything I can get to with the riding mower. Some areas can only be done with the push mower or the weed trimmer, which my daughter is planning to work on tomorrow.

It felt so good to actually be productive. The forced inactivity is driving me bonkers. The yard looks so good, now, too. The outer yard and driveway still need to be done, but that can wait a bit longer. My SIL has been doing that area with their big zero turn mower for the past while, but they’ve got their grandsons still and will not be coming out here on the weekend, so I hope to get at least part of it done with the little riding mower. We are not touching the zero turn mower, at all! 😄

I was happy to get it done while it was still light out, too. That gave me a chance to top up the kittens’ bowl with kibble and cat milk again. It was completely empty, and I know the kittens didn’t finish that off one their own. Even while I was mowing, I had to chase both cats and skunks out. I made sure to top up the gas tank before running out, driving the mower to the garage to reduce the amount of walking I had to do, and ended up driving towards the catio so the noise would drive off the critters stealing the kittens’ food!

After refilling their bowl, I paused on the way back to the house to get a couple of photos at the chain link fence. In the time it took for me to do that, I spotted kittens heading for the new food I’d left for them. Encouraging!

These two photos are both of Black Russian sunflowers. The Mammoth sunflowers are not blooming at all, yet. Both varieties are supposed to have large seed heads, but I don’t think that will happen. The ones in the photos are about the size of the palm of my hand. It should be interesting to see how much bigger they get.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we’re at the end of August already. About two weeks away from our average first frost date (I’m not going by the new date ranges). Just a few days until September. Good grief!

I’m hoping that Super El Nińo will help us out with a long, mild fall and no frost for a long time. Since moving here, we’ve had one year were the first frost happened in November, if I remember correctly. The shorter days will still set things back, but if the frost holds off, it’ll be good for the garden.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to say that I did NOT over do things by getting the lawn mowed. I’m so thankful for that riding mower!

The Re-Farmer