Today was another day of off and on rain, though more off than on, thankfully. The last storm did a lot of damage in areas, including at least one tornado touching down at the edge of the city. We have much to be thankful for.
While doing my rounds this morning, I was able to harvest some more scapes. The largest one yet, which you can see in the first to images in the slide show below. There will be only one more small harvest after this, unless I find some I missed. The girls and I have already talked about dehydrating whatever we won’t use fresh, and my plan to grind the dehydrated pieced into powder, and that should get started soon.
While checking the old kitchen garden, I can’t help but be amused by the dwarf peas. They are incredibly tiny – I don’t know how big they are supposed to get, but I’m sure it’s supposed to be a lot bigger than these! – and yet they are producing pods! You can see some of them in the last image of the slide show above. The plants themselves are less than 6 inches high.
I’m glad I planted other peas, and am thinking of where I can succession sow more in the next little while. The Spring Blush peas are producing pods, too, and the super sugar snap peas I sowed not long ago are growing nicely. One more succession sowing would not go amiss.
Today is Canada Day, and it was a big deal for us for a change. It has been so long since all four of us went out together! It meant clearing out the back of the cab so we could put down the rear seats in the truck. I was able to put our emergency supplies in the box, along with the cane collection and other items, and secure it all on one side, so there would be room for my husband’s walker on the other.
We went to the cottage of my husband’s brother, in a little town on the lake. Talking to my SIL about how I don’t think we’d ever been there before, and she was pretty sure we did – though it would have been about 25 years ago! As an added bonus, their adult children were able to join us, as did my husband’s sister and her significant other. It has been so long!
We had a fantastic visit. Their cottage is very close to the lake, and the girls and I had a chance to walk to the pier, finding it had a set of steps to the shoreline.
The views from above the water level were gorgeous.
The area has a lot of large rocks set in place to reduce erosion, but there are a few tiny beaches in this area of the lake.
My BIL BBQd, though he had to check on the meat with an umbrella a few times when it started to pour rain. We had a great meal and great company, with lots of catching up to do. Thankfully, my husband thought to bring his “as needed” painkillers, though, as that’s the only reason we were able to stay for about 5 hours, plus driving time of about an hour in total. My husband usually can only manage about 2 hours, including driving time.
We had made sure to feed the cats before we left. When we got home and the girls helped get my husband inside, I stayed out to do my evening rounds. The outside cats were acting really hungry, even though some of the outside kibble dishes still had food in them. I topped up the empty ones, and they were still running around, like they were expecting more.
They were waiting for the cat soup I’ve been making with the freeze dried cat food and cat milk included with the hot water.
So I made some up for them. I’ve been making more than I had been, before, and pouring it around more food dishes besides the one in the isolation shelter.
No sign of Sweetie anywhere. I feel so sad for her! I hope she finds her way back, even if she does remain feral. She must be so scared.
The inside cats were also swarming around and I figured they wanted their wet cat food, too, even though they still had plenty of kibble. I decided to make them some cat soup with the freeze dried mix, too. They keep trying to dig into the boxes to get at the bags inside, so you’d think they’d be happy with that.
Nope.
They sniff at it. I sometimes see a cat taking a few licks, and that’s it.
If the cat soup is still there in the morning, I’ll just take the trays outside. The outside cats can’t get enough of the stuff. They’ll finish it off right away!
The inside cats are so spoiled that they can be fussy like that! 😄
Anyhow.
Tomorrow, it looks like we’ve got a rain free day. We should be able to get the corded electric chain saw out to clean up that big piece of maple tree that broke in the storm, It’s going to be cut to lengths for the fire pit. Maple is an excellent wood for cooking over. We’ll also need to go around the yard with the wagon or the wheelbarrow to pick up all the smaller branches that came down with the storms and high winds, before we can mow the lawns.
I’ve also got the first market day coming up soon, so I want to prepare for that, too. I wasn’t able to find the straight legged canopy/market tent, but we do have a splay legged one, so that’s what I’ll be using. I’ve also been crocheting small things to add to my inventory from when we used to do the markets every summer, back in the day. It should be interesting to see how the market goes. If it goes well, the large animal rescue will extend the market dates into August, too.
All in all, I’d say this is the best Canada Day we’ve had in a long time, simply because the entire family was able to get out, and my husband was able to see both is brother and sister again.
Being broken sucks, but when there are good days, we sure to appreciate them more for it!
You can click through for a short video I managed to take while doing the evening feeding. Being in the isolation shelter means cat soup treat. Curtis had spent the night in the shelter, came out after the morning feeding, then right back in again later. Then Havarti scrambled his way up to the window. Domino is back with her cuddle buddies, and that helps. She definitely still wants to go out the windows when I do the food and water, but when she can’t get through, she is willing to accept the pets. I know that, once she is out of isolation, I’ll probably never be able to touch her again, but in all the time she was with the foster, she hid and never accepted pets like this.
I sent the video to the rescue chat group we have and they were so happy to see her accepting pets.
They also told me, it looks like Sweetie might be coming back, too. She has not settled in at all. They can pet her, but she is constantly anxious. They sent some photos and video. In the video, she is being petted but not responding at all, other than moving her head, watching with giant, terrified eyes. Poor thing! They are going to try and give her more time, but if she can’t accept the indoor life, she will be coming back here.
After feeding the outside cats, I did my evening rounds, and finally had a chance to go into the fenced off area where the tulip patch is, and the saffron crocuses. For all the mulch I added, the weeds have taken over, and I couldn’t even see the saffron crocuses anymore. I pulled handfuls of weeds until I got close to where I knew they were, then had to be extremely careful. After pulling up the tallest stuff, I had the creeping bellflower leaves covering everything. With those, I basically had to grab a single leaf, carefully follow it down to the ground, then pull it out. Pulling from higher on the stem usually resulted in it breaking.
I couldn’t get everything, but the crocuses are no longer buried. Those are the thin, grass-like leaves in the above photo.
I also cleared enough to access the crocuses and a couple of nearby tulips, but that was all I was able to do, today. I’ll have to go in again and clear around the tulips. That is going to take a while!
My older daughter came out while I was putting the “gate” back and showed her some of the progress in the garden. Then we gathered some fresh herbs for the fish she was about to cook for her sister and herself ( my husband and I don’t like most fish) for supper before I continued with my rounds – pausing to check out the pink rose bush.
The white rose bushes are almost done blooming, and the mock orange is looking like it’s about to explode into flowers any day now. Some buds at the bottom are already starting to show white petals.
I was heading towards the barn to take a peek inside, walking past a couple of my brother’s trucks, when I heard a noise coming from one of them. As I went to check one of them, I heard the noise again, coming from behind me. This truck has a home made plywood cap on it that extends over the cab of the truck. For a moment, I feared a cat had somehow got locked inside, though I didn’t think my brother had opened the doors while they were here least weekend.
I opened the door and found this, looking back at me.
I would say this is one of the four that had been in the garden shed until my taking things out finally scared them off. The other three and the mama are probably under or in a shed somewhere. I looked around to try and see how it got in and realized the entire wall of the cap by the rear windshield wasn’t there. 😄 There are just small panels on either side, but there is more than enough space for critters to get in.
So no trapped critters. Just curious ones! I was actually happy to see it. I miss them being in the garden shed!
Now to how this morning went.
My daughter and I headed out 2 hours before her appointment, which should have gotten us there almost half and hour early. We did stop briefly at a gas station in the one town along the highway to pick up some drinks for the road and to get the maps app up. If we get it going from home, the app links to our wifi, then basically doesn’t like to switch to data once we’re on the highway, and the app doesn’t work right. I didn’t actually need it until we were well into the city, but it was ready for my daughter to be my Nav O once we got closer.
Along the way, there was a section that we needed to slow down at – the section of highway that got washed out during the storms not long ago. With all the rain we had yesterday, the gravel patch job was a real mess. I noted that they did install double culverts where the highway washed out, so this shouldn’t happen again, once they finished fixing and paving it.
We had to make one more stop at another gas station shortly after reaching the city, but neither stop took particularly long. It was the traffic and road conditions that set us back. Then, once we found the place (the streets being every bit as broken up as I expected) we found the parking lot I’d seen on the satellite map.
The entrance was through a back lane and partially blocked by a truck unloading cargo.
With all the one way streets, it too a bit for me to be able to drive around and back track. I did manage to get past the truck. From the signs, we saw they did have visitor parking for the clinic – a whole three spots. One of them was occupied. Another was “small car only”, and meant it. The third required me driving to the other end of the lot to turn around and drive back the other way so I could pull in, because there wasn’t room enough for me to drive right in, then straighten out, without hitting a parked car – and my truck isn’t particularly big!
As we walked around the building to the doors, the first red flags appeared. This is NOT a safe neighbourhood. We were maybe 10 minutes to my daughters appointment time at 10am, and there were already several people listing about. This is the sort of area that I wouldn’t want to be walking around in broad daylight without something I could use to defend myself.
No surprise, the entry doors were locked. No signs. I finally saw what looked like a possible intercom with a keypad and pushed a button I hoped was to someone inside.
No one answered, but a Purolator guy came through and let us in the first doors, and a staff member saw us and opened up the second set of doors.
They had a sign in sheet for the visitor parking that I filled out so we wouldn’t get towed, then my daughter checked in. Being a first visit, she was given a clip board with a form to fill out, and we sat in the first waiting room. When she handed that in, we moved to a second waiting room. My daughter was called in soon after.
Given what happened the last time she saw a specialist in the city, I offered to go in with her, as a sort of body guard. She said she would be okay. I will say now, from the start, that she was very happy with this appointment. It was an intake appointment, and she came out with a date for a follow up appointment near the end of next month.
Her appointment went quite long, so I had a lot of time to sit there and look around.
This place is a “community health centre”. Being downtown and in a sketchy area, there are some things I would expect that is different from other clinics. Still… there were significant difference that I could see.
All clinics have a few larger posters on the walls, giving health information about specific things. Or with information for people in abuse situations, telling where they can reach or for help. These are clean looking and informative as much as the space allows for.
This place was splattered with small posters all over the place, and they sent out more red flags. A poster about fentanyl, for example, wasn’t giving information on the dangers of fentanyl, but was about the “myths”, suggesting that using it was not all that dangerous. Another poster, instead of, say, giving information on how to get help for sexual exploitation, or cautioning about the dangers of promiscuous sex (plenty of other signs showed they have out free STD treatment kits) instead directed the reader to an app on… how to engage in promiscuous sex “safely”. Other posters basically pandered to all the current identities and ideologies currently trending, written like they were aimed at people with the cognitive development of kids in elementary school. None of them were about how to get healthy or avoid health problems. They were all basically enabling self destructive behaviour. The focus on race in some of them was both creepy and paternalistic.
Aside from all that, the longer I sat there…. Well. Let me put it this way. In my years, I have been stalked, threatened, harassed and physically attacked by a drunk person who wanted to kill me. I’ve walked through downtown city streets in the wee hours of the morning, when the bars were closing down and the drunks were staggering about. I lived in high crime areas. Then there was the situation with our vandal. Not once, in all these years, did I fell as unsafe as I did in the waiting room of this clinic. Everything around me triggered red flags. Even the times I got smiles from the staff felt… wrong.
Part of safety issue was how the staff had to use security key cards to go in and out several doors. Clearly, it wasn’t just the people outside the clinic that was a security threat. From one of these doors I saw two women come out, talking loud enough for everyone in the waiting room to hear. The older (white) staff member was quite angry as she demanded to know how the younger one knew that there was a laptop. The younger (not white) woman said she’d seen the older woman use it for a presentation. As they walked down the hall, I could see the anger in the older woman as she was first silent about being seen using it, then declared that there were two laptops, but only certain people were allowed to use them. This younger woman was clearly not one of them. The conversation, such as it was, continued as they went down the hall.
Shortly after, the older woman came back down the hall alone. I made eye contact with her and she gave me a friendly smile, totally at odds with how she behaved towards the other woman.
I had found news articles about an investigation and report about this place, released last summer. Among the things they looked into were problems of racism and a “toxic work environment”.
I just saw an example of that. Clearly, firing three board members didn’t fix anything.
By the time my daughter was done – looking quite happy – I was feeling my skin starting to crawl from the skeevy creepiness of the place.
We didn’t talk about it right away. Just getting out of the parking lot and avoiding people staggering in front of the truck, was an issue and I had to focus on driving. It was around 11 by then, and neither of us had had breakfast, other than sharing a bag of beef jerky from the truck snack stash during the drive in. My daughter wanted to buy us breakfast and I remembered that our route took us past a mall that was convenient to get into. So that’s where we ended up going. We found the food court and the first thing I spotted was a bento place I knew was good, even though I’d never been to this location specifically, before. On seeing the menu, we both ended up ordering the exact same thing. A salmon bento – normally, I would have gotten chicken, but it was tempura salmon – and a taro bubble tea.
It was amazingly good. That is one thing I do miss about living in the city. Having access to such a variety of fast meal choices from all over the world.
While there, I mentioned to my daughter about how I felt while at this clinic, that it wasn’t safe, and that I never wanted to go back there again. She was really surprised, because she’d had such a good appointment. I tried to describe what I was seeing with the posters, which she hadn’t had time to look at herself, and she just sort of … made justifications for them. She didn’t see what I saw and, chances are, she’s not going to get what the problem with them was.
This is going to be an issue.
Her next appointment is going to be more on the medical side rather than the intake side, and seeing what surgeons she needs to be referred to. Hopefully, she’ll be referred to actual good ones.
As for the drive, I was very happy to be getting out of the city – and that Damocles didn’t drop the sword again. The truck behaved. I needed to get gas, but the prices in the city were $1.649/L instead of the $1.599 we saw when we’d stopped at a station in the town along the highway. I had decided we would be getting gas along the way, but there was one last gas station, just outside the city, that was at $1.579, so we stopped there. I am planning to do a Costco run on Friday and will be filling the tank there, so I just needed to top up a bit. I’m glad I did, because when we drove through the town again, the gas prices there had gone up to $1.649 while we were gone!
Once at home, I was curious and looked up reviews for this clinic.
I wish we’d done this before.
Yes, there were some glowing 5 star reviews with comments like “best place ever!” But there were just as many 1 star reviews – and virtually nothing in between. These gave more information. At least one other person commented on how unsafe it felt in the clinic – especially for women – while others commented on the unsafe neighbourhood. People who had been going there for years commented that things had gone down hill so badly, they would not be going back. Some would say the doctors were great, but the nurses were horrible. Others would say the complete opposite. A lot of people talked about not getting the care they need, including being turned away from the walk in clinic, being denied mental health help (counseling and therapy are among the services provided), being pushed to go “trans” instead of getting help with their mental health, and some talking about wanting to take their own lives after going there. Plenty finished their comments with “don’t go. Just, don’t.”
Yes, I tried to bring it up with my daughter.
It just got her back up.
This is going to be a problem. I truly do not think she is going to get the care she needs there. I’m reminded of when my husband tried to be the “good patient” for so long, while his real problems not being addressed, and by the time that was looked at, it was too late and he was permanently disabled.
So… I don’t quite know how to deal with this right now. I just know, down to my bones, that this place is not good.
*sigh*
Anyhow. That’s where we’re at right now.
Tomorrow, I’ve got a day at home, and then we’ll be doing the usual end of month running around, plus my daughter has her blacksmithing workshop. When I have the chance to work around the yard, I have a new thing to focus on. My brother and SIL will be having a large bin delivered about half way through July, and it will be picked up again after 10 days. This will be for hauling away the non-scrap metal junk. My brother will take the metal to a scrap yard himself – he has the trailer and equipment needed to do it – for cash.
They’ll have it dropped off near our current junk pile, which actually has quite a bit of metal stuff in it, so anything we want to have hauled away can be brought over to that spot.
I’ll finally be able to clear stuff away from around the garden shed. I hadn’t wanted to do it yet, because there is so much in the junk pile already. Anything we add to the pile now will be hauled away by the end of July. Judging from the size of the bin they’re having dropped off, my brother has identified a lot of stuff in the outer yard that needs to go!
What a difference it’s going to be, with my brother and SIL able to come out so often now, and with the resources, tools and equipment they have. Night and day, really!! There was only so much we could do on our own and, with all the health issues showing up, it’s getting harder just to maintain what we managed to get done in our early years here. I’ve been feeling like we haven’t been able to hold up our end of the bargain for living here anymore.
Well, it’s certainly going to be a very different summer, this year!
So… it happened again, today, but this time at home.
First goal of the day was to make a dump run. As usual, I back the truck up to the house to load it up. My brother and SIL are out for the weekend and my SIL was using their beautiful zero turn mower, so I made sure parked the truck well out of her way.
My daughter and I loaded up the truck, then headed out. Finished up at the dump and head home. With the renter’s cattle now rotated onto this section, we made sure to close the gate when we left, so I stopped in the driveway as my daughter got out and opened the gate. As soon as she did, I went to put the truck back into Drive and…
Nothing.
The shifter just slide back and forth, no resistance.
The steering shifter linkage we’d just had installed as no longer working. Broken? Fallen off? We had no idea.
We just got the truck back. Aside from the drive home, this was the first time we’d driven it! They did test drive it a few times before I got it, but still… it should have lasted.
Damocles dropped his sword again.
Once we got over our disbelief, I left my daughter to take care of closing the gate back up, etc. while I headed in. I saw the barn door open, so I went to see if my brother was there. He was working on some of his equipment, so I told him what happened. He said he was busy, and I told him, I was just letting him know, since the truck was just sitting in the driveway, outside the gate, and told him I was going to go phone the garage – and see if I had any more tows left on my CAA!
I called the garage and left a message, then tried to log into CAA.
It didn’t recognize my password.
I double checked and confirmed I had the right password.
Still didn’t work.
Tried the app. I rarely use the app because I always have trouble with it.
It actually wanted my CAA number input first, but again, I couldn’t log in.
I tried to reset my password. A code would come in to my email account.
It never came in.
I hit resend.
It didn’t come in, and this time, there was no “resend” option.
By that time I got a message from my SIL, telling me my brother was looking at the truck, so I gave a phone handset to one of my daughters, in case the garage called back, and headed outside.
My brother couldn’t fit under the truck to see anything – the guy that had done it before, on the street, was incredibly tiny to fit under there! So he brought out a jack.
The next while was spent getting the truck raised up and secured, with blocks, a second hydraulic jack under the truck, and something I can’t remember the name of that can support up to 2 tons, set up to support the truck’s weight should the jacks fail.
It still terrified me, and it takes a LOT to scare me.
Those two pieces are supposed to be attached. The white plastic visible, fits over the metal nib above. It simply fell off.
In the second picture, you can see what terrified me, the entire time my brother was under there. All the safety precautions didn’t matter. The youngest of my brothers had been working under a car. He had taken precautions. It still fell, killing him instantly.
My brother got the linkage connected, but said it would just fall off again, so he looked around.
What he found was a hook, which holds the weight of the linkage cable. It was bent enough to be touching the transmission. Which meant the weight of the cable was actually pulling the linkage loose.
He thinks something had to have hit the hook. Who knows when or how. He straightened it out and then added some zip ties to hold the cable. Now, the weight of the cable actually pushes towards the linkage instead of away, helping hold it in place.
All the while, he explained things, took pictures and even some video. Some of which I was able to message to the garage.
When everything was done and the truck was back on the ground, I was able to drive it to the garage without any problems.
My brother is the best.
I never did hear back from CAA, so I still don’t know if I have any tows left. When I got inside, I phoned the garage and left another message to follow up. I suggested swinging by with the truck so they can take a look at it at some point. There is no way it should have fallen off so easily, even with the hook bent out of place. Even with what my brother did, it could still simply pop off.
Which meant we suddenly weren’t sure about our next trips.
We were planning to do a combination celebration for Father’s Day and a birthday today. My older daughter was going to treat us to Pizza Hut, which meant a trip to the nearer, smaller city. We would have combined the trip to hit a Walmart and a liquor store along the way.
None of us felt comfortable doing that, even though my brother assured me the linkage should hold now.
We decided we’d go to town, instead.
My younger daughter and I headed in so we would arrive as the pizza place we were going to was opening at 4pm, with my daughter messaging the family to let them know where we were, constantly. We ordered the pizzas, which would take a while to cook, giving us time to go to the grocery store. Along with the stuff we picked up for ourselves, I grabbed a small cake for my brother and SIL as a thank you and a Father’s day gift.
It took longer than expected at the grocery store, so when we were done, we went straight back to the pizza place to pick up our order. Then we made a stop at the liquor store for my daughter to run in and pick up a few things for herself and her sister. Then it was off to home.
Every stop we made, we were both on pins an needles. Would the truck move? Did the linkage hold?
It’s insane.
The truck ran just fine. Didn’t stop us from being constantly on edge!
Once at home, I pulled up to the house to unload, then quickly delivered the cake to my brother, staying just long enough to slip it through their door. They went out for supper themselves, not long after, but they will have desert waiting for them when they get back. 😊
Overall, it’s been a day of “rest” in that I didn’t work on any projects outdoors. While waiting in line at the grocery store, though, I couldn’t resist. I picked up a packet of Scarlet Nantes carrot seed tape. I’ll do another succession sowing of carrots. At this point, I’m basically just throwing as many things into the ground as I can, hoping something will make it. Deer got at the Spring Blush peas in the trellis bed. They’re survive, but a few plants are going to be set back. I really want more of the basics, like peas, carrots and beans. If I could, I’d be doing more potatoes and corn, too, but we won’t have ready space for those, even if we did have the time. There is a space down the middle of the trellis bed where I can plant the new carrots, though, next to the rainbow mix that’s already there. Sort of.
Being the 20th, with tomorrow being the first day of summer, I decided to do the garden tour videos today. I’ll see how the files turned out when I’m done here. Hopefully, I won’t have to do them over again, tomorrow.
So that’s where we are at now. Damocles dropped his sword again, but my amazing brother saved us again, while we had our hearts in our throats the whole time he was under that truck. We’ve all had our pizzas for today – my daughter got us enough to last us a couple of days – and we’re just relaxing until we’re ready for cake or pie and ice cream.
Then I think I’m going to try going to bed early. I feel absolutely wrung out.
Happy Father’s day to the dads out there! I hope you’re having a better time than we have been! 😄
I was able to get a couple of big jobs done in the garden. It’s going to be an odd growing year. We had another cold night last night, dropping to about 6C/43F It looks like the cold has killed some of the melons and at least one winter squash transplants that managed to germinate in the tray that got resown after a mouse got to the seedlings. A couple more winter squash have germinated in the tray and I’ll transplant them when they get their true leaves, but it’s really too late for them, unless we have a super long, mild fall. The next time I have a chance to check out a garden center, I’m hoping to find more winter squash, at least.
Right now, I’m thinking of what can be direct sown for succession sowing. I’ll be doing more peas and bush beans, I think, and possibly some beets, but that’s not what I sowed today.
The first bed I worked on was the winter sown kohlrabi bed.
The down side of having a cover that can keep the cats out is, it’s much less convenient to weed.
Lots of crab grass. Thankfully, the remaining mulch kept most of the elm seeds from germinating. That is getting to be a real problem in other areas. Especially inside the protective collars around the tomatoes in the bed next to this one, and in the chain link fence bed.
In the next image of the slide show above, you can see my little surprise. There are actual kohlrabi growing! Absolutely tiny, but surviving. I was going to leave them to grow bigger but, as I was clearing the weeds, there were rhizomes going right under the little cluster. I ended up transplanting them to one end – a whole four tiny seedlings that probably won’t survive, but at least there’s a possibility.
The rest of the bed got completely worked over as I pulled all the rhizomes I could. Unfortunately, there were quite a few tree roots in there, too, and there isn’t much I can do about those. In this location, the roots could be either from the elm in one direction, or the cherry trees in the other. Both are close enough and spread roots far enough to be possible. It might even had been both, not just one.
Once the weeding was done, I have the bed a deep watering. Especially in the three rows I planned to sow into, which you can see in the third image.
In the fourth image, you can see what I decided to plant. American Spinach, Rainbow Swiss Chard, and I had some seed tape of Uzbek Golden Carrots left. They are old seeds so I don’t expect a good germination rate, and I hoped there was enough to lay down a double layer.
Before sowing anything, I noticed my brother had left some cardboard in the garage for me that was just right for this bed, so I cut strips to lay it down as a mulch between the rows, plus a couple that would be used to lay over the carrots to protect them until they germinated.
I didn’t need much. I had only enough of the home made seed tape left for half a row. I thought I had more seeds left in the packet and went looking, but couldn’t find it. So I grabbed the Hedou Tiny bok choy seeds we collected last year – something got to the ones planted in the old kitchen garden. The rest of the new row in the middle got those. The carrots got covered with the strip of cardboard, but not the bok choy.
Then the spinach and chard got planted in the rows still marked by twine on either side. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packets, relatively speaking, and both got emptied in the planting. Then the cat proof cover got set back on.
Hopefully, these will take. We do have some seedlings from the rainbow carrot mix growing, but very few. I might try planting more carrots later on, but we’ll see. The chard and spinach planted between the garlic are just not growing, and what seedlings there were seem to be disappearing. It would be nice to have some greens that survive!
That done, I moved on to reclaiming the small, square bed near the compost ring.
The first image is the “before” picture. The boards on the side are from a same size frame that had been around another bed. They’re pretty rotted out, but they should last at least a couple more years. They still had their screws, so I took those out, first.
In the next image, the bed is all weeded, and the soil pulled away from the sides.
My original plan had been to join the corners opposite of how the frame already in place is, but it turned out the pieces weren’t all quite the same length, so I mixed and matched to get them to line up to the existing frame as best I could. Once the corners were screwed together, I had to be careful shifting it around to lay on top of the bottom frame properly. The wood is dry and rotten enough, I could hear it cracking at the corners.
I rummaged around in the scrap lumber pile in the garage for a while, and found some pieces I could cut into eight 8″ lengths, which is the new height of the bed. Four of them were screwed into corners, and four into the middles of the sides. One side didn’t line up at one corner. After screwing the vertical support piece to the bottom board, it left a gap between the support and the top board. More rummaging in the scrap lumber pile and I found something thin enough and cut it to 4″ in length. It was a bit narrower than the gap, but nothing the 3″ screws I was using couldn’t secure.
That done, I cleared a path to the remaining pile of garden soil we bought years ago and uncovered it. I thought I might be getting two wheelbarrow loads but, in the end, only needed one to top up the bed. In the next image, you can see the finished bed, all cleaned up, topped up and leveled.
The next thing was to protect the bed from being used as a litter box!
I had decided to use the rods from my hoop kit to made supports, running to opposite corners and crossing in the middle. This time, I decided to try something different. I found a drill bit that was the same diameter as the rods in this kit and drilled holes in each corner of the frame.
Which was fine for three of the corners, but one corner is a lot more rotten. There was no solid wood near enough to line up with the rods in the other corners, so I had to make do with what was there. Hopefully, it will be enough. The hoops will not be holding anything heavier than netting, and there shouldn’t be a lot of stress on it.
In the end, it took 6 rods to create each hoop. The hoop set into the rotten corner is a bit wonky, but otherwise it’s holding.
For the netting, I decided to dig out some green dollar store netting from last year, instead of the black netting I’ve been using elsewhere – the black netting that snakes can get caught in. The green netting is quite long, and I wasn’t sure it was wide enough to simply drape over the top, so I decided to wrap it around, instead. It was wrapped low enough that the netting could be secured to the ground with ground staples in the middles, outside the frame, while also being clipped at the bottom of the hoops at each corner.
I still had a lot of leftover netting, but I didn’t want to cut it, since it’ll be used elsewhere, some other time. After fussing with the netting to gather the excess toward the top and securing it with clips, I just pulled the excess length up and over the top and back again, before securing it in place with a clip, too. You can see the final mess in the last image of the slide show above. 😄
With this bed, I might transplant the one Arikara winter squash that has germinated in the middle, and then I will likely plant bush beans around the perimeter.
But not today.
That done, I headed inside for supper before coming back out to do the watering.
Which is when the phone started ringing. I hadn’t bothered to tell the family I was outside, so when the phone started ringing, they thought I was in my office and could answer. After four calls and no messages left on the answering machine, my daughter came looking for me. I went in and saw it was my mother, which was a surprise. I’d gotten a call from the nursing home this morning – at her request – to be informed that my mother was not feeling well. They’d already informed my brother yesterday, as he’s the primary contact, and he let me know. I was told she’d had a very rough night and was doing worse today, coughing, having a hard time breathing and talking. I was informed as to what treatment she was getting, and that she’s still in quarantine. She’s not the only one that’s sick, and if enough people in her ward are ill, they have to shut it down to visitors. For now, she can get visitors that need to wear a gown and mask, which rules me out because I can’t wear a mask.
I had asked the nurse that called me to let my mother know that I knew she was having a hard time talking, so I would not be phoning her. So it was very odd that my mother would phone me! She would have gotten the message, but when I mentioned it, she didn’t say anything about getting it. She did say that the nursing home phoned me this morning because she asked them to, but I told her they’d also already contacted my brother, yesterday. I told her about the medical treatment she was getting. She knew about the antibiotics but was saying they weren’t helping – I had to explain to her that it takes at least a few days before she would feel any difference, but she expects immediate response. I told her about the medication to help with her breathing, but she couldn’t remember anything about that one, then told me whatever pills they give her, she takes. I think she’s having a harder time remembering what she’s taking and when.
Of course, she started saying how she was so sick and didn’t think she was going to live much longer. Which she has been saying for the past… five? six? or so years. Thankfully, she is in the nursing home now. She’s coming up on 96 years old, and a simple cold can be dangerous at that age.
That got her to talking about the funeral and what I thought of it, and how she was surprised to see so many people. Then she told me, in a round about way, that she wanted us to make sure that her funeral had lots of friends there. I told her, we would let people know, but didn’t mention that she’s pretty much outlived most of her friends already.
By the end of the call, her voice was getting pretty squeaky, though she sounded a lot better than I expected, and even seemed to be in good spirits. Finally being where she has wanted to be for so long has definitely made a positive difference in her, even when she’s feeling sick.
After the call, I took the time to update my brother, then headed back out to finish watering the garden beds before it got too dark.
There are a few things I want to get done tomorrow, which is Friday, because I’m going to be doing some driving around on Saturday. June is a birthday month, and Sunday is Father’s Day, so we will be combining both on Saturday, to avoid crowds. My older daughter has offered to spring for Pizza Hut, which we haven’t had in at least a year. The nearest one is about an hour’s drive away. I’ll have other errands to do as well, including a dump run, which I did not do while we had my brother’s car and the truck was in the garage. Next week has got medical appointments, my daughter’s blacksmith workshop (she’ll be bringing home a forge when it’s done), and our first stock up shopping trip. So the more I can get done in the garden in between all this, the better!
Hard to believe we’re coming up on the solstice and the first day of summer already. With the cold nights we’ve been having, it feels like it should be April or May, not coming up on the end of June!
This morning, I headed into town fairly early to pay for the repairs on the truck, and take the keys. I talked to the owner for a bit and told him the background on when this happened before, and the C clip fix that I’d meant to ask him to check before but kept forgetting.
He told me that, with Chevy/GM vehicles, this is the most common thing he’s seen break down. He’s replaced a thousand of these. They just keep breaking. EXCEPT the after market part. Those hold out just fine.
Then I headed into town to fill the tank on my brother’s car before heading home. I remembered to stop at the post office, and yes, our parcel was there. It didn’t have our box number on it, as some places won’t ship to box numbers. So it had the post office’s address on it. As soon as I came in, the postal worker saw me and got it right out!
After I got home, I had some time to get things ready before going to the funeral. To my surprise, my sister phoned. She asked if I were planning to go, and I said yes. She told me that our vandal had been adamant that he didn’t want me, my brother or my mother there. (You can read why we would want to go, anyway, here), but that his wife had said she would not turn anyone away. I told her, no one has said anything to us directly, I’ve only heard through her, but I assumed as much. She just wanted to make sure I knew, in case there were issues.
There were no issues.
My brother and SIL came out to get my mother. Their son and grandsons where there, so while my brother and mother had one vehicle, the rest went in my nephew’s truck. We had more or less worked out how we would switch vehicles.
After the funeral, we went to the cemetery for the interment. I went along with my brother and mother, leaving the car I borrowed from them, for the moment. My brother parked in such a way that my mother could stay in the car and watch, as she didn’t want to transfer to the wheelchair again. We left when they started handing out shot glasses; our vandal wanted everyone to have a shot of vodka at his graveside. *sigh*
My brother started taking our mother back to the nursing home while the rest of us crammed into my nephew’s truck to go back to where their car was parked. Then I drove my SIL to the garage, with a friend following behind, to switch vehicles.
They waited to make sure the truck started and I was on my way. I remote started it and it sounded fine, but when I got in, there was a warning light, and a message to service the 4 wheel drive.
???!!!
The garage was still open, though, so I quickly told my SIL what was happening, then went in to talk to the owner, who was working on another customer’s vehicle. When he heard what I described, he looked absolutely shocked. Obviously, this wasn’t there when the parked the truck in the lot after servicing it.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to check it today. His diagnostic computer was at his second location. I asked him, so what do I do? He suggested I drive it for a while and see if the light turns off on its own, which sometimes happens. It’s not blinking or anything, right? Nope. Not blinking.
So I tell my SIL and they leave, though she made sure I knew her phone was linked to her car, so I could phone her if necessary.
Then I tried to drive the truck.
As soon as I put it in drive (which felt really stiff with the new part) and as soon as I started moving, the alarm started to ding. There is a large open area I could turn the truck around in, so I did that. While in reverse, the dinging stopped. Once in drive, it started again.
I returned to the parking lot and backed into a spot again, then went in to talk to the owner and tell him what happened.
There was absolutely nothing he could do about it at the time, and I couldn’t drive it home like that. So I called my SIL.
*sigh*
I know they’re really wanting their car back. Their other one, that they’ve loaned me before, it still in the shop.
She had to get to where they were all meeting at a restaurant first, and then said she would come back. In the end, it was my brother that came for me. He called along the way, and it’s a good thing he did. He misheard when she told me where I was. The name of the garage is very similar to the name of the general store in our little hamlet, so he was on his way there! He had just passed the turn off to the industrial park our garage is now located in. He was on hands free and kept me on the line as he turned around and came back, telling me what he was seeing as he drove in. He didn’t have far to go.
When he reached me, I could tell he was very unhappy about the whole situation. I don’t think he quite understood why the owner couldn’t just manually check it. It didn’t occur to me until well after, that he didn’t know the owner was working on another vehicle and couldn’t really stop.
I was apologetic about the whole thing, but really, there’s nothing we could do. We had no other options. I’m just thankful that they could lend it to us at all. They used my brother’s newly acquired electric commuter car to drive my mother and plan to sell their two gas powered vehicles. Both of which needed a lot of work done on them, just to be safetied.
But, we have their car again. We drove back to the restaurant to drop him off, and I took their car home again.
This is getting so ridiculous. I can’t even drive the truck away from getting one repair job done, without something else going wrong!!
I don’t even know how we’re going to pay for it. Thankfully, the bill I paid this morning wasn’t large; about $275.
I did remember to text the owner and suggest he try driving the truck around, as I hadn’t had a chance to describe what I was feeling to him at the time. I barely drove it, and all I can say is that something felt… off.
Thankfully, he knows me will enough by now that when I can only tell him something vague like that, he takes me seriously. He might not always find the problem right away, but eventually, it happens.
My daughter and I headed out for my ultrasound early. I had instructions that included drinking 500ml of water by a certain time, so we first went to the Walmart parking lot, since it was nearby, and and I chugged it. We were early for the appointment, but didn’t wait too long before heading over to the hospital.
They actually got me in a bit early, and the ultrasounds – I got two different types in three different locations – were done quickly.
The tech had asked questions and I gave her some back ground. She was really nice and just sort of kept talking. At one point, I mentioned that I almost had to cancel the appointment because of what happened to our truck. She was glad I hadn’t, because these appointments are hard to get! I ended up telling her the name of the garage the truck was towed to, and that they had a second location in this city. Turns out, she had heard of them. Her son had taken his vehicle there to get a diagnostic. When he decided he would do the work himself, then asked how much he owed, they didn’t charge him for anything. When she takes her own Honda in to the dealership garage, it’s $200, just for a diagnostic. Every time she has to get work done, it seems it’s always at least a thousand dollars. I told her I had zero hesitation in recommending our garage and told her about when I’d gone to the second location after dropping cats off at the vet, so very last minute, and never got charged for all the testing he did to try and find why my battery gauge was doing what it was doing. She was quite happy to hear a first hand recommendation like that.
After I was done at the hospital, my daughter and I filled the gas tank, then headed back to the Walmart area. I went to the same place as last time. Where I saw others on the way out at $1.569/L, this one was $1.529 – and they had their 5¢ off/liter sale again, too, so I got a nice little discount! Even so, I was shocked that it took less than $45 to put in 3/4 of a tank. The car’s tank is so much smaller than our truck!
Once at the Walmart, we had a late lunch, then both did a bit of shopping. We took our time about it, but we didn’t need much and the store is still undergoing renovations, so it wasn’t that long. The one thing I did remember to get, for both my husband and I, were iron supplements and vitamin C. The type of iron I was after turned out to be behind the counter, so I had a nice chat with a lovely pharmacist.
As we were leaving and heading to my brother’s car, we could see dark clouds moving in and were starting to hear thunder. We weren’t sure if the system would reach where we lived, but it was definitely coming close. We loaded up the car and headed out. It started raining as we drove and I had to get my daughter to figure out how to get the wipers going, since I couldn’t look around to figure it out while driving.
It was way more convoluted that it should have been! 😄
For most of the drive, we were heading in the same direction as the storm, but eventually we were driving along side it. We could see the mass of clouds and rain heading towards where we knew the house was.
I had planned to back up to the house to unload, but we were just pulling up to the driveway when we realized it had started to hail. My daughter quickly got out to open the gate, and I drove straight into the garage. We got the car inside just in time!! The car is a lot smaller than our truck, so there was plenty of room to pull forward, and we could close the garage door.
In the video above, the first one was taken as I waited for my daughter to catch up to me from the gate. We hadn’t brought our re-useable bags, so she used the back door and dashed to the house to get some. As we set up to unload the back of the truck, I was able to close the door part way and got the second part of the video. The noise you hear is the hail hitting the metal garage door.
Thankfully, in the time it took for us to fill the bags and gather things up to go to the house, the hail had stopped, if not the rain, so we just got wet while dashing to the house.
Well. Hobbling somewhat quickly.
My older daughter was waiting to open the door for us, too.
Once we were all settled in, I headed out again to feed the yard cats and do a quick status check. It had pretty much stopped raining by then. The transplants done this morning are looking okay, so far.
Back inside, I took the time to update my brother and SIL. I haven’t heard back from the garage yet, which means they didn’t get a chance to install the part today, and I wanted to let my brother know.
Before starting this post, I remembered to text the garage to change a burnt out headlight for me. I have a new bulb waiting in the truck. It would just be a pain – literally – for me to get at that third bolt in the wheel well that would allow the light fixture to be removed. Once the truck is ready, we have to work out how to get their car back to them after I pick up the truck.
In other things, before we headed out this morning, we got messages from my SIL. She had found out when the funeral for our vandal was going to happen and where, through Facebook posts. I had messaged my sister about it, knowing she wouldn’t see the messages until after she got home from work, but never heard from her. My brother already promised my mother that he would get her to the funeral, so it doesn’t matter. If people have a problem with us being there, that’s on them. He may have hated us, but we still loved him.
Anyhow.
We’re currently expecting to keep getting rain off and on – more on than off – until about 2am. Our phones have been going off with tornado warnings, but not so much for where we are. The system is moving directly over us, though, and we are definitely getting some lightning. Tomorrow is supposed to be clear of rain, which is good, because we have an insurance appraiser coming out to look at the buildings on the property. Hopefully, my brother will be able to find a better property insurance policy with a better company. The nights of rain and days without will be good for the garden, that’s for sure.
Getting more done outside today is definitely not going to happen. Hopefully, I’ll get at least some of it done tomorrow. If we do end up getting the truck back tomorrow, I’m hoping it’s early enough to check out a greenhouse in town and see if they have cabbage and winter squash transplants available. I’m really unhappy about the destruction of what we’d planted ourselves. I want to try these varieties again next year, and this time I’ll make sure to start them indoors earlier – and protect them from any mouse looking for lunch! I’m already looking to order new seeds for the varieties I ran out of because I had to do second sowings.
One good thing about the storm, though. We went from 31C/88F to the current 20C/68F, and it feels so blessedly cool! I might even be able to get a decent sleep tonight!
As I write this, it’s coming up on 4:30pm, and we’re at 29C/84F, with the humidex at 33C/91F – and we are just reaching our high for the day. Things are not supposed to start cooling down for another couple more hours.
We have a 1% chance of rain where we are now, but some areas to the south of us and into the US are expecting storms with high winds, heavy rain and potentially baseball sized or larger hail.
!!!
I’m still hoping to get outside and get more done, but my goodness, I just can’t handle the heat like I used to, anymore!
Which is why I was out by about 8am, when it was still relatively cool.
My main task of the day was to start working on where I plan to plant corn this year.
A few years back, this area had been a squash patch, but we had to cut back and lost control of some areas. Little by little, I’ve been working to reclaim areas, and this tarp covered area is one of them. I keep calling it a tarp, but I think it’s landscape fabric of some kind. It’s been sitting in this spot for several years now, moved only a short distance to plant where the asparagus and strawberries are now.
The first thing I had to do was remove the things that were keeping it from being blown away. Pieces of wood. The old kiddie pool we sometimes use as a planter. Bricks. Rocks. Lots of rocks. I’ve been tossing rocks onto there while weeding, and some were put into piles to hold corners down. I grabbed as much of the rocks as I could and loaded them into the wheelbarrow, and they have been set on a piece of sheet metal I use in the winter to cover the fire pit. The fire pit has enameled bricks around it – those bricks are everywhere. The problem is, the enamel gets incredibly slippery when wet, and quickly get buried. We will be removing the enameled bricks and replacing them with something else, as we are able. Around the fire pit, it will be rocks from the garden.
Once most of the rocks were removed, I lifted the edges and pulled the tarp over itself to push any remaining rocks and debris together, to make it easier to gather the rest of the rocks.
Which is when I found the ant hill.
Fair warning, if ants give you the heebie jeebies. The second picture in the slide show above is of the ant hill, and the third file is a brief video showing just how many there were, and how they got just everywhere! I uncovered more ant tunnels closer to the opposite corner, and I suspect those were part of the same colony of ants.
In the next file, you can see the whole area that had been covered for so long. It’s amazing how much still managed to grow under there! For the most part, though, any grass or weeds under that tarp has been killed by it.
Ideally, I would have taken the lawn mower or weed trimmer over the next area, but I just didn’t want to lose the time. What I did do was drag over logs, each about 4′ long each, that we used to make temporary frames on the low raised beds several years ago. Logs, a board, the kiddie pool, bricks and larger rocks were laid out or scattered over the tarp. Over time, it will flatten more, and I can stretch the edges out to reduce the slack, over time.
This newly uncovered area is now quite compacted, so it’ll need quite a bit of digging and loosening of soil before anything can be planted.
I started at one corner and immediately hit something, stopping my garden fork. I shifted, tried again, and hit it again. Then again. I finally manage to get under it.
That was one of the bigger rocks I found. Most were more of a size that can be used around the fire pit. As I worked, the rocks all got dumped into the wheelbarrow.
Worse than the rocks were the roots. They were flippin’ everywhere! I was able to pull up some longer ones, but only so far before they stopped dead, because I hit another root they’d gone under.
I had to get the loppers, which meant going into the old garden shed.
The raccoon mama and her babies are still there. The mama didn’t move, one of her babies was nursing, I could see one other that was just sort of leaning against a wall joist, I couldn’t see a third one, but the fourth was just looking at me curiously. No chittering warnings or acting nervous. They have learned I will leave them alone.
I grabbed the lopper as quickly as I could and left them be.
In the next photo, you can see several of the larger roots I tried pulling up before they hit something below ground and stopped.
Loosening the soil alone would not have taken long at all, but between the roots and the rocks, I ended up working at it for almost 3 hours. I got a roughly 4′ wide area loosened, cleaned up, de-rooted and most of the larger rocks removed (there are always more…), then leveled and smoothed out with a landscape rake. Then I brought straw over and set it around the edges, like a frame.
I have two types of corn I want to plant, so I plan to dig at least one more strip like this, with straw covering the paths in between. Someday, these areas might be reclaimed as raised beds, or be converted to a perennial beds.
After finishing up this bed, I watered all the garden beds deeply. The garlic was getting too tall for the netting, so I took that off. I can see some second sowing of spinach and chard where they were planted in between, but not many. I think it’s just been too hot for them. If they don’t take, I might plant some bush beans, instead.
Then I went inside for lunch. Which is when I heard a lawn mower.
My brother had brought out their zero turn mower and started mowing the outer yard.
After I had my lunch, I grabbed the wheel barrow and the landscape rake and headed to the side of the garage their zero turn mower is stored in. The cats have been using the lean-to’s on both sides of the garden as litter boxes over the winter. With the mower out, I was able to rake things up into the wheel barrow to dump out, then use the rake to level the floor, so they would have a nice clean spot to park their mower in.
While getting the wheel barrow I realized my SIL was now mowing – and she was mowing the inner yard! So I moved hoses and logs aside. She even went into the jungle of un-reclaimed main garden area. An area that is extremely rough and is what broke our own push mower. I had planned to very carefully use their push mower they’ve made available to us, with the mower set as high as it can go. I’ve used their little riding mower there before, but really didn’t want to risk damaging it again. That zero turn mower is way more robust and made light work of the mess!
After cleaning up in the garage and putting things away, I backed our truck up to the house to load it with our garbage bags – it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone to the dump, so there was a lot – then headed to the dump. By the time I got back, my SIL was almost done mowing both the inner and outer yards. Since I left the gate open while I was gone, she even mowed the sides of the driveway outside the gate.
I so, so appreciate that she did this! I still need to get the push mower and weed trimmer out, but I no longer have to worry about those huge areas.
It’s now past 5pm as I write this, and I have been seriously considering asking the girls to do the outside cat feeding and calling it a night. I’m falling asleep at my keyboard (which I am now thinking isn’t just being tired from the heat, but from the low iron levels I found out about just yesterday). I should at least try to get the push mower out in some areas, though. It’s not something that can be done in the mornings, because the grass is too wet and would jam the mower. Which means working at it in the evenings, when things would finally have a chance to dry – but we’re not really expected to cool down much overnight, and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, even before the humidex is taken into account.
The second corn bed is definitely going to wait until tomorrow morning. Digging through all those rocks and roots to prepare the bed is not something I want to be doing during the heat of the day!
Oh, dear. The weather group I’m on just sent a notification out. Some areas now have tornado warnings. Not our area, thankfully, but between potentially baseball sized hail or potential tornados, the south end of the province is not looking good right now!
I started things off a bit early, and it was still lovely and cool. My priority, after I did my morning rounds, was to water the garden beds before the heat hit.
I’m happy to say that I am seeing new sprouts in the rows of spinach, chard, turnips and radish in the main garden area. I checked under the boards in the trellis bed and saw what might be carrot sprouts, so I removed the boards. It’s hard to say for sure, as a lot of weeds were trying to come up under there, too.
I’m pretty sure I saw new sprouts in the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, too. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing tiny bok choy and beet seedlings through the mosquito netting, thought it’s hard to be sure. I didn’t see any this morning, but this evening, I’m sure I could see the first dwarf pea sprouts!
After I finished outside, I came in and had breakfast, then tried to go down for a nap before I planned to visit my mother, then pick up anything we needed before doing our first stock up shop, tomorrow.
It was a failure.
For some reason, both Butterscotch and Cheddar have decided that, when I lie down, they absolutely MUST cuddle my head. Aggressively. Then curling up right at my head to nap themselves.
That doesn’t count the other cats that like to settle on my hip, against my back or on either side of my legs.
*sigh*
Next time, I’ll try napping on the couch. The living room is a cat free zone.
I eventually gave up and got ready to head into town. Before I did, I noted activity notification on my bank app and checked.
My husband’s tax return, which is supposed to include my first Disability Tax Credit, came in.
It was short by about $2500.
Unfortunately, my husband still can’t log into his CRA account to see why. I’m going to have to wait until our tax prepared is back from holidays at the end of the month and phone her, because she can log in and see his account – and maybe find out why he can’t log in, himself. anymore!
My younger daughter never got her disability tax credit, either. She did her taxes herself.
Frustrating.
Anyhow.
I headed into town and realized my mother would be just starting her lunch, so I decided to go to the grocery store, first. I actually picked up some ground beef that was on sale. I haven’t seen ground beef for under $6 a pound for a long time, even with sales.
My visit with my mother was pretty good. As I was headed to her room, I spotted her in the dining room and popped in. We then went to her room for the visit.
She is so enjoying having a room – and a bathroom – to herself! She says being in the nursing home, compared to the TCU, is like night and day.
Of course, she still had things to complain about. With her medications, as usual. Apparently someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time? Then the count for her morning meds was off. She said she asked who was in charge of the medications and was told it was the pharmacy in town. I suspect the person didn’t understand what my mother was asking, but she now believes the pharmacy decides what medications she gets, at their whim. She then started going on about how the staff all think she is stupid, and everyone living there is stupid, and that’s why they are deliberately messing with their medications.
*sigh*
She had asked my brother for a radio and he’d given me one to pass on to her. I plugged it in and tried to find the station she told me the number of. There was nothing on either AM or FM (she didn’t know which is was; she doesn’t understand anything about AM or FM). Since I couldn’t pick up her station (though I could pick up others), she decided it was a bad radio and started asking me if an old radio that belonged to my husband when we were in high school – a ghetto blaster, which tells you just how old it is! – was still around. It is, but I told her, it still won’t pick up that station. I tried to explain again about things interfering with frequencies, but she decided it meant that the radio stations were the problem, for having “weak” signals.
Then I tried to show her the sliding switch that goes from off to FM then AM. She demanded “just show me what button to push”. I told her, it’s not a button. It’s a switch that slides, and showed her again; Off – FM – AM.
She got angry that my brother would give her a high tech radio that she can’t understand.
*sigh*
It was a shorter visit, since there really wasn’t much we had to talk about. Now that she is in town, I can visit her more often, anyhow. Before I left, I spent some time at the nursing station. I explained what my mother told me about the medications, and that someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time. She was startled to hear that and said she would look into it. She got out the medication binder and looked up my mother’s file, going over everything, which is basically the same that it was while she was at the TCU. She said they tried looking at my mother’s list to compare (the hand written one she makes after she counts her pills, with little diagrams), but it was in Polish, so they were trying to translate it. My mother had been promised a list of her medications and they were going to try to get it translated into Polish for her, too. I told her, my mother knows pre-WWII Polish; she would not be familiar with modern medical terms in today’s Polish!
As we were chatting, the nurse told me how so many of the staff were startled when my mother was transferred over. Many of them had cared for Baba – “grandmother” – which is what they called my aunt. My mother looks SO much like her sister did. My aunt passed away a few years ago, so for the staff to suddenly start seeing their Baba again was a bit of a shock until they found out they were sisters.
This nurse had just started working there when my father came to live there. I’ve had it confirmed that he was there for only 5 months before he passed away; I thought it was 6 months. She remembered my father, and I told her about how, when I phoned him every Sunday, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him, how well taken care of he was, and how much he liked the staff. She was so touched to hear that!
So far, my mother has been very nice to them. I hope that lasts! She has been saving the nasty comments about the staff for when we are there. 😕
It was a good chat with the nurse, and I expect we will have many more opportunities to talk now that my mother is there!
That done, I headed home, then stayed indoors to stay out of the heat. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter. I finally headed out at around 6:30, which is about when we hit 27C/81F.
The predicted high was 25C/77F.
We’re supposed to keep getting hotter, with the hottest day in the forecast being Friday, which they are now saying is supposed to hit 34C/93F.
The yard cats are laying in puddles all over the yard, in whatever shade they can find.
Bobert was looking adorable in the cat bed I tucked under the isolation shelter’s door box, to keep the weather out in the winter.
With the heat, I made sure to do the watering again. This time, I did watering in the food forest area.
I’m happy to say that it looks like the apple tree survived, in spite of the damage to the stem. A single branch with new leaf buds has shown up. The plum tree also has leaf buds showing up finally, but only in branches coming up just above the graft at the base. None of last year’s growth is showing buds. Neither are the mulberry trees. They survived their first winter, but it looks like they didn’t survive their second. The poor little highbush cranberry have free leaves showing, but they are still remarkably tiny, including the one that the deer did NOT nibble one. The silver buffalo berry bushes, which I don’t bother watering because there are too many, had been covered with what I thought were leave buds. It turns out they were not leaf buds, but flower buds! The leaf buds are showing up now. The sea buckthorn also have leaf buds unfurling.
After the watering was done, I started working on the larger of the two East yard beds that had not been prepped in the fall.
I first removed the two lengths of twine that went around the sides. Those were there to keep anything wrapped around the box frame from flapping in the wind too much, but they were in the way for working in the bed. I considered taking the box frame off entirely, but decided it wasn’t necessary and worked around it.
In the second picture, you can see the cleaned up bed. Unfortunately, while I was leveling the cleared soil with the hoe, I caught the line running across that helped keep the sides from bowing outwards at the joins. The wood is rotting and the screw eye got pulled right out!
Honestly, I’m surprised these beds have lasted as long as they have. I used lumber I found in the barn that had been sitting there for probably at least a decade before I found them. They were not in particularly good shape, but they were the best I could find for the job. I expected them to last about 3 years, maybe, and they’ve lasted twice that by now.
Weeding the bed didn’t really take that much, except that I found a remarkable amount of tree roots! Given where this bed is located, they would not be from the elm tree, but from the nearby cherry bushes.
I look forward to when we can make these into high raised beds. These beds are about a foot high, but it was still really painful to be bending to work in it.
Once the bed was clear, I took some plastic that was rolled up and set aside from previous uses in these beds and covered the soil to protect it from cats, until we can plant in it. I’m looking to transplant tomatoes into this bed. We have four varieties to transplant, and couple probably fit three varieties in this bed. We don’t have a lot of each variety.
The pieces of wood frame on the left of the first photo are on the 4′ square bed that also needs to be done. By the time I finished the longer bed, I was too hot and in too much pain to do that one. Aside from weeding it – and that one has been infected by creeping Charlie – I will be adding the additional wood frame pieces to make it a bit higher, and can then add more soil into it. I’m planning to put the eggplant in here. It’s a small enough bed that I can add plastic walls around it, to protect them from high winds and create a semi-greenhouse around them.
I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done over the next few days. I’ll be doing our city stock up trips and a vet trip in between. Shopping always drains me, so it will depend on how much energy I have left – and what my pain levels are at. At the very least, I plan to water everything in the morning, and again in the evening, because of the heat.
Once the city trips are done, I expect to be able to start the direct sowing, and then hopefully start transplanting soon after. Somewhere in there, I’ll be uncovering and reclaiming the area to plant our corn in.
Today has turned out to be a dreary day with rain on and off all night and continuing on through today.
Translation: I feel like I’m about to fall asleep at my keyboard right now.
The ground is way too saturated for the work I hoped to do outside today, but I can’t complain.
First good news.
I got Bug!
She had come into the sun room to eat kibble and was hungry enough that she didn’t run off when I came near. I grabbed the bowl of cat soup for the isolation cats and saw her still there, so I snuck a pet on her back.
She looked at me, then went back to eating.
I gave her neck scritches.
She kept eating.
So I picked her up.
She wasn’t too happy with that, but I had the bowl of warm cat soup, so I basically stuck it under her face and started walking. Every time she made like she was going to escape, I moved the food closer. She didn’t try to eat it while I held her, but it did seem to calm her down.
Once at the isolation shelter, she allowed me to put her in! I took out the food bowl inside and closed the window before she could make a run for it.
After taking out the leftover cat soup from last night, which the other cats pounce on immediately, I refilled it with fresh cat soup and set it back in.
Curtis was very interested in getting into the shelter and I ended up letting him in, too.
I did a quick check around the yard and, thinking of the raccoon I saw in the garden shed, decided to check and see if it was still there.
There’s a litter of baby raccoons under that ball of fur. At the start of the video, you can hear the extra chittering from the babies.
Hmm… I just realized that Instagram shortened an 11 second video into something barely a second long – but I’m also getting “we are having trouble playing this video” messages. That’s on my desktop, though. On my phone, I can see the whole thing. Do let me know if you are getting the full 11 seconds, please!
I did move that garden feeder attachment aside after getting the video. I could just see part of her face after moving it, but she stayed all hunched around her babies.
I’m going to have to figure out how to get the stuff in the shed that I’ll need for the garden without scaring the heck out of them all. I don’t expect aggression from the mama, unless she feels threatened, which she might if I start moving out the bundles of garden stakes and plant supports. There’s that rolling seat/cart, but I won’t need it now that I’ve got my walker.
We’ve had cats have their litters in there, but this is a first for raccoons!
I paused to get a picture of the isolation kitties before I headed out this afternoon. Curtis is in the big cuddle puddle. Bug wants out again. 😄
Tonight, they have their overnight fast. In the morning, we have to get two into carriers. On file, we’re supposed to bring in Furriosa and Batman (aka: Marta), but they will take any two we can bring. I can see being able to get Bug. Furriosa… my daughter might be able to get her, but I’ve barely managed to sneak touches on her back. The other two, not even that, but we’ll have another week to work on them.
Once the outside cat stuff was done, it was time to head into town. My husband was finally up to getting his blood work done. That is always a challenge. They always have a hard time to get a vein on him – and they needed to take 8 vials! The tech barely got two done before she had to find another spot and was eventually able to fill the remaining vials.
That done and home again, I was going to grab an early lunch, then head over to visit my mother, since I wouldn’t be able to do it tomorrow.
Which is when I got a call from my brother.
It has finally happened.
He got a call from the nursing home. The one my mother actually wants to be in.
They have a bed for her – tomorrow!!!!
After well over two years – probably closer to three, by now! – of my mother fighting to get into a nursing home, it is finally going to happen! Yay!!!!
They wanted us to do the transport, which we thought the TCU would do. I wasn’t going to be home tomorrow, plus my mother can’t get into the truck. She can barely get into my brother’s car. So that was something that needed to be worked out.
Things were still very much in the air, except for what her room number will be, and “check in” time. She will have a room to herself, too.
I told my brother I was planning to visit after I finished my lunch, and he said he would phone Mom right away, since he was at work and was doing this between other things.
When I got to the TCU, I stopped at the nursing station first. The head nurse was there and they had already been called by the nursing home. I brought up about transportation and she told me they had already arranged a Handi Van. There will be a charge for it, since my mother is being transferred to her “forever home”, not another TCU, but it won’t be a lot. This way, they can use her wheelchair to get her in and out, and can safely secure her for the trip. The nurse suggested I take as much of my mother’s belongings as I can, to make it easier for them to transport her.
Then I went to my mother’s room. My brother had got through to her, and she was very happy with the news. She can’t wait to get out of the TCU!
We talked for a while and worked out what I should take with me for now, and I started taking things to the truck. Then I packed almost all of her remaining things in a couple of hard sided grocery bags, leaving just what she would need for the night and the morning. The head nurse came by and we talked a bit more about the transfer. She even remembered that they need to include Mom’s Pepto supply.
I visited a bit longer and we talked about how things will be done tomorrow, what they will take care of, and how she will be transported in the wheelchair while they bring the walker as well (I was specifically instructed to leave the walker).
My mother then insisted that her wheelchair has been “switched”. That her wheelchair was wider than this one. I told her, it’s the same wheelchair. I scrubbed that thing. I know what it looks like.
Only later did I remember about the cushion. Our vandal had brought her a “wheelchair” cushion, except it was basically just a memory foam cushion for a regular seat. It doesn’t actually fit in her wheelchair. Which is why it would be feeling smaller when she’s in it.
My mother has decided they’ve “switched” the wheelchair and nothing will convince her otherwise. She also claimed they “forgot” one of her meds, and went on about how terrible this place is for taking care of her medications and of her, and how she hoped it will be better in the nursing home.
It will be better, for sure, but not in the ways my mother will understand, and some things won’t change. Even while I was there, with her room mate out, she got mad and demanded I close the door, because someone in the hallway was talking. I closed the door but pointed out that, here she was, alone in the room, and complaining about noises in the hall. She’s going to hear noises in the nursing home, too. Her response was, “I’m not alone, you’re with me.”
…
So I rephrased that her room mate was not there. She will have her own room in the nursing home, but there are other people living there. She will hear noise. There is no escaping that.
I get the impression she believes that in the nursing home, things will be completely silent in her room. Granted, it’s not a transitional care unit in an old hospital, but there are a lot of people living there, and a lot of staff. She also thinks that the staff will all be white and Christian, because this place was built by a local Christian community, I forget how many decades ago. She is familiar with this place, since this is where my father spent his last 6 months, and her sister spent quite a few years before passing. Interestingly, when it came up with the head nurse, my mother talked about her sister living there, which she has brought up before, but she never mentions my father living there. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten my father existed, in many ways – and I don’t mean due to dementia. Which really doesn’t surprise me, to be honest. Ah, well.
Hopefully, things will work out. When my father was there, he always spoke about how well they were taking care of them and he would tell them how much he appreciated them.
That’s not something my mother is capable of, unfortunately, and I strongly suspect that, probably within days, she will find things to be angry about, and she will likely be lashing out at people before long. It is just the way she is.
Overall, though, it was a better than usual visit, even though she got mad at me for things like putting some of her items in the box of the truck, covered and hidden from view, because it doesn’t lock. She thinks people will steal her odds and ends. In fact, as I was leaving, the last thing she said to me was to keep her stuff safe. She’s more worried about her possessions than anything else!
Some things just don’t change.
Meanwhile, I have also been in touch with the rescue. They are happy that Bug is back in the isolation shelter. I’m really hoping all goes well, and we can get cats into the carriers in the morning!
It’s time for me to go out and feed them now. I want to make sure the isolation kitties get their fill of cat soup before we have to remove the bowl this evening. We’re going to have to be up quite early and, once we get two cats into carriers, the other cats will get their morning feeding.
I must have been way more exhausted than I thought.
The night before was one of those nights were I just didn’t sleep. Not restless or busy brain or pain, just… awake. Until about 4am.
Last night, I decided to try going to be early. I was in bed and messaged my daughter in the hospital, asking how she was doing, shortly after 8:30pm.
I fell asleep before she answered me.
When I woke later, needing to de-cat myself so I could go to the washroom, I checked the time, expecting it to be 3 or 4am.
It was barely past midnight.
I figured for sure I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again – and then I was awakened by cats crashing around in my room. Sure enough, it was about 5:30am, which is about when Ghosty goes into desctructo mode to wake me up and feed them.
So I did.
It was starting to get light out, but I went back to bed, expecting to not be able to fall asleep again, but I tried anyhow.
I opened my eyes and three hours had passed.
So I quickly got up and got ready to do my outside routine, which I always get done before I have breakfast. Especially when I end up going out later like this, because I know the outside cats would be quite hungry.
After feeding the cats I did my morning rounds, which includes checking all the garden beds. We had a “wintery mix” all night, and it was still raining. The sump pump has been going off, so the garden bed in the old kitchen with the vinyl cover, were I’d added the soaker hose, was being watered from below. The hose from the sump pump drains into a hole under the raised bed wall closest to the house, but it doesn’t go far, so it usually overflows into a path as well, but enough gets under the bed that it makes a difference.
When I got to the poly covered bed in the main garden area, I saw that water had collected in pools at the sides, where it’s weighted down by boards wrapped in the excess poly, again. Enough that, at one end, the weight was pushing the supportive hoop deeper into the ground and pooling more. So I was going to fiddle with the corner so that the water could rain into the bed when I noticed something odd.
A worm.
Two worms…
Ten?
Handfuls????
For some reason, all along the boards, on both sides, there were masses of earthworms in the water. In some places, I could see worms that had somehow managed to squeeze up the outside of the boards, under the poly. There were so many of them, I gave up trying to just drain the water. I unrolled all the boards and straightened out the poly, draining all the water away and taking out every stray would I could find. Amazingly, most of them looks like they were still alive, too!
Unrolling the poly required loosening the secured ends and removing the clips. When I rolled the boards up in the excess ploy again, I did it from below (which is much more awkward!) and in such a way that the poly now wraps completely around the outside of the raised bed’s log frame.
I was just finishing securing the second end when my daughter came out, asking if I could hear my phone or not.
I could hear nothing over the sounds of the poly as I fussed with it.
My older daughter has messaged us. She was free. Knowing it would take a while for us to get there, they told her to let us know first, and they would start the discharge paperwork and go over her prescriptions.
We had already prepped a back seat in the truck yesterday, and I decided to bring my walker along, just in case, which meant securing it in the box of the truck with some Bungee cords, so it would slide around as we drove, and we were soon on the road. Neither of us had eaten yet and it was past 10am by then, so we stopped at the next town to get a bit of gas, some beef jerky to tide us over, and a couple of energy drinks.
As we were driving in, I saw a gas station we would pass on the way out with gas at $1.729. We had gotten gas at $1.849, but most places in the city were $1.809. I decided it was worth getting more gas on the way back.
One of the things we asked my daughter was to find out where the pick up zone was, as I figured there was no way it was at the doors we’d gone in through when we visited.
It was those doors.
With my younger daughter to rubber neck for me while I was driving, she spotted the curb cut that passed as the entrance. Once we pulled in, I still couldn’t figure out where to park; at the doors was a fire lane, so no stopping at all. My daughter spotted some parking spots that looked like part of the patio, but the signs on the back wall said “permit only”. There was a truck sitting in what looked like the middle of the patio area, surrounded by several large, kidney shaped raised flower beds. That turned out to be where only 3 drop-off zone parking spots were, which I had to back into, because there was no room for me the truck to turn in. Thankfully, the “permit only” parking spaces were empty, because I had to pull into one of those to have room to back up.
Half hour only, paid parking only.
At least this time, I could use a machine in the lobby to pay for parking, rather than use a frickin’ website.
My daughter went ahead to get her sister while I took care of paying the parking, then waited in the lobby area for them. My older daughter was looking so much better! She was walking normally again, and she looked so happy to be leaving. She’s been stuck either sitting or lying down for the past week, with tubes and wires hanging off of her, so just being upright and moving made her feel better, too.
Once we had her settled into the truck, we headed out of the city, stopping to fill the tank at the one gas station with the lower price that I’d seen. Our next stop was going to be the pharmacy in town, so she could get a file set up and fill her prescriptions. Most of it will be vitamins.
I forgot, though.
Today is not Sunday. Today is a holiday Monday.
It wasn’t until I saw the empty parking lot at the pharmacy that I realized that. They were closed.
Which means my daughter won’t get her meds for the rest of the day.
We’re going to have to get back tomorrow, as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, my daughter was absolutely craving a meaty burger. The hospital food was good, but had no seasonings. Especially lacking in salt – and we don’t normally use a lot of salt in our cooking at home!
So we stopped at the DQ and got her a triple burger. Red meat, fat and salt – all the things she needs right now! 🍖🥩🧂🥓🍔
Actually, we all got triple burger meals to bring home. Can’t leave my husband out of the treat!
Once everything we settled and done, and it was time to feed the outside cats again, I stayed out to check on things and see what I could get done. Which is when I realized we had completely forgotten to turn on the shop lights over the seedlings (to make up for where the LED lights can’t reach), so I headed down to the basement, where I found a lovely surprise.
The second picture is the early White Vienna kohlrabi I started, just in case the ones outside don’t take. So far, only the chamomile has not sprouted yet.
That done, it was time to head outside.
It had stopped raining, though everything is still very wet, so there was only so much that could be worked on after the cats were fed. I was able to get back to that raised bed at the chain link fence, first securing the vinyl strips protecting the back wall that got pulled up by the winds. Then I started laying out the deadwood I’d stripped of bark along the front wall. It turned out I had enough stripped pieces to cover the bottom from end to end, so I no longer needed to strip any others.
I actually went into the spruce grove to try and find more long, straight pieces, and found a few poplar that weren’t too wonky. I still have a pile of what we collected in the fall, but they are too short to set between the stakes.
I need more stakes. If I’m going to use skinny, short pieces to fill in the gaps so the soil won’t fall out, I’m going to need a lot more stakes.
They won’t need to be as tall as the ones that will support any hoops or whatever we use to hold protective covers, and I won’t bother charring them. That will have to be a job for another day, though.
I will also need to make stakes for the ends. With how narrow this bed is now, it will be a lot easier to do those, and I can use the shorter, but much more flexible pieces we collected in the fall.
One that’s all done, I can finally return the soil I removed.
Which will need to be sifted, because the cats have been using the pile as a litter box.
*sigh*
Once the soil is returned, that bed it doing to need to be covered with netting immediately, or the cats are going to be all over it. Not just to use as a litter box, but they love to roll around in loose soil.
I’ve actually ordered another hoop kit with fiberglass rods. A different kit from last time. This one doesn’t come with little gardening gloves (well… little for my simian hands), but it does come with ground staples – ground “nails” they call them – with “gaskets”. The fiberglass rods are 16.5inchs long, and this kit has 60 of them, plus the connectors. These connectors are metal instead of plastic, so I’m curious to see which ones last longer.
I had been trying different materials to make hoops, and things like the Pex pipe work well, but for the price, I’m getting a lot more hoops out of these kits than out of the Pex pipe. Plus, the lengths can be adjusted as needed; just use the connectors to add more rods. Whereas once I’ve cut the Pex to size, that’s it. I’d have to get pretty creative if I want more length.
Once I have more of these hoop kits, I will be adding them to the bed along the retaining all in the old kitchen garden that I finished last year, and probably just keep the hoops on the bed, even if any covers are removed. With this bed, I want the supports to be permanent, while also making it easy to work in between them. I’ll try it with these hoop kits first and see how it goes. Since they are fiberglass, they’ll handle weathering well.
As it is right now, that front wall is pretty much the same height at the back wall. Once I accumulate more stakes to better secure it, I might increase the height a bit while also filling in the gaps with thinner material. We’ll see.
I was debating what to plant in this bed. With the chain link fence right there, anything that climbs would be ideal. Maybe some winter squash. Once they are big enough that any protective cover can be removed, I won’t have to worry about the deer eating it, like they do with things like peas and pole beans.
Looking at the forecast, we’ve got one more cooler day, with a couple more nights of frost, then thing things will warm up substantially – but we are now getting rain forecasts starting the day after tomorrow and continuing for the next 5 days! At least, that’s what the weather app on my phone says. Not so much the one on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll be nice enough that I can get the last beds prepped that weren’t done in the fall. I don’t mind the combination of heat and rain. Better than the usual drought!
Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get our seed potatoes into one of the main garden beds that were prepped last fall. They could have already gone in by now, but it can still wait for a while longer. At this point, other than things like other varieties of peas I’d like to try, and seeing if I can get some onions transplanted, most things can’t get done until possibly the second week of June!
Weather willing.
Little by little, it’s getting done – and this year, we really need to have a good gardening year, because the grocery prices just keep getting worse.
The Re-Farmer 