So the winter sown flower bed was a total failure. If any seeds did survive the winter, I saw no sign of them. While the bed did get covered with plastic, eventually, once that mulch was removed in the spring, it became a favourite spot for the cats to roll around on!
And did in, of course. 🫤
I decided it should be safe to direct sow more flowers into this bed.
The Dwarf Jewel mixed nasturtium is one of the flowers that had been planted here in the fall. I recently picked up the Cosmos, as I know for sure they grow here; my mother grew them here, and even after we moved back, I remember seeing a few of them show up in places were they’d self seeded. The Aster are seeds that were included in a memorial card for an old friend that passed away suddenly, last year.
The plastic cover on the bed had torn at one end, where the end of a bamboo stake was. That tear was all the wind needed to rip the whole thing in half. So that was the first thing to get removed. Then the hoops and the bamboo stake pieces holding them in place were pulled out and set aside.
The bed itself was full of weed seedlings, plus the dandelions, crab grass and creeping Charlie around the edges. There was even some burdock coming up, next to the high raised bed. It took a lot of loosening with the garden fork before I could start pulling the weeds and trying to get as many of the roots out as possible. Unfortunately, I was also finding elm tree roots in there, too.
Once weeded, I went over it with the rake to pull the soil more towards the middle, making it narrower than before. Partly because fewer seeds were going to be planted here, and partly to make it easier to cover and protect. After everything was levelled, it got a thorough watering, before the smaller seeds were scattered about. The nasturtium seeds are large enough that I planted those, individually.
While cleaning up the bed, I did find at least one nasturtium seed that had been planted in the fall; they were the only seeds large enough that they could be seen. Which means that it is possible that some of the seeds planted in the fall might have survived and could still germinate. Unlikely, but possible! 😁
Then it was time to set the hoops back in place, over the broken pieces of bamboo stakes holding them in place. With the hoops still attached to the bamboo stakes across the top, it didn’t talk long to get them back in place.
While gathering my supplies for this, I had grabbed a folded up piece of mosquito netting I thought might be good to set over the hoops, but it turned out to be too short for this bed. So I went and got the rolled up netting that had been over the garlic, before they got too tall. That turned out be just the right length! I weighted down one edge at the based of the high raised bed, then unrolled the netting. This netting catches on everything, so that was not as easy as it should have been! Once the netting was pulled snug, there was just enough slack to roll back around the stick it had been stored on. I then used the bricks, rocks and pieces of wood that had been used to hold the plastic over the hoops to secure the side, rolling the weights up in the excess netting. I was able to get the netting nice and snug over the hoops.
Hopefully, this will be enough to protect the area until the seeds germinate and get big enough that they won’t need the hoops and netting anymore. The nasturtium are edible, but they can also act as a trip crop, to keep insects away from other edible greens.
Once I gather the materials, I’ll build frame to fit over this area and attach these hoops to support whatever wire mesh I have to put over it, making sure to close up the ends, too. That will be much handier than setting hoops over sticks in the ground! I’ll be making several such covers, little by little, all with the same frame dimensions, so they can be interchangeable. The prototypes I’ve made so far have been incredibly handy!
One more job done. Time for another hydration break, then one more bed to work on!
Okay, after going through their website more, I made some decisions and placed an order at Vesey’s. It was mostly for our future food forest, but I did order a couple of seed packets so I could take advantage of a promo code for free shipping.
As I was preparing to write this post, however, I got a phone call.
From home care.
Guess who has to go to my mother’s again this evening, to do her med assist?
Two nights in a row. Apparently, someone just called in sick.
My mom is going to be furious.
*sigh*
I will just have to deal with that, later.
Meanwhile, here is what I ordered today. (Links will open in new tabs)
These were the one thing we absolutely wanted to get this year. The Opal Plum tree. The description from the website:
Prunus spp. Opal stands alone as the hardiest European type Plum available on the market. It is vigorous, productive and self-fertile. Even in short summer seasons, the fruit will reliably ripen. The plums are round, red-purple with a golden flesh and have a complex and sweet flavour, fresh or dried. Hardy to zone 3. We ship 18″ trees
The key points were that it is self fertile, so we don’t have to plant it next to our dying wild-type plums, but can plant it in the section we’ve designated for a food forest. It’s hardy to our zone, so we don’t have to do like we did with our zone 4 Liberty apple, and tuck it into a sheltered area. (Hopefully, it survived the polar vortexes we got this winter!)
I decided to also order some more haskaps. We already have three, but they have not been doing well at all. While I should probably transplant them, I’ve decided to get a couple more that will be planted in the food forest area, this time.
The second is Boreal Blizzard, an early producing and largest fruit variety.
We currently have “Mr” and “Mrs” haskap varieties, where are sold as cross-pollinating varieties. The “Mr” is an Aurora, and seems to bloom too early to pollinate the “Mrs.” variety, so I am hoping that the early Boreal Blizzard variety will work out better.
If these haskap do well, that will confirm that the ones we have now are not producing because they are in a bad location. Which I am 99% sure of, but it really is a good location – for us!
To use the free shipping promo code, I needed to have at least one packet of seeds.
I had been looking at these last night, while planning my order, but they were listed as sold out. This morning, they were back in stock! So I snagged them.
This is the Sweetie Snack Mix of small sized peppers. They have a short growing season, too, so they should work out. I think my family might like them better than the larger bell peppers we’ve been trying so far.
Last of all, I got some flowers for the girls. 😄 The Jet Black Hollyhock. These are pollinator attracting biannuals and should be self seeding, so we will plan out where to sow them with that in mind!
There we have it. Another order in for our 2025 garden, and our food forest.
The grand total for this, after tax, came to $137.08, however we will only be billed for the seeds when they get shipped in the next day or two. The sapling and haskap plugs will be shipped closer to our last frost date of June 2, and we will be billed for those, then.
The flower seeds were not that expensive, but that packet of mini peppers cost $8.75, with only about 20 seeds in the pack. That’s almost 44¢ per seed!
Still cheaper than buying them at the grocery store, but what a huge leap in prices for vegetable seeds! During the illegal lockdowns, with people panic buying and prices going up and up and up, so many people decided to try growing their own food, a lot of seed suppliers were completely sold out. They are still recovering from that. I know some smaller Canadian seed growers had to back out of the consumer market completely and only sell commercially in bulk. Add to this, in the years since, more people are trying to grow their own food because the grocery prices have gotten so high. That increased demand puts a major stress on supplies, too. Which is why I’m seeing the cost of vegetable seeds skyrocketing, while the number of seeds in the packets are going down, but not with flower seeds. I haven’t been looking at herb seeds lately, so I don’t know how they are doing for pricing.
With this order in, the next thing we’ll need to decide on is what variety of potatoes we want to grow and where. Anything beyond that is just gravy.
Not all of it. Just where the wild strawberries and herbs are growing.
This was the first time I used the pair of hand rakes my brother and his wife gave me. Now that they’ve sold their property, they are living in a townhouse, and have no need for gardening tools anymore. I don’t think these were ever used before!
They work really, really well! The only complaint I could have about them is the straps for the hands are on the small side. At least for broad simian hands like mine! 😄
Oh, gosh. I just realized what I caught a kitten doing in the other mulched bed in that first photo.
*sigh*
The next photo is the packaging for the hand rakes, though Instagram cut part of it off, even though I have it set to “original size” on the slideshow. The website says uncleweiner.com (not an affiliate link). A rather unfortunate name, but a good product!
Oh… gosh. They are located in Prince Albert. That’s… double unfortunate! 😂😂😂
In the last photo, you can see I had a helper when it came to mulching the Albion Everbearing strawberries in the main garden area. I put the chicken wire back over it to keep the leaves from being blown away but, as you can see, it doesn’t lie flat on the strawberry bed. Little Magda quite enjoyed going under there!
That done, I got another wagon load of leaves and started on the patch that’s been covered by the insulated tarp all summer.
After removing the old T posts and a board I’d put around the edges, to keep it from blowing away, I peeled off the tarp. That was unexpectedly difficult. All along the edges, Creeping Charlie had started growing on top of it. It turns out that some of them set their roots into, or even through, the tarp!
So the first thing I did was drag the tarp out to the front yard, where I have one hose still set up. The tarp was spread out to its full size. After hosing it down for a while, I went over it with a stiff bristle broom to get rid of the bigger debris, then used the hose to pressure wash it as best I could. It then got another scrubbing with the broom and a rinse.
For now, I’ve left it out where it is, to dry off as much as possible. Unfortunately, there are some holes in it. Some are tears from winds that happened a couple of years ago. Others were caused by weed roots pushing their way through and into the insulation layer! So parts of it now have water on the inside of the tarp. Not much I can do about that. I don’t have tarp tape, but I do have clear Gorilla tape, so I hope to at least patch up the bigger holes – if they are dry enough! Eventually, the other side will need to be cleaned, too.
That done as much as could be for now, it was back to the patch of soil it covered. In the second picture, you can see how it looked after the tarp was removed. Most of it does look dead but, along the edges, you can see white lines of roots extending into the what will be the growing area.
The soil needed to be loosened for the seeds, so I used the landscaping rake for that – and promptly found a roll of wire, buried in the soil! When we first moved here, this is where most of the chimney blocks and all the ceramic flues had been stacked, along with bricks and other odd things, and even garbage. We cleaned it up, but clearly missed this piece of wire!
The entire area got raked from the inside out, so as to pull the living roots out of the growing area, while also loosening the soil for the seeds.
As you can see in the next photo in the slideshow, the cats were very interested in what I was doing!
After the soil was loosened, I took the container of seeds shaken up in some seed starting mix, and scattered it evenly – I hope – over the area. Then I drew the back of the rake back and forth over the area to cover the seeds a bit.
While chasing away cats that figured this was a big new litter box, just for them!
Last of all, I scattered a wagon load of leaves over the entire area. This layer of leaf mulch is not as thick as on the garden beds. I was trying to more or less emulate how it would be, if leaves had fallen naturally on the ground. They will not be removed in the spring.
These seeds are a Western wildflower mix, so they should be able to handle the winter temperatures just fine. Any that succeed in germinating should have little problem growing through the light mulch.
The seed mix description doesn’t tell everything that’s in this mix. It just says “This mix includes Lupins, Poppy, Coreopsis, Flax, Blanket flowers and much more.” It should be interesting to see what comes up next year!
One packet of seeds is supposed to be enough for 1000 sq ft. I used two packets. Technically, this means this area should be very densely sown. I’m not going to assume they’ll all germinate. We’ve tried to plant these plus an alternative lawn mix in areas nearby, and only some of them took – a year after they were sown! – and in only one area.
Still, if all goes well, enough of them will germinate that they will choke out any weeds that might otherwise spread into the area, and the wildflowers will spread their own seed further into the maple grove.
By the time that was done, it was starting to get close to sunset, to I moved on to things to go in the front yard. One of those was to clean up the flower bed the haskap bushes are planted in.
The first two photos in the above slide show are before and after shots. The dead flower stalks were clipped with loppers for a chop and drop. The old mulch I’d pulled off the garden bed at the fence was then raked on top along one side, and leaves along the other edges were raked up and added to the other sides. I don’t mind if the mulch reduces the number of flowers here. They get so tall, they cover the haskaps! Now, they are a mulch for the haskaps, and the lilac at one end.
I also snagged a couple of bricks and broken pieces of sidewalk blocks from the pile in the foreground. I keep thinking the catio is going to blow away, now that it’s wrapped in plastic for the winter. A corner of the plastic did tear off in yesterday’s winds, so that got tacked back into place, and there is now a weight on each corner of the roof.
I finally got around to laying out the hoses, to get the kinks and twists out. Once they moved, I was able to get to the old basement window to clean it up, then switch the summer window for the winter one. There was more to clean up than usual this year. The kittens have been using the area in front of it as a little box. 🫤 The window is now clear, though, and has a cover leaning over it. Eventually, we will pick up a window well and cover for around this window. The window wells are pretty affordable. The covers can sure get expensive, though!
That cleaned up and done, it was time to roll up and tie off the hoses. I ended up using a garbage can, laying it on its side over a hose, then rolling it with the hose around it. Doing it that way prevents the hose from twisting and kinking, though in these cooler temperatures, any kinks that were in the hoses when I laid them out were still pretty bent up when they were rolled up. Those are now ready to set aside for the winter.
Aside from finishing cleaning the insulated tarp, this is it for winterizing on the south side of the house. Tomorrow, I’ve got some things I want to get done in the main garden area. Our high is expected to be only 4C/39F tomorrow, but the day after is now expected to hit 9C/48F. I might wait for the warmer day before breaking out the chain saw to clean up the dead spruce tree that fell on the crab apple tree.
How much I get done tomorrow, though, may be up for debate. I felt really good while working outside, but once inside and sitting for a while, all my joints are stiffening up. Including my hands. I’m having a heck of a time typing right now. I forgot to take painkillers before I started this post.
Hopefully, I will finally get a good night’s sleep, and that will help. What I’d really love is have a hot soak in the tub, but it’s not worth the risk of injury, trying to get in and out. Sitting on the bath chair in the shower just isn’t the same, though!
Ah, well. It is what it is!
Whatever happens tomorrow, it felt great to be working outside, and I’m quite happy with the progress I was able to do while I had the chance!
I hadn’t planned on harvesting anything while doing my evening rounds.
My garden had other plans!
I ended up using the bottom of my shirt to carry everything, because I didn’t have my usual giant colander that I use for harvesting and washing the produce.
My shirt got very loaded down!
Before I got to that point, I spotted these seed heads.
While shifting and preparing the low raised beds, I spotted a small plant I recognized as a flower that shows up in our main garden area. Rather than tossing it with the weeds, I decided to transplant it into the log framed bed, with the onions I’d been finding. I had no idea if it would survive a transplant.
Well, not only has it survived, it has thrived! It has become quite large and, while the flowers are not particularly large, the seed heads are amazing! Each one of those puffs in the photo are bigger than the palm of my hand.
I don’t want it to seed itself in the raised bed, so whenever the seed heads open like this, I gather the seeds and let them loose in an area just north of the beds. I figure at least some of them will manage to germinate, in the spring.
While checking on this bed, I also spotted one of the larger melons starting to look a bit yellow. I went to pick it up and it fell off its vine, so I included it in my harvest.
Since this from the Summer of Melons mix, I have no idea if this is a variety that turns yellow like this at maturity. I suspect not, to be honest. Still, we’ll crack it open and see what it’s like inside. So I’m not sure if this is a “first” for the melons or not.
You may notice something else different in the photo.
A bright red Cheyenne hot pepper! Red from stem to tip! There was another, next to it, that is about half red. We grew these previously, in grow bags, but they stayed green. When we had frost predictions, we tried to protect them, but were late covering them up one nice. The next morning, I harvested all the green peppers that weren’t frost damaged, and we set them up in the living room. They did turn red as as they dried, eventually, but they didn’t look very palatable. So I’m very happy to have some ripening while still on their plants!
I think I could have harvested several Dragonfly peppers. Some are quite large and so dark a purple, they look black. I will wait a bit, though. I think we’d end up with too many to use quickly, so I want to be prepared to dehydrate some of them, before I bring them in.
As for the cherry tomatoes, they got all mixed up while I was carrying them in my shirt. I honestly can’t tell the difference between the Chocolate cherry and the Black cherry! I’ll have to ask the family if they can tell the difference by taste.
I’m really quite happy with the harvests we’ve been getting. I had been so sure that we’d have almost nothing to harvest regularly this summer, except maybe tomatoes, since we have four varieties. Granted, this is the sort of harvesting we should have been getting in July and early August, not in September, but I’m just so happy to have anything at all!
If the temperatures stay mild enough, though, we should have a pretty awesome harvest of winter squash and melons! I’m quite looking forward to it!
I woke this morning to way too much pain and stiffness, so I asked my daughters to do both the outside and inside cat feeding, so I could take some painkillers and sleep in a bit.
Then I saw my younger daughter come in to do the food bowls in my room, and she’s still using a cane! Damn. We’re quite the household of gimps!
I’ll cover the garden stuff I got done today in a different post, but besides that…
First on the to-do list was a trip into town. Our expected prescription delivered on Wednesday is going to be delayed, as their driver isn’t available on the usual day. With most of my husband’s medications, he has ample supply, but not his new painkillers. So that got ordered, and was ready for pick up today. That gave me a chance to pick up some antihistamines for myself as well. I don’t know what I’m allergic to outside – likely a tree pollen – and it’s very annoying.
Since I was going to be in town anyhow, I grabbed our two empty 18.9L (5 gallon) water jugs to refill at the grocery store.
I forgot.
This is Canada Day weekend.
Town was so incredibly busy and crowded! We definitely need to avoid it until after Canada Day.
There were, at least, some really good sales on at the grocery store. I only took advantage of two; one brand of salad kits were almost half off, so I ended up getting 12 bags; 4 of three different mixes. Then I saw nacho chips were on sale, so I grabbed some of those. We already have cheese and olives, so my husband could have some nachos for a treat.
Once back at home and after I had lunch, it was outside to get some work done, while the weather was good. In the process, I got to see a whole bunch of kittens, of course.
We can now confirm that the white and grey mama has brought her four white and grey/black kittens back to the sun room! I spotted her on the critter cam, nursing some of them, while others – white and and greys from Adam’s litter – played nearby. I counted six kittens with her at the time. That makes 12 kittens in 3 litters now using the sun room.
I do wish Broccli would bring hers over. They are starting to get big! I’m going to stop leaving food by the old garden shed, so they have reason to come to the house for kibble, instead.
Towards the end of the day outside, I just had to pause and get a picture of the mock orange under the clothes line.
The sugar snap peas are starting to bud and bloom. I’m a bit surprised, because the plants are not very big, but there it is!
I also spotted the first summer squash show up; a green zucchini. I was planning to sow more after I finished with the low raised beds in the main garden area. We shall see if any others germinated over the next while. I may not need to re-sow all of them, after all.
The mock orange at the laundry platform now has a few flowers blooming. There are so many buds, it’s going to be a mass of white flowers soon, but for now, it’s just a few scattered around. It’s a shame this was planted where it was. It’s gotten big enough that it gets in the way when we want to use the clothes line. That and the platform needs maintenance and a paint job. We need to transplant it, and I want to find a nice sunny location that will really showcase it, because it’s so gorgeous once it starts blooming.
I like that there always seems to be something starting to bloom, right around when other things are finishing their blooming season.
One of the things I wanted to get back to today, was to work on the garden beds again. It’s getting a bit drier out there, though mowing the lawn is still out of the question, but I want to get at least something done.
There were plenty of kitties coming out for breakfast, though I counted “only” twenty. Shop Towel came around, and his face is looking so beat up!! I did manage to let me get a big wood tick off the side of his head, and a few more around a wound on his side that looks like some fur was pulled out in a fight. No major injuries. His presence does make a few of the other cats very nervous, though.
I did get to visit Broccoli’s babies, straighten out their bedding, and leave food for her. They are getting much more active, which is a bit of a concern. There is a lot of stuff in there they can get into, and they’re getting mobile enough to climb out of their bedding. I’d like to set up some sort of box or bin for them to nest in, but I’m afraid if I do that, she’ll move them away completely.
The cherry tree near the house is in peak bloom now. It looks so pretty, nestled in between the lilacs and their purple flower buds.
Once the morning rounds were done, I came inside for breakfast, and was planning to head outside. Part of the problem is, I’m just not feeling well. I wasn’t able to get to sleep until past 3am – I can only partially blame cats for that! Butterscotch has finally stopped spending her days hiding under the chair, and is back to sleeping on the bed, though any time she sees Susan or Fenrir, she starts snarling. Mostly, though, she has decided that I am her bed! Which is fine, until she starts wriggling and squirming.
Meanwhile, the high humidity we’re having lately has been brutal on my osteo-arthritis. Usually, that’s not been an issue since we moved back to the prairies. When we were living on the West Coats, I could barely walk. Now, it’s all acting up again. The worst is an old elbow injury. Back in… 2010? 2011? I developed the equivalent of tennis elbow. I actually quit my job as a banquet server at the time, because I was afraid I might drop a plate of food or a pot of hot coffee on someone. It got so bad, I couldn’t even turn a door knob, and had to stop crocheting for a year. With physiotherapy, it did improve, but it’s never healed completely, and flares up every now and then, and has developed into OA. It’s my left elbow, and I’m left handed in a lot of things – like turning door knobs! It’s been flaring up a lot since we’ve had the rains, making some of the simplest actions, painful and difficult. At least it doesn’t really stop me from doing big things; it’s the small motions that are affected the most, but I should still be able to handle a garden fork.
But then I started getting messages and had to make phone calls, and then there were other unexpected tasks to get done. To top it off, my younger daughter is feeling even worse than I am right now. For other reasons, but she’s pretty much out of commission for most things.
We are quite the household of gimps!
I’m really fighting the urge to take more painkillers and take a nap right now.
Well. I can at least take the painkillers!
The frustrating thing is, if we don’t get things done today, it won’t get done tomorrow; tomorrow is our first stock up shopping trip in the city. The day after, we’re supposed to get more rain. Then we’re back in the city again, to meet up with a friend that’s back in Canada. Then another trip to the city to do the second stock up shopping trip… on the weekend? After the weekend? Somewhere in there, we’ll be getting contacted about the flat tire I dropped off at the garage, and if all goes well, we’ll be getting that put back on, and the spare stored again. By the time all that is done, we’ll probably be past our last frost date and need to start planting things!
So those beds have got to get done!
At least we do have some spaces ready to plant in.
The cherries at the edge of the spruce grove are blooming like crazy right now. We might actually have berries from them this year. The one by the house – the one we plan to keep – is just starting to bloom. Usually, it blooms before the ones in the bushes.
The different types of lilacs are showing flower buds, but only the double lilac in the old kitchen garden is starting to show a few open blossoms. Most of the crab apple trees have buds, but the one big one that has tasty apples just sort of exploded in flowers this morning.
The grape hyacinths have their flower cones up. Little spots of purple, all over the area they’re in. Unfortunately, they are almost completely hidden by the purple bellflower that has taken over every open space among the trees. The area is too large to weed by hand, but I don’t want to use tools or the weed trimmer, and risk accidentally taking out the grape hyacinths.
I’m really looking forward to when the lilacs start opening. We’ve got five different kinds that my mother planted, and they all bloom at different types. Everything smells amazing for weeks!
I also made sure to check our little strawberry patch. Something – likely the cats – keeps digging into the mulch, but not the strawberries. I just need to put the mulch back in the morning, and everything else is okay.
It looks like 8 out of 9 are doing quite well right now. The 9th one does have leaf buds on it, so it will hopefully recover soon. Considering we ordered a package of 8, that one’s a bonus, anyhow!
Hopefully, these will do quite well where they are – as long as the bed doesn’t get invaded by those Chinese elm roots again!
The Saskatoons growing nearer the house are blooming now. As soon as we’re able, I want to get into that area and cut away the chokecherry, false spirea and other things that are crowding them.
The tiny plums we’ve got left in the yard are in full bloom right now. There’s two trees left and I’m hoping we can manage to keep at least one of them. We’ve had to cut away others that were spreading or dying. We plan to buy plum trees in the future, and some varieties need a wild plum nearby for cross pollination, so if we get one of those, it would be planted near these ones.
Our very first tulip has bloomed. There are quite a few other buds. I’m happy to say that the fence wire we’ve put around the tulip patch has been sufficient to keep the deer out! They really seem to love tulip flower buds.
In other areas, the garlic is coming up nicely. The strawberries we started from seed that are in the wattle weave bed are getting nice and big – bigger than the ones in the asparagus bed. Those ones, however, have started to show flower buds! No sign of the purple asparagus, though. I suspect we’ve lost those.
In the bed with the peas, carrots and spinach, I’ve now spotted a whole three pea shoots from the first planting of sugar snap peas.
The newly planted strawberries are mostly looking good. Seven of the nice transplants are showing definite growth. The other two either didn’t make it, or are further behind.
I did have a sad find this morning. When feeding the outside cats and seeing Broccoli out front, I went to the garden shed to check on her babies and leave some food for her while she was away.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw two of the babies had squirmed off the side of the self warming mat nest. It was a bit bunched up on one side, but where the fluffy top was exposed, I found the third kitten, dead. It was the smaller of the calicos. There was no sign of what caused its death.
As soon as I removed it, the black and white kitten squirmed its way back onto the fluffy part of the mat. I straightened it out a bit, so there was more of the top available for them, and left some kibble for their mother nearby.
Then I buried the little one in front of the stone cross on the edge of the spruce grove. I know this is a to be expected with semiferal cats, but it’s always sad to see. At least we don’t seem to be getting a repeat of last year. If I remember correctly, by this time, we’d already found the remains of at least two or three entire litters.
By about 10:30 or so, I was on my way to my mother’s. She wanted me to pick up lunch first. She was hoping that the grocery store would have their hot dinners available, but if not, she asked me to pick up some fried chicken at the gas station. It turned out they did have two dinners left – each with a piece of BBQ chicken, potato wedges and green beans. As I was getting them, I picked up a cold drink for myself. My mother always has tea, but I don’t want to use up my mother’s supplies. Normally, I’d have gotten a Monster energy drink, but I knew that would just get me lectured. So I got a coffee based energy drink. I figured that would be a safe thing to drink around her. I don’t normally drink coffee, but I do like coffee as a flavour, and that’s pretty much what these are.
When I got to my mother’s, she was very happy with the dinners, though she had made her own “salad”, brought that out and tried to make me eat it. I told her I was more than happy with the vegetables in the dinner.
Then she started complaining that the beans were undercooked. So I ate one.
They were prefectly al dente.
To my mother, they should be mushy.
I couldn’t even think that she preferred softer food because of her dentures, with the holes from missing teeth she refuses to fix, since the salad she made, and was eating instead of the beans, was made with celery and apples, and even crunchier than the beans.
Then, as we were eating, she got “that look”.
Oh, how I know that look. The nasty smirk and open condensation, just before she’s about to launch into some verbal abuse.
“You know that drinks are unhealthy, right?” she says to me.
And by “drinks”, she meant the can I was drinking from. She had no idea what I was actually drinking, but it was in a can, so it must be bad. This isn’t a new thing; shortly after we moved here, she came to visit and saw our recycling bag for aluminum. It had mostly V8 cans in it, but she started lecturing us about how we shouldn’t be drinking pop. We explained to her what V8 was, but I guess she didn’t believe us? She then brought up, for the next few years, how we drink too much pop, and that’s why I’m fat, based on her once seeing a recycling bag full of V8 cans.
At this point, I don’t think I’d been there for more than 15 minutes. So I just put my fork down and asked, is it time for me to leave? I pointed out that she didn’t even know what I was drinking (if she’d bothered to look, she would have seen that it was coffee based, and that it contained vitamins and herbs), that I was there for such a short time, and she was already attacking me.
At which point, she started crossing herself and told me, it was up to me if I wanted to go.
Uh huh.
She did, at least, stop finding things to attack me about.
Instead, she switched tactics. Since the dinners were chicken, she started talking about how my brother would come to the farm every week after work, and he would bring chicken dinners, but he doesn’t do that anymore. This would have been before she moved off the farm to where she is now, so more than 10 years ago. I told her, it’s good that now we’re at the farm, so he doesn’t have to make that long drive anymore. Oh, but he doesn’t even phone anymore! I just laughed and said, yes, he does. Just because you don’t remember it, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. Then I suggested that what she really meant was, he doesn’t call her every day, like she wants him to. Which seems to have hit the mark with her, because she actually seemed to think about it and dropped the subject. Meanwhile, I know my brother has even told her outright, that it hurts him to call her, because she quickly starts attacking him for whatever is on her mind at the time. Her response is to start going on about “freedom of speech” and how she just says what’s on her mind, we need to forgive each other, and generally try to make herself to be the victim, and him into the mean one.
She doesn’t try that with me very much anymore. I call her out when she gets abusive now, so she’s cut it back quite a bit.
It did make for a much quieter than usual meal, though!
My mother has been having a harder time with her mobility, so we went over her list. Her writing is a mix of English and Polish, with the English spelled… creatively, so sometimes, I need to clarify. For example, I knew from an earlier conversation that she wanted corn meal, but on her list, she wrote in polish, corn flour. I clarified, and it turns out she didn’t know that there was such a thing as corn flour that is different from corn meal. She’ll also just say things like “fruit”, and I know it means to get what looks good or is on sale, and I know what kinds of fruit she likes. As we talked, though, she specifically asked for NO blueberries.
They get caught in the holes in her dentures! 😄
Fair enough!
Once I understood what she was looking for, I headed out and did her shopping for her. There is usually at least one thing I have to change up, for various reasons, and I make sure to explain the changes as I put things away.
Oh, there was one thing I couldn’t resist for myself while at the grocery store.
Every year, in the spring, there is a box of free pumpkin seeds at this grocery store. Each envelope has two seeds in it, and they limit it to one packet per person. This year, they came with a little pamphlet. The town has a pumpkin fest every year, and this year is their 100th. It included information about the variety of seeds (Rocket), growing instructions (can be direct sown or started indoors, with a pH around 6), and what to expect (pumpkins from 15-20 pounds in size). Mostly, though, they were encouraging students to grow pumpkins and enter them in the pumpkin fest contest, in various categories, for prize money. These aren’t for giant pumpkins, so the prizes are very small, but if it’s enough to get kids excited about growing things, that’s just bonus!
So I grabbed a packet. Once I’m done writing this, I’ll scarify them and start pre-germinating them. I have no intention of entering any contests, but some 20 pound pumpkins would be nice!
As I was leaving the grocery store, I was immediately blasted by high winds. A storm was moving in, so as soon as my mother’s groceries were put away, I said my goodbyes. I ended up driving into the storm, but the worst of it was past by the time I got home. We’ll definitely need to check for fallen branches – or fallen trees! – tomorrow.
Our gravel roads, however, are getting worse and worse. The municipality can’t even do anything about it, since they are too wet right now.
We’re going to need a break in the rain to cut the grass, too. It’s getting way too tall. Plus, we can always use more grass clippings for mulch!
We should be getting a one day break in the rain tomorrow, but more rain again, the day after. The grass will be too wet to cut, but we have to focus on getting the garden ready, anyhow.
Oh? Is that more thunder I hear?
According to the weather radar, we’re right in line for some heavy rain in a little bit.
I’m not complaining. This is supposed to be a drought year, and with how little snow we got this past winter, any rain we get now is a good thing!
With the current conditions, and the melted snow quickly disappearing, I decided to do some wild sowing.
I’m also going to do a test, since I’m almost out of storage space for files on my WP account. It now allows images to be uploaded from Google Photos, so that’s where these are from. Please let me know if you can also see them!
A friend sent me a whole bunch of old seeds. These are all the flower seeds from the stack. Not all the packages had years on them that I could find, but one of them was dated 2020.
I dumped all the seeds into an old spice shaker with very large holes in the lid. The old prescription bottles with Icelandic Poppy seeds from 2018 form the majority of these.
This is where they went.
This low area on the North side of our driveway still has a bit of standing water and the soil is still saturated in places. It gets full sun and. It’s an area that’s too rough to mow, so it’s as good a place as any to sow some random seeds! I simply broadcast the seeds as widely as I could over the area.
The chances that such old seeds would germinate at all is low to begin with. They will also have to contend with birds finding and eating them. How many will even have enough contact with the soil to take root is another factor.
Still, who knows? We might have ourselves quite a mix of flowers growing here this year.
Now, since this way of posting photos seems to be working (at least as far as I can tell on my own computer!), here’s a bonus.
I eventually counted 29 cats this morning, though not all together at the kibble bowls.
Hypotenose really, really wanted attention this morning!
The Re-Farmer 