flowers

Spring flowers, a sad find, and I only had to threaten to leave once!

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We have been getting quite a bit of rain this afternoon, with more to come, but things were still dry while I was doing my morning rounds.

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.

Yeah. I got some seeds. 😄😄

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!

The Re-Farmer

Sowing wild, and a test

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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

First flower!

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Once things started to cool down, I went out to do some weed whacking. I especially wanted to get the outside of the chain link fence cleared, because the grass was getting so tall, it was interfering with the garden beds on the inside.

While trimming the grass by the gourds, I realized I was seeing something new!

This is our very first Zucca melon flower!

When we tried to grow these last year, we had four transplants, and they all got flooded out. One did start to recover, but by the end of the season, it was still smaller than this one was when I transplanted it here. And now we have a flower!

This was not the only surprise flower I saw today. While trimmed around the outhouse and the raised box beds, I saw a tree deeper in the spruce grow in full bloom. It looks like another rather large apple tree. There is another one nearby that we had uncovered while cleaning the edges of the spruce grow that had already bloomed and is done. The nearby cherries have also bloomed and are done. It should be interesting to see what we find in there in the fall!

While moving closer to look at the flower tree, I walked through the tall grass of an area we’ve been able to clear so far. It’s quite overgrown with crab grass and some of the poplars we cleared are trying to come back.

I found flowers among the grass and weeds.

There are strawberries in there! Because they are surrounded by the crab grass, the plants are a lot taller and thinner than the ones we planted with the asparagus, but they are most definitely not the very fine wild strawberries we have growing elsewhere. I have no idea why there would be strawberries in here. There is also a path of some kind of lily that started to grow after we cleared away the area of dead trees and other detritus.

You’d think, after being here for more than 5 years, we wouldn’t still be finding surprises like this, yet there they are!

Eventually, I would like to transplant the strawberries I found to someplace where they won’t be competing with crab grass to grow!

As for weed whacking the edges of the yard and around some garden beds, I didn’t finish the job, yet. There is still lots to do, but it will have to keep. It likely won’t be tomorrow; as I plan to head into the city to do our second Costco shop. I’ll be making a couple of stops along the way, and just arranged to meet my SIL for lunch, since the Costco I go to is a fairly short drive from their place.

It’s been a long day for me, even though I did end up taking a nap (woke up to find Cheddar using my hand as a pillow!), and it’s going to be a long one tomorrow, too, though in a very different way. The girls were able to put things away, bring in the plants, and close things up for the night for me while I took a break and hydrated.

Now, it’s time for a shower, and bed!

The Re-Farmer

First bloom!

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Well, I did NOT finish off the cover for shallots I started yesterday. I did, however, get quite a bit accomplished. That, however, is for another post. For now, I’d like to share this…

Our very first tulips are blooming! When my older daughter and I checked on them this morning, these were still buds, but just starting to show colour. By evening, they were like this. 😊

The grape hyacinths in the maple grove have also exploded into bloom. Every time I try to get a picture of one, though, my phone keeps focusing on anything else but the spike of flowers right in front of it! 😄 My daughter daffodils that bloomed last year are coming up in lovely bunches right now. We’ve also found the leaves of some of her irises that barely made a showing last year. She’s absolutely thrilled, as she was sure they had died. Even the raspberries we got her for her birthday a couple of years ago are showing the tiniest of leaves. I thought they finally died last year, too. We managed to protect them from the deer, but couldn’t protect them from the horrible, no good growing year. The raspberries we planted this year are leafing out nicely right now, and even the newly transplanted apple tree has leaves unfurling. The mulberry, which are still in the house, have tiny leaves on them, too. The two surviving sea buckthorn have lots of leaves on them, as so the silver buffalo berry. The highbush cranberry are also showing leaves, though the one the deer got twice is a bit behind.

Near the tulips, the plum trees that didn’t get cut away are in full bloom. I love trees that bloom before their leaves come out! They will, eventually, need to be taken down, but I would rather not do that until we have something to replace them with. Like an edible variety of plum. For now, they are one of the few things in full bloom that the pollinators can enjoy.

We are most definitely well into spring out here in the Great White North!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: winter survivors!

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But first, the cuteness!

I was able to zoom in to get a shot of Brussel and Sprout, sharing the tray under the water shelter. When I first came out this morning, I saw only about a 14 cats, but more kept showing up, including these two. I think I counted 22 in total, with some of them skulking around in the distance, waiting for me to leave the food area.

While doing my evening rounds, I took the winter mulch, which was corn stalks, off the asparagus and sunchoke beds. There is still no sign of the sunchokes or the asparagus, but…

… the four strawberry plants that share the asparagus bed were looking great! I wasn’t sure if they’d survive the winter. Not only did they survive, but they are looking better now than they did at the end of the season, last year! I’m hoping they’ll put out more runners this year, that we’ll transplant elsewhere. Strawberries are among the plants we want to have a lot of. They’re so incredibly expensive in the grocery stores!

Of course, I had to check on the crocuses and found this little guy.

The very first yellow crocus! There are a lot of purple ones blooming this morning, and a lot of white buds showing up, but still just the one yellow buds visible.

I should make a point of checking the bed I inoculated with morel spawn more often. May is the time of year they usually fruit. It would be cool if the giant puff balls emerged, too, but if they do, it’ll be later in the season.

It’s a good thing today is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. I didn’t do a lot when reclaiming the bed to plant poppies yesterday, but it was enough to increase the pain levels. It’s turning out to be a really windy day, too. So, tomorrow will be my day to really get into the manual labour needed in the old kitchen garden. Hopefully, at the very least, the winds will die down!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: garlic and crocuses!

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When doing my evening rounds today, I decided to do a walkabout, which I will post about separately. I was just finishing up when I got a message from one of my daughters, who had gone out while I was going in, with a picture of purple snow crocuses! She said there was garlic up, too.

They were not there when I did my morning rounds!

So I went back outside and checked it out.

While trying to find the purple crocuses she took a picture of, I found a couple of white ones. They’re so small, it was hard to get a good photo while zooming in, so this is the only one good enough to post.

I’m so thrilled to see them!

As for the garlic, I had been thinking about whether it was time to move the winter mulch aside, or to wait a bit longer.

Well, now’s the time!

I found the one garlic that had pushed its way through the mulch and began clearing.

Marking each end of the rows with sticks when we planted helped a lot!

In the process, I found quite a few more garlic sprouting. They will do much better, now that they will be getting more light and air circulation.

I am just so happy!!!

The Re-Farmer

Morning flowers and not quite enough!

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Look what I found blooming this morning!

This is the flower of an apple gourd. Usually, the flowers are some shade of yellow, leaning towards orange or white, but these are almost brown in colour!

While doing my morning rounds and tending the garden beds, I can’t push back on a feeling that everything is really “wrong” this year. Added to that, I’m seeing people in my zone 3 gardening groups posting pictures of how far along their gardens are right now, and they are WAY ahead of ours.

So I just went and looked at garden posts I made around this time, last year. I did a tour post on July 3 or last year, but mostly I compared to posts closer to 1 year ago today.

This year, our purple Kulli corn is starting to grow more enthusiastically, but last year’s purple Mountain Morado corn, which was also started indoors and transplanted, where producing silk by now.

Last year, we had bush beans starting to bloom, and the King Tut purple peas were blooming and growing pods, in spite of the heat. This year, even the first bush beans we planted with the Kulli corn are not yet blooming, and the peas are really just starting to actively grow. The King Tut peas we started indoors are much larger and climbing the chain link fence, and there are a few flowers on those.

Our summer squash is all pretty small, though some are starting to bloom, anyway. Last year, I posted a picture of our first yellow pattypan squash that was of a size we would normally harvest.

Last year at this time, the Crespo squash was looking as big as the Giant Pumpkin plants are this year, and just days later, things were starting to eat it, but this year’s Crespo squash is still quite small.

This year, our beets are just a couple of inches high. Last year, we had lush leaves we could harvest for salads, and had to use a row cover to keep the critters from eating it all.

This year, we have a tomato bed that was started indoors very early, and those determinate varieties are growing fruit. Of the tomatoes we started indoors at about the same time as what we started last year, the Yellow Pear are starting to bloom but nothing on the Chocolate Cherry yet. Last year, the cherry tomatoes already had sprays of fruit forming.

So it’s not just in my head. The garden really is far behind, when compared to our own garden last year. A summer of heat waves and drought, no less. This year, things that should have been planted before last frost didn’t, because everything was under water, and even things that needed to wait until after last frost date were a bit on the late side.

We’ve got rain and hotter temperatures coming up, with a possible thunderstorm tonight. Conditions that are actually better than at this time last year. I hope this means that what we’ve got will start catching up soon, though from the looks of the melon patch, I think we’ve lost most of them. Especially the Kaho watermelon, which has actually gotten smaller instead of bigger, and it looks like something ate a few of them.

At least most of the potatoes are finally coming up, though there are some blank spaces. As these are in groups, I think they ended up in water for too long and rotted before they could sprout.

There is little I can do about things. All I can do is be glad for what growth is happening, and pray we will have another long, mild fall to make up for the cold, wet spring.

We do the best we can.

In other things, while putting the kibble out, I’ve started to leave some in front of the pump shack door, and on the metal table in front of it (where the skunks can’t get at it). As I came around towards it, I saw the black and white kitten, the tuxedo and a tabby looking kitten, just as they say me and dashed into the pump shack. Which is encouraging, as I was concerned most of the litter didn’t make it. I also saw the tiny little calico, playing in the big branch pile, by itself.

Yesterday evening just kept getting hotter and hotter, but I decided to head out and see if I could get the new clothes line up. I was able to remove the tightener from the old line, then had to set up a step ladder at the post opposite the laundry platform, to be able to reach the pulley. Then I walked both ends of the line back to the laundry platform.

Except… not.

100 feet was not enough.

I got to about 10 feet short of the post. Which means I’m about 20 feet short in clothes line.

I don’t want to start splicing ends, so I’m just going to get another 150 feet. They sell them in 50 ft rolls that are still attached to each other. I’ll get 3 rolls and should have roughly 30 ft extra. Plus I’ll have a spare 100 ft of clothes line. I don’t mind having extra. I’m sure we’ll find a use for it at some point.

I was also able to finally undo and re-wrap the excess cable from our StarLink dish. When my brother helped install it, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, so he just quickly wrapped up the excess and used zip ties with screw holding heads (I forget the proper name for them) to hold it all together against the outside wall. It was pretty tangled and messed up. I finally picked up more of those zip ties. After removing what my brother used, I re-wrapped the cable nice and neat, making sure there was slack available in strategic places, just in case. Since I didn’t want to leave holes in the wall, I use the same number of zip ties that my brother did, then screwed them into the same holes as before.

It looks much better now!

Unfortunately, in the few minutes it took me to do that, I was just baking! The hottest part of the day has been hitting well after 6pm.

Keeping that in mind, I tried to go to bed early last night, so that I could get up much earlier and get things done before things got too hot.

Instead, I ended up having a sleepless night with all sorts of distractions, issues, and just plain not being able to fall asleep.

Which means that right now, when I should be doing things outside, I’m sitting here typing, and trying not to fall asleep on my keyboard. I’m feeling to tired, I actually feel ill.

*sigh*

Well, at least I got some things done this morning, but right now, I’m feeling pretty useless.

We’ll see what I manage to get done before the thunderstorms start. If they even hit us at all, rather than going around like the often do!

The Re-Farmer

Surrounded

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The mock orange is blooming beautifully right now!

I pruned away a lot of dead branches this spring, but the rest is just thriving!

The other one at the side of the house is still just budding. It doesn’t get as much direct sunlight as this one. I’m actually amazed it’s still alive. The groundhog has dug a tunnel behind it, damaging and exposing quite a lot of roots in the process. I keep filling the hole in, pushing back the dug up soil with a hoe, sometimes taking a hose to it, too. It can stay filled in for days. Then the grog will suddenly be back. I happened to be at the door above the steps when I saw it going by with a mouth full of nesting materials.

Despite all the root disturbances and damage, that mock orange looks like it’s going to have massive blooms, too.

At some point, I’d like the move both of them. The one by the house doesn’t get enough sunlight, and is far enough under the eaves to get hardly any water when it rains. This one is right up against the laundry platform. It gets in the way when we try to use the clothes line, even with all the pruning. Plus. we need to paint the platform. We have not yet decided on a new new spot for them, though. I still want to keep them close to the house. Just not too close!

All in good time.

The Re-Farmer

Rosy

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I am just amazed at how the pink rose bush is doing this year!

There are dozens of flowers, and dozens more buds developing. This is the first year we’ve had more than just a couple of flowers!

The leaves are looking awfully yellow. I don’t know much about roses. I’m not sure if that’s from the type of rose, if there’s a nutritional deficiency, or if there has just been too much water this spring. It could also be lack of sunlight, still. We’ve pruned back the ornamental apple above it, but unless we take it out completely, it’s still going to have shade for at least half the day.

And to think, when we first moved here, it was in such poor shape, it could barely be seen against the stick that was supporting it. The same stick you can see in the photo above! I’m so glad we were able to save it. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Summer growth

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Yesterday, forecasts said we were supposed to have a couple of dry days. While I was out and about with my mother, I saw lots of people mowing, so when I got home, I decided to do some preparatory weed trimming. The beans and peas are coming up nicely, and some of the cucumber plants are getting pretty big, so we need to get those A frame trellises up. I picked up some 6′ bamboo stakes to use as supports. I’d hoped to use pieces of poplar, like the frames are made of, but of what we have, any pieces long enough were too thick or too crooked. If it was straight enough, or thin enough, it was too short. So, bamboo stakes it is. Unfortunately, they cost a fair bit; just under $10 for a bundle of 6. I was only able to get 4. Not enough for what I was thinking to do.

Before we could set those up, I got out the weed trimmer and a whole lot of extension cord, and trimmed the paths as close to the ground as I could.

Which is about when I started hearing thunder.

I did get the trimming done, then 4 pairs of stakes lashed together and set up at the trellis with the cucumbers. I had planned to set up 5 pairs – one at each upright support – then have cross pieces at the bottom, to help support the netting. With only 4 pairs, I don’t think they’re long enough to join with cross pieces.

I was able to lash together 4 more pairs of stakes before I was driven inside by rain. We ended up with quite a thunderstorm with heavy rain and strong winds. We even lost internet and had power fluctuations.

Still, when I headed out this morning, I thought we might at least be able to do some mowing in the west yard, but no. There’s water all over, and even the usually drier spots are squelchy. :-/

Quite a few new flowers are blooming. The ornamental poppies have exploded along with the dwarf Korean lilac, and even some wild columbine is blooming. The yellow lilies near the fire pit that I keep intending to divide and never quite get to, are in full bloom.

I waded through the tall grass and water to check on the Korean pine. A couple of them are in puddles of water! Five of them are showing new growth, but the one that got dug up by something looks like it has not survived. A lot of the needles have turned brown.

While checking one of the pine trees, I kept an eye out for the strawberries I saw before. They are now mostly hidden by the tall grass, but I could still see them. They are still blooming.

The corn we recently direct sowed are starting to come up! The popcorn seems to be a bit slower in germinating than the sweet corn. No sign of the green bush beans, yet.

The garlic that is doing really well in the main garden area is now starting to grow scapes. The other garlic, that seemed to have been set back badly by the extended winter, are finally starting to really perk up and grow, though they are still quite small. I’m seeing carrots coming up in the various beds, but a lot of the turnips that I saw before now seem to be gone. One variety seems to be holding out, even if the tiny leaves are riddled with holes.

No sign of the bare-root white strawberries starting to grow. Those might be a total loss. The red strawberries we transplanted with the asparagus are still blooming, though.

Everything is so wet, wet, wet – and we’re supposed to get more showers tonight! In fact, now the forecasts are saying nightly showers, or thunderstorms, for the next 5 days. This is frustrating. One of the down spouts is clogged. Normally, the girls would go out onto the roof to clear it, through one of their windows. Their windows, however, are pretty much coated with mosquitoes. Which means using a ladder, but the ground is so wet and mushy, there’s no place solid to set a ladder. The eaves over the north side of the old kitchen also need to be cleared. That area is difficult enough to set up a ladder at the best of times. With how slick and muddy things are now, it’s just not an option. The ground needs to dry out at least somewhat, but that’s not going to happen. I think the girls are going to have to brave the mosquitoes to at least do the one over the living room. Too much water is seeping into the new basement.

One of these days, we need to pick up one of those small, mobile scaffolding set ups. Too bad the scaffolding that was here before we moved in grew legs and walked away. It would be so useful – and safer – with scaffolding.

The rains we’ve been having are certainly a mixed blessing. The saturated ground and open water prevents us from being able to do some things, and makes it harder to get to different parts of the year – but things are growing and blooming and, with a few drowned exceptions, fairing much better than last year! Things definitely prefer the damp, over the drought.

The Re-Farmer