It never cooled down much during the night, so none of us got much sleep. We are now expected to reach a high of 30C/86F, with a humidex of 38C/100F While nothing much reached us, a massive storm blew in from the US across the south of our province, with alerts telling people to seek shelter.
As I write this, it’s 26C/79F, which is only slightly hotter than it was while I was watering the garden this morning. Humidex puts us at 30C/86F right now.
About all I can say for now it, at least it’s not windy like it was last night. I’m happy to say that we did not lose any trees. At least not anywhere that I could see.
My morning, of course, started off with feeding the yard cats. With the expected heat, I set frozen water bottles in the water bowls, too. I’ll change them out for fresh ones, later in the day.
I saw little Colby running around and playing in the grass.
In the second photo above, you can see his sisters still eating. I didn’t see the white and grey one anywhere, though. I hope it’s all right.
After doing my rounds, I gave the garden beds a deep watering, which ended up taking about 2 hours, maybe longer. I didn’t even make it to the trees. The heat and humidity was already getting to me. They still need to be done, though. I’ll have to go out again, later.
Meanwhile, I’m happy to say that some of our corn finally has tassels!
Only in the bed with the Arikara squash, where they are bigger than the ones in the corn bed. No sign of cobs, though.
When doing the watering, I often see lots of frogs jumping out from under the mulches and hopping away. Usually, they are the greyish, brownish wood frogs. Sometimes I’ll see some tiny copper or emerald ones.
Apparently, this is a Pacific tree frog! Which is strange, because we are nowhere near their range. The other possibility is the common tree frog, but from the images I’m finding, that’s not it.
Well, whatever kind of frog it is, I am happy to see it!
Today is looking to be a day of staying out of the heat as much as possible. None of us tolerate heat very well, it seems!
While taking video of the peppers for the garden tour yesterday, I spotted what I thought was a tiny pepper beginning to form. It turned out to be the remains of a blossom. From what I could see, if it did develop into a pepper, it would be our first one.
Today, I went to take another look. After moving the dried remains of petals off, I did indeed find a teeny, tiny beginnings of a pepper.
An absolutely adorable little tree from, no bigger than the tip of my thumb.
I am so happy we have so many frogs this year. I wish they could make a bigger end on the mosquito population, though! Lots of frogs, but no dragonflies.
Gotta set up some bat houses at some point. Walking around this afternoon, the air was filled with the whining of mosquitoes. It’s absolutely insane, how many there are this year!!
Thankfully, I wasn’t needing to be out there for long. My daughter and I had our back to back medical appointments, after doing my mother’s med assist this morning, followed by a trip to the pharmacy, so we were away most of the day. Plus, it’s been raining off and on all day. Very happy for the rain, too! Not much to do in the garden right now, anyhow. Just see how much more the deer have eat, and stare perplexedly as all the things that just aren’t growing this year.
*sigh*
As my SIL once said about their own garden; if they had to live off of what they grew, they’d starve! They weren’t trying for any sort of self sufficiency. Just to supplement. We, on the other hand, are planning our garden out specifically to have a combination of fresh eating, freezing, canning and winter storage. Last year, we at least were able to freeze a few things. This year, I don’t think we’ll even have anything more than for fresh eating.
We do still have just under 50 days before first frost – a bit longer, if we go by the adjusted average, though I certainly won’t count on it. Who knows what might happen in that time! Maybe, things will actually start suddenly growing and producing and we’ll have a long and mild fall, with plenty to harvest at the end of the season.
I wasn’t able to water the garden last night – I was just too burned out and went to bed early. It was going to be hotter again today, so I wanted to make sure it was done this morning, including the walnut trees and Korean pine, in the outer yard.
To water those, I drag the hose out as far as it can go, then grab a couple of watering cans. I keep those by the rain barrel against the house, filled with water, so they don’t blow away. Since they’re already full, I use that water on the first two saplings.
The last time I did this, something was clogging the water, and it turned out to be a frog in the watering can. So when the first watering can started clogging again, I figured it was another frog!
I took the rose off just in time to see a little frog face duck back into the spout. 😂
I poured it out and found the lovely green friend.
It seems that once a frog gets into the watering can, it can’t get out – but it can go up into the spout, above the water line, so it won’t drown, either.
When I was done and put the watering cans back, I refilled them – then removed the rose. If a frog gets into one of them again, it’ll be able to get out through the spout.
When feeding the yard cats this morning, I have been making sure to bring a bowl of food to the garage, where the secret kittens are. I never saw the kittens, though I did see the mama coming up the driveway from across the road, at the time. After the watering was done, I went to retrieve the bowl for this evening’s feeding. I peeked through the open door first, of course, and didn’t see anything, so I went right in.
A white and grey kitten suddenly bolted from my brother’s big mower, and hit under the stuff in the corner where their “nest” is.
Then I saw the mama, starting at me in alarm.
She had been curled up with her babies, nursing them, on the comfortable seat of the mower! The seat has a back to it, plus arm rests, so they were completely hidden from view from behind.
The mother was acting really nervous, but she did let me come closer. I reached my hand out and she sniffed my fingers, and allowed me to pet her for a bit before she ran off.
My goal was really just to touch the kitten, and give it a chance to learn my scent. It hissed at me, but not very enthusiastically. It gave my fingers a sniff, and hissed again, but didn’t move.
I went for it.
I pet the kitty – and it let me!
I was even able to give it skitches on the neck and ears. It just looked at me, but didn’t try to get away.
I was leaning awkwardly across the mower, so I had to pull my arm back and shift positions. I got another light his, but the kitten still stayed.
It let me pet it again.
As I was petting it, I thought again; do I dare?
I dared.
I very gently scooped the kitten closer to me on the seat, so I could pick it up.
It let me.
I was able to hold and snuggle the baby for a couple of minutes!
This kitten is a solid baby. All dens muscle! Even its fur is thicksome.
We have another kitten with blue, blue eyes!
After holding it for a while, I didn’t want to push it too far, so I gently put it back on the mower seat, then took the bowl and headed back. I am so amazed that I was able to pick it up at all! I would have been happy if I only managed to get it to sniff my fingers without running away!
Hopefully, I will soon be able to touch the other kitten, too – and bring them to the house, where they will have access to food, water and comfortable beds, and other kittens to play with.
This baby is an absolute stunner.
I don’t know where the mamas find them, but we’ve got some gorgeous genetics showing up in our colony!
After a morning that turned out to be way more hectic than it should have been, going out to water the garden was a much needed stress reducer!
It actually did start raining a bit while I was watering, and it’s rained a bit more since then, but so little, the watering was still needed.
What I’d really like to see is a whole lot of rain going over all those wildfires. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future.
When watering the beds in the south east yard, I noticed more missing tops of greenery along one side of the winter sown bed. I’m actually not too worried about that, as the deer aren’t eating the radish pods I want to keep. I do have some lettuces I’m leaving to go to seed, though, so I might have to do something to protect what’s left in this bed. The other two have netting around them, and the little square bed has plastic around it. The deer can reach over, but I don’t think they like winter squash or corn plants. Corn cobs, yes, but not the plants.
It was when I got to the main garden beds that I found more damage.
Most of the damage was in the high raised bed, which is really just the right height for a deer buffet. A whole lot of beet greens disappeared. In the trellis bed (the next image in the slide show above), a single Hopi Black Dye sunflower lots its top. It will probably grow a new one, though.
While doing the watering, I was seeing all sorts of frogs coming out of the mulch. Some of them were huge! Well… huge for our native varieties of frog, that is.
There was one tiny one that emerged that really caught my attention, though. Would you look at that colour!!!
What an incredible green! That is not a common colour for frogs here, at all. It’s almost metallic.
I did the trees in the outer yard, too. To do that, I drag the hose out to the outer yard, where it almost reaches one of the Korean pines. Then I go back to get a couple of watering cans. I keep those next to the rain barrel (which still isn’t even half full) with water in them, so they don’t blow away.
Since they already have water in them, I got straight to the two furthest walnut trees. The one seed that had been almost dug up did survive, and a seedling has finally emerged!
As I was watering it, I notice the watering can seemed to be getting clogged. That happens a lot with this can. It has some algae, I guess it is, stuck to the inside that I haven’t been able to get off. It comes off in bits, which then clogs the holes in the rose. When that happens, I take the rose off and use the water to rinse off the stuff clogging it while still watering the plant.
Except that there wasn’t anything clogging the rose.
Then something landed in my hand before falling to the ground.
First, I grabbed some support posts and traded them out for three of the post I have with pinwheels at their tops. I put a couple in the corners of the high raised bed, where the beets are, and one at the end of the trellis bed where the sunflowers can be reached. The other end doesn’t have anything the deer like near the end, and the side that doesn’t have the trellis netting is lined with onions, which are a bit of a deterrent for deer, so it was really just the one end that needed something.
In the high raised bed, I put overlapping hoops on the sides, and one at the end. I set the hoops under the radish plants, so they’re not hanging almost to the ground anymore. Then I added a hoop to each end of the trellis bed, including the one that didn’t really need it. The asymmetricy without it was bugging me. 😄
I deer can still stick it’s head through, but they don’t have good depth perception, so I’m hoping the extra things in the way will prevent more carnage.
There is one massive turnip in the high raised bed. I’d left it to go to see, but it’s not bolting. What I thought was from the turnip turned out to be from another radish.
I need to look up recipes for pickling radish pods. I’ll have enough to harvest to be able to fill at least a pint sized jar or two, to do a quick pickle. Now that we finally have radish pods, it’s our grand experiment to see if we want to do this again next year – which would mean planting them this fall. I did order icicle radish seeds, but those won’t be grown for their pods (thought I might let one go to seed to actually collect seeds.
Anyhow. We’ll see how the new additions to to keep the deer from chomping more of my veggies!
Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!
Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.
Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.
The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.
When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.
Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…
That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.
Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.
She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!
Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.
It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.
The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.
The thing is…
Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.
The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.
They were empty.
So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.
Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.
Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.
When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.
The time stamp on the message was 10:01.
*facepalm*
Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.
I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…
My mother doesn’t remember that call.
I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.
So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.
It was a very strange day with her, this time!
I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.
By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.
It felt like it should have been much later!
She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.
Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.
I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.
Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.
July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!
Anyhow.
I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.
I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!
Good grief. How is it not even 6:30pm as I start this? It feels like it should be much, much later!
It’s been a long day. 😄
Once again, I was awakened way too early by cat shenanigans. I finally gave up and got up at around 5:30 to top up their kibble and give the hoard access to my room before heading outside to feed the yard cats and do my morning rounds.
Checking on the garden as part of my rounds at this time of year is a bit like Christmas. There seems to be something new, every time! I just came back from doing the evening watering, and there was more new stuff to see, in just the space of about 9 hours!
One of the things we have blooming right now are the ornamental poppies.
Very few of them, this year, but they sure are show stoppers! Those are irises in the background, that have been growing there since before I was born.
Just a few scapes and ripe wild/alpine/whatever-they-are strawberries.
When approaching the low raised bed with most of the tomatoes, interplanted with yellow bush beans, I startled away a bird that had been digging in the dirt. As if cats digging wasn’t bad enough, the birds are, too!
When checking on the damage, I spotted our first yellow bush bean sprouting! I was really happy with this, as these seeds are several years old, and I wasn’t sure any would germinate.
When I was back at the bed to water it this evening, I found almost all the other beans I’d planted in the bed had sprouted while I was gone! I only planted a single bean in each spot, no extras, and at the moment, it looks like just one hasn’t germinated yet.
I didn’t see more corn sprouting in the other bed in the morning, but this evening, I spotted the tips of perhaps a dozen, breaking through. Still no beans in the alternating rows sprouting there, yet.
This morning, I had the usual cats following me around, but I was also joined by an Eyelet!
Who really looks ticked off at getting his picture taken. 😄
The cats really love that grass mulch. It does protect the soil from them a bit, but they do dig it up to use the gardens beds as a litter box, if I’m not there to chase them off. Those collars around the transplants are probably the only things saving them from being flattened by cats rolling in the beds!
In the second image of the above slide show, you can see the cuddle puddle I discovered, just before coming inside.
Adorable, but a concern.
Caramel is in there, cuddling with the kittens. Only the orange tabby, Havarti, is hers. Her other two are still missing. While my first thought was that she took them to the property across the road, I am no longer sure. Every time I got outside, she’s here. Which means if she did take them across the road, they are there alone, not being nursed by her or any of the creche mothers, and not getting any of the cat soup I’ve been giving out specifically for the kittens. I now wonder if they are even still alive. I don’t get it!! Zipper is also still missing.
Later on, as I was preparing to leave for town, I just had to get this picture of Leyendecker.
Chonky boy! Gosh, he’s so big. I don’t just mean he’s a fat cat. He’s just a giant, overall.
He’s also one of the bullies.
I picked up that calming liquid to try, but the instructions aren’t particularly clear. It basically says to add it to their food, no mixing required, and that cats love eating it. Add how? Just… pour it on?
It also sort of assumes feeding one cat directly and individually.
Which is our problem.
How do we dose just the most stressed out and/or aggressive cats?
After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to just add it to their cat soup. It’ll be a very low dose, but basically all the cats would get at least some. Except Potato Beetle. He still won’t eat wet cat food. He’s a chill dude, though, and not one we’d be dosing, anyhow. I honestly can’t remember even seeing him try the cat soup. I use 6 cans of cat food for one batch of cat soup, so this evening, I decided to add one tsp per can (the recommended dose is 1.5 tsp for under 10 pounds, 2 tsp for 10 pounds or over, per day).
We’ll see how it works out.
Meanwhile…
I headed out early because I wanted to remove the remains of the truck box cover, first. We kept wanting to do it, but once the truck is in the garage, there really isn’t a lot of space to move around in. Then we’d forget again.
So today, I got the truck out of the garage, grabbed a tool kit and got to work. It ended up taking way less time than I thought it would. There were just two of one type of clamp on one side, then one each of a different type on both sides. I was fully expecting the nuts to be seized or something, but nope. They came off easily, as did the remaining piece of the box cover.
Once it was done, I just went ahead into town right away, anyhow. I did remember to stop at the post office along the way; I kept forgetting to do it all last week.
Our mail box was completely stuffed.
With fliers.
With the threat of a strike hanging over us, no one is using the mail for anything but junk mail right now. Not even for packages. The threat of a strike alone must be costing Canada Post millions of dollars – and they have already been running in the red for years. People living in cities and larger communities have plenty of alternatives to choose from. People like us, however, are stuck with pretty much only Canada Post. There are a couple of delivery companies that will actually find us and deliver directly to our place (which is impressive, since our physical address doesn’t exist on any maps), or will deliver to the store the post office is in, but they are rarely an option when we place orders online. Right now, a lot of places won’t even take orders. It’s not just Amazon cancelling orders that can only be sent by Canada Post. I’ve noticed some tree nurseries and seed companies have notices on their websites, saying they’ve stopped taking orders completely until the threat of a strike are over. Some say they have found alternative methods and are taking orders again, but for those that don’t have the option, they could well lose their businesses entirely because of Canada Post. Of course, these are almost always the small, independent and family run companies that are most affected, but public sector unions don’t give a rip. It’s insane how bad they’ve become.
So, junk mail is all we’re getting.
While heading into town, I kept a close eye on that oil pressure gauge. At first, it seemed to be back to normal; that half liter of oil we’d put in last night seemed to have made a difference.
And then it didn’t. The pressure kept slowly dropping until it was just barely in the range it’s supposed to be in.
When I got to the garage, the owner was there, so I had a chance to talk to him about the booked oil change, and what was going on. I was honest about the fact that I really couldn’t tell if it was low on oil or not, because I simply can’t see the line, but it did seem to me that it was low. They had done so much work on it when we had the issues before, it really didn’t make any sense for anything to be leaking now, so he was definitely going to check on it for me.
I then asked if they could check the tires, too. We have the one front tire with the slow leak in the valve step that needs to be replaced first, but there are three altogether that need to be done, because the sensor batteries are dead. As for the one that was already done, I told him that it always seems to look low to me. I’d check the pressure and it would be fine, but it still looked low. So he said he would get that checked, too.
I reminded him about the broken handle inside the driver’s side door, and it can only be opened from the outside. We talked a bit about the possibility of getting a new one from a scrap yard or something. He does make use of those for parts and says they usually don’t sell just a handle like that, but the entire door. So it is unlikely to actually save us anything. He did say he would keep it in mind, though.
Not that we’ll be able to get it done, anytime soon.
That done, I turned over the keys and started walking. I was 2 hours early for my appointment, so I had plenty of time to run any errands and have lunch.
I had lunch first, since I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I walked across town towards the marina and decided to stop at a fish and chips place. I don’t normally like fish anything, but they have the best fish and chips anywhere, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been there!
I forgot how massive their portions are. A really great deal for the dollar – a rare thing, these days!
I think next time, I should see if I can get just the fish and skip the fries completely. 😄
This place happens to be next to a Thai store that we rarely get a chance to visit, so after lunch, I went to check it out. My younger daughter, who’s birthday is this month, has a couple of pairs of very unique, very comfortable, pants from this place that she loves. I was thinking of possibly finding her more – after going through some of the other Thai stuff they had. There were some really nice things, but not anything I thought would be good as birthday gifts.
While trying to find a rack with the type of pants my daughter had found, I was approached by the lone saleswoman holding out a dress for me to possibly try.
I was rather amused by the small size of it, but told her I was looking for something for my daughter.
She came back with something even smaller, so I told her my daughter was an adult. She didn’t speak much English, but we managed to communicate.
In the end, she helped me find a sundress that’s actually pants, that looked like it would actually fit my well endowed daughter. So that turned out all right!
After that, I started making my way back towards the garage, stopping at a couple other places along the way. There wasn’t much that I needed, so I wasn’t stuck carrying much during the walk back.
By the time I reached the garage, it was shortly past my actual appointment time. I half expected the truck to be in a bay still, but I found it parked in a different spot outside, so I knew it was done.
The owner was in the office when I got there, but he wasn’t the one who worked on the truck, so he went and got the guy who did. Which turned out to be the same guy who had worked on it last time.
I am so glad I asked them to check the tires.
One of the things this guy had found before was that our tires were starting to wear on the insides, showing that we needed a wheel alignment. That was done along with most of the other stuff at the same time.
In the months since the alignment was done, the worn spots had gotten worse, and were now completely bald on the inside. Something I wouldn’t have been able to see. It was, however, very likely contributing to why both front tires would sometimes be low, even though one of them had had its leaking valve replaced already.
We talked about it for a while, and could confirm it was just additional wear and tear; I’d already had the wheel bearing replaced on the driver’s side, then they did the alignment. They would have spotted any other possible contributing problems at the time.
While, technically, I could still drive on them, this is not something I was going to mess around on, so I asked how much it would cost to replace them.
It’s going to cost over $600, after taxes, for new tires, installation, balancing and labour.
*sigh*
I am thankful that we now have credit cards that we can do stuff like this, but … yikes!
I asked how long it would take for the tires to come in, since they have to order them first, and was told if they ordered them today, they’d be in tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, I’m taking the truck in to the autobody place for them to go over and determine what parts they need for our insurance claim repairs, so I booked the new tires to be installed after that.
Then we talked about the oil change.
It turned out that the oil level really was low. As in, almost half what it should have been. !!! He told me that it was wet all over underneath, so they couldn’t pin point exactly where it was coming from. The leak was so slow, there was no dripping under the truck for me to see. So what they’ve done for now is cleaned it all up so that, when I come back for an oil change again, they would be better able to see where it’s coming from.
If there’s still a leak.
They recommended an oil treatment concentrate to use before then. Every now and then, over the next while (which might be weeks, or months), I’m to check the oil when the engine is cold. Once the level reaches between the “fill” and “full” lines, I’m to add this stuff, instead of more oil. This should improve all the seals and stop any leaks. They both said it works really, really well, and should solve the problem.
That done, I paid the bill, which turned out to be lower than I expected. Especially with the additional product. When I commented on that, the mechanic I was talking to said it looked like the owner, who have left for the day, had given me a deal!
He is so awesome.
While all this was going on, we chatted about other things with the truck. I mentioned the issues we were having with the insurance company and how, because of the things they won’t cover, it’s still going to cost us a lot – and they won’t cover the tail light at all. We’d talked about the broken tail light earlier, when describing the damage to the truck box frame. I told him the insurance guy says it’s from an impact, not from the cover being blown off. Yet when I described what I saw in my mirror when it went flying, the mechanic immediately said that it would have been broken when the box frame was twisted. I agree, but there is impact damage under the tail light. I didn’t hit anything, and that damage wasn’t there when I bought the truck, so all I can think is that maybe someone hit the truck while it was parked in a parking lot, and I just didn’t notice until I checked for damage after the cover was blown off – and I have no way to prove that the tail light cover wasn’t broken before the box cover was blown off.
When he found out they wouldn’t cover the cost of the tail light, the mechanic suddenly got excited and asked which tail light it was. He quickly became disappointed when I told him it was the passenger side. It turned out he had a spare tail light for the same truck as mine, but it was for the driver’s side. He would have let me have it for free, if it had been the right size!
Have I mentioned how much I love our garage? The owner is awesome, and the guys he has working with him are also just fantastic.
So we’ll see how things go with the autobody shop, and their guy has a chance to price out parts.
Once done at the garage, I made a quick stop at the grocery store before heading home. By the time I was done there, I was heavily using the shopping cart as a walker. My hips were starting to really give out. I mentioned that when I messaged my family that I was on my way home, and was pleasantly surprised to find the gate open for me already. After I was done parking in the garage, I was going to leave the couple of bags I had in front of the garage while I went back to close the gate, only to find my daughter already on her way to do it for me!
She is so sweet!
She also noticed and commented on the pretty bag I was carrying, so I asked her if she wanted her birthday present now, or later? 😄😄
She decided, now.
So, once we were inside and everything was put away, I presented her with her gift. She put it on right away, and we were very happy to find it fit just fine – unlike the previous one I picked up that was “one size fits most” that didn’t fit either of us. My daughter has some matching fabric and will be adding gussets to the side seams, but until then, she now has a floofy, flowy, gorgeously patterned pants-dress to wear on those really hot days. It also looks quite beautiful on her, but my daughter always looks beautiful, so that’s no surprise. 😊
Not much later, after taking some pain killers, I headed back outside for my evening rounds, and the evening yard cat feeding. After Caramel apparently moved two of her smaller babies away (or…?), I’m now very concerned that Poirot might do the same, but so far, nope!
She seems quite content to keep her babies close to the house. They are getting so much more active and starting to go further around the house, and using the old kitchen garden as their very own playground – even when I’m watering the beds!
Oh, I’ll have to make a point of heading out after dark and getting some pictures. When I was last at the Walmart, I took advantage of a clearance sale and got a box of 8 solar lights on stakes. Most of them are now in the wattle weave bed – literally in the weave – with a couple in the rectangular bed near the house. They look really nice and, if the price is right, I’d like to get more for other areas around the garden beds.
The cats aren’t the only ones that like the garden beds, or the mulch. Every time I water, there are frogs jumping out all over. The beds with the heavier mulches often have a dozen or more emerging and jumping away from the water!
This evening, however, I spotted a different frog. The usual ones tend to be coloured in browns and greys. Sometimes, I’ll see one that looks copper coloured. What I haven’t seen before it one that was green!
Usually, any green frogs we see are tree frogs, and I haven’t seen any of those this year, yet. The only other native frog that I know of that’s green is the leopard frog, which is now pretty rare to see. This one looks like our typical wood frog, except for the colour. What a beauty!
I am so happy to see so many frogs in the garden this year!
So that was how things went for most of the day.
I do, however, have some concerning updates about my mother.
After what happened yesterday, I updated my siblings in our group chat to let them know what went down.
I got a message from my sister late this afternoon. She had phoned our mother earlier in the day. Apparently, my mother got two med assist visits this morning for some reason.
???
She also said she would try and walk to the grocery store (it’s just a couple of blocks away) to do her own shopping, then have them deliver it. She also had stuff to get at the pharmacy, though, and that’s much further.
I responded by saying I’d gone over there on my one free day, and I’m booked up through to next week (not all of which is stuff away from home, but including time dependent stuff that must get done outside, while the weather is good). My sister said she told my mother that people would be far more willing to help her, if she treated them nicely!
(I’m hoping my sister or my brother can do the shopping for her, but my mother doesn’t like their shopping. I know her list so well, I can pick out exactly what she likes, even when I get things not on her list. They don’t know as well and pick the “wrong” things – which might only be a brand from their local store they shopped at for her, rather than the one next to her place.)
Not long after I got home, I got a call from the home care coordinator.
It was about the double visit this morning.
When the home care aid got to my mother’s, she insisted that someone had already been there and given her her medications. The aid went into the lock box to check. This morning’s medications were still there, and no one had signed the form. Yet my mother insisted, someone had already come and done her meds. The home care workers have the lock box code on their instructions file for my mother. She’s not the only one with a lock box, and there are quite a few different people doing her med assists, so it’s not like any of them are going to be remembering everyone’s lock box combinations, nor is it possible anyone NOT a home care aid would be going into there. Not even my sister has the code for it (my brother is the one who programmed it so, of course, he knows what it is).
I read to her the message I got from my sister, about my mother saying that two people had come to do her morning meds today.
There is no record of any home care aid going to my mother’s place before the one that made the report on my mother saying that someone did.
I told the coordinator that I’d been there yesterday morning, but left very soon after, because of my mother’s behaviour (she understood!), but I was there long enough for my mother to mention no one had shown up on Saturday morning. I hadn’t gone back into the lock box to check if the Saturday morning meds where still there; it never even occurred to me. The coordinator looked at the record for Saturday, and there was nothing about her morning med assist being missed.
She was going to instruct the supper time med assist person to check the bubble pack to see if Saturday morning’s pills were still there.
This morning’s home care aid, the coordinator and I all agreed that it was very unlike my mother to be mixed up about someone coming and giving her her pills, when no one had actually come. Now we have the possibility that she can’t remember someone coming on Saturday morning. This is very concerning! My mother was very prone to messing with her meds, forgetting what they were for, thinking they had been “changed”, etc. But she had never actually forgotten to take them, or thought she’d taken them when she hadn’t.
It’s going to be looked into, and I will be contacted about it later.
It does not seem like my mother would invent (whether she knows it or not) that someone came when they didn’t. Could someone else have come to her place that she mistook for a health care aid? If so, they couldn’t have given her her meds, since they’re locked away.
This is just so bizarre.
Another reminder that my mother really shouldn’t be living on her own. She wants so much to be in a nursing home (a very specific one), and it still seems like she somehow doesn’t “qualify” yet, according to our system.
Whatever they find in their investigation, maybe this will be the final hurdle that will get her into, at the very least, some sort of assisted or supportive living situation.
Assuming there are any spaces available.
*sigh*
There isn’t much we can do until then, which is the most frustrating part. It’s not like any of us can have her move in with us. Either we’ve got our own family health issues to deal with, or lack of accessibility in our homes, or both – it just couldn’t work. She would hate it, anyhow. She knows she needs to have a higher level of care, especially at night, than any of us can give, but she would also go bonkers without the social activities she has access to in her building, now.
Well, it is what it is. We can only deal wit the hand we’ve been dealt, no matter how messed up it is.
My mother certainly isn’t helping herself out, with her behaviour, though!
Today is supposed to be warmer, but it’s still dreary and overcast out there. Which means it’s all I can do to stay awake!
The first order of business, as always, it to feed the yard cats. The adults get distracted with their kibble feeding first, then I set out the canned cat food for the kittens, some in the sun room, some in the cat house. This morning, they got some bonus cat soup from one of the trays for the inside cats that got mostly ignored (we set out 3 trays, plus some in Butterscotch’s cat bowl, every day). This is supplemented with lysine, so that’s extra good for them. After adding it to the kitten bowls, I set the tray with some still in it by the kibble house to lure the adult cats away, and it was licked clean in no time!
Poirot headed out while all this was going on, so I had a chance to say hello to her babies, and look them over. Hastings (the white and grey) is the biggest of them, and most definitely female. Miss Lemon (the mostly white) and Japp (the mostly black) are less developed and harder to tell, still, but I suspect they are also female.
I made sure the sun room was closed up with some of the bigger kittens inside, so they got a chance to fill their bellies before the adult cats gobbled up their wet cat food, then continued my rounds.
I think the winter sowing in the bed is a lost cause now. I don’t know how they managed it, but I found a section of netting completely pushed over the hoops to one side, allowing all sorts of elm seeds in. This was even a section that was pinned down with ground staples on the fence side, but it still got pulled up. About the only benefit the netting provides at this point is to keep those elm seeds off, since the cats are still managing to either get under the netting, or just lie on top of it, and even the seed protection is being sabotaged by the cats! I keep looking for seedlings, and even the onion seedlings and what I thought might be sprouting beans seem to be gone. I do see some seedlings that I know are weeds (mostly creeping bellflower), plus grasses. This is so frustrating!
On a more pleasant note, more trees are blooming. The Saskatoons have been blooming for a while, as have the cherry trees now. The ornamental crab apples are really starting to open up. Then there’s this one.
These are on the tree that get many small but very edible crabapples on it (click through for a second image). The others in the row have flower buds, but they aren’t opening up yet, like this one.
It wasn’t raining this morning (though I did see snow, every now and then) so I headed into the outer yard to check on the walnuts.
In the first photo, you can see the tiniest of leaves on the walnut sapling are emerging.
Click through to the next image, and you can see the little friend I found, hiding out in some of the grass that fell into the collar!
*sigh* Of course, my phone’s camera didn’t focus in the right place. I hate it when I have pictures that look great on my phone, only to discover they actually suck, when I see them on a proper screen!
Our rhubarb is doing really well with all this rain, so I gathered a few stalks before heading inside. Poirot was back with her babies, though, so I did pause to give her her squeeze treat! She is much more pleasant about it than Brussel was (Brussel no longer goes into the sun room, now that the older babies have all moved themselves into the cat house to join Caramel’s babies!). Brussel would always growl at me, then attack my hand, when I gave her the treats!
As for the rhubarb, they got cleaned up and cut up, along with some strawberries, to make a double recipe of Upside Down Strawberry Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread We’ve got two cast iron skillets and can fit both of them in our oven at the same time, so that works out. This, together with a bit of whipped cream, and some Vanilla Chai tea made for a perfect treat for such a dreary day!
I still fell ready to fall sleep on my keyboard, though.
And now, just for fun, here is the newest cooking video from Townsends. This sounds like something that would be perfect for a day like today!
I took advantage of today’s relatively cooler 20C/68F, give or take a degree or two, to mow the lawns. Last night, we actually dropped to 8C/46F! At least, that’s what it was at about 5:30am I actually felt cold last night! Not cold enough to close the window, though. I was enjoying it too much!
I’d already done most of the edges around the yard with the weed trimmer yesterday. Today, I went to start the riding mower, but the battery was dead. So I put the charger on it, then used the push mower to mow the edges wider, so it would be easier to make the turns with the larger riding mower.
After doing all the edges along the inner yard, I got the riding mower going and started doing the rest.
I doubt I got as much as 50 feet of mowing before I gave up and parked the riding mower. I don’t know what’s wrong with that thing, but it just won’t cut! It’ll cut for the first foot or two, then nothing. The grass wasn’t that tall, so I can’t blame it on that, this time. If I reverse, then go back and forth a couple of times, I can finally clear an area – but only if the deck is as low as it can go, and I use the slowest speed.
At which point, it’s faster to use the push mower.
So that’s what I did.
By the time I finished the south and east yards – the largest sections with the thickest grass – I’d been out there for several hours. I went in for supper and was considering finishing the rest tomorrow. The north and west yards are a lot smaller, and the grass is thinner, so it wouldn’t take long.
Then I saw that we’re supposed to hit 27C/81F tomorrow.
There is no way I want to be mowing in that heat!
So I went out and finished the last two sections, and even mowed the one path through the maple grove I’ve managed to clear this year.
Then I filled the tank one last time and started working on the outer yard. Usually, I work in a circle, but this time I started at the chain link fence and just went back and forth until I ran out of gas. I managed to cut around the junk pile – most of that was grass that hadn’t been cut this year – and a path to the electricity meter. By the time I ran out of gas, I had almost finished clearing as far as the last time I was able to mow, except the driveway. I didn’t even try for the driveway this time. Next time, I’ll grab the gate key and mow all the way to the road.
But not today.
It was past 7pm by the time I finished, and I am totally beat!
I’m really happy with how the yards look, though, Plus, the grass clippings get to dry in the sun tomorrow, and at the end of the day, I should be able to collect quite a lot of it to use as mulch. Especially around the junk pile, where the grass was the tallest.
Also, I think there is a new litter of kittens in the junk pile. I’m seeing some white and greys running around in there. Previously, there’s only been the one fluffy tabby, until I found Button. I’m not sure if I saw two or three or four kittens!
Aside from the mowing, I tried to record some video for the July garden tour. I did some recordings yesterday evening, but I wasn’t sure I was happy with them. So I did more this morning. I don’t think I’m happy with them, either. However, I was really tired while going through the files, both times, so I think I’ll get one or both of my daughters to review them and tell me what they think.
Meanwhile…
After making some recordings this morning, I got a bit of a harvest.
I also startled a deer this morning! It was on the far side of the row of problem trees on the north side of the main garden.
Deer make the most interesting huffing noises.
While doing my rounds and mowing the lawn, I also saw lots and lots of frogs. All that rain may mean we’ve got lots of mosquitoes, but we also have lots of frogs to eat them, too!
I found this beauty on the upside down garbage can we use to support a rain diverter I needed to move so I could mow in the north yard. It’s held in place by a brick on each side. When I moved the diverter, the frog scooted under one of the bricks. I just had to move it long enough to get a picture! What a beauty!
I was still trying to use the riding mower when I spotted it climbing up the tent canopy that’s draped over the chain link fence right now. If it weren’t for the running motor, I would have taken video. It looked so adorable, climbing up the canvas! It’s body was, at most, an inch long. Probably less.
Even when using the push mower, there were a few times I had to pause to let some frogs jump out of the way. One little thing got stuck in the grass and I ended up catching it and moving it. That was was only about half an inch long!
I like frogs, and am so happy we’ve got so many this year!
Now, if they would just eat up all those slugs in the garden!
Well, I think I’m rested enough. Time for a shower. I’ve already got one of my daughters to put the bath chair in the tub for me. I’m so tired and unsteady right now, I don’t want to take a chance, no matter how many arm bars we’ve got in there!
It’s a “good” tired, though. Everything looks so much better out there, and I really do enjoy mowing!
Tomorrow, however, will be a different story. I am definitely going to be paying for that last push to do the outer yard! Just the weed wacking I did yesterday had my damaged left elbow hurting so much, it kept waking me up during the night. The pain killers I have don’t really do much for this type of injury, though. *sigh* It had been pretty good for so many years. Why is it coming back so badly, now?
This morning, I was planning to work on shifting that last bed in the main garden area. I knew it would be wet, but figured it wouldn’t be too bad by then, since the rain had stopped so much earlier than forecast.
I didn’t real we got more rain overnight.
There is even more open water around the inner yard than every before. The ground is so saturated, it’s just got nowhere to go.
We’re supposed to get quite warm today, and tomorrow they’re now saying to expect a high of 28C/82F. The forecast now also says no rain until Friday. Which would mean, counting the rest of today, 5 days with no rain, and most of Friday, too.
I really hope this forecast is accurate!
I didn’t get to work on the low raised bed, but I did get to check out other things.
I managed to get a decent picture of Junk Pile. She normally doesn’t sit still long enough. I also saw all four of her babies, though I only got pictures of three. They are spending most of their time in the sun room. Understandably, they are more nervous than before, and are quick to run under the shelf counter to hide.
As for Junk Pile, I was keeping tabs with the critter cam last night. I saw her nursing her babies in the sun room and being generally maternal.
Then I heard her start growling and attacking something in the opening of the tied off outside door.
She didn’t succeed in driving the racoon away, but she tried!
I went and chased it out. It had gone straight for the cat cage, where I like to keep some food for the kittens.
We have got to do something about the racoons!
There is still no sign of the white and grey babies, though I do see the mama every time I go out to feed them. I startled Broccoli’s two in the garden shed when I opened it to leave food inside for them. I probably shouldn’t do that, since I want them to come to the front of the house, but Broccoli stands guard over them and being very protect and, after what happened to the newborns, they are probably safter in there. Mind you, they aren’t quite so helpless, but still…
So I’ll be monitoring how things are outside today, and see how much things get absorbed. While doing my rounds this morning, I went to check the barn to make sure the top half of the back door didn’t get blown open again. The tall grass has been flattened by the wind in places, and my pantlegs were still soaked to above my knees. I was splashing through water the whole way. All around the house in the inner yard, I’m seeing water where I’ve never seen it before, even growing up here as a child. My brother, who would remember things much clearer than me, says the same thing. I still hope to get work done on that bed, since tomorrow – Monday – is supposed to get so hot, but it might have to wait until Tuesday. Wednesday, I’ll be making my first city shopping trip, then the second one on Friday, so I’ll be trying to get things done in between. If things dry up enough, my daughter might be able to do some mowing while I’m gone, too. At least in the parts we’ve managed to mow so far.
Looking at my posts from a year ago, we’re not that far behind. It was a year ago tomorrow that I got our last transplants in – however, I also had our direct sowing done by now, and this year we have barely any direct sowing to do.
We went a little nuts on the winter squash and melons this year. They need a lot of space.
If I can’t work on the bed, I should at least remember to plant the new purple bush beans seeds I picked up, to replace the ones where only one germinated.
Mostly, though, I want to get that last bed done so I can finish transplanting the onions! Once those are in, time will be less of an issue. It shouldn’t even take all that long, either, since it’s not full of creeping Charlie and the soil doesn’t need to be sifted.
Well, if not today, we should be able to get it done tomorrow.
I ended up taking some progress video, and I’ll put something together when they’re done. For today, I started by marking out the north ends of the remaining 3 beds that need to be shifted, at the 18′ line. Then I removed the logs around the beds. Some of them were quite difficult to get loose from the ground. The worst were actually a couple of pretty small logs, but they were completely enrobed in Creeping Charlie and their roots.
One of the beds still had boards over it that I used to step on when tending it, and a stack of bricks that held netting down, from last year. All of those, plus things like sticks that were used to support plants, got moved aside.
One thing I was happy to see while doing all that were lots and lots of frogs!
Hopefully, they are doing a good job of gobbling up slugs and other critters that might cause us trouble once things are planted.
The whole area is so overgrown, I ended up getting the weed trimmer out, along with a couple hundred feet of extension cord. 🫤 It took a while, but I trimmed things down to almost bare earth – and found more logs that had been hidden in the grass while I was at it! The whole thing looked a lot less overwhelming after that was done.
I then took a break and headed into town. We needed to get refills on a couple of our water jugs. I called the grocery store ahead and asked if they had cardboard that I could take. I got transferred to someone who works in the back, and it seems they didn’t have much, but then he accidentally hung up on me. 😄
When I got there and got the refills I needed, plus a couple of other things, since I was there anyhow, I found someone working on the floor about carboard. She went to the back and came out with some boxes for me. My timing wasn’t very good; most of what they had had already gone through the compactor. Still, a few boxes, plus what we already have, is a good start.
Once at home and unloading the truck by the house, though, I could hear thunder. It had actually started to rain a tiny bit while I was working in the garden, but it didn’t stick around. The forecast says we’re supposed to start getting rain around 4pm, but a tiny little storm hit at around 2. It’s passed us by, but a much larger system is heading towards us right now. It’s past 2:30 as I write this, and the forecast now says that heavy rain is expected in about 25 minutes.
Well, I’m glad I at least got that weed trimming done. That will help. The boxes I brought home are out in the yard, getting rained on, which is fine. It doesn’t look like we’ll get any more down on the garden beds today, though.
Today, being June 2, is our last average frost date. Starting tomorrow, it should be safe to start transplanting things and direct sowing.
Oh, gosh. I just remembered that our transplants are outside right now. I hope they did okay in the rain! I’d better bring them into the sun room before the big system hits us. Mostly, I’m concerned the pots will get knocked over and such. They need to get used to rain as much as they do the sun and wind!
The Re-Farmer 