garden

First sighting, and a bit of stuff done

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I headed outside this afternoon to check things out. Before I get to that, though, I just have to share!

We have a first sighting of Caramel’s babies! I thought they might be in the wood pile (which we thought was a junk pile, until we took the junk off the top), since I would sometimes see her disappear under it, but cats in general like to shelter under there.

As I was heading back to the house, I spotted a grey tabby by the opening under the tarp. When it saw me, it ducked under. For the briefest of moments, I saw an orange face peek out, then Caramel stuck her head out and stared at me. She seemed to be okay with my watching from where I was and came out. Her little grey one came out soon after, and then the orange one – which turned out to be orange and white – came out and stayed behind Caramel. I stayed long enough to see if any others would come out, but it looks like there are just the two of them.

As for things outside.

The water has been absorbed in some places, though everything is still very wet. I lifted the mosquito netting cover off the potatoes, since the elms are no longer dropping seeds, and over the chain link fence. I will leave it there for now, as the blowing of the netting should startle the deer away. Not that they’ll eat potato plants, but it might keep them from going into the yard and eating other things. I considered lifting the netting off the chocolate cherry tomatoes, too, but they don’t seem to be hampered by it at all, so I’m leaving it for now.

I took the cover off the bed with the German Butterball potatoes. They’re getting so big, they are starting to crowd against the netting. I set the cover on top of the old dog houses by the outhouse, for now. It’s pretty much the only place with enough for it, while also keeping it off the wet ground.

It looks like I will need to try planting the Seychelle beans again. Only a few have come up in one row, and none at all in the other. The seeds are a few years old and, between that and the weather we’ve been having, it’s no surprise if they don’t come up.

I did plant more of the Royal Burgundy bush beans. In fact, I had enough seeds to plant a row on either side of the original row, which has only one successfully sprouted bean plant coming up. I still have seeds left over, too. For some reason, I remember having only enough seeds to plant one short row, but these are the same brand’s seeds as before. I’ll have to check my seeds bin and see if I still have some left, after all. With only one bean successfully germinating (plus one more that broke ground and that’s about it), I figured planting two more rows on either side of the original row would hopefully ensure we have at least a few bush beans survive!

The water around the bed I was going to work on next has been mostly absorbed into the ground, and I considered working on it – but only for a moment. It’s 22C/72F out there, with a humidex of 28C/83F. I was not about to do that kind of work in full sun with this level of heat and humidity. I did do a bit of weeding, through. With the ground so wet, I could pull some of the weeds out, tap root and all. A bit of that was more than enough to convince me, turning new sod and shifting the remains of that bed over is just not something I should be doing right now! If I get out early enough tomorrow morning, though, I should be able to get it done and, if all goes well, transplant the last of the onions. Since I have so many, and this bed won’t have anything else in it, I should be able to get away with planting them a bit denser, too. It would be great if I could get all the onions, plus the last few shallots, in. It’s getting really late for onions. They really should have been planted in late May, as they prefer the cooler temperatures, but we shall see how they do.

Once that’s done, I can breathe a sigh of relief for a little while. Then I can look into seeing what I can do in the gaps where things that were direct sown didn’t come up, and replant where the spinach was sown. What little spinach came up and actually grew is now bolting in the heat! We never got anything to harvest, even out of those.

Maybe I’ll just plant more of the Uzbek carrots. I intended to plant a lot more carrots, but the beds are all full of winter squash and melons, which grow too big to interplant carrots under. I could have planted them under the tomatoes, but the onions needed to be transplanted – plus, the onions should help deter deer and other pests from the tomatoes.

Well, writing this just got interrupted quite a bit. A racoon was back in the sun room and had to be chased off repeatedly. We’re prepared to deal with it, once the opportunity arises. There is, however, a second one, and I haven’t seen both at the same time since last night.

For now, I’m going to enjoy watching kittens on the critter cam.

Oh!!! Did I just see a white kitten running by past a window??? It would be so great if the white babies came back, too! We were making such good progress in socializing those ones.

Ah, well. What will be, will be.

Oh… that’s a skunk I just saw walking by this time…

The Re-Farmer

Morning finds

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Before heading to the city, I of course did my morning rounds. I had a few surprises this morning!

The first is, I finally got a good look at the tortie kitten, one of a litter of three that Broccoli started brining over recently.

It’s a long haired kitten! What a beauty, too.

Of course, they all are. I’m biased that way.

Nosencrantz also showed up for breakfast this morning.

She actually came up to the kibble while I was setting it out and let me pet her a bit, but she is still really stand offish. I can see, she is making sure I can’t grab her to pick her up and bring her inside.

*sigh*

There was another surprise in the squash patch.

The downpour we had yesterday seems to have triggered a burst of overnight growth on the sunburst patty pan squash! So many fresh new leaves under the frost damaged ones, and it’s almost the end of September – and still blooming, too!

Speaking of overnight growth, check this out…

This is on a dead maple tree near the fire pit, and it wasn’t there yesterday. We get these regularly, but this is easily the largest and most beautiful cluster of mushrooms I’ve seen since moving here.

We are having good weather today (Friday), and should have a lovely day tomorrow, too – then a thunderstorm on Sunday! We’ve found ourselves with a last minute conversation with family, and it looks like we’ll be doing a cook out tomorrow evening. So today, I’ll be raking the leaves away from the fire pit, so they are not a fire hazard, and setting things up. The old picnic table is so far gone, I don’t think we can safely use it anymore, and I’ll have to snag one of the girls to help me move it, and bring over the folding table we made this year. I’ll also have to empty the fire pit of ashes. It’s been a while!

I’m thinking a pot roast in the cast iron Dutch oven would go over very well!

The Re-Farmer

Swinging

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While checking on the garden yesterday evening, I noticed some of the melons were getting pretty heavy, so I dug out something I’d made the first year we tried to grow melons, and succeeded. This morning, I got some photos.

Melon hammocks!

I might have to make more. There are quite a lot of melons getting nice and big in the makeshift trellis!

I look forward to when we have permanent and portable trellises. I am really happy with how some of our climbing vines have been doing. Especially the melons in their kiddie pool raised bed! There are three varieties in there, but they are all climbing so vigorously, the vines are all twisted around each other. We’ll figure out which is which, when it’s time to harvest them.

The Re-Farmer

New?

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I was feeling well enough to do my evening rounds. In fact, I feel as though I was never sick in the first place! Bizarre!

One of the first things I did was catch Ghosty’s sibling, and my daughter and I gave it a face wash.

Its eyes weren’t stuck, but there was a lot of crud around one of them, and its nose was partially blocked, so my daughter cleaned it up as much as the kitten could tolerate while I held it. This kitten is starting to get used to being handled, and doesn’t run away like the other kittens. It even comes right up to me, sometimes, and lets me pet it.

While checking the garden, I spotted this beauty.

The Black Beauty tomatoes have a lot more tomatoes forming than seems obvious, at first glance. Some of the stems are so dark, it’s hard to see the dark tomatoes against them. This one, however, is so dark, and was shining in the sun! What gorgeous tomatoes!

I tended to a few things from this morning, including reopening the gate by the fire pit, and using the bucket of water I’d left for the cows to water the Korean pine. Two of the Korean pine wire covers had been knocked off. They’re just held in place with ground staples. I’m going to have to find something better to hold them in place, so they don’t get knocked aside so easily.

I was puttering around the kibble houses before going inside, hoping to lure some playful kittens closer, when I spotted … a new kitten?

My apologies for the picture quality, but I didn’t dare come any closer, so this is zoomed right in from across the yard.

That is a rather large kitten!

Usually, then the mamas bring the kittens to the house, they are old enough to be weaned, or close to it, and able to start eating solid food. The tiny tuxedo that showed up first is the oldest; the others still have blue eyes.

This kitten looks much larger and older than any of the kittens around the house. It looks almost “teenager” size! I’ve never seen it before. It makes me wonder that the mother didn’t bring it to the kibble house earlier!

I’m glad we kept up leaving food so far from the house for cats that aren’t ready to come closer. We have a couple of kibble bowls further from the house, but this one has more shelter under the spirea, and is more popular with the kittens.

We are expecting to see more kittens show up at the house throughout the summer, but younger kittens, not an older one!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s progress

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Last night was another chilly one, as we went down to 9C/48F – but not chilly enough for the furnace to turn on this time! The thermostat was turned down to 10C/50F for the summer, but we never expected it to actually get lower than that!

Today we hit 26C/79F. We keep getting storm warnings, but I can’t rely in them hitting us, so I made sure to water the garden. Starting by hooking up the soaker hose and just leaving it while I made a run into town to pick up some prescription refills for myself, refill a couple of our 18.9L water jugs, and fill the tank on my mother’s car. Thankfully, the gas prices in town have not gone up with the new tax, though it has in other parts of the province, including the city. Rather backwards on that, but I’m certainly not going to complain!

I haven’t heard from the garage about our van, yet, which means he hasn’t had a chance to look at it. Thankfully, we have access to my mother’s car, so it’s no hurry.

I wasn’t going to do any heavy stuff in the heat of the day – the rest of the week is supposed to be much more reasonable! – but that just meant catching up on smaller things. While moving the hose to the different beds with sprinkler hoses, I went ahead and planted some of the Red Swan beans we have so much of, in with the purple corn. These beans are both a fresh eating and dry bean, but this late in the year, I think we can only reasonable expect to have fresh beans in what’s left of the growing season. Hopefully, they will work out with the corn to climb. I considered planting bush beans, instead, but I’d rather pick beans from higher up!

After finding the newly sprouted summer squash eaten by slugs already, I sprinkled fresh corn meal around all the squash mounds. I spotted another seedling in the next mound over, and I didn’t want that one eaten, too! I also sowed more summer squash again. If this third planting doesn’t take, that’ll be it for trying to sow them. I just came back from checking the garden beds while there was still enough light, and I did find a few slugs around a couple of squash, but that’s it. Hopefully, this new application of corn meal will be enough to keep them from returning.

Along with watering the main garden with the hose, it was time to refill the old rain barrel out by the Crespo squash and new raspberries. I’m trying to make sure the squash out there get extra water, because that corner gets so dry and sun baked. For the garden beds in the south yards, I used water from the full rain barrel by the sun room, then left the diverter off so that, if we do get more rain, it’ll get refilled.

While watering the old kitchen garden, I took the time to take the cover off the shallot bed and do a thorough weeding. The first of the poppies in there has started to open, and I can tell these are more of the Double Scarlet, not the Giant Rattle poppies we grew there before. Darn. Still, these do seem to be an eating poppy, not an ornamental one, so that’s okay.

The shallot greens were starting to get too tall for the wire cover – a problem I did not anticipate! – and were falling over too soon, so I harvested enough of the greens to take some of that weight off. Then I decided to harvest some of that mint that’s been invading our paths; it’s much taller than the ones I transplanted into the retaining wall blocks! My younger daughter might try some of the mint to flavour a panna cotta. Sounds good to me!

I also spotted our can of marking paint when I got back inside, which reminded me to head back out again and use it to mark the rocks and high roots in the southeast yard, so we can see them when mowing the lawn. We’ll have to get more of that marking paint. I finished off the can, and it has been very handy.

I made sure the kibble was topped up for the evening – I don’t want to do it too late in the day, or we’re just feeding skunks and racoons. Of course, I still saw a skunk before coming back in, just a little while ago. The kittens were also out and playing. I was able to catch and pick up another of the white and greys, and give it a cuddle. It didn’t like being picked up and put down, but it tolerated being held and snuggled just fine!

I was happy to see the tiny tuxedo enjoying the bed and stuffy the Cat Lady donated to the yard cats. There are other beds in the cat house, but these are in the water bowl shelter. Even the littlest kittens have figured out how to use the board leaning on the edge as a ramp, to drink water in there. Of course, we have water bowls at their height, but it’s good that they can get at the ones in the shelter, too.

Among the two litters that now spend so much time in the sun room, there are a couple that are white and black, very much like their mother, but one of them is most definitely a tuxedo, even tinier than the singleton! I spotted the two tuxedos playing together, and can see that it’s going to get hard to tell them apart, once they’re both adult sized!

I think I managed to get a decent amount of stuff done today, even if it wasn’t the big stuff that needs to be done, too, just yet.

The Re-Farmer

Baby bed, drainage and feeling frustrated

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Would you look at this tiny worm?

I found a cardboard carton large enough for the mama to fit comfortably in and lined it with one of the blankets the Cat Lady donated to us for the kitties. Unfortunately, I really spooked the mom when I opened the door; enough that she ran out the hole in the back of the shed she’d been using to get in and out. I suppose that made it easier, since I didn’t have to worry about her reactions. I quickly put the baby in the bed box outside the shed, cleared the netting and other odds and sots where the baby had been lying, fit the bed box in, and left. The whole thing probably took less than a minute to do.

Picking up that tiny baby, though. Wow! It must have been maybe hours old, the first time I spotted them a few days ago.

The mother is Baby Beep Beep, which means she is NOT the mother of any of the sun room kittens.

In other things, we got quite a lot of rain last night. I’d used the rain barrel to water the front garden beds, as it was full to the top, and got it down to maybe a quarter or a bit less. This morning, it was full to the top. Not overflowing, but close, so I put the diverter on for now. We’re expecting more little thunderstorms passing through tomorrow. This morning, I was hearing thunder around us, and even got rained on a bit.

The potted herbs on the front step seem to be doing well. The lemongrass is getting taller. The spearmint in one pot by itself, and the thyme and oregano in the other, seem to be recovering from being transplanted well. Those two post have drainage holes and are sitting on trays, but the pot the lemon grass is in does not have any drainage holes. As I was weeding, I could see it was way too wet, so I just got a hammer and a nail and made one drainage hole.

I got this picture after it had been draining for more than half a minute, and there was still lots of pressure!

The bottom and sides of the pot are lined with grass clippings, and I don’t really mind there being some water accumulated in the clippings. Having a drainage hole higher up will work well, I think. It’s not like I could tip the pot and put holes in the bottom!

The down side is that, after weeding the Chinese elms that were sprouting in that pot, my hands smell like stagnant water. Yes, I’ve washed them. Several times. The smell still lingers. Ick.

I moved the last of the Jiffy Pellet trays to the steps near these pots. There is still that one Lemon Cucumber that sprouted, nothing else. It’s probably too late in the season, but when it gets its true leaves, I’ll find somewhere to transplant it. One cucumber plant is better than none.

This has been a very frustrating gardening year. The intension had been to expand the garden again, or at least use as much as what we did last year. With the weather and the heat, we weren’t able to build those trellis beds in time, which means two large sections, where we’d planted potatoes and melons last year, aren’t being used at all. We got transplants in, but didn’t have room for all of them, which means we have far fewer paste tomatoes than I intended. That was the one type I wanted to have a lot more of, since making our own tomato paste last year went over so well. Along with the weather and heat issues, I’ve lost more than a few days that would have been good days to work outside, because I had to help my mother out, and she demands I take a “holiday” when I’m with her, and not be “in a hurry” to leave. When I point out I have work to do, she just says, “what work? You don’t have cows!”

*sigh*

We didn’t do anywhere near as much direct sowing as intended, because there weren’t enough prepared beds to sow into. As it is, we had to use the old kitchen garden differently then intended, just to get things in the ground. That’s okay. Normally, I’m quite flexible about such things, but after a while, it just gets frustrating. In the end, instead of expanding the garden this year, we’ve got a smaller garden then last year. One positive thing, at least, is that we aren’t having the no good, terrible growing year we had last year!

I was feeling good about the garden in many ways. We have tomatoes growing and starting to produce fruit. The Gold Ball turnips, which disappeared last year, are growing well. Yes, something is eating the leaves, but not enough to hinder their growth. We’ve got two types of carrots, and both are doing well. The bush beans are struggling a bit, but they’re growing. Even the tiniest of onion transplants – the ones so small, they probably shouldn’t have been transplanted at all – are picking up. I’m happy to see so many pea pods forming, even though the plants themselves seem a lot shorter than I expected them to get. I think it’s the squash patch that is most encouraging. They failed so badly last year, and now I’m seeing the winter squash getting big and strong. It even looks like we’ve won the battle against the slugs! I’ll just have to keep up with sprinkling that corn meal. We might actually have fully mature winter squash to harvest this year

The melons germinated so late, they probably won’t get a chance to produce fully mature fruit, but they are recovering from being transplanted nicely and, you never know; we might get a long, mild fall and the frosts will hold off until late in the year again.

Then I see people sharing pictures on the local and Zone 3 gardening groups I’m on, showing their huge plants and talking about the vegetables they’re already harvesting. How can they be harvesting beans already? How is their corn so tall? One person was even eating fresh tomatoes! In June!

I try to remind myself that Zone 3 is about winter temperatures, and covers a large, geographically diverse area, so a lot of these people have a last frost date in the middle of May. Even with local groups, most of the members live well south of us. With this year’s very early and warm spring, even people with later frost dates took a chance and planted earlier. We’ve also had a decent amount of rain, though some people did lose or partially lose their gardens to driving rain, winds or hail.

Still, seeing all those photos of huge, lush garden growth and harvests, suddenly my garden seems really pathetic, and way behind, without even taking into account the things we didn’t get built in time to use this year.

I know better than to compare our situation to others, because it’s so different, but when I’m already feeling so far behind, it’s easy to start feeling down about the whole thing.

Things are supposed to cool down over the next few days, and the storms are supposed to stop for a while. Which means we should finally be able to chop our way through the undergrowth and get those trees my brother cut down for me! This should have been done weeks ago.

Well, it is what it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Look what I found!

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I found a few surprises, today.

The first was the ear mite medication I bought. When I finally opened the bag to get it out, I realized that there was a sealed box inside.

I bought one dose.

A box has 6 doses!

After going over the receipt and making sure I was seeing what I wasn’t supposed to be seeing, I called up the vet clinic and told them what I found, and that I’d like to return the extras. The receptionist went to talk to a tech and confirmed that, as long as the individual dose packages were still sealed, they could take them back.

I plan to go to the city for our second stock up trip, so I’ll make sure to go to town first and drop the extras off and go to the city by a different route. Somebody made what could have been an expensive mistake!

I also found a surprise in the sun room.

Usually, when doing the evening feeding, I go through the old kitchen, where the kibble is stored. This time, I happened to go out the main entry to take something to the compost bin, then went back in through the sun room to put away the rinsed out bin I’d used. We have had rain on and off all day today, and there were a number of startled cats sheltering in the sun room when I came in. As I saw them dashing around, I noticed a tiny tail disappearing between two bins.

A grey tail.

I was actually able to reach in and give it head scritches, though it did not like that. When I got the kibble ready, I left a handful in front of where it was hiding – it could only back up so far. We still coat the kibble with lysine and, from the looks of it, this kitten could use some!

I thought, at first, that this was the tuxedo’s sibling, but now that I look at the pictures, I can see its eyes are still blue, so it is younger. For now, we are leaving it in the sun room, though I did set out a container of water for it to find, too. I have no clue which cat this one belongs to.

In between the rain, I checked out a few things. The last of the Jiffy pellets that have seeds that didn’t germinate are still on the picnic table under the old market tent. The picnic table is not completely under the tent, so some of the trays are being rained on. I checked them and drained the excess water, and found a single lemon cucumber has germinated! Which makes me wonder how many other things will decide to germinate, too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to transplant anything that does. If we get both types of cucumbers, there’s enough time to have harvests before fall, at least.

I grabbed some broken plant pots we’d been hanging on to and set a bunch of them up in the squash patch, buried in the mulch, for the frogs to hide in. Yesterday evening, I used grass clippings to mulch the spaces between squash mounds in rows; the paths in between will be mulched with wood chips. I am still finding some slugs, so I think I will shake out more corn meal, after I get back from the city tomorrow. We’re still expecting rain off and on all night.

When there were just the too-small pieces left, I went to put them in the old garden shed. When I opened the door, I startled Caramel. There’s a rotted out hole in the back of the shed that cats can get in and out of. She seemed strangely hesitant about running away from me, so I took a closer look at where she had been. Sure enough, there was a wriggly little worm! Looks like she’s moving her kittens again! I quickly put the broken pieces of pots away near the door and closed the shed up again, so she could tend to her baby.

As for the one in the sun room, I suspect this baby is not quite weaned yet, so we will have to leave it alone for now. I’ll still make sure to check on it and, if it hasn’t been moved, leave food for it and perhaps its mother.

Oh! Good grief.

One of the things I picked up in town today was a couple of cat collars with bells. Leyendecker and Finnegan (one of our original tuxedos that moved out with us) have been spraying, so we’re hoping the bells will alert us to them being where they shouldn’t be.

I just heard a bell tinkling behind me, so I looked over to see Leyendecker walk over, then jump onto my bed.

For all that I see him every day, it blows me away, just how BIG he is! I don’t mean how chonky he is, either. He is just a massive cat. He’s taller and longer than just about every other cat, and very, very burly. Hard to believe he was the smallest kitten of the litter!

He also doesn’t seem to mind his new necklace.

The Re-Farmer

Not what we planted, and self injury?

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I’ve been watching the self seeded poppies in the old kitchen garden, where one plant in particular has been growing faster than the others, with flower buds looking ready to open.

Today, it bloomed.

I did not plant this poppy.

I had figured the poppies that were showing up were from the Giant Rattle bread seed poppy we planted in the area previously. Which are supposed to look a lot like these Hungarian Blue poppies…

The tiny raised bed we have shallots in do have poppies coming up in it, too, and those are likely the Giant Rattle poppies we planted there 2 years ago, then again using our own seed last year. This is what they looked like.

Looking back at my photos, I found we did get one of these red poppies last year.

This, however, showed up after we cleared away some of the undergrowth along the spruce grove, on the other side of the house.

From what I can find, these are Double Scarlet Papasver somniferum – an opium poppy! These predate us living here, but they are not the poppies I remember my mother growing here, when I was a child.

Meanwhile, the bed where we did deliberately plant bread seed poppies that seemed to be overtaken by weeds, does have poppies growing in it. The flower pods that are starting to develop on some are more elongated than I’ve seen before. These are the Hungarian Blue that we are trying this year. At least I hope that’s what they are! The Baker Creek website has photos of the pods and flowers, but not the plants or flower buds.

Now I’m very curious about what the poppies in the shallot bed will be!

In other things, I saw Non-Junkpile today, and she has a new injury, on the other side of her head!

It’s very much like the first one, that is healed.

We are now thinking this is a self injury. She probably has a very bad infestation of ear mites, and is injuring herself by scratching.

The problem is, this is not one of the friendlies. I’ve been able to get fairly close, while there is food, but even as I tried to get a picture of the injury, she kept moving away. There is no chance of getting her to a vet. Especially since she has a litter of kittens somewhere.

There is the type of ear mite medication that can be applied to the skin between the shoulders. If we could get some of that, there is a better possibility that we could snag her long enough to apply it, than to get drops into her ears. But the clinic can’t usually give out prescriptions for cats they’ve never seen. I’ll have to see what we can figure out about that

Oh! Well, would you look at that. I’m getting messages from the Cat Lady. Maybe she has some suggestions!

The Re-Farmer

This and that

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I had an adorable surprise when I headed out this morning!

The tuxedo kitten is back!

We haven’t seen the litter of four, for a while. I suspect the mama moved them across the road, to the empty farm buildings there. Quite a few of the mamas seem to move back and forth from there. We had been seeing six kittens together for a while, including this tuxedo, but the other two have not been seen for even longer. That this one is now showing up alone suggests the other did not survive after being moved. I do wish the mamas wouldn’t move their kittens around that that, but it seems to be an instinctive thing for them, no matter how safe of a location they happen to have their kittens at any particular time.

You can just see it in the photo, but this tuxedo actually has stripes! I was able to walk past fairly close before it ran and hid, and one time I got a good, clear look at his side (and yes, I’m 99% sure it is male). His black fur has dark grey stripes in it that can’t even be seen at some angles.

I’m pretty sure the white and grey sharing the kibble tray is its mama. Not completely sure, though. It has mostly been alone, though it also interacts and plays with the other adult cats.

Today was expected to be a hot one, so I made sure to get some things done in the garden, before giving it all a good watering. I’m glad I did. We were expected to reach 27C/81F for a high. As I write this, at almost 7pm, we’re still at 28C/82F – only one degree short of the record high for today.

I direct sowed more summer squash this morning – four out of the five varieties that were planted. The G-Star (green) patty pans are doing well. No Magda squash germinated at all, and when I loosened the soil to plant new seeds, there was no sign of the old seeds. The germination rate for the Goldy (yellow) and Endeavour (green) zucchini, as well as the Sunburst (yellow) patty pans was very low, and with some, the seedlings were not looking very strong.

We lost one Honeyboat Delicata to slugs, and I considered planting a few more summer squash in the empty hill, but decided to try an experiment. I took some of the Jiffy pellets that had the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons in them, and transplanted them. One broke up a bit as I did, and I could actually see an intake seed in it, so it is actually possible they might germinate in the new location. We shall see! No harm in trying.

When I transplanted the zucca melon and drum gourds into the bigger squash hill, I mulched in between the transplants, but didn’t have enough to mulch the sides of the hill. Well, I’ve got lots of grass clippings for mulch right now, so I took care of that, this morning. The main reason it was needed was to prevent the sides from eroding when the hill was watered. I was happy to see that a the transplants – aside from the one the slugs ate – are looking strong and healthy. They are liking this heat! We will have to make sure they get watered often, though. Especially ones like the zucca and Crespo squash, which are supposed to grow very large fruit. The Crespo have lots of flowers on them, but they’re all still male flowers, so I’m hoping more watering will help with that. Where they are is far from the house, gets full sun all day, and the soil out there gets dry very quickly, so we could probably get away with watering them twice a day, if we were up to it. Along with watering everything, I topped up the rain barrel by the Crespo squash, too. I keep a watering can beside it, full of water to is doesn’t blow away, and it’s amazing how warm the water in there got, even though it was still morning, and a few hours before we’d hit the high of the day.

When feeding the cats, I realized we would run out of kibble faster than expected, and before our monthly shopping. Since I’m going to be taking my mother to her eye appointment tomorrow, I decided to do a Walmart trip today. The price difference is worth the cost of gas to drive that far, but of course, I had to combine errands to make it even more worth while! The egg lady was going to be in town tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be done with my mother in time to meet her there, so I contacted her and arranged to swing by her place on my way home today. Then, while at the Walmart, I remembered to pick up new hose connectors. I couldn’t remember if I needed to replace male or female connectors, so I got one of each. I drove over the hoses at the front tap by mistake, when unloading the car, which normally would have been okay, except I happened to catch one of the connectors on the sidewalk. More specifically, the metal part under the connector. So while the two hoses connected to each other were fine, the bent metal part resulted in water spraying from where the connector joined the hose.

While looking at the connectors, I also noticed an L shaped swivel connector for the tap, so I grabbed one of those, too.

Once at home, it took me more time to cut off the broken hose connector than it did to fix the hose! So the front hoses no longer leak. At least not at the connectors. The spray nozzle, however, drips. This spray nozzle was actually here when we moved here, and has outlasted all the nozzles we’ve bought so far! So I ended up taking the front plate off of that and soaking it in CLR for a while, then scrubbing it with an old toothbrush. It works much better, now!

I also put the swivel connector on the back tap. That tap is a real pain. It’s difficult to connect a hose to it because of how close to the wall it is, and the angle. We have tried using flexible hose connectors, but they’ve been even more difficult to screw on, and leaked like crazy. Even with screwing the hose directly to the tap, when we move the hose to the side, it starts to drip enough that I ended up putting an old rectangular balcony rail planter under it to collect the water, set up so that when it filled to overflowing, the water would flow further away from the basement wall.

This new connector, however, was much easier to screw on, and angle of the swivel part made it easier to attach the hose, too. Best of all, with everything finally screwed on properly, no more dripping! I like being able to turn the tap on and leave it on.

Hmm… I wonder if, with this new connector, I could attach the hose that runs to the tap on the garden. The last time I was successfully able to attach it, we discovered water spraying from the ground next to a branch pile. The branch piles are gone now, so if I test it again, I’ll be better able to see and mark exactly where the buried hose is damaged.

I think I’ll test that out tonight, when I do my evening rounds!

Along with all that, I had a surprise from the egg lady when I stopped to pick up two flats of eggs. She included some guinea eggs! Enough for all for of us to try them out. She told me that the eggs from guinea hens have higher levels of protein and other nutrients, compared to chicken eggs. I really look forward to trying them!

Well, it’s time to go out and do my evening rounds! One of the things I want to get done is set up the soaker hoses in the low raised beds, with the tomatoes. They should have been set up before they were transplanted, but I wasn’t sure exactly where or how many tomatoes would fit at the time.

It has cooled down to 26C/78F in the time it took me to write this. Better than nothing!

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