The first shot was just some of the weeds and whatnot in where the area I’ve been slowly getting mowed. The second is of one of the Hopi Black Dye sunflower seed heads. That’s among the largest seed heads, too. This frost seems to have finally done them in.
*sigh*
The coldest part of the night tends to be around 6am, so it was still chilly while I did my rounds. I didn’t uncover the garden beds until the afternoon, when it was finally getting decently warm.
In fact, they’re looking pretty darn good. In the next two photos, you can see some of the developing squash are actually getting bigger, too! I had some concern that the pollination didn’t take and they’d just wither away, but nope; we actually have winter squash trying to mature!
Tonight’s low is expected to be 10C/50F. Since the actual overnight lows have been trending lower than forecast, though, I’m still going to cover the beds again for tonight, and probably the next two nights as well. After that, the overnight lows are expected to stay above 10C/50F, so they should be okay without covers – except for the winter squash, which I will keep covering.
While planning on what we need to do around the yard over the next while, I checked the RM (Rural Municipality) website and found that we are no longer under any fire bans. That means we can use the fire pit, if we want. I’d like clean it out and reset the fire bricks we set up for the Dutch oven to stand on. These are larger fire bricks I found while cleaning up around the yard, not the ones we’ve been slowly stocking up on for when we build our outdoor kitchen. It’s been such a long time since we’ve used the fire pit. We also now have two Dutch ovens. There’s a traditional round one on three legs that we got a while back, and now we have a smaller, square one I got on clearance at Canadian Tire this summer. I’m hoping we can have a family gathering and cookout, probably in October, before things start getting too cold. My husband hasn’t seen his family in a long time because he couldn’t physically handle the trip to and from the city, plus the time for a visit, for the last family dinner we were invited to. Kinda scary to think his father, who is in assisted living, is probably more mobile than my husband is!
We’ll see what we can work out, as we get the place ready for whatever winter throws at us!
I found myself staying up late very last night, which meant I was up to see what the weather was doing. So I was not at all surprised by what I found in the garden this morning.
The first picture in the above slideshow is the Arikara squash, which only recently had its first female flowers start to bloom. I’d wanted to grow these specifically to save seed, as it’s a rare variety.
Not going to happen this year.
Thankfully, I do have a few seeds left and can try again, next year.
The next two pictures are of some of the pumpkin plants. It’s a bit hard to tell in the photos, but the leaves are that darker colour they get from cold damage. In one of the pictures, you can see the leaves starting to droop, too. We do have the one pumpkin in its sling on the trellis. It does not appear to be frost damaged, but it might take a day or two before we can see for sure.
The next picture is of the summer squash, still under their covers. They actually seem okay, even though they aren’t completely covered. I did not try to check on the winter squash, under their plastic. They should be fine, and I don’t plan to uncover that bed at all today.
I didn’t uncover anything this morning. It was still too cold at the time. It’s not going to get much warmer, though, and now it is supposed to rain all day. From what I could see, the peppers held out fine under their sheet. So far, the eggplants do, too, but they tend to start dropping later on. It’s the plants at each end, that are the most exposed, and take the brunt of the cold. I’m hoping the jugs of hot water we set beside them helped, but it’ll be a while before we can tell, one way or the other.
Last night, I worked on getting the radish seeds out of their pods, which ended up taking a VERY long time. I stayed up a while longer to monitor the oven, so my daughters could go to bed. Which is why I was up to check the weather apps and get the screen captures in the next two images.
So much for a low of 4 or 5C/39 or 41F. We were expecting it to be colder, to be honest. We did end up hitting 0C/32F. There were no frost warnings.
I’m actually thinking of turning the furnace back up for today! I do have one of the heat lamps in the sun room turned on – the one with the 250F bulb, not the 150F lamp. It hangs above the space in front of the new cat cave, and the sun room littles have definitely figure out that this is a good spot to hang out! 😄
Our daytime highs are supposed to increase quite a bit, about half way through next week, and stay high for about 2 weeks. That will be the time to empty out and clean up the sun room for the winter, and do things like bring the isolation shelter back near the house, put the heat lamp back in and get it set up, so we just need to plug it in to the outdoor outlet there, as needed.
I am not looking forward to winter. My daughters love the colder weather. I can tolerate cold a lot more as I get older – it’s heat I’m having a harder time with now! – but I don’t like the season. Too many things that need protecting from the cold – including the house itself – and too many things that can go wrong that, in the summer, would be just an annoying but, in the winter, can be dangerous, or even deadly.
Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!
We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.
We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.
I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.
The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.
I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.
I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!
Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.
The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.
While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.
The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!
I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.
In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.
My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.
As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.
Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!
Setting the hoops over the winter squash bed worked. They’re taller than I would have liked, but they are held in place by stakes, not pushed into the ground, and in places, I could barely get the stakes pushed into the ground. Too many little rocks.
Thankfully, I had enough hoops and stakes for decent spacing. I still ran three lines of twine across, to keep the cover from caving inward too much. I removed the staked holding the boards along the sides. Those were there to keep the soil from eroding from the edges, but with the mulch there, and time, they’re not really needed for that anymore. Instead, I planned to use them to hold the cover in place.
My original intension had been to use mosquito netting, until I remembered I had picked up 10’x25′ medium weight plastic drop clothes specifically to fit over these beds. “Medium weight” is still very thin, unfortunately (you can see the package in the second photo of the slight show above).
Once the hoops were set, I left it until it was starting to get cooler before we covered all the beds that we are able to. We were able to fill six 4L/1 gallon water bottles with hot water, which is all the empties my husband had from his distilled water at the moment. All the others we had have already been cut to suit other uses in the garden.
Two of them went at each end of the row of eggplants, where they are the least protected by the too-short fabric we have for that. The peppers are planted more densely, so they are covered better.
The remaining four bottles of water were spaced out in between the winter squash before my daughter and I put the cover on. At 25 feet, it was more than long enough to cover the hoops on an 18′ bed. I’d hoped we could keep it folded in half, length wise, but at 5′ wide, it was too short to be able to secure it on the sides. We had to open it up completely, but that did give us more material to wrap around the boards up to the bases. It will certainly not be blowing away!
The down side is, kittens.
While we were covering the bed, Sir Robin and Grommet decided that we were making a lovely tunnel, just for them. After fishing them out and setting the plastic out on the ground, so the boards could be used to roll up the excess, Sir Robin started pouncing on the plastic and promptly made holes in it. Holes in a section that’s now wrapped around a board, but gosh, that didn’t take long!
One bonus in having plastic to cover this bed is that I could probably leave it there. We’re only supposed to reach 12C/54F tomorrow, and only 9C/48F the day after. We’re supposed to get rain a couple of times tonight, and they’re still saying we’ll be getting a low of 7C/45F, but the next night, they’re saying we’re dropping to 4C/39F. If we leave the plastic, or only partially lift it for watering, it should act as a greenhouse.
Today is Labour Day, a statutory holiday here in Canada. I was still set to do my mother’s grocery shopping, though, as she didn’t want me coming over on a Sunday. I knew the grocery store in her town would be open for short hours, though. With that in mind, I wasn’t planning to head out until 11.
Which meant the usual morning routine, plus I would have time to water the garden in anticipation of one more really hot day, before the temperatures drop significantly. First things first was feeding the outside cats.
I had to zoom in from quite a distance so as not to interrupt. Lady Hypotenose does not look pleased!
The first thing I spotted as I headed out with the morning kibble, however, was a kitten laying half out of the new cat cave, clearly passed on. Then I spotted a second one in the box nest in the water bowl shelter!
I messaged my daughter and she came out to help find a place to bury them. Once the food was out, I gathered up the remains while my daughter dug a hole to bury them in. I was quite surprised by the one in the cat cave. This was the kitten with one sticky eye I’ve been washing. Other than a sticky eye, it was looking pretty strong! The second kitten was also one that I saw no signs of illness in. One thing in common, though, is that they both had a bout of diarrhea. Which is the same thing I found with the previous three kittens I’d found and buried.
Once that sad morning job was done, I continued my morning routine, then got the garden watered. I even had time for a late breakfast before heading to my mother’s. By the time I headed out, my brother and SIL were out by his tractor that he needs to fix. It’s outside, so he wanted to put a shelter over it, so he could work on it under at least some protection. Since I didn’t know how long I’d be, and they had to go back home today, I swung by to say hello/goodbye. While I was doing that, they told me they got a voicemail message from my mother saying that she’d been trying to call me, but there was no answer. ?!?! I told them I was on the way to her place to do her grocery shopping, but that our phone had not rung. My brother was planning to visit her briefly on their way home, so I was asked to let her know (and to let her know my brother was in work clothes, not dressed to the nines; my mother has suddenly started to criticize my brother for not dressing “civilized” because he was wearing jeans or whatever).
I was more than happy to wage interference for him.
As I was heading to the truck, I messaged my family to check the land line. When I got to my mother’s, there was a message waiting for me, saying the phone was working fine. When I came inside, I mentioned this to her, only to be told she hadn’t tried to phone me today. It was yesterday! That’s when I realized what had happened (and it was actually the day before yesterday that she’d tried to call me). When I saw the missed call (no message), I called her back and she told me she’d tried calling my brother and sister, too, but no one was home. Somehow, my brother didn’t get my mother’s message on his voice mail until today!
I did let her know that he was at the farm, working on a tractor, and that he planned to visit while on his way home – and yes, I did bring up that he’d be in work clothes, and probably dirty, so don’t give him a hard time! She laughed and said she wouldn’t.
My mother, however, was having a hard time. She said she was not feeling well, and hadn’t bothered to change out of her night gown. I tried asking questions to pin down exactly how she was feeling. She got frustrated and just repeated her usual litany. The problem is, she keeps saying she feels like she’s about to die, but… well… She’s already been to a doctor about these things, time and time again. For some things, like her legs swelling, something could be done – her water pill dosage was doubled, and she now takes it twice a day instead of once a day, for example. There are other things recommended, like keeping her feet elevated, or sleeping on an include. She’s been recommended for a hospital bed so she can do that more easily by me and my siblings, home care and her doctor, and she simply refuses. She won’t even put her feet up in her reclining chair. Eventually, if we ask enough questions, it comes out that she wants the doctor to “fix” her – but not give her more pills – somehow, like magic. And if a doctor isn’t able to do that, well, they’re just hiding something for her, or they just want her to die, or the doctor is [insert racial/sexist slur here] and not a “real” doctor, and she wants us to find her another one. This when we have a major doctor shortage and she’s lucky to have a doctor at all!
Anyhow. It’s frustrating for all of us, including my mother!
She had not felt well enough to make a list, so we worked on that together. I did have to go into her lock box to get a pen. All the pens on her table were gone. I found five in the lock box. Every time home care give her her medications, they have a form to fill out. Instead of using the pen that’s always there for them to use, they’ve been grabbing whatever pen is in reach on the table – then putting it in the lock box when they’re done! 😄
In making her list, she had a few items that would be picked up at the pharmacy. She had also mentioned wanting me to change her bedding, so I knew I’d be there for a while. I was expecting that.
I had some warning as to how things were going to go when my mother started going on about how my brother should really be the one doing this, not me. She “gave” him the farm, after all, and it’s his responsibility. I reminded her that I’m the one in the best position to help her. Oh, I have too much to take care of at home. I had my (disabled) husband and two “babies” to take care of.
Yup. My mother has got it in her head that we’re basically forcing the girls to live with us, and they do nothing. She just sort of invents scenarios on how we live.
As I was deflecting as best I could, she got weird and asked me if my daughters were born boys or girls.
*sigh*
With the way she treats them, my daughter have little interest in spending time with her, plus my older daughter works on her commissions at night, so she hasn’t even seen my older daughter in years. My younger daughter came with me not long ago, as we were on the way to somewhere else and she was coming along as my mobility assistant, really. My younger daughter has pretty severe PCOS, and the symptoms includes having a pretty rad beard. She can even make little braids in it. She gave up trying to shave it years ago, as shaving was damaging her skin, and frankly, it’s just hair. We’re more concerned about the more debilitating PCOS issues.
When I, rather stunned, said that yes, my daughters are female, she asked, why the beard? I told her, it’s a medical condition. My daughter is seeing a doctor and getting referred to specialists about it. My mother just scoffed and made a comment about how she thought I wasn’t telling her everything. I told her, correct. I’m not telling you everything because she just twists everything to be nasty, anyhow, plus my daughter’s health is none of her business.
At which point, my mother twisted what I said to be nasty.
*sigh*
I managed to get away from that conversation and get back to making her shopping list!
As we were talking groceries, she started going on about how bad she feels, but especially after eating. She loves to blame certain foods for anything, because of something she might have heard on TV (sometimes decades ago!) or read in a magazine. She was winding up to the conclusion that she should basically stop eating anything but “liquid”. So… I guess that’s why she waters down her instant oatmeal so much!
After hearing her describe how she was feeling after she ate, it triggered something in my memory about digestive issues with seniors, so I looked it up. Soon I was reading to her about how our digestive systems tend to slow down as we get older, causing various issues. Going through the list, there were only a couple of things that applied to her. One being the heartburn (that she was convinced were heart attacks for many years), which I’ve already gone over with her about, with what foods can trigger it and what can help. She already ignores that. I’ve made printouts for her in large letters that she can ready easily, and she just throws them out. Another was to eat more small meals instead of large ones; again, something that would help her heartburn. She reacted as though this were a revelation, apparently not remembering that we’ve talked about this before. Last of all was physical exercise – something she just doesn’t have the mobility to engage in, at levels that would make a difference.
Then she asked about dry mouth again. She is constantly bringing it up, even though it, too, is something she’d talked about, and she even still has the spray she was given while at the hospital earlier in the year. She used it at one point, thinking it was an inhaler that would help her breathing. It worked so well! When I realized what she was talking about and told her that no, the only inhalers she has are in her lock box. The spray was for dry mouth, she stopped using it.
She has decided her dry mouth is because she had diabetes, and asked me about her blood tests. While at the doctor, she said she couldn’t hear what the doctor had said. I told her what her A1c was (she is not diabetic), and repeated what the doctor had said; she’s sleeping with her mouth open. All she heard was that it was not related to diabetes and she’s not diabetic, so it was another revelation for her.
As you can imagine, it took a while to get her shopping list done!
Today was a Meals on Wheels day. I made sure to leave before that was delivered, so my mother could have her lunch without interruption. I was going to the pharmacy, first, only to find that they were closed for the holiday. I hoped I could find at least some of what she wanted (she was not out completely, thankfully) at the grocery store, but the only thing they did have was ridiculously expensive, so that didn’t happen.
In the end, if was a much smaller than usual shopping list. My mother did make a request for something she could eat with her medications. Some are not supposed to be taken on an empty stomach. She usually eats a few crackers, but I think she’s tired of crackers. She didn’t really know what she wanted, so I told her I would look around the grocery store for something.
I went through the (rather small) store three times.
What kind of snack was there that was “healthy” (as my mother would accept), that didn’t need any sort of preparation, was either shelf stable or could stay in the fridge for a while after opening, and was easy for her to chew, since she refuses to get her dentures fixed after having a broken tooth removed. Some of the things I saw that would have been good, healthy snacks were things I knew she would refuse to eat, because she heard somewhere that they are “unhealthy”. Others were things that she would have a hard time chewing.
I finally settled on some fruit filled breakfast bars. I knew she’s complain because they are “sweet” (as anything fruit filled would be), but it was something to try.
After I was finally done and the truck was loaded, I found a message from my SIL. They were going to be heading out soon, and would I be able to stay longer, while my brother was there? Of course, I said yes. My SIL no longer visits my mother, after my mother started going on about how she wasn’t really family, just my brother’s wife, and blaming her for my brother not being ay my mother’s constant beck and call. So she was going to be dropped off, while my brother was going to pick up some chicken, then meet me at my mother’s.
Once back at my mother’s and everything was put away, and I explained about the pharmacy being closed, my mother started going on about how her “pink” pills were now a different size.
She doesn’t have any pink pills.
My mother was convinced her pills were changed but this time, after asking some questions, she told me that they were different from what she was taking before they started doing bubble packs.
Which has been for at least five years.
I ended up taking one of her bubble packs out so we could look at them together. The “pink” pill she was talking about was actually orange. My mother’s eyesight is failing, so it’s not really a surprise that she sees colours differently, but she’s interpreting that as the pharmacy changing her meds.
As we went over what was in her bubble packs, I went through how the only change has been is the one pill that she’s taking twice a day instead of once a day. Then I talked about how different manufacturers might have slightly different colours or shapes (this was an issue in the past), but the important thing is the dose. The colour or shape of a pill doesn’t matter, as long as the dose is right.
We were in the middle of this when my brother arrived. While he went through to the kitchen with the food he’d brought, she started to tell him that he should look at the pills, because he’s the one that knows all about them.
…
My brother told her that no, I’m the one that knows the most about them now!
At one point, while I was again explaining to my mother about her medications and doses, etc. I realized my brother had started to record the conversation. Which would be a good thing, as it would be a record of how my mother can get.
It’s such a good thing her meds are kept in a lock box now. In the past, when she got it in her head the her meds were changed, she actually took her pills out of the bubbles and “sorted” them. I found the ones she had issue with a while back and had to take them to the pharmacy for disposal. There was at least 50 of these pills that she had stopped taking, because she thought they weren’t the same medication anymore.
Once her bubble packs were put away and my brother was taking the food out, I remembered seeing my mother’s water bottles were needing to be refilled. So I got my brother to pass them to me, then left for the tap her building has in the laundry room for drinking water (I think it’s softened water, but my mother can’t quite remember the explanation she was given to use that water for drinking, not her tap water).
When I came back, my mother was already at my brother.
It got…
Interesting.
In the end, what became clear is that my mother still has zero understanding of the thing she did a while back that stubbed my brother in the back, and the year. In fact, she doesn’t seem to remember what she’d done, and isn’t accepting that she is now facing the consequences of her own actions. She also seems to have forgotten that she has already prepaid for her own funeral, years ago – she basically accused us of planning to have her cremated, like the sons of an old neighbour of ours did when their mother passed. She was also going on about all the things my brother should be doing for her when she passes – things he will not have the legal authority to do, once again thanks to her own actions. She pulled every trick in the book. Guilt tripping. Gaslighting. Accusations. She even started calling herself and orphan, because we were trying to explain to her that she was asking for things that could not be done by my brother. She even brought our sister into it, and had some pretty unpleasant things to say about her!
It took some doing, but we eventually got her calmed down and to some semblance of understanding of how things were, not how she thought they were.
Meanwhile, my mother refused to eat the food my brother bought; not even a single piece of chicken. Because she had her Meals on Wheels (some time ago, by then). I ate only a bit, as did my brother, which meant my mother would have enough prepared food for herself, for at least a couple of days. Which is good, because Meals on Wheels is available only three days a week. She seems to be thinking that, because she gets those meals on those days, she shouldn’t need any other food for the rest of the week… because… she needs to slim down???
*sigh*
Finally, my brother said he had to leave, because he still had a long drive and needed to go to work tomorrow.
My mother immediately started to give him a hard time for leaving “so soon”.
*sigh*
I left at the same time and walked my brother to his car – then gave him a huge hug. I think he really needed it by then! He had come, expecting some sort of behaviour like this from my mother. The good thing is that I was there, which tempers her a bit. When he’s there on his own, she is much, much more difficult and downright abusive. I’ve flat out told her, she teats my brother terribly. Her response is always to justify her treat meant of him because she “gave him everything” by signing the farm over to him. She seems to have completely forgotten that this was done so that her will could not be contested by our vandal, and to take a burden off of her. Since my brother was already taking care of everything for her before then, she doesn’t even understand just how much of a burden it was.
*sigh*
No one has done more for my mother than my brother, and she has no understanding of that. Instead, she seems to actually hate him. It breaks my heart to see how much she is hurting him, and she has no clue. None.
*sigh* again.
After that, I was more than happy to come home and just decompress for a while. I still need to go out and water the garden; I’d gone out earlier, and it was still too hot to stay out for that long. I might not actually need to, though. We’re going from a high of 25C/77F – 28C/82F (depending on which app I checked) today, to a high of only 16C/61F tomorrow. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 15C/59F, but tomorrow’s low is supposed to drop to 7C/45F, and then down to 4C/39F the night after. On the weekend, we’re supposed to get a low down to 3C/37F, and then it’s supposed to warm up again. If the garden is going to have any chance to survive, we’re going to have to cover some things, even if there’s no frost.
This morning, I found and hand pollinated more winter squash. If I can find a way to cover that bed, they might survive the colder nights. It’s so unlikely, but I want to give them every possible chance to produce! As for the tomatoes, we’ll probably just have to pick whatever green tomatoes there are, and let them ripen indoors. Except the Spoon tomatoes. They’re so tiny, and have been nice and productive, we’ll probably just leave them be for the season.
We’ll see how it works out.
For now, I’m going to at least enjoy doing my rounds outside, get some fresh air, and get my brain space back to where it should be, instead of constantly going back to all the things my mother was saying today. Just writing about it here actually helps with that. Now that it’s “documented”, it’s easier to let it go.
I just really, really feel for my brother. He deserves so much better than this.
With all the extra stuff that needed to be done yesterday, I did finally get to water the garden yesterday evening. The poor Turkish Orange eggplant were drooping so badly!
This morning, I made sure to give it another watering, before things got too hot – we’re supposed to break past 30C/86F, and the humidex will make it feel even hotter! Before I did, though, I checked on things and got a harvest done.
I’ve been hemming and hawing for a while now about the corn. Being a short season corn, with only 65 days to maturity, they should have been ready to harvest a while ago but – like everything else – they were way behind. In the process of taking a closer look, I found something else.
Our very first female Arikara squash flower buds. There had been only male flowers until now, but now that we’ve got some females about to bloom, there isn’t a male flower to be seen!
*sigh*
Today is the last day of August. We’ve got one more hot day, and then things are going to cool right down, with overnight temperatures low enough that we’ll need to cover some things.
While watering, I also spotted new female flowers on the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato squash. I’ll have to check them again this evening and see if they opened up and can be hand pollinated.
Why I bother, I have no idea. They won’t have enough time to mature, and they are in beds we won’t be able to cover.
Ah, well. You never know. It’s not like weather forecasts don’t constantly change!
I came prepared to do some harvesting, including stainless steel container for the Spoon tomatoes.
I decided to go ahead and harvest some of the corn. Since the stalks had one cob each, I pulled the entire stalk on the ones that looked ready enough. Handily, the beds are right next to the compost pile.
While I was picking beans and corn, I had company.
Sir Robin was absolutely fascinated by the reflections inside the stainless steel bowl and was busy trying to catch whatever he was seeing.
In the next picture, you can see I got a whole bunch of tiny corn cobs. This is not a large cob variety of corn, but they should have been bigger than this. A few little ones had so few developed kernels on them, they weren’t work keeping. So I just ate them. 😄
It was SO nice to finally pick a decent amount of beans! Finally!
The one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato looks like it should have been picked earlier. I think the heat got to it a bit. There was a decent amount of chocolate cherry tomatoes to pick this time.
The carrots are from the bed that was sown in the spring, rather than the ones sown in the fall. With the Atomic Red ones, it’s still somewhat of a thinning by harvesting situation. The Uzbek Golden carrots were planted using home made seed tape, so spacing was not an issue.
I’m always amazed by the Royal Burgundy bush beans. We have only three surviving plants, and one of those got chomped by a deer. Yet even that one had beans to harvest today! The plants are still really prolific, considering how small they are and how delayed their growth has been.
It wasn’t until later, when I was watering the summer squash, that I realized I missed a zucchini! Just one, though I found a couple that I was able to hand pollinate.
I’m quite happy with this harvest. Sure, we’ve had better in previous years. A harvest like this was something I had picked every couple of days throughout the summer but, for how things have gone this year, this is pretty amazing!
Also, it took forever to pick all those little Spoon tomatoes. Aside from the plants being stunted and short this year, it was pretty painful to pick them from the low raised bed. It did help that I could put a foot on the log wall when I needed to, to take some of the pressure off. In theory, I should be squatting to pick them, but I can’t squat with the condition of my knees, so I’m having to bend over, instead.
Thankfully, I got the harvesting and watering done before it got too hot. The watering got interrupted for a while as I spent some time with my brother, going over my mother’s car. It’s going to need a new battery, and that tire was almost flat again. My brother will take care of a few things on it, and we will take care of emptying it out and getting it detailed, and then it’s going to be sold.
As much as it would be good to have a second vehicle again, we just don’t have the budget to insure and fuel two vehicles anymore – and I would really use the space the car it taking up in the garage! That addition was made to be a work/storage space. My mother’s car is just small enough to fit in there, as long as the passenger side it close enough to the wall, so the driver’s side door can be opened wide enough to squeeze out. I would rather store things like the lawn mowers, snow blowers and wood chipper in there, so that the other side they are stored in can be a work shop again. When I was building the cat isolation shelter, I had to keep our vehicle parked outside for months, so that I had the space to build in.
All in good time. There is no hurry, but it would be nice if we could sell it before the winter.
Winter is on my mind a lot these days, even when we’ve got heat like today!
Last night, a daughter and I covered three areas in the garden.
I rigged a cage of sorts around the summer squash large enough to fit around the large leaves. Our covers are old sheets, and one was large enough to cover the summer squash, though nowhere near large enough to reach the ground. Which was okay, as we weren’t expecting actual frost.
The peppers and eggplant in the wattle weave garden all have their own wire tomato cages, so we just needed to use some clothespins to keep the covers from blowing away. The way the peppers are laid out in the shorter end of the L shaped bed allowed them to be covered more than the eggplant, which are in a longer row. The cloth was just barely long enough to reach from end to end. As a result, the first and last eggplants had less coverage, with one of them being at a more exposed end of the bed.
You can see there is some cold damage to the leaves.
Depending on what app I checked, we dropped to either 6C/43F or 5C/41F last night. It’s hard to say so soon, but it looks like the winter squash, which we have no way to cover, managed okay. In fact, just this evening, I spotted two female flowers in the Mashed Potato squash that I hand pollinated. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, but at least they’ll have a chance!
Our overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up for the next while, so we shouldn’t need to cover them again for some time. In fact, some of our daytime highs are supposed to get downright hot. By the second week of September, however, the long range forecast has changed again, and we’re not looking at dipping below freezing, right around our old average frost date. The new 30 year averages have been released, which suggested our growing season has actually increased by quite a bit, but I’m not counting on that. Based on the previous average frost dates, we’ve got a 99 day growing season, and I think that’s still the more accurate one. That’s the thing with averages. All it takes is one or two unusual years to shift things quite a bit, even if they’re now showing a range of dates, rather than a single date.
This morning, I harvested some potatoes and a few other things for a supper I was planning on.
The potatoes are what I found under a couple of plants. For all that the plants struggled this year and there isn’t a lot, we do have some really nice potatoes! I grabbed a couple more kohl rabi (not too many of those left now!), some Swiss Chard, thyme, oregano, sage and lemon balm, as well as some walking onion bulbils.
All of this, plus some carrots I still had in the fridge, a Sub Arctic Plenty tomato the family hadn’t eaten yet, an entire bulb of fresh garlic (about 6 large cloves), some stewing beef and chunks of sausage, got used to make an Instant Pot one pot meal.
I do like being able to set up either the Instant Pot or the Crockpot and just leave it. Today, it meant I could get a nap in! We’re a real messed up household right now. My husband’s dealing with a broken tooth on top of his constant back pain. My younger daughter had a rough night and has been caning it today – yet she still just came back from picking the Spoon tomatoes for me! My older daughter has been walloped by her PCOS again. I’m still dealing with a wonky hip, plus my injured left arm is still causing issues, but it’s starting to look like I’m the most able bodied person in the household again!
I had thought I could use the riding mower and mow the lawn today. After all the rain we’ve had, it actually needs it again. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for sun and a few clouds for the next week. This morning, that changed to a light rain, pretty much all day! They’re still saying we’ll be getting sun with some clouds for at least a week, but who knows what we’ll actually get. I’m certainly not going to complain about more rain, though. We still need it so badly!
It does make things hard to plan around, though. There are things I’d like to get some work done on before I start making my monthly stock up shopping trips to the city, plus my follow up medical appointment about my arm, and so on. Things that need to be done when it’s dry, or at least not raining. I have this constant sense of running out of time.
Ah, well. It is what it is, and there’s only so much we can do. Having all four of us struggling with physical limitations at the time time, though, was not something I had ever expected when we moved out here, though!
The littles are happily discovering the perks of being close to the house. They’ve been sleeping on various cat beds all over the place, enjoying reliable access to food and water, and the creche mothers are taking good care of them. Some are still super shy, but even they are getting brave enough to go into the sun room.
I was on the late side getting out this morning. I had a rough night. What little lawn mowing a managed with the push more did more than remind me I hadn’t fully recovered from suddenly getting sick.
It reinjured me.
My left arm, that I injured in a fall more than a month ago, had been feeling fine for awhile. Well enough that I wondered just what we’d be talking about when I see my doctor at the end of the month, to go over the X-rays.
Last night, all the joints were hurting enough that I got my older daughter to come over and rub them down with Voltaren. Only after that could I finally get some sleep. By then it was around 3am.
My left hip has also increasingly an issue. Not so much with pain, but stability. The lack of it! It’s gotten so that I have to sit down to put on my pants, because I can’t stand on my left leg. When taking the two steps from the original part of the house to the addition, I can only step up on my right leg. If I try to step up using my left leg, my hip just gives out.
Something else to talk about when I see my doctor!
With that in mind, I got one of my daughters to help me in the garden at the end of my morning rounds.
When I first got into the old kitchen to start preparing the wet and dry cat food mixture I feed them in the mornings, I spotted one of the white and grey littles, right at the window! This window used to be an exterior window, before the sun room was added on, so the sill on the outside is angled down for any moisture to drain away from the window. It makes it a challenge, but the smaller cats and kittens are still able to get onto it and not slide right off. To see the littles up there – I think the one I saw traded off with a second one while I was filling the kibble bowl – is good progress. They have figured out where the food comes from, and are comfortable with that.
Now if only the garage kittens would come out! They are SO hungry by the time I arrive to feed them, because they don’t come to the house where there is more food, after their bowl is empty. I’m seriously considering moving the isolation shelter closer to the garage, and use it to slowly get them closer to the house. The problem with that it, the littles and the outside yard kittens are already using it regularly.
Maybe the catio would work, instead.
After the cats were fed, I continued my rounds and checking on the garden.
I’m quite happy with what’s happening in the trellis bed. The noodle beans are still stunted, but the sunflowers and pumpkins are looking great!
One pumpkin plant – the one with the pumpkin in a sling – is the biggest of the five, and opened up a couple of massive flowers this morning. There’s just male flowers, though. I’ve been seeing tiny female flowers start to form but, so far, they’ve all shriveled up and fallen off, long before they opened up. So it looks like we’ll get a single pumpkin this year.
In the second image of the slideshow above, you can see the tallest of the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. it has almost reached the height of the top horizontal support for the temporary trellis netting, which is at least 6 1/2 feet from the ground, so about 6 feet from the inside of the bed.
I’m surprised by all those little tomatoes I found when doing a major weeding, some time ago, and transplanted. I’ve since found three more that got missed, but I won’t bother moving those. Some of the transplants are getting surprisingly bed. The largest one is hidden under the leaves of the biggest pumpkin plant! One even has blossoms on it. I suspect that some of them, at least, might be Spoon tomatoes.
Speaking of Spoon tomatoes…
My younger daughter came out to help me pick them. With the instability of my hip, I can only pick from one side, where I can lean against the log wall. My daughter can actually get right into the bed, standing on the mulch in between the melons (which are not really growing, even if some are blooming) and pick the tomatoes on that side of the plants.
Yes, those are grapes! My daughter found the ripest looking clusters. There are lots more, but they are still more on the green side. If my guess is correct, these are Valiant grapes and they should get much bigger, not be the same size as the Spoon tomatoes. Once we figure out a place to transplant them, hopefully they will do better. The vines themselves are doing great where they are, but the fruit is not what it should be.
This is the first time in a couple of years we’ve been able to harvest some grapes before the raccoons ate them all.
Under the colander is a selection of fresh herbs; two types of oregano, two types of thyme, sage, basil, lemon balm and even some dill weed from the self seeded dill that came up among the herbs. I also gathers some walking onion bulbils; we don’t want them to spread beyond where they are now, so the bulbils are for eating, not growing! There’s a small amount of bush beans, some Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes.
At the bottom are some nasturtium seeds. My daughter was admiring the flower bed (the Cosmos are getting so tall!) and asked about the nasturtiums, which are winding down right now. While checking them out, we noticed some of the seeds had started to dry up and fall off the plants. Rather than leave them there to likely rot, we gathered them up. They are now in the cat free zone (the living room) where we are keeping gathered seeds and seed pods to stay cool and dry before they get stored away.
As for the rest of today, I’m not sure what I’ll manage to get done outside. I’ll give myself a chance to rest, but I most likely will just pain killer up and head out later and do as much as I can. We shall see.
I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!
I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.
There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.
I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.
After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.
Good for the digestion.
We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.
Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.
Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.
I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.
They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.
Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.
It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.
I went back to the corn/squash bed to get the formerly trellis fence set up. I set the posts as best I could. They had to go right at the corners for the wire to fit all the way around, so I didn’t have the option of moving them if I hit a root or a rock. So they aren’t quite as deep as they should be.
Once the posts were in, I set the wire back on the built in hooks in the posts, tightening things up as much as possible.
In the first image above, you can see my “door”. I wove a couple of 6′ support stakes through the wire, near the ends. The ends themselves just barely overlap, and I can hook them together a bit. The support stakes are long enough that I can drive them into the soil.
Well. Almost. One of them was hitting something and wouldn’t go any further. Probably a root.
In the second image, I tried to get a view of the top, which is wide open, of course. Ideally, it would be covered.
Ideally, I wouldn’t have to do this at all. Those squash should be sprawling all over, not barely meandering between the corn. I don’t know how big this variety of squash vine normally gets, but the Crespo squash we had last year in this spot spread out far enough to start climbing the cherry trees.
I’m hoping this will work. It should at least keep the cats out. A determined raccoon would get through fairly easily, but I’m hoping they’ll just be too lazy to get through the wire to get at the corn.
We shall see soon enough, I guess. The corn in this bed is developing faster than in the other bed, and there are some really nice looking cobs starting to form!
The Re-Farmer 