I had a long day taking my mother to her specialist appointment in the city yesterday, and now another long day with her today. I did have time to do some of my morning rounds, though, and was able to gather a good sized harvest!

In the giant colander, there are a good number of Chocolate Cherry tomatoes from by the chain link fence. I also picked a few green Seychelle beans from the bed shared with the Crespo squash, and I even found a few on the one plant next to the purple Carminat pole beans. There are even some Royal Burgundy bush beans in there.

I found a melon lying on the ground in the raised bed – it harvested itself! 😄 There are a couple of yellow peppers, plus a Sweet Chocolate. Some of the peppers that are supposed to be more orange are finally starting to turn colour. There’s a single G Star pattypan squash, plus a few San Marzano tomatoes.

When it came time to go into the old kitchen garden, I knew there would be quite a bit, so I grabbed the bin. Those are all Forme de Couer and Black Cherry tomatoes in there.

Including a rude looking tomato! Click over to the next photo to see what I mean. 😄

After that, I left things to my daughters and headed out to my mother’s.

Long story short: her apartment finally got sprayed for bed bugs. There were no sign of any, so they will have to come back only one more time. Her neighbour got sprayed, too. I get the impression that apartment has been the main source of the problem in the building.

My mother then had to stay out of her apartment for 6 hours. Technically, she should stay out for 12 hours, as she has respiratory issues, but she refuses.

The neighbor says they only need to stay out for 4 hours, but I have no idea where she got that from. The notification letter they all get says the same thing. At least 6 hours.

We made sure to take along my mother’s supper time medications, as well as the information sheets the eye clinic gave her, yesterday, to go over. While we were waiting for the exterminator to arrive, I did go through some with her. I took the grid eye test, which is a flat magnetic sheet, and put it on her fridge. The grid has a black dot in the middle that is supposed to be focused on. I spent some time explaining the test to her, how to do it, and that she should be checking her left eye with it, every day. I even held it for her while she did the test, as instructed.

While explaining the grid test to her, how to take the test, what she’s looking for, I was saying, your left eye this, your left eye that, with your left eye…

Yet she still stopped at one point and said, “with my right eye, then…”

…

No. Your right eye can’t even see the dot in the grid. It’s for your left eye.

It’s going to take a while for it to stick, I think!

We had a nice chat with the manager while her apartment was being sprayed – she parker her walker across from her door and would not move until the exterminator left.

Then we had to find something to do or somewhere to go for six hours.

I was going to move the truck into the loading zone in front of the doors, to make it safer for my mother to get in, but the exterminator’s truck was in there, and he was chatting with the manager. When I got there, I did apologize for my mother’s behaviour over all this.

She is still utterly convinced the exterminator rifled through her closet to find and steal 70+ year old passports. In fact, at one point when it came up in conversation, she started saying, “maybe I should call the police?” When I said no, she said I was accusing her of lying. I told her, I didn’t think she was lying, but that she probably just put them somewhere and forgot where. When she moves, she’ll probably find them again. Her response was that I was “against” her.

*sigh*

Anyhow…

It was a good thing I caught up with them, because the manager remembered to ask if my mother’s bed had mattress covers. She doesn’t, and the exterminator said she needs two – one for the mattress, one for the box spring. Then he remembered he might have one and checked in his truck. He did have one and gave it to me for my mother’s mattress. We’ll still need one for the box spring.

Then I mentioned I needed to move my truck so my mother could get in, and we said our goodbyes.

By this time, though, my mother had come out and was sitting in her walker, watching us suspiciously. She called me over before I moved the truck and started asking me questions… why was the exterminator still there? Why was the manager sitting in his truck? etc.

Oh, gosh. I just realized what she was getting at.

She thought they were waiting for her to leave, so the manager could use his master key to get into her apartment, so they could steal things.

*sigh*

Anyhow.

We got her into the truck and then headed out for lunch. There was one place she wanted to go to, because someone new bought it and she wanted to see how it was, now that it wasn’t “browny” people that owned it (it had been owned by a Korean family). *sigh* The place was still being worked on, on the inside, but when she saw the worker’s vehicles in the parking lot, she thought it was open and wanted me to go inside and check. I had to tell her, no, you can’t just walk into a construction zone!

So we went to a chicken and pizza restaurant.

She ended up ordering a vegetable pizza this time, which I normally would not have thought much of, except that my mother is once again deciding that the reason she’s having trouble with her eyes is because of food, and so she needs to eat more vegetables and green things.

There is no known cause for macular degeneration, and there is no food she can eat or not eat that will make any difference. But she heard something somewhere – maybe last week, maybe last month, maybe 30 years ago – and just latches on to things.

We’re going to have to watch her on that, because she’s going to start causing malnutrition in herself if we don’t.

I had something else, so she had a small pizza to herself, with some left over that was packed up for later. We took our time eating, though – we did have 6 hours to kill! – then went across the street to a little department store she wanted to check out, while she was out and about. I helped her get across the street, then moved the truck to park by the store, so she wouldn’t have to cross the street again. The nice thing about that was that I was able to pull up really close to the curb – and that extra height made it downright easy for her to get into the truck when she was done!

We then both went in and did a bit of shopping.

There’s only so long we could drag that out, though.

There was nowhere else she wanted to go, and there is nowhere in this town where one can just hang out. We even tried driving around parts of town we’ve never gone into before, but there wasn’t a whole lot of that, either. 😄

We managed to use up about 2-3 hours before finally just going back to her building and sitting in the common room. No one else was around, so we brought out the information the eye clinic gave her and I went over it with her. Most of it, the doctor had already explained to her really well.

It didn’t take long to go through it all.

I was completely prepared to stay with my mother until 7pm, but she told me that I could go home. She was really tired and was going to just sit and close her eyes for a while. She had her leftovers for supper, and I’d added a bottle of orange juice I’d gotten with her meal on the way home from the city yesterday, that got forgotten in the truck, so she was prepared for taking her medication with her supper while in the common room.

So I headed home.

When I got home, my younger daughter was adding more supports to the tomatoes at the chain link fence that yesterday’s winds had managed to blow partly over. I ended up helping her with that, then she moved on to start breaking down the tree that the winds blow over and onto a crabapple tree.

I had gone to talk to her when our phones both dinged. My husband had sent a message.

My mother had called and left a message on the answering machine. Something about her keys?

I had completely forgotten.

While digging in her purse at one point, my mother gave me her keys to put in my pocket, so they wouldn’t get lost.

They were still in my pocket!!!

I had dashed into the house to get my purse when the phone range again. It was my mother, trying again – from the number on call display, a neighbour had let her use their phone. I told her, I was leaving right then and there!

When I got there, so was so apologetic about having me drive all the way back again. Meanwhile, I was apologizing for forgetting I had her keys! It was pretty funny!

Enough time had passed that she had eaten her supper and taken her medications. It was still early to get into her apartment, but by less than an hour, so we went in anyway.

I had offered to come back to help her put things back and she had said no, so this actually worked out.

I was able to put the mattress cover on her bed – and found out that they’d given her, and others, mattress covers long ago. She didn’t want me to put it on her bed, and basically scoffed at the fact that they had been given them in the first place.

*sigh*

So, somewhere in her closet, she had 2 more of these. Maybe when my sister next visits my mother, she’ll be ablet to find one and get it onto the box spring.

I made up her bed and put a few things away.

If she didn’t have to wait until the health care aid came to help with her nightly medications, she would have gone to bed right then and there!

I did make sure to set out the little miniature tagine bowl and lid I’d brought for her. She thought it was adorable! This will be a handy container for the health care aide to put her pills into, after removing them from the bubble pack, so they can both easily see that the right number are in there. Plus, my mother can more easily pick up the little bowl to take them, rather than trying to use her hands. Some of her fingers are deformed with arthritis.

The extra trip was good for another reason. I had forgotten to hit a bank machine earlier, to take cash out for the septic guy. We’re almost into October. Time to get the tank emptied for the winter.

We’ll need to contact the septic repair company again, too, and hopefully get a date on when they can come and repair the leaking pipes at the expeller!

I really hope we’re not getting ghosted by this company. We’ve had this happen before with other companies, in the first couple of years after we moved here. I have reason to believe it has something to do with our vandal defaming us, though I have no actual proof. Our vandal has a past history of trying to prevent companies from doing things here at the farm, and even on property in the heart of our little hamlet that my parents used to own. Then, when they tried to sell it, he drove off two potential buyers!

Yes, he felt he was entitled to that property, just like he feels he’s entitled to this property, too.

Of course, it could be this company is just really busy, trying to get jobs done before winter. Unfortunately, with past experience, I can’t help but wonder.

Well, if we don’t hear from them after trying to call them back several times, there is another company we can contact again. They are in a completely different town that our vandal doesn’t really go to, that I know of, so the chances of them having any contact with our vandal is very low.

The main thing is that this gets repaired before the ground freezes.

Thankfully, our system has still been working so far, even if the greywater is all just soaking into the ground, as if we had a septic field instead of an expeller. The leak must be pretty close to the surface for the ground to become saturated like that, so if it doesn’t get repaired, the whole thing will freeze, the greywater will have nowhere to go, and the ice will break the pipes even more.

*sigh*

Tomorrow, I will hopefully not have to go anywhere, except maybe the dump. I don’t know if I dare to to the nearest landfill again, with how bad it has gotten lately (I don’t want another flat tire!), but the next nearest one is also open on Saturdays. I just need to find it.

If all goes well, though, I’ll finally be able to catch up with stuff here at home!

Like prep and freeze a whole lot of bell peppers and melons, and either freeze whole tomatoes, or start another sauce in the Crockpot.

I really look forward to just staying home. 😁

I’m so tired!

The Re-Farmer