It’s a good thing we started so many squashes, and ended up transplanting them as such different times. The ones that sprouted later and got transplanted later got missed by that last frost of the season, and have been quite prolific. A couple of frost damaged ones in the first bed, both zucchini, recovered enough that they got quite large and are producing green and yellow zucchini for us.
Others…
They’re still working in it.
Some have started bravely blooming, putting out flowers bigger than their leaves!
With the tiniest of yellow zucchini!
I finally remembered to get a picture of the back row. The plants with the bamboo poles marking them are all ones I have been able to confirm as the birdhouse gourds. I put bricks or rocks under some of them, to support the weight of where the leaves are growing out, as the stems are a bit long and gangly.
You can see a pumpkin mound to the right of centre in the background, and way at the far end are the squashes from the second planting that have done so well.
While there were very few squash to collect this morning, there are so many new flowers right now, and lots of pollinators, so I am expecting a second wave of squash to harvest, soon.
I am looking forward to having enough to make more of the quick pickles!
I got to follow up on a couple of things this evening.
We hit 32C/89F today, so once things got cooler, I headed out to water the garden beds.
Yesterday evening, after letting the silicon sealant cure for more than 24 hours, I filled the rain barrel by the garden, so today was the litmus test. I’m happy to report, there were no leaks at all at the cracks in the barrel.
With the barrel set up in the shade of a tree, the water in it was actually still cool! But not cold, which I’m sure the squash pants appreciated. Some of the leaves look like they got shocked by the cold, the last time I used a hose to water them.
While watering the beets and carrot beds, I startled a little friend.
It even gave me a chance to get pretty close with my phone to take pictures, before disappearing. This is the first time I’ve seen one of the green tree frogs jumping out of these beds. Gosh, they’re pretty!
While there, I decided to check on my other green friend, in the chokecherry tree by the junk pile.
The caterpillar is still there – and noticeably bigger! If you look at the veins in the leaf to compare between the two dates, you can see he’s quite a bit longer. The colouring has smoothed out, too. I’ll have to check again over the next while; he might get as big as the ones I found when I was a kid!
I’m happy to add that I saw flashes if kittens while making my way between the garden beds. While I was checking on the caterpillar, Butterscotch even emerged from the spirea to say hello and let me pet her. :-)
I’m glad she didn’t move her kittens.
The next thing I’ll be following up on is how things go tomorrow! We’re headed to the city for my husband’s first appointment with the pain clinic. I’m glad it’s finally happening, though to be honest, I don’t have much confidence in how it’ll go. After all these years, I think I’ve gotten way too jaded, but between the 2 years it took for my husband to get a 14 page form to fill out, and what was in the form itself, I am already not impressed with this place.
Mind you, I don’t think I’ll even be able to go in with him. They said he’ll have to wear a mask to go in, without anything about medical exemptions – and he has several conditions that would apply! I already know wearing a mask triggers my chronic cough, so maybe we’ll both be able to get exemptions, but I doubt it. Another reason for my expectations to be very low.
Our first summer here, when we found the grapes among the overgrown spirea, the ripe grapes were barely bigger than the seeds. I was still excited, because… we had grapes! And they made great jelly (this from someone who does NOT like jams and jellies), and still tasted great, straight from the vine.
This year, they look massive in comparison. I am really looking forward to seeing how they are when fully ripe!!
This morning, I emptied the can of Plasit Dip on the cracks in the rain barrel.
Yesterday, I found a couple of hoola hoops at a dollar store in town, and this afternoon, I dug out the role of window screen mesh we found while cleaning out the basement. I hadn’t quite figured out how I was going to attach the mesh to the hoops, and decided to just sew it on. The only problem with that was holding the mesh in place, so I ended up applying the WeldBond glue I’ve got to the hoop, then laying the mesh I’d cut to size on top of it.
Made a real mess on my hands, pressing it into place, but thankfully, the glue washes off easily.
After it had set long enough, I then just sewed the mesh on with a needle and thread.
It’s a bit on the light side and I want to figure out how to add weight to it. With the screen directly on the top of the barrel, any weight on the hoop could potentially tear the screen. I’ll probably just put a board across the top.
Here are the areas I sprayed with the Plasti Dip, both inside and out. I even sprayed areas that I wasn’t sure was cracked, or just a deep scratch, just in case.
That big crack at the top? It’s actually sealed. I didn’t think it would work, but with enough layers, it filled the gap! Most of the seal on that one is on the inside layers.
After giving the inside of the barrel a quick rinse, it was time to fill it and test out the seal.
As of tonight, it is completely waterproof. When I do my rounds in the morning, I’ll see if it held up through the night.
I’ll also be able to water the garden using water that has had a chance to warm up, instead of ice cold well water. :-D
The second hoop is currently sitting in the basement with the mesh and some glue. Tomorrow, I’ll use needle and thread to attach the screen securely, then put it over the rain barrel by the sun room. It’ll be nice to use the water from there, and not have my watering can’s head get clogged up with leaves and other debris. :-)
It took a while to get the garden rain barrel to the point it could be filled, but I think it was worth it to keep adding more layers to the cracks, with lots of time in between to cure.
It may not be pretty, but it’ll do the job! And that’s all that matters. :-)
I’ve just come back from adding a second layer of Plasti Dip to the picnic table legs and rain barrel, before starting on cooking. Then I realized I completely forgot to share a couple of things in my gardening post!
This is one of them; a friend among the cucamelons!
When watering the garden beds, we have been seeing a LOT of little frogs all over – more than I’ve ever seen before – but we do not see these green little tree frogs often.
We need to fill in those openings along the outside of the chimney blocks we’re using as planters. The tree frog will get out easily enough, but I had one of the other frogs end up in one, and it couldn’t get out. I ended up putting a stick in the hole for it to climb.
My mother also had a “gift” for me, yesterday.
A whole bunch of cucumbers! One of the local Hutterite colonies is quite involved with places like were my mother lives. Every year they host a dinner for widows and widowers, they regularly provide entertainment, and so on. Every now and then, they drop off produce in the lobby for anyone who wants! This time, it was a whole bunch of cucumbers. My mother took a lot (I really hope she didn’t take more than her fair share. :-( ) and gave me about half of what she had. I haven’t decided what to do with them, yet, but she plans to do quick pickles.
I’ve haven’t done pickles since I was a kid helping my mother! We might just make cucumber salads with them.
We had a really hot day today, so when things cooled down enough, I went out to water the garden plots and sunflowers.
Which is when I found this.
All the leaves on one side of this one have been eaten!
This is the first of the large sunflowers that has had this kind of damage. :-( At least the top didn’t get chomped off.
One of the more recently chomped smaller ones is showing signs of recovery.
It also had a friend!
We’ve got a lot of grasshoppers and locusts this year, but this is the first green one like this that I’ve seen. :-)
When I was done and dragging the hose back to the house, I found Creamsicle napping on top of the straw bale. :-) My coming close for a picture woke him up…
I caught him mid stretch. :-D
Meanwhile…
Today, my husband and I had our doctor appointments that we should have had back in March. They were supposed to be physicals, but the doctor wasn’t expecting that. Which is when I found out he does physicals in the mornings, when, as he put it, his mind it still fresh. Which was not a problem, since we had lots to catch up on. He hasn’t seen my husband since December, and has seen me only while I was accompanying my mother.
Us all having the same doctor is coming in handy.
Before doing a full physical, he wanted us both to get fasting bloodwork done. For my husband’s part of the appointment, we updated the doctor on his upcoming visit with the pain clinic. Even though he hasn’t seen my husband in more than 6 months, he remembered that we’d already been waiting for almost 2 years, so he was a bit shocked that this was going to be a first visit. We also told him about the appointment at the cardiac clinic to discuss my husband getting a defibrillator implanted. He had questions about that. Mostly, why does my husband suddenly have such a low ejection fraction? It turns out that the cardiac clinic has not been sending any files to our doctor, so he had nothing. He still has nothing, really, because the cardiac clinic has not been able to find why my husband’s ejection fraction is so low, and are openly perplexed by him. The doctor has requested for us to remind the clinic to send the files to him, so he can see what’s going on. Same with the pain clinic, when the time comes.
In our previous province, all medical files were electronic, and could be accessed by any authorized doctor. So my husband could go from his GP to the specialists at the pain clinic (all 4 or 5 of them that were assigned to his case), to any other specialist, and they would all have access to the same information. Here, there is no connectivity. When our previous doctor suddenly moved out of province, we had to pay to have our files sent to the new clinic. A GP can access the electronic files at their own clinic, but not the files at the heart clinic or the pain clinic. They all have to send their files to each other, as needed. All of the specialty clinics should be sending everything back to the primary caregiver every time, so that at least that one person has all the information. Why that isn’t happening for my husband, we don’t know, but the doctor was not happy with having so much information missing.
We spent some time talking about my husband’s medications, and the problems he’s been having getting refills for the painkillers. So that’s been updated but, after we get the bloodwork done, he wants to look at switching my husband to morphine, and focus on pain management a lot more. There’s one medication in particular that he was wondering why my husband is on at all, and he just didn’t know anymore. I suspect the total number of prescriptions my husband is on will be reduced.
I’m happy to see him being pro-active about it. The previous doctor didn’t want to change anything until after my husband was seen by the pain clinic, but that took so long, the doctor moved out of province before that could happen!
My own part of the appointment was short. I have only one prescription, and I’ll see him again after my bloodwork is done. We ended up chatting a bit about my mother, since I’ll be bringing her back to see him tomorrow.
As for our follow up appointments, he started to ask if we could book them in the mornings when I mentioned I’d asked for the afternoon, because of the drive. When he realized how far away we live, he completely back tracked and said to make the appointment for whenever works best for us, and to book another “joint” appointment, and he will accommodate us. Since our bloodwork requires fasting, we will book the appointment after we get it done, which likely won’t be until Monday.
So we’ll have at least one more medical appointment this month, on top of the others.
With this doctor wanting to work proactively on managing my husband’s pain, I suspect we’ll be back fairly regularly.
By the time we were done, my husband was at his limit – and we still had the drive home to do. He was worried about his appointment at the cardiac clinic next week. The letter said that there have been a lot of delays, and to expect to be there for as long as 2 hours. That’s after a 1 1/2 hour drive. We’ll have to make sure to call in advance so they can have a stretcher available for him to lie down on; something they were able to arrange to do for him before, after a previous appointment was so late, he ended up walking out because he was in just too much pain. They’re a cardiac clinic. They don’t take into account any other issues a person might have, unrelated to the heart, unless it’s brought up directly.
Another reason why not having central files is a problem. When he goes to any specialist, he has to explain everything else to them. At the cardiac clinic, he could see any one of a team of 5 that works together, so he has to explain his disability, and why he uses a walker, all over again with each one. Otherwise, they assume that his use of a walker is related to his heart condition.
It’s frustrating, to say the least.
At least now we’re able to actually get appointments and treatment. The months of delays because of the pandemic shut downs have really messed things up for him. Our province has once again had more people testing positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus, and people are freaking out and demanding things shut down again. What the media isn’t including in their reports (though it’s on the provincial government website, for all to see), those new cases are from 5 days of testing, and represent only .9% testing positive. The total number of positive and presumptive positive cases for the province since March is .03% of the entire population. A person is more likely to get hit by a car than test positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus. People don’t seem to understand risk factors at all anymore, and the panic means people like my husband are having a hard time getting medical care. During our appointment, the only time it came up at all was when I mentioned we were supposed to have today’s appointments back in March, when everything got shut down. My husband’s appointment at the cardiac clinic got cancelled. While my husband did get one appointment rescheduled at the cardiac clinic, for a test in nuclear medicine, next week will be the first time the cardiac team will be seeing him. He’s had a couple of telephone appointments, but that’s it. He had also finally gotten contacted by the pain clinic just before the shut down, which that added a few more months to his wait.
If things shut down again, lack of treatment would certainly mean his condition degenerating further. Lack of treatment is more likely to kill him, than any of us coming in contact with the Wuhan strain of coronavirus.
He is certainly not the only person in this position.
Of the first sunflowers that we planted, several of them are now taller than me!
Unfortunately, the smaller ones from the second planting are still having deer issues.
Right next to the nearest sunflower in the above picture is this one.
This is one of the ones that had had its head bitten off a while back. It had been recovering, but this morning, almost all the new leaves have been eaten.
Then I found this one.
Newly decapitated, with so many leaves eaten, I wonder if it will recover.
Like this one.
This is just a couple of feet away from the newly decapitated one. Just the head had been eaten off, not the leaves, and now it’s growing a new head out the side.
We will have to think on how to protect the sunflowers from the deer in the future. We intend to plant more in general, plus more of the giant varieties. There’s also variety that is used to make a purple dye that I’d like to try. They only need to be protected when they’re little; once they get big, the deer leave them alone. My daughters and I have been talking about different temporary fencing ideas, though another possibility is to companion plant things that deer don’t like. Or we could try both.
Having deer come right into the yard is one of those things that we have now, that never happened when I was growing up here. Most likely because there was just too much activity, plus we always had dogs. My mother never had to deal with deer eating her garden! I love having the deer, and that they come right up to the house, but they can sure cause some problems! :-)
I was a bit late doing my rounds, so it was starting to get a bit dark. Which made finding this, that much more dramatic!
It was NOT blooming this morning!
When checking the squash beds, I have been keeping an eye on the back row, trying to decide with of the surviving plants are gourds. I noticed 3 of them (with possibly a 4th) sending up tall flower stalks. Completely different from all the others!
Now, two of them have these dramatic white flowers!
Not knowing for sure what is what, after the starter trays were knocked over, sure makes checking the squash beds much more exciting than one would expect! :-D
With all the lovely rain we had yesterday, I could see the squash really appreciated it!
This is one of the recovering squashes that recovered after frost damage to our first transplants.
We’ve got baby yellow zucchini!
This is the first of the summer surprise squash mix that we can actually see what it is. :-)
I’m happy that some of the damaged ones have recovered so well. We won’t be getting anywhere near as many squash as I had originally expected, but that’s okay. We’ll still have lots!
With Junk Pile’s babies starting to use the spirea to hide in, I moved a food dish near the area. This morning, while Junk Pile was by the house, waiting for me to refill the kibble, I saw her mostly white kitten, sitting on the mulch by the grapes.
It’s not the white kitten in the photo above!
Can you see the little white nose peaking out from under the grapes?
The grey baby eventually came out to eat with mom, but I didn’t see the white one again.
While checking on the garden beds and doing a bit of weeding, I pulled a few baby carrots.
Breakfast of champions! :-D
I’ve got the three varieties in here; purple, white and rainbow mix.
They were very tasty! :-D
Today, we’re going to have to really push to finish the old kitchen and sun room. The weather forecast has changed.
The heat warnings are back, with a predicted high of 30C/86F, and the humidex making it feel like 36C/96F. The thunderstorms that had been predicted for tomorrow are now expected this afternoon. Even if the storms miss us again, we’ll likely catch some rain, and among the stuff we have sitting outside are power tools.
The Re-Farmer 