Gardening

More deer damage, and a medical update

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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.

Frustrating is really quite an understatement.

The Re-Farmer

Sunflower finds

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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! :-)

The Re-Farmer

White

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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

The Re-Farmer

Yellow

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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!

The Re-Farmer

Two kinds of babies

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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.

Time to get back at it!

The Re-Farmer

Storms done, and pretty things

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Yesterday was a day where the weather lurched from pouring rain to brilliant sunshine! Things had cleared up enough that I even turned my computer back on again for a while. The weather radar looked like we would be getting rain, but the more severe parts of the system would miss us, again.

Then, part way through a phone call, I began to see the lightning. It didn’t take long for the sky to turn completely black. Off went the computer, and I’m glad I did. Not only did we loose internet a couple of times (something we now expect, whenever the weather gets wild), but the power flickered out enough to shut everything down. Thankfully, not enough for my husband to notice his CPAP had stopped!

We were supposed to go into town this morning, so he could get some blood work and an ECG done. Unfortunately, pain had him up at 2am, and by the time I was getting ready to do my rounds, he was more than ready to try and sleep again, having completely forgotten about the tests, and couldn’t remember if fasting was required (it wasn’t; these tests are for the cardio clinic). Normally, blood work is just a drop in, but with an ECG as well, we’ll double check to see what has changed with the pandemic restrictions. Not that it’s an issue where we are. Our province never got hit hard, and there haven’t been any new cases of the virus in over a week.

Without that trip into town, I got to spend more doing my rounds, while the temperatures were cooler. On Sunday, I’d watered the garden plots with a fertilizer attachment, and yesterday morning, the squashes were looking noticeably less yellow!

These ones in particular are much bigger than the others.

Since the transplants got all mixed up when the trays got knocked over, I don’t know what type of squash these actually are, but I’m pretty sure these are green zucchini from the summer squash mix (which had 3 types of zucchini in it), only because I remember my mother’s zucchini from when I was a kid. But then, I have no idea if the other types of zucchini in the mix look any different, so really, it could be any of them. They are definitely not the patti pan squash, though. I’ve grown those in a balcony garden, and remember their leaves never got that big.

I don’t think I’m going to bother with trellising this bed at all, either. I might still do the long row in the back, if only because they are closer to the row of trees. This year is my learning year, so I’m willing to change plans and use the results to make decisions next year.

Some of my mother’s flowers are still coming up, in between the apple and chokecherry trees at the sound end of the area we put the squash beds in.

This butterfly was just sitting there, kindly letting me get a picture. :-)

While checking on the various plots, I find myself kind of torn. On the one hand, things seem to be coming up well enough. Granted, some of the squash will probably never reach full potential, between the lateness of planting and damage from that one last frost, but others look like they are doing well. Then I read from people talking about how they are already seeing little squashes starting to form in their gardens. The carrots, beets and parsley are growing well (only 3 khol rabbi sprouts survived), and we’ll be able to use the plants we thin out in salads and such. Then I talk to my mother, and she mentioned how my sister has been bringing her fresh vegetables. I have no idea what she would have in her garden that’s ready to harvest already! Lettuces and spinach, maybe, but my mother never refers to those as vegetables. So is my garden doing well, for our region, or not? I didn’t plant things that late, for this area, and my sister is in the same climate zone we are in.

Oh, dear. I was just informed by husband that our washing mashing stopped working. The breaker has not been tripped, and there is no obvious reason why it stopped.

So let me just quickly share these fun photos with you, and then I have to see what I can figure out is going on with our washing machine!!

The Re-Farmer

After a wild and crazy night!

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It was shortly after 1 am and, as I was lying awake in bed, something I was seeing finally soaked through my heat-numbed brain.

Lights.

Flashing lights, out my north facing window.

The sky was lighting up, over and over, hardly a break in between! Constant flashes of lightning.

My West facing window was open, but I heard nothing. No thunder. No rain. Hardly even wind.

But the flashes kept going.

After a while, I went to the main entry and watched the storm coming in through the outer door, before finally moving to the sun room.

Creamsicle and Potato Beetle were very thrilled to see me, and just begging for pets and cuddles!

While standing at the mostly-closed outer door, I heard a distinct crunching noise. Using the flashlight on my phone, I took a peak through the gap behind the garbage can, and could just see the tip of a skunk’s nose!

He waddled away, pausing to scream for a while, soon after.

Skunks make the strangest noise!

One of my daughters came down after hearing me go through the old kitchen, but with Creamsicle and Potato Beetle at the door into the sun room, she decided to go out through the main entrance.

After making sure we were clear of skunk.

We stood outside for a while, watching the sky.

Time and again, the entire yard was lit up bright as day!

Then it started to rain, so we went into the sun room. After a while, my daughter went back into the house, through the main entry, making sure to prop a sawhorse in front of the outer door (we still haven’t been able to finish fixing the frame on that!), to keep it from blowing open, while still being open enough for the cats to come in for shelter.

I remained in the sun room, watching the storm through the outer door, when my other daughter came to join me. She was just telling me about how she had checked the weather radar, and the main part of the storm looked like it was passing us by, but we were still getting warnings for hail… when the hail started!

Then the wind pulled open the outer door, sending the saw horse flying. Even though I was inside, I immediately started getting hit with rain, so I quickly closed up the inner door, and continued watching through the window on that.

The video is much MUCH darker than it actually was outside.

Creamsicle was very happy to be inside the sun room, with me! He kept trying to get my attention while I took photos and video so, after a while, I put the phone away and just cuddled him. He was in heaven, giving me all kinds of hugs and kisses!

Then Potato Beetle got in on the action, and soon I was holding both of them, and watching the storm!

The storm passed by rather quickly, and I was soon able to get the outer door set up with the saw horse to keep it from blowing open again, then went inside. Once inside, a quick check on Facebook found I was not the only one up at almost 2am, posting about the storm!

One of the pages I follow is a local weather group, and they posted an image showing the hundreds of places lightning was detected on the weather radar. The storm itself, amazingly, split just before reaching us. Most of it passed by to the North, and a tiny bit passed us by to the South. What we got was the less severe gap in the middle.

Wow.

So when I headed out to do my morning rounds today, I did a more thorough check for fallen branches and see what other storm damage there might be. There was quite a lot branches to pick up. Only two were live branches, though. The rest were already dead. The elm tree in front of our kitchen window lost so many tiny dead twigs, I didn’t even try to pick them up. I’d need a rake to get them all.

I was happy to note that there was no substantial hail damage to any of the garden plots. I did, however, have a wonderful surprise in the squash.

Two of them have suddenly bloomed! These were not there yesterday, and I really was not expecting to see flowers while the plants are still so small.

These are in the second, larger bed that was transplanted later, and they are doing much much better than the others. The long row in the back that was planted at the same time is doing all right, but not as well as the wider bed. The first bed I’d planted, that got frost damage in spite of our covering them first, is still struggling.

Of the three pumpkin mounds, one of the ones that had a packet of 3 seeds planted in it, now has a second seedling sprouting. The mound that had the packet of 5 seeds planted it in has a first seedling just starting to break ground now.

This late in the season, the only way we’ll get ripe pumpkins, I think, is if we have a late and long, mild fall.

Which could happen. We’ll see.

The surviving first planting of sunflowers have also made a very noticeable increase in growth.

No hail damage on anything planted in the old garden area. No deer damage, either.

It wasn’t until I was almost done my rounds that I found the one tree that fell during the storm.

It’s one of the dead trees I need to clean out, anyway, so this actually saves me some work! :-D

With the heat wave, our weekly checking of the root cellar has provided useful information already. With the possibility of building a cheese cave in there, a few years from now, we are looking for a temperature range of between 7C – 12C (45F – 55F) and a humidity level in the 85-95% range, though some types of cheese require different temperatures. As of this morning, the root cellar was at 17C/62F, and the humidity was at 88%. It was the same last week, too. So for most types of cheeses, it would be too warm. It also is not as consistent as it should be. There is an air vent that goes straight outside, with nothing but window screen mesh to keep the bugs out, at the end. I’d tried partially blocking it, but enough of a wind gets through that it blows out whatever is used. It might be worthwhile to add some sort of vent covering that can be opened and closed to help keep the temperatures from fluctuating too much.

Meanwhile, the heat wave continues. We’re already at 29C/84F (“feels like” 33C/91F), with a predicted high of 31C/87F (humidex: 36C/96F). Heat alerts remain. At least the high water and flood alerts have stopped for now, though we have more thunderstorms predicted overnight, so that might change.

Heat or no heat, we have really got to get the counter moved out, so we can put in the new stove. With the old stove, we’d already stopped using one of the elements, due to sparking when it was turned on or off. The girls, who have taken to cooking and eating at night rather than during the day, have noticed other elements have started to spark, too.

It’s going to be dreadful, and take hours to accomplish, but it has to be done.

Installing the stove itself will be the easy part. Juggling the dining table, chairs, shelves, the contents of the counter, and the counter itself, while still leaving room for the old stove to be pulled out, and the new stove to be moved in, is the hard part.

The Re-Farmer

Morning roundup, and I’m a tree!

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After the heat we’ve had for the past while, it actually got remarkably chilly last night.

It was great!

I had some concern about how it got for the kittens, but the basement is pretty good at remaining a constant temperature.

This morning, I took one of the long boxes that held pieces of my new bed frame and lay it out on the floor for the kittens to play in.

They just loved it!

Leyendecker, however, got distracted by something that was apparently much more interesting.

Me.

He climbed me like a tree! All the way up to my head, where he began to tackle my ear and try to eat my hair.

What a silly boy!

The outside cats were eagerly awaiting me when I got outside. Their food bowls had been completely cleaned out. By them, or other animals, I’m not sure.

Butterscotch allowed my daughter to check her out yesterday, and it seems she is pregnant again. Considering how it went when we tried to bring her in before, that is just not something we can do again.

I’m happy to say that, when both Butterscotch and Creamsicle joined me while checking out my mother’s flowers, there was NO fighting, at all.

When checking out the squash beds, I’d found a pleasant little surprise.

Some pumpkins are sprouting!

These two hills had 3 seeds each planted in them. The other one had 5 seeds in the package, but so far, none have sprouted.

Most of the more recently transplanted squash are noticeably growing bigger, though they have also gotten pretty yellow. One of the possible reasons I’ve seen is a lack of iron. Which means we likely should supplement the soil with bloodmeal. I just haven’t been able to find any!

More potatoes are starting to show up through the straw mulch. When mowing last night, I moved out the wooden frames that were around the beds. They are no longer needed, and taking them out makes it easier to mow around the beds. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the mowing today; we might be getting showers this afternoon.

This evening, we’re planning to get all wild and crazy. Father’s Day and my daughter’s birthday fall on the same day this year. Knowing how busy things are likely to be on Sunday, we’ve decided to celebrate today. Our favorite Chinese restaurant is open again, so we’re planning on ordering a whole lot of take-out!

It’s going to be such a treat!! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Recommended: Self Sufficient Me

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Welcome to my “Recommended” series of posts. These will be weekly – for now – posts about resources and sites I have found over the past while that I found so excellent, I want to share them with you, my dear readers. 🙂 Whether or not I continue to post these, and how often they are posted, will depend on feedback. Please feel free to comment below, and if you have a favorite resource of your own, do share, and I will review them for possible future posts.

I hope you find these recommendations as useful and enjoyable as I have!

As we continue to clean up, repair and improve things here on the family farm, we do have an ultimate goal to be as self sufficient as we can. Our health and mobility requirements mean we’ll probably never be completely “off the grid”, but there is still a lot we can do.

Growing up here, we were basically subsistence farmers. We grew, raised, preserved, butchered much of our own food, and for our animals, grew most of their feed, too. When it came to gardening, there was a time when the garden was close to an acre in size. This was your typical garden of everything planted in long rows, far enough apart to run a tiller in between. In my mind, gardening meant growing food. Flower gardening was just an aside, and not something I understood as “real” gardening, for may years. Even now, when I think “gardening”, my mind always goes to growing food.

As productive as my mother’s garden was, however, it is not how I want to garden, for many reasons. Everything from the rocky soil where the garden used to be, to mobility and accessibility, leads me to wanting to do raised bed gardening.

The following resource is very much the sort of thing I have in mind. Self Sufficient Me (Website YouTube) is an Australian site, so obviously, there is a lot that won’t apply to us in central Canada! We’re not going to be growing papayas anytime soon. :-D However, this resource has lots of information that can be used pretty much anywhere. Along with their website and YouTube channel, they are on other social media, which you can find linked here. They also have a second YouTube channel here.

It was through the videos that I discovered this resource. I haven’t been able to go back through all 8 years of them, but I’m slowly working on it. ;-)

The videos include some very basic stuff, perfect for beginning gardeners.

This next video really caught my attention, as hugelkultur is sort of the method we will be using when we build our raised beds. We might not use such large stumps and logs, but will likely have lots of big branches!

I especially appreciate that he talks about what didn’t work about the raised bed, as well as showing how the soil looks after 4 years.

Also, I love his tools!!!

Of course, he covers building raised beds as well.

He’s got all my prerequisites: height, strength, easy and cheap! :-D

Don’t have the space to do raised beds? He’s got you covered there, too.

He also goes beyond growing vegetables, and has videos on raising animals, too.

He readily admits that he is no carpenter, and that’s one of the things I love about it. He’s big on going ahead and building things, without worrying about being perfect.

We don’t have to worry about snakes where we are – the snakes we have would be more in danger from the chickens than the other way around – but definitely predators are an issue.

Chickens are not the only critters he raises, and you will find videos about raising quails and ducks, as well as videos reviewing products – the good and the bad! – about pest control, composting, watering, and so much more. I definitely recommend going through the many videos available. I’m sure you will find plenty to inspire you!

The Re-Farmer

First!

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The kittens were too active to get good photos this morning.

Plants, on the other hand, are much more co-operative.

The first potato leaves have made their way through the mulch!

Yay!

Sadly, we are also down another sunflower. We found another one with just a stem, the leaflets gone. Total count is one less than yesterday.

We’ll still have a decent “wall” of sunflowers, but it will definitely have large gaps. If we do this again next year, we’ll know to get at least twice the number of seeds to start, and maybe even start them indoors, first. The sunflowers that have developed their true leaves seem to be left alone.

The Re-Farmer