getting things done

Last “big” shopping trip, and…wow

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Today, the plan was to drive out to the smaller, nearer city and hit the Canadian Tire and Walmart.

Of course, plans changed, but I at least got those done!

We’ve been keeping in touch with my daughter that is house sitting, and last night she asked me a bit favour.

Could I come over today?

With antihistimines?

There aren’t any in the house, and she normally doesn’t have allergic reactions, but it seems she is allergic to the pillow she’s using! Or, at least, something on it. The house is a fair distance from town, and she wasn’t about to go hunting for a pharmacy on the mobility scooter! 😄

Well, I just happened to pick up some antihistamines while at Costco, so I wouldn’t even have to stop anywhere to get more. Plus, I got to visit her and get hugs.

Of course, none of us wanted to tell my brother and his wife about this, since they would feel bad.

After I left, though, I got a message from my brother.

I forgot about all his security cameras. His door bell cam picked me up, so he saw that I was at the house, and he was wondering if everything was okay! I told him that I was doing another shopping trip and swung by. He’d contacted my daughter as well, and she just said I dropped something off.

Very hard to sneak one past my brother! 😄😄

Meanwhile, I was also in contact with the Cat Lady and we arranged to meet up. I did my Canadian Tire shopping first, getting three 40lb bags of hardwood pellets for the litter boxes, and another 4 fire bricks for our stockpile. I considered more pellets, but I think three of those bags is about as much as my mother’s car can handle well.

Have I mentioned how much I look forward to a getting another van?

It turned out for the better. The Cat Lady and I arranged to meet behind a dollar type store, where the parking lot tends to be empty. She returned our 1 hard sided carrier and 2 soft sided carriers, then added one of their own hard sided carriers for when she comes to pick up Turmeric. We had a chance to chat as well, and, my goodness. This woman just blows me away. They’ve got so much going on, and yet she’s still so dedicated to rescuing, getting care for and adopting out cats and kittens.

I got there a bit early, so I had time to go into the dollar store and picked up a few things. One of them was a cheap hallway mat to go under my desk and chair. Another layer of protection for the carpet, beyond the puppy pads and litter box under my desk.

Then it was off to the Walmart, for the largest shop of the day.

This is $112 and change, though not all of it was mine. My daughter sent me some funds and a request for the energy drinks and ice cream. The wet cat food is shredded only; no paté. I find the kittens prefer the shredded, and it’s much easier to split up between 6 bowls! There are two 2lb containers of grapes, red and green seedless, that were at an excellent price. Though we have the bread machine now, we don’t use it to make rye bread, which I really like. A 2L of milk to replace the expired one on our fridge. 🙄 We don’t actually use a lot of milk in general. The cream of tarter is an unusual thing for our cupboard. We pretty much never use it, but there are some things I’d like to make, and I’d rather have it on hand now, than have to run out and get some when I finally get around to making the things that need it.

I also got 2 more t-shirts for myself, since, in a smaller size than I got last time. I like my shirts big, but not so big they become a safety risk when working outside! I also got a third one for my husband, which I just realized is completely hidden in the photo.

Aside from this, I ended up having to gas up the tank on my mother’s car twice. That was about $55 in total.

*sigh*

My mother’s car is not very fuel efficient and seems to be getting worse. There’s only so much I can attribute to using the AC.

Have I mentioned how much I’m looking forward to a replacement van?

It’s been almost 6 months since I’ve been using a credit card to rebuild my credit rating. Which means that next month, I should be able to actively start looking for a suitable vehicle, apply for financing and not get dinged with insane interest rates or monthly payments.

Anyhow.

The running around shopping is done. For the rest of the month, we will be able to get what we need locally.

Once at home and everything was put away, I tested out something else I picked up at the dollar store. a long, microfibre duster with telescoping handle, to try and get all the cat hair off the walls in the dining room. The cats tend to hang out by the window the most, but also by the door in the summer, as we open the inner door so they can look out the window of the outer door. All along that wall, a thick layer of cat fur has accumulated. The wall itself, near the ceiling, the curtain rod we don’t use, and all the framed photos hanging on the wall between the window and the door.

Well, that new duster works like a charm! Some things it couldn’t get, like all the sliders that hooks on a curtain would be handing on, or the pull cords to open and close the drapes, but I was able to clear the hair off just about everything else. It looks so much better!

There is another area that’s really bad; in the hallway, I’ve got a decorative garland of flowers running up the hand rail of the stairs and along the ceiling, with fairy lights wound around it. Those flowers have become completely coated with a thick layer of cat fur! Considering that the garland if all flexible fake flowers and leaves, I was surprised to get off as much as I did. What we really need to do is take it down and carefully wash it in hot, soapy water, but at least it doesn’t have a thick coat of fur on it anymore!

While I was doing that, my husband asked me to do the shade on the hallway light. That was not a job for the duster, though. Since he’s so much taller than I am, he was able to go up the stairs and reach the screw to remove the shade for me to wash.

Not until after I got rid of this.

What an insane cloud of cat hair in there! It was about an inch thick!

At least it came off easily.

It may not have been useful for the light shade, but I’m really glad I got the fancy duster.

In other things, we’ve reached our high of 33C/91F today, though at one point, I was seeing the forecast change to a high of 35C/95F/ They hit that in the city. For our area, the 30 year record high was 30C/86F, so we’ve gone past that. We’re getting conflicting predictions for rain over the next while. I’ll probably end up watering the garden tomorrow. At least today looks like it’ll be the last really hot day of the year.

Oh, I just made a liar out of myself. I double checked the monthly forecast, and it’s now saying we’ll have a 30C/86F day on the very last day of September!

The first day of October is supposed to be less than half that, so I expect the predictions to change a lot between now and then.

Either way, the garden is going to lover the warmer temperatures!

The Re-Farmer

So many kitties, and trellis bed progress

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I headed out this afternoon, and got distracted by many adorable fluff balls.

I’ve only recently started using Instagram to upload my photos, since I’m running out of storage space on my WordPress account. WP does allow the purchase of extra storage space, without having to upgrade plans, but the cost for 50G is Cdn$68.54 PER MONTH!!!! – billed yearly. Which is insane. If I upgraded my plan to Business, it would cost Cdn$33/month, billed yearly, and that would come with 50G of storage.

So… uploading to Instagram it is.

The problem is, when I upload photos – especially groups of photos – the images are often corrupted. They seem fine right up until I hit “share”, and when I check them, there’s often something wrong with them. Some are so bad, most of the photo can’t even be made out. I thought the issue might be my computer, but when I double checked using my phone, the images were still corrupted. Today, I had to reload this next batch of photos three times before it worked, and even then, the third one is corrupted. At least it’s still visible, though!

These were my distractions.

That orange and white kitten is successfully socialized, and absolutely adorable. The tuxedo in Baby Jail is not socialized at all! I am happy that they are going in and out of the cage comfortably, though. If we ever need to suddenly keep a cat in there until we can take it somewhere, they will already be comfortable in the space.

Octomom’s babies are all over the place these days. The one using a brick as a pillow is just too adorable!

After I took those photos, I started walking slowly in between the cat shelters, and the orange and white kitten came over. I was able to pet him and pick him up, and he was purring up a storm. This made the littles very curious, and they started to come out from under the cat house to see what was going on. That they were willing to come within a couple of feet of me was quite encouraging.

I had to tear myself away from the kittens and get to work! It’s taken forever for me to get back to those poplars I cut for the vertical supports on the trellis beds.

I cut the logs to about 7’2″ lengths, in case the bottom ends need to be trimmed flat. In the first photo is the finished stack of 7′ lengths. I got three out of one log. Most of them got me two lengths. In the corner of the photo is the stack of log ends, or sections that were just too crooked to use.

It was as I was finishing up that I realized I was feeling really dizzy and getting the shakes. It was hot, yes, but “only” about 23C/73F Then I remembered.

I’d had a late breakfast, so when I lay down for a nap at about lunch time, I didn’t eat first. I forgot to eat something before heading outside.

Because I’m an idiot that way.

So I quickly cleaned up then headed in for some food.

When I came back out, I had to figure out the best way to get the logs to where the trellis beds are going to be. I got out the loppers and started clearing a path through the spruce grove. At one point, I had to get the baby chain saw to cut away a fallen tree that was half buried in the grass.

Once I was reasonably sure there weren’t any branches, bushes or small trees to get tangled on, I grabbed a log and carried it over. It was one of the bigger ones, but I could carry it on my shoulder easily enough. The problem was the distance. There was no way I was going to be able to carry them all out like that, without wearing myself out too quickly.

So for the other larger logs, I grabbed a rope to drag them with, which you can see in the second picture.

Of course, if I’m going to do this to make it easier on myself, I really need to make sure there are no stumps of branches to dig into the ground! I adjusted the rope to turn the log a couple of times. In the third photo, you can see all the grass that had been pulled up by what turned out to be two “anchors” on the log! After I got those facing up, the rest of the drag went much more smoothly!

I also took a video of it, to give an idea of just how far the logs need to be carried. For this, I chose a log light enough that I could carry it with one hand, while taking video with the other.

Also, my phone’s microphone really picks up the sound of my breathing! 😄

There’s a brief pause as I show were I had to clear the fallen tree. Just a little one, but too long to just move aside.

In the end, I was only able to move three lengths over. I used the rope to drag the third, bigger one over, after I took the video. It was just too hot for that kind of work. I can’t handle the heat like I used to!

I’m going to have to work on moving these early in the morning, before things get hot. I won’t be able to do much over the next couple of days. Tomorrow, not only am I going into the city for our first monthly stock up shop, but I’m losing a daughter for almost a month. She’ll be house sitting for my brother and his wife while they go on a trip of a lifetime, and going over early so they can show her what she needs to do and what to keep an eye on. So I’m losing one of the more able bodied members of our household!

Looking at the long range forecast, though, I see things have changed. We’re going to be getting hotter again. There’s even a forecast of 30C/86F on the weekend!

Which will be great for the garden. Especially for the squash and melons. The longer we have with warmer temperatures and no frost, the better our chances of having something to harvest.

Well, I’ll figure out what to do during the heat. We really need to get progress done on those beds! Plus, if I can get enough dead spruces cut down, I hope to get more high raised beds built, too, replacing some of the current low raised beds.

At the rate we’ve been going, though, I’ll be lucky to get just one trellis bed done!

The Re-Farmer

Outside bebbies and, how long has it been?

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After I finished with the potatoes, I did some other stuff outside, then headed in through the sun room, where I found these guys.

That white and grey kitten Beep Bop is nursing is not one of hers!

It took a while for me to even see the grey tabby beside her!

The second picture is of a pair of kittens I found in Baby Jail. I’m glad they’re comfortable going in there, because if we ever need to hang onto some kittens until the cat lady can pick them up, it will make things much easier!

Though I suppose we’ll need to buy another litter pan. 😄

The black and white one has been socialized enough that I can usually walk up to it and pet it, and even pick it up for a cuddle.

The white and grey one is among those I’ve never been able to get close to before. Today, however, I was able to reach in, and it stayed. I got hissed at, then my fingers got sniffed. After that, I was able to do ear skritches, and they were accepted! Yay!!! I couldn’t reach very far through the “door”, but it was far enough. 😊

One of the things I got done was to finally clean the eavestroughs on the garage. I was planning to do it after we pick up the small scaffolding we’re looking to buy second hand after next pay period. Far more stable and safe than the ladders we’ve been using. However, I could see all sorts of green leaves growing out of them, and on one side of the garage, it was starting to fall away from the eaves.

So, I got out the step ladder and managed to get it done. On the far side, where the trough was starting to fall away, I actually found worms in there! As for all those green leaves I was seeing, no surprise that it was almost all Chinese elm seeds that had germinated. There was a veritable forest starting in there!

We haven’t cleaned those eavestroughs since we moved here, which is almost 6 years now. I didn’t realized until today, just how long it’s been since they’ve been cleaned. As I was scraping the bottoms of the troughs, I realized the granular material on the bottom was from the original roof shingles. When I was a kid, the garage and the house had the same colour shingles. I used to play up on the house roof, so I remember the mix of grey, with a bit of blue and green, granules quite well. I even found the remains of a package of spare shingles, some of which we could even use on the kibble house roof.

The garage has a metal roof now. I don’t know when it was installed, but I know it was well before the youngest of my brothers passed away, so I’d say it has been around 20 years. Maybe 25.

I’m having a really hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that no one cleaned those eavestroughs out since before the metal roof was put on! My three brothers were all doing what they could to help my parents maintain the place. Surely at least one of them thought to clean the eavestroughs on the garage at least once since the metal roof was done! But there was no mistaking what I was seeing, or how much of it was there.

As for the sagging part of the trough, in one area the wood it’s attached to is so rotten, it can’t hold anything, but that’s not where it was sagging the most. I was able to just hammer things back in again. It was the sheer weight of all the composted material in there that was dragging them down. It should be just fine, now.

Now we just have to make sure we don’t let them sit for another… 20? 25??? … years before cleaning them again!

The Re-Farmer

Morning update

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At around 4am or so, we finally got hit by one of the many little thunderstorms that have been passing us by. It got very loud, and we had a bit of a light show, but it seems we only caught the edges of it. We had some rain, but not enough to bring the rain barrel to even half full again.

As I write this, my husband and I should be on the road to his medical appointment, but we got a call this morning to reschedule it to Thursday. I can’t say I mind the delay. With the van gone, we have to use my mother’s car, which is going to be an incredibly painful drive for my husband. There’s no getting around it until we can get a replacement vehicle, and that still won’t be for a few more months.

Then I found a text message from the garage asking if Thursday would work to get the oil changed on my mother’s car. It would be a morning drop off, and with only one vehicle, I’d have to stay in town until it’s done, so getting to the medical appointment takes priority. Hopefully, he can fit the car in soon after.

Pain had my husband up really early today, so he took care of feeding the outside cats at about 5am. That must have confused the kitties! 😄 When I went out later to do my morning rounds, I spotted this.

It’s Octomom, bringing one of her kittens to the kibble house!

We still haven’t figured out where she moved her babies, but from how active this little one is, we’re going to be seeing all of them, soon. Mama must be more than ready to bring them to where solid food can be relied on! There are two black kittens in this litter. My younger daughter has always wanted an all black cat. If we can get them socialized, we might bring one in, after Decimus and her babies are adopted out.

Oh, that reminds me! I was messaging with the Cat Lady. She’s still working on her husband about the two kittens she’s promised to take; Ghosty and one of the outside kittens that is sicker. She says she may have a placement for Ghosty, so long as she doesn’t turn out to have something major, like feline leukemia or something. That would be so awesome! It’s getting time to take good pictures of all the kittens to send to her, so she can pass them on to her contacts. Getting a picture of Decimus will be a bit more difficult. She is either moving around too much, or covered in kittens!

Anyhow…

Today has a high of only 22C/72F. According to my desktop app, we are 20C/68F right now, and raining.

There is no rain outside.

So I’m thinking I might be able to do some painting this afternoon, then start cleaning up and debarking the logs for the trellis bed. I want to make sure to cut away and smooth out any branch ends and sticky-outy-bits. That’s something I’ve noticed causing a surprising amount of trouble with the high raised bed. You don’t notice stuff like that, until you’ve stabbed yourself with a broken branch end you never even noticed! The netting we’ve got over the beans catches on everything, too, so the smoother we can make the logs, the better.

What rain we did have last night was enough to water the garden well enough. I had to refill the rain barrel out by the Crespo squash, but the squash itself did not need watering. I neglected to take a picture of my little harvest this morning; beans, a green zucchini, and a few Spoon tomatoes were ready.

I’m really happy with how the squash patch is doing. Part of why we’re trying to many different kinds of winter squash is to not only see what we like to eat, but what grows well here. Right now, we have a couple of Boston Marrow squash developing, one on each plant. I think there’s only one, maybe two, Red Kuri, and one hulless seed pumpkin. For all the plants and flowers, we still have only one Honeyboat Delicata developing. There’s also only one Winter Sweet developing.

Then there’s the North Georgia Candy Roaster, and the Pink Banana! Both are now producing plenty of female flowers, and there seem to be quite a few squash that have been successfully pollinated. Though I’m seeing and hearing lots of pollinators – especially in the melon tower – I’m still hand pollinating the squash, unless I spot an insect actively pollinating a female flower. If things continue to go well, we should at least have a decent harvest of the candy roaster and banana squash, and enough of the others to at least taste them. That will go a long way towards deciding what we will try growing next year.

Weather willing, I will make another garden tour video soon.

But first, I need to make a quick trip to the post office and pick up some packages!

I’m kinda glad we didn’t end up going to the clinic today. I’m much appreciating the quieter day.

The Re-Farmer

Project progress: finally getting started!

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Today, after many, many delays, we finally got some progress on those raised bed covers we need to build!

My daughter and I set up the folding table we made using the legs we found when cleaning up the new basement, and a section of 3/4 plywood found in the pump shack. The hard part was finding level enough ground for it, and still be close to the outside outlet. We ended up putting it almost against the house, and that’s where we set up the miter saw. Then we moved the swing bench that’s been sitting on the sidewalk block patio under the kitchen window for the past while, so we could set up the table saw close enough to plug it in without an extension cord.

The first thing we tried to do was cut the 12ft long 1″x4″ boards in half, lengthwise. My daughter, sweetheart that she is, found where the saw blade could be adjusted up and down. My husband and I had tried everything to raise that blade and finally concluded it couldn’t be raised. Turns out, it was just badly rusted and that’s why it wasn’t moving. !! I wonder how many years it sat in that shed before I found it?

The first two boards we cut in half did not go well! My daughter was feeding the board from one side while I supported it from the other, but it just did not want to stay against the guide. We ended up with some wobbly cuts! So we cut the others shorter first, then cut them in half. We measured the beds first to confirm the dimensions. The side boards total 9′ long, but then there’s the width of the end boards; I forgot I’d attached those to the ends of the side boards, and not to the insides. That made the beds 9′ 2″ long. The end boards were 3′ 1/4″ long.

So we will be cutting 9′ and 3′ for the cover frames.

The boards were exactly 12′ and 1/4″ long, so we just measured off the 9′ and cut it. The cuts take off a fraction of an inch, so the remaining sections should be almost exactly the right length for the short ends.

It was much, much easier to cut the shorter lengths in half on the table saw!

All the pieces are now cut. The 3′ lengths are in the front, then the 9′ lengths. In the back is one of the two first 12′ boards we cut in half, with the wonky cuts. The other one was used to cut more 3′ lengths, since being a bit wonky won’t be an issue for some parts of the build.

There is also one board at the top of the photo that was set aside because it has damage on it in two places. We will still be able to use the undamaged parts at some point.

As for the plans, I sketched what I had in mind out for my daughter.

We will be building four 9’x3′ frames, but two of them will be used in one cover. The Tom Thumb corn is going to need taller protection from deer, so two frames will be joined by 3′ vertical supports. One more support will be added across the top in the middle, to keep it from bowing outwards. I also plan to add screw eyes inside the middles and tie a cord across, to keep the sides from bowing out. A cord that close to ground level will be less in the way of growing plants.

At this point, we could just put a net around it, though if we wanted this over a bed with taller plants in it, we could potentially add hoops to the top for extra height.

That box frame is the one we need to get done first, as the corn is most at risk for getting eaten. Between the deer and the racoons, it’s going to become an issue in the near future! If we want to keep racoons out, though, we’ll have to use hardware cloth and find a way to secure the cover to the frame, so they don’t just knock it off.

The other two frames will have rounded tops. We have some wire fencing with 4″ squares that I plan to use with one of them, making a slightly higher cover. The fence wire can then support things like netting, plastic or shade cloth, as needed.

With the other, I was thinking of using the hoops that are currently still over the carrot bed, but… now that I’m looking at the plans, I realized we have enough of that wire fencing to use on both frames. We could make them different heights, for different needs. A shorter one, for example, would be handy for shorter produce, or to create a mini greenhouse over newly sown beds. A taller one would be great for plants that grow higher, but not high enough to need that box cover we’ll be putting over the corn.

As we build more high raised beds, the plan is to stick to the 9’x3′ size, so that these covers can be used interchangeably on any of them. We’re doing three covers for now. One of them should be useable on the high raised bed we have now, which currently has hoops to protect the beans from the deer. The box bed with the red onions does not really need a cover, except maybe to keep the cats from lying in it, or the birds from digging in the mulch. Over time, we plan to build enough covers for all the raised beds we make.

As for cutting the pieces, I was really happy. We will definitely need to get a new table saw, as this one was having issues. It will do for now, though. What I was really excited about was the miter saw. I bought it at a garage sale, and this is the first time we’ve tried to use it. Of course, it didn’t come with an instruction manual! Which is fine. It’s easy enough to figure out.

Up until now, I’ve been using a hand saw to make cross cuts. No matter how careful I am, I always end up making crooked cuts, and there are always those little bits of wood that break before the saw can cut them that need to be sanded. So excited to get beautiful clean cuts! Plus, the speed of it was fabulous!

Once the cutting was done, I realized we would not have enough screws to assemble them all, so we decided to go into town and get more. The table and miter saws got put back into the sun room, and the cut pieces went onto the table we used for the miter saw. We were getting hints of rain, and we didn’t want to take a chance. It’s a good thing we did, because there was a downpour while we were out!

When we got to the hardware store, we drove around the block a couple of times but could find no parking, so my daughter offered to buy us lunch! By the time we were done, things were no longer so busy, and I was able to park and run in.

Before we left home, I took a pair of calipers to the water pipe leading from the house to the garden that needs to be repaired. It’s a 1 inch pipe. After finding the screws we needed at the hardware store, I went looking for a flexible PVC coupling with metal clamps. The smallest size they had was 1 3/4″. That would leave too big of a gap for the clamps to be able to seal it on a 1 inch pipe. I talked to an employee, and showed her the picture I took of the calipers on the water pipe, which also showed the crack in the pipe very clearly. She tried to find something else that would work, but there wasn’t anything they had. In the end, she recommended I talk to a plumber.

What I will most likely do is go to the hardware store in my mother’s town, which is where I first had the flexible coupling recommended as a possible fix. They are a bigger store with a larger plumbing section, and may have a smaller size coupling in stock. If worse comes to worse, we can order them online. In fact, I’ve already found some sized specifically to fit on 1″ pipe.

As you can tell, I’m really hoping to avoid having to dig up and replace the entire length of pipe!

By the time we got home, the downpour my other daughter told us about was done! I don’t know if it’ll be dry enough for us to start assembling the first cover today. We’re supposed to get more rain, too.

This is where I really wish the storage shed wasn’t full of my parents’ stuff, that my mother insists we keep and is constantly afraid someone might come in and steal. As if anyone would be interested in the bags and bags of their old clothes, boxes and boxes of household stuff, or their old furniture. My late brother had used that building as a workshop, but that was more than 10 years ago. We never had a chance to even see what all was still in there, as my brother and his wife had already started moving my parent’s things into there before we moved in, and it was being used as storage for other things even before then.

So we make do with working outside, when the weather allows!

Well, this project has been delayed repeated for about a month now. One more day won’t hurt, if it comes to that!

The Re-Farmer

So many! Plus an evening in the garden

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While catching up on a few garden things in the cool of the evening, I happened to walk near the covered board pile outside the living room window, where Not-Junk Pile has her litter. I’ve been seeing 3 kittens running around and playing on the tarp, and the tire and tire rim we have on top to keep it weighed down.

I could see Not-Junk Pile lying in the grass, nursing her littles. They noticed me, and three kittens ran off into the brush around the board pile.

Leaving three others behind! They and their mother watched me closely as I walked by, but did not run away.

Six.

She has SIX babies!!!!

I saw them again later, and it was quite hilarious. I had to zoom in from a distance, and this is the clearest photo I could get.

That’s just a whole bowl full of babies in there with her! 😹😹

As I was in and out of the sun room, I spotted the kitten with the messed up eye. It’s looking really swollen – even more than before – around and behind the eye socket. I let the girls know, so they could try and get it and tend to it as best they could, but it ran under the counter shelf, and none of us have spotted it since. I did manage to snag a black and white kitten with a gummed up eye, and one of my daughters was able to wash it clear. There’s a white and grey kitten with an eye stuck closed, too, but I haven’t been able to catch it.

As I was finishing up, I spotted a teeny little tuxedo running around outside the sun room door. I’m not sure that I recognise it.

Speaking of recognizing cats, after I put the kibble out and cats were coming around, I realized I was seeing both Junk Pile and Not-Junk Pile. I tried to move closer to Junk Pile, but honestly, the only way I can tell them apart unless they are literally right next to each other, is from the wounds Not-Junk Pile has behind her ears, from scratching herself. We still haven’t been able to catch her to give her that ear might medication, which is really getting to be a problem. The wounds behind her ears had been healing up, but today they are red and raw again. I did manage to come close enough that she sniffed my fingers, but that’s as close as she’ll let me get to her.

We reached at least 24C/75F today, though the thermometer in the sun room was hitting 30C/86F. For all the severe thunderstorm warnings we were getting, we didn’t even get rain. So I made a point of watering as much of the garden as I could, while doing other stuff.

It’s too early for the water soluble fertilizer I used to make much visible difference, but that bed with the Roma tomatoes is bothering me. They are just not thriving, for all that they are producing tomatoes. That bed has a mulch of shredded paper, because that’s all we had left at the time. It does the job, but isn’t as good as a grass mulch, and we have a nice big pile of grass clippings available right now, so I went ahead and topped up the bed with a few inches of grass clippings around the tomatoes, between the onions, and especially the edge, where the crab grass comes up from under the logs framing the bed – and right on top of the soaker hose that winds its way around the bed, leaving only the connector sticking out. Then I went around and pruned the bottom branches off the tomato plants. I’m hoping the fresh mulch and the pruning will help the tomatoes get healthier.

After that was done, I hooked up the garden hose, then went to look at the new soaker hose I set up and tested in the purple corn bed. I got the soaker hose because it was affordable, but I guess you get what you paid for. It works just fine, except for the connector. Inside the connector was a flat green disc with a small hole in the middle. I figured it was to control the flow of water into the soaker hose, but when I hooked up the water hose, it sprayed from between the threads. With the disc there, there’s just too much water pressure, forcing the water out through the connector. So I tried taking out the disc and tried again, but there is no rubber washer, so it still leaked. A lot. I have extra rubber washers, but when I put one in, I discovered that the connector isn’t as deep as others. With the washer in place, there wasn’t enough thread to screw on the garden hose! The washer is just too thick. It’s fine on every other hose. Just not this one. I did eventually use it without the rubber washer, but not for long. There was just too much water leaking.

I did, however, have an extra female coupling, so while giving the other soaker hose time to give the tomatoes and onions a good watering, I cut off the connector on the new hose and replaced it. The original coupling was at the end of a plastic tube on the outside of the soaker hose. The new coupling has a metal tube that needs to be inserted into the hose, then a worm clamp is tightened to keep it in place and from leaking. Getting that into the soaker hose took awhile, though! It was designed for a half inch hose – which is smaller than the hoses we have, but the clamp makes up for that. The soaker hose opening is narrower than half an inch! Thankfully, the material it’s made of does stretch, and I was able to get it in properly, then clamp it down.

Once the tomato bed was watered, I tested out the new hose with its now connector, and it worked perfectly!

Oh, slight interruption!

My daughter read that tonight was supposed to be a good night to see the Northern lights, and she invited me to go outside and see if they were visible, or if it was too cloudy. It turned out to be too cloudy, but we heard the barking sound of racoons, so we went to check.

We found two young racoons on the cat hour roof. When they saw us, they flattened themselves down as much as possible, and froze! We ended up using the hose to chase them off, but… gosh darn it, they are so flippin’ cute!

Anyhow… where was I?

Ah, yes.

With the new soaker hose working, I decided to set up a sprinkler over the squash patch, so the whole patch can be watered at once. We have oscillating sprinklers we found after moving here – three of them. They work, in that they spray water, but the oscillating part doesn’t work at all on two of them.

Of course, the one that worked was the last one I tested!

Turns out that if it’s set right, it not only waters the entire squash patch, but also the small patch with the drum gourds and zucca melon – and the corn bed! So it got a real good watering this evening!

By the time I used the soaker hoses and sprinkler for a half our each, it was getting too dark to do much more, so it was time to go in, and away from the mosquitoes! We’re still getting predictions for rain tonight, but I’m not expecting it to reach us, so I might be watering some more, in the morning!

I so enjoy being able to work outside. I’d say outside all day if I could! Heck, with the temperatures we’ve been having overnight, I’d happily sleep outside, too. One of these days, we’ll have a mosquito proof gazebo, and I’ll be able to do just that!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s progress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: melons transplanted – finally!

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First, the cuteness!

Decimus has taken to wandering around and exploring the house, which gave me the opportunity last night, to get a good look at her babies. Three of them still have their eyes closed. The bitties are getting big enough that, after squirming their way out of the cat cave, they can squirm their way back in again, all on their own!

I was going to my mother’s this afternoon, so I was outside early to get some work done in the garden. I hoped to be out there before it got too warm, but we were above 20C/68F in almost no time at all. Ah, well. At least I got some progress!

We had very few melons germinate. Of the four types we tried (all short season varieties), there were no watermelon, only two Sarah’s Choice, three Pixie and four Halona. I had intended to transplant them into the new trellis beds, but the seedlings really needed to get into the ground.

So I made do.

I used the kiddie pool that has come in so handy over the past few years! We definitely need to get another one before the end of the growing season.

I punched some holes for drainage, then put a layer of grass clippings over the bottom. A couple of wheel barrow loads of soil was enough to fill it. The soil got a soaking, then a layer of grass clipping mulch, and another soaking.

Then I left it for the water to be absorbed and dealt with another problem. Overhanging tree branches! The row of trees my mother allowed to take up where she used to have a raspberry patch includes a bunch of Chinese elms. Around this spot, their branches were getting quite large and dense, and hanging down low enough that I kept getting my hat caught in them. I cut away quite a lot of the branches and some of the smaller trunks. The goal is to get rid of all of them, but that will wait until I can get out there with a chain saw. For now, I just needed to clear the area around our container garden area.

That done, I have the new bed one more soak, then got the transplants. The two Sarah’s Choice went into the middle, while the others were spaced around them. They’re a bit densely planted, so I wanted to make sure they could climb. I had picked up some more of those large plastic coated, metal stakes this spring, so I had enough to put six around the outside, plus one in the middle. I then used the broken canopy tent pieces that had previously been used to support the protective boards around the newly transplanted tomatoes, and some zip ties to attach horizontal pieces around the perimeter. Last of all, I added a couple of shorter plastic coated metal stakes across the middle, for the Sarah’s Choice melons to climb. If necessary, we can add another level of horizontal pieces higher up.

There is a risk that the plants on the outside will end up shading out the ones on the inside, but I hope this makeshift trellis will allow them to climb and still allow light through. When we grew the Pixie and Halona before, it was a drought year, and the greenery didn’t get very dense.

So those are finally in!

Once done, I left early enough to hit the post office before going to my mother’s. While at the store, I talked to the owner, and got the okay to bring our extra tomato and pepper transplants over tomorrow, as giveaways.

I’ve since come back from doing my evening rounds, giving the melons one more watering, to settle things in. In spite of the rain we had yesterday, I found the Crespo squash, the low raised beds, grow bags and the squash patch all needed watering! Some of the summer squash are coming up, but I think I will need to replant a few.

While transplanting the winter squash, I included some of the Jiffy pellets that did not germinate, just in case. Sure enough, a few of them have actually germinated, and the new seedlings are looking stronger that some of the transplants! The transplants should have gone into the ground earlier. There is one winter squash that has been lost, though, and from the slime off over the remains, I’d say it got eaten by slugs. We have a lot of frogs this year, but they’ve been hanging out in the low raised beds. We should set up some little frog shelters around the squash patch to encourage them to hang out and eat the snails!

I’m really happy with how the potatoes are doing. Even the Purple Peruvians, which were the last variety to emerge, are now showing flower buds. I even spotted a couple of Indigo Blue tomatoes forming!

The only problem I have is the cats! While watering the beds, a couple of them decided to lie in the ones I hadn’t got to, yet – right on top of the seedlings! They like to lie on the mulch, and don’t care if that has them lying across seedlings, too, the buggers! Some onions and turnips got a bit shmushed, but I think they’ll recover.

I will be quite happy to pass on all those leftover tomatoes. I’d hoped to get the rest of the Romas into the ground, but with all the delays that keep popping up, I don’t know that I’ll have anything built to plant them in fast enough. Once they’ve been passed on, I will be able to take more time to get it done right, and not have to rush. I’d still like to get it built in time to plant any really short season crops we’ve got, but at this point, I am willing to let a lot of the direct sowing we intended to do, slide for this year. I’m still debating whether to plant some pole beans with the Montana Morado corn. I keep waffling back and forth on that. We shall see.

The next few days will be modestly hot, so I hope to catch up on the outside work!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: transplanting mysteries

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Okay, so I managed to get a bit done in the garden this evening. Also, I had a wonderful surprise. Rolando Moon appeared! I haven’t seen her in at least a month, maybe two. At her age, we just never know if she’ll disappear and not return anymore.

I was also happy to see The Distinguished Guest wander into the north side of the property. Happy, that is, until I heard a cat fight and discovered he had attacked Pinky, and I had to chase him off. *sigh*

I had some squash that were getting too big for their pots that needed to go in, so I focused on the hill we grew pumpkins in last year.

This is how it looked after taking a weed trimmer to it, after the mowing around it was done. Those bricks had been placed under the developing pumpkins to keep them off the ground. The round thing is an ant trap. There was two of them, but one disappeared when it got caught by the push mower, last year.

They didn’t work. The ant hill is still there.

Thankfully, the bug spray I used seems to do a good job of deterring ants, too. I dug up the bed with a garden fork and pulled out as many weeds and roots as I could. The ground was crawling with ants, but while I had them on my boots, that’s about as far as they went.

Before, this hill had only ever had two plants transplanted into it. After weeding it and working the last of a bag of sheep’s manure into the surface, I raked it out into a flattish square.

I fit 6 transplants in. The row of three on the far right are Zucca melon, from a second seed start. In the middle row, the two in the foreground are African Drum gourd, also from a second seed start. The other four were in an unlabeled pot. I restarted both the Zucca melon and Drum gourd at the same time, but one unlabeled pot got mixed up. I think they are also drum gourds, but I’m not sure. At this stage, the leaf and stem shapes look almost identical.

We’ll figure it out soon enough, if they survive.

I then filled in the last of the space available in the wattle weave bed.

I had removed the protective plastic from the Sweet Chocolate peppers, and they now all have support stakes. I left the protection around the one Classic Eggplant, though it did get its own support stake, as did the luffa in the corner.

I transplanted one of each variety of pepper seedlings we had waiting. Between the luffa and the eggplant is Dragonfly. The three around the curve are the Cheyenne, Early Summer and Early Sunsation. I wanted to get at least one of each type transplanted, just in case we aren’t able to get things ready early enough to get the rest into the ground.

To the left of the luffa is the largest of the 3 mystery squash that germinated with some Roma tomatoes. I think they might be luffa, but I’m 100% not sure.

As I write this, it’s coming up on 8:30pm, and we’ve finally started to cool down a bit. What I got done wasn’t a lot, and certainly didn’t involve much physical exertion, but it still left me dripping with sweat. The next few days are supposed to be every so slightly cooler, and then things are supposed to heat up again. And physical exertion is going to be the main work, because we have to start hauling garden soil over to the squash patch, so we can start transplanting. We can’t even start that until I take the weed trimmer to the tall grass around the pile that couldn’t be mowed.

It’s going to be hot, sweaty and disgusting work, but we’re running out of time. It’s not just prepping spots for the transplants. This year, I was going to try direct sowing the summer squash, and those seeds should be in the ground already.

I suspect that by the time we finish building the permanent trellis beds, it’ll be too late to direct sow a lot of things. I might try, anyway. We could find ourselves with a long, mild fall again.

There’s only so much we can do, though. None of us area handling this heat well.

The Re-Farmer

My whack job and, I can see!

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It’s past 6 as I write this, and we’re still at 31C/88F, with a humidex of 38C/100F. We’ve got all sorts of heat warnings going on. The hottest temperatures start at about 3pm, so I tried to do as much as I could outside, before we reached that point.

Today was a weed whacking day.

I was able to use the trimmer around all the raised beds. I could get in between them with the push mower, but that left a lot of tall crab grass and dandelions along the edges. The weed trimmer line can get under the logs a fair bit, so it makes quite a difference.

I also got the tall grass and weeds in the squash patch, then kept on going. Much of the area in the back is too rough for a mower, though my SIL did make a few passes across the area. I did the squash hill, and the corner on the left that’s in shadow.

I was really appreciating the shadows!

I did take a pause after the paths around the beds were done, to go to the post office.

My glasses were in!

The ones with the smaller lenses are what I wore as I continued working, as they were closer in size to my old glasses. They needed less getting used to. I didn’t want to be dealing with depth perception issues or head rushes while using the weed trimmer. I got use to the new prescription very quickly, though.

I’m wearing the larger lensed glasses now. Those are a lot like the glasses I used to wear through most of junior and senior high. I like the larger lenses, and I have better peripheral vision, but they do take a bit more getting used to seeing with.

After I finished the weed trimming and headed inside, I decided to try watching a movie on my desktop. I watched the entire movie, in one sitting, with zero eye strain! Not only that, but I can also tap or read messages on my phone, without having to take my glasses off!

I am quite happy with them, so far. I do feel nervous taking them on and off, though. The designs on both are a lot more delicate compared to my old glasses, so they feel very fragile. They aren’t, but it’ll take some getting used to!

After I had a chance to cool down and get used to my new glasses, I headed back outside to do a few things. One of those was to water all the garden beds. In this heat, even the stuff that is mulched is needing it.

Once again, I found so many frogs coming out from under the boards covering the Uzbek Golden carrots! I checked and saw that carrots were sprouted, so removed the boards. I set them along the edge of the bed, on top of the mulch, making sure to dampen the mulch first, so the frogs will still have somewhere moist and cool to rest under.

When watering the Spoon tomatoes I transplanted last night, I found on looking like it has slumped over in the heat. It turned out to be snapped above the lowest branch. I broke the top off the rest of the way, but the remaining stem may actually do okay.

There is more weed trimming to do, but I’m done for the day. In fact, I’m seriously considering going to bed once I’m done this post!

That is, if the cats on my bed would give me any space.

The Re-Farmer