good news

Our 2022 garden: fall planting, garden progress, and exciting news!

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I’m just going to start with the exciting news.

The tree guys came today! They’ve been here all morning, and have just headed into town for a lunch break. They have finished the big pile in the outer yard. When they come back, they’ll do the small pile by the garage, then work on the piles in the maple grove.

Now, when the owner of the company came here for an estimate, we talked about getting as much done as possible for 3 hours, because that’s what my budget is.

When the guys came this morning and I was walking around with one of them, showing him where the piles were, and where they could dump the chips, he told me I’ve got them all day. He knew I had cash for them, and whatever else it cost, we can pay them as we are able.

!!!!

Which is good, because that big pile took about 4 hours to do.

Meanwhile…

Check out the sunflowers we have opening now! We did not plant any sunflowers this year, though it had been in the plans. There are a few things we didn’t plant, with how crazy this spring was. And yet, we have several sunflowers growing, all planted by the birds. And it looks like the extra bit of fertilizer they were in helped, too! 😉

The Little Finger eggplant in the black grow bag are blooming! It would be awesome if we actually got some eggplant before the first frost hits.

I finally got to working on the cleaning up the lettuce bed.

I kept at least two of each variety of lettuce to go to seed.

After working on pulling out as many weed roots as I could, I decided it was not worth trying to plant anything at the end closest to the house. There’s just too many things spreading into there.

On the left is the Bloomsdale spinach I already planted.

Between the kittens and the grasshoppers, I decided these needed to be covered. I had some longer plastic coated metal stakes I got last year. The metal was hollow tubes, and they bent and broke easily in our soil. I ended up breaking some of them in half, to have me a bunch of shorter rods. I finally got to use the PEX tubing I picked up for this purpose. They fit over the metal stakes perfectly.

The small space near the Bloomsdale spinach got more Bloomsdale in it, while the longer space got Hybrid Olympia spinach planted in it.

After lashing the last of my 6′ bamboo stakes to the middle of the hoops, I grabbed the shorter pieces of mosquito netting from the main garden and set them up here. They are not pegged to the ground. I’m hoping to not need to do that. As they are now, it would be a simple matter to slide the slips up the hoops to be able to reach under. The excess on the ends are rolled around boards, which can also be easily moved, if needed.

The netting does have holes in it, so insects could still get in, but not as much.

When cleaning up this bed in the fall, I’m hoping to start adding walls to build it up higher. I’m just not sure what I’ll have available to use for that. I don’t expect to make high raised beds here, but I do want to have something in between a high and a low raised bed. Partly to make it easier on the back, but also partly to get it up and away from all those invasive plants! That and working around the lilac is a pain. This bed will be a maximum of 2′ wide, so we’ll be able to each all of it from just one side.

Oh! I see the tree guys coming back on the garage cam. Yay!

I am just so excited by the fabulous job they are doing!

The Re-Farmer

Ginger, sliced and snipped!

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We have good news!

Image source

We just got a call from the surgeon at the vet clinic.

The surgery went very well. His heart rate was steady the whole time, and there was minimal bleeding. When she called, he was starting to try and lift his head.

And yes, he got snipped too, so when he is all healed up, he will also be safe around the ladies.

We will get more instructions when we pick him up, which should be about 4 hours from the time I am writing this. I mentioned that we will be keeping him isolated in the sun room and asked for how long we should do that, before bringing him in with the other cats. She said to wait until the wound is fully healed, which should be about 2 weeks. That will give him time to get used to the leg not being there anymore, and puts him at less risk if there are any altercations with other cats. I mentioned we were thinking of slowly introducing other cats to him, in the sun room, and she thought that was a good idea.

He will be coming home with more the pain killers we have already been giving him, plus another that had me laughing. My husband is on the same medication! She said it might make him groggy, and I just had to add, “it does that to humans, too.”

We will be getting another call with what the final bill will be (it wasn’t finished at the time she was calling me), so we know what to expect when we come to get him at the end of the clinic’s day. It sounds like they have just started to open on Sundays, because the doctor had to actually look up what the “end of the day” meant. :-D

The main thing is that all is well with the Ginger bug!

Yippee!!!

The Re-Farmer

Good news!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

And it only took 2 years and 5 months.

My husband got a letter from the pain clinic in the city today. He has an appointment for next month!

Which will make it almost exactly 2 1/2 years since he was first put on the waiting list.

It took 2 years and a new doctor making some noise just to finally get their 14 page (or was it 17 pages?) questionnaire. That got sent in, but then the lock down happened and my husband, like so many others, got knocked off the priority list for health care.

He had to call in to confirm, then answer pandemic related questions. He was also told if he doesn’t have a mask, they’ll provide one.

He had a little chat with our daughter, and she will be making him a pirate mask.

Finally, he’ll be able to talk to a specialist about managing his pain. Who knows what will come of it. At the pain clinic before we moved, he had a team of 5 different specialists overseeing his case. The heart clinic out here has a team of 5 specialists, too, but they all work together on the same things, so when he comes in for an appointment there, he can see any one of them. At the previous pain clinic, each team member focused on a different area, such as pain medications, physical pain management, etc, with one primary care giver. We have no clue what to expect out here. So much of the health care in this province is different from before. Even with basic health care, they do things slightly differently, though at least part of that is the difference between living in the city, or in the boonies, like we are.

I am really hoping this is the start of some sort of treatment plan to at least get the pain under better control. We’ve known for some time – and at least one specialist made sure we understood this – that my husband will never be not-disabled again. He will never be 100% pain free. The best we can expect is an improvement in quality of life. Any improvement at all will be a blessing.

The Re-Farmer

Good news so far!

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I am happy to say that Butterscotch’s remaining kitten is doing very well with her adoptive mom.

I wasn’t able to get a photo today (I didn’t want to bug Beep Beep too much), so this is one I got last night. Butterscotch’s baby is the second from the left, happily nursing.

On the one hand, this is very encouraging. They are lively little squirmy worms. I even had quite a surprise when checking on them this morning. That kitten on the far left? I could see its face peeking out from under Beep Beep’s arm, when suddenly it blinked at me. It’s eyes are starting to open already!! Just barely – if it hadn’t blinked, I wouldn’t have noticed.

On the other hand, it’s kinda depressing, as it likely means Butterscotch really did smother her own kitten yesterday. :-(

As for Butterscotch, when I headed out to feed the critters and do my rounds, she was already meowing outside the sun room door (there are no longer any food and water bowls in the sun room. She also joined me and her boys while I continued my rounds.

While she was willing to rub against my legs, she didn’t really want me to pet her, and certainly didn’t want to be picked up. She has shown zero interest in going back into the house.

I think putting her baby with Beep Beep, and putting Butterscotch back outside, was the right call. :-(

Today turned out to be a day of driving. After dropping my daughter off at work, I headed home just to load the van up with stuff for the dump. We finally included the containers of mystery liquid we found while cleaning the basement. Unfortunately, I think one of them leaked. I ended up having to do the drive with the window open, because of the smell, which persisted, even after I unloaded.

When I dropped my daughter off, I offered to come back for her lunch break. With their lunch room closed off because of the physical distancing requirements, she had her lunch outside again. Yesterday was a lovely day, though, right?

In town, it rained.

My daughter had deferred, since I would be making and extra trip, but I decided to go, anyhow. The problem was, I didn’t know when she was going for lunch. After heating up some leftovers for my own lunch, I asked my other daughter if she knew, and the best she could figure was 11:30. So I figured I would leave at 11 and just meet her.

Then I checked the time and realized it was 10:59. LOL

So I packed my lunch up and headed into town.

Driving with the windows partly open, because of the smell from whatever leaked in the back. :-(

Once in town, I just parked near the pharmacy and had my lunch while I waited. I couldn’t see through the reflective glass, but it turned out my daughter had door duty again (apparently, she has a calming affect on people who might otherwise be upset over having to wait to be let in), so she could see me. While in the van, I realized I should have taken some antihistamines before I left. I have no idea what I’ve developed an allergy to, but it seems to be something that’s only around outside in the early mornings. So I went in to pick some up and got to talk to my daughter. She didn’t know when she was going to be getting her lunch.

It ended up at 1.

I didn’t mind the wait. It meant I could play some Pokemon Go during Community Day. I was also able to pick up some lunch for my daughter, so she just needed to join me in the van. We were able to head over to a park and play Pokemon Go together while she ate. :-D

Normally, I would have just staying in town after she went back to work, rather than drive all the way home and back again. Unfortunately, with so many places closed, there is a lack of open public washrooms, nor places to just sit and enjoy a beverage out of the weather.

Which means I’ll be heading back into town again, fairly soon, to pick up my daughter.

This did allow me to start on a project I had in mind, as an excuse to be in the basement with Beep Beep. It turned out rather well, and I will be sharing about that in another post.

While I was working, Beep Beep came out a couple of times to eat and drink, but otherwise stayed in her nest with the babies.

She is such a good mama.

The Re-Farmer

Cat company and good news

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This morning, I had the boys keeping me company as I did my rounds.

They do love that post! :-D It’s one of their favorite things to climb and scratch when they follow me.

Later, I hear meowing from another direction and eventually spotted Butterscotch making her way through the trees.

With some difficulty.

She is still pregnant.

Poor thing! When I came to pick her up, she would not let me near her. I wanted to carry her over the deep snow, but I think she doesn’t want to be picked up right now.

I don’t know how much time we’ve got to clear out the basement. I don’t know about the girls, but I’m hurting quite a bit today and will probably not be able to get to it again. At least nothing too physical. I suppose I could take a break for our 32nd anniversary. ;-)

Not a complete break, though. I whipped up a couple of mats that we will use to create cozy nests that I hope Butterscotch and Beep Beep will be content with to have their babies on.

They already pass the Susan test. Susan, of the still nekkid shaved belly. I can’t believe how long it’s taking for her fur to grow back after getting spayed!

In other areas, we got some good news. Not long ago, a nurse at the long term care facility my almost 100 yr old aunt is in tested positive for the Wuhan virus. The nurse went into isolation, as did 9 residents that had already been displaying signs of respiratory illness. This, in itself, is not unusual for the facility, but they took precautions and tested them, just in case.

Well, today it was announced that the nurse’s test was a false positive. There is no Wuhan virus in the facility at all. With this news, I believe our area is back to zero cases.

After I got the news, I phoned my mom to let her know. She had already heard the news on the radio, so that was good. As we got to chatting, I mentioned the work we’ve been doing in the basement, and that I’d taken 11 batteries to the barn. She flipped out a bit, thinking I was planning to throw them away. I told her no, I was planning to take them to a scrap yard, to sell them by weight. I think she still thought I was talking about the dump and went on about there being people who would buy them. Eventually, she told me that she used to phone someone who would come to the farm and buy old batteries from her. Which is good to know, but it does make me wonder just how many of these there would have been if she hadn’t done that! I don’t think she realizes, however, that if I take them to a scrap yard myself, I’ll get a better price. I also had a hard time explaining to her that I couldn’t get rid of the batteries now, anyhow, because of the lockdown. Just as she expected to be able to go to a restaurant for lunch after her doctor’s appointment, she seemed to think I’d be able to get a scrap dealer to come over and buy old batteries off of me. I’m a bit surprised by that, considering her own building is, literally, locked down and all regular social events are cancelled, and she can’t even go to church. For me, it’s easier to forget, since we are already pretty isolated and not much has changed at home.

Speaking of which, time to pain killer up and get back at it!

The Re-Farmer

Fantastic news! also… what?

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First things first, I got fantastic news this morning!

I came in from doing my morning rounds to find my husband on the phone; the garage had called about my mom’s car.

There is no damage.

None.

Not even the flat tire!

They pumped it up and checked it, and there’s not even a leak. It looks like the seal got broken at the rim and the air just leaked out. The tire and rim are just fine.

He did suggest an alignment, considering what happened, which I was planning to ask for already. They were already putting the tire back while he was talking to me, so the alignment is all that will need to get done.

Now I have to figure out when I can come pick it up with a second driver. :-/ He said there was no hurry on that. They’ll have it ready and waiting for me whenever I can.

So that is a HUGE relief!

Then there was the weird thing.

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