We were expecting a very hot day today, so I was up early to water the garden thoroughly before things got too hot – even though we have rain in the forecast. Depending on which app I check, we’ll either get rain or thunderstorms. Just before I started writing this, our phones started going off with tornado warnings, but it looks like the system will be passing to the north of us. We might get some rain from the edges of it. We did hit 31C/88F today. As I write this, past 7pm, we are at 28C/82F right now, with the humidex making it feel like 30C/86F.
After I did the morning cat feeding (with some cats very confused by the early hour!) and garden watering, I went back to bed. I must have been really beat because I slept for about 3 hours, checked the time, then passed our for another 2 hours.
Unfortunately, today has turned out to be a bad pain day, and not just for me. My daughter somehow ended up getting a sun burn yesterday, even though she was in the shade most of the day. I’ve been getting so much sun since it got warm enough to work outside longer, I don’t get burned, though apparently I’m quite the redneck right now. 😄 Meanwhile, my other daughter has had increased health issues again. Her pre-op appointment in the city is a couple of Fridays from now – the day the bin my brother is renting is supposed to be delivered! My younger daughter will have to stay home so she can meet them and tell them where to drop the bin off.
Aside from the pain related to why I got those ultrasounds done, my left hip has decided to start working wrong again. Not a lot of pain there. The joint just isn’t moving right and wants to give out.
I am so thankful for all the arm bars and hand rails that were installed for my father, all those years ago!
Eventually, though, I did head outside. I had to use the walker for it, but I set up the new deer scarer my brother picked up for me.
I’ve set this one up by the corn, which is going to need the netting removed from it pretty soon. I set the other one up by the peas to keep the deer away with the sound of a dog barking. With this one, I expect raccoons to be more of an issue, and I set it to the ringing of a bell, since I think raccoons would get used to the sound of a dog barking very quickly.
Once that was set up, I wandered around and checked on various things. In the next image in the slide show above, you can see some chard leaves. These are planted between the garlic and are finally starting to grow! Still pretty much nothing on the spinach in the other row; what little germinated and survived promptly bolted. It does look like we will at least have some Swiss Chard for greens this year.
In the next image, we have a red nasturtium flower. The seeds I collected were from a package with a variety of colours in it, and so far we’ve had yellow and red. They are still quite small, but adding that straw mulch once they got big enough has really helped.
Next is the row of summer squash. Those are picking up quite nicely. The plan is to grow them vertically, but I’ll need to remove the netting to do that, and they still need that protection for now.
The last picture is of the fennel and chicory. They’ve had a bit of a growth spurt! Unfortunately, some of the fennel at the end of the bed got flattened. Stinky found his way under the netting and I found him lying there. I opened the netting up at the other end, so as not to spook him, then moved to scoot him in that direction. Instead, he panicked and started running into the netting over and over before I finally got him to go out the open end. *sigh* He didn’t do too much damage, at least. We added more rods to the hoops over the fennel and it’s getting so tall, it’s almost touching the top of the netting again!
We just got another tornado alert on our phones while I was writing the above paragraph. While that is passing to the north of us, our region and the entire south end of the province are currently under a severe thunderstorm watch this evening and overnight. The warning includes 4-6cm (about 1.5-2.5in) hail, 50-70mm (about 2-3in) of rain and wind gusts up to 100km/h (about 62m/h). For us, we’re to expect rain starting around 4am tonight and lasting until about 10am.
We are definitely not going to be hit with the worst of it, for which I am thankful, but my heart hurts for the people that have been slammed by these storms, over and over again.
Colby is one of several cats that just love that garden bed cover. So adorable!
And yes, those are garlic scapes on the netting beside him. Those are from the few garlic that are growing in the wattle weave bed. More on that later.
Today was our first market day at the large animal rescue. My younger daughter and I loaded up the cab of the truck, then headed out to arrive at around 9:30. They are only a mile away from us, so it was a quick drive.
A couple of vendors were already setting up, with vehicles all backed up to the spots they were setting up in. After pulling the truck in, along the row of vehicles, I went into the large shelter where there is a gift shop, admission is paid, and a petting zoo.
They have three kittens; two orange and a grey tabby that were free ranging. They really, really enjoyed the attention they got from the vendors! The kittens will be available for adoption at the end of the season. I expect they will have a waiting list of people interested by then!
I found someone and got instructions on where we could set up and where to park the truck after we unloaded. It didn’t take long to get everything out, then I moved the truck. Thankfully, the splayed leg style of the canopy tent we have was not an issue. We set that up, then the table with a cloth over it, then my daughter and I set out price tags on my inventory and made the display look pretty.
Thankfully, there was a pleasant breeze, and we had our shade. A couple next to us just had an umbrella, and it kept getting blown over. We took turns checking out the other vendors – there was 7 of us altogether on this first market day. I was told more are expected next weekend.
It was extremely quiet, and most of us made zero sales. I bought things from two different vendors, and those were very close to being the only sales for all of us today! We had plenty of time to talk and get to learn about each other, which was nice. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized one of the vendors is the mother of the woman that runs the rescue. Which means she’s the mother of our mechanic and his younger brother that drove the tow truck (though not anymore; he’s moved on to somewhere else). Too funny that I keep meeting more and more members of this family We had a great chat.
We were super appreciative of the shade and the breeze, as we hit 26C/79F. Things shut down at three, but we didn’t start packing up right away. The truck would have blocked others from being able to get around to load up then leave.
I got quite a laugh when I finally did bring the truck over. The vendor next to use had finished loading and was in her car with her family, waiting patiently as I turned and backed up to our tent. Then I reached out the window to open the door, and one of the guys in the car with her started to laugh and opened his window to say, “you’ve got a broken handle, too?” Sure enough, one of their doors was missing the handle on the inside, and they have to open the window to reach out and pull the handle from the outside, too.
While we were there, we kept the family updated, and I started to hear from my brother. They have their grandsons with them and today they visited my mother. They even managed to get her outside to enjoy the sunshine in a park that is right alongside the nursing home property.
Just as we were finishing loading the truck, I got a message that they’d be swinging by the farm to drop off some stuff, including the second solar powered, motion sensor noise maker they ordered for me. They got here shortly after we did. We’re leaving the truck loaded, except for the box of the truck, as we wanted to be able to put the cover back. I was still outside when the arrived and I was able to chat with my SIL and the grandkids while my brother rushed to get things out of the back of their car and into their caravan. The mosquitoes and horseflies were insane, and he didn’t want them getting into the vehicle. I got the box with the noise maker – I told my SIL that I plant to set it up by the corn, in hopes it will keep the raccoons away. Raccoons are very good at decimating corn, just when they get ripe!
We also talked about where to set the bin they are having delivered to haul away junk. My SIL was telling me they’re feeling quite frustrated. They hadn’t knows they’ve had their grandsons with them for so long before they’d ordered the bin. They’re having a blast with the grandkids, but it means they can’t come here to do any of the stuff they had planned to in preparation for the bin. We talked about where it should be dropped off, as I’ll likely be the person meeting with the delivery people.
They were in a bit of a hurry, so when they were ready to leave, I went ahead to the gate to close it, so they wouldn’t have to stop. Then I went straight to working in the garden.
With the heat of the day, I wanted to do some watering, but first I wanted to do some transplanting.
There were two that I decided to try and transplant. The largest, in the first image of the slide show above, is a Golden Hubbard squash, while the smaller one is a Gille’s Golden Pippin. They both got planted in empty spots in the bed along the chain link fence. Then I started watering everything out of the rain barrel.
As I started on the East yard beds, I remember I’d bought some fresh bush bean seeds (actually, my daughter bought it, along with the other groceries we picked up the other day). The square garden bed is down to four surviving plants!
The Arikara Squash on the middle is looking good! Big enough that I removed the protective collar.
I picked the Gold Rush variety to plant this time. I just wanted a yellow variety, as they are easier to see. Hopefully, these will back it. I have remarkably few bean plants this year!
That done, I continued watering in the main garden area with the hose. I’d picked the few garlic scapes that were on the wattle weave garlic They were much smaller than the ones in the main garden area with a hose.
While watering, I noticed the pods on the Spring Blush pea were looking very good. After i finished watering, I checked them out, then very carefully removed several.
Along with the scapes, I was concerned about the next bed. The red noodle beds are looking like they are doing what they did last year; growing just a few inches, then nothing. I harvested some of the largest turnips, as the greens are getting big enough to shade out the sun.
The turnips were pretty small, but the leaves where useful – and they are edible so we at least have that!
Not too bad for a first harvest. There are the turnips, scapes, Spring Blush peas, and a handful of herbs. Oregano, lemon balm and sage.
They made a nice addition to supper this evening.
Tomorrow morning, I plan to be back to watering the garden earlier in the day, before the heat hit. We are expecting the heat to potentially get up to 32C/90F tomorrow. Nowhere near as bad as other areas, but still not something anyone should be working in, if they can avoid it!
So… in the end, I would call today successful, even though nothing was sold. All the vendors were talking about coming back next weekend. It should be fun, and there should be more people.
Not as bad as in other areas. Especially to the north and south of us. It was also quite brief but, for the time in where here, it hit hard.
The first sign of things was losing our internet. Thankfully, we did not lose power, though I later learned my brother did, briefly. Then I started hearing a lot of footsteps rushing around upstairs. A leak started at the window. This leak has been a problem in the winter, where an ice dam would form. It has never leaked during a rain storm. The roof is still under warranty, though, so we’ll be able to contact the company and see what they can find. That portion of the roof cannot be seen from the ground, and none of us are able bodied enough to climb up there to look.
Even I started having a leak in my bedroom window. The one that did not get replaced by a new window before we moved out there because my mother suddenly decided she was not going to pay for that one last window. This is an original window from my childhood, but I don’t know if it’s original from when this portion of the house was built in the 30’s. I know the molding around it is more modern, but when it installed.
When it started to develop problems, as did pretty much all the other windows, instead of fixing or replacing them, my parents installed panels of what is probably Lexan, not Plexiglass. This window is two parts, side by side. One side has a screen and a handle that could be turned to open the window, while the other side is just a plain double paned window, and each side has its own panel. Once the panels were installed inside, the screen side of the window could no longer be opened. In the last couple of years, I discovered that when the rain was driven from the north, a drip would start from the frame between the panel and the glass window, on the side without the screen. Last fall, I used spray seal around the entire window frame. It hadn’t leaked again until last night – and the leak was on the inside of the room, not between the window and the panel! It wasn’t much, but it was also a first.
Checking the sun room critter cam at one point during the night, I saw both a skunk and a raccoon at the kibble trays. They were both so completely soaked, I didn’t have the heart to chase them off! There were quite a few cats in their shelf at the window, sheltering from the storm, and none of them were the least bit bothered by each other.
When the storm passed by, we still had high winds all through the night, and through all of today.
When I came out to do the cat feeding this morning, I was very saddened to find this.
That is one of the sliding panels that forms both a window and a door on one side of the isolation shelter.
Sweetie is gone.
My guess is that, during the storm, the thunder and lightening scared her enough that she blaster herself into the window. The panel is flexible, and it would have bents and popped off the tracks completely.
Poor Sweetie!
There was no sign of her, anywhere, but there are many places she could hide, too. I put the panel back on, then opened the ramp door and the other sliding window a few inches while adding some kibble to the bowl. Then I made sure to mix up some cat soup and leave some in there. I’m hoping Sweetie will find things familiar, and remember that the house is where there is safety, comfort and delicious food she doesn’t have to hunt for.
Once the cats were fed, I did extended rounds, looking for storm damage – the first of which was really, really obvoius.
The first two images are of the West yard. The dead portion of a huge maple finally broke.
I was not surprised. If anything, I was surprised there wasn’t more. This tree is part of a row of three. The one in the middle is already dead and, when it broke in the winter, the piece fell on my market tent we had set up by the fire pit. Part of it embedded itself into the ground, and I wasn’t able to clear it until spring, when the ground thawed enough. The third three in this group is at least half dead, and I am fully expecting the dead parts to fall in high winds, too.
I had actually checked everything else, including around my brother’s stuff, when I came back into the inner yard through the gate by the fire pit. That’s when I noticed Colby sitting in a maple and paused to take a picture.
Which is when I realized, the tree he was on was freshly broken.
When I cam closer, I found it had come down in two large pieces. One of them landed mostly on the branch pile we have as fuel for the fire pit, and both where mostly hidden by the tall grass and weeds in that area. I simply couldn’t see them, earlier!
I checked the garden beds, of course. A branch and partially fallen on the tomato bed in the east yard. That bed has the box frame on it, which protected the bed and the branch fell mostly into the path, instead.
The Spring Blush peas have quite a few pods on them. They are underdeveloped, still, but they already have the pink blush on them.
Everything else in the garden held out fine.
I made sure to update my brother about the damage. He has all the paperwork for the roof.
By late morning, I started to head out to the city, making sure to stop at the post office, first. My husband’s forms to renew his Disability Tax Credit was ready to mail. I also picked up our mail and found my replacement debit card was in – the one they mailed a month before my old one was supposed to expire still hasn’t arrived. The card could be activated by a purchase, so I bought a 40 pound bag of kibble that I wanted to pick up, anyhow.
From there, I went into the city and did our shopping, which will be covered in another post. While I was gone, I was kept updated by the family on the continued severe wind conditions.
After I got back, the truck unloaded and parked, I stayed out a bit longer. The girls had already fed the outside cats, but I used some of the freeze dried cat food mix to make a cat soup. I put most of it in the isolation shelter, in hopes of luring Sweetie, and poured the rest into the sun room trays. The cats were very excited for the treat!
I did see a skittish tabby in the white lilacs when I came back from parking the truck, but I wasn’t sure if it was Sweetie or another tabby. Possibly Flopsy.
I so hope she is doing okay, and learned to come back to the house for food and water!
In the time since I did the damage check this morning, quite a few smaller branches came down – especially the willow – but there was no other large drops like that section of the giant maple that came down last night.
One thing I can see I am very happy about it the chicken coop. One of our concerns was that it would blow over. It did not. It was well sheltered from the wind by botht he house and the surrounding trees.
The last thing I checked was the old kitchen garden, where I found sprig.
This morning she was among the cats eating on the cat house roof. I was able to put my hand on her back and even rub her shoulders a bit! Then she ran off. Not far, though. Just to the next pile of kibbled on the roof.
Progress!
This evening, she was in what seems to be her favourite place, now that the netting here has been redone.
She really, really loves to be on or near the garden netting!
While I was gone, my older daughter got some good news. A call from a doctor. She now has a pre-op consultation with a referred doctor.
In a clinic in the city, of course. Not a close one, either. No matter! Surgeries can take years to happen here in Canada, so if this is being expedited, we are thankful!
The consultation is in the second half of July, so we have time.
After this consultation, it’s a guessing game to know when she will actually get her surgery. I don’t know what kind of waiting list this procedure has. It could be weeks, it could be months, it could be years. Canada is a place where people die on waiting lists. Thankfully, her condition is not life threatening anymore, now that she knows what is happening and can take medication for it. The surgery is the alternative to being on medication for the rest of her life!
According to the app on my phone, we’re expecting to have rain and thunderstorms for the rest of the week. The app on my desktop shows a more moderate forecast, with today’s threat of thunderstorms already over (it’s not yet 11am as I write this) and rain off and on through to tomorrow, then no rain for the rest of the 10 day forecast. If I had to choose, I’d say my desktop weather app is more accurate than the one in my phone. I think the app in my phone is using weather stations further to the south of us.
While doing my morning rounds, I did get rained on a little bit, but just barely. That gave me time to get a few things done in the garden.
In the first image of the slide show above, you can see I finally mulched the high raised bed, around the bush beans and onions.
We don’t have a lot of bush beans. The ones I sowed in the square raised bed are coming up, so there will be more, but it’ll be a while longer before we can see how many made it. We do have pole beans, but I am still concerned we’ll have the same thing we had last year, where they only got a few inches tall and then stagnated. You can actually see them in the background of the above photo, beside the much larger turnip leaves. They are looking way too yellow.
In the trellis bed, I checked on the carrots and they are starting to germinate, so I moved the boards aside. I’m leaving them leaning against the inside of the walls to act as both a weed suppressant and a place for the frogs to shelter under. More than a few times, I’d lift the boards to check on the carrots, and as many as three frogs would come jumping out at once!
The is no sign of the Uzbek Golden carrots germinating in the other bed. I would not be surprised if none make it. They were old seeds. Carrots are one of the things I can still sow again, though, even in July, which I might do.
The last image is of one of the Spring Blush pea flowers. The peas are very sparse; they should be bushier and have more foliage, but they are pretty much just long stems. Still, they are blooming (well; the ones that didn’t get chomped by deer, at least), and they have the pretties flowers!
I also got a couple of first harvests this morning! I’ve been eyeballing the garlic for a few days now, and today I had my first harvest of scapes.
I also harvested our first Golden Boy celery. Yes, it’s on the small side for harvesting, but they are fairly crowded, and thinning by harvesting will be helpful.
As you can see through the netting under the scapes and celery, the purchased cabbage transplants are doing well. I can’t say the same for the nearby melons, though. They are definitely struggling. *sigh* While my daughter was at her blacksmithing workshop yesterday, I checked out one of the nearby garden centres. They don’t have much left at this stage. For edibles, I saw they still had lots of cabbage, pepper and tomato transplants, plus some herbs, but zero melons or winter squash left, which are the only things I’m after at this point.
Today, I had been thinking of visiting my mother. She called a couple of days ago and, right from hello, she was on me about how none of us have been visiting her. She just got out of quarantine. She was really laying it on thick, to the point I was ready to hang up on her. She just can’t seem to understand how much her behaviour drives people away from her. I told her I might be able to visit her on Sunday (today), but now I don’t know that I will be up to it. I’ll phone her, instead. Rainy and overcast weather like this always makes me feel ridiculously sleepy, and I don’t want to drive in it if I can avoid it.
Today has turned out to be a fairly hot and muggy day. Depending on which weather app I look at, we’re either supposed to be raining right now (it isn’t) through to tomorrow, and then thunderstorm warnings for the next two days. Or, we will get scattered rain today, with more rain for a few hours, now and then, for the next two days. Once again, it looks like the more severe weather systems will go around us.
Our day started early, as my younger daughter and I needed to get to her blacksmithing workshop for 8am. We left an hour early, and just made it on time, partly due to skirting road construction and areas still damaged from the flash flooding. The road to the blacksmith’s acreage had visible damage, some of which has been repair, some still waiting to be patched. There were a couple of areas I could tell had been completely under water, with standing water and flood damage in the fields on either side.
When we got there, I started getting messages from the rescue about Sweetie. She is not doing well and bit someone again. They wanted to know when she can come back to us. After going over what we’ve got going on over the next while, it was worked out that someone will bring her here on Monday (today is Saturday). They did manage to get her spayed a week ago, so we will keep her in the isolation shelter for only a few days, so she can get used to the idea that she is back in familiar territory again.
My daughter’s workshop didn’t take as long as originally expected. There weren’t as many people signed up for this date, which is their only “build your own forge and take it home” workshop of the season, and only one person added the extra of including an electric blower to take home as well. My daughter wants a manual blower. In the end, the workshop was only about 2 hours instead of 4. When it was done, we loaded the table portion into the back of the truck and strapped it down, removing the firepot portion and putting that in the cab with the air duct for the blower. Then we headed to the smaller city nearby for a quick lunch and to pick up a few small things we would run out of before we do our next stock up shop on Tuesday.
Once we got home, we made some space for the forge in the side of the garage with my brother’s big riding mower and other equipment. Now, we need to build a structure for her smithy so set it up in permanently. In between, she wants to find a blower, and then get fuel.
With rain apparently on the way, I asked her to give me a hand with some maintenance in the garden. Plus, I had one Butterneck squash seedling to transplant.
The first bed we worked on was the summer squash. It was time to remove the protective collars. The finnicky part is lifting the netting high enough, without getting tangled up, to work in the bed. The “funnels” in between the groups of summer squash remain, as they get watered through those.
In the next image in the slide show above, you can see the fennel and chicory bed we worked on. The fennel was getting too tall for the netting, so we took it off, then added one more rod and connector to each hoop. The netting had been folded in half, but with the new height, we unfolded it before setting it back. There is still slack with the new height, but not very much.
In the next image, you can see the turnip, pole bean, daikon radish and onion bed we worked on next. The turnips and onions were getting crowded, so all the hoops here got on more rod and connector, too. We also took the opportunity to do some weeding, and add some straw for a mulch.
Once thing I’m concerned about with this bed is the red noodle beans. When I tried to grow them last year, they got to about the stage this year’s beans have reached now, and then… stopped. They never really got any bigger, and I never figured out why. I’m hoping that a different bed and consistent watering and fertilizing will help them grow. Once they get to when they can start climbing, we’ll take off the net set up a trellis. For now, though, there’s just no need.
This netting had also been folded in half and needed to be unfolded to fit over the new height, then secured. A job made much easier with my daughter to help!
The next image is something I’d actually done last night – I finally added a mulch in between the cosmos, marigolds and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums are quite small. They didn’t get very big last year, either, and I know they should be larger and fuller. No sign of any self-seeded memorial asters (I’m still unhappy that the seeds I saved indoors have disappeared), so the spaces are now all mulched.
In the last image, we have progress on the chain link fence bed. My daughter helped me raise the bottom half of the netting from end to end, securing it up so that I could work under it. After that, I could manage it on my own.
In one of the empty protective collars, I transplanted the single Butterneck squash seedling. Then I mulched with straw tightly around the collars, and carefully around the sunflowers. I also made sure not to cover the furrow I’d planted the super sugar snap peas, from our own saved seed. There are seedlings appearing now!
After the straw was in place, I carefully removed the protective collars. The mulch will protect them from the elements now. Last of all, the netting was set back down and reset nice and snug.
Once that was done, and everything was cleaned up and put away, I checked on some of the other beds. The high raised bed needs a straw mulch, too, but I’ll do that later. Hopefully, tomorrow. The short season corn is getting tall enough to mulch, too, I think. I checked on the more recent sowing of carrots. No seedlings yet, but the frogs do love hanging out under the boards protecting the carrot seeds! I didn’t notice any cucumbers coming up, yet. I checked the garden beds in the east yard, too, and was happy to see my last sowing of bush beans, in the small square raised bed, have started to germinate.
I really hope things start catching up soon. Staples like carrots, peas and beans all seem to be under the weather. The winter squash and melons aren’t doing well, either, but they’re not quite staples in the same way. The garlic is doing great, and scapes have started to form. I expect to be harvesting some in the next day or two. I’m really looking forward to those! The potatoes are starting to develop flowers, with one variety developing faster than the other. We should be able to start harvesting baby potatoes soon, if we wanted to.
So that is garden progress today. Mostly just maintenance. I’m really liking the flexibility of the hoop kits. I still plan to build more covers for the raised beds, but for now, these are doing just fine. Being able to make the hoops higher as needed really helps.
The surreal thing of the day has been the time. When my daughter and I were starting for home, it felt like 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but it was just coming up on noon. When I finished in the garden and did the outside cat feeding, I was sure it was well past 5. Maybe even 6. Instead, it was just barely 3 when I got in! Meanwhile, I can see outside my window, the sky getting darker and the wind blowing the maple branches, and I feel like it’s almost bed time… and it’s not even 4:30 as I write this!
The boards that had been used to protect the Rainbow Mix carrots until they germinated were simply set aside in the bed when they were no longer needed. The first task was to move those off and remove the leaf mulch that was under it. The whole bed got a weeding, and I used a garden stake to make a planting furrow, then used the jet setting on the hose to break up any lumpy bits of soil and saturate the furrow.
The carrots I chose were Scarlet Nantes; a basic orange carrot. I didn’t clue in that the seed tape was perforated and designed to be split into two lengths to total 15 feet, until I’d already set down two or three feet into the prepared furrow. I broke it off, split the roll and finished off laying it down. The result was a few feet short of the furrow I’d made, but that’s okay. It meant the three boards I had were more than long enough to cover the entire planted area – after it got one more watering.
There was a small section available along where the peas were planted, as I ran out of this variety of peas before I could fill the entire row.
I was going to try planting the short season luffa there, but I simply could not find the package. I know I had some left after direct sowing them in the bed against the chain link fence. I know I even saw them the last time I was going through my seed bins. Today, however, I could not find them anywhere.
I’ve had several packets of seeds, including seeds I’d saved myself, disappear, and I’m at a total loss as to where they might be!
So I picked the Eureka cucumber, which is a dual purpose cucumber. I’ve got some in the seed tray, replanting after the tray was decimated. Pretty much nothing is germinated out of the second sowing. I’m hoping this location, which gets quite a lot of sun, will do better. They are older seeds, though, so I don’t expect a high germination rate.
That done, I needed to set up trellis netting for the peas, and this time I wanted to attach permanent horizontal supports. Before I started on that, I moved off almost all the pieces of wood and boards weighing down the cardboard to the far end of the cardboard covered area. That is covering what will be a path and the matching garden bed. I didn’t want to trip over any of the weights. Later on, I think I’ll see of the large tarp I had is the right size to cover the entire space. The cardboard has formed gaps in the high winds we get, so it’s not quite killing off everything underneath it anymore.
I salvaged lengths that were used in the old squash tunnel we built long ago. It’s still standing, though bits and pieces of it have been repurposed over the years.
I dug out eight lengths, roughly 5 feet long, though a couple were shorter, to use as horizontal supports. The spaces between the vertical supports for what will be a trellis tunnel after the matching bed gets built are a little less than 4 1/2 feet apart. It’s variable, due to the different thicknesses of the verticals. That meant there was an overlap with most of the horizontal lengths. Only one of them ended up being just barely long enough.
Each length was tied in place first, just to hold it until I could screw the ends in to the vertical supports, alternating setting each horizontal length above or below the previous one. The northernmost vertical post has a tendency to lean inwards, so I made sure it was pushed into position before screwing in the horizontal support, to hold it in place.
One the horizontals were secured, I got out a couple of nets with 4″ squares for the peas to climb. One of them reaches roughly 3/4 the length of the bed. After the first one was set in place, with the bottom pegged into place near the bottoms of the row of peas and the new planting of cucumbers, I started the second net from the opposite end of the bed to fill in the space, and overlapped the rest.
It was a pain in the butt to get the netting to stay at the top horizontal support, while I set the bottom half at an angle to secure it to the bottom horizontal supports, trying to make it as snug and straight as it would go, using ground staples on the base. I had some length of a sort of plastic cordage salvaged from last year, that I used to secure the bottom half of the netting at an angle from the base of the wire “fence” the peas are currently attached to – literally – to the bottom horizontal supports, making sure to match the squares of the overlapping sections of netting as close as I could. Then the top half got secured to the higher horizontal support. I wasn’t as concerned about that part, since the peas are unlikely to get that tall.
Last of all, to “train” the peas to attach themselves to the trills, it was just a matter of tipping the wire fencing towards the trellis slightly. Some of the peas are tall enough, they mostly just sort of fell towards the trellis netting and will soon start climbing that.
The next thing I wanted to get done was work around the plum, gooseberry, apple and haskap. The chicken wire around the plum tree needed to be removed, and the entire area weed trimmed and cleaned up.
Before I started on that, though, I salvaged the last section of wire on the old squash tunnel to use, as it’s quite a bit longer than what was around the plum.
You can see the chicken wire in the first two images above, before I started pulling supports out and using the weed trimmer.
You can see how the row looked after the weed trimming in the third image. After that, I went ahead and removed the tomato cage fencing around the gooseberry and apple. I left the wire tomato cages over the haskap.
I was considering a few things to do for the area and decided to use the chicken wire to fence off as much as I could. I brought a bundle of bamboo stakes to support the wire. The ground is too hard to drive the bamboo stakes in, so I used on of the metal supports that I’d removed from around the apple tree to make a hole in the soil first – they have handy points on their ends – before I could push the bamboo into the holes and in solid.
I ended up using both lengths of salvaged chicken wire. The two together was just long enough to go around the plum, apple and gooseberry, with openings on either side of the cracked rain barrel. There’s enough space that I could get inside without too much trouble, and I hope no deer will notice the gap and squeeze it’s way in! Later on, I plan to set a couple of brightly coloured rope between the bamboo stakes to further discourage the deer. So far, the wire tomato cages will continue to be enough to protect the haskap.
I had two very thin bamboo stakes left from the bundle, so I wove them through the wire at the top. These will help keep the verticals in place, as well as provide support for the chicken wire in a space the hose goes over, when it’s time to water the trees.
Hopefully, this will keep the deer from getting to, and chomping, the greenery!
Once everything was cleaned up around this area, I took advantage of having the weed trimmer out and finally got to clearing around the old crab apple stumps, and the live trees as well. My brother had come over while I was working on the trellis bed, pruning away the low hanging branches. One of them had hit my SIL in the face while she was mowing. He cleared so many branches, he ended up attaching their little trailer to their zero turn mower and using that to remove the branches and set them on one of the branch piles near the fire pit. He even trimmed a low hanging maple in another area that was starting to hang lower and lower, getting in the way even when just walking.
The old stumps had been buried in tall grass when my SIL decided to mow along there, and she ended up hitting one of them because she hadn’t seen it. Once the branches were cut away, my brother used his zero turn mower to mow closer to the trunks, now that it could be done. He got a lot closer to the trees than he was able to get to the stumps! I got the weed trimmer to clear to bare earth around the trees and stumps, pausing to cut away some suckers that were trying to grow back along one of the stumps. I was on my second battery by then, and was able to do most of the spaces between the silver buffalo berry as well before it died. My brother had used the weed trimmer earlier in the day and the battery he’d used wasn’t recharge yet, so I was done with weed trimming for the day!
That done, I popped inside for supper, then headed back out to water the garden. I got some water soluble fertilizer in the hose attachment to fertilize and water at the same time. I’m hoping that will help the weaker plants that are struggling a bit from the cold nights we’ve been having. I’d set the hose up to the leaking rain barrel where I’d just fenced things off, so I was able to water the food forest trees, too. I didn’t have the energy left to do the nut trees in the outer yard, though.
While I was watering, my brother messaged me with a link from Amazon to a solar powered critter scarer. We’ve been messaging as I was working on this post – I’d need at least four of them! My brother has ordered one, and I’ve ordered one. Within the next couple of weeks, we should have at least one in to test out. They are triggered with motion sensors to flash lights and make 14 different pre-recorded noises to scare animals, or you can record your own sounds. I’m not sure I like the idea of having super loud sounds of things like dogs barking or gunshots coming out of our garden in the night, though! Still, it’s worth a try if it’ll keep my garden and fruit trees from being eaten by critters!
All in all, I am happy with how much I got done today, and the trellis bed now finally has permanent horizontal supports attached to the vertical posts. Eventually, I’ll be adding one long piece across the top, but that’s going to require trimming the tops of the vertical supports to match heights, and for that I’ll need to set up our little scaffolding to reach. I’ll need to snag a daughter to give me a hand, too.
Today was a combination of direct sowing and clean up in the garden. I’d gone out earlier to do finally clean up the cat mess in the dirt floor of the garage around my mother’s car, only to get rained on, which was fine. It meant I didn’t need to water, and we didn’t get the thunderstorms other areas were getting warnings for.
After the rains were done, I headed out again. First up was the newly reclaimed square raised bed.
I found I was able to lift the netting and secure it to itself with the ground staples to work under it. The netting was still a bit in the way, but nothing I couldn’t work around.
I set a collar in the middle of the bed, where I hope to transplant a winter squash at some point, but the beans went around the perimeter. I didn’t soak them first, so I made sure the furrow was thoroughly watered, and then watered some more. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packet, having already used some in the high raised bed, but it’s a small bed so I ended up not using all of it.
Next, I decided to sow the super sugar snap peas I’d saved last year, in the remaining third of the chain link fence bed.
In the first image above, you can see how the elm seeds are germinating like crazy. I broke up the unplanted area, weeding out as many of the elm seedlings as I could, then gave a thorough watering before planting the peas. In this bed, there are two protective collars that were set up but never got anything planted in them, left for open space. The cold nights we’ve been having seems to have done in some of the melons and one of the winter squash, and none of the short season luffa have germinated, even with the protective collars. I’ll give it a bit more time before I decide if I will plant in those spaces again.
The next area to work on was the summer squash bed.
I had considered removing the protective collars but decided against it. I did move them off while weeding and thinning, but put them back again. I also ended up thinning by transplanting for the most part, shoving the thinned out seedlings in empty spaces in the wattle weave bed and in some of the retaining wall blocks that were empty.
Once the protective collars were all back in place, I grabbed straw and heavily mulched around them. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep the weeds from returning.
The next area to work on was the wattle weave bed. The netting I’d put over there originally had to be removed. At first, it would out fine, using the dollar store netting with channels to hold wire supports that I had replaced with my first hoop kit with fiberglass rods and plastic connectors. After a while, though, it got too low. The cats kept using it as a hammock, and the hoops were getting pushed lower and lower into the soil. I reset the hoops, setting the ends of the hoops inside the wattle weave. Unfortunately, the rods were thin enough that they slide through the wattle weave, flattening the netting over the peas and garlic. Cats lying on it would flatten them more. The netting also started lifting on the sides and cats would get under – then panic trying to get out. I found a substantial tear in the netting while I was removing it from the bed! It looks like we also lost a few pea plants, likely from cats simply lying on top of them.
After weeding the bed, I decided to use my remaining Pex pipe hoops, though I didn’t have enough of them for the space I wanted to cover, so one of the hoops is from what was used in the netting I’d removed.
These hoops are a lot higher, so there should be enough space for the dwarf peas and the garlic. I also had some used paracord available so I used that across the top of the hoops to keep things from sagging or shifting out of place. They’re mostly secured with zip ties, though some of the vertical posts in the wattle weave were too thick for the length of zip tied I had, and I ended up using wire twist ties, instead. With this netting and set up, I don’t think the cats will try to use it as a hammock anymore.
I will definitely not be buying this one again. Not only did the plastic connectors bend, but even some of the rod tips bent, too! I like the kit with the metal connectors and slightly longer rods better.
I got pretty much everything I wanted to get done today, since I don’t expect to get much done in the garden tomorrow, when we are planning to do combined birthday and Father’s day celebrating.
It’s past 9pm and still quite like out. I think I’ll head out for one more walkabout before heading to bed. A couple more days of this, and then the days will start getting shorter!
I was able to get a couple of big jobs done in the garden. It’s going to be an odd growing year. We had another cold night last night, dropping to about 6C/43F It looks like the cold has killed some of the melons and at least one winter squash transplants that managed to germinate in the tray that got resown after a mouse got to the seedlings. A couple more winter squash have germinated in the tray and I’ll transplant them when they get their true leaves, but it’s really too late for them, unless we have a super long, mild fall. The next time I have a chance to check out a garden center, I’m hoping to find more winter squash, at least.
Right now, I’m thinking of what can be direct sown for succession sowing. I’ll be doing more peas and bush beans, I think, and possibly some beets, but that’s not what I sowed today.
The first bed I worked on was the winter sown kohlrabi bed.
The down side of having a cover that can keep the cats out is, it’s much less convenient to weed.
Lots of crab grass. Thankfully, the remaining mulch kept most of the elm seeds from germinating. That is getting to be a real problem in other areas. Especially inside the protective collars around the tomatoes in the bed next to this one, and in the chain link fence bed.
In the next image of the slide show above, you can see my little surprise. There are actual kohlrabi growing! Absolutely tiny, but surviving. I was going to leave them to grow bigger but, as I was clearing the weeds, there were rhizomes going right under the little cluster. I ended up transplanting them to one end – a whole four tiny seedlings that probably won’t survive, but at least there’s a possibility.
The rest of the bed got completely worked over as I pulled all the rhizomes I could. Unfortunately, there were quite a few tree roots in there, too, and there isn’t much I can do about those. In this location, the roots could be either from the elm in one direction, or the cherry trees in the other. Both are close enough and spread roots far enough to be possible. It might even had been both, not just one.
Once the weeding was done, I have the bed a deep watering. Especially in the three rows I planned to sow into, which you can see in the third image.
In the fourth image, you can see what I decided to plant. American Spinach, Rainbow Swiss Chard, and I had some seed tape of Uzbek Golden Carrots left. They are old seeds so I don’t expect a good germination rate, and I hoped there was enough to lay down a double layer.
Before sowing anything, I noticed my brother had left some cardboard in the garage for me that was just right for this bed, so I cut strips to lay it down as a mulch between the rows, plus a couple that would be used to lay over the carrots to protect them until they germinated.
I didn’t need much. I had only enough of the home made seed tape left for half a row. I thought I had more seeds left in the packet and went looking, but couldn’t find it. So I grabbed the Hedou Tiny bok choy seeds we collected last year – something got to the ones planted in the old kitchen garden. The rest of the new row in the middle got those. The carrots got covered with the strip of cardboard, but not the bok choy.
Then the spinach and chard got planted in the rows still marked by twine on either side. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packets, relatively speaking, and both got emptied in the planting. Then the cat proof cover got set back on.
Hopefully, these will take. We do have some seedlings from the rainbow carrot mix growing, but very few. I might try planting more carrots later on, but we’ll see. The chard and spinach planted between the garlic are just not growing, and what seedlings there were seem to be disappearing. It would be nice to have some greens that survive!
That done, I moved on to reclaiming the small, square bed near the compost ring.
The first image is the “before” picture. The boards on the side are from a same size frame that had been around another bed. They’re pretty rotted out, but they should last at least a couple more years. They still had their screws, so I took those out, first.
In the next image, the bed is all weeded, and the soil pulled away from the sides.
My original plan had been to join the corners opposite of how the frame already in place is, but it turned out the pieces weren’t all quite the same length, so I mixed and matched to get them to line up to the existing frame as best I could. Once the corners were screwed together, I had to be careful shifting it around to lay on top of the bottom frame properly. The wood is dry and rotten enough, I could hear it cracking at the corners.
I rummaged around in the scrap lumber pile in the garage for a while, and found some pieces I could cut into eight 8″ lengths, which is the new height of the bed. Four of them were screwed into corners, and four into the middles of the sides. One side didn’t line up at one corner. After screwing the vertical support piece to the bottom board, it left a gap between the support and the top board. More rummaging in the scrap lumber pile and I found something thin enough and cut it to 4″ in length. It was a bit narrower than the gap, but nothing the 3″ screws I was using couldn’t secure.
That done, I cleared a path to the remaining pile of garden soil we bought years ago and uncovered it. I thought I might be getting two wheelbarrow loads but, in the end, only needed one to top up the bed. In the next image, you can see the finished bed, all cleaned up, topped up and leveled.
The next thing was to protect the bed from being used as a litter box!
I had decided to use the rods from my hoop kit to made supports, running to opposite corners and crossing in the middle. This time, I decided to try something different. I found a drill bit that was the same diameter as the rods in this kit and drilled holes in each corner of the frame.
Which was fine for three of the corners, but one corner is a lot more rotten. There was no solid wood near enough to line up with the rods in the other corners, so I had to make do with what was there. Hopefully, it will be enough. The hoops will not be holding anything heavier than netting, and there shouldn’t be a lot of stress on it.
In the end, it took 6 rods to create each hoop. The hoop set into the rotten corner is a bit wonky, but otherwise it’s holding.
For the netting, I decided to dig out some green dollar store netting from last year, instead of the black netting I’ve been using elsewhere – the black netting that snakes can get caught in. The green netting is quite long, and I wasn’t sure it was wide enough to simply drape over the top, so I decided to wrap it around, instead. It was wrapped low enough that the netting could be secured to the ground with ground staples in the middles, outside the frame, while also being clipped at the bottom of the hoops at each corner.
I still had a lot of leftover netting, but I didn’t want to cut it, since it’ll be used elsewhere, some other time. After fussing with the netting to gather the excess toward the top and securing it with clips, I just pulled the excess length up and over the top and back again, before securing it in place with a clip, too. You can see the final mess in the last image of the slide show above. 😄
With this bed, I might transplant the one Arikara winter squash that has germinated in the middle, and then I will likely plant bush beans around the perimeter.
But not today.
That done, I headed inside for supper before coming back out to do the watering.
Which is when the phone started ringing. I hadn’t bothered to tell the family I was outside, so when the phone started ringing, they thought I was in my office and could answer. After four calls and no messages left on the answering machine, my daughter came looking for me. I went in and saw it was my mother, which was a surprise. I’d gotten a call from the nursing home this morning – at her request – to be informed that my mother was not feeling well. They’d already informed my brother yesterday, as he’s the primary contact, and he let me know. I was told she’d had a very rough night and was doing worse today, coughing, having a hard time breathing and talking. I was informed as to what treatment she was getting, and that she’s still in quarantine. She’s not the only one that’s sick, and if enough people in her ward are ill, they have to shut it down to visitors. For now, she can get visitors that need to wear a gown and mask, which rules me out because I can’t wear a mask.
I had asked the nurse that called me to let my mother know that I knew she was having a hard time talking, so I would not be phoning her. So it was very odd that my mother would phone me! She would have gotten the message, but when I mentioned it, she didn’t say anything about getting it. She did say that the nursing home phoned me this morning because she asked them to, but I told her they’d also already contacted my brother, yesterday. I told her about the medical treatment she was getting. She knew about the antibiotics but was saying they weren’t helping – I had to explain to her that it takes at least a few days before she would feel any difference, but she expects immediate response. I told her about the medication to help with her breathing, but she couldn’t remember anything about that one, then told me whatever pills they give her, she takes. I think she’s having a harder time remembering what she’s taking and when.
Of course, she started saying how she was so sick and didn’t think she was going to live much longer. Which she has been saying for the past… five? six? or so years. Thankfully, she is in the nursing home now. She’s coming up on 96 years old, and a simple cold can be dangerous at that age.
That got her to talking about the funeral and what I thought of it, and how she was surprised to see so many people. Then she told me, in a round about way, that she wanted us to make sure that her funeral had lots of friends there. I told her, we would let people know, but didn’t mention that she’s pretty much outlived most of her friends already.
By the end of the call, her voice was getting pretty squeaky, though she sounded a lot better than I expected, and even seemed to be in good spirits. Finally being where she has wanted to be for so long has definitely made a positive difference in her, even when she’s feeling sick.
After the call, I took the time to update my brother, then headed back out to finish watering the garden beds before it got too dark.
There are a few things I want to get done tomorrow, which is Friday, because I’m going to be doing some driving around on Saturday. June is a birthday month, and Sunday is Father’s Day, so we will be combining both on Saturday, to avoid crowds. My older daughter has offered to spring for Pizza Hut, which we haven’t had in at least a year. The nearest one is about an hour’s drive away. I’ll have other errands to do as well, including a dump run, which I did not do while we had my brother’s car and the truck was in the garage. Next week has got medical appointments, my daughter’s blacksmith workshop (she’ll be bringing home a forge when it’s done), and our first stock up shopping trip. So the more I can get done in the garden in between all this, the better!
Hard to believe we’re coming up on the solstice and the first day of summer already. With the cold nights we’ve been having, it feels like it should be April or May, not coming up on the end of June!
I have had no word back about the truck yet, which means they haven’t had a chance to look at it or do a diagnostic. I should try phoning directly, tomorrow.
Before I share about today, I wanted to share what I found last night. I am so glad I decided to enjoy the long daylight and walk around the yard before bed! This, of course, included checking the garden beds. In of them, I saw unexpected movement.
It was a garter snake.
Stuck in the excess black netting over the Daikon radish, turnip and red noodle bean bed.
I tried to get it loose with just my hands at first, but quickly realized that was not possible, to I ran… well.. hobbled…. to the house to get a utility knife. I then very carefully cut at the netting where it was tight against the snake’s body – and even its mouth! This netting is something even frogs can get through, but there is something about the garter snake bodies that get caught. The more they struggle to get loose, the worse they get caught. Last year, my daughter was helping me remove some of this netting from around the trellis bed and found a snake had been caught up in it, in a spot where it couldn’t be seen until we pulled the netting out. That one was already dead when we found it. This one was still alive, thankfully. Once I got its mouth and head free, it tried to curl up on itself as they are wont to do, but it had obviously been struggling for a while and didn’t have a lot of energy left.
Once I got it free, I set it aside in the greenery under where I stack the logs and boards we use in the garden. This morning, it was gone!
I am so glad I found it in time.
We really need to find different critter netting. This stuff is to keep the larger critters out while still letting the pollinators in, but I’m quite unhappy about how it catches on everything – including our much desired garter snakes!
So that was a happy start to the day.
We were expecting the insurance company assessor to come today at around 12:30. I did my morning rounds as usual, then had my breakfast before heading back out again at about 11 and do some work in the garden until she arrived. I started out by using the very full rain barrel to water the garden beds by the house and in the south and east yards.
I have been checking out the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, and they appear to be a total loss. The cabbage bed is full of self seeded radishes, which would be a good thing, except they are all bolting. The only thing doing well in that bed are the shallots and onions I transplanted while redoing the bed by the chain link fence. As for the kohlrabi, I can see a few seedlings here and there,, and they are quite eaten up. No sign of what did the eating. Normally, I’d say flea beetles, but there’s no sign of any. Those tend to show up later in the season, anyhow, after the canola fields are harvested.
After watering in front of the house, I moved to the main garden area to water there. That done, I was getting ready to set up the hose to fill the old rain barrel to water the food forest trees and bushes.
While I was watering everything else, I could hear a utility vehicle, and it was definitely coming closer, so I went to take a look. It was the wife of the couple that rents the rest of the property, checking the fence line. So I headed over to say hi. While she kept following the fence line, it gave me a chance to check on the walnuts.
*sigh*
The Manchurian Walnut, that had been doing so well, has been eaten by dear. So has at least one of the Black walnut, and it looks like the ash tree my mother gave us was also eaten.
I hadn’t gotten to making cages for them fast enough.
I still plan to do that; they should regrow their leaves again. It’ll set them back probably a year, though.
Around then, our renter was closer so we stopped to chat at the fence for a while. I told her where I had planted the basket willow, and how I’d set up the T posts and used a partially collapsed fence line to hopefully ensure their cows won’t trample them. She said they will be rotating the cows to this section very soon.
After a lovely conversation with her, I checked my phone because I’d heard some notifications while we were talking.
It was well past 12:30 when my brother messaged me, asking if the assessor had arrived. I told him no, and updated him about the renter and their cows. It was a little past 1 when my brother messaged me again. He just received a text from the assessor, saying she would be here shortly after 2.
Hmmm.
I went back to watering the food forest trees. When that was done, I moved on to the old kitchen garden.
The bed with the tiny bok choi, mixed beets, onions and parsnips needed weeding, and I decided I would remove the old mosquito netting, which is two lengths cobbled together, and replace it with the second sheet of new insect netting I picked up, one of which is currently protecting the cabbage transplants.
In the first image, I had removed the netting and done nothing else yet. While I was putting the mosquito netting pieces away, I heard some noise out by the barn and went to check it out. It was the renter; some stuff had blown around and she was moving them back onto their pile, so the cows wouldn’t step on it. We talked for a while again. The grass in this area is incredibly tall – tall enough to short out the electric fence, so she was going to have to come back with the weed trimmer. The fence posts in that section are getting really rotted. Part of the rental deal is that they are responsible for the fences, and she told me of what she would be telling her husband about the fences and what she sees that they need to do.
That big green thing in the top right of the image?
That’s an invading rose stem! Likely from the pink rose bush at the end of the bed. In the wattle weave bed, it’s the white roses that invade.
While weeding the bed, I found the remains of some of the tiny bok choi, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. That little strip was almost the only ones I found at all.
There are beets and parsnips coming up, though. There was some self seeded spinach, but it was all bolting, so I weeded those out. The onions that got transplanted in the fall along the south side of the bed are looking nice and strong. You can see how the bed looked after clean up in the third image above.
Then I recovered the bed with the new insect netting. This stuff is much lighter and flexible, but it is still quite strong. It’ll hold the weight of cats using it as a hammock! I didn’t want to cut the netting to size, though, as it will be used differently in the future, so the excess length got rolled up at the end near the rose bush, and the excess width got pulled up over the top, then fastened in place with safety pins. There is a gab between the cover and the frame along the north side of the bed, so I used a board to hold the netting down and below the based of the cover.
By this time, it was past when the assessor was supposed to arrive, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I went inside and the girls were cooking, so I went to sit and take a break.
Before I knew it, there was a knock at the door!
The assessor had arrived, but parked her car in front of the garage, out of view.
Now, as far as I knew, she was going to look at all the outbuildings.
Turns out, she needed to come into the house, too.
I warned her, the house is a disaster, and that we had 21 cats.
We did that part last.
We started out going to the garage, though she asked about the storage house along the way. She never took measurements of that, but did take pictures. Once at the garage, I told her about the ages of the different parts. She took her pictures and measurements. Then we moved on to the barn, though she did take pictures of one of the sheds beside it that is still used for storage. She checked out, photographed and measured the barn, then we headed to the pump shack. I explained to her the fence line marking where its rented out and where we are responsible for taking care of. While checking out the pump shack, she asked about the log building that used to be the chicken coop, and I told her that’s the last log building we have that is still salvageable; it needs a new roof, but the walls are still solid. So she took pictures of that, too. My brother’s caravan and trailers are not permanent, so she ignore those, but did check the warehouse, stuffed with my parent’s belongings.
Finally, we made our way back to the house, and I showed her where the septic tank is, where the well is, which part of the house was original log, and about what year it was built, and the additions.
Then she had to come inside.
*sigh*
We haven’t been able to do the spring cleaning of the sun room yet, because of the weather. Then there’s the old kitchen – I made sure to tell her that the old wood cook stove was broken and cannot be used. I’d already told her about the new roof, and that the chimney to the old wood burning furnace had been removed, so there’s just the chimney to the old kitchen.
Then she had to go through all the rooms in the house, which was downright embarrassing. Our house really is a disaster. Then we went into the basement, starting with the “new” part basement. Once in the old part, I made sure to tell her that we had a new well pump, and she checked out the other pumps, too. The blower fans are going continuously now, and I explained the the old basement was built before weeping tile was a thing, so it does get wet, but doesn’t flood.
I apologized for the disaster, and she basically said, between the cats and being on a farm, she knows how it can get.
Oh, and it turned out she’s allergic to cats!
After she was done, I followed her car out to close the gate behind her. By this time, I was getting pretty famished, so I headed in to finally have my lunch (it was well past 3 by then). We were running low on kibble for the inside cats which, for the price, would normally be a trip to Walmart. Chatting with the family, my older daughter ended up sending me funds and a list, so I ended up doing a bit of a grocery shopping trip. I checked out the garden centre after the shopping to see if they had any transplants worth picking up.
They did not.
So I headed home. If I hadn’t had frozen stuff in the car, and forgotten to bring insulated bags, I would have gone across the road to see the garden centre at the Canadian Tire, but everything would have just melted in the car while I did.
By then, it was late enough that my daughter took care of the outside cat feeding while I was gone. I will be heading out again after I finish this post to do my evening rounds and checks. It’s still nice and light out.
Hopefully, I won’t find another trapped garter snake, but I’ll bring my utility knife with me, just in case!
Tomorrow, I think I will re-work those failed beds and see what I can plant in there, that has a short enough season for it.
We had another chilly night last night, with temperatures dropping to 7C/45F Today reached 22C/72F, but we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F again, tonight! In fact, over the next while, our overnight lows are expected to be below 10C/50F more often that above.
Not good for the garden.
This morning, after doing my rounds, I started on transplanting the purchased plants. I decided to plant the butternut squash in the bed along the chain link fence.
Each pot had two plants in it, so I prepped four spots. Unfortunately, there was no way I could separate them without damaging the roots too much. So I kept them together. I plan to train them up the chain link fence, and/or the sunflowers. You can see some sprouted sunflowers in the bottom of the above images. These went into the middle third of the chain link fence, and the two varieties of sunflowers each got half the entire bed, so the seedlings coming up next to the butternut squash would be the Mammoth sunflower variety. Both varieties should have stems strong enough to support climbing vines, if they get a chance to get big enough, first.
That job went quickly. The next one took quite a bit longer.
The rest of the transplants were to go into the bed in the main garden area that I had to put the insect netting over, to keep the cats out of the exposed soil. Newly exposed soil. The first thing to do was to remove the netting and hoops. I made a point of spreading out the netting and folding it up right away, because it was rather breezy and I didn’t want it getting blown around and tangled up.
Next, I went over the bed with the garden fork to loosen the soil and get rid of any weeds. There were hardly any weeds, which was nice for a change.
Once the soil was loosened and leveled, I spaced out the cabbage transplants to be more or less a foot apart. Or, slightly more than the length of my trowel. As this bed only recently had the plastic cover removed, the soil didn’t get much chance to be rained on. Moisture drains away and disappears so quickly, I made the extra effort to deeply water the planting holes before the cabbages were transplanted. I also made sure they were slightly below grade, so that any water would drain towards the plants. The dozen transplants took up about half the bed. Once they were in the ground, that half of the bed got a thorough watering, not just the plants. Then I started cutting up pieces of cardboard to set around the transplants as a mulch, which also got a soaking. Finally, I added straw on top of the cardboard and thickly along the edges. Then the straw got a soak.
The cabbages need insect netting to protect them, but the rest of the transplants need insects for pollinating, so I set hoops up over the cabbages only. For the entire bed, I’d made 7 hoops, but used 5 over the cabbages. I used the extra rods and connectors to add one more rod to the hoops. This way, the hoops could cover the width of the bed, including the straw mulch, completely. For the netting, I set it so that the salvage edge of one side was at the base of the hoops along one side, and the excess length was at the end of the bed instead of the middle. After clipping the salvage edge to the hoops, close to the ground, I pulled things snug to clip the netting close to the ground at the other side. That left me with a lot of excess netting, which got pulled up over the top and clipped on the other side as far as it could reach.
It isn’t set up yet when I took the last photo in the slide show above, but I later added weights along the edges of the netting between the hoops, too. I didn’t want to use ground staples as, with the straw mulch in place, they get pulled up very easily.
That done, it was time to do the melons.
For this, I had a large, heavy duty card board box that I could use to cover the entire remaining half of the bed. I decided to lay it down and cut squares out where the melons would be planted, first. It got moved aside after that, so the soil could get a good watering. Then I laid the cardboard down to give it a thorough soak, turned it over to soak the other side, then turned it back again to soak it some more.
For here, I have one pot of watermelon and three of muskmelon. All have two transplants per pot but, as with the butternut squash, there was no way to divide them without damaging the roots too much. Which means I have six muskmelon in three spots and two watermelon in one spot.
As always, the planting holes got a deep watering, before the plants were added. Again, I made sure they were planted into a slight depression for water flow, then the whole area got watered again.
That done, the straw mulch was added, including in the area that has nothing planted in it. If I find more transplants worth buying, I have room. I would just need to push aside the straw mulch, then cut a hole in the cardboard below.
The straw got a very thorough watering. If the straw is too dry, it’ll act as a thatch.
That done, and everything put away, I wanted to get some trellis netting out of the garden shed. Which meant disturbing our little furry family.
Things had been knocked about by the raccoons, and the wrapped balls of netting were coming undone and getting caught on things, which meant it took a while for me to get them. In the end, I grabbed several different types of nets and the tomato cage they were getting hung up on, just to not disturb the raccoons to much.
They didn’t seem to care.
The mama didn’t move. She actually seemed to be asleep. The babies just watched me. No chittering. No getting upset or scared. Not even looking particularly curious. They just stayed snuggled up to Mom and watched me.
These buggers have no business being that cute. 😄
The netting got set aside for now; the peas in the trellis bed are getting tall enough that the trellis netting will soon be needed.
Once everything was done and set aside, I got changed to head into town. My younger daughter forgot to call in her meds for delivery on Thursday and she just ran out of one of them, so she called her refills in when the pharmacy opened which, on Sundays, is at noon. My older daughter sent me funds to pick things up at the grocery store, too.
After picking up the prescription refills, I made a point of heading to the cash desk, just to show the cashier that there was nothing owing on the meds. Along the way, I passed a new display of what turned out to be bouncy balls. I had no idea. All I saw were all these round critter faces looking at me. Including a hilariously adorable dragon, though it took some doing to figure out that it was a dragon.
It called to me.
They weren’t expensive, so I bought one for my daughter and hid it in her bag of prescriptions. She loves dragons, and I knew she would get a giggle out of it.
The cashier started chatting about today’s weather, and how we are finally supposed to not get rain for a while. Where she lives, the flooding was pretty bad, but not as bad as an area south of her that got 12 inches of rain in 6 hours.
12 inches.
30 cm.
In six hours.
That’s just insane!
No wonder highways were being washed away!
That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up a few things, then home.
My daughter loved the dragon. She thinks it’s hilarious.
By the time I got back from town, it was time to feed the outside cats, so I quickly did that while my older daughter made supper. After supper, I headed back outside again. First thing was to break out the weed trimmer and clear the grass away from several rocks in the west yard, so I could see them and not high them with the riding mower.
I am so thankful to my brother for letting us use their push mower and little riding mower. The riding mower they gave us years ago still runs but, for some reason, doesn’t cut. The grass just bends – and my brother had sharpened the blade when he repaired the chain that kept falling off. Our push mower lost pieces and couldn’t be repaired. We don’t have the funds to replace the push mower, and we can’t figure out what’s wrong with the riding mower. Thanks to my brother, we can still do the mowing.
I was able to do most of the inner yard. As I was moving into the West yard, where all the cat shelters are, I spotted a huge raccoon coming out of the catio, where it was stealing food! Not the mama, but a bigger one; likely a big male.
I didn’t even try to mow around the main garden area, nor did I start on the outer yard. That will wait for another day.
Not tomorrow, though.
On the way into town, I took a quick side trip to find where our garage’s new location is. It was very easy to find, and our truck is parked under the shade of a tree. Tomorrow morning, I will take my brother’s car into town to pay for the repairs and get the key, but will leave the truck there. After the funeral and internment, we’ll be able to switch vehicles, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that before the garage closes. It’s unlikely my mother will be physically up to anything beyond the funeral itself, but we are working out the timing so that we all arrive together with my mother, who will be using her wheelchair for this outing. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult for her to transfer into my brother’s vehicle.
I really hope things work out well tomorrow. A part of me still suspects someone that believed our vandal’s lies about us might make a scene and try kicking us out or something. We shall see.
Time to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
The Re-Farmer 