When I had a laparoscopy done, some 15 or so years ago, the thing that surprised me most was how it basically wiped me out for a month. I felt so weak for so long, and completely drained.
Now?
I feel none of that. If anything, I’m feeling downright energetic! The fact that residual pain from the areas they worked in has reduced so much, so quickly, certainly helps. Basic biological functions that were painful yesterday are pretty much pain free now. I still have to watch myself, of course, but I’m really amazed by how quickly the pains are passing.
I will continue to sleep on the couch in the living room for some time, though. Which means that cats have my king size bed to themselves. You’d think they’d be happy with that, but it hasn’t stopped them from trying to tear down the door into the living room. This set up was made to be temporary and easy to remove. It’s basically just famed chicken wire, with a hook and eyelet on either side of the door to keep it closed. Last night, several different cats decided they absolutely needed to get through that door, because I was there, grabbing at the chicken wire with their claws and trying to pull it open.
My older daughter stayed up almost all night, so that she would be available in case I needed help, and she ended up luring the cats away with wet cat food, after which they finally stopped trying to tear down the door. Mostly. I did actually get some sleep, and found getting in and out of the low couch much easier than I feared. I’d still like to raise it up by about 4 or 5 inches but, for now, it is working. My daughters set up my walker near the couch so I could use it to help get myself up and down, and that worked out very well. By morning, though, I found I didn’t even need to use it.
My brother and his wife did end up coming over for a few hours today, making sure to let us know we didn’t need to even come out to greet them. They had some winterizing to do, and very little time to do it. My daughter did head out to return their container from the lovely turkey soup my SIL had sent home with us, though.
I spent much of my day in the cat free zone. Got some crochet done until I found myself being blinded by the morning sun once it cleared the spruce trees. My husband and daughters made sure I got my high protein meals and plenty of hot tea.
Temperature wise, today was a lovely day, but we had high winds again. In the late afternoon, the girls helped get my walker outside so I could do some walking around, and we were seriously buffeted. We found a lovely surprise on our compost ring; my brother had left a bag of their compost for us. I had been perplexed by this, when he brought us several buckets of compost in the spring but, while staying overnight and their place, they showed me their electric compost machine. I’d never heard of such a thing before, though I’ve seen other types of countertop composters. This thing cooks down the kitchen waste and the end result is a compost that looks a lot like course coffee grounds. I was very happy to see more of it.
When I first started walking around the yard, I checked out the vines on the chain link fence. I’d picked the tiny yellow winter squash a while ago, but those were easy to reach under the frost cloth I’d draped over them. I remembered the green one from nearer the middle of the fence. The wind had torn most of the frost cloth loose, so I could reach around and finally found it. As we walked around the main garden area, I ended up picking the muskmelons that were under the plastic all this time.
In among the frost killed bush beans, fresh onions are growing! I’d harvested the onions from there, but obviously missed a few. These are quite small, so it’s possible they are transplants that simply didn’t grow until the bush beans died back.
While walking around, the girls and I talked about where we could plant more of the little haskaps, and the various things that need to be taken down and put away for the winter. There’s no way we’ll be able to get all the beds cleaned up and prepped before winter. As long as we get one done, planted with garlic and mulched, I’ll be happy. The next while should have good daytime temperatures, so my daughters will be able to harvest the last of the carrots, beets, parsnips and the rest of the chicory root, little by little. That has priority over clearing beds for next year. They are also wanting to get as many more of those smaller pots of haskap as possible planted, too. Looking at the long range forecast, it doesn’t look like the ground will actually freeze until about mid-November. That is unsure, of course, since the forecast that far ahead is based entirely on averages, and this winter is not supposed to be average with that Super El NiÅ„o. It’s entirely possible the ground won’t freeze until some time in December.
I’m rather okay with that.
The hardest thing for me right now is to not go out there and try to do stuff, because I’m feeling way too good and way too energetic!
I was feeling good when I headed out to do the evening cat feeding, so of course, I stayed out longer.
As I was feeding the cats, Colby actually wanted attention. So much so that I got him, and was finally able to dose his ear. Just one. The one with the wound behind it from being scratched so much. Not ideal, but better than nothing! The medication says to dose once ever 24 hours, so hopefully we’ll get it done tomorrow again, before we head out to my brother’s for the night.
Depending on what weather app I check, we’re looking at going below freezing tonight. Cold enough that the frost cloth over the self seeded tomatoes won’t be enough to protect them anymore.
So I harvested them, to let them finish ripening indoors, leaving the tomatoes on their vines.
The vines themselves were remarkably strong and healthy, so I chopped them up quite a bit before dropping them on the bed for now. Some of them were even still blooming! The frost cover alone is not enough to explain how well they were doing. This section of the bed seems to be very well sheltered from the cold. Something to keep in mind, when deciding what to plant there next year.
I have been very curious about the nearby chicory. They never did bloom, and I could see no sign of flower stalks anywhere. Where there any roots? I decided to dig one up to find out. I used the handle-less garden for to do it.
It took a lot of wrestling and loosening of soil all around a single plant before I could finally pull it up.
All of the tips seem to have torn off in the soil as I pulled it, even with all the loosening of soil I’d done first.
I need to look up how to process it so we can try it as a drink. I only harvested the one for now.
Okay, this is what I’ve found. After a thorough cleaning, they get cut into uniform pieces and completely dehydrated. Then they are roasted. After roasting, they can be processed into powder or granules for use. One site I found, though, skips the dehydration and the roots are just roasted at low temperatures until crispy.
Looking at photos, it seems they can have very different root shapes. I’m guessing different varieties? Most images show them looking a lot like parsnips; a single large root. Fewer images show them with multiple thin roots like ours has.
After rinsing it off with the hose, I broke off the greens and set them in the compost ring. The greens are supposed to be edible – at least while young – but we have no interest in them that way.
Since I was by the compost ring anyhow, I decided to clear the tomato plants from the bed next to it. I didn’t dig them up, but cut their stems at the bases, and tossed them all onto the compost ring. The next step will be to get all the protective collars out and give them a cleaning for the winter, then pull up all the elms that have been trying to grow in there.
I really, really want to get rid of those Chinese elm, and their billions of seeds.
I was just finishing up when my older daughter came out, looking for me. She had been quite worried about me, given my condition earlier in the day. The pain has gone away completely, and I was feeling like it was never there. I still made sure not to act like I normally would, though, because I can be really stupid that way and easily end up causing more problems for myself!
In talking about what I was doing, I mentioned the tomatoes and chicory, which my daughter had noticed before seeing where I was. As we went back to the old kitchen garden, I started talking about the HUGE beet greens in one of the beds, and how curious I was to see what they were. With some of the – much smaller – beets, we could see some of the roots, and they did not look very large. These, however, had no visible roots.
We were both curious enough to dig up the largest beet plants, and boy did we get a surprise!
Would you look at these giants! (and the three largest red beets, too) I kept my food in the picture for perspective.
These beets are from a package of mixed varieties, with nothing to say what those varieties are. So I have no clue, but these white beets look like sugar beets! We’ve never grown sugar beets before, and only ever seen photos.
What’s curious is how they have all spiraled like that. Even the little one.
From what we can see of what’s still in the bed, there are no other larger red beets, and maybe one more white beet like these.
My daughter helped me with rinsing them off and bringing them inside. The beets went into the kitchen to use right away, while the tomatoes went into the cat free zone. We’ve suddenly had issues with fruit flies and, unfortunately, hat to throw away a lot of the ripening tomatoes. Of the ones that didn’t end up in the compost, they got set in the bin with the newly harvested tomatoes, with paper towel below, and a lid.
Some of the chocolate stripe tomatoes, and the California Wonder bell peppers, however, were quite ready.
Those got put into produce bags and brought to the kitchen for the family to enjoy. I can’t eat tomatoes or peppers, so I’ll have to rely on them for feedback. I’ve already been told that the California Wonder bell peppers are worth growing again. We’ll see if it’s the same for the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes. They are awfully pretty.
So here we have a lovely surprise harvest.
It’s remarkable that I had tomatoes still on the vine in the middle of October!
This is the first year I’ve tried to grow parsnips, and it was not planned. They went were something else had failed.
They grew incredibly well – at least from what we could see. Huge greenery that got so tall, it grew through the higher raised bed cover we had on this bed, because it’s strong enough to hold protective plastic or netting, plus the weight of cats. For the past while, it was just the wire, nothing else, to keep cats out in general. Once I removed that, not long ago, in preparation for harvesting, the parsnip greens were so tall, the stems on the outside flopped over and couldn’t hold themselves up without the wire.
What I couldn’t see was parsnips.
I had tried probing around the surface of the soil, but could neither see nor feel any roots. I tried pulling some up at one end, some time ago, and there was basically nothing. I was prepared to have a whole lot of paltry roots of the sort I see when carrots or radishes bolt, though no parsnips bolted.
With Thanksgiving dinner happening tomorrow, as I was covering the self seeded tomatoes for the night, I decided to try and harvest some parsnips to go with the carrots my daughter was digging up. She had the garden fork, and the spades are all by the haskaps, so I tried with the flat blade of the ice chipper, first, thinking to loosen the soil beside the parsnips so I could pull them without just tearing the greens right off.
The first thing I noted was there was definitely something there. Not near the surface at all, though. I ended up switching to the tines of an old garden fork that the handle had broken off long ago. We meant to get a new handle and simply forgot. I found it while cleaning up around the house in preparation for winter. The lack of a handle actually came in handy in a raised bed.
It worked much better, though I found I still couldn’t get deep enough!
You can see a couple with tips that broke off because they were deeper than I’d been able to loosen the soil, as well as some surface damage from the tines. The soil surface was about an inch above the tops of the roots. No wonder we couldn’t see them!
I wonder if I’ll find the same thing when we start digging up the beets, growing in the same bed?
This is all I picked for today. Parsnips and carrots can both handle frost, so there’s no hurry to harvest them all. Same with the bunching onions we also picked, to go with our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. I forgot to take the turkey out early enough to thaw, so we’re going to have a pork roast, instead. 😄
All this was done after we did a little stock up trip at Walmart, since we weren’t up to doing Costco, while recovering from colds, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving! We will just make sure to do it on Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest, since my daughter and I will be spending Thursday night at my brothers before my surgery in the city on Friday morning.
We need to be pretty organized ahead of time.
We were starting to run out of things, though, so the Walmart trip had to be done today, if only it the smaller one that’s closer.
Today turned out to be a rather nice day, that none of us really got to take advantage of.
I found myself awake at 4am and wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so I did the morning cat feeding. Which turned out to be greatly appreciated, as both my daughters were feeling quite sick with colds.
They stayed well away from my and my husband!
I did wake with a sore throat, which could also have been from sleeping with my mouth open, but I’m going to be proactive to try and avoid getting a cold. The last thing I need is for the cancer clinic to call me with a date and time for my surgery, then having to cancel it because of a cold!
The outside cats were quite happy this morning, as I made their cat soup with a couple of little cans of donated wet cat food as well as some cat milk and soaked kibble. We have so many bags of donated cat treats, I ended up scatting three (small) bags of treats all over.
I only saw 11 cats. I did not see Sprout (Sprig?) at all. Hopefully, she came by later. I did get to pet the shrine kitten, though, who no longer eats at the shrine feeding station at all anymore. There is a particular tray she prefers to eat from. The problem with that, though, is that there’s usually four other older cats insisting on eating from that tray, too, even though there are so many others around, scarfing down the food, and she doesn’t get as much. She doesn’t seem to want to eat out of any of the other trays for some reason.
After taking care of the kitties, I stayed out to enjoy the morning and do some light work in the old kitchen garden. I uncovered the self seeded Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and had a chance to give them a good look.
Hidden in the thickest greenery, there are tomatoes ripening on the vine!
The frost cloth isn’t long enough to completely cover one end, so the branches there were more frost damaged. I broke off the most damage branches, and found a number of little green tomatoes that had fallen off. So I picked them, which you can see in the second image, and brought them inside to ripen. Between the frost cloth and the more sheltered position in this bed, these tomato plants are protected enough from the colder nights that they’re not being killed off. I’m quite impressed!
After that, I finally removed the cover over the beets and parsnips, and the herb bed. The herb bed was more difficult to remove, as the oregano on one side had grown through the chicken wire quite thickly. I managed to get it off without uprooting anything.
Then I started working on the summer squash, removing all the wire garden ties securing the stalks to their vertical bamboo stake supports, then the ones holding the ends of the woven horizontal supports together, before finally pulling them all up. I was able to make a couple of bundles of 10 stakes all the same length, with the garden wire to secure them. Then I did my usual morning rounds, checking on the other garden beds and the haskaps. With the high winds we had, a lot of the smaller ones in the trays were blown right out, so those got fixed, then watered. I made sure to water the spruce saplings, too. Those little pots will dry out fast.
I didn’t try to take down other covers and rods on other beds yet. The netting and clear vinyl sheets are something I will wait to have a second person help with. With the winds we’ve been having, it’s rather difficult to fold and roll them up for winter storage with just one person.
That done, I headed back in and tried to go back to sleep.
It didn’t work.
I did send a bit of a list to the girls of what I’d gotten done, and what needed to be done with them, mentioning that all the transplanted haskaps would need a deep watering.
I also found an email update on my FIL’s condition. He is, unfortunately, deteriorating and it’s looking like he is not going to be around much longer. His dementia is failing particularly fast, and he has been “sundowning” by the end of the day, talking about things like going to see his parents. They passed away decades ago. It’s been particularly hard on my husband, as he physically can’t make the trip to see his father, and now it seems he won’t even be able to talk to him on the phone. His father is unlikely to even know who he is.
It does make me appreciate just how well my mother is doing.
My SIL messaged to check on me and how I was doing, and we chatted for a fair bit before I finally gave up on lying down. I had intended to go back outside again in the afternoon, but the pain levels suddenly kicked in and I ended up having to lie down again. My daughters, sick as they were, headed outside and deep watered the haskap.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to sleep, because I kept getting notifications! I got some texts from my sister, letting me know she had visited my mother. She was updating me when the phone rang – and it was my mother! She wanted to know how things had gone yesterday. It was a mostly good call, though she did try to go on about how my brother should be doing stuff around here, not us, because he’s a man and we women shouldn’t be doing things like planting trees. Which is bizarre, since she planted many, many trees over the years! (Mostly in terrible places! 😄) She did start talking about how my brother has many important responsibilities, both at work and at home, and how he goes out of province to visit the grandsons, etc. Then, much to my shock, she switched to Polish and said a blessing on him for good health and a long life. My mother rather hates my brother and he can never do anything good enough for her, so when she does stuff like this, it makes me suspicious. She seemed to be genuine, though.
By then, a few hours had gone by and my pain levels finally eased and I did finally make it outside. I meant to just walk around and check on things but, of course, I found small things that I could do.
Including getting a small harvest.
In the East garden bed where I’d planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, I was able to dig up these.
A couple of them were self seeded, while the others were the only ones that germinated from the older seed tape I’d made with them a couple of years ago.
While checking things out in the main garden area, I tried digging up some of the Daikon radish that all bolted. There were no radish roots at all in the ones I dug up. Just the woody material that happens when they bolt, instead.
I did, however, dig up a few Red Bearded bunching onions.
As I write this, I’ve got a pork stew going in the Instant Pot, with all these carrots and onions, plus the last of the summer squash I’d picked before the frost got them, along with our own potatoes and our own garlic. The liquid is gelled meat juices from the last of the big brisket I got a while back, cut into individual size roasts that my daughter seasoned well and slow roasted, low and slow, for something like three hours.
I am quite looking forward to it! We don’t have a lot from the garden this year, but we at least have enough for a few meals. Which is better than nothing!
I’m just really appreciating the fact that I was able to harvest anything at all, in October. Looking ahead on the 10 day forecast, we’ve got some mild weather for the next while, and even another day with an expected high of 20C/68F! Things are supposed to be cooler after that, but still relatively mild. The ground isn’t going to freeze for a while, yet. Right now, my time limit is not the weather anymore, but my surgery date. After the surgery, I’m out of commission for 6 weeks, so the more I can get done before the surgery the better, though my daughters will be taking over a lot of things as they are able.
Oh! What is that beeping I hear?
’tis the Instant Pot, finished cooking the stew and now depressurizing.
In the second picture, you can see him enjoying pets.
Midnight still has a mark on his nose. For most of the summer, he had an odd wound there that would get bigger, burst, start going away, then get bigger again. Which was rather gross because he kept trying to rub his nose, wound and all, against us while demanding attention! At some point, it simply started to heal and now there’s just a bit of bald skin where it used to be.
Fluffy lets us pet her regularly now, and is often found lounging on various beds and blankets.
Today, I finally got progress done in the sun room, which meant taking all the beds scattered on the floor out, as well as the food trays and water bowl, so clear the half of the room so the floor could be scrubbed. I put all the beds and blankets into the wagon and set it outside. It was always either Fluffy or Midnight in the wagon, enjoying a nap in the sun.
Once the floor was clear, I unhooked the shop lights from one end, then cleaned all the windows on the inside.
Then I did the outsides.
Then, since I had the bucket with glass cleaner and long pole window washing tool out anyways, I did the outsides of all the first floor windows.
Then I did the windows in the isolation shelter.
Plus the roof.
That done, I got the bucket refilled with all purpose cleaner to start on the floor in the sun room. I’ve got a broom with super stiff bristles on it and I used that to scrub the floor, because there’s no way a regular mop can do the job. It was a very dirty job, but I got a little more than half the floor in the room done. Then my daughter brought me a mop bucket and I used a mop to rinse the floor – which required several changes of water.
It’s going to take quite a while for the floor to dry. Once it’s dry, we can clear the other half. Most things will go outside, but the counter shelf will be moved to the cleaned half, since it’s easier than trying to fight it through the door.
I did get the lights set up again before doing in, and the wagon with the beds was tucked into the other half for the night, in case it rains. The cats are going to have to find other places to sleep tonight!
They have lots of places to choose from.
Through the window of the above photo, you can see the beds with the self seeded tomatoes. That got covered for the night. The other beds in the main garden area did not get covered again. Instead, I harvested.
There are a few California Wonder bell peppers and the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes that will be left to ripen indoors. The single Caspar eggplant is about as ripe as its going to get, so we can try that out at any time. It’s unfortunate that we got only one one successful eggplant, and even that is smaller than it should be.
This morning, my younger daughter and I made a dump run. When we got back, she went straight to the food forest to keep working on the transplants. Her sister took a break from working on commissions to come out and help. Even I was able to help out. With the 18 holes my daughter got done last night, I started by watering each of them – something that would have been good to do with all of the transplants, but there wasn’t the opportunity. Then we worked assembly line style, getting plants out of their big pots, then my younger daughter brought them to the pre-dug holes while her sister went along and put soil back around them.
I found more pots with self seeded willow in them.
Some, like in the photo above, showed signs that someone had already cut away willow earlier, and new ones had started to grow from the same stems. We tried to cut away as much as possible, but there’s just no way to separate their roots out. In the second image, you can see the pile of most of the willows I’d cut away, including from haskaps that had already been transplanted! The leaves are quite similar, but the stems are very different, which helped in finding where to cut them away.
Then my alarm went off for my afternoon painkillers (just T3s now), so I left the girls to it and worked on other things. One of those was doing a scan of the truck. The check engine light had turned itself off a couple of days ago, but turned on again while we were driving to the dump. It was the same code as before, that our mechanic says is likely the gas cap. The other possibilities are all things we’ve taken care of already. I cleared the code, then sent our mechanic screen caps of the scan results, asking for suggestions. We’ll be doing our Costco run tomorrow, so it should be interesting to see if the light is still there.
By the end of the afternoon, this is how far the girls got.
They got 18 haskap into the pre-dug holes, then dug and planted another 7, making for 25 transplants done today. There are still another 10 large pots waiting to go into the ground that will need larger holes dug, before we can switch to the ones in the trays that don’t need such deep holes. In the third photo of the slideshow above, you can see what’s left.
It’s unlikely we’ll have a chance to work on them tomorrow, but we might be able to finish getting things in the ground on Monday. At least for the pre-measured area. Once that’s filled, we can start sticking more of them wherever we can find space.
After that, we go back to clear out the rocks that got dug up. Then the soil around each one will get raked smooth, and finally a water trench will be made around each one.
Then we can start hauling over wood chips and start mulching.
Meanwhile, we have various garden beds that need to be cleared out. The carrots need to be harvested, but those can wait, since they handle frost just fine. At the very least, a bed needs to be prepared for the garlic, which needs to be planted this month.
On the plus side, we should have a couple more weeks of relatively mild weather before overnight temperatures start consistently going below freezing. Which I am grateful for. Today I saw one of those Facebook “X years ago today” photos come up. It was a photo taken out of the living room window, 8 years ago, and there was snow on the ground. I think we even had a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend, that year. So I am quite happy with the weather we’ve got happening right now! In fact, it was a perfect day to be working outside today, and not get too hot while doing it!
I’m also happy that I was feeling well enough to be outside most of the day, and finally work on the sun room, too. We’ll see how things are with our Costco trip tomorrow. I’ll definitely bring the walker along and have my daughter push the cart, instead of using the cart as a walker, just to be on the safe side.
Well, we most definitely dropped to freezing last night, so I was expecting to see much of the garden finally killed off for the season.
I didn’t make it outside for quite some time, though.
I was doing great in the wee hours when my alarm went off – so much so, I skipped the painkillers and fell back asleep. I was still feeling good when the morning alarm went off and I took my meds and supplements as usual, then promptly fell back asleep again.
Then the phone rang. I was expecting a call back from what I missed yesterday, at 10am. The call came at about 9am, and I was still hard asleep.
It did turn out to be the cancer clinic calling. Finally! I have a date to come in on Tuesday next week. I had thought I’d be getting a procedure done – another biopsy and testing of my lymph nods – but she said the appointment should be only half an hour. So it sounds like I’m just talking to a doctor? I will find out when I get there.
The clinic is in the same hospital the cardiac clinic is in. The cardiac clinic that would not accommodate my husband’s disability while always being very late calling him in and making him wait in painful waiting room chairs, then ghosted him when he refused to put up with it anymore.
Hopefully, the cancer clinic is better.
What isn’t better is the length of the drive, downtown driving to cross the river to a sort of second “downtown” of the French part of the city, and endless parking issues around the hospital. The woman that called me even brought up the parking as a potential issue, and I told her about taking my husband in and having to park several blocks away. She completely understood. I appreciate that she brought it up. It is clearly a major problem.
Oh, and the appointment is for 9:15am. The drive, with heavy downtown traffic, is about an hour and a half. More, with construction issues. Then we’d need the time to find parking, then walking however many blocks it’ll take to get to the hospital. We’d have to leave at around 6:45am to be sure to get there in time.
I passed on to my brother and SIL about the appointment. While chatting with me SIL, I mentioned that the parking issues was brought up.
She had a suggestion. We could drive to their place, just outside the city, and leave the truck in their driveway. She would drive us to the hospital, drop us off, then come back for us later.
!!!!!
My SIL is such an awesome person. I very gratefully accepted the offer.
By the time that was all worked out, I’d had breakfast and was getting ready to head outside. Unfortunately, pretty much right from when I lurched out of bed to get the phone, the pain started kicking in. It kept slowly getting worse so I held out until my afternoon meds, using the topical painkiller lotion in between, hoping that with the two of them, things would improve.
It never really did. I’ve just taken my evening painkillers and it’s only now starting to get better.
My younger daughter, meanwhile, had gone out to start working on the transplants. She had come in briefly in the mid afternoon when I remembered that I wanted to go to the post office. I had a thumb drive to drop off for someone, care of the store’s owner, as well as getting the mail, in case there were more medical letters in.
My daughter came with me. I drove but stayed in the truck while she did the running around. By the time I was driving home, I had to hunch over the steering wheel, as the angle helped ease the pain a bit.
Once home, I decided to stay outside and finally look at the garden as I’d planned to do earlier. My daughter offered to bring my walker over – she had set it up under the crab apple trees as somewhere she could sit to rest and hydrate every now and then. I said no and just took my time over things.
Of course, I couldn’t NOT do stuff while out there.
The winter squash vines all seemed to be frost killed, even with the frost cloth I had over it. Which I’d left, because it’s white and still lets light in. Plus, I wasn’t up to moving it. The vines looked damaged, but the developing squash did not seem to have damage to them. So I left them.
The bush beans, in the first photo above, are all killed off. The Cosmos and Crackerjack marigolds in the second photo seem to be killed off, too. Looking through the plastic over the melons, they look dead, as well. I did not try to uncover the peppers, Chocolate Stripe tomatoes and eggplant. The celery, which I have not been able to harvest to dehydrate as planned, looks just fine!
The summer squash, in the third picture, were completely frost killed – revealing a few squash that looked big enough to harvest and not very damaged by frost!
So, I harvested them. Two Lemon squash, some Prolific Longneck, and some yellow zucchini.
In the other images, you can see that some zucchini flowers look surprisingly strong and like they might still bloom!
After that, I checked on the tomato and bean beds by the compost ring. The self seeding tomato plants in the old kitchen garden, which is still covered, seem to have survived, but the ones in the tomato bed did not. After checking on the state of the tomatoes still hanging on the vines, I decided they were worth picking, with the split ones going into the compost ring. Only the larger tomatoes. The Orange Currant tomatoes are so small, there was nothing salvageable there.
I was being haunted by cats while doing this, so I did the evening cat feeding. Which is when I got to love on this beauty.
Colby SO loves attention now! He’s such a gorgeous kitty!
That done, I finished picking tomatoes and set them in the cat free zone, aka: the living room, to see if they will ripen, then decided I was up to doing at least some clean up work on the tomato bed.
I basically just took off all the plant ties and clips, then pulled the stakes out. With the green stakes, I was able to make a bundle of 10 but, since we stole some to use for the haskaps, I didn’t have enough to make a second bundle of 10, so those will just wait there for now. The bed is at the stage where the protective collars can be removed, but that was more than I was able to do today.
The deer ate the entire row of Swiss Chard, but it’s trying to grow back! Chard can handle frost quite well, and the little leaves have no frost damage at all.
After that, I felt I had enough energy for one more thing. I measured inside the water bowl shelter, then cut a narrow piece of plywood to length.
The first image shows the new board, which is in the middle, plus I added back one of the other narrower boards I’d tried adding to make it wider, previously. Originally, it was just that white board in the back (there’s a spare piece of wood I’m just storing there for now). I set the self-warming shelter back, and it now has enough space to be set sideways, with the peak matching the angle of the roof. Hopefully, nothing will try climbing on top of it and crushing it again!
Under the shelf, you can see the last beds and blankets that need to be cleaned for the winter, but in the second photo, you can see I’ve added another bed, already cleaned, to the second floor. As the season progresses and we plug in the cat house, there will be power to the heated water bowl for the winter. We still need to pop the roof on the cat house to clean it for the winter, and check the heat bulb and smoke detector.
That was about it for me, by then. I did go over to see how my daughter was doing. She’d been at it almost all day. She had planted 6 more haskap, but then switched to just digging holes. While she was doing that, I gave all the pots and trays a watering. I hadn’t realized until then that my SIL wasn’t able to take all the spruce trees! There are still about 5 trays and a few loose pots of them!
My daughter dug another 18 holes before calling it a day. Digging the holes is actually the “easy” part of the job – getting the root bound haskap out of their pots is far more difficult.
Unfortunately, as she moved her way down the tilled rows, the top soil was getting shallower in places, and she was digging up a lot more gravel and rocks. Including hitting some rocks too big to dig out!
You can see the edge of one in the first photo above. The second photo shows some of the “smaller” rocks she’d gotten out of another hole. As for the third picture…
Yeah… that’s a crack in the spade’s wooden shaft. It finally broke while she was digging around that rock in the first photo.
Thankfully, my brother had brought a couple of his spades out and left them for us to use, too. We have another one that has a metal shaft that my daughter doesn’t like to use. She’d started using one of my brother’s that had a wooden shaft, but the top was some sort of ergonomic handle that she found actually caused her more pain. Which left only one last shovel available that she could use! Another wooden shaft, which she prefers. Hopefully, no more big rocks will become an issue.
Here, you can see the day’s work. Six more haskaps transplanted, on the left of the photo, and 18 holes dug. That leaves another 30 holes to dig, but the last ones won’t need to accommodate the big pots. The last ones could be done with a hand trowel, for the haskap in the trays.
You can see the piles of soil that have more gravel in them, too.
By the time she was done, my daughter fully needed to use my walker to go back to the house! The poor thing could barely walk by then.
While all this was happening, I got a message from my sister saying they might be swinging buy to drop off some tires, then head back out again. We’d been inside for a while when I checked the cameras and saw they were here! So I went out to talk to them.
Oh! I completely forgot to mention last night!
A few years ago, someone had come out here to buy several old vehicles out of the car graveyard. Two years ago, he came back wanting to buy a couple of little cars parked by the old threshing machine. They’ve been there so long, they sunk into the soil right to the undercarriage, and there were caragana and red osier dogwood growing around them.
We made arrangements and he just needed to figure out how to get them out and take them home.
I never heard back from him. I thought he might have changed his mind but, last night, I got a call. He was at the gate!
It turns out he had started a new business this spring, and now has a crane truck. He was able to use it to lift the cars out and tow them to an open area closer to the gate, where they can be easily accessed to load onto a trailer, which will happen another day.
Of course, I let my brother know and kept him up to date, then sent him video I took of the crane work. My brother, however, was visiting my mother at the time and didn’t see all of it; all he saw was that someone had come for the cars – and he completely forgot about the arrangement made, two years ago. Not a surprise. At the time, they were frantically trying to get their own stuff off their property they’d sold to bring here, before the possession date. He ended up phoning me after visiting my mother and had seemed very confused and anxious about it.
By the time they got here tonight, though, he had had a chance to see everything I’d sent them. When I realized they were here and I came out to see them, my brother was just coming back from the main garden area, where they’d checked out the progress. Then I saw my SIL come around the trees on her phone, look up and laugh, because she had just messaged to tell me what a great job was done with the digging! I told them, it was all my younger daughter! They were very impressed.
Then we had a chance to talk about the vehicles, and about the lack of paperwork for them. Even scrap yards need proof of ownership when it comes to old vehicles. That’s all gone, and the people who would have had them have passed on. Most of them have been there for so long, they would be considered abandoned, anyhow. We’ll need to figure it out.
I mentioned the guy is still interested in some of the other old vehicles, and my brother wants to talk to him about that. They’ve taken two trailer loads of stuff from here to the scrap yard and for the last one, they barely got enough back to cover the cost of gas to take them there. Selling the individual vehicles to someone who wants to rebuild them, and can pick them up himself, would have a much better rate of return. Plus, my brother is also now looking to sell more of their farm equipment, because he’s not going to be farming with them after he retires in a couple of years.
They weren’t able to stay long, though, but thanks to her generous offer, I’ll be seeing my SIL next week, when she drives me and my daughter to the cancer clinic.
Which means we will need to do our Costco trip on Sunday. Tomorrow, the dump is open so we’ll be doing that, then planting trees before more holes are dug. I know myself well enough to admit that I wouldn’t be able to do a Costco trip on Monday, without putting myself in a physically bad situation for the cancer clinic appointment on Tuesday, which leaves us only Sunday to do the Costco stock up trip, leaving Monday to do any recovering I might need. Particularly since I am now out of the Tramacet and am back to using only T3s for pain.
So, that’s where we are at now. Thanks to my daughter, much progress was made on the digging, and I was even able to do some stuff in the garden to prepare it for winter. I continue to pray for a mild fall, because I will need the time. I’m going to be severely limited in what I can do to prepare the beds for winter, and the girls aren’t that much better than I am, until they get their surgeries. Which won’t be for months, while I should get mine within October.
Meanwhile, with the weather changes, my husband is getting hit with a lot of pain, too.
What a broken and battered household we are right now!! 😄
Ah, well. It is what is it, and we do what we can. What else is there to do?
We had a rather long day today, and it’s not even 5pm yet.
My younger daughter had her doctor’s appointment in the city, which meant we had to be on the road by 8:30am to get there, with extra time to be delayed by construction or whatever else came up. We had time enough to stop at a gas station along the way to pick up drinks and a couple of sandwiches for the girls, who hadn’t had breakfast before leaving. I noticed the gas prices in this town were still $1.729/L, and I hoped prices would be better while in the city, as we’d need to top up before heading home.
I’m glad we left as early as we did because, even with my daughter navigating and the map app talking out directions, I missed a turn. It was at one of the more bizarre intersections – of which there are many – and it was either turn right, or turn extra right. I didn’t catch the extra right in time. Then, because it’s one way streets all over the place, we ended up taking a completely alternate route – that turned out to make it easier to get into the parking we needed, than if we hadn’t missed the turn.
I truly dislike driving in the downtown area of the city. Some of the worst street planning out there and, for where we were driving, it can’t even be blamed on things like being split up by rivers and tributaries. Then there are the crappy drivers and the crumbling streets.
*sigh*
Still, we got there with about 10 minutes to spare. After getting through the security gauntlet to get into the building, which included my daughter justifying why we were there without our own appointments, I signed in for the parking spot we were in, then we waited. My older daughter ended up going in with her sister for what turned out to be two consecutive appointments; one with a doctor, one with a nurse practitioner. It ended up being more than an hour before they came out again, with another appointment for next month, plus some lab requisitions. There’s a lab right in the building, so we just waited until my daughter was called in. That went quickly, and we were soon heading out. Which was great “fun”, trying to find and read inconsistently placed street signs, including one that was half hidden by a set of street lights, and not get hit by drivers oblivious to everything around them. Oh, and dodging construction. Or course.
Have I mentioned I really dislike driving in this city? I don’t think I could say it enough.
My older daughter ended up not being able to eat the sandwich we’d picked up on the way out, so she was really hungry. So chose a different route out, so we could take the street we do one of our stop up trips on. Gas prices were $1.799 all over, except for one gas station we saw on the way in, at $1.639 – but it was a co-op franchise that we stopped going to after their cheap, dirty gas cost us over $400 in repairs in our previous vehicle, plus repairs on our lawn mower. There was a Domo along the way that was at $1.749/L, and today was discount day, so we got gas at $1.609/L instead.
This station is right near the international grocery store we like to go to, and that’s where we went for lunch. My daughters got themselves some steamed dumpling dim sum, and I got a large Chinese meal that I only ate half of, taking the rest home.
From there, we went to a Superstore that was along our way out. We have already run out of the torpedo buns we all like so much, so we got three more bags, along with a couple of pounds of butter, since I’m not sure when we’ll be at Costco to stock up on butter next. The girls found a giant Italian sandwich for their dad as a treat, and we happened to cut through the aisle with energy drinks, so I got some Beaver Buzz for home.
Of course, it was while we were doing all this that I got a message from my husband saying a doctor had called for me and would call back at around 2. I didn’t think we’d be home by then, so I told my husband that, if it was about an appointment, to take whatever they give me, except for November 3, and 4, when the girls have their next medical appointments.
When we got home, I missed the call back by mere minutes. The doctor hadn’t been able to talk to my husband because he’s not on the last as my “next of kin”. But she would call back tomorrow at around 10.
Which suggests to me it was the specialist getting back to me, not cancer care. I’ll have to make sure to let her know, she can speak freely to my husband about my file, if I’m not around.
We had barely settled in when my younger daughter headed out to start digging holes. Her sister followed soon after.
They were able to finish the first section that was planted in, where I’d already dug 3 holes yesterday, which is what you see in the first image above. Then they moved to the northernmost end of the new rows and started working across there. My younger daughter did the digging while her sister did the transplanting. In the second picture, you can see the 6 transplants along the north end are in. The next photo shows just some of what my daughter had to deal with while digging!
So. Many. Rocks, all over this area.
The last image is taken from the south end of the new rows. The transplanting will be done from the north end, so that when the south end is reached, we will be planting small ones out of the trays, rather than the big pots. We’ve got a total 77 haskaps in the large pots, but there are a total of 90 spaces to plant in. So, to fill the whole area, there would be another 23 plants from the trays, plus another 5 or so spots between the Silver Buffalo berry to fill. I’m pretty sure we can fill all those spaces, and still have plants in the trays left over.
I did pop out later on, though I was banned from doing any digging. Depending on which app I look at, we’re going to drop to either 2C/36F or 0C/32F tonight. I brought out the fabric to cover four beds – the peppers, eggplant and Chocolate stripe tomatoes in the main garden area, and the self seeded tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. My older daughter came out to help me while updating me on their progress.
I remembered that I still had an unopened package of frost cloth I got at a dollar store, years ago. I got multiple packages but, when I tried to use them, they tore apart. I figured I would try using it to see if I could protect the winter squash, which are more exposed on the chain link fence.
It wasn’t quite long enough to cover from end to end, but the developing squash, at least, are covered. The edge on the inside of the chain link fence got squished between the squash plants and the sunflowers, then it got secures with clothes pins to the chain link. The sunflowers might actually help hold it in place, too.
That was about my limit for today, as pain levels were starting to increase, and I wanted to not let it get worse. When my daughters came in, they updated me with their progress. All of the transplants got watered, as well as all the pots and trays. Later on, I’ll rake around the transplants and make water trenches, as with the first ones that got done, but that’s not as urgent as getting them in the ground and watered. After getting updated, I went out and took pictures, before we lost the light.
I really hope a lot of these survive. With the silver buffalo berry, we had a bundle of 30. Over the span of several years, we’ve lost only 5, and they were in great shape when they were planted. The haskap are not in great shape, so it’s reasonable to expect a higher loss rate. Still, it would be nice if they all made it!
Tomorrow, we do more digging.
Well. My daughter will probably do more digging. If I’m still banned from digging, I’ll see if I can finally get back to cleaning the sun room for the winter, which has had zero progress in the past few days! Too many other things dragging us away. After tonight’s drop in temperature, things will warm up again for the next while, with no rain, so we should get some decent progress done.
This evening, before things started to get dark, I headed outside to do my evening rounds. I remembered to bring a bowl to finally harvest some tiny Orange Currant tomatoes!
I actually dropped quite a few of them that were damaged by frost to the ground. Which means we might have some self seeded tomatoes showing up in this bed next year, which I am okay with. I still managed to get quite a few, plus a couple of Blueberry tomatoes. I even found a Manitoba tomato that was getting ripe, with no cracks in it! All over those, I’m seeing green tomatoes already cracked. The cracked ones I’d brought in before, intending to dehydrate the non-cracked portions, ended up molding almost right away and had to be composted. *sigh*
Once the tomatoes were picked, I checked the beans in the bed beside them and found a few ready to harvest. A couple of the plants have lots of developing beans still, so this will probably not be the last beans we pick from there.
While checking the main garden area, I found myself really impressed by this bolted carrot.
It is HUGE! Those flower clusters are downright massive! We’ve had carrots bolt before. Usually Uzbek Golden carrots. This one is from the Rainbow Mix carrot seeds, and I’m not sure which colour of carrot this is from. When we can finally harvest this bed, we’ll be able to see. I’ll make sure to leave the bolted carrot. If it survives long enough before it gets too cold to develop seeds, I intend to harvest them.
We’ve got at least three more mild nights before temperature drop enough that I would want to cover as much as I can, just in case the actual temperature drops lower than the forecasted temperature – again. Overall, though, we’ve possibly got almost two weeks of fairly mild overnight temperatures.
I’m really hoping for a mild winter overall. My tolerance for our typical prairie winters is getting shorter as I get older! 😄
Last time, I’d gathered bush beans from the ones planted later in the season around the Arikara squash. This time, I harvested beans from the high raised bed. The plants there have considerably more frost damage, and yet are still producing!
Along with the beans, I picked the two Prolific Long Neck summer squash that looked ready.
The girls ended up using this summer squash in their roasted Arikara squash soup, which they tell me turned out very excellent. It included carrots and bell peppers from the garden, too. Not something I can even taste, but that’s okay. I had some of roasted Arikara squash separately, and made sure to taste some on its own, with no seasonings, first.
Definitely something we would be okay growing again. The flavour was mild, and smooth and stringless, with a texture much like mashed potatoes.
The girls also taste tested our first California Bell peppers before adding it to the soup, and they liked it enough that we set aside some seeds, though I still have some in the package. So we now have two varieties of peppers – these and the Sweet Chocolate – that pass the taste test with the family.
Aside from that, today was a home day, though it could have been our first stock up shopping day. My husband’s CPP Disability came in early, as it does when deposit day falls on a Monday. I was feeling well enough for the trip, but rainy days like this make me very sleepy, and my daughter is still fighting her own pain levels. We’ve decided to do the shopping tomorrow, instead.
One thing I started on today was a Christmas garland, crocheting around a purchased bead garland, 6 feet long, with lace weight white crochet thread paired with a strand of silver reflective thread, using a 3.25mm hook. I was working on the second row of the pattern, about 3/4 through, when I spotted an error…
Made about 6 inches from the start of that row.
I’d already found the same error made after about a foot and ripped the stitching back to fix it, but that just isn’t going to work with something closer to three feet. The strand of reflective yarn is quite thin, and I don’t want to end up breaking it or adding too much wear to it. Plus, the sheer length of what I’d have to undo would be difficult to keep from tangling. Just the short amount I’d ripped earlier, kinked into waves from the stitches, kept wanting to tie itself into knots.
So, I’m going to finish the second row and not do the third row I had planned on. On its own like this, the error would not be visible unless someone knew what they were looking for, but would throw the pattern of a third row off completely.
I still can’t believe I did that. The girls are still laughing at the wail of despair I made when I found it and realized where it was.
Ah, well.
I still have a fair bit to do to finish the second row, but I won’t finish it tonight. I’ll just have to make sure to tuck it away somewhere safe from that cats for the night. 😄
My daughter and I headed into town this morning, hoping to get the truck worked on, even though I hadn’t received a message back from the garage with a time. I had my suspicions, but my daughter had something to do in town after, so I knew it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.
Oh, my. I really feel for the owner of the garage.
When we got there, he was outside, on the phone. My daughter stayed outside by the truck while I went into the office and waiting for him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying on the phone, but I could hear his tone, and it was a lot tenser than his usual laid back manner.
When he came to the office door, he was furiously texting while also apologizing. He had meant to text me back with a time, but had never had a chance to look at his schedule to tell me when. He was finally able to set his phone down on a shelf just outside the door, telling me how, after he’d had to go home yesterday, unable to work on our truck, things ended up taking hours longer than it should have. Of course, that absolutely screwed up his schedule completely.
He had just sat down at his desk and started getting his schedule out when his phone started ringing again. From where he’d left it just outside the door! He had to answer it and went outside again to talk. When he came back, he looked absolutely frazzled.
He was, of course, needing to catch up on things, and I could already see his bays were full, so there was no way we’d be getting in anytime soon. He had no openings today and, at best, could squeeze me in between other scheduled jobs. Of course, that would me us waiting in his office, since there’s nowhere else to go in the industrial park his shop is now located in. Alternatively, he had openings tomorrow.
We’ll be back tomorrow morning.
Poor guy. Yes, there was another mechanic, but there are things only the owner can take care of and, when it comes to our truck and needing to figure things out, he had taken that on himself rather than delegating.
That arranged, my daughter and I headed into town. I had forgotten our water bottles to refill, but we’ll be back to do that tomorrow. My daughter ran her errand and we were soon home.
I was feeling really good today – left the walker in the truck and didn’t even need a cane. After we had lunch at home, I headed outside to see what I could get done, as we are expecting rain.
I got the cat beds soaking in the tub finished and set out to drain and, if it doesn’t rain, dry. Floor mats got hosed down, which will need to be done again another time or two. I got the cat cage dismantled and the interlocking mat under it set out for soaking, then hosing down.
With the cat half of the sun room finally empty, I swept as best I could, but the floor washing and window washing will have to wait. Instead, I brought out all the cleaned cat beds and blankets and set them on one side, then brought all the food trays that had been removed and laid them out on the other, along with a water bowl. This way, the cats will at least have someplace warm and dry to hang out in, should the weather get wet. The wind, at least, seems to be dying down.
By the time all that was done, it was time to do the outside cat feeding. The singleton kitten would not let me touch her today, but she kept calling at me. She looks so sad without the little kittens to play with! I’m glad she’s staying close to the house now, though. Hopefully, with all the trays returned to the sun room, she will start hanging out in there more often, and the other cats won’t chase her out.
Before heading in, I did my evening rounds and checked on the garden. I watered the muskmelon, since they are under their own mini greenhouse set up. Then I noticed a strange bit of colour among the yellow leaves of the red noodle beans in the other bed.
There it is. Our single, sad, floppy little red noodle bean! I couldn’t see any others. Which I found funny because the same thing happened the first time we tried growing this variety during what turned out to be a drought year. We got just one sad little bean that year, too.
I would really like to successfully grow this variety, but I think I’ll wait a year or two before I try again.
I was still able to get a little harvest for today, though.
I got a handful of beans from the ones planted later in the season, with the Arikara squash. My pain levels started to kick in, so I asked a daughter to make supper, and I now have those beans on my cooling plate as I write this. I also grabbed a few of the Blueberry Tomatoes for the girls.
Sept. 23, and we still have a few things we’ll be able to harvest. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, we will have no danger of frost at all for at least the next 10 days.
I’m appreciating every frost free day we’re getting as a gift right now!
