Yesterday was damp and chilly, so some outside stuff had to be postponed again. One of the things I did get to, inside, was de-kerneling the popcorn cobs. I’ve had them drying in a cardboard box until now. So I popped on the Roku and found a show on food history to watch. Sadly, there was a fair bit of modern projection inserted that made some claims patently false. It frustrates me when people reframe the past to suit their ideological stance.
Anyhow.
I got through 3 episodes, so that is about 1 1/2 hours to get the corn done. Doing all those tiny cobs started to get rough on the fingertips, but it did allow me to keep just the good kernels.
I got more than I expected, to be honest! Almost exactly 6 cups.
Yes, I did test pop some, but almost none popped. They need to dry more. I currently have them in a container with a desiccant, since the oven still has peppers dehydrating in it. Those are ready to put away. We just haven’t gotten to it, yet.
In other things, we still have no hot water. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, so unless I call an emergency service number, we aren’t going to get a plumber for a while. No hot water may be inconvenient, but it is far from an emergency.
Today and the next few days are supposed to be a bit warmer and, more importantly, dry. A good time to catch up on things outside.
Last night, the forecast was for just above freezing, but I covered some things, anyhow. I’m glad I did. Before one of my apps updated, I saw we had actually dipped below freezing. The peppers and eggplant I covered seem okay. With the volunteer tomatoes, any parts that had grown above their plastic rings had frozen, but the parts below look fine. How long those survive is just a curiosity, since they will not have time to mature.
I have no complaints, though. Our first Thanksgiving here got a blizzard. It’s not at all unusual to get snow in October, so I am appreciating even the rain that delays some jobs.
So this day turned out completely different than planned!
The morning was pretty routine. While doing my usual morning rounds, I did a harvest. We are dropping close to freezing tonight – every time I check the forecast, it keeps changing, but not enough to make a difference. Even if we don’t get frost tonight, the few things that are not cold hardy out there are unlikely to continue to ripen, with a few possible exceptions.
One thing I was hoping to do was get one of our few friendly female cats, probably Beep Boop, into the carrier. If I’d managed that, I would have taken her straight to our egg lady for adoption. Of course, this would be the morning when she didn’t show up! In fact, “only” 17 cats showed up this morning, which is a little unusual these days. Caramel showed up and was being friendly, but when I tried to pick her up to put her into the carrier, she would have none of that!
So I let her be and did the rest of my rounds and the harvesting.
I harvested all the remaining melons. Most of them are probably not ripe, but we won’t know for sure until we cut them open. There’s also the last couple of patty pans that were large enough to be worth harvesting.
We had only three of the purple Dragonfly peppers, and I grabbed them all. All the other peppers in the grow bags, I left. The Sweet Chocolates in the old kitchen garden had a fair number of ripe peppers, but I also harvested most of the green ones, too. There are still a few on the plants that I didn’t bother with.
I didn’t harvest the eggplant, and I hoped to be able to put up the one hot pepper in the wattle weave bed, as it seems to have the most mature peppers on it.
I also picked through the last of the ripening tomatoes and brought them in, along with the yellow onions that were curing beside them.
Once inside, I had breakfast, then started on some dishes. With the hot water tank dead, we’ve been heating up kettles of water to use for everything. I was starting to heat more water for another batch of dishes when my mother called.
I’d mentioned to her that I was taking her car in to the garage, so her first question was, how was the car? Turns out, she thought it was still at the garage. Why, I’m not sure, since we only have her car now, so I’d have no way to get home if I left it at the garage!
Once she knew it was running find, she asked what my plans for the day were…
*sigh*
Yup. Even though I ask her repeatedly if she’d need a shopping trip, every time we talk, she always tells me no, she’s fine, she doesn’t need anything – even when I try to preplan a shopping date. She refuses to, because she still has food, so she doesn’t need to. And she doesn’t want to shop before she runs out of things, because then it’ll all go bad unless she eats it all right away…
*sigh*
Honestly, I think she just likes the idea that she’s messing with my day when she does this. It’s a control thing. Of course, part of the reason we’re living here is so that I’m available to help her with this stuff, and she’s not making my brother book time off work to come over (with my sister, she goes out of her way to only call on the days she knows my sister isn’t working).
So I was soon on the road to her place, earlier than usual, as she also needed help with some household chores that are getting too hard for her to manage on her own.
I don’t know that my mother was all that happy with me today, to be honest. I helped her with her household stuff, then we sat for a bit to chat. She started going into her usual manipulative rants, and I was having none of it. At one point, she started off on how everything is so expensive, and it’s because all the stores are cheating people. I tried to explain inflation to her, but nope. It’s because all the stores are cheating people. She knows this because, years ago, someone at the grocery store helped her with her shopping, and when she checked her receipt at home, she found she had been charged for a watermelon she didn’t buy. This happened probably 10 years ago and frankly, I don’t think it happened the way she claims. The grocery store by her place prints receipts that include featured specials. One time that she went through her receipt while I was there, she thought she was charged for a pie she didn’t get, but when I looked at the receipt, I found she was looking at the featured sale on pie and thought it was part of her purchases. Or, the maybe guy made a mistake about the watermelon, and punched in the wrong code. She got mad at me for not agreeing with her, then tried to blame me for her being cheated “last week”. I’d helped her with shopping and she wanted to get a case of mushroom soup. They’d been on sale the week before, but they’d run out. There were no cases, but I found a staff member and asked. She found one for my mother in their stock room. The cheat? My mother looked at the receipt and the price was not the sale price she wanted it to be – a sale that was over already. I’d even told her it was over, but in her memory, she now thinks I told her the price was the sale price from the previous week. I never told her a price, because I never saw a price for cases, only singles. This also happened more like 2 or 3 weeks ago, not last week, as she claimed, because my brother had visited and helped her with shopping last week, not me.
Then, after going on about how this guy had cheated her over a watermelon she never bought, she turned around and tried to make excuses for our vandal, of all people. She still tells me how we all need to get along and forgive each other, yet still allows him to talk to her in spite of all he’s done, and his open expression of hatred for me in particular, not to mention blatant lies to her about me. Somehow, my siblings and I are at fault that we all don’t get along like we used to.
Things even went sideways when I made the mistake of telling her about the truck we have been trying to get financing for. This was her cue to say that my FIL, who lives on a pension in an assisted living building, should be “helping us”. She’s got it in her head that he’s got a “good pension” (whatever she things that is; I don’t care to find out), and if she can help us out, he can, too. He does help us in other ways, but when I said that, she demanded to know in what ways. I told her it was none of her business, just like his finances are none of her business. Oh, and she even tried to use the fact that she paid for the new roof as ammunition against me! We’ll be getting that one rubbed into us for the rest of her life, I’m sure. She never does anything good, without finding some way to use it as a weapon. She and our vandal are very much alike in that regard.
Things went down hill from there, and instead of rising to her bait on so many things, I pointed out that she was being psychologically abusive, and I wasn’t going to accept that. She then tried to gaslight me, and I called her on that, too. Finally, she just stopped talking and sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes, apparently praying. Then she started doing a few other things in preparation for running errands, and wouldn’t answer me when I offered to help or asked her questions.
Then we just went and did the errands, and everything settled down. We even went out for lunch part way through. I made sure to pay, because she never tips.
By the time we were done, my mother was quite tired. I did stay for a little bit of a visit after everything was put away. Since I’d gone to her place to much earlier than usual, though, I decided to do our last stock up shopping trip. I needed to go to Canadian Tire and Walmart, and her place was already half way there.
Before heading out, though, I messaged my family about the change in plans. That’s when my husband updated me on the plumber situation.
He’d called our usual guy again, and it went straight to voice mail. So, he called another company we’ve dealt with and left a message there. That company called back.
I think we know why we haven’t been hearing from the first place.
This is the time of year when everyone is getting their cottages ready for winter. Which includes draining the plumbing, so nothing freezes and bursts pipes over the winter. This second plumber is fully booked draining cottages for the next two weeks. Given how many cottages there are around the lake, every available plumber would be booked solid right now.
We are going to be without hot water for a while! Over Thanksgiving, at the very least.
I have not told my brother we don’t have hot water at the moment. I didn’t want him to worry as they go to visit their son and grandsons for Thanksgiving. If we don’t hear anything after Thanksgiving, though, I’m going to have to ask him if he can come out and install the new tank. The frustrating thing is, it’s really not a difficult thing to do. We just don’t have what we need to do it. Particularly with the electrical part of it.
Ah, well.
On that note, I headed out and did the final shopping I needed to do, and even picked up a couple of treats for Thanksgiving dinner. The only other stop was to get gas on the way home. It doesn’t look like getting the air filter and new sparkplugs done are helping with the poor mileage my mother’s car has been getting, though it does seem to be running noticeably better! Also, that tire with the slow leak they couldn’t find is still holding air, so that’s good. Mind you, it took about 3 weeks before it leaked enough to be noticeable, last time, so it’s really too soon to say, and I need to keep an eye on it.
When I got home and drove up to the house to unload, the yard was just filled with cats! All the ones that didn’t show up for breakfast were very hungry.
Beep Boop was among them.
So after everything was unloaded and the girls were putting them away, I fed the outside cats, which lured at least three of them out from under the car! The carrier was in the sun room, and Beep Boop was among the cats eating kibble in there, so I put some in the carrier, then picked her up and dropped her in through the top (I love that this carrier opens up at the top!). She immediately started eating again, so I closed it up, then messaged the egg lady to see if she was home.
She was, and eager to welcome a new cat!
So, off I went again! Beep Boop was not happy once she realized she couldn’t get out of the carrier, but she did eventually settle in for the ride.
She now has one of the chicken coops, all to herself! It’s roasty toasty in there. Food and water were already waiting for her – and she’ll have all the mice she can catch! Just getting into the coop, which has a small vestibule with some feed storage in it, we saw several mice running around. Beep Boop (who will surely be renamed!) will get to stay here for a while, and arrangements will be made to get her spayed right away. My friend’s mouse problem is so bad, she thinks she might need three more cats! So we will work on trying to get some of the other females, as she doesn’t think her one male would be happy with more males around.
By the time I got back from delivering the cat, it was getting dark. I was just able to get the eggplant and the nearest peppers covered for the night. I had a couple more covers, so I went ahead and covered the peppers in the grow bags, too. As I write this, the forecast says we will stay above freezing, but the “RealFeel” will be below freezing.
We shall see what we get for real!
Oh, and while all this was happening, I started getting messages from the cat lady. One of the last kittens will be going to her new home tomorrow. There were 17 people interested in that one tiny kitten – but none interested in the other that’s not so tiny. That one doesn’t want to leave them, anyhow, it seems. There’s also someone interested in Ghosty, but that person wants a male, and Ghosty is female. I’ll find out tomorrow, if it’s still a go. I passed on a picture of Tiny, Pom Pom and Soot Sprite to pass on – make sure to mention Soot Sprite is not up for adoption, and she’ll put the word out for them, since the tiny ones seem to have more interest.
So not only are we looking at having as many as 3 more female yard cats adopted out soon, we might have some kittens adopted out, too!
She’s also going to let me know when one of the clinics has their neuter discount day, to start getting some of the outside males done.
And now it’s almost 10pm, and I need to see about some supper! I just realized, I haven’t eaten since having lunch with my mother at noon. Nothing involving the oven, though. My daughters prepped the ripe Sweet Chocolate peppers while I was gone and now have them dehydrating in the oven.
Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get to do the work outside I’d intended to do today!
It’s been a wet and dreary day today. It started raining off and on last night, and has continued throughout the day. I was just getting the kibble ready for the outside cats when it started raining again! No surprise that many of the cats preferred to eat in the sun room. 😁
The squash we harvested was still on the table outside, so I brought it all in. I laid the winter squash out on the freezer in the old kitchen, but there wasn’t room for most of the squash from the compost pile. Those, at least, I could find room for in the sun room.
I left fairly early to get my daughter, since I wanted to make a couple of stops along the way, including a gas station, where I made sure to pick up an air freshener for the car! Having the garbage in the car from Thursday evening to Saturday morning was not a good thing. We can’t even leave windows open to air it out, since either critters or insects would get inside. The last thing we need is for a racoon to decide to get in and tear the inside apart, searching for the source of the smell.
I also wanted to stop at a Walmart long the way to pick up one more bag of kibble, as our supply was not going to make it to our first big shopping trip.
We have not been feeding the cats more than usual with the outside cats, and with the inside cats, we’ve been controlling their feeding a bit more. Instead of having dry cat food available throughout the day, and giving them wet cat food in the evenings, they are getting two feeding times with dry kibble, with a small feeding in between. At least we’re not running out of wet cat food, as I’d been buying extra for the kittens.
This is the first month I’ve really tried to keep track of how much kibble we’re buying. Usually, we’d buy 8 bags during the big shops, then just buy more near the end of the month a few times. This month, however, I got twelve 9kg bags of kibble from Costco. We thought that would be enough. This is, however, the second 10kg bag I’ve had to get.
That’s 14 bags, totalling 128kg of kibble for the month. Which is 282lbs.
With the Costco and Walmart prices, plus tax, that’s about $300 on just dry kibble, this month alone. Then there’s the canned cat food, plus the litter pellets. The litter pellets are cheap and the 40lb bags last a long time, so I’d say about $20 a month, on average. The canned cat food, between the large case we get at Costco, and the slightly smaller cases we get at Walmart, is about another $90
So we’re looking at $410 (US$304.18 at today’s exchange rate) we’re spending on the cats this month. On those months where we had to buy kibble in the middle of the month, wherever we could, it would probably be more expensive.
That would make one heck of a car payment.
Now, part of that can be blamed on inflation. The price of kibble has increased by almost 6% in the past couple of years. And that’s just going by Costco and Walmart prices. Other stores have seen steeper increases. Especially outside of the city.
It’s ridiculous, but the alternative would basically be to start putting cats down. With the outside cats, someone from the municipality would send someone over to shoot them.
I suppose we could just stop providing food for the outside cats, and they’d eventually go away, but considering how starved some of the cats look after they’ve disappeared for the summer, I don’t think there are a lot of options out there for them. More likely, the coyotes would get them. So… no. Not going to let that happen. Even if it means sometimes feeding skunks, racoons and blue jays in the process.
So, we keep feeding them, and looking for people willing to adopt. Thanks to the Cat Lady, we have actually managed to adopt out quite a few, though six of them are still with the Cat Lady, four of them permanently!
Ah, well. It is what it is!
Meanwhile…
When I got to my brother’s, I thought they’d be really tired and I would just be saying hello and good bye, but they were up for an actual visit. It was so wonderful to see them! We got caught up on how things went while they were gone, particularly with my mother. As we were leaving, I mentioned coming back to see their photos from the trip. My SIL told me she’s considering putting them together into a movie, like I used to do, years ago. Digital cameras were just starting to become affordable, and when we moved out of province, we started to basically document everything. Then, about once a year, I’d put them together into a DVD for my parents. Moving making software for home was also just starting to be affordable, but these were still little more than slide shows. Still, I had fun adding music and making captions, and sorting things into chapters. The idea was that these would be easy for my parents to see on the TV.
I did that for several years. Then I found out my parents never watched any of them. So I stopped.
Making DVDs, that is. I never stopped documenting things. It had become a habit by then, along with journaling. A habit that came in very handy when life suddenly got very complicated, and I found myself having to make witness statements, police reports and affidavits.
So glad to be away from all that now. Dealing with our vandal is small potatoes in comparison! It also made his attempts to intimidate me pretty comical, but that’s a whole other topic! 😂
But I digress!
I hope she does put something together. I’d love to see it!
After my daughter and I left, we made a couple of stops along the way, including to pick up the pizza order her sister made after we let her know we were leaving my brother’s. That was sweet of her to treat us!
We’ve had more take out this month than we’ve had in years!
My daughter enjoyed her time taking care of my brother’s place for them, but she was glad to be home.
Once at home, and before we settled in to eat, my older daughter and I were able to deal with the winter squash I’d left on top of the freezer. The first challenge was just to get through the old kitchen door, without any cats getting through. Then it was just getting them into the new part basement, where the root cellar is. Then it took the two of us to get them into the root cellar, but keep the cats out.
But we got it done!
The two round, green pumpkins at the top are from the compost heap squash. All the smallest winter squash fit into a carboard box. The rest are the candy roasters and Pink Banana.
The root cellar is not a very good one, to be honest. We had considered turning it into a cheese cave at one point, so I set up a thermometer and a hydrometer in there, and kept track of the temperature and humidity for a year. Both fluctuate too much to make a good cheese cave – or a good root cellar! Still, my parents used this as a root cellar for many years. It works well enough!
Not that any of these squash can be left there for long. With the frost killing off the plants before the squash could fully mature, they won’t last as long, so they’ll need to be eaten fairly quickly. We are most eager to try the big ones!
The main thing, however, will be to make sure we don’t forget about them. I avoid going into either basement – or even the upstairs – because my knees and stairs are sworn enemies. We go into the root cellar even less often. It’s where we store our Christmas decorations away from the cats! Heck, we still have a couple of cases of mead down there that we keep forgetting exists.
But it’s done, and the winter squash is put up for the season.
We’re still processing tomatoes, too. We have whole tomatoes in the freezer, plus I’ve got a couple more trays dehydrating in the oven right now, and there are still more under the old market tent, slowly ripening. We’ve just been bringing in the ripe ones every few days or so. Thankfully, those are out of the rain, and no critters seem interested in them at all!
I was just yawning and thinking how it’s so late and time to go to bed, but I’m seeing it’s not even 8:30pm yet. It’s full dark out there, and feels so much later! Especially after being such and overcast and dreary day to begin with.
I might try going to bed early for a change.
Ha! Who am I kidding? I’ll probably get started on something, then suddenly realize it’s 2am again. Because I’m silly that way!
With the popcorn harvested, I needed to find someplace to put the box cover. While removing the chicken wire, I figured out a great spot for it.
The onions had a cover simply because I had one. It made weeding impossible, but with onion tops growing through it, it couldn’t be conveniently moved aside.
Since these covers are all 9’x3′, it fits perfectly on top of the box cover. This would be an ideal set up to protect taller plants! I just used the twist ties that were holding the chicken wire to fasten the two covers together. The onion bed is basically a storage spot for them, but now I can access the onions for weeding!
And yes. Those are new squash blossoms in the compost ring in the background!
While checking the other garden beds, I had a little surprise.
The largest melon had picked itself! 😆
I even found a pattypan large enough to harvest.
That’s the size we enjoy the patty pans best.
My daughter gets back from house sitting soon. We will save tasting the melon for when she gets back. 💚
In other things…
When feeding the outside cats, I tried to do a head count. It takes a while for them to all show up. I eventually counted thirty – then three more kittens ran into the yard!
After my rounds were done, I did a dump run. The car was already loaded, because when I tried to do it 2 days ago, it was closed.
I was glad to be able to air out the car, later!
As I was returning to the house, I spotted Nosencrantz slinking away from the kibble under the shrine, and disappear behind the pump shack. She is looking big and fluffy, and is acting incredibly shy. I wish I knew why! At least we know she’s still around.
Now, if only Butterscotch and Marlee would show up!
I’m just going to post this photo for now; I took some video and will upload that later.
Until then, this is what I was able to harvest today.
We did get another frost last night. I was out doing my rounds early enough to see some frost still on the ground. Once again, there was no frost warning and, according to the official past 24 hours record, we never dipped below 6C/43F, while I know I saw 4C/39F on my app when I checked before heading out this morning.
I should get one of those high/low thermometers that have needles to mark the highest and lowest temperatures on the dial.
So for now, all the stuff affected by the frost has been harvested that could be harvested. I left the melons, because they look like enough of the vines survived for ripening to continue. We’re supposed to warm up over the next while, so that will give more time for things like the melons, peppers, Spoon tomatoes and the one eggplant to ripen. The other things, like the carrots and onions, can handle frost so they’ll be fine for quite a while longer.
While doing my morning rounds, I make a point of looking at the squash blossoms to see if any need to be hand pollinated. With the chilly nights we’ve been having – we dropped to 6C/43F last night – I’ve been finding bees in the flowers, curled up and covered in pollen.
We’ve got so many tomatoes inside already, waiting to be processed, and I still have the unripe Romas sitting on screens under the market tent, until we have room to move them indoors, but when they’re ripe, they’re ripe. They need to be picked!
Then there was just one, lonely zucchini. 😁 Which I’m quite happy with, since we almost had no surviving zucchini at all, this year!
With the overnight temperatures dropping lower than forecast, I find myself wondering if we should gather all the tomatoes and bring them in to ripen. We’ve got a couple of nights coming up that are now predicted to drop to 6C/43F overnight. Considering that we’ve been hitting that on nights we were supposed to drop to only 10C, it has me concerned. Sunday is the 10th – our first average frost date. We’re supposed to have a high of 18C/64F that day, and an overnight low of 6C/43F. The next day is supposed to have a high of 17C/63F, with no change in the low. After that, things are supposed to warm up again. Depending on how the forecasts change, we might be trying to cover the tomatoes, peppers and melons. There’s no way we can cover the squash bed. It’s just too spread out.
So many things depend on the weather right now. For things like the winter squash, peppers – only the Sweet Chocolates are far enough along to have ripe ones to pick – and our one eggplant that’s trying to grow fruit right now, a frost would mean no harvest at all. The carrots, onions and purple potatoes would be fine, at least.
Well, we shall see when the time comes. Just praying for the frost to hold off long enough for things to finish ripening, though even chilly nights will slow things down.
I know the bees would sure enjoy the warmth hanging around longer!
Well, I’m going to be running around tomorrow, after all.
But first, while doing my evening rounds, I found myself bringing in a small harvest.
At first, I thought I’d just grab the few ripe Indigo Blues I spotted, but then I noticed the Red Swan beans, among the purple corn. The plants are small and sparse, but once I started looking around the leaves, I kept finding more and more larger bean pods! The yellow zucchini was one I looked at this morning and thought would wait until tomorrow or the day after, but it was noticeably bigger by the evening.
I really should know better than to move the peppers to see how ripe they are. Where the sun hits turns brown rather quickly, while the parts in shade stay green longer. They are completely ripe when they are all brown. The problem is, their stems are fragile, so when I move a pepper to see the other side of it, it just snaps right off!
Which is fine. My daughter is using it for her meal right now.
Meanwhile…
While still at my mother’s, I got a message from my husband letting me know there was something to pick up at the post office. One of the packages was RAM for his computer. He was very excited about it.
Some time later, I came out and noticed he wasn’t in his room. Eventually, I found him in the living room, reading on his tablet.
Not a good sign.
He had installed the RAM, which was absolutely the right hardware for his computer, but when he turned it on, it wouldn’t work. He just had a black screen with a spinning circle on it.
Turns out, this is a known problem with his brand of computer. It doesn’t like being upgraded.
After fighting with it for a while, he reinstalled the original RAM.
And it still didn’t work.
His computer was dead.
At which point, he pain killered up and lay down for a while, because installing the hardware really did a number on his back. When he couldn’t handle being prone anymore, he moved to the living room.
At least he was still able to research his issue, then try something else.
Ultimately, he was able to get the original RAM working again, and he has a working computer again.
He’s also going to return the RAM.
That requires printing out a return label.
The printer is in my room. We don’t need to print a lot of stuff, but the self cleaning uses a lot of ink, anyhow. I’m out of cyan and magenta. You’d think we’d still be able to print out a black and white label, but nope. Even when it’s set to black and white, if more than one colour of ink is out, the printer simply won’t print.
Which means that tomorrow, I have to go to the nearest place that sells this brand of ink.
Which is a Staples, in the smaller city.
Then, after the ink is installed the the labels printed, I’m going to have to go to a Purolator to send the return out.
Which is driving to either the town we usually go to, or the town my mother lives in. Considering were the Purolator depot moved to in town, there isn’t really any difference in time or distance between them.
So I’ll have a couple of hours, more or less, of driving to get the ink and bring it home, then another 45 minutes to an hour of driving to get to a Purolator.
A significant portion of the refund is going to have to go back to paying for the gas and ink!
Well, so much for starting on that tomato sauce tomorrow.
The kitten seems to be completely normal right now! No favouring the leg that was dislocated. No limp that I can see. The kitten stays away on its own, for the most part, but doesn’t run away when the other kittens come over to say hi. I’ve even seen TTT grooming in on the way by.
I’m also not finding any messes. Not even on the puppy pads under my desk. It looks like TTT has finally starting using a litter box. Not while I’m in the room, though, so I’m hoping she’s using the covered box in my closet – the only one I can’t see into – and not in some secret corner somewhere. I’m not seeing any tiny messes, either, so it looks like the kitten figured out litter boxes right away.
The main thing is, the kitten appears completely uninjured! I was able to sneak a pet this morning, but otherwise it stays away. Now that it’s indoors, socializing it will be much easier, so I am not concerned.
Today is supposed to be “cooler”, with a high of 27C/81F. We currently have weather advisories for smoke. I can see it on the security camera live fee, hanging in the old hay yard like a fog. It is worse now, than when I was doing my morning rounds.
Our squash flowers are very popular.
They are pretty much the only things blooming right now, other than some wild yarrow, so the bees are happy!
I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I found these!
I was surprised to find such large patty pans. They got missed yesterday, hidden under leaves, but this morning I could actually see them. I normally like to pick them a bit smaller, but these will still be tender, without a seed cavity yet.
I was not intending to pick the pepper, though. I had moved it to look at the back and see how much green there still was, and the stem broke off!
Some of the beans growing in the compost ring are completely dried on the vines, so I picked one of the pods. Once inside, I opened it up and found…
A mystery.
When I first opened the pod, I thought they were black, but once I uploaded the photos to the computer, I could see they are actually a deep, dark blue.
I have no idea where they came from.
I have never bought seed beans like this, nor do I remember buying dry beans like this. If we did buy some that I can’t remember, they would have been cooked; no viable, uncooked seeds would have ended up in the compost heap.
I’ve tried looking them up, but have had no luck. These had pale purple flowers, green pods, and now deep blue, almost black, seeds. I’ve found seeds similar to this, but they all come from yellow or purple pods, none green.
Well, whatever they are, we’ve got more of them with pods drying out on the vines. I’ll keep the seeds and maybe try growing them in the garden next year, and seeing if they are actually a tasty bean.
I’m considering a couple of things in the garden beds right now.
One is going to have to be done; it’s just a matter of doing it when it’s cooler in the day. The Roma VF look like they’ve picked up a fungus. I don’t know if it’s tomato blight or something else. Either way, all the remaining tomatoes need to be picked and the plants pulled. They will be burned, not composted.
I’m debating the bed along the chain link fence. The peas are pulled, but there are still some of those Czech lettuces in there that I’m allowing to go to seed. Plus the volunteer tomatoes.
The tomato plants are really small, but if the long range weather forecast is at all accurate, they still have more than a month of growing season. So I am thinking of transplanting them into the empty bed in the old kitchen garden, where the Irish Cobbler potatoes had been. I would need to protect them from the kittens that like to play or nap in there.
Once that bed by the chain link fence is clear and ready to be prepped for the winter, I’m going to make it a bit narrower. It’s too painful to reach near the chain link fence to weed. Plus, some of those pieces of concrete patio blocks I found run under one corner of the bed, and I want to dig those out.
I have those tillage radish seeds still. I am thinking, once some beds are emptied and cleaned up, I can plant some of those as a cover crop. They won’t reach full size before winter, but they should drill far enough to make a difference. These are meant to be left in the ground, where they will freeze in the winter, decompose, and add organic matter to the soil in the spring.
Amending this soil into something healthy again is definitely a years-long process.
Quite a few of the Roma VF could be harvested, and there was even a fair bit of beans to pick. I found a single ripe Black Beauty, and a couple of Indigo Blues. The Black Beauties are determinates, so when they finally start ripening for real, there should be lots of them all at once, like the Roma, but gosh, they’re taking a long time to get there! We might end up harvesting them all to ripen indoors, if the weather doesn’t hold.
Not too much action with the summer squash. There are a lot of female yellow patty pans blooming, which I’m hand pollinating, so we should have more of those later, but it looks like the green patty pans are almost done, and the green zucchini… well, those never really did recover from the slugs.
Meanwhile, we’re seeing all sorts of kittens around. In fact, last night, I think I spotted two “new” kittens, including a calico! Definitely much older kittens. We have never seen Sprout’s babies, so those might be hers. They ran off before I could get a good look at them.
Some of the older kittens, while still quite shy, are at least letting me come a bit closer before they run away. When it comes to feeding them, that usually means dashing under the water bowl shelter for the kibble tray there. That one is a favourite for all the kittens. Especially the littlest ones. Those would be Octomom’s kittens, and they were hanging out under the cat house, waiting their turn at the tray.
In the photo above, the tuxedo on the left is the one that lost its eye. The lids now appear to be closed, and it looks gummy, but it’s hard to tell. It will not let me come any closer than I did when I got the picture.
With so many cats and kittens showing up at different times, I have given up entirely on trying to get a head count. While the kittens may be closer to the house, a lot of the adults seem to be moving on. I haven’t even seen Gooby in a while, and he used to be among those that greeted me every morning. Now I’ve got a couple of white and grey males that are my morning greeters.
When it comes to the yard cat population, the adults seem to not like being around when it starts to get too crowded, and simply move on to new territory.
At least, that’s what I hope they’re doing. There’s no way to know what’s happened to them, once they disappear. I like to think they found new homes on their own, on one of the neighboring farms.
The Re-Farmer 