With all the extra stuff that needed to be done yesterday, I did finally get to water the garden yesterday evening. The poor Turkish Orange eggplant were drooping so badly!
This morning, I made sure to give it another watering, before things got too hot – we’re supposed to break past 30C/86F, and the humidex will make it feel even hotter! Before I did, though, I checked on things and got a harvest done.
I’ve been hemming and hawing for a while now about the corn. Being a short season corn, with only 65 days to maturity, they should have been ready to harvest a while ago but – like everything else – they were way behind. In the process of taking a closer look, I found something else.
Our very first female Arikara squash flower buds. There had been only male flowers until now, but now that we’ve got some females about to bloom, there isn’t a male flower to be seen!
*sigh*
Today is the last day of August. We’ve got one more hot day, and then things are going to cool right down, with overnight temperatures low enough that we’ll need to cover some things.
While watering, I also spotted new female flowers on the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato squash. I’ll have to check them again this evening and see if they opened up and can be hand pollinated.
Why I bother, I have no idea. They won’t have enough time to mature, and they are in beds we won’t be able to cover.
Ah, well. You never know. It’s not like weather forecasts don’t constantly change!
I came prepared to do some harvesting, including stainless steel container for the Spoon tomatoes.
I decided to go ahead and harvest some of the corn. Since the stalks had one cob each, I pulled the entire stalk on the ones that looked ready enough. Handily, the beds are right next to the compost pile.
While I was picking beans and corn, I had company.
Sir Robin was absolutely fascinated by the reflections inside the stainless steel bowl and was busy trying to catch whatever he was seeing.
In the next picture, you can see I got a whole bunch of tiny corn cobs. This is not a large cob variety of corn, but they should have been bigger than this. A few little ones had so few developed kernels on them, they weren’t work keeping. So I just ate them. 😄
It was SO nice to finally pick a decent amount of beans! Finally!
The one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato looks like it should have been picked earlier. I think the heat got to it a bit. There was a decent amount of chocolate cherry tomatoes to pick this time.
The carrots are from the bed that was sown in the spring, rather than the ones sown in the fall. With the Atomic Red ones, it’s still somewhat of a thinning by harvesting situation. The Uzbek Golden carrots were planted using home made seed tape, so spacing was not an issue.
I’m always amazed by the Royal Burgundy bush beans. We have only three surviving plants, and one of those got chomped by a deer. Yet even that one had beans to harvest today! The plants are still really prolific, considering how small they are and how delayed their growth has been.
It wasn’t until later, when I was watering the summer squash, that I realized I missed a zucchini! Just one, though I found a couple that I was able to hand pollinate.
I’m quite happy with this harvest. Sure, we’ve had better in previous years. A harvest like this was something I had picked every couple of days throughout the summer but, for how things have gone this year, this is pretty amazing!
Also, it took forever to pick all those little Spoon tomatoes. Aside from the plants being stunted and short this year, it was pretty painful to pick them from the low raised bed. It did help that I could put a foot on the log wall when I needed to, to take some of the pressure off. In theory, I should be squatting to pick them, but I can’t squat with the condition of my knees, so I’m having to bend over, instead.
Thankfully, I got the harvesting and watering done before it got too hot. The watering got interrupted for a while as I spent some time with my brother, going over my mother’s car. It’s going to need a new battery, and that tire was almost flat again. My brother will take care of a few things on it, and we will take care of emptying it out and getting it detailed, and then it’s going to be sold.
As much as it would be good to have a second vehicle again, we just don’t have the budget to insure and fuel two vehicles anymore – and I would really use the space the car it taking up in the garage! That addition was made to be a work/storage space. My mother’s car is just small enough to fit in there, as long as the passenger side it close enough to the wall, so the driver’s side door can be opened wide enough to squeeze out. I would rather store things like the lawn mowers, snow blowers and wood chipper in there, so that the other side they are stored in can be a work shop again. When I was building the cat isolation shelter, I had to keep our vehicle parked outside for months, so that I had the space to build in.
All in good time. There is no hurry, but it would be nice if we could sell it before the winter.
Winter is on my mind a lot these days, even when we’ve got heat like today!
Last night, a daughter and I covered three areas in the garden.
I rigged a cage of sorts around the summer squash large enough to fit around the large leaves. Our covers are old sheets, and one was large enough to cover the summer squash, though nowhere near large enough to reach the ground. Which was okay, as we weren’t expecting actual frost.
The peppers and eggplant in the wattle weave garden all have their own wire tomato cages, so we just needed to use some clothespins to keep the covers from blowing away. The way the peppers are laid out in the shorter end of the L shaped bed allowed them to be covered more than the eggplant, which are in a longer row. The cloth was just barely long enough to reach from end to end. As a result, the first and last eggplants had less coverage, with one of them being at a more exposed end of the bed.
You can see there is some cold damage to the leaves.
Depending on what app I checked, we dropped to either 6C/43F or 5C/41F last night. It’s hard to say so soon, but it looks like the winter squash, which we have no way to cover, managed okay. In fact, just this evening, I spotted two female flowers in the Mashed Potato squash that I hand pollinated. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, but at least they’ll have a chance!
Our overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up for the next while, so we shouldn’t need to cover them again for some time. In fact, some of our daytime highs are supposed to get downright hot. By the second week of September, however, the long range forecast has changed again, and we’re not looking at dipping below freezing, right around our old average frost date. The new 30 year averages have been released, which suggested our growing season has actually increased by quite a bit, but I’m not counting on that. Based on the previous average frost dates, we’ve got a 99 day growing season, and I think that’s still the more accurate one. That’s the thing with averages. All it takes is one or two unusual years to shift things quite a bit, even if they’re now showing a range of dates, rather than a single date.
This morning, I harvested some potatoes and a few other things for a supper I was planning on.
The potatoes are what I found under a couple of plants. For all that the plants struggled this year and there isn’t a lot, we do have some really nice potatoes! I grabbed a couple more kohl rabi (not too many of those left now!), some Swiss Chard, thyme, oregano, sage and lemon balm, as well as some walking onion bulbils.
All of this, plus some carrots I still had in the fridge, a Sub Arctic Plenty tomato the family hadn’t eaten yet, an entire bulb of fresh garlic (about 6 large cloves), some stewing beef and chunks of sausage, got used to make an Instant Pot one pot meal.
I do like being able to set up either the Instant Pot or the Crockpot and just leave it. Today, it meant I could get a nap in! We’re a real messed up household right now. My husband’s dealing with a broken tooth on top of his constant back pain. My younger daughter had a rough night and has been caning it today – yet she still just came back from picking the Spoon tomatoes for me! My older daughter has been walloped by her PCOS again. I’m still dealing with a wonky hip, plus my injured left arm is still causing issues, but it’s starting to look like I’m the most able bodied person in the household again!
I had thought I could use the riding mower and mow the lawn today. After all the rain we’ve had, it actually needs it again. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for sun and a few clouds for the next week. This morning, that changed to a light rain, pretty much all day! They’re still saying we’ll be getting sun with some clouds for at least a week, but who knows what we’ll actually get. I’m certainly not going to complain about more rain, though. We still need it so badly!
It does make things hard to plan around, though. There are things I’d like to get some work done on before I start making my monthly stock up shopping trips to the city, plus my follow up medical appointment about my arm, and so on. Things that need to be done when it’s dry, or at least not raining. I have this constant sense of running out of time.
Ah, well. It is what it is, and there’s only so much we can do. Having all four of us struggling with physical limitations at the time time, though, was not something I had ever expected when we moved out here, though!
The littles are happily discovering the perks of being close to the house. They’ve been sleeping on various cat beds all over the place, enjoying reliable access to food and water, and the creche mothers are taking good care of them. Some are still super shy, but even they are getting brave enough to go into the sun room.
I was on the late side getting out this morning. I had a rough night. What little lawn mowing a managed with the push more did more than remind me I hadn’t fully recovered from suddenly getting sick.
It reinjured me.
My left arm, that I injured in a fall more than a month ago, had been feeling fine for awhile. Well enough that I wondered just what we’d be talking about when I see my doctor at the end of the month, to go over the X-rays.
Last night, all the joints were hurting enough that I got my older daughter to come over and rub them down with Voltaren. Only after that could I finally get some sleep. By then it was around 3am.
My left hip has also increasingly an issue. Not so much with pain, but stability. The lack of it! It’s gotten so that I have to sit down to put on my pants, because I can’t stand on my left leg. When taking the two steps from the original part of the house to the addition, I can only step up on my right leg. If I try to step up using my left leg, my hip just gives out.
Something else to talk about when I see my doctor!
With that in mind, I got one of my daughters to help me in the garden at the end of my morning rounds.
When I first got into the old kitchen to start preparing the wet and dry cat food mixture I feed them in the mornings, I spotted one of the white and grey littles, right at the window! This window used to be an exterior window, before the sun room was added on, so the sill on the outside is angled down for any moisture to drain away from the window. It makes it a challenge, but the smaller cats and kittens are still able to get onto it and not slide right off. To see the littles up there – I think the one I saw traded off with a second one while I was filling the kibble bowl – is good progress. They have figured out where the food comes from, and are comfortable with that.
Now if only the garage kittens would come out! They are SO hungry by the time I arrive to feed them, because they don’t come to the house where there is more food, after their bowl is empty. I’m seriously considering moving the isolation shelter closer to the garage, and use it to slowly get them closer to the house. The problem with that it, the littles and the outside yard kittens are already using it regularly.
Maybe the catio would work, instead.
After the cats were fed, I continued my rounds and checking on the garden.
I’m quite happy with what’s happening in the trellis bed. The noodle beans are still stunted, but the sunflowers and pumpkins are looking great!
One pumpkin plant – the one with the pumpkin in a sling – is the biggest of the five, and opened up a couple of massive flowers this morning. There’s just male flowers, though. I’ve been seeing tiny female flowers start to form but, so far, they’ve all shriveled up and fallen off, long before they opened up. So it looks like we’ll get a single pumpkin this year.
In the second image of the slideshow above, you can see the tallest of the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. it has almost reached the height of the top horizontal support for the temporary trellis netting, which is at least 6 1/2 feet from the ground, so about 6 feet from the inside of the bed.
I’m surprised by all those little tomatoes I found when doing a major weeding, some time ago, and transplanted. I’ve since found three more that got missed, but I won’t bother moving those. Some of the transplants are getting surprisingly bed. The largest one is hidden under the leaves of the biggest pumpkin plant! One even has blossoms on it. I suspect that some of them, at least, might be Spoon tomatoes.
Speaking of Spoon tomatoes…
My younger daughter came out to help me pick them. With the instability of my hip, I can only pick from one side, where I can lean against the log wall. My daughter can actually get right into the bed, standing on the mulch in between the melons (which are not really growing, even if some are blooming) and pick the tomatoes on that side of the plants.
Yes, those are grapes! My daughter found the ripest looking clusters. There are lots more, but they are still more on the green side. If my guess is correct, these are Valiant grapes and they should get much bigger, not be the same size as the Spoon tomatoes. Once we figure out a place to transplant them, hopefully they will do better. The vines themselves are doing great where they are, but the fruit is not what it should be.
This is the first time in a couple of years we’ve been able to harvest some grapes before the raccoons ate them all.
Under the colander is a selection of fresh herbs; two types of oregano, two types of thyme, sage, basil, lemon balm and even some dill weed from the self seeded dill that came up among the herbs. I also gathers some walking onion bulbils; we don’t want them to spread beyond where they are now, so the bulbils are for eating, not growing! There’s a small amount of bush beans, some Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes.
At the bottom are some nasturtium seeds. My daughter was admiring the flower bed (the Cosmos are getting so tall!) and asked about the nasturtiums, which are winding down right now. While checking them out, we noticed some of the seeds had started to dry up and fall off the plants. Rather than leave them there to likely rot, we gathered them up. They are now in the cat free zone (the living room) where we are keeping gathered seeds and seed pods to stay cool and dry before they get stored away.
As for the rest of today, I’m not sure what I’ll manage to get done outside. I’ll give myself a chance to rest, but I most likely will just pain killer up and head out later and do as much as I can. We shall see.
I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!
I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.
There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.
I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.
After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.
Good for the digestion.
We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.
Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.
Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.
I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.
They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.
Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.
It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.
This morning I collected our largest harvest yet, for this year!
I had some help, too.
When I prepared to transplant the melons, I set up a trellis for them using Dollarama steel fence posts and welded wire mesh salvaged from the old squash tunnel from years ago. When the Spoon tomatoes were planted in the other half of the bed, I use bamboo stakes to make them their own trellis.
Well, with the melons barely growing at all, they’re not going to need the trellis. So, with my daughter’s help, we pulled the posts, with the wire still on them, and moved them over to the corn and Arikara squash bed. It’s loosely set up for now, but the 4′ square bed will get a wire fence around it – the mesh is just long enough! – to hopefully keep the raccoons from getting into the corn, when the cobs are ready. I’ll probably have to put some sort of cover over it, too, or they’ll just climb up and over.
The corn bed has plastic netting around it. Hopefully, they will be dissuaded from the corn rather than tearing their way through.
After moving the melon trellis away, the Spoon tomatoes can now be reached from both sides, so my daughter helped me pick tomatoes on one side, while I did the other.
I’m glad I remembered to bring a separate container for the Spoon tomatoes!
There was also a whole two Royal Burgundy beans to pick, from the three surviving plants. I did pick a small handful of yellow bush beans last night, though, so there was enough to actually use. While checking last night, I noticed some ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and this morning, one was ready to grab.
After that, I dug up some potatoes, then winter sown carrots from the high raised bed.
In the next image in the slide show above, you can see a very wonky potato!
That was from roots.
These potatoes were picked from about the middle of the bed, so at least twenty feet away from the trees. My garden fork was digging up more roots than potatoes.
Those trees have got to go.
Then I remembered we have herbs and stuff, so I went to the old kitchen garden, where I gathers some lemon thyme, lemon balm and oregano. In the winter sown bed, I grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves. I even grabbed some bulbils from the walking onions, since we don’t want them to spread any further.
Once inside, the longest time was spent getting all those little green bits of stem off all those Spoon tomatoes! I also set aside some of the ripest looking ones to collect seeds from, later. Their seeds are so tiny, I’ll have to consider how best to do that!
In the last photo – which looked much better and in focus on my phone, I swear! – it what I made with it. There’s still potatoes and Spoon tomatoes left, plus the one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, but I used up all the carrots, julienned, a handful of bush beans cut small, the onion bulbils and a whole head of garlic. We still have fresh garlic left of the ones that were too far along for curing and winter storage. Then there was the chard and herbs.
When I went into town to get kibble yesterday, I also picked up some chicken legs and thighs that were on sale, which my older daughter prepared last night, so breakfast (brunch?) was the vegetables gathered this morning, plus oven roasted chicken legs.
There’s another one under it that bloomed and was done before I ever saw that it was a female flower.
There were no male flowers open at the time, so I grabbed a couple of older ones and tore off the petals so I could access the pollen and hand pollinate. The first one had water pour out when the petals were torn off, so I used a second one, too, just in case the first one didn’t have any viable pollen. At this point, it’s too early to tell if the one I missed had a chance to be pollinated before it was done blooming.
This afternoon, I decided to use up a whole bunch of odds and ends vegetables in the fridge, along with some fresh stuff, in the slow cooker. I’ve been leaving the potato bed for the past while but decided to dig some up for today’s use.
I had dug some up before under the potato plants that had died back the most, which was at the north end of the bed, closer to that row of self seeded trees my mother left to grow. The entire potato bed died back early, without ever developing flowers, but the north end of the bed had them dying back the fastest.
The potatoes in that basket are from under four potato plants that were at the end of that bed. That mass beside the basket is capillary roots from the elm trees nearby that came up while I was digging around for the potatoes. I was hitting more, larger roots as well. I’ve de-rooted these beds several times, and they come back so fast!!
Those trees have GOT to go! They’re killing our garden!
I dug up more potatoes closer to the middle of the bed, and was still getting a lot of capillary roots like that, but found more potatoes under two plants, than under the four I’d dug up first.
Since I finally had a container on hand, I harvested Spoon tomatoes. It’s been a while since I picked any, so there were plenty to gather. Thankfully, the mesh on this basket is fine enough to hold the tomatoes! Some of them were so small, they would have fallen through if they weren’t being held in place by the larger ones. I had to be careful to keep the potatoes from rolling over and squishing them.
Then I grabbed a few more carrots to add to what we already had inside, and the only ripe bush beans I could find.
In the last photo of the slide show above, it shows all the vegetables I prepared for the slow cooker, seasoned and tossed with avocado oil. All from our garden!
There are the potatoes, carrots and Spoon tomatoes, of course. Plus I finally used that one big turnip that I’d left to get big and go to seed, but the deer ate most of the greens. There’s kohlrabi in there, and more beans that we had in the fridge. It took three “harvests” of bush beans to have enough to make it worth using them in anything! Oh, and there is Swiss Chard and a whole bulb of fresh garlic in there, too.
We have a large Crockpot, and the vegetables almost filled it completely. They will shrink as they cook down, though. After I left for my mother’s, my daughter browned some ground turkey, along with some of the yellow onions we still have left from last year’s garden (they have lasted a really long time!!!) and mixed that in later on.
The slow cooker was set to high for 3 hours. Since I’ve come back from my mother’s, I’ve checked on it a few times and added more time. All those potatoes need extra time to cook through, as I deliberately left them in big chunks. For I still don’t know how it turned out!
The house is smelling amazing, though, and I’m getting hungry! 😄
Just a quick garden post before I cover the rest of the day.
We have a first!
I harvested just a few things to include with supper. There was one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato that was ripening earlier than the others, and I decided to wrestle my way through the protective netting to see how it was. It came off the vine very easily, even though parts of it look a touch greener than red.
I also checked the one Black Beauty tomato. That’s still hard as a rock.
So the family will get their first taste of a new variety of tomato. I also picked some Uzbek Golden carrot, a couple of Napoli carrots, and some Swiss Chard, all from the winter sown beds.
We had quite a bit of rain last night. I’d used about 3/4 of the full rain barrel to water the old kitchen garden yesterday, and it was full this morning. I can really see a difference in the garden. Things that have been stagnating for more than a month are showing new growth. The Hopi Black Dye sunflowers have all shot up in height, and I can see where flower heads are starting to form. Even the summer squash … well… some of them… have had a growth spurt. We had more rain this afternoon, too. There is a huge system slowly rotating over the prairie provinces right now, and I am really praying that this means some of those fires are getting rained on!
Seeing how much of a difference it made in the garden, in such a short time, does give me a bit of home for this gardening season.
The first of the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes is starting to develop a blush. As with so many other things, these tomatoes have stagnated in growth, but there are a few tomatoes developing at least. The rest are still very green.
In the next photo, we have our first open female pumpkin flower. I made sure to hand pollinate it, just to be on the safe side!
Last of all, I had a teeny, tiny harvest. A whole four of the yellow bush beans growing among the corn. It is odd to pick them when there were so few (from two plants, too!), but picking them will encourage more production.
I also picked the most Spoon tomatoes at one time for this year. There was maybe half a cup’s worth. This time, I washed and bagged them up to bring to my mother as a little treat. She’s not supposed to eat acidic foods like tomatoes, but loves them. These are so small and there are so few, they shouldn’t be an issue.
I headed over to my mother’s, getting to her place at around 9am. That’s when the lab opens, but she was scheduled for her morning med assist for 9:30. (She laughed in delight when she saw the teeny tomatoes!) So I helped her out with a few things and rubbed the Volataren on her back for her – something that the home care aid would have done, if I weren’t there. Then as she was getting ready to put on her slippers, I saw her toes needed some serious work! She had hired a foot care person to do her feet a while back and my mother told me she didn’t do a good job. As near as I can figure, though, it wasn’t a good job because her toenails are now long again. ???
I tried to do her feet, but it turned out she doesn’t have toenail clippers. Just fingernail clippers. Some of her toenails were so thick, they couldn’t fit into the clippers. Even scissors just slid off. She had a nail file I tried using, but it was so old, it was practically smooth.
Now on the shopping list for my mother: proper toenail clippers, and one of those callous grinders. There are special toenail grinders, but that would have to be an online purchase. I might order one for ourselves, actually. My husband needs help with his feet at times, too.
[side note: I sent a link to my husband to see what toenail grinder caught is attention and he came over to talk about it. He noticed that these grinders are basically just Dremels for toes – I had noticed that, too, and we both got a laugh over it. He has a variable speed Dremel and was suggesting we just buy the tips and use that. Which wouldn’t work too well for my mother! 😄)
While I was working in my mother’s feet, the home care aid arrived so I paused to let my mother take her meds. Normally, she would be having her breakfast with it, but she was fasting for one of her blood tests. She mentioned that to the aid, who said that she was going for blood tests herself, too.
After checking to make sure my mother’s back was treated, the care aid left. It took a while for my mother to get organized before we could leave. She decided she wanted to go to the bank today, too. Normally, she makes out a list of how many of each denomination she wants, but hadn’t done that, so she was looking all over for an old list. It took a while to redirect her away from that and assure her, she could still get the variety of denominations she wants, even without her list.
Thankfully, my mother was feeling better today than she was yesterday. She has to use a stool to get into the truck, with me lifting her slightly to help out, and she was concerned about whether or not she could do it today. She managed like a champ, though! Once at the lab, there was someone else at the counter, so I got her seated while she looked for her health care card. While waiting our turn, who should show up, but the health care aid we saw this morning! 😁
After my mother was checked in and the forms dropped off, we waited again. It turned out that they were short two people today. At the check in counter was an Asian guy that we’ve seen a few times. My mother prefers the girls, and they weren’t in today, so he was doing it all. At one point, he was at the counter and my mother was staring at him, then started crossing herself, repeatedly. Like she was trying to protect herself from the scary non-white person. *sigh*
The last time I brought her in for her monthly blood test, she asked me to make sure I was in the room with her while her blood was being drawn. It turned out that a while back, when I went to get an EKG done while she was getting her blood drawn, it was this guy that had drawn the blood, and she was convinced he faked it. She was positive that no blood was actually drawn, because she didn’t see any go into the vial.
The when she asked me to be there, it was one of the girls that drew her blood, but this time, it was the guy. As he was drawing her blood, with me sitting nearby, she actually spoke up, asking if he got the vein or not, because there was no blood going into the vial. Meanwhile, from where I was seeing, I was watching the vial fill. She had an extra test done this time, so I saw both of them fill. But my mother said she couldn’t see it.
I am now thinking this is related to her macular degeneration. Parts of her vision is obstructed so, because the guy drawing her blood wasn’t white, that must mean he was faking drawing her blood.
…
He was absolutely sweet with her, though, but sadly, that means nothing to my mother.
*sigh*
After her samples were drawn, we headed out and stopped at the bank. She hasn’t gone in ages and my brother has been getting her monthly cash for her, because it’s so difficult for her now. With his work hours, he’s only been able to take out smaller amounts through an ATM, and not all in the denominations she wants. This time, since she didn’t have her list, she asked me to go to the counter with her and make her requests as she had instructed me in the truck. This is a first. I usually go along to be available to help her with things, physically, but this time she actually wanted me to talk to the teller for her. The teller, of course, confirmed with my mother after I passed on the instructions, that it was what she wanted. My mother asking me to do something like this, especially involving money, is a really big shift.
The banking done, my mother was really hungry from her fasting, so she suggested we go somewhere to eat. It was early enough we still had to wait for the restaurant to open at 11. While there, someone else showed up to wait for the doors to open. My mother, being my mother, had her usual complaint every time we go to this place. The sidewalk to the door has broken edges on the concrete. She constantly rants about how they need to fix it, it looks bad, it makes the entire town look bad, it’s bad for business, etc. In reality, though, she just doesn’t like the look of it and demands it gets fixed for her. It really isn’t that bad. She started going on about it to the guy that was there, too, and we were both commenting that this would be very expensive to fix, and I pointed out that special permits would be needed. Plus, part of the area wouldn’t even belong to the restaurant, but to the town, so it would be the town’s responsibility to fix about half of it. All of which she angrily dismissed.
Then the poor guy came to unlock the door.
He held the doors open for my mother and her walker. My mother, meanwhile, didn’t miss a beat and went from complaining to us about the state of the sidewalk, to yelling about it at the poor guy. He did give an apology for it and said that it would be fixed when they could afford it, but my mother just kept being really rude and angry at him. I apologized, of course, but he seemed to take it in stride.
We had ourselves an excellent lunch, though, with my mother ordering a medium pizza for herself, so that she could take half of it home for her supper later on. Even with ordering, though, my mother was so impatient. She was hungry, which probably explained some of the behaviour, but she seems to think that if she tells the waitress how hungry she is, they will somehow magically produce her order instantly. Almost immediately after placing her order, she was complaining about how long it was taking! Once she got her food, though, she was very happy with it.
My mother insisted on paying for the meal, but she doesn’t believe in tips, so when she gave me just barely enough cash to cover the bill, I snuck a tip to the waitress. The last time my mother saw me leave a tip, she actually yelled at me on the way home over it.
That was our last stop, though, and my mother was more than happy to get home. Getting in and out of the truck is so difficult for her, but she manages it! Still, she had to stop and rest on her walker several times, just to walk the short distance to her apartment.
One of the things she was telling me to talk about with my brother (as her PoA) is about getting her a wheelchair. I tried asking her some questions about it, but she just said she needs a really comfortable wheelchair, and she can pay for it.
Now, we still have my late father’s folding wheelchair. That’s not what she’s asking for, though. She wants something “comfortable” (which is so subjective!). The problem is, I don’t think she has the arm strength to wheel herself around in a manual wheelchair. I tried to explain that to her, but it took several times for her to understand what I was getting at. Once she did, she tried to say that if she could stand at the counter and cook her own food, she could operate a wheelchair. I told her that there is a big difference between doing stuff at a counter or stove, and trying to move around her own weight. At which point she asked, what’s the alternative.
*sigh*
Several times now, my brother has tried to provide her with motorized mobility devices. Including a motorized chair that took up less space than her walker does. She refused to use it. When I brought it up, she said she didn’t like how jerky it was and she was afraid she would run into things. I told her, it was just a matter of getting used to it and learning how to use it.
In the end, I told her I would bring it up with my siblings but, in the mean time, I would bring my father’s wheelchair over. She could try it out and see just how well she can handle a manual chair. If she can, then we can look into getting her a “comfortable” wheelchair. Otherwise, we’d have to look into a power chair.
Our province does actually have a program that provides manual and power chairs on loan. On looking into the details, though, my mother doesn’t qualify, as she is in the process of being paneled for a nursing home.
The other problem I didn’t even bother bringing up is, my mother’s apartment is not wheelchair friendly. We would have to get rid of some of her furniture for her to be able to get around.
Well, we’ll be seeing my mother’s doctor next week. Perhaps there is something the doctor can do to expedite getting my mother into some sort of supportive living or long term care. As far as how the home care system paneling goes, they’re basically waiting for my mother to have a fall or something and end up in the hospital before she qualifies for anything. Which, of course, we’re doing everything we can to avoid!
In the end, I spent about three hours helping my mother get around and do the things she wanted. She was pretty exhausted by the time I got her home, and so was I! Enough that, once I got home, I ended up crashing for a couple of hours.
I still feel like I could sleep for a week.
Meanwhile, my brother and his wife came out, late this afternoon. They were returning their trailer from the camp ground up north and parking it. It was several hours of driving for them to get here. My brother was then running around like crazy, as he usually does! My SIL was able to catch me up on things while I gave her a tour of what I’ve been doing around with the garden. She really liked the new section of wattle weaving, and I told her about the issues I was having with the project, and my plans to get some basket willow, and where I would be planting them. Definitely with more planning than with the other willows we’ve got on the property! Some of them, like the ones near where the ejector is, should be cut down. They were planted way too close to the ejector and, even at its new location, their roots can destroy the system. I’m really surprised that they were planted there in the first place and, from the looks of some of them, someone already tried to cut them down at some point, and they just grew right back!
My brother and his wife have been talking about ways to help out with big jobs like that. We simply don’t have the tools and equipment to do a lot of it.
There isn’t a lot left of the season for this year, but next year I suspect there are going to be a LOT of changes and progress being made here, now that they no longer have their acreage to take care of, and can come out here more often. They’re even going to bring out a more permanent structure they were able to get a very good deal on. Something more like what in the UK is, I think, called a caravan. I can’t remember the name of it she told me. They want to be able to bring the grand kids out and have them stay the night, and that won’t work in the RV trailer they have right now.
I’m excited over their grandkids being able to come out here, too. They live in another province, so I hardly ever get to see them, and they’re growing so fast!!!
There are going to be so many changes here over the next few years!
When I went out this morning to feed the yard cats, I had an adorable little surprise. Fluffy Colby was with some other cats INSIDE the sun room! I found the other three kittens around the cat shelters and they did run off, but Colby stayed close.
When it was time to bring out the kitten soup bowls, I found him sharing a tray with Havarti. He ran off a bit when I put the kitten soup bowl down, but he was soon back, sharing with with his cousin.
The garage kittens, sadly, still won’t come closer.
Today, my plan was to focus on finally giving the garden, and the food forest additions, a deep watering. Particularly since tomorrow will be hotter again, and I will be doing my Costco shop in the city. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 25C/77F. Today reached a comparatively cool high of 23C/73F. I didn’t need to go anywhere today, so I hoped to get some progress outside.
Well, of course, that changed.
My husband called in refills for his injections, so a trip to the pharmacy was in order. Of course, I combined errands as much as possible, grabbing our big water bottles to refill at the grocery store after getting the meds. Then, since I was there anyhow, I checked out the sales and picked up a few things.
Nectarines always tended to be more expensive, but they still were usually under $2/lb in season.
The next image is of a beef tomahawk steak. This is a cut I almost never see. I know people on carnivore that prize these as having an excellent protein to fat ratio. I just can’t imaging spending $84.95 ($55.09/kg) for about 3 pounds of bone-in meat (1kg=2.2lbs) that would be just one meal. Sure, that might be enough for the entire day on carnivore, but… yikes!
I did pick up a family pack of stew meat, though, which was in the $20 range.
Once back at home, I was soon outside doing the watering. When I got to the high raised bed, though, I also did some harvesting. In this bed, I had left one Purple Prince turnip to go to seed. Which it did.
It’s probably past its best stage for eating, but it wasn’t regrowing a new seed stalk, so I figured it was harvest it, or it would start rotting.
In the next photo, you can find the fuzzy friend I found on one of the leaves. I broke off that section of leaf and set it aside, so as not to disturb the caterpillar. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is. Hopefully, not something I will regret saving!
In the last image, you can see the turnip with the Uzbek golden carrots I also harvested. I was careful to pull the biggest ones. I’m leaving the smaller ones to give them a change to get bigger, instead of just harvesting the entire bed as I was considering doing. I found a single orange Napoli carrot large enough to harvest. I see hints of orange on some of the other carrots, but for the most part, it’s the Uzbek Golden carrots that have been growing. The Napoli carrot seeds were a couple of years older, and I finished off the last of what was left in the packet. I didn’t expect many of those to germinate.
For all the garden struggles this year, things are still kicking! In both winter sown beds, the radish seed stalks that the deer ate are trying to recover.
They’re blooming again, and sending out more leaves in some of them.
While watering the Spoon tomatoes, I noticed something. When they were being transplanted, I pruned off the bottom leaves before planting them inside the protective collars. One transplant had a larger branch that I pruned off. It was so nice and strong, I decided to just stick it into the ground between two other tomatoes and giving it a chance to grow.
It’s still tiny but, as you can see in the next image above, it’s producing tomatoes!!! The entire plant is maybe 8 inches high, if that. Just one little branch, and it’s producing!
As for those Royal Burgundy beans in front of the Spoon tomatoes – the whole three plants that emerged – one of them has a tiny bean starting to grow! I didn’t get a picture, but one of the yellow Custard beans planted with the tomatoes in the East yard had a whole bunch of tiny bean pods forming. It’s really late in the season, but we might actually have beans to harvest before summer is over!
Even the sugar snap peas are trying to make a come back! Some of them are dying back – they are well past their season – but after the deer munched away at them, some of the plants are pushing out new growth, and blooming! I’ve got one Super Sugar Snap pea plant that I’m leaving (and the deer have left alone) to fully mature so I can save the seeds, but it looks like we might have a few more fresh pods to enjoy, too.
If the deer don’t get to them, first!
It’s encouraging to see some signs of the garden trying to recover and grow. The tiny summer squash are getting a bit bigger, and blooming, though still just male flowers. The winter squash seem to be recovering a bit, too, and some are blooming. The melons are still tiny, but some of them are blooming. The pumpkins are doing quite well, and one of them even has a female flower bud showing!
Whether or not any of this will have time to recover, grow and produce before our season runs out is questionable. With some things, unlikely. Looking at the monthly forecast, it’s possible we’ll have all of September with no frost, though we would probably still need to cover things on colder nights. August, at least, looks like it’ll stay pretty warm. Of course, such long term forecasts are completely unreliable. I’m still going to assume our average Sept. 10 first frost date.
After finished up in the garden and bring the little harvest in, I used some of the carrots, onions from last year – yes, we still have a few! – and an entire head of fresh garlic in a beef and barley dish for my husband and I. The girls hate barley, but my husband and I love it, so they get to make their own supper using some of the fresh fish I picked up for them, yesterday. There will be enough of the beef and barely for my husband to have tomorrow, as well, while I am in the city. My younger daughter is having some PCOS issues right now, so she won’t be able to come with me this time. Which is fine; I don’t actually need the help, but I do like her company. I’ve been doing so much better myself, since I’ve been on the anti-inflammatories, I’ve actually been able to handle these outings better, too. I’m only taking them at the end of the day, instead of twice a day, before with my last meal before bed. I can take them up to 3 times a day, as needed. I just haven’t needed to take that many!
I haven’t taken any pain killers at all since I started on the anti-inflammatories. I do still have pain. Particularly if I lie on my left hip for too long, and I still have issues with my injured left arm. The pain, however is now more specific, and really not all that bad. Nothing worth taking more meds over. I should probably take some painkillers before I leave for the city, though, since I’ll be doing a lot of walking on concrete, and these shopping trips really take a lot out of me.
In the first image, I finally harvested that White Vienna kohlrabi I’ve been eyeballing for a while now! I also grabbed a smaller Purple Vienna kohlrabi.
They were peeled and quartered to go into a roaster with potatoes and carrots, including the Uzbek Golden carrots in the photo. I made sure to taste test them, first. If I had to choose, I’d say the Purple Vienna was tastier, but I think I might have allowed the White Vienna to get too big before I harvested it, so that might account for the taste difference. Once peeled, there’s really no visual difference between them.
In the next photo in the slideshow above, I picked some of the largest beets that had their greens eaten by deer. On one of the albino beets, you can see where the deer actually chomped off part of the beet root, too! These, I’m leaving for my daughters to get creative with.
I went to my mother’s this evening to do her med assist, as home care didn’t have anyone for her two evening med assists. I didn’t bring anything from the garden for my mother at the time, but I will be in her town again tomorrow. I’m meeting a friend as she drops her car off at the garage to be checked out. Originally, she was going to come by and pick me up on the way, but my mother’s almost completely out of her medications, so I want to make sure to get her bubble packs from the pharmacy – and that they get properly locked way in her lock box! Last month, she snuck one of the bubble packs away and hid it, for those days when home care simply doesn’t show up.
Since I’ll be leaving quite early to meet my friend, I’ve already prepared a bag with some fresh potatoes and some garlic bulbs from the ones curing under the canopy tent outside for my mother and left it in the truck. I had already promised her some garlic, and I think she’ll really like the fresh potatoes, too.
Also, I’m happy to say that my not being up to watering the garden this morning was not a problem. We got a lovely little downpour this afternoon!
Tonight is supposed to be a fair bit cooler. Hopefully, that means I’ll finally be able to get some real sleep!
The Re-Farmer 