healing

Our 2025 Garden: getting bigger, some firsts in the harvest, and peeking!

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First, the cuteness. I got this picture last night.

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.

This is our morning’s harvest.

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.

The Re-Farmer

A rough night, but much improved

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We have GOT to get more of the inside cats adopted out.

Last night was a rough one. 

With my arm still giving me grief, I tried going to be early again. While I could move my right arm forward and back as normal, if painfully, I still couldn’t get it move more than a few inches straight outward. 

When I go to bed, I often has several cats that insist they MUST be either right against me, or me, and they don’t often give me a chance to finish getting into bed before they do it! Cheddar is one of several that has decided where I sleep is his spot. He’s a big boy, so moving him with one wonky arm was a challenge! Others will move as I pull the covers back, but not Shadow in the Dark. He’s one that likes to curly up near my face or against the back of my neck, and he won’t move. So lifting the covers usually results in him being rolled over and over, then he lies there, all sprawled out, looking at me like I’ve offended him somehow!

That’s not unusual, though. 

Butterscotch made things unusual.

She’s been doing quite well, and even gotten to the point that she has started to leave my room, if only to go as far as the steps to the dining room, or peak around the corner at the basement door, to look down the hallway, before running back into my room.

Lately, however, she has taken to growling and snarling. 

Sometimes, I can see that there’s a cat nearby that she’s snarling at, but they’re usually just there, and not even looking at her. A couple of times, one of them would go at her, but it seems more a response to her snarling, and not the other way around. Other times, I’ll hear her snarling, and I can’t even see any other cats around her.

Well, it seems that having so many cats in my room, usually covering my bed, sleeping in groups, is stressing her out to the point that she isn’t going to the litter boxes. She’d have to go past the other cats to do that.

The first time I heard the odd noises, I found her squeezed onto one of the boxes I’ve set in front of the wall shelf, under my craft table. I’ve got other boxes inside the bottom shelves; with the table there, they can’t be accessed for us, but when they were empty and I thought the cats were just using them as places to sleep, we discovered they were defecating in them, so we blocked them off with empty boxes. One of those overhangs the edge of the shelf, and she was squeezed between the box on the floor and the overhanging box.

Then I started hearing a very strange sound indeed.

The sound of hard turds dropping onto the box she was on!

I managed to get her out of there, but then she went into a shelf above where I sleep; the shelf I keep my glasses in, as well as where I put my phone on a stand to charge at night, among other things.

I got her out of that, and she squeezed herself into the space of another shelf, in between my cookbooks and the top of the mattress. I tried lying down again, but more noised had me getting up again to investigate, and this time she was digging into the shelf that I use for some of my clothes. I got her out of there and tucked her into the nearby cat cave, and she stayed there.

Not for long.

I was again awakened by strange noises, and this time I found she was making a mess on my bed, between my pillow, and my leaning sheep – a large stuffed sheep I sometimes use to lean against when sitting up in bed, but is normally stored in the shelve under where I keep my glasses. It’s large enough to almost fill the space completely.

Well, this time, it was a very messy mess.

My daughters are still timing things so that one of them is always available to help me with his, so I messaged my older daughter to help me. We wiped up as much as we could, then stripped the bed. The fitted sheet and the leaning sheep had to be washed, along with one pillow case, but the mess was bad enough that we had to strip the waterproof mattress cover for washing, too!

By then it was past 1am – so much for going to bed early! 

While my daughter got the laundry going, I started putting out wet cat food. That lured all but one cat out of my room. I set wet cat food out in the bowls I have there, which allows for Butterscotch and a few of the the shier cats to get some, without being pushed around by the other cats. This time, I was able to close the door and keep the other cats from coming back in during the night.

Of course, that meant frequent interruptions by cats trying to claw the door open.

Eventually, though, I did hear Butterscotch going into a litter box, which should have been a good thing, but… something didn’t sound right. So I used the flashlight on my phone to try and see her.

*sigh*

Yeah, she was using the litter box, finally, but didn’t quite go all the way in. 

She ran off again and hid in her cat cave while I got up and cleaned up the mess.

*sigh*

After that, things did finally quiet down, and I managed to get some sleep, but all this having to get up and check things was quite painful. 

I have discovered on thing, though. While my girth may make it seem otherwise, I’ve got some pretty decent abs! I had to sit myself up many times using just my abs, and not being able to use my arms at all. 

With just Butterscotch in her cave and what turned out to be Susan sleeping somewhere else, I actually was able to get some decent sleep, if only for a few hours.

This morning, I felt good enough that, when my younger daughter went to feed the outside cats, I went along to help out, then do the rest of my rounds and switch out the trail cam memory cards. 

I was very happy to demonstrate to her that I can now lift my right arm straight out again! While there is still some pain, I have almost full mobility of my arm again! The level of improvement since yesterday is amazing. I’m so relieved! There were times I seriously considered getting my daughter to drive me to the hospital, but giving it a couple of days of rest seems to be what I really needed. In fact, while writing this, I just tested my arm again, and I could do a full rotation at the shoulder, with no pain! Not even my left shoulder, which was not strained as badly, still has more pain now than my right shoulder does. I’m so relieved!

While doing the morning feeding, neither of us tried to do a head count. There were clearly fewer cats than usual, but they were also running around a lot, making it hard to keep track. There were these two, though…

The cats still aren’t going into the sunroom as much as usual. Checking it just a short while ago, there was a small pile of maybe three or four cats on the platform, and that’s it. Usually, we’d see about 6 or ten on the platform, and almost as many under the heat lamp or on the cat bed below, plus more in the shelf, at the food bowls or just wandering around. It’s going to take time for them to start feeling safe in there again.

These two are almost always in the sunroom. Syndol can’t get enough attention, but the little one (can you believe they’re only about a month or so apart in age?) is now getting to the point of enjoying pets and being picked up. We’d brought this one into the house a couple of times to give his nethers a thorough washing. He was so patient about it, the girls have named him Patience.

Even his tortie sister has started to allow me to pet her more often, and will tolerate being picked up more. Which is good, because it means we can bring her indoors for overnight fasting at the end of the week, before taking her to get spayed. Oh, how I wish more of the females could be socialized enough to get them done! My daughter was able to pet Broccoli this morning, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I did manage to pet Junk Pile – the first time in ages. She seemed shocked at being pet, and liking the shoulder skritches, but didn’t allow it for long. Even Caramel was around, but I only managed to touch her while she had her back to me while eating. Brussel won’t let us near her, but she will go into the kibble house and even into the sunroom. Sprout keeps her distance. If we’re around, she won’t eat at all, and she prefers to eat from the bowls under the shrine, across the yard. We’ve seen Slick around, I think (aka: Octomom), and there’s another grey tabby that’s more spotted then striped that I think is also female. That one will eat at the kibble house or on the cat house roof, but is even shier than Sprout, so we haven’t been able to confirm, either way. Another one we have not been able to confirm is one more from that late litter of either kittens; a small grey tabby with dense longer fur. It will go into the sunroom to eat, and I’ve been able to sneak a pet on its back, if it can’t see me, but that’s it. Given how it won’t let us near it, I’m going to just assume it’s female. 😕

Anyhow, that’s the current status.

In other things, my daughter was able to help me move a chair out of the living room so I have access to the aquarium greenhouses again. With my arm mobile again, my goal for today is to get the big aquarium ready for seed trays, then hopefully actually get seeds started. We’ve got the red onions, yellow onions and shallots that should have already been started by now, plus some peppers and eggplant. Possibly some oregano and thyme, too, but those can probably wait a couple more weeks. I’ll have to go through our seeds that need to be started the earliest and make some decisions. With having to build or rebuild so many beds, once things are thawed out enough, I’m going to work on the assumption we won’t have room for everything we want to plant. Especially for things that would need to be planted in ground, like corn.

We shall see how things work out. For now, I’m just glad to 1) be pain free and mobile enough to get back at it and 2) not have any unexpected running around to do, but actually be home to get my own stuff done!

Time to grab a stool and get at those aquarium greenhouses!

The Re-Farmer

Hello, Kitties

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We have not had an update on Cabbages recently, which means she has been doing well. The last news we had was posted here.

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The cold temperatures are hanging in there, but the outside cats seem to be doing quite well.

I often see them running around on the security camera live feed. I do wonder, though, about the times when I see half a dozen of them, all running back and forth on the driveway at the same time! :-D

Nosencrantz and Butterscotch remain in the sun room. Technically, we can let them out now, but with these temperatures and their shaved bellies, that wouldn’t happen, even if we weren’t considering bringing them indoors permanently. With Nosencrantz up for adoption, it would be just easier that way. Butterscotch… we’ll give it a try again. She came out when I set fresh food out for them, but didn’t really want attention, and kept moving away when I came near. Unlike Nosencrantz, who will happily accept being picked up and cuddled!

We’ve talked about bringing them in and have decided to wait until after the spice girls, Saffron and Turmeric, go. They are booked for their surgeries on Feb. 23. We drop them off in the morning, then the cat lady will pick them up in the afternoon, where they will be delivered to the fosters that are ready and waiting for them, to recover then be adopted out. With Cabbages unexpectedly leaving when she did, we now have 15 cats in the house. It’s probably not a good idea to make it 17, when two more are leaving in such a short time. I’m sure Nosencrantz will handle the transition just fine. Not so sure about Butterscotch.

It does mean we will be visiting them in the sun room as often as we can, and providing them with more toys to keep them happy.

Beep Beep looks like such a kitten in this photo!! Hard to believe she’s a minimum of 7 years old. It’s also hard to believe that such a tiny cat made such big babies. Cheddar and Layendecker, who are a couple of years apart in age, didn’t start big, but both grew into such hefty boys. They totally dwarf her. Even Big Rig is bigger than she is, though they are so much alike, I often get them mixed up. Only Saffron remains smaller, while Turmeric is almost caught up in size.

Beep Beep and Fenrir have recovered so well from surgery, I forget they even had it, until Beep Beep starts rolling and I see her belly.

Fenrir doesn’t roll like that. Ever. Checking her belly is a two person job.

I wonder how well Beep Beep and Butterscotch will remember each other, when we try bringing Butterscotch indoors? For all we know, Butterscotch is her mother. They’ve shared the parenting of litters every year we’ve been here, with Butterscotch more than happy to leave her babies with Beep Beep as much as she could. I’m sure they’ll remember each other at least a little bit, even if they haven’t seen each other in almost 2 years. Whether that means they’ll be friendly with each other or not, is anyone’s guess! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Not going anywhere, today! Plus, cat surgery update

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After doing my morning rounds, I contacted the garage to let him know I wasn’t going to make my appointment with the van today. We are under blizzard conditions right now, which are expected to continue until this evening.

There actually isn’t a lot of snow, but the winds are insane. There is a drift in front of the garage door we will have to dig out before we can go anywhere though, at the moment, the driveway is still mostly clear.

There is supposed to be a path around the back of the kibble house, and a kibble tray at the end. Under the drift. The cat path to under the storage house was also filling in.

Temperature wise, we are at only -17C/1F, but with 50km/31m per hour winds, the wind chill is at -31C/-24F. The winds are coming from the northwest, which we are normally protected from, but at these speeds, it’s just swirling around the house and all the outbuildings.

The path to the compost pile is, once again, mostly gone.

Even right up against the house, the path to the feeding station is mostly filled in.

I opened the gate to check the road, then left it open so that it would not be drifted over in the closed position. Right now, the only thing keeping the end of our driveway from drifting over completely, are the walls of snow made by the front end loader when it was being cleared. They’re acting a bit like a snow fence, for the moment. The road past our place is actually looking quite clear, but it runs from north to south, and the winds are just blowing the snow along. The main gravel road, and the highway I would be taking to get that oil change done, would be drifted over, and the winds would be hitting our van broadsided. I checked the Facebook group for local highway conditions, and some people were reporting that they were in the ditch – and the roads they were on were mostly clear! It was the winds that did them in.

Smart kitties. They came out when I put food and warm water out, ate and drank quickly, then disappeared into their various hidey holes. One is visible in the window, but I think there’s about 5 or 6 in there.

I saw Rolando Moon emerge from the junk pile. She’s a tough one, and has seen many cold winters. She knows how to handle it. She stayed out to eat longer than the other cats, then went into the insulated shelf shelter to get out of the wind. Which, as you can see, is even managing to blow snow into the opening!

We need to build more little shelters like this. Especially when we finally get that junk pile hauled away. They use it for shelter, a lot.

Before heading outside, I treated Butterscotch and Nosencrantz with some wet cat food. Nosencrantz has been staying on the top shelf of the frame the heat bulb is in, which means sitting on top of the board the fixture is attached to. That puts her under the light we’ve got, hanging under the peak. It’s got a full spectrum bulb that we were using for seed starts. It’s incandescent, so it’s also warm, so we’ve been leaving it on. She was there when I came in, and I helped her down so she wouldn’t have to jump and jar her body.

Butterscotch has been using one of the box beds we have set up, and very languidly emerged when I brought the food out. I can see some things knocked about a bit, so I know at least one of them is trying to jump onto shelves and explore a bit, but it’s not too bad.

When I was done my rounds, I paused to spend time with them before going into the house. Nosencrantz quite enjoyed being held and snuggled.

When I put her on the swing bench, she was comfortable enough to roll around and let me see her roly poly belly!

She is such a big sausage!

I was able to pick up Butterscotch and cuddle her a bit, too. She even purred at me!

After hearing from the vet, what the condition of her uterus was when they removed it, I have a suspicion that Butterscotch is going to undergo a catonality change. She’s always had a bit of a mean streak at times. I now wonder if it was due to physical discomfort. Right now, she’s moving around more slowly (or course!), but while I was holding Nosencrantz, she still came over and wound around my feet. When I picked her up, she was a lot calmer than I normally expect her to be. Even as I was going in and out of the sun room, she made no attempt to escape, though that might have more to do with having just had surgery, yesterday. Perhaps, once she’s healed up more from the surgery, she’ll go back to her more ornery self. However, I have a suspicion she’s going to be a happier and more pleasant cat to be around.

It should be interesting to see how it goes for Beep Beep, next week. We don’t know if she is older or younger than Butterscotch.

So today is a day to stay indoors. We shall see if we can make the trip to the city tomorrow or not. The winds are supposed to die down, but the temperature is supposed to drop quite a bit.

Times like this are exactly why we’ve been working so hard to stay stocked up!!

Having said that, one of the things I was hoping to do while in town getting the oil change, was to come home with some Chinese take-out. Now that it’s no longer an option, I am craving Chinese food like crazy! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Morning update

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When I do my morning rounds, I’m in and out of the sun room quite a bit. We didn’t want to take a chance of Tuxedo Mask dashing outside. Every time one of us used the bathroom, we could hear him through the window, crying to get outside! So my younger daughter took on Tuxedo Mask duty. I did have to stop my husband, though. He was about to do the outside cats’ food and water, forgetting that we have a patient in the sun room that would be eager to dash outside!

Tuxedo Mask was not a happy camper when we came in. He had settled at the bottom of the door to the old kitchen, then ran and hid when we opened it. It took a while for my daughter to get him out while I topped up the food and water bowls. Which did not need topping up. If he ate or drank during the night, it wasn’t enough that I could tell the different. The litter wasn’t used, either, which means we’ll likely find a mess to clean up in the spring.

Gotta love concrete floors.

My daughter then stayed with Tuxedo Mask, holding him in her arms while she sat on her dad’s walker, while I went in and out. As unhappy as he was about being stuck in the sun room, he had discovered the joys of being cuddled, and didn’t even try to get out of my daughter’s arms!

His eye is looking pretty much normal already! It wasn’t even very leaky. When giving him his eye drops, it was a bit more closed than the other, but the redness seems all gone. A huge improvement from when I first saw it, and it looked like blood.

Which means, unless something changes for the worse, he’ll be in the sun room for only a week.

Hopefully, he’ll have learned to use the litter box before then!

The other outside cats, meanwhile, were in fine form. Even Broccoli’s eye has no visible redness, and any signs of leaking doesn’t appear fresh. I couldn’t see Caramel’s eyes, though. Too much running around!

Rolando Moon joined me for a while.

Ah, Rolando! One moment, it’s CHOMP!!!

The next moment, it’s KISS!!

She’s so mean and loving. :-D

Meanwhile, the fix on the door is holding out wonderfully. Tightening that hinge plate seems to be making the biggest difference. All this time we fought with the door, and never thought to look at the hinge! There was one spot on the floor where the door would jam. If I could push it past that one spot, it would swing free again. The floors in this house are uneven, and it’s been doing this for longer than we’ve lived here. It never even occurred to me that it was anything other than the uneven floor being the problem. Tightening the hinge plate adjusted the door a tiny bit, but it’s enough that we can now open the door all the way, without it jamming on that bump on the floor!

The door latches much better now, too, and we no longer have to fight to get it to stay closed. Which means where will be less wear and tear on the knob mechanism. It opens and closes so smoothly now, I didn’t even notice the bit of give on the handles, because of the too-long bar!

To think we put up with this for 4 years, and never thought to look at that hinge the entire time. Even my dad would have been putting up with it for who knows how many years; as his mobility declined, he went in and out through the sun room, too, because there are no stairs that way.

Funny how easy it is to miss these little things, yet they can make such a big difference!

The Re-Farmer

Morning spice

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Ginger says “good morning!”

And then he attacks my phone. :-D

Ginger continues to settle in. With so many cats in the house there are, of course, moments of aggression. He has no problem standing his ground when one of the other cats decides to take out their bad mood on whichever other cat happens to be nearby. I’ve even seen him running around and tussling playfully with the spice girls.

He does have a habit of squirming around too close to the edge of the bed and sliding right off. :-D

His fur is growing back in the shaved area, but not evenly! He’s got patches of longer hair that’s surprisingly dark. Being right next to the corner where the incisions meet, it looked like he somehow got the area very dirty. :-D

Best of all, he’s now starting to actively seek out people for attention. :-)

He is such a sweetie!

The Re-Farmer