Morning in the garden, and good grief, what a day

September 16, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s the noon hour as I start this, and it’s already been a day!!! It feels like it should be evening by now.

Morning was pretty typical. I had to get my daughter to help me with getting into the sun room as kittens swirled their way through the door under my feet. My main focus is to not step on anything while holding the kibble bowl high so I can see. Once I got some food out, my daughter was able to put a food bowl of fresh kitten soup into the cat cage, was wasn’t able to take the old one out, as she was in a vortex of hungry kitties! By the time I got back from adding food to the different feeding stations in the yard, things had calmed down. My daughter and I had the chance to snag Frank’s two babies that had sticky eyes – one had both eyes stuck shut, the other just one eye – into the bathroom to wash their eyes until they could open again.

Then I could do the rest of my rounds and check on the garden bed. I’m glad we did water it last night, as the predicted storms and rain we were supposed to get yesterday fizzled out and we got no real rain at all.

The first photo above is of the blooming luffa. One by one, male flowers in different clusters are blooming. Still no female flowers. Not that it matters at this point. It’s the middle of September. Under normal circumstances, we’d have fully developed luffa gourds right now.

I had a surprise when I got to the trellis bed. The one sunflower seed head that was opening up has gotten much bigger, just overnight. This particular sunflower also has multiple seed heads, two of which just exploded open overnight! I tried to get a picture of all the seed heads that are starting to open along the stalk and did get most of them. In the third picture, you can see four along the stalk, but there’s a fifth one hidden by a leaf at the bottom that is also starting to open.

In the next picture, you can see our first aster flower bud has finally opened! The package of memorial seeds these are from had a mixture, if I remember correctly, so I expect different colours from the others I see forming buds.

In the last photo, we have our “just for today” harvest. There was a handful of beans to pick this morning, along with a single zucchini. I decided to go ahead and harvest the last of the kohlrabi. The remaining plants don’t seem to be forming their… bulbs? … at all. I also grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves.

There was one wonky purple kohlrabi that I decided to use right away in my breakfast, along with the chard leaves and stalks and a small Turkish Orange eggplant that I’d harvested previously. Those got stir fried to go along with some leftovers.

I didn’t peel the eggplant, partly because I’d picked such a small one. I did find the peels to be a bit on the bitter side.

My older daughter had used one to include in her stir fry last night. I’d gone to bed before she was done, so when I was talking to my younger daughter this morning, I asked how it turned out.

She told me, her sister had had to throw it away.

????!!!!

They may her lips go numb! They were the only new thing in her stir fry, so they were the only thing that could have been causing it. We’ve eaten eggplant before and she’s never reacted to any of them before, but those were the more typical purple varieties. The Turkish Orange is very different. Being so different is why I got the seeds to try.

I had no such reaction. I just found the skins bitter. Very strange! It does mean that we won’t be growing this variety again, though.

As I was setting down with my own breakfast, I noticed I had a phone message.

From home care.

Thankfully, it was NOT a call for me to come in. My mother’s med assist for this morning was scheduled for 8:50, and I was getting the message at past 9:30. The message was to let me know that there had been a last minute cancellation. They did find someone else to cover the med assist, but it would be much later; perhaps 9:45.

I called my mother right away to let her know. When she answered, she mentioned she was making her breakfast at the time, but didn’t say anything about no one showing up to do her meds. I told her about the message I got and when to expect someone to come. It was almost that time, so it was a short phone call.

That done, I finished my breakfast and was starting to upload the photos for this post on Instagram when my younger daughter came over to talk about what to work on today. She decided that this would be the day to do work on the yard and garden tools. So, for the next while, she got her supplies set up on the bench under the canopy tent while I gathered the various things that needed to be worked on. Some needing repairs, as well. It’ll probably take her a couple of days to work through them all.

After she was all set up (and we paused to wash kitten eyes again!) and working on cleaning and sharpening various cutting tools, I headed back in to work on this blog post. I got a message from my daughter who remembered there were some tools in the basement that needed to be worked on. Since I hadn’t started writing yet, I headed down right away to look for them. I knew I’d put all the ones that needed work into one container, but couldn’t find the container – in fact, I couldn’t even remember what container I’d put them in (it turned out to be an old plastic lunch box. 😄) – when the phone started ringing.

I was expecting an important call, so I started heading upstairs, promptly losing my slippers as I rushed up the stairs. The answering machine picked up before I got to the phone, and I heard my mother’s voice starting to rant at the machine.

I picked up the phone while she was doing that. It turned out she had tried to call my sister, first, and there was no answer, so when she called me and it went to machine, she was really upset. Was my sister gone on holidays already? She’s supposed to be gone for two weeks… I told her, I knew nothing about this. (This is the time of year for her church’s harvest feast – one of only two “Biblical” holidays they’re allowed to celebrate – but she’s not mentioned anything about it to me.)

My mother then started telling me how badly she was feeling. She was dying. She’d used the life line and talked to the responder, who asked her what she wanted them to do. She said, they kept asking what she wanted them to do until she finally told them to just leave her alone.

…

I told her, the proper response would have been to have them call an ambulance if she were feeling that badly!

She didn’t want an ambulance. She didn’t want the hassle (I can’t blame her for that!). She would need to someone to get her bag (her prepared hospital bag), her purse, and if she’s in the hospital “they” will come in and steal her stuff.

???

I told her that if she’s really feeling that bad, have the Lifeline call an ambulance (911 seems to be too much for my mother to grasp), and the paramedics could make sure to grab her prepared bags.

No, she doesn’t want strangers. She needs us (me and my siblings). She needs someone around her all the time. She relies on us…

I told her, we can’t live with her! What did she want me to do for her?

She had no answer. She just kept on about how poorly she is doing, how hard it is to do things, and her breathing. She needs someone with her. She needs to be in a nursing home.

But she doesn’t want to go to the hospital. She relies on us… then she started trying to rag on about my brother; he doesn’t call, he doesn’t visit. They’ve actually just gone through a rather scary health emergency with my SIL while she was out of province, but they don’t want to tell my mother about it. My mother handles such information very badly and can be downright cruel. They just got back home today and my brother immediately had to go to work to take part in a couple of important meetings. His job is in internet security at an international level. This is at a level even I have a hard time grasping, it’s so above my pay grade, so to speak. Not something my mother can even begin to understand. I did tell her that he was at an important meeting right now, but added that we did arrange to come out to her place on Sunday, as she requested. I’d forgotten to mention it when I called her this morning.

That mollified her somewhat. She told me that she would “be brave” and hold out until Sunday.

*sigh*

What I told her I would do is call the home care office for her town as soon as I got off the phone with her. I’d let them know that my mother’s condition is deteriorating. All the home care coordinator can do, however, is update the files with this information and send it up the chain. It’s another department that makes the decisions on whether someone can go into a nursing home or assisted living facility. I had to remind my mother about how shocked her doctor was that they hadn’t already approved her for a nursing home.

I wish I’d thought of it at the time, but if my mother did decide to go to go to the hospital, that might be just the thing that would finally get her into a nursing home, like she wants. That’s the typical way it works; a person ends up in the hospital with a broken hip or something, and only then do they get to go to a nursing home from the hospital. My father was an exception. He was getting home care three times a day, but his care included things like helping him use the toilet, bathing and even eating. A hospital bed was set up in the living room next to the window, so he could see outside, with a commode nearby, because he could no longer take the two steps between the old and new parts of the house to get to the bathroom. It was the home care aids that said he’d reached a point where they could no longer provide the care he needed, and that got him into a nursing home right away. Six months later, he passed away.

It is so incredibly frustrating. My mother should not be living on her own. She insists that she can still cook and dress and bath and toilet herself, when I really don’t think she should be. Every time home care offers what they can for her, she turns it down.

Among my siblings, none of us are able to have her live with us and give her the care she needs. None of us have accessible enough housing, even if we did. She is struggling, but refuses to make the decisions she needs to be making. She expects everyone else to make those decisions which, in many cases, they aren’t even allowed to make on her behalf. This is not a new thing; she’s always been one to deflect responsibility to others. It’s just gotten more extreme as she gets older.

Anyhow.

After telling my mother I would call the home care coordinator as soon as I got off the phone with her, my mother kept me on the phone for another few minutes. I finally had to get almost rude to get off the phone so I could make the call!

By then, it was past noon, and she was probably on lunch. I got her voice mail and left a message about my mother’s condition deteriorating.

That done, I updated my siblings on our group chat, then went back to looking for the tools my daughter had asked for – and retrieve my slippers. The box I was looking for turned out to be on a shelf right at the bottom of the steps. I’d put it there specifically so it would be easy to find!

So I brought that out to my daughter and updated her, since all I was able to do was sent a message that I’d gotten a call from my mother and needed to make more calls.

Updating her also gave me a chance to catch my breath.

Now that I’m almost done this, I’ll soon be going into town to pick up prescription refills for my husband. I’m still half expecting a call, but if it hasn’t come in by now, it probably won’t. While in town, while I’ve got a strong data signal, I’ll have to try and set my phone up for Wi-Fi calling again. I can’t even get text messages right now. Which is a pain when I try to log into my bank account on my desktop. They don’t do it on my phone, but if I use my desktop, they always want me to input a code. Every. Time. I try to log in. The problem is, by the time the texted code gets to my phone, the log in session is expired. Sometimes, if I go outside and walk around the yard, it’ll come in faster, but I’m not always in a position to do that.

Frustrating.

Ah, well. It is what it is.

Time to get ready to head into town!

The Re-Farmer

Kitten fix, and medical appointment

August 28, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

While doing my morning rounds, three kittens were playing on the hand rail in front of the sun room – but did not what me anywhere near them! They know that rose bush will protect them. 😄

The third image of the garage kittens was from this evening. I went to tie off the catio door for the night, so it won’t blow around. I didn’t even seen them in the cat bed at first! I wasn’t able to get closer, though. I was able to pet them both when I fed them this morning, while they were eating, but that smokey one will not let me touch her, any other time.

Yet.

The littles are all over the place in and around the sun room, and I was able to get a couple of decent shots. That white and black kitten in the last two images has such surprisingly blue eyes!

Sadly, though, we lost another kitten last night. Once again, I found it in the new cat cave in the sun room, like the last one. About the only thing I can say is, at least they passed away in the warmth of a cuddle puddle, and not cold and alone.

Once the morning routing was done, I had time for a quick breakfast before heading out early to my appointment. I wasn’t sure how long things would be, so I made sure to go to the post office before it closed from 11:30am to 2pm. They close for the day at 5pm.

Then, just to be on the safe side, I made sure the packages of seeds were put into an insulated bag, in case the cab of the truck got too hot. I’m glad I did, because yes, it certainly did!

I got to the shopping commons the clinic is at early enough to grab a proper meal for lunch. I’m glad I did because I ended up getting into my 1:30 appointment about 45 minutes late.

The first thing the doctor did was ask how the new prescription was working out. I told what a huge difference it made, and that I’ve hardly had to take any painkillers since I started taking it. She was really happy to hear how well it went. Especially when I told her I have only been taking it once a day, before bed. She commented that I’m already on a low dose (I can take it up to three times a day), so it was really amazing that it’s made such a difference. She commented on how this particular anti-inflammatory is really good, and she thinks it should be prescribed more often. I did mention the one time I took with with just a snack rather than a meal and how that really did a number on my stomach. She was just nodding her head and saying, yup… it does need to be taken with a full meal, because it can be so hard on the stomach, otherwise, and mused that that’s perhaps why it isn’t use more often. All I can say it, it has helped me so much, I’m willing to make the effort to take it properly so that doesn’t happen!

I then told her about my hip issues and asked for X-rays to find out what’s going on. She looked in my file and it’s been more than 5 years since my hips have been X-rayed, so it was time. We already know that I have OA and bone spurs, but something is going on with that left hip that’s making it worse. She wrote me up for a complete pelvic X-ray, so both hips would be checked out.

Then we got to why I was there in the first place. My arm.

I was able to read the report on her monitor with her. They found no anomalies in my shoulder or elbow. Which surprised me, because they do still hurt at times. Especially the shoulder. Which suggests to me that the issue is now soft tissue damage – though the anti-inflammatories are helping with the arm pain, too!

Then there was the hand/wrist. There was a potential anomaly, so they recommended to get it X-rayed again in 1-2 weeks. We were already past that, so she printed out another requisition to get my wrist done again, along with my hips.

As for the follow up, normally they would call me to book a follow up appointment, but I mentioned that my daughter already has an appointment coming up on the 9th, so she said to go ahead and book my follow up then. Which I took care of while picking up my printouts.

Next stop was the hospital, where the lab and X-ray is. Once I gave them the forms, I had time to message the family with an update, and was soon called in for the X-rays. The tech took X-rays of my hand in some very different positions from the last time it was done. At this point, all they can do is confirm whether or not something actually broke in there. After all this time since my fall, it’s not like they’re going to put my wrist in a cast or anything.

Once the hand was done, I got the hips done, and that was it. It was very fast.

That done, it was back to the shopping commons where my doctor’s clinic is, this time to make a quick stop at the grocery store. I hadn’t realized we were out of bread until last night. While I was there, I picked up some sandwich meats that were on sale, and a few other little things.

From there, it was a stop at the gas station and the home.

When I was about 10 minutes from home, I could see the highway ahead of me, disappearing in a cloud of white. It turned out to be an absolute wall of rain! It was coming down hard enough, with so much water on the road, I had to slow down and was about ready to pull over and wait it out. It did lift a bit, though, and I was able to continue. By the time I got home, it had blown over – something I was very happy about, since I needed to get out to open the gate. Particularly since, with the inside handle on the driver’s side door broken off, I need to open the window so I can open the door from the outside.

No complaints about the rain, though. We needed it.

Anyhow.

So all went well with the doctor, though I am surprised nothing showed up in the X-rays for my shoulder and elbow. The shoulder injury it still sometimes an issue, and I was expecting some sort of damage to my rotator cuff. My left elbow has been a problem for a long time, since well before my fall, but that is due to nerve damage, so I guess that wouldn’t show up in an X-ray.

In a couple of weeks or so, I will be back to find out what they find in my hips.

That should be… interesting! I hope I get to actually see the X-rays this time, and not just a report. I’m very curious as to what shows up!

Meanwhile, it is now past time for me to have the supper my daughter made – a nice, substantial meal to take my anti-inflammatories with!

The Re-Farmer

Afternoon in the garden, and there’s our vandal again

July 23, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today, I was out giving the garden and the food forest trees and bushes a deep watering. Yes, we did have good rain not long ago, but everything is bone dry again.

I had company, of the adorable kind.

I caught him, mid yawn! 😄

Sadly, in the video in the next file above, it did not pick up the purring. Eyelet started purring loudly as soon as I started moving closer with my phone. So adorable! Someone needs to adopt this baby!!!

Party way through, my younger daughter came out to let me know her sister had to jump into the shower, asking me to pause on the watering for a bit. While I was waiting for her to be done, I decided to see what we had for potatoes. With them dying back like they are, without ever having bloomed, I wasn’t sure if we could have any at all. I chose a spot where the plants were the deadest, and this is what I found.

This was from two or three plants, so not a lot, but gosh, those are lovely potatoes! Whatever is going on with our potatoes, we will at least have enough for a few meals, from the looks of it.

One of the things I noticed is that we are finally having some flower buds on bush beans.

Two of the three surviving Royal Burgundy bush beans – the two that did not get topped off by a deer – are blooming. Some of the yellow bush beans in between the tomatoes are also starting to bloom. The plants are still absolutely tiny, so I don’t expect much. They just don’t have the foliage to provide a lot of energy towards growing beans. We’ll see how that works out.

Then there was the weird thing that happened.

While I was watering, I could hear a quad start up and head out way, which meant it was our vandal. I saw him driving by through the trees, but he didn’t keep going. I could hear that he’s stopped at our driveway. So I went over to take a look, cutting through our garage, since we keep the main door wide open for most of the summer.

Sure enough, he had stopped at the end of the driveway, and was off his quad. I missed whatever he’d been doing since I first could hear that he had stopped. He was doing something to the back of his quad when he saw me looking at him from the garage. So he lifted his hands up to either side of his head, and seemed to be wiggling his fingers at me?

Then he pointed straight at me, before pointing down to the ground.

It was clearly intended to be a threatening gesture.

Then he got on his quad and drove away.

*sigh*

I really hope the cameras got that, and it didn’t get missed in the gap between capturing files and the motion sensor being triggered again. I’ll know, tomorrow.

Our vandal is clearly getting more unhinged, and his anger and hatred is aimed directly at me. He claims even his doctor said that I caused his cancer, which I assume is due to stress. Which is his own problem. I’d happily forget he existed, except he’s starting to show up and do weird stuff again.

I really don’t want to go through the process of applying for a restraining order again. It is such a pain.

Bah.

Anyhow. Once he was gone, I just went back to watering the garden and that was that. I never heard him driving back again, so who knows where he headed off to.

I really wish I understood why he got like this. I can come up with all sorts of contributing factors, but lots of people have been through the same or worse, without becoming like he has. It is the one major point against living here. Even my brother has said, if this farm ever does get sold, it will be because of our vandal, and my parents’ wishes have always been very clear about keeping the property in the family name. The irony of that is, our vandal is hating on me and doing all this because we live here when he expected to be able to convince my mother to change her will and leave it to him, instead of my brother. He’s causing all his own problems.

Well, there isn’t much we can do about it. We just focus on the thinks we can do something about!

Side note; while I was writing this, I got a message from the rescue that took in Poirot’s babies. She was asking what other kittens we have! I told her, but made sure to mention things like Eyelet being deaf, and Sir Robin’s infected eye that isn’t quite recovered. I told her about the feral kittens, too. Who knows. They might be able to help out with them! One can hope!

Oh, on a completely different note.

I got a call back from the autobody company. The arrangements we made for them to pick up the truck tomorrow have fallen through. Partly because the guys that would be doing the repair and painting on the damaged part of the box says they will need to use a primer, and it will need to sit overnight, at least. They know we don’t have any other transportation, so until the can arrange a courtesy vehicle, our insurance work is on hold. Otherwise, the earliest they can book us for is in September. Thankfully, the damage being worked on is not essential, and the truck can be driven.

Which worked out, in the end. My daughter was able to order her new computer, using my brother’s address for it to be delivered to. It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow. Which means that, after my eye appointment, we should be able to drive to my brother’s and pick it up, since where my eye appointment is is already about half way to their place.

I also just realized something else.

I’ve been doing various things, inside and out. I’ve taken no pain killers since yesterday morning. I’ve only had two dozes of the new anti-inflammatories, though I can take them up to three times a day, if I felt the need.

I am virtually pain free right now. Even my shoulder isn’t bothering me as much. Normally, while typing, my finger joints would be stiff and sore, making it hard to type. Not only that but, after sitting for a while, when I got up to walk around, I could actually do so normally. Usually, my knees and feet would have stiffened up so much that I have to hobble for a while, before I “grease my joints” and they can bend normally again. Yes, there is still some pain and stiffness, but much, much milder.

How utterly amazing. Such a huge difference, in so short a time!!!

Wow.

I wish I, or one of my doctors over the years, had thought of this earlier.

The Re-Farmer

More deer damage, stuck at home, kitten sightings, and burning out

July 12, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While doing my rounds this morning, I discovered something.

When the mild stuff is eaten, the deer will eat the radish greens, after all!

It was just at one end of the bed in the east yard, and there’s still plenty left. What I ended up doing is gathering pretty much the last of my support stakes to create a carrier around three sides. Hopefully, it will be enough of a deterrent.

This morning, I “stole” kibble from the inside cats and made a big bowl of cat soup for the outside cats. There isn’t enough kibble to do that again. There’s plenty of wet cat food for the inside cats, but not enough for the outside cats, too, other than what I had already been using to make kitten soup on top of the dry kibble feedings.

I made sure to leave a bowl of food in the side of the garage where the kittens are, leaving one of the doors open. This would be their first taste of anything besides what their mama has been bringing – and she’s been acting very hungry when she comes to the house by herself. I did see the kittens run and hide but that was it.

My plan was to head to the feed store, using my brother’s vehicle, when they opened at 9am. I found their website and they’re open for short hours on Saturdays and closed on Sundays.

Thankfully, my brother messaged me, first.

I thought they’d gone into town yesterday about the insurance on their old vehicle stored here, but it turns out they ran out of time because they stopped to help me with the broken down truck, instead. They checked the insurance this morning, and saw they had only storage insurance on it. It can’t be legally driven.

The public insurance company wouldn’t let them change the insurance online or over the phone. They would have to come in, in person.

They are at a campsite with their son and grandsons right now, and the nearest insurance place is closed on Saturdays.

After much searching to find another location that was open today, the nearest one turned out to be over 2 hours drive away. Which meant at least 6 hours to do the drive, switch the insurance, then drive back again.

No. Not going to happen.

My brother was so apologetic!

I assured him, the only thing we needed was dry cat food, and we’ve got wet cat food we can use for now.

We are, however, completely stuck at home, with no transportation.

The feed store website said they could do deliveries, though. So I called them up and left a message, saying what I needed and asking if they could deliver to where we are.

Because they were on short hours today, I tried again about an hour later, and left another message.

They never called back.

So, no kibble delivery.

After looking at our options, we got some meaty soup bones out of the freezer and started those going, boiling the bones for a couple of hours, then putting the meaty bits back into the stock. I ended up making a very modified cat soup, thickened with a bit of rice, using the immersion blender to make the meaty chunks smaller, plus adding and a couple of cans of regular cat food. I even tossed the bones out for them to pick at, and for the raccoons to chew on, later in the night.

When I set that out, the cats were… confused. They would eat it, but not for long. They seemed to like it, but maybe not like it, but they did like it? But not… 😄

The more socialized cats, that is.

The more feral cats inhaled it. I ended up moving a tray I’d put on the cat house roof that was being ignored, under the shrine for the feral kittens, because they’d already finished off what I’d put there earlier. I wanted to make sure there was enough for the two shier ones. I also put a bowl in the garage again.

When I went to check on the bowl I’d left in the garage, it was already empty, and the mama was licking it clean.

I did my evening rounds, then came back to retrieve the bowl.

I got to see the kitties.

Both of them.

The mama, Pinky – a grey tabby with white, and a very pink nose – is one that has let me pet her at times. While I was in the garage, she was acting totally feral, but wasn’t quite ready to run off and abandon her babies.

The babies ran into the stuff in the corner, but did come out to take a look at me.

I thought the one was looking very Siamese, but maybe not? From the red glow in the picture (no, the flash did not go off), I’m thinking it might have eyes like Ghosty. That fur colour is soooo interesting! It gets darker towards the tail, and the tail is almost black.

When I had the chance, I messaged the Cat Lady, who is out of town right now. She’s mentioned to me that she only makes her own cat food now – and that’s for a LOT of inside cats – so I asked her for her recipe. I’ve tried looking up recipes, especially for “costs less than store bought!” recipes.

Yeah… no.

Not only did they tend use expensive meats, like rabbit, but they all included supplements that would require a trip to a health food store, and are also very expensive. Yet these recipes all claim to be cheaper than store bought cat food?

It turns out the Cat Lady just uses chicken drumsticks. That’s it.

She had less than flattering things to say about the online recipes.

The only exception is The Wolfman, who is allergic to poultry. He gets a salmon fillet a day, plus some herring dry kibble.

Oh, the tragedy… 😄😂

We actually do have a big family pack of drumsticks in the freezer right now, but we won’t use that unless we absolutely have to. We can use a meaty bone broth as a base, along with some leftover cooked meats and other suitable ingredients.

To make things easier for tomorrow, we’ll put more bones in the crock pot overnight, for the morning cat soup.

There were, of course, all the other usual things that need to be done, but by the time I was doing my evening rounds and seeing that the garden needed to be watered, in spite of rain we got early this afternoon, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do it. The last few days have drained me completely, and I’m burning out.

The worst of it is, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now.

My younger daughter is still limited in what she can do while her wrist heals. She does as much as she can, though. Her sister, however, is down with PCOS related… issues, shall we say… She can’t lift, bend or stretch in any way at the moment, without unfortunate consequences.

My husband, of course, is pushing it just to go from his room to the kitchen or to the bathroom.

Thank God my daughter was able to get us all that early birthday take out food before we lost use of the truck! All we’ve had to do for the past couple of days is just reheat leftovers.

Still, I can feel myself giving out. I’ve tried to rest as much as I can, taking naps when I get the chance, but there’s just been too many things in too short a time.

I need to slow down and pace myself, but there’s so much that needs to get done. Thankfully, the temperatures will continue to be more reasonable for the next while, so at least I’ll be able to have some progress with the outside projects I’m falling behind on, little by little. We just have to watch for the smoke. We’re still under air quality warnings, and it’s still pretty bad. Everything is under a haze of smoke right now.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

I just wish it wasn’t quite so little, some times!

The Re-Farmer

A quick (ha!) run down

July 2, 2025July 2, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was my day to go to my mother’s to get her monthly blood test done, so I just did my usual rounds this morning. My daughter was a sweetheart and took care of watering everything before it got too hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, but we might also get thunderstorms, depending on which app I check, so we’ll see if we have to water twice again or not. I’m starting this past 9:30pm, and we’re still under heat warnings!

I spotted a couple of the new kittens while doing my rounds this morning. Just the two of them.

I also spotted a garden friend.

What a unique looking frog!

Once the rounds were done, I was soon off to my mother’s.

Going to my mother’s did not go as expected. Which is saying something, since visiting her rarely goes as expected.

The plan was to wait until home care came for the morning med assist, then I would take my mother for her blood work. She’s got a new 2 week schedule, and her morning visits are now at 9:30-9:40am. They seem to switch from 9am to 9:30 fairly often. She gets 10 minutes scheduled in the morning, rather than the usual 5, because they’re supposed to be doing things like emptying her commode and offering assistance in getting dressed. I don’t think they’re doing that. They just give her her meds and leave.

When I got there, I went into the lock box to get the paperwork for this month’s lab tests; it’s a place to store them where they won’t get “lost”. My mother told me to give her her pills, but I said no. We’ll wait for the home care aid to arrive.

Which is when she told me they didn’t come for the two evening visits on Monday…. no… Sunday…

That’s when she showed me the new schedule (the old one was still taped to the wall), where she’d written “no one” around those two time slots. She still kept trying to tell me it was Sunday, but it couldn’t have been.

Since they didn’t show up, she took them herself.

She would have had only Monday left in the lock box, and would have gotten the Monday morning meds from there. The pharmacy tried to deliver her refills later in the day, but she though I’d already paid for them, so she told them she didn’t have enough cash, and tried to say I paid for them. They left her with 1 week’s refills (for free) until it could be straightened out. That got worked out and my mother was supposed to get the refills delivered today. I thought she wanted me to take her to the pharmacy herself after her bloodwork, when I talked to her on the phone last night, but when I got there this morning, she said she was prepared to “pay again”. She’s still convinced she’s being double charged and cheated. Meanwhile, they’re bending over backwards to help her!

Anyhow, this left my mother with a week of pills and no one with the code to put them in the lock box. She’s already had her Monday morning pills, so when no one showed in the evening, she took them from the new package, since the other one was in the lock box. It was pure chance that she took the right day’s pills, since she ignores that completely and gets furious that they can’t give her pills from missed days.

It took me a while to get things straight, and I had to check and recheck things because it just didn’t make sense. When I went into her lock box on Friday, she had a bubble pack that would be finished on Sunday, and a bubble pack with just Monday on it, plus one set of morning pills from a day (a Thursday) that got missed.

The person who saw her Tuesday morning put the new bubble pack into the lock box. The lab requisitions sheets were on the bottom, of course, so I had to take everything out to get them.

The thing is…

Tuesday’s pills are still there. All of them.

The older bubble pack should have hat the two Monday evening bubbles still full.

They were empty.

So what did my mother get, yesterday? She mentioned that an empty bubble pack got thrown out yesterday, but that would have been the one that was finished on Sunday. Did that one also have a full Tuesday’s pills in it? I hadn’t thought so. I had no reason to look too closely at that one.

Meanwhile, time went by and the home care aid didn’t arrive when she was scheduled. My mother started saying, oh, she doesn’t feel like coming today… She is convinced that when days are missed, it’s because the home care aids just don’t feel like doing her pills. Just her, though. She doesn’t believe that the rest of the people on their schedule list aren’t getting done, either.

Finally, I decided to call the number for the scheduler at about 9:45 (this is relevant) and left a message explaining that the aid had not arrived yet, and that I had to take my mother for blood work, so I would do her meds myself.

When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine. It was the scheduler, telling me they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.

The time stamp on the message was 10:01.

*facepalm*

Meanwhile, as we were going to the lab, my mother asked me to make sure I stayed to watch while her blood was being drawn. I asked why, as I’m always there, and she basically said, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It took a few hours to drag out why she was asking, but the last time we went (In May, because the June one got missed when she got verbally abusive and I walked out), she said I had left to do my own thing – she was very accusatory about it – which I couldn’t remember at the time. While I was not there, she basically thinks the guy faked drawing her blood. She wanted me to be there today to watch and make sure he really did take her blood. Except it was a different person drawing the blood this time.

I brought up the telephone doctor’s appointment after the lab work was done, and she said there wasn’t one. So I brought up my calendar for May. There was my appointment to take her to the lab, then a week later, her follow up telephone appointment with the doctor. Which I remember, because there was nothing of concern with the results, so her assistant called and talked to us, instead. After the call was done, my mother’s comment was, so… the doctor didn’t want to talk to me…

My mother doesn’t remember that call.

I was flummoxed by my mother saying I had left her, but I did finally remember, after I got home. There was a time I’d taken her in, and I had my own requisitions for blood work and an EKG to be done. I wasn’t able to do the blook work, as it needed to be fasting, but I did get the EKG done. So that’s when she would have had her blood drawn while I wasn’t there. I was in another room, getting wired up.

So my mother believes the home care aids are not showing up to do her meds on purpose (she says they want her to die), and she thinks the tech that took her blood last time, faked taking her blood.

It was a very strange day with her, this time!

I had expected to do her grocery shopping after this was done, but she told me she didn’t need one. I asked more specifically about things and ended up getting her a few little things she was running out of. When I got back with the groceries, she had an envelope ready for me to make that had a prepaid envelop. She asked me to mail it for me, and insisted I take it in person, not just drop it in the mail box. The mail box apparently got stolen or vandalized once, some 10 years ago, so she refuses to use it.

By the time I left my mother’s it was just past 11.

It felt like it should have been much later!

She had her Meals on Wheels coming soon, so I left her to that.

Once home, the heat was really kicking in, and I had lots to do when it cooled down, so I did try to take a nap, after updating my siblings about the visit with my mother. I called the home care coordinator and left a message about some of the stuff, but she didn’t call back today. My daughter reminded me that I’ve been wanting to book an appointment with my doctor for this month, instead of next month, and requested a tandem appointment. She now has her own follow up to do, regarding her referral for a reduction mammoplasty. So we are now both booked in the middle of the month.

I have a field of vision test right after that, but I think I’ll have to reschedule. My daughter would have to drive me home, since they’ll have to dilate my eyes. That’ll be less than two weeks from her ganglion eviction, and she might not quite be up to driving quite yet.

Meanwhile, my husband has his first physio appointment at the new pain clinic tomorrow.

July is working out to be a very busy month for medical stuff!

Anyhow.

I am happy to day I did succeed in getting a nap in – I ended up sleeping almost 4 hours! The heat is really draining the energy out of me.

I did, however, get lots done in the garden this evening, once things started cooling down!

That will get it’s own post – or more, though 😊

The Re-Farmer

How things have gone today

June 30, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Rather all over the place!

Today was our Costco shopping day, and I’ll post about that separately. My day, of course, starting with feeding the yard cats and going my morning rounds.

Which included spotting this little guy.

So far, he’s the only new kitten we are seeing regularly. I saw no sign of any others, so far today.

I think I’ll call him Colby.

While checking on the garden beds, I remembered to take a picture of our new blooms.

Our Sweetie Snack Mix bell peppers are flowering!

I’d seen flower buds starting on the Turkish Orange eggplants, but they got quite a bit of cold damage a few nights ago. They are recovering, but it definitely set them back.

Since we were heading to the city this morning, I didn’t do the watering. I had done it last night. With the expected heat in the next few days, we will have to start watering morning and evening. Even if we do get the rain predicted, in a few days, unless we get a downpour, we’ll still need to water.

Before we had to head out, I got a phone call from the autobody shop. The truck is now booked for repair and replacement of the box cover. I will be dropping it off on the 25th, a Friday, and most likely will get it back the following Tuesday.

They will have a courtesy car for me!

I am just so happy with this place. They have gone above and beyond in dealing with the insurance company, trying to keep costs down for us as much as possible, and now even ensuring we still have transportation – small town shops like theirs typically can’t afford to have courtesy cars available. They were even able to make it so we won’t be charged for part of the paint job, dropping the total cost to us by about $140.

That wasn’t the only call we got to get things worked out. While we were driving into the city, my daughter got a call from the hospital, regarding her upcoming ganglion eviction. She now has an exact time to come in, plus they’ll be calling her a few days before to go over her medical history in more detail.

When we got back from the city, it was getting close to when we’d be feeding the outside cats, so once everything was unloaded, I started on that so my daughter could park the truck. The kittens sure to like to go under the truck when we’re unloading!

And under our feet.

With the heat, part of the routine includes switching out frozen water bottles in their water bowls. Before refilling them, I had to run the hose for quite a while, so it wouldn’t be scalding hot. I refilled the leaking “heat sink” container in the portable greenhouse to get all that hot water out. The handy thing about that is that, while the container was put in the greenhouse to release its heat during cold spring nights, when it gets refilled during the day, it absorbs heat and cools down the greenhouse surprisingly quickly.

It’s still hot AF in there. Just not quite as much. 😄 The luffa seem to be doing all right in it, though.

Once I was finally back inside, there were a couple of messages for me – one from the pharmacy, and one from my mother. Both about her bubble packs that were supposed to be delivered today.

I called the pharmacy back, first.

As soon as I said my mother’s name, the pharmacist was all, “oooohhh… yes…”

They did try to deliver her bubble packs today – which is the last day of her medications she had left from the previous month’s packs – but when the delivery person got there and told her how much it would be, my mother told them she didn’t have enough cash.

Also, she told them I’d already paid for it.

I had picked up her inhaler, and it cost almost $200. Her bubble packs were over $200.

What they ended up doing, since today she would be out of her medications, was giving her a week’s worth of her medications – for free! – until we could clear this up.

Once I got all the info from the pharmacist, I told her I would either got to them before they close to pick up the bubble packs, and my mother would pay me back later, or they could deliver them on Wednesday (tomorrow is Canada Day, so they will be closed). I just had to talk to my mother about it, first, and had the exact amount ready for her.

Also, I was startled that my mother said she didn’t have enough cash. She uses only cash, but can’t go to the bank herself anymore so my brother, as PoA, has been making sure she gets her cash for her monthly spending.

Then I called my mother.

*sigh*

When I confirmed with her that I had only paid for her inhaler, not her bubble packs (because there were no bubble packs ready yet), and that I’d told her this at the time, she started to get really, really angry, and even started yelling at me because I used my credit card to pay for it. As if my using my credit card somehow was why there was a charge for the inhaler? Which, according to her, was supposed to be free. Now, she did get to keep the one they used on her while she was in the hospital – back in February! – but that was it. Then there was the cost of her bubble packs. She’s never spent that much on medications in one month before! Except… of course she has. Maybe not all at once, but she has.

I tried to explain to her that she just hasn’t paid her deductible on her insurance, which is through our province’s health care system. (Something not all Canadian provinces has.) She got mad about that, too, telling me she has never had insurance.

Except she has. Even before Canada brought in our medicare system, my father told me, he always made sure they had insurance. Plus, she’s been covered by our province’s prescription insurance for decades. She has to sign a form for it, every year. She’d commented to me about how she sometimes got her prescriptions for “free”, and sometimes not, in the past. Apparently, she had no idea why. I’m not sure why she would get angry at the idea of having insurance, either. She seemed to think having it was a bad thing.

Then she got even angrier when I offered to come into town to pick up her meds. She actually started yelling at me.

Her neighbours must get quite an earful at times.

It took a while to calm her down enough to tell her that the pharmacy knew that, if I didn’t come in today, before they closed, to go ahead and deliver it on Wednesday.

Then I made sure she knew how much she would have to pay for them, and write it down. She tried to say she would remember it, but I insisted she write it down, just in case!

Then I asked if she really was low on cash, and she said she was.

…

I also made sure she understood that the pharmacy gave her a week’s worth of medications for free, because of the mix up. It took a while for her to get what I was telling her, and she was finally happy about something.

Among the other things she got angry at me about was when I talked about her inhaler. What’s “haler”? What is that? I told her, it’s your puffer. Then she got angry that I was calling her puffer an inhaler – followed by my talking about her bubble packs. What bubble? You mean pills?

I use the term “bubble pack” all the time when talking about her pills, but today, she decided she had never heard the term before and was angry at me for saying it.

On the plus side, as quickly as she became angry, she calmed down.

As soon as I got off the phone with her, I messaged my siblings to keep them up to date. My brother ended up phoning me because of what she was saying about being low on cash. There is no way she’s low on cash. There seems to be a combination of things going on. One is that that she probably just lied to the delivery person about not having enough cash because she believed they were already paid for, and thought the pharmacy was trying to cheat her. The other is, she doesn’t use a wallet and keeps her cash in between the pages of a very old booklet I think is a calendar, forgetting that the cash my brother brought for her are still in their envelopes in other parts of her purse. Or, she “hid” some of the money and then forgot about it. Again. The last time she did that, she couldn’t find the envelop and decided one of her neighbours went into her unit while she was in the common room and stole it. She made the accusation many times during social gatherings, without actually saying the person’s name. Then, months later, she found the envelop with all the money still there.

She never did apologize, nor did she ever acknowledge that there was anything wrong with her behaviour.

By the time I got off the phone with her, I was exhausted!

Then I started on this blog post, with some minor interruptions. One of those was to go outside and help my daughter replace the plastic clothes line winch (I kept forgetting the word “winch” when I wrote about setting it up in the first place!) with a metal one we picked up today. We got some more clothes line separators, too, and now both lines have three each. With how long the clothes lines are, they are needed more to keep the bottom of the line from sagging too much under the weight of laundry than to separate the top and bottom. Two was not quite enough. I even remembered to tighten the winch on the older clothes line; that one has had more than a year to stretch out, even though we didn’t use it all that often. We’ll be using them a lot more from now on, weather willing.

Speaking of weather, my daughter and I talked about the upcoming heat. I’m going to be changing my sleep cycles quite a bit. Basically, I’ll be out early to get as much done outside as I can before it gets too hot, get a few hours sleep during the hottest part of the day, before going out again to do as much as I can until it gets too dark, then have another short sleep during the night. None of us tolerate heat well, but there is much that needs to be done!

Which includes working on that permanent trellis again. My arm is doing a lot better since I fell while working on it before. As long as I don’t over do it, I can get back at it. Mostly, it’s just my palm and my shoulder joint that are still hurting, but the entire arm gets tired and sore very quickly, still. At this stage, we’ll be bringing out the little folding scaffold we got last year, and it is definitely going to be a two person job – and not just in case I trip and fall again!

Oh, and I have more adorableness to share with you! After helping my daughter with the clothes line, I spotted Eyelet and managed to get some pictures. He does NOT like to stay still!

Those eyes! Button had the bluest eyes, but Eyelet’s eyes are so much paler. They almost glow blue, when the light hits them right, but I wasn’t able to capture that with my phone’s camera.

Well, it’s time for me to get outside and start watering the garden. It’s about 7:30pm right now, and we’ve barely started to cool down. It’s going to keep getting hotter every day for the next four days, too. Even the overnight temperatures are not much lower. It’s also really muggy, so that’s not much fun, either!

We’re not going to be doing anything for Canada Day tomorrow. I’ve got one day at home to get stuff done, then I’m booked up for the next couple of days.

*sigh*

Looking at the times, I realize I won’t be able to do that shift in my sleep cycle, after all. I’m going to be driving around, instead of sleeping during the hottest parts of the day!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.

Time to go water a thirsty garden! Then work on my stock up shopping post.

That was painful, and I don’t mean physically.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Birds, gardens, kittens and pain

June 23, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Things were definitely all over the place today!

I was out doing my morning rounds pretty early. That’s always disorienting. By the time I’m done and settling it, I feel like it should be 2 or 3 in the afternoon, only to find it isn’t even 9 in the morning yet!

Our permanent trellis may only have the vertical posts so far, but it’s already being appreciated by birds.

I zoomed in with my phone’s camera, before getting closer and startling it away, so the image quality is not very good. It’s still enough to see that this is a type of bird I don’t recognize at all. Pretty, whatever it was, and it enjoyed a nice little rest on top of one of the trellis posts.

I also got a tiny harvest in this morning. I picked what is probably the last of our garlic scapes.

You can see one is starting to split a bit; the consequence of not harvesting for a couple of days. The scape was starting to straighten out again, and getting ready to form bulbils. I didn’t notice it when I finally did a larger harvest of scapes, yesterday, thinking the straighter stem meant it was too early to pick, rather than getting almost too late to pick! That’s okay. It’ll still taste good!

As I was getting ready to head inside, I managed to get this adorable picture of Havarti.

He’s more feral than the other kittens but is starting to clue in that when I pick him up and carry him, it usually means I’m putting him next to a bowl of kitten food. We make a sort of cat soup for the littles, but some of the adult cats have discovered it and can get pretty aggressive about eating it before the littles have a chance!

Havarti’s two siblings are still missing. Every day we don’t see them, the more convinced I am that, wherever Caramel took them, they have not survived. She is always here, and I sometimes see her in one of the cat beds in the water bowl shelter, covered in kittens and napping. This is not the behaviour of a mama cat with babies in another location.

I managed to get a picture of Captain Hastings this evening.

Poirot has been diligent in keeping her babies close to the sun room, and we’ve often seen her picking up Inspector Japp and carrying him back to the house if he goes too far! Hastings and Miss Lemon tend to stay closer, though.

It looks like Hastings will be another blue eyed beauty!

I just got back from chasing a racoon and a skunk out of the sun room. I found Caramel in the water bowl house, snuggled with Havarti. She definitely is down to one kitten.

This time of year is normally when the more feral cats are starting to wean their kittens, bringing them to the house where there is reliable food, water and shelter.

That isn’t happening.

Just now, I saw Slick – aka: Octomom, as she had a litter of 8, two years ago. She was one of the pregnant ones that would come close to the house for food, but we couldn’t otherwise get close to. She is one of three ferals, for sure, that were definitely pregnant and suddenly were looking skinny again.

Slick is looking pregnant again.

Which means, she lost a litter.

As for the other two ferals, I haven’t seen any sign of kittens with them, either. At least neither of them are looking pregnant, though!

I don’t quite know what to make of it. I suppose I should be glad I’m not finding remains to bury, as happened so often last year, but it does make me wonder.

Oh, there is another possibility.

The nearest farm to ours that has someone living there full time is our vandal, and I know they care for a colony, too. I can see on our trail cams that some of our cats head in that direction, too.

Perhaps they had babies, but took them to our vandal’s place, instead?

It’s possible, I suppose. Not likely, but possible!

Anyhow.

When I first headed out this morning to get the food ready for the outside cats, I realized something.

There was a cat stuck in the old kitchen all night!

The old kitchen is our “buffer zone” between the house and the sun room. It’s sort of tacked on to the original log portion of the house. When heading out or in, we make sure to close the doors. That way, the inside cats don’t end up outside, and outside cats don’t end up inside, but if they do get through, they’ll only get as far as the old kitchen.

The problem is, the door from the main part of the house to the old kitchen is an antique door. I love it, but it doesn’t always close properly. Sometimes, I’ll be convinced it’s closed, but when I open the first door to the sun room, the air pressure change pushes open the door into the house.

Well, I guess something like that happened during yesterday’s evening feeding. My daughter was helping me and, as she started back into the house from the sun room, she discovered a whole bunch of inside cats in the old kitchen!

We thought we got them all out.

Unfortunately, the old kitchen has been used for storing things temporarily. One corner was full of cardboard set aside all winter, to be used in the garden. It is also where we put our garbage bags until we can go to the dump. Which we haven’t been able to do properly, since the box cover was blown off the truck. Without a cover, there are too many lighter bags that would end up blown into the ditches. Between that and things coming up to prevent us from getting to the dump, we have way too many bags of garbage in the old kitchen. With those, the cardboard, the furniture, chest freezer and old wood burning cook stove, there are a LOT of places a cat can hide.

This morning, while getting the kibble ready, I started hearing meowing, but couldn’t see anything. My daughter came to help with the cat feeding, and she couldn’t see anything either. Once the outside cats were fed, she and I started passing things out of the old kitchen, mostly through the door with the missing screen (which has been SO handy!), to clear space. A few garbage bags, stuff for the burn barrel we can’t burn because we’re under a fire ban still, and all the carboard I was setting aside for the garden.

The old kitchen feels down right huge, now!

Still no sign of a cat.

We did eventually track the meowing to coming from under a dresser. My daughter ended up removing its 2 drawers completely, only for the cat to run out and under the couch. We did figure out it was Tiny. No wonder we didn’t realize she was missing. She is one for hiding away on top of the closet in the entry, or other secret places, because some of the other cats bully her.

So I continued my morning rounds while my daughter made sure to unlock the other door, so I wouldn’t have to go through the sun room and potentially scare a cat into hiding again.

By the time I finished and was back inside, I found my younger daughter on her knees, trying to persuade a cat out from under the couch. Her sister had already left a bowl with the contents of a squeeze treat in it, but the bait wasn’t enough.

My daughter did find a way to get Tiny to come out voluntarily, though.

A tin of wet cat food, and David.

Tiny loves David. The two of them get along incredibly well.

My daughter put a bowl of wet cat food in the middle of the floor, then brought David in, leaving the door from the house into the old kitchen open, standing guard to make sure none of the other cats went in.

Tiny saw David and immediately came out.

She saw the food bowl he was at and ran over to eat.

She saw the open door and ran into the house!

I strongly suspect Tiny is not going to sneak into the old kitchen again. At least not for a very long time!

Very glad my daughter was able to take care of that!

Meanwhile, my husband had his appointment at the new pain clinic today. I was finished my morning rounds so early, I was actually able to try and lie down and close my eyes for a couple of hours, before trying to drive.

My husband also tried to go back to sleep. He had a horrible night last night. Ozempic side effects. He’s been on it for years and they keep increasing the dose. I don’t know why he’s still on it. It is not working. Oh, and the weight loss side effect everyone is being prescribed it for these days? He has lost zero weight, but he HAS lost muscle mass. Which is the “weight loss” of Ozempic, though in his case, the number of the scale hasn’t changed in years. One of the other side effects, however, has sometimes been a problem. That particular side effect had my husband taking a shower and doing laundry at 2am.

Nasty stuff. I can’t understand why anyone would take it, if they weren’t diabetic – and even then, I don’t think it’s worth it!

Neither of us managed to get much sleep before it was time to start heading out. I had deliberately made a point of resting my injured left arm as much as I could yesterday, so that I would be okay for driving.

I forgot something.

The broken handle inside the driver’s side door. The one that requires opening the window and twisting my left arm around to open the door from the outside.

*sigh*

After moving the truck closer to the house for my husband, I had to give it a go, and it was way more painful than it should have been. I was still okay to get his walker out of the entry and down the concrete steps so my husband could use it to walk the rest of the way to the house. He used a cane to go through the old kitchen and sun room, to avoid the steps he’d have to taken using the main entry.

In working with his walker, however, we discovered a problem.

It’s been a long time since my husband has had to go anywhere, so his walker has been in the entry for a while.

The cats climb it, of course.

Well, one or more of them decided to pee on the cushioned seat, even though the walker was folded up. While getting it in an out of the truck, folding and unfolding it, we realized it was even still wet.

Once at the hospital, we were directed to the new pain clinic, which happens to be sharing the same area as the outpatient clinic my daughter will be going to for her surgery. We went through the registration process and my husband settled down to wait. Typically, to take pressure off his back, he will sit in a chair and lean forward onto his walker, stretching his back out.

The smell of cat pee was so bad, he took his cane out of the holder and asked me to put the walker back in the truck.

!!!

When I got back, he was already taken to see the first pain clinic specialist. This guy turned out to be a physiotherapist. My husband had a questionnaire to fill out, along with a list of his medications, and send in some time ago. They were going over that first. We went over the many things attempted before we moved, and how things went at the city pain clinic in this province he managed to get to (that was a waste of 2 years on a waiting list!) in 2020.

After going over all that, he left to consult with the doctor, who then came to get us for the second part of the appointment.

The doctor was looking at the husband’s CT scans from November, and we appreciated that he was honest with us.

There really isn’t anything they can do for him.

Which is pretty much what my husband expected to hear.

Everything that could be tried, has been tried. He’s on the medications. He’s had the various treatments. In the end there were just two things they could offer. One was information about scheduled workshops they have available online, though in person is also a possibility, for those who are able. They cover a variety of things to help cope with and live with chronic pain. My husband has been living with is for so long, he’s probably tried or has been doing them already. Still, there might be something he hasn’t tried, yet.

The other is physiotherapy.

My husband did the physio route pretty much from the start. It kept him going for a long time, and he even started to get better. He started out seeing a physiotherapist three times a week. She got him down to once a week. He was still able to work at this time, too.

The insurance covers physio 100%, but with an upper limit, so once that limit was reached, my husband had to stop physio until the fiscal year started again. Without the equipment used on him, his condition deteriorated during that break, but then he started up again and things started to improve.

Then the physiotherapist was lured away by a rugby team. The therapist that replaced her was… not as good.

There was much more going on that affected his condition as well that I won’t get into here, but it wasn’t much longer before my husband couldn’t work anymore and went onto disability. Then we ended up here, on the farm I grew up on, in a province where some of the specialists that had been helping my husband before don’t even exist.

Anyhow. That’s what we both thought of, when physiotherapy was brought up. There’s no way my husband can handle driving all that way, multiple times a week. Even when he got a prescription for physio with the first doctor he had after our move, and he could have gone to a closer therapist, it just didn’t happen. With only, at best, 10 sessions covered by insurance, why even bother? Of course now, we couldn’t afford the gas, either.

Well, it turns out they can try something different.

Physio, done at the pain clinic, is covered by our medicare system, for starters. It would also be just once a month, with my husband being given a regimen he can do at home until the next session, when things can be adjusted as needed.

Once a month with a 45-50 minute drive one way, my husband can do.

We are now booked with the first guy we saw today, next week!

Beyond that, however, there really isn’t anything that can be done about my husband’s condition. His doctor is going to get a report, and she can take it from there again.

That done, my husband and I headed out. As difficult as it was for him with just a can and not his walker, it was lunch time, and he wanted McDonalds. 😄 It’s probably been more than a year since he’s been to one. So we went to the nearby Walmart and had lunch, then I left him to enjoy the fries he had been craving to do a bit of shopping. My first city shopping trip is in just a couple of days, but we were going to run out of cat food before then.

During the drive home, we actually drove through some rain! Not a lot. We still need much more! Thankfully, the kibble I got that was in the box of the truck came in plastic bags, not paper, so the rain wasn’t an issue.

We kept the girls updated the whole time, so when we got home, my daughter had the gate open for us, and was able to help me bring things inside. As careful as I was, my arm was really throbbing by then.

Oh, I discovered two things while taking my husband’s walker to the truck.

One, I really, really like using a walker.

Two, my right arm hasn’t completely escaped damage. While leaning on the walker’s hand bars, my left arm was actually quite a bit better than when my daughter brought it out to help me get back to the house after my fall. My right arm, however, seems to still have some damage to a triceps. Nothing I notice unless I am pushing down on something, though.

Once everything was inside and taken care of, my daughter took care of my husband’s walker. She took it outside and scrubbed the whole thing down, top to bottom, hosed it down, then took the carpet and furniture shampooer to it. That thing looks brand new, now!

It’s also now stored in the old kitchen, where the cats can’t get at it!

Unless they sneak in and hide overnight, like Tiny did!

With all this, my husband is completely worn out and drained, and in so much pain. Hopefully, he’ll be able to actual sleep tonight, and not end up feeling sick again.

As for me, I’m happy to say the arm is doing better. I was able to get a bit done outside this evening. I went over the pink rose bush again, looking for any scale insects I missed. There were a few! I treated it with another soapy water spray, too. It’s only been a day, but I think the rose bush is already looking less droopy than it was, yesterday! We only have the one pink rose bush, so I would hate to lose it.

While checking on the rest of the garden, I noticed insects on the winter squash again – possibly thrips. They got the soapy water treatment, too. The winter squash are trying to bloom like crazy, but the plants are not looking very healthy at all. The transplants were very strong and healthy, so this is disappointing.

So, that has been our day today! It’s been a wonderfully cool and, at times, rainy day today. The only downside is, our overnight low is currently expected to drop to 6C/43F tonight – which is actually an improvement! This morning, they were saying we might drop to 4C/39F. With temperatures that low, I’d be looking to cover some of the garden beds to prevent cold damage! Meanwhile, the 10 day forecast has us looking at temperatures approaching 30C/68F, soon.

Good grief. It’s hard to believe we’re almost at July already.

Oh! I forgot one bit of good news!

We got a call from the door guy at the hardware store I went to last week. We now have an appointment for three days from now. He’s going to check out the damage, take the measurements he needs, and we’ll start talking what options we have, and how much it’ll cost.

I know it’s going to be painfully expensive… well… everything is painfully expensive right now. However, once that door and frame is fixed, it’s going to be really nice to not have frost showing up on the bottom of the door every winter!

So I’m both dreading and anticipating getting that door fix.

What to do with the cats while the work is being done is a problem we’ll have to figure out when the time comes!

😄😄

The Re-Farmer

I am so NOT a morning person

May 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Not that I’ve got much choice. If it isn’t the morning light, it’s the cats suddenly going bonkers at 5am, expecting me to top of their kibble. Even if there is still plenty of food!

Of course, today, I had to get my morning rounds done earlier, since I needed to be at my mother’s before 8am.

After a daughter and I fed the cats (Poirot stayed in the carrier with her kittens all night, and did not leave while we were putting food out!), I did my usual garden bed checks while on my way to the trail cams.

Alas. It begins.

The Chinese elms are starting to drop their seeds.

This is while they’re still green, too.

Over the next while, there were be more and, when they get to their dry stage, they’ll be falling by the millions.

The netting on this bed will protect it, to a certain extent. Unfortunately, the cats keep managing to slide the netting on the wire hoops, bending them flat, getting inside and so on. So seeds are still getting inside. It won’t be so bad as to smother everything planted in there, at least.

No, that cats are busy doing that, instead.

I had spotted one pea sprouting a while back, and it’s gone. There are some possible beans sprouting, and I’ve spotted some onions sprouting. Plus weeds, of course. While the netting has stopped the cats from using the bed as a litter box, or just digging around because they like to dig, they still either lie on top of the netting, get under the netting, and generally just crush everything in that bed. They really, really like this garden bed, and I don’t know why!

Speaking of cats…

That tabby has all sorts of attention – including from a cat that ran off when I paused to see what was going on. The tabby had caught a bird, and the others were looking quite eager to steal its breakfast!

I’m seeing a lot fewer cats these days. This morning, I counted “only” 16 or 17 adult cats, and I may have double counted a couple

Once everything was taken care of outside, I headed to my mother’s early enough to stop for gas first. She was up and about, making herself breakfast when I got there. This included some of the instant oatmeal I’d bought for her a while back. I ended up sitting in an armchair, basically behind where she sits at her dining table in her very tiny apartment (my bedroom is probably bigger than her entire apartment), with just a half-wall between us. Mostly because I needed to close my eyes for a while, but I was also in pain, and needed the more comfortable chair. I didn’t take my T3s this morning, which can cause drowsiness and dizziness, since I was going to be driving, and just took some extra strength Tylenol. I was already tired, so taking a pain killer that could cause drowsiness didn’t seem like a good idea.

I was quickly reminded of something. My mother isn’t very good at following instructions.

I’ve shown her how to make the instant oatmeal, but she skipped over an important part. Letting it sit for about 5 minutes to absorb the liquid. She basically just started eating it right away, like it was some kind of soup.

My mother has never been a quiet eater. Now that she has had a tooth pulled, but refuses to have her dentures adjusted to fill the space, it’s gotten even worse. Thankfully, she was behind me and I couldn’t see what she was doing, because the sounds alone were making feel absolutely ill. I’m not normally bothered too much by stuff like that, but it was really bad today!

Thankfully, she was done rather quickly, and had a chance to chat about the upcoming call from her doctor. I knew it would be about the results of her blood tests, and she could ask related questions, but anything else would require a separate appointment. She started saying that she wanted the doctor to get her into a nursing home. I tried to explain to her that the doctor has already done as much as she could; she got the ball rolling, my mother got the Xrays and EKG readings they required, and then it goes to home care. I told her again about how the case coordinator and I went through all the panel questions again, to update information on how much more difficult things are getting for her. My mother thinks that a doctor can basically just order her into a nursing home, but it’s the home care department that makes the decisions but, even if she’s approved, if there’s no space, she basically has to wait until enough people die to free up beds, and even then, the spaces go to those are are considered in the worst condition. We’ve all explained this to her, many times by now. The problem isn’t that she doesn’t understand it. She simply refuses to accept it. I ended up telling her that this is because she’s doing it through the health care system. There are privately run nursing homes that she could go through, but she’d be paying a lot more (even through the system, nursing home residents are charged “rent”, based on their income, just like where she lives now). Then she started complaining that the home care worker wasn’t there yet, even though it was barely past 8am. I commented that she’d told me they come closer to 9am. Oh, sometimes they come at 8… they come at all times.

At which point I realized that the time the “usually come” is the time she notices it is, and that they should be there is when she wants them to be there. Nothing to do with schedules or having to go to other homes.

Which got her talking again about how there should only be the same two people coming to do her med assist, not so many. I told her again, this is how the system works. It’s how they have to do it. Otherwise, she would have to hire a private home care company and pay for it out of pocket.

Which actually caught her attention.

We didn’t get far into the conversation, though, as the phone rang.

It was the clinic, but the doctor’s assistant, not the doctor. We’ve spoken with him before.

I put it on speaker phone so my mother could hear, but the volume was a bit low, and the guy had a strong accent. My mother’s response was basically to start yelling at him to speak louder. I manage to get her to stop, tried to turn the volume up, and explain to the guy that she couldn’t hear him, all at the same time.

There wasn’t a lot for him to tell use. Her test results hover around the same ranges, with minimal fluctuation. My mother really seems to want to be diagnosed diabetic, though. She keeps asking about her blood sugars, which were on the high side of normal this time – barely. He basically just said, eat less carbs. It’s not an issue. Her kidney function was also fine, which is the monthly test she’s been doing since leaving the hospital, back in March.

Before the call ended, I asked if my mother had any questions, and the launched into saying, she wanted the doctor to put her into a nursing home.

*sigh*

We both responded with basically the same thing; the doctor can’t do anything about that. She’s done as much as she can.

After the call ended, I went over my notes with her and explained things. She’s understandably frustrated in that she couldn’t make out much of what he said, but that’s why I’m there for these calls. Then she said, “so… the doctor didn’t even want to talk to me…”

*sigh*

When it came to explaining about reducing carbs – and what carbs are – it got more difficult. My mother makes a big deal about how she avoids sugar, which she doesn’t really. As she understands it, it’s all about avoiding white table sugar, and “sweet things”. I tried to explain to her that bread is “sugar”. Pasta is “sugar”. etc. He’d said something about eating more vegetables that I brought up, and she perked up saying “and fruit!” I had to tell her, no, fruit is basically just sugar.

I finally started looking up lists of low carb vegetables for her, then wrote out the ones that she knows and likes, dropping off the ones she wouldn’t eat (partly because they were unfamiliar to her, or aren’t available locally, but also because she doesn’t know what a lot of them are) and those she shouldn’t eat, because of her acid reflux.

What the doctor doesn’t know when it comes to my mother’s diet is that she has stopped eating meat almost entirely, because she has decided it’s bad for her (the TV told her so…) and the bulk of her diet is bread and milk. So I looked up and made another list of low carb foods aside from the vegetables list.

She wanted me to write out a list of things she should NOT be eating, and I told her it would be too long. Instead, I looked up a list of high carb foods and read it out to her.

Not that is will make much difference. And really, at her age, there are far bigger things to be concerned about!

While talking about meats, though, she suddenly told me to take the whole chicken I’d bought with her groceries, take it home and cook it for ourselves. That chicken was pretty much the only meat she had.

After a few questions, it came down to, she couldn’t cook it. She doesn’t know how to use the oven on her stove, so she can’t just roast the whole thing, and she can’t physically stand to process and cook it on the stove top.

I offered to butcher it for her, which she agreed to.

I started off by clearing and preparing the space to work in, including doing a few dishes, then cleaning the sink itself to wash the chicken in. Of course, my mother started giving me step by step instructions on what I should be doing. She suggested using a stainless steal bowl I didn’t know she had, for washing the chicken. So that worked out – except I was apparently supposed to wash the bird after it was cut up, not before.

Then I discovered my mother does not have a proper knife.

She directed me to her one larger knife to use, and it was some sort of bread knife with different sizes of serration. I did try to use it, but it was just tearing the bird apart, so I looked around some more. She told me she had this really good knife that she got at the second hand store, and that turned out to be a cheap steak knife.

I ended up using a paring knife.

Apparently, I still wasn’t going it right, so my mother came over to the sink, got the water running – hot water! – and started tearing the chicken still in the bowl apart with her bare hands, splashing chicken juices everywhere. After tossing a chunk of tail and spine into a frying pan, she started saying that the wings are small, so they could be quickly cooked right away, and she then tried to tear the chicken apart more. I tried to tell her to sit down – the whole point of me doing this was because she couldn’t stand at the counter for fear of falling! – but she ignored me.

Thankfully, the home care worker for her morning med assist arrived just then!

I had to remind my mother to wash her hands of raw chicken, with soap, before getting her meds, and once she was with the home care worker and getting her medications, I was able to finish butchering the chicken.

That left me with a carcass I didn’t want to waste, so I found a small pot in her oven (she stores her pots and pans in the oven, since she never uses it) and got a stock going, using up some older vegetables I found in her fridge to clear out. I was a bit perplexed when I asked where her salt was, and found a small lidded bowl with salt that had dark flecks in it. It turns out that any take out packets of salt and pepper she found herself with, she would empty them into her salt bowl. So it was a mix of salt and pepper! I found some dry herbs and she directed me to her very last garlic clove, which was stored in a drawer with her larger knives, and spare envelopes.

…

My mother seemed surprised by what I was doing. I don’t think she’s ever made a chicken stock on its own before.

Once that was going, implements washed and the splashed raw chicken mess all cleaned up, I started frying up the pieces of chicken in batches. When those were done, I set them aside in a container to cool, then deglazed the pan and added that to the stock, which was getting close to done by then. I had enough time to clean up again, then take out her garbage, then clean up again…

When the stock was ready and I fished out the large pieces to remove any of the meat that was left on the bones (there was next to none), my mother gave me a hard time for throwing it out instead of taking it home to the cats. I reminded her that onions are bad for cats, but she said they’d be fine.

…

The stock got drained to a smaller pot and set aside with the cooked chicken to cool and everything got cleaned up again before I could finally sit down for a few minutes. My mother actually seemed eager to use the stock – even just to drink straight!

Which was the closest I got to seeing any sort of appreciation, really, but that’s fine. I don’t expect that from her. I could tell she was happy with it because she wasn’t giving me a hard time for doing everything wrong. 😄😂

Once everything was done, I finally got to sit and rest for a bit (my painkillers had worn off for some time by then!) and we got to chat. I mentioned that the store our post office is in closes at noon, so I’d have to leave in a bit, but I did still have some time to visit.

When it was time for me to do, she was looking at the clock and saying “it’s not noon yet!”

I actually had to explain to her that them closing at noon meant I had to be there BEFORE noon – and I had driving time to consider, too!

😄

It’s a good thing I did, too, as my daughter had a parcel to pick up. I also picked up a few packets of flower seeds, since it looks like none of the flowers we planted in the fall have survived the spring.

I still got home before noon!

It was all I could do not to go straight to bed!

Today has been a much more pleasant day outside – feeling almost cold, after the heat of the past two days. We’re apparently having rain and thunderstorms right now, too.

~ looks out the window at the clear sky ~

I don’t think I’ll be able to get anything done in the garden beds today, though. We’ll see what the evening brings. I’m just glad to be home.

The Re-Farmer

Everything is all right

November 20, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, I’m happy to say that my daughter’s visit to the doctor today went well, and it’s nothing serious. The dizziness was caused by her inner ear.

She also had high blood pressure, though once I heard her numbers, I think it is likely to be “white coat syndrome”. She got a prescription, but we won’t be able to fill it for a while. Once we got home, my husband called the pharmacy to ask how much it was, as our daughters are not covered by his insurance. They couldn’t say, exactly, because it’s currently unavailable, and they don’t know when it will be available again. Still, the approximate cost they were able to give us is well within our prescription budget.

Since we were a walk in, my daughter was seen in between appointments, so we ended up waiting about 2 1/2 hours, give or take a few minutes. We did get to see a new doctor we’d heard excellent reviews for, who also happens to be open for new patients. I’d had it suggested that we switch my mother to this new doctor, since she doesn’t like her current one, because she’s black, female and has a strong accent. I’ve advised against switching doctors because she’s in the middle of trying to get into long term care or assisted living, and changing doctors would set things back.

It turns out, my mother wouldn’t like this doctor, anyhow. She’s black, female and has a strong accent. It just happens to be a British accent instead of a Nigerian one. 😄😄

My daughter, however, really likes her. She listened to what my daughter had to say, didn’t jump to conclusions or make assumptions, and actually took her seriously. After examining her to try and find a cause of the dizziness, which involved sitting my daughter on the edge of the examination table, then flinging her down onto her side abruptly, it was determined that it’s an inner ear problem. My daughter was written up for blood work, and there’s a lab just down the hall from the clinic, so that got done as soon as we booked a follow up appointment in two weeks. This will be to both get the test results and for an official “meet and greet”, so that this doctor will officially be my daughter’s doctor.

In two weeks, I’ve got an appointment for another field of vision test. The eye clinic is just a few blocks away from the medical clinic, and my appointment is in the afternoon. My daughter has to come along to drive me home, since my eyes will be dilated – hopefully, her dizziness will not be an issue by then! So we booked for the same morning.

Unfortunately, the only morning appointment they had was at 8:45. Which means we need to be on the road by at least 7:30, if not earlier. It’ll be a long day, but I don’t mind. My daughter and I can hang out together and have a lunch date in between appointments.

The town we had to go to is most of the way to the small city with the Walmart we go to, in between the big city shopping trips. My daughter felt well enough to go there, instead of figuring out where to find cheap kibble in the town we were in. As we were driving, she read from the printouts she got, which was much funnier than they probably intended.

The short version:

What is the cause? It could be this, it could be that, or it could be nothing at all. We don’t know.

What is the treatment? do this exercise that involves sitting on the side of the bed, then flinging yourself bodily down onto your side abruptly, several times. Repeat the process three times a day.

Why does this treatment work? we have no idea. It just does.

We found that incredibly funny. Especially the “exercise” instructions.

When we got to the Walmart, my daughter stayed in the truck while I did the shopping, as she got more dizzy spells along the way. We didn’t need much, so it wasn’t long before we were on our way home again.

During the drive home, though, we got a message from my husband. He found broken glass on the floor in my office/bedroom, where there is food for the cats. It turned out that the cats had knocked over a glass jar I had on my window sill, filled with pretty beach rocks. Thankfully, the glass broke but didn’t shatter into a million pieces, like some types of glass does. Still, the cat food in the tray had to be thrown out, and I’m probably going to be finding beach rocks on my floor for days!

Meanwhile, tomorrow, I am off again to take my mother for her eye treatment. I called and left a message for her, and she just called back. She didn’t try to get out of it at all, which was good.

What was not good was finding out she had visitors. Our vandal and his wife. Apparently, he’s still getting chemo or something. He behaves when his wife is with him, but after hearing the message he left at my brother’s cell number, she seems to finally understand that when there are other people around, it’s the “nice” him, but those phone calls are the real him.

She still can’t bring herself to tell him to not come around anymore. She told me she tried to recommend he was a religious program she enjoys every morning, and talk to him about turning to God. Apparently, he has some pretty nasty things to say about the show she watches, even with his wife there, so she was not happy.

I do hope the process for getting my mother into long term care or assisted living happens soon. The faster she can move out of where she is, the sooner we can make sure he can’t show up at her place anymore. Hopefully, we can even keep him from finding out where she ended up living but, if nothing else, we’d be able to tell the staff that he’s not allowed to see her for security reasons.

I so wish we didn’t have to do this. We used to be so close. The person he used to be, however, is gone.

Mental illness can be very cruel. Especially if it’s a type where a person can hide it and be “normal”, even from their own spouses.

It is what it is, though. We can only work with the hand we’re dealt with.

As for tomorrow, my mother and I have worked out our schedule, and what time we have to be on the road for. The high for tomorrow is supposed to be below freezing, but no rain or snow, so the roads should be clear.

It’s going to be a long day away from home, though.

I’ll have to remind my family to keep checking my office/bedroom to make sure the cats aren’t destroying it while I’m gone!

🫤🫤

The Re-Farmer

Change of plans

November 20, 2024November 20, 2024 / Re-Farmer / 10 Comments

My daughter came to me last night with some concerns over strange and severe dizzy spells.

Of course, my plans got changed.

We are now sitting at the nearest walk in clinic, a 45 minute drive away. We’ve been waiting for almost anout 1 1/2 hours, now.

On the plus side, the doctor she will be seeing is accepting new patients. Depending on how things go, she may later book an official meet and greet appointment. I’ve heard good things about this doctor.

I still need to pick up more kibble and a few groceries. Where we do that will depend on how things go here, and how my daughter is feeling.

I’m just really glad the weather and road conditions are good. Other parts of the province got hit with a storm white out conditions, still ongoing this morning. We are currently clear, and the highways are dry.

We shall see how the day goes!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

health issues

Morning in the garden, and good grief, what a day

Kitten fix, and medical appointment

Afternoon in the garden, and there’s our vandal again

More deer damage, stuck at home, kitten sightings, and burning out

A quick (ha!) run down

How things have gone today

Birds, gardens, kittens and pain

I am so NOT a morning person

Everything is all right

Change of plans

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: