heat wave

Melting

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, we reached our predicted high of 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and we’re not expected to start cooking down until well into the evening.

I had a much interrupted night, so the girls took care of the outside stuff for me, including watering the garden, so I could try and get some more sleep. Which is rather difficult when, every now and then, a cat will suddenly get the zoomies and parkour off my body while careening across my room. What a way to be awakened!

I did make my trip into town, late this morning. It was slightly delayed when I stopped at the post office to pick up a package, and found my daughter’s computer was in a day early! I’d even checked the tracking this morning, and it was still saying tomorrow, by the end of day. Once I had that, I went back home to drop it off, then headed into town. My daughter hasn’t tried to take it upstairs yet. Her old computer is still chugging away, backing things up onto online storage – a very sloooooow process. She’ll start getting the new machine set up during the night.

I had intended to see what errands I could do while I was in town after sanitizing and filling our water jugs (it’s a different grocery store than where I usually go to, that has a sanitation station with their refill fountains), I got a message from my husband asking if I could swing by the Greek restaurant and pick up a couple of gyros for him. I found out this morning that my husband had eaten almost nothing all day yesterday – he just didn’t have any appetite – and his blood sugars dropped dangerously low. He had to pop glucose tablets to get himself back up again. The water refill station at the grocery store happened to be next to their pharmaceutical section, and they had some of the glucose tablets in stock, so I grabbed a bottle. With his Ozempic dose being doubled, the danger of his blood glucose levels dropping are much higher. Which ticks me off because I am 100% certain that is his chronic pain could be brought under control, he blood sugars would normalize. However, there’s no fix for his back, and so far, no pain killers tried have been able to get it under control. At best, it become more bearable. It’s like when he was diagnosed diabetic the first time. After that he was diagnosed with sleep apnea and started using a CPAP. Almost immediately, his blood sugars normalized and he lost about 100 pounds. I suspect the increase in dose for the Ozempic is more for the potential side effect of weight loss, but he’s been on this stuff for years now, and it has had zero effect on his weight. Plenty of other side effects, like losing much of his sense of taste, a loss of appetite, loss of muscle mass and intestinal distress, but his weight just won’t change.

Needless to say, when he asked for the gyros, my other plans went out the window, got his food and headed straight home with it, and skipped the other places I was going to check out.

I had been thinking of going to the dump later today, when it opens for the evening, but we really don’t have enough garbage and recycling to make it worth burning the gas in another trip.

My other plan had been to try and get some lawn mowed this morning, before it got hot, but that didn’t work out. Tomorrow is supposed to be a little bit cooler, so I will see if I can get it done then. In fact, our entire 10 day forecast has changed and, after tomorrow, we’re now supposed to be closer to 20C/68F instead of in the 30C/86F range.

I just got back from refreshing the cats’ water bowls outside, and adding frozen water bottles in a couple of them to help keep them cooler. The cats are just splattered all over, trying to keep cool

Except for these ones.

She’s nursing six kittens.

She only had four kittens in her litter.

So happy to see Button in there, getting some nip!

I’m just looking back at some of my garden posts from a year ago. At this time, our garlic was all harvested and curing, and I tried planting beets, radishes and spinach in the empty bed (they did not do well at all). I was also harvesting bush beans, turnips and G-Star pattypan squash. Not a lot, but at least something! I was even getting some yellow zucchini and the odd green one from the plants that survived getting eaten by slugs. We had Black Beauty tomatoes getting so big and heavy, we had to add extra supports. Our Spoon tomatoes were turning red, and our Sweet Chocolate peppers were covered in developing fruit. We even started harvesting some Indigo Blue tomatoes, and our Pink Banana and Georgia Candy Roaster had so many huge squash developing!

I’ll be doing another garden tour video in the middle of the month. Hopefully, things will have progressed between now and then! It should be interesting to compare the two.

For now, though, the main priority is to keep things protected from the heat.

Including us!

The Re-Farmer

Foggy morning, and another one!?!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last night was one of those nights where, as soon as I went to bed, I just kept getting more and more awake! I finally got up and spent time with my younger daughter, who was busy making pies. Of course, being up at 2 or 3 in the morning, I was peckish, so I made a snack in between batches of pies, then she and I watched an episode of Columbo while they were baking.

We cheated on the pies. We had some canned pumpkin pie mix. Yesterday, I made a quick trip to the local grocery store and grabbed some frozen pie shells and other missing ingredient. There was no way we were going to be making pie dough in this heat and humidity!

By the time I got back to bed, it was 4am, and even then, I was still up at 4:30!

I did get a bit of sleep, though, but was just after a nap at that point. We were looking at reaching a high of 29C/84F today, but the coolest part of the day was going to be a brief period at about 5 or 6am. My goal was to water the garden while it was still cool.

So when I woke up at 6, I got up and headed out.

The first thing was, of course, to feed the outside cats. As I was going into the sun room with the kibble, I saw several kittens asleep together in a small cat bed on the floor. One got out, another start looking around, and the third…

*sigh*

One of the tabby kittens was lying stretched out, looking like it was asleep. With this heat, I see a lot of the cats sleeping all stretched out like that, but with all the commotion, this one wasn’t moving.

Yup. We lost another kitten.

That’s three kittens in four days.

After putting the food out, I quickly buried it near the unknown kitten I found yesterday morning.

I wonder if it’s the heat and humidity getting to them? There was no sign of anything obvious. It was about 17C/63F at the time. The sun room would not have been much warmer – these days, we leave the doors to outside wide open and the ceiling fan on all the time, for maximum air circulation. If anything, down at the concrete floor, it would have been a bit cooler.

I don’t know what to make of it. About the only solace I can take is, fewer cats in the colony.

Once the sad deed was done, I started my morning rounds. It was very foggy this morning!

It was so dense that I could see the fog covering the tops of the spruce trees in the inner yard. My phone’s camera automatically clears up the image, so in reality, it looked foggier than in the photo.

It wasn’t just fog, though. It was also smoke.

That sun is red because of smoke. Again, the camera doesn’t capture it well. It was much redder than it appears in the photo!

I just checked the live fire map. There are no fires near us; they are all quite a bit further up north. However, there are currently 6 fires listed as out of control, another 5 listed as being held, 29 (!!!) listed as being monitored and another 9 listed as under control. Some of these, however, are grouped closely on the map, almost on top of each other. All of them are listed as natural causes. None are near populated areas.

So this morning, it was both smoke and fog!

Checking the weather forecast last night, it was saying thunderstorms during by around midnight tonight, but when I checked again this morning, it was saying thunderstorms starting at about 3pm this afternoon.

I’m writing this at quarter to 3 right now, and on checking the weather radar, there are no storms on the horizon. My phone’s app is now saying to expect a thunderstorm around 8 or 9pm.

We shall see.

Either way, with the upcoming heat, once I did my rounds, I did a thorough watering of the garden beds. Which was rather torturous, because I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Not so bad that I was willing to go back to the house and get the bug spray, though. Having had only a little more than an hour of sleep, I was planning to go back to bed as soon as I got inside and didn’t want to have to wash all

As I write this, we are at 27C/81F, with the humidex at 32C/90F The expected high had changed to 28C/82F, and I’m not sure if we actually reached it.

Oh! I just got a message from the Cat Lady. She just dropped stuff off at the gate for us. She didn’t message ahead, or I’d have opened the gate. She had The Wolfman with her, and she says he started going nuts as soon as they got on the gravel road. When they opened the windows at the gate, he started clawing to get INTO his carrier. He didn’t calm down until they were back on the highway.

This cat has gotten completely attached to them! More than any of the others they ended up keeping permanently!

Excuse me while I head out and collect the donated kibble from the gate.

Wow! Four 9.1kg bags of kibble were waiting for me! I’m glad I dug the wagon out of the garage to bring them over. That will be such a huge help!

Also, I am absolutely dripping with sweat. I just checked and yes, we reached the predicted high of 28C/82F in the last twenty minutes. The humidex is at 33C/72F Apparently, our humidity levels are just 56%, but I question that. Stepping outside was like walking into a sauna!

I did top up the cat food outside with some of the new kibble, and they definitely prefer it over the feed store kibble I got. They’ll eat the feed store brand, but not as enthusiastically. Not that they are eating much in this heat, anyhow!

We should have a brief respite over the next few days – meaning will be in the mid 20’s rather than approaching 30C/86F – but then we’re supposed to get right back up there again.

This is the sort of weather that breed thunderstorms, but so far, those only seem to be forming up north. If only they would get just rain to help put out those fires, instead, that would be good!

Well, the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, melons and squash will sure enjoy the heat! We just need to keep up on the watering.

I think I’ll go to the living room and stand in front of the air conditioner for a while!

The Re-Farmer

Distractions

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last night, before doing the evening watering, I did a couple of things to – hopefully! – distract the deer away.

One of them went around the Montana Morado corn.

The aluminum tins spin freely on the twine, so I hope they will do as distractions. We can add more distractions after a while, to change things up before they get used to them.

This next one is more of a diversion than a distraction. On a wildlife group I’m on, someone had posted a picture of a deer with her fawn, in their yard. With the heat and lack of rain we’ve been having, they had put out a bucket of water for the wildlife. The mama and her baby promptly showed up and started drinking, even as the guy who posted the picture was sitting on his deck with a coffee!

We have water bowls all over the place for the cats, plus we found a way to keep using the cracked bird bath. Which is great for the cats and birds (and skunks, and probably the woodchucks and racoon), but they’re rather small for deer. I imagine they might still be drinking from them, but for the amount of water in the shallow containers, it wouldn’t slack their thirst.

It occurred to me that if we could set up water for the deer in the right place, we might be able to divert them away from the garden. The deer damage we have been seeing has been comparatively small; they seem to be just nibbling a few things on the way by. My thought it, if they can get water somewhere away from the garden beds, they won’t have a reason to go by and nibble.

The deer go through the maple grove and jump the fence at the gates along West fence line. Our kiddie pool isn’t being used right now (who knew a kiddie pool could be so useful?), so I set it up near the old willow that overhangs the fence. The rocks and bricks are there to keep it from blowing away if it gets emptied, but for little critters, like frogs or kittens, to use to climb out if they fall into the pool.

I checked it this morning, but I honestly couldn’t tell if the water level had changed much.

We’ll see if it works!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of other distractions. Some pretty, developing tomatoes!

This is one of the Mosaic Medley plants. It’s such a dark green! There are others I couldn’t get good pictures of that are a much lighter green.

More like these.

These are the itty bitty Spoon tomatoes. They’re so adorable! :-D

Last night, after setting up the deer distractions, I stayed out to do a very thorough watering of the garden beds. Last night, I ended up awake and 4am and unable to get back to sleep, so I finally gave up and headed outside to do my morning rounds early. With the expected heat, I stayed out to give all the garden beds another thorough watering.

Then I napped. LOL

This afternoon, after coming back from a dump run, I stayed out to check the south garden beds and noticed that the gourds were actually drooping from the heat. When a hot weather crop like gourds are feeling the heat, I am glad I gave everything that extra watering!

Meanwhile, as I was writing this, my daughter went out to put frozen water bottles in all the cats’ water bowls.

Any little bit to help the furry critters deal with the heat!

The Re-Farmer

The big cheese!

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Just look at this big beast!

This big cheesy creature! Cheddar has grown to be such a big, meaty, boy. ;-)

I usually have several cats splashed across my bed, right where the breeze from my fan in the window hits. :-D

We’re at 33C/91F right now, with a humidex of 35C/95F. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach a high of 34C/93F with a humidex of 37C/99F. After that, we’re supposed to drop a few degrees, but then head back up to just above 30C/86F again. Not as hot as the heat wave we left behind, but definitely higher than the long range forecasts had been predicting earlier.

Which means the cats have been spending their days in furry puddles around the house during the day…

And going nuts during the night.

Somehow, flying insects are getting into the house. In my office/bedroom, I have a shelf that has a space for them (the cats, not the insects), right up near the ceiling. Unfortunately, to get to it, they can only use the back of my office chair, since their alternative jump off point is now filled with a box fan. I have a wall shelf at the head of my bed, and I’ve set things up to prevent them from getting to the top, since that is where fragile items that don’t fit anywhere else are stored. Some of the smaller cats, however, can climb straight up on part of it. I’ve tried to block the top by storing a triangular support designed to go under the knees, or behind the back, depending on how it is oriented, where they climb. Every now and then, I’m awakened by it crashing down because a cat has decided to go for it. Last night was so bad, I had to kick them out and close the door. Unfortunately, that meant they tore around the upstairs, instead. There are no doors up there, so the girls can’t close them out.

At least the cats won’t be keeping them awake for the next while. With the increasing temperatures, even with the much improved conditions after adding a box fan to the south window, set up to blow the hot air out, it gets too hot for my daughter’s computer and drawing tablet. She’ll be working at night again, which means they won’t be going to bed until something like 5am; shortly before sunrise. So they’ll be able to deal with the cats tearing around after flying bugs during the night! :-D

Time to start leaving ice packs on the floor for the cats to cool down on again. :-)

The Re-Farmer

I thought it was supposed to be cooler?

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Once again, the real world made liars out of the forecasters. 😄

We were not supposed to break 30C today.

I’ve been watching the weather radar as rain supposedly passed right over us. Out my window, it was bright and sunny.

I headed out earlier with the animal repellent spray and used it around the garden beds. Hopefully, that will mean no more critter damage. We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: first pea pods!

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

We managed to get a few things taken care of in the garden, once things started cooling down.

But first, kittens!

I wasn’t able to get pictures of all four of them, but these two seem to be a bit braver. :-) I also saw Rosencrantz and her two babies. It looks like they are actually living in that junk pile now.

I also saw the woodchuck again, this time diving under the garden shed. I don’t know if it was just trying to hide from me, or if that’s where it’s new den is.

One of the things that finally got done today was transplanting of the Hopi Black Dye sunflower seedlings that we’d tried starting indoors so long ago. There was a total of 8 to transplant. I also transplanted the few pink celery seedlings. I don’t expect them to grow, but I figured I’d give them a chance.

While I was refilling the watering can for the transplants, something caught my eye among the green peas.

Our first pea pods are developing!

The green pea pods are surprisingly large, for the size of the plants. There turned out to be quite a few of them we found as we watered. I didn’t see them this morning, but I may have missed them.

There was no missing these ones, though!

These pods are SO purple! I love them! :-D Among the purple peas, we only found two pods, so far.

Oh, I am so excited. :-D

Before I transplanted the sunflowers, which you can see in the row in the foreground, I hoed around the remaining Dorinny corn. Of the 7 rows we planted in this block, there are 4 rows left, and all of them have gaps. I did transplant about 5 corn plants from the other three rows into the larger gaps. They seem to have handled the disturbance well. Even the corn plants that got munched on seem to be recovering!

It’s hard to see, but after the watering was done, the girls put up the wire mesh on the last section of the squash tunnel. My younger daughter has been diligent in getting the winter squash, gourds, melons and peas trained to climb their various structures.

While they were putting up the wire mesh, I got another corn block hoed.

Even though we had already watered everything, I was finding the soil so dry, I watered all the sweet corn and sunflower beds, over again. Little by little, I’ll be hoeing all the blocks. Since these rows were just new garden soil placed directly on the ground, with no cardboard layer, nor any sort of organic matter underneath, what few plants that were growing here are working their way through. As this corner gets so baked in the sun, what little had been growing here can handle drought conditions. Their roots are incredibly tough and hard to pull. Now that the area is being watered for the first time, these plants are growing like I’ve never seen them before. I don’t want them choking out our corn and sunflowers, but my goodness, they are hard to dig up!

With these beds being so far from the house, we’re doing a lot of dragging of hoses around. Today, a pair of hoses gave out. The joined connectors both started to break, spraying water with remarkable pressure. So tomorrow, I’ll have to head into town to find both male and female connectors to replace the broken ones. Both of these hoses were purchased last year, but considering what we’re putting them through, I am not at all surprised that they would break where they did.

Oh, my daughter tells me that the potatoes are blooming now, too. When I watered them this morning, they still just had buds.

So much growth is happening right now!! :-)

On a completely different note, my husband got a notification email. Our StarLink kit is on its way. Our area should get coverage by mid to late this year – and we’re already midway through the year. I’m really hoping this new service works out, even though we would still be in Beta. Our satellite internet bill keeps going up, while the quality of our connection keeps going down. That is annoying enough in general, but I’m finding the WordPress editor seems to need higher connectivity than pretty much anything else. The editor simply won’t finish loading in any browser but Chrome and Tor. While everything loads much faster in Tor than on any other browser, the block editor does not work well if I have to go back and edit or adjust things, because blocks end up overlapping each other. Today, Chrome stopped working, too. Nothing will load except the tool bar across the top, and the question more icon in the bottom corner. The rest is blank. And sometimes, I don’t even get that much. Instead, WordPress just keeps timing out and I get error messages, instead.

So I’m using Tor right now, and am hoping that I can eventually load WordPress in one of my other browsers enough to open the draft and fix any weird formatting that might happen.

Hopefully, once we’re on StarLink, we’ll have a more stable connection. We’ll also have unlimited data, so we won’t need to have two accounts anymore. Switching could save us a couple hundred dollars a month, possibly more. Well worth the initial expense of setting up, which is pretty high, but doesn’t get billed all at once. For now, we’ll just be charged for the kit that’s being mailed out to us, which includes the dish, router, tripod and all the cables, parts and pieces needed to install it. My brother knows quite a few people already on the service, and they are really, really happy with it.

For now, though, I have to keep juggling browsers, just to be able to keep posting on this blog. I suppose I could use my phone, but I really need the big monitor and full size, ergonomic keyboard! That and the editing software I use to resize any photos I include, so they take up less storage space in WordPress.

So we’re getting a little bit of technical progress to go with our garden progress. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Starting early

/ Re-Farmer / 10 Comments

With the expected heat today, I headed out earlier to do my rounds, and stayed out to do extra watering with the hose fertilizer attachment.

When I first went outside, at about 7:30am it was almost chilly. An hour later, the heat was already hitting. The above photo was taken between 8:30 and 9am. The thermometer read 25C/77F but my weather app listed only 17C/63F! Still, in the time I was out there, the temperature rose almost 10 degrees in under 1 1/2 hours.

Later on, after I’ve gone over the instructions, I’ll be going back out to use the Critter Ridder. I didn’t see any new damage in the cord and sunflower beds, but I think the big carrot bed is still being chewed on. Even the carrot greens in the old kitchen garden showed signs of being nibbled on, though nowhere near as bad as the others.

One of the things I found yesterday was another solar powered spotlight with motion detector. This one will be set up on the side of the house, over the old kitchen garden. I want to position it so that smaller creatures eating our vegetables will trigger the light. Hopefully, that will startle them away. We won’t be able to set the light up facing south, as instructed, but that area gets lots of light right up until sunset. Not even shade from the ornamental apple trees reach it, so I think it should be able to charge up just fine.

The girls set up their new box fan in their window and had it running while my older daughter could finally work on some commissions, all night. This morning, before heading to bed, she told me that having the van made the upstairs the most comfortable part of the house last night! Which is a HUGE difference.

The forecasts have changed for today. We were expected to hit 28C/82F as a high, but now they’re saying we will get a high of 31C/88F, with the humidex at 34C/93F. Tomorrow, we’re now supposed to hit a high of 36C/97F, and the day after, 37C/99F. On Sunday, we’re supposed to reach “only” 31C/88F with a chance of thundershowers. I don’t expect any thundershowers to actually reach us, but it would be nice! Until then, we’re just going to have to be diligent with that watering! The girls have been waiting until after 8:30pm to do the evening water while it’s cooling down, so as not to shock the plants with cold hose water. I’ll have to keep heading out early to water again, before the heat really starts to hit. As disappointed with the loss of our carrots and lettuces, and the one beat bed, I’m very happy with how the beans, tomatoes, onions, corn, sunflowers, squash and melons are doing! The peas aren’t very big, but they are blooming, including more of the purple peas. The cucamelons are also quite small, still, but more of them are big enough to start training up the chain link fence.

It’s worth heading out early to beat the heat and tend to them. Even for someone who really, really dislikes mornings! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more firsts!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, this is getting ridiculous!

I don’t think the needle on that thermometer can go any further. What do you think that’s at? 65C/149F? Closer to 70C/158F? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that thermometer get that high.

Of course, the weather apps didn’t show temperatures that high. One of them allows me to look at historical weather. Our average temperature for June is 22C/72F, and our record high for the month was 37C/99F, set in 1995. I’m pretty sure we did beat that, today. The average low for June is 12C/54F, with a record low of 0C/32F, set in 2009.

This is the thermometer in the sun room.

This is with the inner door open, the screen window in the outer door open as wide as it can, and the ceiling fan going at its highest setting, and it still got to about 37-38C/99-100F. There are still a few trays of seedlings (and cups of dirt I’m pretending to expect things to germinate, still) in the sun room while I take the rest out to harden off. The trays outside got misted several times during the day, but a bunch of the squash and melons were really droopy by the end of the day. For all the misting they got, they still dried out quite a bit, so everything got a thorough watering before they came in for the night. Except the corn. They get put back into their bin, without the outer cups, so I put water in the bin for them to absorb from below.

When the girls went out as things started to cool down, they checked on the netting over the lettuces and beets. They ended up flipping one side up over the other, because there were so many insects caught inside. Including several of these guys.

This snowberry clearwing moth decided to just sit there and chill instead of flying away!

We also had a visitor, as things cooled down.

Madam Stinky came over for a snack! Later on, we saw a second one in the kibble house with this first one. I am loath to chase any critter away from food when it’s not doing any harm, but it’s really not good for them, and there is potential for harm. I think they are both hungry mamas. It’s certainly the time of year for them to have babies. When I used the hose to spray them away, the second one, which is quite a bit bigger than this one, did NOT want to leave! It kept grunting at me and trying to go back to the kibble house, until the water finally drove it away.

They’ll be back tonight, I’m sure! :-D

Before it had cooled down enough to start the evening watering, I checked on the garden beds to see how they were handling the heat. Especially the new transplants. I’m happy to say that the tomatoes and sunflowers were doing just fine. Only the bunching onions were starting to get a little bit wimpy.

While checking other beds around the transplanted sunflowers, I spotted little bits of green and pink.

We have beans!!!

These were not there when I checked them this morning, but both the yellow and green bean beds had sprouts, some still carrying their brightly coloured inoculated seed covering. The Royal Burgundy didn’t have any sprouts, but when I came back later to water them, even that bed had sprouts just starting to break through the soil. I’m so excited!!!

While watering the sunflower transplants, though, I got an even bigger, more exciting surprise.

This is a Hopi Black Dye sunflower seedling! I had to check and double check to be sure. I marked the spacing to plant them with flags, which are still there, so I could use them to confirm that yes, these are in the right places and everything. Considering how long it took for just one Hopi Black Dye seedling to sprout in the tray, I am totally stunned that they are already sprouting after being direct sown, just 5 days ago! All I can think is that the seeds we tried to start indoors were just too cold to sprout, even in the warmth of the sun room. Now that I’ve started to take the tray outside, to harden off the cucamelons sharing the tray, we might get even more of them.

The heat may be hard on humans and animals, but some of our plants are just loving it!

Hopefully, the extra watering they all got will help the ones that maybe don’t like the heat quite as much. :-D

After the watering was done, and things had cooled down a bit more, I did decide to do one transplanting job done today, but that will get its own post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

It’s a little hot out there…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This is from a screen cap on my phone’s weather app. Just before 3 in the afternoon, and we’re at 35C/95F, and it feels like 38C/100F.

At least, that’s the data from the weather station this app is linked to.

This is the thermometer outside a south facing window.

Yeah. The thermometer is “only” labelled to 50C/122F, and the needle has passed that. It looks like it’s close to where a 60C/140F would be. Certainly past where a 55C/131F would be.

This thermometer is mounted on a white wall, so there’s no reflective heat from any dark surfaces, but it’s also in full sun, so it’s probably reading a bit high. Still, this is what it would feel like if someone were insane enough to be out in the sun today.

Wow.

The Re-Farmer

Another scorcher

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, the heat wave is back!

When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, it was already 26C/78F. When I grabbed the hose to use it briefly, before topping up the cats’ water bowls, the water was almost hot! So I decided to water a bunch of things, using up the warmer water so as not to shock the plants, until I could fill the cats’ bowls with cold water.

Since I have not found what I need to fix the front tap, we have all our hoses linked together at the back tap. That’s almost 300 feet of hose.

I got quite a bit of watering done before it started coming out cold! The nice thing about being on well, though, is that it does get cold. Ice cold, even. When we were on city water, on days like this, the best we could get was maybekindasorta cool.

I’m going to have to get in the habit of carrying a basket or something with me, when I do my rounds.

This are thinnings from the three different carrot beds. I would have picked more but 1) it was getting hard to hold them all in one hand – especially the ones where the greens broke off, 2) the mosquitoes were eating me alive and 3) I had a Creamsicle deciding to jump up on my back.

And roll around.

And repeatedly start to fall off before I finally got him off (with only minor scratches! LOL).

So he then decided to start rolling right over the carrots!!

*sigh*

We have lots of little sunburst squash showing up, but just the one bigger one. I didn’t want it to get too tough and seedy, so I picked it now. Later, I will choose one that I will leave to go to seed, for next year. We will probably still buy seeds, but I’d like to at least try saving seed as well.

This afternoon, I made a quick run into town. By the time I got home, we had reached our high of the day, which we are still now, now. At 32C/89F and a humidex putting us at 38C/100F, I was very glad to see my daughter meet me at the garage to help me hall the water jug refills back to the house! Yes, I did have the wagon, but getting anything through the door with kittens about is much easier with 2 people!

The sun room is definitely NOT a place to hang out right now.

If we were still keeping the doors open for the cats, I would have had the ceiling fan on to help at least a little. Right now, I just have the replacement door open – it has a screen window that actually opens and closes, unlike the one we replaced. :-D My mother used to have lacy curtains on all the windows because of how hot it would get in here. I can understand why, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having a sun room.

Who knows. We might use this at least part of this room as a greenhouse, some day.

The girls must be just dying upstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if my daughter has to stop working because her computer and drawing tablet are overheating again!

We’re supposed to “cool down” after today, but the only means we’re supposed to remain below 30C, over the next two weeks.

One of the things I did while doing my evening rounds was bring the rain barrel we’d found behind the storage out, closer to the garden. My thought was to fill it with water, so that I can use ambient temperature water in the garden, rather than the hose. Unfortunately, since I’d last rolled it aside, it has developed cracks where it had been lying on the ground. I’m thinking I can patch them with some silicone sealant and still use it. I think I even have some, already. Before I do that, though, I have to figure out what I can use as a cover for it. I wouldn’t want some critter to fall in.

At some point, we will dig up the hose to the tap by the garden and replace it. The set up for the tap itself is getting very wobbly, so I want to redo that, as well. Thinking of how we do want to keep at least part of the area back there as a vegetable garden, I not only want to have a tap I can hook a hose onto, but I’d like to set up a surface area of some kind, so we can wash the veggies right away, or even just wash our own hands. Maybe with a small bench to sit on while scrubbing, for old and decrepit people like myself. ;-)

We can’t even start on that until we get the branch piles cleared away, first. The line runs almost under one of them – and that’s where water was spraying through the ground when I tested the tap. :-D

I’m really looking forward to when those are gone!

The plan was to hire the company that cleared trees from the roof and power lines to bring in their massive chipper this year, but after having to replace so many expensive items just this month, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do it after all. Ultimately, though, we should invest in our own chipper.

All in good time.

Little by little, it’ll get done. :-)

The Re-Farmer