I got a phone call from my brother this morning, letting me know he was going to our mother’s for Easter services. He had double checked that a particular restaurant would be open, so we arranged for me to meet them there.
I left early and was able to grab a table for us. He hadn’t told my mother that I would be there, so she was quite surprised. I’m not sure it was a good surprise – at least at first! 😄 Of course, she did eventually get around to asking why I didn’t go to church. Thankfully, my brother played interference and diverted her with some humour, because my answer would have been along the lines of “you. I don’t go to church because of you!” Which is partly true. I could go to church with her every Sunday, and it wouldn’t be good enough. Still, she was having one of her good days, so it was a pleasant visit overall. She even complimented me on my appearance. Okay, so it was really a backhanded insult, but I don’t think my mother even knows how to make a genuine compliment. 😄
It was good to get together, and especially to see my brother. I don’t see him anywhere near as much as I’d like to, and his wonderful wife even less (after my mother’s unending mistreatment of her, she no longer comes out to visit my mother – and I’m not sure my mother has even clued in to that. 😥)
As we were chatting, I mentioned the water in the path we’re having to walk through to get to the garage, and the that is starting to form. My brother had been wondering if we could simply go around it, but there’s just too much snow. On top of that, as the snow melts… well…
… when I left this morning, there was just the deeper part in the path. While doing my rounds this morning, I was breaking through ice. Still, I was able to walk through it and not get my feet wet. By this afternoon, the “lake” had grown, and it’s now deep enough to reach where the laces start on my boots and seep in. Unfortunately, my rubber boots have a big crack in them, so I have to get a new pair. It’s really hard to find rubber boots that will fit my battered, wide feet or my over-developed calves.
Minor inconveniences. I’m just happy to see the snow going away! Which should happen quickly. The weekly forecast has changed. We were supposed to slowly warm up today and over the next couple of days, still staying below 10C/50F, then jump up to 16 and 17C/61-63F Instead, we now have a high for today expected to reach 7C/45F, and highs of 15C/59F for the next three days! The average high for this time of year is about 8C/46F, though the record highs have reached as much as 20C/68F, while the record lows have reached down to -15C/5F.
I’ll take the 15C!
All in all, it’s working out to be a gorgeous day to celebrate Easter!
May today be a day of great joy and blessings for you and yours!
Our basket this year included a multi-grain bread, figs and port sausage, ham, olives stuffed with blue cheese, a wheel of brie, salt, mustard with horseradish, parsley butter, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and hard boiled eggs, all of which received the traditional blessing.
The outside cats are quite enjoying the warmer temperatures.
I snagged this picture through our bathroom window. The cats have knocked everything off that shelf, except for an organizer box in the corner that’s too heavy for them to casually push around.
They love this shelf!
They are also loving the paths to the electric meter and burn ring, now clear of snow.
Now that our angel of a neighbour cleared the driveway for us, that’s going to melt clear quickly, too. I just finished going through the trail cam files and took note of the time stamps. He showed up almost exactly an hour after I started clearing the end of the driveway.
This is how far I got in that hour. About 6 feet or so. Maybe 7. Granted, a lot of that time included having to use the ice scraper to break up the plow ridge before I could shovel it away, so it would have gone faster clearing ordinary snow. Still, it would probably have taken almost 2 more hours, just to clear up to the gate, where it was slightly deeper due to drifting. My daughter working at the other end with the little electric snow blower would not have been able to go much faster. It definitely would have taken us all day to get a path just wide enough to drive through, clear.
Which means we both would have been in a world of hurt, today – and we are set to drive to the city this afternoon!
Today is Holy Saturday, After I finish this, we’ll start assembling and blessing our baskets. We’re making a second one as a gift to bring with us this afternoon.
There was quite the crowd when I came out to do my rounds this morning!
I counted 23 altogether this morning. I did not see The Distinguished Guest this morning, but he was hanging around inside the sun room when I went to feed them last night. He was so hungry, I was actually able to pet him a bit. Then he ran outside, but when I put food in the kibble house trays, I was able to pet him briefly, again.
He has a very distinctive, low pitched meow, I’ve noticed!
This handsome boy followed me up the driveway and, as I was walking back, he kept flinging himself to the ground in front of me, every few steps. I’d pet him a bit, then he’d run ahead again and the process would be repeated!
He still has pieces of burr stuck on his back. I’d been able to get the worst of them out, but he won’t let me take out any more. His tail is still chock full of burrs, but as soon as I check his tail with my hands (his fur is so long, the burrs are mostly hidden from view), he runs off.
Then, as I was coming back from the sign cam, I found this!
There was actually five of them, but when I stopped to get out my phone and zoom in for a picture, Judgement, who was at the front, ran ahead and under my feet! I had to stop and pet each one of them before they would let me past on the path. 😄
Plans for today had changed again. I got a call from my mother last night, telling me I didn’t need to come over to help her with errands today. After I rescheduled from yesterday because of highway conditions, she decided to try doing her errands herself, using her walker. She got it all done, including a large grocery shopping trip that they delivered to her place later. That’s a lot of walking for someone in their 90’s with wrecked knees!! She sounded quite pleased with herself.
In the end, I still needed to go to town to get a few last things for our Easter baskets – we will be making an extra one this year, as a gift – before the predicted storm hits some time today. I also had some stuff I was going to give to my mother when I helped her with errands today. So I decided I would drop stuff off at her place first, then head to town for my errands.
I called and left a message telling her I was going to drop things off on my way to the other town, but when I got there, she was fully expecting me to stay for a long visit. She had a dessert ready for me – it had bananas in it, which I already told her is among the things I won’t eat because I gave up sugar and starchy foods for Lent – and water boiled for tea. Of course, she mocked me for not eating the banana dessert, telling me I should go to church, instead. As if there is any sort of equivalence. Not that it matters. When we lived in the city, we were going to church every Sunday, but that still wasn’t good enough for her. It wasn’t the “right” church. Whatever that means to her at any given moment! 😄
I did stay for a few minutes as she went through the things I brought for her. One of them was a photo I found (I honestly don’t know where it came from) of me, my mother and my sister. I gave it to her to replace the one she has on her wall of me and her, that has a big X scratched across my face that had to have been done by our vandal, though my mother never noticed it until I spotted it.
It should be interesting to see if she actually replaces the picture. When she saw the one I brought for her, she told me she thought she already had a copy.
Then she started listing things off that she wanted me to take, from the carboard box her groceries were delivered in, to the bucket of peelings for our compost she had in her fridge. I just told her, not today! For someone who complained for years about how their friends from the city kept bringing their unwanted junk (and sometimes pets!) to the farm, because “there’s so much room at the farm!”, it amazes me that she now does that to me. I’ve even pointed that out to her, but she just laughs, and keeps going it!
When I was finally on my way, I took a different route to town. The highway to my mother’s town was nice and clear, but this East/West road turned out to have quite a lot of ice and snow, which was melting, just to make it that much more slippery, along the way. Especially as I got closer to the next highway. That one, at least, was almost clear until I got to the turnoff to where I needed to go. That road had sheer ice on it, including the exit lane. Yikes!!
Once in town, everything was pretty clear. I ran my errands, including picking up the prescription refills that were scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. Since I was in town anyhow, I picked them up – along with some antihistamines. While walking around this morning, I was having a hard time breathing because my sinuses were completely blocked. It took me a while to clue in that, duh, it’s spring. I don’t know what I’m allergic to out there – it’s too early for pollen in our area – but something out there is causing me to react. It’s not as much of a problem when I’m indoors, but once I’m outside, it doesn’t take long for problems to start!
On my way home after finishing my errands, I was happy to see the provincial trunk road was mostly clear. After the other East/West roads I took, I was not sure what to expect.
Now that this trip is done, we should hopefully not need to go anywhere again until the weekend, and by then, any snow from the predicted storm we get should be cleared from the roads, even in the city. At least I hope so. The last few times we’ve been invited to their place, we ended up turning around and going home because of storms!
I need to start my next batch of seeds this week. I’m not quite sure how I’ll be managing that. We just have the one warming mat in the big aquarium greenhouse, and while the Spoon tomatoes are coming up, there isn’t a single pepper germinating yet. There’s the space beside the warming mat, but the eggplant there won’t germinate for a little while yet. The strawberries could handle being moved to the small aquarium, but we’ll also have to move out my daughter’s orchids. They are there not just to protect from cats, which is not needed anymore, but for the extra warmth. Being by the window in winter is too cold for them.
We’ll figure something out.
Until then, I’ll be getting the toilet paper tubes we’ve been saving and make them into little plant pots to start seeds in. We’ll be working on the seeds that need to be started 6-8 weeks before last frost this time.
I’m so glad we were able to block the living room off from that cats! It’s making all this a lot more stress free!
The fog has mostly dissipated – I was still seeing touches of it while going my morning rounds.
My goodness, but it does make things beautiful, this time of year!
I couldn’t resist getting a picture from the same spot as yesterday.
The temperatures are nice and mild right now. As I write this, we’re at -8C/18F, with almost no breeze at all. We’re supposed to reach a high of -6C/21F today. A good day to finish clearing in front of the garage so I can open the doors to get my mother’s car out, and clear a few more paths.
One way we can tell how much more pleasant the weather is, is by the cats.
The usuals are back to preferring to eat on the cat house roof again. In this bunch, there’s only one that’s friendly. I can sometimes pet the black and white, but not often. Still more than I can come close to Broccoli. I don’t know how she’s been with her kittens gone. She’s been avoiding me, so perhaps she’s made an association between me and missing babies. I don’t know. I so want to socialize her more! We’ll have to wait longer before we can try to trap more females. The hard part is waiting for things to warm up, so there’s no chance of a critter freezing in the trap, but not so warm that they start going into heat and get pregnant, first.
Speaking of which, I saw Shop Towel skulking around when I put the food out. While I was switching the memory card on the trail cam (and melting the frost off the lens and solar panel), I heard a cat fight, and am guessing it involved Shop Towel.
Before going in, I tried to get some more pictures of the frost and was able to zoom in to get this little cutie.
We have not been able to keep up with the feeding this winter, because of the racoons destroying the hanging feeder, but the chickadees and blue jays have been raiding the kibble trays, instead!
While getting this shot, something strange in a tree above the storage house roof caught my eye.
Well, I guess we can see who Shop Towel went after! One of his older sons, no less. A couple of the grey and whites are much larger – more like their dad in size.
In other things, I spoke to my mother last night. She’s in need of a grocery shopping trip, which is why I want to clear the doors to her car. She was fully expecting to go to the grocery store today; apparently my sister is supposed to be visiting her, though my mother didn’t seem sure, when I spoke to her. I pointed out to her that it’s New Year’s Day. The stores will be closed. She sounded so surprised when I told her that. 😕 So, if all goes well, I’ll be heading out tomorrow to help her with shopping – in her own car!
For now, I’m monitoring cats. With the littles gone, I actually got a full night’s sleep! The ladies seem relieved to have the room to themselves again – even if Marlee still hisses at Butterscotch and Nosencrantz sometimes. Leyendecker and Cheddar seem to be looking for the littles when they come in. Meanwhile, I now have grandma, who moved out here with us, in with me. My daughters just let me know she’s been behaving oddly, like there is something stuck in her mouth. We thought it might have been something stuck in her throat, but I’ve seen her eating. She seems fine, until she suddenly makes retching faces and started rubbing the sides of her face with her paw. My one attempt to gently move her head for a look had her meow in alarm and run off, so I do think something is hurting her. Hopefully, it’s something that will work itself out. So far, she’s eating and drinking normally. Right now, she’s on my bed, not far from Marlee, and settling in for a nap.
I’ll have to get one of the girls to take over monitoring her when it’s time to get outside.
Well, it’s New Year’s Eve! Let’s take a look at how things have been on the blog for the past year.
As we did last year, we will have two top ten lists. The first will be the posts with the highest number of views in 2022. The other will be the posts actually written in 2022 that got the most views.
All links will open new taps, so you won’t lose your place!
Here are the overall top 10 posts with the most visits, starting from lowest to highest.
10: Fall Garden Update: Crespo squash This one is from 2021. We did try to grow Crespo squash again in 2022, but they did so very poorly. Yes, I plan to try again!
8: Presto, Change-o! I saw a traffic spike to this 2021 post in the fall. I suspect a lot of Canadians were looking for information on pressure canning in 2022. Particularly since we don’t have anywhere we can take the gauges to for calibration.
7: Making Crab apple cider vinegar: airlock or cheesecloth? This post goes back to 2020. In 2022, I saw a large spike in traffic to crab apple related posts. Last year, we had no crab apples to harvest, and I don’t think we were the only ones. This fall, it seems we were not the only ones to have an excellent harvest to do things with!
5: Chokecherries, ready to freeze This post, from 2019 also sees a jump in traffic in the fall. We, however, have had no chokecherries to speak of for two years in a row, now.
1: Things with crab apples: apple cider vinegar Hmm… I see a pattern here! This post from 2019 saw the largest spike in traffic in the fall I’ve seen in a long time! It looks like crab apples did well for a lot of people in 2022!
I see another pattern in all these popular posts. They are all food related, and all but 2 are related to preserving food in some way!
I think that tells us something of what’s been important to people in the past year.
Now, we have the top 10 posts that were actually written in 2022.
10: First snow A 2022 cat post makes the first entry in this year’s top 10 list, and it’s not even two months old!
9: Cabbages update – and a fundraiser announcement We’ve had so much help from the cat lady and her rescue, but nothing compares to how she went all out in the fight for Cabbages’ survival. I’m happy to say that Cabbages is not only healthy and happy with the Cat Lady and her family, but her treatment is now being used as a case study by other vets, in the treatment of other severely ill cats. Saving Cabbages is saving the lives of other cats!
6: Getting Cozy (crochet talk) The cozy I made for my tea mug has disappeared. I think the cats dragged it off somewhere!
5: Thoughts on being prepared Okay, I just got distracted by reading this post over again! It remains quite relevant. With the winter storms that have just passed through much of Canada and the US a short while ago, I truly believe this is something we all need to consider, no matter where we live. There is one thing I would add to my commentary. We’ve found that ghee, purchased in restaurant quantities, can be a LOT cheaper than buying the jars in the grocery store. Ghee is a shelf stable butter, and would be an excellent addition to a preparedness pantry!
4: Remembered to order: from Lee Valley I’m rather curious about why a post about getting a sharpening stone and holster for our scythe got this much traffic!
3: Sometimes, I hate being right (convoy talk) The use of the Emergency Measures Act against legal, peaceful protestors has gone through its mandatory committee investigation. The investigation – as biased as it was – proved that there was absolutely no reason for it to have been invoked, and that our Prime Dictator and media repeatedly lied about the convoy. But will anyone be held accountable for it? Of course not. Our Prime Dictator should have resigned years ago, the RCMP should have laid charges against him (but didn’t, for political reasons) – and that was even before he went full dictator – but there has been zero accountability. And most Canadians have no idea what happened, or are too apathetic to care.
1: Recommended: RoseRed Homestead – That “Woman with a gadget” This is from my 2022 additions to the Recommended series – which I still need to add to the list under the Recommended tab! Rose Red Homestead is well worth taking the number one spot for 2022.
Well, the themes for the most popular 2022 posts are a lot more diverse, but not one of them made the overall list. Not by a long shot!
What I am seeing seems to show a trend towards people looking for more information on how to grow and preserve their own food.
After the past three years, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Food security has become a huge priority for so many!
I wasn’t planning on writing a post today, but I just had to share. What an awesome Christmas surprise!
When I turned on the tablet and the live feed to the garage security camera, there was something different about our driveway.
I could see grass.
We’d only been able to clear the driveway just wide enough for a vehicle to drive through, not wide enough to uncover any grass.
Someone had cleared our driveway, and we never heard a thing!
When I went out to switch the memory card on the trail cam, I could see that this was not done by our lovely neighbours, and the renters of most of this property. They would clear our driveway with their front end loader. These were ordinary tire tracks. I could see that someone drove in, clearing the driveway on one side, almost up to the burn barrel, backed up to turn around, then cleared the other side on the way out.
Of course, the first thing I did was check the memory card to see who did it and when.
It turned out to be a pickup truck with a plow attachment. It’s one I recognize and see every winter, but I’ve never been able to see the driver’s face. I had no idea who it was. Also, it was done in the early afternoon! We were busy making our dinner at the time. On the trail cam, I could see the truck go by and stop on the road, then back up to our driveway and go in, then out again – just two quick passes to widen our driveway. Normally, we would have had the gate closed and locked, but with this weather, we’ve been leaving it open. He basically took advantage of that!
So I sent a message to someone I figured might know who it was, and got a name of who it could be. I was able to send a message to that person, and it was confirmed. It turned out to be someone who was a neighbour when I was growing up, and still lives in the area, though now further away. I’ve known him for most of my life, but I don’t think I’ve seen him since we’ve moved back here. In fact, after all these years, I probably wouldn’t recognize him if I did.
We have such good neighbours! It so makes up for the problems we’ve been having with our vandal!
There is other good news. The littles are settling in quite well! Walnut already settled in almost immediately, but it getting even more exploratory. The bitty tabby is also getting better, and not running away quite as much.
Then, last night, I woke to feel a cat curled up against my leg. It was completely dark, but I could reach my phone and try for a flash picture.
Yup! It was the bitty tabby!
The bitty and Walnut have been wrestling and napping on my bed a lot more. During the night, I could feel them walking across me and the bitty – which I could recognise by the almost negligible weight – even curled up on my thigh to sleep. Then, this morning, I was able to pick the bitty up and snuggle him for a while, and he even settled in and start purring, rather than staying tense and running off.
Also, yes. The bitty is now confirmed male.
Unfortunately, we’ve still had no luck getting his sibling in the sun room. After my last failed attempt to catch it, it’s even more skittish. I was afraid that would happen!
It is already noticeably warmer out there, though. Not the actual temperature – at least not that early in the morning – but the wind has finally stopped! What a difference that makes!
While doing my rounds – and checking out the driveway! – I ran the van for a bit. My daughter’s Christmas gift to the family is going to be Chinese food. We’re pretty sure the place we usually order from will be open, but if not, we have a back up plan. It does mean driving to town, though, so I wanted to make sure to start the van and run it for a bit.
I just realized I forgot to plug the block heater back in. I’d better take Walnut off my chest and go do that now!
Yes. I have a little kitten curled up on my chest and napping as I write this.
In my family, Christmas Eve is when we celebrate the Wigilia feast. Whether you are starting your celebrations today or on Christmas Day, I wish you and yours a joyous and peaceful Christmas.
The Re-Farmer 