insect damage

A quiet day… not really in a good way

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Things were all right in the morning. After taking my morning painkillers, I went out to join my daughter during the cat feeding.

We did not get any kittens. They are still very skittish, and the older cats kept pushing their way in for the cat soup, even though they got some in the other food bowls. I tried distracting Sweetie with the cat toy but she was too hungry to be distracted, and insists on eating at the shrine feeding station, where the kittens come through the chain link fence. As today was supposed to be another day or rain and potential storms, we put the carrier and bait bowl back into the catio, with the regular food bowl set to keep the door from closing by accident, and let the kittens be for now.

I had brought my walker out so, after my daughter went inside, I went around the yard and checked on the garden beds. I found both winter and summer squash that I could hand pollinate. We should have some yellow zucchini large enough to harvest soon, and some of the green scallop squash. We might get more of the Early Prolific Straightneck squash, but there are still no yellow pattypans or lemon squash. Interestingly, I think one of the squash that were thinned by transplanting might be a lemon squash. The tiniest of round, yellow female flower buds are showing up and I don’t think they are pattypans.

In the main garden area, I just had to get a picture of a monster.

The first image above is of a carrot from the Rainbow Mix that has gone to seed. It is remarkably huge and sturdy! Normally, carrots don’t go into seed until their second year, but I don’t mind having one that I can save seed from.

The second image of the slide show above shows what’s left of the Daikon radish. The flea beetles not only denuded the stems of leaves, but they even ate a lot of the pods, too! There are still pods left, but nowhere near as many as before. Enough to collect seeds from, though, if they were not too badly damaged.

Once back inside, I was feeling well enough to have breakfast before trying to lie down for a bit. When I got up again, I was able to make a lunch using some leftover brisket, with potatoes and bush beans from the garden, to make a stew.

While I was cooking, I heard some noises outside the kitchen window. My brother was leveling the ground where the tree and patio blocks had been. He had to dig up some remarkable thick roots that were buried under where some patio blocks where. He also had to remove some of the soil along the edge of where the blocks would be so that it was lower than the blocks, instead of higher. He levels a block in the corner between the house and the concrete steps so it wasn’t draining towards the house as well, and the blocks along the outside edge were sloped slightly to drain away from the house. He ended up filling our wheelbarrow completely with dirt and detritus he’d removed. Probably the heaviest load it’s ever had. Which would have been fine, except the tire turned out to be flat! I had come out to talk to him and, as he pushed the wheelbarrow from the grass onto the sidewalk, I was able to see the flat. All he could tell is that it wasn’t rolling right. He’s checked the tire before and couldn’t see a valve, so he thought it was a solid rubber tire. He did find the valve, but it had been partially pushed in from lack of air. He assured me he’s take care of it and told me to go back inside. Later on, I saw that he had also loaded all the old hot water tanks and pumps into his little trailer. They’ll be taken to the scrap yard another time.

By the time I finished cooking, the painkillers had definitely worn off. After lunch, I took them when the 6 hour alarm went off and tried to stay up longer, but eventually had to lie down again. Frustrating when it becomes difficult just sitting upright in a chair. *sigh*

I did manage to get a basement check in. I had to turn on a couple of the fans. One, aimed at the well pump and pressure tank because there was so much condensation dripping, it was creating a puddle. The other more in the new basement, more for air circulation and humidity levels. The recent rain, which is still sort of happening now, hasn’t been enough to cause problems in the basements.

I was also able to head outside and do the evening cat feeding. Some of the skunks are getting quite brazen! As I was setting up some bowls with cat milk in the kibble, specifically for the kittens (with extra to draw the adult cats away), I heard a commotion. I’d put some kibble at the back of the shrine base. A skunk was there, but one of the little tabbies was wanting that food (even though there was more) and hissing and spitting at the skunk. Which was about 5x its size!!! I scooted the skunk away, going down a path behind a willow where there’s an opening under the chain link fence they can fit through. I knew it would be coming back, so I tossed some kibble into the grass of the path, so it would have no reason to go closer and scare the kittens.

I also move the shrine feeding station bowls next to the catio, on either side of the door, with the bait bowl inside the carrier again. The bigger cats will eat the closest food, which should leave the bait bowl inside the carrier for the kittens, when they go looking for food later.

If the skunks don’t eat it first.

*sigh*

Then it was back inside, and not doing much. The painkiller either didn’t kick in, or the pain was worse and the painkiller has managed to just take the edge off. At least I can tell myself that, with how wet it is outside, I wouldn’t be getting much done out there, anyhow. It’s supposed to continue raining, off and on, until about 2am. It does look like some onions are ready to harvest, though. Something I should be able to do tomorrow, if all goes well.

Tomorrow afternoon – if we’re not delivering kittens to the rescue – my daughter and I will work on breaking down that fallen tree. I can handle a chain saw, and my daughter will be able to clear away the branches and smaller logs. Normally, the two of us together will drag the bigger logs out, but we’re both pretty broken, so I just want to cut things to size. I’m hoping to be able to get an 18′ length for the next garden bed out of this tree. The base of its trunk looks like it will match the size of the one that’s currently in place for the garden bed fairly well.

That’s pretty much it for the day.

I am looking forward to seeing the doctor, a little over a week from now, and getting those test results. If things go as expected, she’ll get me in for a hysterectomy fairly soon. If not, then I’ll be referred to specialists in the city. Who knows how long that will take.

I feel like I’ve lost most of the year over this.

The Re-Farmer

Plenty done today!

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It was a productive day today – and in a good way, if rather expensive. How expensive, we don’t quite know yet!

First up, when doing my morning rounds, I was able to water the trees as well. It’s been a few days, and wow, a lot can happen in a few days, when it comes to growing things!

While all the transplants seems to be doing all right, the Opal Plum had one heckuva growth spurt with that one branch!

The real surprise while I was watering was spotting this.

This is the Royalty raspberry! One has still survived! We got a bundle of three, and they actually fruited in their first year, even though they were first year canes. The next year, only one survived the winter, and really didn’t grow much at all. So it was no surprised when there was no sign of any at all, this spring. Until this morning!

Needless to say, it has been added to my group of trees and bushes that get watered. I’ve included a single silver buffalo berry as well, as it’s the only one that seems to not be doing well. The watering doesn’t seemed to have helped. Makes me wonder if there’s something under it that’s causing a problem. A large rock, perhaps, or meandering poplar roots.

Now that I know what silver buffalo berry bushes look like, I think we actually have some growing wild, just a short distance away! The sign cam is right near the corner of the fence line, and I can see some bushes in the ditch that look like our own silver buffalo berry bushes. If we can confirm that at some point, we might transplant a few to fill in the gaps for the ones we planted that didn’t make it.

After watering all the garden beds, I still had time to water in the outer yard, where the Korean Pine and walnuts are.

We now officially have three walnut saplings.

Two of them are from seed, one is the year old sapling we got at the same time. Yay!!!

After finishing my rounds and chores, I grabbed a late breakfast, then headed to town early for my first appointment with the truck. The autobody place is not far from a lumber yard and hardware store that I keep forgetting exists, as we don’t usually go to this area of town. I dropped the truck off almost an hour early and had a chance to talk to the lady that’s been in charge of dealing with the insurance company and trying to get our truck done. I told her where I was going after leaving the truck with them, and that I had an appointment for the front tires to be replaced a half hour after my appointment with them was scheduled. She told me that was plenty of time.

We get fliers for this hardware store that I check out, so I did know that they did doors and windows. What I wasn’t completely sure of was if they did pre-hung doors and, more importantly, if they did installations.

I was very happy to find out that they did! My searched for companies that could do it came up with rather useless results, and I was starting to get concerned. The one company I knew of that my brother had hired to install new windows here, the summer before we moved in, disappeared during the illegal lockdowns, as so many other small, independent businesses did.

The guy I spoke to filled out a form and gave me the business card for their installer. In a day or two, we will get a call to book a time for him to come here to take measurements and see what we’ve got now. We’ll then be able to talk about what pre-hung doors we want (or can afford), and things like making sure the arm bar get reinstalled.

That was done so quickly, I decided to look around the store a bit. In the gardening section, of course.

While there, I remembered that we are wanting to add more clothes lines (our posts can support three lines), and went looking for that section. They had the exact same kits that I’d seen at another store, but at a better price.

I decided to get one.

My daughter has been diligent about following her doctor’s instructions to help fight the skin infections she’s getting, and that includes washing her clothing and bedding more often, in hot water, then hanging them on the line so the sun can further disinfect them. We’ve got a long clothes line, but when things like bedding are included, it runs out of space, fast!

Eventually, we’ll have three lines set up again, but just having the second one will be a huge help.

That done, I headed back to the autobody shop. It was still early for my appointment, but I saw the truck was no longer where I’d parked it. They took it in early!

As I waited, I had a chance to chat with both ladies behind the counter. When I told them how things went at the hardware store, they both started telling me how they’ve had them do work for them, too, and how great they are! One of them said she lives in an old farmhouse that she and her family basically rebuilt the old farmhouse they bought (admitting, they probably should have just torn it down and built a new house!), and they did much of the work for them; doors, windows, flooring… She was really happy with them. So that was certainly encouraging!

A little while later, the woman working my file came around to tell me that their guy says there is no need for them to paint more than the top rail part of the box frame, after it’s straightened out, not the entire side of the box, which would include an old dent and the rust around the wheel well. That will save us $140, as the insurance company does not cover rust damage, so we would be charged for that portion of the paint job.

We talked about the tail light as well, and she made the call to find out how much a new one would cost, right then and there.

$350.

!!!!!

Good grief!

What she did do was give me the part number, then did a quick search for it on Amazon.

$135.

What a difference!

If we can get it delivered.

I explained the issues we’ve been having, and how Amazon has simply cancelled orders that would be mailed, due to the threat of a strike. If there is an alternative delivery method available, either to our physical address (which doesn’t exist on any maps) or to the store our post office is in, we could still order it, though.

She has been trying so hard to bring the costs down for us! Talk about awesome.

Towards the end, when I got the keys and was ready to head out, she told me the parts would be ordered right away, and when they came in, we would get a call.

Then she mentioned they would need the truck for a couple of days.

…

I told her, we’ve only got one vehicle. I’d have to make arrangements of some kind. She said that, when we get the call later one, we can talk about that.

??

As far as I know, they don’t offer the loan of a service car, as some places in the city can do.

If nothing else, I might be able to borrow one of my brother’s cars for a couple of days, but I’d really prefer to avoid that. They use both their cars quite a bit.

That done, it was off to the garage to drop off the truck and the keys.

A friend from high school had messaged me a couple of days ago, saying she was in town, and we had arranged to get together after I dropped the truck off. She doesn’t have her own transportation this time, so we walked around for a while, stopping at a couple of places, before sitting down in one of the smaller restaurants for a very late lunch.

I didn’t know how long the truck would take, but by the time we were done lunch, I figured it was time to start heading back. Which turned out to be just right; they finished with the truck maybe 10 or 15 minutes before I got there! My friend was able to join me for most of the way before we said our goodbyes. We’ll be able to get together again, before she heads home.

As for the truck, I was happy to hear they found no other issues while working on it. 😄

In the end, though, it cost over $660 after taxes, including a “new tire enviro tax”.

*sigh*

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to bring it back whenever I have a chance to get the tires torqued. It should be done withing 100km of driving.

That done, I drove across the street to the grocery store.

In that short drive, I could already feel the difference. I had not realized just how much I was feeling something of off about the tires! Not even anything I could specifically pinpoint, but gosh, once it was no longer there, I could sure tell!

One thing I needed to get at the grocery store was more kibble for the outside cats. With the cost of gas jumping 5 cents per liter, and only needing a couple of things, it wasn’t worth it to drive to the nearest Walmart for better prices.

Their shelves for large cat food bags were completely empty!

The only other thing I needed was eggs, so I got those, then headed to the one other grocery store available. With this one, I was able to pick up a couple of bags of their house brand in 8kg sizes, totaling about $45. They had one 7.5kg bag of name brand kibble available, and it cost $45 just on its own!

The outside cats are going to just have to put up with no-name cat food for now.

I did have to pick up a bit of gas before leaving town, feeling rather frustrated with myself for forgetting to get gas the last time I was in town, when it was still $1.299 a liter, instead of $1.349 a liter!

I’ve been getting weather alerts for incoming rain or thunderstorms all day, so after everything was put away and the outside cats were fed, I did my evening rounds to check on things.

I spotted this guy, that I haven’t seen in a while.

I tried zooming in to get a picture of his face. It looks like he’s sporting a rather large new scar on his head!

He is pretty feral, and won’t let me even walk in his general direction without running away. I still haven’t completely figured out if he is one of ours, returned after months away, or a stranger that discovered we are a source of food and relative safety.

There is still no sign of Caramel’s two little ones, though this morning, I think I caught her trying to lure Havarti away. I so wish she would bring her littles back! They need access to solid food, and she’s been hanging out here most of the time, instead of tending to them, or hunting for them.

No sign of Zipper, either.

😢

I checked on all the garden beds, of course, which had me walking past a large currant bush my sister had given to my mother. My mother planted it near the main garden area, right under a chokecherry tree, so it’s completely shaded out almost all day. I almost never find berries on it, though, and it was years before I found one and could confirm it was a black currant bush.

This spring, it bloomed prolifically, so I was hopeful for a grand harvest.

Nope.

Not going to happen.

I think I finally found out why it hasn’t been producing.

The leaves have yellow spot all over them, I just realized, now that I can see them in the photo, that these are egg clusters!!!

As you can see, the forming berries are being killed off. I had thought the spots might have been some sort of fungus that’s also killing the berries, but if the spots are actually eggs, and there are so, so many of them, perhaps it’s whatever is laying the eggs that’s doing it. I haven’t seen anything on the leaves that was laying eggs. Certainly not in such numbers. There’s hundreds of leaves, covered in these spots.

The second picture shows more what the berries should be looking like, at this stage, though it’s got an odd bump on it.

Gotta do some research on this!

My weather apps keep saying we’re supposed to be getting rain or storms, but as I finished my evening rounds, I just got hit by a couple of raindrops, and that’s it.

We could really, really use some rain. It just keeps missing us!

Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter, but the hottest part of the day is not supposed to hit until 4pm. Hopefully, that will give me a chance to finally get back to working on that trellis bed in the morning. I plan to take the truck in to get the new tires torqued in the afternoon.

Must. Get. Sleep!!!!

Well, we’ll see how that goes, when the time comes!

Altogether, though, it has turned out to be a very good and productive day.

It will be a while, though, before we find out how much getting the front door replaced, and the truck done, will end up costing us.

It’s going to be expensive. That’s all I know for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: new finds!

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Today is supposed to exceed 30C/86F, so I wanted to make sure the garden got an deep watering this morning. When I had removed the shade cloth from the three beds with fall harvest crops planted, the seedlings seemed to be doing pretty good.

When I returned to cover them this morning, I saw this on one of the beds.

There was no evidence of a critter getting under the chicken wire cover. That suggested whatever ate these leaves was either a really small, light critter, like a mouse (very unlikely, given how many hungry mouths our mama cats have to feed), or it was insects.

My money is on the grasshoppers. :-(

This was, however, the only damage found this morning. The rest was all fun stuff. I was absolutely thrilled to see this.

Our very first Tennessee Dancing Gourd!!!

Somehow, in seeing all the flowers in the plants next to the luffa, my brain just stuck them in the “melons” category. On looking more closely, I found lots of these.

It looks like we are going to have plenty of little spinner gourds growing! They only get a few inches long and, according to one of the reviews I read when I bought the seeds, they are very prolific. The writer claimed their one plant ended up with at least 250 gourds. This was someone with a much longer growing season than ours, so I don’t expect that sort of success, but we should definitely have quite a few from our several plants.

Meanwhile, the flower bud on the nearby luffa plant I saw yesterday, looking like it was starting to open, absolutely exploded into flower this morning! So awesome!

What is also awesome is being able to walk past the squash tunnel and, from any angle, be able to see melons, and knowing that there are more little ones, still hidden under the leaves.

I finally remembered to uncover and read the labels by the winter squash. The ones that are so enthusiastically climbing the wire are the Little Gem variety, with several small squash already forming.

This morning, I finally saw some fruit forming on the Teddy variety of winter squash.

Both of these varieties as supposed to produce small fruit, with a short growing season, so when I hadn’t seen any of the Teddy squash developing, I was beginning to wonder. I am really excited to see the fruit developing now. :-)

The Re-Farmer

In the garden, and critters not in the garden

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Well, we seem to be back to having all the rain systems passing us by again. We are a bit cooler – as I write this, we are at “only” 26C/79F – but our humidex puts us at 33C/91F. Which I suppose helps, as we didn’t need to water the garden at all, yesterday. I probably could have left them be for another day, but I used a water soluble fertilizer on most of it, this morning.

This is the biggest of the Pixie melons that I checked on this morning. I just love how perfectly round they are! :-D

We had a whole bunch of poppies blooming this morning, including this tiny one. So far, it’s the only one with petals that are almost the pink they are supposed to be.

Unfortunately, the potatoes are getting more grasshopper damage these days.

They seem to prefer to eat the flowers! There is a fair bit of leaf damage, though the potatoes are doing so well, they can handle it pretty well right now. Though this seemed odd.

The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes have virtually no damage at all! I think I found only two leaves that had been chewed on. That’s it. All the other varieties, meanwhile, have quite a lot of chewed up leaves. Apparently, these potato leaves taste bad to grasshoppers! :-D

I don’t know what it is about today, but the entire household seems to be having a hard time. Perhaps it’s the humidity? I’m actually feeling an oppressive weight in my upper chest and throat that gets worse when I lie down, making it hard to sleep, and my chronic cough has been an issue, even though the rain we did get cleared the smoke out of the air. I don’t know, but we’re all barely able to drag our butts around to get anything done, and we all feel like falling asleep where we stand. Even the cats are sprawled all over the house in furry puddles, sleeping.

Speaking of furry puddles…

The big woodchuck was under the bird feeder earlier today – along with a chipmunk! You can’t really see it in the photo, but the woodchuck’s back hips are just sort of flattened to the ground, like a puddle.

It came back again later, then got some company.

The little one wandered over and started munching. They look peaceable in the photo, but when the littler one got too close to the big one, the big one attacked it! Had it flipped over on its back, teeth at its throat, in a heartbeat!

Then it let the little one go. This was clearly a dominance thing, not an attempt to do real damage. The little one didn’t fight back, but submitted to the big one. Given the size – and likely age – difference, that was probably a wise decision on the little one’s part!

With today being a day where manual labour seems to be out of the question (and there is much of it that needs to be done, but couldn’t be, because of the heat we’ve been having), I decided it was a good time to write out some plans and lists, and make some diagrams, for next year’s garden. I’ve got our catalogues out and started some wish lists, as well as working out what we want to do for next year. The girls and I will go over things and hash out details, using what we learned with this year’s gardening. Having this worked out early will be useful as we clean things up at the end of this growing season. The main thing I’m trying to figure out is what to use to build the first permanent, high raised beds, which will be where we currently have the low raised beds bordered with logs. Buying lumber is out of the question for our budget, but the barn and sheds got picked over by our vandal over the years before we moved here, quite thoroughly. The barn used to be full of salvaged lumber. I have a few ideas in mind, but it looks like it’ll be a while before we can see if they’re even possible. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out.

The Re-Farmer