inside cats

First monthly stock up shop: this is what $448 looks like

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That, plus the things I didn’t get pictures of.

Normally, at this point, I would say “but first, the cuteness.” But no. Not this time.

This is not cuteness.

This is Clarence, being a jerk. 😄

As soon as I get up from my office chair, or go near it, Clarence runs ahead of me, jumps onto the chair and does this. As if to say, you can’t be mad at me! I’m adorable!

Then he goes all rubbery when I try to take him off.

Sorry, Clarence. You ain’t THAT cute! 😂

I fooled him this time, though. I didn’t need the chair. He was so disappointed. 🤣

Today, my daughter and I went into the city for our first stock up shopping trip. This is the one where we hit multiple stores along one strip.

Just as we were pulling out of our driveway, though, my cell phone started ringing. My first thought was, oh, no. It’s home care calling to say they can’t do my mother’s med assist.

My daughter was thinking the same thing.

I was able to pull over immediately – one advantage of living off of gravel roads! It turned out to be the autobody place. They wanted to book the truck in for the insurance claim repairs. That is now scheduled for the 26th to the 30th of September, and they have a courtesy car for me, so we can still do our stock up shopping. Yay!

Our next stop was at the gas station in town, where we picked up $40 in gas. Prices jumped 10¢/L overnight, a few days ago. Since the town nearest us is a resort town, they have the same prices as the city, at $1.449/L My CAA card gave me a whole 83¢ discount. Better than nothing, I suppose.

From there, we headed to the city and our first stop was at Walmart. The main thing we needed there was cat food.

This is what $200.23 looks like.

We did get a few other things to, of course.

For the dry kibble, we got a different brand because we could get three bags, about 21kg (a little over 40 pounds) for about the same price as two bags of our usual brand, which would have been 18kg total (a little over 36 pounds). Those were for the outside cats. We also got two 32 packs of wet cat food, one for the inside cats, one for the outside cats.

There was a really good price on some boxed cereal my daughters like, so we grabbed two of those, along with some feminine hygiene products I’ll be paid back for later. We got a 4 pack of Monster drinks for now; we’ll be getting a case at Costco (which I will be paid back for as well).

I grabbed some water flavours for my husband, and a pound of butter, as we were out this morning. We’ll stock up on butter at Costco, in a couple of days.

That’s it. That’s $200.

*sigh*

Our next stop was the Canadian Tire, with a side trip to Michaels. My older daughter needed a certain size of envelop we haven’t been able to find anywhere and really hoped we’d find them at the Michael’s! These are to fit some prints, among other things, my daughter sends to some of her higher tier Patreon supporters. They come in two sizes and we haven’t been able to find anything that fits both!

Thankfully, they did have a size that worked. We got her two packs of 50. That should last a while! They cost about $36, but I will be reimbursed for those, too.

Next, we drove across the lot to the Canadian Tire and picked up two bags of stove pellets for the litters. They weren’t in the usual place, so I asked staff. They directed me to the BBQ pellets. Which are fancy woods and really expensive. I found someone else and she tried to direct me to the same area. After looking it up on the devices all the staff carried, she finally saw what I was talking about, but had no idea where they were.

They turned out to be in the exit vestibule.

All we needed were two bags! That came out to $16.78.

Finally, we were off to the international grocery store. It shares a parking lot with a Dollarama, so we went into there, first. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but they did have more of those metal fence posts that I am currently using to fence around our corn and squash bed. I got four more, for a grand total of $21.25

Looking at the receipt, though, I see they have them listed as “flower stand”. ??? I have no idea how they would be used as a stand for flowers. I just tried looking them up and, after tweaking the search terms a bit, finally found them – being sold as fence posts. Which is what they’ll be used for!

Then we finally went into the international grocery store. It was past lunch time by then, so the first order of business was food! I got a three item dim sum meal that was so loaded, I only ate half of it, and the rest will be my supper. My daughter got some fresh sushi (they were in the process of making more while we watched) which turned out to be available for free with points, so I used them. So my meal, plus our drinks, totaled just over $16.

This place is where we get a number of things we don’t find anywhere else – at least not anywhere we go regularly. Since we have to make special trips into the city, we won’t have the luxury of hunting down specialty shops, nor harder to get to locations. I was happy that we made it today, because it was the last day for some really good deals.

This is what $248.54 looks like.

Pretty much everything in there was on sale.

The main thing I really wanted to get was the frozen sushi grade Ahi tuna. They were only $1.99/100grams. I ended up getting to two biggest frozen chunks of tuna they had left. My daughters really loved it, the last time they had a sale like this and I was able to get one. They enjoyed it both raw and as steaks, lightly seared.

The other proteins we got was some regular ground beef, applewood smoked bacon slab and regular smoked bacon slab, which was on sale. I also got a salmon for the girls that wasn’t one sale, except that it was a deal connected with my loyalty card’s special offers, so that got price reduced when we scanned it through.

This store has an excellent cheese counter. They had lactose free brie that was one a “buy two and save” sale. I also got a pesto gouda, which is something new to try. Yes, it was on sale, too.

Let’s see. What else…

There is a bag of pearl barley – something only my husband and I like in this household. It was not on sale. I can’t believe these now cost over $4 each! We got the soy sauce my husband likes and, after much searching, my daughter found some liquid smoke I remembered to pick up, for something I want to try later on.

There is a clamshell of nectarines that was on sale, and the sale for the instant milk tea was so good, I got two. The Kraft Mac and Cheese was on sale, as were the granola bars and Greek yogurt. My daughter also spotted some hair accessories on sale, so we picked those up as well.

Finally, we got things for immediate eating when we got home. A huge Lumber Jack sandwich for my husband (that’ll be at least two meals!), plus my daughter chose three different sushi for herself and her sister that was part of a multi-discount, so they came out to only $5 each. Last of all were a couple of drinks for the road.

So my total for all that was $248.54 after taxes. I got bonus points that largely made up for what I used to get my daughter’s lunch sushi for free, plus I got $54.94 taken off with loyalty card sales. It doesn’t include the savings from items on sale that are sold by weight. Including those, it was probably closer to $65-$70 off.

In the end, counting the items not pictured, gas and lunch, our total expenditure for the day came out to just over $578, some of which I will be paid back for.

There were a lot of things we would have liked to get. They were even on sale. The problem was, what is considered a sale price now for these things is what used to be a high regular price, just a year or two ago! We stayed in budget, but even if we wanted to go over budget, we would not have been willing to pay those prices, sale or no sale.

It should be interesting to see what the prices are like at Costco, when we go in a couple of days!

Tomorrow, however, I’m heading out again, this time to my doctor’s appointment. If things go as I hope, I’ll be getting X-rays on my left hip to find out what the heck is going on there of late. It has actually gotten better, in that I can put weight on my left leg to go up a step or two, but it’s still really unstable. While I am ambidextrous with most things, I’m left dominant. Which means I’m more likely to step forward with my left leg rather than my right. I made the mistake of stepping up a curb with my left leg today. I really should not have done that! It messed me up enough that, even when I was stepping up with my right leg, I needed to grip my daughter’s hand to stabilize me as I did it. I know I have bone spurs in both my hips, along with the OA. It could just be that the OA in my left hip has gotten worse.

No way to know without getting X-rays done.

I’m quite curious about what showed up in the X-rays of my left arm. They wouldn’t have called me in if everything was fine, but it can’t be too bad, or they would have had me either come in earlier, or told me to go to a hospital.

I’ll find out tomorrow!

Then it’s back to the city the day after, for the Costco shopping.

We need to focus on stocking up. I’m seeing more long range forecasts for this winter, and the general consensus seems to be a mild fall (ha!) and winter (double ha!), with lots of snow and blizzards. Which means a higher potential of getting getting snowed in.

At least this year, my brother’s equipment is all out here. Including snow blowers and a snow clearing tractor attachment. None of which we can use ourselves, though. Some need repairs, and some have “tricks” to using them, that only my brother knows! I expect they’ll be out here pretty much every weekend, once their grandson is back home. I know my brother has a lot of stuff he wants to get working on, including repairing a tractor that got damaged when they were moving their stuff out here. Plus, things need to be organized, just to be able to get at some of the equipment. When their property sold, they only had so much time to bring everything they were keeping out here, and were just shoving things wherever they could find the space! It’s not even something we can help him with, either. With their “new” mobile home/caravan they recently picked up, they will at least have a winter worthy “home” to use in the winter, though being an older model, even that has some work my brother wants to do on it to make sure it’s winterized and no rodents or wasps or anything like that can get in.

So while we can expect to have a much better winter when it comes to things like snow clearing, that can only happen while my brother is here. Which means there is still the potential to get snowed in. At least the truck is better able to get through the snow than our previous vehicle, but even that only goes so far.

There is much to be done, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Morning (and evening) kitties, and an update

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I’ll actually start with some evening kitties. I got these shots last night.

Havarti does NOT like to be picked up or carried, but gosh, he loves pets!

He also loves wrestling with grommet.

After the heat we’ve been having, daytime highs are finally getting to be more reasonable, but last night?

We dropped to 7C/45F last night. Lower than was in the forecast.

We’re expected to drop that low again tonight, though some apps say to expect a low of 9C/48F which means we might actually be hitting lower, the way the forecasts have been off lately.

Yes, we’re still in July.

Not quite cold enough to cover things, but pretty darn close. Overnight lows are expected to warm up again after tonight, but not by much.

As if the garden isn’t have a hard enough time as it is. My squash and melons still haven’t recovered from that one cold night back in June.

At least they’re protected from cats, though.

They do like the grass clipping mulch around the winter squash!

This morning, I tried to get some images of the feral kittens at the shrine feeding station. One seems to be missing from view. No idea if it was just behind something, or hadn’t made it to the feeding station yet.

Several of the older cats tend to push the littles away from the cat soup, even though they’ve already had dried kibble. I don’t make a lot of it, since it’s supposed to be just for the kittens, but there’s no stopping the adults from getting at it. All I can do is spread it around as much as possible, so everyone gets at least a little bit.

I have one more quick share for you – an inside cat this time!

Oh, Clarence. You are something special…

I need to get ready to go now. I found a ride to pick up the truck! Yay! We’ll have transportation again! Plus, I get to spend time with an old friend. 🩷 That’s about as good as it gets. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Kitties in the heat, our two headed cat, and first appointment with the new pain clinic physiotherapist

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As I write this, it’s just past 4:30pm, and we’ve surpassed our predicted high of 31C/88F and reached 33C/91F.

That couple of degrees makes a huge difference!

It could be worse; some areas to the south of us reported up to 40C/104F today.

It was a relatively cool 16C/61F when I did my morning rounds at about 6am. I even spotted the two feral kittens that are starting to show up regularly. No idea what’s happened to the other one or two that I saw.

When we got home from the physio appointment, there we were immediately greeted by Sir Robin, while Havarti and Eyelet remained splatted in the shade. Eyelet got up, waiting for their special food, while Havarti just lay there, unmoving – so I got a picture! The last image above was taken after everyone had a chance to eat their fill, and the full belly babies were back in the shade. Grommet was around, too; just not where I could get him in the picture.

Before we headed out, I spotted this on my bed and had to get a picture.

It looks like we’ve got a two headed cat in there! Ghosty and Tin Whistle had merged into one. 😄

That inside cats have also been splayed all over, but it’s a whole lot better for them, that’s for sure. Thank God for the AC my brother gave us. Between that and the living room, and a fan blowing the cooler air to there rest of the house, it’s so much better than previous years – and now my daughters have their AC set up in their upstairs “apartment”. It’s the fist summer since living here that the upstairs has been at all bearable. Even with that, they had to strategically place a fan to counter the wave of hot air coming up the stairs.

My husband and I got to enjoy the truck’s AC when we headed out just before noon for his appointment at the pain clinic. This was his first appointment with their physiotherapist, which made it more of a meet and greet. We met him last week, of course – he even remembered us a bit – but this was a more dedicated meeting.

It was a combination of interesting and encouraging… and not.

The interesting thing was, after asking questions about my husband’s specific issues and past treatment (the conclusion with the doctor, last time, was basically what we expected; he’s already tried everything there is to try, and there isn’t anything more or new they can offer him), he talked a fair bit about how things have changed in physio in more recent years. He talked about all the typical recommendations given out for decades; loose weight, exercise more, focus on core exercises, etc. simply haven’t been working. They weren’t helping people get past their pain or improve healing of injuries. There have been a lot of studies trying to figure out why, and they found many factors were at play. An example would be how they’d have two groups of people doing comparable exercises. Some people would report improvement, even though there was no measurable improvement in their condition. Others would report no improvement at all. When taking blood tests before and ever activities, it was found that people all had inflammation. The group that reported feeling better has less inflamation, the other didn’t – and the only difference was that the ones that reported improvement actually enjoyed the activities they were doing. The ones with the worst outcomes did not enjoy the exercises they were doing, and they had higher inflammation after their activities. Inflammation in general, it was found, played the biggest role in how people felt. It basically came down to individual body chemistry.

There were also things like how doing small amounts of activity more often was more beneficial that doing lots in a short time. He also talked about how misleading the “in your head” idea was. When he did talk about weight, he mentioned studies that found that when people enjoyed their activities, did them regularly without overdoing it, etc. they reported improvements, both physical and mental, with no change in their weights at all. This was something I appreciated hearing, since part of why my husband’s conditions deteriorated so much was because he started seeing a nurse practitioner (the only person available after our regular doctor went on medical leave and didn’t come back), she basically ignored the reason he as there – his back injury – but focused almost entirely on his weight. His blood sugars, too, but it all came down to his weight. Of course, in being the “good” patient, he just went along with it. For some two years. It was like she believed if only he would lose the weight, all the other things would magically go away. Of course, he never lost any weight at all in that time, and we finally insisted that she start focusing on his back injury. When he saw the spine specialist, the damage was too severe, and there was really nothing that could be done but give him stronger and stronger pain killers.

So having someone who knew to focus on the actual reason my husband was there, and not pet causes, was always a relief.

That was the encouraging part.

The discouraging part was, we already knew all this. This is really old news, even though most doctors don’t seem to know anything about these studies. I’ve been reading papers on this stuff for more than a decade.

After some discussion, a plan of action was worked out. My husband will start doing tai chi again (he used to teach it at one point), starting out by finding his limit, then maintaining the activity regularly, based on those limits.

Next month, we’ll be having a phone appointment with him.

As we were leaving and talking about it, my husband said he felt like the guy was a puppy discovering a new and fabulous toy and being all excited about it. Which is only because we were already aware of the stuff he was talking about already.

We shall see how it pans out.

Once the appointment was done, with a follow up telephone appointment booked at the end of this month, we headed over to the nearby Walmart to have lunch – breakfast, for my husband. My older daughter got quite sick last night, and hadn’t even been able to eat all night, while she was working. I made sure there was something she could eat before going to bed for the day! She sent me some funds to pick up heat and eats, which I did while my husband finished his lunch. Then it was off for home, with a brief stop at the post office. My husband had ordered more Tei Fu lotion for me, since it helps so much with the Charlie horses. He ordered three tubes, so the company added a freebie. It was a bottle of cordyceps, for “… energy, stamina, endurance and strength”. That one free bottle costs more than one tube of Tei Fu lotion! That’s quite a freebie!

I’m happy to be well stocked with Tei Fu lotion, though. I was running low.

When we got back, we found my younger daughter had the gate open for us, and was out hanging laundry in this heat! She’d done all their laundry, including bedding, plus my laundry, too! What a sweetie.

I planned to head out to water the garden this evening, but I’m not so sure about that right now. We’re at 31C/88F, with the humidex putting us at 33C/91F, and apparently won’t be dropping below 30C/86F until after 9pm! Even the overnight low is expected to be 21C/70F

I think I’ll just do my evening rounds and go to bed much earlier than usual. I’ve been waking up as it starts to get light out, anyhow, so I may as well wait and do the watering in the morning. That way, I won’t be shocking the plants with cold well water. Something the winter squash and melons could certainly do with out, with how much damage they got from that one cold night a while back! We’ve definitely lost a few completely.

Not looking forward to doing my evening rounds this evening, that’s for sure! Stepping outside is like walking into a wall of heat.

Ugh.

The Re-Farmer

First stock up shop: this is what $598 total looks like

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I am so…

…so…

…tired.

We got the first shop done, though, were able to get some good deals today, and got home early enough to be here for when the door guy comes out.

The first issue was a very unfortunate awakening shortly after 3:30am. Two cats started fighting, basically on my head. As if that weren’t bad enough, while flinging whatever cat was there at the time, I found myself with a very wet hand.

It took a while to figure things out. Butterscotch was sleeping next to my head, as she usually does. In the wall shelf that is my headboard, right at pillow height, I have my “leaning sheep”. A large stuffed sheep my daughters got for me for a laugh that has turned out to be an incredibly comfortable back support while sitting in bed, so I keep is stuffed into the shelf near my head to keep it handy.

Leyendecker, for some reason, sprays. Yes, he’s neutered. We have not been able to stop him, and have resorted to setting puppy pads out at areas that are the most commonly targeted.

It seems that last night, he decided to spray my leaning sheep. After the altercation was done, I was looking all over for the wet spot I knew had to be somewhere, and it was only on the sheep, and the edge of the mattress that was directly in front of it.

My older daughter, sweetheart that she is, helped me change my bedding and got the laundry going during the night, as I went back to bed.

Not for long.

At about 5:30, I started hearing a commotion, and it was Ghosty at my computer desk. She was trying to dig into a container of small items she likes to steal, trying to get under the cover. She stopped and ran off when I brought out the spray bottle, but she was soon back, trying to steal the trail cam memory cards.

I have up trying to sleep and got up to do my morning rounds.

As usual, the first thing on the to-do list is feed the outside cats. This time, I just went ahead and put several kitten food bowls on the old kitchen floor before heading out with the dry kibble. I soon had all 7 of them enjoying their special cat soup, without having to fight off any big cats.

My morning rounds were typical, with no extra jobs added on, since we had to head out early. I immediately noticed that, aside from the scratches on my right wrist, the cat altercation caused issues with my injured left arm. Any healing was definitely set back.

We ended up leaving just before 7am. Along the way, we made a stop at a gas station convenience store in two to grab some drinks and snacks to tide us over until we got to the city. Which is when I realized I would need my daughter to let me out of the truck, due to the broken handle on this inside. There was no way I was going to twist my arm over and over, by opening the truck door through the window.

My daughter ended up doing all the even more moderate lifting and carrying for me, today!

Our first stop in the city was the Canadian Tire. We needed more stove pellets for the litter boxes, but we also did some looking around. I ended up getting a very sturdy 25′ tape measure on clearance. We keep either losing or breaking ours, and it was more than half price, so I snagged it. That, with the litter pellets, cost under $20, so I didn’t bother taking my usual picture. My daughter, sweetheart that she is, got the 40 pound bags into the box of the truck for me.

Our next stop was the Walmart, with a quick side trip to Domo gas station along the way, since today is Thursday, and that’s one of their 4¢ off per liter days. We just got $40 in gas. We’ll do a fill at Costco, when I’ll reset my trip meter.

The main things we needed to get at the Walmart was cat food to last us until we do the Costco shop. Aside from that, my older daughter requested some energy drinks, and we were thinking to grab things that were quick to cook, as we’ll be doing a lot of running around in the next while.

This is what $266.47 looks like.

We got some Fresca for my husband and energy drinks (2 for $6) for the girls and I. I decided to get paper towel here instead of Costco, for space reasons. They were on sale, but not as good a sale as the facial tissues. My daughter remembered that we were getting low on spray cleaner, so we grabbed one of those. There are also three 9.1kg backs of dry kibble and two 32pack boxes of wet cat food. My daughter chose some frozen popcorn chicken and pizza bites for the quick eats. There was also a really good price on Sea Bass steaks for my daughters, so I grabbed two of those. The bag of potatoes was also on sale.

The cat food is heavy enough to put in the back of the truck without risk of it being blown away, along with the canned drinks. My daughter just put a bag of cat food over the drink box to keep it from sliding around.

That packed up, we were off to our last stop of the day at the international grocery store. We ended up getting quite a bit more than expected today, as there were some really good sales on.

This is what $324.15 looks like.

There were some really good deals on cheeses today, so we ended up getting the makings of a charcuterie. We got a blue triple cream brie, plus a small regular brie, as my daughter isn’t a big fan of the blue version, a “Pure Perfection” (the brand, I think) gouda, as well as a small jar of clotted cream (we haven’t had that since before we moved out here!), a red wine salami, some Prosciutto and a charcuterie trio of meats, plus a couple of loaves of French bread.

I also found a container of 7 Layer Dip, which my husband has been craving but, for some reason, no one has had in stock for months. So we got one of those, plus a couple of bags of tortilla chips to go with it.

For non-charcuterie protein, there’s a frozen Coho salmon filet for my daughters, a smoked bacon piece and an applewood smoked bacon piece, and a large package of chicken drumsticks. The drumsticks were one of the best deals we saw today, at more than half off. We also picked up an 18 count of eggs to tide us over until we get our usual double flat at Costco. They had an unusually good sale on Pizza Pops, so we got a box of those, too.

In fresh produce, we took advantage of more sales. Black plums, nectarines and plumcots, plus four bags each of two different types of salad mixes.

We also got some plain vanilla ice cream, which my daughters like to add to their coffees. We got some Katsuo Furikaka seasoning, pearl couscous, red rooibos and instant milk tea. In the non-food stuff, we got some argan oil for my hair, and Dabur hair oil for my daughter.

Then, for lunch at home, my daughter picked a couple of sushi for herself and her sister, we got a giant Lumberjack sandwich for my husband, and a teriyaki bento box for me. For the drive home, I got a lime Jarritos soft drink, my daughter got a green tea for herself and a jasmine green tea for her sister.

With all the sales, we got $55.12 in loyalty card discounts, though that doesn’t include sales on items sold by weight. There were deals on loyalty points, too. Normally, it’s $1 gets 1 point. Today, that was double, plus I had an accumulative offer available for spending over $200, resulting in over 10,600 points for our purchase. Come Christmas time, I should be able to get at couple of free turkeys, at least.

So that was our first stock up shopping trip done, and I’m happy with how much we were able to get, with our still limited use of the box until the new cover is installed.

Meanwhile, I’ve had plenty of distractions while writing this!

The door guy has come and gone. He thinks they can save the storm door! That would be good. As for the new exterior door, they do have the style with the window that opens that I was wanting. The need to replace the frame, not just the door, was quite obvious. They will be able to put the arm bar back. There is a hand rail outside that will need to be removed, and that will be put back, too. The only thing that might be an issue is that the frame is partially under the stucco outside, and there’s no way to know what’s under there until the start taking things out. He figures there is a stucco on stucco situation.

Then I got a call from home care.

Not for tonight, thankfully.

Tomorrow morning. So I’ll be going to my mother’s to take care of that. When I called to let her know, though, she told me she had a shopping list for me… that way, I don’t have to come back next week.

I told her, you’re going to need another shopping trip next week, too! 😄

On the plus side, I’ve been chatting with my SIL. They are coming out to stay at their trailer this weekend, but she is coming out tonight. My brother will be able to meet me at my mother’s, tomorrow, and help me out with the med assist, and the shopping. That will be less stress on my arm, and greatly appreciated.

Oh, and on top of all that, I’ve been in contact with the large animal rescue about Poirot’s babies. They will have a cat cage set up for the kittens tonight, and we’re just working out whether we’re taking the kittens to them tomorrow, or if they’re coming to us to get the kittens. My daughter wants to meet them and chat with them about animal care, so I’ve suggested we go to them. Plus, we’ll need to go into town anyhow, to refill our water bottles.

I hope to be done with my mother’s shopping before her Meals on Wheels gets delivered, so we’ll be able to get the kittens delivered in the afternoon.

Tomorrow had started out as an open day, where I could focus on work outside again.

Ha! That didn’t last long!

Meanwhile, we will most likely be doing our Costco shopping in the city on Saturday. If all goes well, we’ll be able to do a proper shop, and not end up making so many extra runs to get things throughout the month. We’ve put in more than twice the usual mileage in June than is typical for us, and the extra cost in fuel is painful on the budget.

July is going to have a lot of driving, too, including for medical reasons.

At least all this extra driving is happening now, and not during the winter months!

I’d love to just crawl into bed right now and hopefully not be awakened by fighting cats landing on my head.

Butterscotch is still hiding under the armchair, poor thing.

The Re-Farmer

Plans? What plans?

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First off, I’m happy to say, we did get rain last night! A lovely, heavy downpour, enough to refill our rain barrel to the top.

I happened to get up at around 4am or so. I was able to see the flashes of lightning around us, and at one point, could hear the rain. My daughter was up working, and she told me we had a power failure during the night, too.

I was unfortunately, heavily disturbed during the night, so I didn’t get much sleep. I tried to leave my door open to allow all the cats in but eventually had to chase them out so Butterscotch could eat and use the litter without being bullied and attacked. That meant frequent scratching at the door for the next while. I’ve finally figured it out. It’s Ghosty, scratching at the new mat I have under my door, to replace the one they shredded. She doesn’t want in. She just wants to scratch at the mat under the door! I finally let them in again after a while, only to have to chase them out again after a couple of hours.

Interrupted sleep is far worse than no sleep at all!

It did mean the inside cats got fed early – I make lots of noise doing a barely there top up on their kibble to lure them out of my room – so I tried sleeping in a little bit before going outside to feed the yard cats and do my morning rounds. The plan was to do my rounds, which would be short, since no watering was needed, have breakfast, then get to work on the permanent trellis before things got too hot.

*sigh*

I was about half way through checking the garden beds when my cell phone rang.

It was home care.

*sigh*

No one was available to do my mother’s morning med assist, which was scheduled for 9:30.

My mom is right that they keep coming later and later. Her meds are supposed to be done between 7 and 9am.

I had time to quickly finish checking the rest of the garden on my way back to the house, update my family on our group chat, since I thought everyone else was asleep, grab my purse and go, still wearing my gardening grubbies.

My younger daughter, it turned out, was up and had come down to check on what was going on.

She was walking with a cane again.

I wasn’t the only one to have a bad night!

I haven’t talked to my mother since I walked out on her abusive behavior on Monday, and today is Friday. I did quickly phone her to say I got a call from home care and that I was leaving for her place right away.

I got there just a little bit before her scheduled home care visit time, so that worked out.

My mother was up, dressed and ready, complete with her cup of water and a cracker to eat with her pills. She noticed what I was wearing and commented, and I told her I was in the garden when the call came, so I just dropped everything and came over. She seemed surprised about how early I was working in the garden (I was actually a couple of hour later than usual) and I told her, I was trying to get things done before it got too hot out. She actually understood.

She seemed genuinely apologetic about my having to come out to do her meds again, and expressed gratitude that I did it. Which is actually pretty rare with her. She did say she didn’t want to do the inhaler, which I was okay with. She was prescribed the inhaler only to see if it would work, and she doesn’t feel it’s making any difference. I don’t really know why her doctor wants her to continue it, if it’s not doing anything. My mother, however, then said she didn’t want to take it because she woke up with a really dry mouth, and she thought it was because of the inhaler (she takes it in the evening, too). Usually, she tries to blame it on her food, or her other pills. Somehow, she just can’t accept the idea that she’s sometimes simply sleeping with her mouth open.

After she took her medications, she asked me…

Would I be able to stay and do her grocery shopping for her?

I told her I couldn’t today, explained about getting new tires yesterday, and that I would be going straight to the garage from her place to get our tires torqued (without using the word, since she wouldn’t understand it), rather than making another trip in the afternoon. I then mentioned that I’d asked my sister if she had a day off during the week when she could do it, and she said she could come today. My mother told me that yes, she was coming. !!! It was already arranged, but she still asked me to do her shopping for her!

She prefers I do her grocery shopping for her. I’d taken her for her errands so often before she could no longer go herself, I know what my mother likes, what substitutes are okay and sometimes even what to add to her list if it is within budget and I thought she might need/want it. I also know how to go over her list with her before I leave and notice if she missed anything, and what questions to ask. My sister doesn’t. She simply never had to do it before.

I told my mother to just make sure she has a good list and talk to my sister about it. My sister does the best she can. My mother assured me, she already had a list ready!

That done, I quickly updated my family and headed to the garage, which is about a half hour drive from my mother’s town. When I got there and the mechanic that worked on the truck saw me, he immediately grabbed the torque wrench and came out to take care of it. As we were chatting, I told him how glad I was that I asked them to check the tires, and that I hadn’t realized how much they were bothering me until the new tires were on. I could feel the difference right away. He was nodding along when I asked, just how bad where they? He told me that, in some places, they were worn down to the metal.

!!!

I mentioned to him that I’d originally intended to come in the afternoon, but had an unexpected trip to my mother’s town this morning. That got us to talking about distances and where I lived.

Turns out, we’re “neighbours”.

Okay, he lives about 5 or 6 miles from us, but in this area, that’s “neighbours”.

That done, I messaged my family and my older daughter started messaging me. Normally, she would have been in bed by then, after her night’s work, but was staying up because her sister was feeling so terrible. I was going to pop into the grocery store to grab something to eat on the way home, since I’d skipped breakfast and was starting to feel light headed. My daughter ended up sending some funds with a request for birthday cake and heat and eats for her sister.

(As an aside, we don’t tend to celebrate actual birthdays, but instead do nice things for the birthday person, all month)

That done, and another top up on the gas, since the extra driving basically used up what I’d put in yesterday, I finally headed home.

By then, it was already starting to feel warm, but I was still hoping I could get outside to work on the trellis.

Instead, I found myself falling asleep while checking the trail cam files on my computer. I finally gave up and tried to lie down for a nap. The hottest part of the day wasn’t expected until 4, so I might still get something done.

After a couple of hours, I woke to find a message from my husband, saying a prescription refill was called in and ready to be picked up in an hour.

…

???

Normally, he calls his prescriptions in for delivered on Thursdays, but obviously wasn’t going to do that on a Friday. Especially since some of his medications cannot be filled until 3 days before he’s out, because they are listed as controlled substances. But why did he call it in after I’d already come home from town?

My younger daughter was feeling better enough to come with me, and I found out what happened as we drove. When she saw his message about the refills, she went to ask him about it. My husband knew I was planning to be in town to get the tires torqued this afternoon, so he called it in for while I was in town. He never saw my messages I’d sent this morning and had no idea I’d already been to town and back, and was taking a nap when he sent his message!

Oops.

No matter. While at the pharmacy, I picked up some supplements I was low on, too.

By the time we got home, it was late enough to do the outside cat feeding. In this heat, their water bowls get gross pretty fast, so those got a scrubbing. It took a while to get the scalding hot water out of the hose before I could refill them. Then they all got new frozen water bottles added to them. The sun room thermometer was above 30C/86F, but with the littles now much more mobile, it’s not as life threatening as it was during the heat spell we had when Poirot’s babies were really tiny and in that cat carrier up on the shelf. I do still put ice packs out around the cat beds at times, but it’s not as necessary now.

So all my original plans, and then my adjusted plans, got thrown out the window. As I write this, it’s coming up on 6:30, and we’re still at the hottest part of the day. We’re still at around 24-25C/75-77F, while the humidex puts us at about 29-30C/84-86F. We’re barely expected to cool down at all, even in a few hours when we’re expected to get more rain and possible thunderstorms.

Tomorrow is supposed to be slightly cooler, so I’ll be shifting things over to tomorrow morning and will hopefully get things done then. Along with putting up the permanent trellis supports, I want to take the netting off the potato bed, as it no longer needs the extra protection, and put it around the tomato bed in the east yard. While checking the bed this morning, one of the cats actually used it as a little box behind my bad – and dug up one of the beans to cover his business!

I was not impressed. We have very few bush beans coming up!

Before starting this post, I realized I hadn’t even taken an pictures today.

I was going to say I planned to take some garden tour video tomorrow, as it’s the first day of summer, but double checked and realized that today is the solstice, not tomorrow!

Happy first day of summer!

Maybe I’ll head out and take some video this evening, instead.

Since I have no pictures to share from today, I thought I’d finish off with some adorableness from a couple of days ago.

Adorable sleeping Ginger!

For month, he had isolated himself pretty much to the dining room table. He had been bullied by other cats and it was his only escape, so he and Toni (our two tripods) became the only cats allowed on the dining table. We turned a box into a bed for them, to a certain extend. It didn’t stop the bullying. For some reason, the cats that do the bullying are particular about attacking while Ginger (or Butterscotch) try to use the litter.

After a while, though, we just couldn’t keep the cats off the table anymore, and would often find two or three of them smashed together in the box bed. Cheddar and Toni have become especially snuggly.

Then Ginger started showing up in my room again.

So now, when I chase the cats out for the night, Butterscotch and Ginger get to stay together in my room. Ginger has a particular fondness for that green frog bed that was donated to the cats. The “hood” that forms the frog’s head always gets flattened, though. They seem to light it that way. In the second picture, you can see what a beautiful round loaf Ginger forms while in there!

Time for an evening walk and, hopefully, a early and good night’s sleep. I really need to get work done, before it gets too hot!

The Re-Farmer

Getting stuff done, and birthday take out

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The cats had me up ridiculously early this morning. I ended up just doing the outside cat feeding and going back to bed, instead of doing my full morning rounds. Thankfully, I did actually get some real sleep the second time around, even if it meant having Butterscotch basically lying on my head. She seems to associate my being in bed as “it’s safe now”, and she’ll come out of hiding from under the armchair and start demanding attention before curling up and sleeping right against my head and neck.

My daughter’s appointment at the hospital wasn’t until 4:40, and we were planning to be on the road by 3:30, so I did have some time in the afternoon to get the weed trimmer out and start clearing around the house. We were way behind on that in some areas, particularly around the portable greenhouse. I had just a bit left to do around the north side when the weed trimmer simply stopped. Usually, when that happens, it means the plug in the handle had come loose, but that was fine. I checked all down the extension cords (I need three 300′ cords to be able to reach everything), but everything was fine. So I messaged my daughters asking if one of them could check the breakers, but none were tripped.

We might be down a weed trimmer.

I’m hoping it was just over worked and will start again when I test it tomorrow. By the time we confirmed it was not the breakers, I had to put everything away, so I could clean up and change before we had to leave.

I did remember to prepare the cat soup variation for the kittens, and had it all ready for my older daughter to take care of while we were gone. The kibble mixed in with the canned cat food and warm water would have had plenty of time to get nice and soft by then.

One of the things I started before the weed trimming was replace the hose end with the pin prick hole in it with one of the new couplings I picked up. It was definitely the quickest and easiest fix I’ve ever had! No screw clamps on these things. It took me a while to understand how the rest worked, though. It just didn’t make sense to me, but the shut off valve is basically just pulling the female coupling part right off. That can be screwed into the end of another hose, or into a nozzle, then popped back in place for the water to start flowing. Which works well enough, except that I was attaching this to a soaker hose. Then, after about an hour, to a different soaker hose in another bed. The hoses are different brands and their mail couplings are designed slightly differently. One is a lot deeper than the other, and both were difficult to screw onto the new coupling’s end properly. It’s really designed to work with the same brand’s matching male couplings, not regular hose ends. I haven’t tried it with a sprayer nozzle, yet. One of the sprinkler hose connections leaked a fair bit, but I just move it so it would lean into the mulch near one of the plant collars in the bed that was being waters.

It might actually be worth replacing the other hose ends with this new type I got. A lot of the ones with screw clamps on them either still leak, or they are hard to attach and detach, because the screw clamps are in the way.

Anyhow. Just the two beds got watered, so I’m going to have to make sure to do a full watering of everything else, tomorrow morning. We’re expected to reach a high of 23C/73F tomorrow, then a high of 26C/79F the day after, so everything is going to need it!

My daughter had a questionnaire they’d sent to her all filled out to bring along for her appointment. It was close enough to her appointment time that I dropped her off at the doors before finding a parking spot. When I caught up with her, there was absolutely no one else in the waiting room, so she got called in right on time.

The first person (a nurse?) took her sheet with the questions, but the only reason they went through them at all was because my daughter hadn’t quite understood some of their questions, and hadn’t answered them. After a little while, she was taken to see the surgeon that will be operating on her wrist.

Most of what they asked was, in a nutshell, are you really sure you want to do this? Is it really so bad you’re willing to go under anesthetic and have someone digging around in your wrist? The surgeon was, at first, careful with how he phrased things but, after hearing how my daughter answered, realized he could go right into gruesome detail without any issue. So my daughter got a very intense description of what the surgery will entail, and was she really sure it was bad enough to go through this?

It makes me wonder just what sort of things they had to deal with in the past, to make them have to asked some of these questions!

My daughter, meanwhile, was more than happy to accept the surgery. Her ganglion happens to be on the small side right now, but when it gets bad, it gets really bad. The pain gets extreme and renders her arm pretty much useless.

She left with a printout with pre-op instructions. We have a date for the surgery, but she’ll get a call in about a week for the exact time she needs to come in. It’s just day surgery, so I’ll be driving her in, then hanging around to take her home.

We’re pretty impressed that she’s getting her surgery so relatively quickly. The referral was sent in April. To get such a quick surgery date for what is classified as elective surgery so quickly is very rare. She’s still waiting on other referrals her doctor had sent out for her.

Once she was done, I asked if there was anything we needed to do, while we were in town. After messaging with her sister for a bit, it was decided that we would go to a Pizza Hut – her choice for her special birthday take out (it’s not her birthday yet, but we split things like this up throughout the birth month, instead) – courtesy of her sister. We ended up getting four large stuffed crust pizzas, plus two 22 count boneless wings with different sauces.

That cost my daughter over $200 – and that was before the tip was added!

It’ll feed us for several days, though!

The ride home sure smelled good, though – and we were both quite hungry by then!

I may not have done my full morning rounds, but I did do my evening rounds. I’m concerned about a lot of my transplants. All of the transplants in the main garden area, and even in the east garden beds, are looking strangely yellow and floppy. The eggplant, peppers and herbs transplanted into the old kitchen garden seem fine, but all the other transplants are looking like they are dying. This doesn’t look like transplant shock, either. I don’t know what to make of it, but at this point, I’m not sure any of the melons or winter squash will survive! I’ve tried looking up the possible causes, and the only thing that seems likely is lack of nitrogen.

I did get some water soluble fertilizer while in town recently, so I think I’ll be making use of that when I do the watering tomorrow!

Other things are looking just fine. Like the raspberries that have spread into the old compost pile.

Turn your volume up for these videos.

You can’t see very many, but the raspberry bushes were absolutely buzzing with mostly bumblebees. There is one huge bumble in the second video. You can even hear the much deeper tone of that one’s buzzing!

These raspberries have had zero tending to, other than my pulling some of the weeds around the edges. No watering or anything. They’re doing fantastic, though!

On a completely note, here is some adorableness for you.

I’m actually not 100% sure which cats these are, but I think it’s Mitsy and Toni all snuggled together. The cats just love this box! It’s a compromise with the cats, to allow them on the dining table; we used to allow only Ginger and Toni up there, as a safe space to get away from the other cats. When we started to find them snuggling with other cats, it just didn’t make sent to chase the 4 legged cats away from the 3 legged ones! Now, we’ll go past the box and sometimes find three large cats mashed into the box, literally hugging each other to fit. They keep moving when we stop to try and get a picture, though.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, we’ll be able to make a dump run, and my daughter plans to break out the riding mower. I do hope I can get that weed trimmer going again, as there are still areas that need to be done. Particularly around garden beds I need to work on. If not, I might be able to borrow my brother’s gas powered weed trimmer. I’m hoping they’ll be able to come out this weekend. The last couple of times they came out, I missed them entirely, and I’d love to do some catching up with them, too.

We shall see!

For now, I’m happy with what I managed to get done outside today, in the short time I had available for it, and that we got my daughter’s surgery consultation appointment done. It seems strange to be excited about getting surgery, but that ganglion has been causing her so much pain, it’s going to make a huge difference for her, once it’s gone!

I’m so glad we found this doctor and my daughter is finally getting this stuff done!

The Re-Farmer

Morning pretties, and a longer day than expected

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My daughter had a doctor’s appointment today, so I headed out to do my morning rounds early, then stayed out to work in the garden for a couple of hours. I’ll write about that in a separate garden post.

Before we headed out, I couldn’t resist getting a picture of Ginger.

Since Butterscotch has gone into another stressed out and hiding all day phase, I’ve been kicking the other cats out of my room for the night, so she can come out to eat, drink, use the litter box, and not be hiding under an armchair all night. Ginger is the one cat I’ve been allowing in the room at night, since he’s a bundle of nerves, too. He is taking full advantage of the perk, and luxuriating in comfortable cat beds and oodles of pets. Thankfully, he and Butterscotch get along!

This time of year, we’ve got quite a few things blooming, or starting to get into bloom. This year, a couple of bushes that normally don’t, are blooming prolifically for the first time since we’ve moved out here!

The white flowers are on a small bush near the house. It has been bashed and battered, and at one point, I was sure it was dead. Whatever it is, it’s incredibly hardy! This year, not only is it the largest I’ve seen it since our first year here – a major recovery – but it is covered in these clusters of white flowers.

The lilacs are on a bush that is at the fence on one side of the gate at our driveway. This area gets baked in the sun, though it at least gets some shade from a giant spruce tree in the evenings. It also doesn’t get a lot of moisture. This year, however, we have enough moisture that the “pond” not far away in the old hay yard still has some moisture in it. Since moving here, I’ve seen it bloom a couple of times, when we had very wet springs, but nothing like its blooming this year!

There is another lilac planted at the fence line on the other side of the gate. That area gets baked out from sunrise to sunset, and I’m amazes it’s surviving. No flowers this year, though.

When we finally get around to making the people gate near that sad lilac, I’m hoping to improve conditions around it and find a way to get water to it.

As my daughter and I were heading out, she got the truck out of the garage while I opened the gate, so I picked a few clusters of lilacs for her. She set them on the dash. When we came back to the truck after her appointment, they were completely flat and shriveled from the heat! I hope she remembered to take them out when she parked the truck in the garage.

Thankfully, she and I left really early for her appointment. My plan was to have lunch before her appointment. About twenty minutes from home, she suddenly remembered the prescription, an injection, she was supposed to bring with her today. It was still in the fridge at home! So we turned around and headed back while I messaged her sister to meet us at the gate with it in an insulated bag and some ice packs.

Even with the return trip, we got there early enough that we could have had lunch at the Subway next door – until we saw the line up. So we skipped that and headed for the clinic. She got into the examination room a bit early, but the doctor was running late and even had to leave part way through the visit and come back later. It was just a follow up visit, though, and there were no changes to my daughter’s mediations. She did get a chance to show and ask the doctor about some skin issues she’s been having. She’s had issues that she traced to an allergy to something in her deodorant, but with the recent heat, that’s gotten painfully worse, plus she’s got all sorts of skin issues. The doctor said it looks fungal, and recommended…

Head and Shoulders, used as a body wash.

She could have prescribed an anti-fungal cream but it turns out Head and Shoulders contains anti-fungal ingredients that work just as well, and it’s a lot cheaper!

She also recommended doing her laundry in hot water, and hanging her clothes on the line instead of using the drier. My daughter had already switched to using hot water and we’ve started to use the clothes line more often, too. Often enough that we’re looking to hook up two more lines. When I was growing up here, there were three laundry lines set up, so the hooks for pullies are already on the posts. I have no idea what happened to the pullies that used to be there. I spotted some kits that include 150′ (which is how much we would need) of medium strength, plastic coated metal laundry line, and all the parts and pieces, for about $50. The pullies and tightener, however are plastic, so I think we’d be better off paying a bit extra and getting metal pullies and tightener.

Anyhow, sunlight is also anti-fungal, so we’ll be using the clothes line more often. We’ll need to get more clothes pins, though. The kittens have discovered them and think they are toys!

After my daughter’s appointment was done, we finally had lunch. We were both pretty famished by then! We’d both had only very light breakfasts.

We also had a shopping trip planned. I was prepared to have to go to town to pick up new prescriptions, if necessary, but it wasn’t, so that made the day a bit shorter! The nearest Walmart to us is just 15 minutes away from the town our doctor is in, so that worked out well, too.

Since we were planning to get things that needed to stay cold, we popped over to the Dollarama, first. I got the rest of the tomato cages I wanted, which will be used over the eggplant and pepper transplants. I also got more plant clips, as my bucket with them seems to have disappeared!

The Walmart shopping was both stuff for my husband, and my daughters’ list. Nothing came out of my regular grocery budget, so I didn’t do my usual “this is what $X looks like” photo. The important thing is that I remembered to get more distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier.

This year, I’ve been using his empty water bottles to make collars for transplants, much more than usual, since we’re expecting a dry year. I’ve used up all the old collars I’d used last year, plus made more with all the bottles I’ve been saving all winter. There’s only a few empty water bottles left and, if I want one for each of the remaining tomato plants, I’m going to have to find more.

Oh! I just remembered! I have a bunch of them on posts at the chimney block garden bet at the chain link fence! Which means I’ll only be short about 5 or 6 for the tomatoes I have left to do. I’m sure I can find enough other containers I’ve been saving to reuse somehow.

By the time we got home, it was about 5pm. As we pulled into the yard to unload, the yard cats were absolutely everywhere, waiting for their feeding time! As soon as my daughters and I got most of it in, I headed over to feed them and distract them away from the truck, so my daughter could safely leave the yard and park it.

One of Poirot’s babies made an achievement today. Japp got out of the cat cage! I’m not sure if s/he climbed out the “door”, or if s/he found the opening at the bottom (it was blocked with a stuffy). We’re really going to have to watch our step, now!

The days are long enough and warm enough that I seriously considered going back out to at least work on the garden bed I’ll be planting in tomorrow, but I need to keep my limits in mind. I’m already pushing them on a daily basis right now. Plus, we’re getting weather alerts for possible thunderstorms. Looking at the weather radar, I don’t think we’ll be hit with any, but it’s possible I certainly won’t complain about getting more rain!

I’ve got a couple of days with no outings or appointments planned. If all goes well, I should have everything transplanted or direct sown by then. After that, it’s more construction type stuff, like making the wattle weave walls on the bed in the old kitchen garden, and working on the permanent trellis supports.

The main focus right now is just to get plants and seeds in the ground!

Tomorrow.

I’m done for today.

😄

The Re-Farmer

Productive

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It was a perfect day to work outside! We reached our expected high of 15C/59F, there was a bit of a breeze, and a lovely mix of sun and clouds. Not too hot, not too cold… It was juuuuust right!

Most of it involved clean up.

I headed out to open the gate for my brother, only to find he was at the gate and opening it for himself. 😄 We said our hellos, then he set out to get their push mower out of storage (there was a lot of other stuff in front of it) and get it going. My first task was to get the wagon out and start going through the yard, picking up all the fallen branches and sticks I could find. We hauled away any large branches that fell right away, but there’s always tonnes of smaller ones that we leave until a day like today.

I worked my way around most of the yard before stopping near the septic tank to switch jobs. The tank was still covered with an insulated tarp, folded in half, and the pipes and hose for the emergency bypass was still set up over it. A few things needed to be moved so I could get the tarp off. That got dragged to the south yard and stretched out to full size, so I could hose it down, then flip it over and hose it down again. Then I went ahead and got the sun room broom and used that to scrub the entire surface before hosing it down again, then leaving it out in the sun. Then it was back to the septic tank area.

It’s remarkable how much survived being under that insulated tarp. In fact, some things had even started growing into the fibres!

The rigid pipe is being left where it is for now. I don’t have any way to store it properly right now (I’m wanting to find a way to store all the parts and pieces right near the tank), and the pipe that sticked out through the wall still needs a cap. I don’t want any dirt – or small critters! – getting into there.

I brought the back hose over and used that to spray down the inside of the flexible hose. It’s quite long, to it took a while to get enough water flowing through it. A number of bricks, rocks, boards and pieces of Styrofoam insulation were used to create a slope for the fluid to drain away, though some low spots were still inevitable. I gathers all those up to store against the house for now, the rinsed the inside of the flexible hose some more before finally dragging it all in, making sure water continued to drain away. Then that got curled up into a pile near where the boards were sticks. Then, since my next job was going to be weed trimming around the house, I pulled in the garden hose, too.

By this time, I could hear my brother’s lawnmower, so I went over to see how things were going. He showed me the particulars of how to start and run the mower (it has a choke that shuts itself off!) and his own modifications to it. He was mowing a lane to the barn, and around his stored equipment beside it. He had other stuff he needed to do, so I took over with the push mower and ended up finishing off most of the area in front of the barn. It was all being cut at the highest level, so I’ll be going over it again, likely with the riding mower, soon, to get it cut lower, little by little. The area is so dense with dried thatch mixed in with the tall grass, it would easily be too much if the mower were at the height I would want to cut it to.

I’m going to have a lot of grass to use as mulch, soon!

Once that section was done, it was time to get back to the inner yard.

Which was shaded quite a bit by these.

No, those are not leaves. At least, mostly not leaves. Click through to the next picture, and you can see that these are seeds. The Chinese Elm are absolutely thick with seeds right now, and they’re blowing everywhere. Pretty soon, they’ll dry up and drop like a storm.

I’m not looking forward to that. We’ve got so many of these trees in the south yards alone!

I then spent the next hour or more with the weed trimmer. Aside from doing the edges and areas too small or awkward to use a mower in, I went hunting for the rocks and roots in the lawn that stick up high enough that, if I’m cutting to the height I want to, would get hit by the mower blade. I’ve run over these by accident in the past. Bad enough when using our own equipment, but I do NOT want to damage my brother’s equipment!

In the end, I was able to get the south east yards done before I had to head inside, pausing only to find my brother and touch base with him. He was up on the roof of their trailer! 😄

While I was outside, my daughters were busy inside, and I came in just as one of them was making dinner. I actually needed help getting my boots off, before I could change out of my grass covered clothes, take some pain killers, and rest for a bit.

I had company.

A bowl full of Ginger on my bed!

I also had Butterscotch all over me. She has started to become aggressively affectionate when I sit or lie on my bed.

After having a lovely supper my daughter made, I realized I was hearing a mower running outside. By then it was time to feed the outside cats, so I started doing that. My brother, I discovered, had taken out the riding mower and was mowing around their trailers and RV, and in front of the storage shed. Something to be very careful off, as that area has some really rough spots! Leveling things off around there is something they have plans to do, once they can get some of their equipment going.

Unfortunately, he was done and gone before I was finished feeding the cats!

I wasn’t going to be doing more weed trimming today, but I did get a chance to weed the retaining wall blocks.

I was joined by a little Sir Robin the Brave.

He joined me while I took a quick break on the bench, too!

What an adorable face.

The last thing I got done was to flip the insulated tarp, hose, scrub and hose it down again.

Unfortunately, it has worn out holes in it, so water gets inside the tarp. I’m not sure how to address that, Ideally, I’d hang or drape it somewhere, but it’s quite large and surprisingly heavy. Especially with any water inside it! For now, it’s just going to say on the grass for the night. Hopefully, we don’t get any high winds to blow it away!

Tomorrow, the tarp will need to be moved away, and then it’s back to weed trimming. Particularly around the cat shelters and the portable greenhouse.

The kittens are not going to be happy with all that noise!

Once that’s done, though, I’ll be able to use the riding mower. With the amount of mowing I did today with the push mower, plus all the trimming, I’m in quite a lot of pain, even with taking painkillers. There’s no way I’d be able to do push mowing two days in a row.

While the overnight temperatures are still too low to set out the transplants, there are some things that can be direct sown. I’ve decided to take advantage of the boards protecting the sugar snap pea bed, and plant more carrots. I do see carrots coming up in the winter sown beds, but I’d like to have more! There are a few other things that can be sown now, too, once I get the beds prepared for them. We’ll see how it goes. The rest of this week will have some good daytime temperatures for that sort of work. Next weekend, things will start getting hot again.

The forecast for freezing overnight temperatures, with rain and snow, that I was seeing for the end of May, beginning of June, this morning is gone. Now the forecast is calling for overnight lows of almost 10C/50F! What a difference!

Of course, by tomorrow morning, it’ll probably be completely different again.

As for me, I’m heading to bed as soon as I’m done posting this. Well… after I take more painkillers, that is. Today is a day to max out the prescription dose, that’s for sure!

We shall see what tomorrow brings!

The Re-Farmer

Cold, wet and windy, and how we said goodbye.

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Today turned out to be pretty unpleasant, overall. Our high of the day was supposed to be 9C/48F which, according to the hourly forecast, was supposed to happen around 9am, with temperatures slowly dropping since yesterday afternoon. When I headed outside at around 8am, it was 5C/41F and still slowly dropping. As I write this, at past 5:30pm, we are currently at 3C/37F, the wind chill is -10C/14F, and it’s still supposed to drop more.

When doing my rounds this morning, I plugged in and turned on heat lamps in various shelters. The kittens will certainly need them! The bigger, mobile kittens have all been hanging out in the cat house together, instead of the sun room. The heat bulb in there is on a light sensor, so it’ll turn on as it gets darker, when they’ll need it the most.

The forecast for the overnight low has wobbled from -2C/28F to the current 0C/32F, but the coldest temperatures are not supposed to hit until 7am tomorrow. Meanwhile, high winds and rain continue. Yesterday, I’d uncovered some of the garden beds so they could get rained on. I goofed with the high raised bed, by lifting the sides. The plastic was all bunched up on top, so it wouldn’t get hit too hard with driving rain. This morning, I found the weight of water collected in the plastic was enough to bend the hoops all out of shape. I was able to re-cover the beds, but that one took some extra fiddling with. I never did take the plastic off the bed in the old kitchen garden, which turned out to be a good thing in the end. The sump pump is going off pretty regularly now, so that bed is getting watered from below, at least.

As I went out to do the morning rounds, there was only minimal wind damage found so far. The chunk of maple in the West yard, in the first image, was the worst of it.

The second image, which is focused in totally the wrong place, is of the Liberty apple leaves! It has survived its first winter with the coldest of Zone 3 temperatures (last winter was pretty mild). Not too shabby for a Zone 4 tree! This suggests that the micro climate in the location we chose for it is actually helping.

In the next photo, also focused in all the wrong places, you can see the leaves on the new apple tree we planted this spring. Good to see that it has taken.

After that are some leaves on one of the mulberry bushes – they both now have tiny leaf buds unfurling! I had been starting to wonder about those. They both definitely have some cold damage to the tips of some branches, but they have survived their first winter. While these are supposed to be hardy to our zone, they are also tucked in gaps of the lilac hedge, which should act as a protective microclimate, too, until the mulberry get bigger. They were planted where they are, partly to fill the gaps the deer were getting through.

The very last image is of something completely different. That is a sugar snap pea shoot! I found several of them coming up already.

We’re going to have to put something around/over that bed soon, to keep the deer from eating them.

Which confirms to me that any peas that were winter sown in the bed against the chain link fence are toast. The one sprout I did see is simply gone. I thought I saw some bean sprouts, but now I can’t find them. Just some weeds and onions, really. No sign of any of the corn or sunflowers planted in there.

So I will replant that bed, but not quite yet. The Chinese elm seeds are starting to fall and, while the netting is helping keep them off, the seeds are collecting along the edges, which will need to be scooped away. Also, between the cats and the wind, the netting is getting slid up the hoops, allowing the seeds to get under. What I will probably have to do is pull the netting off completely, straighten out the hoops as best I can, then use ground staples along both edges of the netting when they are being replaced. I’ll do that when I resow into the bed. We have quite a few ground staples, but this bed will need a lot, so I’ll be getting more as soon as I can. I still have a packet of Hopi Black Dye sunflower seeds I can sow, and I’ll probably plant pole beans along with them. If they survive and start getting too tall for the netting, we’ll have to find some other way to protect them, because the deer really love both beans and sunflowers.

The kitties, meanwhile, are doing okay in the cold and the wet. I’m not seeing anywhere near as many adult cats these days. I haven’t tried to do a head count lately, but I’m thinking under 20 in total, for the adult cats, for sure. Even Brussel isn’t around as much, leaving her babies to the other creche mothers!

A lot of the fixed cats have lost their collars, so today, several of them got brand new necklaces.

Even Kohl got her first necklace! We’ll have to keep an eye on her, as I don’t think she has reach adult size yet, and I had to make it pretty short to fit her. The Grink and Magda are still way too small.

Poirot, meanwhile, as been spending a lot more time with her babies, now that it’s gotten cooler!

We have chosen names for her babies.

The mostly white one is Miss Lemon. The white and grey is Captain Hastings. The black with white spots on the belly is Inspector Japp.

In other things…

My husband had a medical appointment this morning. This was the appointment we had to reschedule last time, because my husband was in too much pain and walked out before ever seeing the doctor (and where the appointment times were messed up). There must have been some notes added to his file, because they got him into the examination room 5 minutes early, and someone came in to take his BP right away. The doctor came in a bit on the late side, but only by a few minutes. We went over his most recent lab results, and another medication is being applied for (it needs approval for coverage with our province’s pharmacare system) and will be added to all the others he’s already taking. He’s got his first appointment at the new pain clinic next month, so we’ll see if they change up any of his other meds. At some point, they might actually find a pain killer for him that does more than just take the edge off.

My husband felt well enough that we even stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few small things. The next time we go to a city shop, we’ll need to pick up more flour, but that’s not something to buy locally. It costs almost twice as much. I might actually make a trip to the nearest Walmart tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I didn’t get to do a dump run last weekend, so I’m hoping to get that done. We’ll just have to get a tarp or something to secure the load, now that we no longer have a box cover, so we don’t end up losing bags of garbage on the highway. I still need to gather the required info together to file a claim with our insurance and see if they’ll cover a replacement. I did notice damage to the truck I hadn’t seen before. Where the remaining piece of the box cover was twisted out of shape, I realized that a section of the box frame itself was twisted, too. It was just partially hidden by the remaining piece of the cover. The amount of force needed twist that is amazing!

One thing about today’s overcast dreariness is that I have been feeling incredibly sleepy. Once we got home, I went straight for a nap. The house has been cold enough that we actually turned the furnace back up. I’m noticing that, while my phone and desktop weather apps are both saying we’re at 3C/37F still, the old tablet I have set up as my clock and weather monitor, is telling me we are at -1C/30F right now, and that our expected low will be -2C/28F! It really makes me wonder where the weather station that app is connected to is! It almost always reads colder than the other apps.

A dreary day for a dreary mood, continuing from yesterday, and our trip to the vet.

Our elderly Freya had been declining for some time. Even before her more obvious physical decline and something going very wrong inside her mouth that we were never able to see, she was at that stage where we would see her peacefully sleeping, thinking, awww… how cute. Then checking to see if she was breathing.

We knew it was time but, lately, between trips to my mother, stuff with the truck, other running around, etc., I just hadn’t gotten around to calling a clinic. The Cat Lady recommended the clinic we’ve been doing the spays and neuters at, as having lower prices.

I actually called them up twice, yesterday. The first time, I was put on hold and, as I was waiting, I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen Freya all morning. Nor all night. The last time I’d seen her, she’d gone to the dining room to eat cat soup, and I found blood in the tray after she was done. She had been spending more of her time sleeping in my room and, at feeding time, I would take a bowl of soft food, just for her, go to where she was curled up (usually in her favourite box bed) and hold it until her chin until she either started eating, or moved away and didn’t eat at all. She hadn’t eaten when I brought her some cat soup, so I was glad to see her leaving the room to eat later, but she never came back to my room after that. She wasn’t around when I did the morning feeding. So when the receptionist got back on the line, I briefly told her why I was calling, but said I would have to call back later… maybe. It was entirely possible Freya had found a quite corner somewhere and passed away. The receptionist was very understanding.

I searched ever spot in my room that she normally went to, and there was no sign of her. I searched various possible hidden corners in the dining room. Nothing. The other areas she might have gone into were closed off. I let the family know to look for her, then went into the basement to check on things there (we’ve got both blower fans going in the old basement, to try and keep the seepage down; today, I added another fan), while my daughter looked for her.

My older daughter finally found Freya, asleep on her sister’s bed. My younger daughter was in the shower and missed all this.

Freya hadn’t gone up those stairs in months, so no one expected to find her up there!

My older daughter then brought Freya down, and she immediately curled up in her favourite box on my bed, while I called the clinic back.

After explaining the situation, they asked how soon we wanted to do this, and I said sooner was probably better, given the pain she was having.

Knowing we were in another town, she asked how long it would take us to get there. They could take us in pretty much right away.

It takes a little under and hour to get there, so we booked the appointment for during the noon hour. I also got the cost (just over $200, after taxes). On informing the family, my younger daughter said she would come along. My husband and older daughter had time to give Freya goodbye cuddles, and then we were off.

Freya was comfortable in her box bed, so we just put her, box and all, into a cat carrier with a side opening door. My daughter was able to open it and pet her as we drove. She never quite settled during the drive, though. It’s amazing how much you notice the bumps on a road, when you know they are causing pain.

We left early enough that I stopped and ran into a store to get some squeeze treats for her. My daughter gave her 2 of them (there were only 4 in a box) as we drove the remaining distance to the clinic, and Freya was quite enthusiastic about the treats!

Once inside, all the paperwork and paying was done at the start. The clinic has a separate room, with its own exit door, used for times like this. It’s larger than the other examination rooms, and has comfortable seating available. Once all the paperwork was done, we were set up in the room, and given a few more minutes alone with Freya. We opened up the carrier, and she quite eagerly went exploring. She did stop to enjoy the last two squeeze treats, though!

The vet came in after a while, along with a second vet that was just starting at the clinic and along as part of her orientation. While I wasn’t in their system until today, we’ve been here many times through the rescue, and the vet recognized us.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had to do this, so she explained the entire process to us. Things have certainly changed over the years. They were to give two injections; the first was the same used to put animals to sleep before surgeries. Then, after about 10 minutes, she would get a final injection, and not feel a thing.

My daughter got to hold Freya while she got the first injection, then the vets left. Freya was soon asleep with her chin tucked onto her paws on my daughter’s shoulder. We both got to cuddle with as she slept, before the vets came back, gave the final injection, and listened with a stethoscope until she could tell us it was over.

From there, they left us, saying we could spend as much time as we needed. They started to assure us that, as we left through the other door, a chime would go off, and someone would come get Freya right away, so she wouldn’t be left alone, but that was if we were going to do a cremation. We were taking Freya home with us, so that was not an issue.

I have to say, I really appreciate how well the clinic handled all this. The last time we tried to have a cat put down, we were still living in the city. We tried calling the Humane Society. The first issue was how long it would take to get an appointment. Almost a week. The next was that they were going to charge extra if we wanted to stay with our cat while it was done. !!! The cat passed away before we could get her to the vet. We tried to make her as comfortable as possible, but it was pretty hard to watch. My older daughter was pretty traumatized by the whole thing, really. So how things went yesterday was really about as good as things could be, under the circumstances.

Once we got home, my daughter and I went to the space I’d prepared for our incoming plum tree (which, according to the tracking, just got processed in the city today, so it should arrive locally on Monday). We dug the planting space out again, then kept going so we could bury Freya in her favourite box bed, and have room above her to plant the plum tree.

We have ridiculously rocky soil, but I think the physical labour was helpful for my daughter.

When we were done, my daughter picked a bouquet of dandelions to place on top.

The whole thing was a lot more comforting. We’ve lost a few cats since moving out here, both indoor and outdoor, and those circumstances were considerably more difficult. My daughter and I have both comforted cats and kittens as they passed in our arms. I’m glad we were able to give Freya a peaceful end, and she is no longer in pain.

The cold and dreary skies, however do suit our mood right now.

The Re-Farmer

Goodbye, sweet lady

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About 15 years ago, a couple of scrawny, starving cats showed up on our balcony. One of them had a collar. We gave them good and water, and found they were just as starved for human attention as food. On taking them to a vet to see if they were chipped (they weren’t), we learned one was female – and pregnant.

Long story short. Freya adopted us and even brought us her kitten, both eventually moving out here to the farm with us.

After declining quite a bit over the past year in particular, it was finally time. The clinic was even able to take us in today.

She is now buried near our newly planted gooseberry bush, and we will be planting the incoming plum tree over her grave.

Rest well, sweet lady. Your pain is ended.

The Re-Farmer