inside cats

Catching up on this morning

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Things went in unplanned directions this morning!

But first, the fun stuff. :-)

We have the handsome Ginger to greet us! He’s been quite the character, and a lot of fun. :-)

The outside cats were happy for breakfast. :-)

We finally took the tarp off the top of the kibble house. We got some rain yesterday; enough to soften the ground a bit. It should be fine until we get some paint.

My daughter wants to paint it yellow. !! Not a bright lemon yellow or anything like that, thankfully. :-D

The girls and I removed most of the mulch from the garlic beds the other day, and uncovered many more sprouting garlic. Most were a bit on the yellow side, since they hadn’t worked their way through the mulch to the light, yet, but they are already looking nice and green and strong.

We moved the mulch over to the new bed, then covered it with a sheet of metal we scrounged from the outer yard, so the wind wouldn’t blow it away. We will have to build a box around this bed. At this point, if I add soil to the top as planned, it’s high enough that it’ll just fall off on the sides. I think we have some scrap wood in the barn we can use for that. It’ll be temporary, so it doesn’t need to look fancy or anything! :-)

After doing my morning rounds, I had some calls to make. One of them was to the court office about the restraining order I applied for against our vandal. The last time we had a court date, everything had been cancelled again, due to our province’s extended restrictions. I was told everything was deferred to after April 23rd, and to call around them. Well, that was on Friday, but I remembered too late in the day, so I called today.

The person I spoke to told me that they were holding court sessions now, and that I have a court date on May 21st. She wanted to check something, though, and said she would call me back.

Which is when I found out that the file had actually been in court on Friday. Our vandal was represented by a lawyer. The court offices informs the lawyers when things change, but people who don’t have representatives have to call themselves to keep updated. :-/

Nothing came of it, other than the new date, and it’s just on the morning docket. It will likely go to a trial date after that. One of the possibilities she said that might come out of it is a mutual restraining order. He stays away from us, we stay away from him. Before our move, I was in a situation where I agreed to one of those, and I regretted it. The type of restraining order I applied for would mean our vandal would have to stop drinking – and provide proof of that regularly – and have his guns removed. I believe his drinking has a lot to do with his behaviour. He often sounds drunk in those bizarre messages he’s been leaving with my mother. I would hope if he were at least sober, he might finally get the help he needs. It would, however, drag things on longer. His having a lawyer, and our not being able to afford one. I have LegalShield, which gives me free, unlimited phone consultations, among other things. If I need a lawyer to represent me in court, I would get a discounted price, but we don’t have the funds to spare to begin with, so that’s a moot point. I’m not going to let what he’s doing to us financially ruin my family, even if he’s willing to financially ruin himself, apparently. He has no defense, really. About the only thing a lawyer can do is drag it on. That’s just going to cost him more money – and he’s already said that he’s willing to sell his farm and be homeless, so he can sue me, my mother and my siblings.

I wonder what his wife thinks of that. :-/

Anyhow.

After that, there was an unplanned trip into town, and then a stop at the post office. We crossed paths with our vandal in the process, but only passing him on the road. I could see him well enough to tell that he recognized our vehicle, too. He lives near enough that, when I was working outside later one, I could hear him and his chainsaw, as he cut wood.

A part of me wonders how it would work out, if he really did follow through with his threats. He’s already got his silly suit against me, wanting me to pay him for things that aren’t his, and that I don’t claim to own in the first place. What can he do by going after me? We own nothing, so we have nothing to lose. He’s the one willing to bankrupt himself. And if he does end up selling his farm to pay for lawyers, well… we won’t have him living so close and creeping through the bushes from the road, and whatnot.

What a mess.

Whatever happens, happens. We’ll deal with things as they come.

Once at home, though it’s been a pretty chilly day, I did get to start on one project outside.

That, however, will get it’s own post!

The Re-Farmer

Window kitties!

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It’s been warm enough (out of the wind) to open the kitchen window at times.

Cheddar and David, bird watching!

This is the one counter in the kitchen that the cats are allowed to be on. It’s a favorite spot at the best of times, but when the window is open, we’ve been seeing as many as 4 cats crowded onto here! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: Soil test on purchased soil and tending tomatoes

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I finished testing samples of the new garden soil this afternoon.

I was interrupted by scrabbling sounds behind me.

Saffron looks so adorable!

She is also a vicious beast. ;-) Her favourite thing it to suddenly launch herself across the room, onto whichever human is passing by. She typically lands about half way up, and then starts sliding down.

Which can be very painful! She is very sharp, and rather clumsy. :-D

Anyhow.

Here are the test results from the purchased garden soil.

The nutrients are nice and high, all round – and so is the pH! Most of what we are growing recommends a pH of 6 – 6.5, so we’ll want to look into increasing the acidity a little, if we can.

Today, I decided to “pot up” the tomatoes. It feels strange to do that, since they are so tiny, but they are also tiny varieties of tomatoes! ;-)

We planted 4 double cups of each variety, but I worked with only three each. Of the Spoon tomatoes, there’s one cup where nothing at all has germinated. Of the Mosaic Medley, one cup as a single seedling in it, and it’s quite small, so I left it.

I’ve never grown tomatoes before, so I looked at a lot of gardening resources before deciding to plant them in a small amount of growing medium in the larger cups, rather than Jiffy Pellets or tiny pots, so as to add more soil as they grew bigger, rather than transplanting them from small to larger pots.

After the soil was added, they got a careful, but large watering. I left them to drain for a while, emptied the lower cups and left them to drain some more. I wanted to ensure the added soil was completely dampened, through and through. I’m hoping this will give them a nice growth spurt. :-)

The overnight temperatures in the sun room are getting much nicer, so we will be able to move things out of the aquarium soon. Over the next while, we will be starting all the summer and winter squash. We’re going to need the space! :-D

Something else on the to-do list:

Having worked out where we will be planting things (which is always subject to change until the seeds are in the ground!) and, more or less, what dimensions we’ll need, my daughters and I need to start measuring out, marking out and preparing garden beds. Some things, like our two varieties of peas, need to be direct sown well before the last frost date. They are going to be near the corn, which isn’t supposed to be planted until well after the last frost date. So we’ll need to mark out the plots and start prepping them. We’ve decided to make most beds at 3′ x 8′ (roughly 1m x 2 1/2m) for ease of access and denser planting. Ultimately, we have no idea how many of these we will need, until we actually start planting. Some varieties had packets with a LOT more seeds than others of the same vegetable type, and some were packed by weight, so we won’t know how many seeds there are until we open them.

We’re finally getting close to when we can plant things outside! Yay!!!

The Re-Farmer

Morning spice

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Ginger says “good morning!”

And then he attacks my phone. :-D

Ginger continues to settle in. With so many cats in the house there are, of course, moments of aggression. He has no problem standing his ground when one of the other cats decides to take out their bad mood on whichever other cat happens to be nearby. I’ve even seen him running around and tussling playfully with the spice girls.

He does have a habit of squirming around too close to the edge of the bed and sliding right off. :-D

His fur is growing back in the shaved area, but not evenly! He’s got patches of longer hair that’s surprisingly dark. Being right next to the corner where the incisions meet, it looked like he somehow got the area very dirty. :-D

Best of all, he’s now starting to actively seek out people for attention. :-)

He is such a sweetie!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties!

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I managed to get a picture of Ginger this morning.

This was just a moment before he leapt up and tackled my phone! :-D

He was very fierce-some this morning!

I got this picture of David the Magnificent, yesterday, and just had to share.

He is such a pretzel!

Meanwhile, I had a whole crowd, outside!

The Ghost Baby was peeking between the shelters to see if it was safe to go eat!

She finally dared!

My daughter told me that she sometimes shows up at their second floor window, describing her as a ghost baby. I figure that’ll do just fine as a name. Better than “that sort-of calico cat…”.

My daughters have also been telling me about another grey and white tabby. I honestly can’t remember (I’m losing track!), but they say it’s Junk Pile’s baby from last summer, and it looks like here, except thicker. So they call it Thickilous.

:-D

I may well have seen it and thought it was Junk Pile, but until I see them both at the same time, I have no way of knowing.

So we have these 7, possibly Thickilous, and Nicky the Nose, hanging around. We have more cats inside than outside right now!

Well. At least until the kittens are born. Only Butterscotch looks pregnant, but that doesn’t mean the others aren’t!

The Re-Farmer

Ginger baby, on the hunt

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I finally got some Ginger pictures!

He’s been running around all over the house, but I managed to catch him and lure him with some cephalopods.

It’s not the squidlies he’s hunting.

It’s my phone!

:-D

As a side note, my spell check dictionary does not recognize the word “cephalopod”. Which is weird enough on it’s own, but the alternative spelling it suggests for the plural is “hydrocephalus”, while the suggestion for the singular is “cephalic”.

Excuse me while I “add to dictionary.” :-D

I dug up the patterns to make more of these. I am in error. Neither of these are squids. The pink one is a cuttlefish. :-D

The cats love them!

But not as much as Ginger loves to attack my phone while I try to take his picture. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

So much orange!

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I finally was able to get a photo of Ginger today.

Turmeric has been cuddling up with him fairly regularly, these days, which I am so happy to see!

It still throws me, how much bigger he is than Turmeric.

Then this happened.

Cheddar is about the size of both Ginger and Turmeric together, and definitely heavier than both together! :-D

He has been mostly ignoring Ginger, so this is awesome!

That is just so much orange. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Ginger bug, skunk visits, and progress!

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Ginger let me take his picture this morning! :-)

Then he promptly tried to catch and eat my phone. :-D

I’m happy to say that, for a past couple of night, we have not been closing the other cats out, and have found Ginger curled up and snoozing with other cats. He’s always been more laid back about accepting other cats, and now it looks like the other cats have gotten used to their new family member. :-)

Unfortunately, other critters are getting used to things.

When the girls went outside to drop the bags of litter into a bin we have for them, they found THREE skunks in the kibble house! If things were warm enough to have a hose out, we would spray them with water from a distance, but that is not yet an option. My daughter tried to shoo them away with a stick, but they just ignored her. They didn’t even threaten to spray. The little one even ignored her when she actually poked at him with the stick!

We’re going to have to leave less kibble out for the outside cats, since they’re not finishing it all during the day, and the skunks are starting to rely on it as a source of food.

Oh, my goodness!!! I just got interrupted while writing this, and I am so excited!!!

I called about the garden soil this morning. I was expecting a call back, to arrange for one of the guys to come by and figure out where to drop the soil off. Before then, I’d called to have our septic tank emptied, and the drive wanted to do that right away, while the ground it still hard, so I had gone ahead to open the gate for him. Instead of the septic guy, we had someone else come knocking on the door about the garden soil.

We walked around and I showed him the easy one, first; in the outer yard, near where we will be building the permanent raised beds in the future. For this year’s garden, however, I was right. They won’t be able to get their truck under the tree branches to where I had hoped the soil could go. I showed him an alternate area I was thinking of, and that one works out perfectly. There is a gate to the garden in the fence there, and they can use our secondary driveway to come right in to it.

Then he said they could deliver it today.

!!!

The ground is still frozen, which makes it better for the trucks.

When I mentioned I didn’t have cash on hand to pay for it, he brushed it off and told me I could swing by and pay for it later.

!!!

So we now have both gates open and waiting for very large trucks to come through! :-)

I am just thrilled!

Okay, back to topic. Where was I?

Ah, the skunks. LOL

When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, I saw the skunks had been after more than kibble.

This is near the kibble house and cat shelter. I’m not sure what they were digging for, this early in the spring, but I guess they found something!

I’m a bit disheartened by how dry the soil is, though, even with most of yesterday’s snow melted away.

Heading into the outer yard, I was watching the large numbers of birds in the pile of branches when I noticed a patch of ground that looked different.

Here, at least, the ground is a bit moister. There used to be a large pile of snow, pushed up by a tractor when our driveway was kindly cleared for us. That snow finally melted away only recently.

Well, that area now has a pile of soil beside it! The first load was just delivered!

The next load should be here in about 20 minutes, so I’d better get my butt off the computer. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Garlic, Ginger and the snow cats :-D

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This morning, we woke to more snow on the ground.

We were supposed to get rain, first, but if we did, it wasn’t much. Not a lot of snow, either, but we’re supposed to get more, later in the week. These are our “April showers” that will hopefully lead to May flowers. :-)

I managed to snag a photo of Ginger this morning!

He has been very active, so it’s been hard to get photos! :-D

As squirmy as he was while I tried to get that photo, it was no comparison to Beep Beep.

I hadn’t even tried to pet her. As soon as she saw me taking pictures of Ginger, she started rolling around like mad, beeping for attention!

When I came outside, I saw Ginger’s brothers and Junk Pile coming out of the cat’s house, while his mom emerged from the shelf shelter by the sun room door. I’m not sure where Rosencrantz emerged from! :-D

You can see the chickadee on the bird feeder platform, and if you look carefully, you’ll see another one in the lilac bush, just under the thicker branches.

The snow almost made even the ugly fence look pretty!

I so look forward to when we can take that fence out!

The little garlics peeking through the mulch are visibly bigger than when we first spotted them! Thankfully, they should be able to handle this weather just fine. Likewise, the onion starts in the sun room are doing quite well. The temperatures in there don’t go below freezing (and the trays also have heat from below), but it gets chilly enough that if we had the tomatoes or squash in there, we’d have to bring them into the house for the night. The sun room still manages to stay warmer overnight than the old kitchen!

I spotted the shy calico disappearing under the fence on the far end of my mother’s “living fence” of hawthorn, carigana and oaks.

One of these months, I’ll get to cleaning up around the collapsing log cabin, and that corner of the fence. The chain link just sort of got dropped to the ground after the last fence post, so the junk there, and on the other side of the cabin, act as a sort of fence on their own. Once it’s cleaned out, if the renter’s cows get into the outer yard again, there will be nothing that can stop them from getting into the inner yard. Another reason to fill in any gaps, should the electric fence fail again.

I do love seeing the cows, and the few times they have gotten through, they did a great job of eating the overgrown areas in the outer yard, which in turn reduces the fire hazard in those areas. :-)

By the time I was done my rounds, the cats were making their way back into their shelter. I think it’s even dark enough for the light sensor on the timer to turn on the ceramic heater bulb.

Those things have been so handy, I think we will pick up more!

As I write this, we are at -3C/27F with a wind chill of -11C/12F. It’s the wind that’s more of an issue than the snow or the temperatures. Meanwhile, short range forecasts have us at 1C/34F over the next couple of days, with a sudden leap to 15C/59F on Thursday – only to drop to -3C over night, with more snow into Friday. Which is supposed to reach a high of 2C/35F, so it’s all going to melt away very quickly. Long range forecasts show rain and snow in the first days of May.

Somewhere in there, we have to get our septic tank emptied, and get those loads of garden soil delivered. There are things we need to be able to direct sow two weeks before last frost, and everything we are planting this year depends on having that soil available.

It feels like we’re starting to cut it close. Even with the snow, though, we’ve had enough warm temperatures that they should be able to load the soil into their trucks by now. I need to remember to make some calls tomorrow and find out.

It seems the more we get these little snowfalls, the more antsy I am to get gardening! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Ginger Squid and general update

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Last night, I introduced Ginger to a new toy.

I’d crocheted an amigurumi squid, years ago, trying out a new pattern. When I realized we’d closed the other cats out for the night and Ginger had no toys in the room, I decided to see if he would like it.

He did.

Squidly is now Ginger’s favourite toy! The other cats like it, too. :-D

Speaking of other cats…

His sister, Cabbages, and Keith were pretty adorable, cuddling together! :-)

This morning, as I put kibble out for the outside cats, most of them eventually made their way over.

I did not see Butterscotch.

I have my suspicions that she’s tucked away with somewhere, with new babies.

If my suspicions are correct, I hope her nest is nice and cozy, because they’re now predicting another 7 inches (almost 18cm!!) of snow on Sunday! We’ll have more snow in April than we’ve had the entire winter.

The slow melt we’re having now is perfect, except with the overnight temperatures going below zero, the freeze-thaw cycle is destroying the roads! I had to run some errands today, picking up our newly sharpened and tested electric chain saw while dropping off a lawn mower for servicing, then going to another town to drop some stuff off, and the gravel roads in particular are just awful. The paved roads and highways are going to be crumbling even worse than usual in the next while.

I don’t mind the snow while we’ve got these milder temperatures. I think most people on the farms out here will happily put up with rough roads, if it means they will have enough moisture when planting their crops.

I must admit, though, it’s rather disjointing to read other people’s blogs where they talk about all the stuff growing in their gardens, or their latest transplants. :-D

Speaking of which, we did decide to start one of the squashes we’ve got now, rather than later. The Crespo squash is the only one of them that grows large fruit. In trying to find the “days to maturity”, all I can find is “harvest the the skin is very hard”. Which doesn’t tell me much at all! I’ll just assume large fruit means longer time needed to grow them, and will give them a bigger head start. I set the seeds to soak last night, and will plant them later today.

I’m not finding a lot of information about this specific variety at all, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens with these.

And now I have to de-cat myself (hello, Susan) and get some work done! :-D

The Re-Farmer