I wanted to share some photos from this morning’s rounds, but first, some photos from last night.
May I introduce you to, The Three Croissants.
Nicco, Beep Beep and Susan, all nestled together! Can they get any cuter? :-D
While putting things away for the evening, I noticed my mother’s lilies had started to bloom. Thye practically glow in the evening light!
If all goes to plan, we will be dividing these up this fall, and transplanting some in a new bed where the potatoes in their grow bags are now.
We had quite the crowd of hungry kitties this morning! Ghost Baby showed up not long after.
I expect the mamas will start bringing their babies over for food some time soon. I wish I knew where they were. I’d leave food out nearby for them, if I could. I’ve spotted mamas going by carrying various rodents, though, so the mamas are obviously taking care of that, themselves. It just makes less work for them if we can supplement with kibble! That, and there’s a better chance of the kittens getting used to humans.
Of course, I had to check the newest transplants. We got another heavy rain last night, that lasted for a couple of hours. They seem to have handled it quite well. I took this photo from the gourd end of the row. In the foreground are the 4 Ozark Nest Egg gourds (you can just barely see one of them, it’s so tiny!). By the fence post is the Thai Bottle gourd. You can’t see it in the photo, but hidden under one of the leaves is a second sprout!
This is what’s left of our straw! I’d taken so much from the bottom, where it was breaking down the most, that the whole thing finally just fell over. We should have enough to mulch the summer squash, and hopefully have some to add to the transplants at the squash tunnel, but I doubt there will be much left by then. I’ll have to contact the renter to see about getting another bale. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get hay next time. I’m deliberately asking for older bales that aren’t good for feed anymore, since it will be used only for mulching, but when I asked about it last time, they had none, as they spread them on their crop fields and plow them under to amend the soil.
Today, we’re looking at a high of 27C/81F, though we are already at 25C/77F as I write this, so I would not be surprised if we get hotter. The next couple of days should be just a degree or two cooler, then we’re looking at possible thunderstorms again. Hopefully, we’ll have the squash tunnel and pea trellises finished before then! We’ll see how things work out. One of my daughters has been feeling quite ill lately, and I’m pretty sure it’s the heat. :-( Summer is their least favorite time of the year!
There is one other down side to this time of year that I was really noticing this morning. The horseflies are out in full force! I had a buzzing crowd of them, dive bombing my head, from the moment I stepped outside to the moment I stepped back into the house – and even then, it was only because I dashed in and closed the door fast enough. Having them bounce off my head is annoying enough (at least they weren’t biting!), but they were even getting caught up in my hair bun. They already seem to be unusually bad this year.
First up, thank you to those who wished me well after my last post. I ended up lying down for a while, and the pain was much reduced when I got up again. It’s still there, but it’s more of a stiffness than pain now. I still have no idea what caused it, but it’s getting better.
Which made things much less uncomfortable while helping my mother run her errands this afternoon. Since I had her car, she took advantage of it and we went to several places. Before heading home, I stopped to fill the gas tank. Talk about sticker shock!
A couple of days ago, gas prices had gone down to 117.9/L for regular gas, and now it’s 128.9/L!
For those in the US, 1 US gallon is 3.78L (1 Imperial gallon is 4.55L, so there’s quite a difference). So this about $4.87/US gallon in Cdn dollars, or $5.90 in US dollars, at today’s exchange rate. And that’s just for regular gas, not premium!
As I understand it, this is still a low price compared to UK prices! Granted, we’re a lot more spread out, and have fewer alternative options to driving.
So…
Ouch!
At times like this, we are thankful my husband no longer has to commute to the city, as he did when we last lived in this province.
Overall, shopping with my mother went very well. A few days ago, she called me with concerns about pains in her chest and wanted me to make an appointment for her with the doctor. In the end, he ended up doing a telephone appointment with her – and instead of talking about her chest pains and other symptoms, she talked to him about the pain in her knees! *sigh* Still, she got a prescription for a topical painkiller to try on her knees for a couple of weeks. The last couple of times I helped her shop, she had some near falls as her knee gave out. That didn’t happen today, but she did get tired very quickly. Thankfully, when I do these trips with her, I don’t have anything I need to rush off to, so I can give her all the time she needs.
There was one thing that had me shaking my head, but before I describe it, some background is needed.
My mother had asked us to move out here a few times, and one of the “perks” she dangled in front of us is that we could grow a garden and never have to spend money on groceries.
Which doesn’t make much sense. Even when she had her big garden, plus we had chickens and butchered our own cows, we still had to buy some groceries. But that was the carrot she dangled in front of us. We’d be saving all that money by having free food.
When we did move out here, and didn’t immediately put in a garden in our first summer, she was furious. Like, actually furious. She was also angry the we let it go to “weeds”, as if we were doing it deliberately, rather than because it was so badly plowed, we couldn’t mow it until one of the push mowers was fixed the following summer. We would have destroyed the riding mower my brother got for us (because the one that was here disappeared while the place was empty.) In fact, it got so bad that, at one point, we were starting to look at rental listings because we thought she would “evict” us and, frankly, we didn’t need the abuse. It calmed down, but took a lot of concerted efforts from my siblings and I.
Then, when we finally did have a garden last year, my mother have very little so say, and what she did say was all negative. She had never heard of mulching before, so that was bad. We didn’t get it plowed or use a tiller (none of the tillers here work), so that was bad. And so on. But, overall, she just didn’t bring gardening up as much.
This year, with our plans for a much larger garden, she was once again furious, because we are going to buy soil. She has even finally started to acknowledge that the soil is not the same as when she had my dad to plow it, 5 kids to help pick rocks, and manure for a herd of cows to fertilize it. However, she had nothing much to say about the fact that we are planning to have a large garden, even though she harangued us about it for our first two years here. I would tell her about the seeds we got, and she would chastise me for spending money on seeds. During one attempt at a conversation about it, she was giving me a hard time for now “allowing” her to have the garden plowed, when she offered to pay someone, but when I told her that if she were still offering, we were ready to say yes, she just said she would think about it. It hasn’t been brought up, since. (But I’m still not supposed to spend money to buy soil…)
So that’s where we’ve been at for the last while.
Today, while at the grocery store, we were looking at some canned goods and I mentioned that we now had the supplies needed to do both water bath canning, and even do pressure canning, so we will be able to do things like can soups and things like that, safely.
Her response was to make snarky comments about spending so much money, spending, spending…
???
So… I’m supposed to grow a large vegetable garden, but I’m not supposed to buy seeds, not supposed to buy soil, and I’m somehow supposed to preserve the harvest without buying canning supplies and equipment (her water bath canning supplies also disappeared before we moved here)
I pointed out to her that when she canned things, she spent money, too. She had to.
She promptly dropped it.
It is so strange that, with how big a deal she made over us not gardening over our first two summers here, now that we are gardening, and very excited about it (I even mentioned how excited we are about it!), she can’t see anything positive about it. Even when I mention that we’ve started seeds indoors, she expressed surprise (yes, she did start some things indoors, too, so this isn’t even doing something different than she did), but doesn’t want to talk about it. And yet, she had been constantly going on and on about my sister’s garden, and how wonderful it is, and bragging about it every time my sister brought her some fresh produce. My sister has been gardening on their farm for somewhere around 40 years, but you’d think it was all a new and wonderful surprise or something.
So very strange.
But not as strange as the phone messages I listened to.
Yes, our vandal had called her again, a couple of days ago. For the first call, it was an unfamiliar number, so she answered it. She told me about it later, but neglected to mention that he had called her three more times, leaving messages!
He’s changed his story again. Now he’s saying he doesn’t want her money (which is hilarious, since for years, he was constantly after her to pay for things for him), but only wants to “walk freely” on the farm.
Why on earth would he even want to walk around on someone else’s property? It’s one thing to have come here to “take care” of the place, when it was empty (though he was helping himself all sorts of things at the same time). It’s quite another to want to just pop over any time, while there is someone living here, just to “walk freely”.
He obviously has no idea just how creepy that sounds.
Well, his messages were all sorts of rambling diatribes about how my mother has given the whole farm to me (she hasn’t), and why did she do that, when he worked so hard here, and we didn’t do anything at all, ever (he’s including my brother on that one). Then wailing about how we’re trying to put him in jail and have ruined his life.
Oh, and apparently, I go by, waving at him and laughing at him. Laughing!
Also, we’re fat. FAT!!!!
I think the funniest one was his claiming my daughters are holding parties. *snort*
There were some new ones in his messages, though. Now, we’re apparently ruining the lives of my late brother’s children, too. How, I have no idea. He’s also claiming I’m responsible for putting him into almost $200,000 of debt by charging him. Which I’m not doing, because when I tried that after he broke the gate, the courts stayed the charges after he went through some sort of program. I’m applying for a restraining order. How any of that resulted in him going into such massive debt, I have no idea. More likely, he incurred debt in the belief that he would coerce the farm out of my mother and sell it to pay off his own bills.
But that’s just a guess on my part.
Which leads me to the other new thing.
He actually offered to buy the farm from my mother (who doesn’t own it anymore, and he knows that) for…
…
drum roll please!
…
$500.
Which is what he says my parents paid for the farm (which would be the two quarter sections we’re caring for now, not the third quarter section the younger of my brothers got as an early inheritance).
In 1952.
Which I think might be before my parents were even married. Certainly before any of us kids were born, and only my late brother and I were born after the moved her from the city. I believe my parents bought the property in the early to mid 1960’s, and they certainly paid more than $500 for it! Even the quarter section my younger brother lives on cost them more than that when they bought it!
So where did he even get those numbers?
And what on earth was he thinking, to even suggest buying the property for the price he thinks it was purchased at, almost 70 years ago? Was he trying to be insulting? If he was, it didn’t work.
As my mother put it, he’s just making things up!
The oddest thing (among many odd things) is that I can submit these messages to the courts, both in my application for a restraining order (whenever that finally makes it to court), and in my defense against his vexatious civil suit against me, which still has a court date in July, and he knows this. He’s said as much in some of his past messages.
So why does he keep doing it?
And why is he so obsessed with this property? Particularly since he already has his own farm?
And why does he keep going after my mother, as if she still owns it?
None of it makes sense.
Interestingly, when my mother updated her will, the lawyer commented that he sees lots of people doing stuff like this, so he has lots of experience in making wills that can’t be contested by such people.
How very sad.
Ah, well. We deal with what we have.
In the mean time, I think building nice taaaaalll deer fences around the perimeter of the yard sounds like a very good idea. Something that also gives us privacy from anyone going slowly by on the road and peering through the bushes… :-/
We may live in the boonies, but sometimes I think it’s not quite far enough in the boonies. There are still people around. ;-)
The weather system has finally weakened and moved on. Over the next while, we’ll be slowing warming up, with a bit more snow predicted on the weekend (depending on which app I look at! LOL). With temperatures hovering only a few degrees above freezing during the day for the next while, we should have a nice, slow melt. We’re not expected to get into the double digits (in Celsius) until May. Which means no flooding, and no washing away of soil, and the still frozen deeper soil will thaw out slightly faster.
If things actually turn out as forecast, it will be pretty much perfect.
The outside cats are doing just fine in all this! When I came out this morning, I saw Butterscotch coming out of the bottom of the shelf by the sun room that we put rigid insulation in, adding more to the front to create a shelter for them. Creamsicle Jr. was in the middle shelf, sitting like a loaf in the opening, watching me as I changed out there water. I’m really glad that little shelter is working out for them.
The weather at least seems to have kept away the skunks, as there was still some kibble left in their food bowls.
Rosencrantz (in the foreground) has the densest, fluffiest fur! All the cats have their dense winter fur, but hers is so incredibly fluffy! :-D She would not let me pet her this morning, though.
Butterscotch, on the other hand, is looking rounder and rounder.
*sigh*
We’ll just have to assume that Rosencrantz and Junk Pile cat are also pregnant, but they don’t look any bigger than their winter fur would normally make them.
:-/
Anyhow.
In total, I would say we got about 6-8 inches (15-20cm) of accumulated snow in our area. The snow is so heavy and wet, it actually made shoveling the sidewalk a challenge, because the snow kept sticking to the shovel!
Meanwhile, we don’t need to actually go anywhere until tomorrow, so we’ve got another quiet day at home to catch up on things indoors. :-)
While doing my rounds this morning, I spotted Junk Pile cat at the bottom of this icicle hanging from the rain barrel diverter, drinking from the little well created at the bottom. Even though we were still a few degrees below freezing, there was a trickle of ice melt, making it’s way down and creating a pool.
By the end of the afternoon, it was so beautifully warm! We easily went several degrees above the 0C/32F forecasted. Things were enthusiastically melting, and the outside cats are loving it!
We did city trips to stock up, two days in a row. As productive as those trips are, they leave us feeling completely drained. Today, I actually felt productive, with just a couple of short trips.
I had intended to go to the post office yesterday, and pick up deer feed and bird seed while I was at it. I ended up skipping it, because I just didn’t have the spoons left. Which turned out to be a good thing, since I completely lost track of what day it was. I thought it was Tuesday, but it was Wednesday, which meant the store – and the post office inside – had closed at noon. So today, I combined errands, starting off by heading into town to refill our 18.9L/5 gallon jugs of drinking water (we have 3, and refill when 2 are empty). For this, we go to our usual grocery store. Since that happens to be across the street from our garage, I swung by to talk to the mechanic. The van has been running well, so I asked about maybe just resetting the error codes. He suggested I call him on Monday (he was working on a vehicle at the time) and he’ll schedule me to bring the van in. Since it’s likely the crud he couldn’t reach to clean, come loose and getting stuck in the new EGR valve, he’ll take it off and give it a clean.
That arranged, I headed to the grocery store with the water jugs and, since I was there anyhow, I went through the fresh produce and meats sections, so see how things looked, and what was on sale. I’m sure we got a sale flier in the mail, but we don’t drive to the post office every day, so I tend not to see them before I actually go to the store. I was very happy to see asparagus bunches for only $2 each – they’re usually about three times that price – and grabbed some.
Well, that was just the start. Then I noticed other really good sale prices. It turned out they had some massive sales on a meat in particular. Some were half price, or even better. And no, this wasn’t old meat, but the fresh cuts they process themselves.
I ended up going through all the aisles and stocked up!
A lot of things that go on sale tends to be stuff we pretty much never buy, but this time I was able to pick up a whole lot of things we actually do buy, some regularly, and others only rarely or as a treat. I didn’t go nuts or anything, but with the city shopping we already did, our freezer, fridge and cupboards are now the most well stocked they have ever been!
I came to refill water jugs and left with a cart full! :-D
Having a hard time finding where to put all the food is a good problem to have!
I finished in town too quickly, though. The post office closes for an hour and a half around lunch time, so I just had to play a bit of Pokemon Go before heading back. :-D
The store the post office is in is not only where I pick up our bird seed and deer feed (they also carry the best hams), but it’s also a liquor store. Our older daughter has a birthday this month, and her gift came in. (not an affiliate link) So I picked up a case of Jamaican lager for her to use her gift with! We don’t really celebrated our birthdays on the days themselves, so she got her gifts right away. :-D
So now we are stocked up in food, deer feed, bird seed and beer. :-D
Today is also a day the dump is open for a few hours in the evening, and with our van up and running, we were finally able to load up all the garbage and recycling. We tried to keep up with it, using my mother’s little car, but not a lot fits in it, and we just weren’t able to make multiple trips per week. Or even one trip per week. More like one trip every two or three weeks. :-/
Using the van, one trip, and we were all caught up! We ended up going to the new pit, rather than the household bins I normally use. Normally, we would drive into the pit, but with the ice and snow, they seem to have closed that access off. What they have instead is a sort of parking area, where you can back your vehicle up to the pit (there are concrete blocks to make sure no one drives over the edge!) and the garbage is just tossed down the hole.
Oddly, people have somehow still managed to stack up a huge pile of garbage at the edge. It took no effort at all to make sure the bags rolled down into the pit itself, but nope. In the middle of the dumping area, people left their garbage piled high, right up to the concrete blocks.
So very strange.
It felt so good to finally get that job done!!!
Oh, and I had a nice little surprise this morning. My tax return came in. We won’t have to wait until April or May to get that garden soil! I called the company to arrange it and left a message. If all goes well, we’ll have the soil before the end of this month. I should be able to pick up a chain saw this month, too! I can hardly wait! Garden soil first, though. :-)
Just a couple of relatively minor things, but yeah… it made the day feel so much more productive!!
I like when our Sunday day of rest turns out to be an actual day of rest!
While doing my rounds this morning, I let Potato Beetle out of the sun room. Today, he ignored this personal food and water bowls in favour of the outside ones.
I love how Nosy likes to just sit in the window, napping. :-)
Potato’s wound is looking better as well. He didn’t want to go back into the sun room when I was done my rounds, so I left the doors propped open so he could go in later, if we wanted to. We were at a fairly mild -15C/5F (though with a wind chill of -28C/-18F!), so I knew he would be okay. We’ll keep him in the sun room for one more night, so when my daughters went out for a walk this afternoon and spotted him, the put him back in. Things are supposed to warm up quite a bit, after tonight, and he’s healing up well enough that we don’t need to take extra precautions.
Beyond that, it was just a day of online church (second Sunday of Lent), keeping up with family, and watching the parade of deer visiting the feeding station! It looks like the same group of five came back a couple of times, as well as a pair and a singleton showing up. There were so many showing up at once, I didn’t even try to take pictures with the DSLR set up in the living room. The zoom lens can’t get so many deer at once, I didn’t feel like switching lenses. Too many shedding cats around! :-D
Tomorrow, I bring the van in to the garage to see what can be done about that noise from the power steering pump. We were just going into the cold snap when I brought it home from last time he worked on it, and it hasn’t been driven since. We’ve only run the engine a few times, and the noise was there, so the cold is the only thing I can think of that could have caused the problem. Hopefully, it is something that can be fixed quickly, so we can do our monthly shop, and pick up that warranty replacement hot water tank! I feel like we’re on borrowed time with the current one.
Hopefully, this replacement will last more than 2 years. :-/
Oh, my goodness! It is so incredibly warm out there right now!
The Weather Network app on my desktop has not been working well with our intermittent internet connection, and often will not update at all, but the weather app that came with my computer seems to get through better. (Even while writing a post, I’ll get the red bar across the top, telling me the autosave didn’t work because I have no internet, several times before I’m done!) Between those two on my desktop, plus the one on my phone, we have three different forecasts at the same time. :-D They would be linked to different weather stations. None of them tell me which weather station they are linked to. Ah, well. They tend to be close it enough, it doesn’t matter too much.
We have all sorts of melt happening right now! This is the diverter from our rain barrel; it’s mostly full and frozen right now, so I’m not letting the melt go into it for now. I did empty it in the fall, so all the water in it – minus what I was able to bail out several times over this winter – is from when things got warm enough to melt. A demonstration of how, in spite of the polar vortex we’ve been under for the past few weeks, this has been a very mild winter!
While doing my rounds I, of course, checked on the yard cats. Nosy’s eyes are still leaky, but they are more open. He’s spending much of his time in the cat house, with the white cat with calico markings. I was looking through old files and confirmed that she is Rosentrantz’s baby. I have some photos and video from last spring of her and her orange sibling, being groomed by Rosencrantz, outside the pump shack. We never saw her orange sibling again, and have no idea what happened to it. I am just sort of assuming this cat is also a female, but we really have no idea. She runs off too quickly.
It was Potato Beetle I most wanted to check out. He had looked really messed up, just a few days ago, and had blood on his fur at his back legs, but we weren’t able to see where he was hurt. Yesterday, I saw him and, while he was moving around better than before, he was still messed up. Plus, there seemed to be some (frozen) bloody mucus on his fur on a back leg. I tried to see where it came from and thought there might have been some swelling inside a back leg, but he wouldn’t let me get a better look.
This morning, when he came out for food and water, I was happy to see he seemed to be moving normally again. He was eating with good appetite, and followed me around as I continued my rounds. He even let me pick him up and carry him, at the same time as Butterscotch. When I got back to the house, I was able to put Butterscotch down and try and get a look at Potato Beetle’s back legs and belly. I saw no sign of injury or swelling. There was no longer any dried blood, either. So I put him down and watched as he went into the kibble house.
When is when I saw the matted fur on his hip. I tried to get a closer look, and found it was a wound. My touching the area obviously was uncomfortable and he moved away, but I was able to see the fur was matted with blood and getting into the wound. I am guessing this is from a bite. It’s not a clean wound, like the gash we found on Butterscotch, but a messy hole. From what I can see, he just needs to be cleaned up and will likely need a stitch. Getting him on an antibiotic would be good, too. He would probably be fine if we did nothing at all, but… why take the chance?
So… time to dip into the emergency funds and take him to the vet. Thank God we actually have emergency funds! Before moving out here, we would never have been able to set money aside for any sort of contingency fund or savings. It’s amazing what a different not paying cash for rent makes, even if we have much higher expenses in other areas. :-)
I am going to my mother’s to help her with shopping today, so we will be bringing him in tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already called the vet to arrange it. At least Potato is one of the more socialized cats and will not be a problem to catch. I should still probably close him up in the sun room when I do my morning rounds tomorrow, just to make sure he’s in the area when it’s time to get him into the carrier.
Meanwhile, all the cats seem to be really enjoying these warmer temperatures! Including Potato Beetle with his injury. The younger cats are very rambunctious, playing in the snow and wrestling. They are such fun to watch!
Okay, so it looks like our internet is working, at least somewhat, so this is a sort of test post!
Today was a beautifully warm day! We reached -13C/9F, which was awesome! They are now forecasting Monday will be 4C!! (40F) It’s going to be amazing! The girls will be going out onto the roof to get as much snow off the second level roof as they can. There isn’t a lot, but once it starts melting, we don’t have to have water leaking into the house at the window again.
As I was doing my rounds, the spice boys and Creamsicle Jr. were happily rough housing in the snow. Creamsicle Jr’s eye looks all clean and healthy now, which is good to see. There was quite a crowd of cats this morning, and I even saw Rosencrantz. I haven’t seen her in weeks! Nosy was on his warm spot on the tire in front of the garage side doors, meowing plaintively. He’s looking better, overall, but now both his eyes are leaking. Poor thing.
While checking the trail cam files later, I was most impressed. The new camera, which includes a temperature reading along with the time stamp, had an internal temperature of -3C (27F) at a time of day when I knew it was about -16C (3F) outside. Moving it out of the shade has made a huge difference. It got below -25C (-13F) during the night, but it still kept shooting stills, even when the batteries got too cold to be able to record video. The older camera, meanwhile, had no problem with the cold.
I used my mother’s car to go into town and pick up a few things, then we later made a much needed dump run. Somewhere in between there, something happened to Potato Beetle! He had been fine this morning, when he joined me for my rounds and I carried him around. He came around while we were unloading the car, and was looking a mess. Literally. He had dirt all over, and his fur was matted. He was also walking as though limping with his back legs. We found dried blood in the fur on the inside of his ankle, but could see no wound. We’ve been putting our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where they can freeze, but no animals can tear apart the bags. I went through the sun room to load bags into the car, and he followed me in. By the time I was done, he’d settled onto a old pillow under the swing bench – his favourite spot in there – so I left the doors partly open and let him be. Unfortunately, this evening, my younger daughter heard a commotion, and found Nicky the Nose in the sun room, going after Potato Beetle. :-( I think we can guess who messed Potato Beetle up!
We’ve got to do something about Nicky the Nose! We’ve had quite a few other toms, from who knows where, come by but none have been as aggressive towards our yard cats as Nicky.
Well, time to see if we have a stable enough internet connect for me to post this! :-D
I took advantage of yesterday’s warmth with a trip into town. At one point, on the way back, I was driving through precipitation that couldn’t make up it’s mind if it was snow or rain! LOL We actually hit 3C/37.4F, which was a couple of degrees warmer than forecast.
Then the temperatures plummeted overnight. While the actual temperatures remained above -20C/-4F, the wind chills brought things down colder than -30C/-22F Apparently, there was even a storm last night, though it seemed to be well to the south of where we are. We got hit with high winds, mostly.
As I write this, we are at -17C/1.4F with a wind chill of -28C/-18.4F
While I was doing the cat stuff outside, most of them just stayed in the cat shelter and watched me though the windows. They still had lots of food in the kibble house, but I also toss some inside the entry of the cat house, where I have another food bowl. I don’t put much in there, since I don’t want to encourage other critters going in there. That food bowl was empty.
Some of the cats did come out for some warm water; the heated water bowl does the job, but when it’s cold like this, I like to give them water that is actually warm, and they really seem to appreciate it.
Then they all just disappeared! Not into the cat house, but running off around it, with some running under the storage house.
I discovered why when I turned around as saw we had a visitor!
My younger brother’s dog had come for a visit!
He just thrives in these temperatures! The colder it is, the more he loves it.
They have yard cats too, of course, so when he comes here, he expects to be able to come right up to ours and play! Butterscotch and Rolando Moon (and Beep Beep, if she were still outside) are more familiar with him, as he used to visit my late father all the time, but the other cats where born after we moved here, and the sudden appearance of a fluffy giant is rather frightening for them! Meanwhile, he just wants to play. :-D
As I was finishing my rounds, I managed to get him to follow me down the driveway and start heading home, but as I came back, he was suddenly bounding beside me, leaping and jumping in the snow, trying to get me to play with him!
Unfortunately, the winds made staying outside any longer than I had to, out of the question.
My goodness. I just glanced at my weather icon on my computer and noticed we’ve already started to drop in temperature. Looking out my window, it’s a clear and sunny day and looks like it should be quite pleasant out there, but we’re now -18C/-0.4F, with the wind chill down to -31C/-23.8F We’ve already hit the high of the day, and it is expected to keep slowly dropping from now on until tomorrow. We’ll have one more mild day tomorrow, then temperatures are supposed to plummet for a few days before getting mild again. With concerns over the vehicles, we plan any outings around the forecasts, which means quick run to check the mail and pick up more bird seed and deer feed will be done tomorrow.
Unlike our furry visitor, we do NOT thrive in this cold, and neither do the vehicles! :-D
That -12C (10F) isn’t too bad. It’s the -21C (-5F) wind chill!
Actually, I’m pretty sure that in our yard, the wind chill is more severe than that!
The amazing thing is that we are supposed to reach 0C (32F) by this evening.
The winds are driving into our yard from the south/southeast. One thing we have noticed since moving here is that it’s those south winds that are the worst! When it comes time to plant more shelter belt trees, that is where we will need to focus on.
With the cat house and kibble house, the winds are driving right into the active areas. There isn’t much we can do about it. Even shifting the kibble house to more of a 90 degree angle with the cat house, wouldn’t do much with these winds. The good thing is, when my brother built the shelter for his dogs, he added on that “porch”, and the entry has two layers of carpet strips. Without those strips, the wind would be blowing straight into the opening, even with the kibble house sheltering it more. Any wind that does get in is going into the “porch” area, and not affecting the main part of the shelter very much, so the kitties are still cozy inside.
The kibble house is working out very well, though. The inside is sheltered from the wind almost completely, so the cats can eat in peace. Even the gap under the kibble house is quite sheltered. The sheet of insulation I put under there (the photo is from when that was done; it was too cold to take photos this morning!) actually blocks spaces where the wind would be getting in from the south, since it fits under the support pieces.
The water bowls are not sheltered, though. The heated bowl near the entrance – which had ice forming across the top, again! – has some shelter, but the others along the side of the cat house are getting the full brunt of the wind.
I think, next year, we should build another small shelter for the non-heated water bowls. Depending on how it’s positioned, it can act as a wind break, while still allowing sunlight to reach the one window of the cat house they love to sit in so much! :-)
Amazingly, I still had cats following me around while I was switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. Poor Potato Beetle was shivering when I picked him up and carried him back to the house. The silly boy had been up on the roof, earlier. No shelter up there!
I am so glad we don’t need to go anywhere today.
Doing bread baking and laundry sounds really good right now! :-D
Yesterday, things cooled down enough it was actually worth opening up my window.
There is still a problem with that.
The three amigos and their stuffed companion!
For some reason, the cats really, really like to attack the bugs through this window screen. I try to keep on top of it, but they’ve managed to cause some minor damage already, and I’m often forced to close the window to keep them from clawing their way through the screen!
With the window closed, they prefer the spaces I’ve left for them on my utility shelf. As crack-eyed Two-Face is demonstrating! :-D
The cool of the evening was a welcome respite.
It didn’t last long, unfortunately.
By about 5pm, we reached our high of 32C/89F, with the humidex at 38C/100F. The low of 21C/70F we’re supposed to reach tonight is going to welcome, along with any rain we might get.
We have yet to try and move the counter today. I’m hoping to try this evening, but I don’t have high hopes for that.
This afternoon, I headed into town and made another deposit to the garage, against the work on my mother’s car. Sometime in the next couple of weeks, he’ll order the part and shoot to have it done at the end of July, when I can pay off the balance. I am really appreciating how patient he’s been about my mother’s car!
The down side it, almost our discretionary funds in our budget has been doing to get my mother’s car fixed, rather than towards things like what we’ll need to buy to build the cordwood outhouse, or the plywood to make a base on the trailer frame, or a cover for the old basement window to replace the one that fell off, or… the list goes on. Between that and the heat making it downright dangerous to work outside, I already feel like spring was almost completely wasted, and summer doesn’t look like it’ll be much better. :-(
Still, we do what we can, and try not to stress about what we can’t.
Once I was done at the garage, I went to the pharmacy to pick up prescription refills. We’d called them in yesterday, but one of my husband’s meds that was renewed last month, was only renewed for 30 days. They had sent a fax to the doctor’s office, but there had been no reply yet. So they filled my husband’s bubble packs without it, and when I talked to them today, the pharmacist said he would send the fax again.
Along with mine. It turns out mine was renewed for a short time, too, and there was only 15 days worth, left. I decided to wait on those. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick up both at the same time, in a few days. Unfortunately, the missing medication for my husband is one of his pain killers. That is NOT going to go well for him. His pain is barely controlled as it is. Being down one of his painkillers is going to make life decidedly more unpleasant for him. :-(
My next stop was at the hardware store, where I wanted to look at different types of fasteners to use on the wire screen door I made for the basement. I ended up going with the old standby: hook and eye closures. I also found some angle plates that will solve a problem for me, in making a new screen window for the old part basement to replace the one that finally broke apart over the winter. On that, I plan to use both the 1 inch wire that I used on the door, to keep the critters out, and window screen mesh (I found rolls of it when cleaning out the basement!) to keep the bugs out. The air circulation from outside is needed to help keep the old basement dry, together with the blower fan. With the materials I have, I knew I’d have a problem making strong corners on the frame, and these right-angle plates are just what I need to solve that problem!
Once I got home, I put the hook and eye closures on the screen in the door. There are now 4 of them, and there is no way the cats will be able to push their way through anymore!
We had talked about possibly removing the basement door, but decided against it. When it is fully open, it blocks my bedroom door. So I’ll just leave my own door open, and the basement door will provide me with privacy. :-D
With the heat, just putting on those hook and eye closures was enough to leave me dripping. I’d hate to think how much hotter it would be if we didn’t have that door open! It’s like poor man’s geothermal. :-D
One of the other things I did while in town was swing by the grocery store to get more things that don’t need to be cooked. It’s been too hot to eat; none of us have appetites, and no one has the energy to cook. So fruits, vegetables, and sandwiches are the order of the day! I have been telling myself to go eat something since before I started writing this post, because I’m absolutely famished, but I have zero appetite. It’s the sort of thing where we have to make ourselves eat, just so we don’t end up getting dizzy spells or something. We have no problem making sure to stay hydrated, though, that’s for sure.
*sigh*
Well, I guess I should go make myself a food of some kind.
The Re-Farmer 