As things cooled down, I was able to get some stuff done outside, which had me in and out of the sun room quite a bit.
I had to be careful not to step on any kittens!
Yes, most of them were running away and hiding, but a couple of them were not.
This is why.
Now I understand why I kept seeing this kitten doing things like napping in the middle of the floor, or just moving around slowly. It can’t see.
One eye was completely stuck closed, and the other was open, but not wide open.
I was able to pick it up and gently dampen the eye until the gunk finally started to come off. The kitten was not happy with the rubbing on the eye, of course, even though I was more about getting it wet then actually rubbing. After a while, though, I got the big stuff off and the eye started to open, so I left it at that. I didn’t want to push things too far.
There was another kitten with gummy eyes, but it was just around the eye lids, not gluing them shut, so it would still see. We will have to make cleaning those eyes a regular thing. That’s one way to socialize them, I guess. Handle them while their eyes are stuck shut!
The good thing is, the kittens are starting to eat kibble, which means they’re going to get the lysine it’s coated in. That will help them fight off the herpes that’s causing this. If things start getting worse instead of better, we’ll see about getting eye drops for them.
While I was tending to the kitten, Baby Beep Beep came in, with a mouse. She growled constantly as she ate it, but didn’t leave! I think she might be the mom of the littlest kittens. Later on, I saw Adam skulking around the door – with another mouse hanging out of her mouth! Towards the end of the day, when I was ready to come in, I found her lying just inside the doorway, nursing. She’s the mom of the bigger kittens – the black and white ones that look so much like her! That means the grey and white cat I’ve been seeing in the sun room (I believe the girls call that one Pistachio), would be the mother of the in between sized kittens, including the ones with the gooby eyes.
I’m still not sure who the mother of the tuxedo is. I’ve seen him try to nurse on a grey and white, but she wouldn’t let him, so either it was his mother enforcing weaning, or another mother, refusing to nurse a kitten that isn’t hers.
As things started to cool down, I was able to empty most of the rain barrel to water the front garden beds. Then I went around to use a hose in the main garden area. While doing the squash patch, I hoped to see some frogs using the little houses we made for them, but so far, nothing. I also wasn’t seeing any slugs, so that’s encouraging. The second sowing of summer squash still hasn’t germinated. Looks like we’re going to be very short of summer squash this year!
For the tomato beds, I hooked up the sprinkler hoses, and remembered to get some ground staples to hold them in place, facing slightly inwards, so the inside of the beds are being watered, not the paths. The soaker hose takes a lot longer to deeply water the bed, and that gave me time to remove the old straw and what’s left of the cardboard underlay in the area the trellis beds will be built. Once the beds are built, and the vertical posts for the trellis are in, the old straw will be layered back into the beds.
I’d watered the Crespo squash, in the bed far from the house, with the watering can earlier in the day, so the rain barrel out there was due for a refilling, too. After using the watering can, I always leave it full of water, so it doesn’t blow away. When I used that first can of water, it sure was warm from the day’s heat! Not hot enough to harm the squash, thankfully.
When I was done and heading back to the house, I startled some creatures at the kibble house. Racoons. A whole family of them! One big one ran off – I think the same one I’ve been seeing fairly regularly, by itself – but then I saw about four of five little ones and an adult run off. Some of them ran under the laundry platform, which is accessible only though the spaces between the steps. From the noise, I think there was a bit of a panic when they realized they couldn’t get out any other way. I made sure to stay back and to the side, so they couldn’t see me, and could get back out.
Gosh, racoons are cute. Especially when they are little!
Well, for a while there, I thought the kittens that were moved into the sun room had been moved out again! We did not see them when doing the evening feeding, nor did I see them when checking during the night. Handily, we’ve left the shop lights that were hanging over the transplants where they are, which means we can use the remote control in the bathroom to turn them on and check the sun room. 😄
There’s a reason we didn’t see kittens.
My daughter happened to be in the bathroom when she heard a ruckus. She looked out the window, just in time to see one of the mamas chasing a skunk out of the sun room, batting at its butt.
Yeah. It still stinks in there.
When we didn’t see the kittens after that, we thought the mothers might have taken them away again, but nope! They were there this morning!
From what I can see by their sizes, I think the three kittens in this photo are from two different litters. Then there are the smaller kittens whose eyes are still blue, and finally there’s the tuxedo that’s been here a while, still running around outside. Which means we might have a total of 4 litters combined right now!
While they were eating, I was able to reach down and pet some of them. I was even able to pick up and cuddle three of them! Two from the above picture, and a third that wandered over to the kibble container I was standing next to. One of them hissed a bit while I picked it up, but the power of ear scritches is a magical thing, and they settled in a fair bit.
The cats have knocked so much stuff off the shelves and onto the floor. Even after picking up most of the stuck knocked over during the winter, the cats climb into the shelves and knock it all down again. Which is now giving the kittens lots of places to hide, so I guess it’s okay we haven’t been able to get it all cleaned up, after all!
In other things…
Before heading to the city yesterday, I texted the garage about our van. I mentioned that it seemed to be the power steering that was making the noise, and asked if I should drive or tow it in tomorrow (meaning, today) for him to check when he could. When I got to the city, there was a response, and he said it should be okay to drive it in; he just suggested I add power steering fluid. He also gave the okay to leave the van and gave instructions on where to park it.
Today being Canada Day, I knew he would be closed. He’s closed Sundays and, with Canada Day falling on the weekend, a lot of places close on the Monday, too. So he might not be able to look at it until Tuesday, which is fine by us. Since we were at Walmart, I picked up some power steering fluid, too.
So today, I topped up the power steering fluid. We haven’t driven the van in a few months. Even the doors are stiff to open and close! Then I drove it to town, with my daughter following in my mother’s car, to drop it off.
The fluid seems to have made a difference. The steering wasn’t making noise anymore, though when I was outside the van while the engine was running, I could still hear the noise from the engine area. From inside the van, the engine sounded quiet.
Gosh, it felt so good to be driving the van, instead of my mother’s little car! Except for the lack of working air conditioning. 😂
There was something else, though, that wasn’t there before. When I hit the breaks to decelerate, there was a repetitive whumping coming from the rear. !!!
So after parking the van, I sent a message to tell the garage where the keys were hidden, mentioned topping up the fluid, then told about what was happening when applying the brakes.
The 2016 Caravan we’d tried to get financing for is still there, and the price has dropped considerably! At the time we applied for financing, it was selling for $15,400 – though he knocked $400 off for us from the start. Later, I saw it go down to $14,600, then down to $13,900. It is now down to $10,400 ! We weren’t able to get financing for it, because it was just over their mileage cut off. The loan we were approved for was a newer vehicle with lower mileage, but with no credit cards, loans or mortgage to improve our credit rating, the interest rates and requirements were insane. I got a low limit credit card to use to improve my credit rating, which takes about 6 months to really make a difference. We’re at only a couple of months, so it’s still too early to apply again, and get a decent interest rate. But if that van is still there by fall, I’ll be applying for it again. We’ll even be able to make a down payment, though it we can get it with only the van as a trade in, that would be preferable. There are a lot of things that money would be useful for. Life finally getting a plumber to work on our bathroom taps! One vet bill used up the money we had for that, but hopefully, we won’t have any emergencies to require us to dip into it again.
Of course, as I walked by, I took a look at the van. Looking through the tinted back windows, I could see some bags in the back. Looking through another window, I could finally see that they were bagged tires. The van has a set of winter tires, too!
Gosh, it would be so nice to have that van! We loved it when we had a 2007 Grand Caravan, and while the 2005 Uplander we have now has little things that I really like about it, a newer Caravan probably has some version of them, too. I would just really love to have a vehicle that doesn’t have me saying an extra prayer for protection, every time I have to drive somewhere! If the van needs repairs that cost more than it’s worth, though, we might end up applying for it again, sooner, rather than later!
One nice thing about having the van waiting at the garage until it can be looked at: once at home, we didn’t have to squeeze my mother’s car into the side room of the garage, and could park where the van usually sits. Not only is there room to open the driver’s side door all the way, but someone can get in and out of the passenger side, too! 😂
Ugh. It’s past 4pm as I write this, and we’ve hit 30C/86F That matches the 30 year record high from 2012. Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer.
It could be worse. We could be matching the record low of 5C/42F set in 2001, instead!
Though we had some excellent rain recently, I need to check the garden beds and see if they need to be watered in this heat! It won’t start cooling down for 3 or 4 more hours, though.
Plus, of course, check to make sure the water bowls outside are full, and maybe add some frozen reused water bottles in them, as well!
I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. First, I was awakened by Turmeric going after Nosencrantz. Then I had Fenrir climb on top of my stomach, demanding pets. Then Butterscotch came over for attention which, for some reason, requires that she get her claws caught in my sheets, repeatedly, before Potato Beetle came over and wanted pets, too. It’s rather hard to pet three cats at the same time!
After a few more aggressive incidents with Turmeric, I finally gave up and headed outside to do my morning rounds, early.
I spotted a couple of kittens in the sun room as I went through from the kitchen, but they quickly hid. Later, while checking on the garden beds, I spotted a very wet Adam crossing the garden from the road. The morning dew was really excessive, and I was getting soaked half way to my knees, and I wasn’t even walking in the tall grass!
Adam appreciated breakfast, but would not let me come any closer.
Nor could I get close to Not-Junkpile. It might be a while before we can giver her that ear mite medication! But we have to do it quickly, considering how madly she’s injuring herself with scratching.
Decimus and her babies are doing quite well. My daughter and I headed to the city and stopped at the clinic to drop off the extra medication we got by mistake. They were very happy I did that! 😄 While there, I mentioned being able to grab a yard cat right after she had her babies and bring her in, and that she likely has ear mites, too. She agreed. Since I was there anyhow, I bought a second dose for Decimus. She, at least, will be easier to get ahold of!
We did our errands in the city, then picked up gas at Costco, for both the car and the lawn mowers. While in town yesterday, I was shocked to find that gas prices had dropped from 158.9 cents/litre to 149.9/litre. We usually see prices jump by that much, but never drop by that much. Costco was still at 145.9/L, and the gas station was insanely busy. We saw other people filling their jerry cans, too. For the lawnmowers, we only use Premium, which was 165.9/L
Before we left, my daughter and I looked into the sun room from outside, and saw at least 5 kittens playing in a group, with several others ducking in and out of view.
After we got home, I looked again from the inside of the house, and spotted Adam with a white and grey. They are both mamas, but it seems to me there are actually three litters combined.
One of Adam’s kittens looks almost exactly like her! It looks like there is a second tuxedo, or something very close to a tuxedo pattern, among her brood as well. The younger ones seem to belong to the white and grey mama. The tuxedo that has been handing around for a while seems very happy to have other kittens to keep him company, now! I get the impression he is older than all the other kittens.
While running our errands today, we were able to pick up more bell collars. They are a lot cheaper in the city! The two boys that spray are now belled. Next, we wanted to bell the more aggressive females. We got a black one with white skulls and crossbones for Turmeric, as it suits her catonality! Tissue got a pink one, to stand out on her white fur. The third went to Fenrir, as she tends to harass Nosencrantz, too. That one is pale green and glows in the dark.
Turmeric didn’t like the colour, but seemed to get used to it quickly. My daughter got Tissue upstairs, and I think she slept through ti! Fenrir, on the other hand, was not a happy camper!
The main thing is, we should be able to hear them before they get into trouble!
I popped into the old kitchen for something and glanced through the door into the sunroom.
I saw the most amazing looking kitten!
Poor photo quality, due to taking pictures through a window screen.
It’s almost, but not quite, a white kitten!
Then I spotted two more.
The one that’s fully visible is the one I’d spotted earlier in the day. The second one seems to have more grey, but it kept hiding behind the bin, so I never quite got a good look at it.
From her behaviour, I think Adam, the black and white, is the mother. The other cat is Baby Beep Beep, and I’m pretty sure she has kittens somewhere, too.
The first was the ear mite medication I bought. When I finally opened the bag to get it out, I realized that there was a sealed box inside.
I bought one dose.
A box has 6 doses!
After going over the receipt and making sure I was seeing what I wasn’t supposed to be seeing, I called up the vet clinic and told them what I found, and that I’d like to return the extras. The receptionist went to talk to a tech and confirmed that, as long as the individual dose packages were still sealed, they could take them back.
I plan to go to the city for our second stock up trip, so I’ll make sure to go to town first and drop the extras off and go to the city by a different route. Somebody made what could have been an expensive mistake!
I also found a surprise in the sun room.
Usually, when doing the evening feeding, I go through the old kitchen, where the kibble is stored. This time, I happened to go out the main entry to take something to the compost bin, then went back in through the sun room to put away the rinsed out bin I’d used. We have had rain on and off all day today, and there were a number of startled cats sheltering in the sun room when I came in. As I saw them dashing around, I noticed a tiny tail disappearing between two bins.
A grey tail.
I was actually able to reach in and give it head scritches, though it did not like that. When I got the kibble ready, I left a handful in front of where it was hiding – it could only back up so far. We still coat the kibble with lysine and, from the looks of it, this kitten could use some!
I thought, at first, that this was the tuxedo’s sibling, but now that I look at the pictures, I can see its eyes are still blue, so it is younger. For now, we are leaving it in the sun room, though I did set out a container of water for it to find, too. I have no clue which cat this one belongs to.
In between the rain, I checked out a few things. The last of the Jiffy pellets that have seeds that didn’t germinate are still on the picnic table under the old market tent. The picnic table is not completely under the tent, so some of the trays are being rained on. I checked them and drained the excess water, and found a single lemon cucumber has germinated! Which makes me wonder how many other things will decide to germinate, too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to transplant anything that does. If we get both types of cucumbers, there’s enough time to have harvests before fall, at least.
I grabbed some broken plant pots we’d been hanging on to and set a bunch of them up in the squash patch, buried in the mulch, for the frogs to hide in. Yesterday evening, I used grass clippings to mulch the spaces between squash mounds in rows; the paths in between will be mulched with wood chips. I am still finding some slugs, so I think I will shake out more corn meal, after I get back from the city tomorrow. We’re still expecting rain off and on all night.
When there were just the too-small pieces left, I went to put them in the old garden shed. When I opened the door, I startled Caramel. There’s a rotted out hole in the back of the shed that cats can get in and out of. She seemed strangely hesitant about running away from me, so I took a closer look at where she had been. Sure enough, there was a wriggly little worm! Looks like she’s moving her kittens again! I quickly put the broken pieces of pots away near the door and closed the shed up again, so she could tend to her baby.
As for the one in the sun room, I suspect this baby is not quite weaned yet, so we will have to leave it alone for now. I’ll still make sure to check on it and, if it hasn’t been moved, leave food for it and perhaps its mother.
Oh! Good grief.
One of the things I picked up in town today was a couple of cat collars with bells. Leyendecker and Finnegan (one of our original tuxedos that moved out with us) have been spraying, so we’re hoping the bells will alert us to them being where they shouldn’t be.
I just heard a bell tinkling behind me, so I looked over to see Leyendecker walk over, then jump onto my bed.
For all that I see him every day, it blows me away, just how BIG he is! I don’t mean how chonky he is, either. He is just a massive cat. He’s taller and longer than just about every other cat, and very, very burly. Hard to believe he was the smallest kitten of the litter!
Okay, the running around I did with my mother yesterday drained me a lot more than I thought it did. I feel totally wasted today. And she wasn’t even having one of her bad days, either.
I’m also not quite sure what is worth getting started on outside right now. We’re under thunderstorm warnings. The south end of the province is supposed to get the brunt of the storms, but looking at the weather radar, is does look like the system will go right over us, too, for a change. However, with the weird climate bubble we have over us, due to our location between lakes both small and huge, there have been times when the radar shows a system right on top of us, but when I look out the window, there’s nothing. So do I go out and start a job that would normally take a lot of time, or requires electricity, and risk a storm blowing over? Or just putter around with small jobs and leave myself feeling like the entire day is waste?
At least I got this cheerful sight, first thing.
Best of all, I GOT TO TOUCH THE BABY!!!! While he was eating under there, I was able to come close, reach under and start petting his back. He sort of looked around at me, then kept eating. If another cat hadn’t made some sudden crashing noises, he would have stayed longer, too.
I was able to see that the big wood tick visible in his fur previously is now gone, and I could feel no other lumps and bumps as I pet him. I think it was in a location fairly easy to get groomed out. Unlike when I found that cluster of wood ticks by Pinky’s ear a few days ago.
While doing my rounds, I checked out all the garden beds and did some weeding, but I’m hoping we’ll at least get some rain, so I didn’t hook up the sprinkler and soaker hoses, or do any other watering. The girls hadn’t had a chance to move the branch pile I’d made yesterday, so I dragged that off. I was rather pleased to find the branches were stacked in such a way that I could just grab the bottom branches and pull it across the lawn, all at once!
I haven’t completely put away the seedling trays with the Jiffy pellets that didn’t germinate. It looks like two little Birds Egg gourds have shown up! While weeding in the old kitchen garden, near my daughter’s daffodils, I found cleared a space that could actually have something planted in it. I’m considering sticking the new seedlings in there. If they survive, they would get big enough to shade out a lot of the weeds, but might also get big enough to shade out the flowers my daughter planted in there. Another option is the space we had ground cherries in last year. This was partly an experiment to see if they would seed themselves, and it looks like they did not. Which means there’s a spot with really good soil potentially available. If I pull more dandelion roots out of there, I think it would be worth trying.
I’m still disappointed over how many things had zero germination rates. Some winter squash, and both types of cucumbers, in particular that I was looking forward to.
Now… it is worthwhile for me to get the extension cords out and use the weed trimmer, so I can access those trees my brother cut down for me? According to the weather app, it should stop raining within half an hour. In fact, on the animated radar, I can watch the rain system moving right over us.
It’s not raining right now. There isn’t even any wind.
*sigh*
Well, we’ll see what I manage to get done, so the day isn’t entirely wasted.
I managed to get a few things done before I had to head out to my mother’s. This is what I was greeted with, when I started getting the kibble for the outside cats.
This kitten has moved right into the shelter area! He runs away from me, but waits until I’m fairly close before he does. For example, I was able to walk past him while he was on this rail, and all he did was tuck himself further under the rose bush.
After feeding the cats and doing my morning rounds, I got out the extended pole pruner and cut away some of the problem branches from Chinese elms near the chain link fence. We’ve been pruning them back pretty much every year since we’ve moved here, but the branches grow back very quickly. Pruning one tree now allows for more light to reach where the peas are planted, but the branch that’s casting the most shade is too high for the pruner, even at maximum height. I dragged off the one branch I did get down, to add it to the pile by the fire pit. I really should have broken it down to smaller pieces, first! Elm is a very heavy wood, and once it was on the ground, I realized the branch was quite a bit bigger than I thought.
I also worked on the elm near the vehicle gate into the inner yard, next to the asparagus patch. This is another tree we’ve cut back before, but when the septic truck came out, it was hitting branches again! I got a couple of the problem branches down but started running out of time, so I just broke them down quickly with the mini-chainsaw pruner and piled them for the girls to haul away later. Some of the branches that need to be taken down will probably have to wait until fall, as they would end up falling right on the asparagus and strawberries. If I wait until they are mulched for the winter, they will protected enough.
Then it was time to change and head out to get some gas, then pick up my mother. We then drove to the next major town, about half way to the city from her place, for her eye appointment. I wanted to get her there early, since she was a first time patient. I explained to her that they would need her health care card and do the “paperwork” to get her into their system, and that they would need to take her glasses to measure her current prescription and do some pre-tests. When we got there, though, she actually seemed surprised when they actually did all the things I explained to her. It was as if she didn’t believe me or something! The timing worked out just right, though; all the pre-stuff was done just before her appointment time, and the eye doctor called her in, right on schedule!
There were a few tests she did with my mother that she didn’t do with me when I had my appointment, like checking my mother’s peripheral vision. My mother will have a fairly minor change in her prescription. She mentioned having headaches, mostly when reading, so we hope the change will make those go away. If the headaches turn out to be caused by something else, she’ll at least be seeing better!
Then the doctor went over the photos taken of the inside of my mother’s eyes. She is showing early signs of macular degeneration, but it is still dry, so there is no treatment for it. She was given a booklet about a specific multivitamin that can help slow down further degradation, that also has a grid eye test on the back page. The doctor got her to use it as instructed, looking at a center dot with one eye covered, and what to look for. It turns out that, with one of her eyes, the grid lines look wavy. For now, the thing to watch out for is if it starts to get worse and, if it does, to get back to her right away.
The one odd thing was when she asked if we had any other questions, and my mother started asking about why an eye might turn all red. The doctor said there could be many reasons and, as my mother continued, I realized she was talking about what that happened to her, four or five years ago. After having a sneezing or coughing fit (I can’t remember which, right now), she popped a blood vessel in her eye. I drove her to the hospital in this town every day for a week, so she could get a blood thinning injection, to help it heal faster. And it did.
Turns out, she either doesn’t remember why it happened, or doesn’t believe that her sneezing/coughing fit actually caused it, anymore. It looks like she’s rewriting her memory about it, too. When I realized what she was talking about and mentioned driving her to the hospital for the injection daily like that, she gave me this death glare for saying something. *sigh*
But, the appointment went well, and she got her prescription. She had brought up with me earlier about the possibility of going to Walmart to get her glasses, because one of the people in her building suggested it. I told her that she could probably get cheaper glasses there, but recommended getting them here, because she’d get better care. After her appointment, when she was told she could look at frames to get her new glasses if she wanted, she started hemming and hawing. I again recommended doing it right away here, if only to get it over and done with, and she sort of agrees. But first, I took her to the counter to pay for the appointment. That confused her and, for some reason, she thought they wanted her health care card again. She had the money for the payment already set aside in an envelope in her purse. She was told she could pay for it together with her new glasses, but that confused her even more, so I told them to just process the payment for the appointment on its own.
With her knees being an issue, my mother wasn’t up to wandering around to look at frames, so one of the staff asked her some questions, then went looking for frames that were sort of like what my mother already had. She ended up bringing two metal and two plastic frames. One of the metal frames were a bright red that matched the shirt my mother happened to be wearing, but my mother would not consider such a bright colour! What was funny about that is that the frames she did choose were a plastic pair with blues, browns and greys, and very trendy! 😄 They look good on her, though, and she liked them, so that’s all that mattered – though I know my mother well enough that she chose them more because she was overwhelmed by having to choose at all.
Then they started asking her about what coatings she wanted, and that was almost more than she could handle. She basically told the woman that was helping her at this point to just give her good glasses, and that she would trust her! 😄 They checked her current glasses and basically matched what she already had.
As we were talking, my mother kept asking questions about the chain and how long they were here, etc. They didn’t quite understand what she meant at first, and told her about other franchise locations, but she was really trying to ask if they’d been located anywhere else. She was still convinced that there was only one eye clinic in this town. They told her there was another one, and where it was located, so she figures that’s what she was remembering. I don’t know when she was last taken to this town to get her eyes tested, but considering she says she was taken to it by her niece, it had to have been well over 10 years ago!
I’m amused that it took them telling her there was another eye clinic for her to finally believe it. We even drove past it later one.
The main thing is, her glasses are ordered. They’ll call me when they are in, and I’ll bring my mother in to pick them up.
That done, even though she was clearly tired, my mother wasn’t ready to go home. So we ended up going to a chicken place for a late lunch/early supper. This is a place she normally goes to in this town, but I don’t know that she’ll be willing to go back again, even though the food was excellent, and so was the service. There seems to have been a change in ownership since we were last there, the the people running it are *gasp* not white. We heard another customer talking to the guy that seated us (well; my mother ignored him and walked right to the table she wanted, so… tried to seat us) and he said he was from Pakistan, so when the waitress came by towards the end of the meal, my started asking her where she was from and how long she’s been in Canada…
She was born here. Second generation Canadian, it turned out.
Thankfully, my mother behaved, and didn’t make any rude comments.
Oh, that reminds me. During conversation, she brought up not going back to the Chinese restaurant that’s right next to her building. Why? Because she’s been seeing so many strange cats lately. *sigh* I think one of the people in her building told her this, but when I asked, my mother said there was something in the news about a Chinese restaurant in the city, where they were caught serving cat meat. The problem is, she could have seen something about this years ago, and who knows in what context it was in. Now, very suddenly, she has decided that because she once saw a strange cat in the field outside her window, it means the Chinese restaurant next to her place is using cat meat…
*sigh*
Anyhow…
When it came time to take care of the bill, I made sure to pay it, because my mother doesn’t believe in tips. Before we left, though, she took the receipt from me. When I got her home and she looked at it, she was really shocked by the amount. I told her that included the tip, and she was all “why did you give a tip? She just did her job. She should be happy to have a job…” The usual.
I told her, I tipped her because she gave us really good service. I know the tipping expectation has gotten pretty extreme these days, but some people will always get tips from me. Wait staff is one of them (especially if my mother’s behaviour has been particularly bad!). Our septic guy is another. 😄
By the time I got my mother home and was getting ready to head home myself, I realized I’d been out for 6 hours already. Almost 5 1/2 of those were with my mother. No wonder I was feeling so tired!
One the way home, though, I swung by the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I did want to see if the tomatoes and peppers were gone. The peppers were all gone, as well all the Black Beauty tomatoes, but there were still a few Spoon and Romas left. I hope someone will take them, but if they’re still there the next time I check, I’ll take them back and try to find someplace to plant them!
Once at home, I went straight back out again to do my evening routine with, today, included giving the Korean Pine in the outer yard a deep watering.
I was watched the entire time by cows. 🐮🐮🐮🐮
I thought I had been hearing them for the past couple of days! I love it when the renter’s cows are here!
I was planning to go to bed early tonight, and get and early start working outside, but it’s already 9pm as I finish writing this, and I still need to update my siblings about how things went with my mother!
Then, it’s bed time. Hopefully, I’ll actually fall asleep instead of suddenly becoming wide awake once my head hits the pillow! 😄😄😄
I had an adorable surprise when I headed out this morning!
The tuxedo kitten is back!
We haven’t seen the litter of four, for a while. I suspect the mama moved them across the road, to the empty farm buildings there. Quite a few of the mamas seem to move back and forth from there. We had been seeing six kittens together for a while, including this tuxedo, but the other two have not been seen for even longer. That this one is now showing up alone suggests the other did not survive after being moved. I do wish the mamas wouldn’t move their kittens around that that, but it seems to be an instinctive thing for them, no matter how safe of a location they happen to have their kittens at any particular time.
You can just see it in the photo, but this tuxedo actually has stripes! I was able to walk past fairly close before it ran and hid, and one time I got a good, clear look at his side (and yes, I’m 99% sure it is male). His black fur has dark grey stripes in it that can’t even be seen at some angles.
I’m pretty sure the white and grey sharing the kibble tray is its mama. Not completely sure, though. It has mostly been alone, though it also interacts and plays with the other adult cats.
Today was expected to be a hot one, so I made sure to get some things done in the garden, before giving it all a good watering. I’m glad I did. We were expected to reach 27C/81F for a high. As I write this, at almost 7pm, we’re still at 28C/82F – only one degree short of the record high for today.
I direct sowed more summer squash this morning – four out of the five varieties that were planted. The G-Star (green) patty pans are doing well. No Magda squash germinated at all, and when I loosened the soil to plant new seeds, there was no sign of the old seeds. The germination rate for the Goldy (yellow) and Endeavour (green) zucchini, as well as the Sunburst (yellow) patty pans was very low, and with some, the seedlings were not looking very strong.
We lost one Honeyboat Delicata to slugs, and I considered planting a few more summer squash in the empty hill, but decided to try an experiment. I took some of the Jiffy pellets that had the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons in them, and transplanted them. One broke up a bit as I did, and I could actually see an intake seed in it, so it is actually possible they might germinate in the new location. We shall see! No harm in trying.
When I transplanted the zucca melon and drum gourds into the bigger squash hill, I mulched in between the transplants, but didn’t have enough to mulch the sides of the hill. Well, I’ve got lots of grass clippings for mulch right now, so I took care of that, this morning. The main reason it was needed was to prevent the sides from eroding when the hill was watered. I was happy to see that a the transplants – aside from the one the slugs ate – are looking strong and healthy. They are liking this heat! We will have to make sure they get watered often, though. Especially ones like the zucca and Crespo squash, which are supposed to grow very large fruit. The Crespo have lots of flowers on them, but they’re all still male flowers, so I’m hoping more watering will help with that. Where they are is far from the house, gets full sun all day, and the soil out there gets dry very quickly, so we could probably get away with watering them twice a day, if we were up to it. Along with watering everything, I topped up the rain barrel by the Crespo squash, too. I keep a watering can beside it, full of water to is doesn’t blow away, and it’s amazing how warm the water in there got, even though it was still morning, and a few hours before we’d hit the high of the day.
When feeding the cats, I realized we would run out of kibble faster than expected, and before our monthly shopping. Since I’m going to be taking my mother to her eye appointment tomorrow, I decided to do a Walmart trip today. The price difference is worth the cost of gas to drive that far, but of course, I had to combine errands to make it even more worth while! The egg lady was going to be in town tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be done with my mother in time to meet her there, so I contacted her and arranged to swing by her place on my way home today. Then, while at the Walmart, I remembered to pick up new hose connectors. I couldn’t remember if I needed to replace male or female connectors, so I got one of each. I drove over the hoses at the front tap by mistake, when unloading the car, which normally would have been okay, except I happened to catch one of the connectors on the sidewalk. More specifically, the metal part under the connector. So while the two hoses connected to each other were fine, the bent metal part resulted in water spraying from where the connector joined the hose.
While looking at the connectors, I also noticed an L shaped swivel connector for the tap, so I grabbed one of those, too.
Once at home, it took me more time to cut off the broken hose connector than it did to fix the hose! So the front hoses no longer leak. At least not at the connectors. The spray nozzle, however, drips. This spray nozzle was actually here when we moved here, and has outlasted all the nozzles we’ve bought so far! So I ended up taking the front plate off of that and soaking it in CLR for a while, then scrubbing it with an old toothbrush. It works much better, now!
I also put the swivel connector on the back tap. That tap is a real pain. It’s difficult to connect a hose to it because of how close to the wall it is, and the angle. We have tried using flexible hose connectors, but they’ve been even more difficult to screw on, and leaked like crazy. Even with screwing the hose directly to the tap, when we move the hose to the side, it starts to drip enough that I ended up putting an old rectangular balcony rail planter under it to collect the water, set up so that when it filled to overflowing, the water would flow further away from the basement wall.
This new connector, however, was much easier to screw on, and angle of the swivel part made it easier to attach the hose, too. Best of all, with everything finally screwed on properly, no more dripping! I like being able to turn the tap on and leave it on.
Hmm… I wonder if, with this new connector, I could attach the hose that runs to the tap on the garden. The last time I was successfully able to attach it, we discovered water spraying from the ground next to a branch pile. The branch piles are gone now, so if I test it again, I’ll be better able to see and mark exactly where the buried hose is damaged.
I think I’ll test that out tonight, when I do my evening rounds!
Along with all that, I had a surprise from the egg lady when I stopped to pick up two flats of eggs. She included some guinea eggs! Enough for all for of us to try them out. She told me that the eggs from guinea hens have higher levels of protein and other nutrients, compared to chicken eggs. I really look forward to trying them!
Well, it’s time to go out and do my evening rounds! One of the things I want to get done is set up the soaker hoses in the low raised beds, with the tomatoes. They should have been set up before they were transplanted, but I wasn’t sure exactly where or how many tomatoes would fit at the time.
It has cooled down to 26C/78F in the time it took me to write this. Better than nothing!
Decimus contentedly nursing one of her babies. The other three put themselves in the cat cave.
Bringing Decimus and her babies indoors has had an unexpected benefit.
I can now open my door, and leave it open. Not overnight, and I prefer it closed if there isn’t anyone up and about to hear if there are problems, but open nonetheless.
Before bringing her in, if I was in my room, I was constantly opening and closing the door to let a stream of “safe” cats in and out. The cats that Marlee, Butterscotch and Nosencrantz were okay with, and that generally did not try to attack Nosencrantz. It basically came down to Turmeric being the only one that could not be allowed in the room, because she would go straight for Nosencrantz, and Tissue was touch and go. It took her a bit longer, but she would start stalking Nosencrantz and was generally really high strung.
Once Decimus came in, some of the usual cats would come into the room, see her and the babies and suddenly leave! After awhile, they stopped wanting to come in at all. Cheddar was pretty much the only one that was calm about it, but even he doesn’t want to come in as often anymore. Leyendecker still acts like he wants to come in, but as soon as he sees Decimus and the babies, he might sniff a bit, but usually wants out again, right away. Especially if Decimus is out of the cage and lounging on the carpet nearby.
Decimus actually wants out of the room. She wants to wander around the house and explore. I don’t think she has discovered the upstairs, yet. Since we want her to be able to go back to her babies quickly, the door gets left open.
The other cats still aren’t sure about her, but she so obliviously ignores any hissing or growling, sniffing and stalking, they tend to back off. Or get really startled when she walks past them and rubs her body against them on the way by. It’s like “I’m threatening you! Why are you hugging me?!?”
With the kittens in my room, pretty much none of the cats try to come in when the door is open. They might go through the doorway for a moment, look around, then leave. Even Turmeric won’t go much past the door. There was one time she’d come in and was under a stool, so we didn’t notice her when we closed the door. I discovered her when I heard a sudden cat altercation (I can’t really call it a fight) between Turmeric and, I think, Marlee. I dashed over (as much as this broken body can “dash” anywhere) to open the door and Turmeric ran out with her tail puffed out like a bottle brush! She hasn’t tried to come in, since.
Which means that now, after months of having to keep my door closed to prevent cats from going after Nosencrantz, I can now keep my door open again. All thanks to a tiny little mama that is completely oblivious to the curiosity and/or aggressive behaviour of other cats.
It also means that Marlee, Nosencrantz and Butterscotch can leave the room on their own, if they want.
None of them have bothered. Even Marlee, who sometimes does decide she wants out, has shown no interest in going out that door.
Hopefully, that will change and I can start leaving my door open when I’m asleep, too!
In other things, I was up way too late last night, after finally being able to recover my original, personal Facebook account. It was stolen on May 2, and I’ve been going through it to look for damage done. My total friend’s list count had gone down, which was no surprise. I knew that quite a few of my friends that joined me on my new account had either unfriended or blocked my original account after the thief had DM’d them to try and scam them, or they had interactions with the thief when sketchy posts were being made from my account. I also saw a lot of new names I’ve never seen before. So far, I’ve been leaving public posts to let people know that my account was recovered, and that anyone who got a friend request or message from my account after May 2, it was not me, but the thief. This morning, I found the blocked list and unblocked a lot of my friends and family, but saw a whole bunch of unfamiliar names, too. I suspect these are people the thief had successfully scammed, or people who called them out as a scammer. I don’t know what to do about these new names, yet, but once I unblocked the people I knew, I posted another public message that they would finally be able to see, too, explaining the situation.
It’s Messenger that is really going to take time to deal with. The thief was very busy there! From the looks of it, a lot of the thief’s attempts to contact people simply got ignored, which likely means they had already clued in that my account was stolen. It’s the ones that I see had actual conversations that I will have to go through and assess the damage done under my name.
I’m glad I didn’t give up trying to recover my account, but I can sure see why so many people do. So many people were reporting my original account and scam posts being made from there, it really should have been shut down long ago. Since I couldn’t see any posts being made from my original account, due to privacy settings, all I could do was report the profile as imitating me, until the thief changed the public name and profile picture. Then I kept reporting it as a fake account with a fake name. I was reporting it as close to every day as I could, as well as repeatedly going through the recovery process. Then I would use every feedback option I encountered to explain the problems I was having. I would also post updates on my new account, tagging Facebook, telling people on my friends list what was going on, as well as the occasional public post, in case people who knew me were trying to look my up to see what was going on. As frustrating as it was, I fully intended to keep it up as long as I possibly could. I simply was not willing to accept that someone out there was scamming people under my name, without doing something about it.
I don’t have a lot of time to spend on this, and I want to be thorough about it. If that means directly contacting people to let them know that they had been dealing with a stolen account and not me, I want to take time to do it right. So that means I’ll still be using my new account a lot, still. Especially for direct messages.
It’s a pain in the butt, but I really want to repair as much damage done under my name as possible.
Decimus has taken to wandering around and exploring the house, which gave me the opportunity last night, to get a good look at her babies. Three of them still have their eyes closed. The bitties are getting big enough that, after squirming their way out of the cat cave, they can squirm their way back in again, all on their own!
I was going to my mother’s this afternoon, so I was outside early to get some work done in the garden. I hoped to be out there before it got too warm, but we were above 20C/68F in almost no time at all. Ah, well. At least I got some progress!
We had very few melons germinate. Of the four types we tried (all short season varieties), there were no watermelon, only two Sarah’s Choice, three Pixie and four Halona. I had intended to transplant them into the new trellis beds, but the seedlings really needed to get into the ground.
So I made do.
I used the kiddie pool that has come in so handy over the past few years! We definitely need to get another one before the end of the growing season.
I punched some holes for drainage, then put a layer of grass clippings over the bottom. A couple of wheel barrow loads of soil was enough to fill it. The soil got a soaking, then a layer of grass clipping mulch, and another soaking.
Then I left it for the water to be absorbed and dealt with another problem. Overhanging tree branches! The row of trees my mother allowed to take up where she used to have a raspberry patch includes a bunch of Chinese elms. Around this spot, their branches were getting quite large and dense, and hanging down low enough that I kept getting my hat caught in them. I cut away quite a lot of the branches and some of the smaller trunks. The goal is to get rid of all of them, but that will wait until I can get out there with a chain saw. For now, I just needed to clear the area around our container garden area.
That done, I have the new bed one more soak, then got the transplants. The two Sarah’s Choice went into the middle, while the others were spaced around them. They’re a bit densely planted, so I wanted to make sure they could climb. I had picked up some more of those large plastic coated, metal stakes this spring, so I had enough to put six around the outside, plus one in the middle. I then used the broken canopy tent pieces that had previously been used to support the protective boards around the newly transplanted tomatoes, and some zip ties to attach horizontal pieces around the perimeter. Last of all, I added a couple of shorter plastic coated metal stakes across the middle, for the Sarah’s Choice melons to climb. If necessary, we can add another level of horizontal pieces higher up.
There is a risk that the plants on the outside will end up shading out the ones on the inside, but I hope this makeshift trellis will allow them to climb and still allow light through. When we grew the Pixie and Halona before, it was a drought year, and the greenery didn’t get very dense.
So those are finally in!
Once done, I left early enough to hit the post office before going to my mother’s. While at the store, I talked to the owner, and got the okay to bring our extra tomato and pepper transplants over tomorrow, as giveaways.
I’ve since come back from doing my evening rounds, giving the melons one more watering, to settle things in. In spite of the rain we had yesterday, I found the Crespo squash, the low raised beds, grow bags and the squash patch all needed watering! Some of the summer squash are coming up, but I think I will need to replant a few.
While transplanting the winter squash, I included some of the Jiffy pellets that did not germinate, just in case. Sure enough, a few of them have actually germinated, and the new seedlings are looking stronger that some of the transplants! The transplants should have gone into the ground earlier. There is one winter squash that has been lost, though, and from the slime off over the remains, I’d say it got eaten by slugs. We have a lot of frogs this year, but they’ve been hanging out in the low raised beds. We should set up some little frog shelters around the squash patch to encourage them to hang out and eat the snails!
I’m really happy with how the potatoes are doing. Even the Purple Peruvians, which were the last variety to emerge, are now showing flower buds. I even spotted a couple of Indigo Blue tomatoes forming!
The only problem I have is the cats! While watering the beds, a couple of them decided to lie in the ones I hadn’t got to, yet – right on top of the seedlings! They like to lie on the mulch, and don’t care if that has them lying across seedlings, too, the buggers! Some onions and turnips got a bit shmushed, but I think they’ll recover.
I will be quite happy to pass on all those leftover tomatoes. I’d hoped to get the rest of the Romas into the ground, but with all the delays that keep popping up, I don’t know that I’ll have anything built to plant them in fast enough. Once they’ve been passed on, I will be able to take more time to get it done right, and not have to rush. I’d still like to get it built in time to plant any really short season crops we’ve got, but at this point, I am willing to let a lot of the direct sowing we intended to do, slide for this year. I’m still debating whether to plant some pole beans with the Montana Morado corn. I keep waffling back and forth on that. We shall see.
The next few days will be modestly hot, so I hope to catch up on the outside work!
The Re-Farmer 