kittens

Morning flowers and absorbed into the crèche

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This morning, I woke up to the sound of rain. Lovely rain!

There was absolutely nothing in my weather apps calling for rain. Even the weather radar showed nothing.

I was glad to have it as we got very little rain yesterday. Before my trip into town to pick up prescriptions, I helped my daughter gather garden and yard tools to the bench under the canopy tent, and she spent several hours cleaning, sharpening, removing rust an otherwise tending to them. The job’s not done, as some things need repairs as well, and others just took a really long time, so this is a multi-day project.

The good thing is that she was set up under the canopy. I headed out later on and, while I was in the garage, it started to pour.

No, we were not expecting rain.

Then it stopped as abruptly as it started.

Then it started again, with another downpour.

This happened a few times, on and off like a tap, but in the end we didn’t actually get much rain. Even this morning, after whatever rain we were getting when I woke up, I found the level in the rain barrel had hardly moved.

The garden – what’s left of it – still appreciated it.

The pumpkins, which look so dead, are still popping out massive flowers. So are the winter squash, though not anywhere near as big.

In the next photo are three of the stem sunflower seed heads that exploded open yesterday. They’re looking a lot better developed and healthier than the main one at the top!

That first aster that bloomed, in the next photo, was looking so pretty with the rain drops on its petals. The buds on plants next to it look like they will be a very light colour.

One of the things about working outside – at least when the grass is dry – is that we have certain cats that like to follow us around. There is one kitten, a white with grey tabby spots, from the deluge of younger kittens that showed up weeks ago that loves to follow us around. The problem is, he is absolutely tiny. Though he is weeks older, Frank’s litter that she moved into the cat cage, which are the youngest of them all, are the same size as him. I often find myself picking him up and carrying him around, just because he’s so tiny, I fear he can’t keep up. He loves being carried, though, and loves attention.

One of the things I’ve started to do is put him into the cat cage with Frank’s litter. Sometimes, just to keep him out from underfoot to I can do things. Sometimes, so he can help himself to the bowl of cat soup we put in there and not have to fight through larger cats and kittens. Usually, he leave the cat cage right away, though.

He’s also one of the kittens that makes a dash through the door when I come out with their food in the mornings! I really have to watch my step as I go through, so as not to step on him or any of the other cats in the swirling horde. This morning, it was my older daughter who was available to help me get through the doors, then herd the kittens out again. This tiny one being the most determined to stay inside!

We had to wash the eyes of two of Frank’s kittens again. One always gets two eyes stuck shut, but that doesn’t stop him from finding his way out of the cat cage and to the food trays (we have confirmed that all three of Frank’s kittens are male). The other has one eye that sticks shut. Once the eye washing was done, I had a chance to tuck the little adventurer into the cat cage to enjoy the kitten soup. There was a fluffy little tabby already in there, sitting in the litter box. Not using it. Just sitting in it. 😄 I was happy to see the tiny white and tabby kitten start eating the kitten soup.

From there I did my rounds, checked on the garden, and all the usual things.

When I came through the sun room to go inside, I spotted a cuddle puddle in the cat cage.

With an extra head peeking out.

The white and tabby was right in there with the other three.

Before I could get a picture, Frank jumped in.

In this picture, you can see her three milling about. You can’t see the white and tabby, because he’s underneath her.

Nursing!

She has accepted him as one of her own! I’m happy to see this because the crèche mothers all have older kittens and are pretty much done with nursing. Slick is the only one we regularly see nursing her kittens, but they’re all out by the shrine feeding station near the junk pile, where the litter lives. The sun room kittens tend not to go there at all, so the little one isn’t there to be included.

I’ll be honest in that I don’t think this little one is going to make it. He’s active and eating and playful and friendly, but he’s just not growing. I’m hoping that with Frank allowing him to nurse, he will get stronger and better able to fight off whatever is going on with him.

I am very glad to see him snuggling with kittens his own size, too. I’ve never seen him with other kittens in a way that would suggest they are litter mates. He seems to be on his own. Perhaps his siblings are among those we had to bury. It makes me happy that Frank has accepted him as her own.

Oh, before I forget, I just have to share this picture from yesterday evening.

So adorable!

Also, so glad I’ve got those protective collars around the luffa! 😄

In other things…

Today and the next few days are supposed to be a bit cooler, though the overnight lows are still supposed to be warm enough that I shouldn’t need to cover any of the garden beds at night. Hopefully, that means we can get some more stuff done outside today. We shall see how it works out!

The Re-Farmer

Fast little grublings, and … possible help?

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I just have to start with this adorableness.

Frank’s kittens have gotten big enough and active enough to get in and out of the cat cage.

There are two of them.

My daughter’s t-shirt is appropriate. It reads “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” It’s actually an old design by her sister.

With so many kittens figuring out where the food comes from in the morning, it’s getting really difficult to get into the sun room from the old kitchen, while holding the kibble bowl, going through two doors, trying not to step on any kittens and trying to stop them from running into the old kitchen. There’s one kitten in particular that is so incredibly tiny, and so determined to get underfoot! He loves to be picked up and help, but hasn’t learned to stay away from feet!

So my daughter has been joining me to help with the doors, catching kittens as they try to run inside and then, once I’ve distracted cat enough by filling the kibble trays in the sun room and starting to do the ones outside, put a bowl of kitten soup into the cat cage. So far, the littles have just sniffed at it, but their mama can at least enjoy her own special treat when she comes in to nurse them.

My daughter has also been able to help with eye washing. One of the kittens she’s holding in the photo had one eye stuck shut, and we’d just finished washing it. Aside from the occaisional stickiness, Frank’s kittens are looking really strong and healthy. More so than some of the older littes!

Today turned out to be another day of going to my mother’s place. I almost forgot that it was arranged for me to pick up her bubble packs at the pharmacy. The pharmacy opens at noon on Sundays in her town, and I knew someone was going to be bringing her communion after church, so I was shooting to get to her place closer to 1pm. Since I was there anyhow, I made sure to pick up the Tylenol and kitchen garbage bags I hadn’t been able to get at her grocery shopping trips. I figured she probably forgot that I was supposed to pick up her medications today, so I called her before I left the pharmacy, but got her answering machine. When I got there, she was in the common room, enjoying the view out the window, and was very surprised to see me!

Even though we talked about it before, my mother was a bit ticked off that her got her refills so “early”. She had the equivalent of 8 days left in her lock box, and she still has the mindset of not getting refills until the last minute. They make up their bubble packs on Saturdays only, and I had told her I talked to the pharmacist to push her refills back a week so there would be less chance of her running out before they make the next refills. I don’t think she remembered the conversation, but that’s okay.

I remembered her telling me that my sister hadn’t taken out her garbage yet, because she was out of garbage bags, so I took care of that – and found that she did still have a few garbage bags left. The box was hidden behind the garbage can. 😄

My mother was very happy that I’d picked up more Tylenol for her. That was something she was almost out of.

After I came back from taking out her garbage, my mother started getting some cash out to pay me back for her stuff. Which reminded her of something she had meant to talk to me about.

The next while was very confusing, as she first started asking me about if the front door had been replaced yet, and how much it was going to cost. Then she started talking about her car, and “using that” to pay for it. Now, the last time she talked about her car, it was to tell me to go ahead and sell it. At first, I thought she was suggesting we get her car fixed up to sell and use the funds to pay for the door, except she wasn’t talking about the door anymore. I did get a chance to tell her my brother had checked the car out and tried to explain what he’d found, but she wasn’t interested and got annoyed that I was telling her this, even as she was telling me she wanted my brother to get the car fixed.

After much confusing and questioning, I finally got the straight of what she was wanting. She wants my brother and I to sit down with her and talk about the car and her money that she has in a tax free savings account. She wants my brother, with his Power of Attorney, to use that to get her car fixed up and running, because I need two vehicles, and she can’t get into my truck anymore. When I told her, now that we have truck payments, we can’t afford to pay the insurance on two vehicles anymore, she said she would pay for the insurance. She then started saying some other things and…

I’m not going to count on this, because of her history on such promises in the past, but I think she was offering to cover the cost of getting the new door installed. Considering we’ve had to go into debt to pay for it, on top of the truck repairs we had to do (having to replace the front tires, the MAF sensor issues, etc), that would be a huge help for us. Her comment was, the money is just sitting there, may as well use it.

!!!

Once I finally understood what she was trying to tell me – half the time, she talked as if I could read her mind, or she thought she’d already told me some things – I told her I would pass that on to my brother. She insisted, no talking this out on the phone or messaging or whatever. She wants us to both be at her place, in person. Which is the slower way to do it, but I do understand why she wants that.

She also insisted that we not be in a hurry to leave, but to spend time with her. The only problem with that is, her idea of being “in a hurry to leave” can change pretty dramatically at times! I’ve been at her place for hours and, when I finally had to leave, she accused me of being in a rush, etc. Other times, I’ve been at her place for less than an hour and she’s all but kicked me out, because she was done with company! 😄

Like today. I asked my mother if there was anything else she needed help with, and offered to make lunch for her, but she said she was fine, then told me I could leave, now. 😄 I think I was there for maybe 15 minutes. Twenty, at most.

Once I was done, I had to make a side trip. I’d used my card to pay for my mother’s stuff and she paid me back in cash. Our bank that we have our main accounts in used to have a branch in my mother’s town, but it was closed some months ago, so I can no longer use a bank machine to deposit the cash. The nearest branch of our bank is now much further away, so I decided to go to the town nearer to us where there’s a bank I have my own personal banking in. I’ve had an account there since I was in my teens and just never closed it when we moved and moved and moved again. I could deposit the cash there, then do e-transfers to pay off what I used on my card.

I had just reached town and was slowing down for a stop sign when something strange happened.

The check engine light started blinking.

It didn’t just turn on. It was blinking. I’ve never seen that happen before.

Then it went away.

So now, after all the weird stuff we’ve had going on with it, I’m absolutely paranoid about the truck.

My brother and I had been talking about selling my mother’s car, as she originally wanted us to do. The truth is, we really do need a second vehicle, and that sudden blinking light on the dash just reminded me of why.

Tomorrow, I need to remember to hook up the OBDII scanner and see if it picks up anything of concern. I’m also due for an oil change within another 1000km, so that will give the guys at the garage a chance to check it out.

I’ve already passed on the message to my brother and we’ll be visiting my mother together next Sunday. We can work things out if my mother backs out on helping us again, but if she follows through with it, and my brother is made responsible for taking care of things, the help would be much appreciated. So we’ll see how that goes!

At least she no longer rants at me about how the house was perfect, everything was perfect, when we moved in to take care of it for her, so why are there all these things that we need to fix? It took a few years, but now she’ll say things like “nothing lasts forever”. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Sudden changes in plans, and morning photos

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First, a follow up from yesterday. It took many hours, but the debilitating pain that had set into my left hip during the night did recede. I found myself able to walk normally again – not even a limp! – but my hip still feels very… unstable.

Which turned out to be a good thing, because my evening plans changed completely.

Yesterday evening, after a very warm day, I took advantage of being able to walk again, headed out and watered what’s left of the garden. I was back inside and settled down with my supper when I saw there was a message on the answering machine.

From home care.

The message told me they had a last minute cancellation and there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist (they are just a few hours apart and typically done by the same home care aide). I was, however, assured that Saturday and Sunday were covered.

I got the message about an hour after it was left, since I was outside when the call came – and about 15 minutes away from when my mother’s supper assists are scheduled this cycle.

It takes about half an hour to get to her place, even if I just grab and go. I did quickly call my mother to let her know I was on my way, got my husband to tuck my supper into the oven, and headed out.

When I got there, my mother did try to do her usual snarky comments about, have they hired me yet? and the usual giving me a hard time for covering for home care again. I’ve still been in a dark place in the last while and I just told her, please don’t. I’m not in the mood for it. She paused a moment, then said, neither am I.

She did, however, have a good day. My sister had come out on her day off. Being a Friday, it was my mother’s scheduled turn for the laundry room, so my sister took care of that for her, as well as doing her dishes and light housework. It was much appreciated.

I helped my mother settle in with her supper to take her supper meds with, so I could then get her bed time meds ready, and she asked if I wanted a piece of her birthday cheesecake that I got for her. She had just a couple of pieces left, and had already had one with my sister. I agreed, and it gave me a chance to ask my mother about when she wanted me to do her grocery shopping.

It turned out she was already working on her list. I asked if she wanted me to come back tomorrow (which would have been today), and she said she had an appointment with her hair dresser – someone who comes to her apartment to cut her hair, which is really nice! – in the afternoon. As we were going back and forth I suggested, I could just do it right then. That way, I wouldn’t have to come back over the weekend. My mother was surprised by this, as she thought the grocery store closed much earlier. It was too close to closing for the pharmacy, though, so that got skipped. She only needed one thing there, anyhow, and not urgently.

So I did her grocery shopping and got everything put away. As we were chatting, she asked how I was and I mentioned I was out of sorts and explained a little bit about why. My mother had heard of the assassination but, of course, she only heard it from the TV news – “that guy from the states?” – and Canadian news has been lying about Charlie Kirk at every turn. Especially the CBC. So I told her who he really was. None of which was talked about on the TV.

I don’t think it’s possible to hate the mainstream media enough. I’ve had plenty of personal experience as to how dishonest and manipulative they are, over the span of decades, yet it still surprises me, just how bad they can be.

I didn’t stay too long, though, and was soon back home and having my supper. Then I noticed a notification on my cell phone.

I had a voice mail message.

My cell phone never rang.

After fussing with it for a bit, I realized the Wi-Fi calling had been turned off again – my phone keeps doing that on its own, and I don’t know why. I wasn’t able to get the message because there wasn’t enough signal. I couldn’t even go through the process of getting the wi-fi calling set up again, which required once again confirming my identity. I ended up having to go outside and wander around the yard, trying to find a strong enough data signal, to finally get it set up. Only then could I finally listen to the message.

It was home care.

The scheduler was very apologetic, but there was another cancellation. There was no one to do my mother’s morning med assist for today.

*sigh*

We were already planning to do a dump run, then a trip to a Walmart, and now I had to go to my mother’s again. The timing for it worked out, but it did mean almost another hour extra of driving.

So I called my mother again, thankfully getting her before she went to bed, and let her know I’d be back in the morning. She was not impressed. None of us are. My husband is getting right ticked off. He even went online to try and find somewhere to complain. What he did find were some forums with many, many other people in the same home care region we are in, having to deal with the same problem.

With the time scheduled for my mother’s morning med assist in mind, I managed to get to bed early and, happily, I did not have a repeat of what happened to my hip the night before. I still don’t know what triggered it in the first place!

I did my morning rounds early. There isn’t much to do in the garden, so things are done faster these days.

I did have to get a picture of that one Hopi Black Dye sunflower again.

Every day, more and more of it is actually developing seeds and they’re starting to bloom! I’m still amazed it survived the frosts.

In the next picture, you can see a huge cluster of tree mushrooms I found. I’d heard a cat commotion by the collapsing log building by the fire pit and checked to see what it was. It turned out to be The Grink, chasing after Sprout’s little calico (Sprout, once again, is AWOL). It was way up in a tree next to the log building. I did get The Grink away enough that the little one was able to get down.

Speaking of little ones…

Frank is such a good mama! And her littles are getting used to being handled. The one kitten who’s eyes have been getting stuck shut seems to be past the worst of it. No eye washing needed today!

The next photo is of, I think, one of Slick’s little tabbies. It was enjoying the cat bed in the catio that we moved over to lure the garage kittens to the house. They’re not using the catio since we moved it, but the littles are enjoying it! The garage kittens still seem to be using the garage as “home base”, but I am seeing them near the house a lot more often now.

Last night, I was hearing that we were supposed to have a dense fog this morning. It wasn’t too close around the property as I was doing my rounds.

Then I started driving to my mother’s.

I had to pull over at one point, just to take pictures, about a mile from home. When I was driving between the trees, there wasn’t much, but as soon as I cleared the trees and reached fields, it was like driving through a wall!

Keep in mind with the above photos, that the camera “cleans up” the shots, so the fog was actually denser than it appears in the photos.

Very moody.

Also, by the time I was heading out, the sun was fully up and we had bright sunshine!

Once I got onto the highway, it was even thicker, to the point that I had to reduce speed due to lack of visibility. I did eventually catch up to a shadow that turned out to be a car. Then we’d go through a section of highway bordered by trees, and the fog would disappear and we could see just fine. Then we’d enter a section surrounded by fields, and it would be like driving into a wall of fog.

Then… it was gone. Such a stark delineation!

When I got to my mother’s she was really struggling. She was still in bed and really didn’t want to get up. I can’t blame her! She’s had a sleepless night, too.

Yesterday’s grocery shopping trip had missed a few things. Particularly milk. It wasn’t on her list and I’d considered getting some anyway, but my mother has specifically said she had milk. I figured my sister had brought her some. It turned out my mother was thinking she had enough to last until I came to do her grocery shopping… on Sunday.

The day she told me she didn’t want to have her grocery shopping done on anymore…

She was so out of sorts, though, one minute saying she needed milk, then asking me to check and see if she needed milk (she did), and not to get this other thing that got missed, or maybe something else or…

I finally told her to just enjoy her breakfast, and I would get her some milk. The rest could wait.

Then, as I was heading out the door, I hear “and apples!”

😄

So that was a short shopping trip.

That done, I headed home where my daughter had things ready to start loading up the truck for the dump run. When we got to the pit, we were happy to see that they had finally cleared the wall of garbage at the pit edge. There was room to turn again!

Once we were finished there, we continued on, first making a stop at a gas station in town, along the way. The price there was still $1.409, whereas in my mother’s town, it was $1.419 With all the extra driving, I was down to a quarter tank. I really try to avoid letting it get below half. I asked for $50 in gas, and it didn’t even get me to 3/4 of a tank. By the time we reached the Walmart, I was at half a tank again.

*sigh*

I had a short shopping list for myself – mostly more cat food – while my daughter had a list for herself and her sister. She couldn’t find everything on it, though, so we decided to go to a regular grocery store further on. As we were driving to it, we passed an independent gas station.

The price on their sign was $1.349

After we finished at the grocery store (my daughter still had trouble finding one item!), I made a point of stopping at that gas station again and added another $30.

The price on the pump was $1.299

That $30 sure went a lot further!

From there, we could finally head home, unload, and finally settle in. Today was originally supposed to be just a dump run day, and instead I was out for most of it.

It’s been hotter today than yesterday, and it just now starting to cool down for the evening, so I’ll be heading out to water things again before bed. The next three days are supposed to be as hot, or hotter, than today, so still no need to cover garden beds yet. After that, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit. Enough that I will probably keep the winter squash bed covered both day and night. I’m still amazed that was have any squash developing at all, so I want to give them every change to mature!

Getting outside and being productive has also been good for my overall mood, too, so the more of that, the better.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kittens and too much pain

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First, some cuteness that is actually from last night. I went out to do my evening rounds before it got dark when I spotted this before I opened the door.

Adam and Slick were both nursing babies on the sidewalk. Two mamas, seven kittens. Slick has a litter of five, but they’re not all there. I think only one, possibly two, are there. I don’t know how many kittens Adam has, but I’m thinking around four. Being a créche mama, I have no idea which are actually hers. She is content to nurse any kitten. I’m pretty sure at least one of those kittens belongs to a much more feral mama that I’ve seen nursing a kitten in the sun room, once or twice.

I wonder if my evening walk has anything to do with how things turned out?

It’s just hit 9:30am as I start this, and it’s already been a very rough day.

I was awakened this morning by pain. Something’s gone wrong with my left hip. Maybe a slept in it wrong or something, I don’t know. I tried using Voltaren on it and took an extra anti-inflammatory and tried to get back to bed. There was no position I could lie in that alleviated the pain. When I finally tried to sit up, after about an hour or more, I could barely move. I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t stand. Moving hurt in one way. Not moving hurt in another.

I finally managed to get up and get moving, hoping that if I walked around, it would help, as it often does when my joints stiffen.

I can’t say that it worked.

Getting dressed was a challenge. Just try and put on pants or socks while sitting down, but not being able to bend over far.

We have a cane with feet on it, so it can stand on its own, and I had to use that while feeding the indoor cats for the morning.

That done, I went into the old kitchen to start on the outside cat food. In the mornings, I still mix up a can of wet cat food with ground pumpkin seed and water to make a “cat soup”, then mix it into the dry kibble and leave it to soften. I couldn’t use a cane while feeding the cats their softened kibble, so I was hobbling around on my own.

I did spot an adorable surprise.

Yes!!! In the first photo, that’s the smokey garage kitten we’ve been trying to lure closer to the house, at the feeding station on the well cap! This is between the house and the kibble house. She even was at the doorway to the sunroom when I first came out of the old kitchen!

It was around this time that the girls realized I was having issues, and they came out to give me a hand. My older daughter got my husband’s walker out for me, and I used that to continue my morning rounds. It’s heavy duty enough that it can handle the rough terrain in the main garden area.

I took my time doing my usual checks, stopping to sit on the walker along the way. It almost wasn’t worth taking the break. The act of sitting down and then standing up was the most painful.

When I came around to the house, I found my younger filling the water bowls, and she came to join me. As I was wheeling around the portable greenhouse to return through the sun room, we spotted the kittens inside. There was a fluffy grey tabby snuggled up against the protective collar around the bigger luffa – that explains why I keep having to shift the collar back in position! There was a tiny white and grey on the ground next to the other luffa’s pot, and Colby was pretty posing on top of the heat sink’s cover.

One of these days, I hope to get an accurate head count on the smaller kittens. They run and hide way too much!

As for me, it’s been about half an hour and I think my hip is feeling a bit better. My daughter made a breakfast for me that would protect my stomach from taking another anti-inflammatory (I’m still taking far less than “allowed” with them), and she was able to get some Voltaren over places I have difficulty reaching on my hip and lower back.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to accomplish much outside, today!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Morning kittens

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Yesterday, my daughter and I carried the catio over, closer to the house. The goal is to convince the garage kittens to actually start coming to the house for food and shelter, little by little.

We may have moved it too close.

The first photo was taken yesterday. Pinky and her white and grey have been good with the new location, but her smokey baby actually missed out on food rather than go to the shelter.

The next photo was taken this morning. The kitten has finally started to go into the shelter to eat, at least. None of them, however, are using it to just hang out inside, like they had been when it was next to the garage. I think part of the problem is that more of the other yard cats are going in there, now that it’s closer. Pinky and her babies do not like other cats! Even the skunks will go into there, which I’m not happy about.

This little guy is getting a big braver.

Colby will go into the sun room to eat a bit, before dashing off. While on the hand rail, I almost got close enough to touch him, but while he was willing to pose for a picture, he wouldn’t let me get any closer.

He is getting so big and fluffy!!

The Re-Farmer

Foggy morning, parasitic weeds, cuteness, garden update and doctor visits.

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The garden clean up has officially started!

Not until rather late in the day for that sort of thing, but it’s started!

This morning was surprisingly foggy, and actually seemed to get denser as I did my rounds.

While going around the row of crab apple trees, I noticed some pretty little flowers in the grass. Just a little patch.

Thankfully, just a little patch!

I pulled all that I could find. We have these all along the shoulders of our gravel roads. In one of the nasty voice mail messages our vandal left on my brother’s cell phone, he said that there was red bartsia in the second quarter section our renter is taking care of. That quarter is just used for pasture now, though it also has trees, a pond and marshland. Our vandal still thinks the property should be his, so he was having a screaming fit on the message about how I should get my [insert vile and disgusting insult] daughters out there with lawn mowers to get rid of it.

If you follow the link about the weed, you’ll note it specifically says, “Mowing is not reccomended.”

With the arrangement made with the rent, they’ll be the ones dealing with it. This stuff is parasitic with grasses, and can do real damage to pastures. Cows can’t eat it.

We can’t do much about the roadways, but we can keep it out of the areas we are responsible for, at least! It’s bad enough that we’re dealing with creeping bellflower and creeping Charlie.

While uncovering the garden beds this morning, I was happy to finally see some colour among the peppers.

That was this morning. This evening, I went looking and did find another with some colour showing at the very tip. Also red. No sign of yellow or orange in any of this mix of peppers.

I didn’t start any projects outside this morning, as my daughter and I had consecutive appointments with our doctor early this afternoon. We got some Dairy Queen coupons in the mail, so we left early enough to have lunch in town before continuing on to larger town our doctor is in (I just double checked; it’s not large enough to be considered a city, yet). They weren’t very busy, and my daughter got called in for her appointment right on time. Mine was half an hour later, and I got called in on time, too.

All I was there for was to go over my X-rays. With my hand/wrist, it was confirmed that I did NOT break anything in my fall. It just still hurts at times. More my shoulder than where I landed on my palm, even after all this time. Not that anything could have been done about it, if there had been a break. It’s been quite a while since my fall!

It was my hip that I really wanted to see about. According to the lab report, there is actually very little change since the last time I got X-rays done, some five years ago! The arthritis and bone spurs aren’t any worse.

I told her about the issues I’ve been having. I told her, with the anti-inflammatories making everything else so much better, when it comes to things like my hip, the pain is more acute, now that there isn’t so many other aches and pains muffling it. She was nodding her head as was saying this. It’s very typical! I described the issues I was having with my hip, using last night as an example. As soon as I lie down, it starts to hurt. Eventually, I had to get up and take some pain killers, which didn’t really do much. I got up again and used some of the Voltaren lotion, and that finally did the trick. Only then could I sleep. It’s been getting more painful, though at least I can now put weight on that leg when taking the stairs again. When I mentioned that, she suggested it was due to increased activity. I told her that was very likely, since I’m outside working and winterizing while the weather is good. She just laughed and said, “making hay while the sun shines!” Yup. She gets it!

She said that it sounded like tendonitis, so she has referred me to a sports injury physician. This would be in a clinic in the city, but one that is straightforward for us to get to. It would be decided by the specialist, but she felt that getting a steroid injection to the hip might be helpful.

She was writing up the referral as I was leaving. I was done my appointment a whole 6 minutes after it was scheduled! My daughter had already booked her own follow up appointment a couple of months from now and was waiting for me in the truck. No extra trips to the pharmacy or anything, but we did make a quick stop at a grocery store and a gas station before heading home. I was looking to get a flat of 30 eggs, but chokes at the $15 price tag. It was actually cheaper to buy two 18’s, instead. Weird.

After we got home, I was soon outside, starting with the evening feeding of the yard cats. I’ve actually reduced the amount of food I put out, because there are so few adult cats around these days!

Must share the adorableness, of course.

Frank is such a good mama, and her kittens are adorable. When I checked on them this morning, one kitten had one eye stuck shut, which was easy to address. Another had both eyes stuck shut and I ended up bringing that one into the bathroom for an eye washing. This afternoon, that kitten’s eyes were both stuck shut again, so we’ll have to keep close watch on it.

Speaking of good mamas…

Adam is so patient!

After I took the video that’s after the still shot, that tuxedo pushed its way under the smaller kittens, hunting for nip! Only then did Adam move, pushing him away with a back leg so he’s stop messing with a kitten that was still attached.

As I was scrubbing out and refilling water bowls, I spotted some kittens in the portable greenhouse. Now that they’ve discovered it, they really enjoy staying in there – even when the thermometer in there was reading 50C/122F!!!

I’m not sure if the little tabby in the first picture is part of Slick’s litter or not. They usually stick close to junk pile, shrine feeding station and isolation shelter, but there’s one little tabby that comes to the house and even into the sun room. I think it’s actually from another litter, but I really can’t tell.

That black and white with the blue eyes in the next photo is a stunner.

After tending to the yard cats, I started watering the garden. There was just enough water in the rain barrel to do the old kitchen garden beds. The Turkish Orange eggplants were drooping! Everything else was looking better, but those Turkish Orange eggplant seem to be really sensitive to all sorts of things. They can’t handle cooler temperatures well, and they seem to not handle heat very well, either! Or at least the dryness that comes with the heat. They’re watered just as much as the peppers, which haven’t shown any drooping at all. We reached a high of 23C/73F, but our low is supposed to be 9C/48F, so I’ll be covering them for one more night. According to the 10 day forecast, the overnight temperatures are expected to be warm enough to not cover them anymore, and I could even be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night, too.

Once the watering was done, it was time to start.

It’s clean up time!

For now, I’m working on infrastructure.

The woven bamboo stake trellis I made for the Spoon tomatoes is now dismantled. The tomato cage wall I set up to keep the deer from eating the Super Sugar Snap peas I was leaving to go to seed is down. The soaker hose that was around the Spoon tomatoes and melons was removed, but I’m leaving the one around the winter squash for now. Hoops and stakes and fasteners collected. Most of the stakes with deer distracting pinwheels on them were already set aside. Some of the water bottle noise makers were collected. Not pictured is the post I’ve started using to hold the plastic collars that were around the Spoon tomatoes. I haven’t taken the ones off the melons, yet.

Remarkably, I’m seeing new flowers on the pumpkin vines I thought were killed off. There’s even some melons, still green and trying to bloom. I think the plastic collars actually helped them survive the frosts! My big surprise this morning, though, as finding more bush beans to pick. Only a small handful, but I expect to continue to get little handfuls of beans for at least another couple of weeks, if the weather holds, and I keep watering!

I’ve got a lot more stakes and ties to collect, but I will need to snag possibly both daughters to help me remove the protective netting that is currently pulled up and over the tops of the beds. It needs to be stretched out and straightened before we can fold it up into more manageable sizes, then roll it up for storage, and this particular netting is surprisingly difficult to handle. It snags on EVERYTHING!

As I clean up all the structural stuff, it’s all being brought to the bench by the garden shed for sorting and organizing.

This was the stuff I could do with the time I had this evening. With no outings scheduled, for the next few days I hope to work on more time consuming projects.

I’ve been thinking about that inner wall on the garden bed in the old kitchen garden I’ve been working on. I was going to take out the wattles I’ve got so far, add another stake in between each of the current ones, and find more material to weave a wall. The problem is, even with extra stakes to weave around, I just don’t think I have suitable material for weaving.

So I think I’m going to skip the weaving entirely.

Instead, I’ll do a version of what I think is called a dead hedge, though a very short, narrow version. I’ll be adding vertical stakes to make two rows, a few inches apart, and just lay the horizontals in between them to form the wall. No trying to bend anything. As long as it’s dense enough to hold the soil in, I’ll be happy!

That narrow little bed is taking a ridiculously long time to work on. Lots of experimenting in the process.

That’s just one job I want to work on. Unfortunately, there are so many larger jobs to get done before it starts getting too cold, it gets hard to prioritize which ones need to be started first! Looking at the long range forecast, I’ve got maybe 9 or 10 days before the temperatures start to drop. There’s even a mix of rain and snow in the long range forecast, a little over two weeks from today.

Well, however it works out. As long as I have garden beds ready in October, for planting garlic first, and then doing our winter sowing before the ground freezes.

Lots of work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, adorableness, and unexpected outings

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I headed outside this morning with my usual feeding of adorable beasts and doing my rounds. I had a bit of a surprise when I got to the main garden area.

In the first picture, you can see a Hopi Black Dye sunflower, still trying to bloom! All of the sunflowers, which I thought were killed off by our last frost, look like they’ve actually recovered! Wild!

I had some plans to make a stew later today, so I decided to do a small harvest (second image above). Just enough potatoes for the day, plus our only bulb onions of the year! These were in the high raised bed and their necks were bent by rolling cats, so they weren’t going to get any bigger. The only onions we planted this year were the seeds included in our seed mixes. Quite a few came up, then disappeared. In the high raised bed, just these got big enough to form bulbs. All the others were basically just the greens. Even the really strong and healthy looking ones in the old kitchen garden are nowhere near starting to form bulbs.

Next year, we’ll be starting seeds indoors again. 😄 From our own seed, too.

I was back inside, helping my daughter, who’d been working on the “cat free zone” (the living room) for most of the night. We’ve basically been just shoving things that needed to be protected from the cats into there, but never quite getting the chance to go back and put them away properly. It had gotten to the point that there was just a path in between furniture to the shelves in front of the window, where I’ve got tomatoes ripening and seeds drying.

I didn’t get to help her for long before the phone rang.

It was home care.

I have to admit, it’s been a long time since they’ve called. The scheduler was very apologetic, but they had a last minute cancellation. Someone called in sick.

My mother’s meds were scheduled for 9am.

It was about 8:35 when she called. Driving time alone to my mother’s is 25 minutes.

I didn’t even bother changing out of my grubbies. I just made a quick call and left a message with my mother, grabbed my purse and headed out. So she got her meds just a little bit behind schedule.

Apparently, the person who was supposed to come this morning was also supposed to do my mother’s two evening visits, and she didn’t show up for those, either. Apparently, a guy came to do it, and he was all the way from the city! I appreciate that they found someone to do her evening meds. Her and however many other people are on that home care aide’s list!

In the end, it worked out. My mother was still in bed and not feeling well. I ended up making some toast for her, so she’d have something to eat with her meds. She also likes to have milk, half and half with boiling water, as her beverage, so I made that, too – finishing off both her milk and a loaf of bread in the process of making her breakfast. I told her I would get her more milk and asked if she needed anything else. I figured I would go get it while she was having a peaceful breakfast.

Which is when things got strange. I have no idea how she interpreted my request, but she seemed to think I was trying to rush her and was leaving right away or… I don’t know. She started going on about how she needs to rely on me and my siblings more now, and making …. less than charitable, shall we say … comments about my brother and sister. Now, I admit, to a certain extent, I can understand about my sister. She used to call my mother almost every say, and visit on some of her days off from work (she only works 3 days a week at a Walmart). In fact, my mother used to lord it over me, how my sister was calling her every day. Then my sister started to get more involved in their church again. The Worldwide Church of God, which is recognized as a cult. Her behaviour has changed since then, and she has been … not cutting the family off, but definitely cutting us out of things. She’s back to refusing to celebrate birthdays (they’d relaxed on that for a while) and hating Christmas and Easter, going on with the long debunked claims about them being pagan holidays, etc. There are definite issues there, but my sister does still do things like to my mother’s laundry, or mop her floors, and will pick up things like clothes and other things from Walmart for her. My sister used to sew her own clothes all the time and she knows my mother’s measurements, so anything she gets for my mother, she tailors to fit. So while there is definitely tension and issues, she does still help out in ways my brother and I can’t. We each have things we can do individually for my mother that the others aren’t able to.

Anyhow.

She made a comment about my wanting to leave so soon (I think she decided my wanted to get her milk while she was having breakfast meant I was in a hurry to leave?) and how there are two girls at home that can help take care of my husband. Which threw me, because my mind wasn’t there at all. I told her, we’re winterizing. There’s lots of work to do. She actually seemed confused by that. I don’t think she ever knew all the things my dad and brothers did to prepare the house and yards for winter.

I kept trying to bring her back to, I want to get you milk, do you need anything else? but she kept going back to saying things about my brother and sister. Finally, I just grabbed my hat and purse and told her, I’m going to get you some milk.

To which she told me to hold on… she might need something else…

…

*sigh*

In the end, there were just a couple of things from the grocery store she wanted, but we also checked her Volataren supply. She still had but, since she’s using it on her back now, as well as her knees, it was worth picking up more. Which meant a trip to the pharmacy.

My mother then started getting cash out, took out a 50, and asked if I wanted an envelope. I said it would be good, since I put all her change and receipts back into the envelope for her to go through later. She started looking for an envelope, found one on her table – and it still had the change and receipts from the last time I did shopping for her! Then, just in case, she took the bills from that and included it with the $50 bill she already had ready.

I then left her to her breakfast and my first stop was at the pharmacy. They know me pretty well by now, and I’ve had pleasant chats with the manager a few times. They are aware that I’m shopping on behalf of my mother, and I’ve also talked about having to come in to cover for home care way too often. So when I came in and the manager saw me coming in so early in the day, I told him about home care cancelling again this morning – but, it turned out to be okay, since it meant I could run errands for my mother, too.

He laughed and said, “let’s not tell them that!” 😄

My mother’s Voltaren turned out to be on sale, which was nice – until I tried to hand over the $50, then went into my own wallet for the change. The manager very sheepishly asked if I had anything smaller. This early in the day, making change for a $50 would have emptied his float! He even commented that he should have a bigger float, but almost no one pays in cash anymore. In the end, I had enough of my own cash to add to my mother’s smaller bills and was able to pay with exact change. He was so very thankful!

I’ve worked retail for many years. I totally get it!

We talked about how so few people use cash these days, but then you have people like my mother. She simply could not use a debit card. It’s beyond her. He commented that, if ever the machines go down, though, it’s people like my mother that will be in the better position!

That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up the few things my mother wanted, plus I got a couple of extra things that were on sale that I knew she’d enjoy and could put in her freezer. It was still a really small shopping trip.

When I got back to my mother’s and put things away, showing her what I got different, I tried to entertain her with what happened at the pharmacy. In the end, I think I only confused her. She seemed to be trying to figure out how they were trying to cheat her by not being able to make change for a $50 bill, that early in the day.

*sigh*

Then she started going through the envelope with the change and receipts and the contents didn’t make sense to her. I told her again, because I used the smaller bills, adding in my own cash, there was no change from the pharmacy. The change in the envelope was only from the grocery store.

I’m not sure she got it.

In the end, I didn’t stay much longer. My mother was feeling very tired and I encouraged her to go back to bed, which she said she would do. She told me she’d even used her LifeLine last night, to talk to someone about how she was feeling. She wanted them to tell her what to do, but they can’t really do that. The guy did ask her if she wanted him to call an ambulance, and she told him no. Instead, she told him he could go back to bed, and she would do the same.

I hope she did go back to bed after I left!

From there, I went straight home. My daughter had managed a lot more progress on the living room while I was gone, including moving some things to the basement. (If we can figure out how to get it down the steps, I’d like to move the big aquarium to the basement, too.) She was really exhausted – I think she was up all night! – and was feeling sick, but had just remembered that she had a prescription to pick up for our joint appointment tomorrow. It’s a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated, so it was something to call in at the last minute. She did that and was told it’d be ready for pick up this afternoon, and I told her I’d take care of it, and sent her off to bed. She was more than happy to do that!

Which meant that, after a couple of hours, I was on the road again. My husband needed a few things from the pharmacy, too, so that worked out. Before heading home, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a couple of small trays of sushi as a thank you for my daughter. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t eaten, again.

By the time I got home again, it was time to feed the outside cats. I headed out again later, to close some things up.

Which is when I spotted this.

Some of the kittens have discovered they really, really like the portable greenhouse! That’s Colby snuggling with a much, much smaller tabby in the foreground. I’m not sure about the other older kitten, watching me through the doorway. I’ll have to remember that distinctive black chin. When I moved around, I spotted two more littles, curled around each other on the grass near a luffa pot. Today was a decently warm day, but they quite enjoy the extra warmth, when they can find it!

I’ll be heading outside one more time before calling it a day. With the extra trips out, I did not accomplish what I’d intended to, but none of it was particularly time dependent. We’ll be out again for much of tomorrow, too. After that, there are no more planned outings until I have to pick up my mother’s refills on Sunday, then my husband and I have a dental appointment later next week. We’re supposed to have good weather so, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the bigger outside projects done. Getting the sun room cleaned out for the winter will probably be the biggest and longest job. The critters have made a real mess in there – and I don’t mean just the cats!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

The cuteness

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Things are starting to warm up today, which means I got to spend more time working outside. I was finally able to use the push mower around the cat shelters, then break out the weed trimmer.

Before I started making lots of noise and scaring the yard cats, I got to enjoy some adorableness.

I have almost, not quite, been able to pet the kitten in the first picture. Progress is, it moves away when I touched it back, but didn’t panic or jump off the rail and run off.

Of course, I checked in Frank’s babies in the cat cage, and was amused to find their guardian kitten asleep on the level above them.

The last picture was taken while I was moving things and prepping to mow – and spotted a skunk going after the food and water bowls in the catio! I went to chase it off, but it went inside of the catio instead of away. The door had been tied off so it wouldn’t blow in the wind, so I untied it, then went around to the back of the catio to persuade the skunk to leave. Then I found the garage kittens were inside, too, and very nervous about the whole thing!

This morning, I was able to stop the smokey kitten from running away when I brought the food, put it back at the bowl and started petting it. It was hungry enough to let me, and started eating. Progress!

While using the push mower, I made a point of mowing where the catio is going to be moved to, once I can snag a daughter to give me a hand. Little by little, we’ll get those kittens to start coming to the house! They seem to be like their mother; they don’t seem to like other cats and have no interest in any of the other kittens. Hopefully, that will change by winter.

We’ll have some nice weather over the nest week to 10 days, which means we need to focus on getting winterizing done. The sun room needs to be cleaned out for the winter, the cat house needs to be opened up and cleaned out, the winter window to the old basement needs to be set in place, etc. That’s all on top of cleaning up the garden and preparing as many beds as I can for winter sowing. If things go really well, I hope to have some beds we didn’t use this year ready for next year, and get the second trellis bed at least started. We need to cut more dead spruces to get the 18′ logs we’ll need for that. The trellis bed will be two logs high, so we’ll need four 18′ logs and four 4′ logs. The existing low raised beds will be framed just one log high to start with. We’ll add more height to them as we’re able to get the materials. There’s only so many dead spruces in the grove that we can harvest, and not all of them are nice and straight.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get lots done while the weather holds!

The Re-Farmer

Kitten updates, and birthday with Mom

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Today was my mother’s 94th birthday, so I had plans to head over to her place, not long after doing the morning rounds.

With the appearance of kittens in the sun room cat cage, I was expecting to see a fourth kitten by this morning, since I knew that the mama had four active nips.

Nope. Still just three.

With a slightly older kitten on guard, above!

My guess is, the fourth kitten was a loss, and that might have had something to do with why the mama, Frank, suddenly moved her babies into the sun room. Normally, the ferals don’t bring their kittens to the house until they are closer to weaning age. Frank is getting to be more semi-feral than feral, as she does allow some pets every now and then. The good thing is, we now have a chance to socialize her babies, which increased their chances of survival, and our chances of getting them fixed when they’re old enough and big enough.

I headed to my mother’s town a bit early, as I had plans to pick some things up for her. I was hoping to get her a small cake, as I knew she’s complain about things being “too much” (which she did), but there was none to be had, so I got her a cheesecake with two slices each of four flavours. I figured, it was something she could share. Then I picked up her favourite fried chicken and wedges for lunch. When I got there, she was in her living room, so I made a joke about how she wasn’t allowed to come to the table until I was done. Of course, she still had to come to the table – her glasses were on it! I had picked up a candles in the shape of a 9 and a 4 and got everything all set up and the candles lit. She got a good laugh out of it when I started singing happy birthday to her and brought it over. On her 90th birthday, when she was more mobile still, we’d celebrated her birthday at my brothers, and I’d bought her a little tiara to wear. I got it out and had her put it on before I took pictures for the family. She got a laugh over that, too, before blowing out her candles.

We then had lunch together. As she was close to finishing her meal, she did stop to say, she wanted to tell me something, but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. 😂 Yeah. She complained about the food! Or, more accurately, that I was buying her too much food. I told her, she doesn’t have to eat it all at once! Oh, but it’s temptation, she said. 😄 She said she doesn’t want to get fat(ter). I just shake my head. She’s been fat for as long as I can remember, and she just turned 94. In her family, all the women that got fat after having kids lived to grand old ages. All her skinny relatives (the ones that didn’t have kids) died young.

I don’t think she needs to worry about it!

With the cheesecake, I told her she could share it with her neighbours. She stopped to consider the date and told me the next event in the common room would be on Tuesday (three days from today). They usually have a pot of coffee going, and sometimes snacks. She told me, she’d think about whether or not she wanted to share her cake with them! 😄

Since I was there anyhow, I did some light housekeeping and refilled her water bottles. Then I went to the pharmacy to get the things I couldn’t get last time, because they were closed for the holiday. This gave me a chance to finally talk to the pharmacist – I kept forgetting to phone them! – about just how close my mother was to running out of her prescriptions before her new bubble packs were ready. He was able to change the date so that her refills will be done a week earlier. Which means that I’ll be heading over to pick up her bubble packs two weekends from now, and getting them into her lock box. This gives some flexibility, in case I’m not able to get them on the day for some reason. We don’t want them to be delivered anymore, since the delivery person wouldn’t have the code to open the lock box, and we can’t trust my mother to not do something to her meds if they’re not locked away.

While my mother was in a good mood overall, that didn’t stop her from talking smack about my brother and sister. They don’t call her enough. They don’t visit enough. She knows my brother is out of province right now – running a “marathon” with his grandson! Then she started going on about both of them. I was done everything that needed doing by then, and still had to go to town, so it was definitely time to leave.

One of the things on my list to do in town was to go to a different grocery store with our water bottles. This place has a sanitation station, and our bottles were due. I had two to refill, got them both sanitized and started filling them. I had finished filling the second one and was starting to put a new cap on it before putting it in the cart when…

It split open at the base!

There was water spraying all over before I was able to shift it into the sanitation sink to drain. There was a woman using the second fill station and we got the attention of the staff. One guy came over but all he could do was take over holding the jug in place over the sink as it emptied. All 5 gallons!

So… I had to buy a new jug. I don’t like the new jugs that they have now. With the older ones, the handle is part of the jug itself. The new ones have the handle as a separate piece attached. We’ve already got one like it, and it always feels like the handle is about to break off when the jug is full. Ah, well.

That done, I picked up a few things we’d run out of. My husband had requested water flavours, but I couldn’t find any at all, so I ended up going to the other grocery store for those, plus the rest of my list. They happened to have a good sale on stewing beef (good being relative, these days!), so I got a family size pack. I look forward to having a beef stew! We eat beef so rarely these days.

From there, it was a stop at the gas station – the prices had dropped from $1.449 to $1.409 – then home. I pulled up to the house to unload. My daughters were sweethearts and got everything into the house, then distracted the yard cats so I could get the truck out of the yard!

It was feeding time for them, anyhow, so while they put everything away, I took care of the feeding.

It’s getting time to move the catio closer to the house. Even the smokey garage kitten is finally started to sneak closer to the house. Sort of. She’s been skirting the edges of the flower bed at the far end of the yard, along with her brother (I’m still just guessing that she’s a she). They are MUCH more comfortable eating in the catio, though.

What an incredibly unique looking cat!

The kittens in the cat cage were alone at the time, though Frank was no far away. I noticed their eyes were getting stuck shut, so I made sure to give them a wash. This was a first time experience for these kittens, and they did not like it, but they actually handled the whole thing rather well.

Since coming home, the weather geek group I follow on FB sent out some info. Parts of the province are under a frost warning. Our area is not included. Uh, huh. We already had our first frost night, and there were no frost warnings in advance for that one! It’s still rather warn as I’m writing this, but we’re still getting a low of 2C/36F being forecast for tonight. I’m expecting it to get colder than that. I’ll wait a bit longer before covering up the beds again.

Oh, that was something my mother had a hard time with. I showed her garden pictures, including the winter squash bed with its plastic cover. She had the hardest time understanding why one would do that. I had told her about how everything was behind this year and she was all, you know what that means, right? You planted too late.

…

I talked to her about our spring, and how in May we had such hot days, but very cold nights, so the soil didn’t warm up enough. We had drought this year. We had heat waves this year. Then there was the smoke, smoke and more smoke. She just shook her head and told me how she didn’t remember every having problems in the garden.

…

Now, I do remember her making a passing comment a couple of years back, when we had issues in the garden, saying that some years things are good, some years they’re not. This was several years ago. She did remember having bad years in the garden here. This stuck in my memory because she always made a big deal about how she had such a big healthy garden here, and was upset with me for not instantly recreating exactly how her garden used to be, some 20 or 30 years ago. Now, with things not turning out well, in her mind, it’s because I caused it somehow. She’s still wrapping her mind around the idea that I can garden in different ways than she did. Not that I have any choice. It’s physically impossible to do otherwise, at this point. She’s having difficulty accepting that things are not the same as she remembers! She would much rather think that the garden is struggling because I don’t know how to tend thins properly, like she did. 🫤

Ah, well. We do the best we can!

She did manage to throw dig at me, this time about how I didn’t bring her out to the farm for a visit this summer, and now it’s getting cold.

*sigh*

I told her, it’s been a very rough year. We don’t even have a front door right now. Which is absolutely true but, in past visits, we learned very quickly that my mother has zero interest in visiting us. What she wants is to look at everything, from how the yard and garden looks, to rifling through the cabinets in the bathroom while pretending she’s using the toilet (apparently, it didn’t occur to her that we could hear it). She would then follow up with declarations about how useless I was as a human being, and how terrible my family is, for not living the way she wanted us to, and because things aren’t exactly the way she remembers leaving it, when she moved out some 10 years ago. Not how it actually was. How she remembers it was. End result is, none of us want her to come out here again. Her motivations for wanting to come out here – even though, after we moved in, she declared she never wanted to see the farm again – are far from kind, to put it mildly.

My mother has no understanding of just how much her own actions drive people away – and then wonders why no one wants to call her or talk to her! I’ve told her, but she just goes on about why she’s entitled to behave the way she does, and doesn’t see how much she hurts the people who are trying to help her the most. She really and truly doesn’t care, either. *sigh*

Ah, well. We just do the best we can. What else can we do?

At least I can say that she was happy I visited her for her birthday, even if I did it all wrong. 😄😂

The Re-Farmer

Rain, wind and… babies???

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Once again, the overnight temperatures dropped lower than was forecast. Today was also supposed to have high winds in the morning, then rain in the afternoon.

We had rain in the morning, and it’s been windy all day.

I really had to drag my butt out of bed to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. Short rounds, and then I crawled back into bed. Even after several more hours of sleep, I woke up bleery and out of sorts, stiff and sore, though not as bad as it used to be, before I got on the anti-inflammatories. I’ve been feeling like that for a couple of days now. It took me a while to make the connection. I always get like this when it’s rainy and overcast!

I felt much better when the sun came out!

Aside from a quick run to the post office, it was a home day. My daughters have been having a hard time, today, too. It’s hit my younger daughter the worst, and she’s been caning it most of the day.

I did finally get outside to get a few things done, when I discovered something in the cat cage.

Two new, little kittens, in the cat bed.

These are very young kittens! Definitely not a mama bringing her older babies to the house for solid food.

There was only one cat I could think of that might be the mother. That would be Frank, and I was recently able to pet her enough that she showed me her belly. She had four active nips.

If she were the mama, then we were definitely going to be finding more.

I checked on the kittens and, other than a bit of dried gunk on the edges of their eyes, they looked chunky, well fed and healthy. Very fluffy!

I fed the outside cats and worked on a few other things before mixing up a jar of kitten soup. I put just a few spoonfuls into a shallow container and put it into the cat bed with them.

Sure enough, I came back into the sun room later and found Frank in the cat cage, eating the kitten soup. It wasn’t much longer before I saw the kittens nursing on her, too.

I was out for a while longer, and when I came back, she was gone again. Her kittens were sleeping peacefully. I took a peak at some other kittens in the cat cave when I spotted something white, moving around a plant stand we leave for the cats to use to get onto the platform.

It was a little, mostly white grubling!

Frank hopped into the cat cage just as I picked it up, and was very nervous, so I just quickly put the kitten with the other two and left. The next time I came through, she was nursing the three of them.

I went back out to finish things – for all that it rained, the garden needed watering, though there isn’t much left to water! By the time I was done and headed back in, Frank was all curled up and nursing her babies in domestic bliss.

If you look at the second image of the slide show above, you can see her and maybe, possibly, a fourth kitten, under her front leg. I thought, at first, it was her bottom leg, but I don’t recall any of her legs having spots like that on it.

I never did figure out where she had her kittens. All I knew was that it had to be really close.

I got a few things done that were manageable with the wind. I wasn’t able to get that fallen branch off the hawthorn, yet. I’ll have to get in there and cut it up in small pieces to get it off without damaging the hawthorn. The problem with that is, it’s really embedded in hawthorn branches, and hawthorns have massive thorns!

One of the jobs I finally got done was to add legs to the wind break box that I made to go over the opening of the isolation shelter. We had it up on bricks over the winter, so now it has legs that are just a bit taller than the thickness of the bricks. I was also going to add length of wood to each side to act as handles, so it would be easier to move around, but I ran out of the right length of wood screws. I had just enough to add the legs, and that’s it. For now, the box is sitting on the concrete well cover, over a kibble bowl. After the new door is installed, we’ll put the insulation back around the base of the house under the kitchen window, then set up the winterized isolation shelter there again. I need to find a better way to wrap clear plastic around the bottom of the shelter again. The tacks held fine, for the most part, but the plastic kept tearing free of them. It didn’t help that, when we had cats recovering from being spayed/neutered in there, the other cats were clawing through the plastic to try and get in! I might invest in some transparent tarps at some point. They’re expensive, but they’re also 20mm thick. Even greenhouse plastic is only 6mm thick, and the plastic dining table covers I’ve been using are, I think, only 3mm thick. I’ve been looking them up, and one Canadian company that makes them says they’re rated down to -23C/-10F. Which would be really useful for all sorts of things, really!

Speaking of which…

I had intended to uncover the winter squash bed to check on them. Through the plastic, I can see the bright yellow of new flowers, and I wanted to see if anything could be hand pollinated. It was just too windy, though. So windy, it was starting to tear the plastic free of the boards we rolled up in the excess on each side!

I rolled them back up and made it as snug as I could before adding bricks to weigh down the boards that were weighing down the edges!

With the sun out and things warming up, I finally uncovered the other beds. The cover over the summer squash was half blown off, already. The zucchini seems to be doing quite well, really! Some of the leaves around the very edges have cold damage, but mostly, they’re still growing and producing more zucchini. Even the white scallop squash is starting to bloom!

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F, but last night we were supposed to drop to about 5 of 6C/41 or 43F, but we actually hit about 2C/36F, so we’ll be putting the covers back on later this evening. Meanwhile, what’s left got a deep watering. The rain barrel by the sun room was finally filled, though not to the top, so I used that to water the old kitchen garden. Checking on the peppers, it looks like the oldest pepper is finally starting to turn colour, and it’s looking like it will be a red one. The Turkish Orange eggplants are getting brighter in colour, so it looks like they are managing all right, as long as they get that overnight protection.

The frost hardy plants, like the carrots and remaining beets, kohlrabi, little onions, etc. are doing fine. Surprisingly, the pumpkins haven’t been killed off entirely, and the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers seem unbothered by the colder temperatures. Their developing seed heads are still so tiny, though. The yellow bush beans, much to my surprise, are looking undamaged.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler, with a high of 12C/54F expected (today, we hit 15C/59F), but the overnight low is supposed to be 2C/36F, which means we will probably drop down to, or even below, freezing. Then we’re supposed to warm right up again, with highs in the 20’sC/68F range, and overnight lows hovering on either side of 10C/50F. The long range forecast has us going even warmer, the week after, including as high as 28C/82F.

We’ll see what actually happens!

The Re-Farmer