Butterscotch’s babies were extremely active in the cool of the morning. :-)
It took them stopping for a nursing break before I could get pictures!
I didn’t want to disturb them, so I used the zoom on my phone’s camera, which takes the worse pictures. :-(
I still ended up disturbing them. Ah well.
Earlier, I noticed a couple of the kittens playing around under the bird feeder (the flowers under there are totally mashed!). Something seemed odd about their actions, though, so I went and checked. It turned out they were “playing” with a chipmunk. :-( It was still very much alive and the kittens were… well… being cats about it. I shooed them away and the chipmunk just sort of set itself into a defensive stance and stayed there. When I found it let me touch it, I picked it up and carried it to the pile of maple logs near the garden shed, so it had a place to rest and recover. It was bleeding, but I don’t think it was mortally wounded. Hopefully, it will be okay.
Later I found Bradicus just going nuts in this tree! :-D Chadicus is at the bottom of the tree, and Caramel is in the foreground.
Broccoli, meanwhile, was busy hunting grasshoppers in the grass. :-D
Well, we’ve passed our forecasted high of the day and have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex putting us at 35C/95F, this afternoon. We did, however, get RAIN this morning! I was awakened by the sound of thunder, so I quickly went outside to make sure the cats and birds had food before the rain hit. The storm blew past us, but it did start to rain while I was still outside. I’ll take the nice, gentle rain, thank you very much!
Unfortunately, it looks like this will be the last rain we’ll have in a while, and tomorrow the smoke is supposed to be back. What rain we did have never reached the fires up north. :-(
While doing my evening rounds yesterday, and checking the old kitchen garden (the floating row covers are doing their job; no signs of critters trying to get under them, and our carrots are recovering!), I stumbled on a pretty green friend!
It was just hanging out on the leaf of one of the flowers that made its way through the layers of mulch we put on this garden, two summers ago. We’ve seen a lot of frogs this year (likely because all the ponds and ditches have dried up), but we don’t often see the green tree frogs.
It didn’t seem to like us giants hanging around, so we let it be, though I must admit, it is very tempting to want to hold it.
I also was able to get a picture of some furry friends.
Rosencrantz and Nosencrantz were calm enough to just watch me as I went by. Toesencrantz, unfortunately, is more skittish and was hiding.
I so want to boop Nosencrantz’s nose. :-D
While the girls and I were checking the garlic beds, I showed them this odd garlic.
It looks like garlic is forming inside the stem, and this one is getting pretty big. I’d noticed another had started to show signs of this happening a few days ago. This is only in the Racombole garlic, which is split between the two garlic beds, so the girls started looking around in the other bed, and we found several more.
This one was the strangest looking one, and it may explain what’s happening.
This looks like a garlic scape! This might explain why the Racombole seemed to have fewer scapes than the other two varieties. Instead of growing out the tops, as they should have, the scapes look like they got stuck in the bottoms of the stems in quite a few of the plants. Since they didn’t get harvested, bulbils are now forming inside the stems, eventually bursting through. Only this one had the rest of the scape emerge from the stem for us to see.
It also looks like something tried to give this one a taste!
In theory, we can keep the bulbils and plant them in the fall. Hardneck garlic are bi-annual, growing seeds in their second year. Planting the cloves, rather than the bulbils, and harvesting the scapes by passes that, allowing for large bulbs with lots of cloves to form. If we planted bulbils, we sould get small bulbs that are basically one big clove. Kind of like the garlic we had to harvest early, because the plants died back so soon.
It should be interesting to see the bulbs that form under the plants that have these trapped bulbils growing in their stems. I would expect they would be smaller bulbs, though with conditions this year, I expect all of them to be smaller. I don’t expect to have any suitable for planting next year. This year, for our fall planting, we are looking to double the amount of garlic we plant. I should order them soon; they will be shipped when ready for planting in our zone, so ordering early will not be an issue. We will just have to decide where we want to plant them this fall, as we rotate things.
I am finding that half the fun of gardening is planning out next year’s garden! :-D
Last night, as I was topping up the food dishes near where kittens are, I found Butterscotch and her babies playing around the concrete steps at the side of the house. So I sat on the stairs and scattered some kibble at the bottom to see if I could convince them to come closer.
This was about as close as Bradicus got. At least I could see him! Chadicus just hid in the lilacs and peaked at me. :-D
While I was trying to get a picture of Chadicus (I never did), I heard a small noise beside me.
Broccoli had come over and was licking the container I used to carry the kibble in! :-D
Of course, I scattered some kibble on the step for her, as she ran off a little ways.
Those eyes!!!! My goodness!
Caramel is definitely one of the braver ones. My daughter has actually been able to put Caramel on her lap and scritch her ears.
Eventually, I had both Caramel and Broccoli on the step by my foot, eating kibble, and I was even able to touch and pet both of them!! They’re not comfortable with that at all, but were interested in the food enough to put up with it. A bit.
Gosh, they are cute. I just wish Butterscotch wasn’t leading them to the empty farmyard across the road. These babies need to stay close to the house!
I just have to start with the exciting part. We actually got rain today!
Okay, so it was maybe only for about 20 minutes, but it was a nice, gentle, steady rain, and enough that after several hours, the ground is still damp. Not only that, but we’ve got a 90% chance of more rain overnight and into tomorrow morning.
Thank God!
Hopefully, by then, the smoke will finally clear out of the air, and some of that rain will hit the areas that have fires right now.
It is not going to make up for months of drought and heat, but it will certainly help. Even the completely dry, crispy grass has started to wake up and show green already.
It was lovely and cool when I did my rounds this morning, then a daughter and I went and checked all the garden beds just a little while ago.
I’m really glad we set up the chicken wire over the gourds and cucamelons. I found this critter damage this morning. It looks like something, likely a woodchuck, leaned on the wire and managed to nibble on a leaf through the gaps. Just one leaf here, and another on the other side of the chain link fence. Without the wire, we probably would have had a lot more damage.
While I was checking on these, Nosencrantz was playing on the concrete block leaning on a tree nearby, so I paused to try and get her to come to my hand. I managed to boop Nosencrantz’s nose before she ran away. Toesencrantz, on the other hand, was far more interested in trying to get at a lump of dirt on the other side of the chicken wire! He could get his paws under the wire, but the tent pegs held and he couldn’t get the lump out. Not for lack of trying! So that confirmed for me that the kittens were doing the digging in the dirt. More reason to be glad for the wire! The dirt lump got broken up, so as to remove further temptation.
The cucamelon plants looks so tiny, but they are starting to develop fruit! The chain link fence gives an idea of just how tiny these are. I’m looking forward to seeing how they do in this location, which gets more sun than where we grew them last year. They produced quite well last year, for a plant that’s supposed to have full sun.
While checking things out with my daughter, I found new critter damage. When I checked the bed this morning, the damage wasn’t there. These are the Champion radish sprouts. Not all of them were eaten, and the purple kohlrabi sprouts next to them seem to have been untouched. Which would lead me to think it was grasshoppers, not a groundhog, except that after the rain, there were NO grasshoppers around. I didn’t see any in the morning, either, but I usually don’t, that early in the day. They tend to come out later.
Unfortunately, this bed has only the wire border fence pieces to hold up the shade cloth. We are out of the materials to make another wire mesh cover, so with the shade cloths not being used, this bed is unprotected, and there’s really nothing we can do about it right now. :-( On the plus side, it wasn’t a total loss, and I’m thinking the woodchucks, at least, are preferring the easy pickings under the bird feeder.
At the squash tunnel, we found this lovely friend, resting on a Halona melon flower. The melons, winter squash and gourds are doing quite well right now, though all the garden beds are due for another feeding. The baby melons are getting nice and big, and we keep finding more. I was really excited when my daughter spotted this, hidden under a leaf.
These are the first flower buds on the luffa! I was really starting to wonder about them. They started out well, then went through a rough patch, but since I started using the soaker hose, they are already looking more robust again.
In checking the onion beds, my daughter spotted an onion that had lost its greens completely, so she picked it. It will need to be eaten very quickly. It is so adorable and round! This is from the onions we grew from seed. Though I’ve trimmed the greens of almost all the onions, we’re finding some of them with broken stems. Most likely, it’s from the cats rolling on them, as I’ve sometimes seen Creamsicle Baby doing.
We also found a green zucchini big enough to pick. I’ve checked all the plants, and while there should be at least one golden zucchini, I’m not finding any. Every plant is starting to produce fruit now, too, even if just tiny ones, and no golden zucchini. Odd. Perhaps the package was mislabeled and we got a different kind of green zucchini instead? There are differences in the leaves that suggest two different varieties, even if the fruit looks much the same.
Oh, in the background of the onion picture is the Montana Morado corn. We’re always checking them and the nearby Crespo squash for critter damage. There does seem to be some, but I am uncertain what to make of it. One corn plant, in the middle of the furthest row, lost its tassels and top leaves, but none of the others around it were damaged. It has a cob developing on the stalk, so I pollinated it by hand. Then I spotted another stalk, in the middle of the bed, that also lost its tassels. But what would have done that, while ignoring all the other plants around it? Very strange.
And finally, we have the poppies.
The Giant Rattle Breadseed poppies continue to bloom in the mornings, loosing their petals by the end of the day. Their pods are so tiny at that point, but in my hand, you can see the pod from the very first one that bloomed. It has gotten so much bigger!
We also found a couple of these.
My mother had ornamental poppies in here, and even with the mulching and digging we did, some still survived. This photo is of the bigger of two that showed up in an unexpected place: where my daughter had dug a trench to plant her iris bulbs. Somehow, they survived, and now we have two tiny little ornamental poppies. :-D
In hopes that we will get rain tonight, we will not be doing our evening watering. If we don’t get rain, we will water everything in the morning, instead.
Today, we did indeed break the 30C/86F mark, but by the “cool” of the evening (you know you’re acclimatizing to the heat when 27C/81F starts to feel cool!), the kittens were out to play!
I haven’t had much luck getting Butterscotch’s babies to come close while I’m sitting in the camp chair, but they’ve come closer to my daughter when she sit on the ground. So when I had the chance, I decided to get down on the ground to see if I could lure them closer.
It worked.
This was totally worth the pain of having to get back up again! :-D
Also, I would like to introduce to you, Bradicus, of the twins, Bradicus and Chadicus. These two look very much alike, but Bradicus has the distinct white line going up his forehead, and a white tip on his tail.
Out of focus in the background is Caramel, with her caramel coloured swirls on her sides.
Awww… Butterscotch and all her babies. :-)
Nutmeg was enjoying attention this evening, and he even let me pick him up! As long as we don’t try to walk, he will let us hold him, and he gets very cuddly!
Rosencrantz’ babies were running around, too.
Meet Nosencrantz.
I wasn’t able to get a picture of her orange sibling, Toesencrantz, this evening.
Then there are Junk Pile’s four, but when we see them, it’s usually in the form of a tornado of kitten, running away across the yard. Hopefully, they will start hanging around more.
I got to see all sorts of adorable things this morning. Starting with these guys!
They were very rambunctious this morning. :-)
The girls have informed me that the calico that looks like Cabbages has been named Broccoli. The tabby twins have also been named, but I forget them right now.
The fourth kitten, sharing breakfast with her mother here, does not yet have a name.
I also saw an adorable, fuzzy little monster this morning, but I wasn’t able to get a photo. The woodchuck was by the old garden shed, then ducked under it as I came over.
I’m happy to say that adding two bigger rocks and a bunch of broken bricks seems to finally be enough to keep the woodchuck from digging its way back under the stairs. I think it still tried, though. A small, gap-filling piece of insulation had been braced between the brick wall and the big rock, before. Looks like it got pushed inwards.
One last adorable bit of fuzziness! This bee wasn’t even gathering nectar or anything. It was just sitting there, like it was taking a nap while it was still cool. :-)
I got a few things worked out in the garden, before coming in from my morning rounds, but that will get its own post. :-)
Today, with repeated warnings for thunderstorms, and even the sound of thunder in the distance, we got only a smattering of rain this afternoon. Barely enough to get the ground a bit wet. :-( At least we’re a couple of degrees cooler than forecast. With the conditions we’ve had this year, our Rural Municipality officially declared an agricultural emergency. We had one last year, and I seem to remember there was an attempt by the province to declare one the year before, but it was rejected by the federal government. When I was growing up here, there were no such declarations. Whatever federal funding programs that are now available were brought in while we were living elsewhere, in cities.
It was during one of those times our skies were spitting a bit of moisture that I headed outside for a bit and made a point of checking the newly planted beds. Happily, we now have more seedlings appearing!
Swiss Chard “Bright lights”
Kohlrabi “Early Purple”
Kale “Russian Red”
Yes, these pictures were all taken after there was some rain. :-/
Both types of chard are showing seedlings, though I only took a photo of the one type.
It would be awesome if we FINALLY got some kohlrabi! We will be taken extra steps to try to protect these beds, since what’s growing in them are favoured by all kinds of critters. The red flakes you see on the ground around the seedlings are hot pepper flakes, which we hope will deter critters better than the sprays and granules we’ve bought.
Which leads me to why I headed outside.
I saw the woodchuck out by the old compost pile again.
Yes, I sprinkled the new mystery squash seedlings growing in there with hot pepper flakes, too.
As I came out, the woodchuck watched me for a while before finally running off and into…
*sigh*
…the old burrow we thought had finally been abandoned. We’re still running water into it, and collapsing the entrance little by little. The entrance is not being cleared, but they’re still squeezing in.
After seeing the woodchuck go in, I went and raided my kitchen cupboards again and dragged out a package of whole, dehydrated hot peppers. After giving them a rough chop, I scattered them in and around the opening.
At some point, we will be sure enough of it being empty, that we can finally fill it in. :-/
While heading back inside, I did get a chance to play with some more pleasant critters. Butterscotch’s junk pile babies!
Three of them like to come out to play with the stick, though they still won’t come close enough to touch. There’s that one tabby, hidden in the background, that just will not come closer.
I saw Rozencrantz’s babies – the other junk pile babies! – today, too, though I couldn’t get any pictures. The one that looks like Nicky the Nose is a bit braver and doesn’t run off until it’s sure if I’m coming closer. They like to play in the soil the cucamelons and gourds are planted. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that I’ve caught them actively digging into the edge of the bed! At least they’re not digging near the plants, themselves. :-/
While we are still getting thunderstorm warnings, when I look at the hourly forecast, the warnings disappear. Instead, we will have sun and clouds for a few hours, and then it switches to “smoke”, all night. There are quite a few wildfires in the province right now, including about 5 that are listed as out of control, but none are near our area. Fire risk, of course, remains high so we are still under a total burn ban. It looks like we won’t get to test out the firepit grill my brother and his wife got for us this year at all, nor the big BBQ that they passed on to us after getting a smaller one for themselves.
Maybe we’ll get a chance to use them in the winter!
I was able to get a whole bunch of kitten pictures this evening.
Only three of Butterscotch’s 4 kittens were visible while I was nearby.
Butterscotch’s expression is just too funny. :-D
I’ve been slowly trying to lure the kittens closer, so I can finally touch them, but it’s a little more difficult while sitting in a chair. My younger daughter can sit on the ground, and she has been able to get some of them to come close enough to touch. :-)
That stripe on the calico’s nose is just hilarious! :-D
This little lady almost came close though to touch. :-D
Later on, I spotted one of Rosencrantz’s babies, taking a drink, so I move a camp chair near their food and water bowls, too.
This one’s face bears a strong resemblance to Nicky the Nose. Particularly that tragic expression!
Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is another spawn of Nicky the Nose! :-D
The little orange one is quite a bit shier than its sibling. Rosencrantz, at least, is tolerant, if not friendly, and will once in a while let me pet her.
I’ve seen Junk Pile cat around today, but no sign of her two kittens. I do hope she brings them around again!
When things started cooling down, I headed outside and checked on the old kitchen garden. I started to pull out some weeds I missed this morning, when I heard a noise.
I had startled Junk Pile cat, who was lying on the beets by the retaining wall.
She wasn’t alone!
What a cutie!!
I saw another one dash around the tree, so I started carefully moving around to the side of the garden…
Only to startle more critters.
I certainly wasn’t going to begrudge the skunks a drink of water, so I let them be (the water bottles had been frozen, earlier) and kept moving slowly though the side of the garden.
This confused the skunks, as usually we never go between them and the storage house. We usually go to the other side and use the hose to chase them that way, instead.
This baby was so confused, it started to follow me! :-D
On the far side of the retaining wall, I found the kitten.
It just froze there, watching me.
The other one came bounding over, playing in the mosquito netting, until it realized I was there, then it ran off into the maple grove. The first one stayed frozen for a while longer before it ran off.
I am so glad Junk Pile finally brought her kittens over! From how many teats I could see were in use, I had thought she had more. I don’t know if these are the only ones that were brave enough to follow her, or if they are the only survivors left.
As I headed around the kibble house – which got its second coat of paint yesterday – I spotted Rosencrantz’s babies.
This little one was hiding behind the pedestal, watching me, before coming out for a drink.
It’s sibling was watching me, too, while lounging on some scrap carpet in the junk pile.
I had been wondering how the kittens were getting through the fence. The ground rises slightly here and, between that and the junk, there is no gap at the bottom. This morning, I saw how. They are still small enough to fit through the chain link… but just barely! Pretty soon, they’ll have to go around to another part of the fence, where there is a gap underneath, to get through.
So that’s three litters of kittens we’ve seen now. Butterscotch and her four, and Rosencrantz and Junk Pile’s, with two each. That leaves Ghost Baby, assuming Ghost Baby is actually female and has a litter. We still don’t know, but are kind of assuming.
Hopefully, we will be able to socialize some of them, but if they just become comfortable enough to come to the house for food and water, I will be happy.
The Re-Farmer 