Dealing with the heat… and Mom issues again

May 13, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

With an even hotter day expected for today, I was outside early to take care if things while it was still relatively cool.

If 20C/68F at 6am could be considered cool.

After the cats were tended to – and they were a lot happier and more active in the relative cool, that’s for sure! – I started preparing things for the upcoming heat.

The transplants were moved outside so they wouldn’t cook in the portable greenhouse later on. If you click through the above slideshow, you’ll see we have tulips blooming, and the wild plums are in full bloom.

I watered some of the winter sown garden beds, lifted plastic covers up for air flow, and was watering some of the food trees when I got a message from my daughter.

My mother had phoned. My daughter didn’t get to the phone in time, but her my mother leaving a message about not feeling well and going to the doctor.

???

So I shut off the hose, headed inside and listened to the message. Which wasn’t particularly clear in what exactly she was having trouble with, or what she was intending to do, but it was because she’s not getting her medications on time.

I called her back.

She started talking about how she was poorly she was feeling and she has to go to a doctor (she sounded good; voice strong, few issues with finding her works, no breathing issues…), and it was because she wasn’t getting her medications regularly.

Her morning med assist wasn’t expected to arrive for another hour.

After asking a number of questions, and basically, she thinks that the home care workers should arrive at her place at exactly the same time, ever day, no matter what. And there should only be two people visiting, not so many people, and that’s why she’s not getting her medications “properly”.

She’s getting her medications. They have a 2 hour window when she’s supposed to get them.

Then she started going on about the no-show on Saturday. She had asked someone about that and apparently this person had made arrangements with a friend to take over for her (which can’t be accurate; she would have arranged with another home care worker, but that’s not how my mother understood it) because – insert extremely mocking and condescending tone – it was Mother’s Day and she has a little daughter she wanted to spend time with.

Now, I have no idea what was actually said, since this was on Saturday, not Mother’s Day, but she was made at this woman for arranging to spend time with her daughter, rather than the woman who didn’t show up.

Which reminds me of another home care worker she complained about. While my mother was taking her pills the worker was texting her own mother on her phone. My mother was extremely mocking in describing this. While that does seem unprofessional, I suspected there was something else going on. After several different days of my mother complaining about the woman texting her mother while at my mom’s place, she finally mentioned…

Her mother had just had to put her dog down, and was having a hard time about it.

My mother was using her mocking tone again as she told me this, too.

I tried to explain to her that they need to have a lot of people, not just two, because they have a lot of people besides her that they have to visit, and they need to have enough people to cover for each other is someone gets sick or whatever. My mother began to complain about how they only cared about themselves, only themselves, not about her… They should only care about her.

Meanwhile, it’s my own mother who doesn’t care about anyone else, only herself. The home care workers should all not care about their own families. Just her.

The hypocrisy was completely lost on her.

Then she started talking about needing to talk to the doctor and to make an appointment.

One of the things on my to-do list was to call to arrange a phone appointment, because my mother’s doctor had left a message with her to do that. The clinic wasn’t going to open for another hour, though, and I told my mother that.

I kept asking questions, trying to understand what was going on, and telling her that if she really felt she needed help (she mentioned waiting up in so much pain, she can’t move and can only scream, but she doesn’t want to disturb her neighbours…), she had a life line. Push the button. That’s what it’s for.

She didn’t really respond openly, but clearly wasn’t interested in that. She wanted me or my siblings to drop everything and do it for her. Instead, she started talking about how, because she’s not taking her pills regularly (I think we might be having an issue of her rewriting her own memory again), that’s why she’s feeling so poorly. Her pain is getting worse, her vision…

Her vision?

She’s mentioned her vision before, but hadn’t said it was getting worse. That fact that it was NOT getting worse is why we got away with cancelling her last appointment.

I told her, she hasn’t said it was getting worse. None of her pills will help with that. This is where she would need to go to the eye clinic in the city. (The treatment is injections into her eyeball. Which she handled we better than I ever would have!!!) Did she want me to make an appointment at the clinic for her?

…

We’ll talk about that later, she says…

Then she started saying how she needs to be “around people” (meaning, have someone available to help, 24/7, as in assisted living/supportive living/long term care). Which I totally agree on. She asked and I told her again that I’d gone through her entire panel with the home care coordinator again, making changes where things have gotten worse for her, and basically taking her worst days and writing that down, to try and get her in somewhere; preferably long term care. I reminded her that most people go to long term care from the hospital; they fall and break a hip or something, and never go home. Just straight to long term care. Most people don’t actually want to go into long term care, like she does, so hers is a different situation. But we would still have to wait for a bed to come available, and for that, we’re basically waiting for someone to die, because that’s pretty much the only way space becomes available in long term care.

(I didn’t mention it this time, but I had told her about one of her neighbours that I’d run into, while my mother was in the hospital. She told me it had taken 8 months and two hospital transfers for her late father to get into long term care. He wasn’t well enough to go home, but there were no open beds in long term care, so he had to stay in the hospital.)

I remined her that I was already supposed to call the clinic to make a phone appointment for her this morning, but the clinic wasn’t open yet, so I’d have to call her back.

Which meant I lost about the cooler weather to get stuff done outside.

I had time for breakfast before calling the clinic. I made an appointment for tomorrow morning, which means I’ll have to be at my mother’s before 8am. I called my mother to let her know, but it went to her answering machine, so I left a message. Then I headed outside to at least finish what I was half way through before I headed inside.

Once I was back inside, I spent more time on the phone. One was to return a call from the small engine shop I’d left our push mower at, for servicing.

There are a couple of parts I can’t remember the names of, one connected to the choke, that were done. That’s why I couldn’t start it anymore. They simply were no longer there. My guess is, they broke and fell off. Our lawn is very rough on lawnmowers!

The problem is, this is a Canadian Tire, Certified brand. The parts are hard to get at the best of times. With these parts, there aren’t any parts numbers. Which means, they don’t service them. “Fixing” it would mean replacing the entire engine and, at that point, may as well just buy a new mower!

He’s going to try and find the parts for me but I told him, if you can’t, you can’t. Just let me know and I’ll pick it up.

I then told him that I do have another push mower. The prime pump needs replacing, and it’s jerry rigged for starting and stopping. It’s about 20+ years old. He told me that it would probably be easier to find parts for that, and those older machines last a lot longer!

So what I might end up doing is bringing the newer push mower home as basically trash, and bringing my mother’s old push mower in for servicing and repair instead. We shall see.

I also made a number of calls about the truck, trying to find out if the insurance will cover the lost box cover, and it it would be worth making a claim.

Long story short, I would start an insurance claim. They would make an appointment for me to bring it in for inspection. Someone from the insurance company comes to town every other week to do these inspections. If it’s determined that the damage isn’t because of some fault (rust, previous damage, etc), and that they will cover it, it would be worth paying the $500 deductible. A new cover ranges from $1200 to $2800. !!!! The tail light would also be replaced. They don’t just replace the cover, but the whole unit, and that costs about $250-$300. Not worth making a claim for just that, if the inspector decides they won’t cover the loss of the cover, at which point I could cancel the claim entirely.

Eventually, I made my way back outside.

This was the temperature before I headed out, then when I got back in.

Much of what I did was things like watering down the hot concrete, misting the transplants and garden beds, and wetting down the mats in the sun room to help cool through evaporation.

The first picture above was taken when I started my rounds at about 5:30-6am. Poirot stayed with her kittens for quite a long time. The wall thermometer was already reading about 20C/68F, while outside was still around 13C/55F. The frozen water bottles would be thawed by then, but must still have been helping keep things cool. Little by little, as I could reach, I replaced the water bottle in front with a new frozen one, and replaced the ice pack on top of the carrier with another ice pack. Eventually, I was even able to add a small ice pack along the side of the carrier.

Poirot let me do this.

She did growl at me as I did things around her, but I was able to give her a squeeze treat and she was quite happy with that, and with licking the last of it off my fingers, too. When I added the ice pack on the side, she shifted, but let me. Later, I put my hand in to pet one of her kittens and…

… she licked my fingers!!!!

When I later saw that she was gone, I switched out the water bottle in the back of the carrier for a frozen one. The second picture with the babies is after I’d done that.

So while it was still pretty hot in the sun room, things were much better in their nest, with the help of the car windshield heat screen blocking the sun from the windows and judiciously placed ice packs!

The bigger kittens had their own ways to keep cool.

Little Kale, in the first photo, was on the very bottom of a shelf, where temperatures would be cooler. The next photo shows some of the other kittens, chilling with the moms – one ran off before I could take the picture. Last image is of Sir Robin the Brave. When we pick him up, he almost immediately flips over onto his back, so we can pet his neck and chest! This kitten is so socialized, it’s amazing!

Meanwhile, every time I had the chance, I would try and call my mom to confirm about tomorrow.

No answer. Every time.

Then my older daughter offer to buy supper, so we wouldn’t have to heat the house with cooking (the upstairs is insanely hot!), so my younger daughter and I headed out, but not before I tried calling my mother again. Still no answer, so I ended up calling the home care coordinator, because that’s the only home care number I have. I explained that I talked to my mother this morning, but had been trying to get back to her for hours, and there was no answer. She was quite surprised to here this. My mother’s supper med assist was going to be happening soon. She told me she would let the home care worker know and that they’d get back to me.

We were on our way to town when my cell phone rang. It was the home care worker, calling to let me know she’d just left my mother. She had been asleep this whole time!

She was also very groggy.

Otherwise, she seemed all right.

I was very, very thankful for the news.

Our trip to town did not take long. After we got back home, I called my mother, and she answered the phone. She told me she had been sleeping and had a hot water bottle for her back (I can’t even imagine using a hot water bottle in this heat!), and her pain was why she was in bed. She never heard the phone ring.

I confirmed she got my message about tomorrow, so we’re on for that.

As we were talking, there was a knock at the door.

It was her suppertime med assist.

???

Which means the person that called me before had swung by my mother’s place, just to do a wellness check! She was not the evening med assist person!

That was so awesome of them!!!

So that’s all done for today.

For now, I just need to do my evening rounds and do the evening cat feeding. Normally, I would have done it earlier, but it was so hot, the cats don’t have much appetite!

*sigh*

The temperature had dropped to 27C/81F, but has just jumped back up to 31C/88F.

Well, things need to be put away for the night. The low is supposed to be 9C/48F, though not until about 6am. We’re supposed to have some rain for a couple of hours in the morning, and the high is supposed to be “only” 20C/68F Then things drop right down for the next few days!

That’s some wild weather whiplash we’ll be getting!

Anyhow.

Time to get out there, then try and get to bed at a decent hour. I had intended to do a few hours work outside really early, then nap for a couple of hours, but… well… that just didn’t happen!

I am so, so tired, in so many different ways!!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, and then off the rails!

May 10, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s just past 5:30pm as I write this, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I am SO tired! Please forgive any odd sentence structure or typos, because I’m sure I’m going to miss many when I got over things before hitting publish!

The cats had me up at about 5am this morning. I got up and fed them – the morning feeding includes kicking all the cats out of my bedroom except Butterscotch and Freya. After the dry kibble is dispensed, I pour some cat milk into a small bowl for our elederly Freya (Butterscotch gets the rest of the little carton), and then I sit beside her on my bed, holding the bowl for her while she eats until she is done. This saves her from having to jump down from the bed to eat, and she can stay all curled up in whatever cat bed she’s in.

Yeah. I’m a suck for the cats.

After a while, I let the other cats back in, then tried going to bed for a couple more hours. I swear, the cats know exactly when I fall asleep for real, and that’s when they start getting into things they shouldn’t, and start making loud noises. Or just going crazy. Tissue got the zoomies this morning. So what sleep I did manage to get was highly interrupted. I can’t even keep the door closed, because then they start scratching at it and that keeps waking me up.

The temperature had dropped to 2C/36F at 5am. By about 8am, it had warmed up to a whole 8C/46F. Which was about when I started heading out. First, the kitties got fed, and I got a daughter to help out. Not with the feeding, though. With kitten catching! Kale and Sir Robin the Brave are incredibly fast about getting into the old kitchen, and haven’t learned to stay away from moving feet, or closing doors! After luring the adult cats away with kibble, I closed the inner door into the sun room and my daughter started handing me bowls of wet cat food to set out for the littles, plus one with both wet and dry cat food for Poirot at her cat carrier nest. Another bowl with part kibble and part wet cat food went into the cat house for Caramel and her babies.

Then I continued my rounds, leaving the sun room closed up, even though all three mamas were out. The white and grey mama has been seen nursing the creche babies more often, now that her third baby is in the sun room again.

Poirot’s grublings are getting more mobile, so I set up a a bit of a shield for them.

I’ve been saving cardboard for the garden in the old kitchen, and there just happened to be a couple of pieces of cardboard that was used as spacers inside a box that were just perfect for this. In the second picture, you can see how they’re set up to cover the gap between the shelf and the wall, and cat carrier and the wall. This should be enough of they accidentally squirm out of the carrier. As they get more mobile, we might just move the carrier to the floor, so they can go in and out as they wish.

Once done with tending the colony, the first thing I do it switch out the memory cards. As I go out to the sign cam, past where the food forest is being built up. That corner gets very sun baked and dry in the summer, but these guys don’t seem to mind at all!

They are absolutely everywhere. It’s impossible to not walk on them, but they don’t seem the least bit bothered by that. I don’t know what they are, but if I had to guess, I’d say they are some type of pansy? Whatever they are, they are pretty indestructible!

The next thing was to check on the garden beds. Especially the one where I just planted peas, yesterday. I thought they were fine until I got to the northernmost end, where I saw the cats had been digging. *sigh* Hopefully, they didn’t actually dig up any seeds, but I really couldn’t tell. I was trying to figure out some way to cover things when I remembered I still have grass clippings saved to use as mulch. There isn’t a lot left, but enough to do the job!

The soil got a gentle watering, first. After the grass was laid down, that got watered down, too. Partly so it wouldn’t blow away too easily.

The plastic covered beds all got watered, too. With the sprouting seedlings, it’s hard to tell which are what I planted and which are weeks. Some that I suspected to be weeds were starting to show their true leaves, and I was correct: they are maple seedlings. So I pulled as many of those as I could, along with identifiable stuff like dandelions – so long as pulling them wouldn’t disturb any other sprouts.

The low raised bed that no longer has plastic on it got watered. I’d tried blocking off one end of the cover and hoped that would be enough protection until I could do the other end. This morning, I discovered, I was wrong.

*sigh*

After repairing the digging damage as best I could, I got creative. This is all temporary.

In the first picture, you can see I just stuck some boards across the opening. The stick holding them in place is secured at the top through the mesh, so those could only go so high, so I used what I could find to add verticals on the inside. Hopefully, the cats won’t try to jump through the gaps.

In the next picture, you can see the twine I wove through the mesh to close up the end. Again, temporary, but this should hold for a while.

After the watering and weeding was done, I headed inside for breakfast, before going back out and continuing what I hoped to get finished today.

It was almost exactly 10am and I just sat down with my food when the phone rang.

It was my mother.

No one showed up to do her med assist this morning.

I should have gotten a call, but I got nothing. My mother had tried calling the case coordinator, but it’s Saturday; her office is closed.

So I told her, I would quickly finish eating, then head out to give her her medications. She wanted me to dispense her other two meds for the day, too, in case her med assist didn’t show up for those times, either, but I refused. Got quite a mocking for following the rules. So what will you do? she asked me. Come out two more times?

I said, yes! I will!

I told her, there’s a reason your medications are in your lock box. You were messing with your medications, forgetting if you took them, etc. Oh, I wasn’t that bad, she said. Yes, you were, Mom. That’s why you have a lock box! She actually seemed to stop and think about that!

One of the things I did was write up a note and leave it in their notebook, stating that I had dispensed that morning’s medications and at what time.

I also told her that, since I was out anyhow, I would make a trip to the nearest Walmart to do a bit of shopping. I had planned to do it later in the weeks, but I could do it now. The Walmart carries 2L plastic milk jugs, which she finds easier to handle, so I told her I was thinking of getting a plastic jug for her. I did just get her a carton, but…

She does still have milk, but it turns out she had dropped the carton while trying to open it and spilled some. So more milk, in a better container, was a big yes from her!

I ended up leaving with a small shopping list and some cash. One of the things she was running low of was the topical pain killer she’s been using on her knees. She’s now using it on her back, too, so she’s going through it faster. I had already been thinking of checking that out, too, as I figured it would be a better price.

Since it was well past 11am by the time I was going to head out, I offered to make a lunch for her, but she said she had leftovers from yesterday’s Meals on Wheels, so she was fine. Once I knew she was settled, I headed out.

My first stop was actually a Dollarama that shares a parking lot with the Walmart. There were a few small things that I wanted to pick up and, of course, I went through the garden supply section. I ended up picking up four 4′ metal posts. Not T posts, but the same idea. They have hooks in the metal to hold trellis netting. They would have been perfect for what I was doing yesterday – and easier to set into the soil! We will be trellising pole beans and more peas, though, so new posts will not go amiss. I probably should have gotten more, but I should be able to get some more next month, if I need to.

After I was done at the Dollarama, it was across the parking lot to Walmart.

I got a few things that were not on my list. 😄

One thing that was on my list was more wet cat food. Since we are giving wet cat food to the kittens, we’re going through it faster. Normally, at Walmart, I pick up cases of 32. Looking at the new prices for the individual cans, though, I realized it would actually be cheaper to buy them loose, than by case lot! I ended up using some of their cardboard flats and got 48 cans of paté for the inside cats (paté works better when making cat soup) and 24 cans of chunks in gravy for the kittens.

They had sales on canned food for humans, too, and I got a flat of 24 cans of tomato soup for the pantry, too.

I also went through the garden centre. I picked up some replacement Yukon potatoes, since I’m sure the ones I’ve been chitting are no longer viable. Their herbs and vegetables were out, so I went hunting and found a few herbs. I got English Thyme, Golden thyme, two containers of oregano, lemon balm and basil. These will go into the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden, which has a cat proof cover already.

As for my mother’s list, the topical painkiller she uses was there – and cost $11 less than at her local pharmacy! That’s a huge difference!

The store was very busy, so it took a while for me to get everything I was looking for (and then some), and I was really tired and hungry by the end of it. I had some frozen stuff in my cart, so I stopped to get some take out that I could eat while driving, then headed out, making sure to update my family and let them know I was on my way to my mother’s, then home.

Which is when things went sideways.

Literally.

The last part of my route to my mother’s is a provincial trunk road, from one highway to another, that leads to my mother’s town. This is an east/west route.

The wind was coming from the south.

As I was driving towards an area of wide open fields, I saw the entire horizon was covered with what looked like black smoke. Once clear of some trees, I could see it swirling over the fields – but no flames.

It was dust.

Basically, the topsoil from the south side of the road was being blown to the north side of the road.

As I was being buffeted by the wind, driving through it.

Which is when I heard and felt something behind me and looked in my mirror just in time to see the cover over the box of our truck blow off, into the ditch and keep on going!

I pulled over, but by the time I did, there was no sign of the cover. I’m sure it was still being blown across that field for some time!

I had stuff in the box of the truck, and it was already getting scattered across the box. I gathered it all together and crammed it mostly into the back of the cab, making sure nothing went to the front that could get mixed up with my mother’s stuff.

I made sure that there was no way those metal posts would be able to slide and hit a window!

Once everything was put away, I continued to my mother’s place. Wow, what a difference in how the truck felt while driving! The wind swirling into the box of the truck was very noticeable.

When I was done at my mother’s, I was able to get for damage, which you can see in the second image in the slideshow above. There was enough flex on the box when the cover was torn off that it cracked the tail light cover.

But I didn’t get a chance to see that until later.

As soon as I entered her apartment, my mother, who was lying in bed, started saying, Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I’m so glad to see you! while getting up to sit on the side of her bed.

I’m doing poorly, she tells me. Maybe I should go to the hospital. What do you think?

I certainly did not voice what I was actually thinking. My mother has cried wolf so many times, and uses having us take her to the hospital as a way of getting attention.

I asked her questions about what was going on. She was pretty vague about it; as if she expected me to already know. She told me she took one of the new pills (the T3s), but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

I told her, these pills aren’t magic. They are just stronger painkillers. As she kept on basically about what her expectations were (take pill: pain ends utterly and completely), I told her that her prescription for these is just a couple a day, morning and evening, as needed. I’m on the same pills, same dosage per tablet, and I can take up to 9 of them in total, per day. So it really depends on the individual.

She was pretty shocked that I could take so many per day, when she had a limit of two per day.

As I was putting things away, she lay back down in bed and suggested that maybe using the topical painkiller would help (confirming, finally, exactly what it was that was causing her problems this time). So that’s what we tried. She asked me to do, not only her hips (the pain is mostly just on one side), but her entire back as well. As I was doing that for her, she said to add lots, so I did it second time. As I was putting away the tube, she started saying she could feel a difference, already!

Hopefully, that will be enough.

My brother and I are planning to be there tomorrow for Mother’s Day, so we’ll be able to check on her more thoroughly, then.

Meanwhile, whenever I had a few moments, I kept my family and my siblings updated on things. I told my mother that I had frozen things in my vehicle and had to get them home, so I was soon back on the road. A daughter was sweet enough to have the gate open for me when I got in.

After everything was unloaded, and the new transplants and bags of seed potatoes secure in the portable greenhouse, it was time to feed the outside cats. I had another daughter on kitten duty, too! Other than doing a quick check to make sure none of the raised bed covers were blown away, I was more than happy to finally settle in at home.

So much for my garden and planting plans for the day! As I write this, we have continued to get warmer. It’s past 7pm now, and the temperature has risen to 24C/75F, though with the wind, it does feel a bit cooler. Not much, though! One of the local weather groups I follow on Facebook has been posting information and the coming heat way, with significant heat warnings to come.

We’re supposedly getting rain right now, though the current systems are skirting right past us. Later this evening, we’re supposed to be getting real rain. One of the things that the weather nerds that run the group noted is what appears to be pyrocumulous clouds forming in some areas! These are thunderstorm clouds that are created by heat; you might typically see them form over volcanoes, but can also form over forest fires, if the conditions are right. Scary stuff!

Tonight, the coolest temperatures are supposed to be at around 5 and 6am, at 14C/57F, and then start heating right up. The heat wave is supposed to hit us the hardest on Monday and Tuesday, but still be very hot on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday, the temperature is supposed to drop right down, with overnight lows of 0C/32F, and a mix of rain and snow. Saturday is supposed to be only slightly warmer.

Spring weather is so chaotic.

Well, if we can work around the hottest parts of the day, I should still be able to get at least some of those walnut seeds planted, get more areas prepped in the garden and, if all goes well, even do more direct sowing done. Chances are, though, that very little will get done until after the heat wave passes, and we’re back into cooler temperatures. At which point, we’ll be needing to protect some things from frost! For now, we’ve been able to leave our transplants in the portable greenhouse day and night, but we’ll have to bring them inside on those coldest nights.

As for me, it’s time to pain killer up and get to bed. If the cats are going to be waking me up at 5am anyhow, I may as well take advantage of it and get work done outside, before it gets too hot! I just have to work out what time I’ll be meeting up with my brother at my mother’s place tomorrow.

What a day today has turned out to be!

The Re-Farmer

That worked out unexpectedly well!

May 8, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

I just got back home again and spotted Poirot in with her babies, and had to pause for this.

I actually couldn’t see the little black one until viewing these files on my desktop! The little voidling disappears into the void of his mother’s fur. 😁

Last night, I remembered that we hadn’t done my mother’s monthly blook work yet, and that she had a fasting blood test to do as well. I made arrangements with her to come over this morning, aiming to get her to the lab, which is just a few blocks from her place, as early as possible, so she wouldn’t have to keep fasting for so long.

I ended up having a ridiculously early morning. I’ve been waking up as the days get light, which means I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier for a while now! This morning, it was about 5:30am, and I didn’t need to get up until later. While in the washroom, though, I heard suspect kitten noises, so I got a daughter to join me to check on them while feeding them. It’s much easier to get wet cat food to the kittens with a second person! I still had to close up the inner door on the sun room to let the babies have a chance to eat. Poirot and Brussel had left when I started dispensing the kibble, with Poirot heading off somewhere in the outer yard. Caramel’s kittens were in the cat house, of course, so I tucked their tray into the entry, hoping they would find it and eat before the other cats discovered it. I have noticed that the other adult cats don’t go into the cat house at all, now that the babies are in there, which is good.

By the time I finished my rounds, Poirot was back and at the sun room door, wanting in but too scared to let me come close and open it for her. It doesn’t actually close all the way; things have shifted too much over the winter. It jams onto the threshold enough to stay closed, but if a cat were to push against it, it opens – something some of the other cats have already figured out!

I headed out to my mother’s for about 8:30am. As I parked and headed in, I saw someone leaving and immediately thought it was probably the health care worker. Sure enough, I was right; I had just missed her. My mother remembered not to have breakfast with her pills, which was good. She was all dressed and ready to go, too… including a grocery list! Which I was happy to see, as I forgot to suggest I could do her grocery shopping while I was there. We had time to go over her list and the new flier. Whole chicken was on an excellent sale and she was okay with getting one, which made me happy. She is not getting enough protein, and we all need more protein as we get older.

That done, we headed to the lab in the hospital. She was the only one there, so they were able to take her in and get it done very quickly. So quickly, she actually complained as I was helping her out of the chair, that everyone is in such a hurry! The technician didn’t actually hurry, but was efficient in doing a very basic blood draw, but for someone who struggles just to get in and out of their slightly higher chair, I’m sure it feels way too fast!

Since she was out and about, and in need of breakfast, I suggested we try out the newly renovated and re-opened restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to for some time. Even when they were still closed and very much under renovation, she tried to get me to stop and go inside to see if they were open yet. 😄 I drove past it on the way to her place, so I knew it was open for breakfast. She happily agreed, but was then surprised when I drove to the highway. She wanted to go to the “new” restaurant, and this building has been there for a long time.

???

She then told me her neighbours were talking about a new restaurant. This was the only one that I knew about.

With the new renovations, this place now has a wheelchair ramp, but no automatic doors, which I found a bit odd. If I had not been there with her, my mother would have had a very hard time getting in on her own. They are clearly not completely finished with their plans, with dining tables in only one half of the space. Tables spaced nice and far apart, with plenty of room for someone to get through with a walker, even if there were people sitting in the chairs. At this time, though, there was only one occupied table.

We had a basic eggs, hashbrowns, meat (I had sausage, my mother had bacon) and toast breakfast. It was quite good, and the portions generous. Given that my mother was literally breaking her fast, she was quite hungry, so that worked out very well.

More people came in while we were eating and, my mother being my mother, she started talking to people at the other tables. As I was coming back from paying the bill, I caught the tail end of someone explain to Mom about the new restaurant she had been hearing about. It turns out it was more like a canteen in the rec centre that is only open a few days a week. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!

Once we were done there, I took my mother home, since she was clearly getting pretty tired. When we got to her door, though, we found something in front of it.

A reusable grocery bag with a card in an envelop sticking out of it.

My immediate thought went to our vandal, while my mother started listing off all sorts of other possibilities.

I was right. Our vandal and come by and, with my mother away, had left things at the door for her.

My mother was so tired, she settled into her chair without pausing to take her jacket off. The bag turned out to have four mini fruit pies in it. I opened the card for her, too. It was a mother’s day card, and she was quite delighted by the chickadees pictures on the front. I opened it up and there was a note written inside from our vandal. It was from both him and his wife, though clearly his handwriting. The note was a brief mention about something his “cancer counsellor” told him. It was unusually benign, which suggests to me his wife actually saw and knew about the card, though it still reeked of manipulation. Other cards and letters he has left with her were typically quite nasty.

My mother was too enamored by the pretty chickadees to notice or care.

Once she was settled and comfortable, I headed out with her shopping list. I also needed to go to the post office, which is almost directly across the street from the grocery store, so I parked at the grocery store, then grabbed the envelopes to walk across and mail them, first.

I immediately noticed a very familiar looking vehicle.

While I was getting the envelopes out, I saw our vandal getting into it. My mother and I must have just missed him at her place by minutes!

As I walked across to the post office, he left the parking lot and I was concerned that he might have seen and recognized me, and would decide to go back to my mother’s again. So I got things mailed and did the shopping quickly. Not that it would have taken long, anyhow; my mother’s shopping lists are not long.

When I got back to my mother’s place with her shopping, the first thing I asked was if everything was okay. She was surprised to see me back so quickly – she hasn’t even taken her jacket off, yet! I explained to her about seeing our vandal and that I was concerned he would come back, if he’d seen me.

Then we promptly forgot all about him.

After the groceries were put away, I stayed longer to do a bit of housekeeping for her. There wasn’t much she needed done, so I was soon on my way home.

It was actually quite disorienting to realize it was not even 11:30 when I left.

By this time, things were starting to get quite hot, and the high winds were in full force. Our expected high of 27C/81F has been dropped to 25C/77F, which we are at right now and are expected to stay at for several more hours.

When I got home, I had to check on the raised bed covers, and they are all holding up to the wind. The portable greenhouse, however, is not doing as well. We had to tie the door open, as it was over 50C/122F in there. The door faces the house, and the wind is from the south, so at least the doorway is sheltered, but plastic covering the frame is still ballooning. At some point, the ties for the door came loose, so it was flapping. My husband’s window faces it, so he was able to let us know and my daughter fixed it. She ended up draping a broken hose over it, and pushed the cat trap right against one side of it, to try and reduce the ballooning. That actually helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, the plastic around the doorway is starting to tear. Where it’s attached to the zipper already had some tears, and that’s gotten much worse, but even at one corner, where the tie down loop is, has started to tear.

*sigh*

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but I really was hoping it would hold out longer. At least the roof and three sides are still holding out. It’s just the side with the doorway. We’ll still be able to make it work out.

It’s getting time to feed the outside cats for the evening, so I’ll be heading outside to check on things soon. With this wind and heat, though, there is no way I’ll be able to continue clearing out the garden bed I started on, yesterday. The high winds are supposed to continue through the night, but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler (as in, just under 20C/68C) and the winds are supposed to die down by then, so I should be able to finish clearing that bed then. I have decided that I will plant peas down the middle of this bed, and potatoes on either side. Once the bed is clear, I will set up posts to hold trellis netting down the middle, then get netting on it right away, so that’s over and done with, before planting anything. If things go smoothly, I should be able to get the peas and potatoes planted by the end of the day.

If things go smoothly.

I don’t really count on that. 😄

Now to go feed some kitties and check for wind damage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: prepping a bed, and walnut finally planted

May 7, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Finally!

I got that poor little walnut sapling planted!

The seeds still need to be done, but they are not as urgent.

I had debated where to plant the sapling, and decided to plant is to the south of the ash tree. This location is almost straight out from the gate by the fire pit, so if we need to, it would be fairly easy to get a hose out to it. It’s also closer to the ash tree than the Korean Pine that got drowned out. When things were at their wettest, this area did get wet, but not to the point of standing water.

Here is how it went.

In the first photo, you can see the area is thick with dead thatch. I actually started out by pulling a lot of it out by hand, around the marker, before going over it again with a rake. In the second photo, you can see it after the raking. The dead grass I raked up is basically hay, so I set it aside to use as a mulch, later.

The next step was to dig out the sod around the marker. Since a sapling is going into here, I dug it wider than I would need to do if I were planting a seed.

Of course, I hit rocks.

After removing wedges of sod to the side, I dug around to loosen the soil and get it a bit deeper. Which wasn’t very deep before I started kitting gravel. Quite a while was spent finding and removing the flat pieces of rock that you can see in the next photo. These would all be from a single piece of limestone that fractured in layers, which is very typical. There was also a big chunk of granite.

The soil here is very black, very sticky and very heavy! It wanted to stick to my spade like clay.

After digging down as much as I intended to – just to the gravel layer – I went through the chunks of sod to remove any larger roots, and to loosen them up a pit. Then, leaving them upside down, I put them back into the hole, slightly beyond the edge, so the points of the wedges all sort of sunk downwards. Then a hacked at the sod around the middle with a hoe to loosen more soil and refill the hollow in the centre a bit. On top of that, I added about half of the soil I brought. My brother had a leftover bag of soil he passed on to me. After reading the label, I decided to use that instead of making our own mix.

I then used about half of the container of water I brought to water the hole before planting the walnut sapling. I wanted to make sure it would be slightly higher than what the ground level was when I started, but also wanted to make it so any rain would drain towards the middle before getting absorbed by the soil. I’d brought a collar to put around the sapling as well, which will help with both keeping it slightly higher, and also allowing water to percolate into the soil slowly around the sapling itself, rather than draining away and eroding the soil away from the transplant.

Then, since I had these handy flat rocks I needed to do something with, I set them around the sapling, on the upturned pieces of sod. This would both direct water flow towards the sapling and keep any grass or weeds from coming up around it. While this area gets pretty wet at times, we tend to have more drought conditions than flooding conditions, overall.

The marker was placed near the sapling. I forgot to bring something to gently secure the sapling to the marker, to keep it upright. Something I will want to do sooner rather than later, to keep it secure in place until its roots become established.

Last of all, the raked up hay/dried grass was set around the collar to act as a mulch. I ran out, but it was just a matter of raking nearby to get more.

Little by little, over the next while, we’ll get those walnut seeds planted at the other markers. For those, at least, they won’t need as large a hole to be dug!

After that was done, I decided to finally work on one of the garden beds that was being solarized.

Ha!

That didn’t quite work.

The thing with solarizations is, the plastic has to have direct contact with the soil. It needs to be held down tightly. Which we weren’t able to do – and with this bed, it just became a greenhouse for weeds!

In the first picture, you can see how “puffy” the plastic looks, as it gets lifted by the greenery below.

The second picture shows how completely overgrown this bed had gotten! It is mostly dandelions – which were even blooming on the north end of the bed, where it gets longer sunshine.

This bed has had a few years of amendments to it, and was completely reworked last spring, so the soil would be nice and loose. Between that and how large the weeds were, it was going to be a lot easier to clean it up than it looked! The first thing to do was go over the entire bed with a garden fork to loosen the soil and root systems. Once that was done, I brought out my little hand cultivator to loosen it more, so I could remove as much of the root systems as possible. Along with the dandelion tap roots, there were some crab grass rhizomes, and waaaayyyy too much Creeping Charlie. Creeping Charlie roots really do creep, mostly near the surface of the soil, as it spreads. These mats of roots would even get all caught up in my hand cultivator, making it easier to get them out. Unfortunately, even the tiniest remaining root can start growing and spreading, but at least I could get the bulk of it out!

While working on this, I disturbed a surprising number of frogs, and even a Wooly Bear!

With the bed so low to the ground, though, this was an uncomfortable and painful job. I brought over the rolling seat, which helped, but I was only up to weeding one side. Since this is all infested with Creeping Charlie roots, it all went into a wheelbarrow to add to the burn pile, rather than to compost.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll finish the other half of the bed and get it planted. I have decided

The caterpillar was something I ended up picking up and moving. My apologies for the terrible picture, but it was in the leaf litter under the nearby black currant bush, and I had to zoom in quite a bit!

The frog in the next picture was really tiny, so I caught that one and moved it, too. The others I disturbed were larger, and I left them to hop out of the way on their own!

By the time I was done, it was time to feed the outside cats for the evening. With giving the littles wet cat food, what I end up doing is chasing out the adult cats and closing up the door to the sun room, to give them a chance to eat. With Caramel and her babies, I set a bowl with both wet and dry cat food inside the entry to the cat house – and spotted Caramel peaking at me from around the opening inside! I couldn’t see her babies but, when looking through the window next to the entrance, I couldn’t see her babies in their cat bed, either. I went to the other window, where I could see Caramel from the other side, and could just spot her darker kitten half under her, waiting. She was already bringing her babies to the entry, expecting food for them! This is a good sign!

While tending to the kittens in the sun room, I noticed Kale’s front leg had a scab fall off, so I got a daughter to bring the cat safe polysporin to put on the leg. It’s not bleeding, and the wound is closing up, but there is still a chance of infection. There is also the wound on her back leg but, right now, there just seems to be a spot of matted fur. My daughter had to look at it while I tried to hold on to a squirming Kale. She thinks the matting is from dried puss, but she can’t see anything other than the matted fur right now. The wound there seems to have closed up. We can’t say for sure what caused these wounds, but I still think it was from being excessively licked after some squeeze treat accidentally dripped onto her while I was giving it to Brussel.

That done, I was glad to get inside and sit down to the supper my daughter had made for me – but did remember to call my mother, first. I’ve been forgetting to take her in for her monthly blood work. This time, she’s also got a requisition for fasting blood work. We are now arranged for me to take her to the lab when they open at 9am, so that she won’t have to wait too long before eating. When I told her not to eat anything with her morning pills, she told me that she would stop eating for the rest of today; the home care aid for her suppertime meds had left just before I called. I told her she could still have a snack before bed or something; just not breakfast. It seems she’s gotten it into her head that it’s somehow a morally superior thing to not eat for the rest of this evening, too. That would be way too long for her to go without eating!

I remembered to ask her about her new prescription painkillers, to find out if she’d taken them before bed, as I’d suggested, and how they worked. It turned out she hadn’t taken any at all, but was feeling enough pain that she was just about to. I’m glad I asked about it, because she thought that she was supposed to take 2 tablets at a time, “as needed”. The actual instructions are to take 1 tablet, twice a day, as needed. As we went over the instructions again, she started saying that maybe she should not take them at all until she finished her other ones – the extra strength Tylenol she normally takes. I had to explain to her that she could take both; that if, for some reason, she had taken her prescription painkillers twice, but was still feeling pain, she could safely take a Tylenol, because they are in the same family of painkillers (which is the same thing for me, with the different painkillers I’ve been tried on so far). While I was trying to explain that if she had taken the prescription painkillers, she kept interrupting me to tell me that she hasn’t taken any at all. I’d say again, yes, I know, but IF you had taken them… I haven’t taken any of them! she would tell me, again and again, cutting me off before I could finish what I was trying to explain to her! I did finally finish what I was trying to say but, by then, I’m not sure she was still following me along, or if her mind had already gone somewhere else.

So… I think she was still going to take one after we were done on the phone, and knew that she could take a second one before she went to bed if she needed to, but I am not sure what she will actually do.

She also brought up, in the middle of everything else, that she has been having troubles with her headaches and her chest. I had to ask her what she meant by her “chest”. Oh, you know… my head and my chest…

No, Mom. I don’t know! I understand headaches, but what to you mean by chest?

I had to clarify, because sometimes she complains about different physical pains in her chest, but sometimes, she means her breathing.

It turned out she meant her breathing.

I asked if she was seeing any swelling in her legs.

Oh, yes… but it’s my chest that’s the problem.

*sigh*

She then started saying that she’s fine if she is just sitting, but when she walks around, she starts having trouble breathing.

So I had to explain to her again, the doctors warned her that if she has swelling in her legs and has trouble breathing, she might need to go back to the hospital. She couldn’t make the connection between the swelling and her breathing, so I explained again that if she has swelling in her legs, that means her body is holding water, and she might have water in her lungs, too. She then wondered how this could be happening, with all the pills she’s taking.

*sigh*

She has somehow convinced herself that, because she is taking soooo many pills, she should never get sick with anything. I told her that there is only one pill she is taking that has anything to do with her swelling, and that’s her water pill. The other pills are for different things, and none of them are specifically about breathing.

We’ve had similar conversations many times, so I expect she will have forgotten it already. I did suggest that she ask the home care aid to check the swelling on her legs tonight; the last time I was there and she said she had swollen legs, when she showed them to me, they weren’t swollen at all. She actually had sagging skin, which suggests that she did have swelling recently, but it had gone down by the time I was there to see, one way or the other.

The home care office is closed, but I’ll call up the case coordinator and leave a message with her. She was at the meeting with the doctor in the hospital before my mother was discharged, so she is aware of what we were told to watch out for.

The lab I’ll be taking her to, tomorrow, is in the local hospital. Which isn’t really a hospital, since they don’t have the doctors to actually do anything, but there are Nurse Practitioners in the clinic in the same building. That’s where she had gone when they saw that she needed to be hospitalized, and she was transferred to a hospital that has actual doctors, a functioning emergency room and can admit patients.

At this point, my mother being hospitalized again could actually be another of those “blessings in disguise” when it comes to getting her into some sort of assisted living or long term care situation, like she wants so much. With the updates to her panel application for long term care, it might just be enough to get her in.

We shall see how that works out!

The Re-Farmer

Baby moving day and a visit to the doctor

May 6, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, and update on Poirot and her babies.

We tried getting her to move into the cat cage. The babies were tucked into the cat cave, for darkness and warmth. We watched and could tell that she knew where they were, and I kept an eye on the critter cam. My older daughter, who works at night, checked as well, though there was no way to see if a black cat was in the darkness of the cat cave.

When I came out to do the morning feeding (waaayyy to early for me!), I took a peak and could see the babies. I pet them, mostly to make sure they were actually alive, and they immediately started crying for mama.

My daughter helped me with putting the food out, with me setting the dry kibble out first, to distract the other cats, while she split up a couple of cans of wet cat food for the babies, then passed them to me. I made sure to put some wet cat food inside the cat cage, but could not see Poirot anywhere.

So I continued my morning rounds and, while coming back from switching out memory cards at the gate cam, I spotted a whole bunch of cats following from a distance on the driveway.

Including Poirot.

I continued me rounds, hoping she would go to her babies in the sun room but, as I finished up, she was still outside. She just would not go to them.

So I decided to take the cat cave, babies still inside, and moved it back to the water bowl shelter, where she seemed to be hanging out the most. I even put some wet cat food inside the cat cave.

She did come over and stick her head in to eat, but would not go inside.

I hung around behind the cat house, watching her, but she just jumped onto the roof to eat, then back down again. I could hear her kittens crying, and she would stick her head in, but not go in all the way. Which you can see in the first image below.

Okay, so she doesn’t like the cat cave. I decided to take them out and put them on the cat bed she gave birth in, that was right beside it.

I then headed into the sun room and stood by the old kitchen door, messaging the family to update them.

Which is when Poirot suddenly ran into the sun room.

With something black in her mouth.

Her black kitten.

I froze and watched through the sides of my eyes so as not to scare her out. She brought the kitten to the set up just behind me, only to drop it. She tried again and dropped it again.

The way we have things set up in that area, we have a couple of plant stands of different heights in front of the mini greenhouse frame that is now used only by the cats. These are against one of the shelves that supports the platform, and where we store several open cat carriers for the cats to be comfortable and familiar with them. At the moment, there is one on the bottom shelf, and the cats keep pushing the door closed – not latched, but it doesn’t swing open on its own. There had been one the next shelf up, but we had to use it and it is now sitting directly on the floor, opposite the cat cage. I even toss a bit of kibble inside so the cats are comfortable going in and out of it. Then there is a cat carrier on the third shelf up, which is the shelf that supports the platform at that end. Because of the platform, it’s turned sideways, so the open doorway faces the top of the mini greenhouse.

That’s where we found the black kitten, yesterday evening. It has a cat blanket inside that the cats have managed to not drag out and onto the floor, like the other ones.

It was clear to me that Poirot was wanting to get to that carrier. After dropping her kitten yet again, it started crying loudly, so I took a chance. As soon as I moved, she backed away from her kitten, but not very far. I picked it up and put it into the carrier.

She immediately jumped up the shelves, into the carrier, and settled to nurse and groom her kitten.

At that point, I decided to give in. I went and got her other two kittens and brought them over. As I came close, she started hissing at me, but immediately stopped when I put a kitten in, and was grooming it before I could put the last one in. The kittens immediately went hunting for nip.

I then went and got some for the remaining wet cat food intended for her and put it in close enough that she could eat while her kittens continued to nurse. I then hung around and found things to do until I could see she had mostly finished eating.

I then went and got the last squeeze treat for her. She once again started hissing at me when I got close, but then she discovered the treat, and she started eating it. As with Brussel, once the tube it too empty to comfortably squeeze with one hand (I have to use my other hang to hang on to something, since I’m having to lean forward so much to reach the mama), I pulled it back, then squeezed the last of the treat out of the tube and onto my finger and thumb, then reached in again to let her lick the last of it off my fingers.

Which she did, without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Brussel was sitting in her spot by her kittens, under the platform, watching me. I had developed a routine of giving her a squeeze treat before going into the house, but I had none left. We did still have other donated treats; they look a bit like squares of chocolate. I opened a couple of them and broke them into their little squares. There was enough for me to scatter some for Brussel and her kittens, Poirot in her cat carrier, then around the kibble trays for any other cats that happened to still be around.

If you scroll through the Instagram post, you’ll see a video of a very happy Poirot.

The problem is, if the kittens ever squirm their way out of the carrier, which would not take much to do, there is a very real chance they’d fall to the concrete floor below. The girls and I are doing to use some of the cardboard I’ve set aside for the garden and sort of box the area in, so if they do get out, they’ll just be on cardboard, and there will be no gaps for them to fall through.

Poirot definitely won this battle! It would be safer for her to be in the cat cage and, especially, in the warmth of the cat cave, but being in a carrier is hardly a bad thing. I tried calling the rescue in the city the Cat Lady recommended to me, but there was no answer and no option to leave a message. If we can get through to them and they are in a position to taken in a mama and kittens, it will be much easier to do that with them already in a carrier!

So that was my morning adventure!

Once back inside and breakfasted up, it was still quite early, so I took advantage of it to lie down for about an hour. I’d say “take a nap”, but my phone’s notifications kept going off, so not much sleep was to be had.

My daughter’s appointment with the doctor was at 1:30, and we needed to be on the road by 12:30. We ended up leaving shortly after noon, instead, which gave me time to swing by the feed store in my mother’s town and pick up a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats.

Which I have forgotten in the truck… 😄

That done, we continued to our appointments. We were early, but not early enough to have lunch, first, so we just went in and waited. My appointment was at 2, and we both got called in about half an hour late.

The primary thing for both of us was to take care of the disability paperwork the doctor asked us to bring in. We’d already filled out our portions. For me, it was all about my osteoarthritis, which she listed as severe. At one point, I told her that it’s really hard for me to even think of being disabled. I mean, it’s just arthritis, right? Everyone gets arthritis, eventually (meaning OA, of course, not rheumatoid), right? Everyone gets sort feet, right? She just started laughing and shaking her head.

The forms ask about things like being able to walk and needing to use mobility aids (I did have to use a cane, just yesterday evening, which I haven’t needed to do in quite a while), and she listed canes, arm bars, hand rails and the bath chair, as well as sometimes needing to have someone else prepare food for me. What the paperwork doesn’t have a space for it specifically about hands. Just walking. While my walking is affected, my hands are really the more of an issue for me, as I have trouble turning door nobs, or being able to do things like hold a cup.

Which reminds me. We’re going to need to replace the door knob on our bathroom door with a lever style handle, sooner rather than later. As we were talking and she was filling in different parts of the form, I mentioned that I was diagnosed back in 2000, and was already using a cane before then, and she went back and added that in, too. I had checked off the box giving the okay to get retroactive disability payments, but I really don’t think that’ll happen all the way back to 2000!

Now, I fully expect us to both get rejected immediately. That happened with my husband. When he took the letter of rejection to his doctor, the doctor told him they always reject the first application. Just send it in again. Which we did, and my husband’s application was accepted the second time. Now, that was back in…. 2014? 2025? Somewhere around there. So we’ll see if that’s still the case. After the paperwork got the appropriate clinic stamp and scanned for our files, we got them back – after paying $50 each – and will need to mail them out ASAP.

Beyond that, we went over various things and talked about my meds. I’ve been bumped up from T2s to T3s.

I mentioned how I’ve started getting Charlie Horses again, now that I’m active outside more. I’m already taking the supplements that would help, and she suggested I add squats to my regimen. This would actually be quite difficult for me, since my knees are shot. My legs are already over developed, since muscle is the thing keeping them from bending in directions they are not designed to do, but doing squats (and stretches, but I am already doing that) should also help. Talking about it with my daughter, later, I’m not entirely sure how I would do them. My knees are simply not stable enough. We do have an exercise bike, so that might work, too. I will try doing squats, too, though. As long as I’ve got something I can grab on to for support, I might be okay.

Meanwhile, the doctor says she doesn’t need to see me for a follow up for 3 months, and wrote me up to get bloodwork done just before then. My daughter had more bloodwork done after her appointment, so she’s booked to come back next month.

We both had changes in prescriptions, so we messaged my husband to call the pharmacy and let them know to fill the faxes they would get, as we were on the way. This gave him a chance to add anything he needed for himself, but there wasn’t anything this time.

By the time we got to the pharmacy, it was letting late in the afternoon, and neither of us had had lunch. So we ended up getting some take out before heading home. It was late enough that I left my daughter to take things in and split up the food while I went out to do the evening cat feeding.

Poirot was still curled up with her babies in the cat carrier. She did growl a bit at me, until I put the food bowl down in front of her, just outside the carrier. Hopefully, we will have better luck at socializing her than we’ve had with Brussel. For all that she now expects to get the wet cat food and the treats, she still growls and attacks my hands. Aside from a couple of times I took advantage of proximity and managed to pet her, she does not like it when we get within reach, if it doesn’t involve food!

The bigger kittens, meanwhile, are all over the sun room. The third white and grey kitten is still there and joining the cuddle piles with its siblings – litter mates and adopted siblings alike!

The long days are really starting to throw me. It feels like it should be the middle of the day right now, and it’s getting past 6:30pm as I write this! We’re expected to drop to freezing, or even below freezing, tonight, so I’ll be heading out one more time to make sure the heat lamps are on, and the plants in the portable greenhouse are brought into the old kitchen for the night. Our temperatures are expected to lurch back and forth all over the place, from highs of near 30’sC/86’sF and lows of 12C/57F or higher, to much more pleasant daytime highs, but lows just barely above freezing again. We’ll be getting high winds again, soo, too.

Somewhere in there, I need to get all sorts of things done outside!

Ah, well. Spring does tend to be a very mercurial season! We just do the best we can.

What else can we do, right? 😁

The Re-Farmer

Mystery babies! Plus, this and that

April 29, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Last night, my older daughter started hearing kittens outside, meowing loud enough for her to hear them over her headphones. So she went to see what was going on.

She found three mostly white kittens wandering around in the yard, crying. No mother in sight.

So she scooped them up and put them into the cat cage with Brussel.

Brussel was quite okay with the new additions.

What a good mama she is!

The image and video above were taken last night.

They were still there this morning, and my daughters kept an eye on them while I was away.

I admit, when I did my morning rounds, I was on the lookout for bodies. If there were more to the litter and they were outside during last night’s cold, they would not have made it. When I checked the thermometers, it was about -10C/14F inside the greenhouse and the covered bed in the old kitchen garden. Happily, I found nothing.

Brussel’s black and white kitten has been really working at climbing out of the cat cage and, this afternoon, he finally succeeded. One of the new babies discovered the opening under the door. So when I got back, there were two kittens I had to be really careful about not stepping on when I got home!

In the above slideshow, you can see the two most active kittens outside the cat cage. The last image in the series is the possible mother.

As of this evening’s feeding, there are now only two of the white kittens in the cat cage. It looks like Mamma has come for them.

Usually, the mamas bring their babies to the house when they are old enough to be weaned. They bring them here and basically leave them where the food is. This doesn’t typically start until late June, at the earliest, July or August. These babies are definitely NOT old enough to wean, so it’s strange that they should show up like this. The Cat Lady and her rescue have been updated. After last night, things should warm up enough for it to be safe to start trapping and hopefully getting more ladies spayed before we have more kittens!!!

As for me, I am totally exhausted. I went to my mother early, to be there for her doctor’s appointment. The confusion about her puffer was cleared up. She showed me the bottle she was talking about.

It was the spray for dry mouth.

She thought it was an inhaler.

I’m not going to get into all the stuff about her visit; it would just be too much. Suffice to say, this was note on of her good days, and she went off about my brother and how terrible he is, and even admitted that our vandal “was right”; she believes all the lies and slander he has said about my brother. It blows me away that she trusts the person that is the most abusive towards me, while treating the person who has given and sacrificed so much for her like crap.

On the plus side, the home care aid showed up while I was there. She was new to the schedule; it turns out the regular person was away today, so she was the substitute.

My mother recognized her. She provided home care for my late father. She even remembered him and the farm, and had the nicest things to say about him. I told her that, at the time, I was living in another province, but when I phoned my dad, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him and what excellent care he was getting. He was definitely a favourite of all the home care workers.

My mother is very, very different.

After the telephone medical appointment was done, I stayed long enough to get laundry going, then did some grocery shopping for her. She also had stuff to pick up at the pharmacy, which gave me a chance to talk to them about things discussed with the doctor this morning. After I got home, I called home care and left a message about relevant things they needed to know.

Speaking of medical appointments, my husband FINALLY has an appointment at the new pain clinic.

In June.

He doesn’t expect them to be able to do anything at all for him, though. After all these years, he’s gone though all the options and has given up on anyone being able to help him just control the pain, never mind improve.

On a less pleasant note… I hate being right sometimes.

Last night, as I predicted, Marx Carnage was installed as our new Prime Dictator. The media has been priming us for that result from the start. Yes, there were plenty of shenanigans. The election was called before ballots were even counted.

The ballots from the advance polls get counted after the regular polls. There were 7 million votes cast at the advance polls, but the election was called before they were counted. Video has surfaced of people taking the sealed ballot boxes out of their secure locations – one person was even seen rifling inside a ballot box – and taken to someone’s private home. Vote counting is not supposed to stop until it’s done, but they stopped at 9:30pm, after ballot boxes had been unsealed, then starting up again in the morning. Etc.

Then there was this.

This is a ballot from CPC Leader, Pierre Poilievre’s riding. Over 20 years of him serving that riding, there was never a ballot like this before, nor was there another like it anywhere in Canada. That’s 90 names running against him. He lost in his own riding because of it. Most of the people on there are listed as Independents. Most of them apparently didn’t even know their names were on the ballot. To be listed as an independent in this riding, it costs $1000, and only 50 signatures needed, per potential candidate. Now picture that process, 100 times, with 90 making it to the ballot. Somehow, Elections Canada didn’t question this. As the party leader, Poilievre can run in a bi-election elsewhere, but this seriously needs to be investigated. It won’t be, of course.

Dozens of ridings have results with less than 1% between the top two candidates. Normally, that would trigger an automatic recount. I doubt it will.

About the only good news is that the NDP lost so many seats, they lost official party status. Sellout Singh lost his riding and resigned.

The Liberals got a minority, but the Bloc, which is in Quebec only, got enough seats that they can form a de facto coalition with the Libs, just like the NDP did, and they will essentially get the majority government they were after. Another dictatorship.

There are a few things that can happen from here. The Libs already put out a report promising… er… predicting that people are going to be so desperate in a few years, they will be forced to resort to hunting, fishing and foraging on public land (people are already doing that), among other things. They plan to do things like tax the equity on people’s homes, along with their capital gains tax and layers of carbon taxes. They want to ban vehicles with combustion engines, and phase out the energy industry, phase out meat, etc. Basically, Canadians are about to see some very hard times.

I see a few possible options. Some have predicted that things will fall apart so fast, we’ll have another election within the year. I don’t think so. Another possibility is, Alberta will finally separate. Thanks to Quebec threatening to do this for decades, the process is actually easy. A referendum is held with a clear question, and a simple majority wins. So if AB holds a referendum and 50.1% votes in favour of separating, the results must legally be accepted. If they go, SK will soon follow. MB and BC won’t be far behind, though both have NDP premiers right now, so that will stall things.

If AB goes, Canada’s biggest cash cow is gone. Quebec will go bankrupt in no time at all, since they depend almost entirely on equalization payments to pay for their socialist paradise. The Western provinces and probably the territories will combine to form a new republic (this has been in the works for years, and there is already a draft constitution, among other groundwork). Without having the federal government and the Eastern provinces sabotaging everything, this would easily become one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Just as Canada could have been already.

Or, the provinces could separate and join the US. Which I think is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but it would still be loads better than continuing under a corrupt Liberal government, and a system designed to favour one part of the country at the expense of another.

Well, we’ll see how it pans out.

For us, it’s doing more of the same; trying to be as self sufficient as possible, grow and produce our own food as much as possible. It’s something we’ve been working towards anyhow. It has just become more urgent to get there.

The Re-Farmer

Chilly

April 28, 2025April 28, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Today is definitely working out to be a chilly day. Depending on what app I look at, we are at either 1C, 0C or -1C! (34F, 32F or 30F). We’re supposed to reach a high of 5C/41F by early evening, but that’s also when the high winds are supposed to hit us, too.

Yesterday’s high pain day did lead to a high pain night, and these fluctuating temperatures sure don’t help. Part of the problem is that a lot of my pain actually gets worse after I lie down. Particularly with my hips. Along with my prescription pain killers (which are working even less than the first ones my doctor tried me on), I had to get my husband to slather on the Tei Fu lotion before I could finally fall asleep. With the cool and overcast conditions we have now, I feel like I could crawl back into bed right now and sleep for another week.

*sigh*

While doing my morning rounds, I tried to get a picture of the littles in the cat house.

It’s through a window, zoomed in and cropped, so a pretty terrible picture, but you can at least see the two littles in there, in the cat bed under the ceramic heat bulb.

In the sun room, the little black and white kitten almost managed to climb all the way out of the cat cage! I managed to snag him for cuddles before he did, then distracted him with wet cat food pieces I’d put into their cat bed. Once he figures out he can get out on his own, it’ll be pretty hard to keep them in there! At that point, I’ll unblock the opening under the doorway, so they can get in and out freely. There is currently a stuffy in front of the opening, and the “door” is hanging down over it on the outside. I’ll set something to hold the door panel away from the opening.

With the cooler temperatures, we’ll be staying inside for the most part, but I really want to get the one garden bed with the sprouts covered. When I checked on it this morning, there were fresh signs of digging in it. Not in areas where sprouts are coming up, thankfully, but seeds are spread out pretty evenly in this bed, so any digging at all is potentially killing things off.

My goal for today is now to pot up the peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. I am thinking we may have to start using the portable greenhouse, as even with the lights, the basement set up is just not cutting it anymore. The thermometer in the greenhouse was at just below freezing when I checked it this morning.

In theory, we could put things in the portable greenhouse during the day, then bring them into the sun room overnight. We do have the platform and shelves. The problem is, it’s still set up for the cats to use. We could move things around, but I still think the cats would end up knocking things about, or even walking right over them. They don’t deliberately try to get at the pots. It’s more a matter of them getting from point A to point B, and just going through whatever is in their way at the time. We’ve got to figure something out, though.

But first, we’ve got to get the seedlings transplanted.

In other things, I remembered to book a telephone appointment for my mother with her doctor to go over the blood tests and Xrays results. I was surprised when the receptionist asked if I wanted to book the call for today, but that would have been way too short notice for my mother. So I booked it for tomorrow morning. I then called to let my mother know, but it went to machine. She might have been out voting. Today is election day, and they set a mobile poll up in her building for people like my mom, who can’t get to the regular polling station. We voted at the advance polls, already, just in case something came up today. Of course, we’re already hearing about all sorts of election shenanigans going on. Ballot boxes from the advance polls are supposed to be kept sealed at a secure location. Just this morning, I was watching a video someone took. The guy happened to go shopping at a store next to the polling station and surreptitiously recorded ballot boxes being loaded into personal vehicles. One guy had opened the ballot box and was rifling through it. The guy taking the recording ended up following the vehicle, and the boxes were taken to someone’s home. He even questioned the people doing in, but thinks they figured he might be recording. They claimed they were moving the boxes to a secure location, which was obviously not true.

Meanwhile, in BC, people working in remote locations are told they are not going to be able to vote. For these jobs, people get flown in to work for 2 weeks, then flown out for 1 week off. They come from all over the country to work these very high paying jobs in the energy sector. Normally, they would be bussed to the nearest town to vote on election day. It’s been done this way for many years. Only a couple of days ago, they were told that, because they didn’t live in that town, they wouldn’t be able to vote there.

A lot of people going to advance polls told of polling stations running out of ballots (which should never happen), and being given blank pieces of paper and told to write in the person they wanted to vote for. This morning, I watched an interview with a couple of seniors that had a mobile polling station, like at my mother’s building – but it came on Thursday (the advance polls closed on Monday night). They didn’t have ballots, and the “scrutineers” offered to write in the names of who they wanted to vote for, for them. The women even saw them “help” one of their neighbours vote, and this was someone with cognitive decline that they knew would not have had any idea who she was voting for. Another example of shenanigans was in the riding for Opposition and CPC leader, Pierre Poilievre. The ballots had 90 candidate names running against him! There are only 16 registered parties for the federal election, and most of those do not have enough candidates to be in all ridings. The candidates are listed in alphabetic order by surname, so Poilievre’s’ name would have been in the middle somewhere. All this is on top of the RCMP report that the CCP has been actively working to influence the election results (the guy the Libs installed as the new leader and, by default, the current PM, has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the CCP). The Governor General (who is supposed to be a neutral representative of the Crown, and was chosen by the Liberal party) approved millions of dollars to the Libs not long ago, even though Parliament is shut down for the election, so there was no debate to approve it and no one knows what the money was for. Etc. We’ve got the most corrupt government in Canada’s history, and now what is obviously the most corrupted federal election in our history. The only thing we can do is hope enough people get out and vote, to make it too big to rig. It’s blatantly obvious, in spite of the government paid polls saying otherwise, that the Libs can’t win. If they do, Canada will fall apart; everyone knows it would not be a legitimate win. Alberta has been ready to separate for years. Thanks to Quebec threatening to separate for so many decades, this is one thing that is relatively simple. A referendum is held, and all that’s needed is a simple majority. If AB goes, SK will soon follow. BC and MB would, too, except both currently have NDP leaders, and they are hand in glove with the Libs, so as much as the population would want to, the leadership is unlikely to actually act on behalf of their own citizens. Unlike other parties, there’s no real separation between provincial NDP and federal NDP. Even Ontario is talking referendum. Northern ON is getting very tired of being screwed over by more populous southern regions.

Personally, I am going to ignore the media for the day as much as possible, and not check in until evening. With our first past the post system, the election will be decided by the East well before the polls close in the West. Another frustration. Canada needs something like the US Electoral College. It’s one thing to vote for your local representative. Is should be something else to vote for the PM. Right now, leader of whatever party gets the most elected MPs because leader by default. No one votes for the PM in Canada. We currently have 343 ridings, so what we really have is 343 independent elections, all on the same day. I fully expect that the Conservatives will win by a landslide, but that Marx Carnage will somehow get reinstalled as PM anyhow. Lord knows, the media has been priming us for a Liberal “win” for weeks now. The psychological manipulation and behavioural modification has been out in full force. What gets me is that it’s so blatant, and so few people care. They seem quite happy to be manipulated.

Well, what happens, happens. We’ll figure it out when the time comes.

I’m going to go tend to my seedlings now.

The Re-Farmer

Yeah, we got snow today

April 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The forecast was possible rain and snow during the night.

It was snowing when I head out to do my morning rounds, and kept snowing, of and on, throughout the day!

Not enough to bother the yard cats too much, though.

The first two images above are from a poplar branch. I don’t think I ever noticed before that they get catkins like pussy willows do! So we have signs of spring, even as winter is trying to hang on as long as possible!

The last photo is the covered bed in the old kitchen garden. As I was out there, it was about -1C/30F. In both the covered bed and the portable greenhouse, the thermometers were reading about 0C/32F Not much difference – even in the portable greenhouse, after adding the water filled garbage can as a heat sink. I don’t think the water has in there long enough to get completely warmed up, yet.

On the schedule for today was to head to my mother’s to take her to her doctor’s appointment in the early afternoon. I still had plenty of time, as I was sitting down with my breakfast after doing my morning rounds.

Then the phone rang.

It was home care.

No one was available to do my mother’s morning meds. She’s scheduled to get them done, along with extra time to help her get dressed, if she needs it, empty her commode or even heat something up for her breakfast, at 8:55

It was almost 8:30 when I got the call.

*sigh*

So I quickly called my mom to let her know that I would be heading over as soon as I finished breakfast. My mother kept trying to keep me on the phone as she complained about my having to come out for this and I kept having to cut her off and repeat that I needed to eat and run, and we could talk when I got there. After the third or fourth time, she finally let me go! 😄

When the home care aids do her med assist, they have a folder that’s kept in her lock box where they sign off for the day’s visit and make extra notes, if needed. So when I do the med assist instead, I write up the time and date, saying that I did her meds, and include any other notes that might be necessary. So I knew what time I got there to give her her meds. It was exactly 9:15 by her clock, so only about 20 minutes late.

What I noticed as I was getting her meds out was a bubble in her pack that should have been empty, but wasn’t. Her previous Friday morning pills were still there. So I asked her about it.

She told me that she had taken her meds herself, from one of the extra bubble packs on her fridge, that morning.

!!!!

I was sure I’d pushed them far enough back that she couldn’t reach them! I don’t know how she got them down!

I told her, that was NOT a good thing to do. Apparently, the home care aid agreed, because my mom told me she put the rest of the packs into the lock box. Between the bubble packs, their folder, the blood work requisition forms, and other items in there, having an entire month’s worth of packs in there is tight, even with a lock box as large as this one. That’s why I hadn’t put them all in there myself, when I brought her refills home.

*sigh*

After giving her her meds, I did a few other little things for her, like emptying the commode and taking care of her garbage. My brother had recently visited her and brought a few grocery items she’s always running out of, but when we spoke on the phone last night, I told her to see if she needed anything else and to make a list. She did need a few things, and we still had plenty of time, so we went over the list and then I did her grocery shopping for her.

After that was done, we still had time to visit.

If you could call it that.

She spent a whole lot of time criticizing me for not being dressed “presentable” enough (while I was there, I accidentally tore my jeans), and for having messy hair (my hair was braided and I had hat head), and I should have short hair like she does. In the past, these are criticisms that would have caused me to have all sorts of issues, but I am well past that point in my life now. I call her out on this stuff, now. She doesn’t really get it. She feels completely entitled to say stuff like to about and to, anyone and everyone. Even complete strangers! Then starts going on about how people who aren’t “presentable” are uncivilized, etc.

She totally doesn’t get the double standard and hypocrisy she’s displaying!

Then she brought up the Easter baskets; I’d picked up a paska at the grocery store for her own basket. She remembered that we do Easter baskets, too, and bless them ourselves. She suggested that I bring our basket to her place on the Saturday before Easter, then she and I could go across the street to her church to have them blessed together.

I told her, the last time I brought our Easter basket to be blessed with her, she gave me a hard time about having a bad basket.

Oh, she said. That’s because it was so huge. Would you like me to give you an Easter basket?

I told her, we have all kinds of baskets of all sizes.

She told me I should just bring a small one. Just a little one…

I told her, our basket is the right size for our family.

Now, part of the reason for the size of basket we use is that we spread everything out so nothing is completely buried, rather than jamming everything on top of everything else. We also do things like have our ham on a small plate, have oil (we’ll be having truffle infused olive oil this year) and vinegar in little jars, salt in one of the many pinch pots I collect, a bowl with olives, another with butter, etc. The containers take up a fair bit of space. Plus, of course, we like to lay it out to make a pretty display. So there is actually not a particularly huge amount in the basket. But, it’s the size of the basket that bothers my mother, and people will think bad things if they see such a big basket getting blessed in church…

Never mind that I’ve seen people bring in even bigger baskets than any of ours to be blessed!

Anyhow, when she kept going on about how we should have a small basket like hers, I told her, THAT is why we don’t bring the basket in for blessing with her. She then started saying that maybe I could have a less hard heart, just for her…

…

I pointed out, she is the one that has the hard heart with this! She totally does not understand that she is the biggest reason we don’t go to church right now. We’ve tried going to some of the local churches, including the RC Church I grew up going to, and I was saddened to see how … wordly… they had become. My mother’s church is the only one that seems to remain true, so even though I’m Orthodox Lutheran now, the RC church by her place is the one church I would be going to.

Just not with my mother. I did try to, and she made it quite clear that she did not think I was good enough. I don’t put up with that.

I so miss the church we went to before moving out here!

But I digress!

My mother ended up wanting us to leave even earlier than I’d planned. That did give me time to stop at a gas station, and at a post office in the town my mother’s appointment was in (she believes the staff at her local post office steals her mail. Especially her mail to Poland). We still got there an hour early.

I did have some issues with my mother trying to drive from the passenger seat! Like telling me which way I could go to leave a parking spot and not understanding why I wasn’t driving, when I hadn’t even finished putting on my seatbelt yet. The direction she was telling me I should drive would have had me popping a curb and driving over concrete. Or insisting I undo her seatbelt for her, while I was backing up into the loading zone at her place, so I could have the space to help her out of the truck. It’s been a long time since she’s done stuff like this.

As for the appointment, it did go well, overall. She did dive into something completely new – though she says it’s been an issue for at least a year (???) – before we finally got to talking about her hospital stay and the results of her last two blood tests to monitor her kidney function.

Her kidneys are fine.

My mother was written up for some X-rays, which we could do right after the appointment, and some blood work, which required fasting, so that will have to wait. Since we’ll be doing her next kidney monitoring bloodwork in the first week of May, it can actually wait until then and she can do both in one trip.

While all this was going on, I got a message from my husband. The tax preparer had called and our files were ready to pick up. So, once I got my mother home and her new lab requisition form tucked into the lock box with the monthly ones, I had to dash off. From my mother’s place, it was about a 450 minute drive to get to the tax preparer’s office in the town North of us. After signing what I had to sign and paying for the job, I had to grab the form my husband needed to sign, drive home, get him to sign it, and drive back again! We could actually have brought it back another day, but I wanted to just get it done.

On the plus side, by the time I got home, the snow had stopped (when we were driving to my mother’s appointment, we drove into much heavier snow) and was even all melted away. Which is fine. A little more moisture is not a bad thing. We’re not getting anything close to the spring flooding we’ve had in the past. The old basement floor is completely dry, and the sump pump hasn’t gone off even once. Which means we could actually do with more moisture! It’s getting into fire season.

As I was driving home with the form for my husband to sign, I could see smoke to the west of our place. I figured someone was doing a controlled burn, though it was a windy day for it.

When I was driving home later on, on the last few miles of gravel road, I found myself behind a fire truck with its lights flashing. Maybe half a mile from our turn off, I saw more flashing lights behind me, and pulled over for the second fire truck to go by. Both continued on past our turn off. I could no longer see smoke, but somewhere near by is a fire big enough to require at least two trucks! (There could have been more that went by before I was there to see them.) There’s nothing on the live fire maps, though, so it isn’t a forest or wild fire.

Something to be aware of, with everything drying up so quickly.

Anyhow.

Today ended up having a lot more going on than expected. For now, I’ve got some cat carriers to prep and in the morning, we need to try and snag 3 pregnant females for the vet.

Wish us luck!

The Re-Farmer

Slight change in plans…

April 8, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I got a phone call from home care this morning.

No one was available to go my mother’s med assist this morning.

Hmmm…

I was already planning to go to town today, but not for a few more hours. Instead, I arranged with the girls to take are of feeding and watering the cats outside, while I quickly took my meds, got dressed, grabbed our empty water jugs (the main reason I was going to town today) and headed out to my mothers. Since I had three water jugs to take along, my older daughter came down to help me with the doors before feeding the outside cats. She wasn’t impressed that I got another call to cover a no-show (nothing was said about why, this time, and I didn’t ask). She asked if the med assists were being done by volunteers, or if my mother was paying for the service. I told her, it’s covered by our health care system, so they are being paid. My mother has a list of names for all the home care aids she can expect to see. there are ten names on that list. It does seem odd that, with so many aids just for the scheduled route my mother is on (there would be many others), there isn’t someone who can cover when one can’t do the scheduled rounds.

Ah, well. It is what it is. At least the weather is better!

I did remember to phone my mother, first, to let her know I was on the way!

When I got there, my mother was not at all impressed. She’s angry that I have to drive aaaaall that way (it’s about 20-25 minutes of driving time, so not that bad) to do her meds. At least she didn’t start yelling about how we need to get rid of the lock box because she can do her meds herself.

She did, however, get upset over how I was taking the meds out of the bubble pack, and where the lock box was sitting, and where I put the note pad…

She began telling me how the home care aids would pop the pills out of the bubble packs “in the air” (meaning, not over the table, but right into their hands), and pills would go flying all over. Which may have happened a couple of times but, as far as I know, this was before she went to the hospital. It’s why I brought over the tiny dish so the meds could be put into it and double checked.

There was a different reason I was having issues with the bubble pack, though. I was opening the last bubble in this particular pack – and discovered it had been taped shut. I mentioned the tape and my mother said one of the aids did it because she had opened up the wrong day’s bubble.

I got the pills into the little bowl, then checked on the printout inside the cover of the bubble pack to count how many there supposed to be for her morning medications.

One was missing.

A few days ago, while digging for the lab work requisition form, I found a loose pill on the bottom of the lock box.

Now we know where it came from.

When the next aid came to do the med assist saw the pill and my note, she got a tiny envelope for it, labelled it and put it back in the lock box, so I was able to open that up and include it with the rest of the pills Mom was to take this morning.

I then made out a detailed note about when my mother got her medications, what I found and what I did, including putting a new bubble pack into the lock box.

My mother also has an inhaler to take morning and night and I asked her about it, but she said she hasn’t really been taking it. It was a test to see if it would help any with her breathing issues, and it made no difference that she could tell. So we skipped that.

Since I was there anyhow, I did some other stuff for her. The aids are supposed to have extra time booked to help my mother with things like a meal assist (she usually has food ready before they arrive). Some they ask if she needs anything done. Some of them never do. For her morning visit, this includes emptying the bucket in her commode, but they’re also supposed to be available to help her get dressed if she needs it.

I stayed with her to visit for a bit longer, basically waiting until the pharmacy in town opened at 9am, so I could phone them. When my mother started to complain again about my coming out – she is convinced the aids are cancelling simply because they don’t want to do their jobs – I told her that my being able to come out, and having a reliable vehicle to do it, is a blessing. That seemed to take her aback a bit, and I think she liked the idea of thinking of it that way.

After saying my goodbyes to my mother, I spent some time in the truck to update my family and my siblings before calling the pharmacy. With the meds my husband takes, I wasn’t sure they’d even be ready so quickly; he’d called in his refills just yesterday. As we were talking, she asked my time frame, so I told her where I was (which gave her an idea of how long it would take) and why. We deal with this particular pharmacist often enough that she remembers our names and most of my husband’s medications. When I mentioned that there was no one to do my mother’s med assist this morning, she completely understood. They had been in the same situation with her own mother – they even had a lock box. She said they often had home care cancelling visits for them, too. Being in another town, they had their own home care office and staff, but the issue was exactly the same. Last minute cancellations that the family had to cover, frequently. It seems to be a pretty universal problem, and not just in our province.

As for my husband’s refills, they wouldn’t be able to have them ready today, so that’s still scheduled for delivery in a couple of days. Which is fine. I still needed to make the drive to town. I just wasn’t going to go to the pharmacy as well.

Once in town, I got the water jugs refilled. I have a “frequent buyer” list where, after getting 10 refills, I get one free, so one of my refills was free today.

While there, I picked up a couple of things for home, as well as things for our Easter basket. I think we have everything we want to put in it, this year, except for a small ham, which we might simply skip this year.

That done, it was just a quick stop for fuel before heading home. After unloading the truck to my daughter in the house, I left her to put things away while I parked the truck and closed up the gate. I had noticed the plastic on the cover over the raised bed in the old kitchen garden had some gabs fluttering in the wind, so I got the clear duct tape to secure it more.

Before finishing up and heading inside, I spotted Brussel with her babies and decided to give her a squeeze treat. She was really nervous today, though.

I found myself wondering if other cats had been bothering her and her babies – or maybe a skunk or a raccoon! In the two videos above, you can see how agitated she was.

Once I started giving her the squeeze treat, she was right in there – still agitated and somewhat aggressive, but very quick to start eating the treat! When I had to move my hand out so I could use my other hand to squeeze out what was left in the tube, she actually snarled at me and attacked my hand, trying to pull it back! I ended up squeezing the remaining paste onto my fingers (it didn’t start out on purpose!) and let her lick the treat off. She was okay with that, even as she continued to snarl at me.

It should be interesting to see if she has calmed down any, when I do the evening feeding.

I’m glad I was able to go into town for errands today, though. As I write this, we’ve reached our expected high of 6C/43F We’re actually supposed to stay above freezing overnight, but in the wee hours, we’re supposed to start getting a combination of rain and snow, which is supposed to continue through tomorrow. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 2C/36F, but if the long range forecast is at all accurate, that’s going to be the coldest high we have from now on. We’re even expected to reach 15C/59F in a few days! Things are supposed to cool down again, and we’re even supposed to get more mixed rain and snow later in the month, but daytime highs are no longer expected to dip below freezing.

Not including wind chill. That’s a whole other animal!

I will continue to monitor the temperatures inside the greenhouse. While it gets colder overnight, it still maintains at least some warmth. I might decide to try starting seeds inside there, rather than in the basement, when it’s time to start the next batch.

As it is now, I am expecting to start potting up the pre-germinated tomato seeds tomorrow. I could do some tonight, but I want to be able to do all of them at once. Maybe not all 4 varieties, but at least all the seeds in a couple of varieties, just because of space issues.

With how chilly it is in the basement, they should handle the cooler night time temperatures in the greenhouse fairly well! My younger daughter has made a point of working on things while in the basement, so that the heater can be left running. She’d been down there for a couple of hours when I joined her for a bit, and the thermometer was still at 12C/54F. Meanwhile, the thermometer in the greenhouse was reading 19C/66F!

With the combination of rain and snow we’re getting tomorrow, I’m not going to uncover the raised bed but, by the day after, it should be thawed enough that we can take the mulch off the winter sown seeds.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what manages to germinate.

The Re-Farmer

They’re open!

April 4, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While doing my morning rounds, I found that Brussel had left her babies and gone outside. This gave me a chance to take a peak at them before she returned, and I gave her her wet cat food treat.

The babies are a lot more mobile now, and their eyes are now open!

You can see the calico’s eyes in the first image, and the black and white kitten can be seen blinking in the video at the end.

I went to my mother’s today and was gone long enough that it was time to feed them again when I got home. I started that before even going inside, and asked my daughter to bring a jug of warm water for them. I was coming back into the sun room when she warned me about the stinky kitty!

She says this little guy had been hiding under that shelf all day!

This is the little one I’m not sure what to make of. He seems… lost, somehow. He’s quite a bit smaller than the couple of others that I’ve been seeing. He and the cats don’t seem to mind each other. I’ve sort of given up trying to chase him out, since he just goes under that shelf instead of out the door. The others will leave the sun room when I go to chase them out, sometimes even just by telling them to leave through the intercom on the critter cam, but not this little guy.

That crunching noise they make when they eat the kibble is very distinctive!

Anyhow…

Today has turned out to be a lovely day. Which was appreciated since my mother had to actually go with me for some of her errands. I’d made a point of eating breakfast before I left, since I wasn’t planning to eat at her place with my current Lent restrictions. I have given up sugar, but my mother gives up meat on Fridays. She did ask me to pick up some wedges for her, forgetting that she got her Meals on Wheels today. They tend to have fish on Fridays in general; today, it was a tuna sandwich for the main protein portion. She had enjoyed most of her wedges before it got delivered, so she just ate the soup and saved the rest for later.

This time, I remembered to take her blood pressure, though I had to ask her where she’d put the machine. It should be left on the table, tucked away behind her telephone’s base, next to the lock box, but she decides it takes up too much space, and hides it. This time, it was in the linen closet.

As she was eating her wedges, I went into the lock box to get her lab requisition paperwork for this month. The printouts had ended up on the bottom of her lock box and I had to really did to get them out.

Which is why I found the pill.

One of her medications – a pill she takes once in the morning, and again, just before bed – was loose on the bottom of the box. I checked her bubble packs in there to see which medication it was. There is no way to know how long it’s been in there. Even before we got the lock box, the home care aids are supposed to empty the bubble pack capsule for the time of day into a tiny bowl with a lid I’d given my mother, specifically for this. When she first started getting med assists, there were a couple of times when a pill was almost lost, just on her table, and another was found on the floor when she was sleeping. That’s why I brought the tiny bowl. It’s a sauce bowl made to look like a miniature tagine, so it has a conical lid. I ended up putting the found pill into the bowl, along with a note for the next home care aid. The pill would need to be thrown out, but they need to know that this happened, even if we have no idea when. Their job is to make sure my mother takes her meds properly. For them to start losing pills and not even notice is a problem!

My mother had other things she needed help with today, and I was able to get some things done before we left for our first stop, the lab at the nearby hospital (that doesn’t really have any doctors!). I had my own requisition forms from my doctor, which I’d left in the truck, yesterday. Which was an oops. It turns out my blook work required fasting. I was able to get my EKG done, though.

From there, we went to her bank for some cash, then to the pharmacy to get her bubble packs. They were going to be delivered later in the day, but she wasn’t sure if there would be money owing on it or not. It turned out there was; the fiscal year for her pharmacare deductible has flipped. She had stayed in the truck, so when I came back to tell her house much it would be, she was surprised and said she’d never paid that much before. Which just means she doesn’t remember, since it would have been a year since she’s had to pay. I explained it a bit, as she thought that getting charged for her meds was some random thing. She would not have understood what a deductible is, but she did understand that she’d have charges every April.

Not that she’ll remember, next April! Hopefully, by then, she’ll be in the supportive living situation she wants to be in.

After that, my mother was ready to go home. Once I got her inside and settled in, I got a couple of loads of laundry started for her, then headed to the grocery store with her shopping list. It turned out to be timed perfectly. By the time I got back, her wash was ready to be loaded into the driers.

I had to make a few substitutions on her shopping list this time, and I always go through everything with her while I put things away. I even made sure to open the milk carton for her. Her local grocery store only carries the 2L cardboard cartons now, instead of the plastic jugs. They can be difficult to open at the best of times. The last time I opened one for her, I had to use a knife to separate the carboard! This time, it opened properly, but my mother still would have had a hard time with it.

While waiting for her laundry, I had time to do some more housekeeping stuff for her.

Which is when we talked about a gift bag that was set aside when I first arrived.

From our vandal.

It turns out he had come over this morning, not long before I got there. She had told him I was coming and he apparently completely lost it and started saying some really horrible things about me. My mother didn’t want to repeat what he said, but confirmed that it was “the usual”. She said she told him that his hate is why he’s so sick now. He won’t let her talk, though. If she tries to stand her ground and respond to what he says, he just leaves.

The bag turned out to have a small head of cabbage, a couple of onions, and a jar of soup wrapped in paper towel to insulate it.

My mother has told him repeatedly, not to bring her soup. She says the terrible things he says and does makes it taste bad.

There was also an envelope, with written instructions that what was inside was only for her to read.

Which, of course, is the last thing she should actually do.

I ended up opening the envelop for her, then handed it to her to do as she wanted. There were some copies of a photo of our vandal in there, clearly taken while he was at the hospital, though not in a hospital bed. Then she started trying to read the letter, out loud.

After a while of her struggling to read it, I offered to read it to her.

Once I saw it, I could see why she was struggling! It wasn’t just because English is not her first language, or her eye sight. It wasn’t even because his writing was messy; in fact, it was somewhat more legible than usual. Just looking at the shakiness of the writing, he clearly is having a hard time controlling the mobility of his hands. No, it was the content and some of the very strange spellings of things. He had some terrible things to say about me, of course. According to him, I’m to blame for his cancer – and his doctor and counsellor agree, 100%. He also claimed I told my mother the soup from him is poison. ???!!!??? Plus a few other things that had us wondering where his mind is at, because they were complete inventions.

We talked about him for a while. Thankfully, my mother was able to handle the contents of the letter better than in the past, and she didn’t try to defend or make excuses for him.

Then I put everything back in the envelope, set it aside, and we moved on to other things.

All in all, even with the issue of our vandal, it turned out to be a really good visit. My mother was in good spirits, even if she was clearly really struggling to move around her apartment. The visit went well, the laundry and housework got done, and my mother is now well stocked with groceries and her medications.

Just before I left, my mother checked the time and realized that I was there for five hours! We got lots taken care of in that time.

It actually felt like I wasn’t gone that long, because it was still so bright out by the time I headed home. I am just loving these longer days!

It’s going to be extra nice once the snow is gone, and we can start getting work done in the garden!

Which I sort of started this morning.

Which I will share about in my next post!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

Medical

Dealing with the heat… and Mom issues again

Morning in the garden, and then off the rails!

That worked out unexpectedly well!

Our 2025 Garden: prepping a bed, and walnut finally planted

Baby moving day and a visit to the doctor

Mystery babies! Plus, this and that

Chilly

Yeah, we got snow today

Slight change in plans…

They’re open!

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