Well, I finally made it. I got a visit in with my mother, together with my brother.
Today is Remembrance Day, and the nursing home was going to have something going on at 11am, so we decided to go in early. My brother was going to pick me up at 8:30am, but ended up arriving almost half an hour early. He even drove right up to the house to pick me up! He was going to drop me off at the nursing home doors, then plug his car in at the charging station, but I told him I’m supposed to walk as much as I can, so he didn’t need to do that.
One of our own poppies that comes up on their own every year.
I did remember to grab some garlic for my mother. My sister has been bringing garlic for her, but my mother told me the cloves are apparently very small, so I grabbed three of our largest bulbs to bring to her.
My brother and SIL had found some house dresses for my mother while they were driving out to visit the grandkids over the weekend, and my brother brought those along, too. One of them turned out to be identical to the new one my sister brought her, that she was wearing at the time. They were pretty sure the size was right, but not the length. We checked as best we could, and I think one of them will need to be hemmed, as my mother is not much above 4′ tall now.
When we got there, she was having her breakfast, and her medications were delivered soon after we arrived. (She asked me to peel a garlic clove for her to eat with her breakfast, and she was very happy with the large, fresh clove.) My mother made a show of counting all the pills and complaining that she is taking soooo many (some of them are vitamins and painkillers), then talking about how they have “taken away” certain pills, and that’s why she’s having XYZ problems. Part of her problem right now is that her vision is going, and she cannot see colours properly. She kept telling me the “brown pill” was gone, but it was right there. Granted, it was a light shade of brown, but it was still brown. She got very angry at me for pointing it out, interpreting it as my calling her stupid. Then she made a big deal about how our job is to watch out for her, meaning that we were supposed to go after the staff for giving her the “wrong” pills. They have been explained to her, over and over and over. My brother tried to point out that she herself admitted she’s not remembering things right anymore, and that set her off a bit, too. There’s a reason her meds needed to be in a lock box when she was still living independently! She was also very much into exaggerating her “breathing problems.” It’s not that I think she is faking it, but she has a long history of overreacting for show and sympathy. I remember much screaming in “terror” over small things from her, when I was a child! It does make it hard to track down just how bad things are for her, unfortunately.
Besides that, the visit actually went well. My brother noticed the activity calendar. After several attempts at asking, and my mother expecting us to read her mind, we eventually tracked it down to being under the seat of her walker. My brother checked it and saw that today’s Remembrance Day activities started at 10, not 11. It was just watching the ceremonies in the TV lounge, and we encouraged my mother to do, as she is supposed get out of her room at least sometimes! It did mean we left almost an hour earlier than we planned originally. We did stop at the nursing station to let them know my mother planned to go, as someone would need to help get her into her wheelchair and take her down.
From there, my brother drove me home and I told him he could leave me at the gate, so I could close it (we left it open when we left; something we can actually do now), reminding him that I’m supposed to get as much walking in as I can. He was content with that. As we got out of the car for goodbye hugs, we paused to check out another dead tree that had fallen. It’s right at the fence line and being held up by other trees. That’s when I noticed that the grass between the fence and the road, including the ditch, had all been mowed! It was done across the road, too. When I got out to close the gate yesterday, I had been thinking that the area needed to be mowed, but it’s very rough on the mowers. Now we don’t have to! We could see where the equipment used went through the ditch and back up onto the road, so it looks like the municipality had been clearing things for the winter.
So it was a good visit with my mother, mostly – my brother still ended up very stressed out, and my being there helps keep my mother in check when it comes to her behaviour towards him – and as always, an excellent time spent with my brother.
It was only about 10:30 when he dropped me off!
This morning, I had found myself awake shortly after 3am and not been able to get back to sleep so, after lunch, I tried lying down. I was immediately covered in cats! They clearly missed me sleeping in my own bed. I barely got to lie down, never mind cover myself. Which isn’t easy at the best of times, when I lie on my right side. Reaching behind with my left arm to grab the covers is very hard on my damaged shoulder. When my daughter came in after to do the litters, she was kind enough to de-cat me and cover me. I even fell asleep for about an hour! For quite a while now, I’ve been sleeping about 10-12 hours in total a day, but that has been slowly reducing, which suggests my body has healed quite a bit.
Today’s visit worked out quite well, and I was happy to be able to be there for my brother. It definitely made my day, and I appreciated that it was as good of a visit as it was.
Today’s high was just a bit above zero, so it was pretty much a completely indoor day. I spent most of it working on a crochet experiment that, in the end, I was quite happy with, even though I had to modify my plans because I was running out of the yarn I was using.
I did get outside at least a little bit, though, to get a meter reading. As I went to the pole in the outer yard, I spotted a cat toy from the isolation shelter I’d forgotten about. I’d washed it with the others on the sidewalk, but never noticed it was missing. It’s a round pink ball that lights up when it bounces. I grabbed it and tossed it back into the inner yard and Midnight, who had been following me, ran after it like a puppy playing fetch! He was quite hilarious.
I got my reading and started back to the house when I saw it in the grass and decided to toss it towards the sun room door and kibble house set up. As soon as I threw it, there was an absolute stampede of 5 cats, thundering after it! I don’t even know where they all came from. They just exploded after it! It was so funny!
On another note, I heard from my brother and SIL today. They were on their way to my mother’s with a new wheelchair for her. She has the one that was my late father’s and she wanted a new one. My brother had talked to her about what she wanted and ordered one from Amazon, and they wanted to get it to her as quickly as possible.
She hated it.
My brother, thoughtfully, took video of her trying it out and was able to send it to me after they got home – with the new wheelchair that they’ll be returning. On seeing the video, I understand why she wasn’t happy. She couldn’t use the armrests at all! It’s made for a smaller person. My mother is pretty tiny, but overweight, and it just wasn’t right for her. She needs a bariatric wheelchair. Not because of her the number on the scale – as I said, she is tiny, so “overweight” for her is still below the weight limits of non-bariatric chairs – but for the dimensions.
Then, in the video, she started talking about her current wheelchair. My late father’s wheelchair.
She is absolutely convinced it’s not the same chair. Someone “traded” it (something she accused my father of doing for as long as I can remember). She thinks someone took the chair at one of the TCUs she was in before finally getting to the nursing home and replaced it with an inferior one.
That chair had been stored here for some time. I brought it to my mother. Before I did, I cleaned it, oiled the moving parts and conditioned the vinyl. One of the foot rests had been stuck and I had to fight with it, and some WD40, to get it moving again. I recognize that chair very well. It has not been changed.
I now regret removing my late father’s name tag that had his picture on it, that the nursing home put on it while he was there.
I ended up sending a link to my brother for a bariatric chair in a style that would suit my mother better – and suggested getting anything but black (which would be hard to find), so the chances she’d believe someone switched chairs on her would be almost nil. We’ll see how it works out. He’ll have to return the chair and get his money back, and I don’t know if he’ll be able to order a bariatric one before then. Those things are not cheap!
On another note, I was rather taken aback by my mother’s appearance. Her face was quite grey, and she has dark circles around her eyes.
As I was writing this, I checked the sun room critter cam and noticed both a skunk and a raccoon in the sun room. I headed out to chase them away, and found not one, but two giant, fluffy raccoons (they have their winter fur and look massive, this time of year). As I chased them out, I noticed a cat bed had fallen off a shelf and went to put it back. Gouda and Fluffy had been snuggling in another cat bed and came out for pets. I got to give Fluffy some thorough pets.
It wasn’t fluffy. It was the one the girls call Lady Grey. She looks like Fluffy, but has a white chest. She had always been one of the more feral cats, but the girls have been working on her. She kept looking like she wanted to run away, but still let me pet her! That is just huge!
Now, we’re not 100% sure she is a she, with all that long fur hiding things, but the girls are convinced she’s female. If she is now allowing pets, even when it’s not feeding time, we should be able to finally get her spayed!
Or neutered, if Lady Grey turns out to be Lord Grey.
Anyhow…
That’s how today went. Rather quiet. We’re supposed to get a fair bit warmer over the next few days, so I hope to get more stuff down outside.
I know I’ve said this quite a few times already, but I am so appreciating this mild weather we are having this year. It’s allowing us to slowly get things done out there, as we are physically able to.
Next year, I suspect, is going to be a lot more productive in comparison!
I think this is the first time in 9 years blogging here, that I outright forgot to make my daily post!
So here I am, at past 2am, making up for it. 😄
Actually, it’s past 3am.
Our province no longer does daylight savings time, but not all our devices are connected to services that have figured that out. I have an old tablet that’s used only to display the weather, time and date. It, and my desktop, think we’ve changed time. Our phones, however, didn’t change. In theory, we should be able to manually change the time. The old tablet was my husband’s and we both tried to change it. It didn’t stick. I haven’t even tried on my desktop.
The funny thing was when I went online to confirm the time for our province – and got two different official answers!
Too funny!
Anyhow…
It was a lovely day outside tod… er… yesterday, and today is supposed to be even warmer. It’s also started to rain in the evening and it supposed to continue all day today. Most of the prairies right now is also under a fog advisory, with near 0 visibility in places.
I had a nice surprise yesterday, in the early afternoon. I got a message from my brother letting me know he’d just visited our mother and would be coming out here. I had a chance to go out and talk to him for a while. My mother, he told me, was once again complaining about the internet radio he got for her, because it’s all just one station.
Yup. She reprogrammed the buttons again.
He went over it with her again, explaining to just push the buttons, don’t push and hold. She isn’t even holding for long. He told me he’d actually contacted the company he got the radio from (again; he’d needed to talk to them quite a bit while trying to get it to connect to her favorite radio station), recommending a firmware update. He suggested that they make it so you have to hold the button for 5 seconds to program it, rather than the 1 second or so it is now.
He’d also spent some time working on her wheelchair. She says the staff is saying that it’s hard to push her in it. This is the same folding wheelchair that was my late father’s when he spend his final months in this same nursing home. The front wheels, my brother told me, were very wobbly. He thought they had always been like this, but I remembered cleaning the wheelchair before taking it to my mother, and oiling all the moving parts because they had become stiff and, in some places, starting to rust. So there was probably some play in the wheels, but nothing like what he was finding. He ended up McGyvering it for now, but he thinks it’s the bushings that need replacing. My mother has been asking for a new wheelchair, though, so he had showed her some pictures and I think she picked one.
Of course, she gave my brother a hard time about a lot of things, and he’s very worried that she’s going to do something stupid that he’s going to have to fix. I tried to reassure him by reminding him of our conversations with doctors while she was still at the hospital, then later with the nurses at what should be an annual meeting at the personal care home. It is officially noted that my mother no longer has the cognitive ability to make legal decisions or sign any legal papers. If she does, nothing is legally binding. I think the reminder helped him relax a bit. She had already stabbed him in the back so badly a few years ago, and there is nothing he can legally do to fix it. She still doesn’t understand how badly she screwed herself up at the same time. As her PoA, all he can do is try and hold the pieces together, while she remains oblivious to how much he does for her.
One of the things he did as we were talking was clear the maple suckers that had regrown behind the pump shack. Power to their caravan is sourced through that back wall, and he wanted to make sure it was all clear. He was going to clear the stump at the other end, but I asked him not to. I had “harvested” those in the spring, so they were a lot smaller, and I told him that is my coppice and I’ll take care of it in the spring and use them. So he left them for me.
After a while, I had to head inside, though I did get out again to do my walkabout before the rain started. At one point, I started getting all sorts of gate camera notifications and discovered my brother, sweetheart that he is, added some new fence posts to replace a couple of rotted ones that wouldn’t stay up anymore. When they brought their stuff out here after selling their property, it included a whole bunch of fence posts. He has a post pounder, too, which we don’t, and that made the job a lot faster. Even with an injured arm! He told me he got an MRI recently, and I got the story behind it. He had torn his bicep – three years ago!!!! – and only now was able to get to a doctor to have it checked. Not sure what his next steps are, but he’s been using that arm in pain all this time. To see him moving around, you’d never know the arm was injured.
My family is notorious for that. It’s partly why the girls are so severe with making sure I stick to my recovery restrictions. 😄
My brother was able to finish what he’d come to do and head out before the rain started up in the evening, though we’d had light rain on and off before then. We’re not getting anything heavy, but it should be enough that we won’t need to water the haskaps and the little spruces still in pots. It also means we’ll continue to have much warmer temperatures, including overnight. As I write this, we’ve been at our high for today of 11C/52F, and it’s supposed to stay like this all day. Overnight temperatures are supposed to stay above freezing for a couple more nights, and even after that, in the 10 day forecast, we’re expected to just barely dip below freezing overnight.
Which means we don’t need to put the hoses away yet. We just need to make sure the water is shut off and the spray nozzles are open for the night.
I am so appreciating our very mild fall, and holding out for an equally mild winter. I don’t mind the snow so much – we need that winter moisture for the spring – but I could really do without the sub-arctic temperatures!
Last night, my brother and SIL picked up and dropped off another load of haskaps in large pots. I’d already gone to bed after taking my evening meds, so I wasn’t able to see them until this morning.
I counted and got 30 pots. If you look at the second picture, you can see that some of them have invaders. Willow, in that photo. Poplar in others. Herbaceous weeds in others.
I wasn’t sure how many more, but my SIL wasn’t sure if they’d have to make two trips to get the rest. Which means about 30 more in one load and who knows how many in another.
I started marking and measuring more rows.
Each row is 6′ apart, and the stakes in the rows are 4′ apart for a dozen spots marked in each row.
I ran out of stakes and grabbed the ones from the trellis for the red noodle beans that never grew large enough to use it. I had a thinner, shorter stake that I used to hold the end of the measuring tape at a stake marking spots in the row I’d done yesterday. After lining up the first three stakes of new rows, at 6, 12 and 18 feet, I moved the end of the tape measure down each stake along the row I’m made yesterday, then lay one end of a 4 ft stake at the previous 18 ft marker to line up with the tape measure to find where the next 18′ marker would go, then placed the next 6, 12 and 18 ft markers. Lather, rinse, repeat.
When my older daughter came out to join me, I was running out of stakes again. She helped me steal 6′ stakes from the Orange Currant tomatoes, since those are a bush type and weren’t attached to the stakes like the other two varieties needs. Just the plastic coated metal ones, since the few bamboo ones in there would just break in this soil.
Then my younger daughter came out to join us and things went much faster. By that point, I had enough stakes to make one more row of 12. My younger daughter would move the stake holding the end of the measuring tape, my older daughter would use the 4 foot stake to find the 6 ft mark, and I’d push in the next stake.
At this point, even with the curve at the south end of the row, it was getting close to the largest crab apple trees. W
Well, I least we knew there wasn’t going another load!
By this time, we’d made enough rows and marked enough spaces that, counting the empty spaces from the rows already transplanted into, we could plant another 71 haskaps.
My daughters and I went went around to check out other things while I put the measuring tape back where it belongs in the garage, then they went inside while I headed back to the haskaps. I wanted to make water trenches around the 21 that were transplanted yesterday.
How close the ends of the rows were getting to the crab apple trees was bothering me, so I made a decision. The rows were a dozen spots long because I was lining up with the sliver buffalo berry, not because I was counting how many spots per row. I decided to shorten all the rows to 10 spots to transplant into, rather than 12. That meant the first three rows my brother had been tilling in the dark until we told him to stop weren’t going to need more tilling, other than a single spot that he didn’t get to before we told him to stop.
I used those to mark out another row. Since I had both 6′ and 4′ stakes available, I used those to work out where each stake would be placed in the new row. In the end, a total of 6 new rows of 10 stakes were marked out, plus there 9 spots remaining in the original three rows that were already transplanted into.
I then used a garden hoe around each transplant already in the ground, creating a trench, making sure the outside of it had a higher wall of soil. Once each had a trench, I dragged the hose around to the south end of the rows, since I now had 6 rows of stakes preventing access from the side, used the jet spray in the trench so the water could level out the soil as it filled, then switched to the shower setting to water the based of the plants themselves. They’re going to need a lot of watering to be able to develop new roots out of root-bound plants. They’re going to suffer for it, but there’s just no way we could deal with that before transplanting so many at once.
Meanwhile, I eventually got a message from my SIL. She said they’d packed 32 large pots, plus smaller plants she wasn’t sure of.
Which meant we marked out more rows than needed. Which is okay. I’d rather have extra than not enough! I had no idea what these smaller plants were, so I left it, in case it would still be needed.
I did move the pots already hear, setting them closer to the spots they would be planted in. It turned out I had double counted a pot, and there were 29 of them.
The first image above is of the marked out rows, with water bottles on some of the stakes to make them more visible. With there being “only” 29 pots, it was exactly enough to set them out at two marked rows, plus the 9 spaces left in the original three rows.
They ended up taking longer to come out as they had opportunity for other stuff to do before getting here. I had plenty of time to go inside and have a late lunch before going out again to feed the outside cats. I had come back in and was just settling down when the gate cam notification told me they had arrived, so I headed back out again.
When my SIL backed the truck up to the food forest area, she had a surprise for me. I’d messaged them about a new hose connector repair set, and my brother had picked up a pair of them for me and left them before they headed out this morning. I went to fix the hose and realized I neglected to tell my brother than I needed a 5/8 repair kit. He’d picked 1/2 inch sets. Oops! He did leave the receipt in the bag, though, so I can exchange them later.
They came back with hoses… and a drip irrigation set up!!!!
These are not regular garden hoses! On the stump are a couple of timers. There’s a couple of cannisters that we’re not quite sure what they are. The pink stakes, I was told, are to hold electric fence wire, but are just there as highly visible stakes. There are steel clamps and reflectors in there, too, plus a couple of pieces with rigid pipe on them. In the second photo is a hose with drip irrigation nozzles. A couple of pots had the short length of drip hoses and ground stakes to hold them, which each pot would have had at some point. The third photo has a better look at the timers and a cannister; the second one is still attached to a hose somewhere.
I’m going to have learn how to use a drip irrigation system. We would need to buy the drop hoses and nozzles and stakes before we can actually use the system.
I am truly blown away by all of this!! This is all stuff the family was ready to throw out!
Once we got the hoses out, it was time to unload the haskaps. My SIL climbed into the back of the truck and passed them to me, while I set them aside by the trays of spruces. By this time, my brother had brought their tiller over. He shifted each of the stakes, one row at a time, marking where they were with a spade, so he could till an entire row at one, pausing the tiller to let it go deeper, next to a stake. Then we went over the rows again, working to get each pre-measured spot deeper and looser.
He was still working on that when we finished unloading the truck. I set them out in rows of 10, and there turned out to be 27 big pots in total. My SIL told me later how they kept trying to count how many pots there were, and kept losing track! Sounds like me, trying to do a head count of yard cats in the morning. 😄
Then there were the trays.
They turned out to be more haskap in little 4″ pots, but they were so overgrown, they should have been in 8 or 10 inch pots!
The first image above shows the large pots, the second shows the trays.
After all these were unloaded, my SIL drove the truck back to where they keep it parked out here, then drove their car over to fill the back with the trays of spruce that will be passed on to a friend.
While she was doing that, I started digging holes in the original rows that were tilled. I managed to get three done – taking it very easy and letting the weight of the shovel do most of the work – before I stopped for the day. My alarm for my evening painkillers was going to go off soon, and we were starting to lose the light.
My brother managed to get all the rows tilled, including the “extra” row, making sure to get a fairly wide, deep area by each stake that he’d shifted aside.
That’s as far as things could go tonight. They needed to get back to the city, and won’t be able to come back for some time.
So, it looks like we’ve got a total of 77 haskap in the large pots. Twenty one are already transplanted, plus another 56 in large pots, and an unknown number in the trays. We’ll have enough to fill every pre-measured spot, fill in the empty spots among the silver buffalo berry and have more left over. The ones in the trays are in very rough shape, though, so we can afford to be picky over which ones get transplanted.
Over the next while, we will be digging holes.
Lots of holes.
We’ll have to take our time about it, since we’re all pretty broken, though the deep tilling my brother did will help a lot. Once the holes are dug, transplanting will go much faster.
It’s unlikely we’ll get any digging done tomorrow as my younger daughter has her medical appointment at the skeevy downtown clinic in the city, and my older daughter is coming along, too. That’s in the morning, but who knows how long it’ll take once we’re there. I’m glad we did the bigger stock up shop on the weekend. Normally, today would have been our Costco shop, but we can postpone that for a while as we focus on getting those haskaps transplanted!
Then we see how many survive. They have all been neglected for quite a long time, I’m told.
The area that these are being planted in is now so large, it will actually change my plans for building raised beds. I had intended to make two or three more pairs of trellis beds, plus a polytunnel. There is no longer room for that. We will probably just finish off the pair that’s in progress right now (much delayed), then the polytunnel. After that, we will start working in the other direction, in the space I’d been thinking to use for perennials and self seeded things that can be treated as perennials.
I am absolutely blown away by all this. So many haskaps, plus the drip irrigation equipment!
I’m really looking forward to finally having them. Our original three haskap bushes did not produce a single berry that I could find this year, and the two others I got are in their second year and barely grew at all this year. Much like the highbush cranberry don’t seem to be getting much bigger.
I have no idea how much my brother and SIL paid for all this. My SIL only said it wasn’t much – and she had offered to buy them when she found out they were going to be thrown out, then confirmed we had the space for them here. This is easily several thousand dollars worth of plants and irrigation supplies, had we tried to buy these new through the usual sources.
We – quite happily – have a lot of work ahead of us in the next while!
Yesterday, I’d prepped as much as I could in advance of my brother and SIL coming out with haskap bushes they managed to acquire. My SIL estimated about 30 pots. I marked out 36 spaces to plant them in.
My brother arrived first, having come out after he finished work, getting their tiller out of the barn. By the time he checked it, filled the gas tank and pushed it over to our food forest area, and we were talking about what I’d done, my SIL was driving their truck over to unload.
We were already loosing the light by then.
My brother started tilling the soil at each marked spot while I helped my SIL unload the truck. She had managed to bring 21 pots of haskaps, along with more than 10 trays of spruces. Spruces are not something we need – if we ever want to transplant any, we can get seedlings out of all sort of places, including the ditches. Those got laid out between the crab apple trees and will be taken back later, to be given to a friend.
My sister now estimates there are about 45 pots of haskaps in total. She had brought barely half of them.
My brother had intended to till each spot, then start digging holes to plant all the haskaps, before the left. It was full dark, and my SIL had moved the truck around so he could work under headlights. We stopped him after he’d done about 30 of spots. As we started transplanting from the north end, he realized there was no way they’d all be done that night. Between the three of us – and several flashlights – we got 6 into the ground. Then they had to leave.
My SIL took the truck, leaving the car she came here with, so she could pick up the rest of the haskaps today. We messaged each other this morning. Since my brother is off tomorrow (I keep forgetting that the last day of September is a statutory holiday), they will both come out tonight to unload, stay the night, then plant them tomorrow.
We talked about where to plant the extra haskaps. It’s a bit difficult to figure that out, since we don’t know exactly how many are left. She hopes to give me a count as soon as she is able. We settled on adding a fourth row, which would be another dozen spaces marked. That would bring the total to 48. If there turns out to be more, there are empty spots among the silver buffalo berry, where bushes had not survived, they could go in.
My younger daughter headed over after she did the outside cat feeding. She was determined to finish transplanting the remaining pots this morning, before things started to get too warm for her to work. Our expected high was 20C/68F. Which we have reached now, in the mid afternoon, with the humidex putting us at 23C/73F. That area gets full sun and bakes, and my daughter has a little tolerance for heat.
I made sure to have breakfast before I headed out to help her. While she was digging and transplanting, I measured and marked off another row. Then I wanted to help her, but she banned me from digging holes. Instead, I got the thatching rake (or landscaping rake, or whatever that type of rake is called now) and used it to level out the “excess” soil around each transplant, while also removing some of the bigger rocks that would be in the way of any mowing or weed trimming.
Towards the end of it, my daughter switched to just digging the holes, then setting a haskap into it, before moving on to the next hole to dig. I had caught up enough that I could bury the root balls and pack things down, then continue raking the soil into place.
We got them all done just in time. I don’t know what temperature we were at by then, but my daughter was already having a hard time with it.
We had some light rain last night, and it was still raining when she first started on the transplanting, which is great for the transplants, but I made sure to give them all a watering. I brought another hose from the front tap, so we could reach to water each transplant directly. Plus, with the soil damp and rather sticky, I needed to stop to wash the muck stuck on the rake, and even my shoes, before I could continue. While watering, I mostly wanted to use water pressure to settle the soil between the root balls and the walls of the holes that were done, and wash away any loose soil that fell onto the base of the stems. These have been in their pots for too long, and were quite root bound. With so many of them, we made no effort to address that, so anything that encourages them to start extending roots into the surrounding soil is a good thing.
Later on, I will go back and make narrow trenches around them, or build up soil walls, depending on how rough the ground it, so encourage the water to stay and get absorbed near the root balls, rather than draining away into the paths. Then, they will be mulched with wood chips.
The first image has the 21 freshly watered haskap bushes. In the background, you can see the trays of spruces. Now that I look at it more closely, I think there’s a dozen trays of seedlings. On the right of the photo, you can see the new row marked out.
You can also see just how huge these are!!!
In the second image of the slide show above, you can see a photo my daughter took when she was still just starting with digging the holes. We expect to find rocks and roots, but under this one, she seems to have hit a boulder. She could not get it out, at all. She did, however, find an “edge” around it. In the end, she went ahead and planted on top of it. The haskap should still be able to spread its roots to the sides and around the boulder.
Given that these have been getting neglected for some time, the owner of the greenhouse having become ill before passing away, we fully expect that some of these will not survive the winter. The next while is expected to be mild enough that they should start developing new roots, and they should be able to survive their first frosts. With so many of them, we should still get enough surviving to get decent harvests. My daughter even noticed a few of them already had berries!
This is such a HUGE boost to our food forest area. We had meant to get more haskaps, but this is enough that they could potentially bring in a market income in a year or two, even if half of them don’t make it. There is no way we could have afforded to buy this many through regular channels.
What we don’t know is what variety they are, or even if they are all the same variety. There could be several varieties in there. Nothing was labeled. Given this came from someone’s greenhouse dreams, I would expect there to be cross pollinating varieties in there. Expectations, however, don’t mean much!
It’s getting later now and I don’t know what time my brother and SIL are expected to arrive tonight. It may be while we are losing light again. Sunset, this time of year, it shortly after 7pm, so that wouldn’t be particularly late, either.
My SIL started sending messages, telling me they had an opportunity to get a whole bunch of haskaps, if there was somewhere to plant them.
Somewhere around 30 of them.
!!!!!
I told her we’d been preparing areas in the food forest for the past several years that had the full sun and space needed.
Long story short…
She would come over to get their pick up truck, so she could pick them up and bring them over. My brother would then come out after work to plant them.
While she was on the way out, I went to the future food forest area and started preparing it. The three rows where we once grew bush beans, with fresh garden soil added, were still there, slightly elevated from the new soil. What had been an annoyance while mowing now made it easy to find and clear them with the weed trimmer.
The old rows were marked out at 6 feet apart, while the rows themselves were about 2 feet wide and 18 feet long, leaving a 4 foot path between them.
With planting space needing to be 4 feet apart, I knew the three rows would not be enough. I weed trimmed the length of them, then extended them in a curve to match the curve of the silver buffalo berry. The plan was to leave a lane in between large enough to drive through with a truck, and the curve making it easier to change direction.
Once the weed trimming was done, I measured and marked out three rows at 20 feet, each with six poles that were 4 feet apart. I was just finishing up when my SIL arrived, so I went over to ask if she had time to see.
She was surprised. It turns out they intended to do it all themselves, expecting nothing from us to do in advance. I was feeling really good today, so I was happy to do it.
Once we got out there and I explained what I was doing, and why I was marking the way I did, I realized the curves I’d trimmed were completely off and did not match the curve of the silver buffalo berry as well as I’d though, while actually doing the trimming.
While showing there the different zones for planting I had in mind, she was quite surprised by how much we had planned out already. I told her that, with these new trees, they’re basically shaving probably 5 years off our plans!
While we were talking, my SIL noticed the gorgeously red crab apples, and we went over to check them out. The small red ones still have apples higher up and she was able to reach some. She also grabbed one from the tree with larger apples. We both enjoyed a snack of them and agreed that the smaller ones, with their sweet tart flavour, were more delicious than the larger, milder ones, though both are quite good.
As we walked back to their truck, she told me that she would drive right up to where I’d marked the rows, if I were okay with her driving through the yard. She was concerned the truck might damage the yard. We have a septic truck drive though there with no issues, so I assured her it was fine – and was exactly the sort of thing I was leaving a drivable lane open!
While she was getting the truck ready, I started heading back to continue marking rows but realized there was a bit of a problem. The huge maple by the old garden shed overhangs the entire space between the maple grove and the spruce grove, and one branch in particular was hanging low enough to be in the way while mowing the lawn. The truck would be hitting that branch.
So I headed to the garage and got the long handled pruning saw set up. The pole is designed to telescope but the wingnut that would have allowed the length to be adjusted was plastic and broken. I’d tightened it with a wrench. Ironically, that part of it held. The nut that was secured to the bottom length didn’t, coming loose while I was using it. I hadn’t put it back yet, not having needed the extra length until now. So, today, I finally worked on it and got the two lengths together again, making extra sure they were secure. Then I headed over and cut away the lowest hanging branch.
It was quite large, but I was able to drag it off to the branch pile outside the gate near the fire pit, where I left it on the ground. It was too big for me to maneuver onto the pile without over doing it. I messaged the girls and arranged for someone to come out and break it down enough to toss onto the pile, then went back to the tree.
Walking back, something dramatic caught my eye.
The dead maple near the fire pit had a pale frill around its base.
The maples get mushrooms growing on them regularly, but I’ve never seen a ring of them completely surrounding a trunk at the base like this!
Once back at the trimmed maple, I could see two other branches were hanging low enough that they would scrape the truck, so I took them down, too. Those branches were already dead and a bit smaller, so I was able to drag those over the branch pile inside the yard, for fire pit fuel. That left quite a few small broken off branches to clean up in the grass before I could continue. There was one more low hanging branch that should probably be trimmed, too, but even at its full extension, I couldn’t reach where the branch would need to be but to bring it down. There was room to drive around it, though, so it can stay for now.
Another thing I’d done was hook the garden hose back up. We have three hoses to be able to reach all of the main garden area, plus there is a fourth one added on when watering the food forest trees and bushes. While working on clearing the eavestroughs with the hose attachment, I needed only one hose length. I’d already hooked that back up again to the second length but, as I was cleaning up the broken branches, I realized I was hearing a hissing noise.
The female coupling on the second hose was leaking, under where it rotates to attach to the male coupling. I fiddled with it a bit and it got worse. I had to shut the tap off. Since we need the hose working to water the transplants, I messaged my brother and SIL, asking if they could pick up a Quick Connect repair kit, and was even able to send them a photo one I had an another hose, so they knew exactly what I was asking for. Hopefully, one of them will have a chance to swing past a hardware store along the way and get one, and I’ll etransfer them to pay them back for it. Otherwise, I’ll have to steal a hose from the front tap until I can pick one up myself.
Then it was back to marking planting spaced in a curve that match the sliver buffalo berry.
By the time I was done, lining the three rows up, I had marked 36 potential spots to plant in.
I was going to go back with the weed trimmer to clean up the corrected curves, but my alarm went off to take my afternoon pain meds, just as I was finishing the last couple of markers. I hadn’t had lunch yet, either, so I went in for both.
I still haven’t heard from cancer care, so I called my specialist’s clinic to see what I could find out. I’d called and left a message last week, but no one had called back.
The guy that answered the phone was able to look up my file and saw that cancer care had acknowledged they received my referral…
On the 24th.
I’d been expecting to get a call from them on the 17th or 18th.
Which means that, at this point, my file is most likely being assessed by the doctor(s) that will be taking my case, working out what needs to be done and finding a date for me to come in for the surgery. This is for a biopsy and to test my lymph nodes and determine what stage I’m at. Given my circumstances, it should happen quickly. Just not as quickly as my specialist expected. He then told me he would phone them right away to see what he could find out, as far as a time line.
With the longer wait, I brought up that the specialist, who was out of office today, had given me a 2 week prescription of Tramacet based on her expecting me to be in surgery around the time it ran out. I’ve got about 4 days of it left (only because I’ve taken T3s instead, while not at home). He told me that, once he had a chance to talk to cancer care, he’d be able to give the doctor enough information to know if I should get a 1 or 2 week extension on the prescription.
That done, it was past 2pm and the post office was open, so I headed out to pick up the mail and a parcel, then came back and made myself a late lunch.
Unfortunately, I seemed to have pushed myself a bit too far, as the abdominal pain started to come back, even with the painkiller. By the time my food was ready, it was still getting worse. I was going to lie down after having my lunch, but decided I was feeling well enough to write this post, instead.
As I was writing the above, I got a message from my SIL. She had messaged me earlier to tell me she had overestimated how many she could fit into the truck. She sent me some photos. She had already told me that these were from a friend who had a greenhouse and dreams of selling trees, only to become ill and recently passed away; they went to his funeral this past weekend. His family are dealing with a lot right now, of course, and she found out they were planning to throw them away. That’s why she was wanting to contact me about whether there was a place for them this morning. So these are all potted saplings. She sent me some photos of them, and the partially loaded truck. They are HUGE!! She did tell me they were starting to be neglected, so it’s possible they won’t all survive, but even if they don’t all make it, we’ll still end up with quite a lot.
She is still working out how to get them all into the truck, and it has started to rain where she is. My brother will be coming out here ahead of her and start preparing the ground for transplanting. They have a working tiller stored out there, and I now have what should be more than enough spots marked out for him to prepare. If things work out, it’s going to be quite late by the time it’s all done, but this is not something that can be set aside for later. They have “now” to do it, so it needs to be done.
Hopefully, the preparations I made will help it go faster. If nothing else, my brother won’t need to do any measuring.
With the mild fall we are having now, they should have enough time to develop a root system before the ground freezes, and they’ll survive the winter.
So that is where we are at now. Hopefully, tomorrow, I’ll be able to get some photos of a whole bunch of transplanted haskaps to share!
For now, though, I think I’ll go ahead and lie down for a bit, so that I am more likely to be feeling up to joining them outside when they get here – or at least when my brother gets here after work. For my SIL, it’ll be about a 2 hour drive from where she’s picking up the haskaps!
I love my brother and SIL. They are amazing.
This will be a HUGE boost to our food forest plans.
I’m happy to say that I woke feeling very well today. It was also a lovely, warm day, which meant getting things done outside. That included moving the cat stuff out from under the canopy tent to dry in the sun.
I got this picture before they got put back under the canopy tent for the night. The self warming mats were dry, and I ended up putting them into the catio for now, and the smallest cat bed was dry enough to go back into the shelf shelter it had been in before. The rest will eventually go back into the sun room, after that finally gets cleared out and cleaned.
In the back, you can see the summer window for the basement. It got a very thorough hose down, after the winter window was put back in. I’m glad I put hardware cloth as well as window screen on that. The screen has all sorts of little holes and tears in it. Without the hardware cloth, we would have had cats and probably racoons and skunks getting into the basement!
One of the top priorities on the list for today was to finally get a dump run done. My younger daughter helped, though there was nothing so heavy that I needed to be concerned about lifting it. The one thing I noticed during the drive, however, was that frustrating oil pressure gauge reading. As the engine warmed, the pressure reading dropped even faster than the last few days, just barely within the “normal” range, even at highway speeds. It wasn’t that long ago that the gauge didn’t start reading that way until we’d reached the city, and it would drop when I was stopped in traffic for one reason or another. When stopped, the needle dropped below the normal range. Not enough to set any alarms, but not where it should be.
*sigh*
I think we’ll be sure to not drive anywhere until we get it to the garage on Monday!
After the much needed dump run was done, I stayed outside while my daughter headed in. I’d pruned the dead branches from the pink rose bush in the old kitchen garden last night, and today I added to the branch pile. The white Cherokee Rose bush in front of the sun room it remarkably tall and tied back, but when I had tried to get to the laundry platform, I was having to duck under violently thorn covered branches drooping over the path. We can now get to and from the laundry platform without risking serious injury! 😄
My daughter came out soon after with heavy leather gloves and cleaned up the pile or rose branches, straight to the fire pit rather than the branch pile. I got things moved out of the way in preparation to mow the lawn with the riding mower while she did that. My brother and SIL had gone out with their truck and trailer early in the morning, and they got back while I was doing that. I went to say high and mentioned I was planning to mow the lawn in the inner yard. My SIL was concerned, and she had been planning to do the lawn mowing herself, but I told her I can use the riding mower. I just can’t use the push mower. She still looked worried and told me she would do whatever areas I wasn’t able to get it.
Then I had to fight off my daughter from using the riding mower. 😂
So she switched gears and started working on the old kitchen garden, doing a job I can’t do right now. She started bringing wheelbarrow loads of wood chips to the old kitchen garden.
She got the one path done before her back started giving out. This is quite a thick layer of wood chips over the closely trimmed path. Hopefully, that will keep the weeds and grass from growing back for at least a couple of years! There are a couple more paths to cover, but that will be slowly worked on while the weather is good.
It was just reaching 1pm when I got the riding mower out and got started. In the half hour or so before my alarm went off to take my afternoon meds, I was able to get the southeast and southwest lawns done. The grass was still pretty wet, but it couldn’t really wait any longer. Then I parked the riding mower beside the pile of elm tree pieces that is still by the house, then went in for my scheduled painkillers and a late lunch.
At this point, I should not that the riding mower was working fine the whole time, and there were no bumps or ruts or other such things that might get run into.
Which means I had no warning for when I got back.
I started the mower, put it in gear, released the brake and…
Nothing.
It wouldn’t move.
I spent the next while trying different things, turning the mower off and on several times. Everything seemed to be working just fine until I tried to move.
Nothing.
Now, we had that happen with the riding mower my brother and SIL bought for us soon after we moved here. A chain kept falling off. This mower doesn’t have a chain.
I went to my brother’s caravan and my SIL was there. I told her what happened and she let me know my brother was working on his tractor – something he’s been trying to get to for the past three weeks!
On my way over there, I walked past his dump truck and, for a moment, I though he might have been working on that. The last weekend they were here, he’d been able to set concrete blocks under the tires, so they wouldn’t sink into the ground, with wooden blocks in front of the tires to keep them from rolling forward into the driving lane. The truck had been rolled backwards, completely off the blocks and onto the grass. As we walked past it later, he asked if we had moved it. !!! Of course, we hadn’t.
It had been rolled off the blocks by the wind!!!
I found my brother under his tractor and told him what happened with the mower. He went over to take a look as best he could. I shifted from reverse to forward to neutral while he tried to see what was wrong. He could see nothing.
In the end, he pushed the mower back to the garage, so he could go back to working on the tractor. He was going to have to put the mower on a lift so he could see better, but that will have to wait.
Since I could no longer mow the lawn, I worked on other things. I cleaned out in front of the basement window, put on the winter window and hosed down the summer window before setting it aside to dry. Then I cleared out along the side of the entry, next to where the basement window is. There were a few things being stored there, and others that just ended up there. I needed to empt the area because those *(^&$#%&$(#& elm tree seeds were sprouting. Plus, a larger elm sapling I’d cut away during our first spring and summer out here has been growing suckers. So everything got moved out and either set aside nearby or it went into the junk pile. Several things needed to be hosed down first. There was a whole lot of leaves, elm tree seeds and dirt to clear out and I had to start out with the landscape rake, then the fan rake and, finally, a broom to get most of it out. It needs to be hosed down, but the row of bricks closest to the house are all leaning towards the house and would drain against the root cellar wall that’s there. The area there is lined mostly with the glazed brick that we have around the house, which gets incredibly slippery.
My daughter had gone inside by then, so I was able to grab the wheelbarrow to haul the debris away. As I was putting it back my SIL rode their zero turn mower into the yard and stopped to talk for a while. She had been doing the outer yard and wanted to know how much I’d done on the inner yard before the little riding mower stopped moving. I told her what had been done, then we just talked. I told her about where I was working on, and the enameled bricks. We wondered where on earth my dad had managed to get so many! They are everywhere! I told her about how dangerous they are when wet, and that I wanted to pull them all out from around the house and lay down gravel, instead. Much safer! She agreed with that. The bricks are really nice and I told her I could see being able to use them – just not as a floor!
She had seen the water bottle collars I used when starting the summer squash stored on some T posts along the retaining wall and asked about them, and we talked garden stuff for a while before we both went back to work. I just had some things to put away, as I’d done as much as I could for the corner. Then I gathered the cat stuff and took care of those before heading inside.
Before I did, though, I made one last pass around the south yard to check the things growing on the chain link fence. Which is where I spotted this…
Four bees found the one late blooming sunflower (Mammoth variety) to gather pollen from! Some of the Mammoth sunflowers are looking to be more than 7 ft tall right now, and several have small seed heads that haven’t opened yet. Hopefully, that means more pollen for the bees. There isn’t much else blooming right now!
All in all, I’m rather happy with how much I was able to get done outside, though unhappy that my brother’s lawn tractor stopped moving. He has so many other things to deal with!
The main thing for me is that I’m still feeling good. I didn’t push myself too far and am not feeling any abdominal pain. Hopefully, it will stay that way!!
Things were all right in the morning. After taking my morning painkillers, I went out to join my daughter during the cat feeding.
We did not get any kittens. They are still very skittish, and the older cats kept pushing their way in for the cat soup, even though they got some in the other food bowls. I tried distracting Sweetie with the cat toy but she was too hungry to be distracted, and insists on eating at the shrine feeding station, where the kittens come through the chain link fence. As today was supposed to be another day or rain and potential storms, we put the carrier and bait bowl back into the catio, with the regular food bowl set to keep the door from closing by accident, and let the kittens be for now.
I had brought my walker out so, after my daughter went inside, I went around the yard and checked on the garden beds. I found both winter and summer squash that I could hand pollinate. We should have some yellow zucchini large enough to harvest soon, and some of the green scallop squash. We might get more of the Early Prolific Straightneck squash, but there are still no yellow pattypans or lemon squash. Interestingly, I think one of the squash that were thinned by transplanting might be a lemon squash. The tiniest of round, yellow female flower buds are showing up and I don’t think they are pattypans.
In the main garden area, I just had to get a picture of a monster.
The first image above is of a carrot from the Rainbow Mix that has gone to seed. It is remarkably huge and sturdy! Normally, carrots don’t go into seed until their second year, but I don’t mind having one that I can save seed from.
The second image of the slide show above shows what’s left of the Daikon radish. The flea beetles not only denuded the stems of leaves, but they even ate a lot of the pods, too! There are still pods left, but nowhere near as many as before. Enough to collect seeds from, though, if they were not too badly damaged.
Once back inside, I was feeling well enough to have breakfast before trying to lie down for a bit. When I got up again, I was able to make a lunch using some leftover brisket, with potatoes and bush beans from the garden, to make a stew.
While I was cooking, I heard some noises outside the kitchen window. My brother was leveling the ground where the tree and patio blocks had been. He had to dig up some remarkable thick roots that were buried under where some patio blocks where. He also had to remove some of the soil along the edge of where the blocks would be so that it was lower than the blocks, instead of higher. He levels a block in the corner between the house and the concrete steps so it wasn’t draining towards the house as well, and the blocks along the outside edge were sloped slightly to drain away from the house. He ended up filling our wheelbarrow completely with dirt and detritus he’d removed. Probably the heaviest load it’s ever had. Which would have been fine, except the tire turned out to be flat! I had come out to talk to him and, as he pushed the wheelbarrow from the grass onto the sidewalk, I was able to see the flat. All he could tell is that it wasn’t rolling right. He’s checked the tire before and couldn’t see a valve, so he thought it was a solid rubber tire. He did find the valve, but it had been partially pushed in from lack of air. He assured me he’s take care of it and told me to go back inside. Later on, I saw that he had also loaded all the old hot water tanks and pumps into his little trailer. They’ll be taken to the scrap yard another time.
By the time I finished cooking, the painkillers had definitely worn off. After lunch, I took them when the 6 hour alarm went off and tried to stay up longer, but eventually had to lie down again. Frustrating when it becomes difficult just sitting upright in a chair. *sigh*
I did manage to get a basement check in. I had to turn on a couple of the fans. One, aimed at the well pump and pressure tank because there was so much condensation dripping, it was creating a puddle. The other more in the new basement, more for air circulation and humidity levels. The recent rain, which is still sort of happening now, hasn’t been enough to cause problems in the basements.
I was also able to head outside and do the evening cat feeding. Some of the skunks are getting quite brazen! As I was setting up some bowls with cat milk in the kibble, specifically for the kittens (with extra to draw the adult cats away), I heard a commotion. I’d put some kibble at the back of the shrine base. A skunk was there, but one of the little tabbies was wanting that food (even though there was more) and hissing and spitting at the skunk. Which was about 5x its size!!! I scooted the skunk away, going down a path behind a willow where there’s an opening under the chain link fence they can fit through. I knew it would be coming back, so I tossed some kibble into the grass of the path, so it would have no reason to go closer and scare the kittens.
I also move the shrine feeding station bowls next to the catio, on either side of the door, with the bait bowl inside the carrier again. The bigger cats will eat the closest food, which should leave the bait bowl inside the carrier for the kittens, when they go looking for food later.
If the skunks don’t eat it first.
*sigh*
Then it was back inside, and not doing much. The painkiller either didn’t kick in, or the pain was worse and the painkiller has managed to just take the edge off. At least I can tell myself that, with how wet it is outside, I wouldn’t be getting much done out there, anyhow. It’s supposed to continue raining, off and on, until about 2am. It does look like some onions are ready to harvest, though. Something I should be able to do tomorrow, if all goes well.
Tomorrow afternoon – if we’re not delivering kittens to the rescue – my daughter and I will work on breaking down that fallen tree. I can handle a chain saw, and my daughter will be able to clear away the branches and smaller logs. Normally, the two of us together will drag the bigger logs out, but we’re both pretty broken, so I just want to cut things to size. I’m hoping to be able to get an 18′ length for the next garden bed out of this tree. The base of its trunk looks like it will match the size of the one that’s currently in place for the garden bed fairly well.
That’s pretty much it for the day.
I am looking forward to seeing the doctor, a little over a week from now, and getting those test results. If things go as expected, she’ll get me in for a hysterectomy fairly soon. If not, then I’ll be referred to specialists in the city. Who knows how long that will take.
The kittens are definitely more comfortable around my daughter, and were willing to come over for cat soup while she was right there, and she was able to pet them. When she tried picking them up to put in the waiting carrier, though, that was too much. These kittens are a lot more skittish than the ones we took in yesterday.
Sweetie, of course, didn’t help much!
After a while, my daughter and I talked about it and decided it would be better to wait. We made sure to leave the big cat carrier out, door open, so they could go in and out as they pleased and not find it scary. The white and grey singleton also came out, but it’s even more nervous that the littles.
We will try again tomorrow – if the weather holds. We’re supposed to get heavy rain in our area overnight and all day tomorrow. It’s supposed to be worse to the south of us, and the city is getting flash flood warnings, so we shall see.
Once inside and having breakfast, I remembered to tell my brother about the chainsaw mill. He would have seen it by now, but I wanted him to know that he was welcome to use it at any time, since it’ll be a while before I am able to. While we were chatting, I mentioned my plans to go into town to buy a birthday card and visit out mother, since I wasn’t able to do it yesterday.
He was planning to visit our mother today, too, so he offered to drive me in his car, which was very sweet of him. I had enough time to head outside again to move some hoses, as my SIL said she wanted to mow the inner yard for me, then I picked some Orange Currant tomatoes and even a few Blueberry tomatoes for my mother. I figured she make snarky comments about them being so small, but thought she would still enjoy them.
We dove out in their recently acquired electric car, and there’s a charging station almost across the street from the nursing home, so we went there to top the charge up, then walked over to the dollar store, half a block away. I found a card but decided against looking for the other stuff I had been thinking of on this trip. My brother had already brought a card last weekend, but found an actual 95th Birthday card and got it for her, too. Then we walked over to his car to fill the cards out inside.
We had brought my walker along and, by then, I felt that I was going to need it, so he got it out for me and we headed in. It was coming up on lunch time, but my mother was asleep in bed when we got there. Once she was awake enough to realize we were there for a visit, she got up and moved to her corner chair.
The visit was… draining.
My mother almost immediately went at my brother, going on about how she wanted a “good” radio – she simply will not accept that the station she wants to listen to cannot be picked up in her room, and insists the problem is the “junk” radio. My brother had not intended to tell her yet, but he ended up explaining that he did get her an internet radio, like she asked for, and had spent the last week setting it up. She can’t understand any of it, but when she gets it, she’ll only need to push a button to get a Polish radio station. It was not easy, since the one station she wants doesn’t broadcast online like most others. It took him 4 days to figure out how to get their website stream connected to the radio. It was just that one station that was an issue, but none of it was easy. The next step is to activate the new internet that was installed in her room. He tried to explain all this, but she kept interrupting him and complaining.
The rest of the visit did not get any better.
She mostly dismissed the cards we got her. She mocked the tiny tomatoes, then was wondering where her garlic was. She had asked for a bulb of garlic, which my sister had brought, but apparently it wasn’t good garlic (small?). Then she asked me if I had garlic in the garden. I told her no, it’s harvested. She glared at me, asking why. I told her, it’s September. It’s all harvested. She then went to talking about how my sister and her husband eat garlic every day, and that’s why they are so healthy, so she wants garlic.
My sister and her husband are not that healthy.
Then she went on about how she’s gained weight (she hasn’t; she has water retention and bloating) because they feed her too much and keep “pushing” snacks, and “they” put chemicals in food and that’s why she’s gaining weight and why people are getting cancer. She’s cutting our beef and pork, convinced it’s the cause of her “stomach problems”. Then she started talking about something she saw on the news (she doesn’t have a TV, so I’m guessing in one of the common rooms?), except she was clearly combing two completely different things into one, but that’s why everyone is dying of cancer. ??? Then she started on how, after she’s gone, she wants my brother, sister and I to all get along and not fight and push each other away – clearly she had imagined some sort of scenario and believes it happening or will happen, or… I don’t know, but she was making a big deal of it. Not the first time, though the first time she assumed we were behaving a particular way. Then my brother mentioned she’s used our sister for something (he didn’t even try to cover how badly she had stabbed him in the back and broke his heart in the process) and I mentioned she has specifically told our sister to keep it a secret from us, pointing out that she is the only one doing things like that.
It went over her head.
On and on it went, until someone came in with her lunch. We helped her set up with her table and tray to eat, then my brother said he and I would be going out for lunch now, leaving her to eat.
I think we were there for maybe half an hour.
My brother is a saint. I would have left much earlier. Mind you, by then the pain killers were wearing off and I had very little patience in me.
We did not go out for lunch. Neither of us had the energy for it.
Once at home, I had to pretty much lie down right away and my brother, being my brother, had many projects to work on. Later, he said that with all the manual labour he did over the next few hours, none left him as tired as that half hour or so with my mother! I’m glad we were able to go in together. If it had been just him, she would have been much worse. *sigh*
I eventually made it outside again, too, and get into the garden, but that will be in my next post.
Plus the original driver’s side door from our previous vehicle.
My brother and his friend got it all out, late this morning. As expected, the modern tanks were relatively easy, and could just be carried up the stairs.
The old, original tank’s inner chamber, however, was another story. My brother saw those loops at the top and had the same thought I did. They hooked up a ratchet strap made as short as possible to create a handle. My brother’s friend recenty hurt his back, so he took the top with the strap while my brother lifted from the bottom, and they got it out once step at a time.
That thing is HEAVY!
Then they got the old Uplander door out, which was more awkward than the modern tanks in some ways. My brother saw the two old pumps I’d moved over as well and wanted to take them up, so I told him about the others that were hidden by some old light fixtures I’d had to move to make room for the tanks.
The red pump is the newest one that just got replaced. The olive green one beside it, my brother tells me, is the original pump from when we got running water in the house back in the mid 70’s. That one ways about twice as much as the red one!
There were two other pumps we’d found while cleaning out the basement. I’d put all of them in the same general area, and the last two were on the bottom of a shelf. I had to move something so he could see them, and he’s pretty sure they still work, so he left them. He remembered there had been pumps under the work table, but I told him I’d moved them out from there and he’d already taken them outside.
I’d also rolled over the dehumidifier, as the last time I tried turning it on, it started making some rather unfortunate noises. My brother thinks what I described is something minor, so he left that, too.
Now that the tanks are no longer blocking the bottom of the stairs, I will bring up the old divider from between the basements so I can use it for curing things under the canopy tent.
Like the garlic.
It started raining yesterday and was supposed to stop raining by about 7am. It was still raining well past 1 pm. Which is wonderful for the garden, but not the strung up garlic. Since I wasn’t able to hang two long strings of garlic across the middle of the canopy tent, but only smaller lengths around the edges, they did get rained on, if only on one side. I trimmed off most of the stems, and the weight of the bulbs flipped them all so that they are now hanging root side down. The trimmed stems will make it easier to set them into the wire mesh of the old divider, and they will be completely under the canopy.
Not long after the tanks were taken out, I prepped the truck for a dump run. When I messaged them to let them know I was planning to do a dump run, followed by a Walmart run (which is why they took the tanks out when they did), my SIL asked if I could grab some of the bags by the old burn barrel. I’m glad she reminded me of those. We didn’t have a lot for the dump today, so we had room, but I keep forgetting they exist.
I also remembered to finally grab the garbage bag the can in the garage. I knew I needed to bring a new bag for the can, plus I knew some of the bags by the old burn barrel were torn, so I grabbed a bag of large, clear garbage bags that had been set aside. I’m glad I did. After backing the truck up to these old bags, I discovered they had been exposed to the elements for so long, the bags disintegrated as soon as I tried to pick one up. Not just the ones that I had noticed were already torn, but the ones that looked just fine until I tried to move them. It didn’t help that they were all filled with paper and cardboard meant for the burn barrel – which had been rained on all night. All that water made them quite heavy. I managed to get a decent number of them into fresh bags until I ran out, filling about 3/4 of the truck box.
That done, I backed up to the house, where my daughter started passing me the household garbage and recycling from the old kitchen. The poor thing. Even from the truck, I could hear she was dealing with a lot of back pain!
Since we were planning to go to the Walmart after the dump, I took the time to change out of my grubbies and my daughter and I were soon headed out.
I had considered I would need to be careful not to get my clothes dirty from the bags, but I forgot about the clay. I should have worn my rubber boots! I didn’t think of it, since we were supposed to go shopping next.
By the time we got rid of the garbage and recycling (I made sure my daughter didn’t lift any of the water logged bags, with her back giving out like it was), it seemed the rain was finally stopping. By the time we got back on the highway, though, it was raining much harder. At that point I decided we would just go home. There was nothing we needed to get that couldn’t wait another day, and I didn’t want to be driving the highway in those conditions if I didn’t have to.
So we headed home.
The good thing about the grass being so wet is that I was able to clean my shoes while walking from the garage to the house, just by dragging my feet! 😄 The grass was recently cut, though, so my daughter ended up having to use the hose on her boots.
Not long before I started this post, I headed out to do the evening cat feeding and my evening rounds. I’d done a bit of research first and made a point of checking the green cabbage to see if they were ready to harvest.
They are.
It’s too wet to do it now, though, so I will do it in the morning. The largest heads look like they are beginning to open up, which means they are starting to bolt; something we want to avoid.
So we should have a dozen heads of cabbage harvested tomorrow. Possibly thirteen; one of the pots had two transplants in it, and I wasn’t able to separate them without damaging the roots, so I left the extra.
The potato plants are almost completely died back now. Those will be harvested once the ground is dry again, then set under the canopy tent to cure.
I’m happy that, with the help of my brother and his friend, we at least got two major things accomplished. First, the tanks, pumps and old van door are now out of the basement. My brother wanted to leave them near the house until he could drive his trailer in and load them, rather than move them to the junk pile. They are not in the way near the house where they are, so that will be fine.
The other major thing was that we made it to the dump, and the truck didn’t break down.
