When it came time to start working on our first permanent trellis bed, I had hoped to be able to get in with the weed trimmer, first. It just up and died on me while I was using it a few days ago. I hoped it just needed to cool down or something, so I tested it.
Nothing. Not a click or a whirr or a home. Nothing.
*sigh*
So I went and got the push mower my brother has loaned us.
Where the trellis beds are going to be built is over an area we actually made garden beds, a few years ago. Sections were covered in cardboard, potatoes and melons planted, then heavily mulched with straw.
We had spring flooding that year and very little survived.
After that, we just lost control of the space and it became completely overgrown.
To reclaim the space, we will be building pairs of raised beds joined by trellis tunnels. One beds it built and being used right now, but we need to finish adding three vertical supports before we can have something our Red Noodle Beans can climb.
Before working on that, though, I wanted to clear the overgrown space beside it. One part of it had been measured and marked off for the next bed. I had cut poplars to use for the vertical supports, and those had been stacked nearby – and were completely hidden by the tall grass.
So my first job was to find and pull out all the logs, and set them aside in an area that was already mowed.
Which you can see in the first photo of the slideshow below.
After making sure there were not chunks of wood, rocks, markers, etc. hidden in the grass, I went over it with the push mower, set at its highest level.
Then I went over it again, set a mid height.
Then I went over about 2/3rd of it again, this time with the mower as low as it could go, and only in one direction. At this point, I was hitting the old straw mulch in places, and I wanted the clippings to be easy to rake up, later. They will make a good mulch, after sitting in the sun for a day or two.
In the second photo, you can see the entire cleared area.
It was getting insanely hot, and I knew I wasn’t up to working on the trellis in the heat, so I decided to get the next raised bed space prepped.
I have a couple of small logs that are exactly 4′ long. These beds are going to be 4′ wide, with 4′ wide paths in between, and I’ve found these logs make it easy to mark the spaces. Which is what I’ve done in the next photo. I’ve butted the logs up against the frame, not the vertical supports at the corners. That marked off the width of the path. Then I got out one of my rolls of plastic to set over where the new bed is going to be, to start solarizing.
Well. Sort of.
To have the plastic really cook the weeds and grass and seeds in the soil, the plastic needs to be taught against the soil surface. Since I couldn’t use the weed trimmer to get the space cleared right to the soil surface, the plastic will be sitting on top of the cut stems. It’ll still get cooked in places, but will also act like a greenhouse.
Which is fine. I can work with that.
I also hosed the area down, first. The moisture will get really hot under there and help cook the weeds and seeds, too.
The plastic is wider than 4′, so there is some overlap into the paths, which is also good. The big sheet is actually folded in half and I considered opening it up and covering a larger space, but it’s starting to get old and tattery, so I just re-folded it more neatly, then set it out. It’s not long enough to cover the full 18′ the bed will be, so the last section is covered with a clear dollar store shower curtain.
Then is was time to weigh it down.
I shifted the 4′ logs over so that they are now marking the next 4′ that will the the width of the next raised bed. Then I used some of the logs I’d pulled out of the tall grass to weigh down the edges. There were a couple of small gaps, so I used bricks to weight those down.
I had been using some old conduit pipe I’d found in the barn to mark off where the beds would be. I ended up adding those, plus another short little log, on top of the plastic, to try and get it closer to the soil surface. Then the whole thing got sprayed with water to try and weigh it down even more.
By the time all that was done, so was I. At least for working in direct sunlight.
I did have the lawn mower handy, though.
I hiked the deck up again, then started working on the maple grove. We haven’t been able to mow in there all year, except for the beginnings of a path I’d started before running out of gas, and not being able to get back to.
When I was done, I ended up taking a little video of how much I’d managed to do.
I sound out of breath because I literally just finished mowing. The grass was about 2-3 feet high in there, and still is in places I couldn’t get into with the mower.
When we first moved here, this area was not only overgrown, but filled with trees that had been cut down but never cut up and removed, lots of fallen branches, and it was basically impassible. When I was a kid, I used to keep this area mowed regularly, as was as inside the spruce grow.
It’ll be a few years before we get to that level again!
It does feel good to have finally gotten at least this much mowed.
Then I came in for hydration, rest and supper!
It’s still light out and starting to cool down… oh… never mind. I just checked the temperature, and it’s gone back up again! We are getting thunderstorm warnings which don’t actually affect our area, but the winds are certainly picking up.
I might just have to call it a day. Tomorrow, I’ve got to take the truck into town for the autobody shop to go over, then to get new tires. A old friend from high school is in town and contacted me, so we’ll be meeting up somewhere while the tires are being done. That’s all in the afternoon, though. If I can manage a solid night’s sleep, I should be able to get work done on the trellis bed in the morning.
We’ll see what the morning brings!
I may not have gotten the trellis sports up, but I am glad to have started reclaiming more of those old garden beds, though.
I’d call that a win.
Oh, and I have a bit of cuteness to share. I spotted some eyes watching me from the creeping bellflower leaves…
Good grief. How is it not even 6:30pm as I start this? It feels like it should be much, much later!
It’s been a long day. 😄
Once again, I was awakened way too early by cat shenanigans. I finally gave up and got up at around 5:30 to top up their kibble and give the hoard access to my room before heading outside to feed the yard cats and do my morning rounds.
Checking on the garden as part of my rounds at this time of year is a bit like Christmas. There seems to be something new, every time! I just came back from doing the evening watering, and there was more new stuff to see, in just the space of about 9 hours!
One of the things we have blooming right now are the ornamental poppies.
Very few of them, this year, but they sure are show stoppers! Those are irises in the background, that have been growing there since before I was born.
Just a few scapes and ripe wild/alpine/whatever-they-are strawberries.
When approaching the low raised bed with most of the tomatoes, interplanted with yellow bush beans, I startled away a bird that had been digging in the dirt. As if cats digging wasn’t bad enough, the birds are, too!
When checking on the damage, I spotted our first yellow bush bean sprouting! I was really happy with this, as these seeds are several years old, and I wasn’t sure any would germinate.
When I was back at the bed to water it this evening, I found almost all the other beans I’d planted in the bed had sprouted while I was gone! I only planted a single bean in each spot, no extras, and at the moment, it looks like just one hasn’t germinated yet.
I didn’t see more corn sprouting in the other bed in the morning, but this evening, I spotted the tips of perhaps a dozen, breaking through. Still no beans in the alternating rows sprouting there, yet.
This morning, I had the usual cats following me around, but I was also joined by an Eyelet!
Who really looks ticked off at getting his picture taken. 😄
The cats really love that grass mulch. It does protect the soil from them a bit, but they do dig it up to use the gardens beds as a litter box, if I’m not there to chase them off. Those collars around the transplants are probably the only things saving them from being flattened by cats rolling in the beds!
In the second image of the above slide show, you can see the cuddle puddle I discovered, just before coming inside.
Adorable, but a concern.
Caramel is in there, cuddling with the kittens. Only the orange tabby, Havarti, is hers. Her other two are still missing. While my first thought was that she took them to the property across the road, I am no longer sure. Every time I got outside, she’s here. Which means if she did take them across the road, they are there alone, not being nursed by her or any of the creche mothers, and not getting any of the cat soup I’ve been giving out specifically for the kittens. I now wonder if they are even still alive. I don’t get it!! Zipper is also still missing.
Later on, as I was preparing to leave for town, I just had to get this picture of Leyendecker.
Chonky boy! Gosh, he’s so big. I don’t just mean he’s a fat cat. He’s just a giant, overall.
He’s also one of the bullies.
I picked up that calming liquid to try, but the instructions aren’t particularly clear. It basically says to add it to their food, no mixing required, and that cats love eating it. Add how? Just… pour it on?
It also sort of assumes feeding one cat directly and individually.
Which is our problem.
How do we dose just the most stressed out and/or aggressive cats?
After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to just add it to their cat soup. It’ll be a very low dose, but basically all the cats would get at least some. Except Potato Beetle. He still won’t eat wet cat food. He’s a chill dude, though, and not one we’d be dosing, anyhow. I honestly can’t remember even seeing him try the cat soup. I use 6 cans of cat food for one batch of cat soup, so this evening, I decided to add one tsp per can (the recommended dose is 1.5 tsp for under 10 pounds, 2 tsp for 10 pounds or over, per day).
We’ll see how it works out.
Meanwhile…
I headed out early because I wanted to remove the remains of the truck box cover, first. We kept wanting to do it, but once the truck is in the garage, there really isn’t a lot of space to move around in. Then we’d forget again.
So today, I got the truck out of the garage, grabbed a tool kit and got to work. It ended up taking way less time than I thought it would. There were just two of one type of clamp on one side, then one each of a different type on both sides. I was fully expecting the nuts to be seized or something, but nope. They came off easily, as did the remaining piece of the box cover.
Once it was done, I just went ahead into town right away, anyhow. I did remember to stop at the post office along the way; I kept forgetting to do it all last week.
Our mail box was completely stuffed.
With fliers.
With the threat of a strike hanging over us, no one is using the mail for anything but junk mail right now. Not even for packages. The threat of a strike alone must be costing Canada Post millions of dollars – and they have already been running in the red for years. People living in cities and larger communities have plenty of alternatives to choose from. People like us, however, are stuck with pretty much only Canada Post. There are a couple of delivery companies that will actually find us and deliver directly to our place (which is impressive, since our physical address doesn’t exist on any maps), or will deliver to the store the post office is in, but they are rarely an option when we place orders online. Right now, a lot of places won’t even take orders. It’s not just Amazon cancelling orders that can only be sent by Canada Post. I’ve noticed some tree nurseries and seed companies have notices on their websites, saying they’ve stopped taking orders completely until the threat of a strike are over. Some say they have found alternative methods and are taking orders again, but for those that don’t have the option, they could well lose their businesses entirely because of Canada Post. Of course, these are almost always the small, independent and family run companies that are most affected, but public sector unions don’t give a rip. It’s insane how bad they’ve become.
So, junk mail is all we’re getting.
While heading into town, I kept a close eye on that oil pressure gauge. At first, it seemed to be back to normal; that half liter of oil we’d put in last night seemed to have made a difference.
And then it didn’t. The pressure kept slowly dropping until it was just barely in the range it’s supposed to be in.
When I got to the garage, the owner was there, so I had a chance to talk to him about the booked oil change, and what was going on. I was honest about the fact that I really couldn’t tell if it was low on oil or not, because I simply can’t see the line, but it did seem to me that it was low. They had done so much work on it when we had the issues before, it really didn’t make any sense for anything to be leaking now, so he was definitely going to check on it for me.
I then asked if they could check the tires, too. We have the one front tire with the slow leak in the valve step that needs to be replaced first, but there are three altogether that need to be done, because the sensor batteries are dead. As for the one that was already done, I told him that it always seems to look low to me. I’d check the pressure and it would be fine, but it still looked low. So he said he would get that checked, too.
I reminded him about the broken handle inside the driver’s side door, and it can only be opened from the outside. We talked a bit about the possibility of getting a new one from a scrap yard or something. He does make use of those for parts and says they usually don’t sell just a handle like that, but the entire door. So it is unlikely to actually save us anything. He did say he would keep it in mind, though.
Not that we’ll be able to get it done, anytime soon.
That done, I turned over the keys and started walking. I was 2 hours early for my appointment, so I had plenty of time to run any errands and have lunch.
I had lunch first, since I hadn’t had breakfast yet. I walked across town towards the marina and decided to stop at a fish and chips place. I don’t normally like fish anything, but they have the best fish and chips anywhere, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been there!
I forgot how massive their portions are. A really great deal for the dollar – a rare thing, these days!
I think next time, I should see if I can get just the fish and skip the fries completely. 😄
This place happens to be next to a Thai store that we rarely get a chance to visit, so after lunch, I went to check it out. My younger daughter, who’s birthday is this month, has a couple of pairs of very unique, very comfortable, pants from this place that she loves. I was thinking of possibly finding her more – after going through some of the other Thai stuff they had. There were some really nice things, but not anything I thought would be good as birthday gifts.
While trying to find a rack with the type of pants my daughter had found, I was approached by the lone saleswoman holding out a dress for me to possibly try.
I was rather amused by the small size of it, but told her I was looking for something for my daughter.
She came back with something even smaller, so I told her my daughter was an adult. She didn’t speak much English, but we managed to communicate.
In the end, she helped me find a sundress that’s actually pants, that looked like it would actually fit my well endowed daughter. So that turned out all right!
After that, I started making my way back towards the garage, stopping at a couple other places along the way. There wasn’t much that I needed, so I wasn’t stuck carrying much during the walk back.
By the time I reached the garage, it was shortly past my actual appointment time. I half expected the truck to be in a bay still, but I found it parked in a different spot outside, so I knew it was done.
The owner was in the office when I got there, but he wasn’t the one who worked on the truck, so he went and got the guy who did. Which turned out to be the same guy who had worked on it last time.
I am so glad I asked them to check the tires.
One of the things this guy had found before was that our tires were starting to wear on the insides, showing that we needed a wheel alignment. That was done along with most of the other stuff at the same time.
In the months since the alignment was done, the worn spots had gotten worse, and were now completely bald on the inside. Something I wouldn’t have been able to see. It was, however, very likely contributing to why both front tires would sometimes be low, even though one of them had had its leaking valve replaced already.
We talked about it for a while, and could confirm it was just additional wear and tear; I’d already had the wheel bearing replaced on the driver’s side, then they did the alignment. They would have spotted any other possible contributing problems at the time.
While, technically, I could still drive on them, this is not something I was going to mess around on, so I asked how much it would cost to replace them.
It’s going to cost over $600, after taxes, for new tires, installation, balancing and labour.
*sigh*
I am thankful that we now have credit cards that we can do stuff like this, but … yikes!
I asked how long it would take for the tires to come in, since they have to order them first, and was told if they ordered them today, they’d be in tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, I’m taking the truck in to the autobody place for them to go over and determine what parts they need for our insurance claim repairs, so I booked the new tires to be installed after that.
Then we talked about the oil change.
It turned out that the oil level really was low. As in, almost half what it should have been. !!! He told me that it was wet all over underneath, so they couldn’t pin point exactly where it was coming from. The leak was so slow, there was no dripping under the truck for me to see. So what they’ve done for now is cleaned it all up so that, when I come back for an oil change again, they would be better able to see where it’s coming from.
If there’s still a leak.
They recommended an oil treatment concentrate to use before then. Every now and then, over the next while (which might be weeks, or months), I’m to check the oil when the engine is cold. Once the level reaches between the “fill” and “full” lines, I’m to add this stuff, instead of more oil. This should improve all the seals and stop any leaks. They both said it works really, really well, and should solve the problem.
That done, I paid the bill, which turned out to be lower than I expected. Especially with the additional product. When I commented on that, the mechanic I was talking to said it looked like the owner, who have left for the day, had given me a deal!
He is so awesome.
While all this was going on, we chatted about other things with the truck. I mentioned the issues we were having with the insurance company and how, because of the things they won’t cover, it’s still going to cost us a lot – and they won’t cover the tail light at all. We’d talked about the broken tail light earlier, when describing the damage to the truck box frame. I told him the insurance guy says it’s from an impact, not from the cover being blown off. Yet when I described what I saw in my mirror when it went flying, the mechanic immediately said that it would have been broken when the box frame was twisted. I agree, but there is impact damage under the tail light. I didn’t hit anything, and that damage wasn’t there when I bought the truck, so all I can think is that maybe someone hit the truck while it was parked in a parking lot, and I just didn’t notice until I checked for damage after the cover was blown off – and I have no way to prove that the tail light cover wasn’t broken before the box cover was blown off.
When he found out they wouldn’t cover the cost of the tail light, the mechanic suddenly got excited and asked which tail light it was. He quickly became disappointed when I told him it was the passenger side. It turned out he had a spare tail light for the same truck as mine, but it was for the driver’s side. He would have let me have it for free, if it had been the right size!
Have I mentioned how much I love our garage? The owner is awesome, and the guys he has working with him are also just fantastic.
So we’ll see how things go with the autobody shop, and their guy has a chance to price out parts.
Once done at the garage, I made a quick stop at the grocery store before heading home. By the time I was done there, I was heavily using the shopping cart as a walker. My hips were starting to really give out. I mentioned that when I messaged my family that I was on my way home, and was pleasantly surprised to find the gate open for me already. After I was done parking in the garage, I was going to leave the couple of bags I had in front of the garage while I went back to close the gate, only to find my daughter already on her way to do it for me!
She is so sweet!
She also noticed and commented on the pretty bag I was carrying, so I asked her if she wanted her birthday present now, or later? 😄😄
She decided, now.
So, once we were inside and everything was put away, I presented her with her gift. She put it on right away, and we were very happy to find it fit just fine – unlike the previous one I picked up that was “one size fits most” that didn’t fit either of us. My daughter has some matching fabric and will be adding gussets to the side seams, but until then, she now has a floofy, flowy, gorgeously patterned pants-dress to wear on those really hot days. It also looks quite beautiful on her, but my daughter always looks beautiful, so that’s no surprise. 😊
Not much later, after taking some pain killers, I headed back outside for my evening rounds, and the evening yard cat feeding. After Caramel apparently moved two of her smaller babies away (or…?), I’m now very concerned that Poirot might do the same, but so far, nope!
She seems quite content to keep her babies close to the house. They are getting so much more active and starting to go further around the house, and using the old kitchen garden as their very own playground – even when I’m watering the beds!
Oh, I’ll have to make a point of heading out after dark and getting some pictures. When I was last at the Walmart, I took advantage of a clearance sale and got a box of 8 solar lights on stakes. Most of them are now in the wattle weave bed – literally in the weave – with a couple in the rectangular bed near the house. They look really nice and, if the price is right, I’d like to get more for other areas around the garden beds.
The cats aren’t the only ones that like the garden beds, or the mulch. Every time I water, there are frogs jumping out all over. The beds with the heavier mulches often have a dozen or more emerging and jumping away from the water!
This evening, however, I spotted a different frog. The usual ones tend to be coloured in browns and greys. Sometimes, I’ll see one that looks copper coloured. What I haven’t seen before it one that was green!
Usually, any green frogs we see are tree frogs, and I haven’t seen any of those this year, yet. The only other native frog that I know of that’s green is the leopard frog, which is now pretty rare to see. This one looks like our typical wood frog, except for the colour. What a beauty!
I am so happy to see so many frogs in the garden this year!
So that was how things went for most of the day.
I do, however, have some concerning updates about my mother.
After what happened yesterday, I updated my siblings in our group chat to let them know what went down.
I got a message from my sister late this afternoon. She had phoned our mother earlier in the day. Apparently, my mother got two med assist visits this morning for some reason.
???
She also said she would try and walk to the grocery store (it’s just a couple of blocks away) to do her own shopping, then have them deliver it. She also had stuff to get at the pharmacy, though, and that’s much further.
I responded by saying I’d gone over there on my one free day, and I’m booked up through to next week (not all of which is stuff away from home, but including time dependent stuff that must get done outside, while the weather is good). My sister said she told my mother that people would be far more willing to help her, if she treated them nicely!
(I’m hoping my sister or my brother can do the shopping for her, but my mother doesn’t like their shopping. I know her list so well, I can pick out exactly what she likes, even when I get things not on her list. They don’t know as well and pick the “wrong” things – which might only be a brand from their local store they shopped at for her, rather than the one next to her place.)
Not long after I got home, I got a call from the home care coordinator.
It was about the double visit this morning.
When the home care aid got to my mother’s, she insisted that someone had already been there and given her her medications. The aid went into the lock box to check. This morning’s medications were still there, and no one had signed the form. Yet my mother insisted, someone had already come and done her meds. The home care workers have the lock box code on their instructions file for my mother. She’s not the only one with a lock box, and there are quite a few different people doing her med assists, so it’s not like any of them are going to be remembering everyone’s lock box combinations, nor is it possible anyone NOT a home care aid would be going into there. Not even my sister has the code for it (my brother is the one who programmed it so, of course, he knows what it is).
I read to her the message I got from my sister, about my mother saying that two people had come to do her morning meds today.
There is no record of any home care aid going to my mother’s place before the one that made the report on my mother saying that someone did.
I told the coordinator that I’d been there yesterday morning, but left very soon after, because of my mother’s behaviour (she understood!), but I was there long enough for my mother to mention no one had shown up on Saturday morning. I hadn’t gone back into the lock box to check if the Saturday morning meds where still there; it never even occurred to me. The coordinator looked at the record for Saturday, and there was nothing about her morning med assist being missed.
She was going to instruct the supper time med assist person to check the bubble pack to see if Saturday morning’s pills were still there.
This morning’s home care aid, the coordinator and I all agreed that it was very unlike my mother to be mixed up about someone coming and giving her her pills, when no one had actually come. Now we have the possibility that she can’t remember someone coming on Saturday morning. This is very concerning! My mother was very prone to messing with her meds, forgetting what they were for, thinking they had been “changed”, etc. But she had never actually forgotten to take them, or thought she’d taken them when she hadn’t.
It’s going to be looked into, and I will be contacted about it later.
It does not seem like my mother would invent (whether she knows it or not) that someone came when they didn’t. Could someone else have come to her place that she mistook for a health care aid? If so, they couldn’t have given her her meds, since they’re locked away.
This is just so bizarre.
Another reminder that my mother really shouldn’t be living on her own. She wants so much to be in a nursing home (a very specific one), and it still seems like she somehow doesn’t “qualify” yet, according to our system.
Whatever they find in their investigation, maybe this will be the final hurdle that will get her into, at the very least, some sort of assisted or supportive living situation.
Assuming there are any spaces available.
*sigh*
There isn’t much we can do until then, which is the most frustrating part. It’s not like any of us can have her move in with us. Either we’ve got our own family health issues to deal with, or lack of accessibility in our homes, or both – it just couldn’t work. She would hate it, anyhow. She knows she needs to have a higher level of care, especially at night, than any of us can give, but she would also go bonkers without the social activities she has access to in her building, now.
Well, it is what it is. We can only deal wit the hand we’ve been dealt, no matter how messed up it is.
My mother certainly isn’t helping herself out, with her behaviour, though!
It’s mid afternoon as I start to write this, and time to take a break from the heat.
Depending on which weather app I look at, our expected high today is supposed to be 22C/72F or 24C/75F. As I write this, one app tells me we are at 23C/73F, while another tells me we are at 21F/70F, with the humidex putting us at 25C/77F.
All our outdoor thermometers are in full sun, so they’d be reading high, but given how I felt while outside, I’d say at least the humidex making it feel like 25C/77F is accurate!
My morning rounds finished off with watering all the garden beds, trees and bushes. For the vegetable beds, I set up the fertilizer sprayer, because of this.
These are the Arikara squash, but all the winter squash and melons in the main garden area are also getting yellow and droopy like this. So are all the tomatoes. They’re still blooming and stuff, but looking very sickly. These seems like more than transplant shock.
The peppers, eggplant and herbs show no sign of this.
I looked up possible reasons for why this could be happening, and there are many possibilities. Most could not apply for various reasons. One very possible cause is lack of nitrogen; for all our amending, our soil is still nutrient deficient, being low on nitrogen in particular, though it is starting to improve.
The fertilizer I got was and 18-18-21; a tomato, fruit and vegetable ratio. With the hose attachment applicator, I went through most of the container by the time all the beds were done. It’s recommended to apply every 7-14 days. I’ll need to get another container before then, because there isn’t enough to do a complete watering with what’s left in the cannister right now!
When I got to watering the walnuts and Korean pine, I had a couple of surprises.
The first photo is the year old sapling, and it’s doing very well. The second photo, though, is what I found after removing the mulch that somehow ended up on top of the plastic collar, completely covering where the seed was planted.
Something was digging in there!
My first thought was that a squirrel or something stole the walnut seed. Still, I started digging, just to confirm it was gone.
I found it.
Whatever was digging had stopped a couple of inches above the walnut seed! So I just replaced the dug out soil and gave it a thorough watering.
I was encouraged to find that the soil was still moist at the level of the seed. Just barely, but at least it wasn’t dried out!
Then I found what looks like our first sprouted sapling. At least I hope that’s what it is. Until the leave unfurl, it’s hard to tell. While I tried to remove any roots I found while digging the hole for it, it’s still possible something else is sending up shoots.
Speaking of sending up shoots, I saw our first zucchini sprouts today!
Just in 2 out of 3 spots planted, so far. No sign of the white scallop squash, but I remember those took a lot longer to germinate compared to other summer squash we planted last year. We are seeing a remarkable number of frogs this year – more than we’ve ever seen since moving out here – which gives me hope that the squash sprouts will survive. I haven’t seen a single slug this year, yet, and I’d say we have all those frogs to thank for that!
My daughter, meanwhile, headed out this morning to start mowing the lawn with the riding mower, after I came inside for lunch.
Some time later, I heard a knocking at my window.
My daughter needed help. She had tried to mow closer to the crab apple trees. She got caught on a branch that flung off her hat…
… and her glasses!
Crabapple branches are horrible for that sort of thing. It’s like they reach out and grab at you, like something out of a cartoon scare scene!
She had been looking for them but, without her glasses, she couldn’t see very well. So I went out to help her look, but had no better success. Her biggest fear was that she’d run over them with the mower, so of course that was the first place she looked, but when it came to the grass, who knows how far a springy branch could and flung them!
After a while I suggested she go inside to get her prescription sunglasses while I kept searching. Then she would at least be able to see while looking!
While she was gone, I remembered her worry about having run over them, so I decided to look at the mower, too. She had stopped it well away from where the tree branch had caught her.
When I found them, I just had to take a picture, or no one would believe me.
There they were, sitting like someone had very carefully folded them closed and put them in the safest spot possible. They couldn’t even be accidentally stepped on in that spot. While needing a lens cleaning, they were completely undamaged.
An absolute miracle! I brought them to the house just as she reached the door to go back out with her prescription sunglasses. She was so incredibly relieved!
Then she was happily back to mowing.
When I headed back to work in the garden, I didn’t get much done. It was getting way too hot by then, and I was in the full sun. I went through the soil in the kiddie pool we tried using to grow zucca melon before, only to have them eaten by slugs. The soil was full of crab grass but, being contained as they were, it was easy to clear them away. I then used about half of it to top up the row of asparagus, against the log border. I wasn’t able to dig down to the proper depth when they were planted, as it gets too rocky, so I was glad to have the soil available to top them up.
If there is anything alive to help out. I strongly suspect that it took too long for use to plant the asparagus and strawberries. I don’t expect to see the asparagus quickly, but the strawberries should have appeared by now. I’ll keep watering the new bed, just in case, but it might be a total loss.
One thing I’ll have to do later today, and hopefully snag a daughter to assist, is set netting around the trellis bed. This is where the red noodle beans and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers were planted, along with the free pumpkin seeds and the baby onion sprouts I found while cleaning up the bed Aside from overwintered onions and the collars where the pumpkins are planted, this bed is pretty open.
The cats have been digging in it.
So far, they don’t seem to have actually dug up any seeds, but they did dig up at least one or two tiny onions. I’ve set the rest of my tall metal plant stakes, plus some bamboo stakes, around the bed to hold the netting. I’ll wrap the entire bed in netting, like I did with the corn and beans bed. That should be enough to keep them out.
In the process I found my first red noodle bean sprout! There was just a bit of stem visible, elbowing its way through the soil surface, so I didn’t bother taking a picture, but I’m very happy to see it! There should be others, soon!
I’ve set things up so that, after the netting is in place, it won’t block access to where the remaining three vertical support posts for the permanent trellis need to be installed. Keeping the cats out of the bed is the priority right now!
That will wait until things start to cool down a bit, though. I just don’t have any tolerance for heat anymore!
On a completely different note, I have some cuteness to share with you.
We still don’t have a name for this mama. For a mostly feral cat, she is thankfully quite comfortable hanging around the house. Very unlike the other more feral mamas! She takes very good care of her kittens – and any others that happen to be around!
There is a gorgeous long haired tabby that I decided to start calling Rabi, because I thought it might be Kohl’s brother, but I think I’m wrong. While we can’t see to know for sure, I think he might be a she.
I saw her trying to carry off Hastings, yesterday.
She’s acting like a mother cat trying to carry her own kittens away, but these aren’t her kittens, and they don’t want to be carried off by her!
It has me wondering if perhaps she lost her own litter, and some maternal instinct has her wanting to carry off other kittens to mother. I’ve noticed she (I’m going to just assume “she” at this point) has been following me around the yard, but never quite allowing me to get close or reach out to her. I can’t say she ever looked pregnant – another reason we thought she might have been male. I don’t quite know what to make of it!
We’ll have to keep an eye on her. Hopefully, we can get her friendly enough to get her into a cat carrier end get her spayed!
I’m not 100% sure, but I think that stunning cat in the first image might be Kohl’s brother, Rabi. He seems to want to be around me when I’m out and about in the yard, and even follows me while I’m doing my rounds at times, but will not let me come close. The problem is, once Kohl and Rabi got bigger and more mobile, we simply couldn’t get close to them. Kohl’s calico pattern made her easy to identify, but Rabi was one of several fluffy tabbies with white we had that year. I’ll have to go through my old photos from when they were little, and maybe I can tell.
The next photos are of Poirot’s kittens, and Poirot, enjoying breakfast.
It was pretty wet when I headed out – not actively raining, but still wet enough that the older kittens were all hunkered down in the warm and cozy cat beds inside the cat house. Which means it wasn’t until much later in the day that I saw Kale and Sir Robin. Oh, my goodness, they each have one really badly infected eye. We were able to get their eyes washed, but the antibiotics we had left in the fridge had gone fuzzy, so we don’t have any medication for them. Havarti, the orange tabby, has one messed up eye, too, but he seems to be getting better. Other kittens have leaky eyes, too – it seems to always happen when they get big enough to be weaned – but from what I could see today, these two have it the worst. 😢 I was thinking of contacting the Cat Lady about getting some more antibiotics through her, but she is slowly stepping away from rescue and may not even be in the country, with all the stuff going on with her kids.
I’m not sure how we’re going to manage once her rescue is done in a few months. The one other that I contacted, based on the Cat Lady’s recommendation, basically blew me off. They’re too full, anyhow. They all are. It’s no wonder the Cat Lady is burning out! I keep hearing people say to contact the humane society in the city, who are also full up, but when I looked into them before, they wouldn’t have anything to do with anyone outside the city. There’s a local branch, and they stopped doing intakes long ago, yet are still always full. It’s pretty ridiculous.
Well, we do the best we can for the kitties. What other choice is there? Besides calling the municipality to send someone out with a rifle, that is. That’s the only “help” they offer for rural colonies. We certainly aren’t the only ones will a yard full of cats! Not by a long shot.
Ah, well. It is what is it, and we play the hand we’ve been dealt.
The dwarf Korean lilac is kicking into full bloom, and making the yard smell heavenly.
I had company for part of my rounds as Syndol and Stinky followed me around. They do love the high raised bed, when it comes to demanding pets, which you can see in the second photo above. You can also see the partial clearing of the path around the trellis bed in progress that had been just packed with dandelions gone to see. I still need to go over that with the weed trimmer, which will be a lot easier, after going through with the push mower, first!
While walking through the yard, I also spotted a clearwing hummingbird, flitting from dandelion to dandelion. They are remarkably large!
Today we were going to try for a trip to the dump. I’d brought out a heavier duty tarp to put over the load so it wouldn’t blow off while on the highway. It had been set over one of the old, broken tillers that have been sitting by the garden shed since before we moved here. There was some debris stuck in the folds, so I spread it out on the lawn to hose it down. It was so windy, I had to get tent pegs to tack it down!
Too windy.
I decided not to try and use the open truck box at all. Instead, we fit as much as we could of garbage and recycling in the back of the cab. We’ll just have to make another trip, later in the week, to get the rest.
My younger daughter came along to help out. The dump was an absolute disaster. The previous municipal council had fired the custodian that was managing it before, and things have gone downhill, ever since, even though we have a new council now. There was a brief period where I think some outside company was hired, and things were well taken care of, but now, the custodian(s) seem to just be seniors with mobility problems. As an almost senior with mobility problems, I take issue with that! It would be fine if all they had to do was sit in the shack and make sure people coming in just flashed their cards showing they are from the municipality and authorized to use this landfill site. The custodian is responsible for taking care of the entire site, though, and it doesn’t look like they’re contracting out to anyone to do the stuff the custodians can’t.
Like use the front end loader to push the build up piles of garbage at the edge of the pit, into the pit itself. Or to clear the area in front of the bit, so people won’t get flat tires, driving in to unload.
The garbage piled along the edge of the pit was so big, it was taking up space needed for vehicles to be able to turn around and back in. With three other vehicles already there, I was more than happy that one of them left, or I would have had a real problem getting to the pit.
Thankfully, we were unloading from the side door, not the box, so we could squeeze in that way. I couldn’t help but check around the tires after we unloaded. We got a flat tire after visiting the dump once, and I’m paranoid it’ll happen again!
After the garbage was done, we stopped at the recycling drop off, then headed out. We were running low on kibble for the outside cats, so we took advantage of this to go to the nearest Walmart and get a bit of stock up shopping.
Which I did not get a picture of. I’m happy to say that the big bags of kibble (9.1kg is the largest size the Walmart carries) have gone down in price by almost $5 a bag! We also got a 32 pack of canned cat food for the outside kittens.
They are getting totally spoiled, but it is pretty much the only way to make sure they get at least some lysine in them. I’ve been mixing a cat soup by hand for them; just a couple of cans of wet cat food mixed with lysine/pumpkin seed powder, then thinned down with water. As the kittens are getting bigger, I’ve increased the water and have started mixing in kibble to soften up, too. Some of the adult cats get pretty aggressive in trying to get some, too, so I’ve been splitting it up among quite a few bowls, and setting them in the usual kitten spots. Poirot’s babies hang out in the sun room most of the time, though they do venture out the door now, so I try to make sure they get some in the cat cage, where only a few of the adult cats will go in, these days. They are so tiny – and so fast! We really need to watch our step these days!
Along with cat food, we got some grocery items, stuff to keep in the truck (wet wipes, snacks, etc.) I did get one splurge. Since I’m getting more calls to my cell phone, I picked up a dashboard holder that will work with my wallet style phone case. Now I have to go into my phone’s settings to set up hands free. Samsung used to have a really good set up for hands free driving mode, but they got rid of that, many models ago. Now it’s all with Bixby, and I really dislike using things like Bixby. Ah, well.
Once the shopping was done, we set the heavy stuff in the box. I’d picked up a 24 case of canned soup for the pantry that was on sale, so that went in the box, with a cat food bag sitting right on top of it. The case of wet cat food went back there, too, with a dry cat food bag up against it, so it wouldn’t slide around in the box as we drove. The rest went into the back of the cab.
The problem is, it was threatening to rain.
We took the route home that would have us going near town, first, so we stopped at a gas station there on the way home. My daughter was a sweetheart and checked the tire pressure for me, just in case, before we picked up some gas.
The drive out was straight into the wind, and brutal. I had been fighting the wind trying to push me off the road the whole time, and could practically see the gas gauge dropping. On the way home, the wind was at our backs, and the gas gauge barely moved!
During the final leg home, the “threatening to rain” became a downpour.
Thankfully, the larger bags of kibble in the box of the truck are in plastic bags, so they not only kept the kibble dry, but protected the stuff under them.
My daughter and I got completely soaked, unloading the truck! It was late enough that I did the outside cat feeding right away, while my daughter parked the truck. We didn’t have any concerns about cats going under the truck, though. They were staying well out of the rain until I was actively putting food out, and even then, it was just to dash from shelter to shelter. The bigger kittens were sleeping in big piles, one in the water bowl shelter, and others in the cat house. Poirot’s babies just had each other, and Mom, in the sun room.
The rain has since stopped, but I won’t be trying to get out to work in that garden bed I was planning on. We are expecting more rain off and on, all through tomorrow and into Monday morning. Hopefully, I’ll get some done in between rainfalls, tomorrow. No using the electric weed trimmer, though. 😁
Hopefully, there is lots of rain reaching the wild fire zones! The rain we’ve been getting is now over the fires to the east of us, but it doesn’t look like any rain is hitting the ones up north.
Now that we’re done with the running around, the rest of the day will be indoor stuff. I do wish I’d been able to get to that bed yesterday. I can’t help but feel a bit resentful that my mother’s behaviour towards the home care worker meant I had to come in and cover for her med assist. That’s very different from having to come in because the home care worker was home sick or something. Ah, well. It is what it is!
I don’t have much left to do in the garden for planting. I’ve decided to plant the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers and red noodle beans in what will be a permanent trellis bed, then transplant surviving strawberries from last year. While getting groceries for my mother in her town, I couldn’t resist picking up some free pumpkin seeds that they give out to promote their pumpkin fest in September. There were 5 seeds in the packet, this year! They have a number of contest categories going on. The main one is for the largest pumpkin, of course. Another category is pumpkins and gourds, with prizes for the “most perfect pumpkin” of various sizes, the most unusual pumpkin or gourd of any size (maybe I should try growing Crespo squash again!), and prizes for carved and decorated pumpkins. Then there are contest categories for fruits and vegetables, baking, canning, handicrafts, floral arrangements, and “junior artwork”, all with sub categories. There’s even a colouring contest for preschoolers. I’ve never actually gone to this festival. We really should. It sounds awesome!
All that to say, I got pumpkin seeds, and will be planting them in this bed, too, once I’ve finished prepping it. That will give me incentive to finish setting up the permanent trellis structure, that will eventually be part of a trellis tunnel with a matching garden bed. Those noodle beans will need something to climb!
For now, though, I’m going to stay inside and appreciate the rain we’re finally getting. We really, really need it!
In the first image, Fluffy has parked her fluffy self on the newly transplanted and covered Arikara squash. Thankfully, she’s not actually squishing a plant – the collars would prevent that! – but there’s hardly any slack on that netting. Still, she managed to make a bed of it!
Then there’s the second image in the above slideshow. Little Grommet in our clothes pin bucket! There’s half a brick inside, so it doesn’t blow away or get knocked over by the kitties. The little bugger is looking all sweet and innocent, but there’s supposed to be more clothes pins around the edge of that bucket.
Wow. It’s amazing how much can get done in a day, when I can actually stay home for the entire day. Thanks to my daughter doing the mowing yesterday, I could actually focus on the garden! I got enough done that I will actually break it up into several posts.
For now, though, the cuteness!
I had a surprise, yet not surprise, when I went into the sun room to start feeding the yard cats.
After all our attempts to get Poirot and her babies into the cat cage, giving up and upgrading her carrier nest to a larger carrier she seemed happy with, she moved her babies.
Which I was really, really happy to see. They will be much safer there, as they become more active.
In a way, I wasn’t surprised that she moved them, though. When I set up the larger carrier for her, I made a nice bed inside with puppy pads. The past couple of mornings, though, I’ve noticed they were really messed up. I tried straightening them out in the front, over the frozen water bottle I’d tucked into the entry to help cool things down, but realized it was completely bunched up. The kittens were lying on the hard bottom. The puppy pad looked like it had been dug at and pulled from the outside. Which suggested that other cats, or even a skunk or a racoon, had gotten up there and was trying to find a stray piece of kibble or something. At least, that’s my theory.
Whatever her reason, though, Poirot put her babies into the nice, soft cat bed in the cat cage. I was even finding her enjoying her space on the blanket in the other cube, where she could still keep a close eye on her little grublings.
Today was a great day to be outside. Our expected high was 19C/66F, we did actually pass that by a degree or two, depending on which app I look at. We reached our high in the early afternoon, and are only just now, at barely past 7pm, starting to cool down ever so slightly. This morning, however, we had a low of only 3C/37F, and tonight we’re expected to drop to 5C/41F. The highs for the next few days are supposed to keep getting hotter each day, so I was glad to be able to get as much done outside today as I did!
While it was still cool this morning, I refilled the leaking rain barrel and, while that was filling, watered the new transplants, as well as the mulberry, sea buckthorn and highbush cranberry. I don’t water the silver buffaloberry, mostly because there are so many of them, and they look like they are doing just fine as they are.
I did some other watering in the main garden area, before pausing to have breakfast, then getting to work on planting and bed preparation. That area gets full sun, so it didn’t take long to start feeling way too hot!
My brother and his wife came by later in the afternoon, so I used that as an excuse to take a hydration break and say high. My brother had a lot of stuff he wanted to get done, though, and I had to get back to the garden, so I left them to it.
One thing about my brother bringing all his equipment out here is that there are some big jobs that can now get done. My SIL took one of those on and has been using their big riding mower to do the outer yard, including the completely overgrown area where the Korean Pine and walnut trees are (though we still have to plant the rest of the seeds). I headed out to see after I finished in the garden, and am just blown away. This is one of the areas I gave up on trying to keep mowed because it was so rough, and I got tired of breaking lawnmowers.
What a difference having the right equipment makes!
We’ve been using their smaller riding mower, and have permission to use the big one, too. We’ll just have to learn how! It’s a zero turn mower, so it doesn’t have a steering wheel.
My brother and his wife selling their acreage is going to change a lot for us. We are going to be seeing them a lot more often, which is always awesome, but with my brother’s help, we’ll be able to start getting things done here that we simply haven’t been able to, mostly because the tools and equipment that should have been here when we moved in had disappeared. That’s one of the reasons my mother originally asked us to move out here, when she still owned the property. They’ve got plans for things completely outside our scope, too. For the past few years, I’ve been feeling like we have been falling behind so much, simply because things are breaking down and wearing out faster than we can do anything about them, even if we did have all the tools and equipment. Add in various health issues of our own, taking care of things for my mother, vehicle issues, etc., and it felt like a losing battle, and I was feeling like I was letting my brother down. Now, I actually feel hopeful again!
Best of all, though, is just being able to see them more often. They’re just really awesome people, and I thank God for them both!
I also thank God for today being such a productive day. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to get so much done in a day! It won’t be much longer before we can safely start transplanting and direct sowing things that have to wait until after or last frost date, and there is still much to prepare!
Well, it got figured out. Sort of. After trying all the usual rebooting and turning things off and on, my husband physically unplugged and re-plugged in all the physical connections. When he was done, we had internet again. How the power being shut off briefly would have caused that, I have no idea.
Speaking of having no idea, at some point yesterday, a cat walked on my keyboard. I have no idea what combinations of buttons got stepped on, but I now have every letter, space and punctuation I type showing up in boxes as the bottom of my screen, along with and “backspace” and “break”. This has happened before, and I figured out how to shut it off, but this time, I just can’t find how again. I’ll have to figure it out later. For now, I’ve got stuff to do!
First up, though, is some cuteness. I puttered around after feeding the outside cats for the evening and discovered two of them on top of the raised bed cover in the old kitchen garden!
One of them is more feral and ran off when I stopped to get my phone out, but Kohl is looking like she’s settling right down for a nap!
It’s a good thing this cover can support their weight, and the netting is secured snug enough that they don’t end up pushing it through the larger openings in the fence wire.
The ornamental apple trees are in full bloom right now, and just buzzing with polinators!
It’s such a gorgeous evening right now, I’m probably going to head out again, after I’m done writing this, even though it’s already past 8:30pm.
This morning was fairly routine, before I headed out to my mother’s. My daughter offered to do weed trimming and mowing for me while I was gone, so we walked about that for a while. She was happy when I suggested using the riding more first, as I knew for sure it had more gas in it. She wasn’t sure we had permission to use it.
I headed out early enough to get a bit of gas before heading to my mother’s, though it turned out to be too early to grab some fried chicken for my lunch, since my mother was getting her Meals on Wheels today. When I got to her place, she had been lying down in bed again, and was really struggling to get up and move around. She says her mobility is getting worse, which I can clearly see. Before she was settled, I offered to apply some of the Voltaren topical painkiller, and she quite happily agreed. Her morning med assist visit is supposed to offer to do that for her, but she doesn’t like the idea of the home care workers touching her like that. Fair enough!
That done, we were starting to settle down to go over her shopping list, when she commented that I was “hiding my beautiful hair”, because I didn’t take my hat off, like I usually do. I told her, yes, I’m hiding my “beautiful hair” because every time she sees my hair, she had something nasty to say about it (even when she compliments my hair, she does it in such a way that it’s actually an insult). Her response was to tell me that it’s because I braid my hair and only little girls wear braids. I reminded her that her mother always kept her very long hair in a braid. Oh, but she wore it rolled up on the back of her head all the time! I said no, not all the time. I remember her braid was so long, it reached her bum.
In the end, she basically said that having short hair is easier (for her), therefore older women should all have short hair like she does. I told her, I find it easier to have a braid. Oh, when you’re in your 90’s like me, you’ll feel different.
*facepalm*
At least she was not being actively nasty about it.
We went over her shopping list and added a few things she hadn’t thought of. She also had a list for things to pick up at the pharmacy, including more Voltaren. Now that she’s using it on her back as well as her knees, she’s going through it a faster, and she doesn’t want to run out. Which is a real switch for her. She usually waits until the last moment before replacing things or getting refills.
Since I was going to the pharmacy anyhow, I decided to go into her lock box and take out those bubble packs that have been driving her nuts. One of them had just a single bubble for her evening meds in it, while another had one bubble of morning meds and one of suppertime meds in it. The equivalent of 1 day’s worth of pills, but each bubble was in a different day of the week. The home care workers refusing to give them to her on the “wrong” day is what’s driving her absolutely bonkers. It’s like she goes into an instant rage. I told her I would take them to the pharmacy. She has about 1 1/2 weeks left in her current bubble packs, so she’ll be getting refills done next week. I told her I would give them to the pharmacist. She started telling me to make sure they knew she had already paid for these (which… of course they do. She wouldn’t have them, otherwise), so they don’t throw them away. I told her, I would explain it to them, and they will take care of things.
One thing I noticed and remembered to ask before I headed out; her Tuesday morning meds are still in their bubble. Today is Friday, and all the other bubbles in between are properly used. What happened on Tuesday?
Apparently, no one showed up to do her med assist on Tuesday morning. I did not get a call, and my mother didn’t call to tell me there was a problem, either.
*sigh*
Today is her day in the common laundry room, so we got that ready, too. My mother, of course, giving me detailed instructions on how to do the laundry, even though I’ve already done her laundry before and know how she likes it done. Then, when her Meals on Wheels arrived, I got her laundry started, then headed out to do her shopping while she enjoyed her lunch. It looked and smelled delicious!
I did remember to grab the bubble packs for the pharmacist and explained the situation. They can’t repackage them, but she did understand why I had to get them out! My mother was getting downright abusive about it.
My mother had only 4 things on her shopping list at the pharmacy, yet it still came out to just over $60. Ouch.
I did her grocery shopping next, and that came out to just under $60! She didn’t need a lot, but it was still quite a few items. On both lists there was an ‘if it’s in the budget’ item that I didn’t get. As it turned out, since I paid the small change myself so she get round numbers back, she had only a dollar left of the cash she gave me for her shopping – and even then, it was because I suggested she might not have enough, after looking at her pharmacy shopping list, so she added a bit more to her envelope of cash she gives me for her shopping.
When I got back, my mother as busily picking up rugs and bashing them with her cane to get the dust off, in preparation for me to sweep her floors. Not something she should have been doing, but she just couldn’t just sit there, waiting for me to come back and do it.
I know that feel.
I did get her to sit down on her comfy chair while I put her groceries away. Then I grabbed her water bottles that needed refilling (there’s a tap in the laundry room that has a water softener on it, that she uses for drinking and cooking water) and switched her laundry to the dryers. She had actually forgotten about her laundry! One machine was still going through its final spin, though, so the timing worked out.
That done, I got the sweeping done for her, then made sure everything was put back properly. I do wish she would get rid of her little rugs. They are such tripping hazards! But, the floor makes her feet cold, so she wants the rugs. 😔
Once everything was settled, I remembered to get out my mother’s blood pressure machine and get a reading. I try to remember to do that every time I’m at her place for any length of time. I got her pulse oximeter set up, too, but it has the hardest time getting a reading. Her fingers are so twisted from arthritis, it doesn’t have proper contact. I had to try three different fingers before we could get a reading!
Then we had a chance to just sit and visit for a bit. She even asked me how things went with my appointment for the truck yesterday. I told her how it went, and now the adjusted was trying to blame things on previous damage, and that I was expecting a call from the autobody shop some time today to get full information. I mentioned the potential issue with painting after they fix the bent box frame, because of the rust.
Mentioning rust turned out to be a distraction. I barely finished talking when she suddenly declared, “now let me tell you something about me!”
She then vaguely indicated towards her stove and was talking about this terrible problem of rust she has. She didn’t have the word for what she was talking about, but seemed to think I could read her mind and know what she meant! Her gestures were so vague that, even though she was verbally saying “stove”, she seemed to be indicating the counter… or the sink? I finally had to ask. That made her instantly furious as she got up and started trying to tear off an element to show me. I was able to get her to stop and before she broke something!
It turned out she was talking about the drip pan under the element.
I had to look up the name of it, just now! 😄
It was completely rusted out, to the point of having holes in it. Which is bizarre, because I know this stove was replaced after she moved here, so it’s less than 10 years old.
My talking about rust on the truck reminded her about her drip pan, and how she had asked the cleaning staff if she was responsible for replacing it, or the public housing department that owns the building. They didn’t know but said they would ask. My mother later got a two page letter explaining the things they did and didn’t cover… but nothing specifically about the drip pan, so she still doesn’t know!
I told her, I’d just replace it myself. I took a picture and passed it on to my siblings so that one of us could pick up a replacement for her, when we have the chance.
After a while, my mother sent me to check on the driers, and told me to take them out if they were dry, even if the machines weren’t done. They were on their cool down cycle, so that’s what I ended up doing.
Once I started folding and putting them away, my mother let me know she was done by sitting in her armchair and turning on her TV, really loud. 😄 When I was done, she barely acknowledged when I gave her a hug and a kiss goodbye. 😄
While all this as going on, I got messages from the family. While my daughter was out using the weed trimmer, which is electric, someone from the electric company came by to say they were going to be shutting off the power for about half an hour. My husband, sweetheart that he is, made sure my computer was shut down, first!
They still had just enough data signal to send text messages, so they could keep me up to date. My daughter saw them working on the main power pole, so she went out to ask about what they were doing. There was just a small part at the top that was getting replaced. She was told they will be increasing the voltage to the power grid, and had to replace parts so they could handle the increase. Which means they are going to every single farm and rural household to do this! That’s going to take a while!
Once the power was back up, the internet was still out. When I got home, I tried contacting the electric company, but they aren’t listed in the phone books we have (yes, we still have phone books!). I even tried calling 411, but only got a busy signal. Eventually, I went outside with my phone and logged into the electric company’s app, dug until I found a number I could call, and got through. After explaining things, he checked, and all was clear at his end. Which meant we had to contact our internet provider. Which is Starlink.
Which would require logging into their app. Which I couldn’t do, because my upgraded phone doesn’t have my husband’s computer generated, unhackable password stored in it – and after fighting with it while I was gone, my husband ended up having to medicate and go to bed for a couple of hours.
Meanwhile, the woman from the autobody shop had called, so I had time to call her back.
*sigh*
First, the insurance company will not cover the cost of the tail light. The damage is not consistent with the claim.
They will cover part of the cost of the painting that will be required, but we’ll be responsible for $140 of it.
We will have to pay 30% of the cover, on top of the $500 deductible. A cover could cost up to $2000, so we could be paying up to another $600 on top of everything else.
Part of the problem is, there’s not enough left of the cover for them to know what a similar replacement would be.
She asked me questions about it and said she would look for photos to send me, so I can see which one is most like what we already had. As for the tail light, I would have to talk directly to the adjuster about that.
Once I had the time, I started going back into my old photos to find pictures of the cover (turned out, there are none that show enough of the cover to be useful) and for proof of what I was saying about the tail light.
I might have to eat some crow.
I found the pictures I took of the truck when it was still in the lot. No crack in the tail light.
No dent under the tail light.
I thought that dent was already there, because I’ve never backed into anything that would cause that damage. The only time I’ve accidentally backed into something, it was the kibble house because I had the tailgate down and couldn’t see how close it was. The damage was to the kibble house, not the truck, and the paint is yellow, not white like what’s in the dent.
The only more recent picture I could find was taken the day I met the Cat Lady for the catio they donated to use. In there, you can see a bit of white paint above the tail light, no cracks in the tail light – but I was taking a picture of the load, not the truck, so the very bottom of the tail light is not in the frame. No proof that the dent was there, with an intact tail light.
Meanwhile, I’m now wondering how that dent got there and when. As for the crack itself, it’s large enough that I would have noticed it earlier. At least, I think I would have! Now I’m second guessing myself.
*sigh*
In the end, though, I have no way to prove that the tail light was intact before the cover was blown off, and nothing to show when that dent showed up.
Well, we’re not going to get any further ahead on this until after the weekend.
As much of a pain that it is, the main thing is to get that frame repaired and a new box cover, and my older daughter has said she will help us with paying for the cost above the deductible.
We’ll find out how much that is, once we figure out what type of cover is closest to what was lost.
Who know getting this taken care of would be such a pain???
The first photo is the carrier she insisted in putting her babies into. As you can see, they fit, but she doesn’t really have room to stretch out.
We have a larger carrier that was sitting on the platform supported by the shelf this little carrier is on. When I had a chance this afternoon, with Poirot outside, I made the move. I prepped a puppy pad on the bottom of the big carrier, removed the loose top of the small carrier, then started moving babies.
Hastings (the almost all white one) had one eye stuck shut, so she (pretty sure they’re all female) got an eye wash, first. She wasn’t happy with it, which got Poirot’s attention from outside. I put Hastings into the big carrier, then moved of Miss Lemon (the white and grey), who did not need any eye washing, before picking up Japp (the black with white on her belly). By then, Poirot was jumping up to the small carrier and the platform and looing around, but make no move to stop me when I picked up Japp.
Instead, she went to the bigger carrier on the platform and joined her other babies!
Japp had a sticky eye that got washed before being returned to mama, who was contentedly nursing. You can see them all in the second picture.
This carrier is large enough that, when I set out her personal food bowl, there was room for it inside the carrier. She was quite happy with that!
I took the small carrier out and gave it a wash. Later on, when Poirot was once again outside, I shifted the bitter carrier to where the smaller one was, where there is a sun shield at the window side to keep them from overheating. It was warm enough that I tucked a frozen water bottle under the puppy pad near the front. The kittens were all cuddled at the far end of the carrier and barely noticed being moved.
Another good thing today is that I got the luffa transplanted, but only because I wasn’t up to doing the other stuff I’d intended to work on today. It was something I could do, just so I could get at least something productive done outside! That will get a separate post, though.
The day actually started out pretty good, in that I got sleep! I’d used the Voltaren stuff for the first time, along with my usual prescription painkillers, before going to bed. At first, I thought it wasn’t making any difference. As soon as I lie down, my hips and knees start becoming acutely painful, as did my left shoulder and elbow. My finger joints were hurting, too, as usual.
Yet, I fell asleep before midnight, and didn’t wake up until the cats woke me up at 4am. I distracted them by topping up their kibble and closed most of them out of my bedroom, so Butterscotch could use the litter box without getting bothered, and went back to bed. I fell asleep again almost immediately and slept another two hours, waking only slightly when I heard someone opening my door to let the cats in before they started scratching at it.
It was the closest thing to a pain free sleep I’ve had in …. I can’t remember.
So this stuff works better than the prescription topical painkiller the doctor tried me on, years ago – and my OA wasn’t as painful as it is now!
Just as an experiment, I applied some to my husband’s lower back, where the worst of his injury is, just a little while ago. If this stuff will help him, too, even a little bit, that would be a huge improvement for his quality of life! Lord knows, the drugs are barely keeping things bearable for him.
Then, there’s the not so good stuff.
While my daughter and I had been coming home from the city, yesterday, I’d got a call from home care letting me know they didn’t have anyone for my mother’s suppertime med assist. So we swung by on the way home and I set her meds out for her – only to have the home care person show up, anyhow!
This morning, after I’d done my morning rounds, I had just enough time to grab breakfast before I needed to go to town for the appointment with the insurance company rep about the truck. I was just sitting down with my food when the phone rang.
It was home care.
They didn’t have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist, though I was assured they had someone for supper and before bed.
My mother is supposed to get her meds between 7 and 9. It was about 8:45 when the call came in.
It takes 25-30 minutes to get to my mother’s place.
So I quickly put my food back in the kitchen and left immediately. I didn’t take the time to call my mother, nor did I try to call her using the hands free unit my brother gave me, because I knew my mother would be angry and start going off on me. I did not need the delay, and I certainly didn’t need that while driving.
It was the right decision.
When I got to my mother’s place, I knocked and went in, calling out “Hi, Mom” a few times. There was no response, but she was in the bathroom – with the door open. In her tiny apartment, that meant I had to close up the bathroom door just to get in far enough to close her entry door!
By then, she had made an acknowledging response, so I started to say that I got a call from home care, telling me there was no one for this morning, while getting her lock box and little bowl for counting out her pills ready.
Then my mother comes out of the bathroom, starting to talk, saw me and stopped in her tracks. Oh! It’s you! I thought it was home care!
…
I don’t think they normally come into her apartment calling out “hi, Mom”, so I guess that meant she didn’t hear properly.
Maybe it’s time to get her hearing tested! I don’t know that it’s ever been done for her.
I moved aside so my mother could sit in her chair at her dining table, before working on the combination lock. My mother was still standing just outside the bathroom, leaning on the other chair at her table, and half blocking my way.
She was angry, and wouldn’t move.
After it was clear she wasn’t going to sit down, I went back to opening up the lock box.
My mother was on a rant.
She is obsessed with those pills from missed days in older bubble packs. She wanted me to give them to her. I had already mentioned I didn’t have much time, because of my appointment in town (a 15-20 minute drive from our place, but a 30+ minute drive from my mother’s., which I’d told her about yesterday.
She started saying that, if it was illegal for them to take pills from different days to give to her, then it’s also illegal for them to not show up to give her her pills at all, and having me come out to do it for them.
All I could say is, Mom, I don’t have time for this.
She eventually sat down, but was now accusing me of “being on their side”. Then she started saying how we (my siblings and I) are not taking care of her and leaving her in the hands of strangers. All I could say at the time was, none of us live here. I certainly didn’t have time to go into it beyond that!
I got her pills from the correct bubble for the day out, which got her angry about the pills again. I was “on their side”. I got the pills in her little bowl and made notes about what was doing in the notebook I now keep in the lock box for the home care workers to see, and got her inhaler out.
She did take her inhaler, though that was weird. She’s supposed to take a few deep breaths first, exhale, inhale the puffer, hold for a count of ten, then rinse out her mouth. She even had a cup of water waiting for that.
She started taking the breaths, but had trouble doing the exhale before using the puffer. After a few times of not taking a puff, she started forcing herself to burp. For some time, she’s been going on about how she burps so much, and it’s such a problem, only to eventually say that she’s making herself burp because it helps her chest pains.
…
Whatever.
This was the first time I’ve seen/heard her doing it like this, though. First, I have no idea how she was doing it. Where was she getting all this abdominal air from? Second, it was really really gross – and it takes a lot to gross me out! She managed to keep it up for almost a minute, too, before finally taking her puffer.
That done, I started putting things away into the lock box, and she started railing again – but not taking her pills. She said that she was thinking of taking a hammer to the lock box. I told her, that (her attitude) is why you have a lock box! Then I told her (again) that I had to go to my appointment and was in a hurry. Oh, you’re always in a hurry.
…
So, yeah. She was nasty right from the moment she saw it was me and not the home care worker, right to the moment I left.
I did make it to the appointment location in time (it was just in a parking lot!). There was someone else being finished up, so I had time to send messages to my family about how things went with my mother. I wasn’t quite done when the other vehicle got their paperwork and left, and the insurance rep came to me.
We talked about what happened, and he took pictures.
With the box cover, he started talking about how this was the second one he had this week, and that these Velcro types have a habit of getting caught in the wind. Over time, the Velcro just doesn’t hold as well, getting full of dust or whatever. Basically, making it sound like it was more likely a product fault, which the insurance wouldn’t cover.
I showed him the bent part of the frame and the broken tail light. Under the tail light, there’s a dent from before we had the truck, and the crack in the tail light ends just above it. He tried to say that the impact from whatever caused this dent broke the tail light. I told him, the tail like was not broken before. I did mention that we’ve only had the vehicle for just over a year. While it’s certainly likely that, whatever caused that dent had broken the tail light, it had been fixed before we bought it.
One of the things that was noted and the took pictures of was a crack in the fender. The truck had rusted spots when we bought it. I don’t really care about what are essentially cosmetic issues. Along the edge of the fender, framing the wheel well, there’s a section with more rust. The crack is in that section. It actually is a new crack, but I never bothered mentioning it, since it was clearly cracked because of the older rust damage that was already there. I didn’t bother telling him that the crack was new. I just confirmed that the rust and other little dents and dings were old damage.
After he did his inspection, he went to his own vehicle to process the claim to get an estimate. That gave me time to finish updating the family.
End result with the claim.
He couldn’t even find the replacement value of the box cover, since there was nothing like it in his system. The estimated repair cost he came up with was just over $1000, and we could pay our $500 deductible. A replacement cover would be a new, improved version, so we would also have to pay 30% of the difference for “betterment”.
Once I got the estimate, I went straight to the company we’d be taking it to, which was just a block or two away. I had talked to them on the phone, previously, and our mechanic recommended them to me, as they are authorized to handle insurance claims like this.
Of course, since I literally just got the estimate, it was too early to be in the system for them to download the claim file. She did go out to look at the truck with me.
As she couldn’t look into the claim file to see the details, she couldn’t give me any hard information. She did explain to me that, with when they fix the bend in the frame, so new cover can be installed, they will have to paint the frame. That area of rust, where it was thin enough to crack, would be a problem when it comes to painting. I told her, I really don’t care about the paint, but it’s something they are required to do.
So… we might have to pay extra for rust repair, as that is not at all covered by the insurance, nor would I expect it to be.
As we were talking about the 30% betterment and so on, I told her, we might not be able to cover much. We can do the $500 deductible, but anything beyond that, well… we’re on a fixed income. She understood.
Tomorrow, she will download the file, then talk to the insurance company. When she has some hard numbers and confirmed data, she will give me a call.
I completely forgot, though. Tomorrow, I’m going to be at my mother’s. I’ve got her grocery shopping to do, plus I expect to be doing her laundry (Fridays are her scheduled turn for the shared laundry room) and whatever else she needs doing. She’ll have her Meals on Wheels for lunch, but I would want to make sure she has things she can easily put together for her meals during the weekend.
I’ll just have to make sure someone in the house has the phone with them while I’m gone!
So we may or may not be able to get the truck fixed and get a new box cover. We’ll figure that out, some time tomorrow.
By the time I got home, I was wasted. I’d spent probably less than 5 minutes at my mother’s, and she sucked all the energy out of me in that short time. When I got home, I ended up crashing for a couple of hours. While I certainly needed the rest, I woke up feeling like I’d wasted precious time in my day, plus I didn’t have the physical energy left to do most of the things on my to-do list. I won’t be able to them tomorrow, either, because I won’t be home. I’ll be at home mother’s, and I know that by the time I get home from helping her out, I’ll have zero energy to get anything done outside. Thank God I’ve got the girls taking care of things inside, so I don’t have to worry about that, too!
Then, to top things off, while I was at my computer, getting some stuff done while listening to a YouTube video, my sound suddenly disappeared.
After much checking of the system, everything was fine.
I checked the connections on the speakers, which required moving way too many things to access the back of the tower, that all checked out fine, too.
I tested it using my Bluetooth sleep headphones.
They worked fine.
I eventually gave up in frustration, then headed outside to feed the outside cats and get at least one things accomplished in potting up the luffa.
My husband, sweetheart that he is, unhooked and brought over set of speakers for me. They can be plugged into the tower, or be used with Bluetooth, so when I got back inside, I got my speakers out and hooked his up on Bluetooth.
They didn’t work.
We checked the power bar. It seemed fine. I flicked the switch back and forth, but there was no change.
Eventually, my husband was able to look and see where I’m too short to see, and discovered the power bar’s plug to the wall was half out. I keep that blocked off so that cats can’t mess with the cords, so it took some doing for him to be able to reach and plug it back in.
Still nothing.
I tried the switch on the power bar again.
It turned on.
*sigh*
My husband, meanwhile, took my speakers to test them out on his computer. It turned out that there was a loose connection, even though I’d checked them, and they seemed fine!
*sigh*
I didn’t have the energy to switch them back again, so I now have my husband’s Bluetooth speakers, and he’s got my old ones. These were speakers he kept on his headboard to play basically white noise to help him sleep.
Well, we’ll see how it works out.
My daughter just swung by a little while ago and showed me something else that I can add to the “good” list for the day. She just spent the past couple of hours in the basement, with baking soda, water and a toothbrush, cleaning the smoke damage off the book stand I salvaged form our tiny, historical burned out church after the closing services. I’m still debating going back for the benches or a pew, if someone else hasn’t already taken them. I know I’ll regret it if I don’t, but we just don’t have anywhere to store them until they can be used in the future.
I remember admiring this book stand when I was an altar server. The one that was used regularly was on the altar, and was a rather plain wooden stand. This one was sparkly “gold” with glittering “gems” in the front, and was kept in a tiny room on one side, where the priest got ready for services. Us altar servers would get ready in a tiny room on the opposite side then, just before mass started, cross over to join the priest for the procession. The room where we would get ready is where the back door was located, and that was where the person who broke in, started the fire. That room was completely burnt out, but the other room was surprisingly undamaged, other than smoke. This book stand was completely blackened with smoke, except for where there had been a crochet doily on the adjustable book rest. That left a clearer pattern in the smoke.
My daughter wasn’t able to get the black completely off; she didn’t want to damage the surface by scrubbing more. She did get it looking gold again, and while not as clear and shiny as they used to be, the glass “gems” look like gems again. She did an amazing job! I’ll have to try and get a picture of it in nice, bright light.
My mother was very happy when I told her I’d taken it home, and asked if she could see it again. I should bring it with me, tomorrow, to show it to her.
After showing me her handiwork, my daughter asked me what there was that she could do for me outside, tomorrow, while I’m gone. She’s going to try and finish the lawn mowing for me. I still have to refill the jerry can of fuel for the mowers, but haven’t been able to get done, yet, so she’ll do as much as she can before running out of gas. 😄
As for me, I should probably call my mother about tomorrow. Her evening med assist should be happening around now, so I know she’ll be up and about, at least!
Then I’ll share about how the transplanting went in my next post. 😊😊
Last night, things did drop to freezing, so I’m glad we brought the transplants in from the portable greenhouse last night. When I headed out to do the morning rounds, it was only about 1C/34F, but it was just below 10C/50F in the portable greenhouse, so they got moved back in this morning.
After I did some repairs.
The garbage can I’m using as a heat sink doesn’t have a lid, so I’d been using a square of leftover 3/4″ rigid insulation as a lid, weighed down with a brick, and holding the thermometer. With the tears at the bottom of the door zippers from wind damage, cats can get in and out. They don’t jump up onto the wire shelves much; the wire forms 1″ squares, and I don’t think it’s comfortable for them to try and walk on. They do like to sit on the insulation, though.
Well, I came out one morning, and the insulation was broken in to, fallen into the garbage can, along with the brick and the thermometer. I haven’t spotted where it’s leaking yet, but it was less than half full at the time.
Looking around for something else to cover the garbage can with, the only thing I found that was large enough was one of the old window screens we used for things like curing onions in the fall. The smallest of the screens is still a pretty long rectangle, but it cover the entire top of the garbage can, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, for the last couple of nights, I’ve been finding it knocked off the garbage can. This morning, it was knocked off again, in spite of my efforts to stabilize it, and this time a corner tore through the back of the plastic cover on the greenhouse.
*sigh*
I taped it up as best I could with clear duct tape. For now, I’ve tried covering the garbage can with overlapping bin lids and the broken pieces of rigid insulation from before.
Most of the transplants are too call to use the lids on the bins, so we can’t stack them all like we could before. Being able to use lids on just two of the bins to stack on top of is the only reason we can fit all the trays and bins on the chest freezer in the old kitchen. So the transplants got to spend the day in the relative warmth of the portable greenhouse for the day, but we’ve already brought them in again for the night. From the forecast, we’ll probably have to do it again for one more night before we can safely leave them in the portable greenhouse overnight again.
The winter sown bed that has a plastic mesh cover on it seemed to handle the overnight cold just fine. I can see there are some carrots coming up, and the others whatever radishes, beets and turnips that survived the winter. The radishes should grow the fastest, so we should be able to identify and harvest those earliest. That will make more space for the other root vegetables in the process. For now, though, I have no real clue what is what!
In the next photo, you can see the plastic over where we’d winter sown flowers was torn badly by the wind. All it took was a small tear at one end, from the tip of one of the bamboo stakes set across the top, and this morning, it was all wrecked.
There are a lot of seedlings coming up in there but I recognize them from when we grew pumpkins and gourds here, last year. They are all weeds.
This bed will be replanted with flowers, soon.
In the last photo, difficult to see against the soil, is a potato sprout! Some of the potatoes we planted already had pretty long sprouts on them, and one of them broke through the soil rather quickly.
The mesh over this bed is good for keeping the cats out, but the mesh isn’t fine enough to keep the Chinese Elm seeds out! The seed development hasn’t anywhere near its peak, yet, and already there are seeds everywhere.
I so look forward to when we can get rid of all the Chinese elm. They cause way too many problems!
After I did my rounds, I had a quick breakfast, then headed out. Before I get into that, though, I must share the cuteness!
In the first photo, if you look carefully, you can see there are 7 kittens, from 3 litters, mashed into that cat bed! The only one “missing” is Sir Robin, who was already out and running around.
The next photo was taken while I was gathering the bowls out of the cat house entry, for the evening feeding.
I was able to get a good photo of Poirot’s three this evening. The black on (Inspector Japp) looks like it’s got a sticky eye that will need washing. The mostly white one – Miss Lemon – is getting pretty active, and I’ve actually seen it fumble out of the carrier briefly, then scramble right back on. The white and grey – Captain Hastings – is also pretty mobile but, so far, has not gone all the way out of the carrier door. Once they get too mobile, Poirot is going to have to put up with them being brought down to floor level!
Last of all is the crowd inside the isolation shelter. I left things plugged in today, for the heat lamp, and it seems they really appreciated it!
Today was too cold and wet to get much done outside, so it was a good time to run some errands, mostly at Walmart. I did get a start on one wet and potentially messy job, though. The new septic ejector is working great, now that it’s no longer frozen, but with the excavation, there is now a lower area at the end of the metal sheet we have to divert the fluid away from the ejector. Normally, it would have naturally flowed towards a low spot nearby, but now it forms a sort of pool. I headed out with a garden hoe and used it to create a small trench to drain the fluid towards the low area, but to get the pool to drain, more small trenches had to be made, because it is all so uneven. In some places, I was able to use the hoe to move some of the clay/gravel nearby, into the lower areas around the edges. What it really needs is for the deepest parts to be filled, but that will be a job for another time. For now, I just want more of it to drain away. The last thing we want is for a small pond to form so close to the ejector. That will prevent the saturated ground around the ejector from drying out, and it’ll just freeze again, next year.
Of course, I sent progress photos to my brother and his wife, so they were up to date about it.
No, I’m not going to post pictures of pooled septic greywater here! 😄
When I did as much as I could and headed back to the house, I made sure to hose down my rubber boots. So much clay was stuck to the bottom of my boots, they felt a couple of pounds heavier, each!
Once I was cleaned up and changed, and had a quick breakfast, I headed out. My brother and his wife aren’t too far away from the Walmart I was going to so, before I left, I messaged them where I was going and asked if they wanted to meet for lunch or something. It turned out their schedule was open, so we made arrangements to meet at a restaurant near the Walmart I was going to.
I got there early, so I went to my other intended stop first; the dollar store nearby. I wanted to pick up more ground staples – can’t have too many of those! – as well as packages of shorter stakes. I got two packs of 25 bamboo stakes, which I am thinking of using to around the snap pea bed to support whatever I find to set around it and keep the deer from eating our peas. I also picked up four 2 packs of 2′ metal stakes. I am thinking to use them to support the hoops intended for the two 4′ square beds. I will probably cut them in half, though. We’ll see when the time comes.
Once done there, I made my way to the restaurant and met up with my brother and his wife. We had a lovely visit. They also talked about some of the things they are planning to do here at the farm, that we aren’t able to do. One of the things that is badly needed it to get more gravel on our driveway. My brother, however, remembers that the last time my late brother used gravel from our own gravel pit, it turned out to make a real mess when things got wet. Likely because there’s so much clay mixed in. They are thinking of buying crushed limestone, or even slag. Slag would be ideal, as it compacts to form a sort of concrete surface. They covered their own driveway on the property they sold with slag, and were very happy with it.
They also told me that they will have a push mower for us to use! We already have permission to use their riding mower, which is currently being stored in the garage near our truck. They’ve actually used it themselves, around where their trailer is stored, but that area is way too rough. Once they can access the tractor stored in the garage again, they’ll use their big rotary mower to cut that area, and my SIL wants to harrow it to level it somewhat.
With our “new” push mower (it’s just a couple of years old) in the small engine shop still, as they try to find the parts needed to fix it (which is highly unlikely), my brother told me about my mother’s old lawnmower that I had talked about wanting to bring in to get fixed, instead. I know it needs a new prime pump, along with general servicing, after sitting for so long. It turns out this mower was actually theirs, originally. They’d bought another push mower for my mother, but the self propeller was too fast for her, and she couldn’t understand that if she let go of the bar, the self propeller would stop and she would just push it. This lawn mower’s self propeller wasn’t as fast, so they ended up trading, and she was very happy with that! My brother told me not to bother taking it in to be serviced. He said he would look it over and could probably fix it himself.
Which means he would be doing that here.
Which means my daughters and I will have the chance to watch and learn, and eventually be able to do it ourselves!
I look forward to that!
After a very enjoyable lunch, we parted ways briefly. They needed to shop at Walmart, too, so we crossed paths a couple of times there, too!
One of the things I wanted to do was look at the garden centre, but it was too cold for the plants to be outside. Instead, the shelves were all jammed around the outdoor furniture displays, and not really accessible. Aside from being crowded, there was a group of people that were just hanging out around the display furniture, while their kids ran around. I didn’t actually need anything, so I moved on.
The main thing I needed to get was more kibble for the outside cat and canned cat food for the inside cats. My brother had gifted me with one of his vehicle hands free devices, so I can take calls while driving. After checking with the girls at home to see if we had an extra USB-A charging cable, I ended up grabbing one for the truck. It took me and a saleswoman quite some time to find one! They only had two, and I picked the longer cable. So I can now link my phone to this device and it will automatically pick up calls for me. My brother is pretty much the only person who calls me on my cell phone – either him, or home care to say there’s no one to cover for my mother’s med assist – so I don’t expect to use it often, but it’s good to have. I never, ever, touch my phone while driving. We’ve lost friends to people talking while driving.
The shopping done, I had a much more pleasant drive home than the drive in. When I left home, it was rather nice, but the further south I drove, the worse the weather. At first, it was like there was a mist all over. Then I saw precipitation, but couldn’t tell if it was rain, or snow! Then it became very clearly snow, and coming down pretty heavy. It all melted on contact, though, so there was no accumulation anywhere. Just poor visibility!
Then it was done and gone, like driving through to the other side of a wall!
The drive home, however, was warmer and dry, which was nice. Once home, the girls helped me unload and they put the groceries away while I did the evening cat feeding, including wet cat food for the kittens. I was able to close up four of the bigger kittens in the sun room, so they could eat their fill. With the bowls that get set into the cat house entry, it’s more of a hope that they and their moms will get a chance to eat their special food (for inside the cat house, I include kitten kibble, too) before some of the other adult cats eat it all. Once they had a good long time to fill their little bellies with wet cat food, I opened up the sun room again and a daughter helped me do my evening rounds, then bring the transplants in for the night.
We’re at 5C/41F as I write this, just past 8pm. It is supposed to very slowly keep getting colder all night, reaching our expected low of 2C/36F at about 6am. That has been the coldest time of the night for the past while, too. Our daytime highs are supposed to warm up nicely over the next few days, but the overnight lows aren’t expected to get much better for some time. At least the days will be warm enough to get work done outside. Including our first mowing of the lawn, once we get the wagon out and go over it to pick up all the smaller branches that have been coming down all winter. The temperatures will be perfect for getting some manual labour done!
So overall, today has been a very good day – but then, any day when I see my brother and his wife is a very good day! 😊😊😊
