You might need to click through to Instagram to see the above video. Some of the boys really fight for attention! Broccoli decided to get in on the action, which was nice. Still not to the point that we’d be able to get her into a carrier and to a vet. I’m trying to think of some way we can isolate her before she has her kittens. She has her nest somewhere in the outer yard, or possible across the road, so we don’t see her kittens until they’re old enough to follow her to solid food. In the past, we’ve used the basement for this, but the set up down there has changed and is going to change some more, so that’s not an option anymore.
I counted at least 21 tulips coming up. Some, I can’t quite be sure if what’s poking through the leaf litter is a tulip plant, or something else.
I can see something has been digging in the leaves, but not into the soil. Skunks will dig for grubs, but there are no divots of soil pulled up, so I’m guessing it’s cats. They can get in and out of the fencing around this patch fairly easily. That’s not much of a problem. We just need to keep the deer out!
As for the day, I forgot something I should have picked up for my husband at the pharmacy yesterday, so I’m going to have to go into town again, after they open at noon. I checked on the remaining pre-germinating Wild Bunch squash seeds, and there are more ready to pot up. Time to get some of the melon seeds pre-germinating, too, and maybe some other winter squash that need the extra time.
Morning rounds are so much more enjoyable, now that it’s warmed up, and I don’t have to slog through snow, slush or mud. 😂
First, the cuteness!
Broccoli let me pet her today.
She is so very round.
I counted 32 yard cats today, including 5 that were following around one of the white and greys that was obviously in heat.
*sigh*
Of all of them, the least feral one was Shop Towel!
I tended to the raised bed that was planted in yesterday.
In the first photo, you can see that the stove pellet mulch has absorbed moisture and broken apart into sawdust. The second photo is after I gently spread it around. I like using stove pellets as mulch when direct sowing because even things with small seedlings, like the spinach, can easily push their way through the light and fluffy sawdust.
I also managed to get a picture of an emerging snow crocus!
We’re not seeing many, yet, and the few we do see tend to be too far from the path for me to get a decent photo. Looking at the forecast, I was happy to see rain, but a closer look at the hourly forecast shows that we have an only 4% chance of rain, so… none. At best, we’ve got a 25% chance of rain some time tonight.
After finishing my rounds, I headed to the post office to pick up a couple of parcels. One was a courier delivery, so timing wasn’t an issue, but the other was to our postal box, and I wanted to pick it up before the post office closed at 11:30.
There was nothing there.
Strange, but okay.
My husband was surprised, as he got email notifications for 4 different parcels, instead of just the 2 I was expecting. When I had the chance, I went online to check the tracking, which has timestamps on it.
Two showed “attempted delivery” times that were shortly after I left. Two others had time stamps that were after the post office was closed. A fifth (!!) simply said “delivered today”, which would have been a courier.
One of the packages that came in has our sulfur in it; last I checked the tracking information, that one was supposed to come in on Thursday, so it’s three days early!
The post office opens up again at 2, so I’ll head out again this afternoon.
Then it’s back to work in the garden beds! Woohoo!!
Well, it stayed cold enough that the snow we got is still there – with a bit more. We might get more flurries later today, and then the wind is supposed to pick up.
It’ll all be gone by tomorrow.
I counted 33 yard cats this morning – but I didn’t see Sad Face anywhere! Which means there’s another new one in the bunch.
I plugged the heat lamp in the sun room back in. They had really enjoyed the warmer temperatures and only a few continued to hang out in the sun room, but now that the temperatures have dropped again and the snow is back, every time I look out the bathroom window, there’s a crowd. Several crowds, actually, on and under the platform.
They will not be happy when they loose their platform so I can set up for my plants. 😁
Breakfast in the snow!
I got a good shot of the cat with the damaged eye. The hematoma doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller, that I can tell, but he seems to have no vision issues. He’s certainly more lively and active now, after having spent several days being quite lethargic and shivering in the sun room. I’m glad he sought out the warmth and shelter when he was feeling sick. Now that he’s improving, the down side is, he’s no longer letting me touch him. I managed to sneak pet his back while I was petting Driver (on the far right of the photo), but he quickly moved away. He is less skittish then he used to be, at least. The cats were all very hungry this morning, so I let him be rather than interrupt his breakfast.
With the chill and snow out there, I wanted to share something more spring like, so here is a video from MI Gardener to enjoy.
Some of these “hacks” are things I’ve already been doing, or trying to do. The first one is to have hose guards on his raised bed corners. That’s something I’ve appreciated about the higher raised beds, as the beds themselves are the hose guards. The only problem is that I typically have several hoses joined together, and the couplings tend to get caught on things. I’ve seen people use curtain rods they picked up at thrift stores; the round kind, where one half slides over the other to adjust the width. Setting them so the outside half is on the top allows it to rotate as the hose is pulled around it, which keeps things from getting stuck.
In the comments under the video, someone described how they’ve put permanent hose guards in their beds, made from small fence posts – then topped them with tennis balls for safety, so their grand kids are less likely to hurt themselves on them. What a great idea!
Using a board across the beds is something else I do, though I don’t have the knees to get right on one and squat to reach the soil! Mostly, I use them to lean against and support myself with one hand, while using the other to do what I need to do. Handily, we’ve got quite a bit of scrap boards that can be used for that, though they tend to be pretty rotten and damaged, and I’ve had more than a few of them crack and break up!
I’ll have to remember the “using the pot to make a transplant hole the right size”, tip.
With the carrots, I’ve used scrap boards to cover the seeds until they germinate. Only because I tend to have plenty of those, but not cardboard! What’s fun is to move them aside to check for germination – and finding frogs sheltering under them! Slug eating frogs must always be encouraged. 😁
I like his pretty dibbler tool. Since mobility is an issue for me, I tend to use something longer. Some days, I’ve used 4′ long support stakes as dibblers. Those are handy to mark out shallow trenches for smaller seeds, too. If I need larger holes to plant in, we’ve got lots of sticks or tree branches that will do!
Another commenter mentioned a tip I’ve heard of before that I definitely want to try, for the low raised beds. Get a piece of PVC pipe and use it to drop seeds in place. That would solve both mobility/pain issues, and short-people-like-me reach issues!
Just a side note, when it comes to reach; the lower the bed, the harder the reach. So for a low raised bed, accessible from both sides, like what he has, I’d recommend going no more than 3′ wide, but with a high raised bed, 4′ wide works just fine.
I’m really looking forward to winter finally being done with us!
Yesterday’s rain turned into snow overnight. At the time I was doing my rounds, it was more rain than snow, but still coming down.
It won’t last long. Areas such as the driveway are full of puddles but no snow, and we are expected to have a high of 8C/47F today, so it won’t last long. A couple more chilly days, then things are supposed to warm up again.
While giving the yard cats their food and water, I tried to do a head count. Every time I counted, the number got higher! I counted 33 at most.
A couple of the ladies are definitely looking round. With Adam and Brussel, it’s hard to tell, since they have such long fur, but I’m sure they’re getting big, too.
While checking the trial came files yesterday, I found that cats had triggered the gate cam a couple of times, with their baby making activities, as well as just rambling around the driveway.
Including one cat with distinctive patterns I’ve never seen before!
My guess is, he lives across the road from us. I know our own cats go across to two different properties on the regular, and I know other cats live there, too. One of them likely just followed ours back. The gate seems to be as far as he went, though, because we’ve never seen him in the yard.
On a completely different note, I’m not sure I solved any problems by using Google Photo to store images to post here. I tried it before but forgot what wasn’t working about it. Now I remember.
WP seems to still be storing the images in my own WP media files account. They’re still taking up space.
I think.
The image of the cats above, for example, was uploaded to my Google Photo account (which comes with my blog’s gmail address). After using the image block to select the image using Google Photo, it works fine in the post – but then shows up in my WP media files. If I look at the address for the image itself, it goes back to WP media. Which means I save nothing by saving the files externally. WP just automatically stores it locally. With some of the recent images, I hadn’t resized them first (I having worked the kinks out of using the software on my new computer yet), so that means full size files are being uploaded into my blog posts.
Except…
While adding the above photo, I notice it said “inserting” image, not “uploading” image, as it would if I were adding the image from, say, out of my phone.
It could be just a thumbnail showing up in my media files.
The main reason I have my doubts about it is because I’ve sometimes used the free images available through WP. They specifically say that if you use these images, they don’t take up storage space in your account. Yet those images also show up in my media files, and if I open the image in a new tab, I can see it tracks back to my media storage, not Pexels or Openverse. I don’t see anything in the source code that suggests the images are anywhere but in my own account’s storage.
Yet, these images are “inserted” not “uploaded”.
So…
Are the images I am storing externally taking up space in my account or not?
All I know is, my storage space just went from 98.2% full to 98.3% full.
With the current conditions, and the melted snow quickly disappearing, I decided to do some wild sowing.
I’m also going to do a test, since I’m almost out of storage space for files on my WP account. It now allows images to be uploaded from Google Photos, so that’s where these are from. Please let me know if you can also see them!
A friend sent me a whole bunch of old seeds. These are all the flower seeds from the stack. Not all the packages had years on them that I could find, but one of them was dated 2020.
I dumped all the seeds into an old spice shaker with very large holes in the lid. The old prescription bottles with Icelandic Poppy seeds from 2018 form the majority of these.
This is where they went.
This low area on the North side of our driveway still has a bit of standing water and the soil is still saturated in places. It gets full sun and. It’s an area that’s too rough to mow, so it’s as good a place as any to sow some random seeds! I simply broadcast the seeds as widely as I could over the area.
The chances that such old seeds would germinate at all is low to begin with. They will also have to contend with birds finding and eating them. How many will even have enough contact with the soil to take root is another factor.
Still, who knows? We might have ourselves quite a mix of flowers growing here this year.
Now, since this way of posting photos seems to be working (at least as far as I can tell on my own computer!), here’s a bonus.
I eventually counted 29 cats this morning, though not all together at the kibble bowls.
Hypotenose really, really wanted attention this morning!
It’s finally thawed out enough to dig into. I just loosened things up this morning. There are many roots and rhizomes that need to be removed, some of which are now drying in the sun until I can get back to it later.
Syndol would follow me along as I worked my way down the bed, reaching out every now and then to bat at the garden fork, or the roots I was pulling up!
He’s such a cutie!
On another note, my younger daughter now has a nice new pair or steel toed shoes.
I confirmed that the pain in my left foot was from my outer toes hitting the edge of the steel toe cap. The problem is not so much the shoe, as my deformed feet. *sigh* This is not something that is going to get better, so I got my daughter to try them on and walk around in them for a while. She can feel the edge of the toe cap, but it’s not a problem for her.
So it’s back to my old ones or my rubber boots, until I can get another pair of steel toes. I’m really glad my daughter can use these new ones!
Before working on the bed by the chain link fence, I uncovered the carrot bed and removed more of the mulch over the carrots. Unfortunately, there are still frozen chunks that just won’t move. The three beds in this location do get quite a bit of light throughout the day, but no morning light, and that seems to be making the difference.
Which means the carrots frozen in the bed are likely not salvageable. Lesson learned!
Oh! I got a call while I was writing the above. The Cat Lady updated us on Wolfman. He did get those fancy drops and his first treatment, and his eye is already looking almost completely healed! The vet says that for sure the injury was blunt force trauma of some kind. There may even be a tiny fracture in the bone. We’re at a complete loss as to how this happened! He’s going back to the vet on Monday, and they’ll get a look at the back of his eye to see if there’s any other damage to be concerned about, but so far, he’s healing up really well.
Such good news!
Now… where was I?
Ah. Garden stuff!
Before heading outside, I turn on the lights for the seedlings and check on them. Check these out!
They are just exploding in size! Even the comparatively small luffa are growing so quickly! I’m quite thrilled.
I will have to decide, though; will I thin them by removing, or transplanting? I’m very tempted to try transplanting the extras. The more potential transplants, the more likely we’ll have at least one survive outside.
I still have time to decide.
Among my goals for the day is to finish up that bed at the chain link fence, but I will start on that after I’ve gone to the post office when it reopens for the afternoon. According to the tracking information, our potatoes are ready for pick up at the post office, and the owner of the store has signed for our Fed Ex delivery, so that’s ready for pick up, too.
I hadn’t decided on what will be planted in the bed by the chain link fence. Once that’s done, it should be suitable for the 1kg of Caribe potatoes. Then we’ll just have to prepare space for the 2kg of Butterball potatoes.
We haven’t named this one, but that pattern over his nose makes me think of Nosencrantz, every time I see him!
Nosencratnz is doing well at her new home, btw. 😊
I counted 32 yard cats this morning. Remarkably, while I was petting a bunch of the males as they ate on the cat house roof, Broccoli not only allowed me to pet her, but even pushed her way through the boys to get better pets! Even Caramel let me pet her, in between trying to bite my hand.
Yesterday evening, I got a call from my mother, and arranged for me to come over today to help her with her shopping. This morning, however, I got another call from her. She had a rough night, and wanted me to decide for her, whether she should go to the clinic in her town. At least she wasn’t talking about going to the emergency! That would have been in the nearer city. After talking to her for a bit, it seems that she had issues with heartburn again, but my mother can’t quite understand what that means, and always tries to blame whatever food the TV or magazines tell her is bad. We talked for a while and I reminded her of the list of foods that can make it worse. I remember she had it taped to a cupboard door in her kitchen at some point, but I have no idea if it’s still there. She keeps insisting on eating foods that are known to cause heart burn, though, then blames other foods that don’t, but that she has decided are bad for her. It’s really hard to talk to her about this stuff, because she can’t understand so much, including basic anatomy. We have tried to explain things to her, even showing her diagrams or looking up medical information, but if it doesn’t match what she had decided it is, she doesn’t accept it and promptly forgets it.
One thing that did seem to finally get through was talking about processed meats. She keeps trying to say she needs to eat less meat. If it weren’t for the meat we’ve been bringing over for her, she’d be eating nothing but garlic sausage and deli chicken. At least she eats eggs! I spent some time talking about how, as we get older, it’s important for us to eat high quality protein, and some of the ingredients in processed meats might be triggering her heartburn. She seemed to actually hear me for a change.
Still, what she wanted was for me to decide it I “wanted” to take her to the doctor or not. I told her no, that’s her decision, and we’ll see how she feels when I got there!
So I left I bit earlier and picked up Chinese food for lunch, which she actually did eat. As we were talking on the phone, she’d mentioned going there for onion rings (she still thinks they serve cat meat, because someone said something, and she saw a thing on the news …. ). Onions are among the things she shouldn’t be eating. Deep fried foods are also among the things she shouldn’t be eating!
She hadn’t had breakfast, though, so she was happy for the meal!
There was one unfortunate surprise, though.
When I reached her door, I saw some things on her walker, which she parks next to it. There was a jar wrapped in paper two, a carton of eggs, and two carrots.
Under it was a piece of paper.
I immediately recognized our vandal’s handwriting.
It seems he’d swung by her place, left the stuff, but never knocked or anything like that. Who knows how long it was sitting there.
I brought the stuff inside and ended up reading the letter out to her. It was all the usual stuff about the farm and me and my brother, some invented accusations, and how she’s going against the wishes of my late father and GOD!!! Complete with underlines. Then he threw in a comment about going to the doctor. From past calls he’d made to her, before his number was finally blocked, he told her he was dying, but didn’t say from what. He still seems to think she can give him the farm somehow? Either way, it’s clear he still thinks the property should go to him, but 1) he already has a farm and 2) if he’s dying, what’s he going to do with it, anyhow? It’s not like he’s got any kids to leave it to.
Our theory is, he’d simply sell it. It’s the money he’s really interested in.
The paper towel wrapped jar turned out to be soup in what looked like a small mayonnaise jar – at least it wasn’t a pickled herring jar this time! My mother was so disgusted after hearing what was in the letter, she didn’t want any of it. At least not anything that he cooked (it was full of onions and chunks of sausage, anyhow!).
Instead, we enjoyed our Chinese food and had a good conversation. She was feeling a lot better once she was up and out of bed, and I talked some more about how sleeping more upright can be a help (another thing that’s on the list I made for her, along with food choices). It would be really helpful for her to have a hospital bed, like my husband – it would even be better for her and her knees – but no. She doesn’t want to “bother anyone”. ?? In our province, our home care service department can provide a hospital bed as a “loan” – that way, if anything breaks or whatever, they simply replace it. The company they get these from sends a couple of people over to bring it in, assemble it and test it out. Easy peasy. But no. She even has a chair my brother bought for her that can be reclined almost flat and would be good to use as a sleep chair, but she won’t do that, either.
As we were talking about how being upright and moving around obviously helped out, she then suggested that if she hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning, she probably would have died.
*sigh*
She was clearly feeling better, but not enough to run errands, so we went over her list. She writes her stuff out in a mix of English, Polish or English with Polish spelling. Then she makes little doodles of what they are, beside each item.
I was very confused when I saw “soup” followed by an =, a drawing of a jar, another =, then a drawing of a cup.
It turns out, she meant “soap”.
For dishes.
We had a good laugh over that!
One thing I did take note of was that she included “turkey or chicken”, but not sliced, with a doodle of a deli chicken.
I can’t even wrap my mind around how she spelled “sliced” enough to remember it!
It’s been a while, and a longer list than usual, so I was hitting both the pharmacy and the grocery store to get it all. Which is fine by me.
My only problem is, I think I messed up with my new shoes. Wearing thinner socks has helped, but only with one foot. My other foot could have used a half size bigger. Not that there was any half sizes to choose from. Normally, I’d be confident that the shoe would eventually stretch out a bit, but I’m not sure how far the steel toe extends. I might be hooped. I won’t return them. I’m not going to take back shoes I’ve already worn in the mud. Ah, well. Live and learn! I’ll work it out, but gosh, it got pretty painful by the time I was done! The main thing is, my mother is now well stocked again, and I was even able to get her a variety of fresh meat in single person size packages, instead of the processed meats she usually gets!
As I was heading home, I remembered to stop at a hardware store. I got metal corner supports to put on the corners of our raised bed covers.
In other garden related things, I got a notification today that our T&T Seeds order of potatoes got shipped today, and should arrive tomorrow!
These are the varieties we ordered; 1kg of Purple Caribe and 2kg of German Butterball.
I wasn’t expecting them to be shipped so soon! The space we will be planting them was still mostly covered with snow, this morning. It was warm enough today that it’s almost all gone, but the ground is probably still quite frozen. Of course, they don’t need to be planted right away; they can be stored for a little while, at least, but perishables like this get shipped based on the local growing zone, which means they really should be going into the ground soon!
The potatoes are not the only things that are on the way. My husband ordered a hand crank for my crossbow. I have not been able to use it for a frustrating reason. I’m too short to cock the bow, using the rope cocking aid that came with it. Basically, it’s got a pair of hooks you place on the string, with a matching pair of handles. With the bow secured with a foot, you bend over the stock, pull the sting with your arms, then straighten up. Once upright, the string should be far enough along to lock in place.
I’m too short.
I even tried shortening the cords on the ropes of the cocking aid, but there’s only so far you can do that without compromising the gear. My husband can cock it but, with his back injury, he can only do it a few times before it becomes too painful.
The hard part has been finding a hand crank that will fit the model of crossbow I have. There was one made for it, but it was discontinued shortly after I bought mine! It took a couple of years, but my husband finally found one that is supposed to work on my model – and was affordable!
So that should arrive soon.
If Fed Ex can figure out the address.
It might just end up at the store the post office is in. We shall see!
I look forward to finally being able to practice again!
Anyhow.
That’s a few of the things going on today.
Tomorrow, the septic guy comes in to replace the pill switch!
I’m so excited! 😄😄😄
Besides that, I think the ground is thawed out enough that I can continue working on that bed along the chain link fence. I was able to pry out the last chunk of broken sidewalk block that was under the one end, but that was it. We hit 12C/54F today, so that should have helped a lot. We’ll see how tomorrow is. We’re expected to have a high of 9C/48F, with possible rain.
Rain would be good. I even drove through rain on my way home from my mother’s today!
Maybe not so good if it comes while the septic guy is working on our tank, though!
We shall see.
Lots to do outside, as things keep warming up, and that now includes preparing the potato patch!
No, not finally petting this cat, though that did happen (I counted 30 yard cats this morning).
No, not finally the snow is almost gone, or the moat around the garage disappearing, or even large sections of the main garden area accessible again.
No, what finally happened was our tax returns finally got deposited!!!!
I’ve already called and left a message with the septic guy about replacing the pill switch in our septic tank.
Just a little bit longer, and we won’t be having to manually turn that thing on several times a day.
We’ve certainly learned to recognize the signs of when it needs to be done, before things start backing up into the basement!
We were having a problem with it yesterday, though. One of the things that was modified on our system was the addition of a pool filter. Greywater from the tank goes through the filter before it reaches the pump, which then sends the water out to the field by the barn. Hang on… I should have some photos. That will make it much easier to explain!
There they are!
These go back to 2020, in February, when things backed up into the basement, and my brother helped get things unplugged – at least until we had the roots professionally augured out of those floor drains!
This is what it looked like, before the filter was installed.
This is what it’s like now.
The filter needs to be primed for proper flow, but once that’s done and closed up, it should run fine. If, however, we turn on the pump, but the greywater side of the tank outside isn’t full enough to be drained, the filter reservoir drains out the bottom, and that’s it. So we need to open it up and fill it to above the inflow opening to prime. We can even keep an eye through the clear lid and see what’s going on, which I find very useful.
You can see the white handle of the filter basket inside. We have two of them, so that when it needs to be cleaned, we can just quickly switch in the second one, then let the dirty one soak in detergent for a while before scrubbing it out. Typically, we only need to do this a couple of times a year.
That got switched out when the septic tank was emptied and it was really bad, so I switched out the detergent water it was soaking in a few times, and it was still soaking, as of yesterday.
Yesterday, we could tell that the tank needed to be drained, but every time I tried to run the pump, the filter would drain, but no greywater from the tank would come in. I’d prime the filter, but it would happen again.
So I decided to switch the filter basket, but the other one was still soaking. The detergent got most of the gunge off, so I gloved up and started scrubbing the basket with brush that we have, just for this job.
What I found myself doing was pulling out wads and wads of cat hair! Enough that it was blocking the mesh of the filter basket from the inside.
Once I got that clear and clean, I took the other filter basket out and set it to soak. I also made a point of cleaning the inside of the reservoir, the threads and the parts and pieces of the cover. I even scrubbed the inside of the clear cover as best I could. Over time, grease and grime can build up under there and make it harder to see inside.
It was a very disgusting job, but it needs to be done!
Once everything was cleaned up, I popped the newly cleaned filter basket in, primed the filter, then turned on the pump.
It ran fine! I could see the inflow splashing through, and the water level remained high.
While that ran, I started cleaning the other filter basket…
… and started pulling out wads of cat hair!
There was enough cat hair lining the inside of the basket to prevent proper flow and mess with the vacuum seal.
I got the cat hair out, but left the basket to soak in detergent longer, since the other scunge that was already accumulating wasn’t going to come off well, otherwise.
When living on a town or city sewage system, we don’t really think about what goes down the drains. Sure, we know about flushing toilets, baths, showers and draining washing machines. How often, though, do we think about the bits of food and grease from washing our dishes? Or all the different types of cleaners, getting all mixed up together? Or how much HAIR gets in there! We already have to regularly clear the drains in the tub and bathroom sink because of the hair that gets caught – both human and cat – but I never imagined that so much cat fur was making its way into the septic system that it would clog that filter basket after only about 10 days. The Septo-Bac and the bio pipe maintenance stuff both include bacteria and enzymes to break down grease and hair. It just needs more time to do it!
It would be getting in through the washing machine, mostly. Every time we do the laundry, and I clean out the lint trap on the drier, it’s got a thick layer of cat hair on it. It gets everywhere. What we need to get are some air filters for various rooms, but even that would reduce the problem, not get rid of it. We just have too many indoor cats!
Well, by the end of today, we’ll be down by one, as I deliver the Wolfman to the rescue for vet care and adoption. I’m happy to say his eye is looking SO much better today. Hopefully, that will mean a much smaller vet bill for the rescue, though the vet was willing to give them samples of that super expensive medication.
Talking about the Wolfman with my husband today, he joked that he’ll put money on them deciding to keep him permanently. I hope not! They already have 17 permanent cats, plus the ones up for adoption that have their own space, and 4 or 5 (or is it 5 or 6?) of their permanent ones are from us!
Wolfman is such a sweet cat, though. We’re going to miss him!
What can’t we adopt out the a****e cats, instead?
Oh, right. Because they’re a****s. 😂
Anyhow.
It will work out.
Later today, I will deliver the Wolfman, then take advantage of the trip to pick up a few necessities. Hopefully, I’ll hear back from the septic guy before then, and will know how much cash to take out to pay him, and a date for when he can replace the pill switch.
We’ve got another beautiful day today. It was already above freezing by the time I got outside to feed the kitties and do my morning rounds. I counted 28 yard cats this morning.
I was coming back from the outer yard when I spotted the gathering…
Sorry for the shakiness. I was zoomed in from across the yard! If you turn your volume up, you’ll hear a noise right at the start. That’s actually ice crackling! You’ll also hear the Canada Geese flying overhead. There were a lot of them this morning. We’re at that time of year where the cats are preferring to drink melt water instead of the warm water I’m still leaving for them in the heated water bowls. Here, though, I think they were mostly just playing. The water is receding quite a bit – which is good, because it’s actually being absorbed by the ground, not washing away. In some areas, though, that means there is a top layer of ice, then a gap over the water level, with another layer of ice. It’s that sort of top layer of ice cracking that you’re hearing in the video.
Enough snow has melted away that I was able to start adding areas back into my rounds, and even start doing a bit of clean up. It’s still too early for the snow crocuses, but the area they are in is mostly clear of ice and snow. I was even able to check on the Korean pines. I think we lost one of them. There’s four left altogether, and I’ll be happy if even just one survives. We shall see!
In other things, today is our anniversary. Thirty six years ago, while my husband was in “X platoon” in Basic Training (Basic Officer Training Course, to be specific; it’s an option that I don’t think exists anymore) due to an injury, he flew home for about a week. He arrived late on a Thursday, before Easter weekend, which meant all government offices were closed from Friday to Monday. On Tuesday, we bought our marriage license, then waited the requisite 24 hours before getting married on Wednesday. We had two days together, then he flew back to Chilliwack.
The powers that be were not impressed. Apparently, he was supposed to get their permission before getting married!
We didn’t see each other for another 3 months. That’s when his parents and sister were able to fly in from Africa, where they were living at the time. My husband was still in X platoon, so he was able to fly out for a few days, and our two families gathered together here at the farm to celebrate our marriage. After he returned to Chilliwack, we didn’t see each other again for another 3 months, when I took the train and moved out to join him, just in time for him to officially leave X platoon and be part of the next BOTC start date. We didn’t actually live under the same roof until after he was done the 13 week course, and we moved to Victoria, BC, where he had his first posting as a very green naval officer.
Of course, we had all sorts of people making assumptions about why we eloped like we did, but it really came down to, it was the only time slot we had. It was either do it then, or wait a couple of years. The entire wedding, including my dress (I bought it earlier because I was able to get an employee discount on top of a warehouse clearance discount – it only cost me $10! I never thought I’d be getting married in it!) and rings (I got those with my employee discount, too! 😄) cost about $100. My BIL paid the $40 or whatever it was for the license fee, and my brother and his wife took us out to dinner after the wedding. My brother and his wife were the only family members to know what we planned to do in advance, and my SIL walked me through what I needed to do and where I needed to go to get it all arranged before my husband (fiancé) flew out.
I highly recommend eloping. Very stress free!!
My mother had been okay with it at first; just surprised. Then she talked to the local priest, who told her we weren’t really married, because we didn’t get married in a church.
*sigh*
That priest didn’t last long. He replaced a well loved priest that retired early for health reasons. The new guy was a terrible, angry and bitter man who should never have gone into the priesthood in the first place. So many people complained about him, the bishop moved him somewhere else (hopefully, to either get some counselling, or leave the priesthood!). Which says a lot because, even then, there were very few priests, and it was a long time before they found someone to stay as parish priest.
But I digress.
My husband and I were both 19 when we eloped, so of course, we had all the predictions of how it would never last. Interestingly, our marriage has outlasted many others that did things “right”.
It was no fairy tale wedding, but I’ve never been big on fairly tales, anyhow. I wouldn’t have it any other way!
As for celebrating, my husband is in no condition to go out, so I headed into town and got take out to celebrate, instead.
I am so loving these longer days. Not only is it beautifully warm out, at 7C/45F (yeah; I know – in a couple of months, this is going to feel cold!), but it’s 6pm as I start this, and still bright and sunny out!
The dump is open today, so I took advantage of the gorgeous weather to do a dump run – hopefully, we’ll be able to do these a lot more regularly again! – then headed into town. We had a couple of the 18.9L/5 gallon water bottles to refill, so I took advantage of that, too, and took advantage of some sales at the grocery store, too. Then, icing on the cake, I had enough loyalty points to bring the bill down by $20. My husband’s claim for his CPAP supplies may have been reimbursed, but every little bit still helps.
When I got home, I drove into the inner yard to unload and saw this.
Rolando Moon was in there when I drove in to load the truck for the dump, and still there when I got back!
After we were done unloading the truck and parking it, I did a few tasks outside while I still had my rubber boots on, including checking the outhouse. The water in front is so deep, I got my pantlegs wet, even though they were rolled up. While I managed to find rubber boots with wide enough tops that they fit over my calves, they don’t fit over my pantlegs as well. Which gets amusing. One of my calves is a bit larger than the other, so the boot is very snug against the skin. As a result, when I walk around, it makes farting noises.
*snicker*
It doesn’t take much to entertain me.
As expected, the pit under the outhouse is quite full of water. We’ll have to give the outhouse a spring cleaning, soon, if only to get rid of the cobwebs under the seat! Hopefully, this year, we will finally be able to do something about the roof and give the outside a scrape and paint, thanks to the small scaffolding we were able to buy last summer. This outhouse will have to do until we can build the outdoor bathroom we have in mind, and it will probably be at least another year before we can start on that, in the location we have planned for it.
Speaking of things to do, there’s one thing we should be able to manage soon. Take care of that raised bed that Rolando is lounging in! I’ll have to snag one of my daughters to help me move the cover off and set it aside. We can then remove the mulch and harvest the last of the carrots in there. I want to pick up some metal corner reinforcements for all the raised bed covers I made. With this one, I want to add horizontal supports across the middle, at the top of the arches. I’ll need to do that with the tiny one in the old kitchen garden, too. The hoops hold the mesh up fine on their own, but I didn’t count on the cats jumping on them and lying on them quite so much!
Whether I get the extra supports done right away or not, the main thing I want to do is put plastic over it, then put it back on the bed, to make a little greenhouse and heat the soil up faster. The bed next to it, where the corn was last year, has the box cover plus with the third arched cover I made, stored on top of it. I’m quite pleased with how the arched covers fit on the box cover so well; that will come in very handy for when we have taller crops that need to be protected. For now, though, I want to separate them and put plastic on that arched cover, too, and get a second bed warmed up. The first arched cover I made, using strong fence wire, is on the newest raised bed in the main garden area and, at the moment, we won’t be able to get at it. The snow there is still too deep.
Still, if we get at least a couple of the raised beds in the east yard warmed up faster, that means we can do some direct sowing earlier, too! Of course, I can just lay the plastic directly on the top of the third bed in there, and it’ll warm things up just like that, too.
Oh, that reminds me. This morning, I was checking on the seeds I decided to sprout before planting. The container they’re in was just on the coffee table in the cat-free zone (aka: the living room). I keep forgetting how cold that room gets. The damp paper towels were way too chilly. So I reversed how they were in the container, putting the damp paper towel with the seeds on the semi-transparent lid, then covering it with the black plastic base, before putting the whole thing on the heat mat in the big greenhouse aquarium. They need warmth, but not light. Hopefully, that will help. I’ll have to check them more often, since the warmth will also dry out the paper towel.
Meanwhile, we can expect things to get very messy out there for the next while. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to start getting highs in the double digits (Celsius), and even the overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing! It’s also supposed to stay nice and sunny, too. As mild as our winter was last year, it is still a huge psychological boost to finally have sunshine and warmth!
I just have to post this picture, taken one year ago today.
Yeah, we’re pretty ahead of the game, this year! 😂😄😂😄
The Re-Farmer 