While coming back to the sun room door after working in the garden, I spotted some unexpected movement.
Kittens, dashing under the cat’s house!
One of the mamas brought her babies to the kibble house, and they are not kittens I recognise.
It took some patience, some hiding behind the hand rail near the sun room door, and my phone zoomed in, to finally get some photos. This was the best I could get, and it’s cropped quite tightly.
As so often happens, I see more in photos than I could in the moment. In this case, it was finding that there is something wrong with the little calico’s eye. Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing when they’ll even be back at the kibble house again, never mind any chance of catching it to get a better look. That doesn’t look like the usual eye infections we sometimes see in the yard cats.
Hopefully, we will have more success socializing this year’s kittens than last year. Hopefully, whatever is wrong with it is something that will heal on its own.
Poor baby!
In the end, I think I saw a third, darker kitten, but I’m not certain.
We had thunderstorms pass over us during the night, and it was still raining when I headed out to do my morning rounds.
The girls heard cat’s arguing with each other last night. When they went out to check, Potato Beetle came into the sun room, where he got to spend a nice, dry night, with his own food and water. Thankfully, that meant he had no interest in the food when he went out in the morning, because there’s a very wet and bedraggled TDG looking back at me in the photo – and he’s the one Potato had been threatened by!
All the cats were looking so wet!
And you can certainly see why. All the areas that had finally been almost dry are wet again, including this spot the cats normally use to get under the storage house. Even though they can’t get under there right now, because of the water, they still run through here. So do the skunks. The grass is so tall, you can’t really see that the whole area is under water again.
That lilac bush is struggling so much! It’s basically drowning. It still managed to bloom, though!
The main garden area has got a lot of areas with standing water. If we are to loose anything we planted at this point, it’s going to be from being drowned!
Along the bean tunnel, however, I saw both types of beans have started coming up!
I didn’t look too closely at things because, even though it was raining, I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. They don’t mind being out in the rain!
I was keeping a close eye on the forecasts and weather radar. They were predicting a series of thunderstorms throughout the morning and afternoon, including at times when I would expect to be on the road with my mother, to take her to her doctor’s appointment.
So I left early. I figured, I could fill up the tank on my mother’s car and find something to do before it was time to pick up my mother. I’m trying to spend as little time at her place as possible, right now.
Which reminds me… my brother used his Power of Attorney to speak on my mother’s behalf and get her place treated for bedbugs. It’s a good thing he did. She could never have navigated the calls or followed through on them. It was totally beyond her abilities.
Her building is owned by a the provincial government, but the department that administrates it was almost impossible to get to. He got numbers to call from the senior’s centre in my mother’s town, chased a few of them down, found that the contact person he normally would have talked to was away for the week, sent some emails (because he was doing this from work and couldn’t be on hold for 20 minutes, over and over!) and eventually found out that the province is aware there are bedbugs in her building. It’s a problem with quite a few buildings they run. So much so, that they are being treated on a schedule. The next time they are in my mother’s area, she will get a note slid under her door with date and time and instructions. Which my mother won’t understand. My brother was supposed to get a copy of that note and its instructions emailed to him, but he never got it. All he knows for sure is, she’s supposed to be out of her apartment for 6 hours while they take care of the rest. When he told my mother this, she said she would just hang out in the lobby.
For 6 hours.
While her apartment – and any others in the building – are getting sprayed.
My mother, who has respiratory issues…
Yeah…
No.
We’ll find other arrangements.
Once I got to my mother’s, we headed out again soon after. We got to the clinic quite early, but she ended up getting called in early, too!
Oh, the poor doctor.
We were there to talk about breathing issues she’s been having, but when he came in, instead of telling him about it, she started saying things like, “please help me with my breathing…” as if he already knew everything. She and I had been talking about it, and it was as if she thought he somehow heard and knew everything she had said to me!
Between the two of us, we managed to drag out enough information from her that he could figure out what sorts of tests to have done. Any tentative conclusions we both reached by the end of it may be correct, but other things need to be ruled out, first. It will take a few weeks, at least, before all the tests are done and he gets the results.
So that worked out fairly well. Even as we left, though, the doctor commented to me that my mother’s symptoms are quite strange – and they certainly are! Hopefully, we’ll have some answers, or at least a direction to look, after the tests are done. The one that will take the most time will require a call from the city, then someone has to pick up some equipment for my mother to use at home, then the equipment, and the data collected, returned. It may take up to 3 weeks, before all that’s done.
The rain continued off and on, and there was still severe weather on the radar, so we didn’t do my mother’s usual stop at a restaurant (I made sure to ask if she’d had lunch before we left!), and I took her home, with only a stop at the grocery store first. Since I was there with her car, it allowed her to pick up and stock up on a lot more, so she took advantage of it.
I feel much better, knowing my mother has at least some food stocked up, even if it’s just for about a week or so.
It had stopped raining for most of my drive home, more or less, but I’m glad I didn’t linger. The gravel roads are being destroyed by all the rain again. My mother’s car handled it well so far, but we’re supposed to get more storms tomorrow, and that spot near our place is already only passable on one side again. The road past our driveway is still closed, too, for all that I regularly see traffic going by, including small cars. One of these days, I should make the walk to the washout to see how it looks.
On a completely different topic, I found a site before I left for my mother’s, and sent some links to my family to check out while I was away. It was one of those “is this too good to be true?” places. It’s a clearance site for Lowe’s, with various sheds at massive discounts. As in, insanely massive. They were all in the same price range, roughly between $85-$90 Cdn, regardless of original price. It seems that these are all abandoned orders – stuff people already bought and paid for, but never picked up.
After much discussion, we decided to take a chance.
They have a 30 day trial period, but it’s unlikely we’d put it together within that time. We’d open the box to check, but would need to make a foundation for it before we could assemble it.
I was sorely tempted by their largest shed. That one did not come with a floor, which I could live with, but also did not come with shingles. Which is not a big deal, but for something that large, we wouldn’t be able to get them for quite some time.
So we went with a plastic one that was the largest, complete shed available. At 20’x8′, it includes two sets of double doors, 2 windows, 2 skylights, some shelves, shutters and a “foundation”, among other things. We’re a bit confused about the included foundation, because it also says a foundation is needed. Looking at the diagram, I think they mean what looks like a 4″ sub floor as the included foundation. We’d have to find and prepare a spot for a foundation, somewhere in the inner yard, where it would be most useful.
The total cost, in Canadian dollars, came out to just over $133 after shipping. Which is insanely cheap. Hopefully, we will actually get what we ordered, and it’s as good as the specs describe it. If it is, it will be a big help. If not… well, hopefully, we’d be able to get our money back.
The thing is, I’ve looked at other sites with deeply discounted products, including things like chicken coops, sheds, garage kits, etc., that I could quickly spot as scam sites. Seeing images stolen from other sites was usually the first warning! This one, however, actually looks legitimate.
Well, we’ll know soon enough. And if it does turn out to be legitimate, we will certainly get more! One that is currently on the site is a 12’x8′ cedar Cabana, with a split door and 2 windows with window boxes. It’s pretty much exactly what my younger daughter wants as the focal point of the peony garden she wants to plant, well away from the house. There’s currently a branch pile that needs to be chipped where she wants to plant it, so it’s not like we’re in any hurry! Looking around at some of the other sheds, there are even some that could easily be converted to a chicken coop, and cost far less than if we build one ourselves, even using salvaged wood.
It’s been a while since I posted a picture of the yard cats. They’ve been really skittish, lately.
There are 6 in the kibble house, plus I saw Rosencrantz at the kibble tray under the shrine. Which, I believe, makes 7 mamas. I also saw Potato Beetle and, later on, TDG and Toesencrantz. I suspect their skittishness is related to the skunks that have been coming out for kibble, too! I’m starting to put less kibble out, more often, so the cats get a chance to finish most of the kibble off before the skunks show up.
While doing my morning rounds, I started bringing over what I needed to start working on what will be the squash patch. That meant moving the wheelbarrow almost the entire length of the lilac hedge.
They are opening up slightly later than the ones closer to the house, and there are SO MANY flower clusters! I just love this hedge. It took my mother decades to slowly plant them along the fence line, starting from a single lilac bush at this end. Which is pretty amazing!
Also, we seriously need to mow in here, but finishing the transplanting is priority right now! Unfortunately, the tall grass hides more mosquitoes, and we’re already running out of bug spray again! :-D
I haven’t been able to get photos of the outside cats lately. I have been going out earlier, to avoid the heat (ha! Yeah; I know. “Heat” is relative), and few are around. Today, I allowed myself to sleep in a bit, so there was a whole crowd waiting for me at the door.
I spotted 10 in total this morning, including Potato Beetle who had his private breakfast in the sun room, and Sad Face, sneaking in to the tray under the shrine, being very careful around Rosencrantz.
It’s entirely possible all the cats in the above photo are female, which means they might all have kittens somewhere. For sure, there’s 5 that are female, now that we realize that Bradiccus is a dude.
I didn’t do all my rounds this morning, wanting to go into town to run some errands. I even switched out the trail cam memory cards on the way out, since the sign cam can be reached from the road side of the fence.
The grader went through again yesterday. The road looked pretty ugly, but was much better to drive on, including the bad patch near our place. The road is still really soft there, but at least it doesn’t have massive ruts and mud anymore.
I was just coming up on the highway when I noticed a bunch of cars parked on the road, near someone’s driveway. I figured there was a garage sale happening, and my mother had given me cash to pay for gas, so I decided to stop.
I’m glad I did.
One of the first things I spotted was a hybrid mountain bike. I asked about it, and the guy told me a gear skipped and the brakes weren’t very good. Both things my husband knows how to fix. He was asking $10 for it, so I bought it. There are several bikes in the garage, but they aren’t in good shape, and not as high end as the bike I just got, and we don’t have the time to dig them out and see what work needs to be done on them, so getting this one for $10 for now is fine. It’s a tall bike; something that might be good for my 6′ tall husband, but that’s not a problem.
After paying for the bike, I wandered around to look at other stuff before going back to the bike to load it up. I was walking around a display on the ground when I suddenly noticed just what it was I was walking around.
A miter saw.
!!!
So I moved the bike over to the saw and went back to ask about it. There wasn’t much to tell, really. It works. He said I could plug it in and test it if I wanted, but I took his word for it. It’s an older saw, and pretty basic. He was asking $30 for it.
I bought it.
There used to be a miter saw here, in the shed that used to be my late brother’s workshop, but is now a storage warehouse. I’ve seen pictures of it, and it was higher end than this one, but since that one grew legs and walked away, I don’t care. An older miter saw is better than none at all!
Between this and the table saw we dragged out of a shed, it will make things much easier when we can start building our chicken coop, or any other projects we are talking about.
Now we just have to learn how to use it. :-D We’ve never had one before.
Little by little, we’re replacing some of the tools that disappeared while this place was empty. I’m very glad I decided to stop. I don’t normally do garage sales – they were all over the place! – but not only did I find a couple of good deals, but I finally got to meet our neighbour. It was funny when I asked if he could bring the miter saw to the van while I loaded the bike while he got my change. He recognised it from our driving by so regularly. :-D He joked about how having the garage sale was the only time he got to meet his neighbours! I know what he means, that’s for sure. :-)
So I’m all excited for when we are able to start working on some larger projects.
Which won’t be until after we’re done getting the garden in!
Now to figure out where to keep it. There’s no more room in the sun room. Maybe we can find a space in the garage.
Before I get into what took up most of my day, here are some kitty pictures.
While the mama burst out of the shelf and hid behind the kibble house again, I put some food in both shelves of the shelf shelter, then stuck my phone in and managed to get a decent picture of the babies.
They are SO mashed into that corner!
Today was a warmer day with no rain, so I started taking the transplants outside.
Mama did not like that.
After the transplants were out and I continued my morning rounds, I came around and found the little calico in the grass by the kibble house.
I can’t tell if it’s eyes are shut because of its age, or because it has gooby eyes like David and Keith did, when they were little.
I put it back in the shelf, then found it in the grass a few minutes later.
I put it back in the shelf, then found it in the grass again.
I put it in the shelf, then found a different one in the grass!
That is one ticked off looking kitten. :-D
Sadly, the mama kept trying to take the kittens out, even while I was around. I kept putting them back after she would eventually drop them, hoping she would stop.
She just waited until I was gone.
After I was back inside, I went into the sun room several times to check. Which is when I had a surprise.
That white tail tip. There’s only one grey tabby with a white tail tip.
The mama is Bradiccus!
We were sure Bradiccus was male!
I suppose the first hint should have been that we still saw Bradiccus around, even after Chadiccus, Agnoos and Tuxedo Mask all disappeared. The young males all tend to take off shortly after the snow is gone. Sometimes they come back for the winter. Sometimes we never see them again.
I guess that means the other ‘iccuses that are still around are female, too. They run around too much for us to really see, one way or the other.
I had another surprise later on. While puttering in the kitchen, I could see the two mamas that are co-parenting, hovering around the big branch pile, near where the entrance into the pile is. The last time I did a burn, I had heard a kitten in there, but haven’t heard any since, so I was sure they’d moved it. So it was quite unexpected to see the little tuxedo emerge with one of the moms. Then all three of them went across to my late father’s car before disappearing around it.
When I came out later on, I took a quick peak, and sure enough, the shelf shelter was empty. Bradiccus had moved her kittens out. I figured it would happen, but I still hoped they wouldn’t be dragged off again to some unknown nest.
Last night, my daughters heard the sounds of a kitten meowing outside. It was dark and raining, so we went out to check.
What we found, barely visible in the shadows, was a kitten on the patio blocks in front of the shelf shelter. It appeared that a cat was moving her kittens into the shelf! By the time I got out, there was no sign of the mother, but I saw the kibble trays were all empty. After topping those up, I quickly scooped up the cold, wet kitten – it was even smaller than the last kitten we found in the lawn! – and tucked it into the bottom shelf shelter. I just wanted to get it out of the rain, and it would be easy for the mama to find.
When I came out of the sun room to do my morning rounds, one of the ‘iccuses exploded out of the shelf shelter. I came prepared, though. I grabbed a scoop of kibble, along with my usual container full, and quickly poured some into both shelves that are insulated and enclosed, then filled the rest of the kibble trays. Potato Beetle emerged from the cats’ house while I did, but he preferred to follow me into the sun room to eat there. Aside from him, I saw only 3 other yard cats, and I think they were all mamas.
While going past the shelf after setting out some bird seed (we have no feeders out right now, because of the racoons, so it’s a daily toss onto the ground), I quickly stuck my phone into the openings and got pictures.
There were kittens in the higher shelf. It was terribly out of focus, but I could see three kittens.
Just a little while ago, I went out to chase a pair of skunks out of the kibble house. The mama ran out of the shelter shelf and hid around the back of the kibble house, so I quickly tried to take another picture.
I was wrong! There are four kittens. :-)
I hope the mama is willing to let her litter stay here. We will try to avoid using the sun room door as much as we can, since it’s right next to the shelf. Good thing my brother did a quick fix on the main entry door! It’s still a high traffic area, though. Not only is the kibble and bird seed store in there, so are many of our yard and garden tools and supplies and, of course, the transplants in the sun room, with the outside platform we put them next to it, too. The fact that she actually brought her kittens so this shelf anyway suggests maybe her previous location got rained out or something.
I believe this is now the third litter we’ve seen kittens from, though the other two have been moved twice now. Broccoli has her litter around somewhere, too, and I’m sure Ghost Baby must have a litter. How many will survive long enough to start coming to the kibble house with their moms, we won’t know for probably at least another month, maybe two. The shyer mothers tend to keep their babies away longer, but after a while, they start coming over on their own.
Hopefully, these ones will do well in their new home.
Today has turned out to be a warmer day than predicted, and beautifully sunny. When heading out to do my morning rounds, I had a whole crowd of hungry kitties, waiting by the sun room door for me!
They were running around so much, I didn’t even try to count them. While putting food in the kibble house, TDG not only let me pet him, but let me pull the big ole wood tick in the tip of his ear! In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice I did it.
Which reminds me; while topping up the cat food last night, I got to touch Rosencrantz a bit and finally got a closer look at one of her ears. I thought she might have lost the tip to frost bite over the winter, but the tip is still there! It’s just badly torn. Not a new injury. Not much we can do about it, unfortunately.
The transplants got set outside for hardening off. They were supposed to be out for 5 hours, but we ended up bringing them in a bit early. The winds really picked up, and some of the pots were being blown around.
Wind or no wind, I was determined to get the old kitchen garden finally planted!
This is now our beet bed. We bought two types of beets this year, Cylindra and Bresko, plus we had some Merlin left over from last year. The support posts handily divided the bed into three sections, so that makes it easy to keep track of where one type starts and another one ends.
After the bed was seeded and watered, I broke open the roll of netting. This is the stuff my daughter picked out that I thought could be used for deer fencing. It’s a much finer net than I expected! The black just disappears, too, but in the photo, you can see where the excess is bunched up along the sides. I’m really glad I found that big bag of cheap tent pegs in the garage. We used quite a few of them to pin down the edges of the netting. The short ends are held in place at one end by a stick rolled up in the excess, while at the other end, the excess went under a board I was using to mark the end of the bed.
Next was the L shaped bed. Lettuce went into there. I thought I had 4 types of lettuce left over from last year, but it turned out one of the envelopes was empty. That actually worked out, for the amount of seeds in the remaining packets.
The hard part was covering the odd shaped bed. One of my daughters came out and we sized up a piece of netting for the longer part of the L shape and cut it. The netting is 14′ wide, so we stretched it out on the grass and cut it in half.
The short side of the L, up to the label you can see near the bottom of the photo, is one type of lettuce, which is about as much as the other two together! There were still a few seeds left over, including some that had spilled in the baggie the seed packets were in, so those got scattered in the odd little bit of space next to the rose bush. They didn’t get covered with netting; the space is too small to bother.
The long side of the L shape was pretty easy to cover, but the short side curves around the lilac and gets wider at the end. While I used pieces from the canopy tent frame as supports at one end, there weren’t enough of that length for the whole bed, so I dug out some metal support rods I got last year. They’re not very strong and some had pieces broken off, making them shorter. Those matched the tent frame pieces more easily, but other were full length. I could push most if them deep enough to match heights, but with a couple, I kept hitting rocks that were big enough, I couldn’t seem to get around it. That one stake that has a spider web of cords from it is the highest of them all, and there was no way I could adjust it to avoid the rock I was hitting, and still have it where I needed it. (The bottoms of water bottles are there to keep the netting from falling down the stakes) That extra height in particular made pegging the netting down more of a challenge. In the end, we just had to push some of the stakes inwards to create some slack. We managed it, though.
That left one more bed to plant in.
For this bed, I transplanted the Red Baron bunching onions, in little groups of 3 or 4 seedlings. These are not going to get covered, since nothing eats the onions. Hopefully, the cats will leave the bed alone!
While working on this, I checked out the small bed we planted the poppy seeds saved from last year. I think they are starting to come up, but there are so many things coming up with them, it’s hard to tell! For all the roots I dug out of these beds, we’re still going to have a lot of weeds to fight off.
Now, the only thing left in the old kitchen garden are the retaining wall blocks. I’d transplanted mint into alternating blocks, but they’re not showing yet. I don’t know if they’re going to show up later, or if they got killed by the winter cold. It takes a lot to kill mint, but they did just get transplanted. I’ll leave those for now, but still plan to plant things in the remaining blocks. I just haven’t decided what, yet, since we will likely not be covering those. Plus, this area gets shaded by the ornamental apple trees a lot. With the T posts there, we could put up trellis netting and plant climbers, but anything like that would be deer or groundhog buffet, so we would have to find a way to cover them. It was very difficult to cover the retaining wall blocks last year. We’d planted lettuce in it last year, which we were able to protect from the deer, but didn’t count on the groundhogs getting at them.
We’ll figure it out. We can tuck something into the blocks, later one. For now, I’m just glad to finally get this garden basically done!
Oh, before I forget, just a quite update on my mother. I called her up this morning, and she’s still in a lot of pain. She’s quite surprised by it, it seems. She’s also disappointed. She thought that the doctor would be able to fix her. I tried to explain, they can’t fix everything, but she started taking about how, with all the modern technology we have, there must be something. I had to go back to using my husband as an example, since he’s been dealing with debilitating back pain for a very long time now. Even if they technically could do surgery for one thing, the risk was too high for little benefit, and it would have to be done again in 2 years anyhow – and that wasn’t even for the main source of his pain, for which there is nothing that can be done other than painkillers and, for some of it, physio. He hasn’t been able to do physio since we moved here. Some things just can’t be fixed. I don’t think my mother realised just how fortunate she is to have reached 90 and not had to deal with something like this before.
Ah, well. It is what it is. We just deal with the hand we’re dealt with!
Cheddar slowly managed to squirm his way under the sheet, little by little, until he was completely covered!
Meanwhile, we had a whole pile of cats, chillin’ on the front step.
There were also several inside cats at the storm door, sometimes sticking a leg through the window to bat at a cat outside! :-D
Yes, we’re still draining out washing machine out the door. Partly because none of us have the time to sit and supervise the machine if we put the hose into the drain pipe, just in case it starts backing up again (which it shouldn’t, but still…), but also because we’ve got enough water flowing into the septic tank and triggering the pump to drain, just from the water seeping into the north side of the old basement, and the weeping tile under the new basement, both going through the same floor drain. This area of the yard is high enough that none of the water is accumulating, so we’re not adding to the much problems, either.
It was a lovely, warm evening, so I popped out to do a bit of set up in the old kitchen garden… which promptly got catted!
I set out the line to support the netting that will go up after it’s planted. I’ve done similar with the L shaped bed, too. I had several cats very interested in the entire proceedings! Then, once I was done, Nutmeg went under the lines and tried rubbing up on practically ever one of them!
The lines will be in the way while seeding the bed, but this way I’ll be able to cover the bed right away, without giving cats a chance to walk all over it, or use it as a litter box, before it’s covered! :-D
On a completely different subject, my brother was able to update me on how things went with my mother at the ER. Based on how she described the pain, he was thinking her kidneys might be the issue, but when she talked to the doctor, she described it differently. They did do blood and urine tests, but when she described the pain as feeling like she was being stabbed in the back, on one side, the doctor sent her for Xrays right away.
The funny thing about my brother describing what happened, I actually recognized the doctor. He didn’t remember the name, but when he looked up the photo he took of my mother’s new prescription, it confirmed I was right. There have been times when I took my mother into the ER and this doctor had seen her. My mother was in good hands. :-)
The staff was running ragged, and all the examination rooms were full, but with my mother’s pain levels, they got her in quickly. It’s a good thing I didn’t try to take her in, though, as they made them wear masks. Since I can’t, I would have been told to leave.
Long story short, my mother has a compacted disc. She actually has quite a bit of damage to her spine, but this was new damage. The doctor kept asking if she’d maybe lifted something heavy, or twisted something, but she couldn’t think of anything. Most likely, this is just new damage related to her refusal to wear her leg brace. She keeps complaining about the pain in her knees, and one knee bends inwards, but she simply will not wear the brace. My brother even tried getting her a new brace that would be more comfortable for her, but she just won’t do it. Instead, she wears those stretchy knee pads, like athletes sometimes wear. They feel snug and warm, so she thinks they help more than the brace.
There is nothing that can be done about her back, though. My brother even made a point of asking the doctor about possible surgery, just to make sure my mother heard the answer, and no. Surgery is not an option. What he did do was give her a prescription for anti-inflammatory painkillers, and before they left, she got an anti-inflammatory injection.
I haven’t called her again today. After so many hours dealing with everything, I knew she would be tired, so I’ll call her tomorrow. My poor brother was more mentally than physically exhausted. When helping my mother with her appointments, a lot of energy is spent explaining things she couldn’t understand, or asking her lots of questions to try and drag out information from her that is relevant. Or just keeping her on topic. She has a terrible habit of wasting time asking people personal information that’s none of her business, when she should be focusing on the reason she’s there. It gets very draining.
One thing my brother did try to make my mother aware of is that the pain she was feeling right then, was the sort of pain my husband feels constantly. For him, it’s actually a lot more, since he has multiple problems all in the same area, with a crumbling spine being just one thing – and not even the worst source of pain. My mother has had difficulty having any sort of empathy or understanding, because he’s “too young” to be having problems like this. He was hoping it would help her feel some sort of compassion for my husband. It probably won’t make a difference. After all, she still complains about how she’s taking “so many pills” every day, without quite understanding that she doesn’t actually have a lot of prescriptions for her age; she’s just taking some of them twice a day. So in her mind, each one of those pills is a different medication. I’ve told her how many prescriptions my husband is on – some of which are taken 3 times a day, others “as needed”, plus his injections, but it’s not about her, so she doesn’t get it. Ah, well. All we can do is try.
So my mom now needs to take these anti-inflammatory painkillers for a couple of weeks, but we have nothing about after that. I’ll have to make a regular doctor’s appointment for her – the clinic is in the same hospital, but I know I’ll be able to go in with her there. Something else to talk about when I call her, tomorrow.
Today is looking like it’s going to be a gorgeous day! We finally have some sunshine and warmth, and while it’s still muddy out there, the water levels continue to go down. Even the water seeping into the old basement is somewhat better.
There was a whole crowd of cats waiting for my by the sunroom door, eager for breakfast. A lot of the ‘iccuses are hanging out. Still no sign of Chaddiccus, though – the only one of them that we could actually pet. Agnoos and Tuxedo Mask are still missing, too. Still, I saw a dozen cats in total, this morning.
It was nice enough that I brought the transplants out earlier, too.
I managed to get a slightly better picture of the developing Wonderberries.
On the down side, it looks like my mother will be going to the ER today. She’s been complaining of back pain for a while now, but it was really bad last night. My brother was planning to come out to join her in church and visit her after, but planned to take her to the hospital instead.
Oh, now that’s timing. I just got a message from him. They’re at the ER now, and she’s waiting to get her kidneys checked. From how she describes her pain, that seems the most likely cause.
We did talk about my driving her to the hospital and him meeting us there, but he decided he would do it all. Which is probably just as well. Since we are still under restrictions at the federal level, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to go in with her. Hospitals as still demanding people be masked, even though provincial restrictions are lifted, and in spite of all the evidence and data out there that shows it’s not only unnecessary, but harmful. My mother shouldn’t be wearing one, but she does, anyhow, because she’s been bullied into it. The way things are now, she would probably be sent home from the ER if she wasn’t masked and jabbed, as so many others already have been, all over the province. A lot of places responded to the provincial mandates being dropped by doubling down on the restrictions, instead.
Even aside from that, it’s probably just as well I didn’t try to drive my mother. I was awakened quite early today with a sort of headache. The kind that feels like it’s from eye strain. The weird part was that it hurt more if my eyes were closed then when they were open, so getting back to sleep wasn’t going to happen. Driving would probably have not been a good thing for me to be doing.
With the day being so nice, we might be able to get the fire pit going to have a wiener roast, and even finally use the new cast iron Dutch oven for the first time. I hope to be able to get more garden beds prepped, too. The weather forecast is now saying heat and possible thundershowers in a couple of days, then it’s supposed to cool down again, but we should still be able to get the cool weather seeds in. The garden beds we prepped in the fall have crab grass and weeds that made their way through, so I want to get those out before we start seeding, as much as possible.
What I would really love to be able to do, though, is close my eyes for a while. :-/
The Re-Farmer 