Our bare root strawberries came in today, and they need to be planted soon. My original thoughts on where to plant them is too far from the house, so I had to decided on someplace closer, which turned out to be a much bigger job that it should have been. This was after I’d done some yard clean up, then amended and added more soil to the empty raised bed in the West yard.
I’ve taken pain killers, but will need to take more, if I’m going to get any sleep tonight. Still, the job got done, and tomorrow we’ll be able to plant the strawberries.
After I finished working outside, I sat at my computer to upload photos and video, write a blog post, etc. I was on the computer for maybe an hour? Hour and a half? I was feeling fine the whole time.
I had forgotten to take painkillers again after I got back inside, because I was feeling so good.
You know it’s bad when my husband can move around better than me.
He took one look at me trying to move around and offered me two of his painkillers.
I only took one.
Good grief. No wonder he’s having such a hard time. It’s had more than enough time to kick in, but I’ve had almost no improvement.
I know I got a lot done today, but only working on the garden bed against the chain link fence was something I’d consider physically taxing, mostly because of all the bending over to pull roots and weeds out. I’ve been doing other manual labour as the days have warmed up, without getting anywhere near like this afterwards. This is really a big surprise for me.
My family, on the other hand, are not.
I guess they know me better than I know myself at times!
My daughters are making me something to eat, and then I’m going to bed.
We have GOT to get more of the inside cats adopted out.
Last night was a rough one. 
With my arm still giving me grief, I tried going to be early again. While I could move my right arm forward and back as normal, if painfully, I still couldn’t get it move more than a few inches straight outward. 
When I go to bed, I often has several cats that insist they MUST be either right against me, or me, and they don’t often give me a chance to finish getting into bed before they do it! Cheddar is one of several that has decided where I sleep is his spot. He’s a big boy, so moving him with one wonky arm was a challenge! Others will move as I pull the covers back, but not Shadow in the Dark. He’s one that likes to curly up near my face or against the back of my neck, and he won’t move. So lifting the covers usually results in him being rolled over and over, then he lies there, all sprawled out, looking at me like I’ve offended him somehow!
That’s not unusual, though. 
Butterscotch made things unusual.
She’s been doing quite well, and even gotten to the point that she has started to leave my room, if only to go as far as the steps to the dining room, or peak around the corner at the basement door, to look down the hallway, before running back into my room.
Lately, however, she has taken to growling and snarling. 
Sometimes, I can see that there’s a cat nearby that she’s snarling at, but they’re usually just there, and not even looking at her. A couple of times, one of them would go at her, but it seems more a response to her snarling, and not the other way around. Other times, I’ll hear her snarling, and I can’t even see any other cats around her.
Well, it seems that having so many cats in my room, usually covering my bed, sleeping in groups, is stressing her out to the point that she isn’t going to the litter boxes. She’d have to go past the other cats to do that.
The first time I heard the odd noises, I found her squeezed onto one of the boxes I’ve set in front of the wall shelf, under my craft table. I’ve got other boxes inside the bottom shelves; with the table there, they can’t be accessed for us, but when they were empty and I thought the cats were just using them as places to sleep, we discovered they were defecating in them, so we blocked them off with empty boxes. One of those overhangs the edge of the shelf, and she was squeezed between the box on the floor and the overhanging box.
Then I started hearing a very strange sound indeed.
The sound of hard turds dropping onto the box she was on!
I managed to get her out of there, but then she went into a shelf above where I sleep; the shelf I keep my glasses in, as well as where I put my phone on a stand to charge at night, among other things.
I got her out of that, and she squeezed herself into the space of another shelf, in between my cookbooks and the top of the mattress. I tried lying down again, but more noised had me getting up again to investigate, and this time she was digging into the shelf that I use for some of my clothes. I got her out of there and tucked her into the nearby cat cave, and she stayed there.
Not for long.
I was again awakened by strange noises, and this time I found she was making a mess on my bed, between my pillow, and my leaning sheep – a large stuffed sheep I sometimes use to lean against when sitting up in bed, but is normally stored in the shelve under where I keep my glasses. It’s large enough to almost fill the space completely.
Well, this time, it was a very messy mess.
My daughters are still timing things so that one of them is always available to help me with his, so I messaged my older daughter to help me. We wiped up as much as we could, then stripped the bed. The fitted sheet and the leaning sheep had to be washed, along with one pillow case, but the mess was bad enough that we had to strip the waterproof mattress cover for washing, too!
By then it was past 1am – so much for going to bed early! 
While my daughter got the laundry going, I started putting out wet cat food. That lured all but one cat out of my room. I set wet cat food out in the bowls I have there, which allows for Butterscotch and a few of the the shier cats to get some, without being pushed around by the other cats. This time, I was able to close the door and keep the other cats from coming back in during the night.
Of course, that meant frequent interruptions by cats trying to claw the door open.
Eventually, though, I did hear Butterscotch going into a litter box, which should have been a good thing, but… something didn’t sound right. So I used the flashlight on my phone to try and see her.
*sigh*
Yeah, she was using the litter box, finally, but didn’t quite go all the way in. 
She ran off again and hid in her cat cave while I got up and cleaned up the mess.
*sigh*
After that, things did finally quiet down, and I managed to get some sleep, but all this having to get up and check things was quite painful. 
I have discovered on thing, though. While my girth may make it seem otherwise, I’ve got some pretty decent abs! I had to sit myself up many times using just my abs, and not being able to use my arms at all. 
With just Butterscotch in her cave and what turned out to be Susan sleeping somewhere else, I actually was able to get some decent sleep, if only for a few hours.
This morning, I felt good enough that, when my younger daughter went to feed the outside cats, I went along to help out, then do the rest of my rounds and switch out the trail cam memory cards. 
I was very happy to demonstrate to her that I can now lift my right arm straight out again! While there is still some pain, I have almost full mobility of my arm again! The level of improvement since yesterday is amazing. I’m so relieved! There were times I seriously considered getting my daughter to drive me to the hospital, but giving it a couple of days of rest seems to be what I really needed. In fact, while writing this, I just tested my arm again, and I could do a full rotation at the shoulder, with no pain! Not even my left shoulder, which was not strained as badly, still has more pain now than my right shoulder does. I’m so relieved!
While doing the morning feeding, neither of us tried to do a head count. There were clearly fewer cats than usual, but they were also running around a lot, making it hard to keep track. There were these two, though…
The cats still aren’t going into the sunroom as much as usual. Checking it just a short while ago, there was a small pile of maybe three or four cats on the platform, and that’s it. Usually, we’d see about 6 or ten on the platform, and almost as many under the heat lamp or on the cat bed below, plus more in the shelf, at the food bowls or just wandering around. It’s going to take time for them to start feeling safe in there again.
These two are almost always in the sunroom. Syndol can’t get enough attention, but the little one (can you believe they’re only about a month or so apart in age?) is now getting to the point of enjoying pets and being picked up. We’d brought this one into the house a couple of times to give his nethers a thorough washing. He was so patient about it, the girls have named him Patience.
Even his tortie sister has started to allow me to pet her more often, and will tolerate being picked up more. Which is good, because it means we can bring her indoors for overnight fasting at the end of the week, before taking her to get spayed. Oh, how I wish more of the females could be socialized enough to get them done! My daughter was able to pet Broccoli this morning, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I did manage to pet Junk Pile – the first time in ages. She seemed shocked at being pet, and liking the shoulder skritches, but didn’t allow it for long. Even Caramel was around, but I only managed to touch her while she had her back to me while eating. Brussel won’t let us near her, but she will go into the kibble house and even into the sunroom. Sprout keeps her distance. If we’re around, she won’t eat at all, and she prefers to eat from the bowls under the shrine, across the yard. We’ve seen Slick around, I think (aka: Octomom), and there’s another grey tabby that’s more spotted then striped that I think is also female. That one will eat at the kibble house or on the cat house roof, but is even shier than Sprout, so we haven’t been able to confirm, either way. Another one we have not been able to confirm is one more from that late litter of either kittens; a small grey tabby with dense longer fur. It will go into the sunroom to eat, and I’ve been able to sneak a pet on its back, if it can’t see me, but that’s it. Given how it won’t let us near it, I’m going to just assume it’s female. 😕
Anyhow, that’s the current status.
In other things, my daughter was able to help me move a chair out of the living room so I have access to the aquarium greenhouses again. With my arm mobile again, my goal for today is to get the big aquarium ready for seed trays, then hopefully actually get seeds started. We’ve got the red onions, yellow onions and shallots that should have already been started by now, plus some peppers and eggplant. Possibly some oregano and thyme, too, but those can probably wait a couple more weeks. I’ll have to go through our seeds that need to be started the earliest and make some decisions. With having to build or rebuild so many beds, once things are thawed out enough, I’m going to work on the assumption we won’t have room for everything we want to plant. Especially for things that would need to be planted in ground, like corn.
We shall see how things work out. For now, I’m just glad to 1) be pain free and mobile enough to get back at it and 2) not have any unexpected running around to do, but actually be home to get my own stuff done!
Time to grab a stool and get at those aquarium greenhouses!
I woke up in pain. Every joint. Even my finger joints where hurting and didn’t want to bend.
I’m about a 6 on the above chart. My husband fluctuates from 7 or 8 on a good day, to 10 on a bad day, so I really don’t have much to complain about.
At least I remembered to take pain killers this morning.. I was intending to take pain killers after finishing yesterday’s blog post, got distracted and completely forgot until I was taking my evening prescription and supplements before bed.
I’m not sure why I’m in so much pain this morning. It’s not related to my fall. My knee feels good enough that I forget it’s still injured and start to kneel onto a chair or my bed with it. In fact, right now, it’s my other knee that hurts more, just with ambient pain. It could be the change in temperatures and barometric pressure. We’ve reached our expected high of -3C/27F already, and tomorrow is supposed to reach a high of -8C/18C. My desktop weather app includes the pressure, but without knowing what it was yesterday to see how much it has changed, I can’t say one way or the other.
On a more pleasant note, I also woke up covered in kittens. At least four of them at one point, snuggling against me. Well, three against me. Snorri in particular much prefers sleeping on me over sleeping with the other kittens. Usually on my hip, but one time I had my feet out from under the covers, and he decided my bare ankle was the place to be!
He’s so small, he could actually do that, and I could barely feel his weight! Even The Beast (aka: Tiny) is significantly heavier than Snorri, and she’s still too tiny to let out of the room! We are letting Soot Sprite out regularly now, though.
So it looks like I’m not going to get a lot done today. My daughter took care of the outside cats for me this morning. Thankfully, we’ve got our prescription refills getting delivered today, so I don’t have to drive into town for them. I’m glad my husband called his refills in earlier. Yesterday, we got a call from the pharmacist about his pain meds. He gets it in both slow release and “take as needed” versions. The pharmacy not only needed an updated prescription for it, but they needed the triplicate paper prescription, as it’s an opioid. The problem is, they sent a fax for the refill, and got no response. They even tried our old doctor at his new clinic, and we’re not patients of his anymore. My husband called his new doctor’s office and, according to their records, they sent the refill information just a few days after the pharmacy requested it. How they could fax in a triplicate prescription, I don’t know, but I guess they’ve got something worked out. With his new doctor in the same town as the pharmacy again, they’re just blocks apart, and I recall the clinic would simply walk the paper prescriptions over. He called the pharmacy and they double checked, but never received the fax. So the clinic sent it again, and it’s all straightened out. He’ll get his pain meds with his bubble packs today, as usual.
Well, I guess this makes today a good day to work on my 2023 garden analysis drafts. It should be interesting to go through my early planning posts and see just how different our garden turned out to be, from how it was intended this year!
Well, it took a few days, but I’m starting to feel the effects of my fall from a couple of days ago. I woke up this morning to pain in pretty much all my joints, plus soft tissue pain along my left side. My knee that I landed on still has minimal swelling, and only hurts if I press on the area. I made the mistake of putting weight on it while getting into bed. Even though it was on a soft mattress, it hurt like blazes.
So the most I got done this morning was cat feeding.
I was able to do a head count again, and kept getting 37, so it looks like that’s going to be our number for the winter. Our usual wanderers, like Rolando Moon and Judgement, are sticking close to home. Sad Face is now a permanent fixture and seems to have stopped being aggressive to the other cats completely.
Once the cat feeding and watering was done, I skipped the rest of my morning rounds, took some pain killers and tried going back to bed. Sleep was a lost cause. The bigger kittens are now allowed out of the room which, unfortunately, means I’m dealing with scratching at my door much more often, as they keep wanting in and out. The littles are a different story. Soot Sprite keeps managing to dash out, and he’s still too small to be let out; at least at night. Snorri has also started to make runs for it, and he’s the tiniest of the bunch! The Beast (who is still Tiny, but not quite as tiny anymore) isn’t as interested in leaving the room. She and Soot Sprite, however, are balls of energy and frequently wrestling rambunctiously. Snorri is has not recovered enough to join them, and is often content to curl up on my leg or hip, or the back of my neck, and nap. He’s such a featherweight, I have to be incredibly careful before rolling over, because I can’t always tell he’s there!
I’ve given up on trying to lie down, and will work on a couple other blog posts instead.
Before I get into things, I just want to share this adorable photo I got last night.
Nothing like a bowl of kittens to brighten your day!
This is a picture from yesterday, because I’ve taken none today. I haven’t even gone outside, and I don’t know if I will get to it. A daughter took care of feeding the outside cats, and I am skipping my morning rounds entirely. All because of a very long and strangely painful night.
Quite a long time ago, I started feeling a strange pain in my left side. I thought I might have pulled a muscle, but it never went away. This started about 6 months after I’d had a large cyst remove, and thought maybe there was a connection, since it was in the same general area, but the doctors couldn’t find any. It got worse to the point where I had difficulty standing up straight – which could be a real problem while driving! Since moving here, I’ve gotten more tests done, and still, no cause could be found. There comes a point with doctors where, if they can’t find a cause for something, they start looking at you askance, and you can tell they think you’re just making it up, or that the problem is psychosomatic. Eventually, I just stopped trying to find a cause. The pain, if I can even use that word, is just there, now encompassing an area from my hips to under my ribs. It’s just a constant presence, but after a while, I no longer got that escalation, where I couldn’t stand up straight anymore. At least, it became more rare. Instead, something else started to happen.
I would lie down in bed, on my right side, because my left hip is more arthritic than my right. As soon as I started to relax, my left side would start cramping. Perhaps spasming would be the better word. The only way to alleviate it was to tense up and twist into a pretzel. As soon as I tried to relax again, it would come back. Sometimes, if I lay on my left side, that would help. Sometimes, I had to get up. Usually, I just went through several bouts of these contortions before I could finally relax my muscles, and then finally be able to sleep.
Well, last night, it happened again, except this time, it was both my sides, not just my left. I was jerking around like a marionette, trying to get it under control and to the point where I could relax. I’m still feeling residual pain from that.
That, on its own, was bad enough. Things didn’t end there. At about 3 – 3:30 in the morning, I rolled over, and instantly my right thigh started cramping viscously. I couldn’t stay lying down, but I couldn’t straight the leg, either, or the cramping would get worse. Of course, I had to go to the bathroom, right? I managed to hobble my way to the bathroom, but even just sitting on the toilet triggered more spasming. I even tried massaging the affected muscle, but just touching it cause more spasms. I was able to do my business, then hobbled to over to get some ibuprofen, because my extra strength arthritis acetaminophen that I take very night before bed doesn’t touch this. Ibuprofen helps with Charlie horses, and this was kinda like that, so I thought it was worth a try.
I’m still feeling residual pain and weakness in my leg from that.
It would have been nice if that were it, but nooooooo. Then my feet had to get into the action.
My feet are wrecked, so it’s not unusual for me to have a metatarsal suddenly dislocate, or for there to be shooting pains, etc. One of the things that happens pretty regularly is sudden cramping if there is a change in temperature. The temperature itself doesn’t seem to matter; it’s how quickly it changes. So, for example, between the time I come out of a nice warm shower and the time I can put on socks and shoes, my toes can start cramping, and it takes a while for them to warm up again enough for the cramping to stop.
Which means that sometimes, if my foot comes out from under the covers, my toes will start cramping instantly.
That started happening last night, too. With both feet – and they weren’t even out from under the covers.
I don’t even know how long that went on for before I finally passed out, until I was awakened by a kitten deciding to curl up against my face, neck and shoulder. That was when I realized I had all the big kittens on my. One on my neck and face, one in my arm pit, one on my chest, and two around my legs. If any of the tinies were on me, I wouldn’t have known, because they weigh nothing! 😄
I managed to get out of bed and do their morning feeding (including Butterscotch, who has rediscovered my pants shelf as her favourite bed), mostly because I needed them distracted so I could go to the washroom. That’s when I discovered I was still feeling the effects of all the cramping and spasming of the night. My daughter was about to feed the adult cats and saw me hobbling around, so she was more than understanding when I asked her to feed the outside cats, too.
Thank God we have a narrow hallway and arm bars all over the place. I needed the walls and the arm bars to hold myself up!
I’m better now, after a few more hours, but definitely still having issues.
I have considered why this might have happened, and if it was because of the work I did in the garden yesterday, but I’ve done that much and more before, without reacting like this. I mean, I’ve ended up stiff and sore to the point that walking was very painful, but no muscle cramping and spasming like what hit me last night. Especially not with so many parts of my body affected, not to mention all of them in one night.
Whatever it is, I’m currently in recovery mode for the day.
After all that, though, I do have some good news. I’m almost afraid to say something so soon, as it’ll be a few days before it follows through. Still… here it is.
We’re going to be getting that truck.
Last week, I’d stopped at the garage to talk to our mechanic, checking out some of his other vehicles at the same time, letting him know we were able to increase our down payment to $1000, thanks to my daughter. At this point, I’d pretty much given up on the truck, but he had a couple of SUVs that would have worked out, for my husband’s needs, at least. One was sold and the other wasn’t prepped for sale yet, but it gave him something to keep an eye out for.
Well, yesterday, I got a call from him.
He had been talking to the financing lady. He told her the new amount we could give for a down payment, and he was willing to drop the price on the truck even more for us. At this point, I suspect he’s actually taking a loss. He doesn’t just buy used vehicles and resell them right away. He’s a mechanic. He makes sure they are completely sound, first, so any work that needs doing, he does. Unlike the dealership that sold us our van, he doesn’t sell vehicles that turn out to have major damage on them. That has to be factored into the price, too.
As for the financing lady, she tried taking off the warranty, and that also lowered the final cost. Between the three things, that brought the payments down to $162 bi-weekly. Our max budgeted amount was $300 monthly. We would have another $100 or so per month for registration and insurance we have to consider as well. This still put us just over our budget amount. Since bi-weekly payments means having at least a couple of months a year with three payments instead of two, this put the monthly budget amount at more than two payments totalling $324. We’d have to budget closer to $400 per month.
However…
Just the night before, my daughter told me she would soon be able to transfer more over to contribute to the damage deposit, having been paid for more commissions. She has also said she will help with the payments.
I gave him a tentative yes, and mentioned we might be able to increase the down payment. I just didn’t know by how much. He told me to talk to the finance lady once I knew. Depending on the amount, if it would only save us a couple of dollars a month, it might not be worth adding it on.
So I went to talk to the girls, and my daughter said she would able to bring our down payment up to $1500.
I emailed the financing lady with the new amount. I also asked about having monthly payments instead of bi-weekly. It’s just easier for budgeting, since my husband’s disability comes in at the end of the month.
I got a quick response with some new numbers. The increased down payment would make a difference. We would have to make a bi-weekly payment for the first payment, but after that, we could call the lender directly and arrange for it to be monthly, instead. The monthly payments would be $331.
We accepted the deal.
Which is kinda scary.
First, taking off the warranty is a risk, but considering who we are buying it from, I consider that risk to be very low.
Next is relying on my daughter being able to make regular payments. Yes, she has consistent commissions, her Patreon supporters and even a few sales from her digital shop, but working freelance like she does means the monthly income is inconsistent. I know she’ll be good for it. I just don’t like it having to rely on it.
The final thing is, where in our budget these payments will be coming from. Some is what we’ve been squirreling away into our contingency fund. That’s going to drop. Most, however, will come from that part of our budget that pays for things like getting the septic tank cleaned, or hiring plumbers, or fixing my mother’s car…
But with the truck, there will be some reductions in the budget. We will no longer have to do as many trips to the city to stock up, because we can fit probably four times as much in the back of the truck as we can in her little car, and not have to worry about how heavy the load is. That doesn’t even count the space available in the cab if we fold up the back seats. My mother’s car, even with the work we had done recently, is not good on gas. At least it’s not getting worse anymore, but with fewer trips to the city, even with a relative gas guzzler like a truck, we will be spending less on gas per month. We would go back to using my mother’s car just to drive my mother around again, and as an emergency back up vehicle.
Best of all, we’ll have a reliable winter vehicle before the sow flies – with new tires, too!
It will take a few business days for my daughter’s transfer to come through. Once we’ve got the down payment all together, I’ll head over to finalize the purchase and get the truck insured. If all goes well, we’ll have a truck by the end of the week.
I just pray that nothing goes wrong between now and then!
I didn’t overdo it yesterday. Honest. I have done far more physical labour than I did yesterday, without much problem.
So why am I hurting so much today?
It’s not muscle pain, either. It’s my joints. My knees are a mess… well… more of a mess than usual… but worst of all are my finger joints. They had been getting better, but are much worse again.
Makes it rather hard to type, that’s for sure.
I got the girls to feed the cats this morning, but did eventually get outside to switch out the trail cam memory cards, check the planted garden beds, do a bit of watering. Even that was difficult.
So today is going to be a pain killer and recovery day. I’ve got some computer stuff to work on, like another time lapse video to put together.
I’m also still trying to recover my personal Facebook account that got stolen. I got zero progress on that. However, I am still getting emails from Instagram, which is linked to that account. When I got one last night, I decided to check it out.
Of course, I couldn’t log in and following the links from the email resulted in error messages. However, since my personal email address was still attached to this account, I was able to recover the account and change the password.
So now, at least, I have my Instagram account. Not that I was using it, but it’s something!
If only recovering my original account were that easy. It just blows me away how useless Facebook support is for this.
On the plus side, it seems all my friends that have been also reporting the account, and the posts being made selling crazy stuff, calling the account out as hacked and even playing games and stringing along the thief, apparently there is no longer any activity coming out of my original account anymore. Hopefully, it will stay that way!
Anyhow.
Time to pain killer up and ingest some sustenance.
I had another rough morning today. Along with pain and stiff joints, I had almost no balance, bouncing off the walls going to and from the bathroom, so I asked my daughters to feed the outside cats for me again.
Since Easter, when I was no longer on my Lenten fast from sugar and starchy foods, I have still not been eating a lot of either. I might include a potato with my breakfast, or some rice with my supper, and even had a couple of cookies my daughter recently bakes. That’s about it. I think, however, I am going to have to go back. I was mostly pain free during my fast, and certain other… bodily functions, shall we say… had improved. I even had days where I didn’t take any painkillers at all. Granted, some of the pain issues I’m having now may be related to how the temperature fluctuations affect my osteoarthritis, but that can only explain so much. Fatigue is another issue.
A lot of this stuff was so constant, I didn’t even really notice them until they came back after I ended my fast. So it looks like I’m going to need to cut out the sugar and starches, if I want to accomplish the things I need to get done this year. When I finally headed outside, it was because I made myself go. I sure as heck didn’t feel up to it. But, today is working out to be another gorgeous and sunny day, and I had things I wanted to check on.
The first thing I heard when I got outside was a very familiar crunching noise, so I checked the kibble house.
No wonder I was seeing cats cautiously circling around their shelters! Stinky Kitty was moved right in!
This little bugger did not want to leave, either. It’s still too cold to set up the hoses, so I tried to convince it to leave with a long stick. The little bugger just sniffed the end of the stick and kept on eating. He (she?) finally left after I went around the kibble house, banging on the roof and kicking at the back wall.
After that, I did the rest of my rounds. Once more of the snow is gone and the ground it less muddy, we’re going to have to take the wagon or wheel barrow around to pick up all the little branches and garbage that have been blown around. There are a few more garden beds that can be worked on, but I’m physically just not up to it. I kept seeing stuff that I want to get working on, some of which I can start now, but the old bod just can’t handle it today. Which is really, really frustrating. This is stuff that needs to get done, whether I feel like it or not. Especially since the weather forecasts – but just on one of my weather apps – is saying we might get 2-3 cm (about an inch) of snow starting tomorrow, and continuing over the next couple of days. Other apps say it’ll be rain. Either way, not good conditions for the outside work I want to do.
Which I will get into more in a video tour I made yesterday. Unfortunately, every time I try to save the file in a format I can upload, the video gets corrupted. I’m sure the problem is my computer, though, not the software. I’m going to try again today and, if it finally works, I’ll upload and post it.
Then, I’m going to take a nap before I plan to go into town to meet the egg lady for a couple more flats of farm fresh eggs!
Today is Sunday and I normally try to keep it as my day of rest, but today just feels… wasted.
I woke up to a bad pain day. Enough that I asked my daughters to take care of feeding the outside cats, then went back to sleep for a couple more hours. It’s not even the worst pain I’ve been in, but it’s like all my joints just don’t want to work properly.
(As I type, retype and retype again, these few sentences repeatedly, because my fingers don’t want to work right!)
Still, I wanted to make sure I got outside for a while, do the rest of my morning rounds and get some fresh air and sunshine. It’s a really gorgeous day out there, and I didn’t want to miss too much of it!
Judgement is judging the state of my boots. 😄
Judgement and Gooby both followed me around all over. With more snow melting away, and plenty of wind, I found and picked up a lot more of those plastic strips from the new shingles being blown around.
One of the areas I can now get into is parts of the spruce grove. Usually it’s either too wet from the snow melt, or too overgrown, to get into. The snowmelt is being absorbed by the ground this spring and nothing is growing yet, so I was able to get through most of the area. There are so many dead trees in there. Some on the ground and rotting, some stuck on other trees and may actually be useable, and others that will need to be cut down. I was also spotting the poplars I want to thin out to use for the trellis tunnels we will be building. Poplar has been taking over the spruce grove. We will be keeping them to a certain extend, as they have been a very useful material, but as we cut down and clean out the dead trees, I want to plant more spruces in the spruce grove!
Feeling the way I do today, though, looking at all the work that needs to be done had me feeling my aching bones even more.
I was also scoping out locations. If things work out to plan, we’re going to have a shed delivered to us at some point, and we need to decide where to put it. In will likely be used as a chicken coop, once it gets the repairs it needs, until we can build the mobile chicken coop I have in mind. We will need some sort of base to support it, so it’s not directly on the ground. Yesterday, I was able to get into the barn and see the state of things. In the lean to side, there are a whole lot of old tires (why are there so many old tires all over the place???), some with rims, some without. It occurred to me that we can use the tires with rims to support the shed. Or just the rims. We don’t have as many rims without tires around, but we can take the tires off.
I had considered putting the shed near the barn, where we would have access to electricity if we wanted, but we have other plans for the outer yard, including permanent raised garden beds and the outdoor kitchen, so I’m thinking it might get to be too much. My daughter is also looking to build a shelter for a forge in the outer yard, though in a different area. The space is going to be filled up quite a bit, and we still need to make sure that there are lanes to drive through with large vehicles. There are also pipes from the well and septic tank running through towards the barn, with the septic pipe running off to the outflow pipe and water pipes running to an old cattle fountain and the barn. The area over them needs to be kept clear, in case they ever need to be excavated. Some day, I would like to be able to turn that water on again, but not until we’ve been able to replace our well pump and upgrade to a larger pressure tank. The shut off valve for fountains and barn is in in our basement. There are two cattle fountains are designed to refill automatically, and they keep the water from freezing in the winter. One fountain, we can see from the house. The other is behind the barn, set up to be accessible both inside and outside of a pen. I’d like to have both of them checked out and repaired as necessary. We’re not planning to have cattle, but if we end up having goats or something, or even have it available for the deer or the renter’s cows, that would be good. That is years in the future, though. As for the tap in the barn, it’s been bashed into at some point and needs repair, too.
In the end, I decided the best place to set up the shed would be near the garage. There’s an open space there that no longer has a branch pile in it. We would have to line it up with the front of the garage, which should keep it from shading out the asparagus and sunchoke beds along the chain link fence. With the chain link fence and the garage, we would have to fence off only two sides to create a run for any chickens. It would be a small run for just a few chickens, but enough to start with. The shed would need to be far enough from the garage to access the wall and roof. Now that the branch pile is gone, we can finally clean out the eaves on that side of the garage!
That branch pile was never meant to be there for several years!!
Having it by the garage gives easy access to electricity, plus better storage for feed and bedding, and still be fairly close to the house, where we’d be getting water from.
To prepare for the shed here, the ground will need a small amount of leveling, and the tires/rims can be brought over. I don’t know the dimensions of the shed yet, so I’d just want to have them nearby until I know where to put them. We even have a chain link gate in the storage house, sitting on the remaining section of stairs to the basement, that could be used to access the chicken run after we fence it off. The shed itself needs its floor replaced. It has a flat roof that leaks, which is why the floor got damaged, so I want to put an angle roof over the existing one, with an overhang on all sides.
Little by little, it’ll get done.
The next area I wanted to scope out was the maple grove behind the house. The two branch piles there are now gone, so it’s nice and open again. The old garden shed is slowly rotting away. My late brother got it second hand from who knows where, and it was basically shoved in between some trees, on top of rocks. I don’t know if any attempt had been made to level it when it was first brought in, but it’s certainly not level now. The trees are holding it up, though!
Since the outdoor bathroom we were planning to build as a cordwood practise building will have to wait until we’ve cut down and removed about a dozen dead spruce trees, I want to make a garden shed as a cordwood practise building. My original thought was to place it next to where there is a path through the maple grove to he main garden area, with the door facing the path.
The bare ground the branch piles had been on will be planted with a lawn replacement mix of seeds, but as I walked around, I considered using one of those patches as a better location for the shed I have in mind. It’s not going to be very big; the interior is planned to be 6’x8′, plus the width of the cordwood walls, so we have some options. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the water. There is a tap near the old garden area. It used to be right at the path along one side of the garden, but garden grew smaller over the years, and my parents planted more trees closer to the house, instead of along the north fence line. There are now trees on the other side of the old path, where garden used to be. A lot of trees have been cut down since it was installed, and there’s even a stump right at the tap that still keeps sending out shoot. Other trees have gotten much bigger since it was installed, too. The water source is a tap at the back of the house, and there is a hose buried in the ground. I’ve tried hooking up the hose end, only to have water spraying up from the ground, at the edge of one of the branch piles that was there. One of the goals of this year is to dig up the old hold and replace it. My thought is to get some heavy duty hose and run it through a PVC pipe from tap to hose. That way, if we ever need to replace it again, it would be relatively easy to pull it out and put a new one in, without having to dig a new trench.
Digging that old hose out is not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of roots in the way!
The main goal being to have that tap at the main garden area working again. It would be a better place to hook up a hose for watering the garden, and I want to make a vegetable washing station. Having the new garden shed near the tap would also be convenient.
The more I walked around the area, the more I realized the best place to build the garden shed would actually be on the other side of where the hose is buried, closer to where the current shed is, and closer to the tap. There are fewer tree stumps to work around, among other things! There would also be more open space in what would be the front of the shed.
In planning the cordwood walls for this, we intend to place longer logs in parts of the wall to support a bench on the outside at one end, which would be closer to the tap. We could even include some longer logs higher up to support a small table or shelf, too. The other end will be facing south, and we plan to have a window and bottle bricks on that side for natural light. With the new location I’m considering, there won’t be as much light, since there are more large maples there. At least one of them is dead and needs to be cut down and untangled from the live tree that’s holding it up. Others are leaning so far over, I plan to cut them to where the trunks are still straight, which will encourage new growth at a lower height. That will be better for the trees, but will eventually block out more light from the planned shed. I don’t mind that too much, though. As long as we have a good, strong garden shed!
So…
Lots of plans. Lots of work to do this summer.
I guess today wasn’t that much of a wasted day, after all.
Earlier today, I made a trip into town to hit the hardware store. I found the screws in the size I needed, though the cost was insane. A box with only 100 screws was $12.99 – about $4 more than the last time I got a 100 count box! Still, we’ll be able to finish the water bowl shelter now.
I also picked up a glass cutter. We have one somewhere, but I have no idea what happened to it. While I was in the city yesterday, the girls worked on clearing the broken glass from the inner pane of one of the sun room windows. There are still pieces that are firmly attached at the sides. Until that’s done, we can’t let the cats into the sun room. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that cleaned up soon.
I was really happy to find the lever type door handle I was looking for. Just a simple, inexpensive handle for an interior door. It was easy to install, and it now no longer hurts to open my door!
Later on, my older daughter and I headed out to do some work in the garden, including planting these.
The Nootka Rose garlic on the left are a soft neck garlic. On the right, above the cloves, you can see the hard necks from the middle of the bulbs. They do make it easier to break the cloves apart! The cloves are larger, and there are fewer of them. Of the four bulbs, one of them had only three cloves!
The soft neck garlic has nothing like that in the middle. Just smaller and smaller cloves. I’ve never planted soft neck garlic before. While the hard neck garlic should be planted in the fall, in our climate zone, we can plant soft neck garlic in the spring – but we’re planting both now.
We moved the mulch aside and planted them the same way as the first row we planted a few days ago. The row in the middle of the bed got the hard neck Music variety, because there are fewer of them. Less reaching needed when it’s time to harvest!
After laying out the cloves to see how to space them, the kittens absolutely would not leave them alone! They also really, really wanted to dig in those freshly uncovered rows!
After planting, the rows were lightly covered to reduce compaction while watering – and protect from kitties.
Which didn’t work very well. Several of them started digging in to them to poop! One wouldn’t stop even while being directly spayed with the hose!
*sigh*
We did eventually persuade them to go elsewhere.
With the Nootka Rose garlic, there were enough that we planted only the largest cloves.
The remaining smaller cloves are now in the kitchen for us to taste test. 😊
That done, my daughter did some other clean up and gathering of support poles, while I turned my attention to the high raised bed.
The chard remains were pulled. They’re actually looking better after several frosts then they have all summer, now that there are no longer grasshoppers eating them. We were never able to eat any of it!
As expected, the soil level has dropped a fair bit, as the organic material buried in layers below, settle. It looks like some mice may have been trying to tunnel in one corner.
I have no doubt Rolando Moon has taken care of that problem for us already.
The last of the vines from the squash patch were added for more organic material – then smashed as flat as I could get it before adding fresh soil. The remaining soil sifted from what is now the garlic bed came in quite handy!
It had settled enough that it took three large wheelbarrows full of soil to top it up! I probably could have gotten away with two and a half, but it’s going to continue to settle, so a little extra is fine.
It then got a light, thin mulch of grass clippings before I gave the whole thing a thorough watering. I just want to protect the soil surface, not insulate it. In the spring, the mulch will be removed so the soil can warm up and thaw out faster.
We haven’t decided what to plant here next year, yet, but I think we should give it at least one more year for the upper layers to break down before we try to plant any deep root vegetables in it.
I feel like I’m really behind on preparing the beds for the winter. The girls aren’t able to help as much as usual, either. My younger daughter has been having knee issues to the point that she’s now using a cane to get around the house. She did try to go to a doctor about it, about 2 years ago, but it wasn’t taken seriously because she’s so young. It was already a battle to get her to see a doctor in the first place, so that certainly didn’t help. Anyhow, she does the best she can but, right now I’m actually the most able bodied person in our household. Which is kinda scary, considering how much I’m hurting this year! I didn’t expect my hands to be the main problem, though. Usually it’s my wrecked knees and feet. They’ve actually been relatively good, lately. Either that or the pain in my hands is making it seem like they are better.
Ah, well. We do what we can. It won’t be the end of the world if some beds don’t get weeded before winter and need to be done in the spring. There are other things that are higher on the necessity list.
The Re-Farmer 