Only some of them were willing to let me take their picture!
Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but it seems that super fuzzy one on the right is not running away quite as quickly as usual. It’s not that he is letting me come any closer. Just that he seems to be waiting a bit longer before running away.
That little brown tabby in the front in the kibble house perplexed me a bit. He will come up to me, or hang around when I come in, and even gets playful around me – but he still runs off if he feels I’m too close – whether it’s because I moved towards him, or he moved towards me!
If it weren’t for the mosquitoes, I’d be spending more time just being outside, trying to socialize them. I don’t want to slather myself with bug spray to do it, either. Especially with the littlest kittens. Between the smell and the chemicals, it isn’t good for them.
My mother wanted me to check her out of the hotel as late as we could, so this morning I actually got to sleep in a little bit before doing my morning rounds! I’m happy to say, my mother is now settled in at home and really hoping not to have to go through this again! While helping put fresh sheets back on her bed, I noticed the exterminator left a trap in the corner, to monitor things. We shall see.
I had done a small harvest from the garden yesterday, so I didn’t have to pick any beans this morning – though I did find a couple of cucumbers I’d missed!
I was able to do some hand pollinating, which is nice. Not with the luffa, though.
We still have only female flowers blooming. The clusters of male flowers are forming, but are still just tiny buds.
The nearby dancing gourds have so many flowers, I don’t even bother. What few pollinators we’ve got right now are more than able to get those ones done! There are many developing gourds, hidden among the leaves, to show for it.
The G-Star patty pan squash are really getting big and healthy, and I finally spotted a female flower today. When they were still struggling, I did see one squash starting to form, but there were no male flowers to pollinate it, so it fell off. Since then, until today, there have been only male flowers.
This is how they should have looked by the end of June and the first half of July. Not at the very end of August!
There were other summer squash I was able to hand pollinate. Most of them are not as far behind as the G-Star, though the green zucchini is sort of in between. I could have picked some summer squash this morning, but left them to get a bit bigger. I should be able to pick at least a couple of them, tomorrow.
Mostly, though, I wanted to pick tomatoes!
There are only 3 or 4 of the rounder Sophie’s Choice in there, and the rest are the Cup of Moldova. Most of those went into the freezer with the others awaiting processing, though I kept a few for fresh eating.
This is the first time we’ve grown determinate tomatoes. I kept hearing about how they ripen all at once, so be prepared to do a lot of canning and processing in a very short time. I was kind of counting on that, since the main reason we were planting these was to make tomato paste. A lot of tomatoes will cook down to a fairly small amount of paste. However, they seem to be ripening little by little, like indeterminate tomatoes do. Even with what I’ve already got in the freezer, I really don’t think there’s enough to fill the dozen 125ml jars we have waiting for them. (From what I’ve been finding, because tomato paste is so very dense, they should not be canned in even 250ml jars, as it’s so hard for the paste to come to temperature all the way through.)
We’re going to have to process them soon, though. In a couple of days, I’ll be doing the rest of our monthly stock up shopping, and we’re going to need the freezer space taken up the the bin with the tomatoes! So whatever we’ve got now is going to have to do.
Before we can do that, though, we need to finish processing the crab apples and get the hard apple cider started. At least the girls got the cider vinegar started, while I was helping my mom. When I told my mother about what we’re doing with the apples, she asked for a small bottle of cider vinegar to try, which I had already been planning to do – or at least offer. That she’s even asking to try new things like this is pretty surprising, after all these years since our move with her being so angry whenever I did something different from how she did things! 😁 She is still upset with me because there were cherries still on the cherry trees when she came out here with my sister. I was supposed to pick every single one of them, and make all the things she would have made with them. Any left on the tree is apparently a real tragedy. Just the fact that I froze the ones we did pick, rather than processing them right away, ticked her off. I told her I had other things to do and, since they’re frozen, I can do them at my leisure. All that got me as a grilling on what could I possibly be doing to keep me from processing them right away. I don’t have cows to milk! (That’s her current thing: we don’t have cows to milk, therefore we have no work to do.) When she was on the farm, she always processed this stuff right away. I reminded her that back then, there was seven of us, so she was able to do this stuff and the rest of the work still got done. Her response was to ask, what did I do while growing up on the farm? I started listing out how I helped in fields, in the barn, with the cows, with the chickens, and in the garden. I just wasn’t allowed to help much with the pigs, because I was so young, and they were so potentially dangerous.
She didn’t remember me doing any of that.
I told her that just because she didn’t see or remember something, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!
I can’t really complain about her digs too much. It has actually gotten better compared to when we first moved here, and she was so very angry that we didn’t instantly do all the things she thought needed to be done (never mind what actually needed to be done), and didn’t immediately recreate the garden she had some 40 years ago, in exactly the same place (though much of that space is now taken up with trees or the shade from trees), and in exactly the same way she did it (never mind that we don’t have the equipment she did). It’s taken a lot, but she’s at least less critical, even if she still doesn’t understand the how or why of what we’re doing.
And even interested in trying new things, like asking for a Red Kuri squash, and some crab apple cider vinegar!
My plans for yard work would have had to change, anyway, as we are now getting a steady rainfall right now, but there was plenty to work on indoors instead.
The kitties were getting pretty wet, so I left the sun room doors propped open. I’ve discovered why I’ve been finding things knocked out of the top shelf of the shelf shelter. Despite the two bottom shelves being set aside for the cats, some of the little kittens have been climbing up into the top shelf, where all sorts of miscellaneous stuff are kept, and sleeping on some pieces of rigid insulation in one corner! So I am leaving the sun room available for them to shelter in, more comfortably.
Because I’m a suck, when it comes to the kitties! 😁
Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to my brother on the phone, in between his attempts to call my mother. He started trying early enough to catch her before she went to church, but she wasn’t answering. It turned out she was watching her religious programming on TV and wasn’t answering the phone. Then she went to church, and stayed out for hours after.
*sigh*
I got a message from him after he finally got through to her, well into the afternoon. My mother’s apartment was going to be sprayed for bed bugs again.
Today.
She was wondering about staying in a hotel again, since she has to stay away for 12 hours.
*sigh*
So I called her, but her Polish program was on. It was almost 4, so when she said she would call me back when it was done to talk about the bed bug spraying, I said fine.
An hour later, I finally called her myself. I could hear the TV still going, and there was another Polish mass about to start. She wouldn’t have called me back until ALL her Polish shows were done! Meanwhile, I’d delayed working on supper so I could answer the phone without being in the middle of cooking – and I’d already skipped lunch (I lost track of time and forgot to eat).
*sigh*
My mother has zero respect for other people’s time, but expects everyone else to respect hers.
Ah, well.
We talked about her apartment being sprayed again. She did not want to stay at a hotel again, because it’s so expensive (it was actually very cheap, but she doesn’t know what hotel stays usually cost these days). So, she asks me… What was I going to do with her for the day?
Seriously?
What we finally worked out is that I will wait until I get a call from her, letting me know the exterminators have arrived – which I am doing right now, as I write this. They can show up any time between 9am and 4pm. I will then go pick her up, and we will run an errand for her in the city near my sister’s place, and then she wanted to visit my sister.
Who works a 5pm to 1am shift today.
I told her to call my sister first, to make sure stopping by was okay.
Then we’ll have to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. Even then, she’ll end up having to hang out in the lobby or something before she can go back into her apartment. Unlike her neighbours, who can go back after 6 hours, because they don’t have respiratory conditions.
But she won’t stay at a hotel again.
*sigh*
I also had a talk to her about letting me know right away, if her apartment is going to be sprayed again. She got the letter last week, and just didn’t bother telling anyone. I have no idea what she planned to do, had my brother not gotten through to her and then told me.
So my day today is completely gone. I can’t even start anything, unless I can drop it as soon as she calls.
One of the things I wanted to do was get crab apple cider vinegar going. I ended up having to ask my daughters to do it overnight which, of course, changed their plans, too.
They were sweethearts about it, though, and we now have three 1 gallon jars in the big aquarium, safe from cats, fermenting. This time, not only did we stick with just cheesecloth to cover the jars, but the apples are weighted down with slide lock bags filled with water to keep them submerged.
They didn’t use up even half of the apples I picked yesterday!
If I had more jars like this, we’d be making more. As it is, I did have a fourth jar, but after talking to my mother about what we were planning to do with the apples, she asked for a gallon jar so she could make sauerkraut. She wanted one of her old jars in the basement, but those have been sitting for more than a decade. I’ve actually gone through and washed the dozens of jars I found down there, and those particular jars are only being kept because we will used them to make bottle bricks for the walls of the cordwood shed we will be building. I would not consider them food safe anymore. So I’m bringing her one of our newer jars, instead.
So the apples will be used to make hard crab apple cider, instead – though that won’t be started on until probably tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I still did my morning rounds, which included a small harvest.
I had not yet washed these. They are wet from the rain.
There were some summer squash I could have picked, but I decided to leave them to get a bit bigger. I was able to hand pollinate some other squash, though. Which is interesting, when the flowers have puddles of rainwater in them!
According to the long range forecast, we’ve got at least a couple of weeks of hot, mostly dry weather. After that, the overnight lows are expected to be just a few degrees above freezing. I’m hoping that changes. If we have the month of September with no frost, there’s still a chance for some things to mature.
We have more red tomatoes that I should pick later today, or tomorrow morning. The paste tomatoes will go straight into the freezer with the others, until there is enough to start making tomato paste. The others will likely be dehydrated.
Our first attempt at dehydrating them worked, but took a long time. We kept needing the oven for other things. Though my daughter did not slice them super thin, they shrank so much, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get them off the rack they were on. They came off surprisingly well, though.
It was just one tray of tomatoes, so it’s not a lot, but I definitely think it is worth doing again.
Along with the red tomatoes, the Yellow Pear tomatoes have something to pick almost every day.
I did break down and taste on of them. After all, I’d been able to eat the tiny Spoon tomatoes without gagging. Maybe I could eat these ones, too?
*shudder*
Nope.
The Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, meanwhile, are finally starting to turn colour, but it will still be a while before we can harvest any of them.
We most definitely need a mild September. Hopefully, a mild October, too!
Ah, well. Whatever happens, happens. We’ll deal with it.
Hmm. I really should be making myself something to eat before going to my mother’s, but… Murphy’s Law. The moment I start something, the phone is sure to ring! 😂
This morning, the girls opened up the cat house to give the inside a good cleaning.
Both daughters are in this picture. 😂
One is inside the cat house, clearing out the old straw and debris into the wheelbarrow by the side of it, while the other assisted as much as possible. Mostly by keeping kittens out of the way. The socialized ones REALLY wanted to get underfoot! Speaking of feet, my older daughter flipped a toenail and can’t wear closed toes shoes right now, so her sister banished her from going inside the cat house. Unfortunately, in the winter, the cats do crap in there, rather than going outside into the chill.
I tried to do my part in distracting kitties by putting out some cat treats. Which the kittens that were underfoot mostly ignored, in favour of being underfoot!
Once they did as much as they could and closed things up again, the less socialized cats started coming out of the woodwork, too. 😊
The old straw has been removed completely and, being full of cat poop, isn’t going into the compost. It was added to the burn pile, instead. The giant crochets blanket that was in there is now draped over the kibble house, where it had been hosed down on one side. After a while, it’ll be flipped so the other side can be hosed down. It get really, really heavy when wet!
We don’t have fresh straw to put inside, so for now there is another scrap yarn crocheted blanket in there. I am thinking of moving away from straw completely. Having the heat bulb is great, but even though it’s just a relatively mild terrarium bulb should be fine, I’m still paranoid about straw dust. There are some scrap pieces of high density rubber mats in the barn. I am thinking we might lay some of the rigid insulation we have left on the floor, then covering it with the mats. The cats love scratching the foam insulation, but they won’t be able to scratch those mats. Between the mats and the insulation, it should help keep the shelter floor comfortable in the winter.
I also want to give those windows a good cleaning on the inside, and before winter, we’ll be sure to switch out the battery in the smoke detector we have in there.
With so many kitties this summer, I suspect the cats’ house is going to be very full this winter!
We had kittens in the sun room last night, so we left the doors tied partially open. When I had a chance, I joined them for a while, sitting on the swing bench with one kitten violently and playfully attacking one arm, while another was trying to figure out if my fingers were edible on the other. Out the window, I could see other kittens playing in the old kitchen garden.
It’s a very good thing the fall spinach beds are covered with the hoops and mesh!
Then I spotted a large shadow moving at the far end. A raccoon?
I headed out to check. The noise of me moving about sent the raccoon climbing up one of the ornamental apple trees. It was completely dark, but I tried to get some photot, anyhow.
Just look at that big, furry butt!
What I didn’t notice until I was cropping the photo to post here, was the second raccoon in the tree!
Then, while checking the trail cam files, I saw we had a visitor of a very different sort passing by.
This coyote got picked up by the other camera, too. It was just sauntering down the road!
It was a spur of the moment decision to move the original old camera onto this tree and keep it going. It went haywire quite some time ago. I am amazed that it’s working at all. I had even tried setting it to stills instead of video, and it still didn’t work. One of the things it would do was get triggered to start recording, but not shut off. I’d come out the next morning to find the batteries dead, and nothing on the memory card. Now, I still sometimes get an error message when switching the cards – I just have to take it out and put it back in until it starts working. I think that has more to do with the connections on the cards wearing out than the camera, though.
I’m glad it’s working again. Not just so that I can have the old camera on the new camera, in case this one gets stolen, too. It picks up interesting things, like this coyote – and we have a few images of a mouse running across the top barbed wire! 😁
This little guy just LOVES attention, and wants to play with the Giant Food Givers!
I’m hoping these ones will get used to me if I keep coming over while they eat.
I was actually able to touch the tortie this morning! Granted, it was in the process of leaving when I did, but it did stop for a moment before hissing and continuing on.
Did I mentioned this one loves attention?
He actually trapped me. I bent over to reach something, he went onto my back, then settled. I couldn’t straighten without either dropping him, or ending up with a scratched back. When I tried to reach him, he rolled into my arm and I ended up in an even more difficult position, trying to keep him from falling onto the concrete floor! Thankfully, I’d been able to reach my phone in my pocket and had already sent a message to the family, asking for assistance. 😄 My husband was able to come out and remove the bebby. Who did NOT want to be left behind! I had to dash in and rush – carefully! – to close the door.
I had quite the crowd this morning! One of the little black and whites apparently wasn’t hungry, so it hung out, out of frame.
Do you see the catten (that’s what I call our “teenagers” – not quite an adult, but too big to call a kitten anymore!) on the right? Over the counterweight? That’s the one that looks like it’s going to be big and bushy, like David. If we can socialize it, we have a forever home waiting already. One of my SIL’s really, really wants a David. 😂 Unfortunately, it’s one of the shier ones!
The catten climbing up into the kibble house is another shy one that we see pretty rarely.
Rosencrantz and her crew had company this morning! The catten that looks quite a bit like Junk Pile – but with a distinctive black lower lip! This one tends to show up alone, and I’ve yet to see it with any of the adults in a familial way. Here, Rosencrantz tolerated it for a very short time.
Also, I managed to get that tortie to look at me while taking the photo. What a cutie!!!
Here we have it. Finally! A photo with all five of Rosencranctz’s kittens in one shot! The spotted one on the far left tends to hang back while the others go for the food, and tends to be the first one to run off when I come around.
My original plan of the day was to continue mowing the lawn after doing my morning rounds. Unfortunately, I realized that I would need to get new SD cards for the new trail cam, which did not come with its own. Since I switch cards every morning, each camera needs two card, and the old SD cards we’ve been using for the past few years are starting to wear out.
Which meant a trip into town, after feeding the kitties.
So. Many. Kitties!
There are 10 kittens and three adults in this photo – with many kitties that hadn’t come out yet!
Except these ones, that emerged rather quickly, since they have their own kibble bowl.
Gotta love the one that likes to sit completely in the bowl!
The fifth kitten came out of the lilacs after I got this picture, then ran off before I could include it in a shot. It is pretty distinctive, with more black spots on is body than it’s mostly white siblings.
The only place in town that I could think of that would have memory cards was the pharmacy, so I picked up my prescription refill while I was at it. My doctor switched me from pills once a day two injections once a week, which he wants to try for a year.
Thank God for my husband’s insurance! The price went up, and it cost almost $70. Which means that, without insurance, it would cost almost $700. My dosages are still building up to what the doctor wants to be on. At full dose, I am probably looking at about 2 boxes every 3 months, if I remember correctly. As it is, one box now costs more than my husband’s bubble packs for 4 weeks, and he’s got something like 10 different medications spread over 3 times a day in there.
Ugh.
Anyhow…
The pharmacy turned out to not have any memory cards in their little electronics sections. The cashier suggested I try a store across the street. They didn’t have any in their electronics section, but when I asked, it turned out they have them behind the counter.
I was about to buy two of them when I realized they were micro SD, not SD cards. I tested a micro SD on the camera, and it doesn’t work.
After telling her what I needed, she wracked her brain then suggested I try a cell phone place a few streets over. So I did, and they did have one type in stock – with far more memory than I needed, and so expensive, I couldn’t get the two I needed with the budget I had.
The guy wracked his brain, then suggested a small computer repair shop. I’d completely forgotten it existed, because is shares retail space with another shop. So I went there.
They did carry memory cards – but were completely out of stock and would not get more for at least a week.
Crud.
The next option was to go to the small, slightly nearer city. They have a Walmart. I figured I should at least be able to find one there! I made a quick stop at the gas station, then home to leave my meds, then off I went again.
The trip took quite a bit longer than expected, though. This time of year, the provincial and municipal road maintenance crews are out in full force. They’re cutting the overgrown grass and saplings along the shoulders, scraping the shoulders free of weeds, clearing ditched and culverts for the winter, and even painting fresh lines on the highways. This particular highway was being resurfaced – finally! – leaving only half a lane open for traffic. We were all driving half on the road, half on the shoulder, for miles, while traffic in the other direction was having to wait. The road crews wouldn’t even let people make turns along the way, because the asphalt was so fresh.
Once I got to the Walmart, though, I realized it shared a parking lot with a Staples, so I went there.
I found two 32G cards (I would have been happy with 16G, or even 8G, but there were none in stock) at a price low enough, it actually made up for the cost of gas to drive out!
My daughter had given me her card and a shopping list, so I hit the Walmart, too. Then, it was home by a different route!
Once home, I formatted the cards, then finished my morning rounds, which included switching out the memory cards. Though we had a good rainfall yesterday, we’re heating up over the next while, and won’t get rain again for some time (if we get it in our area at all), so I gave the all the garden beds a good watering.
I’m just amazed by how quickly this pumpkin is turning colour! Obviously, it’s not going to reach anywhere near its potential, but we made no effort to do that. I prefer to have a pumpkin that doesn’t need a forklift to carry. 😉
I’ve been eyeballing our long range forecast and, so far, it looks like the mild temperatures will continue well into September. Our average first frost date of Sept. 10 is expected to have a high of 19C/66F, and a low of 10C/50F. The middle of the month is looking to have lows of 5C/41F. Forecasts that far ahead are far from reliable, of course, but it is hopeful. Every mild day is that more more time for all the stuff that’s behind in the garden to catch up!
It’ll also be good for the litters of kittens that were born later in the season, too!
This handsome fellow landed on my arm while I was watering the garden.
What a beauty!
We’ve seen almost no dragonflies this year, until recently, and we’re still seeing far fewer than I would expect. With so many mosquitoes this year, I would have expected a corresponding increase in dragonflies, but not this time. I suspect our long, cold spring and subsequent flooding had something to do with it, just as it did with so many of our pollinators that are in short supply this year.
I am hoping we will start seeing more of these, soon! More dragonflies means less mosquitoes!
I’ve read they used to be common in our area. I have only ever see one, once before, when I was in my teens, and it wasn’t even here. It was at a mini golf course in a lakeside town about half an hour from here.
I have seen a lot more frogs – mostly wood frogs – this year, which always makes me happy. Seeing this handsome fellow is a real treat!
The Re-Farmer 