I went to check out some distressed sounding mews, and found Broccoli Baby in one of the elm trees by the sidewalk. She seemed to not like the “getting down” process.
I was able to walk past her on the sidewalk, and she just watched me from here, ready to run off in a moment. Which is progress!
I also caught sight of a couple of kittens in the big junk pile, with Rosencrantz nearby. I saw the white one with the mostly orange head, and behind it I clearly saw the kitten I’d only seen shadows of, earlier. Just it’s head, really. It looks like we have another tortie.
I am guessing that they are Rosencrantz’s second litter. We never did find out what happened with her first litter, but whatever it was, with everything still frozen, their chances for survival were low from the start. Now, she has four more, and they are looking strong and healthy. At their small size, and having them coming to the kibble tray under the shrine already, I’m hoping we’ll have better luck socializing them, than we’ve had with Broccoli Baby and the other older kittens!
In the wee hours of the morning, I went in the bathroom and must have made a startling noise. Outside the window, I heard some scrambling, and the sound of a bin hitting the floor.
I found these guys.
There are three of them. They stayed frozen like this while I did some clean up. The bin did not spill, thankfully, and is now stored in the old kitchen.
I picked up just enough to make a clear path to the door. While I was working, one squeezed its way up to the next shelf and hid behind some stuff. The other two eventually pushed behind the bird seed bin to the corner by the window, and froze there.
I left the doors wide open and the lights on after I cleaned up as much as I needed to – with kittens under foot the whole time! The kittens and raccoons don’t seem to have any issues with each other. Hopefully, it will stay that way, and raccoons sometimes kill cats.
Considering how we have the doors rigged, I’m amazed that these big buggers managed to squeeze through. They’re set up so that, while a critter is pushing through the gap in one door, the other door gets pulled more closed. The gap is just big enough for a kitten. An adult cat would have to squeeze through.
A big, roly poly trash panda would have more problems getting in, to be sure, but get in they did!
They made no effort to get at the sunflower seeds in the other bin, though we do see them eating them where we put them for the birds. Hopefully, with the kibble bin no longer in the sun room, they will have no reason to come back.
When to do my morning rounds these days is a bit of a conundrum. I can wait until later in the morning, but find it gets too hot, too quickly. Plus, the kitties will be hungry. Or I can do it earlier when it’s cooler, but get eaten alive by mosquitoes. I went earlier this morning and not only were the mosquitoes out in full force (and I didn’t want to use bug spray when I wasn’t going to be outside for very long), but it was so humid out, my glasses fogged up while I was picking beans, and the dew got me completely soaked from the knees down!
Still, there were some decent pickings this morning. The purple beans are starting to really kick in.
Normally, I would have set it up all pretty before taking a picture, but things did not go as expected this morning.
I was planning to make jokes about feeling “chipper”, because I got a call from the tree guys yesterday. They will be coming in today to chip our branch piles. The problem is, I’m not feeling the least bit chipper this morning, and this is why.
There is supposed to be a trail cam there. The post the camera screws onto is snapped right off.
In the off chance something bigger, like a racoon, broke it, I checked the ground around the post, both on our side of the fence line, and the road side. Nothing. It’s gone.
Obviously it was there yesterday morning, since I switched out the memory cards. I was watering the garden quite late, but I didn’t check it, so I can’t say if it disappeared during the day, or at night.
Now, the most obvious assumption is that our vandal took it. While in court with his civil suit against me, one of the things he kept bringing up is that I have cameras all over the place because I’m trying to “catch” him and put him in jail. That camera is there because the sign with my late father’s name on it that was mounted on the post had disappeared. A reflector that had been mounted to overlap the top of the sign was broken in half. Half is still on the post, and I found the other half on the ground. So we made the new sign and put the camera on it as a deterrent. In fact, one of the pictures our vandal submitted to court as some sort of evidence against me (???) was of the sign, with the camera beside it circled.
I would have preferred to have the camera further back from the fence, but there was no way to mount it and still record the area in front of the sign. So it’s very been very visible from the road, and can be easily reached.
The irony of it is, this camera has been having problems. Unlike the other trail cam, where you can see that the batteries are slowly dying in the night shots (infrared flash is not as bright, flickering lines across the frame, etc), when the batteries go on this one, it tends to be very sudden. I’ll open it up and the LCD screen won’t turn on, and the camera will be dead. Usually, I just change the batteries, reset the time and date, and it’s done, but the LCD screen never came back. The camera was still recording, but the time and date was on default, and reset to default every time I changed the memory card. I was planning to replace it, but all our extra funds are going towards paying the tree guys to chip the branch piles today. Still, I was expecting to replace the camera fairly soon.
Now, there’s no camera to replace.
*sigh*
So once I was back inside from doing my rounds, the girls took care of the vegetables for me so I could look up and call the non-emergency RCMP number for our area.
There was no answer, so I left a message.
I could report the theft online, but after going over their options, I decided against it. Because of our vandal and the restraining order we have against him, this theft falls into several categories – and we can’t even say that he is the one who took it. Yes, he’s the most likely person to have done that, but would he really be THAT stupid? Yet, there is no one else who would do something like that. Even if one of his buddies decided to do it, they would know he would be the one immediately suspected and that it would get him in even worse trouble.
My husband took the compost bucket our for me last night, leaving the sun room door open behind him. When he got back, the sun room was full of kittens, so he left the door open.
I went out last night to close it, and there was at least half a dozen kittens on the swing bench, and others running around, freaking out because I’d walked into the room.
The kibble was out, so I topped up all the trays, including the one in the sun room. I didn’t want to risk trapping kittens in there overnight, so I left the inner and outer doors slightly open, so they could go in and out still.
Before heading out this morning, I looked out the bathroom window and there were so many kittens on the swing bench, I could hardly see the seat.
Of course, the more feral ones ran off as soon as they heard the old kitchen doors as I started heading out, but not all of them disappeared.
The calico ran off a moment after I got the shot, then the black and white one ran into the mini greenhouse shelf. The third one is one of the two that are the most socialized. I was able to pick it up and cuddle it. The other black and white that lets us hold it was nearby, and for a while, I was sitting on the bench holding both of them.
So it looks like we won’t be able to close the sun room door for a while! I’ll have to put the rope/knob system back. Basically, the knobs for the two doors are tied to each other, with the rope going through the arm bar in the door frame. This allows me to have the doors almost closed, and the wind (or rough housing critters) can’t open them all the way.
Hopefully, their curiosity about the sun room will also have them getting more used to our presence, and help with socialization.
I’m happy to say that I’ve been seeing Potato Beetle around. He joined me while I was tending things in the garden, yesterday evening.
The cats do like the cardboard mulch around the silver buffalo berry!
Unfortunately, he’s a bit too spry and back to normal. He went after Rolando Moon. Then I saw him and Sad Face stalking each other. I broke that up before it became an actual fight, only to later see him stalking The Distinguished Guest!
I dissuaded them from fighting, but Potato Beetle is looking like he’s wanting to reestablish his top spot in the pecking order.
Aren’t they supposed to be less aggressive after losing their nibs?
Well. At least he’s staying close to home.
He showed up this morning, while I was putting kibble out, but he had no interest in the other trays. He wanted his personal food dish in the sun room! So I let him in and left the door open, so he could come and go as he pleased.
While doing my morning rounds, I took recordings for a new garden tour video. I’ll be working on editing it later today.
I also had a chance to pick cherries.
These are the cherries that I could reach without a ladder. I could pull some branches down, but there are still plenty higher up that need to be picked. The gallon bucket was about 3/4 full. These have been laid out in a pair of trays in a single layer, and are in the big freezer. Once they’re frozen, we’ll bag them up. I wouldn’t mind trying to make wine with these. It’s bee a long time since we’ve tried to make wine. The problem is having a cat-safe space for the carboy. There just isn’t any. 😕😒
After washing off the cherries with the hose, I starting into the sun room, only to find the netting I’d put on the swing bench, on the floor in front of the door.
The bench was occupied.
The sun room was just crawling with kittens! These three, and their mama, were relaxing, but you can just see the tail tip of the one that ran between the window and the bench. Some of the big kittens were in there, too. My presence was panicking them, though. One ran into a window, and another into the back of the inner door, trying to get out. *sigh* So I was careful to skirt around and make sure they could access the door as I picked up the netting, then brought the cherries inside. The mama ran off, too, but the three kittens in the photo, stayed.
That mama has this permanent angry expression on her face. 😄
Today is looking to be a really nice day for work outside, so I’m going to see what I can catch up on. Maybe say hello to the cows. I can see them on the security camera’s live feed, at the fence along the driveway. 😊
Mostly, though, I need to finish mowing. After working in the old garden area last time, though, I had better check the blade and see if I need to sharpen it, first!
I was a bit later with the kibble today – after yesterday, I allowed myself to sleep in! So there were plenty of mamas waiting for me outside the sun room door.
I was very happy to see Ghost Baby was back. She is so hungry, she almost doesn’t run away while I put the kibble out. In the background, you can see Broccoli’s Mini Me with the black and white.
Oh, I let Potato Beetle out of the sun room yesterday, as he was doing so well. I saw him happily making his way through the outer yard soon after. Today, no sign of him. Hopefully, he won’t have the urge to wander too far, since he won’t be sowing any wild oats anymore.
The little kittens came around later on. I am so happy about these two! They don’t run away unless something has made them nervous. They let me pick them up and pet them. I was even able to pick them both up at the same time, after taking this photo!
At least we are managing to socialist two kittens so far!
At the time this scheduled post is published, I should be on the road, headed to court. Because I have to leave so early, I won’t be able to do my usual stuff in the garden until later, but I wanted to have something positive to start the day with!
So here is an evening harvest to share in the morning. 😊
I was checking on the ground cherries while doing my evening rounds when I noticed one that had ripened since I checked them this morning.
I ate it.
Then I started weeding and found several others that had ripened enough to fall to the ground.
I brought those in for the family to taste test. 😁 I know they’ve had them before, since we grew them in a container in the city, but when the first of my daughters tried one, she sounded really surprised when she commented on how good it was. Looks like I’ll be fighting over them, as they ripen! 😂
There were a couple of Magda squash I could have grabbed, but I left the smaller one to get a bit bigger.
I picked the red onions because they were starting to fall over. Though they look the same, the bigger one is a Red of Florence onion, while the other, smaller one, is a Tropeana Lunga.
The yellow onion is from sets. Somehow, a few Black Nebula carrot seeds ended up around the onion, so I pulled all of them. The carrots were just wisps, so I tried pulling the biggest one I could reach, and… well… that’s what you see in the picture. Really long, really skinny.
The pale yellow carrot is an Uzbek Golden carrot that we got as a freebie. The two orange ones are napoli carrots using seeds left over from last year. I tried pulling a Kyoto Red, too, but it turned out to be really tiny. There are so few of them, I didn’t want to try another.
The shallot is one of the “spare” sets we planted in the retaining wall blocks of the old kitchen garden. Sadly, we lost most of the shallots in the bed by the chain link fence. Though the bed was raised a few inches when we added the bricks around it, it wasn’t enough at one end. There was just too much flooding this spring, and they rotted out. The ones planted in the retaining wall blocks aren’t doing much better, but that probably has more to do with cats rolling on them. The one I picked had lost most of its greens, so I decided to pick it before it started going soft. The other that was planted with it had lost all its greens and had gone mushy.
A nice little variety of things to try! Still lots of growing to do, though. 🥕🧅
The Re-Farmer 