Would you just look at that face?
One of the two kittens that allow me to pick them up. The other one doesn’t like to pose for the camera, though. 😉
The Re-Farmer
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photo of the day
Morning adorableness, morning finds
No rain this morning, so the bitty kitties were out and about!
This one looks disheveled because I had just been holding it. 😻 Not only did it let me pick it up and cuddle it, but when I put it down in the food tray, it just started to eat, ignoring me while I continued to pet it.
*melt*
The little calico acts conflicted. It’s curious enough to slink around, watching me closely, sometimes inching closer, but shy enough to not let me anywhere near it.
This one is not conflicted. It will stay and watch me, only if it’s behind something. It will not come any closer, and will leave it I pay too much attention to it, even if it’s holding my phone off to the side to try and get a picture.
It was, however, more than happy to get into the water tray, after I refilled the gallon water bottle that I’ve set up to drain slowly. They seem to like it when I put the frozen water bottle in the tray to help keep the water cool longer, too.
As I continued on, I did a double taken when I realized I was seeing something new. A self-sown poppy had opened.
When we moved there, we found ornamental poppies growing among the lilacs along the side of the house, so seeing poppies show up in other places was no surprise. This one, however, is a completely different flower! The others are more of an orange, and don’t have the ruffled petals. So far, the is the only red poppy like this we’ve seen. A couple of self seeded poppies have sown up in our beet bed. I kind figured they were from the bread see poppies that we have in a nearby bed, but I know my mother had ornamental poppies growing in the old kitchen garden for quite a few years. When I was a kid, she had seed poppies in that garden. It should be interesting to see if these volunteers turn out to be an ornamental poppy, or an edible seed type!
As for the red ornamental poppy that just bloomed, I’ll be sure to allow it to self seed. This area needs more cleaning up, and it would be nice for the stuff we want to get rid of to be crowded out by something we would like to keep! :-)
While continuing my rounds, I had another nice surprise. Our very first golden pattypan squash is forming! It was too small to try and get a picture of, among the foliage. Hopefully, it’ll get well pollinated and not just wither and fall off.
We’ve got a very few other things trying to produce. The sugar snap peas are not doing well, but I did find a single well formed pod.
I ate it. It was tasty!
The King Tut purple peas grown from our own seeds are producing pods, but they are green instead of purple. There aren’t very many, but I have been able to pick the odd pod and give them a taste.
They are not tasty. Quite bitter, instead! Which is different from last year. I wonder if they had cross pollinated with the pod peas growing on the other trellis. The peas did so poorly last year, I would not have expected so. The one King Tut volunteer from last year has produced a single purple pod, which I’ve left to dry out and keep for seed. Now I wonder if it’ll stay true to type. It bloomed well before the shelling peas and snap peas did, so it should be fine.
Some of the Chocolate cherry tomatoes needed additional support. Not all of them are blooming yet, and no tomatoes forming yet. Some of them are growing well, but others, not so much. One end of that bed along the chain link fence got drowned, even though the bed itself it raised about 4-5 inches. We’ve lost quite a few of the shallots from sets to the wet, and it looks like none of the shallots from seed have made it, but I was able to give the yellow onions grown from seed a “hair cut”. I now have more green onions dehydrating in the oven, along with a tray of mint.
I was still able to pick some lettuce this morning. They have not yet bolted from the heat, which is nice. The chard I planted not long ago has started to sprout! I should sow more of those soon.
Though we had a decently cool night last night (it was a wonderful 17C/63F at about 7am), it quickly heated right up to our expected high of 27C/81F. We’re not supposed to start cooling down until about 8pm. Hopefully, between the heat and the wind, things will have a chance to dry up. Yesterday’s downpours flooded out quite a few towns. I’d heard the town my mother lives in got 5 inches of rain in 3 hours, however it now seems it wasn’t quite that much. More than enough to flood streets and parking lots, however. The town to the north of us was among those that got hit the worst in our province, and they had flooded streets as well. We certainly don’t have much to complain about, where we are! Still, it does keep us from getting a lot of outside work done. Frustrating, but we’ll live. 😉
The Re-Farmer
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Kitten fix!
Kitties, kitties and more kitties!
Actually, I’m not seeing very many of them, but there are a few braver ones that come out more often. Like this long haired beauty.
Of the ones I see the most often, he’s one of the shier ones, and runs off very quickly.
This little guy is the one that hangs out around the house the most. This morning, I found him trying to catch the mosquitoes that congregate under the roof of the kibble house.
So. Many. Mosquitoes.
That mama looks so very … tired. 😄
Of the slightly older kittens, the calico seems to prefer spending her time with the younger kittens, though she will make her way to the kibble house every now and then.
The little kitten beside her is one that tends to run off before I can get a good look at it. Shy, but not as shy as three of the six that I pretty much just catch flashes of, as they run away!
I’m not sure about the oldest litter. I think they are in the pump shack, but it might be more of a place they explore than where their “nest” is. Particularly since a skunk seems to be using it, too. This morning, I saw the black and white kitten, watching me through the tall grass as I brought kibble to put in front of the pump shack door, and the table beside it, before running off. I’ve seen only two of that litter, lately.
Those are just the litters we have seen. For sure, Broccoli has had a litter that must be getting quite big, and yet none have followed her to the kibble house. We probably won’t have any idea of just how many kittens there are this year until fall, when I expect they would be large enough to come for the kibble, with or without their mamas.
On a semi-related note, I’ve recently heard from the cat lady. We’re talking about the next cats to have spayed or neutered. Unfortunately, she’s been in and out of the hospital quite a lot, lately. So we are in no hurry. Her health take priority! Cabbages, meanwhile, is doing great, though dealing with a mosquito bitten nose! She prefers to be outside in the catio with the mosquitoes, than in the house! :-D
At some point, I’d love to build a catio, too, but I’m not quite sure where would be a good place to put one. No hurry on that, either. Other projects are much higher on the priority list!
The Re-Farmer
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Grandma cuddles
Butterscotch was very cuddly with me this morning.
She looks so kittenish!
She comes over to cuddle when I sit at the side of my bed to take my supplements. As soon as she hears those bottles rattling, she comes right over. She still doesn’t like to be picked up and held though – and I’ve got the scratches on my arm to prove it! She slid herself right off, taking her pound of flesh along with her, then got all adorable on the bed beside me. Like she knows she’s just too cute to be mad at! :-D
The Re-Farmer
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So wee!
While doing my evening rounds and tending the garden (something has started to nibbled on our carrot greens, so that bed now has a net around it), I topped up the kibble trays. Along with going to the pump shack and leaving some kibble there, I also left a bit of kibble in front of the branch pile, where the bitty kitties are.
While walking around the outer yard, I heard the distinctive crunching noises of a skunk eating kibble – coming from the pump shack.
So of course, I went to chase the skunk away from the kitten’s food.
Oh. My. Goodness!
Would you look at how TINY it is!!!! The litter of kittens in the pump shack are bigger than this guy!
No, I did not chase it away. It’s just a baby! A very hungry baby that let me come quite close. Far more interested in food.
So… we have both kittens and baby skunks in the pump shack now!
I heard a noise and took a quick peek, finding one of the big kittens skirting around the pump shack. Later on, I came back and found no food and no babies, so I went inside. I found the bike I got at the garage sale had been knocked to the floor. While picking it up again I could see, behind some junk, a tuxedo face was watching me. I heard movement in other places, so I left.
The branch pile, meanwhile, was just crawling with kittens!
The four kittens that have been coming to the house were playing with the six little kittens in the branch pile.
That kitten in the foreground?
I was able to catch it and hold it for a while. Some time later, I came over and picked it up again, only to realize it was a different little kitten. I was able to pick this one up again when I came back one last time, topping up the kibble at the branch pile, and the pump shack, again.
Hopefully, this is the start of being able to socialize at least some of the kittens!
So many bitty babies!!!
The Re-Farmer
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There are so many of them!
So my daughter comes over, all excited, telling me there are racoons in the kibble house. Four of them!
Well, we don’t want them eating all the kibble meant for the cats, so I go to chase them off, grabbing my phone, just in case there’s enough light to get a picture.
As soon as I came outside and they saw me, they all just smashed themselves into a pile of pelts.
There was more than four of them!
At the time I took this picture, I was thinking there might be five of them. I didn’t quite see the one being sat on in the middle.
This particular mama cat was pretty chill about the whole thing, but the bandits were really not happy to see me.
I tried moving around to the end, so they could see I wasn’t going to block them, and they were free to run off, but they just mashed themselves into an ever tighter pile! That one in the middle froze into a loaf and would not move.
I finally went around to the back of the kibble house, banging on the wall. It wasn’t until they started running off, one at a time, that my other daughter was able to see that there was six of them!
Four of them ran off, but two were still jammed into a corner. I finally took a mop and sort of waved it at them to scare them off. Only then did one of them take an aggressive stance, leaping towards the mop and snarling. So I moved around to the back again and banged on the wall with the mop. One finally ran off, while the other squeezed under the cats’ house.
I have never seen this many racoons all at once before! Judging by their sizes, I’d say they are a young family unit.
I don’t know if our chasing them off will discourage them much, though. Between the bird seed by the living room window, where we normally see racoons, and the kibble house, they know there is consistent and reliable food here.
Right now, it’s not a problem. They’re just going for the easy food, and not destroying things. They are, however, notorious for destroying garden corn crops in particular, and we don’t have anything strong enough to deter racoons.
I think we need to invest in some Bone Sauce from Perma Pastures Farm soon! From some of their videos, it works on critters other than deer, too.
Why do all these destructive critters have to be so gosh darn cute?
The Re-Farmer
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Morning flowers and not quite enough!
Look what I found blooming this morning!
This is the flower of an apple gourd. Usually, the flowers are some shade of yellow, leaning towards orange or white, but these are almost brown in colour!
While doing my morning rounds and tending the garden beds, I can’t push back on a feeling that everything is really “wrong” this year. Added to that, I’m seeing people in my zone 3 gardening groups posting pictures of how far along their gardens are right now, and they are WAY ahead of ours.
So I just went and looked at garden posts I made around this time, last year. I did a tour post on July 3 or last year, but mostly I compared to posts closer to 1 year ago today.
This year, our purple Kulli corn is starting to grow more enthusiastically, but last year’s purple Mountain Morado corn, which was also started indoors and transplanted, where producing silk by now.
Last year, we had bush beans starting to bloom, and the King Tut purple peas were blooming and growing pods, in spite of the heat. This year, even the first bush beans we planted with the Kulli corn are not yet blooming, and the peas are really just starting to actively grow. The King Tut peas we started indoors are much larger and climbing the chain link fence, and there are a few flowers on those.
Our summer squash is all pretty small, though some are starting to bloom, anyway. Last year, I posted a picture of our first yellow pattypan squash that was of a size we would normally harvest.
Last year at this time, the Crespo squash was looking as big as the Giant Pumpkin plants are this year, and just days later, things were starting to eat it, but this year’s Crespo squash is still quite small.
This year, our beets are just a couple of inches high. Last year, we had lush leaves we could harvest for salads, and had to use a row cover to keep the critters from eating it all.
This year, we have a tomato bed that was started indoors very early, and those determinate varieties are growing fruit. Of the tomatoes we started indoors at about the same time as what we started last year, the Yellow Pear are starting to bloom but nothing on the Chocolate Cherry yet. Last year, the cherry tomatoes already had sprays of fruit forming.
So it’s not just in my head. The garden really is far behind, when compared to our own garden last year. A summer of heat waves and drought, no less. This year, things that should have been planted before last frost didn’t, because everything was under water, and even things that needed to wait until after last frost date were a bit on the late side.
We’ve got rain and hotter temperatures coming up, with a possible thunderstorm tonight. Conditions that are actually better than at this time last year. I hope this means that what we’ve got will start catching up soon, though from the looks of the melon patch, I think we’ve lost most of them. Especially the Kaho watermelon, which has actually gotten smaller instead of bigger, and it looks like something ate a few of them.
At least most of the potatoes are finally coming up, though there are some blank spaces. As these are in groups, I think they ended up in water for too long and rotted before they could sprout.
There is little I can do about things. All I can do is be glad for what growth is happening, and pray we will have another long, mild fall to make up for the cold, wet spring.
We do the best we can.
In other things, while putting the kibble out, I’ve started to leave some in front of the pump shack door, and on the metal table in front of it (where the skunks can’t get at it). As I came around towards it, I saw the black and white kitten, the tuxedo and a tabby looking kitten, just as they say me and dashed into the pump shack. Which is encouraging, as I was concerned most of the litter didn’t make it. I also saw the tiny little calico, playing in the big branch pile, by itself.
Yesterday evening just kept getting hotter and hotter, but I decided to head out and see if I could get the new clothes line up. I was able to remove the tightener from the old line, then had to set up a step ladder at the post opposite the laundry platform, to be able to reach the pulley. Then I walked both ends of the line back to the laundry platform.
Except… not.
100 feet was not enough.
I got to about 10 feet short of the post. Which means I’m about 20 feet short in clothes line.
I don’t want to start splicing ends, so I’m just going to get another 150 feet. They sell them in 50 ft rolls that are still attached to each other. I’ll get 3 rolls and should have roughly 30 ft extra. Plus I’ll have a spare 100 ft of clothes line. I don’t mind having extra. I’m sure we’ll find a use for it at some point.
I was also able to finally undo and re-wrap the excess cable from our StarLink dish. When my brother helped install it, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, so he just quickly wrapped up the excess and used zip ties with screw holding heads (I forget the proper name for them) to hold it all together against the outside wall. It was pretty tangled and messed up. I finally picked up more of those zip ties. After removing what my brother used, I re-wrapped the cable nice and neat, making sure there was slack available in strategic places, just in case. Since I didn’t want to leave holes in the wall, I use the same number of zip ties that my brother did, then screwed them into the same holes as before.
It looks much better now!
Unfortunately, in the few minutes it took me to do that, I was just baking! The hottest part of the day has been hitting well after 6pm.
Keeping that in mind, I tried to go to bed early last night, so that I could get up much earlier and get things done before things got too hot.
Instead, I ended up having a sleepless night with all sorts of distractions, issues, and just plain not being able to fall asleep.
Which means that right now, when I should be doing things outside, I’m sitting here typing, and trying not to fall asleep on my keyboard. I’m feeling to tired, I actually feel ill.
*sigh*
Well, at least I got some things done this morning, but right now, I’m feeling pretty useless.
We’ll see what I manage to get done before the thunderstorms start. If they even hit us at all, rather than going around like the often do!
The Re-Farmer
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Enjoying the indoors life
Butterscotch kept me company while I was getting dressed this morning.
The Grand Old Lady is certainly enjoying the indoor life!
She still shows zero interest in leaving my room. She will put up with Nosencrantz and Cheddar, but wants nothing to do with the other cats. If another cat comes in, she goes into her cubby hole in a shelf, where we gave her a bed and even her own bowl of food, because she simply would not come out if other cats are in the room. While she will happily come for cuddles with humans – just don’t pick her up! – she generally wants to just be left alone.
After all her years surviving outdoors, I figure she’s earned it.
I just wish Nosencrantz wasn’t doing the same thing!
The Re-Farmer
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Time for a snack!
Last night, I had to get this picture through a sun room window, as they would run off as soon as they heard the door open.
There are three kittens nursing in this photo. We usually see 4 kittens together, so this suggests to me that the third kitten – the almost black one – is from another litter. I had thought the one that looks like it’s going to be a long haired cat was from another litter, but it’s in the photo, nursing with the calico and the tabby.
Every now and then, I see the black and white kitten from the first litter. It runs off as soon as it sees me, no matter how far away I am. I have not seen the other 3 from that litter. Hopefully, they have all survived, and they’re just shier.
The Re-Farmer
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I blinked, and the day went by!
My goodness, where did the day go? I just realized it’s past 6pm, but it feels like it should be 2pm. This, even though I ended up doing the rest of our monthly stock-up shopping today.
The mamas were out in full force when I came out to do my rounds this morning – and so was Sad Face! I just had to try for a picture of him on the shrine. I couldn’t get any closer, as he runs off. Which I’m good with, because he has been beating up Potato Beetle and The Distinguished Guest a lot!
He is, however, waiting his turn for the food, letting Rosencrantz eat her fill, first!
It’s entirely possible she’s pregnant with his kittens.
Before coming in from my rounds, I paused to get eaten alive by mosquitoes while picking the rest of the garlic scapes in the main garden. There are only a couple that weren’t ready to pick. Looking forward to using them!
With the other garlic so far behind, we should have more scapes to harvest in about a month or so. A bonus to that garlic coming up so late!
While I was putting food out for the cats and the birds, Potato Beetle appeared in the sun room, enjoying his very own private breakfast. When I was leaving to do the shopping, I found him like this.
Awwww… So cute!
He’s still really skinny again, so I hope he stays around long enough to put some meat back on those bones. And with both Sad Face and The Distinguished Guest prowling around, I’m much more comfortable with him safe in the sun room!
The last of our stock-up shopping for the month was a Walmart trip this time. Partly because I finally wore out my last pair of jeans and needed to get new ones.
Very little of what I needed to get was food times. I got four 7kg bags of kibble; hopefully, we now have enough to last the month. With the skunks and the racoons also eating the kibble, I’ve taken to setting out less kibble, more often. Hopefully, the cats will get more of it that way, and the kibble will last longer.
We needed to stock up more on paper products, in non-Costco sizes. We’re slowly building up an inventory of non-perishable products, with a goal of having at least a 3 month supply by winter. That way, if we get snowed in, or vehicles break down – or if we get another spring of flooding and washed out roads – we will be set. We need to be doing that with cat kibble, too, but with how many big bags we need just for 1 month, stocking up extra is much more difficult!
The brand of bug spray I bought last time didn’t seem to work well at all. During the cookout, we all used it liberally, but the mosquitoes were practically mainlining the stuff instead of being repelled by it. I was able to find the brand that we find works best and bought a couple of cans – along with more AfterBite!
Finding a new pair of jeans was annoying. I tried on a couple of pairs and found ones that fit – on the upper body. Unfortunately, it seems the popular style is skinny leg jeans. The only reason I could get them on my calves at all was because the fabric was part Spandex. Went through rack after rack before finally finding one style that were regular cut on the legs. Thankfully, they had some in my size, too.
It shouldn’t be this hard to find clothes that fit! Honestly, I think the next time I need to get a pair of pants, I should just go to the men’s department. At least if they’re too long, I can get my daughter to hem them for me or something.
I did have a small splurge today. Nosencrantz and Butterscotch still refuse to leave my office. I have a scratch board for them that they completely ignore. Nozencrantz has been using my office chair as a scratch post. Usually, we get the scratch pads made out of corrugated cardboard, and I was originally going to get two of them, but I found a cheap little cat tower that I got instead of a second scratch pad. Hopefully, they will figure out how to use that, instead of my constantly having to stop them from clawing either my chair, or the carpet!
Well, that didn’t take long! As soon as there was a space while unpacking the shopping, Tissue jumped right in!
I gave the cardboard scratch pad to the other cats, but kept aside the cat nip that came with it. After assembling the new little cat tower, I put cat nip all over it, and on the other scratch board they’ve been ignoring, then gave the last of the cat nip to the other cats. Which is always hilarious.
Butterscotch and Nosencrantz seemed happy enough with the cat nip, and mildly curious about the little scratch tower. Then Cheddar wanted in and discovered the tower. It’s barely taller than he is! It has a curved portion with a “comb” under it for cats to rub up against, and I’m not sure he can even fit through it, but he was certainly enjoying the hanging toy and bell, while going into a cat-nip fueled frenzy over the thing. Nosencrantz just sat on a nearby foot stool, looking at Cheddar like he was crazy!
Well. He was a bit high on catnip, so I guess in a way, he was!
They’re all sleeping it off on my bed right now.
I still don’t know if they’ve figured out they can scratch at that thing, yet.
When I next went into the dining room, I found cats splayed all over the place, in a stupor, with Susan all curled up on the cardboard scratch pad (which got its own catnip application), taking a nap!
Aside from the regular monthly shopping, my husband asked if I could get some prices for dimensional lumber, so I stopped at a hardware store on my way home. It’s in the town my mother lives in, and I know they deliver. After getting the prices, I remembered to pick up some new clothes line to replace what broke this spring. I hope 100 feet will be enough. I also got proper clothesline spreader. Two of them, actually. There’s a lot of distance between the poles! I’d been using S hooks, and they don’t slide very well.
When I headed into the city, I drove into a deluge of rain, and by the time I got home, the rain had reached our place. Enough that we have water all over, again. I’m not complaining, though. It means the garden doesn’t need to be watered, and it’s not so much that things are drowning again.
One of the things I was able to get done yesterday was finally prune away some large branches from the ornamental apple trees in the old kitchen garden. Where we have the bunching onions planted is not doing well, and drying out faster, because of the thick mat of interlocking branches above. There was one large branch from each tree that I wanted to take out but, once those were down, it uncovered a whole lot of dead branches. By the time I got that all cut away and cleared out, it was looking much more open and bright at the end of the garden. Which means the retaining wall blocks and the bed along them all got today’s rain better, too!
Oh, my goodness! I am so happy!
Just moments ago, I had to stop Nosencrantz from scratching at my chair again. She left – and then I heard her using the new scratch post directly behind me! She’s figured it out!!! Yay!
Okay, time for me to get my butt back outside and do my evening rounds.
Because even though it still feels like it should be the afternoon, it is well into the evening right now!
Where did the day go?
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 