You’d think things would be warming up by sunrise, but nooooo. This has been the coldest part of the day of late. -30C/-22F with a wind chill of -37C/-35F Normally, I would have been heading out at this time, but decided to wait. I knew the outside cats still had plenty of food, even if they don’t like eating frozen kibble, and they would still have water in at least some, if not all, of their heated water bowls.
It says the extreme cold warning is until Monday at 6am. My desktop’s weather app has the warning to 7:01 this evening. I would say my phone’s app is the more accurate one!
As I write this, we are coming up on 11am, and have managed to warm up to -25C/-13F, with a wind chill of -28C/-18F Thankfully, the sky is clear and sunny, so we’ve got some passive solar heat happening in the sun room and the isolation shelter. We’re supposed to get a bit of snow early this evening, though.
The cats – especially the younger ones – have been absolutely thrilled they can go into the isolation shelter again. That top level is just crowded with kitties. I haven’t been able to do a head count, though. It seems to be mostly the more feral ones, and they panic and run away if I get too close. I don’t want them to leave their cuddle pile in the warm shelter, so I stay away, unless I’m actually putting in more food and water. That is the one place where the food bowl is completely empty when I get to it! I might start scooping frozen kibble from the outside bowls and trays to put into there, so it’ll thaw out enough for them to eat it.
Patience definitely looks like he is losing patience with this cold! Of all the cats, though, he probably has the biggest, thickest coat of winter fur of them all. Even more than Adam…
Adam is a physically larger cat than Patience but, with his winter fur, Patience looks bigger than she does!
Adam was sitting loafed like this when I first came out with the kibble. I’ve taken to scattering kibble in various spots on the platform and other raised areas, where I know they will actually eat it before it freezes. I put some right in front of her in the cat bed, and she barely even backed away from the scoop. She didn’t move from this spot until was about to go inside. I started petting Colin, right in front of her. I’d hoped I could sneak a pet while petting Colin, but as he kept pushing closer in front of her, it was just too much, and she finally got up and moved to the other cat bed.
Kohl, meanwhile, still seems to be holding a grudge against me! A trip to the vet and two weeks in isolation – is it a month ago now? – and she still rarely lets me touch her. She does like to eat kibble on this shelf, though, and that was enough for me to get at least a few pets in. Her fur is getting pretty matted. I am hoping we can get her comfortable enough with us again, that we can do something about that. Probably not until spring, though. We don’t want to be combing out her undercoat and cutting away mats, in this cold!
Magda peeking from behind her is so adorable!
When we got Kohl and Cat 1 fixed (yeah… I couldn’t come up with a name), we did not give them collars. They are not yet their adult sizes. Without knowing if we’d be able to handle them again, I didn’t want to take a chance of them growing bigger and the collars starting to bother them. I remember when our elderly Freya first showed up on our balcony in the city. She had a collar, so we assumed she was someone’s pet that was allowed outside. One day, she showed up with the collar gone – and a rather large spot on her neck where the fur was rubbed off, and a wound visible. Thank God it was a breakaway collar! She’d been on her own long enough to outgrow the collar, and it was harming her. I don’t want that to happen to these two.
Kohl might still let me pet her once in a while, but Cat 1 won’t come near us at all anymore. Getting collars on them when they are bigger, so show at a glance that they’ve been fixed, is not going to be easy!
Sadness. 😢
Today, our expected high is -22C/-8F, and our low is expected to be -30C/-22F, and tomorrow is expected to be the same. On Tuesday, we’re supposed to start warming up again. Thankfully, we don’t need to go anywhere. I might head to the post office tomorrow to pick up some parcels, but there is nothing essential in, so I will probably just wait until Tuesday afternoon!
I am definitely in the mood to hibernate as much as possible!
Just before I was able to take this picture, I watched as Freya slithered her way into the cat bed, on top of Beep Beep. They spend a lot of time, snuggled together in there!
Butterscotch being where she is on my bed is a big deal. She has expanded her range by about three feet to be there. Butterscotch, one of the originals, still refuses to leave my office/bedroom/craft room. In the mornings, I have to chase most of the cats out and close the door so she has a chance to use the litter. There have been times I’ve seen her go for it (she will only use the one under my computer table), and stopped what I was doing to stand guard. Out of nowhere, one of several cats will teleport from somewhere and start stalking, if not outright attacking, her when she tries to use the litter. Most of the time, though, she will stuff herself into the shelf above my pillow to snarl and growl at other cats, even if they’re just walking by some distance away and completely ignoring her.
Beep Beep, on the other hand, has no issues getting along with the other cats (except Butterscotch; they don’t like each other). She has become downright kittenish in her behaviour since moving indoors. You’d never know that she (and Butterscotch) is more than 10 years old. Probably closer to 15, but we just don’t know their exact ages.
Freya, on the other hand, showed up on our balcony in the city in 2010, and we estimate she was barely a year old at the time. She is really showing her age these days. We make sure there is softened kibble for her in a tray in my room. It’s easier for her to eat out of a shallow tray than a deeper bowl. Usually, the kibble is softened with plain water. When we do their afternoon cat soup, I make it extra thin and use it to soften the kibble for her, too. She spends most of her time in my room, these days, snuggled up and sleeping. At night, she will sometimes come over to cuddle with me, too. Every day that she is still with us is appreciated.
As I was outside this morning, doing the morning rounds after giving the outside cats their food and warm water, I was really thankful I don’t need to go anywhere today! There was almost no wind, but it was cold enough to be quite painful. The gate cam is having issues. It is fully exposed so, while it does get plenty of sun to both warm it up and power the solar charged batteries, it’s too cold for the batteries. While changing the memory card yesterday, the display would shut itself off almost immediately. Today, it stayed up long enough for me to read “low battery”. The solar batteries will charge up during the day, but the back up regular batteries were too frozen to take over powering the camera. I haven’t checked the files yet to see how much it manage to capture during the day. The sign game is more shade, as it’s under a tree, but it has enough to shelter it that the camera’s batteries didn’t completely freeze.
As I write this, we’re coming up on noon and have warmed up to -26C/-15F We don’t have a wind chill right now, but the region is under a several cold warning. Tonight’s low is expected to drop to -30C/-22F, but the wind chills are expected to drop it to -40C/F
Looking at the long range forecast, it seems we’ve got about another week of these temperatures before things start warming up a bit. By the end of February, we’re even supposed to get highs above freezing. I don’t hold much stock to that, though. It wasn’t all that long ago when the long range forecasts were saying we’d be warming up and even going above freezing right now.
My husband popped by earlier asking if I could go to the post office to pick up a parcel.
I told him we were at -27C/-17F.
He said, tomorrow, then. 😂
The down side is, I have to take the truck in to the garage tomorrow morning. I have a 9:30am drop off time. At the time I will need to start heading out, we are expected to still be at -29C/-20F Thankfully, the truck is in a garage and plugged in, but it’s still going to be wicked cold. There is no heat in the garage. I’m told there used to be a kerosene heater in there, for when my late brother was working on my parents’ vehicles, but that’s among the things that disappeared in the two years it was empty before we moved in.
Tomorrow we are finally getting that slow leak in the tire fixed. Hopefully, that will also get rid of the “service tire monitoring system” warning I get, every time I start the truck. Next month, we will take it in for the engine flush, sensor replacement and oil change, which should get rid of the check engine light and get our oil pressure gauge working again. I really wish we had to budget to do that first! As it is, I’ve just messaged to ask if they could replace one of our windshield wipers as well. I could do it myself, but wouldn’t be able to get a new blade for a while, and sure as heck don’t want to be figuring out how to replace it while standing on a stool to be able to see and reach, in the bitter cold!
Then, on Thursday, my daughter and I are taking Fluffy to the vet for a follow up appointment, though at least that appointment is for later in the day. This will be Fluffy’s last day in the isolation shelter, and we will be able to open it up to the other cats again. My daughter is coming with me so she can stay in the truck with the carrier while I go into the Walmart to take care of the overcharge from a couple weeks ago, and pick up a few things.
The daytime highs over the next while won’t be too bad, but the overnight lows are expected to be brutal, and last through most of the mornings.
For now, I’m going to enjoy staying at home. I’m not looking forward to more driving over the next couple of days! I’m really hoping things warm up faster. I have to take my mother to the eye clinic in the city on the 19th. It’s going to be hard enough on her without having to also deal with the cold!
I keep wanting to basically hibernate over January and February, and avoid going out as much as possible. Somehow, it just never seems to work out, but this year has got to be the worst for appointments and errands in a February since we have been living here! I’m just thankful we have the truck and that it handles the cold as well as it does. Our first couple of winters, we got hit with far worse temperatures and our van and my mother’s car froze.
I know it could be worse, but gosh, I’m getting really tired of winter.
We are going to have a lot of running around over the next while! Thankfully, the weather looks like it’s going to be pretty good, even we are expected to have chillier days for the next while.
Clarence does not approve. I’m supposed to be available to cuddle him at all time, after all!
Today, I needed to run into town for several errands. The first was a trip to the pharmacy, to get refills for myself and for my daughter. Thankfully, her Pharmacare was processed, and she only had to pay under $5 for something that would have cost over $150! My pain killers, however, did not have a refill. I’m not out, yet, so they will send a fax to my new doctor, and they will be included win my husband’s prescription delivery, next week.
I need to remember to call the clinic and see if I can book an appointment for myself, piggy backing on my daughter’s appointment next week, to talk about the painkillers. They help, but not quite enough. Especially since I can take them only once a day.
The pharmacy needed time to get our refills together. Enough for me to hit the grocery store while it was being done. The main thing I needed to get was distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier. I’d forgotten to pick some up, the last time I was at Walmart. Locally, the price at the grocery store is almost double, so I just got one gallon. The pharmacy has distilled water, too, but it’s even more expensive than at the grocery store. I’ll pick up several more gallons when I’m at Walmart, later this week.
While I was at the grocery store, I spotted a new display with an amazing sale on bagged avocados, so I grabbed a couple of bags. Their sale on whole chicken was still going, so I grabbed another for the freezer. A whole chicken, by weight, cost around $10. Normally, these days, they are around $18.
I also grabbed something I could eat in the truck for breakfast, before going back to the pharmacy. I was early enough to pick up a couple more supplements I was running low on. I had intended to get those at Walmart, but the house brand’s price was very good, plus they also happened to be on sale, so it was actually cheaper to get them now.
Once done at the pharmacy, I went to visit with my mother before she had her lunch delivered. While there, I updated her on the plans we worked out last night, to get things ready in her apartment. My brother and SIL and I will meet at my mother’s apartment, and we’ll go through her fridge and cupboards to get rid of anything that should be. I gave my SIL a typical shopping list and she will be picking up fresh groceries for my mother. As I told her this, it gave me a chance to ask her if there was anything specific she wanted, and was able to pass that on to my SIL.
I told her that they were getting a lock box for her medications that should be in tomorrow morning, so we are meeting in the afternoon. I explained again that the home care aides would be able to get into the lock box but, if they don’t have someone available, they will call me and I will have to come over to give her her medications. She didn’t seem too happy with that, or the idea that she wasn’t going to be able to access her own prescription medications. I had to explain again, why her medications were going into a lock box, adding that she has said herself, that she’s starting to forget things. I could see she wasn’t impressed, but was going to let it go. She started to tell me something else…
… and forgot what she was going to say!
Once she realized what had just happened, we had a good chuckle over it.
My mother had one of her bubble packs with her that was almost full, and I know she has some partial ones at home, too. I took the one she had with her, so that I could take it and the ones she has at home, to the pharmacy, tomorrow. Most of her medications can be repacked into new bubble packs. The Home Care coordinator was going to deal with the pharmacy in regards to my mother’s medication changes, and get her file active again for Monday. Hopefully, they will have her new and up to date bubble packs ready, tomorrow, so I can take those for the lock box.
I explained to her again that she will be getting home care three times a day again, but the first visit of the day will be longer. She will have help with getting dressed and they can empty her commode for her, too. Her troubles with the commode was one of the things we remembered to bring up during the meeting with the doctor and the home care ladies.
I told her again about the Life Line she will be getting. She had forgotten entirely about that. Basically, I assured her that we will get everything at her apartment ready for when she comes home on Monday.
As for Monday, my SIL will be picking me up with one of their cars to get my mother home, which will be much easier for my mother than having her climb into my truck! Discharge time is at 11am, so we plan to be at the hospital for around 10am, so we have plenty of time to get her ready and pack up her things.
We then had time to just visit and chat. It turns out there are two other patients that she knows that are also in the hospital, and she was able to visit with them today. I’m glad she did. First, because it showed up much better she was feeling. Second, because the visits made them happy. An unexpected third is that it made my mother realize just how good she is actually doing. She is more than 10 years older than one of the ladies, and probably another 10 years older than the other. I know for sure that one of them will not be coming home. I don’t know why the other was is in the hospital. Then there’s my mother, who’s in her 90’s, and they’re sending her home, where she lives independently!
I really hope they can find an opening in supportive living for her, soon.
When my mother’s lunch was delivered, that was my cue to go. I just made sure all the lids were off her containers, and set everything up for her, before heading out. There was just one more stop for gas – one gas station was at $1.559/L, while the other two were at $1.579/L – then home.
My daughter was happy to get her medication, as she was almost out. The funny thing was, she had to get me to open the child-proof lids for her! She’s having to wear a wrist brace again, for having the audacity of using her left arm, yesterday. She has issues with ganglions. Something else she wants to talk to her doctor about! They’ve increasingly been a very painful problem. I remember that my sister used to get them, too. She ended up getting surgery, and never had a problem with them again. My daughter would really prefer NOT to have surgery, though! Ah, well. We shall see!
For today, at least, I’m done with running around. I’ll be out again tomorrow, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday is when we take Fluffy back to the vet. That is when her 2 weeks in isolation are up, too. We have not been able to touch her at all while she’s in the isolation shelter. Not even The Grink will let me touch him, though he does sometimes sniff at my fingers.
I have noticed something about them in the mornings, though. After I’ve finished my morning rounds, the last thing I do is pop back outside again with a can of wet cat food for them. I have noticed that after I’ve given them their kibble in the morning, they actually sit and watch me, in open anticipation, waiting for their wet cat food! We can only do this for the cats in the isolation shelter. Not only because there are just too many cats outside to regularly give them wet cat food, but also because anywhere else, the food would freeze. In the isolation shelter, the food area is in front of the heat lamp.
Midnight doesn’t know what he’s missing, by escaping the isolation shelter when he did! I did see him today, but not until this afternoon, after I got home.
I did have an unpleasant surprise in the garage when I got home, though. Thankfully, I did NOT drive over it. When I pull into the garage, there is a a moment when I am blinded, so I did not see the empty paint can and broken glass on the ground. !!!
We now have long wooden crates attached to one of the garage walls to create shelves. On top of one of them was one of our tool kits. That somehow got knocked off, and it hit some things on the way down, before landing upside down on a makeshift shelf we have on the ground. One of those things was a bin with light bulbs in it. That was upside down over the tool box, with light bulbs scattered all over. Some broken on and around the tool kit. Others were on the ground, right near where we give through to park! The empty can of isolation shelter paint was also knocked to the ground, along with odds and ends, like our paint stir sticks.
I was able to message the household about it, and my husband brought over a dustpan and hand broom for me while I picked things up and got rid of the broken bulbs and biggest pieces of glass. I was able to sweep the glass off the makeshift shelf, but the tiny pieces of broken glass in our dirt floor could only be swept aside, under the makeshift shelf.
If it weren’t for my habit of trying to part further to the right, so I have more room to open the driver’s side door all the way, I would have driven right over that paint can, the broken glass and probably at least one light bulb, and never seen it until after I got out of the truck.
I sure would have felt it, though!
There are definite issues with some of the yard cats using the garage as shelter. They go up into the rafters, where I’m sure it’s warmer.
We really need to go through the garage to sort and organize. It’s all pretty overwhelming, though. I’m not sure what half the stuff even is, or what might still be salvageable! Once we build more shelves into the walls, though, we’ll be in a better position to get things organized and cleaned up.
That’s a job for the summer, though!
We’ve got plenty that needs to be done between now and then, though.
It would be a huge help of the gas prices could go back down again. 🫤
This is actually warmed up a bit. When I checked during the night, it was -28C/-18F, with a wind chill of -38C/-36F As I write this, we are at -26C/-15F with a wind chill of -33C/-27F
I did my short rounds this morning! I did make sure to check the ejector, though. The splash area is open, and the heat tape is warm, so that’s all working. I’ve been talking to my brother about what I’m seeing when the pump runs. It does take longer to empty that tank (almost 7 minutes, instead of about 5), and the speed of inflow, while consistent, with the water level in the filter no longer draining, is slower as well. Since this happens while the pump is running, that suggests the possibility of something in the venturi valve. The only way to know for sure is to pull it up and check, which we won’t do until the spring or summer.
The first thing I did this morning was tend to the outside cats, of course, and check on the isolation shelter. I’d noticed something about it last night, when looking out the kitchen window. There is a “ceiling” of rigid insulation under the roof. One full width piece with a notch cut out for the extension cord, and the other cut narrower to fill in the remaining space. That narrower piece was pushed back, and I could actually see through the clear roof panels into the shelter from the kitchen window! Not enough to tell where the cats where, but I shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.
When I checked the shelter this morning, Midnight was gone. Only Fluffy was inside.
Some things were knocked about that I had to straighten up. While she eyeballed the open window as I did that, then refilled the food bowls, she would not go near me. When I came back to do the water, she was on the second level, but jumped down while I did the water and hid in a corner by the litter box below.
No sign of Midnight, anywhere. He’s probably going to make strange for a while, but I’m sure he’ll come back for food and warmth soon.
I didn’t like the idea of Fluffy being along in there, though, so when I saw The Grink, I decided to try and catch her (I think she’s a she). The Grink is one of the tinies and is among the crowd that regularly used the isolation shelter to hang out in. She’s not feral, but not socialized, either. When I did manage to touch her, she let me pet her and pick her up, and was more than happy to be put into the isolation shelter!
As I was finishing up and checked again, The Grink was in the cat bed in front of the heat lamp, grooming. It took a while to spot Fluffy, tucked into a shadowed corner.
Hopefully, over the next two weeks, she’ll warm up to us.
Last of all, I made sure to give them a can of cat food, which The Grink eagerly came over for. Fluffy was still hiding, but there are two food bowls in there now, so I hope she creeps over to at least one of them.
We’re expected to be a lot warmer tomorrow, but also to have snow all day, through to the day after. “Light snow showers” the forecast calls it. So I really don’t want to drive in that with the Costco shopping.
I was planning to visit my mother before heading to the city, but I think I will make an extra trip, first. Talking to my brother last night, I mentioned we’ll need to go into her apartment to make sure there’s no food going bad or anything. They had managed to visit her the other night, and remembered that we need to bring in clothes for her! She’s still wearing the same clothes as when she was went in for her appointment and ended up in the ER. They told me, she is even sleeping in her clothes with her shoes one (her feet get cold). I would have expected them to have given her a gown or something!
So I think I will go to her apartment first. She has had a bag – just a reusable grocery bag – set up as a “hospital bag”. She’s been complaining about her health and wanting to go to the hospital for a long time (and would get very upset when she’d go to the ER, they couldn’t find anything wrong and sent her home), so she had this bag for clothes and necessities. Hopefully, she still had that, and I’ll be able to find it, and make sure it does have everything she would need.
Then I’ll go to the hospital to visit with her before going to the city.
In the end, though, I’ll see how the truck runs when I got to warm it up before I leave. It should be fine, but I’m so flipping paranoid about breakdowns these days. I do have an emergency kit in the truck, and we have CAA, but still… this is not the kind of weather to take chances in.
We shall see how things work out!
Time to bundle up again start warming up the truck, and do another OBDII scan while I’m at it!
My goodness, how things can change in a short time!
Today was supposed to be my day to do our first stock up shopping trip in the city. There’s one major street with several stores I go to that are all conveniently in a row. I save the Costco shopping for another trip.
Then I got a phone call yesterday, late afternoon.
Against our advice, my mother had made an appointment with the doctor in the hospital clinic near her place. They have one doctor that comes in one day a week. That appointment was yesterday afternoon, and a friend from church was driving her. We’ve advised against it as we’ve started the process to try and get her into long term care, and switching doctors could slow that down, but we can’t stop her if she decides otherwise. When she told me about the appointment, I just asked her to call me after and let me know if she had officially switched doctors, so I could call home care and let them know. The only reason she’d told me about it was because I’d called her to pass on a message from the home care coordinator! She had just gotten home from the walk in clinic when I called. She was having issues with her breathing again, which she says has been getting worse. From what I’ve seen the last couple of times I’ve been with her, it definitely has, though she still says it’s the worst when she’s lying down in bed. Apparently, they didn’t actually see her, but made an appointment for the next day.
I didn’t get a call from my mother.
I got a call from the ER in the hospital in her town, instead.
She’d gone to the clinic, but it turned out the appointment was with a nurse practitioner, because the doctor wasn’t there that day. After checking on her and hearing her complaints, he sent her to the ER. They were treating her on the assumption of heart failure, based on the symptoms she described, which she told them she’d had for only a couple of weeks.
She’s been complaining about these symptoms for longer than we’ve been back in this province.
I spoke to the nurse for a while, as my mother was having difficulties remembering her medical history. She asked about the contact numbers they had on file, so I also let them know that I was the nearest of my siblings and to call me first but, if things got to such a point, my brother is PoA, so he would be the one to call for decision making authority. Since this hospital doesn’t have a doctor, they were in the process of doing an EKG, and where then going to transfer her to the nearest ER.
An ER with a doctor.
She mentioned the two most likely ER location possibilities, one of which my mother would probably refuse to go back to, so I filled in about that, too, and why. After we spoke, she told me she would call back once they knew where she would be going.
Which turned out to be the hospital we are closest to.
So much of my evening was spent keeping on top of things and updating my siblings. By the final call I made to the hospital my mother was transferred to, it was concluded that my mother had pulmonary edema.
I had remembered and made sure to call them earlier about the kidney function issues my mother had, some time ago, and this was why she was no longer on water pills. By then, they’d already figured it out.
Pulmonary edema certainly explain her breathing problems!
So my plans changed for today. I was originally going to go to the post office for some packages that came in yesterday, then head towards town to take a particular highway straight into the city and the street with the stores I meant to go to. Instead, I would go to into town to see my mother at the hospital (after phoning to confirm where she was and what room she was assigned to), then go to the city.
After our very warm day, followed by a colder one yesterday, I started seeing all sorts of reports for poor highway conditions, today. All that melting resulted in roads that were icy and snow packed. Today was supposed to be a bit warmer again, but the high winds were back, so now there was blowing snow on top of everything else.
At that point, I was going to decide whether I would go to the city or not, based on what the conditions were like when I got to the hospital to see my mother.
The east-west road to town was not too bad; there were icy patches. Enough to drive below the speed limit, but nothing too excessive – until I got closer to town, when it was all ice.
Then I got to the junction for the highway I would have been taking to go to the city.
It was barricaded in one direction with vehicles, warning cones, people in high viz vests, and a sign saying “emergency scene ahead”. Wherever the emergency scene was, though, it was too far away to see from this intersection. The cross roads are every mile, so that’s not surprising.
My brother was talking about visiting my mother after work, if the roads were safe, so once I parked at the hospital, I updated my siblings on road conditions, as well as posting on the highway conditions group I’m on.
As for my mother, though she has been admitted, she was still in their ER and not yet transferred to her room. They had just finished doing another series of tests on her.
She’s actually doing really well.
She was still wired for EKG; they just need to plug her in for the next test. She had an IV port, but no IV. They’d given her the IV version of her old water pills, and she was already feeling a difference. They’re going to do bloodwork repeatedly to figure out what’s going on with her. She expects to be there for just a few days, though typically, someone admitted with her symptoms would be there for a week.
We had a good visit, and I told her I’ve been keeping my siblings up to day. I also told her about my brother hoping to visit this evening, if road conditions are safe, but they didn’t seem to be. I even checked again while she went to the washroom and found more recent updates from people saying how icy the conditions were on the highways.
As for that accident scene, it turned out a couple of miles of highway was shut down, and the medical helicopter from the city had to be brought in!
My mother said she was just fine without any visits!!
I had already decided by then that I would NOT be going to the city. I’m going to be in the nearer city tomorrow, after dropping the cats off at the vet, anyhow, so I can do most of the stock up shopping there.
After having a good visit with my rather indestructible mother (seriously. She’s amazing), I headed to the local grocery store, instead. I was just going to pick up a few things to tide us over and then head home.
Well, I ended up going an almost stock up trip. I took advantage of a lot of sales.
This is what $262.32 looks like.
Quite a lot of stuff is buried and can’t be seen in the photo.
Because of all the sales, I found myself with a ridiculously long receipt, and had to take two pictures to make it manageable. Here’s the top half.
The cat food was one necessity. We’ve still got feed store kibble, but the inside cats will not eat it! Even the outside cats don’t like this particular brand of feed store kibble, though they do like the other brand this feed store carries. So I got two 8kg bags of house brand kibble, which was a lot more affordable. Hopefully, the cats will actually eat it!
The Basmati rice is for my husband, as we’re low and that’s usually a Costco item. He does love his rice!
My daughter requested and sent funds for energy drinks. The cases of 4 were on sale, so I got two. At Costco, I will pick up a flat for her. The Coke Zero is for my husband and I.
My husband requested nacho fixings and there were sales on, so I got four bags of nacho chips, in hopes to have enough unbroken chips to make a decent sized batch of nachos! The salsa dip is for him as well.
I even remembered to grab garlic powder, as we ran out.
The pre-sliced olives were for the nachos. The canned fruit cocktail was a good sale, so I picked those up as a pantry treat.
I don’t normally buy cereal, but do pick it up as a treat when it’s on sale. Two boxes are in flavours my daughters like, two for my husband and I.
I got a flat of eggs, because we always need eggs. The blocks of cheese were on sale, so I got one regular and one lactose free. We still had cheese at home, but since we’re making nachos, we’ll be using up a lot more than usual in a short time.
I got only 1 pound of butter because it was on sale. I’ll pick up the month’s supply at Costco.
Since we got cereal, I got more regular milk and oat milk. The frozen perogies were another sale item that also got me extra points on my Scene card. The rice crackers were for my husband. It doesn’t show, but those were on sale, as was the bag of McIntosh apples and the baby spinach.
The bacon was also on sale, plus there was a points bonus, so I got two packages. Same with the hot dog wieners. Which means I had to get hot dog buns, which were not on sale. It amazes me that the buns cost more than the wieners! I picked up a couple of loaves of Texas Toast bread, so I got some sliced meats for sandwiches. They are “pizza” meats, but they’ll make good sandwiches, too.
I also picked up more dips for the nachos that my daughters and I like; a 6 layer dip and an artichoke asiago dip.
That made my bill a total of $262.32 after taxes for 43 items, while my total discounts and savings was $57.66, for a 19% savings. I also earned 1230 points with just this trip, which more than doubled my balance. I save the points for times when getting cash off my groceries will be an extra help. As of right now, I could get $20 off, but I’ll save that for a tighter month.
So I ended up getting more than planned, with a lot of things I don’t get very often. We could easily go for some time without a full stock up trip, but after I drop off the cats at the vet tomorrow, I will be close to both a Walmart and a Canadian Tire, which is where I will get specific stock up items without the big city trip. I had been looking forward to going to the international grocery store in the city, as today is the last day for some promotions and sales, but I’ll just have to miss them this time. The Costco trip might be on Friday, or on the weekend.
As for tomorrow, I’m really hoping the roads improve, because there is no way I’m skipping getting the cats to the vet. The rescue set this up for us, and I’d hate to be a no-show. The Cat Lady would understand, but the vet gets so many no-shows, they’ve had to start banning people from their cheap spay days for it. I don’t want to get the Cat Lady in trouble with one of the few vets that gives her such decent discounts! Plus, I will be meeting the Cat Lady, then later on will meet with someone from a feral and stray cats group that has some donated cat food for us.
I would normally live an hour before drop off time, even though it typically takes 45-55 minutes to get to the nearer city, but with potentially bad road conditions, I will plan on leaving even earlier.
I just really hope we can catch either Brussel or the fluffy lady – the ones I am sure are pregnant right now. Sprout has shown up again and had the boys following her around. The last time I saw her, the boys were no longer following her, so she probably is, too. No possibility of catching her without a trap, though. The fluffy lady is our best bet to catch, I think. We’re booked for one male and one female, and we will bring in whichever ones we can snag!
Well, that’s where things stand today. I’ll be calling the hospital again later today to see if there are any updates on my mother. I don’t expect my brother or sister to make the drive out to visit, but there is another highway they could take that is supposed to be in better condition, so we’ll see. Unfortunately, since I’ll be having cats in the truck with me, I won’t be able to visit my mother tomorrow. We’ll see how things go over the next few days.
What would be ideal is for the home care panel to see what’s going on with my mother and this will be enough to get her into the nursing home she wants to be in! That would make her so happy.
Yeah, the thermometer shows it’s gotten warmer, but we’ve got another bit of a storm happening. The winds are quite as severe as a few days ago, but with more snow.
When I headed out this morning, we were at -26C/-15F, but the wind chill was at -39C/-38F I spent as little time outside as possible! Basically, just give the outside cats non-frozen food (their food trays are filled with frozen kibble) and warm water, and that’s it. I did manage to get a few pictures, including a show of this gorgeous girl.
I want to pet her. I want to brush the mats out of her fur.
I want her to not be pregnant.
I assume she is, as the boys are leaving her alone, now, though when I checked out the bathroom window last night, I saw some shenanigans happening with Midnight and a female I couldn’t make out under him; definitely not a big fluff ball like Brussel. I wasn’t going to even try interrupting them, since that would just scare cats outside into the cold.
As I write this, we have warmed up to -19C/2F with a wind chill of -32C/-25F This time, the wind is coming up from the south at 34km/h21m/h, though we certainly have higher gusts that I can see blowing past my window.
We are supposed to reach a high of -17C/1F I don’t know what time of day they use to determine when the high happens, though, as the temperatures are supposed to continue warming slightly, to reach -15C/5F by about 10pm tonight, and stay there until about 2am, when we’re supposed to cool down. The “high” of tomorrow is supposed to be -19C/2F, but that’s supposed to be at about 5am, and things are supposed to keep cooling down for the rest of the day.
Thursday, at least, we’re supposed to have a high of -15C/5F. I got mixed up and was thinking that’s when we’re taking a couple of cats in for a spay and a neuter, but that’s on the 30th. This Thursday is a follow up doctor’s appointment for my daughter. Her appointment isn’t until 3pm, though, and we’re supposed to get snow again, starting Thursday evening and continuing all through Friday. Friday, however, is supposed to have a high of -3C/27F!! Then, on the 28th, we’re supposed to actually go above freezing!
If the long range forecasts are at all accurate, things should stay pretty mild, with only one or two days below -20C/-4F in February.
I certainly home so.
This polar vortex may have some other negative effects that we won’t know about until spring. While our Liberty apple tree is planted in a sheltered spot, and protected someone with an anti-deer wrap, it’s still a zone 4 fruit tree. These temperatures may have killed it.
Our winter sowing experiment may also be affected. While the sown garden beds did get a thick layer of mulch, they would also have benefited from a thicker layer of snow to insulate them. We just don’t have a lot of snow this year (which is NOT a complaint!). Some seeds, like the onion seeds, I’m sure will survive just fine. Others, I’m not so sure!
Well, we’ll see in the spring. Once things warm up and melt away enough, I’ll remove the mulches. Then we’ll see whether I’m making a mistake by not buying more seeds this year.
Oh, who am I kidding. I am sure there are some seeds out there I will end up buying!
With the cold, the snow and the winds, I am cheering myself up by thinking garden thoughts!
… that I convinced my mother to do her errands yesterday, and not today.
The high for today was forecast to be -4C/25F – with a blizzard warning. During the night, I’d checked the weather and we had actually reached -1C/30F at 4am.
It has been dropping steadily, since then.
Temperature-wise, we’re still at a mild -11C/12F as I write this. The wind chill, however is -32C/-26F
This is what it was like when I did my short rounds this morning. (scroll through the slideshow to see a brief video)
The usual bunch is warm and cozy in the isolation shelter. In the next image, the older and more feral cats were taking shelter in various places. The water bowl shelter is more sheltered from the wind than the kibble shelter, though under the kibble shelter, which has a sheet of rigid foam insulation on the ground, plus another under the shelter floor, was a popular spot. The plastic wrapped catio was also being used, as well as the old dog house. When we get a chance, we need to open the roof and check on the heat bulb in there, as I don’t think it’s working anymore. Usually, there is melted snow on the roof above where the bulb is, and there isn’t any, even when we had the warmer days.
The sun room, however, is a very busy place. Looking out the bathroom window, not long ago, I counted 21 cats that I could see. There may have been more in corners we can’t see through the window. The thermometer on the wall was reading 0C/32F, which is likely reading on the cold side, as it’s on an exterior wall and between windows, one of which is a single pane instead of double pain.
In the video, you get some idea of how windy it was, in general. I wasn’t able to catch some of the more severe gusts, and wasn’t about to hang out outside for it! We were getting warnings of 70km/43m winds, with gusts up to 100km/62m As I write this, however were are down to 42km/26m winds.
When I got inside and started checking my local groups on FB, I found it had just exploded with posts from people describing terrible road conditions, and telling people to please stay home. Some had just arrived at their destinations. At least one described starting out, then turning around and going home, because they simply couldn’t see the road.
Soon after, one of the weather groups started posting about highway closures. Some, just sections were closed, but one highway was closed entirely.
For us, we are pretty sheltered from the winds coming from the north-northwest, and we didn’t get a lot of snow. Our odd climate bubble seems to have protected us again. We still have high winds, of course, and I even saw the sun come out briefly, a few minutes ago.
As always, when we have high winds, we are watching the trees. Especially the spruce grove, with all those dead trees. With the wind direction, though, if any do come down, they will fall away from the house. There’s really just one that is a threat to the house itself.
If my mother had gotten me to come today to help with her shopping, as she had wanted to originally, I would have had to cancel, and she would have been stuck. She is just a couple of blocks from the grocery store, though, and they do deliver, so she would have been okay for food. The pharmacy only delivers medications, though, so she could not have gotten her shopping there.
Speaking of which, I’m glad my husband’s prescription refills were delivered yesterday, too!
So we get to stay home and hibernate for the next few days. The temperatures will continue to drop, but will start warming up again next week – just in time for my daughter’s follow up doctor’s appointment!
In other things…
Yesterday morning, I’d poured more of the calcium chloride into the ejector’s venturi pipe, as my brother requested. It never filled, which means it was draining at the bottom. The level in the stack pipe did rise, but not very much. In talking to him about it, we figured that, if everything was thawed out, the fluid could possibly back up into the main pipe to the house.
Yesterday evening, after I got home from doing my mother’s shopping, I went into the basement.
I found a puddle of water on the floor, near the septic pump.
This was good news!
I checked around the pump itself, of course. The pipes and connectors were all dry. The puddle had already started to dry, so it had been there for some hours, and the only other place I found moisture was under the pump itself.
Directly under the loose and open outflow pipe to the ejector.
I found a container that I could fit under it, even though it is unlikely to happen again, but this was a really positive thing. It means that the ejector is now completely thawed out, and the the main pipe to the house is clear. The pipe itself has a slope to it, so it would always drain away from the house. Pouring in the ice melter was just enough to push the water that would always be in the pipe, back up into the basement a bit.
Which means we could set the pump up to the ejector again!
My brother was talking about coming out this weekend to do that, weather willing.
Today, I told him, don’t even think about it! We can stay with the emergency diverter for another week. Next weekend is supposed to be much better. Thankfully, he is able to work from home today, too, so no commuting in this storm! They got hit harder than we did.
Wow. I was just going over this post, looking for typos, when my phone started screaming at me. Our province just issued an emergency alert for hazardous road conditions, high winds and blizzard like conditions. They are asking people in the south or our province to avoid driving, conditions are worsening, visibility is near zero, and multiple highways are closed.
We are further north than the warning area, though.
Today didn’t go above freezing, like yesterday, but it did reach a high of -3C/27F, which is absolutely gorgeous for this time of year . We need to take advantage of it while we can, though. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have the same high of the day, and then it’s supposed to drop to a high of -23C/-9F the next day! We’re supposed to keep getting colder for a couple more days before things start warming up to above -20C/-4F again.
With that on the horizon, when my mother called yesterday about getting help with her shopping, I was already planning to call her to arrange doing it today. My mother, after telling me her fridge is sooo empty, tried to have it on Friday, because there is a social event in her building on Thursdays. I reminded her, I’m doing her shopping for her. She isn’t coming along, so she can still go visit with her neighbours! I just didn’t want her to be with an empty fridge any longer than necessary.
So that was worked out.
Before I headed out this morning, I had a little extra to do during my morning rounds.
It was time to put some pretty collars on some cats!
Here, from left to right, Colin, Judgement and Stinky are sporting their handsome new necklaces. These are not only brightly colours, but have rows of reflective strands in them. I was also able to get one on Gouda, and Nosey showed up towards the end and got one.
This is Gouda’s old collar, that showed up in the sun room after he lost it, as other cats were dragging it around and playing with it.
This colour also has the rows of reflective strands in, though with the collar being scratched until it frayed like this, I doubt they could be seen! The breakaway collar is still there, but the loop of collar on one end had come undone. This has happened before. These are the collars I’ve been able to find at the local dollar store. I still have one like it left that got buried. I just need to remove the bell and adjust the length before I add it to the others.
These are all the prepared collars. Since the yard cats earn their keep by hunting rodents for us, all the bells get removed, first. The ones on the bottom are the ones I found at the local dollar store. The bells on those ones need a pair of pliers to removed them, as the bells are on a ring that goes around the fabric of the collar. The new reflective ones have D rings for the bells. Plus, the rings the bells were on were the kind with overlapping ends, so they could be slid off like a key ring.
I’m keeping all the bells. Eventually, I plan to crochet a bunch of cat toys and will include the bells inside them.
We have one spay and one neuter booked through the rescue at the end of the month. I plan to bring a couple of collars along for the clinic to put on them while they are still under. Much easier than trying to get a collar on a mostly feral cat.
Meaning Brussel, the gorgeous fluffy calico with four boys hanging around.
Yes, she has gone into heat.
In the middle of January.
If we can’t catch her, she would be having kittens at the end of February. Way too early. The chances of survival would be almost nil.
But, how do we catch her? I don’t want to use a trap, yet, as it’s too still too cold, and who knows which cat would actually get caught in the trap. I might be able to get her closed up in the catio – she actually went into there this morning, and I could have closed her in, but she would need a heated water bowl, and there is no power available out there. The catio itself is a mini greenhouse, plus it has two box nests, one insulated, one with insulation between it and the ground, and a food bowl. Once things are warm enough that water won’t freeze, the catio could also be used as an isolation shelter, but not yet!
Brussel is one of the more feral cats but at least she does come closer and sometimes goes into the sun room. Her sister, Sprout, sometimes comes closer to house, but runs away as soon as she sees us. Sprout it one of the most feral in the colony.
Gotta work on that lady! She would be a priority over the other females right now, if we could snag her.
Aside from bedecking cats with snazzy new necklaces (the two littles that got fixed won’t be getting theirs quite yet), the other additional task of the morning was to pour more calcium chloride into the ejector. My brother asked me to pour it into the venturi pipe first, see if that can be filled, before pouring it into the stand pipe around it.
The two jugs were on the old oil drum my brother dragged over to use as a work surface. I started with the one that had only about a quarter jug left. Once that was done, I cracked open the second one.
As my brother expected, showing that the venturi valve is, indeed, no longer frozen, the level of liquid inside the venturi pipe did not seem to increase. The level in the stand pipe did increase, slowly. What would be happening is liquid at the bottom might be draining slowly into the main pipe.
It wasn’t until I was pouring the last of the calcium chloride into the pipe that I realized I was hearing an odd sound from inside the jug.
It was slush.
The liquid ice melter, had started to freeze!
Part of this is because they were sitting on metal, which would have made the bottoms a lot colder. The other part is that, while they were sitting there, the contents separated in the cold, with the water freezing at the bottom.
After closing up the ejector and wrapping it up again, the tarp, I nestled both jugs into the black plastic, on the east side of the set up, so that they would get the most sun and warmth to thaw out.
I hope we get one extra warm day on the weekend, as I expect my brother will want to come out on Saturday to switch the pipes back on the septic pump. I would then trudge out to the ejector for when he’s ready to test it, so I can message him and let him know if it’s working or not.
If it does work, we’ll have to make a point of using lots of water so the septic pump will turn on a few times and wash out the calcium chloride. The fitting at the bottom of the ejector is brass, which might corrode if it’s exposed to it for too long.
Once all that was done, it wasn’t long before I headed out to the truck to set up the OBDII scanner and make sure it is still just the sensor triggering the check engine light. I probably don’t need to do that, but I’m paranoid about having just one vehicle available.
My husband was expecting a prescription delivery today, so I left the gate open when I headed out, and the girls made sure to keep a phone handy and be available to get the delivery.
I timed my departure for when I could pick up our favourite fried chicken and wedges for lunch at the gas station – and top up the gas tank.
One thing my mother needs to get done that I cannot do for her is get cash from the bank, and she is no longer physically up to going to the bank in person. She doesn’t have a bank card (she did get one and my brother has it for safe keeping), as she wouldn’t know how to use it, nor would she trust it, so it’s cash only. My brother, as her Power of Attorney, is the only person who can do it for her. I brought it up with my brother, at her request, to see if there was some way to include me in the PoA (I do NOT want to be PoA at all!). He will have to take a day off work and make an appointment with our mother at the bank to work things out, and has no idea when he’ll be able to do that. Hopefully, some workaround be found.
We’ll figure it out.
After my mother and I had our lunch together, we went over her list and then I went to the pharmacy and the grocery store for her. I got back just in time for the social worker from the senior’s centre to arrive and start setting up their weekly event. I was able to get everything unloaded and put away, before starting time, so that worked out quite well.
My daughters, meanwhile, were also taking advantage of the warm day and have set up the laundry. No one has had a chance to climb onto the roof and check the vent yet (they climb through a window upstairs, rather than use a ladder, as it’s safer that way), so we’ve got the hose running out the door again. Since it’s going to be set up, anyhow, I’ll also take advantage of it and find things to wash. It may be warmer right now, but we still need to make sure to bring the hose in as soon as possible, before any remaining water starts to freeze, or the plastic starts to get brittle and crack.
One of these days, we’ll be able to do laundry like normal people again. 😄😄
Getting all this stuff done during the few warm days we have right now is a lot like “making hay while the sun shines” in the summer! We’re going to be hit with the bitter cold again, soon enough.
I can’t complain, though. For all that we are getting these cold spells, it’s really been a fairly mild winter. Not as mild as last year’s El Nińo winter, but still much nicer than the first few winters we had after moving here!
What the heck???
I just checked my computer’s weather app.
We are now under a blizzard warning.
We were expecting a couple of hours with snow this evening, then more in the wee hours of the morning, but this is the first blizzard warning I’m seeing! With winds up to 70km/h (43mph), they’re now saying. Looking at the weather radar, it seems that most of the system will pass to the north of us.
Mind you, the same weather app is saying the snow has already started where we are, and I see no snow falling at all, outside my window. So maybe our weird climate bubble is doing its thing again.
As I write this, our temperature is still a balmy -4C/25F, though the windchill is at -15C/5C. Still not too bad right now. We shall see!
At least the yard babies have plenty of food, water and shelter.
I would really like to be able to get that fluffy lady and get her spayed! She does sometimes let me pet her, but not very often of late.
This morning, I tried for a head count and got 29, which is the highest I’ve counted in a while. Not sure what to make of that, but cats will cat, I guess!
A brief update on our plumbing situation. Any time I hear a pump go off, I am checking the basement, even if it’s just the well pump. The septic pump makes a different sound now that the diverter is attached but, strangely, it sounds just like the fan in our bathroom!
There is still a leak somewhere, and I’ve had to top up the filter a few times. Sometimes, the filter cap will be tightly seals. Other times, it won’t be. There was one time I checked when I heard it go off, and the filter was low on water, but there was inflow happening. I waited and watched, and the inflow pressure increased as the water level in the filter increased faster than it drained out, and soon it was properly full and working right.
I updated my brother on all of this. He asked for some photos from different angles, and I figured he was planning to come out and see what he could do about it. Something he did eventually confirm, saying he was going to try something with the “back valve” on the pump. I assume there are valves, but I don’t know anything about what they are or where. I look forward to seeing what he does and learning more about it. Meanwhile, my SIL confirmed that she would be driving my brother out and drop him off, so he can take back their car that they loaned us.
My younger daughter and I needed to go into town to pick up our prescriptions today so, of course, we took advantage of the trip to run other errands.
This meant using the truck. I can’t be using my brother’s car, just because it’s there. I’d used the OBDII scanner last night and confirmed it was still the same sensor that was the issue, so there was really no excuse.
It ran just fine, but I really hate having the check engine light on, and the oil pressure gauge not working.
Our first stop in town was, of course, the pharmacy. My new painkiller prescription was filled yesterday, but my daughter’s was just put on file; when my prescription arrived, they called us about it, asking if I wanted it filled. They never called about my daughter’s prescriptions. They were going to need some time to fill it, so I left her to wait for it and did our other errands. The first was to return that security camera I’d picked up, so we could monitor the septic pump without running up and down the stairs all the time. We never did figure out why it wouldn’t connect to our WiFi.
The exchange was pretty straightforward and quick, so I had time to stop at a grocery store near the pharmacy. It’s not one we normally go to, but it was on the way. All I needed to pick up was butter, but on the way out I’d asked if my daughter had eaten anything, and she hadn’t. It was coming up on lunch time, and I knew she’d been up at around 3am and unable to get back to sleep. So I picked up something for her to eat as well.
That done, I went back to the pharmacy, where my daughter was still waiting. They didn’t have one of the meds as a generic in stock, so she got a name brand, instead. Another, they could only fill half of it. It didn’t take too much longer, though. My daughter used to work at this pharmacy, so she got to catch up a bit with former co-workers.
Since I was able to run our other errands while she waited, once everything was paid for, we were done in town.
This town, at least!
We were starting to run low on kibble, especially for the outside cats, so we made the trip to my mother’s town, next, and to the feed store.
The price on the 40 pound bags has gone up.
The lysine I’d ordered wasn’t in. It’s been quite a while since I requested it, so I was a bit surprised.
From there, we picked up some fuel and headed for home, with a quick side trip to the post office. I was giving one more day for the letter mail that got delayed by the postal strike. If it didn’t come today, I was going to assume it was lost and would have to make arrangements.
I was pretty happy to see that it had finally arrived – but also found a parcel slip. I was not expecting any parcels until next week!
The post office hadn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet, so I couldn’t pick it up. They’d reopen in only 20 minutes, though, so my daughter and I headed home and unloaded. She headed in to put things away, and I went back to the post office, just in time for it to reopen.
This is what my brother and I want to try on the ejector. We can’t use the 100′ extension cord my brother set up when he was going to try his heat gun, as it is for 2 prong plugs. We have two, but they are both in use right now. Once my brother retrieves his car, though, one will be freed up, as it’s currently what his block heater is plugged into. I don’t know that we’ll set that up tomorrow, though. If the source of the problem really is the over saturated soil under the ejector, thawing the stand pipe out isn’t going to do much good. It’ll just freeze again. And we certainly don’t want to be switching from the emergency diverter to the ejector on the pump, if only to have to switch it back again later.
We shall see what my brother thinks, when he gets here tomorrow.
Meanwhile, now that we no longer have a clogged drain from the kitchen sink, and the diverter is mostly working fine, we’ve been catching up on dishes and other cleaning jobs. We still haven’t needed to do laundry, though. I’m still on constant alert for the sound of the septic pump; I’m the only one that can hear it when it goes off, and only when I’m in my office/bedroom, which puts a limit on what I can get done.
I really hope whatever my brother has come up with, works!
I must say, though; it may be a pain in the butt to be constantly listening for and checking on that pump, things are a LOT more relaxed now that both the diverter is working, and that clogged drain is cleared!
Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get a much better night’s sleep tonight, with these new painkillers.
For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.
Okay, here is where we talk about everything else. The perennials, the food forest and so on.
Sunchokes, asparagus, grapes, zucca melon and walking onions
Sunchokes: last year, I didn’t harvest any at all so that we would have more growth and a larger harvest this year.
That plan worked out rather well! We got quite a lot of sunchokes, and the largest ones were replanted for next year. We’re still learning what to do with them, but this is something we know grows here and will come back every year.
The only downside is that I found quite a few tubers with chonky caterpillars burrowed into them. Some burrowed all the way in, where they died. Some, with half their bodies still sticking out of the tubers! I have no idea what these are, and need to figure out how to get rid of them.
Asparagus: We planted these purple years ago, and should be harvesting them by now.
We are not.
In planting the crowns, a trench was dug about a foot deep, then the bed itself was hilled to give them depth they are supposed to have.
Then we discovered that, in wet springs, a moat forms around our garage, including through the vehicle gate into the yard.
Which is where the asparagus is planted.
At that depth, even though the bed itself is above water, the crowns would be saturated.
We need to find another place to grow asparagus. I don’t know that we’d be able to salvage this purple variety. The challenge is finding a place where they can be left to grow for the next 20 years – and not get flooded out!
Grapes: In cleaning up around the storage house, we found two grape vines my mother had planted. We made a trellis for them and have been trying to keep the spirea from invading them, every since. Last year was the first year we looked to be getting a really good harvest.
The very morning I was planning to harvest them, I came out to find the trellis knocked down on one side, and all the grapes gone.
Then one morning – while taking recordings for a garden tour video! – I discovered all the grapes gone, again. They had disappeared overnight.
Racoons.
I want to transplant these, perhaps on either side of an arbour they can climb on. Maybe closer to the house, where we can better protect them from racoons!!!
Zucca melon: This is one of those things I’ve been trying to grow for years. They are supposed to get huge – up to 60 pounds – and actually grow in our climate. They never seemed to do well.
This year, I thought we’d finally get some. We had strong and healthy transplants, and they went into the kiddie pool raised bed, so they wouldn’t get the elm tree roots invading them.
The slugs got them.
*sigh*
Next year, I want to try them again, but this time in the new bed the Crespo squash did so well in.
I just have to find a way to keep the slugs off!
Walking onions: When we first moved here, every spring, a single walking onion would appear along the edge of the old kitchen garden. There used to be a fence and a tire rim planter, with a tire cut in half and flipped inside out as the “pot” near that spot.
Every year, this one onion would grow, then something would smash it flat.
One year, I managed to keep it from getting broken long enough that it formed bulbils. I took some of those and planted them along the south side of the tiny raised bed nearby, where they would get full sun while being protected by the logs making up the raised bed wall.
At the same time, that side of the old kitchen garden was cleared as best we could, and my daughter planted flower bulbs as a border. We eventually added logs on the outer edge as a protective border, with a couple of openings line with rocks or bricks to walk through. In placing the logs, I was very careful to place one log outside of where I knew that one onion was.
It never came up after that.
The bulbils we planted, however, grew and thrived. When they formed bulbils, those were harvested to cook with, rather than allowing them to reach the ground and spread. We don’t want them to take over! These should continue to come back, year after year.
Milkweed, saffron, tulips and other flowering bulbs, wildflowers and … salsify?
Milkweed: When starting seeds indoors, I started some Shades of Orange Butterfly flower – a type of milkweed. Very few seeds germinated, and the ones that did, did not do well. When we were finally able to start transplanting outside, I was at a loss on where to put these sad little seedlings, as these were something I wanted to reseed itself, year after year.
Then I found one of our yard cats, passed away. He was buried in a bed that was supposed to get poppies in it, but we completely lost control of the weeds in it. After he was buried, I transplanted the milkweed on his grave, in hopes they would survive. They did not.
Tulips: My daughters planted tulip bulbs in an area of the west yard, not far from the old kitchen garden, several years ago. We had gotten rid of some dead crab apple and other trees around there, and there is a lilac hedge behind it – lilacs that are doing much better, now that they are not overshadowed by dead and dying trees! It’s a well sheltered and protected area – from the weather, at least!
Deer love to eat tulips.
After several disappointing years of tulips being eaten just before they started to bloom, we were starting to think the poor bulbs weren’t doing well enough to store energy to survive the winter.
After having to remove one last diseased crap apple tree, and the remaining stump of one that died long ago, we put in some fence posts and surrounded the entire area with bits and pieces of salvaged wire fending and chicken wire, with one side tied in place to serve as a gate for accees.
This year, much to our surprise, we had the most tulips blooming, ever! We even had some coming up in areas they hadn’t been in ages, and we thought for sure they had died.
Best of all – no deer damage!
I look forward to the tulips finally being able to spread through the area, as we originally planned for them.
Grape Hyacinth and snow crocuses: On the other side of the lilac hedge where the tulips are, is part of our maple grove. A few years ago, in one section, we planted 200 grape hyacinth bulbs. In another section, we planted snow crocuses. The hope was that they would spread and grow and eventually take over those areas, so we wouldn’t need to mow or weed trim it anymore.
This year, we did get both, but neither did as well as the year before. I think our late spring, with heavy rains and flooded out areas, was too much for them. They should continue to come back, year after year, though, and hopefully continue to spread and fill the areas they were planted in.
Wildflowers: I had picked up Western Wildflower and Alternative Lawn mixes of seeds. After we had a couple of branch piles chipped, we were left with bare patches of soil in the maple grove, and we tried planting them there. If any of them survived, though, I don’t know. We did have some things come up this year that might have been from these mixes, but I can’t say for sure. There was one that came up that I was very diligent about pulling and destroying, though. I don’t know if it was part of the mix, but we have them all over in the spruce grove. They have beautiful sprays of tiny flowers that turn into tiny little burs. If you walk anywhere near them, you’ll find your pant legs and sleeves covered, and they do NOT want to come out! Worse than burdock! They are almost as invasive as creeping bellflower or creeping Charlie.
We have an insulated tarp that we put over our septic tank. It’s large enough that we fold it in half to use it. When the tank was uncovered in the spring, I laid it out in the maple grove nearby and weighted it down. It stayed there all summer, in hopes of killing off anything growing under it, which was mostly creeping bellflower.
When it was pulled off, I found some things were still growing along the edges, but most of the weeds under there did seem to have died. I put the Western Wildflower mix into a shaker with some seed starting mix I still had and, after clearing and loosening the soil first, scattered the seeds over the area, raked it again to cover the seeds, then mulched it, as was done with the winter sown garden beds.
Hopefully, it will work this time, and we will have native wildflowers growing in this patch. If all goes well, I would want to harvest seed heads from it to scatter throughout other areas of the maple grove. There are just a few areas where we want to maintain clear paths of grass. The rest, we want to be taken over with flowers of all kinds.
I have not yet decided were to try the alternative lawn mix, again.
Salsify?: In preparing garden beds, I found a plant growing in an area I needed to dig up. I recognized the leaves as something that has been growing and blooming pretty wild. They are quite pretty, so I dug it up and transplanted it into one end of the low raised bed with the seed onions and Summer of Melons mix.
It grew very well, bloomed beautifully, and developed huge seed clusters.
Any time a seed cluster looked like it was ready to be blown away with the wind, I plucked the seeds and scattered them in the same area at the far end of the bed, where they could sprout next year.
As for what they are, it was suggested they might be salsify, which is something we actually have seeds for that we wanted to try growing. The roots apparently taste like seafood. The seed catalogs only had photos of the roots, not the flowers, but in looking online, the flowers did look like they could be salsify. When cleaning up the bed in the fall, however, the roots were completely different. Certainly not a tap root that one could use like a carrot or parsnip! It’s possible that just means they are a different variety of salsify, but I don’t know. Whatever they are, though, we might have ourselves quite a lot of them in that one spot where I was dropping the seeds!
The Food Forest: apple, haskap, mulberry, raspberries, sea buckthorn, silver buffaloberry, highbush cranberry and Korean Pine
Liberty Apple: this is the first variety of eating apple we’ve planted. It is a zone 4 apple, but we planted it near the lilac hedge by the old kitchen garden, where it should be more protected. It survived its first winter. Hopefully, it will survive this winter, too. It will be a few years before it starts producing fruit, though. We just need to keep it alive! As it grows, I’m hoping to be able to esplanade the branches, too.
Haskap: We planted these years ago, and we should have been getting lots of fruit by now. Unfortunately, they are not doing well where they are planted. I suspect it is because they are between an elm tree and a lilac bush, and there is too much competition for resources. There are also flowers that come up around them every year, but their root systems are very different, so I don’t think they could be a problem. I am thinking we should transplant them where we will be having the bulk of our food forest, but my daughters are concerned that transplanting them will kill them off.
The main problem, though, is that the “Mr. Haskap” variety, which is meant to cross pollinated with the “Mrs. Haskap” variety, blooms earlier. At most, we’d find a couple of berries, here and there, and that’s it. This year, we actually had the most berries yet.
A small handful of them. Which meant we at least had a chance to taste them!
They are very tasty.
I still think we need to transplant them.
Mulberry: last year, we ordered a Trader mulberry – a zone 3 variety. This is the second time we’d tried mulberry, and the first was killed off by a late and severe spring frost.
They were out of the 2 year size, though, and were instead sending out two 1 year seedlings, instead. They were so tiny, we didn’t transplant them at all. Instead, we potted them up and kept them indoors through the winter.
This spring, they were planted along the north edge of the property, in our main food forest area. Because these can get quite big, I wanted to make sure they were positioned where they would not overshadow other fruit trees. There is a lilac hedge along the fence line, and one of them was strategically planted in front of a gap in the hedge, where the deer have been getting through. This allowed me to plant it slightly tucked in among the lilacs for extra protection from the elements, until they get bigger. The other one was planted the distance recommended for the size they can get. There, I pruned back the lilacs to tuck it further in, in line with the first one. Both got well mulched, and have some salvaged wire fence around them, to protect them from critters.
This is their first winter. Hopefully, they will survive, and in a couple of years, we will get to find out what mulberries taste like!
Raspberries: My mother has grown raspberries here for as long as I can remember. They also pretty much grow wild. She had last transplanted raspberries in an area on the south side of the main garden area, under a crab apple tree and a chokecherry tree.
Not a good place for them.
There are also other trees planted between the house and the main garden area; my parents added more of the years, encroaching on what used to be part of their garden, rather than on the north side of the property. As a result, they create a lot of shade in places that used to be able to grow lots of vegetables.
We did get small amounts of raspberries to enjoy, though and raspberries, being raspberries, spread. In this case, near the crab apple tree, there had been a compost ring. When it was full, I moved the ring to another location and started to dig into the old compost pile, expecting to be able to use it.
That’s when I found out someone had been using it for garbage. I also found lots of larger branches in it.
After cleaning out as much garbage as I could find, we left the pile to break down more.
Then the crab apple tree got the fungal disease that’s killing off so many of them and died. I cleared that away, which has actually improved things, as the raspberries on that end now get more light.
The raspberries have taken over the old compost pile and are thriving in it, so this past summer, we had quite a lot of raspberries.
Which is good, because the purple variety of raspberries we got for the food forest area did not do well.
They actually produced fruit last year, which was their first year. I was expecting to get berries in their second year; most raspberries produce on second year canes. This year, only one of them survived the winter, and being a first year cane, did not produce. It also didn’t grow well.
We also have a couple of raspberries I bought for my daughter. They were planted in the main garden area, near the trees that are causing us so much trouble.
It turns out, deer like raspberry leaves, too.
They are now protected, but we’ll have to transplant them somewhere away from those trees!
Raspberries are something we want to grow lots of. We are working towards having early, mid and late season varieties. Along with the purple and red varieties, we want to add in a golden variety.
We were supposed to get more for this year, but the budget did not allow for it.
What we might end up doing is transplanting some of the ones in the old compost pile into the food forest area, too.
Sea Buckthorn: We bought a 5 pack of sea buckthorn, which were planted in the north east corner of what is now our main food forest area. The lilac hedge sort of peters out by this point, creating another gap the deer were taking advantage of. After planting them, they got a buck and pole fence put over them to protect them and keep the deer from running through the space.
They didn’t all make it. I suddenly can’t remember if we have two or three left. Sea buckthorn, however, needs one male for every 4 females for pollination. No male, no berries. It’s unlikely we have one of each, so we need to replace the ones that died. Which we intended to do this year, but the budget did not allow for it. The ones that did survive, though, do seem to be doing okay.
Silver Buffaloberry: These were purchased as a bundle of 30. Their placement was deliberate to double as a privacy fence as they reached full size. So far, we have lost maybe 3 in total, which is pretty darn good. It will be a few years before they reach full size and start producing berries. The berries are edible, but if it turns out we don’t like them, they will be good for the birds.
Highbush Cranberry: At the start of the two rows of silver buffaloberry, we had a pair of highbush cranberry. For some reason, the deer kept eating one of them. It is currently protected by and old saw horse, directly over it. It has survived! Both will also need several more years before they start producing fruit.
Korean Pine: I keep forgetting about the Korean pine, because they are the only things planted in the outer yard. We started off with 6 seedlings. We are down to three. They are supposed to be slow growing for their first few years, then start shooting up. This year should have been that first year of increased growth. They’re still quite small, protected under their chicken wire cloche. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to give them the care they should be getting. If only one survives, though, I’ll be happy. It’ll be years before we’ll have pine nuts to harvest, but one mature enough tree would be able to provide more than we need.
Conclusion and planning ahead
It was certainly a mixed bag with how these things went this year.
When it comes to these more permanent things, both food and flowers, we are in for the long haul. These are things that can take years to get where we want them to be.
We had intended to expand this year but our biggest struggle has been with the budget. Aside from everything becoming more expensive, we had so many things that needed to be replaced or repaired this year.
Oh, I just realized, I forgot one more thing: our rhubarb!
We have two patches on opposite corners of the old kitchen garden. The one in the south corner has given us rhubarb to harvest every year, but the one in the north corner has struggled. They both have ornamental crab apple trees growing over them, but the south one manages to get more light. The north one had some dead branches that got cleaned away this year, though. Between that and, I believe, the heavy rain we got this spring, the rhubarb in the north corner was the best we’ve ever seen!
At some point, though, they will need to be transplanted to a better, more open, location. That can wait a few years, though.
Which is pretty much the thing with all our plans for growing food. The ultimate goal is to be as self sufficient as possible. Part of that goal is to have as many things that are either perennial, or will seed themselves, year after year. I’m no spring chicken, and I know my years of mobility are limited. I’m already pretty broken.
Along with planning what we will be growing year after year, we are also thinking 2 years, 5 years, 10 years ahead. We want to add more fruit trees, and even nut trees, though there are few that will grow and produce in our zone 3 climate. As we add animals to our mix, growing food for them will also be part of the planning.
We’re in it for the long haul, though.
It’s a bit different in our situation, in that we don’t own this property, but have the freedom to do this. In the long term, this property could end up belonging to my brother’s grandsons. So all these things that we are doing could ultimately be there to benefit two little boys currently living in another province!
Who knows?
We just do what we can for now. I’m just thankful that we are here, and that we have such a good working relationship with my brother. Everything we do here is a benefit for him, too.
