planning ahead

Thinking ahead

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What shall we do with these babies!

They’re still on the bottom of that old and rotting barrel. As I write this, it’s raining, and I’m afraid rain is getting through the opening the mama is jumping in and out of, and they’re right under it. Where the barrel is is very sheltered, though, so not a lot of rain is reaching the barrel to begin with.

I hope!

I’ve cleared out a corner of the sun room, then used boxes and cat blankets to create a nest, with other stuff placed around it to make it even more cave-like. What I’m hoping to do is get the kittens out of the barrel and move them to the nest. Hopefully, the mama will accept the offering and leave them there. We can even put other things around it to make it more private, so she won’t be disturbed as we go in and out of the sun room.

But that is a job I can’t do without someone more spry and agile to get at the kittens. We can reach to move the boards out and then maybe tip the barrel over, very carefully. It might just fall completely apart once we start moving it.

Is it worth trying? What do you think?

Anyhow…

This morning, the girls were out before I was and took care of feeding the outside cats, then put together two more frames for the raised beds for me. The third one wasn’t done because somehow we missed drilling pilot holes at one end of the 3′ pieces, and they didn’t want to be making noise with the drill while my husband and I were trying to sleep!

I headed out early to go to my mothers, stopping for the mail, then pick up lunch. I went to the Chinese restaurant right next to her place and got myself a full meal, but just onion rings for her. Now that she’s been convinced they are using cat meat and refuses to even consider she might be wrong on that, onion rings are the only thing she’s willing to eat from there! Her loss. The food was delicious, as always.

Before we left, my mother said she had a letter to mail, but she didn’t want to mail it at the local post office. As we were going to get her new glasses, she started talking about the $45 she put in an envelope to pay, but wasn’t sure what she had paid for. I explained to her (again) that it was for her eye test, because it wasn’t completely covered by our province’s Medicare. She said something about the cost of her glasses, as she had written a check for half the cost and I said no, it was just for her eye test, not at all for her glasses. She then commented on not having any receipts, and I reminded her she got two receipts; one for the glasses, one for the eye tests. I had folded up the receipts and put them in the envelope she’d had the cash for the test in. I’d even made sure to show them to her once at home, them back, telling her to put them with her other tax receipts.

She didn’t remember that, and doesn’t know where that envelop is, anymore, but also had no interest in looking. Hhmm.

So, off we went to the town her glasses were in, which is about half way to the city from where she lives. Along with going to the post office, she talked about wanting to go to a grocery store, too. Once at the eye place, my mother got excellent care as they made sure everything was just right.

Then she started asking about the $45, and what was that for?

*sigh*

I’m not sure why my mother didn’t believe me, or what she thought that cash paid for. The lady patiently explained exactly what it was for; it turns out there is just one specific test she had that is not covered. Honestly, I’m still not sure she accepted the explanation.

She was happy with the glasses, though. After getting them to fit just right, she was told to start wearing them tomorrow, when she first gets up, rather than try and get used to a new prescription part way through the day. Since she already uses a walker, there’s a higher risk of falling if she gets dizzy or has depth perception issues.

When it was time to pay, the lady wrote the check out for my mother to sign, and my mother started talking as if they weren’t going to give her a receipt, but she would like one. She was assured they would give her a receipt. Then we made sure she saw the printout, and that it went into the bag with her glasses.

While we were chatting, my mother asked where the post office was, as she couldn’t remember. We got excellent directions. Once we were done, though, she wanted to go to the grocery store, first, since it was so close. As we parked, we saw a Canada Post sign on a pharmacy that shared the parking lot, so we tried going there first. Turns out they just had a postal box, and my mother refuses to use postal boxes anymore. The one outside the post office in her town was stolen, several years ago, so now she things if she puts mail in a post box, it will get stolen.

I didn’t mind stopping at the post office, though, because I was out of antihistamines, and I’m allergic to something out there!

Then it was time to go to the grocery store, but suddenly my mother didn’t actually want to buy anything there, though she did look through the bakery section. Their bakery section is one of the things she looks forward to in that store, as they carry types of bread she can’t get locally. In the end, I did some of my own shopping while she rested in her walker, but as I quickly went around for things on my list, I found her checking out the meat department! 😄 So she did get one thing – just not the thing she came to the store for! I paid for it with my own stuff, so she wouldn’t have to stand in line.

Next, it was off to the post office. She remembered what the building looked like, but the post office hasn’t been in that building for many years. I don’t know what the building is now, but it’s unique enough that it frequently gets used in movies. There have been a few times I’ve come to this town in the summer, and had to drive around blocks closed off and decorated with fake snow and Christmas trees, because another Hallmark movie was being filmed. Even explaining this as we drove past the original building, when we next drove by the old town hall, with similar architecture, she was telling me that was the post office!

I’m glad we got such excellent instructions, because the real post office turned out to be hidden in a strip mall breezeway! So well hidden, after I parked the car, I walked over to see, and discovered the doors where hidden by post boxes. 😄

When I went back for the envelope my mother wanted to mail, I got very specific instructions. My mother has sent mail to Poland (months ago, though she makes it sound like yesterday) that didn’t arrive. When mailing another letter to Poland, the lady behind the counter thought it was to Ukraine, apparently. I honestly don’t see how that could be, but that’s what my mother tells me. She also writes “Polska” on the address, rather than the English “Poland”, and the lady asked what that was.

So now my mother is convinced that the lady at the local post office just throws away her letters. Or that they are being stolen. Or that no one at the post office understand that Polska means Poland.

My instructions were to make sure they knew this was going to Poland, and whether she should write Poland in English rather than Polish.

When I got to the counter, I explained my questions. The lady at the counter even double checked to make sure if having Polska on there was fine, and was assured it was. In the end, I think the questions I made on behalf of my mother made her day!

My mother didn’t even need postage. All that, because she refuses to drop a letter into a postal box!

She was happy with the responses I got, though. But now I’m wondering, what is she going to do the next time she has to mail a letter to Poland?

That was the last of her errands, though, so we made the drive home. I didn’t even get guilted about staying longer after I helped her in. The folks from the seniors centre had some sort of coffe night in the lobby, and it was still going. My mother was happy to kick me out and be able to catch the end of it. 😂

Which is was fine by me – I didn’t have any insulated bags in the car, so I needed to get my few groceries home! I did stop at the hardware store first, though. I wanted to look for the coupling I needed to repair the pipe to the garden tap.

Turns out, the smallest size they had was for a 1 1/4″ pipe. The pipe I need to repair is 1″.

*sigh*

I was really hoping to avoid ordering it online.

Ah, well. Once I got home, I did exactly that. It comes in a 2 pack, so we’ll even have a spare.

That done, I headed outside. After setting up the kitten nest in the sun room, I did a bit of garden tending, then dragged the roll of fence wire over to where the frames were.

I had thought the wire was 4″ squares, but I was wrong. Once I started unrolling it, I could see it was several sizes. All the squares are 6″ long, but there are rows of 5″, 4″ and 3″ spaces.

The roll itself is just over 3″ wide. I decided for the first frame, I would try 5′ long pieces. Three of them will fit along the inside of the frame, with a bit of overlap. Bolt cutters made cutting the wire an easy thing, and I used pliers to bend the cut ends back. Being rolled up for so long, the pieces all have a curve we can take advantage of when attaching them to the sides of the frame.

I didn’t get that far, though. It started to rain while I was working on the last section, so I just put things away to finish tomorrow. Once I see how it looks with 5′ of fence wire, I’ll decide if the next one will get longer or shorter pieces.

For these ones, I plan to cover the fence wire with the black netting we used to protect beds last year, making sure to close up the ends in the process. The cats like to go into the garden beds and just lay on top of my vegetables, so this will at least keep them out! In the future, we’ll have to make a cover sized for the bed the Irish Cobbler potatoes are in right now. I never thought those would need covering! The other potatoes are fine, but the critters seem to really like that one bed! I keep finding kittens in there, but something bigger has been flattening the potato plants. So far, they have been able to recover okay, but there’s only so much abuse they can take! It’s too late to do anything about it this year, but we’ll have to keep that in mind when using the bed next year.

Funny how every year of gardening, I spend much of my time thinking about the next year’s garden! Everything we learn this year will make for a better garden next year.

I hope!

The Re-Farmer

Baby bed, drainage and feeling frustrated

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Would you look at this tiny worm?

I found a cardboard carton large enough for the mama to fit comfortably in and lined it with one of the blankets the Cat Lady donated to us for the kitties. Unfortunately, I really spooked the mom when I opened the door; enough that she ran out the hole in the back of the shed she’d been using to get in and out. I suppose that made it easier, since I didn’t have to worry about her reactions. I quickly put the baby in the bed box outside the shed, cleared the netting and other odds and sots where the baby had been lying, fit the bed box in, and left. The whole thing probably took less than a minute to do.

Picking up that tiny baby, though. Wow! It must have been maybe hours old, the first time I spotted them a few days ago.

The mother is Baby Beep Beep, which means she is NOT the mother of any of the sun room kittens.

In other things, we got quite a lot of rain last night. I’d used the rain barrel to water the front garden beds, as it was full to the top, and got it down to maybe a quarter or a bit less. This morning, it was full to the top. Not overflowing, but close, so I put the diverter on for now. We’re expecting more little thunderstorms passing through tomorrow. This morning, I was hearing thunder around us, and even got rained on a bit.

The potted herbs on the front step seem to be doing well. The lemongrass is getting taller. The spearmint in one pot by itself, and the thyme and oregano in the other, seem to be recovering from being transplanted well. Those two post have drainage holes and are sitting on trays, but the pot the lemon grass is in does not have any drainage holes. As I was weeding, I could see it was way too wet, so I just got a hammer and a nail and made one drainage hole.

I got this picture after it had been draining for more than half a minute, and there was still lots of pressure!

The bottom and sides of the pot are lined with grass clippings, and I don’t really mind there being some water accumulated in the clippings. Having a drainage hole higher up will work well, I think. It’s not like I could tip the pot and put holes in the bottom!

The down side is that, after weeding the Chinese elms that were sprouting in that pot, my hands smell like stagnant water. Yes, I’ve washed them. Several times. The smell still lingers. Ick.

I moved the last of the Jiffy Pellet trays to the steps near these pots. There is still that one Lemon Cucumber that sprouted, nothing else. It’s probably too late in the season, but when it gets its true leaves, I’ll find somewhere to transplant it. One cucumber plant is better than none.

This has been a very frustrating gardening year. The intension had been to expand the garden again, or at least use as much as what we did last year. With the weather and the heat, we weren’t able to build those trellis beds in time, which means two large sections, where we’d planted potatoes and melons last year, aren’t being used at all. We got transplants in, but didn’t have room for all of them, which means we have far fewer paste tomatoes than I intended. That was the one type I wanted to have a lot more of, since making our own tomato paste last year went over so well. Along with the weather and heat issues, I’ve lost more than a few days that would have been good days to work outside, because I had to help my mother out, and she demands I take a “holiday” when I’m with her, and not be “in a hurry” to leave. When I point out I have work to do, she just says, “what work? You don’t have cows!”

*sigh*

We didn’t do anywhere near as much direct sowing as intended, because there weren’t enough prepared beds to sow into. As it is, we had to use the old kitchen garden differently then intended, just to get things in the ground. That’s okay. Normally, I’m quite flexible about such things, but after a while, it just gets frustrating. In the end, instead of expanding the garden this year, we’ve got a smaller garden then last year. One positive thing, at least, is that we aren’t having the no good, terrible growing year we had last year!

I was feeling good about the garden in many ways. We have tomatoes growing and starting to produce fruit. The Gold Ball turnips, which disappeared last year, are growing well. Yes, something is eating the leaves, but not enough to hinder their growth. We’ve got two types of carrots, and both are doing well. The bush beans are struggling a bit, but they’re growing. Even the tiniest of onion transplants – the ones so small, they probably shouldn’t have been transplanted at all – are picking up. I’m happy to see so many pea pods forming, even though the plants themselves seem a lot shorter than I expected them to get. I think it’s the squash patch that is most encouraging. They failed so badly last year, and now I’m seeing the winter squash getting big and strong. It even looks like we’ve won the battle against the slugs! I’ll just have to keep up with sprinkling that corn meal. We might actually have fully mature winter squash to harvest this year

The melons germinated so late, they probably won’t get a chance to produce fully mature fruit, but they are recovering from being transplanted nicely and, you never know; we might get a long, mild fall and the frosts will hold off until late in the year again.

Then I see people sharing pictures on the local and Zone 3 gardening groups I’m on, showing their huge plants and talking about the vegetables they’re already harvesting. How can they be harvesting beans already? How is their corn so tall? One person was even eating fresh tomatoes! In June!

I try to remind myself that Zone 3 is about winter temperatures, and covers a large, geographically diverse area, so a lot of these people have a last frost date in the middle of May. Even with local groups, most of the members live well south of us. With this year’s very early and warm spring, even people with later frost dates took a chance and planted earlier. We’ve also had a decent amount of rain, though some people did lose or partially lose their gardens to driving rain, winds or hail.

Still, seeing all those photos of huge, lush garden growth and harvests, suddenly my garden seems really pathetic, and way behind, without even taking into account the things we didn’t get built in time to use this year.

I know better than to compare our situation to others, because it’s so different, but when I’m already feeling so far behind, it’s easy to start feeling down about the whole thing.

Things are supposed to cool down over the next few days, and the storms are supposed to stop for a while. Which means we should finally be able to chop our way through the undergrowth and get those trees my brother cut down for me! This should have been done weeks ago.

Well, it is what it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: first Indigo Blues, and bye-bye transplants!

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This morning, I made sure to get a picture of our newest tomatoes.

These are the first Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes forming! We’ve got more Romas forming, too but, so far, no Black Beauties. They are blooming, though.

After I finished my morning rounds, I put the remaining transplants into as few containers as I could fit them, then loaded them into the car. Last night, I made sure to write out labels on Post It notes. When I went to the post office yesterday, and asked the store owner if I could bring my extra transplants, she had indicated a counter to leave them on, but there was no way they’d fit on there. There is a picnic table outside the door, though, so after clearing it with her, that’s where I set them up. She was really surprised to see just how many transplants I had! I told her a bit about the different varieties. I managed to squeeze 22 Romas into two bins, and all the Spoon tomatoes into one tray. Fifteen in total, I think. I didn’t really count as I combined the two trays into one. There were only 7 or 8 Black Beauties left, so they fit into one bin easily enough. The tomatoes are all so tall and really, really need to get into the ground!

I knew which group of peppers were the hot ones, so I had those set aside in a smaller tray. I had the bell peppers in groups by variety, but after taking the labels out when I transplanted half of them, I lost track of which was which! I still stuck labels on the tray with information about each variety.

This general store can get very busy, since it not only has the post office, but also sell liquor and gas. I hope that people will take all the transplants today but, if not, they are sure to be taken tomorrow. Our little hamlet is having it’s annual picnic and parade tomorrow, and the parade goes right past the store. The store itself is closed on Sundays, so having them on the picnic table works out well.

With these gone, I have just a few things left to transplant. The spearmint will go into a pot. Only one oregano survived, and I’m not sure how healthy it is, but I’ll try transplanting it somewhere as well. There are also the second variety of thyme to transplant, and I might just put those in a pot, too. That leaves the last of the onions to transplant. Today, I plan to pull the last of the bolting spinach and will transplant the onions there. If there are any left over, I’ll use them to fill spaces near the peas, where the lettuce and bok choy were choked out by the Chinese elm seeds. Thankfully, the trees are now done dropping seeds for the year. I also plant to re-sow some summer squash. They have a short enough season that there is still time for them to grow.

Once all the surviving transplants are in the ground, I can finally turn my attention to building those trellis beds! If I can get that done fast enough, we might even be able to direct sow a few other things with really short growing seasons, but at least that is no longer an urgent thing.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

First day of summer

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Well, here it is! The longest day of the year, and the first official day of summer. It’s going to be another hot one, though not as hot as yesterday, thank God. We’ve had thunderstorms blowing past us through the night. Here, we did get a decent amount of rain. The rain barrel by the sun room is now about 3/4 full, which is roughly double what was already in there.

While feeding the outside cats, I spotted a wound on one of the mamas.

I thought it might be the cause of all the blood I found in the kibble house a few days ago but, to be honest, it doesn’t look bad enough for that. Though I suppose if it was from more than one wounded cat, it’s possible. We can’t get near her, so we can only monitor from a distance.

The bitties under the cat house are now gone. I’m actually surprised it took Caramel so long to move them. It’s a very high traffic area, and where she had them was where many other critters would squeeze under, so she probably had to face down other cats, kittens and the odd skunk while there. She was waiting for me with the other cats when I came out with kibble in the morning. I hope that means here babies are close by. I’m seeing far fewer cats at the same time these days – typical for this time of year. This morning, I counted only 14 in total.

The rainfall seems to have been enough to make the garden beds very happy. I posted a few photos on Instagram (I keep forgetting that exists!).

The flowers on the Irish Cobbler potatoes are starting to open, and I’m starting to see flower buds on the Red Thumb potatoes. More of the Sweet Chocolate peppers are starting to bloom, and the one that bloomed a while ago has the tiniest of peppers forming. The zucca melon continues to bloom, and now one of the Caveman’s Club gourds has started to bloom. Still male flowers only. The peas have started to bloom as well! In the main garden area, I spotted more Roma VF tomatoes developing, while the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes are still just blooming; no developing tomatoes yet.

In the old kitchen garden, I found a surprise. Quite a number of things come up around the side of the garden, where the tiny raised bed and step stones are, some of which I have been keeping, like the dill and the poppies. There were a couple of tiny plants next to some old asparagus ferns, very similar looking to dill, that suddenly shot up flower stalks. I swear, they weren’t there last night, when I weeded the shallot bed! One has pink flowers, the other purple. I’ve never seen them before. I guess with weeding everything else, they finally had a chance to grow and bloom!

Temperatures are supposed to stay pretty high over the next while – slightly above average for this time of year. As uncomfortable as I find it, it’s great for the garden – as long as we keep getting a decent amount of rain! So far, so good, at least.

I’m looking forward to when the tax assessor comes and goes, tomorrow morning. We delayed the joint Father’s Day, birthday pizza night my older daughter planned out, so that’s going to be done tomorrow, too. Then it’s time to get back to work.

Of course, my mother phoned this morning. Even though she told me my sister was able to get groceries for her recently, she suddenly wants me to go over and help her with groceries. BUT she says she doesn’t want me to be in a hurry. In other words, she wants me to stay with her for a long time. I’d just told her we were going to be busy for a while, and had plans, including celebrating my daughter’s birthday (which was already postponed) but she told me we should postpone it to Sunday, so I could spend time with her, instead.

She brushed past the whole “birthday” part as if it wasn’t there. She’s never cared about any of her grandchildren, other than expectations for them to be always sending her cards or phoning her or visiting her. And when they don’t, because she treats them like crap, she starts talking about how, “oh, if they only knew that if they would come to visit me, I’d give them money.”

Okay. I have to admit. I’m still irritated by her phone call. When I called her on it, she started making “joking” comments about how she only thinks about herself, and that she’s my biggest “baby”. I simply said, yes. She has zero respect for other people’s time or priorities. While it has gotten worse as she’s gotten older, this is not a new thing, by any means. It’s one thing when she does it to me. It’s quite another when she does it to my kids or my husband.

Bah.

Anyhow.

When she found out I’d gotten my eyes tests, she asked me to make an appointment for her, but things have been busy and I kept forgetting. So when she brought it up, I told her I’d call the clinic, make the appointment, then call her back.

Well, it went to machine, and now I’m sitting here, waiting for a call back, when I should be doing other things. At least it’s giving me a chance to write this post.

I think, however, I will call them again, in case they simply haven’t checked their messages.

I have stuff to do.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: a morning harvest!

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I’m really impressed with this variety of spinach we tried this year. The plants are finally starting to bolt, but the leaves have not become bitter at all!

I picked some spinach to use for today, but the whole bed will need to be harvested. We can dry the excess leaves, and plant something else in the bed.

I thought I would be picking the last of the garlic scapes, but a couple more showed up overnight that should be ready to pick tomorrow. I don’t know if two scapes could be considered a harvest, though. 😄

Several of the strawberries I was expecting to pick this morning were gone. I found their remains on the mulch nearby. There were a few others that I could pick. They clearly did not get fully pollinated and are misshapen, but my goodness, they are tasty little morsels!

Once these are done, there won’t be anything that can be harvested for some weeks, or even months, and there are still things that need to go in the ground. The squash – including the mystery squash I transplanted near the rose bush – are finally looking like they’re getting stronger. I keep having to remind myself, we’re still in the middle of June. We’re actually ahead of the game a bit. It’s the heat that’s messing with my perception. Well, that and on some of my local and Zone 3 gardening groups, there are people sharing pictures of their huge gardens and the things they are already harvesting. !!!

It’s the delay in building things that’s really eating at me, though. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers So very frustrating!

Ah, well.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Morning of kitties!

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How squee is this?

I couldn’t even see the other two, wrapped up in Decimus. She now leaves the cave more often and wanders around the room, much to Snarly Marlee’s dismay! Poor Marlee. She’ll be sitting on her stool next to her own cat cave, snarling away; Decimus just ignores her and keeps coming up to her, curiously.

Usually, this happens around 2 or 3am.

I finally took the time to look up Decimus. Turns out it’s a very old name, going back to ancient Rome, and means “tenth” or “tenth born”, so the tenth son born into a family would be named Decimus. It’s also a character in Warhammer, and the name of a famous Victorian architect, Decimus Burton. I should remember to ask my daughters where they got the name from. I don’t think they’ve ever played Warhammer, but they probably know about Decimus Burton.

Along with the adorable kitties inside, we’ve been seeing the outside kitties around the house! They hide under the cat house when we come out, but after my daughters watered the garden yesterday, my younger daughter was actually able to touch one before it hissed and ran off. As I was getting the kibble ready this morning, I could see three of them playing in the water bowl shelter. After I put kibble out and put away the container, I turned around to see one of the mostly white kitten eating at the tray under the water bowl shelter, with Brussel. I saw another little head pop out from under the cat house, only to back off when it saw me, so I delayed refreshing the water bowls under after I finished my morning rounds.

I’m really glad they are starting to come close to the house. They are much safer here, and the chances of socializing them increases as well.

We’re starting to run low on kibble, so I’ve decided that I’ll head to Walmart today to pick up more, as well as Canadian Tire to get more litter pellets. Work outside is going to be delayed a bit, though. I found out last night from my brother that an assessor will be coming out next week. She’ll be going through and measuring every room in the house (with a laser measurer, so it’ll be fast). We’ll, we’re not exactly good at that “housekeeping” thing, so this is an excuse to finally do some major cleaning over the next 4 days. Which is not easy to do with so many cats! The girls are going to focus on the upstairs and the basement, while I start on the main floor. Hmm. This would be a good time to rearrange my husband’s bedroom. That room is so small, it would involve moving half the furniture out completely. Mostly, I want to make it so that, when we finally get the plumber in to work on our bath tub faucet and taps, he can access it from the other side, if necessary. We should have had him in long ago, but getting ear mite medication for 16 cats took up the budget, and then some, even with my daughter helping pay for the vet bill.

Well, we’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go stock up on some more cat food. Mamas and babies need to be fed!

The Re-Farmer

Tiny steps, and tiny snips got it off!

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Well, we’re not going to hit our predicted high of 30C/86F, but got close enough to not matter!

I took this screen shot after my daughter and I got back from the city. Last night, my older daughter asked when I had time to go in, and since today was going to be basically heat stroke weather, I figured a trip to the city in an air conditioned car would not be a bad thing! Since my younger daughter had their shopping list, in preparation for joint Father’s Day and birthday celebrating, I went ahead and got a few things, too.

While today’s heat is not conducive to debranching and dragging out dead trees, I did manage to get some tiny steps done yesterday evening.

I marked out where the first pair of mid-height raised beds, with a permanent trellis tunnel, will be. I’m rather impressed with how close it matched the Ruth Stout potato and melon bed. That was determined by the size of the black tarp we lay down to start killing of the grass, first. The posts at the far end are just a few inches longer than the straw bed.

The posts across the ends are all 4 ft apart. There will be a path down the middle, and the logs for the walls of the beds will be placed inside the markers, so that they will be 4 ft wide on the outside. Yes, we will loose some growing space; especially once the vertical posts for the trellis tunnel are put in, but the width is for reach and accessibility, not growing space.

The beds will be 18 ft long – twice the length of the high raised bed beside it. I used the high raised bed to first mark out the south end and the middle of the first bed, then I could use those markers to help make a straight line to 18 ft at the north end.

My tape measure only goes to 16 ft. 😄 Not a problem, but it was funny! Once I had the corners of the first bed marked out, I used them to mark out the second bed.

I must say, trying to place those old conduit pipes I was using to mark the corners, really illustrated how much we need to make raised bed. I was able to use a piece of board to hammer most of them in, just enough that they could hold themselves up, but with some of them, they simply would not go into the ground. I ended up using a hoe to loose the top couple of inches, only for it to still not go into the ground. So I’d use the hoe again, until I could finally get the post to stay up. It wasn’t just that I was hitting rocks, but the ground in places were just as hard as the rocks! The only exception was when I pushed a post to mark in the middle, lined up with the north end of the high raised bed. That one post was in the middle of the amended garden space, and I was able to push it easily into the soil. The other posts were just along the edges of the amended soil.

The next step will be to remove the straw mulch from where the beds will be, and make a shallow trench were the long logs will rest on the ground, so they don’t roll away. For these beds, we’ll use salvaged shorter logs – we still have lots of 4 ft lengths from getting the chipping done available to use – and screw them into the ends of the long logs to hold them in place.

Once the vertical supports for the trellis are installed and the walls and ends secured, we’ll do some layering of organic material – the straw we took out, wood chips and whatever else we have available – before topping the space with garden soil.

Then I can finally transplant those melons we have waiting, and maybe even have space to do some direct sowing. At this point, anything we direct sow has to have a growing season of under 90 days, including the time needed to germinate. Under 80 days would be better.

If we can manage to get two beds with trellises done this spring, I will be very happy. We’ll be dropping quite a few things that I hoped to plant this year, simply because it’s taking so long for us to get these beds ready. Still, we did manage to get quite a few things in, among the various garden beds we have spread out around the inner yard.

Over time, we still plan to have garden beds built in the outer yard. With those, we can focus on having things that get harvested all at once in the fall in the outer yard, while things that get harvested throughout the summer will be planted closer to the house.

We’ll see how the timeline works out! I do see that we’re going to need at least another truck load of garden soil before then. That probably won’t be purchased until next year, though, at the earliest.

In the time it took me to write this, we are now past 4pm, and we’re still at 29C/84F, so we’re not going to be heading out to work on the garden beds tonight. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out early in the morning, before things start getting too hot.

Meanwhile, my younger daughter and I got a big job, done in tiny snips, done this afternoon.

We decided to work on Decimus’ matted fur.

What we ended up doing was laying a towel on my bed, then putting all her kittens on it, then getting her out of the cat cage – a space she clearly considered her safety zone! – and putting her with her kittens. While one of us comforted her by stroking her head and neck, and holding her in place, the other worked on snip snip snipping away. We got a burr buried in fur off of one of her legs, and another off her back, before focusing on the big mat covering her back.

It was even bigger than we thought.

It was easily as big as my daughter’s hand.

While Decimus did try to get away or squirm around a few times, I think she could feel improvement, and became much more patient. As we took turns snipping away, depending on who could get the best angle at the time, I could see that her skin was pulled up and even twisted in places. You could see folds of skin dropping down, bit by bit, as we snipped the fur away. There was a lot of cat dandruff stuck in there, too, and we even found a smothered bug! No signs of any other insects or lice, thankfully. It easily took at least 10 minutes to get that one mat off.

Once we finally got the piece free, we let her go. She had been so patient! Her back is pretty much completely shorn now. There is another large mat on her back end, but we will give her a break before working on that one. Then there are all the little ones, all over.

As soon as we let her go, she ran straight back into the cat cage and lay down on the baby nest! Her little grublings, meanwhile, had been squirming all around while she was getting trimmed, trying to find some nip. They were very happy to be back in the cage with Mom!

I think Mom is a lot happier now, too.

As for me… I think I need to go wash my bedding and certain towel, now!

The Re-Farmer

We got rain!

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Working in the heat must have been really getting to me. I went to be early last night, and ended up sleeping for about 10 hours.

I did wake up briefly at about 4am and could hear the rain and see lighting out my windows, as I tried to convince myself to get out of bed and go to the washroom, only to fall asleep for several more hours.

So I was late heading outside for my morning rounds. The cats were waiting for me.

They do love having access to the sun room again! Especially when it’s really hot out. That concrete floor stays pretty cool.

Of course, there’s a cat in the bin.

The cats that weren’t in the sun room were very wet, just from walking across the grass! It was even still, almost, barely, just a tiny bit, raining.

The rain barrel by the sun room was completely full, though! Which means I slept through quite a lot of rain.

I also spotted this guy through the sun room window.

He was tucked into the bin we keep under the laundry platform bench, where the bucket of clothes pins can be kept dry – and for extra shelter for the cats. The folding closet doors we used to put transplants on for hardening off is still there, and the cats are enjoying the shade it provides on the bench, too.

To be honest, when I first spotted Sad Face in there through the window, with his chin on one of the bricks, I wondered if he were dead, he looks so rough. Then he lifted his head.

His behaviour has definitely changed over the past few days that I’ve seen him. Could be the heat. Could be injuries. Could just be getting old, on top of everything else. He’s hanging out on the laundry platform a lot more, and not running away as quickly. Aside from the wounds on his face, he does not appear to be injured. No limping or anything like that.

This morning, I left some kibble for him on the platform, as much to keep him from chasing the other cats away from the food bowls as to let him have food without moving too far. I did need to get the diverter for the rain barrel, though, and it’s kept on the laundry platform between uses. I tried to be slow and careful in moving it, but he did move out of the bin and disappear. Not long after, I found him under one end of the bench, curled up against the bin – and another cat was eating the food I left for him. He seemed totally uninterested in food, or even moving very much at all.

As for my morning rounds, everything seems to have really enjoyed last night’s rain. I was messaging with my SIL while outside, and they were in the middle of a downpour at the time. From the looks of the weather radar, they were being hit by the same system that passed over us last night. They really needed the rain, too! So that was good news.

The newest transplants all seem to be doing well. While checking the pots of transplants under the market tent, however, I discovered that the trays at one end of the picnic table were just barely outside the tent roof, and full of water. Among those were the small Jiffy Pellet trays that had zero germination rates. The rain had actually uncovered some of the seeds. They don’t look like they’ve been rotting away, but show no signs of germinating, either! I was able to drain the excess water, push the seeds back into the pellets and top them up with a bit of soil. It’s still possible for them to germinate.

Some of the squash and gourd transplants are getting big enough that they need to get into the ground, but it’s too wet to work on that right now. We’re not expecting more rain for possibly a few days, so we should be able to get started once things dry off later today.

Which is fine. I’ve got some indoor projects that need to get finished, too!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Roma tomatoes, mystery squash and other non-gardening stuff

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It’s barely 3:30pm right now, and I could easily call it a day and go to bed right now!

I tried to get out early to beat the heat, but by 7:30, it was already feeling hot and muggy. The humidity is very high, and the uncut grass is covered with dew. Which means that, when the outside cats come over for breakfast, they tend to be completely soaked!

Like this bedraggled beast.

Decimous is so matted and full of burrs! Today, however, for the very first time, I got to give him ear and neck skritches – and he let me! He even started purring. He wasn’t sure about the situation, but he did let me reach out to give skritches – not pets – a few times. His fur is so full of lumps, burrs and mats, I’m sure petting him would be somewhat painful.

I was even able to confirm something.

He is a she.

Yup. Decimous is female.

She doesn’t look pregnant, though. I’m trying to think of how we can catch her and bring her inside, so we can lavish her with love (and wet cat food) and socialize her enough to get those mats cut out of her fur!! The problem, of course, is we already have too many cats in the house. I’d have to bring her into my room and have her in baby jail for a while. That is Marlee’s favourite hangout, though, and Marlee typically isn’t too keen on other cats.

We’ll figure it out.

My priority for this morning was to get as many of the Roma VF tomatoes transplanted in the last available bed as I could.

I focused on getting the largest ones in, first. I didn’t want to do three rows, since it’s harder to reach the middle, but … well, it is what it is. I’m sure I planted them closer together htan they should be. I staggered the rows to use the space more efficiently, and was able to get 41 transplants in It took a couple of hours. I didn’t have time to transplant tomatoes around the perimeter of the bed, nor mulch it right away. My daughter shredded more of our collected fliers and other garden safe paper while I was doing this, and brought out a couple of bags. As I write this, I honestly don’t know if she was able to get back outside to lay the shredded paper around the tomatoes. After that, they’d just need to be dampened, because the tomatoes were deeply watered while being transplanted.

Speaking of which…

These are the mystery squash that showed up with two of the tomatoes. I’d reused seed starting soil from pots where things did not germinate at all, and somehow missed that there were still viable seeds as I pulled out the sticks and rocks I was finding in the mix. We’ll see if they survive. If they do, I’ll find somewhere to plant them, after we get more beds ready. Right now, aside from a couple of scattered spots, we have nowhere left to put any transplants – including the more than 20 Spoon tomatoes, none of which are out, and another 20 or so leftover Romas!

So much work to do!

Today is our average last frost date, but in some places, we’re breaking 30 year heat records. I took some garden tour videos yesterday that I’ll put together and upload later. Lots of heat warnings and warnings for thunderstorms, with possible hail, etc.

The question is, will any of that rain reach us?

Once the transplants were in, I headed out early to my mother’s, stopping to pick up some Chinese food, which was my breakfast. Previously, my mother has started to say not to get rice, because rice makes her cough. She said to get her just lemon chicken. Unfortunately, the timing was off, and I was at her place on the one day of the week they closed. Then she mentioned some of her neighbours would get just onion rings from the restaurant; they have a small North American menu along with Chinese food menu. After that, she started saying she wanted onions rings. So today, I picked up both lemon chicken and onion rings for her, and a combination platter for me.

When I arrived with the food, she was first taken aback that I came early, but I told her I’d been working in the garden, and hadn’t and breakfast. I came early so we could eat together. Then she chastised me for not calling her first, because she’d had a large breakfast (she later mentioned what she had, and it was not a large breakfast. Just not typical breakfast fare). I hadn’t planned to do this, though, so calling ahead was not an option. After I set out the food, setting hers aside on the table while I sat down with my breakfast, she started nibbling on the onion rings anyway, then suddenly demanded to know why I got the lemon chicken, too, instead of just the onion rings. I reminded her that she’d talked about wanting lemon chicken in the past, and she didn’t have to eat it all at once if she didn’t want to . She then started talking about how it’s a “temptation” for her, and if there’s food in the fridge, she eats it…

…

I’m pretty sure that’s what food in the fridge is meant for.

I think she was trying to say that she had little self control when it came to food, but had a hard time coming up with the words for it!

After I’d eaten, and she nibbled, I suggested we head out earlier. She didn’t seem to want to go out and procrastinated. It wasn’t until we were in the car and on the road that she mentioned that, next time, she would give me a list and let me do her errands for here. Her knees are increasingly giving her grief. There’s one errand I can’t do, though, and that is to go the bank for her.

So we got her errands done and her groceries put away. She wanted me to take a couple of trees home with me, along with her vegetable peelings and a plant she’s decided is blocking her window too much (it isn’t).

I did have a bit of a surprise while checking on her air conditioner, next to her plant table. For some reason, it was set to go off at 26C, which is just way too hot. I lowered that, and it turned on and starting cooling things down, but for some reason, I was also feeling heat.

Yes, her heat was also on!

I checked her thermostat.

It was set to about 26C.

So she was heating and cooling her apoartment at the same time.

I turned that right down for her!

I didn’t take any plants from her, because I didn’t want them baking in the car while I did my own errands after I finished with hers. I had to ask her where the trees came from. Basically, she’s got a little maple and an elm in the pot together, and it looked odd. Turns out she’d found them in the few feet of garden space where she has some garlic growing – pretty much the only “gardening” she does right now – so she decided they should go to the farm and stuck them in a pot.

*sigh*

She has also been gathering linden seeds and is trying to get them to grow. She’s got at least a dozen that I could see, scattered at the top of a pot of soil. Something else she has in pots and plans to send to the farm.

This from the person that was laughing at me when I showed her pictures of the garden, because I had some herbs in a pot.

Somehow, my mother has got it in her head that, because the trees around her building drop seeds, she MUST gather then, give them to me to grow, or start growing them herself, so the trees can go to the farm, because they are “free”.

I’m getting a better understanding of why we have so many problem trees right now.

Also, we have GOT to get rid of the Chinese elms. There are millions of seeds drifting everywhere, and every bit of bare soil where I’ve planted seeds or transplanted something is getting filled with them. They have very deep tap roots, even as tiny seedlings, and are so hard to get rid of! There are other elms here that don’t do this, and they’re just fine, but the few Chinese elms are just horrible to deal with!

A job for another time, though.

Anyhow.

Even though my mother basically abandoned the farm a decade ago, she still wants to control what happens here, including giving me trees to plant that are basically weeds out of her own garden space.

She brought up when we can bring her out to the farm to see things – she still has seen only photos of the new roof. I told her that, weather willing, my brother and his wife are hoping to come out this weekend with their lawn mowing equipment to do the lawns. Right now, she wouldn’t be able to get through the grass with her walker! After that, we’ll see.

Once done at my mother’s, one of my errands was to go to the egg lady’s place. While driving out there, I went through several sections of driving rain! It was so good to see! There were a few times I was sure the car was being hit with hail. It wasn’t raining at the egg lady’s homestead, though, and they sure could have used some! She just finished processing 40 chickens, and was dying in the heat!

My next errand was back at my mother’s town, and I drove into rain again. It was awesome! The temperatures dropped about 10 degrees almost instantly, from 31C/88F (“feels like” 34C/93F!), to 20C/68F. It was still coming down so hard when I was ready to come home, I sent a message to let the family know it might be slow driving. And it was.

For a little while.

Then I drove out of the rain, and the closer I got t home, the drier it got.

As of this writing, we still have had no real rain at all. There might have been a few drips here and there, but nothing more.

*sigh*

Looks like our climate bubble is back in action.

We’ll see how things turn out. If it stays dry and keeps cooling down with the wind, I might be able to get more weed trimming done. I need to focus around the garden beds, and where we need to build up the squash patch and where the permanent trellis beds will be built.

Meanwhile, my poor daughter has been busting her butt, cleaning the kitchen and trying to catch up on the dishes, in this heat!

I think I need to shut down my computer, though. It’s starting to act up in the heat. It’s a good thing I know how to touch type, because I’ve been typing entire paragraphs, without anything actually showing up on the screen for almost a minute.

So if there are a lot of typoes or strange sentences in this post, it’s because I’m typing blind right now!

The Re-Farmer

Finally, some progress!

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It’s so bright out right now, I didn’t realize it’s past 9pm, and I haven’t done a blog post yet!

I’m tired.

A good tired!

I finally got the chainsaw out and cut down trees that will be used to build our trellis tunnel.

I started out doing some clean up, first. Several of the apple trees that were discovered when I first cleared this area were dead or partly dead. I cut away the dead parts, which left only a couple of spindly trees.

Then I dropped a poplar on one of them!

It wasn’t supposed to work out that way. The tree was actually falling exactly where I meant it to. Then some branches got hung up on another poplar, which just kept bending and bending until the tree I cut down rolled off, directly on top of the apple tree!

I can’t say it’s a loss, though. As far as I know, these trees have never produced fruit, because of where they are. My mother says she planted them, but they were whatever crab apple seedling she found, so it’s unlikely any fruit they produced would even be edible. My mother had no understanding of how apples need to be grafted, not grown from seed, until I explained it to her. To her, it was all about them being “free”. I know my dad grafted apple trees but most of those died, and only the suckers remain.

Anyhow.

Cleaning things up opened the space to get at the trees I was after. Some of them could only fall in one direction – onto the fence! The fence is already breaking apart, so I wasn’t too worried. It actually handled having trees drop on it several times, surprisingly well! The power line that runs from the garage to the outlet on a fence post I was using had a lot of slack, so there was no risk to it.

A couple of the trees that fell over the fence had to have their trunks cut into two shorter pieces so I could get them free of the fence. I made sure to cut them in such a way that the straightest parts of the trunk were still at a useable length for both. Altogether, I’ve now got about a dozen logs, most of which are long enough that I can get at least a couple of lengths for vertical supports out of them.

While cutting down select poplars, I was also able to finally cut up and removed a dead, rotten tree that had fallen three years ago. I needed to clear it to access the last tree I wanted to cut down. While it was too rotten to be useable for building something, it was still solid enough that the wood can be used as fire pit fuel. 🔥🌭 I was even able to remove some of the little stumps I’d left all over the place, waiting until I had the tools to cut them to ground level. I kept them high, so that they could be seen and avoided, though I still found myself almost tripping over some of the shorter ones!

It was 24C/75F when I finally had to stop – and we were still expected to get warmer! The next step for the logs will be to cut them to length for the vertical supports on the trellis tunnel, then drag them over to where the tunnel will be built. We also need to cut down some of the thinner dead spruce trees, which will be used to form mid-height raised beds at the bases of the trellis tunnel. Once we have the materials, hopefully the build will go quickly.

I gotta tell ya, by the time I was dragging that last tree over to the pile, then cleaning up, I was moving real slow! I was certainly glad I remembered to bring a water bottle out with me. Getting dehydrated in this heat would not have been good.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a cooler day, but we’re also supposed to get some rain, so we’ll see how much I’ll be able to get done while using an electric chain saw.

In other things, the transplanted squash and gourds seem to be handling their transition well. Even the Sweet Chocolate peppers are showing no signs of transplant shock at all! That’s quite encouraging. If the weather holds, I might start transplanting out the biggest, oldest tomatoes. The beds they’ll be going into still need preparation, though, so we’ll see. Ultimately, it all depends on the weather.

I think some pain killers and an early bed time are in order, now!

The Re-Farmer