For most things, I try to order from Canadian seed companies. The chances of success is higher, for starters. Plus, there’s the dollar difference. Baker Creek has some pretty incredible stuff, though, so I’m ordering from them again this year. I don’t know if I’ll keep it up, though; orders higher than $20 will now get charged customs duty. I’ll see how much that turns out to be before I decide if it’s worth buying from the US again.
As with our Heritage Harvest order, there are some things I am ordering again. This includes the Red of Florence onion, Uzbeck Golden carrot (last time, these were the free seeds our order came with), plus both the Kakai and Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins.
Yes, you read that right. The same variety of salsify that I ordered from Heritage Harvest. And yet, they look quite different, as is the taste description. I figured we can try both and see if there really is a difference, and which one we like better.
Another variety for my husband and daughter for fresh eating. The description neglects to mention if it’s a determinate or indeterminate variety, but apparently they are extremely tasty, and only 80 days to maturity. The description even says the flavour even improves with room temperature storage.
We’re going to have a lot of varieties of peppers this year! These are supposed to mature in 75 days, which should not be a problem for our area. I figure if we grow a few of each variety, we’ll know which ones we like best to narrow it down to in the future.
Well. My husband and older daughter will know. My younger daughter and I don’t like peppers.
Have I mentioned I’m a sucker for punishment? And that I’m determined to grow gourds?
They can reach maturity in 90-140 days, so there is a possibility that it will work here. We have a growing season of about 110 days, on average.
On top of these, our order qualified for 2 free packets of seeds. It should be interesting to see what we get!
So that’s it for our Baker Creek order. I’ll be placing at least one more order for our 2023 before the end of November, but that order will include things that won’t be shipped until spring.
I think these planning stages can be some of the most fun in gardening!
It may be the end of November, and I may still be sick, but I can still do at least some garden things!
I got two seed orders in today. This first one is from Heritage Harvest Seed. We ordered from them last year, and I was very happy with them. Plus, they grow their own seeds, and are located even further north than we are, so we can be assured that, barring unusual circumstances (like the flooding we got in 2022!), anything we order there should be able to grow where we are.
Though we do still have seeds leftover for some things, I went ahead and ordered a number of things we ordered last year. Among the things I have re-ordered are: Tom Thumb popcorn seeds (we got none last summer, due to flooding, so for 2023, these will be planted in a completely different location, in a raised bed), Little Finger Eggplant, Canteen, Apple and Yakteen gourds, and Zucca melon (because I’m a sucker for punishment and determined to grow more gourds), Styrian hulless pumpkins and Boston Marrow. I am also getting Georgia Candy Roaster. Last year, we ordered those from Veseys, but I want to try Heritage Harvest’s seeds this time.
Gotta love that name! I wanted to order these last year, but they were out of stock when I was placing my orders. I wanted to make sure I had some seeds for this year. According to the description, they are great for soups and roasting.
My older daughter requested we try salsify, because it apparently tastes like seafood. More specifically, according to the description, this variety tastes like oysters. Apparently, they can be very difficult to harvest and break easily, so she plans to grow them in something deep, like garbage cans (we have a remarkable number of garbage cans around here), so they can be just dumped out to harvest.
Last year, I was torn between ordering these or another type, so I’m trying these ones for 2023. They are noted as being a good storage variety. There are only 50 seeds per packet, so I ordered two.
We’ll be ordering a lot of different onions for 2023. We just can’t seem to grow enough of them!
Lawn chamomile grows wild where we are, but this is the larger type that is what you would find in the chamomile teas you buy in stores. Over time, we will be planting a tea garden, and this is our first start!
I’ll be doing an assessment of our 2022 garden later, but we had a lot of failures, especially with the squash. It is unlikely we will have the level of spring flooding we had this past spring again next year, so I hope things will have a better chance of surviving. I was really looking forward to trying the different varieties of winter squash we’d planted, but we’ll just have to try again!
First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in the US! I hope you have a wonderful day today. 😊
My goodness, this group really loves it when I put kibble on the cat house roof!
It’s mostly the older kittens and adult cats. I even got to pet Broccoli! But only because she didn’t want to leave the food. The kibble I leave up there gets inhaled pretty quickly!
The younger kittens mostly prefer more ground level food. The kittens under the cat house take “ground level” to the extreme. 😄
Altogether, I counted 29 heads this morning – and I never had a chance to peek into the entry of the cats’ house. Usually, there’s at least one more in there, eating at the tray just inside, but not always.
Meanwhile, the self-sequestered cats in my office are very obviously happier, now that Bitty is gone. Amazing how such a little fuzz ball could stress the other cats out so much. Butterscotch, I can sort of understand. By the time we got her fixed and discovered her uterus was “tattery and falling apart”, kittens must have meant nothing but pain to her. But Nosencrantz? Why was Nosencrantz so freaked out? But then, everything seems to freak Nosencrantz out, hence her alternative name, Anxiety Bear.
We need to find her a home with no other cats. She likes people. Oddly, most of the other cats don’t like her, either. When even David will suddenly up and attack her – David!!!! – while she’s just up on her favourite perch by the ceiling, minding her own business, there is something odd.
We’ve got some very nice weather happening for the next while. Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 1C/34F. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach 4C/39F! Then 3C/37F the day after.
My brother heard back from the roofing company. Because the weather is so good, there’s still a chance they’ll be able to get a crew up here. Fingers crossed!
In other things, I’m feeling somewhat better today. Some pain killers and lying down for a couple of hours yesterday helped. I even went to bed “early” and got almost 7 hours of sleep. Which is about 3 hours more than I usually get. 😄
Still, I’m going to be taking it easy today. When visiting my mother to do errands, we talked so much, my throat was sore by the time I left. I’m not used to talking much, so that didn’t take long. 😄 Now, that sore throat is worse, and I’m starting to feel like I’m coming down with a cold. A good day to stay inside, and drink lots of hot drinks with lemon and honey, while getting crafty! I found most of what I needed at the dollar store to make our annual Christmas decorations, but I’m not willing to drive to the city for the stuff I couldn’t find, so I’ll make do with what I’ve got on hand.
These are my first experiments. They’re called “berlingots”, which is the name of a hard candy of a similar shape, or sometimes Dragon Boats. These were made on a cardboard form that started off as a rectangle of 2″ x 6″, but I’ll be making ones for the tree probably from a 3″ x 9″ strip. I don’t think I want to get any larger than that. Or I’ll make both sizes, with the smaller ones for the top of the tree, and larger for the bottom. We have a pretty small tree. It is currently hanging flat against the dining room door, several feet above ground, to get the cats used to it being there. I was able to bring the tree up from storage in the basement, but I had to get the girls to haul the bins of decorations up. I can’t carry those up the stairs; my knees aren’t stable enough anymore. I think I’ll be leaving most of the decorating to the girls, since pretty much all of it will involve climbing up and down the little step ladder to hang things out of cat reach! 😂
Anyhow; for the decorations, I’ll be using more seasonal yard to wrap on them, and I want to find things I can pin to the points, such as beads, or maybe I’ll make some tassels. Each one will be different.
So that will be my project for today, if all goes to plan.
For now, though, I think it’s time to get the kettle on again, and make some more hot lemonade!
We did eventually warm up to our predicted high of -12C/10F, though it came with wind chills colder than -20C/-4F at times.
When I fed the yard cats in the morning, I counted “only” 24 or 25, including the bitty baby – who never came outside!
You can just make him out through the frost, near the bottom of the window.
Thankfully, the south yard is pretty sheltered from the winds coming mostly from the north. Though we had blowing snow all night, there wasn’t anywhere near as much on the ground as it had looked like there should be. I started shovelling the more sheltered walkways, then got a bit carried away.
I used the tire tracks from when I lasted back up to the house as a guide for where to clear away the snow. You can even see the packed down snow under the tire tracks. I didn’t feel like bringing out the ice chipper to break those up, and the shovel I was using already has a crack in it, so I wasn’t going to bash around with it any more than I had to.
As we warm up over the next week, things should actually start melting a bit, and I want these high traffic areas to clear away completely. I think tomorrow, I’ll keep working to clear the space we use to drive into the yard and turn the vehicle around. I’ll leave the paths around the house, and the fire pit, for the girls to do. They’re planning on getting the fire pit going, just because they can, in the near future.
Meanwhile…
Not too long ago, I was outside again and did the evening feeding.
I counted 30 this time, including the bitty baby. He was in the larger window by himself, and even tried to play with me through it, before going to the entry where the food tray is. He never came out, but he’ll have to if he wants the water. If he had come out, I probably would have snagged him and brought him inside. To be honest, though, the next youngest litter of kittens, being all short haired, are probably colder than he is! It isn’t stopping them from playing in the snow, so their undercoats must be well developed for the winter already.
As I write this, it’s -13C/9F, and that’s as cold as we’re supposed to get, including overnight lows, for at least the next 10 days. In fact, the forecast has changed to predict even milder temperatures than before!
Not only are they now predicting three days with highs of 0C/32F, but we’re looking at 3C/37F a week from now! The last time I saw temperatures that high was in the long range forecast, in December.
Of course, it depends on which app I look at. Another app I have shows the first two of those 0C days as reaching 1C/34F, while another shows two days at 0C, then lower temperatures than in the image, though the Saturday is still supposed to be above freezing. All of them are predicting conditions well within average, though.
There is a saying, that a man with two watches, never knows the time. It’s much the same having multiple weather apps! Each company is linked to different data sources, so while one of them might be linked to data from the weather station at the nearest town to the west of us (one that is much closer to the lake, where conditions can be very different from where we are) another might be linked with a station to the north of us (which would probably be the one with conditions closest to what we get here, even though that station would be further away than the others), and yet another might be linked to a station to the south of us.
Well, at least between them all, it gives us a general idea of what to expect. I had been hoping that we might have the roofers coming out during that warm spell we’re supposed to get, but now I’m not so sure. My brother wanted to be here while they are here, and he’s the one that has Power of Attorney for our mother, to make sure they get paid – something my mother would have difficulty understanding how to do anymore. However, he and his wife are currently out of province due to a medical emergency. I got a call from them while they were still on the road, but they should have arrived by now. Hopefully, all will go well, and they will be coming home soon, but I know that they will want to stay there as long as possible, to be able to help. There is going to be a long road to recovery involved. My SIL might be able to stay longer, at least, as she is now officially retired, but not my brother. We are definitely keeping them all in our prayers right now! At least the roads should be good and they should have safe driving.
With my husband’s health, we are well aware of how suddenly everything can be turned upside down. All it takes is a moment. A car accident. A trip and fall. A heart attack or stroke. A bad reaction to medication. One moment, you’re able bodied and doing fine. The next… you’re not. A friend of mine in the disabled community has a term she uses for those who aren’t disabled: TABs. Temporarily Able Bodied. She says it tongue in cheek, but really, she’s right. At some point, we’re all going to start having issues, even if is just from getting old and the body wearing out. Not something we tend to think about while in our prime. For us, after all we’ve been through, we now work on the assumption at, at some point, we’re going to be dealing with stuff like this even more than we are now. So when we plan things like garden beds, or chicken coops, or repairing/replacing sidewalks and doorways, accessibility and mobility needs are part of the plan. I mean, yeah, I can slap together a perfectly functional chicken coop rather quickly, but what good is that, if we don’t have the mobility to get in and clean it? It takes longer to get things done, but at least when they do get done, it’ll be with “age in place” and future mobility needs in mind.
This house will never be fully accessible, though, which is why our long term plans include the possibility of building a smaller, fully accessible, house for my husband and I, while also acknowledging that at some point, we might simply not be able to live here anymore. We may have to move into a place like where my mother lives – but even her building is not fully accessible! They dropped the ball when designing that place, that’s for sure.
I’m digressing, to be sure, and yet this is all very much a part of things we have to think about. What we do with this place now is setting up for the future, for when our daughters will take over and, eventually, my nephew’s sons inherit the property. But even that isn’t written in stone.
We haven’t even done a thorough assessment of our 2022 garden, nor fully decided what we plan to grow next year, but I’ve gone ahead and made our first order for next year’s garden, today.
The main reason is, there are things I wanted to order before they have a chance to be out of stock. Particularly with trees for the food forest we are slowly developing. These will be shipped in the spring, and we won’t be billed until they are shipped. I ordered seeds as well, because I used a sponsor promo code from Maritime Gardening, which gives free shipping if there is at least one package of seeds in the order.
This is what I ordered today. All images belong to Veseys, and links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊
The new Trader Everbearing Mulberry is the main reason I wanted to place an order right away. We tried a different variety before, that promptly got killed by an unusually cold night shortly after it was planted. Cold enough that even if we had this variety, it likely would not have survived, so soon after being planted.
Here is the description from the site (in case you’re reading this years later, and the link is dead).
Morus alba x rubra. There are so many things to love about ‘Trader’ Everbearing Mulberry! First, the tree itself is absolutely beautiful and can be grown as a single trunk or multi-stemmed shrub. Big, glossy black fruit are present throughout the summer and are an irresistible blend of sweet and tart. Even the leaves are starting to be considered a super-food and can be made into a powerfully healing tea. ‘Trader’ is winter hardy (Zone 3-4), vigorous, long-lived and disease and pest resistant. We ship 8-12″ non-grafted tree.
Please note: Due to a crop shortage, we are not able to supply the Mulberry in a 3.5″ pot. We can supply in a 2.5″ pot. Since these are smaller, we will send 2 of the smaller size for spring 2023.
That last bit about pot sizes is another reason we wanted to order the mulberry right away. They may be smaller, but we’ll be getting two trees for the price of one. Which means chances are better for at least one of them to survive!
The other tree we ordered was Liberty Apple. From the website:
Malus. Superlative variety resistant to a host of diseases. This apple has outstanding flavour and is aromatic and juicy. The conical red fruit is among the very best and as an added bonus is excellent for cider. Crispy, juicy apples right in your back yard. Good Scab resistance, making them much easier to look after. For best results, two varieties should be planted. We are offering 1 yr. whips. approximately 18-24″ in height which have been grafted onto hardy rootstock. They should mature to about 15-18 ft. Hardy to zone 4.
Yes, it says zone 4 and we are zone 3, but we will just have to take extra care in where it’s planted, and to protect it while it’s small. We have crab apple trees, but no regular apples. One apple tree should be enough to provide for our needs, and the crab apples will be the second variety pollinator.
Then there are the seeds.
While we didn’t have much to show for peppers this past summer, that had more to do with our horrible growing year in general. My pepper loving daughter had thought we would be ordering several varieties for this past year, but I’d only ordered the one type. I think we learned enough about growing them to order more varieties, so I ordered a sweet bell pepper combo.
Early Sunsation: Bright yellow and big. Very heavy yielding with thick, juicy walls. This variety stays nice and crisp even when fully yellow. 3 lobed fruit. Resistant to Bacterial Leaf Spot races 1-3. 65 days to green; 80 days to yellow from transplanting.
Early Summer: Elite, early and extra large! Early summer is an early maturing, yellow bell pepper. The fruit are large at 5″ and an elite disease resistance package gives Early Summer a winning combination.
Dragonfly: Sweet and colourful. Dragonfly’s early production was a standout for our trial staff. Fruit emerges green and turns deep purple when mature. Dragonfly continues to produce fruit into the fall even after temperatures have dropped.
The Early Summer is new to Veseys for the 2023 growing season.
There was another new for 2023 item I just had to order.
The Caveman’s Club Gourd! This is definitely something for the “just for fun” list. 😁
Truly different! This 12-16″ gourd produces a dark green, ridged, alien-like, bulbous fruit that are not like anything we have seen before! Growing them on a trellis ensures a straight neck. Plant early for best results. Matures in 120 days. Approx. 15 seeds/pkg.
I just couldn’t resist. This will be an ideal thing to try growing on the new trellis tunnels we will be building in the spring.
After we’ve taken the time to assess things from our 2022 garden, then gone through what seeds we still have, we’ll start making final decisions about what else we want to order for the 2023 growing season. One thing we will almost certainly be ordering are different raspberry bushes, that mature at different times. Any raspberries we order won’t start producing until their second year, so what we order to plant in 2023 will be to have raspberries in 2024. As we add to our perennial food producers, while still staying in budget, it’s a balancing act between ordering things that will take years before they start producing, like the apple and mulberry trees, and things that will start producing more quickly, like the raspberries.
I made a trip to the dump, then into town and, by the time I got back, it was time to top up the kibble trays and water bowls.
The bitty baby seems to have no problem being outside in general. It may be tiny, but it seems to have very good insulation! It definitely has developed a thick winter undercoat already. I was able to pick it up and pet it, but only briefly. I’d just finished with the food and water and wanted to make sure it had a chance to eat, before the bigguns’ inhaled it all.
Would you look at the size differences!! In the tray are four kittens from three litters. The grey and white is from the pump shack litter that had been the youngest before the bitties showed up. The white and orange butt just visible on the left is from Rosencrantz’s litter, so we’ve got four different litters represented here.
Meanwhile…
At the hardware store, I was able to find some more of the pipe maintenance stuff to use regularly and hopefully avoid another block. This stuff uses enzymes to help break down any grease and whatnot coating the pipes, so it could potentially even improve things. They had some of the iron fighting toilet tabs that I was unable to find when I was doing the monthly shopping in the city. It took some hunting, but I did find a couple of boxes of screw eye hooks that we can use to better secure the tarp covering the hole in the shed roof. I went looking through several stores for an outdoor dial type thermometer to put into the cats’ house, but could only find liquid thermometers, and there’s no way we’d be able to read one of those through a window. Apparently, outdoor thermometers are a seasonal thing. At least in our neck of the woods. That’s okay. I’ll just grab the one off the squash tunnel that we won’t be using next year. I’m very curious to see what the temperature is in the cats’ house compared to outside, both during the day, when the terrarium bulb is off, and after dusk, when it’s on.
Our highs over the next 4 days are supposed to get a bit milder, and not very windy. That will be a good time to see what we can do with the carport pieces we’ve found. I would love to find a way to set it up in the corner over the window into the old basement. Even if we only use half of it. A lot would depend on whether or not we can secure it from the wind. Oh… maybe that’s not a good spot, though. If it’s there, then we won’t be able to use the telescoping roof snow shovel. Last year, that side of the entry roof accumulated a drift of snow several feet thick in places!
When I came out this morning to feed the yard cats, I found the heated water bowl empty again, even though it was refilled a couple of times, yesterday. I always put the kibble out first, but when I first rinsed out the empty water bowl, I had kittens already jumping into the water shelter, going for the bowl! They were very thirsty.
The two metal bowls were, of course, frozen. They, at least, are easier to bash the ice out of, so I did them first.
The big plastic bowl, however…
… that took a bit more effort! Basically, I just chopped a hole in the middle. In these temperatures, I don’t want to shatter the plastic.
I should probably plug it in, just to test it out and see if it still works. It stopped working last winter, but there is no sign of damage. The extension cord from the cats’ house has only one plug but, if it works, it would be worth replacing that with another cord with multiple plugs.
In other things, after getting the plugged drain cleared yesterday, I set up the washing machine and ran it through a “tub clean” cycle. I stood there and watched it for about half an hour, before it started to drain!
I love having a washing machine with a window in the lid! 😄 It doesn’t take much to entertain me!
Once it started draining, I had my finger hovering over the pause button, ready to hit is if water suddenly started spurting out the drain pipe again. I also kept a close eye on the floor for any leaks.
Everything worked fine!!!
I gotta say, though, the water running into the drain is LOUD now! The washer pushed that water out and a very high velocity, so even with the pipe clear, it still sounds like it’s backing up a bit. Whether it actually is or not, I’m not entirely sure. The important part, though, is that we can put away that sump pump hose we’d been using to run the water out the door! Now that we’re no longer needing to run it through the storm door window, we can also insulate the main doors for the winter, so we don’t get frost building up on the inside.
Which reminds me. We need to insulate between the dining room doors, too, for the same reason. At least with that one, we can just shove the insulation in and leave it. We don’t use those doors. For the main entry, we have to figure out how to fix the sheets to the door. The first time we did it, we used self adhesive strips of Velcro and attached it to the inside door. Unfortunately, we discovered that there’s enough of an air pressure change when we opened the door. Between that and the cold, the adhesive strips started to give out and once they did, they never stuck properly again, so every time we opened the door, the insulation would get pulled loose. Because of this, we never use the insulation last winter, and that was not good.
So now we’re trying to figure out a way to maybe tie the insulation to the door somehow, or maybe attach it to the storm door, instead.
We won’t be able to get it done for this winter, but by next winter, I hope that we will finally be able to replace the entire door/frame assembly with a proper, insulated, metal door hung on a metal frame. We don’t use these doors as much, though, as going through the sun room works so much better, so at least it’s not an urgent thing. It would be really good if we could replace it with a wider, more accessible door, too. The arm bar mounted in between the doors is great, but all the doors are a tight fit for my husband’s walker.
On the “when we win the lottery” list: accessible doors, and a wheelchair ramp. The ramp would have to be off the dining room doors, so it would be good to make it part of a covered deck, too. If we do it right, it can double as a greenhouse, too!
Some people dream about winning the lottery and doing things like travel the world or buying nice cars and houses. I just want to renovate this house, and buy the tools and equipment that would allow me to get more work done! Or hire more able bodied people to help do the work we can’t anymore. Which is funny, because we don’t even own this place, but at some point it will go to my brother’s grandsons, and it would be nice to leave them with a place that isn’t falling apart!
Today is Remembrance Day, here in Canada. Since moving here, we typically have not gone anywhere to formally observe the day, since there is nothing local and, of course, no one was allowed to hold Remembrance Day ceremonies for the past two years.
Last night, though, I got a call from my mother. Her town was having their ceremonies again, starting with a pancake breakfast. She started talking about what was going on, and how she was planning to go, and I knew she was leading to a point, so I offered to drive her. Normally, she would head over with her walker, but it’s been getting harder for her to go far, these days. Plus, there’s a bitter wind out there! At least it’s not like last year; we had a long and mild fall, but we did get snow for Remembrance Day.
So this morning I headed out and went to the ceremonies with her.
They were really well done, and I was teary eyed more than a few times. The candles in the photo had a main candle for the day in general, and candles lit in memory of local people that died in WWI and WWII, another for those who passed on after the wars, and finally one for those serving now.
It was good to see my old Air Cadet squad is still around, though I did cringe for them a bit. They didn’t seem to have been well instructed for their parts in the ceremony, and were a bit lost at times. Having been on the drill team, I was disappointed to see they weren’t well trained in that respect at all – and I’m including their Lieutenants on that! The cadets did have military representatives to model, though, and that made a difference.
My mother was actually on better behaviour, though before things started, I got the story of just how badly the pianist played the last time there were ceremonies, and when speeches started, she was quick to criticise people for not speaking “well.” I told her it was great that they were up there at all, because a lot of people have a really hard time with public speaking or performances. She stopped making criticisms, so I’m hoping she accepted that, but maybe she just didn’t like my not joining her in her criticisms! 😄
Because of the weather, when things were concluded, they didn’t have a ceremonial parade of the wreaths to the cenotaph outdoors. Instead, the cadets and other military representatives were going to lay only 3 wreaths, and people were invited to join if they were up to it. Otherwise, we were invited for coffee and dainties. My mother considered staying, but didn’t see anyone she recognised, so she decided to just go home. It was a long time for her, so she was probably pretty tired, too. I’m glad I was able to drive her because, if I hadn’t, she said she would have walked the distance! It was only a few blocks, but it would easily have taken her at least half an hour to do it, with her need to stop and rest so often now, and it would have been absolutely miserable walking straight into that wind to get there! She does have the power chair my brother got for her, but she refuses to use it. *sigh*
For all the wind and cold, at least it was a bright and sunny day.
I have made sure to give the cats food and warm water before I left, but by the time I got back, the food was all gone, and while the heated water bowl still had a bit of water in it, the rest was frozen! Especially the big bowl. When I came out with more warm water for them, I had to take an ax to the ice in the big bowl. It wasn’t quite frozen solid, but it was pretty hard close!
I’m glad I ordered two 300g tubs of powdered lysine for the cats. I add about a quarter cup, maybe a bit less, to their kibble, and they get fed twice a day. Judging by how quickly the level is going down in the first tub, I would estimate we’ll go through three of these a month, so we’ll have to make sure to order more at least 3 more at the end of this month. More, if the budget allows. The cat lady says it takes 6 weeks for there to be a noticeable difference with the lysine, which means we’ve still got a couple more weeks or so. We are still seeing/hearing cats coughing and sneezing, and a few still have leaky eyes, but they do all seem to be improving. Whether it’s because of the lysine, or because they were already improving without it, I really can’t say. The lysine should act as a preventative, too, though, so if it’s working, and we keep using it, this should mean the end of their outbreaks. The only problem is, there’s no way to measure doses for individual cats. We just toss the kibble in the powder, and hope it’s enough.
I saw the bitty baby this morning, but I couldn’t see it when I came back. The sun was in just the right position to light up inside the cats’ house through the small south facing window in the entry, giving me a good view of the inside from the east facing window. I didn’t see the bitty baby, but I did notice a sheet of aluminum out near the litter box (which I’ve seen kittens using!) that shouldn’t have been there. The heat shield for the ceramic terrarium bulb was torn off! It should actually be okay, given how the fixture is positioned, but that’s not something I want to take a chance with, so we’re going to have to lift the roof and a daughter will have to climb in. While we’re at it, I want to add something to better support the timer for the heat bulb, because it keeps getting knocked loose from the top and ends up facing the floor. Without the light sensor facing a window, the heat bulb will stay on all the time, rather than being shut off during daylight hours. With the windows, there should be enough passive solar heat during the day, and it would not be good for them if things get too warm in there.
Hmm… I wonder if we have a thermometer we can spare to hang in there? Someplace in the middle, to get a sense of the ambient temperature, while still being visible from one of the windows. I don’t think we have a spare anywhere, but I might be going into town tomorrow, so maybe I can pick one up at the dollar store or something.
In other things, we’ve been finding water pooled in the entry way lately. That means that water from the kitchen sink is backing up the laundry drain, for all the care we are trying to take to not pour too much water down the sink at once. The block is getting worse. I was going to wait until the end of the month’s pay before calling a plumber, but we just can’t wait anymore. I don’t know what it’ll cost, but we do have this month’s payment to the tree company that chipped our branches for us. There is no formal arrangement on paying them back, and I think they’ll understand if we have to miss a month, or make a smaller payment, because we had to call a plumber. Who knows. It may not cost as much as I fear, and what we’ve been able to set aside for the plumber might be enough on its own. We were really happy with the guy that brought his auger to clear our pipe to the septic tank, so we will hopefully be able to get him again. This being Remembrance Day, I didn’t phone him, but I did sent a message through his website’s contact form, explaining our problem.
I hope to hear back from him soon. It’ll be nice to not have to run the hose from the washing machine through the front doors in the winter!
The snow we had yesterday morning was gone by the end of the day.
Yesterday…
… and today…
I counted 29 cats this morning. Before coming back inside, I even had a chance to catch and cuddle the bitty baby!
The snow may be gone, but the temperatures are below freezing and staying there. At least it will be fairly mild for the next week or so before the highs are expected to start dipping below -10C/14F. I’m hoping the temperatures stay mild like this for a while. That will give the bitty baby more time with mama. We are fully expecting to bring this one indoors before the temperatures get really cold, but it’s definitely not old enough to be weaned yet.
We’re at the point where my morning rounds will now consist more of just switching out the memory cards in the trail cams, and checking on things. Today, I did finally move the stack of logs leftover from the giant branch pile getting chipped. These are logs that seem strong enough and straight enough to use somehow. I ended up restacking them in the old kitchen garden, between the double lilac and the honeysuckle. This is part of the space in that garden we’ve given up on, as it’s so filled with invasive flowers. I’d cleared away the creeping bellflower before they went to seed, but there’s nothing we can do about the low, creeping flowers that look kinda like periwinkle.
Okay, I just went and looked it up and confirmed, it is periwinkle, and yes, it’s considered an invasive plant! It’s been a real struggle to keep it out of the L shaped bed, because they spread through their roots, and my goodness, those roots are hard to get rid of!! I’m hoping turning it into a raised bed will help to at least keep it out of where I want to grow food.
I’d say having the stack of logs there will help keep them under control, too, but they are there to be used next year, and I expect the stack will be gone long before the flowers in that corner start reaching mature sizes.
There is another type of flower that grows in that corner, and all long the house, right through the rocks we put there when we built the path. These spread through their seeds, not their roots, so they’re not as hard to get rid of. I let those go to seed, then gathered most of them. I took them behind the storage house, where there are two rows of trees, all planted way too close together. It’s very hard to keep this area clear and tidy. This is where I’d scattered seeds from an alternative lawn mix we got, but with this spring’s flooding, that area was under water. None germinated, or if they did, they got drowned. So I’ve scattered the seeds from these white flowers in there. I don’t expect the coming spring to have anything other than normal spring snowmelt, so at least some of the seeds should take. I’ve been looking up invasive species in our province and, while I don’t know what these flowers are, I’m not seeing them come up in the lists. It’s one thing for something to be prolific, as these white flowers are, and another to be destructive, as the periwinkle and creeping bellflower are. At least the periwinkle are just in the old kitchen garden. The creeping bellflower is popping up everywhere that we’ve been clearing and cleaning up among the trees. We won’t be able to get rid of them entirely, but we’re hoping to drive them out by planting the things we do want growing there.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
With the weather turning chilly, we’re moving back into planning stages, thinking ahead to the next growing year!
It’s 2C/36F as I write this. The projected high of the day is supposed to be 4C/39F. This will probably be the last day above 0C/32F for the year.
I counted possibly 31 cats this morning. Even the little bitty baby toodled out of the cats’ house to check things out, even though he could have stayed inside to eat. When I checked later on, he was back in his favourite corner by the window – and even played with me through the window, trying to “catch” my fingers as I moved them around against the glass. (Actually, I think it’s Lexan, not plexiglass.)
In the above picture, you can just see the scrap pieces of insulation I added yesterday, under the water bowls, and the kibble trays under the water bowl house.
With the temperatures, we’ve done as much as we can in the garden beds, so this morning I went around gathering any remaining tools to bring into the sun room, where they can be cleaned, oiled, sharpened, etc. at leisure. When things warmed up briefly, we brought the hoses back out so we could give the trees and bushes we planted this year, one last thorough watering. It’s not too cold to roll the hoses up again, so they’re going to be laid out in the maple grove. As long as the ends are open, they’ll be fine. There are just the hoses at the front of the house left. We have enough hoses now that we were able to use them from the front tap and still be able to reach every transplanted tree and bush, including the Korean Pine in the outer yard.
I brought the poles for the carport into the yard, and we’re going to try putting it together with one or both of the covers we found, and see if it’s something we can use somehow. I was able to use the snow and a broom to sort of clean off the cover that’s on the ground, since we never had the right conditions to hose it down.
I’m a bit frustrated with how little we got done this year. Yeah, we got progress with things like the wattle bed in the old kitchen garden, but there was so much that needed to be done, and it just didn’t happen. Half the beds never got weeded and mulched properly. We have trellis tunnels to build and I’d hoped to get that started this fall, but that didn’t happen at all. I wasn’t even able to cut down dead spruces that I wanted to use to build more high raised beds. We were also supposed to dismantle the shed with the collapsed roof, and hopefully salvage materials to build a chicken cook, and we got very little progress on that at all. This entire year felt like I was constantly behind on getting things done.
On another note, I heard from the cat lady yesterday evening. Cabbages is doing great, and so are the bitties!
We talked a bit about the lysine. She says it takes about 6 weeks for the results to be noticed. The first thing we’ll probably see is that their coats will start looking shinier and healthier. The coughing and sneezing should be reduced by then, too. A study done by a humane society she was working at at the time found the lysine resulted in an 80% reduction in respiratory issues. She has one cat that has continuous respiratory issues, and the lysine has saved her many vet visits.
I must say, this woman is amazing. She has a house full of cats right now that no one is willing to adopt because of health issues. She has one cat that was literally thrown onto the road by her house. Another was a rescue that had been dumped by a closed gas station in the winter. This is the one that needs continuous lysine treatment due to respiratory problems. When she found it, it was unconscious and frostbitten. It had to have its tail and a foot amputated, and lost its ear tips. Worse, there was evidence of substantial abuse, from a broken pelvis that didn’t heal right and can’t be fixed anymore, to cigarette burns, and even trachea damage. After he eats, they have to hold him up so the food will go down. The vet thinks that damage is from abuse, too. This cat is the worst case she’s ever seen. She and her amazing family are giving all these high needs cats their best life now. I’m just blown away. They are such awesome, amazing people. They’ve given up renovations on their house, to be able to give cats the medical care they need. And that’s on top of having her own health problems to deal with! I’m so glad to have connected with them.
