I am so NOT a morning person

May 14, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Not that I’ve got much choice. If it isn’t the morning light, it’s the cats suddenly going bonkers at 5am, expecting me to top of their kibble. Even if there is still plenty of food!

Of course, today, I had to get my morning rounds done earlier, since I needed to be at my mother’s before 8am.

After a daughter and I fed the cats (Poirot stayed in the carrier with her kittens all night, and did not leave while we were putting food out!), I did my usual garden bed checks while on my way to the trail cams.

Alas. It begins.

The Chinese elms are starting to drop their seeds.

This is while they’re still green, too.

Over the next while, there were be more and, when they get to their dry stage, they’ll be falling by the millions.

The netting on this bed will protect it, to a certain extent. Unfortunately, the cats keep managing to slide the netting on the wire hoops, bending them flat, getting inside and so on. So seeds are still getting inside. It won’t be so bad as to smother everything planted in there, at least.

No, that cats are busy doing that, instead.

I had spotted one pea sprouting a while back, and it’s gone. There are some possible beans sprouting, and I’ve spotted some onions sprouting. Plus weeds, of course. While the netting has stopped the cats from using the bed as a litter box, or just digging around because they like to dig, they still either lie on top of the netting, get under the netting, and generally just crush everything in that bed. They really, really like this garden bed, and I don’t know why!

Speaking of cats…

That tabby has all sorts of attention – including from a cat that ran off when I paused to see what was going on. The tabby had caught a bird, and the others were looking quite eager to steal its breakfast!

I’m seeing a lot fewer cats these days. This morning, I counted “only” 16 or 17 adult cats, and I may have double counted a couple

Once everything was taken care of outside, I headed to my mother’s early enough to stop for gas first. She was up and about, making herself breakfast when I got there. This included some of the instant oatmeal I’d bought for her a while back. I ended up sitting in an armchair, basically behind where she sits at her dining table in her very tiny apartment (my bedroom is probably bigger than her entire apartment), with just a half-wall between us. Mostly because I needed to close my eyes for a while, but I was also in pain, and needed the more comfortable chair. I didn’t take my T3s this morning, which can cause drowsiness and dizziness, since I was going to be driving, and just took some extra strength Tylenol. I was already tired, so taking a pain killer that could cause drowsiness didn’t seem like a good idea.

I was quickly reminded of something. My mother isn’t very good at following instructions.

I’ve shown her how to make the instant oatmeal, but she skipped over an important part. Letting it sit for about 5 minutes to absorb the liquid. She basically just started eating it right away, like it was some kind of soup.

My mother has never been a quiet eater. Now that she has had a tooth pulled, but refuses to have her dentures adjusted to fill the space, it’s gotten even worse. Thankfully, she was behind me and I couldn’t see what she was doing, because the sounds alone were making feel absolutely ill. I’m not normally bothered too much by stuff like that, but it was really bad today!

Thankfully, she was done rather quickly, and had a chance to chat about the upcoming call from her doctor. I knew it would be about the results of her blood tests, and she could ask related questions, but anything else would require a separate appointment. She started saying that she wanted the doctor to get her into a nursing home. I tried to explain to her that the doctor has already done as much as she could; she got the ball rolling, my mother got the Xrays and EKG readings they required, and then it goes to home care. I told her again about how the case coordinator and I went through all the panel questions again, to update information on how much more difficult things are getting for her. My mother thinks that a doctor can basically just order her into a nursing home, but it’s the home care department that makes the decisions but, even if she’s approved, if there’s no space, she basically has to wait until enough people die to free up beds, and even then, the spaces go to those are are considered in the worst condition. We’ve all explained this to her, many times by now. The problem isn’t that she doesn’t understand it. She simply refuses to accept it. I ended up telling her that this is because she’s doing it through the health care system. There are privately run nursing homes that she could go through, but she’d be paying a lot more (even through the system, nursing home residents are charged “rent”, based on their income, just like where she lives now). Then she started complaining that the home care worker wasn’t there yet, even though it was barely past 8am. I commented that she’d told me they come closer to 9am. Oh, sometimes they come at 8… they come at all times.

At which point I realized that the time the “usually come” is the time she notices it is, and that they should be there is when she wants them to be there. Nothing to do with schedules or having to go to other homes.

Which got her talking again about how there should only be the same two people coming to do her med assist, not so many. I told her again, this is how the system works. It’s how they have to do it. Otherwise, she would have to hire a private home care company and pay for it out of pocket.

Which actually caught her attention.

We didn’t get far into the conversation, though, as the phone rang.

It was the clinic, but the doctor’s assistant, not the doctor. We’ve spoken with him before.

I put it on speaker phone so my mother could hear, but the volume was a bit low, and the guy had a strong accent. My mother’s response was basically to start yelling at him to speak louder. I manage to get her to stop, tried to turn the volume up, and explain to the guy that she couldn’t hear him, all at the same time.

There wasn’t a lot for him to tell use. Her test results hover around the same ranges, with minimal fluctuation. My mother really seems to want to be diagnosed diabetic, though. She keeps asking about her blood sugars, which were on the high side of normal this time – barely. He basically just said, eat less carbs. It’s not an issue. Her kidney function was also fine, which is the monthly test she’s been doing since leaving the hospital, back in March.

Before the call ended, I asked if my mother had any questions, and the launched into saying, she wanted the doctor to put her into a nursing home.

*sigh*

We both responded with basically the same thing; the doctor can’t do anything about that. She’s done as much as she can.

After the call ended, I went over my notes with her and explained things. She’s understandably frustrated in that she couldn’t make out much of what he said, but that’s why I’m there for these calls. Then she said, “so… the doctor didn’t even want to talk to me…”

*sigh*

When it came to explaining about reducing carbs – and what carbs are – it got more difficult. My mother makes a big deal about how she avoids sugar, which she doesn’t really. As she understands it, it’s all about avoiding white table sugar, and “sweet things”. I tried to explain to her that bread is “sugar”. Pasta is “sugar”. etc. He’d said something about eating more vegetables that I brought up, and she perked up saying “and fruit!” I had to tell her, no, fruit is basically just sugar.

I finally started looking up lists of low carb vegetables for her, then wrote out the ones that she knows and likes, dropping off the ones she wouldn’t eat (partly because they were unfamiliar to her, or aren’t available locally, but also because she doesn’t know what a lot of them are) and those she shouldn’t eat, because of her acid reflux.

What the doctor doesn’t know when it comes to my mother’s diet is that she has stopped eating meat almost entirely, because she has decided it’s bad for her (the TV told her so…) and the bulk of her diet is bread and milk. So I looked up and made another list of low carb foods aside from the vegetables list.

She wanted me to write out a list of things she should NOT be eating, and I told her it would be too long. Instead, I looked up a list of high carb foods and read it out to her.

Not that is will make much difference. And really, at her age, there are far bigger things to be concerned about!

While talking about meats, though, she suddenly told me to take the whole chicken I’d bought with her groceries, take it home and cook it for ourselves. That chicken was pretty much the only meat she had.

After a few questions, it came down to, she couldn’t cook it. She doesn’t know how to use the oven on her stove, so she can’t just roast the whole thing, and she can’t physically stand to process and cook it on the stove top.

I offered to butcher it for her, which she agreed to.

I started off by clearing and preparing the space to work in, including doing a few dishes, then cleaning the sink itself to wash the chicken in. Of course, my mother started giving me step by step instructions on what I should be doing. She suggested using a stainless steal bowl I didn’t know she had, for washing the chicken. So that worked out – except I was apparently supposed to wash the bird after it was cut up, not before.

Then I discovered my mother does not have a proper knife.

She directed me to her one larger knife to use, and it was some sort of bread knife with different sizes of serration. I did try to use it, but it was just tearing the bird apart, so I looked around some more. She told me she had this really good knife that she got at the second hand store, and that turned out to be a cheap steak knife.

I ended up using a paring knife.

Apparently, I still wasn’t going it right, so my mother came over to the sink, got the water running – hot water! – and started tearing the chicken still in the bowl apart with her bare hands, splashing chicken juices everywhere. After tossing a chunk of tail and spine into a frying pan, she started saying that the wings are small, so they could be quickly cooked right away, and she then tried to tear the chicken apart more. I tried to tell her to sit down – the whole point of me doing this was because she couldn’t stand at the counter for fear of falling! – but she ignored me.

Thankfully, the home care worker for her morning med assist arrived just then!

I had to remind my mother to wash her hands of raw chicken, with soap, before getting her meds, and once she was with the home care worker and getting her medications, I was able to finish butchering the chicken.

That left me with a carcass I didn’t want to waste, so I found a small pot in her oven (she stores her pots and pans in the oven, since she never uses it) and got a stock going, using up some older vegetables I found in her fridge to clear out. I was a bit perplexed when I asked where her salt was, and found a small lidded bowl with salt that had dark flecks in it. It turns out that any take out packets of salt and pepper she found herself with, she would empty them into her salt bowl. So it was a mix of salt and pepper! I found some dry herbs and she directed me to her very last garlic clove, which was stored in a drawer with her larger knives, and spare envelopes.

…

My mother seemed surprised by what I was doing. I don’t think she’s ever made a chicken stock on its own before.

Once that was going, implements washed and the splashed raw chicken mess all cleaned up, I started frying up the pieces of chicken in batches. When those were done, I set them aside in a container to cool, then deglazed the pan and added that to the stock, which was getting close to done by then. I had enough time to clean up again, then take out her garbage, then clean up again…

When the stock was ready and I fished out the large pieces to remove any of the meat that was left on the bones (there was next to none), my mother gave me a hard time for throwing it out instead of taking it home to the cats. I reminded her that onions are bad for cats, but she said they’d be fine.

…

The stock got drained to a smaller pot and set aside with the cooked chicken to cool and everything got cleaned up again before I could finally sit down for a few minutes. My mother actually seemed eager to use the stock – even just to drink straight!

Which was the closest I got to seeing any sort of appreciation, really, but that’s fine. I don’t expect that from her. I could tell she was happy with it because she wasn’t giving me a hard time for doing everything wrong. 😄😂

Once everything was done, I finally got to sit and rest for a bit (my painkillers had worn off for some time by then!) and we got to chat. I mentioned that the store our post office is in closes at noon, so I’d have to leave in a bit, but I did still have some time to visit.

When it was time for me to do, she was looking at the clock and saying “it’s not noon yet!”

I actually had to explain to her that them closing at noon meant I had to be there BEFORE noon – and I had driving time to consider, too!

😄

It’s a good thing I did, too, as my daughter had a parcel to pick up. I also picked up a few packets of flower seeds, since it looks like none of the flowers we planted in the fall have survived the spring.

I still got home before noon!

It was all I could do not to go straight to bed!

Today has been a much more pleasant day outside – feeling almost cold, after the heat of the past two days. We’re apparently having rain and thunderstorms right now, too.

~ looks out the window at the clear sky ~

I don’t think I’ll be able to get anything done in the garden beds today, though. We’ll see what the evening brings. I’m just glad to be home.

The Re-Farmer

Dealing with the heat… and Mom issues again

May 13, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

With an even hotter day expected for today, I was outside early to take care if things while it was still relatively cool.

If 20C/68F at 6am could be considered cool.

After the cats were tended to – and they were a lot happier and more active in the relative cool, that’s for sure! – I started preparing things for the upcoming heat.

The transplants were moved outside so they wouldn’t cook in the portable greenhouse later on. If you click through the above slideshow, you’ll see we have tulips blooming, and the wild plums are in full bloom.

I watered some of the winter sown garden beds, lifted plastic covers up for air flow, and was watering some of the food trees when I got a message from my daughter.

My mother had phoned. My daughter didn’t get to the phone in time, but her my mother leaving a message about not feeling well and going to the doctor.

???

So I shut off the hose, headed inside and listened to the message. Which wasn’t particularly clear in what exactly she was having trouble with, or what she was intending to do, but it was because she’s not getting her medications on time.

I called her back.

She started talking about how she was poorly she was feeling and she has to go to a doctor (she sounded good; voice strong, few issues with finding her works, no breathing issues…), and it was because she wasn’t getting her medications regularly.

Her morning med assist wasn’t expected to arrive for another hour.

After asking a number of questions, and basically, she thinks that the home care workers should arrive at her place at exactly the same time, ever day, no matter what. And there should only be two people visiting, not so many people, and that’s why she’s not getting her medications “properly”.

She’s getting her medications. They have a 2 hour window when she’s supposed to get them.

Then she started going on about the no-show on Saturday. She had asked someone about that and apparently this person had made arrangements with a friend to take over for her (which can’t be accurate; she would have arranged with another home care worker, but that’s not how my mother understood it) because – insert extremely mocking and condescending tone – it was Mother’s Day and she has a little daughter she wanted to spend time with.

Now, I have no idea what was actually said, since this was on Saturday, not Mother’s Day, but she was made at this woman for arranging to spend time with her daughter, rather than the woman who didn’t show up.

Which reminds me of another home care worker she complained about. While my mother was taking her pills the worker was texting her own mother on her phone. My mother was extremely mocking in describing this. While that does seem unprofessional, I suspected there was something else going on. After several different days of my mother complaining about the woman texting her mother while at my mom’s place, she finally mentioned…

Her mother had just had to put her dog down, and was having a hard time about it.

My mother was using her mocking tone again as she told me this, too.

I tried to explain to her that they need to have a lot of people, not just two, because they have a lot of people besides her that they have to visit, and they need to have enough people to cover for each other is someone gets sick or whatever. My mother began to complain about how they only cared about themselves, only themselves, not about her… They should only care about her.

Meanwhile, it’s my own mother who doesn’t care about anyone else, only herself. The home care workers should all not care about their own families. Just her.

The hypocrisy was completely lost on her.

Then she started talking about needing to talk to the doctor and to make an appointment.

One of the things on my to-do list was to call to arrange a phone appointment, because my mother’s doctor had left a message with her to do that. The clinic wasn’t going to open for another hour, though, and I told my mother that.

I kept asking questions, trying to understand what was going on, and telling her that if she really felt she needed help (she mentioned waiting up in so much pain, she can’t move and can only scream, but she doesn’t want to disturb her neighbours…), she had a life line. Push the button. That’s what it’s for.

She didn’t really respond openly, but clearly wasn’t interested in that. She wanted me or my siblings to drop everything and do it for her. Instead, she started talking about how, because she’s not taking her pills regularly (I think we might be having an issue of her rewriting her own memory again), that’s why she’s feeling so poorly. Her pain is getting worse, her vision…

Her vision?

She’s mentioned her vision before, but hadn’t said it was getting worse. That fact that it was NOT getting worse is why we got away with cancelling her last appointment.

I told her, she hasn’t said it was getting worse. None of her pills will help with that. This is where she would need to go to the eye clinic in the city. (The treatment is injections into her eyeball. Which she handled we better than I ever would have!!!) Did she want me to make an appointment at the clinic for her?

…

We’ll talk about that later, she says…

Then she started saying how she needs to be “around people” (meaning, have someone available to help, 24/7, as in assisted living/supportive living/long term care). Which I totally agree on. She asked and I told her again that I’d gone through her entire panel with the home care coordinator again, making changes where things have gotten worse for her, and basically taking her worst days and writing that down, to try and get her in somewhere; preferably long term care. I reminded her that most people go to long term care from the hospital; they fall and break a hip or something, and never go home. Just straight to long term care. Most people don’t actually want to go into long term care, like she does, so hers is a different situation. But we would still have to wait for a bed to come available, and for that, we’re basically waiting for someone to die, because that’s pretty much the only way space becomes available in long term care.

(I didn’t mention it this time, but I had told her about one of her neighbours that I’d run into, while my mother was in the hospital. She told me it had taken 8 months and two hospital transfers for her late father to get into long term care. He wasn’t well enough to go home, but there were no open beds in long term care, so he had to stay in the hospital.)

I remined her that I was already supposed to call the clinic to make a phone appointment for her this morning, but the clinic wasn’t open yet, so I’d have to call her back.

Which meant I lost about the cooler weather to get stuff done outside.

I had time for breakfast before calling the clinic. I made an appointment for tomorrow morning, which means I’ll have to be at my mother’s before 8am. I called my mother to let her know, but it went to her answering machine, so I left a message. Then I headed outside to at least finish what I was half way through before I headed inside.

Once I was back inside, I spent more time on the phone. One was to return a call from the small engine shop I’d left our push mower at, for servicing.

There are a couple of parts I can’t remember the names of, one connected to the choke, that were done. That’s why I couldn’t start it anymore. They simply were no longer there. My guess is, they broke and fell off. Our lawn is very rough on lawnmowers!

The problem is, this is a Canadian Tire, Certified brand. The parts are hard to get at the best of times. With these parts, there aren’t any parts numbers. Which means, they don’t service them. “Fixing” it would mean replacing the entire engine and, at that point, may as well just buy a new mower!

He’s going to try and find the parts for me but I told him, if you can’t, you can’t. Just let me know and I’ll pick it up.

I then told him that I do have another push mower. The prime pump needs replacing, and it’s jerry rigged for starting and stopping. It’s about 20+ years old. He told me that it would probably be easier to find parts for that, and those older machines last a lot longer!

So what I might end up doing is bringing the newer push mower home as basically trash, and bringing my mother’s old push mower in for servicing and repair instead. We shall see.

I also made a number of calls about the truck, trying to find out if the insurance will cover the lost box cover, and it it would be worth making a claim.

Long story short, I would start an insurance claim. They would make an appointment for me to bring it in for inspection. Someone from the insurance company comes to town every other week to do these inspections. If it’s determined that the damage isn’t because of some fault (rust, previous damage, etc), and that they will cover it, it would be worth paying the $500 deductible. A new cover ranges from $1200 to $2800. !!!! The tail light would also be replaced. They don’t just replace the cover, but the whole unit, and that costs about $250-$300. Not worth making a claim for just that, if the inspector decides they won’t cover the loss of the cover, at which point I could cancel the claim entirely.

Eventually, I made my way back outside.

This was the temperature before I headed out, then when I got back in.

Much of what I did was things like watering down the hot concrete, misting the transplants and garden beds, and wetting down the mats in the sun room to help cool through evaporation.

The first picture above was taken when I started my rounds at about 5:30-6am. Poirot stayed with her kittens for quite a long time. The wall thermometer was already reading about 20C/68F, while outside was still around 13C/55F. The frozen water bottles would be thawed by then, but must still have been helping keep things cool. Little by little, as I could reach, I replaced the water bottle in front with a new frozen one, and replaced the ice pack on top of the carrier with another ice pack. Eventually, I was even able to add a small ice pack along the side of the carrier.

Poirot let me do this.

She did growl at me as I did things around her, but I was able to give her a squeeze treat and she was quite happy with that, and with licking the last of it off my fingers, too. When I added the ice pack on the side, she shifted, but let me. Later, I put my hand in to pet one of her kittens and…

… she licked my fingers!!!!

When I later saw that she was gone, I switched out the water bottle in the back of the carrier for a frozen one. The second picture with the babies is after I’d done that.

So while it was still pretty hot in the sun room, things were much better in their nest, with the help of the car windshield heat screen blocking the sun from the windows and judiciously placed ice packs!

The bigger kittens had their own ways to keep cool.

Little Kale, in the first photo, was on the very bottom of a shelf, where temperatures would be cooler. The next photo shows some of the other kittens, chilling with the moms – one ran off before I could take the picture. Last image is of Sir Robin the Brave. When we pick him up, he almost immediately flips over onto his back, so we can pet his neck and chest! This kitten is so socialized, it’s amazing!

Meanwhile, every time I had the chance, I would try and call my mom to confirm about tomorrow.

No answer. Every time.

Then my older daughter offer to buy supper, so we wouldn’t have to heat the house with cooking (the upstairs is insanely hot!), so my younger daughter and I headed out, but not before I tried calling my mother again. Still no answer, so I ended up calling the home care coordinator, because that’s the only home care number I have. I explained that I talked to my mother this morning, but had been trying to get back to her for hours, and there was no answer. She was quite surprised to here this. My mother’s supper med assist was going to be happening soon. She told me she would let the home care worker know and that they’d get back to me.

We were on our way to town when my cell phone rang. It was the home care worker, calling to let me know she’d just left my mother. She had been asleep this whole time!

She was also very groggy.

Otherwise, she seemed all right.

I was very, very thankful for the news.

Our trip to town did not take long. After we got back home, I called my mother, and she answered the phone. She told me she had been sleeping and had a hot water bottle for her back (I can’t even imagine using a hot water bottle in this heat!), and her pain was why she was in bed. She never heard the phone ring.

I confirmed she got my message about tomorrow, so we’re on for that.

As we were talking, there was a knock at the door.

It was her suppertime med assist.

???

Which means the person that called me before had swung by my mother’s place, just to do a wellness check! She was not the evening med assist person!

That was so awesome of them!!!

So that’s all done for today.

For now, I just need to do my evening rounds and do the evening cat feeding. Normally, I would have done it earlier, but it was so hot, the cats don’t have much appetite!

*sigh*

The temperature had dropped to 27C/81F, but has just jumped back up to 31C/88F.

Well, things need to be put away for the night. The low is supposed to be 9C/48F, though not until about 6am. We’re supposed to have some rain for a couple of hours in the morning, and the high is supposed to be “only” 20C/68F Then things drop right down for the next few days!

That’s some wild weather whiplash we’ll be getting!

Anyhow.

Time to get out there, then try and get to bed at a decent hour. I had intended to do a few hours work outside really early, then nap for a couple of hours, but… well… that just didn’t happen!

I am so, so tired, in so many different ways!!

The Re-Farmer

Three more walnuts planted, and an unexpected treat

May 12, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We got a nice little down pour in the wee hours of the morning. Not enough to refill the rain barrel, but enough to water things nicely.

Knowing it was going to get hot today, I made a point of having breakfast before I did my morning rounds, as I planned to stay out longer to do some planting, before it got too hot.

While checking on the covered garden beds, I tried to open them up a bit so they wouldn’t get too hot inside during the heat wave (we haven’t reached the hottest part of the day yet, and we’re already at 31C/88F) today and tomorrow, while still giving them protection.

I was hearing thunder the whole time I was outside. As I was gathering my supplies together into the wheelbarrow, the rain started coming down again. It didn’t take long for me to get quite wet before I could dash inside! I ended up waiting until about 8:30 before heading out again, though I’d really hoped to have been done by then.

I went through the bag of walnut seeds and found three that were showing roots and needed to get into the ground right away. That worked out perfectly, as there were three spots marked out along the wet side of the lane I want to keep clear to the second gate. It the second picture of the slideshow above, you can just barely see a dot of orange in the distance, marking the northernmost spot.

The first thing to do was rake around the markers, clearing them of dead grass and debris – and any little poplars coming up that I’d missed, before!

Next, at each marker, I removed a circle of sod, which I quartered and set aside to put back, later. Once the sod was removed, I dug around a bit more to loosen the soil and remove any rocks I found in the process.

Once the holes were dug, I added some of the indoor-outdoor potting soil my brother gave me, mostly filling the holes. Then a plastic collar was set into the soil. The loose soil and and sod (placed upside down), along with any rocks I’d dug up, was set around the collar and the hole in such a way as to create a sort of moat, so wany water would drain towards the middle. Then, all of them got a thorough watering. I actually have a couple of photos reversed. The one with the arrow shows where a walnut seed is. Each got pushed into the moist soil, root side down, and the marker was inserted into the soil near it. Each collar got topped up with more of the bagged soil and pressed down gently, before getting a final, thorough watering.

Once the seeds were planted and watered, I raked up more dried grass to set around as mulch.

Here was have the three planted areas, with the grass mulch set around the collars for mulch. The very last photo shows the “combed” area I’d raked the dead grass out of. I just thought it looked rather funny. 😁

Three seeds planted; five more to go! All of those will be planted on the east side of the lane, and closer to the inner yard fence.

While it hadn’t gotten really hot yet, things were pretty muggy, so I was more than happy to get inside!

I had some plans to head into town today, which turned out to work out for everyone. Because of her work schedule, my older daughter basically didn’t see me on Mother’s day until some time past midnight. She wanted to treat me with a Mother’s day dinner today. After the four of us discussed options and ideas, my younger daughter and I left for town in the late morning.

My first stop was at the place our truck is insured at. I talked to someone about the wind damage to the truck, asking if it was something the insurance covered. She didn’t know for sure, but gave me the number I needed to call and find out. Since the cover isn’t actually part of the truck, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be covered, but it’s worth asking.

The next stop was at our usual Chinese food place to place an order, only to discover they were closed. We keep forgetting. They are always closed on Mondays. After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to try the other Chinese restaurant. We keep forgetting about that one, but I’ve been there for sit down meals a few times while waiting for my truck to be worked on, since it’s in a hotel right next to our garage. This restaurant, it turned out, closes on Tuesdays, so we were good! 😄

After going over the menu and deciding on things for my husband and myself, I left my daughter to take care of the rest while I went to the pharmacy. My husband had ordered refills of his injections for delivery, but getting them faster was preferrable. While there, I also picked up some liquid, spray on bandage. The little calico kitten has a strange wound on her back leg, and lost some skin. We can’t bandage it and, while we’ve been applying antibiotic ointment, it really needs more protection.

That done, I got back to the restaurant early enough that my daughter and I popped across the street to the grocery store, where she picked up drinks to go with our Chinese food. We got back just in time for the food to be ready.

That was a very nice treat from my daughter – and no need to heat up the house more with cooking, today! The air conditioner in the living room has been turned on. We need to start bringing the fans up out of storage in the basement.

In the end, it has turned out to be a more productive day than I expected it to be, with this heat.

One more hot day, and then it’s going to get downright cold again! I’m certainly happy to have gotten those walnuts in!

The Re-Farmer

Happy Mother’s Day!

May 11, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today started out early, as it has been of late. Between how early it gets bright out, and the inside cats deciding it’s feeding time, “sleeping in” is a bit of a pipe dream! 😁

With a daughter on kitten catching duty, feeding the outside cats went rather smoothly. I did notice that Caramel’s three were still together.

That orange kitten is so much bigger than the other two!

While doing the rest of my morning rounds, I made sure to water the covered beds thoroughly, so the moisture would help moderate the temperatures under the plastic somewhat, as the day got hotter.

The “Mr” haskap (the label actually says “Mr. Honeyberry”) is blooming quite nicely.

I even saw a big bumble bee enjoying the flowers!

I looked up the Berry Blue variety that this is, and most pollinator charts don’t include it. However, I found sellers that gave useful information in their descriptions. This variety is apparently a good cross pollinator for all other varieties, and is also self pollinating. It blooms in April-May.

Since the other two look like they won’t even start getting buds until June, this is a really bad combination!

At least we’ll get berries from the one, later in the season!

Once the outside stuff was done, I headed in for a light breakfast, with plans to visit my mother with my brother for Mother’s Day.

After some back and forthing, I ended up leaving later, as the restaurant he planned to pick dinners up from didn’t open until 11. He had to drive past my mother’s place first – and spotted my sister’s car! So that was a surprise. She works late shifts at Walmart and doesn’t typically get home and to bed until about 2am, so we weren’t expecting to see her in the morning.

So plans changed a bit and I met up with both of them at my mother’s, and we had a chance to visit before my brother quickly left to pick up the food he’d ordered. Someone at the restaurant answered the phone before they opened, so it was going to be ready for pick up right when the doors unlocked!

My mother was feeling up to going to church, and services started at 11:30. I had time to quickly go to a bank machine and get some cash, so I had something for the donation basket. My sister belongs to another church, so she left when it was time to walk across the street to my mother’s church. It was slow going for my mother, and she had to stop and rest along the way. With my brother staying close to her, I had a chance to show my sister the damage visible on the truck – I hadn’t realized this was the first time she’s seen our truck! We’ve had it for about 1 1/2 years now.

It was a special Mother’s Day service, so there were some extra prayers for mothers added, and the priest went around and sprinkled holy water on us.

I had to clean my glasses after that! Got “blessed”, right in the face. 😂

My mother was… being my mother. I won’t go into that! She did have a hard time with the new priest, though. He’s from India, has a very strong accent, and speaks faster than she can keep up. Not faster than typical; just too fast for her. Which is unfortunate, because he had a really excellent sermon, talking about his own childhood, and what a hard time he gave his mother! She passed away when he was very young, and that was a struggle for him. With his rather rambunctious youth, he never imagined he would become a priest, but credited where he is today to his mother. He calls her his angel. It was interesting to hear him mention his brother, later in the service, who is also a priest!

After a while, my mother started getting antsy, and even leaned over with her watch, telling me he was really dragging the service on. Which seemed strange to me, because I’m used to services being an hour and, according to her watch, it was only 45 minutes at the time. When the service was winding down, my mother stood up like she was about to leave, then took off as soon as he make the closing blessing, before the final hymn even started. Which meant my brother and I had to rush after her to help with the doors and get her home.

Not being able to hear much of what he was saying didn’t help, I’m sure, but to be completely honest, given some of the things she’d already said to me about this new priest, and some of her other behaviour, it really came down to my mother’s own racism. It’s getting worse as she gets older, unfortunately, as her mental health and cognitive thinking declines. At her age, we really can’t expect any positive changes.

Once we got her home and settled into her favourite chair, my brother went into the kitchen to get the take-out dinners ready. My mother started ordering me to get plates and stuff, but my brother told her, no. There’s simply no room in her 2-step kitchen! He could pass things to me, but anything more then that would just slow things down.

She seemed to get it, but then started ordering us around again, as if the conversation never happened! 😄

We did have a nice lunch together, though, and some time to chat about a few things. My brother had brought brought batteries from home and ended up changing the batteries in her remotes, just in case, so none of the ones I picked up for her yesterday were needed yet.

After everything was cleaned up and we had a good visit, my brother had to head out. I stayed a bit longer, to rub the topical pain reliever on my mother’s back and hips – this time with her sitting in her chair and leaning against the table, rather than lying on her side in bed, making it much easier to get the areas that bother her the most. She told me that, after I’d applied it to her back yesterday, it helped her so much and she slept really well. She also has her hot water bottle, which she finds helps a lot, too. So she was more than happy with getting another “treatment”! Her home care aids do have applying this on her care sheet now, but my mother has been doing it herself before she gets dressed, so it’s done before they get there. She can’t do her whole lower back, though. She doesn’t like the idea of the home care workers touching, though. Hopefully, she’ll have at least some home care workers she trusts enough to do it, because it really does help her a lot!

By the time I got home, it was getting close to feeding time for the outside cats. I started doing for the cat house to get the container from inside the entry, when I disturbed a domestic scene!

This mama was nursing both Eyelet and Grommet, but Grommet ran off (you can see him in the next image above). I tried to not come too close, but it was still too much for him. I had to go where he was to get the food container, though, so he went hiding under the cat house, instead.

Poirot, meanwhile, had left the sun room, so I could see her babies while setting her own food dish in front of the carrier.

Seeing the adult cats splayed all over the yard in the heat is funny enough. Seeing Poirot’s babies splayed out is just adorable!

Once the food was out, I wanted to top up the water bowls, and cool down the portable greenhouse – the thermometer needle was as far as it could go, even with the doorway tied wide open. If the numbers on the dial went that far, it would have read above 60C/140F!

The water in the hose was scalding hot, so I used that to refill the garbage can heat sink until it was cold again. Then I misted all the plant containers, and even the roof and walls. By the time I was done, the thermometer was down to 50C/122F

As I went to refill the bowl in the water bowl shelter, I spotted two little faces peeking at me through the cat house entry.

I wasn’t fast enough to get the orange tabby.

This little tabby stayed and watched me, and I was even able to pick it up and snuggle it!

Grommet, meanwhile, was in the gap under the entry watching me, and started hissing and spitting before ducking further under.

Caramel’s babies need names. There’s the tortie, the tabby and the ginger. Since we already have Butterscotch inside (and is probably a great-great-grandma to them!), and Caramel is their mom, maybe these ones will stay on the sweets theme?

Something to think about.

Tonight’s low is supposed to be 13C/55F, so I’m going to be leaving the door to the portable greenhouse tied open for the night. Meanwhile, Friday’s low has changed again, and is now expected to drop to -1C/30F – this after a heat wave over the next few days with highs reaching above 30C/86F! So no chance of transplanting anything quite yet. Any transplants would just get baked, then frozen, within a week! Tomorrow morning, though, I’m hoping to get some beds ready and planted with things that can handle both the heat and the cold. The summer squash bed looks like a total loss and, since it already has netting over it, I figure that’s a good place to plant potatoes.

For the rest of today, though, I’m taking a Sunday – and Mother’s Day – break.

For the moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

The Re-Farmer

That worked out unexpectedly well!

May 8, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, the cuteness!

I just got back home again and spotted Poirot in with her babies, and had to pause for this.

I actually couldn’t see the little black one until viewing these files on my desktop! The little voidling disappears into the void of his mother’s fur. 😁

Last night, I remembered that we hadn’t done my mother’s monthly blook work yet, and that she had a fasting blood test to do as well. I made arrangements with her to come over this morning, aiming to get her to the lab, which is just a few blocks from her place, as early as possible, so she wouldn’t have to keep fasting for so long.

I ended up having a ridiculously early morning. I’ve been waking up as the days get light, which means I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier for a while now! This morning, it was about 5:30am, and I didn’t need to get up until later. While in the washroom, though, I heard suspect kitten noises, so I got a daughter to join me to check on them while feeding them. It’s much easier to get wet cat food to the kittens with a second person! I still had to close up the inner door on the sun room to let the babies have a chance to eat. Poirot and Brussel had left when I started dispensing the kibble, with Poirot heading off somewhere in the outer yard. Caramel’s kittens were in the cat house, of course, so I tucked their tray into the entry, hoping they would find it and eat before the other cats discovered it. I have noticed that the other adult cats don’t go into the cat house at all, now that the babies are in there, which is good.

By the time I finished my rounds, Poirot was back and at the sun room door, wanting in but too scared to let me come close and open it for her. It doesn’t actually close all the way; things have shifted too much over the winter. It jams onto the threshold enough to stay closed, but if a cat were to push against it, it opens – something some of the other cats have already figured out!

I headed out to my mother’s for about 8:30am. As I parked and headed in, I saw someone leaving and immediately thought it was probably the health care worker. Sure enough, I was right; I had just missed her. My mother remembered not to have breakfast with her pills, which was good. She was all dressed and ready to go, too… including a grocery list! Which I was happy to see, as I forgot to suggest I could do her grocery shopping while I was there. We had time to go over her list and the new flier. Whole chicken was on an excellent sale and she was okay with getting one, which made me happy. She is not getting enough protein, and we all need more protein as we get older.

That done, we headed to the lab in the hospital. She was the only one there, so they were able to take her in and get it done very quickly. So quickly, she actually complained as I was helping her out of the chair, that everyone is in such a hurry! The technician didn’t actually hurry, but was efficient in doing a very basic blood draw, but for someone who struggles just to get in and out of their slightly higher chair, I’m sure it feels way too fast!

Since she was out and about, and in need of breakfast, I suggested we try out the newly renovated and re-opened restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to for some time. Even when they were still closed and very much under renovation, she tried to get me to stop and go inside to see if they were open yet. 😄 I drove past it on the way to her place, so I knew it was open for breakfast. She happily agreed, but was then surprised when I drove to the highway. She wanted to go to the “new” restaurant, and this building has been there for a long time.

???

She then told me her neighbours were talking about a new restaurant. This was the only one that I knew about.

With the new renovations, this place now has a wheelchair ramp, but no automatic doors, which I found a bit odd. If I had not been there with her, my mother would have had a very hard time getting in on her own. They are clearly not completely finished with their plans, with dining tables in only one half of the space. Tables spaced nice and far apart, with plenty of room for someone to get through with a walker, even if there were people sitting in the chairs. At this time, though, there was only one occupied table.

We had a basic eggs, hashbrowns, meat (I had sausage, my mother had bacon) and toast breakfast. It was quite good, and the portions generous. Given that my mother was literally breaking her fast, she was quite hungry, so that worked out very well.

More people came in while we were eating and, my mother being my mother, she started talking to people at the other tables. As I was coming back from paying the bill, I caught the tail end of someone explain to Mom about the new restaurant she had been hearing about. It turns out it was more like a canteen in the rec centre that is only open a few days a week. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!

Once we were done there, I took my mother home, since she was clearly getting pretty tired. When we got to her door, though, we found something in front of it.

A reusable grocery bag with a card in an envelop sticking out of it.

My immediate thought went to our vandal, while my mother started listing off all sorts of other possibilities.

I was right. Our vandal and come by and, with my mother away, had left things at the door for her.

My mother was so tired, she settled into her chair without pausing to take her jacket off. The bag turned out to have four mini fruit pies in it. I opened the card for her, too. It was a mother’s day card, and she was quite delighted by the chickadees pictures on the front. I opened it up and there was a note written inside from our vandal. It was from both him and his wife, though clearly his handwriting. The note was a brief mention about something his “cancer counsellor” told him. It was unusually benign, which suggests to me his wife actually saw and knew about the card, though it still reeked of manipulation. Other cards and letters he has left with her were typically quite nasty.

My mother was too enamored by the pretty chickadees to notice or care.

Once she was settled and comfortable, I headed out with her shopping list. I also needed to go to the post office, which is almost directly across the street from the grocery store, so I parked at the grocery store, then grabbed the envelopes to walk across and mail them, first.

I immediately noticed a very familiar looking vehicle.

While I was getting the envelopes out, I saw our vandal getting into it. My mother and I must have just missed him at her place by minutes!

As I walked across to the post office, he left the parking lot and I was concerned that he might have seen and recognized me, and would decide to go back to my mother’s again. So I got things mailed and did the shopping quickly. Not that it would have taken long, anyhow; my mother’s shopping lists are not long.

When I got back to my mother’s place with her shopping, the first thing I asked was if everything was okay. She was surprised to see me back so quickly – she hasn’t even taken her jacket off, yet! I explained to her about seeing our vandal and that I was concerned he would come back, if he’d seen me.

Then we promptly forgot all about him.

After the groceries were put away, I stayed longer to do a bit of housekeeping for her. There wasn’t much she needed done, so I was soon on my way home.

It was actually quite disorienting to realize it was not even 11:30 when I left.

By this time, things were starting to get quite hot, and the high winds were in full force. Our expected high of 27C/81F has been dropped to 25C/77F, which we are at right now and are expected to stay at for several more hours.

When I got home, I had to check on the raised bed covers, and they are all holding up to the wind. The portable greenhouse, however, is not doing as well. We had to tie the door open, as it was over 50C/122F in there. The door faces the house, and the wind is from the south, so at least the doorway is sheltered, but plastic covering the frame is still ballooning. At some point, the ties for the door came loose, so it was flapping. My husband’s window faces it, so he was able to let us know and my daughter fixed it. She ended up draping a broken hose over it, and pushed the cat trap right against one side of it, to try and reduce the ballooning. That actually helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, the plastic around the doorway is starting to tear. Where it’s attached to the zipper already had some tears, and that’s gotten much worse, but even at one corner, where the tie down loop is, has started to tear.

*sigh*

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but I really was hoping it would hold out longer. At least the roof and three sides are still holding out. It’s just the side with the doorway. We’ll still be able to make it work out.

It’s getting time to feed the outside cats for the evening, so I’ll be heading outside to check on things soon. With this wind and heat, though, there is no way I’ll be able to continue clearing out the garden bed I started on, yesterday. The high winds are supposed to continue through the night, but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler (as in, just under 20C/68C) and the winds are supposed to die down by then, so I should be able to finish clearing that bed then. I have decided that I will plant peas down the middle of this bed, and potatoes on either side. Once the bed is clear, I will set up posts to hold trellis netting down the middle, then get netting on it right away, so that’s over and done with, before planting anything. If things go smoothly, I should be able to get the peas and potatoes planted by the end of the day.

If things go smoothly.

I don’t really count on that. 😄

Now to go feed some kitties and check for wind damage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: prepping a bed, and walnut finally planted

May 7, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Finally!

I got that poor little walnut sapling planted!

The seeds still need to be done, but they are not as urgent.

I had debated where to plant the sapling, and decided to plant is to the south of the ash tree. This location is almost straight out from the gate by the fire pit, so if we need to, it would be fairly easy to get a hose out to it. It’s also closer to the ash tree than the Korean Pine that got drowned out. When things were at their wettest, this area did get wet, but not to the point of standing water.

Here is how it went.

In the first photo, you can see the area is thick with dead thatch. I actually started out by pulling a lot of it out by hand, around the marker, before going over it again with a rake. In the second photo, you can see it after the raking. The dead grass I raked up is basically hay, so I set it aside to use as a mulch, later.

The next step was to dig out the sod around the marker. Since a sapling is going into here, I dug it wider than I would need to do if I were planting a seed.

Of course, I hit rocks.

After removing wedges of sod to the side, I dug around to loosen the soil and get it a bit deeper. Which wasn’t very deep before I started kitting gravel. Quite a while was spent finding and removing the flat pieces of rock that you can see in the next photo. These would all be from a single piece of limestone that fractured in layers, which is very typical. There was also a big chunk of granite.

The soil here is very black, very sticky and very heavy! It wanted to stick to my spade like clay.

After digging down as much as I intended to – just to the gravel layer – I went through the chunks of sod to remove any larger roots, and to loosen them up a pit. Then, leaving them upside down, I put them back into the hole, slightly beyond the edge, so the points of the wedges all sort of sunk downwards. Then a hacked at the sod around the middle with a hoe to loosen more soil and refill the hollow in the centre a bit. On top of that, I added about half of the soil I brought. My brother had a leftover bag of soil he passed on to me. After reading the label, I decided to use that instead of making our own mix.

I then used about half of the container of water I brought to water the hole before planting the walnut sapling. I wanted to make sure it would be slightly higher than what the ground level was when I started, but also wanted to make it so any rain would drain towards the middle before getting absorbed by the soil. I’d brought a collar to put around the sapling as well, which will help with both keeping it slightly higher, and also allowing water to percolate into the soil slowly around the sapling itself, rather than draining away and eroding the soil away from the transplant.

Then, since I had these handy flat rocks I needed to do something with, I set them around the sapling, on the upturned pieces of sod. This would both direct water flow towards the sapling and keep any grass or weeds from coming up around it. While this area gets pretty wet at times, we tend to have more drought conditions than flooding conditions, overall.

The marker was placed near the sapling. I forgot to bring something to gently secure the sapling to the marker, to keep it upright. Something I will want to do sooner rather than later, to keep it secure in place until its roots become established.

Last of all, the raked up hay/dried grass was set around the collar to act as a mulch. I ran out, but it was just a matter of raking nearby to get more.

Little by little, over the next while, we’ll get those walnut seeds planted at the other markers. For those, at least, they won’t need as large a hole to be dug!

After that was done, I decided to finally work on one of the garden beds that was being solarized.

Ha!

That didn’t quite work.

The thing with solarizations is, the plastic has to have direct contact with the soil. It needs to be held down tightly. Which we weren’t able to do – and with this bed, it just became a greenhouse for weeds!

In the first picture, you can see how “puffy” the plastic looks, as it gets lifted by the greenery below.

The second picture shows how completely overgrown this bed had gotten! It is mostly dandelions – which were even blooming on the north end of the bed, where it gets longer sunshine.

This bed has had a few years of amendments to it, and was completely reworked last spring, so the soil would be nice and loose. Between that and how large the weeds were, it was going to be a lot easier to clean it up than it looked! The first thing to do was go over the entire bed with a garden fork to loosen the soil and root systems. Once that was done, I brought out my little hand cultivator to loosen it more, so I could remove as much of the root systems as possible. Along with the dandelion tap roots, there were some crab grass rhizomes, and waaaayyyy too much Creeping Charlie. Creeping Charlie roots really do creep, mostly near the surface of the soil, as it spreads. These mats of roots would even get all caught up in my hand cultivator, making it easier to get them out. Unfortunately, even the tiniest remaining root can start growing and spreading, but at least I could get the bulk of it out!

While working on this, I disturbed a surprising number of frogs, and even a Wooly Bear!

With the bed so low to the ground, though, this was an uncomfortable and painful job. I brought over the rolling seat, which helped, but I was only up to weeding one side. Since this is all infested with Creeping Charlie roots, it all went into a wheelbarrow to add to the burn pile, rather than to compost.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll finish the other half of the bed and get it planted. I have decided

The caterpillar was something I ended up picking up and moving. My apologies for the terrible picture, but it was in the leaf litter under the nearby black currant bush, and I had to zoom in quite a bit!

The frog in the next picture was really tiny, so I caught that one and moved it, too. The others I disturbed were larger, and I left them to hop out of the way on their own!

By the time I was done, it was time to feed the outside cats for the evening. With giving the littles wet cat food, what I end up doing is chasing out the adult cats and closing up the door to the sun room, to give them a chance to eat. With Caramel and her babies, I set a bowl with both wet and dry cat food inside the entry to the cat house – and spotted Caramel peaking at me from around the opening inside! I couldn’t see her babies but, when looking through the window next to the entrance, I couldn’t see her babies in their cat bed, either. I went to the other window, where I could see Caramel from the other side, and could just spot her darker kitten half under her, waiting. She was already bringing her babies to the entry, expecting food for them! This is a good sign!

While tending to the kittens in the sun room, I noticed Kale’s front leg had a scab fall off, so I got a daughter to bring the cat safe polysporin to put on the leg. It’s not bleeding, and the wound is closing up, but there is still a chance of infection. There is also the wound on her back leg but, right now, there just seems to be a spot of matted fur. My daughter had to look at it while I tried to hold on to a squirming Kale. She thinks the matting is from dried puss, but she can’t see anything other than the matted fur right now. The wound there seems to have closed up. We can’t say for sure what caused these wounds, but I still think it was from being excessively licked after some squeeze treat accidentally dripped onto her while I was giving it to Brussel.

That done, I was glad to get inside and sit down to the supper my daughter had made for me – but did remember to call my mother, first. I’ve been forgetting to take her in for her monthly blood work. This time, she’s also got a requisition for fasting blood work. We are now arranged for me to take her to the lab when they open at 9am, so that she won’t have to wait too long before eating. When I told her not to eat anything with her morning pills, she told me that she would stop eating for the rest of today; the home care aid for her suppertime meds had left just before I called. I told her she could still have a snack before bed or something; just not breakfast. It seems she’s gotten it into her head that it’s somehow a morally superior thing to not eat for the rest of this evening, too. That would be way too long for her to go without eating!

I remembered to ask her about her new prescription painkillers, to find out if she’d taken them before bed, as I’d suggested, and how they worked. It turned out she hadn’t taken any at all, but was feeling enough pain that she was just about to. I’m glad I asked about it, because she thought that she was supposed to take 2 tablets at a time, “as needed”. The actual instructions are to take 1 tablet, twice a day, as needed. As we went over the instructions again, she started saying that maybe she should not take them at all until she finished her other ones – the extra strength Tylenol she normally takes. I had to explain to her that she could take both; that if, for some reason, she had taken her prescription painkillers twice, but was still feeling pain, she could safely take a Tylenol, because they are in the same family of painkillers (which is the same thing for me, with the different painkillers I’ve been tried on so far). While I was trying to explain that if she had taken the prescription painkillers, she kept interrupting me to tell me that she hasn’t taken any at all. I’d say again, yes, I know, but IF you had taken them… I haven’t taken any of them! she would tell me, again and again, cutting me off before I could finish what I was trying to explain to her! I did finally finish what I was trying to say but, by then, I’m not sure she was still following me along, or if her mind had already gone somewhere else.

So… I think she was still going to take one after we were done on the phone, and knew that she could take a second one before she went to bed if she needed to, but I am not sure what she will actually do.

She also brought up, in the middle of everything else, that she has been having troubles with her headaches and her chest. I had to ask her what she meant by her “chest”. Oh, you know… my head and my chest…

No, Mom. I don’t know! I understand headaches, but what to you mean by chest?

I had to clarify, because sometimes she complains about different physical pains in her chest, but sometimes, she means her breathing.

It turned out she meant her breathing.

I asked if she was seeing any swelling in her legs.

Oh, yes… but it’s my chest that’s the problem.

*sigh*

She then started saying that she’s fine if she is just sitting, but when she walks around, she starts having trouble breathing.

So I had to explain to her again, the doctors warned her that if she has swelling in her legs and has trouble breathing, she might need to go back to the hospital. She couldn’t make the connection between the swelling and her breathing, so I explained again that if she has swelling in her legs, that means her body is holding water, and she might have water in her lungs, too. She then wondered how this could be happening, with all the pills she’s taking.

*sigh*

She has somehow convinced herself that, because she is taking soooo many pills, she should never get sick with anything. I told her that there is only one pill she is taking that has anything to do with her swelling, and that’s her water pill. The other pills are for different things, and none of them are specifically about breathing.

We’ve had similar conversations many times, so I expect she will have forgotten it already. I did suggest that she ask the home care aid to check the swelling on her legs tonight; the last time I was there and she said she had swollen legs, when she showed them to me, they weren’t swollen at all. She actually had sagging skin, which suggests that she did have swelling recently, but it had gone down by the time I was there to see, one way or the other.

The home care office is closed, but I’ll call up the case coordinator and leave a message with her. She was at the meeting with the doctor in the hospital before my mother was discharged, so she is aware of what we were told to watch out for.

The lab I’ll be taking her to, tomorrow, is in the local hospital. Which isn’t really a hospital, since they don’t have the doctors to actually do anything, but there are Nurse Practitioners in the clinic in the same building. That’s where she had gone when they saw that she needed to be hospitalized, and she was transferred to a hospital that has actual doctors, a functioning emergency room and can admit patients.

At this point, my mother being hospitalized again could actually be another of those “blessings in disguise” when it comes to getting her into some sort of assisted living or long term care situation, like she wants so much. With the updates to her panel application for long term care, it might just be enough to get her in.

We shall see how that works out!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: where the sprouts are!

May 7, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was a very calm morning, with almost no wind, so this was a good time to water the plastic covered winter sown beds.

The first image is under the cover of the low raised bed in the East yard. This one has a root vegetable mix of seeds, plus 1 type of lettuce and onion seeds. There are a lot of sprouts in there! I’m guessing mostly radish and beets. I’m not seeing signs of carrots or onions sprouting, but it’s really hard to tell at this point.

This bed was getting the most difficult to tend to with the high winds, so when I took the cover off to water it, I spent a lot of time securing the plastic after the cover was put back on. The plastic on all the beds is meant to be there only until the plants establish themselves and don’t need as much warmth or protection. It will likely be replaced with netting later in the season. So securing the plastic involves a lot of rolling and carefully tucking under the frame. With this one, that also meant completely redoing how it was weighted down on top. Hopefully, it will hold. We’re expecting high winds again, in a few days.

There wasn’t much to see in the high raised bed or the ground level bed with mixed flowers in it. There are sprouts, but not very many. The main thing is, they are no longer being dried out by the wind, nor dug into by the cats!

The next picture is of the old kitchen bed. There is quite a bit of spinach coming up in there, and I can even see tiny onion sprouts. The cluster of larger leaves visible came up very early and I thought it had to be a missed onion from last year, but now I can see that these are most definitely garlic. We had garlic planted in here, two years ago! I did try to pull things that were most obviously weeds – crab grass and dandelions – but only if I could do so without disturbing any seedlings, so there wasn’t a lot I could pull.

The other winter sown beds got watered as well. I think the summer squash bed, and the end of the garlic bed, are lost causes. The only things coming up in the summer squash bed is clearly not summer squash, and the few feet of the garlic bed shows nothing at all. I don’t think they made it!

There are more sprouts coming up in the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, though still just the one pea shoot. This is the bed that has Dalvay shelling peas, a few King Tut purple, Royal Burgundy bush beans, Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflowers, a few black Montano Morado corn seeds, plus onion seeds. So there should be more pea seeds showing, as peas prefer to germinate in cooler soil. That suggests to me, most of the peas did not survive the winter. As for the sprouts I am seeing, about all I can say right now is that none of them are corn.

Unfortunately, while covering the bed with netting will protect it from the Chinese Elm seeds that are forming right now, the net only partially protects from the cats. There are a few smaller cats that are absolutely determined to get under the netting. Then, when I go to get them out, instead of leaving through the open space next to them that they got in on (the netting slides on the wire hoops), they run down the length of the bed, bashing themselves against the netting every now and then, in a panic. Or, like this morning, they simply climb on top of the netting and play on it! This set up wasn’t designed to actually hold that kind of weight, so quite a few of the wire hoops are now bent out of shape. It is really frustrating.

This bed is still made with temporary materials. Along the path side and ends is loose bricks. The chain link fence there are old boards to keep the soil from spilling through. When we finally have the materials to make it more permanent, we will need to keep protection in mind. It’s not enough to just cover it with netting to keep the elm seeds from smothering the bed, stop the cats from using it as a litter box, or keep the deer from eating whatever is grown there. We need the cover set up to be able to hold the weight of cats – we just can’t keep them from going right on top of any of the covers!

The cover that we have over the old kitchen garden bed is the one that was made using fence wire. When it was done, I swore I never wanted to work with that again! It’s so thick, I had to double up the frame on the sides to secure it in between, then double up the ends, just to keep it from falling apart. However, while it was on the high raised bed, I found it worked out really well, in that I could reach through the wire to tend to the bed, without having to remove it. The openings are not all the same size, though. It’s meant to be installed with the narrower openings at ground level to keep small critters out, while the larger openings at the top are all that’s needed to keep mid sized critters out. Which means there are spaces where I cannot fit my hands through, but I can still reach around from other openings.

The wire is also strong enough that no support hoops were needed. Not only can it hold itself up, but when the plastic was placed over it and the cats started jumping on it, it held their weight, too!

The cover that’s on the winter sown bed in the East yard is almost there. The hoops are strong enough to hold weight; especially now that I’ve secured them permanently, and they no longer slide through the pieces of metal strapping I used to hold them in place. I originally thought it would be useful to be able to remove the hoops at some point, but that potential convenience caused more problems than solved any. They do, however, still bend inwards, slightly. Particularly the ones at the ends.

The hoops are supporting a plastic mesh that is stiffer than netting, but more flexible and easier to work with than hardware cloth. As you can see in that first photo, it’s wide enough that it creates more shade, so this is a cover that would be idea to use for things like lettuces, which like more shade. The plastic mesh does sag when the cats jump on it. My plan is to add horizontal supports in between the hoops. These would keep the hoops at the ends from being pulled inwards, plus keep the plastic mesh from sagging downwards. I am hoping it will only need horizontal supports across the very top, but it might need more halfway up each side, too.

Once the plastic sheet is no longer needed, I will have to put something across the open ends, to keep the cats out. I have some black plastic mesh that should work out well, once I figure out how to secure it!

I don’t want to be spending too much time or effort on these covers, though. These were my first experimental raised bed covers. Now that I know how these have been working out, I plan to build new ones using better and stronger materials, taking into account what we have found works, or doesn’t work, with these ones. These ones still have a few years in them, though, and we will keep building more raised beds, so we will need more covers as time goes by.

Meanwhile, as I was watering the bed at the chain link fence, I took a good look at the haskap bushes.

*sigh*

I have one “Mr. Haskap” and two “Mrs. Haskap” bushes – cross pollinating varieties. With haskap, you need two varieties for cross pollination. The “Mrs. Haskap” is the Borealis variety. I can’t remember what the “Mr. Haskap” is, but that one still has its label, so I can check later.

Here is now they looked this morning.

The first image is the “male” haskap. It’s leafing out beautifully and, in the second picture, you can see it even has flower buds forming!

The next two photos are the “female” haskaps.

The larger one was bought at the same time as the Mr. Haskap and, at one point, I was sure that one had died. It has barely any leaves opening on it. The smaller one is still really small, even though it’s only one year behind the other two. At least it has more leaves, but still, they are way behind their pollinator variety! This is why, after all these years, we’ve never had more than a small handful of berries. They simply aren’t blooming at the same time long enough for proper pollination.

The varieties I have coming later in the month are Aurora (the pollinator) and Boreal Blizzard. These will be planted out in the food forest area, near where the apple and gooseberry just got planted. The Opal plum should be shipped at the same time as the haskap, and it will be planted in that area, too.

Hopefully, this will work out better than what we’ve got now, and we’ll finally have berries to eat! Two bushes should be enough to meet our needs; they are supposed to be quite productive. We’ve got three, and have barely had enough to taste.

At least we know we like them!

So that is how things were in the garden this morning. With today being a calm day, I hope to get back out there soon, and get some work done!

The Re-Farmer

So much hurt

April 27, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

It’s just past 6pm as I start this, and it’s all I can do not to pain killer up and go to bed right now.

My goal for today was to get started on planting the things I bought at the homesteading show yesterday. Which I sort of did. Just not directly, yet!

Oh, before I forget, check out these seedlings!

This is in the winter sown low raised be near the dead tree on the outhouse we were working on last night. I was starting to wonder if they had survived the winter, and the cats! This bed has the root vegetable seed mix I put together, plus our own collected lettuce seeds.

After doing some reading on the tree nursery’s website, I decided a trip to the nearest Walmart was in order, to pick up some supplies. The bed with the new sprouts was going to need protection, too! After doing my morning rounds and a few things at home, it was getting close to noon before I headed out. I ended up going to the Canadian Tire first, though, and that’s where I found pretty much all that I was looking for.

The main things I got were a couple of bags of cattle manure and another couple of sheep’s manure. I wanted to pick up some peat, too, but there wasn’t any, which I found rather odd. After getting some feedback in the comments section of a gardening video, I went looking in the paint section for some plastic to use on raised bed covers, without having to order 6mm greenhouse plastic online. I ended up needing help from two different staff members to find what I needed. Most of what was available was much, much thinner, but they did find some 7mm sheets for me. I ended up getting two 10’x25′ sheets plus three 8’x10′ sheets. Hopefully, this will work out better than cobbling together lengths of dining table protectors! I also got a 50′ roll of 1/2 inch pex pipe. These will be cut to length to use as support hoops. I also found a couple of small watering cans with long, narrow pour spouts. I’ve been looking for them for some time, as it’s been a real pain trying to water the aloe vera without water splashing off the leaves all over the place. It will also make it easier to water the transplant trays under the seedlings.

I did get one completely unplanned thing and that was a smaller Dutch oven that was on clearance.

That done, I went over to the Walmart. They didn’t have peat, either, but I did find cat milk for our elderly Freya and got a whole bunch. Since I was there, I went ahead and picked up things for the pantry and generally just looking for various things we might need.

By the time I was done and the truck was loaded up, I was completely wiped out. Yesterday had finally caught up to me. I had also skipped lunch, so I was tired, in pain and very hungry. I messaged home to let the family know I was on my way and my state. When I got back, I had plenty of help getting things unloaded and put away, and there was a hot meal waiting for me.

Pain levels aren’t the only thing that kept me from getting outside stuff started for planting. It’s been steadily raining/misting all day. On my way home, as my route took me closer to the lake, it was just straight up thick fog. Which will be great for the garden, at least! At least it’s relatively warm, though. It looks like I won’t be getting anything done tomorrow, either. We’re supposed to have a high of only 6C/43F, and the overnight low is supposed to be -6C/21F! For the past while, our overnight lows have been hovering around the freezing mark, at the lowest, but not that far below zero! I’ll have to make a point of protecting the bed with the seedlings overnight! After tomorrow night, our overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing from not until at least half way through May. Our long range forecasts actually show highs getting close to 30C/86F until the middle of the month, and then suddenly dropping to the point of a rain/snow mix.

If I’m not going to be able to get things planted tomorrow, I’m going to have to make sure the trees don’t try out. They’re being kept in the old kitchen right now, where it’s cooler, so at least they won’t come out of dormancy too quickly.

We have seedlings in the basement that are ready to be potted up, so that can be a project for tomorrow. I should be able to get out and plant the trees the day after.

For now, though, it’s all I can do to stay awake at the keyboard while I type this. I’m not looking forward to trying to get out of my office chair and walking, though. I can feel every joint in my body stiffening up. Even typing is getting difficult.

Yeah, pain killers and an early bed time are definitely in order.

The Re-Farmer

Trellis build progress

April 25, 2025 / Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I wasn’t sure how much we could get done on the trellis build today, and it turns out to be just two vertical supports. Which is actually pretty good, all things considering!

Here’s the start.

I selected and de-barked logs for the verticals something like a year ago, and that was about as far as things got for quite some time. Having been sitting out over the bed like that all winter, I went over them and took one out completely, as it cracked too badly to be used. After going through the others, I debated whether I wanted to do four or five verticals, and decided to go ahead and with five. The two largest would go on each corner.

We had debated various ways of setting these up, including digging holes and sinking them, but decided to just attach them directly to the frame of the raised bed. The one last minute decision we made was to set them on scrap bricks, so that the bases wouldn’t be in contact with the soil. We went through the pile of bricks from the old chimney that was removed when the new roof was done and found several chunks that seemed suitable.

The first thing to do was to trim all the bottoms so that they’d be straight. Then, we needed to create flattish, straight-ish surfaces on the sides where they would come in contact with the frame.

With the first corner, the bottom log of the end cap got trimmed a fair bit. With the brick in place, we worked out where we needed to trim the vertical. We still ended up needing to cut extra out near the bottom to fit over that bottom end cap log. Once it was snug enough, we used 3 inch screws to secure it. For now, there’s just two of them. We’ll secure it more, later in the build.

The opposite corner needed a lot more work. We had to cut away more from the frame itself, to create more of a surface to attach to. Then there was cutting away the excess on the vertical. In the end, though, the vertical log was still too thick for our 3″ screws, and we didn’t have anything longer, so we used metal strapping to hold it in place. After using shorter screws to secure the strapping in place, we used a few 3″ screws to tighten it up even more at the gaps.

We weren’t after perfection, by any means. Which is good, because cutting away the excess wood was quite a pain. We mostly used the mini-chainsaw (a Stihl pruning saw) until we drained both batteries, as well as using whatever other tools we had on hand, including a hatchet, a chisel and even the draw knife.

We had “help” while we were working!

Syndol was especially eager to “help” any time I bent over, wanting to jump onto my back! Then, while using the drill or driver, he kept trying to get in on things. My daughter and I had our hands full either of tools or holding the vertical post, and he took full advantage of the fact that we couldn’t really stop him from getting in the way!

In the end, it took us about 2 hours to get just those two verticals up. This is how it looks now.

We reached our high of 16C/61F today, and we were working in full sun, so it got really hot out there.

After this, we’ll measure out where to put the remaining three verticals, with each on top of a piece of brick. They are not as thick, so it shouldn’t take as long. They can only be attached to the top log, though, as the bottom one bows inward quite a bit.

Once those are in place, we will measure and mark the tops and trim them to all the same height. One those are leveled, horizontals will be put across the top. I’m still not decided on whether I want to put the horizontals directly on top, or on what will be the inside of the trellis tunnel, when the matching bed is built. Probably directly on top. Once that’s in place, support pieces at 45° angles will be added.

With the end posts, I am thinking to add angled posts reaching from the opposite corners of the raised bed to the top of the verticals to secure them more.

Eventually, more horizontals will be added – much thinner horizontals – from vertical to vertical, near the bottom. For now, we will probably use plastic trellis netting, but these will eventually be used to create squash tunnels. They will eventually need to hold quite a bit of weight, so more durable material will be used over time. At this point, I just want something up and useable! It will probably be used to support pole beans or peas this year.

We still have a pile of posts meant for verticals as we build more of these beds and, eventually, join them in pairs to create trellis tunnels. Many are completely hidden in the tall grass! We’ll have to dig them out and see how many are still usable. There was more cracking and splitting in these ones than I expected.

I’d gone walking out to the gravel pit and pond beyond the outer yard the other day and one thing I noticed was that there are a lot of nice, straight poplars that we can potentially harvest for projects like this. It’s the “straight” part that’s harder to find. It was good to see that, if some of the logs I’d already cut for posts are too weather damaged, I can replace them fairly easily.

For now, I’m happy with what we got done today. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to work on it next. Tomorrow there is a homesteader’s show near the city that my daughter and I want to go to, and we might be able to do our first stock up shopping trip at the same time. CPP disability is due to come in on a Monday this month, which means it might show up in our account tomorrow, instead, so if I can save a trip by doing both tomorrow, I will! I doubt either my daughter and I would be physically up to working on the trellis for 2 days in a row, anyhow. I’ve already started to stiffen up quite painfully, and I’m sure she is, too. I don’t plan to work on it on Sunday, since I try to keep that my regular day of rest, but Monday is supposed to be much colder and very windy, so Sunday might be my only chance for quite a while.

Working around our physical limitations, plus the weather, can get complicated at times!

I’m going to go take some pain killers now, while I can still move.

The Re-Farmer

How things went today – we got her! Mostly

April 24, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was a lovely day out, though we will dropping to freezing temperatures tonight. We’re supposed to get more rain in a couple of hours, but I’ll believe that when I see it.

When I headed out this afternoon, a number of cats came over to say hi, including Kohl. While petting her, I decided we really needed to take a chance and break out the clippers. Not only was the matting on her back really bad, but it was looking like sections were starting to get torn up from scratching.

So we got the clippers out and I held her, while my daughter very carefully denuded Kohl’s back. I think Kohl was noticing a difference and put up with it a lot longer than I expected, and even licked our fingers at times. As soon as we got the big mat off, though, we let her go.

She looks very strange, now!

You can see the patterns of her fur colour in her skin, but some of the white lines that you see are the result of her skin being pulled into folds by the mat. You can see the mat itself in the next two photos. That thing is SOLID!!

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get her again to trim off more mats. There is one on her right front leg that was under my hand as I held her. I could feel the burrs that are caught in her fur there.

Then, since the clippers were out anyhow, we got Ginger. Ginger is a short haired cat, but he’s basically all undercoat. We just can’t seem to brush him enough! He does love to be brushed, at least. Part of the reason I got the mat cutting combs we got before was to get mats out of his and David’s fur. As we trimmed him – he was very cooperative! – we actually did find mats we hadn’t felt while petting or combing him.

He seems to be quite happy with his hair cut! There were some areas we couldn’t get at. With his missing leg, he doesn’t like to be held in certain ways, so there are patches of untrimmed fur that we’re just going to leave. They aren’t in problem areas.

I still haven’t been able to get a good pictures of David with his hair cut. He still hasn’t forgiven me. 😄

Once we were done, I headed back outside and, of course, had to check on the kitties. That little black and white one is so eager for attention! Brussel is leaving them more often, and they’re exploring all over the cat cage. I’m so glad they are safely in there right now! I kinda dread them getting big enough to climb to the second level. Some of the walls here have 2″ square openings instead of 1″ square openings, and they could fit through. If they get to being able to climb to the second levels, they’d be able to climb out the entry, too.

For now, though, they are happy to play in the cat catch, or catch a few Zzzz’s in the sun spot.

I love how the black and white and his adopted sister are so cuddled up in the second image above.

The little one’s siblings are starting to get more active, too.

Such squirmy little grublings!

Aside from tending to kitties, I went around to find and gather some of the supplies I’ll need to work on the garden beds and raised bed covers, then did my usual checks. I was happy to see more snow crocuses blooming.

There still aren’t a lot of them, and they start blooming at the East end of the area they are planted in, then more slowly emerge and bloom Westward. With how the trees and pathways are, the East end gets sunlight and warmth earlier in the season than the West end of the bed.

One of the things I worked on for a bit was gathering and breaking away branches from the fallen willow, in preparation for when we get in there with a chain saw to cut up the trunk and clean things up.

Which may not work out as originally planned.

Willows are truly remarkable. This tree is probably a hundred years old or more, and has been slowly dying since before we moved out here. Yet even a broken off section like this is somehow still able to have fresh growth!

The top of this broken section landed next to another smaller broken and dying willow nearby. At the base of that willow are a whole lot of larger canes that will do quite nicely in wattle weaving!

Thankfully, the bed I want to add wattle weaving to only needs maybe half a foot added to it. While I’m finding all sorts of potential material to use for that, it takes a whole lot to make a decent weaving. I discovered that when making the L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden. I gather long branches to weave in, thinking I had plenty, but kept running out!

That project will wait a little longer, though. I’ve been talking with my daughter about working on the trellis bed, tomorrow. That’s something I’ll need a second person for. Well… I suppose I could get it done on my own, but a second person will definitely make it easier!

Hard to believe we’re coming up on the end of April. Just a few more weeks, and we’ll be planting outside!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

planning ahead

I am so NOT a morning person

Dealing with the heat… and Mom issues again

Three more walnuts planted, and an unexpected treat

Happy Mother’s Day!

That worked out unexpectedly well!

Our 2025 Garden: prepping a bed, and walnut finally planted

Our 2025 Garden: where the sprouts are!

So much hurt

Trellis build progress

How things went today – we got her! Mostly

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