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Sudden changes in plans, and morning photos

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First, a follow up from yesterday. It took many hours, but the debilitating pain that had set into my left hip during the night did recede. I found myself able to walk normally again – not even a limp! – but my hip still feels very… unstable.

Which turned out to be a good thing, because my evening plans changed completely.

Yesterday evening, after a very warm day, I took advantage of being able to walk again, headed out and watered what’s left of the garden. I was back inside and settled down with my supper when I saw there was a message on the answering machine.

From home care.

The message told me they had a last minute cancellation and there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist (they are just a few hours apart and typically done by the same home care aide). I was, however, assured that Saturday and Sunday were covered.

I got the message about an hour after it was left, since I was outside when the call came – and about 15 minutes away from when my mother’s supper assists are scheduled this cycle.

It takes about half an hour to get to her place, even if I just grab and go. I did quickly call my mother to let her know I was on my way, got my husband to tuck my supper into the oven, and headed out.

When I got there, my mother did try to do her usual snarky comments about, have they hired me yet? and the usual giving me a hard time for covering for home care again. I’ve still been in a dark place in the last while and I just told her, please don’t. I’m not in the mood for it. She paused a moment, then said, neither am I.

She did, however, have a good day. My sister had come out on her day off. Being a Friday, it was my mother’s scheduled turn for the laundry room, so my sister took care of that for her, as well as doing her dishes and light housework. It was much appreciated.

I helped my mother settle in with her supper to take her supper meds with, so I could then get her bed time meds ready, and she asked if I wanted a piece of her birthday cheesecake that I got for her. She had just a couple of pieces left, and had already had one with my sister. I agreed, and it gave me a chance to ask my mother about when she wanted me to do her grocery shopping.

It turned out she was already working on her list. I asked if she wanted me to come back tomorrow (which would have been today), and she said she had an appointment with her hair dresser – someone who comes to her apartment to cut her hair, which is really nice! – in the afternoon. As we were going back and forth I suggested, I could just do it right then. That way, I wouldn’t have to come back over the weekend. My mother was surprised by this, as she thought the grocery store closed much earlier. It was too close to closing for the pharmacy, though, so that got skipped. She only needed one thing there, anyhow, and not urgently.

So I did her grocery shopping and got everything put away. As we were chatting, she asked how I was and I mentioned I was out of sorts and explained a little bit about why. My mother had heard of the assassination but, of course, she only heard it from the TV news – “that guy from the states?” – and Canadian news has been lying about Charlie Kirk at every turn. Especially the CBC. So I told her who he really was. None of which was talked about on the TV.

I don’t think it’s possible to hate the mainstream media enough. I’ve had plenty of personal experience as to how dishonest and manipulative they are, over the span of decades, yet it still surprises me, just how bad they can be.

I didn’t stay too long, though, and was soon back home and having my supper. Then I noticed a notification on my cell phone.

I had a voice mail message.

My cell phone never rang.

After fussing with it for a bit, I realized the Wi-Fi calling had been turned off again – my phone keeps doing that on its own, and I don’t know why. I wasn’t able to get the message because there wasn’t enough signal. I couldn’t even go through the process of getting the wi-fi calling set up again, which required once again confirming my identity. I ended up having to go outside and wander around the yard, trying to find a strong enough data signal, to finally get it set up. Only then could I finally listen to the message.

It was home care.

The scheduler was very apologetic, but there was another cancellation. There was no one to do my mother’s morning med assist for today.

*sigh*

We were already planning to do a dump run, then a trip to a Walmart, and now I had to go to my mother’s again. The timing for it worked out, but it did mean almost another hour extra of driving.

So I called my mother again, thankfully getting her before she went to bed, and let her know I’d be back in the morning. She was not impressed. None of us are. My husband is getting right ticked off. He even went online to try and find somewhere to complain. What he did find were some forums with many, many other people in the same home care region we are in, having to deal with the same problem.

With the time scheduled for my mother’s morning med assist in mind, I managed to get to bed early and, happily, I did not have a repeat of what happened to my hip the night before. I still don’t know what triggered it in the first place!

I did my morning rounds early. There isn’t much to do in the garden, so things are done faster these days.

I did have to get a picture of that one Hopi Black Dye sunflower again.

Every day, more and more of it is actually developing seeds and they’re starting to bloom! I’m still amazed it survived the frosts.

In the next picture, you can see a huge cluster of tree mushrooms I found. I’d heard a cat commotion by the collapsing log building by the fire pit and checked to see what it was. It turned out to be The Grink, chasing after Sprout’s little calico (Sprout, once again, is AWOL). It was way up in a tree next to the log building. I did get The Grink away enough that the little one was able to get down.

Speaking of little ones…

Frank is such a good mama! And her littles are getting used to being handled. The one kitten who’s eyes have been getting stuck shut seems to be past the worst of it. No eye washing needed today!

The next photo is of, I think, one of Slick’s little tabbies. It was enjoying the cat bed in the catio that we moved over to lure the garage kittens to the house. They’re not using the catio since we moved it, but the littles are enjoying it! The garage kittens still seem to be using the garage as “home base”, but I am seeing them near the house a lot more often now.

Last night, I was hearing that we were supposed to have a dense fog this morning. It wasn’t too close around the property as I was doing my rounds.

Then I started driving to my mother’s.

I had to pull over at one point, just to take pictures, about a mile from home. When I was driving between the trees, there wasn’t much, but as soon as I cleared the trees and reached fields, it was like driving through a wall!

Keep in mind with the above photos, that the camera “cleans up” the shots, so the fog was actually denser than it appears in the photos.

Very moody.

Also, by the time I was heading out, the sun was fully up and we had bright sunshine!

Once I got onto the highway, it was even thicker, to the point that I had to reduce speed due to lack of visibility. I did eventually catch up to a shadow that turned out to be a car. Then we’d go through a section of highway bordered by trees, and the fog would disappear and we could see just fine. Then we’d enter a section surrounded by fields, and it would be like driving into a wall of fog.

Then… it was gone. Such a stark delineation!

When I got to my mother’s she was really struggling. She was still in bed and really didn’t want to get up. I can’t blame her! She’s had a sleepless night, too.

Yesterday’s grocery shopping trip had missed a few things. Particularly milk. It wasn’t on her list and I’d considered getting some anyway, but my mother has specifically said she had milk. I figured my sister had brought her some. It turned out my mother was thinking she had enough to last until I came to do her grocery shopping… on Sunday.

The day she told me she didn’t want to have her grocery shopping done on anymore…

She was so out of sorts, though, one minute saying she needed milk, then asking me to check and see if she needed milk (she did), and not to get this other thing that got missed, or maybe something else or…

I finally told her to just enjoy her breakfast, and I would get her some milk. The rest could wait.

Then, as I was heading out the door, I hear “and apples!”

😄

So that was a short shopping trip.

That done, I headed home where my daughter had things ready to start loading up the truck for the dump run. When we got to the pit, we were happy to see that they had finally cleared the wall of garbage at the pit edge. There was room to turn again!

Once we were finished there, we continued on, first making a stop at a gas station in town, along the way. The price there was still $1.409, whereas in my mother’s town, it was $1.419 With all the extra driving, I was down to a quarter tank. I really try to avoid letting it get below half. I asked for $50 in gas, and it didn’t even get me to 3/4 of a tank. By the time we reached the Walmart, I was at half a tank again.

*sigh*

I had a short shopping list for myself – mostly more cat food – while my daughter had a list for herself and her sister. She couldn’t find everything on it, though, so we decided to go to a regular grocery store further on. As we were driving to it, we passed an independent gas station.

The price on their sign was $1.349

After we finished at the grocery store (my daughter still had trouble finding one item!), I made a point of stopping at that gas station again and added another $30.

The price on the pump was $1.299

That $30 sure went a lot further!

From there, we could finally head home, unload, and finally settle in. Today was originally supposed to be just a dump run day, and instead I was out for most of it.

It’s been hotter today than yesterday, and it just now starting to cool down for the evening, so I’ll be heading out to water things again before bed. The next three days are supposed to be as hot, or hotter, than today, so still no need to cover garden beds yet. After that, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit. Enough that I will probably keep the winter squash bed covered both day and night. I’m still amazed that was have any squash developing at all, so I want to give them every change to mature!

Getting outside and being productive has also been good for my overall mood, too, so the more of that, the better.

The Re-Farmer

Morning kittens and too much pain

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First, some cuteness that is actually from last night. I went out to do my evening rounds before it got dark when I spotted this before I opened the door.

Adam and Slick were both nursing babies on the sidewalk. Two mamas, seven kittens. Slick has a litter of five, but they’re not all there. I think only one, possibly two, are there. I don’t know how many kittens Adam has, but I’m thinking around four. Being a créche mama, I have no idea which are actually hers. She is content to nurse any kitten. I’m pretty sure at least one of those kittens belongs to a much more feral mama that I’ve seen nursing a kitten in the sun room, once or twice.

I wonder if my evening walk has anything to do with how things turned out?

It’s just hit 9:30am as I start this, and it’s already been a very rough day.

I was awakened this morning by pain. Something’s gone wrong with my left hip. Maybe a slept in it wrong or something, I don’t know. I tried using Voltaren on it and took an extra anti-inflammatory and tried to get back to bed. There was no position I could lie in that alleviated the pain. When I finally tried to sit up, after about an hour or more, I could barely move. I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t stand. Moving hurt in one way. Not moving hurt in another.

I finally managed to get up and get moving, hoping that if I walked around, it would help, as it often does when my joints stiffen.

I can’t say that it worked.

Getting dressed was a challenge. Just try and put on pants or socks while sitting down, but not being able to bend over far.

We have a cane with feet on it, so it can stand on its own, and I had to use that while feeding the indoor cats for the morning.

That done, I went into the old kitchen to start on the outside cat food. In the mornings, I still mix up a can of wet cat food with ground pumpkin seed and water to make a “cat soup”, then mix it into the dry kibble and leave it to soften. I couldn’t use a cane while feeding the cats their softened kibble, so I was hobbling around on my own.

I did spot an adorable surprise.

Yes!!! In the first photo, that’s the smokey garage kitten we’ve been trying to lure closer to the house, at the feeding station on the well cap! This is between the house and the kibble house. She even was at the doorway to the sunroom when I first came out of the old kitchen!

It was around this time that the girls realized I was having issues, and they came out to give me a hand. My older daughter got my husband’s walker out for me, and I used that to continue my morning rounds. It’s heavy duty enough that it can handle the rough terrain in the main garden area.

I took my time doing my usual checks, stopping to sit on the walker along the way. It almost wasn’t worth taking the break. The act of sitting down and then standing up was the most painful.

When I came around to the house, I found my younger filling the water bowls, and she came to join me. As I was wheeling around the portable greenhouse to return through the sun room, we spotted the kittens inside. There was a fluffy grey tabby snuggled up against the protective collar around the bigger luffa – that explains why I keep having to shift the collar back in position! There was a tiny white and grey on the ground next to the other luffa’s pot, and Colby was pretty posing on top of the heat sink’s cover.

One of these days, I hope to get an accurate head count on the smaller kittens. They run and hide way too much!

As for me, it’s been about half an hour and I think my hip is feeling a bit better. My daughter made a breakfast for me that would protect my stomach from taking another anti-inflammatory (I’m still taking far less than “allowed” with them), and she was able to get some Voltaren over places I have difficulty reaching on my hip and lower back.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to accomplish much outside, today!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

I fought a tree, and won

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I’m still having a hard time after yesterday’s assassination, so my posts might seem a bit out of sorts for the next while.

This is what I meant to write about, yesterday. I fought a tree and – eventually! – won.

This is what came down, about a week ago.

I originally thought both pieces were from the same tree, but I was wrong. The piece that fell on the hawthorn was actually from the tree that was holding up the other piece!

The first order of business was to get the piece on the hawthorn clear. I didn’t stop to take pictures, mostly because I was more focused on not getting stabbed. At one point, while cutting sections of the dead branch clear, I felt something on my chest. Looking town, I found a twig of hawthorn had come loose and a single 2-3 inch long thorn was stabbing me, right in the sternum! Also, thank goodness I always wear a hat!

Thankfully, that living fence my mother planted years ago isn’t just hawthorn, but also caragana. Those were much easier to work around! Still, it was very careful going before I cut enough free that I could move the rest of the log off. A few broken hawthorn branches had to be cut off. Those ended up on the branch pile just past the fence by the fire pit. No way those were going onto the branch pile meant for the fire pit!

In the process I realized the piece that was hung up on the branch above was so long, its end was actually entangled with the one I cut up and got free! After the shorter section was down, I decided to go ahead and try to get the other one down. It was too high up for me to use my baby chainsaw (electric pruning saw with a 4″ blade) to cut into smaller sections first, so I got the extended pole pruning saw. There was no way to actually cut anything with it – it all just swung and bounced around – but I was able to use the hook at the end of the saw and simply yank on it.

Which left me with this.

Still hung up at the top, and held in place by two branches.

The extended pole pruning saw was at maximum length; the knobs to loosen or tighten the clamp so the length could be adjusted broke off long before we moved here. While using it to pull at the branches, it would shift and spin, with the weight resting on first one branch, then the other, before the two sections of the extended pole finally separated. I didn’t feel like getting pliers to deal with that, plus it was obviously going to take more than yanking on it with the hook to get the whole thing down. Time to shift gears.

What I needed was rope, and a fairly long one. With how much the whole thing was spinning, its fall would be completely unpredictable, and I needed to keep my distance.

I found some rope in the old garden shed. I tied it on the smaller branch that was holding the entire weight and was able to shift it a bit, but it wasn’t enough. In the end, I made a stop cut in the branch a few feet above ground, then shifted the rope near the cut. That way, when I next pulled on the rope (with my end of the rope wrapped around a stick to make a handle), the smaller branch would break and the whole thing could drop. Which is exactly what it did.

Right on top of the other side of the Y branch.

Okay. I’ll just tie the rope to the end, near the ground, and pull it up. There was hardly any contact with the big tree branch that it was leaning against at the top, so it should have been fairly easy.

It wasn’t.

Every time I shifted the branch, the end would dig deeper into the soil rather than lifting up.

I even used a nearby tree to wrap the rope around, then used the stick I was using as a handle around the rope on the other side of my handy tree to get extra torque.

It still just dug deeper.

I had to find a different solution.

After ensuring it was safe to do so, I made a pair of stop cuts on opposite sides of the branch, a few feet above ground, and with a couple of inches of space between them. Then I set the rope in between the stop cuts and went back to my tree.

It worked.

The branch broke at the stop cuts and the whole thing came down, falling in the opposite direction that I was pulling from. It didn’t even land on the hawthorn, but on the ground beside it!

As for the section of branch below the stop cuts, it was still sticking up from the ground. After pulling it up and seeing just how far it had been driven into the soil, it was no wonder pulling from the bottom couldn’t work!

Next was clean up time for both sections.

I broke down all the smaller pieces and made two piles; one for fire wood, the other for kindling. The pieces that were too big for my baby chainsaw would have to wait. I’ll break those down with the chain saw or, if I’m not up to dragging an extension cord across the yard, with a buck saw. For now, they’ve just been moved aside. These have been dead for quite a long time and are completely dry, so they weren’t particularly heavy – at least not like it was while the entire weight was balanced on a couple of inches!

In the last picture of the slide show above, I have arrows pointing to where the branches had broken off from. The tree on the left lost its other section a few years back, in the winter, landing on top of the canopy tent we had near the fire pit for winter cookouts. With this other section broken off, that dead tree can now be safely cut down without any risk of it getting hung up on anything as it comes down.

The other tree on the right still has a section that is alive, but there’s another large section that’s dead. That one has grown off into the row of elm trees behind the storage house. We don’t have the equipment needed to safely take it down in sections.

There’s a third tree on the far left of the photo that is also got dead sections. That tree is the largest of the three and one of the dead branches is massive. It also stretches out over the open yard, so that part at least will not require any special equipment to get it down. I do want to leave part of it up. It’s almost horizontal from the trunk, which makes a great place for the cats to hang out. The fact that it’s so thick, my chainsaw would not be able to cut through it at the trunk without getting creative has a bit to do with it, too!

Before working on this, I’d already gotten quite a few other things done in garden clean up. My daughter helped me with the awkward stuff, like straightening and untangling the netting and getting that rolled up for storage. We also got the catio moved closer to the house, and I got a whole bunch of other little things done. By the time I got the pieces of tree down and cleaned up, I’ve been working outside for several house, so I was done.

While I tried to be pre-emptive before going to bed, the exertion did catch up with me and I started to get hit with a Charlie horse during the night. A mild one, thankfully, and some Voltaren took care of it rather quickly.

Still, I decided today would be a good day to avoid more physical exertion. It has turned out to be a dreary day, anyhow. Which has suited the mood, really. I’ve been fighting tears for most of the day. I’ve never been affected by the death of someone I don’t know personally like this before. It’s more than just Charlie Kirk, who was such an amazing person, nor the circumstances of his assassination. It’s the culmination of something that I’ve been watching build up for years. It’s not just grief, but anger, too. Being in Canada is no barrier, either. While leftists have been celebrating the assassination, there are already people saying that Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta should be “next”. If anything, leftists here in Canada are worse, as they hold more institutional power.

I have no illusions about the evil we’re dealing with. I’ve seen it far too often, and I’ve been threatened myself. I’m long past the stage where I can be intimidated and, my goodness, do these leftists loose their s**t when someone stands up to them rather than bend the knee.

In the end, though, they are cowards. It takes a special kind of coward to do what was done to Charlie Kirk.

The Re-Farmer

Foggy morning, parasitic weeds, cuteness, garden update and doctor visits.

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The garden clean up has officially started!

Not until rather late in the day for that sort of thing, but it’s started!

This morning was surprisingly foggy, and actually seemed to get denser as I did my rounds.

While going around the row of crab apple trees, I noticed some pretty little flowers in the grass. Just a little patch.

Thankfully, just a little patch!

I pulled all that I could find. We have these all along the shoulders of our gravel roads. In one of the nasty voice mail messages our vandal left on my brother’s cell phone, he said that there was red bartsia in the second quarter section our renter is taking care of. That quarter is just used for pasture now, though it also has trees, a pond and marshland. Our vandal still thinks the property should be his, so he was having a screaming fit on the message about how I should get my [insert vile and disgusting insult] daughters out there with lawn mowers to get rid of it.

If you follow the link about the weed, you’ll note it specifically says, “Mowing is not reccomended.”

With the arrangement made with the rent, they’ll be the ones dealing with it. This stuff is parasitic with grasses, and can do real damage to pastures. Cows can’t eat it.

We can’t do much about the roadways, but we can keep it out of the areas we are responsible for, at least! It’s bad enough that we’re dealing with creeping bellflower and creeping Charlie.

While uncovering the garden beds this morning, I was happy to finally see some colour among the peppers.

That was this morning. This evening, I went looking and did find another with some colour showing at the very tip. Also red. No sign of yellow or orange in any of this mix of peppers.

I didn’t start any projects outside this morning, as my daughter and I had consecutive appointments with our doctor early this afternoon. We got some Dairy Queen coupons in the mail, so we left early enough to have lunch in town before continuing on to larger town our doctor is in (I just double checked; it’s not large enough to be considered a city, yet). They weren’t very busy, and my daughter got called in for her appointment right on time. Mine was half an hour later, and I got called in on time, too.

All I was there for was to go over my X-rays. With my hand/wrist, it was confirmed that I did NOT break anything in my fall. It just still hurts at times. More my shoulder than where I landed on my palm, even after all this time. Not that anything could have been done about it, if there had been a break. It’s been quite a while since my fall!

It was my hip that I really wanted to see about. According to the lab report, there is actually very little change since the last time I got X-rays done, some five years ago! The arthritis and bone spurs aren’t any worse.

I told her about the issues I’ve been having. I told her, with the anti-inflammatories making everything else so much better, when it comes to things like my hip, the pain is more acute, now that there isn’t so many other aches and pains muffling it. She was nodding her head as was saying this. It’s very typical! I described the issues I was having with my hip, using last night as an example. As soon as I lie down, it starts to hurt. Eventually, I had to get up and take some pain killers, which didn’t really do much. I got up again and used some of the Voltaren lotion, and that finally did the trick. Only then could I sleep. It’s been getting more painful, though at least I can now put weight on that leg when taking the stairs again. When I mentioned that, she suggested it was due to increased activity. I told her that was very likely, since I’m outside working and winterizing while the weather is good. She just laughed and said, “making hay while the sun shines!” Yup. She gets it!

She said that it sounded like tendonitis, so she has referred me to a sports injury physician. This would be in a clinic in the city, but one that is straightforward for us to get to. It would be decided by the specialist, but she felt that getting a steroid injection to the hip might be helpful.

She was writing up the referral as I was leaving. I was done my appointment a whole 6 minutes after it was scheduled! My daughter had already booked her own follow up appointment a couple of months from now and was waiting for me in the truck. No extra trips to the pharmacy or anything, but we did make a quick stop at a grocery store and a gas station before heading home. I was looking to get a flat of 30 eggs, but chokes at the $15 price tag. It was actually cheaper to buy two 18’s, instead. Weird.

After we got home, I was soon outside, starting with the evening feeding of the yard cats. I’ve actually reduced the amount of food I put out, because there are so few adult cats around these days!

Must share the adorableness, of course.

Frank is such a good mama, and her kittens are adorable. When I checked on them this morning, one kitten had one eye stuck shut, which was easy to address. Another had both eyes stuck shut and I ended up bringing that one into the bathroom for an eye washing. This afternoon, that kitten’s eyes were both stuck shut again, so we’ll have to keep close watch on it.

Speaking of good mamas…

Adam is so patient!

After I took the video that’s after the still shot, that tuxedo pushed its way under the smaller kittens, hunting for nip! Only then did Adam move, pushing him away with a back leg so he’s stop messing with a kitten that was still attached.

As I was scrubbing out and refilling water bowls, I spotted some kittens in the portable greenhouse. Now that they’ve discovered it, they really enjoy staying in there – even when the thermometer in there was reading 50C/122F!!!

I’m not sure if the little tabby in the first picture is part of Slick’s litter or not. They usually stick close to junk pile, shrine feeding station and isolation shelter, but there’s one little tabby that comes to the house and even into the sun room. I think it’s actually from another litter, but I really can’t tell.

That black and white with the blue eyes in the next photo is a stunner.

After tending to the yard cats, I started watering the garden. There was just enough water in the rain barrel to do the old kitchen garden beds. The Turkish Orange eggplants were drooping! Everything else was looking better, but those Turkish Orange eggplant seem to be really sensitive to all sorts of things. They can’t handle cooler temperatures well, and they seem to not handle heat very well, either! Or at least the dryness that comes with the heat. They’re watered just as much as the peppers, which haven’t shown any drooping at all. We reached a high of 23C/73F, but our low is supposed to be 9C/48F, so I’ll be covering them for one more night. According to the 10 day forecast, the overnight temperatures are expected to be warm enough to not cover them anymore, and I could even be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night, too.

Once the watering was done, it was time to start.

It’s clean up time!

For now, I’m working on infrastructure.

The woven bamboo stake trellis I made for the Spoon tomatoes is now dismantled. The tomato cage wall I set up to keep the deer from eating the Super Sugar Snap peas I was leaving to go to seed is down. The soaker hose that was around the Spoon tomatoes and melons was removed, but I’m leaving the one around the winter squash for now. Hoops and stakes and fasteners collected. Most of the stakes with deer distracting pinwheels on them were already set aside. Some of the water bottle noise makers were collected. Not pictured is the post I’ve started using to hold the plastic collars that were around the Spoon tomatoes. I haven’t taken the ones off the melons, yet.

Remarkably, I’m seeing new flowers on the pumpkin vines I thought were killed off. There’s even some melons, still green and trying to bloom. I think the plastic collars actually helped them survive the frosts! My big surprise this morning, though, as finding more bush beans to pick. Only a small handful, but I expect to continue to get little handfuls of beans for at least another couple of weeks, if the weather holds, and I keep watering!

I’ve got a lot more stakes and ties to collect, but I will need to snag possibly both daughters to help me remove the protective netting that is currently pulled up and over the tops of the beds. It needs to be stretched out and straightened before we can fold it up into more manageable sizes, then roll it up for storage, and this particular netting is surprisingly difficult to handle. It snags on EVERYTHING!

As I clean up all the structural stuff, it’s all being brought to the bench by the garden shed for sorting and organizing.

This was the stuff I could do with the time I had this evening. With no outings scheduled, for the next few days I hope to work on more time consuming projects.

I’ve been thinking about that inner wall on the garden bed in the old kitchen garden I’ve been working on. I was going to take out the wattles I’ve got so far, add another stake in between each of the current ones, and find more material to weave a wall. The problem is, even with extra stakes to weave around, I just don’t think I have suitable material for weaving.

So I think I’m going to skip the weaving entirely.

Instead, I’ll do a version of what I think is called a dead hedge, though a very short, narrow version. I’ll be adding vertical stakes to make two rows, a few inches apart, and just lay the horizontals in between them to form the wall. No trying to bend anything. As long as it’s dense enough to hold the soil in, I’ll be happy!

That narrow little bed is taking a ridiculously long time to work on. Lots of experimenting in the process.

That’s just one job I want to work on. Unfortunately, there are so many larger jobs to get done before it starts getting too cold, it gets hard to prioritize which ones need to be started first! Looking at the long range forecast, I’ve got maybe 9 or 10 days before the temperatures start to drop. There’s even a mix of rain and snow in the long range forecast, a little over two weeks from today.

Well, however it works out. As long as I have garden beds ready in October, for planting garlic first, and then doing our winter sowing before the ground freezes.

Lots of work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, adorableness, and unexpected outings

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I headed outside this morning with my usual feeding of adorable beasts and doing my rounds. I had a bit of a surprise when I got to the main garden area.

In the first picture, you can see a Hopi Black Dye sunflower, still trying to bloom! All of the sunflowers, which I thought were killed off by our last frost, look like they’ve actually recovered! Wild!

I had some plans to make a stew later today, so I decided to do a small harvest (second image above). Just enough potatoes for the day, plus our only bulb onions of the year! These were in the high raised bed and their necks were bent by rolling cats, so they weren’t going to get any bigger. The only onions we planted this year were the seeds included in our seed mixes. Quite a few came up, then disappeared. In the high raised bed, just these got big enough to form bulbs. All the others were basically just the greens. Even the really strong and healthy looking ones in the old kitchen garden are nowhere near starting to form bulbs.

Next year, we’ll be starting seeds indoors again. 😄 From our own seed, too.

I was back inside, helping my daughter, who’d been working on the “cat free zone” (the living room) for most of the night. We’ve basically been just shoving things that needed to be protected from the cats into there, but never quite getting the chance to go back and put them away properly. It had gotten to the point that there was just a path in between furniture to the shelves in front of the window, where I’ve got tomatoes ripening and seeds drying.

I didn’t get to help her for long before the phone rang.

It was home care.

I have to admit, it’s been a long time since they’ve called. The scheduler was very apologetic, but they had a last minute cancellation. Someone called in sick.

My mother’s meds were scheduled for 9am.

It was about 8:35 when she called. Driving time alone to my mother’s is 25 minutes.

I didn’t even bother changing out of my grubbies. I just made a quick call and left a message with my mother, grabbed my purse and headed out. So she got her meds just a little bit behind schedule.

Apparently, the person who was supposed to come this morning was also supposed to do my mother’s two evening visits, and she didn’t show up for those, either. Apparently, a guy came to do it, and he was all the way from the city! I appreciate that they found someone to do her evening meds. Her and however many other people are on that home care aide’s list!

In the end, it worked out. My mother was still in bed and not feeling well. I ended up making some toast for her, so she’d have something to eat with her meds. She also likes to have milk, half and half with boiling water, as her beverage, so I made that, too – finishing off both her milk and a loaf of bread in the process of making her breakfast. I told her I would get her more milk and asked if she needed anything else. I figured I would go get it while she was having a peaceful breakfast.

Which is when things got strange. I have no idea how she interpreted my request, but she seemed to think I was trying to rush her and was leaving right away or… I don’t know. She started going on about how she needs to rely on me and my siblings more now, and making …. less than charitable, shall we say … comments about my brother and sister. Now, I admit, to a certain extent, I can understand about my sister. She used to call my mother almost every say, and visit on some of her days off from work (she only works 3 days a week at a Walmart). In fact, my mother used to lord it over me, how my sister was calling her every day. Then my sister started to get more involved in their church again. The Worldwide Church of God, which is recognized as a cult. Her behaviour has changed since then, and she has been … not cutting the family off, but definitely cutting us out of things. She’s back to refusing to celebrate birthdays (they’d relaxed on that for a while) and hating Christmas and Easter, going on with the long debunked claims about them being pagan holidays, etc. There are definite issues there, but my sister does still do things like to my mother’s laundry, or mop her floors, and will pick up things like clothes and other things from Walmart for her. My sister used to sew her own clothes all the time and she knows my mother’s measurements, so anything she gets for my mother, she tailors to fit. So while there is definitely tension and issues, she does still help out in ways my brother and I can’t. We each have things we can do individually for my mother that the others aren’t able to.

Anyhow.

She made a comment about my wanting to leave so soon (I think she decided my wanted to get her milk while she was having breakfast meant I was in a hurry to leave?) and how there are two girls at home that can help take care of my husband. Which threw me, because my mind wasn’t there at all. I told her, we’re winterizing. There’s lots of work to do. She actually seemed confused by that. I don’t think she ever knew all the things my dad and brothers did to prepare the house and yards for winter.

I kept trying to bring her back to, I want to get you milk, do you need anything else? but she kept going back to saying things about my brother and sister. Finally, I just grabbed my hat and purse and told her, I’m going to get you some milk.

To which she told me to hold on… she might need something else…

…

*sigh*

In the end, there were just a couple of things from the grocery store she wanted, but we also checked her Volataren supply. She still had but, since she’s using it on her back now, as well as her knees, it was worth picking up more. Which meant a trip to the pharmacy.

My mother then started getting cash out, took out a 50, and asked if I wanted an envelope. I said it would be good, since I put all her change and receipts back into the envelope for her to go through later. She started looking for an envelope, found one on her table – and it still had the change and receipts from the last time I did shopping for her! Then, just in case, she took the bills from that and included it with the $50 bill she already had ready.

I then left her to her breakfast and my first stop was at the pharmacy. They know me pretty well by now, and I’ve had pleasant chats with the manager a few times. They are aware that I’m shopping on behalf of my mother, and I’ve also talked about having to come in to cover for home care way too often. So when I came in and the manager saw me coming in so early in the day, I told him about home care cancelling again this morning – but, it turned out to be okay, since it meant I could run errands for my mother, too.

He laughed and said, “let’s not tell them that!” 😄

My mother’s Voltaren turned out to be on sale, which was nice – until I tried to hand over the $50, then went into my own wallet for the change. The manager very sheepishly asked if I had anything smaller. This early in the day, making change for a $50 would have emptied his float! He even commented that he should have a bigger float, but almost no one pays in cash anymore. In the end, I had enough of my own cash to add to my mother’s smaller bills and was able to pay with exact change. He was so very thankful!

I’ve worked retail for many years. I totally get it!

We talked about how so few people use cash these days, but then you have people like my mother. She simply could not use a debit card. It’s beyond her. He commented that, if ever the machines go down, though, it’s people like my mother that will be in the better position!

That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up the few things my mother wanted, plus I got a couple of extra things that were on sale that I knew she’d enjoy and could put in her freezer. It was still a really small shopping trip.

When I got back to my mother’s and put things away, showing her what I got different, I tried to entertain her with what happened at the pharmacy. In the end, I think I only confused her. She seemed to be trying to figure out how they were trying to cheat her by not being able to make change for a $50 bill, that early in the day.

*sigh*

Then she started going through the envelope with the change and receipts and the contents didn’t make sense to her. I told her again, because I used the smaller bills, adding in my own cash, there was no change from the pharmacy. The change in the envelope was only from the grocery store.

I’m not sure she got it.

In the end, I didn’t stay much longer. My mother was feeling very tired and I encouraged her to go back to bed, which she said she would do. She told me she’d even used her LifeLine last night, to talk to someone about how she was feeling. She wanted them to tell her what to do, but they can’t really do that. The guy did ask her if she wanted him to call an ambulance, and she told him no. Instead, she told him he could go back to bed, and she would do the same.

I hope she did go back to bed after I left!

From there, I went straight home. My daughter had managed a lot more progress on the living room while I was gone, including moving some things to the basement. (If we can figure out how to get it down the steps, I’d like to move the big aquarium to the basement, too.) She was really exhausted – I think she was up all night! – and was feeling sick, but had just remembered that she had a prescription to pick up for our joint appointment tomorrow. It’s a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated, so it was something to call in at the last minute. She did that and was told it’d be ready for pick up this afternoon, and I told her I’d take care of it, and sent her off to bed. She was more than happy to do that!

Which meant that, after a couple of hours, I was on the road again. My husband needed a few things from the pharmacy, too, so that worked out. Before heading home, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a couple of small trays of sushi as a thank you for my daughter. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t eaten, again.

By the time I got home again, it was time to feed the outside cats. I headed out again later, to close some things up.

Which is when I spotted this.

Some of the kittens have discovered they really, really like the portable greenhouse! That’s Colby snuggling with a much, much smaller tabby in the foreground. I’m not sure about the other older kitten, watching me through the doorway. I’ll have to remember that distinctive black chin. When I moved around, I spotted two more littles, curled around each other on the grass near a luffa pot. Today was a decently warm day, but they quite enjoy the extra warmth, when they can find it!

I’ll be heading outside one more time before calling it a day. With the extra trips out, I did not accomplish what I’d intended to, but none of it was particularly time dependent. We’ll be out again for much of tomorrow, too. After that, there are no more planned outings until I have to pick up my mother’s refills on Sunday, then my husband and I have a dental appointment later next week. We’re supposed to have good weather so, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the bigger outside projects done. Getting the sun room cleaned out for the winter will probably be the biggest and longest job. The critters have made a real mess in there – and I don’t mean just the cats!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

The cuteness

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Things are starting to warm up today, which means I got to spend more time working outside. I was finally able to use the push mower around the cat shelters, then break out the weed trimmer.

Before I started making lots of noise and scaring the yard cats, I got to enjoy some adorableness.

I have almost, not quite, been able to pet the kitten in the first picture. Progress is, it moves away when I touched it back, but didn’t panic or jump off the rail and run off.

Of course, I checked in Frank’s babies in the cat cage, and was amused to find their guardian kitten asleep on the level above them.

The last picture was taken while I was moving things and prepping to mow – and spotted a skunk going after the food and water bowls in the catio! I went to chase it off, but it went inside of the catio instead of away. The door had been tied off so it wouldn’t blow in the wind, so I untied it, then went around to the back of the catio to persuade the skunk to leave. Then I found the garage kittens were inside, too, and very nervous about the whole thing!

This morning, I was able to stop the smokey kitten from running away when I brought the food, put it back at the bowl and started petting it. It was hungry enough to let me, and started eating. Progress!

While using the push mower, I made a point of mowing where the catio is going to be moved to, once I can snag a daughter to give me a hand. Little by little, we’ll get those kittens to start coming to the house! They seem to be like their mother; they don’t seem to like other cats and have no interest in any of the other kittens. Hopefully, that will change by winter.

We’ll have some nice weather over the nest week to 10 days, which means we need to focus on getting winterizing done. The sun room needs to be cleaned out for the winter, the cat house needs to be opened up and cleaned out, the winter window to the old basement needs to be set in place, etc. That’s all on top of cleaning up the garden and preparing as many beds as I can for winter sowing. If things go really well, I hope to have some beds we didn’t use this year ready for next year, and get the second trellis bed at least started. We need to cut more dead spruces to get the 18′ logs we’ll need for that. The trellis bed will be two logs high, so we’ll need four 18′ logs and four 4′ logs. The existing low raised beds will be framed just one log high to start with. We’ll add more height to them as we’re able to get the materials. There’s only so many dead spruces in the grove that we can harvest, and not all of them are nice and straight.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get lots done while the weather holds!

The Re-Farmer

Kitten updates, and birthday with Mom

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Today was my mother’s 94th birthday, so I had plans to head over to her place, not long after doing the morning rounds.

With the appearance of kittens in the sun room cat cage, I was expecting to see a fourth kitten by this morning, since I knew that the mama had four active nips.

Nope. Still just three.

With a slightly older kitten on guard, above!

My guess is, the fourth kitten was a loss, and that might have had something to do with why the mama, Frank, suddenly moved her babies into the sun room. Normally, the ferals don’t bring their kittens to the house until they are closer to weaning age. Frank is getting to be more semi-feral than feral, as she does allow some pets every now and then. The good thing is, we now have a chance to socialize her babies, which increased their chances of survival, and our chances of getting them fixed when they’re old enough and big enough.

I headed to my mother’s town a bit early, as I had plans to pick some things up for her. I was hoping to get her a small cake, as I knew she’s complain about things being “too much” (which she did), but there was none to be had, so I got her a cheesecake with two slices each of four flavours. I figured, it was something she could share. Then I picked up her favourite fried chicken and wedges for lunch. When I got there, she was in her living room, so I made a joke about how she wasn’t allowed to come to the table until I was done. Of course, she still had to come to the table – her glasses were on it! I had picked up a candles in the shape of a 9 and a 4 and got everything all set up and the candles lit. She got a good laugh out of it when I started singing happy birthday to her and brought it over. On her 90th birthday, when she was more mobile still, we’d celebrated her birthday at my brothers, and I’d bought her a little tiara to wear. I got it out and had her put it on before I took pictures for the family. She got a laugh over that, too, before blowing out her candles.

We then had lunch together. As she was close to finishing her meal, she did stop to say, she wanted to tell me something, but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. 😂 Yeah. She complained about the food! Or, more accurately, that I was buying her too much food. I told her, she doesn’t have to eat it all at once! Oh, but it’s temptation, she said. 😄 She said she doesn’t want to get fat(ter). I just shake my head. She’s been fat for as long as I can remember, and she just turned 94. In her family, all the women that got fat after having kids lived to grand old ages. All her skinny relatives (the ones that didn’t have kids) died young.

I don’t think she needs to worry about it!

With the cheesecake, I told her she could share it with her neighbours. She stopped to consider the date and told me the next event in the common room would be on Tuesday (three days from today). They usually have a pot of coffee going, and sometimes snacks. She told me, she’d think about whether or not she wanted to share her cake with them! 😄

Since I was there anyhow, I did some light housekeeping and refilled her water bottles. Then I went to the pharmacy to get the things I couldn’t get last time, because they were closed for the holiday. This gave me a chance to finally talk to the pharmacist – I kept forgetting to phone them! – about just how close my mother was to running out of her prescriptions before her new bubble packs were ready. He was able to change the date so that her refills will be done a week earlier. Which means that I’ll be heading over to pick up her bubble packs two weekends from now, and getting them into her lock box. This gives some flexibility, in case I’m not able to get them on the day for some reason. We don’t want them to be delivered anymore, since the delivery person wouldn’t have the code to open the lock box, and we can’t trust my mother to not do something to her meds if they’re not locked away.

While my mother was in a good mood overall, that didn’t stop her from talking smack about my brother and sister. They don’t call her enough. They don’t visit enough. She knows my brother is out of province right now – running a “marathon” with his grandson! Then she started going on about both of them. I was done everything that needed doing by then, and still had to go to town, so it was definitely time to leave.

One of the things on my list to do in town was to go to a different grocery store with our water bottles. This place has a sanitation station, and our bottles were due. I had two to refill, got them both sanitized and started filling them. I had finished filling the second one and was starting to put a new cap on it before putting it in the cart when…

It split open at the base!

There was water spraying all over before I was able to shift it into the sanitation sink to drain. There was a woman using the second fill station and we got the attention of the staff. One guy came over but all he could do was take over holding the jug in place over the sink as it emptied. All 5 gallons!

So… I had to buy a new jug. I don’t like the new jugs that they have now. With the older ones, the handle is part of the jug itself. The new ones have the handle as a separate piece attached. We’ve already got one like it, and it always feels like the handle is about to break off when the jug is full. Ah, well.

That done, I picked up a few things we’d run out of. My husband had requested water flavours, but I couldn’t find any at all, so I ended up going to the other grocery store for those, plus the rest of my list. They happened to have a good sale on stewing beef (good being relative, these days!), so I got a family size pack. I look forward to having a beef stew! We eat beef so rarely these days.

From there, it was a stop at the gas station – the prices had dropped from $1.449 to $1.409 – then home. I pulled up to the house to unload. My daughters were sweethearts and got everything into the house, then distracted the yard cats so I could get the truck out of the yard!

It was feeding time for them, anyhow, so while they put everything away, I took care of the feeding.

It’s getting time to move the catio closer to the house. Even the smokey garage kitten is finally started to sneak closer to the house. Sort of. She’s been skirting the edges of the flower bed at the far end of the yard, along with her brother (I’m still just guessing that she’s a she). They are MUCH more comfortable eating in the catio, though.

What an incredibly unique looking cat!

The kittens in the cat cage were alone at the time, though Frank was no far away. I noticed their eyes were getting stuck shut, so I made sure to give them a wash. This was a first time experience for these kittens, and they did not like it, but they actually handled the whole thing rather well.

Since coming home, the weather geek group I follow on FB sent out some info. Parts of the province are under a frost warning. Our area is not included. Uh, huh. We already had our first frost night, and there were no frost warnings in advance for that one! It’s still rather warn as I’m writing this, but we’re still getting a low of 2C/36F being forecast for tonight. I’m expecting it to get colder than that. I’ll wait a bit longer before covering up the beds again.

Oh, that was something my mother had a hard time with. I showed her garden pictures, including the winter squash bed with its plastic cover. She had the hardest time understanding why one would do that. I had told her about how everything was behind this year and she was all, you know what that means, right? You planted too late.

…

I talked to her about our spring, and how in May we had such hot days, but very cold nights, so the soil didn’t warm up enough. We had drought this year. We had heat waves this year. Then there was the smoke, smoke and more smoke. She just shook her head and told me how she didn’t remember every having problems in the garden.

…

Now, I do remember her making a passing comment a couple of years back, when we had issues in the garden, saying that some years things are good, some years they’re not. This was several years ago. She did remember having bad years in the garden here. This stuck in my memory because she always made a big deal about how she had such a big healthy garden here, and was upset with me for not instantly recreating exactly how her garden used to be, some 20 or 30 years ago. Now, with things not turning out well, in her mind, it’s because I caused it somehow. She’s still wrapping her mind around the idea that I can garden in different ways than she did. Not that I have any choice. It’s physically impossible to do otherwise, at this point. She’s having difficulty accepting that things are not the same as she remembers! She would much rather think that the garden is struggling because I don’t know how to tend thins properly, like she did. 🫤

Ah, well. We do the best we can!

She did manage to throw dig at me, this time about how I didn’t bring her out to the farm for a visit this summer, and now it’s getting cold.

*sigh*

I told her, it’s been a very rough year. We don’t even have a front door right now. Which is absolutely true but, in past visits, we learned very quickly that my mother has zero interest in visiting us. What she wants is to look at everything, from how the yard and garden looks, to rifling through the cabinets in the bathroom while pretending she’s using the toilet (apparently, it didn’t occur to her that we could hear it). She would then follow up with declarations about how useless I was as a human being, and how terrible my family is, for not living the way she wanted us to, and because things aren’t exactly the way she remembers leaving it, when she moved out some 10 years ago. Not how it actually was. How she remembers it was. End result is, none of us want her to come out here again. Her motivations for wanting to come out here – even though, after we moved in, she declared she never wanted to see the farm again – are far from kind, to put it mildly.

My mother has no understanding of just how much her own actions drive people away – and then wonders why no one wants to call her or talk to her! I’ve told her, but she just goes on about why she’s entitled to behave the way she does, and doesn’t see how much she hurts the people who are trying to help her the most. She really and truly doesn’t care, either. *sigh*

Ah, well. We just do the best we can. What else can we do?

At least I can say that she was happy I visited her for her birthday, even if I did it all wrong. 😄😂

The Re-Farmer

Rain, wind and… babies???

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Once again, the overnight temperatures dropped lower than was forecast. Today was also supposed to have high winds in the morning, then rain in the afternoon.

We had rain in the morning, and it’s been windy all day.

I really had to drag my butt out of bed to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. Short rounds, and then I crawled back into bed. Even after several more hours of sleep, I woke up bleery and out of sorts, stiff and sore, though not as bad as it used to be, before I got on the anti-inflammatories. I’ve been feeling like that for a couple of days now. It took me a while to make the connection. I always get like this when it’s rainy and overcast!

I felt much better when the sun came out!

Aside from a quick run to the post office, it was a home day. My daughters have been having a hard time, today, too. It’s hit my younger daughter the worst, and she’s been caning it most of the day.

I did finally get outside to get a few things done, when I discovered something in the cat cage.

Two new, little kittens, in the cat bed.

These are very young kittens! Definitely not a mama bringing her older babies to the house for solid food.

There was only one cat I could think of that might be the mother. That would be Frank, and I was recently able to pet her enough that she showed me her belly. She had four active nips.

If she were the mama, then we were definitely going to be finding more.

I checked on the kittens and, other than a bit of dried gunk on the edges of their eyes, they looked chunky, well fed and healthy. Very fluffy!

I fed the outside cats and worked on a few other things before mixing up a jar of kitten soup. I put just a few spoonfuls into a shallow container and put it into the cat bed with them.

Sure enough, I came back into the sun room later and found Frank in the cat cage, eating the kitten soup. It wasn’t much longer before I saw the kittens nursing on her, too.

I was out for a while longer, and when I came back, she was gone again. Her kittens were sleeping peacefully. I took a peak at some other kittens in the cat cave when I spotted something white, moving around a plant stand we leave for the cats to use to get onto the platform.

It was a little, mostly white grubling!

Frank hopped into the cat cage just as I picked it up, and was very nervous, so I just quickly put the kitten with the other two and left. The next time I came through, she was nursing the three of them.

I went back out to finish things – for all that it rained, the garden needed watering, though there isn’t much left to water! By the time I was done and headed back in, Frank was all curled up and nursing her babies in domestic bliss.

If you look at the second image of the slide show above, you can see her and maybe, possibly, a fourth kitten, under her front leg. I thought, at first, it was her bottom leg, but I don’t recall any of her legs having spots like that on it.

I never did figure out where she had her kittens. All I knew was that it had to be really close.

I got a few things done that were manageable with the wind. I wasn’t able to get that fallen branch off the hawthorn, yet. I’ll have to get in there and cut it up in small pieces to get it off without damaging the hawthorn. The problem with that is, it’s really embedded in hawthorn branches, and hawthorns have massive thorns!

One of the jobs I finally got done was to add legs to the wind break box that I made to go over the opening of the isolation shelter. We had it up on bricks over the winter, so now it has legs that are just a bit taller than the thickness of the bricks. I was also going to add length of wood to each side to act as handles, so it would be easier to move around, but I ran out of the right length of wood screws. I had just enough to add the legs, and that’s it. For now, the box is sitting on the concrete well cover, over a kibble bowl. After the new door is installed, we’ll put the insulation back around the base of the house under the kitchen window, then set up the winterized isolation shelter there again. I need to find a better way to wrap clear plastic around the bottom of the shelter again. The tacks held fine, for the most part, but the plastic kept tearing free of them. It didn’t help that, when we had cats recovering from being spayed/neutered in there, the other cats were clawing through the plastic to try and get in! I might invest in some transparent tarps at some point. They’re expensive, but they’re also 20mm thick. Even greenhouse plastic is only 6mm thick, and the plastic dining table covers I’ve been using are, I think, only 3mm thick. I’ve been looking them up, and one Canadian company that makes them says they’re rated down to -23C/-10F. Which would be really useful for all sorts of things, really!

Speaking of which…

I had intended to uncover the winter squash bed to check on them. Through the plastic, I can see the bright yellow of new flowers, and I wanted to see if anything could be hand pollinated. It was just too windy, though. So windy, it was starting to tear the plastic free of the boards we rolled up in the excess on each side!

I rolled them back up and made it as snug as I could before adding bricks to weigh down the boards that were weighing down the edges!

With the sun out and things warming up, I finally uncovered the other beds. The cover over the summer squash was half blown off, already. The zucchini seems to be doing quite well, really! Some of the leaves around the very edges have cold damage, but mostly, they’re still growing and producing more zucchini. Even the white scallop squash is starting to bloom!

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F, but last night we were supposed to drop to about 5 of 6C/41 or 43F, but we actually hit about 2C/36F, so we’ll be putting the covers back on later this evening. Meanwhile, what’s left got a deep watering. The rain barrel by the sun room was finally filled, though not to the top, so I used that to water the old kitchen garden. Checking on the peppers, it looks like the oldest pepper is finally starting to turn colour, and it’s looking like it will be a red one. The Turkish Orange eggplants are getting brighter in colour, so it looks like they are managing all right, as long as they get that overnight protection.

The frost hardy plants, like the carrots and remaining beets, kohlrabi, little onions, etc. are doing fine. Surprisingly, the pumpkins haven’t been killed off entirely, and the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers seem unbothered by the colder temperatures. Their developing seed heads are still so tiny, though. The yellow bush beans, much to my surprise, are looking undamaged.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler, with a high of 12C/54F expected (today, we hit 15C/59F), but the overnight low is supposed to be 2C/36F, which means we will probably drop down to, or even below, freezing. Then we’re supposed to warm right up again, with highs in the 20’sC/68F range, and overnight lows hovering on either side of 10C/50F. The long range forecast has us going even warmer, the week after, including as high as 28C/82F.

We’ll see what actually happens!

The Re-Farmer

Just a matter of time

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I found this, while doing my morning rounds.

A large chunk of a dead maple finally break off and landed on the hawthorn living fence. I’m impressed that the hawthorn is holding the weight! Another section cracked as well, but it’s being held up by the still living section of another maple.

This tree has been dead for a while. The main trunk is still solid, and, I made sure to debark the lower section of it so no carpenter ants would start compromising the wood. As for the branches that came down, it was just a matter of time.

I’ve been wanting to cut this dead tree down, as well as the dead sections of the ones on either side of it, for some time. The problem was one of, how to do it without causing more damage. I knew part of it could only fall onto the hawthorn; there was no other direction it could fall. I also knew the other part would get hung up on the other tree. Again, there was no other direction it could fall. In the video, you can see another broken off part of the trunk. That came down a few years ago, landing right on top of a canopy tent we had near the fire pit.

Well, looks like I have a clean up job for today. At the very least, I want to get the section off the hawthorn without causing more damage.

The tree that’s holding up the other section is also partially dead. The dead section stretches off in the other direction, right into some nearby elms, so it would get hung up on the branches if we try to cut it away.

The alternative, of course, is to hire a tree company that has the equipment needed to get right up there and take it down in sections. Something that would be very expensive. If we’re going to hire a tree company, the priority would be to remove the tree in front of the house that’s overhanging the roof. These trees by the fire pit area a lot lower on the priority list!

Hmm… I might not be cleaning this up today, after all. Checking the weather for the day. Not only did we end up a lot colder than expected last night, but our expected high is now only 8C/46F, and it’s supposed to start raining in about half an hour, and continue raining until 7pm.

Our chain saw is a corded electric. Not going to have extension cords running across the yard to work in the rain!

From what I could see, this tree was the only thing that came down during the night. Thankfully, the winds have died down, so we wouldn’t be having any more dead trees breaking or falling for at least a little while!

The Re-Farmer

Almost

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Well, the installers for our new door on the main entry were expected at about 9:30am, and got here half an hour early. They got to work right away.

It’s about 9:40am right now, and they are gone.

The guy was so, so apologetic, but the door that was ordered is the wrong size. There is just no way they can get the new door and frame into the space. Part of the issue is that they would need to install a new header. Another issue is the stucco.

I would actually have been good with a bigger door. Ours is 34″. The new door is 36″. Apparently, 34″ doors are pretty rare these days.

They offered to find a way to make the old door smaller so they could put back on until a proper sized door came in, but I explained the frost and moisture damage to the door. They also offered to put some foam in the door for now. I told him, that was not a problem – we were already using foam insulation to barricade the entry from the cats, so he could see we already had some. We won’t need to use it, though, as we already have a piece cut to size, and even with a space cut so we could have the hose running out the storm door when we did laundry in the winter. Yes, we’re still going that. The girls are convinced that if we use the drain pipe, it’ll just back up and flood the entry again.

So, we are still without a proper door in the main entry. Just the storm door. For which I am thankful! Without that, we’d have had to board the doorway up somehow.

He said he would see if they can do a rush order on a replacement door, as it can take a while for them to be made. I hadn’t realized their doors are actually custom made on order. I was thinking something like Home Depot, where they have entire aisles of doors and pre-hung doors, interior and exterior, that you can just buy then and there. I guess it makes sense. A small town hardware store has neither the space, nor the sales, to warrant keeping that sort of inventory on hand.

On the plus side for me, is… I can go for a nap. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Mostly because of cats going nuts, including Tin Whistle getting the zoomies across me in bed.

I just need to go close up the gate first. Then sleep! Hopefully.

The Re-Farmer