I’m back from doing the Costco shopping today, but before I post about that painful trip, here’s some good news!
While doing my rounds, I found new growth in various places!
There are more purple crocuses up and blooming, plus more white crocus buds are up.
There is no sign of the muscari/grape hyacinth yet, but I did have a wonderful surprise nearby.
Okay, I know they’re hard to see, but there are at least 14 tulips coming up here! Before resizing the photo to post here, I looked at it at full size to try and find them all. Some of the green is blades of grass, but I spotted the leaves of a few tulip plants piercing through the dried leaves above them. I’ll have to keep an eye on those. I remember last year, seeing some of them getting taller, but not able to break through the leaves they’d grown through, so they were all squished together. Once they get taller, and I know where not to step, I’ll go in and pull the dead leaves off, so they can spread out and grow properly.
I had another pleasant surprise in the old kitchen garden, too.
We have one Egyptian walking onion that’s been trying to grow every year since we moved here. Last year, it actually survived long enough to form bulbils. After building a new, little raised bed, I took those bulbils and planted them in front. Here, you can see two of them have sprouted! There were several more, too. I can’t remember how many were planted, but I’m pretty stoked that they survived the winter and are now emerging through the mulch. I didn’t see if the “parent” onion has started to emerge, but think I might have seen, maybe, possibly, leaves from one of the flower bulbs my daughter planted along the edge of this garden. Last year, some leaves came up, but none bloomed. There’s another spot, at one end, where she planted daffodils which did bloom last year but, so far, no sign of them.
I did also check the carrots, and there are no sprouts that I could see, but I was just peaking under the edges of the plastic and couldn’t see very far in. I need to put a priority on building covers for those beds, as the current set up is very temporary, and not as functional.
We’ve got highs of 9C/48F predicted for today and tomorrow, with a bit of rain now and then. After that, we’re supposed to warm up a bit more and have sun for at least 5 days. Great weather to get work done out there!
But maybe not today. City trips three days in a row has sucked all the energy out of me! Right now, I just want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.
This morning, we had new weather warnings – this time for fog!
This is taken through my bedroom window, and the phone camera automatically cleans up the image, so the visibility was actually for less than this. We had no wind, so it hung around until past 10 or so, and as I write this, it’s nice and clear. In fact, I’m seriously considering making another trip to the city. Not for the Costco shopping. That trip is going to be big enough, I’ll wait for my husband’s private insurance disability payment to come in, but the international grocery store we try to go to regularly has a case lot sale starting today. There are a few things we find only in this store (I’m not willing to drive around the city to find other stores that might carry them), so it would work out. However, it would also mean making trips to the city, two days in a row, plus yesterday’s trip to the smaller city.
We shall see.
Meanwhile, I had a bit of a surprise when I headed out to do the morning rounds.
We had several cats trapped in the sun room. The wind had blown the outer door closed. Since we keep the pair of doors just barely open for the cats to squeeze in, but still keep the weather out, we couldn’t tell when checking through the bathroom window that it was closed.
They did have food and water, but the litter box that used to be in there is in the cat house now.
Yeah. I could tell when I walked in!
The cats that were stuck outside were very hungry! The food trays outside get emptied a lot faster than the sun room trays that they could no longer access. I still counted only about a dozen or so cats, including Sad Face, skulking away.
Considering how high the winds got yesterday, I was rather impressed with how little damage there was. The girls did check repeatedly while I was out yesterday, so this is stuff that happened after I got home. The diverter over the rain barrel was knocked right off, which means the rain barrel was overflowing during the night. The diverter being knocked off isn’t all that uncommon, but this hasn’t happened in a long while…
The metal roofing sheets got blown off the garden shed! You can see the strap that held them in place, dangling off a tree branch.
We tried to fix these permanently to the roof, but just couldn’t do it. Not only is there too much rot, but there are too many odd… things… that were attached to it to cover the leak. It is also no longer flat, which I think is also due to a rotten section.
We really need to get another garden shed built!!!
So those metal sheets were just laid out on top and held in place with the strap. They used to get blown out of place all the time, when winds came from the north, until we overlapped them differently and found a way to get them to lie somewhat flatter. Yesterday’s winds, however, were from the south. Still, that strap didn’t break. It somehow got unhooked.
Well, one of my goals for this year is to finally haul away the junk from around this shed, add it to the pile that will get taken to the dump, and store away stuff that we can use again, like that roll of snow fencing. It’ll be good to get this clear. Once we build the new shed, I will quite happily tear this old thing apart! I’m curious to see what it looks like underneath. At the very least, I know we’ll find a groundhog den. The whole thing is sitting on top of rocks, which I think my daughters will find useful for the forge shelter they’re planning to build. I believe they plan to build mostly rock walls, to keep things as fire proof as possible.
Anyhow.
So getting those metal sheets back on top of the garden shed roof is a multi-person goal for the day. It may leak and be falling apart, but we’re still using it.
Other than that, I found a few small fallen branches, and that’s it! Those first few years of cleaning up dead branches has been paying off! Best of all, the cover on the carrot bed held just fine. I’m quite pleased!
Meanwhile, the 10 day forecast has changed again. We were supposed to warm up, then cool back down again, but now it’s saying we will warm up, and keep getting warmer. We’ve even got a 20C/68F day in the forecast!
I only saw about a dozen cats this morning. It was quite lovely out there, with little hint of what was to come!
I knew we were supposed to eventually get rain. The high today is supposed to reach 7C/45F. This morning it was already quite windy, so I made sure to tend the smoldering burn ring so the cover lay flat over it. Normally, I set it so the slight gap faces the wind, to encourage the smolder, but this time I made sure it was facing away.
Turns out I didn’t really need to worry about it.
As I write this, we are at 3C/37F, with the wind chill at -1C/30F, and not only is it raining, but snowing, too!
I’m glad I have those carrots I planted yesterday under plastic! The cooler temperature and snow isn’t the problem. Though I covered the seed tape with soil, the wind would probably still have blown some of it away, and whatever didn’t get blown away would have been bashed about by the rain.
Today, my husband’s CPP Disability came in, so I was planning to go to Costco. By the time I headed out, shortly before 11am, the winds had increased to the point that I was thinking I would be changing plans. When I got to the town my mother lives in and gassed up (168.9 cents per liter, there!!!), Costco was off, but I decided to head to the smaller, closer city for the Walmart and Canadian Tire part of our regular shopping. Honestly, though, I seriously considered just getting a few things where I was and heading home. If the price difference wasn’t so dramatically different, I probably would have. Even while parked next to the gas pump, the car got buffeted by wind gusts, and I was facing into the wind!
The route from my mother’s town to the smaller city takes me on a several east/west stretches of road. The wind was coming almost directly from the south, and I was fighting it the whole way. It was better when I was driving into the wind, though the gas gauge sure was dropping faster! I took it slower at times, and wasn’t even getting passed, which is saying something!
Still, I got there safe and sound, and my first stop was at Canadian Tire.
This is what $110.67 looks like.
There were two things I went there for. The stove pellets for cat litter, which were $7.29 each, and another 4 fire bricks, which where also $7.29 each. The plan is to pick up a few fire bricks each month until we have enough for our outdoor kitchen, when we are ready to build it.
The cast iron frying pan was a serendipitous find. For starters, the 10″ size was 80% off! Cast iron anything has become extremely expensive, so getting this for $19.99 was something I did not want to pass up. Even so, I would not have bought it if it weren’t for one other thing: the bottom of the pan is flat. The cast iron pans we have all have a slightly raised ring around the bottom. Which isn’t an issue with a typical electric stove, but we’ve got a glass top stove now. It actually affects how the pan heats up. This one does still have a ring on the bottom, but it is indented, which solves that problem!
It says it’s pre-seasoned, but… we’ll probably season it a few times ourselves, first!
The other thing is that blue metal bar. There used to be a pencil tip bar like that here on the farm – I even remember it from when I was a kid – but it is among the things that disappeared before we moved here. These don’t tend to be in stock very often and, when they are in stock, they’re usually out of budget. This one is a 60″ chisel tip pry bar, which will meet our needs quite nicely. Best of all, it was 40% off, which brought it in budget!
I then made sure I left very quickly, before I found something else to spend money on!
Hardware stores are a very dangerous place for me to be, which money! 😄
That done, it was off to Walmart. This is what $283.38 looks like.
*sigh*
Part of that total was a donation to the Children’s Hospital, for which I was given a lanyard as a gift, which you can see sitting on the case of wet cat food. That case cost $28.77 The 10kg bags of dry kibble cost $29.97 each. I don’t usually get a 16 pack of facial tissue, but it was on sale at $17.97, instead of something like $23 regular price. There is also a 6pk of double roll paper towels at $18.97; another sale price. One extra, off list, thing that I got was a pair of sweats for myself, at $18. The other was a hanging scratch pad for $4.97. The cats in my room tend to ignore the small scratch post I have for them, in favour of the carpet, so I’m hoping a hanging scratch pad of similar texture will better appeal to them.
For my lactose intolerant daughters, there are two 2L cartons of soy milk at $4.78 each, as well as coffee, at $8.97, though that had a $1 off coupon attached to it. There is a bag of mixed frozen berries at $12.97 and four different cheeses at 2/$10. There’s a 4L jug of 3% milk for $5.88, a large jar of green olives for $8.97, and 4 things of liquid Crystal Light drink mix for my husband, at $3.37 each, which is more than a dollar cheaper than locally. There’s a giant pack of wieners for $5, but there was only one package of hot dog buns left, at $3.37. There’s a 5lb bag of yellow potatoes at $5.97, and a 5lb bag of red potatoes for $4.97. Finally, there are two bottles of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, at $1.87 each, and bottle of a Coke Zero for the road at $2.27. Of course, all the bottles and jugs also had their 3 cent enviro fee which, in this province, we don’t get back when we recycle them.
The grand total, before taxes and donation, was actually $256.86 However, I see on the receipt that the quantity sales – the Crystal Light was 2 for $6, and the soy milk was 2 for $8 – got deducted at the end, so that brought the subtotal down to$253.82 before my donation. Taxes totalled $19.56
So this was a smaller – though heavier! – shopping trip than the Costco trip I intended to make. Between the 40 pound bags of pellets and the pry bar that weighed more than one of those 10kg bags of kibble, I wasn’t going to get too much more while using my mother’s car. We’re not using the van until I can get that noise in the engine checked, and we won’t have the budget for that until June.
Still, I was appreciating that weight on the drive home. By the time I finished shopping at Walmart, it had started to rain. Between the extra weight and having the wind at my back, the car was not being buffeted around anywhere near as much. I was still fighting the whole drive home, though, this time with all the rain accumulated on the highways that wasn’t draining off.
I took a different route home. Instead of going back the way I came, I took the highway to the town closer to us, which is a more sheltered route. It also runs through several small towns, so the speed limit is lower for most of it. When I got to town, I topped up the gas tank again – this time at 155.9 cents a litre! – before the final stretch home. I kept the family updated with where I was, every chance I got, and my daughter kept me updated on what the weather radar was showing. The last leg of my trip was driving east, which meant I was getting broadsided by the wind again, as well as the rain. For most of the drive, I was doing 80km in a 100km zone and, once again, no one was passing me! I did my shopping just in time, though. According to the weather radar, after I left the Walmart area they got hit with the brunt of the storm, and I was safely home before the worst of it hit our area.
And in the time it took me to finish writing this, the rain and snow has stopped! From the looks of the trees outside my window, the wind has died down dramatically, too! Even on the live feed from the garage cam, I’m not seeing the trees in the distance moving at all. Not even the tarp on the shed roof near the barn is flapping anymore, and that thing was billowing when I left!
Ah, weather. If you don’t like what you’ve got at the moment, just wait 5 minutes and it’ll change! Especially in April!
We are definitely seeing fewer cats at feeding time, as the weather improves. Sometimes, I’ll see a few of the more feral ones sneaking across the yards, waiting until I’m gone, before they come for food.
Then there are the ones like this little guy. They come as much for the pets as for the foods!
Last night, I was chasing that big racoon and a pair of skunks out of the sun room again. Overnight temperatures in the long range forecast look to be staying above freezing, so I think it’s going to be time to start closing the doors for the night. They’ll just have to put up with the beds in their cat shelter instead of the swing bench to sleep on. 😉
As I haven’t been able to do a burn during the day because of wind, the girls were kind enough to get it going last night, when things were calmer. They got hoses hooked up and I turned the water on from the basement for them, but there were issues! One hose just would not properly attach to the tap. Now that it’s daylight, I’ll take a look to see if there was any damage, because even when we hooked up a different hose, it wouldn’t attach to the end of that one, either. Thankfully, there was a third hose that worked well. Not that I would mind doing a controlled burn out there. Just not in the middle of the night! Now that the burn is finally done, I can clean out the ashes.
We’ve got some lovely weather predicted over the next while. Time to get outside and get to work! Woo Hoo!!
I was able to pick up more potting soil after helping my mother with errands yesterday, which means that today I got to finish potting up our tomato seedlings.
I actually was able to “pot up” the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes by topping the cups up with soil, first. Then I potted up the last 18 Roma VF tomatoes, which used up my last two plastic bins. I had to move things around, and move the onions right out, to fit everything. The taller seedlings hat to go either to the top of the mini greenhouse frame, or to the shelf, where the onions were. The rest are still short enough to fit in the mini greenhouse frame, though I’ve run out of space in there.
Next was the Spoon tomatoes.
I planted two seeds per pellet, and I made sure to do the ones that had pairs of seedlings first – though one of them had three! For each one, I removed the outer covering on the Jiffy pellets, then separated the seedlings. They’re still quite small, so the cups got filled only about half way.
I noticed the outer covering on the Jiffy Pellets is different this year. It’s more paper like. I remember it being more net-like, before. Those didn’t really break down, and I would find them in the garden while cleaning up at the end of the year. I’m guessing that has sometime to do with the change. With one pair of seedlings, a tomato had actually grown through the outer covering. As I was trying to gently remove it, I ended up breaking the tomato stem clean through! It’s a tomato, though, so I went ahead and planted the tomato top, anyhow. Changes are pretty good it’ll send out new roots and survive.
These are all 35 Spoon tomatoes (I’d mistakenly counted 36, before). I was able to fit 19 onto an oven liner tray, which will allow for bottom watering. The tray the Roma tomatoes had been in, which now had only the spearmint and oregano in it, could fit another dozen. That left only 4 that needed to be double cupped. I’ve run out of both trays and bins.
Those done, I did some more rearranging and removed off the watering can and extra cups, which allowed me to bring the onions back closer to the light. With all those, plus the bin with the Zucca melon and African Drum gourds in it, this surface is now completely full. I don’t even have my work space anymore! The light isn’t as good during the day on here but, early in the morning, it does actually get direct sunlight for a few hours.
The peppers in the large aquarium greenhouse still have new seeds germinating, so I won’t be potting those up for a while. Not that I have the space for it anymore!
I will need to monitor the overnight temperatures in the sun room over the next while. We’re supposed to warm up, but the overnight temperatures are still dipping below freezing. If the sun room can manage to stay at 6C/43F or warmer during the night, I should be able to at least move the onions over. They are about the only thing we’ve started indoors that can handle cooler temperatures. I’d love to be able to move the biggest plants out, which is mostly the gourds and Zucca melon, but they are the most cold sensitive plants we’ve got right now. Daytime temperatures in the sun room have been reaching as high as 20C/68F, which would be great as long as it didn’t drop too far. The times I’ve checked it through the bathroom window at night, I’ve seen the thermometer at around 10C/50F, which would be acceptable, I think. Plus, we’d be closing the doors overnight to keep the yard cats out of the plants, which means it would stay warmer overnight, too.
The cats are not going to be happy, losing their favourite bed on the swing bench, and private dining areas! I’ll be happy to not have skunks and racoons going in there anymore!
All in good time, though. It’s still only April, and a lot of these can’t get transplanted until the middle of June!
I planted chamomile and the second variety of thyme just a few days ago.
Two mornings later, when turning the aquarium lights, I spotted sprouting chamomile! By the afternoon, some thyme was coming up, too!
They were so tiny, though, I didn’t even try to get a picture until this morning.
They are still quite miniscule, but I can see more thyme coming up, while every single peat pellet has chamomile coming up.
I’ve never seen anything germinate this quickly! Meanwhile, I still have just a single oregano (I’m thinking of reseeding those) and just a few spearmint, that were started near the beginning of the month, and they are still barely any bigger than the chamomile sprouts are now! It seems the peat pellet trays are doing much better than using seed starter mix in toilet paper tube pots.
This afternoon, I will be heading out to help my mother with grocery shopping. Depending on the timing of things, I hope to pick up some more potting soil before coming home, so I can finish potting up the tomatoes.
I’m still just blown away by how quickly these germinated!
My daughter took care of feeding the outside cats early this morning, so I headed out a few hours later to do the rest of my rounds, including checking to see if any fallen branches needed to be cleaned up, etc.
You would never know that, just a few days ago, we looked like this.
The day after the snow stopped, not only was all this new snow gone, but so was a lot of the remaining older snow! Right now, the only snow left on the ground is either from the deepest piles, or in the deepest shade. Which actually goes a long way to helping me identify where to prioritize new growing zones and high raised beds.
With so little snow and not a whole lot of accumulated water, either, I checked out a few areas in the outer yard I now have access to.
Removing the maple that was allow to grow at the back of this old cabin means there are no longer branches causing damage to the roof, but we have lost a few more pieces of that corrugated tin. There are pieces from a shed that collapsed long before we moved here that can be salvaged to replace the missing and damaged ones, but we have no way to safely get up there to put them on. I really want to cover these patches of roof. This is the last of the log buildings that hasn’t collapsed, and I want to salvage it, if at all possible, but that’s not going to happen if we don’t at least patch up the roof. Ideally, of course, we’d replace it entirely, but that’s not going to happen until we are in a position to repair the building, and that’s not going to happen for a few years, yet. We’ll need to continue cleaning up around it, and cutting away the trees that have been allowed to grow against the walls.
I find myself wondering if the best way to save this building would be to literally take it apart, log by log, and rebuild it on a better foundation (it’s sitting on giant logs that are rotting away and sinking into the ground), and put on a new roof in the process. We’d have to keep track of the individual logs so that they get put back together in the same order, since they are cut to fit just as they are.
When my parents bought this property, this building was used as a summer kitchen. My parents used it as a chicken coop, which never got cleaned up inside after they stopped having chickens, so there’s a lot of work that needs to be done inside. It is actually wired for electricity, though, with a couple of lights, light switches and outlets, so that heat lamps could be used for the chicks. I believe it was powered via the old pump shack, much like the current warehouse is now, except that my late brother buried the electrical cable between those two buildings. The pump shack and the old chicken coop are much closer together. I have no memory of it, but there was most likely a power line running from just under the eaves of each roof. I’ll have to take a closer look to see if there is any sign of where the line went into the cabin at some point.
Then there’s this old cabin.
I was able to get around to the far side of it, and it has collapsed even more. What a shame.
When I was a kid, this building used to be closer to the house, where we now have a parking area. It used to be a house. My parents bought this place from my dad’s uncle, but the family that owned it before had built the cabins. This one, and another before it, had been houses. When the family needed a bigger house, they just built another cabin. The original part of the house we live in now was the last cabin they built. I don’t know if they originally built it on a basement or if that was dug out later, but a second floor was included and what we now call the old kitchen was tacked on later, and is not built of logs. At some point, my dad had this old cabin moved here, and it was used as “storage”. Basically, filled with all the junk no one was willing to throw away, or that friends in the city gave to the farm, because there’s always room on the farm, right? I remember playing inside it as a child, before it was too filled up, then again after it was moved, and more filled with stuff. I even found the remains of the cradle I slept in as a child. I was quite startled by how small it was – way smaller than what is now considered safe for a baby crib – but I distinctly remember the little teddy bear design on the inside of what might be considered the footboard. Of course, in my memory, it was much, much bigger.
I have some very, very early memories.
I also remember playing and exploring in the other log building that had been a house. There had been a foot powered sharpening wheel in there, and I wonder if the one I found when cleaning up my dad’s old forge was from there. I doubt it, but I like to think that at least that one thing was saved. During the years I was away, I’m guessing it collapsed, too. All I know is that it was burned, and there is now no sign of it. Sadly, no one considered these buildings worth maintaining.
I’ve had it recommended that we just light a match to this, but I want to dismantle it to clean it up, and salvage what we can. There are bound to be sections of logs that aren’t rotted out, and they can be reused for things like the cordwood buildings we are wanting to build. Much of this wood is so rotted that yes, it will get burned, but there is so much stuff in there, we need to dig it out and see how they should be disposed of properly.
That oil drum in the foreground would make a good replacement burn barrel, if we had a way to cut the top off.
Because this is so close to the septic outlet, we might have to get rid of those trees that should never have been allowed to grow against the building in the first place.
What a shame.
Thankfully, the winds have died down, but to have an idea of just how windy it got…
The winds have been slowly destroying the tarp – or what was probably the roof of some kind of shelter – and I’d put the rocks and old tires to keep it from blowing around as much. The winds were high enough to actually blow that tire on the ground off the roof of the car! I pulled as much of the tarp back as I could – it needs to be replaced, of course, but a little bit of coverage is better than no coverage – and put the old tire back on top.
What’s really amazing is on the left of the photo. Do you see what looks like three sticks poking through the tarp?
Those look like maple. There’s a tree growing under there! It wasn’t there when I put the tarp on, several years ago. Somehow, it has managed to get enough light under there to grow and actually break through the tarp. Once things warm up a bit more (the tarp is still frozen to the ground on this side), I’ll have to uncover it and remove the tree.
Talk about resilient!
Usually, when extending my rounds this time of year, I’m making note of all the things that we’ll need to work on and hopefully complete over the summer months. What’s frustrating is looking at things like this, knowing what work needs to be done, but also knowing we can’t do it for various reasons. Like not being able to safely get up to patch the roof on the one cabin, so it doesn’t end up like the other one.
Well, we shall see what we manage to get done over the next few years.
Last night, I glanced through the bathroom window into the dark sun room, and could see a larger… shadow… moving around. Too big to be a cat and the wrong shape for a skunk.
So I headed out to take a look and, sure enough, it was a big racoon, searching for kibble.
I chased it out, then left the light on in the sun room so we could check it throughout the night.
I don’t know about the rest of the family, but several times, I headed back out to chase out skunks and another – or the same – racoon. That second racoon sighting was funny, as I glanced out the bathroom window, and this racoon head popped up over the seat of my husband’s walker to look back at me!
We’ve getting a couple of very small skunks and one big one going into the sun room. The little ones don’t like to leave, and will sit on the threshold, between the inner and outer doors, rather than go outside. I end up having to push the inner door and kick at it to make noise and chase it out. Chances are, there are cats or other critters just outside the door that are keeping it from going right out, too.
I was trying to get one of the skunks out that way, when it was still light out, when movement out the windows facing the old kitchen garden caught my eye. I had just scared our piebald deer away from the kibble house, too!
So we’ve got the deer, skunks and racoons, along with the blue jays and chickadees, stealing the cats’ food.
No wonder it’s disappearing so fast. Poor babies.
I did manage to sneak a pet on the back of the little black and white cat that looks so much like Pointy Baby. It was all lumps from matted fur. We so need to socialize this cat, so we can take care of that!!
Between the outside critters and the antics of the inside cats, I got very little sleep last night.
Meanwhile…
It’s still really windy out there.
Once again, I found the gate cam fallen over. This time, the solar panel got knocked right off. Thankfully, the connectors were all completely dry – the only parts that aren’t water proof – and I was able to reattach it right away.
I also dragged over a heavy piece of metal I found in the shed with the collapsed roof.
Hopefully, the weight of it will be enough to keep the stand from falling over, until we can find something better.
It was funny checking the files just a little while ago. After it got knocked down, it seems a cat clambered over it and used the wooden stand to keep its feet out of the water. From the fur colours and the matts I could see, it was the little black and white one.
The winds are supposed to keep up all day, but I’m hoping it will calm down at least a little bit, later today. I’m going to need to make a trip into town. I could probably wait until tomorrow, but thinks have a habit of coming up unexpectedly, so I’d rather get it over with today. I’ve heard the highways are clear and dry, so at least I won’t have to worry about icy roads as well as high winds.
Right now, though, I’m so tired, I’m not safe to drive. My daughter isn’t feeling very well, either, so she can’t drive for me. So I think I’ll try for a nap and hopefully head into town later.
And hopefully, we won’t have too many critters out in this wind, stealing the outside cats’ food!
My daughters were sweethearts and took care of the outside cats for me again this morning. Which was nice, because I was trapped in my bed by about half a dozen of them at the time!
When I headed out to switch the trail cam memory cards, only Rolando Moon was willing to follow me around!
She would not let me remove the burr she has stuck in her tail, though.
The driveway cam really takes a beating in this location! I need to find something to weigh down the base of the stand.
The camera was fine. Only the solar panel was touching the water. It and the camera are waterproof.
We had some heavy snowfall at times, but we’re also staying mostly above freezing temperatures. Even overnight, we’re just a degree or two below freezing. We’re getting snowfall warnings of up to 20cm/8in by the end of tomorrow, but from the looks of the weather radar, our strange little climate bubble is very much there. The snow is moving through our region but, directly above our area, the clouds part and go around! The southern part of our province is getting hit harder, and a neighbouring province has gotten 30cm/12 in places already. We’re doing just fine where we are. With how warm it is, the paved roads are staying clear. Not that I have any desire to go anywhere! 😄
We have about 3 or 4 more days of temperatures hovering above freezing, and then we start warming up again. About a week from now, the overnight temperatures are supposed to stay consistently above freezing, too. We’ll see how it actually works out!
Meanwhile, I’ve got some herbs to get started in the Jiffy pellets I started hydrating yesterday. 😊
While some apps predicted rain, others predicted snow.
Guess which ones where right?
My daughters decided to go for a walk and feed the outside cats for me. They are also bringing in the saw horses and old closet door we’ve been using as a table for the past year. We have so many tomatoes to pot up, we will need it inside for extra space to hold them all.
One of my daughters is wearing shorts out there. How Canadian of her! 😁😁
Some areas south of us are expected to get 20 – 35cm of snow. That’s about 8 – 14 inches.
