While doing my morning rounds, I made sure to check the tulips. Nothing has been showing up on the tulip cam, trying to get at them again. There are files of cats passing in front of the camera, and one of a skunk running along the lilac hedge, as if something had startled it, but that’s it. Nothing has been going after the tulips.
And yet, I found this.
It was on the ground, next to one of the tulips that got its flower bud chomped off, but not the leaves. The only signs of digging in the area were the old ones from before, which was likely a skunk digging for grubs in the leaf mulch. With how deep the girls had buried the bulbs, there should have been a fairly large hole if it had been freshly dug up. The bulb doesn’t even have dirt on it, or in its roots.
As far as I know, it wasn’t there before, though it’s possible it was covered in leaf mulch that got blown off, but… I don’t think so. When I’d seen that something was digging in the leaf mulch, I checked to see if the tulips were damaged, so I’d looked right in that spot. I expect I would have seen it then, if it had been somehow dug up then.
So I brought it inside, and it will be planted, once we’re sure of where we want to put it. The girls and I were thinking to put it in one of the blocks in the retaining wall that has nothing in it right now. That area is going to be draped in mosquito netting to protect it, once the netting comes in, so if it’s planted there, it will get protection from being eaten or dug up.
Still, I have no idea where this came from!
I’ve also been finding another mystery in the mornings.
For the past several mornings, I’ve been finding the rocks at one end of the path we made along the house, scattered like this. I put them back, and the next morning, they’re scattered again. Something has been digging among them. I suspect it has something to do with this being the only section of rocks that had some soil put over them, before I changed my mind about doing that the whole way down. My guess is that it’s the skunk, but there’s really nothing to show, one way or the other, what is doing it.
On the one hand, I’m glad whatever it is, is digging here and not in the garden beds nearby! On the other hand, those rocks are there because I found the concrete pad under the sun room was as thick as I thought it was, and they’re keeping the soil under the concrete from eroding out. The last thing I want is for a critter to start digging under there! The sun room is shifting enough, as it is. :-/
I did see the skunk again, this evening. I was just putting things away before going inside, when I heard a cat get startled out of the kibble house. When I looked, the skunk was in the kibble house, munching away. I made noise to scare it away, and it did start to leave, but it must have been very hungry, because it turned around and started heading quickly towards me, then jumped back into the kibble house to eat. I suspect we have a hungry mama skunk. Kibble is not good for them, though. Ah, well. It seems to have a peaceful relationship with the cats, at least. We need to get one more, smaller, hose to keep hooked up to the tap on that side of the house. Much safer to chase it away by spraying water than walking towards it, making noise!
Once again, our temperatures have lurched from one direction to the other! From days cold enough for the furnace to turn on, and overnight lows below freezing, we’re back to the heat. It’s past 7:30pm as I write this, and our temperature is still at 24C/75F. A week from now, we’re expected to hit 31C/88F.
Well, by then we should be transplanting our squash seedlings, so that will be good for them, at least!
This morning’s job was to direct sow our bush beans. I am so glad we picked up that extra hose. The mini-beds we made for them needed to be soaked, re-soaked, then soaked again, before I even planted the seeds. I can’t believe how quickly things have dried out already, though I suppose with the winds we’ve been having, I shouldn’t be surprised. You can even see that the pea trellises have been moved around by the winds! I even found one end of a cross piece had come loose after one particularly windy days. The bags may work to startle critters, but they also act like sails.
The yellow and green bean packages had 200 seeds each. With a 20’/6m double row, we still had seeds left over. The purple beans were packed by weight, and a 50g package was just enough for its double row.
Once planted, they all got watered, and watered again! Normally, I would have pre-soaked the beads, but these were inoculated seeds, and I figure soaking them first would have washed off the inoculant!
After the beans were done, we set up the sprinkler to start soaking down the rows for the corn and sunflowers. We left it running over one side for a few hours, then moved it to cover the other end. Much to my surprise, the sprinkler can cover all but 3 rows. There isn’t a lot of pressure, this far out!
Our afternoon project was to see what we could do about protecting our spinach beds. After scrounging in a little shed near the barn, we dragged out the last of some narrow old, salvaged boards. Many of them had several 3″ deck screws in them that had to be removed, first. There were 13 boards, and we ended up using 12 of them, because they were not all the same length.
The roll of chicken wire (or 1″ hex wire) we got was 25′ (7.6m) long and 4′ (1.2m) wide. We have three spinach beds we need to cover. While the beds themselves are about 3-4′ (about a meter) wide and roughly 15′ (just over 4.5m) long, the rows of spinach were, of course, less than that. So we were able to use the roll to cover 2 spinach beds. Well, mostly.
We stole a couple of hoops from the small beet bed by the garlic beds to hold the wire up in the middle. The sides are held in place with sticks, that have a bit of mesh hooked onto their tops, so they are helping hold that up, too. Once we get more hoops, we’ll be able to stop using the sticks to hold up the mesh, which will allow us to move the covers to harvest the spinach.
The edges of the chicken wire were sandwiched between boards that were screwed together. Because of the different lengths, we had to cobble them together. A couple ended up with small gaps between the ends of boards, but they were still secure. The covers don’t really leave much room to do a second sowing, though, which we could do any time now, if we wanted. I think I will skip it, and save the seeds to sow later in the summer for a fall crop.
Like everything else we’re doing this year, this is a temporary thing, so we don’t need to get too fancy. When we build our permanent, high raised beds, we will make protective covers that fit properly, and be properly framed and supported. Right now, neither one completely covers the rows of spinach, so the ends might still get nibbled at, but it should be fine. If we want, we can tie on brightly colored or metallic ribbons to flap in the wind and discourage critters.
I’ll have to make a trip to the local dollar store again and see if they’ve restocked on things like pinwheels. I’ll pick up more hula hoops, too. I figure a couple more rolls of the chicken wire would not be a bad idea. I think we still have enough of that wood in the basement that we can make one more cover for the third spinach bed. For the small beet bed, I’m hoping the mosquito netting we ordered will come in soon, but if not, we can use chicken wire.
While in the city, I also picked up 200’/60.9m of yellow rope to string around where the corn and sunflowers will be planted. If what I read about deer not having good depth perception, so having two shorter fences a few feet apart works as well as a high fence, is accurate, we should be able to string just one “fence” of the yellow rope around half the garden, since it’s already so close to the barbed wire perimeter fence. Since most of the other half will be edged with squash, which deer don’t like, we might not need to do much more than that. We shall see!
Now that the blocks for the corn and sunflowers have been soaked down, tomorrow’s job is to plant the corn, with radishes in between to help break up the hard soil, and direct sow the rest of the sunflowers. The transplants are not done hardening off yet, and all our transplanting will wait until after June 2, regardless of what the weather forecasts are right now! The forecasts change so often, I don’t really trust them beyond a couple of days, and, even then, they are frequently wrong for our area.
Once the seeds are sown, we can finally get back to working on the squash tunnel!
Today was one of those days that went all over the place! So this is probably going to be a very disjointed post! :-D
One of the first things I wanted to get done this morning was to call the RCMP, as advised by my lawyer, about the gunshots from our vandal’s property. For non-emergency calls like this, it first goes to a receptionist who then, if it seems warranted, starts a file (or adds notes to an existing file), then passes it on to a constable, who calls back later.
The challenge was to bring up my concerns about hearing the shots, while also making it clear that there was no crime that took place. The interesting thing is that, as I described a bit of about why it was a concern in this particular case, the receptionist asked, “is this about…” and gave the name of our vandal.
I had not mentioned his name, nor did I mention my own. Yet, she knew who I was talking about!
She might have looked up my phone number in their system while we were talking, but she later had to ask me what my name was, so… that’s probably not it. She did remember talking to me about our situation previously, which would have been at least 8 months ago.
After we talked for a while, she put me on hold to talk to someone else, then came back to me with a new file number, telling me that an officer would call me back later. Since we were going to the city later, I gave my cell phone, just in case.
I shouldn’t do that. Whenever there is a cell phone number available, that’s the first number that gets called!
Once I was done on the phone, I went to quickly do my morning rounds, only to have my pocket start ringing. The officer was calling me back already! I do have my phone set to use WiFi, and at first he could hear me just fine, but then my signal started breaking up. We managed to arrange for him to call the land line, and I got back into the house just as the phone started ringing! Thankfully, I made sure my husband had the phone before I headed outside, so he got it before it went to machine.
In the end, the call was pretty much what I expected. There is no cause for them to go over. They did check and our vandal’s firearms license is up to date, and there are no restrictions in our area in regards to firing a weapon on your own property. He did tell me that, if something like this happens again, to go ahead and call 911, even if I didn’t feel it was an emergency. They would pass me on to dispatch and it would go from there. He also assured me that, even though there clearly was no crime (and I made sure to say, normally I would have no issues hearing gunshots out here), it was a good idea to call, given our particular situation. If nothing else, there is now a file on record.
Now that I think about it, though, while I’ve certainly heard gunshots a few times since moving out here, I have never heard gunshots from our vandal’s property before, or even that direction.
So that’s taken care of, as much as possible right now.
After quickly finishing my morning rounds, my daughter and I then headed out to the city, with a quick stop at the post office, first. Much to my surprise, I found a letter from the Court of Queen’s Bench. I opened it before we continued on, and it turned out to be about the court date for the civil suit our vandal filed against me, in retaliation for applying for a restraining order against him. We had an in-person court date in July but, according to the letter, due to Schrodinger’s Virus, all in-person small claims matters scheduled between May 6 and September 6 were being rescheduled and being done through teleconference calls.
Court of Queen’s Bench is federal, not provincial. The dates seem rather telling.
Anyhow, our teleconference date is set for September 10 now. Since my restraining order is a provincial matter, it is not affected by this. However, from what I’m hearing right now, our provincial government has no intention of relaxing their choke hold on us. I fully expect our court date in July to get cancelled. I really hope I’m wrong.
My daughter and I then continued on to the city, with a brief stop at a gas station along the way to grab some food. Now that we have changed where we get our gas, we’ve started going to a place that not only has hot food available, but even a few tables to sit and eat at, if desired. They’ve got some of the best fried chicken and potato wedges around! :-D When we got there, I just parked and dashed in to get food. I walked in fine, but as I walked out, something went wrong and a metatarsal in one of my feet decided it didn’t like where it was and tried to escape.
That hurt. :-/
My daughter thought it was a great idea when I suggested that maybe we should keep my father’s walker in the van. Just in case. We do keep a collection of canes in the van, though, so at least I had that to fall back on.
Once in the city, we headed straight to the Costco, drove through the parking lot, saw the line up was even worse than yesterday, and kept on going. We went to the Superstore, instead. They had a line, too, but it was shorter and moving. My daughter reminded me to grab a cane, then when we were in line, she was able to get a shopping cart for me to lean on as we snaked our way through.
The down side of the change is that they don’t have flat carts. We did get most of what was on our list, but only half the amount of cat kibble we should have gotten, and a few other heavier or bulkier things got dropped. We’ll have to make another trip, later in the month. For the kibble, at least, we can go to the smaller city for some things, while other items can be gotten locally.
The price of beef has gotten insane. :-(
Even though we only went to the one place, we were both exhausted by the time we were done. My daughter dislikes shopping as much as I do! We find these trips more tiring than a day of hauling wheelbarrows full of soil. Plus, with the drive, I was having breathing issues again, and my daughter did the driving on the way home. I’m so glad she comes along, “one person per household” be damned. :-(
Still, it feels good to be stocked up again, even if some things will need to be topped up later.
Once we were at home, I had time to check the trail came files. Nothing triggered the tulip cam at all. I had plans to finally plant the beans today, and maybe start on the squash tunnel, but it was insanely windy. For all the rains we finally got, everything is all dried up again. In checking the garden beds, when I pushed my fingers into the soil, it’s dry all the way through. So this evening, wind or no, I went out to water.
I’m really happy with how great the garlic is doing!! Next year, we need to plant more. :-D
I set up the new hose we bought yesterday, and was able to reach everything that needed watering at the far end of the garden. Which was handy, because I hadn’t had a chance to refill the rain barrel we have out there, for the watering can. We want to get more of those. We’d rather use watering cans and warmer water, as the well water gets to incredibly cold.
Which reminds me. I looked up about the mulberry tree. There isn’t a lot of information out there, but I did find one site that proved useful. It turns out that mulberry trees tend to just drop their leaves when hit with frost, and grow back new ones. If our little mulberry had more time after being transplanted, it would have been better, but it may still actually survive. We shall see!
Meanwhile…
I found these tracks on one of the spinach beds. They were not there, this morning! The seedlings at the very end were nibbled on, too. There are no defined tracks in the soil, but I am inclined to think it was a deer. Partly due to the spacing of the tracks, and partly because we almost hit a deer this morning, while on the way to the post office! In this morning’s trail cam files at the gate, there was a deer making its way through the fence and hanging out in the driveway, too. We seem to have a lot of deer activity this year.
Tomorrow, we have to figure out how to set up the new chicken wire to protect our garden beds! Time to go scavenging in the barn and sheds for materials again.
I think that project just took priority over building squash arches!
Setting the trail cam on the saw horse did work; several files were captured.
First, the good news.
Nothing was eating the tulips last night.
The camera did catch a few critters, though. I took some screen caps from the videos.
There was only one night time file, and it looks like the first definitive sign of raccoons. The critter passed too close to the camera to be fully captured, and it just walked by. All I can say for sure is that the tail looks too fluffy to be one of our cats. It did not go any closer to the tulips.
We did get a couple of deer passing by. They showed no interest in the tulips, and both ended up running off towards the gate by the fire pit.
The final capture was this cheeky little robin hopping around.
Whatever critter has been eating our tulips didn’t show up! I’m okay with that. Hopefully, it will stay away and the remaining tulips will have a chance to bloom, and the chewed up ones will be able to at least grow new leaves.
We had a cold, wet night last night, and this morning, all of the outside cats where there to greet me.
Even the shy ones!
Ghost Baby, in the back, is the shiest of them all, still. We still don’t know if Ghost is a he or a she, but if it’s a she, she likely has babies somewhere.
Do you see how Nutmeg, in the foreground, is positioned, with his chest so low to the ground like that? Ginger does that all the time. It’s one of those mannerisms that I thought was due to the missing leg, but both brothers do it. I haven’t seen if Creamsicle Jr. does it, too; he’s more likely to move away from any people than maintain his behaviour with other cats.
As large as we made the kibble house, and with so many food bowls spread out inside, we still get some minor battles between the cats. Rosencrantz and Ghost Baby tend to not be able to eat until after the more aggressive cats, like Butterscotch and Rolando Moon, have moved on. The plan was to make a second, smaller, shelter for the water bowls in the winter. I am now thinking to match the size (if we can scrounge the materials), and split the food and water bowls between the two shelters. That should reduce feline fracases.
Once the critters were fed, I went to check on the tulips and switch out the memory card on the trail cam.
Yes, the tulip carnage continued.
More flower buds were missing, though it didn’t look like any more leaves were eaten away. I was very disappointed to see damage to this Bull’s Eye tulip. Of the 8 bulbs planted, three had come up, and then this fourth one finally emerged, way in the back. It looks like the damage done to it was from something digging next to it, though, not from something trying to eat it. The flower bulb is still intact, if somewhat the worse for wear, and only one leaf was torn right off.
After switching the memory card out on the trail cam still at the driveway, I made sure to check the rest of the garden beds. I saw no signs of frost this morning, though there could have been some during the night. I think we had rain, though, so that would have helped. I’m happy to say that I saw no signs of frost damage on anything.
Unfortunately, I did find other damage.
The Heritage variety of raspberries that I got for my daughter had been doing very well in their newly planted location. I guess they still are, except that something has started to eat them!! They will recover – so long as the munching does not continue.
We still have some 1″ wire mesh in the basement. It might be enough to put a barrier around each of these raspberries.
Interestingly, the old raspberry plants, on the other side of the garden, under the shade of a crab apple and chokecherry tree, show no sides of nibbling. They aren’t as healthy as the new plants, though, and are just barely managing to leaf out right now. In the fall, we should transplant them into a sunny location. For now, whatever critter ate the new raspberries seems uninterested in the old ones.
I also found this.
It looks like something walked right through a couple of our beds. I’ve seen tracks similar to this before, but those tracks were so small, it was likely a cat. These much larger tracks line up with each other across the two beds. There is nothing to show if they were made by hooves are large paws (like a dog or a coyote), but with the nibbled raspberries, it does seem more likely to have been a deer. Or we could be looking at two different animals. The angle of the tracks don’t go to or from the raspberries, but at an angle well aside from them.
*sigh*
Once inside, I checked the trail cam, and nothing at all triggered the camera facing the tulips. Aside from files with me checking the angles and adjusting it, there was one other file, and it got triggered by wind blown branches.
So I went back and moved the camera. It is now on the crab apple tree at the “corner” of where the tulips are. I tried a couple of different branches, so when I next check the files (which I will probably do later today, rather than wait until tomorrow), I can see if one works better than the other. The problem is, I think the camera is now too close. It may be covering just a small part of the tulip area, rather than the whole thing.
Meanwhile, as I was tightening the strap and adjusting the camera position, Creamsicle Jr. came by, walked up to a tulip plant that was still taller (having had just a flower chomped off, leaving the stalk and leaves), grabbed it with a paw, and started biting at the leaves!!! The little s***! Now, I don’t think the cats did the damage we’re finding, but it’s adding insult to injury for him to start chomping on the already damaged tulips!
The girls and I have been talking about what we can try to protect these. The problem is, there isn’t a lot available. I made a point of looking in garden centres, and have not been finding what I remember seeing just last year. I’ve seen some “deer fencing”, which is basically a stronger plastic mesh, but no netting. The closest I found were pop-up mesh covers for individual plants. Which would be fine if we were trying to protect just a couple of plants, but completely unusable – and insanely expensive – for our set up. In researching options. I’ve read that smaller birds can actually get tangled up in the bird netting, so I was looking for something finer. Unfortunately, there was nothing. I found that very odd, as this was something that used to be easy to find. In the end, we ordered a roll of mosquito netting, online, courtesy of my daughter. It’s a 10′ x 30′ roll, and we were going to try it over the beets, first. I think it would be fairly easy to set up on the hoops I put over the beet bed next to the carrots, and my daughters were thinking of using the T posts along the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden to support netting over the lettuces and beets planted there. If this works out, we’ll pick up more mosquito netting.
I also want to pick up more 1″ wire mesh, which is relatively cheap (at least I hope it’s still cheap!). I think that will work better for some of the beds. I’m thinking of getting some PVC pipe to use as hoops, too, though I’ve been looking for that for a couple of years now, and not finding the right size that will bend well. We might have to order that online. We’ll have to come up with something much cheaper to put around the corn and sunflower beds, though. I’ve read that deer don’t have good depth perception, so two low fences, a few feet apart, works as well as one tall fence. We might be able to get away with picking up more of that yellow rope and making a double “fence” around that far garden area. We can also tie flappy, spinny and shiny things to it, to keep the birds away, too.
I’ve been looking at ideas for protecting garden beds from insects, birds, etc. for some time, and in many ways, it has been very … perplexing. I suspect it has to do with the difference between countries. For example, I often see ways to make various structures by re-purposing “free” wood pallets. Where on earth are people getting free pallets? My daughters both worked at a major hardware store. Pallets were always returned to the company that supplied the product, to be used again. They did have “extra” pallets that customers could have – at a price, not for free. By the time pallets ended up at the back by the garbage bins, they were no longer usable. Not much left to salvage from those (we’ve grabbed some in the past and did what we could with them). No one just tosses out good pallets! At least, not that I have been able to find.
Then there are the PVC pipe projects. PVC is so cheap! You can make things for almost free!
Well, not really. I mean, PVC pipe is relatively inexpensive, compared to other things, but clearly our prices are much higher than whomever is writing articles about these projects I’ve found. Also, I’ve looked for the type of pipe used in the projects, and I’m not finding them. What I am finding is far too rigid to be used the way they are in the projects. Then there’s the electrical conduit. I’ve seen these used to make strong, lightweight frames for trellises. Again, I’m not finding them in local stores. The type I am finding is flexible, not rigid. I suppose we might find it in the city. Yes, I know; we could try ordering online and pick them up or something, but the few times I’ve tried that, what showed as available in a store on the website often turns out to not actually be in stock at the store. Plus, when buying something I’m not familiar with, I like to be able to actually see the product to make sure it will do, before I buy it. For my fellow yarn crafters, it’s like buying yarn online. It’s one thing to buy yarn you’re familiar with. Caron Simply Soft is Caron Simply Soft, wherever you get it, but when buying new type of yarn, it’s very much a touchy-feely thing. I recall a friend of mine who spent $200 on yarn intended for some charity projects, but when it came in, she found the texture to be so course and awful, she ended up spending another $200 on yarn at the store I was teaching at, at the time. For me, it makes no difference whether it’s yarn, or PVC pipe. I need to see and handle the product, first. I find ordering online to be a bit of a crap shoot for many things. Like when my daughter ordered a XXL hoodie, thinking it was be safe to order a much larger size than needed, only to get something labeled as XXL, but would barely have fit a child! Or the keyboard my husband bought for me that I ended up not being able to use.
By I digress, yet again!
We have to figure something out, to protect our garden beds from critters. We have so many, so spread out, however, it becomes difficult to find affordable, practical solutions! Particularly since so much of it is temporary. It will be much easier when we are ready to build our permanent accessible garden beds.
Until then, we do the best we can to reduce the carnage!
I woke up late this morning, and it was already getting hot by the time I headed out to finish in the garden. I still made sure to check my daughter’s tulips, after so many flower bulbs got eaten the other night.
At first, I was please; the rope I’d put around the front and side had worked. No new damage.
Then I looked further back.
The deer had just gone around the back, through the lilacs and caragana hedge. They didn’t just eat the flower buds, either, but the leaves as well.
My daughter was quite upset. It looks like all the ones with black flowers got eaten. We have no idea if the tulips will recover from having so much of their leaves eaten. We’re hoping they will still be able to grow more leaves, but so much has been eaten!
This evening, the girls added more rope around the area, and dug out some chicken wire that was among the junk stacked around the garden shed. You can’t see it in the photo, but it’s along the lilacs in the back. I still have some plastic spinners I’d picked up from the dollar store, then we raided my craft supplies for some Christmas bells. Those got strung onto twine. In some areas, there are short lengths hanging down. At the back of this photo, plus on the other side of the lilacs at a more open area covered by the chicken wire, we tied longer strings of bells.
Hopefully, this will keep the deer away from the rest of the tulips.
Of all the green things coming up that the deer are going after, why does it have to be my daughter’s flowers? :-(
I suspect the girls will not be so averse to my goal of hunting, anymore. Especially if it’s venison with a hint of tulip.
Today being Sunday, I normally avoid all unnecessary work. With the weather turning nice, it became a day to get back to hauling dirt, so we’ll have something to direct sow and transplant into, so that counts as necessary work! Tomorrow is supposed to get quite hot, so I wanted to get as much manual labour done today.
I had a couple of distractions.
One of them was the mock orange at the clothes line platform. I was starting to wonder if it had survived our deep freeze in February. We’ve been including it in the watering, and parts of it have started to leaf out, so I figured it would be a good time to prune it, now that I could actually see which parts were still alive.
I did accidentally snip one branch that had leaves, but otherwise, this is all of what got killed off this past winter.
A lot of little twigs and tips got snipped away, too. There’s not a lot left, but I know it will recover quite well. These are remarkably resilient plants!
It was also a nice enough day that the transplants could be set out to harden off again.
This is the first day of hardening off for all the Mongolian Giant sunflowers, and most of the Montana Morado corn. Some of the cups got left in the bin, as they either didn’t have anything sprouted in them, yet, or had only recent sprouts. I’ve been watering them in the bin from below, and I noticed many of the cups had roots coming through the drainage holes, so I put them in other cups to protect the roots while they were outside.
That done, it was time to start hauling soil.
I had company.
Nutmeg really wanted attention!
He and Ginger share many mannerisms. Ginger has a habit of hunching down and flopping a certain way that I just figured was because of the missing leg, but Nutmeg does it, too!
He’s such a cutie. :-)
This was the progress I made before I headed in. I couldn’t figure out why I was starting to feel kind of light headed, but then I realized I’d had only 4 pieces of toast for breakfast – and it was past 3pm!
You can see the corn block that had been done before the rains started, in the back. I’d finished a sunflower block, another corn block, and over half of a sunflower block, before heading in for some sustenance.
Not straight in, of course, because there’s always something to do first, right? :-D The seedlings went back into the sun room, and various garden beds got checked. It’s so nice to see so many seedlings, even if they are still really tiny!
After a couple of hours, I headed back outside. On my way to where I’d left the wheelbarrow by the garden soil, I paused to check on my daughter’s tulips. They have not opened, yet, but we can now see the colours of petals beginning to show in most of them.
Something didn’t seem right, though. In fact, something seemed very wrong.
Were there fewer flower buds?
Yes, indeed! Among the tulips closest to the edge, the flower stalks were cleanly snipped, and the flower buds missing.
It seems the deer were enjoying some appetizers!
I am not impressed. I didn’t expect them to squeeze between the plum and apple trees to get at these.
I left them for the time being, and continued working on the corn and sunflower blocks.
One of the down sides of setting up these beds in the area we intend to plant food trees later on, is that they are very close to the road, and today was a high traffic day. Thankfully, with all the rain we’ve had, I didn’t have the clouds of dust blowing in that we usually do. At least that won’t be as much of a problem for long, as the lilac hedge is leafing out quite nicely. It does a great job of stopping the dust cloud. One of the ATVs that passed by turned out to be our vandal, studiously and resolutely pretending not to see me. ;-) Which is fine. At least he’s stopped giving me the finger as he goes by.
During one of my trips back to the pile of soil, I saw him heading back, then could hear him slow down and finally stop on the road. I decided to see why, and found that he’d crossed paths with someone and they both stopped to talk on the road. So I continued with getting the load of soil, then heading back to the last of the corn blocks I was working on. I could hear the vehicles part ways, and our vandal’s ATV driving onto his property. As I was placing the soil, I could hear the ATV getting closer again, though clearly not on the road. Eventually, I heard it stop and the engine was shut off.
Then I started hearing gun shots.
By the 4th shot, I decided it was time to go inside. I have no idea what direction he was shooting in, but I wasn’t going to take chances with a stray bullet. It wasn’t a high powered rifle he was using; it was likely just a .22 I had only a row and a half left to do, but that can wait until tomorrow!
It was shortly after 8pm when I went inside, but I did head back out again about 10 minutes later. I dug out what was left of the yellow rope we found while cleaning up and tied it around some trees by the tulips.
It might be a bit too high, but I hope it will still discourage the deer from going under the bright yellow thing. We can hand dangly things off of it, to further discourage the deer.
As you can see by the spots of colour, there are still quite a few tulip buds. Thankfully, none of the Bull’s Eye tulips – the little ones in the foreground – were harmed. I counted the other ones, and all 54 bulbs have come up, but only half of the Bull’s Eye tulips (I found a fourth one had emerged, though it’s not visible in the above photo).
While I was doing this, I heard our vandal’s ATV start up again, so I headed over to where I might be able to see something. I did eventually see him off in the distance in his field. I can’t imagine what was out there that he would be shooting at. Normally, I would guess a skunk or some other potentially troublesome creature small enough that a .22 would be useful, but that would be an issue closer to his house or outbuildings, none of which we can see from our place. Out in the field like that, I might expect a bear, but if that were so, I would have expected to hear a higher caliber rifle!
Ah, well. Gun shots in the country are not all that unusual. The only reason it was a concern is because I had no way of knowing what direction he was firing, and I would not expect him to care where his bullets might end up, if he missed hit his target, whatever that may have been.
So that was it for my garden work today. Tomorrow, I’ll finish those last rows in the last corn block.
Oh, my goodness. I just checked the weather. The predicted high for tomorrow has been increased. We’re now expected to hit 27C/81F tomorrow afternoon! I’ll have to make sure I finish up much earlier in the day. The expected low tomorrow is 15C/59F. then temperatures are expected to drop right down again. We’ll have overnight lows just above, or at, freezing for three nights. After that, overnight lows are expected to range between 11C and 14C (52 – 57F) and stay in that range, well into June. Theoretically, that means we can start transplanting things outdoors by the 28th.
Which is what I did last year, when we got a frost on June 2. So while we will do the direct sowing we have left to do, the transplants will wait a bit longer!
Once I’m done with the corn and sunflower blocks, we will be done with all the areas that will be direct sown into. The next job is to work on the bed the winter squash, melons and gourds will go, since we will have to dig post holes for the squash tunnel we’ll be building to support them. Once that’s built, it’s back to hauling soil for the beds all the transplants will be going into.
I forgot to take a picture of the pile of soil. It is much depleted! I suspect we will be finishing it off and bringing soil in from the pile in the outer yard, by the time we’re doing the last of the beds.
The much needed rain we are having right now has been accompanied by some pretty chill temperatures! The furnace even turned on, this morning. As I write this, my desktop weather app tells me we are at 4C/39F, but it feels like -1C/30F. But then, it also says we’re raining right now, and we’re not. As I thought might happen, the weather system is passing us by to the south, and some areas are getting storm conditions, but we’re just getting the edges of it.
A couple of days ago, our neighboring farm was rushing to get their crops planted. One of my daughters and I had gone out past midnight to investigate the smell of smoke. There are several wildfires burning in our province, most under control, but none nearby, yet we were still getting smoke! While out, I noticed lights through the trees that looked like vehicles in the rented field beyond the barn, so we went to check it out. It turned out to be farm equipment in the next property over, where they had worked their way close to the property line. Checking the trail cams the next day, I saw the farm equipment going past our driveway after 2am! They got their seed sowed, just in time for the rain.
Looking over all the garden beds this morning, everything is looking fine so far. Even if we dipped low enough to get frost, the things we have planted won’t need to be covered. Which is good, because we don’t have anything suitable to cover the beds we have. Meanwhile, the seedlings in the sun room remain in the sun room. That will set back the hardening off process a bit, unfortunately. Ah, well. It is what it is!
The work outdoors has had to take a pause. The girls did as much as they could, but it was just too cold and wet to continue building more beds for the corn and sunflowers, nor add to the pea trellis. That, at least, we still have plenty of time for.
The blocks for corn will all have 5 twenty foot rows, while the sunflower blocks will have 3 twenty foot rows in them – though we might not have enough sunflowers to fill the blocks. At least not of the purple ones. If the half we started indoors still haven’t germinated in such ideal conditions, I don’t hold much hope that the direct sown half will germinate, either. :-(
With today’s weather, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to get more progress in building beds, but hopefully we’ll be able to get more done over the next couple of days. I don’t mind the delay. We need this rain so much. For all the watering we’ve been doing, it can’t compare to the deep soak that several days of rain can do! Even with the chillier temperatures, I think what we’ve got sprouting right now is going to thrive for it.
Not at all like the mischievous bugger I had to stop from trying to attack one of the trunks of the big jade tree in the living room! :-D
I did very quick rounds this morning, since I had to head out early, but I did manage to check on the mulberry tree.
It clearly has handled being transplanted just fine!
It’s also doing very well with the cooler, wet weather we’re having right now.
I haven’t been able to get much done for the past couple of days, and not because of the weather.
Yesterday, I called the court office to make sure today’s court date was still on. As expected, with the long weekend, our provincial government increased restrictions even more than they did before Mother’s day. They don’t come into effect until midnight tonight, though, so…
Well, I could only leave a message, as there was no answer. I had to go to my mother’s, on a related matter, so I quickly headed out in the afternoon. Of course, that’s when I got a call back, but not with an answer to my question. I called back, left another message, but never heard from them by the end of the day.
Thankfully, my daughters were able to continue working on things in the garden while I waited for the call. There’s one area ready for one corn variety, then they began working on a trellis for the peas. The plan was to do more clean up in the spruce grove, and use the poplars we’re cutting down to make an sort of A frame on the existing supports, but we haven’t been able to work in that area at all, lately. So they decided to use what we’ve got now and made pegs to hold the twine we were going to attach to the frame, instead. They didn’t get to finish it before they had to come in as the temperature dropped, but it’ll be a while before the peas will be big enough to need the support. I didn’t get any photos yet.
I headed out to the courthouse this morning, leaving early enough to get some fuel and still have time for delays, like road construction (there was some, but just a short stretch) and meet with my brother, who booked the morning off work so he could be with me. We deliberately set a time to meet an hour before court was supposed to start. Just in case.
When we got there, I saw security guards, so that was hopeful. From previously visits to the building, there were security guards only when court was in session.
Well, not this time. It turned out they were there for the court office! The first guard we spoke thought that court had gone virtual, so he went into the office and talked to someone for us, then came back with a number for the crown office, in the bigger city, for us to call. While we were still talking to him, the woman he spoke to came out with a printout for him, and it said everything was delayed until June 18, because of the increased restrictions.
So my brother and I went to his car and I called the crown, only to be told they knew nothing about any virtual court dates; that would be with lawyers only, and the court office of the city we were in to schedule. She was quite frustrated when we told her we were just at the court office, and they told us to call the crown!
We went back to the court office. I wasn’t allowed to go in until I emptied my pockets and they scanned me with a metal detector, while I got the usual covid questions. I did get asked about my Mingle Mask, but when I said I was medically exempt, they were fine with it. My brother had to quickly dash back to his car while I went in (only one person allowed into the court office at a time, anyhow). When I asked about the virtual court session, she told me only lawyers could call in to those (?!?!?!), but that they weren’t doing restraining orders, anyhow. After we talked for a bit, she got my name and the name of our vandal to look up our file. She remembered talking to someone about it and asked if I’d called a couple of weeks ago. I had not. I called yesterday. It had to have been our vandal. Or, more likely, his wife. My voice may be low, but not low enough to be mistaken for our vandal! She then went to look things up while I went to wait in the lobby.
Shortly after, my brother got back and, even though we were only going to wait in the lobby, the security guards still had to scan him, and we both got our temperature checked on our wrists.
When the woman came out again, she told me she’d got through to our vandal’s lawyer, and he agreed to a court date of July 9 – if the courts are open then.
Our vandal’s vindictive civil suit against us is scheduled for July 12.
*sigh*
I do, however, now have the name and phone number for our vandal’s lawyer – something I should have had long ago, but it’s not like anything it working the way it’s supposed to right now. The worst of this is that this is for a retraining order. It’s a safety issue for us, and it just keeps getting delayed. This is now the fifth time!
She said that, if I chose to, I could call the lawyer myself and potentially work something out privately and bypass the courts completely.
Well, I suppose that’s an option, but I really don’t think there’s anything our vandal would agree to that didn’t involve completely dropping the whole thing. Considering that he’s still calling my mother with his bizarre rants about how we’re all laughing at him, his mental state is clearly a concern.
So that was another wasted morning – and another day my brother booked off work that was wasted, too. At least we were finished early enough that he could still make a meeting.
*sigh*
I made sure to call my mother before I headed home, because I knew she’s be concerned. As you can imagine, she wasn’t happy, either, but is having a hard time understanding why the court office isn’t calling us to let us know about the cancellations. It’s almost as if she thinks ours is the only case they’ve got, or that there are very few of them. Meanwhile, they probably had a couple dozen files or more, just on this morning’s docket, all cancelled. The extra frustration is that they DO call the lawyers (more likely just their firms, really), so there’s a sort of two tier justice system. People who can afford lawyers (or are willing to go into debt for one) and those who can’t. Though to be honest, it’s always been like that, so nothing’s really changed, there.
Once I got home, I contacted my LegalShield firm. That membership has more than paid for itself! It’s been so long, the file was actually closed, but it was reopened, and the lawyer assigned to my file will call me. Given that today is the Friday before a long weekend, I don’t expect to hear from him until Tuesday. It’s possible our membership will cover some action between our lawyer and our vandal’s.
I also looked up our vandal’s lawyer. There is a Canadian website that lists all lawyers, and I found his profile – with no photo, and a different phone number from what I have. It listed him as “in good standing” and included the name of a firm. I looked up the firm, which was not linked from the profile, which turns out to specialize in criminal defense. This lawyer was not listed on their website. It’s not even a matter of there being more than one person with the same name. The guy has a somewhat unique surname, and only one in Canada showed up in my search. This is also not the same lawyer or firm our vandal has worked with before. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to drop him from their case load. Still, it all comes across as very strange.
So now I wait for a call back from my lawyer. We’re also somewhat stuck indoors today. We’re getting actual rain right now. From the weather radar, the worst of the weather will be hitting the southern regions of our province, but it’s big enough that we’re getting at least some much needed precipitation. We might even get some of the storms they’re predicting to happen overnight, though I doubt it. What has been happening, though, is repeated loss of our internet. As I am writing this paragraph, we have no internet connection at all. Again. Hopefully, we’ll get enough of a connection that I can publish this, soon!
Traditionally, a lot of people put their gardens in on the May long weekend, but from the looks of the weather this year, few people will. Particularly those living closer to the Rockies, where they have been getting snow! From the zone 3 gardening groups I’m on, quite a few people had taken the chance and started transplanting outdoors, and are now struggling to save their gardens. Thankfully, everything we’ve planted so far is frost hardy. They should be okay, even without being covered. Hardning off our transplants is getting delayed, though I can at least open the inner door to the sun room. Between the screened window of the outer door, and the ceiling fan, the seedlings will get exposed to differing temperatures and some wind. Rotating the bin the purple corn and giant sunflower seedlings are in seems to have made a difference, too. The sunflowers that were looking all floppy and leggy, yesterday, are now standing tall under the lights. That’s encouraging. Now, if only the purple sunflowers would start germinating!!!
Oh, our internet is back! Time to see if I can publish this before the signal is lost again…
Wow, what a difference a day makes! After yesterday’s heat, our 9C/48F (feels like 5C/41F) is a welcome, if slightly chilly, reprieve. Welcome especially for the rain we got last night! I didn’t have to do any watering this morning!
These are the purple pea seedlings. Definitely not a high germination rate, but it’s possible more will sprout yet. With these, the entire packet was planted, but with the others, we still have lots left. If there are still lots of gaps left in a week, we can successive sow more.
The forecasts have, of course, changed again. We’re supposed to stay wetter and cooler for the next while, and next week, there’s even an overnight low of -1C/30F predicted. But just on the app on my phone. The weather app on my desktop still predicts a low of 5C/41F for that day. We shall see.
It was cool enough that I did not plant the beans this morning. It will wait till later in the day.
The Saskatoon bushes are in full bloom right now! I haven’t seen a lot of pollinators yet, but I hope we’ll have lots of berries this year.
It’s too cool and blustery to more our transplants outside. I want to harden them off, not kill them! The inner door to the sun room has been left open, though, and the window is open in the outer door, so that will cool the sun room down and, along with the ceiling fan, allow for more air circulation.
I rotated the bin the sunflowers and purple corn are in, and adjusted the lights above them to a higher level. I don’t know what to think of the sunflowers. They look really leggy, but these are also a giant variety of sunflower, so this might actually be normal for them.
The corn next to them is doing quite well. Here are the rest of them…
There are still 10 cups that have no germination yet. We are still seeing new seedling popping up, though, so they may still come up. They really responded well after I found a way to put the aquarium lights above them.
The purple sunflowers still have zero germination. These are the ones that were planted in the tray of Jiffy pellets. I don’t know what to make of that. Especially with how quickly the Mongolian Giants germinated. At least the other seedlings are doing well, overall, and more of the squash and melon seedlings are slowly emerging. We should have a decent amount to transplant next month!
