As I write this, we have warmed up to -26C/-14.8F, with a wind chill of -30C/-22F It’ll keep warming up for the next couple of days, and tomorrow – Christmas Day – is now expected to reach a balmy -5C/23F!
When I headed out this morning to tend the critters (I have been skipping most of my rounds outside right now!), I was surprised to find no kitties in the cat house, though a couple were outside. I know they had been in the shelter last night, as I went out to give them a treat. We set our turkey to brine overnight, and I cut up the organs, neck and excess skin as a treat for them. All of which was frozen solid. It doesn’t look like any of the cats braved the cold for the treat at all! In fact, most of the kibble was untouched. I do put some just inside the door of the cat house, and most of that was gone, but I think it’s just too cold. Even dry kibble freezes and can be harder to eat, I think.
As I was putting out fresh warm water and topping up the kibble with some that wasn’t frozen, I could hear a plaintive meowing. I spotted Nosy, out by the storage house, tucked under a lilac bush. He is normally a quiet kitty, but this morning, he was just looking at me pathetically and complaining.
So, I shoveled a path for him.
There was already a slight path in the snow, showing where they had been leaping through the snow to get to and from the shelters. They were very happy to not have to do that anymore! You can see that Nosy immediately took advantage of the situation to get to the food, no longer complaining. :-) Even Ginger was happy for the path. :-D
There were plenty of deer tracks in the snow around the house, including here, where you can see they were trying to get at the ornamental apples. These apples are smaller than cherries, but food is food! The snow at the feeding station was well trampled and dug up, as both deer and birds tried to get at the buried feed.
Now that the critters are fed, it’s time to get to work for our non-traditional Wigilia feast tonight.
Just in case I don’t get a chance to post tomorrow, I will take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. May you all be warm and cozy, and your days filled with joy and blessings. May the new year bring you peace, good health and abundance!
Our first blizzard of the season has passed us by. The weather system is still going, though. On the weather radar, I can see that a swath of the US, Ontario and Quebec are being hit as the storm makes its way to the East coast.
As I write this, we are at -22C/-7.6F, with a wind chill of -36C/-32.8F (I usually round the Fahrenheit down, but decided to include the decimals today. :-D ) Our high of the day is supposed to reach -19C/-2.2F with a wind chill of -30C/-22F Tomorrow is supposed to be a couple of degrees colder.
Then on Christmas day, we’re supposed to reach a high of -9C/15.8F with a wind chill of -14C/6.8F We’ll have these mild temperatures for a couple of days, then it’s supposed to drop around the -20C’s for a couple of days, before going back to mild temperatures in time for the new year.
It’s going to feel like spring.
The girls did some shoveling yesterday, so things wouldn’t accumulate too much as it continued to snow.
I was seeing this on the live feed from the security camera last night.
The storm came in from the west, but it was swirling so much, the winds in the image are actually coming from the east!
When one of my daughters had to take the bag of cat litter they cleaned out last night to the bin we have for it outside, she had to push the door open through a snow drift.
You can see signs of that, below.
This is how it was this morning.
You can almost see the path the girls shoveled down the sidewalk! :-D
They also shoveled in front of the cat shelters.
Do you see those icicles hanging from the cat house roof? You know what that means?
It’s warm in there! Warm enough to melt the snow from underneath.
I’m so glad that aquarium bulb is working out as a heater! It’s not enough to warm it up too much, either; too warm, and it will affect their ability to acclimatize to the winter and put them more at risk from the cold.
Some snow did get into the kibble house, unfortunately. We’ll have to clean that out later, when we’re doing more shoveling. This morning, I just did the minimum I needed to do to feed the critters.
The other water bowls were completely buried, but the heated water bowl was doing just fine!
You can see tracks in the background, between the two shelters. Those led to the storage house, so we know that some cats are still sheltering under there, too.
Once I cleared enough snow to give the cats fresh food and water, I continued clearing a path to the feeding station, where the smaller bird feeder is hanging. That will do for now. Eventually, we will need to dig paths to the compost pile, down the sidewalk and to the electricity meter, and to the garage. The girls had cleared all three doors of the garage, including where the snow blower is stored. I can see on the security camera that it isn’t completely filled it again. :-D
I was going to take pictures of the shoveling I did this morning, but I just wanted to get back inside! Plus, my glasses were frosted over and I couldn’t see. :-D
Aside from the paths, we will need to clear the driveway to the road, of course, but we will also need to clear into the yard, for when we need to drive up to the house. That has to include space for a turning radius. Plus, we will need to make paths around the house, so we can reach the septic tank, if needed, and it would be good to have a path to the fire pit, too. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take the big snow blower in to see why it won’t start and get it fixed. So all we’ve got is the little electric one. We do also have an “electric shovel” that my dad used to use. We used it our first winter here. So we won’t have to do all of it by hand, at least!
All that clearing does not have to be done right away. We are well stocked and don’t have to go anywhere, so it can wait until it warms up a bit.
The last couple of winters, our first blizzards were in October, so this one was very late in the season. It may be a lot more snow than we’ve had so far, but it’s actually not too bad. We still only got hit by the edges of the storm. The more severe parts of the storm moved across the Canada/US border, so the south of the provinces all got hit a lot harder. We are doing pretty good where we are. I’m also happy to have more snow in general. Having this stored water will be essential in the spring, for gardens and fields. Lots of snow with a nice, gradual spring melt, would be ideal conditions for planting in the spring, whether it’s farmers’ crops or garden beds. Our first two summers here were drought conditions. Last year, we had a wet spring, followed by a hot, dry summer, and that wet spring was enough to keep crops going through the heat later on.
We shall see what the rest of the season brings us. I’ve seen predictions for both severe cold and mild temperatures for this winter. So far, it’s looking like the mild prediction is the one that’s panning out.
Until then, we’ll enjoy our Christmas while snowed in, all warm and cozy!
Including the outside kitties. :-) Relatively speaking!
I hope anyone reading this that got hit by this storm, too, is also safe, warm and well!
If all had gone to plan for today, I would be just arriving at my mother’s right now, to help her with her grocery shopping.
This morning, things were looking just fine out.
Some of the cats still didn’t want to go out in the relatively warm temperatures! :-D
Switching out the memory card on the new camera was a problem this morning. I had my little bowl under it and pushed the micro SD card in to unlatch it, but it didn’t pop out. I tried several times, eventually getting it looser, but I still couldn’t get the card out. It has a little ridge at the end for taking it out of card reader adapter, but even pulling on that with a fingernail was not getting it loose. It did eventually come out, dropped into the waiting bowl I was holding under it…
Then bounced out, and fell into the snow.
*sigh*
I put the replacement card in, then went hunting. Thankfully, the snow was really soft under the camera, and I could see a little slot in the snow were the memory card sliced through. I scooped a handful around where it fell, but still couldn’t find it. The snow was so soft, it fell even deeper! So I had to very carefully dig around in the snow, and I did find it.
I then had to make sure it got good and dry before using it!
I also have to come up with something better to catch the memory card, that I can also fit in my pocket. Ideally, I’d have a little tray attached to the post, under the camera. Figuring out how to rig one of those up would probably be better.
It’s a good thing we’re not actually trying to hide the camera or anything like that! LOL
There has got to be a better way to do this, though. :-/
When I finally tried to upload the files, however, I realized I’d forgotten something important.
I hadn’t formatted the second card. There was nothing on it.
When setting up the camera with the first card, I was able to format it right in the trail cam. When I switched cards yesterday, I wasn’t able to get the screen working (likely due to the cold), and I forgot completely about it needing to be formatted before use.
So there’s a day or recordings, lost! I even saw our vandal going by on his quad, in files on the other camera, turning around near our driveway. It did look like he was just turning around, not stopping or doing anything nefarious, but I really would have liked to have had the different view of him.
We shall see how things work tomorrow.
That’s if I switch out the cards tomorrow. I might skip a day, with the weather we’re having right now.
On seeing that it looked like the storm was actually going to hit us, and fairly soon, I called my mother to see if she was up to doing her shopping earlier. She was, thankfully. She had other places she wanted to go to as well, so we picked up the groceries last. Unfortunately, there was a line up outside the store, which she had never seen before! With the restrictions on how many people can be in the store, they had someone outside (poor kid was NOT dressed for the weather!), counting people. He was a sweetheart and got a cart for me that I could bring to my mother so she could use it as a walker. Thankfully, the line was moving fast, so my 89 yr old mother with her damaged knee didn’t have to stand outside in the cold for very long!
I’m rather incensed about that. Not only have there been no cases of Covid traced to retail outlets in our province, there are none at all in her town.
The storm reached her town while we were in the grocery store. I was able to bring her groceries to her apartment, at least (her building is locked down, but it turns out they do allow deliveries). I wasn’t able to stay and put her groceries away for her, like I usually do. I didn’t want to get her in trouble with the abusive caretakers. Things didn’t look too bad in town, but once I reached the highway, I could see the storm had reached town. I actually drove out of it on the way home, but in the last couple of miles to the farm, I could actually see the storm coming in from the west. Not longer after I got home, my mother phoned to say how glad she was that we did her shopping earlier, because it was really blowing hard around her building! By then, we were getting fairly heavy snow, but not the winds. As I write this, the snow has actually let up a bit. The south of the province is getting the blizzard warnings. It’s a large system, but we may be far enough north to get just the edges of it.
The good thing is, we are well stocked and, now that my mother is also well stocked, we don’t have to go anywhere for some time. We could probably hunker down until after New Year’s, if we needed to. Not that I expect to need to. The storm should pass by tomorrow, and we’re supposed to get a couple of cold days, and then its supposed to get mild again. And by “mild”, I mean around the -10C/14F range.
About the only thing that is going to be an issue is our internet connection. Which we just lost, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to publish this post! Oh, it’s back again!
Better publish this while I can! My apologies for any typos I’ve missed. :-D
I was quite looking forward to seeing how the new camera worked after it’s first night. We got a few centimeters of snow last night, and it was blowing quite a bit – I had 400 images of snow from the garage camera in my email this morning, and I’d already deleted about 300 before going to bed! So I did have some concerns that I’d have hundreds of stills and video of snow.
I did see one potential problem before even opening it. The camera is water tight, but snow accumulated on the top. Even brushing it off, it does mean moisture can potentially get into the camera when it’s opened. That is one benefit the old cameras, with their bottom latch, had over the side swing design.
I brought along a small, disposable bowl as a safety catcher for the micro SD card. I’m glad I had it! I was able to prep the new card from it’s little case, so I could quickly and easily switch cards, and have it waiting in the bowl. The card in the camera was easy enough to get out – it just needs to be pushed in and it will unlatch, as is typical. I then let it fall into the bowl rather than try and pull it out with my fingers. There is not a lot of space for fingers to grab the card. I do like the micro SD, but this is another thing that I would consider as better with the older cameras, because I am switching cards out daily.
As I suspected, putting the new card in is going to be an issue. It needs to be pushed in far enough to latch, but getting it to that point is not as easy. Just using a thumb for finger isn’t good enough. It has to be pressed in with a fingernail. Awkward to do while holding a bowl, and the camera itself wiggles. Until it catches, the memory card is pretty loose, and it would be way too easy for it to fall out – and it that little thing falls into the snow, the chances of finding it are very low! It would be much better if the slot were on the side, instead of the bottom.
Once it was in, I tried to check the preview screen, as it was just black. It doesn’t “wake up” when the memory card is taken out, like the old camera’s did. I put it on set-up and the screen came live, but it didn’t even show the little start-up image. The screen was basically white, with a greyish bar across. I hit the menu button, and I could see text trying to show up in the grey area, but nothing readable. I figure the screen was not handling the cold very well.
Which did not bode well.
Once I started uploading files to the computer, however, I was encouraged. It’s set to take 3 still images, then a 10 second video, which means 4 files for every time the motion sensor gets triggered. There were a lot more files than just me fiddling with the set up.
I have it set to maximum quality for both stills and video, and I must say, I was really impressed! Here is the second of the three still shots it took of my brother’s dog, coming to visit.
The files are so large, I reduced this image to 25% of original, just to keep the file size down!
It was rather jarring to see such high quality images of my own face as I fiddled with the camera position. It turns out I make some rather strange expressions while concentrating… :-D
With the old camera, the gate barely fit in the frame, so this wide angle is awesome. More importantly, the motion sensor has a wider range, too. It caught one of the cats going by at the far end of the gate. With the old camera, it wouldn’t have even been in frame, never mind picked up by the motion sensor!
Also, I love the information bar across the bottom. It even includes temperature! Which was funny to watch as I went through the files. It started at 14C, still warm from the house. By the last file, it was at -17C!
It’s also much more readable. The old camera included time, date, file number and moon phase icon, all crammed into the bottom right of the image.
The processing speed on this is much faster. With the old cameras, when set to video, there is a delay between when the motion sensor is triggered and when it starts recording video. For, say, a vehicle driving by at normal speeds, that would leave me with either the very tail end of the vehicle, or nothing but a cloud of dust or snow, settling on the road. When set to still shots, it’s faster, but not by much.
This thing is fast enough that it can get the burst of 3 stills at the beginning, and the vehicle is still picked up in the short video. And not just the tail end, either. I’m very impressed.
As for night shots, it also seems to be smart enough to know not to turn on for snow! The other trail cam had a couple of videos triggered by snow. The new camera had none at all. There was one series of files taken when it was dark enough for the infrared flash, triggered by a vehicle, and that was the closest thing to night shots we got.
I am really happy with this camera so far! We shall see how it handles the upcoming weather, though. A storm is predicted to hit us tomorrow, and by Wednesday, we’re supposed to get 30-45cm (11 – 17 inches) of snow! January and February are our coldest months, so that’s when it’s really going to be tested.
At this point, however, my husband and I are already talking about getting more of these. They are inexpensive, and it would be really good to have cameras in other areas of concern.
I had actually checked the tracking status last night, and was surprised to see it listed as delivered.
In the city.
It wasn’t visible from the security camera live feed, because…
… camouflage! :-D
At least the UPS driver found us! :-D Checking the trail cam video later, I saw him pull in, dash out the side of the van, slide the box under the gate, and dash off again.
So… among our projects for the summer is to build a person gate on the side of the main gate, and set up a box for deliveries. :-)
This is our new trail camera, to replace the one that’s gone funky and isn’t recording anything. It’s still trying to work – on some of the night videos on the other camera, I could see that the infrared flash was triggered, but there was nothing on the disk. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
The new camera is up now, and I’ll be doing an unboxing post, next. :-)
That -12C (10F) isn’t too bad. It’s the -21C (-5F) wind chill!
Actually, I’m pretty sure that in our yard, the wind chill is more severe than that!
The amazing thing is that we are supposed to reach 0C (32F) by this evening.
The winds are driving into our yard from the south/southeast. One thing we have noticed since moving here is that it’s those south winds that are the worst! When it comes time to plant more shelter belt trees, that is where we will need to focus on.
With the cat house and kibble house, the winds are driving right into the active areas. There isn’t much we can do about it. Even shifting the kibble house to more of a 90 degree angle with the cat house, wouldn’t do much with these winds. The good thing is, when my brother built the shelter for his dogs, he added on that “porch”, and the entry has two layers of carpet strips. Without those strips, the wind would be blowing straight into the opening, even with the kibble house sheltering it more. Any wind that does get in is going into the “porch” area, and not affecting the main part of the shelter very much, so the kitties are still cozy inside.
The kibble house is working out very well, though. The inside is sheltered from the wind almost completely, so the cats can eat in peace. Even the gap under the kibble house is quite sheltered. The sheet of insulation I put under there (the photo is from when that was done; it was too cold to take photos this morning!) actually blocks spaces where the wind would be getting in from the south, since it fits under the support pieces.
The water bowls are not sheltered, though. The heated bowl near the entrance – which had ice forming across the top, again! – has some shelter, but the others along the side of the cat house are getting the full brunt of the wind.
I think, next year, we should build another small shelter for the non-heated water bowls. Depending on how it’s positioned, it can act as a wind break, while still allowing sunlight to reach the one window of the cat house they love to sit in so much! :-)
Amazingly, I still had cats following me around while I was switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. Poor Potato Beetle was shivering when I picked him up and carried him back to the house. The silly boy had been up on the roof, earlier. No shelter up there!
I am so glad we don’t need to go anywhere today.
Doing bread baking and laundry sounds really good right now! :-D
Hmmm. Our internet is cutting in and out like crazy today, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to post this right away!
Today, our first batch of seeds from Veseys came in. Yay! There are more that will be shipped later, but even so, that little box was just jam packed! You can read about all that we ordered, and why we chose what we did, here (link will open in new tab).
This is what we got in today.
First, the wildflower mixes. These are both for planting in the fall, so we will have the summer to prepare the locations we intend to plant them in. The Western mix is intended for outside the yard, between the fence and the road, to attract pollinators. We have not yet decided exactly where the Alertnative Lawn mix will go, other than well away from the house. My husband is allergic to bee stings, so anything like these needs to be planted away from any doors, the path towards the garage, and the firepit.
Spinach is among the items we will have to ensure are protected from deer. In talking about it, the girls and I are leaning towards building simple box frames with wire mesh that will fit over the beds.
Here are 2 of the 3 varieties of beans we orders; a yellow variety will be shipped later, plus the peas. The collection I’d intended to order for peas suddenly went out of stock, so I ordered these as an alternative, and I’m still seriously considering ordering another variety or two. I like peas more than I like beans! :-D
The girls and I are looking into various trellis designs for these. Yes, I know, bush beans aren’t supposed to need them, but we are looking to grow as many things vertically as we can.
We already have 2 varieties of corn from Baker Creek Rare Seeds, so we might not actually plant these at all this year. It all depends on how well we are able to prepare growing spaces. The Rare Seeds varieties are priority, and we have to keep in mind that we don’t want them to cross pollinate.
The pelleted seeds will be much easier to plant!
We now have 4 varieties of carrots, and I will happily plant them all. Carrots are a favorite vegetable in our household. The challenge will be creating the soft, deep soil they need. We have space to create one more bed in the soft soil where the wood pile used to be, and that’s it. Our topsoil is shallow, and we have a lot of rocks. My mother always successfully grew carrots in the old garden bed area, but I don’t think the soil has been amended since my parents sold off the cows and retired from farming. Raised beds would be the solution. At this point, the girls and I are thinking we’re going to have to order in a dump truck load of garden soil. We have not yet decided where we will build permanent raised beds, so any beds we do build this year will likely be temporary.
At least we don’t have to worry about the deer going after the carrots.
Three of the 4 varieties of onions are in; the 4th variety are sets that will be shipped at planting time in the spring. I’m hoping to plant these in the old kitchen garden, near the house.
The beets are intended for the additional bed we’ll be preparing next to where the garlic is currently planted, where the old wood pile used to be. My daughters had wanted to get another variety as well, but they were sold out. These might be enough. Like the spinach, we are thinking of protecting these from the deer with a wire mesh box.
We got extra cucamelons, just in case the tubers I dug up and currently have stored in the old kitchen, where it’s not quite as cold as outside, don’t make it. We intend to plant these along the chain link fence bordering the south yard. The melons will be trellised, elsewhere. Possibly near…
…the squashes we will be trellising. :-) I am hoping to build squash arches for those.
The summer squash will, hopefully, be trained up stakes. We could get away with letting them spread on the ground, like we did last year, but it’s supposed to be healthier for the plants to train them up, while pruning off the lower leaves.
Speaking of summer squash…
Last summer we ordered a summer squash mix, with extra sunburst squash. We enjoyed them enough to order the same thing again for next year. I was a bit confused as I unpacked them from the box, however…
Somehow, I accidentally ordered three collections!
Totally my goof on that one.
I’ve offered the extras to my siblings. I don’t even know if they like squash. If they don’t want them, we’ll just keep them for next year! :-)
In the spring, along with the onion sets, cherry tomato mix, yellow beans and mulberry tree, we will be getting 4 varieties of potatoes. While using the Ruth Stout, no-till, heavy mulch method did work last summer, we are thinking of using grow bags or something similar, next year. Those would give us more flexibility and, hopefully, higher yields.
The more I think about the condition of our soil, and the spaces we will be working with, the more I think getting a truckload of garden soil is going to be the best thing we can do at this point. I would much rather build up the soil over time, but I simply did not expect the soil condition to have deteriorated as much as it did, over the years. Plus, given how much my planned timeline for cleaning up the yards has been pushed back, anything that we can to do make up for that will be good.
We just have to find a local source and see how much it costs. I think it’ll be worth it, in the long term.
We tried to be creative with the Christmas tree, with so many kittens in the house. The older cats are not as much of a concern, but the little ones are another story!
Well, after several days of cat caused disasters, today I came into the dining room to find they’d trashed the tree. For the past few morning, I’d come out and find the tree skirt askew, ornaments on the floor, and branches bent. Clearly, they knew enough to wait until we were in bed to wreck havoc. However, this time, they’d gone in while we were all busy and done even more damage than what I’d already fixed in the morning. The tree was tied to the wall, so they couldn’t knock it over, but they clearly were climbing it as high as the ceiling, and trying to get into the shelves beside it, as even things from there were on floor. Nothing fragile, thankfully, but still…
After finding the last mess, I gave up.
I took the tree down completely – which only took a few minutes, considering we’d already decorated it sparsely.
My older daughter, who lent us her little tree to begin with, saved the day.
It turns out this tree can be flattened, without damaging it. She found a way to hang it flat against the door, then redecorated it.
She even used wrapping paper to hide the base, where the legs would normally be attached.
I think it looks even better now!
Later, I actually caught some cats under it, looking up forlornly.
After yesterday morning’s cat disaster, the girls were kind enough to drop their own projects and take over cleaning up.
While I was doing my rounds outside, the furry little monsters created another mess. One of the jade plant posts I’d managed to shield from their digging got knocked to the floor. *sigh* I was able to repot the plant. Not sure if it will survive. Once again, the girls took over the clean up so I could take care of other things. At least I wasn’t bread baking today!
The one down side of using my grandmother’s method to bake bread is, once I take the dough ball out of the flour and start it soaking overnight, it must be used the next day. There’s no way to postpone it if other things happen!
By the time we were doing cleaning up and putting things away, I started the bread baking much later than planned.
I did, however, cheat a bit. I wanted to mix up more dough, so I could take off more to set aside, for larger batches in the future. As it was, the overnight soak was not looking as active as I would have liked, so I did end up adding some yeast and a touch of sugar, and let that bubble up some more.
Then, since I have it, I used half all purpose flour, half durum wheat flour.
This is after it had about an hour to rise.
I notice a definite difference in the dough, when using the durum wheat flour. The dough feels smoother and more elastic. It was very noticeable when making the pasta, but even at half-and-half, for the bread, it is much nicer to knead.
My grandmother would have used whatever flour they had, so mixing it up like this is probably not all that different from how she did it.
After removing a portion to set aside for the next batch, I split the dough in half. The first half was left plain, though I did have some fun with it, anyhow.
I split the dough into 4 pieces (because there’s 4 of us), and made knots.
The resulting bread was a bit denser and chewier with the durum wheat flour in it. We all like our bread on the toothsome side, so we quite enjoyed it.
For the other half, I was going to do a cheese roll, but my daughter suggested rolling and folding it. With the extra gluten in the durum wheat flour, it could actually handle that, so I have it a try! This time, I made two loaves.
After rolling the dough out flat and as thin as I could, I used some of the herb butter my husband had made. I don’t know what all he included in there, other than a LOT of dill (the container slipped…), some caraway seeds, and a touch of lemon juice.
Then I added some shredded cheese. It’s a mix of sharp cheddar, mozzarella and Havarti.
Then I folded it in on itself.
It then got rolled out slightly and folded again, before final shaping. I had to use a touch of water to get the edges to stick closed.
Once in the pan, I flattened them out a bit more with my hands, before leaving them to rise.
Of course, some of the cheese did make its way through the dough as it baked, but my goodness, it looked and smelled wonderful!
It was quite flaky on the outside. On the inside, the dough absorbed much of the butter, leaving cheesy little pockets all over!
It was quite enjoyable! I don’t know that I would go so far as to do the folding method again (though it would be awesome to do that again with some sliced green onions, to make a version of green onion cakes!), but I definitely do it as a cheese roll in the future.
Until then, I am not going to have some with my lunch!
When I picked up my mother to take her to the doctor yesterday, she came out with a big bucket riding on her walker, full of Christmas decorations. She didn’t want them anymore, and there’s lots of room on the farm, so…
*sigh*
We aren’t using even a quarter of our own decorations this year!
So last night, I went through the bucket – which turned out to be 2 of them, and they were fermentation buckets from wine making kits. I’m finding them all over the place! Now I have two more… *sigh*
What I found was one full sized sparkly garland, some smaller lengths, and bits and pieces that are so small or so messed up, they’re not even worth keeping for crafting. I filled a basket of baubles, most of which were newer, but a few of which I am sure I remember from my childhood. There were some random pine cones, some still glued together. Then there was a … garland “cake” with small red ornaments as the “cherries”. I have no other way to describe it! I believe it’s supposed to be a centerpiece? I don’t know.
The cats, of course, were extremely curious. As these were on the dining table until I could figure out what to do with them, I covered the whole thing with a shiny gold vinyl tablecloth that was in the one bin of Christmas decorations we brought up. The girls still ended up having to tuck it under and weight it down, because of course, as soon as the room was empty, the started jumping on it.
That was not part of the disaster this morning.
With my husband’s pain levels, he has very different hours than we do. It’s not unusual for him to be forced out of bed in the wee hours. He tries to help as much as he can, though, so he took over the job of topping up the cat kibble and refreshing their water in the basement – going up and down the stairs is painful, but it’s about the most exercise he can handle right now, so he does it. Then he fills a jug of water for the outside cats and leaves it for me, so I’m not having to run water while one of the girls is in the shower or something. He leaves that on the counter between the kitchen and dining room.
On the kitchen side of that counter, there’s the sink in the middle with counters and cupboards on either side. On the dining room side is a floating counter that’s about a foot higher than the sink. Very handy to reach from both sides. It’s also the perfect length and height that we fit a pair of cube shelved under it; a 9 cube shelf for dishes, bowls and platters, and a 6 cube shelf with cube storage boxes holding our hats and scarves, mitts and ear warmers, etc. Yes, all 6 of them are full of winter gear.
There’s enough space between the tops of these shelves and the underside of the counter to hold my many tiny bowls, jars and pinch pots, among other things.
The counter top has our advent wreath on it, as well as things like a fruit bowl, paper towel roll and other odds and ends. You know how it is. All flat surfaces immediately get filled! I’ve manage to keep it pretty open, lately.
Unfortunately, the cats do jump up on there, when we are not around, so I have been finding the candles askew on the advent wreath, and things knocked over.
This morning, I was awakened by some very unhappy exclamations from my husband – and more than a little blue language.
Coming out, I discovered him desperately trying to find something to soak up what turned out to be almost a gallon of water, while also chasing away cats.
One of them had knocked over the jug of water he’d prepped for me to give to the outside cats. Nearly a gallon of water.
My husband unrolled the remains the paper towel roll (which was already partially wet from the water hitting it on the way by) while I dashed (okay, hobbled…) for a mop.
The next while was spent mopping up and moving things. My husband’s back soon gave out and he had to leave.
The cube shelves are open in the front, of course, and water not only got into the shelf – and the stuff in it – but under the shelf before flowing around the counter and puddling all along the front of the sink. We’ve got a couple of those interlocking foam mats there, partly to make it easier on the back while doing dishes, partly to cover the damaged worn out floor, so that had to be removed, too.
Once the bulk of the water was cleaned up, I had to empty the 9 cub shelf and pull it out, to get there rest of the water out from under it. The cube shelf itself has water damage, but as I emptied it, I noticed more damage on the bottom shelves. The stuff we use the most off is kept at the top, the least often at the bottom, so we don’t have a lot of cause to see this. It seems that things the cats play with have been getting in there, and they’ve been digging to try and reach them. Enough that one cube actually has a hole scratched into it! How long that’s been there, I have no idea!
So right now, I’ve got the shelf out and drying. Then I had to do the outside rounds and feeding of critters. I’ve since cut some pieces of wood that will be placed under both shelves to lift them a couple of inches off the ground, so that if there is another spill, it won’t damage the shelves even more. Every single dish, bowl and platter will need to be washed before we can put them back.
Only then can I deal with the dining table and do the old dough bread baking I had planned for today.
*sigh*
At least it was just water, and nothing was broken.
I am now going to go investigate the unfortunate noises I’m hearing…
