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A hint of what this August looks to be like

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Today, the girls held down the fort while I headed out early to take my mother for a doctor’s appointment – her first since things were just starting to shut down. Most appointments were being cancelled – thankfully, not hers – and they were only doing phone appointments. The clinic is still doing “walk ins” by phone, but are now doing in person appointments again.

The doctor had wanted my mom to be able to do fasting blood tests, so the appointment was shortly after the clinic opened. That way, she wouldn’t be without food for too long. The doctor also wrote her up for an EKG and chest Xrays. Without the results of those tests, he didn’t want to do a physical or address her prescriptions, etc. quite yet. So he did memory test with her, and talked about some of her concerns to address next time.

Which will be this Friday. He wanted to get her back as soon as possible after he got the test results. She also formally gave him permission to talk to me about anything regarding her health, at the same level as he can with my brother that has Power of Attorney. This will reduce the burden on my brother, as well as make things easier for the doctor, since I am more available to both the doctor and my mother.

Right after her appointment, we went across the hall to lab and Xray with her requisitions, only to be told that their Xray machine was broken and wouldn’t be fixed for 6 months. We could go to the hospital near my mother’s place, though, so we got that paperwork back while she got blood taken, then her EKG. The staff in the lab were the only ones we saw wearing masks and gloves, besides the odd patient.

We wanted to stop for lunch – breakfast, for my mother! – in the town the clinic is in, but the places we normally would have gone to were all closed. We ended up going back to her town before we found someplace open. By then, she’d gone 12 hours without food! Then we got her Xrays done. Thankfully, we didn’t have long to wait. At this hospital, there was one person near the door who was wearing masks and gloves and asking the usual “have you traveled, do you have any symptoms” questions. The only other people I saw with masks was a couple of patients. I found myself in the waiting room with a couple of people, with chairs physical distanced apart. The woman nearest me was wearing a cloth mask, and I could hear the poor woman struggling to breath through it. :-( At both hospital clinics and lab areas, they had the same sign saying who should be wearing masks. Few would have been required to wear them, based on their list. It seemed very reasonable; cautious, without being excessive.

I was going to help my mother with grocery shopping after she was done with the Xrays, but she was – understandably – too tired and just wanted to get home. I’m glad I persuaded her to bring her walker. She was ready to just cane it, but I told her it was better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. Plus, I have plenty of space in the van to bring it along, and don’t even have to fold it up. The only time she chose not to use it was when we went into the restaurant.

After dropping her off at home, I then had to head to the pharmacy – which made town number 3 I drove to! ;-) – to pick up the rest of my husband’s medications for the month. I let the pharmacist know about potential updates or changes in his prescriptions over the next while. As we were talking, she mentioned that my husband is the only person they have taking the painkillers he’s on; the ones with all the restrictions and regulations. He’s at the maximum dose already, and all they really do is take the edge off the pain. I really hope the folks at the pain clinic can help with that!

I took advantage of being in town to run a few errands. That included stopping at the garage to see when my mother’s car would be worked on. I was told they’d be able to work on it at the end of the week, or next week. I mentioned my mother having a doctor’s appointment on Friday, and that I hoped to be able to use her car, since it’s easier for her to get in and out of. He couldn’t say for sure, but they would try. We’ll see how that goes.

A stop to pick up our mail on the way home found a letter from the heart clinic for my husband. They made an appointment for him next week, to discuss implanting a defibrillator. His ejection fraction has improved, but not much – and they still don’t know why it’s become a problem in the first place. All the tests they’ve done have come back normal and healthy.

So we now have a phone appointment for my husband tomorrow, with home care. The day after, he and I have appointments for physicals with the same doctor as my mother. Then on Friday, I’m back at the clinic with my mom. Next week is the new appointment at the cardiac clinic in the city, and the week after is his first appointment with the pain clinic, also in the city.

I have to admit, I’ve become spoiled by our current situation. This is now a lot of driving for us. When we lived in the city, I did a lot more driving. Not drives of an hour or more, to be sure, but our mileage of less than half what it used to me. A few extra trips now feels like a big deal! :-D

It’s going to be tiring – especially for my husband – but I’m just grateful we’re finally “allowed” to get health care again.

The Re-Farmer

Sunflower finds

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Of the first sunflowers that we planted, several of them are now taller than me!

Unfortunately, the smaller ones from the second planting are still having deer issues.

Right next to the nearest sunflower in the above picture is this one.

This is one of the ones that had had its head bitten off a while back. It had been recovering, but this morning, almost all the new leaves have been eaten.

Then I found this one.

Newly decapitated, with so many leaves eaten, I wonder if it will recover.

Like this one.

This is just a couple of feet away from the newly decapitated one. Just the head had been eaten off, not the leaves, and now it’s growing a new head out the side.

We will have to think on how to protect the sunflowers from the deer in the future. We intend to plant more in general, plus more of the giant varieties. There’s also variety that is used to make a purple dye that I’d like to try. They only need to be protected when they’re little; once they get big, the deer leave them alone. My daughters and I have been talking about different temporary fencing ideas, though another possibility is to companion plant things that deer don’t like. Or we could try both.

Having deer come right into the yard is one of those things that we have now, that never happened when I was growing up here. Most likely because there was just too much activity, plus we always had dogs. My mother never had to deal with deer eating her garden! I love having the deer, and that they come right up to the house, but they can sure cause some problems! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Cookout, cats and cucamelons – what a beautiful day!

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What a lovely day today turned out to be!

The area we have the picnic table set up for painting is near where the cucamelons are planted. After painting last night, the girls checked them out and spotted baby cucamelons! When I’d checked them earlier, they weren’t even blooming.

Of course, I had to check them out, this morning.

The tiniest cucamelons on the tiniest of flowers! There are lots of them, and they are all barely visible. :-D

I had another smile waiting for me when I got back in the house. Our feline matriarch has laid claim to the base from under the washing machine; she likes the Styrofoam. Before heading outside, I took the piece that was inside the drum of the washer and set it on the floor.

She took the bait.

She’s been in it pretty much all day – and if she hasn’t, one of the other cats was in it! :-D

I think we’ll keep it, just for her. :-)

The girls and I planned a cookout today. Usually, we do these later in the day, when it’s cooler and the fire looks great as it gets dark. The girls have plans for the evening, so we did it earlier than usual.

Though we bought a big bag of potatoes while stocking up for the month, I ended up getting some from the store that were already wrapped and ready for grilling or baking. What can I say. The price was really good, and I didn’t feel like fussing with foil.

Along with the potatoes, I put together something we’ve never gone before, based on a recipe I’d found online. Ground beef meatballs, stuffed with cheese, encased in onion rings, then wrapped in bacon. I have a cooking sheet that’s designed to do things like vegetables on a BBQ, and I used that as my base. I lined it with heavy duty aluminum foil and made “sides” around the edges after the meatballs were set up, then covered with another sheet of foil. I also prepped corn on the cob by peeling off only a couple of the other husks, pulling back the rest so I could remove the silk, covered the cobs with the husks again, then let them soak in a giant bowl of water.

Once everything we ready, I got a fire going and built it up until I got a good, solid base of coals. While I was doing that, the girls painted one last coat on the picnic table.

Since the picnic table wasn’t ready to use, and we needed a table of some kind, we ended up bringing a pair of saw horses and a couple of 3×4’s that we’d been using to hold things near the picnic table. The sheet of high density plastic that I’ve been hanging on to (I think it was used to cover the basement window for the winter at some point) was brought over as a table top.

Once I had a decent amount of coals, pushed them to the back, then set up one of the oven racks from the broken stove over them. Sitting on the concrete blocks, the rack is still pretty high above the coals, so I used an old roaster lid to cover them and keep the heat from above, like a sort of oven.

After about 20 minutes, I set up the other rack and put on the meatballs. My daughter had added a baking sheet over it, just in case the cats decided to go for them, and I ended up leaving it on to serve a similar purpose as the roaster lid.

I’m not used to cooking thick hamburger like this over fire, and we had some concerns about getting them cooked all the way through (the cheese in the middle would help with that, at least), but within moments of putting the pan over the fire, I could hear it sizzling!

After about 10 minutes, we checked how they were doing.

Wow! The cheese just exploded out of them! :-D There was quite a bit of liquid, so I left the baking sheet off and just loosely covered it with foil again.

The potatoes were ready by then, so I moved them to a corner away from the coals, and covered them again to stay warm.

We kept a close eye on them and, after a while, flipped them.

Sort of.

They kept wanting to fall apart, and the bacon was sticking to the foil!! My daughter managed to get it done, though. :-D

Once they were done, the pan was moved to the other corner, and the corn was put on.

The corn cooks very quickly, compared to most things. Still, after flipping them, I ended up using the roaster lid to cover them.

My husband wasn’t able to join us, so when the food was ready, I prepped a plate for him.

The plate was too small for both of his cobs of corn. :-D

The husks make a great handle to use while eating the corn. :-)

It all turned out absolutely delicious! I don’t know that I would do the meatballs again – at least not over a fire. They were quite difficult to get off the foil. Still, they were so tasty, they’re worth the fuss.

It was so nice, sitting outside then enjoying a delicious meal. We were serenaded by cicadas. Two of them. LOL (Cicadas are not really a thing in our area.) There was a constant snapping and crackling as caragana seed pods exploded in the sunlight, while we played “chase the shade” with our chairs. LOL We had feline company too, of course. Potato Beetle demanded attention, and kept steeling our chairs for naps!

While waiting for the fire to burn down, the girls (who had missed breakfast) had brought out hot dog fixings and toasted a couple of dogs early on. They left the supplies behind (in an insulated back with ice packs, of course) when they had to leave. Once the cooking was done, I started to build up the fire again and began working on the pile of branches against the old log cabin. I was out there so long, I ended up having hot dogs for supper, too! :-D

I found another smile waiting for me on our makeshift table.

Of all the places he could lay down for a nap, he chose the picnic backpack, and used the cutlery as a pillow. What a silly boy!

I’m not sure when this happened, but I noticed it after I had started to rebuild the fire again.

The half-block cracked in the heat! I pushed it back into position after the photo was taken and I moved the piece of wood off of it.

I check the other blocks, when the fire died down a bit, and can see that one of them has cracks, too. Only on the top of the brick, though.

Eventually, the piece on the half block fell right off. As I moved it to one side, I noticed this.

One of the bricks under it has not only cracked, but when I tapped it while moving the ashes around, chunks broke off.

Well, they still do the job, so I don’t mind!

Meanwhile, I’m already thinking ahead to what I want to try cooking on the fire pit next!

The Re-Farmer

It’s here!

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Yes!!!

Our new washing machine is now here!

Which is quite a surprise, since we got a call from the shipping company a couple of days ago, letting us know they didn’t have it, and that they’d call when they did. Home Depot gets weekly deliveries, so we were expecting to get a call next Thursday.

Then, I got a call today.

It was an automated survey to determine delivery satisfaction.

Delivery?

What delivery?

So I hung up on the survey, then phoned the store. It’s been a while, so while I got the guy who sold it to me, he didn’t remember the details of our particular order. He was just as confused about the survey call as we were. Once I mentioned we thought the store itself might have it, and he realized it was supposed to be delivered to them, he said he would check and call me back.

Sure enough, it was there!

So I basically dropped everything and headed out! :-D The girls prepped the entry for dragging the box through, then worked on painting, while I was gone.

Once the washing machine was loaded in the van, I took advantage of the situation and found some of the spray rubber stuff, for the bottoms of the picnic table legs.

Like the stove, it juuuuuust fit through the doorway – and because of the arm bar, we had to pull it in on its side. This time, I was able to back the van up so that the bumper was over the steps, which made getting it to and through the door that much easier!

Getting it open was easier, too. The bottom piece was not attached to the box, so once the straps were cut off, we could just lift the whole thing.

Then we set it up where the old machine was, while my younger daughter stayed squeezed in the back to hook it up.

We found one potential problem. The drain hose is shorter than the old machine’s. It just barely reaches the stand pipe. If we could have the machine with its back to that wall, it would be fine, but then we wouldn’t be able to use the machine.

So it is not tight against the side wall, and right up against the step leading into the dining room. It should be fine, but there is no wiggle room on that.

Thankfully, now that the old kitchen and sun room are done, my husband’s walker is now in the sun room. This way, he doesn’t have to do any stairs to get to the walker, nor does he have to lift it up and down the steps to the main entry. Being a larger than average man, he’s got a much larger walker than typical, making it heavier, too. Not something a person with a back injury should be struggling with! We used to keep it folded up right in front of the washing machine, but now that the machine has to be so far forward, there’s no room for his walker.

Once it was hooked up, we leveled it.

It turns out the floor sags a fair bit towards the middle, but my daughter was able to adjust the legs on one side. Then she squeezed out and we pushed the dryer back, moving it forward to line up with the washer.

There is now quite a lot of space behind the machines.

I’m sure the cats will enjoy it. :-D

While going through the manual, I found that it has a “test before using” function. So I tried that.

I don’t know if it worked.

The manual said to turn the power on, then push the spin and soil buttons simultaneously, until a particular letter/number code showed up on the screen.

The code never came up. A number did. I tried hitting start anyhow, and the machine started doing things, but I wasn’t sure if it was doing what it was supposed to!

In the end, I ended up powering it off. I noticed that the machine only uses the HE type of detergent. The detergent we have isn’t HE.

So I headed off to town to pick some up.

Once the water is no longer needed for anything else, I’ll try again, then start some laundry.

I’ve never been this excited to do laundry before!!!

Woo Hoo!!

The Re-Farmer

A lovely day

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Today has worked out to be a lovely day!

First, I had a cheering squad waiting for me when I went to feed the fish.

Saffron, Cheddar, Big Rig and Two Face

The top of the big aquarium we can’t use right now has long been a favorite place for the cats to sit. Now, the kittens are big enough to appreciate it, too!

Also, Saffron wanted my phone.

It’s amazing, how one little fish fascinates the cats. :-D

Both girls ended up going into the city with me, which worked out rather well. I went into town first, to pick up my husband’s prescription refills. He got just one week’s worth, because of the weird rules over some of his more powerful medications, so he can’t get the rest until after Tuesday. We have actual doctor appointments on Thursday, so they should have updated prescriptions by Friday. Hopefully, that will end the problems we’ve been having regarding his refills, lately.

The bubble packs weren’t ready yet, so I made a quick run to the garage to see about my mother’s car. I was surprised to find it closed! My mother’s car was there, along with one other car, but that was it. Then I remembered that they often go into the city to pick up parts on Fridays. I’ll have to remember to call them tomorrow. I was able to get a medical appointment for my mother on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday this weekend), and it be nice to surprise her with her own car.

My mom’s car has been sitting there for so long, it has spider webs on the side mirror!

After getting the medications and heading home, it started to rain. I even drove through a very nice downpour! By the time I was unlocking the gate, it had slowed down a bit, but started to come down hard again as the girls and I were leaving.

By the time we were driving through the town my mother lives in, we had left the rain behind us and everything was dry! Which is basically the opposite of how it usually goes. :-D

The shopping went smoothly, which is something I can’t say about the drive. It was one of those days where it seemed like every other driver out there was determined to either tail gate me, or pass me into oncoming traffic!

Okay, I exaggerate.

A little.

A very little.

We had way too many close calls for my comfort.

I am so glad to not have to drive through city traffic all the time anymore!

We only had two places we needed to go, and once in the stores, things went much better. We found pretty much everything we needed, and the rest we can get locally as we need to throughout the month.

It feels good to be well stocked again.

Back on the highway, we drove into the rain again. By the time we got home, it was pouring. The girls unlocked the gate for me, so of course they got soaked while walking to the house. I pulled into the yard, right near the door, but got just as soaked while unloading the van.

It was beautiful! The rains have been passing us by for a while, now, so it was really nice to finally get some.

After the van was unloaded, one of my daughters went to check the picnic table under the tent. We hadn’t bothered to put on the walls, so it was possible rain could have been blown in from the sides. The back of the house provided enough shelter, though, to prevent that. The table was bone dry! The bird house I’d scrubbed last night was mostly dry, too. When doing my rounds this morning, I found something I could put the bird house on under the tent, just in case it rained, and I’m glad I did!

Tomorrow, if all goes to plan, we’ll flip the table and do the first coat on the top, as well as the bird house. I have to remember to bring the screened window over to paint, too. I’m leaving that as long as possible, since I’ll have to switch to the high density plastic window we use in the winter. I’ll be plugging in the big blower fan in the old basement to make up for the lack of air circulation while that one is in.

Right now, the sky is blue and there’s a lovely breeze.

I think this is a good time to do my evening rounds.

:-)

The Re-Farmer

Picnic table progress: painting started

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While the tech was here to try and figure out why our secondary internet account wasn’t working (more about that on another post), my daughter and I got started on the scrubbed and fully dry picnic table.

First, we set up her tent!

Once we moved it over the table, she got the paint ready while I pegged down the legs.

Well.

Tried do.

I was able to get only 1 leg properly pegged down. With the others, it didn’t matter what angles I tried, I kept hitting rocks!

Hopefully, it’ll be enough to keep it down if we get any winds.

Even if we don’t end up getting rain, it provided much appreciated shade!

Since it’s the underside, we weren’t too worried about complete coverage, except for the ends of the legs. Those might even get a second coat before we flip it.

I’m really glad we had those chimney liners to use to raise it off the ground. They really made the job easier! Amazing what a difference just those few inches makes, on preventing back strain.

The colour darkens a bit as it dries, but it’s still really, really bright!

Of all the things we need to work on, this small project is something that will be done fairly quickly. It’s a psychological thing. Once it’s done and set up, we’ll be able to see this one bright object in the yard that is a thing that we actually finished. So many other things have been delayed, or are things that will be worked on over years, not days, or even months.

I really look forward to using it when it’s done! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Prepping the picnic table

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If all goes to plan, by the time this post is published, I should be in the city with one of my daughters, doing half of our monthly shop. While going over our list, we realized we will have to split it into two trips.

Of the various outdoor projects we need to work on, I decided to start on the picnic table. It meant working in the shade, and with water, so being out shortly after the hottest part of the day would be less of an issue.

I had company.

Creamsicle tired himself out, rolling in the dirt where the picnic table has been for the past couple of summers. :-)

We will be painting the picnic table a ridiculously bright blue that I found, but first, it needed to be scrubbed.

I started with the underside, since that required the most time. Here is how it looked before I started.

I had kinda hoped those white patches were old paint but, alas, they were not.

They were old, dry mold.

I spent the next while methodically scrubbing away everything but the underside of the table top.

Which revealed a fair bit, such as the state of these two legs.

There were rotten pieces that just sloughed off as I scrubbed.

I intend to paint the underside of the table, and especially the bottoms of the legs.

This old picnic table has a lot of rot on it, but it is still strong enough to sit at. The goal is to make it more pleasant to sit at, until such time as we can replace it. The paint may even add some years to it, but I don’t expect it to.

You can actually see the colour of the wood, now! :-D

At this point, I’ve scrubbed everything except the underside of the tabletop and only managed a cursory scrub of the few inches above it. Here, it became an issue of mobility. I don’t bend and reach very well anymore, which meant I needed to find a way to raise the whole thing higher.

The area I was working in is near the old garden shed, which is an area I was able to clean up of a lot of stuff, our first summer here. Among those things was a stack of what I eventually learned are chimney liners. They and the chimney blocks we are now using as a retaining wall/planters (with more in the basement) were intended to replace the crumbling chimney for the wood burning furnace.

They were acquired shortly after my parents bought the property. The chimney had needed replacing even then (about 50 years or so ago), but it just never happened!

So now I have the inserts stacked by the back of the house, waiting until I can figure out what to do with them.

So I grabbed three of them and set them up.

… after hosing off all the spiderwebs, first…

They were perfect. I wish I’d thought of using them earlier. It made things SO much easier on my back!

Here is the underside of the table top, with years of dirt and mold scrubbed away.

I can also see where some attempts had been made to strengthen and stabilize it. We had lived in a building my parents bought as an investment property in the “downtown” of our little hamlet, years ago. After many years of problem tenants costing them thousands in damages, they didn’t want to rent the house out anymore, so we lived there for a couple of years before moving out of province. While there, we got this picnic table for a whole $5. The municipality was replacing the picnic tables in public parks and selling off the old ones for next to nothing. So it was already old when we got it, but still in great shape. It just needed a paint job. Which we never got to do, before we left the province. So my late brother brought it to the farm. He is likely the one to add the angled braces supporting the middle board. That bar across the middle was an addition, too. It looks like a hole had been drilled though to support a shade umbrella, which is probably why the braces and support bar were added. Then there’s the other piece, with a lager hole drilled through it, to support an umbrella with a larger post. I’m pretty sure we have the umbrella that was used in there, stored in the sun room now. When we’re done painting, I plan to see if it fits.

Then it was time to flip it over.

I know my mother did make efforts to protect this from the elements. She’s the last person so have painted it, and she told me how she would cover it with a plastic table cloth over the winter, to protect the wood (she used thumbtacks to secure it, and some of them are still stuck in the wood!).

It has been a long time since anyone has done anything to protect it, since. She has been living where she is now for about six years, so it’s definitely been longer than that.

Long enough for lichen to start growing on it!

The top was a lot easier to scrub. :-)

There was red paint at one corner of the table top, as well as the seat below. I suspect someone used the table to do something else, and made a mess on the table. Whatever kind of paint it was, parts of it actually dissolved and washed away with the water!

I had to use the hose almost constantly as I scrubbed. Otherwise, it all just sort of smeared. !! There was also debris packed into the spaces between some of the boards that not even the jet on the hose nozzle could blast out. Among the nearby junk around the old garden shed, I found some wire sturdy enough that I was able to get the debris loose and clear.

When we first got this table, it was a sort of reddish brown colour. I think the provincial parks department got some sort of deal on the paint because, for a while, all park benches and picnic tables were painted that same colour! There’s no sign of it now, though I can see that someone did paint it a different grey some time before my mother’s final coat of blue-grey.

So the table is now prepped for painting!

When they had a chance, the girls came out to see how it looked, then we flipped it upside down over the chimney inserts again. Since we’ve got at least 1 city shopping day to do first, it won’t be right away but, hopefully, it can be done before we go back to get the rest of what we need for the month.

Hhmm. I should probably pick up another paint brush or two. You never know. We might have more than one person available to work on it at the same time! :-D

Once it’s painted and ready, we’re thinking of setting it up near the fire pit. We will be making sure to pick up things we can cook over the fire, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to use the fire pit quite a few times this year. The picnic table will get some good use, once it’s no longer nasty to sit at! :-D

I’m really looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Finally out

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One thing about the new washing machine taking a while to come in (still no word on a new delivery/pickup date!) is that moving the old machine kept getting delayed.

Yesterday, my younger daughter wrestled it out of the house, and we “walked” it over to the junk pile.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to completely drain the washer when it broke down, and what was left in there stunk to high heaven! Ick. When we got it near the old stove, we took the lid off, then turned it upside down to drain as much as we could. Even then, we could still hear sloshing as we righted it.

While it was upside down, we had a chance to take a look.

Aside from the oil leak, I was actually surprised by how clean and new it looked under there. The exterior belied the interior!

We also found where those screws came from.

The entire bottom of the washer was rusted out. This metal bar was completely loose, having been held by only those two screws we’d found.

When this machine was in the basement, it had been on a pallet to keep it off the wet. Clearly, the wet still managed to reach the bottom of the washing machine!

I recently had a conversation with my mother about the laundry being upstairs now, instead of downstairs. She had been asking me if this was still around, and was that still around; she still seems to think the house should have stayed exactly the way she left it. :-/ She’d commented about my brother moving the washer and dryer upstairs, so we couldn’t have to go into the basement to do laundry. Of course, my response was to extol the virtues of my brother, and gratitude for him doing that. It was a HUGE job to get the electrical set up for the drier, even with my younger daughter being there to help. That was harder than moving the machines, themselves. My mother responded with how my brother was more concerned about making things “easy” than about how things looked. One of the things she’d been asking about is what happened to a mirror she’d had hanging in the entryway. I don’t remember it, and it was already gone before we moved here. When the addition had been built, my dad had a sink installed in the entryway, so we could wash up after coming back from the barn or whatever. My mother hated having a sink there, so when they retired from farming, she had the sink covered to be a sort of counter, and added plants and other stuff. She was much more concerned about how things looked. Well, at least on the surface. She then went on about how wonderful she had made it look, and how it was so nice, that when the carolers came to sing and were invited inside after, they said they didn’t want to leave the entry, it was so nice in there.

I was a caroler one year, so I know what really would have happened. Before every house we stopped at, we had to decide whether or not to accept invitations, usually to partake in alcohol, once inside. My parents were among those who would offer a glass of wine. Or vodka. Whichever. ;-)

With some homes, we were never given a choice! *L* By the end of it, we were really singing. :-D

My brother had wondered why our parents hadn’t moved the washer and dryer upstairs years ago, so they wouldn’t have to struggle up and down those stairs as their mobility decreased.

Now I know why.

The Re-Farmer

Evening visitors, and growth progress

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Yesterday evening, I happened to glance out my window facing the garden and saw a deer making its way into the yard. Something startled it and it ran off, but I figured that would be a good time to do my evening rounds – and check the sunflowers!

I headed out through the sun room and found another visitor.

The cheeky little bugger completely ignored me and the noise I was making as I came out the sun room doors.

He seems to have some odd matting in his fur. Or maybe something it caught in it?

It wasn’t until I started moving further from the doorway that he started paying attention to me.

(Yes, I was zooming in to take photos, and then I cropped the photos. I was staying well away from Stinky!)

He was not a happy Stinky! I just kept moving away, and he eventually ran off through the old kitchen garden.

So I made sure to go around the other side of the house, to check the garden! :-D

After checking the sunflowers and making my way back to the house, I saw Stinky again – with a friend! – running through the back yard towards the old garden shed. Of course, that was the direction I needed to go! I was able to skirt around them, then use the garden hose to discourage them from coming closer.

Alas, we did lose one of the smaller sunflowers.

I took this picture this morning. This is one of the third variety of giant sunflowers that we planted much later, to replace the ones we lost in the original planting.

The survivors of our first planting are doing pretty good, I think!

Most of them are approaching 5 feet in height, now. Once they got higher than a couple of feet, the deer seemed to ignore them. One of the last ones that got its top chomped off is surviving quite well, and is growing a new “head” from the side of the main stalk. I have high hopes that the most recently decapitated sunflower will do fine and grow a new head, though being one of the variety planted the latest, chances are it won’t have long enough of a growing season to fully mature. We shall see.

I’m just really impressed with how big the pattypan squash plants are getting! They are also filled with buds and blossoms, and little baby squashes. None of the others are even close. There’s a good possibility these will be the only squash that actually produce this year. Which is okay. This year is our experimental year. Anything we get is bonus, and we’re learning a lot.

I keep forgetting to take pictures of the potatoes. They actually look rather sparse, as far as foliage goes, but some have started to bloom, so we can definitely look forward to having our own potatoes this year. Whether or not we use the same method to grow them will be decided when we harvest them.

I also found a rather dramatic surprise this morning, when checking on the carrot and beet beds.

This is a chokecherry tree growing among the sour cherries that are doing so poorly. When I went past it last night, the berries were all still green!

This one is mostly by the cherry trees and a lot of other stuff that we will be taking out (the cherry tree by the house has ripening berries on it, but none of the ones in this other location). I want to make sure to keep the chokecherry tree, since it seems to be doing so well, now. Our first two summers here, this tree didn’t even bloom, so we didn’t realize what it was!

There is another chokecherry tree, in behind where the sad little Saskatoon bushes are, that also decided to bloom and produce this year. It is in an area still filled with spirea that we need to clear out.

Another surprise this year is that we have more, stronger and healthier Saskatoon bushes, hiding behind the stack of boards and junk that have Junk Pile kitten her name. (No kittens in there, this year!) They are still producing big, juicy berries. There is another chokecherry tree growing with them. It’s berries are still very green. In this location, this tree is in shade most of the time, whereas the other two get a lot of sun.

Which had me curious about the other trees we’d gathered chokecherries from, over the past two summers.

It was pretty windy when I tried to take this photo, so it’s not very clear, but you can see there are no red berries on here, yet. A few of the berries are starting to show just a bit of a blush on them. This tree has more shade, being planted so close to the maple grove and rows of spruce trees my parents added on the North side over the years. The berries on this tree ripened later than the other two I checked next, but the berries it produced were larger and juicier.

This chokecherry tree is being choked – by lilacs! It is tipped way over and hanging down. My daughters and I have been talking about what to do with this one. I’ve been thinking of cutting away the lilacs surrounding it, then adding some sort of support I can use to train the tree to start growing upright.

My daughter suggested we leave the lilacs, and get rid of this chokecherry! The lilac hedge serves as both a privacy and dust screen from the main road that goes by on this side of the property. It has quite a lot of traffic, for a gravel road. The reason my mother spent so many years planting and extending this hedge was partly because of just how much dust drifts in, every time a vehicle drove by. Plus, every now and then, vehicles going by would slow down to peer into our yard and garden. And not just the year we grew “konopie” from seeds my mother got from Poland, after regaling us with stories from her childhood. It turned out that konopie is Polish for hemp, but someone thought it was marijuana and stole a row and a half of it.

Anyone who tried to smoke that would probably have gotten rather ill rather than high!

Anyhow. The lilacs serve a purpose, and in that location, privacy and dust screening is more important than having chokecherries. Especially since it turns out we have so many more, elsewhere.

This chokecherry tree is also among the lilacs.

Unlike the other one, this one is growing from the inside of the hedge, instead of out from the middle of it somewhere. So it is growing straight and tall, rather than falling over. In the last couple of summers, I found that of the two among the lilacs, this one also produced better berries, and ripened sooner, than the one that’s falling over.

There is also a small chokecherry tree growing in the middle of the area I move, near where the falling over chokecherry is. It likely sowed itself, but over the years, it has been allowed to grow, rather than getting mowed over. We will likely leave that one be. In the open as it it, it will have lots of light and space to grow straight and tall, and eventually produce lots of berries.

It’s a good thing we like chokecherries. I like to eat them straight off the tree, even though they are very … astringent, I believe the word used is. Given how many trees we’ll have producing berries this year, we can expect to have lots to make things with!

The Re-Farmer

Quiet Sunday, and thinking seeds

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I was feeling a lot like this, today!

We normally try to keep Sunday as a day of rest, and today, it seemed I really needed it. It’s as if the heat from the past couple of days have sucked the energy right out of me! :-( Thankfully, today has been a much “cooler” 24C/75F. Higher winds made it feel even nicer, though it is a bit disconcerting when I do my rounds, and I can hear branches cracking! This morning, I found a rather large branch that had come down and almost missed it, since it had landed almost right on one of the piles of branches in the maple grove. :-D

One of the things I was doing to take advantage of the quiet time was think ahead of what we’d like to try growing, based on how things have been going so far. I still want to try gourds again, though I now know to start them indoors much earlier, and that it might be worth investing in one of the warming pads available for under seed trays.

I found a couple of very interesting seed sites that I look forward to trying out. I will certainly be ordering more seeds from Vesey’s – I’ve been happy with what we got from them, and their customer service. Any problems we’ve been having have been at our end, and not a problem with the product themselves. Even with the rough start, the sunburst squash are doing remarkably well! They certainly handled things like the seed trays being dumped onto the ground by cats much better than other varieties. Even in the bed that got frost damaged, I am seeing sunburst squash recovering and getting much bigger.

Here are a couple of seed sources I’ve found.

One is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They are a US based company and specialize in rare varieties. I am not seeing a lot of information about what can or can’t be grown here in Canada; especially in our zone three, but their site does allow for customer reviews that have been pretty interesting, and useful, to read. Just as one example, I was looking at varieties of carrots. The Kyoto Red carrot caught my eye. The description talks about it being a late summer, fall or winter carrot. Obviously, not something we can grow here, right? In the reviews, there were people complaining about how the carrots would bolt into seed or otherwise fail – they’d planted in the spring. Then I found one reviewer saying, yeah, I planted in the spring, in Canada, zone 3, and they’re doing great!

I think we’ll be trying out that variety! :-D

There is just so much to go through, and so much I’d love to try! If we can create the right growing environment. A long term goal is to be able to grow food plants for at least 3 seasons, and some of the stuff in here would definitely provide incentive!

It was in searching for seed sources for different types of gourds that led me to this site; Seedman – Seeds from Around the World

Sadly, they no longer ship to Canada, nor anywhere else outside the US. They’ve got a huge variety of unusual seeds. One of the things I like is the list they have, right on their main page, that go beyond “vegetables”, “herbs”, etc. Do you have only a patio available to garden in? There’s a list for that. Do you want to grow flowers for crafting purposes? You can find them here. Moon garden? Rainforest? Hanging baskets? There’s even a list for tropical plants, zone 9 or higher.

Alas, I won’t be able to get anything from there, and will have to find a source that is in, or will ship to, Canada.

If you happen to know of any, please do let me know!

Meanwhile, I might just have to go join David…

The floofiness… it calls to me!

The Re-Farmer