When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, it was already 26C/78F. When I grabbed the hose to use it briefly, before topping up the cats’ water bowls, the water was almost hot! So I decided to water a bunch of things, using up the warmer water so as not to shock the plants, until I could fill the cats’ bowls with cold water.
Since I have not found what I need to fix the front tap, we have all our hoses linked together at the back tap. That’s almost 300 feet of hose.
I got quite a bit of watering done before it started coming out cold! The nice thing about being on well, though, is that it does get cold. Ice cold, even. When we were on city water, on days like this, the best we could get was maybekindasorta cool.
I’m going to have to get in the habit of carrying a basket or something with me, when I do my rounds.
This are thinnings from the three different carrot beds. I would have picked more but 1) it was getting hard to hold them all in one hand – especially the ones where the greens broke off, 2) the mosquitoes were eating me alive and 3) I had a Creamsicle deciding to jump up on my back.
And roll around.
And repeatedly start to fall off before I finally got him off (with only minor scratches! LOL).
So he then decided to start rolling right over the carrots!!
*sigh*
We have lots of little sunburst squash showing up, but just the one bigger one. I didn’t want it to get too tough and seedy, so I picked it now. Later, I will choose one that I will leave to go to seed, for next year. We will probably still buy seeds, but I’d like to at least try saving seed as well.
This afternoon, I made a quick run into town. By the time I got home, we had reached our high of the day, which we are still now, now. At 32C/89F and a humidex putting us at 38C/100F, I was very glad to see my daughter meet me at the garage to help me hall the water jug refills back to the house! Yes, I did have the wagon, but getting anything through the door with kittens about is much easier with 2 people!
The sun room is definitely NOT a place to hang out right now.
If we were still keeping the doors open for the cats, I would have had the ceiling fan on to help at least a little. Right now, I just have the replacement door open – it has a screen window that actually opens and closes, unlike the one we replaced. :-D My mother used to have lacy curtains on all the windows because of how hot it would get in here. I can understand why, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having a sun room.
Who knows. We might use this at least part of this room as a greenhouse, some day.
The girls must be just dying upstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if my daughter has to stop working because her computer and drawing tablet are overheating again!
We’re supposed to “cool down” after today, but the only means we’re supposed to remain below 30C, over the next two weeks.
One of the things I did while doing my evening rounds was bring the rain barrel we’d found behind the storage out, closer to the garden. My thought was to fill it with water, so that I can use ambient temperature water in the garden, rather than the hose. Unfortunately, since I’d last rolled it aside, it has developed cracks where it had been lying on the ground. I’m thinking I can patch them with some silicone sealant and still use it. I think I even have some, already. Before I do that, though, I have to figure out what I can use as a cover for it. I wouldn’t want some critter to fall in.
At some point, we will dig up the hose to the tap by the garden and replace it. The set up for the tap itself is getting very wobbly, so I want to redo that, as well. Thinking of how we do want to keep at least part of the area back there as a vegetable garden, I not only want to have a tap I can hook a hose onto, but I’d like to set up a surface area of some kind, so we can wash the veggies right away, or even just wash our own hands. Maybe with a small bench to sit on while scrubbing, for old and decrepit people like myself. ;-)
We can’t even start on that until we get the branch piles cleared away, first. The line runs almost under one of them – and that’s where water was spraying through the ground when I tested the tap. :-D
I’m really looking forward to when those are gone!
The plan was to hire the company that cleared trees from the roof and power lines to bring in their massive chipper this year, but after having to replace so many expensive items just this month, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do it after all. Ultimately, though, we should invest in our own chipper.
With Junk Pile’s babies starting to use the spirea to hide in, I moved a food dish near the area. This morning, while Junk Pile was by the house, waiting for me to refill the kibble, I saw her mostly white kitten, sitting on the mulch by the grapes.
It’s not the white kitten in the photo above!
Can you see the little white nose peaking out from under the grapes?
The grey baby eventually came out to eat with mom, but I didn’t see the white one again.
While checking on the garden beds and doing a bit of weeding, I pulled a few baby carrots.
Breakfast of champions! :-D
I’ve got the three varieties in here; purple, white and rainbow mix.
They were very tasty! :-D
Today, we’re going to have to really push to finish the old kitchen and sun room. The weather forecast has changed.
The heat warnings are back, with a predicted high of 30C/86F, and the humidex making it feel like 36C/96F. The thunderstorms that had been predicted for tomorrow are now expected this afternoon. Even if the storms miss us again, we’ll likely catch some rain, and among the stuff we have sitting outside are power tools.
The girls took care of a huge job for me, in emptying out the old kitchen!
Well. As much as it will be.
Here is how it looks now, while we take a break and get out of the heat.
When we first moved here, my younger brother had his larger freezer where the one in the photo now sits. They moved it out shortly after we moved in, freeing up some space for us.
There was a shelf in the corner, filled with a variety of things hidden behind a curtain. My mother had a thing for putting curtain rods on shelves, then hanging light and lacy curtains to hide the contents. I don’t think she understood that she was damaging the shelves in the process. Mind you, with most of the shelves, it really didn’t make much difference.
This corner is where our current freezer, which had belonged to my parents, used to sit. When I was a kid and we were still using this kitchen, there was a fridge in this corner.
I have zero memory of there being a fridge in this kitchen!
When I started cleaning up the old kitchen before, I had put a utility shelf in this corner. In no time at all, things ended up dumped in front of it, because we had no place else to put them, and it became completely inaccessible!
That corner is where we will be putting the plastic couch from the sun room.
After taking this picture, I took down the curtain over the window that doesn’t have aluminum foil on it. It has a screen, so I tried opening it to get some air circulation, but it would only open half an inch. Ah, well. Better than nothing!
The window with the foil over it is supposed to get replaced. The replacement window is actually leaning against a wall, between the doors to the house and to the sun room.
We are not going to be replacing the window just yet, but I will keep that in mind as we set things up again.
Ah, the old wood stove! This is what my mother cooked on, until the addition was added to the house and we got an electric stove, to go with having running water and an indoor bathroom.
The hinges on the door are broken, as if someone tried to stand on it while open.
There are still ashes in there!!
Eventually, I want to clean it up and pick up some stove blacking – I even found some in one of our local hardware stores.
It’s amazing that this stove was going almost all day, every day, and the kitchen never caught fire. There is NOTHING protecting the walls and floor.
We will not be doing anything to what’s on the shelves in that little nook just yet.
Of course, there were all sorts of things the girls cleared out. The dresser in the photo being one of two larger items, plus lots of things like this sifter screen. It was used to clean the chaff and dirt out of seeds. It’s old and the wood is rotting, but it’s being kept. It’s very likely my dad made it himself. The screen is ordinary metal window screen. The wooden frame was very likely salvaged from a peach basket or something like that.
As the girls took things out, I started hauling some of the stuff either to the junk pile, or into the storage house, which is where that sifter went. I hate that we’re adding things into there. We’ve made no attempt to start cleaning it out. When we do, we’ll definitely need to use masks and gloves. If I can find some coveralls that would fit us, that would be good, too.
Among the things I took in were a large and a small shop vac. When my daughters started talking about using a shop vac on the floors, one of them wondered if the large shop vac worked. I had taken a look at it while carrying it over, I thought that, while it might run, it probably doesn’t vacuum anymore. The little one was
(Aaaannnd… that’s it. I’m done for the day.
As I was writing the above, the phone rang. My sister had taken my mother to the cemetery, and accidentally locked her keys in the car. Long story short, it turns out her car has a combination touch screen she’d forgotten about, but since they were in the area, my mother wanted to see the yard. I am now completely drained. We’ll finish the job tomorrow.)
Where was I?
Ah, yes. The little shop vac. It was wrapped up in a plastic bag, so my daughter didn’t realize what it was. The old kitchen had (and still has) lots of jars that we put into the wagon, so before my daughter had to go back to work, we brought the wagon to the storage house and assembly lined passing them all up the stairs and stacking them in a space I’d prepared for them. Then I brought the little shop vac to the sun room to plug it in and test it out.
It works! So we have a little shop vac – small enough to fit into a grocery bag! – to help clean up the floors. This will be a huge help in the old kitchen, with it’s bits and pieces flooring.
After doing the glass, we stopped to take a break, and I started on this post. Then I got the call from my sister. It turns out she’d tried to call several other people first, including her husband who has spare keys, before being able to reach me. The concern was, there is no shade at all in the cemetery, and it was way too hot for my mother to be in the sun.
So I headed out to go get them, thinking to bring them here to wait for my brother in law – or I could take my mother straight home.
It turned out to be a moot point. I got to the cemetery, and there was no car! Clearly, they’d gotten it open.
Then I saw a car I’d passed on the way over, coming back up the road. I haven’t seen my sister’s newer car in a while, so I hadn’t recognized it. I learned she’d gone to the house closest to the cemetery (which is off the main road and cut into the bush) to make the calls, since her cell phone was locked in the car along with her keys. After reaching me, she got through to her husband, who told her to just use the combination. She’d forgotten there was one! Along the frame of the driver’s side window is basically a touch screen of numbers. She didn’t remember the combination, but her husband did, so they were able to get in. I guess they were on the way to the farm when they saw me going by and turned around.
Since they were there, my mother wanted to come see the yard. She insisted, she didn’t want to come into the house (stairs are difficult for her). I had already told them we had emptied the sun room and old kitchen, and everything was spread out in the yard. They were okay with that, so I sent a message to my family to let them know the situation, and off we went.
What does it say that I get better cell phone reception at a cemetery in the bushes than we do here at the farm? :-D
Once we arrived, my sister parked in the shade of the yard. I asked her if my mom had brought her walker, and she hadn’t, so I went and got my father’s walker. We keep it handy for times like this (and in case I ever need it!). My sister and I also moved the plastic couch into the shade of my mother’s white lilacs, for later.
We then did a tour around the yard, and it was about what I expected. My mother had no real interest in the progress made, and all the interest in the things she didn’t like. Oh, I’d pulled up the spirea over there! Yes, Mom. It was spreading and killing things off. I want the lilacs, not the spirea.
Which is when she told me she had also tried to keep up with pulling them out of that spot, too.
And why did I want those piles of sticks all over the place?
I don’t want them there, but we have to put the branches somewhere. They will be cleaned up in time.
We went around to the old stone cross my late brother had salvaged off a building he’d demolished, which was another area I’d pulled up spirea. I’d been given a hard time about that, too, but now the area is filled with wildflowers. My mother had already graciously given me permission to pull up the spirea in that area. There is one patch of spirea by the storage house that we are keeping. The butterflies and other insects just love them, and it’s a place where we can keep it under better control. My mother was, at least, happy to see how well the grapes are doing (no comments on their no longer being buried in spirea and now on a trellis, though), only to launch into how I need to water them. I really have to water them, because they’re under a roof (meaning, the eaves of the storage house), and they’ll do really well if I just water them.
…
Yes, Mom, I know how to water plants.
She didn’t know what to make of the cucamelons.
Then we started walking towards the old garden area, and she could see the sunflowers at the far end.
What are those sunflowers doing there? Did you plant them?
Yes, Mom. We’ve been talking about that a few times, now.
What are those over there? Are they squash?
Yes, those are squash.
*long pause*
Oh, there used to be such a beautiful garden here! It used to be so beautiful!
*sigh*
She couldn’t, of course, go into the garden, because it is so rough. My sister and I went down to the end of the apple trees, and she had a few things to say about the horrible plow job. The summer before we moved here, she and her husband were the ones trying to cut the lawn in the area. The problem is that, instead of plowing in straight rows in the same direction, so the furrow overlap each other, my younger brother had gone in circles, instead. That left the mounds the were are now struggling with. We’re not sure why he did it this way, but my sister suspects alcohol was involved! :-D
Since I’d mowed a path, my mother was able to go through the maple grove with her walker, all the way to the old willow tree that we’d lost a big chunk of in a blizzard last fall. My sister remembers that tree being huge, even when visiting at the farm before my parents bought it. Then we went over to the fire pit, and I told my sister about how I found the bricks around it. She was amazed, partly because she remembered those bricks being there, and didn’t realize they’d been completely covered.
I tried to talk to my mother about some of the plans we had, but she wasn’t interested. Instead, she wanted to go to the storage warehouse, where almost all the things my parents left behind are now packed away in. I managed to convince her to first stop for a rest in the shade. After a nice rest and hydration, we made out way over.
She actually insisted in going inside, struggling up the few stairs to get in. The building is jam packed, with only a couple of narrow areas to walk in, but she squeezed her way through. Some of the cardboard boxes have started to collapse under the weight of their contents, and I found some things that could not be boxed where knocked onto the floor, including a little mirrored altar of my mothers. The original crucifix was long gone, and another had been put in it’s place. We found that on the floor. My mother decided to take it with her. It turned out to be the first gift she and my dad received, when they got married! Then she started pulling out the large framed pieces, eventually digging out a print of Mona Lisa.
She ended up taking that with her, even though she had nowhere to hang it!
Then she started digging at the end of the path, trying to reach something. There was a bunch of curtain rods from when we cleaned out the sun room, originally. I convinced her to let me get them for her, but when I asked which she was after, she’d completely ignored me. So I grabbed several and held them for her while she picked a couple of the least damaged ones.
My sister and I eventually persuaded her to stop trying to rearrange things and start heading out.
Then she decided she wanted to go into the storage house.
!!!
My sister immediately pointed out how difficult it would be for her to get up those stairs. I had to plead with her, not to go in. I reminded her of her breathing problems, telling her I’d been in and out of there several times, and my own lungs were starting to burn from it (as I type this, I can still feel my throat burning from talking so much, after being in there). I promptly got told that I needed to leave the doors and windows open to get the smell out. I told her it needed a major cleaning, plus there are no screens on the windows, and I didn’t want anything to get in and get trapped (my sister says that’s probably how the dead squirrel that is now a skeleton on the kitchen floor got trapped in there). She still insisted I should leave the door open and open windows.
What was it she was after in there? Maybe I could get it?
It turns out she was worried about a pair of brass candlesticks, and whether they were still there. They are actually a pair of menorahs, and I assured her, they were still on the shelf, covered with a light curtain. Oh? I didn’t cover them! was her response. Well, someone did. They’re still there.
In the end, my sister and I ended up going into the storage house, and we each grabbed a candlestick, took them to the door and showed them to her.
As we put them back, my sister and I were talking for a bit, but I just couldn’t stay in there any longer. My lungs were burning. Even my sister was already noticing it affecting her, so we headed out. I got more lectures on how I needed to leave the door open, and how I need to clean things. Eventually, my sister pointed out that I had stopped cleaning things, and they should probably leave so I could get back to it.
Which they did, but by then, I was done. That hour or so with my mother drained more energy out of me than two days of working on the sun room and old kitchen. I would so love to have a better relationship with her, but she just can’t seem to find anything good to say, without undermining it with by making sure I know what a bad job I’m doing, or how wrong what I’m doing it, etc. I’ve reached a point in my life where she can no longer hurt me, but my goodness, it just sucks the energy right out of me! She couldn’t even resist making a snarky comment about the sweatpants I was wearing; the ones I wear when I know I’m going to be doing dirty manual labour, that used to be my husband’s. They have elastic around the ankles, to help keep the wood ticks out. No recognition at all that I dropped everything to go and get them when they were stuck at the cemetery, and that’s why I was still in my grubbies.
But I did get a lecture about how she won’t be around forever, and after she’s gone, we’ll remember and miss her.
*sigh*
I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother lived to be 100. For all her complaining, she’s got an amazing constitution. Even when she had abdominal surgery and they kept her in the hospital for a week, she recovered faster than when I had a much less invasive day surgery! I was about to say she could get hit by a truck and survive, but… she’s already done that.
So I’m done. Wiped out. Exhausted. Not physically, but mentally.
My daughter headed out to secure some of the stuff so they won’t blow away. I’m going to go do the watering with fertilizer I’d planned on doing, once things cooled down a bit.
I’ll at least be able to say I finished one thing, today, after that!
Well… except for the mosquitoes. The bug spray we used is supposed to last for 8 hours. It didn’t!
Unfortunately, my husband wasn’t up to joining us, so it was just the girls and I. One of whom helped me unload the riding mower for the van, while the other tended our first fire in the new set up. :-)
Those blocks turned out to be very handy, in many ways!
With the pit all cleaned out, we were reminded of just how big it really is!
This metal ring is one of several my late brother had acquired. He worked in demolitions, and once had the job of dismantling a coal fired electric generating station. A company in the States had purchased it, so my brother and his team had the job of dismantling the pieces that would go to the train station for shipping. Dismantling them was very dangerous. While the station had not been used for many years, there was still coal dust all over, and coal dust is explosively flammable. What wasn’t shipped to the purchaser was demolished and went to the landfill, so he was able to salvage sections of pipe. This is one of three that I know of, that became fit pit rings. :-)
As for our cookout, we have a terrible habit of starting to cook way too early. We’re just too impatient to wait for proper cooking coals! :-D So we deliberately didn’t being the food out until later. The question was, how to set up the food and fixings? The picnic table is in the process of being prepped for painting. The folding table we’d used before is now being used for something else. Plus there was that whole bug problem.
Solution found!
Yup. The mini greenhouse! We could put everything in, the close it up to keep the bugs out. :-D
The only thing that was a bit of a problem was how wide the mesh is on the shelves. The squeeze bottle kept tipping over. :-D
Ah, perfect!
Did I mention how handy those blocks turned out to be? :-)
After we’d had a bunch of hot dogs, we build the fire up again, then tossed in a packet of stuff to make colourful flames. I’d actually bought them last year, but with the fire bans, we never had a fire to use them in!
I’m sure the colours would have been much more dramatic if we had waited until it was darker. :-D We’re saving the second one for another time.
Unfortunately, no one remembered to read the packet to see how long the stuff lasted. We still had S’mores to do, and a coloured fire is not for cooking over. I was eventually able to find that it could take from 1 – 2 hours, depending on the fire and conditions. So we built the fire up more, until it was all burned up, before letting it get down to cooking coals again.
Then we made S’mores. :-)
The problem with that is, while we all love to toast marshmallows to golden perfection, none of us actually like eating them all that much. :-D I could sit there and toast marshmallows all day, as long as I had someone else to eat them! :-D
It was a wonderful, peaceful evening. While the girls and I were out there, we got visits from Creamsicle and Potato Beetle, with all their loving attention. We also got to see Junk Pile cat’s THREE kittens! Just flashes of them, really, as they’re even more skittish than their mom, but they are now coming to the house – even into the sun room! – with her. We also got charmed by a chipmunk on the stacked wood pile, and even Stinky came by, determined to dig for grubs among the nearby hawthorns.
With our big shop coming up some time next week, the girls and I will have cookouts in mind when we make our list. :-) I can definitely see popping on the racks and cooking supper out there.
Hmmm. As I’ve been working on this post, I’ve noticed some connectivity issues. We had still not received a call from a tech about coming here to check out equipment. The secondary account is still getting no signal at all, while the primary account is also kicking out much more frequently than usual – and no winds or storms to account for it. At least my daughter can still work. That’s the main thing!
Now let’s see if the connection is back, and I can hit “publish”! :-D
I was out doing my rounds a lot earlier than usual, though I skipped tending to the kittens for later. My husband needed to go into town to get his blood work done – something that has been postponed several time already – and we were planning to get there for when the lab opened.
Of course, since I had something scheduled in the morning, my brain decided that sleep was not going to happen.
Yeah. I was up all night.
It turned out to be a gorgeous morning. We were at 9C! (48F) It was absolutely wonderful!
Not wonderful enough to make me a morning person, but I did appreciate it. :-D
One of the things I made sure to check was our haskap bushes. The flowers in the bed around them have grown high enough to almost completely hide the bushes, even though I made a point of pulling up anything growing near the haskap. In time, the haskap will be taller than the flowers, but that might take a couple more years.
I was sure the female haskap had died last fall, but it has recovered remarkably well. I had noticed a couple of flowers, and then some berries forming, so I wanted to see how they are doing.
There are actually 2 berries here; one is still green, and is hidden by the ripe one. In another spot, I found a couple more berries, one ripe, one green.
It looks like that’s all we’ll get this year. Which I am happy with, since the alternative would have been trying to find a replacement female plant, and I just haven’t seen them at all in the garden centres this year. I had hoped to get 1 or 2 more female plants anyway (the ratio for pollination on these is 1 male for every 3 females), but there were none to be had.
That’s okay. Next time, I want to order them from Vesey’s instead. I think I’ll get better quality plants from them.
Until then, I am happy with our bitty baby berries!
As I catch up with things I wasn’t able to post while our internet was down, I figured I’d start with some fun stuff!
(Also, whatever technical problems killed off our secondary account is also affecting our primary account – but at least that one still gets a signal! We will get a call in a day or two about when someone can come by to check the hardware.)
This first photo shows some impressive progress.
That’s Keith, reaching out to touch a napping Leyendecker.
Keith.
Keith, the ball of stress and anxiety that would hiss and run away anytime a kitten came near him.
Now, he will actually curl up with Leyendecker for a nap.
He still doesn’t do much with the kittens overall, but at least he isn’t freaking out anymore.
Which leaves Fenrir as the remaining problem cat. She is more aggressive than Keith was, and will hiss and bat at them. But then, she’ll hiss and bat at some of the adult cats, too.
Then there’s Cheddar. This is him in his usual state.
He has managed to take up half of my king sized bed, with his stretching and splaying!
When he came indoors, almost a year ago, I never imagined he would grow into this big beast!
He used to be so tiny! :-D I’m so glad we were able to get his eyes all healed up.
And now some bonus critter pictures!
Much, much bigger critters.
Our renter’s cows came by the barn for a visit. :-D
In the middle foreground, walking away, is the bull. What a massive, meaty beast he is!
It won’t take long for them to eat up all that grass, and it’ll be shorter than our lawn, after being freshly mowed!
I just love hearing the cows when they’re nearby. We’re not in a position to have cows ourselves, so I get to enjoy them vicariously through the renter! :-D
It seemed our internet woes were solved, late yesterday. Alas, by morning, we had no signal, once again.
My shoes finally blew apart, though, so the girls and I went into the city. Yes, we can find shoes locally, but not anything suitable for my monstrous, deformed feet.
Since we are in the city, anyhow, we are taking advantage of the trip. While the girls are in another store, I stayed in the van to put on my new shoes, and take advantage of having a data signal on my phone, to write this post.
Hopefully, we will have internet again by the time we get home. I have pictures to upload and share! 😊😊
First up, a big Thank You to City Mouse for making a quick update post for me yesterday.
We are still having internet issues, and it’s not the trees!
For those who are new to visiting this blog, here’s out set up, in a nutshell. Because of the house being surrounded by tall trees, which protect us from severe winds and snow, we cannot get “regular” internet. We can only get satellite. There is only one company that services our area. When we first got a satellite, the highest data plan available was 100 gigs. Our normal usage before moving out here about about 350 gigs, with 4 of us using it. We had to get a second account, with a second satellite, just to get another 100 gigs of data. So we would keep an eye on our data usage, then when we got close to 100%, we’d switch cables on the router to switch accounts.
Some time later, the company got a new satellite, which allowed us to get a better plan, but it required moving the satellite dishes to another location on the house. However, their new system allowed us to add another 100 gigs to the primary account. So we’d use the primary account for 2/3rds of the month, then switch cables when we got close to 100% of our data. The secondary account had some issues due to tree branches, but it wasn’t that bad.
When the lock down started, our internet provider waived overage fees for a limited time, so we didn’t bother switching cables for the last couple of months. This month, my husband got the courtesy email saying we were at 90% of our data. Which is the first I knew of their no longer waiving the fee. We switched cables, but by then, we were already at 103%. The overage fees is double the regular cost per gig.
When we first switched cables, we had intermittent signals, but the next day, we lost our internet in the morning, and it didn’t come back. We actually did get a signal at about midnight, but it only lasted about an hour before we lost it again.
The problem is, my daughter’s business is all online. She has commissions to work on and clients to contact, references to download, etc. She can do up to a certain point offline, but then she has to go online.
She and I just tried going into town, with the plan to go somewhere that has free wifi, sit for a while as she used her laptop to do what she needed over a cuppa or a snack.
Instead, we found all the usual places – restaurants, coffee shops, hotels – have their free wifi disabled.
So we went home.
Right now, we’ve switched the cable back to the primary account. As I write this, we have internet, but we’ve lost it a couple of times already. My husband had tried calling the company, only to get a recording saying they were having technical difficulties, then going into a very long list of the different areas that were affected.
The problem is, if we use the primary account, we’re paying double for the overage, while also paying for a secondary account that isn’t working at all. Even the light on the transceiver is showing there is no signal from the satellite, most of the time, but even when the colour changes, showing that we should have a signal, all of our devices show no internet.
But my daughter needs to get work done. So I am posting this for the time she needs to do what is necessary, and then we’re switching the cables back. At some point, we have to get through to the company to find out wtf is going on. And we had better get a credit of some kind for this!
Until then, I will make quick update posts as I’m able, but using as little data as possible in the process, or make posts when I’m in town and have a signal on my phone.
While doing my rounds, before going to the city, I went to the usual spots to see if any more branches had come down during the night.
None had, but when I reached the fence near the pump shack, I heard something moving on the metal table beside it.
It took me a while, but I eventually saw a kitten slink under the table itself.
Was that Junk Pile cat’s white and grey baby?
Near where I was standing is a spot the cats use to go under the chain link fence. Rosencrantz, whom I’d seen earlier as I put kibble out for the yard cats, went through, stopping several times to look back at me and give me a death glare! :-D
Just look at that face!
So was that Rosencrantz’s baby I was seeing?
She made her way to the pump shack, then settled down in front of the door, keeping an eye on me. I could no longer see the kitten under the table, but then and orange head popped out of the hole at the bottom of the door!
I’d actually enlarged that hole last year, when Pump Shack kitten was living in there. (We haven’t seen Pump Shack cat, nor her mom, Guildenstern, in a very long time.)
It took a while, but the other kitten did eventually come around.
Of course, there’s that little sapling in the way! :-D
This is most definitely NOT the grey and white kitten I saw before. This one has more white, and also has patches of orange in it.
So this is a first time sighting of these babies!
These would be the younger siblings to Keith, David and Junk Pile cat.
Shortly after this, my older daughter and I headed for the city. Having gone looking around online last night, I had several possibilities for washing machines that I wanted to check out at Home Depot.
Once at the store, I went looking at the machines. I wasn’t too surprised that there were fewer than what I saw online. Aside from the prices, I had also looked at ratings. GE had some of the lowest ratings, while Whirlpool had the highest. Those were out of budget, though. Plus, I wasn’t seeing any on display.
I had an employee acknowledge me when I first got there, asking if I needed help right away. I didn’t, yet, which worked out for him, since he said he needed to go to the back for a while. This gave me lots of time to look at the machines before settling on this one.
It was a GE, but not the same model I was seeing on the website that had the lower ratings. In fact, I don’t recall seeing this model online at all. The price was also easier on the budget than others on display. There were several cheaper ones but… they were also TOO cheap! And I don’t mean just on price.
There was also the issue of size, which turned out to be more of a non-issue. Where we have the washer and dryer is already tight. My daughter at home measured the width and messaged me the info. Our machine at home was 26 7/8ths wide. We could go up to 27 inches, but that was it. The machines were all either 26 7/8ths inches wide, or 27 inches wide. This one was 27 inches wide.
I then waited for the guy to come back.
And waited.
After a while, I asked a nearby cashier if she could see if someone was available, on the possibility there was someone else in that section.
There wasn’t.
So I waited some more, wandering around a bit.
Which is when I discovered there was a whole other section of washers and dryers I’d somehow managed to not see.
Of course, that’s when the guy came back.
I told him I was looking for a washing machine, mentioned that I’d just noticed the other section. After a quick walk around, I showed him the one I said I’d decided on.
“No,” he said.
I could only laugh. He did explain, though.
Basically, the brand sucks. He’d never use one himself, and wouldn’t sell one, if he could avoid it. His recommendation was to go with either Whirlpool or LG. I’d seen both brands were highly rated, but I hadn’t looked at any LG models online.
The first one he took me over to was a Whirlpool. It was over budget but, more importantly, it was 27 1/2 inches wide. That half inch would make a difference.
He showed me a couple others he recommended, both LG, that were 27 inches. The closer one we came to, I told him straight up was out of budget, so he showed me another one.
After going back and forth, I went with the cheaper LG.
This is it.
It cost $100 more than the GE, but it was still within budget. Well. Almost. After taxes and whatever fees were added on, it ended up costing $835 and change. So $35 over budget. It is also a higher capacity machine, at 5.5 cubic feet instead of 4.9 cubit feet in the GE I was looking at.
Unfortunately, they do not keep an inventory of stuff like this. It has to be delivered from the national warehouse in Ontario.
Expected delivery to the store: Friday, the 24th.
That’s more than a week away.
Now, I could have decided not to buy it, then tried going elsewhere, but that would most likely have meant going to another city, at a competitor’s location where we got our replacement hot water tank. That store has higher prices for the same makes and models, though, so even if I were able to find an identical machine, I probably could not have bought it.
So I bought the machine. If we really, really have to, we can go to town and use the laundromat.
As he did the computer stuff, and put me into their system, we had time to chat. I told him about our washer dying yesterday, and how we had to decide if it was worth fixing. I told him about finding the plastic part under it, and he cringed. I mentioned the screws, and he cringed a bit more. Then I mentioned the puddle of oil, and he did a whole body twitch while in the middle of typing. :-D
After the transaction was done, he made sure to let me know to expect a call on Thursday, the 23rd. If there was no call, he said to call him early on Friday (I made sure to take down his name). The delivery trucks stop running at 4:30. Once they stop, there would be no chance of it arriving until Monday, so it would have to be early enough for him to make some calls about it.
The new washer will be delivered to the store. We’re too far away to have it delivered to our place. Which actually helped a bit, since it kept the price down. There would have been a delivery fee on top of everything else, but he was able to waive that.
So we’ve got more than a week without a washing machine.
And I needed to do laundry, yesterday.
While we could make the trip into town to use the laundromat, we’re not going to bother. At least, not yet. My daughters have already done a load of their own laundry in the bath tub, and I’m about to do the same.
The one good thing about the new washing machine not coming in right away is, we have time to haul the old one out and clean up the mess of oil under it.
By the time we got home, I was surprised it wasn’t even 2pm yet. If felt like it should have been more like 4 or 5!
This has been a very expensive month. I had to buy the push mower. Then I had to buy the parts and pieces to fix the sink. My daughter bought the new stove, and now we’ve bought a new washing machine. Meanwhile, we’ve got the riding mower still in the shop (at this point, I’m hoping they’ll continue to take their time getting to it!), plus my mother’s car will be ready for the end of the month. That one, at least, I’ve got almost 2/3rds paid off. My older daughter is still getting regular commissions, but my younger daughter is not going to be able to find a job for some time, given the pandemic situation, and our Premiere extending our “emergency” status for a couple more months, in spite of the lack of cases in our province. So it’s not like there’s any way for the income to increase with the outgo!
Unfortunately, it means a lot of things we’d hoped to get done this summer, likely won’t happen. We need to buy plywood for a floor on the trailer, and more for other projects we had in mind. I was hoping to buy materials to create a base for the cordwood outhouse we were planning to build this summer. While there is a lot we can get started on to prepare that won’t cost money, we do still need to buy some things, like mortar ingredients, and I was hoping to have concrete paving stones as a “floor” to build on. That project will likely have to be pushed back to next year. Plus, if anything else breaks down, there’s very little left in reserve. I’m just thankful we had as much as we did, set aside, to cover these. I just can’t help but think, how on earth are we supposed to come up with $10,000 for a new roof, when stuff like this keeps happening?
But, thanks to my husband’s private insurance and disability income, the bills are being paid, there’s food on the table, and gas in the tank. Being hear at the farm, we’ve got a roof over our head (even if it needs replacing!) and are secure as “caretakers” of the property. We are much better off than so many others, and have much to be thankful for.
Well, there’s one thing that might help, on the financial side. Our internet provider has had a new tower built in the area.
When moving here, the only option we had was satellite and, because of plan limits at the time, we had to get two of them to provide enough data for our needs. (Getting internet is a necessity, since my daughter’s business is entirely online now.) Even then, we had issues. Eventually, we were able to double the data one of the plans. Meanwhile, we lose connectivity fairly easily. Particularly in summer, when the foliage is full. The primary account’s satellite is usually fine, but the secondary satellite is barely a couple of feet to the side, and the branches block the signal more frequently (I’ve lost internet several times, just writing this post!). As we reach the limit on the data plan for our primary account, we switch cables on our router to the secondary account – and we switched cables just this morning. We have been regularly going over our data plans, and while the company waived those costs for the past couple of months, due to the lock downs and more people being stuck at home, that ended this month.
My husband talked to the company and will arrange for someone to come by next month to do a site survey (when we’ll have money to pay for the survey). If they can get a signal to the new tower, we would be able to move away from satellite completely, have only one account, unlimited data, and save almost $200 a month.
Yeah. We spend over $300 a month, just to get internet out here, with limited data and frequent loss of connectivity.
Yesterday was a day where the weather lurched from pouring rain to brilliant sunshine! Things had cleared up enough that I even turned my computer back on again for a while. The weather radar looked like we would be getting rain, but the more severe parts of the system would miss us, again.
Then, part way through a phone call, I began to see the lightning. It didn’t take long for the sky to turn completely black. Off went the computer, and I’m glad I did. Not only did we loose internet a couple of times (something we now expect, whenever the weather gets wild), but the power flickered out enough to shut everything down. Thankfully, not enough for my husband to notice his CPAP had stopped!
We were supposed to go into town this morning, so he could get some blood work and an ECG done. Unfortunately, pain had him up at 2am, and by the time I was getting ready to do my rounds, he was more than ready to try and sleep again, having completely forgotten about the tests, and couldn’t remember if fasting was required (it wasn’t; these tests are for the cardio clinic). Normally, blood work is just a drop in, but with an ECG as well, we’ll double check to see what has changed with the pandemic restrictions. Not that it’s an issue where we are. Our province never got hit hard, and there haven’t been any new cases of the virus in over a week.
Without that trip into town, I got to spend more doing my rounds, while the temperatures were cooler. On Sunday, I’d watered the garden plots with a fertilizer attachment, and yesterday morning, the squashes were looking noticeably less yellow!
These ones in particular are much bigger than the others.
Since the transplants got all mixed up when the trays got knocked over, I don’t know what type of squash these actually are, but I’m pretty sure these are green zucchini from the summer squash mix (which had 3 types of zucchini in it), only because I remember my mother’s zucchini from when I was a kid. But then, I have no idea if the other types of zucchini in the mix look any different, so really, it could be any of them. They are definitely not the patti pan squash, though. I’ve grown those in a balcony garden, and remember their leaves never got that big.
I don’t think I’m going to bother with trellising this bed at all, either. I might still do the long row in the back, if only because they are closer to the row of trees. This year is my learning year, so I’m willing to change plans and use the results to make decisions next year.
Some of my mother’s flowers are still coming up, in between the apple and chokecherry trees at the sound end of the area we put the squash beds in.
This butterfly was just sitting there, kindly letting me get a picture. :-)
While checking on the various plots, I find myself kind of torn. On the one hand, things seem to be coming up well enough. Granted, some of the squash will probably never reach full potential, between the lateness of planting and damage from that one last frost, but others look like they are doing well. Then I read from people talking about how they are already seeing little squashes starting to form in their gardens. The carrots, beets and parsley are growing well (only 3 khol rabbi sprouts survived), and we’ll be able to use the plants we thin out in salads and such. Then I talk to my mother, and she mentioned how my sister has been bringing her fresh vegetables. I have no idea what she would have in her garden that’s ready to harvest already! Lettuces and spinach, maybe, but my mother never refers to those as vegetables. So is my garden doing well, for our region, or not? I didn’t plant things that late, for this area, and my sister is in the same climate zone we are in.
Oh, dear. I was just informed by husband that our washing mashing stopped working. The breaker has not been tripped, and there is no obvious reason why it stopped.
So let me just quickly share these fun photos with you, and then I have to see what I can figure out is going on with our washing machine!!
