I was able to get a bunch of photos of the kittens this evening. As we have discovered is typical, the older kittens start to get eye infections once they start eating mostly solid food and aren’t nursing as often. It’s a strain of herpes that we’ve since learned is particularly difficult in our area.
So… just fair warning that some of the kittens in the slideshow below look a hot mess, after getting their eyes washed.
A rare image of some of Inspector Japp’s white belly and chest spots!
It looks like Captain Hastings (next photo) is related to Ghosty. She has those shadows of colour on her head. When Ghosty was that size, she had those hints of pattern in her fur, but was otherwise almost completely a cream colour. Those shadows kept getting darker as she got older, and now they are very brown. Which is why we think she might be an albino tabby. That and her eyes that glow red when the light hits them. Hastings has a dark tail and dark ear tips, and such pale eyes!
Miss Lemon is the biggest of the three and very assertive! 😄
I’ve contacted a local large animal rescue that had reached out to me last year about possibly taking a more feral pregnant cat to socialize and integrate into plans for opening their rescue to the public for events and tours, but we didn’t have one at the time. They ended up not being able to open last year, largely due to weather. They’ll be having a grand opening later this month, though. If they could take in Poirot and her babies, that would be amazing.
The next image is Sir Robin the Brave. He was all curled up in the grass, napping, and did not appreciate being interrupted! His eye is actually looking much better right now. I didn’t see his sister, Kale, this evening. She was looking pretty sick. We’ve been bringing her into the house for eye washing in the mornings lately. I do hope she’s okay, and was just napping somewhere.
The next image is of Havarti and Little Rig, both of whom are looking much, much better now! I’ve been able to catch Havarti every now and then, but he really doesn’t like it and keeps his distance.
Then Grommet came by. His eyes are looking better, too, but he still got an eye wash after I got that picture. He’s slightly more socialized than his brother, Zipper. Zipper looks just terrible after his eye wash! The only reason I was able to catch him to wash his eyes is because they were both stuck completely shut! Normally, he would fight me off, but he’s so sick, he actually let me wash his eyes, while I had him on the roof of the cat house. Then he just stayed up on the roof, in the warm sunshine, making snorking noises.
The next image is Eyelet and Wormy snuggled for a nap. Wormy has one slightly sticky eye, but nothing of concern anymore. Eyelet’s eyes are… well… check out that last photo!
That blue is so pale, his eyes look almost white!
I also suspect he’s deaf.
~~~back from a quick run outside to switch soaker hoses in the garden~~~
Well, I found Kale! She’s sleeping in a kitten pile in the cat house. 😁
Adorable kittens aside…
Today, my younger daughter and I headed out for some errands. One of the things I needed was to get myself a pair of non-work shoes. Finding shoes for my messed up feet is never easy, so my daughter suggested we go into the bigger city, rather than the nearest Walmart in the smaller, nearer city. We had just started driving when my cell phone started ringing.
It was home care.
They weren’t going to have anyone for my mother’s morning med assist.
Which is supposed to happen between 7 and 9am.
It was about 9:20 or so when we got the call.
*sigh*
On the plus side, my mother’s place is along the way, so we were already part way there. I called my mom to let her know about home care, and that I was on my way. The hands free unit my brother gave me sure came in handy!
My mother wasn’t happy. When I got there, she started talking about hiring someone, though the home care office, to do med assists for her. Just one person doing her assists, all the time, and always at the same time (she says they keep coming later and later). I had to explain to her, they can’t do that – and she can’t just hire some random local person to do her med assists, either. There are laws about that.
She doesn’t accept that.
I couldn’t stay long, though, and was soon on my way. My sister was going to be showing up after lunch and taking her to the cemetery to visit our family gravesites. While it will be easier for my mother to get in and out of my sister’s car, I knew it would still take a lot out of her!
That done, my daughter and I continued on our way. Neither of us had had breakfast yet, so lunch was the first order of business.
Then my daughter, sweetheart that she is, busted her butt, trying to find me shoes. She knows me too well! I’m terrible when it comes to buying things for myself. Especially things I need. Add in how difficult it is to find shoes that fit, I would have given up after the first couple of pairs where I couldn’t even get my foot in. I used to be able to wear men’s size 9’s, triple wide. That’s the size of my work boots. That’s the size of my inside shoes I was wearing at the time, that are wearing out and falling apart. In the end, the only shoes I could get my feet into where men’s size 11’s, wide, and even then, some styles still didn’t work.
In the end, we found a pair that fit, but were absolutely tacky. The grey was okay, but the bright neon yellowish green accents were a bit much. Being the only ones I could find that fit the bill, I was willing to get them, until my daughter spotted another display shelf.
I got the same shoe, in bright red. It matches my new dress. 😄 They look like runners, but the “laces” are fake and stretchy, so they’re actually slip ons, not lace ups. I think they’ll work out just fine and, thanks to my daughter, I wasn’t going insane by the time we found them!
From there, we had our shopping lists to get. We were both pretty tired – my daughter actually fell asleep during the drive in! – so we took our time about it. Which worked out, since my husband remembered a few things he messaged us about, too.
We didn’t refill our water jugs in the city, though. We were going to do that locally, so I could get my “buy 10, get one free” freebie. During the drive from the city, though, I did end up pulling over so my daughter could take over driving while I tried closing my eyes for a bit. The energy drink I got for the ride accomplished nothing!
By the time we got to town, though, I was feeling much better, and was able to drive home after we finished in town.
I’d better get to bed early tonight and, hopefully, get some real sleep, because my daughter and I have an early start tomorrow! My brother and his wife got her a blacksmithing beginners workshop for her birthday this month, and we have to be there before 9am tomorrow. The drive will be almost an hour, as the forge is just past the smaller city. The workshop is all day, with a 1 hour break for lunch. I’ll probably pick something up in the city nearby, so we can have a picnic on the grounds (something they say is available) during break. It’s going to be a long day!
With that in mind, I’d better start winding down for the day, kick most of the cats out of my room, and try and get some sleep!
I’ve been hearing them for at least a week, probably two, but the renter’s cows didn’t come close to the barn area until yesterday evening. I got this shot, this morning.
When I checked the temps in the wee hours, we were at 7C/46F, but it felt like 4C/39F. As I write this, we are now at 10C/50F, but it feels like 3C/37F! The expected high of the day is only 16C/61F.
I don’t know if we got one last rainfall during the night. Wind is the real issue this morning. For the first time in a long time, though, I have not been seeing smoke, so I’m hoping all that rain has made a big difference for the wildfires.
While doing my morning rounds, I finally gave in and took the netting off from above the Arikara squash. The elm seeds are mostly dropped, and it was doing nothing to keep the cats off. In fact, as I was starting to pull the ground staples to remove it, one of the yard cats (a tabby with no name) jumped onto the mesh and immediately fell through over a squash and started to roll around in a panic!
Thankfully, the collars around the squash did their jobs, and nothing was crushed.
What we do have, however, is buds and even a blooming flower!
What is strange is that these are all female flowers. No male flowers! I’m used to the male flowers blooming first. I’m not sure if I should be pruning these off so the plants themselves can grow bigger before starting to bloom again. I’ve never grown these before. I’ll have to look that up. I’d hate to have to prune them but, without any male flowers to pollinate them, the baby squash are just going to wither away, anyhow.
At the high raised bed, I decided to pick these, as the plants were getting big enough to crowd other things out.
I’m leaving one Purple Prince (I think) plant that has bolted to go to seed. Tiny flower buds have started to appear. I picked the other larger ones; perhaps I waited too long and should have picked them at a smaller stage. As for the red thing in the middle, I thought it was a beat, but as I was cleaning and trimming it later, I could see that it’s white on the insides to… a big radish?
That’s one thing about using a seed mix for the winter sowing. This one was a mix of whatever root vegetable seeds I had left. There was only one type of turnip, which makes it easy, but there were several times of radishes and beets, and two types of carrots. One type of radish – the French Breakfast – has a distinct shape that makes it easy to identify. Everything else is “root vegetable surprise”. 😄
I just hope today isn’t so cold that the seeds recently planted will die off and rot instead of germinating. Things are supposed to get sunny and warm up over the next while, without extreme heat, which will be nice. Those overnight temperatures, when they start dropping below 10C/50F, could be a problem, though. The transplants should handle things fine, but the direct sowing… well, we’ll see how those go. At the very least, it will slow germination down.
Well, hopefully, we will have a long, moderate fall and a late first frost, to extend our growing season.
Meanwhile, in the time it took me to write this, our temperature has actually dropped, instead of getting warmer! We’re not supposed to reach our high of the day until 7 or 8 this evening. I’m( seriously considered plugging the cat house in again. It’s overcast enough that the light sensor for the heat bulb will turn on for the kittens.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think that stunning cat in the first image might be Kohl’s brother, Rabi. He seems to want to be around me when I’m out and about in the yard, and even follows me while I’m doing my rounds at times, but will not let me come close. The problem is, once Kohl and Rabi got bigger and more mobile, we simply couldn’t get close to them. Kohl’s calico pattern made her easy to identify, but Rabi was one of several fluffy tabbies with white we had that year. I’ll have to go through my old photos from when they were little, and maybe I can tell.
The next photos are of Poirot’s kittens, and Poirot, enjoying breakfast.
It was pretty wet when I headed out – not actively raining, but still wet enough that the older kittens were all hunkered down in the warm and cozy cat beds inside the cat house. Which means it wasn’t until much later in the day that I saw Kale and Sir Robin. Oh, my goodness, they each have one really badly infected eye. We were able to get their eyes washed, but the antibiotics we had left in the fridge had gone fuzzy, so we don’t have any medication for them. Havarti, the orange tabby, has one messed up eye, too, but he seems to be getting better. Other kittens have leaky eyes, too – it seems to always happen when they get big enough to be weaned – but from what I could see today, these two have it the worst. 😢 I was thinking of contacting the Cat Lady about getting some more antibiotics through her, but she is slowly stepping away from rescue and may not even be in the country, with all the stuff going on with her kids.
I’m not sure how we’re going to manage once her rescue is done in a few months. The one other that I contacted, based on the Cat Lady’s recommendation, basically blew me off. They’re too full, anyhow. They all are. It’s no wonder the Cat Lady is burning out! I keep hearing people say to contact the humane society in the city, who are also full up, but when I looked into them before, they wouldn’t have anything to do with anyone outside the city. There’s a local branch, and they stopped doing intakes long ago, yet are still always full. It’s pretty ridiculous.
Well, we do the best we can for the kitties. What other choice is there? Besides calling the municipality to send someone out with a rifle, that is. That’s the only “help” they offer for rural colonies. We certainly aren’t the only ones will a yard full of cats! Not by a long shot.
Ah, well. It is what is it, and we play the hand we’ve been dealt.
The dwarf Korean lilac is kicking into full bloom, and making the yard smell heavenly.
I had company for part of my rounds as Syndol and Stinky followed me around. They do love the high raised bed, when it comes to demanding pets, which you can see in the second photo above. You can also see the partial clearing of the path around the trellis bed in progress that had been just packed with dandelions gone to see. I still need to go over that with the weed trimmer, which will be a lot easier, after going through with the push mower, first!
While walking through the yard, I also spotted a clearwing hummingbird, flitting from dandelion to dandelion. They are remarkably large!
Today we were going to try for a trip to the dump. I’d brought out a heavier duty tarp to put over the load so it wouldn’t blow off while on the highway. It had been set over one of the old, broken tillers that have been sitting by the garden shed since before we moved here. There was some debris stuck in the folds, so I spread it out on the lawn to hose it down. It was so windy, I had to get tent pegs to tack it down!
Too windy.
I decided not to try and use the open truck box at all. Instead, we fit as much as we could of garbage and recycling in the back of the cab. We’ll just have to make another trip, later in the week, to get the rest.
My younger daughter came along to help out. The dump was an absolute disaster. The previous municipal council had fired the custodian that was managing it before, and things have gone downhill, ever since, even though we have a new council now. There was a brief period where I think some outside company was hired, and things were well taken care of, but now, the custodian(s) seem to just be seniors with mobility problems. As an almost senior with mobility problems, I take issue with that! It would be fine if all they had to do was sit in the shack and make sure people coming in just flashed their cards showing they are from the municipality and authorized to use this landfill site. The custodian is responsible for taking care of the entire site, though, and it doesn’t look like they’re contracting out to anyone to do the stuff the custodians can’t.
Like use the front end loader to push the build up piles of garbage at the edge of the pit, into the pit itself. Or to clear the area in front of the bit, so people won’t get flat tires, driving in to unload.
The garbage piled along the edge of the pit was so big, it was taking up space needed for vehicles to be able to turn around and back in. With three other vehicles already there, I was more than happy that one of them left, or I would have had a real problem getting to the pit.
Thankfully, we were unloading from the side door, not the box, so we could squeeze in that way. I couldn’t help but check around the tires after we unloaded. We got a flat tire after visiting the dump once, and I’m paranoid it’ll happen again!
After the garbage was done, we stopped at the recycling drop off, then headed out. We were running low on kibble for the outside cats, so we took advantage of this to go to the nearest Walmart and get a bit of stock up shopping.
Which I did not get a picture of. I’m happy to say that the big bags of kibble (9.1kg is the largest size the Walmart carries) have gone down in price by almost $5 a bag! We also got a 32 pack of canned cat food for the outside kittens.
They are getting totally spoiled, but it is pretty much the only way to make sure they get at least some lysine in them. I’ve been mixing a cat soup by hand for them; just a couple of cans of wet cat food mixed with lysine/pumpkin seed powder, then thinned down with water. As the kittens are getting bigger, I’ve increased the water and have started mixing in kibble to soften up, too. Some of the adult cats get pretty aggressive in trying to get some, too, so I’ve been splitting it up among quite a few bowls, and setting them in the usual kitten spots. Poirot’s babies hang out in the sun room most of the time, though they do venture out the door now, so I try to make sure they get some in the cat cage, where only a few of the adult cats will go in, these days. They are so tiny – and so fast! We really need to watch our step these days!
Along with cat food, we got some grocery items, stuff to keep in the truck (wet wipes, snacks, etc.) I did get one splurge. Since I’m getting more calls to my cell phone, I picked up a dashboard holder that will work with my wallet style phone case. Now I have to go into my phone’s settings to set up hands free. Samsung used to have a really good set up for hands free driving mode, but they got rid of that, many models ago. Now it’s all with Bixby, and I really dislike using things like Bixby. Ah, well.
Once the shopping was done, we set the heavy stuff in the box. I’d picked up a 24 case of canned soup for the pantry that was on sale, so that went in the box, with a cat food bag sitting right on top of it. The case of wet cat food went back there, too, with a dry cat food bag up against it, so it wouldn’t slide around in the box as we drove. The rest went into the back of the cab.
The problem is, it was threatening to rain.
We took the route home that would have us going near town, first, so we stopped at a gas station there on the way home. My daughter was a sweetheart and checked the tire pressure for me, just in case, before we picked up some gas.
The drive out was straight into the wind, and brutal. I had been fighting the wind trying to push me off the road the whole time, and could practically see the gas gauge dropping. On the way home, the wind was at our backs, and the gas gauge barely moved!
During the final leg home, the “threatening to rain” became a downpour.
Thankfully, the larger bags of kibble in the box of the truck are in plastic bags, so they not only kept the kibble dry, but protected the stuff under them.
My daughter and I got completely soaked, unloading the truck! It was late enough that I did the outside cat feeding right away, while my daughter parked the truck. We didn’t have any concerns about cats going under the truck, though. They were staying well out of the rain until I was actively putting food out, and even then, it was just to dash from shelter to shelter. The bigger kittens were sleeping in big piles, one in the water bowl shelter, and others in the cat house. Poirot’s babies just had each other, and Mom, in the sun room.
The rain has since stopped, but I won’t be trying to get out to work in that garden bed I was planning on. We are expecting more rain off and on, all through tomorrow and into Monday morning. Hopefully, I’ll get some done in between rainfalls, tomorrow. No using the electric weed trimmer, though. 😁
Hopefully, there is lots of rain reaching the wild fire zones! The rain we’ve been getting is now over the fires to the east of us, but it doesn’t look like any rain is hitting the ones up north.
Now that we’re done with the running around, the rest of the day will be indoor stuff. I do wish I’d been able to get to that bed yesterday. I can’t help but feel a bit resentful that my mother’s behaviour towards the home care worker meant I had to come in and cover for her med assist. That’s very different from having to come in because the home care worker was home sick or something. Ah, well. It is what it is!
I don’t have much left to do in the garden for planting. I’ve decided to plant the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers and red noodle beans in what will be a permanent trellis bed, then transplant surviving strawberries from last year. While getting groceries for my mother in her town, I couldn’t resist picking up some free pumpkin seeds that they give out to promote their pumpkin fest in September. There were 5 seeds in the packet, this year! They have a number of contest categories going on. The main one is for the largest pumpkin, of course. Another category is pumpkins and gourds, with prizes for the “most perfect pumpkin” of various sizes, the most unusual pumpkin or gourd of any size (maybe I should try growing Crespo squash again!), and prizes for carved and decorated pumpkins. Then there are contest categories for fruits and vegetables, baking, canning, handicrafts, floral arrangements, and “junior artwork”, all with sub categories. There’s even a colouring contest for preschoolers. I’ve never actually gone to this festival. We really should. It sounds awesome!
All that to say, I got pumpkin seeds, and will be planting them in this bed, too, once I’ve finished prepping it. That will give me incentive to finish setting up the permanent trellis structure, that will eventually be part of a trellis tunnel with a matching garden bed. Those noodle beans will need something to climb!
For now, though, I’m going to stay inside and appreciate the rain we’re finally getting. We really, really need it!
Last night, I had a voice message on my cell phone, letting my know that there was no one to do my mother’s evening med assist.
Early this morning, I got a call from the home care coordinator, and found out what happened.
My mother’s supper and evening med assists are usually done by the same person. When the home care aid came in for the suppertime visit, apparently my mother started making racist comments about “brown people” being “cockroaches”.
(in retrospect, I am second guessing this; that is not a word my mother would use. I don’t think she knows what a cockroach even is.)
The home care aid said that she found this insulting, because she is Metis, and my mother apparently responded by saying she was a cockroach.
The aid now refuses to go back to my mother, and did the paperwork for that. It went up the chain, and that’s why I got the call.
We talked about it for a while, and there is recognition that my mother’s cognitive decline is playing a part on this. The problem is that this can affect her long term care panel. My mother actually wants to be in a nursing home. A very specific one, and we’re trying to accomplish this for her. The staff at long term care and supporting living, however, are of all races, so this could be a problem.
My mother is basically self sabotaging herself.
When I was done with the call, I sent out a group message to my siblings about it. Not long after, messaged to let us know he’d phoned her from work. My mother did admit she shouldn’t have said what she said to the home care worker, and even said she was sorry. My brother told her that he wasn’t the one she should apologize to – she needs to apologize to the home care worker, but she won’t be coming back, because of how my mother treated her.
My mother was dismissive about it, saying there are lots of workers, and there’s always people looking for jobs. He told her, no, there is a shortage of workers, and you just don’t treat people like that.
She did seem to catch on that she had actually done something wrong.
The morning med assist arrived while they were talking, so they got off the phone. I later found out that my mother had told the morning person to extend her apologies.
I had my appointment in town, though, so I was going to call my mother later.
I got to my appointment early, so I popped into the Red Apple (a rural department store) for a bit. A display caught my eye and distracted me from what I planned to look at, and before long, I was walking out with a caftan and what I at first thought was a sleeveless summer dress, except it was pants, not a skirt. Something that is stepped into from the top, with no zippers or buttons. They were both “one size fits all”, but I didn’t have time to try on either of them. I figured if they didn’t fit me, they might fit my daughters. What I was really after was the caftan, though, for the upcoming summer heat.
Yes, this is relevant.
After my appointment, I remembered to pop over to the autobody shop to ask some questions. Since they were going to be working on the truck at some point, I asked about the door handle and the driver’s seatbelt. The handle broke off and I have to open the window to open it from the outside. I’d called our garage and got an estimate for it, but they don’t normally do that sort of work. The driver’s seatbelt buckle has a terrible habit of suddenly coming undone. Once it catches, it catches, but sometimes it feels like it’s buckled, but isn’t quite all the way, so it’ll suddenly come undone while I’m driving.
It turns out that yes, they could do this work for me, but it would be expensive. The door handle, which is snapped off, is expensive and would cost about the same as the garage would charge me. The garage, however, could go to a scrap yard or something, and find a second hand one. Something they can’t do. As for the seatbelt, that would also be really expensive, because they would have to replace the entire thing, not just the buckle, because that’s how it’s sold. Again, the garage could look for a second hand one for us at a better price.
Then we talked about our insurance claim.
Normally, the insurance will cover like for like and, if that can’t be found, they’ll allow an improvement, but the client pays the difference. The problem is, box covers like the one we had fit newer models, which have different sized truck boxes. The only one she could find that would fit our truck was an off market version, and the insurance company normally wouldn’t approve that. After talking to the adjuster, he said he would have to pass it up the line for approval and get back to her.
He hasn’t gotten back to her yet.
If they don’t approve the off market cover, and there are no other options, they might offer us cash, instead. We would still need a box cover, of course. As for cash, the adjuster put the value of the old box cover at a dollar, because he couldn’t find anything to tell him what it actually cost. So who knows what we would get.
The twisted frame is covered, though, as it needs to be fixed before a box cover can be installed. We’d be charged for part of the painting, because of the rust on the fender, around the wheel well. She told me she would ask the repair guys to try do it so only the top of the frame needs to be painted, not the whole panel. That would save us up to $140.
Then there was the broken tail light cover. The insurance company won’t cover that and, since I can’t prove it wasn’t broken before the box cover was ripped off by the wind, I am not going to contest it. She’s going to see if they can find an off market one for us. The entire tail light assembly gets replaced, not just the cover, and a new market value one can cost $250-$300.
So now I know the status of our insurance claim, and to contact our garage to see if they can find the parts we need from the scrap yard or something. Getting the door handle fixed before winter would be good, that’s for sure!
By the time I got home, it was about mid afternoon. I grabbed a quick lunch, then headed outside. I decided to work on the permanent trellis bed, but needed to clear around it, first. In this area, it made more sense to break out my brother’s push mower first, then go back with the weed trimmer.
Of course, since I had the mower going anyhow, I kept mowing further out. I hadn’t refilled the tank before I started, so I basically just kept going until I ran out of gas, then went to get some more.
Which is when I discovered I had a voice mail message.
From home care.
There was no one to do my mother’s suppertime or evening med assists.
Then, while I was listening to this message, a text message came in.
If was from my mother’s LifeLine provider, telling me it looked like the pendant was no longer connected to the based, and saying to test it. If a test didn’t work, it gave a number to call.
I put away the gas can, and the lawn mower.
Once back inside, I called up my mother. The first thing was to explain about the text I got, and get her to press the button on her LifeLine pendant.
There was no response.
I would have to phone the company.
I then told my mother about the call I got from home care, and that there was no one to come for her two evening med assists. She asked if I knew why, and I told her, I just had a phone message. Her response was, “oh, they’re trying to “get” me”, or something like that. My mother thinks the home care aids are deliberately not coming to give her her meds so that she’ll die. I told her, no, you did this to yourself. Because of how you treated the home care aid, they don’t want to work with you anymore.
Oh, you know about that, she said…
I told her I got a call this morning from the home care coordinator about it. My mother said she’d called her, herself, and wanted her to “visit” (have a meeting). By then, the office was closed, so I told her she wouldn’t hear back until Monday. I then told her I needed to call the LifeLine number, and would be coming over to do her med assist.
After being on hold for awhile, I got through to someone and explained the text message I got, and that I got my mother to test her pendent, with no response. He looked up her file and it seemed her pendent was no longer synced with the base. So he gave me step by step instructions on how to reset it and test it again, and told me that if it didn’t work, call back.
That done, I finally got to finish cleaning up and changing. Our predicted high of 22C/72F turned out to be 27C/81F, so I decided to wear my new caftan, which did fit (the other garment did not, so I have it to my daughters to try one). It is a very loud, mostly deep red, with bold colours in the patterns. More importantly, it’s made of a very light, breezy fabric that feels as close to being naked in the heat, without actually being naked.
So, off I went to my mother’s. When I got there, she was fussing in the kitchen and didn’t stop, so I asked for her LifeLine pendent and did the reset, as instructed, ending with a test. When it was done, what should have happened when I pressed the pendant button at the end was an almost instant human voice responding.
There was nothing.
So I called the number on the machine, using my cell phone (the machine is linked through my mother’s land line). I got the guy on speaker as we talked and he walked me through doing the reset again, then doing the test call.
Nothing.
At which point, they simply replace the machine, and he started that request going. If necessary, they know to call me on our land line first, before trying my cell phone.
That done, I went back to my mother, who was at her dining table, so update her and start getting her meds.
Which is when she noticed what I was wearing.
She commented on it and I told her I had picked it up, just today.
She started laughing at me, because of course she would, and told me it looked like something for sleeping in.
*sigh*
I told her no, not at all. It would be terrible to sleep in (it’s ankle length, I’d be tangled in it in a heartbeat!).
She still said it looked like something to sleep in, but that’s okay, she’s got something similar that she uses to sleep in, too.
…
No, she doesn’t have anything like a caftan. She has night gowns.
She was absolutely oblivious to the idea that laughing at me for what I was wearing was not a nice thing to do. It’s something I have come to expect from her, so it doesn’t really bother me, but she does this to everyone.
That did give me the segue to talk about what happened yesterday.
Long story short, it seems my mother did genuinely seem to realize she had done something wrong. She still tried to justify it. Saying things like, she gave her opinion, the home care worker gave her opinion, like it was some normal conversation. Then she started saying, she’s alone at home all day, and she wants to talk.
I told her, when they come to her place, they are there to do their job and leave. They are not there to talk about politic or religion or race or whatever. She needs to treat people nicely, and I stressed that her behaviour could keep her from getting into the nursing home she wants to be in.
As we talked, she mentioned again that she’d called the case coordinator, while bringing out the home care worker list of names and times they’d be coming. The number on there is what she called and left a message.
She called the shift scheduler.
I told her, this number was for someone else. I’d given her the number for the case coordinator, and it was with the schedule, but it was gone. Meanwhile, my mother was angry that the number she wanted wasn’t on there. I told her, this number would have different people answering, depending on the time of day and day of the week. The number she wanted is office hours only.
Meanwhile, I got her supper time meds out, and she took them a bit early. That freed up her little pill counting bowl and I set out her before bed pills, plus her inhaler, for later. I also updated the notebook I keep inside the lock box for the next home care aid to see.
Once all of that was done and everything was put away, I stayed for a while longer, and we talked some more about her behaviour. This time, my mother took out what she’d showed the home care worker. It was a photocopy from a new article, showing a grown of anti-Western, pro-terrorist demonstrators, in Canada, and she had basically asked the woman her opinion. Apparently, she said she agreed with the pro-terrorist demonstrators, which ticked my mother off. The women then told my mother that her ex-husband was black, and her kids were half black.
…
The case coordinator told me she’d said she was Metis.
So we have another discrepancy on the stories, here!
I asked my mother, why do you even have this? (She would have had to get someone to print out or make a photo copy of the image for her) And why would you show it to the home care aid?
My mother started talking about being lonely and wanting to have someone to talk to. (It sounds like her neighbours in the building are avoiding her now.) I said fine. Talk about the weather. Talk about the gardens (the building’s garden plots are visible out her window). Don’t talk about stuff like this.
I also recommended she stop watching TV news, because it’s not good for her!
My mother agreed that she would not talk about things unrelated to her med assist when the home care workers came.
Once I was sure she was set up for the evening, I headed home. By then, it was time for my own supper. My plans to work in the garden after clearing around the bed I was going to work on were out the window, but it was light enough to at least do the watering, including the new trees and bushes.
While I was watering the high raised bed, I picked a couple of things.
One is a Purple Prince turnip. I thought the yellow one should have been a Zlata radish, but it was so big, I thought maybe I somehow had some Gold Ball turnip seeds in there.
Later on, while watering the low raised bed in the east yard, which as the same mix, plus lettuce seeds, I picked a few more of the yellow ones. They really are radishes, not turnips. It just happens that this one is very large for a radish!
While I was still out there, my older daughter came out to talk about a potential visit from my son from another mother, later in the year. It has been a long time since we’ve seen him! She stayed out to help with the watering, too. The girls had already taken care of feeding the outside cats while I was done, but after I was done watering, I stayed out to play with Poirot’s kittens. They REALLY want attention, and love to get under foot!
Some of the bigger kittens have infected eyes, but I was able to wash only Sir Robin’s eye. I tried to get Havarti (the one orange tabby kitten) to wash one of his eyes, but he would not let me get him. I hope I’ll be able to wash it out, tomorrow.
Kitten therapy is good.
This has turned out to be a pretty messed up day. I really hope my mother takes our warnings to heart, and starts behaving better.
In talking about the situation, my brother had a good point, though. As people age, this sort of thing is not at all unusual. This is usually something that would play a part in getting someone IN to long term care, not out of it. My brother remembers an eye doctor we used to go to, many years ago. He was the sweetest man every, but when dementia hit, he suddenly starting saying some incredibly racist things. It was actually a big part of how he ended up in long term care. I supposed it’s different with my mother, since she has always been racist. Her cognitive decline is just bringing it out more, not creating it. The end result is the same, though, and as bad as my mother can be, others in long term care are far worse.
*sigh* again.
Well, whatever happens, happens. We do the best we can.
I woke at my usual time, which is basically when it starts getting light out (about 5-5:30am, these days), but was in massive pain. I did manage to get outside to feed the yard cats, but wasn’t able to do the rest of my morning rounds. Instead, I took some painkillers and headed back to bed.
I didn’t wake up again until about noon!
I did feel a lot better by then, though, which is good, because – as always – the job I needed to do took more than expected!
The bed I need to work on is where I had eggplant and hot peppers growing, last year. These had been mulched first with cardboard, then grass clippings on top of the cardboard. In the fall, I just did a chop and drop, leaving it pretty much as it was for the winter.
What you see in the first photo is what was able to grow through the openings in the cardboard where the peppers and eggplant were growing through, and areas around the edges where rhizomes in particular were able to work their way up the side walls of the bed.
The box frame was secured to hold plastic I’d set around the eggplant and peppers to form a sort of open top greenhouse. The twine wrapped around was there to reduce billowing in the wind. If the wind were not an issue, it would have worked out quite well, but it was a pretty constant battle. Even the cover with the wire that is stored on top of the box frame would get blown off, and it was there to weigh down the tops of the plastic, and didn’t have anything else over it! Which is why it got lashed down with paracord, later on.
Removing the mulch and remaining bits of cardboard did clear a lot of the elm seeds off, but there were so many seeds, the mulch can’t be used again, nor would I want to put it on the compost pile. Instead, I put it around the base of the box on the outside, to hopefully smother any weeds that would come up through the gaps.
Then it was time to fluffify the soil and pull the weeds, including the roots.
Which was absolutely brutal. It was like concrete.
I normally would have gone over it with a garden fork, first, but with the box frame in place, that wasn’t an option. So I was just using my little hand cultivator.
That has got to be my favourite garden tool right now. It really does the job! It was still pretty difficult. In the end, I spent more than an hour, just breaking up that soil. There weren’t a lot of weeds to pull, thanks to that mulch, but getting the roots out was almost impossible. Even after breaking up the soil first, if there were any clumps at all, the roots and rhizomes would just break apart.
I keep water with me while I work but, once the soil was prepped, I had to head inside for a sit down and hydration break. Thank God for cooler temperatures! Unfortunately, I’m out of any amendments that would help reduce this sort of compaction.
For this bed, I wanted to plant the Orchard Baby corn, which has only 65 days to maturity, with some beans. I had some yellow Custard bean seeds left. Which is a bit funny because, a few years back, we grew a different variety of corn in this bed, with beans from this same packet, in between!
Given that the beans are a few years old, I don’t expect a high germination rate, but bean seeds last a lot longer than other things.
Using the end of one of the larger plastic coated plant stakes, I marked off 5 fairly deep lines in the soil – three for corn, two for beans – then filled the resulting little trenches with water. Then I ran the stake over the lines again, and this time used the hose on the jet setting, to drive the water deeper in the planting areas.
In the slide show above, right after the photo of the seeds, the seeds are laid out in the rows. Even the bright pink inoculated bean seeds are hard to see, but they’re there!
The beans were planted pretty far apart; there were enough that I knew there would be plenty left behind. They’re more of a “bonus” crop.
The corn was supposed to be about 50 seeds per packet, and I did hope to get them all in, but there just wasn’t the space, even setting them pretty close together. They will be thinned later, if the germination rate is high.
To actually plant the seeds, I cheated, and used the end of the plant stake I used to make the rows to push the seeds into the soil, which you can see in the next picture. For each one, I’d give the stake a spin to make sure no seeds stuck to the end, before moving to the next one! Then I gently dragged the stake over the rows to cover the seeds before finishing off with a gentle watering, which further ensured the seeds were well covered.
I still had those leftover corn seeds, though. I didn’t want to hang on to such a small amount, but what to do with them?
Well, there was this little bed nearby, with the Arikara squash in it.
So I opened up the mulch, where there seemed to be the most room, including right in the very middle, and planted the leftover seeds there. These beds are close enough that wind pollination between them should work out fine. For now, though, the mosquito netting cover got put back on until the squash is large enough I won’t have to worry about something getting at them.
Then I went to the tomato bed and, using the plant stake to make holes in the soil, planted more beans down the middle of the bed, plus the gap between the Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. Bonus beans, plus they will act as a living mulch later on.
That done, I brought out the stove pellets for the corn and beans bed. I scattered them all over the bed, then misted them with water. After the pellets had a chance to expand and start breaking up into sawdust, I sprinkled some more pellets on and misted it again.
As there is nothing in this bed with protective collars or anything like that, it was going to need something to keep the cats out. A few years back, my daughter bought us a large roll of netting. I’ve been reusing pieces of it in other areas but, for the amount I needed, I brought the remaining roll out. You can see it in the second last photo of the corn and beans slideshow. The netting on that roll is actually folded in half. I left it as it was, though. Using ground staples to fasten the netting to the wire above the box cover, I unrolled it all the way around, with a decent amount of overlap, before cutting it. Roughly 25 feet, in total. There is still lots on the roll.
About this time, I got a notification on my phone for a voicemail message. Turns out my Wi-Fi calling had shut itself off. Why I was still able to listen to the voicemail message, but not get the call itself, I have no idea.
It was home care, letting me know that there would be no one available for my mother’s bed time med assist.
It was almost 6pm when I got the message, which means she would have just had her suppertime med assist.
I had time to finish setting up the netting. The top was secured with ground staples to the wire cover at several points. This netting catches on everything, so I was able to make use of that and got it “stuck” at each corner. Then, just to be on the safe side, I used more ground staples to secure the netting between the box frame and the walls of the bed. The box frame is tied down tight enough that it was hard to make the space to slide the ground staples through. Those aren’t going anywhere! The netting would rip, first.
Once that was finished and everything cleaned up and put away, I got a daughter to take over and do the watering of the rest of the garden, while I washed up and changed, before going to my mother’s.
It’s been almost a week since I did my mother’s grocery shopping, and I have an appointment in town tomorrow, so I left early enough to hit the grocery store, first. I knew she’d be running out of milk, at the very least – she is always running out of milk, but refuses to buy more than one 2L carton at a time – so I got that, plus a few other things I thought she might be running out of by now. Since I was there anyhow, I spotted some excellent sales and picked up some stuff for ourselves, too.
When I got to my mother’s she was so very happy when she saw I’d brought her more milk! She had told me, she even considered asking me if I could pick some up on the way, but had decided against it.
I was early for her evening pills but, once everything was put away, I opened up the lock box and got them ready for her. Which gave her time to tell me why the cover was missing on the tiny tagine shaped bowl I gave her to put her pills into, so they could be double checked and counted before she took them.
It turns out that, a couple of times now, someone would open the bowl to put in her dose for the time, only to find one of her half pills from the previous med assist, still sitting in the bowl. It had been counted out, but she missed it when she took them – and clearly, the home care aid didn’t double check to make sure my mother had actually taken all the pills!
So it was decided that she would tuck the lid away so that, if a pill got accidentally left behind again, it could actually be seen and she could take it right away.
Good thinking, but really, part of the home care aid’s job is to make sure my mother takes her pills properly. That’s why they’re there, and the pills are in a lock box, after all!
I did get a bit of a visit in before I headed home, much appreciating the longer daylight hours! I’ve made these trips in the winter, when it was dark by the time my mother was supposed to get her suppertime visit, but this time of year, I was driving home in full light. Much easier to watch for deer!
Tomorrow, I’ve got an appointment in town, but my afternoon is free. I’m waffling between working on the bed at the chain link fence, or the bed that will have a permanent trellis built into it.
I’ll see what I feel up to, after I get home!
For now, it’s time to take some pain killers and get to bed. Maybe even before midnight!
Spoon tomatoes can get pretty tall, but they don’t tend to get particularly large or heavy. Each transplant has its own pair of vertical supports, and I wove the horizontal supports through. The bamboo stakes I used are about 6′ long, and the row of tomatoes is about 13 or 14 feet long. I ended up weaving two bamboo stakes through, then using whatever sticks I had handy to finish off the last bit. The tomato plants should be light enough that this should be enough to hold them. I might have to secure the supports to the metal posts, if they start to get tippy, as the tomatoes get bigger. There’s a possibility that, once the trellises start filling in, they will start acting like sails in the wind. We’ll see, as the season progresses.
With the temperatures at a more reasonable level, I haven’t had to water every morning to protect the garden beds from the heat. Even with that lovely rain we got recently, though, things dry out really quickly, so I watered the beds in the main garden area, after I was done with the tomato supports. The other beds got watered as I was working in the areas, later on.
When working in the old kitchen garden, there were a few things that needed to be done before I could start on the transplants. One of them was dealing with the pink rose bush. This rose bush is insanely thorny, and it wants to sprawl. Part of it died over the winter, too.
So this afternoon, I broke out the leather gloves and pruned away the dead parts. There was more of that then I expected! Then I dug out the pair of wire supports I’d picked up at the dollar store last year. I used them on their own, as three sided supports, last year, but for the rose bush, I joined them together.
I didn’t think to get a picture until much later, though, after the transplanting was mostly done.
The green wire is hard to see with all the other greens around it, but you can just make it out in the photo. It’s tall enough that it should keep the branches from leaning into the garden bed or the paths. It had a tendency to flop all over the place, so we’d tied it off with twine and, for the tallest stem, I actually had it tied to a branch of the ornamental crab apple tree.
I think that tree might be why the rose bush doesn’t seem to be doing as well this year. We pruned it back quite a bit, years ago and, once it started getting sunlight, the rose bush finally recovered and started to thrive. The crabapple tree has filled in again, though, and the rose bush is being shaded out again. We’re going to have to prune it back again.
The ornamental apple tree at the other corner did get some pruning. Aside from a few low hanging branches that kept catching on my hat, there were some large, dead branches that needed to be cleared away, too. On that side of the garden, there is a white rose bush that is aggressively spreading. I cleared spreading little rose bushes away from the wattle weave bed and out of the rhubarb, old asparagus and some flowers in that area. It was even coming up through the stack of small logs I’ve got stored in that corner. There is more that needs to be cleared away, but for today, I just cleared enough that I could get into where I needed to work, without getting attacked by rose bushes or crabapple branches!
These were the “little” things that gone done today.
I did manage to get all the transplants in, though! That will get its own post. See you there in a bit! 😊
My daughter had a doctor’s appointment today, so I headed out to do my morning rounds early, then stayed out to work in the garden for a couple of hours. I’ll write about that in a separate garden post.
Before we headed out, I couldn’t resist getting a picture of Ginger.
Since Butterscotch has gone into another stressed out and hiding all day phase, I’ve been kicking the other cats out of my room for the night, so she can come out to eat, drink, use the litter box, and not be hiding under an armchair all night. Ginger is the one cat I’ve been allowing in the room at night, since he’s a bundle of nerves, too. He is taking full advantage of the perk, and luxuriating in comfortable cat beds and oodles of pets. Thankfully, he and Butterscotch get along!
This time of year, we’ve got quite a few things blooming, or starting to get into bloom. This year, a couple of bushes that normally don’t, are blooming prolifically for the first time since we’ve moved out here!
The white flowers are on a small bush near the house. It has been bashed and battered, and at one point, I was sure it was dead. Whatever it is, it’s incredibly hardy! This year, not only is it the largest I’ve seen it since our first year here – a major recovery – but it is covered in these clusters of white flowers.
The lilacs are on a bush that is at the fence on one side of the gate at our driveway. This area gets baked in the sun, though it at least gets some shade from a giant spruce tree in the evenings. It also doesn’t get a lot of moisture. This year, however, we have enough moisture that the “pond” not far away in the old hay yard still has some moisture in it. Since moving here, I’ve seen it bloom a couple of times, when we had very wet springs, but nothing like its blooming this year!
There is another lilac planted at the fence line on the other side of the gate. That area gets baked out from sunrise to sunset, and I’m amazes it’s surviving. No flowers this year, though.
When we finally get around to making the people gate near that sad lilac, I’m hoping to improve conditions around it and find a way to get water to it.
As my daughter and I were heading out, she got the truck out of the garage while I opened the gate, so I picked a few clusters of lilacs for her. She set them on the dash. When we came back to the truck after her appointment, they were completely flat and shriveled from the heat! I hope she remembered to take them out when she parked the truck in the garage.
Thankfully, she and I left really early for her appointment. My plan was to have lunch before her appointment. About twenty minutes from home, she suddenly remembered the prescription, an injection, she was supposed to bring with her today. It was still in the fridge at home! So we turned around and headed back while I messaged her sister to meet us at the gate with it in an insulated bag and some ice packs.
Even with the return trip, we got there early enough that we could have had lunch at the Subway next door – until we saw the line up. So we skipped that and headed for the clinic. She got into the examination room a bit early, but the doctor was running late and even had to leave part way through the visit and come back later. It was just a follow up visit, though, and there were no changes to my daughter’s mediations. She did get a chance to show and ask the doctor about some skin issues she’s been having. She’s had issues that she traced to an allergy to something in her deodorant, but with the recent heat, that’s gotten painfully worse, plus she’s got all sorts of skin issues. The doctor said it looks fungal, and recommended…
Head and Shoulders, used as a body wash.
She could have prescribed an anti-fungal cream but it turns out Head and Shoulders contains anti-fungal ingredients that work just as well, and it’s a lot cheaper!
She also recommended doing her laundry in hot water, and hanging her clothes on the line instead of using the drier. My daughter had already switched to using hot water and we’ve started to use the clothes line more often, too. Often enough that we’re looking to hook up two more lines. When I was growing up here, there were three laundry lines set up, so the hooks for pullies are already on the posts. I have no idea what happened to the pullies that used to be there. I spotted some kits that include 150′ (which is how much we would need) of medium strength, plastic coated metal laundry line, and all the parts and pieces, for about $50. The pullies and tightener, however are plastic, so I think we’d be better off paying a bit extra and getting metal pullies and tightener.
Anyhow, sunlight is also anti-fungal, so we’ll be using the clothes line more often. We’ll need to get more clothes pins, though. The kittens have discovered them and think they are toys!
After my daughter’s appointment was done, we finally had lunch. We were both pretty famished by then! We’d both had only very light breakfasts.
We also had a shopping trip planned. I was prepared to have to go to town to pick up new prescriptions, if necessary, but it wasn’t, so that made the day a bit shorter! The nearest Walmart to us is just 15 minutes away from the town our doctor is in, so that worked out well, too.
Since we were planning to get things that needed to stay cold, we popped over to the Dollarama, first. I got the rest of the tomato cages I wanted, which will be used over the eggplant and pepper transplants. I also got more plant clips, as my bucket with them seems to have disappeared!
The Walmart shopping was both stuff for my husband, and my daughters’ list. Nothing came out of my regular grocery budget, so I didn’t do my usual “this is what $X looks like” photo. The important thing is that I remembered to get more distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier.
This year, I’ve been using his empty water bottles to make collars for transplants, much more than usual, since we’re expecting a dry year. I’ve used up all the old collars I’d used last year, plus made more with all the bottles I’ve been saving all winter. There’s only a few empty water bottles left and, if I want one for each of the remaining tomato plants, I’m going to have to find more.
Oh! I just remembered! I have a bunch of them on posts at the chimney block garden bet at the chain link fence! Which means I’ll only be short about 5 or 6 for the tomatoes I have left to do. I’m sure I can find enough other containers I’ve been saving to reuse somehow.
By the time we got home, it was about 5pm. As we pulled into the yard to unload, the yard cats were absolutely everywhere, waiting for their feeding time! As soon as my daughters and I got most of it in, I headed over to feed them and distract them away from the truck, so my daughter could safely leave the yard and park it.
One of Poirot’s babies made an achievement today. Japp got out of the cat cage! I’m not sure if s/he climbed out the “door”, or if s/he found the opening at the bottom (it was blocked with a stuffy). We’re really going to have to watch our step, now!
The days are long enough and warm enough that I seriously considered going back out to at least work on the garden bed I’ll be planting in tomorrow, but I need to keep my limits in mind. I’m already pushing them on a daily basis right now. Plus, we’re getting weather alerts for possible thunderstorms. Looking at the weather radar, I don’t think we’ll be hit with any, but it’s possible I certainly won’t complain about getting more rain!
I’ve got a couple of days with no outings or appointments planned. If all goes well, I should have everything transplanted or direct sown by then. After that, it’s more construction type stuff, like making the wattle weave walls on the bed in the old kitchen garden, and working on the permanent trellis supports.
The main focus right now is just to get plants and seeds in the ground!
Before heading to bed last night, I noticed the forecast was starting to suggest rain by this morning. Just a bit, and a fairly low chance of it.
By morning, my weather app was telling me things like, “rain expected to end in 30 minutes” or the like. When I headed out to do my morning rounds, though, it was barely even spitting.
With today expected to be much cooler, I didn’t water everything this morning, so my rounds were done a lot faster. Then my daughter came by to let me know that she had called in a prescription that she needed to bring to her doctor’s appointment, tomorrow. I didn’t realize just how much faster I was done my rounds until we had left and I was thinking to stop at the post office and realized they had only just opened!
By the time we left, though, it was actually raining. A gorgeous, solid rain!
It was still insanely smoky, though, and the smoke got thicker, the closer we got to town. There’s a large fire on the other side of the lake, so they were getting hit by the smoke a lot more than we were.
Both my daughters were not feeling well all last night, and no one was up to cooking, so they decided to treat us with burgers. When we finished at the pharmacy, they still weren’t open, so we drove around to take a look at the lake.
Which we could barely see! It was still pouring rain when I too the above photo.
It was no longer raining when we got home, and the smoke was far less. The good news was in checking the weather radar. The rain we got was being pushed straight towards the biggest fire across the lake. There’s rain up north, too. As welcome as it is, there isn’t anywhere near enough to do much for all the fires. From the looks of it, we won’t be getting more for almost a week.
My goal for today is still to get more transplants in, but delay due to rain is not a bad thing!
The Re-Farmer 