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I am so NOT a morning person

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Not that I’ve got much choice. If it isn’t the morning light, it’s the cats suddenly going bonkers at 5am, expecting me to top of their kibble. Even if there is still plenty of food!

Of course, today, I had to get my morning rounds done earlier, since I needed to be at my mother’s before 8am.

After a daughter and I fed the cats (Poirot stayed in the carrier with her kittens all night, and did not leave while we were putting food out!), I did my usual garden bed checks while on my way to the trail cams.

Alas. It begins.

The Chinese elms are starting to drop their seeds.

This is while they’re still green, too.

Over the next while, there were be more and, when they get to their dry stage, they’ll be falling by the millions.

The netting on this bed will protect it, to a certain extent. Unfortunately, the cats keep managing to slide the netting on the wire hoops, bending them flat, getting inside and so on. So seeds are still getting inside. It won’t be so bad as to smother everything planted in there, at least.

No, that cats are busy doing that, instead.

I had spotted one pea sprouting a while back, and it’s gone. There are some possible beans sprouting, and I’ve spotted some onions sprouting. Plus weeds, of course. While the netting has stopped the cats from using the bed as a litter box, or just digging around because they like to dig, they still either lie on top of the netting, get under the netting, and generally just crush everything in that bed. They really, really like this garden bed, and I don’t know why!

Speaking of cats…

That tabby has all sorts of attention – including from a cat that ran off when I paused to see what was going on. The tabby had caught a bird, and the others were looking quite eager to steal its breakfast!

I’m seeing a lot fewer cats these days. This morning, I counted “only” 16 or 17 adult cats, and I may have double counted a couple

Once everything was taken care of outside, I headed to my mother’s early enough to stop for gas first. She was up and about, making herself breakfast when I got there. This included some of the instant oatmeal I’d bought for her a while back. I ended up sitting in an armchair, basically behind where she sits at her dining table in her very tiny apartment (my bedroom is probably bigger than her entire apartment), with just a half-wall between us. Mostly because I needed to close my eyes for a while, but I was also in pain, and needed the more comfortable chair. I didn’t take my T3s this morning, which can cause drowsiness and dizziness, since I was going to be driving, and just took some extra strength Tylenol. I was already tired, so taking a pain killer that could cause drowsiness didn’t seem like a good idea.

I was quickly reminded of something. My mother isn’t very good at following instructions.

I’ve shown her how to make the instant oatmeal, but she skipped over an important part. Letting it sit for about 5 minutes to absorb the liquid. She basically just started eating it right away, like it was some kind of soup.

My mother has never been a quiet eater. Now that she has had a tooth pulled, but refuses to have her dentures adjusted to fill the space, it’s gotten even worse. Thankfully, she was behind me and I couldn’t see what she was doing, because the sounds alone were making feel absolutely ill. I’m not normally bothered too much by stuff like that, but it was really bad today!

Thankfully, she was done rather quickly, and had a chance to chat about the upcoming call from her doctor. I knew it would be about the results of her blood tests, and she could ask related questions, but anything else would require a separate appointment. She started saying that she wanted the doctor to get her into a nursing home. I tried to explain to her that the doctor has already done as much as she could; she got the ball rolling, my mother got the Xrays and EKG readings they required, and then it goes to home care. I told her again about how the case coordinator and I went through all the panel questions again, to update information on how much more difficult things are getting for her. My mother thinks that a doctor can basically just order her into a nursing home, but it’s the home care department that makes the decisions but, even if she’s approved, if there’s no space, she basically has to wait until enough people die to free up beds, and even then, the spaces go to those are are considered in the worst condition. We’ve all explained this to her, many times by now. The problem isn’t that she doesn’t understand it. She simply refuses to accept it. I ended up telling her that this is because she’s doing it through the health care system. There are privately run nursing homes that she could go through, but she’d be paying a lot more (even through the system, nursing home residents are charged “rent”, based on their income, just like where she lives now). Then she started complaining that the home care worker wasn’t there yet, even though it was barely past 8am. I commented that she’d told me they come closer to 9am. Oh, sometimes they come at 8… they come at all times.

At which point I realized that the time the “usually come” is the time she notices it is, and that they should be there is when she wants them to be there. Nothing to do with schedules or having to go to other homes.

Which got her talking again about how there should only be the same two people coming to do her med assist, not so many. I told her again, this is how the system works. It’s how they have to do it. Otherwise, she would have to hire a private home care company and pay for it out of pocket.

Which actually caught her attention.

We didn’t get far into the conversation, though, as the phone rang.

It was the clinic, but the doctor’s assistant, not the doctor. We’ve spoken with him before.

I put it on speaker phone so my mother could hear, but the volume was a bit low, and the guy had a strong accent. My mother’s response was basically to start yelling at him to speak louder. I manage to get her to stop, tried to turn the volume up, and explain to the guy that she couldn’t hear him, all at the same time.

There wasn’t a lot for him to tell use. Her test results hover around the same ranges, with minimal fluctuation. My mother really seems to want to be diagnosed diabetic, though. She keeps asking about her blood sugars, which were on the high side of normal this time – barely. He basically just said, eat less carbs. It’s not an issue. Her kidney function was also fine, which is the monthly test she’s been doing since leaving the hospital, back in March.

Before the call ended, I asked if my mother had any questions, and the launched into saying, she wanted the doctor to put her into a nursing home.

*sigh*

We both responded with basically the same thing; the doctor can’t do anything about that. She’s done as much as she can.

After the call ended, I went over my notes with her and explained things. She’s understandably frustrated in that she couldn’t make out much of what he said, but that’s why I’m there for these calls. Then she said, “so… the doctor didn’t even want to talk to me…”

*sigh*

When it came to explaining about reducing carbs – and what carbs are – it got more difficult. My mother makes a big deal about how she avoids sugar, which she doesn’t really. As she understands it, it’s all about avoiding white table sugar, and “sweet things”. I tried to explain to her that bread is “sugar”. Pasta is “sugar”. etc. He’d said something about eating more vegetables that I brought up, and she perked up saying “and fruit!” I had to tell her, no, fruit is basically just sugar.

I finally started looking up lists of low carb vegetables for her, then wrote out the ones that she knows and likes, dropping off the ones she wouldn’t eat (partly because they were unfamiliar to her, or aren’t available locally, but also because she doesn’t know what a lot of them are) and those she shouldn’t eat, because of her acid reflux.

What the doctor doesn’t know when it comes to my mother’s diet is that she has stopped eating meat almost entirely, because she has decided it’s bad for her (the TV told her so…) and the bulk of her diet is bread and milk. So I looked up and made another list of low carb foods aside from the vegetables list.

She wanted me to write out a list of things she should NOT be eating, and I told her it would be too long. Instead, I looked up a list of high carb foods and read it out to her.

Not that is will make much difference. And really, at her age, there are far bigger things to be concerned about!

While talking about meats, though, she suddenly told me to take the whole chicken I’d bought with her groceries, take it home and cook it for ourselves. That chicken was pretty much the only meat she had.

After a few questions, it came down to, she couldn’t cook it. She doesn’t know how to use the oven on her stove, so she can’t just roast the whole thing, and she can’t physically stand to process and cook it on the stove top.

I offered to butcher it for her, which she agreed to.

I started off by clearing and preparing the space to work in, including doing a few dishes, then cleaning the sink itself to wash the chicken in. Of course, my mother started giving me step by step instructions on what I should be doing. She suggested using a stainless steal bowl I didn’t know she had, for washing the chicken. So that worked out – except I was apparently supposed to wash the bird after it was cut up, not before.

Then I discovered my mother does not have a proper knife.

She directed me to her one larger knife to use, and it was some sort of bread knife with different sizes of serration. I did try to use it, but it was just tearing the bird apart, so I looked around some more. She told me she had this really good knife that she got at the second hand store, and that turned out to be a cheap steak knife.

I ended up using a paring knife.

Apparently, I still wasn’t going it right, so my mother came over to the sink, got the water running – hot water! – and started tearing the chicken still in the bowl apart with her bare hands, splashing chicken juices everywhere. After tossing a chunk of tail and spine into a frying pan, she started saying that the wings are small, so they could be quickly cooked right away, and she then tried to tear the chicken apart more. I tried to tell her to sit down – the whole point of me doing this was because she couldn’t stand at the counter for fear of falling! – but she ignored me.

Thankfully, the home care worker for her morning med assist arrived just then!

I had to remind my mother to wash her hands of raw chicken, with soap, before getting her meds, and once she was with the home care worker and getting her medications, I was able to finish butchering the chicken.

That left me with a carcass I didn’t want to waste, so I found a small pot in her oven (she stores her pots and pans in the oven, since she never uses it) and got a stock going, using up some older vegetables I found in her fridge to clear out. I was a bit perplexed when I asked where her salt was, and found a small lidded bowl with salt that had dark flecks in it. It turns out that any take out packets of salt and pepper she found herself with, she would empty them into her salt bowl. So it was a mix of salt and pepper! I found some dry herbs and she directed me to her very last garlic clove, which was stored in a drawer with her larger knives, and spare envelopes.

…

My mother seemed surprised by what I was doing. I don’t think she’s ever made a chicken stock on its own before.

Once that was going, implements washed and the splashed raw chicken mess all cleaned up, I started frying up the pieces of chicken in batches. When those were done, I set them aside in a container to cool, then deglazed the pan and added that to the stock, which was getting close to done by then. I had enough time to clean up again, then take out her garbage, then clean up again…

When the stock was ready and I fished out the large pieces to remove any of the meat that was left on the bones (there was next to none), my mother gave me a hard time for throwing it out instead of taking it home to the cats. I reminded her that onions are bad for cats, but she said they’d be fine.

…

The stock got drained to a smaller pot and set aside with the cooked chicken to cool and everything got cleaned up again before I could finally sit down for a few minutes. My mother actually seemed eager to use the stock – even just to drink straight!

Which was the closest I got to seeing any sort of appreciation, really, but that’s fine. I don’t expect that from her. I could tell she was happy with it because she wasn’t giving me a hard time for doing everything wrong. 😄😂

Once everything was done, I finally got to sit and rest for a bit (my painkillers had worn off for some time by then!) and we got to chat. I mentioned that the store our post office is in closes at noon, so I’d have to leave in a bit, but I did still have some time to visit.

When it was time for me to do, she was looking at the clock and saying “it’s not noon yet!”

I actually had to explain to her that them closing at noon meant I had to be there BEFORE noon – and I had driving time to consider, too!

😄

It’s a good thing I did, too, as my daughter had a parcel to pick up. I also picked up a few packets of flower seeds, since it looks like none of the flowers we planted in the fall have survived the spring.

I still got home before noon!

It was all I could do not to go straight to bed!

Today has been a much more pleasant day outside – feeling almost cold, after the heat of the past two days. We’re apparently having rain and thunderstorms right now, too.

~ looks out the window at the clear sky ~

I don’t think I’ll be able to get anything done in the garden beds today, though. We’ll see what the evening brings. I’m just glad to be home.

The Re-Farmer

Dealing with the heat… and Mom issues again

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With an even hotter day expected for today, I was outside early to take care if things while it was still relatively cool.

If 20C/68F at 6am could be considered cool.

After the cats were tended to – and they were a lot happier and more active in the relative cool, that’s for sure! – I started preparing things for the upcoming heat.

The transplants were moved outside so they wouldn’t cook in the portable greenhouse later on. If you click through the above slideshow, you’ll see we have tulips blooming, and the wild plums are in full bloom.

I watered some of the winter sown garden beds, lifted plastic covers up for air flow, and was watering some of the food trees when I got a message from my daughter.

My mother had phoned. My daughter didn’t get to the phone in time, but her my mother leaving a message about not feeling well and going to the doctor.

???

So I shut off the hose, headed inside and listened to the message. Which wasn’t particularly clear in what exactly she was having trouble with, or what she was intending to do, but it was because she’s not getting her medications on time.

I called her back.

She started talking about how she was poorly she was feeling and she has to go to a doctor (she sounded good; voice strong, few issues with finding her works, no breathing issues…), and it was because she wasn’t getting her medications regularly.

Her morning med assist wasn’t expected to arrive for another hour.

After asking a number of questions, and basically, she thinks that the home care workers should arrive at her place at exactly the same time, ever day, no matter what. And there should only be two people visiting, not so many people, and that’s why she’s not getting her medications “properly”.

She’s getting her medications. They have a 2 hour window when she’s supposed to get them.

Then she started going on about the no-show on Saturday. She had asked someone about that and apparently this person had made arrangements with a friend to take over for her (which can’t be accurate; she would have arranged with another home care worker, but that’s not how my mother understood it) because – insert extremely mocking and condescending tone – it was Mother’s Day and she has a little daughter she wanted to spend time with.

Now, I have no idea what was actually said, since this was on Saturday, not Mother’s Day, but she was made at this woman for arranging to spend time with her daughter, rather than the woman who didn’t show up.

Which reminds me of another home care worker she complained about. While my mother was taking her pills the worker was texting her own mother on her phone. My mother was extremely mocking in describing this. While that does seem unprofessional, I suspected there was something else going on. After several different days of my mother complaining about the woman texting her mother while at my mom’s place, she finally mentioned…

Her mother had just had to put her dog down, and was having a hard time about it.

My mother was using her mocking tone again as she told me this, too.

I tried to explain to her that they need to have a lot of people, not just two, because they have a lot of people besides her that they have to visit, and they need to have enough people to cover for each other is someone gets sick or whatever. My mother began to complain about how they only cared about themselves, only themselves, not about her… They should only care about her.

Meanwhile, it’s my own mother who doesn’t care about anyone else, only herself. The home care workers should all not care about their own families. Just her.

The hypocrisy was completely lost on her.

Then she started talking about needing to talk to the doctor and to make an appointment.

One of the things on my to-do list was to call to arrange a phone appointment, because my mother’s doctor had left a message with her to do that. The clinic wasn’t going to open for another hour, though, and I told my mother that.

I kept asking questions, trying to understand what was going on, and telling her that if she really felt she needed help (she mentioned waiting up in so much pain, she can’t move and can only scream, but she doesn’t want to disturb her neighbours…), she had a life line. Push the button. That’s what it’s for.

She didn’t really respond openly, but clearly wasn’t interested in that. She wanted me or my siblings to drop everything and do it for her. Instead, she started talking about how, because she’s not taking her pills regularly (I think we might be having an issue of her rewriting her own memory again), that’s why she’s feeling so poorly. Her pain is getting worse, her vision…

Her vision?

She’s mentioned her vision before, but hadn’t said it was getting worse. That fact that it was NOT getting worse is why we got away with cancelling her last appointment.

I told her, she hasn’t said it was getting worse. None of her pills will help with that. This is where she would need to go to the eye clinic in the city. (The treatment is injections into her eyeball. Which she handled we better than I ever would have!!!) Did she want me to make an appointment at the clinic for her?

…

We’ll talk about that later, she says…

Then she started saying how she needs to be “around people” (meaning, have someone available to help, 24/7, as in assisted living/supportive living/long term care). Which I totally agree on. She asked and I told her again that I’d gone through her entire panel with the home care coordinator again, making changes where things have gotten worse for her, and basically taking her worst days and writing that down, to try and get her in somewhere; preferably long term care. I reminded her that most people go to long term care from the hospital; they fall and break a hip or something, and never go home. Just straight to long term care. Most people don’t actually want to go into long term care, like she does, so hers is a different situation. But we would still have to wait for a bed to come available, and for that, we’re basically waiting for someone to die, because that’s pretty much the only way space becomes available in long term care.

(I didn’t mention it this time, but I had told her about one of her neighbours that I’d run into, while my mother was in the hospital. She told me it had taken 8 months and two hospital transfers for her late father to get into long term care. He wasn’t well enough to go home, but there were no open beds in long term care, so he had to stay in the hospital.)

I remined her that I was already supposed to call the clinic to make a phone appointment for her this morning, but the clinic wasn’t open yet, so I’d have to call her back.

Which meant I lost about the cooler weather to get stuff done outside.

I had time for breakfast before calling the clinic. I made an appointment for tomorrow morning, which means I’ll have to be at my mother’s before 8am. I called my mother to let her know, but it went to her answering machine, so I left a message. Then I headed outside to at least finish what I was half way through before I headed inside.

Once I was back inside, I spent more time on the phone. One was to return a call from the small engine shop I’d left our push mower at, for servicing.

There are a couple of parts I can’t remember the names of, one connected to the choke, that were done. That’s why I couldn’t start it anymore. They simply were no longer there. My guess is, they broke and fell off. Our lawn is very rough on lawnmowers!

The problem is, this is a Canadian Tire, Certified brand. The parts are hard to get at the best of times. With these parts, there aren’t any parts numbers. Which means, they don’t service them. “Fixing” it would mean replacing the entire engine and, at that point, may as well just buy a new mower!

He’s going to try and find the parts for me but I told him, if you can’t, you can’t. Just let me know and I’ll pick it up.

I then told him that I do have another push mower. The prime pump needs replacing, and it’s jerry rigged for starting and stopping. It’s about 20+ years old. He told me that it would probably be easier to find parts for that, and those older machines last a lot longer!

So what I might end up doing is bringing the newer push mower home as basically trash, and bringing my mother’s old push mower in for servicing and repair instead. We shall see.

I also made a number of calls about the truck, trying to find out if the insurance will cover the lost box cover, and it it would be worth making a claim.

Long story short, I would start an insurance claim. They would make an appointment for me to bring it in for inspection. Someone from the insurance company comes to town every other week to do these inspections. If it’s determined that the damage isn’t because of some fault (rust, previous damage, etc), and that they will cover it, it would be worth paying the $500 deductible. A new cover ranges from $1200 to $2800. !!!! The tail light would also be replaced. They don’t just replace the cover, but the whole unit, and that costs about $250-$300. Not worth making a claim for just that, if the inspector decides they won’t cover the loss of the cover, at which point I could cancel the claim entirely.

Eventually, I made my way back outside.

This was the temperature before I headed out, then when I got back in.

Much of what I did was things like watering down the hot concrete, misting the transplants and garden beds, and wetting down the mats in the sun room to help cool through evaporation.

The first picture above was taken when I started my rounds at about 5:30-6am. Poirot stayed with her kittens for quite a long time. The wall thermometer was already reading about 20C/68F, while outside was still around 13C/55F. The frozen water bottles would be thawed by then, but must still have been helping keep things cool. Little by little, as I could reach, I replaced the water bottle in front with a new frozen one, and replaced the ice pack on top of the carrier with another ice pack. Eventually, I was even able to add a small ice pack along the side of the carrier.

Poirot let me do this.

She did growl at me as I did things around her, but I was able to give her a squeeze treat and she was quite happy with that, and with licking the last of it off my fingers, too. When I added the ice pack on the side, she shifted, but let me. Later, I put my hand in to pet one of her kittens and…

… she licked my fingers!!!!

When I later saw that she was gone, I switched out the water bottle in the back of the carrier for a frozen one. The second picture with the babies is after I’d done that.

So while it was still pretty hot in the sun room, things were much better in their nest, with the help of the car windshield heat screen blocking the sun from the windows and judiciously placed ice packs!

The bigger kittens had their own ways to keep cool.

Little Kale, in the first photo, was on the very bottom of a shelf, where temperatures would be cooler. The next photo shows some of the other kittens, chilling with the moms – one ran off before I could take the picture. Last image is of Sir Robin the Brave. When we pick him up, he almost immediately flips over onto his back, so we can pet his neck and chest! This kitten is so socialized, it’s amazing!

Meanwhile, every time I had the chance, I would try and call my mom to confirm about tomorrow.

No answer. Every time.

Then my older daughter offer to buy supper, so we wouldn’t have to heat the house with cooking (the upstairs is insanely hot!), so my younger daughter and I headed out, but not before I tried calling my mother again. Still no answer, so I ended up calling the home care coordinator, because that’s the only home care number I have. I explained that I talked to my mother this morning, but had been trying to get back to her for hours, and there was no answer. She was quite surprised to here this. My mother’s supper med assist was going to be happening soon. She told me she would let the home care worker know and that they’d get back to me.

We were on our way to town when my cell phone rang. It was the home care worker, calling to let me know she’d just left my mother. She had been asleep this whole time!

She was also very groggy.

Otherwise, she seemed all right.

I was very, very thankful for the news.

Our trip to town did not take long. After we got back home, I called my mother, and she answered the phone. She told me she had been sleeping and had a hot water bottle for her back (I can’t even imagine using a hot water bottle in this heat!), and her pain was why she was in bed. She never heard the phone ring.

I confirmed she got my message about tomorrow, so we’re on for that.

As we were talking, there was a knock at the door.

It was her suppertime med assist.

???

Which means the person that called me before had swung by my mother’s place, just to do a wellness check! She was not the evening med assist person!

That was so awesome of them!!!

So that’s all done for today.

For now, I just need to do my evening rounds and do the evening cat feeding. Normally, I would have done it earlier, but it was so hot, the cats don’t have much appetite!

*sigh*

The temperature had dropped to 27C/81F, but has just jumped back up to 31C/88F.

Well, things need to be put away for the night. The low is supposed to be 9C/48F, though not until about 6am. We’re supposed to have some rain for a couple of hours in the morning, and the high is supposed to be “only” 20C/68F Then things drop right down for the next few days!

That’s some wild weather whiplash we’ll be getting!

Anyhow.

Time to get out there, then try and get to bed at a decent hour. I had intended to do a few hours work outside really early, then nap for a couple of hours, but… well… that just didn’t happen!

I am so, so tired, in so many different ways!!

The Re-Farmer

Three more walnuts planted, and an unexpected treat

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We got a nice little down pour in the wee hours of the morning. Not enough to refill the rain barrel, but enough to water things nicely.

Knowing it was going to get hot today, I made a point of having breakfast before I did my morning rounds, as I planned to stay out longer to do some planting, before it got too hot.

While checking on the covered garden beds, I tried to open them up a bit so they wouldn’t get too hot inside during the heat wave (we haven’t reached the hottest part of the day yet, and we’re already at 31C/88F) today and tomorrow, while still giving them protection.

I was hearing thunder the whole time I was outside. As I was gathering my supplies together into the wheelbarrow, the rain started coming down again. It didn’t take long for me to get quite wet before I could dash inside! I ended up waiting until about 8:30 before heading out again, though I’d really hoped to have been done by then.

I went through the bag of walnut seeds and found three that were showing roots and needed to get into the ground right away. That worked out perfectly, as there were three spots marked out along the wet side of the lane I want to keep clear to the second gate. It the second picture of the slideshow above, you can just barely see a dot of orange in the distance, marking the northernmost spot.

The first thing to do was rake around the markers, clearing them of dead grass and debris – and any little poplars coming up that I’d missed, before!

Next, at each marker, I removed a circle of sod, which I quartered and set aside to put back, later. Once the sod was removed, I dug around a bit more to loosen the soil and remove any rocks I found in the process.

Once the holes were dug, I added some of the indoor-outdoor potting soil my brother gave me, mostly filling the holes. Then a plastic collar was set into the soil. The loose soil and and sod (placed upside down), along with any rocks I’d dug up, was set around the collar and the hole in such a way as to create a sort of moat, so wany water would drain towards the middle. Then, all of them got a thorough watering. I actually have a couple of photos reversed. The one with the arrow shows where a walnut seed is. Each got pushed into the moist soil, root side down, and the marker was inserted into the soil near it. Each collar got topped up with more of the bagged soil and pressed down gently, before getting a final, thorough watering.

Once the seeds were planted and watered, I raked up more dried grass to set around as mulch.

Here was have the three planted areas, with the grass mulch set around the collars for mulch. The very last photo shows the “combed” area I’d raked the dead grass out of. I just thought it looked rather funny. 😁

Three seeds planted; five more to go! All of those will be planted on the east side of the lane, and closer to the inner yard fence.

While it hadn’t gotten really hot yet, things were pretty muggy, so I was more than happy to get inside!

I had some plans to head into town today, which turned out to work out for everyone. Because of her work schedule, my older daughter basically didn’t see me on Mother’s day until some time past midnight. She wanted to treat me with a Mother’s day dinner today. After the four of us discussed options and ideas, my younger daughter and I left for town in the late morning.

My first stop was at the place our truck is insured at. I talked to someone about the wind damage to the truck, asking if it was something the insurance covered. She didn’t know for sure, but gave me the number I needed to call and find out. Since the cover isn’t actually part of the truck, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be covered, but it’s worth asking.

The next stop was at our usual Chinese food place to place an order, only to discover they were closed. We keep forgetting. They are always closed on Mondays. After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to try the other Chinese restaurant. We keep forgetting about that one, but I’ve been there for sit down meals a few times while waiting for my truck to be worked on, since it’s in a hotel right next to our garage. This restaurant, it turned out, closes on Tuesdays, so we were good! 😄

After going over the menu and deciding on things for my husband and myself, I left my daughter to take care of the rest while I went to the pharmacy. My husband had ordered refills of his injections for delivery, but getting them faster was preferrable. While there, I also picked up some liquid, spray on bandage. The little calico kitten has a strange wound on her back leg, and lost some skin. We can’t bandage it and, while we’ve been applying antibiotic ointment, it really needs more protection.

That done, I got back to the restaurant early enough that my daughter and I popped across the street to the grocery store, where she picked up drinks to go with our Chinese food. We got back just in time for the food to be ready.

That was a very nice treat from my daughter – and no need to heat up the house more with cooking, today! The air conditioner in the living room has been turned on. We need to start bringing the fans up out of storage in the basement.

In the end, it has turned out to be a more productive day than I expected it to be, with this heat.

One more hot day, and then it’s going to get downright cold again! I’m certainly happy to have gotten those walnuts in!

The Re-Farmer

Happy Mother’s Day!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today started out early, as it has been of late. Between how early it gets bright out, and the inside cats deciding it’s feeding time, “sleeping in” is a bit of a pipe dream! 😁

With a daughter on kitten catching duty, feeding the outside cats went rather smoothly. I did notice that Caramel’s three were still together.

That orange kitten is so much bigger than the other two!

While doing the rest of my morning rounds, I made sure to water the covered beds thoroughly, so the moisture would help moderate the temperatures under the plastic somewhat, as the day got hotter.

The “Mr” haskap (the label actually says “Mr. Honeyberry”) is blooming quite nicely.

I even saw a big bumble bee enjoying the flowers!

I looked up the Berry Blue variety that this is, and most pollinator charts don’t include it. However, I found sellers that gave useful information in their descriptions. This variety is apparently a good cross pollinator for all other varieties, and is also self pollinating. It blooms in April-May.

Since the other two look like they won’t even start getting buds until June, this is a really bad combination!

At least we’ll get berries from the one, later in the season!

Once the outside stuff was done, I headed in for a light breakfast, with plans to visit my mother with my brother for Mother’s Day.

After some back and forthing, I ended up leaving later, as the restaurant he planned to pick dinners up from didn’t open until 11. He had to drive past my mother’s place first – and spotted my sister’s car! So that was a surprise. She works late shifts at Walmart and doesn’t typically get home and to bed until about 2am, so we weren’t expecting to see her in the morning.

So plans changed a bit and I met up with both of them at my mother’s, and we had a chance to visit before my brother quickly left to pick up the food he’d ordered. Someone at the restaurant answered the phone before they opened, so it was going to be ready for pick up right when the doors unlocked!

My mother was feeling up to going to church, and services started at 11:30. I had time to quickly go to a bank machine and get some cash, so I had something for the donation basket. My sister belongs to another church, so she left when it was time to walk across the street to my mother’s church. It was slow going for my mother, and she had to stop and rest along the way. With my brother staying close to her, I had a chance to show my sister the damage visible on the truck – I hadn’t realized this was the first time she’s seen our truck! We’ve had it for about 1 1/2 years now.

It was a special Mother’s Day service, so there were some extra prayers for mothers added, and the priest went around and sprinkled holy water on us.

I had to clean my glasses after that! Got “blessed”, right in the face. 😂

My mother was… being my mother. I won’t go into that! She did have a hard time with the new priest, though. He’s from India, has a very strong accent, and speaks faster than she can keep up. Not faster than typical; just too fast for her. Which is unfortunate, because he had a really excellent sermon, talking about his own childhood, and what a hard time he gave his mother! She passed away when he was very young, and that was a struggle for him. With his rather rambunctious youth, he never imagined he would become a priest, but credited where he is today to his mother. He calls her his angel. It was interesting to hear him mention his brother, later in the service, who is also a priest!

After a while, my mother started getting antsy, and even leaned over with her watch, telling me he was really dragging the service on. Which seemed strange to me, because I’m used to services being an hour and, according to her watch, it was only 45 minutes at the time. When the service was winding down, my mother stood up like she was about to leave, then took off as soon as he make the closing blessing, before the final hymn even started. Which meant my brother and I had to rush after her to help with the doors and get her home.

Not being able to hear much of what he was saying didn’t help, I’m sure, but to be completely honest, given some of the things she’d already said to me about this new priest, and some of her other behaviour, it really came down to my mother’s own racism. It’s getting worse as she gets older, unfortunately, as her mental health and cognitive thinking declines. At her age, we really can’t expect any positive changes.

Once we got her home and settled into her favourite chair, my brother went into the kitchen to get the take-out dinners ready. My mother started ordering me to get plates and stuff, but my brother told her, no. There’s simply no room in her 2-step kitchen! He could pass things to me, but anything more then that would just slow things down.

She seemed to get it, but then started ordering us around again, as if the conversation never happened! 😄

We did have a nice lunch together, though, and some time to chat about a few things. My brother had brought brought batteries from home and ended up changing the batteries in her remotes, just in case, so none of the ones I picked up for her yesterday were needed yet.

After everything was cleaned up and we had a good visit, my brother had to head out. I stayed a bit longer, to rub the topical pain reliever on my mother’s back and hips – this time with her sitting in her chair and leaning against the table, rather than lying on her side in bed, making it much easier to get the areas that bother her the most. She told me that, after I’d applied it to her back yesterday, it helped her so much and she slept really well. She also has her hot water bottle, which she finds helps a lot, too. So she was more than happy with getting another “treatment”! Her home care aids do have applying this on her care sheet now, but my mother has been doing it herself before she gets dressed, so it’s done before they get there. She can’t do her whole lower back, though. She doesn’t like the idea of the home care workers touching, though. Hopefully, she’ll have at least some home care workers she trusts enough to do it, because it really does help her a lot!

By the time I got home, it was getting close to feeding time for the outside cats. I started doing for the cat house to get the container from inside the entry, when I disturbed a domestic scene!

This mama was nursing both Eyelet and Grommet, but Grommet ran off (you can see him in the next image above). I tried to not come too close, but it was still too much for him. I had to go where he was to get the food container, though, so he went hiding under the cat house, instead.

Poirot, meanwhile, had left the sun room, so I could see her babies while setting her own food dish in front of the carrier.

Seeing the adult cats splayed all over the yard in the heat is funny enough. Seeing Poirot’s babies splayed out is just adorable!

Once the food was out, I wanted to top up the water bowls, and cool down the portable greenhouse – the thermometer needle was as far as it could go, even with the doorway tied wide open. If the numbers on the dial went that far, it would have read above 60C/140F!

The water in the hose was scalding hot, so I used that to refill the garbage can heat sink until it was cold again. Then I misted all the plant containers, and even the roof and walls. By the time I was done, the thermometer was down to 50C/122F

As I went to refill the bowl in the water bowl shelter, I spotted two little faces peeking at me through the cat house entry.

I wasn’t fast enough to get the orange tabby.

This little tabby stayed and watched me, and I was even able to pick it up and snuggle it!

Grommet, meanwhile, was in the gap under the entry watching me, and started hissing and spitting before ducking further under.

Caramel’s babies need names. There’s the tortie, the tabby and the ginger. Since we already have Butterscotch inside (and is probably a great-great-grandma to them!), and Caramel is their mom, maybe these ones will stay on the sweets theme?

Something to think about.

Tonight’s low is supposed to be 13C/55F, so I’m going to be leaving the door to the portable greenhouse tied open for the night. Meanwhile, Friday’s low has changed again, and is now expected to drop to -1C/30F – this after a heat wave over the next few days with highs reaching above 30C/86F! So no chance of transplanting anything quite yet. Any transplants would just get baked, then frozen, within a week! Tomorrow morning, though, I’m hoping to get some beds ready and planted with things that can handle both the heat and the cold. The summer squash bed looks like a total loss and, since it already has netting over it, I figure that’s a good place to plant potatoes.

For the rest of today, though, I’m taking a Sunday – and Mother’s Day – break.

For the moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, and then off the rails!

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It’s just past 5:30pm as I write this, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I am SO tired! Please forgive any odd sentence structure or typos, because I’m sure I’m going to miss many when I got over things before hitting publish!

The cats had me up at about 5am this morning. I got up and fed them – the morning feeding includes kicking all the cats out of my bedroom except Butterscotch and Freya. After the dry kibble is dispensed, I pour some cat milk into a small bowl for our elederly Freya (Butterscotch gets the rest of the little carton), and then I sit beside her on my bed, holding the bowl for her while she eats until she is done. This saves her from having to jump down from the bed to eat, and she can stay all curled up in whatever cat bed she’s in.

Yeah. I’m a suck for the cats.

After a while, I let the other cats back in, then tried going to bed for a couple more hours. I swear, the cats know exactly when I fall asleep for real, and that’s when they start getting into things they shouldn’t, and start making loud noises. Or just going crazy. Tissue got the zoomies this morning. So what sleep I did manage to get was highly interrupted. I can’t even keep the door closed, because then they start scratching at it and that keeps waking me up.

The temperature had dropped to 2C/36F at 5am. By about 8am, it had warmed up to a whole 8C/46F. Which was about when I started heading out. First, the kitties got fed, and I got a daughter to help out. Not with the feeding, though. With kitten catching! Kale and Sir Robin the Brave are incredibly fast about getting into the old kitchen, and haven’t learned to stay away from moving feet, or closing doors! After luring the adult cats away with kibble, I closed the inner door into the sun room and my daughter started handing me bowls of wet cat food to set out for the littles, plus one with both wet and dry cat food for Poirot at her cat carrier nest. Another bowl with part kibble and part wet cat food went into the cat house for Caramel and her babies.

Then I continued my rounds, leaving the sun room closed up, even though all three mamas were out. The white and grey mama has been seen nursing the creche babies more often, now that her third baby is in the sun room again.

Poirot’s grublings are getting more mobile, so I set up a a bit of a shield for them.

I’ve been saving cardboard for the garden in the old kitchen, and there just happened to be a couple of pieces of cardboard that was used as spacers inside a box that were just perfect for this. In the second picture, you can see how they’re set up to cover the gap between the shelf and the wall, and cat carrier and the wall. This should be enough of they accidentally squirm out of the carrier. As they get more mobile, we might just move the carrier to the floor, so they can go in and out as they wish.

Once done with tending the colony, the first thing I do it switch out the memory cards. As I go out to the sign cam, past where the food forest is being built up. That corner gets very sun baked and dry in the summer, but these guys don’t seem to mind at all!

They are absolutely everywhere. It’s impossible to not walk on them, but they don’t seem the least bit bothered by that. I don’t know what they are, but if I had to guess, I’d say they are some type of pansy? Whatever they are, they are pretty indestructible!

The next thing was to check on the garden beds. Especially the one where I just planted peas, yesterday. I thought they were fine until I got to the northernmost end, where I saw the cats had been digging. *sigh* Hopefully, they didn’t actually dig up any seeds, but I really couldn’t tell. I was trying to figure out some way to cover things when I remembered I still have grass clippings saved to use as mulch. There isn’t a lot left, but enough to do the job!

The soil got a gentle watering, first. After the grass was laid down, that got watered down, too. Partly so it wouldn’t blow away too easily.

The plastic covered beds all got watered, too. With the sprouting seedlings, it’s hard to tell which are what I planted and which are weeks. Some that I suspected to be weeds were starting to show their true leaves, and I was correct: they are maple seedlings. So I pulled as many of those as I could, along with identifiable stuff like dandelions – so long as pulling them wouldn’t disturb any other sprouts.

The low raised bed that no longer has plastic on it got watered. I’d tried blocking off one end of the cover and hoped that would be enough protection until I could do the other end. This morning, I discovered, I was wrong.

*sigh*

After repairing the digging damage as best I could, I got creative. This is all temporary.

In the first picture, you can see I just stuck some boards across the opening. The stick holding them in place is secured at the top through the mesh, so those could only go so high, so I used what I could find to add verticals on the inside. Hopefully, the cats won’t try to jump through the gaps.

In the next picture, you can see the twine I wove through the mesh to close up the end. Again, temporary, but this should hold for a while.

After the watering and weeding was done, I headed inside for breakfast, before going back out and continuing what I hoped to get finished today.

It was almost exactly 10am and I just sat down with my food when the phone rang.

It was my mother.

No one showed up to do her med assist this morning.

I should have gotten a call, but I got nothing. My mother had tried calling the case coordinator, but it’s Saturday; her office is closed.

So I told her, I would quickly finish eating, then head out to give her her medications. She wanted me to dispense her other two meds for the day, too, in case her med assist didn’t show up for those times, either, but I refused. Got quite a mocking for following the rules. So what will you do? she asked me. Come out two more times?

I said, yes! I will!

I told her, there’s a reason your medications are in your lock box. You were messing with your medications, forgetting if you took them, etc. Oh, I wasn’t that bad, she said. Yes, you were, Mom. That’s why you have a lock box! She actually seemed to stop and think about that!

One of the things I did was write up a note and leave it in their notebook, stating that I had dispensed that morning’s medications and at what time.

I also told her that, since I was out anyhow, I would make a trip to the nearest Walmart to do a bit of shopping. I had planned to do it later in the weeks, but I could do it now. The Walmart carries 2L plastic milk jugs, which she finds easier to handle, so I told her I was thinking of getting a plastic jug for her. I did just get her a carton, but…

She does still have milk, but it turns out she had dropped the carton while trying to open it and spilled some. So more milk, in a better container, was a big yes from her!

I ended up leaving with a small shopping list and some cash. One of the things she was running low of was the topical pain killer she’s been using on her knees. She’s now using it on her back, too, so she’s going through it faster. I had already been thinking of checking that out, too, as I figured it would be a better price.

Since it was well past 11am by the time I was going to head out, I offered to make a lunch for her, but she said she had leftovers from yesterday’s Meals on Wheels, so she was fine. Once I knew she was settled, I headed out.

My first stop was actually a Dollarama that shares a parking lot with the Walmart. There were a few small things that I wanted to pick up and, of course, I went through the garden supply section. I ended up picking up four 4′ metal posts. Not T posts, but the same idea. They have hooks in the metal to hold trellis netting. They would have been perfect for what I was doing yesterday – and easier to set into the soil! We will be trellising pole beans and more peas, though, so new posts will not go amiss. I probably should have gotten more, but I should be able to get some more next month, if I need to.

After I was done at the Dollarama, it was across the parking lot to Walmart.

I got a few things that were not on my list. 😄

One thing that was on my list was more wet cat food. Since we are giving wet cat food to the kittens, we’re going through it faster. Normally, at Walmart, I pick up cases of 32. Looking at the new prices for the individual cans, though, I realized it would actually be cheaper to buy them loose, than by case lot! I ended up using some of their cardboard flats and got 48 cans of paté for the inside cats (paté works better when making cat soup) and 24 cans of chunks in gravy for the kittens.

They had sales on canned food for humans, too, and I got a flat of 24 cans of tomato soup for the pantry, too.

I also went through the garden centre. I picked up some replacement Yukon potatoes, since I’m sure the ones I’ve been chitting are no longer viable. Their herbs and vegetables were out, so I went hunting and found a few herbs. I got English Thyme, Golden thyme, two containers of oregano, lemon balm and basil. These will go into the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden, which has a cat proof cover already.

As for my mother’s list, the topical painkiller she uses was there – and cost $11 less than at her local pharmacy! That’s a huge difference!

The store was very busy, so it took a while for me to get everything I was looking for (and then some), and I was really tired and hungry by the end of it. I had some frozen stuff in my cart, so I stopped to get some take out that I could eat while driving, then headed out, making sure to update my family and let them know I was on my way to my mother’s, then home.

Which is when things went sideways.

Literally.

The last part of my route to my mother’s is a provincial trunk road, from one highway to another, that leads to my mother’s town. This is an east/west route.

The wind was coming from the south.

As I was driving towards an area of wide open fields, I saw the entire horizon was covered with what looked like black smoke. Once clear of some trees, I could see it swirling over the fields – but no flames.

It was dust.

Basically, the topsoil from the south side of the road was being blown to the north side of the road.

As I was being buffeted by the wind, driving through it.

Which is when I heard and felt something behind me and looked in my mirror just in time to see the cover over the box of our truck blow off, into the ditch and keep on going!

I pulled over, but by the time I did, there was no sign of the cover. I’m sure it was still being blown across that field for some time!

I had stuff in the box of the truck, and it was already getting scattered across the box. I gathered it all together and crammed it mostly into the back of the cab, making sure nothing went to the front that could get mixed up with my mother’s stuff.

I made sure that there was no way those metal posts would be able to slide and hit a window!

Once everything was put away, I continued to my mother’s place. Wow, what a difference in how the truck felt while driving! The wind swirling into the box of the truck was very noticeable.

When I was done at my mother’s, I was able to get for damage, which you can see in the second image in the slideshow above. There was enough flex on the box when the cover was torn off that it cracked the tail light cover.

But I didn’t get a chance to see that until later.

As soon as I entered her apartment, my mother, who was lying in bed, started saying, Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I’m so glad to see you! while getting up to sit on the side of her bed.

I’m doing poorly, she tells me. Maybe I should go to the hospital. What do you think?

I certainly did not voice what I was actually thinking. My mother has cried wolf so many times, and uses having us take her to the hospital as a way of getting attention.

I asked her questions about what was going on. She was pretty vague about it; as if she expected me to already know. She told me she took one of the new pills (the T3s), but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

I told her, these pills aren’t magic. They are just stronger painkillers. As she kept on basically about what her expectations were (take pill: pain ends utterly and completely), I told her that her prescription for these is just a couple a day, morning and evening, as needed. I’m on the same pills, same dosage per tablet, and I can take up to 9 of them in total, per day. So it really depends on the individual.

She was pretty shocked that I could take so many per day, when she had a limit of two per day.

As I was putting things away, she lay back down in bed and suggested that maybe using the topical painkiller would help (confirming, finally, exactly what it was that was causing her problems this time). So that’s what we tried. She asked me to do, not only her hips (the pain is mostly just on one side), but her entire back as well. As I was doing that for her, she said to add lots, so I did it second time. As I was putting away the tube, she started saying she could feel a difference, already!

Hopefully, that will be enough.

My brother and I are planning to be there tomorrow for Mother’s Day, so we’ll be able to check on her more thoroughly, then.

Meanwhile, whenever I had a few moments, I kept my family and my siblings updated on things. I told my mother that I had frozen things in my vehicle and had to get them home, so I was soon back on the road. A daughter was sweet enough to have the gate open for me when I got in.

After everything was unloaded, and the new transplants and bags of seed potatoes secure in the portable greenhouse, it was time to feed the outside cats. I had another daughter on kitten duty, too! Other than doing a quick check to make sure none of the raised bed covers were blown away, I was more than happy to finally settle in at home.

So much for my garden and planting plans for the day! As I write this, we have continued to get warmer. It’s past 7pm now, and the temperature has risen to 24C/75F, though with the wind, it does feel a bit cooler. Not much, though! One of the local weather groups I follow on Facebook has been posting information and the coming heat way, with significant heat warnings to come.

We’re supposedly getting rain right now, though the current systems are skirting right past us. Later this evening, we’re supposed to be getting real rain. One of the things that the weather nerds that run the group noted is what appears to be pyrocumulous clouds forming in some areas! These are thunderstorm clouds that are created by heat; you might typically see them form over volcanoes, but can also form over forest fires, if the conditions are right. Scary stuff!

Tonight, the coolest temperatures are supposed to be at around 5 and 6am, at 14C/57F, and then start heating right up. The heat wave is supposed to hit us the hardest on Monday and Tuesday, but still be very hot on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday, the temperature is supposed to drop right down, with overnight lows of 0C/32F, and a mix of rain and snow. Saturday is supposed to be only slightly warmer.

Spring weather is so chaotic.

Well, if we can work around the hottest parts of the day, I should still be able to get at least some of those walnut seeds planted, get more areas prepped in the garden and, if all goes well, even do more direct sowing done. Chances are, though, that very little will get done until after the heat wave passes, and we’re back into cooler temperatures. At which point, we’ll be needing to protect some things from frost! For now, we’ve been able to leave our transplants in the portable greenhouse day and night, but we’ll have to bring them inside on those coldest nights.

As for me, it’s time to pain killer up and get to bed. If the cats are going to be waking me up at 5am anyhow, I may as well take advantage of it and get work done outside, before it gets too hot! I just have to work out what time I’ll be meeting up with my brother at my mother’s place tomorrow.

What a day today has turned out to be!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: sugar snap peas are in!

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I’m looking forward to taking some pain killers and going to bed early, though! 😄

But first, the cuteness! While feeding the cats this evening, I got to see the grublings while their mama was outside. They are getting way more active!

While getting the container out of the cat house for Caramel and her babies, I saw a surprise through the window.

Three kittens, snuggling together in the cat bed.

The sun room kitten has found her siblings!

She didn’t say, and was soon back in the sun room for feeding time, but I’m glad that she found and was immediately accepted by them.

Also, Kale and Sir Robin are 1) insanely fast and 2) determined to go into the old kitchen. As soon as the door is open, they come bounding for the doorway. It’s actually really quite dangerous for them, because they’re doing this while I’m carrying the kibble bowl with one arm, opening the outer old kitchen door (the one with the screen window, with no screen) with the other, and trying to get through fast enough to close the inner door (the solid one) and keep the cats out. They keep getting under my feet while I’m juggling all this. I’ve already accidentally closed a door on a tail because Sir Robin basically teleported from across the sun room.

Kale and Sir Robin want people, and they want inside!

So that’s what feeding time is like these days. 😁

One of the things I wanted to do today was get our push mower to the small engine shop in town. Last summer, it got harder and harder to start until finally, after stopping to refill the gas tank, I just couldn’t start it anymore. It’s possible this is related to the fact I was unable to change the air filter all summer, because there were none to be had. I finally found one this past winter and made sure to bring it with me. While I was at the counter, this was one of the things I mentioned. The woman filling out the paperwork was very glad that I brought the filter. It seems I was not the only one to have problems finding these, last year!

Along with basic servicing (oil change, blade sharpening, etc.) they will check the self propelling mechanism, which is broken, but not in any visible way, and look for anything that could be causing the starting problem. This time of year, she told me they probably won’t have a chance to look at it until next week, which is pretty much what I’m expecting. The nice surprise was when I gave my name and contact information, and she recognized me. We haven’t met in person until now, but “know” each other on local Facebook groups. When our truck suddenly lost oil pressure and started giving the “shut engine off now” warning, her husband was the person who stopped and helped us out. I made sure to tell her to thank him again for us, briefly mentioning some of the problems we found from this happening.

That done, it was a run to the grocery store to refill our 5 gallon water jugs and pick up a few things before heading home.

By the time I was able to head outside and work in the garden it was, unfortunately, reaching the hottest part of the day. Which, thankfully, was only 17C/63F. Still hot in the sun, though. Tomorrow is supposed to be 22C/72F with high winds again, then 27C/81F on Mother’s Day, then 32C/90F on Monday! Or 32C/90F on Sunday and 34C/93F on Monday, depending on which app I look at! So now was the time to get this done.

The first thing to do was finished getting all the weeds out of the second half of the bed. By now, the soil had baked hard and had to be broke up with a garden fork again, so I could get as much of the tap roots and rhizomes out as possible. I am so thankful for that rolling seat! It’s not comfortable to sit on while reaching down that far, but still much easier on the body than bending at the waste. My doctor may want me doing squats, but my knees are too unstable to bend that far for that long!

In the first photo of the slideshow above, the bed is cleared and leveled, and the centre marked out. I wanted to set trellis support posts down the middle, along the twine you can barely see in the image. The posts I used were old T posts we found while cleaning up around the property. They’re not in good shape and several of them are way too tall for this, but they’ll do. With the first one (set at the end at the bottom of the photo), I hit something in the soil below, and it just would not go any deeper. I tried using my chisel tip digging bar. That wasn’t getting very far, either, and I ended up having to use a spade to loosen whatever it was I was hitting, before I could set the post. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do with any of the others. You can see all 5 posts in the second image of the above slide show.

At that point, I had to stop, get out of the sun and take a break. Before heading back out, I prepared my seeds.

My original though had been to do a row of peas down the centre, then plant potatoes on either side. I changed my mind and decided to do two rows of snap peas; the Sugar snap peas and the Super Sugar snap peas. I prepped markers and set the seeds to soak while I continued.

I decided to use wire mesh for the trellis instead of the plastic trellis netting that I used last year. I found that too saggy. I went to the old squash tunnel that should have been taken down a couple of years ago, and grabbed the 1″ square wire mesh from one section of it. That leaves one more section of 1″ mesh, plus another with hex chicken wire. It’s turned out to be a rather handy way to store the wire on there. 😄

I wasn’t sure if it would be long enough, so I laid it out on the grass to check, and was very happy that it wasn’t too short! Then I realized I’d set all the “teeth” of the T posts facing the other way, and had to drag it around to the other side of the bed. 😄

In the old garden shed I had a bungle of garden twist ties and brought those out to fasten the wire to the posts. The next while was spent first getting it up, then adjusting one way or the other, to get the wire snug between the posts, without pulling them one way or the other. There was enough excess wire to actually wrap around the posts at each end, and fasten it to itself. The other posts got twist ties at the top and bottom to secure it in place.

One thing about using this wire for the trellis. When the wind blows through it, it can get pretty loud!

Hopefully, we won’t need to secure the posts with tie downs. It will depend on how much trouble the wind becomes, once there’s peas actually growing up the trellis and acting like a sail.

I took a picture of the trellis after the wire was up, but you can’t really see the wire at all!

That done, I used a garden stake to draw a trench for seeds on each side of the posts, then used the jet setting to deep water the trench only. This would also break up and clumps, plus the water would naturally level the soil a bit.

Then it was time to set out the pre-soaked seeds evenly down the trenches. There were more of the Super Sugar snap peas, but this bed is long enough that they got pretty normal spacing, while the other wise got more space between each seed. Hopefully, we’ll have a high germination rate, and there won’t be any gaps!

After pushing the seeds into the ground, the trenches got another watering, this time with a flat spray; gentler than the jet setting, but still enough pressure to settle the soil over the seeds.

While I was working on this, of course there were cats going across the freshly loosened soil – and trying to use it as a litter box! So after the seeds were planted, I took the boards that were used to weigh down the solarizing plastic and set them along the sides of the bed. Hopefully, that will be sufficient, and they won’t go under the wire in the middle and start digging there. Later, mulch will be added.

I will plant something under where the boards are, later. I haven’t decided what, yet. The potatoes I’d planned on will get their own bed, I think. If they get planted at all. I may have to buy new seed potatoes. When I prepped the potatoes for chitting, they seemed to be find, but have just… stopped. No sprouts, no leaf buds, no growth. Some of the potatoes have even started to shrivel up and dry out, instead. They were sprouting in their bag when I bought them, and then just… didn’t.

I suspect our basement set up has something to do with it. I hoped they would start growing once in the warmth of the portable greenhouse, but nope. No change at all. I could – and probably will – still plant them, but I think getting more potatoes is in order. It’s not like we can have too many potatoes! It’s just a matter of space.

For now, I’m thinking and early bed time and an early start tomorrow, before the heat hits, which is supposed to be in the early evening. I’d like to get some more walnut seeds in, but I also need to start digging a trench for the asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries I picked up awhile ago. Then there’s the trellis bed that needs to have the rest of its vertical supports attached, the log frame of another bed assembled, then the bed cleared of weeds… and then… and then… and then… Lots of work to do before we can do more direct sowing and transplanting!

For all the heat we’re supposed to get within the next few days, in the long range forecasts, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit, again, with overnight temperatures barely above freezing.

What we really need is rain. It’s wildfire season, and there are quite a few going right now. The closest ones to the north of us are mostly now listed as under control, but the further north you go, the bigger they are, and they are all listed as out of control. Rain and no wind. That’s what we need!

From the 10 day forecasts, we might get some next week, but just for a couple of days.

We shall see.

For now, I’m happy to have gotten that bed done, and some direct sowing accomplished! Peas really could have gone into the ground quite a while ago, but this should be okay – as long as the heat doesn’t kill them! It sure feels good to be digging in the dirt again.

Even if my body is now saying very nasty things to me right now. 😄

The Re-Farmer

That worked out unexpectedly well!

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First, the cuteness!

I just got back home again and spotted Poirot in with her babies, and had to pause for this.

I actually couldn’t see the little black one until viewing these files on my desktop! The little voidling disappears into the void of his mother’s fur. 😁

Last night, I remembered that we hadn’t done my mother’s monthly blook work yet, and that she had a fasting blood test to do as well. I made arrangements with her to come over this morning, aiming to get her to the lab, which is just a few blocks from her place, as early as possible, so she wouldn’t have to keep fasting for so long.

I ended up having a ridiculously early morning. I’ve been waking up as the days get light, which means I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier for a while now! This morning, it was about 5:30am, and I didn’t need to get up until later. While in the washroom, though, I heard suspect kitten noises, so I got a daughter to join me to check on them while feeding them. It’s much easier to get wet cat food to the kittens with a second person! I still had to close up the inner door on the sun room to let the babies have a chance to eat. Poirot and Brussel had left when I started dispensing the kibble, with Poirot heading off somewhere in the outer yard. Caramel’s kittens were in the cat house, of course, so I tucked their tray into the entry, hoping they would find it and eat before the other cats discovered it. I have noticed that the other adult cats don’t go into the cat house at all, now that the babies are in there, which is good.

By the time I finished my rounds, Poirot was back and at the sun room door, wanting in but too scared to let me come close and open it for her. It doesn’t actually close all the way; things have shifted too much over the winter. It jams onto the threshold enough to stay closed, but if a cat were to push against it, it opens – something some of the other cats have already figured out!

I headed out to my mother’s for about 8:30am. As I parked and headed in, I saw someone leaving and immediately thought it was probably the health care worker. Sure enough, I was right; I had just missed her. My mother remembered not to have breakfast with her pills, which was good. She was all dressed and ready to go, too… including a grocery list! Which I was happy to see, as I forgot to suggest I could do her grocery shopping while I was there. We had time to go over her list and the new flier. Whole chicken was on an excellent sale and she was okay with getting one, which made me happy. She is not getting enough protein, and we all need more protein as we get older.

That done, we headed to the lab in the hospital. She was the only one there, so they were able to take her in and get it done very quickly. So quickly, she actually complained as I was helping her out of the chair, that everyone is in such a hurry! The technician didn’t actually hurry, but was efficient in doing a very basic blood draw, but for someone who struggles just to get in and out of their slightly higher chair, I’m sure it feels way too fast!

Since she was out and about, and in need of breakfast, I suggested we try out the newly renovated and re-opened restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to for some time. Even when they were still closed and very much under renovation, she tried to get me to stop and go inside to see if they were open yet. 😄 I drove past it on the way to her place, so I knew it was open for breakfast. She happily agreed, but was then surprised when I drove to the highway. She wanted to go to the “new” restaurant, and this building has been there for a long time.

???

She then told me her neighbours were talking about a new restaurant. This was the only one that I knew about.

With the new renovations, this place now has a wheelchair ramp, but no automatic doors, which I found a bit odd. If I had not been there with her, my mother would have had a very hard time getting in on her own. They are clearly not completely finished with their plans, with dining tables in only one half of the space. Tables spaced nice and far apart, with plenty of room for someone to get through with a walker, even if there were people sitting in the chairs. At this time, though, there was only one occupied table.

We had a basic eggs, hashbrowns, meat (I had sausage, my mother had bacon) and toast breakfast. It was quite good, and the portions generous. Given that my mother was literally breaking her fast, she was quite hungry, so that worked out very well.

More people came in while we were eating and, my mother being my mother, she started talking to people at the other tables. As I was coming back from paying the bill, I caught the tail end of someone explain to Mom about the new restaurant she had been hearing about. It turns out it was more like a canteen in the rec centre that is only open a few days a week. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!

Once we were done there, I took my mother home, since she was clearly getting pretty tired. When we got to her door, though, we found something in front of it.

A reusable grocery bag with a card in an envelop sticking out of it.

My immediate thought went to our vandal, while my mother started listing off all sorts of other possibilities.

I was right. Our vandal and come by and, with my mother away, had left things at the door for her.

My mother was so tired, she settled into her chair without pausing to take her jacket off. The bag turned out to have four mini fruit pies in it. I opened the card for her, too. It was a mother’s day card, and she was quite delighted by the chickadees pictures on the front. I opened it up and there was a note written inside from our vandal. It was from both him and his wife, though clearly his handwriting. The note was a brief mention about something his “cancer counsellor” told him. It was unusually benign, which suggests to me his wife actually saw and knew about the card, though it still reeked of manipulation. Other cards and letters he has left with her were typically quite nasty.

My mother was too enamored by the pretty chickadees to notice or care.

Once she was settled and comfortable, I headed out with her shopping list. I also needed to go to the post office, which is almost directly across the street from the grocery store, so I parked at the grocery store, then grabbed the envelopes to walk across and mail them, first.

I immediately noticed a very familiar looking vehicle.

While I was getting the envelopes out, I saw our vandal getting into it. My mother and I must have just missed him at her place by minutes!

As I walked across to the post office, he left the parking lot and I was concerned that he might have seen and recognized me, and would decide to go back to my mother’s again. So I got things mailed and did the shopping quickly. Not that it would have taken long, anyhow; my mother’s shopping lists are not long.

When I got back to my mother’s place with her shopping, the first thing I asked was if everything was okay. She was surprised to see me back so quickly – she hasn’t even taken her jacket off, yet! I explained to her about seeing our vandal and that I was concerned he would come back, if he’d seen me.

Then we promptly forgot all about him.

After the groceries were put away, I stayed longer to do a bit of housekeeping for her. There wasn’t much she needed done, so I was soon on my way home.

It was actually quite disorienting to realize it was not even 11:30 when I left.

By this time, things were starting to get quite hot, and the high winds were in full force. Our expected high of 27C/81F has been dropped to 25C/77F, which we are at right now and are expected to stay at for several more hours.

When I got home, I had to check on the raised bed covers, and they are all holding up to the wind. The portable greenhouse, however, is not doing as well. We had to tie the door open, as it was over 50C/122F in there. The door faces the house, and the wind is from the south, so at least the doorway is sheltered, but plastic covering the frame is still ballooning. At some point, the ties for the door came loose, so it was flapping. My husband’s window faces it, so he was able to let us know and my daughter fixed it. She ended up draping a broken hose over it, and pushed the cat trap right against one side of it, to try and reduce the ballooning. That actually helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, the plastic around the doorway is starting to tear. Where it’s attached to the zipper already had some tears, and that’s gotten much worse, but even at one corner, where the tie down loop is, has started to tear.

*sigh*

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but I really was hoping it would hold out longer. At least the roof and three sides are still holding out. It’s just the side with the doorway. We’ll still be able to make it work out.

It’s getting time to feed the outside cats for the evening, so I’ll be heading outside to check on things soon. With this wind and heat, though, there is no way I’ll be able to continue clearing out the garden bed I started on, yesterday. The high winds are supposed to continue through the night, but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler (as in, just under 20C/68C) and the winds are supposed to die down by then, so I should be able to finish clearing that bed then. I have decided that I will plant peas down the middle of this bed, and potatoes on either side. Once the bed is clear, I will set up posts to hold trellis netting down the middle, then get netting on it right away, so that’s over and done with, before planting anything. If things go smoothly, I should be able to get the peas and potatoes planted by the end of the day.

If things go smoothly.

I don’t really count on that. 😄

Now to go feed some kitties and check for wind damage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: where the sprouts are!

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It was a very calm morning, with almost no wind, so this was a good time to water the plastic covered winter sown beds.

The first image is under the cover of the low raised bed in the East yard. This one has a root vegetable mix of seeds, plus 1 type of lettuce and onion seeds. There are a lot of sprouts in there! I’m guessing mostly radish and beets. I’m not seeing signs of carrots or onions sprouting, but it’s really hard to tell at this point.

This bed was getting the most difficult to tend to with the high winds, so when I took the cover off to water it, I spent a lot of time securing the plastic after the cover was put back on. The plastic on all the beds is meant to be there only until the plants establish themselves and don’t need as much warmth or protection. It will likely be replaced with netting later in the season. So securing the plastic involves a lot of rolling and carefully tucking under the frame. With this one, that also meant completely redoing how it was weighted down on top. Hopefully, it will hold. We’re expecting high winds again, in a few days.

There wasn’t much to see in the high raised bed or the ground level bed with mixed flowers in it. There are sprouts, but not very many. The main thing is, they are no longer being dried out by the wind, nor dug into by the cats!

The next picture is of the old kitchen bed. There is quite a bit of spinach coming up in there, and I can even see tiny onion sprouts. The cluster of larger leaves visible came up very early and I thought it had to be a missed onion from last year, but now I can see that these are most definitely garlic. We had garlic planted in here, two years ago! I did try to pull things that were most obviously weeds – crab grass and dandelions – but only if I could do so without disturbing any seedlings, so there wasn’t a lot I could pull.

The other winter sown beds got watered as well. I think the summer squash bed, and the end of the garlic bed, are lost causes. The only things coming up in the summer squash bed is clearly not summer squash, and the few feet of the garlic bed shows nothing at all. I don’t think they made it!

There are more sprouts coming up in the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, though still just the one pea shoot. This is the bed that has Dalvay shelling peas, a few King Tut purple, Royal Burgundy bush beans, Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflowers, a few black Montano Morado corn seeds, plus onion seeds. So there should be more pea seeds showing, as peas prefer to germinate in cooler soil. That suggests to me, most of the peas did not survive the winter. As for the sprouts I am seeing, about all I can say right now is that none of them are corn.

Unfortunately, while covering the bed with netting will protect it from the Chinese Elm seeds that are forming right now, the net only partially protects from the cats. There are a few smaller cats that are absolutely determined to get under the netting. Then, when I go to get them out, instead of leaving through the open space next to them that they got in on (the netting slides on the wire hoops), they run down the length of the bed, bashing themselves against the netting every now and then, in a panic. Or, like this morning, they simply climb on top of the netting and play on it! This set up wasn’t designed to actually hold that kind of weight, so quite a few of the wire hoops are now bent out of shape. It is really frustrating.

This bed is still made with temporary materials. Along the path side and ends is loose bricks. The chain link fence there are old boards to keep the soil from spilling through. When we finally have the materials to make it more permanent, we will need to keep protection in mind. It’s not enough to just cover it with netting to keep the elm seeds from smothering the bed, stop the cats from using it as a litter box, or keep the deer from eating whatever is grown there. We need the cover set up to be able to hold the weight of cats – we just can’t keep them from going right on top of any of the covers!

The cover that we have over the old kitchen garden bed is the one that was made using fence wire. When it was done, I swore I never wanted to work with that again! It’s so thick, I had to double up the frame on the sides to secure it in between, then double up the ends, just to keep it from falling apart. However, while it was on the high raised bed, I found it worked out really well, in that I could reach through the wire to tend to the bed, without having to remove it. The openings are not all the same size, though. It’s meant to be installed with the narrower openings at ground level to keep small critters out, while the larger openings at the top are all that’s needed to keep mid sized critters out. Which means there are spaces where I cannot fit my hands through, but I can still reach around from other openings.

The wire is also strong enough that no support hoops were needed. Not only can it hold itself up, but when the plastic was placed over it and the cats started jumping on it, it held their weight, too!

The cover that’s on the winter sown bed in the East yard is almost there. The hoops are strong enough to hold weight; especially now that I’ve secured them permanently, and they no longer slide through the pieces of metal strapping I used to hold them in place. I originally thought it would be useful to be able to remove the hoops at some point, but that potential convenience caused more problems than solved any. They do, however, still bend inwards, slightly. Particularly the ones at the ends.

The hoops are supporting a plastic mesh that is stiffer than netting, but more flexible and easier to work with than hardware cloth. As you can see in that first photo, it’s wide enough that it creates more shade, so this is a cover that would be idea to use for things like lettuces, which like more shade. The plastic mesh does sag when the cats jump on it. My plan is to add horizontal supports in between the hoops. These would keep the hoops at the ends from being pulled inwards, plus keep the plastic mesh from sagging downwards. I am hoping it will only need horizontal supports across the very top, but it might need more halfway up each side, too.

Once the plastic sheet is no longer needed, I will have to put something across the open ends, to keep the cats out. I have some black plastic mesh that should work out well, once I figure out how to secure it!

I don’t want to be spending too much time or effort on these covers, though. These were my first experimental raised bed covers. Now that I know how these have been working out, I plan to build new ones using better and stronger materials, taking into account what we have found works, or doesn’t work, with these ones. These ones still have a few years in them, though, and we will keep building more raised beds, so we will need more covers as time goes by.

Meanwhile, as I was watering the bed at the chain link fence, I took a good look at the haskap bushes.

*sigh*

I have one “Mr. Haskap” and two “Mrs. Haskap” bushes – cross pollinating varieties. With haskap, you need two varieties for cross pollination. The “Mrs. Haskap” is the Borealis variety. I can’t remember what the “Mr. Haskap” is, but that one still has its label, so I can check later.

Here is now they looked this morning.

The first image is the “male” haskap. It’s leafing out beautifully and, in the second picture, you can see it even has flower buds forming!

The next two photos are the “female” haskaps.

The larger one was bought at the same time as the Mr. Haskap and, at one point, I was sure that one had died. It has barely any leaves opening on it. The smaller one is still really small, even though it’s only one year behind the other two. At least it has more leaves, but still, they are way behind their pollinator variety! This is why, after all these years, we’ve never had more than a small handful of berries. They simply aren’t blooming at the same time long enough for proper pollination.

The varieties I have coming later in the month are Aurora (the pollinator) and Boreal Blizzard. These will be planted out in the food forest area, near where the apple and gooseberry just got planted. The Opal plum should be shipped at the same time as the haskap, and it will be planted in that area, too.

Hopefully, this will work out better than what we’ve got now, and we’ll finally have berries to eat! Two bushes should be enough to meet our needs; they are supposed to be quite productive. We’ve got three, and have barely had enough to taste.

At least we know we like them!

So that is how things were in the garden this morning. With today being a calm day, I hope to get back out there soon, and get some work done!

The Re-Farmer

Baby moving day and a visit to the doctor

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First, and update on Poirot and her babies.

We tried getting her to move into the cat cage. The babies were tucked into the cat cave, for darkness and warmth. We watched and could tell that she knew where they were, and I kept an eye on the critter cam. My older daughter, who works at night, checked as well, though there was no way to see if a black cat was in the darkness of the cat cave.

When I came out to do the morning feeding (waaayyy to early for me!), I took a peak and could see the babies. I pet them, mostly to make sure they were actually alive, and they immediately started crying for mama.

My daughter helped me with putting the food out, with me setting the dry kibble out first, to distract the other cats, while she split up a couple of cans of wet cat food for the babies, then passed them to me. I made sure to put some wet cat food inside the cat cage, but could not see Poirot anywhere.

So I continued my morning rounds and, while coming back from switching out memory cards at the gate cam, I spotted a whole bunch of cats following from a distance on the driveway.

Including Poirot.

I continued me rounds, hoping she would go to her babies in the sun room but, as I finished up, she was still outside. She just would not go to them.

So I decided to take the cat cave, babies still inside, and moved it back to the water bowl shelter, where she seemed to be hanging out the most. I even put some wet cat food inside the cat cave.

She did come over and stick her head in to eat, but would not go inside.

I hung around behind the cat house, watching her, but she just jumped onto the roof to eat, then back down again. I could hear her kittens crying, and she would stick her head in, but not go in all the way. Which you can see in the first image below.

Okay, so she doesn’t like the cat cave. I decided to take them out and put them on the cat bed she gave birth in, that was right beside it.

I then headed into the sun room and stood by the old kitchen door, messaging the family to update them.

Which is when Poirot suddenly ran into the sun room.

With something black in her mouth.

Her black kitten.

I froze and watched through the sides of my eyes so as not to scare her out. She brought the kitten to the set up just behind me, only to drop it. She tried again and dropped it again.

The way we have things set up in that area, we have a couple of plant stands of different heights in front of the mini greenhouse frame that is now used only by the cats. These are against one of the shelves that supports the platform, and where we store several open cat carriers for the cats to be comfortable and familiar with them. At the moment, there is one on the bottom shelf, and the cats keep pushing the door closed – not latched, but it doesn’t swing open on its own. There had been one the next shelf up, but we had to use it and it is now sitting directly on the floor, opposite the cat cage. I even toss a bit of kibble inside so the cats are comfortable going in and out of it. Then there is a cat carrier on the third shelf up, which is the shelf that supports the platform at that end. Because of the platform, it’s turned sideways, so the open doorway faces the top of the mini greenhouse.

That’s where we found the black kitten, yesterday evening. It has a cat blanket inside that the cats have managed to not drag out and onto the floor, like the other ones.

It was clear to me that Poirot was wanting to get to that carrier. After dropping her kitten yet again, it started crying loudly, so I took a chance. As soon as I moved, she backed away from her kitten, but not very far. I picked it up and put it into the carrier.

She immediately jumped up the shelves, into the carrier, and settled to nurse and groom her kitten.

At that point, I decided to give in. I went and got her other two kittens and brought them over. As I came close, she started hissing at me, but immediately stopped when I put a kitten in, and was grooming it before I could put the last one in. The kittens immediately went hunting for nip.

I then went and got some for the remaining wet cat food intended for her and put it in close enough that she could eat while her kittens continued to nurse. I then hung around and found things to do until I could see she had mostly finished eating.

I then went and got the last squeeze treat for her. She once again started hissing at me when I got close, but then she discovered the treat, and she started eating it. As with Brussel, once the tube it too empty to comfortably squeeze with one hand (I have to use my other hang to hang on to something, since I’m having to lean forward so much to reach the mama), I pulled it back, then squeezed the last of the treat out of the tube and onto my finger and thumb, then reached in again to let her lick the last of it off my fingers.

Which she did, without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Brussel was sitting in her spot by her kittens, under the platform, watching me. I had developed a routine of giving her a squeeze treat before going into the house, but I had none left. We did still have other donated treats; they look a bit like squares of chocolate. I opened a couple of them and broke them into their little squares. There was enough for me to scatter some for Brussel and her kittens, Poirot in her cat carrier, then around the kibble trays for any other cats that happened to still be around.

If you scroll through the Instagram post, you’ll see a video of a very happy Poirot.

The problem is, if the kittens ever squirm their way out of the carrier, which would not take much to do, there is a very real chance they’d fall to the concrete floor below. The girls and I are doing to use some of the cardboard I’ve set aside for the garden and sort of box the area in, so if they do get out, they’ll just be on cardboard, and there will be no gaps for them to fall through.

Poirot definitely won this battle! It would be safer for her to be in the cat cage and, especially, in the warmth of the cat cave, but being in a carrier is hardly a bad thing. I tried calling the rescue in the city the Cat Lady recommended to me, but there was no answer and no option to leave a message. If we can get through to them and they are in a position to taken in a mama and kittens, it will be much easier to do that with them already in a carrier!

So that was my morning adventure!

Once back inside and breakfasted up, it was still quite early, so I took advantage of it to lie down for about an hour. I’d say “take a nap”, but my phone’s notifications kept going off, so not much sleep was to be had.

My daughter’s appointment with the doctor was at 1:30, and we needed to be on the road by 12:30. We ended up leaving shortly after noon, instead, which gave me time to swing by the feed store in my mother’s town and pick up a couple of 40 pound bags of kibble for the outside cats.

Which I have forgotten in the truck… 😄

That done, we continued to our appointments. We were early, but not early enough to have lunch, first, so we just went in and waited. My appointment was at 2, and we both got called in about half an hour late.

The primary thing for both of us was to take care of the disability paperwork the doctor asked us to bring in. We’d already filled out our portions. For me, it was all about my osteoarthritis, which she listed as severe. At one point, I told her that it’s really hard for me to even think of being disabled. I mean, it’s just arthritis, right? Everyone gets arthritis, eventually (meaning OA, of course, not rheumatoid), right? Everyone gets sort feet, right? She just started laughing and shaking her head.

The forms ask about things like being able to walk and needing to use mobility aids (I did have to use a cane, just yesterday evening, which I haven’t needed to do in quite a while), and she listed canes, arm bars, hand rails and the bath chair, as well as sometimes needing to have someone else prepare food for me. What the paperwork doesn’t have a space for it specifically about hands. Just walking. While my walking is affected, my hands are really the more of an issue for me, as I have trouble turning door nobs, or being able to do things like hold a cup.

Which reminds me. We’re going to need to replace the door knob on our bathroom door with a lever style handle, sooner rather than later. As we were talking and she was filling in different parts of the form, I mentioned that I was diagnosed back in 2000, and was already using a cane before then, and she went back and added that in, too. I had checked off the box giving the okay to get retroactive disability payments, but I really don’t think that’ll happen all the way back to 2000!

Now, I fully expect us to both get rejected immediately. That happened with my husband. When he took the letter of rejection to his doctor, the doctor told him they always reject the first application. Just send it in again. Which we did, and my husband’s application was accepted the second time. Now, that was back in…. 2014? 2025? Somewhere around there. So we’ll see if that’s still the case. After the paperwork got the appropriate clinic stamp and scanned for our files, we got them back – after paying $50 each – and will need to mail them out ASAP.

Beyond that, we went over various things and talked about my meds. I’ve been bumped up from T2s to T3s.

I mentioned how I’ve started getting Charlie Horses again, now that I’m active outside more. I’m already taking the supplements that would help, and she suggested I add squats to my regimen. This would actually be quite difficult for me, since my knees are shot. My legs are already over developed, since muscle is the thing keeping them from bending in directions they are not designed to do, but doing squats (and stretches, but I am already doing that) should also help. Talking about it with my daughter, later, I’m not entirely sure how I would do them. My knees are simply not stable enough. We do have an exercise bike, so that might work, too. I will try doing squats, too, though. As long as I’ve got something I can grab on to for support, I might be okay.

Meanwhile, the doctor says she doesn’t need to see me for a follow up for 3 months, and wrote me up to get bloodwork done just before then. My daughter had more bloodwork done after her appointment, so she’s booked to come back next month.

We both had changes in prescriptions, so we messaged my husband to call the pharmacy and let them know to fill the faxes they would get, as we were on the way. This gave him a chance to add anything he needed for himself, but there wasn’t anything this time.

By the time we got to the pharmacy, it was letting late in the afternoon, and neither of us had had lunch. So we ended up getting some take out before heading home. It was late enough that I left my daughter to take things in and split up the food while I went out to do the evening cat feeding.

Poirot was still curled up with her babies in the cat carrier. She did growl a bit at me, until I put the food bowl down in front of her, just outside the carrier. Hopefully, we will have better luck at socializing her than we’ve had with Brussel. For all that she now expects to get the wet cat food and the treats, she still growls and attacks my hands. Aside from a couple of times I took advantage of proximity and managed to pet her, she does not like it when we get within reach, if it doesn’t involve food!

The bigger kittens, meanwhile, are all over the sun room. The third white and grey kitten is still there and joining the cuddle piles with its siblings – litter mates and adopted siblings alike!

The long days are really starting to throw me. It feels like it should be the middle of the day right now, and it’s getting past 6:30pm as I write this! We’re expected to drop to freezing, or even below freezing, tonight, so I’ll be heading out one more time to make sure the heat lamps are on, and the plants in the portable greenhouse are brought into the old kitchen for the night. Our temperatures are expected to lurch back and forth all over the place, from highs of near 30’sC/86’sF and lows of 12C/57F or higher, to much more pleasant daytime highs, but lows just barely above freezing again. We’ll be getting high winds again, soo, too.

Somewhere in there, I need to get all sorts of things done outside!

Ah, well. Spring does tend to be a very mercurial season! We just do the best we can.

What else can we do, right? 😁

The Re-Farmer

New baby update

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After the heat of yesterday, this morning felt almost cold, at 16C/61F!

One of my goals with the new babies is to try and get them and their mama into the cat cage in the sun room. While setting out the kibble, Poirot joined the crowd on the cat house roof to eat, giving me a chance to see her babies in the cat bed.

I had already prepared bowls of wet cat food for the sun room kitties, and for Poirot. Once the cats were distracted with eating kibble outside, I closed up the inner door to the sun room (sort of; it doesn’t close completely without being forced) so the kittens and Brussel could have their wet cat food. Then I set things up in the cat cage, returning the cat cave into one of the bottom cubes. I’m hoping a nice, dark cave will be accepted by Poirot after we move her babies into it. When I was done, however, she was back with the babies and nursing them, so I just brought over her container of wet cat food. She was not happy with me coming close, but once the bowl was close enough, she devoured the food.

I hung around a bit to make sure the other cats didn’t come to steal her food before going back into the sun room and leaving the door open; the littles had eaten their fill by then. The other cats seemed to be ignoring Poirot and her babies, so I did the rest of my rounds, taking the time to water the winter sown beds that aren’t covered in plastic. By the time I got back to the house, Poirot had licked her bowl clean. She hissed at me when I moved it out. Before going in, I saw Brussel was tucked under the platform, on top of the cat cage, so I went to get our last two squeeze treats. Three of the littles were in the cat cage, so when Brussel wouldn’t come closer to have some treat, I was able to give a few squeezes to the babies. She did finally come closer to eat her treat. When the tube is almost empty, I squeeze the last of it out onto my finger and thumb, and she will lick that right off – then start growling at me for being too close!

I then went to give the last tube of treat to Poirot. When I came out, she was squeezing herself into the box covered part of the cat bed, getting her kittens in with her. I tried reaching in with the open squeeze treat, but I couldn’t see where her head was without lifting the top of the box (cats like to sit on it, so it’s bent). She was disturbed enough to start coming out of the box, at which point I practically shoved the squeeze treat to her mouth. Only then did she clue in that this was something good! I was able to give her most of the tube after that, but there was no chance of squeezing the last of it out only my fingers and letting her lick off the rest of it. That would have been pushing her tolerance too far! Stinky and Kohl were on the cat house roof while I was doing this, so they got the remains.

It’s not going to be easy to get Poirot into the cat cage. We were spoiled by Brussel actually giving birth in it, then willingly moving her babies into the shelter of the cat cave when we tucked into the cube next to her. Basically, I’ll have to wait until the kittens are alone, but Poirot is nearby enough to see me moving them. Tonight, we’re expecting a lot of 7C/45F, but tomorrow night we’re expecting a low of 0C/32F, so I really want to get them into a cozier shelter as soon as possible!

The Re-Farmer