I should probably prune it off for now, so that more energy should go into the plant itself getting bigger, but it’s just one of three plants blooming, and it looks so pretty.
We do still have a lot of standing water all over, but the area around the garden bed I needed to work on was much improved. Still very wet, to be sure, but at least workable.
The weather forecast predicted a quick thunderstorm and rain at about 8am, so I was out there by about 7. There was a good chance the tiny storm on the radar would miss our location entirely, so I wasn’t too concerned. Mostly, I wanted to get things done before it got too hot – and things were getting hot pretty fast!
The main thing I wanted to get done was to break and turn the sod in the new area. That ended up taking a bit longer than expected. The wet ground did make it a bit easier to remove some of the bigger tap roots and rhizomes. This area, however, turned out to have a lot more tree roots under it – most of which were deep enough to leave alone, but shallow enough for the garden fork to get hung up on them. It also has a lot more, and bigger, rocks. Again, a lot were deep enough to leave after the sod was turned, but in many places I couldn’t push the fork into the ground without having to fight to get around rocks.
But that part is now done, and I left it to go in for breakfast. It’s supposed to be very hot today, so I don’t mind leaving the exposed roots to bake in the sun. The stalks from corn that was grown here last year were still around, so those are going to be buried when the soil that needs to be moved, gets shifted over.
I had the hardest time falling asleep for some reason, but woke up at 5am, so I’ve only had 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open right now.
Napping through the hottest part of the day is probably a good idea, anyhow!
This morning, I was planning to work on shifting that last bed in the main garden area. I knew it would be wet, but figured it wouldn’t be too bad by then, since the rain had stopped so much earlier than forecast.
I didn’t real we got more rain overnight.
There is even more open water around the inner yard than every before. The ground is so saturated, it’s just got nowhere to go.
We’re supposed to get quite warm today, and tomorrow they’re now saying to expect a high of 28C/82F. The forecast now also says no rain until Friday. Which would mean, counting the rest of today, 5 days with no rain, and most of Friday, too.
I really hope this forecast is accurate!
I didn’t get to work on the low raised bed, but I did get to check out other things.
I managed to get a decent picture of Junk Pile. She normally doesn’t sit still long enough. I also saw all four of her babies, though I only got pictures of three. They are spending most of their time in the sun room. Understandably, they are more nervous than before, and are quick to run under the shelf counter to hide.
As for Junk Pile, I was keeping tabs with the critter cam last night. I saw her nursing her babies in the sun room and being generally maternal.
Then I heard her start growling and attacking something in the opening of the tied off outside door.
She didn’t succeed in driving the racoon away, but she tried!
I went and chased it out. It had gone straight for the cat cage, where I like to keep some food for the kittens.
We have got to do something about the racoons!
There is still no sign of the white and grey babies, though I do see the mama every time I go out to feed them. I startled Broccoli’s two in the garden shed when I opened it to leave food inside for them. I probably shouldn’t do that, since I want them to come to the front of the house, but Broccoli stands guard over them and being very protect and, after what happened to the newborns, they are probably safter in there. Mind you, they aren’t quite so helpless, but still…
So I’ll be monitoring how things are outside today, and see how much things get absorbed. While doing my rounds this morning, I went to check the barn to make sure the top half of the back door didn’t get blown open again. The tall grass has been flattened by the wind in places, and my pantlegs were still soaked to above my knees. I was splashing through water the whole way. All around the house in the inner yard, I’m seeing water where I’ve never seen it before, even growing up here as a child. My brother, who would remember things much clearer than me, says the same thing. I still hope to get work done on that bed, since tomorrow – Monday – is supposed to get so hot, but it might have to wait until Tuesday. Wednesday, I’ll be making my first city shopping trip, then the second one on Friday, so I’ll be trying to get things done in between. If things dry up enough, my daughter might be able to do some mowing while I’m gone, too. At least in the parts we’ve managed to mow so far.
Looking at my posts from a year ago, we’re not that far behind. It was a year ago tomorrow that I got our last transplants in – however, I also had our direct sowing done by now, and this year we have barely any direct sowing to do.
We went a little nuts on the winter squash and melons this year. They need a lot of space.
If I can’t work on the bed, I should at least remember to plant the new purple bush beans seeds I picked up, to replace the ones where only one germinated.
Mostly, though, I want to get that last bed done so I can finish transplanting the onions! Once those are in, time will be less of an issue. It shouldn’t even take all that long, either, since it’s not full of creeping Charlie and the soil doesn’t need to be sifted.
Well, if not today, we should be able to get it done tomorrow.
I often see Broccoli perched in various higher items around the old garden shed, like a guardian gargoyle, keeping an eye out. I think I’ve heard her chasing off other cats – or other critters – too.
So far today, her two are the only kittens I’ve seen today. Still no sign of the white and greys, and the greys weren’t around at feeding time. I know there’s a little fluffy grey kitten in the junk pile, but I didn’t see it this morning.
I like to scatter handfuls of kibble all over, and two of them came to eat right next to the sun room door. The other two were in the sun room, hiding under the counter shelf, so I left some in a bowl for them there.
It was a relief to see them. I haven’t seen any of the white and greys, though. I see their mother (I still don’t know who the mother of the greys is) around, but no babies. I’m hoping the mama has simply moved them. After what the racoons did to the newborns in the sunroom, I’m afraid they might have found other kittens, too.
I’ve been seeing the black and white cat with the black nose around more. I even saw that she spent the night in the sunroom, with a few other cats. The more I see her, the more I get the sense that she might have been the mama, but there’s no way to know for sure. For all I know, she may actually be a he.
I have also been seeing Broccoli’s two, playing around the old garden shed. Now that they are bigger and more agile, I can’t get anywhere near them. With how wet it’s been, the mosquitoes are really bad right now, so I barely stay long enough to leave kibble for them. The problem with using bug spray to help with the mosquitoes is, I’m covered in bug spray and don’t want to handle any kittens!
Hopefully, they will find their way to the front of the house, soon, and join the other babies.
I do hope we see the white and greys again. They did like being in the sunroom, until the newborns showed up, and all the cats got a bit freaked out over it. Some of them are still skittish about going in, too.
I had no idea we even had a pregnant cat! As far as I could tell, they all already had their kittens, weeks ago.
It seems one of the more feral cats – one of the ones we don’t even know the gender of – had her kittens in the carrier last night.
The problem is, there’s no sign of her. I’ve been keeping an eye on the critter cam as I write this, and there are no cats – or other kittens – in the sun room.
It looks like the white and grey litter has been moved out. I only saw two of the greys this morning, and the last time I went by, I only saw one.
I currently have the app for the critter cam in the sun room running. I have not seen any cat going to them. In fact, I’ve only seen one short haired black and white, just as it was leaving the sun room, and I don’t think it was the mama.
Sometimes, I have to turn the sound off on the camera, because they start mewing and it just breaks my heart to hear them, but not see a mama.
Now, out in the wild, so to speak, this would not be unusual. The mamas have to leave their babies for hours as they go hunt (or come to the house for food). They come back when they are ready to feed the babies. But with them being in the sunroom, I’m concerned they have been abandoned, or will be abandoned. We are currently going to avoid using the sun room for the next while, so the mama won’t be scared off. While working outside this morning, when I needed to go into the sunroom, I’d check the camera first to make sure it was empty before going in.
This mama found a really safe “cave” to have her babies, though. You’d think that would mean she will come back to tend to them.
Seeing three of four siblings with their mama is adorable enough. Seeing mama giving kisses to a kitten that showed up just yesterday just melts my heart!
The only down side is, the mother seemed to be leading the kittens (including the grey one!) away from the house.
The kittens, however, seem to really like the sun room and keep going back there on their own, to nap or have a bit of food.
Still, today I’ve only seen two kittens from the grey litter. I think the mama might be Junk Pile, but I’m not sure.
As I was finishing up for the day outside, I spotted Broccoli’s two, playing by the garden shed. They run away and hide when I come near, with is sad. I’d hoped handling them when they were smaller would have made them less anxious. At their size, if I do manage to pick them up, I’m taking them to the sun room, too. They are large enough and old enough that they might just leave and go back to the shed on their own. Or they might decide soft beds and easy access to food, plus other kittens to play with, is much preferable to the shed!
While giving the outside cats a light afternoon feeding, several mamas were on the cat house roof while I pet the boys. It looks like Caramel has at least three active nips. I could only see two on Adam, but she doesn’t give me much chance to see. Junk Pile also has at least two active nips. Slick (aka: Octomom) also had two that I could see.
We will probably have more kittens showing up by the house over the next few weeks!
Our forecast had changed to rain starting last night, continuing though today and tonight, no rain during the day tomorrow, but rain again at night.
Well, all of that seemed to just hit us at once, last night!
It started off gentle enough, to I left our remaining transplants out, but let my daughter know they were out there. When she heard the downpour, she ran out to bring them in.
They were still there, this morning. The mama may have wanted them in the cat house, but they definitely prefer the cat cage in the sun room!
It was looking like I wouldn’t be up to working on that next bed today, last night. I had to get someone else to put the bath chair in the tub so I could take a shower. Then, as I got up from my office chair and walked across the room, I got hit with a Charlie Horse. I ended up needing one of my daughters to assist me for the next while, until I could finally crawl into bed.
In the end, it’s a moot point. There is no way we’re going to be doing much of anything in the yard or garden today.
The paths around the garden beds are all full of water, including around the beds that still need to be shifted. The melons I planted last night seem to have handled the battering just fine, as did everything else, which I am most thankful for. In fact, of the stuff that got planted earlier, just about everything is growing really well. The only exception is the struggling spinach, really, and that is a different issue completely. Spinach has been really hit or miss for us. Either it does really great, or not at all.
So we shift our goals for today.
With Father’s Day and my younger daughter’s birthday being in the same month, my older daughter is planning to treat us to a pizza night, later this week. We were also going to do an extra trip ahead of that, as she has other things she wants to get (like heat and eats for those hot days when no one is up to cooking), and I’m planning to get a cake of some kind. Probably a cheese cake, as that’s the birthday girls’ favourite. 😊
So we will be doing that trip, today. We’ll be heading to the nearer city, so I’ll be taking advantage of that to combine errands.
We are supposed to get a bit more rain this evening, then on rain for three days, then rain all day on Saturday. Hopefully, those three days will be enough for us to get more done in the garden, and get those tomatoes and Zucca melon transplanted!
Since moving our here, we’ve had drought, heat waves, flooding, and now spring so wet, we’ve now got more water in the yard than we did the spring we flooded! At least roads are being washed out.
As far as I know, anyhow!
Well, it is what it is. We’ll just have to deal with things as they come. What else can we do?
I put together a garden tour video last night, then set it to upload to YouTube and went to bed. This morning, I was expecting to be able to include it in a blog post – but it was at only 59% upload! The video is about 26 minutes and “good” rather than “high” quality. This shouldn’t happen. Plus, we’ve got StarLink, which means we should have the same upload speeds as anywhere else.
Which means the problem is local.
I closed my browser to stop the upload, then tried again.
My browser opened the upload at exactly the same place.
I’ve never had that happen before!
I ended up closing it again, and am now trying to upload it with a different browser. It’s already at 12%
I don’t think it’s the browser that made the difference.
Ah, well.
It’s just past 7am, and a lovely 12C/54F out there right now. I’m planning to do my morning rounds, then stay out to get back at working on that garden bed, so I’m having my breakfast now (I don’t usually eat breakfast until after I’ve done my rounds, at the earliest). I can monitor the upload at the same time.
We’re supposed to hit 20C/68F today, but not until about 3pm, so I should have a few hours of decent temperatures for manual labour this morning. It’s supposed to start raining again during the night, no raid during the day tomorrow, then rain during the night again. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 17C/63F! That’s going to be awesome to work in!
Best of all, the winds have died down.
We might actually have some productive days over the next while.
We had short, fast downpours throughout the night. It never really cooled down, though. I was hoping to get out early again but, at 5am, it was already 18C/64F, and still blowing like crazy. Things have calmed down a bit – still very windy, but the sun is out. All the areas that had finally become just wet, rather than filled with standing water, are once again filled with standing water. I’m glad we got as much mowing as we did. It’s going to be a while before we can try again.
When I came out this morning, there were plenty of cats eager for food, at least. The poor long haired cats are just soaking wet. I didn’t see any kittens at the time, though. When I finished my rounds and was coming around the laundry platform, when a single, wet little kitten climbed out from under the platform and onto a step. I’d left a bit of kibble there, and it seemed to be sniffing for it.
This is the kitten that has been the most willing to be cuddled, so I picked him up and did just that, so warm it up. He was a bit nervous about being carried around until I set up a small bowl of kibble in the cat cage and put him beside it, at which point he started chowing down!
Over the next while, I kept looking for the other kittens. Yesterday, it seems the litter was down or 3, so I was concerned it was now down to one. He was okay with running around and playing in the sun room, at least, and I kept an eye open for any others.
With the soil being far too wet to continue working on the garden bed, I decided to make recordings for a garden tour video, in spite of things looking a mess and being half done. After I finished that, I paused to pull some burdock coming up from under the cat house – and startled a baby! The two other kittens were inside the cat house! That makes me so happy. The cats haven’t been using it much, lately – it probably gets pretty hot and muggy in there at times like right now. The kittens were happily playing in the entrance, though, so I brought the other one over and they immediately started all horsing around together.
As I write this, we’re now at 21C/70F, with an expected high of 22C/72F. The winds are supposed to die down this afternoon. We should get a break from the rain for today and tomorrow, though we’re supposed to get more the next evening. Hopefully, that will give use the time we need to finish those beds and get the last transplants in.
Either that, or I’ll have time to put the garden tour video together, at least.
Looking out the window right now, we definitely aren’t getting the break from the wind, yet! I’m honestly amazed I found only a couple of fallen branches. The box frame over the eggplant and hot peppers is tied down and holding, but even the plastic around it is still there, though the bottoms keep getting pulled loose and need to be weighted down again. I’ve given up tacking down the mosquito netting at the chain link fence. They are well secured at the top, to the fence itself, but the ground staples keep getting yanked out, and most have disappeared. Bricks used to weigh the bottoms down just get flipped off. This netting lets water through, but the weave is still fine enough that they are more like sails than nets. They still do the job of keeping the elm seeds off. Those, at least, are almost done their season.
On the plus side, our water table may finally be recovered from all those years of drought that started before we moved out here! I’m not sure where to find that out. Plus, this is normally fire season. I’m quite liking not having to deal with smoke for weeks at a time!
There’s always a trade off of one kind or another, both good and bad. We just hope to have more good than bad!
Okay, so yesterday was a bit of a blowout, and I got very little done on the bed that needed to be shifted to its permanent position, before it can be planted in.
This morning, the goal was to get out there by 6am, and I almost got it! We discovered some cat destruction and cleaning that up delayed things a bit. My older daughter, sweetheart that she is, made me a hearty breakfast. She has fully switched over to sleeping days and working nights, so this time of the morning is when she and her sister usually share a meal before she heads to bed for the day. I’m usually not up this early! At least, not on purpose.
So it was about 6:30 before I finally got started on the bed and, my goodness, what a difference it made! The morning was still wonderfully cool, making the work so much easier. Especially since this part of the main garden area is already in full sun at this time.
The first thing to do was finish breaking new soil inside the area the bed will be shifted to. The only think I could really do at this point was turn the sod over, root side up. I was able to pull out the largest of the tap roots, and some clumps of sod just got tossed towards the trees. If this were just a lawn, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but this is all crab grass, dandelions and creeping Charlie. Simply flipping the sod wasn’t going to be enough.
Once the new ground was broken, I have to figure out what to do with the soil in the raised bed. Most of it is in what will be a new path. It still had some mulch left on it for the winter, so I took as much of that off as I could. It won’t be useable as a mulch anymore, though. Too much creeping Charlie mixed in with it. I ended up spreading it near the end of the bed that was most recently planted in, where it will eventually be covered with cardboard or landscaping cloth, if I can get some, and wood chips.
I decided to just clear the soil from marker to marker, moving it aside to make room for the boards that will be laid down where the log frames will eventually go. The sod was just piled on top of the rest of the bed for now. The soil on this side of the bed is clear of creeping Charlie enough that I will actually sift it, later on, and salvage as much as I can. We’ve spent years amending this soil. It’ good stuff!
At this point, I finally had a 4′ x 18′ rectangle of turned soil, full of weed roots.
I had been collecting cardboard intended to be used for the paths, but this bed needed it more. I used every scrap I could, and just managed to cover the area, though not to the edges. The cardboard got a good soaking, tromped on, then soaked some more.
Once that was down, I used boards to mark the boarder of the bed, where the log frame will go.
Then I soaked it all again.
I had a bit of clean straw left from something else available. “Clean” being a relative term. Everything as those elm seeds all over. I scattered it on the carboard, then got some grass clippings to cover the cardboard completely.
Then I soaked it all again.
By this point, about 2, 2 1/2 hours had passed, and it was time for a break.
We are looking at a high of 25C/77F this afternoon. I’ve decided I’m going to let that soil piled on the side bake in the sun for a while, then sift it and start moving as much of get bed’s soil over the grass clippings as I can. Hopefully, I won’t need to get more soil from the pile to top it up.
I’ve decided to take advantage of the time and make a trip to get more cat food, and possibly a few other things. My daughters need to replace their box fan upstairs. It’s unfortunate there was no way to set up the air conditioner my brother gave us up there. It’s needed up there way more than anywhere else in the house! The heat is why my daughter has to work nights; otherwise, her computer and drawing tablet overheat and start randomly shutting down or glitching out. During the day, they set up the box fan in the south window to blow the hot air out. They have other fans, but that one in the window makes the biggest difference.
So that’s the next thing on my to-do list.
Time to get changed and head out.
The Re-Farmer
ps: I almost forgot to mention. The kittens are gone! I saw them in the sun room in the morning, but by the afternoon, they were gone. They are still gone. The mama has moved them somewhere pretty far afield. It’s a shame. The kittens were really liking the run room!
As for Broccoli and her babies, I don’t see them when I bring kibble to the shed, but yesterday evening, I saw Broccoli chilling on one of the old benches, while her kittens played nearby. This morning, the kibble inside the door was gone. They may not be inside the shed anymore, but they might be under it.
The Re-Farmer 