Broccoli was eating at the kibble house, so I took a quick check.
She has not moved her babies!
The old garden shed is a good place for them, other than the fact that we actually still use it.
In other things, the rain started yesterday, off and on, and will continue throught today. No downpours or anything like that. Just intermittent light rain. Enough to make the ground too wet to work in the garden beds or process the felled spruced.
If my husband is up to it, there will be a trip into town for some blood work.
I don’t think he’s up to it.
One of my older daughters, however, has offered to treat us to some Chinese food today, so a trip to town is still a possibility!
That would be a nice treat on a wet and chilly day. 🩷
Yesterday’s progress turned out to be a lot more work than it should have been, but the job got done. Rather than try and post pictures through Instagram, I decided to take them and make a vlog, instead.
It’s coming up on 1am as I post this. Time to go to bed and, hopefully, the old bod won’t stiffen up and break down too badly overnight!
We’ve got a much cooler day today – as I write this, it’s coming up on 1pm, and it’s still only 6C/39F, with a high of 13C/55F by about 6pm expected. I took full advantage of the cooler temperatures to get some things done! We’re supposed to start getting rain tomorrow, have more rain, off and on, over the next few days, so the more we can get done out there, the better!
The first job, of course, was to feed the yard cats. I counted 28 in total, I think. Knowing that we have kittens in the junk pile, I now put food out under the shrine, and even on the bench nearby. Which the Blue Jays appreciate… 🫤
Stinky, Hypotenose and Syndol were all pushing each other around, trying to get at pets!
I spotted Broccoli at the food bowls, so I interrupted my usual morning rounds and dashed to the garden shed.
I started taking out as many things as I could think to grab – garden stakes, hoses, netting, etc. I had to get under where the kittens were, so I lifted them all up in the self heating mat and set them on the ground as I worked. Once I got the stuff I thought I would need right away, I returned the tarp and the felted grow bags Broccoli has made her nest in, made sure it was flattened in such a way that no kittens would accidently roll off and get stuck somewhere, then carefully put them, still half snoozing, back in in their soft, fuzzy and warm mat.
By this time, Broccoli had come around the house and was watching me. When I was done and continued my rounds, she followed me around the garden. I’m hoping she will be okay with what I did, and not take her kittens away and hide them. By removing the stuff I did, I’m hoping we won’t need to open the door and disturb her and her babies for a while. I’ll still check on the, of course, but will try to do it only when I know Broccoli isn’t in there with them.
That done, I started doing garden related stuff. While rain may be on the way, we can’t count on it actually reaching us, so I did the watering. It looks like we finally have carrots sprouting, so I’ve moved the protective boards off of them. The German Butterball potatoes got the grass clipping mulch returned. I’m still putting the cover with the plastic on it over them, to keep the cats out. The garlic also got their mulch returned, now that they’re bigger, and watered.
After all the watering was done, I checked on the grapes. The false spirea growing nearby is trying to spread into them again, so I got some pruners to cut them away. Normally, I’d try to pull them up by the roots, but I can’t do that when they are right in with the grape vines.
Then I started clearing other spirea to clear more space around the grapes.
Before I knew it, I’d gone through the entire corner, clearing away dead false spirea, trimmed dead branches and last year’s flower husks, finding and clearing around a perennial flower that gets buried by the bushes every year, and really opening things up and cleaning them out.
The cats are very happy with this! They like to go under there. When they are in full leaf, it’s a shady spot they can hide in, and now it’s nice and clear of dead branches and twigs.
While the false spirea is leafing out, and the grapes are showing leaf buds, other things are further along. The “Mr. Honeyberry” haskap is in full bloom right now. I even saw a bumble bee among the flowers! The “Mrs. Honeyberry”, however, might have some leaves, not no flower buds yet. There’s no way proper cross pollination can happen, which means no berries.
*sigh*
The plum trees are blooming; they always bloom before they get their leaves. Quite a few tulips are showing flower buds, which is pretty awesome. The trees are also getting very green. So nice to see!
I look forward to getting back to work, when I get back from running errands!
The inside cats have been particularly messy and destructive for the past couple of days. The outside cats did some damage, too but, at least with them, it wasn’t on purpose (more on that in another post).
While doing my rounds this morning, I caught this little bugger.
There’s Syndol, using the tiny raised bed’s cover as a hammock again!
I’m actually impressed on how well it’s keeping him suspended above the garlic!
My daughter and I were working in the garden this morning, before it got too hot. The weather apps seem to change the forecast every time I check them, but we’ve had predicted highs ranging from 26C/78F to 29C/84F! We’re already at 22C/72F as I write this, and it’s not even noon, yet. I had to go into the garden shed, where I thought Broccoli might have her babies – the cats can get in through a hole in the wall in the back. Sure enough, I startled her when I opened the door, but I didn’t hear or see any kittens. It wasn’t until I went back again later that I saw them – and they were not actually all that hidden, either!
Broccoli was not around at the time, but we knew that, with our needing to go in and out of the shed, that she would end up moving her babies to who knows where. So we took a big risk. While my daughter kept an eye on the babies, I brought the big cat carrier from the sunroom over. It already had a blanket inside, but I added the self warming mat for the babies.
As we were moving them into the carrier, I could see Broccoli at the corner of the house in the old kitchen garden, watching us. Before we were done, I saw her dashing through the maple grove on the far side of the shed.
The carrier is now set up in the sunroom, and I’ve even more the critter cam so I can see it from my phone. My daughter is also monitoring the house from across the yard. It’s pretty normal for the mamas to leave their babies to sleep while they go hunting or whatever, so it might be hours before Broccoli comes back to the shed to nurse her babies, then figure out where they are. As I write this, the kittens are peacefully sleeping, but when the get hungry, they will start calling for her, so she should find them all right. If we can get her with them in the sunroom, we can close the door. She can stay safe with her babies in there, with her own food, water and litter box, and we should finally be able to socialize her! We’ll be able to give her some wet cat food, which we normally don’t give to the outside cats, which should help. I’ve already sent pictures to the Cat Lady. If all goes well, we’ll be able to finally get Broccoli spayed when the kittens are older, and be able to socialize the kittens as well.
It all hinged on whether or not we can lure her into the sunroom and keep her there!
Her two calicos, we assume, are female. I didn’t even bother to check. As we were moving them, I could see the black and white is a male.
They are so flippin’ adorable.
This does mean we will need to avoid going into the sunroom as much as possible, until we’ve lured her in and closed the door. The sunroom is where we keep a lot of our tools and supplies. Hopefully, it won’t be long before we can close the door with mama in with her babies. After that, we’ll just have to do things like go in only through the old kitchen. Unless we can move her and the babies into the baby jail cage under the plant table, and close her in with them briefly, while we go in and out of the sunroom. Whatever it takes to get her with her babies and not hide them somewhere else!
According to the Window 11 weather icon on my new computer, it’s 15C/59F out there. According to the other weather app that came with my computer (why is there two of them?), it’s 17C/63F. According to the app on my phone, it was 19C/66F, but has already cooled down to 18C/65F. The thermometer on the wall of the sun room says it’s 20C/68F in there.
I don’t think any of the apps are right, because when I walk out the sun room door, it’s like walking into an oven. The sun room is cool, in comparison!
We have high winds today, which suggests that it would feel even hotter outside, without it!
My plan to get to bed early then start outside before things got too hot, did not succeed. The longer I lay in bed, the more awake I became. By the time I finally fell asleep, it was starting to get light out. *sigh*
My younger daughter and I were talking about this, and how the temperatures are expected to continue to be about the same for the next while. She had the same plans that I was trying to accomplish; to go to bed early, then get up and work outside while it was still cool.
She’s been as successful at it as I have been.
Still, that’s what we’re going to try doing. Maybe it’ll work out better if we encourage each other about it!
I did manage to get some gardening related stuff done, though.
The last two trays of tomatoes have been moved out of the living room and into the sun room. I ended up rearranging the transplants a bit. The Crespo squash are getting so big, they were shading the luffa and drum gourd sharing their bin, so those got moved to a tray and are now in the window, while the Crespo squash have a bin to themselves. I also moved the Black Cherry and Florme de Coeur tomatoes in individual pots out of the plastic tray they were in, and onto a metal one. The plastic tray was just too wobbly, while carrying them. For now, I’m using the plastic tray for the luffa and drums, but I’ll switch that out to metal trays later on. We’ll be starting to harden things off, soon, and I don’t want to risk dropping any because of a bendy tray!
I also moved a tray of winter squash to the sun room, leaving the onions and shallots in the mini greenhouse frame. I was going to set the Summer of Melons tray out of the aquarium greenhouse and to the window, but decided to take them straight to the living room, instead. I put them on the bottom shelf at the window, where they would get the best sunlight – with the overhang of the roof, the lower shelves get more sun than the upper shelves. I’m trusting the cats will leave them alone.
The makeshift table under the lights got rearranged a bit to use the space more effectively. There is a wall about a food wide between the east facing windows, casting a shadow across the table, so I’ve left a gap between the trays and bins, moving one bin of peppers and thyme to the shelf between the south facing windows, next to the mulberry and the Butterfly Flower.
Oh, we might have some oregano, after all! When they didn’t sprout, I returned the seed starting mix to the big bowl I use to pre-moisten the mix before filling pots and cells, mixing it all together. Now, some of the tomatoes look like they have oregano growing with them! They’re looking pretty leggy, but I’m leaving them be for now. They’re not big enough to be a problem for the tomatoes. If the survive, we’ll just transplant them at the same time we transplant the tomatoes.
Some of the other melons and watermelon we pregerminated have emerged from their soil, so I moved those ones off the heat mat and into the mini greenhouse frame with the onions and shallots. I checked the remaining seeds set to pre-germinate. Still nothing on the remaining two Zucca melon seeds, but one of the Pixies had its radical, and another was open, so I planted both. Those got added to the tray on the warming mat, along with the other pre-germinated melons that haven’t emerged yet. I ended up adding water to the trays under the cardboard and peat pots a couple of times. The pots were drying out, and I didn’t want them sucking the moisture out of the growing medium, and wow did they ever absorb the water from the trays fast! These are needing to be watered more often, because of the pots. The transplants in the plastic pots don’t have this problem.
Tomorrow morning, the plan is for my daughter and I to prep one of the empty raised beds in the West yard, next to the peas, carrots and spinach, with the peat and sulfur amended soil left from other beds, and finally get those German Butterball potatoes planted. We then want to set up netting of some kind around the other bed, to protect the spinach from hungry critters, as well as from the cats walking all over it, but in such a way that we can easily left the netting to tend to the bed. There are still no peas emerging, but it would be a good time to add trellis netting to the support posts set up for it. By now, I’m guessing they all failed, and I don’t know why. We do have shelling peas to plant, but I think I might buy another package of edible pod peas for that bed. It’s starting to get too hot to plant peas, though!
Hmm… I just looked at the time. The post office is open for the afternoon, and my husband’s medical grade latex tubing arrived early. They have a seed display. I’ll check and see if they have any edible pod peas! We might even plant them tomorrow morning, after planting the potatoes.
What we try to do next will depend on the weather. If it’s not still windy, we might even try to take down some dead trees!
I got to bed “early” (which, for me, is anything before midnight), got actual sleep, and was outside and working while it was still cool out!
I even made sure to have breakfast before I headed outside, so that I could get right to work after finishing my rounds, though I did upload and check the trail cam files, first. Now that the weather is nice, I’m seeing our vandal going by fairly regularly, rubbernecking towards our place as he drives by on his quad. *sigh*
Anyhow.
My goal for the morning was to get the chimney block planters along the chain link fence ready to plant into, then maybe move on to the ones that form the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. I thought I might have time to do both, before things got too hot for that sort of work.
Ha!
I should know better by now.
I took progress pictures and posted them on Instagram, since I don’t have the storage space to upload so many images onto Word Press anymore. I didn’t think to set up the tripod and take a time lapse video, as I do for other projects, because I thought this would be done quickly. I did consider taking the stills and making a brief video, with narration, but decided against it.
Let me know, though, which you would prefer. I know not everyone can see the images when I embed them from Instagram, without having to click on the embed area and go to Instagram to view them. Would you prefer a short video, even if it’s just a bunch of stills, and making a vlog post out of it? YouTube doesn’t have the storage limitations that WP does.
I remembered to take a “before” shot, too. There’s a bit of crab grass showing through the grass clipping mulch, but things didn’t look too bad. I figured, maybe an hour to get it done, give or take.
Then I removed the grass clipping mulch and tried weeding the first block.
At first I thought the soil was strangely compacted, but even using some tools to loosen the soil, it was still a struggle. There were quite a lot of roots in there… Way too many roots. I set the sifter up over the wheel barrow and started trying to lift handfuls of soil out, but it just wasn’t working. Finally, I just grabbed the entire block and tipped it off the soil.
Leaving behind a packed cube.
A cube filled with tree roots.
Yup. Just like with the grow bags near the row of trees my mother allowed to grow after she transplanted her row of raspberries, roots from the nearby Chinese elm had made their way into the growing space from below.
After that first one, I just pulled the next block over, without even trying to dig into the soil, first. The soil cube stayed behind, held in place by all the roots below. Others came loose with the block, as the soil was so filled with roots, it stayed packed into the block, even as the roots were being torn from the ground below, and I had to force the soil cube out. Then there was breaking up the blocks on the sifter, pulling out handfuls of roots. There were some crab grass rhizomes, but even they seemed to be choked out by the tree roots!
Now we know why all the vining gourds that we planted there last year, failed so miserably. They were completely choked out by invading tree roots.
While I was working my way down the row of blocks, there was something else that was unexpected.
The distinct sound of kittens, mewing!
One of the other mamas has had a litter, and it sounds like they are in the old freezer lying on its side in the junk pile. I didn’t see any of the mamas, though I did eventually see a black cat come out of that area. I didn’t think we had a black cat that was female. I certainly didn’t notice any that looked pregnant. Not even the one tuxedo that I figure is female, after seeing the boys going after her. Mind you, the cat I saw might not have been a mama. All the cats like to take shelter and climb around the junk pile.
After a while, though, I guess they all fell asleep, because I no longer heard the mewing.
Once the blocks were all moved off and the soil sifted, I did as much weeding as I could in the soil underneath where the blocks were, but there were just too many tree roots. The best I could do with a lot of them was simply severe them.
Then I took a rake to the area, getting rid of the weeds and roots, before leveling where the blocks would go. We’ve been saving our cardboard that’s suitable to use in the garden, so I took some of that and laid down a double layer. Hopefully, it will be thick enough to discourage the roots from growing up into the blocks.
The carboard got a soaking, but it takes a lot to saturate cardboard. I got it decently wet, then put the blocks back.
This is where I really appreciate steel toed shoes! After lining the blocks up first by hand, the final touch was to kick them into place.
I’ve gotten way too used to wearing steel toes all the time. Every now and then, I’ll be out somewhere, forgetting I’m wearing normal shoes, and almost break my toes kicking at something! 😄
Once the blocks were in place, I walked back and forth over them a few times, using my own weight to settle them into place, then took the hose to them. The blocks helped by actually holding the water and letting it start to pool, rather than running off the sides, allowing the cardboard to become better saturated.
The next step was to start amending the soil.
The wheel barrow was pretty full, so adding the peat and sulfur granules was done in batches; enough to fill a couple of blocks before the next batch of soil was amended.
Since the peat made for greater volume, there was soil left over in the wheel barrel after all the blocks were filled. Each block then got topped with a couple of handfuls of stove pellets to act as a mulch. The blocks got a watering, then left for the pellets to absorb moisture and start swelling, while I watered the potato bed and haskaps, nearby. The one “Mr. Honeyberry” haskap has all sorts of flower buds, with some of them even starting to bloom! The two “Mrs. Honeyberry” aren’t anywhere near that point.
*sigh*
That took enough time for the stove pellets to swell to the point that the sawdust could be spread around a bit, before getting another thorough watering.
The very last thing to do before clean up was to return the support posts – they had to be hammered through the cardboard. We need to put something similar along the bed with the potatoes, so we can place netting of some kind over them. This will be to protect the beds and anything growing in them from being suffocated by the Chinese Elm seeds, when they start dropping in their millions.
What I thought was a job that might take me about an hour, ended up talking almost 3 hours – though I did take a hydration break, part way through.
By then, it was starting to get pretty warm, too; the perfect time to be done!
After that, my daughter and I headed into town. We had some parcels to pick up on the way home, but the post office closed shortly after I finished working, so we had to find extra things to do. That way, we could time our trip home for when it reopened again. We ended up going to the beach; something we haven’t done in at least two years! The lake is mostly clear of ice, but there were a few patches being blown against the beach by the winds.
It was all candle ice, and in places, you could hear it tinkling like wind chimes in the waves! I tried to capture the sound with my phone.
That area of the beach has quite a lot of rocks, making it our favourite part. We spent the entire time, trying to find interesting ones. We found quite a few, including some that sparkled amazingly in the sun. I tried to capture the sparkle in photos, but the camera just couldn’t pick up the glitter.
We had no problem at all, taking up the extra time we needed to, on the beach!
From there, it was a stop at the grocery store. I just needed to refill a couple of the big water jugs and get some eggs. My daughter had her own shopping list. That done, it was back home, with a stop at the post office to pick up a parcel.
Which turned out to be five parcels!
One was for my daughter, which arrived faster than she expected. A couple more for my husband arrived early as well, plus there turned out to be another with the courier company packages. I didn’t know anything about that one, but the store owner stopped me on the way out to give it to me.
There was one parcel that would have been great to arrive early but, alas, it isn’t expected until next week. My husband needs to replace the face part of his CPAP set up. He’s been able to replace the hose the runs from the machine to the face mask, and he was able to get new nasal prongs. The part of the mask he can’t get has the latex tubes that attach to the sides of the nasal piece. Over time, the latex starts to harden, turn yellow and, eventually, begin to crack. My husband tends to wait way too long before replacing them, so they’re at that point, now. The problem is, it’s not in stock, and hasn’t been for months. It’s starting to look like they’re not being made anymore. So he’s simply ordered medical grade latex tubes to attach to the fittings, which are still fine.
What he really needs is a new machine. Medicare doesn’t cover CPAPs. His insurance does, but it’s by reimbursement, so he’d have to have the funds to buy it first, then submit a receipt. Medicare does cover BiPAPs, though, which would be better for him, anyhow. For that, however, he needs to get a new prescription. It’s been so long, he’ll need another sleep test, first. Which his new doctor has started the process of getting done. When he was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, we were living in this province (for the second? third? time) and he spent the night in a lab at the sleep research centre. They actually interrupted the sleep test after a couple of hours and put him on a CPAP, because they were afraid he would die on them. That lab is no longer there. I don’t know if it moved to another hospital or city or province, or simply no longer exists. Now, they usually do home tests. Which should be… interesting.
However he ends up getting tested again, he’s on a waiting list, and has been for a few months now. Who knows when he’ll finally get tested.
Until then, he has to find ways to make do with what he has and, right now, it looks like he needs to buy parts and pieces to replace the worn out ones. He can’t even use a different style of mask, as they are made for specific machines, and the fittings can’t cross over. At least, not with the machine he has now.
Hopefully, the tubing he ordered will fit. He did order some earlier, but it turned out to be the wrong size for the fittings. It’s something we can find a use for, though, so no loss there.
Meanwhile…
As I finish this up, we’re coming up on 6pm, and it’s still 18C/64F (the high was 19C/66F), with the humidex putting it at 22C/72F. Unless I look at my other map, which has us a couple of degrees Celsius warmer!
While talking to my daughter earlier about what needs to be worked on next, we were both rather depressed at the thought of getting the low raised beds in the main garden area clear. The crab grass is taking over with a vengeance and, in one of them, Creeping Charlie is also invading. The only way to really make a difference when it’s that bad is to either use an herbicide, or sift it all. Since we also need to amend the soil with peat and sulfur, sifting it would be the best choice. Which basically means, every one of those beds needs to be redone – and these are all beds we want to make into higher raised beds. My daughter suggested we just skip ahead to making the beds higher, if we’re going to have to remove all that soil, anyhow.
Which means, we need to shift gears and start harvesting more of those dead spruces. We currently have only two downed trees to process. We need more. Lots more, even if we’re just doing middle height beds, like with the trellis beds we’re working on. Those are only two logs tall, which means we need four 18′ logs for the sides and four or five (depending on the width) 4′ logs for the ends, per bed. With the largest of the dead trees, the bottom 10′, which would be too thick for a garden bed, will be set aside for the vertical supports for the outdoor kitchen we will be building (we need 10 of those). Depending on how straight and tall the trees we harvest are, that means 2 or 3 trees per raised bed. We need to rebuild… hold on… let me look out the window and count… five low raised beds. One of those has the onions growing in it, so that one won’t be done this year; it’ll just get weeded for now. So, four that need to be rebuilt. Plus the other 3 beds we need to make to make two trellis tunnels (two beds per tunnel). So we’re looking at a minimum 7 new beds at 2 logs high. If we assume 3 trees per bed, we’re looking at about 21 trees that need to be harvested. I’m pretty sure we do have that many dead spruces that need to be cut down; I’d counted 22 before we cut down the ones we’ve done so far, but there are a couple that have fallen on their own and are stuck against other trees that we probably could use, plus I’m sure there are others in an overgrown area we can’t walk through. If worse comes to worse, there are more dead spruces in the old hay yard. It’s further to drag the logs but, at that point, we can use the truck to drag them out.
Which means, weather willing, we need to start cutting down all those dead spruces in the spruce grove. If we focus on cutting the dead trees down first, then processing them to the sizes we need and dragging the logs over, building the beds themselves won’t necessarily take long. Prepping the spaces usually takes longer.
That electric chainsaw is going to get quite a workout.
Hmm… I wonder if I can talk to my brother into coming out with his gas chainsaw? He’s so busy with so many things, though, I hate to ask him. Especially since we’d have no way of knowing if the weather would be good on a day he can come out.
Well, I guess tomorrow, I’m getting the chainsaw out and making sure it’s working after a winter in the garage!
It’ll be good to finally get those dead spruce trees cut down. Then we can start transplanting new ones!
I tried going to bed early, so I could get an early start on work outside, before things got hot again. Of course, everything seemed to conspire to keep me awake.
Which, I suppose, turned out to be a good thing.
It eventually soaking into my sleep deprived, frustrated brain, that I was hearing the septic pump running.
And it wasn’t turning off.
I almost dozed off, but was awakened again, and it was still running.
So down to the basement it went to check. The filter had no liquid in it. It was running dry.
I did the usual routine; shut off the pump manually, prime the filter, turn it on again… then off again, when the filter just emptied, but the pump kept running.
*sigh*
Why would a new pill switch conk out so quickly?
Tomorrow… er… later today… I will call the septic guy again, and let him know.
Until then, I hope to get at least a few hours of sleep!
Taking a break from manual labour yesterday seems to have done the trick. My right arm is feeling find again. So fine, in fact, it makes me suspicious! 😄
Today, I was thinking to use the amended soil pulled from the bed the potatoes are now in and starting on the chimney block planters along the other section of fence. Once I got outside, however, I remembered that getting the sun room cleaned out and set up for the transplants is a higher priority.
The outside cats are not happy with me!
When we set it up for them for the winter, one side of the room was set up for them, the other side was set up to store our gardening supplies and tools. I did put a sheet of rigid insulation on the top of the counter shelf – the top is metal and would get quite cold on their little toe beans – and left them space to sit on the shelf between the two windows on the storage side.
They, of course, trashed everything. They even managed to knock the sheet of insulation off the counter and get it stuck between the counter and the broken and now single pane window it’s covering. Boxes of screws scattered all over the floor, plant pots and garden supplies knocked out of the shelf opposite the window… just a disaster.
Getting the room cleaned out is something that needs to be done in sections, as we can’t empty everything outside. The only thing that physically can’t be removed is the baby jail that used to be in my room, when we had Decimus and her kittens. We might be able to squeeze it through – I honestly can’t remember if we had to partly dismantle it to get it from my room to the sun room, which would take it through three sets of doors.
Mostly, though, it’s because of the weather. The wind is insane right now, and we’re expecting rain. There is a large system blowing towards us and, from the weather radar, it does look like we’ll actually get some heavier rain, though the worst of it looks like it will miss us.
The first thing to do was get the floor mats out, hose them down and scrub them as best we could. They’re not hanging on the chain link fence. I think they’re heavy enough to not blow away!
Then some of the cat bedding on the floor got moved out before I could detach the heat lamp and remove the platform we made for them. The platform was basically a way to store the screen door we made to fit the old basement doorway, which allows us to have cool air circulating from the basement during the summer, while keeping the cats out. That had a sheet of insulation attached under it, then we had another small piece on top, along with a couple of cat beds, so they weren’t trying to walk on the half inch hardware cloth.
Both the frame and the sheet of insulation got a hose down and a scrubbing!
More cat bedding was removed from out of baby jail. All the food bowls were taken out, as well as the heated water bowl. The extension cord to the cat house was also pulled in and wrapped on its hooked on the wall for storage, as we no longer need to heat the cat house or the other heated water bowl outside.
Bins that were knocked out of the shelf at the window had to be cleared our. Plant clips, tent pegs, trays… all sorts of things they pushed off the shelf, so they could sit at the window, had to be picked up. I’d dragged the folding table we made a while back, over, and a number of things are now stored under it to be protected from any rain.
After finally being able to clear the shelf away from the window, I could move the baby jail, and take the interlocking mats out from under it. Those also got a hose down and a scrubbing on the lawn, just in time for some rain to rinse them off. 😄
Of course, there were cat messes to clean up, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it has been in previous years!
Still, the concrete floor did need some mopping up in a corner. We’re now at a point where we have to let that dry before we can continue.
For now, I’ve put the shelf back at the window, but we’ll need to pull it out again to clean the glass before we finish setting things up. I’ll also take the second shop light that’s in the living room right now and hang it back next to the one that’s in the sun room.
I moved the two trays of plants off the window shelf. The poor tomatoes. It looks like the cats have been walking all over them, to get to the open spot I left for them to sit in, instead of walking in the space next to the trays! We’ve lost a few, for sure, and they’re not doing anywhere near as well as the ones still inside. We had to move them out of the living room, but the overnight temperatures in the sun room were probably still to chilly for them, I think. The gourds, peppers and eggplant seem to be fine, though!
Since the interlocking floor mats are still outside and likely to get rained on again before they can finally dry and be brought in, this is likely as far as we can get for today. Last year, we rigged a table on the sawhorses using an old folding closet door we found in a shed somewhere, and we’ll be using that again this year. The saw horses are tall enough that it’ll clear the baby jail, so we’ll be able to leave that under it. Last year, we did allow the cats into the sun room while the plants were there, and they left them alone.
All the cat beds and blankets are currently being washed right now. When the time comes, we’ll set some up inside the baby jail for them. Who knows. We might even have a mama decide to have her kittens in there! Unlikely, but you never know!
After I took this photo, I gave the cats a light feeding, with no food or water bowls in the sun room at all right now. We also brought the mulberry saplings out of the living room and into the sun room. They really need to be in bigger pots, but they also need to be transplanted soon. We need to start hardening them off, and they could probably go into the ground, now. They are supposed to be a zone 3 tolerant variety.
It will be good to get the transplants out of the living room and into the sun room! We’re not starting anywhere near as many seeds indoors as we did last year – we were expecting to have a lot more growing space ready for them! – but it’s still pushing the limit as to what we can fit in the cat free zone inside. Unlike the cats outside, some of the inside cats would quite happily destroy all the seed trays, just for fun!
We definitely made good progress in setting things up on this side.
The other half of the room, however, is not going to be this easy, that’s for sure!
Ah, well. That’s what we get for being such sucks for the cats!
By the end of the day, my right arm was giving me grief. Painkillers didn’t seem to help any, and it made for a difficult night. There just wasn’t any position I could get into that wasn’t making a joint somewhere more painful – and it was just the joints. No muscle pain, which is more what I would have expected. And why just my right arm? The wrist is the worst.
So that changed my plans for today. I didn’t want to push it by doing more manual labour outside. Instead, courtesy of my older daughter, I decided to do that cat food shop that was planned for later in the week, and my younger daughter is currently working on cleaning up and weeding the low raised beds in the main garden area, in preparation for amending with the sulfur granules and peat. She’s taking it slow and easy; it’s 20C/67F out there, and she handles heat even worse than I do!
I still did my morning rounds, though, and was happy to see more snow crocuses blooming.
I tried to do a head count of the outside cats this morning, and I think I counted 27. I saw Broccoli, which was good. Sad Face was there, which I’m not sure is good. Last night, there was a huge fight in the sun room – there’s tufts of fur all over the floor now. It was between Sad Face and Creamsicle III No sign of Creamsicle this morning.
Unfortunately, I also identified another of the white and greys as female. There’s one that I hear mewing every time I come out to feed them, but I never quite see which cat is making the noise. Well, which one was confirmed, as she was standing there, looking at me, as she mewed – and she was looking decidedly round.
*sigh*
So… Broccoli, Brussel, Sprout, Caramel, Slick (aka: Octomom) and Adam are all cats that had kittens last year, and now we have 2 white and greys that are looking round, and I’m pretty sure one of the tuxedos might be female, though I’m guessing only because I saw cats I know are male, showing extreme interest, about a month ago. So that makes for 8 mamas, with Broccoli already having her litter, possibly 9 if I’m right about that tuxedo.
*sigh*
I’m just assuming Brussel is pregnant. Her fur is so long and fluffy, we can’t actually tell if she’s getting round or not.
After what happened last year, though, it’s entirely possible we won’t actually have that many litters of kittens, though. It was such a bad year for losses. I suppose, in the end, that’s a good thing, as our colony would be much bigger if there hadn’t been, but it was still heartbreaking to find all those little bodies.
At least I can say, the outside cats are earning their keep. We have zero rodent problems!
The inside cats, on the other hand…. 😄😄
So my trip today was specifically for cat supplies, along with a few other things. I went to the Canadian Tire, first. I needed another bag of seed starting mix, so I could pot the pre-germinated melons. I also got three bags of stove pellets for the litters, with an extra bag because I sometimes use it to mulch garden beds.
Then it was off to the Walmart.
Of course, I got a few other things, too, for a grand total of $240.73 after taxes.
The canned cat food is for the inside cats, and the dry food mostly for both inside and outside cats.
Then there was the stuff for us.
The only thing we really needed was the house brand version of Pepto. I remembered we were low on popcorn seasonings, but couldn’t remember which ones (I hardly ever have popcorn, myself), so I got three different flavours. Then I spotted the rice crackers my husband likes, at only 97¢ each, so I got 2 each of 2 different flavours. Then I spotted the house brand teas at 97¢ each, too, so I got an Earl Grey and two Vanilla Rooibos. I was taking my time going through the store, as I didn’t want to leave until I knew the post office would be open on my way home, and found some compostable bags for our compost buckets. They keep moving where those are! Finally, I saw a good price on canned ham and decided to get one for us to try and see if we like it. If we do, then we can start getting more for the pantry, as part of our stock up supplies.
Oh, and I grabbed some bananas, too. We still have fruit at home, but we all like bananas. 😊
So that was my cat food re-stock trip that I would have done later in the week.
Hopefully, my right arm will be feeling better soon. I was going to wear a wrist brace, but the only one we could find was for the left. Somewhere, we have two more, one right handed and one left handed, but do you think anyone can remember what happened to them? I did look at wrist braces while at Walmart, but my wrist isn’t hurting enough to pay that much for one, when we have one somewhere at home!
The weather is finally good. I need to be working outside! I don’t have time for injuries. 🫤
We finally have some warm and drier weather today! It’s already 14C/57F, and we’re expected to have a high of 16C/60F.
I think I counted 27 yard cats this morning, but they were running around so much, I can’t be sure. What was funny to see, as I was trying to count, was a skunk suddenly come running around from behind the storage house, just like one of the cats, going for the kibble house! Not the little one I’ve been seeing, but a big on. My guess, a pregnant mama. I scared her off with the hose, because I wanted to make sure the cats got the food first. I know she’ll show up later.
I was happy to see Broccoli – she even let me pet her! We’ve started to do more frequent, smaller feedings, so that there’s something there when she is able to leave her kittens in her secret place and come eat. I was even able to get a glance under her and, from what I can see, she has 2 active nips. I think the largest litter she’s ever had has been 3 kittens. Hopefully, that will be the norm this year, and not litters of 5, 6 or even 8, like last year! At least most of them turned out to be male, though we did manage to get some female kittens indoors. There’s just one I can’t get at that I think it female. The other females are mamas from last year.
We really, really need to catch these mamas!! They are not cooperating at all. *sigh*
Oh, I just got some updates on the Wolfman this morning. He eye is healed up well, and there are potential adoptees coming to see him.
Much to my shock, Wolfman has taken to hissing, flattening his ears, and hiding, any time strangers come be. He also only lets their youngest daughter pick him up – he used to love being picked up! – and always hisses at the Cat Lady’s mother, who helps care for the cats. The poor guy must be so stressed out from, first, suddenly being taken to a new place, then going to the vet so often, then having to get his eye treated regularly. Poor baby. It’ll take time, but that just makes it harder to adopt him out. Especially when people coming over don’t even get to see him, because he’s hiding!
All in good time, I guess.
But I digress!
My morning rounds now includes checking the various growing things. There is still nothing showing up with the peas and spinach. Not the carrots, either, but carrots do take much longer. I’m surprised about the peas and spinach, though, even with the cooler weather we’ve been having. Hopefully, the seeds have survived and things will start sprouting as we get warmer days again. These need cooler weather to germinated, though, so… we’ll see!
We have more snow crocuses blooming, including our first – and so far, only – purple one. We have a few more yellow ones showing up. Mostly, we’re seeing the white ones, as well as the white with a hint of purple.
The grape hyacinths won’t be blooming for a while, but we are starting to see their distinctive clusters of leaves showing up all over the area they are planted in. My daughter’s tulip patch is also looking pretty good. I’m really looking forward to seeing what those “new” tulips that came up next to the saffron crocus turn out to be. I’m about 95% sure they are the Bull’s Eye tulips, but there was another variety planted there, too.
Oh! I’m remembering wrong!
It’s a good thing I’m journaling all this, here on the blog. I just looked up what I wrote about it, back in the fall of 2020. Only Bull’s Eye tulips were planted there.
We got them as a newly available tulip from Veseys, but they carried the variety for just the one year, I think. I suspect a lot of people did not have success with them. If I do a search, I can find other places that carry them, though, and they are listed as being zone 3 hardy. Well, we’ll see! It’ll be awesome if, after all this time, they actually show up! The idea that the bulbs would survive all this time, without any growth emerging, would be pretty amazing. Actually, I think some did show up that first spring, but the deer decimated the tulip patch, so for any tulips to show up after that is pretty amazing. It’s a bit of an eyesore to have the wire fencing around it, but there isn’t much choice!
More and more garlic is starting to come up, too! I’m quite happy to see them, after thinking most may not have survived the winter.
I’m not so happy to see how much crab grass is growing in the tiny raised bed, though. We pulled as many rhizomes as we could find at planting time, but it’s pretty much impossible to get it all. They’ll come back from the tiniest pieces.
I’m quite looking forward to having scapes to harvest!
After the garlic bulbs are harvested, which should be in late June or early July, this little raised bed is going to get refreshed and amended with the granulated sulfur and peat. We’ll be able to do that with the long bed against the retaining wall, too, as well as the short section of the wattle weave bed, as those will not have anything else planted with the garlic. The bigger rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden has garlic growing all down the middle, so there is room to plant other things on either side. I do hope to be able to amend the sides before we plant anything with the garlic.
Things are looking dry enough that we should be able to finally plant potatoes in the bed that’s been solarizing. The plastic is still there, but I don’t know how much solarizing actually happened, considering the rainy and overcast days we’ve had, since it was laid down. With the bed made narrower, though, it’s actually got more soil than the brick edging can contain. Since we don’t have the materials to raise the bed higher, yet, plus I want to work peat and sulfur into it first, it looks like I’ll have to actually remove soil from the bed. Which is okay. The excess can be used to top up the chimney block planters nearby.
So that’s my goal for today. Get that bed amended and planted with potatoes. I might actually be able to get both types of potatoes in there. We do still have Red Thumb and Purple Peruvians from last year that we could plant. They were so small, though, we didn’t really use them often. The fingerlings are also odd shapes, so getting them clean in preparation for cooking was not worth the bother. That’s why we still have some left! However, if we can increase the acidity in the soil enough, they might actually go much better. It might be worth trying, somewhere.
First things first, though. Gotta get the ones we bought, into the ground!
The Re-Farmer 