When it comes to deciding what seeds to start indoors, and when, your frost dates are more important than your zone. Gardening in Canada talks about what to start now, whatever zone you are in.
We’ve got our onions,shallots, eggplants and hot peppers started (even though the hot peppers are supposed to be a short season variety). Next up, I have herbs to start.
We don’t have luffa seeds to try this year; I will buy more to try again next year. I’m debating whether I want to try any gourds this year. I’m not sure how many beds we will have access to this year. I think I should skip them this year and focus more of the edibles than things I am growing for crafting purposes.
What about you? If you have a garden, what are you trying – or skipping – this year?
This morning, I headed out to drive my mother to her doctor’s appointment. It really sucks to not be able to use her car right now, because it’s a real struggle for her to get into the truck, even with the foot stool. She finds it easier to get out, and refuses the foot stool completely, preferring to use her walker for support.
I’m certainly glad my shoulder is all healed up, because I had to help boost her up into the truck! Something I could not have managed, just a few days ago.
Once in the truck, though, she was happy as a clam! She commented on how nice it looks inside, and how smooth the ride is, compared to her car. I think she finds the seat more comfortable too.
At the doctor, she got the referral she was there for. The doctor was supposed to give her a physical exam, but my mother couldn’t even get up the step to go onto the examination table, so that was skipped. My mother will get either a call or letter about an appointment in the city to see a specialist, and the wait should not be long.
After that, she was up to stopping for lunch before heading home. I didn’t stay long after dropping her off; mass on TV was about to start, and she watches every day. Plus, I wanted to stop at the grocery to pick up an ingredient we were missing for my daughter, who wants to use the last of our winter squash to make a pie, and my husband sent me a message saying we had parcels to pick up at the post office.
Along with the parcels, my seed order from T&T Seeds was in.
It took several tries to get a photo without a cat photo bombing me!! 😄
The potatoes will be shipped in the spring, but they included a pamphlet on how to handle their various types of perishables with the seeds.
Based on what the package says, with our June 2 average last frost date, the tomatoes can be started indoors in the first half of April, and the winter squash can be started indoors at the beginning of May. Both say 80 days, though, and our growing season from last frost in the spring, to first frost in September, is 100 days. Technically, we could direct sow both of them! I don’t think I’d want to take that chance, though.
I must say, it’s very hard not to buy more seeds right now! The McKenzie Seed displays are out, and they are everywhere. Even some gas stations have them! As soon as I walk in somewhere – like the grocery store, today – and see the displays, I just zoom right in and start looking. We have so many different seeds, and for many we also have several varieties, so there’s really not been anything in the displays that I would get, that we don’t already have. About the only thing I really find myself looking for is sugar snap peas. We have lots of seeds for shelling peas. The first year we grew peas, we grew both types, but that was the drought/heat wave year, and the snap peas barely survived.
With everything melting outside right now, and the rest of the winter expected to be mild in our area, who knows. We might be able to get things started earlier than usual! At the very least, we should be able to get to work on the building more trellis tunnel beds and reworking others. early. There are seeds that can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked, even if there are frosts later on, so I’d quite like to have some of those started, nice and early! Things like the peas, which I want to plant in the bed the popcorn was planted in, last year, to get some nitrogen back into that soil, spinach and onions.
I so looking forward to getting outside and back to work again!
I popped outside briefly last night, when raccoons showed up in the sun room again. It was raining ever to lightly at the time.
By morning, we were still above zero, with a light fog. Things are pretty wet and slippery put there!
We’ve got the “moat” forming around the garage – something more typical or March or April.
That didn’t stop Driver from following me around and demanding attention! He kept flopping in front of my feet, until I finally picked him up and carried him.
I managed a head count this morning. The cats still aren’t all back to using the sunroom at night, but I think I counted 35 this morning!
Meanwhile…
I am having major computer issues again.
I tried using my movie making software last night. I finally started seeds and was going to make a quick little silent video.
The computer started making grinding noises.
As the noises got worse, I tried shutting down the machine, but it wouldn’t shut down. After numerous attempts, I finally did a hard shut down and tried again, after waiting the 20 minutes or more it takes to boot up now.
After doing a few things to make sure it was functioning, I tried the movie making software again. As I was going through Windows Explorer to find some images to include, it started locking up on me.
Oh, and I can’t see my external hard drive, where i have been moving my photos and video to conserve space.
When I tried navigating around WE, it started “not responding” on me. Of course, with WE, you can’t just End Task it. The only option is to restart it.
Which locked up even worse. I got a white screen that wouldn’t go away.
After having to do hard shut downs several times, I called it a night.
This morning, I tried turning on my computer.
It wouldn’t boot up.
After having to do a couple of hard shut downs, I got the dreaded blue screen, and the “this device needs repair” message.
Much to my surprise, though, I was able to go through the prompts and get it started! While I’ve been tapping this on my phone, it managed to finish booting up.
Meanwhile, my husband has been looking up computers on Amazon for me. Not that we can afford one that has what I need. He was even looking at ones with payment plans, but those were even out of budget.
As much as I love the truck, the payments we ended up with were over budget, and that’s really affecting what other things we can do.
Well, I really did a number on my right rotator cuff yesterday. I can’t raise my arm at all in two directions, with limited mobility in other directions.
During the night, I heard a commotion on my craft table and discovered Ginger peeing on it. Getting up to chase him off was quite difficult, and I ended up having to put weight on the injured arm. By the time I was done getting him off and cleaning the mess, I was in a cold sweat and feeling ready to throw up.
Yes, I did take painkillers. In fact, I went so far as to take one of my husband’s prescription pain meds.
It made no difference at all.
After a couple more hours of attempted sleep, things have improved. I will probably need to see a doctor, but I’m not sure where to go. I don’t really have one, and my interim doctor isn’t in the clinic on Fridays, anyhow. I really don’t want to spend hours waiting in an emergency room, either.
My daughters are taking shifts to be available to help me. My younger daughter has the day shift. She fed and watered the outside cats and tried to do a head count. She counted about 20 or so, which has been typical for our warmer days of late.
My daughter is cooking breakfast for me now, so I will have to de-cat myself and get up. I have been trying to at least lie down, if not sleep. Oddly, lying on my left side has been more painful, and not just because of my arthritic hip. I just can’t find a good position for my right arm that doesn’t strain the joint. Lying on my right side, I can at least find a position that supports the shoulder, rather than strains it.
I’m going to start this with some cuteness. I could really use some cuteness right now.
Not a very clear picture, but it was getting pretty dark and the time. This little sweetie is starting to actually enjoy being pet and even picked up, if only briefly.
Also, I’m very happy that he’s alive and unhurt.
I’ll have to explain that particular statement in a bit, but I’m rather unhappy right now.
I had called my mother last night and made arrangements to help her with her groceries today. At her request, I was going to pick up a hot lunch at the grocery store first, if they had them ready, so I left earlier and expected to be away for some hours.
They didn’t have the hot lunches, but I was still able to pick up a meal for us, and we had lunch together, then went over her grocery list. Grocery shopping by myself, with just her list, is a lot faster, and even got a bit more of a visit in before she left for a regularly scheduled social gathering some social workers arrange in her building.
I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, having discovered a huge puddle on my bed and needing to do laundry in the wee hours! Once I was back home and settled, I tried lying down for a bit, on the half of my bed that wasn’t still air drying. Yes, I had the new waterproof mattress cover on, and yes, the puddle actually soaked through it in spots.
While I was lying down, I had my phone on the charger on my desk when it started making notification noises. I ignored them, partly because I was buried in cats. After a while, though, my husband came by, commenting on how surprised he was that no one commented on the photo he’s sent.
Before I left my mother’s, she gave me some stuff to take with me. One of them was a baggie of different types of candies and chocolates that the social workers give out to everyone in her building. The girls and I had split them up, with a few going to my husband, including some caramels.
The picture he’d sent was of a caramel.
This a crown stuck to it.
The candy had actually pulled it right off!
After talking about it briefly, my husband made a phone call to the dentist. It was shortly after 3, and they were willing to take him in right away, but with how long it takes to drive into down, it was too early. So they said to come in for 4.
I could hear his side of the conversation and, once I realized he was able to get in right away, I extricated myself from the cats and started getting ready to head out again. I drove the truck into the yard, then went to the sunroom, which had only the outer door tied off, so I could open it from the outside, to get his walker.
I reached in to untie the door, and it growled at me.
I opened the door, and there was a big white dog standing there, looking at me.
At first glance, I thought it was the dog belonging to the younger of my brothers, who lives on the quarter across from our driveway. He doesn’t come around anymore, so that was a surprise.
Then I realized, it was not my brother’s dog. First off, this dog was not as fluffy. My brother’s dog gets very fluffy in the winter. Also, this dog had very distinctive eyes; one blue, one half blue, half brown.
I stepped aside and the dog left the sunroom, but it didn’t go far. It was very nervous and wagging it’s tail, but it was the sort of “if I reach out, will he lick my hand, or bite it?” nervous behavior. I didn’t reach out to it, of course, but the dog did start barking at me.
I still had to get the walker, though, so I went into the sunroom. There, I found a few things knocked out of the shelf against the window and onto the floor under the platform. The only cat I saw was the little fluffy tortie, and she was clambering her way up the shelf to the very top. It wasn’t until I was outside with the walker, after picking some stuff back up again, that I saw there was another cat already up there. They were watching me – and the dog – out the window.
The dog was still barking as I got the walker set up. My daughters, of course, came out to see what was going on, so while I fussed with the walker, they were on the other side of the kibble and water bowl shelters, and able to see what I missed.
A cat, lying dead in one of the paths in the snow leading to the food bowls under the shrine.
It was the single calico cat among last summer’s kittens. We’ve never been able to socialize her, but she was a talkative one and would always greet me when I came out to feed them.
I had to confirm that she was dead, of course, and she had clearly not been gone for long. I was able to move her to where she will later be cremated, and I’m sure that if I’d touched her with my bare hands, she would still have been warm.
Needless to say, that dog was no longer welcome.
We did some banging around and commended him to go home, but he just ran around the house. I chased him away some more, and he eventually ran out of the yard.
We were all quite unhappy with the situation.
My husband, meanwhile, had come out of the house and was in the truck. We needed to get going. We left the girls to take care of things, including locking the gate behind us, so we could get to the dentist.
It was just 4:00 as we came through the doors!
They got my husband in quickly and, while I waited for him, I posted a message on an FB page for our community, as well as on my personal profiles (since recovering my stolen original account, I still keep both old and new accounts active), about the dog, what happened, and our general location.
We did have a bit of a surprise at the dentist.
They already had a file for my husband.
Neither one of us remember him going to the dentist since we moved out here, but apparently they have him on file for 2021.
I was in the process of messaging my daughters to update them when my husband came out.
He was done.
When he made the appointment, they asked him to bring in the broken off crown. It turns out, all they needed to do was cement it back on again!
Then it was time to pay the bill. They do direct billing with the insurance company, but when they tried to process the payment, they got a message to get the new card information. There had been some changes within the system and we got new cards, but they had the exact same information on them. In fact, they sent us new cards twice, because of some other issue. I had both older cards, plus the newest on, in my wallet, so we were able to look at all three to compare.
They all had identical information on them.
Rather than fuss with it then, the receptionist said they’d clear it up with the insurance company, then bill use the rest later.
I remembered to ask how much it was, and it came out to $190. Our coverage is 90%, so we won’t have much to pay at all, when the time comes.
Since we were in town anyhow, my husband suggested we get something to eat. Clearly, his mouth was feeling just fine!
So we went to small restaurant nearby, and I was a very rude person, frequently checking my phone. There had been a number of reactions to my posting about the dog and what happened.
Then I started getting some private messages. A friend and neighbour sent me a picture of a dog. I couldn’t tell if it was the same dog, though. It had its fluffy winter fur, for starters, but I couldn’t make out the colour of the eyes. I asked about the eyes, and my friend said it was his brother’s dog (they live on the same quarter section), but he wasn’t sure about the eyes.
Then he sent me another picture. This time, it was a summer picture, so the dog’s fur was sleek. More importantly, it was a clear shot of the dog’s face – complete with porcupine quills in its snout!
Once I saw the eyes, though, it was confirmed. This was the dog that we found at our place.
We messaged back and forth a bit, and he gave me his brother’s phone numbers.
When we were done eating, and getting some take out for the girls, we headed straight home. The light was fading fast, so as soon as I parked the truck, I wandered around the house to see what I could see. Which was nothing obvious, but it was really getting too dark by then.
While we were out, our daughters kept an eye out for the dog, and did the evening feeding of the outside cats. A few of the cats had started to come back, including some friendlies that wanted pets.
The sunroom doors were also secured with both doors tied off, and tightly. There would be enough room for cats to squeeze into the sunroom, but no dog is getting in there!
My husband took his walker in through the main doors and is now storing it in the entry, in front of the washing machine, again. It’s more in the way, there, but we can’t get into the sunroom from outside anymore, when both doors are tied off like that.
Once things were settled indoors, I went through the old kitchen to go to the sunroom. There were only 3 cats in there; the fuzzy black one in the photo above, Syndol and one of the white and greys that’s really friendly. When I had been walking around outside, I did see a few cats around, but they were understandably very nervous and quick to run off. I did see Rolando Moon as we drove into the yard, and Brussel by the garage, plus a few more identifiable ones. It won’t be until tomorrow morning that I’ll be able to try and get a head count and take a good look around.
Meanwhile, I did phone the guy the dog belongs to. He had already been told what happened by my friend, and was in total shock. When he got home from work, the dog was at home and everything seemed normal. Plus, this is a dog that is not prone to wandering, even when chasing deer out of the yard. The dog looks like it’s part Pyrenees, and they like to guard their own territory. That he should wander to another farm a mile away, then kill a cat, is extremely odd behaviour.
Had my husband not had to go to the dentist unexpectedly, I wouldn’t have gone out for at least another hour, to do the evening cat feeding. I would have found the sun room half trashed and almost devoid of cats, and I would have found that little calico in the path, and never known what happened – and the dog’s owner would never have known his dog had wandered off.
As we were talking, one of the things he asked me is if we had a BB gun or pellet gun. We do have a pellet gun. I have permission to use it to scare the dog off.
Which is unlikely to happen. I don’t typically carry it with me when I do my rounds!
To be honest, though, I was thinking thoughts about having our crossbow handy.
I am seriously unhappy.
We are dog lovers in this household, but a dog that’s a killer is a different situation altogether.
Hopefully, we will never see it again.
I’m going to miss seeing that gorgeous little calico.
Oh, and jus to top things off, I’ve wrenched my shoulder. When the dog had gone around the back of the house, and my daughter could see it through the sunroom window, in the old kitchen garden, I went around to chase him off. Right now, instead of a rain barrel at the corner, we have the diverter set up. It extends as far as the hand rail with the rose bush growing at it, near the steps for the laundry platform. With how warm things have been lately, there’s been a lot of melted snow from the roof that flowed onto the ground in the space between the handrail and the laundry platform, and towards the cat shelter.
The very space I needed to go through, to get to the old kitchen garden.
It was, of course, very slippery. I used the hand rail to keep myself upright, but still came very close to falling a couple of times. I didn’t think I’d hurt myself, but the more time goes by, the stiffer my shoulders are getting. My right shoulder, in particular, is getting so that it’s painful to move, or raise my arm at all. I’m going to have to pain killer up if I’m going to get any sleep tonight!
I’m in the city right now. I decided to get an oil change before heading into Costco, so I’m just waiting on that right now. I decided to check the weather conditions back home.
Wow!!
The highest temperature I saw in the forecasts was 6C, but we are at 8C now – and it’s not even the hottest part of the day, yet!
The is going to make the temperature drop tomorrow feel even colder. 😆
The city is usually a couple degrees warmer, but right now, it’s a couple degrees cooler where I am.
Here is a rolly polly Rolando Moon to delight you…
… while I wait in a parking lot, for our quarter beef pick up.
It still makes me giggle, every time, that we do this like some sort of illicit drug deal.
Though the way things are going with the powers that be, I might not be far off the mark. So many groups are now calling to end the eating of meat, especially beef, I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to make it illegal.
Hopefully, sanity will prevail.
Until then, let’s appreciate a fuzzy orange belly and all those toe beans!
I was awakened by an army of cats demanding to be fed, so I finally got up to do that, a bit earlier than they usually get fed in the mornings. I tried going back to bed, and several of them “thanked” me, by laying down with me.
And on me.
At one point, I had four cats lying across one arm alone!
Eventually, I was able to crawl out from under them and got out to do my morning rounds about an hour later than usual. I was just finishing up when I came around the corner of the house and saw this.
There had actually been more of them in the paths to the bowls under the shrine, but a few ran off before I could get my phone out for a picture. It’s been so much warmer, I can’t get a good count of how many there are. They are a lot more active, and not staying as close to the house. They’re also not as hungry, which can only be helpful when it comes to the cat food supply! In fact, I went out to do the evening feeding before starting this, and didn’t have to add more kibble at all, there was so much still left!
I got a message from the Cat Lady this morning, to confirm how many females will be brought in for the cheap spay day. The clinic needs to know by Feb 1st, as spots are filling up fast. They’re doing males, too, but the spays are more intensive than the neuters, so they need to know. I’ve confirmed we’ll have 2 indoor females and 1 outdoor female, plus 1 indoor and 1 outdoor male. We’ll try to get the fluffy tortie indoors for overnight fasting, but we won’t be able to do that with an outdoor male. In fact, when it comes to an outdoor male, we’ll just grab whichever one we can get into a carrier! I would like it to be Shop Towel, but I didn’t even see him today, and there’s no way to be sure he’ll be around. We already do their evening feeding while it’s still light out, so the food is typically gone before 8pm, and that’s as close to having the outside cats fasting as we can get. The clinic does trapped ferals, too, so they are understanding if some cats may or may not have had an overnight fast, and are as prepared as they can be for that.
I’ve been informed that, along with the donated cat beds and other stuff the Cat Lady has for us, she’s got another kennel – by which she means, a cat carrier. I still am not used to her calling carriers, kennels. To me, a cat kennel is one of those wire cages, sometimes with multiple floors inside, and enough space for a litter box. Which I do want to get, to make it easier to isolate cats indoors. Right now, to do the overnight fasting, we’ll have to keep the fasting cats closed up in my room overnight. With needing to isolate 3 cats for fasting, that’s not too bad, but if we only need to do one, or a few kittens, a kennel would be far more efficient, and I wouldn’t have to worry about cats escaping if I have to go to the bathroom during the night!
After the morning rounds were done, it was my turn to do the upstairs cat litters (I can’t do the downstairs ones, as with my knees being so unstable, going up the stairs while carrying the buckets would not be safe for me to do). At the same time, I had the computer starting up. Last night’s upgrade was downloaded and the computer shut down, so it needed final installation when I turned it on. As a result, start up was even longer than it has been of late. Thankfully, everything seems fine. I’m still slowly going through things that I haven’t accessed for so long, all my saved passwords, etc. need to be input all over again. In some cases, I’ve even had to change passwords, because the ones I tried were coming up as “you are using an old password”. Frustrating. Still, it’s getting done, and the computer is behaving, and that’s what’s important.
Anyhow.
I never even made it to the computer this morning, other than turning it on. By the time I finished my chores and made breakfast, it was almost noon and, for some reason, I was incredibly sleepy. My daughters apparently were having issues, too. My younger daughter has been trying to go to bed early, then get up early, but Sunday nights is their regular gaming night with friends in various time zones. So she got up later this morning. My older daughter, who has gone back to working at night, partly to keep the cats from attacking her sister (who does the same for her during the day) had work to do, but was falling asleep at her computer, and ended up going to bed much earlier than usual. Neither of them got much sleep.
I was finished up my breakfast and my older daughter was chatting with me, and I was so tired, I was actually falling asleep mid sentence! I finally gave up and went for a nap. It wasn’t even 12:30, and I was planning to go to the post office to pick up a parcel when it opened at 2. Still, I figured at least an hour would be good!
Well, I did get about an hour or so. Which was interrupted.
I think I was lying down for less than half an hour, when the first interruption happened. My older daughter was in the kitchen, getting started on some cooking, when the power went out.
My daughter’s first thought was that the kitchen breaker was tripped, but nope. The furnace had been running at the time, which I can hear the loudest in my room, and that shut off.
Of course, what really got my attention was my hearing my computer shut off.
Not good, on a computer that is already on its last legs!!!
My daughter mentioned she had seen some trucks milling around at the intersection near our place, and wondered if they had done something. With all the fans and furnaces and whatnot off, even I could hear the reverse alarm from the trucks on the road.
My husband was in the process of trying to find a strong enough signal to report the power outage to the electric company with his phone, when my daughter, still in the kitchen, saw some guys at our power pole!
My husband went out to talk to them (I was only half awake through all this). He was told it was regular maintenance, and they apologized for cutting our power; they didn’t think anyone was home.
!!!
Normally, for things like regular maintenance, I would have received an email from the electric company, but not this time!
It was good to know that we lost power on purpose, though, rather than some sort of failure somewhere. It was back on again before long.
When 2 rolled around, my daughters did the wet cat food, and the cats surrounding me exploded the moment they heard a can open. While being used as a launching pad was rather painful, it did mean I could finally roll over onto my non-aching hip! It wasn’t long before I was enveloped in cats again, but I figured I could lie down for a bit longer. In fact, I’m going out to pick up our quarter beef tomorrow. Picking up the parcel can wait until then, right? I’ll just get a little bit more sleep.
Of course, when I did try to get up, I had even more cats on me. One of them was David, who doesn’t usually cuddle me – he prefers my daughters – so I didn’t want to move. My bladder, of course, had other ideas, so finally I dragged my butt out of bed. It wasn’t until after I’d talked to my husband for a while that I suddenly realized…
It was well past 4pm.
I’d slept for at least another two more hours!
I had no idea I was that tired! I’m not even sure why I was so tired. Sure, I had a cat-interrupted night, but it wasn’t any worse than usual!
So my plans for this afternoon just sort of disappeared, along with my day.
My plans involved things like vacuuming, so I’m not exactly heartbroken about it.
For now, I need to go through the trail cam files, which I normally would have done in the morning, and see how many more old files I can delete to clear more space on my computer.
It’s just past 7pm as I finish this. It’s full dark out right now – sunset is shortly after 5pm these days – but it’s still 2C/36F out there. So warm!! We had a high of 4C/39F, which is what we’re supposed to reach tomorrow, too – but the say after, we’re now getting a predicted high of 7C/45F!!! The 10 day forecast has us with highs above freezing every day. Woohoo!!! The record high for today was 3C/37F, back in 1976, while the record low was -38C/-36F in 2004. The average high for today is -12C/10F, so I am quite enjoying this break from our typical winter temperatures!
Not having the furnace running all the time is going to be much nicer on our electric bill, too!
Anyhow. Time to get my butt in gear, and get at least a few productive things done this evening!
I took this picture while doing my rounds this morning. Rounds which finally included switching out the memory cards on the trail cam again! It was about -7C/19F at the time. As I write this, we’ve dropped to 0C/32F, from a high of 2C/36F. We’ll be even warmer over the next few days, with Wednesday – the last day of January – expected to be anywhere from 4C-6C/39F-43F, depending on which app I look at.
Checking the 30 year records for today, the record high was 3C/37F in 1989, and the record low was -37C/-35F, in 2019.
I well remember that year. Both our van and my mother’s car froze, and we were stuck here for weeks.
And that, my friends, is why we try to have at least an extra month’s supplies stocked up for the winter! I am so enjoying this year’s El Niño temperatures. It’ll probably be another 30 or so years before we have one like this again!
I headed into town today, as three of our four 18.9L/5 gallon water jugs were in need of refills. I was just on the far side of our little hamlet when I saw a car in the ditch, with someone walking around on the road.
The north side ditch, which is deep and steep!
I stopped to check on the driver, who had been taking photos of her vehicle from the road. I’m happy to say, she was unhurt. She’d had a deer run in front of her! She had a tow truck called in that she was waiting for, and thanks to our warm day, she was in no danger from the elements. She was pretty shaken – understandably! – but being able to talk to someone for a while seemed to help her relax a bit. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like her vehicle is damaged, so once it’s towed out, she expected to be able to keep driving. Someone else had stopped that was willing to pull her out, but her vehicle had nothing to attach to, so tow truck it is!
The car was gone when I was driving home. Hopefully, she was right, and was able to drive home without any issues.
Once in town I decided at the last minute to go to the dollar store, which is close to the beach. I was actually surprised to see the ice fishing village set up. I was sure this winter hadn’t been cold enough for the ice to freeze to a safe thickness. I guess this close to shore, it’s less of an issue than further out onto the lake. It makes me wonder about the ice roads up north, which is the only time some of the fly-in reserves can be accessed by road.
I found a few small things at the dollar store before heading to the grocery store. Of course, I picked up a few extra things besides the water refills. With three jugs to refill, there wasn’t much room in the cart, but that’s okay. I’ll be doing Costco in a few days. One thing I was excited to find were boxes of papadam! I haven’t seen these in years. When we were living in the city, we picked some up at a Wholesale Club and loved them, but then they stopped carrying them, and we never saw them again. For some reason, I suddenly started craving them, and have been trying to keep an eye out for them for at least the past year. I supposed I could have looked up a recipe and tried making them, but I know I wouldn’t be able to do as good a job. Especially with rolling them so thin. Even in the city, yesterday, I was keeping an eye out for them, yet here I find them at the local grocery store, as a new product! The boxes have 10 each, so I grabbed the two boxes I could reach. 😄
Must… resist… cooking them now! I want to save them for later today. 😊
I’m just itching to be outside and working on something right now, but there isn’t anything that needs to be done, that can be done before the snow clears. Ah, well. I’ll just enjoy the lovely day, instead!
In other things, I’m quite happy to have my computer up and running again! Yesterday, I was able to upload the files from the memory cards I’d switched out a few weeks ago, then go through them. Normally, I keep quite a lot of the stills, and a few of the videos as well, but not anymore. Unless our vandal is in the file, or there’s something specific I want to keep (I’m a suck for critter catches!), I’m going to be ruthless about the deleting.
When I uploaded the other set of cards this morning, I was glad I didn’t have to hurry. The sign cam typically doesn’t have many files on it, but it still had almost 200. Stills are fast to go through, though.
The gate cam is another story. It’s set to take one still, then one 10 second video, every time the motion sensor is triggers. The gate sees a lot more activity, partly because the motion trigger can be triggered again after a shorty time, and partly because if we are doing things like unlocking the gate, driving through, then locking again, or meet the prescription delivery driver, each even ends up with as many as half a dozen pairs of files. This time, though, it included my daughter using little Spewie to clear the driveway, so there would easily be a couple dozen files of her going back and forth.
There was almost 500 stills, which meant almost a thousand files to go through.
Again, the stills were fast to go through. The videos took quite a bit longer! I could skip through a lot of them, like my daughter with the snow blower, or any time we were driving through, but others needed to be watched all the way through.
And yes, there were some with our vandal in them that were kept, just in case.
Then I made sure to empty the recycle bin on my computer!
Now that the machine is up and running, I need to continue getting rid of old files and clear more space. I should have regularly purged older files over time, but just didn’t realize how much space these trail came files were taking up! Especially since we got the newest camera. Having better quality images is a trade off, as the files are so much larger.
Meanwhile, my computer has an operating system update that needs to be downloaded and installed. I’ll to that at the end of the day.
Last night, the fog rolled in. It was weird to see it rolling in on the garage cam live feed. The road and field beyond the gate was glowing! Really amazing to see.
It was still quite heavy this morning. The trees were covered in hoarfrost and looking gorgeous. Even Driver’s long black fur had hoarfrost on it!
I was 99% sure that my husband’s CPP Disability would come in today. It would normally come in on the third last business day of the month, but if that falls on a Monday, the funds get deposited on Saturday, which is what happened today. His private insurance disability payments, which comes in on the last business day of the month, also gets deposited on the Saturday, if that last business day falls on a Monday. It wasn’t always like this, but I’m not entirely sure when it changed!
No complaints, though. It meant I could go into the city and do the first stock up shopping trip – and finally pick up my desktop computer from the repair shop!
Yes, I am finally typing this post out on my computer, using my ergonomic keyboard and my nice big monitor!
This is soooo much better than using my phone!!!!
Getting my computer was not my first stop off the day, though.
I left pretty much as soon as I was done my morning rounds, so things were still quite densely foggy out. It got denser the closer I got to my mother’s town, where I stopped briefly at the gas station. Her town was so thickly covered in fog, it was hard to see the turn off to the gas station! I didn’t actually want to get gas, as the prices there have gone up to 123.9/L (122.9 in the city), and I was planning to fill the tank at Costco, but I had someone tailgating me in the fog, and I wanted to get him off my a$$!
For this trip, we decided not to do the Costco shopping, but the “little” shopping, and save the Costco trip for when main pay comes in next week. My first stop was at the international grocery store. There were a few things we wanted to get there that we don’t find anywhere else, plus I was planning to have breakfast there.
Sadly, I was a bit too early for dim sum or the Chinese buffet. There was none set up, yet. The self serve chicken wing and pierogi bars were open, though, so I picked up some hot food there. I was just going to get a variety of wings at first, but all but one type were spicy hot, which I can’t tolerate😭so I got some pierogi and sausage.
It was disappointing. None of it was out there long enough to be fully hot, yet. It was just barely warm.
Note for future reference. Don’t leave home before 9am, if I plan to get breakfast at the international grocery store!
With a variety of these buffet items, sold by weight, plus a drink, my breakfast cost about $15. Not too bad. Dim sum would have cost more, but would have been worth it!
It turned out to be a good day to shop in this store, as they had some really good sales on, so I got more of what was on my list than what was specifically for this store.
I realized I forgot to take a picture of my cart only after I left for the computer store, so… this is what bagged up $187.37 looks like.
Normally, I would have picked up the paper products at Walmart or Superstore (I ended up not going to Superstore), but the toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissue were all on sale. I’ll still get more TP at Costco, but extra toilet paper is never a bad thing!
That gallon jug had been on the other side of the red bag, but I had to brake harder than usual as I drove to the computer shop, and it went flying to the front of the truck box! It’s a good thing I keep that garden cultivator tool in the stuck, as I had to use it to retrieve it!
The gallon jug is a soy beverage my daughters requested. One of those items we don’t find anywhere else. In the hard sided bags, we have: avocados (bag of 4), bananas, 2 clamshell packages of blueberries, 3 Saskatoon and 3 Citrus Beaver Buzz, blocks of marble, Old cheddar, Extra Old and Old White cheddar (they were 50% off), two different flavours of coffee creamers, rice vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, two different flavours of frozen dumplings, smoke bacon (slab, not sliced), Sockeye salmon fillets (package of 2 big fillets for $20, which is an unusually low price for salmon), frozen cooked prawns, Bergamot Earl Grey tea, powdered milk and dental floss picks.
All of which fit into those two bags and cost almost $200 – and that’s with almost $30 off for the various sales. *sigh*
Then it was time to get my computer.
The computer did not get repaired. He got it running again, but for the cost of replacing everything that needs to be replaced, it would be better to get a new machine. So I was charged for the diagnosis, not any repair. That was about $60. He was able to do a “premium” data save, which was almost $80, plus I got at 2T external hard drive to put the data on. That was just over $110. After taxes, the bill came to $280 and change.
Ouch.
I’ll get to how things are with the computer, later.
Costco is pretty much across the street, so gas at Costco was my next stop. I was at just over half a tank. Costco’s price was 114.9/L, and a fill cost me $56.89 Much better than if I’d filled anywhere else!
From there, I went to Walmart. This is what $264.90 looks like.
*sigh*
Those three bags of cat food are 10kg bags, and they cost $32.97 each. The canned cat food cost $28.77 each.
Besides food for the cats, I got a family pack of breakfast sausages and a family pack of pork chops. There’s 2 loaves of rye bread, a 2L of soy milk for the girls, a large jar of olives, 2 bottles of hydrogen peroxide for shocking the hot water tank, and a new toilet roll holder, because the cats knocked over and broke the one we had before. Plus a bottle of water for the drive home.
That’s 17 items for almost $260.
*sigh*
So the groceries cost $452.27 altogether, plus the computer, lunch and gas, which means I spent over $800 in total just today. I decided I didn’t want to go to the Superstore and spend more money! The rest of the stuff on my list can wait until the Costco trip.
And to think, by doing these stock up trips to the city, then buying mostly fresh stuff locally, we’re saving at least a couple hundred dollars a month. The big difference in cost is with the cat food. Those 10kg bags – if we can find bags that size in the first place – cost about $45 each locally. A 7kg bag will cost about $32 locally – and that’s going with the cheap brands (not too cheap, as the quality is so bad with those).
We’re also going to be increasing the amount of wet cat food we’re giving the inside cats. The outside cats can supplement with hunting (no mouse problems here!), but the inside cats can’t. I think the ratio of dry:wet cat food is causing problems with some of the cats. Our vet budget is going to spays and neuters right now, so we can’t afford any sick cats!
Speaking of which…
I’ve been chatting with the Cat Lady. She has some donated items for us that will be passed on when we meet up on Feb. 10 for the cheap spay/neuter day. She has us booked for 5 cats. We have three inside cats to do, plus we should be able to grab the fluffy tortie from outside, plus one outside male. Hopefully, Shop Towel. The Cat Lady will be paying for two of them. She was talking to the lady who is donating the cat supplies, having just lost her cat of many years, that will be passed on to us. After being told about how we’re taking care of so many cats, she donated enough funds to cover another spay! That was so sweet of her!
Okay, back to the topic at hand!
Once at home with the shopping and everything was brought in, we let the computer warm up to room temperature before turning it on.
The first time, it wouldn’t boot. I had to do a hard shut down and tried again. After letting it spin for almost half an hour, I had to do another hard shut down. After talking to my husband about it, he asked if I’d tried his power cord, which he’d leant me to try before we took my tower into the stop. It turned out, that’s the one I was using. I found my original power cord and tried again.
This time, it actually booted up!
It took almost half an hour to finish booting up, but it did finally happen!
Everything is sooooo slow to open right now. At this point, I’m not sure I dare shut if off anymore, given the crunchy noises I was hearing from the hard drive the first time I tried turning it on.
The main thing is that it’s running right now. I don’t know how much time I’ll get out of it before it finally dies, but hopefully not before we are able to set some funds aside and find a refurbished computer! Or maybe find somewhere with a payment plan.
This machine is on borrowed time, but there are so many other things pulling at the budget – a much tighter budget, not just because of increased costs of everything, but because we have truck payments that have taken up pretty much all our unallocated funds.
Thank God my husband’s private insurance was such a good plan. Who ever thinks they’d ever need to go on disability? We can still get by.
Okay, we’d be getting by a lot better if we weren’t buying so much cat food! But that’s a choice we’ve made, so nothing we can complain about.
All right now. Time to finish this off and really put this computer to the test. I’ve got trail cam files to upload!
The Re-Farmer 