Today has been a very unproductive day. I felt exhausted all day, to the point of falling asleep at the computer. I even tried to nap, but that was a failure. Mostly because I’m a suck, and I didn’t have the heart to move the sleeping pile of cats on my bed. 😀
It was my turn to do the cat litter tonight, and I headed out a bit early to do the sun room litter pans. It seemed cooler, so I stayed out and worked on the old wood pile area. I didn’t get very far. Again, I was feeling exhausted, and was dripping with sweat. This is not usual for me.
Then, just before starting this post, I checked the temperature.
27C – feels like 30C.
Which means it was even hotter while I was out there, even though it was about 7pm at the time.
That might have something to do with how I was feeling!
This is what I managed to do, in the short time I was out.
Ah, what a perfect day to work outside! This morning, it was cool enough that I actually wore…
*gasp*
…long sleeves!
😀
The goal was to move the debris pile from where I’m clearing in the old wood pile to the area behind the outhouse. Which meant I first had to clear around the outhouse.
This is what the must looked like this morning, before I did the first stir of the day.
Bubbly bubbly!
I love me some CO2 action!
At the time of this writing, we’ve done the second stir of the day. The instructions we are using as a guide said to stir it twice a day in the first 48 hours, so this was the last one. We now leave it, loosely covered and untouched, for the remainder of 10 days. After that, we siphon it off into the carboy, leaving behind any sediment, set up the airlock, then tuck it away into the basement for a minimum of 4 weeks. After this second fermentation, it should be ready to bottle.
We will, of course, have to taste it first, and see if we’ve got mead. 🙂
Today was a statutory holiday, and the pharmacy my daughter works at is closed for those, so my daughter had the day off. We still made a quick trip into town, as there was a festival going on. It was the market we wanted to check out, after I mentioned some of the vendors I saw. Unfortunately, half the market wasn’t set up today, so it was a bit of a wasted trip.
Except we got churros. Which makes up for that. These are a once a year thing, so it’s a really special treat. 😀
Another treat we had was when we got home and found the little furry bean, lying in a sun spot.
Is this little guy gorgeous, or what?
While things are starting to cool down, it still wasn’t until evening that I headed out into the yard to water a few things. I was pleasantly surprised to see Guildenstern coming into the yard with her baby.
After watching them for a bit, Junk Pile Kitten ran into the lilac bushes, so I settled myself on the steps at the door on that side and watched.
I was not disappointed.
What a beauty! Just look at those eyes!
He came pretty close to me, playing with a couple of the sun room kittens that came by. Including his brother, Keith. 🙂
I was able to get a bit of pruning done in the yard. Some of it was getting rid of low hanging branches that were starting to hang too low. Some of it was in the lilac near where I’ve planted the haskap berry bushes. Some of the branches were hanging low enough to be all stabby at me when I try to mow around the bed, but most of what I cut away was dead branches, twisted among and around the live ones. That opened the bush up quite a bit.
The kittens immediately took advantage of that.
There was 4 of them in there, at one point! 😀
As I was hauling the branches off to the wood pile, my husband went around to get some photos of the sun going down through the trees. We could see a cat off by the pump shack. After putting the wheelbarrow away, I decided to see which cat was out there, because Beep Beep has been pretty vicious about chasing Rosencrantz off in that direction.
It was, indeed, Rosencrantz, but I had another pleasant surprise, too.
She and her baby are using the pump shack again! It looks like the little guy can squeeze himself through that hole in the bottom of the door.
The hole was not that big before.
He is such a dark grey little kitty!
The other kittens came around, and he did play with one of them that came over, a little bit, but for the most part they stayed away from each other.
I’m really glad they have stayed nice and close. I hope Pump Shack Baby will make friends with the sun room kittens and start coming to the house for food.
I may not have gotten a lot of work done outside, but seeing the two other kittens is enough to make up for that. 😀
Today, my daughter and I got some progress done on the old garden area that we mulched with straw this spring.
We didn’t put anything under it, so things did start growing through it.
This is taken from one corner, next to the gooseberry bush and raspberries.
It looks a lot worse than it is. Partly because some of the weeds are so big, they take up more space on the surface than what they take up through the mulch. Partly because the mulch itself had seeds in it, and we’ve got oats growing in there, now.
We wanted to cover it, but first, we needed to kill this stuff.
Yes, we used herbicide on it. No, I’m not the least bit bothered by that.
Before we started, we tried to set up a hose to wash up later – and to spray any kittens who might come too close.
I’ve had some problems with the hoses. We’re down to two again, despite my repairs to them. There is, however, a garden tap. Basically, it’s a tap at the garden with a pipe running to the house, then a section of hose that can be screwed on to the water tap at the rear of the house. We’d never needed to test it out last year, so this was a good time to do it!
Yeah. That’s water spraying out of the ground, next to one of the wood piles.
I tried turning on the garden tap itself. Some water did start to come out, which turned really brown, then stopped altogether.
So I tried hooking up a pair of shorter hoses to the house tap, instead. One of them was spraying like crazy at the tap. When I switched to the other hose, it was fine.
So… we were down to one hose. *sigh*
While my daughter sprayed the garden, I worked on taking the pieces of wire that sewed the two sheets of black tarp together, out.
There was quite a lot of it. Some of the pieces were quite long and were done in a running stitch. On one section, there were two pieces used to created a double running stitch!
Getting it out was a challenge.
The kittens were very interested in the tarps!
After I got the wire out – and got scissors to cut away the fraying pieces that were catching on everything, I was able to spread them both out.
When the spraying was done, we left this area for a while, and I went back to working on cleaning around the old wood pile. After hauling another wheel barrow load to the pile near the burn barrel, I took a side trip into the barn, where I’d seen some tarps. The two black tarps are big, but not big enough!
While moving things to be able to access on of the tarps. I took a closer look at the old hoses that were in the way, and decided to try one of them out.
Much to my shock, it works just fine! No leaks or cracks, even though it’s really stiff from being in the barn for who knows how long.
So, we are back to two hoses. 😀
Later, my daughter and I spread the two black tarps over as much of the mulched area we could cover, while still making sure there is overlap. Then we checked out the two rolled up tarps I’d found in the barn.
One turned out to be an insulated tarp. We weren’t going to use that, even if it weren’t too small. We’ll save it for something else.
It turned out to be really huge!
Plus, it has grommets, so we can use tent pegs to pin it down.
We started to do that, but the ground is so hard, we actually bent some of the pegs.
Then, we had a visitor. A mom and her daughters came to look at the kittens to potentially adopt one. They stayed and played with the kittens, and took some pictures, for quite a while. I learned they got our phone number from the vet in town.
I had gone to the vet this morning, with updated pictures of the kittens, and little write-ups about each one, printed out. This family had actually phoned this clinic, asking about kittens, since they are also a shelter, and were given our number.
They will think about which one they will take and get back to us in about a week.
At least I hope so. I’d hate to get ghosted again. 😦
By the time they left, all the aches and pains were kicking in, and I had definitely overdone it on my broken toe, so I didn’t go back to get pictures of the tarps on the garden area, nor get back to working on the wood pile area.
It’ll be at least a day before I get back to it, since we’ll be doing our monthly shop in the city tomorrow. I’ll also be picking up a 5 kilo bucket of liquid honey I ordered yesterday, before we head out. My daughter is wanting to try her hand at making mead. 🙂
Until then, it’s time to shower off the bus spray and herbicide, pain killer up and go to bed early!
I didn’t get as much done cleaning up in the old wood pile as I’d hoped, but a little is better than none!
This is most of the area I focused on today. I got more old pallets out, and a bit more rotten wood. For the most part, it’s too rotten to even pick up, but I’m hoping to at least get out the pieces with nails. I also cleared out some saplings that were in the wood pile my sister and her husband had made in the big garden, the summer before we moved out.
Most of the pile in the foreground is what I’d move there last year. I had intended to find uses for it, but I have access to better types of wood than I knew of back then, so I will be adding it to the chipping pile. I’ve got cherry wood set aside, and I have more than enough to work on, so any more cherry I take down is going to the chipping pile, too. There is still some apple wood I’d set aside by the old dog house. I’ll see what condition it’s in as I move it, before I make any decisions about it.
The pile of debris is growing, and I’m at a loss as to what to do with it. With the possibility of nails being in there, I can’t compost it, but there is so much soil in there, I just don’t think it’ll burn well.
I think, after I clean up more around the outhouse, I’ll spread it in the back. There is an access to the pit under the outhouse there, so it can be emptied as needed, so it should be kept open and clear. It’s not an area that will get traffic, to the risks of people finding nails is lower, and we certainly won’t be gardening or anything back there.
That’s one possibility, anyhow.
I did find a few things while moving pallets out.
A bent piece of sheet metal, two electrical insulators, and a perfectly intact tea cup – not even a chip on it! – buried under the pallet fence.
Weird!
In between working on this, we got some progress on the garden area we mulched, and had some company, but I will write about that in my next post. 🙂
Things actually got chilly last night, and we had a wonderfully cool morning! I was really looking forward to getting some progress in the yard.
Of course, by the time I actually got out there, it had warmed up considerably. 😀 It was nice, working in the shade, though.
With the way things have been doing this year, I decided that getting this old wood pile cleared was my one primary goal for the summer. Anything beyond that was gravy.
I may have messed myself up with this particular goal! 😀 It’s turning out to be a more challenging job than I expected!
This morning, thanks to cooler temperatures that I was able to take advantage of, I was able to finally get back to cleaning up around the east perimeter of the spruce grove. It was only about an hour and a half before I had to get out of the heat, but I think some good progress was done!
The area I planned to work on stays shaded for a while, which allowed me to work later into the day than otherwise. Dragging the bigger trees I cleared to one of the wood piles outside the yard really showed me what a difference that made! Walking into the sun, the heat hit like a hammer.
After a while, I stopped dragging them out and started a pile in the yard, instead. We’ll drag them out when it’s cooler!
I took before and after pictures from two different views. Here are the before pictures.
The area around the old dog house is where the wood pile was, when there was still a wood burning furnace. It has a pallet fence, and pallets on the ground, all of which are falling over or rotting. My ultimate goal for this year is to get this area cleared.
In the process, I also wanted to clear things a bit further back into the trees towards the outhouse, to access a fallen tree I want to clear out.
There turned out to actually be two of them. After taking pictures, I went to pull out what I thought was a fallen branch, only to find it was actually another dead tree – just a long and skinny one, with about 8-10 feet buried in the tall grass that I didn’t see!
I also cleared some poplars that were growing too close to the outhouse.
The dead tree I wanted access to was also longer than I expected. It extends quite a bit further into the trees, and in the third picture, you can see how its top has landed on other trees, causing them to grow bent.
I’m debating with myself whether I want to cut it into more manageable pieces and haul it out, bit by bit, or just drag the whole thing out in one go.
The lazy part of me says, drag it out in one go. 😀
While working my way towards the elm tree with the tire around its base, I made a discovery.
I’d been able to somewhat see the log someone leaned against the tree trunk through the dying cherry trees, but what is that metal thing under it, and the fallen branch?
It’s a metal chair frame.
Because… of course.
I’m keeping this.
I’ll turn it into an art installation. To go with all the toilets I’m finding! 😀
Clearing around that elm meant I also finally reached one side of the pallet fence.
There’s a poplar growing through it.
I also uncovered a dead tree and some fallen branches.
There are some branches that I put in the area (you can’t see it in the picture) that I saved from the pile in the big garden area that my sister and her husband had pruned before we moved here. Some of it is apple wood. I also kept some of the dead and dying cherry trees I cleared today. I plan to cut them into discs, or other shapes, to make things with them.
It’s hard to see, but as I was trying to clear away the cherry and poplars, I found some of them were growing through the remains of pallets.
There’s going to be a lot of that, as I work my way into the area.
By this point, it was getting simply too hot to keep working outside, and I had to stop for the day. Checking the temperatures before I started this post, I found it was 30C, with a “feels like” of 33C. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue tomorrow. They’re predicting thunderstorms, but we shall see!
Here are the after pictures of my progress so far.
That reciprocating saw made the job so much easier! The only other tools I had to use were pruning sheers for stuff too small to use the saw on, and a rake, to try and find the bases of the trees I was taking down.
Of the self-sown cherry trees in the area I cleared, I did actually keep one. It even has some cherries ripening on it! I’m hoping it’s far enough away from the elm tree to get adequate sunlight.
Clearing and thinning the trees is the easy part. The hard part is going to be dragging the dog house out (it’s on a pallet, which is rotting and collapsing under it), then digging all the old pallets, pieces of carpet, and who knows what else is buried in there!
