I wasn’t expecting to get much done outside today. It’s been a damp and chilly day – the sort of overcast day that makes me want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. Tonight, we’re supposed to dip below freezing for one last time.
Hopefully.
The first thing we had to do today was head into town and to the pharmacy, where my older daughter got a file set up and her prescriptions mostly filled. They didn’t have enough to fully fill one of them, but they’ll have the rest in a day or two. Meanwhile, she has enough to last for a fair bit longer than that.
One of the meds turns out to be covered by our province’s health care system, and the other was very cheap, which was a pleasant surprise. Once we were done there, the girls wanted to hit the grocery store and picked up a few things. On the way home, we stopped at the mail where my garden hoops kit was waiting for pick up.
There was also a letter from the health care system for my husband that turned out to be a “hey, you need to get your blood work done” reminder. He’s had his requisition form for months, but we weren’t able to do it either because the truck was in the garage for most of two months, or he was physically unable to make the trip into town.
We’re planning to do it tomorrow morning. Hopefully.
Later in the afternoon, after I went out to do the outside cat feeding and do my evening rounds, the weather had improved enough that I decided to try and find more materials for the chain link fence raised bed. I was looking to get about 18 stakes for the front wall, plus the side walls needed three smaller, thinner stakes. Going through the spruce grove, I found enough poplar, maple and cherry suckers with straight sections strong enough for stakes. I had two left from earlier, that I’d used to mark where the wall would go after the bricks were removed, so I collected enough for another 16 stakes for the front wall before going back Cutting the longer pieces down to equal length, I had enough slightly shorter lengths left over that I only needed to fine one more poplar sucker long enough for two stakes.
The shorter ones for the ends of the bed were narrow enough that I could easily make points with the utility knife I was using to debark them. For the longer ones, some are thicker, so I’ll use the vice and a draw knife to make point on those ones.
You can really tell in the picture, which lengths are the cherry wood!
They are all freshly cut and very green, so that are also very damp. I’ve left them out to dry out a bit. When I check on them tomorrow, I’ll have to decide if I should use them as is, or if I should char them like the others. If the soil weren’t so rain soaked right now, I wouldn’t be as concerned, but we’re looking as possibly more rain over the next few days.
We shall see.
So that’s my progress on the garden bed for today. Tomorrow, things finally warm up and are supposed to keep warming up to the point of getting actually hot – at least for our region – within the week.
Which means replacing the plastic covering two garden beds with netting, and keeping an eye on the isolation shelter. They will still need the heat lamp for one more night, and tomorrow, I’ll need to make sure to turn it off when the morning feeding is being done. If it gets too warm in there, even with the mesh walls on the bottom uncovered, I’ll set frozen water bottles in with them to help cool things down.
Now that I have the second hoop kit, I should be able to set them up over a couple of beds in an almost permanent basis, and still have enough left over to temporarily cover others. This is in addition to the Pex pipe hoops I already had. The goal is to be able to cover any individual bed with some sort of protection, until I can build more removeable covers for most of them. We need to frame out more raised beds in the main garden area with logs, and build more trellis beds, before I can focus on more covers. The hoops will do just fine until then.
Not a lot of progress today, but it’s at least one step closer to getting that chain link fence bed done!
I must have been way more exhausted than I thought.
The night before was one of those nights were I just didn’t sleep. Not restless or busy brain or pain, just… awake. Until about 4am.
Last night, I decided to try going to be early. I was in bed and messaged my daughter in the hospital, asking how she was doing, shortly after 8:30pm.
I fell asleep before she answered me.
When I woke later, needing to de-cat myself so I could go to the washroom, I checked the time, expecting it to be 3 or 4am.
It was barely past midnight.
I figured for sure I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again – and then I was awakened by cats crashing around in my room. Sure enough, it was about 5:30am, which is about when Ghosty goes into desctructo mode to wake me up and feed them.
So I did.
It was starting to get light out, but I went back to bed, expecting to not be able to fall asleep again, but I tried anyhow.
I opened my eyes and three hours had passed.
So I quickly got up and got ready to do my outside routine, which I always get done before I have breakfast. Especially when I end up going out later like this, because I know the outside cats would be quite hungry.
After feeding the cats I did my morning rounds, which includes checking all the garden beds. We had a “wintery mix” all night, and it was still raining. The sump pump has been going off, so the garden bed in the old kitchen with the vinyl cover, were I’d added the soaker hose, was being watered from below. The hose from the sump pump drains into a hole under the raised bed wall closest to the house, but it doesn’t go far, so it usually overflows into a path as well, but enough gets under the bed that it makes a difference.
When I got to the poly covered bed in the main garden area, I saw that water had collected in pools at the sides, where it’s weighted down by boards wrapped in the excess poly, again. Enough that, at one end, the weight was pushing the supportive hoop deeper into the ground and pooling more. So I was going to fiddle with the corner so that the water could rain into the bed when I noticed something odd.
A worm.
Two worms…
Ten?
Handfuls????
For some reason, all along the boards, on both sides, there were masses of earthworms in the water. In some places, I could see worms that had somehow managed to squeeze up the outside of the boards, under the poly. There were so many of them, I gave up trying to just drain the water. I unrolled all the boards and straightened out the poly, draining all the water away and taking out every stray would I could find. Amazingly, most of them looks like they were still alive, too!
Unrolling the poly required loosening the secured ends and removing the clips. When I rolled the boards up in the excess ploy again, I did it from below (which is much more awkward!) and in such a way that the poly now wraps completely around the outside of the raised bed’s log frame.
I was just finishing securing the second end when my daughter came out, asking if I could hear my phone or not.
I could hear nothing over the sounds of the poly as I fussed with it.
My older daughter has messaged us. She was free. Knowing it would take a while for us to get there, they told her to let us know first, and they would start the discharge paperwork and go over her prescriptions.
We had already prepped a back seat in the truck yesterday, and I decided to bring my walker along, just in case, which meant securing it in the box of the truck with some Bungee cords, so it would slide around as we drove, and we were soon on the road. Neither of us had eaten yet and it was past 10am by then, so we stopped at the next town to get a bit of gas, some beef jerky to tide us over, and a couple of energy drinks.
As we were driving in, I saw a gas station we would pass on the way out with gas at $1.729. We had gotten gas at $1.849, but most places in the city were $1.809. I decided it was worth getting more gas on the way back.
One of the things we asked my daughter was to find out where the pick up zone was, as I figured there was no way it was at the doors we’d gone in through when we visited.
It was those doors.
With my younger daughter to rubber neck for me while I was driving, she spotted the curb cut that passed as the entrance. Once we pulled in, I still couldn’t figure out where to park; at the doors was a fire lane, so no stopping at all. My daughter spotted some parking spots that looked like part of the patio, but the signs on the back wall said “permit only”. There was a truck sitting in what looked like the middle of the patio area, surrounded by several large, kidney shaped raised flower beds. That turned out to be where only 3 drop-off zone parking spots were, which I had to back into, because there was no room for me the truck to turn in. Thankfully, the “permit only” parking spaces were empty, because I had to pull into one of those to have room to back up.
Half hour only, paid parking only.
At least this time, I could use a machine in the lobby to pay for parking, rather than use a frickin’ website.
My daughter went ahead to get her sister while I took care of paying the parking, then waited in the lobby area for them. My older daughter was looking so much better! She was walking normally again, and she looked so happy to be leaving. She’s been stuck either sitting or lying down for the past week, with tubes and wires hanging off of her, so just being upright and moving made her feel better, too.
Once we had her settled into the truck, we headed out of the city, stopping to fill the tank at the one gas station with the lower price that I’d seen. Our next stop was going to be the pharmacy in town, so she could get a file set up and fill her prescriptions. Most of it will be vitamins.
I forgot, though.
Today is not Sunday. Today is a holiday Monday.
It wasn’t until I saw the empty parking lot at the pharmacy that I realized that. They were closed.
Which means my daughter won’t get her meds for the rest of the day.
We’re going to have to get back tomorrow, as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, my daughter was absolutely craving a meaty burger. The hospital food was good, but had no seasonings. Especially lacking in salt – and we don’t normally use a lot of salt in our cooking at home!
So we stopped at the DQ and got her a triple burger. Red meat, fat and salt – all the things she needs right now! 🍖🥩🧂🥓🍔
Actually, we all got triple burger meals to bring home. Can’t leave my husband out of the treat!
Once everything we settled and done, and it was time to feed the outside cats again, I stayed out to check on things and see what I could get done. Which is when I realized we had completely forgotten to turn on the shop lights over the seedlings (to make up for where the LED lights can’t reach), so I headed down to the basement, where I found a lovely surprise.
The second picture is the early White Vienna kohlrabi I started, just in case the ones outside don’t take. So far, only the chamomile has not sprouted yet.
That done, it was time to head outside.
It had stopped raining, though everything is still very wet, so there was only so much that could be worked on after the cats were fed. I was able to get back to that raised bed at the chain link fence, first securing the vinyl strips protecting the back wall that got pulled up by the winds. Then I started laying out the deadwood I’d stripped of bark along the front wall. It turned out I had enough stripped pieces to cover the bottom from end to end, so I no longer needed to strip any others.
I actually went into the spruce grove to try and find more long, straight pieces, and found a few poplar that weren’t too wonky. I still have a pile of what we collected in the fall, but they are too short to set between the stakes.
I need more stakes. If I’m going to use skinny, short pieces to fill in the gaps so the soil won’t fall out, I’m going to need a lot more stakes.
They won’t need to be as tall as the ones that will support any hoops or whatever we use to hold protective covers, and I won’t bother charring them. That will have to be a job for another day, though.
I will also need to make stakes for the ends. With how narrow this bed is now, it will be a lot easier to do those, and I can use the shorter, but much more flexible pieces we collected in the fall.
One that’s all done, I can finally return the soil I removed.
Which will need to be sifted, because the cats have been using the pile as a litter box.
*sigh*
Once the soil is returned, that bed it doing to need to be covered with netting immediately, or the cats are going to be all over it. Not just to use as a litter box, but they love to roll around in loose soil.
I’ve actually ordered another hoop kit with fiberglass rods. A different kit from last time. This one doesn’t come with little gardening gloves (well… little for my simian hands), but it does come with ground staples – ground “nails” they call them – with “gaskets”. The fiberglass rods are 16.5inchs long, and this kit has 60 of them, plus the connectors. These connectors are metal instead of plastic, so I’m curious to see which ones last longer.
I had been trying different materials to make hoops, and things like the Pex pipe work well, but for the price, I’m getting a lot more hoops out of these kits than out of the Pex pipe. Plus, the lengths can be adjusted as needed; just use the connectors to add more rods. Whereas once I’ve cut the Pex to size, that’s it. I’d have to get pretty creative if I want more length.
Once I have more of these hoop kits, I will be adding them to the bed along the retaining all in the old kitchen garden that I finished last year, and probably just keep the hoops on the bed, even if any covers are removed. With this bed, I want the supports to be permanent, while also making it easy to work in between them. I’ll try it with these hoop kits first and see how it goes. Since they are fiberglass, they’ll handle weathering well.
As it is right now, that front wall is pretty much the same height at the back wall. Once I accumulate more stakes to better secure it, I might increase the height a bit while also filling in the gaps with thinner material. We’ll see.
I was debating what to plant in this bed. With the chain link fence right there, anything that climbs would be ideal. Maybe some winter squash. Once they are big enough that any protective cover can be removed, I won’t have to worry about the deer eating it, like they do with things like peas and pole beans.
Looking at the forecast, we’ve got one more cooler day, with a couple more nights of frost, then thing things will warm up substantially – but we are now getting rain forecasts starting the day after tomorrow and continuing for the next 5 days! At least, that’s what the weather app on my phone says. Not so much the one on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll be nice enough that I can get the last beds prepped that weren’t done in the fall. I don’t mind the combination of heat and rain. Better than the usual drought!
Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get our seed potatoes into one of the main garden beds that were prepped last fall. They could have already gone in by now, but it can still wait for a while longer. At this point, other than things like other varieties of peas I’d like to try, and seeing if I can get some onions transplanted, most things can’t get done until possibly the second week of June!
Weather willing.
Little by little, it’s getting done – and this year, we really need to have a good gardening year, because the grocery prices just keep getting worse.
It didn’t take long for things to warm up enough that the snow on the ground melted away, but it was a bit longer before the snow turned into a light rain. Yes, we need the moisture, but we also need warmer temperatures! Especially overnight.
We were able to message with our older daughter, who is still in the Women’s Hospital in the city. There was a possibility that she might come home today. They were asking her how far away she lived, so they knew she needed some advance notice before the discharged her. They were waiting on some test results, first, though.
They didn’t get the results until about mid afternoon.
She didn’t come home today.
They’re changing her meds a bit, and are saying she might come home tomorrow.
She is just itching to get out of there!
It wasn’t until late afternoon that things warmed up enough to make working outside more pleasant. As a bonus, my brother and SIL came out to work on their set up. My younger daughter and I went over to their caravan to say hello and visit for a bit, and I got to show off my new wheels.
Before my daughter went inside, I got her to help me with a couple of things. One was to take off the vinyl covered garden bed cover in the old kitchen garden, and move it completely aside. I’ll do a separate post on garden progress, next. Then I showed her a location I thought would work out for the chicken coop that looked the most level. It’s where I’ve been trying to get wildflower mixes growing, but the cats keep using the loose soil as a litter box, or to roll in, killing off anything that might have germinated. She agreed that it looked like a good spot, so I gave it a through raking while she set the ramp up in the coop, so it wouldn’t drag sideways on the ground while we moved it.
Moving the coop was a real pain. Aside from both of us being rather broken, we can only pick it up by our fingertips. Once we’re more settled with it, I’m going to find some way to modify it, so we can move it around more easily.
We set it almost where I wanted it to be, and I worked on the rest. I wanted to set the coop on top of the bricks that used to line one side of the low raised bed I’ve been slowly redoing, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough. I loaded the wheelbarrow and started by laying them out along the back of the coop, just to see how many were needed for the length of it.
It turned out to be 10, with the last brick turned at a right angle.
Once I worked that out, I set the bricks out as straight and even and tight against each other as I could, before very carefully lifting the coop, one end at a time, on top. Then I immediately set bricks under the front corners, just to level it.
It turned out I had another 10 bricks in the wheelbarrow, so a prepped those before getting another load for the sides. I don’t know where these bricks were re-purposed from, but I made sure to use the ones with no, or almost no, mortar still stuck to them. There was more raking and leveling and careful placement, but I finally got it done – and had extra bricks.
The first image above was taken after the coop was moved. I didn’t open the door to let the ramp down until all the bricks were in place.
The next pictures show how the bricks were laid out, including the extras I set along the back and sides. I wanted it on bricks so the wooden frame wasn’t touching the ground. Yes, it’s painted, but it would still end up damaged by moisture and rotting faster.
What I’m not sure of is if anything would burrow under it to get at the chickens. Raccoons and skunks are both known to kill chickens. Ideally, we would set wire mesh around the outside edges by about 2 feet. Which is something that would have been done before setting the coop on bricks. We still need to figure out about securing it. With the wind storm we just had over the past couple of days, it was fine, and that location was more exposed than this one. It might be fine as it is.
Something to consider, still.
I’m glad we finally got it moved and set up on bricks, though. We can figure out the rest later.
Meanwhile, here is a beautiful Lady Adam, and I am rather perplexed by her.
I know Adam has had kittens, but she has been staying around the house a LOT for a mama that just gave birth. She has allowed me to feel her belly, while she’s on the cat house roof, eating. At first, it seemed I was feeling at least three active nips. Maybe more. Then, I was able to feel two, full and swollen with milk. The last time she allowed me to feel her belly, they weren’t swollen anymore. That could mean that she’d nursed her babies before coming to the house for food, but she is always around the house. Even more than usual. Does this mean she lost her litter? Or has she abandoned them? We have no way to know, without knowing where her “nest” is.
I don’t know what to make of it.
As for the cats in the isolation shelter, we are having zero success in socializing them. When we open the windows to give them their cat soup and fresh water, Bug is the only one that tolerates contact. Furriosa glares at me before moving out of reach. The other two just run away, as soon as I open a window. They aren’t even tempted by squeeze treats!
I did change out their litter box today – since I have to open the ramp door to do it, it has to be done quickly, so none of them escape, so I quickly remove the dirty litter pan and immediately replace it with a freshly prepared on, then quickly close up the ramp door. I’ve been able to add more toys for them as well, though I’ve yet to see them actively playing with any of them.
When it comes time to get them to the clinic – Furriosa is to be done first – I honestly don’t know how we’re going to manage it. We might be able to get Bug into a carrier, but the others will not allow us to touch them. How are we supposed to get them into a carrier, if we can’t reach them? Especially if they go into the lower level.
*sigh*
And these are among the friendliest, most gettable females.
We have got to figure something out.
Anyhow.
After I was done with the chicken coop, I worked in the garden for several hours and got good progress done.
I had one real goal today. That was to visit my mother in the afternoon.
While doing the morning routine over the past week, my younger daughter and I had been making sure to open the gate, just in case. It was late morning when we heard a honk and I saw a thing of beauty.
The septic truck had arrived!
I headed out to meet him as he got out to check on where he needed to set the truck up. He was apologetic about not getting back to me about the delay – he’d lost my phone number! I was just glad his truck was up and running again, and he could make it at all.
Once he confirmed that he could back up around the back of the house – I wasn’t sure if our straw bale would be an issue or not – he opened up the tank to check inside. I told him about how we’ve had things backing up into the basement because there seems to be a bottleneck that I estimate to be roughly under the wall. He mused about how something like that could be fixed until I told him it was a cast iron pipe joining plastic. He just shook his head. Cast iron, over time, can start crumbling, and it’s likely near the join with the plastic pipes. As for fixing it, I told him I figured it would require tearing up the concrete and replacing the pipe. He said we’d have to excavate outside, too. I mentioned this had been done, before we moved out here and he wondered why it wasn’t fixed them. I told him, no one knew. My dad was living here alone by then. With just one person, it wasn’t a problem. He understood.
With the tank open, I stayed out on cat watching duty, to make sure none came too close to the open tank. Which is much easier, now. The rescue took so many of the cats, there’s a huge difference in what we’re seeing. Even when I check the sun room critter cam at night, I have been seeing no cats at all, many times, or just a few in the cat beds. None of the swirling masses we used to get! With the very loud truck, the cats almost all immediately disappeared. The Grink was the only one that came to check things out, and it was easy to persuade her to leave.
He was done very quickly and was soon leaving the yard, stopping when I came out with the envelope of cash we had ready for quite some time now, to pay him. Every time we’ve done it this way, he’s never even looked in the envelope, trusting me that I had the right amount. Of course, I tip him, too. Always. There have even been times when I couldn’t get to a bank machine to get cash before he came out here, and he just did the job and told me where his house was, trusting I would drop the payment off when I could.
He may be more expensive than other places; I don’t actually know for sure anymore, but I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else.
When he left, it was late enough that I was going to get changed, have a quick lunch, then head out to my mother’s.
Which is when the phone rang.
Earlier in the morning, I’d noticed that the wind was tearing off a tarp covering one of my brother’s pieces of equipment. It was too torn up for any chance to secure it again, so I took some video and sent it to my brother. He called to thank me for that, and asked if I could get some measurements, so he could pick up another tarp. So I quickly got some shoes on again and headed over with a measuring tape to get the info for him. He might come out tonight to take care of it.
Not too much longer, I was on the road to my mother’s for what turned out to be an okay visit. She was having one of her better days. The last time I was there, she had asked for a couple of apples because she missed having fresh fruit. I’d passed that on to my siblings, because I knew it would be a while before I was back. When I reached her bedside, I saw an apple on her tray, so I knew my sister had come by on her day off and remembered to bring some for her – I had completely forgotten. Once my mother was settled on her bedside, she picked up the apple and reminded me that she’d asked me to bring her apples. I guess my sister bringing her apples wasn’t good enough??
The next thing I knew, she was talking about giving me some money to get something for her, but started talking about her vision, her vison, her vision… Her vision is so important. She started going down a rabbit hole so I cut in to ask what it was she wanted me to get for her.
The eye vitamins. Because they’re only giving her the eye vitamin once a day, not twice, and she wanted me to get the gel type that she used to get in her bubble packs.
I told her, the TCU has her prescription now, not the local pharmacy – and they were definitely giving her her eye vitamin, twice a day. She insisted they were not; she was supposed to get it at the end of the day, as well as in the morning, but she wasn’t getting the second one. When I didn’t immediately agree with her, she started saying “oh, you think I’m stupid… you’re just like them… you’re taking their side“, and so on.
She also said that her vision was getting worse, because they weren’t giving her the eye vitamin, and that it was for both eyes.
I explained to her again, she has two different problems. The vitamin can only help with her left eye. For her right eye, she would have to go into the city to get the eye injection, because there is only one place that does this treatment. I even tried to ask her how her vision is getting worse. “It’s getting dark“. I asked if it was with one eye or the other, and what did she see if she covered one eye, but she wouldn’t do it and just made like it’s both eyes going the same thing.
That conversation got nowhere.
As we were chatting, her new room mate was wheeled in and transferred to her bed, promptly falling asleep. The privacy curtain was already pulled and we just kept talking. At one point, I spotted a tiny insect flying near one of my mother’s eyes and I mentioned it was there, in case she saw something moving in her peripheral vision (which is pretty good, based on the last tests she had). Her response?
Her room mate sleeps with her mouth open.
???
This confused me so I asked what that had to do with anything. She talked in circles for a while before dropping it, but she said enough that I realized she thought the insect had come from her room mate’s mouth, because she sleeps with her mouth open.
?????????
Meanwhile, I started to get messages from home.
The tree company had arrived.
My daughter and husband knew which tree was being assessed for removal, but there were details they weren’t sure of, so we messaged back and forth on that, while I told my mother about my brother wanting to hire a company to safely remove the tree.
My mother started saying, she planted that tree there, and did I know why? Yes. It was for shade. She’d told me before about how the sun through the kitchen window made it so hot. I suggested it would have been easier to put up a curtain (that window did have curtains, but they were lacy things that did not block any light), so she started telling me about how, at her childhood home back in Poland, they had a cherry tree right by the house. I pointed out, they didn’t have a basement. Oh, of course – no one had basements! So I talked a bit about how this tree’s roots were causing cracks in the basement wall, and the branches were threatening the new roof.
She brought up the extended pruning saw that should have been here. I told her I use it often, but it can’t be used on these branches. They’re just too big, and if we cut them, they’d fall onto the roof. So she started to give instructions on how we could put a rope around the branch to pull it so it would fall the way we wanted it to. I told her, that might work somewhere else, but not over the roof. It would be much better to get someone with the proper equipment and get it down right, with no risk to the roof. Oh, it’s not my business anymore.
…
*sigh*
I didn’t stay for too much longer, as my mother was looking forward to Bingo starting soon. Before I left, I stopped at the nursing station and talked to the nurse that gave my mother her meds this morning, and would again, at supper time. I told her, my mother keeps insisting that they are not giving her the second eye vitamin.
It turned out that not only is she getting it at both breakfast and supper time (it has to be taken with food), but the pill is so big, at my mother’s request, they break it in half for her. She always sets out the pills on her tray and counts them out, and when she does that, she counts the two halves as one pill, recognizing that they belong together (she has another half pill, but it’s tiny, and she takes only one half at a time).
The nurse promised that she would make sure to explain to my mother that the big pill split in half is her eye vitamin, and why she’s taking it with her supper, not at the end of the day. We talked about some other pills she has issues with, like one that she is completely convinced she used to take twice a day, but she only ever took once a day.
That done, I headed out, but not home, yet. I went to the feed store to ask about the chicks. The woman who was working out the splitting of the minimum 24 chicks order was not there. I talked to the guys that were that and was told that, if she hasn’t called me by now, she wasn’t able to confirm the arrangement. One of them made a note for her to call me when she is back next week.
Then I confirmed the date the chicks will arrive.
It’s the same day I’m supposed to bring three of the isolation cats in for their spays.
Crud.
I would be dropping them off at 8am, though, and they said the chicks tend to arrive at 11am or later, so we would have time to drop off the cats, then drive to the feed store to get the chicks. We would then have to take them home and get them set up in a brooder before I would have to drive back to pick up the cats and bring them home!
That’s going to be a lot of driving.
While there, I got an extra 40 pound bag of kibble, plus a chick feeder and waterer, both gravity fed. I’ll get the pine shavings and chick feed another time. I may not be able to get chicks, if I can’t split a minimum order with someone, but if that doesn’t work out, I know people I can guy adult laying hens from.
On the way home, I remembered to stop at the post office. I wasn’t expecting anything, but it’s been a while.
I’m glad I did.
I got a letter from the health care system. I’m booked for a pelvic ultrasound on June 9, in the hospital that’s literally across the road from the vet clinic we get spays and neuters done at. 😁 The appointment time is in the afternoon, which will be much easier for us to get to.
I’m surprised I got the appointment so fast. My younger daughter had to wait for almost a year before she got an ultrasound done, but the images weren’t clear, so they want to to come back. That was two winters ago.
Meanwhile, there isn’t much news from my older daughter. Things are improving, but not where they should be, yet. She really wants to just go home. Which I can understand, that’s for sure! Still, it means we have no idea when she’ll be discharged.
While today was nowhere near as windy as yesterday, we were still dealing with high winds – though we didn’t lose any trees, where I could see! – and it was overcast and rainy. The sort of weather that always makes me sleepy. After I got home, I settled at my computer for a while, watching the latest Tasting History video, and fell asleep in my chair! Aside from the evening cat feeding, the only thing I managed to get done outside today was a bit of clean up in the old kitchen garden.
Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to freezing or lower – I made sure the heat lamp in the isolation shelter was plugged in and on – and tomorrow is supposed to be chilly. Which is actually a good time to do some of the direct sowing I want to do. Hopefully, I’ll be able to work on that. I’m also hoping to finally get my mother’s old mattress and box spring to the dump, but we shall see when the time comes. We’ve got a few chilly days ahead, then we’ll warm up moderately. There is still much to do out there in the garden, and the month is already half over! The long range forecast says we’re supposed to suddenly get very hot during the day, approaching 30C/86F, and staying high for all of June.
We’ll see what actually happens.
For now, though, I need to get any seeds that prefer cold soil direct sown right away.
At some point, I’ll be able to get back to working on the walls of that garden bed!
What I really want to do right now it crawl into bed and sleep for a week.
It was quite nice out today, and I was able to get some decent progress on the raised bed walls at the chain link fence.
I also have more materials than I realized, starting with the stakes. Somehow, I got it in my head that all the stakes I’d made and charred were just for the back wall, when I had prepped enough for both the front and back walls. I might even have enough materials for the deadwood wall, too, though that’s harder to say. A lot of those are really wonky and crooked.
In the first image above, I have the stakes pounded into the soil on either side of the boards. The taller ones are on the inside of the bed, so they’ll be easier to reach when supports are attached to them, so they were very specifically spaced out in the three sections of chain link. The shorter pieces went on the outside, between the boards and the chain link. I wanted to stagger them a bit, since the deadwood they’ll be holding is all weirdly shaped. Thankfully, we had such a lovely downpour yesterday, I was able to drive the stakes into the ground quite solidly.
A bit too solidly, with one of the shorter ones.
In the second picture, I’ve laid some deadwood on top of the boards. For this, I chose the shorter ones, as they have to fit between the posts. I alternated which way the thicker and thinner ends were laid out as well. In the end, I added about 3 or 4 inches in height. One of the shorter posts had been driven in far enough that it barely topped the deadwood, but it will still hold.
One of the issues of doing it this way, however, is that there are gaps between the deadwood that soil can fall through. Ordinarily, I’d try to fill those gaps with skinnier pieces of deadwood, but didn’t really have anything appropriate.
The state of the boards gave me an idea, though.
I still had a couple of dollar store vinyl table protectors. I decided to use those to line the back wall from the inside, and pull over the top.
These sheets are for a larger size table, and I decided to cut them into thirds, length wise. The way they are folded in the package made it easy, as I just needed to follow a fold with my utility knife, after spreading the vinyl on the ground and securing it from the wind.
I good with the next two pictures of the slide show above. The third and last picture is the progress shot. Three strips was not enough, though, so I got out the second table protector and cut one more section.
After checking things out with the first strip, I went down the row with the tip of my space and moved soil away from the bottom of the boards. The vinyl strips now extend beyond the bottoms of the boards. I tried to push them under the boards as much as possible, then pushed the soil back to hold them in place. Then the rest got folded over the top of the deadwood and pushed down the outside. The stakes are still on the outsides, and will hold the vinyl in place.
Once that was in place, I secured the stakes and vinyl a bit more, before starting on the front.
I used bale twine, because that stuff is pretty indestructible, and tied the long and short stakes together in pairs, making sure they won’t bow apart while making the vinyl more secure and less likely to blow away. The winds get pretty severe from the south and, unlikely as it seems, has the potential to dislodge the vinyl from the outside of the wall.
After that, I replaced the stakes I had marking where the inside of the bricks were, which makes the bed about 2 inches narrower, with longer charred stakes. For the front wall, the longer stakes will be on the outside.
Once they were pounded in place, lined up with the taller stakes in the back wall, I got the roll of paracord and strung a guide line across, which you can see in the second photo of the slideshow above.
Then I used one of the larger pieces of dead wood to use as a guide to where the shorter stakes would be driven in.
The next two photos of the slide show above show the lines of stakes – with Larence photobombing one of them!
I could not start laying down the deadwood right away, though. The wood I harvested is a mix of poplar, cherry, willow, and even some smaller maple suckers for the ends. Any pieces that will have contact with the soil on the bottom will start growing, if I set them down as is. I needed to debark some of it.
After selecting some of the longest pieces, I took them over to the larger bench, then started debarking with the aid of my utility knife. The draw knife would be more efficient, but the pieces are just too narrow.
Unfortunately, I ended up nicking my thumb in the process. Not a large cut, but with the pressure being put on it while debarking, I was leaving blood all over the places.
So I stopped for the day. This gave me a chance go change and go into town for a few things for my older daughter and refill our water jugs. I will continue tomorrow.
Once I have enough debarked to do the base of the wall, the rest can go on top as is. Hopefully, I’ll have enough to match the height of the back wall but, if not, I’m sure I can find plenty to harvest where I need to clean up more in the spruce grove.
Oh, that reminds me. My brother messages me today, asking about the company we used to clear trees from the roof and do wood shipping for us, a few years back. He has decided it would be better to hire them to take down that Chinese elm in front of the kitchen window, that has so many branches overhanging the roof. He’d originally thought to do it himself, but the first of branches falling onto the roof is too great. Better to have several people on lifts to do it. The other reason the tree needs to go is because its roots are causing cracks in the basement wall, and they would be getting into the weeping tile under the new basement as well.
He plans to grind the stump once its down to get it out completely. That will include getting rid of the roots that are lifting the patio blocks out of position. In some places, water is draining towards the house instead of away. That means, once this is all done, we’ll be able to level the ground before putting the patio blocks back again. It’ll be nice to not have to worry about tripping over the lifted edges anymore!!
I contacted the company for my brother and someone will be coming out some time this week to give us an estimate, which I will pass on to my brother. Then we can work out a day for them to come out.
The tree does provide some nice shade, but it’s going to be so good to not have to worry about branches falling on the roof anymore, or more root damage.
Now that my brother and SIL have sold their acreage and all their equipment is here, things are going to be very different this summer! Things are going to get done that we simply couldn’t do ourselves. We’ll probably see more things done in one summer, than we’ve been able to do in all the years we’ve lived here, just due to lack of tools and equipment.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too windy, and I was able to get a fire going to do some charring.
Not until after dragging the hose over, raking around the fire pit and hosing down the bricks surrounding it, half of which were hidden under ash and soil.
I’ve decided on a use for all those rocks I’ve been pulling out of the garden bed. I’m going to pull the glazed bricks around the fire pit, that get super slippery, and replace them with rocks.
There wasn’t a lot of wind, but there was some, and it kept changing directions! I was constantly having to shift around while I worked. I started off by charring the sharpened tips, trying to char as close to half of the stakes in the process. I was not particularly successful with getting them half done. It was just too hot, though it was at least a bit easier with the longer stakes.
In the second picture, they have all had their sharpened ends charred.
Before doing the blunt ends, I wiped down all the charred ends with a rag to get the loose ash and soot off, which you can see in the next image. I hosed down the rag to get the soot off, then used it to hold the charred ends and protect my hand from heat while charring the blunt ends.
Once I got them all completely charred, I wiped them down again with the damp rag. In the next image, all the longer ones were done, and I was starting on the shorter ones.
By this point, the fire had mostly burned down, but still had a ways to go, so I broke up the bigger pieces and set things to burn down faster. Since I’d used a damp rag to wipe down the stakes, I set them all on the grill and swung it above the fire, so they could dry out, which you can see in the last image. I spent the next while tending the coals and shifting the grill back and forth, so nothing would get hot enough to catch fire – while also watering the nearby flower bed, in between tending the fire and the stakes. Earlier, I’d raked away most of the dead material over the lilies, so the emerging leaves can get more light. They had been completely smothered and hidden by last year’s growth.
Eventually, things burned down enough that I used the hose to put it out. The stakes are now near the garden bed they will be used for. I’m hoping to be able to do this again, once I gather enough stakes for the other side and the ends of the garden bed. I’ll do that after I’ve built up the wall against the chain link fence. That will give me an idea of how much more material I need to gather for the other walls, or if I even have enough to do the back wall.
Whether or not I can char any other stakes will depend on how windy things are, and if any fire bans on open fires kick in. At this point, there are no fire bans of any kind listed on the municipal website, so that’s good news. Usually, there is at least a partial fire ban, on controlled burns, by now.
So that is progress so far. Since I’ll be heading to the city tomorrow, I am not likely to be able to work on the garden bed again until Tuesday.
By which point, I should have my new walker handy while I work!
Today, my daughters took care of the morning routine, so I could sleep in, though “sleeping in” is rather different as the days get brighter so early now, and breakfast waiting for me.
I headed outside to take care of something and ended up staying out to get a few things done. One of those was to clean up under the green house frame, move it out and tiny up.
I think the cats are okay with losing their winter shelter.
The first image above is Fluffy (spayed), sleeping in the straw under the mock orange, which has become a favourite napping spot for her. We have huge progress with her. Yesterday, while I was coming around the north side of the old kitchen garden, she actually came running towards me, coming to a stop on a retaining wall block and waited for me to come over and pet her. After I got the picture above, I was able to walk up to her and pet her, and she stayed all curled up. Until recently, while she would sometimes allow pets while eating, she would otherwise not allow us to approach her. I would sometimes manage to sneak pets, but that was about it. Now, I can just walk up to her to pet her.
The second image is Sprig, in what seems to be a favourite napping spot for her. I have a giant crocheted blanket I left on the kibble house roof over the winter as extra insulation. I’ve left it there because it’s heavy enough to not be blown away by the wind, and the cats enjoy sleeping on it.
Sprig is more feral, though not as feral as her mother. Sprig hangs out close to the house and in the sun room, whereas her mother goes elsewhere until it’s feeding time, and runs off if we come to close.
While I was watering late this morning, I heard a cat fight that was a real surprise for me. Judgement, who is neutered, was violently attacking Sprig, who is intact and has not gone into her first heat. (We really need to trap her!!!) He is about twice her size and probably more than twice her weight. Why he would attack her like that, I just can’t understand!
The third picture shows where the portable greenhouse frame was, and you can just see part of Sprig, on the kibble house roof, in the photo. I had to wrestle part of the frame loose from the tall grass draped over one end before I could move it. For now, it’s set up next to the shrine, against the chain link fence. It barely fits between the shrine and the white lilacs there, and blocks one end of the path, but it will not stay there permanently. I just had to get it out of the way. Once the frame was clear, I raked up the straw and dead grass that was under it, into the wheelbarrow. It’s been pooped in by cats, so it can’t be reused as mulch or go into the regular compost, so it went to the cat litter compost pile. The pots I’d tried growing luffa in were also thoroughly pooped in, so I emptied the soil into the wheelbarrow, too, and it went into the litter compost, too.
One of the pots somehow ended up with a hole cracked into the side, with a chunk missed. I’ve no idea how that could have happened, in that location!
The rotting wooden bench that I’d had against the back of the tarp to reduce billowing in the wind is now set up against the back of the kibble house. The wire mesh frame, now leans against it, resting on broken pieces of brick so it doesn’t have contact with the ground. That was made to be a summer “door” for the old basement, so we can keep it open for air circulation in the summer, and no cats can get down. Once things get warm enough, we might do that again. For now, it’s nowhere near warm enough.
Last of all, I move the folding table up to the kibble house, and all the pots and bins, and even the black garbage can I was using as a heat sink, fit under the table.
That scrap yarn crocheted blanket on the table is even heavier than the one on the kibble house roof!
Today’s watering has finally included the main garden beds, as I now have enough hoses set up to reach them all. I found a lovely surprise. High winds had blown the leaf mulch over the onions and the row I’d planted peas, so I gently removed it as I watered, and made the discovery.
They had already sprouted when I first removed the mulch, looking rather blanched from being buried by mulch. Then we got those ridiculously cold days and it seems that they had all been killed off. I even ordered more seeds, since there weren’t a lot in the packet of this variety, so I had no extra seeds to try again. Now, it looks like the peas have recovered and sent up new shoots!
Still no sign of the rainbow mix carrots, though. Under the boards was still damp, but the only sprouts I’m seeing are a few tentative weeds. With those, I do have more seeds, I believe, so it can be resown, if it turns out they didn’t survive the spring.
Their tips were blanched when I removed the mulch, and those tips did get damaged by frost, but now you can’t even tell where the damage it. A couple of them needed a bit of help, though. Their leaves were suck in a membrane that would normally have been the cover of the stem at the base, just above ground. It was already starting to split, just from the size of the leaves, but they were getting all twisted out of shape, so I carefully got them free. They’ll be standing straight in no time.
There’s no sign of the spinach or yellow chard, but it may be too soon to tell. It’s been too dry. Now that I’m able to, I’ll be watering them daily, so if anything survive the temperature lurches we’ve been having all spring, we should see something soon. There’s no sign of poppies yet, either, but I don’t expect to, yet. The plot does show evidence of cats walking all over it, though, so that might be a problem. I was also able to water the Albion everbearing strawberries that have survived the winter.
I’ll need to hook up more hoses, so I can fill the water barrel out by the plum, gooseberry and haskap. the gooseberry’s leaf buds are starting to unfurl already, but I can barely see the haskap at all. I’d be concerned they got eaten by deer during the winter, but I never saw any tracks around there. The snow was too deep. Hopefully, if I can start watering them, they’ll perk up and start budding leaves. The plum seems to be okay and is starting to show leaf buds. The plum still has chicken wire around the tall dollar store tomato supports I set up around it, after the deer got to it a couple of times last year.
I intend to get more of those supports. They are really handy. I might even use them for tomatoes at some point. 😄
According to the forecast, we might get some rain in a couple of hours, but only a 35% chance of it, so I’m glad I did the watering. What rain we got yesterday really wasn’t much at all.
After moving the portable greenhouse frame, I noticed that the white lilacs are starting to spread into the path, toward the chimney block planters, quite a lot. Normally, I’d prune them back, but I remembered that the renter’s wife had said she would like to have white lilacs, so I messaged her today, telling her she can gab as many suckers as she wants. She accepted the offer. Once she has an area prepped, she will come over and dig them up. I just asked her to let me know when she’s going to come, so I can water the area the day before, to make it easier to dig them up and transplant them. This is the perfect time of year to transplant them, since their leaf buds are just starting to form. Once she has taken as many as she wants, I’ll prune away any other suckers remaining.
Yesterday, I’d been hearing heavy equipment and the sound of cattle and thought they might have been moved to this quarter. I asked about it, since our basket will are going to be shipped at the end of May, and I’ll be transplanting them beyond the outer yard. I’ll have to make sure they are protected from the cows for the first few years. It’ll be about 5 years of coppice training before they produce useable switches, but I can use any sprigs cut away and plant them. Which means that, every year, there should be at least a few more new basket willows started. There are two more varieties I want to try, with differently coloured bark. I’d hoped to order them for this year, too, but the budget did not allow for it. Too many truck and plumbing repairs!
I got through to the septic guy today and he will be coming out tomorrow morning. I should still be here, but will probably be leaving early to go to the post office before it closes for 2 hours over the lunch period, so I might end up leaving before he’s done. Which is okay; the payment is already ready and waiting for him. Tracking information shows my new walker is now in the city, which means is should get to the post office tomorrow morning, even though it still says Wednesday for delivery. A friend suggested I could get a note from a doctor about it, which would allow us to claim it on my medical insurance. I should be able to get that done by the doctor at the sports injury clinic during my appointment.
Things are looking very calm outside right now. I think, after I feed the outside cats for the night, I might get a fire going in the pit and char those stakes for the chain link fence raised bed. I probably won’t have a chance to get more done on it tomorrow, but at least they’ll be ready for when I can.
The first photo was taken after I finished weeding, removing more soil, then leveling it off. There’s a short video next.
The remaining photos are of the stakes I prepared, to hold the deadwood walls in place.
I decided on doing half the stakes at about 24 inches. Closer to 23, really. I’m not too concerned about the length, since I’ll be driving them into the ground and can more or less level them just by hamming them in until the match. The hoops or whatever I decide on to support protective covers will be attached to these stakes. The other half, I went with about 18 inches. After cutting them to length, I used my handy dandy draw knife and a vice to create points. Then they all got de-barked.
I had gathered the materials for these in the fall, and they’ve been frozen in the garage ever since. Now that it’s warmer, they are very green, and some of them even have sap trying to run! It did make it easier to remove the bark, but these are really damp.
Because they are so damp, the ideal thing would have been to char them all over a fire. This would dry and harden the wood, and make them less prone to rotting.
It was too windy to get a fire going in the fire pit, though. Tomorrow is supposed to be even windier. So, I have them all laid out on the bench to dry overnight.
You’ll notice in the last picture there is a single piece of wood that’s different. I needed 18 stakes in each length, and I ran out of gathered materials while doing the shorter length. I was one short. I had a scrap piece of wood from another project that was about 19″ long, so I will be using that.
I will need to gather the materials to get the same number of stakes for the front wall, plus the ends.
Not today.
Having done as much as I could for the raised bed today, I got a few other things done. I’ve been watering the old kitchen and East yard beds, plus all the strawberries in the chimney blocks, and will be trying to do that daily, for now. Despite the fact that we have open water in low lying areas, the soil surface is incredibly dry. I should be watering in the main garden area, too, but I haven’t got enough hoses set up, yet.
After watering, I set the hose to start filling the rain barrel, so I can use a watering can and ambient temperature water, instead of ice cold well water. There was just a few inches of water in the rain barrel, and we won’t be getting any real rain for quite some time.
While that was filling, I finally got the tarp off the portable greenhouse, and removed the torn up original cover.
I had left the pots the luffa had been growing in, and discovered that they’ve been used as litter boxes.
*sigh*
The frame, despite being knocked half over and nearly told apart in one particularly bad wind store, is completely undamaged. It just doesn’t have a cover any more. If we’re going to cover it again, it has to be done in a way that can handle the weight of cats jumping on top of the roof.
Until then, I might end up moving the whole thing to a different location to get it out of the way, and to clean up under it.
The giant tarp that was covering it for the winter is now laid out and pinned to the ground. When I have someone to help me, or the wind dies down, I’ll fold it up and put it away properly.
That’s it. Garden progress for the day. Most of it was spent cutting, sharpening and debarking the stakes.
Tomorrow, Saturday, the dump is open for longer hours, so I plan to do that in the late morning, then I’m planning to visit my mother in the afternoon. The weekend is supposed to be cooler, and then things are supposed to warm up again on Monday, which is when I’m heading into the city for my appointment at the sports injury clinic. Somewhere in between that, I’ll need to go into the spruce grove and harvest more materials for this garden bed’s walls. I might have to go further afield to find enough material strong enough and relatively straight enough for the stakes.
Hopefully, it’ll be done soon, and I can focus on the remaining beds that need to be prepared for planting.
Today, I was supposed to do a dump run, but I was just too tired and in pain. It’ll have to wait until they’re open again on Tuesday.
I had a rough pain night and didn’t get much sleep, so I was going to try lying down for a bit, then visit my mother in the afternoon. I wasn’t looking forward to that, after her last phone call, but it needed to be done. I wasn’t down for long when I got a message from my SIL. My brother was on his way to see our Mother, and would then come here to the farm.
So I decided to head out to my mother’s earlier and meet him there. When I got there, though, I found another message from my SIL, as well as from my husband. My brother had tried to call me, but he was calling the land line. He was going to the farm, first.
Which worked out. I got the messages just as I parked at the hospital and realized my mother would be getting her lunch tray, so I walked around for a bit to give her time to finish eating before I went in. I stopped at the nursing station to find out about the phone call I didn’t get on Tuesday, about arranging a family meeting with the doctor. The person at the desk wasn’t the one in the know, so she made a note for the nurse in charge to come see us while I was visiting her.
The first part of the visit was okay. My mother talked a lot about things she remembered from back in Poland. All stuff I’d heard before, but that’s okay. I took a chance and showed her pictures of the chicken coop. She asked me why I didn’t build a shed for them instead of something with so many “windows”. I told her, because we can’t do that right now, this is what we’ve got. She laughed at me for having a chicken coop but no chickens. I told her we were getting chicks at the end of the month. Just 10 for now. Only 10? So few?
…
I told her, the coop is only big enough for 10 chicks.
Then she started going on about how wonderful our vandal is, because he buys his eggs from the Hutterites, and he bought chickens for the freezer from them, too. Now, it’s entirely possible he did this once or twice, years ago, but in her mind this is something he always does. I told her, the Hutterites have a huge operation; we just need enough chickens for eggs for ourselves.
Oh, and my sister’s husband visited our vandal, who told him he doesn’t want me or my brother at his funeral. Which I figured. My mother told me, she wanted us to do what was the right “Christian” thing to do. *sigh*
Then the nurse came and things got… brutal, though in a relatively calm way, for my mother.
In a nutshell; the doctor will not see her or have any meetings about her, because he simply doesn’t have the time. She does not have any medical need for a doctor’s care. She went on about her hearing and her vision, but neither is something that requires him. My mother is undergoing the mineral oil treatment on her ears again – it will be for 5 days this time – before they try flushing it again, and my mother had all sorts of things to complain about with that. Meanwhile, my mother is adamant that they are not giving her her second eye vitamin pill of the day. She writes it all down, she counts all her pills, but they tell her different things about different pills – the nurse and I both realized that my mother was mixing a blue pill up with a green pill, thinking they were the same pill, so that’s why she was getting different answers. My mother is also now convinced that her hearing was “perfect” before she came there, and her hearing problems have something to do with not getting her pills. When I pointed out that she used to have her TV and radio incredibly loud when I’d come over to her apartment in the past, she switched to Polish and accused me of taking their side and of lying. She also wants a pill for her eyes. I had to go over how the eye vitamin is only helpful for her left eye and the dry macular degeneration. The only treatment for the wet macular degeneration in her right eye is the injections she would have to go to the city for. She has rejected that and demands another pill; going back to how she claims they have stopped giving her the second one of the day. Even her own notes show that she is getting two pills at 5pm, but now she says she only gets one.
Even after the nurse left, my mother kept insisting they were not giving her these eye vitamins, and all her health problems have now only started after she came to this TCU. Things she has been dealing with for a long time. I kept trying to explain things, but she just went back to the manipulation, saying I was taking their side, etc. etc. I finally said, it was time for me to go.
As I was getting ready to leave, my mother brother up her wheelchair. This is a folding wheelchair that had been my father’s.
She asked me if I recognized it. I saw it in the hallway and said I did. She asked me to bring it over, and began questioning me about recognizing it. The staff had clearly given it a really good cleaning; whatever they used on the heavy vinyl got it all nice and supple and looking brand new. They even oiled the squeaky food rest. However, it’s an old chair, and there are cracks in the wheels and spots of rust that I could say where there before.
My mother clearly didn’t believe me. She has decided it’s not the same chair anymore. The hospital switched it.
This is not a new thing. For as long as I can remember, she accused my father of “trading” cattle, vehicles, furniture, the TV, etc. and he was giving the “good” versions the second family she believed he had, and the “bad” versions for us. When she tried to convince me a particular cow had been traded because it looked different – it had matured and filled out, looking bigger, strong and healthier – I pointed out that if this cow had been “traded”, we now have a better cow, so how did her accusations make sense?
I had a very confusing childhood at times.
The visit done, I headed home, utterly drained. My brother was still here, so we sat in their mobile home and I filled him in. It was good to talk to him about it in person, and we had a great visit! He was dreading his visit with Mom, but I just heard from him. He ended up staying with Mom for a couple of hours and the visit went well. It seems my mother got her nasty out of her system before he got there. I’m very glad it worked out that way, because she has been incredibly cruel to him during most of his visits with her.
After filling in my brother, I headed inside and took a bit of a break before changing into my grubbies and going outside for some manual labour. That, more than anything else, really helps decompress after a visit with my mother.
My focus for today was getting the straw off the septic tank. I had just started when I began getting messages from the cat rescue.
They are trying to get ahold of special traps to borrow and bring here. Traps with motion sensors and operated by remote. We can set up the camera currently facing the isolation shelter to monitor the traps. When the motion sensor goes off, check the camera to see what critter is in it. This way, we can trigger the trap only if the specific cat we are after – Slick, for example – is in the trap. Skunks and raccoons can be ignored. 😄 That would be amazing!
My brother was getting ready to head out around then, and dropped off some lovely compost they’d made from their own kitchen scraps for me. He had time to check out the chicken coop and we talked about the septic area, and the emergency bypass set up I had set off to the side until the straw was gone. After he left, I continued and got it all clear. The surface straw was set aside in a pile, but the damp straw touching the ground, which was already starting to rot, got raked up and repurposed as mulch around the honeysuckle and white rose bushes in the old kitchen garden.
That clear, I set up all the parts and pieces for the emergency bypass against the old kitchen wall for their summer storage.
That done, I also set up a hose at the tap in the wall next to the pipe running out of the basement for the emergency bypass. The shut off valve in the basement can now be opened. I won’t set all the hoses up until things warm up more, but I can at least fill watering cans for the pre-sown beds, etc., for now.
My next garden priority is to start more seeds inside. That keeps getting pushed back, but most of what we have left to start indoors are for 3-4 weeks before last frost, so for those we still have a bit of breathing room. I have only a few things in the 4-6 week range that need to be started now.
So this has been… a day. I’m very happy I got to see my brother and that I got some work done outside. As for my visit with my mother, it is what it is.
It just left me feeling so incredibly drained! Getting the straw cleared off actually helped with that. Now I’m just physically tired, not both physically and mentally tired! 😄
I had to make a run into town late this morning, so we didn’t even start on finishing the chicken coop assembly until much later in the afternoon. Which was fine, because it turned out to be an absolutely lovely day today.
The first thing I worked on was reinforcing the interior roost, then securing them in place.
Each corner got one of these flat braces. My original intention had been to have the horizontal roost resting on top of the vertical support, but it was difficult to get proper measurements through the tiny opening I had to work in. The roosts ended up too short by enough that I instead trimmed them about a quarter inch shorter so that they would fit in between the vertical supports, instead of on top. While the corner braces would hold them in place, these were cheap dollar store braces and I was concerned they wouldn’t hold the weight of chickens without bending or breaking. These flat braces are higher quality and will hold. The wood itself will break before those give out.
To secure the roosts, I had to use a little kitchen step ladder to be able to reach from above at the front, to set the roosts in place and line them up, while making sure they were flush against the front and back walls. There is just a bit of a height difference because of the white edging I had to account for. Both roosts had a vertical that sort of bent away from the wall, so I used one of the pieces for later in the build, jammed at an angle to brace the wonky side in place. Once they were solidly flush against the walled, I screwed them in place from the outside. Each end got three screws. Later on, I’ll use some sort of sealant on the screws to protect the wood from moisture.
The coop now has a roost on each side, on the inside.
The next stage of the build was to add the roosts that came with the kit, which were to be mounted underneath, on either side of where the ramp would be. For that, I needed an extra pair of hands and asked my daughter to come help. After I went inside and looking up online, just how they were supposed to be attached. The pictographs were really useless for that and even an image I’d shared with my daughter, showing how high off the ground they were supposed to be secured, looked like there was something else entirely going on.
She ended up basically taking over the build, and I was her assistant. Mostly because she can actually get down on the ground, and I can’t.
This time, though, we set a sheet of plastic on the ground as a drop sheet. Last time, my daughter was crawling around on the ground, she later discovered she managed to get cat poop on her pants. Ick.
Getting the exterior roosts in place was definitely a two person job. Especially for the front. With the area for the door empty, the sides sides were slightly spread out, and I had to push the entire side in and hold it in place while my daughter screwed the roosts in place.
After that, the floor between the two sides had to be installed, then the hinged ramp attached to the floor. That was all my daughter, as there was no room for me to do anything other than hand her screws.
That done, we had to attached the door to the frame by the hinges. There were a couple of plates that I’ve been using as spacers every time we had to attach a hinged door. After the door was hung, those plates were added across the insides of the frame’s corners at the opposite side, to stop the door from going past the frame when closed. Then the latch was added to the top, and the door and frame could be attached to the coop.
With the ramp on hinges, that could be lifted up and out of the way, so my daughter could go inside and screw the door frame to the coop. The ground isn’t level, so my job was to line up edges and corners and hold them in place – which required actually lifting the coop itself slightly, on one side – until my daughter got enough screws in to hold it in place, and she could do the rest without me holding things.
Once the door and frame were in place, there were a pair of cross pieces to attach between the top of the door frame and the back mesh wall of the coop. These were part of the roof supports.
The roof was the next thing to do, and it took a lot of figuring out what the pictographs were showing. We noticed some pre-drilled holes in some pieces and had to look at instructions a couple of pages later to see what they would be used for, and we could tell which direction they were supposed to face.
The roof supports were assembled in two parts before they could be set on top and secured to the coop. Then we could finally put on the plastic roof panels.
Which was more of a pain than it should have been.
First, was figuring out which side was up, as both sides were identical. They had pre-drilled holes in them that needed to line up with the supports they would be screwed into. Then there were the overlaps. After much shifting and flipping and trying again, it was the pre-drilled holes that determined which panel edge went on top of the other. It was not the way I would have expected it to, when it comes to drainage, but it was the only way one screw could secure both edges at the same time.
Once we got that figured out, and the panels were centered and lined up, we could finally start screwing them into place. For this, my daughter was using the little step ladder a lot, and we found a different problem. The ground was too soft and the legs of the ladder started to sink! I had a small piece of plywood nearby that I could put on the ground under one set of legs, which worked out very well. When it was time for my daughter to move the ladder to reach another section, I just kept moving the board.
We found other problems, though.
The screws for this part of the build are quite short. Too short for where the panels overlapped. After some digging around in the garage, I found a few that could replace some of the screws along the seams, but then we had a whole different problem along the front. For all the care we took to line up the pre-drilled holes with the supports below, the entire row of pre-drilled hold along the front were just a touch too far. The boards in that part of the roof were slightly warped. Probably from sitting in the box in the garage for over a month in the winter. There were extra longer screws in the kit and my daughter ended up using those, and not using the pre-drilled holes, to secure the roof panels. Some of the screws went in crooked and the tips got exposed, but not anywhere I chicken could hurt itself, so we weren’t too worried about it. We’ll have to go over the roof with sealant in places, anyhow.
Once the roof panels were on, the only thing left was to attach the hooks and eyes that would be used to hold open the two front doors for air circulation. For that, the hooks were first attached under the roof, and then we could use those to decide where to attach the screw eyes at the height we wanted the doors to be held open at. In spite of using a measuring tape and marking out where to attach them, we ended up doing one door at a different height than the other. The white edging in one of them had marks already on them that I mistook for the marks I’d made below! Which is fine. As long as they can be held open.
That done, the coop was officially assembled. We just had to move it.
Slight problem. The hinged ramp. With the roof in place, it couldn’t be lift up like when my daughter worked under it before. What we ended up doing was lifting is as high as we could through the open door, then quickly shutting the door before it could drop. We still had to push the ramp up through the wire mesh so the door could be closed but, once it was, the door itself held the ramp up and out of the way.
It wasn’t easy to move the hole thing. We were able to get grips on each end, because the wire mesh is on the inside of the coop, so there was enough of a lip on the frames that we could get our fingertips under there. The main problem was me and my janky elbows. I could hold the weight for only short distances before I could feel them giving out.
Still, we managed it, and set it up in front of the retaining wall, where the ground seemed to be the flattest.
It’s still not level, but at least the whole thing isn’t being twisted out of shape by uneven ground.
Where is how the finished coop looks, with all the doors closed, plus the back, which has no doors of any kind.
You can really tell in the side views, how the ground is sloping! In the front and back views, you can see the screws holding the inside roots in place.
The coop was designed with the roosts below as a way of not having to deal with lots of chicken poop inside. With the added roosts sheltered inside, we’ll be adding bedding. The nesting boxes will probably get straw, but I plan to get pine shavings for under the roosts inside.
With the coop right up against the retaining wall, we can potentially secure it to the blocks so it won’t get blown over in high winds.
We will probably not be able to keep it there, though. It is facing west and the sun can shine right through the wire mesh, the sides might create too much shadow for the garden bed behind it.
One of the things I want to do if find a way to add wheels to it, so it will be easier to move around as needed. It might be easier to just make a pair of wheeled platforms that can be tucked under the ends, then removed once the coop has been moved.
This coop will work out fine for when we get our first chickens, and for the summers. It is not the strongest of structures and definitely not suitable for a Canadian winter, but the plan is to build a polytunnel in the garden this year, so that we can move the chicken coop into it for the winter. It will do until we can build a proper, sturdier, chicken coop. We’re just getting a few chickens to start; enough to supply us with eggs. Over time I want to get more, including meat hens, so we will need to expand things quite a bit. It will take time and materials we don’t really have, but at least now we can get started.
Meanwhile, we can get ready for the chicks to arrive at the end of May. We’ll need feeders and waterers (the ones my parents used are still in the old chicken coop, but I don’t know that any of them are useable, after so many decades since my parents had chickens), both for while we have the chicks in a brooding pen indoors, and for when they get moved outside.
Something else that will be coming at the end of May is our order of basket willow. I got an email from the nursery with several shipping dates available, and I requested the latest one. That will give us time to prepare where we will be planting them, beyond the outer yard, and working out how to protect them from the renter’s cows.
On a completely different note…
It is confirmed that Slick lost her litter. While working outside, I heard a commotion and it was Slick. She’s gone into heat again, and had a whole crowd of dudes wanting their turn with her. She was not happy about it, either. I sent a quick message to the rescue and they want me to trap her as soon as possible. I don’t think we’d be able to trap her specifically, though. However, she has been super friendly when we do the morning cat feeding, and we might be able to get her into the big carrier. Tomorrow morning, my daughter is going to come out with me to try and get her. If we can manage it, she’ll go to the rescue for however long it takes for them to get her spayed, then she will come back here.
The Re-Farmer 