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Birds, gardens, kittens and pain

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Things were definitely all over the place today!

I was out doing my morning rounds pretty early. That’s always disorienting. By the time I’m done and settling it, I feel like it should be 2 or 3 in the afternoon, only to find it isn’t even 9 in the morning yet!

Our permanent trellis may only have the vertical posts so far, but it’s already being appreciated by birds.

I zoomed in with my phone’s camera, before getting closer and startling it away, so the image quality is not very good. It’s still enough to see that this is a type of bird I don’t recognize at all. Pretty, whatever it was, and it enjoyed a nice little rest on top of one of the trellis posts.

I also got a tiny harvest in this morning. I picked what is probably the last of our garlic scapes.

You can see one is starting to split a bit; the consequence of not harvesting for a couple of days. The scape was starting to straighten out again, and getting ready to form bulbils. I didn’t notice it when I finally did a larger harvest of scapes, yesterday, thinking the straighter stem meant it was too early to pick, rather than getting almost too late to pick! That’s okay. It’ll still taste good!

As I was getting ready to head inside, I managed to get this adorable picture of Havarti.

He’s more feral than the other kittens but is starting to clue in that when I pick him up and carry him, it usually means I’m putting him next to a bowl of kitten food. We make a sort of cat soup for the littles, but some of the adult cats have discovered it and can get pretty aggressive about eating it before the littles have a chance!

Havarti’s two siblings are still missing. Every day we don’t see them, the more convinced I am that, wherever Caramel took them, they have not survived. She is always here, and I sometimes see her in one of the cat beds in the water bowl shelter, covered in kittens and napping. This is not the behaviour of a mama cat with babies in another location.

I managed to get a picture of Captain Hastings this evening.

Poirot has been diligent in keeping her babies close to the sun room, and we’ve often seen her picking up Inspector Japp and carrying him back to the house if he goes too far! Hastings and Miss Lemon tend to stay closer, though.

It looks like Hastings will be another blue eyed beauty!

I just got back from chasing a racoon and a skunk out of the sun room. I found Caramel in the water bowl house, snuggled with Havarti. She definitely is down to one kitten.

This time of year is normally when the more feral cats are starting to wean their kittens, bringing them to the house where there is reliable food, water and shelter.

That isn’t happening.

Just now, I saw Slick – aka: Octomom, as she had a litter of 8, two years ago. She was one of the pregnant ones that would come close to the house for food, but we couldn’t otherwise get close to. She is one of three ferals, for sure, that were definitely pregnant and suddenly were looking skinny again.

Slick is looking pregnant again.

Which means, she lost a litter.

As for the other two ferals, I haven’t seen any sign of kittens with them, either. At least neither of them are looking pregnant, though!

I don’t quite know what to make of it. I suppose I should be glad I’m not finding remains to bury, as happened so often last year, but it does make me wonder.

Oh, there is another possibility.

The nearest farm to ours that has someone living there full time is our vandal, and I know they care for a colony, too. I can see on our trail cams that some of our cats head in that direction, too.

Perhaps they had babies, but took them to our vandal’s place, instead?

It’s possible, I suppose. Not likely, but possible!

Anyhow.

When I first headed out this morning to get the food ready for the outside cats, I realized something.

There was a cat stuck in the old kitchen all night!

The old kitchen is our “buffer zone” between the house and the sun room. It’s sort of tacked on to the original log portion of the house. When heading out or in, we make sure to close the doors. That way, the inside cats don’t end up outside, and outside cats don’t end up inside, but if they do get through, they’ll only get as far as the old kitchen.

The problem is, the door from the main part of the house to the old kitchen is an antique door. I love it, but it doesn’t always close properly. Sometimes, I’ll be convinced it’s closed, but when I open the first door to the sun room, the air pressure change pushes open the door into the house.

Well, I guess something like that happened during yesterday’s evening feeding. My daughter was helping me and, as she started back into the house from the sun room, she discovered a whole bunch of inside cats in the old kitchen!

We thought we got them all out.

Unfortunately, the old kitchen has been used for storing things temporarily. One corner was full of cardboard set aside all winter, to be used in the garden. It is also where we put our garbage bags until we can go to the dump. Which we haven’t been able to do properly, since the box cover was blown off the truck. Without a cover, there are too many lighter bags that would end up blown into the ditches. Between that and things coming up to prevent us from getting to the dump, we have way too many bags of garbage in the old kitchen. With those, the cardboard, the furniture, chest freezer and old wood burning cook stove, there are a LOT of places a cat can hide.

This morning, while getting the kibble ready, I started hearing meowing, but couldn’t see anything. My daughter came to help with the cat feeding, and she couldn’t see anything either. Once the outside cats were fed, she and I started passing things out of the old kitchen, mostly through the door with the missing screen (which has been SO handy!), to clear space. A few garbage bags, stuff for the burn barrel we can’t burn because we’re under a fire ban still, and all the carboard I was setting aside for the garden.

The old kitchen feels down right huge, now!

Still no sign of a cat.

We did eventually track the meowing to coming from under a dresser. My daughter ended up removing its 2 drawers completely, only for the cat to run out and under the couch. We did figure out it was Tiny. No wonder we didn’t realize she was missing. She is one for hiding away on top of the closet in the entry, or other secret places, because some of the other cats bully her.

So I continued my morning rounds while my daughter made sure to unlock the other door, so I wouldn’t have to go through the sun room and potentially scare a cat into hiding again.

By the time I finished and was back inside, I found my younger daughter on her knees, trying to persuade a cat out from under the couch. Her sister had already left a bowl with the contents of a squeeze treat in it, but the bait wasn’t enough.

My daughter did find a way to get Tiny to come out voluntarily, though.

A tin of wet cat food, and David.

Tiny loves David. The two of them get along incredibly well.

My daughter put a bowl of wet cat food in the middle of the floor, then brought David in, leaving the door from the house into the old kitchen open, standing guard to make sure none of the other cats went in.

Tiny saw David and immediately came out.

She saw the food bowl he was at and ran over to eat.

She saw the open door and ran into the house!

I strongly suspect Tiny is not going to sneak into the old kitchen again. At least not for a very long time!

Very glad my daughter was able to take care of that!

Meanwhile, my husband had his appointment at the new pain clinic today. I was finished my morning rounds so early, I was actually able to try and lie down and close my eyes for a couple of hours, before trying to drive.

My husband also tried to go back to sleep. He had a horrible night last night. Ozempic side effects. He’s been on it for years and they keep increasing the dose. I don’t know why he’s still on it. It is not working. Oh, and the weight loss side effect everyone is being prescribed it for these days? He has lost zero weight, but he HAS lost muscle mass. Which is the “weight loss” of Ozempic, though in his case, the number of the scale hasn’t changed in years. One of the other side effects, however, has sometimes been a problem. That particular side effect had my husband taking a shower and doing laundry at 2am.

Nasty stuff. I can’t understand why anyone would take it, if they weren’t diabetic – and even then, I don’t think it’s worth it!

Neither of us managed to get much sleep before it was time to start heading out. I had deliberately made a point of resting my injured left arm as much as I could yesterday, so that I would be okay for driving.

I forgot something.

The broken handle inside the driver’s side door. The one that requires opening the window and twisting my left arm around to open the door from the outside.

*sigh*

After moving the truck closer to the house for my husband, I had to give it a go, and it was way more painful than it should have been. I was still okay to get his walker out of the entry and down the concrete steps so my husband could use it to walk the rest of the way to the house. He used a cane to go through the old kitchen and sun room, to avoid the steps he’d have to taken using the main entry.

In working with his walker, however, we discovered a problem.

It’s been a long time since my husband has had to go anywhere, so his walker has been in the entry for a while.

The cats climb it, of course.

Well, one or more of them decided to pee on the cushioned seat, even though the walker was folded up. While getting it in an out of the truck, folding and unfolding it, we realized it was even still wet.

Once at the hospital, we were directed to the new pain clinic, which happens to be sharing the same area as the outpatient clinic my daughter will be going to for her surgery. We went through the registration process and my husband settled down to wait. Typically, to take pressure off his back, he will sit in a chair and lean forward onto his walker, stretching his back out.

The smell of cat pee was so bad, he took his cane out of the holder and asked me to put the walker back in the truck.

!!!

When I got back, he was already taken to see the first pain clinic specialist. This guy turned out to be a physiotherapist. My husband had a questionnaire to fill out, along with a list of his medications, and send in some time ago. They were going over that first. We went over the many things attempted before we moved, and how things went at the city pain clinic in this province he managed to get to (that was a waste of 2 years on a waiting list!) in 2020.

After going over all that, he left to consult with the doctor, who then came to get us for the second part of the appointment.

The doctor was looking at the husband’s CT scans from November, and we appreciated that he was honest with us.

There really isn’t anything they can do for him.

Which is pretty much what my husband expected to hear.

Everything that could be tried, has been tried. He’s on the medications. He’s had the various treatments. In the end there were just two things they could offer. One was information about scheduled workshops they have available online, though in person is also a possibility, for those who are able. They cover a variety of things to help cope with and live with chronic pain. My husband has been living with is for so long, he’s probably tried or has been doing them already. Still, there might be something he hasn’t tried, yet.

The other is physiotherapy.

My husband did the physio route pretty much from the start. It kept him going for a long time, and he even started to get better. He started out seeing a physiotherapist three times a week. She got him down to once a week. He was still able to work at this time, too.

The insurance covers physio 100%, but with an upper limit, so once that limit was reached, my husband had to stop physio until the fiscal year started again. Without the equipment used on him, his condition deteriorated during that break, but then he started up again and things started to improve.

Then the physiotherapist was lured away by a rugby team. The therapist that replaced her was… not as good.

There was much more going on that affected his condition as well that I won’t get into here, but it wasn’t much longer before my husband couldn’t work anymore and went onto disability. Then we ended up here, on the farm I grew up on, in a province where some of the specialists that had been helping my husband before don’t even exist.

Anyhow. That’s what we both thought of, when physiotherapy was brought up. There’s no way my husband can handle driving all that way, multiple times a week. Even when he got a prescription for physio with the first doctor he had after our move, and he could have gone to a closer therapist, it just didn’t happen. With only, at best, 10 sessions covered by insurance, why even bother? Of course now, we couldn’t afford the gas, either.

Well, it turns out they can try something different.

Physio, done at the pain clinic, is covered by our medicare system, for starters. It would also be just once a month, with my husband being given a regimen he can do at home until the next session, when things can be adjusted as needed.

Once a month with a 45-50 minute drive one way, my husband can do.

We are now booked with the first guy we saw today, next week!

Beyond that, however, there really isn’t anything that can be done about my husband’s condition. His doctor is going to get a report, and she can take it from there again.

That done, my husband and I headed out. As difficult as it was for him with just a can and not his walker, it was lunch time, and he wanted McDonalds. 😄 It’s probably been more than a year since he’s been to one. So we went to the nearby Walmart and had lunch, then I left him to enjoy the fries he had been craving to do a bit of shopping. My first city shopping trip is in just a couple of days, but we were going to run out of cat food before then.

During the drive home, we actually drove through some rain! Not a lot. We still need much more! Thankfully, the kibble I got that was in the box of the truck came in plastic bags, not paper, so the rain wasn’t an issue.

We kept the girls updated the whole time, so when we got home, my daughter had the gate open for us, and was able to help me bring things inside. As careful as I was, my arm was really throbbing by then.

Oh, I discovered two things while taking my husband’s walker to the truck.

One, I really, really like using a walker.

Two, my right arm hasn’t completely escaped damage. While leaning on the walker’s hand bars, my left arm was actually quite a bit better than when my daughter brought it out to help me get back to the house after my fall. My right arm, however, seems to still have some damage to a triceps. Nothing I notice unless I am pushing down on something, though.

Once everything was inside and taken care of, my daughter took care of my husband’s walker. She took it outside and scrubbed the whole thing down, top to bottom, hosed it down, then took the carpet and furniture shampooer to it. That thing looks brand new, now!

It’s also now stored in the old kitchen, where the cats can’t get at it!

Unless they sneak in and hide overnight, like Tiny did!

With all this, my husband is completely worn out and drained, and in so much pain. Hopefully, he’ll be able to actual sleep tonight, and not end up feeling sick again.

As for me, I’m happy to say the arm is doing better. I was able to get a bit done outside this evening. I went over the pink rose bush again, looking for any scale insects I missed. There were a few! I treated it with another soapy water spray, too. It’s only been a day, but I think the rose bush is already looking less droopy than it was, yesterday! We only have the one pink rose bush, so I would hate to lose it.

While checking on the rest of the garden, I noticed insects on the winter squash again – possibly thrips. They got the soapy water treatment, too. The winter squash are trying to bloom like crazy, but the plants are not looking very healthy at all. The transplants were very strong and healthy, so this is disappointing.

So, that has been our day today! It’s been a wonderfully cool and, at times, rainy day today. The only downside is, our overnight low is currently expected to drop to 6C/43F tonight – which is actually an improvement! This morning, they were saying we might drop to 4C/39F. With temperatures that low, I’d be looking to cover some of the garden beds to prevent cold damage! Meanwhile, the 10 day forecast has us looking at temperatures approaching 30C/68F, soon.

Good grief. It’s hard to believe we’re almost at July already.

Oh! I forgot one bit of good news!

We got a call from the door guy at the hardware store I went to last week. We now have an appointment for three days from now. He’s going to check out the damage, take the measurements he needs, and we’ll start talking what options we have, and how much it’ll cost.

I know it’s going to be painfully expensive… well… everything is painfully expensive right now. However, once that door and frame is fixed, it’s going to be really nice to not have frost showing up on the bottom of the door every winter!

So I’m both dreading and anticipating getting that door fix.

What to do with the cats while the work is being done is a problem we’ll have to figure out when the time comes!

😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Reclaiming space

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When it came time to start working on our first permanent trellis bed, I had hoped to be able to get in with the weed trimmer, first. It just up and died on me while I was using it a few days ago. I hoped it just needed to cool down or something, so I tested it.

Nothing. Not a click or a whirr or a home. Nothing.

*sigh*

So I went and got the push mower my brother has loaned us.

Where the trellis beds are going to be built is over an area we actually made garden beds, a few years ago. Sections were covered in cardboard, potatoes and melons planted, then heavily mulched with straw.

We had spring flooding that year and very little survived.

After that, we just lost control of the space and it became completely overgrown.

To reclaim the space, we will be building pairs of raised beds joined by trellis tunnels. One beds it built and being used right now, but we need to finish adding three vertical supports before we can have something our Red Noodle Beans can climb.

Before working on that, though, I wanted to clear the overgrown space beside it. One part of it had been measured and marked off for the next bed. I had cut poplars to use for the vertical supports, and those had been stacked nearby – and were completely hidden by the tall grass.

So my first job was to find and pull out all the logs, and set them aside in an area that was already mowed.

Which you can see in the first photo of the slideshow below.

After making sure there were not chunks of wood, rocks, markers, etc. hidden in the grass, I went over it with the push mower, set at its highest level.

Then I went over it again, set a mid height.

Then I went over about 2/3rd of it again, this time with the mower as low as it could go, and only in one direction. At this point, I was hitting the old straw mulch in places, and I wanted the clippings to be easy to rake up, later. They will make a good mulch, after sitting in the sun for a day or two.

In the second photo, you can see the entire cleared area.

It was getting insanely hot, and I knew I wasn’t up to working on the trellis in the heat, so I decided to get the next raised bed space prepped.

I have a couple of small logs that are exactly 4′ long. These beds are going to be 4′ wide, with 4′ wide paths in between, and I’ve found these logs make it easy to mark the spaces. Which is what I’ve done in the next photo. I’ve butted the logs up against the frame, not the vertical supports at the corners. That marked off the width of the path. Then I got out one of my rolls of plastic to set over where the new bed is going to be, to start solarizing.

Well. Sort of.

To have the plastic really cook the weeds and grass and seeds in the soil, the plastic needs to be taught against the soil surface. Since I couldn’t use the weed trimmer to get the space cleared right to the soil surface, the plastic will be sitting on top of the cut stems. It’ll still get cooked in places, but will also act like a greenhouse.

Which is fine. I can work with that.

I also hosed the area down, first. The moisture will get really hot under there and help cook the weeds and seeds, too.

The plastic is wider than 4′, so there is some overlap into the paths, which is also good. The big sheet is actually folded in half and I considered opening it up and covering a larger space, but it’s starting to get old and tattery, so I just re-folded it more neatly, then set it out. It’s not long enough to cover the full 18′ the bed will be, so the last section is covered with a clear dollar store shower curtain.

Then is was time to weigh it down.

I shifted the 4′ logs over so that they are now marking the next 4′ that will the the width of the next raised bed. Then I used some of the logs I’d pulled out of the tall grass to weigh down the edges. There were a couple of small gaps, so I used bricks to weight those down.

I had been using some old conduit pipe I’d found in the barn to mark off where the beds would be. I ended up adding those, plus another short little log, on top of the plastic, to try and get it closer to the soil surface. Then the whole thing got sprayed with water to try and weigh it down even more.

By the time all that was done, so was I. At least for working in direct sunlight.

I did have the lawn mower handy, though.

I hiked the deck up again, then started working on the maple grove. We haven’t been able to mow in there all year, except for the beginnings of a path I’d started before running out of gas, and not being able to get back to.

When I was done, I ended up taking a little video of how much I’d managed to do.

I sound out of breath because I literally just finished mowing. The grass was about 2-3 feet high in there, and still is in places I couldn’t get into with the mower.

When we first moved here, this area was not only overgrown, but filled with trees that had been cut down but never cut up and removed, lots of fallen branches, and it was basically impassible. When I was a kid, I used to keep this area mowed regularly, as was as inside the spruce grow.

It’ll be a few years before we get to that level again!

It does feel good to have finally gotten at least this much mowed.

Then I came in for hydration, rest and supper!

It’s still light out and starting to cool down… oh… never mind. I just checked the temperature, and it’s gone back up again! We are getting thunderstorm warnings which don’t actually affect our area, but the winds are certainly picking up.

I might just have to call it a day. Tomorrow, I’ve got to take the truck into town for the autobody shop to go over, then to get new tires. A old friend from high school is in town and contacted me, so we’ll be meeting up somewhere while the tires are being done. That’s all in the afternoon, though. If I can manage a solid night’s sleep, I should be able to get work done on the trellis bed in the morning.

We’ll see what the morning brings!

I may not have gotten the trellis sports up, but I am glad to have started reclaiming more of those old garden beds, though.

I’d call that a win.

Oh, and I have a bit of cuteness to share. I spotted some eyes watching me from the creeping bellflower leaves…

This seems to be one of the more feral cats we can’t get close to, but I’m not sure. It does like to hang around to watch what’s going on, though. 😊

The Re-Farmer

A bit more done, and froggy friend

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Once things cooled down a bit, I did manage to get a bit more done in and around the garden.

The main thing was to get the netting up around the trellis bed.

While I went around, unrolling the netting, my older daughter fussed with getting it up on the supports. They were too tall to leave the netting folded as it is on the roll, so she had to carefully open it up and get the excess over the tops of the support stakes. It turns out the netting isn’t folded in half, but in thirds! That made opening it up rather more difficult for her.

Once I got the netting all the way around the bed, remembering to go behind the vertical trellis supports, I left the roll near the starting point and went to get a bunch of ground staples and ties. That gave my daughter time to finish opening up the netting and setting the excess over the stakes. After that, we used the ground staples to try and get it as taut as we could. On the side I was working on, it was easier, because I was securing the netting to the ground. The side my daughter was working on is the one with the lower log that’s curved into the bed around the middle. The ground staples pulled up very easily around that area!

We just need to get it secure enough that the cats can’t get under it. In a few places, we used tied to tighten up any slack, and that’s about it.

One thing I’ve noticed about this netting. The frogs seem to be able to go through the mesh just fine. Even the larger ones.

Like this one.

This one was almost 3 inches long, from nose to tail bone.

The frog is looking quite damp because, after we were done with the netting, I gave the garden beds another watering. There were SO many frogs popping out of the mulches while they were being watered! Quite a few big ones like in the photo above, but also the teeniest, tiniest frogs! Dozens of them, all over the place. This has been a very good year for frogs and bees. Especially bumble bees. Which makes me very happy!

There was one thing I have been seeing all over the place not that does NOT make me happy!

See those tiny pairs of leaves?

Those are sprouting elm seeds.

They. Are. Everywhere.

At this point, they’re almost too delicate to weed. While they look so small on the surface, these things have ridiculously long tap roots. I did try pulling some of them while I was watering, as it’s easier to get the entire root out when the water is flowing. The tap roots are over an inch long. The exposed stems break off easily, leaving the tap roots, which tend to just throw up new shoots.

These elm trees are the bane of my gardening existence. My daughter mowed the lawns today, and I can’t even use any of the grass clippings for mulch, nor put any in the compost pile. There are more elm seeds than grass clippings.

These elms need to go. Their seeds suffocate everything from above, their capillary roots take over garden beds, choking out plants from below, and the one my mother planted to make shade for the kitchen window is not only lifting and tilting the patio blocks, but causing cracks in the basement wall. That one needs to go, first! We try to keep it cut back, but its branches are a danger to the roof, too.

When I was looking through the garden sections while waiting for my daughter’s workshop to be done, I was seeing pots of Chinese elm, spirea and Virginia Creeper being sold. All of which are wildly invasive, and almost impossible to kill. Any time I see them, I feel like I should be leaving warning signs up for people.

Tomorrow, the only thing I have planned for the garden is to water everything again, early in the morning before it starts getting really hot. We’re supposed to hit 26C/79F tomorrow. (Yes, I can hear you folks in southern climes, giggling at me for thinking that’s hot. I totally get it! 😁)

It’s also Father’s Day. Since my daughter already sprung for pizza for her sister’s birthday, tomorrow we’re planning to do ice cream. Or anything else cold that catches our fancy!

Thankfully, on Monday, we’re supposed to start cooling down – and get rain in the afternoon/evening! Hopefully. At most, we have a 50% chance of rain. We’ll see. Every drop we get is something to be thankful for! There’s still that big fire across the lake that’s out of control. Almost 219,000 hectares/541,160 acres have been burned so far, in just that one fire. There are several others burning out of control up North, including one that has burned more than 370,000 hectares/914,290 acres, and another that’s burned more than 554,000 hectares/1,368,964 acres.

This isn’t even an unusually bad wildfire year, other than some of them requiring towns and small cities to be evacuated. There aren’t a lot of people living that far north, so that is unusual. From what I’m seeing on the weather radar, though, the system that’s moving our way has a few scattered thunderstorms with lightning in it. Lightning is the last thing we need right now!

We’ve got it pretty good, right where we are, and for that, I am grateful.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: pumpkins planted

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Last year, I picked up the free pumpkinfest seeds early enough to start them indoors. I picked them up just a few days ago, so there’s no time for that, this year!

While we have been getting a few rainfalls, off and on, and don’t expect more rain until tomorrow morning, our province is actually getting special weather alerts for possible funnel clouds. I got messages from my brother, saying they had rain pretty much all day, with occasional massive downpours. It’s been knocking his internet out often enough that he ended up linking to his phone to access the internet, so he could work.

From home.

On a Sunday.

Because my brother just never seems to stop working. Ever.

He’s always been like this, even as a kid. How he hasn’t burnt out, long ago, I have no idea!

While I had completely forgotten about the pumpkin seeds when I was working on the bed earlier, it was probably a good thing, in the end, given that I started to get rained on before I finished what I did remember to plant!

So here is how the bed looks now.

The row with the transplanted onions had enough empty space for four seeds, and the last one was planted in the remaining space of the sunflower row. I used the plastic collars to mark where the seeds would go, then planted one in each collar. They may not all germinate. Last year they have out 3 seeds per packet. I pre-germinated them, and they all sprouted within a day, so I do know they give out very healthy seeds.

I had some stove pellets left in the bag I’ve been using in other garden beds, and I finished it off here, including adding a few into the collars as well. Then everything got watered, even though it just rained. The collars got partially filled with water a couple of times, to make sure the pumpkin seeds got thoroughly soaked. The watering was also to get the stove pellets to absorb moisture and start breaking up into sawdust. They will do as a light mulch for now. Later in the season, after things are fairly big, more mulch will be added.

I don’t expect to use the mulch that I pulled off this morning. In the photo, you can see it raked onto the taller grass. That is where this bed’s twin is going to be built. Once things are dry enough to drag out the weed trimmer, I’ll clean out that area, trimming it as close to the soil as possible, then lay cardboard down on it, in preparation for building the next bed. The mulch I’ve set aside will eventually get buried in the new bed.

So I think I can NOW say the garden is officially in! 😄😂 There’s still lots of work to do, of course, but what needed to be planted is now in the ground.

🍾🥂🎉

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: beans, sunflowers and unexpected transplants

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I managed to get it done, just as the rain started to hit!

I think I can now officially say, our garden is in! Sure there are some things, such as fall spinach, that can be planted, but for all our expected spring planting, it is done.

Yay!

I waffled between planting along the chain link fence in the south hard, or in the trellis bed in the main garden area. In the end, I decided to go for where I knew there would be the most sunlight.

The first image above is how the bed looked, after the mulch was pulled off. Last year, we grew melons along one side, onions for seed on the other. The onions were replanted in the fall, with just one half of the bed being prepped, then covered with leaves for mulch. The other half had melons mulched with cardboard, bark and grass clippings and, in the fall, I just pulled the melon plants and left the rest in place to protect the soil.

That made cleaning the bed up much easier!

This bed does have an issue, though. You can see that – sort of – in the next two images.

To make these beds, we’re using logs as straight and even as we can find. Which is surprising difficult. Especially when looking to use 18′ logs. With this bed, on the trellis side, one of the logs was quite bent. We put that one on the bottom, with the bend going into the bed, while the top log is straight. That’s what the remaining three vertical trellis support posts are going to be secured to.

What that means, though, is that there is an entire log, just inside the top frame of the bed, in the middle. The bend is extreme enough that there’s an actual gap formed between the two logs. Over time, it won’t matter as much, as we are aiming to eventually make the beds all 4 logs high. Until then, though, the gap is getting stuffed with skinny pieces of wood, bits of bark and even grass clippings and dried leaves.

Once the mulch was removed, I went over the bed with the garden fork first, to loosen the soil and make it easier to pull the weeds. As I went along, I started to find other things besides weeds, though – and I was not at all surprised. The onions that had gone to see had dropped some of their seed before they could be harvested.

Once I got to where the onions had seeded themselves, I worked a lot more carefully, and gathered every one that I could find.

Along the way, I also found a couple of plants I recognized as the flower I allowed to grow at one end of the bed, last year. I removed those as well.

It wasn’t part of the plan, but since I had them, every since baby onion I found got transplanted. The flowers got transplanted at the opposite end of where we grew them last year.

While preparing to transplant the onions, I also carefully pulled some of the onions that were growing against each other, broke them apart, then replanted them separately.

One half of the bed had fewer onions survive than the other, so that was the first area I started transplanting onions the tiny onions. I still had enough left over that I made a second row for the rest. They filled a little over half the bed’s length before I ran out, so there’s still room to plant something else, if I wanted to.

After that, I planted the two flowers (possibly a wild salsify) I’d found, then marked off two more rows in the soil in the other side of the bed. Those were for the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers and the Red Noodle beans.

There were not enough sunflower seeds to fill the row. I spaced them about 6 inches apart, which is close for sunflowers. I don’t expect a 100% germination rate, though. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if none germinated. These are older seeds.

The red noodle beans, on the other hand, are fresh seed. These got planted nearer the edge of the bed, where they will be able to climb the trellis that will be built on that side of the bed. After filling the row from end to end, I had only 6 bean seeds left. So I stuck them into some of the gaps among the sugar snap peas, since they have a trellis already prepared. The planted rows then got marked off at the ends with plant stakes, so that if I decide to plant something else there, I know where the open spaces are.

Oh! I completely forgot! I was going to plant the pumpkins in this bed!

I can still do that. For those, I plan to set up plastic collars to mark where the seeds are.

In fact, I see the rain has passed and the sun is out. I’ll go do that right now!

The Re-Farmer

The things I see, and the day’s progress

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It’s coming up on 5:30pm as I start this, but my day is pretty much done – at least for the outside stuff.

It was a very lovely morning, as I was doing my rounds.

The dwarf Korean lilac is kicking into full bloom, and making the yard smell heavenly.

I had company for part of my rounds as Syndol and Stinky followed me around. They do love the high raised bed, when it comes to demanding pets, which you can see in the second photo above. You can also see the partial clearing of the path around the trellis bed in progress that had been just packed with dandelions gone to see. I still need to go over that with the weed trimmer, which will be a lot easier, after going through with the push mower, first!

While walking through the yard, I also spotted a clearwing hummingbird, flitting from dandelion to dandelion. They are remarkably large!

Today we were going to try for a trip to the dump. I’d brought out a heavier duty tarp to put over the load so it wouldn’t blow off while on the highway. It had been set over one of the old, broken tillers that have been sitting by the garden shed since before we moved here. There was some debris stuck in the folds, so I spread it out on the lawn to hose it down. It was so windy, I had to get tent pegs to tack it down!

Too windy.

I decided not to try and use the open truck box at all. Instead, we fit as much as we could of garbage and recycling in the back of the cab. We’ll just have to make another trip, later in the week, to get the rest.

My younger daughter came along to help out. The dump was an absolute disaster. The previous municipal council had fired the custodian that was managing it before, and things have gone downhill, ever since, even though we have a new council now. There was a brief period where I think some outside company was hired, and things were well taken care of, but now, the custodian(s) seem to just be seniors with mobility problems. As an almost senior with mobility problems, I take issue with that! It would be fine if all they had to do was sit in the shack and make sure people coming in just flashed their cards showing they are from the municipality and authorized to use this landfill site. The custodian is responsible for taking care of the entire site, though, and it doesn’t look like they’re contracting out to anyone to do the stuff the custodians can’t.

Like use the front end loader to push the build up piles of garbage at the edge of the pit, into the pit itself. Or to clear the area in front of the bit, so people won’t get flat tires, driving in to unload.

The garbage piled along the edge of the pit was so big, it was taking up space needed for vehicles to be able to turn around and back in. With three other vehicles already there, I was more than happy that one of them left, or I would have had a real problem getting to the pit.

Thankfully, we were unloading from the side door, not the box, so we could squeeze in that way. I couldn’t help but check around the tires after we unloaded. We got a flat tire after visiting the dump once, and I’m paranoid it’ll happen again!

After the garbage was done, we stopped at the recycling drop off, then headed out. We were running low on kibble for the outside cats, so we took advantage of this to go to the nearest Walmart and get a bit of stock up shopping.

Which I did not get a picture of. I’m happy to say that the big bags of kibble (9.1kg is the largest size the Walmart carries) have gone down in price by almost $5 a bag! We also got a 32 pack of canned cat food for the outside kittens.

They are getting totally spoiled, but it is pretty much the only way to make sure they get at least some lysine in them. I’ve been mixing a cat soup by hand for them; just a couple of cans of wet cat food mixed with lysine/pumpkin seed powder, then thinned down with water. As the kittens are getting bigger, I’ve increased the water and have started mixing in kibble to soften up, too. Some of the adult cats get pretty aggressive in trying to get some, too, so I’ve been splitting it up among quite a few bowls, and setting them in the usual kitten spots. Poirot’s babies hang out in the sun room most of the time, though they do venture out the door now, so I try to make sure they get some in the cat cage, where only a few of the adult cats will go in, these days. They are so tiny – and so fast! We really need to watch our step these days!

Along with cat food, we got some grocery items, stuff to keep in the truck (wet wipes, snacks, etc.) I did get one splurge. Since I’m getting more calls to my cell phone, I picked up a dashboard holder that will work with my wallet style phone case. Now I have to go into my phone’s settings to set up hands free. Samsung used to have a really good set up for hands free driving mode, but they got rid of that, many models ago. Now it’s all with Bixby, and I really dislike using things like Bixby. Ah, well.

Once the shopping was done, we set the heavy stuff in the box. I’d picked up a 24 case of canned soup for the pantry that was on sale, so that went in the box, with a cat food bag sitting right on top of it. The case of wet cat food went back there, too, with a dry cat food bag up against it, so it wouldn’t slide around in the box as we drove. The rest went into the back of the cab.

The problem is, it was threatening to rain.

We took the route home that would have us going near town, first, so we stopped at a gas station there on the way home. My daughter was a sweetheart and checked the tire pressure for me, just in case, before we picked up some gas.

The drive out was straight into the wind, and brutal. I had been fighting the wind trying to push me off the road the whole time, and could practically see the gas gauge dropping. On the way home, the wind was at our backs, and the gas gauge barely moved!

During the final leg home, the “threatening to rain” became a downpour.

Thankfully, the larger bags of kibble in the box of the truck are in plastic bags, so they not only kept the kibble dry, but protected the stuff under them.

My daughter and I got completely soaked, unloading the truck! It was late enough that I did the outside cat feeding right away, while my daughter parked the truck. We didn’t have any concerns about cats going under the truck, though. They were staying well out of the rain until I was actively putting food out, and even then, it was just to dash from shelter to shelter. The bigger kittens were sleeping in big piles, one in the water bowl shelter, and others in the cat house. Poirot’s babies just had each other, and Mom, in the sun room.

The rain has since stopped, but I won’t be trying to get out to work in that garden bed I was planning on. We are expecting more rain off and on, all through tomorrow and into Monday morning. Hopefully, I’ll get some done in between rainfalls, tomorrow. No using the electric weed trimmer, though. 😁

Hopefully, there is lots of rain reaching the wild fire zones! The rain we’ve been getting is now over the fires to the east of us, but it doesn’t look like any rain is hitting the ones up north.

Now that we’re done with the running around, the rest of the day will be indoor stuff. I do wish I’d been able to get to that bed yesterday. I can’t help but feel a bit resentful that my mother’s behaviour towards the home care worker meant I had to come in and cover for her med assist. That’s very different from having to come in because the home care worker was home sick or something. Ah, well. It is what it is!

I don’t have much left to do in the garden for planting. I’ve decided to plant the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers and red noodle beans in what will be a permanent trellis bed, then transplant surviving strawberries from last year. While getting groceries for my mother in her town, I couldn’t resist picking up some free pumpkin seeds that they give out to promote their pumpkin fest in September. There were 5 seeds in the packet, this year! They have a number of contest categories going on. The main one is for the largest pumpkin, of course. Another category is pumpkins and gourds, with prizes for the “most perfect pumpkin” of various sizes, the most unusual pumpkin or gourd of any size (maybe I should try growing Crespo squash again!), and prizes for carved and decorated pumpkins. Then there are contest categories for fruits and vegetables, baking, canning, handicrafts, floral arrangements, and “junior artwork”, all with sub categories. There’s even a colouring contest for preschoolers. I’ve never actually gone to this festival. We really should. It sounds awesome!

All that to say, I got pumpkin seeds, and will be planting them in this bed, too, once I’ve finished prepping it. That will give me incentive to finish setting up the permanent trellis structure, that will eventually be part of a trellis tunnel with a matching garden bed. Those noodle beans will need something to climb!

For now, though, I’m going to stay inside and appreciate the rain we’re finally getting. We really, really need it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: transplanting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, and creating supports

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I am very happy to say that, as of today, ALL the transplants are in! There is just the final direct sowing to do, now.

The first transplants to get in where the tomatoes, and they all fit into one garden bed.

This bed had already been prepped, then covered with plastic, except for one end, where there had been onions gone to seed. They did not survive another winter, though.

The plastic didn’t solarize the weeds to death, but at least it kept most of the elm seeds off! The challenge was to get the plastic off again, without dumping them all onto the soil.

For a bed that had already been weeded before the plastic was laid down, there were a LOT of weeds to clear out. As I worked around the bed, I suddenly realized that I was pulling out baby carrots! Last year, we had a couple of Uzbek Golden Carrots bolt and go to seed, so I left them to it, so I could collect the seeds in the fall. When I went to gather them, though, the seed heads were shriveled and messed up looking, and there were no seeds to collect.

Looks like one of them did have seeds, after all!

There was no way they could be transplanted or anything like that, so away they went.

Once the bed was clear of weeds and roots, I finished off our last bag of manure into it, and worked that into the soil.

Then it was time to figure out where the tomatoes would go.

I used the collars (I found an extra “stash” of the water bottles I make the collars from in the basement, so I had plenty for the tomatoes) to figure out the spacing. There were four Black Beauty, four Chocolate Cherry and nine Sub Arctic Plenty.

We’ve grown the Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry before, so I know what to expect with those. They both get quite tall, while the Black Beauty became really heavy. They had trellis supports, and I ended up having to add supports to the supports, to keep the whole thing from tipping over in the wind!

With that in mind, I made sure that these were on the north side of the bed, so they wouldn’t shade out other plants. So I set out eight collars on that side, with a space in the middle.

If I remember correctly, the Sub Arctic Plenty are a bush type tomato, so I don’t expect them to get tall. I’m thinking they will be more like the Forme de Couer tomatoes we grew last year. Each tomato plant had a pair of bamboo stakes to support it, and I’d used twine around the plants to secure them. The plants got so heavy with tomatoes, the supports started falling over, and some of the bamboo stakes even broke from the weight.

With that in mind, I planted the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes along the south side of the bed, where they would get the most sunlight.

As with everything else, this bed was dry, dry, dry, so it got repeated waterings at every stage. I’d taken the cover off the other bed and every time I watered the tomato bed, I gave the other bed a gentle watering, too.

Once the tomatoes were in, it was time to give them support. For the verticals, I used 6′ plastic coated metal stakes. I’m glad I got more of these! Every collar got one of these tucked against one side. I used up all the stakes from last year, and used a couple of the new ones, to make one for every tomato plant.

Once those were in place, I used bamboo stakes to weave through the verticals. I did three horizontal rows on each side, and more can be added later, if need be. I then added some sticks to connect the two sides. There’s just a couple at the ends of one level, and a couple more further in, at another level. We may not need any more than that. We’ll see how things progress over time.

I did not have any clean grass clippings left for mulch, so I made use of the stove pellets we use for cat litter. I scattered them around, and even inside, the collars before giving the whole thing one final watering, to get the pellets to break up into sawdust.

I think it worked out rather well, and should be able to hold the weight of the tomatoes we can expect from these varieties,

Once this was done and cleaned up, and I took a break for lunch, it was time to work in the old kitchen garden. I decided it was time to remove the cover and netting from the greens bed, so the first thing to do was roll up the two sheets of netting, then take the cover off.

The kittens are going to miss their little mosquito netting hammocks!

The greens bed was really dry, so I spent time time watering it from the rain barrel – the rain we had was almost enough to refill it – and weeding. The spinach is bolting and we’ve decided to let them go to seed. I also found a second tiny bok choi that is staring to bloom.

That done, the herb bed got a watering, too, and then I did the pruning and clearing I mentioned in my earlier post, before I could even start on the wattle weave bed.

I decided that the Sweetie Snack Mix mini bell peppers would go in the short part of the L shaped bed, and the eggplant in the long section, among the strawberries.

The short side of the bed didn’t need a lot of weeding, and I was careful to work around the garlic that got missed and started growing this year. The old mulch got pushed up against the wattle weave sides, and the hard packed soil was broken up and fluffified. It was surprisingly hard packed. So I added some of the remaining rehydrated coconut coir over the area and worked that into the soil.

I laid the transplants out, in their cups, to figure out the bed way to space them. After that, it was the usual routine of wetting everything down, then again and again, in between every stage of transplanting. When the peppers were finally planted, I made sure to press down around each one, to create a shallow “bowl” to collect water and drain it towards the plant. Then each pepper plant got its own wire tomato cage to grow up into.

That done, it was time to work on the other side. It was a bit more challenging, working around the strawberries and onion survivors that are there. There was no sign of any of the chamomile self seeding, and the thyme that almost survived the winter was long dead, so that gave a bit of extra space. The mulch was moved aside, the compacted soil broken up, and the last of the coconut coir worked into the soil.

The transplants in their cups were laid out to figure out the spacing, along with the mystery flower. I decided to plant that at the very end of the bed, where it could stay permanently. If it survives! The flower did get a plastic collar, more to keep the cats from rolling on it.

Once the eggplant were in, each with their shallow “bowl” around them, they got their wire tomato cages set in place, and they were done!

Almost.

The mulch I’d moved aside was mostly old wood chips. I didn’t want to push that back. I did, however, have some leaf mulch that had been pulled off and set along the inside of the L shape, by the double lilac. It was old and dry, so I was able to crush handfuls of it, and shake it out over the transplants, to give the soil a light protection. More mulch can be added as the plants get bigger.

I forgot to take an “after” picture when I was done, so I went back out later, and got a picture of the entire finished bed, which is the last image in the above slide show.

That done, I went on to water the new trees in the fruit forest area, and the walnuts in the outer year. Still no sign of anything emerging where the seeds are planted, but the year old sapling is starting to get some bigger leaves on it.

I headed outside shortly after 7am to go my morning rounds and start on the garden. By the time I was done and heading back inside, it was past 8am. Taking into account stopping for breakfast and lunch, I got about 10 hours in the garden today!

Which is great, because all the transplants are IN!!!

Tomorrow, my main goal of the day is to get the third low raised bed near the compost rind cleaned up and planted with short season corn and yellow beans. After that, I want to work on the permanent trellis bed where I want to plant red noodle beans. That will make sure the trellis gets finished off, because they’re going to need something to climb!

Last of all, I will be clearing the bed at the chain like fence, salvage what I can find, replant with what I can manage, then cover it up again. Somehow. I like the netting that’s over it, but it really need something better than the wire to support it. I’m not even sure I can salvage the ones that cats have bent up!

I’ll figure it out.

Just another day or two, and the garden will be officially in!

Almost there!

On a completely different note, while I was working outside, my daughter let me know that the shop I took our push mower to had called and left a message. As expected they can’t find the part that’s needed. It’s simply not available, anywhere.

I was expecting this and had been thinking about it. I’d told them not to worry if they couldn’t find it; I’d just come pick it up. However, it would just end up as more junk here. So when I called them back and talked about it, I suggested they could keep the mower and use it for parts. If I ever buy a push mower again, it won’t be that brand, so it would be of no use to me. They, however, might be able to scavenge it if some other poor soul has the same brand of mower and needs a part that’s hard to find. They happily accepted the offer. Win, win!

Thankfully, my brother has provided us with mowers we can use! I was going to take my mother’s old mower in, but my brother thinks he can fix it himself, so we don’t even need to bring that in.

Oh, my goodness. It’s past midnight as I finish this! I need to get my butt into bed!

Have a good night!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: two quick supports

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I had an entire day at home, with excellent weather. Which means I got lots done!

Of course, I took full advantage of it. While getting the transplants in was my primary goal, I got as many other things done in between that I could.

One of them was to add some horizontal supports for the Spoon tomatoes.

Spoon tomatoes can get pretty tall, but they don’t tend to get particularly large or heavy. Each transplant has its own pair of vertical supports, and I wove the horizontal supports through. The bamboo stakes I used are about 6′ long, and the row of tomatoes is about 13 or 14 feet long. I ended up weaving two bamboo stakes through, then using whatever sticks I had handy to finish off the last bit. The tomato plants should be light enough that this should be enough to hold them. I might have to secure the supports to the metal posts, if they start to get tippy, as the tomatoes get bigger. There’s a possibility that, once the trellises start filling in, they will start acting like sails in the wind. We’ll see, as the season progresses.

With the temperatures at a more reasonable level, I haven’t had to water every morning to protect the garden beds from the heat. Even with that lovely rain we got recently, though, things dry out really quickly, so I watered the beds in the main garden area, after I was done with the tomato supports. The other beds got watered as I was working in the areas, later on.

When working in the old kitchen garden, there were a few things that needed to be done before I could start on the transplants. One of them was dealing with the pink rose bush. This rose bush is insanely thorny, and it wants to sprawl. Part of it died over the winter, too.

So this afternoon, I broke out the leather gloves and pruned away the dead parts. There was more of that then I expected! Then I dug out the pair of wire supports I’d picked up at the dollar store last year. I used them on their own, as three sided supports, last year, but for the rose bush, I joined them together.

I didn’t think to get a picture until much later, though, after the transplanting was mostly done.

The green wire is hard to see with all the other greens around it, but you can just make it out in the photo. It’s tall enough that it should keep the branches from leaning into the garden bed or the paths. It had a tendency to flop all over the place, so we’d tied it off with twine and, for the tallest stem, I actually had it tied to a branch of the ornamental crab apple tree.

I think that tree might be why the rose bush doesn’t seem to be doing as well this year. We pruned it back quite a bit, years ago and, once it started getting sunlight, the rose bush finally recovered and started to thrive. The crabapple tree has filled in again, though, and the rose bush is being shaded out again. We’re going to have to prune it back again.

The ornamental apple tree at the other corner did get some pruning. Aside from a few low hanging branches that kept catching on my hat, there were some large, dead branches that needed to be cleared away, too. On that side of the garden, there is a white rose bush that is aggressively spreading. I cleared spreading little rose bushes away from the wattle weave bed and out of the rhubarb, old asparagus and some flowers in that area. It was even coming up through the stack of small logs I’ve got stored in that corner. There is more that needs to be cleared away, but for today, I just cleared enough that I could get into where I needed to work, without getting attacked by rose bushes or crabapple branches!

These were the “little” things that gone done today.

I did manage to get all the transplants in, though! That will get its own post. See you there in a bit! 😊

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: setting up a trellis, and transplanting melons

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Once the frame for the low raised bed was finally assembled, it was time to set up a trellis, then do some transplanting.

This time, I got to use actual new, never before used by anyone else, metal posts to hold the wire! I had picked up four of these posts at Dollarama, and they seem like a really good product.

Rather than set the posts right at the freshly attached end logs, I set the end posts about a foot in from the ends, which turned out to be roughly 15′ apart in the 18′ bed, so the other two were set about 5′ apart. And by “feet”, I mean literally my booted feet. 😁

At the end closer to those trees we need to get rid of, I had to actually dig around with the garden fork to pull up the rocks I kept hitting, trying to push the post in!

Then I went to the old squash tunnel and snagged the last 2″ square wire mesh. There’s still one section with chicken wire on it. I find the 6 sided shapes bend and stretch out of shape too much for my liking, so I’m not sure what I’ll use that for.

The square wire mesh was about 18′ ong, so there was excess to work with.

One of the things about these posts is that they have hooks on them to hold stuff like this, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. There’s four hooks like that, with the opening facing up, along the top 2/3 or so, then two in the bottom third, facing the other way.

Very convenient, except it was remarkably difficult to get all of them hooked up at the same time!

It was still much easier to get the wire mesh up evenly than on the salvaged T posts I used for the pea trellis.

Once the trellis was done, it was time to finally do some transplanting!

Once again, the trellis posts dividing the bed into 3 sections came in handy, as I had three types of melon to transplant. There were four each of the honeydew and Sarah’s Choice (cantaloupe type) melons. Then there were the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon. There are two larger plants, plus one really tiny one I probably shouldn’t have bothered with, but I can’t just toss the poor thing!

I decided to transplant all of them melons on the East side of the trellis, so they will get the morning sun, and the three watermelons would be on the south end of the bed.

As with the winter squash, I set up collars made from 4L water bottles that my husband uses for his CPAP humidifier. Those are turning out to be very handy!

Once I spaced out each collar and set them into the soil, just enough to keep them from blowing away, I added a handful of manure into each. That got well mixed into the very, very dry soil, the collars reset in place, and then I made low trenches in the soil around them, to drain water down towards the roots.

Then everything got a thorough soaking. Which got sucked up like a sponge, so I did it again.

Even with filling the collars with water, as well as the trenches around them, when I dug down to plant the melons, I was still reaching super dry soil!

Everything got another thorough watering, once the transplants were in.

Then I grabbed the wagon and headed to the outer yard to rake up grass clippings to use as mulch. Thankfully, that area is far enough away that it’s not filled with Chinese elm seeds! The inner yard is practically drifted with them.

Once the melons were surrounded by mulch, it got yet another thorough watering. I wanted to make sure the mulch was wet all the way through, not just on top.

As these get bigger, I plan to train them up the trellis as best I can. Last year, we had a 4″ plastic trellis net, and it really sagged under the weight of the vines, so I’m hoping this set up will work better. I will probably still have to add cross pieces at the tops. The wire extends about 4″ above the top hook on the posts, so I should be able to weave supports through the mesh fairly easily. The posts also have holes in them so, if necessary, I can use twine or something to stake them out at the ends, so the weight of melons doesn’t pull them towards the middle.

That took care of one half of the bed.

I have decided that I will plant our Spoon tomatoes in the other half.

Several of them are staring to bloom now! These are indeterminants that can grow quite tall, so they will have their own individual supports, plus the trellis, to hold them up. I’ve got nine Spoon tomato transplants, so there will be room to plant something else with them, if I wanted to. Some bush beans, perhaps.

I’m hoping to be able to get them in tomorrow morning, since the bed is pretty much ready, and there’s even extra mulch waiting in the wagon for them. My daughter has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and we’re planning on leaving early. Chances are, we’ll need to go to the pharmacy after her appointment, and I will likely take advantage of the driving around to do some of the shopping we weren’t able to do during our stock up shops, so it might be a long day of driving around! Which means the morning will be pretty much the only time I’ll have available to get any more transplants in.

After the Spoon tomatoes are in, that leaves the peppers and eggplant to be planted in the old kitchen garden, and the rest of the tomatoes should fit in one of the low raised beds in the East yard. The other low raised bed will have our short season corn planted in it, with more bush beans planted in between.

By the time those are in, the elm seeds should be done dropping, and I can finally do something about that bed along the chain link fence. The mesh tunnel may be all bent up, but it’s still doing its job of keeping the bed from being suffocated by seeds. I’ll be replanting the bed with my remaining packet of Hopi Black Dye sunflower seeds, and pole beans.

I might skip planting into the chimney block planters at the other section of chain link fence entirely, this year. I’ll have to see how badly the elm roots have invaded. There’s still the trellis bed that still needs work, but can be planted in before that’s done. Plus, the bed in the old kitchen garden that will be getting wattle weave walls added. It could probably be planted in before that’s done, too.

It feels like I’m way behind on getting the direct sowing done, but it’s only June 2 today – our previous average last frost date. Which means most things couldn’t actually be safely direct sown until after today, anyhow! We had so many insanely hot days, lately, everything feels off.

Having said that, it’s June, now.

Half the year is pretty much gone already.

Good grief.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: finally assembled!

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Today, my goal was to at least plant the melons in the main garden area. Before I could do that, however, the bed needed to be prepared.

Not the soil, though. That was already done.

The frame that never got fully assembled last year.

First, though, I had to be able to access it, which meant using the corded weed trimmer, so I had to wait until everything was dry enough from this morning’s rain.

After weeding the bed earlier, I covered it with plastic to keep out windblown seeds, cats and hopefully bake any new weeds that tried to come up. Considering the paths were so full of dandelions in full seed, I was glad of it!

I did pause while I was doing that to check on the carrots. I’d seen some starting to come up yesterday, but with how hot it was expected to get, I left them covered to keep them moist and cool. Today, I took the boards off and set them on the sides of the bed to protect the soil from erosion and digging cats.

For the frame, all I needed to do was attached the 4′ ends to the sides. I debated between attaching them to the ends of the logs, which would make the beds slightly longer, or to set them on top of the logs. I decided to set them on top.

The first step, after moving the 4′ logs away, was to move the soil away from the ends to make space. Then the end logs were lined up with the sides logs, so I could use the width of the side logs to make a stop cut for the section that I needed to remove. The first one worked out pretty good.

Once the sections were cut out, I set the log on the sides and used it to make stop cuts on the side logs to match the width of the ends.

From there, it was cutting away enough wood that, once the end log was in place, the top would be about the same height as the side logs. That part took a bit more fussing and more removal of material.

Once it was done and the end log was in place, there was quite a gap under it. I used the bits and pieces of wood that was cut off to fill the space, rather than just fill it with soil. I didn’t want to waste good soil!

Then I repeated the process on the other side.

Which I did a really crappy job on! But, they fit together, and that’s all I really needed! Once again, the scrap bits of wood were pushed under the log at the end to fill in the space, before the soil at both ends was leveled.

The whole thing was more of a pain then it should have been, but it is what it is!

The only thing that needs to be done now is to drill holes through the corners, then drive a rod through to secure the logs together. Right now, the end logs could get knocked of fairly easily.

In time, more logs will be added to make this bed taller, but for now, the priority is to frame all the beds and make the new trellis beds. In time, I hope to make all the beds about 4 logs high (assuming logs the same size as now). That’s what the high raised bed is, and I’m finding that height ideal to work with.

It’s going to get a few years to get to that point, though! There’s only so many dead trees we can harvest for this. That and having nice, straight 18′ lengths for the sides is not as easy as you’d think!

This one, however, is finally done!

It only took about a year… !!!

The Re-Farmer