rain

The babies are (mostly) back!

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When I headed outside to see how much I could get done in the heat, I had quite the surprise, hissing and spitting at me!

The sun room babies are back!

Except, one is missing.

They are hanging out on and under the laundry platform right now, which is next to the rain barrel. They weren’t too happy with my going back and forth to refill watering cans, but they didn’t leave the laundry platform.

I replaced the coupling on one of the broken hoses and was able to do some watering further away. I’m not sure if it was necessary, as I was hearing thunder by the time I was heading inside. From the looks of the weather radar, we should get a bit of rain, but nothing substantial. Enough that I should probably bring the transplants inside, I suppose. I don’t want the pots to get all blown around and knocked over.

I didn’t make it back to the garden bed, unfortunately.

Okay, that was one heck of an interruption.

I decided to look up old posts to see how far along we were at this time, last year. As I was doing that, the trees outside my window suddenly started swaying like crazy. So I ran to the sun room to bring the transplants in.

We were in a downpour!

There are only 6 trays left to bring in, so it didn’t take me long, but I got completely soaked!

Now that I’m dried off and changed, I look out my window, and the trees are barely moving. The rain has already moved on!

Because I used the rain barrel earlier, I left the diverter off so it could refill. It was about half full. I’ll have to check it and see if it needs to be put back. There was a LOT of water pouring into the barrel as I brought in the trays!

Wow.

Now… where was I?

Ah, yes…

Looking at posts made in June last year, we didn’t get the last of our transplants – the melons – in until June 24th. On the one hand, that’s a bit encouraging. On the other hand, around the same time, we already had tomatoes and Sweet Chocolate peppers formed. We were already harvesting spinach by now, and about to pull them to be replaced with the last of our onion transplants, but this year, the spinach just isn’t doing well at all, and most are still just tiny little things. A couple of them are bigger, but nothing that can be harvested from.

So we’re not “behind” when it comes to getting everything into the garden, compared to last year, but we were further along in the things that did get into the ground by now. Even our shelling peas, last year, were blooming and starting to develop pods. This year, I just got the shelling peas planted a few days ago!

However, our focus was very different this year. We didn’t do as many tomatoes – we will have lots in the freezer from last year – but instead went with a lot of winter squash and melons. We aren’t doing a lot of peppers, but do have at least as many varieties. Much of our attention has been directed towards getting the existing low raised beds shifted to their permanent positions before planting in them. That’s been slow going, but not shifting them would not have been any faster, since they got so thoroughly invaded with weeds, despite our best efforts.

Well, we’ll see how things work out.

As much as all the rain we’ve been having this spring has slowed things down, What we do have planted is certainly the better for it!

Though, after this downpour, I’m going to have to check the squash and melons, in particular, to see if they were damaged.

Well, we do what we can, when we can.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Water, water, everywhere! Also, I love my phone case

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The rain has slowed down quite a lot, but it’s still coming down. The worst of it has passed us by, and at this point, we’re getting more of a sprinkle than a rain.

Continuous rain for almost 2 days, however, does accumulate!

The area behind the garage is quite the lake. It’s actually larger than it appears in the photo, as much of it is hidden by the grass. The paths between the raised beds are full of water. The area I think someone tried to make into a ditch, along the fence line north of the driveway, is full of water, as is the driveway and the “moat” around the garage. There’s a moat around the storage house, as well, and more water in the space behind it.

The main garden area, where it’s still rough from the last time it was plowed (badly) before we moved here had little pools of water all over, of course. There’s also water in the paths between all the raised beds, and pooling in the area where we tried to grow potatoes, the year it flooded. At the far end of the crab apple trees, where water accumulates every spring, is another area of water that extends almost half way up the rows of silver buffalo berry! There’s even pooling under the crab apple trees.

The old basement is, of course, quite wet. The fans are keeping it down a bit, but some areas don’t just get damp, but pool, so we have go do down and sweep the water into the sump pump reservoir in one area, and into the floor drain in the other half of the basement.

I ended up making an unexpected trip to town. After unlocking the gate and getting into the truck, I reached into my pocket to put my cell phone in the spot I keep it while driving… and it wasn’t there.

Figuring I forgot it in the house, I backed the truck up to the small gate in the chain link fence, so I wouldn’t have to wade through the moat again, then went in to look.

Nothing.

So I tried phoning my cell phone with our land line.

It didn’t even ring, but went immediately to a message saying I was being automatically forwarded to voice mail. So I hung up.

The only thing left was that it somehow fell out of my pocket while I was going to the garage and the gate. So I started back tracking.

I was just reaching the part of the driveway that goes into the yard – which is under the moat surrounding the garage – when I saw a dark rectangle in the grass.

With a muddy tire track running right over it.

Much to my shock, nothing was broken. The case I have for my phone is a very basic wallet type, with a cover over the screen. That case saved my phone! It was quite wet, of course, so there was the warning not to plug in the device. A warning that finally went away, just now!

After wiping off the phone as best I could, I set it over the window vent on the dash and headed into town, did my errand, then headed back. I was able to use the phone to message my family without any problems.

Once inside, I used the toothpick end of a floss pick to clear out any debris that might have been in the port. I also took off the cover, and wiped up the moisture caught in it. Then I used a dual valve balloon pump, kept from our busking days, to dry the port a bit before just setting it on its stand to dry. All seems to be working well, except it’s telling me I can make emergency calls only. So I need to fuss with that for a while.

The main thing is, this thing fell into the edge of a pool of water, got driven over by a truck, and didn’t break!!!

What a relief!

Meanwhile, as I was in town, I got a message from my brother. He has started getting alerts on his phone about overland flooding, telling people not to try to try through flooded areas. It turns out while I was in town, they got flooding alerts, too, though where I was, there didn’t seem to be any issues at all. Where we are, we’re not getting any alerts for flooding at all, so that’s good.

It will probably take several says of no rain for things to dry up enough that we can get back to work on the garden beds and harvesting the dead trees. I am most definitely not complaining, though. This hopefully makes up for the lack of moisture when the snow melted, since we had so little snow this past winter. I definitely want to take a walk beyond the outer yard and see how gravel pit, etc. are. We should have a flowing creek in the municipal drainage ditch right now. When outside, we are hearing cows, but not seeing them, so I’m not sure if the renter’s cows are on this quarter, or if we’re hearing someone else’s cows. The important thing is, the gravel pit and pond should be full of water for them, and the gravel pit, at least, should stay full for the year, since it has so much clay to hold it all in.

It may make some things inconvenient, but I am very thankful for all this rain.

The Re-Farmer

It’s a bit wet out there…

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But it could be worse!

Some places are getting snow! Or a rain/snow mix.

I was able to finish mowing the East yard, which is where the lowest part of the inner yard is. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but through the short grass, you can see the water extending well beyond the little pond in front of the outhouse. The moat around the garage is back, and I’ve been watching the driveway on the garage cam slowly fill with water.

While we have reached 7C/45F out there, we still have a wind chill of -4C/26F It’s gotten cold enough in the house, I turned the furnace back up again!

Amazingly, we still have three fires going in our province! All well to the north of us. Two are under control, and one is “being held” – that one is what’s left of a much larger fire that burned out of control for some time.

The rain, however, is now supposed to continue through to tomorrow evening, instead of ending around noon.

Thankfully, we got those errands done yesterday, don’t need to go anywhere in this. I feel for the people who have to be out there right now!

There is one disconcerting thing, though.

When I’m at my computer, I’m basically right above the septic pump, so I’m basically the only one that can hear it go off. Especially now, when we’ve got both of the new blowers, plus fans, running to try and keep things drier in the old basement. Since we had the pill switch replaced, only once before did we have a situation where it wouldn’t shut off again. It basically fixed itself, though.

Well, as I was working on this post, it happened again. I could hear a change in the sound that immediately got my attention – I’m pretty paranoid about that, these days! I went down to check, and the pump was running, but I could see now water flowing through the filter. It was empty. So I shut off the pump manually, primed the filter, and tried again. The filter emptied, no new water started to flow, and the pump kept running, dry.

So for the last while, I did things like switch out the filter basket (it didn’t seem clogged, but I changed it anyhow). We keep an old hose that’s missing its female connector down there, permanently hooked up to the cold water tap from when the washing machine used to be down there. It makes refilling the filter very handy, but I even sent water running into the inflow opening, at the top of the filter, in case there was something blocking it. It seemed fine. Each time I did something, I tried turning the pump back on again, and it would empty the filter and keep running dry again.

Finally, I opened up the floor drain and sent the hose through, all the way to the tank. That meant fighting to get it through the bottleneck that’s somewhere between the wall and the tank it keeps getting caught on. I suspect that bottleneck is the source of quite a few of our problems. After I got it through, I turned the water on to flush things in the pipe, then ran the hose in the other direction, towards the weeping tile under the new basement, then back to the septic tank again.

Then I turned the power to the pump back on and…

… it stayed off.

After I got back upstairs, my older daughter, who is getting up for her night of working on commissions, checked with me. She could hear that something was going on, and she wanted to know if it was safe to shower! Which is was. Once I heard the septic pump turn on again, I went into the basement and watched the water flowering through the filter. Everything seemed fine, and the pump turned itself off, as it normally would.

This makes me think that there is something the float is getting hung up on every now and then, so it’s not dropping far enough to tell the pump to shut off. Whatever it is, running the hose through seems to have cleared it.

At times like this, I wish we had a gravity system, instead of a pump one! We would just need to make sure the septic field gets insulated every winter. No pumps to worry about, and no electricity needed. I do understand why my dad set up the pump system. There really isn’t anyplace in the inner yard to have a septic field. Too many large trees and their roots to mess things up.

Ah, well. Dealing with this stuff just comes with the territory!

No different than having to deal with moats around the garage and sopping wet driveways! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Wet, wet and more wet – and new growth!

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So the rain started early this morning, and has been pretty constant, so far. The rainfall warnings include possible flooding in places, including our region. Our region is huge, though, and contains quite a few rural municipalities. Where we are is unlikely to have much, if any, where we are. The newly graded roads, however, are probably going to be a real mess!

With the rain, I did short rounds this morning and skipped switching out the trail cams, since I won’t want water getting into the cameras. Short rounds was good, though, because…

… a lovely surprise!!!!

My husband actually came out with me!!!! He caned it rather than drag his walker into the rain, but he did it! I could see he was really struggling near the end, but he did it. I honestly can’t remember the last time he went outside and walked around. It’s probably been at least a year.

As we went around, I checked the beds and we had a lovely surprise in the bed of Purple Caribe potatoes.

The first plants have emerged! Just two, so far that we can see, but this rain is going to be so good for them.

When I was mowing yesterday, I’d put one of the raised bed covers over the German Butterball potatoes, then forgot to take it off, so my husband helped me lift it off to the side, so they could get some rain, too. I had also forgotten to put the extensions on the eavestrough downspouts back after mowing. I’ll have to check the new basement later, and see if that caused any problems. The one corner was already damp and has a fan on it. That was the corner a rain barrel had been left to overflow during a wet summer, and is why we now have weeping tile problems. This basement used to always stay dry, even when the old basement was wet, but not anymore. My brother had found that corner so wet, for so long, there was mold. He cleaned it up with bleach, and when we clear the basement, we also bleached that entire corner, but it still gets wet at times.

So forgetting the extension on the downspout above that corner is not a good thing!

When feeding the outside cats, I didn’t see Broccoli, but we still went around to the garden shed. If I think she might be in there with her babies, I knock on the door, first. Opening the door still startles her, but she doesn’t always run out completely. She gets in and out through the hole in the back wall, and there’s an old chair in that corner. Sometimes, I can just see her butt under the chair, as she waits while I put food out for her. Today, she did actually leave the shed, so I took advantage of that to pick up her kittens and straighten out the self warming mat for them. My husband got to see them, too. If it hadn’t been raining, I would have passed them to him to hold while I straightened out the bedding. More human interaction would be a good thing, but not if they get too chilled in the process!

Speaking of chilled, as I write this, we are at 5C/41F – with a wind chill of -4C/25F! Our expected high for today is supposed to be 8C/46F According to the weather radar, we are under the light rainfall area, with the moderate rainfall passing by to the west of us, with a few places in the south and west of us, getting occasional heavy rainfall. In total, we’re expected to get 50-60mm of rain, which is roughly 2 – 2.5 inches. The rain, with another high of 8C/46F, is expected to continue until about noon tomorrow. Starting Sunday, things are supposed to warm up and we’ll have dry weather for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be enough time for us to get those beds reworked and ready for planting! We should probably lay plastic down to help warm the soil up faster, too. Looking at the long range forecast, there are still going to be cooler nights in the second week of June. Not cool enough for frost, but cool enough that I’d want to find ways to protect our more heat loving transplants.

Which won’t even be in the ground for more than a week.

Pretty much everything we do, revolves around the weather.

If the really long range forecasts can be trusted (they can’t), we’ll have only one day of rain in June, and none in July. June is supposed to have a few highs reaching or surpassing 30C/86F, but right now, July is supposed to have highs of 25C/77F, every day. Literally, every day except the first four, which are supposed to have highs of 24C/75F. So you know that’s going to change a lot by the time we get there!

Well, that should be good for all the squash and melons we’re planting this year! Plus the eggplant and peppers. As long as we can keep up with the watering. One of our best gardening years was a drought year with heat waves. I’m still amazed by how many melons we got that year. It was so hard to get them properly watered on the squash tunnel, and the plants were so spindly, and they they produced so well! This year, they will be closer to the house for easier watering, and have better soil conditions. I am hopeful that we will have a much better gardening year, this year, and actually harvest enough to do some canning and preserving of things other than tomatoes and onions!

Time will tell.

The Re-Farmer

Still there!

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Broccoli was eating at the kibble house, so I took a quick check.

She has not moved her babies! 

The old garden shed is a good place for them, other than the fact that we actually still use it. 

In other things, the rain started yesterday, off and on, and will continue throught today.  No downpours or anything like that.  Just intermittent light rain.  Enough to make the ground too wet to work in the garden beds or process the felled spruced.

If my husband is up to it, there will be a trip into town for some blood work. 

I don’t think he’s up to it.

One of my older daughters, however, has offered to treat us to some Chinese food today, so a trip to town is still a possibility!

That would be a nice treat on a wet and chilly day. 🩷

The Re-Farmer

It’s a little wet out there

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Just before 8am, the sky opened, the thunder roared, and down it came!

In short order, we had water pooling in all the usual places – except it usually takes a lot longer to get to this point!

Funny. I only counted about 22 cats when I put food out this morning. 😁 I didn’t put any on the cat house roof this time. They are all willing to crowd into the sun room, the kibble house and under the water bowl shelter.

The septic guy was supposed to come this morning. I called him and suggested tomorrow, since it’s supposed to be raining off and on all day. He agreed, though he will call first to ask how wet the ground is. It doesn’t take much for a truck that heavy to start sinking!

The rain was lighter when I fed the cats, so I did my morning rounds, including switching out the trail cam memory cards. I made sure to bring some tissue this time. There has been condensation inside the door of the solar camera, accumulating on the window in front of some lights. On the inside, the little window is recessed to fit the 3 LED lights it covers, so there was no way to just wipe it off. The lights are for settings, not for active recording, so it’s not essential to have them clear, but it gave me a chance to get rid of the moisture.

While it was raining…

Baseball cap visors are handy things!

So it will be a mostly indoor day. It’s election day, While I voted already, my daughter hasn’t (only the 2 of us have valid photo ID). The polling station is in our little hamlet, but I plan to go into town after, and get those medical files dropped off.

Hopefully, my mother’s car will behave!

The Re-Farmer

We got rain!

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Working in the heat must have been really getting to me. I went to be early last night, and ended up sleeping for about 10 hours.

I did wake up briefly at about 4am and could hear the rain and see lighting out my windows, as I tried to convince myself to get out of bed and go to the washroom, only to fall asleep for several more hours.

So I was late heading outside for my morning rounds. The cats were waiting for me.

They do love having access to the sun room again! Especially when it’s really hot out. That concrete floor stays pretty cool.

Of course, there’s a cat in the bin.

The cats that weren’t in the sun room were very wet, just from walking across the grass! It was even still, almost, barely, just a tiny bit, raining.

The rain barrel by the sun room was completely full, though! Which means I slept through quite a lot of rain.

I also spotted this guy through the sun room window.

He was tucked into the bin we keep under the laundry platform bench, where the bucket of clothes pins can be kept dry – and for extra shelter for the cats. The folding closet doors we used to put transplants on for hardening off is still there, and the cats are enjoying the shade it provides on the bench, too.

To be honest, when I first spotted Sad Face in there through the window, with his chin on one of the bricks, I wondered if he were dead, he looks so rough. Then he lifted his head.

His behaviour has definitely changed over the past few days that I’ve seen him. Could be the heat. Could be injuries. Could just be getting old, on top of everything else. He’s hanging out on the laundry platform a lot more, and not running away as quickly. Aside from the wounds on his face, he does not appear to be injured. No limping or anything like that.

This morning, I left some kibble for him on the platform, as much to keep him from chasing the other cats away from the food bowls as to let him have food without moving too far. I did need to get the diverter for the rain barrel, though, and it’s kept on the laundry platform between uses. I tried to be slow and careful in moving it, but he did move out of the bin and disappear. Not long after, I found him under one end of the bench, curled up against the bin – and another cat was eating the food I left for him. He seemed totally uninterested in food, or even moving very much at all.

As for my morning rounds, everything seems to have really enjoyed last night’s rain. I was messaging with my SIL while outside, and they were in the middle of a downpour at the time. From the looks of the weather radar, they were being hit by the same system that passed over us last night. They really needed the rain, too! So that was good news.

The newest transplants all seem to be doing well. While checking the pots of transplants under the market tent, however, I discovered that the trays at one end of the picnic table were just barely outside the tent roof, and full of water. Among those were the small Jiffy Pellet trays that had zero germination rates. The rain had actually uncovered some of the seeds. They don’t look like they’ve been rotting away, but show no signs of germinating, either! I was able to drain the excess water, push the seeds back into the pellets and top them up with a bit of soil. It’s still possible for them to germinate.

Some of the squash and gourd transplants are getting big enough that they need to get into the ground, but it’s too wet to work on that right now. We’re not expecting more rain for possibly a few days, so we should be able to get started once things dry off later today.

Which is fine. I’ve got some indoor projects that need to get finished, too!

The Re-Farmer

Wet, wet morning

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While the Western parts of the prairies got walloped with snow yesterday, by the time the system reached us last night, it was rain. Some places even got thunderstorms, apparently.

When I headed out this morning, it was still raining pretty heavily, so not a lot of kitties were coming out for kibble! Quite a few of them were inside the cat house, though, so that was good to see. As I went to switch the memory card for the driveway trail cam, I had to walk on the grass to the side of the driveway because it was covered in water.

We seriously need more gravel on that driveway.

While we have not finished winterizing the sun room, we did get the broken glass cleaned up, so I’ve been allowing the kittens to go in. When I topped up their kibble last night, some of them were still in the sun room, so I rigged the doors so that they were mostly shut, but the kittens could still get in and out. Then, because racoons remain a problem, even if we don’t see them, I used my husband’s walker to brace the kibble bin in its shelf, then took the two big bags of kibble my BIL and his family so generously gave us, and tucked them into the old kitchen.

Well, I forgot to put the breaks on, on the walker! This morning, I found the walker had been pushed aside, and the kibble bin open and almost knocked onto the floor. Thankfully, the bin was only half full, so while it was on its side, hung up on some buckets (with a kitten sitting in the kibble!), the kibble wasn’t spilled onto the floor.

Before moving things around, I’d had a shallow bin, designed to fit under beds, on the top of the shelf we used to hold the kibble bins to catch water from the leaking roof. Well, that shelf isn’t there anymore. I wasn’t expecting it to rain this heavily, so there was just stuff set aside against the wall until we could finish cleaning and winterizing the sun room. I had to move those out – and my husband’s walker that had been pushed that far back – so I could set up a bucket to catch the drips.

I will be so happy when that roof finally gets done, though my brother and I are both on pins and needles, afraid our mother will suddenly decide not to pay for it after all. She tends to do that at the last minute, though, so I expect that once the roofers are actually here and the final bill is being tabulated (the total will likely be higher than the estimate, as I expect them to find rot from leaks that needs to be repaired), she’ll try to refuse to pay it. Much like she tried to do after promising to pay for the movers so we would move out here to take care of the place for her.

There was water on the sun room floor, of course, but it’s a concrete floor and not going to be a problem. Seeing how it all flowed across the room to the opposite corner, though, really shows how much the room has shifted since the concrete was poured, and how much that one corner has been undermined.

Speaking of which…

Something knocked the diverter off the downspout above the rain barrel. It had not been full before, but it sure is now, and was starting to overflow. I got the diverter back in place, so it’s not an issue anymore. Getting that barrel empty and set aside for the winter is going to have to be done soon. The girls are going to have to clean the eavestroughs (aka: rain gutters) out again, too. I did pick up rolls of mesh to cover them, but those won’t be put on until after the roof is done. I also picked up a spray sealant to be used after they’ve been cleaned. There are a couple of places where they are leaking. The roof is supposed to be replaced, but I don’t think that includes the eavestroughs.

Looking at the short range forecast, we’re supposed to get a couple of chilly days, with highs barely above freezing, then it’s supposed to warm right up again for about a week, with several sunny and dry days. That will be a great time to get more progress on things, and to finally be able to finish cleaning out and winterizing the sun room. Cleaning the other half of the sun room will require removing the swing bench, the table saw, and a couple of shelves, along with all the stuff in them, outside. Because overnight temperatures have already been going below freezing in there, all the remaining squash have already been moved to the living room. Some of them are still ripening, so they won’t be going to the root cellar, yet.

In putting the stuff back, we need to keep in mind that we’ll be using the sun room as a greenhouse again in the spring. I want to come up with a way to be able to hang those lights we used last spring, more efficiently. If we do it right, the same set up can then later be used in the fall to hang things like strings of onions and garlic to cure.

Wow. I just realized that, if we’re going to be doing things like starting onions from seed again (which we likely will be), we’ll be needing to get those going in just a couple of months. Onions should really be started indoors in January in our area.

The girls and I will go over how the garden went this year and, taking into account the failures due to flooding and other issues out of our control, what worked, what didn’t, what we want to keep doing, what we will stop doing (if only temporarily), and what we don’t want to ever do again! 😄

We have lots of work to get done before the snow flies, and then lots of planning for next year to get working on.

It’s going to be fun!

The Re-Farmer

A day “off”?

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Things were looking pretty good when I headed out to do my morning rounds.

I got a giggle when the tuxedo moved off the chimney liner and, instead of the one white kitten I thought was behind him, there were three! I had a head count of “only” seventeen this morning. I couldn’t tell if any cats had stayed in the cat house, with the heater bulb plugged in again, overnight or not.

It was clear we’d had some rain last night – and a fair bit of wind!

The joy of time stamps. The gate cam stand got blown over just before 6pm last night. My daughter and I were still outside, cleaning up after finishing the kibble house roof, at the time. The winds had certainly picked up by then!

As I write this, it’s 4C/39F out there, with a “reel feel” of -4C/25F. It started raining after I finished my rounds and was back inside. I might have a day “off” from working on the old kitchen garden today, though it is supposed to clear up this afternoon and warm up to 8C/46F. The more I can get done, the better, because tomorrow we’re either going to get more rain, or between 5-10cm/2-4in of snow, depending on which app I look at.

I’m happy to say that, while I did have pain issues last night – I had to get one of my daughters to open a can of wet cat food for me, because I couldn’t – I’m in a lot less pain today then I was expecting to be. I even got sleep last night.

Oh, that reminds me. I’d written before about some sleep issues I was having, unrelated to pain or even my usual “busy brain.” It was centered around a strange sort of pressure and almost a buzzing feeling in my head, as soon as I went to bed. A clue to the cause came when my husband and I traded phones, because my phone’s Bluetooth wouldn’t work with the new OBDII reader he got me. That turned out to be a known problem with my model of phone, but not with his, newer model.

My habit when going to bed was to put my phone on the charger, then set it up on a phone stand on my nightstand, or on a wireless charger in the wall shelf where a headboard would be, if my bed had one. I preferred not to use the wireless charger, as I kept having to take my phone out of its case for it to work properly. My phone serves as my clock and alarm, but I also do my nightly devotions on a Bible app at my bedside, and often set it to play relaxing music for several hours to help me sleep.

I’d already suspected my phone when the discomfort in my head was slightly worse if the phone was in the shelf near my pillow, rather than on the night stand. When it got so much worse after switching to a newer phone that sleep was increasingly difficult, I tried an experiment. I can’t just shut my phone off for the night since, as I mentioned, I use it as my alarm clock, etc. So I just set my phone up on the charger, further away from my bed. Just a few feet, really.

The strange pressure/buzzing in my head went away, and my sleep has improved.

Well. As much as possible with cats in my room. 😁

I have no idea what the phone is doing that is causing the problem. It only seems to be an issue when I’ve got it on a charger, not while using it normally, throughout the day.

Weird.

The Re-Farmer

A break in the rain

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When I headed out to do my rounds this morning, we were having a steady, heavy rainfall. I got completely soaked!

The rain did nothing to slow the mosquitoes down, of course. *sigh*

The rain kept falling for hours. It has stopped for now, so I made a quick check on how things are outside, and to see if an expected parcel got dropped off at the gate (it had not). The driveway is half under water again. The low area along the fence line on the north side of the driveway is a pond again, as is the spot in front of the outhouse, behind the garage. The grass hides most of it, but that whole east yard is under water.

People have been posting photos and video online, and I just had to call to check on my mother. The town she is in has been flooding. I have not been able to confirm, but I’ve heard they got about 5 inches – inches, not cm – of rain in 3 hours. That’s almost 14cm. In the news, I’ve heard that parts of the province are expected to get 15cm of rain, but that’s over the day, not in just a few hours! My mother told me that the lane behind her building is a river right now, and the front of her building is under water. Water had been leaking into their common room, too, but people had already been brought in to fix it. The photos I’m seeing posted online are amazing. Even with all the flooding we had this spring, this town did not get that sort of flooding!

We didn’t get anywhere near as much rain as where my mother is, though we got enough that there are areas of water in the paths around the low raised beds. Not so much that the ground level beds are under water, at least. Our squash, melon and potato beds are just very wet, but not in puddles, though there is some standing water in between the sweet corn. I just had to get a picture of the tomato bed in the main garden area. There are so many tomatoes on all the plants! The other tomato beds are also handling things well, and I’m starting to see Yellow Pear tomatoes starting to form. No Chocolate cherry, yet.

I very briefly spotted some kittens on the board pile. They seem to be quite okay with their kibble being softened by the rain. I didn’t try to do more than top up their kibble, as the clouds of mosquitoes along the edge of the spruce grove, where the board pile is, are pretty insane.

We are still under thunderstorm watch, though more for the southern areas than here, with possible hail and torrential rainfall. For us, we’ve still got high winds, but so far, just enough to flatten the hay I haven’t scythed yet, but not enough to take down branches or trees. At least not around the house and inner yard.

Checking the 30 yr record for our area, we are still pretty average. Nowhere near breaking any records for temperature or rainfall. I suspect my mother’s town may have broken some rainfall records today, though!

While we aren’t about to go anywhere soon, because of the condition of our own driveway, the spring flood damage on the roads around us have been almost completely repaired, so at least we will be able to get out, if we really need to. We’re doing quite all right, here, and for that, I am grateful.

The Re-Farmer