Part of my morning rounds now includes checking on all the garden beds.
With the kiddie pool planted with Zucca melon, near the strawberries, I made sure to check them out.
One of them was squished!
The mulch around it was flattened, too, in an almost perfect circle. It looked like a cat took a nap on it!
I lifted it up and found that it did not seem to be damaged. I found some short support posts that used to be part of a canopy tent frame that a tree fell on a few winters ago. I set one beside each melon. A cat could still lie on the mulch beside in between, but not on a melon plant – at least not without being right up against a stick!
Yesterday, I’d turned the raw sod on the next raised bed that needed to be shifted. I’d hoped the exposed roots would get to back in the sun, but instead, they got watered by the series of storms we got. I was going to my mothers, so I didn’t do any weeding, as it would have been too messy. Instead, I used the thatching rake to break up some clumps around three sides and level them a bit, then set out boards to mark where the logs will go.
Then I just used a garden fork to turn the soil from the bed in it’s old location, piling it into the new location. Against, I didn’t try to weed, so it went really fast. This bed was in so much better condition than the last one, with all that creeping Charlie in it! Once the soil was moved, I used the rake to level the edge, as well as the area where the bed was that would become path, before adding the last of the boards to frame around it.
Then I had a few things to do, before doing to my mother’s and helping her with her groceries. These days, she just gives me her list and I do the shopping for her, and put it all away. It was actually a pretty good visit, until just before I left. She’s started to talk about coming here to the farm for a visit. The problem is, she behaves so badly here, especially towards my family, they don’t want her here. She also has no interest in seeing what we’ve done here at the farm. She want to see reasons to tell us what we’re going wrong, tell me how terrible I am at taking care of the place (because I’m doing things differently than she did), and rag about what a terrible parent I am for keeping the girls tied to my apron strings (the idea that they chose to out here to help with the property, and their disabled father, just doesn’t sink in with her), and so on. I tried to explain to her about the problems with her behaviour. The truth is, I’d love for my mother to come and visit. I’d love to be able to show her the progress we’ve made, and talk about our plans. But that is not anything my mother has any interest in.
One of the things I’d showed her on my phone was some video I’d taken of the tree that fell on the outhouse, then of the swaying of the trees. She commented on all the “dry” trees (the dead spruces), and I said we need to cut them down. She asked if I’d talked to my brother about this and I told her, yes (I’d already told her I’d sent him the video), and that we’d be cutting down the dead trees. Then I corrected myself and said that it would mostly be my younger daughter doing that.
At which point, my mother started saying that using a chain saw was a “man’s job”, and she can’t do that. I told her, Mom, anyone can use a chainsaw. But that’s a man’s work! I should get my brother to do it!
So… we aren’t doing enough, because we’re not doing things the way she wants them to be done, but we’re also not supposed to be doing any “men’s work” because we’re female.
Well, at least this time, she didn’t go on about how sorry she feels for me, not having a man around the house.
I guess, because my husband is disabled, he’s not a man anymore?
She says awful stuff like that all the time, but when I tried to explain that people don’t want to be around her because of this, she twisted things around to make herself as the victim and me as the big meany.
Not a good way to end the visit.
I did have somewhere else to go, though. I’d made arrangements with a homesteading friend to buy some eggs. She wasn’t going to be home, so they were going to be tucked into a safe spot outside, where I could also leave the payment. I didn’t want the eggs to be outside in this heat for long – when I started writing this, we were at 23C/73F, with the humidex putting it at 28C/83F, and it was hotter where my mother lives than here – so I wanted to leave as soon as I could. I actually got there before my friend had left, so we even got to catch up for a bit – and she gave me extra eggs, because she needed the room in her fridge! 😄
I was considering whether or not I could continue on the bed once I got home, but there’s no way I can do that kind of work in this level of heat and humidity. It will wait until the morning.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter by the afternoon, and we’re supposed to get more rain in the evening.
*sigh*
I’d really like just a few day’s break in the rain, so the ground and dry up a bit and we can try mowing some lawn again. At least the parts we managed to do, previously, since the taller stuff is just too wet. We’d need probably a week without rain before we could do anything about those areas.
Or a couple of cows to graze the outer yard for a week or two!
We really need some grazing animals! As long as we could keep them out of the garden beds, I’d be letting them graze in the main garden area. That would be good for the soil, too.
My daughter wants sheep, for their fleece, as she wants to spin her own yarn. I would like a couple of milk goats. That would be on top of the chickens I want to get!
We’ll get there. It might take a while, but we’ll get there.
For now, building up the garden beds is the main focus.
My brother and I were both saying how we don’t remember there ever being so much water in the yard before. Even when it flooded, a couple of springs ago, it didn’t get this bad. Yes, the flooding was more severe in places, but the ground didn’t get saturated right up to the house, and stay saturated for so long, like it is now! Every time it rains, the standing water returns, because the ground it just too saturated to absorb it. This, even though we have high drainage in our soil, what with it being basically gravel with a few inches of top soil.
Oh! I found an excellent picture of what our soil is like, at this web site.
This image belongs to Joselito (Lito) M. Arocena, UNBC and was taken in Edmonton, Alberta, but it’s exactly what we’ve got here, too. If there is any different I could find, it would be that we have more small rocks in between the second and third layers.
I keep hitting them with the garden fork or spade, while shifting the beds!
Yet another reason why raised beds are the way to go for our gardening!
For now, I just want to get these last two beds done, and get the last of the transplants in. If there’s room for direct sowing, that would be bonus, at this point.
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 