While taking video of the peppers for the garden tour yesterday, I spotted what I thought was a tiny pepper beginning to form. It turned out to be the remains of a blossom. From what I could see, if it did develop into a pepper, it would be our first one.
Today, I went to take another look. After moving the dried remains of petals off, I did indeed find a teeny, tiny beginnings of a pepper.
An absolutely adorable little tree from, no bigger than the tip of my thumb.
I am so happy we have so many frogs this year. I wish they could make a bigger end on the mosquito population, though! Lots of frogs, but no dragonflies.
Gotta set up some bat houses at some point. Walking around this afternoon, the air was filled with the whining of mosquitoes. It’s absolutely insane, how many there are this year!!
Thankfully, I wasn’t needing to be out there for long. My daughter and I had our back to back medical appointments, after doing my mother’s med assist this morning, followed by a trip to the pharmacy, so we were away most of the day. Plus, it’s been raining off and on all day. Very happy for the rain, too! Not much to do in the garden right now, anyhow. Just see how much more the deer have eat, and stare perplexedly as all the things that just aren’t growing this year.
*sigh*
As my SIL once said about their own garden; if they had to live off of what they grew, they’d starve! They weren’t trying for any sort of self sufficiency. Just to supplement. We, on the other hand, are planning our garden out specifically to have a combination of fresh eating, freezing, canning and winter storage. Last year, we at least were able to freeze a few things. This year, I don’t think we’ll even have anything more than for fresh eating.
We do still have just under 50 days before first frost – a bit longer, if we go by the adjusted average, though I certainly won’t count on it. Who knows what might happen in that time! Maybe, things will actually start suddenly growing and producing and we’ll have a long and mild fall, with plenty to harvest at the end of the season.
Yesterday, I was able to connect with the scrap guy, and he was scheduled to come over this morning to see what there was to see. After opening the gate for him, I stayed out to give the garden a watering, while keeping an eye out to make sure our vandal didn’t suddenly show up. Given his recent threat of “retribution” in a phone message to my brother, we just never know what he’s going to do next.
As I was watering the winter squash interplanted with now-dry corn, I spotted a tiny green friend on a leaf.
I paused to take a photo, then continued watering – and spotted another one.
And another.
And another!
There were so many tree frogs, just chilling on the dried corn leaves!
There was one larger frog, sitting with its eyes closed. Most of the others were no bigger than my thumbnail! I was absolutely enchanted by the one that was just sort of peeking at me over the bend of the leaf it was on.
I so love our tree frogs! Especially when they’re in the garden.
Eat those slugs, my little friends! Feast away!
I had just finished watering and was putting the hose away when I heard the scrap guy driving in. Perfect timing!
The first thing to look at was right nearby – the years of aluminum cans that we’ve been collecting since moving out here. Then we went to look at the old threshing machine and the three cars. There is other metal around those cars that they can take, too, plus a stack of salvaged steel doors that have been sitting outside for so long, they are no longer useable. I almost forgot to show him the old truck (or half a truck) that’s almost completely buried in burdock and weeds. He took photos as we went around, and asked about the old vehicles and farm equipment beyond the outer yard that we could see. I need to get clearance from my brother on those, because I think he has plans for some of them. There are also the old appliances and even the old bikes my daughter and I took down from the hayloft in the barn, and other things laying about that I was able to say yes to having removed.
I took him through the barn – the old cow stall where the collection of batteries we found while cleaning up is partially blocked with my brother’s stuff – to the former hay yard. I need to clear it with my brother, but we should be able to get almost all those old vehicles, and the old, broken snowmobiles, removed. Having them there is dangerous for the renter’s cows. They will actually try and eat things like the vinyl seat covers on the snowmobiles.
In fact, we had a hard time getting into the old hay yard because of them. We haven’t had any reason to go through that door in the barn until today, so I was expecting it to be blocked by overgrown nettle and weeds, but something else was blocking the door. Thankfully, I was able to open it wide enough to reach and move it, though not without difficulty.
It was a radiator.
Small, but rather heavy for its size.
I remember seeing it leaning against the barn along with some other junk. How the cows managed to drag it in front of the door, I have no idea!
After our walkabout, he was honest with me. For just the threshing machine and 3 cars, plus the appliances, it isn’t worth it for them to come out. When they go to a site, they bring along an excavator and other heavy equipment, plus a scale to weigh on site, to be able to load things. If, however, we were able to include the vehicles in the old hay year, that would make it worth the trip for them. If we could add some of the other old vehicles and farm machinery beyond the outer yard, even better.
So I will have to talk to my brother about that.
We will also need to go through some of the vehicles to take things out, as some of them seem to have been used for storage. One of them looks like it has at least one heavy duty tarp in it. Until we take it out, there’s no way of knowing if it’s still useable, or if it’s been there so long, it’s become brittle.
As for the aluminum and batteries, I asked him if it would be better for us to just load it into the truck and take it in ourselves. He said yes.
So that is something we will need to plan on. We might have difficulty fitting it all into the box of the truck. If we remove our bags of hard sided grocery bags from the back of the cab, we should be able to fit the dozen + batteries in there.
That should give us a few bucks, at least. The aluminum would be by weight. I have no idea what the batteries would give us. There are some very different sizes and shapes in there, too!
He’s going to email me with some information later, and I’ll ask them what their procedure is for drop offs.
After that was done, I was talking to my younger daughter, and she asked what plans I had for the day. She was wondering if we could make a trip to the city. She has been saving up for a really good pair of boots – she’s after something all season and high quality, to last her for many years. There is a specific outlet in the city she wanted to go to.
The location of this store is near the Costco we normally go to, so I was familiar with the route. My older daughter transferred some funds so that we could also pick a few things up at a nearby Superstore. So shortly after the scrap guy had come and gone, my daughter and I were on the road to the city.
We drive right into the predicted storm.
I love the tires on our truck! It’s been almost a full year since we got it and, while the monthly payments make things tight, it’s worth every penny!
We stopped at my mother’s town to pick up gas and breakfast (at lunch time), then continued on our way. My daughters were messaging each other to keep us up to date, and we learned that the rain we’d left behind as we got closer to the city, did reach our place with a lovely downpour. I was so happy to hear that!
Once we reached the outlet my daughter wanted to go to, I dropped her off then went to the nearby Superstore. I had barely started shopping when I got a message from my younger daughter.
It was a bust. They recommended a different store on a street I’m not familiar with.
I quickly finished my shopping – we didn’t need much – then went to pick her up. We considered trying this other store, but my daughter was pretty upset – I still don’t know what went wrong, but I’m sure she’ll be able to tell me later – plus we had refrigerator items among the groceries, so we went home, instead. Courtesy of my older daughter, we took a different route to go to the town nearest us, first, and pick up some Dairy Queen using coupons we got in the mail recently. That was a lovely treat from her!
Once we were at home, I looked up the store on the street they recommended. It turns out that, while it’s on another part of the city, it’s in the north side, and pretty easy for us to get to.
It also turns out they have another location, under a different store name, that was just a couple of blocks up from the store I’d dropped my daughter off at! The only difference it that the recommended location includes “casual” shoes by this outlet, which is not what my daughter is after, so that doesn’t matter.
*sigh*
We really need to get this done before winter, so I will happily make an extra trip for it.
I know my daughter feels bad about dragging me out for a “wasted” trip, but it did allow me to pick up some stuff that’s not available locally, so it’s not wasted at all. I just wish she could have found what she was looking for!
Some of those leaves growing up from vines on the ground are taller than my waist! The vines climbing the cherry trees are really taking off, and blooming.
If you click over to the next picture, you will see my little green friend that I found in the main garden area. The onion flower stalk it’s sitting on is bigger than the frog!
Later on, I went back out to finish painting the catio.
I thought a quart would be enough. I was wrong, but by so very little!
If you click through to the second photo, you’ll see that I finished painting the mesh in blue. I didn’t try to get into the spaces to cover the white on the frame. I just wanted to make sure the rusted mesh was protected. When more black paint is in the budget again, we’ll give the while thing a second coat. Except for the top, of course, since that would require taking the roof panels off.
Once everything is dry, we can replace the cat hammock and then it’s basically done. Getting more paint is not a necessity, since all the important bits are now protected with at least one coat of paint.
The cats will be happy to be allowed back in there!
I find this kitten, curled up like this and napping, all over the place! Usually someone in a sun spot, in the open, on the grass. Today, he decided the kibble house roof would be his curl up spot.
I was actually able to pet him while he slept. Usually, when I try that, he wakes up and runs off. Today, when three adult cats pushed their way through, demanding pets and waking him up, he didn’t run away! I even got to touch his back a bit before the other cats pushed themselves under my hand. I stopped trying, because I didn’t want the bigger cats to end up pushing the little one right off the roof.
I tried to do a head count after feeding the cats this morning. I think I counted 41 this morning. I may have counted a cat twice, but I don’t think so.
*sigh*
Anyhow.
Today, we’re looking at a relatively bearable high of 23C/73F. As I write this, we’re at 21C/70F, with a humidex of 25C/77F. We got a little bit of rain last night, so I have decided not to water the garden today. I’ll definitely have to, tomorrow, though. The system that blew through barely touched us, but other areas in our province got enough that people in my local gardening groups had their gardens completely flooded out.
This morning I finally made some follow up calls. I left a message with the company that will be repairing our septic expeller. I got through to the scrap guy and told him about the threshing machine and cars that we have permission to get cleaned up. He will be coming over tomorrow morning to look at things and see what they’re dealing with. They were also supposed to take the collection of old batteries we found while cleaning up in the basement and garage. Those will be harder to get at, now that my brother is storing things in the barn, but we should still be able to do that. It will be good to finally get those bags of aluminum hauled off. We’re looking at almost 7 years of cans collected. With all the cat food cans in there, the outside cats keep digging into on corner and making a mess.
At least it’s just in the one spot, though!
I look forward to being able to clear out more of the old vehicles, but I have to clear with my brother, which ones he says can go or not.
I have what have become the usual beans – all three kinds – G Star patty pans and Forme de Couer tomatoes, but today I picked the largest of the purple Dragonfly peppers. There are quite a few more, but I’m giving them more time to ripen.
Of course, I also fed the outside cats and, as I was going around the sun room door, I found a little green friend.
This little guy was not much bigger than the top of my thumb! He was above the rain barrel, where I have a board for the diverter to rest on, this rock, and a brick on the other side, to hold it in place.
In yesterday’s sudden, severe storm yesterday morning, the brick actually got knocked right off, and the diverter almost did, too!
Gosh, I love these little tree frogs! I like all the frogs, but these ones are just too adorable!
That was about all that was usual about today, but the update will need its own post, next!
We’re expecting heat but no rain for the next while, so it looks like I’m going to be back at watering the garden every morning again. I worked on that while the girls took care of eyes baby, cleaning and treating her eyes, then feeding her cat soup with the modified kitten baby bottle. That made a mess, of course, so she was looking really bedrabbled when I finally saw her outside!
While I was watering, I saw a little green friend on the grape leaves.
While watering the G Star pattypan squash, I found a squash I’d somehow managed to miss seeing before. It’s a bit bigger than I would normally let it get, but it’s still in the tender stage. I got a pretty good handful of Carminat beans and a few Dalvay shelling peas.
There was one Yukon Chief corn stalk that didn’t survive being broken by the wind, and it had a tiny little cob on it. I went ahead and shucked it and, small as it was, it was ripe. I ate it raw, and it was quite tasty. So I took a chance and harvested the ripest looking cobs I could find. Only one probably could have used a few more days on the stalk. I decided to harvest some of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and even found a few Seychelles beans in the bed with the Crespo squash. I’m happy with the carrots I picked this morning. There isn’t much left in the bed, including the two that have gone to seed. I really hope we’ll have the space to plant more carrots next year.
I was happy to see that we FINALLY have ripening chocolate cherry tomato. Just two, really, and one looked almost ready to pick, but I left it for now.
With having such small harvests for the past while, most have not had enough to make it worth including in a meal, so we’ve been setting some things aside. We had enough that, with this morning’s harvest, I decided to use it all up. I was inspired by A Jeanne in the Kitchen’s Low Country Boil. We had no seafood, and I just used what we had. Except the peppers, since I can’t eat those without gagging for some reason, but we did have a couple of little San Marzano peppers I could use. I can’t eat fresh tomatoes, either, but I can eat them when they are cooked or processed.
I ended up using half a package of bacon, half a package of fresh sausages, frozen onions from our garden last year, carrots, beans, shelled and sugar snap peas, the patty pan squash, the corn chopped into chunks (not a way I would normally cook corn on the cob), some Russet potatoes we bought that need to be used up, and several cloves of fresh garlic that couldn’t be hung for curing with the others. I think that’s everything. Some of this was browned before adding water.
For seasoning, I used some of the truffle salt we still have left, freshly ground pepper, ground thyme, dried parsley, a couple of vegetable bouillon cubes and a touch of turmeric. I was digging through the fridge and spotted some jars of seafood sauce and oyster sauce, so I went ahead and added some of that to the liquid, too.
I’m quite happy with out it turned out, and it made an excellent brunch.
It will now make an excellent… supper, I guess. I got busy working in the garage and am now realizing I haven’t eaten in way too long.
I’ll post about the progress on the isolation shelter next, but first, I need to eat!
We’re supposed to get rain tomorrow morning, but I’m not counting on the forecast. The garden needed watering. So, while I had a sprinkler going in the main garden, I took off the diverter on the full rain barrel in preparation to water the south garden beds.
Look what I found hiding under the down spout!
I just love these tree frogs! They’re so adorable!
Between the smoke and the heat, I decided to work on a semi-indoor job today. The inner sun room door is not meant to be exposed to the elements the way it is, when we have both doors wide open as we do for most of the summer. Since we’ve got outdoor paint left over from doing the stump bench and table, I decided to use it on the door.
I’ve got inside and outside shots starting after I’d scrubbed the door down and removed the loose bits of veneer, then after using masking tape on it. I made sure to cover the hinge plated, door knob roses and the latch.
One of the things I noticed as we cleaned and cleared stuff shortly after we moved here is that any doors that got painted, no one taped off anything. Which is almost painful to see, when the antique door knob/skeleton key plates, and even the knobs themselves, were painted over. Unlike the door I’m painting now, which is a modern, hollow core door, these are solid wood doors, too. I’d love to strip the paint off and maybe stain or varnish them, but that’s a project for well into the future!
I got the first coat of paint on, and I figure this is going to need at least three coats. We might end up finishing off the gallon of paint on this! It would have been nice to use the same blue as the outer door, but we use what we’ve got. That outer door isn’t going to last too much longer, anyhow. Like the one it replaced, it’s already starting to come apart in places.
Depending on the weather, I hope to get another coat done tomorrow. I’ll be heading out tomorrow morning on some errands, then the next day I’ll be taking my mother to her medical appointment. My younger daughter is feeling better now – she was actually able to eat! – so maybe she’ll be up to doing a coat or two while I’m gone, and if it doesn’t rain. We shall see. With the first coat on, at least the door won’t be getting any worse while waiting for more coats!
Going out in the mornings is such fun these days! There are so many babies to see.
Granted, most of them are not as willingly photogenic as this little model of mine!
What a cutie!
These ones are willing to pause for pictures, as long as I don’t get too close!
I’m not sure where the tortie was hiding.
The love to play in the holes in the shrine’s base.
As these little guys aren’t up to going to the kibble house, yet, I brought over a bowl for water as well as kibble. Now that they are eating solid food regularly, I figured Rosencrantz could do with less kitties still nursing because they are thirsty.
While working in the garden, I spotted an adorable little green baby on a corn leaf.
Can it be any cuter? 💚🐸
It was about as big around as a quarter.
My daughters have been getting tree frogs visiting their window for most of the summer. The same three frogs, in small, medium and large! 😄 This one falls under the “small” category.
How can you tell it was nice out today? I got so much done outside to post about! :-D
I just wanted to share some of my finds today. Like this adorable little guy.
The tree frogs seem to really like the sacks we’re using to grow potatoes! I keep finding them, all tucked in and napping. :-)
Though we have almost no grapes at all this year, the few we do have are managing to survive and ripen.
I am just loving how the colour is changing on this squash! Our one and only winter squash. Though there are many little ones growing, even if they don’t all die off as they have been, I don’t think there’s enough growing season left for them to fully ripen.
The melons, on the other hand…
The Halona melons turn orange as they ripen! I’m sure that was obvious on the seed packet photo, but I didn’t even think to look.
There was something I missed completely when I took this photo, though.
I saw another one that was starting to turn colour, too, and lifted it to check the weight, only to see the stem come off. So I went back to the first one and realized it was completely detached from its stem already!
Aren’t they adorable?? <3
After picking one of each melon type to taste test, and they both turned out to be under ripe, I look forward to seeing how different these ones taste.
There always seems to be something new to find when I do my rounds!
Some are good, some are not so good, and some are… kind of in between. :-D
Finding holes in the ground from skunks digging for grubs is not unusual. This morning, however, it was VERY unusual! I found probably a hundred off them over by the sweet corn and sunflower blocks! They were in the open areas around them, but also right in among them.
The skunks (I’m assuming there was more than one) seem to have worked their way through two corn blocks and about one and a half sunflower blocks. Only the corn block furthest north was completely untouched. Judging from how many holes there were, I’m guessing it had something to do with very full little bellies!
Before we planted here, and were just mowing, I never saw divots. My guess is that the area was so dry and sun baked, there simply weren’t any grubs in the soil. Now that we’ve started to amend the soil and have been watering regularly, plus all the rain we’ve recently had, it’s now a skunk buffet!
I don’t mind the skunks digging up the grubs. They have no interest in the plants. The only problem was that some of their digging was close enough to our already struggling corn and sunflower plants, that roots were exposed. I worked my way through the rows, pushing the soil back into those holes, at least. The others, I left. There were just too many, and I don’t care if the weeds have their roots exposed!
It took a long time, but we now have our very first vine making its way across the top of the squash tunnel! This luffa had reached the top some time ago, but not gone over.
The winter squash still has a ways to go, but it’s working on it!
Had conditions been more ideal, this structure would at least have had the walls completely covered in vines by now, if not the “roof” as well. Given what a tough year for the garden it has been, I’m quite pleased with what we have!
The girls moved the canopy tent over the picnic table by the fire pit for me this morning, so I dragged a hose over to give the table a bit of a power wash. While there, I checked out the nearby currant bush.
We only rarely watered this bed by the fire pit at all this year, yet the currant actually has a few berries on it! After picking these, I checked on the two currant bushes near the main garden beds and found a few more. Those ones did get watered more often, but are located under trees. They get a lot less sunlight, and even with the rains we’ve been having, they would have gotten less. The one by the fire pit is on the south side of the maple grove and has no overhanging branches, so even with almost no watering, it has more berries. Even so, the berries are a lot smaller and less juicy than they should be. I’m surprised there are any at all, to be honest!
This morning, I fussed around with the potato grow bags. Some of them were falling over, so I secured them to the chain link fence, then straightened the bags out again; the tops of the bags are more to keep critters out than anything else.
In the process, I uncovered this little guy.
So incredibly adorable!!!
Finding one is exciting enough, but then I found this slightly bigger one!
This one wasn’t too impressed with my moving the bags around. :-D
These are probably my favourite type of frog. :-D And we’ve seen so many of them, as well as the more common wood frogs, this year!
As we develop our permanent garden beds, providing shelter and moisture for frogs is on our list of things to include. :-)
Today is supposed to be our last comfortable day before the heat comes back, and no rain is predicted for a few more days, so I will be heading out to apply cayenne pepper to some of our garden beds after this. Especially our purple beans. Checking the garden cam this morning, I caught a young buck in the garden, nibbling on something. The summer squash was blocking the view, but there is only one thing where that buck was standing; our purple beans. I didn’t even notice the damage, this morning! The purple beans are a lot bushier and leafy than the other types, but it likely explains why I’m not seeing as many beans on there. I think the deer are actually avoiding the leaves to eat the beans, instead, judging from what I do see, when I am looking closely to find beans to pick.
We keep our containers from things like sour cream, and had one with a transparent lid. I poked a whole bunch of little holes in the lid, then emptied the bulk packages of cayenne pepper into the 500ml container, to create a shaker. I’m hoping the holes aren’t too small. We shall see how it works!
The Re-Farmer 