Yesterday, I headed out to fix the water pipe to the garden tap. It was hot and muggy, and I had sweat pouring off my face, so if you hear me sounding out of breath in the video below, that is why!
The couplings did work. I had to use both of them.
But then… well… here’s the video.
So… that’s a write off.
In theory, I could just dig out the section between where the couplings are, and my unexpected find, figure out where the third leak is and repair that. However, the pipe is so old, and clearly splitting apart easily, it’s not worth it. It needs to be replaced completely.
So now my plan is to take advantage of end of season sales to pick up a heavy duty garden hose long enough to reach from the house to the garden tap, with slack. I am also thinking of picking up some pipe wide enough to run the hose through it. This way, the hose would be protected by the pipe after it’s buried, but if it does need repair, it can be easily pulled out, then put back in again, without having to dig another trench. It would be even easier to attach a line to one end before pulling it out the other way, do any repaires, then use the line to pull it back through the pipe.
I won’t dig up the water pipe until we have what we need to install a replacement, but I am now very curious as to just why there is that wider diameter section of pipe, and how far it extends. I’m also curious as to just how far the hose section coming out of the ground to attach to the house extends, and how it’s joined to the pipe.
Whatever was done obviously made sense at the time, and it did work for about 50 years, which is pretty darn good!
This was the first time she nursed the babies in the comfort of my bed. She is so tiny!
And filthy. Especially her belly. Those kittens get her very dirty! She has gotten to the point where she actually enjoys being held and cuddled, so chances are pretty good we should at least be able to take a damp washcloth to her.
I spotted the two kittens in the junk pile, without mom around, playing. When it saw me, the black one went and hid, but the other one stayed and watched me while I took photos. The black one has a single small patch of white on its chest that I could see.
The third photo is of a kitten I’ve never seen before. I saw it again this morning, with two other kittens of similar size that I didn’t recognize. I have no idea which mother they came with. There are several of the more feral mamas that had kittens quite early in the spring, and I was wondering when their babies would start showing up.
Beside the main garden, there is an area we’ve allowed to grow wild that is now tall with what I thought was a type of alfalfa but, when I tried to look it up, I couldn’t find any images with white flowers like them.
Whatever it is, it was just buzzing with bees last night, and I managed to get a decent picture.
I also got a picture of our first fresh garlic – after cleaning it off with the hose!
The squash is our first Honeyboat Delicata. The one I hand pollinated from a different type of squash, as there were no Delicata male flowers blooming. There still aren’t. So far, it looks like the cross pollination took. Hopefully, we’ll have at least one Delicata to try and see if we like them, and if the Honeyboat variety really does store well. If so, we will plant them again – with purchased seeds, though, since the seeds from any we grow this year will likely all be cross pollinated.
And finally, a handful of Royalty raspberries I picked this morning! Most of those were from one plant, with a few from a second. The third is the smallest, and its berries are still unripe.
I’m still amazed we got any at all in their transplant year!
I forgot to get a picture, but one of the African Drum gourd female flowers was blooming this morning, so I made sure to pollinate it with one of the male flowers from another African Drum gourd. If it works out, it should be interesting to see just how fast the gourds develop, and if we have a mild enough fall for them to reach full maturity.
In other things, we’re concerned about Leyendecker. He’s getting his medications, but he’s still refusing to eat. We even mixed the new food with the food he’s used to, and he won’t eat either! He also spends most of his days just lying around, but that could be from the medications. This morning, while staying with him in the bathroom, trying to convince him to eat, he just sprawled tragically at the closed door. I took the opportunity to palpate his abdomen. He not only tolerated it, but shifted so I could reach better as I was pushing around where his bladder is. He had just gotten his medications, so it would have been too soon for the pain killers to kick in. If he were having blocking issues, my poking around would have been very uncomfortable for him, and I would have been able to feel an over full bladder. Neither was an issue. So we’re not sure what’s going on with him right now. 😟 We will continue to monitor him.
For now, I’m going to go help my daughter with juicing those cherries we picked. By request, we will be making jelly with them!
I was up way too late finishing this off, then set it to upload while I went to bed. It wasn’t until I watched it together with the girls this morning that I realized I’d inserted a video clip twice somehow. I don’t have the motivation to fix it! 😄
So there we have it: a tour of how the garden is doing, as of a couple of days ago.
I hope you like it! Feel free to watch it on YouTube and give it a like, subscribe, etc. if you wish. 😊
Considering it took me two days to do a relatively small area, I figured it was worth a video!
I am so glad I finally got this done. There was so much dead thatch in there, I spent more time emptying the bad into the wagon, then hauling it away, than actually mowing.
If you look carefully, you’ll see a total of four kittens. Two stay hidden under the spirea.
It looks like the kittens in the cat house are no longer in the cat house. I did see the mama at feeding time. I hope she didn’t move them too far.
My daughter and I headed into town today to run several errands. As we were finishing up, she wondered if the haze we were starting to see what fog or smoke.
It was smoke.
We are now getting air quality advisories for smoke from fires to the east and north of us. Most are on the other side of the lake, but quite a few are way up north, too. As I write this, only two are listed as out of control, and those are nowhere near any towns or villages. Most are listed as under control or being held, with a few as being monitored. Our current fire year isn’t anywhere near as bad at other provinces, but most of those are turning out to be arson. Ours are almost all listed as natural caused.
Right now, I feel like I’ve been totally lazy. Once we got home and put everything away, I tried to catch up on a few things on the computer before changing and heading outside. I was falling asleep in my chair, though, so I lay down to close my eyes for a few minutes.
Almost three hours later, I suddenly woke up, thinking it was morning. !! My brain still feels foggy.
I might still get some work done outside, but we’re at the hottest part of the day now, so not quite yet.
I ended up not being able to get to doing outside work today.
It was actually cooler, but things are still too wet. I just got back from outside. It has cooled down to 23C/73F, and with the breeze, it’s gorgeous out there, but too dark to start anything.
I did, however, get to see a hole bunch of kitten out by the spirea and grape vines. So when I went out to feed the cats, I moved one of the kibble bowls over for them to discover. I’m guessing they must have already been hiding in the spirea, because just minutes later, I saw all six of them at the bowl, enthusiastically eating!
I did get some productivity in, and finally finished putting together video I took on June 1. Here is a tour of our garden, taking one day before our average last frost date.
Of course, a whole bunch has been done since then. I’ll aim to do another garden tour video on July 1 or so, to compare.
Well, the cat videos I took earlier were much shorter and quick to upload to YouTube, so here they are!
First, the kittens.
Gooby, meanwhile, decided he really loved my boot.
Much of today has been a total waste. I got almost no sleep last night, and it was basically all because of the cats! First, there was the constant stream of cats wanting in and out. I swear, even the cats that are outside the door have a sense of when I’m finally lying down and comfortable in bed, because that’s when they start scratching at the door again! As the ladies have been able to tolerate more of the other cats, that means more scratching at the door to be let in or out.
All that, because we’ve got two cats that always go after Nosencrantz, forcing me to keep the door closed to keep them out!
The other cause of interruption was Nosencrantz.
I have one small window I can open – a window with a deep sill the cats like to sit on. The screens on all the new windows are high quality, but the cats have still managed to damage all of them. With mine, I tried to have most of it blocked off with a window fan, a salvaged metal mesh window screen and a hunk of Styrofoam insulation, to protect the screen, but even when the fan was put away for the winter and the window kept closed, the screen would get clawed at. I finally removed it completely – then had to hide it behind the metal mesh screen – because Nozencratnz still wanted claw at it!
We ended up getting what is supposed to be cat proof window screen, and have replaced the screens on several windows, mine included.
Yes. It’s supposed to be cat proof. However, I don’t think even cat proof window screen can withstand a cat sitting up on its hind end and going at it with both front paws! Even if the screen managed to survive the attack without getting holes, chances are it would get yanked right out of the frame, eventually.
That’s what I was trying to stop all night. Nosencrantz is fixated on clawing on that screen! I even jammed the salvaged screen in front of it. It’s narrower than the window, and Nosencrantz would just reach around the metal mesh screen, to claw at the window’s screen! There aren’t even any bugs or blown in fluff that she’s after. She’s just after the screen!
So that was another thing that had me getting up repeatedly. Oh, and also the sound of cats using the carpet as a scratching post, instead of the scratching post… 😕
I’ve now stolen my husband’s box fan, which fills the window almost completely. I just had to stick some cardboard between the wall and a shelf to cover a gap on one side. Hopefully, at least that problem is solved.
The whole thing left me feeling awful by morning. A sleep repeatedly interrupted is far worse than simply being up all night. It’s not even feeling physically sleepy that’s the problem, though I was so physically tired, I felt ill. It’s the affect on mental acuity that really knocks me out.
The girls took care of feeding the outside cats and taking the transplants out so I could sleep in, but I still found myself constantly awakened and having to open and close my door. I finally gave up and tried to leave it open, cat fight or no, only to have the breeze from my open window slam it shut, over and over!
Yeah. I was pretty miserable this morning, and finally gave up.
The afternoon, at least, was better after indulging in my last energy drink. 🙄 I finally went outside to see how much work I could manage to get done.
Which turned out to be far more than I expected.
I took a significant risk today.
I did some transplanting of squash and gourds!
Normally, these would not go in until about the middle of June, but some of them were getting quite large. I didn’t want to keep potting them up, and they were getting so big that taking them in and out of the sun room to harden off was damaging them.
I took photos of the progress and will put together a small video later, but here is a preview.
Four of the transplants were climbers, so I cleaned up the blocks and transplanted them here. Because they all can potentially get quite large, I put them in every other block. In the foreground is the Zucca melon. I put it there so it has room to expand away from the others.
I thought the next one was also a Zucca melon, but when I took out the label, it said African Drum gourd. We have extra, much smaller, seedlings of both. The next two are the Caveman’s Club gourds.
All of them are long enough that I was able to get their tendrils wrapped around the chain link fence and start training them up it or, with the Zucca melon, away down the side. These all are supposed to have fairly large fruit, though with the Caveman’s Club, they are more about length than girth. If any of these reach the point of developing fruit, we’ll figure out how best to support them.
The next thing that had to go in were the Crespo squash.
Then went into the bed we had a hulless pumpkin variety in last year, near the old squash/bean tunnel. This will likely be the last year we use this spot for gardening, and hopefully we’ll be able to plant something for our food forest here, next year. We shall see.
The Crespo squash plants can get really huge, which is part of the reason they went in this far away bed. The old rain barrel I filled yesterday is nearby – but it was only about a quarter full when I got to it today! I couldn’t see if it developed a new crack, or if the seal on one of the old ones gave out.
We really need more rain barrles.
I’m quite glad I found that one last hose in the old garden shed, so I could give this area a thorough watering. I’ll have to keep that up for at least a few days to make sure it’s damp through the new mulch, all the way down through the layers we put here, least year.
I’m reeeeaaallllyyy hoping I didn’t jump the gun by transplanting these so early. There is no sign of frost in the long range forecasts. In fact, June is looking like it’s going to be quite hot, and rainy. If, however, we do find ourselves with a frost warning, I think we’d be able to add covers to protect things fairly well.
After I was done and putting things away, I fed the outside cats for the evening (and chased away a couple of skunks eating their kibble!). Judgement is still limping, and the foot seems to be bothering him more. He still won’t let me look at it, so I tried seeing if I could sneak a look through my phone’s camera.
It didn’t really work, but I did get this video!
I did not get a response to my email to the vet, asking about being able to bring him in as we are able to catch him, without an appointment. I’ll have to remember to phone them, tomorrow.
So I did get at least something useful done today. If the weather holds, this early planting will make a big positive difference for things like the drum gourds and Zucca melon.
I’m not sure what I will plant in the empty blocks. Ideally, it would be some other climber, but since I expect the fence to eventually get completely engulfed by what just got planted, perhaps it would be better to choose a shade loving plant, instead. We’ll see.
I’m just happy to have gotten at least a bit of productivity in today!
I thought we would have more than enough old feed bags to use for both types of potatoes we have left to plant, but I was wrong! The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes alone, took 14 of the 19 bags we had!
I made a quick little video with the photos I took. It’s less than a minute and a half long. 😁
The first time we grew potatoes in feed bags, we were intending to do the tower thing, expecting to add more material to the bags several times throughout the summer. Then we found out that potatoes come in both determinate and indeterminate types – and we had determinates. They aren’t the right kind for growing in towers, so there was no benefit to adding more material. The plants got huge, though, and the bags couldn’t support them. With that in mind, this time I made sure to add quite a lot of straw to the tops of the bags. It should help support the plant stems, and hopefully the bags as well.
So now we have to figure out how and where to plant the Red Thumb fingerling potatoes.
I wonder if there are too many to plant in that bed along the old kitchen garden retaining wall I just finished reworking?
