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.
Yesterday was beautifully cool, and I knew it would get cooler overnight but, my goodness, did it get cold last night! With June’s temperatures, I haven’t even bothered putting a blanket on my bed; just a top sheet, and I’d often sleep on top of it, with the fan blowing right over me. Last night, the fan was off and I should have closed the window and gotten a blanket, but was too sleepy to do it, and slept cold, instead. When I finally checked the temperature at about 6am, it was 7C/45F!! I don’t know if it got any cooler than that last night, but you can bet I was checking on the tomatoes and squash this morning, for cold damage. They seemed to be just fine. If I’d known it might get that cold overnight, the girls and I would have covered them! I keep a bottle water by my bedside for when I take my supplements, or just need a drink during the night. When I drank it this morning, it was as cold as if it had come straight out of the fridge!
The kitties seemed to handle the drop in temperature just fine. I’m sure they were well cuddled by their mamas!
Speaking of mamas…
I thought I saw a pregnant cat run by, last night! There she is! I almost never see this cat anymore. I can’t remember if we’ve ever named her. Good grief, she looks ready to pop! Considering we’re in July, I suspect this is a second pregnancy, and that she lost her first litter. Unless she’s the tuxedo’s mother, but I don’t think so. She is from one of the oldest of last year’s kittens. We can’t get anywhere near her, and the only reason I was able to take this photo was because she was really hungry, and I can zoom in.
As I was finishing up my rounds, I was pleased to spot this.
The tiny tuxedo has figured out that there’s safe food on the roof of the cat house! Normally, he eats at the tray under the water bowl shelter. He couldn’t do that at the time. It was occupied.
An adult skunk had already run off, but these two little ones did not want to leave the food. I sprayed them with a hose to chase them off, as I usually do, and one ran off. The other, however, kept trying to go back for the food, then hunkered down beside that ceramic chimney flue and just took the spray. Of course, I stopped. The little guy eventually started moving around as if looking for the food. I felt so bad! The urge to go over and try to comfort it was very strong. I didn’t, of course. They shouldn’t be eating kibble (it has to do with how their jaws hinge, not because it’s bad for them), but my goodness, how can I say no to a hungry baby? I just completely soaked it, and the poor thing even looked like it was shivering as it moved around.
I’m such a horrible monster! 😥😥
Looking at the long range forecasts, we’re going to get more cooler night, but not as cold as last night. Daily highs are expected to be slightly below average for July, with less rain than June. This will work out just fine for getting work done outside. It’ll be great for the local farmers, too. Some have already baled their first cut of hay, and may even get three cuts this year. I’m seeing grain fields turned golden and almost ready for harvest, and the canola fields are in full bloom. There is lots of pasture for the cows, and the dugouts are full of water. Wild berry bushes are ripening, too, so there will be plenty of food to keep the wildlife uninterested in our garden!
It’s looking to be a really good growing year. Plus, it’s supposed to be a strong El Niño year which, for our area, usually means a mild winter, too. That would be so nice! For us, and for all the critters outside!
… when I dreamed of living on a tropical island somewhere. A place where “winter” didn’t involve air so cold it hurt your face and snow measured in feet instead of inches, or whiplash seasonal temperature extremes.
As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve changed my mind. Oh, sure, I could do without the extreme cold temperatures in winter. However, my tolerance for heat has dropped considerably. We’ve got a somewhat cooler day today, at 25C/77F right now, compared to the last few days. Still above average, but not breaking any records. Yet I still can barely tolerate it.
Looking at the temperature map of North America right now – and not even looking at the tropics – I’ve come to the realization that this old dream of mind is something I probably don’t want anymore! I mean, even the hottest areas in the screen cap above are just a few degrees hotter than we are right now, in the prairies.
If it weren’t for the even shorter growing season, I’d be more interesting in going further north, rather than south!
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.
With the weather we’ve been having, I have been feeling really anxious about getting the garden in “in time”, when we physically don’t have places prepared for everything yet. I feel like I’m falling behind, and everything is being planted late.
Then I remind myself.
Today is May 29. Normally, I wouldn’t be transplanting or doing a lot of direct sowing until after June 2.
Still, with the weather forecast being what it is, the more we get in the ground now, the more time we’re adding to our short growing season.
I headed out shortly after 7am this morning, to beat the heat, and didn’t come back in until almost 11. It was already feeling too hot by 8am, but I stuck it out as long as I could. My main focus was to finish planting in the beds the tomatoes were transplanted into, and get something into the high raised bed.
I’m still bordering everything with the yellow onions. I decided to plant bush beans in the high raised bed. That will make harvesting so much easier on the back!!
There wasn’t a lot of space left in the low raised beds, though that is partly because of the boards protecting the tomatoes. Once those are removed, it will open things up.
In the bed on the far left, with the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes, I sowed all the Gold Ball turnips in one half, and Merlin beets in the other. These were densely planted in many short rows, more Square Foot Gardening style. When we planted the Gold Ball turnips last year, something ate them pretty much as soon as they germinated. I’m hoping surrounding them with onions will help keep away whatever ate them – I never saw any hint of what it was. I had intended to put a floating row cover over the turnips to protect them, but the space is too narrow for that.
In the bed with the Black Beauty tomatoes, I planted one long row of Uzbek Golden carrots. There was only space for the one row, which I then covered with boards. I will check under the boards daily and remove them as soon as I see carrots sprouting.
Both beds got a thick mulch of grass clippings along the outside, next to the onion transplants. Aside form helping keep the soil cool and moist, and slow down the weeds that come up from under the log boarders, the grass will also help prevent soil runoff while watering. I’ve basically used the last of our grass clippings at this point. We haven’t been keeping up with the mowing, unfortunately. Not only are the dandelions now all going to see, but in a lot of places, so is the grass!
With the high raised bed, I planted the yellow Custard beans – a new variety for us – on the left in the photo, and the green Lewis beans – a variety we’ve grown before – on the right. At each end, I stuck in a few more onion transplants. By this point, only the smallest yellow onion transplants are left, and I was planting them a bit closer to each other than usual, but I was still left with may 10 little transplants left. They’re so small, I probably shouldn’t bother transplanting them, but I’m sure I’ll find someplace to shove them into the ground!
(As an aside, while working on all this, I was happy for a breeze that kept away the mosquitoes. It wasn’t enough to keep away what turned out to be horseflies! Thankfully, they didn’t seem interested in bighting me today. Just in dive bombing my head.)
The large low raised bed you can see on the right is still completely empty. I’m considering using it for the Roma tomatoes, which are growing much faster than expected – one bin in particular is has plants so big, if it weren’t for the labels, I’d have thought they were Black Beauties or Indigo Blues that were started so many weeks earlier! Why that one bin of Romas is so much larger than the others that were started at the same time is an interesting question. I was originally wanting to plant peppers in that bed, but the Roma tomatoes need transplanting more urgently. I wont’ be able to fit all of them in there, but if I can at least get the biggest ones transplanted, that would be a good thing.
Before heading in, I made sure to water the corn bed, too. There are corn seedlings popping up now! I’m quite happy to see them. I was afraid that, with the heat and minimal rain, they might not make it. Checking the raised box beds in the East yard, I was happy to be able to see more carrot seedlings showing their true leaves, without having to look close and wonder, are those seed leaves carrots, or a weed? It’ll still be a while before the carrots are strong enough that we can safely weed around them. Right now, weeding mostly involves removing the biggest leaves from the weeds, and pulling and dandelion flower buds, and being careful not to disturb any carrot roots.
I was thinking of doing more transplanting later today but, at this point, I think the mowing is a more urgent priority. Not just because of how overrun both the inner and outer yards are getting, but because I need the grass clippings!
I also want to get in and around the garden beds and where the squash will be planted with the weed wacker.
When I came in, my weather app said it was 23C/73F. I think it felt quite a bit warmer than that! We’re supposed to reach a high of 26C/79F, with chance of a 43% chance of thunderstorm at about 4pm. I suspect I will have no problem getting out and doing the weed whacking when it’s cooler.
For now, though, it’s time to stay inside, stay cool, and hydrate!
We’ve got high winds today, with an expected high of 29C/84F. I wanted to get the transplants out, though.
With the wind direction, I was able to use the picnic table under the old market tent by the fire pit. They won’t get full sun, but with the expected heat, that’s quite all right. They will still get some wind, which is good for them, but not enough to send them flying across the yard.
The next while is expected to continue with high temperatures, with high winds and a possible thunderstorm tomorrow, though only one of my weather apps is predicting that. Overnight temperatures are also expected to be quite warm.
I decided today was a day to do some direct sowing, while also raking up some of the grass clippings to lay down some much needed mulch. If we’re going to be getting thunderstorms, I want the soil protected as much as possible. If we don’t get the thunderstorms, I want the soil well mulched to keep it moist, and from getting too hot!
I set up the extra phone to take time lapse video, so that will be put together for another post. With the peas, I planted the free Hedou Tiny bok choy from Bakers Creek and Jebousek lettuce I got for free from Heritage Harvest. As the peas grow up the chain link fence, they will shade and shelter the lettuce and bok choy. Then I prepped and planted the Tom Thumb popcorn.
I don’t know if I’ll have the energy to get back out there again today, but I’d really like to transplant the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes. They are getting quite large, and I’d rather transplant them than pot them up again. That and it would mean a fewer trays to take in and out every day! As it is, there were some Spoon tomatoes that didn’t make it, and removing the pots meant I could combine 3 trays into 2, with some judicious rearranging. When I transplant the bigger tomatoes, I want to transplant some of the onions in with them, too. The Black Beauty tomatoes are determinate, but the Indigo Blue Chocolate are indeterminate, so I need to consider the different types of support they will need. I also need to resist transplanting all of them, if I start running out of space. We had very good germination rates and few losses, and it’s the paste tomatoes that I want to have a lot of. I can always give away the extras! It’s the same for the remaining peppers. We have a 100% germination rate on all but one variety, and of that one variety, there’s only one peat pellet didn’t germinate – and I only planted one seed per pellet!
With the way things are looking, we may have to start doing outside work in the morning and late evening. The hottest part of the day tends to be around 3pm, but stays hot until about 6 or 7.
In my youth, I wasn’t bothered by the heat the way I am now. Makes it harder to get things done!
While some apps predicted rain, others predicted snow.
Guess which ones where right?
My daughters decided to go for a walk and feed the outside cats for me. They are also bringing in the saw horses and old closet door we’ve been using as a table for the past year. We have so many tomatoes to pot up, we will need it inside for extra space to hold them all.
One of my daughters is wearing shorts out there. How Canadian of her! 😁😁
Some areas south of us are expected to get 20 – 35cm of snow. That’s about 8 – 14 inches.
The weather app also tells me it’s snowing right now, and not a flake is showing up on the security camera live feed. Still, it’s a large system moving in. We might get the 5-10 cm (about 3-5 inches) over the course of the day.
My older daughter has a birthday this month. We don’t typically celebrate birthdays on the day, but kinda spread things out for at least a week. One of the things we like to do is have the birthday person choose where to order food from as a treat, and my daughter chose Pizza Hut. The closest one is in the smaller city, and of course, there is no such thing as delivery out here. The plan was to do that yesterday. With the high winds, we discussed postponing it, but in the end, I decided the drive would be okay. We did take our van instead of my mother’s car, though; for all its problems, my mother’s car is a fair weather vehicle, and while it has new all season tires, the van has good winter tires. When I got to the garage, though, I found that the winds had managed to blow open one of the doors to where my mother’s car is parked! That door had a tire on a rim leaning against it to hold it closed, and the tired had been knocked a couple of feet away!
My younger daughter came along with a birthday shopping list, so we left early for our scheduled pick up time. I figured we could stop at a grocery store along the way, making for less time for the food to get cold after picking it up. The drive is normally about 45 minutes, and we left about half an hour earlier than necessary.
Which turned out to be a wise decision.
The winds were coming from almost directly the south, so for the first leg of the trip, it was like driving into a wall, but except for one section on a curve, where the highway was running more east/west, the highway was clear. Then we reached the town my mother lives in, where we turn east on another highway.
My daughter tried to get a picture for me.
Don’t let this picture fool you. The camera on my phone cleans things up quite a lot. In reality, we could barely see the road. It was all white. Every now and then, we’d pass a shelterbelt around a farm house and the road would suddenly be clear for a short while, then back to blowing snow. It was actually quite mild out – just a few degrees below freezing – which meant the dark road surface on these clear spots got warm enough for the edges of snow to be melting. The van was being buffeted the whole way, and it was a fight for the entire stretch of road, until we reached another highway and were travelling south again. That highway was mostly clear, though some places were starting to have buildups of snow. The plows were out, at least.
After a while, we had to turn east again, and that section of road was even worse. In places, there was enough snow kicked up by the winds that it looked like a distant fog, half engulfing any stands of trees.
The last leg of the trip was a stretch of highway weaving south and east, so it was a mix of clear and covered. Once inside the city, the winds were blocked and there was no blowing snow at all! It was such slow going the entire way, we didn’t have time to stop at the grocery store first, and headed straight for our scheduled pick up. We made it just in time, too!
Once the hot food was picked up, my daughter and I stopped at the grocery store on the way out, and then it was time for the drive home.
Since emptying out the van, with the expectation of trading it in, we took out all our music CDs and still haven’t returned them, so we had the radio on a classical music station, instead. Normally, we don’t listen to radio, but this time, I’m glad we did. When the news and weather was on, there was a lot of talk about road conditions and road closures. Things were certainly a lot more severe, the further south things got, and the big city was being hit hard.
Considering what we drove into on the way home, that must have been really crazy! The winds had picked up, and were blowing even more snow, but it was the ice under it that really made things iffy. We were driving much, much slower and, at one point, the wind started blowing the van around, and we were fishtailing on the ice. Thankfully, there was no oncoming traffic, and I got the van under control again without being blown into the ditch. It was very touch and go for a while! This happened a couple more times along the way, but not as bad as that first one. If I had known it would be this bad on the east/west roads, we would have done this another day!
It took us quite a bit longer to get home than the drive out, as we had to drive so much slower. Once we were travelling north, conditions were much better and I was even able to drive highway speeds, while the wind was at our back. The only east/west road we drove that was good, was the last two miles of gravel road to our place!
Yes, the food was mostly cold by the time we got home, but that’s okay!
As the evening wore on, the road conditions worsened. Parts of the Trans Canada Highway were closed, as was the entire ring road around the bigger city, as well as the major east/west highways leading into the city, while many other roads and highways had travel advisories. People were told to stay home, and there were many reports of vehicles in ditches and other issues.
I’d seen forecasts showing that the winds would continue for several days, but this morning, there was no wind at all! While doing my rounds, there were a few things that had been blown around to pick up, and once the snow is going, there’s going to be a lot of fallen branches to clean up! The tarp covering the shed with a hole in its roof was flapping around a lot in the wind, and there are now friction tears, but it did hold. It’s unfortunate that we had not been able to secure the sides of the tarp, even if it was just in a few places, but it still handled the conditions far better than I feared, based on how much I saw the wind tearing at it.
When I got to the sun room to start my morning rounds by feeding the outside cats, I discovered the insulation covering the cracked window about the counter shelf had been pulled down, along with the boards and even a 5 gallon bucket that had been helping to hold it in place. Things are mild enough now that I just set the sheets aside. Other things were knocked about, and I soon realized why.
The outer door into the sun room had been blown closed!
So we had a bunch of cats trapped in the sun room over night, while others were trapped outside! There was still some food and water in the sun room but, outside, all the kibble trays were empty, and even the outside heated water bowl had somehow been knocked right out of the water bowl shelter, and was dangling upside down by its cord. We built that shelter with a board across the front specifically to prevent the bowls from being easily pushed out. It’s possible the bowl was knocked out by a deer, not the cats, considering the fresh tracks I could see in the snow!
The cats were very excited about my getting that door open again!
We’re supposed to have a nice warm day today, so hopefully the ice on the highways will melt away and dry off. Tomorrow, my daughter has her eye exam. It’s supposed to get a little bit chillier, and the winds are supposed to be back. Hopefully, not as bad as it was yesterday, but at least we’ll only have one short stretch of east/wet highway to be concerned about.
Spring may be on the way, but winter’s not done with us, yet!
As I type this, we are currently at -20C/-4F, with the wind chill at either -32C/-26F or -29C/020F, depending on which app I look at. Our high of the day is still supposed to reach -14C/7F, with a wind chill around -25C/-13F
Yesterday, we were supposed to reach a high of -1C/30F. I have no idea if we ever did, but what we did get was incredible winds. Whiteout conditions on many highways, with some of them closed due to the blowing snow. Today is a significant improvement!
The long range forecast has changed, of course. We went from expecting much milder temperatures for the rest of February, with the coldest days having highs just a little colder than -10C/14F, to now getting forecasts with highs colder than -20C/-4F, all with significant wind chills.
Winter just doesn’t want to let go quite yet!
Thankfully, with the current wind direction, our front yard is quite sheltered, and the cats and cattens are making good use of the cat house and the sun room to keep warm.
This morning, this little guy was absolutely determined to get stepped on.
When I first go out in the morning, there’s usually several cats right under the threshold of the old kitchen door. I have to carefully push the outer door open (while holding the kibble container) with one hand, pull the inner door closed behind me, while trying not to step on any cattens trying to get into the old kitchen at the same time. They make if VERY hard not to step on them, as they keep dashing right under my boot every time I try to move around them.
There are now three white and greys, all male, that come for attention, but this one here was making life quite difficult for me in the process! Absolutely suicidal around my feet! I do wish we didn’t have to keep the kibble bin in the old kitchen. At least there, they don’t start milling about my feet until I’ve got it open and am scooping out the kibble, and I can get in and out of the old kitchen doors with less risk of stepping on a cat!
I was able to count 24 cats this morning, but then I saw Sprout by herself next to the cat house, and I wouldn’t be sure if she was among the others I’d counted or now. So there might have been 25. No Distinguished Guest this morning. I haven’t seen Sad Face (aka: Shop Towel) for a while, either. The toms are probably visiting other farms in their range. Hopefully, The Distinguished Guest is doing better. That cat needs a vet visit. 😥
We have some progress among the inside cats.
Marlee and Ginger, sharing prime nap space! These two are hilarious. They hiss and snarl at each other, all the time. Then Marlee will flop down next to Ginger, often dropping right on top of him, and they settle down for naps together.
Nosencrantz is figuring out that the new shelf at the window is available for her, and I woke this morning to find her sitting on it. Unfortunately, what woke me was the sound of her batting something off the window ledge.
No, I don’t have anything on the window ledge the shelf is against. She went after stuff on the other half of the window!
My craft shelf next to her spot is where I store envelopes in a variety of larger sizes. She decided those were something to chew on, so I had to find a way to protect those but, otherwise, it’s been working out as hoped. I may not even have to shorten the legs, after all. No other cat has shown any interest in the shelf at all.
With how well this is working out, I should actually be able to clear and reorganize the rest of my craft table and even *gasp* use it to do crafting again!
What a novel concept.
With the temperatures dropping again over the next while, it’s a good time to catch up.
The Re-Farmer 