A patch of my mother’s flowers that she still constantly asks about is now in full bloom.
These are all about 3 feet tall. Can you make out the two markers hidden in them? That’s where the haskap berries are planted. The flowers are actually cleared away from around them, and they’re still hard to see! :-D
Does anyone know what these are called? I’ve tried using Google Lens on my phone, but the possibilities it offers up have included things like a type of coneflower, and even dandelions!
These pictures were taken yesterday, with the top one taken just as it was starting to rain. By the time I was out again and took the second one, it was bright and sunny again. For all the thunder and winds, we didn’t get much rain at all. More than we have in a while, to be sure, but it’s a good thing I needed to empty the patched rain barrel by the garden, because I still needed to water the squash beds.
I would really like to know what it is about where we live that pushes storm systems away. Watching the weather radar, the storm did not miss us. It passed right over. My mother told me they had a solid downpour at her place, yet we had only a light rainfall.
Microclimates can be strange and perplexing things!
It was a hot day to be taking my mother for her medical appointment in a van with no air conditioning!
It was already cooling down when I took the above screencap. 28C/82F, with the humidex bringing it to 35C/95F From the weather radar, I don’t expect to get that predicted thunderstorm; it appears to be moving to the north of us. I hope we’ll at least get some rain. It’s been a challenge to keep the garden beds watered. At least I haven’t needed to mow the lawn in a while. :-D
While driving my mother to her appointment, she actually asked me to open the windows more, even though we were at highway speeds. Normally, she’s asking me to close them because of the wind! Well, hopefully we’ll have her car back next week. I could see she was really struggling to get into our van. She’s so tiny! :-D
Her appointment went well. She is frustratingly healthy. All her tests came back excellent. She has obvious issues with arthritis, which there’s really nothing more she can do about, and problems with her knees. She could get surgery to fix those but, considering she won’t even wear her knee brace, there is significant doubt she would keep up with the post surgical requirements, so it didn’t even come up. Her major concern is with her “heart”. By which she means her breathing. But only sometimes, and only in the morning, when she sometimes wakes up gasping for air. The doctor suggested she try sleeping upright, to relieve pressure on her chest from certain generously proportioned parts of her anatomy. I mentioned my siblings and I have discussed getting her a sleep chair, and he said he thought that would help her a lot. He also suggested we try putting something under her mattress to elevate it. I figure we can try that for a few weeks, then assess how it helps or not. She might actually do well with a hospital bed, like my husband’s, which would allow her to lower the whole thing to get in and out easier, too.
He will also be referring her to a geriatric team to assess her. Or an “elder care team”, as he put it. She still didn’t quite understand what he meant, so when we were talking about it later, I explained to her about how some doctors specialized in helping older people, with their physical and mental needs that are different from younger people. Once she understood, she was quite excited about that, saying that yes, she needs that!
Since I was driving her around anyhow, I also helped her get some grocery shopping done, and then we had a very late lunch – in a nice, air conditioned restaurant!
All in all, it went really well, and she was on much better behavior than usual. She was having one of her good days, so it made a huge difference.
After I got home and updated my siblings on how things went, I went to do my evening rounds a bit earlier. The girls had already watered the garden beds. I tried weeding around the beets a bit, but so many of the leaves have been eaten by deer, I don’t know if I should even bother. I’d mentioned this problem to my mother, and she decided that meant we needed a dog. A dog will keep the deer away! I wish I’d remembered to mention that my sister has a dog, and they still had to fence their garden to keep the deer out. And bears, but that’s a problem we, at least, don’t have! :-D
With the bird feeder painted and done, the girls are still doing coats of paint on both sides of the screened window frame for the old basement. Today, I flipped the picnic table and scrubbed the bottoms of the legs clean of dirt, so that we can apply the spray rubber on the ends. I also cleaned a rain barrel I’ve moved near the squash beds, around the cracks it has in one area. I was going to look for some sort of silicon caulking or something to patch the cracks when I realized the spray rubber would actually be better. The application will wait until tomorrow. According to the instructions on the can, the weather we’re predicted to have will affect how well it works. The 14 day forecast predicts continued high temperatures, but no rain, so that will be a good time to start applying layers of this stuff. Meanwhile I want to make some sort of screen cover for this rain barrel, plus the one set up by the house, to keep debris and critters out. I found a bird downed in the one by the house once already – I’m guessing it flew into a sun room window, knocked itself out, then fell into the barrel. :-( Once I have a cover made, and the cracks coated, I will keep the one barrel filled so that we can use ambient temperature water on the squash, instead of cold well water. If we don’t get rain tonight, I’ll likely be filling the rain barrel by the house to warm up, too.
In the long term, I want to get some large tanks like this.
I’m happy to say, that a day of rest seems to be just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I felt so good, and it looked so beautiful outside, I decided to see if there was something I could get started on today.
Because I’m an idiot like that.
The beautiful looking day lied! :-D It was still cold and windy out there! Those lilacs are looking gorgeous, though.
When I went to check the forecast, though, I found a weather alert. We’re supposed to get frost tonight.
I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get those transplants done!
The girls and I headed out to make sure everything was covered.
The squash bed was a challenge. I didn’t have very many of the plastic containers I was keeping to use as cloches for exactly this purpose. We did, however, still have the five gallon size water bottles from when I did a complete water change of the fish tank (which, I am happy to say, shows no signs of turning cloudy or that mass of algae growing back; it was definitely our well water that was the problem!). I cut a bunch of them in half, and we got all the squashes covered!
I don’t know that the bricks balancing on the necks of bottles will do much good, but it’s worth a try, to make sure the cloches don’t get blown away.
The girls covered the new garden bed with plastic, as well.
The plastic row covers are sandwiched between pairs of boards, so the sprouts won’t get flattened too much.
We didn’t bother doing anything with the potato beds, since the straw mulch will insulate them just fine.
Based on the long range forecast, this should be the last frost of the year. We’re going to start getting hot again, tomorrow.
Meanwhile, here are some more smiles for you! :-)
The girls went to visit with the kittens for a bit, but only Big Rig stayed still long enough for a decent photo. :-D
As David does so well with the kittens, the girls let him come down, too.
Beep Beep was doing a good job of keeping her babies warm on this chilly morning.
She didn’t come out at all while I topped up her food and water
The basement actually maintains a pretty constant temperature, but while we didn’t get the predicted thunderstorms in our area, we did get quite a bit of rain, so the humidity has gone up a fair bit. The sump pump is doing its job, though, so that’s good.
Yesterday evening I spent some time working in the basement, leaving the door open. At first, only two of the upstairs cats came to check things out, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how interested most of them are over that door. Eventually, the others discovered the open door and came to visit. Beep Beep, however, preferred to check out what I was doing! :-D
Then she demanded cuddles. :-D
We did get the rest of the cats out for the night; they might be ignoring the babies for now, but why take chances?
Temperatures have gone down quite a bit, today, and it looks like we had rain on and off all night. As I write this, the temperatures outside are 4C (39F), with a “realfeel” of -2C (28F), and it’s expected to warm up only a couple of degrees. I am happy for the rain, but even though the sun room is still pretty warm, I decided to put the seed trays into the mini-greenhouse along with the light I used as a heat source for the cats’ water bowl last winter. Just for a little while. I don’t have grow lights, but I can at least give them a bit more warmth.
Even when doing my rounds, I didn’t see any of the outside cats at all, until I was coming back to the house and found Rosencrantz had come out for food. They’re all holed up somewhere, keeping warm and dry.
My daughter has her one shift of the week today, but other than heading to and from town, this will be an inside day, for sure. Definitely not going to be getting any work done on the new garden plot. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as chilly, but no rain, so by Tuesday, I hope to be able to get back at it. Things are not supposed to get actually warm again until the middle of the month. If all goes well, it will stay warm, I’ll have the new garden plot finished, get the carrots planted, and we’ll be ready to do transplants by the end of May.
Assuming the seed starts do well. I’m not too encouraged by what I’m seeing of the fennel. :-(
I’m not looking forward to clearing the driveway after this.
It’s supposed to continue snowing through most of the day. I was planning to go to the post office, as I’m expecting some packages, but I think I will wait until Monday! My daughter is working on Saturday, which is supposed to still be chilly. There isn’t going to be much of a window to clear the driveway so she can get to work, and I can get the rest of my husband’s prescription refills.
On Sunday, it’s supposed to warm right up again, and stay warmer for the rest of the week, even as we’re supposed to get a bit more snow. Things should melt away fairly quickly.
Which isn’t going to help us get out and about tomorrow!
The deer have suddenly stopped coming around, which leaves plenty of seeds for the returning juncos. I haven’t seen these guys in ages!
I’m certainly glad my mother’s appointment had been rescheduled for yesterday and not, say, today. Yesterday was a very pleasant day and the roads were great. If it had been for today, I’d have already called to reschedule by now!
There is, in fact, a large puddle of water over much of the area here. Thankfully, the lower part of my snow boots are waterproof, so as long as I skirted the edges of where I knew the water to be, I would be fine.
Some little critter got wet feet!
The deeper water is still filling with snow. Though it’s -7C (19F) right now, with a wind chill of -15C (5F), the water is not yet freezing. Just filling with snow.
By the time I’d gone to bed last night (past 2am!), it was still raining. The van had been parked by the house so we wouldn’t have to walk through the water and mud between the house and the garage. I looked out the window a few times last night, debating if I should move it to the garage.
I probably should have moved it to the garage, but trying to skirt around the water and mud in the dark to get back to the house just didn’t appeal to me.
With the rainfall earlier, the van doors had started to freeze shut. I brushed only a bit of the snow off, and scraped enough of the windshield to see enough to drive to the garage. In the time it took me to put away the scraper and start the van, the snow was already covering the windshield enough to make it harder to see again!
I am really thankful to have a garage for the van. It may have only a dirt floor and be filled with mystery stuff and junk, but I love having it. Before moving here, we parked outdoors, but at least if something went wrong, it was relatively easy to get it to a mechanic – unlike now, when we have to take it to other towns! With a vehicle like ours, I want to protect and baby it as much as possible. I don’t know how many years we’ve got left in it, and we depend on it so much.
While looking at the long range forecasts a few days ago, I remember thinking about how there is almost always one last blowout in April, usually around our anniversary. Which is in a few days. :-D The forecasts at the time showed nothing but warm and pleasant conditions.
It took a few days for the forecasts to change, but here it is! We’re expected to get 5-10cm (2-4 inches) of snow in our area today, with snow continuing through to tomorrow. To the south of us, especially around the city, they’re predicting 10-15cm (4-6 inches). It’s supposed to warm up for the weekend, then we’ll continue to have more snow off and on over the next week. We’re getting the big stuff now, though, with a huge weather system sweeping up from the US.
I think this is a good day to start prepping our seed trays and maybe starting the cucamelons. They’re the ones that need the most time before transplanting and, for our region, absolutely must be started indoors. That mini greenhouse my daughter bought for me with be great to not only help keep the planting trays warm in this chilly house, but protect them from the cats! :-)
Well, I’m happy to say that the weather forecasts for today are no longer predicting a severe drop in temperatures in only 4 hours.
We’re still going to get the extreme temperatures. It’s just going to take until about 8am tomorrow for it to happen.
Our current mild temperatures (we are at -3C/26F with a wind chill of -10C/14F as I write this) are supposed to slowly drop until about midnight, then the winds are going to hit. Locally, by tomorrow morning, we’re supposed to hit -29C (-20F), with the wind chill bringing it down to -43C (-45F).
Thank God we don’t have to go anywhere! I really feel for the people who have to work outside, or commute to the city. It’s going to be dangerous out there. :-(
While working on my last post, my friend mentioned the weather conditions, so I paused to take a look.
29C, but feeling like 38C (that’s 84F and 100F, for you folks in the US), with 61% humidity!
No wonder going outside feels like walking into a wall of moist heat. That’s exactly what we’re doing!
Less than 2 hours later, I checked the conditions again. I got this screen capture just minutes ago.
The temperature is still going up! 30C (86F), feeling like 39C (102F).
The forecast over the next few days hasn’t changed (yet?). I’m driving my friend to the airport tomorrow, and we’re planning to go in early to play tourist a bit.
Somewhere with air conditioning.
We might be driving through thunderstorms!
Looks like I might be driving my mother through storms when I take her for a medical appointment in a few days, too.
At this point, a nice storm would be very welcome. More rain to cool things down and get that humidity out of the air, and into the ground!
Chances are, the storms are going to miss us again, but I’ll take the edge of a storm, too!
I was up earlier this morning, heading out to switch the memory card on the trail cam so I could check the files before heading out. I left the critter stuff for my older daughter to do later, since I was heading for the airport after dropping off her sister.
It was less than an hour later when we headed out, and immediately noticed a dustiness to the air – except it was in all directions.
