weather

Rain, wind and… babies???

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Once again, the overnight temperatures dropped lower than was forecast. Today was also supposed to have high winds in the morning, then rain in the afternoon.

We had rain in the morning, and it’s been windy all day.

I really had to drag my butt out of bed to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. Short rounds, and then I crawled back into bed. Even after several more hours of sleep, I woke up bleery and out of sorts, stiff and sore, though not as bad as it used to be, before I got on the anti-inflammatories. I’ve been feeling like that for a couple of days now. It took me a while to make the connection. I always get like this when it’s rainy and overcast!

I felt much better when the sun came out!

Aside from a quick run to the post office, it was a home day. My daughters have been having a hard time, today, too. It’s hit my younger daughter the worst, and she’s been caning it most of the day.

I did finally get outside to get a few things done, when I discovered something in the cat cage.

Two new, little kittens, in the cat bed.

These are very young kittens! Definitely not a mama bringing her older babies to the house for solid food.

There was only one cat I could think of that might be the mother. That would be Frank, and I was recently able to pet her enough that she showed me her belly. She had four active nips.

If she were the mama, then we were definitely going to be finding more.

I checked on the kittens and, other than a bit of dried gunk on the edges of their eyes, they looked chunky, well fed and healthy. Very fluffy!

I fed the outside cats and worked on a few other things before mixing up a jar of kitten soup. I put just a few spoonfuls into a shallow container and put it into the cat bed with them.

Sure enough, I came back into the sun room later and found Frank in the cat cage, eating the kitten soup. It wasn’t much longer before I saw the kittens nursing on her, too.

I was out for a while longer, and when I came back, she was gone again. Her kittens were sleeping peacefully. I took a peak at some other kittens in the cat cave when I spotted something white, moving around a plant stand we leave for the cats to use to get onto the platform.

It was a little, mostly white grubling!

Frank hopped into the cat cage just as I picked it up, and was very nervous, so I just quickly put the kitten with the other two and left. The next time I came through, she was nursing the three of them.

I went back out to finish things – for all that it rained, the garden needed watering, though there isn’t much left to water! By the time I was done and headed back in, Frank was all curled up and nursing her babies in domestic bliss.

If you look at the second image of the slide show above, you can see her and maybe, possibly, a fourth kitten, under her front leg. I thought, at first, it was her bottom leg, but I don’t recall any of her legs having spots like that on it.

I never did figure out where she had her kittens. All I knew was that it had to be really close.

I got a few things done that were manageable with the wind. I wasn’t able to get that fallen branch off the hawthorn, yet. I’ll have to get in there and cut it up in small pieces to get it off without damaging the hawthorn. The problem with that is, it’s really embedded in hawthorn branches, and hawthorns have massive thorns!

One of the jobs I finally got done was to add legs to the wind break box that I made to go over the opening of the isolation shelter. We had it up on bricks over the winter, so now it has legs that are just a bit taller than the thickness of the bricks. I was also going to add length of wood to each side to act as handles, so it would be easier to move around, but I ran out of the right length of wood screws. I had just enough to add the legs, and that’s it. For now, the box is sitting on the concrete well cover, over a kibble bowl. After the new door is installed, we’ll put the insulation back around the base of the house under the kitchen window, then set up the winterized isolation shelter there again. I need to find a better way to wrap clear plastic around the bottom of the shelter again. The tacks held fine, for the most part, but the plastic kept tearing free of them. It didn’t help that, when we had cats recovering from being spayed/neutered in there, the other cats were clawing through the plastic to try and get in! I might invest in some transparent tarps at some point. They’re expensive, but they’re also 20mm thick. Even greenhouse plastic is only 6mm thick, and the plastic dining table covers I’ve been using are, I think, only 3mm thick. I’ve been looking them up, and one Canadian company that makes them says they’re rated down to -23C/-10F. Which would be really useful for all sorts of things, really!

Speaking of which…

I had intended to uncover the winter squash bed to check on them. Through the plastic, I can see the bright yellow of new flowers, and I wanted to see if anything could be hand pollinated. It was just too windy, though. So windy, it was starting to tear the plastic free of the boards we rolled up in the excess on each side!

I rolled them back up and made it as snug as I could before adding bricks to weigh down the boards that were weighing down the edges!

With the sun out and things warming up, I finally uncovered the other beds. The cover over the summer squash was half blown off, already. The zucchini seems to be doing quite well, really! Some of the leaves around the very edges have cold damage, but mostly, they’re still growing and producing more zucchini. Even the white scallop squash is starting to bloom!

Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F, but last night we were supposed to drop to about 5 of 6C/41 or 43F, but we actually hit about 2C/36F, so we’ll be putting the covers back on later this evening. Meanwhile, what’s left got a deep watering. The rain barrel by the sun room was finally filled, though not to the top, so I used that to water the old kitchen garden. Checking on the peppers, it looks like the oldest pepper is finally starting to turn colour, and it’s looking like it will be a red one. The Turkish Orange eggplants are getting brighter in colour, so it looks like they are managing all right, as long as they get that overnight protection.

The frost hardy plants, like the carrots and remaining beets, kohlrabi, little onions, etc. are doing fine. Surprisingly, the pumpkins haven’t been killed off entirely, and the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers seem unbothered by the colder temperatures. Their developing seed heads are still so tiny, though. The yellow bush beans, much to my surprise, are looking undamaged.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler, with a high of 12C/54F expected (today, we hit 15C/59F), but the overnight low is supposed to be 2C/36F, which means we will probably drop down to, or even below, freezing. Then we’re supposed to warm right up again, with highs in the 20’sC/68F range, and overnight lows hovering on either side of 10C/50F. The long range forecast has us going even warmer, the week after, including as high as 28C/82F.

We’ll see what actually happens!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: covered

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Well, I hope this works!

Setting the hoops over the winter squash bed worked. They’re taller than I would have liked, but they are held in place by stakes, not pushed into the ground, and in places, I could barely get the stakes pushed into the ground. Too many little rocks.

Thankfully, I had enough hoops and stakes for decent spacing. I still ran three lines of twine across, to keep the cover from caving inward too much. I removed the staked holding the boards along the sides. Those were there to keep the soil from eroding from the edges, but with the mulch there, and time, they’re not really needed for that anymore. Instead, I planned to use them to hold the cover in place.

My original intension had been to use mosquito netting, until I remembered I had picked up 10’x25′ medium weight plastic drop clothes specifically to fit over these beds. “Medium weight” is still very thin, unfortunately (you can see the package in the second photo of the slight show above).

Once the hoops were set, I left it until it was starting to get cooler before we covered all the beds that we are able to. We were able to fill six 4L/1 gallon water bottles with hot water, which is all the empties my husband had from his distilled water at the moment. All the others we had have already been cut to suit other uses in the garden.

Two of them went at each end of the row of eggplants, where they are the least protected by the too-short fabric we have for that. The peppers are planted more densely, so they are covered better.

The remaining four bottles of water were spaced out in between the winter squash before my daughter and I put the cover on. At 25 feet, it was more than long enough to cover the hoops on an 18′ bed. I’d hoped we could keep it folded in half, length wise, but at 5′ wide, it was too short to be able to secure it on the sides. We had to open it up completely, but that did give us more material to wrap around the boards up to the bases. It will certainly not be blowing away!

The down side is, kittens.

While we were covering the bed, Sir Robin and Grommet decided that we were making a lovely tunnel, just for them. After fishing them out and setting the plastic out on the ground, so the boards could be used to roll up the excess, Sir Robin started pouncing on the plastic and promptly made holes in it. Holes in a section that’s now wrapped around a board, but gosh, that didn’t take long!

One bonus in having plastic to cover this bed is that I could probably leave it there. We’re only supposed to reach 12C/54F tomorrow, and only 9C/48F the day after. We’re supposed to get rain a couple of times tonight, and they’re still saying we’ll be getting a low of 7C/45F, but the next night, they’re saying we’re dropping to 4C/39F. If we leave the plastic, or only partially lift it for watering, it should act as a greenhouse.

If the plastic survives the kittens!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: cold damage, and a morning harvest

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Last night, a daughter and I covered three areas in the garden.

I rigged a cage of sorts around the summer squash large enough to fit around the large leaves. Our covers are old sheets, and one was large enough to cover the summer squash, though nowhere near large enough to reach the ground. Which was okay, as we weren’t expecting actual frost.

The peppers and eggplant in the wattle weave garden all have their own wire tomato cages, so we just needed to use some clothespins to keep the covers from blowing away. The way the peppers are laid out in the shorter end of the L shaped bed allowed them to be covered more than the eggplant, which are in a longer row. The cloth was just barely long enough to reach from end to end. As a result, the first and last eggplants had less coverage, with one of them being at a more exposed end of the bed.

You can see there is some cold damage to the leaves.

Depending on what app I checked, we dropped to either 6C/43F or 5C/41F last night. It’s hard to say so soon, but it looks like the winter squash, which we have no way to cover, managed okay. In fact, just this evening, I spotted two female flowers in the Mashed Potato squash that I hand pollinated. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, but at least they’ll have a chance!

Our overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up for the next while, so we shouldn’t need to cover them again for some time. In fact, some of our daytime highs are supposed to get downright hot. By the second week of September, however, the long range forecast has changed again, and we’re not looking at dipping below freezing, right around our old average frost date. The new 30 year averages have been released, which suggested our growing season has actually increased by quite a bit, but I’m not counting on that. Based on the previous average frost dates, we’ve got a 99 day growing season, and I think that’s still the more accurate one. That’s the thing with averages. All it takes is one or two unusual years to shift things quite a bit, even if they’re now showing a range of dates, rather than a single date.

This morning, I harvested some potatoes and a few other things for a supper I was planning on.

The potatoes are what I found under a couple of plants. For all that the plants struggled this year and there isn’t a lot, we do have some really nice potatoes! I grabbed a couple more kohl rabi (not too many of those left now!), some Swiss Chard, thyme, oregano, sage and lemon balm, as well as some walking onion bulbils.

All of this, plus some carrots I still had in the fridge, a Sub Arctic Plenty tomato the family hadn’t eaten yet, an entire bulb of fresh garlic (about 6 large cloves), some stewing beef and chunks of sausage, got used to make an Instant Pot one pot meal.

I do like being able to set up either the Instant Pot or the Crockpot and just leave it. Today, it meant I could get a nap in! We’re a real messed up household right now. My husband’s dealing with a broken tooth on top of his constant back pain. My younger daughter had a rough night and has been caning it today – yet she still just came back from picking the Spoon tomatoes for me! My older daughter has been walloped by her PCOS again. I’m still dealing with a wonky hip, plus my injured left arm is still causing issues, but it’s starting to look like I’m the most able bodied person in the household again!

I had thought I could use the riding mower and mow the lawn today. After all the rain we’ve had, it actually needs it again. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for sun and a few clouds for the next week. This morning, that changed to a light rain, pretty much all day! They’re still saying we’ll be getting sun with some clouds for at least a week, but who knows what we’ll actually get. I’m certainly not going to complain about more rain, though. We still need it so badly!

It does make things hard to plan around, though. There are things I’d like to get some work done on before I start making my monthly stock up shopping trips to the city, plus my follow up medical appointment about my arm, and so on. Things that need to be done when it’s dry, or at least not raining. I have this constant sense of running out of time.

Ah, well. It is what it is, and there’s only so much we can do. Having all four of us struggling with physical limitations at the time time, though, was not something I had ever expected when we moved out here, though!

The Re-Farmer

Ongoing

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All day, we’ve been under an ongoing thunderstorm watch.

Sort of.

These watches cover a massive area. Looking at the weather radar, none of it seems to be heading to us. Instead, all the systems seem to be splitting off to pass either the north or south of us.

I had been holding off watering the garden because of these possible thunderstorms, hoping we would at least get some rain. I finally started watering the old kitchen garden this morning, and it actually did start raining hard enough that I stopped and went inside, planning to continue later.

Then the power outage hit.

Finally, when it was time to head out and feed the outside cats, I planned to finish the watering.

I was still filling various bowls with kibble when my pocket started screaming at me.

We were getting a tornado warning to our cell phones, complete with instructions to find shelter.

I could hear some thunder in the distance, but there was nothing over us to suggest any sort of storm or rain, never mind a tornado.

My daughter was on her computer when her phone went off so she looked it up. It turns out that while we were in the service range for the warning, we weren’t in the geographical range. That was to the south of us. Nothing was headed our way.

So I finished feeding the cats, then wandered through the garden area, checking on things while deciding whether I was still going to water or not. I could hear equipment running and voices on the road, so I went closer to see what I could over the lilac hedge. The electric company was replacing the top of a power pole across the road from us.

I’m sure they would have gotten the same tornado warning we did and, if it had been for our geographical area, they would have been ordered to pack up and leave!

I started watering, including the new food forest additions. It was while I was there that a second tornado warning with instructions to take shelter came in.

This is what the sky looked like at the time.

I could hear thunder from both east and west, but that was it. Once again, our climate bubble was in action.

I was able to finish watering without interruption.

We’re still supposed to get some rain today. There is a system that is supposed to actually pass over us this evening, with the more severe portions still missing us. We might get actual rain for about an hour. For all the watering I did, any rain would still be a blessing.

However, I’d still be more than happy for the rain to miss us, if it means all those fires get the rain instead. The current count is something like 700 fires across the country, making it the worst fire season in 30 years.

While the severe weather missed us, a homesteading friend who lives south of my mother’s town posted some video she took. While I was outside, watering the garden, she was getting a massive down pour, and hail started to fall while she was recording. It was absolutely insane to watch! They were under the geographical tornado warning area which, thankfully, did not happen. We are still under an ongoing severe thunderstorm watch but, from what I’m seeing on the weather radar, the system has already passed us and moving on into the next province. For our area, we might, just maybe, get some rain. Which is supposed to be happening right now, but the system split off to pass on either side of us again!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Really??? It’s almost July!

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Talk about fluctuations!

Yesterday, I was seeing the forecast for last night’s lows change from 4C/39F to 6C/43F, though that changed with which app I looked at, too.

This morning, I woke at about 4:30am, and this is what I found…

We dropped to 2C/36F.

That’s a “cover your plants, there might be frost” temperature.

Today, we’re supposed to reach highs of 23C/73F and an overnight low of 8C/46F.

We’re in the last week of June.

I just took a look at the historical data. Our average low for today’s date, since 1951, is 12C/54F. The record low of 1C/34F was set in 1958. We almost matched the record low!

Needless to say, I was concerned about our cold sensitive plants, like the melons, squash and eggplant.

It was a couple more hours before my daughter and I did the outdoor cat feeding. They are such a mob in the mornings, since the adults have discovered the cat soup we’ve been making for the littles, it’s gotten quite necessary to have two people doing it. For the kittens, I mash up a couple of cans of wet cat food, add enough hot water to make it very thin, then add dry kibble. That gets divided up among a whole bunch of bowls. Those then sit so the kibble can absorb most of the liquid while I go out with a the dry kibble bowl. That gets distributed in many areas, so that even the shiest of ferals can have breakfast.

The first challenge is just getting out the doors into the sun room. Once both doors are open, there’s a crowd of kittens right under the threshold, making it very difficult to step down without stepping on a cat or kitten. Poirot’s 3 are particularly eager to jump up onto the threshold to go into the old kitchen, so closing the doors behind me is also hard to do without hurting kittens diving into the space.

Once the sun room door – the storm door with the missing screen in the window – it closed, it is safer, though I still have to wade through swirling cats and kittens. They are very hungry, by this time! Some of them actually start fighting, so I try to get food spread out for them as fast as I can.

There are kibble trays in the sun room, the shelter shelf just outside the door, the kibble house, under the shrine and in the open isolation shelter. I also put some out on the cat house roof, in a tray on the well cap, the patio blocks outside the sun room, inside the catio and on the front step.

A number of adult cats, however, know that the warm cat soup is coming out next, so they hang around the sun room door, instead of going to the kibble bowls. Kittens are also milling around, so I try to scoop them into the bowl I used to carry the kibble and get them into the sun room.

Then my daughter starts handing me the kitten food bowls through the screenless window.

I try to put a couple of two sided bowls into the cat cage and get Poirot’s babies into there. Poirot usually joins, as well and, if I can snag them, one or two of the bigger kittens. The Grink, who is still very tiny, will jump into the cat cage and push away the kittens, if we don’t act fast! I set some bowls in one of the larger kibble trays on the floor before starting to take the rest, outside. This morning, I had to actually chase most of the adult cats out of the sun room and close in the kittens, so they could eat without being bowled over by bigger cats, while taking more bowls of cat soup outside. Several go into the water bowl shelter, one or two into the entry of the cat house, or wherever the kittens are. While going back and forth, I was able to snag all the bigger kittens – even Havarti, who did not want to get got! – and put them in the sun room, where they could eat their fill with only Magda to contend with. Magda is so small, my daughter mistook her for a bigger kitten, at first!

That done, I was finally able to do my morning rounds. While switching out memory cards on the gate came, I spotted Adam, making her way down the driveway towards the house. I have not been seeing her as often, and I think she may have had a later litter of kittens somewhere. She’s so fluffy, we can’t tell if she’s pregnant or nursing. I’m still 99% sure that one stillborn kitten we found in the cat house, about the time Brussel had her two in the sun room, was Adam’s.

Of course, while doing my rounds, I carefully checked for cold damage in the garden. This is where I think our cat protection and water conserving measures actually helped. The melons and winter squash all have their plastic collars around them, which would have protected them at least a bit. Even the tomatoes, which are much taller, would have had some protection. A lot of other things we have growing right now are more tolerant of colder temperatures. Eggplants and peppers are no, but they are in the wattle weave bed, and that little garden is more sheltered in general.

Everything seems undamaged, though it might take a day or two before we can be sure.

So that’s a relief, for now.

Once done my rounds, I opened the sun room to allow free access again. I couldn’t see most of the kittens – I think most of them were playing under the counter shelf – but I did spot this cutie.

Eyelet is big enough to discover how to climb up to the platform above the cat cage. That meant, he got to enjoy a cat bed, all to himself!

As for today, if all goes well, my younger daughter and I will be loading up the truck for a trip to the dump, then to pick up another birthday take out courtesy of my older daughter. We’re all so busted up right now, no one is up to doing any cooking!

Doing the first stock up shop in the city tomorrow is going to be… interesting.

The Re-Farmer

Finally! Rain! or not…

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Plus an adorable photo shoot.

My daughter was able to get the most adorable Eyelet pictures when she joined me for the evening walkabout.

Eyelet really loves to be carried and cuddled. So does Sir Robin.

Now for the boring stuff.

I’m happy to say my left arm did rather well during the night. I was pro-active on the pain killers and getting my husband to rub the joints with the Voltaren cream, from my hand to my neck. Oddly, it was less painful on my arm to sleep on my left side, which seems rather backwards. I wasn’t going to complain, though.

All day, I was practically crawling out of my skin, wanting to do stuff. It was a gorgeously cool day out, and it would have been perfect for so many jobs that need to be done around the garden beds and yards. I kept having to stop myself. I had to get my older daughter to do most of the work with feeding the outside cats; basically, I passed the kitten food bowls out to her. I didn’t do my full rounds, but we did walk around the garden beds closer to the house.

I’m glad we did because, as we were in the old kitchen garden, she spotted something odd about the pink rose bush. The stems, in between all those thorns, were covered with little bumps. They were the same colour as the stems, so I didn’t really see them, but she realized they were bugs.

There were so many of them, the rose bush was starting to droop, and the roses that have started to open were showing browned edges on their petals.

We weren’t too sure what to do about it but, just to start, we got the spray bottle of soapy water and sprayed it down.

It was still quite early when we headed back inside, so I tried to lie down again.

That didn’t work.

I finally realized I was getting light headed, so I got up and made myself something to eat. While I was doing that, I started getting some messages from my SIL. I knew my brother was coming out today, so she said she’d find out when he planned to be here.

He already was.

He went into ninja stealth mode and left without her even hearing him – then got here shortly after my daughter and I came in, so we never saw him drive in! He parks by their trailer, which is blocked from our view by trees.

As soon as I could, I headed out to say hello. He was still unloading from his car and hadn’t have breakfast himself, yet, so once everything was in, we chatted in their trailer for a while, as he ate. It gave him a chance to show me the new security camera he picked up for the gate, along with a wi-fi booster.

Over the next while, he plans to do here what he used to have at their house that they sold; add security cameras all over the place. The main thing, though, is the main gate and driveway, since that’s been our vandal’s primary trigger for rage and vandalism. Now that they have so much of their equipment here, our vandal can see bits and pieces of it from the road, and it’s driving him bonkers that he can’t come onto the property to see what’s going on and help himself to things. So I’m quite content with my brother wanting to set up more security cameras!

My brother had lots to do, though, so as soon as he was done eating, I left him to it.

I did head back out and harvested some things from the garden and put them together in an insulated bag for my brother to take home. I finally harvested the garlic scapes, so there was plenty for them, as well. I was also able to pick a couple of turnips, lettuce and chives, with blossoms for them. My younger daughter had cleaned up and smoothed out the stuff she made in her blacksmithing workshop. She set aside her two best ones as a thankyou gift for my brother and SIL for the gifts of that workshop, and I was able to add that in, too.

My brother wasn’t at his trailer, though, so I left it on the step for later and headed back in.

Which is when I got the phone call.

From home care.

*sigh*

Yup. For the third day in a row, no med assist for my mother. Yesterday (Saturday), it was the two evening visits, which get done by the same person. The day before, it was the morning visit. Today, it was the evening visit again.

During our family chat about how things went with my mother, my brother said he was planning to visit my mother, so if it happened again, he could take care of the med assist. Which is great, but I really wasn’t expecting us to have to cover med assists, three days in a row! Yes, we’ve had that happen before, but what was because someone was sick. These visits were all different people.

Before calling my mother, I went to talk to my brother. He wasn’t sure if he would be finished before her first scheduled visit – he had a lot he needed to do before the predicted rain hit. So when I called her, I told her that it might be either me or my brother, but one of us was going to cover her med assist tonight.

My mother wasn’t impressed (none of us are). The weird thing is, she got a double visit on Saturday morning. She had mentioned it to me while I was getting her supper meds out. The last time she said this happened, when the second person came in, my mother said she’d already taken her morning pills – but her morning pills were still in the bubble pack. So I checked, and that was not the case this time, and promptly forgot about it with all the other stuff going on.

As we talked on the phone, my mother was able to tell me when they’d showed up and who they were, though she can’t quite remember the name of the second person.

Then she told me about the 17th, and things got confusing. I thought she was still talking about her double visit, but it was about something else entirely. She said that someone had given her her meds for the 18th instead of the 17th.

???

So she kept her morning meds from the 18th, and stashed them away for the next time no one shows up in the morning.

???????

What I was finally able to get from her is that, when the second person came in for her med assist on the 17th, she noticed a mistake the morning person had made in the form they have to fill out. She had marked the date as the 18th, when it was the 17th.

Which my mother has concluded means that she got the wrong day’s medications. Or something. She’s been furious at me or the home care workers for not giving her the medication from the days that that were missed for some reason, so it’s not really getting the medications from the “wrong” day that bothers her. Basically, she thinks her medications were messed up, even though it was just the date that was wrong.

So when she got her morning medications on the 18th, she didn’t take them, and the home care aid left without making sure she took them.

She then started going on about how we are worried about her messing up her meds (she did that quite a bit), meanwhile the home care workers were the ones messing up her meds…. Except they didn’t. Someone just wrote down the wrong date in their form.

A lot of this was new to me, so I couldn’t get into it too much with my mother at the time. I needed to get off the phone and write it down, while I still remembered the details!

So all that got passed on to my family.

None of us is happy, and my SIL is planning to write a letter to the provincial government, which runs the home care system, about it. I don’t expect that to make any difference. This sort of thing has been going on for as long as the system has been around.

That taken care of, I spent some time doing some research, then tended to a rose bush. From what I could find, the first recommendation for dealing with scale is to prune away the infected branches. Which would cut away too much of the bush. We can cut it back severely in the fall, and it’ll come back, but not this early in the spring.

We don’t have anything like Neem oil or other suggested sprays, but one site I looked at mentioned dish detergent.

Well, we already started that.

A few other options came up that were not of any use to us, but apparently, using an old tooth brush to take them off can work.

So that’s why I tried.

I then spent the next while searching the rose bush, wetting it down with the soapy water, and using a tooth brush to get rid of the scale. This rose bush is a mass of short thorns, so I used a scrap of rigid foam insulation to stabilize the sections I was working on. The thorns could get pressed into the foam and stay in place, while also protecting my fingers from being ripped to shreds!

Once I got them all (that I could tell), I sprayed it down with a hose, then gave it another dousing with the soapy water.

I’m hoping this actually works.

The other thing we need to do is get that ornamental crab apple tree cut back. Sunlight is another thing to help prevent scale!

While all this was going on, I could hear the sounds of power tools being used. My brother had installed a post near the stand I have our trail cam on. He told me he was going to put in a post, and I was thinking “fence post”. Instead, he dug out a 4×4 post from some of their lumber that they brought over before the house sale, and set that in.

The camera is something like 10 feet off the ground.

He even added a few extras, some decorative, some practical – like a little roof over the camera to keep snow from building up on it. The camera itself is solar powered, and the solar panel could be mounted separately from the camera, unlike my solar powered trail cam, which can just pivot slightly to get a different angle. The solar panel is now mounted at the top of that 10′ or so post.

Which means we don’t need to have our trail cam at the gate anymore!

I’m thinking we can move it to record the cat shelters. I want to see how many “visitors” we get (as I have the critter cam up and have used it to chase out a racoon).

But not now, when I can only use one arm!

My brother was rushing to get things done before the rain started, but the rain wasn’t starting. I kept getting weather warnings on my phone about how, the rain will stop in about half an hour, or the rain will start at… but at most, we got spit on a bit.

Which was driving me nuts, because the garden needs to be watered, but I didn’t do it because we were expecting rain. In fact, we were supposed to get rain from about 1pm to about 2 or 3am!

We didn’t.

Later on, when my daughter and I were walking around with Eyelet, it did start to finally rain…

…only for it to stop soon after we got back inside.

I’ve just been itching to get outside, and watering is really about as much as my arm can handle right now.

Currently, we’re now expecting to get a thunderstorm between 7 and 9 this evening. It’s past 6:30 as I write this, and I see now sign of a storm. All of that seems to be passing to the south of us.

I did manage to finally try out those biscuit mixes I picked up at the dollar store. I ended up using two of the four packets. With the first one, I added a lonely piece of Prosciutto, chopped fine, and a garlic scape, also chopped fine. It was so fast, while the first batch was in the oven, I got another one going – this time with cheese to go with the garlic scape – waiting to add the water at the last minute.

I got enough biscuits out of the packages that I was able to bring a bunch to my brother. He was using the big riding mower, trying to clear the tall grass closer to his equipment, and could neither see nor hear me, so I just tucked it into the trailer for him.

When we did finally connect, he told me which app I needed to download and what I needed to be able to log on.

By then, he really had to hurry to finish and get to my mother’s. There was lots more he wanted to do, but they have decided they will come back next weekend – both of them – and stay the weekend to catch up. My brother was telling me what he really wants to do is to stay here, full time, for 6 months so he can get things done.

I’m practically swooning at the though. There is SO much we simply can’t get done, but he can, he has the equipment for it, and if he doesn’t, he has the ability to get it. With the stuff we’ve got going right now, we’re barely treading water and going into debt to pay for necessary repairs. Stuff like this is why we have credit in the first place, but to have so many things expensive things needing to be done, all at once, is good at all.

Well, we’ll see how things go. While I was at my mother’s, yesterday, she started talking about how she’ll pay to get her car fixed up. Which is great, but we can no longer afford to keep two vehicles insured at the same time. Our insurance has actually gone down, thanks to my excellent driving record (which will not be affected by our insurance claim due to wind damage), but everything else just keeps going up and up and up. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind selling the car, so we can use the space it’s in, in the garage. My brother thinks he can fix it.

Ah, well.

My brother is probably still at her place as I write this. He always goes over her banking with her in detail, leaving the printouts for her, all of which she promptly forgets as she throws away the printouts. She’ll keep some political party donation request letter from 5 years ago, but she won’t keep last month’s bank statements. Which is really, really frustrating for my brother!

Meanwhile, I’ve tried to log into the new security camera, and it says it’s offline, so I think I should go check on it.

Tomorrow, my husband has an appointment at the new pain clinic that’s closer to us. I think my arm will be fine for driving, but I might have issues getting his walker in and out of the truck!

Hmm. According to my weather app, it’s raining right now.

It isn’t.

I should ask my daughters to water the garden while we’re gone. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lovely, cooler day, but no rain.

Well, what we get, we get. Not much we can do about it.

*sigh*

It sure was great to see my brother, though, and we can look forward to seeing them both, next weekend! Yay!

Meanwhile, time for some more painkillers, then one last walkabout outside… and maybe cuddle a few kittens in the process.

The Re-Farmer

We got rain!

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Before heading to bed last night, I noticed the forecast was starting to suggest rain by this morning. Just a bit, and a fairly low chance of it.

By morning, my weather app was telling me things like, “rain expected to end in 30 minutes” or the like. When I headed out to do my morning rounds, though, it was barely even spitting.

With today expected to be much cooler, I didn’t water everything this morning, so my rounds were done a lot faster. Then my daughter came by to let me know that she had called in a prescription that she needed to bring to her doctor’s appointment, tomorrow. I didn’t realize just how much faster I was done my rounds until we had left and I was thinking to stop at the post office and realized they had only just opened!

By the time we left, though, it was actually raining. A gorgeous, solid rain!

It was still insanely smoky, though, and the smoke got thicker, the closer we got to town. There’s a large fire on the other side of the lake, so they were getting hit by the smoke a lot more than we were.

Both my daughters were not feeling well all last night, and no one was up to cooking, so they decided to treat us with burgers. When we finished at the pharmacy, they still weren’t open, so we drove around to take a look at the lake.

Which we could barely see! It was still pouring rain when I too the above photo.

It was no longer raining when we got home, and the smoke was far less. The good news was in checking the weather radar. The rain we got was being pushed straight towards the biggest fire across the lake. There’s rain up north, too. As welcome as it is, there isn’t anywhere near enough to do much for all the fires. From the looks of it, we won’t be getting more for almost a week.

My goal for today is still to get more transplants in, but delay due to rain is not a bad thing!

The Re-Farmer

Kitty status, garden status, and a lovely outing

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Last night, things did drop to freezing, so I’m glad we brought the transplants in from the portable greenhouse last night. When I headed out to do the morning rounds, it was only about 1C/34F, but it was just below 10C/50F in the portable greenhouse, so they got moved back in this morning.

After I did some repairs.

The garbage can I’m using as a heat sink doesn’t have a lid, so I’d been using a square of leftover 3/4″ rigid insulation as a lid, weighed down with a brick, and holding the thermometer. With the tears at the bottom of the door zippers from wind damage, cats can get in and out. They don’t jump up onto the wire shelves much; the wire forms 1″ squares, and I don’t think it’s comfortable for them to try and walk on. They do like to sit on the insulation, though.

Well, I came out one morning, and the insulation was broken in to, fallen into the garbage can, along with the brick and the thermometer. I haven’t spotted where it’s leaking yet, but it was less than half full at the time.

Looking around for something else to cover the garbage can with, the only thing I found that was large enough was one of the old window screens we used for things like curing onions in the fall. The smallest of the screens is still a pretty long rectangle, but it cover the entire top of the garbage can, so I gave it a try. Unfortunately, for the last couple of nights, I’ve been finding it knocked off the garbage can. This morning, it was knocked off again, in spite of my efforts to stabilize it, and this time a corner tore through the back of the plastic cover on the greenhouse.

*sigh*

I taped it up as best I could with clear duct tape. For now, I’ve tried covering the garbage can with overlapping bin lids and the broken pieces of rigid insulation from before.

Most of the transplants are too call to use the lids on the bins, so we can’t stack them all like we could before. Being able to use lids on just two of the bins to stack on top of is the only reason we can fit all the trays and bins on the chest freezer in the old kitchen. So the transplants got to spend the day in the relative warmth of the portable greenhouse for the day, but we’ve already brought them in again for the night. From the forecast, we’ll probably have to do it again for one more night before we can safely leave them in the portable greenhouse overnight again.

The winter sown bed that has a plastic mesh cover on it seemed to handle the overnight cold just fine. I can see there are some carrots coming up, and the others whatever radishes, beets and turnips that survived the winter. The radishes should grow the fastest, so we should be able to identify and harvest those earliest. That will make more space for the other root vegetables in the process. For now, though, I have no real clue what is what!

In the next photo, you can see the plastic over where we’d winter sown flowers was torn badly by the wind. All it took was a small tear at one end, from the tip of one of the bamboo stakes set across the top, and this morning, it was all wrecked.

There are a lot of seedlings coming up in there but I recognize them from when we grew pumpkins and gourds here, last year. They are all weeds.

This bed will be replanted with flowers, soon.

In the last photo, difficult to see against the soil, is a potato sprout! Some of the potatoes we planted already had pretty long sprouts on them, and one of them broke through the soil rather quickly.

The mesh over this bed is good for keeping the cats out, but the mesh isn’t fine enough to keep the Chinese Elm seeds out! The seed development hasn’t anywhere near its peak, yet, and already there are seeds everywhere.

I so look forward to when we can get rid of all the Chinese elm. They cause way too many problems!

After I did my rounds, I had a quick breakfast, then headed out. Before I get into that, though, I must share the cuteness!

In the first photo, if you look carefully, you can see there are 7 kittens, from 3 litters, mashed into that cat bed! The only one “missing” is Sir Robin, who was already out and running around.

The next photo was taken while I was gathering the bowls out of the cat house entry, for the evening feeding.

I was able to get a good photo of Poirot’s three this evening. The black on (Inspector Japp) looks like it’s got a sticky eye that will need washing. The mostly white one – Miss Lemon – is getting pretty active, and I’ve actually seen it fumble out of the carrier briefly, then scramble right back on. The white and grey – Captain Hastings – is also pretty mobile but, so far, has not gone all the way out of the carrier door. Once they get too mobile, Poirot is going to have to put up with them being brought down to floor level!

Last of all is the crowd inside the isolation shelter. I left things plugged in today, for the heat lamp, and it seems they really appreciated it!

Today was too cold and wet to get much done outside, so it was a good time to run some errands, mostly at Walmart. I did get a start on one wet and potentially messy job, though. The new septic ejector is working great, now that it’s no longer frozen, but with the excavation, there is now a lower area at the end of the metal sheet we have to divert the fluid away from the ejector. Normally, it would have naturally flowed towards a low spot nearby, but now it forms a sort of pool. I headed out with a garden hoe and used it to create a small trench to drain the fluid towards the low area, but to get the pool to drain, more small trenches had to be made, because it is all so uneven. In some places, I was able to use the hoe to move some of the clay/gravel nearby, into the lower areas around the edges. What it really needs is for the deepest parts to be filled, but that will be a job for another time. For now, I just want more of it to drain away. The last thing we want is for a small pond to form so close to the ejector. That will prevent the saturated ground around the ejector from drying out, and it’ll just freeze again, next year.

Of course, I sent progress photos to my brother and his wife, so they were up to date about it.

No, I’m not going to post pictures of pooled septic greywater here! 😄

When I did as much as I could and headed back to the house, I made sure to hose down my rubber boots. So much clay was stuck to the bottom of my boots, they felt a couple of pounds heavier, each!

Once I was cleaned up and changed, and had a quick breakfast, I headed out. My brother and his wife aren’t too far away from the Walmart I was going to so, before I left, I messaged them where I was going and asked if they wanted to meet for lunch or something. It turned out their schedule was open, so we made arrangements to meet at a restaurant near the Walmart I was going to.

I got there early, so I went to my other intended stop first; the dollar store nearby. I wanted to pick up more ground staples – can’t have too many of those! – as well as packages of shorter stakes. I got two packs of 25 bamboo stakes, which I am thinking of using to around the snap pea bed to support whatever I find to set around it and keep the deer from eating our peas. I also picked up four 2 packs of 2′ metal stakes. I am thinking to use them to support the hoops intended for the two 4′ square beds. I will probably cut them in half, though. We’ll see when the time comes.

Once done there, I made my way to the restaurant and met up with my brother and his wife. We had a lovely visit. They also talked about some of the things they are planning to do here at the farm, that we aren’t able to do. One of the things that is badly needed it to get more gravel on our driveway. My brother, however, remembers that the last time my late brother used gravel from our own gravel pit, it turned out to make a real mess when things got wet. Likely because there’s so much clay mixed in. They are thinking of buying crushed limestone, or even slag. Slag would be ideal, as it compacts to form a sort of concrete surface. They covered their own driveway on the property they sold with slag, and were very happy with it.

They also told me that they will have a push mower for us to use! We already have permission to use their riding mower, which is currently being stored in the garage near our truck. They’ve actually used it themselves, around where their trailer is stored, but that area is way too rough. Once they can access the tractor stored in the garage again, they’ll use their big rotary mower to cut that area, and my SIL wants to harrow it to level it somewhat.

With our “new” push mower (it’s just a couple of years old) in the small engine shop still, as they try to find the parts needed to fix it (which is highly unlikely), my brother told me about my mother’s old lawnmower that I had talked about wanting to bring in to get fixed, instead. I know it needs a new prime pump, along with general servicing, after sitting for so long. It turns out this mower was actually theirs, originally. They’d bought another push mower for my mother, but the self propeller was too fast for her, and she couldn’t understand that if she let go of the bar, the self propeller would stop and she would just push it. This lawn mower’s self propeller wasn’t as fast, so they ended up trading, and she was very happy with that! My brother told me not to bother taking it in to be serviced. He said he would look it over and could probably fix it himself.

Which means he would be doing that here.

Which means my daughters and I will have the chance to watch and learn, and eventually be able to do it ourselves!

I look forward to that!

After a very enjoyable lunch, we parted ways briefly. They needed to shop at Walmart, too, so we crossed paths a couple of times there, too!

One of the things I wanted to do was look at the garden centre, but it was too cold for the plants to be outside. Instead, the shelves were all jammed around the outdoor furniture displays, and not really accessible. Aside from being crowded, there was a group of people that were just hanging out around the display furniture, while their kids ran around. I didn’t actually need anything, so I moved on.

The main thing I needed to get was more kibble for the outside cat and canned cat food for the inside cats. My brother had gifted me with one of his vehicle hands free devices, so I can take calls while driving. After checking with the girls at home to see if we had an extra USB-A charging cable, I ended up grabbing one for the truck. It took me and a saleswoman quite some time to find one! They only had two, and I picked the longer cable. So I can now link my phone to this device and it will automatically pick up calls for me. My brother is pretty much the only person who calls me on my cell phone – either him, or home care to say there’s no one to cover for my mother’s med assist – so I don’t expect to use it often, but it’s good to have. I never, ever, touch my phone while driving. We’ve lost friends to people talking while driving.

The shopping done, I had a much more pleasant drive home than the drive in. When I left home, it was rather nice, but the further south I drove, the worse the weather. At first, it was like there was a mist all over. Then I saw precipitation, but couldn’t tell if it was rain, or snow! Then it became very clearly snow, and coming down pretty heavy. It all melted on contact, though, so there was no accumulation anywhere. Just poor visibility!

Then it was done and gone, like driving through to the other side of a wall!

The drive home, however, was warmer and dry, which was nice. Once home, the girls helped me unload and they put the groceries away while I did the evening cat feeding, including wet cat food for the kittens. I was able to close up four of the bigger kittens in the sun room, so they could eat their fill. With the bowls that get set into the cat house entry, it’s more of a hope that they and their moms will get a chance to eat their special food (for inside the cat house, I include kitten kibble, too) before some of the other adult cats eat it all. Once they had a good long time to fill their little bellies with wet cat food, I opened up the sun room again and a daughter helped me do my evening rounds, then bring the transplants in for the night.

We’re at 5C/41F as I write this, just past 8pm. It is supposed to very slowly keep getting colder all night, reaching our expected low of 2C/36F at about 6am. That has been the coldest time of the night for the past while, too. Our daytime highs are supposed to warm up nicely over the next few days, but the overnight lows aren’t expected to get much better for some time. At least the days will be warm enough to get work done outside. Including our first mowing of the lawn, once we get the wagon out and go over it to pick up all the smaller branches that have been coming down all winter. The temperatures will be perfect for getting some manual labour done!

So overall, today has been a very good day – but then, any day when I see my brother and his wife is a very good day! 😊😊😊

The Re-Farmer

Cold, wet and windy, and how we said goodbye.

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Today turned out to be pretty unpleasant, overall. Our high of the day was supposed to be 9C/48F which, according to the hourly forecast, was supposed to happen around 9am, with temperatures slowly dropping since yesterday afternoon. When I headed outside at around 8am, it was 5C/41F and still slowly dropping. As I write this, at past 5:30pm, we are currently at 3C/37F, the wind chill is -10C/14F, and it’s still supposed to drop more.

When doing my rounds this morning, I plugged in and turned on heat lamps in various shelters. The kittens will certainly need them! The bigger, mobile kittens have all been hanging out in the cat house together, instead of the sun room. The heat bulb in there is on a light sensor, so it’ll turn on as it gets darker, when they’ll need it the most.

The forecast for the overnight low has wobbled from -2C/28F to the current 0C/32F, but the coldest temperatures are not supposed to hit until 7am tomorrow. Meanwhile, high winds and rain continue. Yesterday, I’d uncovered some of the garden beds so they could get rained on. I goofed with the high raised bed, by lifting the sides. The plastic was all bunched up on top, so it wouldn’t get hit too hard with driving rain. This morning, I found the weight of water collected in the plastic was enough to bend the hoops all out of shape. I was able to re-cover the beds, but that one took some extra fiddling with. I never did take the plastic off the bed in the old kitchen garden, which turned out to be a good thing in the end. The sump pump is going off pretty regularly now, so that bed is getting watered from below, at least.

As I went out to do the morning rounds, there was only minimal wind damage found so far. The chunk of maple in the West yard, in the first image, was the worst of it.

The second image, which is focused in totally the wrong place, is of the Liberty apple leaves! It has survived its first winter with the coldest of Zone 3 temperatures (last winter was pretty mild). Not too shabby for a Zone 4 tree! This suggests that the micro climate in the location we chose for it is actually helping.

In the next photo, also focused in all the wrong places, you can see the leaves on the new apple tree we planted this spring. Good to see that it has taken.

After that are some leaves on one of the mulberry bushes – they both now have tiny leaf buds unfurling! I had been starting to wonder about those. They both definitely have some cold damage to the tips of some branches, but they have survived their first winter. While these are supposed to be hardy to our zone, they are also tucked in gaps of the lilac hedge, which should act as a protective microclimate, too, until the mulberry get bigger. They were planted where they are, partly to fill the gaps the deer were getting through.

The very last image is of something completely different. That is a sugar snap pea shoot! I found several of them coming up already.

We’re going to have to put something around/over that bed soon, to keep the deer from eating them.

Which confirms to me that any peas that were winter sown in the bed against the chain link fence are toast. The one sprout I did see is simply gone. I thought I saw some bean sprouts, but now I can’t find them. Just some weeds and onions, really. No sign of any of the corn or sunflowers planted in there.

So I will replant that bed, but not quite yet. The Chinese elm seeds are starting to fall and, while the netting is helping keep them off, the seeds are collecting along the edges, which will need to be scooped away. Also, between the cats and the wind, the netting is getting slid up the hoops, allowing the seeds to get under. What I will probably have to do is pull the netting off completely, straighten out the hoops as best I can, then use ground staples along both edges of the netting when they are being replaced. I’ll do that when I resow into the bed. We have quite a few ground staples, but this bed will need a lot, so I’ll be getting more as soon as I can. I still have a packet of Hopi Black Dye sunflower seeds I can sow, and I’ll probably plant pole beans along with them. If they survive and start getting too tall for the netting, we’ll have to find some other way to protect them, because the deer really love both beans and sunflowers.

The kitties, meanwhile, are doing okay in the cold and the wet. I’m not seeing anywhere near as many adult cats these days. I haven’t tried to do a head count lately, but I’m thinking under 20 in total, for the adult cats, for sure. Even Brussel isn’t around as much, leaving her babies to the other creche mothers!

A lot of the fixed cats have lost their collars, so today, several of them got brand new necklaces.

Even Kohl got her first necklace! We’ll have to keep an eye on her, as I don’t think she has reach adult size yet, and I had to make it pretty short to fit her. The Grink and Magda are still way too small.

Poirot, meanwhile, as been spending a lot more time with her babies, now that it’s gotten cooler!

We have chosen names for her babies.

The mostly white one is Miss Lemon. The white and grey is Captain Hastings. The black with white spots on the belly is Inspector Japp.

In other things…

My husband had a medical appointment this morning. This was the appointment we had to reschedule last time, because my husband was in too much pain and walked out before ever seeing the doctor (and where the appointment times were messed up). There must have been some notes added to his file, because they got him into the examination room 5 minutes early, and someone came in to take his BP right away. The doctor came in a bit on the late side, but only by a few minutes. We went over his most recent lab results, and another medication is being applied for (it needs approval for coverage with our province’s pharmacare system) and will be added to all the others he’s already taking. He’s got his first appointment at the new pain clinic next month, so we’ll see if they change up any of his other meds. At some point, they might actually find a pain killer for him that does more than just take the edge off.

My husband felt well enough that we even stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few small things. The next time we go to a city shop, we’ll need to pick up more flour, but that’s not something to buy locally. It costs almost twice as much. I might actually make a trip to the nearest Walmart tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I didn’t get to do a dump run last weekend, so I’m hoping to get that done. We’ll just have to get a tarp or something to secure the load, now that we no longer have a box cover, so we don’t end up losing bags of garbage on the highway. I still need to gather the required info together to file a claim with our insurance and see if they’ll cover a replacement. I did notice damage to the truck I hadn’t seen before. Where the remaining piece of the box cover was twisted out of shape, I realized that a section of the box frame itself was twisted, too. It was just partially hidden by the remaining piece of the cover. The amount of force needed twist that is amazing!

One thing about today’s overcast dreariness is that I have been feeling incredibly sleepy. Once we got home, I went straight for a nap. The house has been cold enough that we actually turned the furnace back up. I’m noticing that, while my phone and desktop weather apps are both saying we’re at 3C/37F still, the old tablet I have set up as my clock and weather monitor, is telling me we are at -1C/30F right now, and that our expected low will be -2C/28F! It really makes me wonder where the weather station that app is connected to is! It almost always reads colder than the other apps.

A dreary day for a dreary mood, continuing from yesterday, and our trip to the vet.

Our elderly Freya had been declining for some time. Even before her more obvious physical decline and something going very wrong inside her mouth that we were never able to see, she was at that stage where we would see her peacefully sleeping, thinking, awww… how cute. Then checking to see if she was breathing.

We knew it was time but, lately, between trips to my mother, stuff with the truck, other running around, etc., I just hadn’t gotten around to calling a clinic. The Cat Lady recommended the clinic we’ve been doing the spays and neuters at, as having lower prices.

I actually called them up twice, yesterday. The first time, I was put on hold and, as I was waiting, I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen Freya all morning. Nor all night. The last time I’d seen her, she’d gone to the dining room to eat cat soup, and I found blood in the tray after she was done. She had been spending more of her time sleeping in my room and, at feeding time, I would take a bowl of soft food, just for her, go to where she was curled up (usually in her favourite box bed) and hold it until her chin until she either started eating, or moved away and didn’t eat at all. She hadn’t eaten when I brought her some cat soup, so I was glad to see her leaving the room to eat later, but she never came back to my room after that. She wasn’t around when I did the morning feeding. So when the receptionist got back on the line, I briefly told her why I was calling, but said I would have to call back later… maybe. It was entirely possible Freya had found a quite corner somewhere and passed away. The receptionist was very understanding.

I searched ever spot in my room that she normally went to, and there was no sign of her. I searched various possible hidden corners in the dining room. Nothing. The other areas she might have gone into were closed off. I let the family know to look for her, then went into the basement to check on things there (we’ve got both blower fans going in the old basement, to try and keep the seepage down; today, I added another fan), while my daughter looked for her.

My older daughter finally found Freya, asleep on her sister’s bed. My younger daughter was in the shower and missed all this.

Freya hadn’t gone up those stairs in months, so no one expected to find her up there!

My older daughter then brought Freya down, and she immediately curled up in her favourite box on my bed, while I called the clinic back.

After explaining the situation, they asked how soon we wanted to do this, and I said sooner was probably better, given the pain she was having.

Knowing we were in another town, she asked how long it would take us to get there. They could take us in pretty much right away.

It takes a little under and hour to get there, so we booked the appointment for during the noon hour. I also got the cost (just over $200, after taxes). On informing the family, my younger daughter said she would come along. My husband and older daughter had time to give Freya goodbye cuddles, and then we were off.

Freya was comfortable in her box bed, so we just put her, box and all, into a cat carrier with a side opening door. My daughter was able to open it and pet her as we drove. She never quite settled during the drive, though. It’s amazing how much you notice the bumps on a road, when you know they are causing pain.

We left early enough that I stopped and ran into a store to get some squeeze treats for her. My daughter gave her 2 of them (there were only 4 in a box) as we drove the remaining distance to the clinic, and Freya was quite enthusiastic about the treats!

Once inside, all the paperwork and paying was done at the start. The clinic has a separate room, with its own exit door, used for times like this. It’s larger than the other examination rooms, and has comfortable seating available. Once all the paperwork was done, we were set up in the room, and given a few more minutes alone with Freya. We opened up the carrier, and she quite eagerly went exploring. She did stop to enjoy the last two squeeze treats, though!

The vet came in after a while, along with a second vet that was just starting at the clinic and along as part of her orientation. While I wasn’t in their system until today, we’ve been here many times through the rescue, and the vet recognized us.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had to do this, so she explained the entire process to us. Things have certainly changed over the years. They were to give two injections; the first was the same used to put animals to sleep before surgeries. Then, after about 10 minutes, she would get a final injection, and not feel a thing.

My daughter got to hold Freya while she got the first injection, then the vets left. Freya was soon asleep with her chin tucked onto her paws on my daughter’s shoulder. We both got to cuddle with as she slept, before the vets came back, gave the final injection, and listened with a stethoscope until she could tell us it was over.

From there, they left us, saying we could spend as much time as we needed. They started to assure us that, as we left through the other door, a chime would go off, and someone would come get Freya right away, so she wouldn’t be left alone, but that was if we were going to do a cremation. We were taking Freya home with us, so that was not an issue.

I have to say, I really appreciate how well the clinic handled all this. The last time we tried to have a cat put down, we were still living in the city. We tried calling the Humane Society. The first issue was how long it would take to get an appointment. Almost a week. The next was that they were going to charge extra if we wanted to stay with our cat while it was done. !!! The cat passed away before we could get her to the vet. We tried to make her as comfortable as possible, but it was pretty hard to watch. My older daughter was pretty traumatized by the whole thing, really. So how things went yesterday was really about as good as things could be, under the circumstances.

Once we got home, my daughter and I went to the space I’d prepared for our incoming plum tree (which, according to the tracking, just got processed in the city today, so it should arrive locally on Monday). We dug the planting space out again, then kept going so we could bury Freya in her favourite box bed, and have room above her to plant the plum tree.

We have ridiculously rocky soil, but I think the physical labour was helpful for my daughter.

When we were done, my daughter picked a bouquet of dandelions to place on top.

The whole thing was a lot more comforting. We’ve lost a few cats since moving out here, both indoor and outdoor, and those circumstances were considerably more difficult. My daughter and I have both comforted cats and kittens as they passed in our arms. I’m glad we were able to give Freya a peaceful end, and she is no longer in pain.

The cold and dreary skies, however do suit our mood right now.

The Re-Farmer

Dealing with the heat… and Mom issues again

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

With an even hotter day expected for today, I was outside early to take care if things while it was still relatively cool.

If 20C/68F at 6am could be considered cool.

After the cats were tended to – and they were a lot happier and more active in the relative cool, that’s for sure! – I started preparing things for the upcoming heat.

The transplants were moved outside so they wouldn’t cook in the portable greenhouse later on. If you click through the above slideshow, you’ll see we have tulips blooming, and the wild plums are in full bloom.

I watered some of the winter sown garden beds, lifted plastic covers up for air flow, and was watering some of the food trees when I got a message from my daughter.

My mother had phoned. My daughter didn’t get to the phone in time, but her my mother leaving a message about not feeling well and going to the doctor.

???

So I shut off the hose, headed inside and listened to the message. Which wasn’t particularly clear in what exactly she was having trouble with, or what she was intending to do, but it was because she’s not getting her medications on time.

I called her back.

She started talking about how she was poorly she was feeling and she has to go to a doctor (she sounded good; voice strong, few issues with finding her works, no breathing issues…), and it was because she wasn’t getting her medications regularly.

Her morning med assist wasn’t expected to arrive for another hour.

After asking a number of questions, and basically, she thinks that the home care workers should arrive at her place at exactly the same time, ever day, no matter what. And there should only be two people visiting, not so many people, and that’s why she’s not getting her medications “properly”.

She’s getting her medications. They have a 2 hour window when she’s supposed to get them.

Then she started going on about the no-show on Saturday. She had asked someone about that and apparently this person had made arrangements with a friend to take over for her (which can’t be accurate; she would have arranged with another home care worker, but that’s not how my mother understood it) because – insert extremely mocking and condescending tone – it was Mother’s Day and she has a little daughter she wanted to spend time with.

Now, I have no idea what was actually said, since this was on Saturday, not Mother’s Day, but she was made at this woman for arranging to spend time with her daughter, rather than the woman who didn’t show up.

Which reminds me of another home care worker she complained about. While my mother was taking her pills the worker was texting her own mother on her phone. My mother was extremely mocking in describing this. While that does seem unprofessional, I suspected there was something else going on. After several different days of my mother complaining about the woman texting her mother while at my mom’s place, she finally mentioned…

Her mother had just had to put her dog down, and was having a hard time about it.

My mother was using her mocking tone again as she told me this, too.

I tried to explain to her that they need to have a lot of people, not just two, because they have a lot of people besides her that they have to visit, and they need to have enough people to cover for each other is someone gets sick or whatever. My mother began to complain about how they only cared about themselves, only themselves, not about her… They should only care about her.

Meanwhile, it’s my own mother who doesn’t care about anyone else, only herself. The home care workers should all not care about their own families. Just her.

The hypocrisy was completely lost on her.

Then she started talking about needing to talk to the doctor and to make an appointment.

One of the things on my to-do list was to call to arrange a phone appointment, because my mother’s doctor had left a message with her to do that. The clinic wasn’t going to open for another hour, though, and I told my mother that.

I kept asking questions, trying to understand what was going on, and telling her that if she really felt she needed help (she mentioned waiting up in so much pain, she can’t move and can only scream, but she doesn’t want to disturb her neighbours…), she had a life line. Push the button. That’s what it’s for.

She didn’t really respond openly, but clearly wasn’t interested in that. She wanted me or my siblings to drop everything and do it for her. Instead, she started talking about how, because she’s not taking her pills regularly (I think we might be having an issue of her rewriting her own memory again), that’s why she’s feeling so poorly. Her pain is getting worse, her vision…

Her vision?

She’s mentioned her vision before, but hadn’t said it was getting worse. That fact that it was NOT getting worse is why we got away with cancelling her last appointment.

I told her, she hasn’t said it was getting worse. None of her pills will help with that. This is where she would need to go to the eye clinic in the city. (The treatment is injections into her eyeball. Which she handled we better than I ever would have!!!) Did she want me to make an appointment at the clinic for her?

…

We’ll talk about that later, she says…

Then she started saying how she needs to be “around people” (meaning, have someone available to help, 24/7, as in assisted living/supportive living/long term care). Which I totally agree on. She asked and I told her again that I’d gone through her entire panel with the home care coordinator again, making changes where things have gotten worse for her, and basically taking her worst days and writing that down, to try and get her in somewhere; preferably long term care. I reminded her that most people go to long term care from the hospital; they fall and break a hip or something, and never go home. Just straight to long term care. Most people don’t actually want to go into long term care, like she does, so hers is a different situation. But we would still have to wait for a bed to come available, and for that, we’re basically waiting for someone to die, because that’s pretty much the only way space becomes available in long term care.

(I didn’t mention it this time, but I had told her about one of her neighbours that I’d run into, while my mother was in the hospital. She told me it had taken 8 months and two hospital transfers for her late father to get into long term care. He wasn’t well enough to go home, but there were no open beds in long term care, so he had to stay in the hospital.)

I remined her that I was already supposed to call the clinic to make a phone appointment for her this morning, but the clinic wasn’t open yet, so I’d have to call her back.

Which meant I lost about the cooler weather to get stuff done outside.

I had time for breakfast before calling the clinic. I made an appointment for tomorrow morning, which means I’ll have to be at my mother’s before 8am. I called my mother to let her know, but it went to her answering machine, so I left a message. Then I headed outside to at least finish what I was half way through before I headed inside.

Once I was back inside, I spent more time on the phone. One was to return a call from the small engine shop I’d left our push mower at, for servicing.

There are a couple of parts I can’t remember the names of, one connected to the choke, that were done. That’s why I couldn’t start it anymore. They simply were no longer there. My guess is, they broke and fell off. Our lawn is very rough on lawnmowers!

The problem is, this is a Canadian Tire, Certified brand. The parts are hard to get at the best of times. With these parts, there aren’t any parts numbers. Which means, they don’t service them. “Fixing” it would mean replacing the entire engine and, at that point, may as well just buy a new mower!

He’s going to try and find the parts for me but I told him, if you can’t, you can’t. Just let me know and I’ll pick it up.

I then told him that I do have another push mower. The prime pump needs replacing, and it’s jerry rigged for starting and stopping. It’s about 20+ years old. He told me that it would probably be easier to find parts for that, and those older machines last a lot longer!

So what I might end up doing is bringing the newer push mower home as basically trash, and bringing my mother’s old push mower in for servicing and repair instead. We shall see.

I also made a number of calls about the truck, trying to find out if the insurance will cover the lost box cover, and it it would be worth making a claim.

Long story short, I would start an insurance claim. They would make an appointment for me to bring it in for inspection. Someone from the insurance company comes to town every other week to do these inspections. If it’s determined that the damage isn’t because of some fault (rust, previous damage, etc), and that they will cover it, it would be worth paying the $500 deductible. A new cover ranges from $1200 to $2800. !!!! The tail light would also be replaced. They don’t just replace the cover, but the whole unit, and that costs about $250-$300. Not worth making a claim for just that, if the inspector decides they won’t cover the loss of the cover, at which point I could cancel the claim entirely.

Eventually, I made my way back outside.

This was the temperature before I headed out, then when I got back in.

Much of what I did was things like watering down the hot concrete, misting the transplants and garden beds, and wetting down the mats in the sun room to help cool through evaporation.

The first picture above was taken when I started my rounds at about 5:30-6am. Poirot stayed with her kittens for quite a long time. The wall thermometer was already reading about 20C/68F, while outside was still around 13C/55F. The frozen water bottles would be thawed by then, but must still have been helping keep things cool. Little by little, as I could reach, I replaced the water bottle in front with a new frozen one, and replaced the ice pack on top of the carrier with another ice pack. Eventually, I was even able to add a small ice pack along the side of the carrier.

Poirot let me do this.

She did growl at me as I did things around her, but I was able to give her a squeeze treat and she was quite happy with that, and with licking the last of it off my fingers, too. When I added the ice pack on the side, she shifted, but let me. Later, I put my hand in to pet one of her kittens and…

… she licked my fingers!!!!

When I later saw that she was gone, I switched out the water bottle in the back of the carrier for a frozen one. The second picture with the babies is after I’d done that.

So while it was still pretty hot in the sun room, things were much better in their nest, with the help of the car windshield heat screen blocking the sun from the windows and judiciously placed ice packs!

The bigger kittens had their own ways to keep cool.

Little Kale, in the first photo, was on the very bottom of a shelf, where temperatures would be cooler. The next photo shows some of the other kittens, chilling with the moms – one ran off before I could take the picture. Last image is of Sir Robin the Brave. When we pick him up, he almost immediately flips over onto his back, so we can pet his neck and chest! This kitten is so socialized, it’s amazing!

Meanwhile, every time I had the chance, I would try and call my mom to confirm about tomorrow.

No answer. Every time.

Then my older daughter offer to buy supper, so we wouldn’t have to heat the house with cooking (the upstairs is insanely hot!), so my younger daughter and I headed out, but not before I tried calling my mother again. Still no answer, so I ended up calling the home care coordinator, because that’s the only home care number I have. I explained that I talked to my mother this morning, but had been trying to get back to her for hours, and there was no answer. She was quite surprised to here this. My mother’s supper med assist was going to be happening soon. She told me she would let the home care worker know and that they’d get back to me.

We were on our way to town when my cell phone rang. It was the home care worker, calling to let me know she’d just left my mother. She had been asleep this whole time!

She was also very groggy.

Otherwise, she seemed all right.

I was very, very thankful for the news.

Our trip to town did not take long. After we got back home, I called my mother, and she answered the phone. She told me she had been sleeping and had a hot water bottle for her back (I can’t even imagine using a hot water bottle in this heat!), and her pain was why she was in bed. She never heard the phone ring.

I confirmed she got my message about tomorrow, so we’re on for that.

As we were talking, there was a knock at the door.

It was her suppertime med assist.

???

Which means the person that called me before had swung by my mother’s place, just to do a wellness check! She was not the evening med assist person!

That was so awesome of them!!!

So that’s all done for today.

For now, I just need to do my evening rounds and do the evening cat feeding. Normally, I would have done it earlier, but it was so hot, the cats don’t have much appetite!

*sigh*

The temperature had dropped to 27C/81F, but has just jumped back up to 31C/88F.

Well, things need to be put away for the night. The low is supposed to be 9C/48F, though not until about 6am. We’re supposed to have some rain for a couple of hours in the morning, and the high is supposed to be “only” 20C/68F Then things drop right down for the next few days!

That’s some wild weather whiplash we’ll be getting!

Anyhow.

Time to get out there, then try and get to bed at a decent hour. I had intended to do a few hours work outside really early, then nap for a couple of hours, but… well… that just didn’t happen!

I am so, so tired, in so many different ways!!

The Re-Farmer