Despite being well anchored, the portable greenhouse still got blown over. You can see that it came apart at some of the connectors. The base wasn’t moving, since it’s well weighted down.
My daughter and I spent the next while rescuing seedlings. The damaged wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be, however with so much root disruption, we might lose some transplants. The tomatoes should survive, but the melons are not as hardy.
Once everything was picked up and the frame set back again, my daughter moved two of the tie downs, so it is less likely to get blown over – at least from winds in that direction! We pulled the cover down as best we could, and tried to tuck some of it under the frame itself, though the base was still weighted down so that wasn’t as thorough as it could be. My daughter brought out the clear duct tape to secure some tears. With the plastic coming loose from the zipper so much on one side, she simply taped the cover to the frame itself. We won’t be able to zip it closed anymore.
In the next picture, you can see how we’ve put everything back again, and I moved some of the soil and manure bags to weight down the side that’s getting hit by the wind so much. That, alone, will make a huge difference.
As I was picking up other things that were blown around, I heard a noise from the East yard garden beds.
Everything that had set over the plastic to weigh it down got blown off, all at once, by a single gust of wind.
I didn’t even try to put it back and simply removed the plastic completely. No chance of putting anything to close up the ends of the cover, but hopefully the cats will have no interest in going under there in this wind!
The door to the outhouse got blown open, which I actually saw as a good thing. It means it was successfully straightened out again, after the tree was removed. When the tree fell, enough weight landed on the outhouse to misalign the door frame, and the door was slightly jammed in one corner. It doesn’t have a handle on the outside to pull it open yet, which meant that we had to stick our fingers into the largest gap we could reach into and yank with our fingertips.
Other things were getting blown around, too. Thankfully, the plastic covers on the other beds are holding. No trees have been blown over that I could see. This was the largest fallen branch I found, so far.
Tomorrow, we’re going to have to go through the yard and trees to clean up fallen branches.
Depending on what app I look at, we are at either 27C/81F, 25C/77F or 19C/66F. Our winds are at 40kmh/25mph and will continue through the evening. I’ll probably head out a couple more times before it gets dark, just to check on things. Hopefully, there won’t be any more damage.
I actually couldn’t see the little black one until viewing these files on my desktop! The little voidling disappears into the void of his mother’s fur. 😁
Last night, I remembered that we hadn’t done my mother’s monthly blook work yet, and that she had a fasting blood test to do as well. I made arrangements with her to come over this morning, aiming to get her to the lab, which is just a few blocks from her place, as early as possible, so she wouldn’t have to keep fasting for so long.
I ended up having a ridiculously early morning. I’ve been waking up as the days get light, which means I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier for a while now! This morning, it was about 5:30am, and I didn’t need to get up until later. While in the washroom, though, I heard suspect kitten noises, so I got a daughter to join me to check on them while feeding them. It’s much easier to get wet cat food to the kittens with a second person! I still had to close up the inner door on the sun room to let the babies have a chance to eat. Poirot and Brussel had left when I started dispensing the kibble, with Poirot heading off somewhere in the outer yard. Caramel’s kittens were in the cat house, of course, so I tucked their tray into the entry, hoping they would find it and eat before the other cats discovered it. I have noticed that the other adult cats don’t go into the cat house at all, now that the babies are in there, which is good.
By the time I finished my rounds, Poirot was back and at the sun room door, wanting in but too scared to let me come close and open it for her. It doesn’t actually close all the way; things have shifted too much over the winter. It jams onto the threshold enough to stay closed, but if a cat were to push against it, it opens – something some of the other cats have already figured out!
I headed out to my mother’s for about 8:30am. As I parked and headed in, I saw someone leaving and immediately thought it was probably the health care worker. Sure enough, I was right; I had just missed her. My mother remembered not to have breakfast with her pills, which was good. She was all dressed and ready to go, too… including a grocery list! Which I was happy to see, as I forgot to suggest I could do her grocery shopping while I was there. We had time to go over her list and the new flier. Whole chicken was on an excellent sale and she was okay with getting one, which made me happy. She is not getting enough protein, and we all need more protein as we get older.
That done, we headed to the lab in the hospital. She was the only one there, so they were able to take her in and get it done very quickly. So quickly, she actually complained as I was helping her out of the chair, that everyone is in such a hurry! The technician didn’t actually hurry, but was efficient in doing a very basic blood draw, but for someone who struggles just to get in and out of their slightly higher chair, I’m sure it feels way too fast!
Since she was out and about, and in need of breakfast, I suggested we try out the newly renovated and re-opened restaurant that she’s been wanting to go to for some time. Even when they were still closed and very much under renovation, she tried to get me to stop and go inside to see if they were open yet. 😄 I drove past it on the way to her place, so I knew it was open for breakfast. She happily agreed, but was then surprised when I drove to the highway. She wanted to go to the “new” restaurant, and this building has been there for a long time.
???
She then told me her neighbours were talking about a new restaurant. This was the only one that I knew about.
With the new renovations, this place now has a wheelchair ramp, but no automatic doors, which I found a bit odd. If I had not been there with her, my mother would have had a very hard time getting in on her own. They are clearly not completely finished with their plans, with dining tables in only one half of the space. Tables spaced nice and far apart, with plenty of room for someone to get through with a walker, even if there were people sitting in the chairs. At this time, though, there was only one occupied table.
We had a basic eggs, hashbrowns, meat (I had sausage, my mother had bacon) and toast breakfast. It was quite good, and the portions generous. Given that my mother was literally breaking her fast, she was quite hungry, so that worked out very well.
More people came in while we were eating and, my mother being my mother, she started talking to people at the other tables. As I was coming back from paying the bill, I caught the tail end of someone explain to Mom about the new restaurant she had been hearing about. It turns out it was more like a canteen in the rec centre that is only open a few days a week. No wonder I hadn’t heard about it!
Once we were done there, I took my mother home, since she was clearly getting pretty tired. When we got to her door, though, we found something in front of it.
A reusable grocery bag with a card in an envelop sticking out of it.
My immediate thought went to our vandal, while my mother started listing off all sorts of other possibilities.
I was right. Our vandal and come by and, with my mother away, had left things at the door for her.
My mother was so tired, she settled into her chair without pausing to take her jacket off. The bag turned out to have four mini fruit pies in it. I opened the card for her, too. It was a mother’s day card, and she was quite delighted by the chickadees pictures on the front. I opened it up and there was a note written inside from our vandal. It was from both him and his wife, though clearly his handwriting. The note was a brief mention about something his “cancer counsellor” told him. It was unusually benign, which suggests to me his wife actually saw and knew about the card, though it still reeked of manipulation. Other cards and letters he has left with her were typically quite nasty.
My mother was too enamored by the pretty chickadees to notice or care.
Once she was settled and comfortable, I headed out with her shopping list. I also needed to go to the post office, which is almost directly across the street from the grocery store, so I parked at the grocery store, then grabbed the envelopes to walk across and mail them, first.
I immediately noticed a very familiar looking vehicle.
While I was getting the envelopes out, I saw our vandal getting into it. My mother and I must have just missed him at her place by minutes!
As I walked across to the post office, he left the parking lot and I was concerned that he might have seen and recognized me, and would decide to go back to my mother’s again. So I got things mailed and did the shopping quickly. Not that it would have taken long, anyhow; my mother’s shopping lists are not long.
When I got back to my mother’s place with her shopping, the first thing I asked was if everything was okay. She was surprised to see me back so quickly – she hasn’t even taken her jacket off, yet! I explained to her about seeing our vandal and that I was concerned he would come back, if he’d seen me.
Then we promptly forgot all about him.
After the groceries were put away, I stayed longer to do a bit of housekeeping for her. There wasn’t much she needed done, so I was soon on my way home.
It was actually quite disorienting to realize it was not even 11:30 when I left.
By this time, things were starting to get quite hot, and the high winds were in full force. Our expected high of 27C/81F has been dropped to 25C/77F, which we are at right now and are expected to stay at for several more hours.
When I got home, I had to check on the raised bed covers, and they are all holding up to the wind. The portable greenhouse, however, is not doing as well. We had to tie the door open, as it was over 50C/122F in there. The door faces the house, and the wind is from the south, so at least the doorway is sheltered, but plastic covering the frame is still ballooning. At some point, the ties for the door came loose, so it was flapping. My husband’s window faces it, so he was able to let us know and my daughter fixed it. She ended up draping a broken hose over it, and pushed the cat trap right against one side of it, to try and reduce the ballooning. That actually helped quite a bit. Unfortunately, the plastic around the doorway is starting to tear. Where it’s attached to the zipper already had some tears, and that’s gotten much worse, but even at one corner, where the tie down loop is, has started to tear.
*sigh*
I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but I really was hoping it would hold out longer. At least the roof and three sides are still holding out. It’s just the side with the doorway. We’ll still be able to make it work out.
It’s getting time to feed the outside cats for the evening, so I’ll be heading outside to check on things soon. With this wind and heat, though, there is no way I’ll be able to continue clearing out the garden bed I started on, yesterday. The high winds are supposed to continue through the night, but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler (as in, just under 20C/68C) and the winds are supposed to die down by then, so I should be able to finish clearing that bed then. I have decided that I will plant peas down the middle of this bed, and potatoes on either side. Once the bed is clear, I will set up posts to hold trellis netting down the middle, then get netting on it right away, so that’s over and done with, before planting anything. If things go smoothly, I should be able to get the peas and potatoes planted by the end of the day.
If things go smoothly.
I don’t really count on that. 😄
Now to go feed some kitties and check for wind damage!
As things got hotter in the afternoon, I headed out again, hooking up an extra hose to the front tap to water that bed again, as the winds are drying everything out. Inside the portable greenhouse, it was above 50C/122F. Since this is just a plastic covered frame, there is no way to vent the heat, other than to keep the door tied fully open. So I misted everything in there, several times, to try and cool things down. Even the chitting potatoes got misted, a little bit.
The wind was threatening to blow away the plastic covers in the East garden bed and on the high raised bed. The heavier plastic on the old kitchen garden bed cover was handling things much better, even though that cover is slightly elevated by bricks and whatnot, allowing some air flow underneath. I did open up one end and gave it a watering, too. Normally, I would have lifted the cover off completely to water that bed, but that was just not going to happen with this wind!
The covered raised bed in the East yard was getting hit the worst. I ended up tying some more sticks together to drape across the top, but they were still too light. This bed did get a watering, too, and I kept tucking the excess plastic under the frame itself, but the wind kept blowing it loose. I even tied it down around the entire base of where the mesh connects with the frame, but that just got blown loose, too. Eventually, I raided a pile of rocks I’d taken out of the sun choke bed and stacked against the garage, grabbing the larger ones, and using them to weigh down the edges more, rolling them up in the excess plastic where I was able.
The high raised bed was also being blown around like a balloon. Even the extra hoops on the outside of the plastic were getting pulled loose from the stakes they were set on. I used the 3′ extra piece of pipe at one end to give a bit more something to keep the plastic from ballooning in the wind. Between that and the stone and board I already had to secure it, it finally held.
This bed got a pair or sticks joined with twine draped over it, too. These sticks were heavier, but still not heavy enough. I had already used rocks rolled up in the excess plastic as weights, but they were not heavy enough, so I raided another rock pile for larger ones to weight the edges. One of the hoops on the outside kept getting blown loose and I finally had to find a longer piece of bamboo stake – going from about an 8″ piece to one almost 2 feet long – before I could finally secure one end enough that it couldn’t get blown loose again. Once that end was secure, the other end was no longer being pulled loose.
In between fighting with the wind, going back and forth between the two beds, I also set up several hoses from the back tap to the main garden area and got a daughter to open the valve in the basement. I managed to water inside the high raised bed cover first. I’ve got one of those long reach spray guns and the sprayer end can be adjusted up and down. I had it spraying upwards, into the plastic, to rain down, so I wouldn’t accidentally damage the sprouts under there with water pressure. The weight of the water also helped with securing the plastic cover a bit.
The garlic bed also got a thorough watering, including the end that has the same mix of seeds as the high raised bed. The bed winter sown with summer squash got a thorough watering, too. There are things sprouting in the squash bed, but definitely not any squash seedlings, yet!
The one bed I didn’t have to do anything with is the one with flower seeds winter sown into it. When my daughter and I covered that one with plastic last night and weighted down the edges with bricks, I ended up using the mulch set to one side and basically burying the edge of the plastic along that side. That was all it took to keep that bed’s cover from being blown around! I could also see condensation inside the plastic, so I knew it wasn’t going to need watering yet.
Tomorrow, we’re expecting heat again, so I’ll be doing more watering early in the day. I’m hoping the wind will die down by then. One of my weather apps says possible rain tomorrow might, but looking at more detail, it’s only a 1 or 2% chance of rain. So I’m going to keep watering.
Weather willing, I am hoping to get to the outer yard and transplant that Walnut sapling. The way things are going, I’m going to shoot to do just one planting out there a day, starting with the sapling that should have already been planted by now. The walnut seeds are less urgent for planting. Each is going to be a big job on its own. I’m rather dreading to see how many roots I will be hitting when I try to dig transplant holes!
I watched this video this morning, and I might be changing up a few things.
After watching the video, I checked and it seems our last average frost date has changed from June 2 to May 21-31. This is based on the town to the north of us, which is now the same as the town to the East of us. The town to the East of us had a last frost date of May 28, so it’s still in that range now.
This means that, once I get the beds ready, we should be able to get things into the ground about a week earlier than I expected to. Some of the direct sowing can be done now, if I had beds ready for them. I’ve got a couple of beds solarizing that will be easier to prep, and I want to get the potatoes in soon. We still need to finish building the trellis supports on one of the low raised beds, but the climbers I want to plant there can be planted before the trellis is ready.
We’re supposed to cool down to more reasonable temperatures in a few days, then get hot again. The overnight lows are still expected to drop to just above freezing a few times. We’ll see how it actually turns out, when the time comes!
For all the fighting with the covers in this wind, I’m glad we got them on.
On a related note, the water table is high enough that I had to set up a the blower fans in the old basement, where water is starting to seep through. The sump pump has even gone off a couple of times, which will be great for the bed in the old kitchen garden it is set up to drain at. My brother came over again today and checked on the ejector; the stand pipe still has ice in it, but with this heat, I’ll be testing it more often, to see if we can finally start getting through the venturi pipe. Even if it’s just a dribble, once fluid starts going through, it will thaw out faster at the bottom.
It’s hard to imagine, with how hot it is today, that the ground is actually still frozen further down!
We got 4 of the 5 Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon seeds potted up, as well as a couple of Honeydew. There were still 2 Honeydew seeds, and the Kaho melon seeds, that were not germinated, so we ended up combining them into one tray. I’d gotten rid of the one Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon seed that didn’t germinate, as it seemed like it was not viable, but the remaining Honeydew seeds look like they might still germinate. I’m not sure about the Kaho seeds, though. They may simply be too old.
With the pre-germinated seeds potted up, there wasn’t room in the tray for the container with the remaining seeds, plus the container with the Zucca melon seeds, so they got stacked. The large Zucca melon seeds would need longer to germinated, but it does seem like it’s taking too long. I’m not sure we’ll get any at all this year. We shall see.
My daughter and I then went through some of my herb seeds to figure out what else we could be starting inside. In the end, I decided that I will buy transplants, instead, for the ones we want. I also seem to be missing some seed packets! I’ve no idea what happened to them.
We also talked about some of the flower seeds. I’d picked up some Baby’s Breath for my daughters, as my older daughter in particular really likes them. They looked them up and, apparently, they are considered invasive in our area. Which I find strange, since we already have some in a small flower garden where my mother had planted them, ages ago. They barely survive and are certainly not spreading! It’s part of the reason I got more seeds.
Once we were done, my daughter ended up staying in the basement for a while longer to use the exercise bike, so we could keep the heater on for longer. Later, we both headed outside to feed the cats, then go through the garden beds. I wanted to make sure she was on top of the plans I had, in case they had to take over for me for some reason.
She was very happy to see that her tulips are coming up, and we even spotted a few grape hyacinths emerging. No sign of the snow crocuses, though. We pulled back the black tarp to check out where I was thinking of planting the asparagus and strawberries, and it does look like the weeds and crab grass have been killed off well enough to use the space. The only issue will be the roots from the nearby elm trees, and I’m really hoping we can finally cut those down this year. In trying to clean the area up, I found stumps that showed others have tried to clear them away in the past, and they grew back, so I’ll have to take that into account when we finally get those taken down. It still blows me away, how much their roots have been getting into the garden beds and choking things out.
We checked on the beds that I want to cover with the netting, and had to refill more holes dug by the cats. Very frustrating, that we couldn’t cover them because of the wind.
Speaking of the wind, in the next photo of the slide show above, you can see an area in our spruce grove I was finally able to get to. I tell that we lost a few trees over the winter, and saw some that look like they came down within the past day or two. Cleaning up in there is going to be a huge job!
We checked on the netting I put over the bed at the chain link fence yesterday. Much to my surprise, one of the supports at an overlapping section had been completely pulled up and almost took a few others with it! It seems like the extra netting with the drawstring that would normally be the end of the row cover got caught somehow. Hopefully, that won’t happen again, and there was no damage.
The portable greenhouse was getting some wind damage, though.
In the last photo in the slideshow above, you can see the tear along the zipper. It has gotten bigger – big enough that cats could easily fit through, if they wanted. I’m not sure how to reattach it to the zipper. I did add some clear duct tape above the tear, in hopes it will prevent it from tearing more. We also found a tear in one corner where the tie downs are attached. The loop of fabric the cord was tied to actually tore loose from the plastic. The loop is part of a tie that is fastened to the frame itself on the inside, so it can’t go very far. The clear duct tape came in handy to cover the hole and, hopefully, prevent it from getting worse. I know the covers on these little greenhouses don’t last long, but we don’t even have any plants in it yet! High winds were why I’d hoped to set it up in a corner closer to the house, but the ground is just too uneven there.
I’ve been looking at 6mm greenhouse plastic online. What I’d really like to do is get a roll of it, but that’s well out of budget right now.
I keep looking at various notifications on my weather apps, telling me things like, light rain coming soon, or, rain will end soon. The problem is, we’ve had NO rain at all. According to the weather radar, we’ve got a system right on top of us, and we’re supposed to get rain for the next couple of hours, yet I’m not seeing a drop of rain out my window. At this rate, I’m going to have to hook up the hoses and start watering the winter sown beds! I might even have to fill the rain barrel I’ve set up with the hose, to have warmer water for the garden beds, because we sure aren’t getting any rain to fill it! Nor are we expecting any, for weeks.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a cooler day than today, though with the wind, today felt downright chilly. I’m really hoping the wind dies down, so we can get those nets set up. Given my pain levels today, it’s probably good I’ve got an enforced day of rest.
My husband, sweetheart that he is, ordered some Tai Fu lotion (not an affiliate link), that came in today. We’ve used this stuff, in balm form, in the past and it helped, but we were a lot less broken back then. I’m looking forward to trying it when I go to bed tonight. I hope it helps. Lord knows, the prescription stuff I tried a few years ago didn’t do much, and I’m hurting a lot more these days, then at that time. Between the lotion, and today’s enforced rest, I’m hoping to be able to get some work done tomorrow!
I was able to get out with the chainsaw and work on that dead spruce tree.
It was still damp out, but more because it’s not warm enough for things to dry than because of any rain. We’re under a weather watch right now, as a large system is being blown almost straight North from the US, so the southern and eastern parts of our province are expected to get a storm. Locally, we’re expected to start getting rain at about 7am tomorrow morning. It’s then expected to continue to rain, off and on, through to the next morning, when it is supposed to become a mix of rain and snow.
Based on the current forecasts, today was pretty much my last day to get this done.
The first two pictures were taken before I got started. That’s basically how it has been since my daughter was last able to work on trimming away branches.
Which was the first part of what I had to do. I had my baby chainsaw (electric pruner) for most of that job. This part took the longest, because I took the time to break down the branches to fit into the wagon, then dumped them on the big branch pile in the outer yard. A lot of these were branches from the diseased crab apple tree, so they need to be burned. Previously, we were able to get the branch pile chipped, but this year we’ve been piling up diseased branches as well as things like squash plants that had powdery mildew on them.
While cleaning up the branches, I found the remains of an old bird’s nest.
When I finally got things clear enough to start using the chain saw on the crab apple tree, Syndol decided that would be a good time to climb the tree! I even cut away a broken section while he was up there, hoping the noise would have him jump down, but nope! In the end, I dumped another load of branches and came back before he finally made his way down.
Then it was more cutting and clearing and cutting and clearing. Crab apple tree branches are so bent and twisted, they took a remarkably long time to deal with. The wood is so much heavier, too. The difference is quite noticeable when I had pieces of apple tree cut quite short to load into the wagon and haul away, then tossing them on top of the pile, then started working on the spruce tree. I cut sections that were much longer than the apple tree trunk pieces, and the spruce tree’s trunk was at least twice as think at the top section of the tree, yet were so much lighter!
In the end, I had to stop because it was getting too dark. I left a section of the crab apple trunk alone, so that we could easily see it when we can finish cleaning it up later – likely in the spring. I was able to load three sections of the spruce tree’s trunk into the wagon to haul away (my apologies for the very fuzzy picture!) – that will NOT be going onto the burn pile, but will be stacked near the old garden shed – while a couple of larger pieces were left for later. The main thing is that there is now a cleared land that we can walk through – or drive through, if necessary.
Once the cut pieces of trunk are cleared away, the rest of the tree can be left for the spring. It’s going to take a lot more effort to clear that out, since it is in between other trees and in underbrush in the spruce grove.
In the end, I messaged a daughter to come out and help me put things away, because I was losing the light so fast, so the remaining logs have been left where they are until tomorrow. Hopefully, it won’t be raining too hard, and we can haul them away and stack them. We may be able to use these pieces for when we make a new garden shed as our cordwood practice building. We’ll need a lot more, but the walls for the practice building will probably be only about 8 inches wide, instead of the 12 – 16 inches more typical of cordwood building. I still want to use the method for when we build an outdoor bathroom (NOT an outhouse over a pit), but we need to clear some very large dead trees before we can work in the area I want to build it in.
We still have lots to do to collect and prepare before we can start building, but these logs could at least be a start, if the wood is in good enough condition.
All in good time.
For now, I’m just glad I was able to get that tree cleaned up and cut up enough to get that lane open again.
I had thought this was two trunks, twisted around each other, but no. This is one trunk that split and twisted as it fell. There are still three trunks remaining around this old willow.
We have some cooler, wetter weather over the next day or two, so it might be a while before we can start breaking this down and cleaning it up. Running an extension cord this far out, for our chain saw, is going to be an issue.
We could really use a gas powered chainsaw!
Ah, well. We use what we have.
There are some branches on there we might be able to keep and use for wattle weaving.
This tree may be about a hundred years old, is rotting and dying – but it’s a willow, and they are very hard to kill! There are suckers growing around the base, and even the deadest parts of the tree can suddenly shoot out fresh growth. I’m pretty sure the four (now three) trunks growing out from a rotted out base are suckers from an original tree that died long ago. When I was a kid and climbing this tree, it was always these four trunks, and they were pretty big, 50 years ago. I suspect that even after we eventually lose the remaining three trunks, we will still have willow growing here.
I might even deliberately stick a sucker into the rotted out centre. With willow, you can just stick the branches into the ground, and most of the time they’ll start growing.
Somehow, I feel we can learn a lesson from such resiliance.
Good grief, it’s just past 10am as I start this, and things are already done!
As we were expecting the septic company to come out this morning to fix the expeller on our system, my daughter and I headed out together to do the morning rounds. Today, that included opening the main gate, as well as moving the chain and electric fence across the gate by the barn, for the equipment to get through.
Syndol did, too, but they were both moving around so much, I barely managed to get one decent photo of Judgement!
I just realized; one of his eyes looks more dilated than the other. I’ll have to monitor that.
Once the gates were done, my daughter went on to to the inner yard routine, while I went around to check some things in the outer yard. I’m glad I did! One thing I found was one of the missing cat collars. This time, the break away buckle was actually open. The last one I found, it turned out the stitching can come loose at one end and slipped off the buckle. The buckle itself is still together, so no missing parts. I’ll just have to sew it up.
As for the one I found this morning, I spotted Nosy in the sun room as I was coming back in and was able to get it on him.
After checking things in the outer yard, I made my way back into the inner yard through the gate by the fire pit, and started checking the maple grove for fallen branches.
The winds finally broke two of the three rotting trunks on the ancient willow. They’re hung up on other trees, still. My daughter joined me while I was checking it out. As we were going over it, we could hear popping noises and, every now and then, another branch would break off and fall down.
How it is right now is quite dangerous. We’ll have to find a way to safely pull it down the rest of the way. One of the trees that’s holding it up is another willow with a rotting trunk, and it may well pull that one down with it, too.
It was just a matter of time for this to happen and, to be honest, I’m just surprised it was this part that fell, and not the trunk with a super long branch extending horizontally over the fence.
While we were checking it out, my cell phone started ringing. We get a better signal outside than in the house!
It was the septic company, asking about where we were. Turns out, they drove right past us. I’d told him, “first driveway on the right” – and he even had that written down on his printout – but he was looking left, instead!
There are no driveways on that side of the road, other than into hay fields!
So I went to meet him at the driveway while my daughter quickly went inside to use the bathroom before they started work.
As I was talking to the guy (the company owner), I brought up about not using water in the house, and he said it should only take about an hour or two.
?!!!?
I was expecting at least four to six hours, based on what the other company had said.
As we were talking, the truck hauling the excavator made its way over, but parked on the road to unload.
I went along to show them where the expeller was, and explain to them what direction the pipe was running underground. Normally, it would have had a pipe going straight to the house, but this pipe followed the water pipe to the cattle fountains and barn, first. Which meant it was basically at right angles from where they would have expected it to be.
The job was a repair by replacement. The leak would have been at the bottom of the expeller pipe. How the pipe was leaning back like it was, instead of being straight up, would had contributed to the damage. They then dug a hole about ten or so feet away from the existing expeller.
When I mentioned, I thought the pope would be maybe twelve feet down, the owner said it was more likely about six feet. That would have been typical, I guess, and with how much of the original expeller pipe was showing above ground, that would have been a logical conclusion.
After the guys got started, the owner left them to it.
It was definitely more than six feet down.
There were also a LOT of rocks.
The excavator was able to pull a few larger ones out, but there was one huge boulder that was not going to move.
Every now and then, the excavator would stop, a ladder would be put down, and a guy went down with a metal tool to poke around in the clay and gravel, trying to find the pipe. Then he’d climb out, and the excavator would dig some more.
That process got repeated a couple of times before they found the pipe, and then had to dig more to access it.
Watching the excavator operator was truly amazing. He was making that thing dance! It was beautiful to watch.
By the time they found the pipe, there was water on the bottom of the hole. I asked one of the guys about it, and if he thought they’d just hit water, or if he thought it was from the leak.
He said it was most likely from the leak.
The guy that went into the pit was eventually able to clean the pipe of clay residue and start cutting it.
There was a whole lot more water after that!
The excavator went back to work, clearing space for the water to drain away to. Then the guy went back down and finished cutting the pipe. The new expeller’s end was lowers, and he used a torch to soften the plastic of the pipe, so he could insert the brass fitting before tightening it with screw strap bands.
Then he got to hold the expeller straight while a couple of guys started shoveling clay down! The guy in the hole ended up taking one of the spades and digging clay and gravel from the sides while a guy on the surface used a tool to hold the expeller straight. Once there was enough clay and gravel around the base to hold the expeller, the guy climbed out and the excavator took over.
The first of the photos above is how it looks right after the guy climbed out.
This is an excellent visual cross section of what our Dark Grey Zone soil is like. There’s just a few inches of top soil, and the rest is a mix of clay, sand and gravel.
This is why we do raised bed gardening!
Filling that hole back again was when the excavator operator truly showed his skill! He had to carefully lay the soil around the expeller without pushing it aside. There was still a guy using a tool to hold it straight, but there’s only so much that can be done from a distance like that.
When it got close to the top, the excavator pulled down the old expeller, breaking the pipe and pulling out the venturi pipe inside. He then leveled that area and covered over the old pipe in the process, filling an eroded hole near it, while filling and building up the soil around the new expeller.
Which is much lower down than the other one was! I’m guessing the old expeller was on top of a vertical pipe, for it to extend that far above ground. These expellers only come in one length.
Once the hole was filled and leveled, the excavator operator moved aside some of the bigger rocks he’d pulled out. Then the guys put the sheet of metal roofing back and weighed it down, while turning the nozzle so the water would be expelled towards the low area it’s intended to drain into.
I checked the time stamps on the photos and video I took. From the time they started digging to when they were done filling the hole and leveling around the new ejector, was only about 45 minutes. From the time of arrival to when they left was maybe an hour.
I can’t believe how fast they were! It was amazing!
And here we were worried about having to set up the diverter, so we could use our plumbing and the septic pump could empty the tank into the maple grove while they worked. It wasn’t long enough to be even a slight inconvenience!
As for the bill, that will be sent to me by email, which I’ll pass on to my brother. Between him and my mother, it will be covered. The total, before taxes, was even a little bit less than the estimate I got over the phone. After taxes, is should total under $2300.
Getting this done is SUCH a huge weight off our shoulders! Especially getting it done now, before winter. We might have been able to make it through the winter, if this didn’t get done now for some reason. The pipe is well below the frost line, so the saturated area around the pipe probably would not have frozen, and the expeller did start working again, somewhat. The fact that at least some of the water was being properly expelled is the only reason they weren’t digging a hole in a quagmire.
I’m just so happy – and thankful that my mother offered to pay for it, or we would not have been able to get it done at all!
As for me… well… I’m going to be taking a nap. I woke up somewhere between 3:30 and 4am, and wasn’t able to get back to sleep. A couple of hours sleep, and I’ll be heading back outside to get some work done!
It’s about 10:30am as I start this and, according to the weather apps, we’re at 6C/42F right now, with a “feels like” of 1C/34F
Which means it was probably a couple of degrees colder, at least, while I did my morning rounds, which I finished a couple of hours ago.
I didn’t even need a jacket while I was out there. Sweats and a sweatshirt had me more than warm enough!
Still, it’s rather chilly for the kitties – especially the littles – so I took the time this morning to set their kibble to soak in hot water until completely softened, and also had warm water to top up their water bowls.
The cats that prefer to eat on the cat shelter roof aren’t too happy when I just walk past them – some even reach out to grab my arm as I go by! – but they do eventually go to the trays.
I’d say the warm food is worth it for them!
As I was doing my rounds, I had quite a few branches to pick up. Mostly smaller branches around the yard. Then I found this in the maple grove, out by the fire pit.
When I first saw it, I was a bit confused. How could we lose a tree, but all the trees are still standing? Where did it come from?
Click through to the next photo, and you’ll see.
We just lost half a tree! 😄
Clearly, it had been dead for some time. As I was cleaning it up, I left the biggest piece of trunk for last. The smaller pieces and branches went to the two branch piles we have – one in the yard as fuel for the fire pit, one just on the other side of the fence that will eventually need a commercial wood chipper to get rid of.
The trunk turned out to be so dry and partially rotted that, when I went to pick up the larger end to drag it out, it broke in half!
Those pieces got dragged over next to the pile of cut logs we have for the fire pit, to be broken down more, later.
We haven’t used the fire pit even once this year. It’s usually been too windy for a fire, and when it wasn’t windy, there were too many mosquitoes. Now that it’s getting cooler and the bugs are mostly gone, I’m hoping to get it going at least once or twice – if the wind allows!
Another reason I want to get our outdoor kitchen built. We’ll move the fire pit into the shelter. It won’t keep the bugs out, but it’ll have at least some shelter from the wind and rain.
Until then, we won’t be getting much use out of the fire pit where it is now. Not only is wind a concern, but there are too many dead branches around that the sparks could ignite, as well as a nearby spruce. Spruce is basically a big torch waiting to happen.
After finishing cleaning up the wind damage around the yard – mostly very minor stuff, thankfully – I started heading inside, and found all sorts of adorableness in the sun room!
Poor judgement, trying to squeeze his way into the cat bed with the kittens and… I believe that is Not-Junk-Pile in with them.
If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see a kitten cuddle puddle. The “bed” they’re on is an old feed bag, from when we could still afford to buy deer feed and bird seed, we found, stuffed with… I can’t remember what. It was stored on the shelf and the cats knocked it flat to make a bed out of it! 😄
We will be rearranging the sun room as we clean it up for the winter, bringing in another shelf from the old kitchen that isn’t being used as intended. We’ll set up this side of the sun room for the cats, so they will have more places like this to stay warm in the winter.
Well, it’s time to go help my daughter in the bathroom. There is much to do to fix things up!
It’s not even 8:30pm as I start this, but it feels so much later – and not just because the days are shorter and it’s full dark outside!
Today was my mother’s appointment with the eye specialist in the city, but there were things I needed to do before getting to her place.
Which meant, of course, I got almost zero sleep last night. It seems the more I need to actually get sleep before scheduled activities, the harder it is for me to actually fall asleep!
Meanwhile, my daughters took care of all my usual outdoor routines today, which was a huge help.
The first thing I had to do that had me leaving quite a bit earlier than I would have needed to get to my mother’s, was to stop at the home care office. They needed a couple of signatures from me related to the hospital bed they provide for my husband. I also had a copy of the Power of Attorney paperwork for my brother that they needed in order to process my mother’s file for long term care. This was the last thing they needed as far as the paperwork goes. I spoke to the coordinator for a while. He had already talked to the next coordinator about long term care placement. Physically, my mother would only qualify for supportive living, which would be great for her, but behaviorally, they would not be able to provide her the support she needs. Her racism certainly would make it more difficult, too – the home care aids have already reported some unfortunate things my mother has said. Since they were there for only a few minutes, to help her take her medications, there isn’t a lot of time for her to really get bad with any of them. They do have instructions, though, on how to deflect and, if necessary, simply get out of the situation if it’s particularly bad.
As for the care facilities, her paperwork will first go to the supportive living coordinator, where it will be rejected. Then it will go to the long term care coordinator, who is already aware of my mother’s circumstances, and a decision will be made. If she does qualify for long term care, though, this will get her on a waiting list, unless something happens that puts her under urgent placement. Like if she fell and broke a hip, she would go straight from the hospital into long term care.
Or if she got herself evicted, though that’s a grey area.
We spoke about the meal assist, too. We’ll be trying it out at every two weeks, first. They have only 2 hours to do the meal preparation. We would have to make sure they have all the ingredients, any recipes needed, and containers for the meals to go into the fridge or freezer.
After finishing at the office, I was going to pick up fried chicken and potato wedges at our favorite place – the gas station! 😄 It was too early for their chicken to be ready, though, so I stopped at the grocery store to get drinks. There weren’t any that my mother would be willing to drink, so I went to the gas station and just parked until I was sure their first batches of chicken would be ready. I actually found appropriate drinks there, too!
I also made sure to pick up a couple of 5 Hour Energy bottles, and drank one of them right away.
My mother was very happy when I arrived with the food! She keeps saying, she shouldn’t eat fried chicken, because she has made associations with it and various physical complaints, but she really loves their fried chicken was wedges!
We had enough time that we could have a nice, relaxed lunch, and I could tell her about how things went at the home care office. We talked about her bubble packs, and how she needs to not take anything except when the home care aides come in. She told me how, this morning, the aide took the prescriptions out of the blister and set them in front of her in a pile, but when my mother spread them out and counted them, one was missing! The aide, on hearing that, said that she would need to make a report, but my mom knew it had been in the blister. After looking around, they did find it. It may have just stuck to her hand or the packaging as she got it out for my mother.
I told my mother that when I take my supplements, etc. I have a small bowl I put them into first, then take them all at once from the bowl. She liked that idea, so I went digging around her cupboards and found the smallest bowl she had – an absolutely delightful vintage glass dessert bowl with three handles and a pattern of grape clusters and leaves. I’m totally in love with it!
It’s still pretty big for the job, though, so when I told her I collect tiny bowls and how handy they are, she asked if I could bring her one.
I now have a mini tagine wrapped up and in my purse to bring to her. I think she’ll find it adorable!
We talked about the meal assist, and she’s not happy with it, and says that she can do meals on wheels. They deliver 5 days a week. It’s certainly an option, if this doesn’t work out, but we’ll try meal assist first.
We started to talk about the exterminator coming to her place tomorrow, and that I would be there early to try and move as many things away from the walls as can be done. She started to get very angry about it again. She’s convinced they have singled her out for abuse, and that they just want to go through her stuff and steal things. Frankly, I no longer have patience for her behaviour on this. She is very much at risk of getting evicted, and she doesn’t take it seriously. This has all dragged on far longer than it should have, because she would not let them do their jobs. So many people are bending over backwards to try and help her, and she just refuses to accept that she might be the one that’s causing the problem, not everyone else.
I was able to redirect that conversation more than a few times today!
When we left, we had what turned out to be a very easy and uneventful drive. The location of this clinic may be on the opposite end of the city from us, but it is very easy to get to from my mother’s town. The only unfortunate thing about the drive was that I was feeling myself start to fall asleep. I’m glad I got two of those 5 Hour Energy things. My mother even helped open the bottle for me while I was driving!
Once there, I got her checked in and then we sat in the waiting room. We were early, so I told her I was going to close my eyes for a bit.
I think I actually fell asleep for a bit!
Whether I did nor didn’t, by the time my mother’s name was called, I felt so much better.
The first stage of her appointment was for an assistant to ask various questions, check her current medications list, and try to get an idea of just how long my mother has been having issues. It was not easy. My mother’s sense of time has gotten pretty bad, but for all her complaints about her vision, she insisted the problem was her glasses, and didn’t even realize that her right eye was going blind!
He did a quick eye test with her, with the left eye covered, then again with the right eye covered. Her left eye can still see pretty darn good. With her right eye, she couldn’t even see a single large letter C. All she could tell was that there was a roundish shape. She also had some issues when he held up different numbers of fingers at different distances. Sometimes she got it right, sometimes not. At one point, she couldn’t even see him waving his hand back and forth in front of her right eye.
Next, he took her to a machine to take photos and video of the inside of her eye.
It was not easy.
The typical instruction is “focus on the green X in the middle.” To which my mother would say, “there is no X.”
After that went back and forth a bit, I told her to just look straight ahead. He went with that for the rest of the testing on that eye.
The assistant was so very sweet and awesome. He treated her so nicely, with such a gentle mannerism. I found myself wanting to give him a great big hug! 😄
It took quite a while to get the images he needed. It’s hard enough to stare straight ahead and not blink for several seconds at the best of times. It’s even harder for my mother, who had nothing she could focus on.
That done, it was back to an examination room, and for the doctor to see her.
It turns out her eye is really bad, and he was pretty alarmed about it. She’s had blood pooling in her eye for quite some time, but we just can’t get a handle on when she started to have problems. The only thing I could confirm is that I took my mother for her regular eye exam in February, and there was nothing of concern at the time. I was there and saw the photos of my mother’s eye. This damage was not there.
The doctor spent quite a bit of time explaining things to her and making sure she understood what was going on, as best she could, and to ensure she was able to give informed consent for the treatment.
She had to get drops to dilate her pupils, antibacterial drops, a needle to freeze the eye, and finally the needle for her first treatment.
All of which my mother put up with extremely well. When he was telling her what had to be done and made sure to get her verbal and written consent, her response was simply, “do what you have to do.”
Personally, I think I’d rather go blind than have injections directly into my eyeball!
She was pretty amazing about it.
Along with all that, he took the time to give me information booklets, a grid test for her left eye that she’s supposed to do daily, and a bottle of artificial tears. He really stressed with my mother, how important it is to NOT rub her eyes, touch them in any way, or even touch her face near that right eye. If her eye starts to itch, she is to take an eye drop.
If she starts to feel severe pain, though, she is to immediately return to the clinic to see him or, if it’s the weekend, to a nearby hospital that has a specialty in eye care.
When we finished and I was getting her next appointment in 4 weeks, and helping her pay for some of the tests not covered by our system, my mother just sat on her walker seat with her eyes closed, because she couldn’t really see. Once everything was taken care of and she was in the truck, I gave her my husband’s driving glasses – sunglasses designed to fit over regular glasses.
She really, really loved how much that helped!
Also, she looked adorable in camo print driving glasses. 😄
By this time, I was getting really hungry, and I figured my mother would be, too. When she started talking about getting me to heat up a can of soup for her supper when we got to her place, I was not about to leave it that way! I wanted to get gas in the city, where it’s a lot cheaper right now, and the gas station I stopped at had a Burger King attached to it. I ended up getting chicken fry meals for both of us, as that was something easy to eat while driving.
My mother said that the food could wait until we got to her place but I told her, when I get hungry, I start to become dizzy and ill, so I needed to eat. I set my food out on the console, and hers stayed in the bag.
As we were driving, I saw in my peripheral vision, as she reached out to take a fry!
“Temptation!” she said. 😄😄
I told her she could help herself! She had only a few, though.
Once we got to her place, though, I brought the food out for her to have right away. The home care worker would have come and gone while we were out, so I made sure she had her supper time pills with food.
She was quite happy with this.
She still wanted me to open up a can of soup for her, though, for later.
I took the time to explain some of what we brought home from the clinic, but only briefly. I’ll be back tomorrow and I will stay with her for the 6 hours she has to stay out of her apartment, if that’s what it takes! That will give us plenty of time to sit down with the information and I can explain things to her in ways she could understand.
When we first got to my mother’s place, though, I did a quick check on my messages and found my daughter had sent me photos.
It was very windy today.
We lost a tree.
When I got home, I just had to check it out and get some photos of my own, too.
In the second photo of the slide show above, I just had to get a picture of how perfectly it fell in between to other trees, without getting caught on them!
The crab apple tree in the third photo was not so fortunate.
The spruce landed right in the middle, breaking off about a third of it.
Well, this is one of the sick trees we were needing to remove, anyhow!
We should be able to use the trunk of that spruce, though. This is one of trees too big to use as a raised garden bed. We should be able to take the bottom, widest, 10 ft and set it aside for the outdoor kitchen we will be building. Part of the trunk is cracked, though, so I’m not sure we we’ll get a full 10 feet that isn’t damaged, or what we can salvage from the rest of it.
We shall see. It’s way too windy to even consider breaking it down and cleaning it up.
Once again, it will be up to my daughters to take care of the outside stuff, as I will be with my mother tomorrow.
I’m not sure what we can do for such a long time. There aren’t places to just hang out in her town, and I don’t think she’d be up to any outings. Plus, we want to go over the information the doctor gave her. We could stay in the common room of her building, but it might not be easy to have a private conversation in such a public space.
Well, we’ll figure it out!
Until then, I need to get myself to bed and, hopefully, get a solid night’s sleep this time!
The winds are still blowing like crazy right now. I headed outside to check on things. I hoped to do a bit on that garden bed, but the soil is still just too wet to sift.
The plastic on the box frame was starting to blow loose and I was trying to find ways to fix it when I heard a cracking noise.
The dead tree by the back of the garage was blown over, right on top of the outhouse!
Thank God the wind wasn’t blowing the other way, or it would have landed on the garage!
Looking at the base, there’s basically no roots left! I don’t know how long this tree has been dead. Just that it was already dead when we moved here. My guess is, many years of water pooling behind the garage and around to the outhouse simply rotted away the roots until there was next to nothing to hold it in the ground. At least, not with winds like we’re having right now!
My younger daughter came out to see what the noise was and we talked about it for a bit. There’s nothing we can do about the tree right now. Once things have dried up enough, we can tie a rope around the trunk and pull it off with the truck. Waiting for the ground to dry is going to be important, since we’ll otherwise just be spinning tires in the mud and tearing up the yard.
Dragging it off will totally demolish the outhouse.
Well, so much for our “second bathroom”. We won’t need to patch up that roof and give the outside a paint job anymore, though the inside looks real nice. 😄
We still plan to build an outdoor bathroom with a composting toilet, rather than a pit, and it was going to go in a higher area. An area we are now having to walk through standing water to get to. The spot I was thinking would be good to build in is basically in an open area leading into the spruce grove, near where the compost pile is right now. It is very wet, but the plan had been to build up a pad of packed gravel, first, so it would be build on a raised and level foundation that drains real well. I didn’t realize at the time I was considering this, just how much that would be necessary!
But first, we need to cut down the dead trees, as some of them need to be felled into where the outdoor bathroom will eventually be.
Now I’m wondering if we’ll be losing any more trees today!
