So… that could have gotten much, much worse

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One thing is for sure. I am incredibly glad I didn’t try to do the market today.

I did the usual morning stuff, including watering the garden. My brother had his zero turn mower out already, which amazed me, because the grass was still so very wet from dew. He just did the areas he needed to work around, and this mower can handle it.

Then they started loading things into the bin!

After I finished the outside stuff, I came in and started making myself breakfast. Between the fan and the cooking noises, I could hear nothing elsewhere in the house, so it was a surprise when my oldest daughter came rushing in, telling me my husband had been calling for me.

He had his door closed to keep the cats out, and when I got to him, I found him sitting on the side of the bed, barely able to sit upright. He kept falling backwards, and he couldn’t speak. He tried to, but could only manage making noise, while his lips simply could not move. While I was holding him up, he managed to gesture towards the top of his medication fridge, where his Dex 4 bottles were sitting.

He was suffering from low blood sugar. I helped him down a couple of the sugar pills and, once I was sure he wouldn’t fall over again, got a glucometer. During that time, he took a couple more sugar pills. I used the glucometer – which was not easy, as he doesn’t bleed well – and got a 2.5 For those of you in the US, that’s a 45.

By that point, I was on the phone with 911, which was a pain because I could barely make out what the person who answered was saying. I got transferred to the ambulance dispatcher and while I talked to her, my husband visibly improved, in that he could speak, though very slurred. He was able to open the bottle of Dex 4 and took 3 more sugar pills while I had the dispatcher on speakerphone.

Once the ambulance was on the way and the dispatcher got the other information she needed, I tested him again. He was still at 2.5, but already getting much, much better. His could hold himself upright and could speak more coherently. He told me that he’d had to drag himself into consciousness. He had ripped his CPAP mask off, though at the time he wasn’t even sure what he was removing.

Meanwhile, I told my daughter an ambulance was on the way and to open the gate. I had sent a quick message to my brother and SIL, but they were outside so my daughter had shouted out to them that there was an ambulance coming, but she didn’t know why.

Once she was back inside, she started moving stuff around to make room for a stretcher to come through but, in the end, that wasn’t needed. With help, my husband was able to get dressed and use his walker to get outside, where he waited by the front steps, with half a loaf of bread, as he needed to eat something but couldn’t stomach anything else. I’d offered part of my own breakfast that I’d been making (which a daughter tended to and later finished for me), but that was too much for him.

Meanwhile, my brother came over to talk to us. My SIL was at the road, ready to direct the ambulance. My brother told us, they always drive right by – they’ve had to call an ambulance for my late father in the past, and that’s what what had happened before.

Once he was outside, I tested his sugars again and he was up to 3.1mmol/L, which would be about 55mg/dL He was looking and acting dramatically better by then, too.

The ambulance got there very quickly. When they arrived, my husband was able to walk up the steps through the side door while the tended to him, and one of them stayed to ask me questions. My husband had told him he’d dropped to 1mmol/L (18mg/dL). I told the paramedic that the last time that happened, he was in the hospital and they’d given him too much insulin. So the paramedic understood that my husband knew what a 1 felt like. I told the paramedic what readings I’d gotten and, with how much my husband had clearly improved, he jokily apologized that they took so long to get here, we fixed him ourselves.

They did not take long at all to get here. Especially considering they did not come from the nearest town.

They kept him in the ambulance for a while longer and when they checked his sugars, he was at 6mmol/L (106mg/dL) and safe. After talking to him about it, my husband decided to not go to the hospital.

While they were tending to him, my daughter finished cooking my breakfast and I went in to eat – since I was so hungry by then, I was feeling dizzy! Part way through, the paramedic came in to update me and we talked about the situation some more.

Then Leyendecker came over and demanded pets. The paramedic accommodated quite happily. The Potato Beetle came over. He was so taken by then that, when he went back to the ambulance, my husband said the paramedic and brought it up with glee. Sadly, he has two big dogs that have never seen a cat, so adopting one wasn’t an option. 😄

Meanwhile, with everything under control, I could see my brother and SIL tossing things from the junk pile into the bin, leaving behind the electronics garbage, appliances and metal. They also loaded a trailer of stuff to dump, and my brother even went and gathered the toilet collection (I think we found 6 toilets scattered around the yard in total, right after we moved here).

Once my husband was back inside and the ambulance was gone, we took advantage of so many things being shoved aside to make room for a stretcher that never came in. We moved out a couple of boxes from my mother’s apartment and cleared the top of the old dishwasher that can’t be used. It’s the sort that gets wheeled over and attached to a sink’s tap, but it won’t work with the tap we now have, nor could we even plug it in anymore. The top of the dishwasher is what we were using to hold our big jug of drinking water. Once the dishwasher was cleared, I was able to get it out of the house and roll it to the end of the sidewalk. I had to leave it there, as the wheels would not roll well on the grass, so getting it to the bin was going to be a 2 person job. Then I took out some of the electronics waste we kept not getting to the dump and set that with the appliances in the remains of the junk pile. The old dishwasher was sitting where it was for a reason; we have a cube shelf with storage cubes for winter gear that the cats kept tearing up to get into, so the dishwasher was protecting it. Now that it’s gone, we moved our recycling bins to that spot so the cats still can’t get into them.

The main thing about getting the dishwasher out, though, was that we could set up the laundry hose out the window to do my husband’s bedding.

Thankfully, my husband is almost back to “normal” (for him, anyhow). He’s going to be testing his sugars a lot more often over the next while, not to check for highs, but lows, while he adjusts how much Tejeo he is talking. This is a slow release insulin that it taken only once a day.

We have figured out what triggered this. While the girls and I were in the city, we made sure that my husband had food he could easily get for himself. The problem is, between the chronic pain and the Ozempic, he has no appetite. He ate next to nothing, all day, then went to bed early and on an empty stomach. The slow release insulin, meanwhile, keeps doing its thing no matter how much he has or hasn’t eaten. He later told me that what he was feeling this morning was WAY worse than what he’d gone though while at the hospital. It’s entirely possible his blood glucose had actually dropped below 1mmol/L(18mg/dL)

Which brings me to a huge frustration. When my husband had to start seeing a Nurse Practitioner, after our doctor disappeared (he went on medical leave and never came back), she basically ignored his back injury and was focused completely on his blood glucose and on getting him to lose weight. Even the diabetic nurse he was referred to told us that he would not be able to control his blood glucose until he got control of the pain, and he has never been able to get control of the pain, no matter what painkillers they’ve put him on. I firmly believe there is an overdiagnosis of diabetes. A LOT of things can result in high blood glucose. Sleep apnea is one of them, so my husband is dealing with both the chronic pain and the sleep apnea. Also things like high stress levels, anxiety, etc. He’s on a ludicrously high dose of Ozempic now and, frankly, I don’t know that it’s actually helping him. There’s nothing he can do about the spleep apnea; he was diagnosed at a sleep research facility and the head researcher, who was also a university professor, actually asked permission to use his test results in class as an example of how bad it can get. They actually took measurements inside his throat, and found the tissues were smaller than typical for someone of my husbands 6′ plus frame. As he ages, everything gets looser and starts to cause problems. He could lose all the “extra” weight, and would still have severe obstructive sleep apnea.

Which means he may not actually be T2 diabetic. The high blood glucose is more likely a symptom of other issues that cannot be fixed. There is no surgery. Not therapy. No anything that can “fix” the ultimate cause of his back injury, and certainly not the spine damage he was born with that wasn’t discovered until he was finally referred to a spine clinic, after 2 years of the NP focusing completely on his blood glucose and weight.

There is a lot out there about how dangerous high blood glucose is and, in the long term, that may be true. The reality is, low blood sugar is far more dangerous. High blood sugars can cause problems after decades. Low blood sugars can kill you within minutes – and my husband came very close to dying this morning.

The scary thing is that the powers that be keep lowering the threshold. It used to be that you weren’t considered T2 until our BG levels were at 8/144 or above, and after you had that reading after two blood tests (lab tests, as glucometers weren’t common yet) and after several other tests were done to factor other things out. Then the threshold was dropped to 7/126 or higher, and all it took was a single glucometer test at the doctor’s office. Then a new category was invented: pre-diabetes, which is declared if you get a reading of 6.5/117 or higher. Then there was “metabolic syndrome”.

Scarier still is that they lowered the range of “normal”. While looking for conversion charts for this post, I also got charts of what the different ranges were. “Normal” in Canada (probably elsewhere, too) is now a fasting BG of 4 – 5.5/72-99. The first time my husband was “diagnosed” with T2 (which miraculously went away once he got a proper CPAP to treat his sleep apnea), we were told that anything below 5/90 was concerning, anything below 4/72 was dangerous. The safe range was from 5-7/90-126. Now, one chart I found includes a BG reading as low as 2.6/50 as the bottom range of “excellent”.

To top it off, having T2 and higher BG readings is also increasingly viewed as a moral failing rather than a symptom or a side effect, or even just a data point. Treating T2, however, has become incredibly lucrative. I expect attitudes and treatments are going to get worse before they start getting better.

end rant

I’ll get off my soap box now. I’m just so frustrated. I almost lost my husband this morning. I am so very thankful that he recovered so quickly, though he says he’s still shaky. This, on top of the constant pain he’s dealing with. He isn’t living. He’s existing – and there is really nothing that can be done about it anymore. That window closed many years ago.

The Re-Farmer

Garden first, and a quick run down

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Before I get into an update with things, I wanted to share this adorable little guy with you.

I found this while using the rain barrel to water the garden from the rain barrel. I had taken the caps off the watering cans, just in case frogs got into the filled cans again. They are kept full so they don’t blow away. I have no idea what kind of caterpillar that is, and hope it’s beneficial. It’s quite adorable.

I also found these…

The first image is our very first fully open winter squash flower. A male flower; I don’t expect to see female flowers for a while yet. The second image is a bit hard to see, but our caraway is starting to bloom!

Today was getting hotter and I normally would have watered the garden in the morning, but the girls and I were planning to head out a couple of hours early for my older daughter’s pre-op appointment. Thankfully, I made a comment about parking at the women’s hospital when my daughter reminded me that the appointment was somewhere else entirely! I had completely forgotten! I would have taken the wrong highway into the city!

So… we took a different route and stopped briefly at a gas station in the one town along the way for drinks and some fresh potato wedges to eat along the way. My younger daughter didn’t eat at all until afterwards, as she didn’t want to get sick at the start of the trip (eating in general always makes her sick for some reason).

The clinic we went to is clear across the city, and took well over an hour to get there, but the route was straightforward and there was plenty of free parking, which was greatly appreciated. We even got there a bit early, with more than enough time for my daughter to do the “first visit” paperwork.

Her appointment went well. She needs to book another pre-op appointment, but the person wasn’t in today so she’ll have to call them tomorrow. By the time she sees this person, they should have a time and date for her surgery. She was told it should be withing 3-6 months which, for Canada, is incredibly fast. She’ll also be getting a requisition for bloodwork emailed to her, which she can get done locally.

Since we were in the city, once the appointment was done, we went to a nearby Walmart to pick up cat supplies for the inside cats, plus a few other things for ourselves. I also wanted to pick up some food for all of us. This Walmart had a Subway instead of a Walmart – nothing on the menu I could eat while driving, but my daughter was able to get a sub for herself and her sister (who stayed in the truck). I tried looking around the grocery section of the Walmart for something I could eat while driving, but there was nothing. As we left, we got more gas and I went in to pre-pay, so I could use a discount coupon, and ended up getting some beef jerky to eat on the road, once clear of the city, with my daughter to hand me pieces.

Once at home and the truck unloaded, I changed and headed out. First to do the outside cat feeding, then to water the garden. After the watering, I was able to finish weed trimming around the East yard garden beds, but was not going to stay out to do more. Too many mosquitoes, even though I had bug repellant on!

I was almost done the watering when my brother and SIL showed up for the weekend. Before I headed in for the night, I quickly popped over to say hello. I was too much of a mess to go inside and visit, so it was a short one. We caught up for a bit, then my SIL remembered she had some things for us. One turned out to be a bag of frozen meat! Some butcher’s shop sausages that they found they couldn’t eat, and a packet of venison that had been given to them, but they aren’t fond of venison. If it turns out we don’t like any of it either (I already know I’m going to enjoy the venison!), we can always give it to the cats!

Oh, after looking at the forecast, I’ve decided I will skip the market tomorrow. I don’t want the truck to be baking in the heat. Not when those high temperatures somehow seems to be causing problems with the battery – or at least has the battery gauge doing weird things! Next weekend might be just as hot but for that one we will be there until 8pm, and things will be cooling down by then.

I will definitely be watering the garden again in the morning, before things get hot. I’m hoping the grass will be dry enough before it gets too hot that I can get the push mower out, as well as more weed trimming!

We shall see what the day brings.

The Re-Farmer

Almost forgot!

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Wow, did I ever lose track today. I almost forgot to do my daily post!

First, the cuteness.

Batman and Sprig like to hang out together. I draped that scrap yarn blanket over the “porch” of the cat house so it could drain and dry after a rain, and the cats enjoy it so much, I’ve left it there.

Another sort of cuteness. Teeny tiny zucchinis!

The first female flowers on the summer squash showed up.

Unfortunately, there are no male flowers at all. So these will die off pretty quickly.

The summer squash has been growing so much, I was able to tie off stems to their vertical supports a bit higher on most of them.

We had rain off and on all night and most of the morning. It cleared up for a while, though, which was perfect timing. I got a message from my SIL. The big trash bin they are renting for 10 days was going to be delivered today instead of tomorrow. So I headed out to open the cat, and that gave me a chance to go beyond the outer yard to check on things I haven’t been able to for quite a while.

Like the basket willow.

My hopes were not high, when I could see that one of the posts was flat on the ground, and others were knocked askew. After looking around, I did find all five basket willows and straightened everything that needed to be straightened. The ground is incredibly muddy and wet – something few other trees could handle. Still, at least two of the five are doing good. The others…

… one of them might not make it, but we shall see.

Getting to the where the willow is planted, I had to go past where the septic expeller is.

I couldn’t see it at all.

What a jungle in there!!! It’s going to take some doing to clean it up. That will need to be done before winter, at least, but if I can do it at least once before then, that’ll make things easier.

After the bin, then a prescription refill delivered, it started to rain again. That kept me from continuing the weed trimming I want to get done before breaking out the push mower. I was going to switch to some bigger jobs inside, only to get sidelined by pain again. Bad enough I had to take pain killers and lie down, and get my daughters to take over the evening outside cat feeding. It got better after a few hours, but I honestly couldn’t tell if it just faded away on its own, or if the pain killers did the job. I did have to take them again. It is so very frustrating.

Still, it is what is it. As my late father used to say, “can’t complain – it wouldn’t do any good anyhow!”

Meanwhile, we are getting different weather warnings today – air quality warnings. Ontario is on fire, and the smoke is reaching us. For all the rain we’ve been having, the boreal forest is on fire again. It takes a LOT of dead underbrush for that to happen.

Oddly, on my desktop app’s fire information map, it shows zero fires in Canada. It only shows fires in the US. Meanwhile, on a live fire map I found, it says we have almost 900 fires burning across the country right now. Yet I’m hearing nothing about them unless I actively go searching online for information. What’s with that???

Statistically and historically, we have fewer fires now during fire season than in the past, but more area is being burned. Our federal government is responsible for these areas. They have seriously failed when it comes to forest management, and have cut back on funding for fire fighting resources, for more than a decade. The current fire situation is barely even being talked about, and people are demanding to know why Ontario hasn’t declared a state of emergency, and their Premier hasn’t addressed the issue.

Where we are, however, we are safe. Thank God for that!

The Re-Farmer

This and that

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Today was a much more pleasant day today. Still very humid. Kept getting rain warnings that never materialized. I didn’t end up needing to water the garden at all today, though it’ll get done again tomorrow morning.

We got our stinky visitors again this morning.

This time I saw four bebbies with one adult. I also so the mama with her singleton, but didn’t get pictures of them.

Today was our day to head into town for birthday take out. Chinese food this time. Plus a quick trip to the grocery store for drinks, ice cream and cake, all of which my older daughter paid for, so it didn’t come out of our regular budget at all.

It has been so long since we got Chinese food from this restaurant. It’s one of those “special occasion” places. I think it may be two years since we’ve ordered from there!

By the time we brought that home and enjoyed… I don’t know whether to call it a late lunch or an early supper! – it was time for the outside cat feeding and evening rounds to be done. While doing my rounds, I spotted this…

A couple of hollyhock leaves have disappeared! Just two. I’d say it was a deer, and it didn’t taste very good, or it would have eaten more. They do like the yellow flowers that bloom in this area (which won’t happen for a while yet), so when the deer goes into the yard, all the flowers near that gate get eaten. I pulled them up from this end, to make room for the hollyhocks, so they’re going to have to work harder for their floral treat this year!

I also did some work in the chain link fence bed. In the morning, I’d raised the netting from the base so adjust the super sugar snap peas, and the larger surviving winter squash and melon vines trained up the chain link fence. The sunflowers are getting tall enough that they were starting to press against the netting. So, when I came back in the evening, I went through the recycling to get water bottles and adjusted things.

After moving the netting away from the top of the fence, I pulled the ends of the hoops out of the chain link spaces they were bent into. The tops got water bottles set over them, so they wouldn’t go through the netting. Then the netting was put over the ends of the hoops, and back over the fence. The hoops are still bent slightly towards the fence, but are now straight enough that the sunflowers have more room. At some point, the netting will have to be lifted off completely. At least from the top. Both sunflower varieties are supposed to get very large.

I headed back in but decided to go for a walkabout before calling it a day. I got distracted by the vines I could see climbing the lilacs and cherry tree by the house. The Virginia Creeper is severely invasive. I’ve been trying to pull them up by the roots for years, but they keep coming back.

It turned out to be a lot more vines than I expected!

The first image is all the vines I was able to pull off, smashed into a pile. The second is of the lilacs and cherry tree they were choking out. It was particularly bad at the cherry tree and dwarf Korean lilac. I’m going to need to get some pruning shears and get under there to clear away dead branches.

I didn’t get all the vines. Some are still high in the branches, having broken off as I tried to pull them out, and cannot be reached. Those will dry up where they are. I’m sure I missed others that are still attached to the ground. The sheer volume of just the ones I was able to find was quite surprising. By the time I was done getting as much as I could, the branches were much more open and airy! I’m sure I broke some trying to pull the vines out, though. They are remarkable strong! When it comes to trying to pull them from their bases, the outer “bark” tends to break, and the inner part of the vine is very slippery. I didn’t have a knife handy, so I did the best I could for now.

Now I have to figure out what to do with the pile of vines. They need to be burned but that’s way too much for our fire pit. I’ve mashed the whole pile into the wheelbarrow for now. They need time to dry up before we burn them, anyhow.

I’m glad I got it done, before the vines choked everything they were climbing!

The Re-Farmer

A good night, a rough day

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Last night, we were expected to drop to about 17-18C/63-64F

We dropped to 14C/57F

It was glorious. Best sleep I’ve had in a while!

I still headed out early to do the watering, after after the rest of my morning routine. While watering in the old kitchen garden, I decided it was time to remove the insect netting from the rectangular garden bed.

The self seeded poppies had pods pushing up against the nettings from below, as well as some onion seed heads. They are now free to bloom and be pollinated. The parsnip and beet greens are looking nice and lush.

The cats are going to miss their hammock!

While laying the netting out on the grass so I could fold it up to put it away, I spotted a couple of spots where eggs had been laid. When I folded the netting over, I discovered that one of them still had the spider mama on it! She would not move, and stayed clutching the cocoon of eggs.

I ended up folding the netting in such a way that the spider was on top and uncovered, then found a place in the sun room to tuck the netting away that should be safe from having cats climb on it.

Yeah, I’m a suck.

Even for spider mamas and their eggs.

By the time the watering was done, it was almost time for the general store to open, so I headed out right away. The kibble bin in the sun room was pretty much empty after this morning’s feeding, so I needed another 40 pound bag of kibble.

It is so much handier now that the local general store carries that size. Otherwise, I’d be driving to towns with feed stores, to the north or south of us.

Once back home, I had my breakfast and was on the computer when I started having issues. I was starting to fall sleep at my keyboard. Plus, the pain in my lower abdomen was back. So I decided to lie down for a couple of hours.

That seemed to help, but as I was up and about, the pain got worse again. It got so that I could neither stand nor sit properly because of it. So I tried lying down again. I fell asleep again, covered in cats, and after a couple of hours I woke feeling much better.

Until I moved.

All I did was shift a leg to a more comfortable position, and the pain was back. It went away after a while, until I had to move again. Then, just to top it off, I found I had a headache behind my eyes.

*sigh*

In the end, I had to ask a daughter to do the outside cat feeding. I’ve taken pain killers and am hoping to be able to at least do the evening watering, in a couple of hours or so.

On the plus side, we didn’t break 30C/86F again, as was being forecast last night. We “only” hit 28C/82F. The overnight low is supposed to be 18C/64F. The forecast for later in the week has also changed to less extreme highs. For me, I’m mostly looking at Friday, when I take my daughter to the city for her pro-op appointment, and Saturday, when I will be doing the market again. By myself, this time. My daughters have both been invited to a digital wedding on Saturday that they will be “attending”. For our time zone, it will be in the afternoon. It seems the couple live in different countries and are unable to travel, so they are getting “married” in a game, using their game characters as proxies. Obviously, not a legally recognized marriage, but it’s what they are able to do for now.

What a strange world we live in.

Anyhow.

My telephone appointment with my own doctor is next week. I find myself wondering what the next steps will be, if nothing showed up in those ultrasounds. An MRI, perhaps? I don’t know, but something is very wrong, and it’s causing problems. This started out as a side effect from anti-inflammatories I am no longer taking. While the initial side effect is almost non-existent now, it hasn’t gone away completely, and the pain has gotten worse. It’s gotten to the point that my husband, broken and in constant pain as he is, looks at me and comments on what bad shape I’m in, and that I’m moving around worse than he is!

Speaking of which, my husband finally broke down and placed an order for a new chair. An ergonomic, bariatric chair that he could potentially use as a sleep chair, if it ever came to that. Putting one more thing on his credit card is not something we wanted to do, but we were supposed to get it when our tax return came in, and that mess still hasn’t been sorted out. The new disability tax credit paperwork got sent in a while ago, and he did check off the box giving permission for them to go over his previously filed taxes, and that takes time. He should at least get the tax credit that didn’t come in this last time. Who knows, though. He was officially on long term disability back in 2014, and we didn’t know the tax credit even existed back then. We only found out about it after going to a different tax preparer a few years back, and she had asked me why he wasn’t getting it. She was able to set him up on it, right then and there, and set me up for the caregiver tax credit – something else we didn’t know existed.

Meanwhile, the chair he’s got now is breaking and unsafe, and this is a medical necessity. Perhaps not the specific type of chair. I suppose he could have gotten a prescription for a chair from his doctor, but that would just had more time, and he can’t really put it off for much longer. The chair he ordered should arrive before the end of the month. That’s the most important thing.

All four of us dealing with painful health issues, all at the same time, was not something any of us thought would happen, that’s for sure!

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and the heat continues

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Today was another hot one, with the temperatures reaching at least 34C/93F. I don’t know what the humidex was, but the humidity levels reached 80% at one point. For all the fans and the AC going, much of the house felt like being in a sauna.

… and now tomorrow is also expected to reach a high above 30C/86F, too. We continue to be under a Severe Heat Warning.

Which meant I was outside early again this morning, to water the garden before it got too hot – though the overnight temperatures never dipped below 20C/68F and was climbing again fast as I headed out.

I had a couple of surprises this morning.

The first was while I was putting out food for the outside cats, and found this very hungry little one, by the sun room door.

It was a surprise partly because it was so tiny!

It was also extremely hungry. I let it be. I was putting frozen water bottles into the cats’ water bowls at this point, and spotted a larger skunk at the shrine food bowls. It ignored me while I was at the insolation shelter. Then I went to the catio, and that’s when I spotted the little one. It was running through the grass like I wasn’t even there, going straight for Mama.

It ran over my foot, pausing a moment, then continuing on to the mama.

I literally could have reached down to pet it!

No, I didn’t try.

If you click through the slide show above, you’ll see it with the mama, and then a short video of them going up and down the sideway to the house.

They are just too cute for words!

Once the cats were taken care of, and the skunks moved on, I watered the south garden beds. Before heading to do the main garden area, I went past the seed starting tray on the step and checked it. There are more seedlings popping up, but one of the cells had a big green leaf blown onto it, covering any potential germinating seedling. So I went to brush it away.

It moved.

Then jumped down to the concrete.

!!!

This is what it turned out to be…

So. Flipping. Cute!!!!

Meanwhile, the garden actually seems to be enjoying this heat! I was happy to see that most recent sowing of bush beans are growing.

On the down side, some seedlings I saw pushing their way through the soil yesterday are gone. Something got to them. Something small enough to get through that netting.

Still, it looks like we’ve got a decent number of survivors.

I’m particularly happy by how that Arikara squash is doing! It’s already much larger and healthier than when we tried to grow them last year. There’s just the one plant. I do hope it gets enough time to produce squash to maturity, as this is a rare variety, so I want to be able to save seeds from it.

In the last image of the slide show above, there is a new little tomato I spotted yesterday. There’s a whole two of them in the entire tomato bed right now, though there are lots of flowers now. This one is a Blueberry tomato. The other is a Manitoba tomato. Still no sign of any Orange Current tomatoes in this bed, nor the Chocolate Stripes tomato in the main garden area.

Most of the rest of the garden is doing well. The green cabbages under their insect netting look visibly bigger between the morning and evening watering. Even the red noodle beans look like they might be getting bigger. I’m still concerned that they will just stagnate, like they did last year. The bush beans in the high raised bed are blooming like crazy, and the more recent sowing of carrots is actually surviving, while the earlier sowing of Rainbow Mix carrots are looking like we can start thinning by harvesting, too.

With the temperatures rising above 30C/86F, we are going to avoid going anywhere. Tomorrow, however, I do need to at least go to the general store to get another 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. I’ll be doing that right after the morning watering, before things get too hot for the truck.

July is a birthday month. My daughter has said she will pay for the take out treat (it’s my turn to choose, and I chose Chinese food) but, after looking at the weather forecast, we decided it will wait until Wednesday! Absolutely no one wants to do any cooking in this heat. The oven is being used to dehydrate scapes, on the “keep warm” setting”, anyhow.

I’m seriously considering sleeping on the couch tonight, near the AC. I should have done that last night.

I may not be able to handle the heat like I used to, but I am glad the garden is handling it as well as it is. There’s at least that one positive we can make out of it!

The Re-Farmer

How hot is it? This hot…

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I was out early this morning to water and weed the garden before it got too hot, though at 6am it was 21C/70F and increasing quickly.

We all stayed indoors for most of the day. My brother, however, was back out there, working on his tractor! At least it has a makeshift roof over it, so there was shade.

He also discovered a bee or wasp nest inside one of the hydraulic arms!

In the afternoon, when I knew they were planning to head home soon, I came out to their caravan to visit for a bit and catch up. We hadn’t even reached the hottest part of the day when I headed out. Walking outside was like being in an oven.

A very steamy oven. The humidity is wild. Both our basement concrete floors are wet, and it’s from the humidity. The well pump and hoses are covered in condensation, and all the cold water pipes are dripping.

I got this screen cap at about the peak of our temperatures. 34C/93F at 5pm, with the humidex at 41C/106F.

The next image in the slide show is the thermometer in the sunroom, at 40C/104F. I took that after I had to deal with a surprise as I came back to the house.

Water was spraying into the grass.

I’d pulled the hose up to the house, onto the sidewalk block, to have it out of the way in case I was able to get some weed trimming done. My first thought was that the nozzle somehow got turned on. It’s the type with a slider rather than a squeeze trigger.

The water wasn’t coming from the nozzle, though, but from the Quick Connect. Which you can see in the last two photos of the slide show above.

When I first got close enough to see where the water was coming from, I could see a split wide enough that the yellow washer was visible. I was able to get around to shut the water off, then went to take the Quick Connect off, and it fell apart in my hands.

Talking to my husband about it later, he had actually seen the water start spraying. He thought I’d set up a sprinkler! He figures it was spraying for about 20 minutes.

I got the parts of the Quick Connect off but left the water shut off. One of the front hoses is a metal construction grade hose, and that’s what the nozzle’s Quick Connect was attached to, and the hoses were sitting in full sun.

The water inside the metal hose heated up in the sun enough that the pressure split the Quick Connect!!

Once that was taken care of, took care of the evening cat feeding. There was still plenty of kibble in most of the trays, so I set out cat soup, instead. The freeze dried cat food mix is supposed to be rehydrated with warm water. I use hot water from the tap, and it’s still warm by the time it’s ready to go out. The yard cats still eagerly went at it, even in this heat!

I’ll need to go out again soon and switch out the frozen water bottles I put in their water bowls. They’re all thawed out. I also set a frozen bottle in the cat bed at the top level of the isolation shelter, and set another one in a cat bed at the back of the water bowl shelter. Something hot kitties can lie down next to, and cool down at least a little bit. Those are completely thawed out, too.

It’s been an hour since I screen capped the temperature. We’ve dropped to 33C/91F, but the humidex is unchanged. We are still under a Severe Weather Alert, but are now suddenly starting to get thunderstorm warnings. Not until about 9pm or so and, even then, only a 35% chance. The overnight temperature isn’t expected to drop below 26C/79F, and even that isn’t supposed to happen until about 8am tomorrow! It’s not going to be pleasant, doing the evening watering, but the garden is really going to need it.

One more day of highs above 30C/86F. We won’t be dipping much lower, but enough to make a difference. My main concern is for Friday, though. We’re expected to approach, though not cross, 30C/86F again, and that’s when I need to drive my daughter to the women’s hospital in the city for her pre-op visit. Assuming we don’t have to go to the ER before then, which it’s starting to look like we won’t need to. The “use as needed” medication seems to be helping.

As unpleasant as the heat is, most of what we have in the garden right now likes the heat. It’s a shame the melons we started inside over the winter got eaten. This weather is ideal for them. Ah, well. I’m still seeing little seedlings from the second sowing in the tray popping up, and I’ve been transplanting them whenever and wherever I can find the space. Two of them ended up in the tomato bed, where the tomato transplants didn’t make it. If we have a long, frost free fall, they might actually have time to produce mature fruit.

Maybe.

😄

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Market day in the heat!

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The older I get, the less I’m able to tolerate heat. In my youth, it was the other way around.

I was outside early to water the garden before it got too hot – and it was already feeling hot! I very promptly spotted a friend.

What an adorable toad! We rarely see toads. Most commonly, we see wood frogs. Seeing toads is pretty rare. I don’t know that the toads themselves are rare; we just don’t see them much.

After the watering was done, we had a bit it time before my daughter and I loaded up the box of the truck for the market, and what few things we needed to bring along from the house, and left early. I wanted to stop at the general store to pick up some canned drinks to use as display items for the new can cozies I’d made. Plus, I picked up a sandwich for breakfast. My daughter didn’t pick anything, and even drank only water (we brought ice packs and small insulated bags), because eating makes her sick, and there’s only a porta potty available at the market.

We drove past the rescue on the way to the general store, and there was already a tent set up! We later heard that someone had set up by 8:30am. The rescue doesn’t open to tours until 9am, and the market officially opens at 10am.

We got what we needed, then drove back to set up for the market, quickly unloading everything so I could park the truck as soon as possible. Otherwise, we block access.

We had the same neighbour as last week. Before, they had really struggled with having only a sun umbrella. This time, they had a tent with mesh walls. A much better set up – until the wind gust started hitting. Their tent started blowing around and they were going to at weight to one corner when I realize they didn’t even have any tent pegs. I’d bought extra at the dollar store, then found the ones that came with our canopy tent, so they were still in the packages. I was able to give them a package of 4, and it made a huge difference! Once pegged down, their tent actually handled the wind gusts better than ours side. It’s supports were more flexible and would bend with the wind. Our felt like it was about to become a kite at times!

Things were a bit busier than last time, and we made a few sales. It was only the second day of a first time market, so I really didn’t expect much. Add in the heat, and I’m surprised they had as many people visiting for tours as they did!

The highlight of the day was their cat. Last time, it was their Great Pyrenees, who did show up later. This time, it was their long haired ginger cat with the Maine Coon face, but not the Maine Coon size. This cat just hung out at various tents, sometimes visibly splayed out in the shade, other times emerging from under a table, and absolutely loving attention. Towards the end of the day, it came out from under a table at the tent next to us, walked over to my daughter for pets, climbed up into her arms and went for a nap on her shoulder.

It was the most precious thing, ever!!!

While we were there, my phone kept pinging with security cam notifications. My brother and SIL had come out yesterday evening and will be here for the weekend. My SIL brought out their big zero turn mower and was out there for hours. Not only did she mow the outer yard, around their equipment, caravan, to the barn, etc., but she did much of the inner yard, too! There’s one section that can’t be done because there’s still part of that fallen maple in the way. The grass doesn’t get very tall, anyhow. I’m just blown away. Yes, it’s on a riding mower, but it was still around 33C/91F, with the humidex making it feel closer to 40C/104F

After the market was done and the truck packed up, my daughter and I stopped at home just long enough to take the things in the box of the truck out, then grab a couple of water jugs for refilling before heading to town. I was in the truck, waiting for my daughter to come back from the house when my brother came by. I commented on the lawn mowing, and he told me that was all my SIL! He has been working on his tractor. He got it fixed and started again and…

Something else broke on it.

*sigh*

He also got stung by hornets, three times – with one of them somehow getting into the sleeve of his coveralls!!!

Once my daughter got back to the truck, we headed to town. My daughter finally felt it was safe to eat, so she bought us “lunch” first, then we went to the grocery store. They have two stations for refilling water jugs and one was being used, so we started using the second one, only to find it had no pressure. Both stations have signs on them saying that, if there is no pressure, use the other station while it recharges, with apologies.

The women using the other station were clearly also having issues. Both machines had low pressure. We tried to do some of our shopping, then come back, but it still wasn’t long enough. In the end, I was eventually able to refill one jug, and didn’t bother with the second one.

We each had a few small things to pick up as well before heading home again.

One thing I noticed during the drive is that the battery gauge was fluctuating a lot again. At one point, the needle kept dropping as I watched, while we were stopped. Still within the normal range, but it really shouldn’t be doing that. This has happened before when we were above 30C/86F, and I had it checked, so I now know it’s because of the heat. After today, we’re going to avoid going anywhere for the next couple of days. Especially tomorrow, when we’re expecting a high of 35C/95F or, depending on what app we look at, potentially 37C/99F – and that’s not counting the humidex. Other areas of the province are expecting higher temperature.

A good day to stay home!

Two more days of this, and then the highs are supposed to stay below 30C/86F for the rest of the 10 day forecast. I’ll still want to be watering the garden twice a day.

Anyhow…

Once at home, I backed up to the house to unload. Once everything was put away, I wanted to feed the outside cats so I could safely drive the truck to the garage. They still had lots of dry kibble, but were swirling.

They wanted their cat soup!

I am thrilled to say that when I headed out of the sun room with the morning cat feeding, I found Sweetie among the cats just outside the door. She was there again, when I did the evening feeding.

Since they had plenty of kibble, I decided to use the large bowl and scoop I use for the dry kibble to make a larger batch of cat soup, with just a couple of scoops of dry kibble added to the freeze dried cat food mix.

The cats were in heaven. Including Sweetie. She still acts nervous when she looks at me and startles easily, but she still went for the food bowls and was not shy about getting her share!

It also gave me a chance to park the truck in the shade of the garage. It stays remarkably cool in there, considering we don’t close the main door at all. In the summer, I park with enough room in front of the truck to access the counter against the wall. That leaves the back end sticking out a few feet. Somehow, it just doesn’t get hot in there.

I still have to get outside to do the evening watering, but it’s past 7:30pm and still 30C/86F out there, with the humidex still at 35C/95F. The mosquitoes are out like crazy, too. We’re not expected to cool down to a decent temperature until 3am.

*sigh*

The garden must be just baking, though.

Well, time to stop procrastinating, cover myself in bug spray and get watering. I’ll have to be careful not to shock the overheated plants with freezing well water!

Just a couple more days of this…

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: deer damage? and infrastructure progress

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This morning, I made sure to give the garden beds a through watering before things got too hot.

I found this.

On the one hand, I was happy to see another poppy blooming.

On the other, I was sad to see one of the flower buds got chomped!

I have a suspicion that it didn’t taste very good, or the rest would have been eaten, too.

So… we’re down to just 3 Giganthemum poppies instead of 4!

The nasturtiums are kicking into high gear with blooms right now.

The transplanted Crackerjack marigold and white dwarf cosmos that were supposed to be red cosmos are still blooming, too. The bush beans in the high raised bed have flower buds, and I spotted a flower on one of the Caspar eggplant. There are also more flowers showing up on various types of tomatoes. The musk melon and watermelon transplants I bought have also been flowering, but I’m picking those off. The plants are still way too tiny, but they finally seem to be growing.

Once the morning watering was done, we all just stayed indoors and out of the heat. I even crashed for a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

In the afternoon, after the cats were fed, it was back into the garden. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done.

First, I wanted to work on the corn patch.

In the first image of the slide show above, you can see the corn leaves are starting to press up against the netting. This is not a tall variety, but it does get taller than this. I considered finding a way to make the hoops higher, but decided to just remove the netting completely.

Once the netting was off, the corn got a thorough weeding, and then mulched with grass clippings. Parts of where I mowed yesterday do not have Creeping Charlie, so the clippings were safe to use. You can see it all done in the second image. I have left the hoops. Corn gets knocked over by wind very easily, and the hoops will provide at least some support. I’m considering other ways of adding more support as well.

I’ve got the motion sensor deer scarer set to go off at night, though I’ve set one off when it was still dusk, so “night” is a very brought frame. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep them away – and the raccoons! I might have to switch it to be active both day and night, though that would mean I would be setting it off while tending the garden. Which I might be willing to put up with!

Once the corn was weeded, it got a thorough watering, then the mulch was added, then it got watered again. From there, I kept watering the beds until I got to the next one I wanted to work on.

It was hard to see through the turnip leaves, but it did seem the red noodle beans were getting bitter. So, I harvested most of the turnips, partly to let the beans have more light, then added the trellis supports for them to climb. They look like they’re just starting to throw out tendrils.

This bed also got grass clippings added to mulch between the remaining turnips, and between the turnip row and the beans. The daikon radish is looking good – the one survivor from the winter sowing is not only still blooming but starting to develop seed pods. We will have seeds to collect for next year. The onions along the radish side of the bed are looking good, but not to much the ones on the turnip side. Those might start doing better, now that most of the turnips were pulled and they’re no longer shaded out by large leaves.

There was one more bed to water in this area before I moved to the next beds I wanted to work on.

The first section was around the dwarf peas. I wanted to remove the netting, partly because it was a pain to get under it to collect ripe pea pods.

I left the hoops, but added the wire decorative fencing to keep the cats from lying on the peas. After weeding and watering, grass clippings were added. This bed already had some leaf mulch on it, but that was breaking down quite a bit.

I found a surprising number of self seeded tomato plants while weeding! I removed the protective plastic collar that had been around the mystery flowers I’d found and transplanted here. They’re large enough now that I don’t think they need it. Very few of the onions I’d found and transplanted here in the fall made it, but the garlic I’d ground and planted are doing rather well.

Next, I worked on the rest of the wattle weave bed.

The Florence Fennel was pushing up against the netting already, so I took it off completely. I’ll probably remove these hoops later, but left them for now. The fennel, chicory and strawberries, with the two surviving summer squash I’d transplanted from thinning the other bed, are now well mulched with grass clippings and well watered again.

There was one last bed I wanted to work on.

The summer squash.

After removing the netting, each surviving summer squash got its own stake for vertical growing. It looks like four spots, from three different types of squash, didn’t make it. Once the stakes were in place, I went to use garden wire to start securing the larger vines to the stakes, but I think I may have accidentally killed one of them. I moved the stem to put it up against the stake and heard a noise that sounded like it was pulled right out of the ground! It wasn’t, but it may have been pulled up and the roots damaged. I’ll probably know by tomorrow morning if I killed it.

With four plants not making it, I found myself with four extra bamboo stakes, so I wove them across the vertical stakes on the inside, just a bit higher than the hoops. If I can find more bamboo stakes long enough, I’ll do the same on the outside row, too, just to help keep them stable and better able to hold weight.

Hopefully, the garden will survive the heat we’re going to have over the next few days. We’re expected to go above 30C/86F for the next three days, then the highs are supposed to be in the mid 20’sC (around 77F) for the rest of the month.

Definitely “water twice a day” weather.

It’s going to be brutal at the market tomorrow. Thankfully, we do have the canopy tent for shade, at least!!!

The Re-Farmer

Melting cats…

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So… it’s getting pretty hot out there… We’re currently under a weather advisory, due to the heat.

Sunday, we’re looking at a potential high of 35C/95F. The weather warnings are saying the humidex could reach 45C/113C

Ugh.

Today, we “only” hit about 28C/82F, with a humidex of about 30C/86F

The cats are coping pretty well out there…

… taking advantage of any shade out there!

I had a pleasant surprise this morning. I’d done out outside cats’ kibble and was coming out with the cat soup when I startled a cat splattered on the sidewalk in front of the sun room door.

It was Sweetie!

Though startled, she didn’t run far. As I moved away from the sun room door, she ran into the sun room and straight to a tray with cat soup in it!!

This is HUGE progress. She is readjusting to familiar places after being away for a couple of months.

I tried doing a head count this morning and got “only” 18. I didn’t see Adam, though you can see her in the melted cats picture. She’s the one in the middle. I’m seeing Slick a fair bit. She’s had her kittens, but I can’t tell if they’ve survived or not. She seems to be here an awful lot. I’ve not seen that one kitten I spotted a few days ago again.

I also realized, I haven’t seen Domino in a while. I see Bug and Batman, the two other little mostly black cats, but no Domino.

*sigh*

One thing I’ve noticed, now that I regularly give out cat soup. I don’t put out a lot, considering the number of cats out there, but they really like it. They like it so much that when I come out to do the kibble, they do start eating a bit, but then they run around while I do the various bowls further out, waiting for the cat soup! When I come back out again for the afternoon feeding, there’s lots of kibble left, but every bit of cat soup and kibble that had cat soup poured over it, is gone.

Which works fine for now, but it’s not something we can do in the winter. It would freeze before they could finish eating it.

Which is really hard to think about, with the heat we’re having right now!

The Re-Farmer