elle sagenev

I put down a bag of wood shaving animal bedding and planted my bulbs into that. Worked well.

Alex Arn wrote:Look like tent caterpillars to me and I have never heard a good thing about them.

They look like tent caterpillars to me as well.

I've had them several times and while they strip the leaves from whatever branch they are on I can't say that they do too much damage that I've noticed.

Yup. For years and years. We have had predators about. Had a beautiful Ermine murdering them all. Have bull snakes. Have a ton of badger holes around the property. So nature is working on it. Unfortunately they reproduce faster than the predators and are simply out of control. We had a cat adopt us and she's a murdering machine. Never though we'd be able to keep a cap so she's welcome and I'm enjoying her mayhem.

Go give your washing machine a cuddle because it's about to be working overtime!

"HOW CAN SO MUCH POOP COME FROM ONE SO SMALL???"

So I'm still trying to do what I do. Had someone post that putting a color before "lives matter" is what makes you a racist. I made a nice, logical argument that no matter what people of color want they don't get to be just "Americans". Society puts another word in front of their name. I used the school changing my kids ethnicity as an example. The response, "Playing devil's advocate, it was probably just a typing mistake".

So, things are going well. lol

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Idea: Give the adopters a "thank you" card or postcard, stamped and addressed to your daughter -- either "thank you for letting Fluffy be part of our family," or "thank you for finding me a new home, it's really nice, signed Fluffy." An emailed pic of the kitten in a happy house with a ball of yarn would also help.

They're off to be barn cats, not house pets. I mean, they could keep them as house pets. The Mom has litter box trained them. Everyone interested in them wants mousers though.

Thanks ya'll. I'm not a perfect parent but I try. We did have a talk while we ate dinner that we could not keep all the cats. So when she had a breakdown I was rather surprised. I certainly would rather she didn't. It was hard on my back and butt to sit on the floor of her room for half an hour with her sobbing on me. But I informed her Dad, who kept trying to distract her from the whole thing, that she needed to grieve for the cat and we'd let her. Oh boy though. Tough! Part of me wanted to keep them all for her after that.

We have a cat that adopted us and had kittens. The kittens are now 8 weeks old and we've begun re-homing them. Last night we re-homed the first one. Then I had to hold my sobbing daughter for half an hour as she was just devastated to have re-homed the kitten. 5 more to go. That's 2 and a half hours of sobbing child. Being a farm kid is hard.

We are there with you. In fact it started in the winter. Usually we get most of our water in snow. It snows, then melts. We had one hard snow this winter, it was in November and it was so cold it stuck around for months. No real new snow after. So I suffered massive winter kill this year and then it's dry. Depressing year.

Jay Angler wrote:elle sagenev wrote:

It's been working well all summer. Yesterday there was a pretty good storm. Our oldest dog is terrified of storms. We weren't home. He freaked out, broke the gate down, went in and just dug. He dug some things up entirely and some things are ok. Very random panic digging.

I'm totally not in your growing ecosystem but I feel your frustration with struggling to get anything to grow. Hopefully some permies with similar climates will pitch in.

However, helping your dog might be a worthwhile mini-project. Clearly you need some sort of outdoor "dog safe house" - solid, secure and storm-proof. Used packing skids could form at least part of the structure, but if the dog's "panic digging," leaving it with a dirt floor might be best. You're pretty much south of Saskatchewan and I know its storms can be sudden, violent and epic! I'd be frightened and seeking shelter. Maybe you already have something and the dog was just too frightened to use it, if so, please don't take this post the wrong way, but maybe look at what you have provided already from a scared dog's point of view in case you can think of ways to improve it.

One question about the greenhouse - how consistent is the soil inside it? Could that explain part of your inconsistent results? Is there *any* chance you're at least partly dealing with an herbicide residue issue? I got one bad batch of something and *nothing* useful grew in that spot for several years and I haven't had the heart to test it again. What I'd like to do is get some really good mushrooms to grow there in the hopes they'll heal the soil, but too many other priorities!

We do have a safe space for the dogs. I'm not sure why he chose to break into the greenhouse except to maybe devastate me. :"(

I think my soil is pretty consistent. It's clay and not great. I've mulched it with leaves. It's not great soil. Certainly needs improvement over the years but I think it's pretty consistent there. This area has been our yard for 11 years and we haven't put anything on it. Before that it was horse pasture and before that wheat field which was organic.