Heading for a week at the beach. Got my surf gear oiled and set hard on “GO”. Over the past 6 months I’ve picked up a few items here and there to try, mostly hoping for Bluefish. It’s a bit early, I prefer late November, but each year is different and if the Blue’s are not in, that would make whiting and pompano more likely. And of course there are always bonnet and other sharks to keep me on my toes. I’ll bring the camera in hopes I can post some fish pictures but maybe it will just be showing how nice the beach is. We’ll be hitting our favorite beach restaurants and loading up on seafood.

We voted early so no need to return to our home base for that purpose. There are so many interesting races this time that I’m anticipating election night and watching the liberal media squirm as their candidates melt away. What I’m really watching for is to see who will be first to blame racism for the results. Since I don’t watch CNN, MSNBC or other lib networks, I’m not likely to actually see the first anchor ask that question to a black pundit or politician but I’m sure it will happen before Tuesday ends. In Florida we have two losers running for Governor and it’s nip and tuck as to which is ahead in the polls. The only other race I have any interest in is seeing if my man Shrek gets re-elected. Stranger things have happened.

And clearly, I’m a big deal in this election. How I know that is based on the guys who have called to explain their position to me. I don’t mean the locals, but this week I got calls from Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, and Mike Huckabee. I even heard from Sarah Palin. None of these folks let me get a word in edgewise but I thought it was nice of them to think about me at all. It does give me some concern about going to the beach. What if somebody like John McCain decides to call and I’m not here?

You’re probably wondering who’s going to look after the garden when I’m at the beach. So am I. I’ve planted a couple dozen new plants this week and it’s likely that a few won’t make it – whether I’m here or not. At his point I’m close to running out of space until the late summer/early fall stuff crashes. I’m programmed for that to happen around Thanksgiving. If my planning is on target, we switch from cucumber salads to lettuce salads; from zucchini and green beans to cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. In a perfect world, that will be a seamless transition. In Pierson……………?

<img src="http://www.carbonefamily.com/joesblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/tangerine-tree-300×225.jpg&quot; alt="tangerine-tree" title="tangerine-tree" width="300"

Had one event on the NC trip that I debated mentioning but as a fair and balanced kind of guy……………….. I packed for the trip in a single carry on size bag. Nancy said she had packed my meds, shaving cream, tooth paste and brush while my responsibility was the clothing. When I unpacked at the hotel I noticed that there was no comb or razor. Since it was a college campus kind of tour, I didn't think either of the missing items rose to emergency level and could wait until we hit a drug store. Tom had his toothpaste confiscated by TSA at the airport so he too needed a stop although I told him I had enough. When I awoke the first morning it was groggy out and I stumbled into the bathroom, loaded up the toothbrush and started the morning activities. It tasted horrible and looked kind of funny too. Here it comes. Nancy had “accidentally” packed prep H instead of toothpaste. I too can see the humor in that, but at the time……………. She swears it was a total accident and I know she didn't have her glasses on but …….. Was my mouth all puckered up for the day? Couldn't wait for that first cup or ten of coffee. If we lived in Iran, this would be one of those stoning offenses, a caning in Singapore but here, I think she's going to beat the charges.

Had another veggie conversion deal. I had to have a couple pair of pants taken in and one of Nancy's bridge buddies is an incredible seamstress. She also loves anything from the garden. Oila, the pants fit again and we're down a couple of cucumbers, a zucchini or two and a handful of green beans. My only concern is that if I'm not careful, I'll forget to report all these trade deals on my 1040. I'll have to check with my tax consultant, Texas Todd.

I've mentioned the pole beans in earlier posts but they need revisiting. The variety is Smereldo and they are incredible. I'm picking them when they're about a foot long and 1-2” wide. You'd think they'd be tough or stringy at that size but they're tender and exceptionally tasty. And prolific – I can pick a meal's worth in about 2 minutes and they seem to just keep coming. When I mentioned above giving a handful of beans to Wilma, a handful is about a pound of beans. I've always grown bush beans but those days are over. I did screw up on the engineering by building a bamboo teepee like structure. They've overtopped the structure and it's really difficult to get to the top or harvest the inside hanging beans. I've got a new design on paper based on what I saw at Stone Barn Farms in NY this summer and now appreciate why they did it the way they did.

As the pic's show, no shortage of citrus this year. The pic's are the tangerine tree and the Marsh grapefruit. The Ruby Red grapefruit tree is also loaded and the Satsuma tree has a reasonable crop, the largest ever for this small tree. Without a doubt the Satsuma's are the favorites. They must be a cross between a tangerine and an orange since they peel even better than a tangerine but with more of an orange taste. The tree lost more than half it's leaves during last year's coldest snap but it didn't seem to effect the fruit production. Haven't picked a Red grapefruit yet but judging by the pinkish tinge on the skin, they are ready for action. Just in time for my niece's visit this weekend.

I’ve always been ok with birds but having some doubts. I went out this AM to check the garden as usual and found that my parsley plants were pulled out; ditto some onions and holes pecked into the lettuce rows. Since the parsley and lettuce are behind a wire fence, no doubt it was birds. Found the pellet gun. I hope it’s some ugly kind of bird because I hate the idea of blowing away a cardinal.

Had a great trip to NC with Tom. We left on Thursday and returned on Sunday; flew into Greensboro. The only hard event was Tom addressing a class of CS students at Duke. Other than that it was play time. We decided to do Western NC and the mountains on Thursday, the Duke event was on Friday, and the outer banks on Saturday. On the way we hit several campuses {or is that campi) including UNC, Wake Forest, and Appalachian State, located in Boone. Each campus had it’s own character but Duke is the real standout. A large, stone building laden campus with few students. If you didn’t know it was in NC, you’d think you were at Oxford or some ancient, European campus. I think Tom put plenty of photo’s and comments on his Facebook for those who care. The outer bank session turned out to be great for me since it happens to be surf fishing season and we found a great tackle shop laden with interesting bluefish rigs – several of which are now residing in my tackle box. We had intended to end the day at Kitty Hawk but simply ran out of time. Coming to the banks from the south and heading north involves two ferry trips that eat up over 3 hours, not counting wait time. We hit some fine eateries along the way, my favorite being a place called Macado’s (or something like that) in Boone. An awesome menu of specialty sandwiches and incredible brews – my idea of the kind of food that is routinely served in Heaven.

I really enjoyed listening to Tom give his lecture and interacting with the students. Believe it or not, I actually understood the concepts he was discussing and never felt lost in the esoterics of it. The next level down in detail would have lost me for sure but I learned a few things and actually had a few of my ideas about how things worked, confirmed. So that was nice.

The only negative was that the newly planted onions dried out so it’s back to the seed pack for a new start. Also lost maybe 50% of the lettuce but had planted enough spares to cover us on that front. Other than that, the garden kept on producing and it’s becoming clear that November is going to be an overflow month with beans and squash. At least my neighbor will be back to help on the consumption side.

Got a new keyboard and traded in the mouse for a track pad. I think I’m going to love it. The old keyboard is one that I’ve had since the beginning of time and I suspect the mouse is of the same vintage. Somewhere between the keyboard and the mouse, there must be an intermittent short such that the mouse occasionally won’t move the cursor. For the past couple of months I kept thinking the computer was locking up due to some internet interaction with Virgin Mobile and would restart it. The setup we have is a laptop operated with an external monitor and keyboard so the computer is just sitting there with a closed lid acting like a desktop. To restart, I had to lift the lid on the laptop and push the on/off button. I guess in the process of moving things around to get to the button, the mouse/keyboard would reconnect and be working when the machine rebooted. So I never put the frozen cursor together with some mouse/keyboard problem. By chance last time it happened, I brushed the scratch pad on the laptop and saw the cursor move as it’s supposed to. I then unplugged the mouse and plugged it back in. Worked fine. I couldn’t consistently make the problem occur but I could consistently fix it by messing with the USB connector attaching the keyboard/mouse. I didn’t know the trackpad is wireless and have zero experience with blue tooth technology but it seemed to hook up flawlessly.

Politics – I had to laugh last night watching both Obama and Biden campaigning for the Democrat senate candidate in Delaware. The guy is way, way waaaaaaaay out in front of this young, tea party chicky. The only reason they could conceivably be there “helping” is that when it’s all over they can point to Delaware as proof that they did help somewhere. I love to see them running around to colleges trying to get kids behind them. When I was in college, the voting age was 21 but even if it had been 18, I can’t imagine I would have had a clue that there even was an election going on yet alone, actually thinking about it or actually pulling a lever somewhere. At the time, I thought all this politic stuff was so much BS. Then I went through a period where I thought it was real and important; back to the BS position.

Brush clippers one, Joe’s little finger Zero.

It’s been Nancy’s birthday week which means we’ve been eating high on the hog. On Saturday Tom and Tina took us to the International Food and Wine Festival at EPCOT. That’s an annual event where kiosks representing different countries set up and sell samples of their local food. I would guess there are 20 plus such kiosks and it took us almost 3 hours to make the rounds. In addition to taking us and picking up the tabs, they bought us a pass that lets us into EPCOT after 4 PM on an unlimited basis for a year so I imagine we’ll be hitting a couple more such events before the passes expire.

On Monday Eileen came over and took us out to lunch at a new place in downtown Deland and on Wednesday, we’re being taken out to one of our favorite spots in Port Orange by Joey and Mark. So all in all this has been a good week for us. I’m traveling to North Carolina the end of the week with Tom where he has a speaking engagement at Duke. Nancy will make a tour of more quilt shops with her quilt buddies here.

I’ve sure learned my lesson this year about using old seed. With many vegetables, a seed pack contains literally hundreds of seeds and there’s no way you can use them all. A typical pack of lettuce seed, for example, will have 500 seeds. So I use what I need and put them away for next season. Turns out two seasons are fine, three, not so fine. In the case of my lettuce seed, where I had half a dozen different varieties, they fell off the cliff in terms of germination. From nearly 100% last year to approximately zero this year. I did read the fine print on one of the packs and sure enough it said good for three years max.

How’s this for ultimate recycling – I’m recycling dirt. When I decide to plant in an older section of the garden, I dig shovel loads of dirt out of the garden and spread it on a working compost pile. Then refill the hole with 100% compost from the cooked and ready pile. In building a compost pile, it’s normal to add a layer of soil every now and again so that’s the justification for my recycle.

Bit of a dilemma. Watching the Georgia – Vanderbilt game they introduced the new Georgia mascot UGA VIII. His name is Bruce. With the Gators on a steep slide downward and a mascot named Bruce, where am I going to be for the Georgia – Florida game. I do take some solace from the fact that the big kahuna gator, Steve Spurrier, is finally have some success at USC (that would be the real USC, not the SoCal imitator).

I’ve mentioned that many of the plants in the garden seem to be growing faster and bigger than forecast. Aside from the fact that the ground is much more heavily loaded with organic material, compost, the other difference in what I’ve been doing is sprinkling some epson salts and some bone meal underneath the new plants when starting out. Wonder if that combination has something to do with the results I’m seeing? I’ve kept up a regimen of culling the butternuts that seem wimpy and the remaining ones seem to be adding size daily and some are even starting to turn from green to yellowish.

Here’s a picture of today’s pick of jalapenos and grape tomatoes. This will be the end of the jalapenos since I pulled the plants this time. They were still putting out but I need the space for winter stuff and we have been giving away 100% of them for months. I could pick about this size container of tomatoes every third day and have been for quite a while. The plants are still loaded with green tomatoes and blossoms so I guess this will continue until the first frost.

Planting the winter stuff now heavily. Three rows of onions, a couple rows of radishes, 4 varieties of lettuce mixed in a wide row and a couple of Italian parsley plants. I already have two varieties of cabbage in the garden with two more varieties a week or so away; broccoli in and more coming; collard greens – first time attempting these – and Brussels sprouts. I tried Brussels last winter with reasonable success so doubling up on those this season. The collards and the Brussels are for my bride. I’m not much for either. I’m fairly certain that I have the largest variety thriving in the garden that I’ve ever had at one time. I’ll wait another month before considering spinach, beets or peas since they really need cooler soil to get started.

One thing I’m starting to appreciate is just how much plantable space I’ve added this season. I did the main expansion but in addition cultivated space inside the original boundaries that had been left dormant due to a lack of enough compost to create good soil. Last year I had decided to mound up rows for reasons stated in previous posts which left a sizable area unplanted
. Over the next 12 months as I created yards and yards of compost, I created new rows in those areas. By my reckoning, I’ve added a total of maybe 250 SF, a 25% increase over this time last year. Where I’m feeling it now is trying to fill up the whole garden with edibles and spacing things out so they don’t overlap and create surpluses followed by voids. I start most items on the back porch so I have the garden going and a ton of new starts on standby.

Transplanted celery today from a seed starting container, aka Publix blueberry package, into an 18 position plant flat. They are still micro celeries and will spend at least another month in the flat under the protection of the back porch screen. I transferred about half of the total started and will leave the balance in the seedling bed until I’m sure the ones transplanted make it. Or I decide that we really need another 18 celeries. I love to grow celery but it does take a long, long time. Along with onions, I think Nancy prefers me growing celery because we use a fair amount and on a frequent basis so it’s very convenient just to go out and pull a couple onions or cut a few stalks of celery. Personally I lean toward broccoli, cauliflower etc because it yields higher $$$/ square foot.

Check out the size of the green beans. I put a couple alongside a cucumber and a couple of squashes on a 12” x 16” cutting board for perspective. The variety is called Kwintus and the beans are very tender and tasty. So tender and tasty that we’re cutting them up raw in salads rather than cooking. The bad news is that I planted about 50 Kwintus seeds and only one germinated – the seed was a couple years old and questionable to start with. So a couple of weeks after planting, when I was certain the seed was bad, I replanted with another variety called smeraldo. If you remember the picture of the bean tower, that is 98% smeraldo and that variety is just now blossoming. In the catalog pictures, the two varieties look the same so I’m hoping the smeraldo look and taste as good as the kwintus. We’ll know in a couple of weeks.

With my neighbors gone away all summer on vacation, I’m getting to do one thing I’ve not been able to do in the past. Actually count the number of squash I get from one plant. With two families picking randomly in the garden, no way to get a real count so I decided to use this opportunity to gather the data. I’m doing one Cougar yellow squash bush, that’s a Cougar in the picture, and the history to date is that I planted the seed 8/17, picked the first squash 9/23 and as of 10/15 have picked 11 squash. There are still 5 squash in various stages on the bush plus it’s loaded with blossoms so no telling how many more we’ll get before it crashes.

Here’s one for you. Before I transplant to the garden, I usually set the plant in the garden location where it will reside still in the container for a day or so to harden it off and make sure the location works for the plant. Sometimes a plant will wilt quickly letting me know that it’s not quite ready for transplanting. A couple nights back I set 7 plants in styrofoam coffee cup containers out in the garden as usual, 6 in one location, the 7th in another. I had pre-dug the holes where the plants would eventually reside and set the cups into the holes. The next morning I went out to check how they did overnight and found the 6 cauliflower looking good but the 7th, a cabbage plant, was sitting ok where I’d left it but sans styrofoam cup. Something had taken the plant out of the cup and made off with the cup. Luckily the plant was just sitting there in the hole, roots not really disturbed, so I just went ahead and planted it. I looked around for the cup and it was gone. Later in the day I was picking cherry tomatoes down low in the plant and way back underneath was the cup, looking no worse for wear. So some critter literally removed the plant, left it unharmed in it’s designated spot and moved the cup to a hideaway for later examination or use. Is that bizarre or what? I have to suspect a tree rat, aka squirrel, but I have no real proof.

I know you’re getting tired of reading about my butternut squash but since we’re on the edge of greatness here and events change daily, I think you need to be kept current. I really got down into the plant today and noticed that there is not just the single vine but rather 4 vines that split off some time back. End to end the length is now 18′ so that would be four 18′ long vines. In the last couple of days, many of the squash have started putting on some heft so it’s easy to spot the ones who are going to make it and the ones who probably won’t. Note to my Arcadia field consultant – I took your advice and start cutting off the runts of the litter. Today that meant culling about a dozen squashlettes. I’m actually starting to think there are some butternuts heading for the table this year. I planted the seeds August 10 and my home grown garden calculator program is telling me not to expect squash before Nov 23 but I’m betting I beat that by a couple of weeks. Not the first sign of any nematode action which by now should have made their presence well noticed.

Another garden innovation – where innovation means something I’ve never tried before but probably read about somewhere. I’m taking one gallon milk jugs, although any one gallon plastic container would probably work just as well, drilling a few tiny holes in the bottom and burying them with the top 20% above ground in the center of groups of four plants. The idea is to get water to the roots only by filling the jug occasionally with water and letting it seep out about a foot down. I could occasionally mix in water soluble fertilizer as well if the plants start looking motley. I’ll do a dozen or so and compare as the season to progresses to see if this approach is any better. I know if we were paying for water, it would be the way to keep watering totally under control. My sister last year tried growing some tomatoes and her water bill went totally out of sight.

The weather is nice enough to actually go out fishing in the middle of the day. I took the boat out and decided to just troll around dragging for anything that might feel like hitting my lures, not really expecting anything – just a lazy, peaceful afternoon. I actually caught a decent bass, nice enough to consider grilling whole on the Holland. We’re probably 6 weeks early for the spec’s to start but an occasional bass is not all that bad. One thing quite noticeable is that the lake has dropped about a foot in the past month – don’t think we’ve had a drop of rain in about that long. The bad news is that we’re entering the dry season with the lake already down whereas normally it’s peaking this time of year. Not only didn’t we have anything resembling a hurricane or tropical storm or depression, we just didn’t get much in the way of good old frog pleasing hard rains. Bummer. This time last year my concern was too much water in the garden and I was vowing to elevate all the rows to keep the roots high and dry this year. Not to worry – high and dry and burying milk containers to water the roots.

We are now officially in cucumber overload mode. That’s where we have 2 or 3 in the refrigerator and 1 or 2 more coming ready every day, exactly where we are and have been for a couple of months with egg plant. The Sweet Success variety produces major league cucumbers that are typically 12-14” long and 2-3” in diameter – not the wimpy kind you get at the store. They’re also extra mild – a burpless variety – even with the skin left on. So one cucumber goes a long way. Luckily last year Nancy came up with a perfect solution. She trades cucumbers for shrimp with one of her bridge buddies. They live on the St. Johns and there’s a substantial shrimp run every fall so they load up a freezer with shrimp. They happen to love the particular variety of cucumber that we grow so ………………..

Getting ready to plant onions in the garden. I started seeds inside about a month ago and they are looking good. I read something about raising onions that I’m trying. It’s early enough in the onion season that if I screw something up, I have plenty of recovery time. What this article suggested was giving the baby onion plants a “hair cut”. If you’ve ever started onions from seed, they put out a long, wispy stem/leaf and that’s what they suggest clipping. Supposedly it strengthens the plant and encourages additional stems/leaves. Makes sense to me.

The butternut is now at 16′ and showing no signs of slowing down. I had set aside nearly 20′ knowing that would be way more than adequate. oops!

Politics
Man will I be glad when this election cycle is over. The number and character of this season’s ads are really getting to me. If you believe any of them, Florida will be governed and represented by crooks and/or kooks, regardless of who wins. For gov I’m trying to decide if a bank crook is better or worse than a health company crook; Or if Orlando will have Shrek or a Taliban guy representing them. The only civil one to date has been the race for senate where the Republican has such a big lead that he can afford to lay out only positive messages. Even the Democrat’s ads have their guy riding through the Everglades – which he personally saved – on an airboat. The Independent is sandwiched in between trying to figure out what to say at all. His ads say that he’s in favor of whatever everybody else is. When Chris lost the Republican primary and decided to go it as an independent, I worried that he would pull votes away from the Republican candidate. Judging by the polling numbers, he must be pulling from the other guys since I don’t ever recall seeing a candidate of theirs doing so poorly. And he seems like a nice guy – his mother says so.

My prediction as to the ultimate outcome of this election is that right after the first of the year, Hillary will resign and announce her candidacy for 2012. The calculus for her has to be that Obama is crashing and taking down the whole party with him and killing her current plan to run in 2016. So it’s now or never. Her hubby is way more popular now than he was in the white house and Obama is more and more looking like Jimmy Carter (as predicted right here). The Clinton message is simple – when Bill left the White House there was a budget surplus even after inheriting a deficit. Of course he had a Republican congress but that’s exactly the situation Hillary will have so it’s a believable message. She can also get out before the mess in the middle east really gets nasty when the US starts to pull troops out of Afghanistan and use that as part of her campaign rhetoric – Obama just doesn’t get it on foreign/defense policy.

So you can tell I finally figured out how to add pictures to the blog. What was throwing me was that instead of using words, for example pic’s, they use icons with which I am unfamiliar. I actually lucked onto it because I had left the cursor on a particular icon totally by accident. With this operating system, when you place the cursor on an icon, a label pops up underneath. I looked up to see where the cursor was and noticed the word “image” under this particular icon. I moved the cursor to the next icon and up popped the word “video”; then “music”. That one was easy to figure out because the icon was a music note. Still not sure what the others depict but it would have been easier to just use the words instead of some ancient Mayan symbology.

So here’s a picture of the butternut squash plant I mentioned in an earlier blog. I have no idea what the world’s record is for butternuts but this guy is now measuring 12′ long and I counted 30 small squash along the vine. I’m wondering if I should just pull off maybe half of the small ones in order to spur growth on the rest of them. I’d do that if I had two bushes but with just one, I’m hesitant to mess with mother nature. What if I pulled off the baby squash and mother nature punished me by dropping all the cucumbers? I remember all those commercials that said you shouldn’t mess around with mother nature. If the squash is a hybrid, does mother nature still have ownership?

A few patches of vinca/periwinkles have seeded themselves in the garden and are thriving. They seem to love the sun and add nice patches of color to the garden. They also seem to be attracting some really large butterflies. So far, I’m not seeing any caterpillars so maybe they go off somewhere to do the caterpillar laying. The butterflies are really large and seem to be two types – or maybe not. One is mostly yellow with black markings; the other is mostly black with yellow markings. If you see the two side by side, they seem to be mirror images so I’m wondering if maybe one is male and the other female. Also, mentioning flowers, one of Nancy’s friends bought her a small chrysanthemum last year and she asked me to plant it somewhere when it had run it’s course in the house. I humored her and put it in a corner of the garden that never got enough watering to grow much of anything. It’s now at least 10x it’s original size and has flowered a couple of times since planting. It’ll be in full bloom next week and I’ll add a picture to the blog. I read somewhere that zinnia’s are good to plant around the garden for some reason or other so I started a few seeds in another corner. They’ve bushed up fairly well and should also be flowering next week. So the garden is definitely dressing up.

I’ve noticed some of the citrus starting to take on color. The satsuma tree that was hurt in last winter’s frost, never really got back all it’s leaves but has managed to put forth a decent batch of oranges. Those are starting to turn orange and will probably be eatable in November. Likewise, both the pink and white grapefruit are turning from dark, dark green to light green and some even showing a bit of yellow. I normally start picking a few around Thanksgiving and that looks about right this year.

All of a sudden we’re flirting with record low temp’s. What’s that all about? Two weeks ago we were roasting, not record roasting but unusual roasting for sure. I have to do all my garden planning around averages but, of course, averages are fictitious numbers that don’t really exist. Moved right on to long pants and long sleeve shirts.

Several posts back I mentioned that the pole beans were growing rapidly. They have now topped out the bean tower which is 8′ tall. According to my calculations, we should be picking beans by Oct 30 and it looks like that’s highly possible. The other plant that’s showing extraordinary growth is the butternut squash. The vine is over 6′ long and sporting large, dark green foliage and a dozen or so small squashletts. At this point I’m wondering just how long the vine will grow. I have it covering the new area in the garden so it has plenty of room – at least I think it has plenty. I’ve not had much success with butternuts here so I’m hoping this year will be different. What normally happens, and what’s also happening this year, is that the plant puts out plenty of fruit but when they get about 3” long, they die off. I’ve found this to be true with most squash varieties but when the plants mature, the later forming fruit hangs on and ripens. My theory on this is that early on most of the plant’s energy is going into vine and foliage growth rather than the fruit. When it’s met it’s biological target for producing the plant, it’s energy goes to producing the fruit itself. This cycle has been a problem for me in the past because the nematodes have attacked and killed the plant before it gets to this last part of the cycle. I put all my expertise and time into making sure that doesn’t happen this year so I’m hopeful that my efforts will be rewarded with a load of butternuts. I have high hopes because the zucchini bushes are likewise sporting larger and greener foliage than I ever remember and the squash production is much higher already. Zucchini is a 50 day crop compared to 90 days for the butternut.

The other big harvest that I haven’t much mentioned is the jalapeno peppers. Last Monday I picked a bag that had to be 10 pounds for our friend Edna and her family. Yesterday another large bag, I’m guessing 5 pounds, for Joanne who is visiting with her granddaughters. Even this didn’t strip the 3 plants, if you can believe that. I need the space for an upcoming lettuce and spinach crop. It’s still too hot for those leafy vegetables but it won’t be for long and I’ll eventually have to pull out the peppers for a crop we enjoy even more.

The girls have been having a totally new experience for them. They are city folk and a couple days at the lake and in the garden is a big change. We hit the garden after they came and I gave them each a harvest basket to help me pick. I had avoided picking anything for a few days so they’d have plenty to do. We loaded the baskets with eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, grape tomatoes and the jalapenos. I had to help carry the loaded baskets. Then we hit the lake. They wanted a boat ride first so we trolled around, hoping maybe a stray perch would bite. No luck so they were bummed. Not to worry, we brought a piece of bread to the dock and baited the cane poles. Within a couple of minutes they were catching fish, squealing, and jumping up and down. They did a little swimming but the lake was a bit intimidating for these pool kiddies. The water had also cooled down to 85 which they thought was just a little too cold.
Sunday was planting day and they helped transplant a few cauliflower plants from the starter to styrofoam cups and planted seeds for plants that will hit the garden mid November. That would be Chinese cabbage, brussels sprouts, two varieties of lettuce and a few more broccolis. Ran a wheelbarrow full of leaves through the mulcher, distributed the chopped leaves into the garden and then turned the compost pile. So they’ve had a taste of everything from starting to picking and all things in between.

Wonder if it’s too late for Simon to transfer to FSU? Had to sneak out at midnight to pull down the Gator banner. Changed my orange and blue for black.