Seasons

It’s pine pollen season again. Pine pollen is a yellow, powdery dust that coats everything. Then if it’s misty, the pollen coating turns into a paste which, when the sun comes out, bakes onto whatever surface it’s covering. It floats on the surface of the lake and clogs your nostrils when you breath. I can just imagine what happens inside the lungs. I’ve never heard of anyone dying of a pine pollen overload so maybe it converts to something nutritious when your body absorbs it.

It’s spec season which means the garden is filling up with perch carcasses at a rapid rate. Since there’s still quite a load of stuff growing, it’s getting tougher and tougher to find room for the bodies. Research has shown that it takes roughly 3 weeks for a spec carcass to disappear; more like 8 weeks for mudfish, gar, or catfish which my neighbor generously contributes. I try to make sure that every trip Nancy makes to bridge or quilting includes bags of lettuce or whatever else is brimming over in the garden but it’s still not going down as fast as the spec bodies are materializing. That’s my big ole bad problem for the week. Next thing will be running out of freezer space with all the fillets. I just can’t cut a break.

It’s new tire season. Had to get new tires on both the Toyota and the Mercury. That puts a hole in the budget especially if you have something like tie rods thrown in. I’m ok with spending money on boats or fishing tackle but cars……………

In the last week of February we had just over 2” of rain and the lake rose accordingly. That much rain is not unusual in Florida but it is for February. I’m hoping that we got the rain over with for at least a week so it’s nice weather for the upcoming spring break fishing trip with Tom. That will mean a break in the blog stream but you can anticipate pictures of large fish when we get back. The weather hasn’t been all that great the last two years, cold and windy which limited where we could fish. Last year we tried to find fishable areas so we spent much of the time visiting places for the future – as in this year.

Joey came up with something that may turn out to be a good find. He was visiting his local Starbucks and spotted a couple of large, 20lb size sacks of used coffee grounds for gardens. Free. I dump a cup or so of home grown used coffee grounds into the compost pile every day. It’s just something I’ve always heard was a good idea but never had any official sanctioning. My mix leans heavily towards 8 O’clock or Dunkin’ Donuts so I’m wondering if my plants will be able to handle the upgrade to Starbucks. According to the label it’s for use with acid loving plants. I’ve had my soil tested several times and it always shows up short on acid so perhaps this will correct that deficiency. Certainly can’t hurt. A slightly acid soil helps the plant dissolve other nutrients for absorption.