In a month we’ll be in a serious lettuce overload. I have about 4 different kinds going and they are all super fast from seed to table – on the order of a month. Everybody likes lettuce so it’s an easy crop to distribute and better yet, you just pick the leaves you want and the plant keeps putting out. About the same time we’ll start on the lettuce, maybe Thanksgiving, there will be radishes and white Russian Kale ready to start picking. So the salads will be super. By mid December add spinach and swiss chard leaves to the mix and probably cherry tomatoes. I see a switchback to my green smoothie lunches fairly soon.

I went ahead and dug another linear foot or so into the sweet potato patch to see how much the tubers have grown since first checking a few weeks back. The good news is that I found a plentiful supply; the bad news is that they are still too small – bigger than they were a month ago but still way too small to eat – except maybe as a specialty, baby potatoes. I’d say they’re about half the size we typically buy. So Thanksgiving is not looking so good for the home grown sweets. And just to confirm, the tubers are still white so there are white sweet potatoes. I am picking some green beans so maybe we’ll provide the raw material for a green bean casserole.

Put in some snow pea seeds. Last year that didn’t work out so well, no idea why but going to give it another try.

Ate the half sized sweets putting them on the Holland grill along with zucchini slices and pork chops. They were good and welcomed when they get to regulation size.

George is back in the hospital. Barbara called last night with word that he had gone to the hemotologist for a routine check and they ordered an immediate transfusion of two units. That plus he has quite an infection, probably from the wound on his chest, and was running a fever of 103 degrees. He can’t catch a break. He’s been fighting that chest wound for at least 10 years with a handful of different doc’s but they don’t seem to be able to do anything permanent because of the old irradiated tissue – the result of a blast of cobalt about 50 years ago. This one sounds ominous and they told Barbara that he’d be at least 3 days in the hospital. Apparently it’s very much complicated by the fact that his pace maker is just a few inches away from the wound and prone to problems with infections. UPDATE. Got a call at 4:30AM, 11/1, telling us that George had passed away. No details other than the infection overwhelmed his system. I’m going to miss him a lot.

The garden is taking off. Put in most of the seedlings I started in early Sept. So far only a minimal amount of loss.

Nancy and I made eggplant parmigiana this week. Actually it was eggplant-zucchini parmigiana. I picked three small eggplants which turned out to be just a wee bit short so I picked a zucchini to intermix. Perfect. The sauce was still from the summer batch of tomatoes so this is a total homegrown, home cooked meal. The eggplants are from plants that were put in the ground last spring and managed to make it through the summer to produce a second crop. There are still blossoms on the plants so it could possibly go on for another month or so. In the mean time I planted some new ones a month or so back, hoping they’ll produce before a freeze gets them. The eggplant provided a surprise this year in that last year I had planted half a dozen and had them coming out our ears – nobody was interested in them. This year I planted about half as many plants but George and Barbara plus Garrett and Jinny decided that they could make parmigiana so there’s been a run on them.

Getting some nice, much needed rain. A couple of days ago I planted more seeds in the garden and they need to stay moist until they germinate so my timing was right on. The seeds planted included radishes, carrots, and two more varieties of lettuce. Also found another package of spinach seeds from last year so I gave it a spot. So far all the attempts at planting spinach have failed – either the seed is too old or the weather too hot. I suspect the former and plan to rectify that situation next time I hit the feed store in deLeon Springs.

I’m going to make another shot at harvesting sweet potatoes next week. I tried about 30 days ago and found the tubers too small. They’ve been in for over 100 days and that should be adequate. Two pressure points – we’re on the hook for the sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving and I need the space in the garden for more winter crops.

Chris update – Back in NYC as of Saturday, 10/27. He enjoyed the train from Charlotte in his sleeping car albeit a couple hours late. He’ll be living in a hotel until his apartment is ready, mid November. Between now and then he spends a couple days in Boston training and a week in Miami at a National sales meeting. His stuff was packed in two “POD’s” and will be delivered and unpacked when the apartment is ready for occupancy. All very slick and he seems happy to be back “home”.

I’ll be sooooooo glad when this election is over. The TV commercials are driving us batty. Florida is a fairly middle of the road state so there’s a ton of money spent on media to get a small advantage at the polls. We see the same commercials over and over again for months. The really depressing thing about the ads is that it lays out just how mean and corrupt every single candidate is. Each one, over and over again. I’m not sure how they get away with distorting things so greatly. Personally I think you have to be suspicious of anyone who chooses politics as a career.

Exciting start to the day on Wednesday. The phone rang about 7:30AM which is really unusual. It was George relating that they had called 911 and there was an emergency vehicle on the way and asking me to go up to the road to guide them down to his house. His driveway is narrow, curved and heavily wooded so they couldn’t drive down to the house which is not visible from the road. We’ve been through this a couple of times and they need to unload the gurney on the road and walk it down to the house. The problem was blood pouring out a wound on his chest as a result of minor surgery a week ago. I got the EMT’s to the house and went in to see what I could do to help. Lots and lots of blood between the bathroom and the living room but the wound had started to clot and it wasn’t currently bleeding. George has all sorts of side issues with his heart and blood count so they loaded him onto the gurney and off to the hospital in Ormond. Barbara followed quickly and I volunteered to clean up the mess. What was complicating for me was that Nancy plays bridge on Wednesday and we have to leave for the game 20 miles away by 8:30. I got back to the house at 8:29 and we made it to the bridge game with minutes to spare.

George called about an hour later. They diagnosed the problem as a hematoma that had somehow opened. They cleaned the wound, re-bandaged it and released him about noon.

Nancy is squeezing in another Palm Coast bridge day today, Friday. I’m ok with that and will hit the surf again. Last time was just not good with a load of seaweed close to shore making it almost impossible to fish. I’m hoping that will be cleared up but also concerned about an even bigger problem – Biketoberfest. It’s another Daytona event that draws in over 100K bikers and they overflow onto the beaches way up into Flagler Beach, where I fish. The good news/bad news situation is that rain is forecast. That would keep the biking down but make the fishing a little dicey.

Looks like we’re only a few days from a major weather change. It’s forecast to cool off by the weekend – enough for me to start moving my cool weather seedlings to the garden. I won’t list all that will move but anything you can think of, especially if it’s green and leafy, will probably be going in. Picked the first zucchini of the season and have a few eggplants that could be picked so I’m officially in the fall garden. The next big milestone will be digging the sweet potatoes. I found a couple of tubers a few weeks back but they were really too small. I’m thinking Thanksgiving is covered!!

We had a big family event on Wednesday. Tom presented his PhD dissertation to his committee and had to defend it against questions from the experts. We were invited to join the festivities at the University and then celebrate afterwards with friends and family. The committee was 4 professors with an interest in the subject matter being discussed – whether or not there is a skill transfer from game players to surgeons performing laproscopic surgery. Tom designed several tests and then had a good population of students engage in the experiments. Most of those participants were in attendance at the presentation so the total audience was probably close to 100. The format was for Tom to make his presentation and then answer questions posed by the committee members and anyone else who wanted to participate. Our family didn’t ask any questions – just applauded at the right time. At the end of the Q &A session, the committee chairman asked everyone to leave while they reached their conclusion regarding Tom’s academic future. All in all, the presentation and Q & A lasted about an hour. About 15 minutes later, the head guy came out and requested that Tom come meet with the whole committee. Five minutes later Tom came out smiling. The chairman then came out and made the announcement that they had signed off on Tom and the only thing left was the actual ceremony in December. The chairman, Charlie, said Tom was “little Doc” until he was actually “hooded” and becomes “Doc”.

The experience was really great for us since Tom got us a room at the downtown Marriott which was a 5 minute walk from the event. Then after the event he took us all (the family) to a great downtown restaurant. We broke off after that while the rest of them headed to a spot called World of Beer where all the other’s from the presentation were ready to party on. We thought we might be a drag on that party so opted to head back to the hotel.

The actual degree award event occurs in December. At that point we (might) see both Tom and Olivia graduate from UCF. Olivia gets her bachelors degree from the School of Medicine. Originally the schedule had them both graduating at the same event which would have been really convenient but the university came to their senses and split up the event into two ceremonies. Interestingly, supposedly the word now is that Tom can only get two tickets to his event which is a real bummer considering that several people are coming from Utah and (maybe) Idaho and the number of local family planning to go. I guess no problem seeing Olivia graduate.

———-
I usually get out into the yard and/or garden by 9AM to get in a couple of hours before it just gets too hot for me. This morning I poked my head out to head over and got right back in. It turned into fall/winter overnight and it was actually (Florida) cold. That means in the low 60’s. So now instead of getting all my work done before it gets too hot, I have to wait until it warms up. Time to put out my cabbage seedlings etc.

Nancy likes old fashioned white bread, Wonder Bread to be exact. Me, not so much. We go thru a large loaf every week, half for Nancy and half for the critters, mostly fish. But more recently the critter count has grown to include a large turtle and a duck. They nominally reside in the back bay of the lake, where we live and as soon as I step out on the dock in the morning, I can see a turtle head pop out within 100 yds of me and head directly toward me. A few seconds later I hear the flapping of the duck wings. The duck hangs out around George’s dock but he keeps his eyes on ours, especially at feeding time. I’m aware of the fact that you’re not supposed to feed the wildlife but ………………

It’s cooled off enough to get me back surf fishing on Mondays while Nancy is playing bridge. A couple of weeks ago when I was on the beach, just walking, not fishing, I met a guy who was catching a few and clearly, (based on his gear), knew what he was doing. I asked him what he was using for bait and he showed me his sand flea flavored “fish bites”. This is a manufactured bait strip, cut into small pieces that are really easy to deal with – holds on the hook much better than real bait, and according to this guy, caught more fish than real sand fleas or shrimp. It’s non perishable so you can keep it in your tackle box and not have to worry about ice. It comes in lots of flavors – shrimp, crab, clam, squid, shrimp – so lots of options for bait choice. I went by Big Al’s bait and tackle on Flagler and picked up a bag of the sand flea flavored. They don’t give them away – $9 for a small bag but the fact that they will last for many trips, makes up for the expense. Also the bait is tough enough to stay on the hook even after catching a few fish. My surf rig has two hooks so when I got on the beach and saw that natural sand fleas were abundant, I decided to bait one hook with a real flea and the other with a sand flea flavored fish bite. I did catch more fish on the bite. Another advantage to the fish bite is that I can’t count on always being able to find live sand fleas in the surf. Sometimes they’re abundant, sometimes totally gone. And sometimes the surf is running so big that it’s difficult gathering them. I did a little online research and was surprised to find plenty of sources but not much price spread. Walmart was shown as a source so I’m going to visit the Palm Coast store and see if they have them. I’m thinking of adding crab and shrimp flavored Bites to the mix. Update – I found them at Walmart for $6. I bought a bag of sand flea flavor, shrimp flavor, clam flavor and crab flavor. I rushed to the beach to start some serious testing but was met with rain, wind, rip currents and giant waves. Next week!

Lots and lots of seedlings in the house waiting for a break in the heat. I have 50+ seedlings including cauliflower, broccoli, kale, cabbage, cabbage, and collards. This is more than enough to fill the garden open spaces. Also, the swiss chard seeds I planted directly in the garden have mostly germinated and will need some thinning in a week or so. I’ll put some of the thinned plants in individual containers to cover any losses that occur in the garden. I just hate thinning plants and then tossing them away which is why I end up with too many plants in the garden. I had planted two different varieties of Chard but so far, only one variety has germinated so if the other variety, sea foam, doesn’t work in this garden, I’ll use the thinned plants in that place.

Looking at this backlog, I decided to dig around in the sweet potato patch to see how far along those were. Hopefully they’ll be ready for harvest soon. But, I dug around the edges and found a tuber that was way too small. At least there was a tuber but I’ll just let them go another two weeks before checking again. They were advertised as “white” sweet potatoes and sure enough, they are really light skinned. One thing for sure – tubers or not – I’ll get quite a load of foliage for the compost pile.

Looks like Chris will be moving (again) to NYC. He was recruited seriously from a major player in the industry and will celebrate Thanksgiving there.
————————-
We rearranged the furniture in the living room to see if we could enhance Nancy’s TV viewing. We swapped the positions of the small couch and the lounge chair so that the chair could be physically closer to the TV and also provide better back support. Seems to have worked so far.

Nancy’s orthopod set her up for some shots to relieve her back pain. They said there was no fundamental underlying bone issues but rather pinched nerves. I was surprised when they set an appointment to get the shot at 6:00 AM at a surgical center in Orange City – about 45 minutes away. I figured the doctor probably lived there and stopped by first thing in the morning before going to his Deland office and that surely she would be the first patient. So I was surprised when we opened the door to the office and found a full waiting room and learned that there were 4 doctors there performing procedures. She got her shots, 4 numbing shots and 2 serious shots and we were out of there about 8AM.

Decided to simplify our vehicle situation even further. Last month we got rid of our old Camry and replaced it with a new Buick which still left us with 3 vehicles and 1 driver. The ’96 truck was getting very few miles which is worse on the vehicle than getting too many miles. The engine occasionally made some funny noise, the brakes squeaked, and it started missing and steering funny. Last time it exhibited those same symptoms – about a year ago- it cost $400 to bring it back to life. I came close to donating it at that time. I love the truck and had some truly memorable camping and fishing trips with the kids, friends, and family but that was a different time and donating it to the Kidney Foundation seemed a fitting end. We donated our old Buick Park Avenue to the Lung Foundation back in the 90’s so now we’re a multi organ donor. The first person we told about the transaction was little Tommy. He was with me when I went shopping for a truck and agreed with the choice. A few weeks later I bought the camper which was located in the Sacramento area and we drove out together, picked it up at the factory, and then camped our way back to Salt Lake. He (and Simon) was with us when the truck crossed the 100K mile point near Heber Utah along the Jordanelle Reservoir. We stopped, did a little dance around the truck then finished up with shakes at Granny’s. Lot’s and lot’s of memories for the three of us.

Lots and lots of seedlings in the house waiting for a break in the heat. I have 50+ seedlings including cauliflower, broccoli, kale, cabbage, cabbage, and collards. This is more than enough seedlings to fill the garden open spaces. Looking at this backlog, I decided to dig around in the sweet potato patch to see how far along those were. Hopefully they’ll be ready for harvest soon. But, I dug around the edges and found a tuber that was way too small. At least there was a tuber but I’ll just let them go another two weeks before checking again. They were advertised as “white” sweet potatoes and sure enough, they are really light skinned.

Sorry this blog update took so long. My old macbook finally ran out of gas. I couldn’t get online at the Flagler Library, my update venue. Update – not the computer, the internet at the library was screwed up.

Went to the doc for a routine annual follow up and learned that my iron blood count was back to normal after dropping as a result of the hematoma developed from a fall in North Carolina. I had a huge hematoma which turned by backside black and blue from my waist to my knee – Really ugly and enough blood involved (internally) to drop me into anemia. Eventually the iron in the bruise blood is reabsorbed. That took about 2 months enhanced by taking iron pills.

100% of what’s grown in the garden is used – even weeds. It’s either eaten or composted. This year the wet spring and hot summer yielded the largest crop of weeds ever and consequently I have the most compost for the fall garden ever. I’ve been using it as needed and still have what I estimate to be 2 cubic yards of first class compost. I bet the whole garden will be raised up a couple of inches as the new compost is added. Aside from just being a much better growing medium, raising the level makes the garden less susceptible to flooding – better drainage. That’s important with this garden because the lake sets the groundwater level and I like to have at least a foot of soil above that.

I mentioned that I had started my winter veggies indoors using last year’s seed. Here’s an interesting bit of trivia. Chinese cabbage seed germinated in 3 days, some kale in 4 days. That’s faster than I remembered. The cauliflower and collards were a day behind but still, they were all really fast. I decided to jump ahead of my original planting schedule – just impatient, no new input – and put in a few short rows of spinach seed. I favor an heirloom variety, Bloomsdale. Deep down inside I feel it’s a few weeks early but I have plenty of seed and who knows, it may be cool enough if it holds under 90 for a couple of weeks. If that seed germinates and looks healthy, I’ll follow up with some lettuce and get our salad material started. Both spinach and lettuce are very fast crops – ready to start picking as soon as 35 days after germination. So in a perfect world we’ll be eating “garden” fresh salads by the beginning of November – a month earlier than I usually plan

Lost my cousin Billy this week. We were best buddies when we were kids. We both loved exploring, fishing, diving, camping – anything with a large outdoor component. We got into lots of “trouble” by disappearing – long walks in the woods, on the beach – you name it. I’ll miss him a lot. Not that we saw each other often but I thought about our exploits frequently and I’ll continue to do so.

Another loss – both the NY Times and the Washington post have morphed into the National Inquirer. I always knew they were way too liberal for me but thought they had journalistic integrity. Not now.

Working in the garden is really, really hot, sweaty work this time of the year. I go out fully ready to tackle the tasks at hand and come in 2 hours later totally wrung out, drippy wet with sweat. I did an experiment. I weighed myself just before heading over to the garden and then again about 2 hours later when I was done for the morning. I was 2.5 pounds lighter which has to be 100% water loss. FYI, 2.5 cups of water = 2.5 pounds. So now I’m starting to get it on the dehydration front. To make sure, I repeated the experiment on Friday with the exact same results. When I’m working like that, I’ll get a little light headed but didn’t link that to water loss -but I bet that’s the cause.

Not happy with the germination of the beans so I used all the left over seeds from the original pack to fill in the gaps. I’m used to that when I use seed I’ve had for a couple of years but this was newly purchased so it must have been in the system for a couple of years before it ended up in my shopping cart. Most seed packs have a use by date but this particular information was missing on these seeds. Suspicious. But I started the gardening in earnest by making the first transfers from my started seedlings to the garden. My first planting was two Early Blue Ribbon tomatoes, two Dixie Red tomatoes, -both varieties I’ve never grown before – two Skyway’s which I have grown and three Declaration green bell peppers, an old standbye. I also planted seeds for 4 greyzini zucchini plants. The four tomatoes are part of a set that includes 4 more varieties and a total of 16 plants, a couple of paste tomatoes and a couple Cherrys. I planted the first ones very carefully and I’ll watch them for a couple of days to make sure it’s ok before planting the remainder.

I started the seeds for the full winter garden 9/16. That includes the cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and collards. I was out of broccoli and chard seed and expect delivery on those this week. I start these indoors in peat pots with a target of late October, early November for transplanting to the garden. I’ll squeeze a few lettuce and spinach plants as weather and space allow. If you can keep track of it all, it means a very full garden from November thru December when both the fall and winter plants are sharing the garden space.

Nancy and her quilt buddy did a quilt shop tour in west central Florida – over in the Tampa area. They left first thing Thursday morning and back at supper time on Friday. I can’t figure why Nancy likes going to quilt shops when she really can’t see the material – but she does.

It’s nice to be watching the hurricane season developing without being directly in the path of something. I think our Carolina friends and family are far enough inland to be spared the worst of it. I imagine they’ll lose power for a short time but no flooding or wind related problems. Fingers crossed.

As expected, I over did it on the fall seed planting. I have the seeds which have a life expectancy so once I get started, why not go big. Also since it’s a high risk crop, I decided to try a wide variety rather than depend on just a few varieties. The final count is a dozen tomato peat pots among 6 different varieties, 2 of each. Add 6 bell peppers, 4 eggplants, and two basil’s to round out the fall seedling starts. I’ll also plant a few summer squash plants directly in the garden sometime in Mid September, weather permitting. Don’t assume that 100% of the seed plantings listed above will actually turn into future transplants. Germination is normally something less than 100% so in each little pot, I put two seeds. It does happen that both the seeds or neither of the seeds will germinate. In about 2 weeks I’ll have some feeling for how many transplants could make the garden. These seed pots are sitting in a plastic tray – “floating” in an inch of water – on the kitchen counter. I want them to be protected from large temp swings, bugs, sunlight until they have germinated. One of the things I have to be very careful of is losing track of which variety is in which peat pot. All the varieties look alike when immature and I really want to determine which variety is best suited for our climate. It’s not a big surprise that somewhere in between germination and transplant, they become mixed up. Labels wash off, well meaning people “move” them.

Bought/leased a new car. The Toyota we’ve had since ’96 was sending end of life warning signals. It had about 230,000 miles with the original power train and transmission and the A/C was intermittent – a really bad problem in a Florida summer so we decided it was time to look for a replacement. I evaluated several different cars and finally settled on a new Buick Encore – a small, SUV body style. It’s a little bigger than I was thinking but I really enjoyed driving it around the lot and was able to strike what I considered a decent deal. It also had more “goodies” than I was thinking but…………. It’s the model above the “basic” with a special engine, the Bose noise cancellation system and extra fancy wheels and trim. None of that matters to me but…….. That, plus Tom had previously done research on the Encore and had decided that would probably be his next buy. That pushed my decision toward the Buick. This is our first lease, 27 months, 12000 miles per year. Nancy is a little nervous about that but I think it’s a good fit for the routine driving we do. And we still have the Grand Marquis for longer drives and the truck – but not sure for how much longer on that. I drive it so rarely now that it’s suffering from a lack of use.

We made the purchase on Saturday then Nancy and I went back on Monday to actually take delivery and give up the Toyota. It’s so much more electronics oriented that it’s going to take me a while to really feel comfortable with the basic operations. The whole starting and shutting off process is no longer just a key in the ignition and I have this nagging feeling that I’m going to end up some time outside the car trying to figure out how to get in. The sales guy gave me a walk thru but it was a bit overwhelming. It complicated everything that I don’t have a smart phone. I told the guy that a gas pedal, break peddle and steering wheel are all I really needed. I get 3 months of free onstar which seems like something I would never want but Nancy seems to think otherwise. We’ll see.

We were leaving Palm Coast on bridge club day when the car started making funny noises and steering anomalies. Thought it might be the air conditioning so we turned it off and lowered the windows. I guess the wind noise overwhelmed the sound we had been hearing so assumed that turning off the AC fixed it. Thirty minutes later as we turned down our driveway, it became painfully obvious that the steering problem had gone from minor to major. But it did get us home. First thing in the morning I decided to start trouble shooting – maybe it went away overnight. The first thing I checked was the power steering fluid and sure enough it was way, way down. I just happened to have a quart of fluid on hand and it just so happened that was exactly the amount it took. The wailing sound stopped and in just a short test drive, most of the vibrations stopped. My thought was that the small vibrations remaining were probably associated with air bubbles in the system and decided to make it to the mechanic in Deland, about 15 miles away. It did make it but the last 100 yards were total torture requiring all my strength to make the final turn into the garage. My new analysis was the power steering pump had crapped out. I got a ride home from Nancy’s friend Esther who was going to the house to work on quilts with Nancy. The mechanic that works on the car happens to live about an eighth of a mile down our road so somehow we’d be able to work out getting the car back home when repaired. The good news was that the pump was fine, the problem being a leaky pressure sensor – a much less expensive fix – about 1/3 of what I expected. Since this was our main car, this hiccup is probably going to push me back into the new (or nearly new) car market. ugh!

Some days I’m not sure what’s breaking down faster – me or my things.

Decided to start some fall seedlings, tomatoes and green peppers. I’m trying a few varieties that I’ve not tried in the past. If things go right and I get decent germination, they should be transplanted into the garden the end of September and producing after Thanksgiving. That,of course, assumes no flooding, no hurricanes and no surprise early freezes. The soil itself has been really soggy all summer long so I’m not sure what that means in terms of impact on the next crop. Maybe I’ll have more mold and mildew to contend with – who knows. I do know that it won’t take much rain, perhaps one hurricane passing within 500 miles, to have the roots floating again.