Having a fun time in the Carolina mountains – fishing and just generally relaxing. The weather has been perfect. Chris picked up Joey at the Ashville airport and brought him to the cabin so we have the whole family here. Nancy and Kassem drove up from Spartanberg for the day. Simon and Amy are driving in from Alabama, I think scheduled for a very late arrival tonight. We take Joey back to the airport tomorrow and then Chris and Jamie and the rest of the Sheronik clan come on Saturday so it’ll be a full house again – the more the merrier. It’s been great seeing everybody and enjoying the setting. Fishing has not been great but we have caught a few small bass so it’s not been a total loss. We spent a few hours yesterday in a little town called Chimney Rock – had lunch and just did the tourist things. We leave on Sunday and should be home before dark.

We drove to Charlotte Saturday to spend the day with Chris in his new home before heading to the mountain cabin near Ashville with Tom and his family. Chris has a brand new townhouse in an area of Charlotte called Waverly. It’s on the south side of town in a totally newly developed community. It’s one of those new concept places with a highly retail center intermixxed and surrounded by homes and apartments so that everything you need for everyday living is within walking distance. There must be a dozen restaurants of all types, a really nice Whole Foods, and the standard mix of other retail. We ate at the Carolina Ale House last night and loved it. Jamie starts his new job today and Chris takes over his store next Monday. Tom, Tina and Olivia joined us Sunday afternoon, we did a late lunch at a Mexican place there and then headed off for the cabin at Lake Lure. Joey joins us mid week; ditto Simon an his newly announced fiance, Amy; and then other family members. The Carolina relatives, will join us next weekend. Should be a fun time.

The drive to the cabin was exciting. It was about half good road and half narrow, windy, mountain roads – reminded me alot of driving in the mountains in Utah. We hit a super market and loaded up with groceries for the week. The place is quite roomy and will get the job done just fine. There’s a nice looking lake out the back door and a canoe waiting on the shore so we’ll be running a bass test later. Report to follow.

We’ve got some kind of “bad knee” disease going on. George, Barbara, Nancy and I all have the same knee problems. George and Nancy visited doctors and both were diagnosed (eventually) with a torn meniscus and told that it is something you get when you’re old. Like the dentist says – “you’ve got old teeth” or the eye doc says – “you’ve got old eyes”. duh! Nancy’s doc is giving her shots; George’s told him to use ice a few times a day, take tylenol, and keep his leg elevated. Barbara and I are just avoiding the whole doctor thing and are just toughing it out. Actually I’m semi toughing it out by going with the ice remedy. We all seem to be getting a little better. For me, one of the toughest moves is getting in and out of the car and the kayak. Getting down on hands and knees to pick beans is also a bit trying. Maybe next year I’ll grow pole beans again.

Rumor has it that a 7’ gator wandered on into the lake a couple days ago. That happens from time to time but a few of the locals take care of it – usually within a day or so. A couple nights ago we heard two gunshots from a serious weapon and assume the critter was converted into steaks, wallets, belts etc. Sounds kind of harsh but if you had a dog or child living on the lake, you might see it differently. We also had another wildlife encounter yesterday. We came home from Nancy’s bridge game and when she opened the screen door, a snake scooted right by her trying to get out. It was obviously an OK snake – maybe 2’-3’ long and about as big around as a pencil. I think it was a black racer which is totally harmless but it does give your heart a start when you don’t expect it and when it races by about 2’ from you. He was having trouble finding his way out and we needed a broom to help it find the doorway but it was all over in a minute or so.

Joanne, Joey and Mark came up for a “work” day yesterday. There are a few jobs in the house that are difficult for Nancy to keep up with. And I try my best to keep up with the outside but occasionally a job too big or technical for me to handle comes up. This time it was the dock which was starting to get shabby with rotting decking. The structure itself is just like new but the deck itself, particularly the portion that’s directly in the sun has been deteriorating. That’s a Mark job. So a couple of weeks ago I picked up a dozen 16’ deck planks. We pulled up all the bad boards and replaced them with the new wood. Took us the better part of a day but we did it. I finished off the next day by carrying all the bad wood over to the burn pile on George’s and just generally cleaning up. Looks good and hopefully it will hold up another 12-15 years. The only loss was a hammer dropped in the lake but I know exactly where it is and as soon as the water warms up, I’ll retrieve it.

The winter garden is winding down fast. Not much kale left, one more cabbage, no regular spinach. The chard is hanging in there but by mid afternoon, it’s wilting badly – just can’t handle the heat. I give it another week, that’s all. The collards and the NZ spinach are hanging in there so I have greens for my smoothies.

Sure we needed a little rain but 4” overnight and a couple more the next day – the big washout. And lots of lightning to make it even more exciting. But the real action came a few days after the big rain – from the storm that nailed Arkansas on Friday or Saturday. We had plenty of warning but the winds were unbelievably strong – straight line not rotational. My tv antenna was blown off and we lost power for about 5 hours. I broke out the generator when the power company gave us 9PM as the estimated fix time and luckily it was full of gas and started on the first pull. So from the time we lost power to when we were back in business was about 15 minutes. I did note that although the generator was full of gas and would run for about 8 hours, all my other gas containers are empty and that needs correction.

My next big project is replacing bad planks on the dock. It’s been in for over 10 years and the section that is uncovered is starting to rot – not dangerous but unsightly. Even though she can’t see it, Nancy is sure it needs to be fixed. Luckily Joey and Mark volunteered to do the actual work – well actually Joey volunteered Mark. The first thing was getting twelve 16’ planks home from Lowes in my pickup with an 8’ bed. Lowe’s helped load the truck but I had to tie it all down and drive the 20 miles back home and then unload it. Not counting sore muscles, it went smoothly and the planks are in the screened porch waiting for the big install.

We’re about a week away from the first green beans of the season. So far my plan to start them earlier than usual is successful. There’s no sign of any bug attacks which is often the fate of the bean crop. There’s a second crop about a month behind this first one and then another that is just breaking ground. This last planting is not likely to produce much because it matures in the heat of June and near the peak of the bug season. I had some leftover seed and you never know about the weather, so why not try. The worst that can happen is that it all makes it to the compost pile. I picked the last carrot and the last of the “standard” spinach and getting close to the end of the kale. A few more heads of cabbage, a hardy row of Swiss Chard and the collards are all that’s remaining of the green crop – not counting the New Zealand spinach. No surprises except that this is the longest standing, most productive row of Swiss Chard ever. I don’t think I did a thing different but the soil conditions and weather must have been just right. And that’s not just my opinion. One of the bridge ladies that Nancy distributes greens to came over to the car yesterday and told me she’s never had Swiss Chard this good so it is different this year. It’s very rewarding to get those kind of compliments and to see the price in Publix for Chard that doesn’t look as good. Last week a bunch that looked like about 3 leaves was $4.

We’re having overnight company which is a good thing. Believe it or not I have never restored the dock to operational use since the hurricanes last fall so this forced the issue and gets the “lake” season off to a start. Restoring the dock means untying all the dock furniture and trimming the jungle away from the pathway. In doing so I noticed several pieces of the deck that are rotting and need replacement. Joey volunteered Mark to help (do it) me and we’re scheduled for that to happen the end of the month.

Chris’s move is starting to become real. They went to Charlotte over the weekend on a house hunting trip and quickly found a brand new town house that more than met their needs. They’ve had a realtor researching and had been pre-qualified so they had a nice list of possibles and found “the place” quickly. The physical move is scheduled for the end of the month. A big plus – they’ll be about 20 minutes from Lindsay, Charles and the girls and less than an hour from Nancy, Ali and Meghan so we’ll have plenty of incentive to visit. Other than a nice place to live, it looks like he’ll be within 10 minutes to a Costco, a Fresh Market, a Whole Foods and a Trader Joe’s. And a plethora of micro breweries. Maybe 10 minutes to the airport. A short walk to a golf course.

Tom is in the final stage of his PhD program so between that, the classroom teaching and the IG projects he’s in deep water with no cycles to spare. He needs some total isolation to put the finishing touches on the PhD project so we’re going to steal away to a cabin in the mountains in NC. Nancy and Tina will quilt and do quilt shop touring, Tom will work the PhD stuff, and I’ll fish in the small lake, catch up on my reading and quaff a few craft beers. I’m fairly certain we’ll visit Chris’s new digs sometime on the trip.

And if all that is not enough excitement – hang on. Several of the tomato plants have little green tomatoes and two of the zucchini bushes have little tubers popping out. The tomatoes are surprising but I’ve been seeing blossoms for a couple of weeks so the little green ones are only a small surprise. The squash is a much bigger surprise because the plants are covered with insect netting. My expectation was to leave them covered until blossoms appeared and then to remove the covers to allow pollination. I guess either critters from under the cover did the job or this variety just doesn’t require conventional pollination. The variety of cuc’s I mostly plant are designed for hot house growth and are self pollinating. Perhaps that works for this squash too.

Big news! Chris is moving to Charlotte. Jamie got a “too good to refuse” job offer and Chris has wanted out of California for more than a year so they pulled the trigger on it today. He’s hoping that Sephora reaches out to him with an opportunity there but if not, he’s confident he’ll have no trouble getting another job. If all goes as scheduled, they’ll be living in Charlotte by the first week of May. Of course we’re happy that he’ll be much closer to us and actually be living about 20 miles away from “family”. In fact we have a vacation trip (or two) already scheduled for North Carolina in the next few months.

The other big news is that Simon successfully completed his 4 day canoe trip from the Fla-Ala border to the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachicola. If you check out a map, they got on the river near the town of Chatahoochee at the southern end of Lake Seminole – a bit west of Tallahassee. It’s a little over 100 miles of mostly wilderness and quite an adventure. The last day was the toughest when the wind blew continuously against them (from the south) all day so there was no stop in the paddling to let the current do the work. They had made good time up until that day with the south bound current stronger than anticipated – actually cut a day off the original schedule. The good news was that all the patches Simon made to the canoe held.

Got all the weather protection gear out of the garden and put away for the season – that’s how confident I am that winter is over and done with. Picked the last of the broccoli and cauliflower but still have a few weeks worth of cabbage, lettuce, kale and carrots. Then the summer stuff starts happening – already blossoms on the green bean bushes so we could be adding that to the diet by the end of April if not sooner.

Busy Uber guy. George called first thing this AM and needed a ride to the hospital for blood work. He’s been in and out of the hospital a couple times in the last few weeks with blood loss issues. Barbara broke her arm so she can’t drive which puts me in the lineup for emergency transport. Just so happens that Nancy has a bridge game in Palm Coast, for which we leave at 11:30. Nancy was a little concerned that I’d get hung up with George but it all went like clockwork.

We had a nice Easter with Tom, Tina, Olivia and Joey. I made the cole slaw, Nancy made carrot salad and Tina did the rest – with a really special cake for dessert.

Ok, put away the worry beads – the eggplants appear to be doing just fine as are 10 of the 11 pepper plants put in the garden last week. One pepper was attacked by a critter which I don’t count against me as the transplanter. I did make one adjustment a few days after the eggplants went in – cut palm fronds to shade the plants from direct sunlight for a week or so. I did that after they were wimping badly at the end of a day of sun and it made an immediate difference. The only seedlings still awaiting transplant to the garden are 4 peppers that I deliberately started later to extend the harvest and/or act as spares for ones that fall to critters.

I use a garden accessory called “wall of water” to protect my tomatoes from the cold. They allowed me to plant tomatoes in Utah as early as March and often the plant would be growing inside the wall’s protection with a foot of snow on the ground. It looks like a 2’ tall teepee of plastic cylinders, maybe a dozen or so, each filled with water. It works on the principle that the daytime sunshine warms the water so that the plants are heated at night when the outside temperature can be below freezing. I have 9 of them and they still work flawlessly with no leaks although they must be 20 years old. I’ve used them this year to protect 9 plants. I planted a total of 14 tomatoes this year so the other 5 have been protected as needed with pillow cases. The plants that have the water wall protection are all popping out of the top of the teepee so the plants are over 2’ tall whereas the ones protected by conventional covering as needed are less than half that size. So I think next year I’ll add a few more to my collection and use them on peppers and eggplants as well to get an extra early start. And guess what, a few of the tomato plants have blossoms already so living inside the water tent has really been an accelerant.

I’m going to use a different algorithm on the zucchini this year. I always lose a lot of fruit due to blossom end rot and boring critters. I make up for that by putting in way more plants than I need – playing a pure numbers game. I hate to use insecticides no matter how safe the manufacturers say they are so this year I’m going to put in fewer plants but cover them with a floating insect barrier cover that I bought last season and never used. Supposedly the mesh is sized to keep insects out but no heat buildup.

I’m amazed at the outrage over the “news” that Facebook postings are “public” and mined by all sorts of users. I have never thought anything else and assumed from the get go that selling information or selling access to demographics was how Facebook was monetized. And the fact that it could be used by politicians world wide just can’t be a surprise to anybody who thinks about it. What do they think the “WWW” stands for with every URL? Companies have been selling customer lists for years. Anybody get junk mail?

Nancy has a new toy. One of her bridge buddies bought a device for quilting which she must be afraid to use. Plenty of money but a beginner’s apprehension. This is a device for cutting cloth into strips and/or a variety of different shapes. The basic machine is called an “Acuquilt” and along with that you buy cutting dies for different shapes. I think she was so intimidated by the machine that she gave it to Nancy to “try”. Getting it all set up and operating is something I wasn’t looking forward to, especially with Nancy hovering over me issuing instructions and advice and reminding me that this was an expensive piece of equipment. I’m not good at putting mechanical devices together and it takes me a little longer than it probably should but I can usually get it. The “coaching” from the sidelines is not a help. She got it yesterday afternoon and I said I had too much to do at that point because of the approaching freeze. Actually I knew she was going to her crochet group the next morning at 9:30 and I’d have several hours alone to figure it out. I was extra lucky because she overslept and was in too much of a panic to get ready for crochet group that the cutting machine never came up.

First thing I noticed was that the box had never been opened so that meant any screw-up’s were squarely on my shoulders. I got it out and found the instruction pamphlet. The instructions were for a lesser model with a hand crank for roll the material into the cutter whereas this model was fully automatic. Along with the machine she had bought 4 different cutting dies to cut 4 different shapes – a couple of triangles, squares, strips, and diagonals. Her friend had even included a few pieces of material for practice. It took me about a half hour to get ready for a test run – the biggest problem for me was that it was written for a quilter and used terms I didn’t understand. Anyway, the first pattern I cut came out perfect so I moved on to doing strips and a variety of other shapes. Definitely easier, faster, and more accurate than hand cutting but I don’t think Nancy will be able to operate it with her visual limitations – although she never ceases to amaze me at how much she can do with her fingers. I think I’m destined to be the designated cutter. Maybe when I show it to the owner she’ll scoop it up and take it home with her. I can only hope. My real concern about it is the continuing expense. There are loads of (expensive) templates with different shapes and sizes so I can easily see a large inventory building up. My other concern is sharpening the cutter. I’m just guessing but suspect you have to go back to the dealer to have it sharpened from time to time depending on the material type and machine usage.

It finally looks like the cold weather is history so I made the big plunge and planted all the seedlings into the garden. The day after check has the peppers doing just fine but the eggplant looking a little under the weather – still alive and kicking but not lovin’ the new digs. I also put in some new cucumber seeds, squash seeds and another 40’ row of green beans. All of these new seed plants are backup’s to existing plants to extend the season. I have a little room in the garden so might as well fill it.

Maybe too soon to say but the thyroid pills seem to be working in that I don’t feel nearly as tired as I did.

We went to my sixtieth high school reunion this past weekend. It was held in Cocoa, near where Joey lives, so we spent the night with him instead of driving home. He dropped us off at the event and then picked us up just when we were getting ready to leave – perfect timing. Our graduating class was just over 100 folks and I’d estimate roughly a quarter of those were in attendance. Most of them were reasonably local but there was a couple from Arizona, Texas, and California and generically the southeast. I was the MC so that part was amateur hour for sure. Definitely a crowd of old folks in a variety of physical and mental conditions but it turned out much better than I had anticipated.

Might have gotten an answer to a physical problem that’s been bugging me. I’ve been tired for the last 6 months and had trouble coping with cool temps this year. Tired meaning I can get a full nights sleep and be yawning and ready for a nap a couple of hours later. And be that way most of the time. I have a general physical this week and had a blood draw last week as part of the process. The day after the test the nurse called and said I had a blood issue and to please contact them. Turns out I have an under active thyroid. I looked that up on the internet and found I have 7 of the 10 symptoms, the tiredness and cold sensitivity being the most obvious. The med is a bit inconvenient because you have to take it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach and I was told that I couldn’t even drink for at least a half hour after taking the pill. That wouldn’t work very well with my morning coffee. Then when I actually got the prescription filled, the label on the bottle said very specifically to take it on an empty stomach and drink plenty of water with it. I’m going to assume that coffee (without cream and sugar) falls into the “plenty of water” category.

We seem to be having some difficulty transitioning from winter to spring with on and off stretches of cold – near freezing kind of cold – and double digit winds, almost always from the North. For the past few weeks I have to cover the garden to protect the sensitive young plants and the peppers still recovering from the real cold we had a month or so back. One consequence of that is that the seedlings that should have been transplanted to the garden by now are outgrowing their containers. I’m waiting for a weather report with one week visibility free of any fronts moving in from the NW. The almanac says March 20 is the last date I should have to worry about such. Will this global warming ever kick in?????

I can now answer the burning question – which seedlings are the most sensitive to temp. Answer – egg plants are the wimpiest of the summer crops. We got down to about 40 last night and I wasn’t at all concerned about frost so left all the small plants outside, uncovered. I personally thought peppers would show the most stress, if any but they took it without the slight sign of distress whereas the eggplants looked hammered. Interestingly, I brought them in the house and within an hour or so, they were looking totally fine.

Yesterday was eventful – after taking Nancy to Crescent City to play bridge, George called and asked if I wanted to fish a couple of hours. We did and about noon he got a call on his cell phone from Barbara telling him that she had tripped over an extension cord and was injured. We headed in immediately – I went to our house and he went up to his. A few minutes later he called but I wasn’t fast enough to get to the phone and missed the call. I decided to walk up to his house and see if everything was ok. I got to their front porch and immediately saw lots of blood on the porch and noted that their car was gone. We made contact a few minutes later and he explained that she had fallen and banged her head on the pavement and broke her wrist. Later I learned that he had a 4” gash on her forehead that took 18 stitches to close and a wrist broken in two places. Ouch. I went back home and turned on the TV only to find that it was totally dead. All that plus the fishing wasn’t all that great.

We’ve been kicking around getting a bigger set that would be better for Nancy so the loss was an inconvenience but with an upside. I moved the bedroom TV to the living room and we decided to start searching for a replacement the next day when we were in Deland. The IT Dept (Tom) said the best deals for a low tech TV that totally satisfies our requirements would be Sam’s. That’s in Daytona where we would be later in the week. So the plan was to check Walmart in Deland and then Sam’s then pick whichever proved better. As it happens we hit a good sale on a 55” set in Walmart and just pulled the trigger on that. In a couple of hours it was up and running just fine.

Then last night we had a weird TV night. We’re on an antenna – no cable, no satellite – but typically have dozens of channels available. It’s normal for the set to find between 40 and 50 channels on a scan, many of them Hispanic or otherwise of little interest but we get the major networks – usually. But every now and then we have strange atmospheric’s and last night was one of those. I was still messing around with setting up the new set and noticed that reception was poor to non existent on most of the major networks. So I tried an automatic scan and sure enough it found only two channels. To make sure the problem was not the new set, I checked the other TV in the bedroom and found the same limited channel selection. Back to the new set and another scan but this time through it found 77 channels – that’s the most ever and it was duplicated by the other TV. The atmospherics were playing games but the really weird thing was that most of the channels that we normally get were non existent or marginal whereas the majority coming in loud and clear were stations we never get. Got up the next morning and it was back to normal. Strange. It’s easy to understand getting exceptional reception or getting really poor reception but the reversal of which channels you get is beyond me.