Not sure what’s going on with my ability to publish the blog but for whatever reason, I’m not able to post on the Mac Mini but can on the laptop. I’ve always been able to use either. I’ve also always been able to create the draft on the mini and then transport that to the laptop using USB thumb drives. Now, for some reason, that’s not working. This will post because I’m creating and publishing on the laptop. The IT dept is stumped too.

So I’m way behind but can catch up quickly by saying that we’ve had way more rain than usual; that it’s been colder than usual; and that the garden is thriving and producing some of the nicest greens, broccoli, and cauliflower ever. According to the weather folks we were supposed to get close to the mid 20’s overnight, which is hard freeze, killing freeze territory. I did my best at covering the garden and expect that to be 90% effective. The only reason it’s not 100% is that these fronts come in with alot of wind and the covers do not always stay in place. This one surprised me. I woke up about 6AM and checked the temp. According to my thermometer it was 33. I’m always suspicious of the accuracy of the thermometer so I checked the bucket of water sitting outside and saw that there was no ice on the surface. Great, dodged a bullet. I checked again about 9AM to see how much it had warmed up but saw the thermometer was now 31. Check the water – frozen over. So much for the theory that it would warm up as the sun rises. I ran over to the garden and re-covered those areas where the covers had blown off. We’ll see!! I’m expecting almost 100% recovery since the stuff remaining in the garden is fairly cold tolerant. I double wrapped the pepper plants and the one remaining tomato plant but suspect they are goners. That’s ok because it’s time to break out the tomato and pepper seeds for spring planting anyway.

Not sure if I posted that our stove crashed and we bought a new one. It’s working like a world champ and Nancy is able to work all the controls. The first thing I tried was baking a green tomato cake using the tomatoes I picked before the freeze last week. The new oven did it’s job but the cake just wasn’t edible. I made it so I probably screwed up something. It never really firmed up and it was way, way to sugary for me.

Dallas is not in the cards for Chris. They explained choosing the other candidate as a native Dallasian who knew that market better. Personally I think they’re planning to promote him in California and didn’t want him changing regions. But there was some mention of a new Texas district in Austin coming soon. Can’t imagine anybody who wouldn’t prefer Austin to Dallas so being passed on the Dallas position might be a blessing in disquise.

We had 3 consecutive nights of freezing temps as forecast. I covered
the garden as best I could on Wednesday afternoon and removed the
covers Saturday afternoon when the forecast showed a warming trend –
night time lows in the 40’s and 50’s for the next 7 days and daytime
highs reaching into the lower 80’s. I really didn’t know what to
expect when removing the covers. I had mentally written off the green
peppers, tomatoes and basel; expected some light damage to the
Brassica’s – cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli; ditto the lettuce;
was reasonably confident that the spinach, collards and swiss chard
would survive unscathed even uncovered. Ditto the carrots although I
did cover those. What I found was that the only total disaster was
the basel – it was gone. A couple of the pepper plants had minimal
tip damage, a real surprise. I’m expecting those to continue
producing. About half the tomato plants were damaged but not killed,
a couple were gone, and a couple were untouched. I’ve heavily trimmed
the damaged areas and don’t know whether or not they will recover. I
picked about 10 pounds of green tomatoes before covering so whatever
happens to the plants, we’ll get some useable fruit. There was zero
damage to any of the greens. Those represent about 3/4 of the area of
the garden so from that perspective, the garden survived nicely. I
even had the basel covered with a spare plant indoors that I’ll move
to the garden when it’s safe. In the next few weeks I’ll actually
start (indoors) tomato and pepper plants for the spring planting.
One surprise was that all of the pineapples seem to make it – assuming
no delayed action. I didn’t cover them all that well due to the shape
of the plant and the kind of covers I had and also because I believed
they would probably crater long before it hit freezing. So far they
look 100% ok.

The other weather piece that’s kept me mostly inside has been the
wind. It’s been blowing steadily from the north for the past week
keeping me off the lake. I believe that same wind is what has kept
the garden a few degrees above freezing since it blows across the
length of the lake and picks up warmer moisture. Thanks but I’m
looking for it to stop and let me get back to catching spec’s. The
cold snap should have started the spawning season seriously with the
big ones moving close to shore. Of course surf fishing is out of the
question.

Way to go UCF. Tom and Tina had a New Year’s Day party to watch the Peach Bowl and whatever other games were going on. Tom had 4 TV’s going, 3 in the house and one in the pool patio. The crowd was probably 90% UCF affiliated so there was plenty of loud cheering and moaning throughout the whole game. Good food, good company, and a good game – what more could we have wanted. (maybe about 10 degrees more temp).

I’ve had it with this Polar vortex thing we’re having right now. Nancy got me to hang out the sheets even though the temp and the wind were about 40. I’m dreading having to cover the garden tomorrow with a freeze forecast for the next day. It would be impossible to cover it today with the howling wind and it’s been this way for the past few days. I’ll pick the pepper plants clean since that’s the most tender crop in the garden. Last year we made a green tomato cake that made at least some use of that crop before it crashed and maybe we’ll do that again. – update – got the garden covered and we had first cold night of what looks like a 4 day stretch. I haven’t looked under the covers but the temp on the porch only dropped to 34 on the first night and I’m guessing most made it ok. Tonight is going to be the killer.

The final Blue Apron was as good as the other two. It was an Asian pork dish and a bit tricky on the timing – a lot of balls to juggle for an amateur klutz chef like me but somehow it came out just right. We’ve never had a disappointment with a dish from them.

Nancy has developed a new skill set and product. Someone at her crocheting group showed her how to make Scrubbies from a special kind of yarn. They are hot items and everyone she gives one to, loves it. They look like the old steel wool pads but softer and more colorful – from hot pink to chartreuse. She’s also designed one that is shaped like a wash cloth. People use them as vegetable scrubbers as well as general kitchen scrubbers. I used one the other day to clean my sneakers. She whips them out at night while watching TV, in between binding quilts. Busy hands.

Tom and Tina got us a set of Blue Apron meals as part of our Christmas. We’ve made the first two (of three), a Ragu dish and a chicken dish. We’ll finish the last one today, a pork dish. The first two were delicious and in both cases, were meals I could prepare without assistance from the head chef. We have the ingredients for the Ragu on hand most of the time – well, during kale season anyway. With the chicken was a vegetable side roasting (read Holland grill) cabbage and bell peppers coated with olive oil and then when cooked, finished with a sauce that uses sugar, rice vinegar, water, and one that will require some research to duplicate, something called Golden Mountain Sauce. Apparently it’s used in Thai cooking so I’m hoping it’s available in the oriental section of local markets. If not, Amazon to the rescue.

Simon and Amy visited for a couple days and we had a great time. The weather was yucky by Florida standards – overcast and mostly in the mid 50’s – but we managed to visit Persimmon Hollow and troll once around the lake for spec’s. The beer was good, the fishing not so much. We took Simon’s dog, River, out in the boat which could have been a serious mistake if Simon hadn’t made an all star catch when she decided to jump overboard. They went back to Lake Mary where we’ll see them again tomorrow at a New Year’s day party at Tom’s. It’s billed as a Peach Bowl event which this year pits UCF, Tom and Olivia’s school, and Auburn, Amy’s alma mater and where Simon is getting his master’s. My head tells me Auburn, as an SEC team, will dominate but my heart is with UCF. So depending on your outlook, this is either a win-win or a lose-lose for me.

Getting ready for the polar vortex now clobbering the north to make it’s way here. The weather guru’s are forecasting a freeze for Thursday which means I have a few days to prepare. I have plenty of covers and plenty of time but the forecast also calls for rain on Wednesday so if I put the covers on too soon, the wet covers will crush the plants. I have everything stationed and ready so I’m hoping that as the front get’s closer, a window opens to let me cover up without the rain. The only thing I’m most likely to lose are the tomatoes and peppers. We’ve harvested so many green peppers that even with a total loss, the crop still registers as a success. Of a dozen tomato plants, we’ve been picking cherry tomatoes for about a month – that’s 3 of the 12 plants. There are green tomatoes on another 6 and just blossoms on the remainder. What I really should plant is an earlier variety – something that produces in 60 days -rather than the variety I chose, 90 days. Seems obvious but the 90 day variety is the most disease and nematode resistant whereas the early varieties are not so hardy. I’m going to really study the catalogs in search of a new hybrid that fits the bill.

I hope the global warming crowd is happy as we enter a new ice age.

Xmas report. Met Joey and Mark along with his mother Peggy, Paul and Francesca for a pre-Christmas luncheon at the Willow Tree in Sanford. Wonderful time. Then We went over to Flagler beach on Christmas eve to take Wilma out for lunch. We went to the Funky Pelican on the pier and it couldn’t have been a nicer day to sit outside by the beach. Went to Lake Mary on Christmas which has been the tradition since we moved back to Florida. Everything was great – food, company, and gifts. We got there about 10AM and left around 5 to get home before dark.

Shock – Chris turned 40 (on Christmas day). How old does that make us???? He got the full benefit of the holiday birthday with several of his stores throwing surprise birthday parties – no green or red decorations. We reminded him that if his birthday had been something other than Dec 25, then no surprise parties. Still no word on the potential Dallas move but it should be announced within this week.

The garden is going bonkers. I’m giving credit to the extra large loads of compost I’ve added in the past 6 months. It’s been years since we grew such great green peppers. We always get some but this year is really exceptional. I was charged with bringing the salad makin’s to the Christmas party and picked it all just before we left. I picked two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of kale, a few baby chard leaves, beet leaves, spinach leaves, radishes, cherry tomatoes and carrots. I could have included a broccoli head but decided that would be over the top. We’ll eat that this week. Within the next two weeks we should be adding cabbage and cauliflower to the table mix and we’ll start providing kale and collard greens to the little old bridge ladies. The tomato plants are loaded with green tomatoes and I only hope that the cold weather heading our way is manageable. If not, I have loads of seedling plants ready to fill the space. Right now we’re at 100% full – only a few square inches available to pop in seeds. Spinach is my go-to space filler. Each plant doesn’t take up much space and keeps putting out new leaves as you pick.

Bet the folks in Erie PA are hoping for a little global warming.

I’m in shock and mourning. Remember that surf reel I mentioned as out for repair? Well, the repair guy called and Shimano no longer makes the spare parts for that reel – so it’s nearly history. The problem with it is the level wind so I told him to put it back together but remove the level wind parts and let me see if I can use it without that feature. He also threw out a thread of hope that Shimano might just send me a new reel. I know that sounds like a major win (if it happens) but the thing is, reels cast better with age as they break in.

Update – he found the parts on E-Bay and fixed it. Better than ever. I’ll reward it with a large bluefish next week. Also found a place to get a new tip installed on my surf rod so that’s behind me as well. I was a little nervous because I had promised to take Simon and Amy surf fishing over the Christmas break and my gear was looking a little questionable. Good to go.

We had an outstanding weekend. Tommy and Tina took us to NYC for a Broadway show – got the plane tickets, hotels, transportation, meals – the complete package. We spent Saturday night at their house then left for the airport early Sunday morning. Flew into Laguardia and got a cab to the Sheraton in downtown Manhattan. Lunch at Juniors deli, dinner at Heartland Brewery, and the show, Beautiful, at the Sondheim Theatre. After the show we did the lights at Rockefeller Center, Times Square and all the touristy things. The light show at Saks fifth avenue was indescribable. I’ve never ever been in a more crowded environment including a Tokyo subway at rush hour. While all this was happening, the lights were gone at the Atlanta airport where we were scheduled to be Monday afternoon. Other than that and the generally cold weather, it couldn’t have been a better trip. We got to Atlanta and of course our original flight had been cancelled but we were able to secure standby tickets for a flight only a couple hours later than originally scheduled. We boarded without a hitch and were back home in Lake Mary just after dark. We really didn’t feel like driving home to the lake so we spent the night there and enjoyed the Voice with the family. I had an eye doctor appointment in Deland early Tuesday morning and it was actually closer from Tom’s house than the lake so that worked out perfectly.

The eye doc said I can make it another 6 months and then have to give serious consideration to cataract surgery. As the designated driver here, not sure how that’ll fit into the program but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The garden loves spec season. After cleaning, I bury the carcasses strategically to bring the nourishment where it will do the most good. Today’s catch ended up resting amongst the Swiss Chard plants; yesterday’s did the cabbage. I have to be careful to bury them deep enough to keep the critters from digging them up. One day last year I walked over to the garden to find a large flock of big buzzards pulling up everything in sight to get to the buried treasure. What a mess that was. Now when I plant a carcass I place a palmetto frond stem directly over it to make landing difficult.

Another wintry blast. This one brought snow to San Antonio where Chris was spending the day. Who ever heard of such a thing. Snow in Mobile too. We are expecting near freeze conditions over the next few days but it probably won’t happen right here. We’re within a hundred feet of the lake and that normally provides just enough warmth to keep us a few degrees above the surrounding neighborhood. At least the tomatoes are hoping for that. My plan is to wait until about 3PM this afternoon then wrap sheets around the tomato, pepper and zucchini plants. My guess is that we’ll drop into the upper 30’s with some patchy frost and those are the only crops that would suffer from that.

Nancy corralled me into taking her to Gainesville to deliver quilts to the children’s infusion lab at the university hospital. Her and her friend Esther make a few every week and when the pile get’s high, someone takes them up. This was a 25 quilt pile and it was our turn. We made a day of it – breakfast at the Flying Biscuit and pasta shopping at Fresh Market.

The last time I went surf fishing – the Monday bridge game in Palm Coast – was a disaster. The wind was blowing, the surf was super rough, and my primary casting reel broke. Fast forward a week and I dropped my reel off at a repair shop then headed to the surf taking my second favorite outfit. We’ve had cold, cold weather for the past couple of days but it was warming up and the surf was awesome (for fishing). And the beach was nearly deserted. I’d heard rumors of blues in the surf and came armed with frozen finger mullet for bait. When I went to rig up I realized that some of the terminal tackle I knew was in the tackle box, wasn’t. Ok, I can improvise something. Just before making the first cast I noticed that the line was not hanging properly from the rod. Oh, no – the tip guide was broken. I wasn’t sure it would cast at all in that condition but decided to go for it and lay out a long one. Perfect. And 5 minutes later I was landing a medium size bluefish. Fifteen minutes later a larger fish grabbed it hard enough to yank the rod out of the sand spike. After a nice fight, I landed a 3’ black tip shark. Another successful cast and 15 minutes later, another 3’ shark. All in all, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Hopefully by next week I’ll have the old reel back and ready for action and the backup rod repaired and ready. I do have a backup rod for the backup rod so………………

This is a really busy time in the garden. We’re picking, transplanting seedlings started in mid October, and planting seeds in the house that will be the final cool weather crop in April. We have about 10 tomato plants and that many green pepper plants which will be done – either picked out or frozen – by sometime in January (hopefully) and the newest seedlings will go in when the those plants are pulled. We’re at the point where something has to come out for anything new to go in – 100% planted. This last planting will be cabbage since that’s our hottest seller and can handle spring heat in April and maybe into May. At the first of the year, I plant the seeds for what will become the 2018 spring – summer crop. The only real break is from mid July to mid Sept when the heat and the humidity are too much for most anything including the farmer.

Tried something new (to us). We took a zucchini and “spiralized” it. The result was a pile of pasta like zucchini noodles about the size of linguini. We boiled those for about 2 minutes then mixed with Nancy’s home made pasta sauce. A perfect, low cal pasta-like side. We were having sausage, onion and green pepper hoagies with Nancy’s home made pasta sauce so the squash made a perfect side. I think next time we’ll try using the zucchini “noodles” with olive oil, garlic and whatever moves us – maybe some fresh green from the garden. I do think we’ll have to upgrade the spiralizer to handle larger zucchini.

Just watched the AAC championship game with UCF and Memphis. Wow, what a game! UCF wins in double overtime. The game last week against South Florida was also a nail biter. Too bad this will be the last game for the coach who seems to be headed for the head coaching job at Nebraska. For those who don’t follow the team, they went from a winless season two years ago to a perfect season this year. Now comes the final game of the season with the Peach Bowl. Big game for the family with Tom employed by UCF and Simon (and his intended) employed by Auburn. Pretty sure we’ll be doing New Year’s day at the Lake Mary Carbone’s.

Great weekend. Joanne came up Saturday morning and took Nancy shopping. They shopped till they literally dropped on Saturday and then repeated it on Sunday. It was all Christmas and clothes shopping, my least favorite activities. Nancy was happy, I was happy and Joanne gets the hero button.

Did Thanksgiving at Tom’s this year.

We were tasked with bringing a veggie tray to the event. Actually Joey was but somehow Nancy took it over. There’s not a lot coming out of the garden yet but we are picking green peppers, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and radishes – all suitable for the tray. I decided to wait until the last minute to pick so everything would be at the freshest possible. I knew on Wednesday that rain was forecasted on Thanksgiving day but the forecasters and the radar said the rain would hold off until about noon in our area so no problem holding off the harvest until just a few hours before we left for Tom’s. About 6AM I woke up when the rain started pounding the roof. I had left some seedlings out overnight so I had to jump up out of bed and run out to move them back under the porch. That was a good move because it was not raining too hard. I stayed up so I could go over to the garden and pick when the rain stopped. It didn’t and only got harder. By 10AM Nancy is in the prep mode and needed the garden contribution. I wondered if I could even find the garden it was raining so hard. Couldn’t even see the lake. And you can’t pick radishes while holding an umbrella. The only good thing was that I wouldn’t have to worry about washing the dirt off the radishes between the house and the garden. It slowed down to just pouring when I made my move. The garden was totally flooded – the paths between the planting rows were (cuff deep) rivers – but I survived. To cap it off, Nancy was “unhappy” that my feet were wet in the kitchen. Then it was tricky getting the plates of food from the house to the car without drowning and no fun driving in hard rain to Tom’s. It rained about 3/4 of the trip but cleared up before we arrived. After a great feast, we checked the traffic report and weather radar to find that the hard rain persisted – starting just about where it ended on the trip down and ending at our house so we left earlier than anticipated to keep most of the trip in the light. Made it. The rain gauge showed we had accumulated 4”. Can’t wait to check out the garden and see how much of it floated away. update – had some losses but no disaster.

Tom and Tina bought extra tickets for an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, “Love Never Dies”, the sequel to Phantom and invited us to join them. We went to a local sports bar, watched the Auburn Alabama game in a raucous environment, ate lots of hot wings and made the show with plenty of time to spare. The show itself was not all that good – just not up to Weber standards in my opinion. A little way into the second half, there was a stage malfunction that halted the show for about a half hour so it was close to 11PM when it ended and just past midnight when we got back to Lake Mary. We got up fairly early by Tom’s standards, had breakfast at an old favorite haunt of mine – a place we ate at frequently back in the 60’s, and then went over to see Olivia’s house/condo near the UCF campus. Tom bought it as an investment and for Olivia to have a really nice, safe abode. She has two roommates and plenty of room. It’s a mile or so from the main campus and a place we’d be happy to live in ourselves.

Then a stop at a nearby Costco so Nancy could pick up a “few things” she had forgotten on the last trip. It was advertised as a stop to pick up a package of socks but I knew it would end up with a full basket. yep! So all in all, we had a full and happy Thanksgiving holiday.

The garden is taking off nicely now. I’ve had great success in thinning and transplanting lettuce, carrots, beets and spinach and the kale, collards, chard and other greens are taking off. At the same time, we’re picking a few cherry tomatoes and green peppers. Last year was a good year but at least half of what I grew went to waste – even with major giveaways to Nancy’s buddies. This year my neighbor and his grandson, also a neighbor, are pledging diets that will be supposedly garden driven. We’ll see. I planted extra lettuce, enlarged the kale row and have about a dozen swiss chard plants started. So not counting lesser appreciate greens – radish and beet – we should be rolling in salad material by the end of November. I also took into account providing for Nancy’s new friends in the crochet club. These are little old southern gals who love their greens.

The big milestone occurred today when I made a green smoothie using greens from the garden. For the past 6 months we’ve had to buy spinach from the grocery store to make smoothies so the garden should be the source for the next 6 months. It’s still very early and I had to look hard to find a few leaves that were big enough to pick. I ended up with a mix of collard greens, kale, and a whole radish – tops and bottom. I coupled that with homegrown pineapple, frozen from last season – deeelicious.

I was killing time fishing at Palm Coast while Nancy played bridge. The wind was howling from the northeast so the surf was a mess. Always prepared, I broke out my inshore fishing gear and headed to the seawall on the intracoastal in Washington Oaks State Park. The wind was still howling and there were whitecaps. Not expecting much, I none the less decided to give it a try – just to kill time. About 10 casts into it, I got a monster hit – a splash equivalent to throwing a concrete block into the water. It tore off and I got one look at a monster redfish before he rolled on the line and cut it. Unfortunately knowing that the fishing was going to be poor and short lived, I didn’t bring my tackle box from the parking lot to the seawall – a couple hundred yards away. I decided it was worth the walk. I had one more lure similar to the lost one and tied it on. Back to the seawall, another dozen casts, another monster strike and alas, another broken line. It’s not like this is a known hot spot. I’ve fished it and fished it and fished it with little or no luck. The only reason I go there is that it’s convenient and pleasant – a good place to kill an hour or so. Now I’ll be approaching it with more consideration to the potential. Actually I’m not sure what I would do if I wore one of these giants to submission since the seawall is about 6’ above the water so not sure how I would get the fish from the water to the seawall. I’ll worry about that when it poses a real problem.