Getting ready for Irma. I’t Thursday, 9/7, and the local meteorologists are painting gloom and doom for almost all of Florida. What bothers me most is the saturation coverage which creates high anxiety in everyone when the storm is thousands of miles away. When I was a kid, hurricanes just were’t that big a deal and you’d never hear about all these storms that never amount to anything. They’d start talking about them a few days before the event instead of weeks before. The reports would give you a set of coordinates where the center was and you’d plot them yourself on maps you got at grocery stores or in the papers. Right now they’re talking about it clobbering south Florida and then coming right up the middle of the state to our house. I did get a personal sign that it probably won’t hit us – I pulled out the generator and it started on the first pull. I was so elated that I changed the oil as a personal reward to the generator. My next job is to tie up or move all the dock furniture. I’ll probably wait a few days on that since it will only take an hour or so. We have plenty of batteries and a couple gallons of water in the freezer to keep it cold for a few hours if we lose power overnight – before I crank up the generator. If it gets within 24 hours of us and still on track, I bring the chain saw to the house just in case we have to cut our way out. We’re not worried about flooding since this seems to be a fast moving storm and we could literally deal with a couple feet of rain before it caused problems. We can also do a last minute change of venue among Tom, my sister, and us if one area looks to be in for a worse time. Joey will be out of the country on a preplanned trip.
We continue to get an inch or so of rain daily so the lake keeps rising – an inch or so daily. I’ve certainly seen it higher but it is higher than it has been in several years so if we get anything from one of these hurricane critters…………….
I went through all the fishing tackle I picked up at the neighbors moving sale and did a thorough cleaning, lubricating, and test casting. Two of the three bait casters cast smoothly; the third one casts fine but the retrieve could be smoother. I suspect there are a couple of grains of sand still in the gears but even so, the reel is perfectly serviceable. The final test has to be can they catch fish and I’ve set my sights on getting that question answered this week. Harvey, the previous owner, was a spinning reel guy and never really used the bait casters so I may have a training program for this gear; make sure it all understands what I expect. The rods are really like new; graphite, light weight, name brand rods. I would typically expect to see them in Bass Pro Shops at $35 each so even if the reels were total trash, which they’re not, I got a good deal. Ditto the line – he had strung the reels with Power Pro braid on one reel, a good grade monofilament on another, and something weird on the third. It was a bright yellow, heavy grade monofilament. When I say heavy grade, this had to be 1000 pound test. Needless to say it was way to stiff for casting so he must have used it to haul boats or something. I stripped that and replaced it with 30# Power Pro that I had on hand.

The fall garden is officially off the ground – meaning the seedlings I planted in July are in the main garden. I planted six tomato plants (out of 10), four green pepper plants (out of 10), three zucchini mounds, 2 seeds per mound, and four cucumber mounds, 2 varieties, 2 seeds per mound. The tomatoes are a paste variety and a traditional “round” variety; the peppers are a “bell” variety. The only question mark is one variety of cucumber – everything else has a good history in this garden. I had planned to hold off until Labor Day but it looks like we’re going to experience a few days of overcast, “cooler” , wetter weather so I jumped the gun but held back most of the seedlings until I’m certain the weather will be favorable. I also cut palmetto fronds to act as sun screens until the new plants are established. The young plants just can’t handle the intense afternoon sun. It looks like my compost pile is going to be depleted with the last seedling planting next week which is just perfect. That means all of the seeds and all the plants are planted in 100% compost, about a foot deep. Simon told me that a common “amateur” mistake is to put a $5 plant in a $0.5 hole. He’s got a piece of paper that says he’s a master gardener (from Alabama) so it must be right. I normally plant some with full compost and some not. This will be the first 100% treatment. The next pile of compost, now cooking, will be for the winter greens.

Picked the last of this season’s pineapples. Didn’t keep an accurate count but think we ended up with 8 or so. I think there’s 25 -30 plants, some with several side shoots so if they can survive the winter, we should have a substantial crop next summer. I have enough frozen chunks to make pineapple flavored smoothies all winter. Now all I need is for the greens to start coming in. Haven’t planted any yet – just too hot – but I’ll try getting some collard seedlings going this week. They handle hot weather better than any other green I grow.

One of my neighbors, Harvey, is moving and had a yard sale. I was surprised to see a mother lode of fishing tackle including fairly nice rods and reels. I’m now the proud owner of 5 new rigs, 3 bait caster reels and rods and 2 spinning outfits, rods and reels. I got it all for $60 which is what I would have expected to pay for one of the reels. I’ve been ok in the reel department but my rods are getting a little long in the tooth so my future was going to include some new rods before long. Also, Simon’s trailer was broken into a few weeks back and all of his fishing gear was stolen so I sent him a care package with half a dozen reels I’d picked up over the years and kept as backups. So my backup stores was fully depleted.

I went out to mow and cranked up the craftsman on the first pull as usual only to find that the self propelled feature was gone – the drive wheels were locked up. I turned it over and found the axel was tightly wound with vines from previous mowings and figured it would be ok after cleaning them out. Wrong. It must have broken a belt or stripped a gear so it’s in the shop. It was really hot so I’m not terribly distressed about this turn of events and hopes they don’t fix it too quickly. The weeds are the right color so …………..

This visually impaired county service may be a bit of a problem. It’s a Social Services kind of operation whereas Nancy is more of a precise, German kind of citizen. If she asks a question, an answer that begins with “well, that depends” is not going to work for her. She is big on specific start- stop schedules and specific agendas and I can tell from the first interfaces, the styles are going to clash. We had a visit this week from the “white cane” lady and picked up a few tips on using that specifically to let others know that she’s impaired as opposed to using it as a touch instrument. She also got a good pair of sunglasses designed specifically to cut down on side glare and other glare. I tried the glasses myself and they really do cut down on glare – in fact I think I’ll get a pair for myself. We also learned that at the center itself there is a “magnification” lab where she can look at various products and determine which do the best job. She told us that the way we’re walking now is just fine – at least we’re not doing anything wrong. I really didn’t think so. Lot to learn!

I decided to start transplanting tomatoes and peppers into the garden, a week or so earlier than I’d been planning. The plants are getting “leggy” and will surely break off if not replanted deeper. It’s still too hot for my liking but it looks like rain in the forecast so hopefully I’ll be able to “steal” a few days. One problem I’m trying to solve with this planting is having good support for the plants as they grow. I bought 8’ iron fence posts a few weeks back and have them planted 18” deep, 3’ apart to tie the plants as they grow taller. I might install wire cages around some of them for added support. I’ve learned that the cages themselves just don’t do the job on a full plant in a strong wind so I’m hoping this will get the job done.

On the food front – a few months back we read a review on a little breakfast/lunch in Ormond and vowed to give it a try when convenient. Interestingly it’s located in a small shopping center that we frequent from time to time and we had never seen this place. We have several doctors in that area so if we have an early appointment, we could try breakfast. That happened today with a visit to Nancy’s dermatologist. The reason we had never seen it was that it is really a tiny front and the small sign indicates it to be a coffee shop. When we went in, clearly it was doing a bang up business and the patrons were more or less the AARP crowd. Also all the patrons and employees were on a first name basis. The breakfast specials hooked me with a scrapple and eggs plate and really set the hook when the waitress asked if I wanted it crispy and also if I wanted the biscuit warmed or grilled. Just the right questions. The food was as good as it gets and the biscuit was a prize winner. In the same league as the flying biscuit in Gainesville or Jim’s in San Antonio. Way too much food so next time I’ll ask them to hold the biscuit until we’re leaving and then take it home.

Not done on food. Nancy had seen an interesting recipe on TV for shrimp scampi. I pulled it up on the computer and determined that we had everything on hand (or in the garden). Incredible. The surprise ingredient (to us) was anchovy. So this was an over the top food day.

The tourney was a success with Nancy scoring good master points and me keeping up my surf fishing dry spell. I did manage to spend plenty of quality time on the sand and on the piers sipping suds. The place was ok but we found a new possibility in the Hammock area – Palm Coast’s Beach. It’s been there since 1930 but it’s nestled in the oak trees so I never noticed it from the road before. It’s unique in that it’s constructed of solid coquina rock, inside and out so you have a totally different feel than in a conventional hotel room. It’s a few hundred yards from the beach, maybe half a mile, but the property stretches back to the intracoastal. I didn’t check that out but next time we’re there for a couple of days, we’ll be sure to book this place. It’s also about half a mile from Bings Landing where the Captain’s barbecue operates, half mile from Washington Oaks State park where I often fish, and maybe a quarter mile from JT’s fish shack, a favored dining spot and happy hour watering hole. We also noticed, for the first time, that it’s a few hundred yards from a cheese and wine place that seemed to be hustling and bustling last night when we drove by. If you avoid the peak times, aka bike week, race week, Xmas etc, the rates are about $65 per night and under $400 for a week. My take on it is that if you like Marriott’s and Hampton’s, this may not be your kind of place. The name of the place is Palm Coast Villas if you want to check it out.

An instructor for the visually impaired place comes by next week for Nancy’s first lesson. She’ll be bringing the “white cane” and I guess teach Nancy proper beating and swatting moves and fencing positions. I probably need to pick up suitable body armor, a shield and a helmut.

Getting ready to plant the fall crop. I have a dozen tomato plants of various types and varieties and a dozen green pepper plants. I started these in July and they’re looking good. At the same time I’ll plant a few cucumber seeds and squash seeds directly in the garden. Then I get started on planting seeds for the winter crop in jiffy pots on the porch. It’s still way too hot to plant them directly in the garden. The first wave of winter crops will be cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, chard, and collards plus a few parsley plants. The kale, chard, Parsley, and collards will produce new leaves as picked so they will last all season; the cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli will be replanted once a month to provide a continuing supply throughout the whole season; ditto lettuce. I’ll direct plant the root crops, radishes, carrots and beets, along with spinach about the first of November – enough to get thru the first of the year and then squeeze in a second planting, space permitting. Maybe, if time and space permits, I’ll try celery again but that’s on the back burner right now.

I spent the eclipse knee deep in the surf at Flagler Beach. My theory was that the fish would go into a feeding frenzy when the sun disappeared. Didn’t happen. In fact, heavy storm clouds made the whole thing a non event. Other than the advertising, I’d never guess something actually happened.

We had a nice weekend with Tom and Tina – on Saturday they took Nancy to a theater in Daytona and then came back here for a pasta feast; on Sunday we drove down to Lake Mary they took us out to a barbecue feast at a new place in Disney, the Polite Pig. Great food, great drinks. They definitely know what they’re doing when it comes to restaurants.

We’re taking a mini vacation this week. Nancy has a 3 day bridge tournament at the beach starting Thursday. It’s about a 45 minute drive but we decided rather than driving back and forth 3 days running, we’d get a hotel for a couple of days and hang at the beach. That works for me. Thursday night is fish and chips night at the Golden Lion and I see a giant burger in my future at the Sea Turtle Cafe. I get in two good days of surf fishing – with school back in session the beach will be deserted Thursday and Friday. Not sure what I’ll do on Saturday when the masses return but have no doubt I’ll do just fine. There’s nothing at all going on with the garden so the break will fit in.

We continue to get serious summer rains. Seems like it’s averaging an inch a day over the past couple of weeks and the lake is approaching “full”. I define full as the top step of the ladder being submerged. I’m ready for it to slow down just in case we get a hurricane like event that overtops the dock.

When I said nothing going on in the garden, that doesn’t include the pineapple patch. I picked two this week, one for us, one for George and there is another one about 2 weeks away. That’ll be it for this year. I think we picked 6 or 7 this summer. Assuming all the cut tops and offshoots I planted produce next year, we should have a couple dozen pineapples to deal with.

Hang on to your hat for this news – our banana plant may be “with child”. We planted a finger banana bush right after we moved here and had bananas the first couple of years but then we had a string of winters with hard freezes which, seemingly, killed them. Last winter was warmer than normal and the bush came back nicely but still, no fruit. Then today I was clearing jungle in the vicinity and noticed a longish, purple appendage coming out of the bush which I have to assume is the start of a pod of bananas. Under normal conditions we have maybe 5 months until a frost so if this pod is the start of a fruit crop, it may actually have a chance to develop. Fingerlings are tastier than the grocery store fare and maybe half the size. A single pod could potentially produce a dozen or so bananas. The bananas you see in the photo came from one pod and that’s a new one developing under the original one. Those bananas you see were hidden in the pod up until a week ago so they seem to mature rapidly. No idea when they’ll be ready for harvest but I suspect it will be within the next week or so. There are actually two plants there but only one is producing fruit at this time. Bananas, watermelon, pineapples – my veggie garden is turning into a fruit orchard.

At this point I have 26 pineapple plants of various ages and states of development and a waiting list of potential “customers” for fruit. I spent about 4 hours over the last two days working in the pineapple row, cleaning out weeds, fertilizing, laying down a layer of paper mulch and then over covering that with grass clippings. I started this as a test and just something to fill an empty row but now I’m getting serious about it. The next one we pick is designated for a pineapple upside down cake.
Nancy came into the living room at 7PM on Saturday and announced that the water had stopped. Never during the week, never in broad daylight. The last time this happened I removed the cover of the contactor and found a cooked lizard across the main contacts. This time it was a large palmetto bug, AKA, big ole roach. It’s a 220V environment so you have to be careful dealing with it but I’m getting adept at opening the contacts and cleaning them with an emory board or small piece of fine sandpaper. Sure enough, it leaped back into service so a potential disaster averted. And one less roach prowling the jungle. I’m trying a new approach to protecting the contractors from outside critters – wrapping it with a plastic grocery bag and taping it shut. It’s impossible to do anything like a hermetic seal but this should keep out the really large invaders. And I’m spraying the whole apparatus with a potent bug killer.

I’m a happy camper! I found a feature on the Mac that converts text to voice!! It’s really simple to use and will complement the general ability to expand text size. Reading a page of text that has been expanded to about 40 point is tough with lots of scrolling but with this feature, you just select the page or paragraph or sentence or word, whatever, and listen. There are setup options to pick among voice types and reading speed. The default voice is a guy named “Alex”, medium speed. He has a touch of robotic in his pronunciation. I’ll wait for Nancy to make those tough personality decisions. I’m impressed that it doesn’t just read the words but recognizes the punctuations and adjusts the speaking accordingly. Nice job Apple.

Major accomplishment. We’re having company in the next few days, Simon and Amy, so the dock is likely to be a hub of activity. There just hasn’t been much going on down there in the way of parties since last summer so I wanted to do a little touch up. I have a portable boom box for the XM radio that we just left down in a cabinet on the dock but it hasn’t been played in about that long so I thought it should be checked. I started to pull it out of the cabinet and noticed all kinds of strange dust/dirt around it and within a few seconds large, large, large ants started pouring out of it – out of the boom box. I’m talking a river of ants like you see on documentaries of the Amazon Jungle army ants. I grabbed it out and knocked off the back of the unit where the batteries are stored. That area was super loaded with large, white ant eggs and a zillion more ants. Holy crap. I ran up to the house and got my super bug sprayer set and attacked it. It honestly took a half hour for them to evacuate the box. Was there any chance in the world that it would play? I gave it an hour for the bug juice to work and eventually they stopped coming out. I then sprayed high pressure air and electrical contact cleaner on the electrical interfaces – the power port, the antenna port, and the main radio module port. I plugged in the power but not the radio module – no smoke. Good sign. Then I plugged in the radio module and turned on the power. This was a tough call since I knew the module worked since I use it every day in the house and would really hate to smoke it. It worked, that is it lit up and put a message on the screen that said “no signal”. The fact that it lit up and put a message on the screen was very encouraging. I was operating this all from inside the screen porch on the north side of the house so I knew the signal would be impacted. I unplugged it all and went around back where there was no signal obstruction. Reconnected everything and away it went. Still no smoke and it sounded great and was playing one of my favorite songs. So one thing we’ll have on the dock again is music. I just think I’ll carry it back and forth from the house when not in use. duh!!!!!!!!

As predicted, Simon and Amy came on Sunday and we took them to Persimmon Hollow, the Deland brewery. They travel with their dog, River, and the Hollow is dog friendly so it seemed the thing to do. When we got there we quickly found there was another, large dog on the premises who barked a greeting. The dog, Rufus, was leashed to the bar stool but that proved not much of a restraint and it came crashing down. I feared the worst but it turned out just fine after the normal sniffing routine. Then we noticed that the same guy had a small goat. Simon lives in rural Alabama and works for 4-H as the county Ag extension agent so he identified it as a miniature goat. It just wandered around the brewery meeting and greeting all the customers. Of course River is goat friendly.

Interesting piece of trivia heard on CBS News. A survey found that 29% of the population doesn’t know you can get over air “free” TV – 36% of millennials had no idea. I ran into a cable sales guy in Sam’s a few months back that also didn’t have a clue that you could get TV without cable or satellite. What’s an antenna????

Nancy made it home from the cruise, all safe and sound. She had a great time with Joey and Joanne and I got quite a bit done in the yard/jungle. I’m almost finished everything I had planned for the summer – if only I could keep it exactly like it is!! I generally work from about 8Am until 11AM. By then I am absolutely wringing wet and worn to a frazzle.

We had the first meeting with the Volusia County visually impaired folks since putting in the application. A case worker came by the house and spent a few hours checking us and the place out. We picked up a few interesting tips even with that one interface so I’m sure it will be beneficial. They offer a number of classes and needed to assess exactly which one’s Nancy needed and could handle. We should hear something in the next couple of weeks but it sounded like it will be a 4 hour class, once a week, for 12 weeks. There are usually 5-10 students in a class. It’s in Orange City which is about a half hour from here. I don’t know whether it makes sense for me to attend the class with her or just find a place/places to kill the time. One thing for sure – between bridge twice a week and quilting once a week, this certainly fills our dance card.

Got a full 10 pack of germinated tomato seeds for the next planting. 100% success which is a bit unusual. The trick for the next 3-4 weeks is to make sure they have just enough sunlight to grow strong but not enough to stress them. Sounds easy but it’s actually the trickiest part of the process until they’re ready for transplant. At the same time I planted a 10 pack of green peppers. They take a bit longer to germinate but it’s a variety I’ve had good success with in the past. I couldn’t find any last year and had a really disappointing pepper crop this spring.

Picked another pineapple. I invited Garret’s little girl, Miley, to the harvest then showed her and Jinny, her mother, how to prepare it and to plant the top to start another plant. Interestingly, there were 4 new sprouts alongside the one we picked and that’s how this pineapple started – as the second one on the plant. I have no idea if one plant just continues to produce a pineapple (or several) every year or they eventually give it up. In any event, they now have a nice, fresh fruit and I have 6 more in the last month or two of growing. I’m about ready to declare us pineapple self sufficient.

Batchin’ again. Joey took his mama and cousin Joanne on a 3 day cruise to the Bahamas and left me here to tend the jungle and the lake. It’s incredibly quiet and I’m just luxuriating in the silence. Our company is gone – 4 days of reliving what it was like to have little kids. Just go, go, go!!! Loved it.

One thing it did do was give me the push to get started on planting the fall garden instead of just talking about it. With the help of my great, great niece, we planted seeds for green peppers and 4 tomato varieties in jiffy pots filled with starter mix – a total of 20 plants. Along with that, 10 jiffy pots of Inca Marigold seeds along with some planted directly in the garden for comparison. Without the outside push, I probably would have procrastinated getting started and then wondered why it was taking so long. According to the seed packs, most of these seeds won’t be ready to transplant to the garden for 8-10 weeks, close to Labor Day which leads to pickable veggies in November. If I waited too long, that starts pushing into frost potential and somehow that fact always eludes me in mid July. I’ll also plant squash and cucumber seeds directly in the garden about the same time I transplant these plants.

We picked the pineapple mentioned in the previous post. I had let this go longer than ever before and was concerned that it might have been overripe. It was totally gold with no green at all whereas I’m used to picking/buying them when mostly green and just turning yellow. Inside it was gold instead of light yellow and really sweet. I guess they pick them mostly green to give them more time from harvest to market but for sure they’re excellent when ripened on the plant. There’s another on an adjacent plant that could be picked now or sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ve decided to start another experimental pineapple and aloe garden just outside the front porch. I planted 3 aloe plants there about a month ago and they seem to be thriving so decided to plant the top of the latest home grown one mentioned above and a side shoot the same plant had produced. I’m definitely self sustaining with pineapple now.

My neighbor spotted a baby gator in the lake and after a few days of luring it in with fish food, managed to catch it. It was 27” long, so no danger to anything at this time. Nonetheless, he’ll be relocated to a more remote lake – update – he relocated it to Lake George, Florida’s second largest lake, so he’ll have plenty of company. The other “jungle event” that happened was watching a group of three adult armadillos run across the bottom of George’s property and disappear into the jungle at the corner between his property and outs. It’s unusual to see them in daylight but really unusual about 5 minutes later to see them scoot by me on the other side of the fence maybe 5’ away and even more unusual to have them literally bump into me as they crawled under the fence and headed back to the lakefront. I jumped much higher than I would have thought possible.

We’ve received 3” of rain in the last two days with more on the horizon. Along with the rain came big time thunder and lightning. I’ve been sprigging the back yard with St Augustine grass so this weather is exactly what the doctor ordered. Now I need a dry day to mow it. The lake is up nicely, about where it should be for mid July. We have company coming for a few days or a week so the dock should become the focal point for the action.

At this point most of the spring/summer garden has been pulled out and tilled for the next round of crops – 7 out of 11 rows ready to go. The game now is to let it cook in the July/August heat, killing off nematodes, and to start seeds indoors for transplant to the garden in September. Other than the tomato overload, I wasn’t really pleased with the rest of the stuff. The weather was just too weird (I think). We got zucchini but nowhere’s near as much as we should have. Ditto cucumbers, green peppers, and eggplant. A more normal lament is exactly the opposite – overload in the last veggies and skimpy on the tomatoes. I’m going to see if I can squeeze out a larger than normal fall crop but that’s always iffy and I’d probably be better off forgetting fall and focus on producing a sterling winter crop. Decisions, decisions, decisions!!!!

One bright spot – at the beginning of the season, April, I planted several watermelon seeds – a new, prize winning variety. For the most part, they eventually died – all but one plant way back in a corner of the garden. Last week I glanced back there and spotted a watermelon but got called away before examining it more closely. Today I got back and found 4 melons and a thriving bush loaded with blossoms. Now I’m a happy camper. According to the seed pack, we should be picking watermelons 90 days after planting the seeds so we’re not too far off track. That plus having a pineapple ready to pick now. I’m holding off waiting for our great great niece to do the honors next week. This will be the second pineapple from this plant and interestingly, it looks like 4 more sprouts are emerging right below this single fruit. It’s my understanding that I can cut those new sprouts from the main plant and start new ones. Honestly, we could fill the garden with home grown pineapple if we replanted all the new sprouts and the top cutting from the picked fruit.