Nancy graduated from her iron infusions after her hemoglobin number moved into the “normal” range. That means free Fridays. Her red blood count is still below norm so they put her on sub lingual B12 and told her to come back in a few months for blood tests.

It’s August hot in May – too hot for baby plants so my transplanting operation is being impacted. The good news is that usually when it’s this hot nematode problems become obvious and I’m seeing none. When the nematodes are doing there thing, by mid afternoon, plants are drooping big time. They disable the plants from taking in moisture which eventually causes them to die. Tomatoes and squash are the first to show signs and I’m seeing none at all. Maybe for some reason there are none this year (the first time ever) or maybe all the precautions and variety selections I made are actually working. I’ll know for sure by the end of this month.
Another thing about working in the garden now is that the real workers are out in force and I back off by about 10:30 – that would be the bees.

I mentioned the bees/wasps working the palmettos but they’re also working the garden blossoms. They don’t like it cool so if I can get my work done before it heats up, no problem. When I get too close they make it known quickly by buzzing me. If they were yellow jackets the buzzing is replaced with a quick, hard attack but the honey bees seem to prefer making a peaceful request for me to vacate their area. And I respect that.

Picked the renegade watermelon. It was about 20 pounds – enough for George and us. The melons that grew wild last year were marginal in the taste department so I didn’t have much hope for this one and let it grow to maturity only because I had plenty of room. Big surprise, it turned out great. I’ve planted a few watermelon seeds from a new, prize winning variety and hope they turn out as good as this one. Other than that, the garden is nominally full. We’re harvesting zucchini, green beans, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. By the end of the month we could be picking the first of the sauce tomatoes.

I mentioned that the kitchen is now bright, bright, super bright. The 7 overheads are each 1100 lumen “daylight” LED lights but we hadn’t done anything about the 3 lamps over the eating bar, regular 65 watt incandescents. They had a yellow caste and didn’t look exactly right when the overheads were on. One of those bulbs burned out so I replaced all 3 of them with 800 lumen LED’s that I had picked up on sale several months back. Holy Cow! We can really see what’s going on in the kitchen now. Nancy says she can actually see what she’s eating.

Another upgrade/change to help us with our aging eyes – a phone with a larger screen and bigger keys. I saw it in Walmart and thought it would help Nancy. Unfortunately it didn’t really do anything for Nancy but it sure helps me. The other thing about it that is great for Nancy is that when you lift the receiver from the base station (corded), it’s “on”. With the old one you lifted it from the cradle and then punched a button – or tried to push a button. That’s where Nancy had some trouble with numerous cutoffs.

Nancy was invited to make a quilt presentation to the Crescent City Women’s Club. It was during her lunch break at the Crescent City bridge game. I normally drop her off at about 9AM and then pick her up at 2:30 so I gave some thought to going up at noon to watch her presentation but decided that might put too much pressure on her. We packed up half a dozen quilts, each using a different quilting technique. She’s planning to do what she called a “trunk show” so it wasn’t a lecture but more “show and tell”. And it’s a friendly crowd of mostly people she knows.

Tried a new (to me) ingredient in my smoothie, aloe. Somebody told me you could buy the leaves in some health stores (bet that’s expensive) and add to the mix to improve it nutritionally and for improved digestion. I certainly have aloe growing wild in several locations so I looked it up online and sure enough it’s touted strongly as a healthy additive so I decided to try it out. I picked a leaf, peeled it, and put it in along with a large collard leaf, a couple of blueberries, a couple of strawberries, a couple chunks of pineapple, yogurt etc. My normal mix except for the aloe. To tell the truth, I couldn’t detect any change at all. The trick part is peeling the leaf.

Have to be extra careful trimming the palmettos this time of year. They’re in full bloom and attract bees like crazy. They’re busy collecting pollen so I can walk close by and just bring forth some buzzing but if I happen to grab the wrong frond, big trouble. I wear heavier clothing for some protection but best to just leave well enough alone.

We ended up spending good bit of the day procuring blueberries. Our local purveyor had a bad season so we headed over towards Ocala where the farmers were claiming bumper crops. The first one was Auntie Zelma’s up towards Gainesville. No trouble We bought a flat, about 5 pounds. These berries were much larger than the ones we got last year in Crescent City. It just so happens that Auntie’s Farm is close to our favorite barbecue place ever and it just so happens it was near noon so……… The special was a corned beef Rueben sandwich, a big surprise. We split that along with a side of ribs – you can buy any number of ribs you want. Excellent as usual. This is one of those places that no one but a native would frequent. Simon put us onto it when he was living in Gainesville and we ended up having his graduation dinner party there.

After lunch we headed for Abshier Farms in Bellview, about 30 miles away. We knew exactly how to find Auntie Zelma’s so didn’t bother programming it into the GPS but did load Abshier Farms’ address since that was more difficult to find. We headed off to Bellview and turned on the GPS unit and then noticed that it turned itself off in about 10 seconds. First thought, GPS died; second thought – how do we find the blueberry farm. That problem was solved by calling Tom, giving him our current location and the target location. Within a minute he gave us directions and we found the place. Great blueberries, even bigger and juicier than the first place so we bought another 5 pounds. We asked the proprietress for directions back toward the beach which sounded fairly easy. No such luck and we wandered around in circles until we accidentally stumbled on a familiar highway and managed to get back on track. Of course we didn’t have a map in the car, at least not a Florida map. In messing around trying to get our GPS working I thought perhaps the GPS unit was ok but maybe the battery charger had cratered – the light that’s normally on was off. Then I tried plugging in the phone charger and it didn’t light up as it should have. Uh oh, the cigarette lighter socket was bad – maybe not so trivial a part to find and change. By the time we got home I got to thinking that maybe it was a fuse; but why would a fuse blow? I decided to pursue that path, found the fuse box and located the one assigned to the cigarette lighter. Sure enough it was blown. But why? First step is to buy a new fuse. Did that, installed it and Oila! problem solved. I also found why it had blown in the first place. A few years ago someone, I think my sister, had given me a fishing fly that a friend had hand tied and I put it in the ashtray. When I was messing around with the lighter I noticed this strange looking thing jammed way up inside the tray. I got a pair of needle nose pliers and grabbed onto what I thought was trash and pulled out the hook.

I took a walk on the wild side and bought a new house phone with a large screen display. I was fairly certain it would help Nancy. You walk a narrow line by trying something only to find it didn’t work – sort of throws gas on the fire. Sure enough it didn’t work for Nancy but it actually turned out better since I was personally having problems reading the small display on our then current phone sets.

Another walk on the wild side – a new biscuit recipe. I’m a biscuit Nazi and Nancy is determined to make biscuits I’m lovin’. So should I say they’re good when they’re not since she’s put a lot of work into them or be honest. Up to date I’ve taken the honest route and we’ve gone through several recipes. This latest recipe was a bit more involved and as we put them in the oven, I was thinking about giving them a thumbs up no matter. But then she’ll make them again and I’ll be stuck. As it turns out, they were great, the best so far. If you are looking for a good recipe, they are called Tricia Yearwood Angel biscuits and easy to find online.

We have a long position in pineapple. Aside from the 6 I have growing in the garden, Nancy found a real bargain at a market in Ocala at $1 apiece. She bought 6 which should give me enough for my smoothies until next year at least. The big question in my mind is what to do with the tops of the new ones she bought. Considering that it takes about a year to produce progeny, do I really want to take up that much space in the garden? It just seems like every once in a while we can buy them for a $1 so why take up the garden space.

Still no rain and the lake continues dropping. I’ve certainly seen it lower but it’s now the lowest in a couple of years and starting to expose bottom sections that have been submerged for over 5 years. It’s nearly impossible to use the jon boat from the dock although the poke boat is just fine with it. It’s also too low for decent swimming but we’re hopeful that will change by mid summer.

We’ve really been getting more garden to table action this year than ever. I think part of that is because Nancy doesn’t drive so she’s spending more time in the kitchen and we’re trying new veggie recipes. We’ve had a better/wider variety this year and I’ve been picking earlier. Today I picked the very last broccoli, the very last cauliflower and the last of the beets. The only winter veggies left are the kale plants. Just starting on the summer stuff with the green beans and zucchini.

One thing that seems different this season – good different – is that everything I plant is growing. I normally lose a percentage of the seedlings to critters, plant diseases, drying out, damping off, cut worms, and the feared and dreaded nematodes, etc etc etc and compensate for that by over planting. I’m sure we’ll still experience some losses but this is the best start ever. I will admit that I’m spending more time working it – weeding, watering and trimming anything that looks unhealthy but it’s light work and it’s been cool enough to make it doable. The only thing left is planting pepper and eggplant seedlings in the next few weeks and planting watermelon seeds. I’d normally have those seeds in now but there’s no spare room. I’m anticipating the kale to start crashing next week and I’ll replace those with watermelons.

Where I usually suffer high losses is with tomato plants but this year they are all growing vigorously. I’ve planted 5 varieties, 18 plants total (not counting the renegade cherry tomatoes), 2 of which I have prior experience and reasonable success. The other 3 were selected based on the catalog hype. I would have been happy to end up with 10 good ones and by now the weak ones have usually fallen away so I may be looking at a record harvest. I’ve talked it up so much that Nancy is going to Fresh Market to jump on a sale for ground beef that will complement the tomatoes in making pasta sauce. Pretty embarrassing for me if they suddenly crashed.

Finally got to fish the current bluefish run. The surf has been a total disaster for the past few weeks with high winds and strong currents. It was still not “good” but caught 3 small ones and lost about that many.

We tried roasting beets. Lindsay had recommended them and we have a very long position in beets; good but I prefer pickled beets to any other use so far. I’ve never eaten so many beets in my entire life and would guess my blood iron is over the top. We took a large bowl of them, 5 pounds, to Joey’s as our contribution to the Easter feast and they seemed to be a hit – none left. Nancy’s iron rose a few points at her test last week which they attributed to the iron infusions. I guess that could have helped but I have more faith in the beet load we’ve been pumping.

Lot’s of blossoms on the bush beans and a few micro beans popping out. Ditto zucchini. I’m guessing that means some edible size beans by the end of the month and perhaps a zucchini. In both cases I’m determined to start harvesting sooner this year. I always wait just one more day so they’re larger but in doing that, I’m overloaded with full size and toughening veggies. We’re also picking a few cherry tomatoes, the renegades, so I guess you can say we’re eating the last of the winter goodies and the first of the summer crop. I’ve ended up with about 20 legitimate – not renegade – tomato plants and a couple of those are already sporting small, green progeny. I judge the cucumbers are a couple of weeks from blossoms which will/should equate to fruit mid May. We’re experiencing an extended cool, dry period which is helping everything. I have to stay on top of things to keep it all sufficiently watered but no signs of humidity related problems.

One good thing came out of our visit to Joann Fabric the other day. I was standing around waiting for Nancy and happened to spot a table of glue products. One that caught my eye was something called “shoe glue”. Anybody that wears walking/running shoes knows that eventually the sole and/or heel separate from the upper part; no matter the brand, no matter the price. The shoe is perfectly good insofar as wear and support but it’s flapping in the breeze. I bought a package and gave it a try. After a few days, so far, so good.

The other thing we picked up at Joanne’s and the reason for the trip was to find a new Ott light for Nancy to use playing bridge. There was a large selection and we ended up with a table mount, flexible neck, LED model. There was one I liked better because it was battery powered and eliminated the need to be close to an outlet but it promised only 3 hours of life whereas the Crescent City game frequently goes over 4. I still think if managed properly, charging during breaks or turning off when not in use, it could make the full game but I lost the battle.

Busy, fun week. Nancy’s cousin Fred and Martha visited this week and luckily we had great weather to get out and about. That week was followed by two full weeks of doctor’s and misc time consuming events. Then Nancy had a double whammy day with the eye shots and the infusion within a few hours of each other and 60 miles apart. Another example – Nancy’s old bridge friend was abruptly moved from her home in Crescent City to a retirement place in Palm Coast. That involved us for several trips. Yesterday was a doctor first thing followed by Joanne Fabric in Daytona, Rossi’s Diner for lunch -the high light of the day – Sam’s Club and Publics (that’s the grocery market which this word processor won’t let me spell correctly). Doesn’t that sound like the day from hell. Can you believe I haven’t been fishing in the lake for a couple of weeks – the Pokeboat is just sitting down there unused.

And I was getting just as far behind in the garden as with the blog so I stole a full day and caught up; picked lots of beets, lettuce, and the rest of the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kohlrabi. It’s now looking pretty good and all the new plantings are doing well. One big decision this season was not to plant corn. I’ve bent my pick on corn for the past several years, each time learning that corn is available very cheaply locally and that it’s better than the stuff I try to grow. The big consequence of that is that it frees up about 30% more space in the garden and is allowing me to plant a mammoth tomato crop and to space plants further apart – cut down on the overcrowding which probably hurts the yield. My thinking is that I should end up with better albeit fewer plants. I will probably just rest and solarize a few spots and kick off an earlier fall. I also just found a variety of watermelon that may be well suited for a small garden. Last year I had an unplanned/unplanted outbreak of rogue watermelon that basically took over the garden while producing only a few good melons – lot’s of not so good melons. This new variety is a prize winner and the vines are only 3-4’ making them manageable and I’m hoping it does as well as the rogue plants. Without the corn, I’ll have lots of space to experiment with new varieties like these melons. Also going for a new red okra.

Pulled/dug the potatoes, both the Flor-Ida’s and the little red ones. I was disappointed with the Flor’s but think maybe it was a technique issue rather than the plants themselves. I read that the right way to grow them is to make the initial planting in a trench and then as the foliage grows, push soil into the trench, up around the plants. I didn’t do that but as soon as I picked them I saw why – the new potatoes form above the starting spot instead of underneath it (as I expected). Consequently the new potatoes were not deeply in the soil and more on the surface. I’ll try again in Sept using the trench approach. The little red’s were great and I think produced maybe 10 pounds. I started them from seedling potatoes purchased at Walmart so I’ll for sure do those again.

A few posts back I was wondering whether the red truck or the truck mirrors attracted cardinals. It’s the mirrors. I parked the Merc about 20’ from the truck and the cardinals immediately flew from those mirrors over to the car mirrors. The Merc is a gold/tan color so clearly it’s not the red color that they’re attracted to.

Another crop breakthrough – beets. I’ve bent my pick for the past 8 years trying to produce a decent patch of beets. I was always able to get plenty of foliage but no roots. We were ok with that because Nancy’s quilting buddy loved the greens and supplied us with ground beef (in exchange). I tried a variety named Lutz this year and have been overwhelmed from the get go – fast, high level of germination, success in transplanting the thinned seedlings, great foliage and now beautiful beets roots. I think it was the right combination of soil and weather and maybe not repeatable but I’m sure going to plan on doing it again. Nancy has a blood iron deficiency so we’re attacking it the natural way – with beets. She’s been taking an iron supplement for almost a year and it’s done no good at all. She recently started a series of iron infusions, at about the same time the beets started coming in, so my concern is that the infusions will get all the credit instead of Lutz.

How many tomato plants are too many? The problem is that I can’t see into the future and from year to year have different levels of success. In poor years, aka last year, you have to do it with numbers instead of high production with a few plants but if you plant large numbers and they all work – what in the world do you do with the fruit. We use lots of sauce for pizza and pasta throughout the year but the crop last year just didn’t support out needs for the off season. Right now I have 16 plants, half regular and half plum/sauce types and 3/4 of them are varieties I’ve never tried. I think by the time I’m done planting seedlings, I’ll be at 20, the most I’ve ever done. I’m also pulling out all the stops in handling the transplants. They are starting off in a 2 cubic foot hole full of compost and sprinkled with my personal tomato fertilizer mix that includes egg shells and epson salts. The varieties selected are supposedly the most disease resistant, heat resistant, nematode resistant ones in the galaxy. (also the most expensive seeds ever). No “heirlooms” which always sound great on paper but are just too wimpy to handle a Florida summer. Unless there’s some complete environmental melt down or locust attack, I feel I’ve done my best and we should be overwhelmed with red beauties.

Late breaking garden news – 4 new pineapples popped up overnight. I think I planted them a year ago and if I recall from last time, these will be ready for harvest in June. I remember buying the pineapples on a “buy one get one free” sale so this means I will actually have bought one and gotten 4 for free. I checked on the plants that have already produced fruit a year ago to see if those will continue producing and sure enough, each of those had a new fruit popping out. That means there’s some seasonality to it because there was absolutely no hook between those and the ones in the garden.

Dropped off another big load of greens to the Crescent City Bridge ladies. This time it was 3 bags of collards, 2 bags of kohlrabi greens, and a bag of NZ spinach. Each bag is large enough for a couple of meals so they’re definitely happy campers. This batch took an extra effort because it was cold, really cold, and windy and a 7:30AM harvest. We’re getting a shot of that big winter storm hitting the NE – actually have freeze warnings for tonight. I just know I couldn’t begin to handle that anymore. Update – made it thru two nights of potential freezes unscathed. All the stuff I covered looks good and the only sign of distress was that the potatoes might have been nipped a bit. I’ll keep an eye on those since it could be getting close to harvest time on them and the way you know that is the foliage starts to turn.

We had some drop-in company this morning, our great niece and great great nieces from South Carolina are going to a family event in South West Florida and stopping by here for a few hours. I’ve been feeding the fish for a month or so and have them trained to attack dried bread as soon as it hits the water. As expected, the kids wanted to go fishing off the dock as soon as they jumped out of the car. As soon as the bait hit the water, Grace had one – and another, and another……………… With that mission accomplished, she joined Nancy in a quilting lesson. She took to creative sewing a couple of years ago and Nancy periodically sends her pieces of material to work with so she was loaded with questions. She needs to spend a week or so, one on one with Aunt Nancy learning the basics. Nancy said she’s a natural and could be knitting and crocheting with just a little basic instruction and coaching. Maybe………..On the way back they stopped for a major garden pick – 8 bags.

Talk about pressure. Nancy sews together little pieces into larger squares and then those squares have to be “squared” before assembly into a quilt. That’s where I come in now – doing the squaring. The pressure is on because with one incorrect slice, I can screw up hours of work. And it’s really on because I’m a natural born klutz and Nancy is OCD on things like straight lines being really straight – she’s German, I’m Italian.

The garden is transitioning nicely from winter to spring crops thanks to an incredible stretch of weather. If this is global warming, I’m all over it. The row that was 100% cabbage is now 50% cabbage, 50 percent tomatoes. Ditto the cauliflower row. I’m doing all my seed starts directly in the garden rather than in the house so I’m experiencing zero losses when transplanting seedlings to another spot in the garden. The first row of bush beans are working on their second and third set of leaves so they will have about a 3 week head start on the second row. I’ve planted a dozen or so green pepper seeds, a few zucchini seeds and cucumbers. A couple dozen romaine lettuce plants are now about 3” tall and looking strong. The big problem is that the warm winter has made all the winter veggies crater earlier than usual – maybe a month too soon – so we’re having to eat like crazy to keep it all from going bad in the field. There was an article in the paper saying the same thing was happening to the commercial veggie growers in the area so it wasn’t anything I was doing wrong. Lot’s of soups and salads hitting the table.

Took a walk on the wild side this week. I drink green smoothies made from garden greens and whatever fruit happens to be on sale. I decided to throw caution to the wind and use kohlrabi greens instead of the traditional kale or spinach. To go even farther, this kohlrabi is a purple variety and the leaves are dark, dark reddish green with purple stems and veins. It turned out good but the color of the drink would be a little much for any but the most stout hearted – almost black. After that turned out so well I decided trying a drink with a beet tossed in – root and greens inclusive. The beet was about the size of a golf ball. Wow, was it red!!! I liked it and will try to get Nancy to try a taste since she has some issues with iron. I’ll add a carrot to the next one to see what changes to the palette that brings about although I suspect the beet will override anything else.
Nancy was having some keyboard problems – visual problems. She loves to order stuff online where a few missed keys can have some strange results. I saw an ad in the Wallpaper for a special keyboard and decided to give it a try. Success. It’s about the same size as our Mac keyboard but the keypads were larger and the engraving much bolder with white letters on black keypads. She’s ordering up a storm so maybe I’ve solved one problem only to create another!!! No good deed……………….

The highlight of the week was a short visit by Chris. It was a Saturday to Monday visit so not long enough but we managed to squeeze in most everybody. He’s put in for a DM opening in Atlanta and we’ve got our fingers crossed that he hits it. There’s a lot of competition for the spot including applicants from within the district.

I’m now parking my bright red pick up truck in front of the house in a shady location. Turns out it’s a cardinal attractor. I don’t know whether it’s the color or the fact that it has large side mirrors but at almost any time during daylight hours there’s a cardinal or two poking the mirrors, obviously seeing their own reflection. Cardinals are quite vocal and have a really pleasant sound so you really know they’re around. I’m also noticing lots of white splashes on the mirrors and doors. Wonder if there’s a connection?

We found a recipe for broccoli mashed potatoes and since we had all the ingredients decided to give it a go along with the ham and cabbage. Converts the potatoes into a health food and consumes more garden goodies. Turned out really delicious and will certainly be a regular throughout broccoli season. We could probably use cauliflower in the same way but it wouldn’t stand out visually. As my role in the kitchen increases, we’re eating more pasta. Basically you can make a delicious pasta dish with anything that comes out of the garden, usually in less than 20 minutes. Last night we did Prisciutto and spinach with pasta. Yum!!!

I’m under pressure now! Certain quilting moves are now outside Nancy’s visual abilities and she’s recruited me. Up until now it’s been little things that any idiot with eyes could handle, such as threading the sewing machine, (so I make the grade) but today she stepped up my involvement to include cutting the outside edge after the quilting has been done. To ease the pressure she alerted me that one wrong cut and it’s curtains for the quilt. Apparently I did the first one, a small one, ok. I also had to measure a strip and cut it off just right. Again, ok but the pressure is on. One good thing that came from it was she broke out a pair of scissors that I had never seen before and I can see lots of places where I could have used them.

Still working on the house project. The electrical and plumbing are done and we’re doing minor carpentry to prepare the house for installing insulation and dry wall. That should happen this month and I can actually see a move in by the end of April. Race week in Daytona slowed us down since Garret is an avid race fan. Bike Week is next week and I spotted him working on his bike the other day so….But right now the weather is absolutely perfect, cool and dry, but that is guaranteed to change to hot and humid soon. Hopefully we’ll be done by then.