Very tough day ahead. It’s Monday and Nancy plays bridge in Palm Coast. Normally that would be ok but today is also the Florida/Iowa game. So my plan is to take her to her game about 12:30 then hit the surf (fishing) for a couple of hours, weather and tide permitting, then hit the Flagler pier – Funky Pelican sports bar. I pick her up about 4:30 so the game should be over by then. If the surf fishing is not working, I’ve got tackle to try Bulow Creek so I feel like all the bases are covered.

And then there’s tomorrow. Nancy’s quilt buddy that loves beet greens is coming over to help Nancy cut out some material. I plan to pull the rest of the beets with her getting the greens and us keeping the roots. That triggers a series of events including loading that piece of garden with newly created compost. I’ll split the whole compost pile – about 20 cubic feet, between the previous beet area and the previous rutabaga area and then start a new compost pile – the July pile. Both of those empty garden areas will populated with lettuce seedlings – a red leaf variety that’s been incredibly successful and a traditional romaine variety. Then, guess what, it’s time to start summer crop planning. I had a really disappointing tomato crop last year and I’m laser focused on not letting that happen again. It hurt my heart when we had to literally buy about 10 pounds of fresh tomatoes a couple weeks ago to make a load of pasta sauce. We usually finish the summer with enough sauce frozen to last 6 months. This year we ran dry in October. Shame on me.

We made another Blue Apron dish and, like the first one, it didn’t disappoint. The main ingredients of this were steak, potato, and kale. Once again the cooked veggie was the big surprise to me. I’m fine with raw kale but cooked???? It was really good and I see/taste the difference between these dishes and what we’ve done in the past. First, they cook very hot and very fast where we’ve always been cooler and slower. Next, they use quite a bit less oil than we normally do – they use 2-3 teaspoons where we would have used way more. The high heat/low oil approach means things happen much faster and you really have to be right on top of every step. For example the kale is cooked and ready to plate in about 3 minutes total. The potato was cut in half and then into 1/4” wide chunks, coated with 2 teaspoons of oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and then cooked in a 450 degree oven for 16 minutes. If we had fried them in oil it would have been much different and if we had roasted them, the oven would have been cooler – like maybe 350 – and taken more like 45 minutes. They use more salt, pepper and other spices than we normally do. The next one up is a chicken dish with Pak Choy as the main veggie. I’ve never grown that mainly because I don’t know what to do with it. I haven’t looked ahead at the recipe to see if it follows the fast cook procedure and if the results are as good as these other veggie dishes.

Update – no fish in the surf but a big gator win that I watched in Hooligans, a local sports bar. And Nancy had a good day at bridge.

Good News! George made it thru the heart procedure just fine. He spent one night in the hospital and was home the next day. The trick now is him to be inactive for a few weeks to avoid damaging the leads again. A tough task for him.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I had an industrial accident at the construction site that messed up a finger that made keyboarding difficult. I banged it hard enough to cause the finger to swell (big time) and the nail to turn black in about an hour. I toughed it out the day it happened but ended up in the emergency room the next morning. They X-ray’d it – no breaks- and burned a hole in the nail to relieve the pressure. That was kind of spectacular when blood spurted about 6”. The pain mostly went away with the pressure relief but the bandage messed up my dexterity.

Christmas went fine. All the grandkids came home for extended stays and we got to see them several times – here at the lake and in Lake Mary. Lot’s of gifts – too many to list for the most part. One in particular I’ll describe later in the post. A season highlight turned out to be a remote controlled bass boat that Tom bought at Bass Pro Shops on Black Friday. It’s a battery powered Bass Tracker model about 18” long and with a control range of 80’. It comes with a connector to attach fishing gear (provided). We attached a small jig and aimed it where I was pretty sure a school of small spec’s inhabited. We all wondered aloud what would happen if a large bass decided to bite instead of the intended panfish target. Not to worry. Spec’s immediately grabbed it and the tussles began. One broke off but we ended up landing 7. It was a hoot watching the boat get dragged around and luckily all were really small. Not a doubt in my mind that a decent size fish, anything over a half a pound, could pull the whole thing out of range of the controller and it would require a poke boat rescue. One fish did manage to get the rig wrapped around a lily pad and required a rescue.

The interesting gift we received was something called Blue Apron. That’s a service that sends pre-packaged meals at the ingredient level to be cooked by the recipient. It’s very gourmet so includes the spices and things that you wouldn’t normally find in a home kitchen. The only thing they assume you have is salt, pepper, and olive oil. Our package included 3 complete meals, a fish based dinner, steak based, and chicken based. Personally I had my doubts that the creations would be something I’d like but I was willing to give it a try. The box arrived and was very nicely packaged in an insulated bag with enough ice to keep it cold/frozen as required. We tried the fish meal first since that was the one I felt most marginal about. It had ingredients such as fresh spinach, freekeh, parsley, cod, a lemon, a garlic bulb and parchment paper. The recipe sheet entitled the dish “Cod en Papillote with Freekeh and Spinach. The ingredients were enough for 2 servings and it was really enough for us. The recipe card is a plastic 8 1/2” x 11” sheet with pictures of each step so it’s very easy to do it right. There’s also a nutrition fact sheet that gives the nutritional details. It took us about 45 minutes to put it all together and cook it. I was really, really surprised how good it was. I’m not wild about cod, cooked spinach, and had never heard of freekeh so my expectations were low. The steak meal is next on the agenda.

We finished the meal about 6PM and Nancy was rinsing the dishes when the water stopped without warning. It was almost dark but I hoofed it up to the well/pump to see if there was anything obvious. It had to happen on a Friday evening. I pressed a reset button on the pump but that did nothing. I then removed the lid covering the contacts. There, laying across the contacts was a lizard. I removed the body and carefully exercised the contacts with a stick – it’s a 220V circuit. It sparked and the pump came to life. Success. About 2 hours later Nancy was filling the bath tub when I heard the distress yell that the water had stopped again. I knew all I had done was eliminate the lizard body and not really cleaned the contacts and had hoped that would be enough to survive until daylight. So I went back up, removed the contact case, and very carefully cleaned the contacts with an emory board – never did throw the breaker so it was hot all the while and occasionally threw off a spark. Nonetheless, when I put it all back together it worked like a world champ. I went out this morning to check it in the daylight and it looked pretty good.

Possible news – Chris might be transferring to Atlanta as District Manager. A slot opens up there in a week or so and he’s probably tossing his hat in the ring. That would be great for us. It’s certainly not a done deal but we’ve got our fingers crossed.

I can’t imagine any nicer weather for this time of year. Upper 70’s to low 80’s during the day; low to mid 60’s overnight. The garden is loving every minute of it. Even the fish have resumed biting albeit only the small ones.
We created a mixed green pizza last night. The greens included regular spinach, the dark green savoy type, New Zealand spinach, the gift that just keeps giving, and Swiss Chard. In about two weeks, the mix will be expanded to include kale. Since we will have 5 different varieties of Kale, the pizza opportunities are unlimited. My Ninja green smoothies likewise consume the whole gamut of greens.

Made a nice trade the other day. A friend of ours butchered a hog and converted it all into sausage so we did a turnip greens for sausage transaction. The beef for greens connection is broken since Nancy’s quilt buddy that raised cattle got out of the business. The shrimp connection likewise went away when her bridge buddy retired (from playing bridge).
I took Nancy to Palm Coast to play bridge this past week and spent my time checking out the beach recovery and fishing in a local brackish creek. The place we stay is finished. The berm extends from the lawn out about 6’ and then sloping down to the beach about 10’ below. The stairway is done so it’s totally useable. The fish shed is not going to be rebuilt which I’ll miss but understand why. I visited several of the neighbors and they have pretty much completed all the berm restoration.

I frequently mention my next door neighbor George and that he has chronic heart issues and a pace maker. He had one installed about 3 years ago but it’s running out of juice and has to be replaced. You would think it would be fairly routine but the procedure is actually projected to take 10 hours and the doc told them that he has only a 50/50 chance of waking up. His case is not average because about 50 years ago he had radiation treatments to cure cancer and that caused extensive tissue damage and scarring which makes removing and replacing the pacemaker leads much more hazardous. I work with him almost every day at his grandson’s house or around the property. Between us we always have a project going on. I noticed a few weeks ago that he was slowing down. The last time this happened they cranked up the voltage on the pacemaker but with the low battery, there’s no chance of repeating that. Fingers crossed.

I really had reservations about Trump but I couldn’t be more pleased with his cabinet selections. It seems that their policy positions totally overlap mine. Time will tell!

We had a great Thanksgiving at Joey’s – and then a follow-up “thanksgiving dinner” at Tom’s on the following Sunday. The weather was perfect so he hosted the event in his back yard under a large canopy. I think there were 20 people there, a mix of friends and family. Everybody brought something so it was a real eclectic mix of food – all delicious. We brought the big bird and Nancy made a vegetable dish, and the gravy; I made fresh cranberry sauce. Mark smoked a ham and made carrot cakes – one high test and one gluten free. Got a good look at the new boat which is actually floatable at this point. The work is all inside now and could be launched in the next year or so depending on time available to actually do the work. At Tom’s there was a “big reveal” of the remodeling they’ve been doing for the past several months. It looks so much bigger now and really modern. If it’s electronically possible, it’s there.

Perfect garden weather. If we can get another month without a freeze, the garden output should be awesome. One of the surprises this season is the New Zealand spinach which self seeded from last year’s planting. You may recall I planted that based on claims of heat tolerance and it did live through the summer but it really wasn’t all that good on the table. Too tough. It eventually died off or I pulled it out but it started popping up all over the garden toward the end of September. It was so persistent that I decided to designate half a row to it and transplanted seedlings as they appeared randomly throughout the garden. What a great decision that was. It’s now thriving better than it ever did last year and nice and tender – a staple in my green smoothies. I fell for the “handles heat” description which means “heat” as Maine growers know it. For us it’s a great fall crop and probably early spring but for sure, not a summer crop.

Aside from the spinach, I’ve got a bundle of seedlings that just germinated in he past week – kohlrabi and broccoli – that will be left alone for a couple of weeks to grow a second set of leaves and then moved to a row still growing sweet potatoes. So I’m going to end up with a full row, 16’ to 20’ of cabbage, another of cauliflower, another of kale and another of broccoli; shorter 15’ rows of collards, kohlrabi, swiss chard and lettuce, one of each, plus miscellaneous plantings of carrots, radishes, beets and onions – approaching full capacity. Oh yeah, almost forgot the beans – a row of sugar snaps, a row of shell peas and a row of green beans. To put that in perspective, I pick more than enough green beans for a meal every single day – and that’s an 8’ row. There’s a short row, 4’, of turnips and one of rutabagas. Based on past history not sure how those will turn out but they are sure putting out beautiful foliage. I picked a bag full of the turnip greens for one of Nancy’s quilting buddies and she said they were delicious.

I’m ok with Trump talking to the president of Taiwan; I’m ok with Trump talking to Putin; But Al Gore???? Not OK.

Well Ok, Trump gets elected and gas prices drop – 20 cents in just a week. What more do you need to know? And, Florida beat LSU and won the SEC Eastern Conference. And the spec’s have started biting. You can’t tell me all that isn’t hooked.

Nancy picked up a bridge game in Palm Coast yesterday. I drove her over and then went to checkout the work on the seawall and get in some surf fishing. They had finished the wall as planned and ended up dumping 14 truckloads of sand to cover it. The owner of the place where we stay was still working on the beach access and has also decided to have sand dumped in to fill in the yard he lost but decided against actually building a seawall understructure. His ocean frontage is 75’ and he is estimated about 30 truckloads to do his. A truck load of sand is $150 to calibrate you on the cost. Not actually building a seawall sure makes the job easier. It’s going to be interesting over the next few years to see how the two jobs stand up to the surf. Both of these guys plan to plant sea oats and sea grapes into the newly poured berm to hold it all together. I got in a couple hours of surf fishing – no fish but a great day anyway. It sounds like this may become a regular event.

The lake is producing speckled perch again. My neighbor caught a few the other day so I decided to give it a shot this morning. I caught about a dozen small ones before the wind came up so that adds another activity I have to squeeze into my otherwise busy schedule. We’ve definitely cooled down and that triggers the schooling/bedding activity from now until Feb or March. Cool down means night time temps in the 50’s with a projection for the 40’s next week. Bringing on the spec bite is the only thing that makes those temps tolerable. Also, spotted an otter swimming along fairly close to me. Haven’t seen one in a couple of years so that was exciting.

Add lettuce to the list of pickables. Man that stuff sure grows fast. Along with the radishes, we now have the makings of salad every day for the next 5-6 months. Nancy made a large pot of radish soup yesterday. It uses both the greens and the roots. I’m going to try to do a better job this season of adding new seeds every few weeks so we have a continuous supply on into early summer.

Off seawall construction duty and back on the house building project and fall/winter gardening.

I was a bit surprised by the election outcome, particularly the magnitude of the Republican wins at all levels – Federal, State and local. Very reminiscent of the Reagan revolution in the 80’s. I hope the end results are as good. Being a country boy, I have always liked the electoral college concept and it worked for me again. Funny thing was my neighbor, a double country boy, kept complaining that the electoral system was unfair but at the same time he was a staunch Trump supported. I tried to explain to him how the system worked in his favor but he never caught on. He sure knows now and admits he was confused. When you see a Red/Blue map of the country down at the county level, it becomes obvious that this is a red country with a few very dense pockets of blue.

I’ve started transplanting the seedlings I started on the porch a few weeks ago. Right now that includes Chinese cabbage and another cabbage type I’ve never heard of but sounds great for cole slaw and cabbage salad. Also, collard greens, three kinds of Kale, two kinds of broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi – this time a purple variety – and Swiss Chard. I’ve also put in a row of snap peas and a row of shell peas. Pretty easy to see how we get into a veggie overload. I broke down and planted some more onions. They’ve not done well at all for the last two seasons and I swore never to waste the space again. So much for that! My brain just has trouble dealing with an empty space in the garden. We’re actually eating from the garden again – picking green beans, radishes, and New Zealand Spinach. I didn’t plant the spinach but it self seeds all over the garden so I’m pulling it out like weed except for a spot, half a row, I’ve designated just for the spinach. I’m liking it a lot this season because I’ve learned to trim it early before the stems and leaves toughen and that makes a big difference. It’s great in the green smoothies. We’re about 2 weeks away from lettuce which is coming in strongly. I also just planted some Broccoli Raab seeds. I know they’ll grow just fine but I had decided specifically not to plant them this year. For the last two years they’ve just taken up space in the garden because nobody wanted them but the other day Nancy was watching a cooking show and the chef made a broccoli Raab pasta dish that turned her on big time. I was out in the garden planting the seed about 10 minutes later.

We have an interesting natural phenomena going on this year – robins. We’ve been invaded by flocks and flocks and flocks of red chested robins. That happens every fall but this seems a little earlier than usual and for sure, in greater numbers. George assures me that this is a sign of a colder than usual winter. I think last year he attributed the lack of robins to a colder winter too.

Finally got to try fishing in the surf. It’s been way too rough all week but seemed more reasonable today. Wrong – the seaweed was just too much to handle. And there were still some large planks bouncing around in the surf. So I substituted the fishing with Wacky Wings Wednesday at the Funky Pelican. Today is fish and chips night at the Golden Lion. I started helping the next door neighbor here at the beach with building an (illegal) seawall, quite a big job. I talked with a couple more home owners on the beach and the unanimous position they are all taking is to build “temporary” seawalls themselves and not pay $75K for the gov’t approved solution. The common enemy is the DEP (department of environmental protection) who are pro-turtle, anti people. The DEP position is basically that the beach belongs to the turtles and there should be no access to it at all. You can guess how that’s playing. The owner of the place where we stay plans to start his wall some time in December. I told him I’d be more than happy to come over and help. He said we could stay here at the beach as usual (for free) so that might make for a busy December.

I was somewhat surprised by the election results but not blown away. By about 7PM, a few minutes after the polls closed signs of the upset started to appear. I crashed about 10PM and by then fully expected to wake up to a Trump victory. Right on. My write in candidate never made the news. Nice to see the libs/Dem’s rioting in the streets – unruly bunch; city folk; a real class act. Reminds me of the 60’s. Do these folks classify as deplorable?

Update on the seawall- I ended up spending most of the day working on the project along with several other friends of the neighbor. We installed 15 x 12’ long 6”x6” posts where installed means setting them in holes 6’deep, spaced 8’ apart in a sawtooth pattern. Then bolting 8’ long 2”x12” planks between the posts. I quit about 5PM for dinner with Nancy and Tom and the work crew was just finishing up a couple hours later. Today the new sand should be brought in – I think on the order of 15 truck loads. Can’t wait for that.

I took long walks on the beach, a half mile or so north and the same to the south. Almost all of the homes along the shoreline lost their beach access and maybe a third of those have rebuilt. Maybe half the places are seasonally inhabited so the owners have not yet appeared. I found one owner starting to clean up and rebuild his decking. Apparently the community at large is at odds about what to do regarding rebuilding the beach dunes and who should pay what. One plan being tossed around is for some gov’t agency to have a seawall built and assess the owners $75,000. Uncertain financing but this guy is not at all happy with the cost. His position and apparently many other’s is that the berm is gov’t property and they should have it restored. He also thinks the price is double what it should be. There is no doubt that those homes with well constructed seawalls did just fine but adjacent properties were hammered much more than would have been the case without adjacent seawalls. The seawall causes the water to move sideways along the berm and basically scours it away. The guy I was talking to had his house red-tagged as unlivable without a structural review. The sand underneath his house had been scoured out and you could see the support pilings which he thinks would support the house even if all the sand were removed. I can only imagine how heated these community meetings must be and how many lawsuits are pending.

We’ve spent a couple of weeks a year here at Flagler for the past 10+ years and gotten to know the immediate neighbors. Had good conversations with them this week and it sounds like they have decided to build a “temporary” seawall. I volunteered to help them with the installation and they accepted immediately and said we can stay at our usual place instead of driving back and forth. They’re thinking December. Should be lots of work but I’m looking forward to it.

Fishing is still off the table. The wind continues to blow directly on shore leaving the surf really nasty and full of seaweed. So we’re focusing more on the social side of the week and have decided to try several new places. Last night we hit a place called Break-awayz – craft beer and a finger food sort of menu. We settled on a couple of brewskis from a brewery in Tampa called Cigar City and a prisciotto/goat cheese flat bread. It’s right on the beach so the atmosphere is just that. There’s another new one on our radar called Bull Creek Fish Camp. Today we took a drive up north of Mainland – past Matanzas Inlet to see how that area fared. There’s very little elevation there between the ocean and the interstate and in one spot there was actually a new inlet cut by the storm. There’s a good restaurant at the inlet so we thought we might give that a shot. Nope, mostly washed or blown away so we decided to try another old favorite, South Beach which is literally on the beach but at a location where the berm is always low. Surprise, it was open and doing a good business. The building is really flimsy looking and there’s a covered back porch that you just know would blow away in a good afternoon storm but it survived and we had a great lunch.

Tonight we’re focused on the Funky Pelican happy hour. We usually go on Wednesday, AKA wacky wing Wednesday, but Joey is coming up and we promised we’d go to the Captain’s barbecue place at Bing’s Landing. So many good options!!! At the last minute Nancy got a hankering for the Flagler Fish Company so that’s where we landed.

We’re at the beach – or at least what used to be the beach. Hurricane Mathew really hammered Flagler Beach. The place we stay lost about half the back yard including the fish cleaning shed and the stairway and decking down to the beach. The house itself survived unscathed but wasn’t useable on our regular week because of the beach access. That was partially corrected for the first week of November, enough for us to use it. We arrived Saturday afternoon at high tide and was really surprised to see just how much beach damage there was. Almost all the stairways down to the beach were wiped out for the entire beach stretch and in some places the sand erosion brought the surf to within a few feet of the structures. At our place the back yard is about 20’ from house to the sand berm then a 10’ drop down to the surf. What made it even more foreboding was the wind howling along the coast creating a giant surf loaded with seaweed. Totally unfishable. I took a long walk on the beach and was really surprised how much it had changed. I didn’t note any structural damage but an almost total loss of beach access for the homes along the shore. About half had rebuilt temporary structures but I’m not sure what can be done about the loss of berm along the shoreline. There were a few places with seawalls and those made it just fine but in those cases, the neighboring places without seawalls were hammered far worse – which is why seawalls have been banned. We drove by all of our usual watering holes and pleasantly found they were all open for business. A couple were fairly well beaten up but still functioning. That plus the fact that the wind is supposed to subside and the weather forecast is for the low 80’s means that we’ll still have a great week.
Thank God this election cycle is just about over. Florida, being a large swing state, get’s way, way, way too much attention. A constant flow of politicians and saturation political TV. I’d like both candidates to lose and plan to do a write in. Not sure who I’m going to honor with my vote but will probably pick one of my kids – the one I think is least liberal. We didn’t vote early (by choice) so we’ll drive back home on Tuesday to vote and check on the garden. We’ve had virtually no rain since the hurricane and all the seeds and seedlings I’ve planted need watering.

When I said we were done with the hurricane cleanup, I meant at our house, not necessarily at George’s. He had his place plus his daughter’s in Ormond and his brother’s in Deland to deal with. So for the past two days we’ve been focused on taking apart and burning downed trees and tree debris next door and I think we still have another day’s worth of work. I’m mentally and physically done with it! Now the aftermath – mosquitoes. They take a week or so to hatch from all the new standing water and they’ve done so with a vengeance. I’ve never seen so many aggressive, hungry skeeters. I cover up as best I can and spray whatever isn’t covered. That helps. I think they have a life span of about a week so as soon as we get a nippy morning, they should be only a memory.

Got back into the garden and planted the first set of root crops which included carrots, radishes, parsnips, rutabaga, and beets. It’s a tad early but we supposedly have a cool front heading our way. I’ve had really bad luck with roots the past two seasons and had vowed to drop them from future gardens but decided to give them one more chance and some extra special loving attention on planting. The rutabaga is a replacement for turnips which really did poorly last year – great greens but no root tuber. I really don’t know if rutabaga greens are edible or not but Nancy knows a number of elderly southern ladies who probably will have the answer to that. Or I can just give them away under the turnip green label and see what the reaction is. Never grown rutabaga’s so not exactly sure what to expect. The other possibility I’m mulling over is trying another patch of the same turnips that failed last year but with the extra attention mentioned above. My new approach is to add a large dose of “trace” minerals to the soil alongside the crop. That means Epson salts and bone meal. I fertilize very lightly, most relying on compost, and that may leave the soil lacking something needed for root crops. I’ll be able to answer that question in about 2-3 months. Except for radishes which will germinate in 5 days, all the others take a while to germinate – maybe as much as two weeks – so I have to be diligent in keeping the seed beds moist all that time. I got a break with a nice rain right after I got the first few rows planted. And while I was planting the root crop, I popped in a couple rows of spinach and lettuce. I suspect it’s too early in the season, i.e. not cool enough, but I like living on the edge! It’s a way to hedge the weather – better for zucchini’s if the weather stays warm; better for the spinach and lettuce if it cools off.

The other garden news is that each of the three zucchini plants have micro zucchini’s sprouting out. Ditto the cucumbers. That means table size by next week. The experiment with these is an occasional spraying with soapy water to ward off marauding critters. In one of the currently unused rows, a renegade plant just popped up that looks suspiciously like another zucchini or another kind of squash. We’ve had both acorn and butternut squash which means seeds in the compost pile so we won’t know what it really is until it produces fruit. I know it’s not a watermelon.