My bride has a new handicap – a broken arm. After a good meeting with they eye doc where her eyes showed improvement and the interval between shots was increase to 10 weeks (from 8) she wanted to do a little celebratory shopping. I had the laptop and a good book so off we went. Trip and fall led to a call to 911 and eventually to the ER where she was diagnosed with a broken arm. Not a bad break but certainly something to deal with and make her life more complicated.

The pics show progress on Garrett’s house. Since the last pics we basically finished the lower half of the south wall and most of the east wall. The stairs you see, on the east wall, will be cut off and moved to the north side to access the deck and the upper level. George thinks we can do that without disassembling the stairway. I have my doubts. What you don’t see is an area behind the steel quonset hut we cleared and leveled to become the material storage area. Why not put the material in the hut you ask – it’s currently storing all the tools, work benches, doors, windows, lawn mowers, tractors and eventually furniture from their current dwelling.

O
The bass fishing meter has moved from red, through the light green and now solidly in the green. Got 4 today fishing off the dock using live bluegills for bait while reading a new book. I kept one that just fit my keeper slot – that’s a one meal fish for us. Any smaller or any bigger and I release them. I also am starting to consistently pick up a few casting lures from the kayak. Tomorrow’s dinner will be fried bass with a broccoli and cauliflower salad as the side. That’s what you call a home grown meal.
Here’s another “oh wow” from the Daytona Trib – a lady living in an apt on the intercoastal Waterway, aka the Halifax River, opened the door and her small dog, a Shih Tzu fell (or jumped) off the seawall. She called 911 and both the fire dept and “Beach safety Ocean Rescue” came to the rescue. Unfortunately they gave up after about an hour searching. The dogs owner said she had just gotten the dog (Ginger) and it was “not familiar with the surroundings”. This article took up 8 column inches of space.

I wore out my main wheelbarrow after only 12 years and was watching for a sale at Lowes to get a replacement. George said he could use the old one for parts so I gladly gave it to him. Instead he decided to do a refurb on this one and several others he had laying around in various states of disrepair. I didn’t think anything more about it until it showed up at my back door, nominally repaired. He didn’t use standard issue repair parts but somehow made it quite useable. I decided to go the extra mile – paint it and get bicycle handle bar grips to fit over the steel square extrusions George had fashioned into handles. Just like new!!! Probably another 12 years left in it.

Big day in the garden – removed the walls of water that have been protecting the squash plants. The pic’s show before and after. Feb 28 is the earliest ever for the summer squash. My hope is that we can be picking squash before the bugs ever know it’s there. I’ve got three lines of attack for this year. I’m going to spray with NEEM, a natural insecticide; I’m planting nasturtium seed adjacent to the squash plants, another natural insecticide; and covering the plants with a very fine netting. If this defensive triad doesn’t get it done – the farmers market is the fallback.

Nancy attended some major quilt show in Daytona and reinforced my belief that quilters will really buy anything. She literally bought a one pound bag of sand to make a pin cushion. Talk about selling ice to the Eskimos, there’s a company called Primitive Gatherings that can talk grown up ladies into buying a bag of sand literally a 100’ from the beach. The real irony was that I spent about an hour shoveling sand over at Garrett’s house the same time she was at the show buying it.

I boycotted the Oscars too – there’s just not the correct diversity among the nominees to match national demographics. For the same reason I’m boycotting the NBA and the NFL and most major college sports. I’d probably boycott soccer based on over representation of Hispanics but I don’t watch it anyway so a boycott would be meaningless.

Big surprise this morning. I went out to the garden to pick the greens for Nancy’s bridge club and was clipping collards along the fence when I noticed a coiled snake about 6” from my hand. Now I know the stents in my heart are working! I think the snake is a corn snake or maybe a pine snake but for sure, nothing poisonous. Still, it was an eye opener. I avoided that one plant but continued picking for the crowd.

I don’t recall ever seeing the lake this high in mid February. I guess it’s El Nino or maybe it’s the amount of rain we’ve had during the normally dry season. I don’t like the idea of going into the traditionally wet season with a full lake but we’re not flooding or anything. I just wish the fishing was better – following pic notwithstanding. Actually the fishing is decidedly better than it has been and I’m starting to catch a few decent fish off the dock and around the lake – just a notch above bad. The weather this winter has been unusual and I think the fish just aren’t sure what season it is yet.
Big event – I got a store bought haircut – the first in about 12 years. Since we moved to the jungle, I was ok with the wild look and Nancy was good with the scissors. With her impaired vision, it’s a bit trickier – ears and eyes on the line. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by looking elsewhere but I think it was putting her under too much pressure. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon enough; i.e. her driving and cutting hair.
Ribolitta – Italian cabbage soup. Nancy’s latest soup masterpiece with loads and loads of garden veggies including a head of cabbage (of course), a pound of kale, and a pound of swiss chard. Plus the standards – potato, onion, garlic, tomatoes, etc etc. Cannelloni beans. The recipe doesn’t call for sausage but we decided that couldn’t hurt. A pound of kale and a pound of chard is really quite a bit so this soup is definitely a winter gardeners delight. I was really surprised how good it turned out.

We’re starting to make some visible progress on the remodel/rebuild job on George’s grandson’s place here at the lake. The new target is to be finished by Thanksgiving. Historically the place was built off site as a beach house up on stilts. Circa 1980. Somewhere along the way, an owner decided to frame in the lower area and make it a two story place – converting a 750SF place into a 1500SF home. The plan was to gut the interior and remodel it into a 3 BR, 2 bath bungalow but as the siding was removed on the lower part, it was obvious that the 8” x 8” posts holding it up were totally rotten. You could punch a hole completely thru with a screw driver. That changed the scope of the job from a simple remodel to a repair and remodel. As it turned out the extent of the rot and termite damage pretty much made the job a rebuild. The biggest hurdle (so far) was replacing all the structural poles – 13.

All the 8” x 8” posts are installed. We ended up installing 12 posts, each was 12’ long and weighed several hundred pounds. The one’s we removed were unbelievably rotten – amazing that the structure could still stand. We were hopeful that when we tore off the siding on the upstairs half of the house, the basic structure would be sound but on the south side no such luck – the 4” x 4” posts between the floor and the roof rafters are just as rotten as the lower poles. We’re hoping that this is not the case on the other 3 sides but so far, nothing but the worst case has been the reality. By the time we’re done, the entire structure will have been replaced – one board/post at a time. The pic’s below show the installed posts from several viewpoints. Each post drops below the surface 3’ and is encased in concrete – so quite sturdy. You can also see they’re bolted into the floor joist above, tying it all together.

As you know, I bury lots of fish carcasses in the garden as fertilizer. Although fishing in our lake has been super poor, my neighbor has been doing well at other lakes so I get an occasional load to bury. However the last two times has resulted in a critter digging them up overnight. I buried them deeper than usual to no avail so tried another trick – burying them and putting a brick on the spot. In the past that has worked but when I went out this morning, the bricks had been cast aside and the fish dug up. This is going to be war.

My indoor garden is going strong. It’s on the kitchen counter to take advantage of the lighting under the cabinets so my bride is not wild about the whole thing. The current population is 22 tomato plants, 6 green peppers and 4 eggplants. They’re all seedlings that germinated in the last couple of weeks and are too weak to withstand the rigors of the great outdoors. I planted the seeds when we were having an extended run of global warming and intended to move them outside as soon as they germinated but global warming was replaced with polar vortex………… On top of that we’ve set a record for rain in January and on into February so my best judgement tells me that kitchen belongs to the seedlings. It seems symmetrical that they start their life in the kitchen and end up there as din din.

Finally broke the dry spell with the bass below. Got him/her off the dock using a live bluegill for bait. It weighed about 6 pounds. I decided to let it go to keep the population of big ones higher. The next day, using the same technique, caught one about 4 pounds so I’m definitely onto something. I used to fish this way quite often in the winter a few years ago but for some reason got away from it. I enjoy it when it’s warm and sunny after a cold morning start – take a good book or the WSJ and just enjoy the day. If you catch a fish, that’s a bonus. The rod and reel I use are my oldest bait casting outfit. The reel has to be at least 50 years old. It’s a knockoff of the famous Ambassador 500 marketing exclusively by Sears under the Ted Williams brand name. That dates it back to the 60’s. I wouldn’t be surprised to find this is the only one of it’s type and age still landing an occasional 5 pounder.

Nancy got behind the wheel again for the first time in months. She’s seeing better than she was before all this started so we were pretty confident she could make the short drive from our house to downtown Pierson – about 3 miles. The Toyota was in the shop and George was not available so we decided to give it a try. No problem. She drove to the shop with me at shotgun and I followed her home. She drove like most Florida senior citizens. I wouldn’t have any concerns with her driving when necessary but the plan is still for me to be the primary driver until the doctor gives her the green light. So Nancy passed her test drive – the Toyota, not so much. When I got a couple miles down the road, the check engine light came on. Back to the shop.

Is it possible to have too much broccoli? Yes. I don’t think I planted more than usual but it sure seems that we’re getting more out of it. Each plant puts out a single large head just like you see at the produce market but what you don’t see are the small, side heads that grow out after the main head is harvested. You pick the side heads and, as if by magic, more side heads appear within just a few days. I think my neighbor is picking less too. They’re not big on anything green other than cucumbers. They have picked a little kale and maybe some collards but not much beyond that even though there are enough of both to feed 6 families. oh well. Interestingly, what hasn’t been producing (yet) are the cauliflower plants. Why that’s interesting is that all of a sudden the vegan crowd has latched onto cauliflower and the price has gone totally out of sight – I’ve seen it as high as $8 for a single head. I guess much of it is normally grown in Arizona and California but both areas have cut way back due to water issues. I really don’t know why my plants just aren’t as good as usual – you’d think if the broccoli were doing well, their white sister would too but mine must have gotten the word from the west to hang back this season. But all in all, I think I did a much better job this year of pacing the planting so that the harvest is more continuous. Unless we have weird weather, we should still be picking cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, chard, peas, carrots, collards, kale and lettuce until late March.

And all six of the summer squash plants are thriving under the protection of the water walls so it’s possible we’ll be eating squash just about the time I’m normally planting the seed. It’s usually a race between us and the bugs as to which gets to eat squash. Last year was theirs. My plan is that this extra early start will give us the edge and to further insure that, I’ve planted a few onions and garlic plants right alongside the squash. The theory is that those particular plants will ward off the feared and dreaded aphids. I read that nasturtiums will also scare squash bugs so I’ll be putting nasturtium seed all around the squash plants.

We had a fun evening last Thursday night. For Christmas Tom had bought us tickets to a show in downtown Orlando at the new Dr. Phillips performing arts center. Along with the show tickets came a voucher for dinner, a room at the closest hotel – a block away- and a voucher for breakfast the next morning. In addition he was the designated driver and car parker so it took all the potential problem parts away. The original plan was that we’d take the train from Debary to downtown and eliminate the whole car issue but they don’t want you parking overnight at the Debary station. That worked out fine too because we hit Costco on the way home to pick up a few non-essentials and gassed up at $1.69. The hotel was incredibly nice and we had a luxury suite – ditto the dinner and breakfast spots. The show was a “Conversation with Ina Garten”, a famous cook. Nancy has at least one of her cookbooks and every once in a while cooks something from it. The last success was the meatballs I wrote about several posts back. I expected a cooking demonstration but it turned out to really be a conversation with an individual followed by a Q&A from the audience. I did laugh when somebody asked her for a substitute for garlic in her recipe entitled chicken with 40 garlics. I really wanted to ask if something could be substituted for the chicken. I’d have rather spent the night at the hotel bar but seeing the Dr. Phillips Center was a real treat and the show actually wasn’t that bad. Nancy loved it – mission accomplished.

Our local newspaper is the Daytona Beach News Journal. It services a population base that must be close to 500K and is a full fledged paper with multiple sections and one full page designated “Business”. I read that section every day but was blown away the other day with an article labeled “airport delays”. It was a 6” column and reported that there were 3 delays at the Daytona airport; two forty five minute delays on flights to Charlotte and another 45 minute delay to Atlanta. This was on the same day there were literally thousands of delays nationwide. The article wasn’t in the context of how good the airport was or how flying in and out of Daytona was a good thing but rather as real news. Wow – an you imagine reporting on that! slow news day

It happens that sometimes if you bring in an armload of greens from the garden there’s a lizard hidden way down deep in the foliage. I view that as a positive – a built in insect trap that actually hunts down critters – but my view is decidedly in the minority (here). Trying to capture a small, quick lizard in a house is no easy task and if you’re patient enough it will either starve or do the job he was born to do.

Tropicals got banged by the frost – that would be the pineapples and bananas. Too soon to tell but I think they all survived although hit pretty hard. The pineapples are interesting. I have 6 plants in the garden and 2 in a planter on the concrete deck. The planter is sitting about 10’ from the structure but still out in the open. The ones in the garden turned from green to yellow in two days whereas the other two look just fine. It must be that the concrete holds enough heat to overcome the cold air.

Shortly after we moved here I planted a banana bush. It did well and we harvested a bundle of small (fingerling), delicious bananas a year or so after planting. We had a run of cold winters after that so the bushes froze back and never produced again. Well last winter was mild and this year seems to be on the same order so I went to check on the bush – which had been fairly well taken over by the jungle. It’s a good size and looks healthy so I’m going to do a little work around it to give it some space and perhaps we can get some more this summer. Uh oh, frost last night. Maybe I jinxed the plants. There’s another cold snap forecast at the end of the week so I’ll hold off on a garden damage report for a few days. I think a little frost is ok with most of the winter greens growing now. I know it didn’t freeze because I had put out a shallow dish of water to check just that.

Driving Miss Nancy is not all that bad. I take her to a 2 hour meeting with the quilt group and then head off to the library a few blocks away. I check out and/or drop off a book or two and do any internet data intense work I might have and polish off an issue of the WSJ. Our home internet data plan is limited so it makes sense to take advantage of public wi-fi. Taking her to bridge is fine too. It’s about 20 minutes each way so taking her one day a week is no big deal. When it warms up I’m going to take the truck so I can carry the poke boat and hit a few of the small lakes tucked away in that area. But where I have a problem is taking her grocery shopping. I have to participate because reading labels is a problem. I don’t mind that but we have totally different built in shopping algorithms and the pace with which we do the job is totally different. Nancy likes to browse through and pick out bargains along with the necessary items whereas I like to have a prepared list and then get them in the basket and checked out in as little time as possible. It drives me crazy to meander up and down aisles with no clear target; it drives Nancy crazy to speed pass aisles that might contain hidden gems.

I’m helping George and Garret (his grandson) rebuild the house they bought on the lake. It looked fairly good on a cursory basis but when you got up close and personal, there was quite a lot of damage from rot and termites. The main house is up on stilts, 8”x8” 12’ long poles – 14 poles. Each pole is buried 4’ deep. Turns out they are all rotted big time. Hard to believe the place is still standing. We’ve started replacing the poles, one at a time, and have 6 done so far. Garret rented a digging machine to eliminate a manual digging job so we cut out a pole, pull it out of the hole and then install a few pole using the existing bolt holes. Handling a 12’ pole is tricky but Garret is young and strong so it’s going smoothly. Once bolted in place we frame around the hole and pour concrete so the pole is anchored in a 2’x2’ x 4’ encasement. After the poles are replaced, maybe by the end of the month, weather and jobs permitting, we’ll attack the framing and replace the termite damaged 2×4’s. Then do the electrical and plumbing before interior walls are done. The goal is for them to have the family Christmas event at the new place – and maybe Thanksgiving.

Politics – So Bloomberg is getting in the race – maybe. He’s my kind of guy and will go after big drinks on a national basis. At least he’s talking about running as an independent and not trying to pass off as a legitimate Republican. Too bad Trump didn’t make that same election. The pic they’re playing on the tube has him standing at a microphone next to Rahm Emmanuel (spelling?). That’s really all you need to know. What an incredible bunch of losers!!! Both parties. It may be that the convention this summer will actually be interesting and meaningful. I doubt it, but maybe.

Attacked by the Polar Vortex. I am happy with global warming attacks but not so much with the Polar creature. It was 42 this AM against a 32 forecast by the weather guru’s on the tube. I didn’t break out the frost covers because I never believed the forecast would accurately predict our house. The next time I might because this cold spell will have chilled the lake a little more. We have another cold front forecast for next week but it doesn’t look all that strong to me.

And still no speckled perch but instead I’ve hooked several large bass. What’s that all about???? It’s hard to actually land a big bass with the micro hooks I’m using to lure the spec’s but it’s fun to get some action going. We’re halfway through January so the spec’s really have to step it up. I’m guessing it’ll turn hot – the fishing not the temp – any day now.

Last night (Thursday) about 7PM Nancy called out from the bathroom with word that we had no water. She had a tub about half full when it just stopped. The well and pump are up a couple hundred feet from the house and it was pitch black. Bears. I got a lantern and went up to see what was going on; hoping for an obvious something to fix. It was dead – had power but wasn’t running. I banged it around with a mallet – my standard repair technique – in the hopes of dislodging whatever was causing the problem. All to no avail. We were expecting a strong storm front overnight so I was concerned that it would be tough to get a service person out before the weekend. Who knows after that. I called George to confirm the name of the pump service guy. George suggested running a hose from his system to ours so we would have water until it got fixed. We did the reverse of that a few months back when his pump crashed. Within a half hour we were back up and running with water in the house. Got up early Friday morning and walked up to get the mail and paper – passing by the well on the way. As luck would have it, it started running as I approached. I removed George’s water supply and it continued running. The pump shut off when the pressure built up – just as it should – and then restarted when I turned on a hose to drain it – just as it should. I let it cycle for about an hour and had Nancy wash a load of clothes and then called off the repair guy. We took the cover off the main electrical contacts and verified that they looked good so there’s really no definitive reason for the problem. The repair guy said chances are an ant or two got into the contact box and caused a temporary problem. I didn’t see any dead bodies near the contacts but …………….. I sprayed bug killer around the contacts just in case.

Nancy got another round of shots in her eye. They do seem to be doing some good. Still not driving but I think she could. Probably a lot of folks on the road with worse vision. The next round is in 8 weeks – they keep extending the time between shots. I think the plan is to continue with the shots until the spacing is 3 months. We’re almost there.

I think there was a bear on the dock last night. I went down this AM to make a few test casts and noted that the rods were laying on the dock and so was the heavy ladder I had standing up. One chair was on it’s side. It had been windy the day before but unless it really blew hard while we were sleeping, this had to be a critter hit.

I ordered most of next season’s seeds with special attention to the tomatoes. I selected highly disease and nematode resistance cherry, paste, and regular eating types. A really expensive selection as those things go. The cherry tomatoes and paste tomato varieties are ones that thru the process of trial and error have proved reliable but I have never really found a consistent regular eater but I’ve spotted one that sounds like it might be the one. You just don’t know until you try it. I’ve also upgraded the eggplant selection to a hybrid Italian offering called Dancer. Hard to find, expensive seed. Since since we’re eating more of it, why not go to the top shelf. Tried and true on the peppers and cucumbers. Still trying to find a consistent squash performer – some years I think I’ve found it only to be disappointed the following season – but mostly the problems with squash are bug oriented. I overhauled an old spray container and plan to go after that problem externally.

I mentioned that we had traded some collard greens for sweet potatoes. I decided to extend that by trying to sprout one of the potatoes into eventually becoming a summer crop. It’s a simple process but one that takes time, patience, space and warm weather. I sliced off the end of a potato and set the tuber into a container of water and set it in the kitchen windowsill. The plan is for the potato to start putting out stems and leaves within a couple of weeks. Then, after a month or so, you remove the sprouts and plant them in the garden. Each sprig will take root and produce a vine on the surface and tubers underground. In about a 100 days, you harvest a few pounds of potatoes for each sprig. I did this once before a few years back with nominal success. The disadvantage is that the vines really spread and put down more roots along the vine so it really really spreads and becomes hard to control. The big advantage is that they love heat and thrive when all else has succumbed.

Good News – They’re opening a Hidden Treasure restaurant on Flagler Beach. The one in Port Orange has been my favorite place since Nancy and Joanne accidentally found it a year ago. There was a similar place in Flagler about 10 years ago that we really liked but it closed down several years back. Hidden Treasure is going to the same location. Full report will be blogged in March.