My bride and Joanne are in Chicago visiting Chris and little Tommy. She’s made sure there was plenty of food in the freezer so it won’t be her fault if I starve. The weather there is supposed to be “seasonal” which means cold for a couple of Florida girls.

Never seen so much rain without a hurricane. Daytona got over 18” for the month which is a new record – 4” more than 2004 when we had a triple header hurricane month. It just continues to build up and we’re starting to see some rivers overflowing. George’s yard is squshy up past the garden now. (the spell checker doesn’t like squshy or squooshy or squoshy but you know what I mean.) Our property is higher than either side of us, a foot or so, which makes a large difference in terms of drainage. I went down to the dock yesterday before any rain and got trapped down there for a couple of hours when it started coming down big time. Nancy rescued me with an umbrella. I did see something that surprised me while down there. I had been watching an eagle occasionally fly down from a perch in a tall pine and grab a fish swimming near the surface. It was a couple hundred feet away so I could see the fish in his talons but not what kind. The rain started and was coming down fairly hard – maybe an inch per hour – so I was surprised to see the eagle drop down out of the tree and grab another surface swimmer. I couldn’t imagine he could see anything under these conditions but he sure did.

On the negative side, just about all the winter stuff I started is history. I was worried when I started it so early that the heat would be too much but it turns out the problem is a lack of sun and way too much water. If you think about it, when it’s too dry, you just water but when it’s too wet………….. So I’m restarting broccoli, Kale, kohlrabi, and collards in the house.

I also decided to start spinach earlier than usual. I tried an experiment by starting some seed indoors and some directly into the garden. The indoor seed was soaked for about 8 hours; the outdoor seed for 24. That was two days ago and I already have results from my experiment. Germination started in 48 hours, both with the outdoor planted, 24 hour soaked seed, and the 4 hour indoor seed. So at this point the difference is the indoor seed will be at a nominally continuous 78 degrees with controlled moisture while the stuff in the garden is subject to whatever nature brings on. Update – decided difference between the indoor and outdoor plants after 5 days. Only a few of the indoor plants have germinated (so far) and they are decidedly spindly whereas their outdoor siblings have germinated 100% and the plants look strong. What’s been lucky for the outdoor plants is that it’s been cool and wet (for Florida) and no critters have found them.

We’re picking green beans in copious quantity now and hope to continue through Thanksgiving. The game plan is to make the green bean casserole for that event using fresh, picked that day, green beans. It just so happened that Nancy got a magazine with several Thanksgiving meal recipes including a green bean casserole. Tom was stopping by for dinner on his way to Gainesville so we decided to do a dummy run on the recipe to make sure it was ready for prime time. There were a couple of the ingredients that we didn’t have but Nance came up with acceptable substitutes so we went ahead with it. Really, really good. We used 1.5 pounds of fresh beans and that would have fed 4 people with good appetites easily so I’m thinking it will take about 5 pounds for the Thanksgiving crowd.

How stupid was it for Obama to throw the Intelligence folks under the bus – on national TV? He’s losing the mainstream liberal media quickly since commenting that he didn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS. The interview with 60 Minutes was embarrassing.

I just found out that the last several postings somehow didn’t work. Tom is checking it for me but I suspect it’s history. I’d suspect a cockpit error on my part other than it’s never happened before after hundreds of posts and then it happened three posts in a row. I could believe I screwed up once but…………..

On most Friday’s, Nancy plays bridge in Palm Coast with a semi-regular partner, Joanne. Joanne was recently diagnosed with some kind of cancer and is undergoing a combination of radiation and chemo – as it happens, on Friday mornings. This past Friday was the first day of her treatments and the arrangement was that she would still play bridge that afternoon unless Nancy heard from her to the contrary by 11:30AM. She didn’t so we headed over and I dropped her off at the game about 12:30 and then went surf fishing. Joanne never showed up but Nancy picked up another player for the day. When I came back at 4:30 she said they had a good game and that was that. They post the results on line a few hours after the game and Nancy learned that she came in first in “A” and first overall. The icing on the cake was that this day happened to be the club championship game and she ended up winning the championship. The “A” signifies the level of the player in terms of master points. Nancy is a “C” so it’s surprising (not to me) when she ends up ahead of the life masters and other “A” players, of which there are plenty in this club. Congrat’s Nance (champ).

We went to a reunion of folks who worked for General Dynamics in the 60’s and 70’s. We missed the last reunion two years ago when I was having some debilitating medical procedures so it’s been 5 years since seeing most of the folks. Some guys showed up who I haven’t seen in 40 years. I really enjoyed seeing and mingling with all of them. Of course they’ve all gotten old and I’m guessing probably 50% of the folks have passed on to the happy hunting ground.

The wild life is getting closer and closer. I see deer tracks almost every day now in the garden. So far they’ve eaten very little but I suspect when the corn ripens, that will change. My guess is the reason they are coming is to scout out the corn status. I haven’t seen any bears but my neighbor, Andrew, reports almost nightly visits. The other night he opened his door and found himself about 10’ from two. When we come home after dark now, we park at the house instead of the carport to eliminate a 100’ walk in the jungle. Of course I’d take the chance but my bride has no interest in an up close and personal meeting.

As the hurricane seasons comes to a close, The message that should come across loud and clear is that the climatologists don’t have a clue what’s coming in the future. In April the prediction was for a more active than normal season in terms of number of storms, intensity of storms and where those storms would generally hit. They reduced the numbers in July but still missed by a mile. I’m ok with that since I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do with the forecast even if it was accurate but it bothers me that people will take as gospel the predictions these same folks make about global warming. The rhetoric has changed somewhat to “climate change” and I guess we can say with 100% certainty that the climate will change over time and from time to time. With that same level of certainty we can say the temps will rise and they will fall – just not when, for how long, or with what intensity. Anyway, not even a close call on a hurricane anywhere; not on the east coast, not in the Gulf of Mexico – nada. Not even a big storm. I also have to note that this is two years in a row which may be setting some kind of record for inactivity. I guess the hook between warmer ocean temps and storm activity is tenuous at best or maybe the ocean is getting cooler.

I mentioned seeing a few baby cucumbers on the vines. What an understatement that turns out to be. There are now dozens of 2” size cucumbers, a couple double that size and one pickable right now. For those who counts such things, that’s 49 days since planting the seeds, 10 days ahead of the supplier’s estimate. Plus the vines are loaded with blossoms. I can see where we’re covered right thru to the first freeze with plenty for shrimp lady and ground beef lady. So between cucumbers, corn, and green beans I don’t think we’re in danger of starving for the next 3 months.

I keep trying to get early starts on the winter stuff but it seems to last one or two nights in the garden before something gets them. I plant lots of spare seed so I keep trying until they finally make it. If I was short on seed, I’d wait another month. The weather guys keep saying it’s going to get cooler sooner than usual and I want to be prepared for global cooling.

Got into another battle with some unknown critter. A couple of days ago I went out to Nancy’s shed to get something out of the freezer and noticed that something had dug out a major hole to get under the shed. I got the wheel barrow and filled it with what had been dug out and then plugged the hole and pushed it way back under the shed. The next morning it looked exactly the same as before – a den/cave opening. This was way too big for either mice or rats but could be an armadillo, raccoon, or possum. War. I got a solid concrete block about 2’x1’x1’ that weighed close to 40 pounds, plugged the hole, and spread the dirt in front of the shed. I have no doubts they’ll find another place to attack but if it’s not in sight, I can live with it. Oops, spoke too soon, he dug around the block. I have a long position on 30 pound concrete cylinders so I’m going to win this one (probably). I could also run the hose up under there and let it run for an hour or so. Kind of a reverse Noah approach.

The dig around is only the tip of the iceberg today. Nancy found that there was a truly gigantic nest of carpenter ants in one of her shed closets. Carpenter ants are fairly large and this was a very impressive swarm of ants and eggs. I got all the bug spray I could find plus the shop vac and went to work. A lot of Utah winter clothes are history and it’ll take a few days to really uncover the full extent of the damage. Luckily these are not as aggressive as fire ants and I was only bitten a couple of times although at one point I think there were dozens crawling on my legs and arms. Then the grill ran out of gas halfway through cooking a chicken- at least I think it was halfway through.

Really, really getting tired of all this Ray Rice, domestic violence thing. Nobody’s asking the real question – what did she say before he popped her? It looked to me like she was coming at him in the elevator and this may have been a case of self defense. Only kidding ladies.

So much rain. I think we’ve had 8-10” in the past week. Working in the garden is starting to be a muddy event. It’s not the amount of rain but rather that it comes in bursts of really intense rain for an hour then a bit of drizzle after. I’m sure it would be a total disaster if I hadn’t been systematically adding compost for the past 5 years which elevates the garden over local ground level to provide some drainage. One more week like this last one and the lake will be overtop my neighbor’s dock.

My neighbor suggested we go over to the Tomoka River and dig for clams in a sandbar we both know about. We had previously scouted out a place where we could put in our kayaks fairly close to the sandbars. I had some concerns about how well George would do in a kayak due to his shortness of breath with any exertion and also his added girth since the last time he tried it. We went anyway and had no difficulty at all getting the boats launched and paddling up to the sandbars. My boat is faster than his so I’d get a little bit ahead and then drift back casting for whatever fish might be swimming in the dark water beneath. When we got to the clam banks, he got out and started finding them right away. I’m really not interested in clams, especially in that part of the river – way upstream from salt water- so I went back to fishing. He probably got 100 clams and I got zero fish – score one for George. We decided to just cruise further upstream and see what there was to see. We went under 95, under 40 and another 3-4 miles north until the river really narrowed and was almost blocked a couple times by fallen trees. Really primitive looking swamp but then occasionally we’d round a bend and there would be a multi multi million dollar spread. A couple of times the turn around a bend exposed a couple of deer. By the time we decided to turn around and head back we were probably 4 -5 miles from the put in place. When we got back to where the river opened up a bit, the wind had picked up a bit and was right in our face. Couple that with the tide change that was against us and I knew getting back would be a bit more strenuous. We had to stop a couple of times for George to catch his breath but we did make it. He was sore for the next couple of days. Me, not so much since I use the kayak quite often – not this much but still I’m more conditioned to kayaking. When he got home, he purged the clams in salt water for a day and then popped them on the grill to open them. His game plan was to convert them all into clam chowder. Turned out they were not all that appetizing and smelled bad. He tried to eat one and immediately threw up so all that work went for nil. I’m taking away the “score one for George”. Catching no fish is better than digging up bad clams.

And while Joe is scoring, another repair success. This is getting scary. I was in the recliner the other night and all of a sudden there was a loud pop and a big spring went flying out on the floor from under the chair. I turned it over and found that in addition to the flying spring, another had broken but was still attached on one end. These are heavy metal springs about 5” long and 1” in diameter. Because the one was still attached I could figure out where they were supposed to go. We were heading over to Ormond so I could find replacement springs at Harbor Freight or Lowes – no such luck. My next source was George who had loads of springs but unfortunately none that fit the job. He suggested we try to modify the old spring to create new attachment hooks on both ends. I had my doubts about that but we managed to fashion something resembling attachment points – oila, worked like a world champ. The chair snapped into position like new. I think it had probably been operating on one spring for quite some time.

I’m going to quit boring you with corn news. Not. One day after I told you it was 6’ tall and there were tiny ears with silk it was 7’ tall and there were dozens of ears with silk. I don’t remember this happening last spring. Certainly the soil is warmer but also there have been lots and lots of fish carcasses planted before the corn went in so just maybe……………. If the corn has a fishy taste, the link will be established. The next time I mention corn it will be either how good it tastes or that it all crashed. I guess if it hits 10’…………….. Nancy has a bridge partner who’s husband is or was a farmer. He said that if you walk into a cornfield at night, you can actually hear it growing and I believe that. He says that the reason it’s growing like crazy is the high level of moisture. It’s certainly growing faster now than it did in the spring and it’s certainly wetter now so that may be the answer.

When the deer nibbled away many of my tomatoes, Nancy took pity on me and stopped by her favorite nursery in Debary and picked up 3x 4 packs of plants. I planted them but had no technical info on the varieties, just tags that named 8 of the plants as Rutgers and 4 as LaRoma. I was totally unfamiliar with either but looked them up on the internet and found some interesting history. I think everybody over the age of 50 would tell you that hands down, Jersey tomatoes are the best tasting ever. That’s all I ever heard growing up. I assumed that Jersey tomatoes were grown only in Jersey and owed their taste to something in the Jersey soil. What I learned was that the reason they were called Jersey tomatoes is because they were developed by Rutgers University, a famous college in New Jersey. For local use and canning they were the best but commercially they had a flaw – too soft to travel. They later made a hybrid which retained the flavor, added some disease protection but not the firmness problem. Now I’m looking forward to this crop and just hope it does well in Florida. The La Roma’s are a paste tomato (which I was fairly certain of before the research) and have good disease and nematode resistance so I have more confidence that these will do ok. So far, after a week in the garden, all the plants are looking good.

I had to take another corn picture. It’s now 6’ tall, loaded with tassels and I can start to see on the stalks where the ears will form. Not there yet but discernible to the trained farmer. Update – those bumps on the stalks were literally little ears with silk 6 hours later. I am amazed by how fast this is happening. The other pic is the early cucumbers planted August 1. There are some micro cuc’s forming on the stems so I’m guessing we’ll be picking a few by the 1st of October. I’ve never grown this variety before, Diva, but they have a good resume and I have a row of my reliable Sweet Success two weeks into the cycle. Those will be the Nov crop. I need these to be very productive since Nancy’s bridge partner, the one who trades shrimp for cucumbers, told her that they caught 4000 shrimp this past weekend. These are also the cuc’s that Nancy’s quilting partner, the one who raises cattle, covets. She dropped off 14 pounds of ground beef last week – a down payment for cucumbers, pole beans, and cherry tomatoes.

Newly hatched “brassicas” all look alike so it’s very easy to mix up broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, and kolrabi. and it really gets complicated when you have a few varieties of each. These are my nutribullet main actors. I now have 3 full flats (18 plants per flat), one for Joey, two for us and several four packs for a variety of “customers”. By the end of the week, I’ll have two more flats of lettuce, one for Joey, one for us. One variety of lettuce is red leaf so that one’s easy to keep separate. Also lettuce grows so fast that the leaves differentiate themselves quickly so you can generally keep the varieties separated after a few weeks.

Last week the corn was waist high; one week later it’s neck high. I know it grows fast but it amazes me every time I see it happening. Tassels popped out on several stalks on the 5th of Sept – 35 days after planting the seed. Blossoms on the pole beans – in the spots not trimmed by the deer. Maybe it’s all the rain we’ve had – daily and anywhere between 1/2 and 2”.

I planted a dozen tomato plants and 20 “spares” in case I had some fallout. Everything was looking great so I gave away all of the spares – then the deer “browsed” so I went from having tomato plants coming out my ears to none. Nancy stopped by a nursery she frequents and picked up a dozen plants that were way past their prime and root bound. I had thought about it but the one’s in Lowes were trashy and expensive. I wouldn’t have even planted them and they wanted $3.50 per plant. It was a no brainer to pass on them. Nancy got a dozen at her nursery for $5 – worth the risk that they will take hold and grow. It is expensive to feed deer but we really use lots of tomatoes for sauce so it makes sense to give it a try.

Chris has a car now and is settling into a regular work routine so the move went as smoothly as can be imagined. He got a low mileage 2013 Ford Fusion, the James Bond, Aston Martin looking model. He now has to switch focus and start planning for his first official guests – Joanne and Nancy. They’re going up in early October for a few days. With both Chris and little Tommy up there, the pull is gravitational. Next comes winter. I very distinctly remember the last time I was in Chicago and also remember saying that was most likely the last time I would ever, ever, ever be back.

I have a real dilemma coming up. UCF is going to play Missouri. While Tommy was attending Mizzu and since his graduation, I have cheered for them (except when they played Florida). Since Tom, and now Olivia, became associated with UCF, I cheer for them (with the same Florida exclusion) but this game will break new ground. True, Mizzu is an SEC team but it feels like the tie breaker should be the fact that Olivia is a current student, Tom is both a student and an employee at UCF whereas Tommy is a graduate – alumnus. Sorry Tommy.

This airplane reclining seat problem is getting quite serious. I’m thinking Obama should add this to his list of action items. This is one he can probably sink his teeth into and regain lost credibility. It was embarrassing to see him sitting at a round conference table with the European leaders being the dominant players.

Normally I’m super ready for the college football season but not so sure this year. UCF lost one in the last second and now that Olivia is associated with them, I feel obligated to follow them. Florida’s opener was washed out so the big question mark is still out there. Not sure I could personally survive another 4 and 8 season – I’m sure the coach can’t. Last year they added the offensive coach from Boise State which has fielded one the best offenses in the country. He’s history. This season they’ve replaced him with the offensive coach from Duke. Duke? Offense?? Stetson won their opener so maybe I should concentrate on the locals and not get caught up in all the hoopla. Now that the major colleges will be hiring players, this could just be the right time to make the break on general principles.

I started a fair sized project to recover my green house. I bought a small, 8’x8’x6’, a few years ago and got alot of use out of it for 2 years. Then the sun just ate away the plastic covering so there was no weather protection at all. I had quite a lot of potting materials, tools, containers and all the things you use to start seedlings and do transplanting and a year in the weather basically destroyed it all. So I cleaned it up, threw away the junk, and recovered it with 6 mil plastic. That may possibly hold up a year or two but for sure it should get me past this coming winter which is when I really use it.

But as it turns out, I may not have to worry about the green house or anything else related to the garden. The deer returned last night and trimmed the green beans and cucumbers. Some of my newly planted tomatoes may have fallen victim as well. Deer got me out of the gardening business in Utah and they might do the same in Florida. Hunting season starts next month so maybe I’ll be lucky and somebody will nail the local herd. My neighbor to the north is a deer hunter and I’ll be sure to alert him to the local hunting potential

Other than the night visitors, nothing spectacular going on in the garden – just chugging along looking great. I’ve lost some of the tomato seedlings but that’s expected. It’s just so hot and humid but if I wait a month to start the process, the risk of a freeze right at harvest time increases. It’s always a crap shoot which is why I plant so many different things – something always works. The corn in the picture is waist high and really healthy looking. I planted those seeds the first of August and the harvest is scheduled for the first of Nov. (assuming they stay vertical) and the deer leaves them alone. That white sand you see is what I’ve add to prop up the stalks.

After a dry week, which we needed, last night we got a major storm complete with wild winds, continuous lightning, and 2.5” of hard rain. I checked the garden this morning and the corn which was standing 3’ tall is now lying horizontally 3’. I gave it a few hours of sun to see if it would straighten itself out or if was going to take several hours of manual labor. It wasn’t uprooted which was a good sign. In real life, I gave it about 4 hours and it was self correcting to some extent but I decided to expend a little sweat equity and speed up the process. So it’s vertical again.

Planted 12 tomatoes, all doing well, making it through the first critical 24 hours; no cutworms or shocked plants. The fact that I took so much caution with the planting process tells me that my past failures have probably been self generated by the farmer. Also planted seeds directly in the garden for a second row of cuc’s, pole beans and a second zucchini plant. I actually think we’ll start picking cuc’s and zuc’s late this month if the weather holds reasonably on track. Started a few cabbage and kale seeds on the porch – a bit earlier than usual. Between what’s already planted in the garden and assuming these new seeds germinate and grow properly, by my count this nominally fills the garden 100% through November and December. I still have small areas for carrots, radishes, lettuce, and spinach spread around. I call these filler crops because they take very little room and can just be spot planted on a space available basis.

Dodged a bullet in the garden last night. I went out this morning to do a daily check and noticed deer tracks all along the edge of the trellis, right next to the pole beans and the cucumbers. I also noticed that a small jalapeno pepper plant had been yanked out of the ground but nothing else seems to have been disturbed. I’m guessing that the first think he came to was the pepper plant and when he took a chomp on that, he wasn’t interested in dining any further.

Simon called to give us a Coosa River update. He’s getting a high intensity 3 week training session to prepare him to be an instructor for the upcoming season. The highlight so far is the raptor handling sessions. He started with a screech owl but will graduate to handling a bald eagle. He’s also learning to handle the “herps” – and has been assigned to be the primary caregiver for a leopard gecko.

How is it possible that the pres calls a press conference to announce that he doesn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS? Doesn’t have a strategy, not that he can’t discuss the strategy for security reasons but that he doesn’t have one. Certainly there’s a strategy – it’s to do nothing. That’s ok but he’s ashamed to just come out and say it – as he should be. Or else the strategy is to lull the bad guys into a false sense of security by making them think we’re floundering around with a clueless administration at the helm but we really do plan to do something. Now I know how the French must feel with an embarrassing foreign policy. But they’re used to it by now whereas this is all new to us. I can just visualize Obama, Hagel, and Kerry sitting around the table looking at each other with dazed looks on their faces wondering how they got into this s— storm. A bit of a strategy is forming though – the pres sent Kerry off to Qatar, Jordan, and Lebanon to get them to help. GADS!!!! The UK raised their threat level and Obama says that’s not necessary and I suspect he’s right but can you imagine the backlash if some nut case Jihadist shoots somebody at a shopping mall. Not to worry, we’ve got a strategy for putting up windmills/eagle choppers so for sure he’ll have something to tilt in the future.

All the moves are done. Chris is in Chicago; Simon is in Alabama; Olivia is tucked away in a dorm on campus at UCF. All came through without a hitch.
The picture shows the water ballet show at the dock this weekend.

This was a big week in the garden. I spotted blossoms on the zucchini plant and climbing tendrils popped out on the cucumbers. All of that was fairly well on schedule and the plants seem to be handling the August heat and humidity just fine. But the big thing was I planted the first four tomato plants; two standard sandwich tomatoes and two Roma, paste style. I had five of each plus some cherries that were getting leggy in the flat – ready, I think, for the garden. This is a big step in terms of their surviving so I did the small planting first and will make sure these survive for a couple of days before planting more. I did the full treatment – meaning digging a 12” x 12” x12” hole, filling it with compost then transplanted the seedling. I then installed a cardboard collar around the stem of each plant to protect them from the feared and dreaded cutworms. Cutworms are horrible creatures that must live dormant in the soil until they sense a tomato has been planted. Then they emerge at night and gnaw the stem through so when you come out in the morning you find the plant laying over separated right at ground level. In the past if I plant 10, chances are 2 will be gone the first night. The collars work but I usually am either too lazy or forget that step. Not this year – no short cuts. I’ll give these plants 2-3 days and if they survive, I’ll transplant another 8-10. I’m pretty sure I have enough compost to do the job but it’ll be close. Also, I planted these in rows that I’ve kept completely weed free and baking in the sun for 2 months so if I have nematode problems this time, I’m back to zero thoughts about how to control them. I didn’t use my sugar/clorox treatment because there were so many earth worms in the soil, I didn’t want to risk killing them along with the nematodes.

A few months back Tom was here and happened to mention that he had personally replaced the ice maker in his refrigerator. Ours has been acting up for a fair while now and Nancy figured that if Tom could fix his, I could fix ours. Both of us are slightly challenged when it comes to home repairs. The problem with the ice maker was that every once in a while, it must have been dripping water which caused the cubes to freeze together. Personally I could live with that problem for years especially knowing that a service call would end up being $250 and also knowing that you can still buy ice trays at the dollar store. Nancy was not deterred and, unbeknownst to me, ordered the replacement part online for $65 – about the same as 65 ice trays. There were a few hitches in the getalong but I had the replacement installed in about an hour and even had all the tools required so no emergency trip to the hardware store. According to the directions, it can take up to 24 hours for the first ice to form. It took 2. So from start to finish including making a batch of cubes, 3 hours. Overnight, the receiving tray was full of cubes. Mission Accomplished.

On my recent visit to the Doc for an annual check-up, he mentioned my BMI showed I was “slightly overweight” but not to worry. I told him I thought I was not overweight and that his measurement was off because he used the fully clothed weight but not the fully clothed height. That threw him off his game. I said that if he was going to use my fully clothed weight in the calculation, then he should use my height with shoes and socks. Believe it or not, he challenged my calculation and was surprised to see what difference a 2 pound pair of shoes with a 1” elevation mattered. I went (on paper) from overweight to just fine.

I guess today’s party line is that we don’t want to go into Syria or blast ISIS in Syria because we would be helping Assad. Gad’s. Seems like the perfect excuse to drop a few big ones on Assad while blowing up a few ISIS guys. This could be a win win but this administration is simply floundering around with indecision. In the end he’ll be forced into action, kicking and screaming. If it goes fine, he gets the credit; if it crashes