A bachelor again. Nancy and Joanne took off for New York to spend a few days visiting Chris. She’s back again next week, just in time to prepare for her Utah trip at the end of the month. So I’m basically foot loose and fancy free – except for the 25 new bags of concrete that appeared magically at George’s.

I think that’s the final installment of the heavy work phase of the project, not counting building a short stretch of coquina rock wall or putting down some slate pavers. At this point I’m fairly confident the job will be done completely by the end of the month. Check out the pic showing the steps, complete with cobble stones. You’ll notice that the slots between the cobble stones has been filled in as compared to what you see on the deck area. When the job is done, it will all look like the stairs. The picture showing the walkway presents the largest area left to pour. That’s roughly 6 bags of concrete. Beyond that, we pour the pavers in the mold and then cut them apart for use as individual cobble stones to fill in the areas where the whole mold didn’t fit. That will probably take another 2 bags, leaving us with 2 as safety margin or future projects. So when it’s all said and done, we’ll have put down 100 bags of concrete. The whole job is coming out better than I really thought.

Both the telephone and internet problems seems to be solved. After dropping Nancy off at the airport, I went by Tom’s office with my laptop and he installed the T-Mobile modem in his lab. There was a strong signal and 4G coverage so it was really fast. Later In Pierson, it still worked but not nearly as fast – I think we “no” G compared to 3G and 4G. Comparatively it seems about the same as Virgin Mobile – sometimes faster, sometimes slower – but in the same ball park. Regarding the telephone lines, the repair guy did a temporary splice today, Friday, so I guess we’re ok.

Got the second set of Blue Lake pole beans and the second bush zucchini, Cavili variety this time, planted. That’s 3 weeks since the first set, which seem to be thriving. The pole beans are actually sending out tendrils that are grabbing the pole and climbing. I remember last season the rate of growth was incredible so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I also took a peek under the insect cover and found the butternuts doing just fine. The green bean seeds I planted after the crop failure mentioned in a previous post have popped up nearly 100% so it must have been the seed rather than the location. I’ll give them a few days and then cover them with an insect cover too. I also did a major trimming of the sweet potatoes which should be ready to harvest in 4 weeks. Too bad you can’t eat the vines since they are incredibly prolific. I have to be careful to take the trimmings and put them in the burn pile, not the compost pile. They sprout roots so quickly that they would turn the compost pile into another sweet potato patch in a heart beat.

The lake level is up maybe an inch since the last time I reported on it. Still not up to even the third step on the ladder but I’m hopeful we’ll pass that mark by the end of this weekend. September is often a rainy month and even October has seen a major storm or two so I still have hopes for this season but I’m starting to fear another year of low water.

Got some great new refrigerator art from South Carolina compliments of Grace Yearta.

Don’t remember whether I mentioned it before but we never did finish putting the gates on the rabbit fence. George’s deck project moved to the forefront and has been the focus of our attention ever since. We ran out of concrete on Friday and are waiting for a new shipment to arrive at the local ACE Hardware later this week. I had put up wire mesh pieces at the gate openings as an interim measure to keep out the rabbits. Yesterday George’s renter, Harley, told me that he and his bride had been walking down by the garden and he saw a rabbit climb through one of the temporary gates. The wire mesh is 2”x4” so it’s almost impossible for me to believe that a regular size rabbit got through so small an opening but he swears he saw it happen. That report spurred us on build and hang the permanent gates. The picture shows one. It literally took us a full day to make and hang the three gates but they are truly masterpieces of gatedom.

Anyone that’s thinking of getting the Virgin Mobile broadband modem for connecting to the internet while on the road, don’t. I’ve used the service for a couple of years and have been happy but all that ended when the modem failed. That set off a sequence of events which ended up with them suspending my service with a cash credit still on the books. There’s no way to talk to a human being other than at a remote call center with no authority to remedy any administrative problems. Basically I ordered a modem from them after my original unit failed only to find that the unit they sold as a replacement would not qualify for the Walmart service plan I’d been subscribing to for a couple of years. I sent the modem back right away, per instructions, with an RMA and bought another identical unit from Walmart. Virgin Mobile claimed they never got the unit back although the Postal Service had a record of it being received and signed for. I called AMEX and had them stop payment to Virgin and gave them all the information regarding the transactions. Based on that, VM suspended my service. They’ve been getting $20/month for a couple of years now so it really seems crazy to me that they would drop me over a $50 dispute that is clearly a mix up at their end. Even if they assumed that the Post Office was faking their records, wouldn’t you think they’d want to keep a long term, paying customer? Interestingly my neighbor George has been getting the same treatment with regards to a Virgin Mobile return modem. In his case, they claim he didn’t pack it correctly – which I know personally that he did. He too stopped payment on his Discover card and purchased a T-Mobile modem and contract instead of Virgin Mobile. He’s been happy with it so that will be my next move, take the Virgin Mobile modem back to Walmart and trade it in on a T-Mobile replacement.

On top of all this internet drama, George decided to install a new side gate to his property and in the process of digging a hole for one gate post, cut the telephone line to his house. We fixed that without getting the telephone company in the loop and about 30 minutes later, digging the hole for the other post he cut the main line for the neighborhood. So as of this moment, we are without internet and telephone – virtually incommunicado.

George’s deck project is coming along just fine. Yesterday he took a trailer to Lowes and picked up 50 bags of concrete/rock mix. That’s 50 bags at 80 lbs per bag. We used 5 of those mixed in the traditional fashion and used as a footer and then used the other 45 in a dry fashion. The deck area had been filled and leveled with yards of fill dirt on top of which the concrete was spread, dry 2 1/2” thick. We finished up about 7:30 PM just when the rain started. The first two pictures show the deck in that state. I was fairly sore from lifting those bags but two Aleve’s and a Bigeloil rubdown seemed to do the job and I got a good night’s sleep. We took a day off to let the concrete deck harden.

The current job is to make and put down concrete pavers on top of the layer of concrete – we estimate that will require 60 or so bags of concrete – at 80 lbs per bag. The pics show the pavers being laid down. George has a mold into which mixed cement is poured giving the affect of individual pavers. One bag of cement, mixed, is roughly 1 1/2 full molds. The last picture represents 20 bags of cement – about 1/3 of the job and 4 hours of work. I’m the cement mixer, George is the paver man. This is all new work to me so I’m learning on the job. I already learned enough not to try anything like this at my place.

Semi crop failure. I planted a couple rows of a bush bean, Nash variety. For whatever reason, one of the rows had a germination rate just under 50% but the other row was more like 10%. The seed was two seasons old so perhaps that had something to do with it but I think when I planted Nash last season, it wasn’t all that good either. The fact that most of the failure was in one row gives me pause that maybe a critter ate the seeds or that there’s something chemically wrong in that immediate location. I had another pack of “new” seed, a mix of green and yellow Italian, Romano style so I replanted those two rows as needed and added two new rows. This planting is also a bit of a crap shoot because I didn’t really buy these seeds. A seed company I order from sent me this pack labeled as “experimental” for free. That happens all the time and generally I don’t plant them simply because with my limited space, I really hate to use it for something I haven’t specifically selected. But in this case, it’s the last of the bean seed and if I don’t get something going, no green bean casserole for Thanksgiving. Oh, that’s right, I have pole beans planted so that takes some of the pressure off the experimentals.

The pictures shows my new shade huts over the tomato plants and the insect cover over the butternut squash. You can also see the palmetto shade approach I use as well. This is aggressive farming; going to war with the elements. The shade huts are made out of the same cloth you see ringing the garden along the fence. In that case we used it to hold back the soil and keep it from washing away. The rain has turned off again so now I have the daily watering ritual and without the sun protection, the tomatoes would just dry up and blow away. In a couple of months I’ll be wondering how many tomatoes we’ll get before a frost gets them.

I’ll sure be glad when the Socialist Convention is over. Not even sure what the purpose is. There’s only one candidate who’s been campaigning (instead of governing) for most of the past 12 months and we know all there is to know about the personalities and policies involved ie, free birth control pills for the ladies. Not sure why that’s an issue and not free aspirin, or prilosec, or toothpaste. I felt sorry for that poor college girl who has to spend $3000 for birth control pills but is that really where I want my tax dollars going? The “fair” word comes to mind. How about just giving all college kids $3000 and let them spend it on birth control if they want, or beer, or pot or No Doze. My guess is the young lady would take the $3k but still want her birth control paid for by other money. Biggggggg issue. But, you know, I can understand why she wants free pills; what I find truly baffling is how she can gain a speaking position at the convention – in this country. How bout the Dem’s kill the convention and take all the money they’d spend on it and provide free birth control pills to all college girls. It also became really clear to me why so many Dem’s are in favor of abortion. Too bad their mother’s weren’t. Glad tonight’s opening night for the NFL. Generally I’m not an NFL guy but this year, or at least this night, will be different.

We did another batch of pickled jalapeno – 4 pints. I was smart enough to wear gloves throughout the whole procedure so no burns but for whatever reason, the fumes were way, way stronger this time and had Nancy and me coughing and sneezing the whole way through. This will be the last batch for the season but I should have enough to last until next season, 9 pints total.

I put an insect cover over the butternut squash. I didn’t see any signs of problems but no sense in taking any chances. I’ll keep the cover on for at least a month when I expect blossoms to start appearing at which point I guess I’ll have to uncover them to allow pollination – good bug/bad bug thing. The first set of pole beans and the first zucchini bush have germinated and the bush beans, planted a week later, are just starting to pop out. I keep adding tomato bushes as they get large enough to move from the starter containers to the garden – so far 6 have made the transition. There are literally hundreds of renegade/volunteer tomato plants springing up and I pull them the same as weeds. I plant mostly hybrid varieties and those special characteristics are not necessarily transferred to the next generation so no telling what they would grow into. I still might pick a couple stronger ones and plant them along side the hybrids just as an experiment.

Had a nice call from Simon the other day. He’s in Gainesville studying Environmental Science or Wildlife or Ecology or something along those lines. He called to tell me about a project he had volunteered for with a grad student who’s speciality is the Fox Squirrel. He took Simon to a UF managed forest where there were squirrel traps set out to capture, tag, and document what’s going on with the Fox Squirrel. He spent all day there and they caught and released a goodly number of squirrels so he was just bubbling with information about how the forest was managed and how the Squirrels fit into it all. There is no question he has found his niche – not necessarily Squirrel tagging but working in the great outdoors. He’s seriously thinking graduate school now and told me something I had no understanding of at all. In fields I’m acquainted you get into grad school by keeping your grades up and test in. Apparently in Wildlife management, there’s a clearing house at Texas A&M where professors from all over post needs for grad students as research assistants. You visit the board and find something that interests you and then contact the Prof. I guess that becomes a one on one negotiation and if there’s a match, you’re in. Simon’s personality is such that he’ll be studying that board religiously and finding all manner of opportunities that interest him – no intimidations or doubts at all. So I bet he’ll come up with something really interesting for this summer, his last before graduation. Will he go back to the Smokey Mountains, as was a near certainty last month, or strike out on a totally different project?

I love September – college football starts. I’m listening to the Gators on the radio while watching another game, muted, on the TV. Alabama plays Michigan tonight.

I’m on another 5 pound project – that’s a project on which I’ll sweat off 5 pounds by the time it’s done. I was 180 when we started the rabbit fence, 175 when it was over. I see 170 in the cards by mid September. Mosquitos get part of the credit for the excessive sweating. They’ve been so bad this year that I wear long pants, long sleeve shirts, socks and shoes while working. By the time I hang it up for the day, they are literally soggy. I strip down by the washing machine and just dump it all into the tub then hit the shower. George decided to tear down his old back deck and replace it with a concrete one. At first he decided to have a contractor do it but that didn’t quite work out the way he had envisioned (exactly as I predicted) so after two days, he fired that crowd. They had torn down the old deck and once it was all revealed, it just didn’t look like that big a job for he and I to tackle. The contractor had estimated 15 yards of fill but to me it looked more like 5, if that. So we decided to take our time and work on it for the next couple of weeks, a few hours a day or until either of us collapsed. So far I’d estimate we’ve loaded and unloaded 50 wheel barrow loads of dirt – the dirt pile is maybe 250′ from the work site – and used 50 bags of cement at 80 lbs per bag. I’m guessing we’ve done 75% of the dirt hauling but less than half the concrete work. I’m the principle dirt mover and George is the mason, so I’m nearer the end of the tough stuff.

A few posts back I mentioned that we had pickled some jalapenos and it would be 2-4 weeks before they were ready to try. Did that today and they were great. The recipe used olive oil which seemed odd to me but the commentaries said that it was the oil that made this a great recipe. I have to agree. The texture is different, and better to my taste, than the standard pickled peppers I’ve had in the past. They were hot but not blow your head off hot. For me, just right to put on sandwiches. Tomorrow I’m going to check the plants and see if there are enough for another project. If so, for sure this time I’m putting on gloves from the get go.

Hard to believe but I’m starting seeds for winter crops; cabbages, broccoli, and cauliflower. It takes about 6 weeks from when I plant seeds to when a seedling will be ready for transplanting to the garden so that’s early October. Two months later, harvest. So these are vegetables we’ll be eating starting late November. These planting dates sneak up on you in Florida because it’s so hot in August that winter is the last thing on your mind but if you want to be continuously harvesting year round, you have to keep on top of the start dates.

Before we left last week, I checked under the hood to make sure nothing had taken up residence after a few weeks of sitting unused. Sure enough, there was a medium size nest in exactly the same spot others had selected and it had started gnawing on the exact same cable harness that had previously been attacked. I can’t tell whether it’s rats or squirrels but looks like I need to start spreading the poison again.

Also before we left first thing in the morning I checked the garden and there were 3 rabbits hopping around inside the fence. That was not too big a surprise since there are three openings where gates will eventually be hung. I assume that’s how they got in since that’s the way they left when I roused them but it is possible that they just hopped over the fence and that would be bad news. So I closed off the openings with wire mesh and since then, have seen no rabbits inside the garden. It’s important now because I have seedlings in the garden that are most vulnerable.

On the SC trip we hit the local Costco and spotted a 37” TV on sale that I was pretty sure would fit exactly into the design of the bedroom. I had it in my mind that the opening was 36” and the TV was 35.8” so it was a tight fit but if I measured it correctly, or rather remembered the dimension correctly, it would work. At the time we had a car full of people so the store manager checked the inventory in the Jacksonville store and found 9 in stock. We had planned to stop there anyway to refill our freezer with meat and other goodies so buying the TV there would fit our plans just fine. Sure enough, they had the same set in Jax, we made the purchase and it fit in the car. Before it could be installed we had to pull out the monster tube style Sony that was currently living in the slot and find a home for it and all the other attached goodies. Luckily a local charity had a pickup service and they came and carried away the old set plus another old one in the other bedroom. We also threw in two VCR’s, a DVD player, loads of VCR tapes and movies, and the digital signal converters. Sure enough, the new one fit with not even 1/4” to spare. It set up in about 10 minutes and I even figured out how to make the DVD work. My bride is a happy camper.

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Politics – so all my liberal friends and family can quit reading. I really did understand people electing Obama last time around. Young guy vs old guy; eloquent speaker vs not so eloquent speaker; first black president vs old white guy. No way a lib or a young college age person could pass that up. I even said to myself, how bad could he be. So I missed it too but for sure I didn’t vote for him – I’m ok with old white guys and I thought Sarah was a knock out. But after seeing his performance for 4 years there would be only a few reasons I can think of to vote for reelection; you’re a European style socialist; you’re an old black person and remember the old days; you’re on welfare and plan to stay there; you think Chicago style politics is good for the country; you have a large wager on the election results; you’re brain dead. Forgetting personalities, this is the clearest choice in my lifetime between the American free enterprise system and European style socialism. I’m going to assume most of the people I know who will vote for Obama are not brain dead – some are but not most.

Home from South Carolina. We left Friday morning early when there was a reasonable chance that tropical storm Isaac would turn into a hurricane and hit Florida but it was still too far away to really count on it one way or the other. We figured we could keep an eye on it and if necessary, cut the trip short and get home – it’s a 7 hour drive. So we’re glad we decided to make the trip since the storm never came close to hitting Central Florida. We did drive about half the trip home in fairly heavy rain – from Savannah to Barberville or to be more accurate, until we got about 10 miles from Barberville. I was anxious to see how much rain had accumulated in the gauge over the weekend and was blown away to see only 1/2”. That was it. So much for getting any lake replenishment from Isaac.

We really enjoyed the trip and got to see the whole Sheronick clan quite a bit. Everyone is doing well. Lindsay and Charles bought a new/old home in the University (Winthrop) neighborhood and are fixing it up perfectly. Charles recruited Ali, Kassem, Aaron, and his dad to tear down a hill that consumed most of the back yard and put up a monster of a retaining wall. You can look at the job, which seems to be 90% complete, and tell it’s the kind of project that, had you known, you’d never have started in the first place. Visualize a sloping hill 10-12′ high, stretching lengthwise across the entire back yard, 35′, sloping to house level over 30′ or so. Then remove that 35‘x30′ section. I tend to think in cubic yards since I have lots of experience with yards of fill dirt and would guess there was at least 150 cubic yards – 8 truckloads. Then think about the retaining wall that has to hold back the rest of the hill. They used 8”x8” square posts, probably 16′ long sunk 4‘deep on 4′ centers. The cross planking was 4”x6” for the bottom 4′ and 2”x6” for the next 8′. I can tell you from personal experience building the dock, handling lumber that size is incredibly difficult and back breaking. But I think it really enhances the property and basically adds a back yard. I checked it out from a sunlight perspective, and it would be a perfect place for a garden. We had a wonderful lunch there are solved all the world’s problems while sampling/depleting Lindsay’s wine collection.

On Sunday all the kids came over to Nancy and Ali’s and we had another great lunch – Ali grilled salmon and we emptied the last of his keg of craft beer. That part of the day broke up about 4pm so there was plenty of time left to hit their favorite brew pub. I think I drank more (and better) beer this weekend than I have cumulatively in the past 12 months. It was just a great day and a great weekend.

Got up this morning and jumped on the garden for a few hours. The butternut seeds I’d planted last week had all germinated and four of the tomato plants started a few weeks back were ready for transplanting. The goal is 12 by the end of Sept. Those will be converted to spaghetti sauce designed to carry us through June. I have 3 sets of pole bean trellises and decided to get the beans planted on one of them. My plan is to plant the other two in intervals of two weeks so the last should go in about mid September. I’m going to do a 20′ row of bush beans also so between the pole beans and the bush beans, we should have enough beans to carry us through the winter until next bean season. I also planted the first of the fall zucchini. Same story – plan to have 3 bushes and will stagger the follow on plantings in two week intervals. That’s the fall planting. Winter stuff will start hitting the garden in mid October so nothing going on there. If the weather cooperates, we’ll still be picking fall stuff in December along with the winter greens.

My bride advised that we’re heading for South Carolina this weekend, leaving Friday morning and returning Monday afternoon. It’s been a couple of years since we visited the family(s) there and there are new homes and remodeling projects to inspect. And of course our great, great nieces. Nancy has a goody bag of things she’s been making for them and mailing them, as I suggested, just wouldn’t work for her.

But what about Isaac? It’s Wednesday, we’re planning to leave on Friday, and there’s a tropical storm brewing that the weather dudes are saying could bang Florida late this weekend or early next week. The current forecast has it landing in South Florida about 2AM Monday morning. Nominally these forecasts are not very good but it would be stupid to totally ignore the warnings. That would have us driving home in potentially nasty, nasty weather or deciding to hole up somewhere on the road. I’ll spend a good bit of today tying down the dock furniture and anything else that is prone to unplanned flying. I also need to load up on gasoline to fuel the generator. I go through roughly 20 gallons of gas from year to year to operate the generator, mower and chipper and, as luck would have it, I’m sitting on empty right now and gas prices are leaping back up. So that’s something else I need to hop on sooner than planned and before the trip. Any way you slice it, the next two days here will not be the relaxed, hang out and chill days I had in mind.

The last few times I mowed the lawn, I noticed there was some black smoke being emitted and an occasional spit and sputter from the engine so I decided to service it. I think we bought it 5 or 6 years ago and other than occasionally checking the oil, have never done anything to it. It almost never fails to start on the first pull which is all I really use as an indicator – that and black smoke. So I pulled the spark plug and sure enough it was really gribby looking; ditto the air filter. I’m fairly sure that all I need to do is clean both of those but after this long time, might as well go ahead and treat the machine to some new parts and change the engine oil. I can even visualize taking the pressure washer to it and bringing it back to like new condition. I’ll still clean the old ones and keep them for spare parts.

Check out this spider. I don’t know the scientific name for it but I’ve labeled it the quilter spider because the web looks very much like some of the stitching Nancy does with her Bernina. The spider itself is about 5” tip to tip so it’s not one you want to brush up against.
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New project – pickling jalapeno peppers. Usually Barbara keeps me stocked in pickled peppers but this year she seems to be too busy and the pepper bushes are breaking down with the heavy fruit so I decided to take on the task myself. How difficult can it be? I also picked a dozen or so nice okra and a few Marconi peppers, some green, some red so the contents of the jars will be more than just jalapenos. One pic shows the raw ingredients, the second, the 5 jars we created. I really screwed up though by totally underestimating just how much handling the peppers would burn the skin. I worked with them underwater to kill the fumes and never gave skin burn a second thought. About 5 minutes after finishing up, the pain in my hands started and the swelling began. I soaked them in ice water and Nancy came up with some kind of cream but they kept getting worse. About an hour into it and I’m thinking emergency room when I remembered that I had an aloe plant growing off the front deck. Just a few minutes after coating my hands with the aloe juice, the pain stopped, the red turned back to white, and the swelling went away. Man does that stuff work.

The peppers should be ready to eat in 2-4 week

Planted the butternut squash seeds today. They’re a 105 day crop so you can do the math on harvest. We’re usually a little bit faster than advertised, I think maybe because it’s warmer, so sometime between mid November and mid December. I’m going to do my best to shield them from bugs but fall planting in Florida is a real crap shoot. So far so good in that the rains have picked up and the temps dropped just a tad.