Everybody is familiar with the switch from Standard time to daylight savings time but lesser known is the switch from winter pizza to summer pizza. We have another month of green based pizza – that would be pizza loaded with broccoli, or spinach, or swiss chard in many combinations – to light colored pizza such as eggplant or zucchini parmesan with slices of fresh tomato and green pepper toppings.

Took care of the trees downed by the mini tornado that lashed us last week. It’s now future fire wood and will eventually end up as ash in the compost pile. This oak was right at the entrance to the path down to the lake so I’m really not too sorry to see it go. You wouldn’t have known it from looking at the tree growing but it was rotted inside and broke off right at ground level – perfect. The tree to which the clothesline is tied at the other end is obviously dead so I’ll just take this opportunity to whack that down and come with a totally new route.

Nancy has the cataract in her right eye taken care of on the 14th. Since we know what to expect on this, it’s not as worrisome as it was the first time. Had a funny experience at the eye doctor’s yesterday. Nancy had an appointment to check on the left eye and take one last map of the right eye before the surgery. When we walked in I saw another patient in the waiting room who looked familiar but I just couldn’t place where I knew her from. She spotted us when we walked in and smiled but nothing else. I just figured it was my magnetic personality that attracted the smile. Then they called the name of the patient and she walked by and the lights went on – it was an old friend from 30+ years ago but before I could say anything she was gone. Nancy and I looked at each other and said at the same time, “that was Mimi”. Nancy was called about 5 minutes later and after that Mimi came out. I called over to her and then it was old home week. She said she thought she knew us but couldn’t recollect exactly from where. Turned out that Mimi also had a cataract removed – on the same day as Nancy last time, a couple hour earlier, and she was in to set up for the second cataract which was scheduled for 2 hours prior to Nancy again. Same doctor. Is that bizarre or what?

Back from the fishing/camping trip 2 days early. I really enjoyed spending the time one on one with Tom but the fishing was bad. Wind, wind, and more wind. It was more or less continuous from when we got there until we left at 25 mph with gusts to 35. In addition, fishing out of the fold boat was tough on my back and legs so I was beat. The boat and motor performed well and we got to try out the electric motor too but it’s just too cramped for days of fishing. Ok for a few hours; longer for younger backs. I hope we get another shot at it before the summer heat arrives. Usually April is a good month on the Tomoka so I’ll be keeping a close eye on that action.

Still feeding/poisoning the rats on a daily basis. Nancy kept up the duty while I was gone, filling the cups every evening and seeing them emptied the next morning. She bought a different kind from the Pierson ACE – I’ve been patronizing the Deleon Springs ACE – so maybe we’ll see more dramatic action out of the new formulation. There are only a few tangerines left on the tree so the natural source of food will be depleted in the next few days. Maybe they’ll leave on their own at that point.

I’ve decided to take a risk in the garden and plant a few summer squash a month early. Seeds are cheap so there’s really not much to lose even if winter returns and the upside is getting squash before the bugs and heat take over. Ditto cucumbers. I have space available, all ready with muck and newly minted compost. The first year of Florida gardening I tried a variety of zucchini that had been really great in Utah but totally bombed here. I’m going to give it another try since I don’t know if the problem the first time was poor soil or just the climate here. For sure I’ll plant other varieties that I have more confidence in but have my fingers crossed that Gold Rush will come on as strong as I remember.

Started three different types of eggplant; the old standard, Lavender Touch, that I’ve had so much success with; a slender, green variety called Raveena; and a slender purple Chinese variety call PingTung. Several people have asked for seedlings so I’ve started plenty. Last year I had several Lavender Touch plants spring up from seed in the soil from the season before – we call them volunteers or renegades – and I expect that to happen again but I’ll pull most if not all. Last year I just let nature take it’s course and I had way, way too many eggplants. Going to pop three or four of these guys in plus a half dozen green pepper plants as well so by the end of this week I’ll be heavily committed to the spring/summer crops – 2 weeks ahead of the Ag Dept’s recommendation.

I still haven’t killed off all the rats. I know that because every night I put out poison and every morning it’s gone. Also, every morning there are eaten tangerines on the ground. – not one or two but as many as a dozen. I pick up the peels, deposit them in the compost pile and carefully note that there are no more all day long so I know they’re still climbing the trees and feeding at night. Either the poison simply isn’t working or there are more than I thought. The proprietor at ACE tells me they are all over and causing trouble. His brother lives about 30 miles away in a high $$ neighborhood, Victoria Park, and overnight rats ate the brake lines on his SUV parked in the driveway. That makes me think the exceptionally warm, dry winter we had has fostered a rat bloom. Assuming the poison is working, I wonder if each lid full I place is eaten by only one rat? I had envisioned a communal feeding frenzy but that’s probably not what’s going on. Whoever finds it, gobbles it all. Twice now when I do the morning check, the lid is actually missing. I found it both times, the last time about 15′ from where I placed it and close to the nest we destroyed by the firewood. I’m guessing that when the tree is cleaned of fruit, they’ll disburse and find some other food source. Uh oh, zucchini?

I’m taking a 4 day sabbatical fishing with Tom down in the Stuart area- camping out and everything. That means Nancy will have to take over the rat patrol. She doesn’t seem too interested in the training program I’ve planned. I’m making a wild guess that she won’t crank up the chain saw and remove that tree and fix the clothesline while I’m gone.

Make that 16 tomato plants growing. I took the water walls off and found one had suffered the curse of STC. My bad.

About 5AM I was awoken by a serious storm. About that same time we lost power and appeared to be inside as strong a hurricane as we’ve ever experienced. The forecast was for severe thunder storms but this seemed a bit more than that. Lots of lightning but no thunder – kind of strange. The good news is it was all over in about 15 minutes. I got up when there was enough light to see and did a quick damage survey. Lost an oak tree and an old dead pine down by the dock. It was not just any oak tree but the one that held up the clothes line. It’ll take a day or two to get that all cleaned up – actually considering I’m going camping tomorrow, it’ll take a week. I went down to the dock and found several pieces of dock furniture in the lake. The good news is that with the low lake level, I could just wade out and retrieve it. The Poke boat, which had been laying upside down a few feet from the water’s edge was halfway in the lake. About that time, George showed up in the golf cart and we did a neighborhood tour. We must have had a mini tornado or micro burst because the place on the other side of George’s had a fairly large shed totally destroyed. In fact the metal roof was up in the trees. We called the power company and they reported we’d be out until 1PM. The last time we had a report of 5 hours, it turned out to be 12 hours so I cranked up the generator. Very slick. A few hick ups with too many refrigerators and freezers to start simultaneously but after sequencing through them, all was fine. Turns out the power outage was caused by that shed roof up in the trees along with power lines running through the same trees. We were back on line about 11AM. Sure glad we had the generator – else no morning coffee.

Nancy is making a new recipe courtesy of the west coast. It has kale (maybe a yuk), Feta Cheese and Italian sausage. I love Feta cheese and sausage so how bad can it be. Well, it wasn’t great but it was edible – once.

Nancy has been bugging me for a while about putting up a few more shelves for food storage. I am always very reluctant to add storage space because no matter how much you have, it’s never enough and is filled quickly. My answer is not to carry so much inventory. That was my line when running a manufacturing operation and that’s my line with Nancy too. Also, as simple as adding shelf space sounds, it just never turns out as easy as it first looks. I finally capitulated and sure enough, it turned out to be a bit more complex than the guy at Lowes made it sound. Actually it would have been just fine except that the design depends on the wall studs to be uniformly spaced at either 16” or 24”. I found the center stud quickly after only drilling 3 teeny weeny, nobody can see them holes. From that point you mount a horizontal bracket and then use the predrilled holes to secure the bracket to the wall. Guess what, the predrilled holes do not line up with the studs in my house. So I removed the bracket and tried to find the studs (lots of teeny weeny holes) only to learn that on one side of center, the stud was 20” removed and something like 21” on the other side. The bottom line was that if you line up the center point with the stud, all other securing hardware would miss studs. I was able to scrounge up some wall board inserts and alternate hardware to make it all work. It does look just fine and seems sturdy so all it took was about three times as long to install as advertised.

Pulled out the remaining broccoli plants to make room for the corn crop. I checked my records and this broccoli was started from seed in August and September and moved to the garden late September and October. So we really do get a long season and a continuous harvest from December through February. I used 3 different varieties with different maturation points so the main heads were staggered out and side shoots from all were prolific the last two months. For what it’s worth, I liked a variety called Calabrese which is an old, heritage variety. It took longer than the more modern hybrids and grew much taller which is probably a negative for many gardens. Also the florets were not as tight but I thought tastier and more tender. I unloaded 4 wheel barrel loads of lake bottom muck over top of the broccoli roots and will probably overtop that with a shallow layer of compost. If the weather holds, I’ll probably plant the corn seed in mid March. The only thing holding me up is a dozen or so lettuce plants right in the middle of the planned corn patch. Those will be gone within the next few weeks – one way or the other.

Corn is one of those crops that has to be planted in a substantial block. You can’t just grow a few corn plants but need at least 50 plants and the more, the better. That’s because it pollinates by the wind so if you just have a few plants, the pollen could/will most likely totally miss the target. I’ll end up with maybe 100 plants in a 15‘x20′ area. I’ve decided to try the “three sisters” method again. I didn’t have much luck doing that 3 years ago but then I didn’t have much luck doing anything 3 years ago. The 3 sisters are corn, squash, and pole beans. The technique is to plant the corn and when it’s a foot or so tall, plant long vined squash plants – I use butternut – and then 3-4 pole bean seeds around the corn plant. The technology here is that the squash, with large leaves, shades the roots of the corn and keeps them from drying out in the hot summer sun. The pole beans fix nitrogen, that’s what peas and beans do, so they actually provide living fertilizer to the corn. The pole beans wrap around and climb up the corn, not enough to bother the corn. The technique supposedly goes back to American Indians way, way back.

I now have 17 tomato plants growing – not counting the 2 patio plants. Is that over the top? Well if all 17 make it and produce as advertised, 17 plants is definitely over the top. Thing is, I don’t expect them all to make it and the 17 plants are made up of 6 different varieties, several of which I’ve never tried before. Six of the plants (3 varieties) are in the fire pit, an adjunct garden, which has steadily improved as I’ve worked the soil but which has still not been really good. This could be the break through year – in which case we will be way, way over the top in terms of tomato production. What I’m searching for are varieties that are dependable in this climate. Once I narrow it down, I can get by with fewer plants. I have big hopes for a variety tagged Bella Rosa and am hopeful that a new variant of Celebrity will also be tough enough to get it done but no guarantees on either.

This might surprise you about rats – it surprised me. Rats can climb trees. I have a tree which still has a fair number of tangerines up near the top where I can’t reach – maybe 20′ off the ground. Every morning there are a dozen or so tangerine peels on the ground, completely eaten except for the peel. I pick up the peels and toss them in the compost pile but the next morning, there’s another batch of eaten fruit on the ground. That also tells me they come out and eat at night because I check just at dusk and the ground is still clear under the tree. That’s also how I know that it’s rats and not squirrels. Squirrels are active all day and sleep at night. I guess I can read into it that we don’t have any resident rat snakes, foxes, or feral cats who are supposed to be slinking around at night catching rats. I think one of those Burmese pythons would be over the top. I do know that the rat poison is disappearing but can’t say for certain who’s getting it. My neighbor is also putting out poison so between us, maybe we can dent the population. I sure wish they would show themselves in daylight so I could pop them with the pellet gun.

A day later – I’m getting a good handle on the rat issue. This morning there were only two eaten tangerines under the tree. This compares to a dozen or so every morning for the past couple of weeks. There’s still plenty of fruit on the tree so it has nothing to do with supply. Also, for the second night in a row all of the poison I put out is gone. My neighbor and I found home base this morning – a large nest in his fire wood pile which is located about 10′ from the tangerine tree. When we uncovered the nest it looked exactly like the nest I found in the car except quite a bit larger. It also was loaded with tangerine peels so no question this was headquarters. I’ll put another lid full of poison under the tree tonight and just keep at it until it remains untouched. That way I’ll know that we either got them all or trained them.

Spotted a few micro green tomatoes on the patio bushes – those are the ones planted in the container with carrots. I can’t tell how well the carrots are doing underground but if the greens are any indication, they’re doing very well.

Looks like my timing is pretty good regarding taking advantage of the low lake level and extracting all that muck. Usually we’re dry until April and I could easily have procrastinated knowing that I could get even more by waiting for another month of dry weather. But the last couple of weeks we’ve seen more than normal rain – not enough to budge the lake level yet but as the ground saturates, the lake will rise faster on runoff and it could be the end of the muck season. Good. I was wearing out. In addition to all the rich muck, I now have a good place to land and launch the poke boat and perhaps the trench I dug will turn into a fish hideout for Old Nathan, the biggest bass in the lake.

I decided to plant some potatoes after all. We opened a bag of Idaho spuds from Publix and noted that several of them were already sprouting. Wonder if they’ll grow in Florida? We’ll soon know – where soon is 90-100 days. The sweet potatoes I have sprouting in water now have leaves so I’m guessing by the middle of April we’ll have both kinds of potatoes in the garden. You start them quite differently. With white potatoes, you cut off chunks of the potato with an eye and plant them directly into the soil. With the sweets, you let the sprout develop then cut it off the “mother” and root the sprout by either planting it directly in potting soil or rooting the slip in water.

Notice how the higher gas prices are being blamed on world affairs – Greece, Iran, China etc. When they went up during the Bush admin it was all about the evil oil companies and Bush/Cheney’s hook to them. The energy issue/gas prices are going to be the nail in Obummer’s coffin. Before he was elected he speechified often about how we would benefit from higher prices and actually said we should be paying the same prices as they do in Europe – $10-12 a gallon; wanted to tack on a carbon tax to raise the price and reduce driving; within a few weeks of being elected, shut down offshore drilling, arctic drilling and other drilling on Fed lands. Now he’s taking credit for all the oil and gas coming on line from projects started 5-8 years ago. Makes it kind of hard now to talk your way around the high prices. Especially after killing the pipeline from Canada.

If you want to just grow something edible but not mess around with much of a garden, I highly recommend radishes as the perfect starter. Seeds are cheap and very available; they take very little space – try a clay pot; they give nearly instant gratification – germinate in about 3 days and are ready to pick in a month. The newer varieties can grow as large as golf balls and still not turn hot or pithy. They do well in cold weather, not freezing cold, but spring and fall are perfect almost anywhere. I just keep planting them around as fillers.

I think this is going to be the first season with completely renovated garden soil. Using the muck is accelerating the process dramatically such that there will be at least a foot and more like 18” of organic material over 100% of the garden area. From this point on, I’ll be able to use compost simply as a soil enricher and not to build up volume and create more plantable footage. I never see the time coming when I’m wondering what to do with all the compost but it won’t be nearly as urgent as it has been.

The rat story won’t go away. The Merc is now home with new vacuum hoses installed and the check engine light properly out. Total tab $57 so not as bad as I had anticipated. I learned something interesting about the car along the way. When the check engine icon is lit, which means some fault has been detected, it automatically turns the radio off. So I guess if you’re just riding along listening to the radio and not likely to be looking at the dashboard, turning the radio off brings your eyes in that direction. Very clever. My fear was that the rat had eaten through a wire that powered the radio and would be very difficult/expensive to find. I did pick up some poison and have distributed it up around the carport and sheds. The problem with poison is that you can’t really say whether it’s working or not since they don’t come out into the open and line up bodies. I guess they just crawl away and quietly convert to dust. I haven’t seen any squirrels falling out of trees either so maybe they’re just smart enough to avoid rat poison. I’d be ok with a few thousand less squirrels/tree rats too. My neighbor said that if I scoot some moth balls under the cars, that too will keep the rodents away.

I’m starting to think about an “all Florida” Republican ticket. That would be a Bush/Rubio ticket. I’m starting to hear some of the talking heads on the tube speculating on a brokered convention or some late comer dropping in to stir the pot. Wonder if they’re reading my blog? Let’s see how long it takes them to opine on the Florida ticket. I could certainly get behind Christie too. Although still a yankee, he’s got some really great one liners – example, telling Warren Buffet to just shut up and write a check if he wants to pay more taxes – so I could probably get past the geographical problem. If something happens to Romney, he just might jump in. What could happen to Romney? London could need someone to rescue their Olympics.

We decided to take the Merc down to Altamonte Sunday to meet friends for dinner. Having had the nest fire in the Camray and the Merc having sat under the carport for almost a month, I made sure to open the hood before cranking the engine. Good thing – there were several nests but this time the culprit was still in residence. Turns out the perps are rats; not mice, not squirrels. Along with the nests and acorns this guy had actually dragged a fresh tangerine peel onto the engine for a later snack. At least now I have a line of attack – rat poison around the carport. One good thing is that I have a good use for the nests which are made from the fiber that forms at the base of palmetto fronds – where the frond grows from the trunk. I use it as a base for orchids and other air plants- it’s airy and holds moisture fairly well. New input. On the way home from Altamonte, the check engine light came on. Nancy dropped it off at the mechanic on the way to quilting and the guy called and said that something had gotten up under the hood and chewed through a vacuum hose; that would be a $50 assembly from Mercury. Also the radio apparently no longer works so the rodent probably also chewed an electrical wire. Now I’m pissed. This month is turning out to be a very expensive vehicle maintenance month. First the gas tank on the pick-up decides to leak, needing full replacement, and then a rat(s) decides to make a meal of the car.

The de-mucking job is really keeping me busy. On day one I rake the muck off the lake bottom into a pile to drain then on day two, haul the drained muck up to the garden area where I spread it – either onto the compost piles or directly into the garden. I’m not counting wheel barrow loads but am sure I’m over twenty at this point. What I’m finding is that the muck collection is a shoreline thing and once I work my way 8-10′ from shore, it turns to nice hard sand bottom. So the particular area I’m working seems to be maybe 25′ long by 10′ wide by 3-4′ deep and I’ve worked my way through about half of it. So I’ve got a large commitment and hope the results are what I expect. What a bummer it would be if this stuff turned out to kill off veggies.

The broccoli and cauliflower are pretty much playing out on schedule. Ditto the Chinese cabbage and kohlrabi. Next to go is the spinach which will be packaged away in the freezer probably by the end of the week. Kale and collard greens show no sign of fading away and the brussels are still a few weeks away. Pulling carrots and onions on an as needed basis and have enough to keep us humming for another month at least. One thing I’m doing differently this year as a result of attending that small garden seminar is to cut off the spent plants at ground level rather than pulling them out. I used to pop them into the compost pile so the old roots eventually made it back but according to this expert, they decompose faster by just leaving them in place. Then I’m just spreading 2-4” of compost or muck right on top of the cut stems – no tilling.

Nancy saw a recipe on TV and decided to try it. It was a pasta dish using a style called Orecchiette, which it turns out is not all that easy to find. The pasta is shaped like small , thick shells. The dish incorporates a load of swiss chard, cannelloni beans, fresh parsley, some lemon, some cheese, and Italian sausage. I have to admit I had my doubts but it was really, really good.

Simon’s has applied for three summer jobs – each sounding pretty good. The first one he applied for is a “domestic” position at Yellowstone and he got the offer a couple months ago. The second is in western North Carolina at an outdoor center that specializes in guiding white water rafting and kayaking trips. Check out NOC.com. He got that offer earlier this week. The final job, the Trenton Institute, is also in western NC and likewise an outdoor camping experience for young kids so it includes hiking, fishing, kayaking and the like. Trenton requires certification in CPR and lifeguarding. Simon has some background with both as an Eagle Scout and can be re-certified as required. He will probably hear within the next couple of weeks whether or not he can do a hat trick and get offers from all three applications. I think the Trenton opportunity would be the preferred catch but either of the NC jobs would make for a great summer and fit better with the family summer schedule.

You know it’s possible I’m related to the Sports Illustrated cover girl this month. My maternal grandmother is an Upton so Kate and I could have some common genes. She doesn’t really look like my grandmother but then I didn’t know her when she was a young lady so……………….

I keep reporting that the lake is at the lowest level ever and that is still the case. After this latest cold snap, it’s down a few more inches. I gauge the level using the dock ladder where the lowest rung is now out of the water. That means the water at the end of the dock is about a foot deep. We consider 5′ at the base of the ladder to be normal. Over the years things have dropped off the dock which we assumed were gone forever. Maybe not. One big target is a ring that Megan lost about 10 years ago. Assuming some giant bass didn’t gobble it up, maybe we’ll be able to recover it, especially if the lake keeps dropping. Probably one more freeze with the ferneries pumping will leave that area totally high and dry.