We were invited out to a “light lunch” on Sunday. I didn’t think too much about it but on 3 or 4 separate occasions, the inviter mentioned the “light lunch” so I got to wondering what is a “light lunch” exactly and how do you prepare for that. Do you eat a giant breakfast. It was scheduled to occur at 2-3PM which further added to the planning difficulty. Should we wait until about 10AM to have breakfast and then take out stuff for a supper when we get home? When I grew up, a Sunday supper often occurred at 2-3PM – not sure what label we gave it other than “dinner” but we ate breakfast as usual, skipped the regular lunch and then had a big meal mid afternoon. If you got hungry at 8PM, you could make yourself a sandwich, maybe from the leftovers, or maybe there was some cake. You can handle all that in your own place but a mid afternoon “light lunch away from home is more problematic.

Not to worry. We had a really great time and the term “light” must have referred to calories since we had plenty to eat – a grilled piece of salmon on a bed of mixed greens and an excellent Greekish, side salad. Who’d have guessed Mark was such a chef. Then it was topped off with a home made carrot cake, perhaps the best I’ve ever had. Oh, and to start off we sat around drinking fine adult beverages and munching on home made German pretzels. Could not have been better.

I’m not sure what was more impressive – the eats or the incredible remodeling job that was done on the back porch. The last time I saw it, it was one each standard Florida screen porch attachment. Now it’s magazine quality. The great part of it was that it was all done creatively using existing things that might have been pitched out by less thoughtful remodelers. Hat’s off to Joey and Mark for the job they’ve done in changing a 50’s style, nothing special house into a real showplace, and for putting together exactly what would work for us in an enjoyable afternoon.

After letting the sweet potatoes dry out for 10 days, we decided to try them. Tasted just like store bought sweet potatoes to me; Nancy thought they were sweeter so they probably are. All in all, I’m calling the experiment a success. Not sure I’m going to do it again though. Mainly because they really take up lots of garden space. On the other hand, they do well in August and September when most other things have crashed so I’ll have to take that into consideration. I think there might be varieties that have more bush like characteristics as contrasted to vining so I’ll do some research before I completely close the door. It would be nice to ping pong between white potatoes and sweet potatoes as the season dictates and with both species, I seem to have broken the code.

Damn armadillos got into my newly planted chard and chinese cabbage last night. They’re not after the plants per se but it seems that a newly planted area just attracts their attention. It must be that I mix fertilizer in with the soil and they are attracted to that somehow. Maybe the planting attracts ants which pulls in the armadillos. It’s not near as big a disaster now since I semi-expect it and start plenty of spares.

Thinned out 5 rows of radishes this morning. I interplant radishes and carrots which I guess is fairly standard practice. Carrots take a while to germinate so it’s recommended that you plant radish seed adjacent to carrot seed because the radishes germinate much faster and mark the row. That plus they loosen the soil to enhance carrot growth. Radish seeds are cheap and small, not as small as carrot seed, but small. So I double plant to make up for seed germination issues and then thin wherever multiple radishes pop up together. The next part of my process is inexplicable. As I noted radish seeds are cheap and they grow well so what most people do is just yank out the wimpiest or where multiples occur. I try to ease them out gently and replant somewhere else. That takes time and effort for not much return and I know that in advance – but yet I try to save as many as I can. So a 10 minute job takes me over an hour.

A note on the carrots – I planted predominately one variety using standard seeds but did a small row using pelleted seed. Not sure where I got that seed – it might have been a bonus thrown in by a seed company as a reward for ordering – but I’ve always been dubious about pelleted seed. The big advantage with the pelleted seed is that it’s much, much easier to deal with. The pellets are about the size of a BB as compared to normal carrot seed which is about 10 seeds in the same size. So in planting carrots, with the pelleted seed it’s easy to space the pellets correctly and thus, eliminate the thinning task. The part that has surprised me is that the pelletized seed has germinated in about the same time as the non-pelleted seed and with about the same germination rate. So next time I buy carrot seed, years from now, I’ll probably go with the pelleted seed.

I was also surprised to see that the beets I planted on Tuesday had started germination by Friday. I did soak the seeds for about 8 hours prior to planting and it looks like that’s the trick. I routinely soak spinach seed to speed up germination but it seems to work just as well with beets. Beets also presents a thinning challenge because each seed contains the makings for multiple plants. What I’ve read is that I shouldn’t try to gently separate the seedlings and replant- exactly what I’ve done in the past. Apparently doing that disturbs the roots of both the one being removed and the one remaining which results in stunted growth. The recommended approach is to take a tiny pair of scissors and clip off all but one from the cluster. I’m going to religiously use that approach this season and see if I can break the jinx I have with beets.

I was still not quite over all the after affects of the cryo happening and was glad when the Surgery Center called this morning as a follow-up to see if I was having any difficulties or had any questions. It was an automatic system which prompted me to leave a message if I had any needs or questions and that the doctor or equivalent would follow up. I thought that was very efficient – except I never heard from them. By 5PM I decided to call on Dr. Yeungling – currently residing in the fridge – and see if there was an organic malt solution to my problem. Sure enough, my instincts were right and I was rewarded with a flow of goodness. So, if things got better with one adult beverage doesn’t it make sense that two would be twice as good?

I’ve never seen fire ants as we’re having this year. There are more mounds, bigger mounds, and the ants themselves seem more animated and aggressive. If you happen on a mound they are on you in a fraction of a second and chomping down hard and often. It must have something to do with the dry weather we had up until this month and then the recent storms. I have a giant economy size bag of fire ant killer and am doing my best to keep the garden ant free. That’s where I’m most vulnerable, kneeling down and working in the soil. Most recently I study the area I’m going to work carefully and don’t get down until I’m fairly sure my feet or knees won’t be in a danger zone. And I put on a pair of vinyl gloves with longer sleeves. But if I let me guard down, wham they have me. I’ve heard that pouring gasoline on a mound will do the job but hate to pour gasoline in the garden but if the Amdro isn’t up to the job, I’ll float them in gas in a heartbeat.

Up until yesterday, I wasn’t taking Herman Cain too seriously. I can’t mentally get past the national sales tax he likes. Then I heard him sing a rendition of the old Beatles song, “Imagine”, where he inserted the key line “Imagine there’s no pizza” and I was won over. I have to think congress would gut the sales tax part of his plan. If he would pick up Ron Paul’s plan to shut down about half the gov’t agencies, he’d have me hooked for sure.

I keep hearing that there are millions of jobs available that require technical skills but too few people interested in gaining those skills. Here’s my plan: free tuition to all kids in engineering and science curricula; paid for by doubling tuition for all kids in liberal arts majors. Maybe triple tuition for law school and political science majors. Or automatic payoff of student loans for those kids who have degrees in engineering or science or business. No Pell Grants for those planning on a degree in 17th century French literature.

Nancy is a car locker; I’m not. We have a 15 year old Toyota approaching 200K mileage. I honestly don’t care if someone steals it. So we’re in a restaurant and it starts raining cats and dogs, no umbrella, and Nancy has locked the car. Who should be the one who goes out and unlocks it? Seems pretty straight forward to me.

The peas, onions and radishes that we planted last weekend have popped out and seem to be doing just fine. This cooler weather and an occasional shower are getting the job done. The carrots have yet to pop but they normally take a couple of weeks so no concern yet. I’m going to push forward under the assumption that this cool weather is here to stay and plant beets. How’s that for a gutsy move. For whatever reasons, I have bent my pick on beets here. We got a few last year but certainly nothing compared to the number planted or the loving care and attention I gave them. I’ve also taken advantage of the fall weather to fill in open spaces among the cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce with spares. It’s very normal that I lose a few here and there after planting and I always start some backup seeds just to fill in as needed. Sometimes the sun proves too much but more often one of the critters – four legged or insecta – take their share. Actually that’s not so bad because the fill in spares mature a bit later so the overall crop is extended and more spread out for the table.

Got a tomato experiment going. My San Marzano’s just haven’t done as well as a fall crop as they did as a Spring crop. I’m fairly sure it has to do with the critters gnawing away, day after day. Next time I try this I’ll hold off a month more so that the crop comes ready in November instead of September. I did start several tomato plants, not San Marzano’s, 6 weeks later and those are just now coming to blossom and look just fine – even a few green tomatoes. Too soon to label them successful since the San Marzano’s also looked good at the point where they started producing blossoms. The experiment is that I took one plant that was in particularly bad shape and trimmed it substantially. Maybe trimmed is an understatement – butchered is closer to the actual condition of the plant. Not a leaf or a twig left on the bush – nothing but a thick stem and a few bare branches. Will it recover and generate all new, fresh foliage? If yes, will it produce tomatoes? My expectations are that it will produce new foliage but won’t have time to produce fruit before it gets too cold. But you never know, we could have an unusually warm winter and be feasting on bonus tomatoes in January.

I’m back to adding a little space to the garden. Generally what has limited expansion is the availability of compost as apposed to actual space. I’ve created an incredible amount of compost over the past 3-4 years but most of it has gone to increasing the depth of the plantable space rather than increasing the areal dimensions. I’ve used the width of the trenches between growing rows as a variable – making the trench narrower as I have enough compost to widen a planting row. Today I filled in another 20 SF and by the end of December will add about that much again. If you think about a garden of 1000SF, another 20 or 40 SF seems hardly worth concerning yourself about but if you consider that, on average, plants require about 1 SF – then the added space means 20-40 more cabbages, broccolis, or whatever. If you think about root crops – carrots, onions, beets, radishes – I plant these about 10-12 per SF so 20 SF produces more onions than you would use in a year. For me it’s not as much about the quantity that can be produced but the ability to experiment with techniques or varieties with no concern about the end result. It also lets me do a much better job of time spacing to keep a more continuous flow of goodies.

I was really ok with this cryogenic procedure up until 3 hours before the event. In my mind and based on what the doc and his nurse had explained to me, the event would be much like the biopsy in terms of my experience. The procedure – my term for the event – was scheduled for 1PM and at 10AM a nurse called to check on me and tell me she would be visiting the house tonight and for the next few days. Whoa, what’s that all about. Plus she used the word “surgery” as in “post surgery”. I was not concerned about having a procedure but surgery………………. I also hated it that she used the word “large” when describing the needle to be used in the procedure. She said that the biopsy used multiple small needles whereas this event used just one “large” needle. I didn’t need to know that at all. What is “large”?

Anyway, it’s done and I’m home. Sorry I haven’t updated in a few days but sitting at the computer was not comfortable. Today I get the catheter removed and have a bladder scan to make sure the plumbing is working per plan. All in all, this ended up being a bit more than I expected. Having a catheter installed for 5 days is quite a bit more of a burden than it was for one day and the normally simple act of relieving your bladder almost brings tears to the eyes. Good thing I’m so tough!! I do have a relatively high pain threshold but was forced to resort to pain medication on Sunday. Half a percoset got the job done.

Back to regular commenting – It was interesting to see just how influential the media is on people and the Amanda Knox story did just that. As far as the media in the US was concerned, Amanda was an innocent victim of injustice in Italy; as far as the media in Italy was concerned, Amanda was a she -devil killer so there were all kinds of demonstrations outside the court house when the innocent verdict was made. Couldn’t help but think about Casey Anthony and notice that in both cases, the media had significantly influenced public opinion when in neither case was there solid, hard evidence. Personally, I don’t think the media should be allowed access to any criminal proceedings at all after an arrest is made. In sooooo many cases the media becomes part of the decision process and sensationalizes the situation to sell their product. The news journalists become tabloid journalists and the news turns into biased opinion pieces.

Finally getting some real rain but it’s far too late in the season to be meaningful in terms of raising the lake level to anything resembling normal. I guess I’m assuming a normal fall/winter in terms of a dry season. The weather for the past week has been perfect for the garden and all the newly planted starts. Too much heat and direct sunlight makes it tough for the young plants to establish roots and also gives the grasshoppers and whatever other munchers are out there a free reign of the garden. Rain and overcast is just what the (garden) doctor ordered. Also took advantage of the weather to replace the sweet potatoes with onions and snow peas. The girls (Alyssa and Kamyrn) helped and really got their hands dirty. We ended up planting 30′ of peas and 90+ onions. There has to be another couple hundred onion sets – Nancy bought two pounds which turns out to be a jillion or so. Instead of raising them all as large, cooking onions my plan is to harvest every other row as green onions. We planted them in rows separated by 6” which is a little tight but if I remove every other row early, that should leave the rest plenty of space and provide us with salad material all along the way. I also read that onions are great companion plants for cabbage and lettuce so I think I’ll intermix a few dozen where I have those plants growing now. After the girls left, I still had some unplanted space and didn’t want to miss the opportunity this weather break was giving so I did a carrot/radish patch. Of all the things I plant, these are my least favorite in terms of effort. The seeds are so tiny and the interspacing so small that it becomes tedious work to even do a small, 3’x6′ area. In the past, I’ve been borderline successful, at best, but this time have done all the appropriate things, up to and including, special root veggie fertilizer. We always manage to harvest a few so it’s never a total loss but it just never lives up to expectations.

The pic is the sweet potato harvest. To put it in perspective, this is the yield from 6 cuttings I started from the original batch that failed to produce any tubers at all.

Had a great Monday evening. There’s a food and wine event annually at EPCOT. We went with Tom and Tina last year and they bought us an annual pass – which we never used until Monday. There were a few days remaining on the pass so we all went again with one eye on the sky for the much threatened rain. Not a drop fell and we enjoyed the evening sampling the wares from around the world. I was in a beer and cheese mood and found plenty to take care of those cravings. The rest of the party pretty much did an eclectic sampling from such places as Australia, Mexico, Norway, France, Korea, Ireland and other countries that I can’t call to mind.

I think Democrats are in the catbird seat now with the likelihood that there will be two Democrats running – Obama and Romney. Perry self destructed and as much as I like Herman Cain, his 9% sales tax is a deal breaker for me. I think that’s an economy destroying move for sure. It will be interesting to watch this primary unfold if Sarah Palin throws her support behind Cain.

I broke the code on sweet potatoes. We – Alyssa, Kami, and I – dug up the two rows and harvested about 20 pounds. They ranged in size from monstrous to micro’s but no doubt, they look just like sweet potatoes. You’re supposed to let them set for about 2 weeks before eating – I think that stops the growth and starts converting something into sugar or starch. Have a feeling it will be a constant job keeping those rows free from new potatoes based on the extensive root system that was generated by these plants. I noticed that the texture of the soil where these plants grew was altogether different than where they failed to grow last season. This area was deep in leaf mulch compared to a more sandy soil and I did fertilize here based on the conjecture that the first batch was missing some nutrient. One thing for sure, sweet potatoes can be grown in the hottest summer so maybe next August I’ll start another batch.

So the new/refurb phone set came. It looked identical to the old set – same model numbers etc but there was a subtle difference that didn’t appear until the next day. My game plan was to use two of the new handsets with old base station and the remaining good headset from the original set. That would leave me a spare base station, one new handset and the original handset with the bad 4 digit. I’d put those away as spares. The instructions said to charge the batteries for 15-20 hours so I did just that. Trouble was that the new handsets didn’t communicate with the old base station. Plug in the new base station and the new handsets communicated just fine but the old handsets didn’t. That blew me away since I would expect any compatible (same model number) handset would work – how else could you order a replacement handset? To me it means that I have to reprogram all the phone numbers into the new base station. What a pain.

Then to make a bad start to a day even worse, I looked out at the greenhouse and saw that some items that went to bed in the greenhouse were on the lawn. In particular a bag of fertilizer was ripped open so that the rain could ruin it. I can only hope that the raccoon or possum or whatever critter got into it was properly poisoned – but not before he spread the word that the greenhouse was a bad place to visit. It does have a zip up door but I hadn’t intended to use it until the cold weather required it. Zipper doors are the weak spot to any tent so I figured that the least use possible was the best policy.

Want an example of Obama’s decision making ability? He created this jobs counsel, chartered to …………….. get the job engine moving. Sounds ok so far but who does he appoint as the head job getter? Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. All you have to do is take a look at GE’s performance since Jeff took over as CEO to know he’s the wrong guy. Just ask any GE shareholder. The company’s performance and the stock’s performance has been sliding down since he took the reigns from Jack Welch. Aside from moving the center of gravity of the company offshore, aside from plunging deep into the business of making windmills, aside from expanding the disastrous financial lending arm which put GE right up there with Bank of America in terms of making bad loans – seems to me he has taken a wrecking ball to one of America’s greatest legacy companies. What a loser and what an incredibly stupid choice to head a job creation counsel.

We’re tough on phones. About 6 months ago we bought a 3 headset cordless at Costco and as I recall it was just over $50. A month back I left one of the headsets out, it rained, and has never worked exactly right after that. It’s useable in terms of answering but the 4 digit doesn’t work so you can only dial numbers that don’t contain a 4. For us that’s a very livable situation, having 2 1/2 phones is about as good as having 3. Then we totally lost one of the headsets. The only thing we can think is that someone broke in while we were gone and stole one of our phones. Neither one of us misplaced it so what else could it be. Had it been the one with the missing 4, that would have been ok but it was one of the remaining good ones. So I went on line and found that a single headset, not the whole system, would cost just under $50. At the same site, I found that we could get a complete 3 phone system, factory refurbished, for $40. And there were no shipping charges or tax so, all in all, considering the rate we go through headsets, this is probably the right thing to do.

Got a big weekend coming up. Joanne and the girls are coming up on Saturday and we’re joining Tom and Tina at EPCOT Sunday for the annual Food and Wine Festival. We went last year and Tom bought us a one year pass – which we never used after that visit – but it’s still active for a few more days. Nancy bunged up her foot a few days ago so that may create an obstacle to the Disney trip but as of now, we’re still planning on it. I’ve got some good gardening activities planned for the girls. Going to pull out the sweet potatoes and plant onions and carrots in their place. If I don’t have any better luck with the sweets than last time, it would be more accurate to say we’re going to pull out the vines. Before we plant the new stuff, we’ll work in some new organic material and sprinkle the area liberally with a special “root crop” fertilizer formulation. Planting onions is easy to do and something I’m guessing the girls will like doing.

We have a new predator prowling the territory, a feral cat. He/she is a nice looking, smallish cat with white fur on all four legs from about the knees down so it’s probably a house cat that has taken to the wild. I’m ok with that so long as one day it doesn’t turn into a clan/passle/gaggle/pride or whatever the correct term for a family of cats is. It must be doing ok here even though nobody is feeding it or maybe it goes home at night and then comes here for hunting and catting around. If it’s a good cat it would keep the mice/rats/rabbits and small snakes on the run. It’s definitely not a fat, lay around all day kind of cat but rather seems to be constantly on the prowl. And very spooky around people, which is also a good thing.

Believe it or not, some of the citrus is turning color already. The tangerines are turning orange and the Ruby Red grapefruit is lightening, some almost yellow. To me, the color is mid November coloring, not early October. Our summer was much drier than usual so that may be the factor driving the earlier maturity. I’m wondering if the fruit will be drier than it should be?

What’s with all this Listeria food thing going on? I thought listeria was some kind of mouthwash or the disease you got if you used to much listerine. At first I was ok with melon problems in Colorado then next thing you know it’s lettuce from California and something or other from Arizona. All of a sudden it doesn’t seem like a one time, avoid one item problem but spreading to all fresh veggies. I’m very suspicious that it just so happens to occur exactly when the output from our garden is at it’s seasonal lowest. We’re pretty much down to eggplant and peppers and that will get old really quick. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, how about the organic growers are sprinkling a little listeria around to get you to switch to organic.

Seen no signs of the bear(s) in over a month. I solved my personal problem by putting the trash can in the shed up to the day of pickup but not everyone has done that and I haven’t seen any signs at all that their trash cans have been attacked. What I think is that the same folks that eliminate gators from the lake, should any decide to take up residence, took care of the bear in the same fashion. So somewhere there’s a brand new bear skin rug laying beside an alligator rug.

Read something in the paper about growing pomegranates in Florida. That may be my next project after I do a little research. This UF professor is pushing a new variety he developed specifically for Florida and believes there can be a whole new cash crop for the state. I honestly don’t care much about that other than it would probably reduce the outrageous prices charged. I can buy small trees for $10 from the county so $$ is no issue. What is a consideration is that the only place I really have to plant a couple is currently shaded by a medium size camphor tree and some scrub palmetto so it would most likely take a day of hard labor to get them in. I don’t want to go to all that trouble only to find that they won’t fruit for 20 years or require some special kind of spraying for fighting off the elements.

Getting used to the cooler weather and can see why people enjoy it. The best part for me is that we can open up the house – doors, windows – and let in the fresh air and jungle sounds. This house is very well built and it’s amazing how much difference it makes when it’s open. All of a sudden you hear the birds, squirrels, leaves, pine cones and acorns falling; an occasional train passing, boats and skiers on the lake. None of those sounds make it through the doors and windows all summer long. Best of all, no air conditioning – we usually have two months before we occasionally have to turn the heat on but that’s only at night – so a wide open house for the next 7-8 months.

Ok, life as I know it has changed. The Gators lost big time and it was “cold” when I went out this morning. The air had a real bite to it this morning as I went up to get the paper. According to the thermometer on the front porch it was 60. I’m already feeling nostalgic for the 90’s of August. Just knowing that before long it will be in the 50’s has me twitching. No more shorts, sleeveless T’s or sockless flip-flops. No dripping, sweaty garden workouts for 6 months and no mid day clothes changes or three shower days. As far as the Gators, this loss was probably a good thing since I no longer have to worry about things like the SEC championship, national rankings and can go back to the more routine Gator things – like the FSU game and the Georgia game. Nothing else matters. Even the fact that the starting quarterback was injured and maybe out for a while, takes the sting out of any defeats that may come along.

Talk about calibration – The car cover we use for the Merc was wearing out where wearing out means the material had thinned to the point where you could see through it. – I think the technical term is threadbare. Nancy stopped to get a new one and guess what, it has a 5 year warranty – exactly how long the original lasted. When new, the material has a coating to which nothing clings. As it wears, the first thing to go is the coating and it becomes an ever cling fabric. We keep the car under a carport but here in the woods there are always leaves flying around and once the coating wore off, the leaves started attaching to the cover. It made the whole thing look like a camo cover. Maybe that’s why the bears never attacked the car. Actually I have a use planned for the old cover – it will fit nicely over the greenhouse as a thermal blanket.

Living next door to Fred Sanford can be a good thing. Part of the furnishing for the green house came directly from his salvage operation on an old travel trailer. I made a nice cover for the table that will protect it from the water that invariably spills inside a green house. Almost anything I need to codge together from bits and pieces can be had at George’s and if they don’t exactly fit what I need, he has all the tools to create or modify as required.

So, all in all, the greenhouse is ready to go and will be full of plants by the end of October. I do have to make one confession – it’s carpeted. Lest you think I’ve gone over to the dark side or become OCD on all things greenhouse, this is something I was nominally backed into. A few weeks ago I was just fine sans greenhouse. I used the screen porch as a perfectly adequate substitute. The problem was that my bride was not necessarily happy to have all the flats, seedlings, potting soil and misc starting goodies in the porch so when she spotted the greenhouse at Harbor Freight, she jumped all over it. At the time it didn’t seem like a bad idea and I think I mentally had it that this new greenhouse would be an adjunct to the screen porch, not a replacement. So we were not on the same page from the get go. All of my goodies are now in the greenhouse. You’ll also recall a couple weeks back I had a long position in limestone and builders sand, perfect to fill an area alongside the house where the greenhouse would sit. In my mind that was a nice dirt floor that would never require anything further, no matter what I dropped on it. I didn’t think ahead to the fact that some of this sand would stick to my shoes and make it to the house. Hence, the carpet. It was an old carpet that I had in the shed so it didn’t involve any acquisition – it’s more the principal of it that bothers me. There’s no room for a cot so I guess I’m safe from that potential.