Well I drank the first of the Berry Smoothies last night. It would classify as the worst Berry Smoothie in the galaxy but it wasn’t nasty. That’s good because I had another one to put down in a few hours. It would really have been cruel and unusual punishment if it was killer bad and you had 8 hours between doses to fret about it. As to the CAT scan itself, nothing terrible. They inject some iodine into the blood stream which is simple enough and then move you in and out of a machine. I think the whole thing took about 20 minutes and is very ho hum.

There has been a silver lining to all this testing. When we first moved here we found a truck stop that defined the term greasy spoon. But the food and service were great. It was a regular spot for us until it was forced out of business a few years back due to a lease issue the owner of the building wanted to sell the property. A few hundred feet away was a Waffle House that went belly up about the same time and after a 6 month hiatus, Big Rig took over the Waffle House and reopened as Big Rig 2. We jumped right back in and found that while shut down, all the great employees that worked together like a finely oiled machine, had scattered and the newby’s were simply not up to the task. We tried it twice more with about 3 months between each trial but alas, it never returned to anything close to it’s Big Rig roots. Fast forward to a month or so ago when I started on this torture test circuit. One of the tests was early in the AM and required two days of a liquid diet. We have a favorite breakfast restaurant near the test facility but forgot that it was closed on Monday. Since we were only a few minutes from Rig 2 and since we had been seeing an ever fuller parking lot, we decided to give it another chance. Back to greatness! Aside from the fact that it’s located about 2 minutes from the hospital, the anticipation of a meal there takes the sting out of having to visit the doc’s.

Politics – What I like most about Rick Perry is that he didn’t attend an Ivey League school; what bothers me the most is why would anyone in their right mind want to move from Austin to Washington. Found it interesting that Warren Buffet and George Soros, both very rich libs, think that the rich should pay more taxes. I think each of those guys are worth something on the order of $40B so if they really believe what they’re saying, why don’t they just donate 99% of their wealth to the Treasury? That would still leave them with $400M for their remaining few years on earth. Sure they both give plenty to charity, and get the tax break for that, but why not just turn it over to the Feds? They could get the super rich Hollywood and Silicon Valley crowd to join in and among them, really put a dent in the national debt.

Hard to believe but I’m starting my seedlings for the winter crop already. Got started with cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels. This season I’m going to try to remain disciplined as far as planting fewer seeds at any one time but more continuously over the season. It’s kind of a guessing game in terms of when space will become available since much of that is determined more by weather than clock. An extra warm, extra long fall makes for less space for early planting of winter crops so I end up with seedlings but no place to plant them; a cold, short fall generates lots of space by killing off the later summer crops but the space goes unused if there are no seedlings available to plant. The saving grace is that seeds are cheap so I just plant and start things assuming ma nature is going to cooperate and take my lumps as she dishes out a dose of reality.

It’s also a fact that I have more plantable space this year than last. I haven’t increased the size of the garden perimeter but have increased the width of the individual planting rows. When I first recognized that my problems were soil related a few years back, I organized the garden in rows where the width of the plantable area and the width of the walking rows was determined by the amount of good soil I had. I was limited by the amount of compost I was making which, prodigious by any standards, was still only a finite amount. My focus was on soil depth, making the planting rows higher, so there was good soil and good drainage deep down. Once I was satisfied with soil quality in any given row, I start widening the planting area and shrinking the walking space between rows. As an example, last winter my planting rows probably averaged 30” wide whereas the space between rows was more like 40”. The season before that the planting rows were more like 2‘ wide. By using the compost to widen rows throughout last spring and this summer, those widths are about reversed and in some areas, the space between the growing rows is down to 2′. Doesn’t sound like much but it’s the difference between planting a row of cabbage 2 plants across vs 3 plants – 50% more plants per row. Some of the rows were wide enough for 1 plant whereas now all will handle at least 2. It’s hell being an engineer and breaking everything down into a design calculation.

Finally some Ghost peppers. I started the seeds in March and put the plants in April 24. With most pepper varieties I’m familiar with, we should have been picking by the end of June or early July. These will probably be mature in September. I don’t plan to test them for heat or flavor but rather ship them off to the hot pepper fanatics in the family. Anybody that wants a sample, let me know.

So the first of my test sequence is a CAT scan. By itself that seems fairly passive but to spice it up, they give you a bottle of guacum to drink the night before and another for an hour before the scan. The bottle is labeled “berry smoothie” and the label actually sports a picture of a cornucopia spilling over with mixed berries; very attractive. If it was really a berry smoothie don’t you think they’d have just given me a chit for a smoothie at McDonalds? Each bottle is 450ML, whatever the hell an ML is in regular people measurements. It looks way too much to chug. Be nice if they offered it in both an alcoholic and non-alcoholic version. The only directions on the bottle are to shake well. Nothing about mixing with gin or vodka or a recommended chaser. It doesn’t say not to though. I’d look it up on the internet but I’m afraid I’d read all kinds of nasty potential side affects like those commercials for drugs on TV.

Talk about a bad week. Yeah, we all lost it big time in the market – welcome to Obama world. But there’s way more to it. I found out that if your PSA starts to rise again after you’ve completed radiation treatments, there is a whole new world of torture tests out there waiting. More to come. This morning ended the week in the same fashion it has progressed all week. I made a list of things to do which started with spraying round-up on the driveway to kill the weeds. I use a very concentrated version that is available to commercial growers which I get here in nursery land. I bought a gallon about 5 years ago and transferred it into one of those plastic Tide soap jugs that has a push button top to to allow easy measurement. The jug sits on it’s side and I just bring the spray bottle up under the top, and give it 10 pops on the push button. Each tap of the button is a tablespoon so I give it 10 taps into the spray bottle, add 2 gallons of water, and spray away. This morning the top broke off after the 2nd push on the button. I’d guess the container was half full of the toxic goop and, if I’m lucky, only half of it spilled out on the porch. Cleaning up that mess set me back half an hour. In the middle of all that Nancy said she was leaving, bridge day, and that there was a load of freshly washed clothes in the basket and would I be a prince and hang them on the line. My niece is visiting this weekend and she loves freshly washed and sun dried sheets. I got the load all hung when the clothesline broke. The line is probably 5 years old, maybe the same age as the Tide jug. So the market broke, I broke, the Tide jug broke, and the clothesline broke. The market will come back, I can get a new clothesline and Tide jug, so that all bodes well for me too. In retrospect, I’m wondering if this string of bad things didn’t start last winter when the spec’s quit biting.

I’m really concerned for those folks who are blaming the Tea Party for the current financial disasters unfolding. If I have it right, the Dem’s were in control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress for the first two years and the White House plus the Senate ever since. And I think I’m right when I say that there were only 75 Republicans elected to the house this past election who were supported by the Tea Party – that would be fewer than 20% of the total membership; Sixty freshman representatives. So how is it that such a small group in the lower house can really be blamed for anything? What the Fed was saying when they decided to keep interest rates near zero for 2 more years is that nothing much is going to happen to make things economically better until after the election and a new cast of characters enters the stage. Makes sense to me.

And personally, I’m happy to see Rick Perry enter the race. I think one of the big roots of this country’s financial problems and employment problems can be traced to the Obama energy policy. He focused like a laser on basically shutting down the fossil fuel industry in this country and threw billions of stimulus dollars at flakey energy policies – chasing the wind and sun rays. And converting food into fuel. I don’t much care what else Rick Perry promotes, for sure he will jump on the energy issue and get us back drilling. Drilling in Alaska, drilling offshore and fracking shale. He understands the relationship between energy and the economy -the current group is clueless. I really believe that if energy is cheap and abundant, everything else falls in line.

Got beared again last night but I’m chalking this one up to a victory for the home team. We heard lots of dogs barking last night and had speculated that the bear was roaming around. Sure enough my trash can was up-ended again. But surprise, it was empty. Our trash is picked up on Monday and we didn’t have anything to put in it so it was empty. I didn’t put it in the shed as I have been for a week or so for just that reason. I guess that tells me that the bear is not smelling something that tickles his fancy but rather doing a sight thing. Based on that, I guess hiding it in the shed has been successful.

Moving on to phase 2 of my fire pit revival project. I planted it this spring and got pathetic results so started loading it with organics in May, layer after layer of leaves, grass clippings and a wide variety of other yard debris. Yesterday I tilled it all in and created 4 rows. The rows are now elevated nearly a foot above last season’s surface and the tilled organics are at least 18” deep. The rows are 8′ long by 3′ wide and the plan is to put in two tomatoes in one row to start the experiment. The actual transplant will take place circa September 1, the tomatoes being 6 weeks along at that point. I have been saving gallon jugs for deep root watering and planted the first one in the designated tomato row. What I do is drill holes along the bottom of the jug then bury it such that the neck and fill hole is a few inches above the surface. I can then fill the jug with water or even a few spoons of soluble fertilizer which insures that the moisture and goodies are distributed down by the deeper roots of the plant. Next I dug holes about a foot deep exactly where I plan to put the tomatoes and liberally sprinkled them with sugar, my first line of nematode defense. Once a day for the next month I’ll fill each of the holes with scalding water, sun baked in the hose -my second line of nematode defense. Last for now, I crumbled a couple of egg shells into the bottom of the hole to provide calcium to the plants. Supposedly that prevents tomato bottom rot, a typical tomato problem. About a week before planting, I’ll sprinkle each hole with a good dose of special fertilizer then overtop that with very well prepared compost. I don’t need the tomatoes at all since there will be more than enough planted in the main garden so no great loss if all these preparations prove for naught.

Haven’t decided yet what I’m going to plant in the remaining rows but for sure nothing before September. I’m leaning towards maybe trying some early cabbage plants.

Oh yeah, understand why they call if Star of David okra. When you cut it, the inside cavity is exactly star shaped. Both varieties were tender and delicious. Going to have to be very vigilant in terms of harvesting. The okra is colored the same as the stems so it’s tricky spotting them inside the foliage. Not sure about these particular varieties but if they get too large, they are totally inedible. Maybe I should let a couple get big just to experiment and see if perhaps these never get woody. That would really be a big deal.

In the previous post I mentioned that I was growing two varieties of Okra. When I picked the Start of David I must have missed the Annie Oakley or it grew overnight. In either case, this picture shows the difference between the two varieties. I’m making a side dish tonight that will combine these with other garden goodies – specifically Louisiana Long eggplant, Marconi grilling peppers and White Wing onions. I saute these in a little olive oil, pour in some tomato sauce and season with fresh oregano and basel. Oila! I’ve made this dish a few times sans okra but can’t see any reason why that won’t just add a little something to the mix.

People visiting the garden these days are blown away and several of these visitors are people who know something about gardening. I knew it was much nicer than in the past but apparently it’s now unbelievable. An August garden in Florida is a burned out wasteland waiting a month or two for replant. Mine is full, green and putting out plenty of veggies. The first thing people say is “you must just be pouring water on it all the time”. Nope, mostly natural rain watering or via a 15 minute spot watering about 6PM. I know what the difference is but it’s even surprising me. Florida soil is almost completely sand so water runs right through it, no retention at all. My soil is now almost completely organic material from the surface to nominally 18” deep. If you dig down a foot or so, it’s moist. Although I don’t have any measurements, I suspect my soil is also cooler and that too may be part of the success. I don’t think it’s the nutrients because most Florida gardeners pour fertilizer in prodigious quantities so if it was just nutrients, they’d have great gardens. They also comment that I must spend hours weeding because there are virtually no weeds. One thing that does grow here in summer gardens are the weeds and is the thing that drives most gardeners back in the house. For me, basically no weeds. I think the answer must again be organic soil and the fact that I am not pounding it with water hours a day. I try to keep a leaf layer on the surface which fairly well keeps any growing media from the surface so my theory is that the wind carried weed seeds have nothing to root into. I think in the end, they simply don’t believe me and assume I’m out there 24/7 watering and weeding. I’m ok with that.

It’s also interesting that I’m having no bug problems. Usually by May I’m spraying whatever it is I can find that has a skull and crossbones to kill off the evil borers, leaf eaters, or whatever manner of attack bugdom throws at us. And normally my chemical defense or offense is totally useless and I end up splitting the crop about 50/50 with the creepy crawlers. No problems at all this year. I guess it’s possible that the plants are so healthy they have natural anti bug mechanisms at work. Maybe healthy leaves are too tough or taste bad. What I think more likely, the dry summer we’ve had is not conducive to insect life. We basically did not have a yellow fly season or a love bug season this year (so far). Works for me.

I luckily escaped a disaster this morning. I mentioned a while back that a wasp had nailed me when I was retrieving the daily newspaper so I’ve been careful to look inside the box before sticking my hand in ever since. I did the same this morning but unbeknownst to me, a covey/herd/gaggle/flock/swarm of wasps had started working on a nest, in earnest, after I got the paper yesterday. As I started withdrawing the paper I heard the unmistakeable buzz and did a high speed yank out and backing up move. A few came out but I was far enough away to avoid their vengeance. I came up to the house, got a can of wasp spray, and blasted the nest. There had to be at least a dozen working the nest so it was a clean wipeout. Unlike bears, I don’t think wasps are a protected species but I still won’t call the wildlife folks to report the encounter.

Starting to spot small okra pods forming. Most people haven’t seen okra growing so I’ve added the pic’s. The blossoms are particularly pretty and dress up the garden nicely. They look a bit like hibiscus blossoms. I’m not sure how tall these plants will grow but right now they’re 3′ with no sign they’ve peaked out. I’m going to keep a very close eye on them and be sure to pick the pods earlier than I have in the past. The particular varieties I’ve chosen this year are totally different than I’ve grown in the past so maybe they won’t get woody as quickly but I’m not going to let them get away from us this year. One variety is called Star of David so maybe this is a Kosher crop. The picture doesn’t show it too well but it’s more deeply furrowed and more plump than the Clemson Spineless most people grow. I’m going to put this guy on the grill and see how well it performs in that venue. The other variety is called Annie Oakley so I don’t have a clue what to expect that is reminiscent of a female sharp shooter.

So far, so good on the mid summer cucumbers. Cucumbers are right up there with tomatoes in terms of what people want. The plants are looking beautiful and loaded with small cucumbers and blossoms. My calculation says we’ll be picking 8/24 but they look a bit ahead of schedule to me. Deep down inside I really expected that the high heat and humidity would be too much and that still may be the case but I’m really encouraged at this point. I have two varieties going, time and location spaced, so the youngest plants have not yet developed any fruit but have great looking foliage. I’m going to start a couple more in a few weeks and see if we can keep cucumbers on the table through November. That will be a big change from the past.

The bear guy came by and talked to all the folks in the neighborhood individually. First point he made emphatically was that they were not going to relocate the bear. We live in bear country so just get over it. Having said that he did offer some possible aids. They have several motion detecting solutions – one blows a siren, another turns on a sprinkler – and an electric fence that shocks but doesn’t kill. They’ll loan you any of these for 60 days at which time you can either give them back or buy them. The electric fence for the trash can is the most expensive at $100 installed. The hook is that everyone in the neighborhood has to agree to do something so that the bear will simply route totally around this area. I can tell you, that ain’t going to happen! He also said the bear was quite capable of tearing down the shed where I currently hide the can. We have very minimal foodstuff that goes into the trash so I think what we’ll do for a while is just put what few items we have – mostly bones – in a zip bag in the freezer and then just transfer the bag to the trash can on trash pickup day. The burn barrel is also a viable alternative for trash. My big concern is that the grill is inside the screen porch and that must give off meaty odors, wouldn’t you think? I really don’t want him/her crashing through the screen to lick the grate.

The last paint job came out so well, I decided to do another wall. Talk about luck (or planning), I ended up with about 20′ out of 100 yds of the blue tape left over and maybe a cup of paint out of a gallon. Just enough to put in a jar for future touch up. I have to admit I was getting a little nervous and jerky as I was coming close to finishing the paint and still seeing some blank wall in front of me. The minimum amount of this particular paint you can buy is a full gallon. I was thinking I could hang a picture over the unfinished section if I had run out prematurely. Luckily Nancy was at her quilt club so that discussion never happened. In the end, this new wall really turned out well so I’m done painting for a couple of years at least. Without a doubt, this new blue masking tape is the greatest boon to home painting to come along in a while. The taping itself is easier and removal is flawless. I am basically a sloppy painter but you would think Picasso did these walls.

Politics – In the past whenever someone asked me which Administration I thought was the worst ever, with no hesitation I pointed to the Carter administration. About two years ago I opined that the Obama administration was starting to smell like the Carter Administration. Now I think Obama is making Carter look pretty good. I don’t believe there is one economic indicator which is not worse today than it was when Obama took office, not one. Clearly this administration does not have a clue how to turn the economy – not a clue and at this point I’m just wondering how bad it’s going to get and if 2012 will ever get here. Why is business shut down? Simple. People remember the Carter administration and have decided to wait it out. Maybe we’ll get a president with some private sector experience; someone who’s had to meet a payroll; someone who at least has held a private sector job; or maybe some executive experience, even if it’s in the public sector. This is turning out to be the most anti – business, pro gov’t crowd in my memory. Watching all this unfold is making me ill.

Sweet potato vines are really tough. They were taking over one section of the garden so I cut them way back and threw the vines into a wheelbarrow rather than into the compost pile. I saw how easily they root and didn’t want to take a chance they’d start rooting in the compost. One week later, the cuttings look as fresh as they did when I cut them. Nothing survives in the heat and direct sun for more than a day here – that is except sweet potatoes.

The rest of the sweet potato news is not so good. I dug them up after 100 days and found zip, nada, none. There were some wide, reddish spots in the roots that you could tell should have developed into tubers but just didn’t get the job done. The only thing I can figure is that the soil must be missing something necessary for tuber development. I’m going to do some research and see if I can learn something finite to do with the new starts I put in last month. They look great but obviously that’s no indication of what’s happening underground and there’s no sense letting them just take up space if they’re not going to earn their keep. There was one bit of good news – when I pulled out the roots there was a decent population of earthworms living there. That’s indicative of healthy soil and something that’s been missing from the garden since the get go. I had a compost pile ready to go and laid down about 4” of this black gold on the row and will plant green beans there later this week.

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Follow-up – So I called the State Ag center to talk to a sweet potato expert and also read a few articles. The consensus is that my soil is phosphorus deficient. It turns out that root crops need soil richer in phosphorus and potassium and I guess my soil is just that. I’ve consistently had trouble growing decent carrots and beets but I attributed that to the general condition of the soil and assumed that once I got the organic material levels up to snuff, all other problems would disappear. The Ag guy even suggested that soil could be too “organic”, meaning not enough native soil. My objective has been to totally eliminate the native soil which was infested with nematodes so perhaps I’ve reached a saturation point. I do know that in most places, the pure native soil – aka sand- is down about 18” at this point so maybe I need to be adding more soil to the compost mix.

For me, the paint job came out just great. A very close scrutiny might show up some flaws but to my integrating eyes, perfection. I also came up with something for the bear. I removed the blue masking tape, probably 200′ worth, and wadded it into a couple large, sticky balls. I’m going to put them in the trash can and let nature takes it’s course.

Not all the wild life is threatening. For whatever reason, I’ve never seen as many hummingbirds as we have this year. We don’t have any feeders but there are enough flowering plants around to attract them. Still, I think we need to get a couple feeders up and going to lure them closer to the house. My neighbor has four or five around his house and they are really swarming up there.

The corn seed I planted germinated in 3 days! Too soon to say how much of it germinated but a few have already popped out, two to three days before I expected. So did the acorn squash. I guess the higher temperatures and the recent rains have made things happen much faster than I’m used to. It’ll become obvious quickly how these new seedlings will deal with the mid summer heat. I think the corn will do ok for the first couple of weeks since I planted it amongst the butternut squash which should provide plenty of shade for the seedlings and maybe keep the soil just a tad cooler.

My neighbor, George, has a new toy. He picked up an attachment to a propane tank that creates a flame thrower. It has a turbo mode that shoots the colorless flame tongue about 15′. So he can load the propane tank onto the golf cart and ride along slowly torching the weeds along the driveway. It sounds exactly like a hot air balloon taking off so I can hear him coming. He also got a new computer. Guess which of the toys is the most fun to play with. If he has a much trouble with this new computer as with the old, I’m seeing a flame thrower attack on it in the near future. A bear burner?

It’s a bear. One of the neighbors spotted it last night, standing up knocking over her garbage can. It’s got a regular route and moves from house to house knocking over the cans and rummaging through the contents. According to Norah, it’s really large and “scary”. I’ve thought about moving the can into the shed but do I want it looking around for it or are we better off letting it do it’s thing a hundred feet or so away from the house. I did notice that the Mexican’s house up on the corner was left alone. Not sure if that means theirs is not on the route or if the bear doesn’t like Mexican food. There’s no sense at all calling Animal Control – they do absolutely nothing. Maybe he’ll wander over to the folks on the other side of the lake – the gator shooters – and they’ll solve the problem the old fashion way. My pellet gun might just piss him off. The other possibility is to just burn the trash and forget about the can entirely. In the mean time, the plan is to move the can farther away from the house and closer to the Mexican place. Plan B, eat more Mexican food.

Bear update – in addition to the sighting by Norah, it came up on George’s back deck. Barbara heard something and turned on the deck light and there it was. Now that’s close. It got into two of their bird feeders. Get a mental picture of a bird feeder 6′ up on 2” galvanized pipe and visualize that pipe bent double. Or better yet, check out the pic. Hard to believe but that’s exactly what it did. Bears must like bird seed. George also has Koi ponds up against the house so if it ever figures that out………………….

Back to being a bachelor. Nancy and a friend are hitting the quilting circuit in Georgia for a few days. I’m going to paint an interior wall (or two) that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while. With Nancy not around, I can do it the way I want, at my own pace, and without worrying about the cleanup until it’s really time to clean up. I just crank up the XM tuned to either The Coffee House or The Loft and let the paint fly. Since the last time I did any painting and this time, either a new product has arrived or it was there all the time and I’ve just found out about it. I always used masking tape to protect those areas not to be painted, ceilings, molding etc. I saw an ad on TV a while back for a blue tape designed specifically for this job and was sold on trying it. I can tell you now, from personal experience, that it really made the taping job easier to apply and easier/cleaner to remove. It’s certainly not cheap but I’m ok with that and rank this innovation right up there with iphones. In fact I like it better than iphones.