Joe’s Blog
• • • • •

Here we go again. This one has me a bit more concerned than Fay and I’m expecting it to be more of a wind event. The path seems to be unstable so really not sure how much advance work to do.

Joey’s 5th treatment is today and we’re a bit apprehensive about this one because it’s only 12 days since the last one. We’ll see. The worst of it for him will probably be just about the time Hannah is making it’s presence felt along the east coast and I doubt he’ll feel much like battening down the hatches. He’s handling this remarkably well and I think I know why. He doesn’t have time to be sick. Aside from a fair amount of cruise business, he has a couple of consuming projects going. For example, he realized that in older half dollar coins, the intrinsic silver value is more than the face value of the coin. Once he found that out he started haunting banks for bags of half dollars - and gathers them at $7000 per trip to the bank. He then goes thru the 15000 coins and sorts out the “good” ones. He’s had some success and it’s certainly kept him occupied. Or maybe it’s the handwriting projects. A year or so back he got interested in old fashion, Ben Franklin like, handwriting. He attended a seminar and classes in Ohio and spends quite a bit of time practicing and perfecting his craft. So he offered his services to the Cocoa Historical Society on a gratis basis. Now he’s on the trail of old, antique Singer sewing machines called Featherweights. Nancy has had one for a couple of years and believe it or not, these 50+ year old machines are the machines of choice for quilters because of their size, portability, and the fact that the stitches are so true and consistent. Last week he spotted one at a flea market and called to ask if he should buy it and what it was worth. He took a chance and got it for Nancy even though he couldn’t ascertain that it worked. They drove right here from the flea market and sure enough, it worked like a champ. I cleaned and oiled it and it performs perfectly. See what I mean - no time for sick sick.

My time for the past couple of weeks has been consumed trying to recover the garden. That’s code for moving wheel barrow after wheel barrow of fill dirt to the garden to try to raise it up a foot or so. One thing I learned is that the storm totally aroused the fire ants and mosquitoes. I was working in one area of the garden and dug into a fire ant mound that must have been the NYC of fire ant habitats. About 10’ away I hit London. These were masses of ants that literally resembled living orbs of jelly. I managed to get away from both of these with just a few bites but if I had not been alert, I think they could have consumed me in a few seconds. And the mosquitoes remind me of the masses we had back in the 50’s. That’s where you fear breathing because you’ll suck in a mouthful. And these are different than the normal ones we get. These are huge and can hold about a gallon of blood. On a one by one basis, they’re easier to deal with than the smaller, faster ones but in a swarm, they black out the light. Maybe a good wind event is what we need to send these bad boys over to Tampa.

Politics - Sarah Palin. I was very soft on McCain and have always thought he was a Democrat throw back to the 50’s. I would vote for Palin in a heart beat. My kind of Republican. Hunts, fishes, eats moose - what more could you want? In favor of drilling and making the oil companies pay big for the privilege - not just talk but a track record on doing just that. Kicking corrupt politicians out of the system - not just talk, but a track record. I love it that she’s not a lawyer and not a blather, blather, blather legislator. Love that she’s a Journalist by trade, has run her own business and has several years of Executive level decision making. The bottom of the Republican ticket has more experience than the top of the other guys.. The thing this choice is going to do is bring more Republicans to the ballot box. McCain is big with Independents - those are people who really don’t know what they are; she’ll nail the Republican base where he’s shaky. No doubt she’ll pick up some disgruntled Clinton supporters who, let’s face it, were shafted. How you can end up with Biden - the presidential candidate who got the fewest number of primary votes - on the ticket instead of Clinton who won all the big states, is beyond comprehension. The Democrat voters said clearly “we don’t want this guy for president”. Hillary basically ran the table in the primaries after a bad start. Has to be personal because it sure defies common sense. So I guess the only thing we have to suffer through is the press beating up on her teen age daughter. I think they forget how many of us had teenage kids and know just how unpredictable that can be. And beating up on her is going to offend quite a few young ladies I’m sure.

I just love having a real person on the ticket.

Fay came and went (eventually) and other than wiping out the garden, was pretty much a good event here. We picked up the 8-10” we had hoped for and avoided the nasty flooding some areas experienced. I don’t believe we ever got wind over 35 mph and we only lost power for a few seconds Friday morning about 2AM. The lake is back up to what I’d call a normal level so I can start fishing from my boat again. Brevard County picked up quite a bit because the storm moved so slowly. My sister in Melbourne got over 30” between Tuesday and Wednesday which is fairly impressive. Lots of flooding - of course in subdivisions that didn’t exist 20 years ago. I checked with the Lake Mary Carbone’s and they were getting plenty of rain but no flooding and plenty of room still in the area retention ponds. They had some issues with the drainage pattern in the back yard since it was re-landscaped but nothing sounded serious. Funny how it floods more since the farms, raw land and jungles have been replaced with concrete. We really don’t have much flood danger here for exactly that reason - mostly rural, heavily vegetated with few paved roads. And since we’re elevated and on a well, we don’t have to worry about overloaded, flooded sewage systems that are causing so much concerns in the developed areas. The news channels have so much at stake for a blockbuster event, that they just beat these things to death. This one actually brought relief from the non stop story of Casey and Caylee Anthony. Thank goodness Michael Phelps got his medal job done before the storm.

As far as the garden goes - maybe I should have planted rice.

The biggest casualty was that Joey’s chemo appointment was postponed twice. He finally was treated on Thursday but the doc said he’ll go back on the regular Tuesday schedule for the next go round. Tuesday’s are good since he more or less recovers from the droopsies by Saturday when the cruise business is nominally best. He felt bad right after this treatment which is unusual but by the next day, he was feeling great. Then the follow up Neulasta shot followed by the 2 day hangover. He talked to the doctor a a bit about signs of progress or lack thereof. The Dr. said that all his blood numbers were good and that since all the symptoms he had before the diagnosis had disappeared, the signs were positive. Interestingly he said that since he never had any blood markers - meaning the cancer was never showing in any of the blood chemistry - there isn’t any positive way to check on the cancer directly until they do a PET scan downstream. I took that as positive since you’d have to guess that it’s not good for the blood to be impacted as it would be in a more advanced condition.

And the boat made it through unscathed. It remains to be seen whether all the rain raised the river to a level that will prevent them from sailing under the bridges for awhile. The mast is 65’ and the nominal clearance under the bridge is about 65’ - maybe a little more slack - but it might be that for a while they’ll have to cruise around between bridges rather than going under them. Since the river is part of the intracoastal system - open to the ocean at several places - it will only be high for a little while.

The olympics are getting lamer and lamer. With the storm we got to watch lots of daytime activities. Seems to me like they’ve incorporated lots of circus acts now. No kidding, I’m pretty sure I saw the one with little girls throwing rings around at Circqu de Soleil. So they kill softball and add artistic gymnastics. barf. I did enjoy the new dirt bike racing event. We got about an hour of boxing and virtually no basketball but plenty of phoo phoo events. The Olympics have definitely gone feminine. I vote to bring back chariot racing.

We had a great time with Chris. It could have been longer but not sure how much more country living he could deal with. He did bring us up to speed on a couple New York terms that I thought you need to know. Around here you get a hair cut. There they get their wig busted. And if you get your hair fixed up, that’s getting your wig bumped. So if you go to NY and need an emergency hair job, you know how to ask for it.

I also confirmed again how great it is to be out of the work force. Or rather, to have been in the work force prior to cell phones, texting, blackberries, etc etc. This generation of worker bees are tethered to the office by these devices. When I was on the road, if I needed to know something I called in - if and when a phone was available. If they needed me, they would leave a message with my secretary so on one call, I had a complete dump. And I could always just leave somebody in charge who could deal with the day to day minutia. Now when Joey, Tommy, or Chris are traveling - no exaggeration, it’s rare that 5 minutes would go by without some kind of electronic communication. With Tom that’s 24/7; Joey is saner and in his case, that’s how he books business. With Chris, it’s more or less constant all day and until he craters at night. The only reason I know Tom is 24/7 is because we traveled together to Missouri so I experienced the chirps of incoming messages all night. That has to be so stressful and something I just didn’t have to deal with.
—————
We’re waiting now for the storm named Fay. I suspect the only casualty will be my corn and Joey’s Chemo treatment which has been postponed a day. This treatment should mark the halfway point.

I did my due diligence to make sure we don’t get anything serious by filling up all the gas cans - 20 gallons worth - and positioning the generator for easy access. If we do lose power it tends to be lengthy since the power company doesn’t service us jungle folk on any kind of priority. We’ve had a couple of inches of rain in the past few days and if we’re lucky we could another 4-6 before it’s passed. I do enjoy the news during these events. My favorite is watching the news folks trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. “Now to our reporter stationed at the National storm center” The cameras pan a room with folks laid back with their feet on the desk drinking coffee and telling jokes. The reporter meanwhile is describing the scene as a beehive of activity, high tension etc. “Now we switch to Skip Skipson, on the beach”. The camera goes to a guy fully decked out in Nor’easter kind of gear with people swimming in a calm surf or just laying on beach towels reading. The reporter describes the high level of preparedness, high tension etc. And there’s always the thinning of the gene pool when some dumb ass does something like decide to climb a power pole to get a better view. In this case it was a guy who went kite surfing down in SW Florida when the storm was making landfall. They actually caught this guy flying horizontally for quite a distance and crashing into a building. This will probably count as a storm casualty but no doubt this guy was destined to die of the dumb ass at some time.
————–
Watching the Olympics on and off. I was disappointed with the fencing. I was expecting some Three Musketeer stuff - swinging from chandeliers, jumping on tables, slashing ropes that brought the tent down on the bad guy - you know what I mean. This Olympic version lasts at the longest 1 second. I never once saw anything resembling an Errol Flynn or Burt Lancaster move. No blood, no broken blades. Boring. I don’t think there should be an Olympic event that lasts less that 10 seconds except for the 100 meter races.

Other Olympic highlights:
rowing. very impressed that they can put so much weight into such a skinny boat. Not sure how in the world they get in and out unless the boat is put into some locking gate. I have a 32” wide John boat which would be considered a narrow John boat. You really have to be careful getting in and out to keep it from tipping. Just ask Fred.

The other sport I like to watch because I have some personal experience with is Kayaking
I can tell you that I would not make it one foot or one second on the kayak course before I’d be dumped. Of course I’d have my fishing equipment with me and these guys are not trying to cast while heading downstream. I actually did some white water stuff in Oregon that was about one ten thousandth of the wimpiest part of the olympic course and dumped a couple of times.

And I sure have some doubts about team makeup’s in terms of nationalities. For example there’s a guy playing on the German team whose great grandparents were from Germany. Give me a break. I should think at the very minimum you should have to have citizenship in a country to play on the national team.

The other crackup was watching the parade of countries in the opening ceremony. I’m totally convinced that some of those countries don’t really exist or are rich guys who bought an island and somehow get it classified as a country for tax reasons.

Next to the USA, I root for the Dutch teams. That’s because they wear gator colors.

My pet peeve - allowing events in the Olympics where there is no clear winner but rather some averaging of scores from judges. The ancient Greeks must turn over in their graves at the thought of all that 9.7 stuff. Can you honestly remember any Olympics in which there was not a judging controversy on one of these judged competitions? And can they test for age when testing for drugs. They have special olympics for disabled folks so maybe they should have a special olympics for children. It just seems wrong, wrong, wrong to have an olympic sport dominated by kids under 16. Synchronized swimming? Pleeese.
—————-
And last but not least, little Tommy is in Missouri and ready to start classes next week. Wow! How in the world did he go from a kid making his first cast to a college guy soooo fast?

Joey completed treatment 3 and so far his after treatment pattern is holding. We took Chris over to Cocoa Monday to see the boat. We had lunch with Joey and Mark and then did a grand tour of the beach from Melbourne south to Cocoa Beach. We stopped over at the Beach Place Guest House Resort where Joey goes to recuperate. I was impressed with the setup. It’s a set of cottages that were once off-base housing from the 40’s when it was Banana River Naval Air Station which predated Patrick Air Force Base. You can barely see the place from the road behind the vegetation but it’s a rustic, beach front without all the crowds of a Holiday Inn or other modern, commercial beach place. I can sure see how spending a couple of days there would be quite relaxing and a good place to recuperate. I sure appreciate the guys who own the place being so kind to help out like that.
———————–
I have to pass this one along. Anybody who has a bird feeder in an area with squirrels knows how tough it is to keep the tree rats out of the bird feeder. I’ve basically given up. I had talked about this to my friend Lou Daniels and he agreed. Right now he’s up in North Carolina escaping the summer heat and visiting a fishing buddy of his who has a cabin in the mountains. He too was having a devil of a time keeping a bird feeder going because of squirrels. He researched it and found a book named Squirrel Busters or something along those lines. It gave him several designs that work 100% and I thought I’d pass them along. There’s a rule called the 5 - 7 - 9 rule that you need to follow. Any hanging feeder must be at least 5’ from the ground because that’s the highest a squirrel can jump. It must be 7’ from any jumping point on the side because that’s the farthest a squirrel can leap horizontally. And it must be 9’ beneath any kind of overhang. They can drop 9’ and grab ahold of anything but any higher and they can’t stop. That’s good poop but here’s a couple of good designs.

If you are stringing a wire between a couple of poles or trees with the feeder hanging in the middle, string 6” pieces of 1/4” pvc on the wire between the tree and the feeder from both sides. When the squirrel tries to walk out the pieces of pvc rotate and spins him off. You have to have a turnbuckle on one end so you can make sure the line is taut. Very clever. But here’s an even better one. Say you are pole mounting a feeder. Hang a slinky from the bottom of the feeder and if possible around the pole. I think it would work if it was just close to the pole. When the squirrel jumps up, he grabs the slinky and is bounced right back to the ground. Now is that a great idea or what.
——————-
Saw one on TV the other day that cracked me up. In my top 10 things I hate, home owner’s associations are right near the top. It would be impossible for me to live in any area that had a home owner’s association. Not sure where this story was being reported but some folks have decided that one way to be extra green, conserve energy, do the carbon foot print etc - I think they actually wanted to cut the power bill - was to hang out their laundry and shut off the dryer. Nancy and I have always hung out the clothes because we like the way sundried laundry feels and smells. We’ve also always had a drier so we’re not dependent on the weather. So the reporter interviews several of the homeowners who were sneaking around to hang their clothes and they gave all the politically correct reasons. Sort of like the people who put an American Flag on their lawn to honor the troops or whatever. Then they interview the grinch - the head of the home owners association. He looked like a McNasty kind of old fart so it was a perfect interview. It - hanging out laundry - trashed up the neighborhood, ruined home values, and was just plain nasty. I’d probably just burn the jerk’s house down which is why I should never live in such a community.

But it brought to mind a personal story you might find funny. A few years back Nancy was having some shoulder problems and asked me if I’d mind hanging the wash. It was a beautiful, sunny day and I agreed. After a month or so it just became routine that she would wash the clothes and I would hang them out. Mostly she would take in the dry ones because for some reason she didn’t like the way I folded them. I quit arguing about that and just leave them for her to take down. One Friday she was doing the wash and loaded up the wash basket (as usual). I walked down the hall and picked up the basket (as usual) but she said, “oh, don’t bother, I’ll do it”. “oh, I don’t mind”. “No, I’ll just do it today”. “well how come all of a sudden you’re going to hang the wash?” “Well, we’re having company and they may get here before the wash is dry”. Our niece Joanne and her friend Edna were going to spend the weekend with us at the lake. “So what difference does that make?” “Well, you don’t hang the clothes right and I don’t want them to see it that way”.”What the ……… do you mean, I don’t hang it right. Seems the clothes have been getting dry with me hanging them for about 6 months now so how can I be doing it wrong?” “Well, you don’t hang the socks side by side heading in the same direction for one thing” and then she went on to list several stylistic hanging rules that I never knew existed and for which she would be banned by the sisterhood if they ever saw the wash hanging. Needless to say I got my job back the next wash day that dame around and I just relinquish my post whenever company is coming.
So maybe that’s what this homeowner’s association jerk was so worked up about - people have forgotten the proper techniques and the art of hanging has gone dormant.

For those of you that think owls only eat mice and rodents, think again. We were watching TV Sunday morning and Nancy spotting some big bird sitting in a pine tree next to the house. I found it after a minute or two. It was a fairly big bird and colored like the tree so when motionless, it’s difficult to see. All of a sudden it swooped down from the tree and scooped up a snake in the underbrush and flew off to another tree to enjoy a meal. The snake was a light colored slender snake about 2’ long or so. I would guess a corn or rat snake but it was too far away for a solid ID. It took him about 10 minutes to polish it off, head first. It was kind of interesting to watch because the whole time he was sitting on the pine tree, eating the meal, and then back on another perch in another tree, small birds were harrassing it. I don’t know what kind of birds but they were about sparrow or finch size. Every time the owl put his head down to take a bite, one of these little guys would fly at him and hit his back. With binoculars I could see the feathers on his back lift up every time one hit so I know they were actually making contact. You could tell it bothered him because he would quit eating and swivel his head around to catch the bomber. But the small birds were way too fast. I guess I had my eyes on him for 15 minutes before he finally flew away. For whatever reason we just seem to have more birds this summer than ever before and we’re loving it.
————–

We’ve got a good thing going on. We’re on Sprint for our cell phone. Reception here is lousy but everybody in the family except Chris is on Sprint so we’re locked in. About 2 months ago we got a flyer in the mail offering us $70 to resign our contract for 2 years. Since our current agreement had expired and we were locked in anyway, we called and got the $70 credit. For us that’s about 2 months of free service. Yesterday we got something in the mail from Sprint offering us $70 if we renew our contract and an additional $15 if we did it pronto. We learned that you can re do the contract any time you want and all it does is negate the old contract and start a new 2 year clock. So for example we renewed on June 1 and then went to get a new phone on June 15. Getting the new phone and using our “phone credit” for a big discount, restarts the contract for two years so the new expiration date is June 15, 2010. According to the guy at the Sprint store, any time you do a transaction, it extends your contract for 2 years. So it seems right to me that I just go ahead and do this new renewal that extends it to Aug 15, 2010 and pick up 2 more free months of service. I’m sure it’s a screw up at Sprint but…………………. I’m hoping this becomes a regular event now every couple of months and we enjoy free cell service. I don’t feel too bad about this because that’s more like what the service is worth anyhow.

—————-
Joey recovered from treatment 2 right on schedule. By the Saturday after the Tuesday treatment he was back to his own self. Two treatments is 25% thru.

And more good news; Chris comes home Sunday. He’ll be here until Thursday which is a long time for a New Yorker to be out of his element. I know he picked August so he could bitch about the heat but we’ll take what we can get!

I have to comment on two experiences I’ve had in the past couple of weeks with product service. In both cases I have products that I’ve really loved but with which I had a need for spare parts. One of my prize possessions is my grill - a Holland Grill. For my kind of grilling, it is hands down the best grill I’ve ever owned. I bought the first one in Utah in 1991 and was gratified to find a friend who would take it when we moved. Nancy tells me it’s still in service there. It was the first thing we bought when we finished the lake house - even before the first stick of furniture. So the current unit is 7 years old and performs flawlessly. But when I was cleaning it the other day I noticed that the drip pan and a heat shield were corroding away. Ever try to get a spare part for a 7 year old product. I called Holland Grill and the person who answer the phone said she could help me and within 3 minutes the parts were on order. No transfers to the service dept, no push #3 kind of phone system - just a competent person answering the main phone. The parts came in two days, fit perfectly, and in 10 minutes I was back in business. I did make a minor engineering mod to their design which will make it easier to clean in the future but the basic grill design is a marvel in ruggedness and simplicity. I am perhaps the world’s worst barbecue grill cook but have never, ever, ever screwed up a meal with the Holland Grill.

The other product is a portable, battery powered sprinkler system. It’s made in Bountiful Utah of all places by Orbit Irrigation Products. We must have lived just a few blocks from Orbit and never knew it. The system includes a programmable control head, a 4 outlet manifold which allows 4 hoses to be attached, and up to 4 solenoid operated valves. I bought two systems at Costco a couple of years back. One controls sprinklers in an area not covered by my main sprinkler system; the other waters the vegetable garden. About a year ago I had a fire up at the pump caused by a bug getting across the main pump relay. The fire spurted out of the box and charred the sprinkler controller box and really toasted one of the control valves. Luckily the control head still worked and I had a replacement valve. I was very impressed with the ruggedness of the design. The other day I noticed that the garden sprinkler was just not working properly and getting hung up rather than moving continuously. It had been doing this on and off for a couple of months. I cleaned it, greased it and did more or less everything I could but no long term success. I have never had too much luck with sprinklers and this time had bought one with a lifetime guarantee. So I took it back to Lowes and exchanged it for another sprinkler. I hooked up the new one and it did the exact same thing. I then did what I should have done the first time - checked the Orbit control valve. I remembered there’s an integral filter and figured it was clogged. Nope, I had removed the filter previously. Long story short - the valve was not opening fully. Changed to my remaining spare valve and it worked like a world champ. I went to Orbit’s web site intent on buying a spare valve but the site didn’t have a spare part list - at least that I could find. I called Orbit, went thru a phone system and a perma hold before I finally got thru to a human. The guy listened to my story and within 2 minutes had 2 new control valves on the way, free of charge. Now that’s what I call customer service. I guarantee you that as my rainbirds crater, they’ll be replaced by Orbits.

———————

Joey spent most of Thursday and Friday sleeping. He called this morning and it sounded like the nausea thing did not got out of hand but every time he got stationary, he fell asleep. Considering that what’s going on in his body is a major regeneration of blood cells after the chemo kills them off, you would expect all his body’s energy is going to that manufacturing job. You have to think that nothing would be better than sleeping through a day when you probably didn’t feel all that well anyway. If this week mirrors last week, he’ll start coming out of it later today and be feeling fine tomorrow.

Joey put this in a comment - I thought I’d post it on the blog in case people don’t drill into the comments…

For those of you who keep tabs on me through Dad’s blog…All your positive thoughts and well wishes are appreciated. Dad is spot on in his analyses and I can’t add much more. The cycle seems to be chemo on Tuesday, Neulasta shot on Wednesday, then start down hill with fatigue and nausea til Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon the nausea has eased and my energy level begins to sneak back up a bit. By Sunday evening I am pretty much back in the game and good til the following Tuesday.

As Dad mentioned, The weekly (or every other week, this go around) food for empty container trade has been a Godsend. If it weren’t for the premade food I really think poor Mark would be sunk. I am not the best “sick” person, so having all the leg work done by my Mother has really allowed him to focus on the presentation vs preparation end of it. The fact that the food is good (great) helps with what would otherwise be a poor appetite. When you have a sick stomach you really don’t feel like eating… But when it’s my Mothers’ spaghetti sauce or homemade chicken (greenwise, Thanks Mom) soup, I somehow manage to get it down.

As you all know, my parents don’t seek out hero points and none are ever expected; but to all of you who read this blog, I just wanted to let YOU know what an important piece of my life they are. As I work my way through this I can trust that they will always be there for me. This blog and the amount of time that has been dedicated to me as of late shows what a vital role their children (and grandchildren) play. In our family when someone goes down it’s time to circle the wagons and everything else in life gets put on temporary hold. In the end, there’s only family and close frieds…My family is as good as it gets….

Joey had his second treatment yesterday and all seemed to go well. I talked to him just a few minutes ago and he said he was feeling tired but not nauseous at all. He attributed that to the fact that he took the anti - nausea medicine sooner and also that he took a dose of pepsid before the treatment as recommended. He didn’t do that with the first treatment and said he actually is feeling a bit better so far after this go round. He was given all his blood stat’s from recent testing and everything looked good. In some cases his blood numbers are below normal but have improved over the pre-treatment ones. He’s actually gained weight whereas the expectation is that he would lose weight. With Joey, unlike his parents, losing weight is a bad thing.

Without a doubt he’s eating better now that Nancy is in the loop and she adjusts the menu each cooking cycle depending on the reports and comments from Joey. For example we heard that his hemogloblin is slightly low, I think he said 13.7 vs a normal 14. It was 13.3 before the first treatment so this is actually an up tick. When Nancy heard that, pickled beets went on the list for the next food delivery. Joey requested home meade chicken noodle soup - so she plans to use spinach noodles for the extra iron. The routine we’ve established is that we meet Joey on Monday’s for lunch and a movie and trade empty food containers for full ones. Nancy cooks over the weekend such that it’s impossible to put anything more at all in our refrigerator. And any left overs we have - history. So if I don’t move quickly, it’s gone - just like when he lived at home.
———-
Ever wondered what a guava bush/tree looks like? or ever wonder what a guava loosk like? That’s what’s pictured above. Most people are familiar with guava jelly but not the fruit itself. The red fruit is about 2” across and full of seeds. I eat them right off the bushes and skip the jelly conversion. They’re soft and sweetish but not overwhelming. My neighbor planted them years ago and now they pop up all over the neighborhood. This year’s crop is good and the squirrels haven’t found them yet.

Garden disaster. last month I planted some Bell pepper seeds in a container and kept them nicely protected on the porch. Nothing unusual about that. I nursed the seedlings along with water and fertilizer until they were ready for transplanting into the garden. There were a dozen plants which I timed to be fruiting about mid October and produce until we had a freeze. A dozen plants would provide enough peppers to allow us to freeze for a winter supply. Mistake number one was doing the transplant in the morning. That’s the right thing to do in the spring because it gives the plants a full day in the warmth and sun in anticipation of a cool evening and overnight. I learned that it’s the wrong time to plant them in mid July. They roasted. Out of a dozen plants - 2 sorry looking ones were still alive when I checked on them 12 hours later. And I use the term “alive” in it’s loosest form. I’ll start a new batch and then condition them to the Fla sun in small doses. Lesson learned.

Another tidbit - I noticed that the crop of cherry tomatoes and jalapeno’s has been dropping off. We’ve had ton’s of both so I just assumed the plants were playing out. But on a couple of occasions I’ve hit the garden in the early AM and noted lots of young cardinals hopping around in the bushes of both varieties. I moved in close to the plants, maybe 2’ away, and waited to see if they’d come back. They did and I saw that they were eating the very young fruits and the blossoms. Just before a blossom actually drops off, you can see the baby fruit forming at the center. That’s what they are eating. I do like the cardinals but this is putting me under a bit of stress. We had noticed that there was an exceptional number of young cardinals around and about this season and felt this meant they had a bumper crop of babies. Now I’m wondering if maybe they have gathered around here because the food is so good. This will surprise you but I took one of the sunflower heads that was loaded with seeds - traditional cardinal food - and set that down on a bench in the middle of the garden. They would peck around that for a bit but then head back to the tomato plants. Not only that, George put up a nice bird feeder about 50’ from the garden and keeps it full of commercial bird seed. So there’s plenty of food about but they prefer the tiny tomato and jalapeno’s. Who’d a thunk it.

A note on commenting on the blog- Several people have said they have trouble sending comments. I tried and found it doesn’t work about half the time. Tom is trying to fix the problem but if you try a couple of times, it will probably work. I do appreciate hearing from you and hope this inconvenience is short lived.

More organic material in the mulch pile. A coral snake, at least I think it was a coral snake, was crawling across the top of the newest pile. It’s easy to confuse a coral snake with a king snake and there’s a nursery rhyme to keep you from getting them confused but I can never remember the rhyme exactly so……………….. whack. Who said I don’t recycle.

The lake is inching up. We’ve had a good 2 weeks of rain so we’re up about 8-10”” from the lowest level and rising daily. The level rises faster than you might think because when it’s raining the surrounding nurseries are not pumping irrigation water and the natural springs in the lake are more effective. There’s still a long, long way to go before it approaches anything like normal but the trend is right. Another week like this and I’ll actually be able to lower the boat into the water. About a foot a month for the next 3 months would be great and not outside the realm of possibility at all.

The second half summer garden is popping out big time. As it turns out most everything comes to harvest in Sept and October so it will be interesting to see how it survives the storm season. I’m thinking a hurricane - even one that misses by 100 miles - will play hell with the corn. On the other hand, a good storm would go a long way to filling the lake, so I’m hedged on the occurance of a hurricane. What I’ll try to do is have one keep just far enough away to avoid the winds but still give us a good dousing.

Joey is feeling fine. His next treatment is Tuesday so we’re hoping the side affects are no worse than from his first go round. He’s got dinner cruises booked for the next 3 days and he plans to work them himself so that’s a sign he’s feeling good. As best I can tell, the side affects got Nancy more than they got Joey.

Interesting wildlife encounter today. I was sitting in front of the computer checking email about 7 AM and out of the corner of my eye caught a movement of something going behind a bush. I watched as he came out the other side and started heading up towards the house. It was a red fox with a creature of some sort in his mouth. He spotted me looking at him and took off into the jungle so I never really got a good look at the prey. It could have been a small rabbit, a big rat, or a medium sized squirrel; maybe even a cat. I’m hoping rat but betting rabbit or squirrel. I saw a large owl drop out of a tree last week and he too nabbed something but he was just too far away for me to see exactly what he caught. He stayed on the ground and worked on it for quite a while so I know it was something way bigger than a mouse.

It’s all about the mulch. I’ve mentioned the wide variety of vegetables that we’re growing but hands down, the biggest crop by volume and weight is mulch. When most people think of mulch piles, they have in mind a small pile of garden debris and kitchen scraps that eventully converts into an organic garden soil amendment. We’ve ratcheted it up a bit from that. Visualize a mulch pile on steroids. The picture is the current load. The stuff on the right, about 75 cubic feet, is nearly ready for use. The left side is brand new green chippings. That pile will shrink about 75% by the time it’s ready.

Florida doesn’t have soil. We have sand. And the sand has none of the traditional minerals necessary for good vegetable plant growth. Because of the climate it’s a major agricultural state but that’s as a result of constant chemical additives. There’s also no water retention at all in the soil. It can rain 4-6” in an hour and within a few minutes it will have totally disappeared into the sand. So in order to keep from continuously fertilizing and watering, we’ve been adding organic material to the soil - as much as we can produce it. At this point our mulch piles can support as much as 150 cubic feet of mulch in process at any given time. It turns from raw material to useable mulch in maybe 4 months so over the course of a year, we should produce 450 cubic feet. To calibrate the value - I was spending $1.25 for a one cubic foot bag of mulch at Lowes. So it’s not a stretch to say we’re saving $500 a year by creatiing our own mulch. And it’s not the cost so much but think about hauling 450 bags, 40 lbs each, from Lowes. I don’t want to run the math that shows me working for 50 cents an hour but prefer thinking I would have to be paying a fee at the Y or some place to burn off as much energy as I do working the mulch piles. So I look at it as a work-out alternative.

From the initial pile of raw material, we see about a 40:1 shrinkage so you can see we are working with a substantial base of raw material. Most of the shrinkage comes with the initial chipping, at least 10:1 and with some materials, even greater. The largest volume of material comes from cutting undergrowth and vines from the jungle that surrounds both our house and my neighbor’s. It’s not n exaggeration to say that if we didn’t keep more or less a constant trimming, the jungle would take the property back to the original state in a year or two. So we have a ready and easy source of material - where easy means it’s close. For us, a chipper is not a nice touch but an absolute necessity. Our’s is a 10HP beauty as you can see from the picture On the spectrum of chippers, this is between a home garden chipper and a full blown commercial machine. Without the chipper, there would be no mulch operation. We also have a large burn pile where we dispose of the large tree limbs that are trimmed or naturally fall with every wind storm. During the wet, stormy season we probably burn a load once a week; during the dry, no burn season, we reduce that to maybe once a month. So every couple of months we shovel out the ash and toss it into the mulch pile to add minerals to the greenery.

This week we added an interesting load of organic material. George has large Koi ponds around his house. Over the past few years the continuous dropping of oak leaves into the ponds started overwhelming them so Barbara took on the task of cleaning them out. It took 3 days and I would guess 30-40 five gallon bucket loads made it from the pond to the mulch pile. Plenty of large snail shells made it too. The ponds are loaded with large Koi so no doubt they contributed to the organic load. I can’t smell but George says the whole thing now smells fishy.

And as fast as the grass grows, we don’t use grass clippings. Not because they’re bad but in Fla, you use mulching mowers because grass clippings are one of the only sources of nutrients for the lawn itself. If we used lawn clippings, I guarantee the mulch pile would be twice it’s current size.

A quick update on the Gardner’s Spray. Doesn’t stop fire ants.

——————

Joey had a couple of bad days Wed and Thurs but by Friday afternoon he was coming out of it and planning to work a cruise on Saturday. He and Mark have some good friends who run a beach resort on Cocoa Beach and they invited them to spend a few days there to help make the bad days somewhat better. I’m guessing it did help. They also have friends capable of standing in for Joey on cruises - a huge help - so they should be able to keep the business going just fine. In general they are taking reservations only for the weekends and so far that seems to be working out ok.