There's Frost on the Tomato

Florida has just finished the coldest December in history. It had two cold snaps. The first one was sort of a warm up for the second one. It only got just below freezing. The tomato field down the block from us got hit just a little. They had crews out just before the frost picking anything that was close to being ripe. They even sprayed the plants with some chemical that was supposed to help them withstand the cold.

But one week later came the real freeze, it got down to 26 F and the tomatoes didn't like it at all. The guy at the field says the ones under the leaves are probably still good to pick especially if there are any green leaves left.

These fields are really big. This picture is one direction but the opposite direction goes just as far and then goes around a corner and goes on forever. Prices for tomatoes are going up.

The locals wrap all their temperature sensitive plants with cloth - we did also but missed a couple on the first freeze - they'll survive.

The good news is that the La Nina that brought the Arctic air down to us means that the rest of the winter is going to be much warmer than normal. Yea.

Fireplace

Every fireplace has to have a mantel - but ours in Florida didn't - so here is the story of how it got one.


Last spring my son cut down a Curly Maple tree and with a borrowed saw mill cut it up into 2" thick slabs. We built a solar kiln during last summer and after three months of drying the maple plank was finally ready for woodworking. We brought it over to my son-in-law's house and used his big planer to give it a smooth finish, then back to my garage for some finish sanding, cutting, drilling and finishing - and, walla, a fireplace mantel was born. Loaded it in the back of my pickup and carted it down to Florida. Installation consisted of mounting a 3/4" by 1" board onto the wall studs. This fit into a milled grove in the back of the Curly Maple mantel. A few screws in the bottom side of the mantel locked everything in place. Nothing to it - we got a mantel for the fireplace and just in time - we got down into the 30's last week.

Thanksgiving

We went back to Connecticut for Thanksgiving - Polly had it with her family and I had it with mine but down in New Jersey. We drove back to CT rather than flying in order to bring my Toyota Tundra back for a recall - Believe it or not they were going to replace the frame of the truck because it had severe rusting- and they did. It took them almost two weeks but I got it back one day before my planned return to Florida. The guy at the garage told me it cost Toyota $12K to do it and they have dozens more trucks to do.

We left at 4:30 AM on Saturday and drove (or flew according to Polly) down to my Cousin Russell in North Carolina. We got their 10 hours later just as the snow started. They have a bird feeder in front of their kitchen window and it was loaded with all types of birds - cardinals were a brilliant red - picture through the window doesn't get the colors but look at the number of birds in the bush waiting for food.

In the morning, his young calves came over to say goodbye to us.

It was beautiful drive with the snow stuck to the tree limbs and clear roads.

We made it to Wimauma by 8 PM that night. In the morning I went outside and found two more birthday gifts. The first was a new camper - only 14 ft long but it'll be perfect for short outings and according to the sticker it cost less than $9K.

Oh and look at this - a new car - for me?? It is a Yaris which is the updated version of the Toyota Echo that I drive back in Connecticut.

What a nice birthday surprise but I can't seem to find the keys to it.

No termites for us

When we had the home inspection done when we bought the place, the bug inspector said that there are two types of houses in Florida - ones that had termites and ones that are going to have termites - it is inevitable. He recommended that you shouldn't have any wood touching the ground next to the house. That referred to the mulch in all the garden beds around the house, some 2x6 treated lumber used as a border and a couple of palm trees that were touching the house. To fix all those things we ordered 3 yards of stream pebble rock to act as a replacement for the wood mulch, cement borders tiles and a lot of sweat.

These are Red Tipped Bomeliads. We thinned out the plants and had enough to line the driveway.

This is Polly's favorite - a little water and the roses came out almost instantly.

This is the bed leading up to the front door and was the toughest to do - a lot of the plants are spider plants but they just grow right in the ground instead of in pots as they do back in New England.

A lot of firewood

The people that we bought the Florida property from were very proud of how much of the natural landscape they left intact when they built and they did do a good job. Most of the three acre lot was undisturbed native vegetation - Live Oak, Sable Palm, Palmetto and stuff I have no idea what it is called. Well that was the last owners - we are planning to put in a pool - luckily it doesn't require any trees to be removed but I want to use solar to heat the water in the pool and that required the removal of seven trees in the backyard. I cut down the Saw Palmettos - they are called "Saw" Palmettos because of the saw like teeth on their stems - they hurt - ask my arms and legs. This is the backyard after I cut down the palmettos and small trees.

The guy that I hired (low bidder) does not own a lift bucket, he climbs, ties ropes to higher branches as he cuts off the lower limbs. Primitive he may be but he got all the trees down and none landed on the house.

Here he is trimming up the only tree we left stranding in the near backyard.

Al Gore would be proud of me again - cut down all the trees but I'm not burning a non-renewable fuel to heat the pool water - damn the tree huggers.

Weird Fruit

We went to the Red Barn Flea Market which is a great place to buy fruits and vegetables. A lot of the vendors have cut up samples of their produce for you to sample. We tried a slice of Pomelo and it was delicious, kind of like a sweet grapefruit.

The picture shows it compared to a normal sized tomato - it was 7-8 inches in diameter. But when you cut into it you find it has a very thick rind. The actual edible fruit size is about the size of a grapefruit.

Going to the opposite extreme is the Limon. This comes from a Limon tree in Gary and Sandra's fruit orchard (their home lot). This one is smaller than a regular lemon (that's the same tomato used in above pic) but what a powerhouse of taste - it just full of juice.

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Still Fixing things up

Way back in last summer, my son Wayne cut some boards out of a red oak tree and a curly maple tree. I wanted to build some bunk beds for Florida out of the wood but we first had to dry it so we built a solar kiln at his place and a month later the wood was dry enough to work with. So in September I cut up the wood and built a bunk bed out of the red oak. I had a talented woodworking team to help me. Polly had worked at Yankee Remodelers for years so this just came naturally to her.

I took this bed and another one I had built for the Beachpond cottage in Voluntown down to Florida with parts tied on top of and in the back of my pickup truck and here are the two bunk beds all assembled down in the kids room in Florida. (I'll use the curly maple wood to build a replacement for the one I took from Voluntown.)

Another project gets done - We have this long bare wall in our bedroom and couldn't decide what to do with it. We saw these wallpaper like murals in a paint store and decided that that might be a nice treatment. So I order a 8 ft high by 12 ft long mural of a tropical sunset - appropriate for a bedroom, right. You put some guide lines on the wall, apply paste to the back of the panel and glue them up.

It came out OK but not great - there goes our plans to use one on the wall in the dining room.

Weather Report- another cold day in Florida - it's only going to be in the mid- 70's again.

Happy Birthday

Yeah, it happens every year for the past 39 years - I keep getting older and older - but this year we are down here in Florida all by ourselves - will anyone remember? Oh look the UPS guy has delivered a box - it says don't open until Nov. 5th - I wonder what's in it - and then a second box comes with the same instructions.

Well, oh my God, there were 70 presents in them and they were labeled 1 to 70 and the instructions were to open them in order. But why 70, I'm only 39 - if it were 2 for every year it should be 78 presents.

I opened present after present - had to take a break - when you get to be 39 every thing is an effort. Look what I got - a bunch of tools (everytime I do something down here, I have to go out and buy another tool but not anymore), pictures of everyone so I don't forget what they look like, all kinds of cooking tools - that will help me to become a great chef - towels and all kinds of stuff.

What a great birthday - I have a wonderful family.

What a table!

Hey, we got a new table the other day. I bet it will make a great table for the kids to eat at on Christmas as we adults eat at the big dining room table.

Here we are using it for a dinner party, we men cooked and served the meal to the girls as we always do - they are so spoiled - we men eat in the kitchen in between serving courses.

But after we men clean up and do the dishes we take over the table to play some poker - Hey look at the table has changed into an eight person poker table - like magic.

After I lost all my money to Gary we decide to play some bumper pool - My God, the table has changed again from a card table to a bumper pool table.

While we were playing pool the girls got into the liquor cabinet and started to get pretty rowdy. Good thing they didn't have to drive.

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If you didn't recognize the other couple, it was my cousin-in-laws, Sandra and Gary Fenstemaker, they live on the Gulf and have every type of fruit tree on their property. When they came over to visit they brought the excess fruit from their Star Fruit Tree. They are delicious but there was a lot of them - we gave some to our neighbors (first time we ever met them), went over to the Masonic Campground and everyone we met we gave them a plastic bag of them, Polly looked up a recipe and made 7 jars of delicious star fruit jam and finally we have them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, cut up on ice cream and for snacks.

I'm too smart for my own good

It started last year when I was staying in the Masonic Campground. Some of the campers put out satellite dishes and used them for the TV in their camper. When I talked to them they said they had satellite tv back home, took the satellite receiver from their home with them in the camper and just bought another satellite dish to use with their camper. This sounded good to me - just one satellite TV bill and I'd have TV reception in both houses.

So when I got back to Connecticut I cancelled my Comcast cable and had Dish TV installed. I signed up for the option to have two receivers (only costs another $5 to rent the second receiver) and I'd take the second receiver to Florida and leave it there. What Dish TV doesn't know wouldn't hurt them. When I get to Florida I'll unplug the receiver in Connecticut and visa versa when I come back to CT. As far as Dish is concerned they will only see signals being received from one location and they will be none the wiser that I've got two homes hooked up to them.

I went online and ordered another Satellite dish along with cabling and the tools needed to find the satellite and align the dish to it. When it came in, I practiced setting the new dish up in Connecticut, connecting it to the second receiver and a TV. After a day of struggling I got it all to work with a good picture - so I figure I'm all set to go to Florida.

We get down to Florida and before I attach the satellite dish to the house I attach it to an existing pole and do the same setup that I did with it back in CT. Try and try but I couldn't get any satellite to come in. After two days of trying, I give up and call a guy listed as an installer for satellite antennas. I tell him what I'd like to do and he says he could do it for me but why don't I just call up Dish and they will install it for free. So I called Dish TV up and said I had moved and need my antenna installed. They scheduled me for the next day - their tech shows up - spends almost the entire day attaching the antenna, running the wires into the attic, down through the walls into existing cable boxes, and of course in was a 90 degree day and the attic (which only has a crawl space) must have be over 100 degrees. But he did it and everything works. Now I'm still under the impression that Dish TV thinks that I've moved to Florida - the receiver I left in CT is off so how would they know different.

I get an email from Amy where she says she stayed overnight at the cottage and after they found the receiver was unplugged, plugged it back in and watched TV with her kids that night. Wait a minute - I was down in Florida watching TV the same night - and DISH TV didn't notice there were two houses receiving TV under the same billing - Well I guess I made a big deal about nothing - I didn't have to set up my Florida satellite on the QT - I didn't have to buy all that special hardware so I could set it up by myself and I guess I didn't have to disconnect one receiver when I was using the other out-of-state. I'm just to smart for my own good. By the way, how do you like my 50" TV - You can never buy a TV that is too big.

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A Little Job

In the backyard way up in a tall tree is an outside light with a photosensor on it which turns it on every night and keeps the boggymen away. The people we bought the house from said how reliable this light was - it has been up there for 10 years and it faithfully came on every night. So two days after we get down here it stops coming on at night. It's way up in a tree so to check it out I have to first buy a 24 ft extension ladder. It turns out that the light uses a high pressure sodium lamp so I take the bulb out and for $21 I buy another bulb.
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Wow, that was too easy, it's fixed since it came on that night. But three days later it's out again. So up the ladder I go again and I change the photosensor on it. That was only $8 so not bad - but it doesn't come on. There is a ballast in it but I'd have to take the light down and take it apart to get to it so I opt for the easy way and say maybe the bulb I bought wasn't good. To check that out I buy another bulb and try it in place of the first - didn't fix it - returned the bulb - found that Lowes sells the entire fixture for $36 - Took the old fixture down and replaced it with a new one and everything is finally working. Only five trips to Home Depot and Lowes and it's fixed. If I save the extra new bulb and photosensor for 10 years and I'll have all the parts to go through the repair again for free.

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Fort DeSoto Beach

It's another bright and sunny day, temp is in the 80's, so we went to the beach. Ft DeSoto isn't the closest beach to us but it was rated the Best Beach in the US in 2005 so we drove 30 minutes or so to get to it. It's right at the mouth of Tampa Bay.

Even though it's in the mid-80's there is a nice breeze blowing and it was pleasant weather to work on our tans.

I like to walk along the shore line and look for flotsam and jetsam that washes up - look what I found - how can I get this home?

Ft DeSoto is a huge beach with miles and miles of white sand. There must be over three thousand spaces for cars to park but the day we were there, there was only a couple of hundred people - well maybe it's because it is fall and the nobody goes to the beach during the fall and winter except the Northerners.

Halloween Party

It's a week before Halloween and our Sundance property owner's association holds it's Halloween Party.

It starts at 4 PM at the Firehouse where they hold best costume contests for all the different age groups. It's still in the 80's so those costumes are hot.

Even the dogs get into the spirit.

After the judging they walk around and everybody gives them candy - then they load them onto trailers for a hay ride to the Little Manatee boat launch/picnic area.

This is the picnic pavilion before every gets there. Hamburgers, hot dogs, popcorn and cotton candy.

They have a blow up slide and bounce house. This was bouncing off the ground after the kids got into it.

They were very organized with all kind of games for the kids to play and win prizes.

A couple of witches hatching up a plan to scare the kids.

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Landscaping

It was the end of May when we last left and locked the gates at our house in Wimauma. Four months later we come back and unlock the gates and find that things had grown a little during the wet season in Florida. The grass (actually mostly weeds) in some places was 3 feet tall.

I set the riding lawn mower on it's highest cut height and slowest speed and in two days I made a lot of hay.

Polly brought her hibiscus from New London. It took the trip down pretty well and when planted in the nice warm Florida soil it immediately started to bloom - maybe it had some help from Polly's green thumb and constant watering.

Once she got started on gardening it was "dig this out", "move that over to here","plant this over there"but than she adds "please Honey" and my aching back disappears. The red tipped plants that she is replanting in the picture were originally planted next to the house but had multiplied so much that they had to be thinned and moved a little bit away from the house to discourage termites. But after digging them up and splitting them apart we ended up with over fifty plants. Some went back in from where we dug them out but another thirty holes had to be dug in another location to take the rest.

Oh my aching back - Honey - OK I'll keep digging.