Cleaning up the backyard

It has over a year and a half ago that we had four large trees cut down in the back yard. In addition, we cut down a whole bunch of palmettos and smaller trees - All this was to open the roof up to sunlight for the pool solar panels and to make room (someday) for a pickle ball court. It was so long ago that everything started to regrow and we had to go through and cut all the new growth down again.

I had originally asked the guy who dug our pool to come back and clean out the stumps - he quoted a price of $1600 to do it - It sounded a little high but he had good recommendations so I told him to go ahead - but he was busy and said it was illegal to pull palmetto stumps out without a permit and he'd have to wait till all the inspections were done on the new pool so that the county inspectors wouldn't see him removing the palmettos. Well that gave me some additional time and I stopped in a local grain store and asked if they know of any local diggers to clear the stumps. They gave me the name and phone numbers of a local guy who came out and gave me a price. What would you guess his price was? It was $350 to clear and bury all the stumps - What a difference - $1250 cheaper. It took a few weeks of calling him to get him in to do it but he did come in and did a great job. He started on the pickle ball court area first.

Pulling out all the stumps and digging a large hole in the back of the area to bury all the stumps.

One of the trickiest jobs he had to do was remove a big stump that was right next to the new pool.

Besides being next to the pool and lanai, there were two buried electrical lines that ran out from the house to a well and were between the tree and the pool.

But after quite a bit of digging and pulling he got the stump out and didn't break the electrical wires.

After we chain sawed the stumps into smaller pieces, all the stuff got dumped into the big hole he dug in the back and covered up.

I got my laborer busy on the landscaping right away.

She did a pretty good job

And using leftover cement edgers made a nice border around the lanai and pool.

The Everglades

On our way back from Miami, we took the old road - the Tamiami Trail. It cuts across the the top of the Everglades and there is an entrance to the Everglades at Shark Valley - We were there as it opened and took a tram ride into the Everglades. The guide kept talking about the havoc the Burmese Python was raising on the Everglades animals, eating anything that moved - deer, racoons, rabbits, alligators, etc. Wait a minute - alligators??

They were all over the place - from the time the tram left to the end of the tour - there were alligators. This one was a mother watching over her hatchings from last September.

There were a lot of birds also. this one is an Anhinga - they stab their prey.

So they have to unstab it, turn it around and swallow it.

There were Egrets, Ibis, Roseate Spoonbills and on and on. This one is a Wood Stork - it's almost 4 foot tall.

And this is the Purple Gallinule, a very rare bird that we crept up on.

OK, that was your bird watching lesson for the day.

Miami

We initially were planning to go over to Miami for a whole week with Ina and Jeff's Marathon as a highlight. The week before we left I got a call from the digger who was going to pull all the tree and palmetto stumps out of our yard and he was ready and wanted to start on Monday so our one week Miami trip became a four day trip. But still we had a couple of extra days for touring. First place we went was a Spice and Fruit Garden that was right near our campground. We paid our admission and went in but after walking through the gardens we were griping to ourselves that without a tour to tell you what the strange fruits we were looking at were it wasn't a very good tour. Just at that time a lady in a golf cart pulls up and asks if we'd like a tour of the gardens with her. We jumped in and what a tour she gave - she had worked there for 19 years and knew everything. She stopped and ran over and picked some strange fruit off a tree, cut it into sections and gave it to us to eat while continually talking about the tree and the fruit. Here are the some of the fruits that we didn't eat - The round yellow one is an Egg Fruit (tastes like custard), the green one has a slight vanilla taste and the other yellow is a Star Fruit (we get them locally so it isn't too rare).

She also gave us a whole bunch of pink banana seedlings which I've replanted and will distribute when they are bigger. We next stopped a the Coral Castle which turned out to be a total loser of a place - we never went in - they wanted $16 each and it was just a stone ruin with nothing much to see.

But it did have one of the biggest lizards crawling on it that we had ever seen.

On we went to the Deering Estate - his father started International Harvester.

It was right on Biscayne Bay and had a whole family of Manatees swimming around it in the harbor.

On our way over to Ina's hotel, we toured a couple of the Coral Gable sites, one neat one was this tree lined street.

After Ina and Jeff ran we did one more tour, Vizcaya. It was another huge mansion right on the water and guess who built it - the half brother of the guy who built the Deering Estate.

Neat house with a Venetian boat built in front of it - they used it for dinner parties and dances.

Very nice gardens around the house - That was Ina showing that she still had enough energy to move after running 16.2 miles.

Miami Marathon

We took our first trip of the New Year, packed up the RV and drove over to Miami - a little over a 4 hour drive. Our purpose was to see Ina and Jeff run in the Miami Marathon. We met them at their hotel and had dinner with them on the Miracle Mile - a fancy store and restaurant strip in Coral Gables where their hotel was. We left them to get a good nights sleep and went back to our camper. We set the alarm for 3:45 AM so we could pick them up and get them to the race start in downtown Miami by 5:30. It's still very dark at that time in the morning but what a crowd - 25,000 runners were in the Marathon - it's still pitch black out or did I already mention that. The runners are placed in fenced in groups called Corrals - Ina was in Corral E which was right in front of us but we never saw her.

Then the race starts - first the handicapped, then the pros, and on and on for about a half an hour. Finally they are all out of the Corrals and you can actually see the start line.

Jeff ran a half marathon  - 13.1 miles - sensible guy. I stood on the final turn for a half hour looking for him - never saw him - there were so many runners coming in it was unbelievable - but we did meet up at the H meeting area after he had finished. We all moved to a straight stretch and set up camp waiting for Ina. Who is that coming straight at us?

Yes, it is that famous Marathoner who has signed up for 50 Marathons in 50 states - This is number 2 and it was a breeze.

We didn't see her cross the finish line but the crowd in the bleachers were cheering her on - shouting Go, Ina, Go.

Well that's what we were going to shout thinking we could get right next to the finish line but we never got a chance to use them in Miami.

Polly had a whole cheer made up that she never used.

Only 48 more to go - we'll get to use them yet.

It's Spring in Florida

How do plants know January is Spring in Florida? December wasn’t very cold and we didn’t get our first frost until the first week of January. So how did the Hyacinth know to stick it’s stalk up through the stones and blossom. 

All the spring flowers are blooming.  This Red Azalea was hiding in the woods when we saw it’s red blossoms and we cleared out the Palmettos to give it some room. 

There is a White Azalea blooming in the front yard.

Seeing everything just wants to grow we got to work on an overgrown block of garden that was loaded with African Iris, a very rugged plant that just keeps growing and spreading without any help from us.

But we hired this homeless hippie to dig them all up and spread them out all around the yard. These were the home of the red ants that attacked Polly and finally made her jump into the pool.

We cleaned up the garden leaving a couple of clumps of the Irises and supplemented them with a couple of Camellias

And a couple of Gardenias.

We don’t want to rub the sunny weather in too much on our Northern friends so let us sign off with a nice warm picture.

We burned it every night during our little cold snap a couple of weeks ago.

Everything is Growing

Well even though it is cold up north, Florida is getting ready for spring and everything is growing like mad. The hydroponic garden has produced it's first strawberry - yum yum

And the small cherry tomatoes are getting ripe.

Some of the broccoli we left on too long and it started to flower - little yellow flowers where the the broccoli buds were - I didn't know that.

We've got green peppers galore and a few jalapenos - good for the blood circulation

We picked our first batch of snap beans.

And we got more cilantro than I can make salsa with.

We originally thought that we'd eat lettuce right out of the garden in our salads but there isn't any way we can keep up to the rate that it is growing. That is a stalk of lettuce growing from the lowest Styrofoam box right up past the top box - starting to get a little bitter so I've got our second and third crops planted and growing to replace the old ones.

We've been saving pineapple tops, they are suppose to root and grow new pineapples - just have to wait two years.

Come on in, the water's fine

Well we've had the pool since before Christmas with the solar blanket and solar panels on the roof working hard to warm the water up but does Polly go in - Noooo - It's too cold, the sun isn't shining, I don't want to get my hair wet - There are a lot of excuses.

But red ants changed her mind - We were working on an overgrown flower bed in the back yard - digging out the African Iris, thinning them and transplanting them to other beds that had more space.
I was planting out front when I heard a scream and a string of curse words that I can't repeat. Polly had been breaking up a clump of Iris and there must have been a nest of red ants in it. She shed what clothes would come off easily and headed for the pool to get rid of the hanger oners.

It took a couple of tries but she finally jumped in, after the initial shock said it was great.