Coconuts

There seems to be coconuts laying all over the Keys so we picked some up. You can just write an address on the side of the coconuts and take them to the post office and mail them. The grand kids love to get them.

So I put them down near our stuff on the beach and they just disappeared. Some body must have taken them. Well if they needed them that much they can have them.

Boy, since we joined the YMCA, Polly is sure shaping up.

Portuguese man o'war

OK, we're walking along our favorite beach in the Keys and we come across this jelly fish looking thing in the sea weeds. So I pick several of them up and tossed them back out into the ocean but the wind just blows them back in again.

There are a lot of them along the shore line. Some only an inch long but others 6 to 10" long. If you accidentally step on them they pop and make a bang just like plastic bubble wrap.

Later we had a nature walk with a park ranger and he told us they were Portuguese man o'war and if I had touched the tentacles when I was picking them up I would have received a sting similar to that of a wasp. He also told us that they weren't really jelly fish. They were composed of three independent creatures (the jelly fish is all one) and that these creatures work together to survive. One does the tentacles to stun the fish, one digests the fish and I forgot what the third did. Here's a photo of one we took from our kayaks.

I mentioned that this was our favorite beach - well it should be since it's named for the Currys. This Curry gave the state the initial land for the park. She's 103 years old now and still comes around to check up on it.

We're back

I'll bet you didn't even know we were going someplace but we are back. We went to the Florida Keys for a week and have some new tales to tell you but before we start I want to see how observant you are. Look at the photo below and what do you see different?

No it's not that my hair got a little grayer (it did but that's due to Polly). So here's a little close up.

Now you see it - not the mosquito bite - the little piece of plastic tubing leading into my ear - I got a hearing aid - so now I don't have to ask you to repeat what you said. Instead I have to ask you not to talk so loud and can you turn down the TV a little.

They are neat devices - The device mounts behind my ear and it has a microphone pointed backwards. That picks up whatever noise is behind me, cancels it out so I can hear what is being said to my face. It has three different settings ( I push a little button on it's top to change settings). The normal setting for everyday use, a setting for very noisy environments which cancels even more noise coming from behind me and a third for when I go to the opera that increases the sensitivity. Boy is everything awfully noisy now - I can hear myself walk and the grass crush under my feet. Please don't type so hard and don't ever crinkle paper - it's a killer.

More Planting

It was another day in the 70's so you have to work outside. First job was to divide up a Staghorn fern that Gary and Sandra brought over. It was a big guy maybe about 40 lbs. Gary said I could divide it into three so that's what my razor knife did. We got three big sections plus we found three little "pups" or young Staghorns with their own root system.

After cutting them up and shaping them to a tree trunk, I tied two of them onto trees. They will eventually wrap their leaves around the tree trunk and I'll be able to remove the strings.

I put the last big section in a basket. I've seen a lot of them grown this way. The straw packing will eventually disintegrate and it will just be the fern.

The three little pups were also tied to tree trunks.

Seeing the weather was so nice, we also planted all the various citrus trees that we had accumulated. There were two from Wayne (Hamlin Orange and a pink Pomello), a Lyhee nut tree from Sandra and Gary, two tangerines grown from seed by Cheryl, a Lemon grown from seed by Jean Seaman. I also found a local grower who sells to plantations so I bought 8 more citrus trees (a pink grapefruit, a red grapefruit, a mid-season orange (the Hamlin is an early season), a sweet pomello, a tangello, a Meyers lemon, a regular lemon and a lime). I put them along the lot border so in case that lot ever sells and someone builds, I'll have a citrus blind to allow us privacy. Everybody is going to get fruit when we come home (maybe next year).

Norfolk Pine

Our friends, Gary and Sandra, always bring something when they come over. The last time they brought two Norfolk Pines, a hugh Staghorn Fern, Jatropha Tree and a Lychee Nut tree. They get all these from seeds that drop from trees and germinate in their lot. Amazing how productive Florida can be. Well, they all have to be planted so we started with the Norfolk Pines. Now having recognized what a Norfolk Pine was, we realized that there was a bunch of them growing already over near the drainage canal. They were growing in three big bunches, with some over six feet tall and some just a foot or so. I assume the previous owners must have gotten them from someone and just stuck them in the group right next to each other, planning to replant them at some other time but now they had grown up with their roots all intertangled.

So before we planted the two that the Fenstemakers brought over, we dug up all the existing ones and replanted them (12 had enough roots left to be replanted).

Now one side of our property has a nice line of Norfolk Pines that will eventually group into the majestic and tall trees that the Norfolk Pines are.

Fire

I talked before about the new mantle I made for the fireplace. Here's a follow up story about burning down the house by using the fireplace. Polly has a fear of fire and whenever we have a fire in the fireplace she insists on closing the chain curtain in front of the fire. I of course say that's not necessary because nothing is going to catch fire and the wire curtain cuts down on the radiant heat from the fireplace. So when I leave the living room she closes the fireplace curtain and when she leaves, I open it up.

As added protection Polly bought this special fireplace rug to lay on the carpet in front of the fireplace. I think it was the first fire that we had with the rug in front and a big ember must have jumped out. Well the fireproof rug didn't catch fire put it did melt.

This wasn't satisfactory so I tore up the wall to wall rug in the living room and rolled it back. Glued some matching tiles to the bare cement floor, grouted them to match the fireplace.

After I added some tack strips, I relaid the rug back down and got a floor that wouldn't melt or burn.

Beauty isn't it. Now the argument is about the smokey fireplace. The house pretty air-tight and the fireplace doesn't have any air vents to pull in outside air. So a little whiff (I say whiff, Polly says house full) of smoke sometimes enters the house - that's fixed by opening a window next to the fireplace a little bit - that fixes that . No it doesn't, if you turn on the stove vent, it overpowers the fireplace draft and a little smoke comes back in. There has to be a solution but I don't know what it is yet.

Christmas

Well, the Christmas Holiday is over and everyone has gone home. The house is empty but I have my memories. Who came down for Christmas - My son Wayne, his wife Wendy and their kids, Samson and Addy were the first to arrive. Then came my daughter Amy and her husband Dan and their kids Kylie and Bowen. Last was my daughter Anna and her mate Heidi and 6 month old Skylar who everyone wanted to hold. If you count them up that's a total of 12 people counting me - Polly went home to CT to be with her family - smart move - the house was full.









Walt Disney World provided most of the entertainment - It was decked out for Christmas.

Wayne held the record for endurance - he left for the Magic Kingdom at 7 AM and didn't get back until midnight. Kylie, who went with him, had to get up and go to Animal Kingdom at 7 the next morning. I started out with him but chickened out and went home with Dan and Amy at 7 PM. This was my sign out picture in front of Cinderella's Castle










Great rides - check out the first car on this roller coaster.

Here's a close up. It was Kylie, Amy (eyes covered), Bowen and Anna - very brave people.

This is the new addition to the family Skylar (and Anna and me)













She attracted all the attention - that's Kylie, Bowen and a piece of Addy.









Besides Disney we went to Myakka State park which gave an airboat ride to get a good close up view of a lot of alligators.

They also had a canopy walk that gets you into the tree tops (that's Samson).





The best prank, the shark tooth find. The Fenstemakers (Gary and Sandra) were amateur archaeologists at one time and collected a lot of fossils - I told the kids how we were walking along the drainage canal next to our house one day and Gary found a shark's tooth. So everybody spent a lot of time walking the canal banks and looking for shark teeth to no avail. When Sandra and Gary came over for a visit, I asked them to bring some shark teeth with them. When they arrived, I secretly took the teeth from them and put them in the sand in the backyard. Later I told the kids that Gary and Sandra were going to show them the proper way to look for shark teeth. We all went out to the backyard and Sandra bent down, studied the sand some and picked up a black shark tooth - the kids went wild - everybody was down in the sand and found some of the shark teeth that I had salted the sand with - then they spread out - down on all four - crawling all over the place looking for more teeth. I finally fessed up and told them that the teeth were planted.

It still didn't stop us from looking. Here we are checking along the banks of a dried up lake - found some manatee ribs but no shark teeth.













Citrus is what Florida is famous for so we went out and picked some. The only ones that nobody liked were the Kumquats.









Everyone was impressed with the hundreds of Manatees at the local power plant, they loved the puppy hugging at the Guide Dog Society, they liked the prices at the Red Barn Flea Market, and the horses at the Lipizzan Stallion Show did some fancy stuff. I hope everyone comes back again and, if you weren't in this group, we are here from October to April, stop down and see us.