Smarties Bar & Grill #76

I have some fancy daffodils that need separated and replanted. They will be thrown in and around the phlox cuttings. Or should I say under them. But seriously, a nursery quart can get you a lot of cuttings. Wait for the blooms to fall off....or cut them off.... and use that "stick" as your cutting. Stick each cutting in a cell pack and set under shade tree and keep moist. Stick 72 cuttings a day. You can plant the cuttings in pots or in the ground. Just don't let the cuttings bake or dry out. All of that purple stuff is from the original 2 sticks

 

Loaded my street legal dirt bike in my minivan and drove to Boca grande Island today on Florida's Gulf Coast. It's a very exclusive place with extremely wealthy residents.

So I swam in the Gulf and then unloaded my bike and proceeded to ride around the island and got a bunch of dirty looks from the rich people almost like they don't know that a dirt bike can be street legal. Lol..... It might piss them off but they're public roads and I have every right to be here just like anyone else. The water is 77°, so it's still a bit nippy.
I'm riding perfectly legally at or below the speed limit and not going in areas where I should not go plus my bike is California compliant with the emissions so it's not like my exhaust is obnoxiously loud

 

Got fresh Florida mullet you just cast net it off a doc about 1 hour ago? I do. And three more to go along with it after this.

 

Look at that blue blue water *.... One picture is of the Gulf and the other picture of the dock is where I netted the mullet. The mullet are still on ice in my cooler but me and my friend are going to grill the mess of them, tomorrow for lunch
*This post should not be interpreted in any way shape or form so as to encourage anyone to move to Florida please stay away.... We have a fascist governor and mosquitoes and alligators and other things that can kill you.... And that's not even touching on the subject of the ever-increasingly frequent hurricanes...

 

I would love to actually ride my dirt bike down the beach but of course nowadays that's probably some sort of environmental crime that will get you tossed into the nearest local county jail.

I should have been born 30 years earlier, because 30 years ago they wouldn't have blinked an eye about such activity and you could have even sat there and pitched a tent and spent the night on the beach doing whatever the hell you wanted without the law being involved....

The times.... They are a changing and I'm not sure if they're changing for the better or the worst.

 

All beaches in Texas are public land. There are miles and miles of beach that I can drive my Jeep on. Not many gators until you get to the Eastern coast of Texas near Louisiana.

My home is going up. The builder is providing me a shell with a foundation and I will go in next month to finish the framing, electrical, plumbing, etc........ I won't be moving in until around the end of the year. The slab on the right will be covered patio on the side of the house. The trees are my front yard and the county road is just behind them. The view is from the rear of the house.

 

This was my food prep area where I gutted and scaled and cut the head off of the fish.

Then I simply packed the body cavity with about a quarter stick of butter and season them up very well and wrap them in foil just like rolling a joint, you wrapped them good and tight and no butter will spill out when you put them on the grill.

 

Going to try chickens for th efirst time.... unfortunately where we are placing the hen house and corral is where we feed scraps to the feral animals!

Have a '99 chev PU, a 2001 Chev PU (4x4) a 2006 Lexus 350, a 2009 Chev PU (wifey's truck and the "going to the city truck, It typically does the 600 mile round trip) AND her 2016 MB GLC 300, which we are taking on our two week vacation Friday (1st vacation in 30 yrs.. the world still owes me 28 weeks of vacation!)

 

If you can't drink beer from the same cooler that you keep your fish in....then you're not really a true beer drinking fisherman from the south.

Now I will admit to trying to wipe as much of the fish water off of the mouth of the beer can before I open it.

Because let's face it.... The logistics of fishing can often be difficult enough especially when you need to tote all of your gear 100 or more yards from your parked vehicle to the spot where you will fish.

It is plenty enough to do to keep one cooler serviced full of ice. If someone wants beer that's not in the fish cooler.... Then they damn well better bring their own dedicated cooler

 

These mullet can only be described as delectably delicious !

I can't believe that for so long mullet were considered a poor People's food.

I need to get over to the gulf about once a month and try to catch a good dozen of them if I had my way

 

I reckon if I had to live rough due to either some bankrupting circumstances or if the world should come to an end as we know it..... I would have to have my tent set up in a coastal region and keep my cast nets well regulated and in good working order.

You might get tired of eating fish everyday but I guarantee you that one thing you would not do is to starve. Might need to travel inland a ways to find some limes to stave off the scurvy. Lol

 

Y'all must try to keep your trips to the city limited to maybe once a month with that sort of mileage.

I go to some pretty remote places myself but that's a hell of a long distance.

What a joke it is to expect people like you guys to get some battery operated car to depend on. Lol

In gasoline and various petroleum products do I trust !!

 

Security is everything with chickens. Lock them up tight at night and don't spare the hardware cloth. Daytime grazing Security depends on your location. Some dogs are very protective and some want to kill your chickens. Great Pyrenees have the best reputation as guard dogs.

 

Chickens are fun till something happens to them. A neighbor's dog, a hawk, an owl, possum, bobcat, raccoon or coyote. You just have to be vigilant and make sure they are locked up tightly at night. I have seen people that let their chickens run loose and have good luck. I haven't been that lucky. Good luck with your chicken venture.
By the way have a great vacation and be safe.

 

What a night we had last night. We got massive amounts of rain last night. I haven't looked at my garden yet for fear it might be drowned.

 

Horse and buggy or horse and covered wagon for longer trips.

 

I am TOTALLY Jonesin' on that Gulf shot, bro. I wish I was there.

Last Friday we had to cut down one of the huge old White Oaks on our property and give another massive Post Oak a major haircut to keep it upright. We also cut down a good-sized red cedar that was half dead and needed to come down before it fell into our propane tank and blew us all to kingdom come. Since then all my free time has been spent cutting up the logs and moving them down to the Slave Pit before the rains coming out of your part of the country rolled up here today and turned the ground into mush again. It's been a race against time and the weather, but last night I finally finished getting all of the stuff I could heave into the pickup out of the yards and all I've got left are about 10 huge segments that I can't lift and will have to drag off somehow. I'm thinking about doing a little redneck engineering and converting the tray in an old steel wheelbarrow I have laying around into a sled but it will probably be days before the ground gets hard again. I figure I cut and moved at least 8 cords of wood over the past 3 evenings and last weekend.

I'm glad that legacy of brutality is pretty much over and I won't need to pay my chiropractor a visit. Hopefully I'll get a little down time this weekend but now I'm running behind on getting our overgrown vegetable garden cleared for planting (ugh). I would kill for a sunny afternoon down on the Gulf with a cooler full of Buds right now....

 

Well it will probably be a while until I get around to another gulf day. Girlfriend broke her arm about 18 days ago and she has been in the hospital for 10 days and will be discharged tomorrow. She had been losing weight due to this second round of radiation and she also now has a feeding tube inserted.... Not the first time because she had one about 18 months ago.

So between work and making sure that she settles in well and figures out how not to overexert or hurt herself with the recent surgery on her arm last Wednesday, I have my work cut out for me for a while.

Sounds like you deserve to kick back with a beer right about now.

 

Dayam, man, I'm sorry to hear that - ten days in the hospital is a mighty long time. Was it because of her arm, the radiation therapy or both?

 

The arm mainly, and she had been dropping weight and down to 90 lb from her 106 for the last several months before radiation.

The radiation is in the throat region so it makes it very difficult for her to eat or swallow. The pain of the arm and the lack of sleep due to the pain and the malnutrition and dehydration all added up to the point where I actually thought when I left the ER the day she was admitted that that might be the last time I saw her on this Earth. By this point she could be roused to consciousness but was unaware that I was there standing over her

In the week that she had a broken arm I had taken her to three different er's before something finally happened.

But fortunately she is now doing significantly better. She broke the upper humerus so they cannot cast it but they did put pins in it

 

Well, I'm glad to hear she's doing better, and I'm sure being home again will lift her spirits. Now you gotta make like Chef Paul and fatten that girl up a bit.

 

Here's a picture of the White Oak I've been wrasslin' with all week. I took this picture over 10 years ago when it was still happy and healthy:



Then about 5 years ago I could tell there was something terribly wrong with the tree. The south face of the tree was dying and and the trunk and lower branches were full of borer holes. Then one day, to my horror, I discovered that the bark on that side of the trunk had fallen off and I could see rotten wood at the base of the tree. I had to cut down three cherry trees that had been hollowed out before so I figured that something similar was going on with this oak, so last Friday I had a local tree service cut it down...



...and sure enough...



...the tree was rotten and hollowed out in the center.

It made me sick to have to cut that old-timer down, but it was half-dead, dropping big branches and the threat of it falling into our house forced my hand.

In the back yard we have a Post Oak that's the same size as this White Oak and it had gotten too gangly and was starting to pull the tree over so we gave it a major haircut and took a considerable amount of weight and drag off the tree in the hope of stabilizing it. We figure we bought it a couple decades, if not more, so I'm crossing my fingers on that one. The last/third tree was a half-dead red cedar that the previous owner had allowed to get choked by poison ivy so we cut that one down, too.

Anyway, it's a bummer we had to cut down what was once a beautiful old White Oak that had to be at least 100 years old, but the house is safe and now the front/west side of the property has become big sky country, which is really nice on a clear night. Now I'm thinking of taking up astronomy. Some time ago my wife bought a Star Wheel but I haven't tried to make sense of it yet - I've always wanted to be able to read the constellations but I'm a looong way from learning that.

 

did you cruise by the south beach restaurant? what is the status of it?

 

I did on my way to the phosphate docks at the South end. I didn't really pay attention but I'm pretty sure it was open.

Pretty funny that you have to dodge spiny tail iguanas on the roads around there.

Of course you don't have to because they're invasive but I don't like running things over especially on a bike.

I had a beer there once years ago but I prefer a place that is downtown I guess.... It's kind of tucked away and they sell Mexican food for a reasonable price at a service window. Everything on that damn island is so expensive but what do you expect when you probably can't find the most humble house for sale around there for less than two million?

I think next time I would just go to manasota key. Not only do you not have to pay $6 to cross the bridge but it just seems that you're under less observation everywhere you go around there.

Manasota key is just North of there a couple of islands I believe. It's like 11 miles long and pretty skinny and it has a beautiful road running next to the Gulf under a canopy of beautiful trees. A great place for a motorcycle ride and I didn't get dirty looks or the stink eye from the police like I did at Boca. Lol

 

Just pulled into the fort Myers hospital 55 miles away to pick her up.