Smarties Bar & Grill #77

Yup - you can't forget to do that. I drill about a 3/16" wide hole in the bottom of the cup, which is large enough to stay open most of the time. If it clogs up, I'll poke a stick up there until it drains. I also label the plant variety on a small piece of masking tape and stick that on the cup so I know exactly what's growing in there. At the end of the growing season, I rinse and stack them up and then re-use them the next year.

I also re-use the stackable plastic crates that my wife's daffodil bulbs come in, and they fit about 28 Solo cups, so by the time I fill them up I've got over 50 seedlings per crate.



In addition to containing all the cups, the crates make it easy to move all the seedlings around and water, and of course you can re-use them every year instead of just chucking them in the county landfill.

 

Should be OK. We have one that’s probably 12-13 years old still works good. Starts easy as long as keep battery up. Replaced the deck once. Engine is a Kohler.

 

Someone take the phone away from me and break this vicious cycle..... Browsing Amazon for a bunch of crap I really don't need.

 

An interesting coprophilous fungi I found today while foraging mushrooms in a cattle pasture.

Not a psychedelic one but still fascinating nonetheless.

And yes I did find a couple of cubensis.
It's always nice to have landowner permission to go foraging.

 

Fungi infedentied as likely ascobolus

 

Back in April (Page 1) politicalcenter and I briefly talked about no mow lawns and I found a couple pictures from a few years ago when I let part of the fields in the North 40 grow wild all year. It's actually quite nice, and this year we're doing it again but I don't think the fields are going to wind up looking this nice. We must have had more rain in 2020 than we had this year.

In this pic you can see the difference between the areas I mowed and the areas I didn't cut:



The pics were taken in late September, so you can see some of the Autumn color emerging...



Needless to say, the birds, butterflies, bees and other bugs love it when we let the field grow wild. I'm also a big fan of Goldenrod, and the field is full of it, so it's a win for everybody....

 

Here's a wider shot of the fields - when it gets windy out the Goldenrod and grass blow around like waves in a gold, bronze and lime green sea....



...and the Goldenrod...

 

Here a couple of my favorite shots:





I have no idea what that burgundy-colored plant is, but the feathery texture is real nice and it looks great against the Goldenrod...

 

Labor Day weekend is almost here...Vacation starts tomorrow afternoon, woo-hoo!!

For the first time in several weekends I won't have to process any tomatoes. I've cooked and frozen enough chili, chicken & andouille sausage gumbo and Brunswick stew to last us three months, and I stewed and made salsa with the rest. We've still got some tomatoes coming in from the succession crop, so last night I stir-fried some shrimp in a sweet tomato salsa using fresh Cherokee Purple, Virginia Sweets and Sungold cherry tomatoes, with fresh basil, rosemary and Greek oregano from our herb garden, threw some Tabasco sauce in there to give it a little kick and served it over yellow rice, and it was a taste of Summer if I ever had one. Ya gotta love this time of year....

 

I'm inclined to let my yard get two foot before I have someone cut it. And that's only about 5 weeks worth of growth during the summer.

I live in the county and I have plenty of pictures of county roads that they let get 7 ft tall before they cut.... So if they come and give me a hard time for my you're getting around 2 ft... I'm going to show them those pictures.

 

Beautiful pictures of what Florida looks like before they destroy it... 260 acre Park along the Peace River.

 

Nice pics.

Florida is a very special and beautiful place, and I have fond memories of it from my childhood - you're very fortunate to live there.

I take it you're referring to development destroying it? If so, that's a damned shame. I experienced the same thing where I grew up in the western reaches of Northern Virginia. What was once one of the prettiest parts of Virginia has been turned into an over-developed concrete shithole. I can't bear to go up there anymore.

Sadly, a lot of that is starting to spread south down the I-95 corridor and east and west along I-64 from Hampton Roads to the counties west of Richmond. My wife and I had to move a considerable distance away from those two corridors to escape the sprawl that is spreading like a plague along them.

 

Sadly it's only going to get worse.

Like nothing is the way it used to be.

If I ever make the money I'm probably going to retire up in the most rural part of the panhandle I can possibly find. The very poorest region. And maybe I'll be able to die in peace without seeing everything bulldozed down.

 

The last time I grew tomatoes my neighbors got tired of seeing me coming over with more. Lol

 

My wife and I moved into a similar region ourselves (and to be honest I prefer the people in these parts). The wealthier areas are the first places to get paved over.

 

That's a nice problem to have. I had to give away some tomatoes and zucchini, too - a couple of weeks ago we were up to our eyeballs in both.

And no sooner do we finish harvesting it's time to get the beds ready to plant the cool weather crops, but that ain't happening in this heat - we're headed for the mid to upper 90s today. The only thing I'm doing this afternoon is sucking Coronas.

 

Been looking at Sopchoppy Fl. City limits somewhat over one point something square miles and 400 residents and not too far away from the Gulf in the Big bend region. Also steinhatchee looks good

 

@Adfundum
Found some really nice chanterelles while foraging today.

These are a pretty safe one for people to forage who are new to the practice.

At least here in Florida it's only toxic look alike that looks remotely similar is the jack-o'-lantern mushroom which will always grow from wood while a real chanterelle never grows from wood and always from the ground under oaks typically.

Also the chanterelle has false gills while the jack-o'-lantern mushroom has true gills.

The difference is the false ones are more like fleshy projections coming from the mushroom itself while true gills seem of an entirely different texture.

The other species that you see pictured ( not the yellow ones...) is of the Genus boletes.

The majority of those are edible and good condition and some are fine eating but I am not certain about the number of ones that could potentially be toxic.

So I collected the specimen to bring home with the sole purpose of trying to put a positive ID on it so I will know to look for it again if it is indeed good. Until I know that information I will not consider consuming it.

The one at the bottom of the picture is an absolutely prime specimen of chanterelle in perfect condition.

The larger one had one little area that I had to remove where it had started to degrade but both are free of bugs which can sometimes be a problem when trying to find big edible mushrooms.

That problem is almost always present with boletes. I found a rather large grouping of some large specimens today but they were riddled with bugs so I didn't even see the point in attempting to collect and identify them. But the pictured specimen back by the butter dish is a fairly young mushroom in perfect condition.... No matter what it is or how good it is said to be.... If it is old and or full of bugs, no need to go any further.

Bugs are not always a deal breaker in a large specimen because you can cut them out and salvage the edible portion..... But large boletes are virtually always riddled with them to the point they are not worth bothering with

 

A word of caution on the apps, while they can be used to point you in the right direction they can be notoriously inaccurate when it comes to mushroom identification.

Also be very leery of any AI generated content when it comes to the topic. There have been cases where people consumed toxic mushrooms they thought were safe as a result of these.

I even read that some AI generated books have found their way to Amazon.

I recently did find a really good book on Amazon though which is definitely considered about the best book for this region called mushrooms of the gulf coast states that identifies over 1,000 species.

 

I found a very interesting tree while foraging the other day, it was full of green fruits about the size of a chicken's egg but more around and there were ripe fruit on the ground underneath of it and I picked one up and felt it and broke it open and it was sort of mushy inside with some seeds but smelled like the sweetest mango I had ever smelled.

But I did have to wonder about its edibility seeing so much ripe fruit on the ground, seeing as there are plenty of cattle and deer and hogs grazing the area.

 

Area I recently went foraging in. All the way to the left and barely visible is the Peace River. Nothing but cattle grazing going on around there. I could stay all day and not see half of it.

Very beautiful area full of wildlife in addition to the grazing.
20 years ago I didn't have the benefit of Google Earth satellite to check out possible new areas.

 

Sopchoppy looks real nice - reminds me a lot of the town near us - and with all the parks and WMAs in the area you won't have to worry about developers wrecking the area.

 

I officially become unemployed September 30th and officially become self-employed October 1st.