I know I should be anti-WalMart.

     But WalMart makes it so dang easy!

     I spent several days on the road last week, participating in a wide variety of activities, and whenever there's a minor emergency, there's always a WalMart nearby with just the thing I need.

     I spent the first night of my journey at Ft. Myers "Crestfallen Suites."  I only have one thing to say about that:  it sucks to be poor.

     The next morning, I realized I didn't have the right kind of top to wear under my wet suit for a day of fossil digging in the Peace River so I drove straight to the Wauchula WalMart to find what I needed on the clearance rack.  I was almost to the checkout with my $4 sports bra when I spotted a shelf of clearance wine.  Might as well look!

     Hmmm...the label on the Mixed Up Red indicated that it contained cab, merlot, syrah, and zinfandel (all things that I like) as well as having the requisite 13.5% minimum alcohol content that I prefer in a red wine.  

     And a $5 price tag.

     Add 4 bottles of Mixed Up Red to my $4 sports bra.  It was a gamble as I didn't actually get to taste the wine until that night, in a city 2 hours away but had I still been in Wauchula, I would've driven back to WalMart and bought every bottle they had.  Dang!  It's good!

      The one thing the Wauchula WalMart didn't have was my current salad dressing obsession, Kraft Asian Toasted Sesame.  

     As soon as I discovered this dressing, it seemed to disappear from the shelves of every grocer I visited in my range of Florida.  Finally, the Sanford WalMart came through.  It's not the greatest dressing ever but for some reason, right now, it's all I want.

     While in Wauchula, I snapped a photo of this truck with a large bag of peanuts sitting on top of the truck's tool box.

     This is the 2nd time I've seen this mode of peanut transport in Wauchula.  I've now lived in Florida long enough to know that this man is probably going to take these peanuts home, throw them in a crock pot for a week, destroying their naturally delicious taste and texture and henceforth refer to them as "boiled."  What I don't understand is why these people don't secure their peanuts better (or everything else in their truck, for that matter).  One sharp turn and those nuts are road kill.  Let's hope he doesn't have far to go.

     On the subject of trucks and transporting gear, check out this guy's set-up!

     Coolest of the cool old-school truck, high-tech streamlined yak, AND a surf board!  Are you kidding me?!  I felt a little embarrassed to park my flea circus nearby.

     

     I'll be spending some quality time at home for a couple of weeks.  I got most of my veggie garden planted, knitted a hat for a friend, and even snuck in a little fossil necklace work for my SolOpsArt Etsy store.

     I had to run in to Joann's and couldn't resist checking out the sale beads where I found these wonderful chunky stone beads.  They look like little granite bricks to me.  They are vaguely labeled "JAS" which usually means jasper but they reflect light like labradorite.  Cool!

     

     So I was sitting on my sofa, knitting away, when I glanced down at the pen I keep on the coffee table.

     It suddenly occurred to me that this particular pen has not left the coffee table in over a year.  Prior to that, every single pen I put there disappeared into Mike's truck within a few days until I got so frustrated I decided to "decorate" the pen, a la banks and shops, in such a way that no one would want to make off with it.  I knitted a length of i-cord and attached it to the pen with ugly blue duct tape.  

Works like a charm!

You can take the girl out of the Midwest...

       ...but you can't teach someone from Missouri when to plant their Florida garden.

     I was talking with a friend last week and he said, "I got our garden planted," to which I replied, "What garden?"

     Crap!  That day I wore a sweatshirt was winter! 

      Come to think of it, the temps are definitely in the balmy range so I gathered together all the seeds I wanted to plant and immediately realized, as I do every year, that I don't have nearly enough space to plant all this stuff.  And why did the seed company send me a free packet of cantaloupe seeds?!  I have never gotten a cantaloupe past baseball size and frankly, I'm not up to that challenge.

     I absolutely had to revamp the area where I will place the 5 gallon buckets that I plant tomatoes and cucumbers in.  Thankfully, I've been stumbling in that direction for a few months, building the 4' sections of reclaimed fence post walkway that I planned on using to define the area.  I had enough to finish this long crucial stretch.  The ground is covered with the clearanced weed barrier that I picked up for $3/roll and I'm still kicking myself for not buying every roll they had.  

     A quick run to Home Depot for some of their cheapest topsoil and compost/manure and I've got a good start on my veggie garden.  I planted 2 "nursery" buckets each of cherry tomatoes and cucumbers (I will transplant the seedlings to more buckets once they are strong) and called it a day.  I should be able to get all the seeds planted (with the exception of that damnable cantaloupe) by the end of next week and that's one of the earliest gardens this midwestern girl has gotten in the ground since I moved to Florida in 2004!

Orchid Show!

    I haven't purchased orchids in several years.

I have a lot of orchids that are doing well and tending to them is an enjoyable hobby that doesn't take up much time.  Recently, however, I decided that I wanted to add a few specific orchids to my patio.  I was looking for varieties that are proven survivors for me but when I started searching on line, I found that ordering them would be very expensive and when I've ordered orchids in the past, they are small and frail.  The next option was finding an orchid show nearby.  Luckily, the Orlando Orchid Society's yearly show fell on Valentine's Day weekend.  Count me in!

     An orchid show can be overwhelming if you don't know what you're doing.  Each vendor at this show had a small square space within which to showcase their wares and they crammed their spaces full of every conceivable variety of orchid.  The vendors were packed so close together, there wasn't room for more than one person to walk between the stands at a time.

     I avoided my usual panic attack by being completely prepared with a short list and a tight budget.  The closeness of the stands allowed me to quickly scan and price the orchids I wanted and I studiously avoided being distracted by the ones I wasn't interested in.

     I've wasted plenty of money (thinking I was saving money) by purchasing baby plants that would need years of nurturing before I could even begin to hope for a bloom.  Most of those plants died long ago.  Now, on the rare occasions that I buy an orchid, I get a mature, healthy plant.  The vanda in the above photo came from Smiley Orchids in Clermont, Florida.  I often pass through Clermont on my way to Brooksville and plan to stop in some day to check out their operation.  Greenhouses are wonderful places to visit: warm, softly humid, quiet, and filled with beautiful plants.  I lost all my vandas to a freeze about 5 or 6 years ago.  It was 2 years before I purchased another but its blooms reminded me of why I had several in the first place: stunning!

     I was also on the hunt for a stanhopea.  I have one that has always been happy and produces increasing numbers of unique blossoms every year.  The orchid show didn't have a big selection of stanhopea but I found this interesting plant:

     This stanhopea has been growing for years but the price tag was ridiculously cheap so I asked the seller why.  She explained that it has belonged to a club member for years and he has never gotten it to bloom.  He's given away many starts but no one else has gotten it to bloom either.  I'm not a miracle worker or an orchid expert, but I do know how to wait, so I accepted the challenge.  We shall see...

     My 2 other purchases were a hardy looking schomburgkia hybrid (on my list) and a well-established, fragrant cattleya (not on my list).  I was in and out in under an hour.  Fun!

And now, for a product review.

     Do not be seduced by the Grill-n-Go.  Regardless of what they show you in the photo, it does not pack enough firepower to cook a hamburger, and maybe not even a hot dog.  I bought 2, on sale, and I hated to just chuck the second one in the trash so I took it apart and used the grate to repair my old BBQ grill.

     

     I finished my walkway yesterday, despite the hens being under foot the entire time.  

     They are on the watch for bugs hiding under the boards but a few unlucky lizards got caught in the fray, too.  I watched Goldie get medieval on a brown anole.  She "immobilized" it, then swallowed it whole.  Crazy!

     Anyway, the completion of this latest walkway revealed a perfect area to turn into a pigeon pea patch.  I'll start the seeds today.

A million baby steps

     Why does it always seem that every project begins with a million baby steps just to get to the point where I can START the project?

     I am forced to the same conclusion I arrived at after using my latest purchase of under eye firming cream:  expecting overnight results is unrealistic.

     Said project is adding stairs to the left side of my deck in order to quickly access my planter boxes but that can't happen until someone hauls away the hot tub that I acquired during a lapse in sanity and plunked down on the left side of my deck.  It was free but needed the heater repaired and I figured I could get my super-handy friends to work on it for me but my super-handy friends have their own lives so now I just want the thing gone BUT there is a stack of chain link fence rolls blocking the hot tub's exit and Mike will have to move those and...you get the idea.

     There are plenty of other projects to fill the void.  Just the other morning I said to myself, "If I step in dog crap one more time!!!" and thus began the long-planned walkway connecting deck and patio to shed.  I'm building it out of reclaimed deck boards and I'm building it fast.  

     That same morning I also said to myself, "If I have to look at these cookies one more time, I'm going to eat the cover page of my latest issue of Living!!!"  Where can I buy a couple of these treats?  I'm certainly not going to make them;  hours and hours of labor to create misshapen macaroons that I'll just eat in one sickening sitting anyway.  Not gonna do it!

     This coconut milk I just bought at WalMart also has the potential to lead me down the path of overindulgence.  I tried it because it was inexpensive and a product of Thailand.  The milk is more like cream and I started eating it out of the can with a spoon before remembering I had a SE Asian curry to finish.  Yum!

     If I keep eating like this, I won't be able to fit into my new pair of Pajama Jeans.  Oh wait!  Pajama Jeans have plenty of give even if they don't offer as much forgiveness; I don't think everyone can pull off the pictured Pajama Jean look but I almost parted with $20 just to head out to the clubs in PJ's and stilettos.  Thaz right!

     True beauty can be found right outside my door.  I finally thought of using the angel trumpets as a bouquet.  Stunning!  They made me think of the Diego Rivera paintings of calla lilies.  The only problem is they are delicate and when the house was cool, lasted all day, but when the house warmed up, quickly wilted and plopped over.

     While every state north of Florida is getting hammered with winter storms, I truly appreciate being in  flip flop Florida but when I came across this young couple in the latest National Geographic magazine, I considered, for a second, heading into the cold weather.  I LOVE everything about their outfits (except for the ice skates.  I don't ice skate) and talk about forgiving clothing! Multitudes of sins and all that.

     And finally, a shout out to the hens.  Every once in awhile, one of the ladies lays a robin's egg.

     The shell on these little surprises is always fully formed but there is no yolk inside.  Hmmm...

"Do you party?"

     I was riding my bicycle to the grocery store when a young man pulled over and rolled down his window.  

     I hate when people ask me for directions because not only am I directionally challenged, I also get stage fright when entrusted with the task of helping someone find their destination.  I always realize later that I left out vast, vital chunks of information.   So I steeled myself to knowingly send another innocent on a wild goose chase.

     The young man smiled and asked, "Do you party?"  

     Here is EXACTLY what I looked like, as chronicled by a Winn-Dixie employee that day (I've since fixed the bangs...I think):

     I'm out of the loop that I was never in to start with but I really, really wanted to ask, "Do I look like I party?!"

     I suspect his question had to do with drugs but he didn't mention Lipitor or Xanax so I continued on my way, calling out a lighthearted, "Nope!"  

     As I bicycled away, I heard him ask, "Do you have a boyfriend?"  What an entrepreneur! 

     And now, for a gratuitous photo of Tom Hardy:

I'll party now! Please? :-)

     

    

Survival of the fittest: Herbs

     I hate to think of all the money I've wasted trying to create that picture-perfect herb garden.

I blame the herbs.

     Potted herbs require a level of care that I am unable to give; before I know it, I have pots filled with dried herbs which I could have just bought for 87¢ in the Badia section at Winn-Dixie.

     Slowly...sooo slowly...I have been creating a potted herb garden that has the right stuff to survive in my world.

     The diehards are a grim looking rosemary, a lush kaffir lime tree, and a shock of lemongrass.

     I was given a start for a type of basil that likes it rough.  No fragile, pillowy leaves on this basil plant; it has small sturdy leaves that can handle all the negligence I can dish out.

     A start of chives is finally growing now that I've got it protected from the hens.  They managed to pull it out of the pot 3x before I tried the tera cotta barrier.

     On the rare occasions that I break down and purchase fresh herbs, I get the Living Herbs brand.  It is packaged with a root ball that can be transplanted and since I needed the herb anyway, I don't feel as bad if I kill the plant.  I now have productive mint and thyme plants by doing it this way.

     Slowly but surely.

     Speaking of hens...

     They all insist on laying their eggs in the same nest even though they have 3 to choose from.  This leads to a lot of bickering and ruffled feathers as they jockey for position.  I suspect that when the egg is ready to go, there's no holding it back.

     Bath time for the hens looks a little different than you might expect.  Maude, Pearl, and Opal are enjoying their daily dirt bath in this photo and also demonstrating why, after I plant veggies, I have to put all the fencing back up on the planter boxes.

     And the papayas keep rolling in...