Footprints and a New Fence!

I went out to the garden yesterday and noticed some strange foot prints in the carrot bed. So, "Super Hubby" and I decided it's time for a real garden fence. We worked most of today and now it's up. Not pretty to look at but it should keep the critters out.

Here's the old fence!                                                                                  And the new one!

We are going to be getting some cold nights here, down to the 30's so I will be covering the garden for sure.

I was on the way to the store and I saw my neighbor had torn down his wood fence and put up a new one. I checked out the pile of wood on the curb and then stuffed it all in to my Xterra!

 I can make a bunch more raised beds with them! I am so excited! I also plan on making a raised bed with the concrete blocks from my original garden fence. I want to plant peppers inside the space and lots of basil in the holes on the sides.

Here is the garden covered last year. Not sure how I will cover it with this new fence.

Valentine's Day Gift from "Super Hubby"

Today is Valentine's Day. "Super Hubby" is usually so good to me all year round that I don't get excited about this holiday.

I went to work and when I came home I had a super cool seed starting rack in my dining room! It's a wire shelf with a grow light! Now I can start seeds all year long. I had been mulling over ideas for a seed starting area and I know S.H. was going to help me by building it, but I never thought of this! I put all my basil seeds that I started outside two weeks ago under the lights! So exciting!

All in a days work - Blue Moon, Black Friday (NSFW!!!!!)

This is a not safe for work or kids blog post!

Today is "Black Friday, that crazy, turkey fueled, shopping extravaganza! I live across the street from a mall and several big box stores. We saw people lining up for a few days before the holiday, for the good deals.

I went in service, this morning, at around 5:45 A.M. As soon as I turn on my radio, I heard a call come out at the mall, involving two males running through the line, hitting the waiting shoppers.

I was on scene in seconds, and I saw people pointing to a large white truck pulling away. I did a traffic stop on the truck and this is what I saw after the driver and passenger exited the truck.

I call this photo "Blue Moon, Black Friday". 

Two young guys thought it would be funny to wear only thong underwear and run through the crowd. The joke was on them though, this morning was very cold for Florida. It was 39 degrees, which when you are used to temps of 95+, IT IS COLD! They had to wait while we spoke to everyone who got hit, if the wanted to press charges for unwanted touching (battery). No one did but we still had to ask. They were freezing.

All in a days work - Tourists!

How can you tell if some one lives in Florida or is just a tourist? A tourist will call the police about a massive gator in the ditch by their vacation rental.

I go out and see this little guy. He is maybe 3 feet long. I wish I had a picture of the guy from New York's face when I told him, we won't call a trapper or move a gator this small. Priceless!

The gator is where he is supposed to be, he is not in a yard or shopping center so he gets to stay! I think he is super cute!

The Worm Bin

After reading more about gardening and how it went hand in hand with recycling, I decided to try vermicompost. That's composting using kitchen waste, newspapers, paper towels, cardboard etc with the help of red wiggler worms also known as the Eisenia fetida.

I saw this great video about how to build a warm bin. You can buy already made bins but the cheapest I have seen is around $99.00 and "Super Hubby"built one like in the video for under $25.00. It took me about an hour to construct the bin. Then I set out looking for a place with-in driving distance for the red wigglers. You need this type because they can eat about one half of their weight in food per day. Earthworms and cold bait worms won't do that.

I found a place called Best Buy Worms, which strangely enough was located less then a mile from my Grandparent's place, in Masaryktown, Florida. It's a working farm, you can visit with an appointment but they also do mail order worms too. I bought a pound of worms for $12.50

So, last April, I put the worms in the bin and have been feeding them coffee grounds, egg shells, left over veggies, just about anything except no meat, oils or dairy. It reduced the garbage that I have to put out for landfill to take and my four year old loves to help feed the worms.

It's been almost a year and soon, I will separate the worms from the compost and start over, using the compost in my garden beds. I will be sure to post pictures because I have no doubt it will be messy!

As a Pagan, projects like this one make me happy.

The Gardening Bug Bites Hard!

After my Granddad died, I still had my two tomato plants. I added some green peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, pumpkins, water melon and potatoes! I was hooked. I read everything I could get my hands on, like Vegetable Gardening In Florida and watched gardening videos on YouTube. Check out The Produce Garden. Here are my two tomato plants on June 11th.

I really had no idea what I was doing. I tried to plant things that we like to eat and some that were fun too. I planted the potatoes in  buckets after seeing a great video on YouTube doing it. They grew and I covered them, and they grew some more and I covered them until they looked like this.

I learned that you had to wait for the green tops to die then you could pour out the buckets and get the potatoes. Thanks Brian! I grew lettuce, not having any idea that it is a cool weather crop and we were just at the start of a Florida summer. So lesson learned. I planted the pumpkin too late, it flowered and then died. Has some success with the watermelon.

By now, I had run out of room with the two planters I had from The Garden Patch so I got my "Super Hubby" to build me four wood garden beds, that we lined up by the fence in the back yard.

This is where I had the watermelon growing, three to be exact until my lovable, slightly less then intelligent puppy dog, Bailey, decided they looked fun to play with and snatched them off the vine! Again, lesson learned. This year, we will build a fence or raise the beds off the ground.

All in a days work - Hog Wild!

I get to see and do, all sorts of strange and interesting things while at work. So, I thought I would do a re-occurring post about some of those things.

Today at work was like every other day, it's all the same, until it's not the same. I work for a city of about 100,000 people, we have urban areas but we also have a lot of undeveloped land. This can cause some fun moments for us at work, because of animals.

We received a call that a feral hog was loose in a backyard. This is disturbing. We have a pig problem! There are an estimated 500,000 wild pigs loose in the Florida woods, they can grow up to 200 lbs, they eat anything and everything and the males can become very aggressive.

Several officers and myself went to the residence, quietly approached the backyard and spend an hour trying to wrangle this fearsome beast!

I don't know if this little piggy was super fast or we were laughing to hard to catch him but we finally did. Several people in the neighborhood came out to watch us look very silly. I saw lots of phones so I am sure there is a Youtube video somewhere! :-)

I put Mr. Piggy in my patrol car and brought him deeper into the woods away from the houses. I thanked him for the fun and that I was happy to have met him.  Hope he stays safe and away from people.