Lowering the Mango Tree

Some of us can't get near the fruit, or they hate it.

I'm over the moon with it. I can't really get enough mangoes.

I even have a tree in the backyard.  Therein lies the problem.  You see, Mango Trees can get insanely big.  In South Florida they can get to 40 or 50 feet tall.

Lets call that 17 meters for the imperially impaired.

There is one that big just a short walk from my front door.

So unless you want fruit that is upwards of two pounds or a Kilo falling from 50 feet onto your head, or breaking glass in your car, you want to lower the things.

I've been telling people this for years.  Don't let it grow up, make it grow out.

Yes, I am turning my mango into a bonsai.  Not one of those little trees in a pot, but a tree that could be huge is going to be cut back to about six feet.

It's a manageable height for these things.

I know it is something that works because I did a test cut a month back and I am trying hard not to allow myself to finish the job.

I had gone out there and found that my tree was almost 20 feet tall and growing out of control.   About the time I took cuttings from the Bougainvillea, I walked to the Mango with saw in hand and lowered the tree on one side by about a person in height.  It also got narrowed to about 10 feet.

How do I know it worked?  Simply because the plant told me. 

I didn't do a simple beheading of the tree, I cut back long arms to the core.

One month later, everywhere I cut, the tree put out lots of little branches like fingers.   I stopped where I did with the tree because I was afraid it would pout and not put out more fruit for next year.  Since flowering and fruiting happens in spring here, I have to wait.

My Theory is that I can gently reduce the height in stages and not shock the plant.

At least it's not a skyscraper any longer.

Motto of this exercise is that if you have a truly tall tree that is getting out of control, take a measured approach and trim it back.  But do so gently, after all you do still want the tree.

I will say mine is vigorously putting out new growth and should be in perfect form for blooming in early spring.

A man with one leg recently got a job working at a brewery. He was put in charge of the hops.

I guess because it's Sunday and because it has been raining here overnight, this one fits... for me at least.




Jock, the painter, often would thin his paint so it would go further.

So when the Church decided to do some deferred maintenance, Jock was able to put in the low bid, and got the job.
As always, he thinned his paint way down with turpentine.

One day while he was up on the scaffolding -- the job almost finished -- he heard a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened.

The downpour washed the thinned paint off the church and knocked Jock off his scaffold and onto the lawn among the gravestones and puddles of thinned and worthless paint.

Jock knew this was a warning from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?”

And from the thunder, a mighty voice: “REPAINT! REPAINT! AND THIN NO MORE!”

Cop: How high are you? No officer, it's: Hi, How are you

I just picture this next story as a plot point from the TV show Letterkenny.  Jared Keeto's character Wayne would stand up and have this distinctive and frankly odd stance when he does.  I don't get it but I don't think we're meant to.





A man walks into a bar feeling gloomy walks into a bar

"What's wrong John?" asks the bartender, standing with his legs apart and hands on his hips.

John says, "It's the wife. I feel like she doesn't love me anymore. Our love life feels dull and the sex has become routine."

The bartender starts stroking his chin, legs apart, with one hand on his hip. "Hmmm. Well,I've never had a problem with the ladies. In the years of my happy marriage, distance has always made the heart grow fonder."

John looks at the bartender with a spark in his eye. Without saying a word, he rushes home to his wife. There, she is reading a book in the bedroom, when John bolts in, posing just as the bartender was: legs apart, with his hands on his hips.

In a felt swoop, he rips the clothes off his wife and proceeds to make love to her through the night.

After what seems like hours, she turns to John. Still trying to catch her breath, she asks him what changed.

John gets up, stands with his legs apart and puts his hands on his hips. "It's this stance", he says.

"What about this stance, John?".

He lifts one hand and starts stroking his chin, legs apart and with one hand on his hip.

"This stance makes the heart grow fonder."

Propagating Bougainvillea is Easy

The first time I propagated bougainvillea, i used what my family "on the farm" would call "Involuntary Propagation".

There was a pot with a little pine bark mulch in the bottom, and a little soil.  It sat under the bougainvillea arbor that I have behind the house.  I came through one day and trimmed it back and a small bit fell in the pot.

I didn't see or ignored the clipping instead of throwing it out.

Months later when I went to use the pot, I pulled the clipping out and it had begun to grow roots.

Bougainvillea is an amazing looking plant but it has thorns all over it.  Whenever I work with it, I end up having arms that look like I was trying to give a pill to a cat.  Shredded.

But it is one of the reasons why I bought the house.  Standing at the front window, you can see through the house to the arbor in the back, and when it is in bloom, it is a wall of flowers.

It also has a very thin bark that scratches off with a thumbnail to show a little green underneath.

Many plants down here are like that, and it is pretty easy to find a plant that I can propagate easily with better than 50% success.

With the bougainvillea, you will want to find a piece with green growth at the end and some leaf buds on it.

Cut the stem, and trim it to a 45 degree angle to make it easier to stick in the soil.

Treat the cut end generously with rooting hormone.

Push the stem into wet soil deep enough to allow the cutting to stand more or less upright.  Larger stems will need more support and will need to go deeper.

Once in soil, water generously until it is obvious that you have new growth and roots developing.  It can be as long as 3 to 6 months before the new plant can go into the ground, so be patient.

In one case I have seen new growth in about two weeks once all the old leaves had fallen to the ground.

Finally, the plant does not seem to care whether it is getting started in a pot or directly in the ground.  I have cuttings starting in both the soil and in pots on my irrigation lines.

I can eat sugar with either hand. I'm ambidextrose!

I have a triple play today.  A Three-Fer of strangeness.  A couple dad jokes for you to smile at, hopefully for your day today.



I just ordered a Chinese takeaway from a local place just been to pick it up and as i was driving home, I heard the bags rustling and moving!!!

I thought what the hell is that? Has something got in the bag?

I thought I could see a little pair of eyes peering out I was driving so I leaned forward, picked up the bag, put it on the passenger seat and there it was again, more rustling and little eyes looking out behind the prawn crackers, I thought its got to be a rat or a mouse or something, so I carefully pulled the bag down ...

And there it was ... ... A Peeking Duck!!!



My teacher said that unison isn't a proper word.
That's ridiculous, she should know a unison is one buffalo standing by itself.
If there are 2 buffaloes then it's bison.


And finally...


Taking a day off

Two factory workers are talking.
The woman says, "I can make the boss give me the day off."
The man replies, "And how would you do that?"
The woman says, "Just wait and see." She then hangs upside-down from the ceiling.
The boss comes in and says, "What are you doing?"
The woman replies, "I'm a light bulb."
The boss then says, "You've been working so much that you've gone crazy. I think you need to take the day off."
The man starts to follow her and the boss says, "Where are you going?"
The man says, "I'm going home, too. I can't work in the dark."

Wanna hear a roof joke? Alright, the first one's on the house.

Gardening.

The easiest rule of thumb is to plant what your neighbors have in their yards.  Since you want something to look distinctive, and not copy cat, go a block away and see if you can figure out what they have.

Then when you get home, and have all your precious cuttings in hand, make sure that they aren't invasive.  I found out that some of the plants that propagate so well are deemed invasive by the different groups here in South Florida.

Won't stop me though, I have pots of the stuff in my backyard that are "shovel ready" to go in the yard.

Ooops.


Or you could easily take this old gentleman's idea to heart and plant a forest instead.


There was an old man who lived by a forest

As he grew older and older, he started losing his hair, until one day, on his deathbed, he was completely bald. That day, he called his children to a meeting.

He said, "Look at my hair. It used to be so magnificent, but it's completely gone now. My hair can't be saved. But look outside at the forest. It's such a lovely forest with so many trees, but sooner or later they'll all be cut down and this forest will look as bald as my hair."

"What I want you to do," the man continued, "is, every time a tree is cut down or dies, plant a new one in my memory. Tell your descendants to do the same. It shall be our family's duty to keep this forest strong."

So they did. Each time the forest lost a tree, the children replanted one, and so did their children, and their children after them. And for centuries, the forest remained as lush and pretty as it once was, all because of one man and his re-seeding heirline.

Say Something Sunrise

Ironically this was one of my earlier wake up calls.

Not the morning in the picture, but today, when I am writing this blather.

More than two hours before sunrise, I was up walking around this same spot, a little more than two years later and thought to look East towards the sunrise.

Except it won't be there for a while.

Coming home to sit in the dark house, I'm going about procrastinating everything that I needed to do and did "other things" instead. 

Looking out the back window from my Poang Chair, through the bougainvillea, I saw the same colors starting to show in the eastern skies.  Orange tints began to appear, painting the large banana tree leaves under my mango tree back there. 

After all, I'm in South Florida.  I think it's a state requirement that you have at least one fruit tree on your property and since I know how to propagate plants, I have too many.  Too many banana trees is not really a problem, but the mango can get massive.

My mango looks like it has been mistreated lately, I hacked it down from 15 feet to a more manageable ten.  If you "lower" the top of the tree, you will end up with a skeletal look, but the plant is quite forgiving.  It's putting out tiny little chartreuse leaves from the trunk just below where I butchered the plant.

That's my yard, too many fruit trees in pots.  So many that when I look at it from "space", I can see the trees around the pool.

But that picture.  I was standing at NE 7th Avenue and Wilton Drive in Wilton Manors, Florida.  Looking east towards the ocean two miles away and the approaching sunrise there was a sign flashing.

See Something
Say Something

I did see something.  A beautiful sunrise.  It was all for my benefit, at some level.  The city has not awakened on that day, June 24, 2017, at 6:14.  The warning sign kept repeating its mantra, and I stood there, my faithful sidekick, Rack the SuperDog (TM) looking towards the sunrise and up at my face.

"Isn't it beautiful, boy?  It's our privilege to be up this early and see the city like this!"

I got a wag or five out of him and he went back to looking at it.

"Well, lets go home, the house should be waking up soon."

Rack stood up and began walking across the street in the general direction towards our house, tail wagging and leading the way.

Beautiful mornings should be shared.  My dog seemed to enjoy it too. 

Now, two years later, I'm sharing it with you.

Get out of bed early once in a while, go have a look.  You never know what you'll find.

I don't hate lazy people anymore. I found someone else who does it for me.

First, I give you one kind of Lazy.

A young married couple have moved into an apartment and want to re-paper the dining room.

They decide to call on a neighbor with a dining room of the same size and ask him how much rolls of wallpaper he bought when he did his dining room.

"Seven," he says.

Heeding his words, they buy seven rolls of expensive wallpaper and get to work. When they get to the end of the fourth roll, the dining room is finished.

Annoyed, they confront the neighbor and tell him, "We followed your advice, but we ended up with three extra rolls!"

The neighbor shrugs and says, "Well. So that happened to you too."



And since this is Sunday, I give a final kind of lazy!


The county's road maintenance staff got a new trainee.

The trainee is tasked to paint the lines of a reconstructed highway before it is to be re-opened for public traffic.

    On Day 1 the trainee painted 5 miles.
    On Day 2 the trainee painted 2.6 miles.
    On Day 3 the trainee painted 0.9 miles.
    On Day 4 the trainee gets then questioned by the boss.

Boss: "On your first day, you have painted a great length of the road. But the following days it got significantly less than before. Are you slacking?"

Trainee: "No, sir! The distance to the bucket gets longer!"

Would you like to hear a construction joke? Well I’m still working on it.

This one threw me, but considering that I come from a computing background, I got it. 

Then I remembered my programmers and yeah I can see it!




Three townsfolk were sentenced to death by guillotine.
The King must witness every execution.

First up was the town’s Priest.
Sentenced for baptizing the newborn babies a bit too long.
Executioner puts the bag over his head, priest kneels down into the headrest, and the lever is pulled.
The blade comes speeding downwards and stops half way.
The King was in shock. “There has to be some devine reason you have not died. You may go now.”

Next was the town Drunk.
Sentenced for too many nights running around naked whilst urinating on others property.
Executioner puts the bag over his head, he kneels down into the headrest, and the lever is pulled.
The blade comes speeding downwards and stops half way.
The King was amazed. “I don’t know why the gods have decided to keep you alive... go on now and drink the finest whiskey you can find.”

Finally was the town Engineer. Sentenced for releasing the castle prisoners while demonstrating the flaws in the wall structure.
Executioner puts the bag over his head, he kneels down into the headrest, and the lever is pulled.
The blade comes speeding downwards and stops half way.
The King was starting to get a little irritated that no heads were rolling off that day.
“Well, Engineer, it must be your lucky day too.” He says as the executioner pulls the bag off the Engineers head.

Before the King could get another word in, the Engineer looks up and says, “Hey! There’s your problem!”

Rack Wants To Grill Lunch

There's an old line about Dogs Playing Poker that you probably have heard.

They can't.  You will know how good a hand they have because they will show you by wagging their tail.

Rack, the McNab SuperDog (TM) is clearly one of those emotional ones.

I let him follow me just about everywhere on the property.  I'd take him with me in the car more often except businesses can get rather arbitrary as to what they allow in their stores. 

Leaving a dog in a car is a definite no and since I have a soft top Jeep Wrangler, if we're going somewhere, he's got to come with me.

It's a Jeep Thing.  You leave nothing that you would not mind losing in a convertible car where the windows are held on by slots, velcro, and zippers.

But at home, it's open.  I walk around the property and he's following me while I am doing things.  Actually, my Morning Yard Inspection, he comes out, and does his own thing until he gets bored.  He'll keep coming back until he gets to go back inside. 

I have a higher tolerance for "boring" things I guess.

I've told him before "Go do something, you're just bored, I'm not ready yet" and he will wander off and snoop around the property line until something else looks good.

In this case, we're getting ready to grill some burgers this morning, and he knew it.  Plopped himself in view of the grill and waited for me to bring out the sausages and the burgers.

Smart dog!  Have a Burger!

Besides, if I use the brush on him out back by the hedges, the fur will magically disappear and I don't have to use the vacuum cleaner to pick up quite so much of it.

Cliffhanger puns are extremely frustrating. They just

Since my friends have discovered that I like Dad Jokes and Punny One Liners, I am being sent a bunch of them.  I've got a file sitting on the desktop of my Debian Linux Desktop Computer called "Thirteen Bad Jokes.txt" that is getting quite full of them.

Here are thirteen more of them for your... enjoyment?





My son has adorable little baby hands... I don’t know what he did with the rest of the body.

My tuktuk got stuck earlier in the mud - False advertising should be called a stuckstuck.

Did you hear about the big fight at the seafood restaurant?  There was battered fish everywhere.

3 guys are on a boat with 4 cigarettes but nothing to light them with …so they throw one cigarette off the boat to make the boat a cigarette lighter

I have got a black belt in origami.  I made it myself.

A lady walks into the library, asking for books on paranoia.  The librarian whispers, "they're right behind you".

How many lawyers does it take to fill up an ambulance?  I don’t know, nobody’s ever tried to save one.

My daughter asked for a Cinderella Themed Party.  So I invited all her friends over and made them clean my house.

Whenever I travel I like to open a window.  The airline strongly disagrees.

My wife and I have three beautiful children and three out of five isn't bad.

Talk to your lock calmly if you get locked out because communication is key.

Since when do we have a alarm system?  You are standing on the cat...

How do you make any salad a Caesar Salad ... Stab it 23 times (Et Tu Brute?)

They launched a ride share app for witches... It's called BroomService.

There's an app for everything these days... you can use that one this month. 



The wise old Mother Superior from county Tipperary was dying.

The nuns gathered around her bed trying to make her comfortable. They gave her some warm milk to drink, but she refused it. Then one nun took the glass back to the kitchen. Remembering a bottle of Irish whiskey received as a gift the previous Christmas, she opened and poured a generous amount into the warm milk.

Back at Mother Superior's bed, she held the glass to her lips. Mother Superior drank a little, then a little more. Before they knew it, she had drunk the whole glass down to the last drop.
"Mother", the nuns pleaded, "Please give us some wisdom before you die". She raised herself up in bed with a pious look on her face and said, "Don't sell that cow".




Due to a power outage, the house was very dark so the paramedic asked Kathleen, a 3-yr old girl to hold a flashlight high over her Mommy so he could see while he helped deliver the baby... Little Connor was born.

The paramedic lifted him by his feet and spanked him on his bottom and he began to cry.
The paramedic then asked the wide-eyed 3-yr old what she thought about what she had just witnessed.
She quickly responded 'He shouldn't have crawled in there in the first place, spank him again!'





Years ago, I decided I wanted to be a doctor, so I took the entrance exam to go to medical school.

One of the many questions on human anatomy asked was to rearrange the letters “PNEIS" into the name of "an important human body part which is most useful when erect."

Those who answered "spine" are now doctors
The rest of us are posting jokes on social media.

Lime Honey Frozen Yogurt Recipe

Ok, this is easy. 

The Recipe comes from "playing around" with food in the kitchen.  No "cooking" so it's safe for all ages, even you non cookers.

The recipe would work better in an ice cream freezer but I literally just tossed the mixed yogurt in the freezer.  It was a bit "Crunchy" but it tasted awesome.

I guess it would be fine not frozen too, maybe I'll try it that way.

At about 220 calories for 9 ounces, it's a saving over the usual 400-800 calories for a regular ice cream of the same size.

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces (225g) unsweetened and unflavored yogurt (recipe)
• 2/3 ounces (21g) honey
• 1 tablespoon of Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice
• Optional:  I added 3 packets of Sweet N Low for a sweeter kick

Process:

Add all ingredients to a container and mix until smooth.

• Freeze until solid, about 3 hours.
• Hint: If you mix it while it is freezing it will be smoother and less ice will form
• Chip away and enjoy.

The Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice is common in drinks and bars.  I know I got it at one point for some drink recipe but it was lingering in the fridge.  It's basically simple syrup flavored with lime concentrate.

If Lime is not your favorite, Lemon Curd (recipe) would work as well as other favorite flavors.

This reminds me ... I need to make more Lemon Curd since I have Grapefruit for that task!