Cashew Fruit and Nut? Apparently They DO Grow On Trees

You never know what you might find if you just open your eyes, take your dog for a walk, and keep that stupid phone in your pocket.

I had been reading about an effort to put the fruit of a cashew tree to use.  The trees grow in India in some rather impoverished areas, and anything that would actually help the people in that sort of situation is sorely needed.

The Clinton Foundation had partnered with some of the farmers there, and with Pepsi Co., will be trying to use the fruit to make a beverage.  Usually the fruit is thrown away to get the Cashew Nut that we've all had.  It is high in anti-oxidants, and has a taste that was described like a Mango.

Feeling that that was not going to be something I ever expected to experience, I went on with my day.

It had come time to take Mr Dog for his second of three walks around town, and I was out on my own for this one.   We've got some strange plants growing here.  Wilton Manors is not an old city by my standards coming from Philadelphia, but it has been here long enough to have the original homes settled and the trees planted are mature.  People would plant things for their enjoyment, for shade, and food.

There are many fruit trees here, and they always catch my eye.  The neighborhood I grew up didn't have any fruit trees along the sidewalk, although the pin oak trees that were planted when the houses were built are now quite tall and create a lot of shade.  The acorns there only feed the squirrels.

Having food grown by the road is a bit of an odd thing.  Food grows in a supermarket, not in a yard in suburbia.

So finding something that is edible and that you never saw before was a shock.  Having just read about this the day before it was also on the top of my mind.

I saw the small yellow orange fruit hanging from the tree and remembered it.  When I got home, I said to Kevin that we have some real exotic trees in this town.  A neighbor has a Cashew Tree, and it's gone to fruit!

There were dozens of fruit there that were on that tree, I explained, and just thought it was another quirk in this quirky little island and filed it away with the rest of the detritus of suburban life.

The next day we both walked past that house and commented to the owner about the tree.  They knew about it and told the story that the construction workers that were building the "Bunker House" next door were from The Islands.  They came by and asked for the fruit, if it wasn't going to be eaten.  The owner gave permission since they didn't really want to try the stuff, and in short order the tree was swarmed over and cleared of fruit.  There were a few nuts left on the tree, but the fruit was gone.

Apparently they have a lot of Cashew trees in Trinidad and the fruit is a delicacy there.

He offered us the one lone fruit that got missed and we happily took it as a curiosity.

I got it home and took the picture, laughing to myself saying that I had to look up how to eat the stuff, who knows what strange preparation you need to do to it.

The nut portion hangs under the fruit and has a coating inside the shell that is poisonous.  That is why all the Cashews you find in a store are in a jar and are pre-roasted for your pleasure.  This black sap that coats the actual nut is not edible.

But the fruit was edible.  Actually, the juice was and I did try it.  It tasted like a Carambola Fruit, a Star Fruit.  The juice from this little fruit coated the inside of my mouth and an hour later I was still tasting it.  It was not very sweet, but an interesting taste all the same.  Then again, I like tropical fruit.

After sucking the husk dry of that fruit, I took the nut out to the yard and stuck it in a pot on my irrigation chain.  It may grow, and if it does, it will go into the ground.  Those trees don't get that tall here, and are a good shade tree.

The Cashew is a true tropical tree, and since the freeze line is in Boca Raton on Clint Moore road, we're not going to freeze.

Yes, I'm 10 miles south of the freeze line.  No snowballs here.

I did manage to find a video of someone in a Cashew plantation eating one fruit right off the tree.  So we were a bit over the top in how we handled it.  The fruit has a strong almost acrid scent to it, and I would have to wonder whatever possessed the first person to decide that this strong smelling thing would be something to eat.  On the other hand, knowing what it was, I would have it again.  It was "interesting" in a way unlike anything else I have ever tried..

A Tree Eats A Honda, or When A Micro Burst Attacks

It started when I looked up from what I was doing.  The skies were getting dark and we weren't supposed to have rain that day.

Checking radar it was clear.

Then a dot formed about 1/2 a mile away in the "bad neighborhood" of Fort Lauderdale South of us.

The next radar frame came six minutes later and that dot was now covering Wilton Manors with green.  It's not a big place, one mile from North to South, three miles wide.

Six minutes later we already knew it was starting to rain.   I was watching it from the kitchen window splat the pool with giant water drops.  It went from nothing to that in an eye blink.

Putting the water on, I was making Mac and Cheese for lunch.  By the time it was off the stove and I was mixing the cheese sauce, the rain was biblical. 

From stove to table in 12 minutes, the storm blew up.

It then got weird.

The mangoes fell from the tree across the street, their fence fell over onto the car next door in the duplex.
FLABOOM!
Aunt Betty's chair blew from my front porch into Kevin's car in the driveway.
FLABOOM!
The flag flew then flew over the house and landed in the bougainvillea out back.
FLABOOM!
It was raining through the Jalousie windows and hitting the back of my neck.   It never rains inside the house, or even gets the front windows wet unless it's a real gully washer.

FLABOOM!  Well, you get the picture.  The lightning strikes were within a property away.

This was rain unlike anything I ever expected, and since I moved to Florida after Wilma, I haven't experienced what it was like to have Mother Nature act like a Real Mother.

Moving my Mac and Cheese to the interior of the house, the lightning took out first the Internet, then the electric power in short bursts.  It went out for an hour or so that time.

I managed to finish lunch while the winds howled like a freight train, but only for a few minutes.  The green blob on Radar had turned yellow, then orange, then red.

Luckily that freight train sound was brief, the lightning started to shift from the front of the house to the back signalling that we weren't sitting at the epicenter of the cell any more and it was moving South. 

Since Radar had been stuck with no Internet to feed it, I hibernated the laptop.  The rain went from Biblical to merely a monsoon, to rain and petered out over the next half hour.

Going outside, we gathered up Betty's Chair and got the flag out of the backyard.   The chair survived, the flag was in tatters from the trip along with the pole that had a neat bend in the middle approximating 90 degrees.

That won't work, plus who uses a metal flag pole in Florida anyway?  Lightning rod would be a better description.

At that point we started hearing about the tree that fell over from our neighbor Bill.  He had taken his truck out for a lap around the neighborhood and said a tree in the parking lot of the Shoppes had fallen over.  Since we still had no internet and power, we were going to take Rack for his walk, then a ride down to Kevin's office to check things out there. 

I brought a camera.  Bill was right.  It was a Honda Civic being eaten by a tree.  According to Bar Security, the guy who owned it had only "PIP" insurance so this wasn't going to be covered.  The pavement under the tree had been lifted up and dropped by the tree falling, and roots under the pavement were severed by the falling.  Just that morning I had walked Rack through that same spot thinking that a tree root pulling up the pavement meant the tree couldn't have been all that stable.

I guess I was right.

Getting Rack out into the car after our walk around town, I noticed that the further from Wilton Manors we got, the less damage there was.  The heat island effect of downtown Fort Lauderdale forced the storm around it.  It swerved to the Southwest of downtown Fort Lauderdale, then went South by way of the Fort Lauderdale Airport.   A lightning strike there left a crater in one of the runways.  I guess they were out there fixing that because as we drove south to the office, we watched a jet take off over Federal Highway, heading East over the ocean before turning North to its destination.

Funny how these things crop up from time to time.  A Lightning strike can hit 10 miles away from the cell itself.  You wouldn't even know what hit you.

By the time we hit the SE 17th Street Causeway area, it looked like a passing sunshower had gone by, nothing really notable.

A Duck Walks into a Bar

A Duck Walks Into a Bar

...and he asks the bartender, "Do you have any grapes?"

"Grapes?" the bartender asks. "Why would a bar have grapes? No, we don't have any grapes."
With his beak towards the floor, the duck waddles out of the bar.

However, the next day, the duck walks into that same bar. He waddles up to the counter with his feet flapping against the wooden floor with every step.

"Do you have any grapes?" the duck asks.
"I told you yesterday," the bartender says. "We don't have any grapes."
And, the duck leaves.

However, wouldn't you believe it, that same duck walks into that same bar and asks that same question the very next afternoon.
"Do you have any grapes?" the duck asks.
"Listen," the bartender says. "If you come in here one more time and ask for grapes, I will staple your feet to the floor."

The duck shrugs it off. He waddles out of the bar, and the night comes and goes. Finally, at noon the next day, the door to the bar opens, and lo and behold, there is the duck. Timidly, he walks to the counter. The bartender sees him, and he shakes his head.

"Hello, sir," the duck says. "Do you have any staples?"
"Staples?" the bartender asks. "Why would a bar have staples? No, we don't have any staples."

"Well," the duck says. "Then do you have any grapes?"

A Man Rushes Into A Bar

A Man Rushes Into a Bar

The young barkeep asks him what he wants. "A whiskey, as quick as you can!"
 The barkeep brings it to him and the man downs it straight away.

"Another! make it a double"
The barkeep once again obliges and the man downs it again.

"Bring me another double, and a triple chaser"
The barkeep, a bit shocked, once again obliges and again the man downs both.

The barkeep, now getting curious, says to him. "Excuse me sir, why are you drinking so much so quickly?"
 He responds, "If you had what I had, you'd be doing the same!"

The barkeep asks him, "If you don't mind me asking, what have you got?"

The man responds...

"No money!"

Northern Mockingbird Chicks in my Podocarpus

I should have known that when I had strange birds hanging around the house, I'd eventually have them move in.

I don't have a problem with that at all.

A while back I had a bird come out and stare at me when I was out in the yard taking random pictures.  After I found that there was a bird roosting in my Podocarpus, I knew that there was a picture in store.

I was out untangling the flag from the pole in front of the house.  Struggling with the new flag pole mount on the house, it's a little too tight and a little too high for me to just reach up and grab it like I did on the old one, I was getting some attitude from a bird.

Now I have the entire story.  It was the Momma Bird that I saw on the tree near the house.  In this case, Momma Bird is a Northern Mockingbird which is ironic since most of their range is in the South.  Actually, Momma Bird was perched next to the fake plastic Owl that we have there to scare noisy birds away.

They.
Don't.
Work.

I went about my business, removing the plastic eagle on the end of the pipe and went back in the house to get my camera.  Sticking my nose in the Podocarpus, I saw these four little gems.  Mouth open, eyes barely open, I fired off six pictures then left them alone.

Typical photography, this was the only one in focus.  I really need a Digital SLR, so if you have one gathering dust, write me.

But begging for old hardware aside, my trusty old digital camera did a nice job of this.

This isn't the first time I have had this experience.  When I went up to Deltona to get my dog Rack last year from the Dog Liberator's shelter, we stopped off at Harvey's Groves fruit stand at the end of their season.  Walking into the shop, we flushed out a bird from their podocarpus.  They make for a great place for birds to nest, very thickly limbed and leaved, the plants are quite common here in South Florida as hedges and accent plants.

Having these creatures growing in my yard, I now am in this mode where I'm feeling protective.  So far, they've been quiet and Momma Bird hasn't felt threatened by me.  I discovered them while going out and pulling weeds from my grass.  These weird daisy looking weeds that take root and grow from a tuber in the lawn if you don't pull them are all over the place here, and my gardening is as uneven as my housekeeping is.   I was within a few feet of that particular podocarpus and Momma Bird flew out over my head, perched on top of the flag I had just replaced, and scolded me with a racket.

Tough, Momma Bird, you don't pay my bills or my mortgage, but you're welcome to stay put while you need the space.  Just let me get this weed ball out to the trash bin for tomorrow.


I guess after all this time, my own little mystery is solved.   I have been watched over by some Northern Mockingbirds for a while, and with the Ducks, snakes, and various lizards I have here, I'm in good company.

Some Helpful Hints on Selecting an HE Washer and Dryer

This is actually the second front loader we have ever had.  

This one is a Bosch Nexxt 700 Series washer, and it's been crowding me out in the laundry room for about 5 years now.

What this blatant boosterism is all about is that my sister asked a question about these things on Facebook.

Quote:  "I'm interested in buying a High Efficiency washer and dryer and I'm wondering if anyone could please let me know if they have one and how do you like it."

Yes, Pat, we like it.  In fact we have been using one here and one before it in Philadelphia since around 1999 plus or minus a couple years.  We won't do without one.

The one I had before it was a Maytag, and while we did have some teething pains until we learned that you have to keep the door open or else you would get mold or mildew in the thing, we have been very happy with them.

My only problem with the ones here is that I'm physically broader at the shoulder than the room we crammed the things into.  But that isn't the washer's problem is it.

When looking for a washer there are quite a few things to look for.

The rubber rings should not be white.  They will discolor in any washer, and if you don't leave the lid shut, you will get mold on them.  Mine are a battleship grey.  Not my favorite color, but a good compromise.

Make sure the washer has a timer on it.  You will be surprised how well you will enjoy being able to load the washer and set it for a timed wash to be ready when you come home from work or when you wake up in the morning.  Nobody likes to twiddle their fingers waiting on a washer that is running on your time.  I can silence my beeper on the washer and set the thing to be done an hour before I wake up if I like.   Usually when I do that, I wake up at that time anyway but that's my own little mental problem.

You will want an extra hot cycle.   My hot water is set for 125F here, that is per the British National Health Service recommendation.  The NHS recommendation means that the water coming out of the tap will be hot enough to sterilize clothing so be careful.  But on top of that my washer will heat the water to "ungodly hot".  Somewhere above 140 if I remember right, although it could be warmer than 160.   Perfect for when you have house guests or little brats staying with you.  You never know what they're going to get into, do you?

I always use HE soap.  That was an education for me.  I had to look for the logo and now I just buy the stuff in bulk at the wholesale store when I have a coupon.  I now have back-stock for about a year of laundries.

You will use less soap and much less water.   I have paid for the washer by now with the savings on both soap and water.  My utility bills dropped immediately by about $25 a month from the old school top loader that was beyond inefficient.   The cups for the detergent are quite small.   You will use about 1/4 cup of soap per load.  I remember being taught to dump about a cup (8 ounces) of soap "back in the day" by Mom when I learned to do my own laundry.

It will be an adjustment because you will have to learn how to load clothes.   A front loader isn't what we grew up with.  If it fits you can wash it.  Don't cram it in, clothes will need "room to dance" but basically if it fits in there without being stuffed full, you should be good.

I wash blankets in my home washer every week.  Clean linens are nice, but sterile linens are something I still notice after all this time.  When our Aunt Betty was still here, she had a big comforter that she was going to take to the laundromat to clean for the "next season".   We took it to our house, tossed it in the washer by itself, set it for ultra hot, and sipped some port wine by the pool.  A rather civilized way to do wash I would say.  But the comforter came out sterile clean.  We all were quite pleased.   You can ask Aunt Betty about that.

Finally, we did get the 10 year warranty.  Since I live in South Florida, the electric power coming into the house is full of power pops and more surges than a menopausal woman.  I lost more desktop computers than I care to count as a result of that, and went over to a laptop as a result years ago.  You will have to decide whether this is good for you or not.  I will say that all the problems we had with ours were in setting the thing up and we put a power filter on the washer, dryer, and the house in general as a result.

I can ramble on about this thing, basically since you didn't ask about a "Specific Model" I am not raving about my washer so much as talking about the technology.  But do your research.  A Bad Washer is a nightmare, and you can avoid that by looking at review sites online.

We're quite happy with ours, can you tell?

Ok, Rack, You Win, Have Some Yogurt

I'm not used to fussy eaters.

I've not been a fussy eater since I was a pre-teen brat, and none of my pets have ever been.

Fish will gloop at the top of the tank if you walk past it.  No, really, I used to have fancy goldfish that would swim to whatever side of the tank I would sit at and then swim up and down the glass trying to get my attention.  I would feed them.  Pavlov's fish I guess.

My parrot, Oscar, begs whenever I go into the kitchen.  He will drive me into the laundry room to eat some days with a constant patter of "Hello!" and "URP!" to try to get me to share.  It's especially disturbing when I'm eating eggs.  Kind of a weird cannibalistic parrot chicken egg thing.

Lettie, my departed dog, would scarf down her food and want more.  Up until the end when chronic renal failure took her appetite away, she would still entertain food.  I had to syringe feed her for six months, but she would still eat until the last weekend.

Rack, my McNab Dog, isn't anything like that.

He's a Fussy Eater.   I'm not used to this.  I didn't expect it out of a dog.  Dogs are those creatures that you could take a pill, wrap it in a piece of cold cut, toss it over your shoulder, and it would never hit the ground.  Lettie was like that.  Rack is definitely not.

I feed him the best rated dog food I could find.  I think the "mass market" dog food I used to feed Lettie is what was her end.  As a result, I feed Rack Orijen food.  It's got very little waste, and everything is locally sourced.  No Chinese Crap.  It's bad enough when trinkets self-destruct within the first week you buy them due to bad materials and workmanship, I don't want bad Chinese garbage getting into my dog's diet.  Syringe feeding is not a bonding experience anyone wants.

I have the bag of the food at the edge of my kitchen.  It comes in a large mylar plastic sort of bag that is vacuum sealed.  You open it up and it smells like food.  No, I mean "FOOD", as if to say some sort of a stew that you had cooking in the crock pot all day and you can't wait to dig in.

Human grade foods go into the stuff, so I guess in an emergency we've got supplies for all.

Yum!  Dog Food!

Except I think my dear furry puzzle seems to be bored by it.

We've gotten "out of sync" with feeding times.  One of the first things I do each morning is to set out fresh food and water for Rack.  He ignores it in favor of going out and watering every tree, shrub, rock, and light pole in Wilton Manors.  When we come back, the bowl is still there, ignored.

If I let him to his own devices, he will let the morning food go until after I put the evening food on top.  I have visions of this giant mound of food being picked over by everything but the dog as bits of it get carried off by whatever critters sneak in under the door.  Termites, mosquitoes, Black Racer snakes, you name it.  Just not Rack.

I got a bit fed up with that lately.  For a brief blink, he would tear through the food like a long lost friend and then started turning his nose up at it.  Then I started following him around.  He'd hide behind the big green chair in the corner, so I would put the food bowl on him.  No, not next to him, on him.  Physically.  Resting on his foot.   Meh.  I'm going to ignore you, he would be saying in my mind, and the food would sit.

Later he would move, so I'd follow him with the bowl.   Eventually he'd sniff at it and grab a few pieces of kibble. 

When I would go to bed, he would follow, so I'd drop the bowl right in front of the dog bed.  When I turn off the light, that is when he would start eating.  First the layer for dinner, then the layer for breakfast.   Yes, a midnight snack! he would say and munch while I'm trying to get to sleep.

Demented dingo more like it!

Today I pulled out the big guns.  My homemade plain yogurt.   I put out a measured cup of dog food.  He ignored it and we went for a walk.  I let it sit for a couple hours until hunger drove me from the routine of searching through web pages and into the kitchen with hunger.   Before I was up, I had his attention.  I picked up his bowl and poured an ounce of plain homemade yogurt on top.  He was watching me the entire time, nut brown eyes boring holes into me.

Yes, you greedy mutt, you are getting yogurt.

I padded back into the kitchen and gently went about my own breakfast.  As quietly as I could, walking on egg shells, I prepared my own food.

Yes, egg shells.  I'm a lousy housekeeper.

But success.  He ignored me, and I was able to get a normal amount of food in him at a normal hour.  
He licked the bowl shiny and I was able to get my own food in me while being stared down as if to say "Hey, dumb human, that is what I want!".

Fussy dog aside, he's right, I have a good recipe for yogurt, but we shouldn't have to go through this.

But go through this we will.  Tonight when we walk him out to water trees, shrubs, rocks, lamp posts and the like, I will wait until he comes back.   If he hasn't eaten then, he's won.  I'll pour another ounce of plain yogurt onto his food, shrug, and go back to making my own food up.

It's a ritual, not a good one, but sometimes it works for a fussy dog to get what he wants.  Not that I understand it but he's getting what he wants.

Ikea, Particle Boards and Florida Don't Mix

It was one of those things.

Having house guests meant we got to go shopping.  I had to restock the kitchen.  No problem there, I actually like going to the big Publix supermarket downtown.  If anything I try to restrain myself from getting all sorts of crazy goodies because I like the challenge of making new recipes and sharing them with friends and family.

In a small house, you learn quickly that cabinets and pantry space are at a premium.  There are many that would consider 1200 square feet large, and others that would consider it a rabbit hutch.  They're all not paying my mortgage so I'm inclined to tell them to have a nice day.

Among other things.

But we did get creative with storage when we moved in here.   Coming from 1900 square feet on three floors in Philadelphia, I'm still throwing things out that we moved with back in 2006.  The box of random parts gets smaller since I just don't have room to store things that can be repaired.

There is always room for food, and with the seasons being only two here, I have to store food for each.

Hurricane Season means that we store two weeks worth of food, water, and necessities for six months.
Snowbird season is easy, the weather is predictable, and we don't really expect problems.  So this is when you eat the Hurricane food.

Hopefully.

One of the things we did was throw up our hands and build up the laundry room.  It's definitely not "ADA Compliant" any longer.  In fact, I have to wonder if it is even Ramblingmoose Compliant. 

There are so many cabinets in the laundry room that my shoulders brush both sides of the path to the back of the room.   Shelves above your head, on the walls, and cabinets on the entryway.

That's where Ikea came in.

We went to the land of cheap Swedish Flat Pack Furniture a while back.  They name things by taking a phone book in Stockholm and throwing darts at a random page and saying "Billy!  I shall call a cabinet Billy!"  or "Look it's a Boj!".

Not that anyone out of Scandinavia knows what on Earth a Boj is, mind you.  I suspect it's another word for a room of convenience, and most likely flat packed so you can assemble it with a happy Allen Key and a lot of swearing.

Oh, and it's probably made with Particle Board.

Ikea doesn't make everything out of particle board.  This is a good thing because particle board is rubbish in a humid climate like South Florida.  It's rubbish in a dry climate too, but at least it won't melt there.

I had some rather nice looking dressers from Ikea that were made of particle board in Philadelphia.  By the time I moved out, I didn't have any trouble moving them out.  I simply gave it a nudge, and it collapsed. 

All the more easy to throw out.

And this was the basis of my problem.

We got back from Publix with giant bags of food.  Technicolor bottles of soda.  Cans of random condiments.  Eggs.  Lots of Eggs.

All of that food had to be stored.

I walked into the kitchen and began to fill the freezer immediately as Kevin brought in the rest of the food. 

Beginning with the frozen fish that was on a "Bogo", I began playing Freezer Tetris. 

I think somewhere in Stockholm, six weeks ago, a Butterfly flapped its wings.  That butterfly caused my pickles from Nebraska to bounce.

The pantry simply collapsed.

We hadn't actually added anything to the pantry.  What must have happened was that the rain that was approaching from a tropical system that was two days away at that point scared it.  Six feet worth of Canned Goods, boxed pasta, random glassware including two strange Star Trek promo glasses I have no idea what to do with, a stack of 5 ready made pie shells, three jars of spaghetti sauce and much more began a short trip.

The shelves gave way in the middle of the pantry.

The sheer volume of the food that hit the floor was a shock, we didn't realize that we had those 4 bottles of catsup in the extra large sized handy plastic squeeze bottle.  We also don't know what we'll do with them, considering that we don't use quite that much catsup. 

We still have the catsup by the way.  It survived the trip to the floor.  Those bottles ricocheted off of the washer, onto the stack of bottled water and onto the floor in the corner cushioning more fragile things like cereal boxes on their way down.

The pickles were a gift from my cousin Bill in Nebraska.  Good ol' Mason jars.   I never knew that a glass Mason storage jar could take the fall from chest high, bounce off of my dryer, the spaghetti jars, and some other weirdly random food and survive with only the sealing ring getting dented.  But survive they did.  Good thing because Bill has an excellent recipe for sweet and sour pickles!

Unfortunately that spaghetti sauce didn't survive.   We had four jars of the stuff.  The two that were in the Good Ol' Mason Jars bounced off of the pickles and settled on the floor back in the corner intact among the dirty towels that have been collecting waiting for Hot Wash Day.  The other two did not.  They were commercially prepared, and since glass isn't designed to take impact unless it is a Good Ol' Mason Jar, and the commercially prepared stuff is much thinner glass.  It's Just Thick Enough to get it home, but not really thick enough to survive any shock.

How did all this happen?

The side walls of the pantry were not built with any support beams across the back.  The pantry itself was built as four sides with a piece of cardboard nailed to the "box" as a backing.  It wasn't designed to hold it together.  Yes, a piece of particle board nailed across the back would hold it up much better but that wasn't to be. 

The box bulged through the successive years of humid weather and jars of pickles, and that night even before I put another can of Whole Fruit Cranberry Sauce on the shelves, it collapsed.

I never saw a cabinet burst its seams like that before.  It was a giant waterfall of crap.  It simply vomited up my stored food and Star Trek glasses into my laundry room.

My laundry room now has a slightly pink floor.   Yes, the spaghetti sauce again.  The floor is unsealed concrete and while I managed to get up almost all of the sauce with a mop and a lot of hot water, it is impossible to get all that healthy lycopene back up off the floor once it has been left there in an explosive fashion.

I'll be cleaning up spaghetti sauce for years.

So if you do get a tall and narrow Ikea Particle Board cabinet, there is a fix.  Screw your shelves in with a long drywall screw through the outside box of the cabinet.   That will give you the lateral stability you need in case your cousin Bill from Nebraska should ship you some yummy pickles again!

Pickles.  Suddenly I'm craving some pickles.   No ice cream, please, and we have quite enough spaghetti sauce that survived.

Did you know that a Mason Jar could bounce?  Neither did I!

Betty's Vinca Returns

Wandering through the wilds of the suburban back yard, the exotics sprout up in the strangest places.

A couple years back, I paid my last visit to my Aunt Betty's condo.  She was at Century Village, which is in itself a bit of a stereotype.  You know, your senior Aunt living in a condo in Deerfield Beach?   Actually not a bad place, if a bit sterile like most settled condos.

We were talking about the sorts of things that family who have become friends have to talk about when they know time will be short.  This was to be my last visit, and shortly after this, Betty moved back to New York.

She was proudly pointing out the flowers that were growing in front of the little condo.  Some of her favorite white Vinca flowers were growing there, and I decided to take a bit with me.  Like Betty said, nobody will miss it, and she put it there to begin with.  Bloom where you are planted.  If things are a bit sterile, brighten it up with a wee bit of color, or even white.  The flowers were an eye catching touch.

I grabbed a few cuttings and as soon as I got home, I stuck it in a pot in the backyard next to the pool.  I didn't completely expect it to grow, but it did.  I guess that if I ever want the thing to thrive, I should put it in the ground out back, but it's fine in the pot.  After all, it grows well in the pot, by the pool, under the sea grape tree. 

That all was a couple years ago.  Three, maybe four.  It's still there.  It's supposed to be a mild invasive in places like California, but in a pot it's fine.  Besides, the little plant, in the little pot, next to the little shed isn't there to invade.  It gives me pause to think of a little lady who insisted that I take some home to remember her by.

Three Guys Arrive at the Pearly Gates and Sam and the Chick Magnet

So Three Guys Arrive At The Pearly Gates

St. Peter says "Guys, we're almost at our limit for the day, so... you three tell me your stories, and the best one can go through."

So the first guy says "Well, I thought my wife was cheating on me, so I doubled back home on the way to work. My wife was sitting in bed with the covers around her, so I took a look around. I ended up finding a guy hanging from the balcony, so I pushed him off. He fell off, but landed in a tree, so I grabbed our refrigerator and threw it down at him, but just after the deck collapsed and I died."

The second guy says: "So, some lady called me to come fix her deck, so I showed up to fix it. Unfortunately, I slipped, and started hanging from the deck, but then some crazy guy came over, pushed me off and threw a refrigerator at me!"

The third guy says: "So there I was, hiding in a refrigerator..."



Sam and the Chick Magnet

Sam was a simple fellow, socially awkward, not very attractive, but he had high hopes for meeting girls on his long-awaited Florida vacation. Every day, he went to the beach in hopes of meeting someone special, but every day he was disappointed because all the girls seemed to hang around one certain man. This guy was not necessarily much to look at, but he seemed to be a real chick magnet and Sam was baffled.

Two days before his vacation ended, Sam happened to see this man in his hotel lobby, and got up the courage to approach him.
"Excuse me," Sam stammered, "but I could not help but notice that you are quite the ladies' man on the beach. I wouldn't try to compete with you, but tomorrow is my last day of vacation and I was wondering if you might share your secret with me before I go."

"Well sure!" the man said heartily, "since you're only here one more day, I can do that.Here's what you do: buy yourself a really tight pair of Speedos, and a good-sized baking potato. Slip the potato down your Speedos and strut your stuff. The ladies will knock themselves out to be near you. Good luck!"
Sam wasn't sure this would work, but he had nothing to lose so he did as instructed. Next morning he heads for the beach, and just as he suspected, the potato-in-the-Speedo was not having the effect he wanted. In fact, people were starting to point and laugh and Sam was beginning to wonder if maybe he had gotten a potato that was too large.

Suddenly Sam sees the guy who gave him the advice, and motions him to come over. "Why isn't this working?" Sam asks. "I did what you told me to do! Is my potato too large?"
"No, the size is fine," the guy says, "but you need to put it in the FRONT!"