An Orchestra In Albuquerque in July

A travelling orchestra had planned on being in Albuquerque in January and Minneapolis in July. However, their manager got the dates wrong and the group ended up doing a three-day run in an outdoor theater in Albuquerque in the middle of the July heat. The event was exhausting and by the third night, everyone was just hoping to survive one more concert and move on.

During the last song - Beethoven's Ninth - the bass players in the back of the orchestra hatch a plan. There's a bit in the middle of the song that's all violins and flutes, surely they won't be missed. They decide to sneak out to the bar next door for a drink, 'just to keep hydrated.'

They stay a little longer than they should have, and drink a lot more than they would have, when one of them realizes that they are going to miss their entrance. The ring-leader of the group tells them to not worry, as he had the foresight to tie the last page of the score down with a bit of string. It will take the conductor a while to unite it, which means the concert will stop and they can sneak in. They drunkenly congratulate him for being so smart as they stumble back to the theater.

Meanwhile, the conductor is in a bind. The very energetic end of the piece is coming up and his bass section is missing. The violinists are working up a sweat trying to keep up in the heat when suddenly the first violinist faints from heat exhaustion. This is the last straw for the second violinist and she faints too. The bass section begins stumbling in not so subtly as they are knocking people, instruments, and chairs over. To top it all off, someone has tied down the last page of the score as he is desperately trying to flip the page.

It would do us good to sympathize with the conductor and put ourselves in his shoes. From his vantage point, he begins to realize that:

• There are two out, at the end of the ninth
• The score is tied
• And the basses are loaded.

Hey! Can A Dog Get A Little Privacy Here?

We've got an evening ritual around here.

I eat first.  My house, My rules.   That's fine because having a beta dog, my boy Rack wouldn't have it any other way.

After I finish or at least put a major dent into the plate, I call Rack over and start to feed him.   He's always eaten slowly, painfully slowly.  Rack the McNab SuperDog (TM) is afraid of his own shadow.

We describe it as he's aspiring to be at the edge of the pack, close enough that he can see it, but far enough away that he won't get snapped at by the alpha dog.

I may be that alpha dog here, he certainly treats me like it.

I have to shake the bowl at him, tap the bowl, make sure that the food is properly hydrated with hot water, and hope that he doesn't hear a thunderclap less than 10 miles away.

No, I am serious.  No closer than 10 miles.  If it is any closer, he shuts down, begins to shiver and walks off.  It's not a pretty sight.  He really is that fearful.

So while I'm prodding my dog to finish his dinner, I'm listening closely to the conditions, trying not to knock anything off the plate, and for crying out loud just don't sneeze!

Now that we've got food in both of us, I rinse the bowl and my plate off.  It's a delaying tactic.  The longer it takes, the more likely he's going to go do his business back in the yard.

He's getting ready since he's sniffing at the back door as I scrape the last bit of sauce from my fork or my spoon.  Not alpha enough to dare staring me down, except in rare circumstances, I catch him looking at me through the corner of his eye.

I guess at this point he'd be doing the potty dance if he could.

"Gotta go?"  I ask.  "Back up!" to get him away from the door, I then remove the locking bar and the lock from the sliding door.

"Come on, Rack, Let's go!".

I step through and Rack darts past.  Once the pressure is relieved we move onto the next step - the dance around the pool.

Assuming that it's quiet, there aren't any trash trucks over at the Shoppes, or thunder out over the Everglades or the Bahamas, we start charging around the pool.

Throwing my arms wide, I start to run around with him.  He loves that.  Figures that he's part of the pack.  We both get winded eventually, although he's faster than I am.




At this point he starts sniffing again with a purpose.

Along the hedges on the East side of the property is a triple fence.  The property line, the wooden fence on the far side, and hedges and ornamental fences on my side.  It creates a couple dens, nooks, crannies, and small spaces that I can't get into.

On the other hand, Rack loves it.  He walks through it regularly.  If I don't watch, he's going to end up having a den behind my hibiscus and it won't be easy to get to him, let alone get him out if I need to.  This being Florida, there could be all sorts of critters back there too.  It's not exactly the best idea to let him go into the hedges since that is a prime location for nasty bite-y creatures.

But there he is.  Before I can stop him.  He squats.  I catch him looking at me.  Through a layer of wooden slats, a couple ruellia flowers, and the stand of hibiscus, I see one lone eye.   Dark brown.

I am being accused of being a Peeping Tom.  It as if to say "Can a Dog get a little privacy for a change?".

I follow after this dog for three miles a day.  Stuff my pockets with plastic bags of questionable strength.  Tested at home with pressurized air from my own breath, I make sure there are no leaks before I use it to pick up anything that I wouldn't want to touch.  We walk all over town.

So why are you hiding behind the hibiscus and the fence to get privacy, Now?

He comes out of the fence looking all proud of himself.  Chuffed.

We've got time to do a couple more laps around the pool.  I throw my arms out and say "Play!" and we start running like crazy people.

I guess all is well with the dog world after all.  He's running around two pounds lighter.

"Water?" Rack looks up and trots to the door.  I guess all's done out there.  What he did was to make the backyard safer for us and less of a habitat for wild creatures by leaving what he did by the fence.

Dog Logic.  I'll leave that there.  Keeps the iguanas away and it will fertilize the hibiscus.

Avanti in Pompano

In the TV Series Sex and the City, it is said that New York City is a place where models run wild on the street and you can actually see them.

In South Florida, Classic Cars run wild on the streets, and you can actually see them.

The other day when I rolled into the parking lot at Pompano Airpark, I saw this cherry beauty.

Avanti.  The last automotive remnant of the old Studebaker Car Company.  There's still a husk of the

company left doing leasing or some such nonsense, but their cars are long gone.  Their last year was 1966 when the last car rolled off the production line in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  March 16, 1966.

The Avanti was never a common car, although someone near us in New Jersey had a gold one well after the company went away.  5800 roughly were built total.

You or I will probably never drive one, and maybe it should just be that way. To find one on the road these days is the automotive equivalent of the holy grail.

When I rolled my Jeep in next to it, I parked far enough off from the car so as not to spoil the shots.  You just don't see these things in the wild.

I was That Kid that every neighborhood has even to this day.  I could recognize cars as a wee brat and tell you make and model with the high accuracy that only a child's OCD could manage. 

When we were older, my sister and I would be taken places by our cousins.  They were the ones responsible

for igniting my own Motorhead spark.  We'd stick our heads inside the cars and ooh and aah at the speedometers that crept well over the more pedestrian 120 MPH of Dad and Mom's Buick.  Muscle cars of that era had speedometers that were well over 150 MPH. 

Meanwhile I have a Jeep Wrangler.  It's never been over 80 and I can't say I've ever found the need to go faster than that.  Aerodynamics of a brick but I'll get there.  You may not, but I will, even if I have to take him off road.

Squatting down in the parking lot I got these few pictures for friends who appreciate the art of automotive design like I do.

I know of someone who will be firing off an email to me any second demanding full sized copies of these, and I'll just send him here.

A Cashew Tree Is Born

We have been through this once before.

We tried it last year and I guess I am the cause of it failing.

You see, all these pots in the backyard by the pool are there for a reason.  I propagate "interesting" plants so that they can go into the gardens.

Anyone with the right conditions can do it, anyone with a green thumb has at least thought of it.

With all the three irrigation zones we've got, it makes it easy.  Put a pot out there on Zone 3, where it will get a daily gallon of water delivered directly to the roots without any extra  help from me.  Stick a seed in the pot.  Step away from the pot.

We did that last year.  Then I got started putting other things with it.

You see, a baby cashew tree does not like having its roots disturbed. 

It was joined by Japanese Yew.  Some of the Japanese Yew took root and it's doing well in the hedges on the other side of the yard. 

Where a little is good, a lot is better, right?  I stuck so much Japanese Yew in that pot that it was hard to find the cashew tree.

It gave up.  "You win" and dropped its leaves.   I babied the stick that was left and a few leaves came back, then it gave up again. 

This May when the Cashew Fruiting Season happened, we got three more cashew fruits.  They're an

interesting thing.  Orange or Yellow when ripe, they have a clean and almost astringent flavor to them.  The seed is on the bottom, and that is what we all recognize as those wonderful Cashew Nuts that we pay a premium for.  Cashews are expensive, relatively, because they need some special handling to get rid of the poisonous outside skins.

After all, the cashew nut grows for the benefit of the plant, not mankind.

So who knows what the cashew will bring, but it has started to toll for me.

Well, not me specifically, but I'm sure we'll find a place for it in the yard if I don't kill it with kindness.

Spider On Art

I have always noticed Public Art.

I will say that in this case it's a welcome art installation that works exceptionally well at night.  Art that Functions is a difficult dance to do well.

In front of Gables Wilton Park on Wilton Drive, there were once these blank spaces.  They begged to be filled.  Someone there decided that the thing needed was some lights.  Lights are great in Urban or Suburban environments, you never know what you will find.

Broadly, or what may find you.

They had the idea to put up light boxes.  Big rectangular boxes to break up the lines of the columns of the buildings.  Something to add to the aesthetics of the place while shedding light on the night.

Sure, they could have just put up a couple lights on a pole but where's the creativity in THAT? 

Instead of having just a big white block in front of the building that would detract, they filled it with what reminds me of holiday wrapping paper or perhaps wallpaper.  It isn't rigid geometric lines, there is some texture and irregularities to it to keep it interesting, and the "wallpaper" is crumpled a bit.  The crumpling added a certain something to it to catch the eye as you walk by at 5:25AM, or whenever you are in the area.

All of that was a while ago and it has had time to settle into the environment.  Florida itself has acted on the art but it has remained remarkably stable in the punishing UV that we have here.

The environment has been moving in.  We live in an area that if you drop a seed, it will grow, and wildlife lives here with you, despite whether you like it or not.  Coyotes in Boca Raton, Iguanas blocking toilets, Black Racer Snakes in the garden, Cuban Brown Lizards on the windows, and Geckos keeping down the pesky mosquitoes that are everywhere.

I could do without the mosquitoes, truly.

In the case of the big orange square, er, rectangle, a large spider has made it its home.  There's just enough of a gap in front of it that a spider had strung a web there for the last week or so and is getting visibly larger each day.  Spider, go eat those bugs!

I'm sure someone will squeal at it and either knock the web down or worse, but for now it greets the day with eight legs, eyes, and who knows what else doing its spidery business, decorating art for all passersby.

Add a Little Sweetness to Your Life, Have Some Mango Truck Nuts

Every so often you see something that makes you stop, scratch your head, and laugh like a fool.

I couldn't stop thinking about just how South Florida this was.

A bag of mangoes hanging off of a trailer hitch on the back of a Lexus SUV sitting behind a waterfront apartment in Wilton Manors, Florida.

So lets deconstruct that.  I will anyway since I'm still amused at the sight of it all.

It was taken in Wilton Manors, Florida just two miles from the beach.  Pretty South Florida to me.   Add to it that we're just about as central a location as you can possibly get.  Travel time to Downtown Fort Lauderdale can be as little as 10 minutes, and we're by time about the same distance from West Palm Beach and Miami's respective downtowns.  It's a little further to West Palm Beach but the roads are better heading North.

Now, that whole Truck Nuts thing?  It's a more redneck affectation - you generally don't see them hanging off of anything that isn't a pickup truck.  I have seen them on a random Jeep, but normally it's an F150 pickup truck that has been through a few miles.  A Beater.  Someone who wants to shock you. 

Why a shock?  Trucks generally don't come from Factory Equipped with a pair of day glow testicles hanging off the back so it's a bit of a sartorial mistake.

Doesn't harm anyone, but it is a bit weird.  My truck has bigger balls than you do or something equally Juvenile Mindset.  For the record, my Jeep's Trailer Hitch doesn't have anything on it at the moment.

This was a Lexus.  Mind you it wasn't exactly a new one, but it was a Lexus SUV.   So the idea of putting truck nuts on the back of a Lexus is a show stopper to begin with.

Now, it really isn't a pair of truck nuts.  It's a bag of about a dozen ripe mangoes.  Folks who have mango trees generally are trying to find a place to put all the fruit at this time of year.  A mature tree can easily put out about 100 pounds of fruit.  A large child or a small woman's worth of fruit.  It all ripens within a month of itself.

Some of that fruit can get big.  I have personally picked one mango that weighed more than 2 pounds.  That would be a full Kilogram for our Metrically Aware readers.  (Hello!)

You have to keep after your trees because a mango falling from 32 feet in 1 second is going to hit you in the head at about 27 miles per hour.  2 pounds hitting you at 27 MPH/43 KPH could be fatal.  So pick them before they fall.  The ones you don't get will roll out into the street and get mashed into the pavement or eaten by ants in short order.

Now what are you going to do with 100 pounds of fruit?

You can only make so much Mango Jam, Mango Bread, Mango Chutney, Chunked Mango, Caribbean Honey Spiced Chicken with Mango, and my own breakfast today, Mango Lassi.  Make too much and your eyes will roll back into your head in a sugar shock and you'll swear off them for the rest of the year.

I made 12 jars of Mango Jam and canned 9 of them.  If a storm knocks out power, we will have plenty of sweet Mango Jam to trade with the neighbors to have with their Peanut Butter sandwiches.

When September comes, My Dear Sister will probably get one.

(Hi Pat!)

That's how you get rid of your extras.  Some folks will sell a "Homer Bucket" full of Mangoes online.  The going price is around $10.  

But that's not what happened here.  A neighbor of this truck owner was gifted a bag of them and they were left to amuse me as I walked past.

In front of the little apartment house, next to the river that surrounds the Island City of Wilton Manors, deep in the heart of South Florida. 

A Cop Pulls Over His Pastor When He Notices Him Swerving

As the officer approaches the window he notices a bottle in a brown bag on the seat.

Officer says, "brother, I pulled you over for swerving back there. You haven't been drinking have you?" "
No sir, why would you ask that?"

"Well I noticed the bottle on the seat next to you."
"Oh, that's just holy water."

"OK brother. So why is it in a bag?"
"Well, that is to protect it from the suns rays."

"Mind if I take a sip?"
"Not at all." As the officer puts the bottle to his lips and takes a drink, he immediately spits it out... "Brother, this is wine."

The pastor, "PRAISE THE LORD. HE'S DONE IT AGAIN!"

Some Penguins Escaped From The Zoo The Other Day....

Some penguins escaped from the zoo the other day and were headed south on the highway.

Meanwhile, a few miles up that highway an officer was posted up at a speed trap to catch speeders.

One guy zooms by, exceeding the speed limit by 25 miles per hour.
The officer pulls him over and tells him what he was doing wrong.

When the officer is ready to go write him a ticket he notices that the man is very distressed, so he decides to cut him a deal. He tells the man that if he goes and picks up the penguins from the highway and takes them to the zoo, then he will not get a ticket.

So the man thanks him and says he won't speed anymore and goes off on his way.

The next day the officer is at the same speed trap and pulls over a guy going 20 over.
When he gets to the car he sees the same guy driving with 5 penguins in the back wearing sun glasses.

The officer says "what the hell do you think you're doing?! You were supposed to take these animals to the zoo!"

To which the man replies, "and I did just that officer. In fact, they enjoyed it so much, that today I'm taking them to the beach!"

I Am Why Wilton Manors Smells Like Coffee

I ran out this particular day.

Up before 5 AM, I got back from the dog walk and started the Normal Routine.  Sure, it was a solid hour and a half before sunrise but that's how I roll.

Making the dog's breakfast, I then turned my attention to my own needs.

Coffee.

I have a mug that is a French Press brewer and you drink directly from that.  I can make coffee any strength I want in that mug, from what Grandma likes to the hipster quivering espresso, and it's all from home roasted beans.

21 grams of "real" coffee beans.  Guatemalan Huehuetenango Finca Antigua I believe.  Roasted just before second crack to bring a bold and balanced flavor to the mug.

Sure, it's a bit OCD, measuring out 21 grams, not 22, into the grinder and grinding it to espresso powdered fineness, but it tastes great with scarcely any extra effort.

There's a problem.  After this first mug I will need more since I only had 7 grams left.   I could mix it with some rather excellent decaf beans that I had on hand, but I knew no matter what I would have to roast more.

Roasting coffee is a trivial process.  Getting the green beans is tricky, but the idea of pouring them into the right popcorn popper, plugging it in, and waiting for the right moment to let them come out and be poured into a cooling bowl is the trick.

Just before Second Crack.  Roughly 5 minutes and 30 seconds for the first batch, shorter for the second and further.

I went through my own morning routine while drinking that mug.  Complex flavor you will not get from a pre-roasted commercial bean.  It really does degrade after about a month no matter how you store it once roasted.  Green beans last about a year and a half and I buy those Huehuetanangos when I see them on sale - recently $3.65 a pound, a true 16 ounce pound.  Roasting will make them weigh less.

It was time for that second mug so I went into production.  It was after 7AM so I was free to make the noise I was going to make with the popper outside.  I roasted five 1/2 cup batches of these beans.  It took me about a half hour. 

Yep, I've got it down to a science.

Since I had my own breakfast while I roasted, I was done, and Rack, my faithful McNab SuperDog sidekick was vying for my attention.

"Ok, lets go have coffee!".  It's our normal habit to go out and have coffee by the pool.  We walk around the yard inspecting the irrigation system practically every morning. 

I made a round of the pots and realized that I was being talked about indirectly.

Over the hedge I hear "Hey, is that coffee ready?".

He wasn't talking to me, he was facing the other direction from what I could see.

I didn't hear the response.

"That stuff smells great!".

I had to suppress the urge to shout out a thank you over the hedge.

Going back inside to give the neighbors privacy, I took the trash out about a half hour later.  What I didn't realize was that the entire neighborhood still smells of Coffee.  Well, really coffee and mango.

I walked out to the corner tree and gathered up three wind-fallen mangoes for tomorrow's breakfast and realized that the scent of my coffee was on the breezes.

So if you were in town this particular morning, I apologize.  I only roasted up 5 batches.  It does carry on the wind and give things a smell that will linger.  Give it a bit, that scent will waft over into Fort Lauderdale soon.

Zen and the Art of Sprinkler Maintenance

At 515AM I ran into a neighbor and started talking about two of my favorite things.

Dogs and Sprinklers.  The dogs were doing their own thing, watering the ground when I casually mentioned

that I had to be back before the irrigation started at 6AM.  We spotted a random rogue sprinkler head in a strange spot and I wanted to look for fountains.

It was at that time that I ended up going into a reverie of sprinkler geekdom.   It's really rather simple technology but it needs a lot of maintenance.

You see, when I was a wee brat, on the open Prairie land of South Jersey, a sprinkler was an entertainment device.

You would use it on those days that the temperature was up into the 90s, sometimes nudging up to 100, and go run through it.  Kids everywhere know what I mean.  They'd see you had yours out, wait until the grass got good and wet and then join you for a good splash.

You never really used them to water the grass.  The only time you'd consider it was when you had just planted seeds and wanted them to sprout.  Then the International Sign for Do Not Cross would appear - small stakes and some white cotton string.  It would draw a boundary around the area and you knew that you just were NOT allowed to be there.  The sprinkler would then get dragged out, usually with the green hose crossing the sidewalk somewhere, and get turned on so that every prospective grain of grass seed would get a drop.

New Jersey got 40 inches of rain each year, and the only real time you felt it was "dry" was in August.  Even in August you'd get the Thunderstorms rolling in from the west down the street in a battleship grey cloud.

South Florida gets 50 inches of rain.  Or so they tell us.  It falls mostly in the "Wet Season" of May to December.  You may get a storm here and there in the other months but they're the exception.  This is also the land where you don't need an umbrella because if you get caught out in it, you're drenched.   If not, you just huddle under an eave somewhere for 15 to 20 minutes and it's done.

The other six months or so - welcome to the dry season, also known as the Desert.

In order to keep those lawns green so that the people from other places like New Jersey, and other places in the country would expect, we have to water frequently.  It's illogical.  The British Habit of keeping rolling hills of green grass work because it rains practically every day and is cooled by clouds and never really gets what I'd consider warm.  Our winter temperatures are a good warm day in Britain.

So how do we do it?  I'm considering a degree in hydrology next.  Really.  Because in order to keep our grass as green as we do, we do a dance of watering, timing it just so, and three separate zones of plastic pipes, fittings, tubes, and bubblers of all shapes and sizes.

But it all is fairly simple, even if it is annoyingly "fiddly".  There is a well that goes down into the higher ground water aquifer.  I know we don't suffer from salt intrusion because the other day when I was adjusting a sprinkler head, it flew off at full speed into my left eye, and sprayed directly into my mouth.

Mmmm tasty, tasty ground water!  Full of things like Iron, Monsanto produced garden chemical "leechate", and bacteria!  Yay! Bacteria!  Right in my mouth!  Ugh, never mind that.

Also sand gets brought up.  I know that because my mouth crunched some after that little shower.  It also collects in the low spots along with all that slop that gets in my precious bubblers and sprinkler heads.

The water goes into a manifold that shuttles it between the three zones, and then into a distribution system that each zone is more complex than what it takes for my house to give me that daily shower.

The first two zones are full flow - all out watering so they're restricted.  Water the grass in front, hedges and grass in the rear.  As such I can only use them twice a week during set hours.  We do it in the morning on those days since the grass is most thirsty then and it keeps the roots from rotting in water that sat in the beach sand that passes for top soil here, 2.5 miles from the briny Atlantic Ocean.

Zone 3 is the pots and flowers.  Everything there is on drip feed.  My farmer relations out in Nebraska would know exactly what I'm talking about.  Each "drip" is limited to 1 gallon per hour.  Zone 3 runs only 30 minutes a day so each pot gets two quarts of water, roughly.  There are currently 18 pots in the backyard, along with a perimeter soaker hose that spot waters the hedges.  All of that puts water exactly where it is needed.

Everything has joins, unions, and elbows.  Reduced down to smaller than a drinking straw, all that wonderful bacterial water has a nasty habit of slowly plugging up.  I have a precision tool made up of a piece of copper telephone wire, 24 gauge I think, that I run through each head when they plug to knock out the collected plug of bacterial muck, ground water chemicals, and general ooze.  After that it's soaked in white vinegar to get more of it out and returned to duty.

All of this so I can remain scrupulously legal in my watering and keep things green.

But all of this requires maintenance.  The faster the water moves, the less maintenance it requires.  The large "Golf Course" sprinklers in the front yard will knock a small woman over with the flow, but they rarely need attention.  The midsized ones under the hedges need rather a lot.  The pot bubblers?

Every morning coffee time with Rack.  We go outside to the backyard while they're running.  He runs around the yard, I look at sprinkler heads.  Every blasted one.  Or rather the ones that aren't blasting water all over my Mango, Ruellia, Milkweed, and Banana trees.

All so that we can have it nice for the Monarch Butterflies that munch on the Milkweed, the random Bananas that I used to get before the plant got overgrown, the deep purple Ruellias I'm starting in that pot.

Yeah, it's a lot of work but I like it.  So if you have a problem with the sprinklers, just ask around.  It's pretty simple.  But skip the cotton thread.  We've got turf here!