Bits and Pieces, Plus A Missed Opportunity

I don't have a photograph of the Indigo Snake that poked his neck out from under my old dead GMC pickup in the backyard yesterday, and you might have thought it was April Fools day if I did.

You might have doubted my veracity and suspected I had photoshopped the snake to make it appear as big as it was.
So maybe it's better that I don't.

Not.

I have seen a lot of indigo snakes ... even posted a few visits with them here on Pure Florida.

I HAVE NEVER SEEN ONE LIKE THE ONE BENEATH THE TRUCK YESTERDAY.
NEVER. EVER. NEVER.

You feel me?

I came around the corner of the truck on my way to feed the shrimp and there he was with about two feet of head and neck sticking out from under the truck.

We both froze.
Because I had just stopped powerwashing and was soaking wet, my camera was 100 feet away from me in the front yard.

He tucked back under the truck.

I got down on my knees to peer under there and oh mother of herpetology, there were thick coils of beautiful black indgo snake, one upon the other ... it was breathtaking.

A big empty plastic barrel was a few feet away by the aquaculture tank. If I moved it closer, I could catch him just long enough for a photo, and then release him.

I turned, walked 5 feet, grabbed the barrel, returned to the truck, and he was gone.

I did a quick search in radiating circles, but it was hopeless.

My place is indigo heaven ... A nearby shed sits up on blocks with a armadillo burrow beneath it, there is an active gopher burrow 30 feet away, a brush pile even closer, next to the truck is a 5 x 10 foot BBQ deck with space underneath, ten feet away is a downed tree trunk with tall grass and the jungle of blueberry bushes adjoining it, and surrounding everything ... woods and more gopher burrows.

Lost cause.

So you probably won't believe me when I say this snake may have been between 7 and 8 feet long.
That's okay. I don't blame you.

The bright spot is, there's no reason for him to leave ... and there is a great chance that he was living under PFHQ and all of our noisy powerwashing disturbed him.

I think we will meet again.


This is a beautiful pawpaw, one of our low growing varieties. Don't ask me which one, because the red is throwing me off.
It's pretty similar to our flag pawpaw that you see as short clouds of white in cattle pastures. Pawpaw leaves are unpalatable so the cows crop all around them, but leave them be. When they bloom, the green pasture is punctuated by clusters of white blooms.


It's pretty whoever's Paw it is.
This one is growing out of the rockpile around the Waterfolly koi pond where it is quite welcome.
If you know this variety, feel free to chime in.


Spider lily (rescued from a road department ditch scraping).

This spider lily lives in my livestock water trough "pond" out in the garden. For a year or so, it has sat there as a couple of green leaves, biding it's time. A few weeks ago, it pushed up a flower bud spike, so I knew something was afoot.

At 4:00 pm on the day of the bloom, the bud was still closed.

About an hour later, I was walking by and it looked like you see in the photo.
Just amazing.

In other news, ... I was absent from PF yesterday due to the continueing face lift of PFHQ.
I should be clear that I am not doing this alone. Mrs. FC has been out there sweating too and in the years since the last exterior redo, Junior has grown from pudgy little boy to strong helper guy ... so I put him to work.

Actually he loves powerwashing ... I think we all do in this weather. Being wet while you are working makes it the fun job and we all covet the position.
Sure, you get splattered with mud dauber nest dirt, spider webs, and gunk, but at least you are cool.

He's having fun ... no really, I'm serious.





And the last little bit of this "Bits and Pieces" post is a few seconds of video from last Thursday's kayak trip.
The video starts near the top of the food web and drops down near the bottom.

Enjoy.

Prawns and Lemon-Blueberry Quick Bread

No, not "Prawns and Lemon-Blueberry Quick Bread", as in prawns and blueberries in the lemon quick bread.

Eeeuuu.

First a freshwater prawn update and then the bread.

The larger shrimp in the photo above is the pregnant female prawn. The yellow mass beneath her abdomen is her clutch of eggs which she will protect and oxygenate by gentle fanning of her swimmerets until they hatch.
I've asked her to cut me a little slack on the due date.
I am still setting up her nursery, but time is getting short.
She will not wait on me.

Above is the largest of the prawns on the day I moved him from the school RAS to my home RAS.
He is pretty magnificent ... and not full grown.


They have learned to creep up the tank towards me when I peer in at them as it usually means that they are about to be fed.
At this point, I have moved all the prawns home for summer grow out and attempted breeding.




Here is the lemon-blueberry quick bread.
Yesterday morning, there was a collander of "ripe,but picked 2 days ago" blueberries on the counter when I stumbled out to make my coffee.
I remembered an ancient box of lemon-poppyseed muffin mix that had sat in the pantry for a year, so I snatched it out and threw in a few handfuls of my blueberries.

It was delicious and is just about gone now.

Which is what I need to be ... gone ... blogging is about to make me late for something yet again.
Got a doctor appointment ... two actually.
When you teach, you schedule all this stuff during the summer.

Speaking of doctors... one of our own blogger pals, and a favorite hippy of mine, Roger of the Dharma Bums, is undergoing cancer surgery today.

I'll be thinking of him and his lovely wife, Robin, today and hoping for the very best.

Oh This Will Be Great UNFUN!

It's hot out there so be sure and drink plenty of nectar while you are flitting about.

It's nine O'something in the morning and I am about to head out to do pre-house staining prep work.

This will basically "to draw in by creating a partial vacuum", but it must be done and the payoff will be a more efficient and better looking final product.

The good news is, Home Depot has a major rebate going on and the Behr Premium stain I want has a $20 rebate per 5 gallon bucket ... and I a will need a bunch of those.

I will be clipping and pulling plants away from the house, taking down some bad, and unneeded gutters, renailing a loose thingie here and there, fixing a couple of pieces of siding that are tired, power washing everything, and tackling all the unknown things that will pop up while I am doing the things I KNOW about.

I'll keep you posted on how it went.

Abientot!

Beautiful Swimmers Mating

What were you picturing?
I hope it was Callinectes sapidus.

If it was something else, well, I may just have to wash your brain out with soap.



Meanwhile, back on that island from Wednesday ...


After a while poking about the island, I left the kayak parked on the shore and waded out to sea. There were blue crabs EVERYWHERE, mostly juvies of 4-5 inches, but plenty of bigguns too. Had I thought to bring some string and chicken necks, I could have come home with supper pretty easily.

The nursery aspect of a healthy marsh is hard to miss when you are out there surrounded by schools of tiny new killifish and mullet pups. Plus, when every step sends 4 or 5 blue crabs scuttling away into the depths and the mud is covered with gelatinous egg masses from worms ... well, like I said, it's hard to miss.

In a tiny pool, about as big as a small swimming pool, I found this pair of blue crabs mating. The pool was entirely enclosed by "higher" ground now that the tide had dropped, except for one small, inch deep rivulet with water flowing to the Gulf.

It was a great place for a pair of blue crabs to mate, away from the pressure of predatory fish for a few hours while the tide left, changed it's mind, and then started back.

The photos above and below were taken by holding my polarized sunglasses over my camera lens to cut the water's glare, so they aren't super,duper sharp, but I wanted you to see this.

A big male blue crab is holding a female protectively beneath him. During this embrace, she will molt her exoskeleton under the protection of his feisty crabattitude.

That's important since she will be a very vulnerable soft shell blue crab chick for several hours while the new exoskeleton stretches and hardens.

During this time, he will mate with her.

Sort of a ... you scratch my carapace, I'll scratch yours.

Crown conchs were patrolling the sandier areas. These are voracious predatory snails that strike fear into the hearts of smaller snails like marsh periwinkles.

The other, really abundant crab, the stone crab, was less obvious, due to the fact that they were under, around, and on the oyster clumps ... and they hold still rather than scurry off.

Since the young ones are about the same color as the oysters, they really blend in.


Back at the Shell Mound boat launch ...

This earlier in the day picture shows the ramp at the time I launched. Pay attention to the water and how close it is to that spectacular red JEEP.



The picture below is what it was like when I returned, still with an hour of falling tide to go.

In the photo above, I'm standing about directly behind where the JEEP is parked in the first photo. I had just paddled in through that narrow slot of 6 inch deep water and then slogged and dragged the kayak up the smooth muddy shore.

It's a little gooshy at low tide, so plan to get sweet smelling marsh mud on your lower parts if you launch from this site.

You'll feel really smart if you pack a gallon of freshwater to rinse off your tootsies before getting back in your vehicle.

I wish I had thought of that before the trip.

The Grass Is Everything

Yesterday, I dusted off the Pure Florida kayak and slipped out to the Shell Mound boat launch, just north of Cedar Key.


I had not kayaked for months, nor had I been to Shell Mound for a while.





Shell Mound is ... well, a mound of shells. It's a First Floridian midden, at first glance an "Indian Landfill", but it was likely much more than that.





In our flat coastal marsh topography, building mounds of shell offered both symbolic and strategic uses. Florida tribes warred with each other on a regular basis and building a hill out in the marsh offered lookout views not possible otherwise.





The large mound at "Shell Mound" sits next to a formerly mud boat launch site that has been improved just enough by one of my favorite guv'mint agencies, the USFWS.


It's all part of the Lower Suwannee NWR and the refuge folks did a great job of rocking it with gravel so it's less quagmirey, but not all fancy, dancy boat rampy.



Don't bring a deep draft boat to this launch and don't expect to get in or out at low tide, unless you can pick up your boat, drag your boat, or own an airboat.


The collage above shows the way in to the shell mound site, the gravelled ramp, and a few kayakish views soon after launching.



I launched with a high tide falling. I love falling with the tide and watching the seafloor emerge ... just never get tired of it.




The top of the avian food chain was well represented by a pair of ospreys lounging in a pine tree.


(Yes, the other one flew away before I could slow the kayak and shoot)



Some midlevel munchers were also in the area. There's no shortage of fiddler crabs here so the ibis are fat and happy.


(In a fit of honesty, I have returned to this post to delete my misidentification of these plovers. Thanks Myamuh and Tai for the gentle correctnifitinousity. Now back to our regularly scheduled post ...)

It amazes me how magically these shorebirds can disappear amongst the usual mix of sand and shell here. They are plenty obvious in this pic, but I walked right up on them on some oystery islands, before I realized they were there.



If you go solo, and your ego says it wants to be in at least one picture, be sure and pack your tripod or in this case, a monopod.


... or you could just leave your ego at home ... as if ...


To document that I was there, I leaned the camera/monopod against a big cedar, set the timer, and ran down the hill.

These pics are not of THE shell mound by the boat ramp. This is on an outer island. I followed the tide out, then paddled along the outside Gulf shore of the island until I came to an incredibly inviting landing site.


The islands out here are covered in a forest known as coastal maritime. It's a mix of the same species you might find back on the peninsula, but conditions out here on these tiny specks of land are so much tougher than inland.


For instance, this island is essentially one long skinny shell mound, another midden site built by the First Floridians.


What this means is ... there's really no "soil" to speak of. all of these plants are growing out of many feet of ancient oyster, clam, and conch shells.

Along with the whole, "no soil" challenge, the islands are small enough that they are inundated with saltwater by hurricanes and so porous that any rainwater quickly flows away through the shell.



Toss in prevailing winds that beat you with salt spray and you can see why it takes extreme woody determination to grow here.












Some don't make it.


They become monuments to those who do.


Here's the seaward view from atop the island of shell. You can see how building a shell platform out here could have great defensive possibilities.


When I left this island, I paddled out to the distant islands you can see in the above photo, but none of them were quite as appealing as this one.

I spent a lot of time here, poking around that bar you see in the foreground and wading a sandy flat to a tiny nearby islet.


Here's the Cedar tree that held my stuff for me. It's not dead, although what you see in this photo might make you think that ... same tree as the in the photo above this one. In this photo you can really see the shell matrix that all of these plants are growing out of.


No shortage of calcium in that "soil".




Litter left behind about 7 centuries ago ... maybe longer.
What a harmless bit of trash ... I left it there by the way.



In the mud around the island, there was an occasional beer can, a chip bag, and the stray bottle or two.


Remember when we used to get upset over litter? Litter that is often nothing,but an eyesore, although some, like plastics and fishing line can have real impacts on turtles and birds.

I'd trade a litter spill out there in the Gulf over an oil spill any day ... although OSHA would probably still require space suits and training before anyone could pick it up. Sheesh.


If the oil is swept this way, we will be horribly impacted ... more so than the sandy beach coasts that are being hit now.

Cleaning oil off sandy beaches is relatively uncomplicated (until the government gets involved).

Look at the picture above.

This part of Florida, the Big Bend region, has few sandy beaches. We have much more in common with the Mississippii River Delta, thousands of estuarine creeks and vast, I mean truly vast expanses of emergent spartina marsh grass.

On top of that, or maybe under that would be more correct, we have the largest, most pristine submerged seagrass beds in the country.

Barnacle babies crowd a spartina leaf.

Every single blade, above and below the surface is habitat, vital habitat for too many organisms to list.

The grass is food, shelter, fertilizer, nanny, solar collector, erosion fighter, water purifier ... the grass is everything.

We have everything to lose if the oil gets here.

Follow This Frigate Bird To Tomorrow's Post About Today

I suppose this qualifies as a teaser, but I'm just too tired after kayaking out to sea today.

More tomorrow after some sleep.

Trumpet Creeper Creeping Into My Blueberries

This is one of my favorite native vines, Trumpet Creeper.
"Creeper" is a great name for it, because that IS exactly what it will do ... creep into and onto everything ... which is kind of neat if you plant it in the right spot ... which I did not.

Years ago, I stuck a little rooted piece into the ground near a garden fence. I pictured a vine covered fence with hummingbirds dancing from blossom to blossom.


The Trumpet Creeper sprig pictured itself as the dominant plant in the garden and immediately sent out runners.
I battle it constantly, but love it too much to "kill" it.
"Creepy" thinks my blueberry plants are some kind of neat trellis that I installed just for it's climbing pleasure.
I did not.
Like a grape vine, it can take being completely mutilated and still spring back, so that is what I do.

From time to time, I whack the nectar out of it, and then enjoy my breathing space for a few months while it slowly plans a new attack. It's really blooming like crazy now since I cut down an oak tree that had overshadowed the blueberry patch. The increased sunlight not only improved my blueberry bushes, it also jump-started Creepy.



The blueberries are still ripening almost faster than we can keep up with them. Take a look at that guy above!

We had a peach, blueberry, pecan cobbler for desert last week. Not too shabby!





The home aquaculture system is up and running so I am including a short, narrated video to explain how it works. It's a quick fly through of the system.
Sorry for the abrupt ending, my memory card filled up just as I was about to close.

I now have pregnant shrimp by the way, so just when I thought I could relax, I have to set up a nursery and a brine shrimp hatchery to feed the upcoming larval prawns.

More on that when I know what the hell I'm doing.

It Was A Blur, But It's Clearer Now

The last two weeks have been somewhat of a blur.

With the baby boy graduating, there were celebrations, awards ceremonies, graduation, graduation parties, more graduation parties, a college orientation trip, and then Father's Day.

Today seems like the first normal day since early June, but it's early yet ...

(it was a pool party)

NEVER allow this lad near a Karaokidokie machine.
That's all I'm saying about that.
His graduation party was a riot ... mostly due to his "singing" ... loudly ... with his friends ... and about his friends.
Anyone who walked by was incorporated into the lyrics being sung at the moment.

Here he is in a calmer moment, crooning a tune to his sister ...

... who was not impressed.

The next day was graduation with actual clothing and lots of huggy pictures. I'm just including a few here.

The photo above is Junior with my big brother.

Big sis, Katie, gives the new graduate some advice on being successful.

The new grad with his Grandparents.

Three amigos who have been together since kindergarten.

Junior made us beam with pride at event after event over the past two weeks, not the karaoke thing ... no, not that. Singing may not be his special talent.

He was ranked 5th in his class, and at the senior awards night, he walked away with $6250 worth of scholarships on top of the full Florida Bright Futures scholarship.

Here's some advice to parents of high school age ... have your child explore every scholarship opportunity, no matter how small. Those $500 and $1000 mini-scholarships add up fast. Junior spent a lot of evenings this winter/spring writing scholarship essays and filling out forms.

It paid off ... that $6250 figure represents about 6 different scholarships that he won.

Trust me, even with larger scholarships and prepaid college accounts, you will need every extra penny ... or is that just me, now that I officially have 3 kids in college at the same time?

All the hoopla is over now, but it was quite a two week ride.

... And then along came Father's Day.

Amber Bock, green tea, corn on the cob, salad, mashed potatoes with an Irish gravy made from Guinness Stout beer, and a ginormous porterhouse steak.

OMG!

There was a chocolate pound cake and some super dark, rich, Chocolate Dream cookies too.

Damn that Man vs. Food guy! Last week, after watching him polish off some giant hunk of meat, Mrs. FC asked me what I wanted for Father's Day dinner, and I said, " I want a huge steak, one so big that I am ready to be done when I get to the end of it, instead of wanting a little more."

She did good on the picking and the grilling, because it was perfect.

So, now it's back to eating lighter and healthier, but every once in a while, I need a giant hunk of cow.

On top of that great meal, my JEEP disappeared for a few hours yesterday, ... along with my crew and when it returned, it had spiffy new JEEP logo seat covers and was completely cleaned and detailed inside and out!

It's so purty, I'm afraid to get in it.

Pelican's Lament

Remember when having a hook caught in your bill was the biggest concern for a pelican?

Those were the good old days, weren't they?

Progress On The Home Aquaculture Front

Okay, I noticed that the last time I posted about constructing the aquaculture canopy roof, I bored a few of you to tears.

Too much "here's how I nailed this part" and, "...and then I clamped it like this."

I felt ya.

I am always thinking of my regular readers when I post something here at PF, but ...
...when it comes to home aquaculture, I am also posting for that person who is not a reader of Pure Florida (the HORROR!), but is interested in small scale recirculating aquaculture systems (aka RAS).

There's a lot of large scale, high tech, high investment commercial scale stuff out there, but less of the small system info. The Aussies have a really neat Aquaponics forum and there are some Youtube videos available, but it's not like looking up "tomato gardening at home" and getting flooded with info.

So I picture this person wanting to try some backyard fishfarming and searching the internet for how to do it small and on the cheap. She googles the topic and up pops some of these PF aquaculture posts.

She reads one or two of these posts on home RAS construction, shakes back her thick mane of (insert color preference here) hair and thinks, "Hey this guy ain't right, but he does know how to construct inexpensive home fish farms."


And another backyard aquaculturist is born.

That's how I picture it anyway.





Are you still there?
If so, check out this prawn from the RAS at school.
To be honest, this is the biggest prawn in the system, a young blue claw dominant male who still has lots of growing to do, but ain't he pretty?
There are a lot of big, but not THIS big yet shrimp in the tank right now, so things are going smoothly.

Mostly.
Last night, around 9:30 pm, I stopped in to feed them on the way home from Tampa and found that the power was out at the school.
I called the power company and they were not aware of it, but they would send a crew out. Apparently storms had moved through earlier and they were really busy.

I stayed with the shrimp until 1:00 am, scooping and pouring water from a bucket to areate the tank and then went home.
The shrimp are reported to be fine this morning so I will begin moving them here today instead of kayaking on the Gulf of Florida like I had planned.

That power scare was enough to accelerate my shrimp moving plans.


Now back to the home system overview so far...

The canopy cover over the tank is supported by a cattle panel that I cut in half. The cattle panel supports a tarp to keep rain and leaves out of the tank. Cutting the panel produced some sharp edges that would quickly shred a tarp though, so I bought a few foam swimming noodles and utilized them to cushion the sharp ends where I cut the wire.



I built a shelf to support the barrel bio filter and hung a perforated bucket from it to keep the pump submerged, but not on the bottom where it could get clogged from stuff that settled out of the water column.

The filter bucket wears a mesh bag to keep junk and small shrimp from being sucked in. The top will be screened off too.

The tank holds 700 gallons of water and the pump can move about 750 gallons per hour so there will be good turnover through the filter. The pump also uses UV lights to sterilize the water as it passes through (UV light kills microcritters).

The barrel filter will be full of clean shell, bioballs, and broken pvc pipe bits. The purpose of that is to give the denitrifying bacteria a place to adhere to so they can cleanse the water of nitrates as the water trickles through the barrel.

(Nitrates are coming from animal waste and uneaten food, If they build up to dangerous levels, you lose your livestock. Nitrobacter bacteria convert them to harmless nitrites and the world is good.)

Wake up!

The video below is a short tour of the still incomplete system . It's not narrated, so here's the main idea.

It starts with a look inside a reddish barrel. I'm popping a cap off the U-shaped pipe and allowing a siphon to flow. The water filling the red barrel is coming from the main tank.

This barrel will be filled with netting to slow and settle out fish waste and uneaten food bits.

That's not shown in the video, plus the second, return pipe is not shown.

More on that later ... you're welcome.

The rest of the video is just a snapshot of the system running. The system is functional right now, but is really about 90% complete. It's enough for you to get the idea.

I will update with more pics and a narrated video when it's JUSSSSSSST RIGHT.

I think you've probably had enough Rube Goldberg Aquanerd stuff for one post.

And Just One More Thing ...

Work, work,work.

Our 3 days of post-school training are in full swing.

The theme is SURVIVOR, ... a show I have never watched.

We are divided into tribes ... ours is the "Margaritavillians" and our icons are the lime and the salt shaker. There are tribal challenges for points to break up the educationalesium. Our tribe is doing okay, but they will be without me tomorrow as I travel to USF for Katie's orientation there.

So when they announced that coming dressed in Island Attire would earn your tribe points, I went for it since I can not help the Margaritavillians Wednesday.

I got a little deciduous on the walk to the training area, ... left a few palm fronds down the hallway, ... but enough remained to get us some points.

In other teachery news, my very good buddette, Cindy ... aka Cinbad in the comments, had a beautiful bouncing baby boy last Sunday. I had predicted the birth for Sunday, at 6:00pm, and that it would be a boy. The little guy came in around 11:30ish, so I missed the time, but 2 out of 3 isn't too bad.

Both parents and baby are doing well.

We are all happy and much relieved.

Look for a late post tomorrow as I will be traveling without a computer ... probably an evening post if I actually manage something.

Baby Gopher Goes His Own Way

Sunday Serenade

Crank it up!

It's Hard To Walk On Water When It's Covered In Oil

I was too kind.



Too optimistic.



Too benevolent.







When I first wrote about this oil spill, I made the point that we all share in responsibility for this oil spill since we are the driving force in the quest for oil.



That is still true.







Where I went wrong in that post was when I skimmed over BP and the Obama administration's responsibilities in this disaster.







You can chalk that up to nice guy optimism that bordered on naive ignorance.... and a pretty strong (and historically correct) belief in our deep sea technological capabilities.







Let's talk about BP first.



Prior to this oil spill, if you had asked me to name a green "oil" company, I'm sure I would have named BP without a moment's hesitation.







Their slick "BP ... Beyond Petroleum" advertisements focused on diversifying our energy sources and making the transition to wind, solar, and other alternatives.







Heck, they had a green logo for crying out loud ... and they had it way before the color green was "green".




BP's "green" has faded to the same dull brown sheen that coats the Gulf.






If you look at the past few decades, oil spills of note have been minor and quickly cleaned up ... considering the thousands of oil wells beneath the world ocean. We've come a long way from the 60's and 70's when tankers seemed to break up on a regular basis and pictures of oil covered birds on the news were pretty common.

From Santa Barbara to the Exxon Valdez, each new oil disaster back then brought new and better regulation ... better blow out prevention, better clean-up technology, double-hulled tankers, etc.

These new protective measures were always reactive though, just like the new ones that will arise from this diaster.

The difference is THIS disaster makes those pale in comparison.

As an ocean science educator, I've kept up with deep sea technology and we do some amazing things ... incredible things at extreme depth. I confess I had begun to believe we could seek deepwater oil and thus avoid shallow water coastal drilling where an oil spill would be more disastrous.






I never considered the possibility of an unstoppable oil geyser on the seafloor spewing oil for months at a time. The history of oil spills did not support that scenario.







I knew oil spills and rig blow outs can happen, but, ... and here is where I was really ignorant ... I never dreamed that major oil companies and the United States government would be so completely unprepared for dealing with a major spill.







What I am not going to do in this post is repeat all the details of BP's inadequacies, unpreparedness, lies, slow response time, and general callous attitude toward the Gulf, the wildlife, and the people of the Gulf Coast. I am not a reblogger ... go watch the news.







It's out there for everyone to see 24/7 (although you might not see everything... BP blocking photos)









The evidence is piling up in sticky mounds like tarballs on Santa Rosa Island and the evidence points to a company that was totally unprepared for the disaster they have caused.





Preparation for a castastrophic blow-out is not demonstrated by:

• Purposefully understating the amount of flow from the pipe. It's understandable that in the first few days, this might be inaccurate, but the low estimate was out there long after it was challenged by respected scientific organizations.

• Rushing to build a containment structure at local Gulf Coast shipyards AFTER THE FACT. In the entire Gulf, with all those oil wells, there was nothing like this prepositioned and ready? This is a huge US government failure also.

• Bringing in minimal assets ... this is what, day 50 something? NOW they are bringing in assets from other parts of the globe.

• Spraying dispersants with secret proprietary ingredients all over the Gulf. Vast amounts of additional chemicals, toxic chemicals , whose purpose is to break up the surface oil and hide the slick in the water column.

• Restricting access to reporters. Spinning the story and spending millions on BP PR while handing out $5000 to fishermen who may just lose their boats and their way of life due to the oil.

• Asking the public for advice on how to stop the flow ... Huh? If it was a PR move to involve us and make us feel part of the team, well ... it backfired. It only served to make BP look like a company that was in over it's corporate head without a clue as to what to try next.

Those are just a few highlights of BP's failures, again, the details are on the news 24/7.

As for the Obama administration ...

This will be their big test and so far, I give them a D.

• Slow to react. It's the worst environmental disaster in the history of the USA ... ACT LIKE IT! We're 50 days in for God's sake. Feel some pain to paraphrase another president.

• Initial responses were low intensity and only seem to have ramped up when polls show the public's disappointment with the response effort.

• Less talk of prosecution and more ACTION on execution ... of the cleanup plan. We can pursue prosecution of BP after we stop the flow and clean the slicks.

• ASSETS! You are the United States Government! Quit relying on BP for guidance and materials. BP wants to spray toxic chemical dispersants in quantities never before used and the administration allows it UNTIL scientists in and out of the government challenge the safety of those substances.

• Reactive just like BP. No evidence of proactive, "What If ..." contingency plans. The US government prepositions food,water, and other emergency supplies at distribution centers across the country for use during weather or terrorist disasters. Why was there no central WELL STOCKED prepositioned oil spill emergency materials at some location in the Gulf? If there was one, why did BP have to engineer and build it's failed containment structures locally after the fact?

• Regulating agencies are too cumbersome and some, are too cozy with the very industry they are regulating. Yes, it's probably been that way for decades, but this is now and it's your watch, Mr. President.

Every president has events that define their time in office and this will certainly be Mr. Obama's. So far it doesn't look good, but this story is far from over ... very far from over. The effects stretch out there so far into the future ... it's hard not to be discouraged.

The BP oil spill is an almost physical pain down here.

You don't have to live near the Gulf to love it and the rich natural heritage it contains, I know that. This disaster affects all of us.

But, here at PFHQ, We raised our babies in that clear salty water. They grew up swimming, diving, fishing, beach combing, boating, island hopping, and living, truly living in "our" Gulf.

Now the ominous black smear on the Gulf's blue waters hovers offshore, shifting shape and location each day, always threatening ...

Here on the eastern shore of the Gulf, we hold our breath and hope the winds and currents might deliver us from evil, and then we feel the sting of guilt, for the wind that might save us will devastate someone else's shore.

For now the innocents go about their timeless cycles of life, unaware of impending disaster, in the rich and truly pristine coastal marshes of the big bend region. It's crushing to realize how much is at stake and that we may be witnessing the last time things were "normal" here ... before the oil.

Things like this ...

Wasp vs. Hornworm, Turtle vs. Hornworm

This tomato hornworm is toast. Parasitic wasp larvae have fed on his insides just enough to imobilize him, yet keep him alive while they pupate in those tiny coccoons sprouting from his body.
I noticed this one last weekend and yesterday as I was plucking small tomato hornworms off the tomato plants, I found another parasitized caterpillar.

(I scout my tomatoes daily for pests)


I always leave the parasitized caterpillars in place so more wasps are produced to patrol my garden, but the other caterpillars are plucked.


One of the nice things about having a fish/turtle pond in your garden is that as you weed your garden, you can toss pesky organisms into the pond.





My turtles are omnivorous, so they are happy when I toss in some random weeds plucked from the garden, but they are even happier when something squiggly comes their way.


They are very tame since I raised them from eggs, so when a hornworm makes it's appearance on the nearby tomato plants, it provides an opportunity to hand feed the little Chelonians.

You can see that below ...



Oh, and did I mention that today is the last day of school?

S-U-W-E-E-E-E-E-T!

Blue Heaven

10 minutes worth of picking.


My blueberry crop is pouring in ... POURING!

I walk out every other day and pick a colander like that full of big bluebies.

When a crop is ripening so abundantly, you have to think of things to do with them, although I have to confess, I love them best as they come off the tree.

I just don't think anything we do to them is an improvement over that, but that doesn't mean I don't love blueberry products.

In fact ... I'm thinking I need a good blueberry scone recipe, 'cause I dang well LOVES ME SOME SCONES.


Pictured above is the blueberry pie that Mrs. FC made and took down south to my Uncle Keith.
Uncle Keith flew on B-24's over Europe in World War II so he certainly earned his pie.


So ... the bowl on the left is full of Kashi GO LEAN cereal and about a cup of blueberries. That was breakfast.

Now it's my lunch break and I am eating whole handfuls out of a little blubbermade container as I type.

And ... I'm drinking Superfruit blueberry green tea ... Is it cold in here? ... 'cause I'm turning blue.


I'm one totally antioxidized dude let me tell ya.





Look at those beauties!

How about these?

Those are D cup berries at least.

The video below is a little fly through of my tomato-datil pepper-blueberry patch out back. It's longer than usual, and a little zoomy, so fasten your seat belts.