Don't Text Me About All The Fish You Caught While I Am Sweating In The Yard

It's cooler today, only 92 at 2 PM.
I've been working in the "yard" following the shade mostly. As soon as the job I'm doing becomes exposed to the sun, I move to a shadier zone that has some job to do.

This summer, I've hired Emma and Junior for a host of grunty, grueling jobs that need to be done. Some are torturous and some are not too painful, so it's a mix of pain and less pain.
They cleaned all my aquariums a few days ago. They had sat out under the oaks for a year and become positively fuzzyfilthified.
This qualifies as a not too bad job as it involves water and getting wet is part of the duty.
Hauling away tons of scratchy brush into the woods and stacking firewood in the summer heat qualifies as pretty miserable ... ("it's not the heat it's the humidity " ... no DA, it's both)

Beloved, yet dead trucks are always eager to prove they can still be useful. My old 1982 GMC (pre government takeover) S-15 Sierra proved to be a handy aquarium drying rack after the cleanification.

Never throw anything away prematurely ... especially trucks.

This is my old tilapia aquaculture area after the first stage of clean up.
Yes, that is after ... it was a jungle before.

I am redesigning and prepping for a start up ... not tilapia though.
Something else.
Tell ya later.


Here's some of the firewood that Emma stacked this week. That's mainly from the branches of the two oaks I removed. I'm just now getting to the trunks.
Need some oak?
We couldn't burn all that in 3 Florida winters.
Maybe one of the local BBQ places could use some.


Attached to the barn shed is a pole shed roof for storing stuff ... like more firewood than you could ever use.
Today I climbed up on a step ladder to take a look at the barn roof which needs some major TLC and I discovered ...

... that I was growing small trees on the shed roof in a rich composting mix of decaying oak leaves.
I knew there was a branch or two up there, but I had no clue that I had a soddy starting.

Action shot!

So I pulled the cart up into a strategic position and raked the soil and leaf mixture off for transport to the woods.

While I was doing this, the adult barred owl landed on a branch about 20 feet away and stared at me. My camera was in the barn, so I slipped down the ladder, grabbed it, and slipped back up.

As soon as I raised the camera, the owl flapped off.

Oh well.

I think it was about then that Junior, who is spending some time down near Crystal River at his good buddies house, texted me:

"18 fish today! Eleven rock bass, 4 sharks, one grouper, one blowfish, and one sea trout."

grrrrrrr. I could hardly read it as the sweat rinsed the sunscreen off my skin and into my eyes.

Then ... another text:

"Mr. Jim trolled us around the sandbar and a pair of dolphins got within, like one foot of us!"

Not fair.
I swatted away the biting ants that were caught in the mix of sweat, dirt, and sunscreen on my neck, and texted him back:

"Okay, that is just waaaay too awesome to tell someone while they are doing grunt work! Be sure and take some pictures for PF. "

He responded:

"Will do, we're going spearfishing tomorrow so I'll get some then too."

Ack!!

Rub some salt in the wound, why doncha!