Moving A 10 Year Old "Flexible PVC" Garden Irrigation System

Now that I'm retired from teaching 5-6 DIFFERENT science subjects every day, I have time to rejuvenate and redo the garden. 

Changes are happening and this video covers one major change along with the side effects. 

Years ago, I turned a 16' x 16' FFA hog pen into my Datil Pepper nursery and grow-out area. By adding some higher fencing, I had a deer-safe spot to start and grow my Datils.

Fast forward to my installing DeerBusters deer fence around a much larger garden area (that includes the old hog pen area too), and now the old irrigation system needs to be repurposed.

So, I dug up the old flexible PVC pipe with sprinklers attached and wrapped it around my raised beds.

To do this, I had to trench around the beds to lay the pipe underground.

Unfortunately, this meant I had to remove the paver stone walkway that I had installed not too long ago along one side of the 25-foot-long raised beds.

Also, after the trenching, pipe install, and backfilling was done, I needed to tamp down and relevel the walkway path, BEFORE reinstalling the pavers.

It was a classic example of one thing leading to another, but in the end, it all worked out.

Now with one turn of a faucet, I can drench my raised beds.

As I write this, I am doing just that. I'll be planting turnips and other fall-winter crops in those beds today after everything is nice and moist.

REAL DATIL PEPPER CHAT,... NOT A RANT, ... A CHAT.

It's been a remarkably warm fall here at PFHQ. The official start of Winter is about 20 days away and I have Datil pepper plants blooming in the pepper patch!
In December ...
It is a fitting weird gardening end to 2018 since the Spring was remarkably cool here and it took forever for the Datils to grow and start blooming.

See? That was a chat, not a rant.

Blossoms and tiny pepperlings in North Florida on December 1, 2018.
I used to be happy to still have peppers hanging in October, but unprotected plants were almost always toast by November.

Hot Christmas Tree

I picked the fully ripe peppers below this morning.
They will provide the seeds for both my next planting and for the folks who buy real Datil pepper seeds from me.

 As I picked, a light rain was falling ahead of a cold front, but I think these plants will make it through the cold air to follow.
Forecast temps are in the 30's, but we've already had two nights of near 32 F and the plants were unphased by it.

Without consciously meaning to, my Grandfather, my Dad, and I may have slowly selected for cold tolerance over our 3 generations, as we saved seeds from surviving plants late in the season.
Couple that with a warming climate and ALL of this year's crop may overwinter for a second round.
Usually, I get one or two plants to overwinter for the second year of production, but in the past, that has involved running them in and out of the house as cold fronts slide over us.

I may not have to do that this year.

If you skipped the video, here's the Cliff Notes:

• I grow Datil Peppers handed down from my Grandfather to my Dad and now to me. 
• I grow them in isolation from any other type of pepper to avoid even a chance of hybridization.
• Datil Peppers are HOT, not "sweet" aka mild.
• Ripe Datil Peppers are orange not red when ripe.
• The 2 bullets above may have been a rant.
• You can buy REAL Datil Pepper seeds from me by clicking on the sidebar ad or the Datil Pepper seed page on this blog or you can zip over to eBAY and look for PURE FLORIDA DATIL PEPPER SEEDS.

Eat More Datils!

Reclaiming The "Garden".

We were going through some old home videos not long ago and I was flabbergasted to see how sunny and organized my garden was when we first moved onto our beloved PFHQ.

We had a toddler, a Labrador, and a new baby all in a 2 bedroom, 42' single-wide trailer.

On top of that, in August of 1988 I had walked out of the National Park Service and into a classroom without any real "teacher training".

I was working every night at the kitchen table until 11pm just to be ready for the next day.

And yet ... somehow in the videos, I had a big sunny garden with neat wide rows and actual plants growing.

The garden evolved (devolved?) over the years into raised beds outlined by PVC drainage pipe, but over time, even those became weedy monuments to gardening failure.

A recent photo shows its decrepit state of being.

In the photo above are "fossils" from the different garden eras.

• PVC lined beds with a crop of seed grown coontie.
• The green "Mallard Mansion" chicken/duck house.
• A rabbit cage which doubled as a chicken tractor.
• Fence remnants.
• A gate to nowhere.

And, if I turn around and look South, there is the scene below.

This 16' by 16' cage is all that remains of our FFA show pig days. After we graduated from that period, I raised the fence posts higher, added extra fence height and created the only deer proof zone (all 256 square feet of it) on our 10 acres.

For years now, this is where I've grown my datil pepper plants. 

The photo shows the remains of last seasons pepper planting. I need to dump all those pots and replant.

One of the most shocking things about those old home videos was the tree growth in those 30 years.

In the videos, spindly young oaks are visible on the edges of the garden, but they cast no problematic shade.

Now ... they tower 60 feet high and in some cases branch out over the garden.

Some of this shade issue I caused.

I went through a wood carving period when the kids were little and black cherry was a favorite. So I started a bunch from seeds and transplanted them out into the woods, except for one...

Look at that straight beauty below.

I never moved her and now she is at the South end of my garden.

I can't bear to cut her down ... maybe someday for lumber, but not now.

So, I'm compromising.

I have trimmed lower branches before to reduce the shade on my datils, but now a V-notch branch is growing out over the garden.

Time for the very long ladder, some ratchet straps, gumption, and the Husky chainsaw.

That branch must go while it is still "small".

Back to the original musing ... how was I able to create and maintain a sweetly neat garden in those early days.

The answer is ... I had a Tiller.

As soon as we moved onto the property, I bought a used Troybuilt Horse rear-tine tiller from a guy in Gainesville for $800.00.

It was a beast and served me well.

Once it finally gave up the ghost, the garden slowly reverted back to wildness.

I just could not keep up.

In the picture above, I have begun reclaiming sod-covered parts of the garden.

Curse you St. Augustine grass!!

I've been able to do that thanks to the Husqvarna beast in the picture below.

160cc's of dirt munching Honda power!

Progress.

Next step is Tenax Deer Fencing and some tall posts.

The good news is I can tie that into the new yard fence that is not shown, but just to the right of this photo.

I will at least get some potatoes (blue ones of course) started, I don't think Deer munch on the Nightshade family.

Updates to come. 

OKAY, I TAKE IT BACK ... PINTEREST IS NOT JUST FOR GIRLS ... AND YES, IT HAS BEEN A GREAT HELP ON THIS FENCING PROJECT

 A few years ago, when someone asked me, "Do you use Pinterest?"

I would snort, sneer, and say, "Um no ... I have testosterone."

In my defense, early Pinterest did seem pretty girly, and I didn't find much to interest me ... at first.

So that has all changed now and I ate those earlier "testy" comments with a dose of datil pepper hot sauce.

This is not a post about Pinterest ... (sorta seems like it so far), but rather a post about my dog fence.

One of the things I learned from having kids in FFA ... (besides being sure to drink strong heavily caffeinated coffee before an end of the year FFA banquet) ... is that something called "hog panel" and "cattle panel" exists.

I love this stuff ... as does Pinterest and YouTube. At both of these sites you can find all kinds of projects using these panels in ways never intended at the "panel factory".

The cattle panel fences on Pinterest were very creative and some were downright beautiful.

My wood budget doesn't allow as much extra wood trim on this fence as the prettiest Pinterest pics showed, but Pinterest was definitely a source of inspiration and instruction.

My goal is an attractive, Labrador Retriever proof fence surrounding the back and side "yards" here at Pure Florida HQ.

 Right away, these 16 foot long panels present a challenge.

How the heck do you get them home?

This challenge gets more challengy when you drive one of the shortest vehicles on the road ... A JEEP Wrangler.

Hey, no problem, I have a trailer ... which is barely 7 feet long.

Did I mention I also needed to buy two 16 foot 4X4's for my Ninja Warrior Salmon Ladder project?

No?

Well, I did and that both helped and complicated things.

In the trailery-cattle panelly photo above, this may not be obvious, but I took an old 14 foot extension ladder and strapped it into the trailer fully extended.

Allowing for a little overhang at the JEEP end and beaucoup overhang at the stern, my system worked like a charm.

 Of course, once I got home (multiple trips by the way), there were a bunch of post holes to dig.

 With the exception of some VERY rooty areas in one section, digging post holes here is pretty easy. 

"Easy" in the sense that the soil is sand with no rocks or hard clay.

The photo above is just a sample and it also shows one of the minor challenges ... the humps.

Scattered around PFHQ are occasional humps of richly dark, charcoally soil. They rise above the surrounding ground by only a couple feet at most.

My hypothesis is that a long time ago, when they cleared parts of this land for cattle, they pushed piles of trees and brush together and burned them in situ.

You can still see that practice in any rural area today.

Above is a comparison of the hump soil and the native sand beneath it ... all from the same post hole.  I'm trenching and then swaling the ground wherever a hump arises. 

On this project, that's only 2 places, but the second one is big, forested, and SO DAMN ROOTY!

 IF you are going to do this kind of work during the humid 100 degree heat of a Florida Summer, it's important to fuel up for the task at hand.

I call this "The Fencer's Breakfast" ... bacon, Key Lime Cake, coffee, and milk.

 The devastated brown area to the right of the line of fence was a shrubby, briaralicious, grapevine encased jungle that extended out past the where the fence now lies. 

A bit of machete mayhem at the end of the day pushed it back so the fence could both proceed and ... turn a corner.

 (Important note from the fencer: None of the fence in these photos is finished. It's all just hanging and the future trim has yet to be added.)

The photo above shows the fence passing through a large hump of that dark, charcoal-rich soil I mentioned earlier.

It's pretty good dirt for Florida, so I'll be harvesting some of that as I swale the fence line.

The trenchy look is temporary.

 This is a fencer's rootiest nightmare.

Sigh...

On the bright side, I've made much progress since I first stared down this line, and that makes me feel good.

 Don't forget to take breaks if you are trying this at home... and remember, it's not a fashion show.

Wear what works.

Easy for me to say ... I don't have neighbors :)

Turning the corner ...

 I'm going old school on this big log that lies across my fence path in the jungle zone.

I only need to move the part across the fence line, and I COULD chainsaw it, but it's punky on the outside and in the dirt, ... I try to never let my saw chain touch the ground.

So while I work nearby, I let a slow and low fire saw through the log. When it gets done, I'll just move the section under the fence line.

That's about it for this PFHQ fence update. This one is more for me than you dear reader. This blog is many things and one of the most important jobs it does is keep a running record of projects in and around Pure Florida HQ.

I can't tell you how many times that history has come in handy.

And remember ... when your head starts to smoke, well, it's time to take a break.

Some Datil Peppers, Some Basil, Some Lizard Tail, ... some Aquaponics too!

There is something about a healthy Datil Pepper pup showing great foliage and vigorous roots that just makes me smile.

That's a good thing, because I have seen a lot of the them this Spring. 

Presently, (using the same seeds I sell to you folks), I have a little over a hundred datils growing in various stages.

Some are 18 inches tall and budding out, while about a dozen are still in the original seed tray they were born in.

Those are losing their patience.

If you're looking at the photo above and counting, (hmmm, he said over a hundred ...), just know that I have potted even more since that picture was taken.

Also, you might notice a few basil and tomatoes in there. 

Rest assured, it's the datils that are the stars in this garden patch.

So far, I'm a big fan of these 5 gallon grow bags. They were super economical compared to 5 gallon pots, although they certainly won't last as long.

I'm expecting one season out of them, but secretly hoping for two.

We'll see.

The tall fencing around these datils is to keep the deer away, but ... being deer, they found a flaw in my defence.  

This datil was too close to the hog panel fencing and some enterprising whitetail stuck his snout through, fed, and tugged the plant out of the soil.

So, I adapted and moved everybody back from the fence and replanted this little guy.

Deer.

I keep reminding myself how cute the spotted fawns are this time of year and how I love to see them grazing here at PFHQ.

Meanwhile, at Cedar Key School ...

The sweet basil growing in the Science Department aquaponics system are all fat and happy and waiting to be harvested.

That will probably happen tomorrow. We will just give them a severe trimming of course. The basil will give us multiple crops, much to the delight of the CKS teachers.

Not shown in the basil photo are the tanks of bluegills and goldfish whose enriched tank water flows through the gravel basil bed and back into the fish tank continuously.

The fish make fertilizer.

The plants clean the water and grow.

It's a beautiful thing.

This year I stuck 2 datil seedlings in the grow bed and they are thriving ... as are the red mangrove saplings who are now 2+ years old and putting out prop roots.

I'm sure they are heavy nutrient suckers and we'd probably have even better basil production if they weren't there, but hey ... they're MANGROVES.

How cool is that?

Hang on,  we are switching locations ...

Speaking of aquaponics, back home at PFHQ, our little goldfish pond was often a green slime pond in the past.

Last year I added more gravel to the waterfall pools and sprigged in iris, lizard tail, spider lily, and mint.

Problem solved.

Like the basil system at school, the plants in the waterfall soak up the fish nutrients so the pond water stays clear and clean.

This, ... well, this is just a gratuitous selfie by the iris.

I couldn't irisist posting it.

A Native Pollinator Bee House Kind Of Day

 Yesterday, November 21st 2015 was hot, humid, and grey with clouds promising, but not delivering a rumored, and much lusted after, cold front.


We are almost to December and my datil pepper plants are still blooming ... that should not BE.

Speaking of BEES, last year, my science students built a habitat, a "bee house", for native pollinators. The plan came from the University of Florida 's website, Native Buzz. This is a great website, check it out if you are propollinator.

The kids built it, loaded it with bamboo and drilled log chunks for nesting sites, and then, contrary to my assurances ... nobody moved in.

I was perplexed about this at first, since anytime I hang a bundle of bamboo sticks under my eaves, the tiny natives find it and seal off every tube entrance within a few weeks.
(They lay their eggs and then seal the bamboo tube)

But, at school, nothing happened, even after the summer.
Hmmm, what the heck was going on?

One day, after yet another search for signs of native bee use of our school beehouse, I decided to straighten up the bamboo stacked on the house shelves.

Instantly I got bit.
Not by a native bee, they basically don't participate in such unlikable behaviors, no, the biter here was the invasive fire ant.
They poured out of the bamboo ... and suddenly the vacancy sign at the bee house made perfect sense.

Mark down yet another negative impact of the imported fire ant. Ants from a fire ant nest nearby had discovered that the bamboo tubes held food ... aka bee larvae, and had taken advantage of them.

Now I looked closer and sure enough, some of the bamboo tubes held dirt residue around the openings. So some bees had tried to use the nest tubes, but the fire ants dug through the plugs of dirt and ate their young.

A dilemma, and not one to be solved by spraying the bee house with pesticides for obvious reasons.

I've been brainstorming a few barrier ideas that involve a pesticide barrier application very low on the structure, axle grease painted on to the lowest portions, or some combination of both... along with neutralizing any fire ant nest nearby.

Me and my freshly (yesterday) installed bee house at home. It will face the same problems as the school bee house... the fire ants are firmly established here at PFHQ.

The bee house in the grand scheme of things.
The garden is a mess. 
Much of it is overgrown with St. Augustine grass and Bahia grass.

I spent much of yesterday disrupting the grasslands and hauling wheelbarrow loads of grass to the gun range where it can stabilize the earthen backstop.

At some point, tired and sweaty from grass tugging, I decided to mount our bee house. I built it months ago, but it had remained prone in the garden until the weather "cooled off ".

A close up.
The recycled fish pond behind it holds gambusia fish and anacharis, but usually is full of blue flag iris and other blooming water plants.
I cleaned them out recently after they completely took over the pond.
They are now down at the real pond, and soon I will restock this one with just a few iris, lizardtail, etc.

This is an old picture of a simple native bee nest project that can be hung from an eave or any sheltered spot.
Bamboo sticks like these will be used to fill most of the shelves in the big bee house, along with some log chunks drilled with appropriately sized holes.
I grow the bamboo here at PFHQ.


Updates on this project will occur sporadically. Input on barriers to fire ants that I haven't proposed in this post are most welcome.

BEE good y'all.

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF THE CEDAR KEY SEAFOOD FESTIVAL, OCTOBER 17 AND 18, 2015.

The Cedar Key Seafood Festival is next weekend, October 17 - 18, 2016, and you REALLY need to be there. There will be a delicious array of seafood delights to savor as well as a wonderful art show.

Plus, all of this is in quaint, old Floridy, quirky, wonderful, Cedar Key, Florida. That's like a huge scoop of ice cream on an already delicious piece of apple pie.

Almost too good to be true.

The festival takes place downtown, all along one main street, with food vendors at the seaside park area while the artists extend from the park through town.

I'll be there slinging 12 oz cups of my REAL Minorcan style clam chowder for $5.00 a cup. 

Come buy some!

All proceeds go to support the Cedar Key School Science Department.

It takes REAL datil peppers, homegrown by me, to make REAL Minorcan style clam chowder.
Lots of flavor and just a little bite.
We sell out every year so this year I'm making more than ever before.
Insider tip: Sometimes, depending on crowd size, food vendors sell out on Sunday afternoon. We are not restaurants and while we try to plan for big crowds, some times the food runs out before the 5:00 hour on Sunday.
Your best bet on Sunday is to be there by lunch time to be safe.
We are all trying to avoid early sell outs, but this is an article about how to enjoy the festival and I'd be amiss if I didn't mention this observation. 

Here are some very practical tips to help you maximize your fun at this great event:

• Bring cash for parking. Unless you are there at sunrise, you can expect to pay $10 to park all day in parking lots, private yards, and church yards. 

• Bring cash in small denominations ... PLEASE! All the food vendors are nonprofits, most are from our school, and we don't have deep pockets. A steady stream of ATM fresh $20 bills quickly depletes our change supply. Small bills, (ones, fives, tens) will help us with making change and not hold up the line while we send a runner to try and find some small bills.

• I can't speak for the art vendors, but in my experience, many of them are set up to take debit and credit cards.

• You will be in a coastal town so expect lots of sunshine and bring your hats, sunglasses, sunscreen, etc. Don't let the fact that it's October fool you. You can get a wicked sunburn in Florida in October.  Right now, one week ahead of the festival, the forecast for those 2 days shows highs of 81, sunny with some clouds (duh), and a 12 mph breeze. SOUNDS PERFECT!

• Every year there are well behaved leashed dogs that come to the festival. Just remember, they are wearing a fur coat, not a tank top like the rest of us and bright sun on an 81 degree day can cause a dog to heat up pretty quickly. There is some shade from trees in the park where the food vendors are, but the art section is sunny and more confining. Use common sense and maybe leave your best buddy home, or at least plan for his needs. We will have a doggy water station at our Clam Chowder booth.

• Other handy things are shady strollers for your baby and folding chairs so you have a place to sit, eat, and people watch.

• If you are a cyclist, a bike is the perfect way to cruise around Cedar Key.

Those are my best tips after years of working the festival. Thank you in advance for supporting the nonprofits by your purchases of food and drink at the festival.

Just to bring home how important this event is to our school, chew on this:
A teacher at Cedar Key School receives an annual classroom budget of $75 for the year. 
Try teaching science or any subject on that.
Last year, when I finally ran out of clam chowder late on Sunday, I put $1600.00 in the school Science Department Account ... all from clam chowder sales!
That's field trips, supplies, equipment, all the things you need for good teaching.
So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Come see us next weekend ... and please drive like your children live here.

A Decade of Nature Blogging: Pure Florida At Ten

(NOTE: Unlike every other Pure Florida post, there are no photos in this one ... I'm just looking back on the 10th anniversary of Pure Florida.)

I started Pure Florida ten years ago on April 10, 2005.
Actually, that's a bit misleading, the roots of Pure Florida go all the way back to my teen years and the journals (logs) I filled with what is now the handwritten history of those times. 

Quite a bit of that falls into the "diary" category, which contains things far beyond the scope of nature and wildlife. There is, as might be expected, a fair amount of teenage angst, misadventures, and other stuff that will never show up on the internet.

Still, those journals, now taped shut and stacked in storage, were my boot camp, my training ground if you will for this thing called Pure Florida.

Along the way, there were also some nature articles published in FWC's "Florida Wildlife Magazine" back in the 1980's, before paper magazines became an endangered species.  I also published in a regional magazine called "North Florida Living" and "Old Bottle Magazine". 
A copy of "Writers Market", was a constant companion.

I thought, back in the late 70's and early '80's that a freewheeling freelance nature writer was a real possibility, which made my focus on my college studies more like an intermittent stream than a reliable, steady flowing river.

Somewhere along the way, life happened.
First the Park Service, then marriage, then baby one, then career switch to teaching, then baby two, then homesteading 10 acres in wild wonderful Levy County, then baby number 3 ... and for a while writing and even nature photography seemed secondary to all this amazing life stuff.

By late 2004, I was looking for an online platform to somehow share how awesome the real Florida was ... without somehow encouraging people to move here, because Florida is full and has been for some time.

During those super busy years, the internet had been maturing and becoming more user friendly. No longer did you have to be an HTML programmer to publish online. 
I tried different online programs ... remember going into any office supply store and browsing rack after rack of boxed software products?

None of the programs I purchased were satisfactory to me, and then, one day, up popped a link about "Blogger", a free, WSIWYG web publishing site.

This sounded too good to be true, but like a 20 pound redfish who knows better, I rose to the bait.
It worked!
I was hooked.

Oh, sure ... my very first post vanished into thin air after I clicked publish, but in the days of 14.4 k dial up modems, things sometimes went astray.

I rewrote the post, pushed send again, and at 10:09 am, on April 10, 2005, Pure Florida was born.


It was published by some guy who called himself "Florida Cracker". 
(Note: this was soon shortened to "FC" by some early regular reader/commenters and it stuck.)
In my early internet publishing innocence, I thought you could, and should be anonymous. 

And for a while, I was, but that vanished after a few years and no one on the net is anonymous anymore.

So a few years ago, I switched my user name to my actual name (or is it?). 
My really long term readers often still use FC when they comment ... it's our secret club handshake, and I like it.
You know who you are. 

When you first publish a blog, you are boldly going where no one has gone before... or so it seems. There's this vast internet ocean and each post is a blind cast that could sink to the bottom without ever being seen, but you cast anyway.
Certainly that is the case for a young blog like Pure Florida ten years ago. 

I'm sure some of those early posts have never been seen.

That's okay.

Pure Florida was created to be the post-paper version of those dusty journals I used to keep. A place where I could say what I needed to say and whether it was liked, or agreed with, didn't really matter that much.

This was all pre-public FaceBook, and the internet was exploding with personal and business blogs ten years ago. All kinds of people were writing posts, not FaceBook soundbites, but REAL posts about whatever interested them.

It wasn't long before I crossed paths with folks who loved the nature where they lived. We became friends, NOT by pushing a "confirm" button, but in the slow, old fashioned, true friendship manner of mutual admiration and empathy.

I have friends today from blogging who I have never met, but I have no doubt we would get along great over a cold beer and some wings. Some of those folks have been "with me" for almost the whole decade long ride and we have shared happy and sad times through blogging without physically meeting. 
I've watched their kids grow up, stressed over their surgeries, rejoiced in the new grandkid or puppy, and mourned their family losses ... as they have mine.

Sure feels like friendship to me.

My long term blog pals include a dairy farmer in NY, two older than me awesome hippies in CA, an island historian, a rascal in MO, a singing fisheries biologist in MN, an awesome young mother with multiple sclerosis who seems to let nothing hold her back, a snowbird - mountain bird retired psychologist, a first grade teacher in MD, ...too many to list and I apologize for that.

Some I have met in person and each time, they have lived up to their online persona. Warm, funny, crazy, sweet ... whatever they projected on their blogs was how they were in real life. 

I hope they saw me the same way.

Along the way, Pure Florida led me to neat coincidences ... like the email I received once from an older woman seeking datil pepper seeds. Her email had some history in it. She was of Minorcan descent (as am I) originally from New Smyrna, FL, and wanted some datil seeds. 
As I read her letter, I just kept focusing on her signature, "Mrs. Robert Marx".

As a kid in the 1960's-70's, totally crazy about the ocean, a treasure diver named "Bob Marx" was a hero of mine. He traveled all over the world diving on wrecks of all ages, like a wet "Indiana Jones" ... before there was Indy.

So I had to ask her, and yes, it was that Robert Marx who was her husband. I gushed about my early admiration and his influence on me, and she wrote back that Bob said thanks for the kind words. 

Dude! That never would have happened without Pure Florida.

Ten years of photos and plugging away can even provide the 15 minutes of fame moment.

Once or twice I've had people come up to me and ask "Are you that Pure Florida guy?" ...in a restaurant, slinging chowder at the Cedar Key Seafood Festival, or twice now, someone driving past the school as I happened to walk out to the JEEP at the end of the day. 

And then there's Julie Zickefoose, professional nature author, painter, and blogger. I don't remember when she first stumbled across Pure Florida, but I'm sure glad she did. I mention this, not just because she is an awesome writing mentor and all round nice person, but to make the point that we simply would not have "crossed paths" had it not been for blogging.

Crazy.

So now it's been 10 years, 2622 posts, and almost 1,000,000 visits to Pure Florida. In that decade, a lot of blogs have bit the dust, taken out by the crack-like addictive, easy instant gratification of FaceBook. 

I get that. If your blog was mainly family posts and photos of your dog, your lunch, your trip to Walmart, selfies, etc, well then FaceBook works great.  I use it for that crap too.

... and yes, Obie Wan, it is good for increasing your blog's exposure and snagging new readers. I get it now.

As a semi-self congratulatory history of Pure Florida post, (without photos!), this one has run its course. If you've read this far, you have a picture of how this blog came to be ... and why it will keep going.

Now that the first decade is complete, my plan is to keep blogging ... to keep writing about Florida and showing what makes it so amazing and worth protecting.

Pure Florida, where every post is a first draft, is ten years old.