Anhinga Eats a Fish

 

Update On Fruit Trees as of March 12, 2021

We're nearing the end of winter here in central Florida, where it's 77 degrees F right now.....  It's the perfect weather to go for a walk around the five acres and experience the beauty, and to check on all of the delicious fruits and vegetables growing.  My goal has always been to have fruit on trees outside, covered with fruit, ready to taste, and it's been challenging to find the right trees that flourish here.  I've had some successes, and all signs indicate that 2021 is going to be a good growth year for the fruit trees.

Mr Pea and the Ladies

 Here's Mr. Pea showing off to the ladies, trying to win their favor.  In March, this is a daily occurrence...   and he looks his best.  The display is perfect, the dance is elegant, the feathers are unbelievably blue and green and hopefully the ladies are impressed.

And the daytime racon, stealing black oil sunflower seed treats behind Mr. Pea's back :D

Mr. Pea (AKA Top Male Peacock) Preening his HUGE, Majestic Feathers - March 11, 2021

 Mark and I were just sitting here in the kitchen pond viewing chamber, and suddenly Mr. Pea spread his amazing feathers and started grooming.  I had to capture the glory of his fluffy feathers since they are in a state of absolute perfection.  They grew in this winter, and since we've had a drought and essentially no rain, they are showing zero signs of damage or wear.  Enjoy!

Mr. Pea (AKA Top Male Peacock) Preening his HUGE, Majestic Feathers - March 11, 2021

50 Pound Banana Bunch!

 

New Duck - Gadwall!

 We were enjoying watching our mallard duck of the day (We call them all "Mel"), and we noticed his lady friend is different than the usual mottled and mallards we see every day.

The new duck is a Gadwall....   she's very pretty!

I didn't bother to try to shoot a picture, but here's a Gallard.

https://www.purelypoultry.com/images/gadwall-ducks_01.jpg

 

I hope we see more of these delicately colored ducks!

Ringo Eating Out of my Hand

 Ringo woke up STARVED today... he sat on the window sill staring at me. So I knew he was hungry enough to perform and eat out of my hand today :D

 

 

Ringo Pingo coming home after a couple of days of adventure... He's VERY Hungry

 

BABY RACCOONS, FALL BATCH

 I've been up at night shooting video of all the baby raccoons that have been coming with their moms to visit P2. Currently we have around 15 babies regularly coming between 9PM and 12AM.

Here are a few good screen shots of some of the kittens.

WOLFIE VISITS P2

 I was up filming raccoons when everyone left suddenly. A moment later this beautiful wild coyote (which we appropriately named Wolfie") showed up and entertained me for a minute and a half, just long enough to catch "her" on video. Here are some screen shots from the video.

TO CHILL OR NOT TO CHILL

So if you're 55 or older, C H I L L . . . . . .oh yea

Sometimes the Universe sends us messages in the strangest of ways and places

Birthday Flowers

Mark surprised me on my birthday with amazing flowers.  They smell stunning with the roses, lillies, carnations, and delphiniums....   I LOVE THEM!

Thank you Muppy 💗

OUR HURRICANE HISTORY

We bought our home in Florida December 4th, 2014 and we had no hurricane that year.

2015 was another non-hurricane year, thankfully because we were unprepared.

2016, October 7, hurricane MATTHEW came into our lives. Fortunately it had minimal impact on us thanks to the Australian pine trees around the perimeter of our property.

2017, September 5th, hurricane IRMA introduced herself. We put plywood over the windows and left it for two years.

2018, no hurricane :-)  JULY 13, 2018 Roll Tite Shutters Installation Complete

2019, September 3rd, hurricane DORIAN made his appearance. Fortunately for us Dorian got stuck over the Bahamas and then turned right and headed North. His breakthrough Category 6 wind never came near us.

2020 September 15th, New roof installation

2020, No hurricane (October 7th cancer surgery instead), 

2021, No hurricane

2022, September 28, hurricane IAN came and stayed for a while. Fortunately for us he entered the state in Fort Myers / Naples area. It was a tropical storm by the time it was over Melbourne, Florida.

Mark's Gear Station

"Who here loves T R A I N S ?"

In the midst of the pandemic "Mark's Gear Station" took flight on Reverb.com. I posted one item at the beginning of April 2020 and it took 30 days to sell. 79 items later the virtual online store has racked up over 80 sales with ALL Positive Feedback.

Along the way I thought it would be fun to make a custom banner photo for the online store to give it a touch of my personality. I used Plasticville components I bought used off eBay, these are copies of the same pieces I had in my train set as a child.

Prototype photo test shot for Mark's Gear Station

Another photo-proto on the road to Mark's Gear Station banner

My beautiful partner, Mary helped me do test shots in our screened in porch area to get the aspect ratio figured out. Reverb has very specific specifications for the size of the photo, 160 pixels high by 960 pixels wide. I reshaped the original digital master photos using Photoshop so I could crop and resize the contents just right.

Version on Reverb as of August 2020

I made it clear in the text details on Reverb that this is not a typical music store, I'm only selling 1-off used pieces from my personal collection, so when it's gone, it's not coming back.

$21,000+ from stuff laying around that I never thought I'd get any money for. If you look around the studio you can barely tell anything is gone. Today the last EHX 44-Magnum amplifier sold, I got a hair more than $100 from something that has not been used in years. I thought it was "sunk cost" but nope :-)

First 2020 Baby Peacocks at P2

This evening we saw the first batch of baby peacocks.... the moms brought them to visit us for the first time this year. We had a tiny puffball, and two older peacock babies. Music is "Mark King - Sailing Ships - Live" (c) Mark King 2020

HURRICANE ISAIAS AUGUST 2020

This was not really a hurricane by the time it "grazed" Florida, we often get more rain in an afternoon shower than this storm brought to us. 

We're not complaining but as usual the media blew it all out of proportion.

We had a peak 10mph wind speed register on our Weather Station, total rainfall was under half an inch.

Banana Twins

Banana twins!  And delicious too.

Bananas 2020!

It's been an epic year for bananas.... with the mild winter, the mats exploded with a zillion bunches.  We have had non-stop ripe bananas for many weeks, and there's no end in sight since there are about 10 "almost ready" bunches still on the plants.

This batch is special, as it's the first REALLY NICE bunch from Blue Ice Cream!  They are not quite ripe, but they look like they'll be amazing.  They're about 6" long and plump.

The other bananas are from various other super high producing banana plants. 

I've had so many ripe bananas, I invented a delicious new recipe:  Use a fork to smash VERY ripe bananas, mix with a little flax seed, freeze it, and slice it into little mini ice cream bites.  No other ingredients, and it's stunningly good!  WAY better than just eating a banana!

Blue Ice Cream bananas harvested 7/18/2020

Another view of Blue Ice Cream.... not the biggest bunch ever, but wow it's going to provide 40-50 bananas, all ripening within a few days :D

All of the current harvested bananas on the ripening hooks.

New Gator!

In the middle of the night, Mark and I were sitting in the kitchen watching fish leap out of the pond and back in...   upon further looking, we found a new gator.  This guy is HUGE.  When his back surfaces out of the water in addition to his head, he looks easily 10 feet long like a crocodile in the movies.



We're going to call Scott, Gator Man, this morning!

June 29, 2020 Baby Racons!

Another great baby racon pic. I hope they come every day!

First Baby Racons 2020

Today, June 29th, we got greeted this morning with our first baby racons (raccoons :D).

Mom and four babies came to "hunt".  We love P2 baby racons!

Alligator!

We have a new gator this morning...   he'll be gone by tomorrow, way too big and too dangerous to keep as a "pet".

 

 

Vultures

Sent from my iPhone

Just Display'n

200 Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

...or "peep a peeps" as I call them.

This was an EPIC bird day.  We had:

200 black bellied whistling ducks
100 sneetches

but very few peafowl.

The sound of the peep a peeps was insane... the whistling at this level was loud.  I love their calls, I hope the neighbors do LOL.

Whistling Ducks and Mottled Ducks sharing breakfast with the squirrels

The "peep-a-peeps" and brown ducks invaded the squirrel seed breakfast. The squirrels seemed happy to share, and I love seeing the ducks up close :D

Peacocks Displaying

It's January 14th, and we are in full male displaying time of the year.  By about January 10th, the males had their massive feather trains in place.  In late December, they were long but not 100%.  Now, OMG, they fill the whole area when they display.  The males are still getting along together - later, territorial behavior will have them arguing and chasing each other.

So for the record, January 10th begins official male peacock display time.

Night Racons

NIGHT RAKE'ns

GROWING & HARVESTING BELLPEPPERS IN MIDDLE OF JANUARY👍

First evening peacock calls tonight, May-Ya May-Ya. Lots of owl hoots tonight too. A beautiful evening here in Florida.

P2 Update - Lots of Amazing Stuff Happened Today - Friday 12-27 2019

Today, Friday, December 27, 2019, we had some critical memorable milestones!

1. Mark made a new seat for the weight bench
2. Swamp baby baby (in the 2019 garage banana patch) put out a flower
3. Pip pup air layering success
4. New scanner for art

I'm particularly thrilled about the air layering success, as today's identification of the first roots is the critical initial step to creating air layered papaya plants with fruit and leaves at human levels.

Here's the story behind each of the four milestones...

After four years of using our olympic weight bench, the seat plywood interior had dissolved from the moisture and humidity.  No problem, a new weight bench cost only $149 on Amazon.  Here's the new one.

New weight bench.... lovely and not rotten :D

We used the new seat from the new weight bench to create two patterns:  a shape pattern and a hole pattern.  Then Mark cut out the seat from 3/4" birch plywood.  Here's the new seat.  Now we just need to add upholstery and a nice vinyl cover, and we'll have two perfect weight benches in use.

This is the old rotten seat with the underside peeled back to release the rotten wood and show the foam. 

Swamp King is one of the original 2016 tissue culture cavendish bananas I bought to get this madness going.  I harvested the pups from Swamp King in December 2017 - this is one of them, named Swamp Baby Baby.  I put Swamp Baby Baby in the ground by the garage within the last nine months.  And today - flower!

I think the garage looks beautiful with the bananas in front.

Tada!  The flower.

The label from the harvesting of the pup.

Now, on to Pip.  A few years ago, two papaya trees sprouted up behind the nursery:  Pip (female) and Pop (male).  Pip has been incredibly prolific and her fruit is delicious, but she's REALLY tall now plus she's covered with branches.  The branches have fruit, but the whole system is overloaded and can't really mature edible fruit until I cut off the excess branches.  I've been studying air layer using sphagnum peat moss in a bag over a cut into the arms like Pip has.  In September, I launched a bunch of air layering, figuring it wouldn't work since we were going into fall and winter.  This is Pip and all of her arms... she has about 8.

A lower view of Pips multiple arms/branches.

The air layering section on Pip, which is essentially just the branches I can reach from the ground.  The others are 10' plus up in the trunk.

The air layering is simple.  Cut into the branch, wrap plastic filled with moss around the wounded section, and wrap around.  Florida takes care of the watering and humidity (this would never have worked in So. Cal!).

And here they are:  FIRST ROOTS.  They're big, healthy, and meaty.

Another view of the thick roots.

I love that the papaya trees are a habitat.  Here's a little tree frog living up high, eating bugs.

Close up of the froggy.

Another happy guest...  anole enjoying the papaya habitat.

And finally - my new scanner!  I love it - my art will look perfect.