Smarties Bar & Grill #76

God bless you both.

 

Thank you. This hospital is a far drive from the house but it is without a doubt the best one we have ever been to.

Took her to three er's the week that her arm was broke before someone finally did something and that was here at Gulf Coast medical center.

 

i've ridden my motorcycle and bicycle up and down manasota key many times. Plus you have the Sandbar and whatever elephant restaurant right there by the traffic circle. I haven't gone by boat yet to Sandbar but have gone to the Boca sandbar, Cayo Costa and Cabbage key many times. It's a beautiful area but lots of folks moving here

 

When we had our cancer scare with Debra the medical folks around here were fabulous. Even helping with gas money.

 

Sounds like you found a caring hospital. I hope all goes well for her after she leaves the hospital.

 

We got almost 7 inches of rain from the storm that moved through. Some areas around here were under a flood watch.

 

I ate at that restaurant by the traffic circle a couple of years back. It has an outdoor tiki area where I sat.

Stump pass State Park at the end of the island is pretty interesting. You can walk all the way to stump pass down the trails through the deep sand but it's like a mile walk and you better bring bug spray. Worth the walk though.

Of course there are no motorized vehicles allowed on the trail or it would be easy peasy for me to take my KLX 230 down it.

If I tried it I'm sure the Karen's would hold me down under citizens arrest until the police arrived to take me to the local county jail after impounding my bike. Lol

 

Almost all of the great live oaks that blew down during the hurricane had a similar defect inside of the tree.

Anytime water can get up in the branches of the tree and sit there, it's not good. That's probably the beginning of most of the times when you see rot like that.

There's a big live oak down the road it has about a 7 ft palm tree growing from its main split.

It's about 8 ft off the ground.

 

Geneva, Alabama has the oldest and largest oak tree in Alabama. We went up there a few months ago especially to see the tree. It is magnificent. https://www.genevaal.gov/oak#:~:text=The City of Geneva is,junction of the two rivers.&text=This oak is known by,oak to name a few.&text=The Big Oak is,Geneva's history as its rivers.
My Uncle had some property in Orlando that had protected oak trees. When he sold the land the people who bought it were not allowed to cut the oaks. For the time it takes to grow no big oak should ever be cut down unless it is diseased. I am not a fan of land clearing for that reason. Why waste years of growth?

 

@Talon are the daffodils blooming there? I had two blooms this year and didn't get many blooms at all and they were spaced weeks apart. One bed bloomed early, the other bed bloomed a few weeks later, and the wild daffodils didn't bloom at all. The narcissus bloomed like crazy and early.

 

Hi Daisy. We had an early bloom in the Old Dominion this year - starting shortly before Valentine's Day - so all but a few of the really late varieties are still flowering. We had a better bloom this year than last year because my wife fertilized the bulbs with Osmocote (14-14-14) over the Winter and hit them with a 5-1-1 fish emulsion after they broke ground. Then it rained a lot while they were in bloom so they hung on for longer than usual, which was nice. I did notice her big gold Dutch Masters seem to be getting shorter with age, but I don't know if the early bloom had anything to do with that. We had a mild Winter for the most part so even the fruit trees flowered early, and we were lucky not to get any freezes after that. We've got a bunch of wild plums growing along our south wood line and I'm hoping we get fruit last year. The plums are small and have got a pretty big pit, but they're delicious (the wildlife love them, too). I've noticed they propagate themselves like crazy so I'm thinking of spreading the saplings around the property but I'm not sure I'll get to that this year. Mrs. Talon propagated 13 Roses of Sharon from cuttings and I need to get them in the ground before it gets hot and dry. Today we're going to get our first day in the upper 80s so time is running out.

 

I'm with ya on that. The only big mature oaks you'll find in our area are around old homesteads like ours. Most of them got wiped out when the plantation owners cleared the land in the mid to late 1700s and after the plantations got parceled-out after the Civil War the survivors got the axe and the timber companies who bought a lot of the land never re-planted any hardwoods. Today, the forests around here consist almost entirely of pines with a few poplars, gums and maples mixed in. Because of this we decided to start planting oaks and maples around our property. The owner of the tree service told me that Willow Oaks are the fastest growing oaks - they'll get big in half the time of a White Oak - so I've been thinking of ordering a few of those.

 

Wish me luck y'all. Headed back to the Boca grande, Placida Englewood area tomorrow to hopefully cast net some more mullet.

No closed season and no size limit and a 50 fish per day per person bag limit. I'd be plenty happy with a dozen good size ones to make the trip over there worth it. I'm going to try chumming them this time and with any luck I can throw the net once or twice and call it a day.

 

Good luck! Sounds like fun.

Speaking of chumming, I've got a funny story for ya. Many moons ago me and my rowdy friends were camping down at Seashore State Park near Virginia Beach and after a long night of heavy drinking and partying we got up, ate a really greasy breakfast of sausage and eggs and went out on the Chesapeake Bay to do some crabbing. We were out there for a while and weren't catching jack, so as we started contemplating what to do about our situation one of my buddies who had looked a bit green all morning got seasick and dumped his breakfast overboard. Evidently, this served the same purpose as chumming the water, for a short while later we finally started hauling in crabs. As you might imagine, all of us except our sick friend who decided to go home found this immensely amusing, so after we brought him ashore we went back out, caught more crabs and then spent the rest of the feasting on freshly caught Chesapeake Blues and consuming mass quantities of beer.

 

Bet the blue crabs are bigger and sweeter out of that cold water

 

They're incredible - best eatin' in the Mid-Atlantic.

All you need is some Old Bay, melted butter, cold beer and a wad of napkins and you're good to go.

 

There is a place down here that has all you can eat fresh blue crab for $40.

You can't hardly go out and catch a mess of them for any less money unless you live right there on the Gulf.

 

That sounds like a great deal. I seriously doubt you could get them at a restaurant in Maryland for that price anymore.

 

Takes too many years to grow a tree and nature should have first choice on what to do with a tree. Good luck with your tree planting. The Arbor Day Foundation sells trees. They are big into reforestation which is not a bad thing we will need it before long. Too many farms and forests are being taken over by builders and we need the forests and farms more than buildings. https://shop.arborday.org/nursery Ok ,I am off my soap box.