Smarties Bar & Grill #76

@Falena @daisydotell @Smartmouthwoman

Sorry for the late mention ladies.... But I wanted to make sure that y'all saw the finished photographs of my squirrel cage which is about five posts above this post.

 

The introduction..... Chicky chicky seems rather pleased.

 

You did a good job on the cage. I made crawdad traps something like that but with a cone on each end.

 

Thank you. I thought about how easy it would be to make fish traps like that out of chicken wire but I'm not sure how legal it would be to use them.

 

The cage is in its first day of full operation. Chicky chicky Simon seems to like it..... I mean as far as anything could like a cage....

It is very much an improvement over the fish trap it has been living in for a few weeks.

I just got back from going to visit friends that live down in the river floodplain.

Minor flood stage is 11 ft and the river is now at approximately 14 ft. Expected to Crest probably by 3:00 a.m.

I stuffed my kayak in the back of my minivan and I drove as far as I could to the water's edge and deposited my boat and then went and parked my minivan up on a bit higher ground.

So I paddled down what is usually a dirt road, in about 2 to 4 ft of water to go visit a couple of friends of mine.

They have already got their vehicles on to high ground and their house is built on stilts. It happens once or twice every decade.

The last major flooding event on this River was hurricane Irma that hit in September of 2017.

The Peace River peaked at a height of 19 and a half foot.

This is certainly a flood where you would need a boat or a large vehicle to get down the dirt road but it doesn't compare to Irma.

If you have a jacked up truck or a swamp buggy or an airboat or anything that can get down the road.... You are absolutely redneck fabulous right now!

I live about a half a mile away at 24 ft elevation.... So anything short of a catastrophic biblical flood.... My place will be just fine.

It's not like it's a mystery to people that live in a river floodplain that once in a great blue moon it's going to flood..... Welcome to a river floodplain in Florida....

 

I quit taking cuttings and in the process of setting most of them out. I will grow a few in pots just for the heck of it. I am also doing an experiment.....plants under all led lights. It would be cheaper than heating a greenhouse if it works. I have grown a pepper plant under led lights before.

 

I want blooming hydrangeas this spring. And I want them blue.

 

I don’t like them. Very funky texture.

True story, when I moved to Jacksonville Fl from Chicago, my new co workers kept talking about bowled peanuts. Bowled peanuts are amazing!

Here’s me, “ Why are they so much tastier in a bowl? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Reply, “Not bowled, BOWLED, as in Bowled in ohl!”

Cleared it right up.

 

They have these new generation grow lights and they grow some fine marijuana under LED so I don't see why other plants couldn't

 

Silly Yankee, bolied peanuts are for native Southerners

We sell tons of them at our store.... Nature's perfect snack food.

 

Ha ha, got to my friend's house in the boat earlier yesterday and I was standing in his driveway, looking out on the main road.... And saw a couple of garfish, swimming up the road.

I got out of there before sundown but I made sure to take two very important items. A flashlight and mosquito repellent. No way do you want to be caught out there after dark without that.

The day before yesterday I went riding on my dirt bike and three of my friends were on four wheelers.

They drove through water almost up to the top of their tires but I stayed on relatively dry ground of 6 in of water or less and said I will sit here and watch you guys swamp your bikes....

No way am I going to get in there and stall my bike.... I just got done paying near $7,000 for it.

Not me buddy! I'll go wading through it and take my kayak but I'm not going to get my bike in there!

As long as you can keep the air intake of your motor out of water, you should be all right. Even if you're exhaust gets underwater you'll be fine as long as you don't cut the motor. But you don't want to kill the engine with your exhaust underwater.

I bet their motors stayed good and cool.... A real liquid cooled engine!

People have been driving there $30,000 side by side machines all through there.... You know, like a Polaris with wheel sizes bigger than maybe 20 inches

 

A good flood like this means that next dry season there will be very good fossil hunting.

The river is at 14 ft.... Maybe closer to 15 ft right now.

During fossil hunting season.... Typically runs from around February to June..... Depending on rain, of course... But that being the dry season in Florida...

The river is at probably 2 to 4 ft...... Possibly even less.

When you take a canoe or a kayak down it, you will be getting out of the boat to drag it, at certain points.

 

Somewhere in this thread.... I have some good pictures of me fossil hunting earlier this year.


I think it was back in May or June of this year

 

Right now this park probably has a foot or two of water in it

 

Friend of mine's place. The water in the dirt road out front is about 3 ft deep. But the bottom of his house is about 3 ft above the top of my head where I was standing when I took the picture. As you can see the house is built on stilts, made of cinder block pillars.

Their house does not flood and they are older retired people but right now in order to get in and out of there.... You have to have a boat or a vehicle with extremely large tires.

So they don't plan on going anywhere for at least a couple of weeks. And for a couple of weeks after the water goes down.... It stinks out there because of the fish that became trapped in other animals and the road is muddy as hell for another couple of weeks.

But if you are retired and have to go nowhere and you have plenty of food and water.... The hell with it!

It's kind of hard to see because of the debris on top of the water.... But the entire front yard is nothing but water.

I was joking with him and singing the Gilligan's Island theme song. I asked him if he ever felt like he had been marooned on a subtropical Island.... Because he is!

 

I'm having motorcycle withdrawals.... I did not crank my bike at all yesterday... Just sitting in the shed.

Because I took my boat in my minivan. I'm going to fort Myers today to visit my girlfriend at the hospital. It's about 70 miles south of here.

She is healing up nicely from the surgery and out of the ICU. But before she is discharged home she will probably have to go to physical rehab for a week or two and possibly as long as three.

She has to learn to live without being able to speak without the voice thingy... And I'm sure her life is going to be very different in several other important aspects. I myself am going to be educated on how to make sure everything is going okay for her.

But the good news is... She is alive!

She is near 60 years old. So the good Lord willing we should have at least another decade together.

 

~ This woman adopted this 20-year-old cat from a shelter because she didn't want him to spend the end of his life alone in a cage. I’m so glad he’s with someone who will give him love.

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I don't think I could handle going to a shelter to adopt a cat. How could someone pick just one, when the kitties ALL need a home??? All the cats I've had save one, have adopted me along the way. My very first, Budweiser, was from a litter my sister's cat had.

If I were to win the lottery, I'd buy 10-20 acres and build sheds for all the cats and kittens to stay in. Sappy, I know, but they are beautiful and wonderful creatures.

 

~ There is a woman who did just that. It's wonderful to see. I believe she is in central California.

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We have 6 cats. That's enough.

 

My thrift is established here. Should look like one bloom come spring I hope.This is the color of the pink. The candy stripe is also doing well

 

Candy stripe Also have red.

 

I am reclaiming this from the jungle. I will cover everything with thrift and hopefully it will become almost maintenance free.

 

I did not ride my motorcycle at all yesterday either.... Two days in a row and I just got a good long night sleep I don't have to work until 10:00 p.m. tonight so I'm probably going on a 30 mile ride or so today.

She is doing well. Healing up nicely from the surgery but still swollen, but not like it was.

When she leaves the hospital she'll be going to a rehab for 1 to 2 weeks so they can teach her everything that she needs to know about how to live without a larynx and a tracheotomy I think it is.

It was a long drive, 57 miles each way. When I was at the hospital I was looking on Google maps satellite view just to see what was around the area and I saw a restaurant across the street called The shrimp shack.... So you knew where my big boy ass went when I left the hospital!

If you're ever in fort Myers don't miss it!

There was a few other places I would have liked to have stopped but I was just more concerned with getting back home. My van has almost 290,000 mi on it so I really don't like to take it outside of the county lines if I can help it. But it's a Dodge and knock on wood it's still running strong!