A depression could not be far off. Now, think about stories you have heard from people who were alive in the depression era. My grandparents are mostly dead, but I do have one grandmother who is still around to tell me stores of how she and her family survived. Also, my parents were both raised depression-era parents and were instilled with values of frugality and self sufficiency. Thank goodness they passed those values down to me.

Up north we always kept large gardens. My mother canned fruits and vegetables. I see now the value of growing as much of my own food as possible and “putting it away” for later use. I am ready to learn how to can. However, I live in Florida now and I have to re-learn how to grow a successful food crop. I know I am going to have to have good soil brought in. I will need to build a tarp to make sure my crops do not burn up in the sun. I will need to learn about planting season here and what foods do the best.

Fruit is an easy option to start. We have a large yard and although the grapefruit tree was cut down a few years back, the star fruit tree we trimmed to the ground this year will be back within two years. We have lemons and oranges in pots that are ready to go into the ground. We have apple trees of a variety that grow well in the Florida climate. I have looked online and found suppliers for Blueberry and Blackberry plants that should do well here. All of these things can be canned and will also provide a good deal of fruit to be eaten fresh.

Widows can be native to Florida. Of the four species of this type of spider, three are native. The fourth species has been introduced. It turns out that widow spiders are not native to Florida at all, but there are three species that are occasionally found here.

Since both of these kinds of spiders generally stay where they are no easily seen, the article recommends that you wear gloves when doing things like lifting firewood or reaching into a storage box or your BBQ grill.

A widow’s bite releases venom that acts systemically and moves through your lymphatic system. You might notice “intense pain, rigid abdominal muscles, muscle cramping, malaise, local sweating, nausea, vomiting, and hypertension.” The symptoms can last three to five days if not treated, but treatment is easier than you might think. Not only will an anti-venom work, but so will calcium gluconate – with can be obtained at the drug store inexpensively.

Recluse spiders are hunters and more aggressive than widows, but still only usually bite humans when trapped against the skin, like when you roll over onto one in bed or put on clothing where one is hiding. Their bites cause symptoms within two to four hours, generally making a swollen, painful blister at the bite site that is reddish in color and surrounded by blue. This is called a ‘bull’s-eye’ pattern. If it turns purple, the skin around the bite is becoming necrotic, which means it will eventually turn black and the cells will die, leaving a pitted, scarred area.

When I lived in Gainesville, we had a lot of brown recluse spiders in our wooded yard. We often found them on our screened porch. Alachua County is one of the places the brown recluse is often found. We resorted to putting out a trap, because my daughter was a toddler at the time and liked to run about touching things and exploring the environment. Of course, I still felt safer being right with her so I could monitor her actions.

Now, before she was born I bought a set of crib bedding that did end up being used. I have been a huge Babar fan all of my life and I went to al lot of trouble to locate a set of Babar crib bedding. I figured that the liberal use of red and Kelly green would work for either a boy or a girl and we had chose not to find out the gender of the baby before she was born. When Gigi was born, I suppose the red and Kelly green just did not feel right anymore and I boxed up the Babar set.

About a year ago I gave away the crib, bassinette, changing table, swings, and other baby items on Freecycle, along with a lot of Gigi’s clothes and toys that she had outgrown. I offered up the Babar bedding, asking that someone only take it is Babar meant something to them, since I the crib bedding had been to hard to obtain – not to mention expensive. I got a lot of replies, but every single one said they ere just looking for whatever they could find for their babies. So, I chose to hang onto the bedding. I did not want to give it to someone who could very well just toss it out.

And so, I have both sets saved. Maybe I’ll even use them again myself one day.

My friend lives two houses down from her neighborhood’s resident bully. He has cameras trained on his next-door neighbor’s pool and the park across the street. He has gone door-to-door during HOA elections each time to try and smear everyone running for an office. He has made physical threats to several of his neighbors and regularly attempts to engage people in shouting-matches and the like.

Lately, though, he has escalated. He’s been spraying Roundup on his neighbor’s yards so the grass dies and he is has been seen messing around with newly planted trees in other people’s yards – and they die within days of whatever it is he is doing. Now, it looks like he has poisoned at least two dogs in the cul-de-sac.

There is a lot of proof, just not really the kind the police will take into consideration. He was told by a sheriff, though, that the next time something destructive happened in the area they are going to open up an investigation about him. My friend gets the blood work back on her dog in the morning and if it is positive for poisoning, I image that will b the straw that broke the camel’s back. Let’s hope.

I’ve never had a neighbor THAT bad. I did live next-door to a couple in my last neighborhood who had loud outdoor parties during football games and who also dumped their car ashtrays on neighbor’s sidewalks. They were the type to mow their lawn and skip the mere 6-inch swatch of grass between their property line and my driveway. You know – the kind of people who would rather suffer physical pain than do even the slightest kindness for a neighbor. They were super loud, unbelievably so, but I do not think they every knowingly damaged my property.

This week we found heirloom tomatoes at Publix. They were a hefty $5 a pound, but we picked one each of the available varieties and will save the seeds. It will be fun to try to grow them.

After all the flavorless hybrids I’ve eaten from the local stores, the heirlooms were such a treat. I cannot tell you how much I miss the tomatoes in my grandmother’s garden up in West Virginia. When I went up a year ago for my other grandmother’s funeral. I ate garden corn, tomatoes, and green beans every day for at least two meals each day. I couldn’t get enough.

I’ve been trying some tomatoes on the back patio and they grow and ripen well, but the birds and squirrels keep beating me to the punch so I have not got any actual mature tomatoes yet this summer. I am going to start moving the plants onto the screened porch to see if that works.

Anyway, here is a snap of the tomatoes. Aren’t they pretty? The varieties are Red Brandywine, Gold Medal and Cherokee Purple. According to the stickers, they were all Florida greenhouse grown.

When I cook a meal, I pay careful attention the aromatic elements. I choose my lotions and shampoos and soaps carefully, for both quality and scent. I am choosy about my perfumes, preferring Champagne by Yves Saint Laurent. I even make sure my laundry smells a particular way – roses and violets. A house that smells pleasant is a sign of how much you care about your environment.

I recently tried the Renuzit TriScents scented oil air freshener. Between you and me, this is ideal for me. I am actually that person who changes the oil cartridges in my other air freshener systems back and forth, before they actually run out. I like variety and I get in the mood for one type of scent or another and I take charge and just switch it out.

This particular TriScents rotates through some of my favorite Renuzit fragrances: Waterfall Mist, After the Rain (my absolute favorite), and Pure Breeze. They call it the Morning Meadow Collection. I love these scents, because they’re crisp, clean and natural smelling. What happens in the unit, when plugged into an electric outlet, cycles through the fragrances in 45 minute intervals. It’s divine, honestly!

(I even kept the little blue, green and yellow lids that came on the oil containers just so I can have them here at my desk to add a little yumminess to my office!)

I have some tomatoes I still have not potted. I’m not doing them any favors by leaving them in the containers they came in from the nursery. The same goes for the marigolds I have yet to plant. I was doing a huge landscaping project, installing landscaping fabric, mulching, re-designing the flower bed borders – all when I threw out my lower back. It looks like I am healthy enough to continue, but I have to admit my momentum is gone.

I’d really rather just take a book outside and sit with a glass of iced mint tea. Nonetheless, we aren’t going to have fresh vegetables this summer if I don’t finish my gardening, and soon!

The apples, blueberries, patio tomatoes, blood oranges, navel oranges, and lemons are all doing well. They just need fish emulsion and water. The star fruit tree is dormant. All I really need to do is finish my tomatoes and I can justify grabbing that book and that glass of tea.

Oh, someone just kick me in the rear, please.

But, who has time? As much as I would love to have a calming soak every night; that is a luxury that went out the window with motherhood. I just don’t have enough time to myself, especially as a single mother; to be sitting is a bathtub while my daughter has the run of the house. And, I don’t feel comfortable doing it after she goes to bed, because her “kid sense” perks up and she usually awakes and comes to crash my party.

So, now I am a shower girl. I can get clean a lot faster that way. I had no idea, though, that I would spend my showers in mortal combat with the shower curtain. If my daughter is not sneaking n the bathroom to push the curtain around to stare at me, then there is that creepy bathroom craft that keeps the curtain whipping around my legs as I try to shave or wash my hair.

What’s up with that? Is there some sort of lay of physics I never learned in high school that dictates that a shower curtain has the law of nature on its side and the given ability to shrink your shower space?

Of course, I could buy a curved shower rod to increase the space, but I’m really just not up to drilling holes in the tile to install the fool thing. I did, however, find a product called the ShowerBow. It attaches easily to your existing shower rod and works to create a little more space in the knee and shoulder regions of the shower stall. Plus, it keeps your curtain from blowing in on you. Rather ingenious, but then then I always have believed that some of the best things in life are simple.

One of the babies jumped up on a limb of the ficus tree to look around, but he made it back to the nest. Another baby followed suit, but it fell from the nest and the parents are currently pretty busy chasing it around the neighborhood. At my last check, I saw it across the street and two houses down. The mom and dad birds have their hands (wings) full with keeping an eye on the escaped baby and still feeding the two that are still in the nest.

Here is a picture of the first chick to venture out of the nest. He went back in and is sleeping soundly as I write this:

Here is one of the parents. The sun was at the wrong angle, so the picture is washed out, but it is sitting right next to my camera:

When I was living in Gainesville, I bought some trees that had been cultivated from Israeli varieties – the “Anna” and “Dorsett Golden”. I bought several trees of each, since they need one another for cross pollination.

I never did put them in the ground, because shortly after I bought them, I found out my then husband was probably being transferred back to Tampa. They came back to the Tamp area with us in the move.

Now I have them in very large pots on the back patio and they are doing so well, despite the fact that most people say they need to be further north in the state to do well. At almost all times throughout the year, we have trees in different stages of production. Right now we have some apples with nothing but buds, some with lovely pink blossoms, and some with ripening apples.

I took a photo of some of the apples. They are growing in droves, but they are small – barely 2 inches across. That is just the nature of these particular varieties.

The apples in the pictures are the “Anna” variety, I think. They are green with a red blush, so I am pretty sure that is what they are.