Hold that gator!

We had a very good day yesterday. Most of you know we like to go mini golfing. We went to Congo River yesterday with Judy and Larry. There was a new addition to our favorite mini golf place..."Hold an alligator". Had to do it! Here's the proof...

Puptruck

Here is a picture of my adult tricycle as I it was when I bought it from a lady earlier this year. I bought it so Noriko could ride in the back.

Lucet patterns

While doing some research on making friendship bracelets I ran across a link for making cordage with a lucet. I have done this in the past and still have a small lucet. I did not find many patterns to cut a lucet so I made some up for the public at large.
What is a lucet you say? It is a wood, bone, plastic forked tool to make decorative cord, for clothes for decoration, to use an bracelets, etc.

You will need to click the image to get a full size picture to print. I put a few measurements on the image to help you size it as needed.

GARLIC WARNING!

Warning: Garlic oil is a non-selective insecticide, which means that it will kill beneficial insects (such as lady bugs, who are natural predators of aphids) just as well as it kills bad bugs. It's best to keep as many beneficials around as possible. This spray should only be used if you haven't seen any beneficial bugs in your garden. A nightshade recipe, won't harm beneficials, so you should use that if you have some beneficials in your garden.

Hard Water and Insecticidal Soap

Here's an interesting fact I came upon while researching homemade insecticidal soaps, but probably also applies to commercial insecticidal soaps also.

The minerals in hard water react with the soap and create soap scum instead of insecticide. Just like in your shower, if you have hard water. So always use pure water to mix with your insecticidal soap. I saw somewhere that Calgon™ or similar product could be used to soften the water. I would think distilled water would also work well.

Green Anole

I found this guy about a week ago at Maria's house while I was mowing. I made a half hearted attempt to catch him and did. He was skinny and sluggish. Since then he has resided in our screened in porch and gets fed meal worms twice a day. He seems to be doing well and hangs out in the bamboo.
Common names for this lizard are Green Anole, Carolina Anole, American Chameleon(although it is not related to true chameleons). He will grow to about 6 or 8 inches and live about 7 years and can change color from green to dark brown.

Carolina anole - Wikipedia
Anole Care Guide

Gecko!

Last night while letting a corn spider loose I spotted a lizard on the bricks that cover the front of the house. It is a weird behavior for the anole lizards, so I went to check it out and I found this guy.

Click to enlarge

He looks pretty much like an anole, but the eyes are a bit bigger, the toe pads are larger and his tail is flatter. Really cool find! We think it is probably a Common House Gecko. Active mostly at sunrise and sunset.

UPDATE: Here is a link to bigger picture.

Tropic Breeze Hibiscus

We have been gardeners/landscapers/plant lovers for going on 20 years now. In California we could grow some great plants. In Washington we grew some good plants but the weather sucked so most of the gardening joy turned into a sunny day(rare) chore. But here in Florida we really can grow some FANTASTIC plants...tropical plants.
One of my favorites is the hibiscus. Here in Florida it is a bit "generic" and almost everyone has one or someone nearby has one and we tend to shy away from the norm, but this plant is great! It is super easy to propagate from cuttings and I believe it blooms all year round. And pretty!
Here are some pictures of the latest hibiscus blooms - Topic Breeze hibiscus. Our neighbor Maria found this one on sale at Lowes.

Renewed Effort

I am going to try to make a better effort to post some stuff here. I have been too busy fussing with the layout and worring more about the template that I have with the content. The main purpose of this blog is twofold. On one hand it is to let us post stuff for friends and family to see, on the other hand it also acts as a repository of information for us, so we don't have to scour the web again to find it. A lot of times I look at 10 or more sites and condense the info into just one post. It is useful for me and hopefull for someone else out there too.

I am going to be going through my photos and posting what needs to be posted. Some of it may be dated, and some may be just plain boring to some.

So just ignore what doesn't interest you and read what does.

 

TNT

Theme change

Once again I have changed the theme of this blog. I reallylike this one, it reflects how I feel here in Florida, sunny, happy, and colorful. We hope you enjoy the new look. BTW, the nice slideshow at the top there is just filled with generic pictures that came with the template, I will fill them in with relevant info and pics as soon as I can.