I Need a Standing Eight Count

Here’s a tip for people who are fasting and praying for McCain. Do NOT work with food during your fast. And don’t do yardwork.

You can guess how I came across these bits of advice.

I moved a huge planter full of wet dirt, from one end of the yard to the other. Then I salted down a rib roast and applied minced garlic to it. It’s obvious why doing manual labor was a bad idea. The food thing is harder to explain. I’ve noticed this before. If you fool with food during a fast, your blood sugar will drop. I knew better.

I plan to enjoy the hallucinations while they last. And I’m satisfying my hunger with a delicious glass of iced water! MMM…tasty water! What a treat!

Hurry up, sundown.

Was Not Arrayed Like a Banana Flower

Here is intesting Bible stuff.

Lately, from time to time, I have thought about the fact that Jews pray toward Jerusalem. I figured it was one of those things that don’t apply to Gentiles. Maybe it was hyper-religious super-observance rooted in the Talmud, or maybe it was one of the many commandments which only apply to Jews. That was my guess.

Today I read from the books of Chronicles and Kings. Look what Solomon said as he prayed to dedicate the temple:

41 “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name- 42 for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when he comes and prays toward this temple, 43 then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

That is from 1 Kings 8.

Incidentally, earlier on, he said this about his own people:

33 “When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and confess your name, praying and making supplication to you in this temple, 34 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land you gave to their fathers.

I guess I’ll catch a lot of flak for recommending praying toward the temple, but come on. This isn’t Elmer Gantry’s prayer. This is SOLOMON. How can you not take him seriously?

When I was on the kibbutz, I had something like a vision. I won’t call it a vision, because I wasn’t completely awake. It happened in the funny state between sleep and waking. I found my bed turned sideways, and at the foot, I saw an angel in a white robe. It was a female angel (some believe all angels are male), and she had grey hair, and there was a wide silver belt around her waist. She had her hands raised in worship, and she was praying and looking up. The bed had a quilt I did not recognize (I didn’t have a quilt over there), and there were arms and legs attached to the edges of the quilt, and they were flopping frantically as she prayed.

Now, here is something I can only tell you because Google Earth now exists and permits me to view the building where I lived, from the air. My bed was parallel to a wall, but in the vision, my feet were pointing at Jerusalem, and I was facing it. The angel, on the other hand, faced the other way. She was facing me.

I think it probably means something; I think it was about something stupid I did years later. But I won’t go into that. Of course, it may have been the tail end of a dream. But I’ve had a few of these things in my life, and they don’t feel like dreams. There is a kind of turbulence to them, as if I were being thrown around. Makes me think of Jacob and his dream of wrestling the angel.

In other news, I have some plant photos. A commenter was asking for them.

First of all, you have to see my prik ki nu bush. This is the pepper the Thais call “bird’s eye,” among other things. This is one bush, I swear. A tiny bit of the lime tree behind it is visible at the top, but there is only one pepper bush in the frame. To establish scale, let me point out that it is against the fence behind it, which is standard chain link.

I know it’s incredible.

Here are some of the peppers.

Now some other stuff. Here is the key lime tree I planted the other day, with the little wire string-trimmer shield I made:

The older tree is behind it. I am now getting limes. It’s yellow. I’m not sure why. Many things can cause this, and only one of them is fatal.

Here is one of my banana trees, with smaller “pups” around it. The big tree is around fourteen feet tall, which is about twice what I expected.

Now take a look at the bananas. the flowers haven’t dropped off yet.

When you say “banana flower,” it can refer to one of at least two things. One is the giant purple blossom which gives rise to all the fruit and blossoms. Another is an individual blossom, which turns into a banana.

Here are the “petals” which have already fallen off. I’m going to use these as mulch for the new trees. These things are actually called bracts. They are not real petals.

The flower or bunch or whatever you call the entire fruit/flower thing drips with sweet fluid all day. It’s always full of bees. It turns out you can eat the last bit of the main flower (bracts) which remains on the plant after it quits producing hands of bananas. Eventually you end up with several hands plus a knob at the end of the bunch, and the knob, made up of bracts, is the part you eat. You soak it in something or other and then chop it up. Asians dip it in sauce.

I won’t show you my smaller pepper bushes, which look awful. They’re in the same bed as the prik ki nu, and I expect them to grow very well once they get used to the dirt. They used to be in pots, which they outgrew.

Chili!

My yard has been sprayed with copper. The garage door has yielded to my efforts. To reward myself, I have decided to commit suicide with chili.

I made my famous Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili today, only I made a change. I took out 2/3 of the beans. I am trying not to be a giant obese hog, and the beans are what make chili sit in your guts like mashed potatoes. With the beans cut down, the chili isn’t so carb-heavy.

Believe it or not, I’m low on peppers. I have some white habaneros, but they’re all heat and no flavor. I managed to scrape together three habanero golds and one yellow habanero, and I made my own chili powder, which contained chipotles. I think I did okay. I put the cutting board and a few other things in the dishwasher, and after it had been running a while, I opened it to add something else, and I started coughing. The pepper residue from the dishes was rising up with the steam. It was like being maced.

Usually I don’t go for internal blistering, but today I felt like I needed some heat in my chili, so I am not playing. I got some cheddar to put on the top and some sour cream to go on the side. This should be tremendous.

It Will Pay

Man, do I have stuff to do today. I have to spray things with copper to kill fungus. I have to make some effort to get started on the soffit. And I have to kill an electric eye on a garage door.

I have had lots of problems with this electric eye. Its purpose is to detect objects in the path of the door and stop the door so it won’t close on them. That’s its ostensible purpose. Its actual purpose is to protect the garage-door-opener company from lawyers.

You would have to be brain-damaged to let yourself be injured by a garage door. And the door has a second sensor which stops it when it hits stuff, so the electric eye is superfluous even for the brain-damaged. Obviously, somebody has sued over this, because there is no other explanation for all this safety junk.

I am wondering if I can fool the electric eye by putting foil over it, so the foil reflects the light back into the sensor. If the door crushes me and I die, I will take full responsibility.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to disable it sooner. Maybe I’m brain-damaged, and I need the sensor to save me.

I put arsenic on some of my St. Augustine grass yesterday. Still waiting to see if it dies. I sure hope it does. I love that fluffy, bug-free, weed-free Bermuda grass.

Over the last two days, I have gotten so much done, it’s hard to believe. Yesterday I filled the trash heap with an enormous pile of hibiscus and other limbs. I gave a new hedge its first trim. I’ve been moving my old tomato pots off the patio and dumping the dirt in areas that need it.

I feel full of hope these days. Am I the only Republican who can say that at this time? I’m sure I’m not, although I doubt there are many non-Christian Republicans who feel this way.

Amen, Bubba

I feel like God and gardening are all I write about these days. I guess it’s monotonous for a lot of people. Can’t seem to do anything about it, however.

I think the physical condition of a house reflects the spiritual condition of the people in it. If you have filth and crud around your doors and on your walls, for example, I think it means malevolent spiritual beings go in and out freely and hang out inside and on the grounds. Just as the blood on the doorway of a Hebrew home during the Passover was a sign that a hostile spirit was not to enter, mildew and rust and mold and bug cocoons are signs that say, “Everybody come in and party; you will be welcomed here.” I can’t say I know of a biblical justification for this idea, but it still makes sense to me. So I can’t help thinking that the compulsion I feel to correct the neglect and decay on this property comes from God and reflects the turnaround I have made.

My mother was a realtor. In addition to selling property, she found tenants for condominiums. I used to paint empty condos for her, and sometimes I helped clean them.

In Miami, the presence of drug dealers and the necessity of doing business with them are facts of life. And it was worse back when my mother was alive. It was not unusual for her to rent properties to people she felt sure sold or transported cocaine or other drugs. I was often disgusted by the things I saw when I entered the places they had vacated. Very often I could smell the roach feces as I opened the front door.

Many of these people were involved in Santeria and other occult practices. Sometimes they left big black candles behind, which had become fastened to counters by wax that had melted. They had revolting shrines. If I recall correctly, sometimes they had photos of their children around the areas where they kept their religious items. Innocent-looking school photos framed in construction-paper borders. Imagine involving your child in Santeria. Why not just inject him with AIDS while you’re at it? Looking at those photos was like looking at photos on milk cartons. No hope for those kids.

The tenants kept liquor around, ostensibly to be used in worship. And they had so many roaches, their cabinets were littered with tiny brown pellets of reeking manure. For some reason, they had German roaches, which are much filthier than the bigger and scarier American roaches. German roaches are unusual in a clean home in Miami; it has been years since I have seen one. Avoiding American roaches is impossible, because they live in the trees and don’t need filth to survive.

I remember sponging out those cabinets and throwing out that disgusting Santeria trash. I wondered how anyone could be foolish enough to worship demons in their own home. Of course, this stuff still goes on here, and it’s not just among drug dealers. But with drug dealers, you can pretty much count on it.

These people welcomed demons into their lives; they spent money and worked hard to attract them. And their homes were like neglected animal pens. They stank. If you were to buy one of these condos, the only way to make them right would be to install new cabinets and replace the carpeting and blinds. The filth works its way into the particle board and fibers.

Santeria, spiritism, and voodoo are among the reasons I want to get out of Miami. These evil religions are the reason life in countries to the south of us are so miserable. In a country where Santeria is popular, no one should be surprised when a communist revolution erupts. You should expect things like that to happen; it’s the logical result. When you worship demons, a punishment like the Castro regime should be considered mild. And Haiti, where voodoo is practiced, is worse than India.

And here we are in the US, flirting with socialism, at a time when sick religions are more popular than ever. Coincidence?

I keep thinking about getting a truck. At first, I wanted one because I realized it was impossible to pursue my interest in tools without a decent vehicle that would hold things like dirt, bricks, scrap metal, and sheets of plywood. But lately, I have begun to think that every responsible person should have a truck these days. At least those that don’t live in cities. Hard times may be on the way; when they arrive, practical things will be a blessing, and Bentleys and Porsches will lose a lot of their appeal. And a person who has a truck can do things for other people, which can’t be done with a roadster.

Today I have to put poison on my mamey tree, which has termites. I have to trim a hedge. I should trim a tree that is getting a little close to telephone and electrical wires. Sooner or later I have to get real and fix the soffit where the bees were removed. I also need to remove a dead strangler fig from a cabbage palm.

Before too long, things will look presentable. I may celebrate by barbecuing every day for a week.

Paths Directed?

Man, did I get stuff done today. Washed half of the back of the house. Removed a 300-pound fragment of broken sidewalk. Planted shrubs. Then there is the key lime tree I already mentioned. I planted it, put manure around it, added gravel on top, and attached a wire mesh shield. And this stuff didn’t take much time. I finished quite some time ago. I managed to get out and get a flu shot.

Moving the sidewalk piece was an interesting job. I realized there was no way I would be able to right it and get it on a handtruck. It was close to a wall, and there was no way to get leverage. I thought I might use the rotary hammer to break it in half, but I didn’t want to blow $30 on a chisel bit. Then I decided to take my 3/4″ masonry bit, drill a series of holes across the concrete, and snap it in two.

Believe it or not, this worked. This concrete was unbelievably hard, probably because of its age, so it took maybe 30 seconds to drill each hole. Still, it was easy, because a rotary hammer doesn’t require much pressure. Soon I had about ten holes running across the fragment. I tried to pry up one end with a crowbar, but the fragment wouldn’t snap. I got a machinist’s hammer and a chisel and busted out the concrete between two adjacent holes, and when it went through, the whole piece broke in half. Not bad! I’m going to get a chisel bit; this job would have taken thirty seconds had I had one.

I managed to get each piece on a handtruck and put it on the trash heap. I hope the trash people can’t pick the fragments up. Their crane keeps digging out the ground in the trash area, and I need something hard and heavy there to keep them from turning the whole thing into a pit.

There is NOTHING like having tools. Without a handtruck, a rotary hammer, a hoe, a machinist’s hammer, and a big chisel, I would have been out of luck today.

The weather is fantastic. I think I’ll go stand outside and stare at my handiwork.

Her Bugs and Fungi are no Match for my Gardening Kung Fu

I am a gardening juggernaut.

I got me a second Key lime tree. I feel like they’re free; Home Depot is charging like 20% of what slightly bigger ones cost at nurseries last year. And Home Depot’s trees are much nicer.

Home Depot is generally a bad place to buy fruit trees, because they have a pathetic selection. No mameys, plantains, guavas, papayas, or other worthwhile tropical stuff. But they do okay with citrus.

A funny thing happened while I was unloading the tree. A crew was doing something or other across the street with a lo-boy and a backhoe, and one of the guys came over and offered to put in a hole for me. Didn’t say anything about money. I was too startled to take him up on it, and there was another consideration. If someone does something for you free of charge, there is a limit to how much you can holler at him to get it right. No, I’ll go out tomorrow before the sun gets hot, and I’ll put it in the ground myself.

I had a problem with some ornamental flowers by the door; I didn’t have enough of them, and they vanished from the market for a year. While I was shopping today, I noticed that they were back. Now I got that fixed. Finally.

While I was looking for a good bag of excrement to buy, I learned that excrement comes in different quality levels. There was an ad thing over by the Black Kow manure display, cautioning me on the deficiencies of inferior manure. So I bought the real thing. Evidently the cheap stuff is only part manure. The rest is old Band-Aids and Run, Hillary, Run stickers that have been put through a grinder.

I paid good money for dirt again. I put about 400 pounds of it in an area where the dirt had simply gotten up and walked away.

I poisoned the snails and ants one more time. You just can’t poison them enough. This morning I found a carpenter ant with me in the shower. Explain that. Seems like every time I poison them, we have two days of torrential rain which carries the poison away. It’s sunny today and the humidity is an incredible 48%, so I took advantage.

I washed the front of the place with a Windex product which works pretty well.

Now I have to go out and build little mesh shields for the tree trunks, because it has become obvious that different illegal aliens are mowing the yard every time, and it is pointless to tell them to quit cutting into the bark with weedeaters. Someone needs to invent a device that grabs the weedeater line, rips it out of the machine, and sends a giant shock up into the illegal wielding it.

I can’t believe all the stuff I’m getting done. Maybe in ten years the difference will be apparent.

It’s Freezing

Mish Weiss has an infection. According to her blog, this is normal, after a bone marrow transplant. It happens because marrow recipients endure a period during which they do not produce white blood cells. Still, it’s upsetting to read about. Her fever was over 103 today.

Keep praying.

Also, don’t forget to check out Agent Bedhead’s blog. As stated yesterday, John Malkovich mentioned her in Esquire magazine! Bloggers are the new media! Resistance is futile!

It’s a beautiful day, at least compared to the mess we’ve been having lately. It’s BELOW 70 DEGREES! That will probably change in the next half hour, but it’s still encouraging. I’m very tempted to get a second Key lime tree and plant it.

Key limes are essential, if you live in Florida. In fact, if you have room to grow them indoors, they are probably great to have, no matter where you live. They bear fruit practically all the time, and the fruit is very useful. And if you make pies, you can go through a whole lot of limes. I think Persian limes are better for many jobs, but store limes tend to be dry and unripe.

Persian limes are supposed to bear fruit about ten months out of the year, but that has not been my experience.

Blogger Pal Rivals Hedda Hopper

First off, Agent Bedhead is now famous. In a recent interview with Esquire magazine, John Malkovich mentioned her blog. I won’t spoil it by quoting him here; go read. And because this is a crummy Sunday link, I will mention it again tomorrow.

I’ll bet Orson Bean is jealous.

In other news, George Moneo of Babalublog had a car accident yesterday. You may want to do him a favor and pray that things will work out with minimal conflict, and that everyone involved will be physically healed. As of yesterday, George and a person from the other car were having neck pains.

Mish Weiss is still recovering from her bone marrow transplant, so don’t forget her, either. If you’re wondering how Leah Friedman is doing, she is apparently strong enough to deal with a home full of kids. That’s more than can be said of me at my best.

It’s funny; prayer is like tending a garden. Every day you get up and you tend to this person or that one, just as you would go from tree to tree in your yard.

I am making a determined effort to find a decent church. I’ve really enjoyed Perry Stone’s work, so I looked up his denomination. Turns out it’s the Church of God. Hard to argue with a name like that.

Made an interesting score at Costco yesterday. I bought a bag of pummelos. These are like grapefruit, except a small one weighs maybe four pounds. The big ones are like volleyballs. I can’t remember the last time I had one, but I believe they are dryer and less bitter than grapefruit. Guess I’ll find out this morning.

I remember these because when I was picking grapefruit on a kibbutz, there was talk of switching over to pummelos. Europeans were excited about having pummelos for breakfast, so Israelis were eager to grow them. Not sure how to pronounce it. On the kibbutz, they said “puh MELL oh.” But wouldn’t that imply “tan JELL oh,” which is wrong? Tangelo rhymes with Angelo.

I am thinking I need to keep putting in fruit trees. I like the idea of having them all around the place. Some people down here don’t like putting fruit trees in their front yards; that seems silly to me. They look just as good as ornamental trees, plus–hey–fruit! I’d love to have a pummelo tree, if I could find one.

The neighbors would steal all the fruit, I suppose. That’s Miami for you.

Time for a pummelo.

“Banana” has to be Code for SOMETHING

I hope everyone is having as good a day as I am. I’m a fat, healthy American with a roof over my head, good food, good clothing, tons of tools, and a blog. How can life get any better than that?

I am having a hard time concentrating, because a conversation is going on.

Marv: Can I rub your snout?

Me: No.

Marv: What do you think of that?

Me: I don’t know…I think it’s a travesty.

I am cheerful in spite of the hideous weather. Once again, the sky is the color of dirty gym socks. It was like this all day yesterday, but it refused to rain. Today the chance of precipitation is 90%, but I haven’t seen any action yet. Oh, wait. The forecast has changed. Now the figure is 80%. We’re saved.

I attribute my frame of mind to my spiritual improvements. One nice thing about Christianity is that it relieves a lot of your anxiety. For example, I am not eating my liver over the possibility that we may elect Barack Obama President. I trust God to protect me when the country falls apart and goes communist. Maybe there is a reason I’ve been buying guns and learning how to grow food!

It’s good that the election is not driving me crazy, because it will keep me out of trouble. As we all know, all criticism (and even some types of praise) directed at Obama is vile and racist. So the less the race (AHA! “RACE!”) disturbs me, the less likely I am to write about it and expose my horrific bigotry.

Last night I learned that “socialist” is a “code word” for “black.” I had no idea. I thought it was a code word for “Democrat.” And there’s more. It turns out “Ayers” means “watermelon,” and “McCain” is actually secret code for the mighty N-word itself. So now the networks will have to quit running McCain ads, especially if they refer to terrorist nutcase Bill Ayers.

I think the Democrats should have gone even further, in squashing debate. They should have told us “Obama” was a black word. You know. “That’s our word. You can’t say that word.” Then conservative and moderate commentators would have had to sit out the whole campaign. And we could call this the Blackness Doctrine. Or something.

When I think of socialists, I don’t think of black people. I think of spoiled white people who hate their parents and want other people’s money. I’m fairly sure the “code word” thing was invented this month. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I guess I can’t fix the soffit today. That is tragic.

I checked the yard this morning. I have this peculiar feeling that it’s a good thing to walk around your property early every day. It looks like my newest banana tree is doing great. I can’t figure that out. It was a pup at the base of one of my Orinocos. I hacked it off with a shovel, and when I was done, it had no roots. I jammed it in a place formerly occupied by a papaya tree, and I kept the ground wet, and that was days ago, and it looks great. One day my bananas and plantains will start coming in again, and I’ll have to harvest them with a bulldozer.

I think I may give up on my fatalii pepper plant. It looks awful, and the peppers aren’t worth the effort. They’re about like white habaneros, which means they are incredibly hot and have a flavor reminiscent of the smell of sulfuric acid.

Everything else either looks good or appears to be improving.

Maybe I’ll put in a couple more citrus trees. You can’t have too many eating oranges or Key limes.

Be Awake Before Your Enemies Get Set Up

Life continues to improve here.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my sister told me about an evangelist named Perry Stone, and she said one of his teachings was that Communion was something that could, and should, be celebrated privately as well as publicly. I read his book, The Meal That Heals, and I heard my sister’s testimony about the transforming effects, so I decided to give it a shot. I have kept it up ever since. I have also started getting up at 6:30 to spend the first hour or ninety minutes of the day with God. I’ve tried to do that in the past, but until now, I found it impossible.

For some reason, evil things are most active at night. So it’s probably smart to get to bed early and to get up and start preparing your defense (and offense) while it is still dark. To undo whatever traps have been set for you.

I have been using grape juice. The thought of drinking wine in the morning is just too much for me. And from what I’ve read, I’m satisfied that grape juice will get the job done. I started out with Streit’s lightly salted matzos, but I have since switched to Manischewitz whole wheat. It’s probably more like the stuff they used 2,000 years ago, and it’s not a big dose of refined carbs.

I don’t use a tiny amount of these things; I pour a 12-ounce glass of juice, and I use a whole matzo. I would feel funny playing around with tiny slivers of matzo and a glass the size of a thimble. The first Communion was part of a meal; I figure I might as well do what people do at meals and consume normal amounts. One problem: I really like grape juice. I have to be careful not to drink it during the day, because then I won’t have it when I need it.

When I take Communion, I make a serious effort to search my heart for things that will invalidate the effort. I try to remember whether I’ve wronged anyone and whether there is anyone I haven’t forgiven. And I pray about those things.

When it’s over, I have time for study and prayer, and after that, I fix up the birds and go outside and look over my trees and plants. That right there is a great reward. Although the climate here is not quite like the climate in Israel, the foliage is very similar. Walking around in the dew with the citrus around me, I feel as though I have been transported back to the Jezreel. I remember hopping off the wagon after my ride to the grapefruit fields and finding my ladder and the three wooden boxes that had been placed there by IDF General Eli, who managed the grove when he wasn’t commanding tanks. I remember climbing out of the Jeep and stepping onto the rich brown dirt of the almond fields and waiting for Zev and Avshi and Kalman to tell me what we would be doing.

Fortunately, the yard doesn’t remind me of the day I spent working in the chicken house. Don’t get me started.

Because of the way my schedule has changed, the day seem longer, and I get more done, and when bedtime comes, I am ready to sleep. It’s just a better way to live. If it happens after ten p.m., odds are, you are better off missing out on it. Seems like that principle applies to a lot of things. If it’s on a pay channel, you are better off not watching it. If it’s network-TV entertainment, you are better off not seeing it.

Here’s a funny example. Now that I carry a gun all the time, I can’t go into bars. It’s the law. Hmm…isn’t that a win-win situation? Seriously, is there anything that happens in a bar that makes the visit worth the down side?

Life is changing. I am discarding the objects and practices that invite attack and corruption. It’s like debriding a wound and removing the dead, infected crud the bacteria use as a base. I didn’t realize it until this morning, but Communion is part of that. You can’t just do it. You have to prepare yourself and clean up your soul. Holding hatred and vengeance and other bad things in your heart is about like keeping a Ouija board in your closet.

It’s all about t’shuvah; turning back to God. That’s where the power comes from. Think of God as the sun and yourself as a solar panel.

According to the Talmud (says Aaron), Jewish tradition teaches that today (beginning last night) is the Yom Kippur of the Gentiles. Fine with me. Two days of atonement have to be better than one. One day for the olive tree, and another day for the grafted branches. Can’t complain about that.

This morning, I will be driving my sister to Fort Lauderdale, to some sort of a garden center. How about that? I couldn’t have predicted that two months ago.

I have to thank everyone who offered guidance. Of course, I have to thank all the readers who quietly kept me in their prayers. And above all, God.

Time for breakfast.

What a Deal!

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with buying excrement?

Think about it. Money is a reward for time spent working. So whatever your money is worth is also what your time is worth. What does it mean if you take your money and buy excrement for it and consider it a good deal?

I just bought 150 pounds of excrement. My grandfather, who raised cattle, would be turning over in his grave.

The guy I bought my plantain and banana trees from said compost was important for plantains. He said horse manure was the way to go. Darn the luck. My horse is constipated. No, it’s even worse than that. I don’t even have a horse. Unless you count my motorcycle apparel, cordovan shoes, and A-2 jacket. I checked Marv’s and Maynard’s cages. They do what they can, but I just don’t have that kind of time.

The guy said cow manure was okay, too, so today I went and bought three bags, and I just distributed them under my trees. Not just the plantains. Bananas, too. They’re nearly the same thing, so I figured it could not hurt.

I wore my Israeli commando boots. I was looking sharp out there. I didn’t want to experience the all-too-familiar sensation of noxious gardening substances falling in the gaps between my socks and tennis shoes.

While I was at the store, I noticed they had MAGNESIUM SULFATE! It’s supposed to cure yellowing leaves, which can be a problem here. I thought I might try it. Only eight bucks for about a pint and a half! Wow!

Wait. Isn’t magnesium sulfate epsom salt?

I’m fairly sure you can get a half gallon of epsom salt for about a dollar. Good for your plants, and I guess it could also help with the situation I mentioned above. If you’re not shy. Maybe the drugstore is the better option.

I guess I could get tons of free manure for nothing, if I knew where to find it. We have race tracks, but they’re not close by.

I continue to be fiercely envious of the banana guy’s life. Not just the room and the greenery and the peace. I envy him, having a business which is so morally neutral. It’s tough to practice law without damaging society, and writing has its temptations. It would be fantastic to grow plants, put up a website, and sell them. You would never have to ask yourself, “Gee, was it right to sell that guy the musella lasiocarpa?” I suppose every person who works has moral issues to worry about, but some jobs are less troubling than others. I’d sleep better growing alfalfa or running a hardware store than doing plastic surgery or practicing tort law.

I hope this work pays off. My plants have many problems, and I am tired of watching them languish.

I still want to kill those squirrels.

Get me a Therapist

I am still consumed with bitterness and ire over the plantain trees that turned out to be bananas. You cannot imagine my fury. They’re pretty tasty, but I want what I was supposed to get. Dang it.

It turns out there is a nursery down here that specializes in bananas in plantains. The name of the business: Going Bananas.

Another thing to be enraged about, to the point of mouth-foaming: they’re a lot cheaper than the place the phony plantains came from. Twenty bucks a plant. That’s a great bargain. Once you have a plant in your yard, you’re set for life. They reproduce by throwing out new plants from the roots. And boy, do they bear.

I think I’ll get a couple of new trees. I have a big hole where a papaya used to be.

Papayas are really disappointing. They produce, but there is something about the smell of the fruit that reminds me of dog poo. Must be the soil. The ones from the store don’t smell.

Tree Rats are on my Turf

Tonight I called the cops and asked their permission to kill every squirrel I see. I got some PR guy who didn’t really know the law, but he asked everyone in the office, and they were pretty sure it was illegal. So I found the municipal code online, and I noticed two things.

1. There was no reference to squirrels.

2. It turns out it’s legal to shoot an air rifle in Coral Gables, if you have the property owner’s permission. I think that can be arranged.

I have had it with squirrels eating my mangoes. And considering all the fruit they eat, they should fry up nice.

More great news: Christopher Walken and I have come to an understanding, regarding Hershey’s syrup.

One More Reason to Send Illegals Home

Guess how you keep yard guys from hitting your citrus trees with weedeaters? Here’s one thing that may be good to know: the answer is NOT mulch.

It is impossible to convey information to illegal-alien yard guys, and there is no other kind, so you have to make it impossible for them to do things you don’t like. I mulched my citrus because it was not possible to tell them not to skin it with their machines.

Turns out mulch creates a soggy environment which fungus loves, and then your trees rot. So I had to get rid of the mulch, and now I’m trying to kill the fungus on my beautiful lime tree. I painted it with copper and Daconil until it was blue.

I don’t know if it will live or not. Very frustrating. This neighborhood is like a fungus/mildew/algae zoo. My mamey is trying to die from red algae, regardless of how often I spray it.

This happened at a fine time, too. The precipitation probability was 90% today, and right now, the humidity is 84%. When I walk outside for more than ten seconds, mold grows on my face. I’m pretty sure.

One more example of how no one in Miami can do ANYTHING right.