My "New" Car

Well, yesterday Mike picked up the new car. It is a 1982 Porsche 928. As you can see it needs some work. Mike has a work buddy who inherited it when his father passed away several years back. This man had bought it new and only drove it occasionally. Unfortunately he did get in one crash with it so it needs some new paint. Most of the other stuff is from sitting in a barn for 10-15 years. Today we dropped it off at the repair place and hopefully we can get it running. We figured it was a great project for us :)

Working too much...

We haven't had anything exciting happen these past couple of weeks so I thought I'd just give a general update...
I worked 60 hours this past week so I'm pretty exhausted. I can always tell the warmer times of year because we have so many dogs come in with problems giving birth. In the past 3 days I've seen two dogs that weren't able to give birth at home. The first one was a yorkie shitzu mix (cute but strange mix) who hadn't had any puppies after 12 hours of labor. After checking her we found she was pregnant with 6 puppies and none had yet moved into the birth canal. Her calcium and glucose levels were okay so we just had to increase her contractions. We gave her an oxytocin injection and all 6 puppies were born in the next 2 hours. All did very well. My next case was a miniature pinscher mix. She had already had 4 puppies (2 dead, 2 live) and still seemed a little swollen. We checked her and she still had 1 remaining puppy who hadn't descended. They were a little tight on money so we went straight for the oxytocin injection. She had the last puppy (alive) about 15 minutes later. That dog wasn't nearly as healthy so we talked a lot about her nutrition and perhaps supplementing the puppies with puppy formula. I have to say there is nothing more rewarding than being able to send a dog home with live puppies. It really is the miracle of birth.
Mike has also been working a lot these past couple of weeks. He's shot several rap videos recently (he does a lot of those) and has been doing 2nd unit for Burn Notice. For those of you that don't know, 2nd unit is the stunt shots in a show or movie. Last season Mike shot 1st unit (all the dialogue and basic shots) for Burn Notice, a USA network show. This season he's just doing some of 2nd unit. He likes the adrenaline rush of all the stunt shots. I don't go to watch on those days :)
Hopefully we'll be posting about the solar panels and new car soon. We're just waiting on the phone call to install the solar panels and we just have to coordinate picking up the new car.
Stay tuned...

My Car

This month my 4 year lease on my Nissan 350Z is up so I thought I'd share some fond memories. When I first got it all of you thought I had gone off the deep end (except my mom who still fondly refers to her Camaro). But I thought, Why not? I'd driven a sensible, economic Sentra for 10 years and was ready for something with more power than a golf cart. For anyone that missed the story of the Sentra's demise... I made a U-turn while going 70 mph on the freeway. Obviously it was not on purpose and the suspension as well as the body had considerable damage. I was not hurt (nor was anyone else involved) so Mike viewed it as Christmas (he hated the Sentra). We went to every type of car dealer, told them we wanted to buy a car that very weekend and they were all very eager. I would have preferred the blue color but there wasn't one available in south Florida. So I ended up with a red Z!

I am proud to say I have only gotten 1 speeding ticket in it and have only had to change 1 tire. The most interesting story doesn't even involve me driving it. One evening it was parked in the driveway and the fedex man came to deliver a package. As he went to pull out of the driveway I heard a horrifying crunch. He had managed to slowly back into the left front corner of my car. I immediately called the police to come make a report and the driver was very apologetic and worried about his job. I told him that it was an accident and there was nothing to do about it now but that I did want a report due to the amount of damage. So I got my report and started calling my insurance company as well as fedex.

The next day Mike's good friend Mack dropped me off at the body shop where the car had been towed to and I got my rental car. It was 3 weeks before I would get my car back. It had a total of $2500 of damage. The entire front bumper, side panel and mirror all had to be replaced. The fun began with trying to get fedex to pay for it. Even armed with a police report saying the car was parked in my driveway they still didn't want to pay. I couldn't even get them to return my calls. Eventually my insurance company had to sue them and I got my deductible returned about 5 months later. What a mess.

I will miss this car but it just doesn't seem like a good plan to buy it with the miles on it and it not being a very sensible car to haul anything larger than my purse. But I'll always have my memories of my little red sports car...

Going Green part 2

We also like to grow our own fruit and vegetables. I've been working with composting and other things like that this year to see what I can come up with. Mike says we grow about 1 % of our food. I'm not really sure how to calculate that but we do grow about 75% of the fruit and vegetables we eat.

This peach tree was planted in February when it was 3 feet tall. I guess it likes our watering schedule.

This lychee tree is my second attempt at lychee. My first one died from overfertilizing :( It's a slower grower (about 3 feet each year) so I'm not sure when I'll have fruit from it. I love lychees! They are a red, round asian fruit. they are very sweet and moist. For now I buy my lychees from the roadside fruit stands every June but I can't wait to have my own!

These are the oranges growing on the tree we planted 2 years ago. The orange tree had issues with mold and leaf miners (pests that destroy leaves) but is doing well now.

The lime tree is trying to take over the backyard. It was 3-4 feet across when planted 2 years ago. It is now about 10 feet across.

This is a lemon on the Meyer's lemon tree also planted 2 years ago. It also had issues with mold but is now thriving.

This is the fig tree we planted this February. It was also about 3 feet tall and is now 6 feet.

This is one of the many avocados on our 2 trees in the front yard. Both trees were planted 4 years ago but 1 broke off at the ground during a hurricane 3 years ago. Proving just how hardy they are both trees are now equal size and about 15 feet tall and 10 feet across.

This is the strawberry patch that grows in the planters on the new deck. They add a really nice garden feature to the deck as well as being super tasty! So far it has only given us miniature strawberries (about 1/2 to 1 inch) but they have lots more flavor than the store bought ones.

My garden has a rotation throughout the year. We have to adjust our planting schedule back several months to account for the extreme heat in summer. These 2 pictures are of our many tomato plants. This year I planted seeds for Roma, Pear and Cherry tomatoes. All are doing very well. I put down the red tarp to reduce the weeding I have to do and it's supposed to increase yields.

My eggplants are also all started from seed. I always get good results with these :) I know most of you have no idea what to do with eggplant. I'm pretty simple about it. I slice them and either fry them coated with corn meal or broil them with just a little olive oil. I like the flavor but Mike doesn't really.

My herbs do pretty well. This is a basil plant that started from seed in February. It's about ready to be cut down completely. There is also dill, oregano, and chives.

One of my new projects this year is composting. I always had a lot of plant material that was piled along the fence as well as paper documents that should have been shredded. So I got myself a kitchen compost bucket to put fruit and vegetable remains in (only fruits and veggies so as not to attract rodents to the composter). I bought a shredder for the office and then the big outdoor composter. This composter is small (comparitively) and spins to mix. About every 2 weeks I add new vegetable remains and shredded paper. There is also additives that the manufacturer sells to help things along. With this type of composter I'm supposed to leave it alone for 6 weeks but then what would I do with my vegetable reamins? I haven't yet got any good compost from it. The first batch dissolved completely and my second ongoing batch is really moist so I'm not sure what to do. It's a great experiment and if nothing else keeps us from throwing more stuff away.

The gardening and composting is always a work in progress and each year brings new challenges as far as pests and moisture levels. It keeps me busy and is very relaxing. The time I spend in my garden is uninterrupted, no phones or anything else. It gives me a chance to forget everything else and just focus on each litle plant and what it needs :)