Mi Ranchito, Placed a bid, Mulchy, Sprinkless, Mom day, 24

Friday after work I stopped at Home Depot to load up the back of the Tacoma with 30 bags of mulch for the second day in a row.  I followed up with a quick stop at Costco where I somehow managed to lose a massive container of minced garlic that I paid for.

After dinner I told Cindy I wanted to see if I could quickly get the 30 bags dumped and spread since the cooler evening temps had arrived.  As usual she was happy to jump in and lend a hand.  We knocked out all 30 bags, finishing up just as sunset was going down.  We had pretty much everything mulched beside a short part of the pool border and the two islands that surround the palm trees up front.  I estimated that 10 bags would cover what was left.  As usual the landscape looked much nicer with it’s annual mulch replenishment.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed out pretty early for our day of fun.  After loading up with some DD coffee we headed to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a place I have been quite a few times but a place Cindy had never seen.

It didn’t take her very long to appreciate the beauty of the place.  Since we are firmly in the midst of dry season there was precious little water to be found in the swamp.  It is always interesting to see the place during dry season and then to come back once the daily deluges start to compare the difference.

We still saw a lot of wildlife from the 2 mile boardwalk path, mostly birds, including owls, something I don’t recall seeing there before.  We also saw these two HUGE gators.  We assumed at least one of them had to be a pregnant female, it was so wide across the middle.

I am always impressed by the huge cypress trees that are in the swamp.  According to the information placards some of them are more than 500 years old.  The largest we saw had a trunk 23 feet around.  Old things always have been sources of fascination for me. (as long as they aren’t me)

One of the reasons I wanted to go to the swamp was to get a couple bird feeders to replace some of mine that are falling apart.  Several years ago I bought some made out of recycled materials from their gift shop and they have held up well.  I figured I would get more there to help support the place.  I was disappointed to see the only bird feeders they had for sale were the wooden variety that break down quickly in Florida conditions.  Too bad, I guess Amazon will have to fill the void.

After a great swamp visit we headed east to Immokalee, specifically Jack & Ann’s Feed store.  I became familiar with Jack & Ann’s when I fenced the back yard years ago, I got all of my posts, fencing and wire from them.  The store, like much of Immokalee is very old and rustic.  It’s also quite large, selling a large variety of things that would cover the needs of most farmers.

Cindy scored herself a set of white boots for outdoor work but the real reason we went there was to look at their chicken accessories.  I thought they might sell coops there.  Unfortunately they had no chicken housing but they do have feeders/waterers and feed for them.  Once chickens are a certainty I am sure we will hit J&A more often for supplies.

It was nearly noon by that time.  I asked Cindy if she wanted to try to find an authentic Mexican place to eat at which would be very easy to do in Immokalee.  She was excited by the idea.  We pulled into a small little place called Mi Ranchito.  When we sat down I am pretty sure we were the only people in there with English as our first language.  The decor was old, the tables were dirty but the food was authentic Mexican.  I had a huge veggie burrito and Cindy enjoyed a chimichanga.

During the meal I dared her to try the sauce labeled as XXX hot. As I expected she took up my dare.  The sauce did invoke a reaction from her but not the violent, my tongue is on fire, type that I expected.  She followed up by sampling the 2 or 3 other hot sauce varieties that were on the table.

After lunch we headed northward.  I took a route through Lehigh Acres, I figured it would be a good opportunity to check on the two 1/4 acres plots of land I own and lost my ass on.  I have not driven by them in several years.  They looked much as I remembered.  One of my lots is really in a decent location, literally less than a mile from a Winn Dixie and other retail.  Too bad despite that fact the lots currently are worth about 10-15% of what I paid for them back in 2003.

The next stop was the Germain Arena box office, I needed to pick up my free 2014 Florida Tarpons season tickets.  Since the 2013 season was such a cluster fck with a ton of rescheduled and/or cancelled games they offered to give all 2013 season ticket holders free tickets for this year.  They have totally shifted the schedule from previous years.  The season doesn’t open until this Friday.  Last year the season opened in early March and was pretty much wrapping up by this point.

I managed to score a big upgrade in seat position this year.  My season tickets last year had a face value of something like $15 each.  The tickets I got this year are in row 4 and have a face value of $45 each, nice.  I can only hope this season goes better than last.  I am really quite amazed that the team and the league has not folded yet.

On the trip back south we stopped at Home Depot to get the remaining 10 bags of mulch needed to finish the landscaping.  Cindy also snagged three plants to be used in her ongoing pool landscaping renovation.  We had two more stops yet on our very busy Saturday, one for gas and one at Wal-mart before we finally pulled back into the driveway.

We got the additional mulch spread and the plants in the ground.  I had wanted to set the sprinklers to run manually so I could check their operation, I suspected some of them were not sprinkling as they should be.  My sprinkler controller has been flaky for several years.  The buttons were not working as they should be some of the time.  If you applied pressure at the wrong spot the display would reset or a function different then what you wanted would show up.  A couple buttons didn’t work at all.  I still have been able to work around the glitches, until Saturday.

The entire right side of the box now was unresponsive, not even responding to Fonzie like smacks.  I also noticed the status screen was showing OFF despite the rotary knob being set at the AUTO position used during normal operation.  If the system thinks it is OFF that means no water is flowing which would explain why the garden has been looking drier than normal.  It was clear the sprinkler box had to be replaced.

When I started looking on Amazon at replacements I stumbled across something called the Rain Machine.  My eyes widened.  A SMART, Wi-Fi connected sprinkler controller, touch screen device???

The device uses NOAA forecasting to adjust it’s watering schedule  accordingly.  It compiles your watering history and uses that as well to better fine tune future sprinkling.  There is even a smartphone app that allows you to interact with your sprinkler system anywhere you are plugged into the net. This is cool….

So immediately my mind is racing, thinking about the possibility of adding a smart sprinkler system to my homestead tech collection.   Mounting the box outside would be risky and dumb since part of the coolness factor would be interacting with the keypad and checking out the info.  That means I would need to relocate the sprinkler controller indoors.

Relocating it would involve stringing wire through the hotter than a sauna attic and then down one of the bathroom walls.  It would need to be somewhere close to AC power as well.  Another factor was the cost.  The device costs $250 and by the time I bought the materials needed to extend it inside I could easily drop $300 bucks in total.  In contrast, a replacement digital controller similar to what I have now would be less than $60 with a very straightforward and much easier installation.  I eventually quieted the tech addict in my brain and decided to go the latter route.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to a surprise birthday party at South Street for one of our running club friends.  There were a TON of people there.  We hung for a couple hours before heading home.  We were both quite pooped from our very busy day.

Despite our busy Saturday we still wanted to get a brick in on Sunday.  We headed to the waterpark where we did 4 miles of running followed by laps in the pool.  I broke my swim segments into 400-600-600 to try to get ready for my 1/4 mile swim leg of the fast approaching Naples Fitness Challenge. Cindy, Randall and I are competing as a team this year.  Cindy will run, Randall will ride and I will finish it out with my awkward sidestroking swim in the gulf.  The 4 mile run on Sunday was way tougher for me than I would like.

When we got home I worked on replacing the sprinkler controller.  Unfortunately it is a different form factor than the 8 year old box it replaced, meaning some touch up painting will be required.  Once I got it hooked up I had Cindy help me do a sprinkler health check.  I ran each zone for 5 minutes to verify the heads were still covering what they were supposed to be watering.  The survey revealed I have 4 heads that need to replaced, yay, more work.

We had to hustle Sunday afternoon to get stuff done since we were picking up mom for a Mothers Day dinner at Watermark.  We were planning to meet Cindy’s mom there at 5PM.  I figured the very early time would mean the place wouldn’t be too full.  When I pulled in the parking lot and saw no parking spots for the party van I knew my theory was incorrect.

It was jammed, with no less than 20 people waiting to be seated. We got very lucky that Cindy’s mom is an early bird.  She had shown up closer to 4:30 and got our name in.  We wound up only having to wait a couple minutes instead of the 30 minutes or more we would have had to wait otherwise.

We all had a nice meal that was subsidized by a gift card my dad had sent me for Xmas.  I hadn’t been to Watermark with my mom in a loooong time.  We shuttled mom back to her place and dropped her off.  She had fun which always makes me happy.

Over the weekend Cindy and I finished up season seven of 24.  It seemed to be the most ridiculous storyline so far with no less than 5 different people (one twice) being the main bad guy in the span of 24 hours.  Despite the impossibility of so many things occurring in a 24 hour period the show still manages to provide suspense and excitement.  You just have to be able to suspend your sense of reality to fully enjoy it.

We now have embarked on season 8, the final season of the original show.  Once that is consumed we should be up to date and ready to start watching the reboot of the series which is being collected on my X1 box.

Oh I forgot to mention I have a bid on Ebay on a perspective housing structure for our yet to be acquired flock of 3 or 4 chickens.  If my bid is successful we will officially be on the path of chicken caretakers.