Clint & Barnacle
Drought And Seaweed Visit The Island
Greetings from the island everyone. Hope all of you are doing well and enjoyed a nice Mother’s Day with Mom last Sunday. Barnacle and I normally would have gone in and spent the day with Mom, but a few days earlier Mr. Dog was at the vets office having surgery to remove a growth on his chest, so we stayed put on the island. But after his overnight stay at Dr. Motl’s, we stayed an additional night at Mom’s, so we had a nice visit. And Barnacle is doing much better, getting back to his dog ways.
The island and my garden need rain in a desperate way right now. It has been several months since any decent rain has fallen from the heavens out here. To keep the tomatoes, peppers, squash and watermelons/cantaloupes going, I’m having to water almost daily. And even though I use well water, there’s something about the rain falling from the sky that does a much better job, causing the plants to thrive and flourish. I’ve already dug up my red potatoes, with seven plants producing nearly 50 nice spuds. I just cut out and planted the eyes from two potatoes that came from the feed store, making sure to plant them only one inch deep. Nothing better than quarter to fifty-cent piece size red potatoes, very delicious.
My eggshell tomato plants, from seeds that I started inside of partial eggshells, have now been planted in the ground and are doing very well. It was just a novelty experiment that I saw on Facebook, but was fun to try and actually worked very well. Now to see how they taste in a few months, yum!
The sargassum sea grass has begun its annual invasion along the beach. It began washing ashore a few weeks ago and is already several feet deep along some areas. This is a common Spring/Summer occurrence, and is part of nature’s way to slow down beach erosion, at least I think so anyway. I’ll soon be heading down to the beach to fill up a dozen or so shrimp baskets with the seaweed, to compost it down into a soil consistency and add it to my garden soil. After rinsing it with fresh water, it can also be used as a mulch around your plants, and will eventually break down and mix in with the soil. It’s a great organic fertilizer that is free for the gathering.
A few months ago I made mention of occasionally finding dead marine mammals along the beach and bay shoreline on the island. In order to preserve and use the pieces to educate others, I would clean and display them at the cabin. Well, apparently there is a proper procedure to adhere to in regards to salvaging dead marine specimens. You can absolutely legally possess these items (Section 50CFR216 – Marine Mammal Health & Stranding – National Marine Fisheries), but there is a proper simple and free procedure to follow. For information regarding the proper steps, you can call 727-824-5323. But hey, at least I got to meet a State Warden and two Federal Wardens, and now have contacts should I ever need them, and all three are great professional guys.
I enjoyed a weekend visit from Kelli Conway and two of her friends a few weeks ago here on the island. They camped out on the beach, and despite very windy conditions, they had a great time and caught a few nice fish at the Big Jetties. Of course they are probably STILL digging out sand from unspeakable places. Hope to see y’all again sometime.
Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a great day.
