Mostly Sunny and Lots of Chlorphyll

Spring, otherwise known as Summer- Part One, is beautiful here in central Florida. There is so much green! I've even been able to grow a successful garden, thanks to the raised bed installed by the previous residents. The kids have been swimming for a month now (off and on, you understand), and our jackets are hanging forlorn behind the laundry room door.

Well, that's not quite true. I still use my jackets regularly, but it's only because the stores around here believe, I mean BELIEVE, in air conditioning. It's like they want you to forget you live in Florida when you enter a Wal-Mart. We keep our house a comfy 78-80 degrees, and one of our cars doesn't even have a working air conditioner, so church, stores and medical offices are always a shock.

Our aquaponics tanks are still filling and draining just as they're supposed to, and the plants are all growing well. Again, I have to say that's not quite true. The kale was a miserable failure, but Aaron won't let me pull all the plants out because the tilapia like to eat it, even if no human ever will. The problem is aphids. Those little beggars have just infested our kale. They love it like I love brownies. To each his own, I guess. Maybe I should go stick a brownie in the kale bed and see if they'll move to that...

A rotten tree was casting too much shade on the grow beds, so Aaron Bunyan and the trust I-TEC chainsaw felled the beast. It is currently dismembered in the backyard, some sections stacked neatly as if we'll ever need firewood again, and the rest making a cozy home for wasps. I know this because the kids were supposed to stack the rest yesterday, and the wasps provided a convincing reason for them to leave it alone.

Aaron and his colleagues are working every day toward the goal of getting their UAV's out into the world. They are doing training, fine-tuning the processes, and thinking about how the planes themselves could be changed for the climates or requirements of their future homes. They've only lost one so far. It was eaten by the trees and brush of the Cross-Florida Greenway, and might require a family hiking trip with binoculars to track.