Matanzas River Marsh

The picture below of the Matanzas River comes from the west end of Dondanville Road in Saint Augustine, Florida, and demonstrates the diversity of waterways, with this beautiful marsh located just blocks away from sandy beaches.  This is part of the Intracoastal Waterway, a 3,000-mile stretch of mostly inland waterways beginning in Boston, Massachusetts, going around the southern tip of Florida and continuing along the Gulf of Mexico to Brownsville, Texas.

Matanzas translates to "massacre" or "killings" and in this case relates to the murder of several hundred shipwrecked French Huguenots by Spanish forces led by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés way back in 1565.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanzas_River

Maria Sanchez Lake

If you travel on Bridge Street in St. Augustine, Florida, you will find it oddly named, as doesn’t cross any river or stream, the nearest one being several blocks away to the south.  Roll the clock back to the 1880s and Bridge Street crossed Maria Sanchez Creek whose northern end Henry Flagler wanted to build a couple hotels.  The creek was filled in between King and Bridge street, and later on more blocks of the creek disappeared to develop the city.  Eventually, a dam was placed at South Street and Maria Sanchez Lake, pictured below, was created.

https://dougdillon.com/2012/07/19/st-augustine-fl-maria-sanchez-creek-and-lake

Leftover Mashed Potato Gnocchi

We ended up with an extra quart of mashed potatoes recently and instead of piling on all those carbs in a few days we decided to make and freeze, uncooked, several packages of gnocchi.  It just takes roughly an equal amount of flour, one egg per cup of mashed potatoes, and the patience to roll, cut and score with the tines of a fork.  Detailed instructions can be found at this link.

https://www.lifeasastrawberry.com/leftover-mashed-potatoes-gnocchi

Thriller, Filler, Spiller

This is a great technique to get the most out of your planter.  In the back put a tall plant like Baby Tut Grass, which is the “Thriller” and in the middle a contrasting shorter plant such as Polka Dot Plant, aka the “Filler”.  In front goes a draping plant like Bacopa, which is the aptly named “Spiller”.  The result is a beautiful, vertical mix of colors like our 2019 box below.  Use your colorful imagination to build your own tower of beauty.

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/special/containers/thriller-filler-spiller.htm

BannerSaver

On the new lamp posts at Lincoln Park, we couldn't figure out what the horizontal arm was.  A Wi-Fi antenna, a temperature sensor or a listening device were a few of our way-off guesses.  It would have been obvious if the lower arm was in place, which we're assuming was taken off to limit theft.  These arms and the spring-loaded brackets attached to the poles are to hang banners.  This system from BannerSaver allows the banners to flex as it gets windy, saving on wear-and-tear and extending banner life, as shown in the cool demonstration video at this link.

https://vimeo.com/155769862

Packet Capture Apps

Sorry, these apps are Android only...

Being an old network guy, I find it invaluable to see data as it's flowing on the network.  For Mac and Windows computers I use Wireshark, but that's not available on my Pixel 2.  A couple app alternatives that I've tried are "Packet Capture" and "tPacketCapture". The first one is good for immediately seeing data, as shown below, but it lacks any further depth of analysis.  The second app just captures data with no display, but the data can be saved in "pcap" format, which can be transferred to a program like Wireshark to perform very in-depth analysis. 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.greyshirts.sslcapture

Ice Spike

We get an ice spike, like the one pictured below, every so often and it's a tribute to the Reverse Osmosis (RO) system that Enting Water Conditioning installed several years ago to provide us with pure and great-tasting water and ice.  Ice spikes are rare enough, but they are less likely to form when water contains impurities, which inhibit spike formation, and the RO system takes most of that out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_spike

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

Here’s a delicious reason to buy cream of chicken soup...

These enchiladas were unexpectedly creamy and spicy and none of the plentiful leftovers went uneaten.  You'll find the recipe at this Pinterest link and one major substitution was using four cans of Kirkland (i.e. Costco) chicken, which if you haven't tried it is pretty darn good.  This is the ultimate comfort food, perfect for a cold, stay-at-home day.

Big shout-out to my wife Elaine for preparing this tummy-pleaser!

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/302233824991102548/

Oil Versus Mole

The picture below is a victory of imagination.  For the last few years it was an exit hole for, presumably, a mole, and I tried pouring various liquids in that hole (e.g. ammonia) which would work for a few months, but then the hole would reappear.  Then one day last fall I thought about what a mole wouldn’t like that would stay around and bam, the brain said “motor oil”!  What mole would want to dig through that?  A quart of oil went down the hole and eight months later, a few days ago, I threw down some grass patch which I will water every day in celebration.

Yanny or Laurel

This auditory trick was apparently popular two years ago, but it wasn't until a recent episode of Last Man Standing did we hear of the "Yanny" or "Laurel" debate.  In the recording available at this New York Times link, about half of us, including me, hear "Laurel" while the other half, including my wife, hear "Yanny".  This recording is interactive, so you can change the mix of frequencies, high to low, which changes the pronunciation just enough to hear the other word.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html