Spider season

Last night I dreamed I wrestled with one of these, a banana spider. They're usually out in June, making babies and living in 20-foot webs attached to your porch to catch the flying bugs attracted to the light. Which makes them even more fearsome to live with because you have to duck under them to bring in the groceries. I'm sure mailmen hate them. They aren't included in the average Florida tourist brochure, for sure.


From http://www.davidmichaelkennedy.com/

Living in the lawn are 2" fuzzy gray wolf spiders, which I think are fairly national, and also on the palmettos there are spiders which look like tiny turtles with lots of legs, which sit in the middle of their nets. They are kinda cute. Inside the house are tiny pindot spiders, sitting in the caulk space of tubs and sinks, waiting for wet gnats? My mom has bulbous tan spiders which look like ticks when full, living on her patio.

The point is, it feels like insects and arachnids are taking over everywhere you go, but it's just the humid jungle bug season. You can't do much about them and they always come back. I haven't actually seen any bananas at my house this year, which is super. Ugh. And neither of those are MY hands.

Canning (no painting)

Not much new to report on the house this month. July and August in Florida are like January and February in upstate New York; you could go outside, but why would you? Although, to be fair sometimes you physically can't go outside in an upstate January.

The phone line was fixed at the pole by AT&T (the new Bell monopoly). The house system needs to be rewired too but the crawlspace is still drying out from all the summer rain. There is a temporary line from the wall box to the phone inside.

The paint bucket says not to paint above 90 degrees, which it is, so I've been inside canning things. What I really want is cheesecake in a jar with raspberries on top, but I've read you shouldn't can dairy. What I've done this summer is tomato wedges and sauce, baked beans, sweet banana peppers, ketchup, and grape and pomegranate jellies. The tomatoes were $11 for 30lbs from the farmer's market and the peppers were from the backyard.

Peppers, along with broccoli and butternut squash, seem to be the only capable crops in our yard. I've never had more than a few smallish tomatoes from a plant, the corn reached a whopping 12 inches high this year and legumes have leaf miners from the moment they sprout. The watermelon never flowered, and the tortured zucchini were stunted and died of a horrible overnight fungus as did the okra. It seems stuff planted in the traditional spring planting season doesn't grow fast enough to produce food before the onset of summer heat, our equivalent of first frost. Mom and I looked at the neighborhood garden last week and saw lots of tall okra and pole beans, high-heat crops, I guess.

What a cute dress!

The bad news- the house next door sold at auction yesterday for $59000 to a slum company! And Lightning? Rain? knocked out our internal phone wiring. Then I fried the phones (I think) by crossing all the red and green wires while trying to shore the place up. doh! I've had a bad cold for two weeks, it wasn't my hands' fault. The good news is the house is feeling better because it just bought a new dress. The body color is silvery gray, the porch is lavender-gray for now, and the window trim is a little more purply-blue than before. The front has been primed and half painted. The stucco sucks up gallons.













I know, it doesn't look all that different. What's important is that everything is clean and shiny. And someone's making ketchup in the kitchen!

Ikea Kitchen Modification

In the previous post, I had decided on an Ikea "Adel" front for the kitchen cabinets. It's too modern; its stamped rails and stiles are twice the width of the butler's pantry shaker door rails and stiles which I'm trying to match.

So, not being a huge fan of this mdf door and drawer front, and after looking around the IKEAFANS forums, I realized, 1. Because of the modular nature of Ikea, I can order their boxes with the fancy Blum slides, Euro hinges and drawers without having to order their cabinet doors. I would be fine living with cabinets without doors until we can afford the right doors. Anything to move the rats! 2. I can paint the more appropriate door, the wood "Tidaholm", to match, or can order unfinished shaker door fronts from Scherr's where they are familiar with Ikea measurements.

Here are great photos of a painted Tidaholm kitchen:
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/attachments/photos/6126d1195228802-painted-tidaholm-cabinets-new-kitchen-kitchen-october-2007-b.jpg
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/attachments/photos/6127d1195228818-painted-tidaholm-cabinets-new-kitchen-kitchen-october-2007-d.jpg

And a spray booth setup for the doors:
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/modifications/11859-painting-tidaholm.html

I've been thinking also about not having a kickspace, instead filling the area with matching painted strips of plywood. Instead of doors under the sink, maybe a curtain. There are many details I could do to make the basic Ikea kitchen look more period, less Ikea. And then my homeowner guilt will be assuaged.