Capture the rain with a rain barrel

Rain, rain, please come this way. Drop on down from the sky and stay. Here is a barrel put together just for you. Thank you for all the wonderful wet things you do.

What can I say? It rhymes. I watched rain sleeting off my roof, thank you Lord for every drop, the earth was dry for a long time. I got to wondering about when it stops. What then? It is not a new thought. Generations of people have been collecting water, saving it against that dry day.

A few years back I took a rain barrel course. That barrel sits out back, catching rain rolling off the roof. It is so full the overflow valve has water coming out of it.

Hummm. There’s a message here. Grab rain while it is raining. I went on line and looked at rain barrels. For such an ancient, earthy, simple thing the rain barrels I saw were hideously expensive. Hundreds of dollars. Not happening.

There is a better way closer to home. The Master Gardeners at the Agricultural Center on Old Jacksonville Road have rain barrels for $50. You don’t even have to take a class. You get a used food-grade 60 gallon barrel, already bored with a hole for a spigot and an overflow hole, and a small brown bag with parts.

In Florida, Check IFAS, (the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at UF), their Florida Yards & Neighborhoods program, for a free fact sheet on building a rain barrel and call your local Agricultural Extension Office to see if they have barrels. Might want to look at the Yellow Pages to see if there is a barrel supplier nearby.

See the picture of the parts? I haven’t a clue what they are all for. No instructions came with the paper bag. The brochure from the Southwest Florida Water Management District shows how to put in the spigot (screw in halfway, apply PVC cement, finish screwing). Easy. Then even have a page showing how to paint your barrel (could be a fun project for kids). I opted for plain and functional.

I placed mine in the front yard under the roof at the edge near the carport. There is no gutter. The barrel itself is interesting. Once it was filled with olives from Europe. Shipped to the United States for canning, the barrels don’t make the return trip. They are sold to a barrel company. These are hauled to Marion County, Florida from Texas. Increased shipping charges are eating up the slim profit.

You need to elevate the barrel up on concrete or bricks. That spigot is down low. Hard to get a watering can down that low. The top of the rain barrel is solid plastic with a screw lid. I used a jig saw to cut a hole out of the top, then placed a piece of screening across the entire top and tightened down the lid. The screen lets rain in, keeps debris out.

Will mosquitoes breed in a rain barrel? Yes. Joannie has a friend with a horse farm and said they put fish in their water troughs to keep mosquitoes at bay (fish eat the mosquito larvae). Great idea. My rain barrel in the back now has ten small fish (10 for 99 cents) .

It rained this afternoon. My new barrel has water! Ah, conservation. It is contagious. Now in the back yard there is a gutter across the porch. The booklet shows cutting off the gutter pipe, putting in a flexible piece and having water run right down the gutter into a barrel.

Humm. Sounds like I need another rain barrel to catch that gutter runoff. But what do I do with the leftover parts?*

*UPDATE: Turns out the extra parts are for the overflow hole of the top of the barrel. Lori Ball, Staff Assistant II at Marion County Extension Service, read the blog and sent me an e mail. Knowledge is power! Thank you Lori. She also notes that Kathy Patterson, coordinator for the “Florida Yards and Neighbors” suggests buying a cheap hose and attaching it to the overflow. The spigot also has threads to attach a hose to help watering the plants (I hadn’t noticed this). Lots of ways to use your rain barrel.

Lucy Beebe Tobias is the Authentic Florida Expert for VISIT FLORIDA and the author of “50 Great Walks in Florida”, University Press of Florida, February, 2008.

Climbing a lighthouse for more than the view

I earned this T-shirt the old-fashioned way – by actually doing what it says – climbing 203 stairs to the top of Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. The lighthouse is 175 feet tall and the view from the top looks out over the Atlantic Ocean and Ponce Inlet.

This is a serious piece of construction. Brick walls are eight feet thick at the bottom tapering to two feet thick at the top. In the days long gone when blue uniformed lighthouse keepers keep things going they walked these stairs several times day and night.

What the shirt neglects to mention is that there are also 203 steps going DOWN, making a total of 406 spiraling stairs. Gasp!

No, they don’t give you a shirt. I bought it as a reward.

You see I am afraid of heights and claustrophobic. So what was I doing climbing the tallest lighthouse in Florida? Overcoming fears and knowing the only way to see the great view is to get up there. In the grand view of things, I’d rather be challenged climbing up a lighthouse than hanging off ropes in a ropes course for character building or whatever it is called.

Oh, and there was a video crew from Visit Florida following me wheezing up the spiral stairs. Yes, your Authentic Florida expert at work. The video on Florida lighthouses will be up on their site in a few weeks. Check out Visitflorida.com then click on Authentic.

Every landing there is a window and sometimes a ledge to sit on. While pretending to admire the view, I am actually trying to get breathing back to semi-normal. The windows have transoms that open allowing air inside, a really good idea.

I know doing this deed is not right up there with climbing Mount Everest or biking across the United States, but there is a rush to doing something difficult and succeeding. And when you see kids prancing up the stairs and down again, it becomes a matter of pride not to be bested by the younger set.

This lighthouse has a museum on the grounds that houses Fresnel lenses. To me they are amazing works of art – specially cut pieces of glass meant to magnify a small light (in the beginning given off by kerosene lantern) into a big light that can be seen by mariners 20 miles out to sea.

The Coast Guard deactivated the light in 1970. A Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association started in 1972. They maintain and restore the Lighthouse and grounds. The town of Ponce Inlet bought the lighthouse from the Coast Guard.

When you step inside the white picket fence, everything inside the picket fence dates from 1887 when the lighthouse opened. Museum staff restored the 1933 Rotating Third Order Fresnel lens and had it reinstalled. It gives out the signal from that era, but it is a private aid to navigation not a regular Coast Guard approved beacon.

Of course, all that work means you’ve earned lunch too. Ask the staff where locals do lunch. They have several very good suggestions close by involving inlet views and seafood.
Florida has 33 lighthouses. You can work your way through the Lighthouse Trail. Click on this link to Amazon to see the book about the trail. So far I’ve climbed St. Augustine Lighthouse, Cape Florida Lighthouse at Key Biscayne (with my son Martin) and now Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. Only a zillion more stairs to go.

Lucy Beebe Tobias is the author of “50 Great Walks in Florida” published by University Press of Florida, February, 2008. You can buy the book (and get it signed by the author) at her Web site. She climbed two lighthouses while researching the book. Lucy also is the Authentic Florida expert for Visit Florida.

Lake City Splashes Color on its Walls

Harvey Campbell had a plan. “I want to take our Lake City officials down to Lake Placid so they can see the murals. ” He hoped to excite his local power makers into splashing color on walls as a way of revitalizing downtown. Harvey had his work cut out for him. These folks don’t usually smile unless they are finding a way to save money, not spend it.

Lake Placid sets the bar high. When you visit you will see why. This small town in Central Florida turned quite a few old walls on brick buildings into living history murals. And people come from all points of the compass to see the murals, spend time and money visiting local shops and doing lunch.

What a concept. Art, culture, commerce, history, nature. Put them all together and sleepy downtowns can wake up, be reborn, even head for a renaissance.

Campbell, executive director of the Columbia County Tourism Development Council, worked his plan. In 2006 he piled officials into vans and headed south to Lake Placid. They loved it. A plan was developed and the plan worked.

Two years go by. The first mural is done and it is fabulous. On Thursday, March 27, 2008 a three-dimensional mural celebrating Ichetucknee Springs was completed with a few final strokes. Artist Keith Goodson stepped up and signed his name to the 86-feet-long mural painted on the side of the Kuykendall Building in downtown Lake City. Goodson worked on the mural for 48 days.

Look at these photos. This mural is drop dead awesome. The springs are so enticing, so crystal clear, you want to dive right in. It gets even better. Columbia County resident and retired County Commissioner James Montgomery donated the $18,000 cost, out of his own money, to have it painted.

Lake City Reporter Publisher Michael Leonard promises to spearhead the effort to raise funds in partnership with the City of Lake City for the next mural. This one will celebrate Lake City’s 150th anniversary coming up next year. In all, five years from now, they’d like some 20 murals downtown. Yep, they have a plan.

Lake City is on a roll and I admire their commitment. I love murals. They are big, bold and brassy. Artists got to play in a huge way on a humongous canvas. Murals celebrate natural and historical Florida. This outdoor art is accessible to all ages. Just walk downtown, no museum admission fee required.

To read more about murals in other Florida places – Palatka, Lake Placid and DeLand, see my mural story on the Visit Florida Web site.

And the next time you headed north on I 75 make a detour to Lake City. Go to Marion Avenue and Northwest Hamilton Street and check out the springs mural. It is a big WOW. Come home inspired. Develop partnerships. Get going. Paint the walls where you live . . .and people who could be your newest best friends will come to your town.

Have a Blueberry Thrill

Need a thrill?

Have a blueberry, or two or three or more. Your body will be thrilled. All berries are antioxidants. A holistic practitioner, Dr. Andrew Weil, says just a half cup of blueberries has the same antioxidant punch as five servings of peas, carrots, apples, squash or broccoli.

Heck, I’d rather eat blueberries than anything on that list. Especially now that blueberry-picking season has arrived. There is nothing quite as wonderful as fresh blueberries you pick with family and friends. Marion County has a number of blueberry farms and some are organic including Bay Lake Blueberry Farm on Highway 315, Ft. McCoy (phone 352-546-3834). Picking season doesn’t last long. Find out what days places are open. Grab those pails and go.

When my boys were little and we lived in Gainesville, we had the blueberry bushes completely covered. No blueberry was safe. Philip, the youngest and the shortest, picked on the lower part of the bush. Martin, middle son, worked the middle. Chris, oldest son, worked higher up and tall Mom got the tops. Yummm. One time Philip tasted so many berries his face was purple. The owner of the blueberry patch suggested weighting him to get a price for the blueberries but fortunately he was just kidding.

The big payoff is going home and making blueberry pie. Personally, I could just eat them straight up anytime but my family prefers pie.

Here is a blueberry recipe from Forest resident Terry Hopkins called “Aunt Kitty’s Favorite”

Blueberry Dessert
2 c. blueberries
Juice of ½ lemon
½ t. cinnamon

Butter an 8×8 inch pan, turn blueberries into pan, dribble lemon juice over them and sprinkle cinnamon over berries.

¾ c. sugar
3 T. butter
1 c. sifted flour
1 t. baking power
¼ t. salt
¼ c. milk

Cream butter and sugar. Add sifted dry ingredients alternatively with milk. Note: there are no eggs in this recipe. Spread butter on top of berries.

1 c. sugar
1 T. cornstarch
Dash of cornstarch
1 c. boiling water

Mix sugar, salt and cornstarch. Turn dry mixture over batter. Then pour 1 c. boiling water over top. Bake at 375 degrees for one hour.

Serve warm, topped with a small serving of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Yum.

If you want to be truly adventuresome, check out Cook’s Illustrated, the issue for July/August 2008 that just came in the mail and their recipe for blueberry pie using grated apple as a thickener. Trust Cooks to come up with something creative.

Bon appetit or better yet, bon blueberry.

Lucy Beebe Tobias is the author of “50 Great Walks in Florida” published by University Press of Florida and the Authentic Florida Expert for VISIT FLORIDA.

Searching for the Fountain of Youth

There comes a time when the words “the Fountain of Youth” sound pretty attractive. For me, that time is now. So off I go, thinking it will just be a myth, a dream Juan Ponce de Leon chased all over Florida back in the 16th century.

Wrong. There really is a Fountain of Youth. De Leon was sure he had found it near St. Augustine. Today the small spring looks a little hokey all encased in a building full of stage sets, but drinking the water can’t hurt and, who knows, imbibing might help a few wrinkles disappear. De Leon couldn’t get enough of the stuff.

In 1493 de Leon joined Christopher Columbus in his second voyage to the New World. These explorers excelled at saying they were going one place and ended up somewhere else. Obviously they traveled before GPS units were available.

Columbus wanted to find a short passage to India. He ended up finding the New World. De Leon first stayed in the Dominican Republic then conquered Puerto Rico. In 1512 he got a permit (some things never change, like needing permits) from King Ferdinand of Spain to discover Biminy.

Hiring three ships at his own expense he sent out in 1513. Using a really cool instrument called an astrolabe to navigate, the ships went north then turned inland and anchored right up to land on April 2. The next morning they came ashore on what de Leon thought was an island on April 3, 1513.

Because flowers were in bloom, he named it La Florida (the flower). So much for Bimini. De Leon was just north of what would become St. Augustine. He gets the credit for discovering the continental United States. Yes, I know, back in grade school it was all about Pilgrims. Well, guess what, the Spanish were in Florida long before the Pilgrims got their feet wet jumping ship and rock skipping. Ah, the things you learn when you go discovering in Florida.

A guide at the Fountain of Youth told us the Spaniards met Timucuan Indians. Their Indian town called Seloy was right here. The Indians stood over seven feet tall. Good thing they were friendly. The Spaniards averaged about four feet eleven inches. And there was this fountain, a natural spring. The water tasted bitter (sulfur water) but heck, maybe the Indians were tall and lived long because they drank the water. It couldn’t hurt. De Leon loaded up caskets of water to take back to Puerto Rico.

After five days hanging out with Indians and drinking the water, he sailed around the tip of Florida, discovered the Gulf Stream and landed on the West Coast of Florida. Returning again to the West Coast in 1521 he tried to land and start a colony. The Calusa Indians didn’t appreciate the newcomers and fought many battles. De Leon died on from a poisoned arrow wound. He was almost 61 years old, ancient by the standards of the day. Most Spaniards were only living until the age of 30 to 40. Maybe it was the water.

Surprisingly, proof that the Spanish landed on April 3, 1513 lay covered up and ignored for generations. In 1904 a private landowner wanted a palm tree removed to improve the view. The gardener found a pattern of stones buried near the tree. Typically, when Spanish explorers set foot on new soil, they claimed it by making a cross. The long arm has the number of stones corresponding to the century. This cross has 15 stones. The short arm has 13 stones. So the year was 1513. Unpretentious and unadorned, the stones of the cross lie on the ground next to the fountain.

Also found at the site was a salt container. These were used to hold documents and a parchment found inside attested to the fact de Leon was here.

The property is in private hands but operates as an attraction. You can walk the grounds and get the guided tour of the fountain, a big indoor globe that rotates (you just have to see it to believe it) and a planetarium, the oldest planetarium in America. This is where they explain how navigators used that astrolabe. The stars played a major part in discovering the New World.

One building has Indian history and the grounds are open for walking. I like the huge clay jars the Spanish used to put under eves to catch water. The day I was there a group of students from a nearby charter school arrived with sketchbooks and found much to draw.

It is pretty amazing to walk out towards the water and see the area where the small ships (they were 84 feet long) came into shore. The shoreline has changed but this is the spot. And so Florida was discovered. It already had a thriving Indian culture. More cultures would follow.

It is said these are the words Juan Ponce de Leon uttered when he stepped ashore:
“Thanks be to thee, O Lord, who hast permitted me to see something new.”
Amen.

©2008 Lucy Beebe Tobias is a freelance writer, photographer and artist in Ocala, Florida. Her book “50 Great Walks in Florida”, February, 2008, is available now at www.Lucyworks.com