I have admitted before in this column that I am a horrible horticulturist. My home is the place where plants go to die. Yet, as I type this column, outside my window sits a tall, lush basil plant – a picture of health. I had purchased it as a small plant along with a big bag of plant soil at the garden center earlier this year. With regular watering it did well for about a month, but one day it began to look tired and wilted. I gave it some plant food and more water. The plant must have assumed that was its last meal because it soon looked dead. I was about to add another plant to my list of kills until my wife said in passing, “I think your basil plant needs more soil.”
Sometimes it amazes me what makes news.
As Hurricane Milton came ashore last week in Florida, lives were lost. Millions of damage occurred, if not more. And there are people who survived who will have a drastically different life in the aftermath.
I went out to the University of West Florida a couple of weekends ago ready to cover a cross-country meet bright and early on a Saturday morning after a late night of covering football in the rain.
I don’t mind waking up early. I’ve always been an early riser.
I am afraid of heights and have been all my life. I once worked in the city of Toronto, and from my workplace I could see the CN Tower. Occasionally I would look up from my work to watch its elevators climb the outside of the spire then disappear into its pod 1500 feet off the ground. One day, in what could only have been a moment of insanity, I agreed to visit the CN Tower with my parents and my wife.
The arrival of October means things get a little more interesting when it comes to high school football in the area.
For teams like Pace and Jay, it’s about continuing their respective pushes for the playoffs. The Patriots are the second-best team in Region 1-6A and a top 10 team in the state. Jay is in the same position in the Rural Classification.
I often write about bears, birds, weeds, and ants, so maybe I should change the name of this column to “Mr. Mike’s Nature Corner.” Turtles have become the celebrity creature in our household. For the past several weeks, almost daily, an assortment of box turtles has crawled under the fence into our backyard. At first, we assumed that they, like the occasional bear, were just passing through, but we soon learned that our yard is a destination.
