You try to teach your kids to have good manners. You know, say “Please” and “Thank You,” wait your turn, share with others, and hold things carefully in your hands. We have failed miserably. Well, not on most things, Abby and Maddy are pretty polite generally, but apparently holding things in their hands is just one too many to ask.

I shouldn’t be surprised. There is this phenomenon in our family that we call Bokor Toes. Many Bokors possess the extraordinary ability to pick things up with their toes. Not sure if it’s the unusually large big toe or the elongated second toe, but whatever it is, you will often find us picking things up off the floor with our toes. I still remember one time when I was visiting my brother out in Washington and we went out to dinner. A salt shaker fell off the table and rolled under the seats. Kim ducked under to try to find it and what appeared instead from under the table was the salt shaker grasped with ease between my brother’s toes. (Needless to say, we didn’t salt anymore of our food . . .)

The other night, Maddy and I were playing a game that involved a few categories of cards. And for some reason she decided that she needed to hold the cards with her toes. She had to use both feet for this particular game, and it became quite the balancing act as the number of cards she had grew. I will say that it did slow the pace of the game a little, but why not add a little extra challenge to your life? I think we’ll try to leave it to games and keep it away from the dinner table.

When we aren’t playing card games with our feet, we are on our feet and busy getting into the fall season. The weather forecast keeps promising a cooldown. I’ll believe it when I feel it, and anyways, we aren’t going to let a little warm weather stop us. Over the past week, we’ve redecorated our front porch for the season, and here are some tips for making fall happen in Florida. To see our front porch happenings from Abby’s perspective, click here.

And with this gorgeous gardening weather around, it is also a great time to get fruit trees planted in your backyard orchard. This Saturday at 10 am, join us for the Growing Fruit Trees Seminar. I’ll talk about growing all types of fruit trees in Florida from peaches to mangos and everything in between. We’ll discuss winter care for your favorite tropicals as well. Fall is definitely for Fun in the Garden.