For compound eyes only

Living in Zone 11 provides some wonderful latitude in plant selections. Craig, our landscape architect, is building in everything subtropical from silver buttonwood, with its velvety leaves, to the showy Simpson's stopper and that butterfly magnet above, coralito.

But while it's attracting mariposas, coral vine repels prying eyes, growing thick and quick. That's why it's the choice to "enclose" our outdoor shower, which abuts the Clarks' back yard.

Outdoor showers are incredibly liberating, and our climate makes them possible most days. The first few times you look out and see someone looking back -- from the neck up -- it's a bit disconcerting. Then you realize they can't see anything from the neck down.

After that, you just smile and wave, rinse and repeat.

The whole 10 yards

Amazing how much trash you can come up with in a day.

Robert ordered a 10-yard roll-off Tuesday morning. They said it would arrive about noon, but I'm glad I was at the house around 9 to let the driver know where we wanted it.

We started on the trash at the porch, plus dug-up roots, plus the big cartons the A/C units came in. Rotten timing -- it was in the upper 80s, and afternoon sun.

We got a fresh start this morning, cleaning out the deck, master bedroom, den, little guest room and finally the big room.

Sweep, cough, vacuum, sweat, sneeze. By the end of the day, the downstairs was far cleaner than we were.

A lesson in perspective

Troy and his helper Robert got our special- order shutters in today -- with my Robert beefing every minute about the cost.

When they were up and in, I had nasty thoughts about how satisfying it would be to leave the damn things closed all the time and avoid having our improper windows exposed to insult the delicate sensibilities of passers-by. But enough of that. They'll be a deep, rich blue, and I think they'll be stunning open or closed.

Window questions were, as usual, making me mildly crazy all day. Then, at dinner at Fogarty's, I got a lesson in perspective.

A few forkfuls into our meal, a bite went down the wrong pipe. Robert saw the look in my eyes, and I pulled him inside, away from other diners, where he did the Heimlich on me.

He saved my life. Makes windows look pretty insignificant.

Bronze on my mind

I think this obsession started with our front-door plaque, but it's now in full force:

On the theory that if you start something in one color or finish, you damn well ought to follow it through, almost all of the hardware in the house is or will be oil-rubbed bronze.

As in the front-door lock set -- which feels terrific in the hand, by the way -- everything from hinges to handles to fans to switch plate covers is going in with a little patina and a lot of deep color.

The exceptions, of course, are in the kitchen and baths, where the rule is stainless, chrome or polished nickel. (One other exception: gray slate switch covers on the kitchen backsplash, which ought to be a kick.) Otherwise, I'm scarfing up things in this dark, sleek brown, which I've come to think of as the new black for home decor.

On the practical side, it shouldn't corrode much in our incredibly salty air. On the style side, it looks lush as all get out.

The demons at 5 a.m. -- a rerun

There I was, kept from sleep again by waking nightmares of the historic commission, when I flipped the TV on in predawn desperation and flipped into -- a rebroadcast of the HARC meeting, on the city's cable channel.

I looked grayer, balder and wearier than I'd hoped -- but nothing like the poor soul in the great Goya etching "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos: The sleep of reason brings forth monsters." At least my voice was strong.

The overhead camera captured the exhibits well, and in my biased way I thought the whole process captured my horrible predicament all too well indeed, though it missed the howling owls.

I filed the appeal Friday, and I await word from the city's special master about the hearing. Sleeplessly.

Happy birthday, Mom

Here she is at our house in Tennessee with her boyfriend of 67 years, my dad, on his 94th birthday, in the fall of 2004.

He died six months later, and since then she's been reinventing herself: new car, redone house, new sun room, more African violets, more time for her card groups.

But she's never left his side. For her, he's still there every day -- I'm sure including Saturday night, when Ray and Shirley took her out for an 87th birthday dinner.

Bless them for that. I would have done it if I'd been there -- I do miss being there for her so much. I need to get this house finished, and get back up north for a while.

Pick your jellybean

Roy's little collection of empty paint cans is about finished, and every time I look at them I have to smile.

From top left: mango for the inside soffits, orchid for the cobalt bathroom, pale lemon-lime for the upstairs guest room and other baths, "Positive Red" for the den and master bedroom, sky for the porch ceiling and outside soffits, lemon drops for the exterior.

We still don't have the deep blue for the shutters in here. Roy's going to do them next week, because the last of the ones we ordered custom-made just came in, and it's better to do them all at once.

At any rate, I think our plantings will echo every one of these colors, from plumbago to ixora, and we're talking about those Monday with our landscape architect, Craig. He'll supply the green background.

Camouflage

This is Joe painting the fence on the south side of the house -- three sections in primed-wood vertical slats, while the rest is horizontal pressure-treated wood.

The big posts were pressure-treated and primed white, too, but Roy found a tan tint that blends seamlessly with the "Honey Gold" water seal we put on the horizontals. And the match was so good, we went ahead and painted the verticals, too.

Those verticals will always remind me of Ref. In the few days immediately after he died, we were scrambling to do something, anything, to take our mind off the loss -- and get on with the project. We had various takes on the style of fence he'd been planning, and those three sections were the prototypes we built. Rather than toss them when we found the final horizontal pattern, we fit them into the spaces least visible from the street or the rear deck.

The HardyBacker at the bottom, by the way, will hold dirt in place for our gardens.

Goddess in my pocket

She is Tara, at the left of the picture.

She is in brass, and I took the photo against the stairway up to the roof deck at our apartment. The mask to her right, maybe 6 inches tall, is one of the odd and wonderful pieces our landlord, Steve, has floating around the place where I've lived for the last year.

The Tara figure is not quite an inch and a half tall. She lives in my pocket every day, her sharper edges playing against my skin to remind me she's there. My thumb polishes her as best it can.

She is all about connections. My sweet friend Lou sent her to me. Lou got the figure from her daughter Gail. Gail had gotten it from a lama on a pilgrimage in Tibet. Gail has since taken her vows as a nun, and every time I touch Tara, silent now as Gail, I touch into her web of peace, strength and compassion. Four degrees of nirvana.

Not the court date I was expecting

Tomorrow morning, I go to the city clerk's office to file my official notice of appeal for our historic architecture commission decision.

So far as I know, that puts me on the agenda for the next session of the city's Special Master in HARC disputes, which is listed for March 23 on the municipal calendar. All of which means I think they'll catch and release me on the 19th, when I'm to report for jury duty.

One of the great clerks at the Building Department (and they have many) made me smile about all of it today.

I was talking with her about the mechanics of posting a performance bond, in the event of further adverse decisions, that would allow us to proceed toward a Certificate of Occupancy for our home despite outstanding HARC issues -- actually moving in, while pledging to abide by whatever decision the court ultimately makes.

She was doing her best to make the process as painless as possible -- to get the paperwork started early, because it has to be signed by inspectors, the city manager, the city attorney -- and when I mentioned the jury summons, she said:

"Honey, get on that jury! You might decide your own case."

I thanked her for the laugh, and she ended up giving me a huge hug before I left the office. She said I looked like I needed one.

Even splashier

Hank's progress in the last day gives you an even better idea of what the kitchen backsplash is going to look like.

What it doesn't give you is the contrast between adjacent surfaces -- nubby slate vs. glassy granite. There's also the matter of color transitions: The slate has just enough dark gray and blue to pick up the granite, and enough russet to make the jump to the cabinets.

I think I'm going to like it a lot.

Making a splash

We figured solid slabs of granite would be too massive for the kitchen backsplash -- too much of a good thing -- so we're mixing things up with the same slate mosaic from the master bath floor.

Hank and Ray just started on it. Hank wasn't exactly delighted about the cuts required for the diamond set, but he sure understood why I wanted to do it that way: to offset the strict verticals and horizontals of the kitchen cabinets and pulls.

Back on plan

Dave's bumper had the best advice of the day.

Looking up

The weather got better, and so did my twisted gut.

I ruled out flu and food pretty quickly. That left amoeba's residual damage. It's a gift that keeps on giving -- bad enough after my first bout in my 20s, and worse after my second 10 years ago. Pile stress on top of that, and it knocks me flat.

By this morning I was up and about for a couple of hours. Roy was sealing the fence, but the best view was up. Breathtaking.

Still, all the crap going on with HARC made me wonder how many more angles I'd have to figure.

So I went home to bed again. I kept thinking how lovely the sky is, how luminous the yellow in the right light.

This is not a post

It was a gray, chilly day, and I woke up feeling awful. Anxiety and grief, I assumed, and went to the house and helped Roy put in some of the ventilation grates he'd painted.

I went back to the apartment before noon, chilled to the bone. Half a bowl of soup for lunch, but it had bought a return ticket.

I spent the rest of the day in bed.

Old Chicagoans

The sidewalk pavers are from the Old Chicago Brick Co., which buys, cleans up and ships out goods from my old stomping grounds.

As I've said more than once this week, it's good not to be the only Old Chicago artifact around here.

Today the lads finished up with some hidden concrete curbs along the street to hold both bricks and pavers in, as well as the two "soldiered" brick planting beds outside the front gate.

I think they did a terrific job.

Moving right along

This is Joe, who signed on to the paint crew a week or so ago when Santos was indisposed (Santos is back now, too).

He's giving the mango touch to the frame of the railing around the loft -- the same color as the soffits, but as usual light plays tricks, and it looks much lighter here than there.

I thought a lot about Joe Wednesday every time I started to feel sorry for myself about the windows, or about the HVAC guy delaying us yet again, or any other little setback.

Joe's apartment building on upper Whitehead burned down Tuesday night, and he's currently a guest of the Red Cross, with unknown housing prospects.

Lose a vote, gain a driveway

We had an inch or so of rain early this morning, which was not great news for Dave and our paving crew.

There were a few inches of water sitting in our walkway and parking area -- nothing I'd ever seen -- though Dave was determined to get the pavers in today.

Declan and Ted scooped water out to the street with shovels, and then they brought in a tamper I could feel as a foot-massager from the porch.

The sun came out, the ground dried -- and then the truck from Mama's Rock and Sand (just behind the smut store near the Navy station at Boca Chica) pulled up.

I had to go off to the HARC meeting, but by the time I came back at the end of the day, they'd almost finished it.

Remind me never to judge anyone on first appearance. That little yellow-and-black blob at the closest edge of the driveway waffle is a laser level -- the highest tech to give us the best result on our driveway.

Besides, Dave, Deco and Ted are all ready to discuss any element of Ulysses or The Wake.

Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa, birthing our driveway.

How the HARC hearing went

Pietro Perugino, St. Sebastian, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Then again, I don't think Sebastiano had a lawyer.

I hate to engage in that sort of thing -- in my entire life, I have never been in court, for anything at any time, except as the subject of a case when my parents adopted me -- but within moments of the end of the hearing, I called the local lawyer with the best batting average for HARC appeals. After all, the commissioners had encouraged me to pursue my case. So we'll take our plea before the Special Master -- a magistrate who handles HARC appeals and zoning disputes.

I asked our architect, Dennis, to estimate the cost of replacing the seven windows in question. I doubled the figure he gave me, and that's my tentative budget for that hearing, as well as an appeal to the Board of Adjustment or the Circuit Court, if they're needed. I might as well use up my lifetime litigation budget all at once.

- ■ -

Here's a question: FEMA, the State of Florida, Monroe County and my insurers all tell me I need to armor my homestead against hurricanes. What role do non-storm-safe wooden windows take in that?

When in doubt, be Dorothy

Tuesday is my appearance before the Historic Archi- tecture Review Commis- sion about our windows, 3 p.m. EST.

If you have energy to channel, send it. Billie Burke will be on my shoulder, but I will very much be John the small and meek.

Going down the road, I'll try to bring as much sense, heart and courage to the presentation as I can.

On my way up to Old City Hall, I could stop in Flying Monkeys for inspiration -- and a pair of these.

Dorothy: Weren't you frightened?

Wizard: Frightened? Child, you're talking to a man who's laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe. . . . I was petrified.

What a ride

Captain Outrageous -- artist, bon vivant, raconteur, political candidate -- had a stroke Friday night, and a heart attack on the way to the hospital. They airlifted him to Miami -- his first trip out of the Keys in 15 years, but his brain was dead by the time he got to the mainland. He was 66.

I didn't take pictures of the impromptu memorial at the gate of his house on Caroline, draped with beads and decked with flowers. Instead I repeat the picture of his car I posted in November, even more to the point now than then:

Marking the Passage

We were out at Higgs Beach for lunch the other day, and the West Martello Tower -- a fortification for Ft. Zachary Taylor dating from the 1860s -- was just steps away. Since it's one of the venues for Sculpture Key West again this year, as well as headquarters for the Garden Club, we made our way there to look around.

Parts of the structure are amazing ruins. Some say guns from Ft. Zach or offshore ships used it for target practice after the war. But a historical marker across the street gives another part of its story:

Near this site lie the remains of 294 African men, women and children who died in Key West in 1860. In the summer of that year the U.S. Navy rescued 1,432 Africans from three American-owned ships engaged in the illegal slave trade. Ships bound for Cuba were intercepted by the U.S. Navy, who brought the freed Africans to Key West where they were provided with clothing, shelter and medical treatment. They had spent weeks in unsanitary and inhumane conditions aboard the slave ships. The U.S. steamships Mohawk, Wyandott and Crusader rescued these individuals from the Wildfire, where 507 were rescued; the William, where 513 were rescued; and the Bogota, where 417 survived. In all, 294 Africans succumbed at Key West to various diseases caused by conditions of their confinement. They were buried in unmarked graves on the present day Higgs Beach where West Martello Tower now stands. By August, more than 1,000 survivors left for Liberia, West Africa, a country founded for former American slaves, where the U.S. government supported them for a time. Hundreds died on the ships before reaching Liberia. Thus, the survivors were returned to their native land, Africa, but not to their original homes on that continent.

As part of this year's sculpture show, Lauren McAloon conceived "Passages" on the highest rise of the Martello.

Belaying pins on stakes symbolize their voyage.

Tribal motifs symbolize their lost land and lost lives, and the consecration of the ground in 2002 by Adegbolu Adefunmi, a visiting Yoruba prince, and William McKinzie, a member of the local memorial committee.

(Ground-penetrating radar had mapped part of the cemetery earlier that year -- not the first time the community took interest. When the Africans arrived in 1860, the town built them barracks and a hospital, contributed clothes and food, paid for the burials as more sickened travelers died, and finally subscribed to send the survivors home.)

Hundreds of blue bottles, traditional symbols of mourning in slave com- munities, stand in ranks on the fence spikes ringing the high ground. And tall, thick bamboo cylinders, notched into huge flutes, turn the constant wind into a low, steady moan.

A mass of mango

When I'm judging colors, or comparing masses of them, I usually take my glasses off. If you'd done that this morning, this would have been your vision of Roy rolling our soffit color on for a test.

Without sharp edges to distract me, it's easier for me to get the flavor of the ceiling and walls against the soffits. Of course daylight played some tricks -- bright places certainly didn't look the same shade as those in shadows -- but by the time he'd gotten a good coat on, I liked what I saw.

Robert's less sure; he thinks it's odd. I think it will grow on him.

Deeper and deeper

Kenny, the HVAC guy, came by late Friday to drop off some copper and PVC pipes -- the former for the coolant, the latter to protect the former -- and couldn't help but notice the excavations at the front step and driveway.

The Irish crew had been working all day to get the left side smooth. Once it's done, with grid sections braced into their dirt box, they'll channel into the dug-out part of the front yard.

"What the heck are they diggin'?," Kenny asked.

It's still on the QT, I said, but I guess I can tell you at this stage: This is the terminal for the new Key West-to-Havana tunnel.

(Auld) Sod, plants, roots, rocks

Dave and his fellow Hibernians were there bright and early Thursday to dig beds to underlay the brick walkway and the permeable pavers -- pierced waffles of concrete that will let some of our rain drain down instead of running off.

The walkway part -- just from the left gate to the centerline, and from the front gate to the porch steps -- was relatively easy going, the plumbers having scraped everything up pretty thoroughly when they put the sewer connector in.

So we turned our attention to our landscape architect, Craig, who came by with his early working drawing.

It was a blackprint, not a blueprint, but the plants gave it plenty of blue, red, yellow, green, silver, orange. . . . I stooped and squinted and turned the plan to help my mental eyes and finally saw the dream in perspective. My real eyes filled up a bit. Beautiful. I even saw where the night jasmine would waft across the porch, and added a day-bloomer on the other corner just for good measure.

Less lovely and far less abstract was what Dave and the boyos -- Declan and Ted -- were encounter- ing in the parking area: They'd uncovered huge roots from our sapodilla stretching exactly where the underlayment needed to go. No one had any idea they were there.

So out came the pick and the pry bar -- and then the Sawzall -- with much wrenching and sweating to get to about eight inches under grade. As they labored mightily, yet with grace, I thought of the generations of sandhogs who had dug so much of the country's structure. Properly directed, these lads could bore straight to the mantle.

And they proved it when, just under the roots, they hit huge chunks of cap rock. More pry bars, picks -- and a sledge, too. They clawed out what they could, and busted up and hauled out the rest.

Late in the day, Deco said his body was telling him he needed a Guinness or two soon for nourishment and encouragement, so he could start the new day refreshed and restored. I wished him Sláinte.

The grass is . . . purpler

We got away from the vapors long enough to have lunch on Higgs Beach at Salute, and I got an eyeful of color when I gave a close look to the beach grass brushing our table.

A case of the vapors

Roy needed something to throw over the window to protect it while he was lacquering the doors, so we found an old Pollock in the closet and hung it up.

The more I looked at it, the better the Pollock looked with the light coming through it, and maybe the varnish will protect it against further damage before we return it to the museum. . . .

Sorry, but I'm a little off my head since inhaling all those vapors today.

For a while, all I had to do was to get out on the porch. Then farther out in front of the house. Then I started moving way upwind. Standing in the street, I still felt my head spinning when our neighbor Martin came by with his dog, Fluffy, sniffed, quickly commented, "Ah, varnish," and moved along smartly.

Hank came back to see about repairing the granite installers' damage, putting in the bathroom floors and doing the backsplash -- and retreated after getting some rough measures. By the time he comes back tomorrow or Friday, the vapors should have dissipated.

Dave, the Irish guy who's doing our brick walks and pavers, came up around noon to say his fellas had been celebrating a birthday Tuesday night, so. . . .

They'll be here Thursday, barring another birthday.

Let us spray

Things are looking down -- only in in the literal sense.

These, of course, are our doors, ready for a coat of prep-stuff, a little sanding, and then a few coats of lacquer.

I spent an hour or so helping Roy put them up into position for spraying, holding while he nailed.

It wasn't a procedure I'd seen before, but when Arnold came into the room, his first words were: "Ah, you're making a spray booth."

So we were.

Shutters! (mostly)

Our windows -- eight of 'em, anyway -- have shutters, thanks to Troy (right) and his assistant, Robert.

Turns out the ground-floor windows could accommodate standard wood shutters, in stock at Strunk's, after just a little trimming.

So on Monday, they got 'em, cut 'em, hung 'em and marked them for painting and re-hanging.

We're special-ordering the ones for the gable and dormers.

Wide screen

Since it's Superbowl Sunday, we went out to the widest screen in town, Smathers Beach.

The crowd was sparse, the sky was starting to spit, the game was slow and all the players were inexplicably masquerading as seagulls -- but the definition was higher than you could believe and the mild 70s breeze felt great. The Cuban and Cuban pork sandwiches beat the usual stadium food, too.

Two down . . .

And Kenny to go.

Which about as much fun as waiting for the HARC hearing. Having having filed those papers Friday, there's nothing I can do about that until the event itself, Feb. 13. Maybe they'll give me a pre-Valentine heart.

As for Kenny, our HVAC man -- I'll ac-cent-uate the positive and say that he has not literally stabbed me in the back. Yet.

Chip, the pool plumber (on the left), and Denny, the electrician, were there on Friday. With all that hooked up, it's now up to Kenny.

This is the man who has, to put it very charitably, been inaccurate about his schedule to me -- what? A dozen times? Two dozen? He must get his -- my -- air conditioners up and running before I can order the floor wood. I hear the metronome. Start the music.

Sunshine on a stem

Key West is full of ixoras -- pretty much non-stop bloomers with hundreds of tiny red flowers on blossom heads. But when we were looking around town for plants to talk about with Craig, our landscape architect, we were surprised to find that this beauty on Fleming Street was an ixora, too: an aureum.

When he gave us its botanical name, I said, Yes -- gold. Aureum indeed, standing there today in a mild breeze and high-80s sunshine. (Heck, it's 80 at 10 p.m., under a full moon as big as the tropical night as I write this.)

I took a closer look at it and saw . . . our walls, on petals instead of wood.

Roy had been wrestling with his old, second-hand sprayer, and then buying a new one, to put a light coat of satin polyurethane on our paint-wiped walls and stained ceilings today.

Look at the sheen on the near wall he'd just sprayed in this picture, and compare it to the blotchy hit-or-miss reflectivity of the raw wiped paint on the far section. That little touch of poly compensates wonderfully for the differing absorbencies of sapwood and heartwood, and it's everything I'd hoped for.

And the ceiling: Well, it's starting to look like big, sweet strips of caramel -- warm, just glossy enough and oh, so tasty.

Thanks, Mr. Cole

I was driving out to the east end of the island today for a haircut from Armando, listening to Diane Rehm on the Miami NPR station, when my inner CD started playing, loudly.

Out of nowhere, Nat "King" Cole was singing, doing keyboard while his two backups did their usual subtle magic.

"You have to ac-cent, the positive. E-lim-inate the negative. Latch. On. To the affirmative. Don't mess with Mr. In-Between. . . ."

I heard it, and then I heard it. I started singing along.

Before long, I'd graduated to "Straighten Up and Fly Right."

After the haircut, I got back to the house and started taking pictures that might go with our architecture commission plea. I had fresh eyes when I went up to the loft and saw our ceiling and windows playing in the light as if they'd just been introduced to each other.

Later in the day, Robert and I went out to Higgs Beach for the sunset just like the tourists, smelled the air, got sand in our flip-flops, had a glass of wine, watched a schooner drop its sails a few miles offshore, tracked the Tortugas seaplane, saw clouds band the sun like Jupiter, daring me to complain because I didn't have my camera.

I didn't care about a camera. I latched on. To the affirmative.

Sunset is affirmative, and I'm by far, come what may, the luckiest person I know.

Thinking of Molly

I've been alternating between tears and laughter today, thinking about Molly Ivins. I'll miss that voice. Then I saw this bumper sticker and thought: Those who share her spirit live on.