Sailing away

This is the Wreckers' Race on Sunday -- which we missed. While they were sailing north, we were driving up the Keys, and I got a bit misty as I passed Stock Island for the first time in six months or so and got farther from Southernmost with every mile marker.

Our last days before the trip were not idyllic -- both water heaters finally decided to fail, and the plumber promised to come both Friday and Saturday, but canceled each time. But no matter.

This morning we're in Gainesville, with probably the last fast web connection I'll have in a good, long time, so we'll just have to see how well this thing works from Holly Hill, where the temperature as I write is 48.

Shiver me timbers indeed.

Let there be light (switches)

Two reasons for my spotty posting: blues, because we're getting ready to head north for a while; and busyness, because we're getting ready to head north for a while.

One full day, for example, went to getting the hurricane door on the laundry fixed. Turns out it was installed wrong, and a misplaced screw doomed the motor, which meant the replacement was free, though lengthy.

I'm still waiting for the replacement water heater, which means we're showering upstairs.

And then the garden. . . .

Robert's been doing spring fertilizing, and I'm pruning things back so they won't be out of control in the month or two we'll be away (we're planning on hopping down during the summer when we can).

And then the computer controller for the lights, which I'd like to fire at odd times while we're gone, as a little deterrent to disturbance. I've been wrestling with it for weeks, and only today found the right button to get the core application to fix itself and start working. So voila, the porch light now goes on at 20 minutes after sunset, plus or minus 15 minutes, and turns off sometime around midnight.

I'll fool around with regular lighting scenarios -- adjusting the spot on the Winnie Godfrey's tulip at top left, for example -- when I have more time.

Setting it straight

There's been a bit of talk lately about our photogenic bachelor governor having a shot at the GOP's veep slot.

That pesky whispering about his singleness keeps coming up, though, which may be one reason they released this picture of him and the woman he introduced as "my girlfriend" at a Governor's Mansion reception.

Safe at last

Eleven years ago, the state Department of Environ- mental Control declared that the Australian pines at Ft. Zach would have to go -- non-native species, invasive, feh.

Hundreds who love the shade, the sound of the sea breeze through the trees and esthetics in general rose up, organized, nagged, complained and nettled.

Last year, the state started cutting, and the caterwauling stepped up loud enough to drown out the chain saws.

And this week, finally, the state agreed that the pines could stay.

That swishing you hear is the laughter of trees.

Another 'Mission Accomplished'

From Reuters, April 20, 2007:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Friday the housing market correction appears to be at or near its bottom and that troubles in the subprime mortgage market will not likely spread throughout the economy.

"We've clearly had a big correction in the housing market. Retail housing was growing for some time at a level that was not sustainable," Paulson said in a speech to The Committee of 100, a business group in New York promoting better Chinese relations.

"I don't see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained," he added.

Muy tropicál

Things like to grow a lot here.

Yesterday I cut the night- blooming hibiscus back at least a foot, to let its neighbors get light under and around it, and today it shouted back with 3 inches of "So there!"

And then there is the ficus ripens, the little creeping fig we want to coat the sides of our front steps.

It's covering the ground on either side, all right -- so much so that I go in every week or so and keep it from choking out everything there. But it's also deployed across the bottom step.

Footfalls keep it in line so far. But I'm fascinated by the regularity of its attempts. (Not to mention those of the volunteer ferns in the brick walkway.)

Monsters among us

This fine creature, sitting in the mangrove pond at North Roosevelt and Martí, is part of this year's Sculpture Key West, which puts new works from artists near and far at Fort Zach, the West Martello and other locations around town.

We scoped out the Martello pieces at Harrell and Barry's end-of-season party there, and enjoyed them as ever. This offsite installation, named "_┌" in an all-too-cute smiley way, is not half the animal of last year's tremendous "Trojan Duck," a giant wooden mallard on wheels that sat at the East Martello for many happy months.

Robert would naturally like to bring the monster to the lake at Holly Hill but, dear lad, he has the sense to read our market positions correctly and realizes that we would do well to fund a newt.

Other visitors in town, however, would be welcome under no circumstances whatsoever.

I refer to spring breakers, who have been either refused admission at or tossed out of most of the hotels and guest houses on or near our street. A batch of 6 lads, who became 8, and then 12, and then 16, and so on, got the boot from the pink house across the street yesterday.

They were replaced by 6 female breakers, who travel in flocks, and became louder than the 16 males because they all chatter at once, as opposed to staggering off in small beer-soaked subgroups whose lungs only power up here when the bars close a block away at 4 a.m. (Besides, the pecs are better on the males this year.) One was sleeping on our driveway two nights ago, and moved very quickly for such a large person when I shone a cop-grade flashlight in his face.

And then there are this weekend's crowds: As I went out to get some new bowls from Grace, our personal potter, and pick up the Keysmobile after an oil change, the clots of people staggering up and down Duval in green T-shirts and green hats and green beads and green beer sloshing on the sidewalk reminded me of why I was so glad to move from the apartment over the Irish bar on Halsted street lo those many years ago.

Two in the bush

Actually, it's now three, but that one's not in the picture.

These are white birds of paradise, out at the front fence, and I'm awfully happy the big plants are so eager to bloom.

Since they went in last June, they've grown an extra couple of feet, and we've had seven or eight blossoms, all about a foot long and not terribly visible from the street but gorgeous from the porch.

Old standards

It was Robert's birthday, so of course we were at Alice's, and of course he had the lettuce wedgie with blue cheese and the coconut shrimp and bread pudding (with decoration), and of course I had duck shu mai and yellowtail, and of course we had Moscato after-dinners.

And of course we went to La Te Da -- where we of course expected to find Debra and Patrick, whom we'd seen a few days before at Harrell and Barry's party at the Martello, but Bobby Nesbitt, who of course was at the H&B party, too, was playing and of course we enjoyed it.

For what the bell tolls

Yet another reason I think Key West is like no other place on Earth:

On our way up Duval from a lawyer's appoint- ment yesterday, we happened to pass St. Paul's at the stroke of noon, and I had to grin.

It was the first time I'd ever heard "Give My Regards to Broadway" played on a carillon.

Another shabby day in Paradise

No one here would say "shabby," but for me it's the same idea Mr. Wright had for Falling Water:

Go outside your house to see where your house is. The intention is what the deal is about.

If you live here, that might mean going to the beach, with the guitar guy in the background doing John Lennon's greatest hits, so you can watch the big ball drop into the palapa at the Casa Marina.

This time of year, there are all sorts of tourists climbing across the barricades on the old Dick Dock, still being repaired after Wilma; but if they fall in the gulls and pelicans will make the alarm.

Screened porch

So there I've been, nursing my thumb (not totally in the thumb-
sucking phase, but almost) on the porch.

And it has been in the 80s and 90s here, which makes me wonder even more about climate change, and about the heat of the ocean.

But back to the topic. It has been difficult, with the bandage and all, to turn pages on books, and specifically to type. But not to observe from my corner of the porch, and to note that the pink mussaenda, to the left of the column, and the night-blooming jasmine, to the right, have all but obscured the view of the street toward me.

Their little view-slits make me think of the Arabic porches of Seville, woodcuts so artful that the harem members above could watch the street below without being observed.

And so I sit, veiled, and watch.

Thumbs

If you look in from the street gate, this is what you see.

Behind it is our outdoor shower, which is why the green wall is crucial, and why I'm so happy it's taken off so dramatically.

That's my green-thumb side.

My red thumb emerged while I was slicing onions for shepherd's pie, quickly becoming a blue thumb when I wrapped it in painter's tape so I could keep on cooking.

Typing is another matter. I'll be back when it's better.