Not wet . . . yet

So there they were, Ken and Ben in front, Robert just behind, looking apprehensive (just click the shot to see their faces better) -- while I, being duller and somewhat acceleration-averse, stood at the foot of Splash Mountain waiting, waiting for their descent. . . .

Which resulted in a splash indeed, but that's not where you get wet on this ride at Disney. It's afterward, as you round a turn to the left and get pasted by the tsunami from the next descending group.

The photo below, by the way, is a little tech marvel that the Disney folks cobble together for riders on the Spaceship Earth exhibit over in Epcot. After your trip to the top of the big globe, with Helen Mirren narrating, you answer some questions about your environmental preferences, and face-recognition software pastes both occupants of the travel pod into a postcard you can email after your landing.

Like most of the things around this place, hokey but great fun.

So leaf, already

The danger of frost seems to have passed, it's only getting down into the low 60s overnight and I only needed one extra layer of fleece when I went out to the greenhouse to trim a winter's worth of old fronds, stumps and nastiness from the several dozen banana trees. Most of them have valiant little corkscrews at the top, signaling new leaves to come.

I have to get them to talk to the other trees around here. These, along our front road, are still looking pretty grim.

About as grim as I felt when I took a break from the hacking and pruning to take care of two phone calls.

One was from the dimwit HARC commissioner who also does freelance writing. If the subject hadn't been the woman who did our dinner set, I wouldn't have spoken to her. But Elizabeth, the potter, deserves as much good publicity as she can get, so I refrained from mentioning the stupidity of the Florida panther analogy the commissioner brought up to me when voting to make us tear out our windows just about a year ago, and instead waxed as eloquently as I could about our fantastic plates, bowls, platters and mugs.

The other was from the bank's brokerage company. As Florida residents, and as two single males, Robert and I have had to jump through some high hoops to minimize tax impacts when one of us dies, so we set up trusts and have put all our major assets in them -- except that brokerage account. Turns out the bank wants us to prove our bona fides by submitting both our trust documents, in full, though the details of the trusts are none of their damn business.

This is an institution, mind you, that has slashed its dividend because of lemon-loan losses. So they're pickier about their customers with assets than they've been about those with debits?

Well, I try

Instead of taking pretty pictures today, I did a little work for our charitable foundation, went to town, had lunch with Mom and her caretaker, got a haircut from a Kosovar refugee barber, pulled out estate papers to persuade the bank to get a laggard dividend check to my dad into Mom's account, got luggage for our upcoming trips to Disney and then to Bette Midler's Las Vegas show, paid a courtesy call at the Museum Center, got a cable Robert needs to make his laptop work with his old printer, hunted and gathered for dinner, picked up clay pots for the caladiums. . . .

And found out that when Miz Joe's annual bridge tournament happens in June, we'll have dinner for a bunch here (which means pulling out all the stops) and a non-bridge-playing houseguest I'll be expected to babysit.

Shoulda stayed in bed, but there wouldn't have been pictures about that, either.

Busy, busy

Our friend Ken asked a favor, and of course we accepted: His only niece is getting married in a few weeks, and she wanted to have some bridal portraits taken at our place.

So just before 7 Sunday morning, the photographer came through the gate, and I gave him a quick tour. Then came Ken, his sister and her daughter, the bride-to be.

She changed into her (lovely!) gown, and we set out around the house and grounds -- grass so dewy that Ken carried the train and I carried a sheet to spread out for shots, and then to tuck under the hem, around the towel I'd carried to wrap her cold, wet feet. These dogwoods at the flagpole made one nice backdrop.

Several hours later, with her back in plainclothes, the groom-to-be arrived with the bride's dad and Ken's partner, Ben, and the two dogs, for family portraits.

And around noon they left, and Robert swept in from the Gatlinburg bridge tournament, where his team had won and picked up a whopping 28 master points.

Soon after which I left for the grocery, to pick up supplies for Robert's regular Monday bridge group -- pepperoni appetizers, a chicken-sausage-wild rice casserole, salad, biscuits and a Key West dessert brought north: trés leches -- "three milks" -- a yellow cake soaked in cream, condensed milk and evaporated milk, left to steep overnight in the fridge into almost a pudding.

All of which I cooked up back home . . . and went to bed early.

It's that time

Our pink dogwoods -- Cherokee Chief is the variety, the best of the reds -- are taking my breath away this year.

They've had a tough time. The horrid drought across the whole Southeast last year put incredible stress on trees and bushes, and dogwoods were among the hardest hit. The tops of many of our trees are dead or dying.

But the problem starts at the top and works down, so I'm enjoying the view at eye level while I can.

Just don't tell me

When I post things here, and check the results to make sure there are no odd hyphenations, or maybe only a few, the Key West weather pops up in the right screen. I'm about to disable it, because it sends me into such a tailspin every time.

One ticked-off cardinal

He's been knocking at the kitchen window for the last few days, with his olive-drab mate sitting a little higher and farther back in the dogwood. They come to nibble, and stay to battle with the rivals they see in the glass.

So BANG goes the bill, and then BANG again.

I guess it comes with the territory -- as do the deer defoliating our little evergreens (I counted 15 at the buffet the other night as I went down to get the mail, sans camera of course), and the nesting geese on the lake (now down to one, fruitlessly honking for its mate; Ray thinks the turtles snagged the one that's MIA), the rabbits hunkered under the boxwoods, doubtlessly licking their chops in anticipation of the impatiens that are about to go in (looks as if we've had our last frost -- I hope). . . .

Not quite the same as pelicans and palm trees, but it'll do for a while.

Looking up

I mean my internet connect- ivity, of course, because this is looking through -- through the weeping cherries.

The satellite guy came late yesterday afternoon, and by dusk there was a dish in place, hidden back behind the garage wall, beaming up and down (quicker down) and providing about as fast a connection as our Key West DSL.

It's a little like escaping a vat of molasses -- though certainly cold molasses: This morning it's 40, and we're still waiting before bringing the bananas and other tender things out of the greenhouse.

Knuckles

PBS's "Antiques Roadshow" is coming to Chatta- nooga in July, and as usual they're sending out a request for local submissions of furniture they might consider dropping into their maelstrom.

For screenings, they don't do tall clocks, so our Simon Willard is out. And they don't do "smalls," so there go our daughters-of-Victoria portraits on their brass Christmas card, from 1858. Nor our Chinese cinnabar box from the 1500s. If we want any of those commented on by the Roadshow experts, we'll have to carry them into the cyclone at the convention center.

But "large furniture" . . . there's the ticket. They pack and ship it to the crowd scene. And there are several things of ours they might be interested in, including the settee from the entry hall, which we got at auction at Leslie Hindman's gallery in Chicago in the early '80s, as I recall the date.

Maybe the Roadshow folks will give us better dates all around.

And I look at those knuckles, and know they can knock their way anywhere they want to go.

Mine eyes look up

. . . And see tulip magnolias.

At least before last night's frost.

I think the high was 57 today. I went to mom's house, took her tax records for her files along with a big amaryllis from the greenhouse, ready to pop.

After that, and just before they closed for their own April 15 independence day, I got a pan of hot-from-the-oven brownies to the accountant's office with the check for mom's fee.

Let us give thanks to the Lord, for the day is good.

A patch of blue

Keith and his crew were giving the driveway its first mowing of the season yesterday -- actually the first mowing since last fall, when they spread a few tons of new dirt in the bald spots and reseeded -- and were kind enough to detour around me.

I was sprawled on my stomach, prime position for the manufacture of photographer tartare, at the edge of this patch of weeds: blossom heads about half an inch high, somewhere between clovers and salvia, and a color that instantly made me think of old Mr. Valdez' Conch Republic flag.

Yep. Still homesick, despite such a fair day and an afternoon in the 80s. And rueful that I didn't bring a new flag north, since the one under the stars and stripes on our flagpole is ragged from the winter wind.

Keith eventually left the patch standing, and it made me think: Wouldn't an acre or so of this stuff, in a rectangle interplanted with the right pattern of yellow and pink, look great in one of our meadows?

Claiming my island

When the process gets far enough in the way of the message, it's time to change the process, so I'm fighting every tightwad tendency I have and going ahead with satellite net service -- which at least I can turn off when not in Tennessee to save some cash and turn on again when here -- after waiting more than half an hour for this meager picture of the greenhouse to upload (and, as it turns out, another 15 minutes to edit).

When I prepped this photo for upload I was going to tell you how sweet it was to get into the greenhouse again, to smell its richness, to see the ferns and bananas and bromeliads flourishing afterwinter, even the bougainvillea doing its thing, when the outside is shivering. My mood was actually quite good.

The temperatures in there are what I've come to love: steamy, as opposed to the arthritis-taunting cold-damp outside, though in the last few days, we've had sun enough to make me love walking around this place again. And to get out to see some wonderful people, and beautiful things. Old friends in a good place.

But to sit here for a half-hour every time twiddling your thumbs on a dialup . . . .

No more. I don't care if they have to put the satellite dish in the middle of the courtyard and a nephew or two doesn't get his inheritance. It's on order.

Life is too short, and there are too many pretty things not to share -- right now.

Patience, patience

Perhaps it was fore- shadowing.

We were at least three- fourths of the way through the 18-Mile Stretch last week, the ribbon of road on Henry Flagler's old right-of-way connecting Key Largo to the mainland, when traffic stopped stock still about a mile shy of the last passing zone. And with nothing coming the opposite way, we figured the blockage was total.

Cars ahead of us and behind peeled off, heading back south (and dodging other U-turners) to take the alternate route via Card Sound Road. I figured the double-back, and then the alternate, would take an hour or more, and that being so close to Florida City, we might just as well wait.

And wait we did, as Robert wandered up the line to watch the rescue chopper from the trauma center in Miami swoop in to pick up the latest motorcyclist to wipe out in the mangroves. (They tend to get a little loony on the Stretch, and I'd feel more empathy for them if they didn't take so many non-motorcylists with them head-on as they attempt their suicide passes.)

So after about 45 minutes, we were on our way northbound again -- creeping carefully, watching out for southbounders who were still U-turning in their queue. It was a taste of things to come, I thought this morning as my dialup connection took 15 minutes to upload the helicopter picture, c r a w w w w l i n g along as random packets whizzed by along the Internets. . . .

Pre-green

Just a placeholder, really.

We've made it back to the Land that Time Forgot -- broadband forgot it, too, which is why you may not see many photos here for a bit. I've had a horrible time connecting.

Still, the redbuds are in bloom (mostly). Dogwoods are doing their thing. Other leaves -- well, it's still early spring in the hills, so the willows have started greening up but the woods are still brown.

I did see a bluebird yesterday. He was shivering: It's in the 50s, drizzling.

Not quite the tropics.