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?