Sometimes, flowers are all

When he was over for drinks a few weeks ago, Father Don sang the praises of Gary, the guy who provides St. Peter's with flowers every Sunday.

He's not quite the official sexton -- I guess Carl is in that job, and he came by the house the other night to check out what we'd done to our place -- but Gary does open and close the church every day, as well as do the floralizing. We smile hellos every morning.

So yesterday, when I heard the front gate bells ching -- the bells from my grandfather's harness shop -- and opened the front door and found three packages of orchids. . . .

Well. And well beyond beautiful.

Then tonight, when Gary went to close the church, he found a man in a pew who had just shot himself in the head. Horrible to discover.

I ran up to the church, and there was gentle Gary, shivering.

Last night

We were on the porch, and I was giving Robert a variation on "A Hundred Million Miracles" (Flower Drum Song was on Turner a few weeks back, and it's still echoing in my head).

I started waxing poetic about the silhouettes of palms against the sky when the evening light reaches a certain level: black against richest South Sea pearl gray, fronds defined by a flurry of cuts with an X-acto knife.

And then another sort of slice appeared. Hundred million and one.

Not your average quiche

I made a quiche lorraine a few weeks back because we had the perfect storm of leftovers sitting around in the fridge: eggs, cream, onion, cheese and bacon. Delish.

So this week when some leftover picadillo got to the use-it-or-lose-it stage, I figured we might try a variation on a theme.

Mexican queso instead of Jarlsberg, and of course that picante mix of beef, onions, garlic, raisins, olives and spices.

I loved it. Robert not so much. I think he's had all the variations on a picadillo theme he can take for a while -- but I sure have the recipe down pat.

Blithe spirit

Wicked wit, heart of gold and you get the idea:

This is Richard, who shares cottage-tending duty at one of the rentals across the street with Martin, the very preppy Québécois.

If you have not noticed, Richard is not very preppy -- though he has cleaned up here from his usual red-bandanna do-rag.

He's from L.A., as in Lower Alabama, and the first time I said hi from our porch, so long ago, he wheeled and said, "Well, hell-LO, handsome! You can call me Blanche."

How can you not smile?

Did you guess?

I found this creature clinging for dear life to our mussaenda the other morning, and thought I'd post him today for my Mom's birthday.

He, or she, was backlit, glorious in the morning light, but having a rough time of it.

He didn't move for an hour or so. I figured he might have given up the ghost.

But when I came back outside after refilling my coffee, there he was on top of the leaf instead of under it.

He got blown sideways a few times, but kept crawling back up to the top. And after what seemed an eon -- and probably was, in his frame of reference -- he fluttered into the wind, and up, and away.

Triumph, at least for a while. Fitting for a day like today.

Patterns

On this one, I think of patterns, though less of Amy Lowell's kind, and more of something by Tiffany or Klimt or Mucha.

When we first went to Prague those many years ago, the Mucha Museum was maybe a block-and-a-half from our hotel. And there were these russets, these ochers, these greens, these grays.

But this is drawn from nature, drawn from our front yard. I'll give you the larger-scale picture later. Do you get it if you click it?

Tasty little devils

Robert and I worked most of the morning on the devils on horseback for the Oscar party tonight at the Tropic.

I'd roasted the garlic cloves last night -- 250 degrees or so for maybe half an hour, just covered with olive oil in a glass dish. So we checked the dates for pits and fragments, stuffed the cooled garlic cloves inside, wrapped each in a third of a lengthwise-folded strip of bacon, and fastened them with picks.

Then I spread them out in batches on a rack in a lined baking tin, brushed them with teriyaki marinade and baked them at 450 for 9 minutes on one side, cooled them enough to turn, then brushed them again and put them back in for 6 minutes on the other side.

Time-consuming, but delicious.
- - -

Postscript: They were winners. We dropped the big tray of 10 dozen devils off at the party early, and by the time we walked in to the grazers in the lobby there was applause. I thanked them, and told them that my mother thanked them, my father thanked them. . . .

Chris Peterson, who gathered up his full Bette Davis skirt and stopped to kiss us along the red carpet on the way in, was in fine form for the VIP pre-awards show. When I won a nifty canvas grocery bag and sunset-cruise tickets in his Oscar trivia contest, he got a good laugh when he took a truculent Davis puff and called me "that nice ho-mo-SEX-ual in the fifth row."

We went home to watch the actual show on our own screen -- commercials on a really big screen are really that much more offensive. Just as well, considering how little I like to cry in public, and how much I cried at the acceptance speeches for "Milk."

Toy story

If they were a band, they'd have to be called Bubba Buttcrack and the Fatbacks.

They rented the little green cottage (at the right) so they could go to a wedding -- you could tell from the precious way they were dressed in Cracker Formal when they all went out together just before sunset, with the wimmin carrying fancy plastic gift bags.

The cast of five: The mom and dad (if you saw him bending at all, you'd appreciate the band name), a single son, and a son coupled up with a woman he apparently met at Wal-mart. (She and Big Momma had matching perms and dye jobs.)

Big Bubba and the missus came down in serious metal: the F-450 extended cab, long-bed, four-wheel-drive, all-terrain monster at the end of the block. Miss Wal-mart and her Lochinvar -- who seemed to have a competition going with his brother about size, sound and street distance of hawked-up goobers -- had the extended-cab big Dodge in the foreground. They also brought the two scooters in front of the Dodge. And a Harley. And they rented the electric cart for good measure, and then rented a Segway, which Daddy Buttcrack rode like a bronco all up and down our street, whooping. All on our quiet little block of Old Town.

That's 22 wheels among 'em. Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to bring the whole damn trailer down?

Up a different tree

I'm able to provide a picture of the guy from Tuesday's entry, about the frond thief, courtesy of the Sheriff's Office.

Seems he was busted for "municipal ordinance violation" -- which usually means drinking on the street -- on Fleming Street soon after our encounter.

I'm of two minds about that ordinance: Tourists and supposedly solid citizens carry cups openly on Duval; it's the bums who get rousted. And I am a big fan of equal enforcement.

But apparently I'm also a good occupation-guesser: I wrote that he was likely a "hat-weaving panhandler," and the sheriff's site listed him as . . . "artist, panhandler."

Sometimes I hate it when I'm right.

Details, details

Sign on Chapman Lane

Considering our island, there's a good chance he does mean it that way.

Frondal attack

I took a little break from reading on the porch for lunch, and when I came out and sat back down, I heard a scuffling in the garden between our house and the Clarks'.

I looked down, and there were huge fronds on the driveway.

Arthur's cutting 'em back, I thought, and then looked up.

A ponytailed guy was in the tree, definitely not Arthur, sawing away. . . .

Can I ask what you're doing?

"Six months ago the lady said I could cut it," the man said, slurring. Probably a hat-weaving panhandler harvesting raw materials.

What lady?

"White hair, thin lady."

Frankie Mae sometimes wears a reddish wig, sometimes a black one; she's not white-haired underneath. And she's definitely not thin.

"Sorry, man," the ponytail said, climbing down and staggering off.

I had to get the pole saw out to lop the branches he'd left dangling.

Double happiness

First, that the darn thing blooms at all -- and especially now, when all the plumerias around town are winter-bare.

And second, that it's recovering, though slowly, from the vandal who ripped off a branch, no doubt to root for himself.

(And third, just because I haven't posted a flower picture in so long.)

Faded glory

The fog came back -- at night, rolling down our little street and giving it the flavor of a tropical London -- but daytimes have been clear as a crystal bell.

And with a snappy breeze from the south, we're back to Paradise.

I was watching the balinese flags taking their dance rhythms from the southeast, south, southwest when it struck me: When Gene and Jerry gave us this pennant at the end of October, it was a bright vertical rainbow.

Sun power.

Candyland

If you're walking on Thomas Street and you look left just south of Petronia, you could be forgiven for mistaking houses for a pack of Necco wafers.

All fogged up

We just don't get these here, but this was the view along South Roosevelt today.

Yes, that is the water on the right.

On North Roosevelt, you couldn't even see Stock Island (which adjoins us).

It's such a rarity -- and our boaters are so unused to it -- that the Weather Service issued bulletin after bulletin warning of dangerous conditions on the water.

It almost felt like a creepy movie set, maybe a remake of "Friday the 13th."

Dying traditions

Old-timers -- those old enough to remember, say, the drive-in theater on Stock Island -- also remember that most funerals out of Bahama Village used to feature a brass band leading the guest of honor to the cemetery.

We still have a few funeral parades, but the bands are a rarity now. Which is why, when I heard the ruckus more than two blocks away the other day, I knew it had to be for Candyman Butler.

He had played bass all around the city, and when he died at 90 it made Page One of the Citizen.

The players brought the Candyman along Truman, across Duval, up Simonton to Angela and then to the big iron gates, taking "Just a Closer Walk."

There was one big difference from the old days: Back in the day, the players for Village funerals were almost all black. Now they needed the oomph of Bubba Low Notes (yes, that's his real name now) on his wildly painted sousaphone, and the snap of Skipper Kripitz on the snare drum. Nobody is mourning the color bar.

Fasten your seat belts

We're bracing for a double dose of Chris, whom we went to see the other night at the cabaret.

He was terrific: Lucy, Cher, Streisand, Liza, Judy . . . and of course the best Bette. (Sadly, no Peggy Lee this time, though that one makes me sore laughing.)

I think the Divine Miss D will be emceeing the Oscar Gala at the Tropic, for which we have tickets and to which I've been pledged as a nibble-maker to the stars. Heaven only knows how many devils on horseback I'll have to saddle up.

And then soon on Oscar's heels comes "BitchSlap!" at the Waterfront, where Chris will again play Bette, joined by Randy Roberts as Joan Crawford. In breathless anticipation, I was sure to record "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" when it played on Turner Classics over the weekend.

The other night, before "Doubt," I heard Danny Weathers, the artistic director, asking around about wheelchairs. I can't wait.

Hearing the bird

It was one of those days.

Robert had been playing bridge with Adelaide, the Taiwanese woman who is about as sensitive to cards as she is to people, and finished 12th out of 15. He was not happy.

And I had been here trying to get the water heater that supplies the kitchen and guest rooms fixed.

The brand is Eemax, and if you have any sense, you will run from it as you'd run from a pump spewing airborne plague.

In the year and some since we've lived here, we've replaced each of our two water heaters at least once, and the circuit boards within maybe twice or three times each. They know me at the factory now, and that is not a good thing.

Our plumbers have discontinued contact with the company, except to call in this warranty claim. And the circuit boards they sent went in today. And did not work. At all.

So after I stopped hyperventilating, and ordered a new Bosch heater from an entirely different supplier, and got out to the porch, there was the bird of paradise starting to sing.

The start of the paradise song was beautiful, at last.

Where I've been

No, I have not been on jury duty for the last two weeks.

On that fateful Monday, when we were kept in a freezing (but beautifully appointed) courtroom (in the spanking-new Freeman Justice Center) for several hours that allowed me to make significant progress in "The Trial of Socrates," we were finally dismissed by the presiding judge, who told us that our presence had intimidated two defendants into accepting plea-bargains.

And for that bit of civic duty as a live round in the State of Florida's loaded gun, I will get a $15 check in the mail.

But by the time I got home to tend further to Robert's wounded foot, shown here in reduced size in deference to those who, like me, do not care to look closely at rent flesh, I realized that I had stepped into a social maelstrom.

In short order, the lonely-for-company Robert had ordered up guests who called for cocktails (and hors d'oeuvre, and dinner) here, more snacks, more drinks, another round of dinners here, the occasional light foray out to the cabaret, more lunches, more dinners, and. . . . You get the picture.

There were two complete sets of friends from Chattanooga and environs, two complete sets from Nashville, all here several times. And mixed into all that were record cold temperatures, record gray days and the attendant midwinter malaise that has affected me every year since at least high school, which is many a drear year indeed.

But now, with the stitches finally out, and no company due for at least a week: Though I still have not heard the voice of the turtle, I can try to sing along with Solomon that the winter is past. Selah.