We've finally had a chance to talk with the wood sculptor Ken recommended for our massive and now-dead oak on the summerhouse lawn -- and as Rick famously says to close "Casablanca," I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
We've sent him pictures of the tree, and talked possibilities (Robert is more figurative, I'm more abstract), and he's coming to see the real thing after he gets through a gallery swing in middle September.
I think it might be monumental.
It's eight weeks to Fantasy Fest, and the king and queen candidates were announced Friday (the winners are determined by how much money their supporters donate for AIDS Help during the run-up, and last year it was about a quarter-million dollars).
As it happens, one of the queen hopefuls, Vicky Gordon, is an old friend of our friend Gene -- who was here for dinner Friday night with Jerry, and Ben and Ken and Toby, and besides shuffleboard and general gossip, we talked costumes: G & J are coming down for the 30th annual bash, and though B & K can't make it then, they are happily visiting later.
At any rate, since this year's theme is Villains, Vixens and Vampires (our friend JT is has yet again won the bakeoff to do the official poster), Robert is having four fetching little bustiers whipped up to unify our foursome in vixenish fashion, with accessories making the difference. Robert is theming his with, erm, black leather stuff. Gene is taking a trip down "I Dream of Jeannie" lane. Jerry is doing something interesting with gold lamé and some things he picked up in India or Burma or wherever.
And after weeks of agonizing, I've decided on my own fruity theme. The only question is whether a fresh pineapple will leak too much to be speared into a headdress.
The things you find on the net. Here's Sir Eric, who built our house (his bedroom is our den), showing Her Madge how a paper mill works.
The photo is undated, but it was probably 1959, when she came across on the Britannia to open the St. Lawrence Seaway.
In another closer-than-six-degrees event, one of the enterprising old-school reporters I worked with got headlines for a supposed "exclusive" interview with her when she reached Chicago. As the legend goes, he'd taken a small boat out to the yacht, reportedly saw her on deck and shouted, "Hey, Your Majesty! How are ya?"
She is said to have waved and said, "Hello."
End of interview, but it made Page One.
He was the son of a bootlegger and a Nazi sympa- thizer, and a child of privilege. His eldest brother died in World War II, and his two surviving brothers were shot dead in public. I don't think it's surprising that he had problems after that with sex and alcohol. He was vilified almost daily by people who do that for a living, such as it is, and in my youth I was continually reminded what a horrible example he was -- of almost everything.
And yet over the next decades he got his act together, sponsored or supported legislation that focused on those without power, respect or influence -- women, children, poor people, sick people, old people, gay people, immigrants -- and made their lives better. If you need a reminder of his voting record, go here.
And when he died late Tuesday I felt, like millions of others, as if I'd lost someone among the damn precious few who cared about me, raised his voice to say so and worked to make our world better.
Farewell, senator. But . . . . “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
I mentioned having to hack back the macho ferns around the Key West pool.
Up north, we confine them to pots, so we can take them in for winter -- and they still get huge. The one behind the impatiens here under the sweetbay trees is at least 5 feet tall. (The impatiens aren't so small themselves; they're happy with a good feeding every three weeks. And that big old hanging Boston fern is so heavy we bend rebar to make the hooks.)
We brought two little machos to Tennessee a few years ago. Every winter, they overflowed the benches in the greenhouse, so we divided and repotted, divided and repotted. . . .
Stop us before we fern again.
We are down to a precious few cousins-once-removed who haven't had nuptial parties here, so it is with a particular sweetness that we learned that Cousin Sally's daughter, Mary, and her intended, Dale, have announced a wedding date for May. And have graced us with the chance to have their reception at our house. It is a woo beyond woo-HOO.
So when Dale and Mary and brother Michael, and their dad Mickey and his wife, Marie, came out to scout the house Sunday (though it will be far different in May) it was such a pleasure to show them the basics of the place.
Including these sweet-smelling brugmansias. If only the greenhouse will store them in condition to ring, a la Poe . . . .
Hear the mellow wedding bells
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
The big plumerias we got from Jack's mom and sister -- in this case of course Ethel, the blond one -- put out dozens of blossoms a day. Each of the mother plants is 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide, after all, and that's a lot of bloom room.
Most of the flowers fall on the pool apron to dry and fly away. A few dozen blow into the pool itself, and look as if we planned them to be that pretty floating around before they're sucked ingloriously into the drains. But . . . plumerias, frangipanis, call them what you will. Sniff 'em. I call them spectacularly sweet.
"Pappare" means to gobble up, in Italian. And pappardelle are my favorite noodles, wide and wonderful.
So when I discovered a classic pasta roller, vintage 1970, in my mom's garage -- complete with original sales ticket for 20 bucks, plus attachments for turning out spaghetti and fettucine, and even making ravioli -- and noticed that it had never been used. . . .
Well, I determined to use it. Simple: flour and egg, a while to rest, and then start cranking to roll and roll and roll and roll.
Then make a sauce: Get pancetta, garlic and pine nuts crispy. Add cream and the best parmesan, coarse-ground black pepper and tiny tomatoes, sage and basil from the garden. Toss it all. Add more cheese. 
Always more cheese.
All you need then is a fork and a mouth: Pappar- delle alla Romana.
Robert took a bite and said the nicest thing: "Velvet!"
Robert and Brenda did a great job of keeping our pots from parching while I was away -- especially these, on the summer house wall.
Given their morning sun blasts, 
and the heat of the brick behind them, and their relative dearth of moisture-holding soil, and the fact that the eaves shield them from rain . . . well, sometimes the impatiens need a good, cool drink twice a 90-degree day.
The plants appreciate the attention. Less so the mantis who scrambles out of the farthest pot along the wall every time I point the water wand in his direction.
I've mentioned the guilty pleasure of tapping into the sheriff's website every morning, to see who did the "but for the grace of God" bit for the last 24 hours. (Friends of mine who run businesses say they check to see who won't be in to work that day.)
Most of the shots that catch my eye are bad-hair-day doozies, schadenfreude for the rapidly balding. Some show signs of having encountered a particularly burly bouncer. (Click on the picture for a bigger view.)
But this collection of arrest shots from the last few months -- innocent until proven guilty, remember? -- has an actual local celeb: The wife of the schools superintendent, herself a school administrator, who's charged with stealing a few hundred thousand dollars from the system in a credit-card scheme.
Ah, the Keys. Come on vacation, leave on probation.
Actually, it's looking north, but from a very Southern- most per- spective.
One of my tasks on the island a few weeks back was to hack that fern along the pool edge back into control. Locals call it a "macho" fern -- huge dense fronds, and it grows like crazy. (We brought some to Tennessee, and they're just as macho in a winter greenhouse or summer pot.)
Mind you, this is one plant that started out small in the corner, and Topsified along the north and east edges of the pool. It almost muscled out the Key West buttercups just to the right of the fountain, but I rooted out about a bushel.
And yes, that's a lovely little yellow orchid blooming halfway up one of the foxtail palm trunks in the corner. When I took the picture, the purple orchid halfway up the palm on the right was just about to pop.
And that little white spot just to the left of the fountain? White Tara, in Tibetan Buddhism a Mother Goddess who brings compassion, long life and serenity. She was a gift from my friend Lou, whose daughter Gail is now Gyelse -- a Tibetan Buddhist nun about to go on a five-year retreat, no contact with the outside world. It brings me serenity to know that I'm in their thoughts, as they are in mine.
My version of the recipe at La Bodeguito del Medio in Havana:
½ lime
6 fresh mint leaves
1 sloppy tablespoon of simple syrup
2 oz. rum
club soda
Ream lime half fully, extracting all juice into a tall cocktail glass, and drop reamed half into glass. Add mint leaves and syrup, and crush mint leaves thoroughly with a muller (you cannot overdo this unless you break the glass; extract as much essence as possible). Add rum. Fill glass with crushed ice and then fill with soda. Mix with a long spoon, and garnish with extra mint.
¡Lo mejor!
I've been by myself in Key West for the last few weeks -- oh, did I need it -- and:
-- Re- charged my solar batteries, and bathed their plates in a perfect salt/humidity solution. It was t-shirt soaking hot by 8 a.m., but oh, the pool.
-- Tended the gardens daily (amazing what they do in a few months), helped our landscaper put some new bougainvilleas in the back and adjusted to the loss of the big palm that used to cover our parking spot and shade the parking-space garden. February's frond thief had done such damage to it that Arthur cut the whole thing down, and our plants roasted. Turns out the guy is now in jail on a coke bust, which ought to keep him occupied for a few years.
-- Read just a shade less than one book a day to clear my head (or stuff it), from a huge helping of John Sandford's "Prey" series to the final installment of Peter Matthiessen's "Mr. Ryan" stories of southwest Florida, with a good bit of Key West history larded in. I love our library, and its librarians. And if you ever want to taste Key West without having to visit, or if you just want to read something beautiful, read the best novel I've come across in years, Thomas Sanchez's "Mile Zero."
-- Reconnected with the street: the dog-walkers (though Vicar Don was away in Alaska), the revelers, the bad parkers, Songman gliding down Olivia on his bike (with me shouting "Sing it!" every time he goes), the confused, Zachary on his 7:30 scooter, the lost (yes, Hemingway's house is just there,) and the weird.
-- Used the meat counters at Fausto's and Albertson's (Hey, Jimmy!, in each case) to bring home a single fresh chop or chicken breast or chunk of fish for a delicious late grill.
-- Was careful to entertain strangers, because, as Hebrews tells us, "some have entertained angels unawares." In my case, it was four guys from Orlando, a nice couple from Maryland, two fellas from the U.K., a nice couple from Germany. . . .
Tomorrow I fly north, and I'll post again when I catch my breath.
