We Know

Yes, we know. We know why we’re here. It is now, I guess, that we wait for all year long – when the sky is blue, the temperatures are in the low 80s and the humidity isn’t much. Never mind that, come June, the temperatures will be in the 90s every day and will remain that way until November. Never mind that the humidity is off the charts. Never mind that there are thunderstorms nearly every afternoon.

We cope, and we do that the way northerners do in winter. Through avoidance. We stay inside when it’s too uncomfortable outside. We do our errands when it isn’t so hot. If we walk for fitness, we do that as soon as it gets light. The same goes for yard work. Do it earlier, and there are pesky mosquitoes. We have air conditioning in our cars and in our houses. Every shopping foray is to an air-conditioned place. So we get along just fine, and we stay here because of January, February, March and April.

Bokeelia, FL Winn-Dixie Plaza in March

I have to admit that January and even parts of February can be cold, at least by our standards – 40s at night and only in the 60s in the daytime. We drag out the sweaters – and sometimes more than one.

This year, northerners have been brutalized by winter, and they are escaping in droves. I believe half of New York State is here. Ditto Michigan. I’ve never seen the roads so congested. Although we grouse some, we are happy to share our secret.

P.S. My book, Goat Water Is Not What You Think, about our years on Montserrat and the volcano, is selling well. To get your copy, e-mail Hawthorne Publishing at www.hawthornepub.com or visit the usual online sources.

Spring is Springing

Up north, there are stirrings under the snow. Can crocus blossoms be far behind? Here, in Florida, the changes are more subtle, because plants and trees bloom in sequence all year around. Even in January, the hibiscus sport some blooms, although not, perhaps, as extravagant in number as later in the year. Live oaks and palms, of course, look just about the same January through December.

We have very few plants that are deciduous, losing leaves and flowers when the chilly weather and shorter days combine to say, “It’s winter; look dead.” Two of those deciduous plants are the bald cypress and the frangipani, (otherwise known as plumeria) which is naked from about December to March or April.

(The kind of frangipani grown in Hawaii is evergreen and ever-blooming. The flowers are the basis for the lei presented to arriving visitors. We in Florida couldn’t reliably make leis with our frangipani.)

And, apparently, we can’t count on our frangipani to start leafing out in mid-March or in April as usually happens. In the past couple of days, I have noticed that leaves are starting to sprout right now.

Plumeria or Frangipani

Some snowbird friends of ours will be thrown off by this early sprouting; they used to say that it was time to head north when the frangipani began to do its springtime thing. Now, they will have to rely on a more certain date to join the I-75 and I-95 parade of RV’s and passenger cars and vans heading north. That date certain is April 1. There’s still time after that to find all the paperwork needed to prepare income tax returns.

P.S. Sales of my book Goat Water Is Not What You Think about our adventures on the Caribbean island of Montserrat and the build-up to the volcano which destroyed our house are going well. I am pleased by the response.

Buy a copy at:

www.Hawthornepub.com.

www.amazon.com.

Or www.Barnes&Noble.com.

Florida News of the Weird

News of the Weird

Floridians do the darnedest things. Are people that crazy in Ohio or Wyoming? I wonder. The newspaper provides a few chuckles a week, showing the misguided creativity of some of Florida’s citizens. One might say, too, that cruelty knows no limits.

Here are some examples:

1. A husband and wife arranged to have a date at a Florida movie theater. During the previews the husband texted their three-year-old daughter in her day care. A retired policeman sitting behind them didn’t like this one bit and asked the husband to desist. An altercation ensued, during which the husband tossed some popcorn at the policeman.

Or I guess it was the husband who did the tossing. Some witnesses aren’t sure.

In any case, the policeman apparently became enraged, pulled his gun and fired away, killing the husband and wounding the wife in the hand.

2. A very thirsty man walked into a convenience store desiring a six-pack of beer. He didn’t have any money so he offered to trade the three-foot alligator he’d just caught for the brew. He had the gator in a big cooler. The clerk was not amused.

3. Baptism parties can be dangerous, as one Floridian found out. There was some kind of fight when partycrashers realized there weren’t enough food, drink and utensils to go around. They had heard about the party on social media and just showed up. The man who was killed tried to be a good citizen and break up the melee and got in the way of a bullet. Doesn’t everybody pull a gun when party food is insufficient?

4. Police are scratching their heads over this one; A paraplegic man stole a used car from a dealership in central Florida, but was later caught gassing up at a service station. A sales person at the dealership told police he had helped the man into the car, whereupon the thief locked the doors, started the car and gave it the gas by pressing the accelerator pedal with a folding cane. Turns out the paraplegic was driving with a suspended license.

5. A woman ran over her husband in their driveway. She said she didn’t see him lying there and thought he must have been intoxicated. He died at a hospital.

(My book Goat Water Is Not What You Think is available from Hawthornepub.com. Sales are going very well, and I'm happy.)

My New Book

These are excerpts from the early chapters of Goat Water Is Not What You Think, a memoir of life on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. My husband and I spent four winters there until we were chased away by the volcano that destroyed our house.

Boxes of the book arrived here by freight a week ago. It's hard to believe that I can hold the several years' project in my hands!

“A fact of island life: Much of the livestock was loose. Goats, particularly, would eat anything and everything. If you cared about your landscaping, you had a sturdy fence and a gate that you kept shut. Mamie, one of our neighbors, showed me the place in our front gate where she and her husband had laced string to keep their goats out.

“We were told more than once that animals on the island were a mark of worth – the larger the herd, the greater the master’s worth. Those who kept animals didn’t necessarily sell them, but they could if they needed cash. Cows, sheep and goats were an investment, rather like shares of Procter and Gamble or General Motors. Anybody who owned 400 sheep or goats was a powerful man or woman indeed….

“The need to cool off after some exertion was a good excuse to sit on the porch and just look at our surroundings. We especially loved to watch the lambs cavorting in a pasture across the street. Often, they would be walking along and suddenly jump straight up, seemingly for no reason except pure joy. When they got tired and hungry and found their mother for a snack, we would turn our attention to the kingbird that had built a nest on a nearby phone pole and divebombed any bird that flew too close.

“It was easy to spend an hour in these pursuits, and somehow we didn’t think the time was being wasted.

“I tried to swim laps in our pool at least every other day after 2 p.m. I loved to watch palm fronds gently swaying in the trade winds as I did the backstroke to and fro. Despite the sun and the location 17 degrees from the Equator, we discovered, to our surprise, that 80 degrees with a stiff breeze was a bit too chilly for swimming. The next day would be calmer. We counted on that.

Transplanted Americans, Brits and Canadians who lived on the island full-time told us they didn’t swim from late November until, perhaps, early March. Sometimes, the thermometer went down to 68 degrees at night. The health department then would put out an urgent plea for the donation of blankets because poor old people were suffering. Nobody had a furnace. And many closed their windows with ill-fitting wooden shutters rather than glass….”

Our Montserrat house before the volcano

“One of the lovable characters we met early in our first year on the island was Katy Connor, the veg-e-TAY-ble lady. When we first saw her, she was walking past our gate carrying satchels of fruits and vegetables. She wore an old felt hat squashed down on her head, covering grizzled, gray pigtails….

“After we had bought some fruits and vegetables from her, we invited her up to our porch to have a cold drink. She told us that she used to bring three of her four children down to Spanish Point, our neighborhood, to help her carry produce. Her home was at least two miles up the hill – or the mountain, if you will – from us. She said her children were all grown up with their own lives to live. Her doctor didn’t want her carrying so much, but, she said, she didn’t pay any attention.

“One of the things she told us that first day was her “Hugo story,” what happened to her during the 1989 Hurricane Hugo, which devastated the island. Ed, my husband, first became acquainted with the island when he went with a work team from the States to help rebuild houses.

“Katy, knowing that her wooden shack might not be safe during the worst of the storm, took Mark, a mentally challenged son, and went to the home of a friend, whose wooden house had a concrete-block addition.

“As she was walking toward her neighborhood when the storm abated, someone told her that her house had blown away and could be found “in de ghaut,” (ravine) down the hill from its previous spot. When she checked to see for herself, she discovered that the roof had caved in around the foundation before the rest blew away, along with all her belongings, which were strewn around on the ground “all mucked up.”

Despite what had happened to her, Katy remained unfailingly cheerful. It was a trait common to Montserratians – and, we thought – worth emulating.

Books are available at www.Amazon.com and at the publisher, www.HawthornePub.com. 

An Introduction to Our Friend

     Here is an excerpt from my book Goat Water Is Not What You Think, which will be published in early February. The book chronicles our four winters on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, leading up to the volcanic eruption which destroyed our house, killed 19 people and made two-thirds of the island uninhabitable. 

     William Owensby, our neighbor down the hill, arrived at our front gate with a burlap sack full of banana shoots and his cutlass to plant MY banana plantation—the plantation that within a few months would feed our family and, if we were lucky, half of Spanish Point, as our subdivision was known, with lovely bananas. Or so I fantasized.

     William had timed his arrival to plant, he said, “by the moon, two days after the first quarter.” This was a serious thing and had to be strictly adhered to. He said all this without even the hint of a smile, so I didn’t smile either….

     Every now and then, William would appear at our gate with goat meat meant as a gift. The first time this happened he said he had made his kill that morning. I asked, “Oh, which one?” He said it was the little male I’d seen running around with his twin, a female I had named “Nice Girl.”

     I said, “Oh, poor thing.” I felt kind of sad.

     William shrugged. “He should know that’s what he was born for.” Females were jealously guarded because they could produce more young. But the life of the male goat – except for big billy – wasn’t worth much.

     I thanked him for the plastic bag containing the goat roast and another containing a big piece of cake that his wife Mamie had baked. We ate the cake right away, but we put the goat in the freezer. In two weeks, when I got up the nerve to thaw it out and cook it, we could pretend it had come from the grocery store. We came to call this ploy “running it through the freezer.”

     Watch here for information abou how you can get a copy of my book.

   

Some Angels Don't Have Wings

When we go out on our daily walk, our happy rescue dog, Sienna, has to be kept on a relatively short leash because she eats everything, and I do mean everything. She is sneaky about this. Unless we keep our eyes on her at all times, she snarfs up doggy delicacies. Her favorite is small cones from the pine trees which grow around here. Second on her list are grass clumps that fall off lawn mowers and dry in the sun.

But there are sometimes other things, unknown things, and therein lies the problem.

Most of the treasures she eats don't harm her overall digestive health, but, alas, sometimes they do. On one occasion recently, she began - how can I say this delicately - running at both ends. She obviously didn't feel well; she wasn't hungry even for her dinner and was drinking a lot of water. She at least knew not to get dehydrated.

We waited one day to see if the situation wouldn't get better on its own. It didn't. In fact, she seemed to be worse. So Ed made an appointment with our vet, a great, tall bear of a guy with a heart to match.

He heard the symptoms, listened to her heart, looked in her ears, and did all the other things that an examination of the sick might require, all while squatting down at her level and finally said, "Sienna, did you eat a bad lizard?"  (Well, that definitely was a possibility, as our island is overrun with what are called "a-NO-lees." And these are known to make cats sick. Dogs, I'd never heard. We didn't see Sienna eat such a thing, but I suppose she could have, when we weren't looking.)

After checking a stool sample and finding no parasites, the vet prescribed a medication for each end of Sienna and an antibiotic, just in case. Then he squatted down at her level again, and she wagged her tail and nuzzled up close so he could pet her and love her and tell her everything was going to be okay. Then, in a soft voice, he asked her, "Will you forgive me for taking your temperature?"

It's wrenching when your baby gets sick, and thank heavens there are angels to help.

Not Your Mother's Fruitcake

I have just made eight fruitcakes to give as holiday gifts, and I wanted to share the recipe, which is different, probably, from anything you've ever tasted and so delicious. No marinating the cakes in booze for weeks. No heavy molasses taste.

A friend, who always writes a newsy run-down of her family's activities for the year, included the recipe, which I read and immediately said, "Wow, that's for me."

(So much easier than the cookies I used to make.)

Here goes:

2 cups sugar                                        1 tsp. soda

1 cup butter, softened                         1 tsp. vanilla

4 eggs                                                  2 cups chopped dates

3 1/2 cups flour                                   2 cups chopped nuts (I used walnuts.)

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tsp.baking powder

14 oz. pkg. flaked coconut

1# candy orange slices (chopped)

1 cup red and green candied cherries (chopped)

Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and mix well. Add remaining ingredients and blend. (I blended the "wet" ingredients with a mixer, then added the fruits and nuts and continued mixing with my hands.) Spoon the thick batter into greased and floured loaf pans Aluminum throw-aways are good. Alternatively, you could use one bundt pan. Bake at 250 degrees for 2-3 hours - less time if using loaf pans, more for a single bundt pan. The cakes are done when a toothpick comes out clean and the top is brown. My oven took 2 hours 20 minutes for four loaf pans.