Finished

When we spent our winters on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the shops were not fully stocked as we were used to in the U.S.A. That's because everything on the island, and I mean everything, except maybe chickens and some fresh produce, had to be brought in by boat.

All of us expatriates survived anyway. In fact, I think that doing without, changing plans, and making do taught us a lot about flexibility and tolerance, which retired people sometimes lack.

I remember how, one December, there was no brown sugar on the island - not in any of the five or six grocery stores. No one had seen any for a couple of weeks, and it was time to bake Christmas cookies.

When I first noticed the lack of brown sugar and asked a grocer about it, he said, "dat finished," the Montserrat way of saying, "we're out of that." I asked when there might be brown sugar again, and he said, "when de boat come."

The boat brought everything

Word spread quickly through the population of 11,000 when the container ship showed up.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" became my mantra. If I was planning to have some neighbors over for dinner, I learned that planning the dinner menu ahead of time would only lead to frustration because the Idaho potatoes or the raw carrots, both of which were imported, might be temporarily "finished." I learned to buy yams and local green beans - or whatever else was available - instead.

One time, we went to a drugstore to buy aspirin, and it was in such short supply that the pharmacist was parceling them out six to a customer.

As there was not much in the way of new furniture for sale in the shops, and what there was cost twice as much as it would have in the States, many people did their own re-upholstery. We did too, even though we didn't know what we were doing. A lot of the island's furniture was ruined in Hurricane Hugo, so that seemed the only answer.

We heard from a neighbor - we all learned from each other - that foam rubber sheets in various thicknesses sometimes were available, but only in one small shop in Plymouth, the capital. The neighbor said we could use this foam to bulk up a sagging seat or repair a lopsided chair back.

When I visited the shop, I was told the foam supply was "all finished," but the boat was expected in a week or two. That was optimistic. I kept calling or stopping by for several weeks, but the foam, called "sponge" by Montserratians, hadn't arrived, and we were due to return to the United States for the summer. At last, the sponge arrived on the island, but it was "in customs" for two weeks after that.

By the time we flew home to Indiana, I had finished just one chair out of the three I hoped to. I will have to say it wasn't too lumpy.

  

Snow, Florida Style

Some of our friends up north can't understand why we would go to Florida and, heaven forbid, live there all year. "Don't you miss the change of seasons?" they say. Well, we have our change of seasons, too, but the changes are more subtle than falling leaves and the onset of sleet storms.

In fact, we have our own version of snow in the form of "Mexican Clover," now blanketing lawns that aren't treated with herbicides. Alas, there has been on occasion a question sent to the local newspaper's plant guru, along the lines of "What are the disgusting lavender flowers that are cropping up in our yard, and how can we get rid of them?"

Mexican Clover

Dutifully, the guru outlines an eradication plan. As for us, we prefer to go natural.

                                                                       Do you agree?

Outdoor Decor

wardrobe for enjoying outdoor Christmas decorations

Although we've lived in the tropics and sub-tropics since the early 1990's, I find it a little difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when people are running around in shorts in December and temperatures in the daytime are in the 80's. We Floridians try, however.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the towns around here rented a snow-making machine and manufactured a good-sized hill so kids could go sledding for a day. Many of them had never seen snow, except maybe on television news. Several thousand people showed up to enjoy their fake winter.

A man in Cape Coral, a town near where I live, outdoes himself every year with his light show, which is synchronized with music. The crowds grow as the word spreads, to the point now that he has put on his website the best way to avoid traffic jams. The night we visited, we saw people setting up lawn chairs to watch the spectacle. A lot of the viewers were wearing shorts or Capri pants, and one was barefoot.

unbelievable

the minimalist approach

As for ourselves, we are minimalists, I guess. But we do accent our palm trees with spotlights and hang colored lights on the front of the house. And today we put up our inside - artificial - tree. So we are ready!

If Only...

Here's an exercise I used to give to my grammar and composition students at Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis.

Change the meaning of the following sentence by where you insert the word "only."

She hit Bob in the eye.

Answers:

1. Only she hit Bob in the eye. (She was the only one who did any hitting.)

2. She only hit Bob in the eye. (Her sister had nothing to do with the fracas.)

3. She hit only Bob in the eye. (She didn't hit Bill, too.)

4. She hit Bob only in the eye. (She didn't hit him in the jaw as well.)

5. She hit Bob in only the eye. (the same as the preceding)

6. She hit Bob in the only eye. (He'd had the other one knocked out several years earlier.)

7. She hit Bob in the eye only. (the same as 4 and 5.)

What other sentences can you think of in which the placement of a single word changes the meaning?

Do you agree with me that 4, 5, and 7 mean the same thing? If not, why not? 

Frog Haven

Today is November 30, and we've had no rain at all since November 6. On top of that, the heat of summer has passed, and it gets chilly when the sun goes down. That means the poor frogs that live around here are having a tough time.

When nights are hot and rain is a daily occurrence, the little squirrel frogs and pinewoods tree frogs leave their daytime safe houses to look for a meal. Favorite spots to hide are the downspouts and some large arborvitae on the shady side of our house. After dark, the frogs venture out, climbing down to the concrete driveway in front of the garage door. There, they wait for insects attracted by the light. June bugs are special treats.

Often we are startled by the "clunk" a little frog makes when he jumps onto our living room window.

In our part of south Florida, houses may be only six feet above sea level. The every-day rains collect in ditches at the fronts and backs of our houses, and the frogs rush there to breed when there is water. Walk out the front door during or after a rain, and we are assaulted by a cacophony of croaking and peeping. Not all species of frog sing the same tune or in the same key.

As soon as the sun is up, the sounds subside as the frogs return to their daytime resting places. With the afternoon rains, though, these singers, which are a pale tan and no bigger than two inches long, tune up again.

The frogs can be found in peculiar places. Until we understood their habits, we were shocked to find a frog under the rim of one of our toilets when we returned home from two months in Indiana. How did it get there? Was someone playing a joke on us? This year, we found a dead frog on our kitchen floor. A Florida-native neighbor had the simple explanation: the frog likely climbed up on the roof at night and slid down the toilet's standpipe to escape the morning sun. It sounded plausible.

When Ed opened an accordion hurricane shutter in late August in preparation for what we thought would surely be a hit from Hurricane Isaac, he was astounded to find three frogs in residence. What a mess they'd made.

The photo here shows another froggy hiding place - in the middle of a bromeliad.

A Lesson

I've been thinking a lot lately about a guy named "Carlton" and how much I learned from him. An unlikely teacher, he was one of the people in our neighborhood when we lived on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. We saw him almost every day - when he picked up his mail, or waited to see the nurse at the clinic, or hitched a ride into town, or walked past our house on the way down to his.

Now, Carlton had something terrible wrong with him. There was no debate about that. One theory was that his brains were fried by illegal drugs, especially "weed." He was normal at one time and even sang bass in the church choir, his former high school teacher told me. Another theory was that he suffered from schizophrenia, a more likely diagnosis. One day he'd sit on the ground and loudly curse the government. On another day, he'd carry a briefcase and say he was advising the government on this or that project. How he acted from day to day was unpredictable.

After Hurricane Hugo decimated the island, the government gave storm victims small pre-fab houses, usually two rooms plus a tiny kitchen, to replace what they had lost. Carlton, who was about 25 when we first met him, was a recipient, but his Hugo House was put together in the busy and often noisy area near where his mother lived. Carlton didn't like the Hugo House and rarely slept there. Instead, he preferred the ruins of a house in an uninhabited area close to the sea.

Hugo House

There were no in-patient mental health services on the island, and hardly any out-patient treatment except for the shots provided at the clinic just up the hill from our house. I guess he got a shot of some kind once in a while, but I didn't know the particulars and didn't want to pry.

We all just did the best we could with however Carlton presented himself on a given day. When his feet were sore from wearing beat-up men's dress shoes without socks, one neighbor bought him a pair of sneakers. Another neighbor always had a can of tuna or sardines on hand to feed Carlton when his disability check didn't stretch far enough. Papayas, coconuts and grapefruit, some from our yards and some growing wild, rounded out his diet.

When he wanted a ride into town, usually with briefcase in hand and wearing his best clothes, one of the neighbors would always oblige, despite what we all knew about his behavior of yesterday or last week. He could carry on a conversation, sometimes lucid, sometimes not. And we talked. Despite his affliction, whatever it was, we all tried to treat him like a normal man.

He was one of us, after all.

   

Saga of the Annie B

The year after we bought our house in Florida, we decided life would be incomplete without a boat. After all, we're only a block from a boat ramp, and almost everyone on our street has a boat and trailer in the driveway.  

Neither of us had ever piloted a boat before. But we bought a 16-foot "vessel" from a neighbor, who had bought it from somebody, who had bought it from somebody. The boat was manufactured in 1987 by a company that was out of business, but the boat seemed seaworthy when we took a test drive.

We loved driving the "Annie B," as we named her, out into Pine Island Sound and then several miles south to Safety Harbor for lunch. Or, on days when we were busy, we would take her out for a much shorter outing, which we called "around the block." This route took us from our slip through Jug Creek and out to the Number 8 marker in Pine Island Sound. From there, we turned right into Charlotte Harbor, turned right again into Jug Creek and, at "no-wake" speed, eased our way back home.

The Annie B behaved herself most of the time, but every year or so, something major would happen to the old inboard/outboard engine, and we would have to phone our boat mechanic. The old saying that "a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money" turned out to be apt on those occasions.

Although the Annie B seemed to be in top mechanical condition this past summer, and she even sported a new Bimini top to keep the sun off and some new upholstery to replace what had fallen apart, all was not well in the engine compartment. One day, when Ed took her out for some exercise, she overheated. He turned her off. She started up again, but refused to budge. Some fishermen who happened by towed the disabled Annie B to our dock, and Ed immediately called the mechanic to come and have a look.

Repairs this time, he told us, might cost as much as $1,200. Oh, dear. We had paid only $3,000 for her in the first place.

Ed and I concluded that, since we were really too busy to use the boat much, putting out that kind of money was ridiculous, and we should just try to sell her as-is and get out of the boat business. When advertising didn't result in any offers, however, we contemplated giving her to the Salvation Army or the Goodwill, if, in fact, either would want an aging/aged watercraft with a past.

One day, as we were driving over one of the many bridges around here, I said "How does it make you feel when you realize you're never going out to the Number 8 marker again?"

Ed said, "Sad."

"Me, too," I said.

When we returned home, Ed took the for-sale signs off the boat and called our mechanic.

Favorite Tree

When I used to think about the tropics - before we moved to Florida - the image that came to mind was coconut palms blowing in a warm breeze. Actually, such trees won't grow everywhere in the state, as I've since learned. In fact, they survive only from Lake Okeechobee south.

I learned today that global warming may be slowly changing the range and has allowed a few coconut palms to live as far north as Orlando.

Most coconut palms grow near the coasts, where they can stand salt air and even high winds, although some trees fall victim to tropical storms and hurricanes. I've heard that coconut palms require salty breezes to thrive, but I don't believe that's true. If they do, please leave me a comment at the end of this post.

If you live in the right zone of hardiness for growing coconut palms - our zone is 10a - getting a nut to sprout isn't difficult, although it takes about as long as it does to grow a human baby. You lay a coconut on its side, bury it half way in potting soil mixed with sand, water now and then and expect roots to sprout in about 9 months.

When we lived roughly 600 miles south of here, on the island of Montserrat, the previous owner of our house had taken to throwing his cast-off coconuts just over the fence. Over a period of several years, a bunch of them sprouted, so we had a hedge of palm trees. At the golf club on the island, someone painted a coconut blue and laid it on the ground to mark the direction to the first tee. In due time, even though painted, this "dry nut" put out a green shoot and had to be replaced.   

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Wild Things

Maybe it's because we live so close to the Everglades. Maybe it's because we have Nature preserves all over the state of Florida, and civilization is encroaching upon them. For whatever reason, we are having more close encounters with wild things.

One day last year, I sat in the car while my husband went into a printery to run an errand. Within five minutes, I saw what I at first thought was a German shepherd crossing the road not 500 feet away. Before he disappeared into the woods, however, I realized his legs were too long and his body, too skinny, to belong to a dog. No doubt about it, I had seen a coyote.

I didn't hear about more sightings until a few weeks ago when our island's newspaper reported that a coyote was found dead alongside the road between us and Ft. Myers, victim of a hit and run.

This morning, as we were taking our morning walk, a man whom we regularly see along the way told us there is a coyote and two pups in a nearby woods and that if we listened, we could hear them. We didn't want to get too close or dawdle, as we had our dog along, but we did make out the yippy sounds of what could have been baby beasties. Ed thought the sound might have been caused by trees rubbing together, but I wasn't so sure. (This bears looking into at a later date.)

Then, on the TV news this evening, there was home video of a coyote running up the side of a busy street on the mainland, car and camera in pursuit. The police advised residents in the area to keep cats and small dogs inside. There is no plan, so far as I know, to catch and relocate.

Remote Island

During the 1990s, my husband and I spent four extended periods - three to six months each - on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The island is located sort of between Antigua and Guadaloupe and near St. Kitts and Nevis, but is so small it doesn't show up on many maps.

How did we find such a remote place? Ed was asked by a minister friend to go with a group to help rebuild houses after Hurricane Hugo. That storm struck in 1989 and damaged 90 percent of the buildings on the island. He fell in love not only with the people but with the island itself, even in its devastated state.

Sadly, Montserrat was just getting back on its feet, with more and more tourists arriving to soak up the relaxed lifestyle and the beautiful surroundings, when a volcano, which had been dormant since the 1500s, sprang to life in July of 1995, shooting boulders the size of cars up in the air.

We bought our house in 1992, never dreaming what was to happen three years later. What a treasure it was, though, to learn first-hand about a different culture and way of life. Despite how it all ended, we wouldn't have given up the experience for anything.

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts about Montserrat. I kept a detailed diary and have written 

an as-yet unpublished memoir, which I'll share with you from time to time.

High Drama

On our morning walk yesterday, we witnessed something that proved once again that Nature is messy and often violent: a bald eagle being chased by an osprey, whose nest was nearby. We weren't sure what bad thing the eagle had done, but I suspect the osprey had caught a fish for breakfast, and the eagle flew by and tried to steal it.

Although I'm not aware that eagles eat the eggs of other birds, it's possible that's what caused the osprey to rise up out of its nest and take pursuit. But it's not really nesting season yet, and ospreys are just now returning to the nests they had last year - to check them out and, if need be, add a few sticks here and there.

Last year, I was driving along a busy highway near here when traffic came to a stop in both directions, and some people got out of their cars to look. It seems that a bald eagle had swooped down and was making a meal of juicy road kill.

Stealing other birds' food and eating what cars have run over are not what you think of when describing our national bird. Benjamin Franklin once wrote in a letter he was sorry the bald eagle with its low moral character had been chosen as the national bird of the United States of America. He personally favored the wild turkey.

A Terrible Tragedy

My thoughts and prayers are with all the people who lost so much in Hurricane Sandy. Stay strong. Better days are coming.

Learning as I go

Gardening in the tropics has its surprises. After a sago palm I planted several years ago succumbed to a disease that has killed virtually all of that variety in south Florida, I found what I thought would be the perfect replacement. It was a foot tall then, and feathery. I thought it would remain small. It had one trunk.

Given our rain and sun however, my choice of pigmy date palm was not a perfect one for the spot outside our bathroom window. Today, the tree is at least seven feet tall with multiple trunks. Worse than that, sharp needles three inches long grow from the otherwise feathery fronds.  My husband, Ed, says the tree is a menace when he wants to turn on the garden hose or wash the window.

So today, I asked our tree man to cut the thing down. He was reluctant. He said he could remove all but one trunk, so at least there would be something pretty in the space, and the faucet and window would be accessible. Other trunks, in a few months, would start growing from the stump, he admitted, but they wouldn't become a problem for several years. At that point, we would have other decisions to make. Sounds good to me.

Well, we've started!

 A New Adventure

We started living at least part of the year in the tropics in 1992, but my love for it goes back to the time my grandparents retired to St. Petersburg, FL. I had never seen a palm tree before, or a hibiscus growing anywhere but in a pot on a summer patio up north. That is, until our family visited Grandpa and Grandma each Christmas.

Frankly, I was hooked then, but years passed by before we - my husband and I - made our own pilgrimage south.

With this, I jump into the blogosphere where I intend to write about my passion for living in the tropics. We started with vacations in the Caribbean - just why I'll tell you later - and even bought a house there. A volcano caused that to change. Now, we live in southwest Florida with our own palm trees and hibiscus.

I won't concentrate on just the tropics, though. Sometimes, I may write about the other loves of my life - the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean, creating art quilts, writing, travel, photograph and gardening zone 10 and 11.

I hope you'll visit often and comment about what you read.