Taste of Florida

Anybody who has lived in Florida for a while becomes an expert on which restaurant serves the best key lime pie - unless other fruit pies or chocolate are preferred. Some fillings are too tart, or not tart enough, and some crusts lack mama's touch.

In weaker moments, we have been known to order a lunch-size salad for dinner to allow room for a key lime pie dessert.

The fruit of which I speak is only 1-2 inches in diameter, so it takes a fair number to make a pie, if you're doing this at home. When key limes are ripe, they are yellow, but the ones you buy in a bag at the grocery are green.

Although it is associated with the Florida Keys, a key lime tree can be grown quite well in southwest Florida. In fact, we had a tree until citrus canker broke out, and the Florida government, supposedly to protect citrus farmers, unilaterally cut down all citrus trees within 1,500 feet of one with the disease. As a result, while we were on vacation up north, nearly all the citrus trees on our street were cut down, including ours. When we returned, we couldn't even see where our trees had been.

Later, it was determined that canker was spread on the wind - especially when Hurricane Charley roared through in 2004.

Add whipped topping on top if you wish

But never mind all that. You can make something that approximates the taste of a restaurant or bakery key lime pie without needing to squeeze those tiny fruits. Here's a recipe:

Key Lime Pie

1 can (6 ounce) frozen lime juice concentrate, thawed

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 container whipped topping (9 ounce)

3/4 cup sour cream

graham cracker crust of your choosing

Mix all ingredients until blended. Pour into crust and refrigerate at least six hours.

Around the Yard

Our "tree man" is coming tomorrow to prune our neighbors' mahogany trees and our carambola (starfruit), so I took a walk around our yard to see what else needs to be attended to.

While I was making notes, I also looked for the oddities which make Florida such a fun place to live. Here are two I found:

Epiphyte

This epiphyte or air plant has attached itself to our carambola tree. It is one of many varieties that can be found in warm and humid places; in the United States, that means the South. An air plant is not a parasite because it doesn't feed off the tree or bush host, but just finds a convenient place to live and grow and settles in. I've even seen epiphytes clutching telephone wires high above the ground. They are cousins to orchids and bromeliads.

Soaking up the sun on the trunk of a Christmas palm in our front yard was this nymph of an eastern lubber grasshopper. It is quite spectacular looking with its bright yellow stripes, and in addition to its menacing look, it hisses to discourage predators. The adult grasshopper can be orange or red or yellow or even black and can be as big as three inches long. The eastern lubber, too, is common in the South. In its black phase, it is sometimes called "Devil's Horse" or "Diablo." 

Eastern Lubber Grasshopper

We're going to ask the tree man to trim the bougainvillea, which is threatening to brush against the screened porch, and the white bird of paradise, which is touching the eaves in a front corner of the house. We have managed to control the size of everything else over the winter when there was little rain.

The rainy season in southwest Florida starts June 1, and that means showers, often with lightning and thunder, can be expected nearly every afternoon. In winter, our grass needs cutting only about once a month because of the lack of rain. We don't have a sprinkler system, and neither do most of the neighbors where we live. In summer, our grass may need cutting every five days.

If you leave town for even a week or two in the summer, you will be amazed at the growth of everything while you were away.

The End of "Season"

Easter and Passover are over, so, in Florida, it's time for snowbirds to head north to pay their taxes and to check in on the grandchildren. They are leaving our area in droves, making Interstate 75 a jammed-up mess of gargantuan motorhomes, sedans and vans with clothing on racks and the usual semi-tractor trailers.

Many of the motorhomes that are driven down from Michigan and Oho - or purchased in Florida - cost way over $100,000 when new, and drivers, when heading north, often have a car hitched to the back or an additional trailer, which was used for belongings that wouldn't fit into the motorhome. These may be the same people who rent storage units up north for their extra "stuff." Of course, a lot of snowbirds rent or own houses or condos in Florida. Motels and hotels do a brisk business, too.

Gone

Gone

Gone

This mass exodus has caused an interesting problem for one of our island's social service agencies. Through the one in which I volunteer, clients can borrow mobility aids at no charge and for as long as they are needed - to include canes, walkers with seats and without, crutches and wheelchairs. We also lend bedside potty chairs and shower seats, which are in high demand.

It may surprise northerners, but a lot of people come down and have their knees, hips and shoulders replaced while they're relaxing in the sun. That's because the doctors in Florida do so many of these "procedures" in any given six-month period they must know what they're doing.

Come April 1, the mobility aids that have been loaned out during the winter come back, and our equipment team is kept busy meeting clients at our storage unit or making pick-ups.

The food pantry, which depends on donations of money and cans during "season," asks people going north to bring left-over non-perishables to fill the shelves.The need is just as great, if not more so, in the summer when prospective donors are gone.

Those of us who live here most of the year love it when the roads are less crowded and restaurants don't have lines snaking out the door. Most of the eateries don't take reservations, making going out for dinner an unpleasant event during "season," especially on Friday nights, when it seems everyone wants to escape the kitchen. That applies, even, to those who hardly ever cook.

Departures are bitter sweet. In our church, for example, half the congregation disappears until about October when they come trickling back. We miss our friends. In addition to the lack of their camaraderie, departure can also mean a shrinking of the Sunday-morning "take," unless some constant fund-raising goes on. The minister's salary and the light and air conditioning bills have to be paid, no matter what.

We in southwest Florida are dependent on tourism. Businesses in the area take a terrible hit in the summer, and many go under because they didn't make enough money during "season" to tide them over. The restaurant we grew to like during "season" may not be there come fall.

In the meantime, we are enjoying the quiet and wishing the afternoon summer rains would come.    

Something New Every Day

Things are not always as they at first seemed. It turns out our rescue dog Sienna is probably not a Lab/Shar Pei mix at all. The man who was doing our annual A/C and furnace check-up this week mentioned that he had just purchased a rescue dog, a Southern Blackmouth Cur, which, he said, looks a lot like Sienna. I first thought this meant the inside of the dog's mouth was black, maybe like a chow-chow's, and that he was using the term "cur" as slang. After he left, my husband looked up "blackmouth cur" on Google.

Sienna, our rescue dog, has new ID 

There were pages and pages of pictures of these animals, and, hey, they all looked like Sienna. Upon checking Wikipedia, I discovered that there is an Alabama Blackmouth Cur, a Florida Blackmouth Cur, an American Blackmouth Cur, you get the idea. The dogs, which are bred principally in the South, are trained to hunt 'coons, 'possums, bears, feral pigs and squirrels. They also can be trained to herd cattle and to do search and rescue work. They are great family dogs, the article points out. And we say "amen" to that.

I do not believe the American Kennel Club certifies this breed, but another registering body, the United Kennel Club, does. It says that to be standard, the Blackmouth Cur's body may be as much as 10 percent white - on toes, tail, nose and chest. Sienna has a white strip on her chest and a little bit of white on her feet. The black, noted in the breed's name, is to be around the muzzle, but not necessarily inside the mouth. Sienna has black circles around her eyes, too.

Southern Blackmouth Cur

Wikipedia also said the active nature of this dog, which lives 12-16 years, makes it susceptible to torn ligaments and pulled muscles. We know all about that! Sienna limped when we first got her, and our vet told us, after an x-ray, that she had torn anterior cruciate ligaments in both hind legs. He prescribed fish oil, baby aspirin, glucosamine and a quiet life for a few months. Or, surgery might be indicated down the line. Our regimen worked, though, and the ACL's are in fine shape now.

These hybrids of the South seem not to be limited to Blackmouth Curs. Our neighbors up the street rescued a dog about the same time we did, and when asked what kind it was, they said it was a "Catahoula." I went looking up that odd name on Google after our introduction to their puppy. There is definitely a Catahoula Leopard Dog, or Catahoula Cur, which is a hunting dog with Louisiana origins. It has an illustrious past and perhaps was brought to this country by the explorer Hernando de Soto. Like the Blackmouth Cur, the Catahoula is being bred in various kennels, also mostly in the South.

You can check out pages of Catahoula photos on Google Images.

  

Farther South

Over the weekend, we drove to Islamorada, in the middle Florida Keys, to visit a couple we've known for nearly 60 years. As usual when driving over to Miami from the Ft. Myers area and then south toward Key West, we noticed how much more tropical it is there than here.

Partly, I guess, that's because of the Gulf Stream, the warm waters of which hug the south coast of Florida. And partly, it's because Islamorada is about 150 miles south of an imaginary line drawn between Ft. Myers and Palm Beach on the east coast of the peninsula.

house near our friends' rental

Of particular note was the frangipani, which is still bare where I live, and is beginning to put out a few blooms on Islamorada. And the coconut palms, which on my island turn brown after a prolonged cold snap, are green and lush farther south, despite brushes with hurricanes and tropical storms.

The bougainvillea, which grow in both places, seem to flourish especially well farther south. (They have wicked thorns, no matter where they're planted.)

Bougainvillea

Islamorada beach

Because it was windy, we old folks chose to eat dinner indoors overlooking the beach at sunset one evening and watched one couple's barefoot wedding. In a few minutes, after that tableaux had cleared away, another young man knelt on one knee and held up to a young woman a small box, whereupon he jumped up and they enthusiastically kissed. I believe she said "Yes!"

Between You and I

The old English teacher in me is on a tear. Excuse me, but I can't sit quietly by on this beautiful Florida afternoon and let another day go by without complaining about some rampant grammar no-no's.

I don't know about you, but I curdle inside when I hear somebody say "between you and I" or "him and I." These gaffes are coming from people who should know better - such as news anchors on television and newspaper reporters. My mother, who taught Latin, would be appalled.

Are grammar rules not taught in school any more? Are children no longer learning that only the objective case of pronouns, such as "him," "them," "us," "her" and "me," can follow prepositions such as "with," "for," "in," "between," "among" and "to"? And only the objective case of a pronoun can be the object of a verb, as in "I drove him to the mall."

Subjective case pronouns such as "I," "he" and "she" can only be subjects of sentences, as in "He and I went to the mall," but I often hear "Him and I went to the mall."  Ouch.

The big trouble comes when the subject of the sentence or the object is compound - as in "He and I" or "him and me." You wouldn't say, as I used to tell my college remedial English students, "Him went to the mall" or "Sally went to the mall with I."

There, I've said it. Time to calm down now.

Do you come across grammar goofs that bug you? Please drop me a comment or an e-mail.

A Continuum

tabebuia or golden poui tree

The seasons don't arrive in a clear-cut manner in southwest Florida. Rather, there are trees and plants blooming at all different times of the year, oozing through the seasons, one might say.

Mango trees bloom here in January and February, and now, at the beginning of March, sport fruits the size of a thumbnail. They will grow bigger and bigger and  ripen in June and July, depending on the variety. "MangoMania," a festival surrounding the fruit, is scheduled in our area in July.

Citrus trees bloom in February or March, and the fruits are ripe in November or December.

This week, it is the golden poui, also known as the tabebuia or trumpet tree, which has taken center stage. Tabebuia can also be pink, but yellow is the predominant variety around here. My impression is that the leaves fall just before the bright yellow flowers appear. These blooms last only a few days and fall from a tree all at one time, leaving a golden carpet underneath.

When friends up north ask if we miss the change of seasons living in a sub-tropical environment, we say, "no" because we have our seasons, depending on which plants are blooming at any given time. We can tell that it is April, for example, when the frangipani trees, which have been completely bare all winter, suddenly put out green leaves and yellow or pink flowers. In fact, some friends who live in Connecticut for half the year, say they time their trip northward by the eruption of frangipani flowers.

Just as trees up north are losing their leaves, in September and October, the silk floss tree  explodes with big pink flowers. This is neither here nor there, but interesting: its trunk is covered with nasty thorns.