Johnny Jump-Ups
I didn’t get eaten by alligators. I did come home, as predicted, a totally mentally and physically exhausted ball of ashes held together by spite; but a month of not humping hundreds of heavy boxes and shouting threats and doom-saying predictions – and having too much rain to plant much of the garden – has brought me back around. Mostly. I was crazy enough to get out that I actually flew, on Southwest, on April Fool’s Day!
There were a very few nice things about Florida:
An Italian restaurant named Da Vinci’s, the only place where the food was actually food, and the little old lady there named Anna who waited on our table and was the only one in FL who figured out how to make the coffee milk I euphemistically call “coffee” and remembered it and didn’t pretend it was weird. And who gave me actual delicious vegetables instead of pasta when I couldn’t face typical F-FL food any longer.
The grocery store in Vero Beach where I found cheese from Vermont.
The very, very lovely and varied flowering trees and bushes, that mostly I couldn’t get names for – but who knew there’s a yellow magnolia? And there’s something called a Christmas palm that has green and red flowers on it? And that coconuts actually grow on those fake-looking trees?
Also, the incredible birds that largely don’t look like our birds, with a few exceptions – including the excellent peacock who wanders downtown Ft. Pierce, and for whom all traffic stops. They even have a few blocks called the Peacock District.
Ft. Pierce peacock; in front of the town offices
Fun things? Where we were staying, on the 6th floor of a huge condo building with 2 elevators, there was an L-shaped screened-in balcony. The night I slept out there was the only comfortable night I spent. One night we were treated to a fireworks display way off across the river, that we never could find out what the reason for was; and every morning there were manatees floating around the docks, and several times we saw fresh-water dolphins (who knew there were fresh-water dolphins??) and pelicans that spent the day setting upon the piers. Note: real-life pelicans – at least, these – don’t smoke pipes and wear cap’n’s hats. I was disappointed.
Below that river side of the balcony was a swimming pool. There were three little black birds that spent hours in the pool, standing on the steps into it, bathing and drinking. We also saw vultures, ibis, many kinds of long-legged, long-beaked birds (no flamingos unless they were white and I didn’t recognize them); and the black bird that two years ago shouted at me whenever I went down my friend’s driveway to get the mail out of the mailbox (trip down: oh no! oh no! oh no!; while I reached for the mail: uh-oh! uh-oh! uh-oh!; while I returned to the house: nyuh-aah!: nyuh-aah! nyuh-ahh!) was still there, but the only time I heard him was when the moving van, when pulling into the driveway, got caught on, and partially brought down, the phone wires strung across the driveway (entirely too low). Poor bird flew into a nearby tree and spent the next hour shouting: Oh-No! Oh-No! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Over and over again. I swear.
Lots of geckos of many colors, and some very pretty many-colored geckos. All named Bob, apparently. Aross the street from the condo was the ocean; so on many nights I could hear the ocean waves crashing. And – get ready for this – the ocean in F-FL is warm!. I couldn’t believe it. Only got to wade (and get splashed waist-high) in it once, because we were too busy, but still, it was great.
In 5 weeks, I only met one (yes, one) person who actually grew up in F-FL – everyone else was from everywhere else, many from PA, NJ, and environs. The area where our short-term rental condo was, was filled with part-time full-timers, retired full-timers from away, and the road – a very long road – resembled a geriatric strip mall of condos, little cottages and trailer parks, and a few truly giant homes. They all had beach names: Beach Front; Beach Side, The Dunes, The Pier, The Pier on the Dunes, The Dunes on the Beach, Manatee Cove, Pirate Cove, Beach Pirate Cove, Manatee Dunes – you get the idea.
I did meet a guy in the condo library – the condo had a library! and grocery carts you can borrow to carry your stuff from car to apartment in – who for all his childhood and until just recently, spent summers near Lake Winnipesaukee, in Wolfeboro, in fact. We discussed the proper pronunciation of Konkid, Boskwine, Lebnan, Klayamot, Kankamangus, New Hamsha, and other local spots. Yes, that is how a native pronounces them, you fakers!
Back home: All winter, the garden gremlins who caused such destruction in garden, and then the house when they moved in for the winter, caused the cold water faucet in the bathroom sink to run only warm or hot water. My threats that stopped them from growling in the pipes and wall didn’t have any effect on the cold water faucet. Sometime in February or March, something – something large enough to climb over the compost wall and from the top dig a large den in the compost, with a hole opening from the top, large enough for – well, for a gremlin or garden gnome – sorry, The Husband covered it over before I got a chance to take a photo of it, but it was at least 6 inches wide by 4 inches high and included a domed top – and by the time I got back from F-FL, the cold water faucet was suddenly producing cold water again.
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| Early rhubarb |
So I’m holding my breath to see what’s going to happen, besides ticks, I mean, in the garden this year. So far it’s too cold and wet to plant anything except alliums, and has been too wet to plant even alliums unless I wanted to do it in galoshes and a raincoat. However, the garlic, planted last year, is well up, and the asparagus is also about 2 inches up, and the rhubarb is about 5 inches up, and the Johnny-Jump-Ups are rioting amongst the garden beds. So, the last 3 days between showers I managed to get the leeks, 2 of the onion sets, and the shallots planted, with fingers crossed. The storm we had the other night left an unexpected duck pond in the side field, and water coming up through the cracks in the cement floor of the cellar and the drainpipe down there.
Earlier in April, we were temporarily visited by a pure white duck with a black streak across his back, a teal head, and a very long very red beak. This, the internet tells me, is a Merganser; but the lady he was accompanied by was not a lady Merganser, she was brown and spotted all over. A dalliance? Or, maybe, garden gremlins in disguise? They were heading for the kitchen pond, which had just started quacking with tree frogs, before the peepers came out. I haven’t seen them since, but what a sight! The woodcock, when it’s not pouring rain, is calling for a mate in the front field; I hear owls hooting back and forth at night; the bird that built its nest atop the lighting fixture at the top of the stairs in the garage outside The Husband’s studio is back; and it looks like the three birdhouses in the garden are occupied, or, at least, being investigated for future occupancy.
Emerging plants
My world is mostly back to normal. The Sailor and I went to the 5 Colleges Book Sale the weekend after I got back to NH, first time since Covid. My cats forgave me for being gone pretty quickly, but Biscuit, the little black female, left this plane while I was in F-FL. She had a cancerous tumor on the side of her neck that had grown to the size of a baseball, and she’d just worn out. Her ashes wait to be planted in the grave bed next to Catmandoo’s. As usual, we ran out of fire wood too soon. As usual, the driveway was a mud pit for most of March – glad to have missed that! I’ve read something like 10 books in the past month, which is more than I read all last year; and I also caught up on months’ worth of magazines that had piled up. And I’m planning the garden, and 3 new raised beds.
I’m also down to just 4 3-ring binders, out of 14, about my F-FL friend’s stuff. But more on that, later.
For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com 2 May 2023
All photos Debra Marshall; peacock and other F-FL photos Paula Lisciotto
That's me in back, and cousin Paula and her husband Len in front; we're on a boat going out to look for dolphins and other F-FL wildlife. What we did the last day, after the hoarder kicked us out of her room. But that's another story...
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