Another Bloody Cold Front

I have a theory that the gods are watching out for me; every weekend off they plan weather in my honor, rain, clouds, cold winds, whatever they think would ruin my weekend off. This weekend is going down in usual style, after a week of summer like temperatures and bright sunshine.If I'm out with the Fusion I am hauling Cheyenne around for a walk somewhere interesting. Interesting to the dog that is. On a day like this the only thing I find interesting is the inside of my snug little home. Persian poets like jugs of wine and loaves of bread. Me? I like a pot of tea and a book, but the principle remains the same.Instead I found myself yesterday lunch time out in the chill north wind on a 60 degree (15C) Saturday hoping Cheyenne was working off all surplus energy. Clearly she was trying to do just that. This gate used to be locked shut. Now it isn't. This trail starts where Niles Road on north Summerland Key ends. It's a short trail, five muddy minutes through the mangroves and one comes to a bridge.On a normal tidal day the waters rush under the bridge through the shallows sounding for all the world like a rock strewn river. When moon and north wind combine to blow all the water out of the Gulf of Mexico Cheyenne takes advantage to sit in the water that's left. When the water blows out one can find all sorts of odd things along the edge of Niles Channel. This garden pedestal for instance. Any wild guesses how on earth this got here? There are reportedly eleven million unoccupied foreclosed homes across America. There are quite a few in the Keys we are told. Places like this with views like this still command premium prices. Pity, that. I cannot for the life of me figure why they built this bridge in the first place. I have been over the bridge several times and the trail peters out in mud and mangroves with no sign of any construction or any reason for a super heavy duty bridge to be built here.I didn't go over yesterday as Cheyenne go too wet for me to want to lift a salty wet Labrador above shoulder height on a cold windy day. We turned back thinking how thoughtful it was for some other visitor to drop off this splash of color in the dreary green mangroves.The vet has told us that a suitable treat for a Labrador is a carrot or a piece of apple. However offering Cheyenne a piece of apple elicits the baleful look of a Labrador evil eye. However when that same Labrador comes across a discarded apple core she guards it jealously and swallows it almost whole in two crunches. People say humans love what they can't have; I know dogs are exactly the same way. So then I started looking with a jaundiced eye at the mangroves growing there minding their own business in the salty tidal mudflats. Is it possible they turn their backs on the ways other trees grow and out of perversity prefer to live in salt water and desalinate their needs from the tides? Do they crave the freshwater they currently can't have? Am I overthinking this?Then I got back to the car, turned the heater on and my brain unfroze and started to work properly again. That was close, I wonder what would happen were I confronted by actual iced frost?