The Key West Botanical Garden on Stock Island was on display this past weekend as part of the round robin of Green Living and Energy Education events that are carried out each winter. The garden itself has a long history as it was built originally as part of the effort to revive Key West during the last Great Depression. At the time North Stock Island was a wilderness and they harnessed more than 50 acres for the gardens. Nowadays it's rather more modest, around 15 acres which is still double the size of 50 years ago when the gardens were at their smallest. Guide books will tell you the Botanical Gardens are wedged between the golf course and the aqueduct pumping facilities which would be the blue building below:
Cheyenne doesn't do well in crowds, tugging at her leash and getting distracted by smells and intrusively sticking her nose in people's crotches, so I took her for a walk before leaving her in the car. A plan that worked well for all concerned in the cool breezy afternoon.
My wife was slightly shell shocked when I found her at the entrance, she had met an old friend from California who left Santa Cruz a year ago and has been living in Key West. By the time I strolled up Eleanor was long gone. Perhaps the meeting was a myth. GLEE was there handing out leaflets.
I wish I liked Green Living and energy Education more than I do. It's not that they are useless but they seem to me to cater more to the feel good crowd than actually focusing their energy on getting stuff done. Recycling rates in the Keys are abysmal, and I see it at my own job where despite my best efforts my young colleagues, destined to inherit the earth after my generation is dead, have no clue what constitutes recycling versus trash. Nor do they care to learn. At the same time they know that City Commissioner Mark Rossi owns the Rick's complex on Duval Street and those bars like all the others, toss out empty beer bottles by the ton. So, what's the point of carefully rinsing and recycling your weekend six pack? Good question. Don't expect GLEE to confront anybody in power seeking answers. But if you need your bike fixed roadside there was a rather cute answer on display:
This is a feel good crowd on the elderly side of heavy metal so the music was light and refreshing, unlike the beer which was refreshing, yes, but not light..
No self respecting Key West event would be alcohol free, and Magic Hat #9 or Burnt Lager were the choices from the Porch, the new place making noise for itself at Caroline and Duval. I couldn't resist a magic hat and it was strong enough I had my wife drive us home.
There were children on display too, frolicking in blissful ignorance of the Federal Reserve's latest efforts to debase their currency.
As alternatives to Honda Metropolitan scooters these things lack any glimmer of pizazz or fun. They look like scooters for the infirm. But they are electric and therefore supposedly desirable.
Two blondes, one cheerful and friendly and ready with her tongue and the other dazed or supercilious. Cheyenne sniffed my legs with profound suspicion when I got home.
Having forgotten to load up with debased currency we were flat broke after buying my beer so we took a free walk through the gardens.
There is not one corner of Key West that is chicken free.
Magic Hat #9, not at all hoppy, a reminder that happiness is to be found in a plastic cup from time to time.
We used to come out here occasionally and eat pizza with friends, in the bad old days before reformers got their hands on the gardens, and kicked out the bums and the turtle thieves, put up a tall fence and started charging admission.
I know progress makes things better, and I know whining about the past is tedious, something I really try not to do, but a walk through the Botanical Garden sets me off sometimes. Everything looks very nice and proper now, and students come and learn stuff and no one steals the turtles to make soup but there was something nice about being alone in here at the end of the day.
I always thought growing sprouts was simple, I used to do it at school with wet newspaper but there was a class going on and we watched for a while.
I might have preferred a lecture on starting a mass movement to encourage Keys Energy to pursue solar power, or ways to persuade bars to buy bottle crushers to recycle their glass, but one can't expect too much radicalism in a town devoted to hedonism. And boy, that beer really was good. I'm going to have to visit the Porch pretty soon. Just to check up on their recycling program you understand.
Last weekend was the run up to the much anticipated major cold front of the Fall. The first front a few weeks ago brought north winds and lower humidity but as usual the second front brings low temperatures and a wintry cast to life in the Keys.
The wind was blowing when I took Cheyenne across Highway One for a neighborhood walk, starting behind Boondocks bar, land of greasy food and cheap been in folding plastic cups. The wind seemed to energize the dog and she ran back and forth doing her imitation of a vacuum cleaner, sniffing up all available smells in ther mangroves and the ditches. She has learned to come quickly when I see a car approaching. Pretty soon I guess we won't see the mail trucks on Saturdays, more's the pity, but I suppose the winding down of our cheap energy dependent world has to start somewhere.
The city of Key West is debating hiring a cheaper ambulance service, and by cheaper one means the paramedics will be paid less to do the same job. One can only imagine what that economy will mean to all those small government voters having heart attacks at two in the morning. Already I see many more people electing to take privately owned vehicles to the hospital rather than face an $800 tab... a choice that isn't possible for some seriously ill people.
Wet dirt for sale, still, on the back roads of Ramrod Key. A friend was perusing the real estate listings on the West Coast of Florida and told me he found 14 pages of repossessed homes for sale for less than one hundred thousand dollars. A claim I found too depressing to verify. The county assessor says my canal front home is worth $215,000 and my wife and I only owe $380,000...
Florida Amendment Four which would have required voter approval of changes to local land use plans went down to major defeat everywhere outside the Keys. The State Department of Community Affairs is expected to be abolished as part of the 2.5 billion dollar state deficit cuts, which could affect land use plans in the Keys which are under the jurisdiction of the DCA, the agency that has to approve development in the Keys. Until now these islands have been designated till now as an area of special concern and subject to development restrictions. 
Thus far growth management has not exactly been a shining star of effectiveness but some really terrible development plans have been knocked on the head. For Cheyenne the issue of weighty moment is that exactly was it that died, or spilled sugar on this piece of the roadway?
Back on the main street Cheyenne continued her snuffling shambling walk, on a leash because she is still rather unpredictable when it comes to wheels. 
A passerby on Big Pine last week made fun of me for leashing pacific old Cheyenne, unlike the mad old bat last summer who berated me endlessly for having her off leash in the trails in the mangroves while the hag's nasty little rug rats snarled and bared their fangs at us, indolent middle aged strollers that we are...I just can't win with some people. 
I rate the walk a success when Cheyenne feels the need for a rest. I guess I get two stars for this stroll. 
Sometimes she just likes to sit and watch the world go by which is a fetish I am happy to indulge, while sitting in the car reading a book. She doesn't look that vicious to me.
Or it can be a thing of physical pain. The pirate shown below is hanging 8 pounds (3.7 kilograms) of water from his arm. On the other hand a longer arm could be helpful to him in other areas of his life.
Friends let friends ride scooters and cruise Key West together. Cute aren't they? And remember they are getting miles to the cup of gasoline. What would happen if they behaved like this at home?
This is my idea of the perfect wheels, sturdy sensible, a covered chain, lights and room for luggage. Across the street the tourist checking the map failed completely to walk into a car. I was hoping for a pratfall. 
One inflexible rule of being a Key West tourist is men always go at the front, walking, riding a tandem or cycling. Why? Ask riepe, I haven't a clue.
Some lucky bastard is getting a Badboy Burrito delivered down Whitehead Street. The best (only) burritos in town get delivered by Vespa, of course. The best for the best.
A convertible for the fearful is the next best way to see the Key West sky. My wife is still enjoying her Sebring. And I am under orders to deliver her Vespa 150 to work for her to use around town. I have been prevaricating as I enjoy riding the ET4 from time to time. 
This was the whole point of this essay. Tourists taking pictures at the Mile Marker Zero sign, the start/end of Highway One down the US East Coast. This essay was suggested by a reader after I took pictures at the Southernmost Point and watched tourists taking pictures of themselves. 
On this occasion I had a moment between dog walks downtown and I sat at the county building waiting to see who would happen along. These were the only photographers who showed up so clearly I'll need to come back during the winter. They look pretty serious so there is potential for some fun pictures this winter.
Bobskoot keeps threatening to show up in Key West with Jack riepe; I can hardly imagine Mr Fussy being dragged around the titty bars by Mr Foul. Bob is so wedded to the idea that he's sending Jack some money to help him get down here. Bob is a Corvette driver, though I don't think he's bringing his car as Jack and his arthritis wouldn't fit. 
Then the rain started and the government workers, the next privileged class to be dragged into insolvency by our homespun wild eyed clerics, discovered they had forgotten their umbrellas.
Not many scooter riders carry waterproofs, so like the improvident virgins in the Good Book they find themselves without their lamp oil at the critical moment when it is most needed. 
If you are bald and butch a little rain doesn't hurt. Get undercover and run a piece of newspaper over your head and you are ready for the wet t-shirt contest.
There was another misanthrope sitting a few feet down form me in the arcade at the court house. He was amusing himself with a book, I was taking random pictures and Cheyenne was watching the world go by. We were all happy. Except the homeless dude who shambled off grumping, presumably because we were cluttering up his living room.
Finally, a sensible person properly equipped for the forecast. 
Horrors! It dawned on me suddenly she only looks sensible from the ankles up.
Sensible people started showing up from all points of the compass.
Rain washed out my attempts to hang with the Parrotheads this past week. I was on my way Thursday and got massively washed out before work. Friday my appointment went late and so it went. So I took a commemorative picture instead.
The zero mile marker has gathered a few extra signs over the years because I guess everyone wants a piece of the action. This sign is at Whitehead and Fleming Streets, an otherwise undistinguished intersection for one very good reason. 
It's where the seat of power resides in Monroe County, the county court house, symbol of government. 
For some it is an oppressor, for others it offers shelter, so I left him to it.
As an aside Wikipedia has a picture of the other end of the road, 2300 miles away.
I expect Fort Kent, Maine is under six feet of snow by now. I wish them joy of it.