I have seen two people jogging down my street these past couple of days. They have earphones and they look fresh and sleek like seals sweeping along so I'm pretty sure they are visiting for the winter. I don't see joggers on my street in summer, except Linda who waves each morning as I get home from work. There was a comment in the Citizen's Voice about dilapidated cars parked on the street, and could the owners of the work trucks please park them in their drive ways. I am seeing out of state tags popping up and someone tried to jump a line I was in the other day like her time was more valuable than mine. These are all signs that winter residents are back, and this first wave is down here early.
People who live in Key West year round have a rather split approach to snowbirds. It's that mixture of dependence and resentment that seeps into many aspects of our lives. Snowbirds bring money and spread it around which has all the beneficial effects of trickle down that keeps people employed. Plus everyone knows and accepts that wealthy winter retirees raise everyone's standard of living by virtue of the fact they spend money here. I doubt we'd have near as much live theater without them, or as varied restaurants, but that wealth also raises costs, notably of housing.
Snowbirds do up the houses they buy as winter homes, and pay more to rent homes and apartments for six months than many people can afford to lease for a year. Lots of people enjoy the quiet of summer in the Keys, as do I, but have trouble focusing on the good when the roads are clogged with all those extra vehicles in the winter. Parking? Forget about parking in Old Town - get a two wheeler! There again I wouldn't get paid as well at my city job without the increased tax base of much improved buildings in the city... Snowbirds are nature's reminder to keep an eye on the big picture while coping with the minor daily irritations of the little picture. For instance I get taken aback by the lines that magically appear at the Tropic Cinema, but without the snowbirds Key West wouldn't have an arts house in the first place. 
This year the winter resident thing is coming early it seems so I am bracing for complaints at work about those irritating quality of life issues that don't seem to plague cities Up North. Peacon Lane is a bucolic little street wedged between Eaton and Caroline Streets, a one way alley aimed at the waterfront.
It is also a place that seems to attract homeless citizens in large numbers, and as surprising as this may sound, our population of HCs also increases in winter. Living on the streets doesn't mean you can't be a snowbird too! So I know winter has arrived in this land of no seasons, when HC complaints go up, not least at the corner of Peacon and Caroline.
You have to think the residents of this little street must have developed a sense of humor about their burden when you read signs like these... NO "hunting, fishing trapping..." but I hear no humor in their voices when they call to request an officer to do a check of the lane to move along bundles sleeping in the bushes.
I, like everybody else, enjoy the architecture and beauty of Key West, but I like living in the peace and quiet of the island suburbs to the north a little ways. I too would get grumpy if I had to step over sleepers on my porch.
Peacon Lane is trim and tidy and at first glance is not particularly eccentric or odd but it has it's features for those willing to look.
Jim who likes to swim? He captures the inshore waters of the keys nicely. And this scooter was an "ah-ha!" moment for me. When I owned an orange Stella 150 a few years ago this silver model was the only other one I saw on the island and it was parked on Catherine Street. Then it disappeared until I found it here on Peacon Lane.
It only had something like 2600 miles on the clock and it was looking quite rusty too, so perhaps that's why I haven't seen it around town. Probably the owner uses it for urban rides only, a little less ambitious than my Highway One commute which put paid to my Indian-made copy of a Vespa two stroke. Scooters are common in Key West of course, even if Vespas and Stellas are still quite rare. Harleys are the other kind of scooter and they are everywhere:
And if you don't want a Harley or a Vespa how about a sweet Honda Metropolitan (Jazz, if you are in Canada):
There is an unusually high proportion not only of refurbished homes on Peacon, but also of off street parking, though bicycles always manage to fit in:
This Dade Pine home put me in mind of a Lincoln Log cabin, even though it is classic south Florida design. Notice the concrete block "foundations" and the overhanging front roof which gives it the infamous "eyebrow" design which was supposed to allow upstairs windows to remain open in all weathers but in fact just trapped the heat inside :
This house put me in mind of the Pacific Northwest, for some reason. It has stained glass windows, not clearly visible in the picture and a heavily varnished front door:
The abandoned ladder put me in mind of unfinished projects (though my ladders are mundane affairs of aluminum and plastic):
And then this object of art under the trees:
I was pondering the puzzle when a lady walking her dog came by and was rather startled when I asked her what she thought. After she composed herself she thought for a bit and suggested it might be something on the lines of a merry-go-round.
"She does other stuff too," the dog walker said, referring to the artist, " she made a bust that swayed gently," she said mimicking the action with her hands. "I liked that,"leaving me to wonder if the horses were of a lesser order.
Triumph Bonneville 900, circa 2008, Key West Florida.
BMW K1200R on the road to Spoleto, Italy. Rented one very wet and cold June 2008.
Chris' less elaborate picnic, on a bicycle camping trip from our English Boarding school. 1971. 
His son Giovanni sheltering from a downpour with me, Terni Italy 2008.
My castle was my home at Morruzze. Fifty rooms with the oldest from the 12th century.
800 square feet dating back to 1987. I'd much rather a canal instead of a wine cellar. 
My sister Liz, 60, the happy farmer's wife and grandmother. Umbria Italy 2008.
57 years ago she is the twin on the left. Neither has ever left home making me the wanderer. 
Upon the advice of Lisa and Josh we spent a little less than $250 and came home with planks and plywood to make four vegetable beds, four feet by four feet (1.5 square meters each), soil to fill them and a few pots for some fruit trees. Lisa has been developing her own southernmost garden over the past few years:
She showed me how she created her own raised beds using simple pine planks with plywood floors, properly drilled to drain water. I followed her instructions and found a shadier spot for some vegetables that don't need to be in the direct path of the blazing southern sun:
With their help the selection process to get all the necessary stuff was easy and painless, and I have started to put together my new beds. The pots were a bit easier as all it took was basically lining the bottom with some rocks for drainage and tossing some potting soil in on top:
Lisa gave us a couple of pineapple cuttings, and as unpromising as they looked I just stuck the spiky things into the dirt and off they hopefully go, they seem quite vigorous so far in their pots. We also got a mango, a key lime, an avocado and an orange tree and I spent a pleasant afternoon potting them as well.
I am always astonished by the way things grow. It seems to me wildly improbable that things will sprout, never mind flourish, when they are stuck in the ground but sure enough the drive to live pushes them up. This neck of the woods is not very promising as far as gardening goes, thanks to the absence of soil and proximity to salt water, but it is frost free and I think it's time I took advantage of all that sunlight.
Lisa calls her beds a Victory Garden which puzzled her mother who had to point out there isn't a war on, but her daughter ever the activist begged to differ. She's fighting to create her own locally grown organic food:
This gardening thing is an experiment for me, I find it surprising that I have taken to it after decades of not wanting to deal with growing things. I justify in my mind as a way of seeing how well we can do growing our own food, organic, local and overseen by ourselves. I hope we can fend off the damned iguanas and insect pests and have something to eat in a few months. I expect some failures but I hope that given time and experience I will remember the lessons my father taught me years ago.
I am getting back into it on a more modest scale, four beds, a few pots and I hope the patience to expand as soon as i think I understand what I'm doing:
Having friends who can show the way is a big help and Lisa is quite the adventurous gardener, taking advantage of our frost-free climate to grow wildly tropical fruits in her much larger space. Sunday night we went by the have dinner and after dinner we sat out in the balmy eighty degree night and watched the full moon hover between the clouds:
As we sat down below in the midst of Lisa and Josh's arboretum:
Josh has half a dozen degrees of one sort or another to his name and he is driving the bio-diesel program at Key West High School:
He also introduced me to something called Gentleman Jack, a brand of whiskey that was in large part responsible for my inability to produce a coherent essay yesterday. We sat out under the stars marveling at our good fortune, enjoying the absence of seasons, more or less:
Lisa is a teacher at a nearby middle school and together the two of them taught for a couple of years in Kuwait. they were momentous years as there was an outbreak of some unpleasantness next door in Iraq, and they have their own stories of ducking and covering:
It was a just reward for screwing and drilling and cursing and grovelling looking for errant seed packets the afternoon before. 
The ones I feel sorry for are the youngsters with their rubber burning crotch rockets, stuck in the Sunshine State with its straight roads:
Vespas, the deluxe scooters are appearing in greater numbers in Key West, mostly in winter because the do tend to be the preserve of the wealthy, relatively speaking. You can buy a lot of cases of Bud Light for the difference in price between this yellow Vespa LX150 and something like an entirely functional Taiwan Golden Bee:
A Yamaha Zuma 50cc will do the job if you are buzzing around town with a package to deliver:
And Duval Street gets crowded with people sitting in their cars cruising and checking out the scene. Irritating I call it, entertainment others call this style of not driving:
Or you can be like me and get out of town every now and again, to enjoy the open road, albeit straight and flat:
Some days it's good to drive a car, but downpours are usually short lived, as short as they are heavy:
Even if parallel parking is beyond your natural abilities you should try to fit into the space properly. Your best efforts may make your rivals for the sought after parking spot crazy, especially as those spots can be in short supply. Waste not, want not and if someone is tempted to stick their moped behind your badly parked car please don't knock it over when you finally lurch out of your spot-and-a-half:
Sometimes nature speaks and trees, of which key West has an abundance, make use of your car as an ashtray. In Turkey figs fall on vehicles, in Key West it's just inedible blossoms:
Cars and two wheelers cohabit quite well in Key West, even though some new arrivals still bring their hatred of bicycles with them from Up North and shout epithets at locals peddling:
Here too are some rules. It's okay to ride a bike on the sidewalk as long as you yield to pedestrians and have an audible means of approach ("Excuse me!"). Use lights, you will get stopped, and I enter a million traffic stops BNL (Bike No Lights) in my night shift.Do not ride the wrong way on a one way, any tickets you get on a bike are moving violations against your driving record.The sad thing is these tourists (identified by the rental plaques on the front baskets) ride bikes in Key West as a vacation thing, this experience won't awaken in them the notion that cycling is useful transportation. I mean, what do you do if it rains? Melt?
It's the same problem pedestrians suffer from, and Key West, particularly Old Town is ideal for walking, even in inclement weather:
And in fine weather, dry weather walking is a splendor of sights to be seen:
Plaid shorts are entirely respectable in Key West, even away from the golf course. We are fashion rebels when it comes to being seen out in public, in your car, on your bike or best of all on your motorbike.