Mangrove Stomp

This badly illuminated self portrait shows Cheyenne and I taking a walk through the mangroves under partly cloudy skies on the north section of Old County Road 939:It's pretty uneventful stuff for the most part, my outdoor life. I have discovered that Cheyenne is as much a misanthrope about dogs as I am about people. We each seem to enjoy each other's company just fine and though she is as polite as I try to be with strangers neither of us seems to feel the need for company. I have stopped making a point of taking her to the dog park in Key West. I looked aloft and there i saw Fat Albert keeping an eye on the world for us. We were not alone on Old County Road 939 on the sunny southern section the next day:I was walking the Sugarloaf Loop, a place I have photographed previously and this was such a beautiful winter's day I wanted to play with my camera and record some of it. I am lucky enough to work 12-hour shifts at the police department and when I am not called for overtime I get to wander these islands weekday afternoons when no one else is around.The day was a perfect winter mixture of sun, deep blue skies, a light cool breeze and everything was just perfect. Of course there should be drama to improve the story but some scruffy oiks Up North in Pennsylvania have compared my diary unfavorably with the plot of Seinfeld episode and that suits me just fine; my little life is about nothing at all these days.

The bright sun made for a day of contrasts and in an effort to create that rich polarized effect I dialed up the shutter speed on my little pocket Canon SX100. In the bad old days of film I had to grope around and attach a polarizing filter and twirl it around to get the right effect and I would only know if I got the right effect when the pictures came back, if the lab hadn't mucked them up. And here is what I saw the moment I took the picture of the canal debouching into the Straits of Florida, and I saw that it was good.The bridge offers a lovely splash of white in the three predominant color groups in the Keys: mangrove green, sky blue and cloud white, or in this case bridge white.

Cheyenne is feeling safe enough to wander off out of sight as she pursues snacks located deep in the mangroves. I had no idea where she was as I stood on top of the old road bridge and called her name. Soon enough....

It looks like summer doesn't it, dappled paths, green leaves and happy dog. Of course because this is the Florida Keys this sylvan scene wouldn't be complete with a cold one. Man proposes, God disposes as the old saying goes. I found the bottle as shown and I wasn't about to taste this particular Rolling Rock. Standing below the bridge one has to be amazed by the amount of effort that goes into sign posting the most obvious prohibitions. Beyond the sign, isn't the sky just a lovely shade of blue?

Cheyenne was wandering around having a grand time of it. I was entranced by the beauty of the day.

I was in such a benevolent mood I even chose to enjoy the free public art instead of getting grumpy about vandalism.I could have been on Duval 20 miles (30kms) away getting shit faced . This was I suppose a wasted afternoon for one looking for the better known Key West entertainments.

I had seen an Illinois tagged vehicle parked on the road at then entrance to the loop and a sole walker striding purposefully by was either a well-burnoosed member of Al Quaida or in fact the driver of the vehicle worried about the effects of the winter sunshine. A little bit of sunshine indeed, the road was burnished by the heat of the afternoon.Happily this disused roadway is closed to motorized traffic so Cheyenne was free to stomp about seeking shade at will.We wandered off the road for a while and found fishy debris lurking in the mangroves. Cheyenne snacked on unseen delights, i fiddled with the macro setting on my camera.

You have to give crabs credit - they lose claws at will and just keep on going. The middle of this part of Sugarloaf is a lagoon and as warm as it was and as inviting as the water looked it's going to be a few months before I'm ready to try swimming. And this place is just too muddy for my delicate tastes in swimming holes even in the heat of summer.

I never really have understood the purpose of the nicely paved loop road round the lagoon. There isn't enough land to do much developing though apparently they gave it the old college try. These trenches are all over the place cut in the solid rock of the Keys. They were designed to hold mosquito larval eating fish to make the marshes fit for human habitation in summer. One can hardly imagine the energy it took to build these things everywhere, but there they are, and along side them piles of spoil gravel that used to fill these trenches now built up into mounds that give a short photographer a slightly extended view across the mangroves.

We were barely half way into our walk but Cheyenne was resting comfortably in the shade even as my camera batteries died and my spares were secure in the car- for I was traveling light this hot afternoon.

The rest of our trek was thus undocumented, but it was a lovely afternoon in the Keys, for me and my dog.

Dustcatcher Rodeo

I was astonished to read in the paper that there is a dulcimer festival going on in town at the moment. Key West will celebrate anything at the drop of a hat so I shouldn't be surprised, and dulcimers at least are pleasant to listen to. As it was my good fortune to have this particular weekend off I got dragged to Whitehead Street to check out the supply of dust catchers offered for sale. This guy also skipped the dulcimer orgy and because he was playing John Lennon's Imagine I took his picture. Those of us who end up in the nonconformist lagers reserved for godless Communist non Republicans will make the song our anthem as we stare at the free world outside the wire.I have decided a pink tricycle will be my wheels when I am too elderly to be riding recklessly on two. Island Bottles has a slogan that involves you drinking it and they will flatten it to make serving trays and the like. I used to live by sailing and I became a bureaucrat; other people go sailing and they become artists.I have noticed over the years that women who go shopping like to touch stuff. I stand back and stare at the object in question and ask myself what on earth we need this for, but women walk up boldly and start pawing the thing. I have seen this done in all sorts of stores and it is a world wide phenomenon. Give a woman flowers and the first thing she does is stick her nose in them; take a woman to Target and she will walk the aisles all day fondling the merchandise. Stand on Whitehead Street among the bric-a-brac and you see this:Men like to live in caves and do stuff. Some men get to do this and make money. Some, very few men, make a living hiding in caves. You take their pictures and feel envy.This next picture is all wrong. The dude is talking to the shopkeeper and the women are watching. Check their body language- all I see is impatience. How silly can he be thinking we want this stuff? Mom has her hands on her hips to signal that it's time to move on. Daughter loves Daddy and wants to indulge him, but really...Celia, with the western dude ranch headgear, came all the way from Santa Fe to check out the dust catchers. The dude in the dark glasses is her driver. She limited herself to a new watchband so Bruce didn't have to carry any parcels home.This guy got away from his minder and was busy grazing on popcorn. He looks happy with his momentary freedom.No popcorn for you. Keep pushing.
Hah! What did I tell you? More public fondling. The guy knows what's good for him. He's fondling too, and doubtless making appreciative noises.This is the Key West fantasy made real. A woman, a bicycle, a warm summer evening in January and a craft fair to enjoy at your leisure. Some people spent Saturday evening shovelling snow.Unselfconsciously Croc'ed. His dog is a lesbian, and Cheyenne was not amused."Best honey in the world," he drawled, to remind us there are some who believe the Florida they grew up in, is actually a southern state. I am glad there are still enough honey bees left to do their work. I love honey but my wife snapped "we have plenty" and my feeble attempt to do good by shopping fell by the wayside. I wonder what this guy does in real life. Issues building permits? Rebuilds jet engines? His imagination is a thing of wonder judging by his offerings.These carvings impressed me but failed to make a dent in my treasurer's carapace. She didn't even fondle them.Popcorn and gossip. One is a Key West staple the other is a Key West pastime. Or vice versa.This kid had the right idea. The adult kept picking up the useless possession and the kid, an anti-materialist if ever I saw one, kept throwing it away. The wrong message at a craft fair- Chinese child laborers slaved away for hours at below minimum wages to bring you that object and what you really want is an American made wooden sculpture. Yes but if we don't buy their crap products, China won't buy our crap bonds and then we'll have to admit we've gone broke.Dog napping is a constant threat in Key West. KA said she wanted to "give Cheyenne a ride" in her patrol car. A likely story. Had I let her go I'd never have seen her again. I need to train Cheyenne not to trust strangers, especially ones in uniform.

It was a wild day on Whitehead Street. I nearly got a pot of hunny and nearly lost my Pooh Bear. I should have gone to the Dulcimer Festival, it would have been safer.

Cudjoe Colors

I thought to take advantage of leaf changes currently underway to go out one gloomy day last week and put some color in my life.

My West Indian Almond trees do their shedding act of the year about now and these large leathery red leaves start falling out of the sky cluttering up the ground and blowing under the house. Soon the bare branches will bud and large green leaves will reappear and shade my house in time for summer. Mangroves normally drop leaves year round, by settling salt from the salt water they absorb into particular leaves and having those drop off taking the salt with them.

Right now everything is going wild shades of red and orange. Not quite everything.The day was overcast and gray, there was a cool north wind blowing, and everything felt autumnal and unusual in the Cudjoe backwoods.Perhaps there weren't enough palm trees. The leaf-less branches put me in mind of a temperate November somewhere cold. Cheyenne exhibited her usual indifference.
I prefer my leaves to be green, in any shade, with a bit of sunshine reflected off the leaves waxy surface.

You will notice that my pink crocs are less a fashion statement and more an object of daily wear, and well worn they are too.
It's also apparently time for that other source of massive leathery leaves to fall around my house, for I have large bushes like these sea grapes on Cudjoe.

Cheyenne has been having great luck finding dead fish along the water's edge ever since the Great Freeze. She looked by this pool but came back, happily, with nothing.

How this cement pipe and these palm fronds got out here I don't know. I couldn't even hazard a guess as to why someone might want to haul them here at all.

These small marshy succulents which look, at a distance like heather, were sprouting little red flowers. It took quite some grovelling to get their portrait.One gets the feeling sometimes that one's dog does not hold one's intelligence in the highest regard. Cheyenne almost never grovels in mud. She can't see the point.