The Constant Gardener

My first Earthbox has sprouted nicely. One of two plants is a ginormous creation. I think it's an eggplant but I can't honestly remember what my wife was germinating originally. Barely visible to the left is a second small green plant doing okay next to it's massive neighbor. For some reason iguana action has abated a bit around here. I hope it's the cooler weather. When the guy with the plants shows up at the Big Pine Key flea market, it's time to plant. So we pulled out our Topsy Turvy planters and got to work filling them after months of keeping them ready for action in the shed.The Topsy Turvy is available by mail for monstrous mailing fees or from Target if you happen to be in Miami among the big shops. Basically it's a plastic tube with a sponge at the south end and an opening at the north end. The plant of your choice hangs from the south end while the contraption is suspended from the north end after you fill it with a plant and some dirt:The beauty of the Topsy Turvy is that it doesn't need weeding, it's iguana-proof and by hanging the plant it takes up not much room if that's a concern for an apartment dweller. I figure one could make a planter with a bucket, a sponge, a drill, some wire and so forth but this works for me:A quick slosh with some water (tomatoes can't get enough water I'm told):Such that when I asked my wife to hold the camera she used her initative to take a picture of the hanging in progress:And presto! As unlikely as it may seem the tomato will thrive hanging upside down. I will water it frequently from the deck when I am watering the other plants and the tomatoes will taste splendid:We have been growing some seedlings for planting in one of the beds left over from last winter, and I think we will see some lettuce if the iguanas can be induced to stay away. We also planted a few herbs in our other Earthbox along with a tomato and we shall see what we shall see:Our fruit trees are doing nicely into this their second season and with my experiences from last year I hope this winter will see a more productive growing season. All I've got to do is keep the iguanas away. By any means necessary.

Money Like Water

There is so much weird stuff going on locally it's hard to know where to begin, or what to think about it all. Money it seems is no object for a few select people and institutions, and where it is an object, the sources of supply are most unlikely. Take the rather nice little hospital in Marathon, described thusly on a rather expensive billboard advertisement in Summerland Key:Fisherman's Hospital has made the rather startling suggestion that it should raise money by creating a tax district in Marathon and charge residents $70 per $100,000 of assessed property value. The idea is to raise money to buy modern equipment to make the facility more attractive for a proposed sale to an interested corporation. At a time when the federal government is being critiqued for being "socialist" for wanting universal health care, such a proposal from a private facility is rather breathtaking! I like Fisherman's and hope it continues to exist but if that can only be accomplished with a district tax I fear for it's future.

The Florida keys Community College on Stock island has a new (interim) leader. The new president announced in the Citizen that his top priority are the students, a rather rash course of action if the fate of his immediate predecessor is taken into consideration. Jill Landesberg Boyle was unceremoniously dumped after she made a raft of changes at the school that put "students first." She is now on leave, drawing her full salary until June when her term in office will come to a contractual close. For the remainder of this year the college burns up two presidential salaries at public expense, to no visible purpose.

The Monroe County School District meanwhile is doing it's own inimitable waste-of-money dance in public. The School Board majority of Pribamsky, Dick and Mathewson who have loudly proclaimed their aversion to administrative spending are planning on increasing the staffing of upper level staff in the financial department by a factor of three. John Dick, a man of little visible intelligence is telling the newspaper that a staffing report allegedly dumbing down requirements for administrative jobs is the work of the ousted former superintendent Randy Acevedo, he of the three felony convictions. According to Dick the consulting firm responsible for the reduced job requirements"probably" did so at the implied request of the former superintendent who is no longer available to refute the charge. This baseless accusation conveniently exonerates the board from any oversight responsibility. Board Chair Andy Griffith's plan to reduce administrative costs is to fire all Vice Principals. That'll show 'em.

The city of Key west meanwhile is working on it's own quality-of-life-improvement plans, which one can only view with a jaundiced eye. The city manager wants to widen the harbor channel to get bigger than ever cruise ships to dock in the next decade. 1,000 foot long ships are apparently passe. The city commission is looking to add more trolley tours to city streets to keep competition alive and well with Historic Tours of America. By supporting CityView Tours' application the city hopes I suppose to avoid an anti-trust lawsuit. I'm sure we all await the arrival of even more trolleys on city streets with bated breath. There was however a lovely moment at a recent city Commission meeting I wish I had seen in person. The paper says a discussion about monies owed from Historic Tours shows the city has lost all control of it's accounts. When one commissioner wanted to know how much HTA pays the city, all the Manager's well paid assistants were unable to provide the numbers. No one has a clue how much HTA pays the city for it's exclusive franchise, and thus no one knows if their accounts are up to date. This helps explain our lack of raises this year! It is comforting in our upside down world to know that we the city workers are helping subsidize the very wealthy Ed Swift and Chris Belland's corporation. Not enough that we the people fund banks and insurance companies!

Winter Commute

"Did you see the sunset?" my wife asked with excitement in her voice, after she drove in to have dinner in Key West Saturday evening. (She went to the Colombian Restaurant on Petronia Street: excellent food, disorganized service was the verdict.) I have been noticing the spectacular shades of red and orange and purple for some weeks, ever since we switched to winter time at the end of October. Before the change the ride home after work in the morning looked like this:Now with the return of winter time it looks like this at 6:15 am:The wind is continuing to blow out of the north bringing clear blue skies, bright sunshine and cool dry temperatures. This is a spectacular state of affairs to wake up to at lunch time, but it does tend to wash out a little of the violent, moisture laden mornings of summer. Still, the rich orange glow across the flat waters and the mangrove islands has it's own beauty:I was standing on the bridge near Mile Marker 18 between North Harris Channel and Park key and in the distance, to the east, I could see the traffic light at Sugarloaf School, the one they installed a few years ago to help school buses get on the Highway. It's the green disc seen below:Commuting is supposed to be a penance in the modern world but in the Keys it's not so bad at all. Traffic tends to get a bit heavy between seven and nine going in to Key West and between five and seven in the evening coming out, but for a wild card like me, commuting is just a pleasant motorcycle ride. Working at night puts me against the traffic flow, and the scenery is always spectacular. I love my commute.Even when the traffic is heavy there is rarely any stop and go on the commute, it's mostly a matter of sitting in a line of cars traveling a little less than the speed limit. For me, the ride is mostly an open road.

By the time I got to Summerland Key, a couple of miles from my house the dawn was well underway. I liked the contrast between gas station sign and the orange of the rapidly brightening sky:The one lane road leading to my house was in the shadow of the houses and the trees but to the south I could see the big puffy clouds of moisture gathered over the warm waters of the gulf Stream, on the horizon:

And finally, forty minutes after leaving Key West Police station I could see the shaded window of my bedroom. The ride home in 73 degrees (20C) should have been enough to wake me, but in a few minutes I know I will be fast asleep, like a vampire, before the sun hits my eyes.

The ride home is a great way to slough off the dramas of a night at work.

End Of Duval

Let me say it straight up: this is not my environment. I wanted to check out the end of Duval Street nearest the harbor but try as I might I didn't enjoy this block of the street.There is nothing residential down here, there isn't much greenery and of beauty, the eye of this beholder sees not much at all. There is a pharmacy though, if you need pharmaceutical thing while busy getting drunk.This is dust catcher heaven and I watched these visitors poring over various knick knacks, doubtless imported from the Mysterious Orient for their pleasure.Every fifth male of my generation is called Michael, so I am ready to bet good money there is one with my name on it......so if I ever feel the need to have a sea shell with my name on it catching motes of dust in my small home, this is where I will be sure to come to pump up the Key West economy:Duval Street is labelled in a potentially confusing way. This is the North end of the street, called Lower Duval because the numbers are lower here than they are at the south end of the street which is called Upper Duval.On the left there we see the imposing bulk of Zero Duval, Ocean Key House:This isn't actually a recreation of Check Point Charlie in the Berlin Wall. This is the entrance to the parking lot at the Pier House, Number One Duval Street:

You might come here to park a car on your way to the spa, or the beach bar and that's what you'd tell the attendant. You would also pass these old cement structures, left over from the days when the Key West Harbor waterfront was devoted to sailing ships and the movement of goods as well as people.Nowadays it's all about moving people which is probably a much easier way to make a living than sailing cargo around the coast. It's a lot less romantic to someone who earns his living in the air conditioned comfort of the police station. I don't actually miss my former job as boat captain.I was hoping for enlightenment and a point of view, about how the city makes it's money, but I could stand here and snap pictures till the cows come home and I would be no closer to a conclusion. A few years ago everyone was up in arms about Key West selling it's heritage to cruise ships and tour buses and developers and I wondered how it would be if the money spigot dried up. Now it has, for a lot of people, and the chance for the rest to make small fortune is evaporating fast. Yet the city still depends totally on tourism to supplement the steady income from the military, which fortunately shows no signs of disappearing. The last time the military pulled back left the city in ruins.I don't really understand mass tourism. I love to travel but my idea of making a journey is to see things, learn things and expand my comfort zone. I find it astonishing people keep coming back to Key West, and I am grateful for their constancy. Working for the city isn't as close to the tourist cash as working as a boat captain but the net result is the same. Without the visitor there is no salary. Beyond that rather base motive there is also the curiosity of trying to understand the phenomenon of repeat tourism, and the pleasure of living in a place that is a mirage of a pleasure palace that can be experienced only for a few short days each year.Of course Key West as pleasure palace wears a bit thin for people paying through the nose to live in the city, and that "island time" fantasy makes no sense to people rushing between multiple jobs and family obligations. Key West has always been trapped between fantasy and reality, ever since the Works Progress Administration decided to try tourism to revive the bankrupt city. The plan worked fabulously but Key West has had to reconcile being a romantic island with being in the business of being in business. Tourism always seems to provoke this dichotomy, but Key West's geographic isolation makes the situation that much more complex. When I lived in a mainland tourist town I had almost no contact with visitors. They had their routes to the beach and I had my tourist-free destinations in and around town. In Key West not only is that difficult to accomplish in such a small space, it is made more complex because being a local is a desired status. Most visitors desire contact with locals to go where locals go and eat where they eat.I asked once on a forum why people fascinated with key West don't just move here and the responses were the predictable mixture of family and job obligations, low pay, high cost of living and so forth. I was forced to the conclusion that Key west is better as a dream and a fantasy escape from real life than as real life itself. For some people this is the end of the road, and if they land up here with no money and no prospects, that's okay too. They take a seat, cadge spare change and watch the world go by. My mid-year resolution was to help struggling tourists trying to find their way on the streets, and to keep my impatience in check with the erratic winter driving and keep reminding myself that living here is a choice, not a dream killer. I would probably never visit Key West if I stopped living here. The tourist destinations bore me, and the fault lies, I believe, in me not in them. Lower Duval is for visitors and they certainly seem to enjoy it.

BPK Flea Market

There is a large open space on Big Pine Key, and it's not really all that open. That's because every Saturday during the winter people operate stalls here selling dust catchers, foods, plants, clothes, sunglasses and all sorts of stuff. It's quite the place to be of a Saturday morning in the Lower Keys:This is the place to be find all that stuff you think you need and lug it back to the car in one of the many packed parking lots that surround the selling ground in the middle. My wife loves this dude who sells vegetable plants that seem to be properly adapted to Florida's climate.
His flourished last year where Home Depot's plants were rather hit or miss. He comes down Friday night, sets up, sleeps under the stars as he puts it, and has all his stock sold well before noon on Staurday. But there is a ton of stuff to be found at the flea market. I took these pictures as we wandered yesterday:

I wanted to tell this woman to keep her hands off the pink ones, but then I remembered my own rubber shoes are at home doing fine for the time being. Perhaps her husband needed a pair. My wife took me home to a nourishing curried chicken salad. I'm sure these were quite horrid:

More plants. We got Cuban oregano here and normal basil.

Cars were jammed in on all sides around the selling area.

In between the selling frenzy on weekends it looks somewhat desolate:And, in some respects rather forbidding. The place is owned by a rather repulsive reverend I had the misfortune to meet once. He claims the rights to the roadway around here and has put up signs to that effect.Before jack riepe gets on my case about being a low life socialist, let me just say private property is a fine and noble thing, and one has the right to barricade one's private roads. My questions about this place come in two parts. One: Is this really a private road?And if it is, in the second place, is this sufficient to close it?

I don't want to get tragic here but if some dude (like me) comes by here on a bicycle or a scooter or even on a Triumph Bonneville could he (or she) not run the risk of decapitation? And think about what it looks like at night: The flea market is not well lit at night and these so called "private roads" connect public roads, places where people have every right to travel, and if I were to tell you intoxicated people sometimes ride bicycles on Big Pine Key would you be surprised? Someone not aware of the "reverend's" penchant for closing roads with pieces of string might easily run into these dangers.

There had been talk that the Flea Market might get sold to a retail developer, my wife hoped Target might move in (she's only half joking!) and I wouldn't mind a Whole Foods just because I'm a yuppie. But back in the real world (where I don't much like flea markets anyway, though people sell excellent plants here) I wonder about this ability to just say "This road is mine!" and get away with it.

If this really is private a proper gate needs to be installed if the owner wants to close it off. Guillotining trespassers just seems a little much, even for a reverend.