After The Storm

I can tell you this: if the morning after a  tropical event everything is back to normal it wasn't a hurricane you survived; it was just some wind and rain. Higgs Beach the morning after Tropical Storm Elsa blew through town at 65 miles per hour looked like this:

It was a lovely sunny day, typical of the scene left behind by a hurricane, however flooding had receded electricity was flowing and the Internet never left town. 

At first I was puzzled by all the ventilating in public about the weather system's arrival and then I was exposed to some of the reporting by people whose job it is to report boring stuff

Tropical Storm Elsa was clearly not going to derange our lives much if at all, so even though my family in Europe (!) started sending me messages of consolation I declined to get ramped up about this thing.

I wonder if (when?) we face a true test of our collective mettle whether people who survived Tropical Storm Elsa unscathed will brag about their hurricane expertise and their survival credentials? And how many people exposed to television nonsense about this rains storm will keep their fears in proportion to the next tropical storm? Fear and urgency are entirely appropriate for certain conditions, having lived through them, but worrying about 65 mile per hour winds makes you unqualified to enjoy life in these latitudes.

A quick walk along the waterfront illustrated my point that things were entirely back to normal so I spent the short time remaining on my lunch break to take a  quick walk through the Garden Club.

                                   

I dropped off five bucks in the donation bucket.  There is no entry fee nor any required donation, which when it is required or suggested removes the notion of donation from my mind. So when I visit I like to drop off some cash for this most genteel and serene public spaces.

I am not a botanist, I have never been one and it is far too late to turn me into one. I enjoy plants and trees and flowers for what they bring to the world and the idea that I should fill my rather small brain with a filing system to name plants seems absurd to me.

                  

I dislike cutting trees down, I honestly don't much like to prune plants however good it may be for them. 

I see perfectly manicured gardens around town and I know were I to live in such a place I would need an expensive contract to keep a landscape company well supplied with work as I am totally uninterested in gardening as a hobby.

                                   

I told my wife that when we sold the sailboat with plans to move ashore if she wanted a lawn she would have to hire someone to maintain it. I love the summer sound of lawnmowers droning but I would rather eat crushed glass than be tied to a schedule of lawn mowing all summer long.

                                     

And yet, for as much as I know myself to be a Philistine in these matters I never skip a chance to enjoy the Garden Club and form time to time the Botanical Gardens on Stock Island. Indeed I am overdue a visit there and I only have 276 days left to get another walk done there.

The Garden Club is an excellent spot to spend time in the shade looking out at the water. A book, a thermos flask of Yorkshire Gold and a winter cold front can make this spot ideal. 

Of course in winter it is much more crowded, not only with people who have "flown onto the island" for the winter, as they tend to say rather grandiloquently, but also with lots of colorful flowers whose names escape me of course.

Summer is low season for birds and plants and people which is when I come out of my hiding place and wander round.

This time next year I hope to be in British Columbia, one hopes not in a 120 degree heat wave, though I haven't yet made the case to my wife that we should detour by ferry to Victoria for high tea at The Empress...

                                

...and a visit to Butchart Gardens where even Rusty is welcome. 

But for all that other cities have more land and bigger gardens and vast expanses of green, Key West does pretty well by its location.

                                   

The West Martello Tower was built as part o the coastal defenses of this border town but it was never actually used in war. Instead the gunners at Fort Zachary Taylor trained their artillery pieces on it and used it for practice! Which is why it so much more deteriorated than the perfectly maintained East Martello Tower at the airport.

                                   

It should give us some pause to picture Key West after the Civil War when you had a line of sight from Fort Zachary to Higgs Beach and didn't have to gun down the Reach Resort or the Casa Marina to lay your sights on the Martello Tower. 

                                     

The Martello Tower was popularized by the British around the world as a small coastal defense point with a  flat roof giving a cannon a wide range of fire. 

However it was an Italian who designed the first one in Corsica ( a colony of Genova at the time) in a place called Mortella in 1565. And here they still are in Key West. 

Rather than blowing up passing traffic this old wreck makes for an excellent viewing platform over the glorious colors in the Straits of Florida, from behind a secure iron fence...

A place to sit and contemplate the glories of nature.

No such luck for me. I had to go back to work.

                            

Old Bahia Honda

Sunrise at Old Bahia Honda, a place to go to breathe deep and enjoy solitude at the waterfront. 

If this place had sand it would be packed year round but its scrubby bushes, rocks and old cement buildings turned to rubble. Absolutely perfect.

                    

                               

Check out the respect the overnight anglers have for this place:

This is as you find the place:

This is as they leave it, leaving me regretting not having my gloves and bags. There are trash cans at the parking lot. All I do know is that during the lockdown these sights we were spared our sensitive eyes:

Back to nature and the sunrise:

This past week 22 people took off from Cuba in a boat just ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa. They didn't make it. The Coastguard picked up 13 twenty six miles from Key West, the other eight vanished. A sobering thought.

The straits of Florida as they look most days when not being stirred up:

Bahama to Rose

An early morning walk looking for things to look at, places often visited and not always seen. A reflection in a window of the Key West Theater:

                       

Rusty looks down where I look up. Sometimes he finds street food.

Then someone puts out a bowl of water for dogs passing by and there he is, hours later at five in the morning. 

The story of Dave and Wendy, advertising I remember from my youth syill present in my mind. Pernicious salesmen!

Behind Wendy's the modern fast food place you can look across the parking lot at Old Key West:

Two bicycles for the price of one:

There has been an explosion of stores selling medical marijuana on Duval Street or some facsimile of it. I know not much at all about all of it except that these stores are everywhere rivaling t-shirt shops in their number. Just what a local wants to go shopping for on Duval.

Rusty on Rose Lane mooching about, walking away from the few drunks and the few cleaners on Duval.

                                    

The courthouse on Simonton Street, home of social security, federal judges, and all the apparatus of federal law.  Yes, Virginia, Key West is not abroad.

Clouds

So much pseudo hurricane drama needs a response. The Keys are as lovely as ever.

Summer is my time for cloud watching, moisture in the air produce spectacular shows in the air.

Sunsets over the mangroves, distant traffic on Highway One is ever-present but muted. More like the sound of water over pebbles or sand sliding down a dune.

Winter is the time for birds migrating so summer is the time of year for the holdouts, the year round residents, the ibis and the blackbirds and some heron and no one around to bother them.

Some days the skies are gray and overcast and give off a terrible flat light. Some days there is a fireball in the sky, exploding overhead.

I like the dramatic days of Florida mountains lit up by the setting sun

I think of mountain climbers on snowy slopes far above the sea.

Spiky buttonwoods framing the puffy white mass in the distance:

Trompe l'oeil, a cloud underfoot hiding among the red mangrove roots:

My escape from long days of working and dreaming of open roads and new horizons when I fear I shall miss these just a bit. Quite a bit.