Spring Break Fever

Has it been ten days already since we all last had classes. More than that, about six weeks, since I have found time to provide any updates. The thing about winter in Florida is that it plays a deceptive hand. Some days rainy and cool overcast and even a frost, and then a teasing almost springlike for weeks. Finally this past week we got rain. A lot of it. Since then, three days of sun.

Outback, the coral honeysuckle have begun to bloom, deep orange pedals with bright yellow stamen. In the winds that blew on Thursday, a large Bromeliad tillandsia was forced out of an elbow in the live oak and fell to the ground. It is an endangered plant species, so we installed it on the trellis as well, affixing it with wire on the north side of the lattice. Maxim also decide it was time to tent and when she could not convince me to pull out the real camping tent, she made one of her own.

On Friday, Maxim turned ten. 10. She invited about ten girls and they had a dance contest, a water balloon fight, got to swing on the tire swing and get sprayed, ate pizza and cake, and then went out to the movies with Lanita, Alana's mom. Yesterday she attended her friend Sophia's birthday party, after spending the afternoon ice skating with another friend. Birthday weekend. Noah mentioned his desire to drive all of the girls except his sister out of the yard after a few hours, but he had Demarco, Brandon, and Jonah to play with on the side. And they all got cake, water balloons, and a swing on the tire swing of cold water, too.

But he's eight, so he doesn't see it quite like that. He's a boy who loves superlatives, and comparisons, out of which the true essence of things emerge. "I didn't have this many kids at my birthday party," he says forlornly. "You had exactly as many." I remind him. "Not if you don't count sisters and friends. I didn't have this many girls!" he says with extra emphasis and contempt on the last word. But Noah is doing well in the real world. He is enjoying playing baseball and he and the boys in the neighborhood play epic games of get the bad guy around the houses with their nerf plastic rifles and the dogged seriousness of pre-adolescent boys. Sometimes they don't even notice I am walking among them. The game just goes on.

And then there's Marcela, who has just received the largest painting in the world to fix and preserve in her small studio. It is called "I Don't Paint Feet," and she has been commissioned by Saratoga County to stabilize it, repair it where possible, and house it for display. Four years ago, Papa and I built a work bench for Marcela (2' x 5'). This painting exceded its size (it is 3'9" x 6'10"), so this morning, I went to the lumber yard and got a nice piece of hardwood plywood to provide enough surface for the work she intends to do. The piece needs flattening, repairs with Japanese paper, and work on the painting side, too. It's exactly the sort of project Marcela trained for in Buenos Aires. She is excited and nervous and ready to get started. I am excited fo her.

And then there's me. I'm good. Six more weeks until summer. :)

KAC

The Sounds of Spring
Hundreds of migrating robins descended on my backyard this morning.  After weeks of grey and overcast and dreary weather, these sounds of spring light up the air.  Here is a short clip of the music filling our day here in St. Petersburg.  We'll remind them to continue north if they stick around too long.  Enjoy:

Winter Grey
The overcasts of January and February. Cool and even chilly air. Sometimes rain, but clearly not enough. We have some of the mildest weather of the contiguous United States, which explains the filled up roadways and endless false turn-signals everywhere I go, but except for a day or two here or there, winter has not delivered a very sunny face this 2011. The storms that have battered almost the whole of the other 47 states, have also pulled moisture from our climate. Day after day of not enough rain and not enough sun.

The changes have come, nevertheless. The stump, you might note, is completely gone. Burned out at last and now used as the burial ground for the Spanish moss that drops intermittently into the yard. The whole scene looks dead or dying, but the truth is that if you were to bend down close and look between the dead pieces, you would see that everything has suddenly started to grow again. (Which strikes me as fine metaphor for the happenings in North Africa, if I may digress.) Seeds are sprouting everywhere, vines and trees are pushing out their buds. Another week, or three, and this landscape will be more obviously turned toward spring.

The start of spring means changes for the kids, both of whom have been playing soccer in the Southside League since late fall. Maxim did not have a very productive season. Her coach was a 16-year-old high school soccer player who had a difficult time seeing the U-10 girls as anything other than little kids. And the absence of leadership took the spirit out of her team. Noah on the other hand, who seems to want to fulfill his mother's dream of playing for the Argentine national soccer team, has been chosen to play on the U-8 All star team, playing for a regional championship in two weeks. He also started baseball, with tryouts last week and formal practices beginning this past Wednesday. He's not very focused when he's in around the house. But put him on a playing field, and he seems to come alive with attention. Today he scored four of the nine goals scored by his team. Maxim, for her part, has decided to return to dancing. She reminds me of me when I was in my early teens. She wants to be a performer. Unlike me, however, she has some genuine talent. She is artistically very brave and creative. She wrote her first real song this week "On Your Side" by Maxim:

And the rest of us, Marcela and me and the two cats, one dog, and one goldfish, continue along our way. Marcela has been working for the Pinellas County School system as a substitute teacher. Last week in a third grade classroom, after she returned from escorting one of the students out of the room, a young girl had her hand raised. Marcela called on her and she said, "Dariem said that you were a green toad when you were outside." Without missing a beat, Marcela acted surprised and exclaimed, "He did! How did you know Dariem?" To which a third child said with wonder and perhaps a small amount of fear, "Are you really a green toad." "Yes I am," she said in her delightful Argentinean accent. "Do know Lake Maggiore? That's where I live. When I leave here I'll turn back into a toad and hop on home." There was a pregnant, uncertain pause and then one of the students, Olivia, who was in pre-K with Noah and has been to our house, shouted, "Noooo! I know where she lives. I know where her house is, she isn't a green toad! She isn't!" And another looked at Marcela and asked again, "Are you really? or Aren't you?" "She's not! She a person!" And, so, as you can imagine, she got along pretty well with the kids after that.

Out in the yard things are starting to flower. This Spanish needle, a native annual flowering plant, some would call it a weed, is blooming everywhere and is the greenest thing in the landscape at the moment.

This potted plant has also just sent up its first flower. An orange sunset of a bloom, but not yet fully exposed to the day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Our butterfly flower, a colorful milkweed and the favorite plant of Monarch butterflies, has itself decide to begin a blooming cycle once again. You can see the giant pods containing feathery seeds as well as the reddish orange future flowers to its left.

And our beach sunflower has been blooming like the Spanish needles, at a steady rate for weeks, well-adapted to the varied winter climate.

Spring will not formally arrive, according to our shared calendar, for about six more weeks. But here on this heap of sand covered limestone, spring is upon us, the snow banks are melting, rivers are swelling, and the air is thick with a nose-swelling pollen. We welcome the arriving season with a renewed spirit of hopefulness and an anticipation of great things to come.

November Rains

The greens have returned. Stump gone. New primitive area under the eucalyptus tree. That's snowflake sauntering across the yard, in search of anoles. It has been a busy fall. Maxim with an injured knee just before soccer season. Marcela with her comps and final classes. Noah with the trial and tribulations of second grade life. And me, well, my troubles are nothing in comparison. The back deck has proven popular and well-used, especially now that the climate has turned to what one might call a mid-spring delight in the north, days that we try to find the time to enjoy.

There is an osprey that visits a snag on our giant eucalyptus. Perching in the late afternoon and letting out the spine wrenching screech, distinctive among raptor calls. The fish eaters are never very hungry in these parts.

Maxim and Noah are learning how raise a puppy. Rex, our new dog, turned six months this week. He is mostly house trained and generally comes when he is called. He has a pecking order, based on who feeds him most frequently. It begins with Marcela, moves through Maxim, then me, and finally Noah -- sometimes he even prefers the cats before Noah, as their food scraps are frequently devoured by him. This is most distressing to Noah, who wants the dog to be his. He wants to be as gifted with animals as his sister. Instead, though, he man-handles the puppy and, honestly, scares him at times. We keep reminding him. "He's an animal. A living thing. Not a stuffed toy." And he is learning.

Maxim, on the other hand, is training Rex to sit and lay down and jump. He is quite good at jumping. And likes to play with her and sleep on her bed, given a choice. But no one ranks close to Marcela, who has been studying at home this year, and spends the most time with what she calls her "new baby." He is happier for it, I'm sure. We all are.

St. Petersburg, Florida is a land of unusual extremes, seasons out of order, people out of place, and an entrenched despair. And yet, through it all, life persists. The love of my life and my children, a growing gaggle of pets as we circle the wagons and keep our power dry, our time is precious and fleeting and rich. We are glad for what we have together, sustaining tenacious joy.

Spring(fall)

Week after week through the Florida summer the sun beats down too hot through heavy wet-blanket air. Plants wilt by midday and we all jump quickly from box to air-conditioned box, escaping to the high-pressure cool of our energy intensive indoor habitats. But, then, from one day to the next, the gods forgive us, releasing their fury to other parts of the world and opening the way for Edenic delight. Fall in Florida brings eternal spring. The air cools as if a global compressor has hummed into action. Flowers appear and the pale green of overheated vegetation sinks into a richer hue of renewed vegetable growth. And so, last night the new weather arrived; it had blown in through the afternoon, you could see it in the clouds whose heavy mass began to fade and lighten and wisp away by sunset. And it remains today, where you can see it in the grass, the complexion of the landscape. Welcome spring.

This week we faced challenges in school as fourth grade came with new faces and new teachers and some of the same old problems. We had solved them once, in other quiet ways, but changes in the school made old solutions worthless and so new ones had to be devised. In the process, Maxim was asked to talk about her experiences to adults in an adult setting with grown up language and she answered with a clarity and a grace and generosity that made me proud to be her father. And she took part in figuring out solutions, and we believe, for the time being, until things change again, we have arrived at a solution that serves the circumstances. Maxim also measured for the string orchestra this week and has been assigned a viola, which she picks up next week. This week, like the sudden arrival of spring, Noah began to draw. From one day to the next. As if he had been doing it his whole life. We bought him a journal during the summer to write in and he wrote in it once and decided that was "too boring." Then it sat until Tuesday, when the drawing began. He will draw for pages in a sitting. The life changes so suddenly sometimes that we don't have enough time to stop and marvel and savor and rejoice.

The primary producers make sugars and cells and feed us all through photosynthesis, the miracle chemical conversion, sunlight captured. This butterfly bush has yet to attract the monarch caterpillars that are its symbiotic insect. Orange and yellow are the themes this week.

This Purslane is about to flower. I believe it will be yellow.

This Bromeliad flower is leading the way for a slow fireworks display of color over the next several weeks from our backyard patch.

Fall in Florida brings eternal spring.

Leg-less

I'll begin by pointing out that the stump still smolders, leaving me in awe at the size of the root ball built by that tree over the years. Maybe tonight it will finish. Maybe its time has not yet come and I will have to burn again next weekend. There was much less rain this week and so the grass did not grow very much, keeping me from having to mow. The lack of rain made it easy for the kids to walk to school, though, and walk home, which they did several days. The school rhythm is on. We wake, scarf down breakfast, put on our uniforms (well, they do), and head off to school. Marcela would gather up to her desk as soon as they were off and begin her own work. She has two graduate classes to finish, and the reading has begun. For my part, I'm still in denial. Monday at 8:00 a.m., I will present myself to a class of students and get the semester underway, and today, in between painting the fascia and repotting some plants, I glanced at the syllabus and the introduction notes. All is in order.

And now the story to which the title refers: Two years ago I decided to dig into my compost pile for the very first time. It seemed dry and I feared I had put too much brown and not enough green. Two shovel drives into the pile and I was suddenly looking at the writhing half of a snake that I'd just cut in two with my spade. I'm easily bothered by things like that so I threw the shovel-full of dirt back on the pile and retreated and did not look at it for two years. When I finally moved it a few weeks ago, I found no more snakes. Next to the original compost we started another compost, for kitchen waste alone. Today I started digging into this pile to gather soil for our planters. Three shovel drives into the pile and I see another snake, trying to get out. I step back and as it slithers along the fence I note that it is the strangest looking snake I have ever seen. It took me a second and then I realized that it was the other half of the snake I had severed two years before. Its chopped off tail was squared off like his head, which was what made him look so strange. But there he was, alive as the day, having learned another easier lesson about the safety of compost piles as homes.
I'm going to admit to some relief. While I'm no fan of snakes, I'm glad to know I did not unnecessarily kill, and only unnecessarily handi-capped the poor thing. I said nothing to Maxim, Jasmine, or Noah. They would have been grossed out. And, anyway, they were busy covering my porch in talcum powder paste.

Rainy then Hot

Our lawn gets greener and greener as the skies carried rain almost all week. And not just Florida, it's the end of the day and a thunder storm is rolling through rain, this was like Portland January I haven't seen sun for two months rain. Heavy dark grey clouds keeping the day underlit. Rains and spittle and driving downpour and then rains again all day long. Maxim said that since it didn't rain like that here very often when it did it seemed to last forever. Rain forever last week. Monday through Thursday. Then Friday the humidity set in to stay through the weekend. The smoldering fire pit in the foreground has turned ablaze and I hope to finish burning out the pine tree stump tonight. The goal was to do so this summer. The goal was met, we hope. The kids signed up for fall soccer today and Noah has been invited to play fall baseball. Maxim visited with her friend Tootie and complained yet another day about the injustice of being an older sister. School began last Tuesday, so the kids and our schedule has begun to make that steady shift into fall. I have one more week and then the summer denial has to end, because they expect me in the classroom Monday, Labor Day. This week we hope to get the soil we need for the planters and get our fall crop in the ground. I hope the sun can reach them. The morning light is coming later, evening sun is falling sooner, the shrinking days are palpable now. Fall is on its way.

This coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) has put out just one flower since we transplanted it farther back in the yard. We expect more next year. The hope for a finished stump is washed out as a torrential, it's dusk in Florida so it's going to pour buckets, down pour has arrived. The fire is out. Tomorrow perhaps.