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.

Finale

Summer winds down for all of us this week. The theme is transition and novelty. The kids' school voted to be a school uniform school, so the kids purchased matching polo shirts and kakis. A fourth grader. Maxim is nervous, anticipatory. The buzz among her peers is that the rubber really hits the road in the fourth grade. No more cruise control. No more easy homework. Everything up to now has been a dry run, going through the motions. The learning start now. So she's understandably nervous. But we're sure she'll do fine. Noah, the second child, the seven year old boy, has some idea that school starts on Tuesday, and will more than likely do just as fine as he did last year. But today there is no school and so he's not going to put his mind on such distant future matters. Marcela begins school this week as well. The textbooks are purchased and her nerves as well are turned up a little more as she breezes her way through the restoration of a blue print for a Lakeland client and then offers the last touches to our back yard restoration project, stringing cross rope for the climbers on the trellis and raking eucalyptus leaves into the trenches left by our former driveway. Depending on a few contingencies, we may get the planters filled and under way today (planting season begins now in this climate region) and may also finally paint the fascia along the roof. I learned this week that I won the 2010 Oscar Winther Award for my first published essay, which lifted everyone's spirits and provided the needed elixir for the final push on the book.

As much as we complain, sometimes, about this maddening heap of sand they call the Sunshine State, there are perks and benefits that cannot be denied. Many summer evenings, one need only step out the front door and look west.

"Home"

Is indeed where the heart is. Back after two weeks of touring that other landscape, where home feels more grounded in soils and granite rock. The house has been well-cared for. The rains fell most of the days during the weeks we were gone and our lawn had sprouted significantly. You can see the images before this piece was mowed at our Flickr site. The completion of the deck project and its residuals left us needing to throw everything together into the shed just before departing. Yesterday we remedied those conditions, actually throwing things out and repacking carefully. There is something incredibly satisfying about a well-organized shed, thinned of its excess. It won't last.

Now in the middle of August even the nights are humid. We set up the fans and try to keep mosquitoes at bay. Which works to a point, but the rains from the past two weeks has hatched a voracious new generation of blood suckers. There is still painting to be done and soil to fill the planters before the new growing season is upon us. But, as Marcela said when we returned, "this time it feels like coming home."

Our new dining area

Yes. It's a nightime shot and so it's difficult to see everything. We've been busy, though. We finished building the trellis on the old frames from the second carport roof. We put more dirt and other material out onto the space where we removed the gravel stones -- the old driveway. And we managed to move the compost and put it behind a vanity fence, which you can just barely see in the far left corner. Maxim likes it. She says it makes the yard look nice. The grass is also coming in some more as we have had a little bit more rain (although still far less than what is expected this time of year). Friday we completed installing the ceiling straw panels (as you can see) and a ceiling fan and so we had a small deck-opening party to celebrate. We moved the dining room table out to accommodate everyone, but now that it's out there, we haven't moved it back. We have to move it in on Tuesday when we leave for New England. But we intend to move it right back out there when we return.

I did not get the stump burned out, although we are down to the very last remnants. One more burn (perhaps even tonight) and it will be ready. We intend to set up a small "primitive area" with log seating and a fire pit out under the eucalyptus tree. You can see in the last shot that new facing is on as well. I installed the new joists and put on the facing during the week. I intended to paint it, but I could not find my paint chip sample when I arrived at the hardware store and I didn't want to guess. I'll get to that in August. We have more landscaping to complete and a couple of blue planter boxes to fill. But we're closing in on the final stages of our summer renovation of the back yard.

New Deck (or, how to recycle a roof)

You might remember (or be reminded by scrolling down a few entries) that the back carport had two roofs. When Ken and Cor visited last April, Ken and I decided to remove the second roof. It was an eyesore and it leaked and it just seemed to take up space for no good reason. We didn't keep our car back here and we usually just stuck a few things to store, careful not to put them under the leak. Removing the extra roof set off a chain reaction that went something like this: once the roof was on the ground and we began cutting it up, I noticed that the joists were made of pressure treated lumber in good shape. I could make something... Marcela and I have been tossing around different ideas for the space out the back door for three years. Having lumber on hand helped decide it. For two weeks I sunk footings, squared frames, and installed joists. For another two weeks I attached decking. Viola! We have a deck. 12' by 16', plenty of room for us. We are covering the ceiling with reed (you can see it piled on the edge of the deck) installing an outdoor ceiling fan and lighting, and will seed the area that used to be the gravel driveway under the old roof with grass. When the Abuelos visited over the winter holidays they brought along a woven hammock. I decided to see if it would fit between our palm trees and (as you can plainly see) it does. One of these days we will upgrade to a real hammock, but for now, a camping pad inside the woven cloth makes a very comfortable place to rest. Marcela has said for some time that all we need to do is fix up a few things and we'll have a great backyard. She's been at the plants for a long time. And this summer we discover the back yard. Morning breezes come in off of Tampa Bay and we sip our coffee and mate and nibble breakfast while the cats chase anoles across the back yard. Yesterday a pilated woodpecker lumbered it way through our oak tree. Crow-sized with a brilliant tuft of red jutting out of the top of his head.

There were extra pieces of pressure treated lumber when the deck was finished and those were fashioned into two planters, which we painted blue. We will grow kitchen herbs and flowers in these. I built a step down into the yard which still needs decking to be finished. Marcela painted both back doors as well. She wants me to close in the electrical box and water heater. And if you scroll back to the top picture, you can see in the far right side the old metal frame for the old second roof, now being strung to carry the weight of corral honeysuckle, a Florida vine that produces a bright orange flower.

Overcast Weekend

Last week passed without having time to say a few words. This week I promised myself it wouldn't happen again. Last Saturday it was freezing, literally, and drizzly. It could have been October in New England. The early soccer game was canceled, but Maxim's game was played. She scored three goals for the fourth time this season. Then this past week the cold continued. Noah's team made up their game on Tuesday night. Also cold. Thursday morning Marcela left for Boston, where she is until tomorrow. But the weather improved. Here. There, she says it is still cold. She has a workshop for professional development as a research librarian. This morning Maxim woke me up at 7:00 because she was worried that she was going to be late for school. She forgot it was Saturday. Noah played goalie in his game and stopped four or five pretty good shots. Maxim's team had this week off, but all of them were sad to hear that Coach Spencer has been called to Haiti for the next 45 days. This afternoon, the kids play in the dirt patch that once was our side yard. Noah, Maxim, Demarco and Jasmine. First soccer, as you can see here, and now an extended game of war in and around the house. They are fortunate to have friends their age and some space to make their own.

Oh One Oh Two, Two Oh One Oh

Rains and cold this end of the year season. The kids have been out of school for two weeks and Marcela's family has been visiting for even longer than that. The house has been full. Lots of love and good spirits. On January 6, the Three Kings come and then, after more than a month, the high winter holidays can be put back into the storage boxes, out to the edge of the curb, and otherwise somewhere else. Monday, the kids return to school. Me too. Marcela's school starts in another week. You may notice some changes in our back yard. (Or you may not.) Our slash pine died last spring and in June we had it cut into pieces. I was hoping to have pieces big enough to cut a few beams for a future second story, but there were too many random nails in the trunk and the tree service only had a small Bobcat, so I opted to let him cut it smaller. You can see it in the back there. We have been burning the remaining trunk and branches since then, although not much during the fall. Our past year, 2009, was probably our busiest yet. Graduate school for Marcela, publications and gardens for me, and soccer for the kids. Plus their usual elementary school. We look forward to the many visits of family and friends that will fill our home again with the sounds of laughter and joy. Happy New Year everyone!