Bombax and Road Rage

I came across this jungly scene while driving through Bradenton yesterday with my brother. Doesn't it look like something from "Tarzan," or maybe one of those "Road" movies from the '40s -- "Road to Zanzibar" or "Road to Bali"? That tree with the red blossoms is what grabbed my attention. It's a kapok, more appropriately called a Bombax, and it has huge, rubbery, prehistoric-looking flowers that fall in profusion at this time of year.

I was happy to see one blooming.

We also passed this magnificent pink Tabebuia, a relative of the yellow one I posted a couple of days ago. (My brother took this photo at my request, and I can hear him now: "STOP TALKING ABOUT PLANTS!")

Yesterday was the day to go visit Dave's family. My brother and I got into his low-slung shiny blue Subaru -- it's so low that it makes me groan when I get in and out of it -- and drove down to Bradenton over the Sunshine Skyway bridge. We met up with Dave's sister Dawn at the family mobile home in Cortez, and then took his parents to lunch at the Anna Maria Oyster Bar. (Or actually, they took us, since his dad paid as usual.) I had fish tacos with mango, which were delicious, and we said hi to Pearl, the robot waitress, who has lost her coconut bra since the last time I saw her.

We all video-chatted with Dave in London via Facebook, and then my brother and I headed back to Tampa. My brother has loved cars since he was a tiny kid, and he loves to drive and spends a lot of time on the road, and he has lots of opinions about the proper ways to drive. Those opinions emerge in his hilarious habit of psycho-analyzing all the drivers around us. Most of us see someone driving crazy and say, "Wow, that guy is a jerk." My brother sees them and says, "That guy is a frustrated slave to the manosphere who's boiling with rage and fears he's an incel." He will judge someone's character based on whether their truck has racing stripes from Amazon or a certain style of hubcap. About 35 years ago I sold him my own car, a Honda, and he still holds it against me that I had spilled coffee on the center console and it had sticky spots. To hear him tell it, I replicated a Jackson Pollock painting inside that car.

He has an eagle eye for any kind of highway oddity. He spotted one pickup truck with a sagging back end that looked so scary and unworthy of the road that I couldn't believe it was legal to drive. Once he pointed it out I was astonished, but I know if I'd been in the car by myself I'd have breezed past without a glance.

Today I'll be helping my stepsister and her husband tidy up the house after all their hosting this weekend, and then I'm off to the airport in the afternoon for the journey back to London. I'll let you know tomorrow whether the wildlife cam picked up anything interesting in my stepmother's yard. (I'm sure you can't wait!)

Lakes Are Holy Places

This frog (lizard?) greets people who enter the bathroom of the pizza shop I visited with my family on Friday. It was a little surprising to open the door and find that face staring back.

It's really not a very appropriate picture to start this post, but it's literally the only one I have. I took almost no bloggable photos yesterday, which was crammed with people people people and lots of family time. In fact I didn't even take pictures of the family, which now that I think about it was probably an omission. I was paying too much attention to "peopling," to use a term I learned from Bug.

The memorial service went well. We had some of June's favorite music playing softly in the background as everyone gathered, like Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell. Then whoever wanted to speak got up and did so, and I did indeed deliver my remarks, though I don't know how effective they were. I have a tendency to over-intellectualize everything (not that I am very intellectual) and let's put it this way -- although they choked me up, I'm not sure they affected anyone else the same way. My brother and stepbrother both spoke, as well as two of June's sisters and my nephew. He delivered the best line of the day when, as the last speaker, he said, "I guess there's nothing to do now but pour her in the lake with Pawpaw."

And that was indeed the plan. My stepmother had been cremated, as had my dad after he died back in 2016. June had saved Dad's ashes, so in the evening we took both his cremains and hers down to the lake and poured them together, in a single mingled stream, into the water. They spread in a fantastic chrysanthemum cloud, almost like a firework, before dissipating in the water. I can't think of a better place for them -- they loved sitting down at the lake and sharing an evening cocktail, and spent a lot of time fishing there and gazing out at the water.

Just like when my brother and I scattered my mom's ashes in the lake where we grew up (a different body of water), I took a photo afterwards. To me, these images always seem so full of God, whatever we conceive him/her/it to be. Any lake in Florida is automatically a holy place of sorts, as far as I'm concerned.

In between the service and the ashes, we chatted with June's six siblings and their spouses, along with other family members and friends. Basically I spent the whole afternoon mingling, which really took it out of me. I think I hold my own pretty well in any social situation, but after a while it's just so tiring -- especially when the people involved are not people I know well. I met June's brothers and sisters several times in my life and many of them had very good things to say about her marriage to my dad and her relationship with all of us kids, so it was rewarding in that sense, but it was also exhausting.

Last night, the family stayed up talking (quite loudly!) into the night but I retreated to my room and went to bed. Of course I'm on a different timetable from everybody else, so that's part of my fatigue too.

Today I'm off to Bradenton to see Dave's sister and parents, and I'm still a little unsure how the rest of this trip is going to play out. I'm not sure if I'm staying down there or coming back to Tampa tonight, for example. I fly back to London tomorrow night, but the real business here is pretty much over and my stepbrother has already departed, along with all the siblings. I'd anticipated needing to sign documents or do business stuff but I don't think any of that is ready yet.

It's decompression time, I guess.

Tabebuia and Pinky

It's not quite 6 a.m. in Florida and I'm back at Dunkin' Donuts, because although my stepsister and her husband have a coffee machine, they had no coffee that I could find -- so I decided to just take a walk up the highway. Nobody else will be up for hours so I imagine I will not be missed!

February and March are great times to visit Florida, because many of the trees are blooming -- the red kapok, the purple jacaranda and the yellow Tabebuia, above. I haven't seen the first two yet, and in fact I'm seeing a lot of frost-scorched plants from a freeze that struck this area several weeks ago. Fortunately the Tabebuias weren't set back by the cold.

I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday morning and was struck by how many birds I was hearing. It was a chorus! I made a recording:

Steve Reed · Florida Birds

According to my Merlin bird app, here's what you're hearing in just that one-minute clip:

Pretty amazing, right?! This really is an incredible, diverse jungle of a state. I have no idea why the Parula warbler is my "bird of the day," whatever that is. Speaking of which, I haven't checked the wildlife cam yet, so I don't know whether I'm capturing video of any critters. I'll download everything right before I leave and post whatever video results when I'm back in London on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, here's a video of another exotic (to me now, anyway) creature, a limpkin. Doesn't it sound positively prehistoric?

I spent yesterday morning running some errands with my stepbrother and his wife, including going to Target, where I was amused to see this:

It's kind of surreal to be on the other side of the planet and stumble across a picture of a crosswalk that's right around the corner from the school where I work!

Soon afterwards, my stepbrother's son, daughter and her husband and kids woke up after an all-night drive from Louisiana, and nine of us went to Alfonso's, a pizza restaurant that has existed since we were kids and still operates out of the same storefront near our house. I think the staff were a little horrified to see our loud gang (including three preschoolers) come through the door but they handled everything well, and it was good to sit and catch up with people I haven't seen for at least a decade (or in the case of my niece's husband and kids, never). It struck me that as much as memorials are about the people who died, they're also an opportunity for a reunion of sorts, a convergence of family members who are normally flung across the face of the planet. People say funerals are really for the living, and I guess that's true.

My brother arrived in the afternoon and we went to Starbucks and caught up there.

The actual memorial is today, and I've prepared some remarks along the lines of my blog post from a month ago. We'll see if I get brave and actually deliver them.

Last night we all gathered for another loud meal, and brave Pinky watched all the activity mostly from the couch, where she snuggled up against me. (I was sitting where my stepmother normally would.) Pinky was very happy to get a few tiny nibbles of pizza. Her little tail was wagging like crazy.

Who ever imagined that Pinky would wind up being the survivor of her whole household, outliving not only her chihuahua companion Manny but also my dad and stepmother? (My stepsister's son, who lives in my stepmother's house, is caring for her now.)

I'm Here

That's my plane, above, sitting on the tarmac at Tampa International Airport after we landed yesterday. Is that a Florida sky or what? Coming down through it wasn't hard at all -- it looks much stormier than it actually was. In fact my whole flight was mercifully easy.

It started in an annoying fashion when I got to the Thameslink train platform in West Hampstead just in time to see the 8:09 a.m. train pull away. I actually hit the button to open the doors before it began moving, but I was too late. It left anyway. I had to cool my heels on the platform for half an hour waiting for the next train.

But I left plenty of extra time so I wasn't stressed, and checking in and going through security at Gatwick was a breeze. I guess this is the first time in recent memory that I've taken a mid-week flight not somehow attached to a school holiday period, because there were no queues at all. As I told Dave, "I'm going to always fly on a random Thursday from now on!"

The flight wasn't full either, so I had an empty seat beside me and the flight attendant was the biggest enabler in the world when it came to serving alcohol. I asked for a gin & tonic and she said, "Would you like two?" Not one to refuse such a generous offer, I accepted, and then when I got wine with my meal she said, "Would you like two?" And then brought me a third later.

So I was fairly blotto for much of the flight, but if there's one safe place to get tipsy it's in an airplane, where you have no control over anything anyway. I watched two favorite Florida movies that I happened to have downloaded onto my computer, "Condominium" and "A Flash of Green," both adapted from John D. MacDonald novels. It struck me that "Condominium" captures a sort of class resentment that is particularly relevant in our Trumpian era -- a blue-collar disdain for the wealthy and educated. (I actually opened my TextEdit app and made a note about this so I could remember to mention it on the blog, a sure sign that I was buzzed: "Captures the experience of the blue collar male — resentment toward wealthy people. Insulation of the wealthy — decamp to Switzerland!" As you may remember from college, everything seems deep and insightful when you've been drinking.)

Anyway, if there's anything better than watching a favorite old movie accompanied by wine, I'm not sure what it is.

When I landed in Tampa I said hello to Phoebe, our airport mascot, as I always do.

My stepsister, stepbrother and brother-in-law all met me at the airport, and I'm now staying at my stepsister's cat-themed house. (They have two cats and lots of cat-related paraphernalia. Thank goodness Dave's not staying here, because he's allergic to cats and he'd be having fits -- although everything is very clean and not "catty" at all, if you know what I mean.)

I did bring my wildlife cam. I'm not sure how successful I'm going to be in capturing some interesting Florida critters, because my stepmother's property is surrounded and divided by several fences, but I'm going to try. After all, the walls of our garden in London do nothing to keep out the foxes!

Unicorn Magic and the Two-Minute Garden

Here's my find from yesterday's walk home from work -- someone's unicorn charm. I left it on the sidewalk hoping whoever dropped it will retrace their steps to find it again. Maybe the magic of the unicorn will help guide the owner back.

I am about to take off for Florida. I'm pretty much packed and I will be in the air in a matter of hours, insha'allah.

I took down the wildlife cam, intending to bring it with me to Florida. I've always wanted to get some video of whatever's happening in my stepmother's yard at night. I'm imagining the place is rife with possums, raccoons, armadillos and maybe even an alligator or two. But I'm not sure I'm going to bring it. There will be a ton of people around this weekend and it's probably not the best time to try to get wildlife footage. We'll see.

Meanwhile, here's what came off the camera from the beginning of this week:

There's not that much exciting, to be honest. First, Pale Cat making his or her rounds, passing one way and then four minutes later passing another, just at the time when the light dimmed enough to make the camera switch from color to black-and-white. Then there's some random fox footage, and then I take the camera off its mount so I can use the terra cotta planter it was sitting on for the rescued primulas.

At 1:07, a fox runs by with something in its mouth and buries it in one of the hydrangea pots. Probably one of those dog treats someone gives them. (Not me, I swear!)

Then there's more fox back-and-forth, followed at 1:38 by two nearly identical "Loch Ness Monster" style videos of Tabby passing by, once at 4:30 a.m. and again after 7 p.m. That cat is out at all hours. Finally the fox comes sniffing around once more, maybe looking for its buried treat?

I haven't seen the fox with the bare tail tip in a while. But maybe its tail fur has grown back?

Written in About Three Minutes

I passed these daffodils growing at the Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate last night on my way home from work. Can you ever have too many daffodils? If so, you're seeing them on this blog.

Not much to say about yesterday. Work work work.

Dave and I have finally started watching "Broadchurch," which came out more than ten years ago but which we somehow never managed to watch. Based on the name I thought it was a sort of "Downton Abbey" or "Bridgerton" type show, a period costume drama, but no -- it's actually a contemporary police and family drama. Really good so far! It's amazing how effectively Olivia Colman can cry on demand.

We're also finishing Laura Linney's show from fifteen years ago, "The Big C," in which she plays a woman with melanoma. For the first three seasons she's the healthiest cancer patient I've ever seen, with time in her life for affairs and family hijinks, but the fourth season takes a darker turn and that's where we are now. Dave doesn't care for it much but I'm pressing on because I like her as an actress, and some of her co-stars too.

There are workmen in front of the house right now erecting another scaffold at the neighbors'. I assume it's because her roof work was never finished. I'm not sure what happened there -- the roofers vanished, the scaffold came down, but the place clearly still required work. Or maybe she's having it painted. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, we've had a bush die in our front garden, a Pernettya, I think as a result of Mrs. Russia's overharsh pruning last spring. When I get back from Florida I'm planning to take it out and plant a hydrangea and/or a buddleia in that space -- we already have both plants in pots and they need permanent homes. The landlords offered to pay for the plants but how do I bill them for plants we already own?

Thoughts on Iran

The once-glittery drag queen hyacinths are looking better and better. They smell great, too. I have them just outside the back door so I can see them from inside, and every time I step out onto the patio I get a whiff of their scent.

I've avoided writing about this Iran thing in order to give my thoughts some time to settle. I think it's a potentially disastrous mistake on Trump's part, and I'm opposed to what he's done -- as I wrote in a comment on someone's blog recently, I'm against starting wars on general principle. Call me crazy! But I'm willing to entertain the idea that this could ultimately lead to a better situation in the Middle East.

I'm kind of in the same position of uncertainty as Thomas Friedman. As he wrote in his most recent column, "Everything -- and its opposite -- is possible." We could wind up with a weaker Iran, less willing to meddle in the politics of its neighbors and less able to act as an anti-Western destabilizing force in the Middle East. Or we could wind up with chaos, as we did in Libya and Iraq following the US-backed overthrow of their dictatorial governments.

Bret Stephens seems to think Trump and Netanyahu have done the world a favor. It was interesting to read his take, given that I've felt sick to my stomach over the whole thing and he helped me see this action in a more positive light, but I still feel like that initial burst of relief is a little too easy. (Stephens is more conservative than I am on many things, but both he and Friedman have been Trump critics so I doubt they're toadying in any way to the Great Leader.)

Ultimately, though, I think Trump remains delusional and is biting off more than he can chew. Remember how he wanted to turn Gaza into a resort? And he's talked about running the governments of Greenland and Venezuela and now Iran? He has a real god complex and, on top of that, he's a blustering idiot. So if this does turn out to be a positive step for the Middle East in the long term, it will be a surprise -- and one that comes with the cost of hundreds if not thousands of civilian deaths.

Closer to home -- more pottery being given away on a garden wall down the street. I kind of like the two little handmade pieces, but I left them there. Dave will kill me if I keep bringing things like this home.