It’s difficult to believe that it’s the first day of winter, WordPress has added snow, the holidays are upon us, and 2017 is coming to an end. For many, this time of year is an opportunity to look back and reflect.
My day of reflection, though, happened on December 12, the 20th anniversary of my car accident.
I think I have fall envy.
That thought first occurred to me as September 21 was approaching and all of the local and chain coffee shops and microbreweries started touting their pumpkin donuts, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin beer, pumpkin everything.
I am not a fan of Halloween or horror, fear or fright. I like well-lit rooms, laughter, and sunlight. Creepy just isn’t for me.
After Irma, life is returning to normal — or, perhaps, to the new normal. While the Florida Keys and the Caribbean have a long road ahead, the Fort Lauderdale area survived.
Hello.
I wanted to get a quick post off to all of you. At the moment, I am sitting in my shuttered house in Fort Lauderdale. The first squall of Hurricane Irma has just arrived.
As you can see, Joe and I have secured the house as best we could. The yard and garden are packed up and stored away. We have our supplies and we’re ready for a long night.
There’s a famous scene from the classic Dustin Hoffman film The Graduate. It’s also one of the most quoted moments in the film, and often makes the list of most-quotable lines in all of film history.
Hoffman portrays Benjamin, a recent college graduate without any direction. At a party, a family friend with career advice approaches him.
There was talk in the garden center, recently — a really juicy piece of gossip personally told to me by a customer. Now, I’m not one to gossip, but this is too huge to keep to myself . . .
Iguanas do not eat Desert Rose!
I’ve been intrigued with Bonnet House ever since a water taxi guide pointed it out while we were on the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale during one of our first vacations to South Florida. From the water, the 35 acres look like a jungle, a section of property completely undeveloped and straddling the land between the Intracoastal and the Atlantic Ocean.
Somewhere in all that greenery, though, was a house — an historic house, a legendary house. The story, according to the water taxi guide — who tells tales of all the mansions along the Intracoastal — is the house was the home of two artists, Frederic and Evelyn Bartlett.
My garden doesn’t need me.
Oh, it uses me — for watering and weeding and such — but it really doesn’t need me.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Man 