I Thought Florida Had the Trademark on Sunsets

I'm out in Arizona for a few days, visiting with my long lost friend the Coaching Goddess who left me back in the spring for a new land. It's so good to see her. The little town of Carefree, just up the road from Scottsdale (just up the road from Phoenix) is lovely.

The big sky surrounded by a silhouette of mountains lends itself well to sunsets.

My Other Dog Face, Stream of Consciousness

So I marched down to the neighbor's house this evening and discovered that...

a.) It was not their sweet, old, shiter-spreading dog barking all night.
b.) They have taken in a second dog they found wandering around the street and have relentlessly tried to find its home for 4 days. That's not the dog barking either. They don't know what to do. The shelter here is full, and the pound carries an uncertain future.

The irresponsible person with the barking dog lives behind them. It barks all day. And it barks all night.

What is it with people and animals?!

The sound of the barking, obviously carrying farther in the cold air, resumed by 6:00 p.m. this evening. 
(Wait, does sound really travel farther in cold air? See answer.)

Neither my problem listening to the barking nor the dog's problem being left outside without care are resolved by this knowledge. And I feel pretty bad for the neighbors I labeled as the culprits at this point. They can't escape it, no matter what, because of their proximity.

So I have already established my love for all things animals with you, right? But let's just say I do not like to see pooches (however lovely they are) inside of stores or on airplanes. I looked up in Ann Taylor not long ago--stop me if I told you this already--and saw some lady with a snotty dog in a purse. "WTF," I thought, "this ain't no PetSmart."

Last week a plane bound for Phoenix landed in Pittsburgh because an 89 year old passenger's dog decided to let itself out of its little kennel. It bit another passenger and the flight attendant. Really? What the hell are dogs doing on planes again?  I forgot.

I feel sort of two-faced about the whole thing. My dog is a part of my family and I feel that pets should be treated as such. But there are certain places meant for humans--like places with tight spaces in which you've paid for a seat (and cannot escape) and places selling new goods or food you don't want to have touched by pet dander or hair.

Is that fair?  OMG! The dog stopped barking...

...Never mind, something was just loud on the tv.

Window Boxes, Rocking Chairs and Skies

I can usually count on these three unrelated images to reinstitute a feeling of peace.

Flowers and soil attached to the window bring a bit of wildness close to the house, blending manmade structure with a small dose of nature-made inhibition.

There were some good ones last week during our travels.

Windows in the historic district of Charleston

Maybe it's the old subconscious memory of being rocked as a baby that keeps me loving the image of a rocking chair--even when the chair itself might not have been so comfortable.

 

Rocking chairs on the dock in Charleston outside of the Marriott, a one night's stop on our way north to NC

D-Man and Husband chillin' out in rocking chairs on the porch of the beach cottage in NC

I love it that, like life, skies are constant only in their everchanging cloud formations and colors. Somehow, it just works from the vantage point of the human spirit. I find a sort of comfort in that.  Summer in the Southeast is responsible for some pretty dramatic skies--there's a lot of power in those clouds, and they always complete the landscape.

If only the land or ocean could say to the sky,"You complete me." They totally had the patent on that before that creepy Cruise ever said it in that rediculous Jerry Maguire scene. (Sorry, fans of Jerry Maguire and Tom Cruise...can you ever forgive me?)
 

Cotton candy cumulous clouds over the Atlantic Ocean

Subtle sunset over Atlantic Beach

  Not so subtle sunset over Charleston

Summer sky over Fort Sumter, off the Charleston coast, where the Civil War began

Alive

Yesterday morning I went to Emerson Point Preserve, one of my favorite places in Manatee County. Laced with enchanted mangrove trails along the Terra Ceia Bay, a view of the grand Skyway Bridge in the distance and an upland trail through a transitioning habitat, it's diverse and full of subjects for any inspired photographer. I didn't bring my camera yesterday. I'm glad I didn't. I was able to focus on all the senses, and found some extraordinary things.

The night before we were fortunate to get drenched with a heavy storm. When the rain hits and soaks in, the world rejoices. Emerson was alive with sounds, smells and colors. Everything looked so bright. 

Seven Roseate Spoonbills stood on the side of a shrinking pond that still didn't get nearly enough water to restore the normal levels. Tracks from a wandering armadillo were clear enough to observe from dig to dig, where it had scraped a string of three inch holes searching for a tasty dinner, each laced with a thin line from its receding tail.

Recently the upland trail had been burned. Prescribed fire is a popular habitat management tool here in Florida, where invasive plants are destroyed and pine flatwoods are stopped from the process of succession to hardwood hammocks. Because of the rain, the smell of the burned earth was ripe again, and filled my nose with the scent of a raging campfire the morning after. Beautiful.

The wild limes, a native plant which doesn't actually bear limes, were blooming with clusters of tiny flowers. As I approached each wild lime, a sound like a muffled airstrip grew louder. Hundreds and hundreds of bees were pollinating them, and no matter how close I got, it wasn't close enough to disturb them from their deliberate work of working the small blossoms. Incredible.

I love how the world becomes even more alive after the rain. Although I'm not sure if the plants and creatures are sure of what they're missing, when it comes, they buzz with gratitude and celebration.

Basking in Weirdness with a Giant Pinch of Hot Creepy

Florida is full of beauty, surprises, transplants from faraway places, agriculture...and weird, weird roadside attractions and unexpected dives.

You can't call the Bubble Room a dive, but weird it is. And so chocked full of memorabelia this restaurant with the wobbly roof is, one wonders if the occassion to dust and clean ever comes around more than once in a very long time. Situated on a charming spot on Captiva Island, the Bubble Room is quite possibly the strangest place you'll ever grab a bite to eat. ...If you don't count the Linger Lodge here in Bradenton, which is bathed in a very odd assortment of badly taxidermied mammals and rattlesnakes spelling out words on the walls. I diverege from the subject at hand...

To me, there isn't much that can be creepier than monkeys, monkeys with instruments and oversized rabbits on the front porches of doll houses.

...except maybe clowns--clowns that look mean, like something out of that movie that ran on HBO for two centuries in the late '80's, Killer Clowns from Outerspace. Remember that jewel? Brother used to love it.

Then again, I can't say enough about statues of ravenous animals like a llama that belongs on Poltergeist--looking at you with a creepy stare as if it will soon come alive and attack with its bizarre pink and black lips...

...and a hippo head the wild Nile River has never seen the likes of--jaws thrown open 180 degrees.

Where the HELL did these things come from. And did Stephen King have a hand in their creation?

I can't forget the cage from a circus side show, inhabited here by a local writing Goddess and Gropius reader. 

Despite my apparent Bubble Room bashing, it's such a cool place to visit. The pop history you find within these walls nearly blinds you from too many detailed movie posters, action figures, faded postcards and worn stuffed animals, vintage stuff that could or could not be worth millions in Antique Roadshow.  You can't possibly imagine all of the oldie moldy collector's items, including a giant filthy Micky Mouse from the Macy's Day parade, looming over the tables; dolls with frozen cries on their faces; metal ferris wheels; Alice in Wonderland's real life tea party; a room filled with aquariums and nautical treasures; etc. etc. All of the tables have glass tops under which a myriad of Christmas treasures and random bits of creepiness are mixed together.

Now you simply cannot be in this part of the world without having a meal at the Bubble Room, or at least stopping for one of the 70 pound slices of cake.

A coconut cake slice one of the six friends took home stayed wrapped in the hotel room overnight, followed us through hot car rides around the island the next day and was finally eaten with a shared fork in the car just before we pulled off the highway home.  Ah, friends. Nice to have a bizarre place to share an adventure. Tomorrow I'll post photos of the gorgeous natural treasures of Sanibel/Captiva. They won't be nearly as creepy.

The Big Move

This was my last weekend with my best friend. She's moving to Arizona where she will live with her sister briefly and set up a new life in a place that's hopefully filled with more professional possibilities and new soul-friends waiting to meet her.

I'm famously good at keeping in touch with phone, e-mail, texts, letters. But there's no replacement for being near someone, just a phone call away from a lunch date or an inpromtu walk on the beach. I'm going to miss her terribly.

She's caught between two worlds now, still in disbelief about where fate is taking her and finding it hard to say goodbye. Yet, she feels that our town is an old item in the refrigerator--the expiration date has long since passed.

Change is inevitable and inevitably hard. Even harder when it seems to lead us by the hand without the element of choice.

When I was in eleventh grade, my parents announced we were moving to Florida after the school year was over. And after getting over the incredible loss, disappointment, shock, where-has-my-world-gone feeling, I realized that no matter where I was, I would be the same person. At the same time, I was suddenly anonymous. I could reinvent myself if I wanted. With that came enormous excitement, freedom and strangely, peace once I came to terms with it.

It wasn't an easy year for me. And no doubt the big move had some negative effects. But for whatever reason, it's what was in the cards. And I have to believe it was for a reason. We don't know everything. And for one, I have faith that when the element of choice is taken away from us, something greater is guiding us.

In this way, I believe that my friend is being led to Arizona. Sure, her level of success and happiness there will largely depend on what she builds for herself. But I rest in the comfort of feeling that none of us is alone. When we feel the hour is darkest, we're secretly being looked after and guided just where we need to be.

The Northern Territory's Big Sky

A recent post on Marvin the Martian reminded me of some experiences I've had with big skies. One of my favorite was the night sky in Australia.

I had the opportunity to travel down under the year I graduated from high school. I was there for six weeks, splitting my time half with a host family in a little town called Woomby in Queensland--about an hour's plane ride from Brisbane--and half traveling around the country. My favorite place by far was deep in the middle of the Northern Territory--the very red desert.

You could travel all day on this two lane road through the Red Centre without encountering another car.  On two nights, we simply pulled over at night and camped on the side of the road. We dragged out our tents, pitched them, made camp. 

The sky in the Southern hemisphere is more brilliant that anything, but out there--with no urbanization for many hundreds of miles--it's especially incredible. It literally looked as if the sky was 2 inches above my head and appeared as if it was descending on me. The magnitude of aliveness I felt was incredible: being far out in the desert, with a quiet breeze, seeing tracks in the shadows of the flashlight, there was nothing to separate me from the Universe. Above me there was a clear and giant expanse of the heavens which seemed to surround me like a blanket and include me with an ancient feeling of connectness.

Big Color in the Springtime

One advantage of living here in Sarasota's paradise is that we have year-round color. But nothing decorates my world like the big color of springtime.

Enjoy these photos from the blooming beauty of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, one of the treasures of this community.

Big Possibilities

Observing others embarking on life at its beginning, we see a clean slate full of new possibilities and exciting unknowns. As we move through our own lives, each choice can be empowering, it can be daring, it can be well-reasoned or silly, but in one way or another, it directs us on a certain path. And though that path can be altered in seemingly infinite ways, as we get older, our possibilities get more limited.

Perhaps one reason we're attracted to the freshly emerged youth of all species is the inherent symbolism they carry of newness--so many potential choices and directions will shape their now infant lives. They stand for big possibilities.

Here's my brother's first little girl, with whom I've been visiting this week. She flew out with her mother all the way from Texas, and we're enjoying getting to know her at this very tender time of life.

My hope for her, for myself, all those I love (and even those I don't like so much) is for us to stay open to big possibilities, to feel the current of things that could be, and to have the courage to make the right ones happen.

This weekend raise your glass to Big Possibilities and vow to make a great one come to fruition in your life!

Two Worlds

Two worlds: 
Vibrating cell phone with 134 text messages, mostly from girls, in a 3 hour outdoor trip
Gurgling river water swollen after a rain

Two worlds:
Crispy fungus growing like warts on a tree trunk
Newly emerging leaves, first red with new life, turning a tender green

Two worlds:
Ken from Minnesota, old friend turned blogger pal, visiting for the week
Florida Husband, always within 50 miles of the coast

Two worlds, now one:
A Palm
A River

Two White Worlds:

Two Worlds:

Being Something, Seeing Something

Spring at Emerson Point Preserve

Could I be any luckier to have the treasures of Emerson only 10 minutes from my house?  Between rain showers this morning, D-Man and I went for a walk along the upland and the mangrove trails with Flanders.

The Spring calls us from our indoor retreats and asks us to embrace the elements, the colors of lushness waiting to explode from budding branches and the birth of new ideas, new life.

The Earth: A powerful image.

It's true. The sight of the Earth from space is one that practically brings a tear to my eye everytime I see it.

If you think I'm a cornball, so be it. But for me, it's an overwhelming image seeing the oneness of our planet's experiences--wrapped up in one package including all of nature, people, continents, weather, atoms forming every material, cells forming every simple and complex organism--as one swirl of blue and green.

It's extremely powerful. I love it. And at times when we seem so diverse in thought, when differences seem to surmount similarity in the human experience, this image brings me back to the reality of what we all share.

From an artistic perspective, this sphere of spectacular color and pattern is simple and complex at once, encapsulating the brush strokes of cloud formations atop massive continents and the reflections of the distant but heavy influence of the sun.

How we can change for the better, open back up to beauty and come back to a single focal point when we observe the brilliance of our world from this point of view!

Peaceful Retreat

The trip began with a rainy drive to central Florida through one-gas station towns and seedy roadside restaurants that offered a burger and food poisoning. The moonscape left from Mosaic's active and obnoxious phosphate mining operation eventually gave way to orange groves. And orange groves. And a few more orange groves.

(taken today, in the sun obviously)

It was cold, rainy and desolate at Bok Tower gardens when we arrived on Saturday. But we put on layers, armed ourselves with umbrellas, and enjoyed an adventurous tour in the rain with a senior volunteer and passionate Bok-lover named Mary.  She did her best with a small green and white umbrella that barely covered her increasingly wet coat, and insisted on plowing ahead to reveal more of the garden's secrets and history. Most enjoyable and unique--and an experience you couldn't enjoy with meek and wimpy adventurers for sure! 

What can I say about our stay at the Chalet Suzanne, five minutes from the garden?  We were a little hesitant when we first arrived at the end of the meandering drive that deposited us at a partially crooked pink house with purple and yellow doors and funky tiles. Ask me about it now, and I'll tell you I'm a convert. Everyone who's in for something unusual and fine flies into the airstrip behind the chalet and dines there at least once--certainly if you're the likes of Dina Shore, Ed McMahon or Bono. So maybe Bono wasn't there. But there was quite a collection of autographed celeb photos displayed at the reception area.

We returned to Bok Tower Gardens today under blue skies without a single cloud and enjoyed the most inviting signs of spring: flowers from camelias to witch hazel and all kinds of birds including quail, catbirds, brown thrashers, cardinals, eastern towhees, Carolina wrens, and an ovenbird.

And yes, there were two swans as well. Both males, to prevent the inevitable mating and offspring that sparks aggression with guests. I can't say the theory worked--these were intent on eating shoes and pants in an attempt to bully us into feeding them. Yes, they knew they were "hot."

The gardens were designed for the purpose of providing a haven of peace and tranquility with nature, woodland creatures and music. I was surprised to find the tower--seemingly random plopped right in the middle of a hillside in the middle of Florida--so beautiful. Carillon music rings out twice each day, and decorates the nearby neighborhoods and groves in the timed assurance of calming sound.

"gilded" front door of the tower

the very top...don't get me wrong, it's reallly high

hilltop bench overlooking orange groves
(this is on a huge lawn that also includes the tower on the opposite end)

Pines Lake Redhead is a most excellent travel companion, and the trip wouldn't have offered the same peace and renewal without her lovely company! She even knitted me a scarf, which kept Gropius warm and toasty, even in the freezing rain.