Senor Raindrop

Some little fellow whose love song sounds like the drip of crazy giant-size raindrops on an amplified tin can has been wandering around the mangroves singing his heart out tonight. It's kind of sad but fits right into the night chorus of buzzing, trilling and croaking that goes on here at the end of the road.

As usual, I'm sitting on the screen porch in the dark. When I'm home, I practically live out here. I love it. I have my corner, table, chair and laptop. Dd the squirrel sometimes drops by in the afternoon for a visit. The screen's between us, but probably best that way. I hate going indoors. Basically, I only go in to bathe and sleep. Well, I go in for our nightly mango party, my favorite. And we do eat a meal together now and then, that's indoors. Mostly we eat over our keyboards. We're feral.

Earlier in the evening, Senor Raindrop (it's late. whatdayawant?) held his song to a monotonous drip ...drip ...drip tempo but, finally, after about three hours of that, he changed it up. He added a rapid dripdripdripdripdrip followed by a slow ........drip ........drip ........drip ........ followed by silence ........ (I assume he's listening) ........ then he begins again with the original mid-tempo and repeats. He's also moving around a lot and, as the night deepens, getting further and further away. Right now he's quiet. It's a big, lonely world out there.

Mango Party!

Alligator Creek in pending rain at sunset

After stocking up on mangoes last Saturday, we had high hopes for the week but things got off to a rough start. Maggots. Our little plan to "follow the mango" sounds great, is great, but like everything else, you can't walk the walk without paying some dues. You want to go to the tree and gather in your own hands it's sweet, ripe fruit? Then you're going to pay some dues.

Mango Party!

Every night we have a mango party here on Alligator Creek. M. Lee halves two mangoes and it's a go. We start by gnawing the pits clean then move on to the custardy goodness of the mango itself. Only last Tuesday, one of the mangoes had a soft spot. Still, being newbies in the world of mangoes, we ignored it until M. Lee noticed that there were little squiggly things in the lovely orange flesh of the half mango cupped in his hands. Maaaaaaaggots! Okay. It was traumatic! Horrifying! Stupefying! Revolting! And for a brief moment, I feared that the dark shadow of trauma would taint my love of mangoes forever but come on! You can't let a few maggots get you down. They're going to win anyway. You know. In the end. It's not the mango's fault. It was a hard moment though. Our faith in Jack wavered, but only briefly. I'm sure he had a maggot or two in a mango now and then by the time he reached his feisty old age. Here's the deal. We've gotten lots of mangoes from the Mango Factory and they are, hands down, the sweetest, tastiest, most delicious mangoes around. So this one was overripe. No big deal. And besides, I wouldn't want a mango that a maggot wouldn't eat. I just want to get to it first.

Nightly no frills mango party

So, as the week rolled on, we got back into the spirit of things, slowly at first but we're back to full steam, though I do look now, something I never did in the past. I'm sure Jack looked too. It comes with the territory.

Tulips

"Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river....."
(excerpt from "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath)

This via Buzzfeed via Brain Pickings. Sylvia Plath reading her poem "Tulips".


I did not realize she was also an artist.

Insect conversation

Insect slow call and answer in monotone rhythm across the brackish swamp tonight. It is soothing, this conversation, in spite of the hollow whoosh of traffic. I wish the humans would just sit down and shut up.

As July deepens

We went to The Mango Factory out on Pine Island again today, Jack's mangoes. When it comes to growing mangoes, Jack made it an art. Back in '64 he planted his seedlings 33 ft. apart so that, full grown, each tree would enjoy full light. Today they're the best on the island. Hell. I'll say it. Best in the world, though we are dedicated to putting that idea to the test. So, with that in mind, we came home with a couple of bags of big, right off the tree, mangoes. Should last the week. Thanks, Jack.

Mango Jack.
What's not to love about this guy?
(picture on the wall at the Mango Factory)

Floridians are funny. Seems a lot of them don't much care for mangoes. Must be those shady backyard homegrowns. Anyway, there was a  good old boy and his wife also at the Mango Factory today. She was walking around the bins, basket on her hip, obviously excited to be at the source while he followed behind, arms folded across his chest, chin tucked down. She'd hold up a mango for his approval and he'd mutter, "I dunno", "You decide", or "I'm not gonna eat 'em". But there was also a fellow there from the Caribbean. He had the Eye. Lucky we got there when we did. Like us, he was stocking up.

Finally a couple of Ibises came by.
They like to graze the grass after a good rain.

As far as life on Alligator Creek is going, DD (Diego's Daughter) the squirrel and I have a nice little thing going but it's very low key. As you may recall, last time we were here, my everyday, all day peanut party turned tragic when the hawk noticed it so this time I'm doing things differently. DD has breakfast, a few peanuts, and that's it until late afternoon. At that point, if I'm on the screen porch, she comes up, looks me in the eye, quietly chitters a bit then goes back down, I follow, put a few peanuts around the Pineapple Palm, refresh the seed for the doves, and that's that. Simple. One other squirrel occasionally drops by which turns immediately into a skirmish but otherwise we have a quiet little scene going. Much as I'd like to be all things to all squirrels, I can't.

Tonight I'm sitting out on the screen porch as usual, the monitor brightness turned to the lowest setting. The frogs are chatting in the dark and the little guy who buzzes like a warehouse buzzer is buzzing back and forth with his friends and Sonny Boy just got back from wherever. He wasn't gone long. He took his mom's car which she didn't seem to be completely down with. He's 51 but you know how niggly parents can be. Usually when he does these little runs it's around midnight, I assume after they go to bed. Also, thunder continues to rumble in the distance and, between flash torrents of rain, guys along the creek are setting off their remaining fireworks. The last ones were directly across from where I'm sitting and just past the mangroves. I'm not wearing my glasses so they were especially sparkly and starry. If that was the last of it, it made for a grande finale. The mangroves are also occasionally back-lit by lightning which is nice and, after a week of really heavy rain, five times the average, Alligator Creek is beginning to smell rather heady, like a swamp.

Road's Eye View

Amid the thunder, rumble, pops, crackles, rips, hisses, thuds, cracks, bangs, shots and blasts exploding all around Alligator Creek tonight for fucking hours now, the cacophony of Fourth of July firework celebrations complete with fragments of a late night drunken domestic argument drifting across the creek, there are creatures in yard, I don't know what ... frogs? ... insects? ... I can't tell, telegraphing each other through the now dark ... extended, one note buzzes and someone, a bird perhaps adding a tuneless, usually descending one note, whistle. Are they assuring each other that it will be, they will be, okay? I'm here. I'm here. We're okay. I don't know but it seems like it.

Pausing to remember

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka. It's nearly midnight now but still July 3 and therefore the 130th anniversary of his birth. I feel a kinship with him. And the cockroach. So today is also a good time remember my friends Delicata, Nugget and Ha'penny.

Delicata, Ha'penny, Nugget
L. to R.

That is all.

The nothing moments we call our lives

It's been raining for a couple of days now and projections for more run out to the end Weatherunderground's 10 day forecast, well really till the end of summer I suppose. It is the rainy season after all. M. Lee and I got caught in it during a Sunday bike ride, which was fine. It only lasted long enough to get us half soaked so we were dry before we got back to our little cracker shack. Since then the intensity has ramped up. There's a big weather front sitting out over the coast and that's that. Rain. Tropical variety. And since Florida is basically paved over wetlands to begin with, no surprise that the house is standing in water and the creeks and intra-coastal waterways are brimming. Haven't seen any alligators swim by yet but I wouldn't be surprised.

So, of course, as part of my ongoing series of real life videos about nothing, I did a video of Saturday's rain from the screen porch. When we are home, M. Lee prefers to remain inside with the air on but Swami, Minerva and I spend most of our time out on the porch. It's really quite lovely there.

A day gone by

Coffee with friends in the morning, then the gym, home, lunch, errands then the beach, Casey Key north. The shore there is buried in crushed shells. Hard walking but we went a few miles up then back. Storm surge is eating the beach, undercutting banks and trees, piling sand on stairs protected by red "Private - Keep Out" signs. Incoming tide this afternoon. It was a bit rough and seaweedy but warm and I stayed in for a long time standing up to my neck, facing the Gulf's western edge, rising and sinking in waves that mirrored the sky...mercurial blue, white, silver waves reflecting the blue and billowy white cloud sky above the horizon which disappeared every time a surge fused them, sea and sky, making the world suddenly austere and slightly threatening.

Future histories tonight and as the century wears on

If you haven't read Jeff Goodell's article in Rolling Stone do. Goodbye, Miami is a must read. And it's not just about Miami or coastal cities. In the overall, it's a peek at the future history of human life on earth.

As for what's going on tonight here on Alligator Creek, lots of ambient sound though traffic on the nearby through street is beginning to settle down at last as is the white noise whoosh of the Tamiami Trail and, just as different sections of an orchestra rise then give way others, the occasional sound of an AC unit snapping on in this, or one of the other two inhabited houses on our dead end street, punctuates the air or the sound of voices or a dog barking in the distance drifts across the water and the squawks and chirps and rhythmic buzzing in the mangroves rise and fall and night settles down around the Gulf and turtles begin crawling up out of the sea to dig their nests and lay their eggs, I notice the sound of palm fronds stirring in the breeze. Eventually I'll hear the gurgles, slaps and splashes of the creek talking to itself and aquatic beings moving through its water.