Front Yard-Hobe Sound

Four o’clock. That’s dog walking time. She knows it and gets excited when she hears the tinkling of the keys and sees me taking my hat off of the hat rack. I grab one of the leashes, there are small, black plastic bags knotted loosely in the loop of the leash handle. The parks department has a dispenser at the park a few blocks away where you can dump a bag of poop and resupply with more bags. I only have on bag tied to the leash so I think we’ll head toward the park and replenish.

Outside the front door the wind is whipping and the clouds look ominous but I’m almost certain it’s not going to rain. Before it rains there is a feeling, and a smell to the air that lets you know that it is coming. There is none of that, just wind. It is strong enough to blow my cap off my head but I catch it just in time and pull the bill down lower and tighter as I lock up the front door. I get a peasant feeling as I walk through the yard. It has grown up around the house so that it looks completely different out there. Different than when we first bought the house four years ago when there was only a single coconut palm anchoring the center of the yard.

I don’t feel guilty in having spent so much time and money on the yard, this feeling of being enveloped by the growth pleases me no end. Liz put a throttle on the money for the plants and I did put a little too much into the Christmas Palms and the pairs of date palms but I never regretted it. I certainly don’t regret the assortment of other plants that I “rescued” from the hedges and out of garbage cans and begged for from neighbors…that I planted and watered and weeded in the “islands” that float in our sea of sand up front of the house. The first of those “islands” I formed out of scraps of concrete paving stone that were being thrown out by a contractor building a house a few blocks away. I saw them while I walked Gurler and asked if I could have them. I hauled them on a tarpaulin in the back of the SUV. I laid out a kidney shaped planter and used the stones as a border. I had doubts as to how it might look but blindly forged ahead until it was done. Then I filled it with plants that I found in the wild hedge on the south side of the property, mostly ornamental palms and orphaned bromeliads. I was rewarded with their happy growth and the border of up-turned, oddly shaped paving stones, now that I look at it, mimics the skyline of a city. It reminds me of how much I miss my life in New York some times. Sometimes.

One island led to another, this one sporting a twin Robelini palm with its mane of dry fronds that makes it look like a lion, and a carpet of purple succulent plants I found in a garbage can one day. While I was picking through the discarded plants in the trash can in her front yard a lovely woman who saw me picking through the living swag asked me if I needed a bag to tote them and I said thanks. I’ve seen her many mornings since then as she walks her two little dogs, one barking harmlessly and the other glassy-eyed and blind. Gurler pays them no mind. I try to pet them but they won’t come near me. They know me well but their instincts will not allow them to come close. The woman, who is always in a hurry to finish her dog walk, has to go to work but she takes her time to alert me of her plans to weed through some of her other plants and “would I like them?” I’ve become a little bit more selective as my “islands” have filled up, sometime I take them and plant them and sometimes I take them just to be friendly. Giving feels good but giving requires a taker.

Another donor to my accumulation is “Bud”. He’s lives  up on Eagle by himself in a primly kept house surrounded by a well tended selection of shrubs and trees. He’s an iron worker. I found this out because I knocked on his door one day and said “I hope you don’t mind  but I just wanted to say that you have the nicest yard!” Not only did he take the compliment to heart but he gave me some beautiful multicolored bromeliads. They are not uncommon but they are hearty and slowly filling up a small section of the island around the original coconut palm. I planted them there because I saw how lush they were in the shade of Bud’s tree and how they climbed the hump of the palm and seemed to hug it as they multiplied. Bud and I talk a lot whenever I can catch him at home. He works a lot and wishes he was retired like me. I listen to his stories about his job and I could match him tale for tale with my own parallel experiences, but I don’t. I have warned him not to wish for something-like retirement-because you just might get it. Often when I leave his place to continue my walk with Gurler I am envious of his job and his work and a little sad that those days are past me. Now I have my front yard and that must suffice.

Cal, a couple of blocks from me, is a retired black smith originally from the Miami area.  Went to Miami High and worked all his life in the Redlands shoeing horses. He’s never said as much but I think he left and came up here to escape the burgeoning Cuban population down in Dade County and the onslaught of development . Not too many horses left to shoe down there any more. He has a little beer belly and sandy white hair that reminds me of many of the farmers I met down there when I was growing up in South Dade and going down to Homestead to work with my dad. His yard is filled with junk and he has an anvil and torches and welding machine in the jungle of his garage. When he heard I was from Miami we spent an hour comparing notes and trying to connect our common experiences growing up in the fifties and sixties down there. He can talk the color out of your eyes and the teeth out of your mouth if you let him but he loves my dog and seems to like me a bit too. He gave me a nice looking mango tree which I planted in the back of the house and some coconut palms which I didn’t need but took anyway. Indeed I planted one of them! Coconuts grow faster than you’d expect and if you turn your back on them one day you’ll be surprised with fifty foot tall giants that deposit hundreds of bowling ball sized coconuts on you house and lawn and car every single year. Nope. One or two of that kind of tree is plenty for me.

So, the dog walk leads to people you get to know. People lead to talk and generosity and plants and plants lead to a jungle in the front yard. I love my jungle. I like some of the people. I love my dog.