Greek Independence Day

Most cities celebrate St Patrick's day, Thanksgiving Day etc.; Tarpon Springs celebrates Greek Independence Day. It is done with the same fervor that strikes other communities to show their uniqueness. In Tarpon, a city already overwhelmed with beautiful blue skies, the Greek Community adds to it by painting most houses in the combination of colors of their flag. So there is no dearth of blue and white. So yesterday, Independence Day, the community dressed in their colors and waved flags to their heart's content to show their pride. It was a lot of fun!

As I have said before the town was founded by the rich from the northeast to escape the cold. Yesterday it was 28 in Collingswood NJ and 88 in Tarpon Springs! Then in the 1920'a the sponge industry took off. The Greeks came to fish for sponges and the industry still remains.

Today, on any street or market the language of choice is Greek not English. It makes for a very colorful town. The town has a section called the Sponge Docks where Greek shops and restaurants thrive catering to other Greeks from the area and the entire country. Greeks come from Cleveland, Chicago, Buffalo and you name it to escape the winters. Their Mecca is Tarpon Springs in the U.S.

Yesterday, everyone was out and I have never seen so many flags being waved and all manner of costumes and dancing and floats festooned with more Greeks. The day was also referred to as GLENDI which for all I know means Greek Independence day. Not being Greek I don't know what that is, but I will check it out with one of my English speaking neighbors (not many!). If you know let me know

This little Greek made my day. Isn't she a doll?

Quickly abandoned for dining and other amusements this Trireme facsimile decorated a street near my house. But all was not white and blue. Around town Spring is in full bloom. The Azaleas and camellias are almost finished, but what remains is truly wondrous. Above, Hong Kong Orchid Tree (Bauhinia) is one of two hundred species of plants that share this name and flower in a variety of colors. The small tree or large shrub can get to be a 20-25 feet ball. I was speaking with two gardeners who were tending their front yard where a solid white version of this flowering tree stood. One gardener told me to come back in a month and I could have all the seeds in the world. The other told me not too bother with seeds. He will pull up hundred of trees that volunteer in this tropical paradise. He also said that it was way too much work for the little time it is in bloom. Oh well, you can't win them all.

On a less than glamorous old property, the greatest of the local beauties is the majestic Red Kapok Tree (Bombax ceiba). It blooms on bare wood before any leaves appear. Typically it looses the leaves during the dry season, although here there has been enough cold to warrant a rethink on that premise. It is a towering tree some 50-60 feet tall and across. The flowers are fleshy and a most incredible carnelian red color imaginable.

Years, ago when I visited Cuba I was astonished to find versions of this tree towering in the landscape but with spines on its trunk and an orchid colored flower. I travelled there during December and did not see any of these marvelous red flowering varieties which I suspect have a small window of time when they bloom. It is a very magnificent tree and must provide that little house a lot of shelter from the summer sun. Maybe I need to consider one of these for my empty lot? Happy Gardening!

Tarpon Springs here I come!

Yes, I got it! It took some negotiating but this old Florida Bungalow is now mine. I am seven feet above sea level and a block away from the "Grand Canal." Tarpon Springs used to be known as the "Venice of the South." There are historic pictures of rich tourists staying in the grand bayou hotels and floating on Gondolas throughout the bayou and canal system. I haven't seen any recently but maybe I can bring back an old tradition.

I signed the papers a week ago and spent my first night in the house that same day. I was very excited as the weather was glorious, the light was bright and luminous and I could not ask for a more beautiful spot to call home. Limo and I walked around the Spring Bayou (pictured above) that evening after my cousins went home after a brief celebration. It was magical evening with stars and palm trees swaying to the tropical breeze. I can see why James Michener fell in love with the tropics and wrote so many books about its beauty.

Live Oak ( Quercus virginiana ) covered in moss at Spring Bayou Park

Although I was born in Cuba, I have only spent less than a month there in the last 50 years. I have travelled far and wide from Tahiti to Brazil to Mexico in search of the sultry magic that is evoked so readily by the word tropical and all that is associated with it. I am a tropical creature at heart although I am not sure how I will survive those blistering summers, but for now and the next seven months it will be a bit of paradise that I will cling to as much as I can.

I will share the bayous with all manner of creatures and fish. The Manatees make the bayous their winter home as it stays warmer than other places plus they forage in grasses that carpet the bottom.

Upon arrival in the area I took Limo for a walk in a wonderful park near where I was staying with my cousins in Tampa. I was so focused on so many things that I failed to check out the water. Every now and then there would be objects that resembled floating sticks but I noticed that they would disappear! To my surprise, they were not sticks at all, but Alligators. Baby alligators, measuring not more than a foot and some a little bigger. The parents use the drainage basins as nurseries in which to raise their young. These drainage basins are everywhere! I started getting a little paranoid as to the idea that there would be gators coming out of every body of water around. My cousin assured me that they are very much scared of us and rarely is there an occurrence between the species and that if ever an aggressive one is found they are relocated. Yappy little dogs do seem to disappear in Florida more than in other places. As for Limo, he will be on a short leash on all nature walks!

My new house is all lawn and palm trees. The biggest palm is a Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis) that is in front of the house and was once matched by a second to create a matching pair. Unfortunately, something happened to that one, which I saw in historic pictures of the house and which I may try and find a replacement at some point. Aside from the Date there are numerous Sable or Cabbage Palms (Sabal) of varying sizes and which are procreating babies all over the place. The other large plant is a Live Oak that is in the back side yard and of considerable size.
Not having a lawnmower or being in Florida all the time, I hired a landscape contractor to take care of the property until such a time as I reduce the lawn footprint or am there to take care of it myself. I own a lot and a half and it is all lawn. It was nice to see the crew of workers come and quickly take this gem of a property that was a little let go and spruce it up. By the end my neighbor, Maria a renowned chef and owner of several restaurants in town was telling me in Greek how nice it all looked in her broken English. I will have to start learning Greek to make deep in-roads into the community.

Some of the other plantings include a hibiscus hedge along the front porch and range of bromeliads growing in the northern shadow of the house to exotic flowering vines and flowers and a few citrus plants. I have a Tangerine and a Ponderosa lemon that produces fruits the size of grapefruits. I brought a bag of them for my friends to share the bounty of Florida. I don't think anyone around Collingswood, New Jersey has ever seen lemons this size.

But the crowning glory for me is a large Mango tree! Yes, I said a Mango, although it is recovering from the cold burn that it got last winter which was a particularly cold winter and that managed to prune about 2 feet of the canopy of my tree this tree will be the focus on my Florida garden. I love Mangos! To me there is no more refreshing and tasteful fruit. I can't imagine what it will be to have a 20 foot ball tree filled with Mangos. Mangos bloom in January and the fruit is ready by July and August.

Mangos and my front porch swing will all have to wait. I now have to deal with New Jersey and the sale of my house there. Given the economic climate, who knows how or when it will all happen. I may also have a job with the Federal Government that I interviewed for before heading South. If that comes through then that will complicate my Florida future until such a time as I can transfer or? For now I am Tarpon Springs dreaming... Happy Gardening.

Tarpon Springs

Prospective new residence in Tarpon Springs

After much debate I have come to Tarpon Springs, Florida to look at a house. As much as I can stay in my beautiful house and garden, the cost of living of New Jersey just no longer makes sense. I feel sad in this admission because, I have dear friends that I will miss. I have established myself as a professional in the area and the work and projects I have done are here. I am also part of a caring religious community with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cherry Hill. It is also sad because I love my house and garden. But I have left places before. The moment seems ripe for Florida.

My unemployment situation has not changed and being 59 I am beginning to feel that what worked before needs to be abandoned and something new created. Nevertheless, the continued economic crisis seems to be affecting us all except for the greed of some politicians who continue to raise property taxes where they are the already the highest in the country in spite of new caps to control it or the necessities created by this economic crisis. At $7500.00 property per year for a small house in a normal town, I give up! I can't keep up no matter how wonderful my life has been there.

Some of the neighborhood
Old Sponge Warehouse (now artist housing)

For sometime I have watched a house that was listed for sale in a community called Tarpon Springs. Located twenty some miles north west of Tampa on the Gulf coast. Tarpon Springs was incorporated in the late 1880s by Greek immigrants who founded a community fishing and diving for sponges. The community has a wonderful foreign flavor and the language heard around town is Greek even though it is here on our shores. As Florida seems filled to capacity with Cubans it is nice to find a place where another minority is the majority. The town is located along a series of bayous along the Anclote River. Fishing boats line Dodecanese Boulevard filled with the latest catch of sponges and varieties of fish. The sun is powerful and the bright skies are "Galanolefci," blue and white like the Greek Flag.

Neighboring bayou

I have watched this house because it was built the same year mine was in 1924 (in reality it was built in 1912) and in some ways it reminds me of my house although this one has a wonderful palm and a tropical hibiscus hedge by the front porch instead of the rhododendrons and other temperate plantings of mine. The house although in the same style is bigger and the taxes are but a fraction: $615.00.

Of course this comes with strings. This wonderful house is in need of lots of work. Work that I performed on my current house when I was younger. Work that I thought that I would not need to do again, but with the current employment situation maybe this is work that is best undertaken again to regain purpose, restore a lovely house in a beautiful neighborhood and become part of a thriving cultural community. If this sounds too pie in the sky believe, me it is not. There are wonderful places around this entire country where people are picking up and doing the same.

Limo with my cousin

Limo has been enjoying all the attention he has been getting from my family. I have cousins nearby whom I visited last year when I first considered this option. Now spending time with them again I feel a sense of family that I lost living alone in California so many years ago with my parents.

We have been to a wonderful doggie beach on Honeymoon Island where all the locals bring their pooches with all kinds of doggie life vests and other floating devices. It was a hoot seeing dogs swim openly and see people interact with their animals.

I know I should not have encouraged this but he was having so much fun...

Doggie, Honeymoon Beach at Sunset

Strapped to go on the road again, he has gotten his car legs and no longer gets sick.

We are starting our trip back tomorrow. My offer was not accepted, but it is on the table as they say. We shall see what we shall see and with any luck I will start a tropical garden this winter. Happy Gardening.

PS An email announcing new members to my UUCCH community focusing on me was just sent. Many know of the troubles I have had finding work and hopefully will not be surprised by my announcement. I am saddened, as I said, by the actions I have been forced to take. I know, I am not the only one doing this exodus from high tax states as it was a feature on the PBS news hour yesterday describing people leaving California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for their high taxes. It is a sad day when you have to leave your home because the taxes are consuming what income or pension you have.