As American as Baseball and Mangos?

Dunedin Blue Jays Stadium Home of the DJ's ( their Single-A  Affiliates)

Happy Belated 4th of July.  The weather is hot and the sport is Baseball.  We in Florida are the home of so many Spring Training Camps.  Of course during training season prices change  but the stadiums are still the same.  Closest to me is the Dunedin Blue Jay Stadium that serves the Dunedin DJs, Single-A affiliate farm team for the Canadian team, member of the American League.  Games are inexpensive and often accompanied by all kind of associated events like Wing night, Barbecue Night, Thirsty Thursday $2.00 Beers, Car Shows, Sleepovers, Fireworks, etc.   A lot of fun can be had for a $6.00 admission.  A senior season pass for 70 plus games costs $79.00. The games feature the local DJs with all manner of  disciplined or recovering pros that are here for a period of time and keep the game very interesting.  As you can imagine the local team is made up of starting players, sometimes, so new they don't even have statistics!

The small cozy stadium makes baseball fun again

Regardless, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to drive 10 minutes and park in front of the stadium for free and have a good time.  I have never seen the game from this close in either Dodger or Philly Stadiums.    I have some friends that have a season ticket and are often out of town so they disperse their tickets amongst interested parties of the UU congregation.  So far I have made it to three games and each one has been all the things that baseball used to be for me as kid growing up in Cuba.  Families come and the kids run around the stadium and local roaming hosts have frozen t-shirt contest, or do some kind of quiz show between plays to offer up prizes to the very intimate audience.  So it is, that we celebrated the 4th in this patriotic pastime that is as American as apple pie.

The Mango tree has responded to good weather and lots of TLC

Unfortunately, we don't grow apples or cherries in Florida so we may need to update our saying here to "as American as Mangos?"  Maybe not.  The mild winter has allowed all the nutrients I have pumped into the Mango Tree to produce a respectable crop of mangos.  

A few more mangos to be harvested will give me a chance to catch up eating

Unfortunately, most ripen at the same time.  I am sure that with the rain, pruning and the feedings I have given the tree, it is now well on its way to provide regular and possibly even more bountiful crops in future years. 

Production processing of the crop

As is, the mango tree has provided enough mangos for a few families of ten.  I have started processing the beauties and storing them sliced with some lemon juice frozen or just refrigerated.  Mangos can be very messy to eat so pealing them and slicing them all out once makes the eating a lot more fun when you choose to.   So every morning I have a cup of two of fresh mangos.  Believe me, there is nothing more delicious or naturally sweet.  

Next training season I think I will check out the pro teams.  The Philadelphia Phillies are a few minutes further away in Clearwater, apparently, in a fancier stadium.  By the way we trounced the visiting team.  I can't even tell who it was for they are as unknown as the DJs, but who cares we had a great time!  Happy Gardening!

Tropical Storm Debbie's Little Water and Lots of Gay Pride

After almost 24 hours of solid rain that dropped over 15 inches on Tarpon Springs it stopped.  We were not the worst off as we are right next to the water so all the water quickly went back to its place.  My cottage bungalow almost seemed like something out of the English countryside with a punting canal in front of it.  

As soon as the tide went down (as the picture above is at high tide with the torrent barely stopping for ten minutes) the waters receeded to display a little bit of my damage.  The mulch was swept away and shallow rooted bromeliads that had been interplanted amongst the hibiscus, had floated off around the garden and the river.  The garden suffered from being water logged for too long and some plants have wilted and hopefully will recover.  The plants that have wilted are mostly non natives which serves again to indicate where the bulks of plantings should be in any garden.   The house is fine and never appeared at risk - this time!

The culprits in all this mess were the pickups pictured in the first picture who were having fun driving around looking at the devastation and trying to get award wining journalism images with their Best Buy video cameras.  The results were wakes of which you can see the remains above where mulch and plants alike form a layer like bathroom scum along the lawn.

Street Access to Safford House Museum

All in all, the next day left pockets of water around us where natural saddles in the landscape held water.  For the next two days showers continued sometimes producing continued downpours but limited to an hour or two.  Today, more than ten days after the storm, the newspaper is still discussing a major toll roadway where the State is pumping out millions of gallons of water a day and the road is still underwater - so much for engineers.

Old Sponge warehouse floating above the street turned river

The innocents in this entire affair are dead manatees that drowned and a whole generation lost of Loggerhead and other turtles eggs that were washed away from their nest in our beaches.  For the most part we had few casualties and it is better than burning or boiling as it appears is happening elsewhere in the country.

Members of the UU Tarpon Springs with banner designed by yours truly

Just a week after all this maelstrom the weather is fine and the sun is baking again and people are getting on with their planned lives.  For us Unitarians Universalists we had an engagement to march in the St. Petersburg Gay Pride Parade on Saturday June 30.  Members from our Church joined other UU congregations "Standing on the Side of Love" to send a clear message that we stand for the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  Although some of us are gay most of the Unitarians Universalist marchers are not.

Members of the Unitarian Universalist Congregations

It was hot, sunny and breezy which made our  day that started at the crack of dawn setting up two booths, long and tiring.  There was but one of our members in his 70 who had to be ferried off in a car when the heat got to him from marching, but kudos to Chuck for believing in the cause.  

The parade attracted more 80,000 people, according to the newspapers, and although not a large number by comparison to other places I have lived, it is the largest such event in conservative Florida.  Members of different Unitarian Universalists congregations manned the booths and had lots of fun with the very diverse crowds.

As typical, advertisers trying to support and make a buck off this affluent community were there with their typical  symbols.

Other advertisers chose more innovative ways of getting their products placement out to the marketplace!  

Given, the crowd there was bound to be spoofs on just about everything.  A local Eurobar decided to parade its moniker about and have lots of fun in the process.

Esconced on the back of a pickup (the preferred vehicle in Florida) and giving us a little wave this character kept a lot of us laughing.  But this was no laughing matter.  We were all there because we had to support one another in a world that sometimes is less than supportive and although we have come a long way to achieve recognition and some freedoms there are many that would like to turn back the hands of time or individuals that stick their head in the sand expecting others to earn their freedoms for them.

As a young man I grew up in California and remember Gay Pride Parades San Francisco and in Los Angeles where millions came out in support and you got goosebumps from how proud you felt to be a part of those communities.  My business took me to New York City where Pride is like a national holiday and the characters that come out on these occasions are often as daring and outrageous as possible.  No matter, the reasons for their outrageousness were always for the good of the community and we needed some laughter during all those years when the AIDS epidemic decimated so many of our friends and peers.  This crowd Saturday looked tame by comparison to some other pride festivals I have seen.  Maybe the more we are accepted the less we have to stick out to make people recognize and respect us.  We have come a long way but there is still a way to go.  Happy Gardening!

Tropical Downpour Debby or Debby does Tampa

Backyard getting so drench that ripe mangoes have almost all fallen off tree

I purchased the house a few months before I experienced my first Tropical Storm - Phillipe.  Phillipe, as it was, formed very matter of fact at last minute and traveled  up the coast to inflict some serious flooding on the east coast.   I was truly impressed with the constant downpour that came from that storm to irrigate the parched gardens of Florida.  It was not a harsh rain but more of a quenching storm.  There  have not been any other storms since then of such drenching capacity and as a consequence we, in Florida, have declared all kinds of drought conditions limiting garden irrigation.  

Terrace overlooking side yard with barrel ponds overflowing

As I write, Tropical storm Debby soon to be declared a hurricane has developed in a similar pattern and fortunately for us on the Gulf coast of Florida it has developed so soon that it has not had much time to become harmful (yet) to us.  No one really knows where it is headed although there are numerous spaghetti models (that is what they call them) to announce nothing but create a stir amongst the people and a viewing base for the networks.  Debbie is quenching our drought and will hopefully return water levels to normal.  It is expected to drop about a foot of rain in our general Tampa Bay Area.  Unfortunately, due to the nature of our soil that will satisfy our gardens for about a week as it is all quickly absorbed by our sandy soils and then if we are lucky it will move through the ground and other channels to feed the Kissimmee Basin that leads to maintain the Everglades.

http://www.sfwmd.gov/portal/page/portal/xweb%20protecting%20and%20restoring/kissimmee%20river

Tropical bed getting properly drenched

Regardless, all this rain is more than welcomed.  The plants will grow inches in a matter of weeks and some quicker than that.  Our lawns sometimes need to be cut twice a week because of this tropical weather.  Not being too fond of lawns, I have been reducing what was here by more than half.  Still, I have decided this time  not to eliminate them entirely as I have done before.  I am waiting for my black bamboo to finally take off.  I brought a small piece from Collingswood with the hopes of creating a screen with it.  It has not done much since I put it in the ground but it is still alive and waiting for the right amount of moisture to awaken its tentacles.  This storm should do the trick.  

Front yard Mexican sage getting drenched - It does not really like too much water.

The front yard lawn is still a work in progress.  It is the only lawn that I have not curtailed too much.  It sets a great entrance and a welcoming green carpet.  When I bought the house there must have been three blades of grass and three million weeds.  After a lot of work removing weeds by hand and feeding the three blades the mixture has changed I suspect now there are only a million weeds to remove - oh well, all in good time!

New addition:  Blue Clerodendron with most flowers pelted off

One of remaining delicate Blue Clerodendron flowers

A recently discovered plant is a blue Clerodendron.  I have been slowly discovering the variety and tenacity of these tropical and Asian plants.  They occur in many parts of the world and have a variety of forms that range from vines to small trees.  I brought one of my favorites from Collingswood that is adapted to cold and when I let it loose here it became very happy.  So much so that it bloom profusely last year, for the first time (it had only bloomed once in NJ as I practically grew it from see).  After that blooming it set seed and now there are at least ten or so plants growing around the mother plant.  This Clerodendron Blue Butterfly is very delicate and you can never have enough true blue flowers in the garden.

Plumeria Pudica in heaven

Another one of my Florida discoveries is a variety of Plumeria that I thought was a cross because for some reasons some people call it Plumerica pudica, but I think that this is just another of the typical mistakes that occur in the plant momenclature.  Regardless, this plumeria native to Panama, Venezuela and that general regions is striking as it blooms for about six months without pause.  Most plumerias bloom for a long time but never that long.  Unfortunately, it is not fragrant, but you can't have everything!

Jatropha multifida gorging itself on the storm

Shortly after arriving a friend gave me this Coral Plant (Jatropha multifida).  It was a scrawny plant that had been kept in the wrong size pot too long and had not had any chance to develop.  I chose for it a real challenge location and a real duty to perform to hide my neighbors concreted front yard (no accounting for taste).  Regular feedings and early attachment to a drip system meant a chance to catch up from a rootbound past.  The results can been you can see for yourself.  It too has gorged itself on life and nutrients as they are and provided a lovely screen to the long entry porch.

The storm has been going on for a few days of on and off rain.  Today it has been consistent and lately it has been coming down fiercely, so much so that when I first photographed the house a few hours ago the water had not reached the sidewalk curb.  It has since kept rising and now it is near my mailbox which means another foot or so higher. I have called the police to have them shut down traffic around here and prevent a stalled vehicle or worse.  Trucks with people with video cameras are out recreating on the flooding and their huge trucks cause wakes eroding my edge landscaping worse than the rain.  As you all know this is Florida and you can do anything anytime regardless of how stupid it is.  Let see what makes them smell the coffee.  I am waiting for a hummer to stall in front of my house and I can use it like a Maine Memorial.

Looking out my side window to check out the car it makes me think that maybe I should think of getting something a little more adept for inclement weather.  Poor Limo, it is going to be fun taking his constitutional.  Let's hope others in the area are well and that we survive this without major consequences although now there are tornado warnings spotted around the region.  Happy Gardening!

PS  Morning after newspaper report that we had 10 inches of rain yesterday in Tarpon.  Today so far hot and dry but garden is soaked and there is standing water in multiple spots.  Let's hope it goes down fast plants around here don't like sit in water.  


All manner of reporting has let us know that several Tornados touched down and wreaked havoc on Passe Grille and in many places in Hillsborough counties.  New Port Richey north of us has entire neighborhoods with 4-6 feet of standing water.


Further rain has dropped another 5.28 inches making the total for two days one of the greatest totals on record and our local river is cresting 12 feet over normal. In one of those odd strokes of fate a  neighboring exclusive walled gated communities received so much rain that the wall acted like a fish tank and emergency crews were breaking drainage holes with sledge hammers to let the water out - The price of exclusivity!  

A Little Mulch Music

Acalypha hispida or as it is commonly known Chenille Plant in the garden.  It is very tender and froze last winter then came back in a matter of a few weeks.  It will grow to 6 feet tall.

I am taking a break from the house to return to my calling - gardening.  I say calling for it is my artistry and my passion.  I have been watching a series of episodes on PBS on Crafts in America that deal with the act of creation of the many forms of artistic crafts.  Whether pottery, glass, cloth, or anything that inspire some people to devote themselves to crafts, some leaving  jobs and careers, others knowing outright their artistic path that lead all to this passion of making something with their two hands.     Watching these episodes, I reflected that I needed to return to some of my other arts, but when I think of it, my greatest pleasure is to garden.  To plan. To layout out concept of color, texture, fragrance and the dimensionality of space and time - this is my craft.  To all craftspeople their art is forever to be indulged.  An art director described that artist need to work and spend time in a studio.  My studio is my garden.

The first of the tropical beds coming along nicely

When I garden, that is when I scrutinize vistas, plant choices, soil conditions, irrigation choices.  I do this automatically with little thought of what I am doing because it is part of my conditioning as a landscape  architect.  Because it is so natural, doing it is a pleasure even when it gets physically hard and I am drenched with perspiration. I am sure that is relaxes me and possibly even lowers my blood pressure.

The Lower lawn in the adjacent lot surrounded by buffer plantings that include black bamboo from Collingswood

When I tell you what I have been doing in the garden you may think that I have slipped or lost some marbles along the way as it is not glamorous indeed.  Yet I have laid the foundations of other gardens before and without it they would not flourish or reflect their Genius Loci, from the Roman, a latin phrase for the spirit of the place- that which makes it unique.  Yet every single one of my gardens or my landscape projects has had a major element of preparation prior to receiving the plants.

One of the three piles of compost/mulch left.  Slowly but surely!

Last year at this time I was in New Jersey prepping the Collingswood house for final sale and escrow closing.  More importantly before leaving, I had come across a source of local mulch/compost  delivered to my door free and for as much as I wanted.  I had seen what my neighbor had received and it looked great, so I wanted some for my garden.  Many phone calls later I had a delivery scheduled that had to be cancelled until the return from New Jersey due to some truck issue.

A new middle garden bed in the adjacent lot will feature this Brazilian Cloak (Megaskepasma erythrochlamys) [a real mouthful from Venezuela not Brazil] that will grow ten feet accross and bloom a scarlet tiara of bracts and tiny white flowers.

Upon my return a few more calls got things started and the truck arrived with a rich dark brown load of soil, mulch and ground up Florida.  I asked how much I could have not wanting to be gready but knowing that this pile of mulch/compost would not suffice my efforts.  So encouraged by the truck driver I said could I have three more loads and the man was delighted.  The county was delighted that they had found someone they could dump a few yards of their mountains of mulch.  It appears that homeowners typically would call and when they said they needed half a bag or a few bags worth the county agents would refuse service due to minimum requirements.  Everyone warned me that I was going to get fire ants, toxins, anything you can imagine me to discourage my efforts.  The mulch delivered was still cooking and steaming.  So far I have not grown any extra limbs or gills but the garden has certainly prospered everywhere I used it without any fire ants.

The High garden behind the house being covered in mulch.  This garden will feature most of the fruits .

Unfortunately with Kitchen, interiors and bathroom remodeling four trucks capacity of mulch sat on my empty lot for almost a year.  Little by little I would take material from the piles, resembling sleeping dinosaurs to mulching of specific beds here and there.  I estimate that I received approximately 50 cubic yards for my yard.  Of this amount I might have used 10 yards and had the majority blocking the view, the garden and my plans.

The other high garden bed in the adjacent lot is shaded by live oaks.  Here I intend to do a Florida Woodland garden with Camellias and native azaleas.

So I have been on a quest to finally finish laying out all the compost/mulch according to my mental plans for the new garden, beds lawn areas and groundcover areas.  I am changing the topography significantly as I am laying it on thick.  Approximately 1 wheel barrel of mulch for about two square feet one foot thick. This of course will not last as it will compact and slowly get absorbed by the sand base that I am covering.  All the organic material is changing the composition of the sandy soil for the better and it will help retain some of our torrential downpours that now wash my sand around like a wave washes a beach.

Glorious Camellia in Bloom under the Oak Canopy at the Huntington Camellia Garden

There are not any pictures of anything finished as what has happened thus far is a baseline for all the planting that is still to come.  One bed that I worked on a few months ago and now filled to capacity with all manner of tropicals is really doing well.  As for the plans of all the empty spaces I have been thinking of planting a camellia and azalea grove that will be sheltered by a canopy of a large  oak  in my yard and a row of neighboring oaks.  Camellias are often planted in the shade of trees as they cannot take direct sun of the type available here in Florida.  For that matter, that is how they really like to grow in symbiosis with oaks.  My foundations as a gardener were honed while working at the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, California as a volunteer many years ago.  Henry E. Huntington was related to the early transcontinental train fortunes and so rich that his California ranch once reached much of what is now the San Gabriel valley.  Of those, two hundred remain with some of the most beautiful gardens in California.  One of the great gardens is a canyon with California live oaks underplanted with thousands of camellias that have fallen in favor to a brand new Chinese garden. Regardless, it is a garden not to be missed.  Happy gardening! 

What Spring?

If you thought I have been loafing around planting bulbs, even spending my time exercising on a bicycle in one of the nicest areas in the country, or better yet on a kayak throughout the network of bayous in my neighborhoods instead of writing this blog you are wrong!  Well, partly.  In fact I have enjoyed a few kayak outings as our beautiful warm weather is beginning to disappear.  Most of the Snowbirds have or are returning to their spring and summer homes up north.  As for Spring?  I don't know that it exists here.  It is a period of time located between insufferable heat and pleasently hot.  Cool exists here for days at a time and is what could be termed winter, but...

Let's see.  I left you on normal Easter and a week later the Greek community celebrated theirs with a bit of a surprise for some of us.  The Orthodox rites were celebrated with fanciful processions at the large cathedral downtown, two blocks away.  Thousands marched on Friday following the Epitaphio (pictured above) in a rite of community and worship.  For my part I met up with some Greek friends and we had a good walk around the downtown while priests and a gaggle of other chorus sang and prayed.  To my secular thinking this was another social event for the town highlighted with fancy garb and gilt miters. Other similar events ensued on Saturday. 

What I did not know, was a little custom in the islands where our Greeks come from.  At 12:01 Sunday morning two major bombs went off in proximity to the cathedral and on the roof of a neighboring bar.  Results, all kinds of injuries to merrymakers while those in the cathedral no doubt rejoiced in their tradition of replicating the thunder and earth movement supposedly experienced when Jesus resurrected.  This is all fine and dandy but BOMBS!  Are these people nuts?  Well, you move into a colorful, distinct, cultural community to be surprised by bombs.  The festivities had been going on for days with smaller bombs that sounded like big fireworks.  Our town police had their hands full.  I recommend they get a hold of the FBI and homeland security and put them to work.

Bathroom as purchased deceivingly nice

The bulk of my time has been involved in a little bathroom remodel.  When I purchased the house the toilet seem to wobble a bit more than it should and a crawl through the underpinnings of the house revealed some deficiencies in the bathroom supporting framing.  When living in a hundred year old house you forget about all the projects you have to do and concentrate on the one you are working, otherwise you might run out into the streets and set off some bombs yourself.

I will not bore you with all the details because it is safe to say I have enough material to write my own screenplay on this project alone.  Needless to say that whoever made the improvements, as this bathroom has had a prior updating, did so with chewing gum and bailing wire, or that is what was left holding things up.  Removal of two vinyl floors and 4 luan plywood  leveling sheets left the toilet floating on a toothpick beam that was rotted.  I suspect it was the cast-iron piping that actually was holding it barely together. 

Discovering what lay ahead

Removal of all these cursory materials revealed a great air conditioning supply to the house.  I say this because Florida houses from this period float on piers three or so feet off the ground and have a flared skirt siding that allows for air to enter and vent these crawl spaces that keep the houses cool.  As such the houses built out of solid materials like heart pine and cypress last forever or until the termites eat them or toilets leak and rot the wood.

Opening the chasm and getting ready from new framing

Of course when I opened the walls to figure out the plumbing connections I found electric outlets in the middle of pipes, and pipes moved to wrong places to accommodate the electric outlets.  So the fix required multiple disciplines.  

Breaking ground in new territory.  My first tile floor!

Long ago, I built a marvelous modern house in Los Angeles.  Since then I have lived in older historic houses either as a fool or to practice all that I have learned from watching This Old House for thirty plus years!  A friend in Los Angeles told me that I had earned the equivalent to Boy Scout badges in Plumbing, Electricity, Carpentry, etc.  Well, over the years I have put all these badges to work and in the process have expanded my repertoire.

I have a local transplanted New Jersyite friend who does everything himself and is a perfectionist fixer upper.  He has every tool imaginable and when you drop in on him he is often working on one of his many projects in his own 100 year old house in Seminole Heights, Tampa (Blog to come on his great neighborhood).  His wife is German with those Teutonic perfectionist urges and they are a perfect couple.  They work as a team and have done some great work in their beautiful house.  So, when I needed a tool and I knew where to go and I got me a professional wet-saw for my virginal outing into this new trade.

The results, I hope speak for themselves.  The bathroom is compact and with the new tile floor and vanity it looks like a bit of a boutique hotel item.

On the garden front I will just show off my first bumper crop of mangoes.  After much care of mulching and feeding and pruning the damaged prior years of winter damage this mango and all those in the neighborhood seem like they will explode with fruit.  A neighbor came and told me to start bracing the fruit laden branches to keep them from breaking.

At the UU Church in Clearwater there is a marvelous lotus pond.  A Buddhist UU (we are a colorful lot) upon seeing my interest offered me a piece of the lotus that for now is in a large pot.  I don't think I will have an in ground pound like I did in Collingswood again, but I am considering a container pond of sorts.   

On an earlier blog I wrote about planting some Sequoia Redwood tree seeds and putting them in the refrigerator for weeks to get activated.  I will have you know that this exercise has produced three viable plants.  I don't know if that will constitute a grove when I take them up north to plant in my friends ranch in the hills of North Carolina, but they will do, nicely!

A break from bathroom reconstruction

While I was refurbishing my bathroom I could not help but think of a family story told to me by my mother long ago.  My grandparents lived in a little town 30 miles outside of Havana.  It took hours  to get there when I was a kid, but going there was a lot of fun.  It was an old 19th century house with few modern amenities exclusive of a bathroom.  The outhouse was located in the backyard in a building opposite the chicken coop and pigeon shed.  It was a rickety old building and we as children were never allowed to go there.  We used chamber pots that were properly kept in each of the eight bedrooms.  The possibly apocryphal story was that my Grandfather Gaudioso Cabrera was on his way to church and was dressed in all his white starched linen finery when at last minute he had need to go to the outhouse and due to its decrepit state a board collapsed and my poor grandfather fell in.  I kept thinking about how my own toilet was on the verge of going through the floor and was a little concerned about having people coming over for dinner and discover more about my underpinnings than I wanted to show them. Well as it happens the world is a circle whether you believe or not.  My Grandfather came to Tampa, not to Kayak, but to earn a living in 1900 as a cigar maker.  He earned enough money to go back to Cuba and marry my grandmother Teresa Diaz and raise a family.   Who knew I would eventually come to the Tampa Bay Area to write about his outhouse story?  Happy Gardening