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 

Happy Easter 2012

The perimeter plantings:  Hibiscus, Jatropha, Crotons , Dietes, Mexican Sage,Liriope and a few bromeliads 

Normally at this time of year, I would have written about snow or winter bulbs or gray weather or some of the other related spring phenomena.  Well, this year I am no longer in a place where gray is the abundant color and cold (even as mild as this winter seems to have been) is the norm.  In fact I am a little off kilter because the seasons are very limited here.  Winter, spring and fall here are quite wonderful and pretty much the same and then there is summer which is not.  I should clarify that as I have only lived here for little more than a year and I am not used to the summer which everyone else seems to love for the wonderful heat.  

What we have plenty of here is sunshine and thanks to it plants grow at incredible pace.  Little cuttings that I made by walking around the neighborhood or receiving gifts from friends of unusual or rare tropicals seem to grow by the day at alarming rates.  Even for my trained eye, I may have miscalculated the proximity of plants to one another as they are growing with incredible vigor.  Above is one of my potted amaryllis from New Jersey now ensconced in the garden like any other plant and blooming profusely.

  

Similarly, a cutting of a red passion vine from a neighbor's garden has not only managed to grow but also to bloom in no time at all.

A visit by my friend Vori who came to celebrate the joining of the 60's club gave us an opportunity to discover new ground in the area.  Have I told you how beautiful it can be around here!  We took a drive to another funky neighborhood like Tarpon called Safety Harbor home of artists and hippies alike.  Originally it was the enclave of one of the earliest settlers, a Frenchman who did some wonderful things.  Some of his estate now remains as the Live-Oak rambling woodlands known as Phillipe Park on the edge of Tampa Bay.

Odet must have been quite a character to come here so far from La Belle France.

This is also the time of year I would have been writing about the Philadelphia Flower Show, but helas no more.  A change in management has shaken up the the show and I was not invited back this year after over a dozen years of wonderful experiences.  Quite frankly living in Florida made it more complicated and it was time to move on and do other things for me and allow new people to have a crack at the show.   I will miss my old colleagues. But just to show you that there is a constant show around here I offer a couple of tidbits discovered in recent outings.  Above at the Leepa Ratner Museum in Tarpon Springs a literal  Watch-dog!

Back in Safety Harbor and an assembly of Whimsy.  The Whimsy house is located at the corner of 12th Avenue North and 3rd Street.  It is the home of artists Todd Ramquist and  Kiaralinda.  Here artistry and plant material (real and created) form a magical mix of wonderland with a whimsical Michael Graves flavor.  The neighborhood seems replete with others expressing their own artistry.  What is unusual walking around the neighborhood is that the normal houses stick out like a sore thumb rather than the other way around.  Unlike the Flower Show these gems are forever evolving and can be seen any day of the year.  

A neighboring house showed just as much whimsy and an incredible sense of color.  These projects I am sure have been in development for many years.  Below is the garage and guest house to the above property.

Of course, being Florida the bugs are a little eccentric too!

  

Well, I guess I am a glutton for punishment as the saying goes, but maybe not.  My friends Vange and Terry gave me an unusual gift this year for Christmas.  It is in my refrigerator as I write and has been in it for over a week photographed between bell peppers and a squirt bottle of Japanese mayonnaise (much nicer than Kraft).  This translucent cylinder filled with a layer of vermiculite that covers 5 seeds in a soil-less mix holds a potential invader to the east coast if I have my way.  The seeds are the potential progeny of Giant Sequoia Redwoods.  

I have no aspiration or hope that they can survive here in Florida but in Tryon North Carolina they may have a chance.  They are due to come out of their winter hardening sometime next week.  What they will do then is any one's guess.  With any luck in due course something green will sprout.  I am planning on keeping them in my kitchen window until they are ready for their future home.  If I am successful, next Christmas, I will return to Tryon with something we can plant in one of those heavenly pastures at Vange and Terry's. These could be the beginning of a Grove of Giant Sequoias on the east coast for the benefit of generations two or three hundred years from now!  Happy Gardening.

PS.  Happy Easter

Kitchen Redux

Kitchen as I saw it when I first visited the house

When I purchased Tarpon Springs, I knew there was a lot of work ahead of me.  It was somehow like Collingswood had been so many years ago, but well, I was just a little older and would not have (let's say) the same energy as before.  The kitchen was one of the best rooms in this old bungalow, but with old houses you never know what is what until you dig in and do a little demo.  Well, no surprise, there were more suprises than could be counted including my own Tom and Jerry mousehole.

Of course, now I had to empty all the cabinets that I had managed to fill up with everything that came from Jersey as well as the local found supplies in those fabulous thrift shops everywhere here.  Let's face it, Florida has an endless supply of chachkas with all of us dinosaurs coming to the final munching grounds so you can get anything and everything and when I was between houses I could not resist picking up an extra set of dishes, cutlery or well you name it!

All the additional goodies made the job of dismantling the kitchen that much more intense.  Quite frankly the old cabinets were rather sturdy as they were filled to capacity and had never sagged or ?  Packing all the many treasures was as though I was moving again.  I had to wrap and package everything except for the ultimate essentials.  

The cabinets although not in the best shape were good enough to be used in my shed.  Of course, the shed was filled to capacity with crap that I had not managed to get rid of yet so they had to be stored in my garage on the second floor.  I jest, I don't have a garage but I have an entire second floor apartment that may one day provide additional income or be a seasonal bed a breakfast for visiting UU snowbirds or something.  As you can see it has a few things in it.  When I left Collingswood I had a basement filled to capacity with construction materials and supplies and I was not going to buy again when I already owned it so I packed just about everything and put it in my second floor garage.

Eventually I got to the bare walls to realize that they were not the real thing.  Somewhere along the way to avoid fixing plaster the whole room was re clad in sheetrock with furring strips.  In one corner they left it exposed to fit the cabinetry and new wiring.  What lay underneath was a crackled paint cracked by heat, grease and who knows what else.  It is kind of a shame because Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren both sell paints that evoke this old feeling.  Here I had the original underneath the walls.  The job of ripping out the walls to expose who knows what other surprises was something that I could not cope with.  So I finished removing the cabinets and left it for the cabinet manufacturers and installer.

Original crackle paint finish exposed pulling off cabinets

The location for a new electrical switch for the under cabinet lights revealed fun old wallpaper in original wall buried underneath sheetrock

I even found this mouse hole 

Voila,the outcome is modern and practical in a house that has history enough to spare. I am still tweaking but the installers are finished with the installation and what is left are finishing touches and the stripping and refinishing of painted doors and some trim.  

The stove that I purchase several months ago finally looks at home with a matching dishwasher and microwave that arrived for the remodel.  Yes, I did some  plumbing to add the dishwasher that was not part of the scheme.  I added a filtered water faucet and garbage disposal. I also added a fabulous main faucet and a sink large enough to give Limo a bath if I am so inclined.   I lived almost a year in Tarpon without a dishwasher.  That for me is roughing it.  

I painted the walls two shades of yellow.  These colors work to keep the kitchen modern and coordinate well with the patterned silver and gray Formica.  I am in the process of stripping and refinishing the door and frame.  I am not convinced with how it is coming out but I will keep going to see the full effect and if it fails, I will just paint it again.  Having lived with natural woodwork I have a desire to bring out the natural elements of this house if they will enhance the bungalow look.

The floor was almost the most amazing product.  After having a cheap vinyl product that curled up on all the edges from lack of a proper installation. I scraped and removed every square inch before laying down this floating floor that is a wonder.   A vinyl cork product that snapped together with adhesive edges is an unrecognizable from the real thing.  I installed it and am quite proud of the effect.  If you look carefully you will note that there is more gray on the right (along the floor) than on the left.  Well, a hundred year old house sitting on an almost dune is not always level.  It is barely recognizable to the feel but the kitchen is a few inches off from one side to the other.  Fortunately the cabinet installer was marvelous and levelled the counters off.  I suspect that it is not as bad as those rooms you see in a Fun House where water appears to flow uphill, but it may well just!  Happy Gardening.


ps I got rid of the mouse hole

The Artist at the Tampa Theater

Since late 1926 the Tampa Theater  at 711 Franklin Street has provided patrons with a magnificent setting for viewing moving pictures.  It was by fortune that friends called me to an evening out in this old grand movie palace to see no other than the modern silent film "The Artist" set in 1927.  It is unusual that it would take a French director, Michel Hazanavicius with a French actor, Jean Dujardin to tell us this wonderfully entertaining story of American silent films.  Check out Dujardin's spy spoofs OSS 117 Lost in Rio and later OSS 117 Cairo Nest of Spies, funny, funny films.  To me going to see this film was great but going to see the movie palace was spectacular for it brought back a lot of historic memories.  

I grew up in Los Angeles where movie palaces were a dime a dozen.  As a teenager I would go downtown LA to see 3 movies for 25 cents in the late 1960s.  They were great, action, cheesy, and well you name it sort of movies.  The audiences were strange at best but my friend Bill McCann and I would get money from our parents to get Chinese food and sit through multiple sittings at once great and now somewhat derelict movie palaces.  We went to the Orpheum, The Palace, The Tower, The Million Dollar, The Los Angeles and I am sure I am missing one or two.  My favorite was the Los Angeles which was a take off on the Palace of Versailles and its hall of mirrors.  When I first saw visited it was a sad story, but in the dark, as they say, "all cats look gray".

As luck would have it the Tampa has a Wurlitzer organ that comes out from the floor and plays some dandy  tunes prior to the showing of the main feature like I remember from many a wonderful performance at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.  The proscenium arch of the Tampa was meant to show classic framed movies from its period.  CinemaScope or Panavision projected images would have a hard time at the Tampa with its small square screen, but for The Artist, it was perfect.  It could not have evoked a more appropriate setting.

The issue with these limiting screen has been solved in a most unusual way at The Grand Rex,  one of Paris'  largest movie palaces from the 1930's.  It was here that I saw the latest version of King Kong, dubbed in French no less, a few years ago.  When the worms start eating the men I thought I would jump from the balcony for the immensity of the screen and its effect. Seating is limited to the upper balcony for these mega screen events and a massive screen the width of the building drops from the ceiling so you can see IMAX and other spectacular modern films.  It is not so at the Tampa, but then there are many modern movie houses in all the malls for typical films.  What is wonderful about The Tampa is that it functions as a performing arts venue and movie house showing classic film and film festivals in a day when most people stay at home glued to their 70 inch screens.

main hall and lobby below

Two images above by Preservation Tampa

The artist is a simple story of what happens to a silent movie star in the new world of talkies.  Nothing shatteringly original, but it offers a film classic to the way silent films were made with over dramatization, animal performer and no major sound track per se.  So it gives us a glimpse at when films were not so over produced as they are now.  I was recently watching a science fiction spectacular Transformers: Other side of the Moon and I finally realized what they meant that these films are geared for teenage boys.  It was so noisy I had to lower the volume down and finally abandoned watching a movie that was nothing but going from one massive special effect costing millions to another.  Teen age boys have changed!

The details at The Tampa are wonderful.  It is a Spanish Baroque colonial village with an open moonlit ceiling where you see flickering stars.  Originally moving clouds would be projected on the vaulted sky.  This type of movie palace was termed "Atmospheric".  At one point there were doves loose in the courtyard main theater.  That must have been fun! The theater has wonderful smoking rooms  and water fountains and doors, and trim suffering some of the same ravages as my house has faced with termites.  All in all is still all there and with luck and more interest it will be restored one day.  The Tampa was designed by Australian John Eberson who also designed movie palaces in Europe and in Australia.
  

foyer entrance light

Michigan Theater, Detroit, image Bob Jagendorf

The Tampa Theater is a gem in a world of lackluster boxes with screens in malls.  I am surprised how many cities have razed their old film palaces for parking lots or for no reason at all.  I will say that the crowd the night we attended was small at best, but it is still nice to know that it is there and has a life for live performers and serves a very select film going audience to enjoy films the way they were intended to be seen.  As I sat enjoying the baroque opulence I kept having this feeling that I had been in this theater before which was not the case.  In fact, I had gone as a kid fresh from Cuba, to its sister The Olympia Theater  also by Eberson also in 1926 and in Miami. It was a wonderful evening getting away from the kitchen remodel that has taken my every waking moment of demolition and recreation and will soon debut on the blog.  Happy Gardening!

Epiphany or Dia de los Reyes Magos

The year started without a bang although there were many fireworks going off around the Tarpon.   Last year I was driving back to Collingswood for a short lived job.  Thankfully I was smarter this year and enjoyed the tropics to full hilt.  Although this Christmas was fairly mild everywhere, even Tryon NC only had a few days of coldish temperature and it was when I returned to Florida that I felt cold for the first time.  That quickly passed and  people returned to their winter outdoor activities.   As you can see from the image above all kinds of yoga/tai chi was taking place on paddle boards.  

This morning, during the prayer chants I was out reconnoitering where I would sit for the Epiphany celebration.  Just in case you don't know, Epiphany is the Greek  celebration when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.  In Cuba,  El Dia de los Reyes Mago marks  Epiphany as the celebration when the Magi guided by the star were said to have arrived to give the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the baby Jesus.  You figure it out. All I can tell you is that as a child I did not get my gifts until the 6 of January even though everyone had been partying since December 24. 

Tarpon Springs with its thousands of Greeks celebrates its New Year with this occasion and parties were going on all around me at homes and at the large St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral Community Center.  Yesterday the Archbishop was going around town blessing the ships, the fisherman, well you name it.  When I first moved here my neighbors told me that I lived in a very good spot and that I never need worry of hurricanes because I was in the Holy Triangle between the Spring Bayou, St. Michael Shrine across the street and St Nicholas two blocks away.  What can I tell you, I takes my blessing from anyone willing to give them!

This morning I was sitting with my friend and Minister as the people arrived by the thousands (25 to 30 thousand were expected) to claim a little bit of wharf, hillside or you name it.  My minister is a good Unitarian was shocked that people were to going to the front of the line to get their spots for the spectacle instead of fitting in respectfully amongst the people who had gotten there early and expected to see the event sitting down.  Very well dressed Greeks arrived in their glittery black finery to lay claims to the remaining spots usually walkways and block all those sitting down.  Those fortunate to know the owners of the bayou houses were escorted on to private docks where pushing was to a minimum.  The rest of us just sat in the slope waiting for the lions to come.  Finally, it did not really matter because when the procession arrived with the kids all stood up to see.

 

An assortment of evangelical Christians were running around with Jesus Saves signs.  I thought it was bit of like taking coals to Newcastle!  After waiting for about an hour, the procession arrived with the clergy, city officials and the youths which serve as part of ceremony.  This is primarily a male event with no girls allowed to swim.  Women libbers here is something to take on.  There is a young girl who releases a dove prior the 64 high school age boys take to the water.  These boys undergo a special catechism to prepare them for the cross retrieval ceremony.  

At some point the presiding priest gives a go ahead and the boys swim out a series of boats that are lined up around the promontory from where the Archbishop (I guess) throws the cross for them to retrieve.

This morning there was a mad dash for the boats and a bunch of boys capsized their boat and sat on it waiting for the cross.  Don't fear the water is not cold and is about 4 feet deep. As a matter of fact the event has to be timed to the high tide otherwise they would all wind up in a hospital with broken necks!  Today there was so much security you would think that a mad atheist like me was going to sabotage the whole thing.  Truly, there were more cops and sheriff boats than it was necessary, but the times they are ridiculous!  Kayakers came and could barely see due to the cordon of official boats protecting the youths.

These poor kids should have been more concerned about running into a small or a large manatee than anything else.  Well, then there is the crud on the bottom on the bayou that divers were cleaning out this week so these kids would not suffer a cut or something and get an infection.

The cross was finally thrown in and they went at it for about ten minutes with no finder.  In a rare upset a second cross was hurled into the water that was eventually caught by some boy.  

Someone came out victorious and the story goes that he who carries the cross out of the bayou will have a long and healthy life.  Let's hope so.  As there are few divers these days getting the bends which use to curtail the lifespan of the local sponge divers, we can be sure that they will indeed, have a longer and healthier life.

Just as fast as it started the crowds dispersed.  I was rooting for the smart kids that wanted a crack at the second cross that lay in the bayou.  I am not sure what happened to it as it was hot and I was hungry so I went to the Glendi Festival at the Community Center for a Gyro plate.  Well, I have now seen it and can refer our loving tourist to it in the future.  Next year I am heading straight for the Gyro Plate!  Chronia Polla (Happy New Year in Greek) and Happy Gardening to you! 




January 7 Update.  The newspaper this morning had this headline on the front page:  Two winners, no 3!  It appears that similar events have happened over the 106 years that the event has taken place.  As luck would have it one boy retrieved the second cross and another smallish 16 year old found the first one.  On the swim back a big 17 year old took it from him and lay claim to recovering the white cross (so much for the catechism training).  The Archbishop queried those concerned and gave all three rights to good luck.  Oh well, Christian charity!


January 10 Update.  This year may prove to be the most blessed people in the 106 year old history of the Epiphany celebration.  Another cross finder was deemed eligible for the blessings.  It seems that in our world where everyone has fancy cameras, phones and access to every sort of published media that people attending the celebrations filmed and posted to Youtube the celebrations and the fact that yet another child was beaten by his confreres when he surfaced with the second cross.  So in all, the newspaper reported this morning that not bowing to pressure from YouTube or anything the Archbishop was acknowledging a 4th recipient of the second  cross which was retrieved first.  If that is not complicated watch the following clip and you will see most of the event all in   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8i2LCqDbk4 Greek!  Enjoy