the familiar trail

It doesn’t take long to develop an ant track. You know how ants are – they follow their established trail and don’t stray from it. Into your kitchen they march, along that one preferred path. You have to use vinegar and other deceptive tricks to confuse and waylay them.

I’ve gotten my preferred trail working for me in Miami Beach. With variations, sure. But still, there are the basic repetitions.

Guava pastry and con leche in the morning.






I can’t walk up north – I have a workshop that starts at 9. So I take the bus. I look with longing at the skies outside, but I am not here for the skies, I’m here for workshops. Sigh. Goodbye beautiful skies.







...and beach umbrellas.







I know there is to be rain in the afternoon. So be it.

But as the sessions end, I step outside and see sunshine! The promised afternoon storms are stalled somewhere. Not at Miami Beach.

And here’s a little variation: if yesterday I walked on the upper beach, away from the water, today, I splashed my way south. All five miles of it rinsed by the wonderfully warm waters of the Atlantic.







Because it is a week-end, the beach is... well, not quite Coney Island packed, but close. All the more reason to do some serious people watching.








All ages, representing all localities, all there, enjoying beach life.







I imagined that the entire coast of Florida is on this day swelling with beach loafers.







Many people love to just stand in the water to cool off and that’s fun to watch too. Humankind, lusting for that refreshing moment when the waves gently tickle your legs or splash against your buttocks. Conversations in the water.







In France, they’d be unpacking their glorious foods and beverages. En famille! Not so here. We tend to like to plump down on a chair or a towel and feel the sun move from one point to the next. Or, in the inevitable quest for romance, we walk the shoreline, holding hands, thinking this is forever thoughts.






Or, we flirt with romance submerged. Or up in the air.







And so life plays itself out on the shore of the Atlantic.








Always with zest and color.








And energy.








Again, as yesterday, I feel hungry by the time I reach South Beach. I look at the lunch offerings – and there are many – but it seems somehow not right to sit down and spend money on yet another (perhaps indifferent?)  meal. 

But here’s a good deal: you don’t want to sit down and be fussed over? Go to Joe's, the Joe's. Order at the take out counter. Carry it to the bar, ask for a soda or, more appropriately, a glass of wine. And eat it there, out of the plastic container.

So, here’s my delicacy (also the cheapest item on the take out menu) – shrimp and scallop ceviche (which is very Floridian – in a Key West manner of speaking) and a glass of rosé.

Heaven.







And after? Remember, I’m on my ant trail. Back to Las Olas for a strong café con leche and a guava roll (their last one! What great luck!).







And I watch people come and go.






An afternoon well spent.




Assumptions. I spoke of them a while ago. Back in Gargnano. Today, I felt I dug a little beyond the guesswork and came up with interesting departures from initial impressions.

So the hotel? St Augustine. A good one. Stay here. Just be sure to ask for a room on the second floor.

The woman who is behind the counter? Not Cuban at all. She is from Argentina. Came here to be with son, stayed. But she knows the good Cuban coffees.

But here’s a guess that proved more than accurate: so many Cubans here have no good words to offer about their home country.

And so here’s an interesting scene: Friday evening at the St Augustine: the hotel throws a wine and cheese social hour for all guests. I’m there printing out boarding passes and somehow I hadn’t known of this but now here I am and so I take my place at the “bar.”

A couple comes over. Where is the wine and cheesecake? The man asks in broken English.
Here. Wine and cheese. Here. -- answers the very friendly, very helpful Cuban-American guy who works evenings at the hotel.
The couple sits down.
Where are you from? I ask. It's what you're supposed to do at these social hours, no?
The Ukraine. And so we start speaking Polish. Ukraine people are used to speaking Polish. It’s the only country that learns my home language because they feel they have to, what with the tourist traffic and all.
The minutes roll along.
I ask our server (and friendly host person) when he came from Cuba. 1999.
Ah. By boat?
No. A complicated story follows.

Have you been back?

No!
The Ukrainians listen, but their chins are down.
Listen, he says emphatically. I know your history. Poland. You needed the Soviet state (I would not characterize us that way, but it’s fine, I understand what he’s trying to say), but in Cuba – it was different.

He’s bitter, indeed hostile about the Cuba of his childhood. The Ukrainians and I look at each other. We’re of a different history.

When we came to America, it was by chance. She won the green card lottery – the Ukrainian husband explains. At first we thought – what are we doing here? I was a professor of engineering in Lwow. I’m a machinist here. But, we’re fine. Our son is here. He's a doctor! (I detect pride.) Our daughter – she was too old, too established to want to move. She stayed.

The Cuban American person describes himself as moderately right of center, politically speaking. But he mentions Canada and the European Union as ideal types, leaving me a bit uncertain as to his classifications.


Suddenly, the Argentine woman is bringing out a lemon pie with a candle. Say what? Ah. Today is the Ukrainian gentleman’s birthday. He’s sixty. We sing, drink, cheer. I look their way. The Ukrainian wife smiles at me. She knows what I’m thinking. I know what she’s thinking.


And so it ends. One last meal – I go for a simple (indifferent) pizza up the street, and a request for a very early wake up call. My flight leaves before they even put out the continental breakfast here at my little hotel in South Beach. I’ll be older and wiser tomorrow. Or older anyway. And home. And that’s a good thing.

next day

The immigrant child carries with her a tangled ball of yarn. Pull on it a little and she’s flooded with memories of the home country. A little more and she’s forgotten it all, embracing the new, culturally almost assimilated, almost, but then pull again and she misses the old place, and then some more and she’s critical of it -- and so on and so forth. It’s a lifelong game.

But the immigrant child has this wonderful thing going for her: she looks at new places with interest and finds ways to like them.

Even Miami Beach.

Sunrise. I can barely see this – my window doesn’t acknowledge the sky, but something outside is turning brighter. Out I go. To the ocean of course.






Mornings by the ocean are my very favorite time there. The colors, the light, yes, all that, but also the people: morning beach people typically have interesting reasons for being there.






I come across, too, the older people who like walking in the hours when they cannot sleep. Me, I could have slept longer, but the AC and I were in a nightlong battle and when, belligerently, I finally turned it off, I felt that I had cheated no one but myself. So in the morning, I left it all and took to the beach.






(The fault is really not with the hotel which is actually very nicely staffed and pleasantly mod and clean, but with the room. They changed me today to the top (2nd) floor and it made all the difference.)

I’m at the southern most tip of Miami Beach and somewhere across the water I can see the towers of Miami proper, but I’m not going to make it there this time around – no time, no need – I have enough here, on Miami Beach, to fill spaces between conferencing.

On the walk back to the hotel, I came across Joe’s crab place. Famous, large, I mean, grossly large. These are terrible places for solo dinners. But I go inside because they have a storefront that opens in the mornings. So here you go, if you wanted to indulge in a dinner of Florida crab, you’d come here. But not with me. Not this time.






And now it is decently early (as opposed to indecently early) and I see that my little hotel is set up for what they call a (free) continental breakfast. I drink my con leche (a Cuban coffee that is good and strong and with just the right amount of milk) and I’m munching on a nice sweet pastry. Is it with guava? -- I ask. Cuban pastries are often with guava.





The woman behind the counter, a lovely person with a thick accent confirms. Noting my interest, she tells me – go visit my favorite café bakery. It’s just a few blocks from here. Behind the CVS.

This is when I started to like Miami Beach.

The corner café she spoke of has a counter opening to the outside too, so you can drive up, get your café con leche, toss around a few sentences with someone you know and keep going.






Or you can linger over your guava roll, or your plate of huevos at one of the handful of tables.






I could stand and watch for a long time the comings and goings in and around the place.






A long time.






But, my first conference session starts at 11 and I have a five mile walk before me to get to it.

A solid, good walk. First, through the quiet, colorful neighborhood north of the café.






Then eventually along the main drag of Miami Beach – Collins Avenue. Here, Miami Beach shows its true colors. Its big hotels, unique, yes, very unique...






But still, they are what they are: big hotels. The Family Law Section of the American Bar Association has chosen the Eden Roc for its spring meetings. The hotel is splendid, or awfully splendid, depending on how much you take to these kinds of places. Big and glitzy with rules about how you must dress when passing through the lobby. Myself, I don’t intend to undress here, but I’m of the mind that if a person in a bikini or one of those European skimpy speedos wants to pass through proudly, so be it. There are, by the way, a lot of Europeans in Miami Beach. French, Italians, Germans. True, their own sea coast is closer, but it’s not nearly warm enough there in April and besides, Miami Beach is just so American – in ways that make you feel like you’re getting a good look at how this country lives and breathes.






It fits the stereotypes, in a colorful sort of way. Like L.A., only with a more accessible beach.

I have just a few minutes to admire the beach area...













... and then I am sucked into the over-air conditioned interior for meetings and workshops – one after another until finally the morning morphs into late afternoon and I am done. Since these meetings bring together attorneys from all over the country, there is not a chance that I’ll know anyone – not this time anyway and so I back away from the social events. Tiki cruises are even less my style than Miami Beach without the Tiki cruises.

And now I face the long walk back to my hotel. I take to the beach this time, walking under suddenly very cloudy skies to the west, so that I am in complete shade, but with a view toward the blue skies in the east. Bright and dark all at once. With the usual umbrellas, lovers, sea gulls, etc etc.







At one point I come across an older woman sprawled just by the water’s edge, her face almost buried in the sand. I run to the beach umbrella people and tell them that surely she is nearly dead, but they assure me that she is in her normal repose, there every day, huddled by the water’s edge. They cannot touch her because it is, after all, a public beach.

Somehow I do not think we have adequately addressed the problem of homelessness and mental infirmity in this country.

It’s a long walk and I pass many many colorful umbrellas and beach scenes, but by the end of it, I know I am just this: very hungry. The small guava pastry and coffee feel as if they were from another day. A mere memory.

I stop at another Cuban-American institution of a place – Puerto Sagua. Since it’s early, around 5, it has mostly a mixed local crowd even as the place is right smack on Collins and very favored by guide books and, therefore, visitors. But they’re nice to everyone here --- outsider, insider, no matter. We all get the well worn menu, the bottles of spicy sauces, the ridiculously rich and delicious café con leche. I order, too, a fresh mango juice and a tortilla de camarones (eggs with shrimp).





Good, solid food.

And just then the clouds let out some drops of rain, but I’m fine with that. I’m almost home and I am certain that within an hour or two, this pretend rain will surely pass.


It does. And in any case, I don’t go very far for dinner.


I don’t know if it’s grand to eat outside because eight months out of the year I can’t do it, or whether it just is grand to eat outside. And if you’re a Floridian, is it boring? Like the exquisite new car that after a while, just gets you from point A to B?

No matter, I do love it and I look for places that have tables outside. Like the Locanda up the block from my hotel.

So it’s Italian. South Beach is littered with Italian eateries. Cuba, meet your cousins from across the ocean. You do rice and beans, they do pasta and tomatoes – it’s all comforting and good, no?


And this sets me thinking (and I think especially vividly because the nice waiter from Italy – oh yes, from Italy and he loved fishing on Lake Garda as a little boy, yes, indeed, in Gargnano too! – makes sure that my wine glass is never empty) – it sets me thinking – isn’t it fascinating how we’ve settled into loving the rituals of ingesting food? Ed, the holdout, is not quite on board with that – he would love to bring along a book to read on our dinners out, just in case neither of us has a good story to share. But he refrains, perhaps realizing that he is fighting millennia of pre-established etiquette.


So I eat. Squid ink pasta which, admittedly is not hugely Floridian, but still, the Italians have come here and they have had an impact and now I am eating their purple pasta and loving it, so there.






I’m in my hotel room now, finishing this text, liking the fact that I can open the window and keep the radio on and basically liking the fact that I am here... and that I’ll be home soon. Saturday. Right in time for my birthday.

hot pink

I’m in a place where, truth be told, I don’t want to be. No no, I’m not talking about the farmhouse. Far from it. Really far from it.

Early, I woke up to this:





In the evening, I strolled past this:





Oh, not revealing enough? Okay, I also strolled past this:






I’m in Miami Beach, where, for the next two days I have a conference which I thought might be (from the intellectual standpoint) good for me.

But me, in Miami Beach?

When I was a kid and spent a handful of years in New York, my parents routinely took us south for winter break. We drove for three days and plunked down our beach towels on the golden sands of Ft. Lauderdale. Once, just once we drove through Miami Beach. This is where rich people stay, I was told.

Even then, I failed to see the attraction.


I have to admit that when I first learned that my conference was going to locate itself in Miami Beach, I wasn’t displeased. Art deco funky stuff, Cuban food, great weather – hey, what’s there not to enjoy!

And it isn’t bad. I just like the farmhouse better.

Ed of course, chose not to tag along. Who could blame him – I’m busy during the day, the trip is short – just three nights – none of it is to his liking. Yes, I sailed through some time ago. On my way to Cuba – he tells me dismissively.
I need your manly companionship! I pleaded.
You’ll be fine. Find a good New York Jewish deli and have a good pickle on me.

So I’m in Miami Beach, at a tiny insignificant little hotel at the south end of things. (The conference hotel, even discounted for attendees, is more than I would ever spend.) There are children in the room next to mine and though I asked for a pleasant view, I got the trunk of a palm tree and someone’s bathroom windows just outside. I may move tomorrow, but probably not. It’s not as if it really matters.





I’m not used to writing unenthusiastic posts and so let me switch gears a little: flights were good, the public transportation from Miami International to South Beach is excellent and cheap, and the beach is just two blocks from my hotel.

Though I find Florida odd (it’s as if, when you move here, you accept the fact that you’re leaving life’s challenges and settling for something... bland), I do like oceans (yes, how obvious) and funky charm is always interesting. For a few minutes.  I find the Cuban presence fascinating and I look forward to eating authentic Cuban food.

I did that tonight, here.





Chicken, rice, beans.


Okay, tomorrow the sun will be out, I’ll wear two sweaters against the public space air conditioning and life will again look peachy pink.

For now, the pink and aqua are a vivid reminder why we no longer rave about pink and aqua.





From Miami Beach, where the air is humid and the waves threaten to drown the place if the ocean rises in the years ahead -- good night. Ed, don’t forget to water my geraniums if they dry out.

as I see it

It’s like this past winter, only warmer. One day it’s damp, blustery, the next day there’s brilliant sunshine, the next day it’s something else altogether. There is no stability to the weather these days. Every day is up for grabs.

Take Tuesday. Storms? Wind? Don’t know anything about that. A tad cool, but stunningly bright. And calm. Ed calls the fire department.
Any chance of getting a burn permit?
Sure!
Whoa! We’ve got piles upon piles to burn, to make way for the newly developing orchard!

Except, not so fast. Ed is still working on his taxes and I have my job to do. Good luck pal, I wave to Ed and scoot off on Rosie.

Oh oh. Rosie has no gas.

Suffer not the details of this morning with me. Suffice it to say that I am late for class. Three minutes. For me – an unpardonable teaching moment. (I am never, ever late.)

Rosie, you old girl, you weren’t even seriously out of gas! I should have known! You flash warnings when you’re half full! You little attention grabber you!


But, the day grows more interesting, more likable, pleasurable, -- in short, better.

I love my classes. I wont talk about how or why or what may have been the reason behind this, but I do want to note here that there are days when everything falls into place and you just love your work.

So there’s that.


After, Ed and I are primed to meet at Paul’s café, but we're both anxious to burn our honeysuckle and other comparable wood debris. A permit, after all! Who knows when another may be offered!

By the time I turn into the driveay, Ed is done with taxes (not really, but he thinks at that moment that he is done) and the fire is picking up force.





I want to help, but it's so hot, so very hot by the blaze. Remove layers, dig in your heals and start heaving. Pile limbs, put out spot fires, push branches onto the raging fire.







Brutal work. I remember burning branches for the Ice Age trail this winter. A fine job in the middle of the cold months. Less so now and especially when you worry (I worry) about embers flying away from under your control.

Hours later, the sun moves to a lower position, the fire dies down.





We plant another cherry (four to go!), heave dirt, remove boulders, throw water at the grasses around the dying blaze.


It's been a very very long day.

Kashi frozen dinners, chocolate covered raisins. Call it dinner, call it food without heart, but it is the way it is today.

Tomorrow – oh, tomorrow will be different. I promise that.

in the wind

I’m back in the car. Driving the red hot lover. Just to give you an idea – we started the day with mid fifties and proceeded downwards. I had an early morning appointment and I swear, in the time of the drive, I felt like I had gone from spring to something other than spring.

There have been wind warnings. Correct predictions this time.

When I was getting out of the car, the red hot lover’s door swung slightly out (the wind!) and touched the great big SUV in the parking space next to mine. The driver was enraged. We studied carefully his black monster car and, satisfied that I hadn’t ripped it to shreds, he stalked off.

The wind scattered branches everywhere. A ripped tree on Old Middleton Road. Bascom Hill littered. Here’s a photo, from my office window (because it’s Monday, I'm hiding here for the day). Picking up fallen twigs.






Gales and gusts. Heard at night, continuing through the morning.
Are you taking the tomatoes outdoors for their constitutional? – I ask Ed before I leave in the morning. It seems so cold...
They haven’t been out for two days now... Ah, restless tomatoes. Maybe for an hour?
Who knows how to treat this delicate set of veggie infants...


The winds blows the petals down from the old crab. Ed tells me – take a picture, it looks like snow! Well yes, maybe, but snow of any kind – petal or otherwise – in April, feels seasonally misplaced.


But pretty. In a windy and cold sort of way.






No trees planted today, no progress anywhere at all. Reheated supper foods, windows closed inside, waiting for the wind to die down.

storms

I'm waiting for storms to create the usual havoc. Ed says – don't fret,  the forecasters can’t get it right. Still, the air is warm and unsettled. And windy.

Hello, fire department.

Are you issuing burn permits today?

(Ha ha ha ha ha....) No.

So we wait for the storms.







When in the morning, the sky looks rather benign, we dig a hole for one more fruit tree – a cherry. We want to fool it into thinking it’s got a good home, with good soil. So we dig extra hard, extra deep. And of course, just as I decide the hole will do, I strike a boulder.

As one commenter pointed out, yard work, of the overly ambitious kind, can strip you silly of any last bit of energy.Yesterday I may have thought  -- nothing's impossible! Let's get it out! Today I think -- leave the damn rock alone. The tree goes in and what happens thereafter is out of my hands. Watch out for the boulder, roots! Make sure you make your way around it!



The stormy weather keeps us locked into a band of warm air. In the afternoon, Ed takes a book outside (because he has taxes to do). I sit with him at the picnic table and survey the perfectness of our spring flower mix.







Life is good. You have to think that. The spring colors tell you that any complaints are to be shelved for another time, another season.


Even as by evening (yes, not until then) the rains come. We have friends and family for Sunday dinner. I can certainly hear the howl off the wind outside, but by now my attention is on what's inside. On the food. On the company. You know. The important stuff.

ufff!

Three down, thirteen to go.

We’re at Paul’s café, stiffening into the comfortable couches. I am so appreciative of this place! For Paul and his fiancé, everyone’s special, everyone deserves a unique greeting, a send off, too. Everyone. Settle in... listen to the chatter... 

We may never get up and out of here. We’re that comfortable. And that tired.


The box of trees came this morning. Perfect timing, terrible timing. Ed hasn’t done his taxes, the weather is iffy tomorrow – all that.






On the other hand, there is this day and this day is a brilliant one, with a warmth to it that allows us to eat breakfast once again on the porch...





Breakfast with idle chatter.

Nina, why did you plant a flower so that we can’t open the porch door without knocking it down?

Because last year, when I did the planting here, there was no door to a porch. Not even much of a porch either.

How time has rearranged things for us! Several years ago, when I made occasional day trips to the farmette – these were years when Ed dutifully commuted to Madison to stay with me there – I had a half-assed approach to the land here. I liked it, I was overwhelmed by it. It seemed out of control, beyond his, mine, our capacities. And yet, I was tempted by it. Drawn by spaces that would profit by an interference. I scattered plants here and there, for impact value. I never thought I’d be here, that I would need a plan.







Of course, now I am here and our ambitions have grown. A flower bed to the north, to the west. A vegetable bed further out. And now, the biggest project of all – the tree garden.

We could not quite clear the land in time. Ed burned off some of the cut down timber, but most still remains there, along with rotten boards from a torn down shed and who knows what else. Our local fire department stopped issuing burn permits the day after Ed did his first bonfire. We’re stuck waiting until the rains provide some needed moisture.

Still, it’s an orchard, darn it, not a flower bed. We can do this! We can!

Ed takes out his ancient John Deere and hacks down most of the tall grasses and prairie growth.






We spot dig – places where the trees will go. Thirteen trees and, in a burst of optimism (it’s not the perfect soil for this), three blueberries. If they thrive, we’ll add more.





Each tree is carefully chosen – honeycrisp apples (three of them – they’re our favorites), moonglow pears, Anjou pears, and four separate varieties of sweet cherries – ones which can withstand our winters and our hugely imperfect soils.

Soils with boulders. Which I strain to dig up.






We’ve got awful clay here, the worst stuff for cherries, for pears too. I remember planting at my grandparents’ house in the village in Poland. So sandy that the water ran away when you poured from the watering can. [No hoses there, no running water – just a pond down the hill and yes, you had to go down, to fetch that pail (after pail after pail) of water...]

I’ve grown used to clay. In the suburban home where I grew perennials for years and years, the soil was perhaps even worse: compacted clay. Hard as concrete on dry days.

But what with the quack grass and the thick clay, digging at the farmette is painful.

We start off rather discouraged, but as I take to the digging routine, I grow more at ease with the prospects. And when our first tree goes in, I insist on a commemorative photo. It is, for me, a proud moment.





We have several such proud moments as we finish planting the apples. Three of them.

But tell me, when are we going to put in the rest?



At home, I rub some cream into my roughened hands. I purchased it at the market in Gargnano from the bee lady. A jar that caused me problems at the final airport security screening in Minneapolis.

It’s not a liquid, it’s congealed cream! Stiff as butter!

It’s a liquid. And it’s more than an ounce.

I didn’t think it was disallowed. In fact, neither the Milan or the Amsterdam airports had issues with it.

It’s a liquid. Is this your last security check?

Yes...

Okay, but next time – know that it’s considered a liquid.

The cream is a little bit lumpy. Home-made, with bee propolis and lemon. I love it because it is so imperfect, so simple and just barely fragrant.

Okay. My hands feel better, my arms haven’t stiffened yet. One more tree maybe. Two more...





...each doused with a bucket of water hauled in from the farmhouse (the hose, even in its longest form, doesn't reach this far).







We end it at seven trees (though we had to redo one so my arms say eight). Six left, plus three blueberries. I wont be terribly upset if it rains tomorrow and we have to pause.

 I mean, we need time off, so that we can again listen to the bees.

orange

Tonight I received a letter from the hotel in Gargnano. Valerio, the proprietor, wrote in the most delightful way, in Italian, thanking me for a review I’d put up on Tripadvisor (I am a senior reviewer there – every once in a while I come across a place that deserves words of support and so I'll write them). 

His email came at a good time. My notes here yesterday notwithstanding, it was a very busy end of week. And after all work details were attended to, I had to check in with a doc and after that proved to be a good and unproblematic visit, I exhaled.


But how?

Well, what with the Italian reminder of blissful times spent letting go of the day at sidewalk cafes where Aperol spritz blazed orange on most anyone’s table, I thought I may as well do it: buy that bottle of Aperol and make my own spritz here. In celebration of a day well spent. Or at least spent.

True, it wasn’t at a port-side table, no indeed, but I poured the drink on my Limone table...





 
...and then I carried it over to where Ed was hauling wood chips.

Nothing about the scene shouted Gargnano. Resting on a cool and dreary evening, in my old jacket, in fact, in my ex’s old jacket, against the backdrop of the old Ford pickup...







... I thought – no, not Gargnano. But home. And I have to say, an Aperol spriz tasted lovely here, at the farmette.