On the Undesirability of Pink Sofas

Everyone's rummaging

  Well guess what. We've bought a house!  We'd been thinking it might be a good idea to find a little place in Florida we could rent out at first and then eventually spend more time in ourselves. It's supposed to be a good time to buy but we found, wouldn't you know, that in the place we actually wanted to be, a hidden gem neighbourhood of small,  unpretentious cottages a short walk from the beach, houses were selling as soon, even before, they came on the market. If you want to get something in some anonymous, swanky gated community farther inland, you are laughing but not here. Still, we have finally succeeded. Now we've set ourselves a challenge. Furnish and equip our completely empty house elegantly and classily  in just four weeks and from junk shops. Yes, you heard that one right.  Junk shops. We've got a limited budget. Mind you, junk or charity shops, (thrift stores, as they call them here) are rather better in Florida than anywhere else. Wealthy Floridians just love an excuse to redecorate and throw out their old stuff, much of which isn't old at all. Meanwhile, everyone who wants to rent out their beach house is rummaging too, so you have to get lucky.

This is not our car

          We were very excited about our first purchase, a sofa which we got for 60 dollars. It looked pretty well brand new and was in a nice abstract design of pastels - pink, grey, aqua. Rather fetching, I thought. "Very Florida", said hubby.  But our pride soon took a dent. The first rental agent to look at our house swept over the sofa with a supercilious eye. "That will have to go".  A bit awkward since it was the only stick of furniture so far in the place and she was sitting on it. "It's PINK!" she sneered. NO ONE will want to rent a house with anything pink! Pink means OLD. It'll have to go or you'll have to cover it."
  I was mortified. And furious too. I grabbed a bunch of House-and-Garden type magazines and set to studying them.  Eventually I found what I was looking for. "Look!" I shouted to hubby, "It says pink is in! And we" , I added, "are going to get a different rental agent."  The sofa stays in the picture.

Coming Soon....

The Great Florida Junkshop Odyssey, in which our real sunshine state master plan is revealed (including the horrible saga of the pink sofa faux-pas)
Watch this space!

Weather Update: A Warm Florida Winter

  It's a record-breaking warm January for this part of Florida - not that I'm complaining, just remarking. True Floridians, who stay down here all year and brave the hot damp summers, are wearingly saying that they'd rather have a little respite during the winter. So far, they're not getting their wish. Even the nights are warm, with the sound of chirping crickets and floral scents in the air. The only things that make me think of winter are the occasional incongruous bare, leafless tree and the fact that the sun rises late and sets early. So the veteran residents who like to head for the beach, drink in hand, to meet their friends for a sunset happy hour are there well before six o'clock. And I don't have to get up too early to catch the dawn.

I haven't yet mastered the art of raking for prehistoric sharks' teeth, small, black objects which look like dodgy fillings. The old "geezers", as hubby calls them are out with their rakes at first light, patiently sifting through the sea-washed sand. Apparently they can do quite well selling the teeth to local souvenir shops, which need an unending supply.  I don't know why so many prehistoric sharks fetched up on the sandbanks of Venice but it's known as the "Sharks Tooth Capital of the World".

No great surf here, just the gentle splash of the waves. Hurricane season has long gone by.

A Caged Life

 In Florida, they live in cages.  The porches are caged, the swimming pools are caged.

The cages, big, ungainly structures, tower over the pools, sometimes enclosing a whole back garden. Here in Venice, where charming little beach houses were originally built in the 1940s, the old places are gradually being done up and added to, or pulled down and replaced, not always for the better. Simple pastel cottages are being superseded by mini McMansions with column flanking the entrance and manicured lawns.

A mini McMansion in progress....

And the cages are everywhere. Rows of them, sometimes, enclosing ridiculously small swimming pools. But it seems each house has, or wants to have a pool. And back porches called "lanais" are screened with ugly wire mesh. Now in January, I can't see the point but apparently in summer the insects are out in droves.
    It could be part of the gated community syndrome, itself a form of cage too. We visited someone the other day and had to run the gauntlet of a uniformed guard in a massive sentry box. What are they all afraid of? That's why I like where we're based - still a normal little neighbourhood but for how long?

The cages give me a feeling of being in a zoo - literally inside, while nature amuses itself with a ready-made climbing frame.  We're the exhibits here.

Oooh look, Fred! There's one having its coffee! 

Who's Behind Our Neighbour's Tree?

Aha!

A Palm Tree Gets a Haircut

Dateline Venice, Florida and it's 80 degrees today. Hooray. I don't care that the snow's melting up north. I'd still rather be here.
  I was puzzled to see a man on a cherry-picker rising up to the topknot of one of the tall downtown palm trees. He was obviously there on official business and doing some maintenance, in this case, giving the tree a haircut.  I watched, mesmerised, as he trimmed and snipped, then gave the palm the full salon treatment, shaving the rough bark from its trunk. I fully expected him to produce a giant mirror and say, "How does it look, Ma'am".

 There are more kinds of palm tree here than you can shake a stick at. The oddest one I've seen is called a ponytail palm and the specimen in the park certainly looks as though it's having a bad hair day. It could do with the ministrations of my cherry-picker friend.

Encounters at Dawn

 I set off for a little early morning exercise along the road to the beach, lined with neat houses and holiday apartments.  It was still half-dark with the grey glow of the Florida gulf coast dawn just beginning to appear and all was quiet. Suddenly, in front of me, a smallish animal, about the size of a cat,  scurried across the road. It had a pointed snout, a fat body and a thin rat-like tail. As I approached, it turned round and bared its sharp teeth. I edged away and tried not to look it in the eye. Eventually it turned into the shadows. It was a possum and the first time I'd ever seen a live adult. Usually you see them prone by the roadside. Hubby remembers finding one in a dustbin at home and shaking it out along with all the rubbish. That one turned and bared its teeth too.
  The following morning, I took the same route at the same time. Just around the corner I heard a faint "click click" and a smallish animal trotted across the road. It had a long snout, a plump body, a thin tail.. Another possum? No, this one had wide bands around its body and looked for all the world like something eerily prehistoric, out of place on the tarmac road of a genteel Florida beach community. It continued on its way, uncaring and oblivious to me and disappeared under a raised manhole and down a drain. I'd just seen my first ever wild armadillo.
  I found it rather exciting. We may think we've mastered the things of nature but the dawn still belongs to them.