Five Things from the Middle of June
(Yeah, I know it’s August)
1) Plants
The Gumbo Limbo (Bursera simaruba) tree is sometimes called the “tourist tree” because it has a red, peeling bark that makes it kind of look like it forgot to wear sunblock. Sunscreen is a good thing to wear, especially in the places the gumbo limbo grows naturally. The sun is stronger in the tropics and subtropics than it is in places tourists typically come from. It’s a semi-evergreen tree that drops most of its leaves right before sprouting new ones. It also grows seeds covered in fatty little coats that birds love. Birds also seem to love distributing the seeds all over the place, so if you have one gumbo limbo tree, you are likely to soon have more. When clustered together, they’re quite pretty, especially when the sun hits the red-peeling bark. (That bark also gives them the name copper wood in Jamaica.) The sap has been used for a variety of things, including insect repellent, glue, varnish, incense, and even a treatment for gout.
Trees, in general, are pretty great and I’m frankly loving how many we have in our yard. I work a lot of mornings giving tours at a botanical garden and when we’re under the tree canopy or in the dense thickets of jungle-like vegetation, it’s noticeably cooler than in the parking lots. Similarly, when I drive around and see sparse lawns with overwatered sod, the glare and heat shimmering off makes me wonder about the people living there. Granted, I keep bumping the A/C at home up to 78°F (25.6°C) or I’m bundled in sweatshirts, but I still appreciate the shade.
2) Books
I’ve been reading Zoë Sharp’s Blake and Byron books. They’re good, but I still love the Charlie Fox books. Might have to reread those. I’ve also been working my way through Lost Girls and Love Hotels by Catherine Hanrahan, but it’s slow going because it’s a rather depressing book and the world is depressing enough. I also picked up Angels by Denis Johnson, which has been good but it’s also about broken people listlessly drifting. Had my English students read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as their “palate cleanser” right before school ended. Two thirds of them liked it. The other one preferred The Things They Carried by O’Brien. Go figure.
3) Music
I’m writing this from a tiki bar overlooking a canal that has too much litter in it. It doesn’t seem like the kind of place to get a salad with strawberry vinaigrette and figs, but there you go. What does that have to do with music? Well, because this tiki bar has been playing nonstop country, the sort of honky tonk stuff you’d find in a biker bar in an 80s movie on HBO. It’s got me thinking how you rarely hear a song (of any genre) about a lost love that’s about anything more than how pretty she is, how hot she is, or how her body parts move. Seems like if that’s all you knew about her, that might be why the relationship is in the past tense. (The salad is shockingly good.)
I need to rebuild my writing playlists. They’ve become too bloated, which happens. I can’t be the only one that keeps adding things until they’ve lost all semblance of theme or order.
4) Animals
The Arts and Culture Center in Hollywood, FL has an exhibit with an animal theme this summer and it’s excellent. One of the larger pieces in particular deals with invasive species. South Florida has its share of those. Unlike a lot of places, where cold or drought might kill off released pets and other non-natives, all sorts of exotic animals and reptiles have made a home out of the ecosystem down here at the bottom of the peninsula. Some do little damage. Others cause major havoc as animals not normally accustomed to dealing with Burmese pythons try to figure out how to deal with the new threat.
One of those invasives is an apple snail, that upon first glance, looks a lot like the native apple snail. At first, the worry was that, in out-competing the native apple snail, it would threaten the native snail kite, a bird who feasts almost exclusively on these little wetlands escargot. Turns out, the snail kites have been evolving to eat the invasives. The exotic snails are still destructive for aquatic vegetation and pushing out the native snails, but the kites at least seem to have found a use for them.
5) Other
It is no longer the middle of June. I started writing fiction again. We’ll see how long this lasts. Fingers crossed and all. I’ve been afraid if I spent writing time on this newsletter or writing up the blog post about those aforementioned snails, I’d lose the momentum or something. Let’s all hope that’s a ridiculous concern.
I got up to about 43,000 words of the draft before I had to switch from writing on my iPad to writing by hand in my “emotional support notebook” again. Writing by hand is my “crutch” when I need to work some things out.
Hope your summer was a good one and that the heat for most of you starts to dissipate soon. (Here in Florida, it’ll be going strong another couple of months.)
Be well. Breathe.