next door to paradise

12-year old girl in Petco, takes three steps toward the puppy adoption center, turns around and says, “Stay focused.”

I moved the red banana trees to the back yard. They are about ten trees, all around 4 to 6 feet tall. They survive from a twelve-year old rhizome we cultivated as houseplants in Oklahoma. Hopefully, they will survive the transplant. And the dog.

Old dude walking past the sodas in Publix supermarket: “WATTAH DE-POT-MENT!”

We harvested the last of the Buttercrunch lettuce and arugula this weekend. Eight plants and enough lettuce to share with two neighbors. Midge planted Romaine lettuce and kale. Hopefully, we’ll get a decent harvest before it gets too hot.

Note to self: When it gets very cold down here, open the hood of your vehicle and check to make sure that a rat hasn’t built a nest of dry vegetation on top of your engine.

We were led to believe our dog, Biko, was Husky/Dalmatian, but I have a suspicion he is a rare coconut terrier. I tossed a dry coconut into the back yard and he had it husked in three days.

Man, gingerly leading a woman on his arm through a darkened parking lot: “When we get home, you’re going to put on your highest heels and walk around in them until you’re comfortable in them.”

Who could have possibly picked a half-ripe tomato in the back yard, smuggled it into the bedroom and ate it on Midge’s robe on the bed? Somebody is sneaky around here.

Although we’ve had a lot of wind for several days, our coconut trees picked yesterday to drop fronds and fruit — after the yard waste truck had passed. I piled the coconuts at the curb so my neighbor can plant them on his Lake Okeechobee property; the fronds, about twenty of them, will have to smother the grass in my back yard for a week.

A man in the grocery store parking lot last night answered an age-old question for me: can a person wearing bagpipes text and walk at the same time? The answer is yes.