Patio Writing

 


This week I've been going out onto the patio to write my prompt writing, my practice writing, every afternoon.  It's been hot and humid but I put up the umbrella and there's a breeze that makes it bearable.  Today I managed to contort around to take my own picture.  Just because.  I didn't have much luck with the writing today but at least there's photographic proof that I tried.





The spiderwort is really loving the heat these days.  More and more flowers are blooming and the bees are having a field day.  The Japanese beetles have decimated the roses and they seem to like the daisies but not the spiderwort.  Another reason to like that plant.





One of the cucumbers is growing bigger.  Quite a few of them have shriveled and died but this one is growing.  Go, little cuke, go!  You can do it!


 



My ferns are enormous.  This one is at least three feet across and I love the symmetry of the fronds around the center.


 

I knitted a bunch more on the Hawk's Wing shawl this evening.  Aunt B said she thought that it looked like a hawk's wing so that's what I'm naming it.  I'm almost through the first of four skeins of yarn.  I hope I have enough.  According to the pattern I've got plenty but you never know.  I don't want to be playing yarn chicken at the end.

03 July--Barbara Malcolm, Tropical Obsession. 

Detective Inspector Rooibos got in his police car and maneuvered it around so that he could drive directly to Playa.  He was in no mood to drive north all the way into Rincon on the one-way leeward shore road and slingshot back to town by the windward shore road.  He radioed back to the officer stationed at the place where the two-way road turned to one way to make sure he would not have to do a lot of pulling over.  As soon as he had gotten word that a body had been found he had sent an officer up to turn any divers back from using the very popular dive sites arrayed along the north west coast of the island like a string of pearls.  He was sure that doing that had not earned the police any points with the scuba diving tourists who were the life blood of the island economy but it was of primary importance that they have the time to examine every possible place where the deceased could have gone over into the water. 

Rooibos considered the possibility that the man had been pushed from or fallen off of a passing boat, but he did not think so.  He had heard a whisper of underhanded doings on the island lately and wondered if this death was related.  As he drove along with the hot midday air blowing in his open window, he thought about the negative publicity that a death like this could generate.  He thought about the ripples of ill feeling that the necessity of questioning anyone who one suspects of having anything to do with the deceased will generate.  And he thought about the effect this all will have on an island with a size and population so small that everyone knew everyone else and news travels faster than lightning. 

Things had changed enough these days, he thought, what with the taint of the internet there to convince young people that the island ways were old ways, wrong ways, that they were missing out on something, something important by living in such a backwater of a culture far from the advantages of Europe or America.  Detective Inspector Rooibos had always thought that living on a small island with like-minded people made an excellent place to live.  You got the news from the television when you needed it, you had contact with the wider world through the internet when you wanted it, and you could turn them both off when your mind needed clearing and your soul needed soothing.  Today he would be unable to turn off the news because he was right smack dab in the middle of it.  

The hot dry wind that blew in his window, that ruffled his sedate tie smelled of cactus from the little hills off to his left and the iodine and fish from the ocean to his right.  If you drove him around the island blindfolded Rooibos would be able to tell you where you were by the smell.  No one could miss the rank smell of decay that came from the marshy land across from Harbor Village, but it took a native to sniff out the aroma of curried goat from El Fogon Latino restaurant on the Nikiboko Road. 

The curried goat there had a hint of Colombian spice very different from the Caribbean version of the popular stew.  The last time he had been in El Fogon Latino he had been surprised to see a middle-aged American couple digging into big plates of goat stew with enthusiasm and even overheard the woman say, “oh, the kids will be so jealous when we tell them we had goat.”  He thought that they must be a rare couple because in his experience Americans liked only American things. 

There're fireworks shooting off all around tonight.  I'm sure there have been more extemporaneous fireworks this year than any other and I'm sure it's because everyone is sick of being at home and being careful.  So many municipal celebrations have been cancelled that I suspect people are flooding the roadside fireworks stands and buying everything they can lay their hands on.  I don't mind, I'm a sound sleeper and I don't have a nervous pet.  Just as long as they don't torch the place...
--Barbara