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| Another Bunch of Bananas |
Our banana plantation along the canal is fruiting. We harvested 3 stalks, each with 5 - 6 hands of bananas, and at least 4 plants are in flower or with small banana already showing. Banana bread, banana smoothies, banana daiquiris, bananas on cereal, bananas just by themselves, a lot of bananas in our diets. These are small, but not finger-sized, yellow ones. I am going to find other varieties to add to our crop, perhaps even plantains, if they will grow this far north. Unfortunately, like so much else, the Rare Fruit and Vegetable Council sales are shut down because of Covid-19.
The rest of our gardens are on hold. Too late for spring planting; too early for fall. My few okra are hanging on. Something ate the eggplants. I’ve learned to start seeds inside. Grant has kindly turned the compost pile twice, adding the bucket of horse bedding I got when we picked Clara up from horse camp in Mount Dora. I need a closer source.
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| Nehrling House Art & Stroll |
We went to nearby Nehrling House last week for its annual Art & Stroll fundraiser, a walk through the gardens while local artists paint
en plein aire. These on-site works and other donated pieces are auctioned to support this historic site. I bid on a mosaic of a red hibiscus flower but have been outbid. Today is the last day, so I need to put my money down if I want that piece.
Henry Nehrling tested plants for the USDA in the early 1900’s and is considered the father of the caladium industry in Florida. After a freeze in 1917, he moved to Naples and founded his garden that evolved into Caribbean Gardens (now Jungle Larry’s Safari Gardens), about a mile away from our house on Forest Avenue. Every morning, the peacocks screamed away. Pretty birds, but danged noisy.
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One day, when I was working at the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce, the head groundskeeper came in a dither. One of the young male peacocks had flown out from the gardens to a pine tree next to our building. The bird wouldn’t come down, and we were afraid he’d end up as roadkill in traffic on US 41. After several hours of coaxing, the man left, swearing he’d be back with a rifle and have peacock for dinner. Eventually, the bird, really just a big chicken in fancy dress, decided to head back to the roost to be fed. Years earlier, my family posed for postcards for Caribbean Gardens. Helps to have the photographer live across the street.
Other than old people’s time at Costco, and my foray into Home Depot for non-deliverable items, going to the Nehrling House has been our only outing around other people. When we went to Wekiva State Park to swim in the spring, we left because there were too many people and not enough distancing or masks.
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| Wekiva State Park |
I wonder how this pandemic stress compares to what our mothers went through when polio was here. I can remember going to a pool in Arcadia, Florida, perhaps in 1953. Betsy was born June, 1954. I think it highly unlikely that Dad would have taken Peg and me to the pool by himself. When we moved to the trailer park in Naples, there wasn’t a pool, but we certainly played with all the other kids. Perhaps we’d received the vaccine by then. It was a miserable shot (I remember several doses, but that could have been other vaccines), allegedly made less painful by keeping our arm swinging for as long as we could. I was never impressed, but my unsympathetic mother would point out that lying in an iron lung was worse. We’d seen the pictures in the Saturday Evening Post or other magazines of children with just their head sticking out from a huge metal tank and were believers. I was thrilled when the oral vaccine, delivered by dissolving a sugar cube on your tongue, was developed. My Girl Scout troop was recruited as volunteers to help the nurses pass them in our school cafeteria. Babies got little squirts of liquid. The days of sore arms were gone.
Yet, the ramifications of polio are still here. We have friends who survived the disease but are suffering its long term effects in their old age. What will be the long term effects of Covid-19? Stephanie has learned it is unlikely she will return to her office this year. What will 9 months of sitting in isolation in front of a computer do to her psyche? Hers, and the millions of others in the same boat. We can say, “At least she/they have a job”, but how crazy are they all going to be. Dare I say, will they all go bananas?
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