On Thursday night, we went on a sunset cruise. The air was cool and a bit misty. The captain predicted fog and I was excited. 'Fog is my favorite weather!' I said to myself, in my thoughts. As it turned out, the fog didn't materialize, but the orange sky was a highlight. We were on a small catamaran with three other gay couples. The captain and his one-man crew were also gay. There were initially five couples, but one half of the fifth couple had a panic attack when we left shore, so we had to turn around and drop him/them off. DRAMA. As we sailed out toward the sun, we socialized with the other couples. One of the couples was from Saugatuck, the Michigan town where we recently visited, so we had many questions for them. One of them had just retired from a major law firm (____ & _____), where he had been a partner, which became evident as they started talking about their many houses around the country in addition to the multimillion dollar renovation of the Saugatuck place. 'We built a garage over the water for our boat,' they explained. 'You have too much money,' I said to myself, in my thoughts. Another couple was also from Michigan, and they were pleased about the recent football game. 'Why would anyone care about college football?' I said to myself, in my thoughts. A third couple, much younger, was scrolling through IG when I overheard one of them ask who Angela Lansbury was, and the other explained that she was known for playing an amateur detective on 'Murder, She Wrote.' I jumped in to say that she was pretty glamorous in her younger days, a contemporary of Bette Davis (as I first confirmed with Stephen). It turned out that mentioning Bette Davis did not result in the wave of excitement I expected. 'I think I've seen her,' said one of the young gays, returning to his phone. 'Hmmm,' I said to myself, in my thoughts. 'The world is changing, and I'm older than I used to be.'
The captain (who was maybe thirty-five years old) cued up a Spotify playlist of mellow club songs and kept the volume at a reasonable level. We passed several non-gay cruises packed with hordes of people getting trashed. Someone was barfing over a railing. Strains of a Led Zeppelin cover band floated across the water. The birds flew across the sky.
The captain regaled us with stories about Key West. Apparently, the gay scion of a Russian family who moved to the island in the late 1800s had built a mansion on a private island not far from where we were sailing. He was famous for throwing big parties in the 1980s and for funding Jimmy Buffett's first trip to New York City, where I guess he got his first big break. His life (the scion, not JB) sounded like a Ryan Murphy miniseries (starring Matt Bomer). Apparently, there's another small island off of Key West that's in litigation because it was long owned by the US government but has since been colonized by a commune of wealthy hippies and free thinkers; they are being sued by a developer who claims that the government sold them the island, but they have no record of this transaction. (All of this information is by way of the captain, so I vouch for none of it!)
The captain also encouraged us to take the 'ghost tour' of Key West, because apparently the island was built on the bones of early Native Americans who either 1) used it as a ceremonial burial ground, or 2) used it to bury another tribe with which they had been at war. (This was before the Russian family came and bought everything.) 'There are ghosts everywhere down here,' he assured us. He also told us that the US Marines had constructed a pool somewhere in Key West that was 300-feet deep for training Green Berets.
On our way home, we admired the bare-branched trees that we had noticed earlier.
These ones seemed less dead than the others we had passed. The leaves looked like butterflies under the streetlight.
Here's a daytime view. I made a mental note to learn the name of this tree when we went to the botanical garden, which we were planning to do the next day.
We woke up and found more chickens crossing the road, to get to the other side.
We took a cab to the botanical garden, which was not in the old town. I asked the woman who sold us our tickets about the leafless trees, and she said, 'oh yes, they're called frangipangi trees -- I love them.' We later learned that they are in fact called 'frangipani' and that their flowers, which are very fragrant, are used to make leis like the ones you see in Hawaii. But I'll probably always think of them as 'frangi-pangi' (Italian accent).
I also loved the scrub palmettos, which are quite common in the undergrowth of the native landscape but I was hypnotized by the light passing through their fans of kaleidoscopic leaves.
We enjoyed seeing some rare palms, including this Wax Palm, which is native to Cuba but where there are only 100 trees left. I'm sorry that the photo is sideways. #technology
Here is a sideways petticoat palm.
I've been to a few botanical gardens in Florida, and they often seem to be scraping by. This one was no exception. I felt a little sad as I walked the trail adjacent to a shimmering golf course, which offers its own kind of beauty but seems out of place in a tropical landscape; or maybe out of place next to a botanical garden that needs to stretch every penny to survive. I wondered if Donald Trump will make funding botanical gardens a priority for his forthcoming administration.
Stephen spotted an iguana in the trees, and it was very photogenic! It's hard to believe that such creatures exist outside of science-fiction movies.
We ended our tour at an exhibit of rotting boats that had once been used by Cubans attempting to escape to Florida. As per the sign, 'Note the industrial hoses used for stability at sea. Through stories from those who made it to land, there were refugees killed from shark attacks as the overpopulated boats hung low to the water line. The ballast helped to keep them safe from attacks.'
At first, I thought it was a strange exhibit for a botanical garden.
But upon further reflection, it seemed appropriate to demonstrate how nature longs to restore everything we've taken from it.
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