I. M. Pei revisited

Driving out early this morning, and tuned into NPR - on air, there came across a brief mention that the acclaimed international architect, I. M. Pei, had just turned 101 years old.  It was his birthday.

Funny, cause I was heading out today for Sarasota's New College campus, looking forward to an intensive two day summit on the quality of our local bays and estuaries, yet now thinking, it might also be a good time to re-visit and reflect on a notable local landmark - the famed New College residential courtyard designed by I. M. Pei (1965). 

Seems years have taken it's toll (now patched & painted). Doing a little background research, and from my own early memory, the courtyard was originally poured and left of raw concrete, left unpainted. In it's original state - referencing the original forms, it's function and dorm livability - an early student once was quoted, "I found the rather rectilinear Palm Court, an Apollonian island in a Dionysian jungle."

like Disneyland .....

My love of palms and all things bamboo, led me down south to a wholesale nursery out on Pine Island.  Like visiting Disney, I became surprisingly excited.  Walking, touching, looking up & looking down, and surrounded by many exotic sounding names (using common names below) and all the while, being guided by an impassioned nursery employee, just excited as I.  And me, just wandering everywhere, from areas of the smallest potted seedlings to acres of an abandoned and overgrown, old growth nursery.

Palmco Nursery, Bookelia, Florida - 600 Acres
(wholesale grower & large exporter of specialty palms & bamboo).


Coconut palm seedlings, with young potted bamboo in the background

a multitude of large landscape palms, prepped, trimmed and root-wrapped for shipping, shipped for domestic and international markets.

3 large Cuban Royal's being loaded for transportation for the Port of Miami, being shipped for a new resort in the Caribbean.

'Wild Date' palm with fruit

'Wild Date' intentionally grown to lean for ornamental landscape purposes

an old growth and abandoned Coconut palm grove (Reclinatas in background) 

old growth 'Cuban Royals' left abandoned on ten 'back' acres. Today, too hard to individually access, to labor intensive to harvest

young 'Slender Weaver' bamboo in containers

'Nana' bamboo

'Golden Hawaiian' bamboo

'Guadua angusifiolia', is the largest "neotropical" bamboo and native to Central & South America. "Guadua" bamboo is commonly used for construction - used as a local, native building material, as well as, being used worldwide for commercial quality applications. This large, tall straight bamboo is also noted for it's leafy, spiny thorns and heights that top 70 feet . Not commonly grown in the US, but most impressive and majestic - and now, a newly found friend.

convenience

There's a nearby convenience store, a Shell gas station, that I frequent almost every day.

Over the past many years, I've probably spent more money in this place than anywhere in town. From filling up with gas, to their cheap car washes - from buying those (former) daily pack of smokes, along with an occasional Pay Day candy bar - there's just about everything offered up, that one would need to survive. And there, on most days, there's a guy there working who I've gotten to know - and when he can smile, we briefly chat.

Pat is his name, originally from Chicago, though most of his adult life he had worked hard in the oil fields of North Dakota. A tough road eventually led him to Sarasota in 2005 - and while here, he began his slow recovery, his sobriety at our local "Sally" (our Salvation Army).

Lately, it's become much more difficult for either of us to have that brief conversation or even visually, to find each other.  So I guess, my so called convenience store has now become far less convenient - by adding more and more, and way too much more.

April gardening (Florida Zone 10a)

Three 50 lb bags of fertilizer should do it.  Full day - dirty and satisfying.