visit to the Audiologist

For several years now, my Sandy has had trouble hearing a normal pitch & clarity across her overall hearing range.  My wife has been to specialists, hearing clinics etc., and all have given a wide range of diagnoses. So today she chose another route - a visit to an Audiologist - to do specific testing, for that possible benefit in the use of corrective hearing aids.

First appointment - The office and patient reception were as if we had stepped back 50 years, back to those early doctor visits from adolescence ......


the waiting room

the single wall chart

Finally, finishing-up with the hearing examiner's completed results - and best explained to the both of us, by the use of a scribbled, personally created graph.  And of course, all test results pointing to a mutual benefit for Sandy and the Audiologist, whose recommendation for a very pricey set of the "latest tech" hearing apparatuses, left us both feeling unsure - and Sandra undecided.

trying something different

Today at our local "Skeet" range with a couple of age old friends - shootin' alongside some good ole boys who really could shoot.

Awhile back, my old buddy Mr. Pete, sold me his older, double trigger - side-by-side - 20 gauge.
Something different, something classic.

The skeet shooting range at Sarasota's Trap, Skeet & Sporting Clays.  Broken "clays" and spent shells piled off to the side.  Today, the "sport of clays" appearing more popular than ever.

current mentor

Today at 95, and next month turning 96, "Gerry" Smith, has been my inspiration, my personal instructor and trusty "bowls" coach for the past three years - and always happy, happy with that big smile.

Just last month, Gerry was awarded a long-time-coming, national Life Time Acheivement Award for her exceptional contribution to the sport of U.S. Lawn Bowling. And today at our Club, she proudly showed me her newly issued driver's license (an exam she easily passed the day before) and good for an additional 6 more years - until the age of 102.

Gerry's always smiling, joking, but when it comes to pictures, "No smiles - I just don't like to show off my teeth."  But from inside out, what a sweetheart gal .... and a very proud, very accomplished young woman.

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.