Putting on the dog

Dogs sprawl beneath barstools on the Laishley Crab House deck. They help themselves to water bowls placed outside dog-mindful downtown shops. Theycruise Punta Gorda Harborwalk in strollers. They're wheeled about in Lowe’s shopping carts, like small poobahs borne on litters. Venice boasts a renowned dog beach, Brohard Paw Park.  Camp Bow Wow in Port Charlotte requires an interview, tryout, and completion of a daunting three-page Camper Application. It’s like getting your kid into a Beverly Hills nursery school, for Chrissake.

No doubt about it, the Southwest Florida Gulf Coast can claim the most dog-friendly venues in America.

They’ve got nothing on Ophelia’s Pasta House in Nokomis.

Before you even step in the door, there's a lighthearted list of rules for Ophelia’s dog-friendly patio and dining room. 

They offer a tableful of free treats, beds on which shaggy patrons may recline like Roman bacchantes, and walls arrayed with poker-playing, birthday-boy, barfly, and chef dogs, all  rendered in colorful detail by local painter Ingeborg Angeli.  A laminated Canine Cuisine menu features six entrees, as well as kibble for the purist who eschews table scraps. Bring a dog and you’ll be treated like visiting dignitaries. The dogless eat pretty well in their dining area, too.

Even unaccompanied humans may dine on Ophelia’s dog patio. 

Paula and Gary Skorb of Rutland, MA, enjoy breakfast at Ophelia’s Pasta House.

Some say that Ophelia’s lovably loopy co-owner, Nancy Champlin, likes dogs better than people, but that’s not completely true. She doesn’t play favorites. Her former life in western Massachusetts was devoted to human caregiving, as a primary-grades teacher who also trained student teachers.  

Nancy likes to tell stories, including one about a unit on “community helpers.” She asked the class, “How many of you have a relative who’s a community helper?”

One little boy raised his hand and cried, “I do!  My dad.  But he’s dead now.”

“What did he do before he died?”

The boy gurgled dramatically and fell on the floor in response.

Pulling your leg or not, Nancy still loves storytelling. She has her own informal standup routine at the restaurant, moving from table to table telling the more-or-less-clean “joke of the night.”

But the footloose Jim Champlin was always the one who wanted to run restaurants. While studying to teach the deaf, Nancy met Jim in a bar, and her life changed abruptly. He owned Champlin’s, an established seafood market/restaurant on the grey-shingled waterfront of Narragansett, RI. Nancy worked there for six years, breathing in the salt air and loving life--until Jim sold out and started Althea’s in downtown Venice.  Homebody Nancy, who never wanted to budge after settling somewhere, made herself comfy in Venice. Then, five years later, it happened again. They sold Althea’s and moved back to launch The Sunflower, right up the road from Champlin’s.

One day, Nancy asked, “Where’s Jim? We need some lobsters,” only to learn that he’d hopped in his sailboat and taken off for Florida again--this time, to open Ophelia’s Pasta House.

“Well, that’s Jim,” Nancy sighs.  “I love Rhode Island, so I stayed there running The Sunflower, while he was starting Ophelia’s.”

About her grandson’s lemonade stand Nancy wisecracks, “I’ll have to clue him in about this restaurant business!”

But whatever career she pursues, Nancy herself is a “community helper.”

When she heard that Hooves Paws ‘n Claws Animal Sanctuary in Bradenton needed more space, to house hundreds of rescued dogs and cats, along with horses, donkeys, birds, and a pig, she began holding benefits auctioning off donated salon gift cards, golf packages, pet supplies, and groomer and vet certificates. 

Nancy isn’t averse to matchmaking either. She’s tickled to have introduced one middle-aged couple, who fell madly in love at Ophelia’s. “We haven’t even had an argument yet,” the pair giggles, after a month together.

Best of the Blotter

Police blotters up north were entertaining enough, but the best they had to offer was material such as: "Woman drives into ditch because of bee in car" or "Neighbors complain of Arabs working at 7-11."  (Police response to the latter: "We know.")

But Florida police blotters deserve a blog all their own. I will try to contain myself and limit it to an occasional "Best of the Blotter" post.


Woman ate dog treats and left without paying for them
NAPLES--Deputies say a North Naples woman drank Red Bull and ate dog treats at Walmart and then left without paying for them.

Reports show that she was shopping in the school supply aisle of the store at about 7:15 p.m.

Employees watched her open several items in the aisle and place them inside a binder which she placed inside her purse. She then chose two Red Bull energy drinks, spilling one on the floor before consuming a second one.

Then employees say she grabbed a bag of rawhide dog treats off a shelf, opened the package, and began eating the rawhide chips. She placed the bag back on the shelf but kept a few in her purse.

When questioned by deputies, she said, "I was just putting together the binder for my granddaughter."

[Editor's note: Naples is a wildly well-to-do community, where residents no doubt lack sufficient dog treats for themselves.]

Baby pulls cocaine from woman's shirt during traffic stop
DAYTONA BEACH--Deputies say an 11-month-old boy pulled a baggie full of cocaine from inside the shirt of a woman during a traffic stop near Daytona Beach.

A K-9 unit arrived to check the car and deputies asked the occupants to step outside with the baby. No drugs were found inside the car, but as the deputy handed a driver's license to Candyce Harden, the baby reached inside her shirt and pulled out the baggie.

It's unclear who the baby belongs to.

[Editor's note: Given their bad luck, no one wants to claim the kid.]


Suspect nabbed during chase; snoring gave him away
PENSACOLA--Officials say a Florida man suspected of stealing a car took off on foot from a traffic stop and briefly eluded deputies while he grabbed a nap under a nearby trailer.

The Pensacola News Journal reports that deputies followed the sound of 37-year-old Kevin Lee Barbour's snoring--described as a "snorting wild boar"--to discover him Sunday night in Santa Rose County.

[Editor's note: Perps' falling asleep in mid-chase happens more often in Florida than in any other state of the Union.]

Blizzard envy

Throughout the past weekend, weather reports couldn't contain their excitement. The Boston area would get hit by another Storm of the Century, a new Blizzard of '78.  With snowflakes beginning to spin through the air in downtown Boston, workers prepared to leave early, toting their laptops home for a snow day to follow.

It's easy to get all nostalgic about the days when you watched the snow line creep up the outside of your first-story windows, had to shoulder open the front door because there was a drift against it, and cleared a bathroom area for the dog.  He was at first stymied by snow deeper than his shoulders, but then remembered how to dolphin through it and race, all crazy-dog, in big circles until he was exhausted.

As long as you didn't have to deliver the newspaper or staff an ER, a Snow Day felt as if you were getting away with something, working at home or not working at all. For a few short hours, you made popcorn, baked cookies, fired up the wood stove, watched movies, played games, and acted like a kid who didn't have to do homework for a night.

At least until the power went out or you realized this stuff had to be shoveled and you were the only grownups in the house. And shoveling became a priority as soon as the plow went down the street, blocking your driveway with a containing wall that promised to turn concrete sometime soon.

Gary and Paula Skorb's driveway in Rutland, MA, says it all.

Our good friend Karen Mercer never minded tramping through two feet of snow, from her place up a brambly hill, through a vacant lot, to our place, because it was good exercise. Besides, there was a bottle of wine and a good meal at the other end. Crashing on the couch instead of tramping home was always an option.

She still likes to tramp through two feet of snow, from her place to downtown Exeter, New Hampshire, for a pomegranate martini at 11 Water Street's downstairs bar overlooking the frozen Exeter River.

And there's still an illicit thrill in the words snow day, even all the way from Florida.

"How many inches?" you ask greedily, hoping for the most.

Remainders

... a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too ... 

     "Very well, then!" cried the woman. "Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose? ... Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it.  ... I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it.  We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It's no sin.  Open the bundle, Joe." ...

     "What do you call this? ... Bed-curtains? ... You don't mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.

     "Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"

     "You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

                               --Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave Four

In a Florida neighborhood, a vast mound of belongings on the side of the road usually means eviction--a sad enough circumstance.

Very rarely, it means that someone has died, which is crushingly sad. This happened on our street, where a pile of belongings began slowly accumulating in front of the house on the corner. There, a brother had been caring for his cancer-stricken sister, who had occupied two rooms of the house and, her son said, had filled them as only an eBay addict and hoarder can do.

Day after day, new objects and mysteries were brought out to join the growing mass on the curb.

A file cabinet, its drawers fastened shut with duct tape as if to protect its contents; a perfectly serviceable chest of drawers with brass handles; endless black garbage bags stuffed with clothing; a spangled black dress-up purse; wooden shelving; a New York Daily News Michael Jackson memorial issue, along with thirty years of other newspapers deemed worthy of preservation; empty boxes of Quaker chocolate-chip granola bars; a Santa doll, bottoms up, atop the heap; the mingled odor of floral dryer sheets and Vicks VapoRub; old prescription bottles; three TV monitors and an Xbox, for passing the time away; tassled decorative cushions in Oriental-carpet fabric; rolls of stained red-shag carpeting; a mattress or two, in equally poor repair; copies of For Love of the Game and How to Make Money with Gold Coins; somehow, a full-size refrigerator; a single-size headboard with a mirror that must have overseen the last days of this woman's life. A lone ceramic angel stood guard at the head of the line of trash, wielding an empty candlestick.

Who's the worse for the loss of all this? All of it meant something to its owner and, if only for that reason, deserves peace and respect.

But whenever there is a heap of stuff like this, it becomes clear to human scavengers that someone means for it to be gone, and quickly put out of sight. They soon appear, to remove, first, items that contain salable metal, silver or copper; next, usable furniture; then, goods of progressively lesser value.  Until rain and wind finish the job by eroding the rest, and the remaining pile is scooped up by the county or Waste Management.

In a chilling moment reminiscent of the ragpickers' scene from A Christmas Carol, a pair of large women pull up in their sedan to sort through what is left of this other woman's life, as her dogs bark impotently inside the house. One of the women sits down in the midst of the heap, the better to appraise its contents. The other bends double like a migrant worker, picking and discarding, for over an hour. Even a package of Peeps that must have been decades old disappears into their trunk. I was tempted to remark in passing, "She died of ebola, you know," if only to see them shriek and scatter like startled vultures.

I wasn't bold enough.

Reentry

I have had a snowbird experience.

Usually this phenomenon takes place over the roughly three months of a Florida summer, but in my case it happened over the three fall months during which we were traveling through Europe, Thailand, and Bali, in a great, post-retirement blowout of a trip.

Returning from the delights of Prague and Amsterdam, the ice-blue weirdness of Iceland, and the disco-ball mania of Kuta, Bali, and Pattaya Beach, Thailand, to the Gulf Coast of Florida is both culture shock and comfort.

When we first pulled into the driveway, our yard looked somehow diminished, like a childhood home that isn't as grand or as spacious as you'd remembered. (A week later, it has improved a great deal.)

I have forgotten the names of every other neighbor, but not of their dogs. I have to ask their neighbors what their names are, lest I be shamed. "Oh, that's okay," they tell me. "They've probably forgotten yours by now and think you're just a snowbird."

Really, though, not a lot changes during three months in Port Charlotte.

Any "For Sale" signs that have come down have been replaced by others sprouting up on different properties.

One barn of a place around the corner--a concrete edifice with its interior still one vast hall undivided by rooms--is under such painfully slow construction that its owners accomplish only one perceptible change per year.  Last year, it was windows. This year, instead of a large board, there is an honest-to-God double door. It is held in place by what look like giant black staples. Perhaps real hinges will appear next year.

Half the neighbors wave "how are ya" as if I haven't been gone. Others accost me with, "We didn't know what happened to you! We didn't see you any more!"  Then, more darkly, "And you never do know, do you?"

"No, you never do!" I reply. "And by the way, has anybody died or become critically impaired since we've been gone?"

Others had more faith. "We thought you were probably okay because your articles were still showing up in the paper."

Little did they know. I could have been taken into white slavery in Denpasar. I had banked a dozen articles to fill the deadlines when I was gone, and no one would have been the wiser.

And a few things exhibit shocking change when you are gone that long.

A dozen new restaurants have opened their doors--which may well be closed by this time next year.

Shorn of the dense shrubbery that had always hid it from view, one house has become so unrecognizable that I thought it had been torn down and replaced, whole. It seems bigger and farther forward on its lot without all those bushes pushing it into the background. They say that its ceiling is caving in and its floors have rotted. And suddenly it stands exposed to view like an embarrassed elderly hospital patient whose johnny won't fasten.

The dogs' old nemesis, a fat grey squirrel, still taunts them by climbing atop the pool cage and frisking his tail. But now he has gone too far and peed down on their heads as they barked.

"Roly, I can't believe he did that!"

"No, Doxie, it's true. This is his stinky squirrel piss all right."

Many neighbors no longer wave when they pass me in their cars. They are no doubt new and don't know me yet, but they will before long.

Sea Hibiscus Blvd.

Time-lapse blogs are a wonderful thing. Just as time-lapse photography fast-forwards into the future, this post will now reveal the completed sea hibiscus boulevard.  

The sea hibiscuses are at this point taller than the house and must be hacked back brutally to stay in line.

My birthday present—an arched trellis that I'd been planning as the entryway—went into place about a year ago.  The Dutchman’s pipe, a bizarre plant whose flowers look like bruised scrota, has by now grown like crazy, crawled all over it, and threatens to strangle the sea grape to its right. 

One approaches this vision around the corner of the house, past the Mexican petunia bed on the left and, on the right, the heliconia, ti plant, and Plant from Mars, which got its name because I had no clue what it was.  I couldn’t find it anywhere online, and our landscaper's brother, who claims to know everything, didn't know what it was. It just grew there one day, I chop it back periodically, and it shoots up again. It has big, cabbagelike leaves with frilly white edges. It's on the right in this picture, behind the ruby-leaved ti plant.

I'm persistent to a fault. After hours of hunting for Plant from Mars online, I stumbled upon a nursery in South Carolina called Woodlanders, which specializes in unusual plants, and wrote to them via Contact Us. I apparently asked the right guy, because Bob McCartney wrote back to tell me that a contact in Gainesville told him it is Acalypha wilkesiana forma circinata, more modestly known as Jacob's coat. Like my sea hibiscus, it hails from Southeast Asia and has many medicinal uses. One website said its stalk is poisonous; others suggested boiling its leaves and drinking the tea to cure everything from pleurisy to diarrhea. I don't think this is a good idea.

Here's Bob McCartney's backstory:

In seeking out people who had been involved with the cultivation of native southern plants, the trail led to Bob McCartney at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia. Colonial Williamsburg's gardens relied heavily on native plants and for more than a decade Bob had been collecting, propagating and introducing into the extensive gardens and grounds a wide range of seldom cultivated species.

What's so odd about all this is that I appear to have found a hobby in the last field I ever would have guessed. I've never liked gardening or considered myself a gardener--even though my mother was one. But it's just so darn easy in Florida, among all these weirdo plants that become like pets.

Growing sea hibiscus

I eventually planted over two dozen sea hibiscus saplings and seedlings, which I’d been nurturing for six months, all the way from a sackful of seed pods, to a tray of seeds on the kitchen counter, to pots on the lanai. I'd moved them around the lanai when they were threatened by downpours, repotted them twice as they grew, sprayed them when something unpleasant and invisible was eating their leaves, until finally they pleaded to be put out.

Here's a stalwart Tonga native who knows how to grow these things from a trunk like the one he has in his hands. These are clearly as easy to grow as sticking a bare trunk in the ground and watering it. 

I failed at this simple approach. Apparently seed propagation is my thing, instead. 

Who knew?  I do not consider myself a gardener, but maybe I need to rethink this. 

The initial vision I had was of a living fence lining the path leading to our back patio. Someday we would even put an arched trellis in place at the entrance to this path.

Here's what such a boulevard might look like.

If they get truly out of hand, I understand sea hibiscus can be invasive. 

I guess I should fear for the foundations of our home, but I figure by then we'll be long gone and it won't be our problem. I could, of course, be wrong and come to regret this.