I took this photo of our house just a moment before walking across the street to our neighbors’ house for a socially-distanced barbecue on their front lawn. It was just a few of us from the street, and it was a lovely way to spend Sunday evening.
I love this neighborhood.
I took this picture after having a couple of friends over for socially-distanced drinks in our front yard on Saturday night.
The temperature was a lovely 24° C (75° in Herr Doktor von Fahrenheit’s old-timey system), we had groovy jazz organ playing on the porch sound system, the company was excellent, and the string lights made our corner lot look so cheerful that we got compliments from the neighbors. (They’re also perfectly timed for Diwali!)
It was a lovely evening all ’round.
We’ve undergoing a period of cooler temperatures here in Tampa — and by cooler, I mean 20°C / 70°F in the late afternoon — which made yesterday’s 10K bike ride (something I do five or six days a week, schedule and weather permitting) a very pleasant one. I took some photos while cycling through Riverbend and Seminole Heights.
Here are the Riverbend photos, which I took while following the Hillsborough River south towards Hillsborough Avenue:
It was then time to cross the river over the bridge, which offers this view when looking north…
…then veer north to Hanna, and then east to Lake Roberta, where 4 circuits of the lake makes one mile. I’d already done more than 10 kilometers after those circuits, so I decided to hang out with the ducks for a few minutes.
Gentle Reader, let me introduce you to Lake Roberta’s biggest a-hole, who makes Canada geese look relaxed in comparison:
He has a gang of followers:
This duck is happy just to have a chance to relax:
I grabbed some last-minute groceries and started heading home. Seminole Heights is one of those tree-lined neighborhoods with a lot of houses built from the 1920s through the 1950s, where college-educated families and craft breweries can be easily found. There’s a clearly-established voting preference here…
The owners of the nearby Corner Club — the neighborhood’s dive bar, karaoke joint, and after-work hangout for folks to work at the nearby TECO branch — recently sold the place, but at least it will remain a bar and not get turned into condos:
Now back to the signs…
If you’re in Tampa and looking for pumpkins, our regular fruit/vegetable place, Bearss Groves, has plenty in stock! I got three “sugar pie” pumpkins for $10, and they’ll end up as part of dinner (mashed like potatoes, they make a great side dish). They’ve got plenty for carving or decorating as well.
I was there this morning, and their garden-grown squash selection was great! They had yellow and green zucchini…
…yellow squash…
…8-ball zucchini, which you can stuff with all kinds of things…
…and patty-pan squash (I got a couple pounds of these).
I saw this on this in Hampton Terrace during this morning’s 10K bike ride.
I think I’ll close this post with something you might not have seen: A scene from Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes that puts together Wu-Tang’s GZA, RZA, and Bill Murray at the same booth in a café:
I finally got around to framing and hanging our Le bateleur (which translates from French as “juggler,” “street performer,” or “busker”) tarot card woodcut print. It’s the perfect size to go under one of the sconces in the hallway leading to our offices, and it looks pretty damned good.
It’s a gift that our Toronto friends Natalie and Eldon gave to us during our visit to Toronto last October, just before we flew off to visit the Philippines.
(It’ll be nice to be able to travel again…someday.)
Le bateleur is one of Canadian artist Graham Blair’s woodcut prints. Here’s how he describes it:
The earliest known tarot card decks date to the early 1400s, and for several centuries they were used simply as game cards, becoming associated with divination only after the 1780s. While the first tarot cards were hand-painted, for most of their existence they were printed from woodcuts using the same techniques that I use today.
This design is my North Atlantic interpretation of the first and one of the most famous trump cards – Le Bateleur – which traditionally depicts a sleight-of-hand magician sitting in front of his table of tricks, the image of a skillful trickster and master of the material world. In my version, the magician is an accordion-playing fisherman seated in front of a table overflowing with cod. On the deck of his ship are the tools of his trade – a cod jigger and splitting knife – and the tail of a humpback whale can be seen in the distance. This magician’s sleight-of-hand is manifest in the jigs and reels he coaxes from his accordion.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, where the holiday is celebrated on the second Monday in October. As a Canadian transplant, a generally grateful person, and one who never turns down a good holiday, I celebrate both Thanksgivings.
One thing I’m grateful for is being able to live on a corner lot on a lush tree-lined street in a delightfully quirky neighborhood in a sub-tropical paradise.
Here are some photos I took earlier in our front yard this morning, as the rain gave way to a sunshine break, just in time for my daily 10K bike ride.
