B.O.L.O.

A vile criminal is running loose around the bend.  His crimes include trespass, theft, assault, and pooping in the shallow end of my pool.

Don't get suckered by his good looks.  He'll spread your garbage around your yard, and then relieve himself all over your patio, preferably in your pool or jacuzzi.

Last night, he not only left a pretty good sized load, but a dead bird he found along the way.  Charming.

Laundry Day

Friday was laundry day a the King-Cromartie House, one of the historic buildings in the Himmarshee Village.

It doesn't look like all the much, does it?  So why all those washtubs?



If you're an apartment dweller, you have to walk it down to a laundry room, or haul it to a laundromat.  But most of us toss a load into the machine when we run out of undies. Maybe we start the machine during dinner.  It fills up, soaks everything, agitates them for a while, replaces the dirty soapy water with fresh, rinses everything, and then spins all the excess moisture.

We dump it into the dryer and fold it while watching the evening news.  Time for a single load; maybe an hour and a half, more or less.

But back in the day, laundry was an all-day affair. 

You'd have to heat the water on your wood or coal-burning stove, and pour it over your clothes in a washtub, pour in some lye, and agitate the mess with a  plunger. Then you'd scrub them on a washboard.  You know, those things sometimes used in folk music.

Then you'd transfer them into a washtub of plain water.  Maybe you'd need to do this a couple of times to get the lye out, and believe me, you really want to get all the lye out.

Then you hang the clothes out to dry.  Depending on the weather, the cloth, and how well you managed to squeeze all the weather, they'd be dry in a few hours.

And then you'd iron them, but that's a story for another time.

Today's walk.

The best part about living 'round the Bend is that nature is right here with us.  Here we are in the middle of downtown Fort Lauderdale, and we don't have to head off to some safari park.  We just have to walk down the street.

Walking along Waverly Place, I suddenly heard a distinctive call from right above my head. And sure enough, there was a distinctive bird making it.

This is a Cooper's Hawk. They are much smaller than the Red Shouldered Hawks that also patrol the neighborhood.  You'll sometimes see them perched on phone wires over the street, waiting for squirrels to bound across their path.  He posed for some photos, and then he was gone quicker than I could see.

A little further up the block, a squirrel was making a ruckus.  By the time I came into view, he had chased an interloper up a branch.

Basilisks are also know as "Jesus Lizards," because their webbed feet and powerful legs allow them to to actually run across the surface of water.  But this guy was just avoiding the angry squirrel.

Speaking of webbed feet: ducklings!

These Muscovy ducks are still clinging to the cute stage.  They were only a few yards from a little green heron:

Who, in turn, was only a few yards from a Night Heron:

It's not all birds and reptiles, though.  This bandit was waiting for traffic to die down across from the police station.

Maybe he's planning a jail break.

Feeding Time

It's feeding time in the night heron colony, located in Sailboat Bend.


No, it's not pretty, but Junior seems happy enough.

So where did I snap this photo?  Right out my front door, in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

Song for the Season

June 1 marks the beginning of Hurricane Season, and there's no better way to mark the day than with Jimmy Buffet's Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season.



FloridaWill was trying to capture "the Keys vibe," but some of the shots are just downstream of The Bend.

I'll be posting some survival tips, having weathered a few bad storms.