Palm

One of the most common symbols of tropical living - the palm tree - isn't even technically a tree, if you ask a botanist. Me, I say it looks like a tree and that's good enough for my purposes. As a monocot, palms are actually related to sugarcane, bamboo, onions and corn.

Tree or not, they've been with us for a long, long time. They appear in the fossil record at least as early as 80 million years ago, and their use by humans predates civilization itself. The earliest civilizations, such as the Mesopotamians, were cultivating date palms at least 5000 years ago.

Palm trees are mentioned at least 30 times in the Bible and at least 22 times in the Qur'an.

Despite the occasional uproar from some Floridians about the need to eradicate "non-native species", the fact is that most palm trees in Florida are not native to Florida. And you can't have Florida without palm trees. Game over. Besides, how far back do you wanna go to arbitrarily consider something a "native species" to any given era, anyway - the Pennsylvanian? Permian? Pre-Cambrian?

There are over 2300 different species of palm trees on Earth. Just you think on that.

Lichen of Leffis Key

There are several different kinds of lichen thriving on trees in Leffis Key, to the extent that it starts looking kinda Day of the Triffids.

Lichens, commonly thought of as being plants, are actually complicated composite organisms consisting of a fungus and a photosynthetic partner - usually algae or bacteria.

Daniel Boone in Florida

When I was a kid, we had pretty good teachers, I suppose, but they never told us a fraction of the true story of Daniel Boone, much less even any hints of the meta-true story, as chronicled in my novel The Devil and Daniel Boone. And one of the revelations about the man that astounds me later in life is the fact that he actually traveled to Florida in the course of his wandering ways.

In 1765 - still a few years before he conquered Kentucky - Boone had fallen on hard times, and had sell off all his land to pay off creditors. He traveled with his brother Squire and a group of men to the Sunshine State and explored the St. Augustine area extensively, and the areas surrounding the St. Johns River. He eventually somehow purchased some land in Pensacola despite his finanical dire straits. The British owned Florida at this point in time, having taken it over at the end of the French and Indian War.

Just what adventures Boone and crew got up to while they were here, history does not record - or maybe it does, somewhere in some forgotten dusty shelf in a library, but I haven't gotten wind of it. But I intend to find out, even if I have to go back there to 1765 and see for myself.

We don't even really know why Boone ended up not staying here and moving the family down, since that was the plan all along. There are vague legendary tales without provenance that his wife Rebecca put her foot down and refused to move that far away, but again, scouting out a place to live was the whole raison d'etre for the Florida expedition in the first place. So, no, that story doesn't wash. Something here changed old Daniel's mind about going Floridal, and I'd love to know what it was. Was it something supernatural? Something paranormal? Something spiritual that scared him? Or did he just decide, "you know, it's really kinda hot here, isn't it?"

Some of Boone's relatives did come down and make this state their home, though, and because of this, Florida's eat-up with his descendents, or those claiming to be. Even Pat Boone, born in Jacksonville, has often stated that he is a direct descendant of Daniel, which may or may not be so, but he does appear to be related at least distantly. As I sit here in Jacksonville tonight, I sip Tempranillo wine and ponder on the ponderables of Mr. Boone's presence right where I am sitting now. And when I make my frequent jaunts to St. Aug, I wonder why Boone didn't set up permanent camp in such a magnificent locale. To repeat what I said earlier: I intend to find out.

Opa-Locka

Back in the good old days, when a man woke up in the morning and decided he wanted to design and build a town, he just up and did it. And if he wanted to lay it all out in a faux-Middle-Eastern architectural theme, hey, why not? Aviator Glenn Curtiss designed and developed the city of Opa-Locka and based it on a One Thousand and One Nights motif, to the extent that even the streets that have names like Sabur Lane, Sultan Avenue, Ali Baba Avenue, Perviz Avenue and - yes - Sesame Street. (The city's name is an abbreviation of a Seminole place name, Opa-tisha-wocka-locka, which sounded too Klishama Klingo to be true, but I checked and it's apparently legit.)

Opa-locka has the largest collection of Moorish Revival architecture in the Western hemisphere, but unfortunately it boasts a sadder statistic as well: in 2004 Opa-locka had the highest rate of violent crime for any city in the United States. Any city. Even Detroit. Pittsburgh. Oakland. Milwaukee. How is this possible? I dunno, man, go ask them. I'm just filing a report here.

Decorated Home in Atlantic Beach

This charmingly garish house in Atlantic Beach caught my eye, and I paused to take a picture of it, albeit with my cheapo flip-phone whose lens was fogged up with condensation.

Curious, I just tried to find it on Google Maps Street View and had some difficulty doing so. Then I realized why: the Google Maps image is from 2011, and the house had not yet been decorated in its present manner.

Then I happened to notice a phone number and a website address on the bumper of a vehicle parked in the drive.

I visited the site and sure enough, it's for an artist - Mark A. Durham - who does all sorts of wacky wild colorful Outsider Art in the very same style as the home's exterior! Says here, "Mark Durham's company, MAD Studio, produces and sells his line of framed giclee and paper prints, gift products, and original art."

And since Mr. Durham provides his address and phone number on the site publicly, I'll go ahead and make this blog post (which I had been debating on previously, since I assume not everyone wants to have their home spotlighted on some weird blog, even if Google Maps did already put it all out there.) The moral of the story is, it pays to advertise and it pays to get people's attention by any means necessary, just as Mr. Durham has done with his eye-catching home/studio.

I enjoy all of his work displayed on the site - Pink Cow, Pimp Kitty, Witherspoon the Dog, and Mad Cat - but I do believe my favorite is Owl, shown here.

Keith Haring's Ghost

For reasons I was probably not put here to get, someone has been putting up surprisingly well-done imitation Keith Haring graffiti paintings around Jacksonville. What does it all mean?

What baffles me, though, is that they're actually signing them as Keith Haring. Does he walk among us as a zombie, and if so, can a zombie reboot of Jean-Michel Basquiat be far behind?

The two examples here are variations on Haring's Untitled (Buddies with Heart), 1987.

L-Loco

Yesterday at the St. Augustine Farmers Market I saw a table hawking gourmet popsicles in cray-cray kinds of flavors, and assumed it was my pals from Hyppo up to their old tricks. But in fact, there's a new sheriff in town - L-Loco! I was strictly on a quest for heirloom tomatoes so I didn't pause to try their product, but I must admit I'm intrigued by flavors like Strawberry Basil Cantaloupe, Chipotle Butternut Squash, Pineapple Carrot, and Scotch Bonnet Blueberry!