I’m back in Florida. Mostly, I spend my days hanging out with my family, or scratching my head about things like why our local supermarket sells ORANGES from SOUTH AFRICA. Did I mention I’m back in FLORIDA. Yeah, who knows.

Other than that, I’m enjoying the sunshine, especially since I’m taking the big steps in getting my garden established - hoeing the soil, distributing the compost, and finally, getting the plants into the ground! It’s an exciting time. Although, it does get pretty frustrating when I have to explain to my family members and neighbors why they shouldn’t shovel all of their wet leaves and grass clippings into the giant green garbage cans provided by the city so they can get shuttled to the landfill every Monday and Thursday. It’s ORGANIC MATERIAL, I keep telling them. We could use the energy and nutrients embodied in all of that “trash”, right here in our neighborhood, in our backyard, in our garden! It’s especially frustrating since I am fresh off of living on a farm in Oregon where they would really appreciate this heat and this humidity and all this luscious compost fodder! Ah! We have all the right elements, it’s just that people would rather be sitting in traffic and working in cubicles than sweating a little for some stupid plants.

Miami brings out the worst in me, and for that, I am sorry.

(Imagine my surprise when I learned that the snap peas I used to pick off the vine in Oregon cost $8 a pound at the local farmer’s market - and these are nowhere near as fresh and crunchy and delicious as the peas I feasted on for free everyday while going about my duties in the garden…)

The only time I can stand Miami (beyond my house and backyard) is late, late at night, when my sister and I take on the darkened streets on our bicycles, relishing the cool breeze in our hair and feeling free. No cars to push us off the road - we ride down the very middle, hands outstretched in appreciation for the quiet peace we’ve finally found in our crazy city.

Miami’s hostile concrete environment also drives me to do other crazy things that I am a bit embarrassed to admit. For example, I feel a deep sorrow for the trees planted in haphazard holes made in the concrete, no other trees around for company, everyone passing them by without a second thought - such a harsh contrast with the harmony I felt with nature on the farm. There, life revolved around the trees, around all things green. Life was lived out in the garden, amongst the veggies - music, meals, meditation, laughter, bonfires, babies. We joked about how happy those plants must be, to be surrounded by all of our love and company. Now I realize that I’ve truly internalized that notion. I give an encouraging pat to to the lonely, scraggly palm outside of the post office. I whisper words of thanks to the lemon tree as I lock my bike to its trunk. I honor this land for what it once was - a tangled jungle of sprawling ficus trees - and I mourn what it has become - a concrete jungle of constant, inescapable, mind-numbing stimulation.