The Elephant's Child

Miami: Casola's

That is one big piece of pizza.  After the beach yesterday we stopped for lunch at Casola's.  My sister and I shared a steak and cheese sub (Enormous! Delicious! Oh, meat MOST glorious!) and Sparkle Kitty worked her way through nearly all of that heart-stopping piece of sausage pizza.

(The bottle belongs to my oh, so precious four-month old niece, who was up every. single. hour last night. Pray for my sister.)

Miami: Key Biscayne.

"There was no fishes," says Sparkle Kitty, but I daresay she had fun anyway.  My first visit to the Atlantic since 1989, and Sparkle Kitty's first view of the ocean ever.

I couldn't convince her to try going in the water without the "floatie" vest, even though the waves are minimal and it's quite shallow. We all got a little sun, but not too much, and Sparkle's hair is now three shades lighter.

Miami: Spotted.

  A Mary Kay pink Cadillac and what was the driver doing,  pray tell?  She was putting on her make-up, of course.

Miami: Plants

One day in Miami and I've already seen most of the plants I remember from Liberia.  I think I'm driving my sister crazy, "Oh, look! Mangoes! Crown of thorns!"  At the park we walked to yesterday, there is a large flame tree (I think it's probably Delonix regia) towering over the jungle gym. How should I be so lucky that it was blooming?  Last evening I took a quick stroll around the block, and glory be, there's a white franjipani (er, plumeria) on the corner.  Guess what else I saw? Amaryllis growing as an outdoor foundation planting. How weird is that? About as weird as seeing a Deiffenbachia growing as a weed in the front hedge. It was of a size that would fetch some $40 in garden centers up in the cold frozen tundra.

Yes, dear readers, I'm a plant dork.