It’s way too soon, but it feels like summer already here on Skinny Island.  Eighty degrees at 11:00 a.m., and will hit ninety on the mainland.  Our water temperature still hovering at 69, so we’ll have that moderating effect and stay in the upper eighties, but the ocean looks like summer, green and flat, just the slightest breeze wafting about.  Winds light and variable, as the weather guys say.  A mesmerizing stillness that stretches every which way, but vibrant with spring life, flowers blooming madly, many butterflies and bees, lizards scurrying, the occasional calls of cardinals and crows startling in  their clarity breaking through.  The pace of life quite pleasantly dictated, and humming throughout.

As much as we love hot weather, this fast warming has us casting a jaundiced eye to the weather horizon.  The latest predictions for the upcoming storm season calls for 16 named storms in the Atlantic basin, with 9 hurricanes, 5 of which will be major.  There’s a 70% chance of US landfall out of all this.  We think that’s spot-on.  All this early heat to warm up the ocean, plus the strange and violent weather we’ve had all year point to an active season. The little hacienda is ready.  Good roof with Dade Pine rafters and joists beneath, thick block walls and foundation, and a 60 year history of weathering whatever’s come this way. Early on we would put up plywood when a storm threatened, but a few years ago we got pro-active and designed and built Bahama shutters for all the ocean facing windows, with an eye toward style and practicality.  They are raised and lowered by a rope system, and can be bolted down when necessary.  Nothing really hard has blown in since we put them up, but we have had some stuff in the 50-60 mph range, and they performed very well.

Life continues apace in the garden as well, everything healthy and lushly green.  What hasn’t already bloomed is putting out buds today. New lettuce and cilantro coming up from seed.  The  garden is the spot for total immersion.  I go back there several times a day and sit on the driftwood bench to witness the changes in light that occur as the sun passes over.  Gethsemane of Skinny Island.  The greens are so intense now, and the contrasting shade under the old bay trees so deep and cool, the sound of the ocean moving in the canopy.  I don’t know what I find more compelling; the beach, especially at morning; or the little hammock and garden behind the house.  The juxtaposition of those seemingly disparate elements, the space between, that synthesis, is what I’m struggling to describe, and thereby hold.