Summer Fragrance

One of the things that defines the transition from spring into summer here in the garden is fragrance. It starts with the Gardenia, whose heavy tropical fragrance  envelopes you like humidity, feels liquid enough to drink. Gardenias seem to suggest a seductive beauty, sultry southern nights, the songs of Billie Holiday. Sticking your nose into a gardenia flower and inhaling is near-intoxicating, as "high" as I need to be.


Since gardenias love acid soil, keeping one remotely happy in our alkaline conditions is a constant struggle, and Irma's salty winds set it back even more, but it still bloomed.  Right now it is teetering between permanent decline and slow recovery. Perhaps I should just replace it. The front yard, more protected from salty winds and a little shadier, might be a better location, but the front is crowded already. I would have to redo the area by the front door or dining room window (same area) so that we would be able to enjoy the perfume. Just one of the many landscaping dilemmas one runs into in a  garden, especially one as small as ours.


If the gardenia is like a heavy wine, the frangipani, Plumeria sp., is more like a refreshing sip of lemonade. Plumerias practice deceit pollination. Their light, sweet odor promises nectar, but the flowers don't deliver. Insects, especially the sphinx moth, keep looking for the nectar in vain, thereby transferring pollen.  Traditional Hawaiian leis are made of frangipani blossoms.

Yellow and White Blossoms Are More Frangrant Than Reds and Pinks

Frangipani copes with winter drought and cold by losing all its leaves, and the turgid, lumpy, leaf-scarred stems look dead. The first new growth and the flowers sprout from the very tip of the stems, and have an oddly other-worldly effect when in bud, like some growth out of science fiction.

New Leaves and Flower Buds

Frangipanis typically grow wider than tall. Thanks to Irma, our frangipani is leaning pretty badly. I may try to stake it, or just leave it as is, pretending I'm striving for a more picturesque effect. Before I do anything, I have to remove a mass of Gaillardias, but they're still blooming vigorously.


The flowers of Jamaica caper (Capparis cynophallophora) and 7-year apple ( Genipa clusiifolia) begin opening about the time the gardenia peaks. Just breathing near these 2 shrubs on a warm, late afternoon is a sensuous - even sensual - experience. This is when the white flowers begin serioiusly releasing their fragrance, sending olfactory signals to lure the moths that will pollinate them overnight. They are visited by day-flying insects and butterflies as well, and emit periodic bursts of fragrance throughout the day.

"Morning After" Pink Flowers

When in bloom Jamaica caper is one of our most beautiful native plants. White 4-petaled flowers open in late afternoon or early evening and in the course of the next couple of days morph through a suffused pink to deep maroon before falling. Numerous long stamens whose filaments go through the same color progression as the petals radiate out from the flower's throat, creating a startling beauty.  During the day the flowers can be humming with bees and small flies. I have noticed monarchs nectaring on them as well.

Jamaica Caper in Bloom

The plant's glossy evergreen leaves, which reflect light strongly, make the plant attractive even when it is not in bloom.  Rufino Osorio writes, "The leaves are an extremely dark green .... The effect is hard to describe - the plant appears both dark and bright at the same time." (A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants, p. 239). Numerous scales give the undersides of the leaves a scurfy appearance. New twigs are cinnammon brown, and older wood is gray.

Jamaica Caper Inflorescence

The seed pod is a brown pod 4 - 8 inches long. The pods on my shrub are more like 3 - 4 inches long. Linnaeus thought they resembled a dog's phallus, hence the species name, cynophallophora. Folks in those days apparantly were less prudish than we are, despite  our foul language, and called things as they saw them. The inside of the seed pod is bright red, and the open pods extend the decorative  phase of the shrub. Cardinals and mockingbirds relish the seeds.

Open Seed Pods

Jamaica caper is an absolutely "cast iron" landscape plant in frost-free areas of Florida once it is established. An inhabitant of coastal hammocks, it is both drought and salt-tolerant. It is untroubled by disease or pests. Occasionally ours shows some light damage from the leaf-rolling larva of some insect. Only  once in the past 20+ years has it become noticeably defoliated, and it recovered quickly and completely. I never water it, though since it is close to the seawall, its roots no doubt reach into the brackish water table. During a close pass of a hurricane years ago, salt/brackish water 1-3" deep covered the root area for several hours during high tide without doing any damage.


Our Jamaica caper was not damaged much by Hurricane Irma. Again, the root area was under water until the storm surge subsided. In fact, much of the back yard was covered during the surge, but no plants suffered any noticeable dmage from the inundation. (The surge line didn't reach the gardenia). I can't remember if or how badly the Jamaica caper was defoliated. There was just too much other stuff going on. There were very few broken branches. In any event, now you'd never guess it had been through a hurricane, while the eastern side of the bougainvilleas in the front yard is still not completely leafed out.


I haven't made a  satisfying watercolor of the Jamaica caper flowers in all the years we've lived here. My quick studies don't capture the glossiness of the leaves or the combination of grace and sturdiness that characterize this lovely plant. But I try.

Jamaica Caper

Next up : 7-year apple.

May - Prelude to Summer

(Just a reminder. All the writing, photos and artwork are mine unless otherwise noted, and protected by copyright. If you're interested in using any of the material, please contact me).


Where has May gone? I feel the time running through my hands like water. ( I stole that image from my sister-in-law,  E.).

Apart from a few afternoons, it hasn't been terribly hot yet; in that regard it clearly is not summer.

South Florida does have seasonal patterns. Things start happening by late February or early March, and the pace gets increasingly hectic until the onset of drowning rains and crushing heat of deep summer applies some brakes.

Every plant and animal seems intent on reproducing. For plants that means germination, growing, flowering, seed production all at a dizzying rate. I can't draw fast enough to record the abundance, much less the process.

Despite drought*, abundant sunshine and seemingly incessant wind, the yard is full of furiously blooming plants, crowding each other, sprawling over each other, all vying for the most light. White and lavender Heliotropium groundccovers, Gaillardias, Coreopsis, Dune Sunflower, Camphor Weed  (Pluchea rosea), Goldenrod, Blue Porterweed, Gopher Apple (Licania michauxii), Vinca, Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea), and Bidens alba are all vying for attention up to a few feet off the ground. Frangipani, Jamaica Caper, 7-Year Apple (Genipa clusiifolia), Red Geiger, Bougainvillia, and Simpson's Stopper round out the list for flowering trees and shrubs.

Intensely Fragrant Genipa clusiifolia

Coral Honeysuckle and the bizarre flowers of Pipevine represent the vines. Not to  mention a few blooming Tillandsias and orchids. And this is all happening on a 60 x 110-foot lot that also holds a house, driveway and sidewalks. Apart from a few boat trips back into the mangroves, I haven't managed to get out into the natural world for several months, but things are happening there, too.

The first tiny Easstern Lubber grasshopper nymphs, which popped out of the ground in early February, have turned into adults. Birds are nesting. Osprey "chicks" have mostly fledged by now. Tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo and mahogany are shedding their leaves in anticipation of summer's rains.

Lubber Grasshopper Nymphs. These individuals have molted several times already.

Adult Lubber. It was crawling up a screen. Don't know why I didn't sketch  that.

Monarch caterpillars are devouring milkweed faster than I can coax it to grow. Even if you can find plants in garden centers, by now they usually already have caterpillars or eggs on them. I feel like a factory worker in the old Soviet Union. As soon as he met his quota for the month, the reward was a higher quota to meet. And on and on. It's the same with the caterpillars - raise one or two successfully, and before you know it you've got multiple broods chomping down leaves and even stems. If I can't find some more milkweed, some of my caterpillars are going to starve.

I would like to use native milkweeds instead of the West Indian scarlet milkweed (Asclepius curassavica), but they just aren't available. Even my trusty native plant nurseryman hasn't had success bringing them through our hot and humid summers.

Asclepias perennis. I can't bring it through our summers.

Perhaps we butterfly gardeners are pushing the monarchs' range farther south than it should be, and encouraging them to stick around instead of migrating, but we are in the range of their cousins the queens and soldiers. The fact that both have been around for a while makes me think that there must be some native milkweed(s) surviving further inland. White twinevine  (Sarcostemma clausum) is one possibility - I've seen it growing in several locales, but it wouldn't provide a great deal of forage, so there must be others.  For some reason the queen population in my yard has crashed. I used to have swarms. Last year I had just a few, and I haven't seen any at all so far in 2018.


The downside of all the vegetative abundance in the yard is that there are far too many plants for it to be a garden. At present large parts of this small plot are virtually impassible for anything other than rodents, reptiles and birds. I hate to rip out perfectly healthy plants, but from time to time I have to harden my heart. It would be nice to have a garden again.

A Riot of Color; Not So Good for Moving Around

*Our drought has been replace by heavy rains. We've had over 9 inches in just one week here at the house, and plenty more is in the forecast. Just another way Mother Nature turns things upside down.

Weeds I Like III - Southern Fleabane

Erigeron quercifolia, "Southern Fleabane," or "Oakleaf Fleabane," bloomed vigorously all through March and April, and has gone to seed now. Individual plants will bloom sporadically throughout most of the year, but spring is the time for the big show.

"Big show" is misleading, because this diminutive annual is one of the quiet bloomers. It just does its job, does it well, without fanfare, and in general is overlooked completely. However, in March and April masses of it adorn roadsides bordering ditches and  brackish bays. The pale heads seem to float above the ground like a layer of dew-bedazzled spider webs. Pollinators like it, but most homeowners who know it regard it only as a turf weed, if they are aware of it at all.

I've always liked this plant, yet I can't find any photos or notes, and I have precious few sketches of it.

The heads (see my post from Jan. 25, '18) are no bigger than a dime. Over 100 tiny white or slightly lavender ray flowers surround a central disk packed with bright orange-yellow disk flowers. The plant arises from a basal rosette, with clasping, often lobed, leaves with hairy undersides and edges.  A many-branched inflorescence, with each branch ending in a single head, arises from a central stalk, which is hairy to sandpapery in texture. Leaves on the inflorescence are sparse and smaller than those in the basal rosette. The entire plant grows 8 to 10 inches tall, possibly taller in particularly favorable  habitat.

Erigeron is a large, cosmopolitan genus in the family Asteraceae, or Composite.  The USDA Plants Database shows Erigeron quercifolius growing throughout Florida, west through Louisiana, and north through Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but the Flora of North America limits it to the southeast. It likes moist to wet situations, and Tobe, Burks, et. al. classify it as a wetland plant. (Florida Wetland Plants. 1998).

 It actually seems able to cope with fairly dry conditions as well. Though it grows only in part of my swale -  the lowest point on the property, where there must be at least some moisture beneath the rock - it still blooms vigorously in our dry, windy spring conditions.

Canadian fleabane, Erigeron canadensis, is well known in herbal medicine with both external and internal uses. Some of the conditions reportedly treated by it include coughs, lack of appetite, hemorrhages, diarrhea, and kidney and liver problems. The common explanation of how it got its common name is that people thought that the dried plants repelled fleas. A more likely origin is Culpepper's description of the seeds as black, shiny and small like fleas in his 17th century herbal.
(A Comprehensive Description of Nearly All Herbs with their Medicinal Properties and Directions for Compounding the Medicines Extracted from Them. 1652). Southern fleabane probably shares some of these medicinal qualities, though it doesn't seem to have been studied.

This charming little annual probably is a little too wild to be a reliable part of a flower border, but might be a good plant to give interest to a moist meadow. Next year I'll be careful to pay more attention and sketch it more.

March Madness Part 2 - Iris and Brown Thrashers

March is the season for "Praire Iris," or "Dixie Iris," Iris hexagona, to bloom, but we went 3 years without any of these ephemeral beauties because the winters were so warm, even hot.  December of 2017 was cool, as was January of 2018. February got warm again, so even though early March reverted to more seasonal coolness, it didn't seem like we were going to get any flowers this year either, but in late March I was surprised by a few blooms. I just about  decided to take most of the iris  out, and put something else in my bog garden, a heavy-duty plastic mortar mixing tray I bought from Home Depot, when I saw that buds were forming.

Iris hexagona - Jeanette Lee Atkinson

Iris hexagona is one of our most beautiful wildflowers. Even though it has a fairly short blooming season, its erect, fan-shaped foliage stays attractive all year, and after nearly 20 years in our yard has not shown any insect or disease problems. Each flower lasts only one day, but most stalks will produce 2 or even 3 flowers in succession. They don't like full South Florida sun, and they do need moisture. There is a clump of these iris in the front  yard near the swale, where it stays a bit more moist than other areas, but in a very dry winter there aren't many blooms. One street away homeowners planted a big clump right in the deepest part of the swale, and they are flourishing, though I don't know whether they produced any flowers this year. This species occurs throughout Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, according to the USDA Plant Database.

Iris hexagona - Jeanette Lee Atkinson

It always has seemed odd to me that these delicate flowers open during one of the windiest times of the year, and sometimes get completely dried out and wilted before noon, especially since they aren't wind-pollinated. Big black bumblebees really love them, and practically disappear between the standard and the fall. Skippers, like the one in my photo below, are experts at stealing nectar without doing any pollinating in return.

 Even though the bumblebees and other insects are diligent, my iris set seed only now and then. The dried seed pods are rather decorative and fun to draw.

Dried Seed Pod
Graphite & Colored Pencil

Early this March a pair of brown thrashers moved into our yard. We have lived here since 1994 and never seen a brown thrasher. In fact, I am not sure I have seen one since we left Georgia in 1990! I am delighted to see them, and hope they have not been pushed out of more suitable habitat. So far they  seem to be coexisting peaceably with the mockingbirds - something I don't think any other bird has accomplished. Just like the books say, they repeat their phrases only twice, whereas the mockingbirds will go on as long as they like. They spend a lot of time on the ground, vigorously digging through the mulch - in fact they make quite deep holes - 3 inches deep or more. I won't see them for a few days, and think they've flown on, but then they will reappear. They may be nesting now - I hope so! - and that may be one reason they're being secretive.

I have just started trying to sketch birds, and this attempt is pretty pathetic. At  least it's a beginning. I bought John Muir Laws's excellent book The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, and am working my way through it when I can grab a moment. These sketches by no means should be taken as a reflection on the merits of the book! Laws  has an excellent website/blog, with lots of instructional and inspiring videos. It's one of my favorites.

I haven't begun to cover all the events that started unfolding in the yard this March, but it's already mid-April, so it's time to move on.

March Madness in the Garden - Part I

March is winding down, and too much is going on to document it all. The growing season is pretty much year-round here, but March still marks the end of the cycle for some plants, and the beginning for others. Soon the tropical hardwoods like gumbo limbo, mahogany and fish-poison tree will shed their leaves, with new buds anticipating summer's rains. 

As usual, it's windy and dry. Fire season is well underway, with between 17,000 and 18,000 acres burned so far in two brush fires that merged into one megafire. Both were started by lightning. High wind and low humidity made the foresters' and firefighters' jobs even harder. Thick smoke enshrouding everything meant very little outside activity, and portions of US 41, the "Tamiami Trail," and I-75, "Alligator Alley," south and east of Naples had to be closed at times due to poor visibility. 

Choking Haze of Smoke

Much of Florida's flora, and indirectly, fauna, is either fire-dependent or fire-resistant. The question that I have not seen addressed is whether all the branches and trees downed by Hurricane Irma made the fuel load high enough to make the fire truly destructive and allow it to get into cypress strands and hardwood hammocks, which burn much less frequently under natural conditions.

Gardeners mimic fire by cutting back native ornamental grasses hard either after they bloom or before new growth resumes in spring. I cut  back the Pink Muhly Grass this March. I also get down on my hands and knees to reach under the clumps and pull out old rotting thatch, which goes onto the compost pile. If we did not live in virtually de-natured suburbia, I would hesitate to do that, because a nice big clump of grass would be a great sheltering place for a pygmy or even bigger rattlesnake. As it is, I have gotten stung by wasps in hidden nests, so now I wear gloves and stay ready to run. 

Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) has bloomed vigorously for months, and is now going to seed, along with Tickseed (Coreopsis leavenworthii). 

Coreopsis leavenworthii

Gaillardias (Gaillardia pulchella)are at their peak, and it won't be long before I have to start pulling them out or cutting them back hard. Dry, windy March is aphid, mealybug and whitefly season, and the foliage of the Gaillardias is getting ratty. The plants also develop long leggy stalks that eventually fall over, and the whole clump tends to collapse on one side. They will regenerate sometimes if I cut them back hard and water them, but it's easier to pull them out, because they reseed so readily.

Quick Impression of Gaillardia Clump

 There is  something inherently cheerful about Gaillardias, and they are tough; extremely drought tolerant, need no fertilizer. They flower so heavily that dead-heading can be an arduous task. I do some before I just give up. 

Cheerful Gaillardias

This year they are everywhere in the yard, blocking even the rudimentary paths I have through the garden. Other years they aren't quite as dominant, but they always come back.

I Love Sketching Gaillardias

One of the agaves bloomed spectacularly, and is now declining. I don't know the name. It was given to me years ago, and I've kept it going via seedlings. This year I don't think any seedlings formed on the inflorescence, but I have a couple pots of the plant, so I don't worry about losing the species. The stalk resembles a huge, tough asparagus spear.  I couldn't reach any flowers while they were still open, and had to settle for the withered ones that fell to the ground.

Reminds Me of Jack and the Beanstalk!

Red Stopper and CocoPlum are putting out new growth in varying shades of reds. Seagrape leaves already have changed from translucent coppers to mature green.  Depending on light conditions the new leaves can look delicately pastel or flaming, almost black-red.

Eugenia rhombea, New Growth

I'll have to catch up with the rest of March in the next post. Life in the garden goes on, whether I'm able to keep up or not!

Trouble with Tomatoes

Back in my previous life in Georgia, I was a pretty decent gardener. Corn, cabbages, squash, zucchini, all manner of "greens," lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, okra, broccoli, and too many snow peas all flourished until the heat and stink bugs of July became too much. I canned, froze, and pickled all summer, and with the aid of cold frames, we had fresh lettuce and "greens" throughout the winter. About the only vegetables we bought were onions and garlic. It was wonderful to wander out to the garden on a hot afternoon and eat warm cherry tomatoes off the vine!

First Cherry Tomato of the Season

In the nearly 30 years I have been back in south Florida, I have yet to grow a decent tomato. It can be done. Neighbors across the street do it. They're "real" tomatoes, red, juicy and flavorful, because I've tasted them. (I have nice neighbors who share). I've never tried very hard, which might be one reason for my lack of success!

Here, the sand we so wistfully call "soil" does not retain water. You can be flooded on Monday and parched by Thursday, especially if it gets windy, and here practically on the Gulf, it is windy a lot. In their article "Unique Challenges for Florida Growers in Tomato and Pepper Production" G. McAvoy and M. Ozores -Hampton called Florida soil in general "merely a media (sic) to hold plants...". Heavy rainfall and high temperatures also mean that our sand doesn't retain nutrients either. In the same article the authors state that in some Florida soils, "there is nothing to bind minerals to what are basically miniature glass beads." Add root-knot nematodes to the mix, and it's obvious that you can't simply dig up a plot in the back yard and go to town.

Raised beds with lots of organic material and some bags of planting soil are the way to go, but somehow I haven't found the time. Hmmm... in 30 years? I've had minimal success growing tomatoes in pots, but this year I decided to try again. I bought good potting soil and composted manure, and planted my bought tomato starts in large pots.

I must have overdone the manure, because the plants almost died at first, but they recovered and bloomed. I was watching one large tomato swell and ripen - it was beginning to glow with promise, especially on one side. Then something - the grackles are my main suspects - pecked/ate a big hole in one side! Muttering and swearing, I  picked it and cut the offending half off.

The "Good" Side

I used the "good" side in a sauce I made - mainly to add bulk and moisture, because in its unripened state, there wasn't much flavor to be had. Actually, it had about as much flavor as many tomatoes I have bought from supermarkets over the years. 

My truly sad-looking cherry tomato plant pushed out a few berries on a languishing stem. I brought this plant into the screened patio to protect it from birds. As for the big flavor test - They were red inside - that's something, and they sort of tasted like a tomato should, but there was no explosion of flavor in the mouth. They also had tough skins. I read that that can be a reaction to too much sun, so I've moved the pot to a shadier spot back out in the yard. I'm hoping new growth will flower and set fruit before it gets too hot. The plant that produced the first tomato produced some small new fruits, so I brought it into the patio as soon as I noticed any color. Now it is a matter of waiting to see what happens.

Surviving Branch

Thirty odd years ago we were following a huge trailer loaded with green tomatoes in Homestead, Florida. They were piled so high that a bunch rolled off every time the truck hit a dip or hump in the road.  A lot of them bounced! That is no lie. After they'd been exposed to ethylene they might have turned reddish, but they never would have developed the characteristic flavor of a vine-ripened tomato. I doubt that anything has changed flavor-wise in supermarket tomatoes since then.

But there's hope, at least for the home gardener. In developing tomatoes that would produce heavy yields, ripen uniformly, ship well, and appeal to buyers, genes responsible for the tomato's distinctive flavor simply were bred out of the mix. 

Dr. Harry J. Klee, in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida, and his colleagues here subjected hundreds of tomato varieties to taste panels to select for best flavor and some keeping ability. The researchers identified the minor chemical compounds responsible for the flavor, and colleagues in China sequenced complete genomes of nearly 400 varieties. If you send a $10 donation for the research, Dr. Klee will send you seeds of 3 varieties - "Garden Treasure," "Garden Gem," and "W. Hybrid." 

My summary is a vast oversimplification, but you can read about it all on Harry's Tasty Tomato Page.

Dr. Klee's lab also is doing some work on melons, lettuce and strawberries - sure would be nice to have strawberries that don't taste like styrofoam! 

Part of my disappointing experiences growing tomatoes in containers in south Florida may be that instead of starting specific varieties from seeds, like I did in Georgia, and like my generous neighbors, I have bought plants from garden centers. They may not have been best-suited for this climate, and it is possible that they suffer from the same genetic flaws as their relatives in the supermarkets. I'm going to send my $10 to Dr. Klee, and wait until it cools off enough to plant - sometime in August or September, I hope. And maybe by then I will have made a few raised beds. It's about time.

Overboard in the Gulf of Mexico!

Having the Gulf of Mexico practically in my backyard is wonderful -except during hurricane season.  Part of it was in my backyard during Hurricane Irma. (Since our house is only about 7 feet above sea level, we left for higher ground). The hurricane hit Sunday, and when we returned on Tuesday, we saw the debris line  about 5 feet from the patio, 7-10 feet away from the house proper, so we were very lucky. People farther down the street and closer to open water had to rip out drywall and discard furniture and appliances. Down and across the canal a home was so damaged by the surge that it had to be demolished.

 I recently had another close encounter of the wrong kind with the Gulf. With the exception of 20 land-locked years in the middle of my life, I have messed around with boats from the time I was 9 or 10, both at home and with Girl Scouts. I never have fallen off a boat, and never have capsized one accidentally. (It's fun  capsizing canoes on purpose, and it takes more work than you might expect).
But there's always a first time.

We'd had a good sail in gorgeous weather out to the sea buoy, about 2 nautical miles from Marco Island, and then turned north, sailing outside Keewaydin Island toward Naples. On the way back the wind got a little frisky for our taste, so we dropped the sail. Unfortunately it didn't come down all the way. Being very careful about hanging on, I went to the bow and unjammed the sail. Then I backed back into the cockpit, but thinking the danger was over, somehow I just stepped overboard instead of back into the boat.

Falling backwards and then plop! into the water was an  unreal sensation. It felt longer than the  second it took. A gentle, but cold landing. Gulf water averages 66 degrees in early February, not cold for people up north, but no self-respecting  SW-Floridian of my generation gets into the water before it hits 80 degrees, usually in March. Apparently there is something called "Cold Response Shock," which causes one to gasp involuntarily when hitting cold water. I don't know if that is what happened to me, but I definitely came up choking.

I can't say what was going through my mind. I wasn't exactly frightened, but I was acutely aware that I was in the water, that my shoes and heavy-duty work pants were making it hard to stay afloat, and that I was suddenly, inexplicably tired, even though I am a fairly decent swimmer.

I was coughing pretty vigorously while trying not to breathe in more water. I do remember thinking, absurdly, how beautiful the water splashing against the transom was. I didn't think to kick off my shoes. Actually, I doubt that I was thinking at all.

 I had learned in safe boating courses from the Power Squadron that most people who fall overboard make it back to the boat, but that many still drown because they can't get back into the boat, and succumb to hypothermia or exhaustion. That mush have been  in the back of my mind.

But really, all that I remember  was the realization that I was not in a good place, had to get back into the boat, had to do it soon, and had to do it on the first go-round, because my energy was flagging so rapidly.  My husband had thrown me a seat cushion, and the flotation was comforting and helpful.

Our boat has a small step on the rudder and then another one on the transom, to help get back on. The   steps were a little high for me, but with my husband's help I managed first the one  and then the other, and then with his pulling and my pushing I got over the coaming, and sort of "walked" on my elbows along the seat to get the rest of the way in.

I was exhausted, and it took a long time for my heart to stop thumping, but there was still work to do before we could continue, so I did my part and then changed into a dry flannel shirt. Somewhere along the line I whacked my big toe, so had a technicolor foot for about a week - a small price to pay.

According to the Boat US Foundation, 76% of boating fatalities occur on clear days with calm seas. I wasn't a fatality, but otherwise the accident fit the mold perfectly. I'm still not quite sure what happened, just that I thought I was safe, and then the next thing I knew I was in the water. We  don't drink while boating,  I have more upper-body strength than a lot of women my age, and we're both in decent shape - all of which certainly helped my chances.

So now we are enforcing the rule that anybody who has to go forward or out on deck puts on a PFD.  I am looking for one that will not be bulky or too hot in summer, and that I can buckle and unbuckle with arthritic hands. So far the cheap red vests that we've always carried have turned out to be the most comfortable.

Another thing. I'm glad that George, the 700-1000 pound great white shark that was located in the 10,000 islands not so far south of us around the same time wasn't there, or wasn't hungry!