Living in Largo - Day 14 - 30 Day Haiku Challenge

Living in Largo
Fire was the heart of our home
Gathered with good friends

When I met my husband Marek, I had a house ten minutes from the beach in Largo, Florida, which is across the bay from Tampa, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The first time I saw the house, I wanted it for the back yard, which was large (for the area) and private, had several bearing citrus trees, and a large stand of timber bamboo.

Pinellas County, Florida, is not only the most populous county in Florida, but also one of the fastest growing. Our house was situated between the number one and number two busiest intersections of the county . . . and yet, because our street was only a block long, and thus had little traffic, our back yard was quiet and peaceful, and a lovely place to view the major constellations that managed to shine through the light pollution.

It was also home to a surprising variety of wildlife, despite the heavily-trafficked location, including bald eagles and ospreys flying overhead, and raccoons, opossums, squirrels, turtles and more wandering their way through - or making their homes in - the yard.

Because my birthday is in October, and Marek's is in April, we got into the habit of having two real parties a year, with a lot of smaller gathering in-between. We both love to cook, and to entertain, and we had a wonderful succession of friends and family gather with us and our animals around the fire. You could find us almost every cool evening out enjoying the fire, and we even braved the Florida heat on numerous occasions.

We also got to know the local fire department really well, because we had one neighbor who called them repeatedly to report us for having fires; but aside from the first time, when we were burning tree branches in a large steel barrel, our fires were always well-contained and in compliance, and we were never even warned, much less cited. Nice guys.

We even invited said neighbor to feel free to join us, but he never took us up on our invitation. His loss.

Largo is not to be confused with Key Largo, the northernmost of the Florida Keys, which is southeast of Miami, on the Atlantic coast, and about a five hour drive from our home in Largo. I absolutely love the Keys, and dived there many times, but although I visited there frequently while living in Florida, I have never lived there.

As for our place in Largo, I miss it a lot; especially my wood-paneled office, the back yard, our two large pink grapefruit trees, and the timber bamboo, which sounded heavenly when it was windy, and was home and/or a stopping-over place to a wide variety of birds.

I'm a bit late posting this, as we lost power tonight for several hours, which was strange as although it was windy, we weren't having any storms.

Ah well, yet another reason to get off the grid.