Big Evie, the hen with the BIG personality, is no longer with us.

well, my flock is winding down by now. Chicken-keepers know, that chickens "come and go." You go to Tractor Supply for feed & they have teeny chicks for sale in spring, & u want them. BUT. The past few months my flock declined: Rilla died probably of Old Age in Chickens (commercial egg producers kill em off when their lay rate declines after 2 years -- i don't). Big Evie got eaten by something -- local foxes, eagles? -- in th day, afternoon, when she was hangin' out over on th neighbors' unprotected lawn, which they all enjoy: just remaining, a big pile of feathers, from a big, personable, popular hen. (i have plenty of garden to dig-n-scratch but i don't have any "lawn.") Two left, Nell & Barb (the "wild ones") but last week Nell got real sick & acted as if to die. I suspect she got into poison, probably Roundup weedkiller, @ neighbor's yard. I dug her grave in th banana patch, but she seems to have, after days of laying limp,rallied, & appears even back to normal now! Chickens r mysterious creatures!

Meanwhile my 9th-life-cat, Charlie, now skin n bones due to diabetes that i'm unwilling to inject-medicate, appears on His final time... Still eating, walking delicately but yet jumping for th occasional lizard-prey; not obviously in any pain and howling constantly for More Food -- with which i comply. He's driving me mad; might have to up my antidepressants until he decides "it's time."

 
How did i come to live in Sarasota?

Back in 2012, Harvard was reorganizing their entire library system, where i worked; layoffs, job changes and early retirements were happening; i accepted the latter.  At age 59, no longer needing to work, i decided it was the right time to search for my next home, a smaller city in an area with a longer garden season and a yard with fewer rats.  Yes I lived in a "bad" section of a poor city, Lynn, surrounded by properties with open trash cans and good people who were challenged in trash disposal procedures.

I searched long and hard on-line for a coastal (East Coast) small city where i could afford to live, with a few visits to potential spots; considered New Jersey, Baltimore, DelMarVa peninsula, North Carolina.  Eventually a good friend (who had visited family in Venice FL for decades) suggested Sarasota.  I checked it out. (Ironically, having grown up in Tampa, and hating the place, only visiting to see my elderly mother there, i had sworn to avoid Florida forever.)

There were affordable homes with good-sized yards near downtown (this was in 2013).  The bird life was incredible, the beach walks gorgeous and accessible, a tiny area of coastal duneland, the town small. and lots of old folks bopping around on bikes and trikes (Pinecraft!)   I decided.  On a second scouting visit i bought an old trailer in a trailer park, until i could find a house.

Just a few months later, i DID find a little house, another fixer-upper, with a derilect yard -- a blank slate to build a garden -- for $124k; walking/biking distance to a Publix grocery store, an Ace Hardware, a park, downtown and the bayfront.

There are LOTS of things to NOT like about Florida.  There are also things that are good.  ...