The Seasons Come to Cross Creek

Cross Creek, the Florida home of 

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is quite an observer of the natural world. In her book, Cross Creek, she has a splendid tale or two to tell about the challenges and delights that each season brings. Ms. Rawlings lived on this 72-acre citrus farm in the 1930s.

She introduces the four chapters on seasons at the Creek with this: "Here in Florida the seasons move in and out like nuns in soft clothing, making no rustle in their passing."

Spring is a time of new life in the gardens and mating among the wildlife and farm animals. Calves and piglets and domesticated ducklings are born. Night-blooming jasmine perfumes the air. Birds - egrets, blue jays, and red birds - gather at the feed basket. The snakes come out to play after their winter naps.

Summer is full of days of lethargy and nights spent sleeping on the screened in porch to escape the heat. The rains come in mid-August. Some evenings the 'night spirits' come out and fog hangs eerily over the orange groves and the marshes.

In the fall, she and her neighbors wait for rain and then it comes in the form of hurricanes. Crops of beans, carrots, beets, and turnips are planted. The sugar cane is scythed and bundled into sheaves, ground, and boiled into syrup.

Winter is the start of hunting season. She and neighbors eat fresh squirrel stew for breakfast. Quail are flushed and killed. Deer are stalked, but Ms. Rawlings deliberately refuses to take aim at these noble creatures. One year, a light snow fell. If the temperature falls below 28 degrees, fires are lit in the orange groves to protect the fruit from freezing. An exhausting task and one that is not always successful. Mistletoe is gathered from the tree tops.

Here is how she describes Christmas at Cross Creek:

Most Christmas days at the Creek have been warm enough to serve Christmas dinner on the veranda. I feel a little cheated on such occasions, for although half the world is warm at Christmas, it is difficult not to think of snow and cold and reindeer and coziness in connection with the day. I have a roaring fire on the hearth no matter what the temperature, and growl a bit at the bright sunshine and the hibiscus blossoms. The holly and the mistletoe that are inseparable from the northern celebration grow in abundance at the Creek, and the poorest families gather a few sprays to hang over the mantel. The mistletoe is a parasite (which the Spanish moss is not) and sucks the substance from my pecan trees. It must be cut out once a year in any case and I have no qualms at breaking immense boughs at Christmas time for furbishing my house and for taking to town friends. 

A Bonus Brought By Mother Nature

Right on the heels of my four-day retreat comes another respite. This one planned by Mother Nature. Ice, snow, more ice and then more snow. Perhaps three to four inches, but enough to keep me indoors by the fire as a safeguard against frigid temperatures.

So since Friday, I have been relishing another day or two of solitude and quiet - a bonus retreat, as it were.

I am still reading the wonderful At Home by Bill Bryson. This book is an entire education in itself. I have learned about architecture, gardening, inventions, and explorations. I don't know how he does it, but he has included everything from mousetraps, bricks, follies and ha-has, to the plague and the conspicuous consumption of America's robber barons and England's aristocracy.

Am in the middle of Cross Creek by Majorie Kinnan Rawlings. One chapter, "Our Daily Bread", is all about the central Florida flora and fauna that she and her neighbors enjoyed eating. We are talking alligators, turtles and turtle eggs, rattlesnakes, and a fruit called the Scuppernong grape. All this, of course, along with cornpone, white bacon, pokeweed, and collard greens. Definitely an acquired taste!

I will stick with tea and pumpkin bread.

St. Augustine, Florida - October 22, 2013

Second Read Books
St. Augustine, Florida

If I had a dollar for every time the name of Flagler is mentioned in St. Augustine, I would be a wealthy woman. Henry Flagler (1830-1913) put the city on the map in 1888 by building an elegant winter resort for the rich and bringing the railroad to the town so they could get here. He wanted his hotel to rival any of New York City's poshest hotels. He had the money to do it.

Today, this Spanish-Moorish building formerly known as the Ponce de Leon Hotel with its courtyard fountain and gardens, is Flagler College, a private, four-year liberal arts school. It opened in 1968. Twenty-five hundred students are enrolled.

The one-hour tour was led by Dan, a student of the college. We saw a lot of mosiac tiles in the entrance rotunda; painted ceilings and Tiffany stained-glass windows in the formal dining room (which is now the student dining hall); and velvet covered furniture, paintings, fireplaces, and eleven crystal chandeliers in the formal parlor where the ladies of that day gathered to chat in their bustles and feathered hats.

The day was very hot and humid. After walking around a bit, we found two bookstores and made our purchases. We were melting. We headed back to the B&B for a siesta.

I am happy with my purchases:

Second Read Books:
Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James, a Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice mystery.

Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings about her experiences in the Florida hamlet of Cross Creek, where she lived for thirteen years. I was very happy and surprised to find this one especially after discovering Ms. Rawlings' connection with St. Augustine yesterday.

Anastasia Books:
Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P.G. Wodehouse, always a delight.

As We Were by E.F. Benson, a memoir of Victorian and Edwardian England. Mr. Benson is the author of the humorous Mapp and Lucia books.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, a lovely edition published by the Everyman's Library Children's Classics. It has color illustrations by Sibyl Tawse.

Tomorrow we leave Mr. Flagler's town and move up the coast to Savannah and more literary exploits.

St. Augustine, Florida - October 21, 2013

Castle Warden Hotel
circa 1940s

Our literary discovery of the day: 

Castle Warden, a Moorish revival mansion in St. Augustine, Florida was built in 1887 for a Philadelphia industrialist. It was bought in 1941 by author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her hotelier husband and run as a classy hotel. The couple had an apartment on the top floor.

Ms. Rawlings was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 for The Yearling.  She died here in St. Augustine of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1953 and is buried next to her husband, Norton Baskin, in Island Grove, Florida.

The former hotel is now home of the first Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum of Oddities. It features displays of shrunken heads, torture devices, life-size wax figures, and unusual works of art. Hmmmm. We didn't go there.

We did take a trolley ride along the waterfront led by a Navy Seal veteran who was very knowedgable and entertaining. Later, at the bed and breakfast where we are staying, a local storyteller/historian wove the tapestry of St. Augustine's history that included Spanish, British, and Confederate occupations.

It is the oldest city in America, founded in 1565, and is still going strong. A Spanish fortress called Castillo de San Marcos sits overlooking the harbor, holding a strategic defensive vantage point. It is the oldest masonary fort in the U.S. and is made from coquina, a soft, local shell rock.The fort was declared a National Monument in 1924.

Tomorrow, we will visit Flager College with its 79 Tiffany stained glass windows; munch our way through the Whetstone Chocolate Factory; and pay a visit to Anastasia Books.