I know that the following has absolutely nothing to do with real estate or the like, but I was out in my yard taking pictures today and got an inspiration.

One of the nifty things about living in Southwest Florida is the great variety of fruit trees that are all over the area, and having grown up in a family with property in Jamaica, I’m especially fond of mangos. I fondly remember the Jamaican women walking along with breadfruit and mangos nearly overflowing the baskets so well balanced on their heads.

I vowed that when I first purchased a property here in Naples, I would for sure have a mango tree. As it so happened, I actually had to purchase that mango tree at a local nursery, since the property that has now become our primary home had grapefruit and lemon, but no mango.

That tree was purchased three years ago, the very first year we were here, gently transported home, lovingly planted and fertilized. (I don’t even know what kind of mango tree it is, there are some 30 or 40 varieties, all I know it’s a mango and that is all I wanted.) We re-planted it after that first year to the spot where it resides now, then watched and waited. That second year the flowers and eventual buds that became tiny mangos flourished and it was with great excitement that I followed their progression. Just as they were looking as though they were going to take hold, that spring we had a torrential rain storm and afterward I went on to check on them and they were gone from the downpour.

I was totally dejected, because I was so looking forward to eating my first mangos from my tree. Later that summer, we had the hurricanes come through, causing even more damage to the fruit trees, which would bear no fruit the following spring.

Last year the summer rains nurtured the tree and with no hurricanes, it once again bore a wealth of spring flower buds and eventual tiny mangos. The picture above was taken today and is of one of the early buds that has now ripened, ready in a few weeks to be picked. There were only 6 that survived that original budding, (this being one of them), but the most amazing thing has happened, we have since had a second flowering, which means a second late harvest as well.

Interesting, because it must have something to do with the hurricanes of two years ago and no flowering following them. I guess that the tree is trying to make up for that year of nothing. All I know is that I’m going to have a full tree of mangos and I can’t wait. I guess that as we grow older, sometimes it’s the littlest of things that makes us the happiest!

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One of the fun things to do in Naples, Florida is walk the miles and miles of public beaches. In Olde Naples, every avenue ends at the beach and once there, you can turn either north or south depending on what your motivation is. Not only will you get a tremendous amount of exercise walking in the white sugar sand, but you will get a good indication of just how the other half lives.

If you turn north, you will, (assuming that you start from somewhere in Olde Naples,) walk toward the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, an unmistakable old landmark. Along the way and further to the North as you head toward the Moorings, you will see some magnificent examples of architecture in many of the mega-homes that line the beach.

But probably the most impressive array of mega-mansions lie to the south, as you meander down to Port Royal and Doctor’s Pass. It is here that you walk by estates that will totally blow the mind, almost as if each was built to surpass the neighbors’. (Actually, in some cases, that was exactly the intent). 

Be that as it may it is quite a site to behold, and should you be into “The Secret” and The Law of Attraction, I couldn’t think of a better place to start!

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Sometimes I feel as if I just can’t keep up with all the new technology that is coming on scene, and yet, I have to tell you that I’m excited! I often say to people that I wish that I were going to live another hundred years, so that I could experience all that will be coming out.

As much as I read and as much as I experiment with different things for my website, blog and newsletter, I feel overwhelmed. There is so much out there, so much in beta and so much that is down the road being talked about that it excites, but confuses the mind.

I often wonder whether we, as real estate professionals sometimes loose sight of the fact when it is all said and done, our responsibility is to establish a relationship with our prospects and clients and sell real estate. Yes, we certainly need to cultivate leads and the internet is one great way to do it, but the bottom line is that the more that we are fooling around playing with all the new gadgetry, software and other tech stuff, the less we are concentrating on what we are really supposed to be doing…SELLING REAL ESTATE!

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One thing that absolutely drives me crazy, and it’s no different here in Naples, is small town politics. You vote for politicians, because you feel that it is your civic duty, and expect that they will listen to the will of the people. Boy how wrong we are in our thinking!

Directly behind our lovely home, resides a beautiful Spanish style small shopping plaza (The Oaks Plaza) with a good array of businesses, including one of our favorite restaurants, Meson Ole, a wonderful Spanish eatery. Not only is the food good, but it has been a favorite of ours because we can walk there in three minutes or so, making it extremely convenient. Well, that is all about to change. With the rapid rise in commercial real estate, small parcels like this plaza have become targets for the mega-stores and national chains who have the deep pockets and a price tag of $5,000,000 or so is but a mere pittance to them.

The plaza is surrounded by residential properties, including ours, and had been on the market for about a year, when along comes Walgreens, who sees the chance to break away from their lease at The Naples Plaza, where they have been for years and years. Now I certainly can’t blame them for their thinking of wanting to own, rather than rent, but all of a sudden, as an abutter of the property, I worry about the effect a big mega-chain store will have on the area and the effect it will have on the general landscape.

With an organized effort, many of the area residents attend and follow the Planning Board and City Council Meetings and voice concerns with many of the Walgreens proposals, such as allowing the store to stay open 24 hours a day, a 24 hour prescription drive-thru, and such. The residents, including myself stood up and strongly voiced our concerns. We said that there was absolutely no need for a 24–hour store in a residential neighborhood and certainly no need for a 24–hour drive-thru.

No matter how hard we pleaded and what was said, in the end, a majority of the City Council turned a deaf ear toward us and voted for almost everything that Walgreens wanted, with the exception of allowing the store to stay open 24 hours a day. They did vote to allow them to stay open until midnight, and I’m sure that when no is looking, they will be back before the council to ask for the full 24 hour opening. (To me it’s like college, when we were allowed to have women in the dorm rooms until 3 o’clock in the morning. What’s the point?…if you are going to let them stay that late you might as well let them stay all night). I’m sure Walgreens feels the same way. One of the city council men rationalized that if one life could be saved, it would be worth it. I told him that if Walgreens were coming to his back yard, he wouldn’t vote the way he did and I asked did he really think that the Naples Community Hospital was really releasing patients, in a life threatening situation, leave the emergence room to go get a prescription filled at 3 o’clock in the morning. The whole thing was not only small town politics, (you can’t tell me that Walgreens wasn’t passing something around), but insanity as well!

Now I’m sure that you’re wondering what all this has to do with eagles, and believe me if I were reading this, I would also. Here is the deal, I come out of my house one day recently and I happened to look up in a lone pine tree on what is now the Walgreens property and to my absolute amazement I see these two majestic creatures, a male and a female just sitting there, like they owned the place. I run for my camera to grab pictures of the two of them and my heart is racing on two fronts. First because it is a most magnificent sight and I want to capture it and secondly because if these two build a nest, there is no way the State will allow the plaza to be torn down and a Walgreens to be built. Eagles in Florida have a right away wherever they go, they are that prized.

Well, the long and short of it was that they stayed for a few hours and then soared off to some other big tree or somewhere else. And here I thought that we, (actually it would have been the birds), had beaten small town politics. Sadly…not to be. I guess the only good news is that I will now be able to walk a few minutes to get all those prescriptions filled that my doctor makes me take.

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Now I haven’t been blogging long at all, (just a matter of months) and I respect my peers who say that even though you have a real estate blog, it’s all about content. They say write about interesting things that pertain to your town, your area and that will somehow tie it all in with real estate. Take lots of pictures and incorporate them in with your articles.

So now I driving along in Naples doing the speed limit of 45 miles per hour, camera on the passenger seat at the ready, and I do a double take. Was that a purple and aquamarine pipe that I just saw?

By now I’m long past it, so I double back around, park the car in the median which is certainly against the law, (I did put my 4–way emergency flashers on to give the situation an aura of authenticity). I grabbed the camera, darted out amongst the traffic taking my life in my hands, for it was around rush hour, which is almost an hour in Naples during high season and snapped away. By gosh…it was a purple and aquamarine pipe as I suspected. At 62, sometimes you think that your eyes are playing tricks on you, but not this time!

Now I don’t know what these pipes do and I’m sure that they are important for something, but only in Naples would you find them meticulously painted in Florida colors. Most any place else would leave them the nondescript grey color that they are naturally!

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Yesterday, I wrote about having to stand in line at Starbucks to get that revered cup of ‘joe’, which made me think about other lines that I have to endure, while waiting for service here in Naples, Florida.Maybe it’s the same elsewhere, but here it seems they are everywhere.

One of the ones that really irrites me is having to stand in a bank line. I’ve never quite understood why I should have to stand in a line to give the bank my hard-earned money. I truly believe that the banks should send armored trucks to my house every day, at an appointed time, and an employee comes to my door and asks “do you have any money for us today Mr. Melhado?”. I think that that is a far better idea than my having to stand in a line, waiting to give them my money so that they can take it and make billions on it, all the while charging me for every check, deposit slip, wire transfer, etc., etc. It just seems fair to me!

Another thing that bothers me involving lines is when I go to the supermarket and see twenty cash registers and check-out stations, with only two or three manned. It really doesn’t matter whether the supermarket is old or brand new, it is always the same. When you question the manager why they they don’t have the stations filled, they will tell you that they cannot find the people to hire. My retort is that you might want to pay them some real money, instead of paying them in “sunshine”. (There is always something about how wonderful the weather is here in South Florida, and somehow that equates into a dollar figure, when companies hire employees).

I can go on and on about lines everywhere. Maybe it’s an age thing, where I’m feeling mortal and realize that time could be short and I certainly don’t want to waste those years standing in lines. After all…I’m a realtor and I need to be selling homes! 

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Maybe I show my age, but who would have ever thought that we would be paying $3.00 and more for a cup of coffee. Granted some of the offerings from Starbucks� are far more than your normal cup of coffee, but still, what am I missing.

Everywhere you go in Naples, no matter which Starbucks� you go to there are lines literally out the door. And the funny thing is that it almost doesn’t matter what time of day either. Come to think of it, it’s not just Starbucks, it’s every coffee shop you go to, 7–Eleven or whoever. It just never ceases to amaze me that we are so driven for that great cup of � ‘joe’, that we will do almost anything to get it. Is it� because we feel that we aren’t fully dressed unless we have it? Maybe so!

Funny too, I’m one of those who stand in line some 3 days a week to get my fix as well. And as I stand in the line waiting to be served, I’m constantly thinking that the Starbucks’ bottom line must be suffering somewhat, because it takes so long to make up some of those exotic coffee receipts and the line moves so frightfully slowly. Somehow, there must be a better way, but I guess that no one has discovered it as yet!

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Since moving to Naples, Florida from the North Shore of New England some fifteen or so years ago, I’ve always marveled at how pristine the area is, not a blade of grass out of place, no trash in the streets. As I’ve traveled around the country and returned home, it has really stood out to me how beautiful Naples is.

Yesterday, I happened to be closing up an exquisite new construction single family home for a friend of mine, when, as I’m walking to my car, I spotted what I thought to be just an ordinary piece of paper lying face down in the grass. Naturally, having lived in such a spotless area, I’m prone to doing my civic duty and picking up anything I might find lying around, which is very rare. (I’ve found lots of pennies, but they haven’t been necessarily that lucky).

As I bent down and retrieved it, I turned it over and was stunned to find that this was no ordinary piece of paper. It was actually a negotiable check for $100,000 that had been made out and dated that day. After some bit of research, I discovered that the check was actually a deposit, part of an offer that had been made on the property earlier in the day. I hurriedly got it back to the proper person.

Only in Naples could you be picking up what you thought was an piece of paper lying on the ground and find $100,000. Oh well…rich in thought for a moment anyway!

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