My husband, Howard, says Barmy Bottom isn’t really a hollow, it’s

more like a slough. Hollows, he says, are Tennessee and this is

Florida. Nonsense, I say. This house we live in and the yard around

it are a big hole.  A dry one, since we haven’t had enough rain. No

mud. But the hole is filled with disarray, crankiness, heat, humidity

in a sweaty matrix of family. Definitely not a slough!