Such a beehive of activity with Edmundo orchestrating preparations for two Christmas parties to be held outdoors over two consecutive nights. Setting of tables; placing glass columns for floating candles; clipping topiaries and sinking bamboo stakes in the garden under trees to hold the Christmas wreaths. At this point, Todd, the decorations man holds up two shining silver knives that he’d found buried in the garden soil . . . . . .
Ah ha! Edmundo had listened to a Venezuelan friend Antonio, who at lunch yesterday told him of the Venezuelan custom to bury two crossed knives in the ground to fend off any chance of rain. And he buried silver ones! And, as we were to find out, he perhaps would have been better off had he said a rosary, the practice of which he is more familiar. Come evening, the rain pelted down and so much of a day’s work of so many people was fruitless.
Not only the terrace, but the whole home looked terrific.
In the middle of this mêlée, I was banished to meet a friend for lunch at the Mandarin Hotel. What a setting, and how wonderful the new high-rises of Miami looked through sheets of rain pelting down. Poor Edmundo, unbeknowns to me, he had re-buried the crossed silver knives in the belief that there would be no rain for the evening party.