Harriet Howard Heithaus

Two weeks after Hurricane Milton blew along the Gulf coast, your landscaping still looks as if someone spray-painted half of it with chocolate milk. Your patience with waiting for regrowth has grown thinner than the stems left on your penta plants. But two people who deal with both daily are telling you to let nature take its course a little longer.

It is 6 p.m. at Dogtooth Sports and Music Bar in North Naples on a Monday that looks like a Friday might anywhere else. The parking lot is nearly full and its dining area is buzzing with a happy crowd digging into platters heaped with homemade chips and buns filled with tartar-friendly grouper fingers or Philly cheesesteak.

The handmade pine needle baskets of a Golden Gate woman appear in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

When Aubee Billie saw a workshop reading of the musical Distant Thunder as a 12-yearold, she saw her destiny in the breakout character of Aiyana Buck.

Artis—Naples' new artistic and music director, Alexander Shelley, could not have arrived last week for his first official concert with one suitcase.

The opening Masterworks series at Artis—Naples was a stretch for everyone involved, and after a long summer without music, a good stretch felt exhilarating.

A box of tissues sits in a conspicuous place at the current exhibition in the Collier County Museum. Mark its location well.

Theater lovers immersed themselves in a rollback of nearly a century Nov. 1, as Gulfshore Playhouse christened the first season in its own building with a 1934 Cole Porter musical artfully aligned with the theater's Art Deco overtones.

A major donor tour of the final theaters at the newly remodeled Sugden Community Theatre came with a helpful gift: $500,000 from David and Jerri Hoffmann.

If we took advantage of half the events Collier County offers during the holiday season, our only New Year's resolution would be to sleep.