Playing

Recently, my Dad sent me one of his old cameras to play with for a while. It has a lot more features than my current camera, so I was out on the porch today trying to figure out how to change some settings (alas an instruction manual was not included in this loan). Since they were convenient and don't have a tendency to move around a lot I took some pictures of my container plants. This is a nice little Gloxinia bud with some caladium leaves next to it.

Endo

Ever wondered what the inside of a cranberry looked like? I didn't...until I was cutting some up to make Roland some cranberry bread (which turned out pretty well).

Otis Jr.

When Roland came home the other night he saw this little fella, who had taken up residence in our front hall. I still have no idea how or when he got inside. He is one of the weird semi-transparent lizards that only come out at night. Kinda creepy.

Royal

I also took a picture of the other gloxinias that are blooming on the balcony. These are a really nice deep purple with white edges and look all fuzzy like the red ones.

Keen

My first begonia bloomed today. It looks lovely and I hope there are many more to follow. Unfortunately I've been having a lot of trouble with stem rot due to the extremely high humidity here. It has cause the loss of at least two begonias unless they are able to send out a new shoot, which I'm totally doubtful of.

Butter

A few more plants on my balcony have bloomed a bit. There is a pale yellow calla with a tiny bit of pink/orange on the edges. Kind of reminds me of the Peace rose that my mom likes.




And some beautiful red gloxinia which I like because of the contrast between the red and the white and the fact that it looks so velvety and soft. I also planted some other gloxinias but one of them hasn't bloomed yet and the third doesn't seem to be doing very well at all.

Date

My walks are getting fewer and farther between as the temperature rises. I'm currently getting up around 7:00 to beat the heat, but it's catching up with me. Here are a couple of palm trees I noticed the other day.

You see a lot of palms down here are aren't coconut palms, so here is one that actually is a coconut palm with coconuts to prove it.


And the other is a different kind of palm with the cool cross-hatch bark. It has some ferns growing out of it that I thought looked pretty sweet.

Where are the reindeer?

In the program I assist with sometimes at the nature center we talk a bit about lichen. Usually we talk about it in the hardwood hammock habitat, but here is some growing on a tree along my route.

Ahoy

I have my first bloom on the deck! It is from a calla lilly, but so far it isn't the color I thought it was going to be. We will have to see if it changes as it matures. It was supposed to be one of these, but it is currently a lot more purple with only a hint of very pale yellow (almost white) along the edges. It's still very pretty though!

Succulent

I found this neat little garden in front of a house I walk by. I never really notice it before, but I love the cactus! Although I would have designed the garden a bit different, but who knows? Maybe it's relatively new and will look different once it has had time to mature.

Snap

I think this is a gumbo limbo tree.



Sometimes the gumbo limbo is known as the tourist tree because the bark is always red and peeling.

Beware

On my walk I saw this tree in full poof.


The poofs were pretty and there were a bajillion of them.


It was fairly early in the day so the sun was coming through the poofy tree and I took this picture. Maybe you can find a poofy tree and take a picture too!


But be careful, poofs eat kites...and possibly babies.

Muscovy

This is what passes for a duck around here. They are actually domesticated animals that have set up a feral population here. They are not terribly afraid of people and like to congregate around strip malls looking for handouts, yet they are protected by state law so no hunting or hurting them.

With feeling

I still sometimes have a hard time believing that I live somewhere that if we had a house I could wake up, look out the window, and see this.





I thought the reflection of the heron in the first picture was pretty cool. I was also suprised that they turned out quite so well because I was facing into the sun and was using my hand as a shield over the lens.

Pointy

Today, near the same place I saw that cool bicolored plant I saw some sort of euphorbia. It's probably a crown of thorns, but it sure looks wicked. I wouldn't want to have to weed around that bad boy.

It's ALIVE

Good news! It's not dead yet either! It turns out that the poor little teeny tiny dead lookin' tree was just dormant. I think it might be a cypress, which is one of the few conifers that drop their needles.

Brown Anole?

I did manage to go on a walk today. It was a close thing at the end there as it got very warm on the last quarter of the trip. My path goes past the nature center where I do some volunteering and I saw this little one hanging out on a rock under the gate.

Orange

There have been a lot of pictures of Bleys lately and not so many of the local nature. A lot of this stems from the fact that it is getting hotter and hotter and my daily walks are dwindling in length and sometimes don't happen at all. I did catch this common gallinule the other day though. It was using one of those fake Canadian geese as a perch. Again this is one that is much easier to see if you visit my flickr.

I didn't make that up

I think this is a yellow bellied sap sucker (female), but it wasn't willing to let me get any closer. It's a little hard to see in the picture below, but if you embiggen it or, even better, look on my flickr version you can see it a bit better.

Bat

It got a little chilly here last night and this morning and consequently some of the indiginous insect life was a little sluggish. I found this ba-giant dragonfly on the landing outside our apartment. It didn't (couldn't) move so I ran back in and got my camera. I would guess that it was around 9cm long!



I kind of like this picture even if it is a little out of focus.

I know it would have been funny

Like most of the plants down here I don't know what this shrub is, but it's pretty. I would guess that it should have been trimmed more and kept at a smaller size (which also probably would have kept is a little fuller) so as not to overwhelm the tree lawn, but the contrast of the leaves and flowers is nice.

Better

I think I was right. This type of tree looks better with a blue sky background, although this isn't the same specimen used in the other photograph. More contrast I suppose, and because yellow and blue are complimentary. Perhaps the other photo would look interesting in black and white...or are the yellow of the tree and gray of the sky too close in density? I also like the splash of green in the corner of this picture.

Vengeance

Another bird that let me get very close was this little blue heron. It was so beautiful, and it's bill was iridescent blue. Maybe it's because blue is so rare in nature (birds, flowers, and such), but it just catches your eye when it does occur.




I think this is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken.

Glide

I don't know what was going on, but I managed to get really close to some birds the other day. This was a great blue heron that was a little leery of me, but more interested in fishing in the shallow water.


And then a closer shot of the bird.

Pop

I saw a cool plant on the way to the dog park the other day. I was part of some landscaping in front of a gated community. I really liked the contrast between the older red foliage and the new bright green leaves.


I still don't dig red mulch though. Plus in this case it actually detracts from the plant. If the mulch was, well, dirt colored the red leaves would then contrast with the ground making a more striking display.

Aware

People have been commenting (on my blog and on the phone) that they enjoy seeing the area where we live. This (and a hand-me-down pocket sized camera from my parents) has encouraged me to take more pictures and post them here for those people to enjoy. I've also noticed that having the camera and thinking about taking pictures has helped me get my eyes off the sidewalk in front of my feet and looking around...



...well most of the time.


The first picture is just a median along the road I generally walk along in the mornings, although It's getting to the time of year when I just can't do it anymore. The second picture is of a butterfly wing that was on the sidewalk. A little weird because, clearly, some butterfly somewhere isn't doing very well, but the contrast struck me.

Overcast

Being spring here in Flordia a lot of the trees are in bloom. Here is another cool one that is near our building at the complex.


I thought the shape of this tree was interesting too. I don't know if they trimmed it at a crucial point or if there used to be another tree above it, but it does that near 90 degree turn there in the middle.


This is a closer shot of the flowers. I think I would like this picture better if the sky had been clear like in the picture of the pink flowering tree.

Vert

I took this picture because the sheer green-ness of it was mesmerizing as I walked by.

Shutter

I hope ya'll like the nature pictures because I've got more. I snapped this one of some sort of bird of prey (hawk, eagle, osprey?). I thought it was cool because the sky was so clear and blue.



Update: Some help from a fellow scuba-boarder and my mystery is solved. This is vulture...probably a turkey vulture.

I also got a few of a neat tree in bloom that is along the route I normally take in the morning. I thought it was just lovely with the pink flowers and green leaves contrasting with the blue sky. I couldn't decide which picture I liked better so I'm putting in both and you can decide.

Tick Tock

When I was out walking I thought I would just take some pictures of the area around where we live and this was one. This canal runs along one edge of our aparartment complex (ours is on the right). There is another canal the runs perpendicular to this one that hems in the back of the complex.

I think I'll go for a walk

I came upon this tree and from a distance I thought, dead tree.



But then I got closer and behold...it's not dead yet.

Fuzzy

These are on a tree outside our apartment building. Only one half of the tree is in bloom though. It's sort of split down the middle, maybe one side gets more direct sun? I like how they sort of cascade.

Blooooood Suuuuuuckers

I noticed this wierd palm tree parasite plant while out walking. It looks sort of like the suckers you sometimes get on roses. If it continues like this and gets very many more of the root-looking things wrapped around the tree, it could look pretty creepy.



Also note the strange little dead tree in the lower right. Poor teeny-tiny little guy.

Some help please?

No walk today, it is and was raining buckets. But, I also saw this bird on yesterday's walk. I think it's a Lousiana Heron, but I'm just not sure. Any ornithologists out there?


I also had a dentist appointment today for a routine cleaning. I'm going back next week for him to play with one of my cavities. About 2 years ago the original filling had cracked and I had it re-filled. Then that tooth started to be really sensitive to cold and to a lesser degree heat. I went back and the dentist thought maybe it wasn't filed down properly making my bite not line up. So he filed it down a bit and that helped some, but still not great. So now this dentist is going to pull out the old one and try again. It would be great if worked!

Repeat

All my plants have arrived now. They are all potted up and I'm just waiting for some growth now. Since they were all dormant bulbs or seeds it will probably be a week or two before I see anything. My sister posted pictures of her bulbs which are starting to appear and it made me miss having a patch of dirt to play in...in a zone that I'm familiar with. I really don't know much about zone 10 gardening.

Out on a walk this morning I saw another Great Blue Heron. It was all tucked away in this neat little foliage alcove. Very cool (although much better embiggened).

A little bit of this

Some more wildlife has been spotted. This time it includes a male anghinga drying itself near the aquatic center and a widdle bitty lizard hanging out in a transformer(?) box at our complex. Both are much better embiggened.



In other news, I will be flying back to Michigan on Wednesday. I'm going to be staying in Muskegon to help out with Marcie's baby which should be arriving not long after I do...maybe. Who knows with a first baby. I'm actually going a bit early so I could get a decent price on the ticket. She is due on the 19th and right before that (when I would normally have gone) is Valentines Day creating some rather steep prices. I'm avoiding all that by going a bit early. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to rent a car and go over to Muskegon on Wednesday or have Karl pick me up at the airport and wait there until Friday when my Mom can come over to get me and take me across the state.

Pictorial

Over Christmas my parents gave me my mom's old camera. My old camera is awesome and I still use it quite a bit, but hers was much smaller and skinnier than mine allowing me to slip it in a pocket or my purse. So this morning I took it along on my morning walk with Bleys to document some of the neat-o wildlife I see around here. This morning we saw...

A great Egret and what I thought were some white ibises but they don't have any black on the wing tips*. Also a great blue heron hiding at a bend in the canal. There also about a ba-gillion tennis balls in the water because a little upstream along this canal is a tennis center.


An female anhinga (cousin to the cormorant) also known as the darter or snake bird. It was drying it's feathers presumably after a dive this morning. The second picture is a little grainy because I was using the enhanced zoom on the camera. I was trying to show what the anhinga was perched on. It is a canadian goose decoy that people put out in the water to discourage ducks from hanging around.


Also recently, some cool art has been installed along Sportplex Drive. Two sweet metal sculptures have appeared near a school crossing.


And last buy not least I was walking along and suddenly it was like being in Animal Crossing. There was this little tiny palm tree that looks just like when you plant one in the game and it isn't full grown yet.


*Update: They are, in fact, White Ibises.