Seven Years Later

 

Here we are, seven years after my last post. On our 19th anniversary, David and I were looking at the old blog, and I thought, "I miss the Voyage of the Bloomingtonauts. Maybe I'll restart it."

Life is very different now than it was in 2015. David, Malinda, and I are living in Claremont, California, where I'm working as the Head of Cataloging & Metadata at the Claremont Colleges Library. David left his teaching job at Florida State when everyone else was leaving their jobs during the pandemic. He's in school now, working on a certificate in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).

For our 19th anniversary, we went to our favorite California botanical garden, the LA County Arboretum. We sat on a bench by the pond and watched a huge flock of swallows swoop and dive over the water. There were turtles piled up on a rock, and a great egret stalking across the shore. "I wish we could see a peacock," I said, because the Arboretum is famous for its gorgeous, shrieking peacocks.

Then this peacock swept into view and strolled right past us, posing for pictures as it went.

What Easter Weekend Looked Like

This weekend we went to a wonderful tree nursery, looked at all kinds of trees from blood oranges to chinquapins, saw hummingbirds flitting around the towering bloom of an agave (which takes about 25 years to bloom and then dies), admired brightly-colored flowers and planters full of curly kale, and went home with two citrus trees, a Meyer lemon and a Cara Cara red orange.

Valentine's Day Flowers

On Valentine's Day we went to Maclay Gardens.

We sat on the benches in that little gazebo by the lake.

David wrote me a poem in Greek.

I wrote him a sonnet in English.

Then we walked around for a couple of hours in the gorgeous early spring landscape.

We saw luminous Spanish moss.

Carpets of camellias.

David took lots of flower pictures.

It was too early for azaleas or magnolias, but we saw spectacular flowering trees that we couldn't identify.

Like this one, which had little clusters of vivid pink flowers shaped like bells.

And this very fragrant tree.

And this pinky-lavender one.

We saw all kinds of life, including the very small.

And the very large.

And we left thinking about all the signs of spring flowers yet to come.

First Shots from the New Camera

David got a new camera for his birthday in February. It took a while for us to figure out how to download the pictures, but here is one of the very first shots: our violets in bloom.

A Great Blue Heron at Wakulla Springs.

An iris by the pond at Maclay Gardens.

A Southern Banded Water Snake (not venomous!) at Maclay Gardens.

Me.

Another iris.

Azalea in full bloom.

Down the Garden Path

I felt like Alice in Wonderland following this path last weekend.

It was a fantastic landscape.

The giant trees make you lose your sense of perspective.

There were red and white flowers.

I followed the path through towering hedges to the walled garden.

Where spring flowers were in bloom.

Reptile Roundup

Last weekend was the weekend of reptiles. It started when I was paddling up the river and suddenly found myself surrounded by swimming turtles, frantically abandoning their favorite sunbathing log. This is the alligator who had clearly made an excellent meal, then taken over the log for himself. Click to see how happy he looks.

Some of the turtles found other logs.

I saw this tiny baby turtle climbing up a cypress trunk.

Later that weekend, I found this snake climbing an azalea bush at the gardens.

More on the Flower Theme

Last weekend we went to Maclay Gardens. Some of you have been there before. The rest of you need to come to Florida immediately so I can take you there.

It was the first time David had ever been to the gardens, and he took a few pictures of the flowers. Actually, he took three hundred pictures of the flowers. They are all amazing. But I will restrain myself and not post them all.

The beauty of Maclay Gardens is that it doesn't really seem like a garden. It's more like an idyllic woodland that happens to have grassy paths and plants in bloom.

There are trees everywhere. Towering pine trees that make you dizzy to look up at them ...

... and ancient live oaks, perfect for photo backdrops.

Also, did I mention that there were flowers? The azaleas were just coming into the peak of their bloom.

The camellias were just leaving their peak.

We wandered through the garden looking for the perfect flowers to photograph. Every camellia tree or azalea bush had a slightly different type of blossom.

I did not break the rules. This camellia in my hand had fallen off the tree, I swear! Okay, I did break the rules slightly by leaving the path and walking up into the woods. David and I got lost and ended up in a place with a "Do Not Enter -- Staff Only" sign in every direction. And later, I found that I had walked through some poison ivy. Still, the gardens were totally worth it.