On my last morning in Gainesville, we climbed down into a giant sinkhole. It's called the Devil's Millhopper, and it's been turned into a park.
As you go down the steps, you descend into a green world.
It looks prehistoric.
The sides of the sinkhole are lined with mosses and ferns.
Carnivorous pitcher plants grow wild there. And there is something truly terrifying at the bottom of the Devil's Millhopper. 
The steps going back up. 
The food on my trip was so good.
We ate at some really cool restaurants.
We had delicious treats like this.
And like this.
And like this. 
That last picture is from the farmer's market, where I went one afternoon with Adrienne and her daughter Maggie.
Adrienne said that this picture should be part of an instructional series. "How to Buy Vegetables for Fun and Profit," or "You Too Can Have a CSA!"
That night, we ate a salad made from all of the delicious greens. Adrienne roasted the radishes, and she sliced up the fresh strawberries to top coconut-milk flan.
Adrienne and I went to Blue Springs Park and took a canoe up the Santa Fe River.
Everything was very green there, especially around the spring that feeds the river.
The river itself was lined with convoluted root structures.
We saw some of the wildlife you might expect to see on a Florida river, like this egret, as well as a great blue heron and a belted kingfisher.
And a turtle. 
And more turtles.
And turtles on top of turtles. And then we heard a strange cry coming from somewhere up the river. We couldn't figure out what it was. Some kind of bird? A human? "It sounds like a goat," Adrienne said jokingly.
Something was moving among the cypress knees.
It was a goat. In fact, it was a whole herd of goats, calling to each other and trotting around in the forest. When they saw us, they climbed out toward us on a log.
This tan goat tried to get close enough to Adrienne to be petted or fed, but it couldn't quite make it. So the goats turned around and went back up the shore, disappearing into the brush. "We should turn around here and go back down the river," I said. "Nothing is going to top the goats," Adrienne agreed.
Adrienne knows me very well. She kept taking me to places where I could see gorgeous flowers in bloom, like these masses of wisteria.
Wisteria isn't in bloom yet in Tallahassee, even though we're not that far away from Gainesville.
The dogwood trees were spectacular.
I also saw daffodils.
And this bright pink flowering shrub.
And this little delicate flower, which must be some kind of a violet.
This week was spring break, and I had an amazing time visiting my friend Adrienne in Gainesville. She took me to so many wonderful places!
Our first stop was the nearby town of Micanopy, which is where they filmed the movie "Doc Hollywood."
It's tiny, but packed with historic buildings and beautiful trees.
We did some shopping.
And wandered around town.
Looking at all the details.
The docent at the historical museum told us we should visit the cemetery, so we walked around there for a while.
We saw the oldest part of the cemetery, with gravestones dating back to the 1800s.
It was creepy and beautiful and right out of a Southern Gothic novel. For David's birthday, I got him a vintage board game called "Bigfoot the Giant Snow Monster." I didn't know that it was a game he actually owned when he was a kid. Here, we try playing the game. I wasn't sure what it would be like -- one of the online reviews called it "the stupidest game ever made." But we loved it. Clearly, that reviewer did not share our interest in chasing people around and stomping on them.
This week David and I discovered a part of campus we had never noticed before: a little garden with a fountain at its center. I taught my Greek class here a few times.
The statues on the fountain are nymphs, which makes the whole place look like one of the ancient nymph shrines that I study, a nymphaion. Some of them were sacred gardens that could have looked a lot like this.
Tall pine trees overhead.
The ground is covered with the needles and seeds of the pines, and with the flowers that fall from the camellias.
Under the camellias, the flowers cover the ground.
There is even a black rock behind the nymph statues, which I would call a "rock-cut altar" if I found it at an archaeological site. People leave flowers on it. Maybe for the nymphs?
A few blocks away from us, an apartment building is advertising its vacancies with rainbow bunches of balloons. They are looking ahead to the summer, when all the students will be moving out. Right now we're in full-blown spring, though, and these rainbow colors are everywhere.
These are the brilliant, sun-drenched colors of spring in Florida. 
Can you believe David is 44?
For his birthday lunch, he asked for some of the things he normally doesn't eat (because they have gluten). So I made a spinach-cheddar quiche with my favorite gluten-free pie crust. I don't know why this recipe works; it feels really strange to put cottage cheese in a pie crust. But for some reason it's delicious.
I also tried making egg rolls again. This time, they tasted slightly more like real egg rolls.
And for dessert, we had berries. Served with love.
