Hidden Pictures

Hiding in these pictures: a great egret, an alligator, a row of turtles, and another great egret.

The Great Blueness

 So David and I went to Wakulla Springs to celebrate our 9th anniversary, and I have pictures of alligators and turtles and birds that I'm going to post later. But first I just want to show you the water. Look at this water!

This is looking down into the deepest part of the spring pool, the 185-foot drop to the entrance of the world's largest underwater cave system. Usually the water here is black and mysterious. Today it was a brilliant, shimmering, luminous blue.

 Bluer than I've ever seen it before.

 In the shallow parts of the spring, the water was clear, and we could see all of the underwater plant life.

 We watched schools of blue-gray mullet swimming past.

Our tour guide said that the water gets this blue about one week out of the year.

Creatures Past and Present

This weekend David and I went to the Museum of Florida History. We saw the massive skeleton of the mastodon ...

... and the model of the giant prehistoric armadillo, and lots of other fascinating things.

I also went kayaking this weekend on the Wakulla, near the place where the mastodon's bones were found. I was surrounded by a cloud of blue-tailed damselflies (you can see a few of them on the kayak in this picture).

 I saw this small alligator, and also a million turtles, and a pair of blue crabs scuttling along the river bed.

I saw this little blue heron, and also great blue herons, snowy egrets, great egrets, black vultures, a solitary sandpiper, and a prothonotary warbler.

And I watched this manatee and her baby swim around my kayak, and then dive down and pass directly underneath me. 

A Hike and (Not) a Moth

This weekend I went on this hike at Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park. I saw lots of spectacularly gigantic trees and crossed some of these weird one-plank bridges; am I the only one who thinks they are a little scary? Also I found this creature in my yard. I keep calling it a moth, but it's a kind of tiny, hairy butterfly. It's called a Skipper because of its erratic flight pattern. Also, this week I learned the difference between moths and butterflies.

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th from a lucky black cat.

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.

What My Weekend Looked Like (2)

This weekend involved a cat and a lot of books, as well as some playing around with my new lighting contraption for my Etsy shops (the picture shows you how bad the lighting is in our living room). Also, this weekend I poached an egg for the first time ever (I know!) and served it over a roasted portobello mushroom with spinach. Yum.

What My Weekend Looked Like

Here is a collection of pictures from my weekend, and I think I'm going to do a post like this every weekend. As I was uploading these photos, I saw that Temporary Librarian had done the same thing. Maybe it was one of those psychic things?

This weekend I went to San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park, saw the St. Marks River flowing into the Apalache Bay, kayaked the Wakulla River, saw hundreds of fiddler crabs (but they scurried away so fast that I only got a few in the picture), and basked in lots and lots of sunshine.

Spring Quiet

To celebrate the Spring Equinox, here are some pictures of the magnolia in bloom outside our bedroom window, and a poem that seems to describe our yard perfectly:

 Spring Quiet


Gone were but the Winter,
Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
Where the birds sing.

Where in the whitethorn
Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
In the holly-bush.

Full of fresh scents
Are the budding boughs
Arching high over
A cool green house:

Full of sweet scents,
And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
"We spread no snare;

"Here dwell in safety,
Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
And a mossy stone.

Here the sun shineth
Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
Of the far sea,
Though far off it be."

-- Christina Rossetti (1847)

Spring

Hello, Internet. I'm back and ready to post a little more frequently on this blog. Here's a quick summary of what happened while I was gone.

 Somehow I didn't post at all during spring, the most spectacular time of year in Tallahassee. But we were outside a lot of the time enjoying the season: the camellias blooming and carpeting the ground with their blossoms, the cherry trees, then the oriental magnolias, then the pears and dogwoods and poppies, and then native magnolia, wisteria, and masses of tiny pink-purple wildflowers in our back yard.

A cherry tree.

An oriental magnolia.

A camellia.

We did the Backyard Bird Count, but we saw this Baltimore oriole a couple of days before. He was so bright that it looked like he was glowing.

We gave Malinda the rest of the red felt that I used to make the Christmas tree skirt, and she spent a lot of time sleeping on it.

And one really exciting thing happened: David finished writing his book manuscript!

To celebrate, we spent Spring Break in Hillsville visiting David's family. Here he is with his cousin Sheree, his mother Ann, and his brother John.