My 35th Year

Year 35 ended with wonderful birthday presents from friends and family, including a manatee ...

... a lovely bracelet ....

... and a whole Magic City of treasures from David.

We went to the fancy movie theater ...

... to see Away We Go, which was really good.

And then I had some delicious coconut-caramel pie ...

... while David had a staring contest with some of the restaurant's artwork.

Later, I took my first kayak trip as a 35-year-old.

I hung out with a baby manatee.

And dreamed about all the things that might happen in year 36.

David's New Glasses

They are bifocals, but I think they actually make him look younger.

Kayak Extravaganza

This is what the Wakulla River looked like early Sunday morning.

It's been in the 100s all weekend, with sauna-like humidity. But the river is always ice-cold, and the breeze that was blowing over it was better than air conditioning.

The water was glassy and perfect.

I saw more big turtles sunning themselves.

A disapproving cormorant. I came a little too close to it, and it gave me a Look.

This moorhen startled me by hooting like a fire alarm. Seriously, I had no idea these shy little birds were so loud!

Oh yes ... and the river was full of manatees! I saw seven of them on this trip. These three little ones seemed to be curious about the kayak and swam right up to me.

They were bobbing around under the water, playfully bumping each other.

Occasionally surfacing with a snort to get some air.

And then flipping up their tails as they dove back down.

Bliss.

Native Nurseries

Our favorite garden store, Native Nurseries, is hard to find but worth the trip.

We were looking for plants for our butterfly garden, and they had an amazing selection.

The plants were all in a beautiful, wooded area with cool lizards wandering through it.

We filled the car with plants. Most of them are natives, but we also got some non-native and non-butterfly plants, including an eggplant ...

... and this gorgeous Persian Shield. Which we also bought for the name.

Happy Father's Day!

HAPPY

FATHER'S

DAY!

To my father, grandfather, father-in-law, and all the wonderful fathers I know!

The Great Blueness

This is our new Puzzleball -- just as insanely addictive as the last one, but with many, many more pieces.

And this is the progress we've made so far. Basically, it's all the land masses. Which leaves us with nothing but hundreds of identical blue pieces.

But with our Nike statuary watching over us, we will conquer the world! At least in Puzzleball form.

Happy Birthday, Katy!

I think your new house will be totally sweet.

(Image from this bakery)

In Search of Manatees

I was planning my kayak trip on the Wakulla River all last week.

Yes, it's a beautiful river, but what I really wanted to see were the manatees that hang out there during the summer.

I paddled up the river, but instead of manatees, I saw five million turtles. Some of them were so big they could barely fit on their perches.

The pickerel weed was in bloom.

I saw two or three little blue herons like this one, and some egrets.

And an alligator. OK, the alligator was pretty exciting, even though I have gotten pretty familiar with alligators since I moved to Florida. But by the time I turned around and headed back down river, I was disappointed. No manatees.

Then I went down this little passage by the side of an island, and I saw bubbles in the water. Then two immense shapes moved under my kayak. Two gray snouts surfaced with a whuffling sound, close enough for me to touch. The water was clear enough to see the propeller scars on their backs as they swam beside me.

If I had been underwater, this is probably what it would have looked like.

But since I was in a kayak, and also I was busy shouting, "MANATEES! HELLO MANATEES!" -- this is the picture I got. That blobby thing in the middle of the picture is the manatee. Next weekend I hope I'll get some better manatee pictures.

The Evening of Natural Curiosities

On Thursday evening the mimosa trees were in bloom all over Tallahassee. I stopped on my way to dinner to take some pictures in an empty lot.

I think they look like something out of Dr. Seuss.

I sat outside at dinner, and across from me was this man. You can't really see it, because I took this picture with my cell phone, but the green blur on the railing beside him is a parrot. Holding a salad fork. All through dinner, the parrot ate salad from her fork, holding the fork delicately in one foot and standing on the other. She also sipped water from a glass. When she saw me watching her, she looked straight at me and said, "What?!"

When I got home, the weirdness of the natural world continued. I found this creature in the front yard while I was taking out the trash.

What in the world is it? It has six jointed legs and a patterned back, is covered with white fuzz, and moves very slowly.

And it has a crazy little face with a long curled proboscis. And then, to top everything off ...

SKINK!