Discovery Gardens

This is a little garden just south of Tavares on Woodlea Road, look for the sign at the parking lot after turning off of US 19 or you'll miss it. This is an extension garden from the university and has over 20 different themed gardens and over 700 verities of plants with a lot of fountains and a butterfly house, a frost had hit the garden about a week earlier but there were still a lot of blooms.

Guard of the Garden

2008

Another Whispering Giant
It's here and that means that its time for us to start moving northward, hopefully at a fairly slow pace. The first thing we did to start the new year out was track down another Whispering Giant, we found this one right down by the riverfront in Punta Gorda.

This one is named "Calostimucu" and is the only Whispering giant that has a carving of a face on both the front and back, the front has a more friendly face with an eagle and the back is a meaner looking face with a bear. I think the reason the Toth made this a double is that the owner of the hotel, commissioned him to do this one and left have room and board at the hotel (free) until he finished. Since it was winter and he was in Florida I think that it took him longer then normal to do this one thus extending his freebee stay at the motel.


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Another day long road trip
We did a little drive out to Gasparilla Island, it took a little to find our way out there but it was worth it. This island was one of the original gulf coast islands that the rich came down to for the winter. It's a very interesting drive through the neighborhoods and city to get to the State Park at the far south end, there is a small lighthouse and museum, a nice sandy beach but no swimming because of the currents.

Naples Botanical Gardens

Walked through the Naples Botanical Gardens today, this is a fairly new garden (4-years old) and when they get it finished in about 4-5 years will be one you don't want to miss. Right now it's about 20-25%, they have a small walking trail with some unusual plants, and an Amazon room with the tropical plants and some spiders, frogs and turtles. But the best part is the butterfly area, it's enclosed with hundreds of butterflies, you can see the cocoons which they bring in and glue to a string on the bushes (see pictures) then the stage were they are coming out of the cocoon and drying their wings. The next room has giant geckos and the room after that had a bird similar to a Hummingbird called Honey Suckle. After that they have a mile long trail that takes you back through a wetlands/swamp area, this is where the other parts of the garden are going to be.
The great thing about this garden is it's right in the middle of Naples and you feel like you're 100 miles out in the wild.

So far this has been a great winter, low 80's everyday and it has only rained at night.

The very rare transparent Butterfly

Cocoons that have been glued to string and hung in the bush.




Just hatched and drying their wings


Giant gecko

Edison-Ford Estates

We're spending December at Indian Creek RV Resort in Fort Myers Beach,. We checked in on the 1st which was a big mistake since everyone else was also checking in, we were in line for an hour and a half before we finally got to our site but it was worth it, we got a great site on a small lake in the back of the resort. This is probably the best run and one of the nicest parks we have ever been to, what ever you want is here.

Took a day and toured the Edison-Ford Estates last week, Edison came down here before there were any roads to get a way from the crowds and years later when he and Ford became good friends Ford bought the house next door. They take you on a tour of the estates and grounds for about 30-40 minutes then they turn you loose to wander around the rest of the property, then when you want they take you on another tour of Edison's laboratory. Every Christmas they give each elementary school a tree to decorate and they put them on display around the grounds; they had some pretty neat ideas.

Marie Selby Gardens

This is a real easy one to drive by without noticing, it's off of US-41 in the middle of an S-turn and on a side street that just looks like a residential street, it turns out that the society owns the entire street. This is without a doubt our favorite garden so far, it covers about 13 acres right on the bay,

has two homes one is the visitors center and gift shop the other is a museum on one floor and the main floor is where local artist have their art shows. There is a coffee shop and two small cafes and tons of benches around to just sit and relax. Following the pathway we went through many different types of gardens, through around and under the banyan trees, there is also a green house where they sell many of the plants that they have on the grounds. There was really just to much stuff here to write about it all and I could have posted another dozen or so pictures and still not have covered it properly.


Banyon Tree,
Air plants on a live oak,
Tree with a root system like an octopus ,
Rainbow trunk,
Tree with a bunch of sharp tacks on its truck.





After we left I got mixed up in traffic and we ended up back on Long Boat Key, so we went south this time and ended up at South Lido Park, so we got the picnic basket out and grabbed a table. We had a nice picnic lunch with about a dozen squirrels that decided to join use to see what they could get, after lunch we took a little walk on the beach around the point. The first thing we came across was a kid fishing and he had caught a small shark, about 12-14 inches long, he was trying to figure out how to get the hook
out with out putting his hand near its mouth, after about a minutes it bite through the line and swam away. A hundred yards father down we found a bunch of jelly fish washed up on the shore, sure makes you want to go swimming at this beach, get stung or bite your choice. We also watched a red tail hawk hover for about 2-minutes before making a dive into the water from about 40-feet to get a fish. A pretty interesting little walk for us.

Manatee Historical Village

We did the outlet mall thing in Ellenton, Cathy with her coupons and a little black magic managed to buy a $24 top for only 11-cents, she even amazed the cashier with that one. On the way home we stopped at the Manatee Historical Village, we were here about three years ago and it was kind of a rough neighborhood, but since then they have really cleaned the area u and are doing a great job of restoring the historical district of the town.

The village is a freebee so you gotta like that, they have about 10 buildings that have been moved here and restored. The main building is the KW Wiggin's store, which also houses the museum. On the grounds you will find the Fogarty boat works, Manatee's first court house which is the oldest remaining court house in Florida, a church, smoke house, sugar cane mill and my favorite the Stephens house which is a Cracker Gothic style home, don't know what it means but I want it. It has a huge hallway that is open to the outdoors and gives you a breeze no matter which way the wind is blowing.
For more info click HERE.

Mote Aquarium

The indoor aquarium is fairly large and has probably 50 different displays, everything from a 2-foot long lobster, without the butter, clown fish, coral reefs, to some great fossils.


From here we stepped outside and found Molly the Mollusk, a 27 foot-long giant squid, this one was found in New Zealand and had been preserved, this is the only place in the USA that you can see on of these on display, no one has ever seen a live giant squid in it's natural habitat. No pictures of it, it was too ugly. There is also a model of a 14.5-foot hammerhead shark that was caught 2006 (World record).

It was feeding time for the sharks so we climbed up to the top of the 135000 gallon tank to watch them, We were all ready for a Jimmy Buffet style "Feeding Frenzy", but instead all we got was the care takers putting cut up fish on the end of a pole and holding it in the water for the fish to take, except none of the fish appeared to be hungry. The tank itself held a variety of fish: nurse, bull, black-tips and sand sharks, grouper, tarpon, snook and redfish, makes you want to go back out to the car and get your fishing rod.

From here we had to leave and walk about a block down to their other building where they keep the sea turtles and manatee.

Hang Tough is a green sea turtle (vegetarian), he was brought to the Mote with several injuries which left him blind so now he just swims around in his tank, using his flippers as a white cane to keep from swimming into the wall. You can't touch them but you can get within a foot or so of them when they come to the side of the tank.

Shelley and Montego are their two loggerhead turtles; they were born in captivity and were part of a study in N. Carolina, when the study ended they were sent here since they could not be released into nature. There is also a few baby turtle ranging in length from 2-inches to about 6-inches.

Another favorite are the manatee's Hugh and Buffett, they were born at the Miami Seaquarium and transferred to the Mote in 1996, they are trained to participate in the scientists research so they can try and save more of the manatee out in the wild.
Most of the injured wildlife brought to the Mote are rehabilitated, fitted with sensors and returned to the wild were they can be located and studied. There is also a dolphin pool but they weren't very active while we were there.

The Sunken Gardens of St. Petersburg

It's a hot sunny day and we're right in the middle of all the snowbird traffic as they work their way into south central Florida and drive all of us EARLY snowbirds crazy, so it's time for a little escape from reality.
How do you do that, you drive to St Petersburg and find the Sunken Gardens, since we're members of the UM Botanical Gardens our cost is… freebee.



Sunken Gardens started out over a hundred years ago when a plumber named George Turner Sr. decided that he wanted his own botanical garden, so he bought a six-acre sinkhole that had a small lake in the middle and started working on it. He drained the lake and started planting a wide variety of plants, after a few years he opened a small nursery and started to sell some of the plants and fruits. When so many people wanted to walk through the garden he started charging a small fee. The garden continued to grow and during the 1930's it became one of the top roadside tourist attractions in Florida, showing people what the tropic Florida was really like.


By 1999 the garden had been neglected, over grown and run down when the City of St Petersburg purchased it and started to restore it to Mr. Turner's original idea of a tropical garden.

Once you enter the garden the sun disappears as you walk through tunnels formed by the heavy canopy of tropical growth, follow the trail and you will soon be walking through a bamboo forest, crossing steams on little arched bridges, spotting tropical birds and cascading waterfalls. Continue on viewing some of the 50,000 different varieties of plants, back to the butterfly garden and house were you can rest up and maybe have a butterfly or two join you on your shoulder, finish up at the cactus garden before you head back out into the real world of noise, traffic and confusion

If you didn't know better and just drove by this place you would think that it was just another restaurant on the main drag of St. Pete and not a place to wander and relax for an hour or two, right in the middle of a busy city.