Mailbox Monday: Water World

This picture was sent to me, along with the text.

An employee of German postal carrier Deutsche Post DHL  arrives to deliver mail from her flat-bottomed canoe in the narrow canals in the Spreewald Forest on April 9, 2010 in Luebbenau, Germany. She has been delivering mail via the waterways for 20 years and is the only postwoman in Germany to deliver mail door to door by boat. The Spreewald Forest is interlaced with canals that are still used by locals for delivering goods, ferrying tourists and even collecting garbage. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Seeing Stars

Our son and daughter-in-law accompanied us on a trip down to the lighthouse. They had not been in quite a long while and requested the excursion. We do not take much convincing to go.

We walked along the muddy shore by the lighthouse itself. The tide was way out.

Son, D, found a small sea star above the water line.

Here is the underside.

He took it back to the water after he took these pictures but was uncertain as to whether it was still alive. Sea stars are not at all common on our beaches.  I hope it will live.

Our Black Friday

While some spent their Black Friday looking for deals on alligator shoes and munching on left-over turkey, we spent ours observing some wild turkeys and alligators at Payne’s Prairie (and driving a few hundred miles.)

On our drive back to Tallahassee (and through Gainesville), our son directed us to a part of the park we had not seen before: La Chua Sink. It was a popular spot today. We counted 52 alligators enjoying the warm temperatures and breeze in our brief hike. There were alligators in many sizes.

  Look closer at the belly on this one!

This one still has its immature stripes.

Supposedly you can also see the wild horses and bison from that spot. We saw some sign, but no large mammals.

There were a number of wading birds. I was amused by this female anhinga sharing a stump with a large turtle.

It was a really cool spot and we will want to go back.

But despite all these gator pictures:

GO SEMINOLES!! Beat the Gators tomorrow!

The Bizarre Bazaar

B and I went to the Bizarre Bazaar on Saturday. It was held as a garage sale at a community of old warehouses that are now artists’ studios. We did not find anything we needed but we did have fun looking around a little shop of resale items—mostly vintage things.

Where we parked were these interesting notices on the side of the building.

I forgot to ask him what he saw!

Turkeys and Eagles

 

The story goes that Benjamin Franklin proposed that the wild turkey be named as our national bird. Of course, you will already know that the bald eagle was out-voted. We eat turkeys. Though they did not attain that status, I would venture to say that more Americans have seen turkey (at least in its sliced form) than eagles.

In our wanderings around north Florida and south Georgia, we often see wild turkeys. In fact, there is a driveway on my way to school that I check every day for turkeys. (Those are wild turkeys, but they are fed like other wild birds by the residents.)

Well, last Sunday we did not see any turkeys, but we did see six bald eagles down at St. Marks Wildlife Refuge.  It is possible that one of these we saw twice in different locations. One was a juvenile and still in its big, brown look.  On our way out, an eagle flew over the road and into a pine, some distance away. There, another adult eagle was already perched. They faced each other for a while. I had already decided that even twelve times larger was still a very small picture of even birds the size of eagles, but they waited so patiently, that I decided to get out of the truck and go for it.

This is the cropped one.

It is not the first time we have photographed two together but I think these were closer together.

Mailbox Monday: Another Stumper

I don’t really know what I’m looking at here.

It reminds me of an old-fashioned telephone.

Fall Colors Have Finally Arrived

We had some much-needed rain on Tuesday. Depending on the location, it ranged from an inch or so, to over three and a half inches. Our yard received something in the middle of that but our school rain gauge measured 3.6 inches.

By Tuesday night, you could see the grass greening up and by Wednesday morning, the leaf colors had popped. When we walked around the block on Thursday evening, I carried my camera.

The hickories and grapevines are golden:

Some maples are turning yellow:

While the native maples are more multi-colored:

The dogwoods are crimson:

But the winged sumac is spectacular!

I am thankful to live in a part of Florida where there are at least three seasons.