Traveling, Traveling, Traveling

Spring is a lovely time of year, even along the freeways.  We enjoyed wildflowers all the way from Georgia through Texas.

 A lot of Texas is about energy - oil wells, cracking plants, wind farms, and storage facilities.

But at least you can speed through the 1000 miles pretty quickly.

We think this was a dirigible we saw over the mountains of New Mexico.

Iris In Georgia- April 2011

 

The iris are all in full bloom now.

Florida Adventures April 2011

When we bought an investment house in Englewood, Florida in March, 2011, we decided to take our mostly unused boat off Lake Eufaula and put it on our dock at the new house.  This seemed like a pretty easy task - after all, we already had over 500 miles with the boat on the trailer - far more than we ever had in the water.  So what was another 500 miles?

The street in front of our new house.  Love that Spanish moss.

So we loaded up the boat on the trailer that hadn't been licensed since 2001, and headed out at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.  We arrived at the marina where we had arranged for a tuneup on the boat by 2:30 p.m. and hoped to have the boat ready to take to our new dock by Wednesday afternoon.  "Murphy's Law" really applies to boating more than any other sport I am aware of.  First everyone in the marina had to go to New York for a funeral, which delayed our boat tune-up for a full week.  We cleaned out the garage of debris left by the last owners, washed windows, painted shutters, wrote on my memoir, visited a casino, and generally wasted time for a full week while we waited for the boat.  We started every day with a long walk in the sunshine in perfect weather.  Oh, did I mention no internet?  Yikes!  How to find how addicted you really are:  take a couple of weeks off!

Bird watching is easier for me when there are BIG birds to watch.  I watched this Great White Egret snag a baby gecho and digest it in a split second as he prowled our flower beds.

The only bad weather day we had in the two weeks we were in Florida was the day we showed up at the marina determined to get a definite time to pick up the boat the next day.  They announced it was ready to go NOW, and in the water.  It was already 4 p.m., we didn't know exactly how to get from the Myakka River to Lemon Bay, and we came totally unprepared.  In our shorts and t-shirts (it was 77 degrees) we took off at 4:30 p.m. with 15 gallons of fuel for our dock on Forked Creek, off Lemon Bay.   We thought it would be about 20 miles, and were fairly certain we just went straight south until we hit the intercoastal waterway, and then followed it to our marker and thence to our dock.

This is the relatively calm water of Lemon Bay where I finally dared to take a picture.

What innocents we were!  We didn't realize it was 42.9 miles (our GPS reading when we finally got to our dock) and there was a small craft advisory for all waters.  By the time we crossed Charlotte Harbor with 4' waves, we were both drenched to the skin and shivering with cold.  We arrived at 7:30 p.m. in our channel, only to discover it was a serious maze and our knowledge of our new GPS left a LOT to be desired.    On the positive side, we did arrive alive, we didn't run out of fuel, and we did find the dock before dark.  However, it was a seriously frightening ride, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone! 

More Spring In Georgia

We take the humidity down here for granted.  When Ron decided it was time to burn our burn pile of fallen branches, weeds, etc. before we head out, I called to get a burn permit and neither one of us thought much more about it.  Ron set the pile on fire and then started work staining the garage.

I washed all the cars and puttered around cleaning, organizing, and sorting and packing for our trip to Florida next week.

While we worked on the road side of the houses, the fire was spreading on the lake side.  By the time we looked out that way, the wind had come up and there was a 5' wall of fire all across the front of both houses.  We spent the next two hours fighting fire until we both thought we might have a heart attack from over exertion.  We did manage to save the dock and the lake irrigation system, but we were up again at midnight fighting new hot spots.  Finally, the fire was out, but I am sure we both have a few more gray hairs.

The fig tree is just loaded with figs this year.

The iris are really blooming now.

Mom's planter boxes are really looking good.

 

 

Getting the Roof Repaired

My folks roof shingles had buckled from settling after we built these houses five years ago, so today, we had a local contractor out to fix it.

They first tore off all the old shingles

Then swept it good and added new tar paper.

 

 Then they replaced all the shingles, and cleaned up all the mess.  Definitely a satisfactory job!

New Blooms in Georgia

We were gone only a week to Florida, and we thought most of the spring blooms had come in Georgia before we left.  Then on our way home, we started seeing the Wisteria.  When you see it down here draping over whole properties, it is possible to see where it might be an invasive weed.  However, it smells heavenly, and is so beautiful, that it just becomes one of the things we associate with the South.

 There are a couple of other plants that will always scream "Georgia" to me:

 Azaleas

Dogwood

Clover along the roadways

 And Pecan trees.  They are the last to leaf out and are just now beginning to get their new leaves.

Fleamaster Fleamarket, Fort Myers, FL

If you ever get to Fort Myers, the flea markets are something to see.  I think the Fleamaster Market is the largest, selling everything from golf carts and cars to underwear and vegetables.  I found a watch with a copper band, Ron got some swim trunks, I got my eyebrows waxed, and we got great bargains on oranges, green beans, and tomatoes.  Here are a few pictures: