Going Botanical

What’s this?  A blog from Joe on a different day then usual?  Why would such an outlandish event occur?  Well, there’s several reasons:  1) I was messing around with Google + and managed to delete many of my photos there and they disappeared from Blogger as well.  2) I’ve long searched for a simple way to put music on my blog again to no avail…finally I think I found out how to do it again!  3) Why do tomorrow (or for Thursday) what I can do now? 

Florida, ah Florida.  The places to go and see something beautiful abound!  We visited some gardens that were so nice to see.  Just seeing the pathway into this one I knew it would be something special.  It was hot but the path ahead beckoned like an instinct that won’t be ignored.  Inside there were many varieties of trees and flowers.  My goodness I love palm trees.  Bird of Paradise flowers always capture me with their exotic beauty.  This butterfly ironwork chair looked inviting…but not in this heat.  I’m not the flower or bird expert my grandpa and grandma Fahrion were but I know a beautiful flower when I see it.  These flowers were like living fireworks.  Can’t you imagine something like this on a 4th of July evening?  This place was not only beautiful but oh so peaceful.  Look at this wonderful wall mural.  The bright and hot sun made for a harsh glare sometimes but I clicked away in spite of it.  The shadows made the sunlight poking through a stunning contrast.  If I lived abroad again for any length of time I’d find a way to grow bamboo…love the stuff!  Other flowers reminded me of ballroom dresseswhile other things were just weird and exotic to my eye…especially seeing it here in America.  I like colorful flowers but there’s a wonderful classic beauty in white ones too…what interesting plants!  Well, this is sobering.  Yellow?  Coming right up.  Some delicate shades suit me just fine as well.  Such stunning names to go with these flowers too.  Coming around the bend there was a bird stretching out to dry his wings…wow!  I’m not quite sure what this is but I like it!  Talk about flowers that pop out at you…they remind me of coals and sparks.  Again some awesome bambooand some bamboo stumps.  The color and symmetry of these just wouldn’t let me go .  What kind of bamboo is it?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  Family made it all even better.  As we snaked our way around the area other interesting plants grabbed my attention…tropical petunia huh?  Some other varieties of palms…hmm, they are different.  I love textures.  Beauty down on the groundand beauty up above.  It’s great being able to have things to see all around.  I think they had at least four varieties of palms there.  Now we began to wind our way around to the parking lot again and Love had to get some shots of our friends and family in.  I do love the tropics and tropical walks.  We had still not seen a real live gator yet but this fake one looked pretty real.  How nice to escape the tunnel vision of home for a bit…or did we?  The last part of our walk had some interesting things to see too.  Mysterious glimpses through the wall gave it a surreal appearanceand though we’d not seen any live gators yet there were reminders to look out for them.  Unusual tall grass lined one side of the walkway  at this point.  Varieties of fruit were all around here too…what’s this?  I know what this is.  This sign made me think we were destined to visit.  Now the walk was quite forested in.  Such amazing plants!  Bananas, bananas by the bunch.  Even pineapple!  I’ve not seen one growing since visiting plantations in the Philippines!  Here were some unusual palmsand an incredible blossom.  The last photo reminds me so of the Baobabs of Africa.  A day to remember in Florida!