some 45 years ago

Monroe Station, Everglades.  March 24th, 1978.

Highway 41, just off the Tamiami Trail  (Station long gone, burned down years ago).

Camera; Polaroid SX-70.  Just found these, now a little worn and faded.

 

 

an ominous visit?

From just outside the kitchen slider, I had an early morning visit from a brood of onlookers. Not one, but four Eastern Screech-Owls. Stemming from folkloric tales, folks will often say "people see owls when they're indecisive about an important decision .... or could be that important time to take a leap in a specific direction."  Or .......

Typically screech-owls are solitary characters, cute, but foreboding. All morning-long they wouldn't stop watching me. And, that was all four of 'em.

sweet Magnolia

The southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) is a flowering, intensely aromatic evergreen capable of growing upwards of 80 feet tall. Southern Living once described the early summer blooms, where in "some flowers may smell good, but none smell better". 

While others, "The southern magnolia is a magnifcent tree, producing a sweet and delightful fragrance, but the smell can be potent and overbearing if the tree is too close to your porch or sitting area". Luckily, I just happened to have crossed these scents while taking 'a walk in the park'.

Both new & fading blooms, 

 

most mornings start the same

 

 

a season's finale

Another end, to another winter season of shows and personal embarrassments.

 

Finally released from the colonoscopy - a warm coffee.

Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast

The Conservation Foundation is a non-profit organization of land acquisition and management, focusing on purchasing and restoring our regions particularly vulnerable environmental areas. 

Our local Herald-Tribune recently ran a short back-piece on the Conservation Foundation's need for volunteers to help with the restoration of the Myakka River’s upper wetlands, to help restore them back to their natural habitat. So I volunteered - to get hot and dirty.

The Foundation's 432-acre Myakka Headwater Preserve includes areas of upland oak hammocks as well. There, some of the individual oaks were recently damaged and uprooted from Hurricane Ian's heavy path.

 

 

 

 

Across the Preserve, an upper marshland of re-introduced Tickweed (Yellow Coreopsis), Florida's designated State wildflower.

 

 

Walking through a multitude of native wildflowers while in Spring bloom, I fell for this handsome ‘Bull’ thistle, once commonly used as a tonic brewed for those with chronic indigestion. 

 

 

 

With gloves and shovels in hand, volunteers in route to help stabilize the eroding banks of the upper Myakka River.

 

 

 

A thick trail to the river's edge.

 

 

 

The main volunteer effort of the day was to help re-establish the native Pop Ash (swamp ash) found naturally along the upper Myakka, thus helping shore-up the river's fragile bank after prior years of cattle grazing and Hurricane Ian's recent devastating floods.

 

 

 

After carrying-in about a hundred potted, Pop Ash saplings, holes were dug and the designated river area was planted anew. 

With just a small group of volunteers, all gladly digging in, this important on-going restoration of the area's Myakka Headwaters Preserve took another major step towards restoring itself back to it's true, and natural wetland environment. 

 

 

 

out ridin' today

Blue skies, Myakka Valley.

(Socialism Sucks and Biden Blows)