Weekend Update

Weekend Update

Saturday – Sunday February 7 - 8, 2021

On Saturday, we cycled out to the Key West Botanical Gardens.  It’s about 4 miles away and we planned to meet McKenzie and Tasha at the entrance at 10 am.  We were late due to some fooling around with the brakes on my bike.  The botanical gardens were less manicured than I had expected—more of a walk in the Florida woods with the benefit of some labels on the plants.  We did happen upon a fruiting tree (not one with a label, sadly) that had an abundance of birds.  We saw the palm warbler, yellow throated warbler, northern parula, pairie warbler and the catbird. Also spotted in the gardens were two green herons, a tricolor heron, a moorhen, a tortoise, several turtles and a plethora of lizards.   The best section of the gardens may have been the Cuban palms sections.  These were interesting and quite different from the native palms (all well labeled). After touring the gardens we went our separate ways with a plan to meet up for dinner at the air B&B on Simonton.

We biked over to Tasha and McKenzie’s AirBnB, arriving unfashionably early (a day of bad timing).  We had cocktails (Moscow Mules) and appetizer on the porch.  While our hosts prepared the meal, we got to enjoy the live music from the bar directly across the street.  The dinner of fish tacos was fantastic.  The mahi-mahi was well seasoned and topped with red cabbage, mango, cucumber, cilantro, green onion, guacamole and lime juice.  Once we had eaten ourselves into a near stupor, out came the key lime pie.  What can I say; it was a meal fit for a king.

Today Sunday, Mike and I decided to go to the beach at the Zachary Taylor Fort State Park.  The morning was so hot already that it seemed we would need to go swimming.  We got to the park and picked a table in the shady pine grove behind the beach.  The southerly breeze was blowing strongly.  With the shade, we slowly cooled down enough that we eventually had to move into the sun.  A short while sitting in the sun and we were ready to swim.  This turned out to be more difficult than expected, as the “beach” is more rocks than sand as you get into the water.  We did eventually immerse ourselves and were refreshed.  At about four pm we headed back to Cotinga.  After showers we are now getting dinner underway.  Our hope is to isolate on the boat and not hear the outcome of the Super Bowl.  We plan to watch the game in the morning over breakfast...

Gloria

24 42.220 N, 81 06.131 W

This Palm-tryptic was created from the following three shots taken at the Key West Botanical gardens. The original images were converted to B&W and then transformed into their color negatives. I believe the mono-chromatic treatments helps emphasize the shapes and textures

Cuban palm

Another type of palm (or palmetto)!

Palm number 3

Red horned spider (my name for it)

McKenzie and Tasha about o eat dinner on the porch of their AirBNB (iPhone photo)

The best ever fish tacos (iPhone photo)