More Signs of Spring!

Despite the freak cold snap we're currently suffering through (the heat's broken in the office, and someone forgot to call facilities to repair it), signs of spring are everywhere.

There are the luscious strawberries.


The gorgeous redbuds.


And, hey, my coral honeysuckle is blooming!


And it's starting to cover my compost!

St. Petersburg

I went to see my best friend, Sheila, and her husband this weekend in St. Petersburg. The weather was amazing--warm, breezy, not a cloud in the sky. I can't believe it's December.


Sheila and Nathan have a bass boat with a huge outboard motor, and we took it out Sunday. We went to Egmont Key State Park, an island at the mouth of Tampa Bay.


Everywhere we looked were gopher tortoises eating grass enthusiastically and ignoring all of us annoying people.


Apparently the island was an outpost during the Spanish American War, and earlier was used to imprison Seminole Indians before transport to Oklahoma. This was at the end of the third Seminole War, in 1858. All over the island are the concrete ruins of Ft. Dade.


There are stairways that lead seemingly nowhere.


The ruins are strangely beautiful.


There were other curiosities on the island, which is a National Wildlife Refuge. The palm forests were covered with millions of fallen palm fronds. It looked like rat heaven. There were also many decapitated palm trees, and palm tree grave yards--presumably left by hurricanes.


I've never seen so many huge century plants.


This is my favorite photo.

Native Flowers

Thursday I picked a bouquet of native flowers from in front of the office. They looked so nice on the dashboard of my car on the way home that I took a photo (while stopped at a red light):

There's swamp sunflower (ours is over six feet tall!), gaillardia/blanket flower, firebush, scarlet salvia, and muhly grass.

Native Plant Sale

I went to the fall native plant sale this weekend at Morningside Nature Center with my parents. I bought a mimosa plant, aka Powderpuff (the groundcover, not the exotic invasive tree) to replace the one I killed last year. I love its puffy pink flowers and fern-like foliage.

I also got a passion flower. Passion flower makes me feel giddy inside. Seriously. I think it's the most beautiful flower I have ever seen--it's over-the-top with different textures, bright colors (purple!), and this wild fringe, all calling out exotically to potential pollinators--and I catch my breath every time I see one. Now I have my own! It's a vine that dies back in the winter, so spring will be exciting for me. You know--it's the little things.

Here's a photo of a passion flower that Kim took:


After I paid for the plants, this student-looking guy asked me a couple of questions for a Native Plant Society survey. "Have you been here before?" "Yes." "And how did you hear about the sale? Did you see an ad?" "Uh...I just know about it. It's on my calendar." All of a sudden it became terribly clear to me--I've become a plant dork! When did this happen?!

(So much for giving the blog a temporary rest.)