Fun in Florida

Greetings! 

I have about a dozen blog posts in my head and just haven't had the time to post them. So I guess I'll just start at the beginning :) I had a business trip to Florida last week and loved how green everything was.

The flora and fauna is so very different from Chicago.

I was really intrigued with how resurrection ferns and air ferns grow on the trunks of the trees.

We started out in a small town outside Orlando and the landscape was lovely.

The Live Oaks and Spanish Moss take my breath away.

I was so thrilled to see the threatened Gopher Tortoise in person!

They are a keystone species that dig very large burrows that it shares with more than 350 other species.

Then it was time to head into Orlando proper.

I really enjoyed the view from my room and did find a few minutes to try out the quarter mile lazy river one morning. I actually walked it against the current and found it an exhausting exercise :)

On a walk along Grande Lake, I stopped at a little pier to admire the view and out walked this fella.

I stopped for a bit to watch him fish.

My room was on the third floor from the top - such a pretty hotel.

This sign amused me, although I was quite careful and a bit glad not to find either :)

Here's another heron enjoying some shade.

This pair caught my eye as well. I think it might be a nesting platform and I love how they were sitting in the exact same pose with their beaks open :)

I will be back very soon to share my project that I finished on the plane ride home.

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.Are you not much more valuable than they?"

~Matthew 6:26

Blessings, Patti