From blush to pink to burgundy

Blush lilies

We are still at Mercer Arboretum in Houston and every year I wonder who decides on the amazing color palettes. Despite the heavy flooding, (and having to replant) the main theme was magenta and yellow with lots of white.

Hot pink azalea

As you can imagine, every type of family celebration is filmed here. The most recent one is very pregnant ladies proudly showing their bump. I bet they don’t bother for the second baby! When I got married, people like Princess Diana, still wore maternity outfits that universally looked awful. I quite like the trend of showing it off but feel sorry for the poor mothers who just look swollen and miserable with zits all over their face. Not everyone looks like Chrissie Teigen when in bloom…

The celebration I love most is the Quinceneara, which is a fiesta for a fifteen year old girl. They all wear fantastical Princess dresses in hues that only a 15 year old Latino girl could get away with. I can tell that some of the families are from central America and how proud they must be that they can send their relatives photographs from this wonderful new place. Chances are that they live in a run-down apartment but their children might be doctors or lawyers.

Burgundy Coleanthus

Peep!

Can you see me?

Heaven help anyone that is afraid of lizards in Houston this year. They are literally everywhere! This little fellow is a green Anole and if you catch his eye he will reveal his bright red fold (a dewlap) under his chin and puff it in and out. Kind of like a flasher… He also has pretty blue eyelids that you can just see in this photo. One of my kitty cats, Toffee, was literally addicted to lizards (they have a taste that cats love). If there was a competition, I would be the world’s best lizard catcher. Their tails will come off and regrow when they are predated. If you hold one of these little ones in your hand you can feel the tiny claws on their feet and their little hearts beating fast – am I a predator or a good Samaritan? One big black one bit me on my palm; ungrateful lizard!

This shot was taken at Mercer Arboretum, following on from my last post. I mentioned that the gardens had been damaged by flooding and this is a shot of the creek below.

Cypress Creek in Abeyance

It is probably hard to imagine that this little creek not only broke it’s steep banks but 7ft of floodwater ravaged Mercer Arboretum. Here is a link to an article about the arboretum’s flood. The creek is always silty but it is still full of fish, especially big catfish, alligators and snakes. Given the devastation it is astonishing to see these new plantings below.

new beds of flowers

Lilac Crape Myrtle Blossom

Crape Myrtle trees are the stalwart of the south – they can survive drought, flood and even frost. On our property we have three hot pink trees, one fuchsia and a miniature deep red. They brighten my life with their eagerness to live in harsh conditions. This is a Google link to various color varieties. One neighbor has a particularly pretty variety in palest pink but with mulberry leaves.

An array of waterlilies

As most of you know, Houston, has had devastating floods this year. Cypress Creek is really a river but with our mix of drought and flood it can go from a trickle to a torrent. It runs from Waller County in north west of the Houston area, through the Mercer Arboretum and then into Lake Houston. The Arboretum had only just repaired acres of woods that had been destroyed in our 10 year drought when the creek completely burst it’s banks flooding most of the new work. The volunteers must have been devastated. As soon as it opened again, we went to see what was left and we were surprised that some areas were still beautifully planted even though half of the park was closed.

In the next few posts, I will show their new color palette. This is a link to my previous post magenta and yellow palette.

Lily pond in Mercer Arboretum

Slow Speed

Heron in the Mangroves

This is one more beautiful shot of a heron in Old Tampa Bay and this concludes my series on Tampa. I have been travelling to Salt Lake City and there will be more travel blogs to come. Like the heron, I am moving at slow speed. Perhaps it’s the incessant heat in Houston? The rain came last night but it feels like it has crept up to 100 degrees again. The humidity makes it feel like 10 degrees more. When I arrived in Salt Lake City I was cold (even though it was in the mid 90s) – no humidity, though.

Just looking at these lovely Koi carp in the grounds of our hotel in Tampa makes me feel peaceful. My dentist has a beautiful aquarium in the waiting room and each room is decorated like the Tropics – I love going to the dentist now. 🐬

Koi

Ybor City, Tampa

Ybor City State Museum

Before we visited Tampa, I had no idea that it had a historical area of such significance. From the periphery, Tampa looks like many other modern cities in Florida, with the exception of Miami and its wonderful Art Deco buildings. Ybor city was named for Vincente Martinez Ybor, an entrepreneur who had moved his cigar business from Cuba to Key West.

Mural with Vincente Martinez Ybor

That hadn’t been entirely successful so he decided to settle in Tampa in the 1880s. The cigar workers were skilled so many of them came from Cuba and Spain, followed by an influx firstly of Italians, then Eastern European Jews, Germans and Chinese, many of the next stage immigrants serviced the city with restaurants and other industries.

Columbia Restaurant

Cigar Shop

It was an eclectic mix that was stable because each ethnicity had their own social club with welfare and benefits. Additionally, the work was plentiful and well paid. Each worker had their own little Casita, some of which are preserved, others have been renovated. The docent at the Ybor Museum told us that they used Ybor City’s welfare system as a template when they set up Medicare and Social Security in the 40s. That fascinated me more than anything else.

Streetcar in Ybor City

Ybor City reached its zenith at the beginning of the 1900s but cigar making started to decline after the Great Depression and World War II. Surprisingly, many of the original buildings remain with their exotic tile work. Artists started to flock to Ybor in recent times and it is being renovated block by block. It is a peaceful little oasis in a busy modern city with lovely tram cars. There are free range chickens on every porch because they outlawed harming chickens to stop cock fighting. You can read more of this in the The Chicken Murder. I noticed with a chuckle that you can have an event or a wedding in the garden of the Museum , but just look out for hungry hawks…

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Valentina

Can you see Valentina sitting on our fence beside the crape blossom? She is a young American black vulture who was investigating our back yard. I don’t really know that she is female or called Valentina but she has an exotic black cloak on and mysterious brown eyes. We live in a forest in near Houston, Texas and regularly see all kinds of critters including Black and Turkey Vultures. In some areas Black Vultures, which are a protected species, are becoming very common but we have plenty of carrion for them to eat given the lack of driving skills…

You can get a really good look at her in the shot above. They are large birds and I guess she was about 3 feet tall with very big white feet. They are a successful species because they eat live prey alongside carrion. When Mrs. Stripe used to laze about on the deck, I would tease her that the circling vultures would eat her if she didn’t move. I don’t really understand why people think they are ugly – I thought she was rather beautiful in an Addams family way. She was quite curious about us but tentative.

Water and light

Old Tampa Bay

Morning view from the Grand Hyatt in Tampa of the old bay. There is something about sunshine, water and palm trees that makes us all feel good. There is a manatee viewing point beside a power plant just down the coast from Tampa. Off we went, excitedly, only to find it is closed in low season. It is weird to think that summer is low season anywhere! So no manatees but we drove down to a lovely marina near Apollo Beach and spotted an osprey in her nest in a palm tree. It seems such a short time ago that ospreys were endangered and now you can see them almost everywhere. That makes my heart sing.

Osprey in her palm tree nest

The marina was small and less grand than many. We had a lovely lunch in the Circles Waterfront Restaurant looking out at this lovely vista, below.

I was fascinated by this boat ‘car park’ at Land’s End Marina. There are also boats at the forefront in dry dock. How many thousands of dollars are parked there, I wonder? 🙂

The beauty of darkness

Looking through the mangroves as light falls, Old Tampa Bay

I rarely see the dark. Off to bed while there is still light in the sky and awake into sunshine. We arrived in Tampa in the afternoon and by the time we toured the hotel and had dinner, suddenly it was dusk and then darkness. It was so exciting walking through the mangroves, wondering what eyes were looking at us and hearing the chirrup of many insects and night birds.

Doesn’t this look like a giant tarantula, below? It is really a spider crab and once I had my eyes focused they were everywhere. Wouldn’t it be fun to go there at Halloween?

Is it a tarantula?

At one point the darkening sky turned green. It was eerily beautiful.

It contrasted so beautifully with the pink sunset just before.

More wonderful photos and stories from Tampa to come.

Small Town America

Happy 4th July!!!

On Saturday we went to Montgomery, our favorite small town, close to our own home. This is a newly renovated antique shop, Modern Farmhouse Antiques, above, but they have kept the post office boxes, below, intact – isn’t it wonderful?

On one side of Modern Farmhouse Antiques there had been a soda shop and the other side was the post office. One of the banks, below, has been a pet store for some years.

This another of our favorite antique shops below – Garrett House Antiques.

Montgomery is a thriving small town and when you eavesdrop on the locals you hear the warmth and care of a real community. Sam Houston visited Montgomery and is one of the founding fathers of the state of Texas. I enjoy the link to Montgomery because I come from a long line of people named for him and looking at the antebellum houses summons up a visual image of the times. My great grandfather was named Sam Houston Dellinger.

We always eat at the Cozy Grape where I greet my favorite server, Caroline, in her native language, “Bonjour, Caroline! Ça va?” This is followed by European hugs and kisses. On one memorable occasion, a table of older ladies commented, “Oh my, it’s just like being in Paris!” It’s not really but it was delightful to see the wonder on their faces – so exotique!

Finally a marker to the history of Montgomery. Happy Independence Day!

Birds and vodka…

Yellow crested night heron, Tampa FL

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Chicken Murder…, Teddy and I went on a hastily arranged trip to Tampa before he started his new job. Once again, air miles paid for the flights and I booked the hotel via Hotwire. My, ‘don’t know which hotel until you book’ worked so well in Charleston, that I thought I would try again. Wow! This one was even better. We were in the Grand Hyatt, on Old Tampa Bay, with a private beach, mangrove, nature walk with an amazing view across to the bridges. As I arrived to check in at the desk, the British receptionist asked me if I would like to upgrade to a sea view for $15 per night. That seemed like an excellent deal and we just gasped when we walked into our corner room on the 8th floor with floor to ceiling windows looking over the bay.

Grand Hyatt Tampa

The mangroves were calling us, so as soon as we had showered off we went. Just before we reached the mangroves, an older couple from the North called us to tell us that there were FIVE nests of yellow crowned night herons in the tree above us! They noticed the cameras and thought we might be bird-watchers. It was so exciting to see a new bird (to us) and so many in a tree. They were very high up so my first shot has been cropped and not quite as sharp as I would have liked. Little did I know that when we walked back to the hotel, we would see others just chilling beside the tourists at the pool, at their own little pond. Completely fearless…

After that, we went to investigate the roof-top bar and restaurant. What a treat, sipping on vodka looking at ospreys and roseate spoonbills diving for fish, with the sun beginning to set. After another two vodkas, we asked for the bill and then realized we were at the Grand Hyatt – 40 bucks for 4 drinks!!! At least the free snacks meant we ate less at the Plebeian bar downstairs… Just before bed I took this lovely shot just before sunset.

It was blissfully quiet in our oasis with the buildings at the other end of the peninsula in the distance. We left the curtains open all night and watched night fisherman with tiny lights.