12 Oakdale

Betsy arrived from Switzerland Thursday evening. We picked her up after attending a dedication of a statue in a pocket park along the West Orange Trail that is maintained by Bloom and Grow members. Amazing how beautiful an area can be if 5-6 women work on it every week. Inspiring, but beyond my ability, even with CC’s help every 2 weeks. But with that in mind, Betsy and I weeded out the area by the boat house fence, laid newspapers, and mulched with pine straw. Looking good. We also went to Target to get her a bathing suit and a SIM card and data for her phone. Back to Target: somehow neither of us noticed she’d bought the wrong bathing suit, having placed the one she actually liked, and looked good in, back on the rack. The home is calling us. Plus, the SIM card wouldn’t work. Wrong suit returned, right suit bought, and tough luck on $40 data, no returns allowed. We moved on to Verizon, where Nick tried and tried, but couldn’t get the SIM card to do its thing, in the phone Betsy has u...

That was way more excitement than I needed. Peg, Betsy, and Keith came over Sunday morning, and we piled into our truck for a tour of the Lake Apopka Wildlife Tour. All the usual: alligators, egrets, ospreys, red-winged blackbirds, etc. Afterwards, lunch of barbecued pork, baked beans, and mac ‘n cheese that Peg had rescued from a Future Farmers of America (FFA) her son Robert hosted. Way too much food had been ordered, so she filled freezer bags with leftovers and brought what the attendees didn’t take home. Even with Steph and Kyle joining us, we still have a couple of bags in our freezer.  Monday, Memorial Day, we got up and went to Oakland Nature Preserve, on the south shore of Lake Apopka. This time the alligators were 5 babies, about 18” long. We didn’t see mom, but she would have been around. A swallow tailed kite flew over. After a late lunch at Yellow Dog Eats, we returned home for naps, Keith’s sweeping our roof, and Betsy and my cleaning and moving the birdbath closer to...

I subscribe to a website that scours state park’s reservations listings and sends me notices about ones I’m interested in. February 1st, I got a notice of a cabin open Presidents’ Day weekend at Blue Spring when Mary would be visiting with her children. I jumped on. Time to show Bella and Remi what manatees look like. They would visit Ryan’s dad and sister in Fort Myers while we birded in Belize. Then they would come to Orlando, Ryan would return to California and work, Mary et al would visit us for 10 days. Perfect. This has been a hard-fought decision with Mary anxious about traveling with children, especially the return by herself. We’d agreed on the basic dates before I’d made a commitment and put down our deposit for Belize. They couldn’t come until Ryan had taken an important test at the beginning of February, then he would have time for leave. All good until mid-January when she suggested she come before Ryan rather than stay after. I was already booked with events I couldn’t ch...

We had a beautiful red sky Friday morning, which indicated the proverbial storm and that sailors should take warning. A minimal yet very wet tropical storm was coming across the Gulf of Mexico towards south Florida. It boded badly for our drive over to Bob’s funeral mass, and even worse the next day for Stephanie’s end of the school year party with 2 (!) inflatable slip and slides that took up her whole back yard. For us, much ado about nothing. It was sprinkling after mass when we walked from the church over to the social hall for the reception. A few paper towels, and we were dried off. Saturday, the sky was dark gray, but barely a drizzle just a couple of times, and no lightening. The party goers enjoyed being completely waterlogged from their water play. My rain gauge showed < 1/16”. I ran the sprinklers. On the other hand, south Florida was flooded. Patten figured he got at least 9”, since he measured 2 1/2” before he emptied his gauge at bedtime. The next morning, the 5” gauge...