Secret Woods, and Ibises

Day Six in Florida. On day three I spent the late afternoon and supper time with a friend whom I knew in junior high. She used to come on family vacations with my mom, my sister and me. Before my stepfather came on the scene, when the three of us were the whole family, fifty-plus years ago. Hadn't seen her for some decades, until last summer.

We spent a long time making bad driving decisions looking for a little county park called the Secret Woods Nature Center. Despite the heat. It had a butterfly island, with wonderful signs to say what species of butterfly larvae or nectar-eating adults feed on each thing in the garden, it worked, there were butterflies. Flitter flitter. Then we went on a boardwalk trek though (dry in this season) cypress and mangrove woods and so on, out to a river called the New River, and suddenly on the other side of the water, huge homes and fancy boats. And all the time the sound of interstate 595 and state highway whatever#, and planes from the Fort Lauderdale airport low overhead. It really is a Secret Woods, you'd never imagine it was there.

Um yeah, it was horridly hot, but a breeze had sprung up so we survived. I took pictures, but for the first time in my whole electronic life, I have forgotten the cord that unloads the camera.

Anyway, the expedition was such a success, and I am here for such a long visit, that we are going to do a rerun next week, it will have to be earlier in the day as we want to go to a famous Japanese garden, Morikami Gardens, and they close at 4.

Other than that, we are doing ok here, in a long tedious sort of way. People here are really really old. If there are ibises on the grass outside the diningroom window at the assisted living place, we can spend a really long time discussing whether they are ibises or cranes, and whether it is spelled 'ibis' or 'ibix'.