I have taken a year off from writing this blog I will write new post again
after July.

Here is my vegan breakfast from this morning.

Not sure this vegan thing is going to work out but I'm giving it a try.

The Thanksgiving walk!

     After Thanksgiving dinner, when you are so stuffed it is hard to move, but there is still pie to fit in... how do you do it? Well, that is where the annual Thanksgiving walk comes in. I saw on TV where there is a lot of walks for charity early in the morning before you eat the big meal but the best time is right after the big meal. It helps settle and burn it off. And makes room for more food.

Our delicious  bird this year courtesy of Aunt Patty!

Here we are starting out to walk the woods behind Aunt Patty's house.

Not everyone made it the whole way to the end of the property. This is no run for the finish line this is a bunch of overly stuffed Americans waddling their way as best possible around in my Aunts back 40. The kids love it cause it is usually when they are getting antsy and gives them something to do.

JR leads the way!

There is a lot to see back there in the yard and Aunt Patty is adding to it all the time.

JR checking out a figure in the garden.

There is a family of box tortoises that make the yard their home.

The former owner left a lot of interesting things lying about. This one is a giant ceramic power pole thing that Aunt plans to make into a planter.

Aunt Patty's puppy likes to look at the figures in the garden too.

There were a couple of pets who died recently (of old age)  and were buried under this tree. Aunt Patty said she is planing on
making some sort of memorial under this tree for them where she will hopefully incorporate the tree.

On the very end of the property is a sandy beach area.  

Even in the sand pretty little flowers were blooming.

Little fuzzy flowers that were fun to blow on.

It was Thanksgiving and we were just eating everything and JR thought the fuzzy's  would be good to taste.

He was wrong and spit them out all over his jacket. lol!

The Heslin's

Hope everyone had as good a Thanks giving as we did and enjoyed walking with us. Now it's Christmas time already!

Wings and wildflower festival!

    We discovered that our county is having a 3 day festival for birding and wild flowers this weekend. I must say it was quite awesome. It was the third annual festival. There were events all over Lake county but we stayed in Venetian Gardens. There was a ton of stuff to do just right there, especially if you have kids.

This was a book of events that was happening almost every park in the county had something interesting going on.

We missed the first day of the festival and ended up just going Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we stopped by with our dog, who we had taken with us to the Saturday market in down town, and realized this was great for kids so... we went home called the oldest daughter and everyone decided to go.

The first place we stopped at was the natural gardening where they were selling all sorts of plant most of them were native to Florida and none invasive and friendly for bees and butterflies.

natural farm area.

not sure what this plant is but it had an amazing bloom very large and exotic looking flower.

Fiddle head fern. 

Then we went back and got the oldest daughter and the grandkids and made it back in time to see the gator land show that was being put on. 

Gatorland man with a giant cane toad!

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Granddaughter got to pet the alligator she said it was soft. 

After the show we walked around and let the kids see everything. Even grandson was having fun and he is cutting teeth.

They were handing out free pens and flower seeds.

 Then we ran into a butter fly experience tent. It was a lot of fun for grand daughter she got to have a butter fly sit on her she said it tickled. There were all kinds of butterflies in the tent it was really a neet experience.

There were all sorts of crafts for kids and we did some of them. There was a whole inside exhibit area with everything you can think of that would do with outside things. We even found a lady that was selling water barrows with the city of Mt. Dora. She had a whole water conservation exhibit and we got free water bottles and came back the next day for the rain barrow. There were live bees in a see through hive. There were people from park services and even artist. Tons of stuff. And just about every both had something for free. And if you know me you know I love the free stuff.   

Before we left we let the kids run out on the dock and check out the lake. 

So Sunday we came back for the rain barrow and found out that we could take a free guided tour out to monkey island. So we did cause it was free. 

Husband with the rain barrow. It is 55 gallons and has a spicket.

The canoeing was hosted by Lake County Water Authority.

This was the launch point for the canoe and kayaks.

Here we are waiting to be launched into the water.

This was the island we paddled to.

 Our guide told us that there are aerators in the canals that run through Venetian Gardens and that the Gardens were built in like 1920.

This was our guide and she was great. The bubbles in front of her are from the aerator.

We floated through the canals and channels of the gardens before heading out into Little Lake Harris.

 We floated past the marina.

This was a photographer that we met she was very friendly. 

 We floated under a fallen tree.

Tree we floated under.

We floated down a canal behind the baseball stadium and found out that there used to be a big professional baseball team in Leesburg and Babe Ruth himself played here.

Only had one person run into a tree and it wasn't us.

After making it out to the island we floated back to shore.

We passed giant lily pads on the way back in.

Back under the bridge to the gardens.

Youngest daughter was excited about something.

I was amazed by the big lily pads.

lily pads.

And then after we moseyed our way home.

We passed some amazing cypress knolls.

And we found these awesome snail shells in the lake. Our guide said the red ones were an invasive species. The shells were huge.

I think we will definitely be going back the the Wings and Wildflowers Festival next year. I think everyone had fun and there was tons of interesting things to do. Plus it was free!

It's Fall!

Husband has been busy around the yard. He acquired some leaves from a yard raking job he had and incorporated them into the garden which is mostly a sand pit. We are going to try planting some alf alfa, as soon as we find out where to get some seeds, because I heard that alf alfa will regenerate the soil and that is what we need.

Fall garden area.

He put all the weeds he pulled from the garden in

 the fire pit and is ready for the next backyard burn.

Fire pit ready for a burn.

He got a couple of papaya trees from the neighbor and planted them. They are little twigs now but hopefully soon we will get a papaya.

Papaya tree!

Youngest daughter got an organic peach and noticed the seed had a sprout so she wrapped it an a paper towel and it got bigger so she finally planted it in a pot and, look, it sprouted and has leaves.

My mom has a peach tree in her yard and it has yummy little peaches on it every year. Florida peaches are just as good if not better than Georgia.

Peach tree.

The fig trees have a bumper crop this year every branch has three or four figs. It's still a fig bush though only about two feet tall.

brown turkey figs!

fig bush with figs on it.

All the plants are doing great this year. And Puppy dog loves them all.

Giant fern bush thing that my Aunt gave me and said it wont grow.

 A few years ago husband planted a plant in honor of his dear Aunt who he loved so much. It did not make it past the first winter and we thought it died but then it came back so we got another one and it would not grow. And people kept stepping on it. So I moved it to a shadier spot where it was out of the way of traffic and it died and then not only did it come back but another grew in the spot where it had been moved from so now we have three of these plants.

Auntie plant.

Plant that got moved.

I've plated carrots and radishes in the front planter near the peanut plant. And they seem to be doing pretty good too. I just need to do some weeding and I'd better do it quick.

Carrot plants surrounded by weeds!

 Another Aunt gave me some basil and I said that wont grow in my sand but it is doing great next to my oregano and mint plant.

Oregano with sexy frog and behind him is radishes and at the top of the picture is basil and ferns and in the front is part of the picture is the  peanut plant.

Next year I'm just going to plant a bunch of these peanut plants they seem to love it hear.

Radish plants with peanut growing over them.

Huge peanut plant! Yes, they have little yellow flowers.

 And then finally grand daughter helped me plant the honey dew plants we grew from seeds we got from a honey dew we bought. She was a little ruff with the plants but she is only two.

Honey dew in the top of the picture. I'm not sure what the other plants are anymore. but we will plant them and find out.

Hopefully we will have a good fall garden. It's late so this may turn into a winter garden. Husband has got to get busy to make it before the end of the fall planting season.