Summer time and watermelon!

We recently got our watermelon for the fourth. It's a little early but I wanted to be sure to get it before the guy sold out. It's just not summertime until you get that first watermelon. I remember as a kid having watermelon feast. We would eat so much that we wouldn't want any more, ever.

Last year we got that seedless watermelon everyone has been raving about from the grocery store. Don't like it. It had seeds. They were just white or clear and harder to find and I think there were twice as many of them. At first I tried picking them out and then ended up eating them. It was OK but it tasted like seeds and I'm sure everyone has heard about that girl who ate the watermelon seed and a watermelon grew in her belly. I don't want to eat seeds I'd rather have nice big black seeds I can spit out. Which reminds me of all the seed spitting contest we use to have when I was little.

On my way to work there is a large patch of land next to a tiny little church. Every year they have a big soul food day there.  Any way, every morning, on my way to work, I watched the guy go out and plant and tend the water melon and so finally... he was sitting next to a big pile of watermelon. No signs just him and his pile of watermelons. Last year he did the same thing and I never stopped. So this year I stopped to see if he was selling them and got a big one for only $3. He had three sizes and two kinds, stripes and no stripes. He said the ones with out stripes were sweeter so that's what I got. I asked if they had seeds and he looked at me like I was crazy. "Yes, they have seeds." So I can't wait to bite into that sweet, sweet  water melon and the taste of summer!

Safely tucked in the frig!

Catching you up.

July!

Family came down and boy was it a busy month. Well, I already posted about our canoe trip and it's already August so I will do the short and sweet version of last month.




Kay and Mom on the 4Th!

 The 4Th of July was a blast! Getting together with family and friends over at Aunt Patty's resort. For a fun day of swimming and bar-b-Que. Catching up with family is always a good time. We had live entertainment via Dylan and Dalton who played guitar, bubbles and fireworks. Couldn't ask for anything better. And I even got a picture of Kay with her eyes open!

GATORLAND

Me and Chris acting like tourists.

Next day we went to Gator land. Talk about nerve wracking. We thought one of those guys was going to loose his hand when they were feeding the alligators and not to mention wrestling them. We had a great time even with all the Florida heat. Definitely a one of a kind experience. 

BEACH



Gary taking the beach home with him.



And of course everyone who comes to Florida must go to the beach. We did some body surfing and sand castle building. All the typical beach things. You can't have a bad day at the beach.

August!

Rain sheeting off of the neighbors shed.

This month started off with a storm out in the Atlantic. Luckily it fell apart and was not much of anything. We did get some really good rain. And there was a water spout spotted in a near by lake. Now we are all just hoping to make it through the heat of August.

Dove that has adopted us as his new home.



Honey suckle that Aunt Gail gave us is really doing well.





Nothing but beautiful sunsets for the rest of the summer.



August is back to school season for us here in Florida and so the summer has almost come to an end. But because it's Florida we will have nice warm weather until at least October. I'm sure we will be out and about some more before it's all over with.

Summer Time!

And so summer begins here in Florida. The temperature keeps going up, up, up. Unfortunately it is still dry, dry, dry. Lawns are giving was to sand pits. But the rainy season will be here again soon and everything will be growing out of control before we know it. The afternoon thunder storm that coincides with tea time everyday right on schedule. I can't wait. But until then we have to contend with water restrictions and to water the grass, garden, flowers, bushes, trees or what ever else you have that is wilting. Even though almost everything is dieing we still had some wild flowers pop up. I'm not sure what kind they are but they are very pretty.

The other day I found Tahiti sauce to make hummus with. I tried to make it without this ingredient but it didn't taste like the store bought hummus. The hummus recipe is fairly easy. I just have to adjust the amounts a bit.

HUMMUS:

1 16 oz can of chick peas (also called garbanzo beans)

reserved liquid from the can of peas

2 gloves of roasted garlic (I tried it with 3 unroasted and it was way too much)

2 tbs lemon juice

1tbs  Tahiti sauce

2tbs light olive oil (the virgin is too strong and overwhelms it.)

spices ( I used dried garlic,chili powder,salt,to taste.)

Put everything in a food processor or blender and chop,chop chop. Add some of the reserved liquid from the can and olive oil as needed to make smooth. Placed well mixed and chopped ingredients in a bowl.

Make a well in the center and fill with more olive oil. Then garnish with paprika and parsley flakes. I also added clamata olives diced up. You could put pine nuts, roasted peppers or what ever you like. It's not even half of what the store bought stuff is.

We took a trip to rainbow springs.

We decided to go check out Rainbow Springs all together to see if it would be a good place to go when my sister is here for the summer. We all had a great time. It was very reasonably priced and I think it would be a good place to go. Either way we will definitely be going back. There was a lot of exploring left to do.



First we found a good place to set up for our picnic. This is the bar-b-q king.



Then we sat in the sun bathing area. People were playing football. It was very nice.



The swimming area was a little crowded but Chris jumped in. Even though it wasn't really hot enough for us.

 We did some exploring and found that this use to be an attraction and they had a zoo back in the 70's. We discovered some old animal cages and examined them.







This is out side of some of the cages.



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Looking into one of the cages.



Paused to take a picture.




Panoramic view. One of the man made falls is on the left.





We checked out the butterfly garden that had a lot of native plants.



 There were a lot of caterpillars. Soon those gardens will be full of butterflies.

All of us back at the picnic area.