Update: Brett and I are safe, waking up to to the mess of Hurricane Milton. We are just north of St. Pete and Clearwater. No power and most don’t have water. As the sun comes up we will head outside to see the mess. Please pray for central Florida to get through this 2nd hurricane in 2 weeks. Thanks, Dina.

I made a quick trip to the Florida Botanical Gardens in late June. At this point it was too hot for anything longer than a 45 minute walk outside. I wasn’t expecting to see many birds but I did see a few smaller critters.

Color around the gardens.

The butterfly garden was already overgrown. I waited a while hoping to see some hummingbirds or hummingbird moths but neither made an appearance.

My favorite tree here is this skinny rainbow eucalyptus tree. The bark peels off in colors.

There are a lot of great old trees here. The tag said this is a kapok tree but I’ve never seen it bloom. Some kapoks only bloom once every 10 years so this may be one of them. The big kapok on the main road through Clearwater blooms big orange blooms every spring.

The big lake is getting all choked up. It seems like they would clear out the water hyacinth that is invasive. It keeps the water from moving through.

After the walk at the gardens I stopped at a fairly new farmer’s market nearby. There were a ton of tables here and most had exotic fruits and vegetables. The coconut booth had a lot of people around it grabbing fresh coconuts.

I came for some mangos but the exotic fruits were interesting. The top booth had a lot of lychee. My husband grew up eating it as a kid but he has lost his taste for it now. The bottom shot is rambutan. You peel the skin off and it’s like a grape underneath.  I’ll come back in the winter when it isn’t so hot and look around a little more.