January 2016, South Africa – We don’t know why it took us so long to getting around to making a South Africa safari. After all, we have friends there and our best friends from England have been trying for years to get us to accompany them on a game viewing safari. The first half of our trip…
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Garden Route National Park, South Africa
We’ve been away for the past three weeks – in South Africa! For many years we’ve been talking about making this trip with dear friends and finally decided that it had to be now, while they were there anyway for business. The trip was amazing. We flew into Johannesburg, spent a week in two private…
A Hot December
Happy New Year! I’m trying to stay upbeat here but December was way too warm. I spend a lot of time in the bamboo in our yard and I have never seen so much life in December. Also, our pear tree is blooming, there are all kinds of tiny spiders and frogs out, mosquitos are…
November in the Park
November 2015 ~ It has been fairly quiet in the St. Augustine Road Fish Management Area, a.k.a, Earl Johnson Park – the wintering ducks haven’t arrived yet and all the interesting spiders are gone. There is only a little fall foliage: The little cypress tree is bright green: And the ferns were pretty happy after a…
Indonesia: Ant Plants
October 2015, Indonesia: Ant Plants ~ Last month, while diving in the Raja Ampat (Four Kings) region of Indonesia, some of our crew took me out between dives to hunt for ant plants. Ever since we tried sarang semut, tea made from the tuber of these plants, I have been looking for the plant in its natural…
Hachijojima Day Tour
We were chased out of the water by an distant typhoon, so our host offered to drive us around the island. Our Hachijojima day tour was a nice chance to see the cultural and natural beauty of this small island, located about 180 miles south of Tokyo. One of our first stops was a preserved,…
Cannonball tree, Couroupita guianensis
I was cleaning photo files this week and ran across pictures I took last year of a friend’s Cannonball tree, Couroupita guianensis. The first time I ever saw one was 15 years ago in the botanical garden on the island of St Vincent. I barely remember the garden, the oldest in the western hemisphere, but…