Sholom Park in Ocala Florida

Today was the girls turn to do a day trip, so Donna and I headed out to find some fun things in the area to see.  We were going to a botanical garden in Gainesville, until I realized last minute that it was the one that Nathan and I had already visited.  So we scrambled a bit to figure out what else we could do.  We ended up visiting a place listed on a website for botanical gardens in Florida, a place in Ocala named Sholom Park.

The park was built to capture a place of peace and was named Sholom to honor Sidney Colen's grandfather's name.  The place was in fact very peaceful.  It had many paths to walk along and everywhere we went it was peaceful.

It is the kind of place that if I lived nearby, I'd go there often to just walk to get a little bit of exercise and the chance to unwind.  After visiting the park, we headed over to Chick-fil-a where Donna ate her first ever meal there.  I didn't have my camera inside with me so I did not get a picture of her eating her first chicken sandwich there.  We then headed out to see what else we could find to do.  More on that in the next blog post!

Kanapaha Botanical Gardens

We have been in The Villages for two weeks now and it feels like we've been here much longer because of all we have squeezed in during that time.  We have so much here that it is easy to see how some people never leave The Villages!  We did decide to leave and venture out this weekend though.  We headed to Gainesville and visited Kanapaha Botanical Gardens.

We were really impressed with this botanical garden and liked some of the unique features it offered, like its vinery.

 I loved the Herb Garden!

The Children's Garden was so whimsical and pretty.

A few signs of human life could be found.

I'm happy to say, much more signs of animal life were present than human.

Most of all, I noticed how very relaxing it was here, even with the sweltering heat!  We had a great (Father's) day here.

Mother Nature's Curves

For those of us who are Monk-like, straight lines are the way to go.  They are clean, they allow you to line things up nicely and they just make sense.

I noticed when editing some pictures from the Sunken Garden, that Mother Nature really isn't so much into straight lines.  In fact, Mother Nature has glorious curves to most of her creations.  Some things are simple circles and ovals.

Some are more twisted and are complicated in their form.

Some have a bit of a pattern to them, even if it is a rough, loose sort of pattern.

There are bold curves, that make bold statements!

And then there are the sort of luscious curves that have me thinking va-va-va voom curves are here!

As much as I love straight lines, I gotta admit that Mother Nature knows what she is doing with all of those curves!  Just stunning!

Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, FL

I have wanted to visit Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg for a few years now and we just have not made it here until now.  We love visiting botanical gardens in general and they give me a chance to take pretty pictures.  So I was thrilled when Nathan picked this as one of his places to visit for his pre-birthday party day.

Sunken Gardens is St. Petersburg's oldest living museum.  It is 100 years old, which means some of the plants here are amongst the oldest in the area.  The land was originally owned by a gentleman who was a plumber by trade but he loved to garden.  His gardens were so beautiful, people paid a nickle to visit them.  His family kept up this tradition for three generations and in 1999 the city bought the land to preserve it and further his vision.  It has been a community effort to maintain this project and there is now a children's museum alongside the gardens.

 

 It was as lovely as we had hoped it would be.  There were beautiful gardens of course.  According to their literature, there are over 50,000 tropical plants and flowers. 

 There were some neat animals as a bonus, both in the water and land.  There were even some vibrant tropical birds.

There were lots of water features and benches to sit and rest on also.  Just a nice, peaceful place overall.  They even offer hooping classes here!

I hope we can visit this neat place again sometime!  Maybe I will have to join in for a hooping class or two some morning.  I will provide entertainment for the creatures watching if nothing else!  I can feel this guy's enthusiasm in that line of thinking.  He just radiates excitement, right?

Living the life in tropical Florida.

Bok Tower Founders Tour

When we purchased a membership to Bok Tower Gardens, they let us know that a few times each year members are allowed to go inside the tower for a special tour.  We signed up for the next one available.  I ended up having to work that day, but Nathan still attended.  For the tour, you are only allowed on the first floor of the tower.  Nathan said it was a really neat room and well worth the tour.  I hope to be able to do the next one.  Here are some of his shots of the room.

More About our Bok Tower Gardens Trip

As I said, this was Nathan's first trip to see Bok Tower.  It was really overcast and looking like rain, so there wasn't a big crowd there.  Which made it a nice day to visit.

As soon as you enter the front of the visitor center, you can see that this is going to be a pretty place.

Clearly this was a personal goal of Mr. Bok, as is shown in the quote over the entrance.

I think he definitely achieved it with this place.

The main attraction is still the tower, with the beautiful carillon music coming from it each day.

Date Night and Day

We have tried to keep up on our date night since arriving here.  What we have not enjoyed in many months is a day off together.  I work every weekend and Nathan works during the week.  Patti that I work with worked for Donna today.  So she told me to take the day off and she covered for me too.  We were so tickled pink to have a date night and a date day.

Last night we went to Abuelo's in Lakeland.  We then went to the movie, The Vow, which was very touching.

We spent time in a bookstore after that where Nathan and I ventured off to different sections.  When I went to find him, I found him in this section:

We arrived home very late to a frantic girl that is not used to being home alone that long.  She paid us back by waking us up bright and early this morning.

That's ok because we had more fun scheduled for today. We ate a great breakfast in bed, hung out trying to figure out how to get audio books from Box.net to our phones.  Then we headed out to Lake Wales.  We stopped at a BBQ place for lunch.

They were really busy and told us they only had a half booth available.  We said no problem and they said we would get dessert for free if we ate there.  I was very excited to hear that.  This is a half booth, and this is our free dessert.

Nathan ate his share of the huge 1/4 of a pie dessert and then ventured over into my territory and helped himself until I threatened to stab him with my fork.  Everything we ate here was excellent.

After that we were off to Bok Towers.  Diana and I took the kids to visit this neat place before, but Nathan had never visited before today.  He really enjoyed it.  All of the pictures here are from my phone, but I'll try to edit and add more pictures from the big camera this week.

When we arrived home, we saw Rich outside so we went over to see how their pickleball tournament went.  We ended up sitting and having a nice time chatting with he and Donna and trying something I really enjoyed.  I told Nathan to put it on the grocery list and I'll share more about that later.

It was a great day and it was so nice to have a whole day together!

Living the life in Florida!

Boy and Panther

Another creative sculpture from Brookgreen Gardens.

And the nature shot: