Where was this

All those days I was watching for the gator?

big day

I was out photographing the birds on the river this morning when finally the alligator came into view for purposes of getting  a decent photo of him---
first the morning river

then the anhinga that caught my attention

then some gator photos- I would estimate that he was about eight feet long from nose to tail end... maybe slightly more but it is hard to tell - he got quite close but most of him was under water so I could only really estimate from his head when he was nearest to me...

so finally - after waiting for him all last season in Jan and Feb of 2011 - he shows up on December 31st 2011 to visit.... pretty darn cool!

stars are out

tonight but I can't get a good shot so I tried for one of the moon on the river...

or one upriver from us

they are both pretty dark - maybe later I can try the other camera- meanwhile--- this is what you get to help you imagine the evening- you CAN see that the area is very dark - therefore  we do see stars out here in the country by the river...

some fun in the sun

had lunch outside today at the old favorite Mar Vista... on the way home we stopped at the fish market in the fishing village of Cortez.  this small town is still an enclave of old Florida cottages and over grown lush tropical landscape.  it is also still a working fishing village. 

so we pulled in to pick up some stone crab claws and some fresh caught grouper for dinner tonight...

here are a few photos to give a feel of the place:

  

then headed to the car wash after all the miles the car has seen in the last week- so it came home all spiffed up... tonight some fresh fish and crab claws...



groceries

perhaps I failed to mention the family curse- LOL- in the way of curses this one may not seem so bad but to the women in my immediate family- of which we lost 66.6% in 2010- we always referred to grocery shopping as the family curse.  my husband's family has one as well- the breaking of glasses and/or dishes (by someone else) when having a restaurant meal.  but back to groceries, in our family it seemed for a long time like whenever the women were together (for holidays or such) there was a need to visit the grocery store at least once a day. 

of course now that my mother and sister have died I am somewhat freed from the curse because there is no way for the three of us (or even two of us) to be together in the same place anymore.  but this week the curse has come back with a vengeance.  so that is where I have been.  we arrived Saturday evening and on Sunday we went to the Winn-Dixie (the only place open on Christmas Day.)  on Monday we went to Costco where I was subjected to cell phone buying as well as groceries (this took no less than a full hour to get the cell phone thing accomplished.)  then on Tuesday it was not really groceries but we did go to a store with groceries that we didn't buy- and three other stores as well. 

I am not a shopper AT ALL and so this is some new record for me - Wednesday we went to the farmer's market for fruits and vegetables and then Thursday to the Publix grocery.  which brings us to today- possibly my first shopping free day in nearly a week. 

oh  and did I forget to mention that in the same few days I have also "shopped" for a new place to live next year?  stopping by six places to see the apartments available and get a feel for locations - and even though this is off the topic of shopping I feel compelled to alert everyone to the fact that the apartment complexes in mid Florida use airline pricing systems for their apartments - yield management (the bane of flyer's existence) has now come to real estate... horrifying concept.

so anyway- back to the week and the horrors of shopping- the upside is we now have plenty of food and I have a new cell phone to replace my four plus year old Blackberry and we have a new wine rack to hold the wine we bought at Costco.  and so we are settling in for our weeks away from home and so are the cats.  so here are some relevant photos of the week-

the new phone- actually pretty easy to use all things considered-

the new wine rack- it took four stores to find it!

flowers in bloom on December 29th- on the way to lunch---

the view from the deck-

we have had one grey day (below) and the rest have been beautiful and sunny like the above shot-

Penny enjoying the screened porch

I have a really lovely photo of a sunrise on the water but it is in RAW and I have yet to figure out how to get it into jpeg to post- will work on that one... meanwhile - we are thinking lunch outside today- December 30th...

we're baaaaccckkk!

arrived at River cottage last night after hours and hours of driving and a five hour "night" at a hotel in northern GA.... but today we got settled in and had our first sunset of the season- so Merry Christmas greetings from us to all of you and here is a lovely sunset river view to celebrate- we will call this our lighting for the holidays....