eating our way

around the island---
Phil's mother Sue arrived yesterday - right on time - from St Louis... we took her home to River Cottage to relax a bit before going out for a fabulous meal at the Sign of the Mermaid- where we had excellent fish and outstanding (award winning) pies for dessert.

then today we headed back to the island to eat lunch outside at the Waterfront where Phil has shrimp and oysters and I had carnitas and Sue had a burger (since we will have seafood again tonight on Longboat)

and just Tuesday night we had a wonderful dinner at AMOB (anna maria oyster bar) the nutty grouper for me and the stuffed lobster for Phil---

other than these things we have been giving Sue the VJS tour of Anna Maria with a full blown history of my family on the island starting in the mid 1920s...LOL (whether she wanted it or not...)

tomorrow we head south to meet up with Phil's brother Larry and spend some time in the sun in Miami.

oh and regarding the family history of the being on Anna Maria- I do promise a blog entry some time this year during our stay at River Cottage... along with some photos if I can find them...

Another stunning sunset

At River Cottage tonight

kitties keep watch

while we go other places and find out our birds are just as cool as the ones that people drive miles to see at bird watching spots...

keeping watch over the river at River Cottage

some of our birds:

and then the view at the Myakka State Park- a big bird watching venue:

Sandhill Cranes at Myakka River State Park

atmospheric view at Myakka River State Park

So we drove a half hour to see birds a lot further away and a lot less interesting than our own- who kenw? Now we do!

what else have we been doing?  looking at apartments for a rental next year and going out to eat at old favorites like Shake Pit (see Killer Cats post from last winter) and hanging out with our neihgbor/landlords for an evening of catching up.  in a day or two Phil's mom is coming for a visit and then we are all going to go to Miami to visit with Phil's brother Larry.  Will keep you posted of course...

Blues Boy King

was in town last night so we went to see the 86 year old guy who is still having a good time on the road - his joy for being in front of an audience was infectious and it was just plain fun to spend an hour or so with the King of the Blues...

I laughed when I read this blurb from the program-
BB King was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, where Sting of the Police made the induction speech. He received the Grammy "Lifetime Achievement Award" in December 1987 and won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Blues Foundation in 1997. 

His lifetime achievement Grammy was awarded more than 24 years ago!

You go guy!

a point of view

My mother-in-law Sue has a saying I love- "there is no one smarter than someone who agrees with you." So when my friend Tom sent me the article excerpted below I found it brilliant- LOL

from:

The Joy of Quiet

By PICO IYER

A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.”

so apparently watching birds and water isn't just good for me....

hard at work

while Phil sleeps late the kitties are hard at work at his desk helping get things started for the day....

islands in the stream

OK- blatant theft of title from Hemingway... LOL - but here is a series of photos that show a "new island" being formed in the windy conditions we had two days ago and of it floating down stream to us-

it eventually went around the bend and is undoubtedly resting at the end of the inlet having joined some other prior "break-aways"...

maybe I should have called this entry "Il Flottante" LOL

it was shaped like the continent of Africa-

and this bird rode it all the way down the river branch...LOL

and here is a series of a heron in flight over the river- that I still haven't mastered in focus but I thought it was cool to see his wing span...

and aren't his legs funny - just sort of following along there? 

atmosphere

when my sister and I were young - grade school age- we were huge fans of girl detectives- of course Nancy Drew would have been our introduction since my mom had also been a big Nancy Drew fan.  we loved Harriet the Spy and I remember carrying around a steno pad for a week or so to record my "observaitons" LOL-

but I thought of this today because one thing you always got from the cover of the Nancy Drew books was an incredible atmosphere of mystery.  I don't remember the exact title but one of the earliest I read was the "secret in the old swamp" LOL or some such- the cover had a swamp with trees covered in spanish moss and a ghostly paddle wheeler steam boat coming from behind the moss covered trees. 

now each moring and evening when the light gets dimmer I wait for the scene at River Cottage to bring the ghostly steamboat around the bend just beyond our own spanish moss covered trees- and it brings me a smile to think back to that time.  the other day in Costco they had the complete Nancy Drew book set but I didn't want to buy updated versions - I wanted Nancy in her roadster- even in our era roadster was an out of date term but we loved that kind of thing because then we knew these were the same ones my mother had read as a girl. 

or maybe this one looks a bit more spooky - LOL

Ha Ha Ha Ha--- found it!

one thing

you might have figured out between this year (already) and last year at River Cottage is that the sunsets can be absolutely magnificent- and just one example - from last night shows that even the "ordinary" ones can be incredible in the colors that show up-

I have to admit that while I like Monet well enough I never really got the thing about the hay stacks- until I started taking photos of the sunsets on the river here at River Cottage.  Now I am fascinated by the ever changing light that happens each day- not just at sunset but during the day as well.  This morning I awoke to drizzle and clouds with no sun at all - right now at around 11 AM it is cloudless blue sky and breezy but not much sun - so our ever changing view  (and its inhabitants) draw me away from whatever I am doing frequently each day.

in the last year of my sister's life she read voraciously- mostly because she could do little else and like me- she was never much of a television person.  I remember my mother telling me that one day she asked Janna what she did most of the time.  my sister's reply was I read - but mostly I watch the birds.  the hospital bed she lived in was located in the living room of her house and she had a wonderful view (easily more than 180* of wooded area that backed on to their house.  I remember thinking that if that were me I would go out of my mind and admiring her ability to find enjoyment in anything at all given what she had gone through and was going through.  but by early last year- roughly six months after she died I understood much better how much she must have gained from that time.

new year's eve wildlife

I know you have all been waiting patiently to see some new bird photos so I have a selection of things we have seen in the last 24 hours to get you started- I won't make you do the identification since we have a book here to look these up and I can tell you what they are (HA HA- urban dwellers that we are- we would be lost without the book)
the blue heron:

a gallinule (no, it is not a duck- LOL) it is a member of the coot family--- so of course feels quite at,l, home here- LOL

Phil's personal favorite the Anhinga (a member of the Cormorant family - a species we also have here on the river)

an osprey- looks from the distance like a bald eagle but has the white under body - in the hawk family - they eat fish and catch them in their taloned feet - which have a two two configuration on the talons rather than the usual one three combo (yes read one book and now I am an expert!- LOL)

and I included this less than stellar (technically) photo because I loved the composition of the bird in flight and his reflection on the river- if only I had been faster at setting up the shot I could have had this in focus...alas- that would apparently be the life of a nature photographer.

I love how you can see his feet dragging in the water as he gets his lift going--- magnificent birds--



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...