This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields.
I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost for a century when another population was found elsewhere in the Strand. Chris and a group went down to this population about three years ago and let me tell you—it is in the boonies. The tram we took used to be clear-ish apparently, but not this time around. We waded through ferns up to our shoulders and ducked under, over and around Brazilian pepper bushes. Two + miles of that. And the water was still fairly high out there for this time of year, not to mention cold!
These are the little plants. They grow on floating logs in the water or in cypress knees in some areas.
This is my favorite shot. I used the reverse lens technique on my 18-55mm lens.
The flowers are very tiny; the whole plant is not but a few inches tall. They are very non-descript if you walked by them in their non-blooming state.
We didn’t see any animals other than a cottonmouth that swam in this area that Chris is at in the photo. It came out of nowhere, but I heard it splash and saw it go over the log and off into the woods. Very creepy! Oh, and a smaller cottonmouth, very tiny baby that wasn’t going to move because it was too cold. But other than that, only bear scat and nothing else!
Brazilian pepper is one of the worst plants in the world. Ok, in Florida. I’m sure in Brazil it is lauded as beautiful and awesome. But, not here. However, I was eyeing a seed pod on a strap leaf fern and thought that it looked pretty cool.
And so I thought this might be the only nice way I would enjoy a Brazilian pepper.
When we left we caught Mike Owen and Karen Relish and a few other Fakahatchee explorers in the park office. It was good to chat with them since it would be the last time to see them in awhile. There was another person there who took a group photo of us but I don’t remember his name, but I do know his friend read my blog at one point. If you are reading this—send me an email! I’d love to have a copy of that photo!
So, goodbye Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. I’ll miss you…but not your mosquitoes.
It was bittersweet taking our last ghost orchid trip to Little Slough. When Chris found our slough in 2007 (you’ll have to scroll down to May because I didn’t link titles back then) we’d been searching for ghost orchids for several years. We’d tromped all around Fakahatchee Strand looking for various plants and just exploring, not really knowing any different orchids.
When we found this orchid, Campylocentrum pachyrrhizum after a geocaching camping event, we were super excited because we thought it was a ghost orchid. Only, it wasn’t. Close—but no cigar. Sadly, this orchid isn’t even there anymore, it was taken by someone right off the tree. Bummer.
We looked for years and then we ended up knowing someone who’d been to a place and he tried to give us a description of where it was and finally Chris went out there in late April 2007 to try to find it. I stayed home because I had a cold, but when he called me to say he’d found what he thought was several hundred ghost orchid, I was excited! Later, when we got the coordinates from our friend for the original area, we discovered that we’d found a completely new and undiscovered batch of ghost orchids.
We spent that summer documenting the orchids and ended up counting 607 individuals. More or less. Now, probably less, as several have died. We would be tying ribbon on the trees and we’d see, one, two, three–no, wait, seven or eight on a tree. It was insane. That was a pretty awesome and interesting summer.
The next summer we spent several nights out video taping to see if we could get the pollinator of the ghost orchid on video. We ended up being successful. It was pretty insane sitting in the dark with the bugs and having a huge moth buzz your ear. And then we got it on tape—even more awesome!
So, on our trip out last Sunday we were a bit worried for our babies. The freezes we had a few weeks ago were severe enough to knock back mangroves down in the Naples area. It was really bad in the central part of the state. Luckily, they survived for the most part.
Two old spikes from last year.
I will miss visiting them.
A new spike is already forming on this ghost—to the left.
This is one that is on the way out.
We’ve entrusted the slough to our friends Kathy and Randy and a very small handful of others who know the location.
Goodbye Little Slough! We’ll be coming to visit in a few years.
Mostly because I’m obsessed with this song at the moment. M. Ward—To Go Home. Realized I loved it via my friend Sara and her wonderful playlist on her blog.
After going through the rest of my photos of Dinner Island I realized I didn’t have enough macro shots to warrant a separate post. Alas, you’ll get a mix of macro and sunset. I love looking at the little details…
Lichen holding on…
I think this is one of my favorite shots. It can be difficult to get light coming in like this, but I love it!
Probably my favorite sunset shot out of the set.
I didn’t think this one was going to turn out that great when I looked at it in the camera, but I think I like it!
A few things:
-Does anyone else have horrible spam comment issues with Wordpress? I NEVER had this problem with Haloscan (which is now closing its doors, so go download all of your comments now!), but I get at least one a day if not more and it is usually on the same post. I don’t want to moderate every comment but this is getting ridiculous!
-We now have a Trail Journal page. It has an RSS button as well. I am planning on copying and pasting on each. I did three posts, repeats of what was on here in order to get the journal listed on TJ, and you can do HTML so it will be easy to c&p. But, TJ has a gear section and we are slowly adding our gear to it. I will let you know when we’ve got it finished and you can have a gander at it.
-We went to Little Slough today to check on the ghost orchids and make it a farewell trip. The ghosts did much better than we thought. A few were already on their way out from a dry spring last year, but only a few had some yellowing on their roots. One even already has a spike! So, things are good there. I’ll bring photos of those later this week. It was a bit bittersweet leaving it, but we have some friends who will keep a good eye on it.
It is fairly quiet in the garden these days. After the cold snap, everything took a hit. I like this time of year because it isn’t so overwhelming. The grass doesn’t grow 10′ in a day and the vines aren’t trying to suffocate each other. It’s more relaxing.
A little bit more reverse lens technique for some closeups:
Going through my old scrapbooks the other day I realized that blogging has become my scrapbook. I abandoned the hardcore scrapbooking phase I went through a few years ago and it seems that it has been reflected here on my blog instead.
It has changed for me over time, blogging. I remember the days of blogger and live journal and it was quite a different era. There weren’t any pro-bloggers, people who made money writing. These days it seems there are people making money at writing on their site, giving their opinions, and while all of that sounds great, I’m glad to just be here writing for myself.
I think the future of my scrapbooking will be writing here, sharing my photos—because I thought the other day that sharing photos is one of the reasons to blog. I love taking photos. Then, what happens when I download them and then they sit on my computer or hard drive and languish? Gone are the days of photo albums and sharing photos in that manner.
For Christmas we made books for our parents and my brother and SIL. It was nice to see them in print, some sort of validation if you will.
The other day, on the deadline date for the Stranger Photo Challenge, I rushed to a nearby park hoping to gather up my guts and ask someone to take their photo. It’s one thing to casually take photos, but to ask someone to take their photo—it was painfully difficult for me. And I couldn’t do it. I had many opportunities, but I just couldn’t. It seems so ridiculous to even say that. I think the part about it is that it is a bit weird, you know? Going up to someone and asking to take their photo. Meghan did it great, I think. At least she has a good excuse, she’s starting a photography business, something which I haven’t begun to even think about.
I much prefer taking photos of animals and landscapes, they don’t look at you strange.
CNN had an article the other day about Twitter, here. It really summed up how I felt about Twitter. I keep resisting the talk in the blogosphere about getting on Twitter and how it helps businesses and getting more readers, this and that. But, what about next year? MySpace was the rage, Facebook, now Twitter. I want people to come here to read, not read on Twitter. And I don’t want to be that connected to posting.
For people who do use Twitter, what do you think? I just found Posterous today, via another blog, but I wonder about it, too. Again, it’s taking you away from the main site of a persons blog. It’s great for people who don’t have their own blog or their own space, but what about everyone else?
I’m a little lonely today. It’s cloudy outside, the sun hasn’t peaked out and said hello, the cats are curled up, and everyone is out somewhere, doing something and I’m not.
Reviewing the rest of the Cayo Costa photos make me a little depressed. Call it two weekends of not getting outside, that’s probably my problem.
So, I’m savoring the washed up fauna that found its way onto the shore…
Oystercatchers…the first time I’ve seen these birds.
A gannett…not sure if it was injured or feigning injury, but it was nice to see the bird up close.
I had the day off for a doctors appointment and spent the morning mowing the back yard. It was seriously over grown, weeds had over taken half the yard. I also surveyed the frost damage from last week. It always takes two to three days for the damage to be known and sure enough the tell-tale signs of browning and curling were beginning. The ylang ylang took a hit as did the tropical almond and other tenders. I once had a starfruit seedling that bit the dust after a 45* night. Very tender tropicals. I think most everything will recover now that it has warmed up, but I will keep a close eye on things for awhile.
We had two iguanas take up a roost in a hanging basket about a month ago and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them in awhile. We also had a black racer snake chilling in our front flower bed but I haven’t seen it in awhile either. I was nervous about running them over in the tall weeds, but I didn’t see anything. *phew*. We’ve hit a few snakes before that haven’t moved from the mower; I always feel bad about that.
After all of that I brought my camera out and did the reverse lens technique out there. This time it was sunny and I could set the ISO to 100 and all was well. Ok, minus the wind, which makes this even tougher without a mount! I had the tripod, just no mount. I think my endeavors turned out pretty well!
This little weed is what has taken over the yard. Bidens alba. It’s a great plant for butterflies and I do keep some of it around, but it seeds itself everywhere and has a tendency to become, well, weedy!
Blackberry lily berries…love this plant!
Amaranth…I got a plant from someone at a garden swap a few years ago because it is an edible grain and I thought I’d try it out. But man, does it seed itself everywhere. I haven’t been in the yard in awhile and the containers are full of little seedlings. Not to mention they have spikes on them so you have to be careful how you pull them out.
Sophora tomentosa, necklace pod, pods…a native to Florida.
Basil flowers…I should go collect the seeds.
White beauty berry. I transplanted this a few months ago from the tiny pot it was in to a much bigger pot and it hasn’t quite recovered. I think the rainy season will see it to better days.
I think I’m going to try this shot again because I couldn’t get the white in focus as much as I wanted. I am not sure what little egg sac that is, spiders maybe?
As for the frost and freezing temperatures, Saturday was bad, but Sunday seemed to be worse. I had ice on my windshield that morning and I found frozen puddles in the center part of the state on Monday morning. I’m actually very nervous for Little Slough and all of the ghost orchids. I’m hoping the water kept the area warm enough, but the wind was pretty bad and since it is winter the trees have defoliated. We’re going to go out and check in a few weekends to see how things fared.
We were at Dinner Island WMA on Sunday afternoon, driving around with our friends Randy and Kathy, when through the cattle pasture we heard this high pitched noise. Eventually we came up to the two bulls making the noise, in the midst of what seemed like a territory war of some sort, or maybe one was miffed the other took his gal. Who knows, but it was hilarious to watch them! Check out the puffs of steam coming out of his mouth—see it was cold here! Lots of throwing of dirt…it was great entertainment!
The photo challenge is up over at Meghan’s blog: Strangers on the Street. I know there are at least two people who read that I could persuade to participate….Robin and Eliana. ooh, and Shelly. There really aren’t any rules other than to break out of a rut and try something new. I’d say use whatever camera you’ve got and try being creative. We’re trying to put together something weekly, so hopefully it’ll work out.
I’ve got more reverse lens stuff to post later today…stay tuned!
