Surprise blooms, Strawberries, Dr. Seuss, and Sponges

All of the above happened this week.  I will start with the surprise blooms.

My orchid, which I bought a year ago here in Florida, finally bloomed!  It has had buds on it since December, and I was starting to fear that they would never open. I thought that orchids were difficult to grow, much less try to accomplish that while being on the road.  Someone told me once that different water and light does not matter to orchids, but that what is important is that they feel safe.  That I could give my orchid!   Course I worried that since we have been boarding our daughter's cat Zelda the plant may not feel very safe.  So far she has killed one plant and chewed off half the leaves on my shamrock. My Christmas cactus has been happy, despite the presence of the cat.  It usually blooms once a year, before Thanksgiving.  As you can see in the picture above, it is currently full of blooms.

We picked strawberries last Monday at Hunsader Farms in Bradenton, Florida.  Our grandson Nathan joined us in the fields, however he ate more than he picked.  Since that day he is still looking for strawberries whenever we walked near any brush or grass.

Next to the Sunken Gardens is a children's museum, Great Explorations Inc.  We had been wanting to visit that museum for some time.  The birthday celebration of Dr. Seuss was happening there this past week, so it seemed a good time to visit the place with Nathan.  He was not enamored with Cat in the Hat, but there were many other activities which caught his attention while visiting the museum.  It is a great place mainly for preschoolers, and has a preschool on the premises.

Saturday John and I revisited Tarpon Springs.  You may remember from another posting that the town is known for its harvesting of sponges.  The bike pictured above is decorated with them.  We explored the town a bit more because in the past we have only walked along its docks.  We found the Tarpon Springs, in another section of town.  And near that area is the historic section of town where we discovered St.Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral.  Built in 1943 it is the replica of St. Sophia's in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Fortunately a wedding was going to occur about 15 minutes after we arrived, so we were able to take a brief look at the inside of the church.  It is quite an awesome cathedral with its icons, numerous stained glass windows and 3 large chandeliers from Czechoslovakia. 

  

Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo, Part 2

One area of this zoo which proved to be quite interesting is the Florida Wildlife Center.  Here we were able to view turtles, alligators, a panther and black bears.  An interesting fact we learned about the latter is that in warmer areas of the country as Florida they do not hibernate during the winter, only sleep a lot.

Also in the Florida Wildlife Center is a manatee hospital.  In the large tanks near that building we got a closer look at manatees than we had of them in the warm waters of the power plant several weeks back.  Here they were up close to the top of the water because food had just been put out for them.
It was also feeding time in the skunk den while we were there.  I did not get a good picture of it, but skunks were out wandering among ibis and sand hill cranes while a zoo keeper was tossing out some sort of food, that was an unusual sight!

Something else interesting which we saw was in Primate World where orangutans were holding up pieces of cloth over their heads. Notice the baby at the mother's right elbow in the picture above.  And something else which we had not seen in other zoos is the presence of hens and roosters among the monkeys, here they are used to keep the insects down among the primates.

There are several areas of this zoo where a variety of birds may be seen.  In the Sulawesi Aviary caged birds were quite actively flying around and a few were willing to pose for me, as the mustached Inca tern pictured below.  That seabird can be found along rocky coastlines.

Sulawesi is an island in Indonesia.  An fascinating creature from that part of the world is a miniature water buffalo.  It is considered a type of wild cattle similar to deer.  They have 2 rear ward pointing horns which allow them to run through underbrush without getting tangled.  Humans are their only predators.

In the picture above "Bindi" , a young anona calf ( in Sulawesi anona is the word for "buffalo")  born in 2014, is nudging her mom to get up.  She kept poking her until she did get up, and then ran from her.  Maybe it was not feeding time or perhaps it was time to wean her, but mom was not obliging the calf.
That is some of our highlights while we were at the Lowry Zoo.  Fortunately our admission ticket allows us to come back again when we can take in some of the animal shows and keeper talks.

Lowry Park Zoo

We had been avoiding this zoo because of the admission cost of $30.00.  But we do have a two-year old grandson with whom it would be fun to go with and visit any zoo.  On Saturday we joined Nathan and his parents at the Lowry Zoo in Tampa.  Our first stop upon entering the park was the Wallaroo Station, which is designed for preschool age children.

Pictured above is a wallaby, one of the exhibits in this part of the zoo.  In this area there is a petting zoo.  While Nathan was engaged in feeding the goats, I was entertained by two goats fighting over a female of their species.

What an impressive bit of drama!  When the larger goat reared up, like he is doing in the picture above, he would then come crashing down and bang his head against the head of the white goat.

John thought that they were playing.  However, there was a third goat involved- the black one whom the white goat would occasionally nuzzle affectionately between the bouts of fighting.  Besides the petting zoo, there are also carnival rides offered at the Wallaroo Station, and they were the reason Nathan wanted to spend his whole day in this area of the zoo.  Fortunately he was too short to ride most of them and we were able to convince him to go over to Safari Africa.

It seems that what makes this zoo so costly are the free zoo rides, which number about 8, as well as  "wild interactions" with lorikeets, sting rays, manatees, and giraffes.  Nathan enjoyed feeding a giraffe some lettuce, there was an extra fee of $5.00 for that experience.  It was interesting to be that close to a feeding giraffe, if nothing else but to get a close view of his blue tongue - it is quite long!   We noticed that same tongue on another animal which we saw on the Expedition Africa Guided Safaris ride.  The okapi is closely related to the giraffe, while observing him I saw the calf (born in 2015) clean his back with his long tongue.

 

What a strange animal, right?  The species was first described by western scientists in 1901.  The solitary secretive creature is native only to the Ituri Rainforest in the Congo.  It is thought that the stripes on his legs are useful to the young in following their mother.  
Unfortunately Nathan and his parents did not join us for the safari ride, the wait for that was about 45 minutes because of the long lines.  John and I were able to do that later in the day after they had left.  The wait was still 45 minutes, and after taking the ride we decided it had not been worth the wait.  The expedition just took us past more caged animals- the train ride at the St.Louis Zoo is definitely better! 
John and I did enjoy other interesting areas of the zoo, which I will write about in the next posting.

Tarpon Springs Aquarium

John and I have visited the town of Tarpon Springs several times in the past.  However I do not believe that I have written a posting on it.  Briefly, Tarpon Springs was an important center for sponge fishing when Greek divers came to the area in the early 1900s.  The industry is not thriving as it had been, but the Greek influence is still present and can be noticed in the sponge shops, restaurants and bakeries of the town today.  There is sponge fishing exhibitions, John and I took a cruise in the past to see the sponge divers at work.

We had just entered the aquarium when we noticed that a staff member had turned over a large sea snail to show the creature inside.  He informed us that it is one of Florida's largest predatory subtropical and tropical sea snails.

 

The aquarium has an entire wing dedicated to "hands-on" educational experience for visitors to experience petting and feeding a variety of species of rays and sharks.  In the picture above our daughter Melissa is feeding a sting ray.  For someone who is afraid of little bugs and insects, it is amazing how sea creatures do not seem to faze her!

 

The aquarium has a simulated coral reef complete with tropical plants and fish.  I was immediately drawn to it because it was so colorful.  A sign near the display notes that coral reefs are the most biodiverse environment in the world.  More tropical plants and animals are found on them than anywhere else in the world.

 

 Sadly coral reefs are disappearing at an alarming rate.  Some types of fishing activities, pollution, and global warming play a part in their destruction.

One last picture here is that of the Goliath Grouper, the largest in the grouper family- which are in the bass family.  The Goliath Grouper can weigh over 680 pounds.  The aquarium is small, but we certainly felt that we saw a lot.  There are also eels, lobsters, octopus, anemones, as well as a variety of large snakes.

Saturday Morning Market

There have been no postings recently from me because I have not even been near our computer.  I had   moved in with our daughter much of the time over the past couple of weeks because her husband, Spencer was studying for the bar at his mother's house in Dunedin.  All we could tell our grandson son Nathan was that his Dad was "studying",   Over time he eventually seemed to understand that concept.  His Dad did make it in for Nathan's birthday party.  It was a noisy party, as Nathan received drums and a guitar.  He did not care about any of his other gifts, not even the cake and ice cream.  He was either banging his drums, or strumming his guitar for the duration of his party.

Nathan,  his Mom Melissa and I have had lots of good times at the beach over the past couple of weeks.  Nathan loves running in the ocean, despite the fact that the water is cold and seems to cause his nose to forever drip.  When we can convince him to come out of the water he loves to play soccer on the beach, tear down other people's sand castles, and dig small holes in the sand to to explore.

Last Saturday we drove into St.Petersburg for the Saturday Morning Market.   According to the Tampa Bay Times, it is the largest produce market in Florida with over 170 rotating crop of  vendors.  Currently it is prime produce season in Florida.

It seemed as though everyone in Florida was at the market.  The  crowds and lines were difficult to deal with, what with having a two year-old along with us.  We soon discovered that it was not only the produce which brought out the crowds, but also the many food vendors.  Here at the market one can find a meal or snack of French, Ethiopian, South American, Greek food- to name but a few.  One farm was selling fresh strawberries- the line for that was to long for us to stand in.  Fortunately we were looking for certified organic produce, and that narrowed our search down to one produce stand run by the Worden Farm.  It is an 85 acre farm and had everything we were looking for, primarily;  tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, green beans and broccoli.  While shopping one of us always stayed with Nathan at the bandstand.  He spent his whole time at the market clapping his hands to the music and just people watching.  It also helped to keep him fed!

Two Day Trips

We had been wanting to take our grandson Nathan to an aquarium.  The Clearwater Marine Aquarium may not have been the best choice, as it is more of a working marine rescue operation than aquarium.  A big attraction at the aquarium is Winter, the wild bottlenose dolphin rescued in 20006 by the center and featured in the movie Dolphin Tale in 2011. 

Winter needed help to survive after loosing her tail,  and at the center she received a prosthetic one.  At the time we saw her she did not have it on and noticed that her tail curves downward without the dorsal fin  A staff member informed us that it is too heavy for her to have it on all the time.   In 2013 the aquarium initiated a photo-identification program to study wild bottlenose dolphins in the Clearwater Bay.  They discovered that individual dolphins can be identified by photographs of their dorsal fin.  About 62 wild dolphins have been identified, given names, and studied to learn about their population's social behavior, biology, health, communication, and habitat use.  Recently they identified Troy, a dolphin rescued and rehabilitated in 2006.  If you saw Dolphin Tale 2 his release was featured in that movie.

At the aquarium we were encouraged to touch the stingrays, one is pictured above.

Yesterday, Monday, John and I rode the Pinellas bike trail through St. Petersburg.  The trail is 40 miles long, of which we rode only a small portion.  There was a fairly strong wind yesterday and we wore out quickly when riding against it.  Our drive took us on a bridge over a small inlet of the bay where we stopped to watch an oyster catcher searching for food.

You may need to enlarge the above picture, or get a magnifying glass to see the two gray willets in the picture above.  One thing you can see in the foreground of the picture are the stilt-type roots of a red mangrove tree.  The walking tree grows in saline coastal waters and is a habitat for oysters.  We saw willets and oyster catchers feeding near these trees.

That is a little egret sitting in the bed of a truck.  I at first thought he was sitting there because of the presence of wood in the truck.  Then the door of a nearby sub shop opened and the bird flew to it.  Unfortunately someone in the past has fed him bread crumbs and now the egret has expectations of a daily hand-out.  That is most unfortunate, such practice by humans has led to the demise of many wildlife!
One last item here.  Returning to our car I noticed a hawk on the ground tussling with some critter he had just caught.  A man standing nearby informed me that the hawk had just pounced on a snake and had to subdue it before swallowing it.  He commented to us that he frequently walks the trail and usually is fortunate to see a lot of wildlife around him.   Hopefully we can get out on the trail again at some later time.



 

Henry Plant Museum- Part two

The old Tampa Bay Hotel has been designated a National Historic Landmark because in 1896 it served as the headquarters for the United States Army during the Spanish-American War.  On the veranda of this hotel officers and career soldiers, some of who had perhaps not seen each other since the Civil War, rocked and sipped on their mint juleps or iced tea while planning strategies for the war which was raging down in Cuba.  Journalists observing the officers dubbed them the “Rocking Chair Brigade”

   As I gazed over the expansive porch I sure wished that I could turn back the years to that time, if nothing else but to watch the activity on the veranda!   By the way, one of the journalists reporting on the war was Stephen Crane (author of Red Badge of Courage).   He stayed at the hotel, as well as Edith Roosevelt who came down here often to visit her husband Teddy Roosevelt

 

The lobby of the hotel is now the admissions office for Tampa University.  Imposing statues and classical music flowing out of the music salons are now the only hints of the former ambiance of  the hotel.

The halls off of the lobby, which lead to administrative offices of the university, seem endless.  And while wandering down one hallway I espied the old wooden Otis elevator which at one time was powered by a hydraulic system.  In 1925 it was converted to electricity.  And pictured below is one of the grand staircases, which lead to classrooms upstairs.  Student notices hang on the marble columns.  Horse's heads are on the newel posts.  Also notice the key hole feature on the landing.

 

We had watched a video in the museum which mentioned the hotel’s dining room, back in its day it could feed 800 people at one time.  In my wanderings I came upon Fletcher Hall, which I later learned was the old dining room.  It now serves as a venue for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other social events.  

What a beautiful building!  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a student within its walls today.  One last picture here, of the back of the building.  Again, take note of its length.

 

Henry B. Plant Museum

We first noticed the minarets of this building when we visited Tampa's art museum.  They certainly make for an interesting and unique city skyline!  They are part of what once was the Tampa Bay Hotel, built in 1891 by Henry Plant.  The hotel has been touted as "Florida's First Magic Kingdom".

Henry  Plant was a very successful industrialist, as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller.  He built an extensive railroad system from South Carolina to Tampa, as well as steamboats and 8 hotels in Florida.  The Tampa Bay Hotel was the flagship of them all.  Two thousand people attended the grand opening and it had a "Grand Illumination".  Meaning that it was fully lit by electricity, of which many Floridians would not yet have for decades to come.  The opulent Victorian hotel was in operation for 40 years, and only open during the winter months.  During its time of operation it was visited by such notables as Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Clara Barton, Teddy Roosevelt- to name but a few.

Maybe the above picture gives you an idea of the size of this very large building which has 500 rooms.  When Jon and I walked around the outside of the building there just seemed no end to it!  Part of it now is a museum, but the majority of it belongs to Tampa University.

Story has it that Mr. and Mrs. Plant toured Europe and purchased  paintings, statues, antique furniture, Venetian-style mirrors and a variety of ceramics which filled 41 train cars.  Such furnishings decorated the Tampa Bay Hotel.  Many of them have been saved and now can be seen in the museum.  Pictured above is a polyptych from late 19th century Germany.  It was once used to hang in the music salon of the hotel.  The panel of pictures celebrates wine, women and song- which were daily activities at the hotel.  Famous actors, musicians, and entertainers performed here as John Philip Sousa, Anna Pavlova and Sarah Bernhardt.

The Writing and Reading room is the most historically accurate room in the building.  The yellow wall color was discovered and reapplied.  The tops of the chairs have swan's heads, which I found interesting.

Another interesting room is a bedroom tucked under one of the minarets.  Notice the key hole arches above the bed, an architectural feature of the hotel.  The round curved windows in that small nook had to be custom made.  In the bedrooms were musical instruments- guests could call for a piano to be brought to their room, which they could play themselves or hire someone to play for them.
We had to step out of the museum and enter the rooms of the university to see the rest of the hotel, I will save that part of our tour for the next posting.

Florida State Fair

There is plenty to do for all ages at the fair in Tampa.  Note I said all ages, as we had a toddler in tow and what he likes are music shows and livestock.  Also, we had only four hours before his nap time.  So that called for some major strategic planning as you can see in the photo below.

We were in luck.  At Cracker Country (a living museum celebrating Florida's rural past) a music show was going on.  Notice in the picture below the large live oaks and Spanish moss- not too often we see them at other state fairs which we have attended..  With palm trees and a small lake in another area of the fair, it was not the usual fair settings which we are accustomed to.

  The music was so good that Nathan did not care to see the rest of the fair.

Fortunately there was a donkey close by, pressing sugar cane.  Florida ranks number one in production of sugar cane in the United States.  Fortunately there are now better ways  of processing it!  A lot going on in Tampa's only living history museum; as tours of some older homes, blacksmithing and weaving demonstrations, as well as production of cane chairs.  While John and I spent some time in those areas, Melissa took Nathan to tour one of America's last wooden cabooses.

A wonderful feature of the fair this year is a White House Exhibit.  It is the result of 50 years of work by an Orlando resident, John Zweifel.  He collects presidential memorabilia as President Franklin Delano's custom 1939 Cadillac pictured above.  In the White House exhibit people have an opportunity to take selfies of themselves at the oval desk, a podium of the press briefing room, or in front of the capitol.  For people who have never visited Washington D.C. or any of the presidential museums, it is a fantastic exhibit. 

We did make it to the livestock barn where Nathan enjoyed feeding the goats and sheep.  There were also other interesting animals on display, as a yak, a water buffalo and 4 horned Jacob sheep.  Clydesdale horses were also in one of the barns.

Male and female of this breed of sheep may have 2 and as many as 6 horns.  Our final stop was at a butterfly house where I found another Biblical name given to a certain butterfly species.

Melissa and I were given special wands to capture the butterflies.  I not only had a monarch butterfly on mine, but also a Malachi.  One staff member informed me that the species is a native of Florida.
That was our day at the Florida state fair, and it was not long enough.  For Nathan it was all that he could take in for one day, he feel asleep on the way home.  As a rule, he never falls asleep in his car seat!

Tampa Museum of Art

We were pleasantly surprised to discover that this art museum is along the river walk of Tampa.  Unfortunately the day was cool and overcast with a threat of rain.  I was so tempted to head out on the river walk, but decided that there were going to be better sunny days ahead when John and I could even possible bike the path along the bay.

Currently, outside and inside the museum, there is the work of one of the world's foremost living sculptors- Jaume Plensa.  This special exhibit of the artist is titled  Human Landscape.  The artist has created all over the globe large-scale artwork related to the human figure.  Several of his art pieces can be found outside of the museum.  Pictured below is his Heart of Trees.  Each of the seven bronze figures is a self portrait.  Arms and legs are wrapped around living trees which pay homage to such great composers of the 19th and 20th century as Gershwin, Bizet Wagner and others.  Their names are inscribed on the shirts of the figures.

 Music profoundly affects Plensa's artwork, as seen in another one of his sculptures in the exhibit which is a human head with musical notes on it.  He also liked poetry as a sensory experience, as seen in his hanging display of letters called Silent Rain.  Those letters form words which compose lines of poetry taken from 8 poems written by different authors.  It is one piece of artwork which can be touched and felt!

Awilda and Irma were created in 2014.  The large stainless steel mesh heads, according to the museums interpretive sign near the artwork, allow light and air to show the inside and outside of the heads.  Viewers are then encouraged to consider inner and outer beauty.

As I have noted before, every small art museum we have toured always surprises us.  Plensa's artwork in the museum, the largest to date, has displaced much of  this museum's other exhibits.  However, there are a couple displays of artwork in the lobby which we found interesting.  We were drawn to the one below because it had moving parts.

The above artwork is titled Simply Beautiful.  It was done by Cuban artist Mabel Pujols.  She made a state-sponsored visit to a women's prison in Holguin,Cuba where the inmates make plastic flowers from recycled materials.  She placed those flowers on bicycle spokes, which are activated to move around a portrait of a lady by a motion sensor.  According to museum information, it creates an on-going formation and deformation of the face.  The artwork explores "the expression of the material and spiritual freedom that the search (for) beauty can provide".

The Classical World is the only complete exhibit currently left on display in the museum.  It is artwork produced in ancient Greece and Italy as well as North Africa and the Near East.  Fish carved on a piece of terracotta pottery, as well as the Christogram on the oil lamp fragment pictured above, caught my eye.  I had learned in church history classes about how the early Christians had used those symbols to identify themselves as followers of Christ.  To actually see those symbols on the ancient pottery was quite impressive for me!