Flying far from frozen feet for fun, Florida forewarned "Falling Figs".
Edison planted many tropical trees, shrubs and flowers from around the world at his summer estate in Fort Myers. He did experiments with them, looking at ways to make latex and other compounds...
I found no fallen figs, hoping to make a Newton if I had.
Spending time in an airport between flights can be fun if you know where and how to look. Peggy made friends with this frisky fellow, so excited to see her, he bolted through a gift shop window. We had fabulous big burgers at a Chili's in the Minneapolis airport.. delicious, and they actually had pretty good coffee too.
Not sure of exact spelling, these gorgeous shrubs are borders and hedges around the Edison/Ford estates... bougavelia pronounced boo-gah-vale-e-ah. They are common in yards around town too, like lilacs in Minnesota. The pink is actually not the blossom, more like the colored leaves of a poinsettia, the flower is a tiny white blossom hiding in the clusters of pink... people were drawn to the shrubs all over to take pictures and investigate the color.
It was easy to find stumps and posts to set our camera for self-portraits... we had a few offers for help, but declined."we are good at this", and it's fun to run back and get into position... hah!
Behind us it Edison's Summer home, nice and relaxing style, not a mansion but very cool. Way ahead of it's time for design and function.
This is a stand of big bamboo... one of the reasons Edison was drawn to this area, wanting to research uses for the fibers.
The entire estates of Ford and Edison are very comfortable and lovely, we did not want to leave... everywhere is something of interest or beauty. It was warm but not hot, a hint of breeze and light cloud cover to keep the Sun off our skin, it was a perfect day together.
Near the Fort Myers beach area, this is typical architecture style... tropical and whimsical.. really fun.
We spent the better part of the morning one day, walking in the soft sand, getting Sunshine and watching the beach fill up with vacationers.. more on that some other post.
Sister Paula's backyard is fun to explore also, for us from Brainerd...
Climbing, night blooming cactus', vines, mangoes, palms, orange trees and other great vegetation all over.
This is an OLD stone cistern used, many years ago to collect rain water from a gutter system... it has been engulfed totally by vines and tree roots, no longer accessible, but very cool to look at, a real head-scratcher.... and it was loaded with those funny little jumping lizards.
It was great to have a taste of Summer before our Spring even begins here at home... Peggy and I counted it as another extension of our Honeymoon!
Peace!
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