txtourista2019

. . . you've seen it all, maybe you get a little quieter, a little more receptive to happenstance. Saturday I was in the Old City, parked on a bench with a terrific cabbage filo turnover from the big farmer's market. I was opposite the grand Ponce de Leon Hotel (a Gilded Era extravaganza now Flagler College), where I'd been a dozen times before. Suddenly, the hotel's carillon burst into song. I'd had no idea there was a carillon. It was lovely. Strolling through the courtyard at the Alcazar Hotel (now City Hall and a museum), where I'd also been many times, I noticed for the first time what looked like a gumball machine. I'd never noticed that the little courtyard pool had koi you could feed for a quarter. In the afternoon, I took my usual walk on the beach at low tide, expecting nothing. It's a bare beach--not a stick of driftwood, not a rock; only some small, scattered shells and the occasional j...

If you have to deliver guests to the airport at Orlando, you deserve a reward, yes? In this case, a visit to the elegant Harry Leu gardens. Featuring exotics, Florida natives, and an "idea garden" to help local enthusiasts broaden their repertoires, among other things, this is a great place to spend an hour or two. I'm a fan of bromeliads, and there was no lack of strange and beautiful varieties. I love the way one species can provide support for another, or several others. This being the semi-tropics, I suppose, things that we in the North think of as house plants run rampant. Azaleas are so common as to almost pass notice. But I always notice camellias! And what is this? I haven't a clue, but I sure did like it!

Ponce de Leon knew a good place when he saw it (he first spotted land just north of here). Among other natural wonders, the sky is big here. I guess it is whenever you're at the beach. It's been clouding up every afternoon, threatening fiercely but seldom delivering. Except that as soon as I wrote that, it started to rain. In my attempt to explore all the green spots on the map within an hour or so of St. Auggie, I thought I'd seen everything. That was only because I hadn't yet made it to Big Talbot Island. I knew and loved Little Talbot, one of my favorite beaches, but hadn't gone the extra ten minutes up the road. This time we did, and discovered Boneyard Beach. They call it driftwood, but it hasn't drifted anywhere. These were live oaks that got their soil pulled out from under them. They fell unceremoniously onto the beach, and there they remain, battered and bleached by salt water and wind, mostly facing the same direction....

There seems to be no end to the marvels of nature in this part of the world. Steve bought us a wonderful late-day eco tour: by catamaran through marshes and up and down the river. We mostly saw the usual suspects, but it was a delicious adventure. An egret tree! And some lovely scenery. The beaches have other animals, sadly no longer alive. Jellyfish are the most interesting. We've found moon and comb jellies, but the cannonball jelly is my favorite: what an odd creature! Then there's the Alligator Farm, a combination tourist attraction/research center, which has both every kind of crocodilian in existence AND, more or less by accident, a rookery with all the storks, spoonbills, egrets and herons a girl could wish. But that's another story: Fauna, part 3.

I go to Kingsley Plantation, near Jacksonville, every year. I write about it every year, too, so skip all this if you want. The Plantation is such a good reminder of how easy it is for us humans to fall into evil and how we, and society, find ways to justify it. Zephaniah Kingsley was a slave trader who "married" a 13-year-old slave. She, Anta Madgigine Jai Kingsley, was freed by Zephaniah at 18 and became a capable, independent woman, in charge of his sea island cotton plantation when he was away. She owned property--and slaves--of her own. Zephaniah advocated against cruel, punishment-based slave systems. He figured that a reasonably happy slave, with some control over his own destiny, would work harder and cause less trouble than an angry, bitter slave. So he allowed his slaves (200 or so of them) to earn some money, own guns and hunt, have their own tiny patches of garden, and work toward being freed. He didn't believe in whipping, and he didn't believe in s...