Our Environs

While in Florida, we've been staying in a 'manufactured home' community. On our daily walk, we go to a small pond and check out the turtles and mallard ducks that resided there. As soon as we show up, the turtles all come swimming over.

I like to think they're saying 'hello' but I think they really think I'm going to feed them. There is a sign posted that says not to feed the wildlife and to beware of the poisonous snakes. Ewww!

A mama mallard takes care of her 10 ducklings. There are 4 drakes that hang around but she's the only female. We walk over every day to take a headcount of the babies. (click on the photo to enlarge to count them yourself)
I could sit and watch them for hours as the little flotilla swims around the edges of the pond. There are always a couple of stragglers. In this video, the last couple of stragglers seemed to almost run on the surface of the water to catch up to the group.

I went back yesterday to take a headcount and they're down one duckling. It's the first casualty since they were born a couple of weeks ago. Mama's been doing a very good job of taking care of her brood.

The bottle-brush trees (aka Callistemon) are in full bloom now.They're at the same stage here as they were a couple of weeks ago when we were in Sarasota.

Skip's new camera takes great macro shots. You can see the yellow pollen on the tip of each of the 'brushes'. The bees love the pollen. Unfortunately, my allergies do not love the pollen and I've had allergies on top of a wicked cold for the past couple of days.Something I've never seen before is amaryllis in bloom in the ground. At home we force one or two bulbs to bloom around Christmas time. Here, they bloom with no apparent effort.
In knitting news, I have finished the lace stole and am now knitting on a border. I had only 60" (150cm) of yarn left after casting off, so am using the second ball for the border. I'm using the border from Eunny Jang's "Print o' The Waves" stole.
The unblocked stole is 62" long. I'm guessing it will block to about 78".
I'm sure it would have been plenty wide enough without the extra border but I had the extra skein of yarn so 'what the heck'.Right now it doesn't look all that impressive but I'm sure once it's blocked, it will look very spiffy.