Florida Discoveries 22: NYSA Baseball

06. May 2012 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 22: NYSA Baseball · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday was one of the baseball-iest days I’d ever experienced.  Each of the boys had their own baseball games during the day, then we headed out to Pensacola and enjoyed seeing our new local AA minor league baseball team, the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, in their brand new stadium right on Pensacola Bay!  More on the Blue Wahoos later.

Our boys here play for Navarre Youth Sports Association’s baseball league.  As is typical in Florida, they’re serious about sports here.  And they start those boys EARLY!  Our own sons had never played baseball until we moved here, and it turns out there are several hundred boys playing baseball here, and several hundred more playing soccer in the same club.  And come this fall, ALL those boys (except my two) are playing football.

In this particular club (and I’m not sure who the national level organization is that this club now follows — last year it was Dizzy Dean, but this year it isn’t) the boys’ teams are simply named after the coach’s favorite major league team.  Last year Jacob was on the White Sox, this year he’s on the Tigers.  His current coach is indeed from eastern Michigan.  Timmy is on the Braves and he couldn’t be more excited about that.

I captured some pretty good pictures of the boys at their games yesterday.  They’re both respectfully among the youngest on their teams, and this is Timmy’s first year playing baseball.  It’s remarkable seeing their skills develop over the course of the season!

When my boys' teams are the "visitors" here, I'm sitting on the side that gives me a good view of the batter. Here's Timmy hitting a foul ball. He's become a VERY good hitter this season...

Two hours later, we were at Jacob's game. I haven't taken many pictures this season because I always fear I'm going to miss something while looking at the screen on the back of the camera. And in this case, I took this picture right before he hit this ball for a single! Do you see the ball in motion? It's hovering between the third baseman and the shortstop.

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Florida Discoveries 21: Dolphin Cruising in Destin

30. April 2012 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 21: Dolphin Cruising in Destin · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

We had a wonderful afternoon on a dolphin cruise. The weather couldn't have been more cooperative!

I guess it’s been a while since I wrote one of these “Discoveries” posts, isn’t it? It doesn’t mean we didn’t do anything — in fact, I’m reminded that I should relabel my USS Alabama, Mardi Gras and Santa Train posts “Alabama Discoveries”…we do seem to spend a lot of time there, don’t we?

Maybe while I’m at it I’ll rename our Atlanta road trips “Georgia Discoveries” 🙂

Thanks to a Groupon I purchased several months ago, we were able to take advantage of a dolphin cruise around Destin Harbor and the Gulf of Mexico this past weekend. The Groupon benefits expired on April 30th, so in typical Major Mom fashion, we took the trip on April 29th.

We took a 30 minute narrated tour of Destin Harbor and then traveled through the East Pass into the Gulf and got up close and personal with three separate pods of dolphins. As you might have read or heard, dolphins are indeed very social and friendly. The younger ones enjoyed showing off for us — trying to get as much air as possible when jumping! More »

Florida Discoveries 20: The Corner of Reef and Citrus

15. October 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

I took these pictures while on a run on Wednesday morning.  I need to learn more about some of these flowers, but these are around a stop sign on a nearby street corner.

I took these with my iPhone camera, and several of the pictures were zoomed in and didn’t turn out so well.

Enjoy!

Morning glories climbing up the stop sign…the first ones I’d seen all season.  I’m sure they’re around, I hadn’t paid attention, though.

Not sure what these are, if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to comment.

A gulf fritillary butterfly.  They’re everywhere around here right now…so pretty.

Florida Discoveries 19: You Can’t Grow Hops in Florida!!

28. September 2011 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 19: You Can’t Grow Hops in Florida!! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Many of my more loyal readers know that in Nebraska Dave and I were able to grow hops in our backyard.  We had a cool landlord/homeowner who gave Dave permission to dig up part of our backyard and string up trellises to grow hops (among other fruits and veggies).

In summer 2009 and 2010, we had this EPIC WIN of hops harvests!  The vines climbed up so high, and it was a lot of fun to learn about how hops grow.  We left Nebraska last fall with about 3 ounces of vacuum-sealed dried hops ready for the next time Dave decides to brew…probably once the weather cools down.

Here is how awesome the hops got in summer 2009:

The top ropes on this trellis are 8 feet tall!  These were awesome!
These flowers were ready to harvest in late July 2009.
Beautiful!

But here in Florida, the goal is survival!  I gave away several of our hops rhizomes and tossed a few in a lightweight pot when we moved from Nebraska to Florida.  This spring the rhizomes sprouted but without the appropriate humidity and sunlight (the sunlight requirements for ideal growing conditions are at 35-55 degrees latitude), we didn’t get much at all.  This morning I took some pictures of the plant at the most growth it had this year.  Here in Florida, all I can hope is that we keep these alive until we get back that far north again.  So far, so good.

You can’t make this stuff up!  About 2 feet long, compared to the 10-12′ vines from Nebraska just one year prior!

All I can do is hope that the plant remains alive while we’re living here….

Florida Discoveries 18: Chinese Hibiscus

29. August 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
Over the course of the day, the stamen will produce their bright yellow pollen, such as what’s seen here.  It’s all very fast…this flower was wilted by sunset.

As promised two posts ago, here’s a nice pretty post for you.  This is our Chinese hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) plant that grows in front of Jacob’s bedroom window in the front of our house.  I was pleased to see these flowers this summer, since the week we moved into the house in late November 2010, we had a hard freeze that essentially killed off the 5′ tall plant for the season.  But in April it came back!

Unfortunately, when the hibiscus plant has to start from scratch, it’s tough to get the profuse flowers that I was accustomed to in Hawaii (where my Dad was stationed then when I was ages 3-6) and Melbourne, FL (when we were stationed at Patrick AFB).  These flower bring back so many memories of living in Hawaii where our house (we lived in military housing) had a tall hedge-like row of hibiscus along one of the outside walls.

I’ve been seeing the occasional flower this summer…hibiscus flowers only last one day so it’s been tricky getting outside at the right time to photograph it.  It needed to be before lunchtime, and most of this summer I simply wasn’t thinking about heading out to photograph the front yard until it was too late in the day.

Once school started, and the kids were playing in the front yard while waiting for their respective buses, I had a chance on the first day of school to get these shots of a fresh bloom!

The flowers are about 5-6″ across.

Florida Discoveries 17: Narceus Americanus

25. August 2011 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 17: Narceus Americanus · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Ready to be grossed out?

This morning I went to the backyard to cover our grill (I forgot to cover it last night) and when I picked up the cover, this thing fell out and started walking across our patio:

At about 4″ long, you can’t just ignore this thing!

Okay, are you done screaming and climbing up to the highest point in the room?

These things are all over our backyard here.  Meet the Narceus americanus, or the North American millepede.  This thing is BIG!  And he’s FAST.  And after I finished doing the heebie-jeebie dance about it, I ran inside to get my camera.  It was a race to get some pictures before he made it to the grass and burrowed into the soil.

Don’t touch this millipede, it will exude some sort of irritant as a defensive mechanism.

Enjoy some more pictures!  I promise something MUCH happier and prettier tomorrow!

I took this picture for a size comparison.

Florida Discoveries 16: Follow That Bird! Help Me Identify a Bird….

25. August 2011 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 16: Follow That Bird! Help Me Identify a Bird…. · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

That beautiful garden from last March-May?  All but dead.  The insane heat, plus the lack of rain earlier this summer made it tough to maintain after our vacation.  Between the tomato hornworms, blossom end rot and other crap, I just said “forget it”.  It was too hot to even stand outside to prune.  No fun!

My herbs are surviving, which can be expected since they typically survive on less water than fruit-producing plants.  I let my basil go to seed — I tried to keep the seed stems picked off, but couldn’t keep up — and lately it’s been a popular hangout for my backyard birds.  More popular than the two bird feeder areas I have on a different part of the yard.

This has been fun because the garden containers are right outside our back door and the kids can watch the birds while they’re eating breakfast in the morning.  We’ve been seeing finches, sparrows and cardinals hanging out at my basil, and even the occasional bluebird who is after the bugs that hover around my herb flowers.

This photo was taken through my screen porch, there’s a house finch among the basil.

Latecomers hang out on my cucumber trellis to wait for their turn.
Much less traffic at the bird feeders.

This morning I had my usual assortment, but then this HUGE bird was trying to get in on the action.  (“Huge” is relative — I have a blue jay that hangs out in the front yard, but this is the biggest bird I’d seen in the back).  I haven’t researched what kind of bird he is, but I’ll post the pictures here and see if you can help me out.

My hypothesis: a northern mockingbird fledgling.

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Florida Discoveries 15: Great Blue Heron in Action!

24. July 2011 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 15: Great Blue Heron in Action! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

First of all, I learned that it’s “heron” and not “huron“.  Oops.  I was wondering why my Google searches kept directing me to Michigan-related websites…

Last night Dave and I went on a good old fashioned DATE!  The kids are visiting grandparents in the northeast through next weekend, and even though Dave’s hard at work these two weeks, we had a fantastic weekend!  Yesterday we went tubing on a creek in the northern part of the Florida Panhandle, then we went parasailing and wrapped up the evening with a delightful steamed seafood dinner.  I’ll be blogging about our parasailing next, but for now I wanted to share this cool series of iPhone pictures I took of this Great Blue Heron* enjoying some fish.  I didn’t have my good camera with me, since I didn’t want to lose it on the parasailing boat.

I thanked the family who bought the fish feed that lured the fish for the bird to eat…

*Yes, I’m capitalizing the full name of this species of bird, per this journal article.

He started out on the dock, staring intently at a patch of water near the public fish food machine.

Staring hard…

Now he’s on a floating platform just below the fish feed machine…he moved to this spot after a kid put 50 cents in the  machine and got a handful of fish food.

Splash!  He quickly darts his beak into the water as the fish come up to get the feed.

He got one!

After swallowing the first fish, he’s immediately on the lookout again…

Splash!

Another one!

You can see how the fish has enlarged his neck.

Florida Discoveries 14: Blackwater River Canoeing

07. July 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Maryann’s and my latest adventure: Canoeing on Florida’s Blackwater River.  Geologically, Florida’s Blackwater River is a “blackwater river“: tannins are leached out of the local vegetation giving the water a diluted-tea color.

Yesterday we took the kids up to Blackwater River State Park (about 25 miles north of our house) and picked up a pair of canoes at Blackwater Canoe Rental.  For about $42 per canoe, we chose the 1/2 day ride.  According to the folks at the canoe rental center, the timing applies to how much distance you have to cover.  You can take all day to do a 1/2 day ride if you choose to spend the day swimming instead.

Blackwater Canoe Rental also offers kayak and inner tube rentals — groups can rent any combination of canoe, kayak and tube and tie them together into groups.  I see a kayak/tube combo trip in our future!

We were put in a school bus that took us off-road through Blackwater River State Park to a put-in area 4 miles east of where we had parked the truck.  Maryann and I packed sandwiches and drinks for the gang, which were easily loaded into the canoes.  Each of us took two boys and we were on our way!

The kids didn’t quite know what to expect, but we were greeted with a gentle-moving freshwater river that averaged about 3 feet deep and was lined with the same really soft sand that exits through the east end of Pensacola Bay and into the Gulf of Mexico.  The water was considerably cooler than the Gulf waters we experienced this past weekend at the beach.

The boys were pretty good about taking turns paddling (all 4 boys wanted to help paddle, which was great for Maryann and me!).

It took us about 4 hours to cover the 4 miles, and that included 4 x 20-30 minute stops along the way.  The kids really enjoyed playing in the water and exploring the wildlife.  We saw birds, turtles and way-too-many-spiders!

Maryann took just about all of these pictures (I took the ones with her in them, along with a couple others) with her waterproof Kodak Easy Sport C123 camera.  Maryann turned many of the pics into a nice collage which you can see at her Fotomom blog.

Maryann has a Kodak waterproof camera, which is what she used for all these photos.  Jacob looks like he’s ready to slice Timmy in half.  Timmy’s doing this unicorn thing which I’ll explain later.

Love these pics of the boys playing on this log.

Maryann was trying to capture splashes…

There was a particularly deep spot here that the kids would drift through with their floatation devices.

A spider?  YIKES!  A group of teenagers/college kids drifted past this tree stump in their tubes, saw the spider, freaked loudly, and then got their tubes tangled on this stump.  They were stuck for several minutes until one of us untangled them.  Maryann and I were fascinated by the spider (along with our sons) and the young adults thought we were fearless!

This is Timmy’s portrayal of a Pokemon named Samurott.  He has a unicorn-like horn and these bearded growths protruding sideways from his mouth. 

Florida Discoveries 13: Pensacola Lighthouse

06. July 2011 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 13: Pensacola Lighthouse · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

As is always the case when I get together with Maryann the Fotomom, today was an adventure.

We took our boys to NAS Pensacola today and enjoyed an hour or so at the Pensacola Lighthouse before spending the rest of the day at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, which we’d visited before.

At the lighthouse, Maryann and I walked with our kids up the 177 steps and then enjoyed the stunning views.

There’s a nice little museum at the base of the lighthouse.  The museum is free of charge, but expect to pay $5 per adult and $3 per child, senior or military member to ascend the lighthouse itself.  There is a volunteer at the top to answer questions and point out what you’re looking at in your 360 degree field of view.

The lighthouse also hosts a unique viewing experience for Blue Angels practice airshows ($15 from the top of the lighthouse, you have to make reservations).

Are you interested in the paranormal?  The lighthouse was featured on Ghost Hunters in 2009 and the TAPS team apparently had a very exciting investigation.  You can reserve ghost tour spots via this website — tours are offered 1-2x per month.

We were lucky enough to see Fat Albert and The Blue Angels parked at their home hanger nearby, plus great views of the Aviation Museum, Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key.

I had a good time photographing the spiral staircase.

All the kids were pretty cautious walking up the steps.  

A nice view of the entire National Museum of Naval Aviation.

That’s “Fat Albert”, which carries the Blue Angels’ support crew and equipment to all their destinations.  You can see the tails of 3 of the Blue Angels behind the hangar.

Great sign!  Albeit a bit morbid…
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