A crimp in the travel plan

Two days before we're supposed to leave on a trip to Spain, and look what Mother Nature has in store for us. The house will be buttoned up tight so I'm not worried about it, but do you think we can get out of here before Tropical Storm (Hurricane?) Erika arrives?

Just my luck!

Well, it wasn't raining when I started to wash the car. In fact, I checked the sky just before I started and it was very sunny. Ten minutes later.... That's Florida for you! The rain we have been needing for weeks finally arrived!

Smells of summer

Enjoying lots of Caprese salads this summer with our delicious fresh basil plant.... Nothing like the fragrance of fresh, organic basil!

Went on a bike ride at the beach today, and I was watching all the people at family or group picnics. It was heartwarming in this day and age to see so many children and adults happy to be spending time together outdoors. It reminded me of when I was a teenager living in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and my dad would announce that we were all going to the beach. My mom would make burgers or buy chicken for him to grill, and we’d take coolers of food and beverages to one of those public picnic shelters on the beach in Destin. We’d spend the whole day body surfing, building sand castles, and eating the delicious food my dad cooked. He was in his element at the grill and at the beach. And when my sister Lynda would come down with her family from Montgomery, it was even better. The more the merrier! What a simple, blissful time that was. 

I miss my dad. He would be 95 if he were still alive. I know that’s too old to be grilling burgers at the beach, but I miss him anyway. And I miss those happy days of childhood. As one of his favorite entertainers used to say, “Thanks for the memories!"

Save the honeybees!

We had a beehive growing under the fill hatch of our in-ground propane tank. Marcus didn't want the gas company to disturb the hive when they come for the next fill-up, so he called a master beekeeper who came by to check out the hive. She said the queen was very pretty and left this "mobile home" sprayed inside with sugar water. Two days later the queen and more than 95% of her workers had transferred over to their new home and were well on their way to building a new honeycomb. The beekeeper collected the box and transported them to a new, permanent location in the country. So happy to have helped successfully relocate these honeybees. So many are of them are dying off now.

It may have been tiny, but it was juicy and delicious - and homegrown! We grew it in the landscaped bed next to the house. So easy to do in the subtropics!

Playin' hooky!

It's just too gorgeous a day to be sitting inside editing my next book. We picked up trash on our adopted road today (that in itself was a good reason to be outdoors!), ran some errands, and ended up on Manatee Pocket for a late lunch. Could have sat here for ever!

Birthdays at the beach

I knew there was a reason I retired in Florida. Love the beach in December! We went to Blowing Rocks Nature Reserve in Hobe Sound to watch the wild surf pound against the coquina, then to Sandsprit Park in Port Salerno to look for dolphins. Found them playing just outside Manatee Pocket! On the way home we stopped by our secret manatee-watching spot to see if there were any about. We saw around a dozen feeding just below the surface of the water. That's a manatee nose you see poking out of the water in the last photo!

Breaking bad

One of my guilty pleasures of retirement is being able to watch television series—in their entirety—on Netflix. We’re not big on watching TV series as they air, only because we forget to turn on the television until we go to bed at night. No problem, if you have Netflix online streaming. We don’t even have to wait for a DVD to arrive in the mail. We can catch up on a season in one week—if we can handle the shift in our circadian rhythms. Many is the time we’ve been up until the wee hours of the morning because we have to see “just one more episode.” And retirement allows us to sleep in the following day.

Series we’ve watched on Netflix include Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife, Bramwell, Doc Martin, Monarch of the Glen, All Creatures Great and Small, Last Tango in Halifax, Sherlock, West Wing, and most recently, Breaking Bad. You notice a proclivity to British series? I am mad about good British television.

The problem with immersing yourself in an entire series? When the series ends, you feel as if your family has abandoned you. When I see the cast of Downton Abbey now, after a nine-month hiatus between seasons, I want to sob with joy at having them back in my life again. I want to drop in on Chummy and Peter to see how Baby Fred is getting along (Call the Midwife). I've got a few, choice words for Celia, when I next see her (Last Tango in Halifax). And I find myself wanting to call Josh Lyman (West Wing) and ask him what he’s been up to. (We saw the actor, Bradley Whitford, in Saving Mr. Banks, and couldn’t believe that Josh had taken a job with Disney. What a step down from Chief of Staff at the White House!)

I’m not a complete television addict. There is hope for me. In fact, if you know of a good series I should watch, please don’t tell me. I need to catch up on my sleep!

Winter is on its way!

We had our first day of winter yesterday - 67 degrees and 64% humidity! That's quite a switch from 88 degrees and 95%. And it was the first day without rain for over three weeks. Had to get out in it. Here's a pic of Shepard Park, near our house. River is really high from all the rain.

Woo-hoo! Winter's on its way! Time to set up the outdoor furniture!

Come rain or come shine

Buying a beach umbrella comes in very handy when you have to leave the store in a monsoon!

It wasn't doing the backstroke!

This morning, bleary-eyed, I was filling the electric kettle to make coffee in the French press. Just about to snap the lid shut when I noticed something floating on the surface. A twig? No, it was a dead, emaciated lizard!

I feel so bad. He got in the house a week ago, just before we left to spend a week in Austin, Texas. We tried to rescue him, but we couldn't get him out from under the bookcase. I worried the whole week we were gone. Florida exterminating being what it is nowadays, there wouldn't be any bug life for him to eat in the house. And how was he going to get water?

Must have been one last-ditch effort that sent him into that kettle. Poor thing!

I had to boil three pots of water before I could use the kettle for my coffee.

My book is coming out in a couple of weeks!

If you enjoyed my Scotland travel blogs on my website (www.spinningcompass.net), you will love my ebook which will be released in June 2014 on amazon.com and through iBooks. I've added 34 new blogs to the 22 originally posted, complete with stunning photographs my husband took, such as the one on the book cover of the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye. The countryside was absolutely gorgeous and inspired many of my blogs, as did the adventures we had as we learned to slow our pace and make ourselves at home on the road.

Watch this page, or my website or Facebook page (Cynthia Fletcher Rothstein), for updates on the release!

New gastropub in town

The beer wasn't so great, but the food was delicious!

chicken poppers wrapped in bacon

In my yard...

Get a load of this baby pineapple growing next to our house! That plant has been there since before we moved here four years ago, and I've never seen it produce fruit. I didn't even realize it is a pineapple plant!

Siesta Key

cool solar ring

We love the east coast of Florida--the ocean breezes, tempestuous surf, worm reefs, and snorkeling and diving--but the west coast of Florida is amazing for wildlife, at least it was in April when we spent a week on Siesta Key off of Sarasota.

We didn't take nearly enough photos. I wish I had a video of the crazy sea hares that were everywhere in the bay. Dozens! I was trying to steer the boat around them. I was so afraid I'd hit one.

One day sea urchins started washing up on the beach. Why? I probably shouldn't have messed with Mother Nature, but I started throwing them all back into deep water. They'll die without water.

a fever of manta rays off of Anna Maria Island

SCUBA

Food like art

churrasco at Cabana el Rey in Delray Beach, Florida

I'm still here!

Even though I haven't been posting frequently, I'm still here and enjoying life in Florida immensely--especially this past gorgeous winter. The weather was beautiful, which you may think is always the case in Florida in winter, but we do get cold weather now and then. There were a few days I could wear sweaters and boots, and--believe me--I took full advantage! But overall it was sunny and a delightful 70-something degrees during the day. We slept with windows open a good deal of the time, and sat outside in the evenings. We only used the fire pit once, and the outdoor sun deck in the evenings twice. Otherwise it was too warm for either.

I've been writing my book, Scotland at the Speed of Life: making ourselves at home on the road, since we got back from the UK in November. I finished it, for the most part, the first week of February. Then I spent the next two months editing with the help of my fabulous editor, Katie. It's now in production, and should be released as an ebook in the next few weeks. Keep an eye on my website, www.spinningcompass.net for updates about the release.

In between bouts of writing, I managed to escape to the Everglades for what I hope will be an annual trip. And we spent a week on Siesta Key, off the west coast of Florida near Sarasota. I'll post some photos soon.

We also had some very welcome visitors from up north, out west, and even central Florida this winter. Lots of fun!

Right now we're enjoying some extraordinary, low-humidity weather. We have the windows open in mid-May!!!

Stop bleeding Lake Okeechobee!

My husband and I left south Florida in 1987, and never planned to return. But a trip to visit family in 2009 accidentally brought us to the Treasure Coast, and we fell in love with the area. In 2010 we came down to find a home. After two weeks of looking and not being able to decide where to live, we decided to pack it in and try again another time.

We reached this decision as were driving south over the Roosevelt Bridge. As we crested the bridge, I looked to the west at the beautiful boats at Sunset Bay Marina, the late afternoon sun shimmering across the river, and the wide expanse of green beyond the river. “This is where I want to live,” I announced. I had never been more sure of anything in my life. Little did we know that from that vantage point, we could see the dock of the house that we would find the next day.

We spent the summer of 2010 exploring our wet backyard - the South Fork, the North Fork, the wide water between downtown Stuart and Rio, Manatee Pocket, the sandbars, the inlet, and the lagoon north to Ft. Pierce and south to Jupiter. This was truly the Treasure Coast, and the waterway was its mother lode. 

I started volunteering at Florida Oceanographic and became fascinated with local marinelife. We took up snorkeling and explored the mangrove islands in the lagoon, delighting in the nursery of fish, crabs, and birds that lived there. On one particularly stellar day at high tide off Sailfish Point, the water was as clear as our swimming pool. A green turtle swam past our boat, and then we spotted a manatee with her calf. We quietly pulled our boat onto the beach of a nearby island, careful not to disturb a flock of roseate spoonbills that rested in the mangroves.

In the summer of 2011, we were surprised when the Corps of Engineers started releasing water from Lake O into the river. The Lake O releases were something we had heard about after we moved here, but we were under the impression that it happened rarely, usually in anticipation of a hurricane. 

We had no desire to swim in water laced with fertilizer and pesticides, and would sit on our dock in the eerie stillness. The baitfish were gone, the birds were gone, and the dolphins, rays, and manatees we often saw from the dock were gone. The oysters at Shepard Park across Frazier Creek were no longer spitting water. It was as quiet as a graveyard.

And now the Corps of Engineers is bleeding the lake again, and every rainy summer promises to bring more of the same. We have only been in the water once this season, and now we have a sickening neon-green algae in the shallows by our dock where our Great Blue Heron used to feed. The view from the Roosevelt Bridge today is one of devastation and loss, laced with a sickening brown foam.

We have to stop the bleeding. As stewards of the most bio-diverse ecosystem in the country, we have a responsibility to protect it.

What can we do? Start by writing a letter and sending it to every one of our Florida legislators. Tell them that it’s time to stop protecting the sugar industry and time to start protecting a unique natural resource. Let our governor know that it’s time to stop ignoring what is happening to our state. It doesn’t have to be eloquent or lengthy. Just put it in an email and send it. It’s time. 

Contact information is on the FOS website (www.floridaocean.org). Click on “Get Involved,” and then “Contact Your Legislators.”