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Hold on, have been gone since last Thursday and have had things happen! First people things, went to Tampa for a baby shower and my son, Aaron proposed to his girlfriend, Leila. 
That was a lot of fun. Lots of people and scenery and gifts and a great time. Thanks as always to Mark and Lynette for the use of their home for these wonderful parties and to all the hard workers who set it all up and took it down. Came home Sunday after spending two nights with three hours of sleep while listening to the poor cat in heat. Don’t worry she is an indoor cat, 
but what is really funny, there is a slab porch with no screen out the back door, and Sasha the cat will not go off the concrete, she hates hates hates the feel of the grass.
Before I got on I-4, I was cutting through a Home Depot to get gas and caught sight of two osprey in the trees, had to stop and take a couple pics. 
Then off it was toward O- town. Finally I was ready with my camera to take the upside down RV’s I always forget about – 
They were near Dover. At one point the artist was told to remove them, luckily, that has changed — http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/mar/14/owner-told-remove-vertical-rv-display-dover/ — I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy seeing that display!
And then the monotonous ride to Orlando and the rejoicing when downtown appears ; 
.
At the house, the herons have left the nest, nothing is there anymore, though the neighbors still have their family in the trees. The wood ducks too, they have taken their family and gone – didn’t even say goodbye. The grasshoppers are horrible,
They want to dine on way too much. Most of my neighbors kill them, I have been told to fish with them, but can’t bring myself to bait them. 
So they eat. The birds are still busy even though the heat is overwhelming.
The moorhens have six babies. The jays and cardinals also have fledglings: 
The cranes were yawning in the heat.
The grackles and crows and mockingbirds continue fighting.
I was going to go to an meeting for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission about banning the penning of fox and coyotes for hunters to let their dogs loose upon- what an unfair advantage! Apparently it was well attended and they will pass the ban. I actually slept through it this am, I woke and it was 10am and the meeting began at 8:30am, whoops… Glad there are so many dedicated animal protectors via animal rights activists. Orlando has a large share.
At 1pm, I went to Debary 
to see the Gateway Center for the Arts exhibit. On my way I stopped at the White Cup on 17/92 in Debary to see if Jon D. Miller’s work was still up, and the artist was sitting there when I walked in! 
So here is a sampling of what is hanging: 
A Horoscope theme of mixed media on wood and canvas and even prints of the originals. Here’s a few close ups: 
Jon’s painted palm fronds are just as colorful and fun as he is: 
Jon’s so enthusiastic, and even though this show comes down this Friday, I am sure he will be somewhere else – if you are interested in his art, contact via email: Toyseum@aol.com. Jon does murals, interior painting besides portraits and even body painting.
Don’t forget that the White Cup has a selection of coffee and tea and is now making their own yummy desserts.
Then hit the Gateway because my friend, Judith Segall and another new friend, Mary Segal were both showing with Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson and Joanna White. Judith is an excellent paper maker and gives classes. She has worked on making mixed media art that can be touched for the enjoyment of sight impaired people. I remember her telling me she went to Gainesville and took a class years ago about applying art as therapy. Here she has applied her knowledge as a paper maker, painter and being that she is sensitive toward someone who might not have the visual ability to see the colors, but as in nature, they can touch and identify the shapes. Her pieces are always well thought out and very beautiful: 
Always love the depth of Elizabeth’s collages. 
Her colors are just stimulating and fun! I have seen her do collage and it’s magic! Mary Segal does striking, long panels of soothing colors with mixed media – she has quite an interesting approach to her art.
The hanging box art by Joanna White was of small boxes strung together to make long chains of color, that looks like a time consuming project!. There were other boxes too of varied descriptions,
and some long shots 
Just a few glimpses into the brains of artists. The show will be on for about 3 more weeks I think.
The front lobby had adorable individually made bird houses for auction: 
Here’s some info, click on photo for larger reading and contact the Gateway Center For the Arts for more info. emails for Mary Segal = marysegal@yahoo.com, Judy Segall = http://www.judithsegall.com/
Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson http://www.nelsoncreative.com/gallery/
On the way home I saw a anhinga relaxing at Mayfair 
I went home to relax and even tried my hand at fishing, not one thing is biting but the turtles and don’t want them biting my hook! I Took a walk instead. One day seems to mesh into the next, but at 3am, I guess that’s how it seems – good morning!
You can’t give this stuff away – 
everyone around me is bloated, gassy, and tired of leftovers. How lucky we are when we think of those around us so less fortunate. Tomorrow, on to new food!
The day before Thanksgiving was still a subtle gray, the front went through and all the rain promised was a farce. We got very little over here. Thanksgiving morning looked like a black and white photograph, the color drained from the landscape and sky, the lake the mirror reflecting the void of color 
Finally the sun broke through and we went away to eat our dinner.
Came back late and went to bed with a belly full! Our host and hostess, my nephew and niece did an outstanding job of keeping us loaded. Plus we all enjoy seeing Irving the tortoise.
He’s so full of contrasting lines and testure. He also follows you like a dog and his favorite food is hibiscus flowers. He weighs about 175lbs now. 
He has many birthdays to go. He’s still just passing puberty and is a horny little devil, he has a flower pot he loves to hump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrW59oLXmY0&feature=player_embedded (cut and paste to see yourself) 
Irving is in love with this hardshell!
Black Friday came and went, I did not shop, nor did I go anywhere Saturday, it was relaxing not to be spending money. That will go by the wayside soon enough. My daughter said to wait for black Monday, great buys on the internet.
Nature itself goes on, and these are shots I took today. The weather is very cold, low 60’s today, in 40’s the past nights, that is so cold Ringo slept next to me! In fact, he usually will ring the bell attached to the inside front door handle around 4:30am to go out, when I opened the door to let him out, he felt the cold and turned and went back to bed. Also, the herons, male and female have both been coming to the lake as I fish, tonight, they were touching beaks and making noises that seems like the mating rituals are taking place. They are nesting nearby, I suppose maybe babies will be coming near New Years????
The band of brothers were the first thing I saw outside this morning, they are still actively patrolling the lake. But an hour later, a pair of mallards came to relax. 
An anhinga was next door getting ready to fly off and when he saw me, that was exactly what he did.
the spider lily was blooming. 
A baby moorhen was running away from me too.
but not the wren, he was calm.
The lily pad looked interesting, like a non conformist among the conservatives. The day flew by and it was too cold for me to fish, but I took a few pictures before the sun went down. The moon was soft and muted. 
Have a wonderful night…
This is how the day began around 6am. The sky was beautifully lit with red clouds. It’s in the low 70’s, feels almost cool. I saw both moorhen parents swimming about, but not one baby sighting. 
Yesterday my friends Christine and Richard came over to hang a duck box in hopes that the Black bellied whistling ducks might come back. 
I showed Christine the moorhen nest and only an hour earlier there had been 3 eggs. As we stood there, all eggs were completely gone, not one broken shell in sight. Then we saw the culprit, a big black crow flew down and began pecking at the nest. Immediately we knew where the eggs had gone. I have not seen the baby in days, I hope it is hiding. 
This is a picture on the day it hatched.
Now I am trying to figure why the baby and mama crane are coming without the father? For 5 days now they have come to eat birdseed and Papa crane is not with them which is very unusual. He has been a good daddy for the years I have lived here and NEVER left the baby and mother. This is highly suspect. Do you think maybe he flew to Argentina to find a soul-mate??? I am thinking the worst, that something has happened to him. The baby is taller than the mother. Last night he came and did his goofy dance before they fly across the lake for a good nights sleep.
I am hoping the father will find his way back soon. As for me, I am going back to bed, only slept 3 hours so far, time to get some shut eye. I am living in a vampire time zone, the sun comes up, I go back to get a couple hours of sleep…
The moorhens have chosen to nest in the weeds that sit about twenty feet from my seawall. The female built a nice nest and I reported a few weeks ago that she had 5 eggs. 
Last Tuesday one hatched and the baby was swimming around and enjoying newly hatched life and an hour later, it was gone. Never saw it again. On Wednesday, a new moorhen chick was hatched. 
This baby is still alive, and it is a great ‘hider’. As soon as I approach the bank. The moorhens squeak and the baby hurries away to the reeds to hide. The Father gets upset and comes running in to either be near the chick or to cover the nest if the female has chosen to go swim near the baby. This again is a wonderful scope of nature. The moorhens are very protective parents. The three other eggs have not shown any attempt to hatch, maybe with all this heat and a warm feathered behind sitting on them so much, maybe they have become hardboiled…
The heat is bad – “how bad is it?” it seems the lizards are melting – or wearing protection. 
The flowers are wilting under the mighty swell of
sun. I went over to the Lake Mary Farmers market which is very shady. Not many people this morning. This was to be a debut for the artists who wanted to rent a table and I found one artist willing to pay.
There will be a new grocer on the corner of Lake MAry blvd and where the town hall is. It is the same man who has vegetables and fruits in a booth on Saturdays. The name of his place is Morris Market and he opens this coming Friday.
Yesterday I ventured up toward the zoo and stopped by the marina. Drove back toward the Palms, maybe 1000 feet 
and to the right of the driveway a few hundred feet to the right is the marina building.
The building looked pretty quiet and the little business building next to the Palms Resort had ‘ for rent’ signs. A sign of the time for sure. Ususally I see birds there, but nothing was there. I wanted to photograph crows and there wasn’t one in sight. I decided to go to the zoo.
The drive along Lake Monroe was quiet, even the water seemed too tired to wave, (that was a joke).
I turned into the zoo which is a few miles from the marina. Surely there would be some crows at the refreshment stand.
The zoo had a lot of small kids using the water park. The snake room was air conditioned and a refuge. They keep it colder so the reptiles will look perky.
But outside, the alligator was not anywhere to be found and the croc was hidden beneath his water hole. The cats looked like my Frankie, panting and hot. 
After I made the rounds I stopped and got a pretzel and drink and sat down. I made small bits of the pretzel and tossed a few out and waited, nothing, no birds came at all. I stayed ten minutes enjoying the shade and drink, but not one bird took me up on my food offer. I walked back to my truck and came home. The birds are staying to themselves these days. The sun is singe-ing their feathers.
Back on Abbe’s lake things are quiet except for my moorhen, a couple of her eggs have hatched. Will save that story and pictures for tomorrows blog.
Today the news said it would be 94 and feel like 104 degrees, that was no lie. It is hot and the sun seems like a deep fryer and it’s only June! The flowers are beautiful after a great thunderstorm last night. They were closed yesterday,
but today they were full bloomed and smelled so wonderfully rosey! The roses had small bits of purple on them. All around the yard, flowers looked happy. I do water them a bit in the morning and in the evening if there is no rain, otherwise they would fry under that hard light and heat. 
The sandhill cranes sat under the camphor tree for a long time taking in the shade. The father was really panting a lot as was my old cat Frankie. I actually think she might have been experiencing heat prostration as she looked way too lethargic on the porch and I could see her heart beating rather wildly. I brought her in and put her on the cool counter and she drank a lot of water. I was kind of worried her heart might give out, but after a while, she did perk up. So remember to keep lots of fresh water out there. I keep it, but poor Frankie looked like she was almost too tired to drink so watch your older animals. 
The cranes stayed a long time down by the lake. The baby was first to buckle and sit down. then when the parents finally sat down, he got up and went over to give his father a hard time. He would jab his father in the rear and then touch beaks. 
Finally they all relaxed and then finally flew off. The Moorhen is also a pretty smart, she built her nest up high on the side so as to shade her from the sun as she nested.
Tonight I tried fishing, but only got greedy turtles trying to find bread. One is so bold as to come up and take it out of my tackle box, so I keep it up on a plastic chair now as not only the turtles, but the ants swarm inside the plastic bags once they sense food. 
Ringo looks at the turtle with amusement, but does not bother them. Fishing sucked, maybe it’s too hot. If there was no breeze off the lake tonight, I would not have thrown out a line. No use standing down there sweating profusely and ending up like Frankie prostrate on the ground, no one would notice me!
Finally Ringo and I gave up and walked back to the house. I picked some small rose buds to put in a shot glass.
Ringo and I were glad to come inside and absorb that nice cool air. No thunderstorms tonight. All is quiet around here. I came in to blog, Ringo passed out and then was treated to a massage from my son. We all have our ways of dealing with the heat, that’s for sure! 
It’s hot out there, really hot, but felt like running up to the used bookstore in Sanford. Wanted to rumage around the shelves and see what was new. I stopped by the marina to see if anything was floating around, water was flat and nothing visible, not even ducks swimming. So I went toward the businesses up on the “island”. I can’t figure out how this concrete slab is considered an island, I have been to Sanibel, that’s an island, but then again in Florida, we call drainage ditches “ponds”. Anyway, the familiar ducks were out and about and do seem to stay all together. I saw the one with the hair standing up, 
and I saw the baby ducks which have grown. 
I also saw a duck walking around with a broken wing. 
It looked kind of pathetic. When I walked up to where the ducks live, suddenly it looked like a mass march toward the human. 
When they realized I had a camera and no food, they ignored me. I still did not see one muscovy anywhere, even at the pond that is across the street.
The City of Sanford has built quite an elaborate exercise track and have lots of new playground equipment.
The osprey in the nest are flying now. 
I took a few minutes to watch
them fly from post to post.
Upon returning home, I checked the little mother moorhen on her nest. She has at least 5 eggs now,
I got a bit worried as the crows began to gather, and they were digging away on the property. About five crows bossing each other around. One was digging and digging and I watched to see what it would extract.
Turtle eggs! They had found a hole, 
and I shooed them away and took the shovel and got the only two remaining eggs and buried them in the garden so the birds would not bother them. Those birds were rather snippy about that, and finally left. Now I am going fishing. I hope something is biting, last night didn’t catch anything, if fact, I put down my rod and my son and I went for a walk. Now ask my son how annoying it is to seriously walk with someone who wears a camera around her neck, he will gladly tell you…(wait, when I look at that hole, it looks more like snake eggs, might have to let the crows have their raw omelets)
CARBS! Carbs the duck was by the stump this morning looking for seed. What a surprise! It was good to see him, he ate then waddled away not even waiting for the Pekins who were not far away. Hope he will come more often. I will have to go by the marina to see if there are more muscovy ducks up there now.
I had another surprise last night — a moorhen has built a nest in the cattails and tall grass about twenty feet from the bank. She used bent cat tail leaves as the base or kind of platform and built it up with nesting material. 
It holds two ‘hen-size’ eggs that I can see, though they say usually there are 5 or more. I only see two. It takes about 27 days to hatch so I will keep an eye out.
Outside it is HOT and it is only morning. When I was out at 6:45am it was already humid and hot and when the sun breeched the homes across the lake, WHEW! That stare down was no competition, I got out of the suns way!
Today I might get the boat my neighbor does not want anymore. I am so hoping I get it, my son and I have big weeding projects for our area of lakefront. And that’s today so far, got a long way to go yet and temperature is supposed to hit 93!!! I will be in most of the day! And here’s a face that popped up last night while I was fishing – the mooch 
– oh, that’s a duck feather stuck to its’ chin. then there is always Ringo and how he deals with the heat… 
