Just more touristy stuff in Sarasota today, but fun. After getting some parts together for a boat project this morning, we went to the Sarasota Botanical Gardens this afternoon. It's an easy walk from the marina, right on Sarasota Bay.

They had a very interesting orchid and jungle flower greenhouse, set up to make you feel like it was in a rain forest, with lots of beautiful orchids. However, the orchids I found most interesting were these, which were growing in a tree near the sidewalk and just happened to be in full bloom today. The ones in the jungle display were all grown in a greenhouse and they cycle various plants through when they come into bloom, which is very infrequently for any one plant. That way, their display is always fresh and blooming. But these growing outside naturally probably don't look like this often so we would never notice them.

On the expansive grounds, they also had numerous subtropical and jungle trees. I really liked this Banyan tree. This is ONE tree, that grows like this by sending down air roots like 30 ft. strings in the air that take root when they touch the ground and build up another "trunk" until there are dozens of huge trunks all combined into a massive jungle grove that's really a single tree. The entire large grounds are very well done and show what you can do with enough money and the great growing climate for sub-tropicals in Sarasota.

They had an exhibit of poison dart frogs. These are the real colors of this frog.... electric blue. They also had electric green and electric yellow frogs.

They also had a display of hand carved Borucan Masks from Costa Rica. Kathy bought a mask
mostly covered with colorful frogs, for her frog collection back home.

Tomorrow we're getting up to go walk to the downtown Farmers Market, which is quite nice. For breakfast, we'll probably graze on donuts and whatever they have. I have to get a couple of the local Meyer Lemons too. Kathy doesn't believe that the juice is sweet, right out of the lemon.