Chicago friends visiting...

Longtime freinds Harry and Debbie Vellines visited us today. They are staying on nearby Amelia Island and drove over to see Sarasota with us. We walked over to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens from our marina. It was sunny but cold today, around 60 degrees and breezy at times.

The Selby Gardens have a spectacular indoor orchid and bromiliad display where is was nice and warm and humid after the walk from the marina. Some of the flowers there are astonishing.










The outdoor grounds are full of hundreds of blooming plants and a jungle-like atmosphere, which didn't feel so jungle-like in the cold today, but at least the sun was shining and little wind inside the gardens. This huge colonade fig is actually one plant, a single living organism covering a lot of ground and arial territory. My camera couldn't get the whole plant into the picture and still show Kathy and Debbie close enough to recognize.

Harry is reading the descriptive sign for another jungle fig with buttress roots that support it's great height in shallow soils of the jungle. These are trees planted here by Marie Selby, wife of an oil magnate, in the 1920s when it was her home and garden. By 2010, these trees have achieved huge size and dramatic proportions in the tropical climate around Sarasota.

After the botanical gardens, we just got stone crab claws and deli salads to bring back to the boat for dinner while watching the sunset on our aft deck. It was nice to see our friends from home here in Florida.