Kodachrome

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my kodachrome away

Yesterday I spent altogether too much time with the camera and a little too much in the sun. First, I tried to take a picture of my leg, in hopes that there was a hint of visible muscle after a week of serious biking and hiking. I don’t think there is and to make matters worse, Rich caught me taking this picture so it was all sort of embarrassing. Bonnie, what I won’t do. Here’s some leg. It seems only fair that we see what yoga can do, yes?  You can post it here anonymously. I will call it "yoga leg" and no one will know whose leg it is.

Tuesday I was up at the city planners office talking about what it would take to get a variance of one foot on a new front porch since we are in an historic preservation neighborhood and many restrictions apply. He said, "nice neighbors."  I went well armed with the drawings plus photos of our house and all those surrounding it and he was incredibly helpful. He said he would support our plans since we are going to match everything right down to the 1930s moldings. He wondered why we had a right angled offset on the porch and I said it was because I didn’t want to disturb the roots of the very nice tree that grows near the front of the house and he offered to send the city forester over-for free!-to give me some tips. About those taxes we pay back in Ann Arbor? I think I’m getting better value for far less money down here.

The city planner also gave me the name of someone who could help me with xeriscape information and so this morning we started out on a trip to the extension service and that ends up being housed over at the Florida Botanical Gardens and Pinewood Cultural Center. What a wonderful place! I got information on controlling the scale on the beautiful Sago palms in the front yard and the field agent also extolled the virtues of Miner bees (who are multiplying around my bench exponentially) and all in all, it was a great field trip. I was enjoying it a bit more than Rich (I could chat about bees and scale forever) until we got into the actual gardens and something called Heritage Village.

Look what I found! A whole town full of Florida Cracker houses! In one of them there were a bunch of women doing handwork and I could have stayed there all day except Rich started muttering about the smell of Depends. That was a clue he was antsy to get to the library and work. I needed to get out of the sun anyway and the view from this library is pretty amazing, too. Dolphins and mullet have been flinging themselves around Bayboro Harbor right outside the window all afternoon.